While Android phones and the Android market certainly haven’t caught up to the iPhone and the iTunes App Store when it comes to games and mobile gaming, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some great games available for Android devices. Being a proud Droid by Motorola owner, I can tell you that there are some really great free titles out there for Android phones (games like Replica Island, Jewels, and Robo Defense Free.)

If you’re an Android phone owner and you’re looking for some free games to help you pass the time, Mashable has this excellent rundown of 10 free games that will work on just about any Android phone, from text games to puzzle games to shooters, and they even include Replica Island, one of my favorites. Check out the full list and start downloading!

[ Mashable :: 10 Great Free Games for Android ]

If you’re looking for an excellent time-waster, look no further than this little flash game based on the hilarious TV show The IT Crowd, currently in its fourth series (what the UK call seasons) on channel 4 in the UK. If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll absolutely adore the game – if you’ve never watched it before, head over to Amazon and buy The IT Crowd: The Complete Series (Seasons 1, 2 & 3) immediately.

If you’re already a fan, the game should be amazing for you – it puts you in the shoes of a new IT temp working with Roy, Moss, and Jen, keeping a watchful eye on the network, zapping spam and viruses as they appear, whether from the Internet or wireless access points, responding to complaints from users, and making sure the network stays free and clear for the flow of information. As the game proceeds, you can upgrade your network with spam slurpers or antivirus injectors to lend you a hand when you’re not looking – all you have to do is make it through your shift to get through the level and to the next day.

Head over and give it a try!

[ Channel 4 :: The IT Crowd Game ]

The long-predicted subscription offering from Hulu has arrived, and while it’s not the service changer I think we all feared or expected, depending on how the private beta goes, it could define the future direction for the service.

It’s called Hulu Plus, and as expected, will run you $9.99 USD per month, and give you access to entire seasons of popular series, and will extend to other devices for which Hulu is making streaming video apps like the iPad and iPhone.

From PCMag:

When they are available, the Apple apps will run over 3G or Wi-Fi, Hulu said.
Shows will play in high-definition 720p resolution and content will also sync between devices.

“You can start watching a show on your HDTV one night, pick up where you left off on your laptop at lunch, watch another chunk on the bus ride home on your iPhone, and finish watching in bed on your iPad. The time to watch your favorite shows is any time you want,” [Hulu chief executive Jason] Kilar wrote.

Kilar said Hulu Plus will not replace the original Hulu, but will instead provide access to an extended library of content. At this point, Hulu users typically have access to the five or so most recent episodes of a given TV series. With Hulu Plus, subscribers will have access to every episode of the current season.

Hulu will also add back seasons or full runs of certain TV shows, including The X-Files, Arrested Development, Law & Order: SVU, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell, Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives. The company will also make available skits from the first five and most recent seasons of Saturday Night Live.

“This is all on top of hundreds of shows already on Hulu.com today,” Kilar wrote. “It’s a treasure chest in the cloud for TV lovers.”

It makes sense that Hulu is looking for some way to broaden its reach and make a little money in the process. A number of people have complained that any subscription Hulu service should come ad-free, but it’s not clear whether or not Hulu Plus will be – the service is still in private beta and was only released this week, so more details are sure to follow.

[ PC Mag :: Hulu Announces Subscription-Based 'Hulu Plus', iPad App ]

The court presiding over the $1 Billion lawsuit Viacom levied against YouTube has finally ruled…in YouTube and Google’s favor, dismissing the case.

In a post at the YouTube blog, Kent Walker, Vice President and General Counsel at Google, had this to say:

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other. We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.

Obviously Viacom could very well appeal the decision, and it’s likely that they will if Viacom and Google lawyers can’t come out of this with some kind of mutual agreement, but even if Viacom does appeal, that just means the standard of proof is going to be that much higher for them in an appeals court, which would have to determine if there’s some new evidence or specific reason why the lawsuit wasn’t handled properly or the correct decision was made in the first place.

Only time will tell, and this certainly isn’t the last volley in this battle, but here’s hoping both parties can settle out of court – clearly this hasn’t put much of a dent in either of their businesses, aside from the legal fees both sides must have incurred.

(thanks to Mashable for the tip!)

[ The Official YouTube Blog ::YouTube Wins Case Against Viacom ]

Monday was Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) and as predicted, Apple unveiled the next generation iPhone, the iPhone 4, at the show. Steve Jobs stood on-stage and acknowledged the leaks and the missing iPhone saga, and sure enough the device we all got to see on Monday looked an awful lot like the prototype that turned up on Gizmodo a few months ago.

