Nokia announces Asha 210: a colorful QWERTY with a social heart, we go hands-on (video)

The last time we saw new members of the Asha family they eschewed the usual QWERTY keyboard, opting instead for a full touchscreen. The newly announced (and previously teased) Asha 210, however, returns to the more tactile input method, and brings a healthy splash of color (five different ones, to be precise) plus a dual-SIM option along for the ride. As before, social networks feature heavily, but the focus clearly remains on low-end and developing markets. We know Nokia can do budget (and do it well), but is a full keyboard, a design update, and a dedicated WhatsApp button (all costing $72 SIM-free, excluding taxes when it lands late Q2) enough to make it appeal to anyone beyond the entry-level social addicts? Nokia was kind enough to show us the devices first hand, so head on past the break to see if we thought so.

Nokia Asha 210 hands-on

The first thing you notice here is the design language. As with the budget 105 and 301 offerings from MWC, the Asha 210 owes a lot of its looks to the current flagships, with more than a whiff of Lumia about them. This influence also spills over into the color options, which include the usual cyan, magenta, yellow and black plus white. We have to say that for a phone at this price point, it really isn't bad looking. The finish is soft-touch plastic, and while it's not one piece of polycarbonate, Nokia's at least gone to some efforts to make it look slightly similar, and we're happy to play along. The casing is designed to appear as seamless as possible, and the phone looks all the better for it. As well as that dominating QWERTY, there are menu and navigation buttons above and below dedicated WhatsApp and camera keys. Nokia was very keen to play up the WhatsApp integration which not only provides quick access to chats, but includes use of the service for free, for life (i.e. no annual fee).

A slight twist here is that in some markets, the Asha 210 will actually have a dedicated Facebook button instead (as we saw with the Asha 205). We've asked for confirmation on which markets will have which, but we understand that broadly speaking the EU and USA will likely come with blue stripes, while the others should get green. We also asked if this button might be configurable, but it appears not. Whichever social network flag you fly, it still won't take you very long to get there, as the Series 40 software it runs on has been set up to put them all front and center on the homescreen anyway, with WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter coming pre-installed. While we're on software, as before there's a "premium" download pack of 15 apps and games on offer after purchase, full details of titles to follow.

As for the rest of the hardware, it's something of a mixed bag. The main thing to note is that we're still running on 2G, so no 3G / HSPA to ease the deluge of all those tweets and messages you're expecting. But, there is WiFi to ease some of that pain. The rear (and only) camera is 2-megapixels, which is quite a jump up from the 205's meagre VGA shooter, and should make good use of that dedicated button. The lack of a front-facing camera might initially turn the confirmed socialite a little sour, but don't worry, you can still take those all important "selfies" with the clever self-portrait mode that we also saw in the 301 (the one that says "left a bit, right a bit"). Nokia played down our requests about what was running under the hood, and while it's always nice to know, at this price-point RAM and processor speeds are likely not the buyer's primary concern. We do know, however, it's lingering somewhere under the 1GHz mark.

The software, it has to be said, does feel noticeably slow if you've ever played with a modern smartphone. Pressing the WhatsApp key took a second or two for the app to open, and generally navigating with the buttons (no touchscreen here) will test your patience unless this is the most premium phone you've ever had -- something that might actually be the case for much of its market. However, this may improve between now and when it finally hits the stores nearer to summer. On the upside, Nokia claims that you'll get 12 hours of talk, and over 40 in standby (under optimum, lab conditions) to give you plenty of time to do everything.

Overall though, in the hand the phone feels light, yet solid. The bright color design is attractive and the keys all have a firm, responsive action, though perhaps a little clustered for those with larger digits. Most of all, at $72 (for both the single- and dual-SIM version), it's feels mean to pick fault with some of the Asha 210's features. The design is great for this price, the social features will please many, and there's just about everything you might need for photos and sharing. The UI may feel a little sluggish, and the continued lack of 3G will write it off completely for many, but for mobile users starting at the lower rungs, who want a well built phone with core functionality, Nokia's made a very reasonable proposition.

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Nokia introduces the Nokia Asha 210, the most social Asha yet

A fast and responsive QWERTY phone with the world's first WhatsApp button

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today unveiled the latest device in its Asha family, designed to offer consumers more social experiences at an affordable price. The Nokia Asha 210, available in Single- or Easy Swap Dual-SIM variants, features a distinctly Nokia design and smart imaging that sets it apart from the crowd. It supports Wi-Fi to help people enjoy more of the Internet for less and is the world's first phone to have a dedicated WhatsApp button.

