Reeva Steenkamp, shot dead by Oscar Pistorius (photo: India Times)
The International Business Times reports that three detectives investigating the killing of Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp have flown to Apple’s HQ in Cupertino to seek assistance in accessing the athlete’s iPhone.
Prosecutors want to access its SMS and WhatsApp messages as evidence for the trial.
South African police have been struggling to gain access to the phone for months, one of several handsets found in the double-amputee athlete’s Pretoria villa on the night he shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Pistorius has claimed that he cannot remember the passcode … Expand Expanding Close
Just about everyone in the tech industry is talking about the $19B Facebook/Whatsapp deal, so what better time to announce new features coming soon to the service. TechCrunch reports that WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum announced at Mobile World Congress today that the app will gain voice calling functionality sometime in Q2 of this year:
“We use the least amount of bandwidth and we use the hell out of it,” he said. “We will focus on simplicity.” Voice will come to Android and iOS first and then following on some Nokia and BlackBerry phones, he added.
The report adds that WhatsApp will also soon be working with some carrier partners:
While WhatsApp, as an OTT service, may appear like one of the companies that is attacking carriers, it is also working with them. The first partnership will be with e-plus to offer special tariffs to access the app, Koum said today. Interestingly, disrupting the current mobile communications economy has put WhatsApp right back into the kinds of services that built out that economy in the first place — in today’s case, voice.
Facebook of course already offers voice calling in some countries, but it’s unclear if the new WhatsApp feature will be integrated with the Facebook voice features. WhatsApp already offers users the ability to send short recorded voice messages as pictured above).
Despite the plans for new features, Koum reiterated that, “There are no planned changes and we will continue to do what we set out to do, even after the acquisition closes.” That, he said, includes “no marketing.”
In line with my report from earlier this month, Facebook has announced that it will be revamping its Android and iOS Messenger apps. As we previously noted, the new apps have an entirely new design that is flatter and distinct from the standard Facebook application on Android and iOS. The Verge was given a preview of the Android version has some new features besides the new design:
In terms of functionality, there are a host of under-the-hood improvements to make sending and receiving messages faster, says product manager Peter Martinazzi. There are also some front-end tweaks that makes the app faster — especially on Android, where the SMS texting feature, which let you text friends who don’t have Facebook, has been removed.
The highlight feature, however, of the new apps is phone number integration. The repot summarizes the functionality as a WhatsApp competitor:
While Facebook won’t let you text a phone number from Messenger, the company plans to use phone numbers in a new way: to identify its users, just like in WhatsApp. Upon opening Messenger for the first time, it will ask you to provide your phone number. Then, the app can match you with people whose numbers you have, but whom you aren’t Facebook friends with. Facebook guarantees your messages will reach somebody’s inbox if you have their phone number.
The Android version is available as a test with a limited number of users beginning today and iOS in the near-future. Also incoming, we previously reported, are updates to the main Facebook app that integrate Graph Search, but Facebook has not confirmed this as of yet.
The Boston Consulting Group’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies has again named Apple as the leader of the pack, a position it has held since the survey began in 2005.
The list is based on a survey of 1500 senior execs across a range of industries, with five criteria applied:
The report singles out five factors that lead to strength in innovation: senior-management commitment, the ability to leverage intellectual property, customer focus, innovation portfolio management and well-defined and governed processes.
BCG also created a second list of up-and-coming companies that it feels to be innovative without having yet hit the big time. These companies include Groupon, Pinterest, Spotify, Rakuten, Netflix, Alibaba, Xiaomi Tech and WhatsApp.
Back in March, Apple retained the top spot in the JD Power phone satisfaction survey, also for the 9th year running, and earlier this month did the same for PCs in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for the 10th year in a row.
Popular chat app whatsapp now allows iPhone users to exchange voice messages with a push-to-talk style function. The feature is also being pushed out simultaneously on the app’s other platforms: Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Phone.
