Macgasm

Mozilla has announced that it will be launching a web app store next week, once the Mobile World Congress exhibition kicks off. Mozilla’s app store will focus on HTML5 and Mozilla-proposed API-centric applications that will let developers “write one app that runs across devices and platforms.”

According to a press release issued by Mozilla today:

While the app store will be available to developers next week, the doors will not open to the public until later this year. Since 2007, Mozilla’s Firefox has held pretty steady between 25 and 31 percent of browser market share; however, since 2009 the browser has begun slowly trending downwards sitting now at just 22.68 percent of the market, the lowest it’s been since 2008. Something tells us Mozilla is hoping that the new app store will turn around its fortunes. We’re not convinced.

Of course the powers that be want a way to ensure that HTML 5 has appropriate controls to decrypt licenses for online video. Microsoft, Google, and Netflix have teamed up to draft a proposal for the W3C that includes concepts for Encrypted Media Extensions in HTML 5.

From the W3C draft proposal abstract:

It’s inevitable, I guess. Content creators want to make sure people aren’t out there stealing quality content from HTML 5 media elements around the Internet. Using a key system, websites would be able to use plain-text, unencrypted keys to decrypt source video, without any other client-side content protection needed. Key rotation would be supported, along with heartbeat modes that would receive an “explicit heartbeat message from a server on a regular basis” to unlock encrypted video feeds.

As always, this is just a proposal, so it’s unlikely that we would see anything in the near future. That being said, it’s interesting to see that three massive media companies, including companies that are responsible for two major browsers (Chrome and Internet Explorer) are looking for ways to continue to support DRM in HTML5.

Facebook has rolled out some “iOS native deep linking” controls for developers today, giving developers better tools to link their applications to Facebook and vice versa. The tools let developers direct users from Facebook apps directly to native iOS applications with ease, and then back again.

From the Facebook Developer page:

Man, talk about a welcome addition. Previously, navigating between applications on Facebook was a bit of a nightmare. It’s pretty awesome that Facebook’s giving developers better tools to transfer users to mobile applications instead of websites through Safari. Giving users the ability to head directly to the App Store to pickup an applications they may not actually own yet is another pretty smart move. Obviously Facebook’s been pretty big on encouraging developers to build native Facebook applications, but giving me the ability to get a better functioning, native application on my device of choice goes a long way towards increasing my user experience within the Facebook application.

According to research done by NPD In-Stat, nearly half of Internet capable televisions are sitting around unplugged. With every major television producing company carrying a line of smart-televisions that let you connect to the Internet and use apps to gain access to services like Netflix, it’s a little surprising to find out that 53 percent of all Internet capable televisions are going Internet-less.

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In case you’ve forgotten, the Beatles catalog is currently available on iTunes. Today, we’re getting just a little bit more of the fab four. The Beatles have released 27 ringtones on the iTunes store. All 27 tracks come from The Beatles 1 album.

There’s not too much else to say, outside of directing you to the iTunes page where you can check out the ringtones. Oh yeah, we should also point out that the ringtones can all be used as alerts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Despite our name, there’s plenty of other things that we keep an eye on around here. webOS was one of those technologies that we wanted to see succeed but sadly its days were pretty numbered. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a great deal of stuff Apple could learn from webOS, and perhaps even implement in future versions of iOS.

Lukas Mathis, a Software Engineer and usability author, has penned an excellent article titled Please Steal These webOS Features.

Lukas Mathis on webOS:

In his article, Lukas goes on to list eight things that Apple should steal from webOS to make iOS better, including the notifications, the keyboard, and account management systems, amongst other things. We highly recommend you head over there and check it out. He hits the nail right on the head: there are a lot of things worth borrowing from webOS that would make iOS even better. We’re huge fans of getting the number pad into the keyboard layout without having to hit a button to change to the keypad.

Read Please Steal these webOS Features on Ignore The Code.

Despite Apple’s lawsuit with Proview, the company is still forging ahead, making deals with major carriers to bring the iPhone to more Chinese customers. Apple Inc. has signed a deal with China Telecom to bring the iPhone 4S to its customers starting March 2nd (preorders), with sales beginning on March 9th.

China Telecom currently has over 38.7 million mobile subscribers, and analysts are predicting that the company could sell about 1.4 million iPhones this year. The carrier plans to sell the phone on multiple plans, so the price will vary depending on which plan customers decide to pickup. With a two-year, $62 per month contract, customers could walk away with a free 16GB iPhone 4S.

The move to sell iPhones on China Telecom has almost doubled Apple’s market in China. Morgan Stanley analysts believe that China Telecom has more than 15 million “high-end” users who could be potential iPhone users. The company also believes that once Apple signs a deal with China Mobile, the company could quickly see iPhone sales reach 40 million phones per year.

When you consider that Apple sold 13.4 million iPhones last year across the three major networks in the US, it’s pretty obvious that there’s huge potential for the company in China.  It looks like the market-share wars with Google are just getting warmed up.

Image Credit: zamax4

Microsoft went on the offensive today, calling reports of Office on the iPad not only untrue, but also erroneous in their entirety. Earlier today The Daily’s Matt Hickey published a report that suggested that Microsoft Office would be on its way to the iPad in the coming weeks, but it didn’t take long for Microsoft to issue a public reply to the New York Times regarding the rumors:

Many have been hoping that Microsoft would release Office for the iPad since the company has begun rolling out applications like OneNote and Xbox Live over the last couple of months. It turns out Office may not be coming to the iPad any time soon, which isn’t all that surprising. With Microsoft working on Windows 8 based tablets, it wouldn’t make too much sense to release office for the iPad before an official Microsoft tablet offering hits the shelves. If there’s anything that could get Microsoft back into the mobile/tablet war it’s going to be an Office tablet edition. It pains me to say, but it would obviously be a smart, and strategic, move.