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The world’s largest social network with over one billion users, Facebook, has made a significant improvement to its mobile Messenger apps for iOS and Google Android, bringing voice clips and free voice calls (VoIP), allowing users to directly talk with their Facebook friends.
The VoIP feature is currently only available for Canadian iOS users, and works over either WiFi or a cellular connection.
The world’s largest Internet search company, Google, today unveiled a new HTML5-powered news and media aggregator for mobile and tablet devices, Google Currents, that elegantly displays user customized content from a number of sources, including from Google News, Google Reader, RSS Feeds, and even the company’s latest social network Google+.
The world’s largest online search engine, Google, is now indexing Facebook comments that are posted using the Facebook Commenting plugin on websites that use the plugin to power their commenting system.
If you use your Facebook account to post a comment on a website that uses Facebook Comments, your comment (with your name) can now be indexed by Google’s web spiders and will be directly ranked and searchable in Google’s index.
About a few weeks after the iPhone 4S was announced, hackers have tried to fully jailbreak the new smartphone and to also port the new voice assistant system, Siri, to previous generation iOS devices.
Troughton-Smith was the first person to port Siri to the iPhone 4, but the system was not functional since it required authentication with Apple servers, only the user interface was working.
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NASDAQ:RIMM stock chart with volatility as at September 29, 2011 |
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Demonstration of how Apple’s FaceTime works on iOS devices, which is now also supported with Mac computers. |
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Demonstration of Skype for BlackBerry, only available in the U.S. for Verizon customers. International users are not able to use the app to make VoIP calls or chat with Skype friends. |
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Adobe engineer demonstrates how developers could use Adobe Air to create a single code base for applications that can be used to run the apps on multiple operating systems. |
RIM’s overhauled BlackBerry Bold 9900, includes capacitive display and keyboard. |
The Ontario-based BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion LLC (RIM), continues to disappoint investors, as sales and free cash flow to equity significantly declined in the pervious fiscal quarter as a direct result of still not having released a competitive device more than a year after Apple launched its iPhone 4 – in fact, Apple will announce the next generation iPhone next Tuesday.
Investors largely blame top management for being too slow to innovate coupled with a corporate structure filled with intermediaries and lack of accountability that works counter-intuitively in facilitating efficient information flows, decision-making, and innovation.
Despite the significant downturn, the company holds over 2,000 patents, and is the market leader in providing enterprises with the most secure mobile communication and management infrastructure. However, competitors are now able to offer many of those core BlackBerry features in their own products with a better user experience and on a more cost-effective basis.
But, it isn’t too late for RIM just yet.
Here are some of the most important things RIM should consider to remain a going concern.
1. Take back control of your own platform:
Apple has been criticized for being notoriously controlling over what apps work on its iOS platform to the point where competitors have raised anti-trust concerns.
Although being too controlling might not be a good thing (and Apple isn’t as controlling today), at least it provides a very consistent user experience, but the same cannot be said about the BlackBerry user experience.
For example, the U.S. telecom Verizon reached an exclusive deal with Skype to make the Skype VoIP/chat app available exclusively only to Verizon BlackBerry customers. As a result, millions of other international Skype/BlackBerry users do not have practical access to Skype (even in Canada) because of the exclusive deal reached between Skype and Verizon in the U.S. – this would have never happened with any Apple product.
As another example, after you’ve restarted your BlackBerry, have you ever noticed new app installation icons (like mobile commerce app Zoom on Telus) on your menu? That’s courtesy of your carrier that has pushed the apps to your device after reaching a deal with the app makers, in the process re-arranging your menu configuration. Even if you delete the service books, after another restart, those apps re-appear. Could you opt out? No.
2. Focus on the user & innovate
One thing Apple really understands is consumer wants, and as a result, people are willing to camp out in front of stores to buy new Apple products.
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Demonstration of how Apple’s FaceTime works on iOS devices, which is now also supported with Mac computers. |
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A look at the current BlackBerry Messenger service. |
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RIM’s overhauled BlackBerry Bold 9900, includes capacitive display and keyboard. |
The Ontario-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion Ltd, is working on a new communications platform that will include video chat capabilities directly from BlackBerry Messenger to compete with Apple’s FaceTime video chat service, according to a person familiar with the plans that spoke to us on condition of anonymity because the plans were not yet made public.
The platform will only support QNX-powered BlackBerry smartphones that will include a front-facing camera for video chat.
The delayed release of the first QNX BlackBerry smartphone is likely the result of compatibility issues with RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server platform.
The first QNX powered BlackBerry smartphone will be released near the end of the first quarter of 2012 and will include the new communications platform complete with a front-facing camera, according to the same source. It is unclear if current BlackBerry OS 7 powered devices would support the application with limited functionality.
The latest U.S. mobile subscriber market share data published by comScore puts RIM’s platform market share down at 23.4% in June 2011, compared to Google at 40.1% and Apple at 26.6%, respectively.
RIM’s dated portfolio of devices have pushed consumers to competing platforms that offer a super user experience with push email, which largely explains the decline in RIM’s stock price as well. Consumers and businesses alike have largely been loyal to the BlackBerry platform because of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).
Apple has announced iMessage, which largely offers the same functionality as BBM, complete with Delivered and Read receipts, for iOS 5 powered devices, which includes the iPad, the current iPhone 4 and the upcoming iPhone 5 that is expected to launch in mid October of this year.
The world’s largest software vendor, Microsoft Corporation, today announced the company has set up a massive $250,000 fund for its Blue Hat contest as part of the company’s latest efforts to challenge developers to enhance security for the world’s most popular operating system, Microsoft Windows.
The world’s largest online search engine, Google Inc., is now subject of a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) review, after the agency officially announced the formal investigation last Friday.
The world’s largest consumer electronics retailer in the world, Best Buy Co. Inc., will launch a new cloud-based music service, Music Cloud, in the United States, which will directly compete against a number of new cloud products from top competitors including Amazon’s, Google’s, and Apple’s cloud products.
The world’s largest software company, Microsoft Corp., outlined new features for its cloud-based SkyDrive service that will be included with Windows Phone “Mango” that will bring deeper integration of the service on Windows Phone.
New features would allow users to easily keep photos and videos in sync between multiple devices, including their Windows Phone and PC. Every photo or video stored on SkyDrive will automatically be accessible from Windows Phone, and any changes that take place on Windows Phone will automatically be synced with SkyDrive.
SkyDrive albums have also been integrated into the messaging and email hubs, which bring the ability to easily attach media to messages. Microsoft has even added an option to upload every album from Windows Phone to SkyDrive for a more seamless sync experience.
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