I saw recently that the overseas online Nokia stores were closing, but figured the US one would stay open given that just a small number of carriers sell Nokia smartphones. However, if you go visit the Nokia USA store website you will find that it is now CLOSED. After the crazy Nokia N8 experiences I had, I have to say good riddance. You were much better off finding phones at Amazon, Newegg, Dell, and through other online retailers anyway.

This is what is posted on the Nokia USA site:

The Nokia US Online Store has been closed from June 30, 2011. Below you will find information on where to purchase a new Nokia product and/or compatible accessory and information on where to find support for your current online order from the Nokia Store.

The site lists the various questions and answers you may have regarding current orders, promotions, and service issues.

Nokia Experts

A federal court judge said Apple’s fight to prevent Amazon from using the name Appstore in selling software for Android will “probably” be denied, Bloomberg reports.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton after a hearing in Oakland said she will “probably” deny the motion because Apple had failed to demonstrate real evidence of confusion among consumers.

Apple filed for a trademark on the term “App Store” in 2008 and was initially rejected, but then approved in early 2010. Microsoft was the first to file an objection in July 2010 on the grounds that the term was too generic.

In March of 2011, the company filed suit against Amazon after Amazon began marketing its own Appstore for Android. At the time, Apple said that Amazon was guilty of trademark infringement and unfair competition, arguing that third-party use of the term “app store” had only occurred in limited circumstances and that Amazon was using it improperly. Meanwhile, Apple is still sending cease-and-desist letters to entities using the term “app store.”

Customers can shop in the Amazon’s Appstore from any computer using a Web browser. They can also access the Amazon Appstore directly on their Android phones or tablets, once they’ve installed the Amazon Appstore application. Amazon is enabling one-click purchasing for anyone with a credit card on file.

Amazon is going head-to-head with Google’s official Android Marketplace (and Apple’s App Store). Unlike Android Market, which has a very open submission process, They will be screening every application to ensure they meet Amazon’s quality standard.

dailywireless.org

I read about the Ovi Store version 2.08 update on All About Symbian and fired up my Nokia N8 to see that the update had arrived. After signing in to the Ovi Store I saw that there was one application update available for my device, as shown in the screenshot to the right.

Getting application update notices is essential in today’s mobile world so I am happy to see it finally come to Nokia’s Symbian line. According to the guys at AAS, here is what is improved in the new Ovi Store client:

• Users are able to review and apply updates to apps they’ve downloaded from the Ovi Store. The server now sends version numbers automatically down to the client on the phone.
• Nokia’s algorithm for delivering ‘Top Free’ and ‘Best Sellers’ has been tweaked, to “make app and game listings more relevant for consumers”. Internal rankings are now filtered better by device and region, so that popularity in one niche won’t skew the whole.
• Finding relevant apps has been made easier, with the addition of a “users who downloaded x also downloaded y” system.
• Localization of S60 clients to Arabic Store clients for S60 5th Edition and S60 3rd Edition.

My new Nokia E7 also received the update the first time I launched the Ovi Store on it. I also fired up my Nokia Astound to check for the Ovi Store update and found it too had the update available so now all three of my newer Symbian devices are running the latest Ovi Store client!

Nokia Experts

I was chatting with Dieter and told him I was quite pleased with the short time I spent with the Nokia Astound and that I was thinking of picking one up for the site. He gave me the thumbs up and was going to get one for me to use, but I decided to just visit a local store to see what I could work out with the expectation I would pay the full $ 299.99 (before 9.5% tax) no contract price. I went to my local T-Mobile store in Federal Way and was shocked by what happened next.

I went into the store and there were six employees standing around with only one other customer being helped. Richard asked me kindly what I would like and I told him I wanted to buy a Nokia Astound off contract. He told me they had them in stock and he would see what he could do for me. He said he thought he could work out something in the system because there were some special offers on accessories. After logging into the system and trying some different things, he worked out a deal where he was able to give me the following gear and still cut my total price out the door to $ 255.08 that included the 9.5% sales tax.

