Generation Y

Generation Y

by Katherine Wilson
on 04/12/2011

As one of the youngest members of The Brandon Agency, I feel it is my duty to touch on the subject of my age group, Generation Y. There is some speculation as to where this age group starts, but for simplicity’s sake let’s just say it is people born between 1980 and into the 1990s. Most of the Gen Y’s are currently in their 20s and are children of the baby boomers – hence the other name for our generation, the Echo Boomers. 

Generation Y is a group of people who grew up with the Internet.  Technology is something this generation has been constantly “plugged in” to.  There is a want, A NEED, for constant connection with others. This need for connection is only enhanced by the capabilities of technology. For instance, I can be using 3 or 4 different types of technology at any given time. Here’s a scenario:

I’m sitting in the living room watching TV, and doing some work on my laptop at the same time. My phone buzzes to let me know I’ve got a new text message so I read that, but hold on just a sec cause I have GOT to change this song on my iPod first. Then I see I have a new comment on my facebook page….yeah yeah you get the idea.

So, as a marketer, how do you break through all the distraction and get a message across to this generation? You may as well go ahead and forget about newspaper ads. With the news readily available online and with up to the minute news stories, Gen-Ys don’t have time to sit down every morning and read a newspaper cover to cover.

Television is not as powerful with this generation as you may think. One hundred percent attention is not given to watching TV. Commercials are either muted or missed altogether due to flipping channels, walking away, you name it! Not only this, but even when the actual show is on, TV has become more of just a background noise. Many other types of media are causing distractions – see scenario above.

Social Media – this is where Generation Y’s attention is focused. The main reason is because they care what their friends think. Social media is the perfect avenue to find out exactly what your friends think about just about anything. Do they like your new haircut, as shown in your profile pic? Would they go see that movie that just came out in theaters, or would they tell me not to waste my time? How about that new product, I heard they had a really cool facebook page? With the capabilities of social media and the Internet, my friends can heavily influence my opinions and purchasing behavior.

Generation Y doesn’t want to be sold a product. Let me explain. They don’t want to see an ad in the media saying, “Here’s my product, here’s the price, and you should buy it!” They want to do their own research on the product or service, and then they want their friends to give them their own personal reviews. If I’ve done my research and I am considering Product A or Product B, if my friend likes Product B better, that’s the one I’m getting.  Bottom line, have a good website and get their friends to like you. Don’t make it hard for them to find out information about your product or service. Generation Y is used to having information available at their fingertips. As for getting their friends to like you, well… (flashback to high school anyone??)

The Royal Wedding – A Social Media Event

The Royal Wedding – A Social Media Event

by sherry moats
on 04/27/2011

Things sure have changed since July 29, 1981 when Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer wed.  A worldwide TV audience of more than 750 million watched their wedding.  Obviously, Will and Kate’s nuptials will be the biggest since the marriage of his parents, and it’s undoubtedly causing massive global interest. The Prince and Kate’s wedding, like his parents, will also be accessible to the public, and is expected to be watched by up to two billion people worldwide.

 

Back in 1981, we didn’t have the Internet; there was no Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr or blogging.  You either watched it on TV or were one of the tens of thousands that camped out overnight on the streets of London to catch of glimpse of the future King of England and his bride.   We are now in the 21st century and living in the world of Social Media.  So what does this mean for the royal wedding?  It means a social media event the world will soon not forget.

 

So you ask, what are some of the ways social media will play a role in one of the biggest events in 30 years?  Google is hosting a blog synchronized with live footage.  It will be streamed live on the Internet via an official royal channel, www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.  This will be a first for YouTube, as there has never been a live blog running alongside a live video stream.  And that’s not all, there will also be a video “Wedding Book” where you can submit your own video of congratulations.

 

Photos will be released via Flikr and announcements will be published on the official wedding site www.officialroyalwedding2011.org.

 

If you want to tweet a message of congratulations, you can do so by using the hashtag #rw2011.  And a @ClarenceHouse account on Twitter will provide live updates on the day, and will also be integrated into the live blog.

 

And last, but not least, there is even a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/TheBritishMonarchy, where users can click the 'I'm attending' button on 'The Royal Wedding' event.  I’m attending, are you???  There’s also links to all of the above via this page, along with a link to the governments’ website and a page where you can make a charitable donation to one or all 5 causes the couple has chosen to support.

New York City Sees Its Future as a Data Platform

New York City may be a lot of things — the city that never sleeps, the Big Apple, home of Ground Zero — but its future is as a data platform, says the city’s newly-appointed chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne. In a presentation at the Activate conference on Thursday, put on by The Guardian newspaper at the Paley Center for Media, Sterne said New York City is trying hard to turn the city’s government into a platform that enables both developers and individuals to take data about life in the metropolis and use it to create apps, services and other resources. “We need to help create an ecosystem that enables both transparency and also economic growth,” Sterne said.

The city has been trying to do that in a number of ways, Sterne told the conference, including its Open Data initiative, which has produced more than 350 public data sets developers and services can use, and has helped power the BigApps challenge that awards prizes of up to $40,000 to the winner of a competition for best city-data based app. Winners include Roadify, which allows users to share traffic and parking-related data with others and incorporates data from the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the Don’t Eat At app — which sends an alert to users if the restaurant they check into on Foursquare is in danger of being shut down due to health risks.

The city is also in the process of implementing QR codes on construction permits, so users with smartphones can scan the code and see all the information about that project, from the contact information for the construction company to any past violations the contractors have had with the city.

Rachel Sterne

Other elements of the city’s efforts are more social-media oriented, Sterne said, including the regular Twitter discussions with Mayor Michael Bloomberg that take place using the “#AskMike” hashtag: a form of direct engagement with the city’s government that would have been almost unheard of even a few years ago. The city’s NotifyNYC alert service, which sends users notifications about serious events like fires, road closures and other emergencies, is also reachable on Twitter now, said Sterne, as is the 311 service that allows citizens to notify government about potholes and other issues. There’s also a public map of all the reports from the past five days, with their status as resolved or unresolved, which Sterne called an exercise in “radical transparency.”

The city also has recently launched a couple of new efforts that involve partnerships with outside agencies, said Sterne — including a joint venture between the parks department and a service called Broadcastr, which allows users to listen to audio walking tours of various popular spots, as well as a partnership with a service called ChangeByUs that’s designed to create “a collaborative platform for communities to share ideas for making a better city,” Sterne said. The site is also set up to connect people who use the site with resources within the city government who can “help cut through some of the red tape.”

New York City isn’t the only metro region to experiment with social media or open data. Governments in cities throughout North America have begun to open up much of their data, and some mayors, such as New Jersey’s Cory Booker, have become well-known for engaging with citizens through Twitter. And some are taking the idea of transparency even further than the Big Apple. Philadelphia’s City Controller has launched an iPhone app called Philly Watchdog designed to let residents snap photos of city staff who are engaged in fraud or abuse of city resources and send them to the Controller’s office.

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user Nathan Siemers

The Nokia X3-02 Touch And Type Boasts A 5 Mega Pixel Camera

Nokia X3-02 Touch And Type is a unique device: it features a touchscreen, but it retains a numeric keypad. It offers very good functionality levels for everyday use, and comes with several bells and whistles you would expect to find in many more expensive smartphones such as a digital camera and Wi-Fi internet browsing.

Its chassis is metal with the battery lid made out of brushed metal, thus the phone itself is very lightweight, yet sturdy and well put together. The phone has a 2.4 inch QVGA screen and a usable keypad with good keys. Of course, it is a compromise: the screen is resistive, which doesn't enable the use of multitouch, but it is decent and good for its purpose, working without hiccups or lag. The keypad has an unusual layout with the dedicated buttons running on the top row of the pad. It isn't charged via microUSB, but it has a port for that. There is a microSD-slot, and the phone accepts cards up to 16 GB.

The Nokia X3-02 Touch And Type uses Symbian S40, which is highly functional, and great for everyday use. The keypad and the touchscreen work together perfectly, with nice icons and text on the screen. The OS supports widgets, shortcuts and themes, so users have some control over the customisation aspect of the UI. The launcher is widely customisable. There are preloaded apps, including Nokia Messaging Service enabling POP/IMAP mailing, there is Ovi chat, the app store Ovi Store, and there is of course Opera Mini.

Despite being a relatively small screen, websites are still displayed perfectly, with text appearing crisp and readable, whilst images are clear with good colour rendering.

The camera boasts 5 megapixels, which is surprising for a device with such a modest price tag, with QVGA-resolution video at 30 FPS, or VGA-quality at 15, offering an alternative to still images.

Social networking is an important part of many mobile phone users' lives nowadays, and the Nokia X3-02 Touch And Type caters for this need, with FaceBook and Twitter apps, two of the most popular social networking sites in the world. Also, many people view their phone as a fashion statement these days, and Nokia has cleverly provides several different colour schemes of the handset. These include White Silver, Dark Metal, Petrol Blue, Pink and Lilac. Therefore, a colour variant to suit most tastes is sure to be found.

The Nokia X3-02 Touch And Type is an affordable option, but makes a great choice if you are looking for a phone with the capabilities to carry out everyday functions with ease.

The Excellent LG Optimus One Provides A 3.15 Mega Pixel Camera

The LG Optimus One is essentially an entry-level Android device that is relying more than ever on well thought-through software to appeal to possible customers. The word entry level may conjour up the wrong image, and in reality it boasts a spec list that many of its rival devices would be proud of.

