Mobile software

Want to sell that movie you bought on iTunes but never watch? You may be able to one day if a new Apple patent filing ever comes to life.

Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and filed last June, an Apple patent application named "Managing Access To Digital Content Items" conjures up a system for legally selling or loaning iTunes items to another person.

The method involves transferring digital access rights from the original owner to someone else. Once those rights are transferred, the new owner would gain access to the content while the … Read more

commentary How do you feel about Firefox as an operating system? Or Ubuntu on your phone or tablet? Is Windows Phone 8 worth switching to? BlackBerry 10 means that the company formerly known as RIM isn't dead yet, right? And what the heck's a Tizen, anyway?

Depending on the OS, these questions and more will begin to plague mobile phone reviewers, phone providers, and consumers at large within the year at the most, and probably sooner.

Some people think this is a bad thing.

Yesterday's IDC report that smartphones will overtake feature phones in global sales this year … Read more

Telly, the popular video-sharing platform that was once known as Twitvid, has today released a major update to its iOS app. Jumping to version 2.0, Telly for iOS now makes it significantly easier to watch content, share with friends, and even add a bit of polish to videos before sharing.

Now, when you're ready to share, you can do so with selected individuals or private groups. This makes it easy for recipients to reply with either text or their own videos, from right within the Telly app.

Also new is a nifty landscape mode that the company is … Read more

Intel Capital, the chip company's venture-capital arm, has invested in software maker BlueStacks.

The companies announced the deal yesterday but didn't say how much Intel Capital invested.

BlueStacks offers software, called App Player, that lets users run their mobile applications on a Mac or Windows PC. According to BlueStacks, the company's platform has been downloaded more than 5 million times and supports the most-popular titles, including Angry Birds Space and Instagram.

BlueStacks' technology has excited more than a few mobile-software lovers. Since applications are designed for mobile platforms running on ARM architecture, getting them to run on … Read more

Netflix's video-streaming application is available on a slew of devices and operating systems. But don't expect it on BlackBerry 10.

All Things Digital reported yesterday, citing people who claim to have knowledge of Netflix's plans, that the company will not be developing a native or ported streaming application for BlackBerry 10 users. All Things Digital's source said that the vast majority of Netflix's subscribers already have subscribed to its service from a mobile device, making the additional work to support BlackBerry 10 unnecessary.

In a follow-up statement to All Things Digital, a Netflix spokesperson confirmed … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--You're traveling and your coworker needs your key to get into your office. Why not just e-mail it?

That's the idea behind Fraunhofer Institute's Key2Share technology, which the German research lab is developing in partnership with Bosch and showing off here at the CeBIT show.

Key2Share uses smartphones equipped with near-field communications (NFC) short-range wireless networking abilities to unlock phones. But because approval to use the key becomes digital data, a person can e-mail that approval.

It could be useful for other situations, too, said Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, a researcher involved with the project. For example, a … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--IBM showed off technology today designed to let people use their smartphones to take command of their real-world shopping.

Big Blue showed an app idea from IBM Research in Haifa, Israel, that uses image recognition to identify products on store shelves, then lets people sort those products by attributes such as price and nutrition information. A customer could select only gluten-free products, pick food that's from nearby, or filter electronic gadgets by operating system.

"The same experience people expect online is available in the store," said Amnon Rebak, a research staff member on the project, at … Read more

Nokia Lumia 822 owners can expect a small gift from Finland today. An over-the-air software update began rolling out to the Verizon Wireless Windows Phone 8 device at 1 p.m. ET.

New features in the update include improved performance for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and support for more microSD card brands. You'll also gain the ability to select an MP3 file as a ringtone, edit a multimedia message when forwarding, select multiple recipients for a message (yes!), and ignore calls with a text message reply.

A slightly downgraded Nokia Lumia 920, the Lumia 822 is one of three Windows … Read more

There are Android apps that come with many features, possibly more features than you need. Or perhaps it's not fully-featured apps you're trying to avoid, but the battery power they require. The more apps you have running in the background, the less battery life you'll see. Here's a trick you can use to skip out on apps that have Chrome bookmarklet counterparts.

This example uses Pocket (formerly Read It Later) to show you how it's done. The Pocket app is actually fantastic -- provided you want access to any queued content on-the-go. If you're … Read more