App Store

Apple introduced Game Center, an online multiplayer social gaming network, in 2010 that allows app users to invite friends, start multiplayer games, track achievements, and compare scores on a leader board, and now reports claim that Google is looking to develop a similar system for Android.

While not naming any sources, Business Insider claimed Google is developing a native Android app similar to Game Center, but the publication detailed Apple’s offering as “an app on the iPhone that connects players in most of Apple’s iOS games.” However, that description is selling the network short. Game Center comes standard with the current iOS, and Apple announced in February that the service would soon integrate with Mountain Lion, which is set for a late summer 2012 release (image, above).

Google’s flavor will allegedly include a social-based achievement system, as well as a leader board. The similar client would poise Google as a legitimate contender in the exploding mobile games market. Developers who build Android games use a variety of third-party solutions, like the iOS-compatible OpenFeint, but Google wants to create its own native app in the wake of Apple’s popularity with gaming.

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Facebook just announced that it is launching a new App Center—but it is not just for Facebook apps.

9to5Mac reported for months that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company were planning a web-based alternative store to Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play dubbed “Project Spartan.” Speculation said the project is a framework for apps that would use social hooks, while working inside of Facebook’s ecosystem.

It seems those reports are ringing true, because the highly-anticipated HTML 5-based App Center will give Facebook users access to iOS, Android, web, mobile web, and desktop apps. Interestingly, Facebook reiterated that it is not competing directly with Apple or Google, because the App Center will send users to both the iOS and Android platforms. For example: If you are visiting Facebook’s App Center on an Android Device, and then enter Words with Friends, or one of the many Facebook-compatible games, you will soon beam to that app’s Google Play page for installation. The same holds true for iOS users.

“In the coming weeks, people will be able to access the App Center on the web and in the iOS and Android Facebook apps. All canvas, mobile and web apps that follow the guidelines can be listed. All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch,” explained Software Engineer Aaron Brady in a Facebook Developer’s blog post.

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(early beta of the functionality, above)

Update: The app is now live on the App Store. A full list of new features is below.

Alongside the Facebook Messenger for iPad app and updated iPhone app with video chat that we revealed earlier this week, we have also been beta testing a new “read receipts” feature. Today, Facebook is apparently rolling out the new feature to its existing iOS Messenger app, which gives you the ability to see when someone received and read your message.

While the update is not live, TechCrunch confirmed with FaceBook’s Peter Deng that the update is coming to the current iOS Facebook Messenger client and Android’s counterpart. According to the report, the feature will appear as “Seen by username” under the message itself, but our build of the app used checkmarks—as seen in the image above.

As noted by TechCrunch, the update will include the name of the location when the message was sent, if the user has enabled location services. It also replaces the three-dot typing indicator with the name of the person typing.

The updated Facebook Messenger iOS app is available here.

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Google launched a new “Go Google” campaign today to flaunt its array of cloud-based services, and now the Google Docs team is doing the same by rounding up a host of improvements it made to Google Docs in April with the announcement of 450 new fonts and 60 new templates.

“Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a little something extra to whatever you create,” explained Software Engineer Isabella Ip on the Official Google Docs Blog.

To select the new fonts, click on the font menu, and then select “Add fonts” at the bottom. This will open a menu to all the Google Web Fonts available. Users can narrow their search for the perfect font by alphabetical order, date added, and “trending.” Once a font is selected, users are free to implement them in Google Docs, especially in one of the service’s 60 new templates that were unveiled today.

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Microsoft’s search engine Bing unveiled a new look today, and, well, it looks strikingly like Google’s homepage user-interface.

“Starting today you will notice a fresh, de-cluttered experience designed to help you find the results you want faster,” announced Principal Group Program Manager Sally Salas on the Bing.com blog.

Bing stripped the gray-blue gradient, orange links, left sidebar, and the convolute of text and imagery from its website to reveal a simple, white background adorned with crisp, blue text.

“Over the past few months, we’ve run dozens of experiments to determine how you read our pages to deliver the link you’re looking for. Based on that feedback, we’ve tuned the site to make the entire page easier to scan, removing unnecessary distractions, and making the overall experience more predictable and useful,” Salas explained.

The obvious rip-off appears hypocritical, though, especially because the company often takes shots at Google for stealing its ideas. Microsoft Europe’s communication team used Twitter in 2010 to poke fun of Google’s ability to implement background images, which is popular feature that characterized Bing since it launched in 2009.

