A new video highlights the features of Samsung’s coming tablet computer. Also, in today’s App Industry Report, we offer advice for organizing your business cards and a look at a new iPad app for foodies.
Galaxy tab video on YouTube
As we anxiously await the debut of the iPad’s most serious competitor so far, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, glimpses of the device keep appearing. Now, you can get a real good taste of what this Android-powered touch-screen tab can do, as Samsung (005930.KS) has released a 9-minute video to YouTube.
The Galaxy Tab will be sold by the four major U.S. wireless carriers — you can make calls on this 7-inch tab, by the way, as the video demonstrates — and will be available … sometime soon. Also to be determined is a price and what official name these tabs will carry at each carrier. The Galaxy smartphones each have a name, including the Samsung Vibrant at T-Mobile and the Epic 4G at Sprint (S).
The official video contains a demonstration of every key feature and benefit of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, according to its official description. Frankly, it looks pretty cool.
Organize business cards
Did you ever come home from a networking event or a business meeting with a pile of business cards from new contacts? Of course you have. Did you then take that pile of cards and put them on your desk, next to a growing pile of cards from similar events? Most likely.
Well, in a very useful App Smart column for the New York Times, Bob Tedeschi offers a number of apps for the iPhone, Android phones and even the BlackBerry that help you organize those business cards. He strongly recommends CamCard, an app that starts at $7, for all three mobile platforms.
“The app outdoes competitors in a couple of respects,” Tedeschi writes. “First, it can scan cards in 12 languages, while others focus on English or, in the case of WorldCard Mobile, English and Chinese. CamCard also allows editing of the card’s image, which will appeal to those who would prefer not to see a coffee stain each time they view an important card.”
He mentioned other apps –ScanBizCards ($7, iPhone) and WorldCard Mobile ($6, iPhone) — but CamCard was his top pick. Tedeschi also offered this: “One caveat: With all these apps, I had the best results with an iPhone 4, which has a better camera than the 3G versions, and a far better camera than the original 2G iPhone. In fact, when I tested the apps with the 2G iPhone, they did not work. And the older your device, the less accurate the scans.”
Food for your iPad
In other app news, Condé Nast’s Gourmet magazine, shuttered last fall, has sprung back to life as an iPad app called Gourmet Live.
In a review for Folio, an industry rag that covers the magazine business, Jason Fell was impressed, saying that the publisher “delivered” on its promise to reinvent the title as a digital product. It also includes a unique twist, adding a sign-in to “Facebook or Twitter in order to access the app’s interactive features,” Fell writes. “It’s this social aspect that Condé says sets Gourmet Live apart from other apps on the market right now.”
We shall see how well it works, but give Condé Nast credit for continuing to push the envelope (at least what the envelope is for the moment) of what publishers can do on the iPad. It’s Epicurious app has been downloaded 3 million times.
Click here to watch a Gourmet Live video demo.
