Our admiration of Japan knows no bounds--we frequently wish we lived in the land of vending machines and tentacle porn. Chalk up another reason to move east: two Sharp Android 2.2 smartphones that offer no-glasses 3D visuals in the style of the Nintendo 3DS.
Sharp has rolled out two mighty-sounding Galapagos 3D handsets in Japan, the touch-screen-only 003SH and the Qwerty keyboard-packing 005SH. Both have 3.8-inch LCD screens and a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, powering Android 2.2 Froyo. They have impressive-sounding cameras too, the touch-screen version with 9.6 megapixels and the Qwerty one 8 megapixels, capable of shooting 720p video. And they'll have a user interface called TapFlow skinning the Android software.
Mobile-app developers still cite the iPhone as their platform of choice, but Android is increasingly winning their hearts and minds, according to the results of a survey released today by Millennial Media.
Among the several hundred developers and publishers polled for Millennial Media's "State of the Apps Industry Snapshot," 30 percent said they're currently creating apps for the iPhone, the highest percentage of all mobile platforms. Though Apple's smartphone grabbed the top spot, its popularity is down a bit from last December, when 48 percent of those polled were eyeing the iPhone as their platform of choice.
Android took second place with 23 percent of the developers currently building apps for Google's mobile OS. That figure just barely beat Apple's iPad, which is supported by 21 percent of those polled. Rounding out the top five were Research In Motion, with 12 percent of developers creating apps for the BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile, popular among 6 percent of those surveyed.
The numbers are not mutually exclusive--the survey allowed publishers to check all OS boxes that apply to them. Thus someone who develops applications for both iPhone and Android would be included in both the iPhone and Android slices of the pie chart.
(Credit: Millennial Media)
The study also examined the number of developers looking to adopt new platforms next year--that is, smartphones for which they're not already creating apps. Looking specifically at those developers, 29 percent of them expect to add Android to their mix in 2011. The iPad, which debuted earlier this year, will tie for second place with Microsoft's newly launched Windows Phone 7, each drumming up new interest among 20 percent of developers. Only 8 percent of those polled said they plan to add Apple's phone to their development plates--perhaps, in part at least, because the iPhone has already established a strong footing among developers.
Overall, mobile app developers and publishers are looking at a surge in business next year. A full 31 percent expect sales of their apps to rise by 100 percent or more in 2011, 17 percent are eyeing an increase of 50 percent or more, while only 10 percent say their sales are likely to be flat.
To compile its study, mobile ad company Millennial Media teamed up with digital media outlet Digiday and an analyst from financial services firm Stifel Nicolaus. The group surveyed more than 500 app developers, publishers, and advertisers about their mobile platform plans.
The survey results echo those from a similar study conducted in September by IDC and Appcelerator, which found that developers favor the iPhone for the near term but are eyeing strong long-term potential from Android.
Get this one: A site called "Lamebook" that mocks bad and silly Facebook content had been threatened with a trademark infringement lawsuit from Facebook, so it decided to sue Facebook first. It may sound silly, but Lamebook's rationale is that it's a very obvious parody and hence is protected by the First Amendment.
"Unlike the Facebook website, the Lamebook website does not offer social-networking services or functionality to its users and, therefore, does not compete with Facebook," the complaint explained, adding that Facebook's repeated threats of a lawsuit began in March.
Facebook has, in recent months, begun to engage in legal action against the operators of sites that use the suffix "-book" in their titles, like Teachbook and Placebook. Lamebook may indeed have a point in that it's not a social-networking site and that it intends to parody Facebook interactions, but its logo and blue-and-white color scheme may ape the Facebook logo a little too closely.
Lamebook is part of the same network of sites as Regretsy, a blog dedicated to the most tasteless and weird items for sale on craft marketplace Etsy, like this $2,000 Swarovski-crystal bust of Michael Jackson.
But the situation there's pretty different. Etsy encourages members to curate and promote items from their own sites--which is understandable, since it's publicity of items for sale--and even though Regretsy serves up ostensibly bad publicity, Etsy hasn't gone after it. (Regretsy is littered with comments from readers who say they actually buy some of the items featured.)
Facebook, obviously, is much bigger, and a parody blog doesn't directly serve to enhance or promote the brand (or profits) in any way. But the company was forced to grin and bear it after initially looking like it was going to fight the production of "The Social Network," the unauthorized hit movie about the company's early days--though Facebook still classifies the controversial content of the film as "fiction," employees nevertheless went to go see the film en masse.
