Although eBay figures don’t exactly correlate with Apple’s sales numbers, it’s interesting to note who’s buying what, and where. Last year, for example, in the first two weeks after the Apple iPad hit shelves, 65 percent of all iPads sold on eBay went abroad. This year, in the same timeframe, the percentages have been flipped — 65 percent of iPad 2s sold on eBay remained in America, or around 7,800 tablets. Perhaps we’re just seeing higher demand or maybe people don’t like waiting in line. Peep the source link to dive deeper into the comparison.
While we’d heard many networks were unhappy with Time Warner’s decision to release its live TV streaming iPad app and there have even been whispers of cease-and-desist letters in the offing, Fox has put a request to have its channels excluded in writing. At issue is whether or not their agreement allows Time Warner to provide the channel on devices other than the TV — while TWC is confident it does since it only works within the customer’s home, the networks would apparently like to renegotiate before conceding anything. Senior VP of Fox Networks Group Scott Grogin confirmed the letter was sent but did not reveal any details about its contents. Following the battle plan of its last battle with Fox, Time Warner Cable has preemptively put up a IWantMyTWCableTVApp site asking customers to show support for the TWCable TV app against the networks. We’ll wait to see who blinks first and remember that Dish is already slinging channels to tablets with wild abandon while Comcast and Cablevision have plans for similar implementations on the way.
Even though Barnes & Noble hasn’t been pushing the Nook Color as an iPad competitor, its low price and slick hardware seem to have made it one.
Barnes & Noble shipped close to 3 million units of the $250 Nook Color since it launched in November, Digitimes reports, based on estimates from suppliers of the device’s components. Its success led the suppliers to calculate that the Nook Color currently accounts for over 50 percent of the iPad-competitor market (which includes all other tablets).
While far from official sales figures (shipment numbers only tell us how many devices are sent to retailers, not how many are sold), the estimates are still a decent indicator of how consumers are responding to the Nook Color. And not surprisingly, it seems buyers want cheap tablets. (B&N previously said that the device was its best-selling product for this past holiday season.)
Barnes & Noble made several bold decisions with the device, including pricing it well below other tablets and bringing it more in line with the Kindle and other e-readers; offering a portable 7-inch size with a high-quality screen; and having it run a locked-down version of Android, which left the door open to expand the Nook Color’s capabilities with apps and other tablet-like features (which are now headed to the device in an April update).
It’s also not too surprising to hear that the Nook Color may be dominating the small field of iPad-competitors, most of which are two to three times its cost. Hackers have also taken a liking to the device because it’s cheap and easy to turn into a full-blown Android tablet.
According to the suppliers, B&N shipped one million Nook Color units in the fourth quarter of 2010 and shipped 600,000 to 700,000 units a month for January and February.
If we asked you to show us augmented reality, you’d likely fire up apps like Layar or Junaio, both leaders within the augmented reality space. But, what if we asked you to create some AR elements? Where would you start?
As this space grows, to remain relevant, it will be critical for business owners to be visible in the AR world and a new service called Poistr aims to simplify the entire process.
Poistr enables non-developers to create elements and points of interests that will be viewable using the Layar app, one of the world’s most popular AR browsers.
It works like this: Users begin by creating a “Layer” of information which can display a variety of elements in augmented reality including images, links to a website or a telephone number. To start creating the layer an address or specific location must be provided. If you were creating this layer for your business, you’d be able to input the venue’s address to trigger your elements within the Layar browser.
Users can create various objects within the layers coupled with a way to set the range of each action (the active range in meters your objects can be triggered). The intuitive interface for developing layers makes it easy to add videos, images and audio by simply giving Poistr the URL to the media file. Additionally, details about the location such as the telephone number, SMS, website URL and email address can be added.
Another cool feature of Poistr allows users to easily import multiple POIs or locations via KMZ files and GeoRSS (Coordinates from Google Maps). Alternatively as we’d mentioned, the address can be manually input as well.
Poistr is still in beta and it’s currently free. As it stands today, the layers are only viewable within the Layar browser (within Poistr’s demo layer) but it’s planning on extending the service to Junaio soon.
When the final version comes out, users will have the ability to publish their points of interest to Layar and Junaio and it will be viewable by anyone using the apps. Poistr appears to have a section for pricing however it hasn’t released any details as of yet.Image: Featured
While the experience of using interactive digital cookbooks on the iPad is great, it does come with one drawback — your ingredients usually end up on the screen.
iCookbook has cleverly solved the issue of a messy, mucked up screen by including a voice control feature that gives users control over two thousand recipes handsfree.
The user interface is gorgeous and neatly sorts dishes in various categories such as themes, occasions, vegetarian and an ingredients section which helps users build a meal around the ingredients you have on hand in the kitchen.
In an effort to refine the searches, iCookbook offers users a way to use multiple filters that can all be activated at once, allowing users to narrow down recipes based on factors like ingredients, consumer brands, grilled food or the ethnicity of the dish. Using the meal building filters, cooks are given complete control over searches and could potentially save users a lot time.
Within a recipe, foodies can view high-quality images, add the dish to favourites, create notes, send the ingredients to a shopping list or share it with friends via Facebook or email. Making a conversion, finding ingredient substitutions and setting timers are also provided within the recipe tools.
While cooking up a storm with your hands full of goo, there’s a list of voice commands that assist users in navigating through the steps of the recipe. Voice commands can also display the status of cooking timers or open notes –all without ever touching the screen. And nicely, your favourite family recipes can be converted to digital form by inputting a dish directly within the app.
Bottom Line:
The idea of a voice control feature within a cooking app seems so obvious yet it’s not included in any of the iPad recipe apps I’ve seen. All in all, the large bank of recipes, meal builder feature, voice controls and the option to easily add ingredients to a shopping list earns iCookbook the title of a must-have app for the kitchen. iCookbook is available for $3.99 in the app store.Image: Featured
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Even though Barnes & Noble hasn’t been pushing the Nook Color as an iPad competitor, its low price and slick hardware seem to have made it one.
