Twitter 2.0! New app for android

All you twitter junkies, rejoice! You no longer need to refer to the likes of TweetDeck, Twidroid and all the other 3rd party apps to make daily twitter updates from your beloved Android device. The developers at Twitter have finally woken up, realized the potential of their app and launched the Twitter app 2.0 for Android. Some of the major changes to the app include a drasticchange in the UI, bug fixes, faster loading of feeds and a smoother way to jump to different columns. All the usual aspects are present here such as swipe left or right over a particular tweet to retweet and respond. Twitter has also added an auto complete feature to ease your typing experience on the portable devices.

A handy navigation bar has been added to the app, which allows you to seamlessly go through @mentions, messages and list view of the tweets. If you are new to twitter, it is possible for you to sign up for a new account via the app. Another handy addition to the app is that you can scan your phone contacts to find friends that are on twitter.
The only down side to the app is that it will only run on devices supporting Android 2.1 or higher. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and give this app a shot. It s free!

Nokia, Microsoft in pact to rival Apple, Google

Technology titans Nokia and Microsoft are combining forces to create smart phones that might challenge rivals like Apple and Google and revive their own fortunes in a market they have struggled to keep up with.

Nokia Corp., the world's largest maker of mobile phones, said on Friday it plans to use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone software as the main platform for its smart phones in an effort to pull market share away from Apple's iPhone and Android, Google's software for phones and tablets.

Analysts said the deal was a bigger win for Microsoft than Nokia, whose CEO Stephen Elop in a leaked memo this week compared his company to a burning oil platform with "more than one explosion ... fueling a blazing fire around us."

Nokia's share price plunged more than 8 percent to euro7.46 ($10.15) Helsinki after the announcement.

Moving increasingly to providing services for phone users, Nokia and Microsoft "will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivaled global reach and scale," Elop said in a statement on the deal on Friday.

Nokia said it will drive the future of Windows Phone, "innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader."

But Nokia warned that the new strategy would bring "significant uncertainties" and said it expects margins to be hit by strong competition from rivals.

Neil Mawston of London-based Strategy Analytics said Microsoft was the big winner in the partnership, by teaming up with the biggest mobile hardware vendor in the world.

"In terms of expanding their distribution reach, this is a huge win for Microsoft," he said.

For Nokia the deal leaves uncertainty about what will happen to its current Symbian operating platform. Mawston said he expects it to be phased out within two years and "completely, or at least mostly, replaced by Windows Phone."

Although Nokia still is the mobile industry's No. 1, it has suffered from plummeting market share, dropping from a high of 41 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in the last quarter of 2010.

It has also lost its innovative edge in the fiercely competitive top-end sector and is virtually invisible with a 3 percent share in the world's largest smart phone market, North America.

Apples' iPhone has set the standard for today's smart phones and Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerrys have become the favorite of the corporate set. More recently, Google Inc.'s Android software has emerged as the choice for phone makers that want to challenge the iPhone.

"Today, developers, operators and consumers want compelling mobile products, which include not only the device, but the software, services, applications and customer support that make a great experience," Elop said.

Nokia, which claims 1.3 billion daily users of its devices, said it hopes the "broad, strategic partnership" with Microsoft will lead to capturing the next billion users to join the Internet in developing growth markets.

The company said that it will also announce new leadership team and organizational structure "with a clear focus on speed, results and accountability."

"Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward," Elop said, adding that the company was aiming at "regaining our smart phone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future."

Jyrki Ali-Yrkko, from the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, described Nokia's cooperation with Microsoft as "surprising."

"The strengths will be in Microsoft's strong position in various corporate solutions and server solutions, but its weakness is that Microsoft perhaps doesn't have a broad, user-oriented group of developers like those around Android or Apple," Ali-Yrkko said.

India gets 'Gingerbread'

Olive telecom has launched the OliveSmart V-S300 smartphone in India. The Olive Smart V-S300 is the country s first HSPA+ smartphone and it will be the first Android Gingerbread phone to hit India. What s more, Olive also touts this phone as being the world s fastest Android.