Your social life at your fingertips

The Nokia Asha 210 has a QWERTY keyboard and a dedicated WhatsApp
button for fast access to instant messaging. To celebrate the Nokia and WhatsApp partnership, WhatsApp is offering their service for free on all Nokia Asha 210 devices with the WhatsApp button for their lifespan. Combined with Facebook, Twitter and support for popular email accounts such as Gmail, the Nokia Asha 210 is designed to ensure that people are never more than a few clicks away from their friends and family.

Capture and share great images every time

The Nokia Asha 210 comes with a 2MP camera that can be accessed through a dedicated hardkey even when the keypad is locked. The smart camera also offers a choice of image capture, editing and sharing options, including:

- Self-portrait - for perfectly centred self portraits, even without a front-facing camera. The built-in voice guides the user to ensure they are in the frame, before taking the shot.
- Fast editing of images directly from the camera app and easy sharing of images to social networks.

People can also share photos and other content quickly by using Nokia's innovative Slam feature, which comes built-into the Nokia Asha 210. It works by enabling the transfer of content such as images or videos to another Bluetooth-enabled phone without the need to pair devices.

"The Nokia Asha 210 really stands out giving super-social consumers new ways to express their personalities through design, colour and innovations like the world's first WhatsApp button," explains Timo Toikkanen, executive vice president, Mobile Phones, Nokia. "It has been designed to allow people to easily update their social networks, stay in touch with friends and share user created content."

"We are focused on delivering the best WhatsApp experience to as many people as possible," said Brian Acton, Co-Founder of WhatsApp Inc. "We are very excited about our partnership with Nokia Asha complementing our strategy of giving people around the world an easy experience when keeping in touch with their friends."

The new device also takes full advantage of the Nokia Xpress Browser which uses Nokia's cloud technology to reduce data consumption by up to 90 percent, helping people enjoy more affordable Internet access. The Nokia Asha 210 also features Nokia Nearby, a web app that lets people discover points of interest such as restaurants, shopping and ATM machines close to their location.

Other key features for Nokia Asha 210 include:
- Social phonebook integration with the ability to launch WhatsApp direct from contact cards in the Phonebook
- Preloaded YouTube launcher for direct video streaming
- Chat screen notifications that keep users up-to-date on new conversations
- Single-SIM and Dual-SIM models featuring Nokia's exclusive EasySwap technology that enables consumers to change SIM cards without having to turn off the device
- WiFi On/Off control button
- Nokia's renowned long battery life: up to 46 days with Single-SIM and up to 24 days with Dual-SIM

The Nokia Asha 210 is available in yellow, cyan, black, magenta, and white. The estimated retail price for the Nokia Asha 210 is around 72 USD and it is expected to start shipping in the second quarter of 2013.

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By: Unknown On 10:44 PM

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Microsoft makes Bing image search more social with one-click sharing to Pinterest

Companies know how important it is to make their products as friendly as can be with third-party social websites, and Microsoft, for one, has done a pretty fantastic job at making sure the team behind Bing's doing exactly that. To wit, the Surface maker is, as of today, also starting to cater to the Pinterest crowd, announcing that it's now allowing users of the recently redesigned site to share Bing image search findings via a simple click -- assuming you're logged in, naturally. The new sharing feature might seem like a rather minor one on paper, but for avid Pinners, it'll certainly come in handy as they can keep their precious boards stocked up with a little less effort. And, well, you know what that means: more cats.

Via: The Next Web

Source: Bing

More Coverage: Bing image search

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By: Unknown On 10:23 PM

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Social prediction startup Behavio joins Google (update)

Google has added yet another talented group to its team ever growing list of acquisitions. Startup Behavio announced it is joining the Mountain View crew and shutting down its closed alpha. The company built its short-lived product on top of Funf, a framework for collecting data from mobile phone sensors. Its goal was to analyze things like physical location, contacts and other data about your activities and environment to monitor trends, then make predictions about behavior. The targets weren't just individuals though, but entire communities, and it was even suggested that Behavio could predict the eruption of mass protests. Big G has acknowledged that the folks from Behavio are joining Google, but isn't revealing any plans for the company just yet. The internet giant's forays into preemptive and curated search offer an obvious application, however. We imagine applying some of the IP to Google Now is just one of many potential uses, and its ad-serving algorithm could also clearly benefit from an injection of this technology.

Update: We've been informed that Behavio was not acquired, instead its team is joining the company.

