From Google’s blog post about it:

“You can now speak your searches into the omnibox. Touch the microphone, say your search query aloud and see your results (in some cases spoken back to you), all without typing a single letter.”

Unlike Siri, this is not integrated into the operating system, and can only be accessed through the Chrome app.

Little by little, Google has been fine-tuning and improving its products that run on Apple’s operating system, and it’s having the effect of creating a Google layer on top of iOS.

Not only are all of Google’s major properties accessible in app form on iOS — from YouTube to Google Maps to Mail, Drive, Chrome, Search, Google+ and more — they often best what Apple has to offer. In addition, Google is finding ways to interconnect its apps, so iOS customers can jump from Google service to Google service fluidly. Earlier this month Google introduced a new setting for iOS developers that can enable app users to choose to set links in the Gmail iOS app to open in YouTube, Chrome or Google Maps, as appropriate, by default.

In April the company updated its Google Search app for iOS with Google Now, an assistant app that offers suggestions automatically based on behaviors and preferences expressed across Google’s apps and properties, all of which are on iOS.

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Zite outlined the changes in a blog post. CEO Mark Johnson has been pretty vocal about how he doesn’t think Zite should be like Google Reader, and told me the new features Zite has added to its iOS app are those that “enhance the user experience both for Google Reader users and the reading population in general.” Articles will now “gray out” after they’ve been read, users will be able to save sources as favorites and Zite’s algorithm will pay more attention to obscure content:

“One of the biggest problems with Google Reader is that RSS feeds which publish many stories per day tend to dominate your feed, so the obscure blog you found a few years ago that publishes every three months can be drowned out in the noise. Zite’s algorithm will more aggressively highlight rare content, so feel free to ‘like’ publishers that you enjoy, no matter how popular or rare.”

An Android update is coming soon.

Zite’s also added seven new publishers to its publisher program, bringing the total number of publishers it works with to 24. The new publishers are GigaOM, Atlantic Media (with The Atlantic and Quartz), Business Insider, Fast Company, Salon, Say Media (Remodelista and ReadWrite) and Serious Eats, and they join existing publishers like CNN (Zite’s parent company), the Huffington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Zite publisher partners share their “best-of” content in their own sections of Zite’s app, and can run their own ads against their content.

“We are also starting to look at ways to monetize publisher content,” Johnson said. That’s something Zite’s competitors are already doing: The New York Times makes content available to paying subscribers through Flipboard, and the Wall Street Journal has a similar arrangement with Pulse.

Here’s a video of Johnson speaking about the future of content personalization at paidContent 2013:

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That would mean that users could sign in with their Flickr and Vimeo accounts within the Settings app on their iOS device, just as they can now with Twitter and Facebook. Then when the user hits the share button in an app, the menu will include the services that they’ve registered.

iOS is expected to be detailed by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco in June. 9to5Mac noted that the decision to include two additional social services could be reversed before any announcement is made. But the report does make a lot of sense.

Such a move could be read as a bit more anti-Google maneuvering from Apple. After all, the company last year shed all iOS-Google tie-ins in iOS 6 with the exception of keeping Google search as the default option in mobile Safari. YouTube is available as a third-party app from the App Store, but it’s no longer the default video service in iOS. Apple could also take up the move to support Vimeo in response to Google allowing iOS developers to enable a setting in their own apps that automatically opens YouTube videos in the YouTube app, instead of mobile Safari.

But it’s also just as likely that Apple is simply increasing feature parity between iOS and Mac OS X. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has built-in Flickr and Vimeo integration, as well as Twitter and Facebook. Facebook integration also began on OS X and moved to iOS, so Yahoo’s photo service and Vimeo’s social video service could be following that same path.

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But Cook, for his first time offering public testimony before Congress, acquitted himself quite well despite the scolding his company faced, which makes sense if you think about it: Sen. Levin is probably nowhere near as scary as Steve Jobs. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and its head of tax operations Phil Bullock were tasked with explaining the details of Apple’s accounting, while Cook extolled Apple’s virtues, the jobs it creates and its values as an American company.