It has a 600 MHz Qualcomm processor, which propels a 3.2 inch capacitive screen through 512 MB of RAM, and lets you take pictures through a 3.1 MP autofocus camera. The camera does a wonderful job of taking still images. They are of surprisingly high quality, as 3.1 megapixels may not sound much on paper, but the results will be a pleasant surprise to many. As an added bonus, the camera can also shoot video footage as an alternative to still images.

Social networking is not overlooked, as this is a major consideration for most people when choosing a new smartphone. The LG Optimus One provides apps for FaceBook and Twitter. It has three physical buttons, a nicely fitting battery compartment cover. Some smartphone connoisseurs may find the construction basic, but it does the job it was intended to do, and for the price of this phone, it is surprisingly durable and feels well constructed in your hand.

The phone functions well. Calls sound fine, with little to no interference on either party.

The software is Froyo (2.2.1), so it does have all that other Froyo phones have: the upgraded Sense UI, Leap etc. LG threw in some nice widgets and added DivX support, and some tweaks to the UI. There is no Flash support, but there is Thinkfree Office. Of course, 3G and Wi-Fi connections are on hand to grant users a speedy and reliable internet connection, and caters for several messaging formats including SMS, MMS, Email, push Email and IM.

Whilst the processor within the LG Optimus One is only a 600 MHz unit, it does perform well. It provides decent speeds of the user interface, with a nice, fluid movement when scrolling through menus or websites.

All in all, LG's Optimus One offers a fantastic introduction to the Android OS, and provides some very nice hardware. If you are a smartphone newbie, or on a limited budget you cannot go far wrong with this unit. The functionality of Froyo is made available to the masses with the LG Optimus One, and the device is ideally placed to win over many new converts to the operating system, who may have previously been loyal to other smartphone brands.

A Look Around The Fantastic Nokia X7

Nokia are probably the most established mobile phone manufacturer going, with hundreds of handsets produced over two decades. In that time we have seen the firm release basic handsets, phones for the business users, devices that focus on design and top end models. With the new X7 we see a handset that is very difficult to categorise. Yes it is a smartphone but not one with jaw dropping specification and yes it is stylish but not so drastically different that people will buy on design alone. It is one of those handsets that will appeal to a certain segment of the market and in this case that segments is the video users and gamers who want a powerful phone that offers HD capabilities.

This high definition quality that we talk off can be achieved thanks to the X7 offering a high quality screen that can display an impressive resolution of 640 x 360 pixels with over 16 million colours thrown in to the equation as well. Another big factor behind the quality of the screen is the use of AMOLED technology in this model when many of the phones rivals are opting for LCD. The issue with LCD is that it offers poor viewing angles and viewing in sunlight thanks to its reliance upon a back light. AMOLED is made up of hundred of tiny lights and thus offers improved viewing angles and better general performance, especially in bright conditions. With a screen of this quality a great video playback package is essential to show it off to its full potential and the X7 certainly does not disappoint. Amongst the wide array of video formats that are accepted is DivX, a format known for its high quality, alongside more well known codecs such as MP4 and xVid.

The Nokia X7 is not only great for watching films and downloaded content, the large screen makes it ideal for watching television services direct from the net. Using one of the many connection methods on offer, the handset can allow you to watch content from sites such as BBC iPlayer and CNN. Another area of entertainment which is impressive is gaming, where thanks to the excellent online store provided users are spoilt for choice with a massive range of games available for download. These cover all genres from classic games such as Monopoly to best sellers such as the Angry Birds series. Actual performance on gaming is impressive with no noticable lag and the touchscreen seeming extremely responsive.

The Nokia X7 will prove a huge hit with a younger audience whilst proving a good option for any other user looking for a middle of the road smartphone with modern looks and great features.

The Excellent Blackberry Torch Blends A Touchscreen With A Qwerty Keypad

The success of the Android platform in the mobile phone market along with the huge popularity of the Apple iPhone has caused RIM to rethink their strategy with regards to their Blackberry range of handsets. These phones were once the corporate mans companion, but have now been geared up to appeal to a slightly more mainstream market without losing any of the appeal that made them a favorite with the business user. The best example of this revamp is the new Blackberry Torch a model combining the well known physical keypad with a new high quality touchscreen.

When you pick up the device for the first time the phone instantly feels like a quality and well constructed device as you come to expect from a Blackberry. At 161 grammes in weight the phone feels sturdy but at the same time the weight does not hinder the phone in any way. In order to incorporate the 3.2 inch display the Qwerty keypad has had to be located on a new slider mechanism hidden behind the screen. This is the major talking point about this new model and has a couple of huge advantages. Firstly it enables the phone to be used purely via the touchscreen for general duties such as taking a call or surfing the web, with the keypad only being deployed to compose a message or an e mail. This also helps to keep the overall dimensions of the phone down to just 111 x 62 x 14.6mm, a size small enough to appeal to the youth market where factors such as size are crucial.

The Blackberry Torch comes with a wealth of multimedia features that ensure that the phone is a capable camera and portable music player. With regards to taking a photograph the Torch offers a high quality image of 5 mega pixels which breaks down into a 2592 x 1944 resolution. The results are pleasing with images captured in daylight and for photos taken in lower lighting conditions the phone benefits from an LED flash. As an audio player the phone offers a 3.5mm headphone jack together with 4GB of internal storage which means plenty of space for your music collection.

The Blackberry Torch may well prove the perfect crossover handset to take the brand the the lucrative youth market thanks to its modern looks, great media facilities and excellent social networking features.

The Great HTC Desire HD Teams A Super Screen With Unrivalled Sound

HTC have followed up their best selling Desire handset with a model geared towards multi media fans in the form of the new Desire HD. Sporting a bigger screen and a newer version of the Android operating system the phone looks to continue the success that the original Desire enjoyed.

It seem only right when looking at this new model that we give plenty of attention to the excellent on board multi media features. Regardless of whether you are watching a movie or listening to music the phones loudspeakers are a cut above the usual mobile phone affair. This sound quality can be attributed to two sound enhancement features that enable these tiny speakers to punch well above their weight. These are Dolby Mobile and SRS Surround. Dolby is a name that has become synonymous with high quality sound and this enhancement helps give a depth to the sound that would normally not be possible. SRS Surround works in a similar manner but by widening the sound to make it appear a if it is coming from speakers placed much further apart, thus improving the stereo effect. There will obviously be times when using the speakers is not practical, and therefore the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone socket enables the user to use a wide range of headphones with this phone.

It is not only the audio side of things that excel on the HTC Desire HD but visual the phone is outstanding. Much of this quality is down to the high standard of screen used on the phone. At 4.3 inches the display is the largest currently available on any mobile handset and teams this large size with a super high resolution of 480 x 900 pixels which means whatever material you are viewing on the phone looks crystal clear. The screen uses LCD technology and a capacitive touch sensitive panel which responds well to the slightest touch. The screen come into its own when using the phone to view movies and numerous codecs can be handled by the handset with usual suspects such as MP4 teamed with lesser used varieties such as WMV9 and the high quality DivX.

The HTC Desire HTC takes the features and functionality that you come to expect from a high end smartphone and throws a large screen into the equation. The result is a handset that remains streamline but comes into its own for activities such as watching movies and gaming.

Google Nexus Smartphones

NEXUS ONE SMARTPHONE

Nexus One, Google's flagship Smartphone manufactured by HTC Corporation that became available on 5th January 2010 implements the Android open source mobile operating system.

Special features:

• Ability to transcribe voice to text.
• Noise suppressing dual microphones.
• Voice guided turn-by-turn navigation to drivers.

Other features include:

• 3.7" OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colours.
• Hosts of Google applications
• 1400mAH battery with 10 hrs of talk time and a standby time of 290 hrs.
• 5MP camera with flash Google announced on 16th July 2010 that it would no more continue to sell

Nexus One via its web store but continue to sell through retail stores and other channel partners, primarily because it felt that consumers prefer hands-on experience of phone before making the purchase.

NEXUS S SMARTPHONE

Nexus S is the next Smartphone in the Nexus series that has been designed by Google and manufactured by Samsung. It is the first Smartphone to use Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" Operating System, as well as, the first Android device to support near field communication (NFC) in both hardware and software.

This is the second attempt on the part of Google to work with a manufacturer to produce a phone (Nexus one - HTC; Nexus S - Samsung). The phone was officially announced by Google on 6th December 2010 and was available on 16th December in the US and on 22nd December in the UK.

Special features:

• Gingerbread pre-installed
• One of the fastest phones in the market with 1GHz Humming Bird processor coupled with 16 GB of internal memory.
• Front facing (VGA 640x480) and rear facing (5MP) cameras with auto focus and flash.
• 4" WVGA contoured display with curved glass screen.

HTC Announce The Salsa And ChaCha - The Eagerly Anticipated Facebook Phones

With the abundance of social networking enthusiasts, it was only a matter of time before a phone aimed specifically at this market was released. And which better company to do the honours than HTC? The Taiwanese firm has gone from strength to strength in the last couple of years, and has released not one, but two smartphones aimed specifically towards social networkers.

The HTC ChaCha features a QWERTY keyboard for fast text input; this makes updating your status or carrying out a live conversation with Facebook char a breeze. The second handset is called the HTC Salsa. Rather than a physical keyboard, this handset boasts a large touchscreen. Therefore, between the two, all bases are covered. Whether you prefer a touchscreen or a physical keyboard, HTC has the handset for you.

What exactly does this brace of new smartphones offer to make them so appealing to social networkers? One of the main and certainly most talked about features is the physical Facebook shortcut key. This is on hand to offer instant access to the world's biggest social networking site. As with the Facebook app which is available on so many operating systems, your login details are saved, so there is no need to enter your email address and password to access your account.

