It’s too bad that Dropbox isn’t a publicly traded company, because it would be a great time to buy its shares now that Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer has given it his patented reverse-kiss-of-death. Ballmer, who previously predicted the iPhone would flop because it lacked a physical keyboard and that Android would fail because Google wasn’t slapping OEMs with any licensing fees to use it, told BusinessWeek on Tuesday that the cloud storage company was just a “little startup” that posed no threat to Microsoft’s own SkyDrive cloud service. More →
As mobile operators across the world seek ways to cope with SMS volume erosion, two leading messaging services are now running neck and neck with triple-digit annualized growth rates. Apple (AAPL) announced on Wednesday evening during its first-quarter earnings call that its iMessage service is transmitting more than 2 billion messages a day. It has now topped 450 billion cumulative messages. Last June, Apple announced it was sending 1 billion messages a day and had reached 150 billion cumulative messages. This translates to roughly doubling the daily message volume in six months while tripling the cumulative message volume. The exact pace is impossible to estimate thanks to Apple’s deliberate vagueness. More →
Kim Dotcom launched the successor to his shuttered Megaupload service this past Saturday and early adoption has been impressive. While speaking during a launch event for the new service, called simply “Mega,” Dotcom said that more than 1 million users joined the site in just one day, The Next Web reported. “We cannot be stopped,” Dotcom exclaimed, speaking directly to media rights holders that have targeted the alleged piracy kingpin. Mega is a file-sharing service similar to the original Megaupload site but it uses a complex encryption mechanism that prevents even Mega from knowing what files are hosted on its servers. Downloaded files can only be decrypted with a unique decryption key made available to the original file holder when a file is uploaded to the Mega site.
Let’s face it: Apple’s (AAPL) Maps fiasco wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it were just a one-time mistake. But as AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski points out, Apple has a history of delivering sub par Web-based services, from Maps to Ping to MobileMe. From this perspective, it isn’t hard to see why Apple executives were supposedly “seething” when they saw how happy their own users were to download the newest iOS version of Google Maps to their iPhones — for all the many things the company does right, it has been frustratingly unable to make a name for itself in the increasingly important web services market. More →
Amid a sea of Ultra-HD TVs, smart washing machines and various other gadgets, waterproofing expert Liquipel took to CES 2013 to make two announcements. The firm, which adds an interior and exterior waterproof nanocoating to cell phones, revealed a new and improved waterproofing material that is even more effective than its first-generation solution. Liquipel also unveiled its new “Liquipod,” a portable machine that can waterproof gadgets anywhere in the world while device owners wait, according to TechCrunch. Previously, Liquipel required customers to ship their handsets to the company’s offices for treatment.
A community dedicated to pirating iOS applications and distributing them via Cydia, an app store for jailbroken Apple devices, has been shut down by its creators. The popular community, called “Hackulous,” was dedicated to cracking paid iOS applications and then distributing them via a Cydia application called “Installous.” The Hackulous Team has posted a message on its site saying that the community has been shuttered due to lack of support, however, taking with it the Installous application and “AppTracker,” an index for cracked apps, TorrentFreak reports. More →
Argue though its executives might, Snapchat is good for two things: sending photos and videos of yourself making stupid faces, and sending photos and videos of yourself naked. The latter, of course, is the more compelling function since that is exactly what the app was designed for. When users send pictures or videos, the recipient can only view them for a set amount of time before they “self-destruct.” Yes, a recipient can take a screenshot but the sender is automatically alerted when that occurs — then, as the saying goes, fool me once… As it turns out, however, Snapchat users (and users of “Poke,” Facebook’s (FB) Snapchat ripoff) can easily save photos and full-length videos received through the service without the sender ever knowing. More →
Following Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in April, the popular photo sharing application grew more than 1,100% over the next six months. In looking to better monetize the service, Facebook (FB) updated its terms to help bring in new advertisers, however many users feared Facebook may be looking to sell or license their personal photos without their consent. The story spread like wildfire, panic ensued, some people deleted their accounts, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom eventually apologized, and the company reverted to its older terms of service. But was it already too late? More →
Good news: there’s a workaround to fix the issues related to the bug where Google Music’s music-matching service replaced explicit versions of songs with clean ones. Droid-Life reports that users who are seeing the issue should do click on the arrow next to each song or album title. Then select “Fix incorrect match” from the drop down menu. That should then upload the correct version of the song from your library into the Google (GOOG) cloud and replace the wrong one. Google’s music-matching service launched on December 18th in the U.S. as a free alternative to Apple’s (AAPL) $25 iTunes Match service and Amazon’s (AMZN) $25 Cloud Player.
Google (GOOG) announced on Monday on the Official Gmail Blog that its free Gmail voice calling service will be extended through 2013 in the U.S. and Canada. The company has provided free domestic calling within the U.S. and Canada for the last two years, further extending the complimentary service repeatedly just before the new year. Google product manager Mayur Kamat didn’t detail why the company is extending the service in his post on the company’s blog. It’s still unclear why Google is keeping free Gmail voice calls separate from its Google Voice service bit either way, free is free and we’re not complaining.
Google (GOOG) updated its Google Music service on Tuesday with a “music matching feature” that is sure to make streaming music from the cloud more convenient. Google Music can now scan your entire library of music from your computer and match up to 20,000 songs in your cloud library so that there’s no need to upload songs anymore. Matched music will be streamed at 320 kbps and won’t cost a single penny, unlike Apple’s (AAPL) $25 iTunes Match service which streams music at 256 kbps AAC and Amazon’s (AMZN) $25 Cloud Player which streams at 256 kbps MP3. Google Music’s new song matching feature is Android-only for now, as the service isn’t available on any other mobile platform.
Remember when we worried that Facebook (FB) would wreck the Instagram experience by adding lots of advertisements next to user photos? Well it turns out that the company’s plans to monetize the popular photo-sharing app are actually much worse. As CNET reports, Instagram has published new terms of service that give Facebook “the perpetual right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world’s largest stock photo agency.” More →
