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Posts Tagged ‘Desktop Application’

FileSocial: A Community for Sharing Files on Twitter

We have profiled Twitter-based file sharing services in the past, but in some cases the shared files were read-only and the UI design left much to be desired, or the service merely redirected the user to a third-party file sharing service.

Argentina-based Ideateca has conquered these drawbacks with FileSocial, a sleek multi-platform file sharing service for Twitter. After authenticating their Twitter account, users can upload any filetype up to 50MB, add a message of 110 characters or less, and FileSocial will post the tweet on Twitter with a link to the file.

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The web interface shows users a stream of their files, which any user can download or comment on. Comments automatically get posted to Twitter as @ replies to the user who uploaded the file.

Aside from using the FileSocial web interface, Windows, Mac or Linux users can download a desktop application, built on Adobe AIR with drag-and-drop functionality, to upload files. Android users can also download the official FileSocial Android app, and while there is no official iPhone app, the third-party app tweet media allows uploading through FileSocial’s API.

The one major drawback of FileSocial is the inability to post files privately for confidential sharing. All files uploaded to the service show up in a public timeline of files, regardless of whether you choose to post the file to Twitter or not. The option to mark files as private or send the link as a direct message is a key feature that is lacking from FileSocial.

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Holiday “Deals”: Best Buy Promotes Interscope CDs With “Free” TweetDeck App

Best Buy is offering a deal for consumers to get a free TweetDeck app with the purchase of a CD under Interscope Records, which includes artists such as 50 Cent, Flyleaf, Weezer, OneRepublic, Black Eyed Peas, Timbaland and others. With the purchase of one of the CDs, which range from $10.99 to $13.99, the buyer will receive an Interscope branded TweetDeck application that is pre-loaded to connect them to the social media content of the 16 various artists.

Best Buy is promoting this as a “Special Offer.” You get a “free Tweetdeck app when you order a CD.” The irony of the deal is that it’s not really a deal. You can download the regular TweetDeck app for free, both as a desktop application or as an iPhone app, and then create a list for the 16 artists to follow. I created a Twitter list of an assortment of the artists whose CDs are being peddled within five minutes.

While more manual labor may be needed to add the MySpace and Facebook accounts for these artists (TweetDeck supports both social networks within its apps), the deal almost seems like a hoax. Except it’s just bad marketing. It’s generally not a good idea to make a big deal about giving away something for free that is free to begin with.

To be fair, TweetDeck allows many brands to create their own customized versions of the desktop app. For instance, we offer a TechCrunch-branded TweetDeck app here. It’s really free (no CD purchase required). But then again, we’re not famous rock stars.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Confluence Supports Google’s Open Social, Microsoft Office 2007

Confluence now supports Open Social, allowing users to pull in gadgets to check Salesforce contacts, Gmail, Google Calendar and other items.

The new features in Confluence 3.1, an Atlassian product, show that dashboard environments are certainly in vogue as the social web becomes a pervasive part of the business user’s daily work life.

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Wikis, though are not a marketing term that has as much resonance. Enterprise collaboration is the holy grail. The release from Confluence shows the importance of open, collaborative services that provides the ability to stitch different data sources together into one environment.

With its new release, Confluence is adding a number of new features:

Open Social gadgets may be added by pointing and clicking. The upgrade to Confluence 3.1 includes two gadgets. Confluence Activity Stream displays a list of recent updates from a Confluence site. Quick Navigation provides Confluence search capabilities and suggests results while typing.

Here’s an example of how a gadget is pulled into Confluence.

Attachments may dragged and dropped into the Confluence environment. The idea being that Confluence can act much like a desktop application.

Support is now provided for Microsoft Office 2007. Users may view attached Office 2007 documents, such as PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets within the Confluence wiki page. Users may search inside files and edit documents.

Confluence is one of the leading service providers in the Enterprise 2.0 space. The service demonstrates how 2010 will see the continued integration of the open web within enterprise environments.

As Bill Arconati of Atlassian said in an interview:

“It’s all about interoperability.”

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Genieo Raises $3 Million For Personalized Homepage Platform

Startup Genieo, which develops personalized home pages, has raised $3 million in seed funding from undisclosed investors. Genieo’s technology automatically discovers the user’s topics of interest when they are browsing and generates a personal home-page with relevant content and personalized news widgets.

A desktop application, Genieo maps and profiles user behavior on computers to determine what content to add to a user’s hompage. Content that is integrated into Genieo’s homepages include favorite websites,news/blog updates, Facebook status updates and Twitter Streams, a Google search bar, videos, and more.

It’s a little scary for a program to be profiling a user’s behavior on private sites where you might not want a third party be viewing information, but Genieo assures users that it does not collect or share any private information. The startup faces competition from NetVibes and iGoogle.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Mouse steals cheese, iPhone 3.1 jailbreak released

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, Jailbreak/pwnage

The legendary Dev-Team has done it again. It just released the new version of the Pwnage Tool, a desktop application that’s used to create custom firmware packages to jailbreak iPhones and iPod touches.

