9to5 Staff

If you run a blog or own a site that runs Google ads, you are no doubt aware of the frustrations stemming from having to deal with Google’s support staff via email only. And if your living depends on that advertising revenue, getting someone to resolve your issue in a timely manner becomes a matter of life and death. Relax, you will soon be able to pick up the phone and yell at Google.

Fielding questions from Wall Street analysts and investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday afternoon, Google’s senior vice president of advertising Susan Wojcicki announced the arrival of customer support for advertisers and publishers via phone:

Within the next quarter we’re moving to allow [publishers and advertisers] to contact Google by phone [for customer support].

She also underscored that Google is one of the largest display advertising providers in China, adding that the company “helps Chinese advertisers reach global markets”.

WebKit – an Apple-developed, open-sourced rendering platform – is picking up steam on desktop. On laptop and desktop computers, WebKit-powered browsers are closing in on Mozilla’s Firefox, which is the world’s second most-popular browser. Look no further than Net Applications’ numbers derived by monitoring more than 40,000 websites in their network (see above chart). Adding May 2011 web usage share numbers for Safari (7.28 percent) and Chrome (12.52 percent) brings us to the combined 19.8 percent market share.

That’s just shy of one fifth of all desktop browsing, putting WebKit within spitting distance of Firefox’s 21.71 market share. Trends do not favor browser vendors who have been pretty much bleeding market share to Google and Apple in past months. Chrome and Safari have managed to grow their user base over the past couple of months at the expense of Mozilla’s Firefox, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Opera Software’s Opera. A StatCounter survey supports those findings (see below). Why is Mozilla failing?

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0VZhhSLDU&w=670&h=411]

Kudos to Deutsche Telekom AG-owned T-Mobile for fresh advertising ideas. The carrier reckoned it could tap the cultural phenomenon that is Angry Birds to help sell more phones in Europe, so they launched a promotion based around a life-sized version of Angry Birds. T-Mobile began work on the real-life Angry Birds level two weeks ago. A huge set was built at the Plaça Nova de Terrassa in Terrassa, Spain. At least three stories high, it involved extras, flying birds and people in a big crane blowing up the pigs. You can see the end result above and the making-of video after the break.

(Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com)

Expand
Expanding
Close

If you were looking for the perfect clip for your video “to make it pop”, Google writes on the YouTube blog, check out the new Creative Commons library under the CC tab of the YouTube Video Editor. This is the real deal, folks: Pro clips from the likes of C-SPAN, Public.Resource.org, Voice of America, Al Jazeera and others that can be licensed for your creative use. In all, some 10,000 Creative Commons clips are at your disposal. The library is lacking high-quality motion graphics, though. You know, broadcast television stuff like Digital Juice motion backgrounds that can really liven up your projects.

This is my next caught up with Toshiba officials, learning their anticipated Android-driven tablet will hit pre-orders beginning next week. Dubbed the Thrive, it runs Honeycomb 3.1 from the get-go. As a result, expect compatibility with mice, keyboards, memory sticks and other USB peripherals from day one because Honeycomb 3.1 is the first Android version that acts as a USB host. Let’s not forget a built-in SDcard port for easy media transfer from your digital cameras and camcorders. In addition to full-sized USB and HDMI ports, the Thrive also packs in – and road warriors will appreciate this – a swappable battery. A couple more perks before we get to the downer…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has rolled out the new +1 button in search results and for webmasters and today brings us the official +1 Chrome extension that lets you +1 any article on the web. From the release notes:

This extension let you +1 any web page. Just simple as one click!

