RIM announces Q1 earnings, says it's shipped 500,000 PlayBooks

RIM's just announced its Q1 earnings, including $4.9 billion in revenue and $695 million in profit. Perhaps even more anticipated than those numbers, however, are the ones involving actual devices, and the company's now revealed that it "shipped" around 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBooks during the quarter, while phone shipments totaled 13.2 million -- it didn't get specific about actual sales to consumers. Those earnings are on the low end of forecasts, and RIM says that the slowdown it saw in the first quarter will continue into Q2, which will apparently result in an unspecified number of layoffs and a lowered forecast for the rest of the year. Head on past the break for the official press release, and hit the source link below for some more detailed numbers.

Update: On the earnings call, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis painted a bright future for his company's tablet, but then said, "We're soon to release native email and BBM and our Android player later in the summer, to be followed in the fall with 4G PlayBooks for WiMax, LTE, and HSPA+."

Deep Shot transfers open websites from desktop to mobile, sans wizardry

When we first read about Deep Shot, we were admittedly dumbfounded, but equally impressed. The "technology" allows you to "capture" the current state of a website on your desktop and transfer it to a mobile device -- taking a picture of a Google Map on your desktop with your smartphone camera will open the site in the same state on your phone, for example. Sounds like a pretty neat magic trick, huh? Well, it's not. In order to use Deep Shot, you need to install an app on your mobile, computer, and any other device you plan to use it with -- thus making it even less practical than Chrome to Phone.

It currently works with Google Maps and Yelp, but could theoretically be used with any site that uses URIs, or those lengthy URLs that contain search details, such as the origin and destination addresses you sent to Google Maps. You could also "transfer" a site in its "current state" by emailing the URI, or by using an app to seamlessly share it over WiFi or Bluetooth with a "send to mobile" button -- which is likely what Deep Shot is doing here anyway, just with an extra step thrown into the mix. Care to visit a land where you can swim with the Loch Ness Monster and ride a pink unicorn?

Apple patent application highlights location-based social networking, encourages intimate pinging

Making friends is hard. Apple knows this. In fact, the company outlined such difficulty in a newly surfaced patent, highlighting the sort of "long and awkward conversation" sometimes required to discover common interests. The patent application, filed back in late-2009, describes a location-based social network that helps users discover people in their vicinity, based on common interests like books, movies, and, naturally, music. Of course, Cupertino already dipped its toes in the social networking waters with the iTunes-based Ping, which, in spite of initial excitement, failed to really capture the imagination of Apple's dedicated base. And this isn't the first time the company has flirted with the idea of location-based social networking either, as a patent that surfaced halfway through last year can attest. The company has clearly learned its lesson with this one, however, and that lesson is: more drawings of women winking and references to Springsteen songs in the application process.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 updates your Facebook, turns your iPhone into a wireless mic

All your sci-fi dreams of being able to talk to your gadgets and have the do your bidding are slowly becoming a reality. Nuance, the company behind Dragon NaturallySpeaking, has been at the forefront of the technology since 1997 and, with the release of 11.5, it has added a few neat tricks to its dictation-taking repertoire. On the desktop side, new widgets allow you to post updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts simply by saying "post to" you social network of choice before spouting off your status update -- perfect for drunk tweeting when those beer goggles make it hard to hit the keys. Nuance also released the Dragon Remote Mic App for iOS, which turns your Apple device into a wireless mic that beams commands and dictated notes straight to your PC. We're pretty excited for all this voice controlstuff -- so long as our computers don't start refusing our requests in a detached monotone. Check out the PR after the break.

Apple and Nokia patent dispute ends with license agreement, Apple payments

It's over. The patent battle between Nokia and Apple just ended not with an injunction, but with a press release citing a license agreement and payments from Apple to Espoo. The specifics of the agreement are confidential, but Nokia does say that Apple will make a one-time payment followed by on-going royalties. So, while Nokia may be having trouble selling its zombied handsets, at least its IP portfolio can help fill the coffers during the transition to Windows Phone

More iOS 5 features get their moment in the beta testing sun

Steve Jobs and co. showed off all kinds of cool new features during the debut of iOS 5 at WWDC earlier this month. We had the chance to take a few of them for a spin, when we tested the beta build of the mobile operating system, and now that more and more folks have tried their hand at iOS 5, more and more features are getting their turn to shine. Here's a list of some of the cooler ones we've seen in the last few weeks.

