Facebook Brings More features to The “Like” Button

Facebook is all set to change the way users share content and links using the “Like” and “Share” buttons. The sharing functionality of Facebook’s like button has been slightly overhauled which might trigger a retiring door for Facebook’s share button.

Before this update, the “Like” button was kind of a recommendation while the share button was “Sharing” in it’s true sense. Liking a webpage would post a mini update on your Facebook profile while sharing a webpage would bring additional details e.g thumbnails, excerpt, personal comments and so on.

The newer update rolled by Facebook changes how the “Liked” story is shared on your Facebook profile or news feed. Unlike before, a thumbnail and excerpt is returned, an example is shown below:

The next major update is that now users can “Like” updates within a Facebook application. You can “Like” and share content or updates from an application which your friend is using, hence expect some heavyweight Facebook liking cluttering up your News feed, “Mr X likes your daily horoscope” and stuff like that.

Why Facebook’s Share Button Shouldn’t Retire

There is a major difference between Facebook’s share and like buttons. It’s “personal commentary”.

When you are sharing a webpage using the “Share” button, you have the ability to add a personal note or comment to the update. Whether you hate the page, whether it’s funny, you can express it. But such is not the case with Facebook’s like button. The moment you hit “Like” it’s dumped to your profile, no second chance at all.

You can always post a comment to the “Liked” story and express your views but this is kind of boring for two reasons. First, you have to open your Facebook profile and then comment on the “Liked” link. Second, your close friends might get annoyed when you keep liking and commenting on the same link over and over again.

For Facebook, The Like Button Makes More Sense

But if you think from Facebook shoes, pushing the “Like” button makes perfect sense for two reasons.

First, content sharing is much more rapid, instantaneous and lucid. No popups or any other confirmation as such, all the user needs to do is hit the “Like” button on any website, blog, app and the page is shared instantly on his news feed.* Second, the “Like” button is much easier to implement and has a powerful branding attached to it. “Hey I have 12K Likes on my Facebook page while you have only 4K”, you get the idea.

Facebook Spokeswoman Malorie Lucich told Mashable that they will continue to support the Share button, Like is the “recommended solution moving forward.”

What’s your take on the newer features of Facebook’s “Like” button? Do you think it’s useful enough and worth ditching the share button from your website ?

Related: Check out Techie Buzz’s Facebook app

BlackBerry Testing Android Apps on Its Devices

Last month, BGR presented an exclusive report on Android apps being tested on the Blackberry PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry has done some considerable work over the last one month and ShopSavvy has seen its app running on three more BlackBerry devices. The data was available to them through the Flurry analytics service.

*The devices running this app were:

BlackBerry 8300 ran Shop Savvy on January 31, 2011
BlackBerry 8600 ran Shop Savvy on January 17 and 24, 2011
BlackBerry 8520 ran Shop Savvy on February 7, 2011

The access was made from Waterloo, Ontario in Canada where RIM headquarters lie. The blackberry OS has support for a JVM and this is probably being made use of to run these apps on BlackBerry devices. Shop Savvy has also presented the analytics for some apprehensive users.

According to some rumors, BlackBerry was planning to use the Dalvik Virtual Machine to run these apps. However, it dropped the plan later, to develop an internal solution.

With Android having a considerably large number of apps in the market and growing faster than any other mobile OS, BlackBerry has every reason to hook on to the Android ecosystem. This will be a groundbreaking development, thereby bringing cross-platform app support for Android. Android app developers will have better scope for revenues and BlackBerry will emerge stronger in this competition where it is pitted against platforms from Android and Apple.

Samsung Galaxy S NOT To Get Android 2.3 Gingerbread Update In March (Officially)

Rumors are floating around on the Internet that the Samsung Galaxy S will get Android 2.3 Gingerbread update sometime in March. The rumor of this source is this tweet from @m4gic. Apparently, the guy went to the Sammy’s European headquarter in Frankfurt where he got this piece of news.

Now, I know rumors spread like fire on the Internet but this is a bit too much. I own a Samsung Galaxy S and am a more than frequent visitor of the Galaxy S sub-forum over at XDA. Now, firmware leaks are a very common thing over the Galaxy S forum on XDA. In fact, the first Android 2.2 based firmware for the Galaxy S leaked nearly 8 weeks before the ‘official’ firmware was released by Samsung.

