Tag Archives: SMS

Linux

13 apps that will make you wish you had an Android smartphone

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FP: In most cases, developers prefer to make new smartphone apps for iPhone first, only moving to Android and other platforms once they get some traction.

There are a bunch of great apps that happen to be Android exclusives. Check them out.

AP Photo/Marcio Jose SanchezThere are a bunch of great apps that happen to be Android exclusives. Check them out.

In most cases, developers prefer to make new smartphone apps for iPhone first, only moving to Android and other platforms once they get some traction.

(Android owners who had to wait months for Twitter’s video app Vine know what we’re talking about.)

But there are some outliers. There are a bunch of great apps that happen to be Android exclusives. Check them out.

Ingress is a unique real-world scavenger hunt game.

 

Ingress is a unique real-world scavenger hunt game.

Google

Ingress is a sci-fi game that sends you on a scavenger hunt through the real world to find “hidden” virtual goodies.

Google developed the game. Here’s the plot:

“A mysterious energy has been unearthed by a team of scientists in Europe. The origin and purpose of this force is unknown, but some researchers believe it is influencing the way we think. We must control it or it will control us.”

So, basically, you run around your town trying to find this illusive “energy” before the bad guys do.

Price: Free

Facebook Home turns your home screen into a Facebook photo gallery

Facebook Home turns your home screen into a Facebook photo gallery

William Wei, Business Insider

Facebook Home adds a Facebook-powered wrapper to your Android phone. Instead of seeing your normal lock screen, you get a beautiful slide show of your friends’ Facebook photos and status updates. You can comment and like those updates directly from the lock screen without opening the regular Facebook app.

Price: Free (Only works on select Android phones.)

DeskSMS makes sure you’ll never miss a message again.

DeskSMS makes sure you'll never miss a message again.

DeskSMS is a nifty app that allows you to forward text messages (and picture messages) from your Android smartphone to your desktop via Gmail, Google Talk, and the Chrome Web browser.

Price: Free

WiFi Analyzer lets you determine how strong a wireless network is in your vicinity

WiFi Analyzer lets you determine how strong a wireless network is in your vicinity

Have you ever been stuck on a slow wireless network?

WiFi Analyzer lets you see how strong networks are around you, helping you to pick the fastest, most reliable one.

Price: Free

Weather Bomb gives a data-intensive view of the weather on your Android device

Weather Bomb gives a data-intensive view of the weather on your Android device

Weather Bomb is an extremely detailed weather app that gives users seven days of data.

There are various views, but our favourite is the graph view, which gives the week’s rain, wind, and cloud forecast at a glance.

Other data includes rain, wind, cloud, temperature, pressure humidity and wave height.

Price: Free

Google Skymap lets you know exactly which star you’re staring up at.

Google Skymap is an open sourced app that lets you point your smartphone up at the night sky to decipher constellations, planets, and stars.

Price: Free

Llama Location Profiles uses where you are to change aspects of your phone like ringer and Bluetooth

Llama Location Profiles uses where you are to change aspects of your phone like ringer and Bluetooth

KnowYourMobile

Llama is a nifty app that automatically switches specific phone settings depending on where you are. You can automatically silence your phone when you arrive at your office or turn Bluetooth on at 7 a.m. to pair with your headphones for a morning run.

Best of all, the app doesn’t use your phone’s GPS, which can drain your battery. Instead, it uses cell towers in your area to figure out where you are.

Price: Free

BetterBatteryStats helps you spend more time unplugged.

BetterBatteryStats helps you spend more time unplugged.

BetterBatteryStats lets you analyze your phone’s behavior, pinpointing exactly which applications are causing your battery to drain. Once you know what the culprit is you can specifically fix the issue.

Price: $2.89

APP Lock password protects specific apps.

APP Lock password protects specific apps.

The premise behind APP Lock is simple: password protect installed applications with a password or pattern. Now you don’t have to be nervous when someone else is playing around with your smartphone.