We spend a lot of time at WhatsApp thinking how we can make keeping in touch easier, and we know there’s no substitute for hearing the sound of a friend or family member’s voice. So today we are introducing a new feature we are truly excited about: Voice Messages
While there are other push-to-talk apps out there, whatsapp has introduced a number of features which it says makes the functionality particularly easy to use … Expand Expanding Close
App-based messaging has overtaken SMS messaging for the first time, according to new figures released by research company Informa (via BBC News).
Informa said almost 19 billion messages were sent per day on chat apps in 2012, compared with 17.6 billion SMS texts … It has projected that nearly 50 billion messages will be sent per day using these apps by 2014, compared with just over 21 billion traditional SMSs. However, it said that despite the growing gap between the two, SMS will continue to remain a key player in the sector.
Chat apps like WhatsApp may be dominating on smartphones, but around half the global market still uses featurephones, and of course there are less tech-savvy smartphone users who remain oblivious to alternatives. Businesses remain keen on SMS too, said Informa spokesperson Pamela Clark-Dickson “as it can be used on all mobile phones and they do not need smartphones to use it.”
Informa thus predicts that SMS revenue will continue to grow, from $115bn in 2012 to $127bn by 2016.
9to5Mac once again gathered the most noteworthy apps that announced news, launched, updated, or went on sale recently and added them in our usual roundup below.
Today’s selection includes a new Japan-only app by Nintendo, updates to popular games like Kingdom Rush HD, and notable iOS and Mac app price drops including big cuts by TomTom for its popular line of GPS apps. Keep checking back for more, though, as we continually update this list throughout the day.
Japan-based Nintendo just released its first paid iOS app, called “Pokédex“, in its home country. According to EuroGamer, a version of the existing 3DS Pokédex app is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPhone in Japan’s App Store. The Pokédex app is initially Japan-only, but it comes with the full Pokémon encyclopedia, and users could purchase four additional monster packs for about $6.18 USD each. The paid app is not Nintendo’s sole iOS app, however, as the game developer also released a Japan-only free app, called “Pokémon Say Tap“, for a limited time last year.
Pay with Square at Starbucks: We already knew Starbucks was signed up to bring Square payments to 7,000 of its stores via the newly renamed “Square Wallet” app. Starbucks just confirmed in a press release that starting today it will officially begin accepting Square payments via a scanned QR.
Fantastical for iPhone: Those familiar with the Mac OS X desktop version of the Fantastical app will be pleased to know developers Flexbits have announced an iPhone version is in the works and coming soon. The Mac version is a slick, menu bar item calendar app for access to reminders and calendar functions, but also has support for iCal, BusyCal, Entourage, Outlook, iCloud, Google Calendar or Yahoo! Calendar. You can sign up to find out when it becomes available here.
New app releases:
Clear for Mac:We knew it was coming and today the Mac App Store version of the popular Clear to do app for iPhone officially makes its way to the Mac.
Jingu Friends:Originally available as a BlackBerry app with more than a million downloads since May 2011 and 3.5 million messages sent monthly, the developers of the Jingu Friends app have released an iOS version of the app today on the App Store. The app allows you to discover new people to chat with through a lounge environment that “immediately drops you into a global conversation stream where you can listen or participate.” From there you can find out more about the messaging apps participants use:
All messages posted on Jingu Friends are public, but users can take their conversations private through seamless integration into smartphone messaging apps like BBM, Hookt, WhatsApp and Kik.
FreshBooks for iPad: FreshBooks is coming to the iPad today with version 1.1 introducing a universal app that now supports both iPhone and iPad.
FreshBooks – The Fastest Way To Track Time, Organize Expenses & Invoice Your Clients, Anytime, Anywhere.
Updates:
Pinterest version 2.1: Pinterest is introducing a new feature today that allows users to create up to three secret boards to share with friends and family. In a blog post, Pinterest explained how to use the new feature: “go to your profile, tap on the Boards tab, and scroll down to the bottom until you see a button that says Create a Secret Board.”
• Block or report other users
• Create up to 3 secret boards
• Edit boards from your device
Clear version 1.2:Clear for iPhone gets a big update today that brings iCloud support, the ability to share quotes on Twitter and Facebook, quick list switching, and more: Expand Expanding Close
