As he was boasting that Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices a day at Apple’s San Francisco event yesterday, Steve Jobs took the opportunity to accuse competitors of boosting their numbers when it comes to device activations.

“We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers,” said Jobs, most probably referring to the recent figures from Google, whose Eric Schmidt claimed 200,000 activations daily in August 2010.

Google has quickly responded to Jobs’ allegations. In a response to an inquiry from Fortune, a Google spokesperson said: “The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.”

So there you have it: according to Google, it might even have more than 200,000 Android device activations every day. Who do you trust: Apple or Google?

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Reviews: Android, Google

More About: android, apple, Google, iOS, steve jobs

Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you have an iPad? Even if the answer to both is “no” right now, after you see Twitter for iPad, those answers are going to change — quickly.

Yes, the wait is over. Launching tonight in the App Store is Twitter for iPad — the first official native iPad app from the company. We all knew it was coming (Twitter even said so a few months ago), but it has been a long wait. It was definitely worth it.

Like most people, I wander into hyperbole from time to time. But it has now been a few days since I first played with Twitter for iPad, and I still think it is hands-down the best iPad app out there. It’s that good. With all due respect to Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Pulse, this is now going to be my go-to app for just about everything related to reading news. It’s simply such a great experience for reading tweets — and more importantly, reading the links your friends share.

What Twitter has done is create an amazing user experience for reading information. This is thanks to an intuitive user interface that layers on top of itself. So, for example, if I click on a link in my tweet stream, I’ll have a new layer that rolls over to show that webpage in a customized browser window. If you’ve used Flipboard, it’s somewhat similar, but better because it’s much easier to go back to where ever you previously were before you clicked the link. You simply swipe something to the side to move it temporarily or swipe it again to get it off the screen (in portrait mode anyway, where there’s less space).

Something else that’s awesome: when you highlight a tweet by clicking on it, it’s now pinned to the top or bottom of the screen as you scroll through your stream. This is great if it’s something you want to reference. A lot of thought has been put into these type of saving state actions within this app. It’s simple to save a draft and go back to it, for example (much easier than with Twitter for iPhone). Or to reference one of these pinned tweets in your own tweet.

There are also some great new gestures that Twitter came up with for this app. For example, if you pinch-outward on a tweet, it will unfold to show you more information about the Twitter user. Better may be the way you can swipe down with two fingers on any tweet to see a full conversation in context. It’s the little things like this that make the app great — Apple-like, even.

Overall, the app looks and feels quite a bit different from Twitter for iPhone (which Twitter built from Tweetie — developer Loren Brichter’s client that they acquired earlier this year). But Twitter’s Leland Rechis assures me it’s using all the same stuff on the backend. In fact, Twitter is now a universal app — meaning it’s one app that will work on both the iPhone and iPad, it will just look different depending on which device you’re using it on.

Rechis also says Twitter started experimenting with some newer things on the iPad version that haven’t yet been brought to the iPhone version, but undoubtedly will. A great example here is that when you click through to a user’s profile page, you’ll see at the bottom a list of users similar to that user that you may like to follow.

Rechis also notes the importance of the logged-out view — something Twitter worked on before the iPhone version launch. Twitter wants to make the service as useful as possible to people even if they don’t have an account. The idea, of course, is that they’ll hopefully sign up for one — and this app may give them the most reason to yet. When logged out, you’ll be able to see tweet streams based on hot topics.

“Tweets in general are not just what I’m doing, they have an incredible amount of metadata,” Rechis says speaking to why they created this layering idea for the app. Almost 25 percent of all tweets now have a link in them, he says. This app is perfect for those tweets, and content consumption and exploration in general.

Rechis notes that one of his favorite things about tablets is how they eliminate window management. At the same time, you need some way to manage all this information. He notes that Brichter’s original concept was stacks of sheets of paper that you quickly shuffle through. Other members of Twitter including Rechis refined that idea and the end result is Twitter for iPad.

