Many news outlets, including ReadWriteWeb reported yesterday that the first piece of Android malware may have been discovered in the wild. It now appears that we were mistaken. In an interview with Android Tapp Jackeey Wu, the developer of the wallpaper app in question, denied malicious intent. He said he was gathering device information to take advantage of favoriting features in Android.

Sponsor

In my applications I collected some device data, not user data. I collected the screen size to return more suitable wallpaper for the phone. More and More users emailed me telling that they love my wallpaper apps so much, because that even "Background" can't well suited the phone's screen.

I also collected device id,phone number and subscriber id, it has no relationship with user data. There are few apps in Android market has the favorites feature. Many users suggest that I should provide the feature so I use the these to identify the device, so they can favorite the wallpapers more conveniently, and resume his favorites after system resetting or changing the phone.

In a follow-up on its blog, Lookout, the security company that originally reported that the wallpaper apps were transmitting data, notes that the app did disclose that it was accessing phone data. However, not every app that accesses data actually transmits it off the device, and Wu's apps did not disclose that phone information would be collected (enterprises most certainly are not going to want employees voice mail passwords transmitted to third parties, regardless of that third party's intentions). Whether Wu himself knew he'd be collecting passwords along with users' phone numbers, we do not know. We have not been able to find a way to contact Wu.

We will update with additional information as it becomes available.

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Name: KnowPro

Quick Pitch: KnowPro apps helps people learn new topics, test for competence, or compete against friends or colleagues through social platforms.

Genius Idea: It's no secret that the iPhone can be used as an educational resource, and KnowPro's extensive lineup of tutorial-style iPhone apps demonstrates just how pocket-friendly and fun learning can be.

KnowPro has developed dozens of apps for practically any educational purpose. App categories cover subject matter such as animals, science, history, music, politics, business and pop culture.

In the science category, for instance, Board Review: Pharmacology is designed to help pharmacologists prepare for their board exam, Periodic Table of the Elements includes quiz questions on all 112 elements, and there's even an app to help with preparation for the biology portion of the MCAT.

Each app tutors users by testing them with quiz questions. At the beginning of each randomized quiz, you can set how many questions you want to answer. Then, for each question, you'll be presented with four possible answers. Get a question right and you'll advance to the next question. Get a question wrong, and you'll need to continue guessing until you get it right.

At the end of each quiz you can then publish your score to the service-wide leaderboard or publicly share it on Facebook or Twitter.

KnowPro's selection of apps is impressive, so if there's a particular subject matter you'd like to master, chances are a KnowPro app can help. The only downside is that each app comes at a price, with the more sophisticated tutorials costing as much as $6.99 apiece. Still, being able to use your iPhone in lieu of flashcards could make the expense worthwhile.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

[img credit: foundphotoslj]

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Many news outlets, including ReadWriteWeb reported yesterday that the first piece of Android malware may have been discovered in the wild. It now appears that we were mistaken. In an interview with Android Tapp Jackeey Wu, the developer of the wallpaper app in question, denied malicious intent. He said he was gathering device information to take advantage of favoriting features in Android.

Sponsor

In my applications I collected some device data, not user data. I collected the screen size to return more suitable wallpaper for the phone. More and More users emailed me telling that they love my wallpaper apps so much, because that even "Background" can't well suited the phone's screen.

I also collected device id,phone number and subscriber id, it has no relationship with user data. There are few apps in Android market has the favorites feature. Many users suggest that I should provide the feature so I use the these to identify the device, so they can favorite the wallpapers more conveniently, and resume his favorites after system resetting or changing the phone.

In a follow-up on its blog, Lookout, the security company that originally reported that the wallpaper apps were transmitting data, notes that the app did disclose that it was accessing phone data. However, not every app that accesses data actually transmits it off the device, and Wu's apps did not disclose that phone information would be collected (enterprises most certainly are not going to want employees voice mail passwords transmitted to third parties, regardless of that third party's intentions). Whether Wu himself knew he'd be collecting passwords along with users' phone numbers, we do not know. We have not been able to find a way to contact Wu.

We will update with additional information as it becomes available.

Note: this article was originally published on OPEN Forum.

Traveling for business can be especially exhausting, since you might have to fly internationally for just a couple of days or go straight to work when you arrive.

Still, there are helpful things you can do before, during, and after your flight to make the travel and the transition much easier.

Join the conversation about this story

See Also:

• The 10 Best Free iPhone Apps For Business Travelers
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I've never been one to have commitment issues. But my decision to move from the iPhone 4 to the Nexus One just couldn't stick. Last month I wrote about what I saw as the flaws of the iOS platform and specifically the issues I had with the iPhone 4. I also wrote a glowing review of the Nexus One and I stand by (most) of that analysis. But yesterday I sold my Nexus One and will soon be buying an iPhone 4.

When I announced this news on Twitter and Facebook last night I think I stunned just about everyone of my friends and followers. I got a lot of questions like What did Android do wrong? but did get a few statements like I knew you'd be back when I left last month, I didn't intend to come back. But there were a few lingering issues that I just couldn't get past.

Subsidies

The Nexus One I purchased cost me $529 direct from Google. So I take that phone and attach it to my AT&T account and then pay AT&T the same amount of money for my voice, data and TXT messages as I would if I were on a 2-year agreement. AT&T spends nothing upfront and makes a larger profit from me than it does for someone who spends $199 for a iPhone 4. The obvious benefit for me is that I can take my phone and go to another carrier, or cancel my account anytime I want. But here's the kicker my only real choice is AT&T.

Beyond the logistical issues of having every friend and family member I know being on AT&T (free mobile to mobile) and the fact that they have one of the better networks in the Kansas City area Google for some reason designed two different Nexus Ones. One radio optimized for T-Mobile and one for AT&T. So if I decided I was fed up and wanted to move to T-Mobile, I'd basically cripple my phone by relegating it to EDGE network data speeds. And since obviously Verizon and Sprint are on different technologies, they're not even something to be considered. Google would have been wise to use a radio that would work on both types of GSM networks, if that were possible. Realistically, I'm locked into AT&T, regardless of if I have a 2-year contract or not.

