901am

Facebook Testing Facebook Highlight in NZ, Other Markets

901am — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:42:40 +0000

Social network giant Facebook is currently testing a new scheme that where you pay to have your status update promoted. With the new system you pay Facebook a small fee to have a status update you’ve chosen appear on Facebook more prominently.

The pay to promote system is already being tested in New Zealand although some people have claimed that it is also running concurrently in a few other countries. At this point, Facebook has not released any statements on whether it plans to expand it to its other markets or even to continue with this new payment system.

Facebook hopes to anchor the idea of Facebook Highlight on the presumption that people will be willing to fork over a little cash to make some of their status updates stickier in the feeds of their friends. The usual Facebook algorithm is that posts from a user’s closest Facebook friends or posts from people in the wider social graph that have elicited a significant number of likes or comments will be emphasized in the user’s wall. With Facebook Highlight, users can pay Facebook to shift that emphasis on their own posts automatically. The status update will stay in the news feed of their friends far longer without having to go through the algorithm mentioned. This means the status update will automatically be seen by more people compared to letting the Facebook algorithm do its work.

Facebook is toying with different price points for the service – from 40 cents to $2. According to Facebook, it is testing the different pay levels so it also reflects on the different ways a post can be made more visible. This even includes ways on making a post visible for free.

Intel Smartphone Now Runs Android 4.0

901am — Sat, 12 May 2012 00:08:45 +0000

Intel may dominate the PC and laptop sectors with its range of processors built for these specific hardware but when it comes to the mobile device segment of the market – which is exploding like crazy – it has not been able to gain much of a headway. For this segment of the market, ARM processors are the acknowledged king.

But this may soon change.

Intel has already woken up to the reality that it needs to put more effort into carving a niche for its mobile processors and it is doing so in a big way. First, it has already produced Intel processors that are now being used on phones that run Windows Mobile. Even though no manufacturer has yet released an Intel powered smartphone in the US market, these phones are now slowly coming out in other countries in Asia and Europe.

A big hurdle for Intel is enabling compatibility of its processors with the Android OS, which is the most widely distributed mobile operating system. In the recent CES, Intel showed a prototype Intel powered smartphone that runs Android 2.3. But now the company has finally caught up and has revealed a smartphone that runs the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The new prototype smartphone still runs a single core Intel processor but because of Intel’s Hyper Threading Technology, the phone still runs smoothly and can compete with dual core processor phones. A Quadrant benchmark test showed that the Intel processor scored a 2,900, which is considered a decent score.

2012 may be the year when ARM will finally have worthy rival in Intel.

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More than 50 percent of People Use Smartphones during Workouts

901am — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:53:53 +0000

A recent study conducted by Lab 42, a market research firm, revealed that 51 percent of the study respondents used a smartphone for various purposes while they were working out.

The Lab 42 study showed that among the various uses for a smartphone while working out, 91 percent used it as a music player while they are lifting weights or doing cardiovascular exercises. Forty-three percent of the respondents said they use their smartphone to help the track their pace, while 33 percent are really multitasking since they check their email even while they’re working out. Of the total respondents, 74 percent said that their smartphones actually helped them in their workout routine by improving their weight loss efforts. About 72 percent said the technology they use (their smartphones) helps encourage them to work out on a more regular basis.

Some of the reasons cited for how smartphones help in weight loss efforts include the use of tracking apps like food journals, various workout apps that make workouts entertaining by encouraging the user’s progress and more information that is provided through the smartphones, which allows for workouts to be done outside the gym. The social network also plays a part in the survey with 75 percent of the respondents saying that they share the progress of their workouts with their friends through Facebook, email or text messages.

Evernote Acquires Penultimate

901am — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:52:55 +0000

Evernote’s growth looks like it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. The company recently got $70 million in its last round of fundraising and now enjoys a $1 billion valuation. The hit productivity and memory platform is now hard at work building up its presence and its newest move is to acquire Penultimate.

Penultimate is an iPad handwriting app and it is now officially a part of Evernote. According to Evernote CEO Phil Libin and Penultimate CEO Ben Zotto, Evernote’s acquisition of Penultimate will benefit both companies. Penultimate will remain an independent app (which means it will be developed separately from Evernote) but at the same time it will also be integrated into Evernote, making it a native application.

Evernote has been interested in Penultimate ever since the app debuted two years ago. It took that much time for Penultimate to eventually go into the Evernote fold. According to Zotto, Penultimate will remain a separate app but will also become the gateway into the all the productivity powers of Evernote.

