Baidu offers glimpse of new mobile OS (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese search engine Baidu offers a glimpse of its upcoming mobile operating system and has launched a new platform of mobile applications on Friday aimed at strengthening its presence in the increasingly competitive mobile web.

The platform, called Baidu Yi, allow application developers to create third party applications such as games, maps and other tools that can be distributed in a manner similar to the App Store.

Yi Baidu was inspired by Google's Android operating system will be extended to mobile devices and laptops in the future.

The company also launched its new website which will have four functions, which include social networking features.

However, Baidu CEO Robin Li was quoted by the new home page could have a negative impact on revenue by requiring users to register for an account of Baidu, reducing traffic on the site.The new page with more links and content, could also affect the loading speed.

"We do not know how it will be negative," Li said in an interview with the website SohuIT.

"No matter the size of the loss would be, this is the future of the industry if we do not, others can;. If not now, you may be required to do so in the future, but rather wait for others to pushes, it is preferred to take the initiative. "

Baidu currently has some 200 million registered users, said Li.

Growth, diversification

Baidu has built on its dominance of the search market in China in the significantly higher profile since Google launched last year citing problems of piracy and censorship, and now has a market share of over 80 percent.

Part Baidu Nasdaq rose nearly 50 percent so far this year, giving it a market capitalization of approximately $ 50 billion.

The company has also been aggressively diversifying into e-commerce, online video and online travel to enhance growth and increase competitiveness.

An array of Chinese Internet users, companies and manufacturers of trains Telco launched the self-developed smart phones in order to locate in a market still dominated by traditional mobile phones and lower than the second generation of phones.

Alibaba Group, the largest of China's e-commerce has launched a smartphone that runs its own mobile operating system at the end of July which will show the cloud-based applications and Internet research.

Huawei Technologies has launched its cloud computing smartphones in August, and Sina Corp. recently deployed a range of smart phones catering to users of the microblogging service Weibos.

(Additional Reporting by Soo Ai Peng; Written by Kazunori Takada and Jason Subler, editing Lincoln Feast)

REVIEW: iPhone App Now Works With Dragon NaturallySpeaking (Mashable)

You’ve probably heard of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the speech recognition software for PC and Mac that lets you do the talking, and it types everything you say. Now the new version 11.5 has been released, and it lets you use an iPhone as your microphone. I installed the PC version of the software and downloaded the Nuance remote mic iPhone app to see how well it works.
Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11 for PC (and the Mac version, called Dragon Dictate, with similar features and the same speech recognition engine) was released last September, and its claim to fame was a significant increase in its speech-to-text accuracy. The speech recognition engine in this version 11.5 is the same as in version 11. It requires little training, and can not only transcribe everything you say, but it lets you navigate your computer and bark out commands such as “search Google for rubber baby buggy bumpers,” and it immediately opens up your default browser, enters your terms in Google and searches away.

[More from Mashable: How the Private Space Race Has Taken Off]

Until now, you needed to connect a microphone, preferably a wired USB headset mic, to make Dragon achieve its peak accuracy. The main innovation in this new version, which is available for PC now and will be soon for Mac, is the way it lets you use your iPhone’s stock earbuds/mic as a microphone, resulting in sound quality that’s at least as good as that of a USB mic. This is a good thing, because Bluetooth mics just don’t work well enough for speech recognition. But the iPhone app doesn’t use Bluetooth — it communicates with your computer over Wi-Fi, resulting in better mic sound quality — which ultimately means better accuracy.

Setting up the iPhone 4 to use its mic is simple. After a quick download of the free Nuance iPhone app [iTunes link] from the App Store, I launched the Dragon NaturallySpeaking PC application, and using the connectivity software Bonjour (which is included in iTunes), it automatically paired up with the NaturallySpeaking software on my PC. If you don’t wish to install Bonjour, you can enter your computer’s IP address, and I tried configuring it that way which worked equally well:

Once the software and iPhone were paired, I tapped the icon on the iPhone app and it activated the microphone. After a 5-minute guided training session that amounted to just testing of the microphone, the software was ready to go. I placed the iPhone in my pocket and I could stroll around the room, talking normally as each of my words and commands were immediately typed on the screen. It worked beautifully, with accuracy that was even better than the best wired USB microphone I’ve been using over the past few years with NaturallySpeaking.