One of the cool features of the Facebook button is that is will glow when you are browsing content that can be shared. For example, is you are listening to music on the phone, the button will glow indicating that you can share it with your Facebook contacts by posting it on your own wall, or on the wall on an individual contact. When the button is glowing and you want to share the content, simply tap the button and away you go. Additionally, it will also glow if there is an update available on your Facebook account; a new message in your inbox, an event invitation or a comment on your status will be indicated by the glowing button.

Aside from the many convenient and impressive features of the Facebook button and integration, both phones of course, also deliver in all the other aspects of their specification sheets. The HTC Salsa comes with a 5.4 inch touchscreen, comprehensive multimedia compatibility, and all the other bells and whistles you would expect from a new Android smartphone. The HTC ChaCha has a Qwerty keyboard along with equally impressive specifications; both handsets boasts a 5 megapixel camera (with the ability to instantly share photos and videos on Facebook, naturally) and the latest version of the Android operating system, version 2.4 aka Gingerbread.

The presence of the new Android software indicated that these new handsets are no gimmick. Whilst the appeal is there for the millions of Facebook users, the fact that the manufacturer has used the latest version of Google's software shows us that the specifications, and no doubt the user experience of the HTC Salsa and the HCT ChaCha are nothing short of exceptional.

The Impressive Nokia E6 Comes With An 8 Mega Pixel Digital Camera With Hd Video Capture

The demand for a wide variety of smart phones is endless. Smart phone companies are constantly trying to outdo the competition on a seemingly weekly basis. Some of the bigger name brand phone manufacturers release several phones each year, but not every one of them is a huge success. For Nokia, they have never been a company that is compared with the top of the line phones, but they are steadily increasing the quality of their products, and people are starting to take notice. One of their newest phones is the Nokia E6. It resembles a Blackberry device somewhat and is designed for both business and everyday use.

The first thing users need to know about the Nokia E6 is the quality of all of the features that are on it, such as the screen quality, camera quality and internal memory. The screen resolution of this phone is 640 by 480 pixels, and it has a screen size of 2.46 inches. This type of screen may not be the best for watching high-definition movies, but it will provide enough screen space to view emails and websites easily. The camera on the phone has an 8 megapixel resolution, which is more than adequate for taking photographs high quality photographs and filming video footage in HD (720p). The memory of the phone has 8 GB of internal memory and can be expanded to 32 GB with a separate microSD card. Therefore, MS Office files as well as multimedia such as music and videos can be stored within the device.

There are features on the Nokia E6 that make it a great phone for business users. The Microsoft business apps that are available on the phone are the main reason that the majority of users would want to make the purchase. With Microsoft Outlook, users have access to emails, contacts and calendars all from their phone. The phone can also create and edit Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and power point presentations without the need for a computer. The advantages of this are endless and having access to all of these features make this one of the best phones for people that are always travelling and do not always have access to a computer.

Having access to email all social networking sites are also an important feature of the Nokia E6. Users will have full access to all of their email accounts all in one location, and they will be able to get all the information from Facebook and Twitter on their home screen. Having these features makes owning this phone more convenient because it saves a lot of time and hassle from logging in to each site separately.

Overall, the Nokia E6 is one of the best phones that a business user can buy. It offers almost every feature that this particular demographic could want, especially if they travel often. The added bonus of several different colour schemes of the phone adds appeal to the style conscious user.

ZTE Fires Back at Huawei in Chinese IP Showdown

It seems like just yesterday that Chinese telecom ZTE was stuck on the defensive end of multiple IP suits filed by rival Huawei Technologies in France, Germany and Hungary. In fact, it was yesterday.

Today, ZTE responded with a lawsuit of its own. The company announced it is suing Huawei in China for patent infringement over its own fourth-generation LTE wireless technologies. The company is demanding Huawei stop the patent infringement and pay damages. (The release did not mention the data card technology that is part of the basis for Huawei’s suit.)

ZTE also indicated the home-turf lawsuit was just the beginning of a more global legal blitz. “There will also be a series of legal actions taken globally to protect ZTE’s rights on intellectual properties, ensuring its legitimate rights and interests will not be compromised,” the company said in a statement.

Image courtesy of Flickr user dpape

Comparing The Differences Between The HTC Wildfire And The Exciting Wildfire S

HTC has been going from strength to strength in recent years, with some of the most innovative and indeed best selling smartphones on the market. Since they teamed up with Google's Android software, sales have exploded. The HTC Wildfire is one of their more popular models.

This was essentially an entry level Android smartphone, but still contained a spec list which would be the envy of many more expensive smartphones. Since the success of the Wildfire, there have been several innovations in smartphone technology; improved internet browsing, updated Android operating systems, improved screen resolutions and higher resolution cameras. The HTC Wildfire S is geared to taking advantage of this technology whilst sticking to the winning formula that the manufacturer came up with in the original HTC Wildfire.

The HTC Wildfire is one that is very affordable and offers decent features to users. While it may not be the most high-tech phone on the market, users will enjoy all of the features that they are given access to. The basic specs of the HTC Wildfire are slightly different from the newer HTC Wildfire S. On the HTC Wildfire, the screen size is 3.2 inches and has a resolution of 240 by 320 pixels. The HTC Wildfire S has the same screen size and has a screen resolution of 3220 by 480 pixels. Each one of the phones has a reasonable resolution, and both phones will be good enough for watching high-definition videos on.

Some of the other minor changes between the two phones are the processor speeds, memory and battery life. For the HTC Wildfire, users will have a 528 MHz processor with 384 MB of RAM, and a battery life of 490 minutes of talk time. The HTC Wildfire S has a 600 MHz processor with 512 MB of RAM, and 350 minutes of talk time. The small changes to the overall functionality of the phone will make the Wildfire S more capable of handling larger tasks, such as loading HD content.

Aside from the differences, both handsets come with the renowned HTC Sense user interface. This allows users to create multiple homescreens which are highly customisable. The User interface adds somewhat of a second dimension to the experience of the phone. The added compatibility for widgets is a great feature that allows users to enjoy the full experience of the phone. Overall, both phones are great, but the HTC Wildfire S has a more up to date spec list.

Microsoft, Sell More Phones if You Want Dev Support

Microsoft unveiled a new set of tools for iOS developers to help them port their apps over to Windows Phone 7, part of an ongoing attempt to court developers to its new mobile operating system. The new package, including an API mapping tool, adds to an already strong set of developer resources, and shows the company is serious about building momentum for the platform. But to really catch up in this game and significantly bump up developer support, Microsoft needs more than tools. It needs to sell more phones.

The company has still not fully come clean fully on how many Windows Phone 7 units it’s sold, and declined to share the information in its earnings report this week. The company said in January that it has sold 2 million licenses to manufacturers but it’s still hard to know how many devices Microsoft has put in the hands of consumers. What we do know is that it’s doing a decent job getting apps into its Marketplace, with some 15,000 now available. That was boosted initially by Microsoft opening up its wallet for big name apps. But the platform is on pace to outgrow BlackBerry App World and Nokia’s Ovi store in the next year.

But for Microsoft to build momentum and close the gap on Apple and Google, it needs to show developers that there’s money to be made on its platform. And that means a sizable and fast-growing installed base. Right now, even with some extra tools, developers won’t rush to support Windows Phone 7 because there are better uses for their resources in building apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets.

That’s the picture we got from the latest Appcelerator/IDC developer survey, which found that developer support dropped from 36 percent for Windows Phone 7 in January to 29 percent in April. Windows Phone 7 still managed to become the third most popular platform after iOS and Android because BlackBerry dropped more sharply. But it underscores the hurdles that these other platforms face in trying to be a solid No. 3 challenger. Unless you have a lot of sales momentum and money-making potential, time is better spent on iOS and Android. The developer survey found that 62 percent felt it was impossible to catch up to Apple and Google while another 46 percent said they had their hands full with iOS and Android.

Now, this is not say that Microsoft shouldn’t put out better developer resources. The new mapping tool is a step in the right direction, helping iOS developers find their iOS API calls and easily look up the equivalent classes, methods and notification events for Windows Phone 7. It’s still limited right now to three categories of APIs. But Microsoft said it will eventually expand the scope of its tools and is working to bring the same resources to Android. I think this can still help with some developers looking to dabble in WP7 and some that have the extra resources and time. But unless these tools get a lot more robust and make porting vastly easier, don’t expect this fuel a developer bonanza. The real momentum swing will happen when developers sense they can’t afford not to invest in Windows Phone 7. And so far, Microsoft hasn’t proven that to them.

What Do Don Draper and GitHub Have In Common?

In a recent blog post, Justine Musk, a well-known fantasy writer facing the challenge of writing a more mainstream novel, quoted Sir Ken Robinson: “You don’t know who you are until you know what you can do.”

That statement reminded me of a recent email conversation with some friends about the differences between education and learning. The big argument was the modern institutionalized education is packaging of certain lessons, classes and ideas, adopted for the median and predictable. Many of us felt that modern institutionalized education just packages certain lessons, classes and ideas, but in the end, what really comes in handy is what we learn along the way.

What I was taught in school and college has had little or no bearing on what I do for a living — that is, write. Sure, I learned grammar from my schoolteachers, but I learned how to tell stories after reading countless novels. Reporting skills came from reading magazines and newspapers. My Chemistry major may have helped me understand the properties of Indium Phosphide, but it has had little bearing on my ability to write about the business of semiconductors. All that, came from what they call pounding the pavement.

