Computed·Blg

Via designboom

-----

Via TechHive

-----

Google has enjoyed a considerable head start on the mobile-mapping front, but Apple and Microsoft haven’t been idle. Both companies have licensed data from a number of services to flesh out their competing map offerings in an effort to bolster their respective phone platforms and chip away at Google’s dominance.

But there’s more to a map than getting users to and from work: We rely on maps to figure out where we are, to find new places, and to plan trips far beyond our local haunts. Here's a look at which mapping service offers the best features and functionality.

A tale of three map apps

Google Maps

Google Maps’ greatest strength lies in its robust search capabilities: Throughout my testing I found that I could type in a location and (generally) find the business or landmark I was seeking, whereas Apple and Windows Phone often required me to add a city to my search query. Google Maps also offers a killer feature in the form of Street View. If you’ve ever used Google Maps in a browser, you’re likely familiar with the little yellow Pegman avatar that gives you a first-person view of the location you’re searching for. It’s incredibly useful, providing a clear idea of where you’re heading before you ever arrive.

The robust direction options are another killer feature. All three mapping services offer directions by car and on foot, but only Google includes public transportation and biking directions. Public transit results can be hit or miss, however—many users have reported that bus schedules and the like don’t necessarily line up with reality, though I’ve had pretty good luck while using the service in San Francisco.

Google Maps’ Places functionality serves as a sort of neighborhood-savvy guide: You just tap the pin icon on the map for a list of places nearby, and filtering options let you limit searches to locations that are currently open, fit into a particular price range, or have a minimum review score. Finally, Google Maps displays reviews that its users have posted for most every establishment you could search for, from restaurants to police stations.

Apple Maps

Apple’s flyover view is a novel and admittedly attractive attempt at emulating Google Street View, but ultimately it falls flat. The vector-based maps certainly are eye-catching; but unless you’re actually planning on flying a small plane over your destination, the view won’t offer much in the way of utility. And let’s not forget the often comical rendering issues that are the subject of at least one Tumblr blog, where bridges appear to melt into the landscape and some landmarks disappear entirely. Apple is working on correcting many of these issues, but they do mar Apple Maps’ presentation.

Apple has tapped into Yelp’s massive user community to find locations and power its reviews, and that’s a powerful asset in places with an active Yelp community. Unfortunately, Yelp’s business listings are mostly limited to larger cities in the United States, so you’re out of luck if you’re traveling through smaller towns or internationally. Tapping a business name in the Apple Maps app kicks you out of Maps and into the Yelp app—if you don’t have it installed, you’ll be prompted to get it. Swapping between apps can make casual browsing a bit annoying, but Yelp user reviews are decidedly more numerous and robust than Google’s similar offerings.

Windows Phone 8

Windows Phone 8 uses Nokia’s mapping engine, but the native Maps application isn’t nearly as robust as the Nokia Drive app currently offered exclusively to Nokia Lumia owners. The Maps app on Windows Phone 8 is ultimately the most limited of the bunch: Although it pulls reviews from sites such as Citysearch and TripAdvisor to fuel its Buzz section, the app lacks photos or any sort of Street View analogue. The Buzz section also has far fewer reviews than Yelp or even Google, which can limit its utility at times.

Windows Phone Local Scout is a bit like Google Places, but Microsoft's offering takes top honors. It scans the area around you (or the location you’ve searched for), and lists establishments that are nearby. Results are divided into four categories. 'Eat + Drink' covers bars and restaurants, while the Shop section covers, well, shops. The sections serve up business hours, contact information, and the average ratings assigned by Citysearch and TripAdvisor users. The filtering options are fairly extensive; you can, for example, limit results to restaurants that are open and serving a particular cuisine, or hardware stores that are currently offering deals. The 'See + Do' section lists nearby upcoming events and places of interest—though the unfiltered list is a bit impractical if you’re exploring casually, with museums and art galleries listed alongside New Year’s Eve parties and high school reunions. Finally, there’s the For You section, which couples data from Bing and Facebook to guess what sorts of venues you might be interested in; my suggestions were largely limited to bars, which makes sense based on my admittedly sparse Facebook check-in history.

Offline Maps

A final useful feature that all three services provide is offline maps. Apple’s implementation is rudimentary: Once you've visited a location on the map, it and the surrounding areas are cached automatically to your device. You won’t be able to search without Wi-Fi or cellular service, but the streets, businesses, and landmarks are preserved in all their vector-mapped glory.

If you’re planning in advance, the latest version of Google Maps will let you make sections of a map available offline. Just tap the menu button, choose make available offline, and select a section of the map you’d like to preserve. Alternatively, you can select My Places from the Maps menu, choose new offline map, and search for a city to download a snapshot. The service will tell you exactly how much space the map will take up (in my tests the San Francisco Bay Area claimed approximately 35MB of storage space), and then it will download the section you’ve selected. Unfortunately, you can't search the map without a data connection.

Windows Phone’s brute-force approach is actually my favorite implementation: You can download entire maps from a number of regions around the world. Although they take up considerably more space (California weighs in at just shy of 210MB) and you lose out on most of their satellite imagery, you’ll have full search and navigation functionality—even in areas with a spotty data connection.

Search shootout

How do the three services stack up when it comes to finding places you’d like to visit? I did some testing to find out. My testing method was rather simple: I typed in the name of a business or landmark, and examined the results. I’ll start with businesses in San Francisco, home to TechHive headquarters.

