Well, two things. One, it was developed by my former employer,Resource Interactive, for whom I have the utmost respect and must also disclaim. Two, it is a tool of sorts, which I seem to be more interested in these days rather than just games or social networking. I wanted to check it out.

How it works.
You use ColorSnap to take a picture of anything (a room, an object, whatever). After the image is selected and zoomed in to the right spot in the application view finder, you move your finger over that image and a small square-shaped magnifier follows your finger around and shows a detail view of the color in that part of the photo. Once you find a color with which you are satisfied, you press the “palette” button and it identifies the primary paint color you have just selected and offers two secondary colors that go with it. For example, if you have a dominant object in a room, like a giant red leather couch, you could use this tool to find some supportive secondary colors for the walls and furniture surrounding it.

In my case, I took a photo of the drab, tan filing cabinet above my desk at the office and ColorSnap suggested both Leisure Blue and Repose Gray as complimentary colors for my cubicle. Leisure Blue at the office? Oh the irony. This is great though! I am going to suggest to my bosses that a Leisure Blue leather love seat and a Repose Gray Teutonic wool rug be added to my cubicle. Hey, I asked Sherwin…I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, you can save that color set into the ColorSnap library and can also use the iPhone’s location services to automatically find the nearest Sherwin Williams store (or also search by old-school zip code, if you want), and then go and get your paint.

Initial impressions.
As a former employee of the place that built this app and in an attempt to remain impartial, I think I test drove ColorSnap harder than I normally do when testing apps and frankly the results were impressive. No crashes. No hang time. It really seemed simple and solid in use. But I still wanted something else impartial to base at least some of my measurements against. So I decided to also measure the app against the DotMobi Web Development Guide’s Mobile Strategy section as well.

Paraphrasing from the guide—successful mobile websites and apps should successfully answer the following questions:

1. “Why should it be mobile?”

2. “How does your audience benefit from a mobile presentation [of content]? What tasks will they accomplish with your mobile content? Does the immediacy of mobile help the user?”

Well, the first thing I ask myself about all iPhone apps these days is this: is it really useful or is it a bandwagon agency/dev shop move to prove competency in order to get into the mobile development game? With this application there is clearly a use that it fits and it’s not just eye candy. With regard to the question of “why should this tool be mobile” the answer is that painting is usually location specific and this tool helps people easily make color decisions, from place to place. Essentially, ColorSnap is a dynamic swatch book that also helps users pick out complimentary paint colors.

As far as benefits, ColorSnap’s mobile form factor is perfectly suited for being able to quickly move from location to location (say, in a house or apartment), choose and save color schemes for that place, compare them and then find the closest place to buy them, as paint. Its main benefit is that it streamlines that whole process without the clutter of unnecessary features. It is simple and clear and at a glance you immediately know how to use it. That gives the app depth and clarity. Just as one would take a portable set of color swatches through a room, ColorSnap is a natural-feeling alternative. Couple this basic use with the iPhone’s screen real estate and top-notch color depth you can see why it is a great choice of platform for this kind of tool. And besides, how many people have had advanced color theory training anyway? (Ok, bad example since half of all iPhone owners are probably flaky designer types). Um, well… who really wants to carry a laptop or a dusty color wheel around with them from room to room to process colors?

Is it lacking anything?
Color can be subjective and the app makes no bones about the fact that light source, individual perception or other factors could affect the results and therefore the color you see on the screen may not be a 100% accurate match to the paint suggested. A color-calibrated, exact-match, pigment analyzer it is not. But for “ballparking” your painting plans, ColorSnap really can help you make some basic color decisions and is a convenient tool for giving you a reasonably accurate palette of complimentary color schemes. In fact, my only gripe with the app at all is that I wish it skipped the short intro sequence when you launch it, but that’s just me. It is probably part of the loading sequence.

The Bottom Line.
ColorSnap is a useful and casual tool to consult when picking out color schemes for any painting project. Ultimately, rely on your own good sense when making your final decision on color (or your significant other’s if you are colortastically challenged), but this tool can help you get close and offer sound color suggestions. It’s fun to use too. Sherwin-Williams and Resource Interactive hit one out of the park with their development of ColorSnap for iPhone!

Source: www.mobilecrunch.com

George Hotz

originally unlocked the iPhone

purplera1n

3.0 firmware

Hotz mentions in a blog post that the jailbreak for Mac is “coming soon.” The iPhone Dev Team did release a unlock for 3.0 which did not work on the iPhone 3GS, but Hotz’s version does (although it doesn’t free you from your current carrier).

