Celebrity Gossip, Technology News, Movies, Trailers, Phones

Alright, lets pat the pockets and run through the mental checklist one last time before security: Passport? Check, front pocket. Headphones? Definitely in your backpack. Boarding pass? Uh oh. Where’d that boarding pass go? Oh, that’s right! It’s on your phone – because you, like a rapidly increasing number of other people, opted to have it sent straight to your handset. Security scans the QR code right off of your handset’s display, and you’re on your way with one less thing to lose. Trinity Mobile, one of the leading companies behind the mobile ticketing push, is today announcing a 1200% year-over-year increase with their mobile boarding pass offerings. In 2008, Trinity Mobile saw 50,000 users opt-in to receive mobile boarding passes rather than the more traditional options. In 2009, this number shot up to 600,000. That’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people flying with ol’ fashion boarding passes each and every day – but considering that that growth is almost entirely driven by users picking the option when its offered to them (without any real marketing push by Trinity or the airlines they’ve partnered with), it’s pretty impressive. Jupiter Research backs up the fact that the trend is skyrocketing; according to their 2010 Mobile Ticketing report, over 2 billion mobile boarding passes will be sent out in 2010, with that number expected to blast up to 15 billion by 2014. Anecdotally, I can honestly say I’ve also noticed a massive uptick in mobile boarding pass usage. As someone who travels somewhat frequently, I’ve seen at least a handful of people going that route on each trip I’ve taken over the past few months – especially on flights in Europe. I’ve yet to be offered a chance to do it myself – but given that I’m the type of person who clutches on to their boarding pass like it’s ice water in Hell, I’d jump on it on a heartbeat. What about you? Have you used a mobile boarding pass yet? What were your experiences? [Image Credit: Paramount Pictures]

Cue the sad trombone , folks. If you were waiting around with your Windows Mobile 6.5 device with hopes that Microsoft would one day bless it with a new chance at life in the form of Windows Phone 7, it’s time to move on. APC Magazine just got the full spiel from Microsoft themselves: Windows Mobile 6.5 devices won’t be upgradable to Windows Phone 7 series. (You hear that? Five hundred XDA hackers just scoffed and said “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”) Why? Standards. Microsoft has a very, very, almost ridiculously strict set of hardware guidelines that they want manufacturing partners to follow when building Windows Phone 7 Series handsets — and for the most part, old handsets just don’t fit the bill. They either lack one of the three mandatory keys (search, back, and Windows key), or — get this — they have too many keys. A while back, a shot of the HTC HD2 allegedly running Windows Phone 7 Series hit the net. We were quick to debunk it here , with our reasoning being that the HD2 lacked the mandatory search key. Sure enough: Microsoft’s GM of Mobile Communications in the Asia-Pacific, Natasha Kwan, says the HD2 won’t be getting the upgrade “because it doesn’t have the three buttons”. Of course, this just means that they won’t be getting the upgrade treatment from Microsoft . As we mentioned above, there’s probably a mighty army of hackers just waiting to get their hands on Windows Phone ROMs for the sake of down-porting it to older handsets; if it’s feasible, it’ll probably happen.

Good news, Palm fans! If you’ve taken a break from jamming on the “Update” button, it’s time to go tap it one last time: the rollout of webOS 1.4 has just begun. The catch: it seems that it’s only for Sprint handsets right now ( Update: In the US, that is – it’s also available on O2 UK, O2 Germany, O2 Ireland, and Movistar in Europe), with the Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus still reporting that 1.3 is the latest release. We knew it was coming in February thanks to Palm’s announcement at CES — and thanks to the rumor mill, we were all lead to believe it was coming a few weeks ago . All false starts and false hopes aside, it’s available now. We’re seeing reports (thanks Twitter!) that it has gone live on Sprint handsets. Curiously absent, however, are any reports of the update hitting Verizon Pre/Pixi Pluses. With the update going out this late in the evening (a bit after 10:30 pm PST), I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were some last-minute snags; might the Verizon update have been held at the last minute? The biggest new feature in webOS 1.4 — at least, of those available right this second — is its new found ability to record and edit video. webOS also lays all the necessary foundation for Adobe Flash support, though that bit will come as a download from the App Catalog at a later time. There are other smaller features and bug fixes throughout — for those, check out the full change log below. (Update: Palm has just released an even bigger, more in-depth change log here ) Changelog: Enhancements: – Updated SMS and chat features. − Tap and hold on an email address to send an email or add to contacts. − Forward SMS messages to email. − Dial a number from chat view without opening a contact card. − Press and hold a phone number (identified via smart text) to get more options for calls and SMS. – New camera support for video capture. − Record and edit videos right on your device. − Upload videos to YouTube® and Facebook®, or send them to friends via email or MMS. – Expanded calendar and task functions. − Set custom alert sounds for calendar events. -View times with added AM/PM and Now indicators. − Dial phone numbers shown in the appointment subject. – More email options − Customize your email alerts by specifying a distinct ringtone or selecting mute or vibrate. − Tap and hold on a phone number or email address to either dial or send an email or add to contacts. − Once emails are sent, you’re taken back to the inbox view. − More sort options for messages, including by date, sender, and subject. – Mobile Hotspot application is now preloaded on the device. – Enhanced universal search now includes Global Address Lookup, i.e., corporate address book. – The light bar in the gesture area now blinks whenever there are pending notifications. Improvements: – Better MMS functions and support. − Support for sending an MMS message when connected to Wi-Fi now included. − MMS messages with multiple audio and picture attachments now allow you to open all attachments correctly. − MMS display updated so messages no longer appear to overlap each other. – Faster performance in several areas of the phone and calendar applications-