It’s a great new addition to the Google social suite and it works seamlessly. See something you like? Hit the +1 button in Chrome and a link to that story will be created in your Google profile, making it easy to recommend stuff to the web at large. The extension lets you select a Google profile from which you are posting and enable personalization of content and ads across the web based on your and your contacts’ +1’s. This page explains the system in greater detail. While we’re at it, I just +1 this post. Your +1’s appear publicly in search and on ads as well. You can lock your +1’s on your Google profile so only you can see them. Plus (no pun intended), you can delete any +1 privately or publicly listedon your Google profile.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Barnes & Noble’s all-new Nook e-reader is now shipping. The company announced via a press release yesterday that the new Nooks have been shipped to those who pre-ordered them. New orders placed via their website will ship immediately, in time for Father’s Day. The device will also be in stock at Barnes & Noble locations. The e-reader features a six-inch display with the latest E-Ink Pearl display technology that responds to touch input. It also surprises with other noteworthy goodies…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Motorola Mobility is in the middle of a website redesign that might have inadvertently (or intentionally) leaked five new Android devices. PocketNow discovered images and references to a Dick Tracy watchphone that looks like an Android-powered remote watch Sony Ericsson was working on, later released as the LiveView. Website graphics refers to a Motorola watchphone as the Tracy XL. The tagline pitches it as a gizmo “Dick Tracy never saw coming”. The device apparently sports a front-facing eight-megapixel camera that captures full HD video in 1080p.

The remaining leaks include a second-generation Xoom, a phone called Pearl and two really hot-looking slim handsets code-named Slimline and Zaha. The fact that the images have been removed “at the request of Motorola Mobility, Inc.” (but not before AndroidCommunity got a chance to re-post them) is usually a tell-tale indication of the leaks being the real deal. Check out the phone hotness and two more images below the fold.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Rolling Stone co-founder will no doubt jump with joy on the news that Zinio just released a magazine reader app for Android Froyo/Gingerbread smartphones and Honeycomb tablets. The software exposes Android community to some 20,000 digital magazine titles, including National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine and more. Oh yes, Rolling Stone, too. Sweetening the deal, Zinio is offering most recent issues of two dozen popular magazines free of charge until June 15. And check out this nice perk…

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Asus Padfone has inspired what appears to be a cottage industry of phone-docking tablets in the making. Take a new docking accessory from ECS. Code-named Trinity, it’s the result of joint efforts by ECS and its partner ICE Computer. Unlike the Padfone which is a real tablet, the ECS solution is an intelligent docking station that can house various smartphone brands. It takes your phone’s video and outputs it via HDMI to the built-in display which is of the same 9.7-inch variety and 4:3 format as the iPad’s.

You also get an SD card slot, two USB ports and a front-facing camera. It’s a cross-platform play of sorts due to its ability to work with and house multiple smartphone brands, from Apple’s iPhone to Windows Phone and Android smartphones. Best of all, the gizmo should work with future iOS devices – including iPhone 5 – using “simple upgrades”. Expect the Trinity to hit the market in the fourth quarter costing $200 or less. Go past the break for a video introduction. via ITProPortal

(Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com)

Expand
Expanding
Close

So Intel has showcased six Honeycomb tablets at the Computex show, all of them engineered around the company’s latest 32-nanometer silicon code-named Medfield, the chip maker’s first system-on-a-chip engineered specifically for tablets and smartphones. Unsurprisingly, the demos fell on deaf ears with the veteran journalists who have seen it all.

Sean Moloney, Intel’s new president for China, flashed six Honeycomb 3.0 tablets and a smartphone during his opening keynote. He said reference designs for Medfield tablets and smartphones include both Android and ill-fated Meego software that Intel and Nokia co-developed for high-end mobile gear.

Intel has been trying for years to penetrate the potent mobile market where ARM-based processors designed by Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Apple and others woe device makers. Be that as it may, we don’t see Intel’s latest technology competing effectively with market incumbents – neither this nor next year. Why?

Expand
Expanding
Close

Huang Jen-Hsun, Nvidia’s co-founder and CEO, predicts tablets will outperform mobile PCs five years from today, echoing a similar sentiment from UK fabless chip maker ARM Holdings. The Tegra revenue could even surpass Nvidia’s GPU business, he tells chatting with reporters at a Computex press conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The CEO dismissed Intel’s latest mobile strides by expressing pessimism about their re-newed focus on tablet and smartphone silicon. Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes quoted Jen-Hsun as saying that “consumers do not care whether their products use x86- or ARM-based processor”, adding:

As for the impact bring by the tablet PC, Huang pointed out that PC and tablet PC each has its own unique functionality; therefore, the traditional notebook should not see any danger of being replaced. However, netbook, which does not have a full functionality as a traditional PC, is being impacted deeply by tablet PC.

