Beta « Funlimited

15May

Firefox For Android Beta Gets Native UI, Improved Performance And Support for Flash

Mozilla was late to the mobile revolution and is still playing catch-up with Firefox for mobile. It’s starting to look as if Firefox for Android is slowly becoming a competitive player on Google’s platform, though. Today, Mozilla is launching its most radical redesign of its browser for Android in beta. This new version features a redesigned interface that, according to Mozilla, “blends in with the Android user interface.” The beta now also features support for Adobe’s Flash plugin, as well as the usual performance improvements and bug fixes.

Firefox for Android Beta is now available in Google Play and unlike Google’s own impressive Chrome for Android, it will work on any phone running Android 2.2 and above (including, of course, Ice Cream Sandwich). For now, it’s only available in English, though.

The highlight of this release is, without doubt, the new native user interface. This new update, however, also features an improved version of what Mozilla calls the “Awesome Screen,” its smart mobile homepage for Firefox.

In addition, the Firefox team has worked on improving startup and response times for the browser, as well as the browser’s overall graphic performance. Thanks to hardware acceleration, web apps and games on the browser should now also run significantly more smoothly on Firefox for Android. Redoing the user interface, of course, should also give the browser a bit of a speed bump.

Mozilla also promises better text readability in this version by using font size inflation.

The fact that this beta now supports Flash will likely raise some eyebrows. It’s worth noting, though, that by default, plugins are only loaded on touch.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

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11May

iCloud.com beta site leaks Reminders and Notes features

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Apple’s secret keeping skills are infamous. Rumors fly around for months before a launch of any kind, and genuinely miss the mark by a country mile. But, when Cupertino slips up, the whole world knows about it. I only need mention the words “prototype” and “Gizmodo” in a sentence and you’ll all know exactly what I’m getting at. Apple has done it again,…

View full post on TodaysiPhone.com

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09May

Facebook Will Start Offering Paid Apps, Beta Program Is Taking Sign-Ups Now

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Facebook’s platform may have come to life on the back of freemium apps, but now it’s taking another page from Apple’s playbook by offering paid apps. A beta program starting now will let developers charge Facebook users a flat fee to use their apps. This will cover both HTML5 apps and apps on the canvas (meaning on Facebook.com).

This was part of a bigger announcement today, in which Facebook gave a sneak peek at a new “App Center,” which is kind of like an app store. It’s very different from the iTunes store in that there aren’t rankings by popularity. App recommendations are personalized and social. Josh Constine is doing a full feature-by-feature take on the new app center here.

Here’s the excerpt from Facebook’s post:

Many developers have been successful with in-app purchases, but to support more types of apps on Facebook.com, we will give developers the option to offer paid apps. This is a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com. If you are interested in the beta program, please sign up to receive more information.

This could make it easier for Facebook to break into other categories outside gaming. Facebook’s chief financial officer David Ebersman reiterated in the company’s IPO roadshow video that the company is looking to support payments for other types of apps outside of games. They’re also considering lowering the standard 30 percent revenue share that they charge developers for apps that aren’t games and that have higher operating costs (which we reported on first!)

In general, though, this move totally goes against the major trend of the last year and a half — which is to move away from paid apps and toward freemium ones. Even if you look at iOS’ top grossing list today, about 80 percent of the top 25 apps are free.

If Facebook can get some developers to offer really interesting paid apps, then it will be able to get the number of paying users up. In 2011, only 15 million out of the company’s then 845 million monthly active users paid with Credits, according to Facebook’s IPO filing.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

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09May

Facebook Will Start Offering Paid Apps, Beta Program Starts Now

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Here’s the excerpt from Facebook’s post:

Many developers have been successful with in-app purchases, but to support more types of apps on Facebook.com, we will give developers the option to offer paid apps. This is a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com. If you are interested in the beta program, please sign up to receive more information.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

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08May

With 70 Million Registered Users, Viber Brings Beta Apps To BlackBerry, Windows Phone

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We’ve been covering Viber since the very beginning, through the launch of an Android app and the addition of photo/location sharing capabilities, to the moment the company announced 50 million users, 150 million calls, and a billion text messages per month. In fact, those milestones only sprung up a few weeks ago in February, and even more achievements are already being announced today.

Between February and now, Viber has already jumped from 50 million users to 70 million users, who just so happen to talk for more than a billion minutes and send over a billion text messages per month. Daily, those numbers translate to over 7 million calls and 40 million texts, within which location sharing is being used about 10 percent of the time.

With growth like that, the migration onto new platforms only makes sense, which is why the company has announced versions of its highly popular VoIP/messaging app for BlackBerry and Windows Phone. The app will launch in beta on both platforms.

Viber for BlackBerry Beta and Viber for Windows Phone 7 Beta will come with Viber messaging, letting people share photos, text, and their location with other Viber users. There’s no friend requesting whatsoever — if they’re on Viber, the app will know and let you message them.

Once Viber feels comfortable about the messaging capabilities on these beta apps, it will launch full versions of the Viber app (voice calls included) for both platforms.

Turns out Robin hit the nail on the head with this prediction: “My educated guess is that this will become a stunningly big hit in no time.”

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