Facebook representatives were not immediately available for comment on l'affaire Lamebook.
Facebook's frequent home page design changes are known to get momentary griping from users who say it's ugly, difficult to use, or hides their favorite features, but this is a new one: scores of ticked-off members go so far as to claim it's detrimental to their health.
That's what happened after Facebook on Wednesday made an unannounced tweak to its home page design, shrinking the font size that appears on users' "news feeds" of their friends' activity across the site. Facebook, in a statement, said it's "constantly testing new ways to make the site more efficient for people."
But reactions across the social Web ranged from "I feel like I'll go blind from reading its updates" to "What kind of bionic carrot-flavored crack rock are the Facebook developers smoking to make the font this small?" There were even accusations of ageism, considering that the over-55 demographic is one of the fastest-growing on Facebook and that older eyes could have trouble reading smaller print.
Not so fast. If your eyes are hurting from the text on Facebook's home page, they were probably already subject to eye strain--the term for the discomfort, dryness, redness, and other unpleasant symptoms that can result from focusing on a computer screen or other object for too long--long before you loaded up the social network to check up on your FrontierVille homestead or to remove some unflattering photo tags. Eye care professionals say the smaller font size is unlikely to affect users' vision or eye health any more than its larger-type brethren. Eye strain, too, is temporary and very preventable.
"Making the font smaller doesn't necessarily increase eye strain for most people, especially with newer monitors that have better contrast," said Dr. Jody May, an ophthalmologist at the York, Penn.-based May Eye Care. "The fonts are much better than they used to be, and refresh rates on the LCD monitors are now adequate on anything you can buy."
And the activity that causes eye strain--looking at something like a computer screen for a long time without taking time to give your eyes a rest--will happen whether the font on the screen is big or small.
"If you concentrate and spend a long time looking at something like a Facebook page, whether the font is big or little, you can run into the same symptoms," explained Dr. Richard Bensinger, a clinical correspondent for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. "When you're trying to focus, you're blinking a lot less. "If you look at somebody, and you just talk with them casually, they're blinking about 16 blinks a minute, and if they concentrate looking at a computer or reading, the blink rate drops to 5 or 6 times a minute. And then the eyes dry out."
So what happens then? May said the best strategy is to consciously avoid behaviors that will cause and prolong eye strain.
"Any time you're using a computer for a long period of time, especially if you're not looking away, you put yourself at risk for eye strain," he said. "Eye strain doesn't cause any permanent vision damage or permanent eye damage. What it does is give you a headache, dry eyes, red eyes. [It will] make your eyes feel fatigued, make you sensitive to light. But the way around that is not to keep staring at the screen for more than 20 minutes at a time. The rule is the 20-20 rule. You use your computer for 20 minutes, and then you spend 20 seconds staring away from the screen."
That said, while eye care professionals seem to be in agreement that small font sizes won't cause eye strain, some believe that it can make it worse for eyes that are already strained. "The issue with smaller font sizes is that people have to look more intently and more closely at what is written on the screen, and that requires them to stare a little bit more, and the blink rate will go down even more," said Dr. William Trattler, a Miami-based ophthalmologist who says he's recently seen heightened numbers of hard-core video gamers showing up and complaining of irritated eyes.
As for the critics accusing Facebook of ageism by putting a smaller font onscreen, May said that, yes, older computer users are going to experience worse eye strain than younger ones. This is due more to the fact that it's significantly harder for their eyes to focus.
"The biggest problem comes when people start to develop presbyopia, that is, the inability to focus to read," May explained. "Once you've passed age 50, and you're looking at smaller text on a monitor, you're going to have eye strain. The way around it is to wear reading glasses for that distance, or get a larger monitor where the font is bigger just because the monitor's bigger."
So should Facebook be obliged to offer a large-print option? Probably not: Unlike a book, a Web page is not static. Unless you're using a browser dating back to the golden age of AOL dial-up, it undoubtedly has a function that lets you alter font sizes or zoom in.
Real trouble reading small print might also be an indication that corrective eyewear is needed.
That possibility was raised by at least one opportunistic eye doctor's office with a Twitter account, the St. George, Utah-based Southwest Vision, which proclaimed in very loud and very easy-to-read capitals on Thursday that "IF YOU ARE HAVING A HARD TIME READING FACEBOOK'S NEW SMALLER FONT, SCHEDULE YOUR APPOINTMENT TODAY AND LET US SHOW YOU 'HIGH DEF VISION!'"