But that’s not all that happened at WWDC, let’s take a brief look:

iPhone 4

Obviously the star of the show was the iPhone 4, newly designed and complete with sharper edges, a more slab-like feel, and specially engineered tempered glass on the front and the back of the device. The new design has individual buttons on the side for volume and other controls, dual microphones in the top and the bottom for noise cancellation, a micro SD tray in the side, a front-facing camera for self portraits and Apple’s new “Face Time” real-time video calling feature (shown above, and largely considered the biggest announcement of the show), an LED flash on the new 5 megapixel camera on the back, and longer battery life.

The new iPhone will sport the Apple A4 chip under the hood, the same processor that powers the iPad, and part of the reason the battery life is improved. Additionally, Apple’s re-engineered the iPhone display to be much sharper and have much smaller individual pixels, which increases the overall resolution and presents a sharper image – they’ve patented the new display technology and call it the Retina Display. Aside from the hardware upgrades, Apple also announced that their eBook reading app, iBooks, along with Netflix streaming video, will make their way to the iPhone this month, and Apple previewed new development tools that make use of the new built-in gyroscope and utilize HTML5 in addition to Cocoa Touch (the iPhone’s native development platform.)

The new iPhone is pretty impressive as-is, and AT&T and Apple have agreed to allow existing iPhone users upgrade to the new iPhone 4 for less than the full retail price, which paves the way for more current iPhone and iPhone 3GS owners to upgrade to the new device as soon as its available, which is currently June 24th (pre-orders will open on June 15th). The 16GB version will run you $199, and the 32GB version will run you $299.

PC Mag got hands on with the iPhone 4 at WWDC and has their first impressions here, along with a video walking through some of its new features.

iPhone OS is now iOS

This is an entertaining tidbit. Much like the word “iPhone” used to be property of Cisco, the phrase “iOS” used to describe the operating system for Cisco’s enterprise routers, switches, and other network devices. Apple was way ahead of itself this time (unlike when they launched the iPhone in 2007) and already arranged to license the phrase from Cisco going forward to describe the OS that now runs on iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads.

I have to wonder how much Apple is paying Cisco to make that happen – or even whether those discussions started in 2007 back when Apple and Cisco settled the flap over “iPhone.”

Safari 5 and iTunes 9.2

Very quietly, Apple almost glazed over the announcement of the new version of Safari, Safari 5, available now. Safari 5 is fully HTML 5 compliant, a bit faster than Safari 4, and has an interesting new “Safari Reader” view that hides ads and other fluff content away from the primary page content that you’re likely interested in reading without the distraction of banner ads and other flashy content in the margins.

PC Mag has an excellent review of Safari 5 if you’re curious what else is new – and perhaps what isn’t new – about the new browser. A quick Twitter poll showed that not too many people use Safari at all, even on the Mac, so this likely won’t make PC users download it if they don’t already love it, but Mac users will get the update as part of Software Update, regardless of whether they actually use it as their primary browser.

Almost entirely unnoticed was iTunes 9.2 – in fact, I don’t think it was mentioned at all during the keynote, other than the fact that the new iOS4, which will power the iPhone 4 and be available for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS (and possibly the iPad) will be available later this month for download via iTunes 9.2. iTunes is currently at version 9.1.1, so this means there’ll be an iTunes update in our immediate future – although what other features it’ll bring other than being the conveyor of iOS4, we have yet to learn.

That’s all she wrote!

That’s about it – Apple has been very adamant about message control lately, so we didn’t see any additional products or announcements at the WWDC this year: no AppleTV announcements or upgrades, no iPod Touch upgrades (although the iPod usually has its own music-themed event in August or September), no iPad upgrades or announcements, and that fact left a number of Apple faithful a little wanting. Still – the iPhone 4 was the star of the day, and that’s exactly how Steve Jobs wanted it when he walked on stage on Monday.

I’ve been fascinated with Urbanears headphones for a long time – I think the solidcolor, modern design is sleek and attractive, and when I found out that they’re not just headphones but headsets that you can use to listen to the music on your smartphone but also take calls using a built-in microphone, I was even more thrilled.

It doesn’t hurt that Urbanears come in an array of gorgeous colors (even though they’re mostly kind of pastel colors and I’m more of a jewel-tone kind of guy) and they come in multiple flavors to suit the type of listening you’re going for. The Plattan, for example, is your standard, classic over the head headphones. They even fold down for portability, and they have an additional output jack on one of the ears so if you have a friend who wants to hear what you’re hearing, you can let them plug in and enjoy the music too.

The Tanto is a smaller, more lightweight over-ear headphone, and looks like those old 80s headphones that came with everyone’s walkman at the time without being quite so flimsy and sounding so awful. The Medis, on the other hand, combines an in-ear earbud with an over-ear hook to give you the benefits of a full pair of headphones with the convenience of earbuds that don’t have a band over your head and are super-portable.