Apple normally gets to choose how it’s shown in the spotlight. So it was an unusually defensive position for the company and its chief executive, known for its preference for privacy, to be in and have the nitty gritty of its corporate accounting practices exposed for all to see.

But Cook did indeed choose to go to Washington. He probably could have sent a senior vice president, but he showed up to speak for his company. And in doing so, he continued to rewrite our expectations of an Apple CEO. While his predecessor met privately with public officials, Apple was not in the spotlight in years past the way it has been recently. As profits have soared and some of its corporate practices both abroad and at home have come to light, Cook has had to face increased public scrutiny in a way Apple didn’t see quite as much during Jobs’ tenure as CEO. (With the exception of the stock-options backdating controversy, though the penalties for that were minimal.)

In the same manner he smoothly handled outrage at the practices at Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partners and offered solutions, Cook used his particular experience at Apple to talk about taxes. As the company’s former operations officer, he ably explained pricing transfer and other complex accounting practices his company uses, and laid out suggestions for how to reform the U.S. tax code to encourage more companies like his to bring more of their foreign earnings home.

Grilling Apple

Two experts on tax law testified earlier in the morning how Apple allocates some income to a holding company and subsidiaries in Ireland that don’t file corporate tax returns in the U.S. or anywhere else. But as was oft-repeated, what Apple has been doing doesn’t break any U.S. laws. (Sen. Rand Paul twice decried Apple being “harangued and bullied” by the committee and repeatedly made the point that if Apple weren’t minimizing its tax burden, it would be irresponsible to its shareholders.)

Cook defused some of the more pointed insinuations made by the committee diplomatically, using the same brand of charm and salesmanship we see from him during keynote speeches at Apple events. “We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar,” Cook said during his testimony. “We comply with the laws but also the spirit of the laws.”

Many of the senators present Tuesday admitted to being big fans and users of Apple products. But the reason the company they all admire was being grilled wasn’t completely explained. It did appear Apple was being used as an example of common corporate accounting practices because it is the largest corporate tax payer in the U.S. — and, as Sen. Tom Carper noted, because of the current political climate surrounding the national deficit. Apple and many other U.S. companies have been operating in this manner for years, but in the shadow of the “sequester,” several members present acknowledged that Congress is looking for tax revenue that it’s not getting.

In the end, Apple’s presence seemed to serve as an intermediary for the senators to argue amongst themselves about how out-of-control the U.S. tax code is. The hearing itself seemed mostly a pointless exercise, as these hearings tend to be, with little promise of any real change. Apple will likely go home to Cupertino and keep doing what its doing, and Congress will continue to disagree over how to appropriately tax businesses.

Meanwhile, Cook gets to continue to raise his public profile as an elite American businessman and cement his company’s stature as critical to the American economy and the overall tech industry.

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AT&T’s statement to the Verge on Monday notes that “by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from [Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry].” Besides FaceTime, Samsung and BlackBerry’s pre-installed video chat apps will also be included.

And more will be coming for all of its customers before the end of the year: “Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.”

When Apple updated its mobile video chat app to work over cellular last summer, AT&T came under fire when it announced subsequently that only customers who subscribed to one of its Mobile Share plans could use it. Several open internet groups threatened to file complaints with the FCC, calling the carrier’s policy a violation of net neutrality. Several months later, AT&T opened the service to anyone with an LTE device.

Based on broadness of the statement, it sounds like video chat apps like Google’s new Hangouts app, which is available over AT&T’s cellular network now for some iOS customers, will work over cellular for Android customers later on this year.

This post was updated on 5/21 to clarify that the iOS version of Google Hangouts is available for use over cellular networks now.