If Samsung does intent to roll out the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update for the Galaxy S by March then at least one Gingerbread based firmware for the handset must have already leaked. Sadly, that is not the case here! Many people may argue that firmware leaks are no big deal and it may happen that a Gingerbread based firmware for the Galaxy S won’t leak.

However, I personally feel that Samsung does intentionally leak some of these firmwares so that it can get the feedback of the modding community about the firmware. Samsung has in fact incorporated some of the changes which the modding community suggested it!

So according to me, the Samsung Galaxy S won’t get the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update in March. If by any means it does, it will be either via CM7 (unofficial), which is progressing very nicely and can be easily used on day-to-day basis, or via a leaked Gingerbread firmware.

Preorder Battlefield 3 and Get Expansion Pack For Free

Well it’s about time if you ask me. Electronic Arts’ successor to the 2005 hit Battlefield 2 has just posted the the pre order incentives. Pre ordering Battlefield 3 gets you the first digital expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand absolutely free! The expansion features a lot of the old, beloved, maps from Battlefield 2:-

 

Pre-order Battlefield 3 to receive the digital expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand at no extra charge! This themed multiplayer expansion pack includes four legendary maps from Battlefield 2 boldly re-imagined with Frostbite™ 2 physics, destruction and visuals. Completing the package are classic Battlefield 2 weapons and vehicles, unique rewards, new achievements/trophies, and more.

The Frostbite 2 is the new game engine that is powering Battlefield 3. The visuals introduced by the Frostbite 2 engine along with the physics (as detailed above) give quite the realistic feel of a battle being fought around you. I can only imagine how this game would be if I were to play it on one of those high-end rigs:-

Battlefield 3 introduces Frostbite 2, the incredible technology that takes animation, destruction, lighting, scale and audio to new heights.* Built upon this powerful game engine, Battlefield 3 immerses players physically and emotionally to the world around them like never before.

To find out more about Battlefield 3 and its immersive engine, do check out the EA UK site.

Google Rolls Out An Algorithmic Update To Remove Spam Sites From Search Results

In recent times, Google has been pretty busy trying to save it’s face from the raising eyebrows on search quality, spam sites infiltrating Google search results and content aggregators dominating the SERP’s. We told you how messy the entire Google experience can get, even Google News is not free from junk sites and content aggregators.

It’s not that Big G wasn’t listening to the appeals, they announced a big algorithmic change in January 2011 followed by announcing domain filtering in search results.

In fact, Google also released a Chrome extension which allows the user to block specific sites on Google search result pages.

Today Google announced that the Google search quality team has rolled out a major algorithmic change in their ranking system. This change will impact almost 11.8 % of search queries made on Google search and the “algorithmic change” is designed such that they will reduce rankings for low quality sites which don’t add value to a subject or scrap content from other sites.

At the same times, Google confirms that the new algorithm will make sure that readers can find more original content in search results. Sites who post original stories, write detailed reports and publish thoughtful analysis or research work are surely going to rank higher in the search results for a given query.

“We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.” says Google in an official blog post.

Google says that the algorithmic update does not entirely rely on the feedback received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension. However, the web spam team did consider the data received from the extension and compared it with the sites, which were marked as “SPAM” by the “new Algorithm”. In fact, the algorithmic change addresses 84% of the spam sites, which other users have also blocked in the Personal blocklist chrome extension preferences.

What are those sites ? Google hasn’t disclosed the list.

The algorithmic change is launched in U.S only and will be rolled out on other locations over time.

New Snapshot of Opera 11.10 Released: Makes Speed Dial Fluid

Speed Dial is undoubtedly one of the most loved features in Opera. It’s also probably the most emulated. Opera first added speed dial back in 2007, to provide a convenient and quick way to access the most frequently visited websites. Since then we have seen Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and others implement variants of this feature.

In the meanwhile, Opera worked on improving speed dial by adding support for background images, customization options, and wide-screen resolution support. Now, the veteran browser maker says that it is ready to take speed dial to the next level. “We are going to make Speed Dial more fluid, dynamic and easier to use”, Cezary Ku?akowski from Opera Software wrote on the Desktop Team blog.