Since iOS 4 was released in mid-June, iPhone 3G and 3GS owners have complained that the software has their phones seemingly grinding to a halt: slow keyboard response time, frozen unlock screens, and a battery that drains faster than with previous versions of the software.
Now a deeply unsatisfied customer is taking her iOS 4 complaints to court.
On Friday, San Diego resident Bianca Wofford sued Apple for violating the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, unfair business practices, and false and deceptive advertising. In the suit she claims that iOS 4 rendered her iPhone 3GS completely unusable and that Apple support has provided no recourse outside of buying a new iPhone 4--and paying AT&T's early upgrade fee--or jailbreaking her phone to downgrade it to some version of iOS 3, which would void her warranty.
She also says that Apple knew that the update would cause slowness on older model phones--the 3G and 3GS--and went ahead with the problematic update anyway.
The court papers (embedded below) state:
"Apple's intent was to ... proliferate its new iOS 4 into the marketplace. Plaintiff is further informed and believes that Apple engineers knew that iOS 4 would substantially undermine, impede, degrade, and decrease speed for consumers who owned third-generation iPhones rather than the newly release iPhone 4..."
She also alleges that Apple concealed this and if she and other iPhone 3G and 3GS owners had known that iOS 4 would degrade their phones' performance they would never have upgraded in the first place.
Apple hasn't said much publicly about the issue. Steve Jobs allegedly told a customer in August that an update was "coming soon"that would fix the problems, though the authenticity of the e-mail wasn't confirmed.
Wofford is seeking class action status for her suit, and is asking for unspecified damages as well as $5,000 for every person whose phone was bricked by iOS 4, and an injunction on Apple's current marketing of iOS 4.
It appears that Motorola, or perhaps Samsung, may be launching a "Nexus Two" of some sort before the end of 2010, if a series of reports are accurate. Joining the dots between statements made in event invites, earnings calls and by industry sources, it appears that the handset will be exclusively available from Carphone Warehouse in the UK.
At the start of the year, Motorola's co-CEO, Sanjay Jha, announced that the company would be launching 20 smartphones in 2010, including one that would be sold "direct to consumer" with Google. Throughout the year, there've been leaks suggesting that an all-new Android handset was in development, and more recently, AndroidandMecaught word of a powerful dual-core, Tegra 2-powered Motorola handset due to launch within the next few months, running the next version of Android.
That next version of Android could be close, especially as Google's just installed a giant gingerbread man on its front lawn next to its froyo, eclair, donut and cupcake sculptures.
Meanwhile, others put the ball in Samsung's court, claiming that the Korean manufacturer is the company that's making the next Google-branded device. The manufacturer seems to be planning a big event for 8 November in the United States, but Wired.co.uk is yet hear of any similar events in the United Kingdom.
Either way, business-focused London freesheet City AM reckons that Google CEO Eric Schmidt was talking rubbish when he toldthe Telegraph earlier in the year that the Nexus One "was so successful, we didn't have to do a second one". City AMquotes industry sources saying that Google will have a second branded phone on the market in the UK before Christmas in an exclusive deal with the Carphone Warehouse. That would still make it direct-to-consumer, just about -- which is a key part of Google's strategy to try and lessen the dominance of carriers in the mobile phone market. As ever, none of the companies involved were willing to comment, but if you count yourself among the many fans of the pure, unadulterated Android experience that the Nexus One offered, then keep some room on your Christmas list.
A proof-of-concept vending machine shows how we can dispense with cash for everyday purchases, skipping credit and debit cards altogether and going straight to electronic transfer.
The vending machine uses QR codes, PayPal, a smartphone camera and Twitter. And, to complete the geek-buzzword bingo checklist, the hardware is based in part on Arduino, an open source hardware platform.
“We’re experimenting with ways of taking PayPal payments beyond the web,” PayPal Labs’ Ray Tanaka said. At the PayPal X Innovate 2010 developers’ conference, he showed off a gumball machine that lets people use their smartphone to scan a barcode instead of fishing for change.
Tanaka and his team put together their gumball machine using an ordinary mechanical vending machine, an Arduino processor, a WiShield and a few other smartly chosen basic parts.
Scanning the QR barcode sets the gumball machine in motion. Then the customer gets a Twitter notification that their PayPal payment has gone through and how much they’ve been charged. On the merchant side, Tanaka showed off an instant payment-notification system using an LCD display.
