Archives: July 2010

Writing checks casually for $100k, selling companies for hundreds of millions of dollars, and then throwing back drinks with semi-well known rappers (see videos below) … this is what Silicon Valley is made of. It’s also only two days of activity. The Valley is an environment where life-time successes are celebrated for half a minute [...]

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

I receive a lot of white papers and product documentation in PDF files, and the iPad is a logical device for reading that documentation. When I am reading a white paper I like to highlight excerpts and make notes on the pages, which is not possible in GoodReader or Dropbox. For making annotations on PDF files I am using Noterize, which you can also use to write notes in either digital ink or in text with the keyboard.

The first step is to import the PDF file into Noterize, which you can transfer to an iPad via iTunes, or open from the cloud services Box.net or Dropbox. You open a file in a viewing mode, and double-tapping switches to editing mode, which displays several editing tools. You can create a text box anywhere on the page and type a note, or write using your finger or a stylus. Text can be highlighted in one of several different colors, and you can control the width of digital ink and highlight by moving a slider.

Annotating a PDF in Noterize.

Of course you can just create new notes within Noterize by creating a new page and either typing or writing the information on the screen. You can create text boxes anywhere on the screen to place typed text around drawings or digital ink, which can be in multiple colors. Noterize also supports audio notes that are associated with the current page.

New notes that you create can be shared as PDFs, either as e-mail attachments or by saving them to cloud services or social networks. Curiously, there are many more options for sharing documents from Noterize than there are importing documents. When you share a document to Facebook or Twitter, Noterize uploads a copy of the document to noterize.com, and creates a link to the document that is provided in the update to the social network. The link remains active for two weeks, and looks like this in Twitter:

Noterize costs $2.99, and based on my experience, I think it is very worthwhile app for that price. You will find Noterize in the iPad App store.

If you own an Android phone, how would you like to mute your phone by simply flipping the phone so that the screen is facing down? Today I discovered a way to mute my phone by flipping the screen and automate more tasks with an app called Tasker, which James Kendrick wrote about in his weekly column on jkOnTheRun.

For those familiar with computers, you can think of Tasker like a scripting language, you use it to program an Android phone to execute tasks that you define when certain events, what Tasker calls contexts, occur. For example, in Tasker I have defined a set tasks to occur when the screen orientation is face down. First, I have the phone vibrate to give me feedback that the phone is going to be muted, then silent mode is enabled, and finally, the display times out after seven seconds. I learned that Tasker only executes tasks when the display is on, so when I flip my phone to mute it, I then want the display to turn off. When I pick up my phone and turn it on with the face up, Tasker runs another task to turn silent mode off.

One of the first programs I used on my Android phone is Locale, which is similar to Tasker in that it executes certain tasks when the phone is at a certain location. Locations is another context in Tasker, so you can define certain tasks to execute depending on the phone’s location. For example, I have Tasker turn Wi-Fi on when I am home and turn Wi-Fi off when I am at the office. As you can see from my first example, Tasker is much more powerful than Locale.

In a sign of just how much of a geek I am, Tasker may be providing me the most fun of any app that I have on my Nexus One. You can spend hours discovering different ways to automate things with Tasker, which makes my phone even more personalized to me. The developers of Tasker host a wiki for users to contribute examples of how they automate their phone, which is a great place for ideas on how to use Tasker. Tasker does cost about $5 as it is in the UK version of the Android Market priced in British pounds. In my opinion Tasker is well worth the $5 that I spent.

Earlier this week there was big news from the U.S. government relating to smartphones as the Librarian of Congress ruled that jailbreaking a phone was not illegal. A provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to circumvent copyright protections in products.

The core software on smartphones is protected so that key files are not deleted or overwritten, which could result with the phone not functioning properly. Prior to the ruling this week, circumventing the protections on smartphone operating systems is illegal under the DMCA. I expect that the ruling will be challenged by smartphone OS companies, but in the mean time it appears that those who wish to jailbreak their phones can do so believing that they are not breaking the law.

Jailbreaking is the term used to refer to circumventing the copyright protections on the iPhone software. Rooting is the term used for the same act with Android phones. In summary the process of jailbreaking or rooting involves gaining read and write access to the file storage area on the phone where the operating system files are located.

Once read/write access is obtained tweaks can be made to the phone’s software to add functionality, and in many cases entirely new versions of the operating system is installed. In the early days of the iPhone, people jailbroke their phones to install applications on the phone because initially the iPhone did not support apps. Android users root their phones to install customized versions of the Android operating system that range to adding features like tethering, to providing a full upgrade. For example, by rooting a myTouch 3G, which officially only supports Android 1.6, one can install Android 2.1 on the phone.

There are risks to jailbreaking and rooting phones, and the process can be fairly technical. A misstep along the way can render the phone completely inoperable. Smartphone OS companies don’t like jailbreaking because it changes their product in ways they didn’t intend, and mobile phone companies don’t like jailbreaking because it could be used to circumvent controls put in place to protect their networks. The people who jailbreak their phones do so to add functionality, and to come up with unique modifications to their phones that nonone else has, similar to how some people modify their cars.

This week in social games was an exciting one. EA selected Live Gamer to power microtransactions, we had a chance to interview Alex St. John of Hi5, Chief Revenue Officer of Offerpal and Robert Winkler of the MMO Dawn of the Dragons, a brain IQ game called InGenius saw tremendous growth, Disney acquired Playdom for [...]

From the mind of Dave Jones – the creator of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto – comes a new social gaming experience for a new generation. Dubbed “the ‘Placebook’ for a next generation of social games”, Project: MyWorld combines social media, social games and virtual worlds in one of the most ambitious online gaming endeavors [...]

Casual Connect is over, and it’s remarkable how close the group gets, even at 2,000 attendees, by the third day.  It’s almost impossible to walk the floor to see the final day sessions without running into someone who you genuinely want to connect with… casually.  Having said that, there were a few topics that kept [...]

Exhibiting poise, insight and respect, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has risen to the top of the list of politicians using social media effectively. Johnson set up a Facebook account a little over a month ago and has posted at least once a day since. However, it is not simply the number of posts that makes [...]

Facebook will likely push back any consideration of an IPO to 2012 to allow more time for growth, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Investors had been speculating that Facebook would begin public trading some time in 2011. Offering common stock for sale to the public is a common way for young companies to generate capital quickly.

The additional time would allow the social network to gain more users and increase sales without having to worry about public examination of its earnings and operations, according to anonymous sources cited by the news organization.

Facebook has been keeping quiet about it’s IPO plans. In a television interview, spokesman Jonathan Thaw simply said that an IPO would happen “when it makes sense.”

Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg still has the controlling stake in Facebook, so any decision on whether or not to have an IPO ultimately relies on him.

Facebook hit 500 million users this month, and was last valued at $24.9 billion by SharesPost, a marketplace for trading privately held shares. Bloomberg’s sources said that Facebook could see its 2010 income double to at least $1.4 billion from about $700 million a year ago.

Zuckerberg has previously stated that his company should have an executive that’s focused more on delivering a quality product, rather than public shareholders, according to AllFacebook.

Facebook has repeatedly come under fire for privacy-related issues, and adding additional scrutiny from analysts and public markets would increase the pressure on the company’s management.

CardStar is an interesting iPhone application that allows users to consolidate all their various reward cards, club cards and such into one application. The premise is that you’d walk into a store, open up the CardStar application, and the clerk can literally scan your phone to find your rewards account. Taking this to a new [...]