• Apple has added the ability to make FaceTime calls over 3G -- though rumor has it that this may be a beta-only feature, which carriers can choose to disable, over obvious data usage concerns.
• AirPlay Mirroring has been shown off. The feature lets users display video from an iPad 2 on an HDTV, by way of Apple TV, for those times when you just can't keep your tablet content to yourself.
• The new software also offers up the ability to sync 1080p video to iOS 5 devices, opening the door to speculation that future iPads and iPhones may be able to play back content at full 1080p
• Like to play your iTunes over your car stereo? Good news, iOS 5 will transfer audio information like album, track, and artist names over Bluetooth.

Microsoft releases Android developer poaching package for Windows Phone 7

Microsoft's App Guy has quite a job on his baby-soft hands: to boost Windows Phone 7's numerically-challenged Marketplace by encouraging developers to port apps across from other platforms. The little fellow helped iPhone devs out a couple of months ago with an API mapping tool to make it easier to translate iPhone APIs to WP7 code. Now he's extended the mapping tool to work with Android APIs too, and backed it up with a 90-page white paper and a promise to get more involved in developer forums. Will the App Guy's efforts unleash a flood of new apps for Windows Phone? We don't know, but we dig his shorts.

Netflix, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Square apps expose your data online for anyone to steal

Here's a little tip for app developers: encrypt everything, especially passwords. Security firm viaForensics fed some popular iPhone and Android apps through its appWatchdog tool and found that Netflix, LinkedIn, and Foursquare all stored account passwords unencrypted. Since the results were first published on the 6th, Foursquare has updated its app to obscure users' passwords, but other data (such as search history) is still vulnerable. While those three were the worst offenders, other apps also earned a big fat "fail," such as the iOS edition of Square which stores signatures, transaction amounts, and the last four digits of credit card numbers unencrypted. Most of this data would take some effort to steal, but it's not impossible for a bunch of ne'er-do-wells to create a piece malware that can harvest it. Let's just hope Netflix and LinkedIn patch this hole quickly -- last thing we need is someone discovering our secret obsession with Meg Ryan movies.

Android Market web store now checks which apps are compatible with your devices

Google has already made some tough moves to tackle fragmentation, but it's clearly still wary of the problem. It's just tweaked the Android Market web store to show users which apps are compatible with which of their gadgets. Of course, compatibility screening was already in place for users who accessed the Market from within their device, but this update should still be of use to those who surf the web store, especially if they're rocking multiple handsets or a phone-plus-tablet combo.

MIT develops “refuelable” liquid batteries for EV applications

Although lithium-ion batteries are seen as the future of electric vehicles, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new battery technology that could completely revolutionize the automotive industry.

As it stands, the two biggest hurdles facing electric vehicles are costs and range. However, MIT’s newly developed semi-solid flow cell battery technology could make those worries a thing of the past.

Dubbed ‘Cambridge crude’, the new technology essentially suspends a typical battery’s positive and negative electrodes in a liquid electrolyte. The energy stored in that liquid can be accessed by pumping the fluid through the system.

Although flow batteries have been around for a while, MIT’s design differs in that it is much more energy dense. In fact, MIT says its design provides a 10-fold improvement in energy density over present liquid flow-batteries, thanks to the use of lithium-ion chemistry.

More importantly to the auto industry, MIT estimates that its semi-solid flow cell can be produced at about half the cost of conventional lithium-ion battery technology. The liquid battery technology also requires about 50 percent less physical space than comparable lithium-ion batteries.

Cambridge crude can be recharged like a normal battery, but also has one distinct advantage – when its energy has been depleted, the fluid can removed and replaced with fully charged liquid. That would give EV drivers the ability to “refuel” their vehicles like a typical car, and could potentially solve the range issues associated with EVs.

MIT expects to have a fully-functioning prototype system ready to be “engineered for production as a replacement for existing electric-car batteries” by late 2013.