The Android-powered Dream G2 handset from China-based maker Sciphone is expected to hit the China market for less than 1,200 yuan (US$174) within 10-15 days, according to a Chinese-language Sina.com report.
The Sciphone Dream G2 will run Android Home edition V1.0, and will come with GSM/EDGE support, 16GB flash memory, and Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube applications, but it will not include a physical keyboard, according to the report.
Written by Maximus on December 3rd, 2008 with comments disabled.
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Agreement Gives Advertisers Access to Hallmark Channel Family-Friendly Programming
NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF., December 3, 2008 – Hallmark Channel and
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today a strategic agreement to offer advertisers access to high-quality family-friendly programming through the Google TV Ads program. Advertisers will now be able to reach even more viewers by using Google TV Ads platform to place ads on both Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel.
In November, Hallmark Channel was seen in 86 million homes across the U.S. and over the past year has consistently ranked in the top ten prime time ratings. The network will air in 2009 more than 30 original movies – its largest-ever slate. Hallmark Movie Channel broadcasts a mix of classic theatrical films, presentations from the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame library, Hallmark Channel original movies and special events. Using the Google TV Ads platform, advertisers, starting in early 2009, will be able to access both networks' national audiences and receive viewership data at an unprecedented scale. Google TV Ads advertisers – many of them new to the television medium – can then better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaigns to maximize return-on-investment.
“Partnering with Google is a milestone for Hallmark Channel’s continued advertising success,” said Bill Abbott, Executive Vice President, Ad Sales, Hallmark Channel. “The Google TV Ads platform will allow more advertisers to access the network’s acclaimed roster of family-friendly programming – entertainment that audiences cherish during the holidays.”
Google TV Ads offers greater accountability and relevancy in advertising. With Google’s innovative targeting tools and auction-based pricing system, advertisers can find the right context and audience for their advertising message, only pay for impressions delivered to their ads, and receive digital reporting within 24 hours. Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel join Google TV Ads’ growing list of inventory partners, which also includes six networks from the NBC Universal family—Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller—along with Bloomberg Television and 96 networks through DISH Network.
“Hallmark Channel’s strong family-friendly brand and programming attracts an important viewer demographic that Google TV Ads’ advertisers can now access,” said John Saroff, Manager of Strategic Partner Development for Google TV Ads. “Combined with our platform’s measurement technology, this collaboration signifies an important step towards making television advertising more accountable for advertisers and more relevant for viewers.”
About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
About Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Channel, owned and operated by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., is a 24-hour basic cable network that provides a diverse slate of high-quality entertainment programming to a national audience of 86 million subscribers. The top tier program service is distributed through more than 5,450 cable systems and communities as well as direct-to-home satellite services across the country. Hallmark Channel consistently ranks among the top 10 ad-supported cable networks in Prime Time and Total Day household ratings and is the nation’s leading network in providing quality family programming. Crown Media also operates a second 24-hour linear channel which plays the greatest family movies of all time, Hallmark Movie Channel, and launched Hallmark Movie Channel HD in April, 2008. For more information, visit http://www.hallmarkchannelpress.com.
Google and Google TV Ads are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.
Source: Nielsen Media Research estimates that from October 27 through November 30, 2008, Hallmark Channel was available in over 85 million homes across the U.S. and during the period from December 31, 2007 to November 23, 2008, ranked in the top ten prime time household coverage area ratings.
Written by Maximus on December 3rd, 2008 with comments disabled.
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To kick off the month of December we wanted to whet your appetite for our year-end Zeitgeist with this sneak peek of the fastest-rising search terms in the U.S. for 2008. We combed through billions of anonymous, aggregated search queries to bring you this snapshot of what's been top-of-mind for Americans in the past 11 months.
When compared to 2007, the following terms have seen the most growth over the past year.
1. obama
2. facebook
3. att
4. iphone
5. youtube
6. fox news
7. palin
8. beijing 2008
9. david cook
10. surf the channel
Written by Maximus on December 2nd, 2008 with comments disabled.
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QiGi i6 specifications:
• Android or
Windows Mobile• 2.8 inch touchscreen display
• virtual QWERTY keyboard
• GPS
• Wifi
• Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity
• Bluetooth
• 2 mega pixel camera
• 624MHz CPU
• microSD support
• measures 109 x 58 x 14.9 mm
source
Written by Maximus on November 30th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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As an avid iPhone user, I anxiously await each and every new firmware update Apple offers for it. It does sound quite geeky to say that, but Apple always throws in a bunch of goodies with each update that make the iPhone either easier to use or more fun. Sometimes both.
By no means are these updates perfect, and I have personal opinions on certain features the iPhone lacks (*cough* cut and paste *cough*) and Apple refuses to include them for some reason.
This past Friday we witnessed the release of iPhone firmware 2.2. Eagerly, I immediately downloaded it and installed it on my iPhone. While I originally anticipated little change or improvement to my iPhone, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. And it didn’t disappoint.
My goal in this review is to cover the new features and how they’ve impacted my iPhone use.
Google Street View in iPhone 2.2
Google’s Street View feature is the defining addition to the 2.2 iPhone firmware update. When I first heard that Street View was coming to the iPhone, my thought was “Apple certainly has some interesting priorities.” I figured it would be a mini version of the Street View you can find on the main maps site. Sad to admit, I was wrong.
