MarketingTypo.com

TeleNav is releasing another handy application, OnMyWay into the Android Market today. You know TeleNav, don’t you?  They’re the brains behind your Sprint and AT&T navigation titles. To describe their new (free) app’s premise, I think it’s best to use it in a short hypothetical scenario.

Let’s say you are on your way to a ten o’clock brunch meeting and you’ve got a an hour drive ahead of you. You start off on time, but later you find yourself stuck in traffic and it looks like you’re going to be late. What’s the best way to to let everyone know what time you’ll actually get to the restaurant? You don’t want to call everyone, do you?  And we all know better than to text while driving, right? OnMyWay does this for you.

OnMyWay alerts a pre-set recipient or group of people as to your status and ETA. Set the notification right before you start driving and everyone gets an alert (text and/or e-mail) that tells them when you are expected to arrive at the destination. If you run into anything that might delay you, OnMyWay automatically sends an update to those that matter.  Their new message tells them that you’ll be late and provides the updated ETA.  This way, you don’t have to worry about anything but driving safely.

To create an OnMyWay notification, you’ll need to follow a few quick steps:

• Input a destination
• Enter a scheduled appointment time
• Selects or enter phone numbers and/or e-mail addresses to send alerts to
• Start!

Your phone contacts are integrated into the app so there’s no need to hunt anything down.  Further, you have the option to send personal messages with your notifications.  For those of you worried about privacy, OnMyWay never shows your specific location, nor does it share it with any recipients.  Keep your eyes peeled for OnMyWay in the Android Market!

TeleNav Unveils OnMyWay for Android originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

View full post on AndroidGuys

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Another innovative app from Google is out for Android phones – Gesture Search !

It lets you search by writing out characters on the touchscreen of your Android device by doing a “double flip”, or flipping your phone away and then back. This eliminates the need to activate Gesture Search from a home screen shortcut. You can also turn the feature on or adjust its sensitivity from the Settings menu.

Download the App here.

Way to go Google !

Dailybloggr Community on Facebook

Android phones gets gesture search from Google was posted at DailyBloggr.com by Mani Karthik.

View full post on DailyBloggr – For the Blogging, Search, Social Media, Web Enthusiast

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

HTC is planning to launch another android phone named as HTC Paradise. This news we get from some unofficial sources as the phone has not yet announced officially by HTC. Paradise phone facilitates you a lot with its rocking and wonderful facilities and features. This HTC phone offers support to 3G HSDPA 850 / 1900 and 2G GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 networks therefore show paramount working capabilities. We obtain some unofficial preliminary specifications for your guidance. At present, its dimensions and weight information are not available but all other details are here.

HTC Paradise comes with 3.2 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard.  The screen resolution is 320 x 480 pixels and it demonstrates almost 256K colors. The phone has wonderful features of accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, optical trackpad, Speakerphone, 3.5 mm audio jack and Touch sensitive controls, all these features are apparent in HTC desire as well.  You are able to record unlimited calls and can made unlimited entries in the phone book. The fast speed connectivity is guaranteed through 3G HSDPA, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and microUSB v2.0.

The trend of social networking boosts up day by day that’s why HTC Paradise also provide various options in this regard such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration. Additionally , for the console of mobile user who wish for speediest communication this HTC mobile features with SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email and IM. In order to make the search process easy and handy, it has the facets of dedicated search key, Google Search and Maps.

HTC Paradise runs on same Operating System i.e. Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair) that is used by previous HTC mobile phones for instance HTC Evo 4G,HTC smart,HTC Max 4G etc.

It integrates with 5 MP camera and Auto-focus facility while the camera resolution is 2592 x 1944 pixels. The phone will come in stunning black color with features of HTML browser,MP3/AAC+/WAV player,MP4/H.264 player, voice memo,T9 and standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh.

View full post on Cell Phone

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

If you’re an Android user, I’m pretty sure you’ve tried to use the official Facebook app. And then given up.