• Nokia Astound (shown as only $ 99.99 on the receipt)
• Jabra Stone 2 Bluetooth headset ($ 129.99 down to $ 90.99)
• MicroUSB car charger ($ 29.99 down to $ 20.99)
• Nokia Astound 2-pack screen protector ($ 14.99 down to $ 10.49)
• Nokia Astound black gel skin case ($ 14.99 down to $ 10.49)

I was amazed by what he was able to get for me while still saving me just over $ 73. My account stayed the same, my excellent family plan remained untouched, and I ended up saving money and walking out with some great accessories. If my head wasn’t lost in the clouds as he was handing me all this gear I would have asked for a 32GB microSD card instead of the Bluetooth headset since I need those more than headsets.

If you are considering the Nokia Astound, you may want to visit your local store and see if they have any special offers for you as well. Richard mentioned that the future AT&T purchase had something to do with his ability to offer me all of these accessories and knock a couple hundred off of the phone price too.

I put my SIM card into my new Nokia Astound and plan to use it as my primary device for a while and create a Guide page for the site. I already like that I can use Swype in portrait orientation and the email client is MUCH better!

Nokia Experts

Google’s eBooks electronic bookstore now contains about 3 million free titles, up from 2 million when it was launched in December.

Macworld

One of the big deficiencies within mobile app store environments these days is the ability to meaningfully discover apps, games and themes that are going to be worthwhile for you. Best Sellers and Top Downloads lists do typically provide a good starting point for app discovery, but moving beyond that app stores tend to fall apart. Star ratings usually regress somewhere to the mean (that 3 star average that leaves you wondering whether you should or shouldn’t download an app) and the comments left by anonymous users far too often provide little or no value (anybody notice all the spam and gibberish in App World these days?). Sum it up, and it’s no wonder so many BlackBerry users check into a site like CrackBerry daily for advice and info on what apps to download. App discovery via the app store environment itself can be frustrating!

That all changes today with the rollout of AppVerse within the CrackBerry App Store. AppVerse delivers a really trusting and engaging app store experience, thanks to the layer of social interaction and features it adds. Should you choose to create your AppVerse account (it’s not mandatory and you can shop in the CrackBerry App Store as you always have), you can setup your public profile which display app purchases you have made, along with reviews and ratings you provide (you can choose to hide apps as well and also have full control over privacy/notification settings from the My Account > AppVerse page). You can follow other AppVerse members, comment on their reviews and rate whether individual app reviews were helpful or not. You can also ask other AppVerse members to provide a review for any app you’re interested in. This social interaction really ups the accountability of everybody in the app store, which delivers reviews that are REALLY HELPFUL. When you tap into the power of AppVerse, that frustration and uncertainty are gone. You can even review apps that are not available in our CrackBerry App Store (ie. it’s in App World and not the CrackBerry App Store catalog yet).

It’s still early days, so if you find any bugs or have any ideas for new features you’d like to see implemented, be sure to drop us a comment. We already have some more features planned for rollout in the weeks ahead, but take a browse around and you’ll see it’s already off to a great start. Not sure where to begin? Try checking out the AppVerse profiles of me and our other writers and forums moderators here on CrackBerry at the link below.

Check out AppVerse in the CrackBerry App Store
Follow CrackBerry Bloggers/Forums Moderators in AppVerse

CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. AppVerse now live in the CrackBerry App Store! Delivers social interaction and features to aid in BlackBerry app discovery!!

View full post on CrackBerry.com blogs

Last month at CES Slacker Radio announced it was coming soon to Symbian devices. I just read a Tweet from the NokiaUS account and saw that Slacker Radio is now available in the Ovi Store. I popped my SIM back into my Nokia N8 and downloaded it immediately. Keep in mind, the initial download to get the software is 1.3 MB so make sure you have a solid connection or are connected via WiFi before downloading.