So the real question for me was, in order to make the value of owning the Nexus One worth it was my experience with it more than 2.5x better than the iPhone 4?

Basically. No.

Quirks

Here's the thing about reading reviews done by people who purchased the product with their own money we tend to want to make ourselves feel good about the purchase, so things that might annoy an totally objective person are sometimes overlooked (or not mentioned.)

There were a few things about the Nexus One that annoyed me from the start, but were not enough to make me dislike it completely. If it was going head to head on price with the iPhone 4, I wouldn't give them much of a second thought and would probably still consider elements on the device and the OS to be superior. But here are a few:

1. Nothing beats iTunes for syncing music. I tried a variety of solutions for Android and was really quite impressed with a program called Double Twist. But the Windows interface was worse than using iTunes on Windows, and the process of syncing tended to take a really long time.
2. The row of home, back and search buttons on my Nexus One were very picky. You have to touch them just above where the actual indicator button is for them to work properly. It's something you get used to, but when you hand the phone to someone else, they tend to have a hard time getting it to work.
3. Battery life was less than stellar. The more I used the device, the more I saw where I was coming very close to not being able to go through the day without a recharge. Since I'm not much of a night owl (I'm usually at home or even in bed by 10PM on a Saturday) it didn't hit me too bad. I did initially purchase a second battery for the device, but I never used it.
4. I found the ear hole for the speaker to be in an old location, at least compared to the iPhone. I had to hold the edge of the phone up to my ear to hear other people clearly. It was something I had to get used to, but found to be somewhat bothersome.
5. The on-screen keyboard was just not as accurate as the iPhone version. In fact I found the touch screen to be somewhat laggy compared to the iPhone. By this I mean, the iPhone screen seems what I would describe as spring loaded snappy and ready to flip from around with ease. On the Nexus One it was common to try and flip two or even three times before the screen reacted.

Applications

Despite what I initially said, the Android Marketplace has a long way to go before it catches up with the App Store. While there were a sizable collection of applications that had been ported, many of them did not function anywhere as smoothly as the iPhone version. The Facebook for Android application was painful to use at times, forcing me to manually refresh pages to see updates or get notifications. This was common for most of the applications that I used, things that seemed to just happen naturally on the iPhone either required multiple menus or buttons to access, or the features were missing.

There is also something to be said for the investment in Apps that I'd made over the last two years as an owner of the iPhone 3G. I have hundreds of Apps in my iTunes library, and I'd paid for a sizable chunk of them. Many of them I could just not find a replacement for in Android. Really, the App Store is one of the smartest things Apple did to insure people stay with the platform.

Photography

Nowhere was this lack of Apps more obvious than in the world of photography, which is my main hobby. Apps like Photoshop Mobile, Best Camera and Camera+ were ones that I'd come to use often on my iPhone, and despite my fruitless searches, I could not find anything similar in the Android Marketplace. They were also Apps that I already owned, and couldn't use.

There is also something to be said for the iPhone 4 camera, versus well, anything in a phone or even most point and shoots.

While not really photography, something else I found ridiculous about Android compared to the iPhone was how impossible it was to easily take a screenshot on the Nexus One without doing a USB tether to the Android SDK, or rooting the phone to install custom applications. It's a simple process of clicking two buttons on the iPhone. Not that I often need to take screenshots, but I do it enough where it was bothersome.

Death Grip

I griped (a lot) about the iPhone 4 and the death grip. Why? Because it really teed me off. However, and I really hate to admit this, the Nexus One had a very similar issue.

While I could never get the signal to drop to the point where I would disconnect calls (which I can do on the iPhone 4) there was a noticeable decrease in signal strength when holding the phone, and the tighter the hold, the fewer the bars. It was not uncommon to watch my signal go from four bars (full) to one bar. Granted, the problem wasn't simply touching a specific area of the phone like Apple seems to have engineered their device for but the issue is there.

Another related issue, was I could never get my phone to remember to automatically reconnect to my home wireless. It had no issues at work, but for some reason when I came home I'd always have to enter the wireless settings and reconnect. It managed to save my SSID and WPA2 keys, so it only took a few seconds but for some reason it would never stick. Same goes for leaving the phone on standby and then waking it up. It would connect to 3G but never Wifi without a little extra encouragement.

Discontinued

It never makes you feel good when you buy something and then two weeks later learn they're not going to sell the product anymore. On the other hand, it made it a lot easier to find a buyer on eBay.

It's Not All Bad

Even with my complaints about Android and the Nexus One. It's not all bad. I still stand by my analysis of the intricacies of the operating systems from my previous review. Things like the notification system and the integration with Google services are really top notch and the notification system in iOS is something Apple really needs to address.

Synopsis

Will I miss my Nexus One? Yes.

Would I buy it again? Yes (subsidized) Would I encourage others to buy it? Yes.

Would I encourage others to look at Android? Yes

But in the end, I just couldn't make it stick. Weighing all the factors, the iPhone, with it's assorted Apps and features was the better choice for me. Forgive me Father Jobs, for I have strayed from the light. Please accept me back to the comfort of the Reality Distortion Field once again. I promise I'll (probably) buy an iPad!

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren't 100,000 applications available in the store yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps been submitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009.

The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps and games are available in the United States, necessarily. Not all markets are counted, even, so AndroLib claims it may potentially undercount the number of apps, although it's safe to say there's somewhat of an error margin either way as with every data aggregation.

According to AndroLib, an estimated 18,000 apps have been removed or otherwise unpublished from Android Market, so the current number of active apps currently available in Android Market is closer to 83,300 today. That's more in line with the number Google itself shared in its latest earnings call, about two weeks ago (more than 70,000 in total).

