Official Formula1 2011 app lands on Android

The much awaited Formula One season was initiated this weekend by the 2011 Formula 1 Qantas AustralianGrand Prix. In an attempt to keep fans updated, Formula 1 has now rolled out the official F1 2011 Timing and Track Positioning app.The latest offering is introduced in collaboration with Vodafone to stream in data about every session of the Grand Prix weekend directly on mobile handsets.
The app empowers users to keep a tab on the progress of every driver right from their position and lap times to the sector times and lap count. It is integrated with new push notification service alerts. So when a Grand Prix session is about to begin the app displays session results, essential news, championship standings and much more. This is an optional feature that allows consumers to stay in touch, even when the app is not open on the phone.
The Formula1.com 2011 app also accommodates several other live timing features such as track status indicator, straight-line speeds and text commentary. This app is enriched with a circuit data screen for offering details about current air and track temperatures, rainfall, air pressure and humidity levels, wind speed as well as direction. Owners can not only receive updates on the current race, but also results for every session of the present season. The novel app also provides the season calendar, timetables for every Grand Prix and the current championship standings.
The Formula1.com 2011 app available to registered Formula1.com users can be downloaded from the App Store and Android Market.

Samsung Galaxy Fit – The new kid on the budget Android smartphone block [Review]

The Samsung Galaxy smartphone range recently got a real shake-up. New models were introduced and prices were rejigged. The Galaxy Fit is one of the new kids on the block. The competition in the Rs 10k to Rs 15k (225$) price bracket is intense. Let’s find out of this one stands up to the rivals.

Look and Feel: Solid plastic!
Straight out of the box, the Fit does look the part, when we talk about classy looking smartphones. The front panel houses the 3.3-inch screen, with the options and return buttons being the touch based type. These are given the glossy black finish, like the area above the display. A strip of chrome runs around the phone, giving it an element of shine. The menu button and the multidirectional keys with it however are hardware buttons. The left panel has the microSD slot and the volume up/down buttons. The microSD card slot on the side panel means that this one is completely hot swappable. The right side panel has the power on/off button, something which is usually found on the top panel. Speaking of which, there is the 3.5mm jack and the micro USB slot there.

What is missing completely is a dedicated camera button. The rear panel has the camera, and the battery cover feels very plasticy. However, it has a nice imprint design on it, making it look chunkier than it actually is.

Features: Almost there
The Fit starts up to 3 home screens, for all your widgets. The strip at the bottom of the screen remains constant across all screens- messages, contacts, phone dialer and menu. This minimalist skin is wrapped around Android 2.2, which comes preinstalled on the phone. No worries about future updates and anything that may go wrong with them. The interface is pretty plain, with a no frills layout. Instead of the traditional scroll up/down app menu in Android phones, this phone has the sideways menu, much like that in the Bada OS in the Samsung Wave-II.

Performance: The perfect Fit!
Powered by the 600MHz processor, the Samsung Galaxy Fit will not win any processor power contests, but definitely does the job in this case. What helps is the minimalist skin (TouchWiz 3.0 UI) which Samsung have wrapped around the Android 2.2 OS, unlike some resource hogging skins some rivals offer. The processor does feel a bit of strain when multiple apps are open, but well within manageable limits.

The 3.3 inch display has a resolution of 240x320 pixels, which is a huge disappointment. The display isn’t very sharp and the colours seem washed out. This is disappointing, because the display is something which is used always when using a phone, unlike the goodies like a camera or Wi-Fi connectivity. The touchscreen response, though, is excellent, which is a huge relief. The touch garners a sure response. This makes typing out SMS and emails a lot of fun. The on screen keypad, both in portrait and landscape modes, are pretty well laid (and spaced) out.

The call quality offered by the Galaxy Fit is very good. The signal reception is quite consistent in Zone1 (full signal strength) and Zone2 (half signal strength), and the call clarity is very good. However, if the signal falls below 50%, the calls tend to drop quite a bit. However, the earpiece and the speaker offer a lot of clarity, which makes conversations easy even if you are in a noisy environment. The handsfree earphones are probably the best we have seen in phones for a long time. Not only are they extremely comfortable, they look like a mid-range Sennheiser earphone! The clarity offered by then is very good, but they lack the bass punch, in case you like listening to that kind of music.

