Silicon Alley Insider reports that Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor noted yesterday that he is “very confident” that his company will reach a deal with Apple for collaboration on the music-focused social networking platform built into iTunes 10.
At a dinner with New York media last night, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said he is “very confident” Facebook and Apple will figure out a way to work together on Ping, Apple’s music social network.
Apple and Facebook were reportedly locked in negotiations for at least 18 months before Apple launched Ping earlier this month. Ping debuted with Facebook Connect integration allowing users to find friends via their Facebook accounts, but the feature quickly disappeared. A subsequent report claimed that the two companies had been unable to reach a deal for the usage of Facebook Connect but that Apple had gone ahead and deployed the functionality anyway. After Facebook disabled Ping’s access to Facebook Connect, Apple was forced to remove evidence of the functionality from the service entirely.
The two companies have reportedly continued their negotiations, but no agreement has apparently yet been reached.
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The What Country iPhone app is upsetting the Italian government, as it describes Italy as the home of “pizza, mafia, pasta, and scooters.” Italy’s minster of tourism demands its removal. Originally posted at Technically Incorrect
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Italy wants to eliminate iPhone ‘home of Mafia’ app
Apple’s rollout of the iPhone 4 in June temporarily slowed down demand for Google Android smartphones, but a new study shows consumers are again very hungry for Android devices.
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iPhone 4 fails to slow Android demand for long
A new report finds Android has matched the iPhone when it comes to consumer interest. If recent trends are any indication, it won’t be long before Apple’s prized product is eating Google’s dust. iPhone – Apple – Google – Android – Smartphone
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Android Now Ties iPhone In Consumer Interest
Customers swarm cashier stand in Apple’s Sanlitun store in Beijing
The Wall Street Journal reports that the shortage of iPhone 4s in China has led to a booming market for scalpers, many of whom are selling their stocks of iPhones outside the company’s flagship Sanlitun store in Beijing.
But as of Thursday morning, Apple’s flagship store in Beijing’s Sanlitun Village mall was sold out of the new smartphone. As a result, scalpers, who bought up iPhone 4s earlier in the week, are now lurking outside the store ready to pounce on anyone who walks out without merchandise.
“Want to buy an iPhone 4?” they say. “Come with us.”
Working in groups, the scalpers lead willing customers to an empty stairway in the same mall, where their cohorts keep stacks of iPhone 4s in the original packaging. One scalper was offering the 16-gigabyte version of the device for 5,400 yuan, or about 795 dollars, a 10-percent mark-up over the sticker price.
According to M.I.C. gadget, however, the scalpers are continuing to snap up iPhones as quickly as the Apple store can be restocked, leading to heightened tensions and even a temporary closure of the store today as tempers flared.
According to sources, the real customers and the iPhone 4 scalpers had a fight in the Apple store. A gang of scalpers were cutting the queue and some customers were fed up with the scalpers for buying large quantities of iPhone 4 and resell them outside the store. The police and Apple’s own security staff appeared to clean up the mess and due to the chaotic crowd, the store needs to be closed temporarily…
The report claims that the sudden rush of scalpers has been enabled by Apple now allowing customers to purchase unlimited numbers of iPhones at the Sanlitun store, whereas the company had previously limited sales to two-per-customer. And with China Unicom not offering contract-free phones and Apple not taking online orders in China, customers and scalpers alike are flocking to Apple’s four retail stores in the country (two in Beijing and two in Shanghai) to compete for the limited supply of contract-free iPhone 4s.
Update: M.I.C. gadget has updated its report to note that all four Apple retail stores in China are now requiring customers to show identification when purchasing iPhones and imposing a limit of one-per-customer. Store employees will also open and activate the new iPhones on the spot, eliminating the ability for scalpers to resell unopened iPhones.
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New Apple TV mounted in iTunes
As noted by The Apple Press, Twitter user StealthBravo has confirmed that the new Apple TV can be mounted and restored in iTunes, easing the way for jailbreakers to bring new functionality to the set-top box.
This means that the jailbreak community may soon be able to offer us tools, as they currently do for other iOS devices, to save SHSH blobs, jailbreak the Apple TV, and install 3rd party software. Maybe an app store for Apple TV may come sooner than any of us may have expected after all.
The Apple TV offers a Micro-USB port to allow for service and support connectivity, but the port also offers a means for users to physically connect the device to their computers to employ the techniques required in order to jailbreak the operating system.
Apple TV’s Micro-USB port
With yesterday’s discovery that the Apple TV offers 8 GB of internal storage, there appears to be ample space available for the installation of additional software on jailbroken devices.
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The numbers show a return to the neck-and-neck race between the two platforms that saw the iPhone temporarily grab a 20-percentage-point advantage over Android back in June as customers awaited the launch of the iPhone 4.
Discounting the iPhone 4 blip seen in June, both Apple and Android appear to still be growing at the expense of their competitors, with preference for the iPhone moving from 29% to 38% between March and September while Android saw an increase from 30% from 37%. Interest in Research in Motion’s BlackBerry operating system has been halved to 6%, while Windows Mobile has fallen from 5% to 1% and Palm has disappeared from the radar over the same timeframe.
The iPhone continues to top ChangeWave’s user satisfaction ratings, with 74% of customers saying that they are “very satisfied” with their handset, a figure that has been relatively stable over the device’s entire lifespan. That compares to 65% of Android customers registering as very satisfied, down slightly from some earlier editions of the survey but still much closer to the iPhone than to Palm, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile, which all find themselves in the 24-32% range for user satisfaction.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An international cybercrime ring was broken up Thursday by federal and state officials who say the alleged hackers used phony e-mails to obtain personal passwords and empty more than $3 million from U.S. bank accounts.
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iPhone chaos in Beijing
When last we visited with our friends from market research firm ChangeWave Research, they were reporting on big gains for the iPhone in the smartphone market, in the wake of the iPhone 4’s release. As that excitement has subsided, however, it appears that Android is continuing to make big gains among consumers.
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Survey shows Android gaining ground on iPhone
There’s some big news about Line2, the iPhone app I reviewed in March. As I’m sure you remember, I wrote: For a little $1 iPhone app, Line2 sure has the potential to shake up an entire industry. It can save you money. It can make calls where AT&T’s signal is lousy, like indoors.
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Turn an iPod into an iPhone