Hotz goes over the process of the jailbreaking on his blog:

Connect your iPhone normally. Click “make it ra1n”. Wait. On bootup, run Freeze, the purplera1n installer app.

Hotz does warn users that you’ll need to backup your data just in case, and emphasizes that the tool is still in beta. Hotz also mentions that normally he does not make tools for the public, and rather have the iPhone Dev Team figure out the unlock process. Hotz continues by explaining that Apple will probably find a fix for the loophole, release an update, and he will go back to work on finding the next loophole.

Update: John Biggs over at CrunchGear goes through the process of jailbreaking his iPhone 3GS using Hotz’s program.

source: www.techcrunch.com

The study was an intense focus group in which 12 subjects were monitored with eye-tracking cameras as they conducted searches. Afterward, they were interviewed and completed a survey. Prior to the test, all the subjects used Google as their main search engine. Following the test, 4 out of the 12, or one third, said that overall they preferred Bing. The other 8 said that they preferred Google because they were already familiar with it, used other Google products, or that Bing’s improvements are simply not enough to make them switch.

What is amazing is that when the test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria (visual design, organization of features, filtering options, and relevance of results), Bing handily beat Google in everything but result relevance. Arguably, that is the most important criteria, but most of the study participants thought that both search engines tied on result relevance. So even though Bing ranked better on design, and tied on relevance, that was not enough for most of them to switch.

Catalyst CEO Nick Gould concludes that Microsoft “created something as good as Google and that is not good enough.” Overall, the test subjects “were not swayed.” No wonder Microsoft is spending up to $100 million on Bing marketing.

Remember, this is only a dozen people so it is not a statistically valid sample. Consider the survey results anecdotal. What is more conclusive are the eye-tracking results.

About half of the participants found and used the Explore Pane on the left side of Bing’s home page and results pages to aid in refinement and navigation, while all of them ignored the navigation/refinement links along the top left of Google (Web, video, Images, Maps, News).

Also because the Explore Pane on Bing takes up the left hand column and then stops, creating white space underneath, people naturally stop there. Heat maps generated by the eye-tracking data showed that people scroll much farther down Google’s search results pages, perhaps because there is no visual cue telling them to stop or they were not finding what they were looking for. It is not clear they got better results with Bing, but if the result they wanted was not above the fold, then they might use the Explore pane to refine their search.

The way results were displayed also had an effect on how long people looked at the ads along the top. The amount of time spent on the ads varied by search, depending on what kind of additional navigation information was presented just below the sponsored results. For instance, a search on Bing for “digital camera” concentrates attention there with navigational links to filter results by top brands, prices and guides. Participants spent 150 percent more time looking at the ads just above that activity zone than on Google.

A search for a local hotel, however, produces similar results on both search engines in that area just below the top ads (a map with local listings). So there was not much difference between the two in the how much time was spent looking at the top ads related to that search. In all cases, the ads on the right were only noticed about half the time.

Read more here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/study-suggests-people-prefer-bings-design-to-googles-but-still-wont-switch/

Source: www.techcrunch.com

Shamlian and Matt Lauer briefly address the potential privacy concerns that have been raised over Voice, which would give Google access to your voice conversations and voicemail. Given that many of us have already used Gmail for years, handing over sensitive data to Google isn’t exactly novel, but it’s a valid point nonetheless. That said, the Today Show piece entirely neglects the other real challenges facing Voice at this point: it requires you to start using a new telephone number (unless you wait it out until number portability) and the numbers shown by your outbound calls can be different from the ones your friends have, which can lead to confusion.

There’s also a pretty big goof at the end of the piece: Matt Laurer concludes the segment saying that Google Voice is “available today, nationwide”, which was big news given that Voice has long only been available to previous GrandCentral members. Google Voice Product Manager Craig Walker has confirmed that this was a goof on NBC’s part, but says that invites have begun going out today to those who have previously requested them. Walker says that the team has “a long list to go through so it will take a while to get them all out”, so don’t be surprised if it takes a while before you get yours. Of course, it probably won’t be long before Voice does open up to the masses, as it wouldn’t make sense for Google to show off the product on the Today Show if the public launch is still months away.

Video: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/google-voice-makes-its-today-show-debut-invites-going-out-today/

Source: www.techcrunch.com

But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness—a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back.

A good proxy for the level of general curiosity about what is on Twitter is how many people visit its Website. The worldwide numbers are out from comScore. In May, 2009, 37.3 million people visited Twitter.com, which is up 16 percent from April, 2009. The monthly growth slowed down from the 68 percent in April, but was not as flat as the 3.5 percent growth comScore reported for the U.S. in May.