More details on Google's Android mobile payment system

Google is teaming up with MasterCard and Citigroup to allow Android users to make purchases with their smartphones at checkout counters. The venture also involves VeriFone Systems, which makes credit card readers for cash registers, and preliminary discussions have already begun with Wal-Mart. Although Google isn't expected to get a cut of the transaction fees, the planned payment system would allow Google to offer retailers more data about their customers and help them target ads and discount offers to mobile-device users near their stores, according to people familiar with the matter quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

We've known Google has been interested in Near Field Communication (NFC) technology ever since the release of Android 2.3 (codenamed Gingerbread). NFC gives consumers an alternative to cash, debit cards, and credit cards by allowing them to pay for products and services by tapping their mobile device against a register at checkout.

The project is still in its early stages, but it will one day allow owners of Citigroup-issued debit and MasterCard credit cards to pay for purchases by launching a mobile-payment application on their phone. Users could also manage credit card accounts and track spending through said app. Google, for its part, would be able to send targeted ads or discount offers to these users. If the program is deemed a success, it would likely expand to other card issuers and networks.

The program would also offer retailers access to data about customers so they would be able to market future offers to their devices. This would, of course, raise privacy concerns since Google would have data as to whether ads targeted at certain groups of people led directly to in-store sales and would be able to gain insight into consumer-spending behavior.

A rumor from earlier this month suggested that Google is planning to start testing an NFC system next quarter. The search giant is not the only company working on mobile payment methods, but given Android's growing dominance, Mountain View has an opportunity to set the bar high.

Java Creator Joins Google; Will Android Benefit?

James Gosling, the man who created the programming language,Java, has just joined Google.

The hire was quite the win for Google, which is currently embroiled in alawsuit with Java’s owner, Oracle, over some uses of Java in the Android stack.

Gosling said in a blog post on the move, “I don’t know what I’ll be working on. I expect it’ll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon.” Call us psychic, but we’re willing to bet Gosling will be working on the Android platform.

Gosling developed Java while he was an employee at Sun Microsystems. The project began in 1991, and the language was released in 1995.

But when Sun was acquired by Oracle in a deal that closed in January 2010, Gosling left the company a few months later. At the time, he said, “Just about anything I could say [about Oracle] that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good.” He’s since been notably cynical about Oracle’s treatment of the Java language and community, even going so far as to call Oracle CEO Larry Ellison “Larry, Prince of Darkness.”

Gosling said he had turned down several “excellent” opportunities prior to signing with Google. He wrote that the new job, whatever it may entail from day to day, “looks like interesting fun with huge leverage.”

Amazon Cloud Player puts your music on the Web

The so-called celestial jukebox that digital-music dreamers talked about in the 1990s looks a little closer. Early Tuesday morning, Amazon launched a Web-based music service that lets you listen to your songs from Internet-connected computers and Android smartphones.

Amazon's Android program playing a song stored in its Cloud Player service. (Rob Pegoraro)

Called Cloud Player, it lets Amazon’s “Cloud Drive” servers take the place of a computer’s hard drive or a phone’s flash storage--provided either device has a sufficiently fast connection to the Internet and a user whose Amazon account includes a valid U.S. billing address.

The Seattle retailer provides 5 gigabytes of storage for free; buying an MP3 album from its store upgrades that quota to 20 GB. You can sync new Amazon purchases to your Cloud Drive automatically.

But you can also upload other songs from a Mac or Windows computer using Amazon’s MP3 Uploader. Contrary to what that name suggests, it will also upload AAC files bought from iTunes, provided they’re not older purchases locked with the “digital-rights-management” system Apple retired in April of 2009.

You can then listen to your purchases through a Web browser or on an Android phone running the latest version of Amazon’s MP3 program. A help page on its site suggests that Cloud Player support may be added later to its BlackBerry and Palm webOS apps.

