Online music service Spotify has just rolled out several social features which the Spotify folks hope would bring their product into the full mainstream of the still growing social music niche. Spotify version 0.4.3 happens to be one of the largest feature upgrade for the online music service since its inception in 2008.

Kicking off its social features are editable Spotify music profile, ability to publish playlists, top artists and top tracks and a relevant move to connect with Facebook. In addition to its new social features, Spotify is also evolving itself to become a full music management platform by adding the “Library” folder which lets you combine your music library with other Spotify members.

Here’s a brief rundown of the new features of Spotify version 0.4.3:

• published your Spotify profile on Facebook, blogs or personal website
• share and publish playlists that you select as you create them
• one-click subscription to playlists within Spotify or Facebook
• display subscriber numbers and subscribers’ names in the submenu
• star tracks or albums or group them into folders
• drag and drop tracks for recommendation

What’s good about the new Spotify is the fact that you can now import any MP3 on your hard drive to your Spotify library via a link within Spotify pointing to its locaiton on your hard drive. You can also import iTunes playlists into Spotify.

Once you’ve setup your account, you can now start browsing, searching, playing and sharing your whole music library.

Overall, a pretty update that is worth checking out. Do you you Spotify? How do you like these new features?

I’m not really saying that Nokia needs saving. Definitely not. It’s just that when it comes to the smartphone market, Nokia seemed to have lost its grip. The smartphone market is now dominated by either the iPhone, Android phones and Blackberry. Nokia needs something to make a scene in this part of the mobile industry. Can the Nokia N8 which was just officially announced with power-packed features give Nokia a boost?

To answer that, how about if we take a look at what Nokia’s latest smartphone has to offer. Quite frankly, Nokia N8′s features and specs are quite impressive, topped by the new Symbian^3 for its OS. This makes the N8 as the first Nokia handset to sport the said new platform.

Aside from Symbian^3, the Nokia N8 also wallops a 12 mp camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash. Yes, dear readers we’re still talking about a mobile phone not a point-and-shoot digital camera.

Speaking of  camera, the N8′s powerful optics can also record high definition videos and then lets you edit them with a smart built-in editing suite preloaded on the phone.  The high-definition video suits well with the phone’s 3.5-inch HD capacitive touchscreen. And to make sure that you can watch your videos on your HDTV, the phone comes with a HDMI connector. Plus, the Nokia N8 can also be used as a portable entertainment centre wit Dolby Digital Plus surround sound and can be hooked into a dedicated Web TV application.

Of course, the Nokia N8 also supports Nokia’s Ovi services including maps and turn-by-turn walk and drive navigation.

There you go – Nokia’s latest arsenal ready to go full battle with other smartphones available in the market today? Does it stand a chance?  We’re really hoping so.

The Nokia N8 debuts on Q3 2010 for around 370 Euro. No words yet on which mobile carrier will be adopting it for release to the U.S. market. A really nice high-res photo of the Nokia N8 awaits you after the break. More →

Adaptive Blue has just updated it’s free browser add-on, GetGlue.com with personalized new releases for each user, real-time suggestions, the ability to quickly decide if a book, a movie, or album is for you as well as a new interface.

Let’s take a look at the new features which were just rolled out by GetGlue:

Personalized new releases – GetGlue scans new releases in movies, music, and books and give your the ones that are most relevant to you based on what you have already liked before.  These movies pertain to your favorite genre which could either be a new album from your favorite artists, or even books on particular topic that interests you.

Real time recommendations – GetGlue automatically updates your recommended movies, music and books everytime you encountered new releases. You can quickly browse through these list by clicking on the “Recommended” filter.

Things you’ve already liked – GetGlue shows you similar things that you’ve already liked while you visit a movie, an album or a book on GetGlue.com or anywhere on the web. It also shows you reviews and liked items by your friends, neighbors and the entire GetGlue community who have similar tastes as you.

New activity streams - GetGlue’s new activity streams compress daily activities of various users. This gives you the ability to explore more items from these activity streams.

New interface - Finally, GetGlue has also redesigned the site’s overall interface – now bigger, shiner, simpler and definitely more fun.

So, there. Are you using GetGlue? Do you like the new features so far?

Well, it looks like RIM is ready to take the business smartphone computing and prove to everyone of us that their BlackBerry device is still the king of smartphones, well at least ont he business market side. RIM just announced two new Blackberry devices – a new Bold 9650 and Pearl 3G which shall be available in two models as well.

So, what do these two new BlackBerry phones offer? First, let’s take a look into the Bold 9650. It’s the newest member of RIM’s BlackBerry Bold series. Surprisingly, instead of updating the Bold 9700, RIM decided to regress a bit an came up with the Bold 9650 instead.  But aside from their size and form factor, it looks like the 9650 and 9700 are almost similar in features and specs. The Bold 9650 is a CDMA-EV-DO world phone that supports HSPA and UMTS networks, Wi-Fi b/g, optical trackpad, GPS, 3.2 megapixel camera with flash, 512 MB flash memory, microSDHC card and running on BlackBerry OS 5.0. This baby will be available in the US in May.