Lucky for me, when it came to getting a job, none of my editors cared what school I went to — all they wanted to know was if I could report and get them decent, clean copy that didn’t require too much editing. As my clippings file grew, the college degree became less relevant. Today, when I evaluate someone for a particular job, his or her degree is a lot less relevant to me. What matters most is the journey they have taken and what they can do as a result.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not dismissing the value of fundamentals one learns in school. I’m arguing that we need to put more weight on one’s demonstrable capabilities than college degrees. This “experience” in the past used to make up a big portion of our resume. With the emergence of Internet as a platform, we are entering a phase where these capabilities will be on full display for others to see.

Whether it is from sharing designs, photos or links through Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, we are defining our reputation and identity. My colleague Mathew Ingram called it the web of reputation. Simply put, we are what we share. Is this behavior mainstream? Not now. Will it be? Absolutely.

As a result, the resume will become more than a mere sheet of paper, listing your previous gigs, schools you attended and degrees you got. I am not naive enough to believe that this is going to impact sectors that need says manufacturing expertise and precision, say making airplane parts, but it could help someone blogging about aeronautical designs stand apart. As our society starts to shed its industrial past and transforms itself into an Internet-enabled economy, one’s proven abilities will determine one’s hire-ability.

The GitHub Revolution

The technology sector, for sure, is at the forefront of this change. “Half of the people who work for GitHub don’t have college degrees,” said Tom Preston-Werner, founder of GitHub, an online repository that now boosts over 1.93 million git software repositories and counts over 680,000 members. “A commit (of code) to GitHub matters lot more to us than the resume.” Why? Because it is not about one’s educational pedigree, instead it is “proof of one’s capabilities.”

Preston-Werner, who in his past life created Gravatar, the web-based visual identity tool, is a firm believer that a programmer’s contributions to open-source projects is a better way to judge talent than skimming through 100 resumes. He believes that one’s weblog tells more about a person’s thinking capabilities than their college degrees. Tom is not alone. I know of a dozen startup founders who regularly spend time on GitHub, looking for engineers and programmers they can add to their team.

Like Github, another online community where capabilities count higher than pedigree is Dribbble, where designers both new and established share their creations. So far it has been in beta, but the service is opening its doors soon and it has the potential of helping designers show off their design skills, a far more important factor when it comes to hiring a designer, whether full time or for a project. The peer-reviews and comments from other designers are only going to help evaluate the design talent more effectively.

The brainchild of Dan Cederholm, a web designer who has worked for Google, MTV, Blogger and ESPN, Dribbble is described as a site by creatives for creatives. It has become a favorite hunting ground for web and mobile startups to find up-and-coming design talent.

And if you were thinking that this was a tech-only phenomenon, think again. Soundcloud is a German startup that allows musicians to create and share their music online and interact with fans directly. There are a lot of new artists who are going to be discovered because of this new service.

New Century, New Music

Forget these examples and let’s take a 360-degree view of our Internet-enabled economy. Quora, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley is essentially a peer-reviewed knowledgebase. By asking the right question and responding to a question with a thoughtful answer, it is fairly easy for others to assess one’s capabilities.

Today, schools teach us old marketing and sales methodologies that work for an industrialized economy. Now imagine selling soda in this new world where media is not radio, newspapers and television but instead is represented by Facebook, Twitter, iPad and Android phones. Try selling to a crowd that believes anytime (anywhere, on any device) is prime time using the old techniques developed for mass media.

I am not surprised that Madison Avenue and traditional media companies are struggling to find a way to embrace the current shift from many unique means of distribution to a single network. The new medium needs someone who has the ability to leverage the Internet scale but also have a micro-focus at the same time.

The marketing whiz of tomorrow cannot get by with the skills of today’s marketing gurus. Instead, what brands would need are what some experts have called a growth hacker whose job is to use the networks, find growth and turn it into revenues and profits. There are no playbooks for this role.

One thing is for sure — you are not going to find him or her in a school taking a class for this stuff? Why, because educational “packages” of today are much slower to respond to this rapidly changing world. I would argue, that the next Don Draper is likely to be found on Twitter rather than on a college campus or on Madison Avenue.

Quixey Looks to Make App Discovery More Natural

With the flood of mobile, desktop and web apps facing consumers, the battle is increasingly turning to how to help users discover the right apps for them. Quixey, a new start-up backed by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, is throwing its hat into the ring of those looking to make the discovery process easier, by allowing users to simply say what they’re looking to do and then use that info to generate app recommendations for multiple platforms. The company just announced $400,000 in seed funding from Innovation Endeavors and Archimedes Ventures.

Quixey, which is in private beta, bills itself as a “functional” search engine because it doesn’t require users to know an app’s name or provide a good description of an existing app. Users can write in actions they’re trying to do such as “mix music” or “find cheap gas” and Quixey pulls up a list of results for Android, iPad and iPhone as well as recommendations for Windows, Mac, Explorer, Firefox and the web.

The results are still a work in progress. In trying it out, I found some queries worked relatively well, allowing me to use a more natural language approach to finding the appropriate app. It’s nice to see the results span so many platforms, too, because sometimes you just want to find the best way to handle a problem, no matter the device. But it still needs some fine tuning. When I asked, “give me local restaurant recommendations,” I got some good suggestions for Where and Hunch Local, but also one for a local guide for Cancun. A similar search, “get local recommendations,” pulled up a similar guide for Monterey, Calif.

Now to be sure, services such as Chomp and Appsfire can already pull up results for many user queries, though they’re not always set up to answer more specific action-oriented requests or longer queries like Quixey does. I expect that, over time, they will incorporate these types of search requests, which may undercut the value of Quixey down the line.

But overall, it’s good to see more innovation in the app discovery space. There is still a disconnect for some people in getting to the apps that will help them the most. ComScore reported that only 36.6 percent of smartphone users used apps in February, despite the fact there are hundreds of thousands available on iOS and Android. Apps stores and discovery engines are doing a good job in refining the process, taking a user’s existing app libraries to suggest recommendations. But there’s more work to be done to simplify the process of helping users find the right app that fits a specific need at the time.

The Mountain View Calif.-based start-up, founded by Tomer Kagan and Liron Shapira, will officially debut at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York next month.

Forget Netflix. E-book Publishers Need a Hulu

For all its growth, the e-book market has been stillborn in one major way: monetizing itself. But recent news that a Spanish company called 24Symbols went into beta on a an e-book service, which includes both ad-supported and subscription options, shows that maybe digital publishing could truly be evolving from a one-trick pony into a showhorse.

Unlike online video, music and video games, e-books only really put money into the publisher’s pocket through sell-through. The other content types offer many payment methods for consumers: rental, subscription, ad-supported and sales. Add in windowing, and the sophistication (and overall revenue opportunities) are much more ample in markets like video.

For the last year, however, some have started to think maybe e-books could start to emulate other content models. There’s been talk of ad-supported e-books, while others have looked at subscription-based e-book plans, or what some have called Netflix for e-books.

Some have called 24Symbols the arrival of Spotify for e-books, since it embraces a freemium model of both ad-support for the casual user and subscription plans for those willing to pay for all-you-can-eat access. That makes sense. Looking at both Netflix and Spotify as models for e-book monetization is a great idea because, as I’ve written before, the more ways you package your content, the more customers you’ll have.

But instead of a Spotify, or Netflix, for e-books, I think what the e-book industry really needs is a Hulu.

What does Hulu for e-books mean? Book publishers themselves should get together like NBCU, Fox and Disney did and begin to offer their content — or at least some of their content — in both ad-supported and subscription offerings.

OK, you ask, why should they do that and not just let, say, Google or Amazon do it instead? Unless I’m wrong, publishers are the only ones with big enough rights libraries of both new and catalog titles to package up in a variety of ways to make this idea interesting. And in an agency-model world, booksellers like Amazon can’t adjust pricing as they see fit, only the publisher can (which is why I have my doubts about startups like 24Symbols).

Some publishers, like Disney, have offered subscriptions for their own e-book library, but to reach the million-subscriber level you need true scale, particularly in title count. And only a collective of big publishers could do that.

And why shouldn’t they? Digital publishing is fast becoming the wild west where, as Barry Eisler showed a few weeks ago, it’s every man for himself. When you’re flanked on one side by Amazon and on the other by mutinous authors, maybe it’s time to take your destiny into your own hands.

For more analysis on the new methods of monetization in the e-book market, see my Weekly Update at GigaOM Pro.

Image courtesy of: flickr user priittammets

How The New Operating System Benefits The Fantastic Samsung Omnia 7

Since the release of the best selling Galaxy S, Samsung have seen their reputation grow in the mobile technology field, similar to the boost they have also received in the home entertainment market where their televisions are currently the best selling in the UK. With the launch of the Omnia 7 handset, they are hoping to corner yet another area of the mobile market, the relatively new Windows 7 field where there are currently several handset vying for top position. The question on many users lips however will be why should I change from Android to Windows 7, so lets take a look at what this new operating system from Microsoft has to offer.

In terms of specification of the models on offer, the Omnia 7 does not differ greatly from other models such as the HTC HD7 thanks to Microsoft setting some minimum specification standards that all handsets must adhere to such as a 1Ghz processor and no removable storage. In terms of the interface itself, there are some really positive elements that make this new system a very attractive proposition for all phone users. Take web browsing for example, the Omnia 7 features the latest mobile version of internet explorer. Like on the home PC version, the browser supports tabbed browsing, and up to six pages can be loaded in parrallel, enabling you to easily flick between different web pages. Another boost for these facilities is that Adobe have also announced that Flash 10.1 will be released for Windows 7 mobiles, meaning websites with flash content can easily be viewed on the phone, something sadly missing from Apples iPhone line up. And the beauty of this system being developed by Microsoft is that the developers are continually working on improvements, at present that is in the form of a mobile Internet Explorer 9, complete with full Javascript and HTML Support.

