9to5 Staff

If your Google+ profile is ever suspended for any reason, it won’t be the worst thing to happen because other services tied to your Google+ account could be rendered inaccessible as a result. As far as Google is concerned, Google Profiles and Google+ Profiles are the same thing and removing one for whatever reason will take down the other. If you intend on building your online identity on Google+, you should read the following guidelines carefully.

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Google+ is gaining momentum with each passing day but the search giant isn’t content with resting on its laurels. Google is aware that it’s facing an uphill battle if it wants to dethrone Facebook so they’re iterating and rolling out new features like crazy. Here’s a quick overview of the more notable enhancements coming soon to Google+.

Rohit Khare, who was added to Google social team following the Angstro acquisition in late 2010, announced that an address book uploader will be rolling out to everyone over the next few days. This will let you export your friends list from other social services in the standard CSV or vCard formats, without messing up your other Google Contacts.

By the way, bear in mind that the folks you put into your Circles are automatically added to your Google Contacts’ Other Contacts section. Previously this week, Engineering Manager for Gmail frontend Mark Striebeck mentioned “several Gmail/Google+ integrations” and he already arranged several Hangouts to discuss the topic. And you may have heard that Google+ features for businesses are coming, too.

Go past the break for more features and a couple of clips…

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Now that Android has become the leading mobile platform in the US and other key markets around the world, developers are taking notice and some no longer prefer releasing their apps on iOS first, followed by Android. For some, it’s a question of Android’s installed user base, the pace of the platform’s growth and the fact that ad-supported free model on Android matches the App Store’s 99-cent economy. For others like WhitePages, the decision comes down to cutting out a middleman in order not to be forced to spend time, resources and money on a lengthy approval process.

According to Ina Fried over at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D blog, WhitePages’ new Localicious app will be released on Android first. Apple’s approval process “is just too difficult to time a launch around”, Fried writes, noting the iPhone maker’s stringent approval process had delayed the launch of a reverse phone lookup app from WhitePages for two months, a far cry from the Apple-advertised “95 percent of the apps are approved in two-weeks time”. WhitePages’ op-chief Kevin Nakao tells the blog:

I think we are going to see a lot of people start to ship Android first. You cant be held hostage. Marketing an application becomes increasingly important given the number of apps that are being published. Since apps can still get tied up in the iOS approval process, it makes this marketing planning almost impossible.

UPDATE [July 13, 2011, 10:20am Eastern Time]: Google itself is now advising developers to target Android first. According to MacWorld UK, Google Ventures partner Rich Miner is telling app developers funded by the Google-backed project that they focus on Android and then roll out apps on iOS later.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-YsZNpkZs]

Remember WDYL, the Google-owned site affectionately named What Do You Love? It rolled out quietly last month to no fanfare as a glorified Google.com frontend to present search results across numerous Google products with pretty layouts. It has gotten some press time before most folks forgot about it so Google made this little video to remind us of the project and showcase the power of HTML5 and Google search.

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The iriver Story HD would pass as a yet another e-reader if it weren’t for its tight integration with the Google eBooks platform. It’s the first e-reader fully integrated with the Google eBooks platform through official APIs that connect you wirelessly to three million free e-books and hundreds of thousands commercial releases. The iriver Story HD will be available for sale in Target stores nationwide and on Target.com beginning July 17, 2011.

It’s interesting that Google worked closely with a non-Android device vendor to include Google Books support while it’s Android operating system does not yet include these capabilities apart from the Google Books app, which is a free download from Android Market. The search firm even promoted iRiver’s device in a blog post, praising its high-resolution e-ink screen and a QWERTY keyboard for easy searching, noting that “manufacturers like iriver can use Google Books APIs and services to connect their devices to the full Google eBooks catalog for out-of-the-box access to a complete ebookstore”.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could report those pesky phone calls from marketeers as spam with a single click, just like you in Gmail? If you’re a Google Voice user, now you can because the search monster this morning flipped the switch on the new global spam filtering machine that sucks out unwanted calls before they hit your phone.

