Seagate Wireless Plus

It wasn’t long after buying my iPad a couple of years ago that I discovered one of my favorite accessories: Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite drive.
It’s a battery-powered hard drive that connects to your device of choice via an ad hoc Wi-Fi network. You can browse whatever’s on it using a simple app. The battery charge lasts about 5 or 6 hours — long enough for a couple of movies, and perfect for a cross-country flight. I have it loaded with a bunch of movie rips, and I take it with me every time I travel.
The Satellite has some flaws. It’s only available as a 500GB drive, the battery life could be better, the app is a little clunky and, at $200, it’s more than twice as expensive as a drive without a Wi-Fi radio.
But — Hallelujah — the drive has been rebooted.
Seagate has just released an entirely new version of the same piece of hardware. It’s now called the Seagate Wireless Plus (a much better name). It maintains its $200 price tag, but you get more for your money. Capacity has been upped to 1 terabyte, battery life has been improved to a claimed 10 hours, and the entire case has been redesigned to match the sleek, silvery finish of Seagate’s more recent releases.
As tablet and phone manufacturers push us toward cloud-based storage services — either their own or those of their partners — they continue to offer devices with limited storage options. If you love to watch movies and you can only load three or four movies onto your tablet, high-capacity drives like this one, built to pair with a mobile device, make a lot of sense.
While all the enhancements to the Wireless Plus are definitely welcome, the biggest change is to Seagate’s custom player app. I did most of my testing on iOS, where the app has been completely redesigned. It’s much easier to browse the media on the drive, either in a thumbnail view or a list view. The app acts not only as a file browser for the drive, but it shows what’s on your device, too. A simple drop-down menu at the top of the screen lets you switch between the drive and your mobile.

Video playback is flawless and basically buffer-free. Files will only play if the device supports the file type natively (on the iPad, I was limited to Mpeg containers — raw .avi and .flv files wouldn’t play), but if there’s an unsupported file on the drive, the app gives you a little alert icon. Tap the alert, and you’re prompted to download the file to the device so you can open it in a different player app of your choosing. Transfers take only a few minutes. Likewise, if you have a movie stored on your device — either something you’ve transferred to it, or a video you just shot with the camera — you can upload the movie to the drive. If you’re away from a ‘net connection, it’s a convenient way to back up your device, or to share video and photos among friends.
In addition to the new iOS app for iPads and iPhones, there’s a new Android app (which I tested on a Nexus 7 tablet), as well as app optimized for the Kindle Fire HD (which wasn’t available at press time). If you hate the apps, or if you’re using a platform for which no app is available, Seagate provides a web-based interface so you can just access the drive through a browser.
Three more things of note. First, the drive has the ability to act as a pass-through point to your main Wi-Fi network. Basically, you connect to the drive, open the app, then go into the app’s settings to connect to your regular Wi-Fi network. This enables you to stay connected to the drive and the internet at large at the same time. As a bonus, if you’re watching on an Apple device and also connected to your home network, you can use AirPlay to throw the video (or just the audio) to a connected AirPlay device.
Secondly, it uses the Universal Storage Module (USM) interface, a SATA-based slot that lets you attach any supported connection type to the tip of the drive. The Wireless Plus comes with a USB 3.0 module, but you can buy a Thunderbolt module as an add-on if you prefer. When you’re in wireless mode, you can unplug the USB 3.0 module and snap a small door over the USM port. Nice and clean.

Lastly, the drive is formatted as an NTFS device, and it must remain that way to work, which means Mac owners will need a special utility to write to it. The drive ships with one copy of Paragon’s NTFS utility on it, but if you have a few Macs in your home, you’re stuck spending $20 per license for each additional computer (unless you have some Terminal know-how). The workaround is to use basic LAN file-sharing to transfer your movies to the one machine that can write to the drive, then mount it to only that machine. Windows users suffer no such punishment.
Overall, though, these are hoops worth jumping through for the convenience of having a full terabyte of movies to watch on your iPad or Nexus 10 or hacked TouchPad or what-have-you. Well worth the $200, especially if you spend a lot of time on planes, in hotels, or at your in-laws’ house.
WIRED Gives your tablet access to a vast media library wherever you are, with or without a Wi-Fi connection. Solid performance. Speedy USB 3.0 transfers. Battery life of over nine hours in my testing (Seagate claims ten). Redesigned app is much cleaner, easier to use. 3-year warranty. Can stream to any DLNA device, including game consoles and Wi-Fi TVs. Transfer movies to and from the drive wirelessly.
TIRED Convenience comes at a price. Drive is slightly bulkier and heavier than other 1TB options. iOS app can play most of your movies, but not all of them. NTFS stuff is a hassle for Mac owners.

