On Thursday, Sprint announced that the iPhone would soon be made available on Virgin Mobile USA, its prepaid plan service.
“The cost will be considerably less than the fees contract customers pay monthly to use an iPhone — once you get past the upfront price of the phone itself,” details The New York Times.
Customers who opt for the prepaid plan will buy the phones for $650 (4S) or $550 (4 or older), “but the baseline $30 monthly fee includes 300 minutes, unlimited data and unlimited text messages. By contrast, AT&T and Verizon no longer offer unlimited data plans, and their contract customers pay upward of $90 a month to use an iPhone,” according to NYT.
Virgin Mobile is not the first prepaid service to announce it will offer the iPhone. It follows Leap Wireless’s prepaid service, Cricket.
Why the sudden offerings on prepaid services? “Tero Kuittinen, a mobile analyst and vice president of Alekstra, a company that offers services to help phone customers lower their monthly bills, has a theory,” notes the article. “He said he had heard from smaller carriers that Apple was upset with the expensive plans offered by Verizon and AT&T. By making the iPhone available with cheaper plans, it hopes to put pressure on the big carriers to cut their prices, he said.”
Digital Trends offers its picks of the best products featured at E3.
Best of Show was awarded to “Dishonored” from Arkane Studios: “The steampunk world was meticulously crafted to allow a variety of approaches, and the gameplay options were varied and complex enough to allow you a huge amount of freedom in the way you played. Any game that allows you to string things together and come up with new attacks that even the developers hadn’t thought of is a success.”
The Best Nintendo Exclusive went to “Pikmin 3” for the Wii U; Best Sony Exclusive was awarded to “The Last of Us” (makers of the “Uncharted” series); and, not surprisingly, “Halo 4” earned Best Xbox 360 Exclusive, Best FPS and Best Multiplayer.
“When Bungie left the ‘Halo’ franchise in the hands of 343, people wondered what to expect,” notes the post. “They wondered if the new studio could live up to the staggeringly heavy burden of taking charge of one of the most iconic franchises in gaming history. Not only does it look like they can match the previous ‘Halo’ games, there is a very good chance they will blow the rest away.”
Additional winners include Best Action Game: “Assassin’s Creed 3,” Best Digital Download: “Quantum Conundrum,” Best MMO: “Planetside 2,” Best RPG: “South Park: The Stick of Truth,” and Best Sports Game: “NBA 2K13.”
The Best Sleeper of E3 was awarded to “Beyond: Two Souls”: “Developer Quantic Dreams has been known for taking risks and creating games that play with the conventions of gaming. This game is just astounding. The facial animation is arguably the best ever to grace a game, and with the main character being created by Academy Award Nominee Ellen Page, this game promises to be an exhibit in the ‘games as art’ discussion.”
Check out the Digital Trends post for a full breakdown of the winners and each category’s runners up.
Asus unveiled the 18-inch Transformer AiO tablet at Computex last week. For many, the device may seem heavy and awkward next to popular tablets such as the 9.7-inch iPad.
“However, it also showcases what an ideal Windows 8 product might look like, and this product has an interesting twist: In tablet mode, it acts as an Android tablet,” notes Rob Enderle for Digital Trends. “Now, getting Windows and Android to play nice is likely a losing game, but what if this product instead ran Windows 8 and Windows RT (the ARM version of Windows 8)? Then it actually could be very interesting.”
“The Asus Transformer AiO is designed to boot two operating systems, and appears to shift from Windows 8 to Android when you pick up the display and turn it into a tablet,” adds Enderle. “If you were to replace Android with Windows RT, it would then switch from Windows 8 x86 to Windows RT, giving you a dedicated tablet experience in tablet mode and a PC experience when it is in its docking platform.”
Enderle also comments that the screen size may not be such a bad idea, since it falls between current tablet and desktop PCs — and may open up new possibilities for the use of tablets, especially if Asus considered replacing Android with Windows RT.
“Like most of you, I doubt this will happen,” he writes. “But were it to have the right backing, the right software, and the right user experience, bigger could be better. Asus, which is a rapidly rising star, could surprise the market.”
