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iCloud.com developer beta opens, includes full-featured web interface
Remember when I told you there would still be iCloud web apps once the service took over MobileMe, despite what some other sites were saying at the time? Not to brag or anything, but I was right. Today, Apple launched the iCloud.com beta for developers. Web apps on the service include Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Find my iPhone, and iWork. The interface looks to be heavily overhauled from its earlier MobileMe incarnation, and iCloud.com's design seems to have taken many design cues from the iPad's iOS interface. Of note, if you're not a fan of the "real object" design of iCal and Address Book on the iPad or in OS X Lion, you're not going to like the web app design either, because it's essentially the same. Since many of us are under NDA at TUAW, we're not providing screenshots; 9to5 Mac published a few, which you can check out here. The iCloud.com beta does require installing the OS X Lion 10.7.2 developer beta before you can use iCloud for OS X Lion beta 5, so if you're not a developer and were hoping to check this service out for yourself, you're out of luck for now. iCloud.com should launch to the public this fall, alongside iCloud itself and iOS 5. Apple has also released pricing data for iCloud storage upgrades. All free iCloud accounts come with a standard 5 GB of online storage, but Apple will be offering three upgrade options: 10 GB for US$20/year (15 GB total) 20 GB for $40/year (25 GB total) 50 GB for $100/year (55 GB total) Before it became free to all, MobileMe was $99/year and included 20 GB of iDisk storage, so these new pricing tiers for storage are a much better deal than MobileMe was.
How to create a unique iOS home screen icon for your website
GIGAOM has put together a nifty article detailing the process for creating a unique iOS home screen icon for your website. When iOS users visit your website and create a home screen icon shortcut to easily access your site again, you want that icon to stand out and be easily identifiable amongst all the other icons, particularly if your site is a web app. Normally, when you create a home screen icon for a website, iOS will create a thumbnail image of that webpage, but by following a few simple steps (using a program like Preview), and entering a few lines of code, your websites can easily be identified by a well branded icon on any iOS home screen. Click here for all the details.
Facebook to launch in-browser video chat powered by Skype?
Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype hasn't closed yet, but it looks like Redmond is already working behind the scenes to make the service even more ubiquitous. According to an anonymous source interviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook is going to introduce video chat next week, and that service will be powered by none other than Skype. And while the service will be browser-based, it's also said to include a desktop component. We'd say none of that sounds too fantastical -- video calls would be a logical extension of Facebook chat, and let's not forget about the $240 million Microsoft invested in the site back in 2007. What's more, Facebook sent out invites for an event next week, where Mark Zuckerberg was clear the outfit would unveil a new product from its Seattle team. That's in Microsoft's backyard, of course, the invites themselves have chat icons on 'em, and, most tellingly, that Seattle office has been snapping up engineers specializing in desktop software. All told, that adds up to a likely true story to us, but we won't know for sure until the long, beachy weekend is through.
Office 365 ditches the beta tag, ready to take on Google Apps
We know what you're thinking -- you like the idea of Google Apps, but the Mountain View crew kind of creeps you out. Well, don't worry, Microsoft has your back. After making its beta debut last year, Office 365 is officially ready to spread its wings and offer its productivity web app wares to the business-minded masses. For $6 per-user, per-month small businesses get access to Microsoft Office Web Apps, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync video conferencing and can take advantage of the suite's integration with WP7 once Mango lands. Larger, enterprise plans start at $10 per user while adding support for desktop Office products and Lync VoIP solutions as you climb the pricing ladder. Really there's not much more to say except, check out the full PR after the break.
MOVL's PokerFun.tv game shown off on Google TV
We won't see any new Android apps on the Google TV platform until later this summer, but there are still developers cranking away on web apps like this PokerFun.tv game by MOVL. MOVL scored a win in Samsung's Free the TV Apps competition for its WeDraw Pictionary-style game (which also runs on Google TV) and this is the followup. They showed it off at Google I/O and it allows users with most any smartphone to connect to the same poker game and control play live on the TV. Founder Alan Queen has a post on the Google TV blog remarking how much he likes the platform for its ability to link other devices and use a full web browser to build its games on which is a good sign, but we'll wait to hear more reports now that the Fishtank is out to find out how things are going.