The phone features Qualcomm's second generation 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor. The phone also features the Adreno 205 graphics engine which results in better 3D performance, gaming and recording/ playback of HD video. The phone also boasts of a 5-MP camera at the back and a VGA front facing camera for video chats.

Other than the usual connectivity options the phone also features Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities.
The phone will be launched in late march and will cost below Rs 20,000.

Olive has joined hands with Aircel , who will be providing their apps store, which will be an addition to the pre installed Android marketplace. Aircel has also released special data plans for the device, which includes free 9GB of data for prepaid customers to be used within 3 months. But, these plans may not be available for customers in Delhi and Mumbai as Aircel does not have a license to provide 3G services in these circles. They have licenses for AP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kolkata, Kerala, Punjab, UP (East), West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, North East and J&K.

We have been lucky enough to get our hands on an engineering sample of the OliveSmart V-S300, which was running Android 2.2 (Froyo). We also managed to get our hands on the Samsung Nexus S which is currently the only device running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. We suggest that you take this comparison with a touch of salt as we still do not have the final product from Olive in our hands.

DESIGN

Looks wise the Nexus S is definitely a head turner with its sleek curvy lines and comfortable form factor. It s an easy on the hands and comfortable to use. On the flip side the OliveSmart is a large rectangular device and has a candy bar form factor, which looks quite mundane. Inspite of its size it s quite slim but its large rectangular shape makes it uncomfortable for daily usage.
One must commend Olive for stepping up the build quality but the Samsung Nexus S still takes the cake!

FEATURES

Now both the devices boast of heavy-duty horsepower. The OliveSmart V-S300 boasts of Qualcomm s latest Snapdragon processor, which also comes along with the Adreno 205 graphics chip. Olive has called the OliveSmart the fastest Android device on the planet. The Nexus S is no slouch as the latest ARM cortex A8 processor powers it. Both the processors are clocked at a speed of 1GHz. Therefore, processor battle remains even Steven s.
The OliveSmart V-S300 boasts of a large 4.1 LCD display, which has a resolution of 800x480. Again the Nexus S comes out in front with vibrant SuperAMOLED display.
The OliveSmart V-S300 comes with an onboard 5-megapixel camera, which also shoots HD video at 720p resolution. The Nexus S also comes with a 5-megapixel camera but does not shoot HD video. Both phones come with front facing VGA cameras.
The Nexus S also comes with a NFC (Near Field Communication chip). This may enable monetary transactions using your phone, instead of a credit card that you use currently.
Both the devices come with Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities. Again HSPA+ is also a feature prevalent in both the devices.
Both devices also feature noise cancellation for clearer audio but the OliveSmart V-S300 features Clear HD voice capabilities.


PRICING

Now come the major difference. Olive has announced the V-S300 will cost less than Rs. 20,000. The Samsung Nexus S currently does not have a official India launch date but it is currently available in the US for around $525 which comes about to be Rs 24,000.


Verdict:

We have finally begun to see an initiative for technology to come to India faster than expected. Even though the Nexus S is the flagship device for Gingerbread, it hasn t made its debut in India. Will Olive be the pioneer to bring gingerbread to our sweet tooth or will we see more love from the Mobile World Congress that starts on St. Valentine s Day!

H.P. Introduces a Tablet and New Phones

Hewlett-Packard wants to get back into the business of selling phones.

Almost a year after buying Palm and nearly two years since Palm introduced its last product, H.P. announced on Wednesday in San Francisco that it would make a tablet computer, the Touchpad, running on the webOS operating system.

It looks like an iPad. But it is lighter, weighing 1 1/2 pounds, and has a 9.7-inch screen. Running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, its selling point will be its ability to multitask quickly.

It will support virtual private networks for corporate users and enables video conferencing.

The device will be available later this summer, the company said, with Wi-Fi. Devices for 3G and 4G phone networks will come later.

The company also introduced the Veer, a small phone the dimensions of a credit card with a slide-out keyboard. It also operates as a hotspot device. It will be available in the spring.

And the company introduced the Pre 3, an iPhone lookalike for the business market. It also has a slide-out keyboard, and will be available in the summer.

H.P. has created an updated operating system for mobile devices, webOS 2.1.