Nvidia, of course, is betting big on ARM-branded processor designs (versus Intel’s desktop x86 and mobile Atom architectures) that dominate the smartphone industry and are slowly but surely becoming a norm in the tablet space. Tegra chips typically combine ARM processing cores and Nvidia’s custom graphics cores. Even the iPad’s A5 chip is custom-designed around ARM’s CPU blueprints and the graphics unit licensed from Imagination Technologies. Nvidia’s technology roadmap is pretty convincing and they’ve been working their way up the mobile chain. The company is set to become the leading silicon provider for mobile gadgets…

Asus yesterday unveiled the Eee Pad Slider, a gadget designed around Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L12sZP22UbI&w=670&h=411]

For all the talk about the graphical prowess of so-called supertablets coming later this year with Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip inside, we’ll have to do for the time being with the old-fashioned Tegra 2 devices. That may not be such a bad deal, because Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 is a capable piece of silicon that can produce some remarkable visuals.

TouchArcade pointed at Shadowgun, a Madfinger-produced game for Android devices that takes full advantage of the Tegra 2 chip, courtesy of the Unity engine. The video you see above shows console-quality graphics running natively on a Tegra 2-based Android tablet. And yes, Apple fans, it’s coming to the iPad/iPhone near you as well. Another in-game video follows below.

Expand
Expanding
Close

”
Strategy Analytics ranked Samsung the #1 Android tablet maker and the world’s #2 tablet company behind Apple in Q1 2011. It took them a month to sell a millionth Galaxy S II smartphone in Korea  and brag about it  on their Flickr account with the above image.

Samsung is content on releasing more Android tablets despite that pending legal spat with Apple, which is accusing them of stealing the iPad’s and iPhone’s design, software features and hardware engineering with the Galaxy-branded tablets and smartphones. The Wall Street Journal quoted this morning Samsung’s J.K. Shin who underscored his company’s determinacy to release more Honeycomb tablets this year as they “continue to work with Android on future tablets”. Their senior vice president of sales and marketing Younghee Lee added:

Android is the fastest-growing platform and the market direction is headed toward Android so we’re riding the wave. When there is a market need for our own software, we will consider it but that’s not our plan at the moment.

Samsung also says it’ll continue offering tablet PCs in multiple screen sizes as a way of distinguishing themselves from Apple. Asked to comment on that pending lawsuit with Apple, Shin responded:

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG1TaKb3okQ&w=670&h=411]
More details are trickling in regarding the Padfone, a phone-turned-tablet device that Asus officially announced this morning at Computex. Engadget went hands-on with a device mockup Asus has been showing off at the Computex show. More importantly, they squeezed out a target release date and other tidbits from their manager Benson Lin.

ASUS’ Benson Lin was careful not to openly admit the company intends to ship with Ice Cream Sandwich, but he did point out that you can’t launch a smartphone with Honeycomb as the OS. We were encouraged to draw our own conclusions.

Go past the fold for a couple more tidbits…

Asus is shooting for a Christmas release, the publication reported, when a second-generation Transformer and Slider are also due. The Padfone smartphone can be housed inside a tablet shell to double as a portable computer akin to the Eee Transformer Pad. The phone and the tablet communicate via microHDMI and USB, with the latter also supplying power to the phone from the tablet shell batteries.

Joining the Computex tablet party this morning is Viewsonic which announced the ViewPad 10Pro, its newest ten-inch tablet powered by a 1.5GHz Intel Oak Trail Z670 processor that can run Android 2.2 alongside Windows 7 Pro. This feature is enabled with the Bluestacks virtualization software which comes preloaded on the device. Blustacks enables you to run Android software within Windows, without the need for rebooting. Note that the ViewPad 10Pro isn’t a dual-boot tablet as some media outlets incorrectly reported.