Price: Free

SwiftKey 3 will change how you type on your Android smartphone.

SwiftKey 3 will change how you type on your Android smartphone.

Business Insider / Matthew Lynley

SwiftKey improves your productivity by helping you to type better.

Swiftkey gives much more accurate corrections and predictions than other keyboards. Very sloppy typing will make sense, even if you miss spaces, and SwiftKey 3 also predicts your next words.

Price: $3.99

Tasker lets you automate everything on your smartphone from settings to SMS

Tasker lets you automate everything on your smartphone from settings to SMS

Tasker is an awesome app that lets you tweak specific phone features like turning the flash on for alerts. You can even cancel specific notification pop-ups.

Tasker features more than 200 actions, triggers, and even an app creation section for making your own app.

Price: $6.49

Friday helps you discover new things to do

Friday helps you discover new things to do

Friday’s makers say that the app brings self discovery to your life by introducing the first passive auto journal.

Friday captures your entire life through your phone and builds a timeline of the things you do. You can even filter and search your life to find the exact information you want.

Friday allows you to share and log your favourite activities that you’ve been doing all day.

Price: Free

Robin is a great alternative to Apple’s Siri

Robin is a great alternative to Apple's Siri

Before Google Now, Robin was the first true Siri challenger.

We love the expanded capabilities of the newer virtual assistant. You can ask Robin for directions, local places, real-time parking, traffic info, gas prices, weather, your Twitter news, and much more.

Robin is disrupting the personal assistant arena, and we only hope that her existence pushes developers to make personal assistant apps feel more like true personal assistants.

Price: Free

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today

Linux

Martin Pitt: umockdev 0.4: Mocking phone calls

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umockdev 0.3 introduced the notion of an “umockdev script”, i. e. recording the read()s and write()s that happen on a device node such as ttyUSB0. With that one can successfully run ModemManager in an umockdev testbed to pretend that one has e. g. an USB 3G stick.

However, this didn’t yet apply to the Ubuntu phone stack, where ofonod talks to Android’s “rild” (Radio Interface Layer Daemon) through the Unix socket /dev/socket/rild. Thus over the last days I worked on extending umockdev’s script recording and replaying to Unix sockets as well (which behave quite different and quite a bit more complex than ordinary files and character devices). This is released in 0.4, however you should actually get 0.4.1 if you want to package it.

So you now can make a script from ofonod how it makes a phone call (or other telephony action) through rild, and later replay that in an umockdev testbed without having to have a SIM card, or even a phone. This should help with reproducing and testing bugs like ofonod goes crazy when roaming: It’s enough to record the communication for a person who is in a situation to reproduce the bug, then a developer can study what’s going wrong independent of harware and mobile networks.

How does it work? If you have used umockdev before, the pattern should be clear now: Start ofonod under umockdev-record and tell it to record the communication on /dev/socket/rild:

  sudo pkill ofonod; sudo umockdev-record -s /dev/socket/rild=phonecall.script -- ofonod -n -d

Now launch the phone app and make a call, send a SMS, or anything else you want to replay later. Press Control-C when you are done. After that you can run ofonod in a testbed with the mocked rild:

  sudo pkill ofonod; sudo umockdev-run -u /dev/socket/rild=phonecall.script -- ofonod -n -d

Note the new --unix-stream/-u option which will create /tmp/umockdev.XXXXXX/dev/socket/rild, attach some server threads to accept client connections, and replay the script on each connection.

But wait, that fails with some 

   ERROR **: ScriptRunner op_write[/dev/socket/rild]: data mismatch; got block '...', expected block '...'

error! Apparently ofono’s messages are not 100% predictable/reproducible, I guess there are some time stamps or bits of uninitialized memory involved. Normally umockdev requires that the program under test sticks to the previously recorded write() parts of the script, to ensure that the echoed read()s stay in sync and everything works as expected. But for cases like these were some fuzz is expected, umockdev 0.4 introduces setting a “fuzz percentage” in scripts. To allow 5% byte value mismatches, i. e. in a block of n bytes there can be n*0.05 bytes which are different than the script, you’d put a line

  f 5 -

before the ‘w’ block that will get jitter, or just put it at the top of the file to allow it for all messages. Please see the script format documentation for details.