The just released snapshot of Barracuda (Opera 11.10) provides a first look at the planned changes by introducing the new “flow layout”. To be honest, as of now, the new flow layout doesn’t do anything earth-shattering. It just makes the speed dial behave a lot more like a webpage. If the browser window is resized, then instead of your speed dials being shrunk, a scrollbar will appear. Also the cap on number of speed dials is gone. Now, it seems that you can have as many visual shortcuts as you want.

The new snapshot also introduces a new “Discoverability” feature that will subtly encourage users to try new features. If done right, this can turn out to be a really smart move, as Opera has scores of awesome features, that even many old-timers aren’t aware of. Opera promises that discoverability will not be annoying or frustrating. However, I couldn’t check it out as till now I haven’t managed to figure out the three features that were added to discoverability. Let me know if you guys fare better.

The snapshot is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. However, don’t forget that this is an early preview build, and is likely to have stability and performance issues.

Opera Software’s Revenue Surges On the Back of Operator Tie-ups

Earlier in the week, Opera Software released its quarterly financial report. The final quarter of 2010 saw Opera increase its user base to 170 million, out of which 53 million belonged to Opera for desktop.

The past year also witnessed Opera Software going from being the the red to recording record revenues. One of the most significant contributors to its turnaround was operator tie-ups, which Opera had been focusing on during the past few quarters.

Opera’s partners include several big names like Vodafone and MTS. While mobile service providers benefit from the partnership by being able to provide its users a customised version of Opera Mini, which reduces bandwidth costs, highlights their web-properties (through speed-dial), and encourages mobile surfing, Opera Software profits from the licensing fee.

The number of operator-branded Opera Mini users jumped from 2.1 million in Jan 2010 to 11.5 million in Jan 2011. Other than that there were approximately 90 million Opera Mini users last month.

Although partnerships with operators helped Opera generate a significant amount of revenue, the Norwegian browser maker credits stronger than expected desktop and device revenues (chiefly gaming consoles and connected TV) for the higher than expected total revenue. AdMarvel also made a significant positive contribution.

As expected Opera’s profits also saw a sharp increase. However, one-off expenses like closing of Czech offices, and shifting of Opera’s server park from Norway to Iceland pulled down the profit percentage.

In the near future, Opera aims to refresh its mail offering by leveraging the previously acquired Fastmail, develop Open Mobile Ad Exchange to generate revenue from mobile browsers, popularize Opera Mobile Store, and aggressively monetize Opera for desktop (see screenshot embedded below).

The Amazingly Awesome Angry Birds Birthday Cake

Almost everyone likes Angry Birds. The game is simple, delightfully easy to learn and atrociously addictive and incredibly hard at times to beat. This simple mix of great things has made the hit Rovio Mobile game the best-seller on the iPhone/iPad and Android mobile systems. Considering how quickly this game of catapulting suicidal birds at megalomaniacal pigs.

So when a geeky father decided to make an Angry Birds themed cake for his son, he also decided to go a little bit further. He made a playable Angry Birds cake, complete with destructible walls of wafer and birds and pigs made of icing.

Electricpig’s (how ironic) Mike Cooper’s son was a big Angry Birds fan. On his sixth birthday, Cooper wanted to give him a memorable birthday cake – and what else could be more memorable than a cake that also doubles as a real-life video game? On the video’s description, Cooper writes:-

It’s become a family tradition that I make increasingly ridiculous birthday cakes for my kids each year. So with my little boy Ben turning 6-years-old over the weekend, and appreciating his love of Angry Birds, I thought I’d have a shot a making him a playable Angry Birds birthday cake with working catapult and iced birds as ammunition.

100% incredible! He has also shared the how-to for making this cake on the Electric-pig website. Do check it out if you’d like to wear a chef’s hat and surprise your friend/spouse/child who is an Angry Birds nut!

Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread Update Rolling Out To Nexus One And Nexus S Handsets

Google has kept its words and has finally started rolling out the Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread update for the Nexus One and Nexus S owners, alike. When Google announced the Nexus S and the next version of Android – Gingerbread, the company stated that they will release the Gingerbread update for the Nexus One within “few weeks”.

However, nearly 2 months later, the company has finally started rolling out the OTA update for the N1 (Nexus One). Android 2.3.3 contains some major changes as well, including API level 10, NFC enhancements, improvements to the graphics department of the handset and bug fixes.