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Cook will call for a revenue-neutral reform of the corporate tax code that does away with all tax expenditures, lowers tax rates and establishes a “reasonable” tax on companies’ earnings from overseas. It’s not in the planned testimony, but in an interview last week, Cook made it clear that he does not believe that a tax rate of zero is a reasonable number. In his testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Investigations, he will say that Apple supports this simplification of the tax code despite the likelihood that it will mean Apple’s overall corporate taxes will go up. The current corporate tax system “applies industrial era concepts to a digital economy” and “undermines U.S. competitiveness,” Apple believes.

Before Cook gets into his specific suggestions for fixing how U.S. businesses are taxed on foreign earnings, he’s going to spend most of his time going over why he’s being called to testify in the first place: Apple’s accounting methods. Apple keeps at least $100 billion in foreign earnings outside of the IRS’s grasp because it doesn’t wish to pay the 35 percent tax it would incur by bringing that money home. Many other businesses follow similar practices.

According to the published testimony, Cook will going into detail about how the company accounts for profits earned in the U.S., how investment in its foreign assets is taxed, how it shares R&D costs with an Irish subsidiary and more. (It’ll probably be a snoozefest for everyone except those who get a thrill out of spreadsheets.) Most of it is Cook on the defensive, explaining how what Apple does is within legal limits. Cook plans to assure the committee it’s not cheating on its taxes with any special tricks and “does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

He will underscore his point about Apple being on the up and up by laying out how much the company pays in taxes. Last year it paid $6 billion in taxes to the U.S. and this year, Cook has said it will pay $7 billion.

Tuesday’s testimony will be Cook’s first appearance before Congress. The company’s tax practices came to light a year ago when the New York Times highlighted some of the methods Apple has used to keep its overall taxes at a minimum.

Update 2:43 p.m. PT: Later on Monday the Senate released the results of its own investigation into the Apple’s tax-paying practices. It found that Apple’s convoluted system of subsidiaries has allowed it to avoid paying $44 billion in U.S. taxes over the last four years. However, it also noted that Apple did not break any U.S. law in doing so, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Expect many questions during Tuesday’s hearings about how the company uses its subsidiaries in Ireland to do this.

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Apple has started introducing trade-in offers that are particularly favorable to students. ZDNet reports:

Students who trade-in their old smartphones while upgrading to an iPhone will get 7,777 rupees (US$144). Non-students will be paid 7,000 rupees (US$130).

That’s in addition to an incentive for customers who use an American Express credit card to buy a new iPhone on a payment plan. Those customers will get 10 percent of their purchase back. Apple doesn’t have its own retail stores in India, but sells through a network of local, authorized retailers, many of whom only sell Apple products.

It’s a bit unusual for Apple to wheel and deal. But the iPhone maker has been tweaking its pricing strategy and incentive offerings in markets where smartphone ownership has only recently begun to take hold. Earlier this year, Apple introduced low and no-interest payment plans for iPhone buyers in India; similar to what it is offering in China. India is a country bearing huge potential — it is an example of what CEO Tim Cook means when he notes the potential of billions of people who have yet to own a smartphone. And as Om noted recently, there are 900 million mobile connections, and so far there are just 2.5 million iPhones in use.

As the iPhone matures especially in established markets, Apple is turning to fast-growing regions whose people are just now joining the smartphone revolution. It knows it can’t sell $600 smartphones to everyone. And so little by little we’re seeing Apple customize its approach to different markets, including selling older model iPhones through carriers, allowing brand-conscious young people to pay for the cachet of the iPhone brand in installments, or reaching customers through deals with local institutions.

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Here are the apps and devices I used that made my life a lot easier during this process.

Practice, practice, practice

One of the nice things about being the person everyone points to and says, “pick some songs” is, well, the songs I picked I already pretty much knew. However, there’s a huge difference between kinda knowing the song, and knowing it enough for a rehearsal. The first thing I did was create an iTunes playlist with the tunes. When I was driving around, I played nothing but those songs to get them stuck in my head.