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/MSEurope/status/15838998934]

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/kcOUWjkGBUY]

It’s no secret that Google is fully cloud-compatible, from emails and documents to online storage and video chats, but now the search engine is boasting about its array of cloud-based tools in a new campaign that encourages folks to go Google.

“At the heart of it, Google is about cloud computing—helping people live online and get things done in the cloud,” explained Vice President of Engineering Venkat Panchapakesan on the Official Google Blog:

According to Panchapakesan, over 16 million students and teachers from 66 of the top 100 U.S. universities and more than 4 million businesses worldwide have gone Google through Google Apps:

“Whether you need to add ‘milk’ to a shared shopping list from the train, collaborate with your teammate back in the office to finish your presentation from a hotel lobby, or chat face-to-face with your mom from halfway around the world, we believe that getting stuff done in the cloud is a better way. We like to call it ‘going Google.'”

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Google is embroiled in a hullabaloo over allegations that it cropped personal data from millions of people during its Street View project, and while the Federal Communications Commission ended its 17-month investigation into the matter, with a partial exoneration for the Internet giant, The New York Times is claiming to have found the culprit at the center of the case.

Google Street View is a service highlighted in Google Maps and Google Earth that offers panoramic views of streets. It launched in 2007 in the United States and has expanded to many cities and rural areas worldwide. The project ambitiously maps the world’s streets with photographs while accumulating data about local wireless networks to bulk location-based searches.

It eventually became apparent that Google’s Street View vehicle also gathered unencrypted information like emails and Internet searches beamed from personal computers from within homes. When this came to light, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company fingered a nameless engineer as being solely responsible for the action, which resulted in a F.C.C. inquiry. The search engine did not break any laws, the regulatory body found, but it did obstruct the investigation.

Although Google and the F.C.C. refused to confirm, the NYT published a lengthy piece yesterday that named Marius Milner as Google’s scapegoat. A former state investigator involved in another inquiry into Street View identified Milner as the engineer responsible. He is a programmer with an extensive background in telecommunications and Wi-Fi networking. As the publication discovered, Milner listed his occupation as “hacker” on his LinkedIn page (not working now), and wrote, “I know more than I want to about Wi-Fi” under the profile’s “Specialties” category.

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We reported on 9to5Mac in February that Apple acquired discovery app Chomp and was thought to be using the company’s technology to help improve the App Store and iTunes experience. We later confirmed Chomp’s CEO Ben Keighran and CTO Cathy Edwards already started working at Apple on the iTunes teams. Today, it appears Apple has shut down Chomp for Android with Chomp’s website now only listing links to iOS versions of the app, as noted by GigaOM.

The “Download Chomp” tab in the upper right corner of the Chomp.com now leads directly to the iTunes download page and only iPhone and iPad options are available for searching online. However, when searching for apps on the website, changing the platform to “Android” in the URL still allows you to view Android apps. As we noted earlier, Chomp helps power Verizon’s Android market, so it is unclear what will happen with that partnership going forward.

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/g_____________n/status/195900431413673985]

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Twitter just announced on its blog that its Android client will get an update today with enhancements made to “discover, search and notifications.” The update does not appear to be live, but it will be available here when it is.

Included in the update is a new “Activity” stream within the Discover tab. The blog post explained:

With this update, you can see Activity on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. Activity is a stream of updates that shows which Tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists… Activity appears below the redesigned stories in Discover. Now you can tap any story once to see Tweets about a particular trend or news article. You can then read the entire story or join the conversation by replying, retweeting or favoriting related Tweets.

Improvements to search include suggestions for spelling and related terms, and autocomplete for first and last names in the Connect tab.

The update also brings push notifications for Interactions like retweets, favorites, and follows, and settings to manage them. You will be able to get all these new features when the update lands on Google Play shortly.
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The trendy photo-sharing app “Instagram” for Android debuted in the Google Play Store nearly two weeks ago and has since increased the service’s user base by 25 percent.

It took Instagram 19 months to reach 30 million iOS users, but it quickly garnered 10 million Android users in less than 10 days.

Gramfeed, a third-party user tracking website, dug into Instagram’s API to determine Mr. Valentino Elbuti (valentinoelbuti) as the 40 millionth user. He recently signed-up and already has four filtered-images posted to his account.

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OpenStreetMap on "Wikipedia for Android" app

Wikipedia updated its Android and iOS apps today, but the noteworthy feature is that the online encyclopedia-like website dumped Google Maps for OpenStreetMap, which marks a growing trend for technology firms preferring an alternative mapping solution.

