First launched in alpha under the name "Paymo" more than one year ago, Mobile payment startup Boku launched the SDK for its 1-Tap Billing solution for Android in 56 countries on Thursday, giving Android app developers another alternative for in-app transactions.

Instead of billing in-app purchases to the user's credit card or debiting from their bank account, Boku adds in-app purchases to the user's monthly mobile phone bill. To do this, users just click on "buy" in an app, confirm their phone number for the purchase, and that's it; no credit card info is collected, no additional registration or work is necessary.

Continue reading →

Skype on Thursday updated its Android app to allow users of select devices to make video calls, putting Android users on the same level of functionality as their iOS counterparts. Users of the Skype for iOS app have been able to make video calls since late December.

The first phase of the launch will allow for video calling on the HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia pro and the Google Nexus S. The calls will be possible over both 3G and Wi-Fi connections.

Continue reading →

I'm sometimes amazed how the Apple fanclub of bloggers and journalists use so-called facts to make iPhone a much bigger success than it really is. Perhaps they're living in denial about the Android reality. I don't really care why. For a week, and even today, I've put up with their prognostications that Android is suddenly in decline before Apple's Jesus phone. That's simply, and undeniably, not reality. It's pure fantasy.

Analyst firms sometimes complicate things by what they state about data they present and how statements don't reconcile with it. Today, Nielsen claims that "Apple is now driving smartphone growth", which has the fanclub in a tizzy fit of blog posts and news stories. Small problem: Nielsen's statement isn't supported by its own data.

Continue reading →

Virgin America is maintaining its reputation as the darling airline of the tech sector, and today it announced a new partnership with Google that will give travelers the option to test Google's Chromebooks in their flight beginning tomorrow.

The promotion will last until September 30, and passengers will be able to check out a Chromebook at their departure gate and use it freely with Gogo in-flight Internet on their whole flight. In addition to the currently available Chrome apps, Virgin America has co-developed a special Chrome app with Google that includes discussion boards about Virgin America's trip destinations, city guides based upon data from UrbanDaddy, and information about packing and travel planning. The app will be available in the Chrome Web Store later this month.

Continue reading →

LightSquared, the Virginia-based company building a wholesale LTE/Satellite mobile broadband network, submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) its three-part solution for resolving GPS interference issues revealed in recent tests by the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Systems Engineering Forum (NPEF). The company hopes to settle these issues with GPS companies and the FCC so it may move on with the construction of its $7 Billion wireless network.

The problem is that LightSquared's proposed 40,000 base station cellular network will utilize the same radio frequency to communicate with end user devices that satellites use. Naturally, a satellite orbiting thousands of miles above the earth is going to emit a weaker signal to receivers on the ground than a base station just a couple of miles away. According to the Coalition to Save Our GPS, LightSquared's signal could be more than a billion times more powerful than a satellite's.

Continue reading →

CyberLink has many years experience with video, but none at all with photo editing, and so you might have expected the company's first digital imaging product to be a little on the basic side.

But you'd be wrong. PhotoDirector 2011 isn't another standard editor. Rather, it's a high-end photo management and workflow app that bears a strong resemblance to Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom 3.x, and is similarly packed with professional features.

Continue reading →

Whoa, look what I pulled out of my Junk Mail folder -- a "notice of termination" email from Amazon. Last year I signed up to be an Amazon Associate and collected not one cent, never having participated. For active participants, this must be a troubling day -- make that Friday.

California is broke and looking to raise cash any way it can. Earlier today, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new tax law that would compel online retailers like Amazon to collect sales tax. The new provisions go into effect Friday. Well, hell, what can I still order online during the next 40 hours?

Continue reading →

The video above has me pining for an alternate universe, where the splitscreen is another path. One where Nokia conquered the iPhone tyrant and made high-tech handsets funner and more Euro in style, function and lifestyle. The video also is sign that Nokia isn't finished yet. For all the talk about how great is the iPhone 4 camera, the aging N8 has superior digital capture capabilities.