So we have established that the Samsung Omnia 7 is a wise choice for anybody looking for a great online experience, but what else does WM7 offer us. Well the majority of handsets are used extensively for SMS text messaging or e mail composition, thus text input is an important area for any operating system to focus on. The keyboard on this model is both responsive and well spaced out, with the large screens found on these models very beneficial in this department, the display on the Omnia 7 measures 4 inches. Predictive text is surprisingly good, and should you complete your message and find you want to change a specific word, simply tapping on it will bring up a list of alternatives or give you the option to change it completely. The younger users will appreciate the Emoticon key, which when pressed reveals a number of symbols and characters you can insert for an added element of fun.

The Samsung Omnia 7 really does appeal thanks to two major factors, firstly the excellent operating system which really does breathe a breath of fresh air into the mobile industry, but also thanks to the excellent screen which sets this model apart from other phones running on this system.

How Zynga Is Playing to Win With Wonderland

Zynga has continued its apparently unending quest to buy every small games studio in existence, with the announcement it’s purchasing British-based outfit Wonderland, which is being rebranded as Zynga Mobile UK.

It’s just the latest in a series of deals for Zynga, which is currently averaging around one buy every month. Wonderland had made a couple of popular iPhone games, including the hit Godfinger. That game, however, isn’t part of this agreement. So why do this deal, and why now?

Mostly, Wonderland offers Zynga a wealth of high-end experience in making “proper” games. Given Zynga’s reliance on gaming mechanics that seem to treat users like hamsters running on a wheel, plenty of people are sniffy about its actual gaming credentials. (Here’s a piece from gaming blog Kotaku asking, ludicrously, “Is Zynga a Video Game Company?”).

Buying Wonderland gives it a lot more muscle in that department: Wonderland’s founders, Matthew Wiggins and Mark Rose, are former employees of Lionhead, the studio set up by legendary Brit game designer Peter Molyneux. Lionhead is behind titles such as Fable and Black & White; other Wonderland employees came with backgrounds at other U.K. development hothouses like Codemasters and Bullfrog.

It also gives Zynga some more mobile knowhow. As the company tries to become less reliant on Facebook and branch out into new platforms, it’s important for it to understand how to get mobile right. Buying the team that developed a mobile smash is a quick way to get there.

The acquisition also gives Zynga a foothold in Britain, which is an important market. Of course, there’s the fact that the U.K. is a high-spending, smartphone-rich nation that loves social networking and games. But it’s also a huge talent pool Zynga can now tap into.

The country is one of the biggest hotbeds of gaming talent in the world — probably only surpassed by America’s West Coast, Japan’s dev scene and Vancouver, British Columbia — but it’s been troubled over the past few years. A number of British studios have shut down over the last couple of years — and from what people are telling me, there are also plenty of dissatisfied workers at the ones which remain. While reports of high-class developers begging for food on street corners in London would be greatly exaggerated, it’s true that there is plenty of talent available right now.

All of which means that this could be a hugely important strategic purchase, if Zynga plays it right.

Freemium Apps Boom, but New Hurdles Emerge

About 11 percent of all free games in Apple’s App Store have in-app purchase for virtual goods, currency and additional features. But these freemium apps have an outsized influence on the App Store, making up 40 percent of all free game downloads from the store in March, according to a new study by mobile app search firm Xyologic.

Xyologic, which indexes apps on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7, said in March there were 99.9 million downloads of free games in the App Store in the U.S., of which 39.9 percent were free games with in-app purchase. Overall, 8,017 iPhone apps offered in-app purchase, and 2,156 of them were freemium games. But despite only accounting for 10.8 percent of all free games, freemium titles made up 94 of the top 150 free iPhone games in March, or 63 percent. And they make up 42.17 percent of downloads within the top downloaded apps.

It’s a testament to the power of the freemium model, which has flourished in the last year, allowing developers to trade on consumer’s desires to download free apps while upselling them later on extras. But with Apple’s recent crack down on incentivized installs, the freemium boom may hit a wall, because many freemium apps used incentivized installed to drive downloads and make money.

Xyologic doesn’t actually track the number of apps that use cost-per-install campaigns. Those campaigns allow a consumer to gain virtual goods or currency in one app for downloading another. The developer who gains a new user pays a middleman, who shares the revenue with the original developer who offered the incentivized install in their app. This practice has been used by many app developers, particularly freemium app makers, to get into the top rankings, where they could enjoy more downloads. They basically paid for downloads and made it up on in-app purchases from users. But recently, Apple stepped in and started rejecting apps that use incentivized installs, citing rules that prohibit gaming of the rankings.

Now we’ll have to see what effect the enforcement will have on developers. I’ve talked to some developers who said they had to drop the incentivized install offers in their apps, which means less revenue. They hope they can make up for the shortfall with better display ads. Others are having to deal with the prospect of fewer downloads from cost-per-install campaigns. It will force some to focus on advertising through more traditional and more expensive display ads, but it could also prompt others to look to Android, said Xyologic.

While the effects of Apple’s crackdown are still being worked out, it’s clear companies that have relied on cost-per-installs on iOS are having to react. It likely won’t kill the freemium app boom, but it does force changes in the business models of many, and it requires app makers to focus more on quality and engagement than simply on downloads. It will also mean the pace of downloads could actually slow on the App Store. Apple’s goal was likely preserving the quality of its rankings by prohibiting incentivized installs, but the change could cut out a lot of downloads that came through cross-app marketing. Apple was already rejiggering the app store rankings to emphasize engagement, but downloads are still a part of the equation. Now, we could see apps heavily reliant on cost-per-installs fall in those rankings, which will also have a negative effect on revenue.

Yahoo Mail Outage: Is This Thing On?

Updated. Yahoo Mail seems to be down for a sizable chunk of users. A spokesman for the company confirmed the outage, saying, “Yahoo! Mail is currently inaccessible to some users. We are working to correct the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologize to our users who might be affected.”

The outage is yet another black mark against the company, which has been struggling with setbacks for some time now. Insiders have reportedly been whispering for months about how the shine has started to wear off of Yahoo’s tough-talking CEO Carol Bartz. Bartz joined the company to much fanfare in January 2009, but has since overseen layoffs, revenue declines, and a top-level executive brain drain. The company has also been shutting down or spinning off a number of properties, the most recent being the divestiture this week of social-bookmarking pioneer Delicious.

Update: According to a source with knowledge of the situation, less than 0.5 percent of all Yahoo Mail accounts are affected by the outage. If true, that accounts for some 1.3 million users, according to Yahoo’s most recent user stats.

And to be fair, Yahoo isn’t the only web giant that’s encountered email access problems. Gmail has had several notable blackouts. Some of Gmail’s glitches reportedly wiped out all the information in some users’ accounts (the information was later restored). Perhaps this would be a good time to revisit Simon Mackie’s excellent post earlier this year on how to back up your email accounts.

Is Yahoo Mail working for you? Let us know in the comments.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Instapaper

I don’t need every customer. I’m primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?

Marco Arment on his decision to discontinue the free versions of Instapaper, his save and read later application. I would say, $4.99 is a fair price for an app that adds so much daily value. More importantly, I admire Marco for taking this stand and doing what is right for his business and more importantly for his paying customers. Of course, his decision goes against the Freemium movement. I wonder if others will follow Arment’s example.

Chinese Gear Makers Huawei, ZTE Locked in IP Showdown

In a surprise attack against a fellow Chinese telecom, Huawei filed IP-violation suits against ZTE this morning in Germany, France and Hungary. Huawei is accusing the rival equipment vendor of violating several patents relating to its data card and Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G wireless networking technologies. The company also claims ZTE has been illegally using a Huawei-registered trademark on some of its data card products.

Huawei claims the suits were a last resort, filed only after ZTE failed to respond to cease and desist letters, and refused to come to the table for cross-patent licensing negotiations.

“As Huawei has neither received any substantive response nor a commitment from ZTE to stop its infringements, the company has had no alternative but to use legal means to protect its legal interests by requesting that the courts prohibit ZTE’s continued infringements of Huawei’s trade mark [sic] and patent rights,” the company said in a statement.

Huawei used this drawing to illustrate the ZTE infringement.

Meanwhile, ZTE responded to the paperwork with indignation, and surprise.

ZTE Corporation is astonished that Huawei Technologies has taken these legal actions. As a company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, ZTE respects and adheres to international intellectual property laws and regulations without reservation, and absolutely rejects that there has been any patent and trademark infringement. ZTE is always willing to negotiate on issues in good faith, but will definitely take vigorous legal action in situations like this to protect its interests and those of its customers worldwide.

Both Huawei and ZTE have experienced steady growth in the last few years selling cheaper telecommunications gear for both wired and wireless networks to developing and more recently, first-world countries. Huawei, in particular has been trying to move up market and shed its image as a low-end supplier with questionable IP practices, itself. Huawei’s move to defend its IP is likely part of a continuing emphasis it is placing on the value of its intellectual property.

But it may also be designed to assure Western countries worried about Huawei’s Chinese origins that it respects IP rights unilaterally. The suit also puts big telecom equipment vendors such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks on notice that Huawei believes it has some essential and valuable patents associated with LTE. This may force other vendors as well as handset makers into negotiations with Huawei.

It’s the latest move in Huawei’s somewhat ironic lawsuit blitz. In January, the company sued Motorola Solutions from selling its wireless network business to Nokia Siemens Networks, because the sale would transfer trade secrets and competitive intelligence from the Chinese equipment firm to its competitor. Huawei and Motorola ended up settling their differences out of court.