After doing that, ofonod works, and you can do the exact same operations that you recorded, with e. g. the …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

Computers

Yale grad's 'Prism' program turns text metadata into wavy art

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What if the NSA took your text message metadata and made a flowing, colorful diagram with a timeline?

The U.S. spy agency — probably — doesn’t do that. But a 22-year-old Yale graduate, Bay Gross, was actually inspired by the U.S. government’s Prism surveillance program revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Gross, who just started working at Google in New York on Monday, created an application he describes as “part data, part art” that analyzes a person’s own SMS messages and lays them out in a rainbow wave. Appropriately, he named it “Prism.”

Prism, which works on Mac OS, draws the SMS metadata from the user’s own unencrypted backups within iTunes. It pulls who was texted and when and plots the data in a “Streamgraph,” a type of stacked graph developed by Lee Byron, who is an interactive information designer with Facebook.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

SIM card hack has severe implications for business

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It’s amazing it took so long. More than 20 years after its initial development, the SIM card has been hacked. A German cryptographer named Karsten Nohl will be presenting findings to that effect at the annual Black Hat computer security conference at the end of the month.

The impact of hacked SIM cards, one of the few stalwarts in the high-tech industry that has not seen a serious exploit, could be monumental. The exploit involves simply sending a specially configured, hidden SMS to the phone, giving the attacker an easy way around that phone’s built-in encryption. Ultimately this would then give the attacker the ability to do all manner of nasty things, from having the phone send pricy for-pay text messages to recording telephone conversations. While some seven billion SIM cards are in use today, Nohl estimated that roughly half a billion mobile devices worldwide would currently be vulnerable to this type of attack.

Fixes are already in the works, but as any IT manager who’s survived an old-fashioned Windows virus onslaught knows, a fix does not necessarily equal a solution. Even if patches are made available, that’s no guarantee they’ll be universally rolled out in a timely fashion. SIM cards can be updated invisibly over the air by network operators, but that poses a secondary problem. Because users have no visibility into whether their phones are vulnerable to the attack or not, wireless customers won’t know whether or not their devices are safe.

For individuals, the risk of someone hijacking your phone and listening in on calls or making phony purchases is bad enough.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Science & Technology

SIM sleuth finds security flaw that may affect 750M phones

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Yet another path to smartphone break-ins and fraud? Trouble-seeking cryptographer and security researcher Karsten Nohl, the managing director of Security Research Labs, based in Berlin, Germany, has revealed that some mobile SIM cards can be compromised as they carry encryption and software flaws. How massive is the potential damage? We are talking about a vulnerability that could affect 750 million phones. Nohl’s company has an ominous front page with a note showing handwriting, “Forever yours, Sim.” The elegant note was below a headline, “SIM cards are prone to remote hacking.” Nohl can back that up. He and his team tested close to 1,000 SIM cards for vulnerabilities, exploited by sending a hidden SMS. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org

Computers

SIM cards vulnerable to hacking, says researcher

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Millions of mobile phones may be vulnerable to spying due to the use of outdated, 1970s-era cryptography, according to new research due to be presented at the Black Hat security conference.

Karsten Nohl, an expert cryptographer with Security Research Labs, has found a way to trick mobile phones into granting access to the device’s location, SMS functions and allow changes to a person’s voicemail number.

Nohl’s research looked at a mobile phones’ SIM (Subscriber Identification Module), the small card inserted into a device that ties it to a phone number and authenticates software updates and commands sent over-the-air from an operator.

