RIM and AT&T: The Love Affair Blossoms

It’s tempting to interpret every move AT&T makes in terms of its relationship with Apple, its status as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the US, and the implications of that exclusivity ending, as it will someday. It’s also dangerous to think that way, because the tea leaves are all too hard to read. Still, one fascinating sidelight of this morning’s BlackBerry Torch launch was the degree to which it was a lovefest between RIM and AT&T.

The first person on stage at this BlackBerry unveiling–the one who got to brandish a Torch in public for the first time–wasn’t a RIM honcho. It was AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega. And RIM and AT&T executives handed off between each other for the entire presentation, spending nearly as much time praising each other as they did bragging about the new handset.

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BlackBerry Torch First Impressions: Fresh But Familiar, Indeed

“The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.” Irving Berlin supposedly said that, and the quote was on my mind this morning as I attended RIM’s BlackBerry Torch launch in New York.

When Palm and Microsoft were faced with the challenge of fast-forwarding into the iPhone era, they had a perverse advantage: Their current products were so obviously part of smartphones’ past that it would have been riskier to stick with them than to start fresh. Hence Palm’s WebOS (a technical success even though it hasn’t yet shipped in a successful product) and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (which, whatever it turns out to be, is anything but a Windows Mobile retread).

For RIM, the challenge is indeed tougher. BlackBerry phones are still selling well; their traditional strengths, such as serious e-mail and well-done physical keyboards remain strengths; they’re part of how the world does business. And yet it’s clear that BlackBerry faces a potentially existential threat from iPhone and Android, both of which are slickier, sexier, Webbier, and more modern than any RIM device to date.

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Lala’s Lost, But is it Missed?

Over at CNet, Greg Sandoval’s inside sources say Apple’s setting low expectations for cloud music, and hasn’t yet acquired licenses to stream songs from its own servers.

In other words, the assumption that Apple acquired Lala to build its own streaming music service won’t pan out anytime soon. The Lala crew may actually be working on some sort of streaming video service instead, Sandoval’s sources say. Apple acquired Lala in December 2009, and shut it down in late May.

We’ve written about Lala quite a few times, because it took such a unique approach to digital music. In addition to selling MP3s, Lala sold streaming tracks for 10 cents each, and let you listen to any song once for free. It could also scan your entire downloaded music library and store a cloud version to be accessed anywhere. For Apple to offer any of those services, it needs more licensing from the music industry, and Apple reportedly hasn’t negotiated for that yet.

But as I look at the digital music landscape now, I don’t think Lala is really necessary. All-you-can-eat music services have emerged from Rhapsody, MOG and now Rdio, all of them offering mobile and desktop access for $10 per month, with the ability to download songs locally. That’s a lot more convenient than building a streaming library of individual tracks, and could be more economical for music junkies. If you just want to hear a song once for free, you can accomplish that with music search tools from Google and Bing.

As for the digital locker concept, how essential is it? Music doesn’t take up a lot of room, and storage capacity on mobile devices is only increasing. I’d rather see Apple focus on streaming video, because movies and TV shows are much more unwieldy to store and transfer. Although I was sad to see Lala go, I’m not desperate for it to come back.

Rdio Music Service: Mobile, Social, and Impressive–and Now Open to Everybody

And the subscription music services just keep coming: Rdio, from Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, is leaving private beta today. That means that anyone can sign up for this ambitious new offering, which includes a Web-based service plus mobile apps for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. It competes against such services as Rhapsody and MOG, and from my time with it so far, it seems to do so formidably.

In terms of features, Rdio may be the most comprehensive iTunes substitute so far. (For the moment, at least–the competition is pretty intense in this category.) Like the late, lamented Lala, it can scan your music collection and add albums you already have to your online collection. (It doesn’t match Lala’s ability to give you online access even for stuff that’s not in its own collection, though, and it’s not finding every track in my library.) Its iPhone app supports iOS4 multitasking, so you can listen in the background while using another app. It has a neat syncing feature that lets you find music in your desktop browser, then auto-download it to your phone for listening whether or not you have Internet access.

Like Lala, Rdio also emphasizes the social aspect of music: Its Web-based version lets you find and follow friends and peek at the music they’ve been listening to. Every time I try a feature like this, I’m struck by the fact that my friendships almost never seem to have anything to do with shared tastes in music. But maybe you’ll find it a useful way to discover songs you’ll like.

The service says it currently offers seven million songs–fewer than Rhapsody’s ten million plus or the 13 million in Apple’s iTunes Store, but still impressive.

Rdio is a paid service, and follows the standard pricing for subscription music: The Web-based version is $4.99 a month, and Web-plus-mobile is $9.99 a month. In both cases, you can listen to all the music you like as long as you keep paying. The $9.99 fee seems to cover multiple devices (Rhapsody charges $14.99 a month if you want to listen on more than one mobile gadget).