Huawei said it filed these lawsuits as part of a broader effort to protect its intellectual property around the world. The company, which holds more than 49,000 patents, also carefully pointed out in its release on this lawsuit that it currently pays $222 million a year to other companies for cross-licensing agreements. I imagine now, it’s ready to get a little something of that back, and this represents its initial steps.

The Lies Social Networks Keep Telling Themselves

British developer Tom Hume recently went to hear a talk by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar — who famously posited that most humans can only handle around 150 social relationships — discuss his views on our ultramodern ways of staying in touch.

The session, titled “How Many Friends Does One Person Need?”, took a look through our lives and established that Dunbar’s number appears in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of places: in the military, in families and in business, for example. But aside from encouraging some fairly standard questions (does anyone really get value out of having 5,000 friends on Facebook?), it also prompted Hume to really examine what social services online are getting wrong.

As a result, he has outlined what he calls four “lies of social software:”  the set of assumptions almost every social service online makes, despite the fact that there is ample evidence that they’re wrong.

And they’re pretty bang on:

Your friends are equally important

Your friends are arranged into discrete groups

You can manage hundreds of friends

Friendship is reciprocal and equal

Almost every service offers you a way to make a connection with as many people as you want, and tools to help you categorize that connection into one of a few buckets. Many of us have started to adopt this way of managing our online friends, to try to eke some efficiency out of the system, but let’s be honest: Very few of us manage our lives in this way. We have siblings who are friends, and siblings who are not; we have co-workers we’d share intimate secrets with, and those we just can’t stand. We have friends who are closer to us than we want, and acquaintances who are further away than we’d like. In short, people are messy — and very few pieces of social software are able to reflect the complexity of real relationships.

When they do, they rarely get the credit they deserve. For example, I think one of Twitter’s great benefits was that it made the relationship between two users asymmetrical. I can follow anybody I like, but there is no real reason — besides a sort of social etiquette or the need for backchannel communication — for them to follow me back. That gives more power to celebrities and broadcasters, which can bring more new users in, and it also reduces the influence of spammers and makes the system more scaleable for different sorts of users. Your network can be pruned to be large, small, broadcast, narrowcast — precisely can choose who to follow without finding yourself overwhelmed.

Hume wonders whether, ultimately, we aren’t the ones holding things back:

Managing lists of friends is unpleasantly icky. I bet Google  or Facebook could take away much of the pain of creating these lists by analysing my flow of communications. I bet they could notice and prompt me to confirm changes (“you’re emailing Freda a lot at the moment — working late or is she a friend outside work nowadays?”). Perhaps the challenge is less technical and more how to present this to a privacy-concerned public;

Context-aware sociability is definitely possible. For all that people deride Google’s social efforts, for example, the company has shown with Gmail’s priority inbox feature that it can use our patterns of communication to determine what is actually important to us.

But I don’t think fear over our privacy is why we don’t let these companies in. In fact, we’ve been complicit in helping them erase privacy in many senses. Instead, I wonder whether it’s just that the laws of social networking are simply based on what others have done before.

In many ways Facebook is not a great deal more advanced than it was when SixDegrees and LiveJournal helped set the standard: and it still, by and large, subscribes to these same mistakes about how human relationships work.

Is it something that will ever be fixed?

Why Did PayPal Buy Fig Card? Find Out

The word is that once upon a time, eBay’s PayPal tried to buy Jack Dorsey’s Square. Knowing Dorsey’s ambition, it was obvious that wasn’t going to work out. What was clear though – PayPal knew that it had to get a piece of the non-web transaction business and jump on the big “people-to-people economy” trend that is starting to gain traction.

Today, the company announced it’s buying small Boston-based mobile-payment startup Fig Card, who’se founders Max Metral and Hasty Granbery will go to work for eBay’s Paypal division.

The FigCard frames itself as “a new way to use your fancy iPhone to pay for things”– (note – you can also use your fancy Android and select fancy Blackberry). Consumers download the app and use it at participating retail stores. Merchants accept the mobile payments in stores through a $5 USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. The cashier never sees the customer’s credit card number.

The acquisition fit’s into Paypal’s strategy to acquire  existing technology and talent to help build it’s mobile and platform businesses. In a blog post announcing the deal, Peter Chu, PayPal’s senior director of mobile, local and new ventures said Fig Card fit Paypal’s vision of a future that not separates payment from the PC.

We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal – in the future,  transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won’t need our physical wallets. We’ll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy.

Keith Rabois, who runs Square and was a key executive during the pre-eBay days at PayPal recently told us his company was “going after 26 million folks who are not merchants in a classic sense.” I guess, so does PayPal.

Engagement Wars: To Pull Users Back, Apps Push Notifications

Recently, the name of the game for developers has switched from downloads to engagement, as Android Market and Apple’s App Store tweaked their ranking rules and Apple in particular started cracking down on incentivized install campaigns. The takeaway for developers is that they need to build more quality into their apps and find more ways to engage users beyond the initial download.

That has increased the importance of mobile push notifications, which are poised to become even more vital tools for developers as they look to retain and engage users. Many developers already employ notifications to send out alerts, offers and remind users of updates. But now, the messages are taking on even more significance, because developers are being judged more on how often users are coming back to their apps. Android Market and Apple’s App Store both altered their app store ranking formula recently, apparently rewarding apps that have better regular use by users. Apple has also started rejecting apps that use cost-per-install ad campaigns, which was apparently targeted for manipulating the download numbers of apps that used it to gain users. Now with fewer tools to drive downloads, it becomes even more important to hold on to the users they have.

“2009 and 2010 were about the number of apps and downloads but it’s not about downloads anymore,” said Scott Kveton, CEO of Urban Airship, (see full disclosure below) a major push notification platform. “It’s more about the users who come back again and again. Even if it’s only 10 percent, that’s still huge. We’re still early on in the mobile game and getting users and engaging them is critical now.”

Retention Already a Challenge

Even before the app store changes, retention was already an issue for mobile developers. A study last year by Localytics found 26 percent of apps were only opened once. If you factor apps that were opened less than four times, the rate is 55 percent. But if you can get users to agree to notifications for things they care about, it can keep people coming back. Dictionary.com, for example, started pushing out notifications for its Word of the Day earlier this year and saw active usage grow by 6 percent.

That’s why it’s becoming critical to keep users involved in the app, because even a modest increase in usage means saving an app from abandonment and potentially making more money through advertising and in-app purchase. One obvious way is to just build a really good app. But with all the software on people’s phones — 48 apps on the average iPhone and 35 on Android devices — it’s still a challenge to get people to come back. Notifications, when used well, can keep a conversation going between an app maker and their customers. As Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures noted recently, if you have good notifications, it keeps users involved in more apps, even if the programs are buried on hidden screens or files. Notification inboxes can almost become the new home screen for users, who don’t have to delve into apps as often.

“I think notifications will become the primary way that we consume on the mobile device and may be the reason we move away from downloadable software and back to web-based software on our mobile devices.” Fred Wilson

Keep It Relevant

There are still a lot of pitfalls for utilizing notifications. If users aren’t prepared for the flow of messages, the notifications can quickly become seen as spam. At that point, consumers will either delete the app or turn off the notifications, which ends the chance to keep talking to that consumer. Kveton put together a white paper on the best practices of notifications recently, noting that developers need to get users to opt-in with a clear value proposition about why they’re being asked to receive them. Users need to be given ways to configure their notifications. And most importantly, developers need to figure out the best way to reach their users, which can be an art.

Jonathan George, CEO of Boxcar, a notification platform, said it’s all about understanding the threshold of users, and learning to stay within their limits. He said the majority of iOS users only get one message every three days. But it’s important to be mindful of what is too much and when is the best time. Apps that push out notifications at the same time every day might be missing out on opportunities to hit users when the message may be more relevant to what they’re doing. When it’s done right, with user consent and notifications that have value, it can strengthen the relationship between users and the app, he said.

“Because it’s opt-in, it’s like getting a card from your grandmother,” George said. “You know generally what it is, but you’re excited that it’s coming because it’s relevant to you.”

George said notifications are becoming a major marketing channel that can surpass SMS text messages. He said 25-30 percent of the time, users open notifications within the first 30 seconds, about twice as high as SMS messages. And it’s easier to measure the effectiveness of notifications because they can use rich analytics. Notifications can also be built with rich media, allowing for more appealing and effective messages.

Opportunities Abound

The growing popularity is opening up opportunities for Urban Airship, Boxcar and Xtify, another push notification service. Kveton said since launching in June 2009, Urban Airship is being used in 13,000 apps and has delivered 3 billion notifications, including almost 1 billion in the last quarter. Boxcar has built a notification inbox service developers can plug into, allowing users who download Boxcar to get notifications from multiple apps through a single manageable inbox. It’s an idea that works well especially on iOS, with its simple and sometimes annoying notification system. But it will likely be something we’ll see more fully fleshed out on all platforms as notifications grow in popularity. Even with the growth of notification services, there are still a lot of apps that don’t use push notifications, something these companies are looking to correct.

Xtify recently put out a new plug-and-play tool called Xtify Retain, a free self-service notification platform that allows developers to easily set notifications based on pre-configured times or after certain periods, such as a number of days after the app has been opened or last used. Josh Rochlin, CEO of Xtify said it’s all about helping developers keep customers, rather having to spend more money to get new ones. Already, 2,000 developers have downloaded the Retain SDK. Rochlin said Xtify made the Retain tool free and is looking to make money off of consultations, helping developers know when the best times are to reach users.