Nexus S users should also keep in mind that updating their handset to Android 2.3.3 will disable Facebook contact sync on their phone. The reason behind this as stated by Google is –:

We believe it is very important that users are able to control their data. So in the over-the-air update for Nexus S, we have a small change to how Facebook contacts appear on the device. For Nexus S users who downloaded the Facebook app from Android Market, Facebook contacts will no longer appear to be integrated with the Android Contacts app. Since Facebook contacts cannot be exported from the device, the appearance of integration created a false sense of data portability. Facebook contact data will continue to appear within the Facebook app. Like all developers on Android, Facebook is free to use the Android contacts API to truly integrate contacts on the device, which would allow users to have more control over their data. We are removing the special-case handling of Facebook contacts on Nexus S and future lead devices. We continue to believe that reciprocity (the expectation that if information can be imported into a service it should be able to be exported) is an important step toward creating a world of true data liberation — and encourage other websites and app developers to allow users to export their contacts as well.

Hopefully, Facebook will soon update its Android app to use the Contacts API.

The Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OTA update will take a “few weeks” to complete so N1 owners need to wait patiently for the update to be pushed to their handset.

Google Gets A Sweet Tooth for Honeycomb

The newest Google mobile operating system was released to developers at the beginning of this month. The OS, called Android 3.o and nicknamed “Honeycomb”, is geared towards securing a hefty portion of the tablet pc market, which has been dominated by the Apple iPad as of late.

Unlike earlier versions of the Android OS, Honeycomb does not produce a mixed experience by being magnified by the tablet device. On the official Google blog, the new OS was designed from the ground to be used on mobile devices with bigger screens. The devices fitted with Honeycomb will be able to use tabbed browsing, auto-fill forms, sync with Google Chrome bookmarks, and private browsing. The OS also features the latest Google Mobile Maps 5 and Google Talk, supporting both video and voice chat.



The Android software development kit, or SDK, has already been released. This allows developers to already begin tinkering with the first tablet-only Android operating system. Still the SDK doesn’t have any finalized APIs and is for testing only for the time being.

After some playing around with the SDK, the new features in the developer realm are clear:

• UI great for creating new apps for larger screen wireless devices
• 3D graphics: Renderscript
• Dual-core processor capability
• HTTP Live streaming support, DRM framework, and file transfer ease for rich content development
• Audio streaming and headset control through Bluetooth A2DP and HSP
• Encrypted storage and password expiration

End users will enjoy:

• Customizing home screens
• Menu area from the phone now become the Honeycomb Action Bar
• Notification bar from the phone now become the Honeycomb System Bar
• A Recent Apps button
• New keyboard features like reshaped buttons for better targeting as well as the addition of a Tab button
• Copy-&-Paste upgrades with a press and hold option, drag and resize, as well as web search and find with the Action Bar
• Media/Photo Transfer Protocol support
• Google sites auto-sign in & bookmark sync with Chrome
• Camera with front-facing option for video conference
• Card-like contacts
• Two-panel email app with multi-select as well as home screen widget

The technical lead for Google’s SDK team, Xavier Ducrohet, stated in a blog post that, “Besides the user-facing features it offers, Android 3.0 is also specifically designed to give developers the tools and capabilities they need to create great applications for tablets and similar devices, together with the flexibility to adapt existing apps to the new UI while maintaining compatibility with earlier platform versions and other form-factors.”

Though the tablet market is the seemingly new frontier in mobile devices and the market will soon be saturated, Honeycomb tablets will be a huge step in the way of tablet computing. It stands to correct a number of issues (i.e. lack of USB) the 15 million iPad buyers stood to overlook.

==== About the author ====

Jon Ryan is the Marketing Manager for CellPhoneNumber.com, a site that helps users find facts and ask questions about cell phone numbers. He has a background in copywriting, journalism, promotions, blogging, design work, drafting, website design/coding, ad design, and creative directing.

Firefox 5 Concepts Revealed; More Site Specific Features For Apps

Mozilla will be releasing Firefox 4 in the next few weeks. Firefox 4 sports a complete overhaul from the previous versions and is very similar to Google Chrome. However, Mozilla is now working on the next version of Firefox 5 which might be released in late 2011.



CNET got hold of some concept pictures which show the future of the browser. The concept pictures can be seen at http://areweprettyyet.com/5/. One of the big focus of Firefox 5 will be desktop apps which will contain site specific features in them.

For example, if you use the Twitter app, you will see options such as creating a new tweet, checking your direct messages and more. This feature will also be available for other sites like Facebook and IMDb.



