Jordan Kahn

We recently heard from various sources that LG and Google have a new Nexus device in the works expected to launch later this month. Last week, we got a look at some of the alleged specs for the device, including a quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB RAM, 8-megapixel camera, and 1,280-by-768 True-HD IPS display, but today we get what might be the first images of the device from baraholka.onliner.by (via AndroidandMe). According to AndroidandMe, its source has handled the device and confirmed the device in the images above is legit. From the device’s About screen, we see JellyBean and “Mako” listed as the model number. With confirmation of the “Mako” codename (previous Nexus devices were codenamed after fish as well), we also get confirmation of the specs via a Nenamark benchmark result.

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HTC released its third-quarter earnings today and announced a drop in net income to NT$3.9 billion ($133 million). The company’s net income is down from NT$7.4 billion in the quarter before and NT$18.68 billion during the same time last year. HTC announced revenue for the third quarter of NT$70.2 billion, missing analysts’ estimates from Bloomberg, as operating income declined 76 percent to NT$4.9 billion. HTC is certainly hoping its recently unveiled HTC One X+ might help it gain back some marketshare in Q4 as the device rolls out across Europe, Asia, and eventually the U.S. According to estimates from Bloomberg, HTC could post yet another drop to NT$5.2 billion in the fourth quarter on revenue of NT$76.5 billion.

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According to a report from Reuters, Sony announced today that it stopped sales of its Xperia tablet S after a flaw was discovered in the manufacturing process:

The problem with the tablet, which is supposed to be water resistant, is the result of a manufacturing flaw at the Chinese plant where it is fabricated, said Sony spokeswoman Noriko Shoji. Sony has not yet decided when it will resume sales, she added.

Sony confirmed that it would fix the issue for any of the 100,000 devices it has shipped since the tablet went on sale in September. On Sony’s website, the company apologized to customers and confirmed the limited number of units affected “may not meet the splash proof specification.” It also provided information on a recall and repair program:

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According to the Mannheim Regional Court in Germany, Motorola Mobility does not infringe on a Microsoft patent enabling a “method and radio interface layer comprising a set of application programming interfaces (APIs).” The patent, which Reuters described as allowing “applications to work on different handsets,” is considered a rare victory for Google’s Motorola. Throughout its countersuits, Microsoft has been able to win three patent cases against Motorola in Germany. As noted by Microsoft-funded blogger Florian Mueller, “Microsoft should actually thank Motorola for this initiative, which at this stage has been far more productive for Microsoft than for Google.”

Microsoft is expected to appeal the decision, as usual, but the Judge Voss did not go over the reasoning behind the ruling during the announcement. Microsoft’s associate general counsel David Howard provided a statement to Reuters:

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Amazon is making a couple of announcements today for both developers and users, including adding support for new countries to its Mobile App Distribution Portal and Cloud Drive services. Starting with Cloud Drive, Amazon announced today that is launching Cloud Drive in both Spain and Italy following introductions of the service in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France earlier this month.

Another improvement in this release of Cloud Drive now allows U.S. users to share files they upload by selecting the individual files at www.amazon.com/clouddrive. Meanwhile, iPhoto users in the U.S. and Europe can now easily import their photos:

In addition, Cloud Drive customers in the U.S. and Europe using Mac computers can now easily upload their iPhoto albums to Cloud Drive in as little as two clicks using the Cloud Drive Desktop App. Users can select the events they want to upload and the Cloud Drive Desktop App seamlessly uploads photos so they can be enjoyed instantly on Kindle Fire or from any web browser.

As for the Mobile App Distribution Portal, Amazon announced today that developers can now submit their apps for sale in Japan:
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While Motorola already announced in the summer that it is cutting around 20 percent of its workforce (roughly 4,000 jobs), a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today revealed the company plans to cut even more jobs. According to the filing, picked up by CNET, Google will increase severance-related costs 9 percent to $300 million, as well as incur another $40 million in related charges this quarter. Google provided the following statement in the filing in regards to the job cuts that remain outside of the U.S. at this point:

“Google Inc. expects to incur certain charges in connection with planned restructuring actions at its wholly-owned subsidiary Motorola Mobility (Motorola),” said the company’s senior vice president and CFO Patrick Pichette. “Motorola has continued to refine its planned restructuring actions and now expects to broaden those actions to include additional geographic regions outside of the U.S.”

