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Feb 27 2013

WARNING: iOS Kindle App Update Bug Removes Library on iPad & iPhone

***WARNING – DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE LATEST AMAZON KINDLE APP UPDATE***

If you’re an iPhone, iPad or iPod owner and you’re planning to update your apps today, read this first…

Early updaters on iOS devices quickly realized something went wrong after downloading the latest Amazon Kindle App this morning. Essentially when these users downloaded the latest update it was like they hit a “reset” button on the app. As Cnet’s Shara Tibken notes:

After downloading the update, existing Kindle users are logged out of their accounts, and everything they had downloaded is deleted from their devices. They also lose bookmarks and other settings, according to angry comments on iTunes. Users then have to log back in to Kindle and redownload their books from the cloud. Some are complaining that they had to delete the app entirely and download it again.

Tibken also quotes the specific warning issued by Amazon, while pointing out how easy it would be to overlook:

Note: There is a known issue with this update. If you are an existing Kindle for iOS user, we recommend you do not install this update at this time.

And many of us with iOS devices tend to click the “Update All” button anyway, so how would we ever see the warning in the “What’s New” area? The last line in that Cnet article quotes the last update from Amazon:

“We have submitted an update fix for this issue and are working with Apple to release,” she said.

Okay… but how about preventing users from downloading it all together? Seems like that would be the way to go at least in the interim, no?

Anyway, this obviously isn’t doing much for the iOS Kindle App’s reviews. I just skimmed through them just now on my iPhone and virtually all of them were 1 star (out of 5) ratings with complaints about the effects of today’s update. I stopped skimming after the first 100, but you can imagine there are a lot of upset users out there today. If you’d like to indulge in a a bit of schadenfreude, here’s are a few samples of what iOS Kindle App users have had to say today:

*UPDATE*

This site seems to indicate that the issue has been resolved, however I’m not seeing that confirmed elsewhere:

I use the Amazon Kindle app on my iPad all the time, and it has just been updated to version 3.6.2 which fixes the registration bug from this mornings update.

Then again, I got to this story late and never saw the “warning” from Amazon in the first place. Still, I don’t see anything from Amazon posted on Twitter or even from the “Kindle Team“.

May 9 2012

Google Goggles – There Are iPhone & Android Apps For That, Just No Glasses Yet

At first glance, last month’s announcement of Google’s Project Glass may have seemed like another Google April Fools prank, but it quickly became clear that this was a serious endeavor by the king of web search. (If you haven’t seen the Windows parody, do so now). Of course, the idea of bringing your computer monitor and smartphone to mini-screens on the inside of high-tech, voice controlled glasses is still a only in the early concept stage. But that doesn’t mean you can’t experience Google Goggles on some level even today:

Okay, so Google Goggles is an app that isn’t really anything like Google Glass… But it’s still very cool. With so many of us now take for granted the ability to do high-speed web searches on the go through our mobile phones, increasingly via speech-to-text rather than fooling around with touch screen keyboards, the ability to search by snapping a photo is the next step in this natural progression of easy mobile search. Try it out today by downloading the app for your Android device through Google Play or for your iPhone here, or through the App Store. Now watch some British dude run around San Francisco while showing you how to use Google Goggles:

As you might expect, Google has really been pushing their own Android apps lately, but clearly recognizing the continued popularity of the iPhone, they offer a rather impressive suite of Google apps for those devices as well.

There are obviously limitations to what this new technology can do today, but the implications are incredible when you consider what they must be cooking in the lab. For now there are just a handful of types of objects that Google is able to reliably use for photo-to-search, but many of them are the types of items we encounter and would use Google Googles to interact with every day:

If Google isn’t overhyping what Goggles can do, then we are entering a strange new world my friends. It already boggles the mind to think about where we’re at with voice-to-text, facial recognition, Siri/iris, instant translation and on and on. Considering the speed with which technology is moving, can you imagine what our mobile devices will be capable even a year from now.

Full disclosure: I have the app for my iPhone 4S and it’s pretty amazing to witness the technology “in action”, but I haven’t yet had the occasiona to use it in the “real world”, unless taking pictures of random things around my apartment counts. Seeing Google search a sentence off the front of a magazine or pull up information about my toothpaste isn’t quite as impressive as getting back instant information about a landmark of painting. I have however been very impressed with my other Google apps and after witnessing the intelligence behind apps like Shazam, I’m relatively certain much more intelligence photo-to-search is just around the corner.

Has anyone else actually unleashed this beast and put it to the test? I’d be interested to hear your real world experiences. Do the Goggles live up to the hype?

Apr 9 2012

Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion

With nearly 30 million users, you’ve undoubtedly seen friends using Instagram to post photos to Facebook in recent months, so you’re probably thinking that that the social media colossus is only acquiring the mobile photo-sharing startup as part as a way to add yet another weapon to their arsenal before what some see as the inevitable battle with Google+ over social media dominance in the near future. While that certainly is a valid argument, Business Insider pointed something out in February that might give us more of a clue as to why FB would drop $1 billion to gobble up Instagram:

Already, startups backed by millions of dollars in venture capital are attacking Facebook’s weakness in this area.

The current leader of this insurgency is an iPhone app called Instagram, which grew from 1 million users in January 2011 to 15 million in December 2011.

Instagram isn’t perfect. You can’t label your photos with your friends’ names like you can on Facebook, for example.

But what’s great about it is that it is very fast – especially compared to Facebook.

With the Facebook iPhone app, there are 6 screens a user has to go through before a user can actually take a picture. With Instagram, there is one.

This is a long term problem for Facebook.

According to Mary Meeker, sometime in the middle of 2013, there will be more people on the Internet via their mobile devices than desktops.

…

Facebook is aware of this problem. A source familiar with Facebook’s photos team tells us one of its top priorities is “reduce the friction to uploading content” through mobile devices.

It would seem that today’s acquisition is less about beating Google to the punch (although there’s that too), and more about mobile photo sharing and the “Insta” that Instagram brings to it. Kudos to Business Insider for their prescient reporting just two short months ago. Many, like Dan York at Disruptive Conversations were caught totally off guard.

For Instagram users concerned that this means the end of their favorite photo sharing app, here’s what the company’s CEO had to say about the move today on their own blog:

It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.
The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you.You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.
We’re psyched to be joining Facebook and are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.

Couple that with what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg said in today’s announcement, and you should be confident that you can continue using Instagram as usual (for now!):

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

Others aren’t so convinced, like C.G. at So It’s Come to This:

They always say that. Gowalla shut down after Facebook bought them. There isn’t a need to keep two independent photo networks up at the same time. Facebook acquires for talent. I expect Instagram to go dark in less than a year from now. I’ll be shocked if it lasts more than 9 months.

John Pavlus had a similar take, but has warmed to the news a bit after reading this piece in the Atlantic.

Commenters on the Business Insider post are debating whether or not today’s decision is a good move and what it means for social media/photo sharing in general, but we want to know what you think?

More coverage of today’s news:
Cnet
Mashable
Mobile Syrup
Sociable Blog
Fresh Networks

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