Via: The Verge

Source: Behavio

More Coverage: Funf, TechCrunch

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By: Unknown On 9:33 PM

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Myriad Social TV brings social networking to your cable box (hands-on video)

The marriage of social networking and television is nothing new, but Myriad recently launched Social TV, a white label solution which allows TV service providers to roll out their own custom social networking platform on your cable box. It complements services like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ by offering a more contextual way for viewers to interact with their friends while watching TV. Social TV provides an integrated HTML5 experience that's consistent across both television and companion devices (phones and tablets). Viewers can chose between receiving alerts on their TVs, mobile devices or both and can create show- or series-specific virtual communities that automatically expire when the program ends. The system is even mindful of time zones and time-shifts messages to prevent spoilers. More after the break.

Myriad Social TV hands-onSee all photoswhen.eng("eng.galleries.init")

We talked with Myriad's Dave Weidner who fielded our questions and gave us a demo of the tech in action. TV service providers can brand and tweak the solution and companion apps to their liking and create content with social networking in mind. In return, Social TV can gather detailed user metrics that enable targeted advertising for additional revenue. The system combines two of Myriad's existing products, Alien Vue (an environment which runs Android apps on non-Android set-top boxes and TVs) and the company's social networking back end (already used by multiple mobile operators worldwide). We saw Social TV running on a Broadcom BCM97425C reference set-top box and Nexus 7 tablet, but it's designed to work with most cable boxes including older models already deployed in the field. Trials are expected to begin by the end of the year, but final pricing and availability will be up to the individual TV service providers. Don't forget to watch our hands-on video.

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By: Unknown On 11:06 PM

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FTC: your mobile and social media ads still need disclosures*

We've all seen online banner ads with lengthy disclosures and other warnings that what we see isn't necessarily what we'll get. Think that the tight spaces of a smartphone screen or a 140-character tweet are exempt from the rules? Think again: the FTC just updated its guidelines to make clear that any "constrained" ads on mobile platforms or social networks still have to reveal their true purposes and show realistic figures. Marketers can't use multiple posts, pop-ups or other tricks to tuck the disclaimers away, either. The warning won't prevent your favorite celebrity from suddenly posting out of character about diet pills, but at least you'll know the difference between a pure enthusiast and someone who has some skin in the game.

*: This is a news post, not an ad. While we're at it, though, we'd really love it if you swung by Engadget Expand.

Source: FTC

More Coverage: The Verge

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By: Unknown On 7:11 PM

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Sony flaunts portable, social aspects of PS4 with high-res screenshots

To keep the buzz going from its recent PS4 pseudo-launch in New York, Sony's just released some high-res screenshots from the upcoming console's user interface. While we already saw many of them at the big event, there's a few intriguing images showing how the tablet or smartphone interface might look, along with shots of the social and video editing aspects of the UI. Other screens show the home, sharing, game streaming, user profile and friend feed pages, so hopefully the gallery below will whet your appetite until we can all actually see, you know, the console. Sony PlayStation 4 interfaceVia: Edge Online

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By: Unknown On 11:22 PM

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Social networks should be more like Facebook Poke

Computerworld - The sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who's name is Randi Zuckerberg, posted a private photo this week of some of her family members, including brother Mark, in a kitchen goofing around with Facebook's new Poke app.

A friend of another Zuckerberg sister saw that post on her Facebook News Feed, thought it was charming and re-posted it publicly on Twitter.

Randi Zuckerberg was upset by the re-share, so she lectured the world on Twitter about "digital etiquette." She Tweeted:

"Always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency."

Randi Zuckerberg is totally wrong. It's all about the settings and it has nothing to do with "decency."

The problem: Nobody knew what was happening with the communication.

Randi Zuckerberg, a former senior executive at Facebook, believed her private Facebook post was viewable only to "friends," when in fact it was visible to friends of friends.

Randi Zuckerberg's other sister didn't know that by simply friending someone on Facebook she was making her sister's personal posts visible to those friends.

And the friend who shared the post on Twitter didn't know that Randi Zuckerberg's photo was meant to be private. She thought it was public.

Even Zuckerberg family and friends don't know what's happening with their own Facebook messages.

Why? Because of the settings, of course -- not because of "decency."

This is the situation for all Facebook users and all messages. Almost nobody knows who can see or share their posts on social networks.

Instead of lecturing the world, Randi Zuckerberg should instead try lecturing her little brother, Mark. (And while she's lecturing him, she should also give him the "decency" lecture -- about copying Snapchat in the creation of Poke. It's about decency.)

When Randi Zuckerberg posted her photo, it should have been clear to her exactly who would gain access to the message. And if she marked it as private and viewable only by a specific group of people, Facebook should have done a better job of both locking it down to some degree and providing obvious signals that it should not be shared.

