People don’t send postcards anymore. Why bother when you can photo MMS a friend? Attempting to restore some of the social experience behind photography, SwingVine has created SwingVine Gallery, an app that attempts to bring back some of the mystique and enjoyment of social photo sharing.
Using your iPhone’s camera and GPS, the SwingVine Gallery app allows you to send a photo to a friend “secretly,” a photo that they are unable to see unless they also participate by sending a photo back, sort of like a mobile game of photo tag.
While both the idea and the app interface are simple, SwingVine gallery does have its appeal, as it’s pretty hard to resist wanting to see whatever photo postcard is under wraps. I genuinely felt a level of excitement as I waited for my “secret” postcard to be revealed (It was, of course, a photo of the Eiffel Tower).
The app, expected to arrive in the app store within the next 24 hours, also functions as a photo album, with all the secret photos you receive being saved alongside your own personal photos. “Our goal is capturing people’s lives visually” says co-founder Ling Bao.
For those that can’t wait until it drops, you can try out the feature on the web here.
ComScore just released its smartphone market share numbers for March through May, and unsurprisingly the trend continues from previous months. Android phone saw the most significant growth in market share in May, up 4.0 percentage points to capture 13.0 percent of smartphone subscribers. Of course, despite Android’s gain, RIM and Apple dominated, with RIM taking 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent share. Microsoft saw a 13.2 percent share and Palm rounded the top five out with a 4.8 percent share. In total, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period.
In terms of manufacturer share, the report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.4 percent market share. LG ranked second with 21.5 percent share, followed by Motorola (21.2 percent share), RIM (8.7 percent share, up 0.5 percentage point) and Nokia (8.1 percent share).
For the three month period from March to May, comScore reports that 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Across the board, comScore’s numbers show mobile phone users in the U.S. are interacting more with their phones. In terms of actions, 65.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in May, up 1.4 percent versus the prior three month period. Mobile browsing also increased to 31.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points). Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 30.0 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.
While Android smartphones were the only type of phone to see a gain in market share for the three month period, the platform is still way behind Apple’s mobile user base. Android still has a ways to go in terms of market share before it can be seen as a major competitor to Apple, but it is nice to see that the platform is slowly gaining a larger user base.
HP’s buyout of Palm may have won them webOS, but it doesn’t seem to have won them many friends within the company. There are only so many names within Palm that are so oft-mentioned that I could name them off hand — and of those, the talent seems to be disappearing left and right. First to go was interface mastermind Matias Duarte, followed shortly thereafter by Rich Dellinger, best known for coming up with webOS’ incredible notifications system.
And now, they’ve lost another; I’m hearing from an unshakably solid source that Lynn Fox, Vice President of Public Relations, left the company earlier this week.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
Best Buy just announced that pre-sale orders of the iPhone 4 can be placed starting tomorrow, June 15. Apple. Pre-sale orders can be placed at any Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile standalone store nationwide.The iPhone 4 will be available for purchase at Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores June 24.
The iPhone 4 was announced a few weeks ago during Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Its notable features are, of course, the extremely high resolution screen, video chat capability with FaceTime, and the new form factor.
Walmart will also be carrying the phone come June 24, but will not be accepting pre-order. And you can pre-prder your new iPhone through Apple starting June 15. Best Buy was also chosen to carry Apple’s iPad as well.
The new phone, which comes in black or white, costs $199 for a 16GB version and $299 for 32GB. The June 24th date is for the US, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The rest of the world will get it in July.