Candy is cute and “gives good demo” (as Steve Jobs puts it), but I can easily imagine 101 even better uses for a simple electronic payment system like this where cash is short and speed is essential. Here’s a short list to get you started:
- parking garages
- public transit
- toll booths
- grocery checkout
- gas stations
In short, anywhere you need to be on the move and would rather not whip out your wallet.
Logitech has announced a wireless keyboard which abolishes battery woes with a smart, green solution: solar power.
Like your classroom calculator, the K750 is charged by energy imparted from light. That means no wires and, crucially, no mid-World of Warcraft-raid battery drop-outs.
Logitech’s claims are quite ambitious. The company reckons that once it's charged up, you can lob it into a desk drawer and the keyboard will continue to work in total darkness for upwards of three months. Plus, you don’t need giant windows or a garden-office to get juiced up: the panel even charges from indoor light.
The keyboard comes with a task manager app for your PC, which includes a lux-meter and battery level indicator to ensure you’re getting enough light to the solar panel. There’s also an integrated power-indicator light to “eliminate surprises”, as the company so eloquently puts it.
Outside of its power-saving features, the keyboard is also both kind to the environment and elegant. Its construction is PVC-free and the packaging is fully recyclable. Plus, at just 7.5mm thick, the thin-profiled device will hopefully look rather nice on your desk, too.
The Logitech K750 keyboard, which is compatible with the Logitech Unifying Receiver, will go on sale in Europe from January 2011, for £69.99.
Apple calls the Apple TV a “hobby” because it isn’t a big seller. But for a bustling community of hackers, jailbreaking and tinkering with the set-top box is the real hobby.
The recent release of the second-generation Apple TV is revitalising a group effort to crack open the set-top box and expand on its capabilities with third-party software. In the next month or two, the rebellious coders say they hope to open an underground app store for the device, just as hackers did for the popular iPhone before Apple opened its official App Store.
“The Apple TV has been jailbroken for less than a month, and the amount of progress that’s been made on [hacking] it so far is absolutely phenomenal,” said Scott Davilla, a programmer who is working to get the Boxee TV platform running on the Apple TV.
Apple’s original Apple TV was cracked years ago, but there was relatively low enthusiasm in modifying the device because of some nagging technical hurdles. Hacking the first Apple TV required using a “patch stick” -- installing software on a bootable USB drive that broke through the set-top box’s restrictions -- and not all USB flash drives booted properly. Also, interest in modding the original Apple TV waned over time: Hacking the device’s software required a Mac running an older version of the Mac OS X operating system (10.4.7), and later versions of OS X broke software used to test Apple TV apps on a desktop computer.
However, this time around, the Apple TV jailbreak community, called Awkward TV, believes that hacking Apple’s set-top box will be much more popular and energetic. This is thanks largely to the fact that the second-generation Apple TV runs iOS, the same mobile operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Hacking the device will be much easier for users: The Apple TV requires connecting with a computer by a USB cable and running existing jailbreak software to break its restrictions, just like users did with the iPhone. (In other words, the annoying patch-stick method is no more.)
And besides, hackers can’t resist the allure of modifying a £99 device into the set-top box of their dreams -- a path that carries much less risk than, say, tampering with a pricier Mac Mini or a less aesthetically pleasing Windows PC.
Also, a major difference to the new Apple TV hacking scene is that many of these coders have been making apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch -- so now, the community is much bigger, diverse and more experienced. A lot of the groundwork has already been laid by iOS jailbreakers, and third-party apps served through the underground app store Cydia should be compatible with the device.
“Everything is kind of coming full circle,” said Kevin Bradley, an Apple TV programmer who works under the handle [bile]. “The old Apple TV is kind of sputtering and dying because it’s a 4-year-old product. Now you have all the people who have done amazing stuff on the iPhone working with us, and it’s made our jobs for the Apple TV a thousand times easier…. I think some really amazing things could come out of this.”
Indeed, the Cydia community is already working on an interface to launch the Cydia app store directly on the Apple TV’s main menu. Also, the “grandfather” of Apple TV hacking Jim Dovey (better known by the hacker handle AlanQuatermain), is working on a software development kit for programmers to code and test special Apple TV apps.
Dovey said he’s especially excited about the potential for hacks to take advantage of AirPlay, an Apple feature that will enable iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch to wirelessly stream content from audio or video apps to the Apple TV.
