Google Voice application is on its way to the iPhone

The App Store review office at 1 Infinite Loop has officially frozen over: we’ve gotten word that the official Google Voice application is on its way to the iPhone in the next few weeks. In fact, we’ve heard from a source close to Google that it’s already been approved — Google just needs to revamp the application to work with the iPhone 4 and iOS’s multitasking capabilities. If you’re a Google Voice user and you’re on an iPhone, this is great news.
It’s been a long, long road to get here. Last July, we broke the news that Apple had blocked the official Google Voice application, which eventually sparked an FCC inquiry into the matter. Apple claimed that the application “duplicated existing functionality”, which didn’t do much to convince anyone as it subsequently accepted similar apps. Nothing happened for well over a year, and the odds of Google Voice ever making its way to the iPhone, at least as a native application, seemed bleak.
Everything changed on September 9, when Apple published a set of guidelines telling developers which applications would not be allowed into the App Store — and none of the rules seemed to apply to Google Voice. Rumors started swirling that third-party Google Voice apps might soon make their way to the App Store, and sure enough, a handful of applications have since been approved.
But the existing applications, nice as they may be, are all provided by third parties. We haven’t gotten the chance to use the official Google application, but it’s possible that it will include functionality that the others don’t. Namely, push notifications for inbound SMS and voicemail messages (Google doesn’t provide an API for these, so third parties would have to route these messages through their own servers to offer push notifications).
Reached for comment about the upcoming iPhone application, Google offered this non-answer of a statement:

“We currently offer Google Voice mobile apps for Blackberry and Android, and we offer an HTML5 web app for the iPhone. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

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AOL reportedly in talks to acquire TechCrunch

Points for timing if this rumor is true: Tech blogger Om Malik reports on GigaOm that AOL, the Internet giant struggling to reinvent itself as a Web content powerhouse, is in talks to acquire TechCrunch, the technology-news website currently holding its Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld declined to comment on the report. Malik said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong might appear at the conference to make an announcement of the rumored deal.
An acquisition by AOL would bring to an end TechCrunch’s spiky independence. Founder Michael Arrington, a former lawyer, is known for stirring up Silicon Valley with his outspoken views on startups and technology investing.
AOL, originally an Internet service provider, has increasingly emphasized Web content since its 2005 acquisition of Weblogs Inc., the parent company of blogs like Engadget and Joystiq. Under Armstrong, that strategy has gotten sharper emphasis. The acquisition of a tech-business site would complement Engadget, a consumer-oriented website which emphasizes hardware, while TechCrunch focuses on consumer-website startups.
AOL had previously been reported to be in talks with Mashable, another rival tech blog, as well as earlier discussions with TechCrunch. But TechCrunch is at a considerably more developed stage than at the last round of talks, with its Disrupt conference series and an expanded writing staff (including VentureBeat alum MG Siegler and witty former SF Weekly editor Alexia Tsotsis, who joked about finding a new job as word of the deal spread. Arrington himself has moved out of Silicon Valley, commuting to the Bay Area from Seattle.
Update: The Wall Street Journal says it also has a source confirming the deal. Meanwhile, Arrington was absent from the stage of his TechCrunch Disrupt conference for the entire afternoon, and we’ve heard that CEO Heather Harde was seen backstage in deep conversation with a lawyer.
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Apple shares hit all-time high, bordering on $300

Shares of Apple this week have been on an absolute tear. Over the past few days, Apple's share price has steadily increased, reaching new all-time closing and intraday highs day after day.

Samsung Q1 net profit surges to record high

Samsung Electronics said net profit surged more than six-fold in the first quarter to a record high on strong demand and higher prices for memory chips as well as increased sales of mobile phones and flat screen televisions.

Samsung earned 3.99 trillion won ($3.59 billion) in the three months ended March 31, the company said Friday. It recorded net profit of 582 billion won the year before.

The latest figure was an all-time high for the company, said spokesman Jason Kim, surpassing 3.81 trillion won in the third quarter of last year.

The company also said sales in the first quarter totaled 34.64 trillion won. That was 20.8 percent higher than the 28.67 trillion won reported a year earlier.