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Reports of the iPhone 5′s Waning Popularity Are Overstated

Recent reports that Apple is cutting orders for the components needed to assemble its flagship handset likely have more to do with seasonal buying patterns and iPhone production ramp up than iPhone fever fading.
The Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to Apple, reported that Apple cut orders for iPhone 5 parts following weaker-than-projected demand. But a bevy of analysts have chimed in since Sunday’s report, suggesting that inventory stockpiling, an aggressive international iPhone rollout and perhaps even the beginning stages of iPhone 5S production could be behind the drop in component orders.
Even so, the Cupertino company’s stock slid 3 percent on Monday following the somewhat shocking report, which came a little more than a week before Apple’s next earnings announcement.
Apple does appear to be cutting iPhone 5 parts orders, though. Vinita Jakhanwal, director of mobile and emerging displays at IHS, told Techsigh he’s seeing reduced iPhone display shipment numbers in this quarter compared to last quarter, in the range of 10 to 11 million compared to 19 million. Paul Semenza of NPD echoed those numbers in a report by the The New York Times. NPD DisplaySearch expected Apple to order 19 million iPhone 5 displays, but the order looks to be in the range of 11 to 14 million.
Jakhanwal says the discrepancy could be explained by seasonality — first-quarter numbers usually are smaller than fourth-quarter numbers — and also could be attributed to other components holding up iPhone production.
“The reduction in display orders could be to align to shipment of other components like the battery, which is challenging to manufacture for the new phone and may not have been able to ramp up to the display numbers,” Jakhanwal told Techsigh via email.
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek posits that Apple could be starting production on its next handset, perhaps the iPhone 5S or a budget iPhone. This could be one cause for the drop in parts orders, as could an “assembly bottleneck” that led to component inventories being stockpiled over the holidays. Semenza and Jakhanwal also believe excess inventory could be a reason for the cut. Mark Moskowitz of J.P. Morgan thinks the order cuts could also be due to improved manufacturing yields, and Apple was simply backtracking on “excess orders” of some parts.
Apple’s super aggressive iPhone roll out, which reached 100 countries by the end of 2012, could also be a reason why demand is slowing a little sooner than normal.
Still, there are certainly signs the iPhone 5 may not be selling as briskly as its predecessors. For instance, a selection of major retailers recently cut the price of the iPhone 5 by $50, and analysts like Pacific Crest’s Andy Hargreaves have told investors iPhone demand isn’t as strong as anticipated. Anecdotally, a lot of people I talk to are still holding onto their 4′s and 4S’s — they’re still good phones, run iOS 6, and breaking that carrier contract to fork over a couple hundred more for a new phone just isn’t worth it to some.
On top of that, Samsung, with its Galaxy S III smartphone, has emerged as a major competitor to Apple.
“The competitive landscape is quite different this year than with iPhone launches years before,” Canalys analyst Chris Jones told Techsigh. Some people are also leaving Apple’s 6 year old mobile operating system in favor of something different, and options like Samsung and even Windows Phone are looking fresh.
In Apple’s last quarterly earnings call, which included the iPhone 5′s first week on sale, CEO Tim Cook announced the company sold a whopping 26.9 million iPhones — 58 percent more than the same period the year prior. While numbers for the holiday quarter aren’t in yet (that will be announced next week), last year Apple sold over 37 million iPhones over that period.

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Facebook Is Quietly Making a Killing With Ads That Pursue You

Wall Street wants Facebook to find a new source of aggressive growth, and the social network appears to have done just that — with ads that follow you from site to site and remember you for lengthy periods of time.
Facebook publicly launched its Facebook Exchange ad-bidding network less than three months ago and has been testing it only since June. But the system is already shaking up the ad business, say partners who have been on the exchange since the beginning, delivering a huge volume of users with a strong propensity to click on ads and helping advertisers follow those users for longer periods of time than is possible under competing systems. In the process Facebook is giving Google, long the undisputed leader in the so-called “retargeting business,” a run for its money.
“It’s huge,” says Zach Coelius, whose ad-bidding company Triggit today announced it raised a $7.4 million series B round led by Spark Capital and Foundry Group at what Coelius describes as a “significant step up” in the company’s valuation. “We literally have been growing exponentially since FBX launched. We’ve grown more than 300 percent both in the size of the community and the revenue the company is doing.”
The success of Facebook Exchange appears to already be helping to lift Facebook stock, even though the social network has been careful not to publicly discuss the exchange’s performance. Facebook shares rose 8 percent after upgrades from BTIG Research and from Carlos Kirjner, the Sanford Bernstein analyst who distinguished himself by setting an early, accurately bearish price target on Facebook. “The early success of Facebook’s mobile monetization efforts and of the Facebook Exchange has changed our view,” Kirjner wrote, raising his price target on Facebook shares to $33 from $23. (The stock is trading at $26 today.)