Apple confirms iCloud web apps, impending death of iWeb and iDisk
MobileMe's complete disappearance is still a good ways off, but it's safe to say that the transition to iCloud is well underway at Cupertino (and Maiden, North Carolina, for that matter). A brief FAQ has emerged today over at Apple's site, detailing answers to a few burning questions about the future of MobileMe. As stated before, all MobileMe users who had an account prior to June 6, 2011 will see their service extended through June 30, 2012 at no extra cost, but what's new here is the amount of functionality that'll also be available from a website. Starting at an undisclosed time "this fall," icloud.com will allow users to access Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Bookmarks, Find My iPhone and Back to my Mac, relieving fears that iCloud was severing ties with the browser altogether. Unfortunately, iWeb, Gallery and iDisk aren't making the cut, and while it seems that previously stored files will still be accessible, we wouldn't count on being able to add anything new a year from now. Hit the source for the rest of the nitty-gritty.
Google working on video chat for Chrome, Skype cowers in fear
Watch out Skype, Google Chrome is comin' for ya. Not long after releasing WebRTC audio and video chat software as open-source, Google has started to integrate these capabilities into its prized browser. Looking to move past the played out features of Gmail and Google Voice, the company is planning for WebRTC to be a frontrunner for video conferencing and online chatting. The software was introduced as royalty-free, too, even promising to work with other browsers devs (namely Mozilla and Opera) to flesh out the project. This means that anyone building a site can make use of the new tech, and in theory, construct their own personal Skype battering ram. With the company being pro-web apps on all fronts, this is another step forward in its quest to bring the aforementioned technology up to par with native apps. Is this one of many dominoes to fall in the web-based app takeover, at least in terms of Chrome OS? It very well could be, especially if companies would rather see the traffic in-browser vs. within a native app. Now, if only Instagram could make use of that dusty webcam...
Google makes Chrome Web Store available worldwide, adds in-app purchases and flat five percent fee
Google has just announced that it's making the Chrome Web Store available to the "entire userbase of Chrome" -- all 160 million, according to the company's latest numbers -- and in 41 different languages no less, although those outside the current markets will apparently only have access to free apps initially. What's more, it's also now added in-app purchases to the mix -- which it notes developers can add to their apps with "literally one line of code" -- and it's announced that it plans to "keep it simple" by simply charging developers a flat five percent fee instead of opting for some of the more complicated fee structures out there. As for how the Web Store has been doing so far, Google revealed that there has been 17 million app installs to date, although it provided few details beyond that. %Gallery-123363%
Flow now available, keeps your tasks beautifully in sync
Flow, the long-awaited task management system by Metalab, is finally slipping out of beta today and opening its doors to the public. First and foremost, Flow is a web app that many will find very similar to MobileMe in aesthetics. Through this interface, one can add and manage tasks through projects or even delegate tasks to other Flow users (a handy feature for teams). The real killer feature we're seeing with Flow, however, is the cloud-based architecture. Combined with Metalabs' new Flow app for iPhone and its Mac companion app, it's a pretty great way to keep things in sync. Flow has a 14-day free trial, which I highly recommend trying out. Beyond this time frame, Flow has a monthly cost of US$9.99. Metalab is also offering a yearly subscription for the very MobileMe-esque price of $99.
Web apps found to be lacking Safari's speed bump in iOS 4.3
Well, it looks like you weren't imagining things if you thought in-app browsers or web apps saved to your iPhone's home screen seemed slower than Safari itself. Ars Technica has now confirmed that pages or web apps loaded using those methods aren't receiving the JavaScript boost added to Safari in iOS 4.3, which the site found to be about 2.5 times faster than Safari in iOS 4.2. The problem is that those apps don't have the necessary permissions to execute dynamically generated native code stored in writeable memory (as Safari does), which basically leaves them running at the same speed they did in iOS 4.2. Not surprisingly, that has prompted some to speculate that it's all part of a grand plan on Apple's part to force developers to use full-fledged apps instead of mobile apps, but Ars Technica points out that it could just as easily be due to some technical problems. Hit up the source link below for all the technical details.
