High-tech and badly dressed

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Philippe Dureuil

Apple isn’t just dominating sales of electronics; it and other tech companies are now eating into just about every market segment. Americans are choosing to buy tech gadgets and big-screen TVs over appliances, furniture and cars. Compared to the first half of pre-recession 2007, sales of televisions, computers, video and telephone equipment grew 1.8 per cent in the first six months of this year, according to a new U.S. Commerce Department report. During the same period, spending on appliances decreased 3.6 per cent and spending on furniture fell 11 per cent.

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RIM’s revival

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Research In Motion remains North America’s smartphone leader, even if it’s now widely perceived to be a runner-up behind Apple and its iPhone when it comes to innovation.

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Steve Jobs finally loses his cool

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Apple CEO Steve Jobs adopted an unusually defensive tone last week at a press conference to address the controversy over Apple’s latest iPhone model, which can lose reception if a palm or finger blocks the device’s lower left corner. With Apple usually the subject of glowing press, Jobs appeared visibly annoyed at the whole “antenna-gate” affair, and even took a potshot at the assembled media. “This has been blown so out of proportion—it’s incredible,” Jobs said as he paced back and forth across a stage.

While he was careful to stress that customer satisfaction was a priority (unhappy users will get a full refund or free rubber case, which appears to correct the problem when slipped on the phone), Jobs maintained that there wasn’t anything wrong with the smartphone’s design, which incorporates an antenna into a metal band that wraps around the device’s edge. He said only about half a per cent of the three million iPhone 4s sold have resulted in antenna-related complaints. Jobs then showed videos of BlackBerry, HTC and Samsung devices experiencing similar problems (although the iPhone’s weak spot appears to be in a particularly bad place based on the way people usually hold a cellphone).

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Theft? There's an app for that.

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

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Over one million people packed the streets during Toronto’s Pride Parade on July 4. One of them took off with Ren Bostelaar’s iPhone. Bostelaar was manning a tent for Henry’s, the Toronto camera store where he works as a senior training specialist. “My phone was low on juice, so I’d plugged it in at the back of the tent,” says Bostelaar, 27. “I figured it’d be safe,” but someone reached down, grabbed it and disappeared into the crowd.

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An iPhone can save a child?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

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So-called “CrackBerry” addicts and their iPhone-crazed equivalents often seem to care more about their devices than the people around them. But as part of a new public safety campaign, General Motors thinks it has found a way to turn that boorish behaviour into a 21st-century life-saving tool.

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With this app, I thee divorce

By Kate Lunau - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 9:55 AM - 8 Comments

Getty Images

Most people going through a divorce could probably do without the stress and expense of endless consultations with a lawyer. Now, some—in the U.S., anyway—can consult with their iPhones instead.

A new company out of Dallas, called DivorceApps.com, is selling iPhone applications aimed at helping people who “can’t afford the services of a lawyer and need to help themselves,” says family lawyer Michelle May O’Neil, its co-creator. O’Neil’s company, which launched in March, sells two apps through the iTunes store (both cost US$9.99). The Cost & Prep app helps people “calculate the hidden costs of divorce,” she says, from the “double cost of housing,” to extra kids’ clothes, down to “how much it costs to park at a lawyer’s office.” It also helps create a list of necessary documents, saving money on “the back-and-forth with a lawyer,” O’Neil says.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 7, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

You wouldn’t want to cross either one
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin burnished his credentials as a man of action last week, while also asserting some Arctic sovereignty. He helped scientists track endangered polar bears in Franz Josef Land, an Arctic archipelago. With cameras rolling, he attached a tracking collar to a tranquilized bear. “Be well,” he said, shaking its paw. “The paw is heavy,” said Putin, one force of nature saluting another. “This is a master of the Arctic, you can feel that straight away.”

