Bump: iOS 4 Has 90% Adoption Rate, Android 2.3 Only .4%

One of the biggest differences between Android and iOS continues to be the fact that by nature, iOS users continue to far outpace their Android counterparts in keeping their devices updated. According the makers of the popular app Bump, nearly 90 percent of its users are running iOS 4 or newer.

What’s even more interesting is the fact that the latest iOS release, 4.2.1, is used by about 53% of its users. That means over half of all iOS users are fully up to date. Now compare this to Android’s latest release — 2.3 — who only has a measly 0.4 percent adoption rate.

As MG Siegler pointed out over at TechCrunch, we should be fair and compare Android 2.2 and iOS 4 against one another, since Android 2.3 is currently available only on Google’s own Nexus S handset (although Android 2.2  has been out much longer than iOS 4) . Google doesn’t fare much better here: 52 percent.
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More on Make-My-Baby.com

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan does great legwork on the Make-My-Baby.com story I wrote about earlier today: Facebook says the company isn’t its third largest advertiser (and in fact was never an advertiser), and Bing says it’s terminating its affiliate relationship.

HP’s WebOS Tablet: Think September, Not February?

Engadget’s Nilay Patel has an apparent scoop: pictures and details on HP’s plans for tablets based on its WebOS operating system. The images aren’t as exciting as the factoids–all tablets look pretty snazzy in product shots–but the most striking factoid is the apparent possibility that the tablets won’t ship until September. That seems eons away given how many other tablets are set to ship in the next few months. It’s also not the “early 2011″ that HP was promising a few months ago. And if HP talks about the tablets at its Feburary 9th WebOS event, it would be preannouncing them by seven months or so. Here’s hoping we don’t have the whole story just yet–and that the whole story involves WebOS tablets showing up before the fall.

HTML5: It’s Logoized! Prematurely!

As Cnet’s Stephen Shankland is reporting, the World Wide Web Consortium has created a fancy logo for HTML5. (To me, it looks a little bit like Superman’s “S” and a little bit like a Tide box.) It’s even selling HTML5 T-shirts. I don’t remember any previous version of HTML getting that honor, although the news does remind me of an attempt to promote MP3 via a logo back in 2008.

I love HTML5 and want it to succeed–and yes, I understand that it’s a collection of technologies and standards rather than something specific. But  it seems a tad premature to be promoting it with a logo when the industry still can’t even agree on basic stuff like how HTML5 video should work.

Microsoft Brings OneNote to the iPhone. Is the Rest of Office Next?

Microsoft apps for Apple’s iPhone aren’t new–there are already ones for Live Messenger and Bing, for instance–but it’s still noteworthy when the world’s biggest software company releases software for the phone made by its most venerable archrival. And today Microsoft is releasing a version of its OneNote note-taking app for the iPhone–the first time that any Microsoft Office program has arrived on iOS.

OneNote for iPhone syncs with OneNote’s other incarnations on Windows, on the Web, and on Windows Phone 7. (It does so using Microsoft’s SkyDrive online storage service, and you need a Live ID to use the app.) It’s easy to use and has basic note-taking features, including the ability to add photos and checklist items. It does feel more like a complement to OneNote’s other versions than a fully autonomous app–I don’t see any way to create a new notebook, for instance–and it certainly doesn’t compete with the 800-pound gorilla of note-taking, EverNote, in terms of features and supported platforms. But OneNote users who have iPhones should be pleased to have access to their jottings on the go, and it’s good to see the app arrive on the single most important smartphone platform. (Microsoft says it plans to update the software as time goes on.)

The most intriguing thing about OneNote for the iPhone is the fact that it brings a little bit of Microsoft Office to iOS for the first time. There have been rumors in the past that Microsoft was considering releasing a version of Office for the iPhone and/or iPad, but this is the first tangible proof that the company doesn’t think it’s self-destructive to put part of Office on an Apple mobile device rather than preserve it for Windows Phone 7, which includes mobile versions of OneNote, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook as standard equipment.

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Kongregate Gives Android a Proper Flash Gaming Portal

[UPDATE: Google has pulled this app from the Android Market for "unknown reasons." You can now get it directly from Kongregate's website.]

The arrival of Adobe Flash games on Android phones last May was dampened by two factors: Most of the games weren’t that great, and there was no obvious way to filter the good stuff from the bad.