House of Shields

House of Shields is a fairly popular watering hole in the middle of downtown San Francisco, and (as expected) all three phones had no trouble finding it and serving up all of the information I could want. Windows Phone 8’s Buzz section really excelled here, offering a concise breakdown of user reviews. It didn’t have very many reviews, unfortunately. If you’re walking about with friends and trying to get a general idea of a bar’s ambiance, however, the snippets it serves up are arguably more useful than an average user rating from Yelp or Google.

Tomales Bay Oyster Company

Tomales Bay Oyster Company is a small but lively oyster farm and picnic area located north of San Francisco. It’s a great place to go if you’re craving fresh oysters, looking for a beautiful view, or testing a phone’s mapping app. Google and Apple found the business just fine, pointing their maps to the same isolated turnoff that hosts this delectable little dining spot. Both services offered the restaurant’s phone number, but Google Maps went a bit further, serving up user-submitted photographs of the location, the restaurant’s website and business hours, and reviews from Google Maps users. Windows Phone couldn’t find the business at all, even when I punched in the address and searched for items of interest in the area. I could spot the picnic area by zooming in on the map’s aerial photography, but that kind of information won’t be of much help to most people.

State Bird Provisions

Both iOS and Google Maps found this relatively new restaurant with ease, supplying reviews, contact information, and business hours. On Windows Phone 8 I had to add "San Francisco" to my search before I found the location, and the results included only a phone number and a link to the website.

San Francisco’s results are nice, but I also branched farther out in my testing.

Totonno’s Pizzeria Napolitano (New York)

Totonno’s Pizzeria Napolitano is a well-regarded pizza joint in New York, and Google Maps found it effortlessly. Finding the restaurant on iOS required adding "New York" to my search query, but Apple's map turned up all of the necessary information with plenty of photos from Yelp (Google Maps offered only two). Curiously, unless I was looking directly at a map of New York, the Maps app on Windows Phone 8 couldn’t track the restaurant down at all. Once it found the establishment, it gave the necessary contact information and store hours, but served up decidedly fewer user reviews (and no photos).

Citizen Coffee (Seattle)

What about a place that's a little less renowned? Citizen Coffee, a cozy coffee shop and eatery in Seattle, is a spot I’ve wandered into a few times while traveling. Google Maps’ search functionality shone on this test, narrowing the location down with ease. On Apple Maps, I needed only to add "Seattle" to my search query to find the place, and the Yelp support produced a lot of photos that gave a nice idea of the variety of food, as well as the ambiance of the establishment. (I still loathe the fact that you need to jump out of the Maps app entirely to check them out, however.) The location was just as easy to find on Windows Phone (once I’d added "Seattle" to my search query), but Windows Phone’s Buzz category once again offered just a few token reviews, and lacked images.

Sukiyabashi Jiro (Tokyo)

Branching out farther still, I headed to Japan to track down Sukiyabashi Jiro. The restaurant is the subject of the excellent documentary film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and I assumed that it would be rather easy to track down. Alas, Yelp’s services don’t extend to Japan, so Apple Maps’ offerings for that country are limited to addresses and phone numbers—I couldn’t find Sukiyabashi Jiro at all. Windows Phone 8’s map of Tokyo (and wide swaths of Asia, actually) is barren, lacking even basic information or street names. Unsurprisingly enough, Google Maps delivered in my test, offering the correct address, contact information, and some user reviews.

Tracking down business listings in distant cities and foreign countries can prove tricky for iOS and Windows Phone, which rely on licensed services from third parties that don’t have as exhaustive a reach as Google does. I had no such trouble with famous landmarks, though Google Maps’ general location-savvy again made it the most useful of the bunch—most of the time.

Taipei 101 (Taipei, Taiwan)

In my quest to find famous landmarks, I started with Taipei 101, the world’s second-largest building. The search took a bit of extra effort on Windows Phone: Oddly, the only query that worked was “Taipei 101, Taipei.” That said, all three services ultimately found the landmark, though only Google Maps provided listings for many of the businesses in the area.

Sydney Opera House (Sydney, Australia)

I had better luck tracking down the Sydney Opera House, though Windows Phone 8’s map directed me a few miles southwest of the actual landmark. It’s easy enough to pan over to the site (which is labeled correctly), but Google and Apple Maps both sent me to the right spot on the first try.

Flatiron Building (New York)

Searching for the iconic Flatiron Building was simple on both Apple Maps and Windows Phone; on iOS’s standard map view, all of New York’s landmarks are helpfully labeled and granted large, distinct icons, which makes casual browsing a breeze. Google initially tried to direct me to The Flatiron Group, a business situated a few blocks south of the landmark, but I was able to locate the building eventually by selecting it from a list of search suggestions.

Fenway Park (Boston)

All three mapping services had no trouble finding Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. Once you arrive at the park (virtually), Windows Phone’s Local Scout offers the easiest way to find nearby establishments; although you can do a generic search on Apple and Google Maps, I appreciated being able to scan a list of interesting locales near the ballpark.

Turn-by-turn navigation

Competent turn-by-turn navigation is a must-have feature for anyone who hopes to rely on a phone to get around. Unfortunately, Windows Phone 8’s native Maps app currently lacks support for it. If you own a Nokia Lumia phone, you have access to Nokia’s free Drive app, and the Windows Phone store offers free and paid alternatives for other Windows Phone devices.

That leaves Apple Maps and Google Maps, two excellent offerings with slightly different implementations. In my tests both services gave accurate directions: The suggestions and even the alternative routes they served up were generally similar (in San Francisco, at least). Miss a turn, and both apps’ robotic narrators will rapidly update their instructions to get you back on the right track. Both will keep you abreast of traffic conditions, and will suggest new routes if the situation looks especially bleak.