How long before the number of active Android apps hits 100,000?

I dashed off a piece for CNET today on the Copyright Office's cell phone jailbreaking rulemaking earlier this week. Though there has already been extensive coverage (including solid pieces in The Washington Post, a New York Times editorial, CNET, and Techdirt), there were a few interesting aspects to the decision I thought were worth highlighting.

Most notably, I was interested that no one had discussed the possibility and process by which Apple or other service providers could appeal the rulemaking. Ordinarily, parties who object to rules enrolled by administrative agencies can file suit in federal district court under the Administrative Procedures Act. Such suits are difficult to win, as courts give deference to administrative determinations and review them only for errors of law. But a win for the agency is by no means guaranteed.

The Appeals Process

What I found in interviewing several leading high tech law scholars and practitioners is that no one was really clear how or even if that process applied to the Copyright Office. In the twelve years that the Register of Copyrights has been reviewing requests for exemptions, there are no reported cases of efforts to challenge those rules and have them overturned.

With the help of Fred von Lohmann, I was able to obtain copies of briefs in a 2006 lawsuit filed by TracFone Wireless that challenged an exemption (modified and extended in Monday's rulemaking) allowing cell phone users to unlock their phones from an authorized network in hopes of moving to a different network. TracFone sued the Register in a Florida federal district court, claiming that both the process and substance of the exemption violated the APA and TracFone's due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.

But the Justice Department, in defending the Copyright Office, made some interesting arguments. They claimed, for example, that until TracFone suffered a particular injury as a result of the rulemaking, the company had no standing to sue. Moreover, the government argued that the Copyright Office is not subject to the APA at all, since it is an organ of Congress and not a regulatory agency. The briefs hinted at the prospect that rulemakings from the Copyright Office are not subject to judicial review of any kind, even one subject to the highly limited standard of arbitrary and capricious.

There was, however, no published opinion in the TracFone case, and EFF's Jennifer Granick told me yesterday she believes the company simply abandoned the suit. No opinion means the judge never ruled on any of these arguments, and so there is still no precedent for how a challenge to a DMCA rulemaking would proceed and under what legal standards and jurisdictional requirements.

Should Apple decide to pursue an appeal (an Apple spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company was considering such an action, and read me the brief statement the company has given to all journalists this week), it would be plowing virgin fields in federal jurisdiction. That, as we know, can often lead to surprising resultsincluding, just as an example, a challenge to the Copyright Office's institutional ability to perform rulemakings of any kind.

The Copyright Office Moves the Fair Use Needlea Little

A few thoughts on the substance of the rulemaking, especially as it shines light on growing problems in applying copyright law in the digital age.

Since the passage of the 1998 revisions to the Copyright Act known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Register of Copyrights is required every three years to review requests to create specific classes of exemptions to some of the key provisions of the law, notably the parts that prohibit circumvention of security technologies such as DRM or other forms of copy protection.

The authors of the DMCA with some foresight recognized that the anti-circumvention provisions rode on the delicate and sharp edge where static law meets rapidly-evolving technology and new business innovation. Congress wanted to make sure there was a process that ensured the anti-circumvention provisions did not lead to unintended consequences that hindered rather than encouraged technological innovation. So the Copyright Office reviews requests for exemptions with that goal in mind.

In the rulemaking completed on Monday, of course, one important exemption approved by the Register was one proposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which asked for an exemption for jailbreaking cell phones, especially iPhones.

Jailbreaking allows the customer to override security features of the iPhone's firmware that limits which third party applications can be added to the phone. Apple strictly controls which third party apps can be downloaded to the phone through the App Store, and has used that control to ban apps with, for example, political or sexual content. Of course the review process also ensures that the apps work are technically compatible with the phone's other software, don't unduly harm performance, and aren't duplicative of other apps already approved.

Jailbreaking the phone allows the customer to add whatever apps they want, including those rejected by or simply never submitted to Apple in the first place, for whatever reason.

In approving the exemption, the Copyright Office noted that jailbreaking probably does involve copyright infringement. The firmware must be altered as part of the process, and that alteration violates Apple's legal monopoly on derivative or adapted works. But the Register found that such alteration was de minimis and approved the exemption based on the concept of fair use.

Fair use, codified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, holds that certain uses of a copyrighted work that would otherwise be reserved to the rights holder are not considered infringement. These include uses that have positive social benefits but which the rights holder as a monopolist might be averse to permitting under any terms, such as quotations in a potentially-negative review.

EFF had argued initially that jailbreaking was not infringement at all, but the Register rejected that argument. Fair use is a much weaker rationale, as it begins by acknowledging a violation, though one excused by law. The law of fair use, as I note in the piece, has also been in considerable disarray since the 1980's, when courts began to focus almost exclusively on whether the use (technically, fair use is an affirmative defense to a claim of infringement) harmed the potential commercial prospects for the work.

Courts are notoriously bad at evaluating product markets, let alone future markets. So copyright holders now simply argue that future markets, thanks to changing technology, could include anything, and that therefore any use has the potential to harm the commercial prospects of their work. So even noncommercial uses by people who have no intention of competing with the market for the work are found to have infringed, fair use notwithstanding.

But in granting the jailbreaking exemption, the Copyright Office made the interesting and important distinction between the market for the work and the market for the product or service in which the work is embedded.

Jailbreaking, of course, has the potential to seriously undermine the business strategy Apple has carefully designed for the iPhone and, indeed, for all of its products, which is to tightly control the ecosystem of uses for that product.

This ensures product quality, on the one hand, but it also means Apple is there to extract fees and tolls from pretty much any third party they want to, on technical and economic terms they can dictate. Despite its hip reputation, Apple's technical environment is more closed than Microsoft's. (The open source world of Linux being on the other end of the spectrum.)