The functionality is lame, the notifications don’t work, and — most annoying of all — most of the actions within the app require being bumped out onto the mobile site anyway. In short: it stinks.

But today, all that changes. Today sees version 1.3 hit the Android Market, and with it comes a butt-load of improvements. So many, in fact, that I may start using the app regularly. And that’s saying something.

So, what’s changed?

First up: don’t expect complete liberation from the mobile site. Clicking on a notification still bumps you out to the (touch) Facebook page. This is still a bit of a bummer (as it makes you question why you even opened the app), but most features are now in-app. For instance, messages can be read and responded to from within the app. But wait, there’s more…

First and foremost is the timeline of pictures that sits down the bottom of the main screen. This shows the latest images from your News Feed. Handily, this includes the thumbnails for any links posted, so is a good place to see if any of your friends have found a new video of cats chasing laser beams.

Also, the notifications are no longer tucked away under a menu, but rather, appear as a notification “drawer” similar to Android’s native notification system (only down the bottom of the screen). This is actually quite nice, as you now know how many notifications you have as soon as you open the app.

Photos are now also handled within the app, and you can comment from within the app, too.

So, to round off, this updated is a must-have for every Android user (assuming you’re also a Facebook user, that is), and one that has been much-needed for a long time now. The functionality divide between the iOS Facebook app and the Android app is now finally closing. Let’s just hope that Monsieur Zuckerberg’s switch to Android keeps this progress rolling. Hands up who wants Facebook chat enabled?

View full post on MobileCrunch

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Back in May, we first wrote about Pulse, an innovative and pretty news reading app for the iPad created by a couple of Stanford grads. Just about a month later, it hit for the iPhone as well. Today, they’re wasting little time graduating beyond the iUniverse with the launch of Pulse for Android.

Pulse is essentially a better-looking and more intuitive way to read your favorite RSS feeds. That’s because the experience is visual and touch-based, rather than being a bunch of text you click on. The fact that it uses RSS also differentiates Pulse from its new rival Flipboard, which pulls in actual content rather than RSS in a way that may be legally murky. You may recall that Pulse was taken down from the App Store shortly after its iPad launch after the New York Times complained about the use of their content. This was especially odd since just 24 hours earlier, no less than Apple CEO Steve Jobs praised Pulse on stage during his WWDC keynote. But (and perhaps because of that) Pulse was quickly reinstated, and has stuck around with no problems since then.

So what do users of Pulse on Android get? As you can see in the video below, the same experience users get on the iPhone and iPad get — and that’s saying something considering how most apps ported over tend to lose something along the way. It’s easy to add and remove content sources. Reading is smooth and seamless. And sharing is simple. Also, in the video below, the app isn’t shown on just the latest and greatest Android device, it’s running on five different Android devices, we’re told.

What may be most amazing about Pulse is that this is their (Alphonso Labs’) third platform release in under three months — and they’ve done this with a team of just three full-time people (and one intern). Also, the group has yet to take any Angel/VC money — though I suspect that may change sooner rather than later.

Pulse is available right now in the Android Market for $1.99. You can find it by searching for “Pulse” or by clicking here if you’re on your Android device. To commemorate the Android launch, Pulse is also lowering the price of its iPhone app to $1.99 for this week.

View full post on TechCrunch

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

While most of the Android-carrying world still waits on the edge of their seat for Android 2.2 (Froyo) to grace their handsets, a handful of engineers over in Mountain View are already hard at work on their next big thing: Android 3.0 (Gingerbread).

Gingerbread, it seems, is getting far enough along in its development cycle that at least one or two engineers have it up and running on their kits.

GreeneComputing, developers of the LINPACK benchmarking software for Android, were running some analytics on their app usage logs and uncovered a few little gems: in between all the Android 2.2 users (which made up 43.1%) and Android 2.1 users (which made up 39.8%), a few users appeared to be running something special: Android 3.0. Oh, and Android 3.0.1, and 3.2, for that matter.