Best of all, they’re not horribly expensive. The Plattan will run you about $60 USD, the Tanto about $40, and the Medis, unfortunately, isn’t available just yet.

[ Urbanears ]

If you’re a big Hulu viewer (like I am) you’ll probably be bummed to hear this, but Hulu is planning a subscription service to view older episodes and back-catalog shows that it currently hosts for free. Hulu announced that they were moving to a subscription “freemium” type of model several months ago to the dismay of people who had grown dependent on the service for their regular television viewing, but I think most people assumed that this was coming.

Now though, Hulu has solidified its plans, and has proposed a $10 per month subscription to access all Hulu videos, including old archived episodes that it has in its library and to access old episodes of shows like Lost that it currently posts as soon as the new episodes air. New episodes of currently tracked shows will continue to be free, it’s just that episodes more than a few weeks old or episodes that “expire” will require a subscription to access.

What do you think? Does this throw a wrench in your plans to get rid of your cable or satellite company in exchange for IPTV, or is the money reasonable for you? Are you planning to just seek your Web video elsewhere (through legal or illegal means?) Let us know in the comments!

[ PC Mag :: Hulu Plans Subscription Service to Access Old Episodes ]

Last week’s launch of the Apple iPad was probably a bigger splash than I expected in any possible way. I mean, I expected the product to be successful – any Apple product generally is, and the first Apple product to pave the way into an entirely new market will do well because it’s the first; but as of today Apple’s passed the 500,000 mark when it comes to iPads sold, and they’ve only been available for over a week. If trends go strong, Apple could very well rack up over a million iPads sold in its first month.

A lot of people like the iPad, a lot of people hate it, and there are both valid and completely invalid reasons on both sides of that line (I’ve written about as much about irrational Apple hate lately as I have about irrational Apple love) but the one thing that’s caught my eye is the visible explosion of the app market with the launch of the iPad. Selling apps is nothing new – the App store is populated with free and paid apps available for your iPhone, Android phone, Blackberry, and more, and for as much as I disagree with the people who claim the iPad is just a glorified iPod Touch, they’ve been available for iPod Touch users as well.

What’s different though is that with the launch of the iPad, all of the apps launched have made use of the iPad as a platform – somewhere between buying software for a shiny new computer (as well as downloading freeware) and apps for a mobile phone. Clearly Apple’s model is closer to apps for a mobile phone than software for a computer, but with the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0, Apple’s portable devices and tablets are looking more and more like computers every day.

The point though is this: the app market has exploded and people are willing to do two things:

1. Buy apps by the bushel (but decline to pay for PC software)
2. Buy apps but demand Web content remain free (within reason)

Let’s dive into both of these below the jump.

First, let’s take a look at how willing people are to just buy apps, no matter what purpose they serve; whether they compliment free services or replace them, whether they’re worthwhile or not:

Buy apps by the bushel (but decline to pay for PC software)

The app market is doing really well, and part of the model is that people are more willing to pay for apps that they can take around with them on a mobile device than they are to buy software for a PC or laptop (unless they really need it or feel like they want it.) Part of it is portability, and part of it is affordability, since the ability to take a well made app with you on the go on your smartphone has value in and of itself, and most apps are relatively well priced and most popularly downloaded apps are around the $5 US mark or below.

The interesting phenomenon here is that the market for apps on mobile devices is pretty big, and even with the launch of the iPad the App Store saw thousands of downloads within the first weekend the iPad was on the market. The model has some issues; for example the iPad is a separate device from the iPod Touch or iPhone, so if you have a license for an app on one you can’t use it for the other – you’ll have to either download it again or download the version specifically for that device. Regardless, it’s amazing how willing people are to drop anywhere from $0.99 to $10 for an app to go on their iPad or their iPhone, but even a shareware license for a utility on their desktop or laptop for about $7 is too much.

I understand that part of this has to do with intrinsic value – if you believe the Scrabble app for the iPad has more value to you than your favorite FTP app for your PC, then that’s an easy choice. It’s still remarkable though that people are willing to shovel money at apps that don’t appear to have intrinsic value – like the iPhone fart app, for example. People are willing to pay for that, but some have difficulty paying for mp3 downloads from iTunes or Amazon.

This is an important fact, and while I can’t entirely explain it, it leads into the second point.

Buy apps but demand Web content remain free (within reason)

This part of the equation came from a not that Gary Vaynerchuk posted on Twitter; we’ve already made it clear that people are willing to drop money on apps more than they are on traditional software, but people are not only willing to spend money on apps that optimize and bring in Web content to their mobile device or their iPad but they don’t want to pay for that content.