And if some go through, the new Report Spam button in the Google Voice interface is all you need to stop the pesky callers who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer from wasting your time. You can also fine-tune the system by automatically redirecting calls, texts and voicemails from any of the numbers in Google’s database directly into their spam folders. To turn on spam filtering, tick the Global SPAM filtering box on the Calls tab of Google Voice settings.

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AT&T this morning announced first two devices 4G LTE devices, both Mac compatible: A 4G LTE mobile hotspot and a 4G LTE USB modem. If you live in any of AT&T’s five 4G LTE markets (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, with more coming by the year’s end), you can take advantage of 4G LTE speeds. Those living outside the initial 4G LTE coverage needn’t worry because AT&T, as they say, will have the only combo LTE/HSPA+ network and both devices feature HSPA+ support as a fallback technology. “Our customers will receive a more consistent mobile broadband experience that supports simultaneous voice and data connections and higher speeds than others can provide outside their LTE footprint”, AT&T argues. More on the devices, availability and price points after the break.

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Apple should know better than sue phone makers left and right. The iPhone maker should honor fair-play in the mobile arena rather than exhibit “constant attempts at litigations”. That’s a summary of the Taiwanese Android phone maker HTC’s latest back and forth with rival Apple over an alleged breach of patents and intellectual property which Apple first asserted back in March of 2010.

The comment came in response to Apple’s Monday filing with the International Trade Commission seeking to block the import and sale of HTC’s devices. HTC’s PR machine kicked into overdrive and their general counsel Grace Lei stepped forward and told Associated Press that his company won’t be intimidated by Apple’s legal sharks:

HTC is disappointed at Apple’s constant attempts at litigations instead of competing fairly in the market. HTC strongly denies all infringement claims raised by Apple in the past and present and reiterates our determination and commitment to protect our intellectual property rights.

HTC made a bet on Android at the expense of Microsoft’s mobile operating system three years ago. The gamble has certainly paid off. Strong sales of HTC-branded Android phones and the handsets they make for the likes of Google and others boosted second-quarter income to NT$17.5 billion (about $608 million). HTC also acquired graphics maker S3 Graphics for $300 million, quite possibly to leverage their 235 patents and pending applications as it gears up for legal fights with Apple and eventually Microsoft (when the $5-per-handset Android patent deal with Microsoft expires).

Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com

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Sony’s inaugural Android tablet, the S1, was caught in the wild ten days ago and today Sony gets semi-official with a possible pre-order date for the UK set to Thursday, September 1, This is my next has learned.

We’ve just seen documents indicating that Sony Centre stores in the UK will be taking S1 pre-orders starting September 1st. That’s just a little later than the late-August pre-order date we’d previously heard, but nothing too major – and Sony will still be among the first to ship a themed and skinned Honeycomb tablet, which we suppose is something of an accomplishment.

No pricing information was released at press time. The Japanese consumer electronics giant will apparently work closely with the preferred retailers to educate them about the benefits of the S1. The September 1 launch is just a month and half away and we are expecting the S1 to hit the US shores shortly thereafter.

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Amazon, the king of sweet deals, is running an interesting promotion designed to boost both sales of Android phones on their site and app downloads through its Appstore for Android. You can now get any Android smartphone or tablet sold through their site between July 11 and through October 11 and the company will put a $15 credit into your account that can be redeemed against app purchases on the Amazon Appstore for Android. You can also buy music on the Amazon MP3 store and e-books on the Kindle Store, if you want.

The credit will be in your account once your Android phone ships, with the expiry date set to November 12. More about the terms of this promotion here. Amazon Wireless offers a decent selection of phones, including the latest models such as HTC’s Thunderbolt 4G, LG’s Revolution and Motorola’s Droid X2. The $15 credit is split between the three stores, with each getting a $5 credit. This should be enough to buy you a cheap or discounted Kindle book, a couple of 99-cent games or apps and a few songs or even a whole album.