That’s roughly 750 words about the app — but you really just need to see it, and use it. It will definitely be my go-to way to browse Twitter from now on. It’s that good.

Look for it in the App Store shortly. It will be a free download.

Update: I should note that for some of these more advanced gestures, there is a slight learning curve. That said, you can do everything without using those gestures, so it’s not a big deal — it’s just icing on the cake. And yes, Twitter is trying to come up with the best way to teach users about these new gestures.

People are increasingly sharing different types of information on Twitter. For example, Tweets point to web pages, photos, videos, hashtags, people, check-ins, and more. Exploring Tweets is a great way to discover new and interesting information. And with devices of all shapes and sizes connecting to the Internet, we’re constantly looking for new ways to make this easier. To date, we’ve created applications for a variety of mobile phones, giving you instant access to Tweets and great content when you’re on the go.

Today we are bringing Tweets to a device that really lets content shine - the iPad. Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad’s fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons. There are a few things we want to point out that make this app a really fast and fun way to read real-time content.

Panes: Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like to. And, it’s really easy to move between panes by swiping to the right or left.


Media: When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen.

Gestures: You can pinch on a Tweet to quickly view details about the author and to take actions on a Tweet, such as reply or retweet. Put two fingers together and pull down on a Tweet to peek at the replies, showing the entire conversation leading to that Tweet.

Mocha frappuccino and soy latte lovers rejoice: Starbucks is rolling out its Starbucks Card Mobile App for BlackBerry tomorrow, September 2.

In September 2009, Starbucks introduced its Starbucks Card Mobile app for iPhone and iPod touch, enabling the owners of those devices to reload their Starbucks payment cards, monitor their rewards cards and even pay for their purchases at 16 stores in Seattle and the Silicon Valley region. In June, the coffee company extended its mobile payment system to 1,000 Target stores in addition to the roster of Starbucks venues.

Now all of this functionality has been adapted — and, in some respects, improved — for BlackBerry Bold, Curve, Storm and Tour users. For instance, BlackBerry owners can use the app’s store locator to identify all Starbucks and Target venues where Starbucks is sold, not just the ones that support mobile payments.

In an interview with Mashable, Chuck Davidson, the category manager for innovation on the Starbucks Card team, described the group’s painstaking efforts to optimize the app experience for BlackBerry users. “We didn’t just want to put an iPhone app on a BlackBerry, which would have shocked BlackBerry users,” Davidson explained. “We had to get inside a BlackBerry head and use the right workflow.”

Thus, instead of embedding rich graphics and video for navigation, the team utilized the menu key, resulting in a much more intuitive experience for BlackBerry users.

With the addition of BlackBerry support, Davidson said that roughly three-fourths of its customers now have access to the Starbucks Card Mobile app. While he didn’t confirm that an Android app was in the works, he did say it was the third-most requested app after the iPhone and BlackBerry.

To get the Starbucks Card Mobile BlackBerry app, text the word “GO” to 70845 or visit the Starbucks mobile site.

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Samsung has finally spilled the details about its long-awaited tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, during a press conference at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

Samsung calls its tablet a “smart media device,” and Galaxy Tab definitely has the specifications to back it up: Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 16/32 GB of internal memory with the possibility of upgrading through microSD memory cards.

Furthermore, there’s a 7 inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600 pixel resolution, a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash plus an additional fron 1.3 megapixel camera for video chats (that’s got to hurt iPad owners at least a little bit) as well as WiFi and 3G connectivity. The dimensions of the device are 190.09 x 120.45 x 11.98mm, with 380 grams of weight, and the battery should last through 7 hours of movie playback.

In other words, the iPad got a worthy competitor, not only because of the capable hardware the Tab is sporting, but also because it has the latest and greatest version of Android. Although it’s smaller than the iPad, whose screen measures 9.7 inches, Galaxy Tab does a lot of things the iPad cannot do: it has two cameras, it supports Flash and a wide variety of multimedia formats, including DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, and H.264.

Samsung has partnered with Vodafone for the launch, and the Galaxy Tab will start selling in October in the majority of Vodafone’s European markets and later this year in the U.S and other markets.

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Of all topics, this is one of the perennials. People want more traffic, more attention, more awareness to their blog. It’s fair. We work hard on our blogs. We want more attention and traffic. If your business depends on volume, this is especially important (for instance, if you’re using ads). Getting traffic is a tricky business, and it requires a lot of experimentation. I’ll tell you what’s worked for me, so far, and I’ll tell you what you might try. Maybe others will educate us both in the comments on their best methods.

Great Titles Help

The first few seconds of someone’s attention are the hardest to pass. If you have a lame blog post title, no one’s going to want to read the post. For whatever reason, we react to “how to,” we react to “7 great,” we react to all kinds of things. Not sure where to look? I stole this advice from Brian Clark years ago: go to the grocery store, buy some ladies’ magazines like Cosmopolitan, and learn how THEY write headlines on the front page.

Graphics Don’t Hurt

This entire series (and most of my blog posts) use graphics to catch your eye. It’s an easy way to get one’s attention. Screen captures help. Video helps. There are tons of ways to get people into a receptive space with your material, and graphics are just the easiest one.

Now that we’ve got a decent title, decent graphics, let’s be quick about your content.

Brevity Is the Game

Keep your posts brief (unless you want tons and tons of bookmarks). People don’t have all day to read. If you can keep your posts between 250-500 words, that’s in alignment with most people’s attention spans. Hey, you’re welcome to write whatever length you want. You asked me how to grow traffic to your blog. I can only give you results that I’ve tested. When I write a super long piece, I get much less involvement with it.

Share Your Blog

I’ve written about making shareability a priority. If you don’t have easy-to-share buttons on your blog, you’re missing the easiest way for people to see your stuff on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and all the other sites where it would matter. Sharing out is a great way to make some more traffic happen. I also automatically push my posts into Facebook with their notes feature. I have an automated post into twitter via @broganmedia, but don’t do this same effect on my primary @chrisbrogan account.

Subscriptions or No?

In my case, subscriptions to my blog matter. I want people to subscribe, because I don’t necessarily survive on ad revenue. If you’re trying to monetize via ad revenue, and if your ads are in the header and the sidebar, a subscription really won’t help you get more traffic. If for whatever reason you want people to come to your website directly instead of via your RSS feed, you might want to obfuscate where you put your subscription information.

If you’re like me, you ask for the subscription all the time. In fact, I’ll ask now. You’re not yet subscribed? Enter your email (I respect your privacy):

Guest Posts

Over in the Third Tribe, we talk about guest posts quite often as a great traffic-builder to your blog. Find someone who has a very similar kind of blog topic to yours (not sure where to start? Check out Alltop), and offer a guest blog post. Oh, and then actually follow through. I have heard recently from my friends who accept guest posts that often, people ask for something, get approval, and then don’t take an action. That doesn’t sound like a good plan. Just FYI.

Consistency

This is one of those points where people disagree. I blog daily. Truth be told, I’m up to 2x a day most days. Why? Because the more I blog, the more people subscribe. I learned it from some of the larger blogger sites out there.

Lots of people justify once a week, or once every two weeks. That’s fine. But if you want to grow traffic to your blog, that’s a very long slow crawl towards that growth. That said, no matter which frequency you’ve chosen, stick to it. The moment you drop off the map, people who haven’t yet subscribed to you lose sight and move on.

Market Your Blog

You can always market your blog the good old fashioned way. I’ve had people hand me business cards at events that had a compelling question or interesting graphic, and then a URL to their blog. More often than not, I’ll at least check out the post. You might make postcards and bring them to the places where your prospective readers might congregate. For instance, if you write a restaurant blog, why not have a business card tray by the mints? Make an offer, just like you do with any other kind of marketing.

Often times, we sit around inside the fishbowl of social media and hope people from outside will find us. Here’s a hint, hero: the people you need are out there wondering what they can do to learn more about the thing you’re talking about. Go get ‘em, tiger.

How Do You Grow Traffic To Your Blog?

I’m a big fan of the basics: write about what they need, make sure they see that you wrote about it, make it easy to carry on the relationship, make it easy for them to promote you to others.

Seems like a simple formula, and yet, we go through all kinds of hoops to come up with trickier methods. Try this one first. What do you say?

iTunes 10 is now live and available for download. It comes bundled with its own killer feature: music-centric social network Ping.

Announced just this morning, the new iTunes/Ping one-two combo pack a mighty punch. But can this dynamic duo deliver on its promise to revitalize music-based social networking? And will Ping be the MySpace killer all the tech pundits are speculating about?

We don’t have all the answers, but we do have a few first impressions to share with you. We were definitely met with a few surprises and even some disappointments when firing up the app for the first time. Here’s what we think so far; be sure to share your opinions with us in the comments.

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Signing Up and Getting Started

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First, download the new iTunes. Once it’s installed, you’ll notice a new link under the iTunes Store tab on the left side of the iTunes interface. The Ping tab is inconspicuous as it is exciting.

The service is opt-in, so you’ll have to turn Ping on and sign in with your Apple account and agree to a new Terms of Service. After that comes a simple profile form that gives you the opportunity to upload an avatar and write the standard social media “About Me” section. Additionally you can “like” up to three genres.

Our first nose-wrinkle moment with Ping came right here: We only get to pick three kinds of music? Almost everyone likes a few more than three genres. Still, this will force those pesky “I listen to everything” types to get specific, so we can’t complain too much.

After that, you get to make some privacy choices. You can specify how music you like, rate and review is displayed on your profile; you can also decide whether or not people can follow you and if they need your approval to follow you. Even if you don’t allow others to follow you, you can still follow anyone you like. It’s a fairly common asymmetric friendship model, much like Twitter’s.

You can also choose to connect your profile on Ping to your Facebook profile, if you wish. Once your accounts are connected, you can also follow your Facebook friends on Ping, too.

Ping already has some “Artists We Recommend You Follow,” among them, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Linkin Park and U2. These don’t seem to be connected in any way to individual users’ purchasing habits or iTunes library contents. In the “People We Recommend You Follow” section, you’ll find luminaries such as Def Jam head Rick Rubin and radio DJ Jason Bentley. It’s a shame these recommendations aren’t based on available user data yet; we’re hoping that as more artists enable Ping profiles and more users sign up and begin to exhibit certain behaviors based on demographic and psychosocial factors, the recommendation quality for first-timers will improve.

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Playing With Ping: UX/UI

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Once you’re in and set up, you’ll see a stream of recent activity. You can think of it in a couple ways. First, it’s a music-only version of your Facebook news feed. Second, it’s a huge recommendation — one that might work pretty well if your friends, or at least the people you follow on Ping, have similar taste in music.

You can comment on and like others’ activities. When you click through to another user’s profile, you’ll also see a run-down of his or her recent activities.

Navigation is a bit awkward; don’t expect Facebook’s plethora of tabs and menus. You’ll get a search bar and simple back and forward buttons in addition to the traditional iTunes navigation bar at the top of the screen. On another look-and-feel UI note, it’s new and jarring to have to use a web app from within a desktop app, but it’s something that Ping users will apparently have to get used to.

The other part of running a social network inside a desktop app is that it’s cripplingly slow — something that might seriously inhibit the platform’s growth. If there’s anything end users hate more than sites that constantly go down, it’s sites that run slowly.

You can search for artists, people or both. Either the search function is purely busted, or iTunes hasn’t got a large enough repertoire of artists on board with Ping yet. Artists have both their iTunes Store pages and Ping profiles. Ping search takes you to the former, which isn’t quite intuitive.

The artist Ping profiles show an activity stream as well as upcoming concerts and a few other links. And of course, the entire Ping artist interface contains built-in music-selling features.

Artists can also upload photos, videos and text updates, something we haven’t yet been able to do as non-artists. As for uploading content other than reviews, regular users are limited to comments on your and others’ activity only for now.

One interesting section of Ping is its Charts, a sort of recommendation engine that delivers a brief list of songs and albums popular among people you follow. It shows purchased music only, not liked, rated or reviewed items.

Other sections of your Ping profile might not be as easy to understand; for example, don’t expect to be able to write a review when you click on “My Reviews;” you’ll have to go elsewhere in iTunes for that. Controls for the interface are small and, shall we say, specific. In other words, you’d better be pretty accurate when clicking on that five pixel-wide arrow, or you’ll end up on a wholly different part of the site and have to start all over again.

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Is It a MySpace Killer?

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The big question for music fans, musicians, digital collateral creators and millions of other people is both simple and complex: Can Ping replace MySpace as the go-to marketplace to find and socialize around entertainment?

We pondered this question at length earlier today, when we were confident that this Apple-backed MySpace alternative, with its baked-in connection to the iTunes Store, would be a surefire success.

However, while testing the app this evening, we see that Ping has a long way to go if it’s going to be a better alternative. All the reasons that users have largely abandoned MySpace — the emphasis on gaudy customization, the constant stream of shallow user-to-user communication, the veritable sea of band-spam — have been avoided to a perhaps detrimental extreme. We love minimalist design as much as the next guy, but we also love self-expression, music-sharing and communication with friends. Much of that is curtailed here.

Moreover, the interface is still buggy and slower than molasses in January at the North Pole during a legitimate Ice Age. And that slowness is a big turnoff and an inherent factor of working within iTunes.

We don’t love Ping yet, but we don’t hate it, either. We suspect that much of the network’s value will be a wait-and-see proposition. Wait and see what happens when there are more artists, more curators, more well-known DJs and music bloggers, and more of your own friends on Ping. Wait to see what changes Apple makes in later iterations. But for now, it’s definitely an app worth watching.

What are your first impressions of Ping?

More About: apple, Apple Ping, itunes, itunes 10, itunes ping, Ping

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When he was introducing Ping, Steve Jobs mentioned that it will immediately reach a user base of 160 million people in 23 countries. Sounds impressive, until you remember that 23 countries actually isn’t that big of a number; and if you’re in a country such as Chile, the Czech Republic, Croatia, or India, then Ping – just like the music store component of iTunes – is simply not available.

The users in most countries around the world are used to products and features not being available to them – receiving money through PayPal or buying music through iTunes doesn’t work for me, for example – but Ping is different. It’s supposed to be a social network; its competitors, Last.FM and MySpace, are available in most countries in the world. Users expect it to just work, but in my version of iTunes, Ping simply doesn’t exist.

Here’s a thread from Apple’s support forums, in which users from all around the world complain that they can’t find Ping. After Apple’s big announcement, most of them don’t even consider the possibility that this great new social network is not available in their country: they think they’re doing something wrong. But Apple hasn’t said a word about availability in other countries, so it might be a long wait for all these users.

From Apple’s point of view, it’s understandable it chose to tie Ping closely to the music store. One feature Steve Jobs had highlighted is buying a song directly from a status update; something you obviously cannot do if you don’t have access to the store. But the social networking part of Ping will suffer for it.

For an example of how being available only in a small number of countries can hurt Ping, consider one of its most important features: concert listings. This is where Last.FM shines; go to any place in the world, and you’ll be able to see which concerts are available, when, at what clubs and who’s attending. But if residents of a certain country cannot access Ping, then the concert listings for that particular country will be a sad and empty sight.

Facebook, which hasn’t really focused on music so far, is also available in most countries in the world; it’s the de facto standard for social networking, and it has half a billion active users. Yes, Ping is directly tied to music, but users aren’t used to network from iTunes. Should Facebook introduce some features similar to those Ping has, it would automatically have a huge advantage simply because it would work for all users, not just the select few. If Apple has any serious aspirations to grow Ping into a global social networking powerhouse, it should strongly consider making it available everywhere.

We’ve contacted Apple to find out when (and if) Ping might become available in countries other than the initial 23, and are still awaiting their response.

More About: apple, itunes, Ping

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Twitter has just announced the service’s official iPad app.

It’s free and comes with a slew of touch interface bells and whistles built right in. The app is intended to allow for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other media and updates. It’s also usable even for those who don’t have Twitter accounts.

Twitter for iPad [iTunes link] has a few new UI touches that you haven’t seen elsewhere. These features are custom-designed for the larger screen and touch capabilities of the iPad. It also caters to what the iPad was made for: media consumption rather than creation. Twitter’s Leland Rechis, a mobile UX designer, writes on the Twitter blog that the iPad is “a device that really lets content shine.”

The main interface is a series of panes that can expand and retract based on the kind of content the user wants to access. “Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like,” wites Rechis.

Media viewing is optimized for the iPad, as well. Videos play in-line with other content and can be loaded while you’re browsing through your timeline. You can pinch a video to view it fullscreen, too.

Finally, Twitter has really done some interesting things with touchscreen capabilities in this app. When you pinch a tweet, you’ll see details about the author and have a list of actions you can take, including reply and retweet. A two-finger pull-down gesture will show the entire conversation around a tweet.

It’s a creative way to approach multitouch app building, and we look forward to playing with it ourselves. We’re also really looking forward to what apps may come to other tablets in the future.

The iTunes release is rolling out right now; if you can’t get the latest version of the app right now, wait a bit and try again. And of course, let us know what you think of Twitter for iPad in the comments.

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Reviews: Twitter, blog

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Apple made a lot of announcements today, from the new Apple TV to the Ping social network for music built into iTunes 10.

Because Apple is entering some new market segments (or, in the case of Ping, some new markets, period) Apple is now a direct competitor to a number of other companies already in the social music and streaming content space.

Boxee, Rdio and Roku have all issued statements in response to Apple’s latest moves and what, if anything, it means for the future of those startups.

Apple is describing Ping as a social network for music. It takes a very Facebook and Twitter approach to following friends and artists and is designed to make discovering and sharing new music super simple.

Rdio, a startup created by the founders of Skype, also lists music discovery as one of its core strengths and missions. Of course, unlike iTunes, Rdio is a subscription service that allows users to enjoy on-demand streaming music for $4.99 or $9.99 a month.

This is the statement Rdio sent us in response to Apple’s latest social music plans:

“Today’s announcement from Apple completely validates Rdio’s social approach to discovering music through people,” said Carter Adamson, COO, Rdio. “But in our view, sharing a short clip doesn’t amount to sharing music and people are still restricted by Apple’s pay-per-tune platform.”

Rdio also notes that it has apps for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

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Roku and Boxee Respond

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When the first Apple TV was introduced back in January 2007, the market for connected video devices essentially started and ended with TiVo (at least on the commercial level). Almost four years later, the landscape is very different.

Steve Jobs highlighted some of the reasons Apple though the Apple TV didn’t really take off and many of the changes to the new Apple TV are designed to address those issues. Some of the changes, including a lower price, a focus on streaming, rather than storing content, and subscription access to Netflix, are familiar to fans of the connected device space.

Roku, a company that introduced the first Netflix Watch Instantly set-top box back in 2008, shares many of the same features and is also similarly priced to the new Apple TV.

Roku provided us with this statement:

Roku created the category for streaming players over two years ago with the original Netflix player for $99. Since then the category has continued to grow rapidly with large hardware entrants like Xbox, PS3, Wii, blu-ray players, and now AppleTV adding streaming capabilities. … During this time Roku sales have continued to accelerate as the overall streaming market grows, and customers enjoy our simple interface, low cost and large selection of services. Our customers are using the box more and more. Two years ago the average Roku customer used our product 11 hours a month, but now it’s 43 hours a month.

Beyond Netflix we have introduced over 50 additional content partners on our open platform that offer customers access to over 100,000 movies and TV shows, live sports, music, photo and video sharing, and more — all while continuing to reduce the cost of our products. Today, a customer can get a Roku player for as low as $59.99 and an HD-capable model for as low as $69.99, plus a 1080p model for $99.99. By selling direct to customers (on roku.com) we can offer more while maintaining lower prices.

Roku is completely confident that our strategy of offering more features and lower cost than competitors continues to be the right plan.

The core difference, as we see it, between what Roku offers and what Apple TV offers is that Roku is a streaming player that connects to bigger content networks. You can browse videos from Vimeo and blip.tv, you can watch UFC Pay-per-view content and you can watch premium titles from Netflix or Amazon VOD.

However, Roku doesn’t have a connection to a users networked content on the Mac, PC or mobile device. Roku has more content options for users but offers less content to a users personal local library.

For Boxee, the situation is a bit more complex. Boxee started as software that could be run on the Mac or Apple TV. Many original Apple TV owners (myself included) only bought the Apple TV because of Boxee. Boxee added the third-party content options that the original Apple TV lacked.

Meanwhile, the Boxee Box promised to be a streaming media device to both your local network and to sources like Netflix, Crackle.com MUBI.

On the Boxee Blog, founder Avner Ronen had this to say:

Most of us at Boxee are Apple fanboys. If it is silver and it has the Apple logo on it, we pre-order it. If there’s a line around the block, chances are we’re in it. And everything stops at Boxee HQ while we unbox the latest gadget to come out of Cupertino. We were incredibly excited when a couple of developers in the community made it possible to run Boxee on Apple TV (as hundreds of thousands of users have done) and the Boxee Remote for iPhone remains one of the most popular interfaces people use to interact with Boxee. Plenty has happened since then. …
We all watched the Apple announcement. We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms. We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want.

The new Apple TV features, especially the addition of AirPlay, really go to the heart of what Boxee offers: A simple way to access local and online content directly from the TV.

While lacking a direct link to the iTunes ecosystem, Boxee does have a layer of extensibility that the new Apple TV still doesn’t really seem to embrace.

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Make No Mistake, Apple IS Competition

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The position that all three companies are taking is that Apple’s entry into their respective fields reaffirms their business plans. The secondary position is that the value proposition offered by each service is enough to differentiate them from Apple’s offerings.

This is true and false at the same time. While existing music networks and connected devices can surely still compete against Apple, make no mistake, this is a competition.

Apple is gunning not just for Boxee and Roku, but for Google TV, TiVo Premiere and video game consoles that tout the ability to stream content.

Mashable’s Ben Parr has already opined on the potential impact Ping will have on MySpace and other music networks like Last.fm and MOG should also be aware of the new competition.

Apple still has to sell itself to consumers in the living room, and the new Apple TV just makes that sales pitch more attractive. Where Apple doesn’t have to sell itself is with music. iTunes is the largest music store in the world and the go-to place for finding and buying music. Adding in social components to that is going to upset other sharing and discovery services.

This doesn’t mean that competing against Apple is going to be impossible, but music networks and connected device makers do need continue to keep an eye on Cupertino. Apple’s here to play.

What impact do you think Apple TV and Ping will have on its competitors? Let us know!

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Reviews: Android, Boxee, Crackle, Facebook, Netflix Watch Instantly, Ping, Skype, Twitter, Vimeo

More About: apple, Apple TV, boxee, connected devices, itunes 10, Ping, rdio, roku

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Sometimes the titles just write themselves. On Tuesday Virgin America and Loopt partnered to offer people two-for-one tickets to Cancun or Los Cabos from California. All you had to do was check in on Loopt at SFO, LAX or one of a variety of taco trucks in San Francisco and Los Angeles in a four hour window.

So how did it go? Loopt says 1,300 people checked in to a single taco truck in San Francisco, and 80% of those people have already bought tickets on Virgin America for flights. It was Virgin’s fifth highest revenue day ever, says Loopt (we’re confirming with Virgin).

Added Loopt CEO Sam Altman by email: “You should also mention that we are on fire.” And indeed they are. Loopt has more than four million users, despite the fact that they are covered far less often than the smaller Foursquare. Loopt is quietly becoming a very large presence in the mobile, um, presence war.

Also, Virgin America doesn’t suck.

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

iTunes 10 and Ping Are Now Live

Apple’s latest version of iTunes and it’s new music-centric social network, Ping, went live late Wednesday evening, some eight hours after the product was announced at the company’s press conference in San Francisco. Mashable’s Christina Warren contends that Ping has a long way to go if it’s going to become a better alternative to MySpace.

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab

Samsung has revealed its long-awaited tablet, the Galaxy Tab, at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

The tablet sports a 7-inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600-pixel resolution, Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 of RAM and 16/32 GB of internal memory with upgrade options. It also comes with a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash, plus a second 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats, as well as Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The battery, Samsung claims, can last up to seven hours of movie playback.

Samsung, it appears, has created a real competitor for Apple’s iPad, which lacks the Galaxy Tab’s cameras and support for popular multimedia formats such as Flash.

Samsung has partnered with Vodafone for the launch, which is scheduled for October in Vodaphone’s European markets, and later this year in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Twitter Releases Official iPad App

Twitter has released its official iPad app, available now in Apple’s App Store [iTunes link] for free. The app allows for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other content, enabling users to load videos while they’re browsing their timelines, for instance, as well as view them in-line with other content and expand them to full-screen size.

Further News

• Starbucks is rolling out its Starbucks Card Mobile App for BlackBerry today, enabling users to manage their payment and rewards cards, and even pay for their purchases at 16 stores in Seattle and the Silicon Valley region, as well as 1,000 Target stores nationwide.
• Google will remain AOL’s exclusive search partner through 2015, both companies announced this morning. The deal has been expanded to include mobile search and to bring AOL’s content to YouTube [via PaidContent].
• Competitors Boxee, Rdio and Roku have all issued responses to Apple’s latest TV and music offerings.
• Microsoft announced Wednesday that it has completed the development of its forthcoming Windows Phone 7. The mobile OS has reached the release to manufacturing (RTM) stage.

Disclosure: Samsung, BlackBerry and Microsoft are Mashable sponsors.

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Series supported by HTC EVO 4G

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This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

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It’s pretty incredible what you can do with a little imagination, some plastic bricks, and a whole lot of patience. Case in point: these wonderful large-scale LEGO creations you’ve likely never seen.

See all thirty-five at Hongkiat.

Total LEGO coverage.

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It's really not that hard to win friends and influence people.

A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you include an entire database, make it interactive, and add filtering options, the word-to-picture exchange rate is even better.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

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1. Google’s Appetite for Acquisition

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Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

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2. Gay Marriage Chronology

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The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

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3. IED Attacks from Wikileaks’ Afghanistan War Logs

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The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

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4. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

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5. CIA World Factbook Dashboard

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The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

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6. Geography of a Recession

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This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

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7. Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Violence Map

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The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

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8. What Does the Health Care Bill Mean to Me?

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Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

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9. Obama’s $787 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

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The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

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10. American Casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond

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This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More Graphics Resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools
- 10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics
- 5 Amazing Infographics for the Health Conscious
- 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers
- 12 Beginner Tutorials for Getting Started With Photoshop

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