Twitter's Vine App Officially Comes To Android

Android users rejoice: Twitter's popular Vine app has finally come to Google's mobile operating system.

Vine, the app that allows people to take short videos and post them to Twitter through their smartphones, has only been available to iPhone users since Twitter launched it in January this year. The app has proven popular, with 13 million users, according to Twitter. Now that Vine has reached Android, expect that number to grow very quickly.

Vine for Android is a little bit different than it is for the iPhone. Twitter said that it is working to make the two flavors have the same capabilities in upcoming updates. The Vine for Android app lets you create the standard six-second video with sound and looping playback, an "Explore" button to discover popular Vine videos, a "Find Friends" feature where you can invite others to join and the ability to digitally zoom, the latter unavailable in the iPhone version.

Twitter will continue to add new features to Vine on both the iPhone and Android apps, including the capability to use the front-facing camera, search funtionality, Twitter mentions and hashtags and the ability to share Vine videos on Facebook. Vine will only be available to users on Android devices running version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher.

Apple Comes Out Swinging In Its E-Book Antitrust Trial

If Apple is scared of the U.S. Department of Justice, it sure isn't showing it.

On Monday, in the opening rounds of the federal government's antitrust e-book case against Apple, company attorney Orrin Snyder called the Justice Department's claim against the company a "bizarre" case based on a "sinister inference," based on shaky evidence. During opening remarks that AllThingsD called "aggressive" and "withering," Snyder argued that federal prosecutors essentially fabricated a case against Apple out of select, decontextualized quotes and not much else.

The government claims that Apple fixed e-book pricing in cahoots with five major publishing houses: HarperCollins, Hatchett, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. Though all five publishers have already settled with the government, Apple CEO Tim Cook vowed earlier this week to fight what he also deemed a "bizarre" case.

But Snyder, Cook, and company faced an uphill climb even before the trial started. Presiding U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote has already predicted a victory for the feds. "I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that," she wrote in a pretrial opinion.

(See also: DoJ Whacks “Self-Serving” Apple in Response to E-Book Settlement Comments)

'The Prices Will Be the Same'

The feds' case claims that Apple, led by then-CEO Steve Jobs and senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, conspired with publishers to drive e-book prices up from the $9.99 price point Amazon had established. In other words, Apple wanted to take pricing control away from retailers and give it back to publishers - to the benefit of Apple's own newly launched iBooks store.

An email exchange between Jobs and News Corp.'s James Murdoch has become central to the case. News Corp. is the parent company of HarperCollins, one of the publishers who settled with the DoJ last year, and in Jobs is quoted in the email suggesting that HarperCollins "[t]hrow in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”

(See also: The DoJ's e-Book Attack Solves Nothing)

Jobs also made comments in a June 2010 Wall Street Journal interview that, to the feds, prove that Apple wanted to leverage publishers against Amazon in order to raise e-book prices. From this AllThingsD video of Jobs speaking with Walt Mossberg just after the first iPad launch:

Walt: "Why should she buy a book for $14.99 on your device when she can buy one for $9.99 from Amazon or Barnes & Noble?"

Steve: "That won't be the case."

Walt: "You won't be $14.99 or they won't be $9.99?"

Steve: "The prices will be the same."

Elsa Riven, former chief counsel to Simon & Schuster, sent an email the next day to her chief executive, Carolyn Reidy, calling Jobs’s remarks “incredibly stupid.” Reidy is slated to testify this week.

Apple says the case is based entirely on cherry-picked quotes like the above two, framed in a way that "reverse engineers a case" while leaving out scores of relevant context and other conversation amongst the key parties. Snyder said Monday, “What the government is trying to do is reverse engineer a conspiracy from a market effect.”

You can peruse the entirety of the federal case against Apple on the Justice Department website. The trial continues Tuesday in Manhattan District Court, and is expected to last three weeks.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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Coverage Is Paramount When It Comes to 4G Internet

If you're considering a foray into the realm of cellular internet, there are a number of factors you have to take into consideration first. Not only do you have to figure out if it's going to be fast enough, but you also have to make sure it's going to be secure too. After all, information will be transmitted over the air. But there's one thing that comes before everything else: coverage. You can't even consider the other things until you know whether or not you can actually sign up for 4G internet. Thankfully, there are a few resources that can help you out.

One thing you could try doing is asking friends and family how their coverage is. Cellular internet has come to the point where it's suitable for the masses, so if you ask around you're sure to find people that are using it on a daily basis right now. There probably is no better way to find out how good the service is in your area than to ask an actual paying customer.

What if you don't know anyone who uses 4G? Even though it's starting to get popular, it's new enough that you might not know anyone who uses it. The next best thing you can do then is to consult a coverage map online. If you look at an authoritative site, the coverage map could be just as good as asking someone who uses cellular internet in your area. It might even be better because you'll be able to see at a glance where you will and won't get coverage in your city. Overall, this can be a great resource for potential customers.

Another way you can learn more about 4G is to consult some reviews of the service online. You have to be somewhat careful about what you read online though because reviews can occasionally be cleverly disguised marketing campaigns. For example, cable or DSL companies might be writing bad reviews about cellular internet so that you get discouraged from signing up. Once again, it's important that you find an authoritative site that you can trust. Alternatively, you might want to post on some forums and get a lively discussion going. That way you can hear multiple points of view from actual customers.

Yet another thing you can try doing is seeing how your cell phone performs all throughout your city. Although 4G is the next generation of cellular connectivity, it can often times have the same availability as your current cell phone service. Of course, this method should be thought of as a very rough guide and should not be relied upon.

Of course, you could also discover the coverage area yourself after you sign up for it, through trial and error. If you are allowed to sign up for it in the first place, then you mostly likely have coverage and you most likely have coverage all throughout your city too. Even if you don't though, the 4G network is always expanding and you could experience much better coverage in a month or less.

It should be apparent by now that coverage is of the utmost importance. As long as you keep that in mind when you sign up for cellular internet, you should be fine.

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