Filed under: iPad Business Insider’s The Wire is reporting , rather humorously, that AP sources have the scoop that the Associated Press is working on its own iPad app. It will reportedly be a paid subscription news app that generates content from the AP and more than 1,000 member newspapers and broadcasters. The AP follows the New York Times and other news sources that are developing applications for the iPad. While the AP doesn’t say if the app would be available for the iPad launch late next month, the hope is that its eventual release will generate sales from the three million people who have downloaded their free iPhone app and would be willing to pay for the apps features on a larger-screen device. To get users interested in the app, it may be free upon initial launch. From the official press release : The group already has drawn up plans to charge for an application designed for the iPad, a 1.5-pound tablet computer that Apple Inc. is scheduled to release at the end of March. The price of the application has yet to be determined, although it might start free, according to Jane Seagrave, a senior vice president who becomes the AP’s chief revenue officer Monday. Much like the AP Mobile news product, the iPad app will show custom packages of headlines, stories, photos and video from the AP and from newspapers and broadcasters that choose to contribute their content and share the revenue. AP members also could use the same system to offer their own iPad apps that show their own content. The AP iPad app is just the first product from the AP’s new business unit known as “AP Gateway” that will focus on mobile platforms. The AP is among the legion of print-centric news organizations that have seen revenue hit hard by free papers and the internet. A week ago, a Dutch paper made the case that devices like the iPad are the newspaper industry’s only hope for paid distribution. While many still debate whether the iPad is the savior the publishing industry needs, it’s clear that the major publishers are gearing up for an iPad world. TUAW Associated Press sources report Associated Press working on iPad app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read

Sick of the iron fist of censorship Apple wields over its App Store? Feel it’s unfair that there’s no way to get applications onto a non-hacked iPhone without submitting them to Apple fickle fiefdom? We have good news, in the shape of web-apps. What? Ibis reader is an e-book reading application that does everything that you’d expect an iPhone e-reader to do, with one big difference: It doesn’t come from the App Store. The app runs on any iPhone or iPod Touch and offers full offline access to your library of books, and is as fast and responsive as a native iPhone application. It manages this through the magic of HTML5, which is supported by Mobile Safari and – crucially – offers offline storage for web-sites. To install Ibis you navigate to the page in Safari. You will be asked if you will grant the site 50MB of storage space. After agreeing, you hit the “+” button and add the app to the home-screen. Now, when you hit that button, you are launched directly into Ibis, not just a tab in Safari, and because it stores both itself and your downloaded books locally, it’ll even work with an iPod Touch out of Wi-Fi range. The controls are similar to Stanza or Kindle for iPhone: tap either side of the screen to flip pages and touch the center to access more settings. You can browse for public domain books from Feedbooks from within the app, and even add books from the URL of your choice. Anything downloaded is stored for you in a local library, and if you opt to sign up for an Ibis account, you can read, fully synced, across multiple platforms. Like Stanza and Apple’s upcoming iPad app, iBooks, Ibis uses the ePub standard format, and you can even upload these files to your account from your desktop web browser, from where they will automatically appear on your mobile device. And because Android uses Webkit for its browser, it too can install and use the app offline. I have been playing around with Ibis for a little while and it really does behave like a local application, although sometimes it is not quite as fast when flipping between different sections. In fact, there’s only one thing that really gives it away: scrolling is a lot slower. Whereas in a native app you can “throw” a page and it speedily scrolls up or down, the “elastic” holding the pages of web apps is a lot stronger. It’s not just Ibis. This is a problem with all non-native applications on the iPhone. As a full-featured e-reader, Ibis is surprisingly good. As a proof-of-concept for non-approved, non-App Store applications, it is straight-up amazing. Ibis Reader [Ibis]

When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 just a few days ago at Mobile World Congress, the only sort of time frame they’d give for release was “by the Holidays”. As it turns out, they may have meant Labor Day . Engadget Chinese met up with LG during some sort of Chinese New Year celebration, and got hit with a nice little knowledge bomb: LG’s hoping to launch their first Windows Mobile 7 phone by September. Alas, they also said that it might slip back as late as November — which is about the time we’re expecting much of the first batch of WP7 phones to launch. [ Via Engadget US ]