Samsung Electronics Co. is a major force in the global technology industry, ranking as the largest manufacturer of computer memory chips, flat screen televisions and liquid crystal displays. It also stands No. 2 globally in mobile phones behind Finland's Nokia Corp.

Samsung said in a release that sales in its semiconductor business jumped 57 percent to 8.2 trillion won in the first quarter. The company said tight supply and strong demand caused prices for DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, chips to rise. DRAM are used mostly in personal computers.

The company also cited steady demand for NAND flash memory chips in line with consumer purchases of smart phones and mobile application products. NAND are used in devices such as digital cameras, music players and smart phones.

"Strong demand for mobile products continued despite weak seasonality," Samsung said in presentation materials for investors.

In mobile phones, Samsung sold 64.3 million of the devices in the first quarter, up 40 percent from the year before. It predicted demand will increase in the current second quarter in line with the global economic recovery.

The company also sold 8.4 million flat screen TVs in the first quarter, an increase of 47 percent from the year before. Samsung said it expects demand to grow 34 percent in the second quarter.

"In the TV business, we launched aggressive marketing activities focusing on 3D TV as well as LED TV," Robert Yi, Samsung's head of investor relations, told analysts on a conference call. "As a result, our shipment and profit margin improved significantly year on year."

Investors cheered the results, sending Samsung shares 2.9 percent higher to close at 849,000 won. Samsung's stock price, which surged 77 percent in 2009, hit a record high of 870,000 won on April 5 this year.
Source: http://asurl.net/eUe

Man who found — and sold — the missing iPhone unmasked

Twenty-one-year-old Redwood City, California, resident Brian J. Hogan, the man identified by Wired.com as the guy who found — and later sold — Apple's missing iPhone in a bar last month, has a message for Apple, the engineer who originally lost the precious gadget, and the tech world at large: Sorry about that.
Following a trail of "clues" on social-networking sites and confirming his ID with a source "involved in the iPhone find," Wired named Hogan on Thursday as the bar patron who made off with Apple's top-secret iPhone prototype and then sold it to Gizmodo for $5,000 after an Apple software engineer left the precious phone on a bar stool.

Up until now, Hogan's identity has been a mystery to the public, but the 21-year-old college student (or at least, he was a college student as of 2008) may have sensed that he was in trouble after all the hoopla over Gizmodo's gigantic iPhone scoop last week and the subsequent fallout, including a raid on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's house by San Mateo sheriff's deputies armed with a search warrant.

Hogan has now lawyered up, and in a statement released through his attorney, the young man says he "regrets his mistake in not doing more to return the phone," and that he thought his $5,000 deal with Gizmodo was only "so that they could review the phone," Wired reports.

According to Hogan's attorney's statement, Hogan didn't see the lost iPhone until another patron at the Redwood City bar came up and asked him if it was his; Hogan apparently then asked a few other patrons if they'd lost the device before heading out, iPhone in hand, according to Wired.

Initial reports had it that the man who'd taken the iPhone tried repeatedly to call the Apple Care support line to return the phone, but according to the statement in the Wired story, Hogan never personally called Apple, although a friend of his offered to. The owners of the bar where the iPhone was lost also told Wired that Hogan never bothered to call them about the lost hardware, although the anguished Apple engineer who mislaid the iPhone "returned several times" to see if it had turned up.

Meanwhile, CNET is reporting that Hogan had help in finding a buyer for the lost iPhone. The "go-between," according to CNET: 27-year-old Sage Robert Wallower, a UC Berkeley student who "contacted technology sites" about the handset. Wallower told CNET that he "didn't see it or touch it in any manner" but knows "who found it," adding, "I need to speak to a lawyer ... I think I have said too much."

No one has been charged yet in the case of the lost iPhone, but a deputy district attorney for San Mateo County tells Wired that Hogan is "very definitely ... being looked at as a suspect in theft." (In California, finding a piece of lost property isn't a case of "finders keepers"; if you find a lost item and keep it without making "reasonable" efforts to find the real owner, you could be charged with a crime.)

Gizmodo's Jason Chen also has yet to be charged; law-enforcement officials have reportedly said they'll hold off on searching the computers and servers seized from Chen's house until they decide whether California's shield law for journalists applies to him.
Source: http://asurl.net/euJ