The Maps app on iOS provides turn-by-turn navigation if you’re running the latest version of iOS and using an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 (or an iPad 2 or later). The accuracy of the driving directions is on a par with that of Google Maps, but the focus on hands-free simplicity can be a double-edged sword. Setting up a route is easy: Search for a location, select the car icon, and tap the route button, and Siri will begin to relay driving instructions.

If you’re focused on getting from point A to point B, this arrangement can be handy; the phone essentially becomes locked to the current step on the list of directions to your destination, ignoring all inputs on the touchscreen unless you leave the app, and even showing directions on the phone’s lock screen. You need to tap the overview button to interact with the map, pausing the route in progress; it’s a small issue, but being able to pan about the map without interrupting directions can be useful if you’d like to gauge traffic congestion in the area or keep an eye out for gas stations and the like on the fly.

Google Maps shines in navigation. When you’re in navigation mode, the map continues to function normally, so you (or ideally, someone who isn’t driving) can scan for alternative routes or use the layers menu to plot landmarks such as ATMs or gas stations on the map. Google Maps also allows you to create routes that avoid highways and tolls, a simple but useful feature that Apple and Windows Phone would do well to emulate.

Truth be told, my only real qualm with Google Maps’ navigation is the awkward overhead angle the app chooses to relay directions. The angle can make it a bit difficult to quickly parse the names of upcoming cross streets and side streets without panning over them on the map, and futzing with your phone isn’t advisable when you’re driving.

Which one is the winner?

The clear "loser" here is Windows Phone 8, but the maps are largely a victim of the operating system's own infancy. The services can only improve with time, as users add reviews and report errors. The Maps app is constantly evolving, and features such as turn-by-turn navigation are reportedly on the way. I do love Windows Phone’s minimalistic presentation and free map downloads. Local Scout is also arguably the best way to explore a new area, but Microsoft's aerial photography and satellite images are lackluster in comparison with the competition, and the overall feature set is limited.

That leaves Google and Apple. iOS’s Maps offering has improved considerably since leaving Google’s mapping data behind, but the reliance on Yelp integration leaves much to be desired for users around the world—to say nothing of the need to switch apps to see most of the information you’re looking for. Apple’s stylish new vector maps are admittedly gorgeous, but offer no real utility; I also found it a bit too easy to slide into the skewed 3D perspective when I was trying to zoom in on a map, which can be a bit disorienting.

Unsurprisingly, Google Maps takes the crown. It offers the best search functionality, decidedly better business listings, and robust navigation options. Features such as Street View and Google user reviews allow you to get all of the information you need directly from the app. It isn’t quite as attractive as Apple’s Maps, and Windows Phone’s Local Scout is clearly more useful than Google Places for exploring your surroundings, but Google’s near-decade head start keeps it firmly in the lead.

Via MIT Technology Review

-----

Choosing sides: Google’s new augmented-reality game, Ingress, makes users pick a faction—Enlightened or Resistance—and run around town attacking virtual portals in hopes of attaining world domination

Ingress website

I’m not usually very political, but I recently joined the Resistance, fighting to protect the world against the encroachment of a strange, newly discovered form of energy. Just this week, in fact, I spent hours protecting Resistance territory and attacking the enemy.

Don’t worry, this is just the gloomy sci-fi world depicted in a new smartphone game called Ingress created by Google. Ingress is far from your normal gaming app, though—it takes place, to some degree, in the real world; aspects of the game are revealed only as you reach different real-world locations.

Ingress’s world is one in which the discovery of so-called “exotic matter” has split the population into two groups: the Enlightened, who want to learn how to harness the power of this energy, and the Resistance, who, well, resist this change. Players pick a side, and then walk around their city, collecting exotic matter to keep scanners charged and taking control of exotic-matter-exuding portals in order to capture more land for their team.

I found the game, which is currently available only to Android smartphone users who have received an invitation to play, surprisingly addictive—especially considering my usual apathy for gaming.

What’s most interesting about Ingress, though, is what it suggests about Google’s future plans, which seem to revolve around finding new ways to extend its reach from the browser on your laptop to the devices you carry with you at all times. The goal makes plenty of sense when you consider that traditional online advertising—Google’s bread and butter—could eventually be eclipsed by mobile, location-based advertising.

Ingress was created by a group within Google called Niantic Labs—the same team behind another location-based app released recently (see “Should You Go on Google’s Field Trip?”).

Google is surely gathering a treasure trove of information about where we’re going and what we’re doing while we play Ingress. It must also see the game as a way to explore possible applications for Project Glass, the augmented-reality glasses-based computer that the company will start sending out to developers next year. Ingress doesn’t require a head-mounted display; it uses your smartphone’s display to show a map view rather than a realistic view of your surroundings. Still, it is addictive, and is likely to get many more folks interested in location-based augmented reality, or at least in augmented-reality games.

Despite its futuristic focus, Ingress sports a sort of pseudo-retro look, with a darkly hued map that dominates the screen and a simple pulsing blue triangle that indicates your position. I could only see several blocks in any direction, which meant I had to walk around and explore in order to advance in the game.

For a while, I didn’t know what I was doing, and it didn’t help that Ingress doesn’t include any street names. New users complete a series of training exercises, learning the basics of the game, which include capturing a portal, hacking a portal to snag items like resonators (which control said portals), creating links of exotic matter between portals to build a triangular control field that enhances the safety of team members in the area, and firing an XMP (a “non-polarized energy field weapon,” according to the glossary) at an enemy-controlled portal.

Confused much? I sure was.

But I forged ahead, though, hoping that if I kept playing it would make more sense. I started wandering around looking for portals. Portals are found in public places—in San Francisco, where I was playing, this includes city landmarks such as museums, statues, and murals. Resistance portals are blue, Enlightened ones are green, and there are also some gray ones out there that remain unclaimed.

