The great success of the Galaxy Note may be attributed to its screen size and amazing screen quality. A winning formula will not go unnoticed so LG has also announced that it will be releasing a new phone that will sport a 5 inch screen. But while the Galaxy Note has a 16:10 screen, LG’s Optimus Vu (Optimus Sketch in other countries) will be sporting a screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The resolution of the Optimus Vu’s screen is reportedly going to be 1024 x 768, which confirms that it will be a square screen. Using the said resolution is actually a pretty good idea because a majority of web sites are optimized for the exact same resolution, which will make browsing much easier. Photos taken with point and shoot cameras are also in the same 4:3 aspect ratio.

Under the hood, the LG Optimus Vu will be powered by a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and one gigabyte of RAM. It will have an 8 megapixel camera that is capable of taking full HD videos. These features all point to the possibility that LG is going to market this to the same people who liked and bought the Galaxy Note.

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Viddy is a new service that lets users shoot a 15-second video clip. The user can then have the option of editing the clip before uploading it on various social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Twitter. They can also upload it on the official Viddy site. In other words, Viddy is trying to become the Instagram of videos.

Viddy is not the first to stumble on to this idea. The 8 mm app has the same functionality and was the earliest app to do this. Instagram itself has revealed that it has plans of expanding its service to include videos. But Viddy may pose a serious threat to those plans. The company has already gained $6 million in Series A financing, which brings the total funding for Viddy to a total of $8.2 million.

Viddy’s service is not just targeting individual users. It has a feature that allows for the application of custom Video FX layers, which could obviously be exploited as a marketing tool (think branding and such).

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One of the things that Lockheimer shared is a new service called Bouncer. This new security tool scans the Android Market and specifically looks for malicious software. Bouncer was designed to run in the background to detect malware. Bouncer will not interfere with the operations of Android Market. It doesn’t even need app developers to “go through an application approval process.”

Bouncer has been specifically designed to inspect all new apps that are uploaded to Android Market. Bouncer will look for malware, spyware and trojans.

The introduction of Bouncer and beefing up the security around Android Market is Google’s answer to growing concerns about the security of Android and safety of Android users against malware and unscrupulous people who want to gain access to Android devices. According to a recent report conducted by Juniper Networks, an IT security company, last November 2011, malware that has been developed to specifically target Android devices has increased by an astonishing 472 percent in four months.

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For the “crime” offering Google Maps to the public free of charge, Google is being asked to pay a fine.

Yup, you read it right. A court in France has ordered Google to pay a fine as well as damages to Bottin Cartographes, a French cartographic (read: mapping) company. The reason? Google is undercutting companies that offer the same services as Google Maps but with fees.

Bottin Cartographes filed an unfair competition suit against Google. The company claimed that Google is using its position as one of the largest companies in the world to gain a dominant position in the digital mapping market.  Google is being asked to pay 500,000 euros to Bottin Cartographes as well as a 15,000 euros as a fine. Google has said that it will be appealing the ruling but declined to further comment on the issue.

The monetary elements of the ruling is nothing to Google. But the ruling may set a precedent that will affect the company’s ongoing legal struggles in France and the European Union. An antitrust lawsuit has been filed against Google in France regarding AdWords. Preliminary investigation has said that Google has abused it position. The company also faced the same lawsuit in Brussels regarding Google Maps and this has been included in the European Commission’s larger antitrust investigation against Google.

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The study involved 1,000 adults and according to the results, it was found out that a fourth of them took out their mobile phone while shopping inside a store in order to look up the price for the products they’re eyeing at online resellers.  Also, 24 percent of the respondents used their mobile phone to look for reviews of the products they’re shopping for.  About 38 percent, on the other hand, called a friend while they were shopping in order to get advice on the item they’re shopping around for – asking about the quality of a brand or a product.

Looking more closely at the habit of looking for product reviews on the internet, it was discovered that people who have had college education are more likely to research about a product using online reviews. Additionally, non-Caucasians are more likely to research for reviews than Caucasians. Based on age, people between the ages of 18 and 49 tend to do research more on products using the internet. Among people above the age of 65, only four percent will go online and look for reviews before making a decision on what to buy. That last factoid is really quite obvious. The four percent who would go online to research are most likely the only people at that age group who know how to turn on a computer, much less go online. I kid.

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But even if Twitter apps for mobile devices are very convenient to use, the whole user experience is still quite different from using Twitter in its original environment – your browser. One of the best reasons to use Twitter using your browser is the personalization you can apply to your Twitter page. If mobile devices have apps for accessing Twitter. The desktop PC also has online services that allow the user to personalize his Twitter page.

One of the more popular services that allow for Twitter page personalization is InstaBG. This service will let users personalize their Twitter page with photos taken from Instagram. InstaBG will collate different photos based on a category or search term you specify and produce a mosaic background with all of those pictures. This greatly personalizes your Twitter page because you can look for search terms that is related to a recent topic that you’ve been tweeting about. You can also use InstaBG to create a background using the Instagram photos you’ve uploaded personally on your Instagram account. The level of personalization is amazing. You won’t tire using it. What’s more using the InstaBG service is very easy. You just simply need to log on with your Twitter login details at the InstaBG website and you’re good to go.