Evernote’s acquisition of Penultimate is part of what Libin describes as Evernote’s creative period – the stage in the company where it takes risks into development and experimentation. Even though Evernote has not released any kind of mergers and acquisitions list, the company is going to focus on certain key areas, among these are the improvement of collaboration, sharing, and group productivity. The company is also going to look into how it can further improve how Evernote will fit into the user’s business environment. Other areas Evernote says it will get into include international expansion and platform extension.

Facebook Updates Messenger App with New Notification Feature

901am — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:16:49 +0000

Facebook has recently released a series of updates to its standalone Facebook Messenger application for both the iOS and Android operating systems. One of the most notable new feature in the updates is a notification that informs a user if a friend has viewed a message the user sent and at what time it was viewed. The same feature will also appear in the group chat function. This is particularly helpful in this application since friends usually set up meetings and get togethers while chatting on Facebook. This way, everyone will know a message was read by all of the friends in the chat.

Aside from the “read receipt” notification, Facebook has also added a tag indicating the location of the user. The name of the city or town is shown next to the message along with a small graphic for Gogle Maps to give a visual idea of where the location is.

The new feature, much like the same feature in the BlackBerry Messenger, cannot be turned off, so you can’t use the excuse that you haven’t read a message just because you didn’t want to reply to it. What can be turned off though is the sharing of the location and GPS map coordinate of the user in each message.

One other change that you will notice with the new Facebook Messenger update is the way your friend’s name will appear in the chat window. Whereas before, the user will only see an ellipsis when he types a message, now you can see the friend’s name in the chat window.

This is not the end of the updates that Facebook plans for its messaging feature. A future update will actually include some form of video chat, through an integration with Skype.

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LG Releases Optimus LTE 2 to rival the Samsung Galaxy S III

901am — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:30:21 +0000

Smartphone fans are getting excited about the impending arrival of Samsung’s Galaxy S III, but LG wants to put a damper on that anticipation by announcing a new phone that it hopes will rival the Galaxy S III.

The new LG Optimus LTE 2 is going to be released in South Korea a day after the Galaxy S III is released internationally. The new LG phone is going to have massive RAM, 2GB to be specific. It’s double the RAM contained in the Galaxy S III and other smartphones in the market today. LG is saying that it is the first phone that will be released in South Korea that will sport this much memory.

Aside from this, The Optimus LTE 2 will have some features that is also in the Galaxy S III – a wireless charging feature and facial recognition for unlocking widgets.

The Optimus LTE 2’s camera has been given a burst mode – a feature that allows a user to take five photos in quick succession. From the five photos, the best one can be chosen and kept. A cool feature is voice activation, which is the evolution of the camera timer. With this feature, you just need to make a voice command to make the phone take a picture.

Where it lags behind the Galaxy S III is in the display. Samsung’s phone has a 4.8 inch panel, while LG’s phone appears to have the same 4.7 inch 1280 x 720 display that is already in the Optimus 4X HD. The Optimus LTE 2 will be powered by a Qualcomm MSM8960 S4 processor, and will run Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

There’s a big chance that LG Optimus LTE 2 will get an international release but there are no specific details forthcoming yet.

Target Pulls out Amazon Kindle From Its Stores

901am — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:35:31 +0000

Target, one of the biggest retailers in the US, has decided to remove the Amazon Kindle from its online stores and final shipments of the league-leading e-reader will also happen by the middle of the month – effectively ending the presence of Amazon in Target stores all across the country.

Target’s decision to remove Amazon’s Kindle reader from its stores is a huge move that has definitely caught the media’s attention. According to various sources it was a conflict of interest that made Target decide to drop the Kindle from its stores. But the official statement of Target says otherwise:

Target continually evaluates its product assortment to deliver the best quality and prices for our guests. Target is phasing out Kindles and Amazon- and Kindle-branded products in the spring of 2012. We will continue to offer our guests a full assortment of ereaders and supporting accessories including the Nook.

Reports have it that the final shipments of the Kindle to various Target stores all throughout the country will happen on May 12. This means that it is extremely likely that no Kindles may still be offered in Target stores by the end of May.

So what about that rumored “conflict of interest”? One of the reasons floating around is that since Target has signed an agreement with Apple to build mini Apple stores in 25 different Target locations nationwide it has created that “conflict of interest” environment. But another reason being assumed is that Amazon’s growing focus on digital products may have exerted a lot of pressure on Target – pressure that Target feels they don’t want to be exposed to.