More than 7 billion SIM cards are in use worldwide. To ensure privacy and security, SIM cards use encryption when communicating with an operator, but the encryption standards use vary widely.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Do it yourself

Emergency Texting 101: How to Set a Secret SMS Code to Bypass Silent Mode on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2

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Just because your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is on silent doesn’t mean that the world stops spinning. Emergencies can pop up at any time, even when your phone is put away during a lecture in class, in the library, or at an important business meeting.

You put your phone on silent to free yourself from distractions—and because most of the text messages and phone calls you receive aren’t super important anyway. But what happens when there’s an emergency that can’t wait?

How to Get Emergency Texts Any Time

TeXTe by Android dev Curly Y. is a simple emergency (and free) SMS app that allows your loved… more

…read more

Source: Wonder How To

Do it yourself

How to Permanently Delete Text Messages on Your iPhone

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Keeping text messages private may seem like a pretty simple task, but more often than not, those embarrassing and incriminating texts can still be accessed even when you delete them from your iPhone. Sometimes, all it takes is a Spotlight search. Snapchat is another not-so-shining example of poor SMS and MMS security. The company is making millions by offering an application that’s supposed to permanently delete messages, yet it’s been pretty easy for people to find ways to save messages and photos on both computers and their Android and iOS 7 devices.

So what can you do to protect yourself… more

…read more

Source: Wonder How To

Science & Technology

Femtocell hackers from iSEC hear, see smartphone content

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(Phys.org) —While all thoughts are on how government agencies can abuse surveillance technologies to ruin people’s lives, an unassuming group of backyard neighbors in summer clogs and shorts can leisurely lean back in their chairs and snoop to read an SMS that a victim has just sent from her smartphone, listen in on her phone calls, and see all the pictures she is sending off by intercepting the data connection. Better still, they can plant themselves in the financial district and snoop on people talking about accounts, business mergers, or anything else ripe for exploit. Welcome to iSEC’s kind of exploit, the talk of the security crowd this week and no doubt the talk of companies that depend on red flags for potential security holes. The security consultants, iSEC Partners Tom Ritter and Doug DePerry, managed to hack a Verizon Wireless device and turn it into a mobile spy. “This is not about how the NSA would attack ordinary people. This is about how ordinary people would attack ordinary people,” said Tom Ritter, a senior consultant with the security firm iSEC Partners. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

LivePerson's Big Competitive Advantage

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By Brendan Byrnes, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

The following video excerpt was taken from an interview with Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson , as he talks about what was behind the company’s incredible success story. In this segment, he explains how his line of products and services uses predictive technology to move beyond a basic chat company. A transcript follows the video.

The Motley Fool’s chief investment officer has selected his No. 1 stock for the next year. Find out which stock it is in the brand-new free report: “The Motley Fool’s Top Stock for 2013.” Just click here to access the report and find out the name of this under-the-radar company.

Brendan Byrnes: Let’s talk about you products at LivePerson. I think some people look at it and say, “All these big companies are customers of yours — [Hewlett-Packard], Microsoft, Verizon.” They say, “Why don’t they do it themselves?” But you’ve built some solid competitive advantages in the fact that what makes that product so good that these companies don’t do it themselves, they go to LivePerson.

Robert LoCascio: It’s really our intelligence and our predictive capabilities, so chat is a channel of communication, and we chat, we use SMS, we use video, voice. These are channels of communication, but when you pair it with intelligence and the ability to say, “Hey, there’s a consumer on my website; let me practically offer to this specific consumer, because they need it, and then convert that consumer into a sale,” that’s what we do really well, and we pioneered the idea of using predictive technologies and behavioral targeting back in 2005, and that’s where it’s really helped us grow our business and make it more than just a chat company.

Byrnes: Let’s expand on that a little bit. I’m shopping for something, I have something in my shopping bag, and I wait maybe a little bit too long. Is that when the chat pops up? What are some factors that go into that?