As for where the cuts might take place, The New York Times previously reported that Motorola, which was unprofitable for 14 of its last 16 quarters, planned to reduce its operations in Asia and India. Google also warned that further restructuring might be necessary and significant costs could be involved:

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We knew it was coming when Google leaked a rough draft of its blog post announcing the feature, but today Google is making things official for Google Wallet for web content. The experimental feature will allow Google Wallet users to purchase web content ranging from 25- to 99 cents for individual webpages with a 30 minute instant refund window, ads, and perpetual access to content for users.

On a website highlighting the new feature, Google explained how the process works. Content owners will be able to embed a Google Wallet banner on a webpage, provide users with a free sample of content, and offer users the ability to purchase with one click. Google has examples of the banner already implemented on websites, including this page on peachpit.com.  When visiting, users can scroll about half way down the page before the banner appears and the user is prompted to pay with Google Wallet. Google noted that users wanting to sell content for more than $1 should instead use its digital goods/games option.

[tweet https://twitter.com/googlewallet/status/253594824362586112]

The company already has a few partners using the Google Wallet for content solution, including Oxford University Press, DK publishing, and Pearson’s Peachpit. Publishers interested in offering their web content can submit a partner inquiry here. 
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YouTube is rolling out some nice improvements for content owners by announcing on the Official YouTube Blog some improvements to Content ID and a new appeals process for copyright claims. YouTube launched Content ID five years ago allowing content owners to upload reference files to automatically identify user-uploaded videos that contain content belonging to them. In a blog post, YouTube explained an updated appeals process would allow users to address rejected disputes related to claims detected by Content ID:

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Google is making some big improvements to the customer experience for Google Apps customers by using its Chrome browser. Over on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, Google’s manager of Google Apps Technical Solutions Engineers Fred Beckebanze announced the company is adding both phone and email support for App customers with questions about Chrome. In the post, Google explained customers could now receive support for “Chrome installation, functionality, security, browser policy settings and Google Apps interoperability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.”

In other Google Apps news, customers will now have access to the CardDAV protocol that Google rolled out to iOS and other devices last week. Google’s description of the protocol, which allows easier syncing of Google contacts to third-party clients, is below:’

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Google announced on the Chromium Blog today a new Chrome Beta release that includes a number of new features to make it easier for developers to create web apps with HTML5 video and audio/video calling. In the blog post, Google’s Justin Uberti explained the new release of Chrome now includes the PeerConnection API that allows developers to implement real-time voice and video calling features without using a plug-in:

Together, PeerConnection and the getUserMedia API represent the next steps in WebRTC, a new standard which aims to allow high quality video, audio, and data communications on the web. Check out this funky video chat demo to see how the PeerConnection API can be combined with other web technologies to create fun new video chat experiences. To start the video chat demo, send the url to a friend.

As for HTML5 video, today’s Chrome Beta update includes track support that provides developers with an easy way to include metadata, chapters, captions, subtitles, and other features in HTML5 video content using HTML DOM and JavaScript. Google also announced it added the Media Source API for adjusting video playback backed on network conditions. In the image above, we see a video enhanced with track to include a Google Map and StreetView.

More benefits of track support and a demo video is below:

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We told you Google had a number of presentations prepared for Advertising Week and one of them included the introduction of a new ad format that Google is calling “Lightbox.” Google explained the new ads (pictured above) start “as a standard display ad, making it scalable, but after a two-second hover, expands to a super-sized canvas.”

According to Google’s Jim Lecinskihe, the benefits of the Lightbox ad format include: elimination of almost all accidental expansions, an increase in engagement by up to 6-8x, and advertisers only pay when a user is engaged.

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A new report out of research firm Localytics today suggested sales of Samsung’s Galaxy S III have been growing on a weekly basis with huge spikes following the Samsung/Apple trial and the iPhone 5 introduction. As highlighted in the graphic above, Samsung experienced a 16 percent increase in growth the week of the Apple trial verdict, when compared to just 8 percent the week before, and an average of 9 percent per week since Aug. 1. After the launch of the iPhone 5, new device growth for the S III again jumped to 15 percent compared to 0 percent growth the previous week.

That combined with the slowdown in new Galaxy S3 growth seen leading up to Apple’s announcement (week-over-week new devices were the same as the previous week, resulting in 0% growth) suggest that many consumers were waiting to hear about the new iPhone before making a decision… Note that the average week-over-week growth of 9% means that every week 9% more Galaxy S3 handsets were added than the week before. This also means that the growth effects are cumulative, so while the Samsung device’s weekly new device growth slowed some weeks, it is still adding handsets at a remarkable rate.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2Y0Gm02XGis#!]

As noted on the Official Google Blog, Google has now reached 20 million students using its Google Apps for Education products; and in celebration of World Teachers’ Day on Friday, the company posted some stats to highlight the product’s success. It is also highlighting amazing teachers on its Google in Education Google+ page. The first video (above) features Ms. Kornowski. She is “a science teacher at Kettle-Moraine High School in Wales, WI, who is using Google Forms to bring her students together.”

