Posts in Linked

iBeacons as a Mechanism to Push Newsstand Publications→

Darrell Etherington from TechCrunch writes about how iBeacons are being used to sell digital magazines. Here’s a clever idea:

The tech is very handy in a number of scenarios, as in a coffee shop for instance, where the establishment could subscribe and enable access to full magazines to patrons who come in. It’s made even more convenient with the addition of iBeacons on iOS, as the whole digital handshake can happen automatically, providing the user with the best possible and most frictionless experience. Another possible use is in modernizing the doctor’s office, offering up publications in the waiting room that are more useful and more current than five-year old issues of Good Housekeeping.

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On Relaxing App Store Rules→

Marco Tabini of Macworld uses the recent TextExpander touch debacle to the make the argument on why App Store rules should be relaxed.

On OS X, TextExpander can interact with just about any app. On iOS, Apple’s sandboxing makes this much harder, but in the past Smile’s developers have circumvented the problem by implementing a software development kit that other programmers can easily and quickly integrate into their own software.

Unfortunately, this leaves one problem unsolved: Third-party apps still need to synchronize their text-snippet database against the main TextExpander app, which is difficult to accomplish in an environment where programs are largely prevented from talking to one another—or even being aware of one another’s presence on the device.

Thus, Smile had to find another workaround, which involved relying on iOS’s built-in Reminders as an ersatz synchronization mechanism. After initially permitting that usage, Apple eventually rejected it as an improper application of a technology whose primary goal is, after all, to help you compile grocery lists.

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Temporarily Capture Moments with Meteor for iPhone→

There are lots of pictures we take in the moment that we shoot off to social networks, private chats, and to others in emails, but they don’t necessarily need to stick around. Meteor advertises itself as a photographic memo pad that lets you take photos that only matter right now, deleting your photographs after a period of time unless they’re manually saved to the Camera Roll. For a buck during their launch sale, Meteor tries to unclutter your Camera Roll by separating memories from photographic reminders, in the moment goofiness, and can even perhaps save you from post “why did I take a picture of that” regret. It works with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, iMessage, your email app, and your favorite photo app.

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Honda Announces Deep iOS Integration With Upcoming Vehicles→

Eric Slivka from MacRumors on the latest in-dash technology to be found in the new Honda Civic and Honda Fit:

The new Civic, which goes on sale tomorrow, and the upcoming Fit, which launches early next year, will offer an all-new Display Audio interface featuring a 7-inch touchscreen that will be familiar to smartphone users, offering easy access to a variety of features.

“Display Audio” is quite the oxymoron.

Whatever happened to iOS 7 in the Car? What Honda is offering are proprietary (and expensive in the case of navigation) apps that are simply launched through the car’s virtual dashboard.

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PayPal Launches Digital Gifts Store Featuring iTunes Gift Cards→

From PayPal Forward (via setteBIT, iMore):

Beginning today, just in time for the holidays, PayPal will be opening the doors (or the URL) to the PayPal Digital Gifts store.

What is PayPal Digital Gifts? It is a store that will give people the chance to purchase digital gift cards from a host of our partner merchants. We have one marquee merchant in the store today and will be adding more very soon!

Right now, the new store is limited to iTunes codes for the US iTunes Store. It’s nice that Apple is making it easier to buy iTunes credit online, but the regional restrictions are curious (an euphemism for awful): unless your PayPal account (not just the iTunes one) is a US one, you can’t send an iTunes code as a gift to someone else – not even if your account is configured with USD. PayPal’s Digital Gifts store would be very convenient to me and I hope that these restrictions will be removed soon.

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GIFs for Documentation→

You could accomplish many of the goals of the way I use GIFs with inline videos or links to Youtube/Vimeo. However, I find that in many cases the result of a simple focused GIF is far better than a video. Firstly, they don’t require fancy hosting or embed codes to work. Any modern browser can display them inline. Their short, looping nature also make it really easy to immediately get the gist of what the video is trying to communicate. They also take far less time to create than a polished video.

I have the same setup as David Smith, only I use Reflector to capture videos of iOS devices.

GIFs are typically used for Internet memes and jokes (or wars), but they have been working well in my reviews, especially for iOS 7 apps. Creating GIFs of iOS apps is one of the few things that I still can’t do on iOS.

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Apple Buys Topsy→

The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. has acquired social-media analytics firm Topsy Labs Inc. for more than $200 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Of all the acquisitions that Apple did in 2013, this is one of the most interesting ones to me. Topsy was capable of analyzing trends in tweets and it was one of the few official Twitter partners with access to the full Twitter firehose (including all tweets starting from 2006).

There are many possibilities opened by this kind of access and technology. At TechCrunch, Matthew Panzarino imagines that Topsy’s technology could be useful to improve Twitter search tools built into Siri:

There is also a slim possibility that Apple may want to use Topsy’s stored trends data and firehose access to improve Siri search. It could provide Siri with a reliable way to present people with trending topics and search results according to Twitter when queried.

As Panzarino also speculates, however, I believe that there’s real potential in Twitter analysis algorithms used to augment iTunes and App Store discovery for media, and especially apps. Imagine being able to determine in (almost) real-time the kind of buzz that an app is getting by analyzing tweets sent by humans (not bots or websites) about a new app release. I’ve written about this before, and smaller third-party companies have already tried to provide their own layer of App Store discovery tools by triangulating signals from App Store charts, online reviews, and social networks.

And, of course, there’s the TV rumor: Twitter has become the de-facto destination for real-time TV commentary by millions of watchers, with the company going as far as surveying a subset of users about live TV viewing habits in their latest iOS app update. Topsy’s firehose access and algorithms could have endless potential for Apple’s rumored television plans.

As John Gruber notes, it is a curious acquisition. Apple may have bought Topsy for its team or technology or patents, but the fact that Topsy was highly specialized in Twitter tools and that Apple already has native Twitter integration in iOS and OS X creates several interesting scenarios. Although, as we’ve seen with the Chomp acquisition, this kind of changes can take a long time.

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Auto-Renewable Subscriptions On iOS→

Marco Arment:

I recently wrote that I wouldn’t use auto-renewable subscriptions again after extensive experience with both non-renewing in Instapaper and auto-renewing in The Magazine. A lot of developers have asked me to elaborate, especially as Apple has gradually allowed some apps to use them outside of Newsstand.

As a user, I can only agree with Marco’s take. I’ve only signed up to 3 or 4 reneweable subscriptions on iOS over the years, and every time I wanted to access the management screen (which is tucked away in the Settings) I found it incredibly slow and hard to use. The entire Apple ID panel (Settings > iTunes & App Store > Apple ID) has poor navigation and is slow and unchanged from iOS 6. I’ve always ended up canceling iOS subscriptions and subscribing through the web (whenever possible).

The solution that Marco proposes at the end is a good compromise, but Apple should really improve many aspects of this – both for developers and users.

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