Internet Explorer 9 has a similar feature where they allow websites to define tasks when a website is pinned to the taskbar. It is now known yet whether the site specific features in Firefox 5 will have their own tasks or rely on websites to define those tasks.



In addition to the site specific features, Firefox 5 will also have a new visual appearance for the search box, where the color of the button would change based on the search engine the user is using. This color could either be specified by the search engines themselves or will be fetched from the favicon of the search engine.

Firefox 5 will also promote the Firefox Sync option to users so that they can sync their passwords, bookmarks and more in the cloud and use it on any mobile device or PC.



Mozilla will also be revamping it’s add-on manager which is used to install and manage Firefox add-ons in the browser. Firefox 4 introduced a new add-on manager, but it looks like they will be revamping it again in Firefox 5.

These are just some of the key features from Firefox 5 which are available as concepts. It looks like Mozilla will continue building on Firefox 4 and add these new features to it, so the look and feel of Firefox 5 may not be any different than Firefox 4.

So what do you think about the new Firefox 5 concepts? Do you like them? What else would you want to see in Firefox 5? Do share your opinions and views about it.

Introducing the Google Translate application for iPhone

Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.

Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month.

Full-screen mode
Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.

And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.

You can download Google Translate now from the App Store globally. The app is available in all iOS supported languages, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch iOS version 3 or later.

Advanced sign in security for your Google accounts

 Has anyone you know ever lost control of an email account and inadvertently sent spam—or worse—to their friends and family? There are plenty of examples (like the classic "Mugged in London" scam) that demonstrate why it's important to take steps to help secure your activities online. Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.

Most of us are used to entrusting our information to a password, but we know that some of you are looking for something stronger. As we announced to our Google Apps customers a few months ago, we've developed an advanced opt-in security feature called 2-step verification that makes your Google Account significantly more secure by helping to verify that you're the real owner of your account. Now it's time to offer the same advanced protection to all of our users.

2-step verification requires two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone. Over the next few days, you'll see a new link on your Account Settings page that looks like this:

Take your time to carefully set up 2-step verification—we expect it may take up to 15 minutes to enroll. A user-friendly set-up wizard will guide you through the process, including setting up a backup phone and creating backup codes in case you lose access to your primary phone. Once you enable 2-step verification, you'll see an extra page that prompts you for a code when you sign in to your account. After entering your password, Google will call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. The choice is up to you. When you enter this code after correctly submitting your password we'll have a pretty good idea that the person signing in is actually you.

It's an extra step, but it's one that significantly improves the security of your Google Account because it requires the powerful combination of both something you know—your username and password—and something that only you should have—your phone. A hacker would need access to both of these factors to gain access to your account. If you like, you can always choose a "Remember verification for this computer for 30 days" option, and you won't need to re-enter a code for another 30 days. You can also set up one-time application-specific passwords to sign in to your account from non-browser based applications that are designed to only ask for a password, and cannot prompt for the code.

How I Nearly Doubled The Battery Life Of My Android Phones

Last year, I purchased my first Android phone – the Samsung Galaxy S. Before the Galaxy S, I had no previous experience with the Android OS. However, after I got the Galaxy S, my love for the OS and its ‘openness’ grew. Since the Galaxy S, I tried many other Android based devices including a HTC Legend, a HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy 5. Recently, I got the HTC Desire Z.

On my suggestion, many of my friends also purchased an Android based phone and they have been simply loving the OS. However, one complaint all my friends have is the poor battery life of their Android phone.* In fact, the majority of Android owners complain about the poor battery life of their handset. Until late last year, the battery life of even my Galaxy S was very poor. If I used the phone heavily, it would be totally out of power by evening.

I tried many tips, found all over the Internet, but the increase in battery life was hardly noticeable. Then one day, I came across an application on the Android market called Juice Defender. The description of the app says that it will help ‘Reclaim your battery’. Out of pure curiosity about the efficiency of these kind of apps, I installed Juice Defender on my phone. I ran the app on my phone and was surprised to see that the app checks if your phone is rooted or not. After that, I enabled the app and used the ‘Aggressive’ profile.

Since then, the battery life of my Samsung Galaxy S has improved considerably! Before using Juice Defender, the battery of my phone would go down to 30% by night on moderate usage. My ‘Moderate’ usage scenario includes an hour of phone calls, 30-40mins of fiddling around with the phone, around 30 messages and some tweeting via TweetDeck with Auto Sync enabled for my FB, GMail and Twitter account.

