More iOS speculation

More speculation yesterday about Apple’s upcoming iOS 7!

So far, we all ( think we) know that the system update will be flatter and less skeuomorphic than the iOS we all know.

This means that some such features originating under Steve Jobs, such as the Notes app looking like a real notepad and other real world aesthetic replication will be gone under the leadership of Mr Jony Ive who took over in October last year. Gone also will be the shine and gloss of app icons.

Now, according to website 9to5mac, as well as being flatter, iOS 7 will have a monochromatic design and according to their sources, each app will have a white back with a splash of color individually assigned to that app.

Jony Ive is said to have made his mark throughout the whole of the updated version of iOS 7, which is due to be announced and previewed at the keynote address of WWDC on June 10th in San Francisco.

Looking forward to it Jony!

image courtesy of Redmondpie.com

Yahoo acquires Tumblr!

The acquiring of Internet social media/blog sensation Tumblr by old school industry stronghold Yahoo made headlines when it was announced on the 15^th of this month.

Tumblr has become a super popular social media icon both by hosting over 108 million blogs and by the public blog content increasingly creeping into other popular social media sites such as Imgur and Reddit.

Yahoo acquired Tumblr for a mere 1.1 billion dollars. That’s billion, not, like, a hundred. 1.1 Billion.  That, for those counting at home, is the most money anyone has paid for a social media company in years, the closest being Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for 1 Billion dollars.

Yahoo has promised, and I quote; “Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business”. If they stick to it, this is good news to extremely loyal Tumblr’s who have been (and are)  scared that Yahoo will ruin their beloved social media site and who have threatened to boycott the site under the control of Yahoo.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO since July last year, seems to be making changes and acquisitions in an attempt to bring Yahoo into the future by gaining new technologies, and focusing on new trends in the tech industry.

As well as Tumblr, so far this month, Yahoo has also acquired the following:

Astrid – Productivity

GoPollGo – real time surveys)

MileWise – Travel Search

Loki Studios – Mobile Gaming

Playerscale – Online Gaming.

Fewf. To top it all off, on Friday  may 24^th, Yahoo submitted a formal bid to buy Hulu, the video service currently owned by Newscorp and Disney.  They are bidding against at least five other companies, and their bidding price, although undisclosed, is rumored to be between 600-800 million dollars.

Although Yahoo is still a popular website, Miss. Mayer, one of Time magazine’s top 100 influential people, is trying to envision a path to take Yahoo into the cool, trendy, (moneymaking) future.

Good Luck Yahoo! ( and Tumblr….)

Image courtesy of Redorbit.com

AT&T discontinuing HTC First!?

The Facebook phone, otherwise known as the HTC First, is not doing so well, guys. First released just over a month ago on April 12th, the phone is the first Android device to have Facebook’s interface- Facebook Home- preloaded.

The phone, once in critic’s and customer’s hands, was given overall generally positive reviews, especially for a low-end phone. The downsides were also duly noted by all, in particular a less than stellar camera with limited functionality, and the fact that your phone and therefore life was now taken over by Facebook. The phone actually encourages 25% more time on Facebook. eek.

Now, the end seems just a little nigh for the HTC First. On May 13th AT&T started selling the phone at a discount. Instead of paying $99 for the phone on a two year contract- now it’s just $0.99. If you wanted to pay for the phone off contract, you’re looking at a $100 price cut from $450 to $350. Take that anyone who bought the phone on the 12th!

The price cut is apparently due to poor sales, with less than 15,000 phones being sold since the phone’s launch and less than 1 million people downloading the Facebook Home interface for their Android phones.

Although this has yet to be confirmed, according to the guys at website BGR.com (who have secret AT&T sources, d’uh), AT&T has made the decision to discontinue the phone altogether, selling off as many units as they can before sending any unsold inventory back to HTC.

I’m fighting back tears, here.

But, it’s ok guys, really it is. It’s not the end of the line for Facebook Home! The Android interface is still available to download, and both the App and the joint App + device marriage will, after a bit of tweaking, be back. And better, maybe. And available on iOS at… well… some point. If we want it.

Until then, you can just  click on that little blue F whenever you want to, and spend that 25% of your time like, dancing instead. Yay!

Image courtesy of BGR.com