Katamari Hack rolls across your favorite websites, leaving swath of HTML5 destruction in its wake
Google Chrome may have come out of Pwn2Own unscathed, but you can rip through any website it (or another HTML5-compliant browser) displays -- just pull out your handy Katamari Damacy ball and wreak havok on the page. Na NAaaa, na na na na na na na, na na na na na naaaa... Alternatively, paste the following Javascript into a bookmark, and then click it when you're tiring of a page. javascript:var i,s,ss=['http://kathack.com/js/kh.js','http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.1/jquery.min.js']; for(i=0;i!=ss.length;i++){s=document.createElement('script');s.src=ss[i];document.body.appendChild(s);}void(0);
AT&T CEO says App Store is bad for consumers
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson must be eating some sour grapes since his company lost its exclusive hold on the US iPhone market. During a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Stephenson said that platform-specific app stores like the ones run by Apple and Google are "bad for consumers," as they require a customer to purchase an app multiple times if they want to run it on different platforms. In the words of Stephenson, "That's not how our customers expect to experience this environment." Oh really, Randall? I'd say that the more than 10 billion apps downloaded on the iOS platform alone would say that your customers are more than happy with the current app purchasing model. What Stephenson would rather see are HTML5 and Web apps that are not platform-specific. Developers, in Stephenson's perfect world, would write these apps instead of using native code for a single platform and then sell the apps through the newly-announced Wholesale Applications Community -- which just happens to be an app store that will be run by carriers. AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint are all partners in the WAC, and the CEOs of these companies are most likely losing sleep over the fact that they're not getting a cut of the billions to be had in the app sales arena. Non-native apps won't be able to take advantage of device-specific hardware features, and most certainly will not be optimized for a platform. Instead, they'll most likely be cookie-cutter apps that are targeted to the lowest common denominator in terms of hardware. [via The Mac Observer]
Average iPhone owner has 108 apps, spends 84 minutes a day using them
A survey of the 1,000 iOS devices that synchronize with Appsfire's mobile app discovery and sharing platform reveal some interesting statistics about app usage by its iOS owners. Summarized in an infographic, the compiled statistics show that most of its iOS users prefer native apps to web apps. The average user spends 84 minutes a day using on-device applications and a mere ten minutes on the web using web-based applications. Each iOS owner has, on average, 108 applications installed on their device. Of these applications, 20 are shipped with the operating system and 88 are installed from the App Store. Breaking it down even further, Appsfire suggests that 58% of installed applications are free, 23% are paid and 19% are the default apps on the handset. Of these apps, the average Appsfire user spends 10% of their time on telephony and 47% of their time using other apps like Angry Birds, Instagram and more. While the results are compelling, they represent a subset of users who are focused on finding and using applications. Take a look at the infographic after the break and let us know in the comments if you fit into this profile.
Sierra On-Line games hit iPad via web app, those old enough to remember them rejoice
You may or may not be old enough to remember Sierra On-Line, makers of such fine games as Leisure Suit Larry, the King's Quest, and Police Quest, but none of that matters anymore. Thanks to the folks over at Sarien, you now have access to these glorious titles via your iPad's web browser. The entire catalog has been ported over, and the games which were previously available via the web only are now there on your Apple tablet! The whole shebang is now hosted on Amazon's content distribution network, and the games have been extensively tweaked for that multitouch interface. Sarien hasn't apparently been issued a cease and desist from Activision -- owners of the catalog -- yet, so get these free gems of yesteryear while you can.
Chrome Web Store, HTML5 and the iPad: symbiosis at its best
It's all coming together, folks. It doesn't take much of a gander at the Chrome Web Store to notice a trend: some of the flashiest, most mature "apps" are actually just in-browser versions of iPad apps. And you know what else? Most of these "apps" actually run fine in Safari on the iPad. We're not sure how long Google gave developers to port their experiences over, but it seems like most of the best work had already been done in the form of HTML5 apps that were merely wrapped in app form for App Store delivery. Google's just taking things to the next logical step. Continue after the break as we expand this thesis paragraph into a number of supporting blocks of text, a few jazzy pictorial examples, and a stunning closer.