“The least expensive acquisition of a user is the one you save from the dead pool,” said Rochlin. “This is about keeping apps out of the dead pool.”

Disclosure: Urban Airship is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

It’s Time to Realize Our Location Concerns Aren’t Dumb

Steve Jobs may have tried to bat away concerns over the iPhone’s location data collection, but if you ever need a reminder why holding such information is something for public concern then look no further than Dutch navigation company TomTom.

It’s trying to weather the storm that has engulfed it since it emerged that the company was selling data about driving activity to police and local authorities. It’s anonymized data, but unsurprisingly, plenty of users are angry their movements have been used in this way, without their knowledge — something that happened, apparently, because personal navigation device makers are under pressure to keep up revenues as users started switching to GPS-enabled phones.

The news, first revealed by Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, has forced an apology from TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn. It has made him promise to stop this kind of thing from happening in the future. And it has led the company to insist the same process does not happen in other countries.

But whatever the eventual outcome of the revelation, there’s something about the apology that’s patronizing. TomTom doesn’t really say selling its customers’ data is wrong, but that it was caught is uncomfortable. The heart of it is in this part of the statement (my emphasis):

When you connect your TomTom to a computer we aggregate this information and use it for a variety of applications, most importantly to create high quality traffic information and to route you around traffic jams. We also make this information available to local governments and authorities. It helps them to better understand where congestion takes place, where to build new roads and how to make roads safer. […]

We are now aware that the police have used traffic information that you have helped to create to place speed cameras at dangerous locations where the average speed is higher than the legally allowed speed limit. We are aware a lot of our customers do not like the idea and we will look at if we should allow this type of usage.

Look at that line: “We are aware a lot of our customers do not like the idea”. That’s the same sort of refrain I sensed from Steve Jobs. Yes, we collect information, but if you’re annoyed, it’s because you don’t understand. If the last week or two of arguments about location privacy have shown us anything, it’s a certain sense of disdain from corporations toward their customers.

Nobody’s arguing that we wouldn’t all like to be safer on the roads. But it seems to me that the real problem with TomTom is the inherent conflict of interest in what it’s doing: TomTom collected the data (which is anonymized), then sold it to law enforcement, who use it to determine the best places to put speed cameras. But then, TomTom then charges its users €50 ($74.19 USD) a year to get warnings about where speed cameras are. They’re effectively building up a circle in which they play two sides against each other for profit.

That’s why people are annoyed. They feels there’s an injustice, or a potential for injustice.

Ryan wrote about why it’s important to come clean about location data. I suspect it’s time for companies to realize user concerns about location data aren’t simply because people don’t get it. It’s because they have a fundamental right to know how people are profiting from what they do.

Spotify CEO Denies Movie Streaming Plans

No it ain’t true. Media these days are funny. Soon I’ll be reading that Spotify is launching a space rocket.

Daniel Ek, co-founder, Spotify in a tweet this morning categorically denied that his company has any negotiations underway to stream movies in addition to music, as reported by Michael Arrington.

Spotify continues to negotiate with Facebook over its long promised U.S. launch. But that isn’t the only thing the music streaming service has been up to. They’ve negotiated a number of deals with major movie studios to offer users streaming movies as well as music, a source in the industry tells us

That said, it does seem like a pretty sweet idea.

The Outstanding HTC HD7 - Boasting Many Multimedia Applications

HTC seems to do a great job nowadays. From being relatively unknown a couple of years ago focussing on more niche devices, it has exploded onto the scene with some of the most technologically advanced smartphones available. The HTC HD7 is one of their latest, boasting the Windows Phone 7 operating system along with outstanding multimedia capabilities.

The HTC HD7 is being advertised as an entertainment device, and design-wise these claims are backed up. Apart from the massive display, there are two speakers on the side, rounded up by a metal band with the volume control, a camera button (getting you straight to the camera), and the power/lock key.

The HTC HD7 feels awesome to the touch, even though the back cover is made of plastic - you won't have to worry about fingerprints, and it does seem durable. You get a kickstand as well (built around the camera), enhancing the video-watching experience, together with its ergonomically well-founded curved design. Even though it's large, it is pocket friendly as well.

It does not have a microSD-slot, so the internal memory of 16 GB cannot be expanded any further. On the rare occasion that further storage may be required, help is at hand: cloud services coming with the phone can extend this storage capacity quite considerably. It does feel strange this phone looks significantly similar to HD2, but then again, Microsoft does have strict hardware requirements concerning devices willing to run WP7, so the reason might as well be out of HTC's reach.

Speaking of which, you cannot say enough times how well WP7 is put together. The speed, the reaction time, the accuracy, the overall well-oiled smooth feel to it makes it similar to other certain popular smartphone models. The second-generation Snapdragon processor does its work well, and we can't have asked for anything more. Naturally Windows Phone 7, being a new software may need the occasion tweak or upgrade, but upgrades are available, making the phone relatively future-proof.

The battery is an ample 1230 mAh, but considering that every smartphone more or less requires daily charging, and with normal usage the HD7 has no problem lasting for a day, while going easy on the usage can take you for two days straight.

The HTC HD7's camera does a way above average job, producing still images that look like they were taken by a pro. Video can be taken at 720 pixels, but that seems to be more or less the average for smartphones of this calibre. Nonetheless, HD capture is certainly an impressive attribute, and the resulting footage is of amazing quality.

All in all, the HTC HD7 is a solid all round performer, and excels at multimedia tasks. The large screen and multimedia functionality makes it easy to forget you are holding a phone in your hand. It encompasses everything good about smartphone technology, all rolled into one great looking handset.

The Impressive HTC Desire HD - Boasting Super Fast Wi-Fi Internet Connectivity

Some people may be put off buying a smartphone with larger dimensions. One of the more notable handsets which has this attribute is the HTC Desire HD. Let's take a look at the specifications of this powerful smartphone, and see if the benefits outweigh the cons.

The HTC Desire HD has a significant difference from its predecessor: its frame is unibody unlike the Desire's, and it is made out of aluminium thus providing a more durable and less fragile feel to it. With the enlarged, 4.3-inch WVGA screen of 800x480 pixels, it has a new, naturally ergonomic experience.

Taking a look inside, we will find a second-generation Snapdragon processor, smoothening our usage experience to an almost ridiculous level, but we will get to that in a bit. The CPU is supported by 768 MB of RAM, which is a lot, and it does enable you to do just about anything.

In terms of the display, having the screen at 4.3 inches rather than its predecessors 3.7, it makes browsing much easier. The texts are more readable, clicking is more accurate - you name it. And it would be very hard to find anything to complain about on this screen.

The HTC Desire HD boasts an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash plus 720p video recording. The performance is great even in outside conditions. Video similarly performs well, easily capturing telling details and rendering colour perfectly.

The software is Froyo, Google's Android 2.2. From shorter boot-up time through to Wi-Fi hotspotting, Flash 10.1 and a stellar browser performance (both in loading time and reacting to clicks and taps): that is all Froyo. The function that it doesn't kill unused application comes handy at situations (even though it is not a friend of battery life): if you have just half a minute to take a look at your phone, you don't have to waste precious moments with restarting the necessary apps every time (thus keeping our Angry Birds progress, for instance).

HTC Desire HD is included with HTCSense.com, which is the producer's first step in the nowadays ever-so-popular cloud service. The most important feature here is Dashboard, which allows you to control your phone remotely. This comes handy should you lose the precious device, when you can wipe your personal data off, leave a message encouraging finders to return the phone, lock the phone or redirect incoming calls to another number.

All in all, HTC Desire HD is in every way an upgrade from its predecessor. Getting the new software, a new, sturdier casing, bigger screen, better camera; the HTC Desire HD ticks all the boxes, and outdoes the competition in many aspecets.

The Exciting Nokia E7 - Featuring Super Fast Wi- fi Internet Browsingthe Nokia E7 is Seemingly

The Nokia E7 is seemingly pitched as a business phone, packed with features which will keep you productive when out of the office. One of the main draws of the handset is the slide out QWERTY keyboard which offers efficient text entry, therefore making the Nokia E7 ideal for those who are constantly texting or sending emails.

It has a similar design to that of the N8 aside from the largish glass display, which can be flipped sideways to reveal the physical QWERTY keyboard. The chassis is carved out of aluminium, which makes the phone solid, and gives it a feel of stability.

It runs on Symbian's latest (and as it has turned out so far, last) iteration, ^3, making the interface similar to the N8 and other Symbian S60 v5 devices. There are three customisable homescreens to toy around with, all three house application shortcuts and widgets. There is a Social client installed amalgamating Facebook and Twitter updates together. Profiles are also available here and through the address book.

The 4 inch screen is AMOLED delivering sharp, contrasted colours even in broad daylight. The panel offers 640x360 pixel resolution and supports a capacitive stylus if needed. There is handwriting recognition included, an accelerometer and it features a virtual keyboard for when you don't want to slide out the physical one.

The Nokia E7 is compatible with QuickTime and Web Runtime standards making it easier for developers to use applications on various operating systems. It has Exchange Mail, IBM LoNo Traveller, QuickOffice, Adobe PDF reader, and other software, but its greatest push is the free Ovi Maps GPS-navigation and mapping software. The latter is perfectly usable, and it is certainly impressive that this is included as a standard feature of the device.

As for the email client, it supports multiple email clients and accounts, and it is responsible for writing text and multimedia messages. For SMS, a threaded (conversation-based) view is available.

It easily and smoothly connects and switches between different Wi-Fi protocols (b/g/n), from GSM to WCDMA. It can be used to tether, making it a substitute for a data modem.

