Daily Bits

It’s Gowalla Vs. FourSquare, Which Side are You On?

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Undoubtedly, location-based or location aware services, be it on the web or mobile is the next big thing to watch out for. And if you haven’t jumped into the bandwagon, you might want to check out Gowalla or FourSquare, two of the hottest location-based social networking tool which are fighting it over the right to become the market’s number 1 service.

And these two services just might officially spark up their unavoidable rivalry at the upcoming SXSWi 2010 gig next week. Both FourSquare and Gowalla are said to be bringing more innovative features in the said event.

So, which side are you on? Are you using Gowalla or FourSquare? Have you checked what new features each of them are preparing to unveil?

I actually have both, and several of them. I have FourSquare on my iPhone and BlackBerry Bold while Gowalla both sits on my iPhone and Google Nexus One phone. But I don’t get to use them that much since there are very few people in my area who uses these applications.

In terms of features, Gowalla recently revamped its Passport pages by using Big icons to show places you’ve visited. It is also now easier to spot if you’ve got new friend requests. Design-wise, Gowalla has also made some improvements, specifically eliminating the prevalent dark green hues of its interface and replacing it with a light green look. Overall, Gowalla is ahead of its competitor, FourSquare in the looks department.

If FourSquare is lacking on the looks department, it is however prepping up some functionality enhancement. One of these is the “categories” element to plaes. This new feature simply lets you put places you’ve visited into various categories to make browsing easier.

Of course, these two location-aware services would only thrive if you are using them. So, which side are you taking? Have you used either of the two on your mobile devices?

10.5 Million Blogs Go Real-Time with Pubsubhubbub

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All WordPress.com hosted blogs just beaten others in becoming a really real-time online content property. Thanks to Pubsubhubbub or PuSh as what some people have shortened it to, each and every posts you published on your WordPress.com blog will now be pushed automatically, in real time to the web. This means, real-time feed push to RSS aggregators such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Friendfeed, Netvibes and others.

Basically, what PuSH does is to let your feed aggregators  to register automatically to receive updates from your blogs each time you publish new posts. These updates are sent out within a second or two after you publish a content. Previously, the process is a bit tedious since your blog is periodically being asked by these aggregators if there are any updates before notifying those who are using the service.

The service was automatically activated  for all WordPress.com blogs, so there’s nothing that you need to do to get it going. If you’re blog is not hosted on WordPress.com, you can still have this feature by installing a new plugin which you can download from  here.

And if you want some more information about PubSubHubBub, you can may want to check out project site or the Google groups. If you don’t have any idea what PubSubHubbub is – TheNextWeb describes it as:

An open protocol for distributed Publish/subscribe communication on the internet. The main purpose is to provide near-instant notifications of change updates, which would improve on the typical situation where a client periodically polls the feed server at some arbitrary interval.

Apple iPad to Hit Stores on March 10, Not for Sale Yet Though

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Rumor has is that Apple stores will start getting iPad units on the 10th of March.  According to the Examiner.com, an Apple Store manager in Southern California confirmed this. The said date was of course earlier than what was previously announced during the iPad launch which was supposed to be on March 29.

Now, before you get all too excited and starts preparing to camp out of your nearest Apple Store on March 9, sorry to disappoint you folks but those iPads were being shipped in preparation for Apple Store employees’  training.

So, when is the iPad going to be available for sale really? Actually, there is still no definite date yet, but the report said that March 26 is the most likely date. Of course, we all know that the iPad units that will be available that day are the Wi-Fi enabled ones only. The iPad 3G versions won’t be coming out until April or May.

Now, for those who are anticipating the usual Apple commercials for new products, expect the iPad commercials to start airing on March 15.

And finally if your camping out on the eve of the iPad release, if in case the actual date is already announced, well Apple is giving you a special gift as a token of appreciation for your enthusiasm in getting the iPad on release date.

Hopefully, all things go according to Apple’s plan, and that production will go on smoothly without further delay.

So, are you excited about the release of the iPad? Are you lining up outside Apple Stores? Are you getting the iPad or will you wait for the next version?

Google Gets Patent for Location-Based Advertising

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So last week Facebook won a rather “vague” patent for news feeds. Now, it’s Google’s turn. This time it’s a patent for location based-advertising which if compared with Facebook’s patent is very clear as to what intention Google will use this patent for.

Actually, Google may have set the pattern already when it acquired mobile ad company – AdMob. It is clear that Google wants to dominate the mobile advertising market, what with the recent launch of its Google branded phone, the Nexus One. AdSense on the other hand have implemented mobile ad serving a long time ago.

And now this patent for location in an advertising system, which is actually the emerging business model for most consumer-facing location startups today.

We must also consider Google’s long-standing  priority over location-enabled search. In fact, just last week a location filtering option for search was rolled out by Google.

Interestingly, this development has to come amidst the proliferation of location-based mobile applications such FourSquare, Gowalla, Yelp and even Google’s own Buzz in its mobile version. [Read more…] about Google Gets Patent for Location-Based Advertising

TigerText Mobile App Lets You Set a Termination Date for your Text Messages

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How about this? – A text message that expires on both your phone and the receiver’s device as well. Sounds cool, right? The patent-pending technology was announced recently by a company called X Sigma partners and is currently available at the Apps Store. But soon, it will also be available for BlackBerry and Android devices.

In brief, here’s what TigerText can actually do:

“For the first time, you have complete control over what happens to your texts after you hit the send button. It brings safety and peace of mind to anyone who sends messages that are intended to remain private.”

TigerText lets you send text messages that delete off on your phone and the receiver of your text messages after a set period of time.  The text messages that you sent disappears from the phones and are not stored on any server. That means that you can’t retrieve the text messages anymore after it’s lifespan expires.

It practically answers your need to keep your text messages private. I mean, you can even set the lifespan of your text into as less as one minute, well if you think that it’s enough time for your recipient to read your text, why not?  Talk about giving you peace of mind, right?

The TigerText app also features an easy-to-use interface, making sure that you don’t have to learn another set of new applications methodology. It’s similar to the text messaging app of your iPhone.

The app is available now from the Apps Store for free. If you use it now, the first 100 messages that you will send or the first 15 days  of your usage will be free. After that, it will cost you $1.49 per month for every 250 text messages. Or if you want unlimited texting, you can opt to pay $2.49 per month.

Symbian Hard at Work to Make S^4 at Par with iPhone and Other Platforms

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Ironically, while  the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile platforms have been pretty much covering the smartphone market, previously major players such as Palm and Symbian are now trying to catch up with them. Symbian for one has recently released S^3 which signals the mobile platform’s transition into the free, open-source route.

And now, even while fans are still awaiting for Symbian ^3 phones to come out, Symbian is already hard at work on its latest version – Symbian S^4.

The folks at Fierce Wireless checked out the latest iteration of what use to be the most popular mobile platform, Symbian S6 and unfortunately were underwelm by what the new Symbian platfrom has to offer. Basically, the new Symbian S64 looks and acts a lot like the iPhone and Android. Although Nokia informed Fierce Wireless that what was demoed during the Mobile Web Congress is still a work in progress. It is by no means the final look and feel of Symbian ^4.

Symbian S^4 will be a completely redesigned  mobile platform which was built from the ground up including a new programming language in place. Previous Symbian OS were built on C++, but now it is based on Qt. So this means that old apps written for old versions of Symbian including S^3 will not run on the new Symbian S^4.

It’s still a long way to go before we see if Symbian will be able to reclaim its lost glory and whether there will be new cool phones to run on Symbian S^4.