The software is currently available on five devices, including the Pre 2 for Verizon, which is going on sale on Thursday. That s the same day Verizon will begin selling the long-awaited Apple iPhone, so the Pre is not going to get a lot of attention.

No exact dates of release for most of the products. And no prices were mentioned.

Jon Rubinstein, H.P. s senior vice president and the former chief executive of Palm, spent a lot of time at the two-hour product introduction talking about the software. As the devices become similar a big screen in a small frame the companies have to differentiate on the software and how well it is integrated.

It also has to get developers to build apps and games for it. With a tiny installed base of Pre phones, H.P. devices aren t very appealing. But the company said it would also place webOS on PCs, which because H.P. sells 120 PCs a minute, suddenly the installed base of webOS devices is immense.

In a demonstration, H.P. showed how the OS is a gaming platform, integrates social media alerts and messaging throughout the platform s apps.

It will have a Kindle app, but the company only showed magazines from Time Inc.

Mobile sales up 32 percent last year: Gartner

Worldwide mobile sales increased 32 percent last year and smartphone shipments surpassed those of personal computers for the first time in the fourth quarter, according to tracking firms.

Technology research firm Gartner said on Wednesday that mobile device sales rose 31.8 percent last year to 1.6 billion units over the previous year.

Smartphone sales soared 72.1 percent in 2010 over the previous year and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile sales last year, Gartner said.

Another tracking firm, International Data Corp. (IDC), reported meanwhile that vendors shipped a record 100.9 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, up 87.2 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

Global persoal computer shipments in the fourth quarter of 92.1 million units were a record high, according to IDC, but were less for the first time than the number of smartphones shipped during a quarter.

Gartner said Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Canada's Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry, displaced Sony Ericsson and Motorola in the fourth quarter in the rankings of the world's largest mobile manufacturers.

Finland's Nokia remained number one overall with sales of 461.3 mobile devices last year but its market share fell from 36.4 percent at the end of 2009 to 28.9 percent at the end of 2010.

South Korea's Samsung was next with sales of 281.1 million units in 2010. Its market share fell from 19.5 percent to 17.6 percent.

South Korea's LG Electronics was in third place with sales of 114.1 million units and a market share of 7.1 percent, down from 10.1 percent.

RIM was next with sales of 47.4 million units and a market share which rose from 2.8 percent to 3.0 percent.

Apple sold 46.6 million units in 2010 and saw its market share increase from 2.1 percent to 2.9 percent.

Sony Ericsson had sales of 41.8 million units. Its market share fell to 2.6 percent from 4.5 percent. Motorola sold 38.5 million units and its market share fell to 2.4 percent from 4.8 percent.

Nokia and LG's drop in market share was due in part to their failure to make more of an impact in the rapidly growing smartphone market.

"Nokia and LG saw their market share erode in 2010 as they came under increasing pressure to refine their smartphone strategies," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop warned Wednesday that the world's top mobile phone maker is "standing on a burning platform" surrounded by a "blazing fire" of competition.

The brutally honest appraisal of the company's woes appeared to be setting the scene for a spectacular shake-up which Elop is expected to unveil on Friday at a strategy and financial briefing in London.

The Wall Street Journal said Nokia may announce a partnership with Microsoft, Elop's former employer, or Google or both to adopt a new handset operating system.

Google's Android smartphone operating system grew 888.8 percent last year to take the number two position behind Symbian, according to Gartner.

Standing on a burning platform: Nokia CEO to employees

In a memo to Nokia employees, new CEO Stephen Elop says the company if facing stiff competition and has to make a difficult choice. Here is the text of Elop's letter to the Nokia employees.

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.

Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Nokia & Microsoft in partnership talks for Windows Phone 7

There are reports in Bloomberg that Nokia is in talks to use Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system on mobile phones.

Analysts say Nokia’s decision to strike a deal with US company would be aimed at revising its handset strategy and reverse deep declines in its core business. It would be a win-win situation for the both the firms, they say.

Sources close the development say the deal announcement can come this week.

Microsoft has plans to launch its much- hyped Windows 7 phone in the Indian market in the later part of this year.

While HTC has already launched a couple of devices to support the Widows 7 phone, Microsoft is likely to join forces with Nokia for exploring the Indian market, he added. Talking about Microsoft's search engine Bing, Amit Chatterjee, managing director of Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd said Microsoft has been developing Bing more as a decision making tool instead of a measly search engine.