A note about NaturallySpeaking software: It’s not for everyone. It works best for people who speak distinctly, and even though it does transcribe quite well even if you utter separate phrases with frequent pauses, it hits its highest accuracy level if you speak in complete sentences. Increasing accuracy further is the ability to train the software by introducing it to documents and emails you’ve written, and it learns your vocabulary.

While you’re training NaturallySpeaking to learn the words and phrases you use most often, the software is training you at the same time. You learn to speak in complete sentences, and even to think in paragraphs. It can even have a profound effect on your writing style, making it more conversational. I use it for everything I write. In fact, I wrote most of an 70,000 word book with Dragon, where I hardly typed a single character. I noticed after I’d used it for a few years that its accuracy is pushing 99%. It’s just uncanny.

Beyond that iPhone Microphone trick, version 11.5 is packed with small upgrades throughout the interface, including new commands that work with Facebook and Twitter. For example, you can say “tweet,” after which it opens a box on your desktop like this:

Then, whatever you say after that is typed into the box. Say “OK”, and NaturallySpeaking sends what you just uttered to your Twitter account. It works similarly for Facebook. It’s a kick, and it’s a huge productivity enhancer on all fronts.

To use this iPhone remote mic app, you must purchase the premium version (or above, and as I mentioned, the Mac version is not available yet) of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, $179.99 for the software download, or $199.99 for the boxed version. It’s worth it — I think this technology is excellent, bordering on miraculous. If you have an iPhone and can’t type as quickly as you can talk, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 might be the best $179.99 you’ve ever spent.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Judge rejects Apple bid for injunction against Amazon (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. judge rejected Apple Inc. 's attempt to quickly stop the online retailer Amazon.com Inc. from using the "App Store" name, according to a court document.

Apple, maker of best-selling iPhone and iPad tablet, filed a trademark lawsuit says that Amazon has improperly used the Apple App Store name recruit software developers throughout the United States.

Apple has also asked a federal judge in Oakland, Calif., a request for an injunction to stop Amazon from using the name that Apple says is trademarked. Amazon, however, argued that the concept is generic and therefore not protected.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton did not agree that the term is purely generic, according to an order released on Wednesday. But Apple has not shown "a likelihood of confusion" with Amazon's services to get a ban, says Hamilton.

Last Wednesday, the above statements, the spokesman Kristin Huguet Apple the company, which said that Apple has not asked Amazon to copy the name of the App Store because it will "confuse and deceive customers."

A representative of Amazon was not immediately available for comment.

In a ruling Wednesday, Hamilton set a trial date in October 2012.

In the case of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple Amazon.com Inc., 11-1327.

(Reporting by Dan Levine, edited by Carol Bishopric)

iPad reaches 100,000 app milestone, no parties or press releases to celebrate (Digital Trends)

Apple changed the world of mobile telephony with the iPhone in 2007, then did the same for the personal computing landscape in 2010 with the iPad tablet. Smartphones and tablet PCs existed before these devices were released, but the grip off the two led to a boom time for the high-tech mobile industry. It is surprising that the Apple iPhone hit the 100 000 in the App Store is not the performance he is away.

Word of the marker 100 000 is reached just Macs Tories, who is listed in the same apartment as you or I can just look at any time by the firing of the App Store on iPhone proximity noticed.At the time of the initial formulation, the official count was 100 161 (we are now 100,740). It's an impressive figure when you consider that the iPad has launched a little over a year (April 3, 2010).

This includes the iPhone specific applications and are available as "universal" compatible with the iPhone downloads and IPAD. Maybe that's why Apple does not make noise on performance. Even so, bravo for the iPhone and the App Store to fill our lives with applications that can do everything from electronic publishing blogs that pose as light sabers.