Now we have the Pearl 3G, which will be available in two models – the 9100 with 20-key condensed QWERTY keyboard and the 9105 with the traditional keypads. Key features of the BlackBerry Pearl 3G include – a 3.2 MP camera with flash, GPS, optical trackpad, dedicate volume and media keys, 3G (UMTS/HSDPA) networks and Wi-Fi b/g/n. Yes, it supports Wi-Fi n and it’s the first BlackBerry handset that does so.

Both the BlackBerry Pearl 9100 and 9105 and Bold 9650 will be released sometime in May through RIM’s partner mobile carriers. Time to update your handsets folks.

via BGR

Are you a fan of Oprah? Well, now you can check out your fans whereabouts as well as connect with her whenever and wherever through Oprah Mobile. Developed by Hands-on Mobile, Inc. Oprah Mobile is a suite of mobile applications that you can use whether you have an iPhone, Android phone, Palm Pre or BlackBerry.

Oprah Mobile will let you access video clips and previews of  The Ophra Winfrey Show as well as quickly find out what time and channel the show is playing in your current location anywhere within the U.S. The app also lets you participate in exclusive weekly polls, listen to audio clips, read articles and view photo galleries and highlights from Oprah.com, the Oprah magazine and Oprah Radio. Yes, even keep with up Oprah’s tweets.

Additionally,  if you’re keeping an eye on show tickets, the app can also alert you whenever these become available. And for its social sharing features, Oprah Mobile also lets you share your favorite items via email, Facebook and Twitter, search by guests and contributors, sign the pledge to make your car a No Phone Zone and customize the menu to keep your favorite sections with easy and quick reach.

Excited about this app? Get it for your iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre or  search for it from the Android Market on your Android phone.

Whether we like it or not, we have to give Apple some credit for releasing its magical iPad tablet. Despite its shortcomings and minor flaws the iPad has managed to stir up the otherwise sleeping tablet computer industry and the e-reader market. Several brands are now in a rush to come up with something better than than the iPad.

For Barnes and Noble it’s much easier to do this because Nook is already out even before the iPad hit the market. So, what B&N can do right now is update Nook’s features and make it a better e-reader than the iPad. And it is doing this right now as it announces some new features for Nook such as Read In Store and the addition of some games that Nook owners can play on their device. These were made possible via a software update to v1.3.

The beta Read in Store feature allows Nook owners you to read ebooks while your inside a Barnes & Noble store. You Nook will automatically connect to the Nook online bookstore and let you read titles from the B&N online bookstore even if the books are physically out of stock. While inside the store, you can read ebooks up an hour per day. B&N also plans to make some current edition newspapers and magazines available for in-store reading soon.

“Our digital customers will feel at home in our stores with Read In Store, which puts a digital spin on the popular Barnes & Noble bookstore experience that millions of our customers enjoy each day. At no cost, NOOK customers can browse through our robust collection of digital content while enjoying their favorite beverage in our café,” said Tony Astarita, Vice President, Digital Products, Barnes & Noble.com.

In addition to these, Barnes & Noble has also included new games and other entertainment features to Nook including Chess and Soduku.

While the Nook v1.3 software update includes the following new features and enhancements:

• improved page turn speed, enhanced color touch screen navigation, faster access to previously opened eBooks  and more
• high-speed connectivity to more hotspots
• built-in web browser
• updated homescreen

Nook v1.3 is available to download from www.nook.com/update or you may want to wait for automatic update in the coming weeks.

Don’t look now folks, but pretty soon,  your favorite restaurants and other business establishments might soon be offering various discounts, freebies and other promotional gigs in cooperation with Foursquare. Yes Foursquare, you it right?  This is because Foursquare has just launched a business strategy that encourages establishment owners to use its service to engage mobile customers with specials and give them the ability to track how their venues is performing over time – through venue analytics.

Foursquare Business provides simple self-service tools that would allow you, as a business manager, to cook up with various kinds of special gigs that would attract customers to your business establishments. Specifically Foursquare Business will let you created the following specials:

• Mayor specials can be unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days).
• Count-based specials are unlocked when a user checks in a certain number of times.
• Frequency-based specials are unlocked every so many check-ins.
• Wildcard specials are always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions before awarding the special.

What’s cool about this is that Foursquare has mobile apps in three major mobile platforms – Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. And Foursquare can use this mobile apps to send notices to potential customers nearby to possibly invite them to check out your Foursquare promotional gigs.

To use Foursquare’s business tools, all you need to do is claim your venue. Once you’ve done that you can have access to various Foursquare venue analytics tools that will let you view:

• most recent visitors
• most frequent visitors
• the times of day people check in
• total number of unique visitors
• a histogram of check-ins per day

So, what are you waiting for? Get into Foursquare and claim your venue now before somebody else takes it.