“I’d be very interested in the possibilities of using AirPlay video to treat an Apple TV as an attached screen in my iPhone, iPad or even Mac apps,” Dovey said.
Already, owners of the new Apple TV can hack their device to run an early version of Bradley’s software, NitoTV, a media player that promises to support every media format. That makes the Apple TV seem weak: It only plays a few iTunes-compatible formats, such as H.264-encoded MPEG-4 videos.
Bradley is also working to get some of his old Apple TV hacks working on the new system, such as an app that enables you to play Super Nintendo on the Apple TV, and an app that allows you to order a pizza.
The Awkward TV community is compiling a list of potential capabilities that could be unlocked with Apple TV hacks, such as playing Flash videos, connecting a TV tuner for recording, or hooking up a CD/DVD player for playing discs.
Reports from vendors located in the Far East suggest that the first netbooks equipped with Google's "Chrome OS" operating system could arrive before the end of the month. DigiTimesquotes sources that claim that HP and Acer will be first out of the starting blocks with a Chrome OS netbook. Interestingly, however, it looks like Google will also throw itself into the fray with an own-branded netbook, echoing the search giant's strategy with the Nexus One smartphone.
Initial shipments for Google's own model are said to reach around the 60,000 to 70,000 mark, and like the Nexus One, they won't sell through traditional retail channels. It'll include an ARM-based chip, rather than one of Intel's low-power Atom chips commonly found in netbooks.
HP and Acer's netbooks will arrive around the same time, and both of their devices will be built by the same manufacturer -- Quanta Computer. Asustek is said to still be sitting on the fence about a product, and Dell, who were originally tipped to be one of the first to launch a Chrome OS device some time ago, are nowhere to be seen.
The platform, which was first announced in July 2009, aims to do away with all the frippery associated with a traditional operating system, instead putting the web browser front and centre and relying on web apps to accomplish tasks.
It's been subject to a certain amount of skepticism from the technology press, who argue that an operating system equipped with a speedy web browser gets the job done just as well as Chrome OS, but can also accomplish far more besides.
What do you reckon, will Chrome OS be another Android or Gmail? Or will it meet the same tragic fate as Lively and Wave?
A new holographic display can transmit three-dimensional movies from one location to another almost in real time. If Princess Leia had to send her “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” message from Earth today, it would now be technologically possible.
“We can take objects from one location and show them in another location in 3D in near real time,” said optical scientist Nasser Peyghambarian, and project leader from the University of Arizona in a press conference on 1 November. “It is no longer something that is science fiction, it is actually something that you can do today.”
Holographic movies have been a dream since at least 1966, when the first hologram was transmitted over a television system by Bell Labs. Updatable holographic displays have been around for decades as well; the first was developed by Stephen Benton at the MIT Media Lab in 1989.
The new device projects a colour 3D image onto a sheet of special plastic using a fast-flashing laser. The image can be updated once every two seconds, fast enough to give a sense of movement.
“In the past, other holograms you have seen are static images,” said Pierre-Alexandre Blanche of the University of Arizona, lead author of a study in the 4 November Nature describing the device. “Now, with a 2-second lag, it starts to become something more tangible.”
The image can also be transmitted over the internet in less than a second, which would allow a near real-time window into distant events, something the authors call “holographic telepresence.”
Peyghambarian and colleagues set an array of 16 webcams in a semicircle around the objects they wished to project, which included a model airplane, a vase of flowers and the researchers’ heads. Each camera captured the object from a different perspective, making the ultimate image more lifelike.
“If you go to a 3D movie like Avatar, you would see only two perspectives, one for one eye and one for the other eye,” Peyghambarian said. “In our case, we have demonstrated 16 perspectives, but the technology has the potential to show hundreds of perspectives. So it’s very close to what humans can see.”
The cameras sent the images to another room, where they were encoded into pulsed laser that flashes 50 times per second. Each laser pulse encodes one holographic pixel, or “hogel.”
Then the researchers trained the laser onto a newly developed plastic called a photoreactive polymer, which is coated with a material that converts light into electrical charges that create and store the image. The charges move around the plastic in such a way that when light bounces off the material, it reaches your eyes as if it had bounced off the toy plane or the researcher’s head.
“With this material, since you can move the charge around, you can erase the hologram and write another hologram on it,” Blanche said.
Two years ago, Peyghambarian’s team made a similar material that could only refresh the image every four minutes. The images in that material were also disturbed by vibrations and temperature changes, so the screen had to be kept in a highly controlled box.
