Archive for July 4th, 2010

Inexplicable rise in iPhone dev’s App Store sales connected to iTunes account hacks? (update)

We’ve received a handful of tips this morning claiming something’s rotten in the state of the iTunes App Store, namely via the Book category. As of this writing, 42 of the top 50 books by revenue are from the seller Thuat Nguyen, whose company website (“mycompany”) leads to parked site www.home.com. A vast majority of these book apps were released in April, have little to no customer ratings or reviews, appear to be in Vietnamese (despite claims in the side bar that the supported languages are English and Japanese), and may or may not be infringing on copyrighted work — we’re noticing a lot of Dragon Ball art here. To give sales a sense of scope, Twilight series conclusion Breaking Dawn is hovering only at 34 right now.

So, how did these books hit the top of the charts? The other half of this story has to do with a claimed rise in iTunes account hacking, with a number of people reporting up to hundreds of dollars being spent unwillingly from their account to these specific books. Coincidence? Let’s not mince words here, something is definitely amiss, and it’s not looking good. Just to be safe, might wanna check your purchase history under Apple Account information. We’ve reached out to Apple and will let you know as soon as we hear back.

Update: We’ve yet to hear from Apple proper, but we do have an update of sorts — 9 to 5 Mac reports all the “mycompany” titles have completely vanished from the App Store. We’re not sure whether Apple decided to shut down the operation or the seller pulled them himself, so continue to keep an eye on your digital pocketbook until we know for sure.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Inexplicable rise in iPhone dev’s App Store sales connected to iTunes account hacks? (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What the Last Airbender TV series has that the movie doesn’t [Airbender]

With over 20 episodes in Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s first season, we knew M. Night Shyamalan would have to cut a lot to adapt it. But what ended up on the cutting room floor could have really helped this film. More »










Last Airbender – Television – m night shyamalan – Movie – Arts

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HTC Vision with Android, full QWERTY in the wild?

For reasons seemingly known only to Peter Chou himself, HTC has mostly steered clear of producing high-quality physical QWERTY devices running Android, despite the fact that there might be no phone manufacturer in the world more skilled at making them (let us remind you of the Touch Pro2, among many others dating back the better part of a decade). Anyhow, we caught wind last month of a possible entry in the form of the so-called “Vision,” but we didn’t have any visuals — just a user agent profile that may or may not amount to anything. Well, that seems to be changing today with a couple blurry shots out of a Croatian site that allegedly shows the goods featuring a 3.7-inch display, a 1GHz processor (Snapdragon, we assume), and Android 2.1 with Sense. At a glance, it doesn’t seem to be the prettiest thing in the world — but for a form factor traditionally associated with power users and suits, this might be just the ticket.

[Thanks, Ivan]

HTC Vision with Android, full QWERTY in the wild? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Jobs Mocks iPhone 4 Antenna Fix, Tells People to “Stay Tuned”

Apple’s main man, Steve Jobs avoided talking about the iPhone 4 antenna issue fix till now, but he must be tired with all the e-mails he’s been receiving, as he started answering them with arrogant one-liners. For starters he recommended the complaining users to hold the iPhone 4 in a different way and now he’s [...]

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Almost Hands Free is a Voice-Activated Music App for Android [Downloads]

Android: One thing that the iPhone 3GS and up inarguably has over Android is voice-activated search of your music library. Almost Hands Free brings this feature to Android, so you can avoid endless scrolling through your music library. More »










Android – Handhelds – IPhone – Smartphone – Arts

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