A bigger question though is how Target’s withdrawal will affect the sales of the Kindle nationwide.

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RIM Announces $10,000 Payout for App Developers

901am — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:28:17 +0000

Research in Motion (RIM) was once quite protective of the Blackberry environment, preferring to develop their own apps for the mobile operating system. But now that the whole company is teetering on the edge of obsolescence, it has realized that help is needed, and fast. Now the company is courting developers to get into the BlackBerry system and it’s going to do it through incentives.

According to RIM vice president of developer relations Alec Saunders, RIM will give developers guaranteed earnings for the first year of $10,000 minimum. If the developer fails to reach that figure, RIM will pay the developers the difference. This is a very aggressive campaign to lure developers to develop apps for the BlackBerry 10. RIM needs to give out these incentives to entice developers to develop apps for the BlackBerry OS because providing a limited number of apps will not attract consumers to try out the new BlackBerry environment. But this is a high stakes gamble that could potentially cost the company more money that they could probably not afford to give out at this point.

RIM is going to implement a number of guidelines so that not any old app can just enter the system and get a guaranteed payment of 10,000. First, the app should meet certain standards of quality based on guidelines that will be checked by a third party entity. After passing this, the app will be brought into App World, the BlackBerry app store. Apps that fail to earn more than $1,000 over a period of one year will not be eligible for the payout. Only apps that earn more than $1,000 but does not hit $10,000 will get the payout.

Samsung Now The Leading Smartphone Manufacturer in The World

901am — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:06:10 +0000

Samsung is well on its way to totally dominate the global smartphone market. According to a report from three different research companies, Samsung is now the leading smartphone manufacturer in the world.

Samsung has posted amazing sales figures for the first quarter of 2012, quadrupling its profits from its first quarter 2011 figures. The figures presented by Juniper Research, International Data Corp. (IDC), and comScore, reveal that Samsung is now the dominant manufacturer in the smartphone market. According to IDC, Samsung has shipped 42.2 million smartphones for the first quarter of 2012, a remarkable 267 percent increase to shipments made for the same period last year. Samsung now occupies 29.1 percent of the market.

Apple, on the other hand, sold 35.1 million iPhones for the first quarter of 2012, an 88.7 percent increase from their first quarter 2011 figures. Apple now occupies the second slot in the smartphone market share pie, with a 24.2 percent share.

All of the other manufacturers are not performing as well. Nokia, once the dominant phone brand on earth, may have sold 11.9 million smartphones for the first quarter 2012, but it is a 50.8 percent drop from their first quarter 2011 figures. Currently, it only holds an 8.2 percent global market share. Resarch in Motion, makers of Blackberry phones also had dismal numbers, recording a 29.7 percent drop in shipments from first quarter 2011 and 2012. Many tech observers have already put RIM on death watch, with many speculating that the company won’t survive the unstoppable wave of smartphone sales.

Image from droidtechynews.blogspot.com

LG Introduces Its Own Cloud Storage Service

901am — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:43:55 +0000

We’ve been discussing cloud storage in 901AM for quite some time now and have mentioned that it is going to be a buzzword in the tech community. It looks like cloud storage is reaching new levels of popularity with various companies announcing their cloud storage plans and services. Last week Google announced the Google Drive. This week, it’s LG’s turn to go into the cloud storage arena.

LG, one of the fastest growing tech manufacturers on the planet, has announced its new cloud storage service called LG Cloud. The new cloud storage service will allow a user to upload music, photos and videos to LG Cloud server and then shared across different LG devices that have internet connectivity – this includes LG’s Smart TVs and smartphones. The files can also be viewed over a computer.

The LG Cloud service will initially launch in South Korea and the US and will give users 5GB of storage. There are rumors though that some users could be given up to 50GB of storage for the first six months. Obviously it will go back to 5GB of storage after that period lapses. No word yet on pricing schemes for those who want to get bigger storage space.

Uploading files on LG Cloud can be done over the website, a client that can be installed on Windows PCs, or through an Android app. The LG Cloud app is free to download but requires Android versions 2.2, 2.3 or 4 to work. LG has said that an iPhone and iPad app is currently being developed.

One feature that will be included in LG Cloud is Folder Sync, where the contents placed in a folder can be duplicated in the cloud and then synced with the rest of the user’s device.

If you’re intrigued by LG Cloud you can sign up for the beta program at lgecloud.com.