Looks Like We May Be Stuck With Just An Iphone 4s After All (aapl)

The evidence continues to grow that Apple will only announce an iPhone 4S on Tuesday, a souped up iPhone 4 that has the same external design but a faster processor and other powerful internals.

9to5Mac discovered a mention of the "iPhone 4S" in the latest developer beta of iTunes. The reference also links to an image of the current Verizon version of the iPhone 4.

There's no mention of an iPhone 5 or any photos of a redesigned device.

It looks like Apple pulled the iTunes beta from its developer's page. We can't find it, and we're hearing the same thing from other developers on Twitter. We're still trying to confirm Apple removed it.

Head over to 9to5Mac to see the evidence >

UPDATE: Yup, it looks like Apple has removed the latest iTunes beta from its developer's site. We just tried to download it and got the following error:

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Looks Like We May Be Stuck With Just An iPhone 4S After All (AAPL)

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Here's What The Apple Tv Will Be Like (aapl)

The drumbeat is growing: a lot of people think Apple is going to introduce a TV set in 2012. 

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reiterated his call for a 2012 Apple TV, and technology grandee Jean-Louis Gassée takes a stab at figuring out what it'll be like:

Imagine a true plug-and-play experience. One set with only two wires: power and the cable TV coax. Turn it on, assert your Apple ID credentials and you’re in business. The program guide looks good and is easy to navigate; pay channels are just a click and a password away. The TV runs apps, from games to FaceTime and Skype, it “just works’’ with your other iDevices and also acts as a Wi-Fi base station using the cable provider’s Internet service.

One problem is that the Apple TV would have to support the many cable systems. The TV would have to either only support a few operators, or be complex and prone to bugs. Cable operators killed the CableCARD, which was supposed to plug into your TV and replace your set-top box, because it would be too complex to service. Apple would have to either rely on the cable guys to play nice and support it or, Gassée speculates, create its own "Apple Geek Squad" that would come to your house and fix it. 

The other problem is that people don't upgrade their TVs as often as they do their other consumer electronics. Moore's Law ensures that computers and phones quickly become obsolete, and you have a reason to spring for a new computer and phone every year or every two years. Once a family springs for a big, great TV, they won't renew so often.

But you could have made the same argument with phones: carriers have different systems, have competing requirements, and Apple worked that out over time. The phone business is commoditized, with wafer-thin margins, and Apple came up with must-have devices that allowed it to get carriers to play nice and (thanks to subsidies) sell incredibly powerful phones.

As Munster says, "Apple will do to TV manufacturers what it did to phone makers with the iPhone."

Let's just hope they don't call it an iTV → 

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• CHART OF THE DAY: iPads May Soon Cost More Than Big Screen TVs
• THE APPLE INVESTOR: Is Apple Stock Less Lovable Without Steve Jobs?
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Here's What The Apple TV Will Be Like (AAPL)

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Here's What The First Blog, Smartphone, and Web Browser Looked Like

Someone had to send the first email. Someone had to create the first computer virus. And obviously, someone had to register the first internet domain.

It's only because of so many technical visionaries that we have the Internet as we know it today.

Here are some of the humble first steps that got us here.

First mobile phone with Internet access: Nokia 9000 Communicator

Available in Finland in 1996, the Nokia 9000 Communicator was almost non-viable due to extremely high costs to the service providers.

In 1999, a much more practical Internet device called the i-Mode launched in Japan, but it wasn't the first.

First email: nonsense letters

Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in late 1972 between two computers sitting right next to each other. He doesn't remember what it said, but he speculates that it was just "QWERTYUIOP."

The first blog: Justin's Links To The Underground

Justin Hall is widely credited with starting the first blog in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College. It's still active today, with a full archive.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Here's What The First Blog, Smartphone, and Web Browser Looked Like

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Twilio Wants Every App To Have Voice Chat Like Skype

San Francisco startup Twilio just unveiled a service for developers to build point-to-point voice chat into any Web, iOS, or Android application.

It's like every developer in the world now has access to the voice chat functions of Skype or Google Talk.

For the last couple years, Twilio has provided simple tools for developers to add voice calling and SMS to their applications, and charged them a simple and transparent fee for each use.

So far, though, all of those communications have traveled through the regular phone network.

As Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson puts it, Twilio was simply helping developers wire up the phone system in new interesting ways, using it "as a big dumb audio pipe."

The new technology is called Twilio Client, and it enables voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls from within any Web page, iOS app, or Android app.

Calls travel over the Internet, so no connection to the phone system is required, although the apps can still connect to regular phone numbers using Twilio's other services.

Because Twilio doesn't have to interface with the phone system, the service costs developers only 1/4 of a penny per user per minute -- a fraction of the price of Twilio's other services.

Some possible uses:

• An online retailer could set up a "push to talk to customer service" button on its Web site.

• Mobile and Web games could let gamers trash talk while playing -- just like they've been able to do on consoles like the Xbox for years.

• Business apps could layer voice on top of existing features -- for instance, a CRM app could let company reps take calls from customers. All data from incoming calls could be integrated into the CRM system, so reps would know who's calling, the last time they called, and any outstanding issues they might be having.

• Companies could set up internal intercom or conferencing systems -- at a fraction of the cost of a product like Microsoft's Lync.

Twilio uses Amazon Web Services for data storage and compute power -- CEO Lawson used to be a product manager for AWS -- which allows it to scale to massive volumes quickly while charging developers only for the exact capacity that their apps uses. Lawson says they've tested Twilio Client for "billions" of endpoints.

The service sounded clear in a test at Twilio's office, and worked equally well between two Macs as it did between a Mac and iPhone. 

Twilio Client is available for Web sites today (a free JavaScript SDK will get developers on board), and is coming for iOS and Android soon.

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• This 21-Year-Old Just Sold Her Startup For $100 Million
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Twilio Wants Every App To Have Voice Chat Like Skype

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