In granting the exemption, the Copyright Office rejected Apple's claim that jailbreaking harmed the market for the iPhone. The fair use analysis, the Register said, focuses on the market for the protected work, which in this case is the iPhone's firmware. Since the modifications needed to jailbreak the firmware don't harm the market for the firmware itself, the infringing use is fair and legally excused. It doesn't matter, in other words, that jailbreaking has a potentially big commercial impact on the iPhone service.

That distinction is the notable feature of this decision in terms of copyright law. Courts, and now the Copyright Office, are well aware that technology companies try to leverage the monopoly rights granted by copyright to create legal monopolies on uses of their products or services. In essence, they build technical controls into the copyrighted work that limits who and how the product or service can be used, than claim their intentional incompatibilities are protected by law.

A line of cases involving video game consoles, printer cartridges and software applications generally has been understandably skeptical of efforts to use copyright in this manner, which quickly begins to smell of antitrust. Copyright is a monopolythat is, a trust. So it's not surprising that its application can leak into concerns over antitrust. The law strives to balance the need for the undesirable monopoly (incentives for authors) with the risks to related markets (restraint of trade).

As Anthony Falzone put it in a blog post at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, The Library went on to conclude there is no basis for Apple to use copyright law to protect[] its restrictive business model' and the concerns Apple articulated about the integrity of the iPhone's ecosystem' are simply not harms that would tilt the fair use analysis Apple's way.

The exemption granted this week follows the theory that protecting the work itself is what matters, not the controlled market that ownership of the work allows the rights holder to create.

The bottom line here: messing with the firmware is a fair use because it doesn't damage the market for the firmware, regardless of (or perhaps especially because of) its impact on the market for the iPhone service as Apple has designed it. That decision is largely consistent with case law evaluating other forms of technical lockout devices.

The net result is that it becomes harder for companies to use copyright as a legal mechanism to fend off third parties who offer replacement parts, add-ons, or other features that require jailbreaking to ensure compatibility.

Which is not to say that Apple or anyone else trying to control the environment around copyright-protected software is out of luck. As I note in the CNET piece, the DMCA is just one, and perhaps the weakest arrow in Apple's quiver here. Just because jailbreaking has now been deemed a fair use does not mean Apple is forced to accommodate any third party app. Not by a long shot.

Jailbreaking the iPhone remains a breach of the user agreement for both the device and the service. It still voids the warranty and still exposes the customer to action, including cancelling the service or early termination penalties, that Apple can legally take to enforce the agreement. Apple can also still take technical measures, such as refusing to update or upgrade jailbroken phones, to keep out unapproved apps.

Contrary to what many comments have said in some of the articles noted above, the DMCA exemption does not constitute a get out of jail free card for users.

It's true that Apple can no longer rely on the DMCA (and the possibility of criminal enforcement by the government) to protect the closed environment of the iPhone. But consumers can still waive legal rightsincluding the right to fair usein agreeing to a contract, license agreement, or service agreement. (In some sense that's what a contract is, after allagreement by two parties to waive various rights in the interest of a mutual bargain.)

Ownership Rights to Software Remain a Mystery

A third interesting aspect to the Copyright Office's rulemaking has to do with the highly-confused question of software ownership. For largely technical reasons, software has moved from intangible programs that must of necessity be copied to physical media (tapes, disks, cartridges) in order to be distributed to intangible programs distributed electronically (software as a service, cloud computing, etc.). That technical evolution has made the tricky problem of ownership has gotten even trickier.

Under copyright law, the owner of a copy of a work has certain rights, including the right to resell their copy. The so-called first sale doctrine makes legal the secondary market for copies, including used book and record stores, and much of what gets interesting on Antiques Roadshow.

But the right to resell a copy of the work does not affect the rights holders' ability to limit the creation of new copies, or of derivative or adapted works based on the original. For example, I own several pages of original artwork used in 1960's comic books drawn by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Gene Colan.

While Marvel still owns the copyright to the pages, I own the artifactsthe pages themselves. I can resell the pages or otherwise display the artifact, but I have no right until copyright expires to use the art to produce and sell copies or adaptations, any more than the owner of a licensed Mickey Mouse t-shirt can make Mickey Mouse cartoons.

(Mike Masnick the other day had an interesting post about a man who claims to have found unpublished lost negatives made by famed photographer Ansel Adams. Assuming the negatives are authentic and there's no evidence they were stolen at some point, the owner has the right to sell the negatives. But copyright may still prohibit him from using the negatives to make or sell prints of any kind.)

Software manufacturers and distributors are increasingly trying to make the case that their customers no longer receive copies of software but rather licenses to use software owned by the companies. A license is a limited right to make use of someone else's property, such as a seat in a movie theater or permission to drive a car.

As software is increasingly disconnected from embodiment in physical media, the legal argument for license versus sale gets stronger, and it may be over time that this debate will be settled in favor of the license model, which comes with different and more limited rights for the licensee than the sale of a copy. (There is no first sale doctrine for licenses. They can be canceled under terms agreed to in advance by the parties.)

For now, however, debate rages as to whether and under what conditions the use of software constitutes the sale of a copy versus a license to use. That issue was raised in this week's rulemaking several times, notably in a second exemption dealing with unlocking phones from a particular network.

Under Section 117 of the Copyright Act, the owner of a copy of a computer program has certain special rights, including the right to make a copy of the software (e.g. for backup purposes, or to move it from inert media to RAM) or modify it when doing so is essential to make use of the copy.

Unlocking a phone to move it to another network, particularly a used phone being recycled, necessarily requires at least minor modification, and the question becomes whether the recycler or anyone lawfully in possession of a cell phone owns a copy of the firmware.

Though this issue gave the Copyright Office great pause and lots of pages of analysis, ultimately they sensibly hedged on the question of copy versus license. The Register did note, however, that Apple's license agreement was not a model of clarity.

