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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.

Facebook Lets You Communicate with Apps via Email

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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.

Twitter’s New Mobile-Optimized Site Might Kill Third-Party Apps

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A post at the Twitter blog  has just just revealed a surprising fact – there are still many Twitter users who access their account on their mobile phones using Twitter’s mobile site.  So, to make their experiences more pleasant Twitter has just revamped its mobile browser-optimized site. m2-medlyIt was really surprising that there are still many Twitter users who access their account through the old mobile site despite the fact that there are several third party Twitter apps available. Whether you are using an iPhone, Android phone, Nokia S60 and Palm Web OS phones, you will surely find one or two Twitter apps that you can download for free or for a minimal fee.

Anyway, the new Twitter mobile browser-optimized can be found by pointing your phone’s browser to http://mobile.twitter.com. And one thing I can say about this new site is that it’s an all new look – almost similar to how Twitter apps look and feel like.

Feature-wise the new mobile site offers just about the basic stuff that you can do on Twitter – post tweets, view DMs, Retweet tweets and more. What it won’t allow you to do is to access multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. But if you’re just using one Twitter account, the new mobile site has enough features to please you.

This made wonder whether Twitter is hitting on the third-party apps that have kept the interest of mobile users into using Twitter on their mobile phones? Like I said, the new Twitter mobile site is as good as what you can get from those third-party apps.

So, if you haven’t downloaded any third-party Twitter app, would you be using this new mobile site instead?

Four iPhone apps for creative writers

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Want to get creative while on the move, or check up on how some of your writing buddies are getting on?

The iPhone’s virtual keyboard may not be best suited for cranking out paragraphs of prose, but sometimes you’ve just got to write, regardless of where you are.

Check out these four apps for the iPhone. Click on the title to go to the app on the iTunes Store.

my-writing-nook-iphoneMy Writing Nook

Write from anywhere and automatically synchronise with the My Writing Nook web application, so you can work from your laptop, iPhone, Internet café — anywhere.

Features autosave, word count, dictionary and thesaurus look ups, portrait and landscape modes.

£1.19 / $1.99


writers-block-buster-iphoneWriters Block Buster

Boasts over 300 thought-provoking questions to get those creative writing juices flowing again when the inspiration has dried up.

12 different categories including plot development and dialogue, with the ability to input your own content and characters.

£2.39 / $2.99


nanomojo-iphoneNaNoMojo

If you’re participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo, this app will keep you in touch while on the move.

Keep up-to-date with how your writing buddies are doing, including word counts, avatars, and latest news from HQ.

£0.59 / $0.99


ipoems-101-iphoneiPoetry

Provides help and assistance for budding poets, including practice and suggestion for eight types of poem. The app can even generate its own poetry.

£1.19 / $1.99

5 iPhone Apps that Let You Read and Download eBooks

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A new research found out that book apps have taken over the lead as the most downloaded apps in the iTunes Apps Store over game apps. This means that more iPhone users are using their Apple device to read ebooks. If you would like to the do the same, you will need an eReader app.  We got five of the best of these eReader apps for the iPhone listed down.

eReader (free)  – This app has been in the Apps Store since 2008, and it could well be the most downloaded ereader app for the iPhone. It has around 100,000 ebooks on its catalog right now. The app has some exciting features as well including – cover flow, thumbnails, speed enhancements, improved access to other ebook sites and definitely more. (Itunes Link)

B&N eReader (free) – Before Barnes & Noble worked on its Nook ereader, there was the B&N eReader for the iPhone. This app works with B&N’s online ebook store, so you could purchase ebooks directly and download it to your iPhone. (iTunes Link)

Stanza (free) – This iPhone ereader gives you access to various sites offering both free and paid ebooks. It supports Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks and other sources of ebooks. It also allows you to purchase ebooks from Fictionwise eReader store and other online bookstores. Stanza has been the most favorited ereader app for the iPhone since its release in March 2009. (iTunes Link)

Classics ($2.99) – Don’t be discouraged by this app’s price because it’s features and the plethora of classic ebooks that it contains are definitely worth the bucks. Classics features 3D flipping of pages, bookmarking and other nifty features that mimics reading of a real-life book. (iTunes Link)

Kindle for iPhone (free) – Amazon’s Kindle iPhone app allows you to read Kindle books on your iPhone. It’s a pretty good app, however you can only purchase Kindle books from your Mac or PC and transfer it later to your iPhone.  It has loads of features as well with the pinch feature of the iPhone working while you are browsing pages of ebooks.  (iTunes Link)

Yahoo! Mail Now Has More Useful 3rd-Party Apps

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Yahoo is “supercharging” its web mail services by launching more useful apps coming from third party providers.  Starting today, all U.S.-based Yahoo! Mail users who have the option to add web apps and tools such as PayPal, Zumo Drive, Picnik, OtherInbox and Photobucket. This is in addition to the previous apps introduced earlier this year – XoopIt, Flickr, and Flixster. [Read more…] about Yahoo! Mail Now Has More Useful 3rd-Party Apps