Gingerbread makes Nexus S a smart cookie

For some people, the holidays go hand in hand with gingerbread, in the form of houses or cookie-cutter men. This year, you can add smart phones specifically, the Nexus S, the first device running the freshest version of Google's Android operating software, Gingerbread.

Developed by Google Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., the phone has a cool curved glass screen, back- and front-facing cameras and the ability to read special tags on such things as stickers embedded with Near Field Communication chips.

Combined with a fairly good price, it's likely to be on a number of holiday wish lists.

Best Buy stores will sell it for $200 with a contract from T-Mobile, or for a more wallet-stretching $530 if you want it to work on either T-Mobile's or AT&T's network.

The Nexus S is the follow-up to the Nexus One, an HTC Corp. phone that Google trotted out early this year but stopped selling months later as plenty of similar Android-running devices became available.

Although Nexus One was a good phone, it wasn't as amazing as Google thought it was. The company avoids this problem with the Nexus S, which is both a brainy and cool-looking handset.

First, let's get to the brains.

There are a number of subtle changes that come with Gingerbread, such as zippier overall performance.

The most obvious update is with the on-screen keyboard. It is better than previous versions of Android at recommending words as you type, such as last names and other words that you've typed before, but hadn't been in the phone's original dictionary. The keyboard features more space between keys and a multi-touch capability that make typing easier and speedier than on Froyo, Gingerbread's Android predecessor.

The copy and paste tools are simplified in Gingerbread, too, with a little slider that appears on the screen that you can move to select text.

The phone's most-touted feature has been its inclusion of Near Field Communication, or NFC, technology, which is a short-range wireless technology for transmitting data. This could ultimately function as a wireless payment system, eliminating the need for your wallet.

For now, though, Google is only letting the phone read NFC chips inserted in objects, such as movie posters you might pass at a bus stop. Once you are nearly touching one of these tags, the phone will automatically read it and, say, pull up a link to a film trailer.

To give reviewers an immediate sense of how this works, Google included a "Recommended on Google" sticker with the Nexus S the company loaned me for this review. Whenever the screen on my phone was active and within less than an inch of the sticker, it would add the NFC chip embedded in this sticker to my collection in a little app called "Tags." The tag contained a link to a YouTube video that explained the development of the Nexus S.

Cool, right? Too bad you can't really use the feature right now unless you live in Portland, Ore., where Google is distributing these stickers to some businesses. I'm all for adding technology to handsets, but it would be nice if I could actually do something with it near my home in San Francisco. Hopefully this will change in the near future, but it's still unclear.

More immediately useful is the Nexus S' bright screen. Like the phones in Samsung's Galaxy S series, it sports an AMOLED display, which basically means it will likely have higher color saturation than a standard LCD screen would.

This screen, which is 4 inches diagonally, is great for watching videos and surfing the Web, and it is super-sensitive to touch. It is a nice canvas for the latest version of Google Maps out now for Android phones which lets you use fingers to tilt the angle of the map and, in many cities, see 3-D buildings when you zoom in.

The screen is also easy to see if you're not looking at it head-on, which is good if you want to share a video with a buddy. It was much brighter in sunlight than another Android phone I had on hand.

What makes the screen truly unique, though, is that it's slightly curved in the center. It's not clear to me why this is beneficial. The press release announcing the phone said it give the phone "a more ergonomic style and feel when held to the user's face," but my face couldn't tell the difference between the Nexus S and a similar-sized smart phone.

Besides giving the phone a bit of a more interesting look and helping it stay slender, it could potentially help protect most of the viewing area if you drop it because only the very top and bottom of the frame would touch the ground.

Wanting to stay on-trend with the iPhone and several other Android-running smart phones, the Nexus S includes both front-facing and back cameras. The low-resolution front camera is handicapped because the phone doesn't include any video chat software, and software I downloaded either wouldn't work, or wouldn't work properly on it.