I found a link to a larger map of the Ingress world that I could access through my smartphone browser and made a list of the best-looking nearby targets. Perhaps this much planning goes against the exploratory spirit of the game, but it made Ingress a lot less confusing for me (there’s also a website that doles out clues about the game and its mythology).

Once I had a plan, I set out toward the portals on my list, all of which were in the Soma and Downtown neighborhoods of San Francisco. I managed to capture two new portals at Yerba Buena Gardens—one at a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. and another at the top of a waterfall—and link them together.

Across the street, in front of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, I hacked an Enlightened portal and fired an XMP at it, weakening its resonators. I was then promptly attacked. I fled, figuring I wouldn’t be able to take down the portal by myself.

A few hours later, much of my progress was undone by a member of Enlightened (Ingress helpfully sends e-mail notifications about such things). I was surprised by how much this pissed me off—I wanted to get those portals back for the Resistance, but pouring rain and the late hour stopped me.

Playing Ingress was a lot more fun than I expected, and from the excited chatter in the game’s built-in chat room, it was clear I wasn’t the only one getting into it.

On my way back from a meeting, I couldn’t help but keep an eye out for portals, ducking into an alley to attack one near my office. Later, I found myself poring over the larger map on my office computer, looking at the spread of portals and control fields around the Bay Area.

As it turns out, my parents live in an area dominated by the Enlightened. So I guess I’ll be busy attacking enemy portals in my hometown this weekend.

Via Technet

-----

If you’re a software developer—or if you follow the work of software developers—you’ve probably heard of TouchDevelop, a Microsoft Research app that enables you to write code for your phone using scripts on your phone. Its ability to bring the excitement of programming to Windows Phone 7 has reaped lots of enthusiasm from the development community over the past year or so.

Now, the team behind TouchDevelop has taken things a step further, with a web app that can work on any Windows 8 device with a touchscreen. You can write Windows Store apps simply by tapping on the screen of your device. The web app also works with a keyboard and mouse, but the touchscreen capability means that the keyboard is not required. To learn more, watch this video.

This reimplementation of TouchDevelop went live just in time for Build, Microsoft’s annual conference that helps developers learn how to take advantage of Windows 8. The conference is being held Oct. 30-Nov. 2 in Redmond, Wash.

“Just as users could turn their scripts into Windows Phone apps,” says Nikolai Tillmann, principal research software-design engineer with the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) team at Microsoft Research Redmond, “we will also allow our users to turn their scripts into Windows Store apps.”

The TouchDevelop web app, which requires Internet Explorer 10, enables developers to publish their scripts so they can be shared with others using TouchDevelop. As with the Windows Phone version, a touchdevelop.com cloud service enables scripts to be published and queried, and when you log in with the same credentials, all of your scripts are synchronized between all your platforms and devices.

While in the TouchDevelop web app, users can navigate to the properties of an installed script already created. Videos describing editor operation of the TouchDevelop web app are available on the project’s webpage.

TouchDevelop shipped as a Windows Phone app about a year and a half ago and has seen strong downloads and reviews in the Windows Phone Store.

“Our TouchDevelop app for Windows Phone has been downloaded more than 200,000 times,” Tillmann says, “and more than 20,000 users have logged in with a Windows Live ID or via Facebook.”

Since the app became available, Tillmann and his RiSE colleagues have been astounded by the creativity the user base has demonstrated. Further Windows 8 developer excitement will be on display during Build, which is being streamed to audiences worldwide.

Via TechHive

-----

The iPhone 5 is the latest smartphone to hop on-board the LTE (Long Term Evolution) bandwagon, and for good reason: The mobile broadband standard is fast, flexible, and designed for the future. Yet LTE is still a young technology, full of growing pains. Here’s an overview of where it came from, where it is now, and where it might go from here.

The evolution of ‘Long Term Evolution’

LTE is a mobile broadband standard developed by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), a group that has developed all GSM standards since 1999. (Though GSM and CDMA—the network Verizon and Sprint use in the United States—were at one time close competitors, GSM has emerged as the dominant worldwide mobile standard.)

Cell networks began as analog, circuit-switched systems nearly identical in function to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), which placed a finite limit on calls regardless of how many people were speaking on a line at one time.

The second-generation, GPRS, added data (at dial-up modem speed). GPRS led to EDGE, and then 3G, which treated both voice and data as bits passing simultaneously over the same network (allowing you to surf the web and talk on the phone at the same time).

GSM-evolved 3G (which brought faster speeds) started with UMTS, and then accelerated into faster and faster variants of 3G, 3G+, and “4G” networks (HSPA, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+, and DC-HSPA).

Until now, the term “evolution” meant that no new standard broke or failed to work with the older ones. GSM, GPRS, UMTS, and so on all work simultaneously over the same frequency bands: They’re intercompatible, which made it easier for carriers to roll them out without losing customers on older equipment. But these networks were being held back by compatibility.

That’s where LTE comes in. The “long term” part means: “Hey, it’s time to make a big, big change that will break things for the better.”

LTE needs its own space, man

LTE has “evolved” beyond 3G networks by incorporating new radio technology and adopting new spectrum. It allows much higher speeds than GSM-compatible standards through better encoding and wider channels. (It’s more “spectrally efficient,” in the jargon.)

LTE is more flexible than earlier GSM-evolved flavors, too: Where GSM’s 3G variants use 5 megahertz (MHz) channels, LTE can use a channel size from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz; this lets it work in markets where spectrum is scarce and sliced into tiny pieces, or broadly when there are wide swaths of unused or reassigned frequencies. In short, the wider the channel—everything else being equal—the higher the throughput.