In the interests of time, let me just say here that this is an issue that will continue to plague the software industry for some time to come. It is a great example of how innovation continues to outpace law, with unhappy and unintended consequences. For more on that subject, see Law Seven (copyright) and Law Nine (software) of The Laws of Disruption.

Filed under: iPad

TUAW20 great, free iPad comics originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google has begun opening up access to a new Application Programming Interface (API) called the Places API. Developers building apps that include a "check in at this place" feature can use the Places API to search across all the places users might check in for basic information like business name, address, phone number and other descriptive information. That information will be editable by the businesses listed and no caching of data is allowed, so apps will have to ping Places regularly for real-time data.

Making this data as free and easy to use as Google Maps is today could create a foundation for new location-savvy apps to bloom throughout the mobile web, with far less overhead than such apps have to wrestle with today in order to provide a rich user experience. One catch? All these apps will have to be integrated with Google's Adsense.

Sponsor

Also available: rating information from the same business review sites that appear in Google Maps search results. So show me the best-rated coffee shop within a mile of me that's described as dog-friendly in user reviews. That would be awesome.

How it Might Be Used

When Google first began discussing the Places API in April, we discussed as an example a pizza restaurant that edited its delivery area on Google and then made that information available to apps that pinged the API for information.

Those kinds of examples are less likely to be implemented at first, since the first developers being allowed access to the API are people building check-in apps. But the possibilities beyond checking in are many and diverse.

Just as Google Maps made it easy for any developer to add a map and display location, the Places API could make it easy for any developer to search up to date information about any location for their application. At least that's what seems to be possible. The Terms of Service favoring search and prohibiting caching may prove frustratingly prohibitive.

That data may be free, but it will come at the expense of integrating with Google's Adsense platform. "Note that in order to be issued credentials for this service," the API documentation reads, "you must provide a valid Adsense publisher id that matches the Google account with which you are currently logged in." That's pretty smart of Google and maybe a little nefarious, but someone's got to pay the bills.

Why is Location so Hot?

Why is location becoming such a hot commodity? From one perspective, the proliferation of smartphones and the development of easy-to-use, compelling applications like Foursquare and MyTown are making it easier than ever for consumers to publish and leverage information about their location. Consumers want to do that for a variety of reasons, from recording their travel history to letting family know where they are to bragging about the hip places they hang out.

For developers, location data is a whole new world to pivot on when looking at feeds of user activity data. Our online activity has to date gone on in the placeless ether. Applications could offer features, highlight content or make recommendations based on things like our interests and social connections - but now any of that and more can be sorted by location. That's a very potent column to add to any spreadsheet, too. We're just beginning to see what all the recombinations of these types of data can look like.

It's an exciting new location-based world, and much of it may be powered by the Google Places API.

Back a few years ago, we all had LiveJournal accounts. After that, we had accounts at Blogger and the like. The advantage to these, of course, was that you could share your writing with the world. OhLife thinks that maybe we should keep those doors shut.

OhLife is a web-based journal application that, while remaining completely private, has its own little ways to prod you into writing daily. Each night at 8pm, you'll get an email asking how did your day go. Respond to that email and your daily entry is posted in your OhLife journal.

The OhLife dashboard, above, is wonderfully simple. All you have is your entry for today, your past entries, and then some settings such as your time zone and password.

What's really cool about the service is that, as time and entries gather, you'll get snippets of past entries emailed to you as well so that you can take a moment to reflect on what happened.

If you've read TNW Apps for any length of time, you'll know that I'm a huge fan of beauty in simplicity. To this end, OhLife is about as stunning as an application can get.

Now if I could just find time to reply to the email

Original title and link for this post: OhLife is private journaling, with a twist. It's time to write your memoirs.

We got a chance to play with the app to see what it offers and how it compares to other location destination apps, like Goby. We've also got 100 copies of the app to give away to our readers (it normally retails for $2.99).

Many mobile applications utilize location, but most of them utilize it for finding a specific place, checking in as part of a game, or reading and leaving reviews.

While there is a nice niche of mobile travel guides, what's less common are applications that are designed to help you find destinations or activities nearby. The immediate use-case for this sort of application is when you are visiting a new city or on a vacation. Say you decide to go the beach for a few days, and then it starts to rain (or I don't know, some catastrophically awful oil leak gunks up the beaches) if you're not in a big city or a place that is a known tourist destination, figuring out how to spend your time, especially while on the go, can be difficult.

A Better Family Vacation Tool

The website, which is free to use and access, is a great way to find different parks, museums, theaters, special events, historical landmarks, zoos and more. What we really like about the app is that it isn't just made for big cities, it's for smaller cities too.

The app is pretty easy to use; it can select your location automatically, or you can enter in your location by city, zip code or street address. Then you select how many days you want the search to cover and how many miles you want your search to encompass.

You can also just search for a specific event if you have an idea of what you are looking for.

The results are brought back in a list by category, and you can also view the results on a map to see where things are in relation to your starting point.

Once you find a place or outing that looks interesting, you can access more information, including the phone number and address, and visit the website for the destination all in the app. You can also see how much admission and parking is.

We do wish that there was a way for users to leave reviews of different destinations, because that would be helpful, especially for people new to a specific area.

Although A Day's Outing is similar in many respects to Goby, it's focus on more family-oriented activities and historical landmarks sets it apart. We really think that families are the types of users that would most benefit from the application.

100 Mashable Readers Get the App Free

If you want to try the app out but don't want to pay $2.99, go to this page and enter in your e-mail address. The first 100 readers will get a code to get the app for free. You can then redeem that code in the App Store.

What do you think of location-based applications that help you find local destinations rather than just restaurants or places of business? How do you find things to do when visiting from out of town?

