All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don’t think they are good enough. It is creating mobile maps designed for pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transit. Originally a TechStars company called Omniar, serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Lookery, Mashery) joined as CEO a year ago.

He recently raised a seed round of $800,000 from Joi Ito’s Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Ted Rheingold, and other angels.

Lumatic has an Android app which works right now only in San Francisco. When it gives you directions, it chooses routes which are optimal for walking, cycling or public transport. As you walk through the streets, the app displays a street-view with photos and arrows pointing in the right direction.

The app is built on top of Open Street Map , but the user experience is centered heavily on using photography, landmarks, and visual cues to help people navigate cities. Fighting Google Maps in this category is going to be a tough slog, but if the app can gain a following there plenty of money in local commerce and advertising to make it a worthwhile pursuit.

Android/iPhone and Windows/Mac: Many Flash-based games would work better with a retro controller than a keyboard and mouse. The free app WanderPlayer turns your iPhone or Android phone into a controller that already works with 100 popular web games right now with more on the way. More »

Android: We've covered the free Aviary online image editor several times—it is robust enough to work for most people who want to tweak their photos but don't require a full version of Photoshop or GIMP. They've just released a plugin for Android that brings the same functions to your phone or tablet so now you don't have to transfer the image to your computer before editing. More »

Many carriers these days are blocking apps from the Market, like Google Wallet or Wireless Tether. Droid Life shows us a super easy way to install them on your unrooted phone. More »

The amount of stuff we trust to fly in and out of our smartphones is astounding. Just look at what happened when a couple of reporters got access to an unwitting (and rather unlucky) Apple employee’s iMessages alone — within days, they learned more about him than most people know about their closest friends.

Now, imagine all the stuff that could fly in and out of a government official’s phone, or that of a highly-ranked member of the military. Forget saucy texts and booty pictures — we’re talking about state secrets, here.

Looking to keep their secrets underwraps while on the go, the U.S government is working on a build of Android custom-tailored to meet their security requirements.

Word of the project comes from CNN, who notes that U.S. officials/soldiers aren’t currently allowed to send any classified data over their smartphones. If they need to transmit anything that might sink ships (so to speak), they currently need to find a secured (generally meaning hardwired) line hooked to an approved device.

Here’s the gist of the project:

• A limited number of soldiers will get the phones first, then federal agencies, then possibly contractors
• The U.S. won’t be building their own hardware — that’d be too expensive. Instead, they’ll be buying commercially available devices and reflashing them.
• They hoped to be able to offer iOS devices, but it’s not going to happen. CNN notes that federal officials met with Apple to request that they share their source — as you’d probably guess, Apple wasn’t too cool with that idea.
• Surprisingly, users of the handsets will be able to install new applications, though the handsets will put a specific emphasis on exactly what information the application can access and what it’s currently sending. Seems unlikely that they’d give these things full Android Market access, though — that’d be rather silly.
• The project is being funded by DARPA, with the NSA evaluating it as they go (while working on a version of their own, curiously.)

Most of the project’s details are still underwraps, but this is all still rather interesting. What hardware might they use? If DARPA makes any substantial security improvements to Android’s kernel, might that work make it back to the official branch? Might this work eventually be monetized (remember, Siri was born as a DARPA project) and offered to enterprises looking for a locked-down version of Android — and what does that mean for RIM/BlackBerry?

Most popular mobile sports apps are trying to feed you scores and news, or show you fantasy numbers. OnSports, by HitPost, is in a smaller class of apps that’s focused on users running the discussion themselves. And now, ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday, viral growth and featured spots on the Android Market and the iTunes App Store are helping it step up against larger competitors.

The app, which lets users make their own reports and polls with professional photos, is now #2 on the Android Market free sports app section, and climbed to #13 in the iTunes version of the category since yesterday. This has translated to around 50,000 daily active users, chief executive Aaron Krane tells me, with 60% of new users returning within 24 hours. He says the app, which makes it easy to share activity to Facebook and Twitter, is generating 30,000 posts to Facebook each day, and 300 tweets per hour on Twitter. OnSports is also sending about 3000 SMS messages per day.

Some of these metrics are of the vanity variety — and they’re certainly not of the scale of social mobile games — but they all indicate an engaged group of core users, in an immature category of mobile usage.

Most significant sports apps, including ones from ESPN and major sports leagues, are focused on broadcasting scores and professional news to users; while they may have social features for commenting and sharing, the focus is not as heavily about user interaction. However, Bleacher Report and SB Nation — two web sites that rely on user-generated content — also have mobile apps. The influx of user web content into devices makes them more immediate competitors.

OnSports is notably sticking to the thesis of being mobile first… that users will want to do to more and more of their social activity on the devices they carry around with them rather than their computers. The company has been trying to figure out exactly how to make this idea materialize over the last year or so. With the new visibility to users ahead of the biggest sporting event of the year, it could be on its way to winning in the big leagues of consumer mindshare.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman says the company's soon-to-be open source WebOS software will eventually be better than both the Android and iOS platforms.

HP will launch the first version of the reimagined operating system in September this year after deciding to commit the storied software to the open source community.

