Daily Bits

Arnold Zafra

Brightkite Releases Apps for Nokia S60 and Palm Pre Phones

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Before Yelp, Gowalla and Foursquare and other location-aware social recommendation/discovery sites became popular on smartphones, there was Brightkite.  It was among the earlier apps of this kind which I’ve tried using on my iPhone.

Today Brightkite just released two new apps for two mobile platforms, Brightkite for Nokia and Parafoil for Palm. The Brightkite app for Nokia runs on all Symbian S60 5th edition phones such as the N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It is currently available for download at the Nokia Ovi Store.

Meanwhile, the Palm application is called Parafoil and was built using the Brightkite API.  The app works with Palm Pre and Palm Pixie phones. You can download this third-party app from the Palm App Catalog.

According to Brightkite’s founder Brady Becker:

” The new Nokia and Palm apps allow more people to use Brightkite in the easiest and most rewarding ways.”

By releasing these two apps, Brightkite is extending its reach beyond the U.S. market. since Nokia phones are very popular in the international market. In fact, Japan is one of the many countries which showed strong growth in the usage of Brightkite during  the previous months.

In case you have not used Brightkite before, this app lets you  meet people around you, keep up with your friends, explore and discover new places. On the other hand, Parafoil lets you share your location, send photos, post to Twitter and Facebook all from one place.

You may download Brightkite for Nokia app here, and Parafoil here. The app is also available for the BlackBerry, iPhone and Android devices.

Gowalla Adds Trips and Bookmarking Features to its Fun and Useful App

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Location-aware social recommendation sites are so hot today. Recently, I wrote something about AT&T’s plan to release its Buzz service, possibly to go up against Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla. Yelp and Foursquare has been getting their share of publicity lately, and now here comes Gowalla with some nifty additions to its already interesting services.

If you haven’t used Gowalla either on your iPhone or on the web, the concept is pretty simple. You create an account, add Trips, Gowalla’s term for identifying places you’ve visited including your opinions about those places and share them with other Gowalla users. Whereas before, trips were curated by the Gowalla team, now you can create your own Trips, describe these Trips and add up to 20 spots that you have visited before and then published it for your friends to see via the Gowalla app that they are using.

To make adding Trips more fun, Gowalla will also start featuring unique and exciting trips. These trips will be promoted on the merits of their quality and relevancy and the number of people who completed the trip. Custom pins or badges, which are the stuff that make Gowalla more fun will be given to Gowalla members who have completed trips published trips by other members.

In addition, you can now create bookmarks of spot pages at Gowalla.com. You can then view your bookmarks from your iPhone. This will also be available to other mobile devices soon.

Alright, I know you’d appreciate these features if you’ve used Gowalla, either from the web or on your iPhone. If you haven’t tried it out, now may be the best time to do so. You might find it cool.

LinkedIn Improves Address Book Browsing

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One of my favorite social networking site which I don’t get to use more often,  LinkedIn has just announced that they would soon be rolling out an improved  address book. The new address book interface aims to make  LinkedIn members more productive.

Key feature of the LinkedIn Address Book update is the new browse panel that gives you a facility for viewing your connections based on their current companies, locations and industries. It also lets you search your connections using  first name, last name or current company.  There is also now a Recent Activity filter in the said browse panel that lets you browse your new connections and your connections who may have recently added a new connection.

The LinkedIn mini-profile now lets you view whether your connections have changed their positions, added new connections or even send them a message. You can also look up contact information such as phone numbers, email address and physical mailing address or add these information yourself in your LinkedIn address book.

Other features of the new LinkedIn Address Book include:

  • Connections automatically tagged with keywords such as “colleagues”, “friends”, “partners” and “group members” based on information you provide when inviting them to connect with you
  • Organize your connections into different groups via tags
  • Send a message to multiple connections at once based on how you’ve organized them by tags

Love it so far? Why not pay your LinkedIn profile a visit and see how cool this new Address Book is right now. I just did.