Before you get too excited: 3.0.1 and 3.2 are likely near identical copies of 3.0 at this point, just separated out onto individual branches for the sake of developing them in parallel. Still, that means Google’s got at least one minor and one small-but-still-pretty-notable update on the drawing board already — and we can’t wait for either, much less the big 3.0 itself.

[Via DroidDog]

View full post on MobileCrunch

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

I’m an Android user and a proud one. No, I’m no anti iPhone or anti Mac either, but I believe in imperfection and an iPhone is too perfect and closed for me, hence I prefer an Android which is open and more “me”. Its like preferring Firefox over Safari. That’s it.

But an Android user is not likely to be as happy and satisfied as an iPhone user in more than one ways. There are several crippling factors for the Android that’s slowing down the market growth in an alarming rate, and what’s more alarming is that on the Android platform you don’t see the enthusiasm like any other successful open-source environment like Linux, or Firefox. The energy is depressingly missing. Why – you may ask.

Here’s why !

The Android market sucks & is broken !

At least when compared to the iPhone store. If you’re outside the US, then you’re almost doomed. The reason is that there is no market at all, so to say. You can get a bunch of free apps but that’s it. I haven’t found any direct, easily accessible method to buy apps from the Android market – if at all it was supposed to be available. Today, the Android market is nothing but a couple of free apps, with no categorization, no search function and virtually a broken store.

You can neither search for apps, nor download them from any site, except a few developer sites, which you don’t necessarily need to know about.

To me, this is one big crippling factor. And a major one because this whole thing is supposed to be open source, and technically nothing is open on the market except a couple (les than what you can count on your fingers) of crap apps.

And the plight of Android app developers is no different. There is no market outside the US, there is no where you can submit an app to, and there is no way to track the app performance etc etc. Apple on the other hand, does a great job at the store, enabling all the above mentioned things and even beyond. It is their USP and unless Android can do something close to or similar to the Apple app store, the Android market is taking the ride downside. At least outside the US.

View full post on DailyBloggr – For the Blogging, Search, Social Media, Web Enthusiast

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Clearly, the iPhone 4 is the best phone yet from Apple, no doubt. We had seen it before via Giz, so the hardware wasn’t that impressive, its shifted from the typical smooth iPhone look to the crisp, edgy Macbook Pro kinda look. Also, its gotten thinner, impressive !

But in the software section, I think most of the improvements were predictable. Improved camera, Video chat (come on, its available already on Android phones and that too Android – other handsets), Better battery life etc. In my opinion, these weren’t surprises, these ought to have been there on the next iPhone, so it didn’t excite me much.

Image credit – Telegraph
The striking thing is that, iPhone is going in a completely different direction as the Android. While the Android goes the “cloud” way, iPhone is going the typical Apple way with sexy hardware and a pay-me-take-it app store market. Many Android devices have shown close to or even better tech specifics than the iPhone 4, but no one yet has put things together as the iPhone, except for the HTC Evo.

Even the new features like iMovie edit is not really a value addition unless you’re someone who’d taken an oath that you’d use only Apple products. A better movie editing app is probably in the Android Market now and getting an update most likely.

Android is no match for the iPhone and vice versa

An iPhone is an iPhone and comparing it to an Android is unfair because both even though crosses over at various functions, are growing in different directions. iPhone is looking at creating its own slice of market, while Android is going the more popular way of open source even without the charm of an iPhone.

So which is better – is an unfair question. A lot of it depends on what the user type is. If you’re the open source type, Android is for you, but if you’re an Apple fan and the loyal kind, the iPhone is for you.

However here’s a feature by feature comparison considering the HTC Evo 4G on Android 2.1. Correct me if wrong.

Just me personal thought, your thoughts might differ. If yes, feel free to share.