Apple relaxes subscription rules for publishers (AFP)

Apple relaxes Guarantee Agreement rules for publishers

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Apple is relaxing its underwriting rules IPAD movement can be accepted by the editors of newspapers and magazines to create applications for Tablet popular to increase revenue.

Apple no longer need publishers offer subscriptions through its App Store at a price equal to or lower than available elsewhere, as the site MacRumors.

Apple takes a cut of 30 per cent of subscriptions are purchased through the App Store.

Some publishers have criticized the size of the incision and expressed his dissatisfaction with certain guidelines as Apple when it introduced its subscription service for newspapers and digital magazines on the iPhone or IPAD in February.

Apple said that when they do not sell any participation in the digital subscription revenue on its own Web page editor.

However, "the offer of the same rights that must be made available for the same price or less" within an application on Apple devices, the company said.

According to MacRumors, Apple has this requirement in the latest version of its underwriting guidelines, with effect from 30 June last retreat.

"Content providers can offer under subscription at any price they want and are not required to provide an in-app-subscription and subscription sold only outside the App Store, too," said MacRumors.

Apple subscription service offered for the first time the newspaper, a magazine for Tablet PC IPAD since the beginning of this year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

With declining print advertising revenues and circulation have Murdoch and other newspapers and magazines in search of IPAD and the Web to increase revenue.

Amazon Challenges Apple With New Mac App Store (NewsFactor)

Even before a court decides whether Amazon.com can sell apps for Android devices and call it an app store, the biggest U.S. online retailer opened a second front this week by offering downloadable software for Apple's Macintosh computers.

That's a direct challenge to Apple's own Mac App Store, first announced in October at the company's Back To Mac event and opened Jan. 6 with 1,000 offerings, mostly games, compared to about 250 for Amazon's store.

Incentives Needed

The Mac offerings aren't new but were assembled without fanfare as a Mac Software Downloads section of the site on Thursday, with another section for games, but Amazon avoided calling it an app store — a phrase Apple wants to trademark.

In March Apple filed suit against Amazon, alleging that its App Store for Android software is used illicitly to solicit developers. Amazon insists "app store" is a generic term.

Amazon told news media the "Mac download store features an install-less download process where the customer gets just the product without any unwanted extras, making for faster and easier purchases. Plus, downloads are conveniently backed up in your Games and Software Library where you can download an unlimited number of times for personal use."

The Mac download store's initial offerings include Office Mac for home ($115) and businesses ($199), Aspyr's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare ($24.95), Individual Software's Logo Designer ($19.99), and H&R Block At Home Deluxe Federal and State eFile for 2010 ($31.98). Visitors can "celebrate the grand opening with a $5 discount on game or software products through June 1st."

Amazon, which had more than $34.2 billion in sales last year, will need to give loyal Mac customers an incentive to shop there.

The company kicked off its Android store by offering one free app per day for visitors, regardless of whether they buy anything.

Let the Battle Begin

"It's going to be interesting to see how consumers are going to react to this app store," said Michael Gartenberg of Gartner Research. "Perhaps they'll try to undercut Apple's prices with promotions."

He said the emergence of the Mac download store "came as a little bit of a surprise. There was certainly no advance warning, it just kind of appeared, and now we're seeing Mac apps in direct competition, although they can't sell anything for the iPhone because that's a closed ecosystem."

After reporting more than a million downloads on the first day of the Mac App Store, Apple can probably expect some continued loyalty, but Gartenberg said Amazon's move is bound to be watched closely.

"It's something that if you're Apple, you don't want to ignore; you want to pay attention because Amazon has a lot of credit cards and it's fairly easy to purchase there," he said, referring to cards that award points toward gift cards for the site. "But their music sales haven't taken much business from iTunes. So [Apple] may not lose a lot of sleep, but they probably want to keep an eye on it."

Guinness Awards Gaming Records to iPhone 4, App Store (PC World)

The Guinness Book of World Records has bestowed the honor of fastest-growing gaming system upon Apple's iPhone 4, as well as noting that the App Store itself and several games in it also have set records.