The camera is one of the biggest draws of the Nokia E7, able to capture 8 Megapixels, supported by a dual LED flash. It records HD video at 25 fps. The secondary camera can record VGA still pictures, and significantly smaller, 176x144 videos at 15 fps, but both work fine.

The Nokia E7 is clearly a sister phone to the N8, offering a number of software similarities to the manufacturer's flagship smartphone. All in all, the E7 is a desirable smartphone, with the tech specs that put it in a position to compete with the majority of its competition. It is also available in several colour option, meaning that it also caters for those who also view their mobile phone as a fashion statement, a massive plus.

Smartphones Remaking the Way Men Work and Live

Smartphones are getting men to do what their women have unsuccessfully tried for years: get them to use a map and make them feel more confident. Those are some of the ways that smartphones are remaking the lives of its male users, according to a new survey from Spike TV. The study found that men are unabashedly in love with their smartphones, a borderline addictive relationship that has empowered and also distracted men in small and profound ways.

First off, let’s establish that women are huge smartphone users as well and in fact, Nielsen recently said 55 percent of smartphone users age 15-24 are female. And in many ways, smartphones are used similarly by both genders because they’re such powerful versatile tools. But it’s still fun and interesting to see how Spike TV sized up the male smartphone audience and how these users come to look at their relationship with their gadgets. It says as much about guys as it does about the technology.

The survey of 1,018 men found that 88 percent of men said they “loved” their smartphone, with half of men saying they were actually addicted to their handset. Eight out of ten said smartphones made their lives better, making them more confident (73 percent) and making them feel smarter (68 percent). That guys could actually find such a boost from gadget suggests that smartphones are powerful, but also that men are also in need of some ego massaging and more affirmations. However, it seems like guys do have a different sense of how gadgets make them feel. A recent Retrevo study found that half of men were attracted to a person using a cool phone while only 36 percent of women said the same.

Because of smartphones, 72 percent of respondents said they were using maps and GPS more often and another 72 percent said they were communicating more with friends. I’m sure women are also doing more of these activities too. But this kind of plays on the guy stereotypes of unfeeling cavemen, eschewing the need to turn to maps or picking up a phone to call a friend. The smartphone is now becoming the more acceptable or easier way to do these certain things for men, it seems. Wives and girlfriends, take note: guys are more likely to do something when you wrap it up in a cool gadget.

The study also found that while phones are helping men communicate with others, it’s also helping distract men when they’re in the company of others. Four out of ten men said they unnecessarily looked at their smartphones instead of interacting with people while 32 percent said reported that people in their life were mad at them for using phones too much around them. I can attest to the fact that smartphones have often made me a bad conversation partner.

The bottom line is that smartphones are disruptive technologies in a lot of ways and guys are feeling the impacts both good and bad. We need to spend more time figuring out the particular nuances in the ways that men and women relate to their phones. There is a deep relationship happening between consumers and their phones and we’re still learning about how powerful, moving and dysfunctional these bonds can be. As the study points out, getting a better fix on how men use their phones can provide a lot of opportunities for marketers, retailers and content creators to tailor their outreach to this audience.

iPhone 4 AT&T and Palm Pre Plus - Excellent Touchscreen Smartphones

Apple Company has recently launched a smartphone called IPhone 4 AT&T which is a powerful player in the smartphone wars that provides enhanced performance, improved design and lovely new display. It is not ideal for everyone, as the call reception and quality vary if you don't use a case. With additional features like revamped design, speedy processor and sparkling new screen, the iPhone 4 is the largest upgrade to smartphone of Apple since iPhone 3G. The iPhone 4 also comes with newest operating system that adds selection of long overdue features along with fewer tweaks. Apple is a strong competitor in an increasingly crowded marketplace and with the introduction of its fast good looking design and features will definitely appeal most of the customers.

As compared to other LG cell phone in the market, iPhone 4 AT&T is probably the unique smartphones that offers slightly closed and highly organized polished user experience. It is available exclusively in United States with AT&T and with other carriers all over the world. The back and front sides are glass and both surfaces are flat with stainless steel border that circles the iPhone 4. It has a svelte, unmistakably clean Apple look, while the beautiful and shiny glass coated with oleophobic make it look richer. It provides a sturdy solid feel and measures 0.37 inch deep, 2.3 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall. The iPhone 4 is slight thinner as compared to LG cell phone in the market. Other new design elements on iPhone 4 AT&T include new VGA front facing camera and new LED flash with new noise cancellation microphone and camera lens on the top of the unit. You will find the SIM card slot on the right hand side which can be switched to Micro-SIM format like iPad. Overall it is one of the excellent smartphones in the market.

Palm Pre Plus is considered as one of the better touchscreen smartphones of AT&T that brings magic of WebOS to AT&T including great contact and true multitasking management. It also ships with inductive back cover for Touchstone charging and features like improved QWERTY keyboard. Its general ease of use and well rounded and extensive list of features makes it one of the better touchscreen cellphones in the market. The Pre Plus has a similar slider design and pebble like shape and also comes with gorgeous 3.1 inch HVGA multitouch screen.

The flash and camera buttons are on the back of Palm Pre Plus, while the 3.5 mm headphone jack, power button and slider ringer switch are on the top of the device. The micro-USB port is on the right hand side. The package includes a reference material, AC adapter, soft carrying pouch, USB cable and stereo wired headset. It also comes with exquisite list of features and applications like WebOS including notification system of Palm, Deck of Cards multitasking function and Synergy. Overall it is one of the better touchscreen smartphones in the market as compared to LG cell phone.

The Fantastic HTC ChaCha Proves The Ideal Phone For Instant Messaging

The HTC ChaCha is one of two new handsets that have been customised for use on Facebook. Like the other model in the range, the Salsa, the phone on its own is an impressive smartphone with high specification and an impressive list of features. The additional support for social networking however will make this model and instant favourite amongst younger users who rely upon this medium as a means of communications perhaps more than any other method available.

You may ask yourself why HTC need to feature two models in their line up that are designed for Facebook and the answer is quite simple. Whereas the Salsa is more like your standard smartphone, the ChaCha also throws into the equation a full Qwerty keypad. This will appeal to anybody who likes to use instant messaging services including Facebooks own as well as also being of benefit for general text and e mail composition. In order to allow the room that the extra keys require, the screen on this model has been reigned back to 2.6 inches but still offers a high level of resolution thanks to the 480 x 320 display. Like the Blackberry Torch the screen offers full touch sensitive functionality which is pleasing, meaning you can perform all manner of tasks as you would on a standard smartphone and purely use the physical keys for typing. Even if you are one of the few people who are yet to succumb to the temptation of Facebook, the ChaCHa still proves a impressive handset not only thanks to the Qwerty system but also the use of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the very latest version of the best selling operating system.

So lets now take a look at why the HTC ChaCha is any better than other models when using with Facebook. Well for starters the phone offers a dedicated Facebook button just like its sister model the Salsa. This button sits on the bottom edge of the phone and lights up when it can perform a function. This means if you are doing something that can be shared via the social networking site it will let you know. Thus if you have just taken a snap that can be uploaded, or have typed something that could be used as an update the ChaCha will tell you so. For the user this saves you having to physically log on to the site in order to perform such tasks. Obviously the phones features make it ideal for using Facebook Chat and HTC acknowledge this my giving this facility its own widget which allows you to group certain friends together as well as check if they are online. The feature also enables you to hold multiple conversations at the same time, making it the perfect instant messaging phone.

The HTC ChaCha as a standard smartphone impresses, but with its additional Facebook features finds a niche in the market that should see the phone prove a huge hit with the teenage market as well as general users of the social networking site.

The Stunning Samsung Galaxy S Is Packed With Hi-Tech Features

The Samsung Galaxy S was released seemingly as an alternative to the popular Apple iPhone range. The 4-inch Super AMOLED display is one of the handsets crowning features, along with a number of impressive specifications ranging from super fast Wi-Fi internet browsing and superb social networking integration to name but a few.

When we take the new Hummingbird processor into consideration, the experience of the Samsung Galaxy S is one of the best phones out on the market currently. It isn't just smooth, it's fluid. Ridiculous ease is the best expression to describe the efforts of the processor when we pinch to zoom or scroll through menus or webpages.

The Samsung Galaxy S is also a highly competent cameraphone. A 5 megapixel camera is there to help you with that on the back, and a 1.3 MP one on the front. It captures 720p videos at a stunning rate of 30 frames per second. The UI reacts so stunningly fast it gives us the feeling it is mechanical without any need of processing.

Samsung tweaked Android's Eclair with TouchWiz 3.0. Having Social Hub - a point where Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social networks are aggravated into one single continuous stream -, the rest of the changes are mostly done in-app, and different skins. You will be in awe seeing the way the Samsung Galaxy S handles contacts. If you swipe on the contact's name to the right, it dials the contact. Swiping on it to the left, it enables text-messaging to the contact; fluid, clever, enjoyable and intuitive.

Qik video and Swype are preloaded to the handset. The former uses the multimedia capabilities, the latter lets people try out another way of text input. Both appeal to a wide audience, providing useful extras. The setup of the phone is perfect, and even smartphone newbies will have no trouble getting used to the UI, and us it like a pro in no time at all.

The Samsung Galaxy S excels in terms of both software and hardware. It remains simple to use, yet despite having been available for some months now, it is still one of the most desirable smartphones out there. It happily competes with the majority of its recently released competition, and thanks to Android updates, the handset remains relatively future-proof.

With some great deals available, the Samsung Galaxy S puts superb smartphone technology within the reach of the masses.