Keep in mind, Slacker is a service with support for those in the US and Canada so this service is only available for these two countries. I understand many other countries have Spotify so it looks like we finally get a client/service in the US before others

I have been using Slacker Radio on my Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 devices for over a year as my primary streaming music client and find it works very well at providing just the right mix for me. I actually have a Slacker sticker on my MacBook Pro since I love the service. The great thing is that favorite stations are synced to your account so you can pick up a different smartphone and listen to your favorites on any device. I like how the client on other platforms lets you cache music for offline listening so you can load up tunes for your next flight and then stream again when you land. This offline caching feature is not yet in this new Symbian client, but we may see it in the future.

This news for Slacker Radio is timed particularly well since Last.fm is going to start charging a monthly fee to stream music.

As stated on the Ovi Store description:

Listen to free personalized radio on your Nokia phone. The award-winning Slacker Radio application gives you access to the entire Slacker music library featuring millions of songs from thousands of artists. Listen to over 130 expert programmed radio stations or create your own custom stations. Learn more about the music you hear by reading the artist bios and album reviews. Slacker Personal Radio is the best way to discover new artists and hear your favorite songs.

Basic or Radio Plus?

The free account you setup with after downloading Slacker Radio gives you full access to Slacker Radio music, but you are limited to 6 song skips per hour, per station, there are some ads, and you get no lyrics. You can upgrade to Radio Plus and pay $3.99/month to have ad free listening, unlimited song skips, complete lyrics, and ABC News Radio. On my N8 this can actually be billed through T-Mobile.  I like the service so pay for the Radio Plus upgrade.

UPDATE: OK, I am using it up here in Alaska and when connected via EDGE the music streams flawlessly. However, if I switch to the task manager or another app the music pauses for 1/2 second and then starts back up again. This is going to be real annoying if I am trying to multi-task with Slacker Radio playing. Hopefully this is something they can fix easily enough and soon.

Also, don’t forget my tip that you can Zune Pass music on your N8 and get a taste of what kind of services a Nokia Windows Phone 7 device will provide.

View full post on Nokia Experts

Apple has made App Store subscriptions available for digital magazine publishing. Apple’s subscription model is now available to all iOS publications and enables users to automatically receive a new publication on a subscription model. Individual publishers can set their own prices and lengths of subscriptions. Apple will takes the same 30 percent share that it currently pulls from other in-app purchases.

Subscriptions are purchased through the apps themselves. Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers.

Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple.

The subscription model was introduced at the launch of News Corp.’s The Daily. But the longstanding kerfuffle between Apple and publishers over app revenues has not exactly been resolved, says the NY Observer.

It provides a more seamless experience for subscription content. On the other hand, Apple requires all third party companies to remove payment links from their apps which show users how to subscribe without sending nearly a third of their money to Apple. Publishers are also prohibited from offering better prices for their content outside of the app.

Apparently, Amazon must remove their link to their Web e-bookstore, and offer in-app purchases so Apple can take its 30% cut.

View full post on dailywireless.org

Google has updated the stable channel of its Chrome web browser. This release is technically labeled Chrome 9, though Google ceased focusing on version numbers some time ago, opting for a rolling, every-six-weeks update schedule.

If you’d like to take the latest version of Chrome for a spin, head over to the Chrome downloads page. If you’re already using Chrome, the update will arrive automatically.

If you’ve tested the beta release of Chrome 9, there won’t be anything new to see in this update. But for those that prefer to stick with the stable channel, Chrome 9 brings several features from the beta channel to prime time — notably, support for 3-D WebGL hardware acceleration. This release also adds support for the new Chrome Web Store, and Chrome Instant, a tool that loads web pages as soon as you start typing in the URL bar.

WebGL, which was originally developed by Mozilla, acts as a bridge between the browser and the desktop hardware acceleration tool OpenGL. The WebGL project gives web developers a way to connect the HTML 5 Canvas tool, which can be used to display complex graphics in the browser without plug-ins like Flash, to the operating system’s native, hardware accelerated graphics engine — in this case, OpenGL. The result is much improved performance for 3-D apps on the web. Google notes a couple of demos you can try out, the Google Body experiment in particular does a nice job of showcasing the power of WebGL.