‘Facebook is finding more people one week from the retail visit than DoubleClick; it has lasting effects for the industry.’

—Josh McFarland
CEO, TellApart

As recently as last month, Wall Street was still trying to make heads or tails of Facebook Exchange. In an Oct. 23 quarterly earnings call with the company, a JP Morgan analyst asked about early results from the exchange, and whether they might help offset declines in desktop U.S. Facebook usage. COO Sheryl Sandberg answered only that it was “really early” and that the exchange was still a small portion of revenue.
But it’s growing fast, partners say. And Wall Street isn’t the only sector keenly interested in that growth. Advertising retargeters, who follow web surfers as they travel away from shopping and other sites, say Facebook Exchange is breathing new life into the business of putting ads in front of the users the retargeters stalk. It’s also opening a new range of possibilities, letting the retargeters point their ads at users over a longer period of time and in a new context where they are more likely to notice the ad.
“Nine months ago, it seemed patently clear to me as a longtime participant in this industry that [Google’s] DoubleClick was just running away with the opportunities; they were just leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else,” says Josh McFarland, CEO of ad targeting company TellApart. “There was no other game in town, and then suddenly Facebook came on the scene and then literally in about three months became an exchange that is almost as powerful and almost as highly performing as the oldest, best ad exchange out there, which is DoubleClick.”
TellApart’s business is to help e-tailers like Drugstore.com and Diapers.com bid in real time to reach former and would-be customers on other sites. Six months ago, Facebook received none of that business; now it’s getting 20 percent.
McFarland, who spent five years at Google managing various ad platforms, thinks that’s partly because Facebook has an edge in its ability to identify users over time, thanks to the cookies set by Facebook.com. Because users visit Facebook directly and frequently, McFarland says, its cookies are treated more benevolently in many browsers than those set by doubleclick.net, the domain Google’s ad exchange uses and one that no ordinary person would want to visit directly.
“As soon as you’re one week away from the last time we saw that person on a retailer’s site, Facebook is finding more of those people than DoubleClick; it’s really interesting and I think it has lasting effects for the industry,” McFarland says. “Over time, Facebook actually does a better job of maintaining consistency with those users.”
Facebook could not be reached for comment on its cookies.
Ad retargeters also like Facebook Exchange because users are more engaged with the ads served there. Retargeted ads in general are already more relevant and clicked on by users, since they “know” about some of your previous web surfing. This relevance helps take the edge off a retargeted ad’s inherent creepiness. On Facebook, retargeters say, clickthrough rates are further amplified, because the site is relatively conservative in the number of ads it shows and because users there tend to be more open to being distracted.
“On Facebook your ad is always above the fold,” says Adam Berke, president of the retargeting platform AdRoll. “There aren’t accidental clicks and things like that; users are used to where the ads are. We’ve been impressed by the quality of the audience. If someone clicks, they are likely to complete the action that you were hoping for.”
Berke said the exchange has been “huge for us,” opening up a “massive” new audience.
Despite the promising growth spurt, there are worries about how sustainable the growth of Facebook Exchange will be. Bernstein’s Kirjner, for example, says the exchange is handicapped by shrinking use of Facebook on the desktop in the U.S. On mobile devices, it’s harder to follow and retarget users as they routinely switch from browser to apps and back again, and from one device to another. Kirjner also raised regulatory concerns about Facebook Exchange; Google was slapped with a $22.5 million fine over its ad exchange practices.
No one is accusing Facebook of the sort of shenanigans that got Google in trouble in that case. And debates over mobile use patterns in America don’t change the fact that Facebook Exchange is seeing more and more business from overseas. Coelius plans to use his new capital to open offices in Asia and Europe. “Literally every day we’re signing new customers overseas,” he says. Whether it’s by luring international advertisers, helping e-tailers follow their users onto Facebook, or connecting users, it seems Facebook is always intent on making the world a smaller place.

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HTC’s Flagship M7 Smartphone Supposedly Outed, But Where’s The HTC Look?