For example, the New York Times has an iPad app that’s remarkably successful. People are willing to download and pay for it and get their news through it for a price. At the same time, the notion of moving to a more Wall Street Journal model where even the Web site requires a paid subscription is an idea that most people, even those who are willing to pay for the app, resist fiercely. The moral of the story is that most people still resist the idea that Web content should be anything but free, but when it comes to optimizing it and streaming it to my portable device or my specialized device, most people are willing to either pay for the optimization or the special features that come with something like an app for their device.

This is important as well – people have a sense of ownership when they pay for an app; they feel like they’re actually getting something tangible, something they feel that they really really own. That sense of tangible ownership is all the difference. When you feel like you’ve purchased something that’s designed to help you customize and personalize the content you absorb, that’s a good feeling. When you feel like you’re paying for a key to a wall that you really don’t think you should have to deal with because there’s nothing special about it (just another news site, for example) then people shy away and are more eager to investigate other options.

This is the reason why the New York Times is having trouble with the idea of making its main news site subscription-based, but has no qualms–or problems–making it’s iPad app and iPhone app subscription-based.

This leads us to the final point:

Can the iPad Save Content Production on the Web?

The short answer is “possibly, with enough help.” The trick is that the iPad itself won’t save content producers from themsevles; neither will Android mobile phones, or the iPhone, or any other smartphone. Neither will subscription models that drive customers away instead of bringing them into the content that a producer creates. What will save content producers is the ability to quickly and creatively provide paid content optimization and added features, not paid content itself.

People will be willing to pay $0.99 for your iPhone app if you give them a way to easily search, save, and watch all of the videos you’ve posted to your site, or if you give them a feature unavailable on your Web site, like tabs for categories of article, the ability to connect with other members of your site community directly, or something similar. The point is that buyers and people interested in your content need to feel as though your apps really offer something unique and special over the Web or mobile Web experience. In order for someone to spend money, they’ll need to feel like your app doesn’t just optimize your content for their device, but they’ll want to feel as though you’ve done something to improve their experience.

If more content producers could do that in more than just one way (I’ll bet different audiences would like different apps, as long as you don’t flood them with options and clones) or even offer the gateway to their content for free and then premium content for additional fees, the revenue from people looking to take their content and communities on the go with them could very well help pay for the operations required to investigate, produce, and build that content. Will it get the publishing industry and video or music providers back to where they were in their single-stream, owner-to-consumer heyday? Likely not, but it may be able to provide enough revenue to make some of those operations worthwhile, and get us back to things like investigative journalism and dedicated reporting.

It’s a hard road, and an uphill battle, but the sheer popularity of the iTunes App Store proves that it’s possible. There may be a light – however dim – at the end of the tunnel for content producers, and they can simultaneously give their consumers and customers what they want without being forced to restrict access to information in order to make money.

Just posted today at Lifehacker; something that I think all of us want to do with our music – fix the metadata so we’ll never ever have to worry about not being able to make a playlist by album, genre, artist, even year again. You’ll never have to worry about jacked up metadata again:

Your digital music library is huge. Even if you only have an iPod nano’s worth of songs, that’s still a good thousand tracks—and some of you likely have closer to four or five thousand (or more). Today’s media players—whether on your desktop or portable device—rely on metadata to organize and display all this music. If your metadata is disorganized, so’s your music player. Unless you just started building your library, or have been ultra organized from the get-go, you probably have plenty of problems with your tags—missing tags, disorganized iterations of the same artist (The Beatles; The Beetles; Beatles, The), and even some albums that have no information whatsoever. Everyone’s problems are a bit different, but here’s a systematic approach to getting your library into shape, from start to finish.

It’s all about making sure your tags are as up to date and finely tuned as possible, and this guide will help you do it:

[ Lifehacker :: Start to Finish Guide to Whipping Your Music's Metadata into Shape ]

The fine folks at PC Mag caught this demo of Spotify running on an Android phone at SXSW, given by Spotify’s Daniel Ek. His phone is based in the UK, where (along with the rest of Europe) Spotify is amazingly popular for its ability to give you music-to-taste and on-demand whenever you want it, based both on your own local music collection and a massive database of music to stream online – Spotify isn’t available in the United States yet because of the licensing and royalty fees the service would have to pay the RIAA in order to license music to stream.

In all honesty, I don’t see any huge benefit to Spotify over a similar service I know and love called GrooveShark, which I’ve written about a couple of times. Still, competition is good, and Spotify is incredibly popular in Europe for a reason. The app already works on Android – could it be a hop, skip, and a jump away from landing on Android phones in the United States?

[ Gearlog :: Spotify Demo on Android Phone ]