New Update Appears To Bring ISIS Mobile Payments Support To T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II (Update)
It appears that a brand new update for the T-Mobile Galaxy S II subtly includes an “ISIS/NFC update.” If this update enables the ISIS service on the phone, it would make the Galaxy S II the first phone to utilize the Google-Wallet mobile payments competitor.
ISIS, if you happen to have forgotten, (no one would blame you, it was announced all the way back in 2010) is an NFC-based mobile wallet system backed by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
Now it seems like things are finally coming to a head — Bloomberg reports that the ISIS payments system is expected to go live sometime next month, so expect more similar updates to roll out to other NFC-enabled devices sooner rather than later. In addition to support for the multi-carrier payments scheme, the update brings Galaxy S II owners nearly up to speed with access to Android 4.0.3 and includes a handful of bug fixes to boot. We’ve reached out to T-Mobile for some further clarification, but for now that’s about all we know.
Update: T-Mobile has responded with the following:
We have nothing to share at this time regarding Isis compatible products from T-Mobile, and we have nothing to add regarding the software update.
So that helps.
If you have a T-Mobile Galaxy S II, the update instructions can be found here. Oh, and feel free to let us know how it works.
[via Android Police]
Read this article: New Update Appears To Bring ISIS Mobile Payments Support To T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II (Update)
Hands-On With The Braun BN0106 High-End Digital Watch
Most people in America know Braun as the maker of some kitchen and bathroom items such as coffee makers and electric shavers. They also make clocks and watches. A new piece from the German brand recently won a Red Dot design award and is produced in collaboration with a clever watch designer from the quirky brand Ventura.
Neo-Bauhaus in fashion, the BN0106 is an experiment in avant garde minimalism. It offers a defined, yet hard to summarize look that ends up being quite comfortable to wear. Nevertheless, the piece is quite polarizing for watch lover. The Braun BN0106 isn’t too pricy in the scheme of designer watches, but is probably one of the more expensive digital watches you’ll come across maxing out at $800.
For that you get a unique design, high-quality negative LCD display, and a scroll-wheel style function selector that you’ll not find on watches aside from this Braun and Ventura timepieces.
You can see more images, video, and read a full review of the Braun BN0106 here.
Link: Hands-On With The Braun BN0106 High-End Digital Watch
Apple to DOJ: Amazon had a monopoly on ebooks and the iBookstore broke it
Only a few days after the US Department of Justice filed suit against Apple as well as many other publishers over the pricing of ebooks, Apple has finally decided to break its silence on the matter.
According to All Things Digital, Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr had the following to say:
“The DOJ’s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.”
The suit, which came after 2 years of investigation against the publishers, alleges price fixing in the ebooks market, as well as collusion between the publishing houses. Apple took on what it calls an “agency model” wherein the publisher (in this case Apple) would set the pricing rather than the retailer.
What’s probably most interesting here is Apple’s argument that it is using the App Store pricing scheme with ebooks. It would be hard to argue that developers and advertisers alike have profited greatly in Apple’s walled garden of the App Store, so it’s just as easy to argue that it’s the ideal model to take for iBooks as well.
In what seems to be a response to the controversy, Amazon today slashed prices on a number of its ebooks, in some cases by as much as $5. As the New York Times points out, the move is a strong one, which could end up setting the pricing precedent for ebooks across the market.
View original post here: Apple to DOJ: Amazon had a monopoly on ebooks and the iBookstore broke it
Crashlytics, A Startup For Crash Reporting on Mobile Apps, Raises $5M From Flybridge, Baseline
Crashlytics, a Cambridge-based startup that helps developers understand how and why their mobile apps crashed, is taking another slug of funding with a $5 million round led by Flybridge and Baseline Ventures. The company’s co-founder Wayne Chang said the company decided to take funding after its $1 million seed round was oversubscribed. (This round was also oversubscribed.)
“We liked the investors that we were working with,” Chang said. “Obviously, we liked the valuation and the terms of this round, too.”
Crashlytics provides developers with an online dashboard that helps explain where mobile app crashes might come from. It details the device’s state at the time of crash (software version, orientation, model, etc.) and even shows developers the exact line of code that the app crashed on.
Chang says that’s a big step up from what Apple provides. Usually if an iOS app crashes, the user deletes the app or leaves a bad review. Chang says that Apple’s own crash reporting system might take a few weeks to reveal what’s going wrong.
The company has some early momentum to show. Chang says that more than 500 organizations are using Crashlytics and that the company’s SDK is on tens of millions of devices.
He touts an enviable list of clients like Path, Hipstamatic, Highlight, Yammer, Box and SoundCloud among dozens of others. A point of pride for Chang is that Crashlytics SDK is very small — think 40 kilobytes. So that should help prevent developers from running up against app size limits in the iOS or Android app stores.
But the big picture isn’t just crash reporting, as you might guess. Crash reporting is a start.
“Our end goal with Crashlytics isn’t do to crash reporting,” Chang said. “We want to be best service for that and then quickly move beyond that to address other developer needs.”
P.S. You may know Crashlytics from controversies such as the debate over how to replace UDIDs on iOS devices. The company came in with its own solution called SecureUDID, that gives developers an identification scheme that won’t violate Apple’s new policies. Apple is deprecating an older identification scheme called UDIDs amid privacy concerns.
Read more: Crashlytics, A Startup For Crash Reporting on Mobile Apps, Raises $5M From Flybridge, Baseline