The 5-megapixel back camera takes crisp shots, but has some shutter lag that annoying gap between when you press the shutter and when the camera actually takes a photo. I missed having a dedicated camera button, as I felt awkward focusing a shot and then maneuvering a finger to the virtual button in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

This camera is also surprisingly Spartan, feature-wise, with just a handful of white balance and exposure settings, but you can always make photos look more exciting by downloading a camera app from the Android Market (the free Retro Camera is a fun one).

I wasn't wowed by the phone's battery life, either. It's rated for up to 6.7 hours of talk time when using a 3G network, and in a day of what I would consider fairly light multitasking, I got about seven hours of life out of the phone. On other days it lasted longer, but I wasn't doing much more than checking e-mail, making a few calls, playing the occasional game of "Angry Birds" and looking up a restaurant in Google Maps.

Still, the Nexus S impressed me overall, especially with the freshening to Android that Gingerbread brings. You just may want to get one while they're hot.

New RockMelt Browser For Facebook And Social Networking

There's a lot to keep track of online.

You probably have a Facebook account and an e-mail address or two. You might use Twitter or another service to share where you are or what you're reading, thinking or doing. You follow the news and do some old-fashioned Web browsing.

I do all of the above (and more), so I'm always looking for ways to wrangle my tangle of online accounts.

That's what I was hoping for when I tried RockMelt, a new Web browser backed by Marc Andreessen, who was behind the Web's first commercial browser, Netscape. RockMelt aims to bring together social networking, news feeds and Web browsing.

Does it do the job? Mostly if you rely on Facebook for social networking.

RockMelt, which is available on an invitation-only basis for now, is built on the same foundation as Google Inc.'s 2-year-old Chrome browser. For general browsing purposes, you can expect Chrome's pros (speed, stability) and cons (some sites don't work, including the one for paying my cable bill).

Once you install RockMelt, you set it up by giving it permission to integrate your Facebook account. You don't need to create a new account the way you do with Flock, a competing "social browser" that's been around for five years. You can then choose to add Twitter and Gmail accounts. RockMelt stores information in the "cloud," so your settings will automatically follow you to other computers.

On the right of the main browser window is what RockMelt calls the App Edge, where buttons offer access to social-networking sites and other websites. On the far left side is the Friend Edge, a column of buttons representing Facebook friends. Above the Friend Edge is your Facebook profile picture click to send a Facebook status update or tweet.

The buttons in the App Edge point out unread updates or Gmail messages for each account at a glance, an approach I like. However, to actually read Gmail or see private messages sent through Facebook and Twitter, you must still go to those sites. Eric Vishria, and co-founder of RockMelt, said future updates will address this.

Flock has an advantage on this front: Facebook and Twitter messages show up there, though they can easily get lost in the barrage of other updates.

For most websites, clicking on the App Edge button calls up a rectangular panel where you can read the latest posts. Similar panels appear for search results and chat sessions, allowing you to chat and browse without disturbing the main browser window.

The panels start out anchored to the side of the browser, but you can click and drag to make them separate browser windows, which lets you keep several open at once.

I like this approach, but the panels have no "X" button to close them. To make them disappear, I had to find a blank spot in the main browser window and click. This slowed me down until I figured out that I could also hit "Escape."

Google search results, meanwhile, were annoying for another reason: If you accidentally click in the main browser window, the search results panel vanishes.

The App Edge reveals a key difference between Flock and RockMelt: Flock integrates social networks and other website updates into one stream, while RockMelt gives each feed its own button. I like choosing which to examine at a given moment, but others may prefer a single stream.

You can drag a link from the main browser window into the Friend Edge to share it; you can also click on a friend's name to launch a panel where you can chat, write on the person's Facebook wall or see and comment on their recent posts.

This is an improvement over Flock, where you can respond to friends' tweets and posts at they come in, but you need to go to the websites or use other tools such as TweetDeck if you want to see existing Facebook comments or start an interaction.

Flock, aware of its competition, released a major upgrade on Dec. 1. I like the way it lets you create custom groups of friends from different social networks. On RockMelt, only Facebook friends are included in the Friend Edge, and you only have two choices for how they're displayed everyone online at the moment or all the friends you designate as "favorites."

From RockMelt's address bar, you can search the Web and your list of Facebook friends. RockMelt could do better here; in Flock, an address bar search also checks tweets and people you follow on Twitter.

