Nokia launch first ever Android smartphone

They might be in the middle of being acquired by Microsoft with the intention of ultimately becoming a Windows-only phone producer, but that hasn’t stopped Nokia announcing today the launch of their first Android smartphone, the Nokia X, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The new model comes in three versions (the X, X+ and XL) and is aimed at the masses with modest specs and a low-cost design resulting in a cheap price-point of €89. Hardly a competitor to the iPhone 5 or Galaxy S4, the range is hoped to find a market with price sensitive users in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. It’s not going to bring them back to their glory days as the biggest handset maker in the world but it’s a move in the right direction at least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUCEN-XvC7g

Posted by Rob in Android, Mobile, Nokia

A fortnight of birthdays for Apple and Facebook

While Facebook might have turned 10 years old on Tuesday, another birthday that seemed to have passed under the radar somewhat over the last week or so is the Apple Mac’s big 3-0. While the Mac wasn’t Apple’s first foray into the personal computing space it is undoubtedly their longest lasting.

While the company struggled in the early 1990’s, the revamp of the Mac range in 1998 gave the company the boost it needed to pick itself up and pursue interests in other fields including music and mobile technology. Without the success of the new iMac in the late 1990’s, the company could easily have folded.

They celebrated the occasion by launching a pretty inspiring ad shot around the world entirely on the iPhone on the day of the birthday itself (January 24th) highlighting how far Apple has come since the Mac was launched in such bold fashion way back in 1984.

http://youtu.be/zJahlKPCL9g

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Apple, Facebook

Twitter co-founders launch new Q&A social app Jelly

Jelly, a new question-and-answer-based social app by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, has been launched this month on iOS and Android. A cross between Quora and Snapchat, Jelly’s aim is to help users find answers to their questions in real time by crowdsourcing opinions from their social networks. Users snap a photo, ask a question, and get answers from connections in their social networks.

With investors like Bono, Al Gore and other Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, Jelly looks like it’ll at least have the financial weight behind it to make a splash.

Posted by Rob in Apps, Mobile, Twitter

Yahoo acquires app organiser Aviate

Yesterday at CES, Yahoo announced the acquisition of Aviate, a startup app that organises the apps on your phone’s home screen according to its best guess at what you need to see at any given moment.

As well as automatically organising your apps into groups (or ‘spaces’ as they call it) based on their function, it also incorporates elements of Google Now, ‘using signals to understand your context – WIFI, GPS, Accelerometer, Time, etc’. Say you’re at the gym, bam, up pop your work-out apps.

At the moment, Aviate is still in beta and exclusively for Android unfortunately so watch this space.

Posted by Rob in Apps, Mobile, Yahoo

Michael O’Leary’s New Years Resolution

Ryanair have one of the worst images in the airline industry when it comes to customer experience. They almost revel in this thought too with Michael O’Leary constantly talking about ridiculous hypothetical ideas like charging customers for using the toilets on the plane and having all-standing flights. But it looks like 2014 will mark a change in approach.

To add to their much needed website redesign at the tail end of last year, a host of new improvements are to be made to the whole Ryanair experience over the coming months.

Some of these changes include a simplified booking process, allocated seating, a 24-hour grace period for rectifying minor errors on bookings, allowing a second free small carry-on bag, lower boarding card reissue fees and lower airport and baggage fees.

In addition, the airline’s mobile experience is to undergo a complete revamp with a new app being launched in May as well as a new smartphone booking service and, my personal favourite, smartphone boarding passes to be made available from April.

While I can understand why many people find reasons to complain about Ryanair, they are genuinely one of my favourite companies and I’m delighted to see them start trying to “eliminate things that unnecessarily piss people off ” like O’Leary pledged at September’s AGM.

Posted by Rob in e-Commerce, Retail, Ryanair