Onavo just launched today. Onavo is an iPhone app that compresses the data that goes through your iPhone and shrinks your overall data usage. Onavo can compress data of many services/apps (like Facebook, Twitter, Google maps, web, e-mail and many others) to make your data plan last longer. Onavo is especially useful when you’re roaming, since data costs are still excessively high and Fon, while approaching 4 million hotspots, is still lacking in coverage.
If you think that you don’t need this app since you never roam you’d be surprised to find out that most “unlimited data” plans actually have limits. Onavo can also get more speed out of your connection when you are on EDGE by sending less data with more information. Onavo works as a background service, so once you install it you don’t have to worry about it again. Plus Onavo shows you how much data is being used by each app and how much you are saving. Android and iPad apps will come later on.
Here’s an interview with co-founder and CEO Guy Rosen on TechCrunch.
Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Onavo.
2010 28
Gourmet is back… as an iPad app
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
What follows is a story of death and rebirth.
Ever since the Internet exploded there has been a fear of printed magazines and newspapers becoming obsolete in favor of the new media. And that has been mostly true. But now the iPad with its magazine format, has given out of print publications a new opportunity. Gourmet Live is one of these.
The first issue of Gourmet came out in 1941, and up until it closed in November of 2009 due to losses, “Gourmet was to food what Vogue is to fashion”, as the New York Times put it. But when we thought Gourmet was lost forever… it reappeared on the 22nd of September as an iPad mag.
So, what is Gourmet Live? In Anil Dash’s (one of the minds behind the launch along with Michael Wolf) words, it’s a “new iPad app that reimagines Gourmet as a sort of massively multiplayer magazine”. While other magazines try to use the same content and the same format for two very different mediums, Gourmet has re-invented itself to make the most of the iPad’s features. They wanted it to look like a native iPad app, not just a cheap imitation of it’s printed version. For example, every time you finish reading an article, you get a “reward”, which is access to more content on the same topic. These rewards are all collected on some “shelves” (similar to iBooks), so you can go back to your old articles whenever you want.
The new Gourmet only 24 hours after it’s launch was already the top Lifestyle applications on iPad. If you want to know more about Gourmet Live, go and read Gizmodo’s review, or better yet, download the application. It’s free!