Nokia Drive+ now available for non-Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices in US, UK and Canada

One of the key differentiators for Nokia's Windows Phone devices, the company's navigation app, is now available to all Windows Phone 8 users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The app, which is called Nokia Drive+, is still in Beta and is available for free on the Windows Phone Store.
This essentially means that users who own Windows Phone 8 devices made by HTC (Samsung's devices have still not gone on sale), will be able to experience features like full turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation, offline maps, speed limit warnings, and day and night modes, which were till now, only available on Nokia's Windows Phone devices.
It's worth noting that Nokia had announced that it would make Nokia Drive available to other Windows Phone 8 partners in 110 countries, coinciding with the announcement of the Windows Phone 8 platform, in June 2012. Nokia's location assets are one of the richest, with map data for nearly 200 countries. So Microsoft's strategic partnership with Nokia which aims at strengthening the Windows Phone ecosystem is finally bearing fruit. We are looking forward to Nokia releasing the app in other markets, including India, soon.

AppSurfer adds support for tablet apps, allows users to try Android apps in their web browser : sam4sammy

AppSurfer, which allows users to try Android apps in their browser before downloading them on their phones, has now added support for tablet apps as well. It supports a resolution of 1024x600 for tablets.

AppSurfer released a private beta in March 2012 and launched its first version mainly targeting developers in October 2012. It runs a customised version of Android in the Cloud and runs multiple instances of the OS, streaming graphics to users using HTML5 or Flash. It tracks user input and sends it back to the cloud. It has also implemented custom sensors to emulate sensor data, like that of GPS and orientation sensors.

RainingClouds Technologies, the company which has developed AppSurfer, says that it is not just another AppStore, and its focus is on enabling users to try apps. After they are satisfied with the app, they can make the decision to download it. For downloading the app, AppSurfer redirects users to the Google Play app store. Users can also share app recommendations on Facebook and Twitter and their friends can try these apps within Facebook.
Developers can create a free account at AppSurfer, and can put their apps (via apk files) on the site . They don't need any code integration/change in app and they can also embed apps on blogs and product pages, just like YouTube videos.
Speaking with NDTV Gadgets, Aniket Awati, CEO and Co-founder of RainingClouds, informed us that as of date, AppSurfer has 4,000 developers and 2,300 apps on-board, with a paid to free app ratio of 1:20. The company intends to monetise by offering new download models, tying up with third party app stores.
It is noteworthy that, Amazon also allows users to try apps in the web browser through its 'Test Drive' feature. However, according to Awati, the feature is based on Flash, while AppSurfer also offers an HTML5 version, allowing non-flash devices including iOS ones, to run app previews in their respective browsers. The company doesn't offer support for iOS at the moment, as there are several restrictions. "iOS apps require installation of emulators, which slow down the experience and don't support native features like GPS," adds Awati.
Services like Pieceable (which was acquired by Facebook), and Kickfolio also allow developers to upload their apps on the web, allowing users to try them via their web browsers.

Facebook puts mobile ads experiment on hold

Facebook said Wednesday it is halting a test of placing ads in "apps" that synch to the leading social network, renewing questions on how it will boost revenues from members using smartphones or tablets.
"We are pausing our mobile ads test off of Facebook," a company spokesman said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.
"While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners have been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook."
The test of placing ads in Facebook-linked apps will be halted by the end of the year as the California-based firm makes a priority of developing ways to profit from "news feeds" of posts shared between friends at the social network.
Facebook shares were down slightly on the news, slipping less than a percent to $27.60 in late afternoon trading on the Nasdaq exchange.
Facebook stock rallied in October after the company reported quarterly earnings that showed gains in tapping the mobile advertising market.
During an earnings call with analysts, founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company was "just getting started with our mobile product development and monetization.
Facebook went public in May with a resounding flop, its $38 initial public offering price immediately plunging to eventually less than half that.
That angered many investors who had built hopes that the company's huge popularity would result in huge gains in the share price.
Analysts have questioned the company's ability to earn money from smartphones, where Facebook is finding its users more often now.

Google releases YouTube Capture app for iPhone

Google has released YouTube Capture app for iPhone in an attempt to plug a gaping hole in its existing YouTube app, which does not include the ability to upload videos.

Google released the YouTube app for iPhone back in September with support for discovering and watching videos, months after Apple announced its decision to drop the iOS-bundled YouTube app. Google later updated the app to add a native interface for iPad, iPhone 5 and include other features like AirPlay. Strangely, the app didn't include an option to upload videos to YouTube. This is where YouTube Capture comes in.

YouTube Capture is a pretty basic app that prompts users to sign-in upon launch. Users have the option to enable Camera Roll that allows the app to user the phone's Gallery for storing/ accessing videos, otherwise it maintains its own private library. The app lets you share videos simultaneously to YouTube, Google+, Facebook and Twitter. It comes with basic video enhancement options like colour correction and video stabilisation.

Other options in the app include Landscape lock (enabled by default), which won't let you start video recording unless you're in landscape mode and a Rotate to begin recording option (disabled by default). On the iPhone 4S, you can toggle the upload quality between 480p and 720p (HD) - this may differ from one model to the other.