First, the Street View is fluid and easy to use. On the internet, Street View has arrows to help you adjust the direction of view, ie. if you want to look to the right, click the right arrow. But the iPhone is simpler and smoother. If you want to look to the right, just swipe your finger to the left. The views run together panoramic style and thus there is no interruption in the images. Use multitouch to zoom in and out; double-tap on the street arrows to move further down the street.
Let me share why Street View adds significantly to the iPhone’s map application. Let’s say you are looking for directions to a friend’s house that you’ve never been to. After following the step-by-step directions, now it’s time to find the exact address. If you’re like me, this typically entails driving down the street at 10 mph looking at each individual house to see if it matches the house number you’re looking for. Now just tap on the pin on the map, find the Street View icon, and the map will magically turn into a picture of the house you’re looking for. Still can’t find it? Adjust the viewpoint so you can see what side of the road it’s on and which houses are next to it.
In the image above, the orange circle with the little guy inside to the left of the restaurant is the Street View icon.
This wasn’t the only improvement to the maps. Now you can get walking directions and bus routes as well.
2.2 App Store Changes
A couple important changes occurred in the App Store. Prior to 2.2, when looking through the categories you could only look at one list for each category. The paid and free apps were lumped together and it was a bit difficult to filter through the rapidly growing list. Happily, the 2.2 firmware update changed all that by adding 3 filters within each category: top paid, top free, and release date.
The other change occurs when downloading app updates. With iPhone firmware 2.0, any app (whether on the main page or the last page) would reappear on the front page when a update was downloaded. In 2.1 that hassle was rectified, but the icon would still appear on the front page during the download, and when the download was complete the icon would go back to its original position. Firmware 2.2 tweaks it a little by having the download occur in its original spot.
Podcast Downloading in iPhone 2.2
This change to the iPhone has been my absolute favorite. In the iTunes app on the iPhone, you now can download podcasts directly to the phone, without downloading it to your computer first. You also can stream the podcast without actually downloading it to your iPhone, thus saving space.
Honestly, before 2.2 came out I didn’t pay much mind to podcasts in general. I felt it was inconvenient and time-consuming to download to the computer and then sync to the iPhone. Nor did I want to take up crucial space with podcasts. I simply didn’t see the value. But I started streaming podcasts while I worked on my computer and a whole new world opened up to me.
The entire stream gets buffered really quickly, so you don’t have to constantly be in range of WiFi or 3G once it’s buffered. I was able to wander down my street with 3G turned off and listened to a hour-long podcast without any interruption.
Homescreen Shortcut
One particular change to the iPhone 2.2 firmware update is small but definitely clever. I have 6 menu screens and find it a hassle to keep swiping my finger across the screen to get back to the main menu screen. But on 2.2, all you have to do is hit the menu button once (no matter which menu you’re looking at) and presto! It moves you back to the main screen.
Other Changes in the 2.2 Update:
When you delete any app from your iPhone, a pop up box appears asking you to rate the application. You can choose from 1-5 stars, or just hit “no thanks” and it will disappear. In my personal opinion, this may skew app reviews a bit, because generally I’m only deleting apps that I don’t like or I don’t use, which makes for negative ratings.
The firmware update also claims to improve visual voicemail sound quality and reception. I haven’t tested either of these out too much yet. But if you have noticed any difference, please leave a comment for us and let us know!
So the iPhone 2.2 update was a lot more useful than I had originally expected. I found the Street View and podcast downloads to be exciting, easy and convenient to use, and I feel that I am getting more out of my iPhone as a result.
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Written by Brad Molen on November 28th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Apple and Google and Software&Services and Wireless and featured and firmware and iPhone and iPhone 2.2 firmware upgrade and update.
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The boys at Google are not playing fairly in the iPhones App Store they should have just released it on Android first whats so hard in doing that
While everyone tries to play by the rules when developing and distributing Applications to the iPhones App Store Google seems unwilling to follow suit and do the same. Everyone knows that Apple has some stupid restrictions laid out for their iPhone when developing for it things like no background processing etc has caused developer uproa
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Written by MobileTopSoft news board on November 28th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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Google’s catalogue of mobile products has gotten bigger than ever, and the amount of user questions the Google Mobile team fields every day must be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
I imagine having to face the difficult task of helping each and every single Google Mobile product user out of his or her predicament is a bag of hurt. So the fact that Google’s launching a dedicated user forum for such activities doesn’t surprise me at all.
The Google Mobile Help Forum, as it is so aptly called, is a community wherein members will be able to find answers to their mobile questions and help others find the answers to theirs. It’s an brand new platform that was built by Google entirely from scratch.
Here are the platform’s “exciting new features:”
- Q&A format to help you find answers quickly
- Improved search and integration with the Google Mobile Help Center
- Better spam detection and prevention
- Public recognition of Top Contributors and frequent posters (with more posting privileges as you make your way up)
- Ability to subscribe to ask questions and receive answers via email
To access the Google Mobile Help Forum, one simply has to go to http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile?hl=en on their browser. Not exactly the best URL ever designated for a forum, but hey, that’s why they invented bookmarks.
Via Google Mobile Blog
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Written by David Gonzales on November 25th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Android and Apple and BlackBerry and Google and Nokia and Software&Services and WINDOWS MOBILE and Wireless and forum and mobile and mobile help forum and user forum.
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After making calendar sharing possible Google has announced that contact syncing is now available for Blackberries.
This improvement offers two-way synchronization between your BlackBerrys built-in address book and your Google Apps contacts automatically over the air said a Google announcement.
Get it now at the Google Mobile Sync site or visit m.google.comsync on your phone.
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Written by MobileTopSoft news board on November 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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