Food and beverage operator OTG plans to include 7,000 new iPads at airports over the next 18 months. The company has been testing the service at LaGuardia Airport by offering use of 300 iPads to its diners.
The planned roll-out includes dining locations at LaGuardia, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and Toronto Pearson International Airport.
“Using OTG’s custom browser, diners will be able to use the iPads to order meals through a visual menu, surf the Web, check their Facebook and Twitter accounts, get up-to-date flight information and play games,” reports Digital Trends. “Security is assured by simply hitting the home button, at which moment any personal information and browsing history will be wiped from the tablet.”
“We believe this to be the largest deployment of consumer-facing iPads in the world, and for us, it’s just the beginning,” explains OTG chief exec Rick Blatstein. “We’re marrying culinary excellence at the airport with new media. In addition to the content we are already offering, we see this as a significant opportunity for broader deployment of digital content from movies to news to games.”
In related news, Scoot Pte has replaced two tons of its bulky in-flight entertainment systems with iPads in an effort to save fuel. “The tablets helped the carrier cut 7 percent off the weight of planes obtained from parent Singapore Airlines Ltd. (SIA) even after a 40 percent increase in seating,” reports Bloomberg.
Economy passengers will be charged a rental fee of $17 U.S. to rent iPads loaded with movies, TV shows, music, and games. Business class passengers will have free use of iPads.
Twitter has made some significant improvements to its Facebook integration including support for business pages, images, and links to hashtags and usernames.
“We have fixed many issues with the Twitter for Facebook integration, including the ability to post to Facebook Pages, and added some new features,” a Twitter spokesperson explained to The Next Web. “The updated Twitter for Facebook integration now includes additional rich media experiences related to the first photo, URL, @mention or #hashtag in the cross-posted Tweet.”
Those who have already linked their accounts will need to update the connection via their Twitter profile settings page.
“The resulting integration is pretty impressive. When a tweet includes a photo, for example, the corresponding Facebook status update includes a thumbnail and link to click through to view the full photo, and other images from the user, on Twitter,” notes TNW.
The post suggests that the integration may be significant in that it is likely to send many of Facebook’s 900 million users to Twitter. Additionally, it could leave Google+ in the cold: “The Google API requires services to reciprocate the data share and, since Facebook does not, a disconnect between two of the world’s most influential sites — which know more about Internet users than almost any others — has developed.”
A new study from online measurement company comScore debunks the notion that Facebook ads are ineffective.
According to comScore, the recent Reuters survey that says 80 percent of users do not purchase products based on Facebook advertisements is inaccurate because “people generally don’t like to believe that advertising actually has an effect on their behavior.”
“ComScore, meanwhile, says it can measure both online behavior and offline purchases, and can connect the two,” notes AllThingsD, adding the disclaimer that Facebook is a comScore client (the two produced a study last summer analyzing how brands use the social network).
Additionally, while Reuters suggests that Facebook users are using the site less than they were six months ago, comScore counters that “time spent per user is actually up a few percent in that period.”
“ComScore says that Facebook ‘earned media’ ads — the kind that Facebook users distribute on their own, via ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ — do help sell stuff,” explains the article. “In their words, the ads have a ‘statistically significant positive lift on people’s purchasing of a brand.'”
Netflix recently announced that it will provide its video streaming services through the company’s own content delivery network (CDN). The network of in-house servers currently handle 5 percent of Netflix streaming traffic.
“Called Open Connect, the service will help Netflix cut the umbilical cord to commercial CDN providers like Limelight and Level 3 and will bring it closer to the cable and telco ISPs ultimately responsible for delivering its movies and TV shows,” reports GigaOM.
Open Connect will offer ISPs the option of connecting directly to Netflix or caching content on their own servers. The company hopes to coax ISPs to use its CDN by waiving Internet exchange fees and sharing open source designs for server hardware and software.