An estimated 1.5 million iPhone 4s were sold on launch day, far eclipsing any other gaming system. Guinness noted that the PlayStation Portable only sold 200,000 units in its first day, and it was a full week until the Nintendo DS pushed 500,000 consoles out the door.

"The release of the iPhone has not just changed the mobile industry, but the video game world too," Guinness' gaming editor Gaz Deaves says in a statement. The organization also noted that Apple's App Store holds the record for the largest downloadable video game store with 37,362 titles available.

Guinness did not provide numbers from the Android Market for comparison purposes, but noted the App Store was well ahead of other competitors including Xbox Live Arcade (around 1300) and Wii's Virtual Console service at 576.

Angry Birds is also receiving honors for being the "Top Paid-For App Store Game in Most Countries." The title is the top paid download in 67 countries on the App Store with an estimated 6.5 million paid downloads.

Other records for iOS games include Tap Tap Revenge for the most popular App Store game in history with 15 million downloads, and Plants vs. Zombies set two records in the strategy category. It was the highest grossing launch with $1 million in revenue for developer PopCap in the first nine days, as well as the fastest selling with 300,000 downloads in that same period.

For more tech news and commentary, follow Ed on Twitter at @edoswald and on Facebook as well as Today @ PCWorld.

Why Does Android Have No Killer Apps? (ContributorNetwork)

That's basically the question John Gruber tried to answer, in his essay, "Where Are the Android Killer Apps?" Because while Google makes some compelling reasons to go Android, if you leave out Google's apps there aren't any that make you feel like you're missing out if you don't have an Android phone. They're either available for the iPhone too, or they just aren't all that compelling.

Why is that?

Fragmentation

That's the word most people use to describe the diversity in the Android world. See, they're used to the iPhone world, where Apple makes everything. But in the Android world, handset makers like HTC can use the Android operating system to make phones without paying Google a license fee. So it seems to outsiders like Android is "fragmented" between manufacturers, when the reality is that it's a freely-available component that companies use to make phones.

The problem starts when you compare Android phones with each other. Can the low-end HTC Wildfire play Angry Birds? Can the Atrix buy apps from Amazon's "Appstore?" If you think that's confusing, it's even more confusing for app developers, who get flooded with reviews saying "it doesn't work on my phone."

You'll find most "name-brand" apps on Android, because big companies can afford to pay people to deal with this problem. Indie app developers are turned off by it, though, and the developers who do write apps for Android consider it a problem. Partly because it means more work for them, and partly because the compromises they make — to put apps on phones with wildly different screen sizes and processing power — often result in apps that look terrible.

Monetization

For a variety of reasons (although some of these have changed over time), people just aren't making as much money on the Android Market as they are on the App Store. A lot of the money they are making comes from ads on free apps, instead of app sales, suggesting that Android phone owners aren't as willing to part with their money.

That's all on the Android Market, though. It's not the only place to buy Android apps, and the Amazon Appstore is adopting a lot of the policies and features that made Apple's profitable, plus combining them with Amazon.com's massive marketing engine. It may become a force to be reckoned with. It's unlikely to replace the Android Market anytime soon, though … for now, it's just another part of the "fragmentation" problem.

Differentiation

By that, I mean "what sets Android apart." And the problem is, it's not much, or at least not much that's easily explainable. Hardware keys? Home screen widgets? Open-source programming code? How do you tell anyone why they want these things, if they don't already know?

App developers are facing the same problem. What reason is there for them to write Android apps, instead of apps for anything else? Is there anything they can do on Android that they can't anyplace else? As it turns out, there is, but it involves low-level system things like making the home screen look different. And while that's a boon to manufacturers like HTC, which use custom-designed home screens, it's not the kind of feature that makes you want to run out and buy an Android phone.

The upshot is that the only non-Google apps that are only for Android are the kind that wouldn't work anyplace else, and they tend to only be attractive to hardcore customizers. Android is a haven for them, but there's a lot else that it's missing out on.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Celebrity tracker ‘app’ for Android smartphones (AFP)

famous tracker "application for Android smartphones

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – The start Scoopler was inviting the owners of Android smartphones to install an application that promises to alert each time a celebrity is spotted nearby.