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In the two weeks since it launched, Google+ is closing in on its first major milestone, the ten millionth user. The news was published in a post by Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com (not related in any way to Microsoft’s co-founder and tech gossip books author). He wrote this morning:

My surname-based analysis shows that the number of Google+ users worldwide reached 7.3 million yesterday (July 10) – up from 1.7 million users on July 4th. That is a 350 percent increase in six days. The userbase is growing so quickly that it is challenging for me to keep up, since the number of users of any given surname (even the rare ones I am tracking) seems to be climbing every day. More impressive than last week’s growth is the astonishing growth in users from yesterday at mid-day to tonight — a 30% jump. My latest estimate tonight shows approximately 9.5 million users. This suggests that 2.2 million people have joined Google+ in the past 32-34 hours. I project that Google will easily pass 10 million users tomorrow and could reach 20 million user by this coming weekend if they keep the Invite Button available. As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth.

Allen also found out that Google+ is especially popular overseas with one US user for every 2.12 non-US users, although that ratio is likely to change over time. If Google+ continues growing at this pace, the service could easily amass a hundred million users before the Fall, at which point Facebook might wanna hit the panic button.

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Image courtesy of Boy Genius Report

Samsung Mobile’s chief technology office Omar Khan is leaving the company for greener pastures, it was revealed yesterday. Khan is leaving for Citi where he will be responsible for their mobile initiatives. The unexpected departure arrives at a time when Samsung is chasing Nokia to become the world’s leading phone vendor and fighting Apple’s copycat accusations of stealing the design of iPhone’s hardware, software, packaging and even marketing communications.

As it turns out, Samsung may have already lost orders from Apple, its biggest buyer, as a result of the growing rift. The Globe and Mail reports that Apple might end its relationship with Samsung by taking their five billion dollar a year in electronics parts orders elsewhere. For example, Apple could order NAND flash from Toshiba, Micron and Hynix Semiconductor and mobile processors from Intel and TSMC. Samsung also supplies Apple with LCDs for computers and iPads. Samsung’s financial filings provide clues to its relationship with Appel.

For example, Samsung recently had to consolidate operations by merging component and manufacturing businesses in order to hide losses of the flat panel business among the lucrative semiconductor operations. This indicates Apple may have stopped buying LCDs from Samsung. They also issued weak second-quarter earnings, with profits dropping 26 percent to 3.7 trillion won (about $3.5 billion) due to sluggish television and semiconductor operations, signalling that Apple might have as well stopped ordering A5 and A6 processors from Samsung. The lower-than-expected guidance prompted analyst Kim Sung In with Kiwoom Securities Co. to slam the company hard over the misstep, arguing:

Only the phone business is holding up. Everything else is looking bad. There’s no bright picture for the company looking ahead.

So, if the loss of Apple’s business doesn’t derail Samsung, any slump in phone sales at this point will. So far phone sales are holding up pretty well…

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Nearly three-quarters of Android sales in Britain during a twelve-week period ended June 12 came from people upgrading from so-called feature phones to their first smartphone. In addition, only 1.8 percent of new Android sales came from iOS users jumping ship, a Kantar Woldpanel ComTech survey reveals. The research didn’t take into account corporate sales or contracts and was based on extensive interviews with up to one million consumers in Europe alone.

Android has grown its share of total US handset market to 9.2 percent in June of this year, up over just one percent a year ago. The platform had a 45.20 percent share of the entire smartphone market in the country, while iOS fell from 30.6 percent share in June 2010 to 18.3 percent share in June 2011. A big part of this was price: Apple’s is among the priciest consumer smartphones and only 45 percent contracts offer the device for free versus 90 percent for Android phones.