This release is also notable for being the first stable version of Chrome to include access to the new Chrome Web App Store (U.S. users only). To check it out, just click the new link on the New Tab page.

Chrome Instant mimics Google’s instant search feature when you type a search in the URL bar. If you type a web address, Chrome Instant will start loading the page as you type, which makes getting to your favorite sites a bit faster. The only catch is that Chrome Instant is disabled by default. To turn it on, head to the “basic” tab on Chrome’s preferences page and check the “Enable Instant” option under Search.

See Also:

• Chrome Add-on Kills Tracking Cookies
• Chrome 10 ‘Obliterates’ Your Browsing History
• Chrome 8 Adds Google Instant to the URL Bar
• Chrome Gets New ‘Crankshaft’ Engine, Syncing, WebGL Support
• Firefox With WebGL Brings Powerful 3-D Graphics to the Web

View full post on Webmonkey

Well, I’m not sure how credible a source the Grand Rapids South Best Buy Facebook page, but they have it from the highest authority that the HTC Thunderbolt is dropping on Valentines Day with the Xoom following up on the 24th.

This is news that has been talked about for a little bit, but nevertheless I think by now we can fully expect to see both of these devices landing before the end of the month. Stay tuned.

Best Buy store confirms launch dates for Thunderbolt, Xoom?

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

HTC’s main business is cellphones sold their wireless partners, but they keep their product catalog spread out among carriers and provide enough options in terms of software and hardware to justify a storefront pedaling only their shwag. Turns out, that is exactly what the manufacturer is considering. Following in the footsteps of Apple, Microsoft, and Nokia, HTC has plans to open three flagship stores in Taiwan. Judging on their success, the company would want to further expand with 100 additional retail outlets.

It is unclear whether any of these stores would make it outside of Asia, but we’d imagine the major international markets like New York and London might get their own. The move would encourage people to purchase their next phone based more on product selection rather than carrier, but we still think HTC would need to diversify their lineup a bit more to make the enterprise successful. A tablet might be a good way to start traveling down that road…

[via IntoMobile]

View full post on Android Phone Fans

Gingerbread devices may soon have a whole slew of new games available to them, as Sony is lining up a new channel for distributing Playstation games onto Android devices. Dubbed Playstation Suite, this channel will be distributing certified Playstation titles to compatible Android phones, tablets, and the next-gen Playstation Portable device. If you Android doesn’t have a slide-out keyboard (for shame!), the Playstation game app will simulate a keyboard on-screen for you. Sony has announced that PSOne titles will be emulated in the Playstation Suite, but they have not yet announced any prices or what the specific requirements will be — but obviously the Xperia Play is likely at the top of the list. We expect more details to be announced at Mobile World Congress in a few weeks.

Sony Announces Playstation Suite, Android Gaming Store

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

Apple’s 10 billion download countdown for the App Store ends with a single winner taking home $10,000 in iTunes Gift Card money.

View full post on Macworld

Earlier this month we told you that Amazon had launched the developer portal for its forthcoming Android App Store, where developers will be able to upload their Android apps for a 30% cut of whatever sales are made. However, it seems that Amazon has decided to control the prices of the apps sold in their store.

Developers will be able to suggest a price, but the final decision will ultimately come down to Amazon. From the beginning it seemed questionable that users (and developers for that matter) were going to turn to the Amazon store as opposed to the traditional Android Market, but with this news I am fully expecting Amazon’s experiment to flop relatively quickly.

