The feature will apparently let users share their own location as well as see the location of their friends in their news feed. The source says that Facebook has been working on this feature for a year, and has waited until it is fully ready before releasing it.

Facebook will also make APIs openly available to third-parties who wish to enable location features within their own Facebook apps. Facebook has not said if or how mobile phones will play a role, but many of the site’s users access it from devices such as BlackBerries, Windows Mobile, the iPhone and Android handsets — all of which offer GPS location tools.

The Vodafone Mobile Application store was started on 15th February, 2010 in India on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress where the company announced ultra cheap phones for India and emerging markets.The store offers over 800 apps in Entertainment, Utility, Finance, Social Networking, Games, etc. with a mix of Indian and international applications.The operator aims to regularly update the store with new applications. The application store is available to customers with GPRS enabled phones.

Regarding the price of the apps around 15% of the apps are free ones whereas the remaining are paid applications in the price range of Rs. 5 to Rs. 30.Vodafone Mobile Application store has been launched in partnership with Arvato Mobile Kumar Ramanathan, Chief Marketing Officer, Vodafone Essar said, “We are delighted to launch the Vodafone Mobile application store which combines an array of facilities for our customers including easy access to information, utilities and entertainment. The mobile applications are affordable and a significant step forward in the growth of mobile data and the future of Mobile intern

Admob might have to modify its approach of the Mobile Advertising business after the arrival of new players such as Aditic that now propose more targeting options and an improved set of features to monetize publishers’ inventory.

Aditic, one of the top leading companies in the Mobile Advertising field has recently invested significant sums to develop its brands and make a place for itself in an already- crowded Mobile Advertising Marketplace.

Mobile Marketing and Advertising is one of the hot topics of the moment as well as a truly growing market which offers an increasing number of opportunities despite the gloomy economic environment.

The fund raising recently announced by Aditic will enable the leading marketplace to speed up its International Development.

The company is considering opening up offices in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and South-East Asia. “We are at a turning point in the market and we have got to speed things up. Everything will be decided in the 18 to 24 upcoming months.” Aditic Marketing & Sales Director explains. A portion of these funds will be equally invested in Research and Development. According to Aditic representatives, the launch of the trustworthy and reliable Mobile Advertising online self-service they provide to the Mobile Operators, Publishers and Advertisers should enable them to reach their 2010 revenue target.

To sum it up, Mobile Advertising and Marketing is undoubtly one of the economy’s areas that still show signs of strong growth and all analyst reports tell us this trend should be continuing for the next couple of years.

Over the past 12 months, Android’s mobile web consumption share jumped 95.3 percent, Quantcast reports. The BlackBerry OS grew 7.5 percent over the same period, and the iPhone OS fell 10.2 percent. Competing platforms dropped 6.9 percent. Quantcast nevertheless adds that iPhone continues to make the biggest strides in respect to absolute mobile web consumption, commenting “the competition have a long way to go before there’s a real fight on their hands.”

The 2010 Mobile World Congress has been held 15-18 February. For four days, we have experienced that this is the place for mobile leaders to collect, collaborate, coordinate business and experience the newest technologies. The event featured conferences, an exhibition with more than 1,300 companies displaying pioneering products and technology that will define the mobile future, an awards ceremony, industry seminars, and the world’s best venue for mobile industry networking.

The advent of Smartphones and the iPhone in particular, has incredibly changed the agencies’ and advertisers’ appetite for mobile advertising. But while everybody is unconditionally convinced that mobile phones supply a unique way of reaching the consumers, neither brands nor agencies seem truly happy with the performances offered by existing ad networks.

In that sense, and despite the gloomy situation of the market today, ADITIC made the difference in the mobile advertising jungle present at 3GSM: innovative, simple, we are able to offer services to developers, agencies and advertisers, and we enable clients to identify audiences and serve campaigns on the growing inventory of mobile operators and publishers.

Indeed ADITIC provides a wild range of simple and flexible tools to maximize revenues, just by registering and then integrating some lines of code; we offer innovative ad formats, as well as an easy integration and a high revenue share for Publishers and Developers. Thanks to our complete demographic data (classified by age, gender, city, phone brand, phone model, country, operator, etc…) we can supply a strong and performing device to all advertisers or agencies eager to develop mobile ad campaigns.