“The world’s other major Internet video provider, YouTube, has long had its own content delivery network,” explains the Netflix blog. “Given our size and growth, it now makes economic sense for Netflix to have one as well. We’ll continue to work with our commercial CDN partners for the next few years, but eventually most of our data will be served by Open Connect.”
GigaOM notes that some ISPs have their own CDNs and charge content providers to cache content, while others “actually earn a paycheck from commercial CDN providers to host content servers on their networks. With the Open Connect, those revenue streams would go away. But if ISPs were to take Open Connect into their networks they could save considerably on network transport costs by moving the source of Netflix’s enormous traffic flow closer to their customers.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, believes 3D movies will eventually prosper and impact the way stories are told, despite a recent downturn of the format’s popularity in the U.S.
“Slowly but surely, it is regaining the regard it was first held in. Internationally, it continues to explode,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
Katzenberg cites a better sensory experience as the technology’s driving force. “It amplifies all of the feelings,” he noted. “There is better engagement and involvement with all of the characters.”
The cost of 3D remains a challenge — and in the wake of “Avatar,” consumers experienced a flood of disappointing 3D films. “There was some crummy stuff put out there for a while,” Katzenberg said. “People only like it when it’s really good.”
“While he didn’t name any movies, many of the about 125 3D movies released in modern times have been panned,” notes NYT. Production costs and bad scripts are not the only issues. Katzenberg suggests new editing techniques need to be employed.
Noting that 3D glasses are an additional hindrance for some moviegoers, he predicted: “When science delivers, it will be ubiquitous.”
The Society for Information Display has selected the winners for Display of the Year, Display Component of the Year, and Display Application of the Year.
Display of the Year goes to AU Optronics’s 55-inch, 4K x 2K, 2D/3D switchable glasses-free TV. According to Information Display: “AUO’s proprietary display made its debut in Japan in December 2011 and is currently the world’s first 4K x 2K TV display, as well as the largest glasses-free 4K x 2K 3-D TV display commercially available.”
“The display features a 4K x 2K (or ‘quad-HD’) resolution of 3840 x 2160 for vivid and lifelike 2-D images,” notes the article. “Meanwhile, a simple switch by the viewer converts the image instantly into 3D format, with 3D support for up to nine positions based on the TV’s built-in face-tracking camera.”
Qualcomm’s Mirasol Display Technology earned the silver award for Display of the Year.
Display Component of the Year was awarded to Nanosys’s Quantum-Dot Enhanced Film (QDEF), which uses quantum dots to create a pure-white backlight for LCDs. The backlight produces a wide color-gamut resulting in vivid colors that are more true-to-life.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note took Display Application of the Year. The Galaxy Note is a portable communication device that combines a smartphone and a tablet. The device includes a 5.3-inch, 800 x 1280 pixels AMOLED display that can handle deeper blacks than LCDs and 95 percent of natural colors.
The silver award for Display Application of the Year goes to Perceptive Pixel’s 82-inch Projected-Capacitive Unlimited Multi-Touch and Stylus LCD.
Japanese printing company Shunkosha provides rectangular plastic handles for customers to hold on Subway cars, and the latest innovation from the company integrates interactive smartphone advertisements into the handles.
“Strappy is a rectangular plastic covering that attaches to the straps hanging from subway car ceilings,” reports The Verge. “Within this covering is a reader that supports the FeliCa NFC standard — the same contactless system behind Pasmo, Tokyo’s rechargeable subway cards.”
Customers on the subway can place their smartphones on top of blue boxes connected to the handles. The smartphones will connect to a browser “directed to a URL with ads, coupons, or other marketing materials,” explains the post.
The innovation comes soon after the announcement that NTT DoCoMo, Softbank, and KDDI have begun building antennas within Japanese subway tunnels.
The product is now in a trial phase which will conclude by the end of June.
Google has implemented a new warning system that alerts users when Google believes the user is the target of a state-sponsored attack.
“When we have specific intelligence — either directly from users or from our own monitoring efforts — we show clear warning signs and put in place extra roadblocks to thwart these bad actors,” explains Eric Grosse, vice president of security engineering for Google.