RockMelt performed smoothly overall, though it did crash twice, once when accessing Twitter and once when I tried to share a link. Sometimes I'd click a button and nothing would happen, so I'd impatiently click again, which made the feed disappear as soon as it loaded.

Sometimes the App Edge vanished, leaving me hunting through menus to re-enable it. And the edges themselves take up so much screen real estate that I sometimes had to scroll sideways to see an entire Web page.

RockMelt's biggest shortcoming is its inability to sync with networks other than Facebook and Twitter. Vishria said more will be added, but for now, Flock is several steps ahead with links to YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr accounts.

A growing number of social networks are designed to be used on mobile devices, which raises another drawback: RockMelt is strictly a desktop browser, though I'm told the developers are considering a mobile version.

So should you try RockMelt? If you rely on Facebook for social networking, sure. You'll find this a fast, stable browser that's rich with Facebook-friendly features many more than are available on Flock, though the gap is narrowing with the latest version of the latter.

If you're a social media power user, you'll find yourself relying on other tools that do the many things RockMelt doesn't. While you're waiting for RockMelt to incorporate more sites, try Flock instead it brings more of the social media universe to your fingertips than any other browser on the market.

Sprint to sell dual-screen 'Echo' smartphone

Sprint Nextel Corp. on Monday unveiled a smart phone with two screens, one stacked on top of the other. The top screen slides out and can be snapped it into place so that the two lay side by side, producing screen space that rivals a tablet computer.

The phone, called the Echo, is made by Japanese manufacturer Kyocera Corp. and has screens that are each the size of an iPhone's display. Put together, they create a larger space for typing e-mails, playing games and watching videos. The resulting display is still about half the size of an iPad's. But it's still a larger surface area than those found on most phones.

If people wish, they can use just one screen, or have something say, a YouTube clip or Google Maps stretch across both screens. But Sprint also lets people use certain applications so that different parts of the app show up on each screen. For example, you can read e-mails on one screen and respond using an oversized onscreen keyboard on the second display. Or, you can play a game such as "The Sims" in one window with the controls taking up the lower screen. Like many other smart phones, the Echo runs Google Inc.'s Android software. Adding an extra screen is Sprint's way of making the phone stand out from dozens of others that also run Android.

For now, Sprint has re-configured the basic e-mail, text messaging, photo, video and Web browser features, along with some games, so that you can use these apps while doing different things on each screen. That list will grow to include more specific Android apps, Sprint said.

One question that remains about the Echo is how long it's likely to last on a charge. For now, Sprint says the phone can offer at least 5.5 hours of talk time, though the company might succeed in stretching the battery life by the time it goes on sale. The iPhone, in contrast, claims 7 hours of talk time.

Perhaps to preempt any complaints about its endurance, Sprint will include a spare battery in the box, along with a device that can recharge both the phone and the second battery at the same time.

The phone will go on sale in the spring and cost $199 with a two-year contract.

Nokia gets delayed E7 mobile phone in some stores this week

Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone maker, said on Monday that its new E7 business smartphone, whose release had been delayed from the end of 2010, will be on sale in "select markets" this week.

The E7 "will begin arriving in stores in select markets this week, with broader availability building up quickly in several markets," the company said in a statement.

The E7 runs the high-end Symbian3 operating system and is heir to the long lineage of Communicator-model business handsets which were first released in 1996 and later evolved into the E-series.

"Importantly, the device supports business applications from leading enterprise technology partners including Microsoft and IBM," the company said.

The phone features a large screen, a full keyboard, and mobile office software developed for Nokia by Microsoft, although its camera is a step down from the N8's much-praised Carl Zeiss lens.

The E7 was unveiled last September at the Nokia World event in London.

Nokia has come under intense pressure as it has lost market share to rivals in the key smartphone market, with both Standard and Poor's and Moody's threatening recently to downgrade the company's credit ratings unless it did better.

Nokia's 2010 fourth quarter beat expectations but its net profit of 745 million euros ($1.02 billion) was down steeply from 948 million euros a year earlier as sales gained six percent to 12.65 billion euros.