That’s how it’s done in Wawota, Sask.
Washington Capitals fans Mary Ann Wangemann and her 14-year-old daughter Lorraine were driving home from the Caps’ game-seven loss to the Montreal Canadiens when their tire was flattened by a pothole. An SUV pulled over as they stood by the side of the road in their team colours. To their amazement, out hopped Brooks Laich, the Alberta-born, Saskatchewan-raised Caps centre. He peeled off his suit jacket and spent 40 minutes, on one of the worst nights of his life, installing a spare tire for two strangers. Mary Ann asked Laich, 26, how to repay the favour. “I’m sure you’ll do something nice for someone in the future,” he said.

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Could Palm end up in RIM’s hands?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 3 Comments

Canadian Press

Around this time last year Palm was rolling out its new Pre smartphone—a glossy black orb that was supposed to resurrect the handheld computer pioneer from the dead. But while the Pre and its innovative touchscreen operating system won over tech followers, including some who suggested it was superior to the iPhone, it failed to catch on with consumers. Palm was about two years too late to the market with the Pre (the iPhone came out in 2007). It didn’t help that the Pre’s surreal TV ad campaign brought to mind powerful antidepressants, not a sleek mobile device.

As a result, it is increasingly looking like Palm will end up on the sales block. Executives are reportedly shopping the company around for US$1.1 billion, and interested buyers are said to range from laptop makers like Lenovo to European cellphone giant Nokia. But maybe the best match, say some observers, would be Research In Motion, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company that makes the popular BlackBerry. “It makes lots of sense,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner Research. “I have been a big fan of this connection for years. RIM has not come up with a compelling touch user interface and Palm has that.”

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Killer Apps that save lives

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Dr. Phillip Yoon loves—nay, needs—his iPhone. Yoon, district chief of emergency medicine for Halifax’s Capital District Health Authority, refers to his phone as his “peripheral brain.” “It’s part of my body now,” he trills. “If I lost it, that would be trouble.” Yoon’s love affair should be a familiar one to his colleagues. The smartphone—and in particular, the iPhone—has left the realm of electronic plaything, and become an almost required medical tool. According to Manhattan Research, a health care consulting firm, the percentage of U.S. physicians using smartphones stands around 64 per cent and is projected to hit 81 per cent by 2012. In Canada, the trend is the same. Smartphone use in hospitals “is almost ubiquitous,” says Dr. Dante Morra of Toronto’s University Health Network.

Today, doctors with a few dollars to spare and a smidgen of electronic know-how can download applications at the iTunes store that can transform their iPhones into drug-dose calculators, fetal monitors, or remote receivers for patient records. Yoon could purchase the Anatomical Diagrams app for 3-D illustrations of the human body. He could use Medical Spanish so he can advise Spanish-speaking patients—or check Medscape to review alternatives to the lab test he wants to order.

Rural docs are especially quick to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. In India, the iPhone is being used to mount a campaign against a retinal disease that afflicts premature babies. The effort takes place mostly at remote outposts, where lab assistants use iPhones to take pictures of preemies’ eyes. They then send the pictures to pediatric eye surgeons in Bangalore for diagnosis. Some press reports refer to India’s “EyePhone.”

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Maclean’s Interview: Chris Bosh

By John Intini - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 4 Comments

Toronto Raptor Chris Bosh may be the greatest self-promoter in pro sports. He’s on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He stars in funny skits on YouTube—the first and most famous was a spot in which he appeared as a car salesman, pleading with fans to vote him into the 2008 NBA All-Star game as a starter. He’s the first pro athlete to have an iPhone application—it features exclusive photos and video. And in December, he released First Ink, a documentary about getting his first tattoo. Bosh plays a bit of basketball, too. While his club is hovering around the .500 mark this season, the 25-year-old all-star is putting up career numbers (he’s averaging about 24 points a game). Good timing, considering the US$16-million-a-year forward will likely wade into the free agency pool this year (Bosh, say his handlers, isn’t talking about free agency until the end of the season). There have also been rumours that Bosh could get dealt before the NBA’s Feb. 18 trade deadline. Whatever the case, he’s made his mark. Last month, Bosh dethroned the much-loathed former Raptor Vince Carter to become the team’s all-time leading scorer. Maclean’s recently caught up with Bosh after practice.
Q: Has having a bunch of Europeans on the Raptors’ roster helped you learn a new language or two?
A: I’m picking up Spanish.

