By Gilbert Falso :: 2:03 PM
If there was a tablet under your Christmas tree, or unwrapped as part of your eight nights of celebration this holiday season, there is a good chance that your tablet had the Android operating system installed.
Chitika, a web advertising and analytics firm, announced yesterday that immediately following the Christmas holiday, the portion of web traffic usually attributed to Apple’s iPad dipped 7.14 percent. Throughout December, the iPad tablets had accounted for 86 percent of tablet-driven Internet traffic. This number dropped to 78.9 percent after the holidays as tablet gift recipients began to play with their new toys.
Among the winners this season was Amazon’s Kindle Fire
By Cynthia Herbert :: 1:32 PM
Photojournalist John D. McHugh has created a watermarking application for the iPhone that he hope will help stem image and copyright theft on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
He developed the app, called Marksta, because he was tired of people lifting his work from the web and posting it without attribution.
London, U.K.-based McHugh is well known for his work in Afghanistan, and has been frustrated to find his work across many social networks with no byline or credit given.
Because the app needed to be easy to use in the field, he wanted something that could be done on a mobile phone, and did not require a computer. “Obviously, I can put a watermark in Photoshop on my laptop, but that means I have to have my laptop, I have to be able to download my pictures to my laptop, and I also need a fairly expensive program and a certain amount of knowledge to do that – my wife can’t do that, and a lot of my friends can’t do that,” he told the British Journal of Photography.
In addition to watermarking images, the Marksta app also lets photographers add any text with a choice of fonts, and add borders to pictures without affecting the aspect ratio of the image.
McHugh has made the app available from Apple’s app store for free download for several days. After that, the price will be set at $2.49.
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:16 PM
Facebook’s new Poke application that allows users to send messages and images that only display for a matter of seconds actually retains the data and images for up to 90 days, according to Business Insider.
The company stores Poke messages in an encrypted format, and keeps them that way for two days after the last recipient receives the poke message. This is done to help Facebook track any abuse that is reported. After two days, the encryption key that allows access to the message is deleted. But, Facebook can still retrieve that key from a log or backup file – for up to 90 days.
After 90 days, the key is no longer accessible. Facebook has told Business Insider that they are “working to significantly reduce that period over the next several weeks” as engineers work on the stability of Poke’s deletion system.
Poke, and its more popular counterpart, Snapchat, both have privacy issues. It recently came to light that some Snapchat images can be retrieved off of users phones after they are viewed. By connecting the phone to a computer, and running a file management program, some users have been able to pull up image files that were thought to have been temporary.
By Gilbert Falso :: 11:47 PM
Apple Corp. has acknowledged a failure in the iOS 6 “Do Not Disturb” setting that leaves it turned on after the user has scheduled it to shut off. Â The company says that the bug wil correct itself automatically on or after January 7, and iPhones running iOS 6 will function as normal when “Do Not Disturb” is turned on after that point.
In a support post on its website, Apple offers little in the way of condolences for users affected by the glitch – only telling them they will need to change the settings manually.
Before this date, you should manually turn the Do Not Disturb feature on or off.
To turn off the scheduling feature, tap Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb and switch Scheduled to Off.
The “Do Not Disturb” feature was added to the operating system with iOS 6, and allows users to block which calls and callers are allowed to reach your device and make it ring. This feature included a scheduling capability which allowed it to switch off at a set time, or within a set period of hours. It is this scheduling capability that is now flawed, as it will not to shut off as scheduled, leaving it enabled until it is turned off manually. In some cases, users need to reboot their phones before the feature will reset itself.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 1:48 PM
As we all return to work, with memories of the holidays slowly fading behind us, customer experience analytics company ForeSee has published their annual holiday online satisfaction reports, which rate top e-retailer websites for 2012. This year’s list puts Amazon
Amazon scored 88 out of 100, and now has the highest scores in ForeSee’s index for eight years running. ForeSee attributes this category dominance due to the variety of merchandise the online retailer offers and the overall shopping experience that it provide, including its website, mobile and tablet connectivity, and offline sales support.
To compile this year’s list of top retailers, ForeSee collected 24,000 customer surveys between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Amazon reacted to the news by releasing some data of its own, showing that 2012 was the biggest holiday season it has ever seen, with over 26.5 million items ordered on its peak day, a record-breaking 306 items per second. Also on its peak day, Amazon’s fulfillment arm was responsible for shipping over 15.6 million units.
In addition to Amazon’s own merchandise and order fulfillment, the company also published figures for the Amazon third-party sellers Marketplace. Here, sales were up 40 percent from 2011.
The Amazon Marketplace