April 2013

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Google Is Retiring Its Meebo Bar On June 6 To Focus On Google+

29 April 2013 4:43 PM
Meebo's homepage as of December 2011.

Meebo’s homepage as of December 2011.

Google will retire the website widget service Meebo Bar just one year after buying the company that built it. Google bought Meebo on 4 June 2012 reportedly for $100m (£643k), before proceeding to strip away much of its functionality.

The advertising giant confirmed this in an early email this morning to all publishers saying it reason for scrapping the tool is to focus on its Google+ plugins.

It started as an instant-messaging service compatible with other web chat programs. It then evolved into the Meebo bar, which could be installed by webmasters along the tops of their sites and allowed visitors to easily share links with friends. It also slurped up data about people and used that to hit them with advertising.

Before Meebo’s demise, Google stripped away all its features until it only consisted of the Meebo bar with added Google+ capabilities.

It will be retired on 6 June, a few weeks before Google Reader is due to be scrapped, here is the email the advertising giant (Google) sent out this morning:

Dear Meebo Bar Publisher,

Five years ago, we launched the Meebo Bar to bring community, engagement, and revenue to publisher sites.

As part of the Google team, this continues to be our focus, but we want to best serve mobile and desktop publishers moving forward. Therefore, we have decided to focus our resources on initiatives like the recently launched Google+Sign-In (which includes interactive posts and over-the-air app installs) and the Google+ plug-ins.

This means we will retire the Meebo Bar, effective June 6, 2013.

Thank you for being a Meebo Bar publisher. We have truly appreciated the opportunity to serve you.

Sincerely,
Sandy, Seth, and the Meebo Team

Is it unclear what will happen to the “Sandy, Seth, and the Meebo Team”, who signed the statement, although it is possible they will be taken on by the advertising giant to create new features for It’s Google+ servicew.

Before Google bought Meebo, it was used by 100 million people a month, apparently.

Source: Email / https://www.meebo.com

AppShopper returns to iOS App Store

23 April 2013 5:19 PM

Even before AppGratis was famously removed from the iOS App Store earlier this month, AppShopper, a similar app discovery service, had already been there: it was removed from the App Store late last year for similar reasons. It had been so long that I thought I would never see an updated version of the native AppShopper app back on my device again. But I was very happy to find out that AppShopper has recently returned to the iOS App Store with a completely new app titled AppShopper Social (free on iOS).

The team behind the app announced the news in a blog post on Sunday and sent an email out early this morning.

This is a brand new app, so it is a separate download (not an update). You will be able to keep your existing AppShopper app on your device as well.

AppShopper Social has a very familiar look and feel to it when compared to the original app. The app name has changed, which means I can continue to use the new app and the older version of App Shopper to find new apps to download. But the big difference in this version is that is no longer lists every app in the App Store in ranked order, which was too similar  to what Apple does with its own App Store lists.

New Social Features

The main view is now composed of your Friend Stream which shows you apps that your fellow AppShopper friends have added to their Wish List or My Apps lists.

With AppShopper Social, you can maintain a Friend/Follower list. When you add a friend to your list, your personalized stream becomes composed of apps that that they have added to their own lists. While you can add any other AppShopper user to your friends list, we’ve created a few special accounts for you to get started with.

Same Old Features, Some Coming Back

Long time AppShopper users will be happy to know that the core Wish List and My App features remain in place. You can still get Push Notifications for updates and price changes to your apps. You can also search for any apps. Following the AppShopper user will get you a list of the AppShopper Featured apps.

A few features didn’t make the first cut. “What’s New” and “Top 200″ were temporarily dropped while we sought re-approval. We will see about returning those features in a future version.

Also, in the interest of time, we haven’t yet updated the iPad version yet. In its present form, AppShopper Social is not a Universal app. We will be working on a Universal update soon.

 

Download now: iTunes Link GB / Download now: iTunes Link US

‘Mailbox’ for iPhone You Can Finally Download and Use Mailbox’s App Without Waiting in Line

19 April 2013 7:33 PM

If you’ve been interested in trying out Mailbox’s app, but didn’t feel like waiting behind thousands of people in line, now’s your chance! Orchestra’s mail management app, Mailbox, debuted in the App Store in February and while it impressed many, there was a long virtual line before most people could actually use it. Yesterday, Orchestra announced that the virtual line to use the app has been eliminated. You can download Mailbox now for free [iTunes link]

Good news! Mailbox is now available without having to wait in line. After 10 weeks of around-the-clock hard work, our engineering team has scaled the Mailbox service to deliver over 100 million messages per day (and growing). We believe we can now confidently handle new users as they sign up, so we’ve pulled down the reservation system.

If you missed the hub-bub around Mailbox, the app lets you manage your email inbox with gestures to re-order, delete, archive, and even snooze your emails for later handling. Here’s the promo video so you can see it in action below:

It works only with Gmail accounts at the moment and the app is free to download and use. I was able to start using Mailbox a couple of weeks or so after it was released and while I like the concept, it doesn’t help me be more productive for work though if it gets the ability to handle IMAP accounts outside of Gmail, I’d definitely use it for my personal email. If you’ve been waiting patiently to give Mailbox a whirl or are just hearing about it for the first time, now is the time to get it. If you’re already using Mailbox, you’ll be happy to know that it got some smarter snooze options, interface improvements, and bug fixes in version 1.2.0 that was released earlier this week.

Last month, Dropbox acquired the app and the team behind it — 13 employees in total — in a move that both companies said would help the app expand more quickly.

Have you tried using Mailbox yet? Share your thoughts about the app in the comments.

Apple iMessage and FaceTime not working for some users

10 April 2013 12:48 AM

Apple has confirmed that its iMessage and FaceTime services are not currently working for some users. On Apple’s System Status page, both iMessage and FaceTime are listed as having issues with a note underneath each that reads “Some users affected.” All other services are up.

iPhone owners have already been aware that iMessage is down. As “iPhones” and “iMessage” have both been trending on Twitter in relation to the downtime. If you thought it was just your phone, rest assured it’s not. You will still be able to send messages to friends though, they will just send as normal text messages rather than iMessage’s, of course that means you will have to suffer with those ugly green chat bubbles temporarily.

The issues began around 3:15PM eastern time according to Apple. It’s been a little over three hours now. The actual problem itself is unidentified at this point, so there’s unfortunately no way of knowing when Apple will resolve the iMessage and FaceTime woes.

Apple has a history of having issues keeping up its services like iMessage and iCloud. This is far from the first time iMessage has been down and if I was a betting man, I’d say it probably won’t be the last.

UPDATE 1:30 AM Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (BST): It looks like iMessage and FaceTime is working again.