No such option is in store for the iPhone or iPad. Amazon hasn’t even shipped its MP3 store app for Apple’s mobile devices, where it would compete with the iTunes Store and, presumably, be vetoed by Apple.

Based on a quick test Tuesday morning, the whole setup appears stupidly easy. The MP3 Uploader could be a quicker install (the fact that it requires an installation on a Mac at all, by virtue of running on a separate layer of Adobe’s AIR software, earns it a demerit), but it quickly piped a playlist of 22 songs up to my Cloud Drive.

Logging into my Amazon account--whether through the Safari or Firefox browsers or a copy of Amazon’s Android app--then revealed those songs, complete with the correct album art. Amazon says it plays back Web-hosted tracks at their original quality; aside from an occasional blip in playback, that sounds about right. Pausing, resuming playback and skipping to the next song all happened almost as fast as if these MP3s and AACs had been parked on each computer I tested.

In making cloud-based access to your music this simple, Amazon owes a debt to serial music entrepeneuer Michael Robertson. A decade ago, his My.MP3.com let users play back songs they already owned over the Web, before major record labels successfully sued to have it shut down.

At the same time, Amazon has also made Apple look foolish and Google appear slow. Apple bought a popular cloud service, Lala, in late 2009but then shut it down months later; it has yet to introduce any sort of replacement to it. Google, meanwhile, demonstrated its own cloud music offering last May and is apparently still working on it.

Have you tried out Amazon’s Cloud Player? If so, post your own review in the comments.

Protect the privacy of your Android phone

Privacy Blocker

The software basically pinpoints the type of data certain applications are requesting about your Android phone and sending it back.

Privacy Blocker replaces the data inside the applications with bogus data and effectively fixes the potential privacy issues.

You may be surprised to find out what type of information certain applications are requesting like your phone number or current cell tower location.

Note: AT&T Users need "SideLoading" enabled to use the main feature of this app.

GO SMS – CUSTOMIZE TEXT MESSAGE ON YOUR ANDROID PHONE [TUTORIAL & REVIEW]

Tired of the Old theme screen of your SMS?

Want to have privacy over your SMS?

Want to manage Push notifications of sms on your Android?

Want to set a different theme for each contact?

Want to back up your text messages?

Want to have an online library of messages on your Android Phone?

If you have any one reason from mentioned above than you must give a try to this great application called Go Sms. Go Dev team on Xda-developers is defining the new ways of using Android Phone at Platform of Android community. They have launched many great tools for Android phone such as Go launcher ex, Go sms. Go Sms is so far best application to use text messaging on your Android Phone and is even much better than the native messaging application.

The best thing which you will surely like about Go Sms is that it is absolutely free of cost in the Android market. So you can easily download this app from Android market. Go sms has a list of great features. Such as now you don’t need to have a different application for security purpose on your Android phone when you have Go Sms. It has a built in security system that will let you guys to control the messages on your Android phone. This great application has received many good ratings and reviews from other Developers as well and it has been downloaded more than 250,000 times from android market.

General information:

Current Version: 2.19

Requires Android: 1.6 and up

Category: Communication

Installs: 1,000,000 – 5,000,000

Size: 3.0M

Price: Free

Features:

Here are some great features of this amazing application:

Many themes are available can easily downloaded from Android Market.

Can easily switch between two styles i-e: Chat style or old list style

Can have Facebook photos on your contacts in Go SMS

You can have night mode on your Device which will help you guys to prolong the battery life of your Phone

Fully customizable inbox each and everything such as font, color, size of contact

Can select the Different Notification settings for different Contacts even

Individual settings that will let you have settings for each individual such as Signature, Conversation and notifications

Sent settings to control the sending of messages from your Android phone

Can have Pop up for a new Message in order to quick reply

The amazing thing about Go sms is its Security settings that will help guys to increase the privacy of Android phone

Blacklist option for different contacts

Backup and restore your sms

A great online SMS library

Some great Tips indigenous in GO SMS

Animation effect in title or conversation list

Avoid messages wrong order: sort by time or by order of messages sent/received and many more which you can understand while using GO SMS.