Instead of requiring every single recipient of every single post to check the light-colored fine print that shows who the sender addressed it to, private posts on social networks should be unsharable on the network and the pictures should be undownloadable, just like Flickr photos are when the user selects certain rights options.

Of course, any recipient can take a screen shot. But when a screenshot is taken of a private photo, the sender of that photo should be notified of the fact.

The next big breakthrough in IT management is here. Learn how you can reduce change risk, speed incident resolution, and improve visibility across your environment with Social IT Operations Management.

Read now.

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By: Dilusha On 9:14 PM

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Review: Add life to Facebook fan and business pages with Heyo Social

Your small business or fan Facebook page is probably fine just the way it is. But it could be a whole lot better. That's the idea behind Heyo Social, a nifty Web-based tool that allows you to add a whole lot of content to your Facebook fan or small business pages.

Until recently, Heyo was known as Lujure, and offered a Web-based tool strictly focused on Facebook fan pages. With the name change the company has an expanded focus: Heyo now offers tools to create mobile apps and social Web sites, too. Each of its functions is offered a la carte, or you can package several options together to save more. In this review, we focused on the Heyo Social Facebook service, which starts at $3 per month for a single tab.

To use Heyo Social to add content to your Facebook fan page, you simply sign in with Facebook. It will find any pages you manage, and within a few minutes you're ready to begin adding content. You do this by creating entirely new pages that are linked to your Facebook fan page through its tabs—those small squares that sit under the cover photo, showing photos and how many likes your page has.

Heyo Social makes it easy to add images and other content to Facebook fan pages.

If you're intimidated by the prospect of designing an entire page from scratch, Heyo offers several templates to get you started. You can apply a template to your page with a single click through the neatly organized and intuitive editor. Templates are available for many of the uses that businesses would likely have for Facebook, including selling products, offering discounts and deals, and more. Heyo Social also offers a series of widgets that you can add to your Facebook page, for things such as adding email links and inserting Google maps. All of these are very easy to use, allowing you to insert slick, professional-looking elements into your pages with ease.

The templates offer an easy way to fill your tabs with content, and are helpful when you're getting started. But I quickly found them limiting, as you can't change all of the aspects of the template. Some aspects such as the background design, are fixed. You can start from scratch with a blank tab, which is a bit more time consuming, but gives you more control over the end result. On the left side of your Heyo Social page, you'll see a dock that offers access to most of the tools you need to create the tab, including options for adding text, HTML, images, changing colors and more. The tools are easy enough to access, but I often found them finicky. The text editor refused to allow me to change text color when I was using Internet Explorer; switching to Firefox solved that problem, but even in that browser, I still found it more difficult than necessary to make quick fixes like as changing a font size.

Heyo Social is an easy-to -se way to create polished tabs for your Facebook fan pages, but the service suffers from one major flaw: It doesn't allow you to save or preview your work before you publish it. I created an entire page using Internet Explorer, but when Heyo Social wouldn't allow me to change the font color, I wasn't able to save it to open it in another browser. That meant I had to redo all of my work. Even without this font color issue, Heyo Social needs a save and preview function. You may be pulled away from your work for any number of reasons, and when you are, you need a way to save what you're working on and come back to it later. Once you publish your content (which is when you pay for it), you can easily go back in and make changes. But if you want to add more tabs, you'll have to pay first: Heyo doesn't let you start drafting a second page before you've paid for the first one.

I can deal with Heyo's sometimes finicky tools, and I don't hold it against them that not everything works all of the time in Internet Explorer. But I really do wish that Heyo Social offered a save and preview feature. It's a major oversight in an otherwise excellent tool for those looking to expand their Facebook presence.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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By: Dilusha On 4:19 PM

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Social Media Is Ruining Our Real Life Conversations

This story will display in ...Nov 22, 2012 1:00 AM  

If you use Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, everybody already knows everything there is to know about you. That sailing trip you took? Liked. Breaking up with your girlfriend? Replied to on Twitter. All these over-sharing, always-on social networks create situations where there's nothing left to talk about! [Shoebox Blog via Neatorama]

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By: Dilusha On 4:51 PM

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In Depth: 10 best Windows 8 social apps

Windows 8 and Windows RT come with the built-in People app which shows you updates from and lets you post to Facebook and Twitter.

It also shows you your entire address book from Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Skype and your email accounts.

So while it's great for seeing what's going on, you can't Share to the People app from other apps like the browser to tweet or post things to Facebook.