Q: Swearing in another language doesn’t count.
A: No, I’m a student. I have tutoring today. I’ve been taking it since October. Twice a week, depending on the schedule. Sometimes three times a week. I just try to get a set amount of time in while I’m here in Toronto. And then I study while I’m on the road.

Q: Why Spanish?
A: I’ve always wanted to learn it. I’m from Texas, where the Hispanic community is massive. And sometimes [Raptors guard] José Calderón and I use it to communicate on the court when we don’t want our opponents to know what we’re saying to each other.

Q: There are a couple of Italians on this club as well. You lining up a tutor for that next?
A: Maybe Italian will be second, if I can get Spanish down.

Q: Has Spanish been tough to learn?
A: Any language is tough, I’m not going to lie. You have to be very consistent, and I’ve been studying pretty much every day for the past four months, and that doesn’t include what I already knew.

Q: With your comedic turns on YouTube getting so much attention—nearly seven million views the last time I checked—have you fielded any feature film offers? Any TV deals?
A: Not yet. I had the chance to do the Jay Leno show a couple of years ago and that was really cool.

Q: So you’d be up for doing something if the right project came along?
A: For sure. I’d try it out. I’m not sure if I’d like it because I’ve never done it but I’m open to it.

Q: What kind of film would you be interested in? Comedy? Romance?
A: I want to do comedy.

Q: Is there anyone in particular that you’d like to star alongside?
A: I can’t be picky. Just give me whatever and I’ll be happy.

Q: Have you always been a bit of a joker, even as a kid?
A: Yeah. People are just now seeing it, because it’s a part of myself that I’ve decided to share.

Q: What made you want to open up?
A: It started with that one video a couple of years ago around the All-Star game. It wasn’t so much about getting votes, it was just to make it competitive. I was behind in the voting. I had to make the numbers look better. [He came up short in the voting, but did start in the game due to an injury to Boston Celtic Kevin Garnett.]

Q: Are you a big locker-room prankster?
A: No, no. I joke around. But I don’t joke too much. Not in a big setting. I’m more of a joker when it’s one-on-one, or with my family.

Q: You have you own website, you’re on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Is taking part in social networking part of the job for the modern-day athlete?
A: It’s a part of the modern world. I wouldn’t say I do it because I’m a modern-day athlete. I just do these things because I enjoy it. I’ve made videos in the past because I enjoyed it. I got into Twitter and Facebook because I enjoyed it.

Q: How do you have the time? Do you have a team of assistants working overtime?
A: I have one guy helping me out.

Q: ESPN named you the most viral athlete in the world last year. Is being everywhere a goal for you?
A: It is now. At first it wasn’t, I was just really going along with the flow. But now it’s a part of what I do.

Q: Last year, you went to court to reclaim 800 Internet domain names—including those of many other athletes and celebrities—from a cybersquatter. Seems like an odd thing for a superstar athlete to be worried about. You won, but why did you bother?
A: Cause that dude was messing things up. I know how important it was to me. I didn’t have chrisbosh.com because someone else had it. Everyone should have their own name. And whoever wanted their domain name was given it back. It was just a sincere effort to give people back their stuff.

Q: With all the things you’re doing, you’ve pretty much become a publicity machine—which includes being the first pro athlete to have his own iPhone app. Is it just a part of getting yourself out there?
A: It’s just trying different avenues and creating different things. We understand technology. We just try to create new ways to communicate with the modern fan. And new ways to have fun with it.

Q: Is that why you decided to do a documentary about getting a tattoo?
A: I always want to do something groundbreaking, something different. I think that’s what it’s always about. If you have the means to do it, why not?

Q: Considering the average star in the NBA seems to have about 14 tattoos.
A: Is that a proven statistic? [Laughs]

Q: No, it just seems like that [by one estimate, more than 70 per cent of NBA players have tattoos]. So why did it take you so long to get your first one?
A: People get them for different reasons. And it was a whole different process for me. I’m more of an artistic guy, so I wanted to create some kind of symbolism of my life.