Whitman said the result will prove to be superior to the 'closed' Apple iOS ecosystem and the undeniably 'fragmented' Android platform.

She also confirmed that the company will re-enter the tablet market, following the HP TouchPad debacle of 2011.

An open and closed case

In an interview with CRN, she said: "There is a clear vision of what we're trying to accomplish.

"There will be some people who will not love that vision, and then there are people who are very excited about this vision, and what it can mean for an alternative, open-source operating system that has some real strengths to it.

"We're going to build another operating system that has huge advantages, in my view, over iOS, which is a closed system, [and] Android, which is incredibly fragmented and may ultimately be more closed with [Google's] acquisition of Motorola Mobility."

Windows 8 tablet

Whitman, who took the reigns at the world's largest PC manufacturer in September last year, also stated that HP will be in amongst it when the first Windows 8 tablets come to market later this year.

She said: "We have to have a tablet offering," Whitman said. "We will be back in that business. We're coming back into the market with a Windows 8 tablet, first on an x86 chip and then maybe on an ARM chip."

Via: CRN, BGR

Music streaming service Rhapsody has enhanced its mobile offering with a brand new application for tablets running Android.

The reimagined app for Android tablets running the Ice Cream Sandwich or Honeycomb operating systems offers a gorgeous magazine-style user interface.

The new Rhapsody app brings album art and imagery to the fore compared with the text heavy approach of the smartphone version.

Rhapsody for Android tablets is also built around the editorial content the company is so proud of, bringing you the latest news, reviews and features all with playable links.

Reach out and touch

The app also brings the ability to swipe through music libraries while listening, and also allows for offline playlists to be downloaded.

"The tablet transforms Rhapsody into an immersive experience that's inspired by what digital music lovers miss about physical albums and CDs: album art, photos and the ability to reach out and touch the next album you're playing," said the company in a media release on Friday.

"The tablet amplifies the experience with the best aspects of digital, with links across the universe of content that Rhapsody editors have produced over the past decade."

The app, which requires a screen of nine inches or more in size, brings access to Rhapsody's 14 million-strong song library for premium members who pay $10 a month for the service.

The company already has apps for iPhone, Android smartphones and BlackBerry devices, but this is the first tablet-centric application launched by the US streaming giant.

While there have been rumours that an official Instagram app may hit Windows Phone before Android, any efforts by third party developers appear to be completely unwelcome by the California-based startup.

According to WP Central, Windows developer Bil Simser was working on an Instagram client for the Windows Phone, but hit a significant roadblock that has him stopping development on the app for now.

Simser’s app, along with similar Android alternatives such an Instaroid, can never be fully fledged Instagram clients for two significant reasons. Instagram’s public API does not include upload or sign-up access. In other words, users have to have access to the iOS app to sign up, and while mobile clients, like their web counterparts give users access to user-generated content on Instagram, there is no real opportunity to contribute.

In his blog post Simser writes:

I’ve taken a stance that I want to provide the full user experience on the Windows Phone 7 for existing and new users of Instagram. After all, what’s an API for if you can’t offer an alternative to “official” apps. Unfortunately Instagram has taken the position to not provide upload capabilities in their API at this time. The reason they cite on the developer site (http://instagram.com/developer/endpoints/media/) is they want to “fight spam & low quality photos”. While I don’t agree that not providing an upload API has anything to do with fighting spam and surely iPhone users take crappy pictures too, it is their playground and their rules.

Simser contacted CEO Kevin Systrom himself via email in an attempt to gain access to a more open API, but was told in no uncertain terms that Instagram has no plans to change its stance.

Instagram had a rocky start with third party app developers, with one of the very first to open its doors to users, blocked almost instantaneously. At the time, Systrom explained the move, since Followgram was scraping its content through Instagram’s undocumented and private API endpoints, since a public API had not yet been made available.

While Simser is aware of workarounds to upload photos to Instagram, he’s not willing to go down that path:

I want adoption of this application to be fair. Previous attempts to do an end-round on the Instagram folks just resulted in that application being blocked. If upload and user registration comes to Photogram (or any Windows Phone app for that matter) I want it to be on the up and up through official API access, not some backdoor sneak.

Instagram’s stance of fighting spam or low quality photos simply doesn’t seem to fully address the issue of why a fully-open API has not been made available.

Android users have been waiting for an Android version of the app, and so far have only received hints that it will eventually become a reality. The most significant confirmation came from Systrom in December, when he announced that there is currently a two-man team working on the Android app.

In the case of other similar situations, third party Twitter clients have done nothing but make it easier for users to find the perfect app that suits their personal needs based on their platform.

Instagram is an app that is built entirely around the concept of community – and that is its main strength, which sets it apart from any other competitors. If the experience provided by other developers is up to Instagram’s standards, should they be allowed to allow other mobile users the chance to join the community?

Is Instagram’s stance justified or should it afford developers the same freedoms that Twitter has? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Android: Dropbox updated its desktop clients yesterday with new photo features, including one that can give you up to 5GB of space, and today the Android app has followed suit with a new beta that automatically uploads photos after you take them. More »