Conclusion:

If you love customizing your android Phone than this is the so far best application for customizing the text messaging tool on Android phone. It is highly recommended to anybody as it is free of cost. So should give a try to this great application so that you can figure out more exciting features of this fantabulous application.

Android 2.3 ROM for European Samsung Galaxy S leaked

An official and final (read: not beta) Android 2.3.3 ROM has leaked for the standard I9000 iteration of the Samsung Galaxy S. Unfortunately, this means it will only work on the European version of the phone and those in the US still have to play the waiting game. This is the same build that you would receive if you send your handset to a Samsung Service Center for repair, according to XDA Developers.

Check out the ROM Highlights video below, courtesy of The Android Soul, to get a taste of what your phone will soon be getting. For the Installation Guide, watch this video and read these instructions. For the Rooting Guide, watch this video and read these instructions.

The leak is one thing, but the fact that Samsung is starting to update handsets when they arrive at its repair centers is good news. This would suggest that Samsung Galaxy S owners won't have to wait much longer to get an official Android 2.3 (codenamed Gingerbread) build from their carrier.

Some users are still waiting for Android 2.2 (codenamed Froyo). We would recommend skipping it and going straight to Gingerbread, if you get the chance of course.

LG Manufactured Google NEXUS Android 3.0 Tablet Coming This Summer?

LG Electronics has come to a new agreement with Google to produce the first Nexus Tablet that will run on Android 3.0 Honeycomb for release mid-Summer or early Fall, according to new discoveries posted by editors over at mobile-review.com.

The source claims that LG is the only manufacturer to agree to Google terms for making their branded products. The agreement we can assume includes conditions like no customizations outside of those sanctioned by Google to Android 3.0 and the tablets have to get the most current updates released by Google.

Now the tablet hasn’t been confirmed by LG or Google but this wouldn’t be the first time Google has contracted a top device maker to create a Google branded device, the Nexus One and Nexus S Smartphone’s have all been offered in recent years. In both those handsets case they came with zero manufacturer customizations and they each get the most current Android updates whenever they are released by Google.

If this device does launch or at least get announced this Summer it would be interesting to see if LG keeps 3D alive in the Google branded device. Also it would be interesting to see what kind of special Google touches the device could get. It’s worth noting that Google has been rumored to be working on their own self-branded tablet since last year. I’ll be staying tuned to any rumors regarding this Nexus tablet for sure, hope you do the same.

Google Enters Mobile Payments with NFC System

Google aimed to go big-time in mobile payments when the company introduced Nexus S with the Near-Field Communication chip. Mobile Advertising is Google's safe bet and the company wishes to boost it via Mobile Payments. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google has joined hands with MasterCard and Citigroup for setting up a mobile payment system to turn Android smartphones into e-Wallets, according to people familiar with the matter. However, in this deal Google won't be getting any monetary cut from both partners whenever Google's phone is being used.

Google, MasterCard and Citigroup have come together for the mobile payment system that also involves credit-card reader maker - VeriFone Systems. So the deal is like this - Google's NFC chip based smartphones would be usable for Citigroup issued debit/credit cards. VeriFone will introduce Contact-less readers that will let the Citigroup card holders to make purchases by waving or tapping their Android smartphones in front of those readers.

The special contact-less credit/debit card readers will incorporate near-field communication technology - a short range wireless technology and will let the client device (Android Smartphones) behave like a contact-less electronic card. Though it is a contact-less system of mobile payment, it's more sophisticated and far more difficult for hackers to crack the code for stealing user's account information as the NFC technology isn't that easily vulnerable. More details are expected to be out in a couple of weeks.

Apart from Google, Apple and BlackBerry too are expected to join the NFC-based mobile payment bandwagon. The next Apple iPhone 5 is heavily anticipated to carry the NFC chip. While the upcoming RIM's touch handsets will majorly feature NFC chip as reported in the leaked roadmap for this year.

Next major thing in mobile commerce is the contact-less mobile payment based on NFC technology.