Daily Bits

Five Coolest Super Bowl XLIV Commercials

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So did you enjoy the Super Bowl game last night? Were you disappointed by the final game result?  Well, now that the game is over, how about checking out the other side of this year’s shindig – the SuperBowl ads? It is also the most anticipated highlight of this year’s Super Bowl, right?

There are actually two types of Super Bowl ads that were shown last night. Those which are general in nature and those that are technology related. We’ve selected five of these tech-related Super Bowl Ads as our favorites.

Google’s Parisian Love Super Bowl Ad

Google surprised everyone when their Parisian Love search-related commercial rolled out.  For one thing, it’s very simple and did not have all the fanfare that other commercials have.  Google’s Super Bowl commercial highlighted how useful its localized search engine is when it comes to everyone’s everyday life. [Read more…] about Five Coolest Super Bowl XLIV Commercials

Facebook Makes Uploading Photos Easier, Faster

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Facebook is rolling out some new feature enhancements today as it celebrates its 6 year anniversary.  Some of you might have already seen the new Facebook UI wherein the top site  navigation and left menu were changed a bit. Part of these enhancements is Facebook’s photo uploading facility which will enable you to share and upload photos to your Facebook account easier and faster.

According to the Facebook blog, the photo uploader will be gradually rolled out in the coming weeks.  While we all wait for this to be activated on our Facebook accounts, here’s what we all should expect to see and experience.

First, the photo uploader will now be a Facebook plugin. Meaning once it is activated on your account, you will be prompted to install that plugin. Once installed and as you try to upload photos, the uploader will display a photo browser which you can use to select the photos you want to upload from your desktop.

So what’s so exciting about it? Well, aside from uploading your photos faster, you can now navigate away from the upload page and check out other parts of your Facebook profile or if you want you can navigate away from Facebook completely while the upload process is still ongoing.  Once the upload process is completed, you will be prompted by the plugin which will allow you to go back to the photo uploader to edit, tag and add captions to your photos.

Sounds exciting? If you upload many photos on your Facebook account, the new photo uploader is definitely heaven sent. Can’t wait to try it out.

As the Smartphone Market Grows, So Does iPhone’s Market Share

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Results of IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker yield some interesting points to ponder on about the current state of the smartphone industry.  And being a smartphone addict that I am (I’ve got an iPhone and Nexus One right now and I’m still planning to get a BlackBerry in a couple of days)  it’s quite interesting to take a look at this report.

According to IDC’s report, a total of 54.5 million units of smartphones were shipped in Q4 2009, up by 39% from the same quarter in 2008.  Total shipment for 2009 was 174.2 million units, up by 15.1% from 151.4 million units in 2008. In addition, smartphone shipments accounted for 15.4% of all mobile phone shipped in 2009, up from 12.7% in 2008.

Drilling down to the top five smartphone brands, Nokia still leads the pack with a 37.6% growth in Q4 2009 and 11.9% growth from 2008 to 2009.  RIM with its BlackBerry devices follows at close second while Apple, HTC and Samsung complete the top five smartphone brands in 2009 and Motorola replacing Samsung in the top category for Q4 2009.

Now his the interesting part. Apple’s market share grew by a huge 97.7% in Q4 2009 and 81.9% from 2008 to 2009. You know why this is interesting? Apple was able to achieve this feat with only one smartphone available in the market, the iPhone 3GS. While both Nokia and RIM both got several smartphone units. Nokia has the 5800, N97, N97 mini, 5530 and other latest models, while RIM has various BlackBerry devices. [Read more…] about As the Smartphone Market Grows, So Does iPhone’s Market Share

Pages Creation Feature Graduates from Blogger in Draft

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Since I stopped using Google’s free blog hosting platform, Blogger a long time ago, that doesn’t mean that I also stopped monitoring what’s been happening with the service. So, not so long ago Blogger introduced this feature for creating static pages and put it in their  “Blogger in Draft” beta feature testing site. Guess what? After a long time, that feature has finally graduated from beta and  is now an official Blogger  feature.

If you’re still running a blog hosted on Blogger.com and you’ve  missed this feature, now is the best time to try it out. Basically, what this allows you to do is to create static Pages that you can link to on your Blogger main page. You can create up to 10 static pages which can be for About page, your Biographical details, information about what you are blogging about and many other related information.

The process of creating a page is similar to the way you create a blog post. Once you’ve created a page, you can have it published on your main blog page using the Pages widget. If you’ve created several pages, you can even organize how these will be displayed on your blog’s main page.

This feature works well for blogs that use any of the default blog templates. For those who are using customized template on the Blogger blogs, the process of creating pages and organizing them is a little different and requires some knowledge of HTML and coding. You can check out the procedures for adding Pages tab on blogs with customized template from here.

You know what this mean? Those who want to create an online presence for themselves or for their businesses but do not want to start a blog, can now use Blogger.com to create their websites. And they don’t have to spend anything since the service is free.

E-Reader Owners Are Satisfied with their Device but Want More Features

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The NPD Group has released a new report entitled “e-Reader Owners: Attitudes and Usage” and this could very well be used by Amazon in its drive to develop the Kindle into a more powerful and interesting ebook reading device.

Based on the report 93% of e-reader owners were found to be either “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their device. A mere 2% expressed their dissatisfaction.

Additionally, 60% of the respondents said that the wireless feature of their e-Reader device was their favorite feature. The second most favorited feature was touch-capability with 23% of  the respondents saying so. Interestingly, among the many e-readers available in the market today, Amazon seems to be the one with the most stable wireless feature. So, does this mean that most of the respondents have the Kindle as their e-reader? While the 23% may not be Kindle users since only the Kindle DX has the touchscreen feature. Unfortunately, the report did not specify what are the respondents e-readers.

Another interesting finding of the report was that e-Reader owners are still looking for more features for the e-reader. Among those features that they are looking for include longer battery life, more book titles and color screens.

As we all know, Kindle doesn’t have a color screen, so Amazon is probably looking into developing a new Kindle that will support this feature.  And what great timing it is that Amazon was reportedly eyeing to buy a start up called Touchco. This company, as you may have guessed specializes in touch-screen technology. Some analysts say that Amazon is preparing its e-readers  for the entry of the Apple iPad by March.

Skype to Update its Mobile App to Support VoIP 3G

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A couple of days ago, Fring has enabled 3G calling on its iPhone applications. Made us wonder whether Skype will follow them and update their Skype Mobile app for the iPhone.  But apparently, the Skype folks are not rushing into the frenzy created by Apple’s recent ruling on allowing voice calls through 3G on  the iPhone. Before internet voice calls were carried via Wi-Fi only.

So, why is Skype taking its sweet time in updating their mobile Skype app to enable the said feature? According to David Ponsford head of the Skype iPhone Team, Skype will release this update pretty soon.  He also said that Skype wants to make sure that when they allow voice calls through 3G network on their mobile app, the sound quality will not suffer.

Mr. Ponsford also said that the Skype update will allow calls in wideband audio which actually translates to greater clarity and fidelity of voice calls through 3G network.

Interestingly, the Skype folks are also pretty much excited about the recent launch of the iPad. The Skype team is carefully looking into the details of the device and it looks like they might be cooking up something for iPad and Skype. Although I’m not really sure as to how this could be possible considering the fact that the iPad does not have a front-facing camera which is needed for voice chat,  or a mobile phone capability.

Or maybe the Skype team is expecting something else from the iPad that we may not be aware of?