After installing the app, I can squeeze out nearly a full day and a half of battery life from my Galaxy S with the usage pattern defined above. Even under heavy usage, I can get a full day of battery life from my phone. I seriously never expected this app to have such a big impact on the battery life of my phone. I installed this app on the Android phones of all my friends and relatives. After a week of using the phone with the app running in the background, even they reported substantial improvements in the battery life.

When I shifted to the HTC Desire Z, I did not install Juice Defender for a couple of days. The battery life of the phone was pathetic. Even on light usage, the battery of the phone hardly lasted me a single day. However, after I installed Juice Defender, the scenario again changed. The battery life of my Z increased substantially.

For people who think that this app may slow down your phone or may disable some features of the phone, I am pleased to say that this is not the case. There is absolutely no performance hit or anything. Your Android phone will continue to function as it was.

For all Android phone owners with poor battery life, I will highly recommend you to try out Juice Defender on their phone. Users always have the option to uninstall the app if they don’t like it.

Windows 7 SP1 RTM Released Coming to Windows Update on Feb 22nd

Microsoft has officially announced and made available the Windows 7 SP1 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 to their OEM partners. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will be available to MSDN, TechNet and Volume License customers on February 16th and to general public on February 22nd through the Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update.

Many of the updates available in Windows 7 SP1 has already been previously delivered through Windows Update, so there wouldn’t be much changes for users who have already applied those updates.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 has been in development for a long time now and it is finally making it’s way out to the users. This could also mean the impending release of Internet Explorer 9 is around the corner.

Samsung Galaxy Indulge LTE Android Smartphone Coming to MetroPCS

Remember the Samsung Forte, the phone which we posted some leaked information about, a few weeks back? Well, it’s actually called the Samsung Galaxy Indulge, and it will be launching in a week.

It was leaked again on the MetroPCS website, and is priced at $399 for the contract free version. It is one of the first LTE devices which will be launched in the US. It comes with two plans – the $50 plan offers 1 GB data while the $60 plan offers unlimited data. Both plans offer unlimited calls and text messages.

The Galaxy Indulge seems to be a smaller version of the Epic 4G. It has a smaller 3.5 inch touchscreen HVGA display and comes with a sliding keyboard. It also has a 3 MP camera and comes with Android 2.2 Froyo with the TouchWiz 3.0 UI. It is powered by a 1 GHz processor and will have 512 MB RAM. It comes loaded with the Iron Man 2 movie on a 4 GB microSD card. It also has all the basics in place – Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS.

The Galaxy Indulge seems to be a nice LTE smartphone option for Android fans. It will likely launch by the end of this week, and might beat the Verizon HTC Thunderbolt to become the first LTE smartphone in the US.

Sprint Unveils The Android Powered Kyocera Echo

Kyocera Communications recently announced the world’s first dual-touchscreen Android smartphone, the Kyocera Echo. This handset runs on the Android 2.2 operating system and it will be exclusively available on the airwaves of Sprint in the US. Kyocera Echo features two high-resolution 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen displays connected by the “pivot hinge” feature, that enables the two displays to operate independently.

“For years Kyocera has provided handsets to Sprint’s Prepaid Group and MVNOs, as well as to Sprint under the Sanyo brand,” said Eiichi Toriyama, president of Kyocera Communications Inc. “We value greatly our relationship with Sprint and we are thrilled that they have chosen Echo as the standout product with which to reintroduce its customers to the Kyocera brand. With Kyocera Echo, we are proud to give Sprint an iconic, industry-changing device that delivers an entirely new experience for smartphone users.”

Kyocera Echo features a dual 3.5-inch LCD WVGA with 800 x 480 pixels resolution, 4.7 inches diagonally and 800 x 960 pixels resolution when opened, Android 2.2 (FroYo) operating system, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 3G Connectivity, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 5 megapixel camera with flash, autofocus and 2x digital zoom, HD (720p) video recording and more.

Other features include a 3.5mm headset jack, Digital compass, accelerometer, proximity sensor, light sensor, GPS, 1GB memory, 8GB microSD card included, 32GB expandable memory, Full HTML Web browser optimized for dual-screen experience, GPS, Wi-Fi hotspot capability and a 1370 mAh battery.