LoCascio: It’s interesting. We have this predictive model, and it’s a very fascinating thing. You set the target, so you say, like, shopping cart sale is our goal, and it looks all the way back on historical data and may find 50 different things that you did: stopped on a page for two minutes, came from this keyword, you’ve been here in the last 30 days. You put a specific item in your shopping cart or a specific price is in your shopping cart, and all that gets mixed together, and the model says this person has a high probability to buy, but they look like they’re going off the path, and that’s when we do the invitation to chat or we send some content out, so it’s a very sophisticated model.

The article LivePerson’s Big Competitive Advantage originally appeared on Fool.com.


Brendan Byrnes has no position in any

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

Services seek money in social messaging as SMS declines

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A large number of customers are migrating to free or cost-effective social messaging apps. This is dampening SMS revenue growth and causing operators to worry about monetizing messaging services, says global analyst firm Ovum.

In a new report that examines the findings of its Consumer Insights Survey, the independent telecom analyst firm reveals that 31 percent of respondents to the survey said that using social messaging services has led to a decrease in their SMS usage. Countries such as Australia, Brazil, China, and France have experienced the highest adverse impact on SMS, although respondents from Germany, Russia, and the U.S. stated that they had actually increased their use of SMS. (See also “Happy bday! SMS txt msgs turn 20.”

“Based on Ovum’s research, there is a clear substitution effect in the early stages of social messaging adoption. This will increase as more social messaging players come into the market, mobile broadband becomes more affordable, and smart devices become even more popular,” says Neha Dharia, consumer analyst at Ovum and co-author of the report. “However, the fact that social messaging does not always infringe on SMS suggests that services with stronger operator relationships can even grow SMS traffic, creating opportunities for operators and OTT players to bridge the gap between online and offline users through paid SMS.”

In responding to Ovum’s survey, 34 percent of Skype users and 51 percent of WhatsApp users indicated that their SMS usage has decreased due to their use of social messaging. “Clearly there is a need to identify services that will promote the use of SMS to bridge the gap between offline and online services, which could lead to a revenue-generating opportunity,” Dharia said.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

From: http://www.computerworld.com.ph/index.php/news/1312-social-messaging-can-be-monetized-says-ovum#tk.rss_all

Linux

Specifications: Correct when writing, Gentle when reading

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I got a BlackBerry Z10 a few days ago.

I had not tried to use it as my main phone until yesterday since it needed a MicroSIM and i had a regular one.

Yesterday I got myself a MicroSIM and put it on the device to find out I could not access the 3G data network.

No problem, my operator has a website where you put the make and model of the phone and they send a SMS to the phone that autoconfigures it.
I went there and was surprised to see there was no BlackBerry listed at all.

OK, time to write the APN settings by hand, so I went to the Settings and started to look where to write the APN details, found them and realized they were disabled(greyed out) so I could not write the correct values.

After lots of searching I have come to understand that the phone obeys a indicator of the SIM that can say “I know how to connect to 3G data, no need to letting the user edit it” and when that happens, the BlackBerry Z10 happily complies and locks you out from editing them.

Problem is, my operator SIMs are wrong, they say “I know how to connect to 3G data, no need to letting the user edit it” and then provide wrong data.

And BOOM! I have a nice paperweight worth 600€

BlackBerry fan forums are full of people that say “BlackBerry is just doing what the spec says, blame your operator”.

I say to them “I’ve used that SIM in Apple devices, Samsung devices and Nokia devices and had never any problem connecting to the Internet”. Because the manufacturers were smart enough to let me edit the APN settings and write there the correct values if I wanted.

And this brings us to one of the mantras of engineering, be Correct when writing stuff but be Gentle when reading. It’s good the BlackBerry browser is following that mantra, otherwise you’d hardly be able to render any webpage.

So people at BlackBerry, please come of your senses and let people edit stuff. This way maybe I’ll get to use your device and people around me will see it and will want to buy one.