More About: a day's outing, goby, iphone apps, location apps, travel

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At Google I/O in May, the search giant indicated that they were about to take their commitment to location to the next level. Sure, Latitude had been around for a while, but everyone knew that Google could do more in the space. The announcement of some new location APIs seemed to a big part of the solution. And now comes the fun part.

Today on their Geo blog, Google is announcing that they're beginning to open the Places API for business. The first developers getting access? Those working on check-in services.

Here's what Google has to say:

We are going to focus initially on check-in applications. These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience.

So does this mean the end of Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and all the rest? Well, no. All this means is that it should be a lot easier for startups to build the next versions of those types of services. Of course, if you listen to Foursquare talk about it, they'll say they're already moving on to bigger and better things beyond simply the check-in.

Google is pointing those who wish to get access to this API to fill out this application form found here. Again, the focus at first will be on check-in apps, but they promise to expand the API to other uses once they feel it is up to speed.

They are also accepting check-in apps for this API built in conjunction with the Buzz API as well.

Just prior to I/O, Latitude manager Steve Lee hinted that some sort of check-in functionality was likely in the future for the service. At I/O, the Latitude API made it possible for others to build such functionality. But this new Places API will allow for location services built on top of Google's data but independent of Latitude.

Geo-aware apps will help democratize news and information

Guest post by Rob Reed
Founder, MomentFeed

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.

Since becoming widely adopted just a few ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing and social entrepreneurship. Its true value hasn't been the technology itself but how we've used it. Today a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.

Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We've decentralized media production and distribution. We're doing the same for energy. And we'll continue this trend for social networking, social action and commerce.

The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information and companies that matter most to us namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:

Checking in for good

1If Gowalla and Foursquare have taught us anything, it's that people respond to simple incentives. By offering badges, mayorships and other intangible rewards, millions of people are checking in to the places they go. Apps like Whrrl take this a step further and enable like-minded societies to form on a local basis. The next step is for these apps to add greater purpose by encouraging more meaningful check-ins and offering corresponding badges and stamps, thus mapping the cause universe. Or for a dedicated app to be developed that rewards conscious consumption, social responsibility and civic engagement. (Yes, the CauseWorld app features a cause element, but it's not about cause-worthy places.)

Eating locally

2Sustainability demands that we source our food as close to its point of production as possible. Many so-called locavores subscribe to the 100-mile diet, which requires that one eat nothing or almost nothing but sustenance drawn from within 100 miles of their home. Given the difficulty of accessing and verifying this information in order to live by this standard, there's a geo-powered Locavore app. It gives you info on in-season foods, those coming in-season, farmer's markets and links to recipes. This rather simple app is clearly just the start. In time, location-aware apps will guide us not only to the grocery store or farmer's market but through them, identifying foods based on our particular diet or sensibility.

Political organizing

3In the next presidential election, politics will not only be local but location-enabled. We saw the power of social media in President Obama's 2008 sizable victory. In 2012, location-based apps and technologies will play a central role in how campaigns are organized, managed and ultimately won. Much of this will be visible through mobile apps and location-aware browsers. Activists and volunteers will be more empowered. Voters will be more engaged in the moment, right down to casting their votes. Behind the scenes, we'll see massive new sets of data available to campaigns for targeting, empowerment and optimization. The party, candidate or cause that has the best handle on geolocation will have a measurable advantage. (The Elections app will soon be updated for 2010.)

Finding green businesses

4The Web has effectively replaced the paper Yellow Pages as a way to find local businesses and services. However, this stationary Web experience is quickly being supplanted by the mobile Web and mobile applications, which give us access to this information when we most need it. The Yelp and Around Me apps are popular ways to find restaurants, coffee shops or hotels wherever you are but what about green-rated businesses? Greenopia has transformed its printed, local guides into a dynamic, nationwide mobile application that lets you find local, green-rated businesses in any category. No more paper and a much better experience. The Green Map app is another that facilitates discovery and connects us to local green environments.

Traveling more efficiently

5We've had access to GPS navigation systems and static traffic information for some time, but only now are we seeing the full potential of these technologies. With access to more detailed traffic information that is specific to your route and updated in real time, we can minimize congestion and maximize traffic flow (as much as physically possible). The new turn-by-turn MapQuest 4 Mobile app is a good start, as you can get traffic alerts specific to the route you program. However, user-generated information from apps like Trapster and Waze can crowdsource more specific details, such as whether to avoid an intersection due to a toxic chemical spill. Or, if you want to avoid automobiles altogether, Google Maps makes it easy to use public transportation and take a bike.

Scanning for ethical products

6With online shopping, we've become accustomed to reading reviews and making comparisons before we buy. This can now be done in the physical world through games like MyTown and services like Stikybits. By scanning a product barcode using a smartphone camera, you can unlock a treasure of additional information (not to mention deals) that can help with your purchase. This might include where it was produced, how far it traveled, the reputation of the manufacturer, chemical contents, carbon footprint or the full lifecycle analysis. Location-aware applications can also transform commerce itself by giving us better access to local inventories and locally produced goods. Whether it's fruits and vegetables or books and electronics, if something can be found within blocks of your current location, it makes no sense to ship it from afar.

Networking neighborhoods

7One of the hottest categories in geolocation is neighborhood networking. The vision for many of these apps is to strengthen the very fabric of our communities. With DeHood, you can keep track of what's happening in your neighborhood, share your favorite places and grease the wheels for actually meeting people. After all, if you've made contact through the app, it's a lot easier to say Hello in the real world. Blasterous is another that lets you share information locally, while BlockChalk does this on an anonymous basis. Finally, NeighborGoods uses your street address to facilitate one-to-one borrowing and trading of useful stuff. In the end, making connections with your neighbors can lead to safer, more productive and more sustainable communities.