Overall, it's a pretty decent offering from Google - albeit rather basic -  though as other recent iOS launches, it's not available as a native iPad app on launch day. We expect that to change soon enough.

YouTube Capture (iPhone, Free)

sam4sammy :: Instagram updates privacy policy to allow data sharing with Facebook

Smartphone photo sharing service Instagram on Monday refined its privacy policy to clear the way for sharing data with Facebook, which bought the company earlier this year.
"Nothing has changed about your photos' ownership or who can see them," Instagram said in a blog post.

"Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups."

The changes were slated to take effect January 16.

Instagram maintained that the coming updates to its privacy policy and terms of service will help it improve the reliability of the service and fight spam.

Policy tweaks include allowing sharing of user information with "affiliates" in a move that could open the door to targeted advertising.

A social media feud between Twitter and Instagram escalated this month as the popular smartphone photo-sharing service made it impossible for Internet users to view its images in "tweeted" messages.

Instagram, which has some 100 million users, is seeking to route photo viewers to its own website, where it has the potential to make money from ads or other mechanisms, instead of letting Twitter get the benefits.

Previously, Instagram pictures shared in messages tweeted from smartphones could be viewed unaltered at Twitter.

Twitter responded by adding Instagram-style photo sharing features of its own.

Instagram rose to stardom with the help of Twitter, but has distanced itself from the messaging service since Facebook completed its acquisition of Instagram in September.

The original price was pegged at $1 billion but the final value was less because of a decline in the social network's share price.

Instagram last month was given a Facebook spin with the roll-out of online profiles that let people showcase themselves and photos they have taken with the smartphone application.

People can share their profiles with whomever they wish, as well as "follow" other Instagram users, commenting on or expressing "likes" for pictures.

Skype slip indicates video messaging feature coming soon

Skype looks set to introduce video messaging service on its platform, a change to its terms of service indicates.
The change, first spotted by the guys at Computerworld, mentions a video message feature that will be available to Skype Premium subscribers without any limit. Regular (free) subscribers will be able to use the service, subject to certain limits.

If you are a Skype Premium subscriber you can ... send and receive an unlimited number of Video Messages and any Video Messages you send and/or receive shall have no expiry date. If you are not a Skype Premium subscriber, the number of Video Messages you can send are limited, however you can receive an unlimited number of Video Messages.

Skype Premium is a service that costs $8.99 a month and offers unlimited calls to US and Canada (with fair usage limits) and other features like group video calling and group screen sharing.
The terms further indicate that messages sent by non-premium users will expire within 90 days.

As a non-Skype Premium subscriber any Video Message you send or receive will expire within 90 days, except for Video Messages received from a Skype Premium subscriber or where you upgrade to a Skype Premium subscription before the 90 day expiry period ends, and in either case the Video Message shall cease to have an expiry date.

Skype refused to confirm the report despite Computerworld's request for comment.

Apps like Wavii, Summly redefine consuming news on the go

Silicon Valley may believe that mobile devices represent the future of information technology, but they've yet to come up with a slick and comprehensive way to read and process news.
A growing group of technology entrepreneurs hopes to change that.

This week, Wavii, a start-up founded by a former Microsoft Corp employee, Adrian Aoun, unveiled a free iPhone app that filters news stories from around the world, crunches them through a natural language processing algorithm and presents them in five- or six-word summaries.

Over the past two years in Seattle, Aoun's team of two dozen machine-learning experts secretly developed code that boils down a news story into a basic subject-verb-object format, and draws connections between disparate news stories.

"Our edge has always been the technology," Aoun said.

Wavii has been online for several months, and Aoun has noticed that readers spend nine times longer browsing news headlines in his rudimentary prototype smartphone app than on his desktop website.

Wavii's app lets a user slice and dice a search into something as specific as "employment change in the technology sector," Aoun said.

Aoun's app pits his company against the likes of Summly, a mobile news reader headed by Nick D'Aloisio, a 17-year-old who is being backed by Li Ka-Shing, the Hong Kong billionaire; Yoko Ono, the widow of Beatle John Lennon; and a host of more traditional Silicon Valley investors.

"I use a lot of news aggregators, I use Facebook, I use Twitter" to find news articles, D'Aloisio told Reuters last month, when he launched Summly. Still, the actual article "is hard to consume. It took effort to read."

Summly, also free, features a gauzy, design-rich interface in the iPhone version of the app that summarizes stories with several-paragraph-long blurbs that fit on one iPhone screen.

Hailed in the UK as a "boy genius," D'Aloisio has been featured in Forbes Magazine and on the BBC and moves almost as quickly as he speaks, trotting around the world with a pair of orange headphones around his neck. He came up with the idea for the app when he felt he didn't have time to consume long-form news articles while on the move.

"The way it's shown on the phone, it's daunting," he said. "It's 10 pages I have to flip through. Who's actually sitting there on their iPhone really wanting to read an in-depth 1,500-word article?"

Other app-makers have left alone news copy but have tinkered with how stories are laid out. One example is Flipboard, a tablet app that spreads stories like a magazine across a tablet screen.

Aoun said the market for mobile news reader apps has grown more competitive in recent years, but few of them have truly caught on with consumers.

"We're getting close to figuring out the formula," he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2012