Kongregate, the Flash game portal owned by GameStop, hopes to change all that with Kongregate Arcade, an app for Android phones running version 2.2 and above. It’s kind of like OpenFeint’s awesome game discovery app for iPhone and Android, with recommendations, user ratings and screenshots, but instead of routing users back to the App Store or Android Market, it links to Flash games on Kongregate’s own mobile site.

Other perks include badges (with user profiles that sync between the desktop and mobile sites) and offline support for a select number of games.

Without the app, Kongregate’s mobile site is just a running list of games, with no descriptions or added features. It isn’t much different from competing sites, such as Armor Games, and certainly isn’t very inviting. The native app, by comparison, looks more like Kongregate’s full website, and it could be just what Kongregate needs to make Flash gaming more popular on Android phones.

I haven’t had a chance to try the new app yet (it’ll have to wait until my wife gets home with her Droid Incredible). I’d love to add some impressions when I get a chance. In the meantime, I hope Kongregate users start helping the good mobile Flash games rise to the top.

A Facebook Advertiser That’s Bad News

[UPDATE: Facebook says Ad Age had it wrong and Make-My-Baby.com wasn't a Facebook advertiser at all.]

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb has a post this morning that left me with a chilling sense of deja vu. It’s about a Facebook advertiser named Make-My-Baby.com–according to an Advertising Age story, Facebook’s third-largest advertiser–which has a silly little site that lets you dress up a baby. The site requires you to install a browser plug-in; the plug-in changes your home page and search engine to Bing. From then on, Microsoft gives the Make-My-Baby people a bounty when you click on a search ad in Bing. (Kirkpatrick is reporting on discoveries made by Google’s Matt Cutts.)

It’s all eerily reminiscent of ugly practices of the early-to-mid-2000s in which advertising companies and their partners used a number of practices to install software that pelted PC users with pop-ups and otherwise fouled up their computers. Here’s a 2005 story we did at PC World on the topic.

For the most part, the companies involved in the earlier round of cheesy PC invasions got what was coming to them. The PCW story discusses DirectRevenue, 180Solutions, and WhenU; the first two companies are out of business, and WhenU’s site now leads to information on how to uninstall its software. I wonder how Facebook and Bing will handle the news of this business partner’s behavior?

Roku’s WealthTV Deal Is a Glimpse of A La Carte

For folks fed up with paying too much for cable, a la carte television — the idea of paying only for the channels you watch — is the impossible dream, but Roku’s taken the first step towards attaining it with WealthTV’s 24-hour linear feed.

For $2.99 per month, Roku users can now watch WealthTV as if it were on cable, with a set schedule of shows streaming around the clock. This is the first U.S. cable channel to offer its content to Roku this way, though it’ll also allow subscribers to watch shows on demand.

To be sure, this would be a bigger deal if WealthTV was a popular channel. Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Cox Cable don’t even offer it in their line-ups. But it’s precisely because of WealthTV’s insignificance that this news has big ramifications for the future of TV.

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CES Wows and Duds

The Consumer Electronics Show is a behemoth, with vendors hawking hundreds of iPad holders and trays, and millions of iPhone cases and protective films; there were just as many oh-look-at-me-too tablets (thanks, Apple, for creating this new industry). And, of course, there’s lots of noise, more booth babes than last year, and people tethered to their smart phones, tweeting their every movement.

Perfect if you have big thumbs.

I found a handful, maybe a dozen, innovative and smart products in out-of-the-way booths, and a few “oh, wow, I gotta have that” gems. I’ve got a few to tell you about this week — like the gizmos that help you save energy at home and earbuds that’ll knock your sox off.

In upcoming newsletters I’ve got hardware that brings TV and the Internet closer together, software that blocks cell-phone telemarketers, and a tool to recover my stolen notebook — or pay me a grand if it doesn’t.

At CES, I watched a 20-year-old whip out what looked like an error-free message on his iPhone in nothing flat. Me, I have the toughest time keeping my thumbs on my iPod’s keypad. Solving the problem is 4iThumbs2, a rubbery, plastic overlay. It has little bumps above where the letters are, giving a lovely, tactile feel when typing. It comes in two versions — landscape and portrait.

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TiVo’s iPad App Now Available

TiVo’s iPad app, announced in November, is now available via the the App Store.

I’ve had app on hand for several weeks now, and I quite like it. Whereas TiVo has been lagging the competition in providing this sort of functionality, they may have just leap frogged nearly all contenders in producing both a beautiful and functional television companion. Of course, it’s only a companion for TiVo Premiere owners. But perhaps there are a few more this week given that amazing $65 Woot deal.