Tim Berners-Lee entreats us to keep the net neutral, standards open, and speech free
We've always thought pretty highly of this Tim Berners-Lee fella, and now we've got a whole essay penned by him to show you why that is. In a six-page treatise on the current state of the web, Tim discusses why universality of access is so important to our freedom of speech and other democratic liberties, why open standards will always prevail over closed ecosystems (with a special critique of Apple's iTunes and concordant appification of the web), and also why it's necessary to distinguish between the web and the internet. Oh, and he also manages to squeeze in one of the most succinct explanations of net neutrality and its growing importance in our massively interconnected world. Hit the source for the full shot of enlightenment. [Image courtesy of Paul Clarke]
RIM's Jim Balsillie says 'you don't need an app for the web,' rejects Apple's appification of the internet
It's no secret that RIM doesn't exactly agree with Steve Jobs' characterization of the company's prospects, and Jim Balsillie has some more to say on the Apple vs. RIM front, particularly where it comes to apps. It's hard to imagine RIM catching up with Apple's 300,000+ apps, but Jim doesn't think that's the point: "We believe that you can bring the mobile to the Web but you don't need to go through some kind of control point of an SDK, and that's the core part of our message." The statement was made at the Web 2.0 Summit a couple days ago, and on further prompting Jim made it clear he rejects Apple's "appification" of the web. RIM's strategy is obviously riding on highly portable Adobe AIR apps and Flash support in the browser (much like Microsoft's Silverlight app strategy for Windows Phone 7), and we look forward to seeing just how well that playbook plays out in the PlayBook. Of course, "there's not an app for that, but our browser is fully capable of performing that functionality" isn't quite so catchy...
Old Sierra games coming to iPad as unofficial web apps
Sierra's old-school adventure games of the '80s bring back many memories of days where finding cheats and walk-throughs were hard to come by, and a binder of scribbled clues sat by my tiny monitor. Many of those same games have been ported to the web, and we're likely to see them made especially for the iPad soon. Martin Kool of sarien.net has made a hobby of porting many of Sierra's older adventure games to the web, and now he wants to make those same games work especially well on the iPad. Kool plans to make each title on its own landing page, where visitors can create web app icons on their iOS devices to each page, essentially giving them access to a full-blown, free Sierra game. Another cool aspect to these ported games is that Kool has added a multiplayer aspect to them. You could be walking around the Kingdom of Daventry and see another player completing the quests along with you! So far Sierra's parent company, Activision, has not submitted a cease and desist letter, but he won't fight them if it comes to that. Kool does not plan to make any money off his ports, and they will remain ad-free. [via Touch Arcade]
GooTasks syncs tasks from Google
We all know that trying to sync up tasks from your Google account to your iPhone / iPad can be a laborious, if not impossible, task! And if you didn't know that, ... now you do. The only way to access Google tasks is through mobile Safari or another Web browser. Even Google Mobile App will direct you to the Web-based version of Google tasks, via Safari. And, as it stands, there is no way to access Google tasks on the iOS Mail.app either, only notes can be synced through that. No one's saying the Web-based version of Google tasks is such a bad thing, but if you're desperate to deal with your Google tasks through an app, with that app feel, shine and shimmer, then check out GooTasks. GooTasks is a straight forward and very simple app. It allows you to manage, create, edit, and delete Google tasks from various Google accounts and lists so that you can have all of your tasks in just one place. And it's free. I must admit, it's not all that different from Google's own mobile, Web-based version. The only difference that I could find is an offline mode, for use when you're off the grid. Naturally, your tasks will only sync once you're back online. GooTasks is made by French developer Runware. You can check out the GooTasks website in English here, but be warned, the iTunes App Store description is in French only. Another word of caution, GooTasks has an in-app purchase to upgrade to GooTasks Pro at £2.99. For the life of me, I can't figure out what added features you get from this, and I can't glean any further details from their website. So, play it safe, kids! If you're in the market for something similar to GooTasks, check out CalenGoo or GeeTasks, but these are paid apps. Or, why not make a little Web shortcut on your home screen? That way, with one touch, your tasks will appear before you -- just remember to save your log in details!
PlayOn now available for iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G
Good news for all PlayOn users who own an iPad. Engadget is reporting that as of this week, joining the iPhone and iPod touch, PlayOn has released a much anticipated software update allowing you to stream content to your iPad, too. With the power of Safari and HTML5, you can now watch streaming content from such providers as Hulu, Netflix, Comedy Central, ABC, CBS, MTV and ESPN3 (and many more) over Wi-Fi and 3G by visiting PlayOn's web based app. To harness the streaming power of PlayOn you need a running version of Windows (to get it setup) as well as a subscription to PlayOn's Premium service. If you haven't used PlayOn before, or you're not sure it's what you're looking for, PlayOn offers a free 14 day trial so you can try before you buy. [Via Engadget]