Kyocera Echo comes with the VueQue app, which allows you to watch a YouTube video in one display, while browsing, queuing and buffering additional YouTube videos on the other. This handset measures 115.0 x 56.5 x 17.2mm and weighs 193g. Kyocera Echo comes with a price tag of $199.99 after a $100 mail rebate and a two years service agreement. This handset will be available for purchase from this spring.

LG G-Slate handled on video, looks like a giant Optimus 2X

The wonders you can find on YouTube, eh? LG's G-Slate (to be known as the Optimus Pad outside the US) has made yet another appearance on Google's video repository, this time giving us a whirl to show off its slender body and port and speaker arrangement. The integrated 3D cameras also get a demo, as you can see above, though we're much more excited to be able to churn out 1080p video with this device thanks to the Tegra 2 SOC it's built around. Its smartphone buddy the Optimus 2X delivered some very smooth output and we can't see any reason why the G-Slate should do any worse. Make your way past the break for all the intimate video action.

Last.fm radio app goes 'premium' on home and mobile devices, web and desktop streamin

Last.fm radio app goes 'premium' on home and mobile devices, web and desktop streaming remain free

Last.fm has decided to tweak its offering on the app front, where it is now introducing a new subscription requirement for most mobile and home entertainment devices. From here on out, you'll have to pay for the privilege of streaming music through the company's software on devices like the iPhone and Squeezebox, though the blow is nicely cushioned by the news that there won't be any ads to dilute your aural pleasure. Windows Phone 7 won't be subject to the new fee for the remainder of 2011 in the US and UK, while Sonos devices will continue to stream freely until this summer, but eventually it seems like all these apps will cost a little bit of cash to use. And "little" is the operative word here, as Last.fm is asking for only $3 / €3 / £3 per month. If you really can't stomach the outlay, however, just stream via the web or desktop application... you tightwad.

Dell Streak gets Honeycomb SDK port, starting to look like a real tablet

Dell always told us the Streak was a tablet and not a phone, so it makes perfect sense to see Android's latest version, the tablet-friendly Honeycomb, ported over to its 5-inch slate. As usual with these builds, we're still at a very early stage, with the chap responsible for the hack noting that "no way is this close to release," but it's still rather exciting to see that brand new interface freshening up familiar pieces of kit. And hey, it's not like Dell itself is going to be delivering Android 3.0 anytime soon either, right? Click the source link to keep yourself updated on how this community port progresses.

Increase Internet Speed

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC etc

To get it back:

* Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor.

* Then go to: Local Computer Policy GO TO Computer Configuration GO TO Administrative Templates GO TO Network GO TO QOS Packet Scheduler and GO TO to Limit Reservable Bandwidth.

Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default." So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO. This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.It works on Win 2000 as well

Butt out for 10 years, Asif 7 and Amir 5

The three players under scrutiny may never play again if found guilty

Salman Butt gets ten years of ineligibility, five years of suspended sentence. Mohammad Asif gets a sanction of 7 years, two years of which are suspended. Mohammad Amir gets a sanction of five years' ineligibility.

Hotmail Brings Multiple Accounts, Extends Beyond Temporary Email Services

Hotmail has announced a feature similar to temporary email services with multiple additional advantages. With the new Hotmail feature, users will now be able to read email from multiple accounts within the same account. This can be potentially helpful in balancing work and play, all within the same email account and eliminates the need for multiple email accounts.

Currently, Hotmail has set the limit to 5 email accounts but will extend it to 15 accounts in future. Dharmesh Mehta, the Windows Live director of product management at Microsoft tells CNET,

One of which is that I don’t want to give my real address out to any site in the world. I might be worried they’ll spam me with newsletters, or they might resell it to other marketers. Who knows what can happen?

Well, this can be one of the reasons to use this service. However, we can make use of this feature to manage our work easily. Say for example, we create 5 email IDs each for a specific purposes like office work, freelancing, personal and family contact, professional contacts and newsletters. Out of these five, if we use only our newsletters ID in public, we can eliminate a significant amount of spam activity in our inbox.

Other than that, the feature also prevents us from mixing up contacts with same names (was it Kevin the nephew or Kevin the HR Manager?) and has innumerable usages. However, the ability to segregate each of these alias IDs into separate folders night lead some of those IDs to be ignored over time.

Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narhwal” Alpha 2 Released

Today Canonical has released the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed Natty Narhwal. This released will be followed by another alpha, a beta and a release candidate before the final version is released in April 2011.

Compared to the first alpha, this release marks the addition of most of the new features we will see in the final release. One of the most significant changes in this release has to the inclusion of LibreOffice in place of OpenOffice.org. Another change in the default application is that Banshee music player has replaced Rhythmbox.

People who have been calling for the Unity launcher to have an auto-hide feature will be happy to know that intelli-hide is now enabled by default. What the intelli-hide does is that it hides the launched only when it is obstructing an active window. The Software Center continues to get improved as well. The long-awaited application rating and review system finally makes an appearance in this release.

The much talked about global menu has also been included in this release as App Menu. Users of Mac OS X will already be familiar with this. It is the system where the menu is included in the panel instead of having it separate for different open windows. It was originally planned for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, but did not make it. The App Menu is supported in both the Unity UI and the classic GNOME desktop.

If you want to try out these new features, you can download the live CD from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/natty/alpha-2/

WebUpd8 has also made a video review of these new features.

YouTube Breaks the Free Music Paid Music Myth. They Pay Equally Well

On one hand where record labels and music companies try their best convincing users to pay for music, YouTube, one of the largest providers of free music has claimed that free music generates as much of revenue as paid music. Not only this, it has also claimed that copyright holders have seen an improvement of up to 300% in revenues from last year with YouTube’s model of free music. This has demystified copyright holder concerns over music providers.

These YouTube claims break the myth behind free and paid music up to a certain extent. For the rest, we should keep in mind that it is YouTube we are talking about. The revenues reported by YouTube are from ad clicks and ad clicks need visitors. YouTube as enough of visitors that helps it generate these statistics and also get enough returns.

YouTube executives have outlined the sources for this income. Wired reports it as,They said the growth was due to traffic increases, particularly on mobile phones; more profitable, optimized ad formats; the “Ad Word“-ization of video content (through which advertisers make videos that users “opt in” to watching); a new crop of curators who increase free music videos through blogs and social networks; more effective sales teams, particularly as part of Vevo (a joint venture between Google, major labels, and Abu Dhabi); and YouTube’s Content ID system, which allows music copyright holders to profit from infringing use of their songs.

With this claim, YouTube breaks the conventional payment model, which is based on direct payment for services. Users instead are generating revenue for record labels by clicking on YouTube ads.

Apple Claims Android Device Counts Include Chinese Knockoffs

Every time someone releases stats on Android, Apple is owned and fires back with some excuse. The last time Google released stats on Android device activations, Apple claimed it included upgrades. This time, when Android has swept past Nokia and amounts for as many Apple and Blackberry phones, Apple claims that the figures includes Chinese variants of Android.

In short, Apple just cannot stand the Android growth and wants to take every chance to speak against it. Android, now accounts for a third of the global handset population and the situation in the fourth quarter reports are reversed from last year. In Q4 this year, Android accounts for double of Apple’s sales and has pissed off Apple.

Apple has claimed that it includes OPhone devices based on the Android variant OMS developed for use in China. OMS was originally developed for CDMA connections in China. Now, it has made it incompatible for Android apps but compatible with Symbian apps. In short, the app is nothing related to Android but has been included in the stats. Another Android fork, Tapas OS has been seen in China that focuses on Chinese social networks and software especially built for use in China.

Apple insider reports this as, That suggests most the growth in “Android” numbers is coming from no-name vendors selling devices in countries such as China, using devices that don’t support Google’s development of the OS (via ads or search services) nor even expand the platform in any meaningful way that could benefit Android users.


As pointed out at Daring Fireball, it would be interesting to know how many of those devices are from Chinese forks.

Cell Phone In Credit Card Size

Its a phone the size of a credit card, only 0.58mm thin (less than a quarter inch, about the width of three credit cards) and weighs just 1.3 ounces.

Appropriately it's from a company called Real Phone Card. As you can see, an advertising message can be printed on the phone's face. 

Spec-wise, it's a dual band GSM GPRS, comes with either a color or monochrome screen, gets around 200 minutes of talk time, and there are canned text messages included.

You dial it by navigating an onscreen dialpad, but it also has built-in voice dialing, which happens to be language independent. Plus it's waterproof. Available in June or July, the Phone Card will hit India first, then maybe the U.S.