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Ubuntu has gotten some mixed responses upon the announcement of its bold plan to go mobile. Some liked it, some were skeptical and others were plain apathetic about it. Ubuntu has been relatively quiet about since the announcement but the progress of its project… until CES when it finally unveiled the Ubuntu smart TV interface.

According to the guys at Ubuntu, the Ubuntu TV is a “vision of how TV will work in the future.” The Ubuntu TV concept allows a user to watch a broadcast or streaming content but also lets them access their own media files that are stored on the cloud. The whole concept is built into the TV itself – effectively eliminating set top boxes or other separate devices. Canonical said there is no browser option in their interface because they do not believe that a browser has a place in a TV set.

Although the Ubuntu TV concept is a good one, Canonical will likely face a huge challenge getting its system adopted by TV manufacturers. Content companies will also be another hurdle that the company will have to face and they are notoriously difficult to deal with. Fortunately, Canonical has also made the right decision of just sticking to what it knows best – being an operating system. It has already announced that it has no plans of producing its own content, which will make it easier to sell to manufacturers and content holders. By not infringing on a lot of other people’s territories, it may be the strategy that will make it an easier sell to the people it needs to partner with to bring it to end users.

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The 39 percent showing of Android tablets is a marked improvement from last year, when it only owned 29 percent of the global market for tablets. One of the reasons cited for the increased performance of Android in the market is the growing number of tablet manufacturers who are using Android to power their devices. One example would be Amazon, which released their high selling Kindle Fire tablet last year. That tablet runs on a modified Android OS. According to Strategy Analytics, about 10.5 million Android tablets were shipped during the last quarter of 2011. For the same quarter a year ago (2010), only 3.1 million Android tablets were shipped.

Strategy Analytics did explain that it used two different sales figures for both the Apple iPad and Android tablets in its report. For the Apple iPad, the company used actual sales to consumers. But for the Android tablets, the company used sell-in figures, this is when the manufacturers sell their products to the retailers. Since most manufacturers are not very willing to share actual sales figures, it is hard to get the true sales of Android tablets, hence the different figures used.

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The belt was created by design and development company Deeplocal. The way it works is this: If you’re walking down the road and see something that you like and you want to Facebook “like” it, all you have to do is thrust your hips into the direction of what you like. This thrust will then register with your android smartphone and let all of your Facebook friends know what you “like” at the very moment you have decided you like it. You can see a photo of the LikeBelt taken from Deeplocal up above.

The Technology behind the LikeBelt

The hardware uses what is called near-field communication technology (NFC). You have an NFC antenna taken from an NFC-enabled Android phone, put it on a belt buckle, and then little NFC chips are placed around things you want to “like.” Now there are obviously not NFC chips everywhere you’re walking down the street or in your house, but the idea assumes that they are everywhere. These little chips certainly can be everywhere, but this will of course come with popularity. In other words, the idea is that you can walk down the street with this belt and update your Facebook, but it’s not yet entirely possible.

These NFC chips are known as RFID tags that are simply coded in an NFC format. I am not technological engineer, but if you’d like more information visit Wired, a leading technology news website. An Android app will then read the NFC chips and register the action.

The Uses of the LikeBelt

As strange as the whole concept may seem, the masterminds behind the idea offer some interesting real-world application examples. According to the Wired article, Deeplocal sees it as a way to simply understand people’s preferences easier. This could potentially work in a few scenarios:

• Dating/Bar Scene
• Retail Stores
• Advanced GPS technology (it can show you exactly where you are in a crowded room, mall, or other populated area)

For those who think that technology is taking over the “real world,” the LikeBelt is their worst enemy. It is certainly one of the more off-the-wall ideas that technology has seen in a while, so most would agree that the popularity of this little belt will likely end at the prototype stage. But then again, isn’t that what people said about status updates in the first place?

What are your thoughts? Do you think this could be engineered to be something useful? Would you use the LikeBelt?

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from technology news to background checks. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including phone systems to small businesses and entrepreneurs for Resource Nation.

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Nokia has recently announced that it has sold its 1.5 billionth feature phone – a Series 40 model. The company also said that they sell 12 similar phones very second.

The landmark phone was sold to a woman in Brazil and the phone purchased was a Nokia Asha 303. People who love to nitpick will say that the Nokia Asha 303 is not entirely a feature phone because it possesses features that we have come to associate with smartphones – a touch screen, a 1Ghz processor, social networking apps, the ability to download and install apps, various connectivity options, a QWERTY keyboard, camera and media player.

So what does this mean? Manufacturers are beginning to blur the line between feature phones and smart phones in an attempt to gain more market share and become a stronger player in the mobile phone market. Samsung and Nokia still have strong feature phone model lines – for example, the C1 and X1 models for the Nokia (these are no-frills phones, with some models not even having cameras), and the Samsung E class mobile phones.

But Sony is taking a different tactic by phasing out feature phones completely and just concentrating on smart phones, although this will mean it will now be competing with Apple and HTC in that segment of the market.

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