Speeds are also boosted through MIMO (multiple input, multiple output), just as in 802.11n Wi-Fi. Multiple antennas allow two separate benefits: better reception, and multiple data streams on the same spectrum.

LTE complications

Unfortunately, in practice, LTE implementation gets sticky: There are 33 potential bands for LTE, based on a carrier’s local regulatory domain. In contrast, GSM has just 14 bands, and only five of those are widely used. (In broad usage, a band is two sets of paired frequencies, one devoted to upstream traffic and the other committed to downstream. They can be a few MHz apart or hundreds of MHz apart.)

And while LTE allows voice, no standard has yet been agreed upon; different carriers could ultimately choose different approaches, leaving it to handset makers to build multiple methods into a single phone, though they’re trying to avoid that. In the meantime, in the U.S., Verizon and AT&T use the older CDMA and GSM networks for voice calls, and LTE for data.

LTE in the United States

Of the four major U.S. carriers, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have LTE networks, with T-Mobile set to start supporting LTE in the next year. But that doesn’t mean they’re set to play nice. We said earlier that current LTE frequencies are divided up into 33 spectrum bands: With the exception of AT&T and T-Mobile, which share frequencies in band 4, each of the major U.S. carriers has its own band. Verizon uses band 13; Sprint has spectrum in band 26; and AT&T holds band 17 in addition to some crossover in band 4.

In addition, smaller U.S. carriers, like C Spire, U.S. Cellular, and Clearwire, all have their own separate piece of the spectrum pie: C Spire and U.S. Cellular use band 12, while Clearwire uses band 41.

As such, for a manufacturer to support LTE networks in the United States alone, it would need to build a receiver that could tune into seven different LTE bands—let alone the various flavors of GSM-evolved or CDMA networks.

With the iPhone, Apple tried to cut through the current Gordian Knot by releasing two separate models, the A1428 and A1429, which cover a limited number of different frequencies depending on where they’re activated. (Apple has kindly released a list of countries that support its three iPhone 5 models.) Other companies have chosen to restrict devices to certain frequencies, or to make numerous models of the same phone.

Banded together

Other solutions are coming. Qualcomm made a regulatory filing in June regarding a seven-band LTE chip, which could be in shipping devices before the end of 2012 and could allow a future iPhone to be activated in different fashions. Within a year or so, we should see most-of-the-world phones, tablets, and other LTE mobile devices that work on the majority of large-scale LTE networks.

That will be just in time for the next big thing: LTE-Advanced, the true fulfillment of what was once called 4G networking, with rates that could hit 1 Gbps in the best possible cases of wide channels and short distances. By then, perhaps the chip, handset, and carrier worlds will have converged to make it all work neatly together.

Via engadget

-----

Interior navigation is only just coming into its own, but IndoorAtlas has developed a technology that could make it just as natural as breathing -- or at least, firing up a smartphone's mapping software. Developed by a team at Finland's University of Oulu, the method relies on identifying the unique geomagnetic field of every location on Earth to get positioning through a mobile device. It's not just accurate, to less than 6.6 feet, but can work without help from wireless signals and at depths that would scare off mere mortal technologies: IndoorAtlas has already conducted tests in a mine 4,593 feet deep. Geomagnetic location-finding is already available through an Android API, with hints of more platforms in the future. It will still need some tender loving care from app developers before we're using our smartphones to navigate through the grocery store as well as IndoorAtlas does in a video

Via 52Tiger

-----

The story of Apple’s iPad is incredible, especially considering how young the device is. Released in April of 2010, the iPad has redefined and dominated the tablet market (if there even is a tablet market) and spawned a radical change in how tablet devices look and operate.

Of course, Apple didn’t cut the iPad from whole cloth (which probably would have been linen). It was built upon decades of ideas, tests, products and more ideas. Before we explore the iPad’s story, it’s appropriate to consider the tablets and the pen-driven devices that preceded it.

So Popular So Quickly

Today the iPad is so popular that it’s easy to overlook that it’s only three years old. Apple has updated it just twice. Here’s a little perspective to reinforce the iPad’s tender age:

1. When J. K. Rowling published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, there was no iPad.
2. When President Barak Obama was inaugurated as America’s 44th president, there was no iPad.
3. In 2004 when the Boston Red Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino and won the World Series for the first time in 86 years, there was no iPad. Nor did it exist three years later, when they won the championship again.

I can’t think of another piece of technology that grew so quickly. The Telegraph said the iPad is among the fastest growing technologies in history. But before we examine where the iPad is, let’s consider where it came from.

Elisha Gray and the Telautograph

Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer and inventor who lived in Ohio and Massachusetts between 1835 and 1901. Elisha was a wonderful little geek, and became interested in electricity while studying at Oberlin College. He collected nearly 70 patents in his lifetime, including that of the Telautograph. [PDF].

The Telautograph let a person use a stylus that was connected to two rheostats, which managed the current produced by the amount of resistance generated as the operator wrote with the stylus. That electronic record was transmitted to a second Telautograph, reproducing the author’s writing on a scroll of paper. Mostly. Gray noted that, since the scroll of paper was moving, certain letters were difficult or impossible to produce. For example, you couldn’t “…dot an i or cross a t or underscore or erase a word.” Users had to get creative.

Still, the thing was a hit, and was used in hospitals, clinics, insurance firms, hotels (as communication between the front desk and housekeeping), banks and train dispatching. Even the US Air Force used the Telautograph to disseminate weather reports. It’s true that the Telautograph is more akin to a fax machine than a contemporary tablet, yet it was the first electronic writing device to receive a patent, which was awarded in 1888.

