News

Google’s Android platform definition is being stretched to include Chinese rivals, including China Mobile’s Ophone and Tapas OS, a project run by the former president of Google China, reports Appleinsider.

“A report by Canalys yesterday claimed that Google Android platform had taken the top spot in global smartphone platforms worldwide, edging in front of Nokia and making up about a third of all smartphones globally.

However, the report’s numbers included a footnote saying the “Google numbers” “relate to Android, as well as the OMS and Tapas platform variants.”

In reference to these “variants,” John Gruber of the Daring Fireball wrote today, “Are things like maps, email, search, and advertising served through Google? Or do they come from Chinese companies? Put another way, are OMS and Tapas variants of Android, or separate platforms forked from Android?””

Read More: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/01/google_android_counts_include_rival_chinese_variants.html

Really Strategies announced the availability of RSuite Cloud™, a web-based editorial and production system for automated multilingual publishing to print, web, and eBook formats. RSuite Cloud is a hosted end-to-end content management and publishing system for book publishers to create, manage, and distribute single-source content to multiple channels. The system also provides language translation tools to publish in 70 languages, including all major European, Asian, and bidirectional languages.

“Publishers have been asking us for a publishing system that will help them generate new e-Book revenue streams and simultaneously reduce their production-related costs,” stated Dan Dube, senior vice president of cloud solutions at Really Strategies. “We are thrilled to respond with RSuite Cloud, so publishers can focus on developing new products to drive top-line revenue rather than focus on labor-intensive production processes.”

RSuite Cloud is available on a per-user license or Pay-Per-Page™ model. Pay-Per-Page is a revolutionary payment model where the software is free of charge and the publisher only pays for final pages published from the system.

RSuite Cloud readily accepts Microsoft Word manuscripts into the system and automatically converts the Word files to XML for web-based copyediting and automated page composition. Production workflows are easy to setup and execute to generate page proofs and eBook drafts for content review and approval. The system is configured to automatically publish print-ready PDF files, HTML output, and eBook formats. RSuite Cloud’s language translation tools facilitate localization of content, enabling publishers to expand their markets and increase global revenues.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team has written a post announcing a specific change to Google’s search algorithm to reduce content copying and spam in search engine results.

“we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments. We’ve also radically improved our ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010. And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”

Read more: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-search-and-search-engine-spam.html

Xavier Ducrohet writes on the Android Developers Blog about highlights of Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) a new version of the Android platform that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.

Highlights:
UI framework for creating great apps for larger screen devices: Developers can use a new UI components, new themes, richer widgets and notifications, drag and drop, and other new features to create rich and engaging apps for users on larger screen devices.

High-performance 2D and 3D graphics: A new property-based animation framework lets developers add great visual effects to their apps. A built-in GL renderer lets developers request hardware-acceleration of common 2D rendering operations in their apps, across the entire app or only in specific activities or views. For adding rich 3D scenes, developers take advantage of a new 3D graphics engine called Renderscript.

Support for multicore processor architectures: Android 3.0 is optimized to run on either single- or dual-core processors, so that applications run with the best possible performance.
Rich multimedia: New multimedia features such as HTTP Live streaming support, a pluggable DRM framework, and easy media file transfer through MTP/PTP, give developers new ways to bring rich content to users.

New types of connectivity: New APIs for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP let applications offer audio streaming and headset control. Support for Bluetooth insecure socket connection lets applications connect to simple devices that may not have a user interface.

Enhancements for enterprise: New administrative policies, such as for encrypted storage and password expiration, help enterprise administrators manage devices more effectively.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/01/android-30-platform-preview-and-updated.html

For an complete overview of the new user and developer features: http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.0-highlights.html

Kristin Burnham, writing on Macworld has posted an interesting article, “Five great Gmail timesavers Tap into advanced features in Google’s e-mail service”

Tips are:

Granting access to your Gmail account allowing someone to read and respond to your e-mail on your behalf.