Otherwise I’ll just wait until the Ubuntu Phone is a bit more usable and start using it. It may not be as polished (at the moment) but at least it’s open source and I can fix crazy stuff like this.

From: http://tsdgeos.blogspot.com/2013/04/specifications-correct-when-writing.html

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

ExactTarget Launches Singapore Office to Serve Digital Marketers Across Asia Pacific

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

Filed under:

ExactTarget Launches Singapore Office to Serve Digital Marketers Across Asia Pacific

Office Extends ExactTarget’s Regional Strength with Operations in Singapore and Australia

INDIANAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Global cross-channel digital marketing leader ExactTarget  (NYS: ET) launched its Singapore office today, expanding the company’s international strength across Asia Pacific.

The office extends ExactTarget’s ability to bring its suite of email, mobile, social media, Web, data management and marketing automation applications to marketers throughout the region, building on the company’s regional presence in australia.

“Working closely with our team and clients throughout the region, it is clear that there is tremendous opportunity in Singapore and across Asia Pacific to transform business through digital marketing,” said Scott Dorsey, chairman and chief executive officer of ExactTarget. “By continuing to bring our expertise and passion for digital marketing to new markets, we are providing the leadership and technology businesses need to achieve new levels of success by connecting with their customers across email, mobile, social media and the Web.”

In a Sept. 2012 report, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development noted, “Singaporeans have shown a strong appetite for smartphones, according to surveys which rank Singapore one of the world’s highest in terms of smartphone penetration.” The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore estimated mobile phone penetration was more than 150 percent in 2012.

“Smartphones are fueling an unprecedented level of hyper-connectivity, making it seamless for consumers to move between email, SMS, apps, social media and the web from a single device,” said Scott McCorkle, ExactTarget’s president of technology and strategy. “ExactTarget’s suite of products provides the solution marketers need to optimize these interactions with data-driven, permission-based digital marketing that builds customer loyalty and drives sales.”

ExactTarget currently powers digital marketing programs for more than 6,000 clients worldwide and many of Asia Pacific‘s leading brands, including Haymarket, Fairfax Media and David Jones.

The announcement of ExactTarget’s new Singapore office follows the company’s 2012 launch of international operations in France, Germany and Sweden. ExactTarget’s global operations now include offices in australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Singapore and Sweden. ExactTarget’s U.S. operations include offices in Atlanta, Indianapolis, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

For more information about ExactTarget Singapore, visit www.ExactTarget.com.sg.

About ExactTarget

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/18/exacttarget-launches-singapore-office-to-serve-dig/

Computers

Gift card SMS spam drops after FTC action, Cloudmark finds

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The volume of mobile spam messages touting free gift cards sharply fell after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed complaints in early March against eight companies, according to antispam vendor Cloudmark.

The fraudulent messages told users they could get a free gift card for retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target in exchange for people’s personal information. The messages are illegal under U.S. law.

The FTC filed eight complaints in various U.S. courts against 29 defendants, accusing them of sending upwards of 180 million messages that confused consumers and often asked them to pay in order to receive the gift cards.

Gift card spam comprised more than 50 percent of all mobile spam messages in the U.S. around Feb. 18, according to Cloudmark’s report, which covers the first three months of this year. It sharply dropped to less than 10 percent following the FTC‘s March 7 announcement.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

From: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2035656/gift-card-sms-spam-drops-after-ftc-action-cloudmark-finds.html#tk.rss_all

Automobiles

Official: 2014 Acura RDX adds new standard features, starts at $34,520*

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By Jeffrey N. Ross

2014 Acura RDX

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Coming off a complete redesign for 2013, the second model year the second-generation Acura RDX has received a few tweaks to its equipment packaging and a slight increase in pricing for 2014. With all models receiving a price hike of $200, the 2014 RDX will now have a base price of $34,520 (*not including $895 for destination).