The new material rewrites every two seconds, a 100-fold improvement, and isn’t bothered by changes to its environment, the researchers say.
Beyond entertainment and fighting the Empire, the display could have important medical and military applications, Peyghambarian says.
“Different doctors from different parts of the world can participate [in surgery] and see things just as if they were there,” he said. The device could even be used for telecommuting. “People from Europe don’t have to come to the US to participate in a conference, it would be as if they were there.”
“This is mostly a materials advance,” said optical scientist Michael Bove of the MIT Media Lab, who was not involved in the new research but is collaborating with Peyghambarian on another project. “The material is faster and more sensitive than what had previously been reported.”
Given the small size of the screen and the two-second lag time, “some people in the field object to the term ‘telepresence,’” Bove said.
Blanche agrees that the hologram’s lag time is too long. “Quite frankly, it’s a bit annoying, and we know that,” he said.
For truly real-time video, the image would need to refresh 30 times a second. That would take either a much more sensitive material or a “very big, very nasty” laser, Blanche said. The team hopes to push the material to produce video quality holographs in the next two years, and the technology could be ready for your living room within the decade.
“In two years we improved the speed by a factor of 100. If we can improve the speed by the same factor, we will be over video rate,” Blanche said. “It will be done.”
Forget about the “Facebook Phone.” Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy is to make every handset a Facebook Phone.
The founder of the world’s largest social network unveiled what he called Facebook’s “Mobile Platform” Wednesday. It’s a new system that will let anyone sign up for, or log into, any mobile app using their Facebook credentials. If widely adopted this would extend the reach of Facebook’s “OpenID”-like universal web login to the entire, rapidly growing mobile platform.
It’s Facebook Connect moved to mobile. The catch is that you need the Facebook app, and it has to be running. But all smartphones now allow apps to run in the background, and 200 million people are already using Facebook on mobile phones -- up from 65 million only a year ago.
So, who needs to get into the phone business?
“It is bigger than Android or the iPhone,” Zuckerberg told a press conference in San Francisco, adding that the company had no intention of making its own phone. “There’s been this rumour floating around recently that Facebook’s going to build a phone. No.”
The three prongs of Facebook’s platform are single-sign in, a locations service that apps can read and write to, and a deals platform that is tied to locations.
In layman’s terms, that means that if you have your Facebook app open on your phone and you download a new app, you can create an account on that new app simply by clicking “Sign me in via Facebook,” and then clicking “Give Permissions” on your Facebook app. No new usernames or passwords are necessary to create an account.
Facebook is gambling that this inconvenience has kept many people from using apps, and that app makers will embrace the easy code integration that saves them from having to write their own login systems.
Facebook members will have to decide whether the convenience is worth allowing the social network to become their default identity provider and whether they want to share their public profile and friends with every new app they put on their phone. They’ll also have to choose whether they want to always have Facebook’s app running on their device, optionally broadcasting their online presence at all times.
The system works only with apps, but Facebook said they are working so that it will work with mobile browsers, as well. Then, you will be able to log in or create an account on a new web service, as well as any app using your mobile phone with just a few clicks. It’s a natural, the company said, because the boundaries between apps and websites are starting to dissolve with the power of HTML5.
Location-aware applications can now use Facebook’s giant database of places so when you check in with services like Foursquare, Yelp or Loopt, that information feeds directly into Facebook’s Places so that it is as if you checked in on Facebook.
The third prong is the mobile platform Facebook is offering local businesses -- a way to offer deals to people nearby. Someone using their phone can look for a nearby business, such as a coffee shop, and see what coffee shops are close and which are offering coupons. You then “check in” to claim the deal, show your phone’s screen to the cashier and get, say, a 50-percent-off deal on a latte.
Businesses can also make virtual loyalty cards, so that every time a customer checks in they get a virtual “punch” on their coffee card.
“What’s been missing with location check-ins is the ability for that local business to be able to communicate with me,” said Facebook director of product marketing Tim Kendall.
Early partners for deals and rewards include the Gap, Palms Hotel and even the Golden State Warriors, which is giving people who check in at an upcoming game an invite to a VIP event featuring one of their basketball team’s players. Limited to the United States at the start, the service is free for businesses to use.
Zuckerberg closed by saying that social is just as hot as mobile, and that there are many industries and companies that can be disrupted by introducing a social layer.
“You can rethink any product area to make it social and have it grow virally because people use the app their friends use,” Zuckerberg said. “And we want to be part of that disruption.”