Indian-origin man 'stalking' Facebook founder Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has obtained a restraining order against an Indian-origin man, who was allegedly stalking the billionaire CEO and his family and asking for financial assistance for his ailing mother.

In the restraining order, a judge has ordered Pradeep Manukonda, 31, to remain at least 300 feet away from Zuckerberg, his sister Randi Zuckerberg and girlfriend Priscilla Chan.

Zuckerberg had claimed in legal papers filed with the court that Manukonda tried to "follow, surveil and contact him using language threatening his personal safety and the safety of his girlfriend and sister" .

In letters and messages on Facebook to Zuckerberg and his sister, Manukonda said his family is going through financial hardship and he was looking to them for help.

In one such letter, Manukonda said his mother is suffering from a serious illness with little time to live. He said he is not asking for "charity or donations" and promised Zuckerberg he would "repay the entire amount incurred for her treatment".

In another message, Manukonda, who also goes by the name Pradeep Kumar said, "I am completely tired and exhausted. Please Mark time is really running out for me. I really need
your help. Please respond in time before it get too late for us".

He further writes, "I owe my entire life at your service, please help me, then I am ready to die for you" and "please understand my pain, please understand my situation".

Manukonda also wrote to Zuckerberg's sister, who is Facebook's director of market development. His message to her read, "Dear Randi please respond, before it gets too late. I am sorry to bother you, which is not at all concern to you, every second is precious to me .
Please understand the urgency and do the needful thing. I really need your help. My dear sister thanks (sic)".

Manukonda reportedly apologised for his behaviour saying,  "I'm a peaceful guy. I'm sorry he (Zuckerberg) thought I was trying to harm him," Manukonda told celebrity news website
TMZ.

"I understand he's a busy man. I'll respect his privacy". He said he had been dealing with "a major personal problem" and thought Zuckerberg could give him some advice. Manukonda had also gone to Zuckerberg's home in late January and reportedly showed up at his office in Palo Alto, the website said.

Local police had issued a verbal warning to Manukonda after security guards found him attempting to walk up the front steps of Zuckerberg's home on January 24.

He had allegedly also sent flowers and a handwritten letter to the Facebook founder's home on January 28. A court hearing on the stalking allegations is set for February 22.

While Manukonda has not been arrested, if charged with stalking, he could face up to one year in jail and or 1,000 dollars in fine. 

ICC pushes for legalised betting in India

After the scandal of spot-fixing rocked the cricketing world, the International Cricket Council (ICC) is now pushing for new ways to curb the menace. The ICC is believed to have approached the Indian government with a special request.

Cricket's topmost body is lobbying with the Centre to legalise betting. In India, the only betting that is allowed in sports is on horse racing.

The ICC's latest endeavour stems from a string of match-fixing allegations in the past involving Indian bookies.

Australians Mark Waugh and Shane Warne said they were given money by Indian bookies to pass on weather information in 1993.

Former South African captain Hansie Cronje said that he was introduced to an Indian bookie by former Indian skipper Mohd Azharuddin.

More recently, Mazhar Majeed, the man charged with paying Pakistani players for spot-fixing says he was acting on the behest of an Indian.

So, the Indian connection has been present in spot-fixing and most match-fixing scandals.

"It is far easier to manage the issue and the temptation of corruption if the betting industry was regulated and legalised...Where it is not regulated, where it is illegal, it tends to go underground and it becomes that much more difficult to manage the issue",  Haroon Lorgat, CEO, ICC said.

The Pakistani trio of Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir were caught courtesy the News of the World sting but bookmakers in England say that regulated bets allow them to catch on to suspicious trends very quickly.

Rupert Adams, Public Relations Executive, William Hill said, "Everything is scrutinised. As a risk operator, e.g. if we see a bit more money, even 1.5 per cent more in a market than we expect, all the screens go red and we immediately try to work out why that is."

According to guesstimates, every India-Pakistan game involves Rs. 90-100 crore of bets being placed.

IPL 3, meanwhile, had touched a new high with reports claiming that Rs. 1800 crore was bet on the tournament.

The government stands to earn huge revenue from legalised betting but the issue of morality has always hindered the change. Not surprisingly, lotteries too are allowed in just a few states in the country.

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