MySpace Launches a Better Looking My Music 2.0 in Beta

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Are you still using MySpace? I’m pretty sure there are still some if not many of you who are still maintaining your MySpace account. Or perhaps you’re still active in MySpace? If you are, you’re probably waiting for MySpace to launch its new My Music portal. Well, it just did, went out live in beta.

My Music 2.0 aims to become your hub where you can build and manage social playlists from My Space’s comprehensive online music catalog. And what does the new My Music 2.0 offers? Quite plenty actually, which include a new sleeker UI and several nifty features.

Some of MySpace’s My Music 2.0 key features that you may like and actually end up using include:

  • sortable song grids with a slicker drag and drop feature
  • subtle “reveals” which display the information and features as you need them
  • in-place edits and settings
  • vertical scrolling improvements
  • playback in-page

In addition, My Music 2.0 now also lets you broadcast playlist on your MySpace profile and share it directly with your friends. There is also a new “song activities” module which displays the latest song related to your activities. This makes it easier other MySpace members to discover most recent music that their friends or other members are sharing.

You can check out MySpace My Music 2.0 from this link.

Apple is Now a $50+ Billion Company, New Product to Boost Income

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Apple has just released its first quarter earnings for Fiscal Year 2010 ending on Dec 26, 2009. And guess what? Apple obviously posted significant growth in revenues.  Apple’s total revenue is at $15.68 billion while net quarterly profit is at $3.38 billion or $3.67 per share.

Part of this revenue was due to the sale of the Macintosh computers, accounting for 3.36 million units sold, a 33% unit increase as compared to the same quarter last year.  The iPhone too, managed to contribute to Apple’s overall growth with a 100% increase in unit growth compared to last year.  Apple sold 8.7 million iPhone in the Q1 Fiscal 2010.  The only product line that didn’t earn Apple quite well is the iPod family, representing an 8% decline from last year. Apple probably needs to come up with something new for its iPod products to renew consumer interest.

Of course, the biggest announcement from the earnings report was contained in Apple’s Steve Jobs statement:

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company. The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

Any idea what that product may be? Of course, well all know what that is – it’s the Apple iSlate or Apple Tablet or the Apple iPad. Whatever it is going to be called, I’ve very certain that Apple is coming out with another killer product. Something that everyone would probably want to have.

And we will soon find out about that on the 27th.

National Geographic’s iPhone Atlas Uses Bing Maps

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In their latest foray into the iPhone apps market, National Geographic is bringing in their version of the World Atlas.  This iPhone app lets you view 7 different levels of cartography, 3 maps styles and a location finder around the world containing 7 million place listings.  In addition, the app also makes use of the Bing Maps platform, embedded right into the heart of the said iPhone application, even serving as a mapping option.

National Geographic claims that its iPhone app utilizes the “highest resolution”  press ready images. Hence giving you the same rich details and graphics quality of the maps it actually has on the printed, published world maps and atlases. In addition, their iPhone app als features a built-in search tool and places directory to help you easily locate even the most remote places eer known to mankind.

Here’s a rundown of the full features of the National Geographic World Atlas for iPhone:

  • High resolution National Geographic cartography, the same used to print our award-winning wall maps and bound atlases!
  • Preloaded with 3 different styles of world maps, down to country detail. Additional detailed zoom levels and Microsoft Bing maps require internet connection to view. Map Library feature allows you to download and save National Geographic maps for faster access and offline use.
  • Easy-to-use and fast place name search tool, with over 6 million database entries (major cities index is preloaded; full search requires internet or cell connection).
  • World Flags and Facts database, expertly edited and up-to-date with concise socio-economic and geographic data.
  • Push pin tool enables you to mark, annotate, and save your favorite places. Push pins come in a variety of colors and can tap into your iPhoto library or camera.
  • GPS enabled iPhones can center the maps to show your current location.

The National Geographic World Atlas for iPhone will cost you $1.99. You may download the iPhone apps from this iTunes Link.