Amazon set to control prices in their Android App Store

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

On Saturday, the English language version of Asia’s largest massively-multiplayer online role-playing game launched on the App Store. Empire Online, developed by Lakoo, is an anime-inspired adventure title that tasks players with building their own handheld kingdom

View full post on Macworld

When the Nokia Ovi Store launched I was extremely disappointed with it and recommended people stay away. As I recently wrote, the Ovi Store is quite good on Symbian^3 and I have been buying quite a few apps and games lately. I just went and checked the Bank of America credit card account I have tied to my Ovi account and saw foreign transaction fees attached to every Ovi Store purchase I made in the last month or so. Is this an issue with this bank or are others in the US seeing these foreign transaction fees too?

The amounts are small (2.75%) with a $1.99 app costing me $2.18 with tax plus $0.06 for the transaction fee, but it is the principle of the thing that bothers me.

I went into the Ovi Store on my N8 and tried to setup carrier billing, but it stated that this was unavailable at this time. I then added my PayPal MasterCard and made a purchase of the UNO HD game. So far, it looks like PayPal doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee so this may be a Bank of America issue, which doesn’t surprise me given their history with me.

View full post on Nokia Experts

To accompany the announcements of nVidia’s Tegra-powered phones, they have announced their own game store that will facilitate the purchase of games designed specifically to take advantage of the Tegra platform. They are currently courting Gameloft to distribute games through this store, called TegraZone, since they do not use the Android market either. By foregoing the market, nVidia will be able to distribute games that exceed Google’s 50MB limit, thus allowing for much more extensive games. As with many CES announcements, we do not have a concrete date for the introduction of this store, but nVidia plans to have 5-10 games available at launch.

TegraZone Game Store Makes Finding Games for Tegra-Powered Android Phones Easy

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

Jason Snell explains the rules for authorizing Mac App Store downloads. How many copies can you use at once? What are the licensing restrictions? We’ve got the answers.

View full post on Macworld

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This morning, Apple announced the stats for the Mac App Store’s opening day—drum roll please—over one million apps were downloaded in the first day.

“We’re amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Developers have done a great job bringing apps to the store and users are loving how easy and fun the Mac App Store is.”

With more than 1,000 free and paid apps, the Mac App Store is an attempt to recreate the App Store experience for personal computers.

Read the rest of href="http://www.appcraver.com/mac-app-store-opens-with-1000-apps-and-1m-downloads/">Mac App Store Opens with 1,000 Apps and 1M Downloads

AppCraver.com, 2011. | href="http://www.appcraver.com/">Best iPhone Applications | href="http://www.appcraver.com/picks/">Top iPhone Apps

In case you’re wondering how minor software updates through the Mac App Store work, here’s a look.

View full post on Macworld

The Mac App Store has launched with over 1,000 OS X applications. Our sister site Gadget Lab has more details on what that means for Apple fans.

One thousand apps for the launch is impressive, but what’s in it for web developers? Here’s a quick roundup of a few apps that Mac-loving web developers might want to check out (URLs point to the Mac App Store so you’ll need OS X 10.6.6 for the links to work).

• iSlice (free) — This slick little app opens PhotoShop documents and slices them up. ISlice retains all the layer info in the Photoshop file so it’s easy to hide background layers and focus on what you need to extract. If you already own Photoshop there’s no point to this one, but if you frequently need to slice comps and don’t want to pay Photoshop’s hefty price tag, iSlice fits the bill.

• OAuth for Mac ($3) — OAuth is pain if all you want to do is pull a bit of data out of say, the Twitter API. OAuth for Mac handles the OAuth calls for you and quickly generates a token. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it looks like it would be handy for testing and developing quick scripts.

• Colorbender ($2) — A nice looking color-scheme generator with hex and RGB values. There are tons of free color-scheme generators on the web, but if you’d like a Mac-native version, Colorbender looks like it would fit the bill.

• mColorMeter ($3) — Ever wanted to know what color your favorite website is using in its menubar? With mColorMeter you can just hover over any pixel on your screen and the app will tell you the value in RGB, Hex and Munsell colors.

• Base ($17) — Base is nice-looking graphical interface for working with SQLite databases. It’s not cheap, but $17 seems a small price to pay if it means never having to work the sqlite3 command line again.