Subscription music remains a theoretically appealing idea that surprisingly few folks choose to pay for. (People who are willing to plunk down money for songs, it seems, prefer to buy them outright rather than rent them.) But Rdio comes close to erasing all the downsides of subscriptions except for the need to keep paying, and I’ll bet its major competitors will match most of its features soon. If you’d like to feast on music for $10 a month, give it a listen.

BlackBerry Event Live Coverage

Greetings from New York. RIM’s BlackBerry event starts at 11am ET (8am for you west coasters). I’m there and hope you’ll join me.

Hello From My iPad on a Plane

Pay no attention to this post– okay, a little attention if you want, but it doesn’t merit much. I’m on board a Virgin America flight to New York (where I’ll cover RIM’s BlackBerry event tomorrow). And since I have Internet access via Gogo but no laptop–it ran out of juice–I’m trying blogging on my iPad.

Verdict: Doable, but slow and not terribly pleasant. Biggest problem: I’m in a middle seat…

No Electronic Reading, Please

This may be one of the fundamental differences between New York and San Francisco: In the Bay Area, I’ve never seen an eating and drinking establishment try to ban laptops, let alone e-readers.

How Nintendo’s Dealing With 3DS Eye Strain

If 3D gaming is going to take off, it’ll have to find a way to reduce eye strain during lengthy play sessions. For one Nintendo 3DS game designer, that means being mindful of the way 3D effects are applied.

Masahiro Sakurai is a veteran game designer who is now working on Kid Icarus — the first proper sequel to the NES classic — for Nintendo 3DS. When asked by CVG whether he’s felt any eye strain with the handheld, Sakurai said the issue is most pronounced when there are a lot of objects flying towards the user.

Sakurai’s solution? Focus more on movement away from the user. That’s it. Sakurai didn’t elaborate further or give any examples of how this would affect the game.

I’m not completely satisfied by the explanation. When I tried the Nintendo 3DS at E3, my most profound 3D moment happened when a dinosaur nearly popped out of the screen during a scream of rage. To hear that such moments must be used sparingly is disheartening.

But at least the explanation shows that Nintendo developers are trying to address eye strain at all. Nintendo was already burned once by the issue; the infamous Virtual Boy would actually pause and remind players to take breaks. Those who didn’t heed the advice got headaches.

Nintendo’s other eye strain solution is built into the 3DS hardware: Players can reduce or switch off the 3D effect entirely with a slider on the side of the device. Again, it’s no cure-all, but at least it will allow people to keep playing without interruption.

The Case for (Not) Jailbreaking Your iPhone

The simplest and most expansive iDevice jailbreak was released last night. In the past, and prior to Spirit, most jailbreak solutions required a computer intermediary running software locally to get the job done. It wasn’t difficult, but it did require research and could be somewhat intimidating to the uninitiated. Whereas the new jailbreakme.com website offers jailbreaking to anyone who can simply navigate to a URL. But I wonder how big the need or interest in jailbreaking is these days.

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A Less Delicious Flavor of Froyo

I’m not personally traumatized by the news that the version of Android 2.2 that Verizon’s original Droid gets won’t let the phone tether to a laptop or serve as a hotspot–I have a Verizon MiFi–but it’s another sign of Android’s inherently fractured nature. (Back at Google’s I|O conference, it played up the hotsot feature as a key advance.)

Office for Mac Coming in October…and It’s Cheaper

Microsoft said Monday that it was expecting to release Office for Mac 2011 in October, while at the same time cutting the price as much as 50 percent to bring pricing in line with its Windows counterparts. Two versions of the software will be made available, one directed at academics and the other for business.

Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 will include World, Excel, Powerpoint, and Microsoft’s instant messaging application for Mac OS X. The business version will include all of the above applications plus Outlook, which will replace Entourage as Office’s e-mail client on the Mac.

Pricing for the student version ill be $119 for a single license, and $149 for a family license which allows for installation on up to three machines. This compares to a single license price of $149 for Office 2008. For Office for Mac Home and Business 2011, a single license is now $199, down from $399, and a family license $279.

At any time, a user will be able to upgrade from the Student to Business version using online upgrade functionality, Microsoft said.

A $99 version of the business suite would also be made available, but only to those in higher-education. Proof of employment or enrollment in an academic institution would likely be required to take advantage of the discount.

Those who purchase Office for Mac 2008 after Monday will be eligible to upgrade to the new version at no cost, Microsoft said. To receive the free upgrade, the purchaser must register at Microsoft’s website.

Study: Social Media Consumes Our Online Time

Checking e-mail has long been considered the primary pastime of the online user. However, if data from Nielsen is to be believed, that’s no longer the case. The firm found that on average, about 23 percent of our online time is spent on social networking sites, versus 8.3 percent on email.