Remember that these are month-over-month growth rates. The annual growth rate for global unique visitors in May, 2009 was 1,334 percent. And none of these numbers include the activity spurred by the Iranian elections in June, which I suspect will add to a pickup in month-over-month growth once again.

But let’s dive a little deeper into the data. The 37.2 million visitors include both people who use Twitter.com as their main interface with the service and curious visitors who aren’t necessarily registered users. About half of all active accounts, by some measures, access the service by desktop and mobile clients, and these numbers don’t count those. To some extent, the comScore number is a good measure of the general curiosity in Twitter for any given month. It doesn’t tell us the abandonment rate, but it does give us some peek at engagement.

Most people consume Twitter in a passive, sheep-like manner. They read other people’s Tweets more than they produce their own. How do we know people are reading stuff on Twitter? Look at Twitter’s pageviews. They are up 30 percent month-over-month to 900 million pageviews globally in May. So pageviews are up twice as much as unique visitors, which implies that each visitor is looking at twice as many pages as they were the month before.

And if you drill down deeper, the average pages per visitor is up to 24 pages per visitor per month, which indicates an almost-daily habit on average. That number is up from 13 pages per visitor per month in January, and 7 pages per visitor per month a year ago. In other words, the addiction is growing.

Twitter

Twitter

Twitter

We’re 5 days away from that milestone. Anyone want to take that bet still?

It’s been 18 days since the launch of the Palm Pre, and the device has already passed an important milestone: 1 million app downloads, according to mobile analytics firm Medialets. That’s impressive for a store with only 30 or so applications. While Apple surpassed 10 million downloads in its first weekend following the App Store launch in 2007, it had over 500 applications at launch, and already had a few million devices (the original iPhone) with which people could download from.

The big problem for Palm is that is set itself up to be compared to the iPhone with comments like the one above and its feature set. And now it has a huge mountain to climb to get anywhere near it. While the Pre may have seen a million app downloads after 18 days, Apple’s newest device, the iPhone 3GS, sold a million hardware units in just three days after its launch last week. Analysts estimate Pre sales to be about 150,000 so far. All told, there are well over 20 million iPhones now out there (probably closer to 25 million), and when you throw in iPod touches (which also access the App Store), there are over 40 million units.

And Palm isn’t making things any easier on itself. During this critical time after launch where new apps are vital, there are only 30 because the webOS SDK still isn’t open to all developers. Palm recently gave an update saying that developers should by the “end of this summer”, but even when they get it, it will likely be another few months before a wide range of apps start coming out. That means it will be the Fall or Winter before there are a ton of apps for the Pre — and that’s assuming developers jump on board.

Meanwhile, all indications are that Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 SDK is kicking app development into an even higher level on that platform. The App Store is currently backlogged with app approvals, and just about every developer I’ve talked to, has something in the pipeline very shortly.

Oh yeah, and Apple just launched a version of the iPhone that is $99, which everyone seems to be forgetting. The sales numbers on that should be interesting.

That’s not to say Palm cannot be successful with the Pre and more specifically, its webOS, it can. It’s a great device, and a great platform. And the mobile arena, and specifically smartphones, are exploding in popularity right now. There is certainly more than enough room for a number of devices and a range of platforms. But Palm still has some very serious question marks on the business side of things, and they’re basically betting the farm on the Pre. It has another webOS device that may or may not come in the next few months, but even if it does, if the apps aren’t there, it could be facing a less than stellar entrance. And that’s the kind of performance Palm needs right now, stellar.

On the other hand, McNamee’s comment might technically be true. All those people who bought the original iPhone may not be using one a month from now — they might be using the iPhone 3GS, instead. Let’s revisit this on July 29, shall we?

Smartphones

Source: www.techcrunch.com

Watch the videos below to see it in action, but to say this is improved is beyond an understatement. Not only can you use various gestures to control navigation of the Apple TV’s menu, it works in movies and music as well. But most importantly, when you go to do a search on the Apple TV now using the Remote app, it will pop up a screen on your iPhone for you to type on.

Find the updated Remote app in the App Store here, it’s a free download and will work with iTunes on your computer as well.

Source: www.techcrunch.com

Source: www.buzzfeed.com

Watch this:

Source: www.buzzfeed.com

http://www.buzzfeed.com/gustavoa/brain-rush-4bf

Source: www.buzzfeed.com