Q: It’s essentially a mural of your life, right?
A: Pretty much. It takes some explanation. It’s very detailed. It’s not done yet. It’s going to take a long time.

Q: How many sessions in the chair have you done so far?
A: I’ve only had time to do one so far. I’m probably going to do another four this summer, so hopefully I’ll be closer to getting it done.

Newsmakers '09: Twits

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, December 4, 2009 at 12:57 PM - 17 Comments

	Baby shakers Apple approved a “Baby Shaker” iPhone app, where users could shake their phones to turn a drawing of a crying baby into a quiet one. It was pulled when users complained that shaking babies is dangerous. Corporations always cave to the big baby lobby.
	Burger King Burger King has a “no shoes, no shirt, no service” policy, but a branch in St. Louis, Mo., may have gone a little too far: they refused to serve a six-month-old baby for being barefoot. Workers claimed that a shoeless baby was a health hazard, but were overruled by upper management, which apologized and gave the baby’s mother a free meal. The big baby lobby strikes again.
	Officer Oops When you’re a police officer about to go on a manhunt, where’s the best place to park your car? The train tracks. That’s what a Toronto cop decided one night in January. Then a Via train crashed into the vehicle. No one was hurt, but taxpayers had the privilege of replacing the car.

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The next frontier

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

When Ken Dulaney and three other tech visionaries set out to build a tablet computer nearly a quarter century ago, the idea seemed like a no-brainer. Tablets were, after all, a key piece of equipment in the 1960s television series Star Trek, which would ultimately have a decent track record of predicting future technologies such as wireless communication, biometric identification and non-invasive medical procedures, if not interstellar space travel. More importantly, tablets promised to literally put the power of a personal computer in people’s hands.

But the GridPad, a clunky 4.5-lb. machine with a green-hued electroluminescent screen and stylus, failed to take off, save for in a few niche sectors in government and health care. Several other efforts suffered the same fate. “We had a number of customers who did their work while standing or walking,” says Dulaney, who worked alongside Palm founder Jeff Hawkins on the project.  Continue…

The Interview: Douglas Coupland

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 3 Comments

Douglas Coupland’s latest novel, Generation A, is set in the not-too-distant future, when bees have all but vanished from the planet—until five individuals around the world are suddenly stung. The acclaimed Canadian author talks to Macleans.ca about how the novel compares to Generation X, published nearly twenty years ago, his first-ever laptop, and why, with the rise of digital media, books still matter.

Q: Generation X is one of your best-known novels. Beyond its similar title, Generation A revisits some of its themes: reading, storytelling, the digitalization of culture. How would you describe the relationship between these two novels?

A: X was written in ’89-90. Compared to the ’70s or early ’80s, it felt like things were speeding up a bit; it felt like culture was speeding up. That’s where the subtitle, Tales for an Accelerated Culture, came from. In the last five or six years, we were absorbed by Google, and eBay, and social networking, and BlackBerries, iPods, iPhones, the digitization of the financial world. We’ve absorbed this insane amount of change-inducing technology in our life, so how does that affect people? If you took a group of people to a remote space, and had them talk [as the characters do in Generation A], what sort of different things would come out of them, now that they’ve been through what Marshall McLuhan would call a “retribalization,” a moving away from the printed story? Thematically, that’s what [these books] have in common.

Q: Generation A is set in the near future, when bees have vanished from the planet. Why are bees the insect you chose to eradicate?

A: I think because it’s grounded in reality. I was having a spirited discussion about two hours ago: we were trying to remember when we first heard about colony collapse disorder. I remember I was with my parents, and [news of colony collapse disorder] was on the radio, and I had a spontaneous vomit on the spot thinking, ‘Oh god,’ because at the time, they thought it was cellphones [causing it]. If you ask humanity, ‘Would you be willing to give up cellphones in order to keep the bees?’, there’s a part of me that goes, ‘Uh oh, we’re not very good as a species.’ With the bees gone, it was like an absence of hope; and when they come back, even to a limited level, it’s like hope returns.

Q: How does that relate to reading and storytelling, two major themes in both books?