When it came to actually putting my fingers to the fretboard, I used AmpliTube on my iPad for 90 percent of my practice — the other 10 percent were with my live rig to get the sounds right. One nice thing with AmpliTube is it will load the songs from my Music.app playlists and let me play along to them, as well as speed up and slow down parts. If there was a part I found particularly tricky to learn, I used Riffstation on OS X to loop that segment while I used the AmpliTube Orange amps to play along. For the first set of rehearsals, I also didn’t worry too much about getting the solos note-for-note, and instead focused on catching the feeling of the solo. I used my Fender Squire USB guitar for most of my practicing since it easily plugs into my iPad and Mac.

For what I was doing, I didn’t really care about my overall guitar sound; I just wanted to balance the volumes so I could hear both the song and my guitar equally. Then, I practiced. A lot.

Charting

I was asked by the bass player to chart the songs for a cheat sheet during rehearsal. While there are plenty of programs that will let you chart songs, I found them to be too advanced for my needs. What I really just needed to do was have the lyrics and then put the chord changes over it.

So, I used Pages ($19.99).

I went to a lyric website, cut and pasted the lyrics into Pages, and then added the chords and beat markers over the lyrics. This worked fantastically. In addition to giving the bass player a cheat cheat, I also had something I could reference during rehearsals. If I couldn’t remember how the chorus went, I had my own little cheat sheet. I printed out charts for her and the drummer, and had my iPad ready for my reference.

Running the rehearsal

Generally, I frown upon singers who use cheat sheets live, but in practice, obviously they are fine. Plus, I’m just filling in until we get a real singer (hopefully soon, I really can’t sing). I needed cheat sheets where I could see them while standing up, and I didn’t have a music stand that went that high. Plus, I wanted them right in my face.

For my cheat sheets, I used the iKlip 2 ($39.99) from IK Multimedia. It’s a mic stand holder for your iPad 2, 3 or 4 in a fairly secure fashion. Note: it slides into the holder, so I’d be a cautious using it during gigs. Not because it’ll fall out, but it’d be easy for someone to just snag the iPad during breaks. So, if you use it, make sure you take the iPad off when you walk off stage.

I was able to position my iPad with the iKlip so I could read the lyrics while warbling. A minor pet peeve is that I can’t get the iKlip to hold my iPad in the portrait position on the boom portion of the stand. Instead, I had to clip it on the main stand just under the boom.

If a note about how we played something came up, I just edited the Pages document with the note. Usually, this is how long the solos were, or if we wanted to change how a bridge went.

Final thoughts

I’ve written before about how I continue to be amazed at the way technology continues to improve how I approach music. It’s been 20 years since I’ve run a rehearsal. Back then it involved a lot of cassette tapes, CDs and photocopies. While OS X continues to be a starting point for my music, I find now when it comes to rehearsals, everything I need is on my iPad. I also have all my music theory and chord books in the Kindle app, so if I need to learn a chord I’m not familiar with, it’s very, very easy.

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Skylanders Cloud Patrol ($1.99, Universal) is a carnival-style shooting game where you tap to shoot at your target to win coins. The targets you are shooting at are mischievous trolls that have broken out of prison.

In this game you play one of a number of different Skylanders. As a Skylander you are responsible for hunting down and eliminating the escaped trolls. To shoot a troll, or anything else for that matter, you simply tap on the screen at the target you want to hit. You can also swipe your finger up, down, across and in a variety of pattern to lock on to a series of targets in quick succession. When shooting in such a manner, the game has the same interactive feel as Fruit Ninja. And like Fruit Ninja there are targets on the screen, in this case mines, that you must avoid shooting at all costs. If you shoot and hit a mine, it will explode and end the game.

As you progress through the game you are presented with a never-ending series of targets at which to aim. Each collection of targets are laid out like individual levels. After you successfully hit all of the targets on a given level, you will be flown to the next level in the cloud and presented with a new collection of targets. These targets can be barrels, boxes, balloons, presents, sheep (yes, sheep) and of course trolls. Things do get progressively difficult as the targets you are aiming to hit do not stay in one place.