Tracking environmental disasters

8The size and scope of environmental disasters appears to be growing. In 2008, we had the Tennessee coal ash spill, which was billed as the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States. And that was before we realized it was three times bigger than originally estimated. More recently, the BP oil spill set daily records for largest environmental disaster in the U.S. ever. In each case, geolocation technologies can be used by engaged citizens to monitor and track the effects. They can be used by response teams to coordinate containment and cleanup efforts. Ultimately, these technologies can be used to accurately measure the size and impact of a disaster to better understand its damages and costs.

Viewing the world through an eco lens

9Augmented reality follows geolocation as one of the hot trends in mobile technology. It enables you to view the world through a smartphone camera (or similar device) and see layers of geo-specific content or information. One of the most popular apps is Layar, an augmented reality browser/platform that lets you choose specific data layers or experiences. The potential for green- and cause-related content is tremendous. You might view green-rated businesses, LEED-certified buildings or virtual GHG emissions as they enter the atmosphere. Combined with smart meter technology, you could see the most efficient and inefficient homes around you in real time. And for the cynics among us, you could view our mountains, forests, rivers and oceans as they once were, before the effects of climate change and so many environmental disasters.

Capturing the moment

10Better access to information about what's happening around us right now can dramatically improve the quality of life. This sense of geospatial awareness is possible through today's smartphones via a piece of content or information a moment that's captured and preserved based on the unique time and place in which it occurred. It is essentially to document space time. Protests, natural disasters, sporting events, parties, political crises real-time information about anything happening anywhere at any time, as well as the history of what happened. This will take several years and a number of different applications to realize. In the end, it will revolutionize how we access and consume content. It will complete the democratization and decentralization of news and information based on time and location.

Cautionary note: Privacy is the single biggest issue in location-based services. It's important to understand what information you are sharing with regard to your location and with whom.

Related posts:

1. Green Mountain Coffee: Changing lives
2. How nonprofits can use geolocation
3. Save resources & money with Better World Telecom

Apple is to launch an official investigation into reports that the iOS4 operating system is having an adverse affect on older iPhone devices, specifically the iPhone 3G.

The release of iOS4 for all iPhone handsets was intended to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 4, offering new features such as multi-tasking and the ability to customize the device. Users who installed the iOS4 update suddenly found their handsets had become slow, unresponsive and apps would frequently crash.

I have personally experienced a slowdown on my iPhone 3G with my apps crashing upon launch and button presses not being registered, opening the Settings on my iPhone now takes a whopping 7 seconds.

The good news is that iOS 4.1 seems to lift the iOS4 iPhone 3G slowdown curse, as reported by our very own Jacob Friedman. Jacob noted the following when using his iOS 4.1 enabled iPhone:

Apps load much more quickly, text entry is much smoother and the phone no longer slows down beyond the point of usability when more than one browser window is open.

We imagine Apple will pinpoint the update to iOS 4.1 as an overall fix but it does beg the question whether support for older iPhone handsets was a bit of an afterthought.

[Via - WSJ]

Original title and link for this post: Apple Launches Official Probe Into iOS4 Slowdowns On iPhone 3G

What if your phone automatically went silent when you step into the movie theater? Texted your significant other when you finished your long commute? Or automatically turned down the volume when a particularly loud friend called? It can; here's how.

Android application Tasker gives you total rules-based automation for your Android phone. It's not free, but it offers a free 14-day trial download. In the Android Market, it's 3.99 in UK moneya little over $6 U.S. If you grab the trial, or shell out the cost of a Double-Double meal at In-N-Out Burger to buy it in the Market (scan the QR code at left), you'll discover it's worth the cost, even if you only have one super-specific use for it.

Since Tasker can do nearly anything on your phone (it's mostly limited by your imagination), here's some up-front ideas about what kinds of uses seem particularly attractive:

Set preferences for each application: Give the Kindle app a longer screen time-out. Make Maps or Foursquare automatically turn on GPS, and have a file browser launch when you trade out SD cards. Have your music and other audio apps lower the volume to 50 percent when you plug in headphones, so you never get a way-too-loud moment.

Time of day automation: Make your phone go into airplane mode overnight, but re-connect for a few minutes every 30 minutes to grab messages. Set up your phone to play specific or random songs from your collection as an alarm, back up files from your SD card every day, load up an application at a certain time.

Set up contact rules: If you've got a friend who talks too loud, make your call volume go down when they ring. Create a home screen widget that sends an automatic SMS ("In the car," maybe). Set your phone to pop up a more iPhone-style message box, rather than background notifications, when you miss calls or get SMS from certain people. Have your phone always record messages from a certain caller.

: More fun, crazy-advanced stuff: Encrypt and decrypt data on the SD card based on your rules. Have speaker phone turn on when you lay your phone flat on a table. Change the home screen icons for apps, have your phone get drastically efficient when battery's below 10 percent, and change your wallpapers to reflect the time of day or the number of messages.

Those use cases barely scratch the surface, really. Take the developer's tour, and you'll see there are variables, hundreds of events and triggers, and nearly infinite setups. Want to have Reddit.com launch on your browser if your alarm clock goes off on a Tuesday while Wi-Fi is on? You got it.

We'd need to write a research-paper-length treatise to cover everything Tasker can do for you, so we'll instead offer up a few examples of app models we've found handy.

Task 1: Turn on GPS/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi for Certain Apps Automatically

I don't keep GPS positioning on all the time, both for battery efficiency and a niggling sense of privacy. At the same time, I dislike when Maps, My Tracks, Navigation, or Foursquare ask me to turn on GPS, and I'm required to click "OK," then make the toggle in Settings, then head back. For just those apps, I want my GPS to automatically click on. When I'm done with those applications, the GPS should shut off, too. You can easily pull the same trick for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or most any system function, but we'll just show how GPS works.

From Tasker's main screen, hit "New." You'll be presented with six options, or "Contexts": Application, Time, Day, Location, State, and Event. Think of "Context" as an "If""If X is happening ..."