A: Putting it through the big metaphorical compression machine, I suppose, there is still hope for the books. For book culture. For long form narrative. I was over in Edinburgh, and all anyone’s been talking about in England is, ‘Is the book dead, is the book dead, is the book dead?’ They were asking the same question in the early ’90s too, except back then they were saying it because all the independent bookstores were vanishing, and because the online stores were going to kill books, period. [Now we have the Kindle], and the Sony Reader and everything. If I was in newspapers or magazines, I’d be wondering, ‘Uh oh.’ But with books, I think that for the time being, until the irresistible app comes along, there’s still paper. I tried the Sony Reader, and it was kind of awkward. The Kindle seems to work for people doing office work, like no one has to haul a manuscript home on the subway anymore.

Q: Should we care if the book is dead?

A: Until you had the etched-in-stone story, people didn’t have what you and I have; people didn’t have that sense of interior voice that guided them through the day. They would just be pure experience machines. Occasionally, if voices did come through their heads, they’d think it was the gods; they wouldn’t even think of that as being themselves. So, our notion of the self, and our notion of the story and our relationship to it, is a recent invention. And it may be on the way out, which is a spooky thought. I’m not sure it’s vanishing, but I do think it’s something that merits a really stringent investigation. Generation A was just sort of a poetic way of looking at it obliquely.

There’s an examination of the need that one’s life has to be a story: that it begins with birth, ends with death, but the story part, whatever it is, happens somewhere in the middle. Is there really a reason that we’re here, or are we just insects? Instead of a story, maybe you have your existence on Google or Wikipedia. How do define yourself? [Today, with the digitalization of media], everything is archived. Within that, where do you find the self? I think the characters in Generation A are figuring out which metaphors are important, what themes are important, and they’re that much further down the information road than we are. Does that represent some kind of Lord of the Flies-like retribalization, or the end of the printed word as a civilizing influence?

Q: It’s interesting that you talk about how books and stories help develop our internal voice, because in both books, they also help your characters develop a community. In Generation X, for example, one of the characters says you need to hear about other people’s lives, to make your own life less scary. Are books and stories a way to build society, in your mind?

A: Well, to build further on that, in order to sustain continuity of culture, you have to have intellectual succession. You hand what you have down to new people, and you’ve added what you can to it, and they’re going to add what they have. We have to make sure that what we have is transmittable down the ages. So much information today [lacks] a good way to store it, especially when it’s all digital; sometimes it requires old technology to go back and retrieve it. I’ve got all my old laptops going back to my first, which was so fancy at the time, in ’93 or ’94, but now it’s just like a doorstop. One day I said, ‘I’ll go in and get all my old documents in there.’ The cords and the wires are all gone, the discettes you need are gone. Meanwhile the little electrons are starting to wither away. What you’d archived brilliantly just becomes unreachable in the end.

I was down at Shoppers Drugmart in Vancouver, and I had to buy an alarm clock. I looked over at the photo department. There used to be this big line-up there, people getting their prints back, but now it’s, like, gone. Even as early as September 11, there’s no cellphone imagery of the attacks. There’s very little digital imagery of it, the way people gather it now. It seems like yesterday, but it’s far away from the other standpoint.

Q: Do you personally use a social networking tools?

A: I’ve never gone on Facebook or MySpace.

Q: Do you avoid them?

A: It seems like there’s too much information; there’s a ceratin level of porosity I wasn’t really interested in. However, Twitter’s actually kind of fun. I do think they gave it a really stupid name. If they gave it a cooler name, it would have a cooler image. I don’t like telephones: I don’t like when they ring. Just because it rings, you have to pick it up. I don’t even like opening mail, I’m weird. I really really really really really—have I said really enough?—I really do force myself to not be fully engaged with all the technology at once, just because I have an addictive personality and I get too into it. At the same time, I like the present. I’m always interested in new ideas, and what’s happening now. I’m not that nostalgic. When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that’s emerging. I think as long as you keep your mind in the palce where you’re actively looking for patterns, you may not be safe, but you’re going to feel safe, I think.