Of course, ‘ol Elisha is better known for arriving at the US patent office on Valentine’s Day, 1876, with what he described as an apparatus “for transmitting vocal sounds telegraphically” just two hours after Mr. Alexander Graham Bell showed up with a description of a device that accomplished the same feat. After years of litigation, Bell was legally declared the inventor of what we now call the telephone, even though the device described in his original patent application wouldn’t have worked (Gray’s would have). So Gray/Bell have a Edison/Tesla thing going on.

Back to tablets.

Research Continues

Research continued after the turn of the century. The US Patent Office awarded a patent to Mr. Hyman Eli Goldberg of Chicago in 1918, for his invention of the Controller. This device concerned the “a moveable element, a transmitting sheet, a character on said sheet formed of conductive ink and electrically controlled operating mechanism for said moveable element.” It’s considered the first patent awarded for a handwriting recognition user interface with a stylus.

Photo credit: Computer History Museum

Jumping ahead a bit, we find the Styalator (early 1950’s) and the RAND tablet (1964). Both used a pen and a tablet-like surface for input. The RAND (above) is more well-known and cost an incredible $18,000. Remember, that’s 18 grand in 1960?s money. Both bear little resemblance to contemporary tablet computers, and consisted of a tablet surface and an electronic pen. Their massive bulk — and price tags ?- made them a feasible purchase for few.

Alan Kay and the Dynabook

In 1968, things got real. Almost. Computer scientist Alan Kay ¹ described his concept for a computer meant for children. His “Dynabook” would be small, thin, lightweight and shaped like a tablet.

In a paper entitled “A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages,” [PDF] Kay described his vision for the Dynabook:

”The size should be no larger than a notebook; weigh less than 4 lbs.; the visual display should be able to present 4,000 printing quality characters with contrast ratios approaching that of a book; dynamic graphics of reasonable quality should be possible; there should be removable local file storage of at least one million characters (about 500 ordinary book pages) traded off against several hours audio (voice/music) files.”

In the video below, Kay explains his thoughts on the original prototype:

That’s truly amazing vision. Alas, the Dynabook as Kay envisioned it was never produced.

Apple’s First Tablet

The first commercial tablet product from Apple appeared in 1979. The Apple Graphics Tablet was meant to compliment the Apple II and use the “Utopia Graphics System” developed by musician Todd Rundgren. ² That’s right, Todd Rundgren. The FCC soon found that it caused radio frequency interference, unfortunately, and forced Apple to discontinue production.

A revised version was released in the early 1980’s, which Apple described like this:

“The Apple Graphics Tablet turns your Apple II system into an artist’s canvas. The tablet offers an exciting medium with easy to use tools and techniques for creating and displaying pictured/pixelated information. When used with the Utopia Graphics Tablet System, the number of creative alternatives available to you multiplies before your eyes.

The Utopia Graphics Tablet System includes a wide array of brush types for producing original shapes and functions, and provides 94 color options that can generate 40 unique brush shades. The Utopia Graphics Tablet provides a very easy way to create intricate designs, brilliant colors, and animated graphics.”

The GRiDpad

This early touchscreen device cost $2,370 in 1989 and reportedly inspired Jeff Hawkins to create the first Palm Pilot. Samsung manufactured the GRiDpad PenMaster, which weighed under 5 lbs., was 11.5“ x 9.3” x 1.48? and ran on a 386SL 20MHz processor with a 80387SX coprocessor. It had 20 MB RAM and the internal hard drive was available at 40 MB, 60 MB, 80 MB or 120 MB. DigiBarn has a nice GRiDpad gallery.

The Newton Message Pad

With Steve Jobs out of the picture, Apple launched its second pen-computing product, the Newton Message Pad. Released in 1993, the Message Pad was saddled with iffy handwriting recognition and poor marketing efforts. Plus, the size was odd; too big to fit comfortably in a pocket yet small enough to suggest that’s where it ought to go.

The Newton platform evolved and improved in the following years, but was axed in 1998 (I still use one, but I’m a crazy nerd).

Knight-Ridder and the Tablet Newspaper

This one is compelling. Back in 1994, media and Internet publishing company Knight-Ridder ³ produced a video demonstrating its faith in digital newspaper. Its predictions are eerily accurate, except for this bold statement:

“Many of the technologists…assume that information is just a commodity and people really don’t care where that information comes from as long as it matches their set of personal interests. I disagree with that view. People recognize the newspapers they subscribe to…and there is a loyalty attached to those.”

Knight-Ridder got a lot right, but I’m afraid the technologists quoted above were wrong. Just ask any contemporary newspaper publisher.

The Late Pre-iPad Tablet Market

Many other devices appeared at this time, but what I call the “The Late Pre-iPad Tablet Market” kicked off when Bill Gates introduced the Compaq tablet PC in 2001. That year, Gates made a bold prediction at COMDEX:

“‘The PC took computing out of the back office and into everyone’s office,’ said Gates. ‘The Tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available wherever you want it, which is why I’m already using a Tablet as my everyday computer. It’s a PC that is virtually without limits – and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.’”

Others followed, like the Axiotron ModBook, which is essentially an Apple MacBook modified into a tablet configuration (a “Pro” model has recently been released) and the Motion Computing LS800.

None of these devices, including those I didn’t mention, saw the success of the iPad. That must be due to in a large part to iOS. While the design was changing dramatically — flat, touch screen, light weight, portable — the operating system was stagnant and inappropriate. When Gates released the Compaq tablet in 2001, it was running Windows XP. That system was built for a desktop computer and it simply didn’t work on a touch-based tablet.

Meanwhile, others dreamed of what could be, unhindered by the limitations of hardware and software. Or reality.

Tablets in Pop Culture

The most famous fictional tablet device must be Star Trek’s Personal Access Display Device or “PADD.” The first PADDs appeared as large, wedge-shaped clipboards in the original Star Trek series and seemed to operate with a stylus exclusively. Kirk and other officers were always signing them with a stylus, as if the yeomen were interstellar UPS drivers and Kirk was receiving a lot of packages. ⁴

As new Trek shows were developed, new PADD models appeared. The devices went multi-touch in The Next Generation, adopting the LCARS Interface. A stylus was still used from time to time, though there was less signing. And signing. Aaand signing.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Bowman and Frank Poole use flat, tablet-like devices to send and receive news from Earth. In his novel, Arthur C. Clarke described the “Newspad” like this:

“When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word ‘newspaper,’ of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.”

The iPad was released in 2010, so Clarke missed reality by only nine years. Not bad for a book published in 1968.

Next Time: Apple Rumors Begin

In the next article in this series, I’ll pick things up in the early 2000’s when rumors of an Apple-branded tablet gained momentum. For now, I’ll leave you with this quote from an adamant Steve Jobs, taken from an AllThingsD conference in 2003:

“Walt Mossberg: A lot of people think given the success you’ve had with portable devices, you should be making a tablet or a PDA.

Steve Jobs: There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, people couldn’t type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this. We look at the tablet and we think it’s going to fail. Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn’t think we’d do well in the cell phone business. What we’ve done instead is we’ve written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.”

We’ll pick it up from there next time. Until then, go and grab your iPad and give a quiet thanks to Elisha Gray, Hyman Eli Goldberg, Alan Kay, the Newton team, Charles Landon Knight and Herman Ridder, Bill Gates and yes, Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and Gene Roddenberry. Without them and many others, you might not be holding that wonderful little device.

1. More recently known as a co-developer on the the One Laptop Per Child machine. The computer itself was inspired, in part, by Kay’s work on the Dynabook.
2. I’m really sorry for all the Flash on Todd’s site. It’s awful.
3. Not Knight Rider.
4. Not a euphemism. OK, maybe.

Via ZDNet

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

-----

There’s no doubt about it. Android, especially Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), version 4.0, already offers more than what is coming in Apple’s forthcoming iOS 6. But, Android has its own flaws.

True, as Tom Henderson, principal researcher for ExtremeLabs and a colleague, told me, there’s a “Schwarzschild radius surrounding Apple. It’s not just a reality distortion field; it’s a whole new dimension. Inside, time slows and light never escapes– as time compresses to an amorphous mass.

“Coddled, stroked, and massaged,” Henderson continued, “Apple users start to sincerely believe the distortions regarding the economic life, the convenience, and the subtle beauties of their myriad products. Unknowingly, they sacrifice their time, their money, their privacy, and soon, their very souls. Comparing Apple with Android, the parallels to Syria and North Korea come to mind, despot-led personality cults.”

I wouldn’t go that far. While I prefer Android, I can enjoy using iOS devices as well. Besides, Android fans can be blind to its faults just as much as the most besotted Apple fan.

For example, it’s true that ICS has all the features that iOS 6 will eventually have, but you can only find ICS on 7.1 percent of all currently running Android devices. Talk to any serious Android user, and you’ll soon hear complaints about how they can’t update their systems.

You name an Android vendor-HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc. -and I can find you a customer who can’t update their smartphone or tablet to the latest and greatest version of the operating system. The techie Android fanboy response to this problem is just “ROOT IT.” It’s not that easy.

First, the vast majority of Android users are as about as able to root their smartphone as I am to run a marathon. Second, alternative Android device firmwares don’t always work with every device. Even the best of them, Cyanogen ICS, can have trouble with some devices.

Besides, while Cyanogen supports many smartphones and tablets, it doesn’t support all of them.
For example, there’s still no stable CyanogenMod 7 (Android 3.x) firmware for Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet. Sometimes even when there is support, such as there is for the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, there are driver troubles that keep the camera from working for many users.

Another issue is consistency. When you buy an iPhone or an iPad you know exactly what the interface is going to work and look like. With Android devices, you never know quite what you’re going to get. We talk about ICS as if it’s one thing-and it is from a developer’s viewpoint-but ICS on different phones such as the HTC One X doesn’t look or feel much like say the Samsung Galaxy S III.

A related issue is that the iOS interface is simply cleaner and more user-friendly than any Android interface I’d yet to see. One of Apple’s slogans is “It just works.” Well, actually sometimes it doesn’t work. ITunes, for example, has been annoying me for years now. But, when it comes to device interfaces, iOS does just work. Android implementations, far too often, doesn’t.

So, yes, Android does more today than Apple’s iOS promises to do tomorrow, but that’s only part of the story. The full story includes that iOS is very polished and very closed, while Android is somewhat messy and very open. To me, it’s that last bit-that Apple is purely proprietary while Android is largely open source-based-that insures that I’m going to continue to use Android devices.

Now, if only Google can get everyone on the same page with updates and the interface, I’ll be perfectly happy!

Via Tech Hive

-----

If you follow the world of Android tablets and phones, you may have heard a lot about Tegra 3 over the last year. Nvidia's chip currently powers many of the top Android tablets, and should be found in a few Android smartphones by the end of the year. It may even form the foundation of several upcoming Windows 8 tablets and possibly future phones running Windows Phone 8. So what is the Tegra 3 chip, and why should you care whether or not your phone or tablet is powered by one?

Nvidia's system-on-chip

Tegra is the brand for Nvidia's line of system-on-chip (SoC) products for phones, tablets, media players, automobiles, and so on. What's a system-on-chip? Essentially, it's a single chip that combines all the major functions needed for a complete computing system: CPU cores, graphics, media encoding and decoding, input-output, and even cellular or Wi-Fi communcations and radios. The Tegra series competes with chips like Qualcomm's Snapdragon, Texas Instruments' OMAP, and Samsung's Exynos.

The first Tegra chip was a flop. It was used in very few products, notably the ill-fated Zune HD and Kin smartphones from Microsoft. Tegra 2, an improved dual-core processor, was far more successful but still never featured in enough devices to become a runaway hit.

Tegra 3 has been quite the success so far. It is found in a number of popular Android tablets like the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, and is starting to find its way into high-end phones like the global version of the HTC One X (the North American version uses a dual-core Snapdragon S4 instead, as Tegra 3 had not been qualified to work with LTE modems yet). Expect to see it in more Android phones and tablets internationally this fall.

4 + 1 cores

Tegra 3 is based on the ARM processor design and architecture, as are most phone and tablet chips today. There are many competing ARM-based SoCs, but Tegra 3 was one of the first to include four processor cores. There are now other quad-core SoCs from Texas Instruments and Samsung, but Nvidia's has a unique defining feature: a fifth low-power core.

All five of the processor cores are based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, but the fifth core is made using a special low-power process that sips battery at low speeds, but doesn't scale up to high speeds very well. It is limited to only 500MHz, while the other cores run up to 1.4GHz (or 1.5GHz in single-core mode).

When your phone or tablet is in sleep mode, or you're just performing very simple operations or using very basic apps, like the music player, Tegra 3 shuts down its four high-power cores and uses only the low-power core. It's hard to say if this makes it far more efficient than other ARM SoCs, but battery life on some Tegra 3 tablets has been quite good.

Good, not great, graphics

Nvidia's heritage is in graphics processors. The company's claim to fame has been its GPUs for traditional laptops, desktops, and servers. You might expect Tegra 3 to have the best graphics processing power of any tablet or phone chip, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Direct graphics comparisons can be difficult, but there's a good case to be made that the A5X processor in the new iPad has a far more powerful graphics processor. Still, Tegra 3 has plenty of graphics power, and Nvidia works closely with game developers to help them optimize their software for the platform. Tegra 3 supports high-res display output (up to 2560 x 1600) and improved video decoding capabilities compared to earlier Tegra chips.

Do you need one?

The million-dollar question is: Does the Tegra 3 chip provide a truly better experience than other SoCs? Do you need four cores, or even "4 + 1"? The answer is no. Most smartphone and tablet apps don't make great use of multiple CPU cores, and making each core faster can often do more for the user experience than adding more cores. That said, you shouldn't avoid a product because it has a Tegra 3 chip, either. Its performance and battery life appear to be quite competitive in today's tablet and phone market. Increasingly, the overall quality of a product is determined by its design, size, weight, display quality, camera quality, and other features more than mere processor performance. Consider PCWorld's review of the North American HTC One X; with the dual-core Snapdragon S4 instead of Tegra 3, performance was still very impressive.

Via ReadWrite

-----

Last September, during the f8 Developers’ Conference, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said that the company had no plans for a “central app repository” – an app store. Today, Facebook is changing its tune. The social giant has announced App Center, a section of Facebook dedicated to discovering and deploying high-quality apps on the company’s platform. The App Center will push apps to iPhone, Android and the mobile Web, giving Facebook its first true store for mobile app discovery. 

The departure from Facebook’s previous company line comes as the social platform ramps up its mobile offerings to make money from its hundreds of millions of mobile users. This is not your father's app store, though.

Let's start with the requirements. Facebook has announced a strict set of style and quality guidelines to get apps placed in App Center. Apps that are considered high-quality, as decided by Facebook’s Insights analytics platform, will get prominent placement. Quality is determined by user ratings and app engagement. Apps that receive poor ratings or do not meet Facebook’s quality guidelines won't be listed. 

Whether or not an app is a potential Facebook App Center candidate hinges on several factors. It must

• have a canvas page (a page that sets the app's permissions on Facebook’s platform)

• be built for iOS, Android or the mobile Web

• use a Facebook Login or be a website that uses a Facebook Login. 

Facebook is in a tricky spot with App Center. It will house not only apps that are specifically run through its platform but also iOS and Android apps. Thus it needs to achieve a balance between competition and cooperation with some of the most powerful forces in the tech universe. If an app in App Center requires a download, the download link on the app’s detail page will bring the user to the appropriate app repository, either Apple's App Store or Android’s Google Play. 

One of the more interesting parts of App Center is that Facebook will allow paid apps. This is a huge move for Facebook as it provides a boost to its Credits payment service. One of the benefits of having a store is that whoever controls the store also controls transactions arising from the items in it, whether payments per download or in-app purchases. This will go a long way towards Facebook’s goal of monetizing its mobile presence without relying on advertising. 

Facebook App Center Icon Guidelines

Developers interested in publishing apps to Facebook’s App Center should take a look at both the guidelines and the tutorial that outlines how to upload the appropriate icons, how to request permissions, how to use Single Sign On (SSO, a requirement for App Center) and the app detail page. 

This is a good move for Facebook. It will give the company several avenues to start making money off of mobile but also strengthen its position as one of the backbones of the Web. For instance, App Center is both separate from iOS and Android but also a part of it. Through App Center, Facebook can direct traffic to its apps, monitor who and how users are downloading applications and keep itself at the center of the user experience.