Toggling between two Gmail accounts in one browser, using Gmail’s new Multiple Account Sign-in feature. To enable this feature, visit google.com/accounts and choose Edit next to Multiple Sign-in.

Opt-out of conversation threads

Easily schedule events in different time zones

Auto-advance to the next conversation

Full Article: http://www.macworld.com/article/157362/2011/01/gmailtips.html?lsrc=rss_main

Twitter has added an online form to its website that companies can use to express interest in purchasing Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets or Promoted Trends.

Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting.

At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length.

Twitter connects businesses to customers in real-time. Businesses use Twitter to quickly share information with people interested in their products and services, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and influential people.

http://business.twitter.com/advertise/start

BitNami Stacks have been announced for Moodle 2.0, the latest stable release of Moodle. This new release has several major new features:

Community hubs, a directory of courses for public use or private communities.
Repository support which allows Moodle to integrate with external repositories of content like Alfresco, Amazon S3, YouTube among others.
Portofio support, so now modules can export their data to external systems.
Course completion and prerequisites.
Conditional activites.
Web services support for administrative systems or mobile clients.
Integration with plagiarism prevention tool such as Turnitin.

You can download a simple native installer for your machine, use a Virtual Appliance to deploy it in your favourite virtualization platform or deploy it in the Amazon cloud.

More: http://bitnami.org/stack/moodle

Facebook has updated it’s user profile pages according to The Facebook Blog and is already being rolled out to Facebook users.
The profile begins with a quick overview of basic information such as where you’re from, where you went to school, and where you work—?the kinds of conversation starters you share with people you’ve just met or exchange with old friends as you get reacquainted.

Features include Featured Friends and Improved Photos and Friends Pages,

More Info: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=462201327130

A group of former members of WikiLeaks is planning to launch its own whistleblowing platform in mid-December, according to SPIEGEL ONLINE.

They say former members of the organization have criticized his supposedly autocratic leadership style. “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off,” Assange famously wrote to one internal critic.

Six Apart the company behind TypePad and Movable Type is to be acquired by VideoEgg. As part of the acquisition, both TypePad and Movable Type will be renamed SAY Media.

Six Apart, founded in 2001 by Ben and Mena Trott, is one the pioneers of blogging. VideoEgg, which launched at the DEMO Conference in 2005, originally was a video publishing service, but has since rebranded itself as an advertising network.

Both TypePad and Movable Type have been hit by the success of WordPress.

Norton has announced 2011 versions of its Norton Internet Security suite and Norton Antivirus software.

Norton also announced a new application, Norton Power Eraser, fake antivirus malware.

Norton Power Eraser is a new freebie tool designed to detect so-called fake antivirus malware,malware that looks like garden variety antivirus software and tried to coerce you into paying for “full” versions of the software that do nothing at all.

Norton’ also announced a Bootable Recovery Tool, a tool of last resort for when your PC is so hosed by malware that it won’t start up, or your antivirus software won’t even work properly. The Bootable Recovery Tool is a free download, but you need to enter a Norton product key in order to use it.

More info at: Norton.com

From small companies to global organisations, social media campaigns are playing an increasingly important role in brand marketing and now a Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame table has been published.

Compiled by PR and social media agency, Umpf, the table lists 54 of the world’s very best social media campaigns, from iconic brands such as Coca-Cola, Ford, Nike and Nokia to lesser known names such as Ascendgence and DARPA.

Adrian Johnson, Umpf owner, said: “Whether they’ve been created to raise product awareness, increase sales, drive footfall, add fans, improve SEO or enhance audience engagement, one simple thread links all these social media campaigns together: a clever concept.

“At the heart of any great marketing campaign, whether it’s a press ad, a piece of DM, sales promotion, PR, or in this case social media, you’ll typically find a brilliant idea – each of the campaigns in our Hall of Fame exhibits that trait, helping generate brand buzz, conversations, interaction and engagement.”

The Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame, which details 54 of the world’s best social media campaigns, can be seen in full at: http://www.umpf.co.uk/blog/pr/social-media-campaigns-hall-of-fame.