Apple brings one more partnerships for iAd

Wall street journal reports this evening that Apple isn’t see the success they’d like with their iAd platform. The company, who deploys iAd as an advertising platform throughout their iOS devices, is making changes in hopes of attracting more developers and ad spending to in the program. First off, Apple is reportedly lowering the entry level cost for marketers to $400,000 bringing it down from $500,000 and even lower from the original $1 million when the platform first launched. Apple is also reportedly putting new caps on what it charges for clicks on ads, letting advertisers pay $10 every time an ad is viewed every 1,000 times (CPM) and $2 every time the ad is specially tapped on.

So why is Apple making these changes? Apple had tied for the lead in ad market share last year but has reportedly fallen back to 3rd in advertising market share in 2011, behind Millennial Media and Google, who holds the number one spot, research firm IDC found.

In hopes of gaining more market share, Apple is launching a training program to bring in more advertisers onto the network. Apple is partnering with OMD to educate new advertisers on iAd. In recent weeks, execs from Pepsi, Clorox, and JC Penny have visited Apple’s campus to talk. ODC also hopes to bring more companies in next February.

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How to enter an alphanumerical passcode on your iOS device

Our devices are filled with personal Data such as names and addresses for our friends and family and for our convenience we will save all our username and passwords for all kind of different services. If our device stolen? Especially previous devices like iPhone etc. when we have an iOS device stolen, thieves don’t just obtain our precious device but also obtain all the information that’s stored on it.

That’s why we secure our devices with passcode locks. But did you know you can use an alphanumeric passcode to make it even more secure?

To apply an alphanumeric passcode, open up the Settings app on your iOS device and tap on the General tab, then on Passcode Lock.

If you already have a passcode set, you’ll have to enter it in order to change the settings. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create one. But before you hit that button at the top that says “Turn Passcode On,” toggle the switch beneath it so that “Simple Passcode” is set to “OFF.”

Now turn on the passcode lock and create your passcode. This can be as many characters as you wish, and you can use letters — uppercase and lowercase — numbers, and symbols.

To be really secure, try to create a passcode that no one else will be able to guess. For example, don’t just use your name, or something like “abc123.” Once you’re happy, hit the ‘Next’ button in the top right-hand corner and your passcode will be applied. It will now prevent your device from being unlocked until the code is entered.

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Apple: We stopped supporting Carrier IQ in iOS 5, complete removal in future updates

Summary: Apple has issued a statement clarifying reports that it will remove carrier IQ completely in a future software update. 

Carrier IQ, the mobile phone logging software that is able to transmit data back to carriers, Apple has now stopped supporting the Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of its products such as the iPhone 4S and that it will completely remove the software in a future updates.

The complete statement is as follows :

We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will eliminate it completely in a future updates on software. With any diagnostic data directed to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this info, and if they do, the data is sent in a nameless and encoded from and does not include any personal info. We not ever record personal info or messages or keystrokes for diagnostic data and we don’t have plans to do so.

Earlier reports are the evidence of that Carrier IQ has been able to seizure information more significantly, including keystrokes and other extremely sensitive info, on Android than on iOS.

Researches on Carrier IQ’s functionality on iOS says that any transmission of info has been limited to phone call and locality info, but as per todays issued statement by Apple suggests that the company has even stopped using that info through Carrier IQ, even though company itself collects their own anonymized and encrypted information from devices except users have turned off the diagnostics reporting functionality.

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