Google does not reveal how they know that the attacks are state-sponsored. “We can’t go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors,” notes Grosse, “but our detailed analysis — as well as victim reports — strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored.”
Receiving notification does not necessarily mean your account has been hijacked. “It just means that we believe you may be a target, of phishing or malware for example, and that you should take immediate steps to secure your account,” Grosse adds.
Wired reports: “No word on whether Google will still notify users if it has reason to believe the state doing the spying is the U.S.”
Google acquired mobile productivity software suite Quickoffice this week in an undisclosed deal intended to bolster Google’s transition from computers to mobile devices.
Quickoffice is “most popularly known for its Android and iOS document-editing applications,” reports AllThingsD. Users often use the software to edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents from mobile devices.
“Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats, and we’ll be working on bringing their powerful technology to our Apps product suite,” wrote Alan Warren, Google’s engineering director, in a company blog post.
“Quickoffice has a strong base of users, and we look forward to supporting them while we work on an even more seamless, intuitive and integrated experience,” he added.
Facebook has launched its previously announced mobile App Center in which users can read reviews, receive suggestions, and buy apps in one centralized location.
According to yesterday’s official Facebook statement: “The App Center is launching tonight with more than 600 social apps, including Nike+ GPS, Ubisoft Ghost Recon Commander, Stitcher Radio, Draw Something, and Pinterest.”
The announcement also notes that only high quality apps will appear in the store based on user ratings and usage statistics.
“Each person will have a personalized experience in the App Center, with recommendations based on the apps they and their friends use, whether that be games or fashion, food, fitness, travel, or other lifestyle apps,” explains the statement.
Facebook provided some interesting statistics in its statement, including: 1) “More than 230 million people play games on Facebook every month;” 2) “More than 130 games on Facebook have more than 1 million monthly active users;” 3) “Facebook drove people to the Apple App Store 83 million times in May;” and 4) “As of May, seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top 10 Android apps have integrated with Facebook.”
Fans of HBO staged a recent Twitter campaign called “Take My Money, HBO!” aimed at getting the network to allow for Web-only subscriptions to its HBO GO service. Currently, only those who subscribe to the cable network via traditional providers have access to the Web content.
On Wednesday, HBO sent a Twitter response that “reaffirmed HBO’s belief that it’s better off with its existing cable and satellite partners than it would be on its own, despite growing pressure from Internet-based alternatives,” reports The New York Times.
HBO is resisting making the Web content available separate from its cable subscription because of its “lucrative relationships” with satellite providers like Comcast and DirecTV. “Selling subscriptions to HBO on the Internet would almost certainly undermine those relationships,” notes the article.
“What would happen if HBO no longer had the pay TV industry’s marketing team propping it up all the time? The results would be disastrous, and there’s no way that HBO could make up in online volume the number of subscribers it would lose from cable,” notes TechCrunch in a related report. “Which is why, even though some users would actually pay more for access to HBO GO without all the other cable channels, you won’t see it show up as a standalone service anytime soon.”
Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren spoke before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, arguing that Internet radio is subjected to unfair royalty fees.
When Westergren spoke before the committee last year, he explained that Pandora feeds 50 percent of revenues back to artists in performance fees, while Sirius Satellite Radio only pays 7 percent.
Westergren describes this as an unfair playing field and notes that Congress should “approach radio royalties in a technology neutral manner.”
“According to the account that Westergren gave me, the criteria for setting royalty rates in broadcast, satellite, and Internet radio were all determined at different times,” reports TechCrunch. “So when Pandora is making the case for lower loyalty rates, even the arguments that it can use are limited. For example, he says even though Pandora is ‘a massive driver of sales’ for iTunes and Amazon… it’s not allowed to offer that data as evidence. Satellite radio companies, on the other hand, can.”
Westergren does not expect immediate results, but does note that since most “members on the Hill use Pandora or some form of Internet radio” he remains optimistic about their desire to protect the brand in the future.
On Thursday, Sprint announced that the iPhone would soon be made available on Virgin Mobile USA, its prepaid plan service.