New for the 2014 RDX, Acura has included even more technology to the standard models, including a push-button starter, rear-view camera and an updated audio system that delivers Pandora Internet radio, SMS text messaging and Active Noise Control. Buyers will still be able to add all-wheel drive and the optional Technology Package. Scroll down for a press release breaking down more features of the 2014 RDX and complete model pricing.

Continue reading 2014 Acura RDX adds new standard features, starts at $34,520*

2014 Acura RDX adds new standard features, starts at $34,520* originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Nokia Launches App for Jazzing Up Camera-Phone Self-Portraits

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By Kevin Chen, The Motley Fool

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Nokia  has launched “Glam Me,” a camera app for taking and editing self-portraits on all Nokia Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone 8 in an effort to capitalize on what it calls the “selfie” phenomenon, the love of taking self-photos with phones.

The app allows a “slick range of beauty enhancing effects, such as teeth whitening and skin smoothing.” Users can also alter their self-snapshots with visual effects that include making them look like a sketch, an oil painting, or a magazine cover.

Nokia says selfies are “a true phenomenon” among young people in Asian countries — especially China. Developed in Beijing, Nokia hopes that Glam Me will appeal to the “young, social, and design-conscious” everywhere. Glam Me also lets users compare photos before and after editing.

In developing Glam Me, Nokia focused on providing  accurate face detection, camera effects, and beauty enhancement features.On Nokia Lumia phones, Glam Me can be launched as its own stand-alone application or selected through the viewfinder.

Once finished taking a picture, Glam Me lets users send photos via email, SMS or through social networks like Facebook or Weibo in China.

link

The article Nokia Launches App for Jazzing Up Camera-Phone Self-Portraits originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Kevin Chen has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Is Google Finally About to Get Serious About Messaging?

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By Evan Niu, CFA, The Motley Fool

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For a company that’s been trying to focus more lately, Google‘s current amalgam of various messaging services is in dire need of some unification. The search giant has a plethora of different offerings geared toward mobile and desktop messaging, and none of them have made major impacts on the market.

Google Talk is a desktop platform for chatting and video calls. Google Voice offers free SMS texting, but requires using a separate number. Google Plus Hangouts are meant for group video chats, and Google Plus Messenger is geared toward messaging on the go. That’s a lot of services that are needlessly distinct, since a unified service would have greater brand strength.

This is nothing new; Google product manager Nikhyl Singhal conceded last summer that the company has “done an incredibly poor job servicing [its] users here,” noting that Big G was planning to merge the services. The name of the unified service has been rumored to be Google Babel, which is expected to be a cross-platform chat service available on Android, Apple iOS, Chrome, Google Plus, and Gmail.

Last week, a Digital Trends report suggested that Google was in talks to acquire popular cross-platform messaging app WhatsApp for upwards of $1 billion. The search giant and the mobile start-up have been at the negotiating table for a little over a month, with the latter still trying to fetch more.

Source: WhatsApp.

WhatsApp has promptly taken off as an SMS alternative, since the service uses existing phone numbers, supports numerous different operating system platforms, and uses existing data plans in lieu of SMS plans. For $0.99 and no ads or in-app purchases, that’s quite a value proposition that wireless carriers are none too happy about, and why the app is the No. 2 paid app in Apple’s App Store currently.

Apple’s iMessage has also taken off in popularity, in part because of its tight integration with iDevices so there are no extra steps required by users. On the last conference call, CEO Tim Cook mentioned that the company now sends 2 billion iMessages per day. iMessage also ties into Apple’s desktop platform, offering another layer of convenience. On the video chatting front, Apple also has FaceTime.

Facebook has also been beefing up its mobile messaging capabilities. Not only does it offer texts and media, but the social network even just added free voice calling to its iOS Messenger app, using the phone’s data connection. Facebook just wants to be the sole communications medium between you and your friends, even if it doesn’t monetize messaging directly.

Apple, Google, and Facebook are all vying for messaging domination, much to the chagrin of wireless carriers. It’s about time for Google to finally get serious.