• Gitbox ($40) — Hardly a day goes by without someone claiming there are no good Git GUIs. We haven’t tried Gitbox so we’re not endorsing it, especially at $40, but it does offer a very nice-looking graphical UI for Git. And the app comes bundled with the official Git binaries so there’s nothing extra to install — just download the app and start using Git. Great for the command-line-phobic, but seasoned Git users will likely turn up their noses at the price. (See this thread on Hacker News for some more thoughts on Gitbox.)

• Honorable Mentions — There are quite a few apps in the new store that have been around forever. We love the all-in-one development tool Coda ($100), Text Wrangler (free), BBEdit ($125 currently on sale for $99) and Pixelmator ($30).

The biggest downside to Apple’s new App Store for Mac is that there are no trial versions of the software. For that, you’ll have to head to the developers’ site and (assuming there’s a trial version available) download a good ol’ .dmg file.

See Also:

• Mac App Store Launches with 1,000 Apps, Big Discounts [Gadget Lab]
• Mobile Safari Gets More HTML5 Love in iOS Update
• Apple’s HTML5 Showcase Less About Web Standards, More About Apple

View full post on Webmonkey

Amazon.com today confirmed plans to launch its own app store for mobile devices running Google’s Android operating system, inviting developers to sign up to offer their apps through the forthcoming store.

Amazon wrote on its blog that “The convenience of using an existing Amazon.com account will make it simple and easy for customers to purchase your apps—both online and on their mobile devices.”

Why submit apps for inclusion in the Amazon Appstore for Android?

• You will have access to tens of millions of active Amazon customers.
• Amazon’s proven marketing and merchandizing features help get your apps discovered and in front of the right customers.
• The convenience of using an existing Amazon.com account will make it simple and easy for customers to purchase your apps – both online and on their mobile devices.

Amazon is not using the standard distribution agreement for developers, notes TechCrunch. “We have sole discretion to determine all features and operations of this program and to set the retail price and other terms on which we sell Apps.” TechCrunch explains that developers will submit a list price but Amazon will “use a variety of market factors” to determine the industry price.

Developers will get a 70 percent share of sales from the app, in line with other app stores, and are guaranteed no less than 20 percent of the list price if the price set by Amazon is markedly lower than the list price submitted by developers.

Amazon isn’t giving an official launch date for the new Android app store, other than to say it will be sometime this year.

View full post on dailywireless.org

HTC has posted job openings around the internet looking for various positions in their US office that paint an interesting picture. They have postings both on the career page of their website, and also at careerbuilder.com What position are they hiring for? They are looking for a “Senior E-Commerce Manager” and an “Online Merchandising Manager,” among others. What could they be working on? One of the more convincing theories is their own app store.

We had heard that an HTC app store might be making an appearance soon, so we had reason to suspect that HTC would be working toward something like this. Some of the job requirements are “smartphone apps store management” and “solid understanding of online store development and operation process.” Are you coming to the same conclusion that the rest of us are? Only time will tell for sure, but we think that HTC is preparing to launch their own app store.

HTC Hiring To Build Its Own App Store

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

I am a big fan of Angry Birds and have been enjoying the Seasons edition on my new Samsung Galaxy Tab. I was pleased to see this version finally come to the Nokia Ovi Store, priced at $1.99. The Angry Birds Season edition is setup like an advent calendar so you can only play the levels up to the day of the month. Thus, Nokia players will now have to play days 1-18 to catch up to the Android and iOS world. I wish there was a way to sync your progress across multiple platforms and I imagine this is something that the folks at Rovio are working on for gadget geeks like myself.

The download is just over 8MB so keep that in mind if you are in a data restricted area with your phone. I installed it on my orange N8 and started playing just a short while ago. The cool thing about this Seasons edition is that it also includes the Halloween edition of the game that I played on my iPad, but did not yet have on my N8.

Anyone else enjoy Angry Birds on their Nokia device?

View full post on Nokia Experts