Believe it or not, the Apple iPad is selling like hotcakes in some Asian countries despite the fact that it is not yet officially available in those countries. PC World, via Yahoo News is reporting that the iPad appears to be selling well in Asia despite the fact that Apple’s official release won’t be happening until end of May.

The report also mentioned about two stores near Taipei’s main electronic Bazaar which are both selling iPad units. And guess what, the two stores are not even competing with each other so much so that one doesn’t even need to lower the iPad’s price.  No matter how pricey the mark up they put on the iPad, it will still sell – like hotcakes. In fact, the store owners want to buy some more because demand is becoming too much as against the supply.

Any idea how much these two stores in Taipei are selling the iPad? Hold your breath folks because the 16GB iPad WiFi sells for around $800, $925 for the 32GB WiFi and $1,020 for the 64GB. In Apple Store U.S. , the prices of these iPads are only $499, $599 and $699.

Interestingly, despite the unavailability of official distributorship, estimates of iPads sold outside the U.S. are already around tens of thousands.

What’s even more surprising is the fact that Asians still buy the iPad despite some possible setbacks of having an unofficially released iPad.  For one thing, there will be no available technician and in case they encounter problems with their iPad, they have no choice but to send it back to Apple.

Aside from Taipei? Where else could the iPad has possibly arrived? In the country where I am right now, there are probably less than 500 owners of the iPad right now.

We all know how formidable Facebook is,  as a social media site capable of generating traffic to websites and in terms of userbase as well. Next to Facebook, we always think of Twitter.  We never really thought about other sites, such as StumbleUpon perhaps? Now here’s an interesting statistics published by StatCounter covering the amount of traffic generated by social media sites that leads to website page views. The statistics cover Mar 2009 to Mar 2010. And guess what in 2009?  StumbleUpon use to bring more traffic to websites than Facebook does.

From March 2009 to July 2009, StumbleUpon was actually the number one social media sites that drives the most traffic to websites. Overall, from Mar 09 to Mar 10, StumbleUpon was second to Facebook in generating traffic to websites with 25% of social media hits, while Facebook had 48%. Twitter had 10% of social media hits.  The rest include – YouTube (6%), reddit (4%), Digg (2%) and MySpace (2%).

So, what’s the importance of these statistics? From a business perspective this only goes to show that social media sites could be a good tool for driving traffic to business sites. Hence, we now see more brands having their Facebook pages linked to their individual corporate websites.

Mr. Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Statcounter remarks:

“Social Media market share fluctuates a lot more than browser or search statistics. For example, Facebook peaked over Christmas and the New Year with almost three quarters of the total, perhaps reflecting its important role in communications between families and friends.”

In case you’re wondering StatCounter’s data was based on 13 billion page views across the globel StatCounter network of member sites.

So there, if your  company does not have a social media presence yet, you might want to start creating one on Facebook, especially now that there are many things happening with Facebook in terms of features and functionality.

There’s a lot of things going on right now at the Facebook camp, coinciding with their f8 Developer’s Conference. But with the several new things that Facebook unveiled today, one thing is certain, Mark Zuckerberg and his gang is out to conquer the social digital world. You still got time, either you opt-in or opt-out now.

Facebook’s plan of dominating the digital world is a three-point attack right now. This is only its initial salvo. I’m pretty sure there are more to come. In the meantime, let’s take at look at these three strategies which were just announced at the f8 gig.

Docs for Facebook

Zuckerberg knows quite well that Google has already dominated the search dominion and it would take a lot of effort to beat Google into this game. So, why not attack something which Google is starting to dominate – the cloud computing space. Enter Docs for Facebook, which interestingly Facebook is launching in cooperation with Microsoft.

Simply put, Docs for Facebook is like Google Docs, only this time it’s main focus is document collaboration and sharing within the Facebook ecosystem and not just anywhere else.  Docs for Facebook is pretty simple right now. You can create documents or upload existing ones and then share it with your Facebook friends, via Facebook and within Facebook.  Can it give Google Docs a run for its money? We’ll know soon enough, once it becomes available to the public.

Facebook’s Take on Social Recommendation with Yelp

Gowalla and Foursqure might have something to be worried about.  Facebook is finally taking the social recommendation, location-aware social networking space for a spin. And it brought along Yelp, Gowalla and Foursquare’s fiercest rivals.

With the Facebook and Yelp partnership, you will be able to see which among your Facebook friends have reviewed a business and read their reviews. You can also find out who among your friends have like a particular business as well as  view feed of what your friends are doing.

Facebook and Pandora Spike Up the Social Music Sphere

There’s not much details yet about how Facebook and Pandora are teaming up. But one thing is for sure, MySpace which has been dominating the social music niche has something to be worried about.  All we know is that when you log in to Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, the music site can immediately start playings songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. It will also show you friends who also like the same songs as you while you are playing or listening to a music.

There you go, three major strategies that will trigger the start of Facebook’s digital world domination. Are you ready for it?