The fall of iOS came as a result of the overall UK market growing at a faster pace than iPhone sales, which have been overshadowed for the past two months as Samsung’s Galaxy S II smartphone emerged as the best-selling smartphone. In the US, Android and iOS had 57 percent and 28.7 percent market share last month, respectively. Android is clearly victorious in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and Japan, where the platform enjoys a whopping 64.7 percent share of the smartphone market versus 27.7 percent for iOS.

Kantar analysts predict that by this time next year smartphones would account for nearly 50 percent of the overall handset market, thanks to more and more feature phone owners dumping their devices for smartphones. This is not unexpected because trends hint that eventually all phones will become smartphones. Other phone vendors are experiencing sharp declines around the world, especially Symbian which has been bleeding share as Nokia fights for survival.

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Android 2.3.4, a minor update to the Gingerbread-named release of Google’s operating system for smartphones has leaked onto the web ahead of the official carrier release. For now, it’s only available for Samsung’s Galaxy S II smartphone through the means of a downloadable firmware file. Even though it’s only a minor update, Gingerbread 2.3.4 carries a few little surprises worth mentioning. For instance, the update enables Google Talk video calling on Samsung’s device and battery life improvements are also being reported. Some early adopters also claim improved reception due to an updated baseband software. If you’re eager to take the plunge and install the new firmware yourself (and void your warranty in the process), check out a handy guide and download links over at the SAMFirmware blog.

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The ever growing circle of Google+ fans was hit by a glitch which caused the system issue a massive number of notification messages to some users. The servers basically were spamming some users inboxes because the search giant has ran out of disk space, the company’s social chief Vic Gundotra explained in a post on Google+ yesterday.

Please accept our apologies for the spam we caused this afternoon. For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications. Hence our system continued to try sending notifications. Over, and over again. Yikes. We didn’t expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have. Thank you for helping us during this field trial, and once again, we are very sorry for the spam.

It seems a bit strange that the company which operates massive data centers around the world would have any issues with disk space, but it is possible that Google+ engineers underestimated interest in the service which by some estimates already has five million users.

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Apple’s iPhone 4 wasn’t the only smartphone to get blasted into outer space with today’s launch of the 135th, final Space Shuttle mission from Kennedy Space Center. Along with two modified iPhone 4s, the mission included another interesting payload: two Nexus S handsets. The astronauts will use both Apple’s and Google’s smartphones for various experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). CNET explains that the Nexus S phones will be attached to a pair of orbs found on ISS. Dubbed Spheres (an acronym for Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites), these bowling ball-sized devices (shown above) are normally used to test spacecraft maneuvers, satellite servicing and flight formation:

Normally, the Spheres orbs carry out pre-programmed commands from a computer aboard the ISS, but the Nexus Android phones will give them increased computing power, cameras, and links to ground crew who will pilot them.

This sounds easy, but so-called “zero robotics” is an incredibly complex field, as you could imagine. As a result of replacing the manual Spheres controls with Nexus S handsets, crew members might have more time for other mission critical tasks. It all depends whether the astronauts can rely on consumer electronics like Android-powered smartphones to run reliably and without absolutely any hiccup in zero gravity environment. If everything goes smoothly, the Nexus S orbs will be certified for use later this year. Here’s a little video showing a test of the Spheres experiment.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G30rTRUYkd8]

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A pair of updates late yesterday brought out minor but useful improvements to Google’s web-based email and mobile version of their online productivity suite, Google Docs. In Gmail, you will soon be able to conveniently switch between several predetermined inbox styles. In addition to Classic and Priority Inbox, new styles will include Important First, Unread First and Starred First, sorting your messages accordingly. We in particular are going to love the Unread First style as this has has been for far too long a glaring omission of the Gmail web interface.

