It’s a sad day when a once-mighty company like Eastman Kodak Co. is reported to be filing bankruptcy in the next few weeks, but that’s exactly what appears to be going down this Wednesday. Of course, we’re all to blame, what with the convenience and quality of digital photography these days. Thankfully, there’s some brighter news to be found today as well, so without further ado let’s commence with a handful of tidbits for this Wednesday, January 4, 2012.
The 2011 holiday season is over, but we won’t have to wait long to find out just how merry Apple’s Christmas was -- the company has announced that it will be reporting their first quarter 2012 financial results at 2pm PST (5pm EST) on Tuesday, January 24. As usual, the conference call will be streamed via QuickTime and there’s sure to be a lot of talk about just how many iPhones, iPads and iPod touches got opened on Christmas Day, not to mention the rest of the company’s 2012 first quarter, which is actually the October through December calendar period.
Billed as “Instapaper on steroids,” the folks behind the Spool app are beefing up their arsenal as the service continues to roll through its beta period. According to TechCrunch, Spool has secured $1 million in new funding through SVAngel, Felicis Ventures, Yuri Milner’s Start Fund and YouTube founder Steve Chen which will help the gears keep turning behind the scenes. The company’s Chrome and Firefox extensions are now capable of sharing links to Twitter, Facebook, Techmeme and other sites as well as dropping content “directly into the Spool library of a friend’s device.” Spool has a free universal iOS client app and is also available on the Android Market as well as the Amazon Appstore, where it even works with the new Kindle Fire.
Somber news from The Wall Street Journal today, who is reporting that legendary photo giant Eastman Kodak Co. “is preparing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in the coming weeks should efforts to sell a trove of digital patents fall though.” The company employs around 19,000 people and has been in discussions with potential lenders for $1 billion in debtor-in-possession financing to stay afloat during bankruptcy proceedings, which could begin later this month or in early February, according to the usual “people familiar with the matter.” A “portfolio of 1,100 patents” would then go up for sale in a court-supervised bankruptcy auction. It’s a sad bit of news for those of us in a certain age range, the ones who grew up with the Kodak brand being synonymous with photography. Here’s hoping they can find a way to turn things around before it’s too late...
On Tuesday, an intriguing new iPad app hit the App Store called CloudOn, which allowed users to run a cloud-based version of Microsoft Office on Apple’s tablet -- all for free. If you thought it sounded too good to be true, it probably was: MacRumors is now reporting that the CloudOn app has vanished from the App Store, with the startup claiming the app is “currently sold out.” So how can a digital app sell out? Beats us, but given that CloudOn was doing its magic on the company’s servers and the app was free, we can only imagine that things got overloaded quickly. The company promises it will return again soon, and in the meantime, interested parties can sign up for advance word on when the app will return from the CloudOn website.
If you’re a SugarSync user with one or more iOS devices, the company has some big news for you today. Version 2.5 has just been released and SugarSync is billing it as the most “photolicious” update yet. The app now includes the ability to upload multiple photos and videos at once with improving browsing performance and complete control over photo and video compression. The Photos tab has also been revamped to now display album covers and sorting options, and uploading/downloading of files now happens even when the app is in the background. The SugarSync team has also squashed another round of bugs for a pretty fantastic update all the way around; the 8.5MB download is now available in the App Store.
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