The company just announced its Android counterpart witnessed 2.25 million installs in less than two months since its birth, while netting over 23 million Wikipedia page views per month. Despite the success with Google’s mobile OS, Wikipedia updated its apps with Open StreetMap data in favor of the service’s “nearby view” feature.

Wikipedia further explained the reasoning behind the switch:

Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMaps – an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as ‘Wikipedia for Maps.’ This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications. OpenStreetMaps is used in both iOS and Android, thanks to the amazing Leaflet.js library. We are currently using Mapquest’s map tiles for our application, but plan on switching to our own tile servers in the near future.

In the last couple of months alone, both Apple and Foursquare also shifted to OpenStreetMap. It is worth mentioning that Yahoo implemented OpenStreetMap data within Flickr in 2009 for a plethora of worldwide cities, such as Baghdad, Beijing, Kabul, Santiago, Sydney, and Tokyo.

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The Chrome Web Store now offers a trending section for the hottest apps and improved methods for finding the perfect extension.

Today’s automatic update allows users to view apps and extensions ranging from “warm” or “on fire” in the new “Trending” view of the Chrome Web Store. App subcategories were also included, such as “Music & Radio” under “Entertainment.”

A screenshot gallery is available below.

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

The last we heard, Apple was working with developers of Siri alternatives such as True Knowledge, the developers behind “Evi,” to iron out similarities between the app and the iPhone 4S‘s flagship feature. Apple is quick to warn developers who are submitting Siri-like apps not to mimic native features of the OS. Apple wants an app’s features to remain “distinctly different from the iOS behaviors and interfaces to avoid causing user confusion.” Developer Sparkling Apps reached out to let us know Apple rejected its latest app submission called “Voice Answer,” with Apple telling the developer the Wolfram Alpha-powered alternative is “too similar to Siri.” The good news for Android users is the developers have decided to release an Android-only version on available Google Play now.

Apple is not flat-out rejecting all Siri alternatives/competitors. Sparkling Apps already has an app called “Voice Ask” on the App Store that sits in the top charts of the Reference category. Evi remains on the App Store as well. However, the Voice Ask app employs the same True Knowledge database as Evi. While Apple did not offer a specific reason for why the app was rejected, it is possible that Apple is more inclined to reject Siri-like apps using Siri’s Wolfram Alpha knowledge base. Unsurprisingly, the developers instead decided to release Voice Answer as an Android-only app on Google Play.

The app provides spoken answers, optional keyboard input, and configurable items stored in the app’s memory. According to the developer, Voice Answer’s “speech recognition works better than that of Siri, especially with foreign accents,” and the app includes a chatbot called “Eve” that you can teach answers. While most of these features are also baked into Evi, it is unclear exactly why Apple is working with some developers to coexist peacefully with Siri, and then flat-out rejecting others without discussion. Fortunately, the app did not have any issues making its way onto Google Play, and it is even marketed as the “Voice Answer- just like Siri.” We told you in January about the number of Siri clones hitting the market with the release of Evi for Android. The Voice Answer Android app is now available on Google Play for $3.99, and the developers promised that support for messaging and email is on the way.

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Google just released an update to its Google+ for iOS, bringing it to version 1.0.9.4278. Today’s update for the iOS app brings it up-to-par with the Google+ Android app, which was updated last week. The update brings three new updates: Instant upload of photos, you can see who +1d posts, and the new “What’s Hot” stream.

You can grab the update on the iTunes App Store.

Google’s Vic Gundotra just announced on his Google+ page a host of new Hangouts features meant to “go beyond the status update”. In short, you can now hangout on any post (an invitation will be added to the comments), call any phone number in the world and conference in anyone (free outbound calls to US and Canada, international calling rates are “super, super low”) and initiate a hangout session from the official Google+ app for Android or iPhone by tapping the new hangout icon.

The executive also shared an interesting milestone for Hangouts on Air, saying “hundreds of people” whitelisted as part of their trial now have the ability to broadcast their hangouts to the world. “Our goal is to enable this for everyone on the planet”, Gundotra noted. Initiating a Hangout session from your phone requires a new Google+ app, which will be available in Android Market within a few days, Google said (“coming soon” to the App Store).

The official Google blog has more information.

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OnLive has just announced (via TechCrunch) new mobile apps capable of accessing their cloud game streaming service previously only available to PC, Mac, and OnLive console owners. Launching in the US and UK first, 25 console titles have been ported to the smaller screen with touchscreen controls, and almost all 200 of the service’s library of console quality titles will be playable via the $50 OnLive wireless controller.