Our success during the exhibition has been unexpectedly huge and we would like to thank all the customers who visited us, whom trust leads us to expect a bright future for ADITIC. Therefore rendezvous is already taken for a new exciting experience in Barcelona next year!

source http://www.symbian.org

The Symbian Foundation today unveiled the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform, the first entirely open source release following the platform’s transition to an open source license on 4 February, 2010, which was the largest of its kind in history.
S^3 is expected to be “feature complete” by the end of Q1 and the release will include: significant usability and interface advances, faster networking, acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics in games and applications, HDMI support (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), music store integration, an improved user interface with easier navigation and multi-touch gesture support, a feature-rich homescreen, and the ability to run even more applications simultaneously.

Members of the Symbian community, including device creators, network operators, hardware technology providers, professional services companies and application developers are already engaged with S^3 and the first devices using the platform are expected to ship as early as Q3 this year.

S^3 introduces major advances, which include:

• HDMI support enables users to plug their phone into a TV and watch a high-definition movie at 1080p quality without a Blu-ray player.
• Music store integration embedded within the radio enables users to identify a song and learn more about it. The addition of a “buy now” button, which links with the user’s chosen music store, makes purchasing easy.
• More efficient memory management due to Writeable Data Paging allows more applications to run in parallel for a faster, more complete and efficient multi-tasking experience, especially on mid-range hardware.
• A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of the hardware acceleration available to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. Users, developers and device creators will all benefit greatly from the visual enhancements and smooth transitions that will significantly improve the look-and-feel of their applications and services. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down.
• The industry-leading networking architecture, ready for 4G networks, provides next-generation Internet experiences on today’s devices. Consumers will benefit from the architecture’s ability to seamlessly balance each individual application’s needs regarding factors such as bandwidth, latency and jitter. This improves the consumer’s experience of network-dependent applications and Internet services like VoIP and media content streaming.
• One-click connectivity for all applications greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, without interrupting the user. New global settings allow the user to configure platform-wide behaviour, for example ensuring the device automatically switches from cellular to WLAN when a free WLAN network is available.
• Usability enhancements across the user interface include the adoption of a direct “single tap” interaction model, making it much easier to complete common tasks on a device. Multi-touch support for gestures such as “pinch-to-zoom” forms the basis of a gesture framework that can be extended and leveraged by the developer community.
• The Homescreen takes a big step forward with support for multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The widget manager makes discovery and download of new widgets simple and support for multiple instances of a native widget means that consumers can monitor multiple weather forecasts, news feeds, social networking accounts or multiple email accounts simultaneously through a common interface.

Lee M. Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, said: “S^3 is another huge milestone in the evolution of our platform. Now that it is fully open source, the door is open to individual contributors, device creators and third-party developer companies, as well as other organizations, to create more compelling products and services than ever before. We have enjoyed significant momentum since we completed S^2, with companies including Sun, Nokia, Ixonos, Comarch and Accenture, among others, contributing to S^3. We are now looking to build on this momentum and remain on course to complete S^4 later this year.”

The developer experience has also been greatly improved. The Qt toolkit is pre-integrated into all kits and the runtime in S^3 will run on existing devices back to S60 3.1. The Web Runtime support provided in the platform remains a key part of the developer story, allowing web developers to directly re-use their skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX to create Homescreen widgets and standalone applications.

- Ends -

About Symbian Foundation
The Symbian Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to enable an open ecosystem dedicated to creating the most innovative user experiences on mobile devices. Symbian maintains the code for an open source software platform based on Symbian OS and software assets contributed by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP(S) user interfaces. The Symbian platform is now fully open source.

The foundation promotes collaboration, contributions and active participation, and operates as a meritocracy. Symbian’s board of directors comprises: AT&T Mobility LLC, Fujitsu Limited, Nokia Corporation, NTT DOCOMO, INC., Qualcomm Innovation Center, Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, ST Microelectronics NV, Texas Instruments Inc., and Vodafone Group Services Ltd.

The Symbian Foundation has offices in the UK (London), US (Foster City), Japan (Tokyo), Finland (Helsinki), China (Beijing) and South Korea (Seoul).

For more information please visit www.symbian.org and blog.symbian.org.