Of course you can always look at the website for your favourite social network, but if you want to get live tiles, notifications and sharing, you want an app.

The Windows 8 People app

We know an official Twitter app is under development; not so for Facebook – Facebook says it has no plans and points at Microsoft, Microsoft points back at Facebook.

In the meantime, here are our favourite Windows 8 social apps so far.

FlipToast lets you see updates from Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Instagram in the same app; you can see the most updates, notifications, photos, messages, birthdays and your first twenty or so friends as you scroll across the screen or tap each pane to get a longer list of each of those. If you want to see updates from just one service, pinch to semantic zoom out and you get tiles to pick from. The design is friendly and fun rather than sleek and stylish but this is like the People app on steroids.

Even without an official app, there are several good Twitter clients. Rowi doesn't have a live tile and its black and green interface only fits in one column of tweets and one of photos, leaving lots of space for seeing one tweet in a large font, with its replies. The fixed ad at the top of the timline is badly placed, especially in snapped view. Gleek has handy options like adding a hashtag to all your posts and choosing how to mark replies (RT or via or just quotes) and the tile view is great for photos but it's a little odd to see the same tweets in a column and as tiles. That makes the colourful MetroTwit our favourite app for running full screen; although you can only see two columns on screen at once, it has a big, clear bar for writing your tweets in, plus previews of weblinks open in a nice large pane.

Also worth trying out, Tweetro has a comprehensive interface that sprawls across the screen to fit in your timeline, photos and the lists and searches you add (mentions, messages and favourites open in their own panes), with slightly confusing positioning but buttons like Reply and Retweet. If you don't mind scrolling you see more than with other Twitter apps full screen and Tweetro is definitely the best Twitter app to keep snapped into a side window so you can glance at your choice of tweets, mentions, messages, favourites or lists - and the conversation view when you reply fits neatly too.

Want to see the tweets in trending topics at a glance? tMetro picks up the latest trending hashtags and grabs tweets for all of them. EventWall lets you pick hashtags to search for so you can easily follow a popular topic like an Apple launch or an event. But if you want to turn Twitter into a screensaver, Social Dribble displays one tweet at a time for your chosen hashtag in a font large enough for you to see across the room.

The interface is a bit of a joke, but this is a handy app for using snapped next to the People app to post updates to more than one network at a time; Digital Director posts to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare (with your location) and Yammer.

This isn't just the best Google Reader app we've found; it also has one of the nicest interfaces we've seen in a Windows 8 app. You can see your list of feeds, the stories in one or all your feeds and the selected story on screen all at once in a view that still manages not to look crowded (and tapping the story loads the original web page into the story pane very elegantly). Or you can flip into a tiled view with no interface, just headlines and pictures for a quick overview; tapping a tile brings up a half-screen pane showing the story in an interface that defines clean and clear. Plus it syncs well with your Google Reader account so you won't find yourself reading the same stories again on other devices.

Ribbit and Narwhal are both worth a look, but the best Reddit app for Windows 8 so far is ReddHub; you can even use it without logging into Reddit if you want to see the cat pictures without joining the debates. You can pin subreddits to the Start screen, submit and reply to links (with decent quoting) and use the Share charm to send links to Reddit or share links from Reddit but perhaps the best feature is the way it automatically resizes pictures to fit on screen. We've never thought of Reddit as beautiful but that's what ReddHub is. Also, prepare to lose hours reading…

If you want to explore random Tumblrs or follow one in detail, Single Stream has a nice interface for doing that. But if you want to manage and update your own Tumblr as well as reading the Tumblrs you already follow, Tumbukun is a good – if rather primary coloured – app for that. You can like and reblog posts and write your own posts from scratch in the editor, although if you want to end an existing post you have to open it in the browser (annoying if you spot a typo right after you post).

The Messenger client for Windows 8 is very purple and uses a lot of space for just Messenger (and linked services like Yahoo and Facebook Chat). If you use other IM services, grab a copy of IM+ which covers all the main services including Google, Jabber and ICQ as well as the ubiquitous Messenger, AOL, Facebook, Skype and Yahoo plus international ones like RenRen and Yandex. The interface is fairly stark but there are plenty of handy options from blocking people you don't know to getting email alerts for messages you miss when you're offline.

The Windows 8 Skype app merges Skype and Messenger (and your Skype and Microsoft account); you see recent calls and chats made on multiple Skype devices, your favourite contacts and people you've talked to recently – or you can see your full address book as tiles. Plus you get Skype as another way to contact friends from inside the People app. If you prefer Google Voice for calls, check out Freetalk.

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By: Dilusha On 4:15 PM

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