Q: Generation A is set in a dystopian future, yet the title is very hopeful-sounding. Your characters talk about the importance of happy endings. Does this book have a happy ending?

A: I’m sitting here with a little exclamation mark in a balloon above my head going, ‘This is the first person who’s ever called it a happy ending.’ Usually people are like, ‘Oooh, bummer!’ At the ending, whether you see it as a plus or a minus, it should leave a reader meditating on the notion of, how important are books in establishing what you call ‘yourself,’ and are you moving away from that? And if you are, what are you moving towards? In the future, does everyone work at some great cosmic call centre for Abercrombie & Fitch? Why are we even here, what’s our human nature? It’s precipitating a real philosophical crisis that I find quite fascinating.

Too hot for iPhone

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 14 Comments

Apple has drawn a lot of attention lately for banning applications from its iPhone. There was the Me So Holy app (which let users paste their face on a picture of Jesus), the Hottest Girls app (featuring nude photos) and the disturbing Baby Shaker app (shake your phone to quiet a crying baby). But the latest app to get the boot has been the most controversial rejection yet: Google Voice. The decision, made last month, immediately drew the attention of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which demanded that Apple explain why the app was rejected. There were even whispers that iPhone’s exclusive U.S. carrier, AT&T, was behind the ban.

Why such a backlash? Because there’s a lot at stake. Google Voice is more than just another fun iPhone add-on. It could rock the very foundation of the traditional telecommunications landscape. By offering consumers the promise of a “Google number” for life, which replaces their existing home, business and cellphone numbers, Google Voice is a bold attempt by the Internet giant to wedge itself between consumers and their cellphone carriers. Once you subscribe, all your calls are routed through Google’s servers before they even reach the phone company, and you control which calls can reach you where. On top of that, the service offers free voice mail, a free voice mail transcription service—even free long distance. Letting Google park this app on the iPhone’s home screen, says Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst, would be like “renting space in your business to someone else who then uses that opportunity to cut the legs out from under your business.” Continue…

Is the iPhone killing RIM?

By Colin Campbell - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 25 Comments

Last month, a posting appeared on the popular Business Insider blog that no doubt filled some Research In Motion executives with a sense of dread. Under the heading “How I Ended My Affair With BlackBerry And Eloped With The iPhone,” former tech analyst Henry Blodget described how he somewhat reluctantly went out and bought Apple’s latest “it” phone, the new iPhone 3G S, after 12 years of loyal BlackBerry service. Business users have long been skeptical of the sleek iPhone and its touchscreen display, which can make emailing and typing a chore, but Blodget wasn’t disappointed with his switch. “It’s nice here in Apple world,” he concluded.

Research in Motion (RIM) is still a smartphone juggernaut, but the defection of influential business leaders like Blodget sends a chilling signal to the Waterloo, Ont.-based company. More than half of its 28.5 million subscribers are business users, and while they haven’t been dropping their BlackBerries en masse, momentum is quickly building behind the iPhone. While RIM reported a decline in the number of new subscribers in its latest quarterly results, Apple saw iPhone sales jump sevenfold. And when the new iPhone 3G S launched this summer, U.S. buyers snapped up one million of them in just three days. If the trend continues, and iPhone sales continue to rocket up, it’s easy to see who will come out on top. Analysts say that Apple’s rise out of nowhere to become a legitimate rival to the BlackBerry is something that RIM is now going to extraordinary lengths to guard against. Continue…

I can turn my phone into a shotgun

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Eddie Marks and James Anthony were students at Stanford University when, working out of a dorm room earlier this year, they wrote an application for the Apple iPhone called Shotgun. It’s a mindless little program that lets you jerk your iPhone down and up to replicate the motion and sound of a shotgun being pumped and fired. Silly as it might seem, it has been wildly popular. Over three million people and counting have downloaded it from Apple’s iPhone App Store over the past three months.