In this case, we're going to choose Application, then pick out the app we want to apply a rule to. You can pick out apps one at a time and apply your "Tasks" to them, but you can also apply Tasks to all applications, or pick out apps you don't want your Tasks to apply to with the "Not" button at bottom. We'll just pick out one app, Maps, which I almost always want GPS to be turned on for.

After you pick your Context, now it's time to add one or more Tasks. Thinking ahead though, we're going to apply this kind of actionturn GPS on when the app launches, then turn it off when it's moved away fromto a few different apps after this. So hit the "New" button in the upper-right corner, then type in a name for your Task that you'll easily grasp later, like "Auto-Launch GPS."

Now it's time to tell Tasker what Task we want to fire when this Context is happening. As you can see at left, you basically get your whole system to play with. The thing we want, GPS, is under "Misc."

In the bar under the GPS "Set" option, you've got three options: On, Off, and Toggle, the last of which just flips the setting the other way, whichever way it is. There's also a checkbox for an "If," which, if clicked, drops down a box where you can enter in a variable and make it a condition. You could, for example, only have GPS turn on if airplane mode is set to off ("%AIR - Isn't Set"). Our needs, for now, are simplejust have GPS set "On," no matter what.

Well, that was pretty easy. Now you'll see that "GPS Auto-Launch" has just one task: "GPS - Set On." Let's say you were a little more protective of your GPS chip, though, and you wanted Tasker to ask you about GPS, Wi-Fi, or whatnot. The gear-and-screwdriver logo in the lower-right corner gives you that option. Set your "Task Type" to "Menu," and you'll get options to set how long the menu stays up, if there's a default option selected, and even set a background image, if you're feeling extra-custom. But we're just having Tasker take care of the GPS switch for us, so get back to the Tasks screen.

You could hit "Test" in the lower-right corner to see how Tasker handles launching Maps and turning on GPS automatically, but we're going to specify one more detail of our auto-launcher. Hit "Done" to get back to the main Tasker menu, then tap on the right-hand side of the process you created, the side with "GPS Auto-Launch" and a green arrow. From the menu that pops up, choose "Add Exit Task." When we told Tasker to do something when Maps launched, we created an "Enter" task. By adding an "Exit" task, we can have something else happen when Maps is closed down or put away. You can add these Exits to all kinds of conditionswhen you're no longer near a certain location, when it's no longer a certain time, etc.

Update: Not all Tasker tasks need an Exit taskin general, whatever settings you've changed while a task is running will set themselves back when you're done. In this case, though, we're getting a little more extra-cautious control over turning the GPS off.

After hitting "Add Exit Task," you'll run through the same process you used to create the GPS turn-on: create a new name template, add the task GPS from the Misc menu, then set it to Off and hit "Done." Now, back at the main screen, you can see that there's a Context (Maps launches), an Enter task (GPS Auto-Launch), and an Exit task (GPS Shutdown). Hit the "Apple" button at the very bottom, and now Tasker will be watching for Maps to launch, then do its auto-GPS thing.

This trick worked fairly well on my Nexus One, despite Tasker providing a pop-up note that application exit watching wasn't as stable on Android 2.0 and later. Worst case scenario, it doesn't launch GPS, and I do it myself.

Task 2: Create an Ultimate Morning Alarm

The next step, adding multiple tasks to a time condition, isn't all that different, but it does show off how far Tasker can go in automating your phone. So let's create Kevin's Ultimate Alarm.

Hit "New" and choose Time as the Context. I'll have this alarm go off at 6 a.m. and, if I don't respond, play for 3 minutes. You could just set 6-6 as your time to run until you take action, but I'll be nice to my morning self. We're going to add another context, the days of the week, later, but for now, you'll be moved into the Tasks section.

For my own Ultimate Alarm, I'm having a song play from my collection, make my Remember the Milk tasks load up on the screen, and have my phone say, in text-to-speech, "Good morning, Kevin. It's going to be a great day." Why? Because, why not? For these pieces, I added three Tasks:

• MediaMusic PlayMusic Play Dir. After long-clicking on the "Dir" field and choosing my Music folder, I also checked "Audio Only" and "Random." If you wanted a particular song, you could swap "Music Play" for "Music Play Dir."
• AppLoad AppRemember the Milk. Fairly simple, and I could set a different starting page in Remember the Milk's own settings, if I liked.
• MiscSay. Then just fille in the text you want, choose a language, and mess with any other fields you'd like. "Stream" sets the output you'd like the audio to go through, which helps if you've got other things, like songs, going too. You can, of course, mess with the pitch and speed of the voice, too.

When you're all done and hit "Done," tap on the left-hand side of your Ultimate Alarm entry, where the clock is. From the menu, roll down Context and hit "Add," then choose "Date." From the pop-up chooser, you can get very specific about the months, days of the month, days of the week, and other selectors for when your alarm goes off. Mine's a basic Monday-through-Friday deal.

That's all there is to that one, but it's a pretty nice package.

Task 3: Make Your Phone Quiet Down When Face-Down

Now I'm going to create a kind of "Quiet Down" mode for my phone. When I put it face down on a flat surface, like arriving at my desk for work, it should turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth (and, heck, you can turn off EDGE/3G data, if you'd like), and then turn the system, ringer, and media volumes all the way down but keep vibrate on. You could add an Exit task to turn some or all of these back on, but that's giving a bit too much leeway to the phone's sensors.

For our context, choose State, then pick Orientation. You'll get the options you see at left. I like to stay away from "Face up," "Standing Up," and "Upside Down," because they're pretty common occurrences. For this example, "Face Down" is a pretty deliberate action you take with your phone.

For the tasks, I added "Bluetooth" and "WiFi" from the Net menu, set to Off, "GPS" from Misc set to Off, and set the volumes for "Media Volume" and "System Volume" to 0 from the Audio menu. "Silent Mode" with Vibrate could simplify your setup, but I like to be sure. Hit Done, and you're all set.