True, you’ve been able to filter all unread messages by typing in “is:unread in:anywhere” into the search field – even save that query as a handy shortcut in the lefthand column using Quick Links from Gmail Labs. However, the new inbox styles are going to be much more convenient and within reach in a new tab above the message window. “After you’ve settled on a style you like and used it for about a week, these tabs will go away”, Google explains in a blog post. If you change your mind later, switch to a different inbox style from the drop down menu next to the Inbox label or from the Settings page. Google Docs for mobile also got a little love…

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As you know, Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for lift-off from Kennedy Space Center today, July 8, at 11:26am Eastern (carrying two modified iPhone 4s with it). This will be a historic launch marking the 135th and final mission of the Space Shuttle fleet. Time to refresh your astronomy knowledge, don’t you think. Just in time, NASA’s official app which has been downloaded five million times on iPhone and iPad is now available on Android Market.

The 4MB download works with Android 2.1 onwards. It’s your window to an enormous collection of NASA content that spawns hires space imagery, on-demand videos, live streaming video from NASA Television, mission information, feature stories and breaking news. It also lets you locate sighting opportunities for the International Space Station and track the current positions of spacecraft currently orbiting Earth. More features and screenies after the break.

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Motorola’s Droid 3 has been specc’d and benchmarked well before its June 17 China debut. Three weeks later, Verizon Wireless brings the latest and greatest Droid smartphone to America. A quick reminder: The Droid 3 runs the latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread version, has a four-inch qHD display at 960-by-540 pixel resolution, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, an eight-megapixel camera with 1080p video capture and a speedy dual-core 1GHz OMAP processor from Texas Instruments. Key thing: It’s available both with the usual two-year wireless contract for $200 and without a contract for $460, direct from Verizon Wireless here. And don’t forget that Verizon no longer offers unlimited data plans. Full release below.

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Samsung today posted a 26-percent drop in Q2 profits because its television and semiconductor operations are shrinking. Profits fell to 3.7 trillion won, or about $3.5 billion, versus 5.01 trillion in the year-ago quarter. The drop is being blamed on Samsung’s flat panel unit which is bleeding money for a second consecutive quarter now. Because demand for 3D TVs and consumer electronics in general is weakening, Samsung’s flat panel division has generated an operating loss of 73.5 billion won ($69.1 million) in the second quarter, Bloomberg explains. Just a year ago, the same unit profited 880 billion won (about $827 million). Slim margins and low prices in the cut-throat television business don’t help either. A Kiwoom Securities Co. analyst Kim Sung In slammed the company:

Only the phone business is holding up. Everything else is looking bad. There’s no bright picture for the company looking ahead.

Maybe the flat panel division will recover if Apple brings out an intelligent, networked television set in 2012 using flat panels from Samsung? It’s all peachy for their mobile devices unit which has benefited from strong smartphone and tablet sales. A recent comScore survey put Samsung as the #1 smartphone brand in the US that accounted for 24.8 percent share of all mobile phone subscribers aged 13 and up. What about other metrics?

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Constant checking of your location is annoying when using public transportation in a foreign city. This will become a thing of the past with the new Google Maps for Android which now features something called Transit Navigation (currently in beta). Basically, this taps Google’s vast mapping database, your phone’s GPS location and real-time public transportation data to figure out where exactly along the route you currently are. The system then alerts you on time when it’s time to hop off the buss, Google explains in a blog post:

Using your location along the route, Transit Navigation will alert you when its time to get off at your destination or to make a transfer. This is particularly helpful if you’re in a city where you don’t speak the language and can’t read the route maps or understand the announcements. 

The best bit? It runs in background so you’ll continue receiving progress reports as subtle Android notifications while checking your email or playing a game. It will even vibrate the device when it’s time to get off at next stop. Other improvements include the navigation interface with big icons and built-in picture viewer for Places pages. The new Google Maps 5.7 for Android with Transit Navigation (BETA) can be downloaded now from Android Market on smartphones that run at least Android 2.1. Transit Navigation arrives with support four hundred major cities around the world and Google will probably add more towns in the future.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NTXkd0dguQ]

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