Skyfire, makers of Webby award-winning, PC-like web-browser for mobile devices, has launched the next generation of its Skyfire browser, version 1.5, for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition smartphones. See below their video explaining what is new about it :

Skyfire who is up against browsers like Opera mini or the newly released Firefox mobile is a mobile only browser. This has the advantage that they do only this and so are super focused on a smooth mobile experience. Of course there is the advantages of players like Firefox as they can sync between you PC and your mobile.

Whatever the case it is great to have players like Skyfire focussing directly on making the mobile internet a “turn-on” experience rather than the often “turn-off” browsing on your mobile device often is.

KT, a company partnered with Apple to sell iPhones in South Korea, revealed its plans to begin selling the 4G iPhone as early as April. We can obviously expect the phone to include new radio hardware for connecting to 4G networks, and KT’s reports indicate the phone will feature a new dual-core CPU for a speed boost. The screen is to be switched from a standard LCD to an OLED model, which could mean a brighter picture and reduced power consumption. There could also be a front-mounted camera for video chat and a battery that’s finally removable by the end-user.

According to Goldman Sachs’ Robert Chen, it won’t lack new features. “Apple’s going to put a lot of innovation, not just on the hardware, but also on the software of the new iPhone,” he said.

There is also rumors that the back of the iPhone will be touch sensitive much like the touch panel used for the Magic Mouse or like the Motorola Backflip, an Android smartphone that can be controlled via a touchpad on the back of the screen.

Apple, of course, doesn’t comment on “rumors and speculation.” But according to Chen, the new iPhone will go into production in April and should be available to consumers in June or July — just enough time for the rumor train to go into full speed.

At first glance, it’s so sleek, stylish and sexy, we were almost wondering: Where’s the Apple logo?

Call it the Google challenge: After a few hours with the new Nexus One, a long time Apple fan will be willing to trade this iPhone. It’s very, very tempting.

Specifications of Google NEXUS ONE

Where could Google succeed, where other competitors have failed?

The Nexus One boasts speed improvements and enhanced camera capabilities, and the device will be sold unlocked.
The unlocked version of the Nexus One, which will be sold directly to consumers via a new web store hosted by Google, will cost $529. A locked version of the phone, which will be sold initially by T-Mobile, will cost $179 with a two-year contract that will cost roughly $80 a month.Apple’s iPhone 3GS now costs $199 with a two-year contract with AT&T.

Still, some new details emerged, so here’s a quick scan:
* In addition to T-Mobile the Nexus One will be supported by Verizon and Vodafone come spring.
* Some of those Android 2.1 goodies — expanded voice controls, including speech-to-text capability for tweets, texts and e-mail; a revamped photo gallery; more homescreen panels; interactive wallpapers; and a Google Earth app.
* In using the Nexus One to launch an online storefront intended eventually to allow consumers to choose from a raft of unlocked handsets and then pick a carrier and a calling plan, Google is revolutionizing the mobile phone marketplace. Or maybe not.

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman

Many interesting developments during 2009 in this mini sector (literally and symbolically) of the movie industry.

The Sundance Institute operators of the Festival of the same name, have announced launching not it’s own mobile film festival but rather a well thought out iPhone App that allows art film fans from around the world to participate in the festival.

The app can be used both at the festival at Park City with program guide trailers, event schedules, GPS venue locator and the like. For those fans who can’t attend but wish nevertheless to participate they can follow via Facebook, Twitter and Flickr as well as get exclusive interviews and trailers.

This is just one example of course of how the movie industry is learning to harness the power of the mobile media channel.

Added to this are the games that often accompany movies. Of course this has been there before but 2009 has confirmed this trend. Example the blockbuster Avatar which looks set to bust all records of viewers and earnings launched it’s own game across all platforms as well as on mobiles such as the iPhone/iTouch platform.

The game play is surprisingly good and engaging as it is built on the Assassins Creed 2 platform.

It is interesting to see of course how the mobile heavy weights such as LG or Nokia continue to use movies as a platform to promote their hi-tech devices.

It is obvious that mobile devices especially the touch ones are great gadgets to watch movies or TV shows while on the move. Following are the words of someone from the industry who sums it up well :

Frank Chindamo, president and chief creative officer, Fun Little Movies: “In 2010, everyone with a mobile phone will realize they’re also holding a really cool video player, and start watching what they want to watch, when and where they want to watch it — instead of having crappy over-hyped TV shows shoved in their faces.”

Link : http://www.funlittlemovies.com/

We look forward to seeing how this will develop in 2010.

by Fab Poller