Now, before we enter the breach, I think it bears repeating that MobileCrunch and indeed the rest of the TechCrunch network in no way condone software/application piracy . Developers work too hard for responsible members of the tech community to give them the shaft like that. That said, while cracked iPhone app repositories like apptrackr continue to operate with impunity, we’re surprised to see that the big Android equivalent has been forced to shut down first. Jesusxxx’s Blapkmarket, which provided paid apps free of charge to its users, was just recently shut down by his hosting company. The justifications for maintaining a collection of pirated apps are many, and they generally seem to address legitimate grievances with the whole app purchase process. Blapkmarket, for example, allowed users to “test” applications outside of the standard 24 hour grace period laid out in the Android Market program policies . Perhaps more importantly, it allowed Android users in other countries to access and use apps that for one reason or another weren’t available in their home markets. Jesusxxx has even gone on record saying that foreign customers “ provide[d] the highest number of requests for paid apps ” in an interview with Android Guys . As noble as those intentions may be, there’s no question that each app pirated robbed developers of sweet, sweet revenue. For all the “scrupulous” users that made avail of the service for legitimate reasons (which doesn’t necessarily excuse their actions), there were undoubtedly countless others that just couldn’t be bothered to pay for anything. With Blapkmarket out of picture for now, the big question is whether other shutdowns are on the horizon. Bigger targets are certainly out there, with repos like apptrackr being prime among them. Whether Blapkmarket’s death knell spells doom for more pirated app repositories is unclear, but one thing seems clear: like their big media brethren, app developers are starting to take pirating very seriously. [via Phandroid , image via VentureBeat ]

Investment giant Fidelity is getting into the mobile game with a new iPhone app. Fidelity’s free app allows you to monitor your portfolio, trades, research investments, and follow daily market news on the go. With the app, you can track your portfolio and monitor positions, balances, and intraday valuations of accounts. The app also lets you trade stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and options from within the app and lets you check the status of your orders. In terms of data intelligence, Fidelity’s app provides you with charts that will compare the value of your stocks. And the app streams financial news from various business news sources including MarketWatch, and Reuters. Users can also get real-time quotes and maintain a watch list for particular stocks. Morningstar has an iPhone apps that lets you track investments and Mint’s iPhone app also allows you to monitor your personal finance. CrunchBase Information Fidelity International Limited Information provided by CrunchBase

Mobile app analytics company Distimo has compiled their findings on the six largest mobile app stores offered by Apple, Palm, Research In Motion, Google, Nokia and Microsoft. Distimo presented its findings about app store size, growth, average price and free-versus-paid-app ratio at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain last week. For quantity of apps, the results aren’t surprising: It’s common knowledge that Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market are in the lead. More interesting is the lesser-known state of the smaller players. Windows Mobile has 690 apps, Palm has 1,450, Nokia carries 6,120 and BlackBerry serves 4,760. (Figures are all rounded.) Distimo also analyzed growth rate of the stores. Android is in a distant second with 19,300 apps compared with Apple’s 151,000 apps. However, Android’s growth rate is faster relative to the number of apps housed. Android’s growth is picking up with 3,000 new apps per month (15 percent). Apple is growing with about 14,000 new apps added per month (9 percent). As for the average cost of apps in each store, RIM’s apps were the priciest at an average of $8.26 for apps, followed closely by Windows Mobile’s, priced at $7 on average. Apps sold by Nokia, Apple, Google and Palm all came out in roughly the same average price range ($2.50 – $3.60). Other observations? Android has the most free apps, and for the iTunes App Store, games were the most popular category. A full summary and more charts of Distimo’s presentation are available at ReadWriteWeb , which first reported the story. See Also: For the iPhone’s App Store, Quantity Really Does Matter Apple’s App Store Hits Six Digits; How Many Apps Do You Need …

HTC seemed pretty confident that the HTC Desire and HTC Legend weren’t US-bound when we talked to them at Mobile World Congress. But hey, things change — right? Boy Genius Report has just received word that the two handsets are bound for this side of the ocean, along with details on which carriers might be nabbing them. According to the ever trusty Boy Genius , the HTC Desire will find its way to AT&T’s shores some time this May or June. AT&T customers must be thrilled; the competitor’s shelves are quickly filling with Android handsets, and all AT&T has to offer is the Motorola Backflip. The Desire might see a few slight physical alterations from the model we saw at MWC, but it doesn’t sound like anything major. Word has it that AT&T’s Desire will tout HTC’s Sense UI — and unless AT&T/HTC have a trick up their sleeves, it’ll be the first AT&T phone to do so. Sprint, who already carries the Hero and Samsung Moment , will be picking up the other hot Android device. The Legend, or Hero2 as it may be called on Sprint, may also differ from what we’ve all seen on the Interwebz. No surprises there, as the original Sprint Hero is easily distinguishable from its GSM counterpart. Alas, there is no time frame for the Hero2 — but with the way things have been leaking lately, that’ll probably spill out before too long.