"Splitscreen: A Love Story" won the Nokia Shorts 2011 competition. JW Griffiths shot the short film using a pair of Nokia 8 smartphones. People were shooting short films and music videos on Nokias long before there ever was iPhone. Music video "Oceans" was shot with a Nokia N93 in 2006, for example.

Continue reading →

Now operating under the #AntiSec banner, the LulzSec hackers are still busy causing trouble. The latest data dump posted to torrent sites goes after several governments worldwide as well as both Viacom and Universal Music Group.

"While the LulzBoat is still sailing with us (albeit not with the LulzSec flag), the objective of #AntiSec is different," the description of the torrent reads. "#AntiSec is more than Lulz and more than even Anonymous: It is our true belief that this movement has the capability to change the world. And should that fail, we will at least rock the world."

Continue reading →

On July 31, networking and communications company Cisco will launch its first Android tablet computer designed specifically for enterprise customers. The Cisco Cius is a 7" touchscreen tablet that will offer compatibility with Cisco TelePresence, Quad social software, WebEX meeting applications, Jabber messaging, and AnyConnect, and will include the ability to act as a thin client or HD video communications tool in addition to being a "standard" Android device. Its current estimated price is $750, but initial promotions will make it available at under $700 when it first launches.

But what will make businesses adopt the Cius over something like the iPad, or indeed any other Android tablet?

Continue reading →

Internet Explorer has never been renowned for its standards support, and with good reason -- the browser has always trailed far behind the competition. Today's release of IE10 Platform Preview 2, though, showed that maybe, just maybe, things are beginning to change.

Major additions include support for web workers, an interesting technology that allows web applications to run complex JavaScripts in the background. And so lengthy tasks won't have to leave you hanging any more: the application's interface should still be able to respond to your clicks.

Continue reading →

A day after rumors surfaced about News Corp's attempts to quickly sell off MySpace, a deal has been struck to let the site go for a rumored $35 million. Ad firm Specific Media announced the purchase on Wednesday, of which News Corp would retain a five percent stake.

At that price, MySpace is a staggering 94 percent discount over the estimated $580 million News Corp paid to acquire the site in 2006. The media conglomerate had hoped to make about $100 million from any sale, but as its fiscal end of year approached on Thursday, it became a matter of unloading the site quickly.

Continue reading →

There's no question that I like what I see in the demos of Office 365. A little research makes me want it even more. But I'm cheap, and so are a lot of the small businesses it supposedly targets. I think it can be competitive for small business and also end up selling a bunch of Windows phones. But can it compete with free?

Office 365 really does look better, richer, and cooler that Google Apps for Business, but it can be much more expensive. Many businesses will be willing to pay for the nice stuff, at least for a while, but most small businesses don't spend a lot more money than they need to on these things. I like to think of myself (and my domain which is both for my business and personal use) as one of those cheap small businesses.

Continue reading →

Smartphone maker HTC on Wednesday finally announced AT&T and Telus will be the first two carrier partners for the long-rumored "Facebook Phone," known as the HTC Status.

Looking something like the Peek e-mail appliance or an Android-powered BlackBerry, the Status has a 2.6" (480 x 320) touchscreen, portrait QWERTY keyboard, 800Mhz processor, 512MB of RAM, a forward-facing 1.3 megapixel/VGA chatcam and a 5 Megapixel camera, and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with HTC's Sense user interface. Its wireless radios are Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900.

Continue reading →

Taiwanese motherboard and video card maker MSI will soon release a free Android app that lets users wirelessly control their Afterburner GPU overclocking utility from their smartphone.

"This is not meant to replace your overclocking software (Afterburner); it's meant to complement it," MSI's Facebook page said. "Think of running a game, and you are just curious as to what the temp readings are without having to Alt+Tab out of the game, or even running it in a window. You can even force fan speed changes on the fly if you see your GPU overheating in-game, without having to exit the program. Who wants to leave in the middle of a firefight?"

Continue reading →