Some of the highlights of Google Apps for Education over the last year:

• 400+ universities are posting lectures and/or full courses online using YouTube Edu
• 600,000 staff from the Philippines Department of Education will now be using Google Apps
• Universities across the continents are signing up for Apps, including schools inPoland, Spain, the Netherlands and Africa
• More than 500 schools and districts went back to school with Chromebooks this fall
• Seven of the eight Ivy League universities and 72 of this year’s top 100 U.S. universities (as determined by 2013 U.S. News and World Report’s ranking)have gone Google with Google Apps for Education

A new report from The Wall Street Journal claimed AT&T and Time Warner Cable are approaching Kansas City officials in an attempt to get the same deal Google has for its Google Fiber gigabit Internet service in the city. According to the report, the companies are after the same free office space, assets, and infrastructure, and government employees the city has agreed to provide Google:

Among the sweeteners granted Google by both cities are free office space and free power for Google’s equipment, according to the agreement on file with the cities. The company also gets the use of all the cities’ “assets and infrastructure”—including fiber, buildings, land and computer tools, for no charge. Both cities are even providing Google a team of government employees “dedicated to the project.”… For the past few months Time Warner Cable has been negotiating with Kansas City, Kan.,to get a “parity agreement” granting it the same concessions as Google got, the city and the company says. Time Warner Cable has already signed such a deal with Kansas City, Mo… AT&T also has approached Kansas City, Mo., for the same deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVeSzfKudFo]

According to a report from Forbes (via TNW), Google just closed a deal last week to acquire Ukrainian augmented reality and facial recognition startup Viewdle. The exact amount Google paid for the company is unclear, but Forbes’ sources said it was somewhere in the neighborhood of the $30 million to $45 million. That puts the purchase price in between the $30 million figure the company expected to get and the amount Google paid for similar companies PittPatt ($38 million) and NevenVision ($45 million).

Viewdle has its SocialCamera Android app, both iOS and Android versions of its face recognition SDK, and several patents related to face detection and augmented reality applications. The translation of the report seems to indicate Motorola had previously been an anonymous bidder interested in purchasing the company:

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Google announced on the Google Commerce blog today that it is finally bringing the previously tablet-only Google Catalogs shopping experience to the web. The catalogs will now be available to browse through any web browser as part of Google Shopping, and they will feature the same collection of issues from partners such as Eddie Bauer, J.Crew, and Williams Sonoma. To visit Google Catalogs on the web, go to www.google.com/shopping/catalogs

Once you find a catalog you like, click on the issue to open the catalog viewer where you can flip through catalog pages and zoom in to see products up close. To view information about specific products, roll your mouse over the page and click the tag for the product you’re interested in. This opens a box with more information, additional views, and price. Clicking ‘View Details’ takes you directly to the retailer’s site to learn more or make a purchase.

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As part of Advertising Week running from October 1-5 in New York, Google is hosting more than 20 sessions with topics ranging from The Mobile Playbook, to YouTube seminars, to a master class in Google Analytics. Over on the company’s Think with Google website, Google highlighted the sessions, some of which take place at conferences and trade shows outside of Advertising Week. Today Google has a number of sessions ending with a keynote by Vice President of Sales Jim Lecinski 4:00pm. Advertising Week has a live stream on its website of the events, and we’ll be bringing you anything interesting as it goes down.

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AT&T just sent out a press release announcing the addition of four new devices including three Samsung smartphones and one tablet. Now added to the AT&T LTE Android lineup: the new Galaxy Note II, which we recently got hands-on time with when it unveiled in Berlin; the 4-inch waterproof Galaxy Rugby Pro; the 4.5-inch Galaxy Express; and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1-inch tablet.

Samsung did not provide exact pricing and release dates for any of the devices, but it said all-new models would become available “in the coming months.” Go below for specs on each device from the AT&T press release:

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Only moments after Apple CEO Tim Cook issued an open letter to iOS customers apologizing for the Maps controversy and recommending the Google Maps web app, Google is now highlighting some improvements it made to high-resolution imagery in its Maps and Earth apps.

New 45-degree imagery for 51 cities and 37 locations in the United States are included in the update, as well as 14 abroad spots like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Google is also refreshing high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery for 112 countries and 17 cities in both Google Maps and Earth.The refresh includes shots of the pentagon-shaped Citadel of Lille in France and the Texas State Capitol in Austin.

A full list of locations in the updates is below:

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