The app itself is quite comprehensive. Who needs picture-in-guide when you can manage just about every meaningful element of your TiVo from an iPad without interrupting the television viewing experience. Remote control? Check. Guide? Check. Season Passes, To Do List, Now Playing? Check, check, check. Plus, you know no app is complete these days without the ability to share on Twitter and Facebook. So they’ve checked that off, too. Bonus — portrait and landscape views for any/every screen.

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Yes, You Can File Your Taxes on Your Smartphone

Three things are certain in life: birth, death, and taxes. So why not turn the process of filing your taxes into a mobile app? That’s exactly what Intuit–makers of  TurboTax–have done with SnapTax. Available for both the iPhone and Android, anyone who is eligible to file a 1040EZ will be able to use the app to file from start to finish.

For those of us who are tax illiterate — 1040EZ users are those who make under $100,000, have no dependents, and are going to claim the standard deduction. Essentially the profile of the “mobile generation,” Intuit believes.

While the download is free, Intuit will charge a $14.99 fee to file the form electronically. SnapTax uses optical character recognition to “scan” W2 forms, making the process of data entry much easier. Like its big brother TurboTax, the user will always have a running tally of their refund (or, gasp, how much more Uncle Sam wants) during the process. It will also allow for the submission of state income taxes as well.

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Target: All $40 PS3 Orders Will Be Cancelled

So much for getting that $39.99 PS3: “Target recently became aware of mismatched price and product information on Target.com and Amazon.com, which resulted in the PlayStation 3 Move Advanced Shooter Grip and the discontinued Sony PS3 Hardware System being displayed incorrectly on both sites,” Target spokesperson Morgan Murray has told us. “Unfortunately we are unable to offer either of these items at this time and we are cancelling guests’ orders without any charge to their account.  We sincerely regret this inconvenience.”

Google Translate Goes Star Trek

Those of us who are Trekkers will remember that all the aliens spoke English. Well, not quite: some used a device known as the Universal Translator. This would listen for the speaker’s words and translate them on the fly for the listener and vice versa.

You knew it was only a matter of time before real life caught up with Star Trek. Enter Google’s latest update for its Translator app which allows for something called “Conversation Mode.” While it won’t translate Klingon just yet, it does Spanish in its initial relase — a far cry from the 53 languages that the text translation service currently supports.

Is it perfect? Not quite, as this video showing a prototype of the software (from last year) demonstrates:

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How Important is the “BlackBerry” in “BlackBerry RIM?”

RIM’s promising BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has features which involve syncing information with a BlackBerry handset. Even after reading this Forbes story, I’m fuzzy on whether that’s a pro or a con.

Steve Jobs Takes Another Medical Leave

Steve Jobs with the original MacBook Air in 2008

Apple CEO and cofounder Steve Jobs is going on medical leave for an unspecified length of time. Jobs, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, went on a previous leave two years ago, during which he had a liver transplant, and returned in June of 2009.  As before, Apple COO Tim Cook (who represented the company at last week’s Verizon iPhone event) will be in charge of day-to-day operations in Jobs’ absence.

During Jobs’ 2009 leave, a high percentage of of the tech pundits who speculated about the upshot mostly proved that it’s a lousy idea for techies to try and play medical expert.

PlayStation 3 On Sale at Amazon for $40? Probably Not!

[New information: Target has issued a statement, saying all orders will be cancelled. See it here]

I’m not sure whether it’s an error on Amazon’s part, or an unannounced sale: Sony’s PlayStation 3 is on sale at the site for $39.99. The retailer itself is not offering the console at this price, instead Target appears to be the source.

Obviously people have rushed to take advantage of this, and it is already appearing out of stock. I am viewing this skeptically: the deal seems too good to be true, and the PS3 is nowhere near to being discontinued.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this pans out. That said, I have ordered myself one just in case.

Update 1: People are noting that Target’s website is also showing this, but the weight is off and appears to be a Move accessory. Still, the error means Somebody’s going to get a stern talking to Monday morning…

Update 2: The order when placed comes as a confirmation that you’ve purchased the Move “shooter grip” accessory, a reader reports. However, the cancellation notice shows you’ve canceled a 60GB PlayStation 3.

Update 3: Looks like as of 3am ET, the item has been removed from Amazon, and on Target’s website there’s no more $39.99 PS3. More reports coming in indicate that in some cases, the confirmation e-mails do say that it is the console, and not the accessory as others have seen. We have mails out to both target and Amazon for comment on the matter.