As one of the most dominant Internet companies ever, Google has made a habit of driving strong returns for its shareholders. However, like many other web companies, it’s also struggling to adapt to an increasingly mobile …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

ExactTarget Launches New Guide to Help Marketers Optimize Campaigns for Mobile

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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ExactTarget Launches New Guide to Help Marketers Optimize Campaigns for Mobile

Research-Inspired Guide Features Practical Advice on Designing for Today’s Mobile Inbox

INDIANAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Global cross-channel digital marketing provider ExactTarget  (NYS: ET) launched a new mobile optimization guide today, providing practical research-driven advice on how to optimize email for mobile devices.

Featuring consumer engagement data from Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, U.K. and U.S., the new Designing for the Mobile Inbox guide features global insights on how consumers engage with marketing content while on the go.

“Mobile is transforming business, fueling a digital marketing evolution that requires brands to evolve cross-channel campaigns to meet the unique needs of hyper-connected consumers,” said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget’s chief marketing officer. “The proliferation of smartphones and tablets provide marketers a tremendous opportunity to view mobile engagements as part of the path to conversion by delivering data-driven content with a focus on the customer’s overall experience.”

The new guide features actionable advice to help marketers optimize campaigns, including:

  • How to design for touch-enabled devices
  • Best practices in determining subject line and from name
  • How design elements, such as colors, contrast and text size, can affect mobile engagement

“With more than 1 billion smartphones in consumers’ pockets at the beginning of 2013, mobile is driving a second Internet revolution that’s even more profound than the first one,” wrote Thomas Husson and Julie Ask in the Feb. 2013 Forrester Research, Inc. report, “2013 Mobile Trends for Marketers”. “Brands that can serve customers’ situations, preferences, and attitudes in real time on mobile devices will leapfrog the competition and, more importantly, provide their services at a premium.”

To download ExactTarget’s Designing for the Mobile Inbox research report, click here.

The debut of ExactTarget’s Designing for the Mobile Inbox follows the launch of ExactTarget’s latest mobile innovations MobilePush and MobileConnect. MobilePush enables marketers to power push notifications from applications on smartphones and tablets and seamlessly integrate the message with campaigns across email, mobile, social and the Web. ExactTarget’s suite of cloud-based mobile applications also includes mobile optimized email and MobileConnect, an SMS messaging application that makes it easy for marketers to integrate mobile-originated or mobile-terminated messaging into the digital marketing mix. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

FAA's Reckless Threat to Close 149 Air Traffic Control Towers in June

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By John Goglia, Contributor The good news is that the FAA has delayed to June the decision to close 149 air traffic control towers at general aviation airports around the country.  The bad news is that June is the start of the flying season for many general aviation pilots living in climates not conducive to recreational flying in winter.  The FAA’s threat to close these towers at the start of the busy flying season is reckless and hurts general aviation, a sector still struggling from the impacts of a drawn out recession and slow recovery. These airports – and the pilots who call them their flying homes – don’t need the kind of uncertainty that FAA’s announcements bring.  But the general public needs to understand that closing these towers without a proper and detailed safety analysis has risks for the communities surrounding these airports, as well. Of course, general aviation pilots fly in and out of countless uncontrolled airports and grass or dirt strips.  But what’s the impact of taking away a tower? At airports with control towers, the FAA needs to study what impact suddenly closing the towers would have on pilots who have gotten used to having them.  And two months hardly seems enough time to study one airport, let alone 149. This is all particularly dismaying since the FAA’s Air Traffic Service has committed to a safety management system approach that is supposed to guide its decision-making.  Under an SMS, any change in the air traffic system that could have a safety impact needs to be rigorously analyzed for hazards, the risks of those hazards thoroughly evaluated and the risks eliminated or mitigated to an acceptable level. Until the FAA performs those detailed evaluations and allows public comment on them, it should stop these reckless threats. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest