Gigaom : “One idea is to create a tech survival kit when traveling. It could be used to replace a lost or stolen smart phone, kept in the car during a long drive, or stored securely in a family vacation house.”
This is a neat idea. It’s strange that I never thought to turn my old iPhone into a pay-as-you-go phone.
Mike Lee: “If you currently have an app on the App Store that uses in-app purchase, you don’t have a choice. While removing in-app purchase from your app may not protect you from lawsuits, leaving it in at this point is tantamount to asking to be sued.”
If you’re using In App Purchase you should remove it, at least until this is settled.
Mike Lee: “You might think that sounds dramatic. A small cut is not going to kill a thriving business, true, but this is the opening salvo to all-out war. The parasites have taken notice of the goldrush, and would like nothing more than the precedent that allows every modern-day mobster with a patent lawyer on retainer to start cracking nuts.”
That post was on May 16. Today, May 18, we get this lovely news. That’s right, it’s a different company going after patent royalties.
From the article: “Jim McGill, chairman of MacroSolve, has said that the patent covers “thousands of existing apps” that collect data and send it to a central server. “
Thousands of apps. Here we go again.
Tested: ” If you want to save a little cash, and maintain your freedom, you can always pick up a used Android phone on eBay or Craigslist. Since you would be getting this phone second hand, warranties are of little use. You need to make sure the handset is as described. That guy on Craigslist probably doesn’t take returns.”
Having a nice GSM based Android phone as a backup isn’t such a bad idea, especially if you’ll be traveling to Europe.
TECHi: “What we are left with is a company that has no concrete plans for competing in the mobile industry. Microsoft has a smartphone platform, but they have no way to connect it to a tablet or desktop computer. They also have no operating system that is capable of competing on a tablet device — trust me, Windows 7 isn’t the solution.”
Don’t write Microsoft off as dead just yet. They still have a solid foundation, in the Windows Kernel, on which to build, and their new mobile OS isn’t so bad. Remember, back before Apple bought NeXT everybody had written them off, 11 years later we were given the iPhone, not to mention iTunes, the iPod, and OS X.
They’re definitely down, but not out.
New York Times: “Owners of BlackBerrys, iPhones or iPod Touches can use them to pay by downloading the free Starbucks Card app and holding their phones in front of a scanner at Starbucks cash registers. The money is subtracted from their Starbucks account, which they can load with credit cards or, on iPhones, with PayPal funds.”
You can now buy your 55-gallon barrel of your favorite coffee, with your smart phone.
CNNMoney.com: “We are fully entrenched in the world of Cloud 2. Smart phones that run apps have replaced PCs. We are mobile. We touch, not click. We are social, not siloed. Our location is known, not anonymous. We know more about what our friends are doing than our own employees, and sometimes our own families. Facebook, Apple, and a new generation of technologies are defining our daily experiences. The old model looks older every day as it tries to hold on in a last gasp of updates based on stability instead of innovation.” – Never count Microsoft out, to do that would be a huge mistake. They still have money, lots of money. Sure, they’re down, remember that’s when animals are the most dangerous, when they’re down and hurt. They’ll learn from Apple and Google and Facebook, or they’ll eventually be a line item in a history book, but isn’t that an inevitable fate of all companies? The world continues to change around us at a frightening pace. Does anyone remember when MySpace was the second coming? Yeah, me neither. Look at some of Apple’s recent moves. No more Apple Developer Awards for desktop developers. That move leaves you going “Hmmmmmm, wonder what that means?” Apple knows where they’re headed, the future, and they’re helping to define it. They’re becoming the new Goliath while Microsoft slips into the background. Question is, who will dethrone Apple? Yes, I believe it’ll happen, just as it did with Microsoft and IBM before them. Of course I’m not betting against them, I’ve become an Apple Fanboy, but they’ll eventually make a mistake like Microsoft did before them, and IBM did before Microsoft. I only wish I could figure out who’s going to take their place?