With Shotgun, the duo hit the Apple app jackpot. They made two versions of the app: one that’s free and one with a few extra features that costs 99 cents. They’re reluctant to say exactly how much they’ve made, but admit it’s enough to support them and their new company, Inedible Software, for some time. “We’re both comfortable working for a year and if we don’t make any more money we’ll still be doing just fine,” says Anthony, on the phone from Palo Alto, Calif., a hotbed for app developers where the pair are now looking for an apartment. Since graduating last week they’ve been crashing on friends’ couches. Continue…

Don’t count on it

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Travis Yates is suddenly the stuff of Las Vegas legend (even though he’s never stepped foot in Sin City, and probably never should). Back in October, the Australian Web designer invented a cloak-and-dagger iPhone application that allows blackjack players to secretly count cards using their thumbs instead of their brains. Card counting, of course, is the cardinal sin of casinos, and now every joint on the strip is keeping an eye out for iCheaters.

Yates, though, has already hit the jackpot—in free advertising. Before his “app”—known simply as “A Blackjack Card Counter”—made headlines around the world, it was selling a mere 10 copies a week on the iTunes store. Not anymore. During one five-day span in February, it tallied more than 4,000 downloads, including 140 in Canada. “I’ve unwittingly unleashed an army of card counters on the casinos,” he jokes.

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Google calling

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 2:19 PM - 1 Comment

We’ve been waiting a long time for this one: the arrival of the Google-powered cell phone.  For now, it’s only being carried by  T-Mobile in the U.S. and comes wrapped in a touch-screen phone made by HTC.  More details here. Why is this a big deal? This is Google’s first big step beyond the confines of the PC and into the world of mobile Internet technology. It’s a vast, untapped new market that Google seems well positioned to take advantage of through things like Google Maps, Gmail, and its well-oiled advertising system.  The first GPhone doesn’t have the polish of the Apple iPhone, but no doubt Google is hoping its phone software will have mass-market appeal. The big question now is, is it too late to this game to catch up to a dominant Apple?

The iPhone is nice but…

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 11:35 AM - 0 Comments

Remember when all we ever wanted was a wristwatch cell phone? The future, from the September, 1984, issue of Rolling Stone (via Stereogum)

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It's about jobs, not Jobs

By Jason Kirby - Monday, July 28, 2008 at 3:43 PM - 0 Comments

A friend of mine who owns a pile of Apple shares, which have fallen nearly 20 per cent in value over the last couple of months, asked why the stock is so dependent on whether CEO Steve Jobs has recurrent cancer or not. It’s easy to see why he’d think this way . Since the launch of the iPhone 3G last month, Apple shares have not behaved the way they were supposed to, meaning they didn’t skyrocket. Bullish analysts have attributed this failure to launch to continued heavy media attention around Jobs’ gaunt appearance (Saturday’s New York Times said he doesn’t have cancer) and whether Apple’s board should be more forthright about the CEO’s health.

Interesting questions both. And I realize Jobs is an important guy and all. But couldn’t it be that shrewd investors are simply worried about the other jobs in the equation, or the lack thereof? Unemployment is on the rise in the U.S., while consumer confidence has reached lows not seen since this…

… was cutting edge Apple. As one Bloomberg commentator wrote last week, “Optimists Buy IPhones While Pessimists Hoard Gold.” Given the fact the company just lowered its guidance for the last quarter of the year by $500 million, you can’t blame investors for fretting about the jobs issue that really matters. And I’m not talking about the one in the black turtle neck.

Biz Fix: More beer money and fewer TV ads

By John Intini - Friday, July 11, 2008 at 2:05 PM - 0 Comments

In the money: Or at least that’s what Fox is hoping for this fall with its new strategy of shrinking commercial break time on two new shows—Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (pic, left) and Fringe by J.J. Abrams. In an effort to keep viewers from flipping, the dramas will run 50 minutes long, instead of the standard 42 to 44 minutes. Reportedly, Fox will charge a premium on the remaining ad minutes to make up the difference. There is, however, one tiny problem with this plan: it does nothing to combat the millions of us out there with PVRs and TIVOs who simply fast-forward through all the ads.