The OSS was JustSpotted available online Android Market.

"There is another application that provides real-time alerts, such as this, with thousands of spots on our site every day," said co-founder AJ Scoopler Asver AFP in an email.

"If you're in a metropolitan area, you will be pleasantly surprised by its proximity to the world of celebrities."

JustSpotted.com was identified in October with an online map, the celebrity of the movements in real-time updates on public social networking star Facebook and Twitter micro-blogging service based start.

just potted members also contribute sightings.

While by some as a potential source for stalker just potted, settled branded itself "celebrity friendly" and as said, the stars can make arrangements to use the service to promote their images or messages.

"We do not have any complaints from celebrities," Asver AFP. "We have actually been approached by people to promote upcoming movies."

He said that a tailored version of the iPhone just potted subjected to an Apple was approved and was expected to be available in the App Store at the end of the month.

Gadgetwise: Mission Creep on Online Reading Services

The new version of Instapaper integrates social networking, editors’ suggestions and a Web browser.

The appeal of Readability, the online reading service, has always been simplicity.

By installing the Readability browser plug-in, a user could avoid the distractions of the Web with the push of a button. Loud advertisements, messy interfaces and the rest of the Internet would disappear, leaving nothing but a single column of text on a white background.

The service, modest as it was, solved a basic problem of reading on the Web. It attracted a large audience, and was integrated into products such as Apple’s Safari browser. So Richard Ziade, the tool’s creator, began to think bigger. Last month, Readability introduced a paid service that included a tool that allowed readers to set aside articles for later, a new mobile app and a payment system that would direct 70 percent of a reader’s subscription fees to the publications she was reading through the platform.

But readability’s simple pitch to readers — press this button and read with fewer distractions — has now become more complicated. Apple rejected Readability’s iOS app, saying that it violated its subscription policy. That led Readability to develop a mobile app that could be downloaded from outside the App Store. Now users had to figure out how to get the HTML5-based app onto their phones — a process that is not inherently intuitive — in order to get a service that was already available on other, iTunes-friendly apps, like Instapaper or Read It Later.

The app works fine, and reading articles on it is comfortable. But unless someone was really interested in sending money to publishers (a very noble inclination, by the way), there is not much incentive to do the extra work.

Instapaper, another popular reading app, has also been experiencing a bit of mission creep lately. The service allows people to set aside articles they’ve found while browsing the Web on a desktop PC. Those stories will be waiting for them in an app installed on their phone or tablet. It was an idea that worked well because it let you read longer articles at your convenience.

The latest version of Instapaper’s app is designed to do more than pluck articles from the Web and store them for later reading. Across the top of the latest version of the the app are several icons that allow a reader to browse through articles recommended by friends or selected by people Instapaper likes. Also, a reader can simply open a full Web browser within the app and surf the Internet, looking for articles to read at a later time. Again, the features work fine, but they seem to fly in the face of what Instapaper was designed to do. Instapaper’s appeal was how it let you read when you weren’t browsing the Web. Adding the Web back in seems to defeat the app’s purpose.

In a way, this looks like the opposite of what Amazon did with the Kindle, another modest but successful idea in the world of online reading. When Apple released the iPad, many people wrote the Kindle off, saying that the iPad could do more things, and therefore would dominate the market. Instead, the Kindle stayed simple, and continued to provide a way to read that felt more like a book than like a video game. This experience remains a strong selling point for many consumers.

Social experiences certainly play a part in the way that people read on the Web, but there are also plenty of social platforms that are doing a good job of providing those experiences. Like the Kindle, both Readability and Instapaper are meant to facilitate a simpler, quieter form of reading, and both do it well. Readability quieted the Web browsing experience down, while Instapaper moved articles out of the browsing experience altogether. By adding more features, both ventures now seem at risk of muddying up their missions.

Sometimes it is better to keep it simple.