This was a much wider spread than last year, when it was 15.8 and 11.5 percent respectively. The changes could be explained by the fact that social networking sites are the primary method of communication between friends these days, which makes sending an e-mail much less necessary.

Facebook is dominating this space, with an 85 percent share of social networking use. MySpace comes in a very distant second with a five percent share, and Twitter only a single percentage point.

Our third most popular activity online is playing games, which on average takes up about 10 percent of our time. Again, highlighting the power of social networking, Zynga is one of the biggest companies in the space.

Zynga is creator of the popular game Farmville, which has seen a majority of its success as a result of the success of Facebook itself.

20 Billion Tweets on Twitter

Social networking service Twitter hit its 20 billionth tweet on Saturday, reaching the milestone only two months after it had received its 15 billionth tweet, and five months after hitting ten billion. The accelerating growth shows that the fad surrounding Twitter is still going strong, and especially in Japan, where the milestone tweet occurred.

Some 12 percent of all tweets originate from the country, the single biggest contributor to Twitter traffic. Some say the language itself is the reason: saying something in 140 Kanji characters would be a much more complete thought than in 140 Roman ones.

Forget Hulu Plus, PlayOn Works on iPad (Sort Of)

While Harry was writing a short post about PlayOn’s iPhone web app, I immediately started trying to run the streaming video service on the iPad as well. I’m happy to say that with a bit of trickery, I’m now able to watch videos from Hulu, CBS.com and more from the iPad, without paying for Hulu Plus.

To do this, you’ll need a Windows PC, the latest version of PlayOn (you can try it free for 14 days, and the paid version is much cheaper than Hulu Plus), and Atomic Web Browser, an alternative iPad browser that costs $1. You’ll also want a bit of patience, because PlayOn doesn’t officially support the iPad right now and the workaround isn’t flawless.

The trick is simple: In Atomic Web, go to “Settings,” then hit “Identify Browser As,” then select “Mobile Safari – iPhone.” This fools PlayOn’s mobile website into thinking you’re visiting from an iPhone, so it won’t redirect you back to the PlayOn homepage.

Now, run PlayOn on your computer, then visit m.playon.tv on the iPad. Press the button to connect with your PC, and you’re in. Just look at all that content!

Fair warning on some glitches: Each menu page may take a couple seconds to load, and you might stare at a black screen momentarily before videos start playing. Don’t start tapping buttons wildly, just wait it out. Also, my computer slowed down considerably and my router dropped its connection after using PlayOn’s mobile site, but I haven’t experimented enough to say whether those are one-time bugs, critical flaws or total coincidence.

I’m now seriously considering a lifetime PlayOn license (as an aside, I’m thrilled that PlayOn now offers a flat-rate alternative to its yearly subscription plan). PlayOn only works over a home network with a PC in tow, so iPhone support doesn’t really interest me, because I won’t watch video at home on such a small screen. But with iPad support, I can watch Hulu in bed, or subscribe to MLB.tv without also having to buy the $15 iPad app. Until PlayOn adds iPad support officially, or Apple approves PlayOn’s native apps, this workaround is going to be great.

Android Finally Outsells iPhone–Yes, Again!

JK on the Run’s Kevin C. Tofel is reporting that a new Nielsen study says that Android phones have 27 percent of the US market for smartphones, beating out Apple’s iPhone for the first time. At the same time, another report says that Android has an even heftier 34 percent of the market, making it the country’s most popular mobile OS.

Both factoids sounded familiar. Sure enough, back in May yet another firm (NPD) said that Android had 28 percent of the market to iPhone’s 21 percent. Lesson: Don’t take research reports as gospel.

Everybody agrees that Android phones are outselling iPhones in terms of units. Given how many models are on the market, and how well-marketed some of them are, it’s not surprising that it’s taken the lead–the shocker is that it took this long for such a pervasive OS to beat one that’s on only two phones from one carrier.

For consumers, the unit-sales horse race isn’t all that interesting. It’s the overall health of the competing ecosystems–as reflected in quality and quantity of third-party apps, services, and accessories–that matters. And while Android is making rapid progress here, nobody who’s trying to be even sort of objective will make the case that the Android Market is now the equal of the iPhone Store.

Android now has users in vast quantities; it’s up to Google to polish up the still-mediocre Market and do everything in its power to help developers create lots of exceptional apps.

PlayOn Hits the iPhone, Applessly

PlayOn, a service that uses your PC as an intermediary to route streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix to non-PC devices, is launching an iPhone version. As VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar reports, the most interesting thing about it is that it’s a browser-based service you access via Safari. (PlayOn submitted an app, but Apple hasn’t approved it.)