Daily Bits

MySpace Launches a Better Looking My Music 2.0 in Beta

by

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

by

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

by

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.

YouTube Intros HTML5 Video Player, What Does it Do Again?

by

It’s been pretty busy on the YouTube side lately. Awhile ago, YouTube announced a redesigned video home page. But before that, YouTube also announced something about its current testing of a new video player – this time it’s an HTML5-based video player.

HTML5 is a new web standard which is becoming popular recently, well simply because it offers new features to everyone’s web experience. And as a basis for its new video player, the YouTube HTML5-based player will support video and audio playback seamlessly without the need for additional browser plug-in. For as along as you an HTML5 compatible browser and support for the right audio and video codec, the YouTube HTML5-based video player will give you almost the same experience when watching YouTube video using its default Flash player.

While the YouTube HTML5-based video player seemed a fully functioning player, it however has several limitations. Well, that’s understandable because it is still at an early stage of development. Specifically the video player does not support video with ads, captions or annotations. It will also require a browser that supports video tagging and h.264 encoded video. Known browsers to support HTML5 are Chrome, Safari, Chrome Frame and Internet Explorer.  Firefox is not yet supported, but YouTube promises to include it and other browsers as well, in the future.

You can try using the HTML5-based video player by visiting the YouTube TestTube site and selecting HTML5 or simply go straight to this page to opt-in for the new video player. But honestly, if you don’t have a problem viewing YouTube videos with your browsers current setting, there’s really no point in trying it out. It’s basically the same thing minus the Flash component.

But still worth a try.

Facebook Quietly Rolls Out Post Insights for Pages

by

Facebook has quietly roll out a new post analytics tool which will be most useful for Facebook Page administrators.  If you run and maintain a Facebook page, this new post insights tool will give you how many impressions each post on your page have received. In addition, it also tells you what percentage of those impressions resulted in corresponding actions – likes, comments, or even much better clicks if you’re promoting something on your Facebook page.

In short, the post insights tool is short of being your usual web analytics tools.  The post insights is currently rolling this out to few Facebook pages administrators. More administrators would have this on their respective Facebook page soon.

While this may not be useful to you if you don’t maintain a Facebook page, those who have been using Facebook for brand marketing will definitely find this tool very useful for their marketing campaigns. Somehow it beats Twitter which does not have this feature yet.

The display is impressions and percentages are pretty simple.  Here’s a screenshot given by All Facebook blog.

Facebook Lets You Communicate with Apps via Email

by

Facebook has just announced a new way of letting your stay connected with your favorite Facebook apps. It’s really just a matter of applying the same email notifications that you receive whenever you are tagged on a photo or receive a message from your Facebook friends. And like other Facebook add-ons that requires access to your email account, this new Facebook feature will never receive your email address unless grant application developers the right to email you.

So, how does this new feature work? Starting probably today, you will start seeing dialog boxes on your application pages containing a question from app developers whether you want to receive notifications about their apps, coursed through your email address, of course.

And why would you want to receive email notifications from Facebook app developers? Honestly, I don’t see any good reason why. But the Facebook blog said that it will give you more detailed and interesting information from developers about your favorite Facebook applications. These information include – receipts of purchases, newsletters as well as notification of actions with their apps.

Of course, like any other email notification set-up, Facebook apps notification feature can be easily cancelled anytime. All you need to do is to hit the “unsubscribe” button located at the bottom of the email notifications that you received.

This new feature is just one of the many new features that Facebook is planning to  launch this year.