Jailbreaking is the act of modifying the official firmware in order to run applications not approved by Apple. Chief among those applications, at least for the iPhone crowd, is the SIM unlock that allows the phone to be used on unofficial cell phone service providers.

The Dev-Team has found holes in previous versions of the iPhone OS that allow this code modification and has developed tools to make exploitation easier for the average user to accomplish. Once implemented, the jailbreak process installs an app that acts an unofficial App Store of sorts. The iPhone or iPod touch user can browse and install games, utilities, themes, and general applications. Cydia, one of these installer apps, even has a store with applications for sale.

Traditionally, when Apple releases a new iPhone OS version, that software upgrade breaks any jailbreak and SIM unlock present on the device. And so, you end up with the cat-and-mouse game that Steve Jobs alluded to shortly after the first firmware loophole was exploited and the original iPhone was unlocked.

Well, the mouse has stolen the cheese once again, and the Pwnage Tool released today will jailbreak the latest firmware, version 3.1.*

The big asterisk at the end of that previous sentence is that the Tool will only work on about half of the devices that use the iPhone OS — only the original iPhone, original iPod touch, and iPhone 3G. The iPod touch line just released, as well as the 2nd generation iPod touch and the iPhone 3GS, cannot be jailbroken at this time. That means if you’ve already upgraded to 3.1 on your 3GS, you still won’t be able to SIM unlock it as of the time of this post.

So, if you want to SIM unlock your iPhone 3G or the original model, Pwnage Tool 3.1 should do the trick. On the 3G, you’ll need to use Icy or Cydia to also install the ultrasn0w app that actually performs the software unlock; however the original iPhone should be unlocked without this additional step.

You will need a Mac to run Pwnage Tool 3.1, but a Windows version is expected in the near future. Also expected soon is redsn0w, for both Mac and Windows, that further simplifies the jailbreak process by avoiding the need to create a custom firmware package.

Keep in mind, if you’ve been waiting for a jailbreak solution before upgrading to the latest firmware, many users have had fairly substantial issues with iPhone 3.1. My fellow TUAW blogger, Josh Carr, has reported that lots of iPhones and iPod touches are working poorly after upgrading. You may wish to hold off and stick with 3.0 or 3.0.1 until a solution is found, either by Apple or some other group of smart people.

TUAWMouse steals cheese, iPhone 3.1 jailbreak released originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Livestation Brings Live TV to the iPhone

Content delivery network Akamai announced today that their partner and live TV provider Livestation has officially launched its streaming video solution which allows any broadcaster to deliver live TV to the iPhone. To demonstrate the capabilities of this technology, Livestation has also launched two applications which stream live TV news over both 3G and Wi-Fi connections. Other broadcasters who choose to build mobile applications with the company’s new white label, turn-key solution can be branded and then sold in the iTunes App Store as the broadcaster’s own.

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Livestation quietly launched their first mobile application streaming live content over a month ago with the release of BBC World News which debuted in June 2009. This iPhone application delivers live TV news to viewers in 16 European countries but is sadly not available in the U.S as of yet. The European viewers can watch the news over two types of streams provided by the app: either a 96 K stream on 3G and Edge networks or on a higher-quality 300 K stream delivered over Wi-Fi. Akamai’s CDN steps in to help Livestation scale these streams to the millions of iPhones worldwide.

In the U.S., Livestation also began offering Al Jazeera English Live (iTunes link) last month, a live TV application built using the same technology. As with BBC News, the live TV channel is available over both Wi-Fi and 3G. Around the corner, NASA may also be launching a live TV streaming application using Livestation’s technology. Already a content partner, NASA’s iPhone app has a description that reads: “Update Coming that adds Live NASA Public TV streaming to your device.”

While both these news applications offer TV streams from stations Livestation is already partnered with by way of their live TV desktop application, the company’s iPhone streaming solution represents “just the tip of the iceberg,” claims Livestation CEO Matteo Berlucchi. “Once other broadcasters see the immediate business benefits of the revenue model we are offering…we expect usage to increase.”

The revenue model he is referring to is the one where iPhone and iPod Touch users purchase the mobile applications built using the Livestation iPhone technology platform in the iTunes App Store. They can then also serve ads within the app itself, if the broadcaster so chooses. Those ads don’t have to be simple text or images links, either – they can be video ads, too, much like what you would see on TV. In addition, Berlucchi says that paid-for content that goes beyond that of the app’s initial purchase price is also a possibility in the future.

According to Livestation’s website, the iPhone solution uses the company’s own streaming protocol for delivering the TV streams. However, they note that they plan to support the native Apple Streaming protocol as soon as it becomes available. That seems to confirm our suspicions from earlier this year about live streaming on the iPhone which came about when we uncovered Apple’s IETF submission for a live streaming protocol.

Livestation is not the company to provide a means of watching TV on your iPhone, but the current crop of iPhone applications like SlingPlayer, Live TV, or Orb require a set-top box, a TV tuner, and/or software installed on your computer. Livestation’s apps, on the other hand, simply require an iPhone.

To see the technology in action, you can watch this video on Vimeo where the BBC News application is demonstrated.

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