HTC is the sort of company that’s never had the best luck at keeping new products under wraps, and it seems it won’t be bucking that trend any time soon. Case in point: Evleaks (now at UnwiredView) has recently obtained a what’s said to be a render of the company’s new top-tier M7 Android smartphone, and it’s definitely not what most of us expected to see.
Got your grains of salt ready? Good, because you’ll need them.
The M7′s rumored specs — 4.7-inch display, 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor — have been making the rounds for weeks now, but this render depicts a device that seems like a marked step back from the company’s current design language. It’s a… weird looking device to be sure, thanks to its abject lack of HTC branding and its multitude of drilled speaker holes, and the device bears more than a passing resemblance to RIM’s forthcoming all-touch BlackBerry Z10 device.
What’s more, there’s no sort of demarcation to indicate where the device’s screen ends and where the bezel begins — it could be that HTC has taken its CEO’s zeal for innovation to heart and crafted a phone with an edge-to-edge screen, but the end result would probably look more like this (courtesy of an UnwiredView commenter).
Now before you’re tempted to judge the device already, know that the device that’s expected to be unveiled in a few weeks in Barcelona may ultimately look nothing like this. It’s worth pointing out again that Evleaks has a fairly solid track record with this sort of thing, but the render in question was supposedly yanked from a video clip meant to teach users how to install their SIM cards for the first time, and he (she? they?) has expressed doubt that this is the design that will soon see the light of day. On top of that, another supposedly leaked image of a device in the wild doesn’t look much like this recently outed render (though in fairness, the image is an extreme close-up of the M7′s screen).
There’s really no way to tell how accurate the render is just yet, but it shouldn’t be long before a handful of new leaks shed some more light on things. Until then, let us gnaw on what few morsels of information we have and dream of what will come.

The original render, and a tweaked mock-up of what it may look like with the screen turned on.

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Viber overhauls BlackBerry app to v2.3, promises VoIP calls are coming in April

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Doing its best Kate Bush impression, Viber's letting its BlackBerry users know that something good is gonna happen. Specifically, that the company is bringing VoIP calls to the platform, currently pencilled in for arrival in April. It's laid the groundwork for the new feature with version 2.3 of the app for RIM phones, which refreshes the UI and adds support for Arabic and Spanish language users. After the break we've got a short clip of a demonstration of the forthcoming feature, which mercifully cuts out before the feedback loop deafens us all.

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Leap Motion goes retail: motion controller to be sold exclusively at Best Buy

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Ever since we first saw Leap Motion's hyper-accurate gesture control system in person, we've been waiting for the time when we can walk into a store and buy one. Sure, devs have been able to buy Leap controllers for some time and it won't be long before Leap's tech is baked into retail laptops, but now the general public's going to get the chance to grab the standalone controller, too. That's right, folks, this spring, the Leap Motion Controller will be available nationwide at any Best Buy store, with pre-orders starting in February. So, it won't be long before you can stroll on down to the nearest big blue box and pick one up -- assuming there's still one within strolling (or driving) distance.

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Another Legal Blow For Apple As Dutch Court Concurs With U.K. Ruling That Samsung Galaxy Tablets Do Not Infringe iPad’s Design

Apple’s courtroom skirmishes against its Android OEM enemy number one Samsung have not been going very well of late, despite Cupertino’s big $1bn+ damages win against Samsung last summer. Today another legal blow for Cupertino: a Dutch district court has ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets do not infringe Apple design patents.
The latest Apple vs Samsung court ruling concerns the rounded corners of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablets — which Apple had argued infringe the design of the iPad. The Dutch court rejected Apple’s argument — saying there is “no question of an infringement” — and citing previous similar decisions in U.K. courts.
A notice on its website (translated from Dutch with Google Translate) reads:

Today the Hague district court judgment in a case of Samsung against Apple. At issue in this case is whether the design of some of Samsung Galaxy tablets infringe a design right from Apple. The court believes that there is no question of an infringement.
The court refers to British law which the court already had found the same two instances on the same infringement question.

While it might seem logical to conclude that all these court misses are accumulating to weigh down Apple’s overall legal hopes against Samsung — Reuters notes that the pair are engaged in patent litigation in at least 10 countries — the reason for the Dutch court falling in line with the U.K. ruling comes down to this case being focused on a design/IP patent, rather than a technical patent.
According to the FOSS Patents blog, design/IP patents are currently subject to EU-level law, whereas technical patents are adjudicated on a country-by-country basis.  ”It would have taken some exceptional circumstances for the Dutch court to disagree with the UK court,” the blog notes.
Samsung provided the following statement commenting on the Dutch court ruling:

We welcome the court’s decision, which reaffirmed decisions made by courts in other countries that our Galaxy Tab products do not infringe Apple’s registered design right. We continue to believe that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners and that the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art. Should Apple continue to make excessive legal claims based on such generic designs, innovation in the industry could be harmed and consumer choice unduly limited.

At the time of writing Apple had not responded to a request for comment.
Last October Apple lost an appeal in a U.K. High Court against a tablet design patent judgement that had found in Samsung’s favour. The U.K. court also ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab did not infringe the iPad’s design (the judge in the original trial actually said Samsung’s tablet was ‘not cool enough’ to infringe Apple’s design). In that instance the court ordered Apple to publish an acknowledgement of the judgement on its website and run ads in paper-based media.

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