We’re not entirely convinced this is what people need. There’s also the question of battery life because virtualization comes at a price and Oak Trail processors aren’t known for their power savviness either. Official specs claim 4.5 hours of 1080p video playback, which is definitely on the low end. Other features include 32GB of storage, a capacitive display, HDMI video output, 3G HSPA+ cellular connectivity, front and back cameras and DLNA support. It weighs in at just 380 gram. Full press release below…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has made it a little easier to find flights online by integrating flight information with their main Google.com search page. From now on, a quick summary of flights and airlines is displayed right on the results page for users in ten language markets (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Catalan). You can also browse a full time-table of non-stop flights and search for non-stop flights from a particular airport.

Even though flight data comes from their ITA acquisition, Google Search does not currently use ITA’s search technology, a Google engineer Petter Wedum noted in a post over at the official Google Search blog. Right now it’s just a schedule, but obviously the ITS deal will pave the way to buying tickets online. Try this example search for flights from San Francisco to Minneapolis.

A report from Citi analyst Walter Pritchard made headlines this morning with claims that HTC agreed to paying five bucks per every Android handset sold. The basis for this is Microsoft’s patent settlement with the Taiwanese handset maker over intellectual property infringement, the analyst has found out. The fact that HTC makes Windows Phones obviously didn’t help dodge that patent hit.

Microsoft’s boss Steve Ballmer argued last October that Android wasn’t free just because it’s open-sourced. Some watchers are calling the Android platform a patent bomb waiting to explode. HTC is also being sued by Apple over alleged breach of iPhone patents and Oracle is suing Google over use of Java in Android. Pritchard warns other Android vendors can expect to pay royalties to Microsoft between $7.50 to $12.50 per device, which is troubling and here’s why.

Expand
Expanding
Close

You may have heard about the latest scandal in the world of Apple involving an unknown company called Lodsys which came out of nowhere, applying legal pressure to the makers of popular iPhone apps that use in-app billing in an effort to extort royalties. Patent troll Lodsys (even though they beg to differ) claims Apple, Microsoft and Google signed licensing agreements with them related to in-app purchasing that don’t, however, include third-party apps. Acting on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s public letter calling out Apple for not stepping up for its developers, the iPhone maker publicly ensured developers that they are covered under its license.

Figuring out the extortionate strategy may have not worked out as expected, Lodsys is now apparently targeting Android developers with patent infringement claims. MacRumors spotted a Google Groups discussion thread which reveals that at least one Android developer may have found itself in Lodsys’ cross-hair. Here’s how that developer described his legal woes with the patent troll firm:

Expand
Expanding
Close

If you’re still wondering why all the fuss about Google Wallet, here’s a little video from Google that will help you process today’s announcement.

[youtube=http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZGoXvzW4WU&w=670&h=411]

Anyone notice the excitement, catchy tunes, the excessive use of superlatives and the overall shininess in Google’s product videos lately? Yeah, very Applefied.

When you pay with your phone, it automatically redeems offers and earns loyalty points for you

Boom, Google Wallet has gone live at the just-finished presser in Google’s New York office. The search Goliath means business, that’s for sure. They’ve managed to convince the journos like us who have seen it all that Google Wallet is no toy. We have here an end-to-end mobile payment solution which quite possibly marks an inflection point in e-commerce. I ain’t drinking Google’s Kool-Aid, bear with me for a sec.

There are two pieces to it: Google Wallet itself, which runs as a native app on your mobile device equipped with an NFC chip, and Google Offers, a Groupon-like service providing rebates, savings and offers that can be easily redeemed on your device, at the points of sale. One click on an offer on the web sends the coupon over-the-air to your devices authorized for Google Wallet. You can also use your device’s camera to snap the Google Offers icon found on printed marketing materials such as in-store posters, banners, print ads and so forth.

Paying for goods is a one-tap affair involving waving your device in front of the wireless payment terminal at participating merchants. The transaction is processed within seconds and directly settled with your issuing bank. In addition, your device negotiates with the merchant’s terminal to automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you. Someday, Google boldly proclaimed, stuff like boarding passes, tickets, ID and keys will be stored in your Google Wallet. You will also get electronic receipts that will eliminate bills on paper. Looking good so far. What’s the catch?

The keynote demonstration had Google’s speaker buying a shorts for his daughter. He waived the phone and the clerk’s terminal took into account his loyalty card and automatically deducted his saved coupon. The live transaction was handled successfully in the second try.

Expand
Expanding
Close