Trading down: Wachovia Corp.’s new CEO Robert Steel promised Thursday, his first full day at the office, to “execute like crazy” in an attempt to turnaround the U.S.’s fourth-largest bank, which lost between US$2.6 and $2.8 billion in the second quarter. But his words weren’t enough to alleviate fear among investors that change won’t come quick enough and the share price sunk at one point during the day to a 17-year low. Today hasn’t been any better as the stock tumbled another 7.7 per cent from yesterday’s close in early morning trading. Then again, it’s not as bad as what’s happening to Fannie and Freddie.

Number cruncher: The StatsCan employment numbers for June are out and while the overall picture isn’t that pretty—5,000 fewer jobs last month pushed the unemployment rate up a touch to 6.2 per cent—there is some good news. Continue…

Biz Fix: Housing starts are up! No wait…

By Duncan Hood - Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 7:18 PM - 0 Comments

In the money: America’s investment firms, are literally and finally in the money. Last week was the first week since the credit crunch hit the U.S. that they didn’t come running to the Fed for emergency overnight loans. Very impressive when you consider that at the credit crisis peak, they were borrowing as much as $38 billion a week. Could it mean the credit crisis is over? It’s certainly a good sign.

Trading down: Royal Bank. Oh no, I guess the credit crisis isn’t over after all. The Canadian banks still seem to have some overpriced assets that must have fallen behind the fridge or something, because it took them a while to find them. In this case it’s a predicted $1.5 billion writedown for RBC, according to a research note from Genuity Capital Markets. At one time, that would have made big headlines, now it’s like, what? Another writedown? Wake me up when they stop.

Number cruncher: Look! Continue…

Biz Fix

By Colin Campbell - Monday, June 30, 2008 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

In the money: Google’s stock price may not have hit anywhere near the $1,000 a share many analysts were predicting last year. (In fact, it’s been slogging along in the $550 range). But the company is still dreaming up ways to try and boost its online ad revenue. The latest is a deal with Seth MacFarlane, creator of  the television cartoon The Family Guy.  MacFarlane, the New York Times reports, is working on an Internet animation series (called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy”) that will appear on thousands of web sites using Google’s advertising system, AdSense. The short, two-minute episodes will appear with ads, facilitated by Google, attached to the beginning, or somehow worked into the videos. Google seems intent on setting up its own little online television network, not just selling ads but distributing the content.  “We feel that we have recreated the mass media,” Google tells the Times. Unlikely. But Google, to its credit, continues to defy its critics by luring ad dollars that once would have gone to television over to the Internet. 

Trading down: Don’t mess with French fashion. A French court ruled that the online auction site eBay, must pay $61 million to LVMH, a company that makes perfumes and luxury fashion goods. LVMH argued that eBay hasn’t done enough to stamp out the sale of cheap, designer knock-off goods (90 percent of Louis Vuitton bags and Dior perfumes sold on the site are fakes, it argued). This isn’t the beginning or end of eBay’s legal troubles.  Hermes International successfully sued the company in June. Tiffany & Co has also sued.  eBay is appealing the LVMH decision. 

Number cruncher: The $35-billion BCE takeover fracas continues. And it may not be resolved until the end of the year, the Globe and Mail reports today. With the legal issues seemingly put to bed, the issue now is the $42.75 a share purchase price.  The banks that are financing the deal think the number should be as low as $35 a share, according to the Globe.  That’s a big difference from the number the BCE board has settled on. 

Boom or gloom: Surprise, surprise. Statistics Canada reports today that the nation’s GDP actually grew slightly in April, following declines in February and March. So, that was a short lived recession. But with an increase of just 0.4 per cent, we’re inclined to say this is still a bit more gloom than it is boom. 

Ticker tape: We’re transfixed with the price of oil, which moved past $143 a barrel this morning. Where will it stop; nobody knows!  Also on the rise: demand for the new Apple iPhone. An RBC report says it’s unprecedented. 

Your Steve Jobs iPhone fix

By Colin Campbell - Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 10:38 AM - 0 Comments

This video has been making the rounds on the Interweb. A 60-second round-up of Steve Jobs’ iPhone love-in earlier this week. Like crack for Apple fans: