Crazy For Tech - Gadgets,Cell Phones,Cameras » Tech

Those Millions On Facebook? They Actually Visit, And It’s Not A Huge Deal Anyway.

kram412 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:33:29 +0000

Traffic numbers provided by companies should always be questioned — I mean, of course each company is going to try to present the data in a way that makes them look as good as possible. Which is what New York Times finance writer Andrew Ross Sorkin has understandably done, going to town on Facebook for how it counts its active users in an article out tonight called “ Those Millions On Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit .” His main criticism is that Facebook counts 845 million monthly active users and 483 million daily active users, but gets to these numbers by including people who click “Like” or take another action on the web or mobile devices — but don’t visit Facebook.com during that time. Because they’re not visiting the home site, where the ads are, he suggests Facebook might not be making as much money off of them. First, I’ll look at what third party data says about actual Facebook on-site usage, then at the idea that these users not visiting the site is a problem, anyway. The article cites Nielsen , a well-regarded web measurement firm, to draw a contrast with Facebook’s own numbers. The filing said the social network had 161 million monthly active users as of December. Nielsen said 153 million unique visitors in the same period. From there, Sorkin goes on to guess that this difference might be due to the Like button and other off-site Facebook usage: “Assuming that Facebook’s United States traffic accounts for only about 19 percent of its business, that means the numbers are off by at least 40 million users from the 845 million Facebook defines as “active.” First, Nielsen is just one data source, which itself disagrees with the numbers provided by competitors. For example, direct rival comScore showed that Facebook.com actually had 162.5 million uniques in December . Nielsen and comScore use similar types of methodologies, which involve doing things like tracking a sample of internet users, and there’s no reason (that I know of) to think one is more right than the other in this case. So if Sorkin went by comScore’s numbers, he apparently would have guessed that Facebook was actually undercounting site usage. Another point on the comparison. Both of these companies track “unique visitors,” which are standards units of measurement that they separately define for all sites they track. The measure is a rough equivalents to the active visitors that Facebook tracks to Facebook.com, but we don’t know that for sure. But Sorkin does have a fair point in noting the differences between the results. There are probably some users, especially the all-important daily active users, who don’t actually visit places with Facebook ads every day. ComScore provides worldwide Facebook numbers, and it shows 794.3 million monthly uniques and 297.1 million daily uniques. That could indicate Facebook’s monthly numbers are high by a relatively small 50 million MAU but a huge 186 million difference in DAU versus daily uniques. But that point comes with its own qualification: comScore may not be able to track Facebook data equally in every country based on local factors, like lots of users getting on a single computer at an internet cafe. And there are also comScore data points in Facebook’s favor on this issue. There average Facebook user worldwide spent 11.6 minutes on the site per visit and December… and get ready for the kicker: visited 32.6 times. So if you’re an investor and you were worried that lots of users were clicking Like but not going to the site very single day, comScore seems to be saying that, well, they are visiting the site multiple times on some days even if they’re not on at every point of the calendar. This means they’d still be seeing a bunch of ads. But this is just comScore data, possibly as right or wrong as Nielsen’s. There’s a bigger point to Sorkin’s article, which he sort of addresses, which second-guesses the premise. Likes are actually quite valuable in and of themselves, because Facebook can use them to target ads, and provide the data to developers so they can build products that use Facebook to customize user experiences. Likes and other actions also generate content in the news feed that in turn makes the site more engaging. It’s hard to know exactly how valuable all that targeting and engagement activity is. But the Like buttons and other web-focused products are only part of what could be going on with Facebook’s web-wide play. It could turn on an ad network or a payments system that is available across the web at some point in the futre. These possibilities have been speculated about for many years now in tech circles, and Facebook has tried to avoid saying anything definitive. But the idea of an ad network for publishers — like, uh, AdSense, which Facebook chief operating officer helped build in her previous job at Google — seems pretty straightforward. Facebook could sell ad inventory on other sites on behalf of publishers, and give them a cut just like Google does with its Adsense publishers. And on the payments front, Facebook could expand its Credits payment system to the web as well. In fact, it already has in the form of games like FarmVille.com, Zynga’s web version of its Facebook game. That game relies on Facebook as the login credentials, so it counts as off-site, but it also monetizes via Credits, so Facebook still makes money. All in all, it’s reasonable for Sorkin to question the original numbers, and he might have a point. But third party data indicates that it might not be a meanginful one. And as far as this relates to prospective stockholders, Facebook is already monetizing traffic on the web via targeting, and could have ad plans for the future that would make this discussion moot. [Top image via NASA .]

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Those Millions On Facebook? They Actually Visit, And It’s Not A Huge Deal Anyway.

Startups, VCs Call For “Fresh Perspective” On Piracy Legislation

A D M I N — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:03:49 +0000

In the aftermath of the defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act , a long list of organizations have sent a letter to Congress asking members to “take a breath” before they trying to push through new piracy legislation. The letter argues that the “wide variety of important concerns” that were expressed during the SOPA/PIPA protests cannot be addressed through “hasty revisions” to the bills. Instead, there needs to be more research and transparent discussion about the broader issues: Furthermore, Congress must determine the true extent of online infringement and, as importantly, the economic effects of that activity, from accurate and unbiased sources, and weigh them against the economic and social costs of new copyright legislation. Congress cannot simply accept industry estimates regarding economic and job implications of infringement given the Government Accountability Office’s clear finding in 2010 that previous statistics and quantitative studies on the subject have been unreliable. Finally, any future debates concerning intellectual property law in regards to the Internet must avoid taking a narrow, single-industry perspective. Too often, Congress has focused exclusively on areas where some rights holders believe existing law is too weak, without also considering the ways in which existing policies have undermined free speech and innovation. Some examples include the year-long government seizure of a lawful music blog (dajaz1.com) and the shutdown by private litigation of a lawful startup video platform (veoh.com). A number of Web companies signed off on the letter, including Asana, WordPress-maker Automattic, the Cheezburger Network, Mozilla, Reddit, and Twipic. So did startup investment firms Foundry Group, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and SV Angel. And lest this be portrayed as simply a battle between the tech and media industries , the letter was also signed by the American Library Association, Amnesty International, and OpenCongress.org (to pick three names at random). [ image via Flickr/Nancy Pelosi , story via TheVerge ] View this document on Scribd

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Startups, VCs Call For “Fresh Perspective” On Piracy Legislation

The Samsung Doth Advertise Too Much, Methinks

ACMAir — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:57:20 +0000

At CES, the AOL booth where we worked, did interviews, and ate lunch was just a few short feet from Samsung’s huge Galaxy Note booth, where they were giving out free shirts printed with your caricature, drawn, of course, on a Galaxy Note. There was a line around this thing the entire time we were there, scores of people waiting for hours for their free t-shirt. Outside CES there were enormous banners in the most prominent and expensive ad spots on the convention center. Phone? Tablet? It’s Galaxy Note™! And just yesterday, in a grandiose ad rather out of keeping with their well-done “next big thing” campaign, the Note was made out to be the end of all our troubles, ending the tyranny of using our fingers and letting us circle and cross out and all those things you wish you could do on your obviously-now-obsolete iPhone. But I saw the Note at CES and formed my opinion in about five or six seconds: it’s weak. And that’s why this advertising blitz makes so much sense. First, let me just justify my judgment. At CES, I was handed a Note at some trade event. I felt it, hefted it: weird size, not big enough to make shows and movies and games pop, not small enough to be considered compact in any way. I was handed the pen, and made a few squiggles and letters. It was, like almost all active stylus LCDs, slightly laggy, accurate up to a point, and generally unsatisfying. And I’m in favor of using a stylus . The rest of the details will be in our full review when we get one for that purpose (I won’t be writing it), but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a pointless device. But that’s not what this article is about. The thing is all this advertising. It reminded me very much of movies recently where they don’t allow advance reviews, gag people who go to screenings, and saturate the airwaves with promotional material. In the case of the movie, it’s so people will form a resolution to see the movie before the critics start beating on it. And even then, that earlier drive to see it will often overcome bad reviews. Who among us hasn’t gone to a blockbuster regardless of reviews? Samsung is doing the same thing with the Galaxy Note. Although of course the European version has already been reviewed, consumers at large are not aware of that and likely think it’s a different product. Samsung is carpet bombing the world with Galaxy Note advertising so that people will decide they want it before they find out that it’s not, in fact, a killer product. Sure, it might be great for a few people who were looking for this kind of thing. But like the Flyer , HTC’s stylus-enabled tablet of old, it fails to deliver on its own promise. The screen and stylus aren’t new or interesting technology, nor is the OS. And as for the size, well, Dell tried it . But again, the point is not the device itself, which I obviously don’t like, it’s the launch strategy. Sure, other companies have big launches all the time. But this is the biggest delta that I’ve seen, I think, between the effort to promote and the real confidence in the device. I think they put all this weight behind the Note because if they didn’t, the thing would sink without a trace. This way they might sell a few. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But treating the consumer electronics world like the movie world and selling on hype alone isn’t likely going to be a winning proposition. Devices can’t succeed on spectacle, and the economics are totally different. Samsung makes a lot of great things, but the Note is not one of those things. It’s an awkward experiment that they felt could only break even on if they promoted it so relentlessly that people would have to believe it was a big-deal device. It’s a troubling trend and marks another point on the trend of CE companies competing awkwardly on either personality or spec. Few CE companies have any personality, unfortunately, and spec-sells are at best misleading and at worst a pack of lies. Samsung has no personality, and the Galaxy Note’s specs aren’t really salable. So they’re in the awkward position of selling by sheer visibility.

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The Samsung Doth Advertise Too Much, Methinks

Yelp Ads Are Not A Rip-Off, You Pay To Seal The Deal

jos — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:29:22 +0000

Yelp built its ad business by attracting users that know what they want, just not who to buy it from — exactly when ads are most effective. That’s why I find today’s VentureBeat piece by Rocky Agrawal titled “Yelp advertising is a rip-off for small advertisers” to be ridiculous. His sources say Yelp charges a $600 CPM, or 1,000-times the standard online CPM rate. Yes, these ads are expensive, especially for low-end restaurants. But for lawyers, dentists, jewelers, and mechanics with a high lifetime average revenue per customer, turning someone searching for their services on Yelp into a loyal customer is no rip-off, it can drive big ROI. Yelp sits at the end of the purchase funnel in the demand fulfillment stage. Users often already have a need for a business’ services and are prepared to spend. They go to Yelp to determine which service provider will get their money. When a user searches for “dentists in San Francisco”, Yelp local ads let advertisers put their own search result with a link to their Yelp profile at the top of the results. For restaurants, a conversion could bring in $20 to $50 in revenue, and that customer will eat somewhere else tomorrow where they could get hooked. For a high CPM to provide ROI, restaurants need lots of customers to be swayed by their ads and turn into regulars. However, for more expensive financial, medical, automotive, real estate, travel, home, and professional services, these stakes are much higher. A single visit from a customer could earn an advertisers hundreds of dollars, their long-term business could be worth thousands, and they’re unlikely to switch if satisfied. If their local ads on Yelp net them just a few or even 1 new customer, they could earn significant long-term ROI. Agrawal compares Yelp ads to Facebook ads, which doesn’t make sense because Facebook users aren’t actively looking for the service the advertiser is selling. He also says Yelp is overcharging advertisers. It’s only overcharging if the ads don’t produce results, not just because they’re priced much higher than less-targeted display ads. If you want proof that Yelp provides value to advertisers, just look at Yelp’s S-1 filing to go public . It notes the massive growth and return-customer rate for its local ads business: from the quarter ended December 31, 2010 to the quarter ended December 31, 2011, the number of active local business accounts increased by 109% from approximately 11,300 to 23,700. Of the approximately 23,700 total active local business accounts for the quarter ended December 31, 2011, approximately 15,800, or approximately 67%, were existing advertisers from which we recognized local advertising revenue in the immediately preceding 12-month period. (Page 56) Yelp had a 67% return advertiser rate, and that would have been much higher if it hadn’t DOUBLED its local advertiser count in that year. If Yelp ads are such a rip-off, why are advertisers coming back for more? Yelp can’t say because it’s in its pre-IPO quiet period. It shouldn’t need to, though. It charges justifiably high CPMs, and is going to IPO , because its ads appear at the perfect time. And they work.

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Yelp Ads Are Not A Rip-Off, You Pay To Seal The Deal

Real Augmented Reality Google Goggles In Prototype Stage?

jos — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:28:56 +0000

There have been whispers in the past of augmented reality goggles or glasses, but generally we have been able to dismiss them as exaggerations or concepts. The technology, while it isn’t unrealistic, simply isn’t quite there yet. Apparently that hasn’t stopped Google: a new report is appearing corroborating earlier ones that they are working on a pair of augmented reality glasses. They’d piggyback on your phone’s connection and overlay information like directions, news, and so on. Whether you think it’s a good idea or not, this kind of thing is going to come eventually, so it’s natural that Google would want to start girding itself for the approaching augmented glasses wars of 20XX. The 9 to 5 Google report says they look something like a pair of athletic glasses, with a forward-facing camera and flash. The augmented reality bit is actually not a transparent display over one or both eyes, but a single opaque display on the side of one eyepiece (which eyepiece, and which side, were not specified). You operate it with voice or by moving your head around to navigate or select menu options. Yes, not exactly the future we were expecting. I guarantee these things don’t look cool, either. But like I said, the technology isn’t there yet: cameras and processors aren’t small or fast enough, batteries can’t provide enough power, displays aren’t built for them, and computer vision isn’t good enough. Some of these things Google can work on, some they can’t. But the best way to have a product ready when the tech is there is to try to build one when the tech isn’t. The glasses are apparently nowhere near done, unsurprisingly, and Google isn’t sure how to make anything out of them. A pilot program could be in the works, or it could continue to be an underground project, metamorphosing again and again until the market is ready. As it is, these things would be weird, expensive, and not particularly useful. In a couple years, though, who knows?

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Real Augmented Reality Google Goggles In Prototype Stage?

Halliburton Dumps RIM, Chooses iPhones For 4,500 Employees

Achilles — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:26:22 +0000

To say that RIM has had a tough time these past few months is an understatement, and today’s news probably won’t help raise the morale around Waterloo. According to AppleInsider , oilfield services giant Halliburton will soon be migrating their BlackBerry-toting workforce to run exclusively on a new fleet of iPhones. I can also imagine the conversation now. “Sorry RIM, it’s not you, it’s us… alright, fine, it really is you.” The news was sent out via an internal newsletter, which mentions that the reason for the switch was because the company “determined that the iOS platform offered the best capabilities, controls and security for application development.” It goes on to offer a basic timeline for the process — all 4,500 of Halliburton’s employee-operating BlackBerrys will be swapped for iPhones over the course of the next two years. So what does this development mean for RIM? Not much at all, if Halliburton was the only company to jump ship. It’s clear that they’re not the only ones in search of some greener pastures — Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer pointed out during the company’s Q1 2012 earnings call that nearly all of the top Fortune 500 companies “now approve and support iPhones on their networks,” including Credit Suisse , Kimberly Clark, St. Jude Medical, and Nike. Of course, that hardly means that all or even most of them will transition their workforce from one platform to the other. Still, it clearly shows that these companies are considering different, more compelling mobile options to help conduct their business. And with the first BlackBerry 10 device not slated to ship until much later this year , RIM may not have too many chances left to show off what they’re really capable of. In the meantime, RIM continues to illustrate how serious they are about the enterprise market with the launch of initiatives like BlackBerry Cloud Services , which allows businesses using Microsoft Office 365 more fine-grained control over devices and their data. It’s clear that RIM isn’t going to give up their hard-won enterprise segment without a fight, but if their recently leaked roadmap is any indication, they’re running awfully low on bullets right now.

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Halliburton Dumps RIM, Chooses iPhones For 4,500 Employees

Groupon Buys eCommerce Data Targeting Startup (And Angelpad Alumnus) Adku

kram412 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:27:29 +0000

I love the smell of acquisitions in the morning! We’ve just heard that Groupon has acquired Adku , a stealth startup that uses big data in order to personalize the online shopping experience for people visiting eCommerce sites like eBay, Amazon and Zappos. The company built their personalized targeting technology in three months, and have basically been in stealth since they launched at the Angelpad Demo day a year and a half ago. Adku is backed by Greylock Partners , Battery Ventures and True Ventures in addition to being an Angelpad startup. Although CEO Ajit Varma and several members of the six person team are former Googlers, from what I’m hearing this wasn’t a talent acquisition or acqhire but a team + technology play – with a price beyond $10 million. Varma would not disclose what the team will be working on when they get to Groupon. While it’s not clear what the technology will be applied to, the acquisition makes sense on a lot of levels, especially because a personalized experience is where most of eCommerce is headed. Greylock VC David Thacker now runs product for Groupon, so that couldn’t have hurt either. Wrote Varma in a blog post, “We started talking to Groupon to bring our technology to more customers and quickly realized that we wanted to be a deeper part of a company that people love and is empowering merchants and customers in a way that’s never been done before.” Stay tuned! OK @ adku (three former Google engineers) is a company that Techcrunch will slobber over. Dynamic content. Interesting company.— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) November 11, 2010

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Groupon Buys eCommerce Data Targeting Startup (And Angelpad Alumnus) Adku

Lip Reading, 3D Desktops, And NUI: Microsoft Plans To Reinvent User Interaction

admin2 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:25:45 +0000

Deep in the skunk works of its Research and Labs divisions, secreted around the Seattle area, Microsoft is working on totally reinventing the way people interact with their computers. Very little is out in the open or in more than a prototype form, but the work is unquestionably being done. Last week it transpired that Microsoft is working on building Kinect into the bezels of laptops , and after that, presumably, tablets and eventually mobile phones. But it’s not just about building out the install base for Dance Central 3. It’s enabling the next generation of awareness in our electronics. The iPhone ushered in an era where our devices know when we touch them. Microsoft is working on the next one, in which our devices will simply know us. How do you, as a person, experience the world around you? You mostly see and hear, and to a lesser extent you touch, taste, smell. Our devices, however, are largely restricted to an extremely limited sense of touch. Why shouldn’t they be more like us? There’s a good reason, actually: computers don’t need to be like people because computers aren’t people. For years this has held true: the computer’s primary purpose for decades was to sit still and perform calculations humans couldn’t do. Interaction with a computer was strictly input, output. You didn’t interact so much as instruct, and wait for the result. But mobile phones and touchscreens and laptops began changing the idea of a computer into something more personal, more interactive, more two-way. And technology exists to let our devices become more human. Why not let them? Microsoft wants to. Despite their reputation among tech enthusiasts as a sort of stodgy blue-chip still coasting on the PC explosion of the late 90s and early 2000s, their R&D sections are world-class and put out actually innovative ideas and devices all the time. The trouble, briefly stated, is that implementing these ideas as products that fit into the Microsoft ecosystem isn’t easy, and even if it were, Microsoft has no talent for it . But this work on “Natural User Interaction,” or NUI, is more promising. People have embraced the idea in gaming: the Wii led the way and the Kinect brought the future into your living room, though the future is a little laggy and the voice controls spotty. People are simply interested in new ways of interacting with their content and devices. For years the promise of a different kind of interaction has been dangling, in the form of sci-fi shows and movies usually, and people have always been intrigued by it. So people want it — and Microsoft wants to make it — and they have the technology. Purchasing the IP behind the Kinect was an extremely smart move, maybe smarter than they know. What started out as a way to cash in on the market the Wii had created has snowballed into an entirely new form of interacting with computers, and a way for Microsoft to differentiate itself meaningfully for years to come. It was reported to me that one of the things the new Kinect/depth/IR sensors will do is read lips. At first it sounds silly. Why? Maybe so it can better interpret your words from across the room, or in a loud environment. You won’t have to turn the music down to search and navigate the web on your TV or tablet. And then it becomes clear that it’s just part of a larger suite of “senses” the device would have. The new devices are to have face recognition and voice recognition, so your password will be you saying your password in your own voice, not someone else, and not a print-out of you. They’ll be able to pick you out of a crowd, say a small party, and will be able to tell when you’re giving it a command — because you make eye contact and move your lips . Again, it sounds perfectly ridiculous until it starts sounding perfectly natural. Another feature described was a sort of 3D desktop on which you could actually grab files and place them here and there. This has been tried before, of course, and Windows 8 is looking decided two-dimensional, so it’s probably more of a research project than anything. But it’s still interesting. Think of the basic gestures you might be able to make. One was described as pulling out a drawer. In the surprisingly resilient desktop metaphor of files and folders, what could be more natural? Or perhaps raising your hand palm up to show the task bar or dock? Trace your finger in a counter-clockwise circle to undo, clockwise to redo? User experience reflects both the needs of the user and the capabilities of the device. For a few years now we’ve been satisfied with running our fingers along a slab of glass, producing an electrical signal interpreted as a point or blob — mainly because capacitive screens got good and cheap, and nobody wants to plug a mouse into their phone. But there are many other ways of interacting with our new mobile objects and information. Soon the glass touchscreen will seem as quaint as the command-line interface. And yet, some are no doubt thinking, we still have some command-line interfaces in use. Sure. And mice and keyboards are still better for productivity, and a pen and paper is better for sketching out ideas, and headphones are better for listening to music in public. There are countless use cases and potential applications of technology, but it’s good to recognize when one should give way or simply isn’t applicable. Microsoft is working hard at this, and you’d better believe that Apple is too, though they aren’t nearly as open about their research. And for once, they seem to actually be missing a piece of the technology pie: Microsoft has a head start on them in the world of NUI, having purchased and developed depth and personal sensors for at least two years now. Apple can always throw money at the problem, but it’s pretty clear that Microsoft has perceived this rare advantage and will be using it as a wedge wherever possible. This shouldn’t be taken as an indication that Windows 8 is going to be anything other than advertised, but I think it will be a test bed for some major changes coming down the line. Microsoft wants to change the way people interact with computers because it sees, hopefully not too late, that the old way, the PC way, treating a computer like a box that computes things, is on its way out in a hurry. So if computers are going to be a part of the real world, they need to be able to live in that world. Eyes, ears, and who knows what else. It’s only creepy until you can’t live without it. [images: Matthew Fisher/Stanford , Wolfgang Herfuntner ]

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Lip Reading, 3D Desktops, And NUI: Microsoft Plans To Reinvent User Interaction

Backplane To Hold Music Hackathon At SXSW, With Top Industry Managers As Judges

A D M I N — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:13:44 +0000

A few weeks ago we wrote about Backplane — a platform for creating interactive, highly visual communities — that counts Lady Gaga as one of its backers, along with plenty of the Valley’s most well-known investors. Now the company is harnessing its star power to hold a unique (and potentially awesome) event at SXSW: the SXSW Managers Hack — a hackathon that will be judged by some of the most accomplished managers in the music industry, including: Scooter Braun, best known for facilitating Justin Bieber’s rise to fame; Jay Brown, President of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation; and Troy Carter, manager of Lady Gaga (Carter is also one of Backplane’s cofounders). Developers are being asked to hack together “apps, platforms, and technologies designed to advance the future of digital music distribution” — where they’ll be judged by the people who actually decide which apps and platforms their artists will use. In order to attend the event, you’ll need to apply for an invitation, which you can do right here . The event will take place on March 11 2012, from 2 PM til 10 PM, and will also be live streamed by R to Z Studios, Randi Zuckerberg’s new social media firm (she’ll be hosting the stream as well). Note that while the event will revolve around music, it’s being held during the ‘Interactive’ portion of SXSW (SXSW Music begins on the 13th). Music-themed hackathons have been held before (check out Music Hack Day if you’d like to find one that’s coming up in your area), but the presence of top industry managers at this one will likely help make it especially interesting. It’s also another sign that the industry recognizes the potential that startups and hackers can bring to the table — which is a lot better than the innovation-squelching lawsuits that the record companies have slung around before. The event also fits in line with Backplane’s stated goal of attracting the best developers around (they’ve previously discussed their aim to foster an engineering-focused culture). Oh, and Backplane fittingly promises that ”live music and DJs will jam throughout” the hackathon.

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Backplane To Hold Music Hackathon At SXSW, With Top Industry Managers As Judges

‘Transparent Screen’ Android App Lets You Text And Walk Without Fear

admin2 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:55:22 +0000

I used to scowl when I saw people walking down the street with eyes locked on their phones, but necessity has gotten me in the habit of doing it too. Thanks to a new app called Transparent Screen though, now I can do it free from the fear of falling into an open manhole or into a large fountain . No, that’s not a hastily Photoshopped image you see here, that’s more or less exactly what you’ll see when the app is running. I say “more or less” because while all of the Android UI goes translucent upon launch, you’re afforded with quite a bit of a control over how dramatic the effect is. It’s in your best interest to get familiar with the settings if you plan on using Transparent Screen for a while too, because you’ll soon have some choices to make. If you’re a fan of texting while sprinting for example (which I don’t condone, for the record), crank the camera resolution down to keep that forward view going as smoothly possible. Alternately, crank it up you’re more a fan of slow, meandering walks while you tweet about the wonders of nature. The big issue, as Android Police points out, is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a configuration that works well while bouncing between your favorite apps. Still, that’s a pretty minor concern — Transparent Screen seems like an app best used occasionally, when you absolutely have to fire off a message while on the move. Sure, there’s nothing that says you can’t have it running nonstop, just be prepared to watch your remaining battery life disappear in front of your eyes. Interested? Mosey on over to the Android Market , where Transparent Screen can be had for the low, low price of free.

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‘Transparent Screen’ Android App Lets You Text And Walk Without Fear