The OnLive service allows streaming of console quality games like Assassins Creed, L.A. Noire, and other titles typically reserved for consoles like the PS3, directly from the company’s servers. The service has received mixed reviews, mostly due to inconsistencies in performance. The same appears to be true for the mobile version, with early hands on reviews highlighting the same performance issues common on PCs. These are “console-class” games, but not always a console quality experience. It’s playable, but really laggy.

The free app should be launching in the Android Market any second now, and will still of course require that you purchase or rent the games. Fortunately, any purchased or rented content is instantly playable through any compatible device. As for supported Android devices, below is the complete list courtesy of TechCrunch (who also says the Kindle Fire is supported):

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We got the highlights before but here’s the whole hour long interview.

[vodpod id=Video.15630199&w=650&h=420&fv=videoGUID%3D%7BB5506435-F8CB-497B-8356-51C6261CF867%7D%26amp%3Bplayerid%3D4001%26amp%3BplyMediaEnabled%3D1%26amp%3BconfigURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwsj.vo.llnwd.net%2Fo28%2Fplayers%2F%26amp%3BautoStart%3Dfalse]

Important quotes below:
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According to a study by research2guidance, the Android Market has exceeded 500,000 apps submitted and successfully published. The study shows with over 500,000 apps published in September 2011, the Android Market is not too far behind Apple’s App Store which has surpassed just over 600,000 apps. Research2guidane also discovered that Android developers on average publish more apps than iOS developers — a 3:2 ratio.

Interestingly, the Android Market has more removed apps after they’ve been published reports research2guidance. 37% of apps published to the Android Market were removed for various reasons, while 27% were removed from the iTunes App Store in September.

At any rate, Android is certainly gaining on iOS. But does any of this really matter? Isn’t about who has the apps that people actually need most, rather than the fart apps?

Google has just notified Google Books users via email that they can now purchase books through Google’s eBookstore website. This workaround comes after Apple shut off Google’s in-app book store on the Google Books app — available on the iTunes App Store. As seen in the image sent with the email, Google suggests you add this website to your iOS device’s homepage. Email from Google:

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT USE THE GOOGLE BOOKS APP FOR YOUR IPAD, IPHONE, OR IPOD TOUCH, YOU CAN DISREGARD THIS MESSAGE. 

Dear Google eBooks customer,

We are writing to let you know about important changes to your Google Books app for your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Due to Apple’s new policies, you can no longer shop for Google eBooks within the app.

But don’t worry, you can install the Google eBookstore on your iOS device using the easy steps in this email, and continue to buy the books you want quickly and easily. For further assistance and more detailed, step-by-step, visual instructions, please visit our Help Center article or you can contact us.

Video tour after the break:

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Apple and Google are clearly the two front-runners competing for market share in the mobile world, which is why it’s no surprise we think of iOS and Android when we think of apps. With the growth of the smartphone industry also came the resurgence of native apps (thanks largely in part to Apple’s App Store which still dominates the space). However, Mozilla hopes that web apps will soon mature to provide a comparable experience for end users and an even better alternative for developers.

“We are aiming at providing all the necessary APIs to build a basic HTML5 phone experience within the next 3-6 months”

While Chrome OS has shown promise, it isn’t the only browser-based platform planning on entering the web app space… If Mozilla has its way, developers can use the results of their new WebAPI project to build an “HTML5 phone experience” that’s compatible across all operating systems (whether it’s Android, iOS, Windows Phone, etc).

A report from CNET claims Mozilla has plans for the APIs to “interact with a phone’s dialler, address book, contacts list, and camera”, essentially giving you access to the same functionality of native apps but directly in your device’s browser.

The WebAPI project certainly isn’t trying to create a full-blown operating system. However, working hand in hand with Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project, which aims to build a “complete, standalone operating system for the web”, it could create a potentially compelling alternative to Google’s browser-based Chrome OS.

It appears that Mozilla is serious about the project, as a report from CNET claims they’re in the process of hiring full time programmers and plan to have the basics in place by February.
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Google has just pushed an update for the official Google+ app for iOS, bringing with it support for iPad and iPod touch, two devices the app was previously unavailable for, among a few other features including aggregated circle add notifications, huddle settings, and the usual “Performance and stability improvements”.

You should be able to update the app now via the App Store or swing by iTunes and grab the new version now. We’ll keep you posted with any other discoveries we might make in this latest update.

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