The trolls will hide behind shields, duck under rocks and even fly around the screen using propeller caps. It really does resemble a carnival-style shooting game. Some of the trolls are armed with weapons that they will use to shoot at you. You must shoot down the projectiles aimed at you before they get too close and kill your Skylander.

Swirling around the screen intermixed with the trolls are the mines.  The mines always seem to change their pattern and place themselves right in front of a troll as you are tapping on the screen to shoot. There are also magical power-ups, crates packed with explosives that will kill all visible trolls on the screen, and golden coins that you can tap on to collect. When you do finally get overwhelmed and either shoot a mine or get shot by a troll, the game will end. Your score will be tallied, coins will be counted and you will be awarded gems for each of the posted achievements you have accomplished.

The coins and gems collected can be used to buy magic items as well as different Skylanders.  The magic items can be used while playing the game to give you an advantage over the trolls you are shooting.  However, switching out your Skylander for a more powerful Skylander with special abilities can really make a difference in how well you perform.  Between each level, there are in-app purchases where you can buy more gems.  The gems can be traded for gold coins.  This can certainly help you power-up at a faster rate by enabling you to achieve your goals faster.

What really sets the game apart however is that you can also make out-of-app purchases.  This is actually the main reason that the entire Skylander series of games exists.  By purchasing real toy models of the Skylanders at your local toy or hobby store, you can use the web activation code that comes with the toy model to unlock its corresponding Skylander character within the game itself.  Through earning gems and coins in the game, buying gems and coins through iTunes in-app purchase, or buying toy models at a retail store, you can grow your Skylander army.

Rather than exclusively use Apple’s GameCenter, Skylanders also utilizes Activision’s online gamers community, Activate. With Activate you can save game progress and challenge your Activate friends to various Showdowns.  These Showdowns are like goals, and if you win the Showdown you will be awarded with gems and coins.  The interaction between the game and Activate is smooth and reliable.  This weekend is as good a time as any to Activate an Activision online gaming account and start hunting trolls.

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Case in point: Yahoo Weather, which rolled out recently, already has what Onavo CEO Guy Rosen calls an “unprecedented” 3 percent market share among U.S. iPhone owners. That’s about 1.5 million users total which makes it the 91st most popular iPhone app three weeks after release, according to Onavo Insights data. That’s very good for a new app, Rosen said in an interview.

Other Yahoo mobile apps including Yahoo Messenger and the Yahoo app are also doing well. “In general, what we found is that although Yahoo has been quiet on mobile, when we look at the top apps, we see quite a few up there. They have a decent footprint.”

According to Onavo stats, the Yahoo app is the most popular of the company’s suite and among the most popular in the App Store overall. In the past three months, active usage has risen to 9.02 percent from  6.5 percent (or to 4.5 million active users from 3.2 million active users.) Not too shabby.

How does Onavo get to these numbers? It uses data gleaned from its free iPhone (and now Android) apps including Onavo Extend, which compresses data flowing into and out of your phone; Onavo Counts, which watches how much time you actually spend using a given app; and Onavo Protect, which scans traffic flowing into your phone for malware. Then it aggregates that data (minus the personally identifiable bits) and runs statistics to suss out usage patterns. That data forms the core of reports that the company then sells to app developers.

This data is far more useful to app makers than app store download figures because it shows actual engagement. If your app is the mobile equivalent of shelfware, it’s helpful to know that.

Rosen said “millions” of people use Onavo’s iPhone apps but would not specify further. “We use a panel methodology with our user base as the sample and apply statistical methodologies to make sure it’s valid,” he said in an interview.

The current app stats do not yet factor in Onavo’s Android users, although they will be incorporated in time.

Note: This story was updated at 12:38 p.m. PDT with a new chart on Yahoo app usage growth and additional data on that usage.

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