Not too long ago the official Twitter app for Windows Phone raised the bar for official apps. Today Microsoft announced via their Windows Phone Blog that the app has been updated to include a couple useful features & bug fixes that raises the bar once again. New features include:

• Lens app integration.
• An improved tweet composition experience with photo filter support. Just tap the camera icon to capture an image from your phone’s viewfinder, or pull in a shot from your Cameral Roll. Then apply one of 8 new filters (you can see them below).
• Play embedded Vine videos directly from within tweets.
• Save tweeted photos to your phone.
• Refresh lists on-demand.

The inclusion of filters puts Instagram on notice, particularly when you realize that Instagram photos aren’t viewable in Twitter’s timeline natively anymore. This means stripping away a barrier for people who want to be social with what they post. Another highlight is the Lens app integration which allows users to post pictures directly from the camera as soon as you take the photo. Another thing is that users can now play embedded Vine videos directly from within tweets. You can grab the app here if you don’t already have it.

Source: Windows Phone Blog

The first major app update that was done right in my opinion was LinkedIn. Not only did the team draw inspiration from a talented third-party developer they actually brought him on board to help with updating the official LinkedIn app. The result was a remarkable app that continues to please and delight utilizing platform specific features that should serve as an aspirational app for developers on the platform.

A couple days ago we saw the official Twitter app get a major update. Everything from new features to UI changes and lock screen support were included. Most everyone I knew had moved away from the official Twitter app in favor of their favorite third-party apps like Rowi, Mehdoh, Birdsong, etc. The official Twitter app update is so good it has caused me to pin it on my Start Screen and rotate between it and Mehdoh. The pull to refresh your timeline is a pleasure to use. The autocomplete messaging function is awesome and the detailed notifications on the live tile and lock screen are all top notch pleasers.

Contrast these two apps to the official Facebook and YouTube apps present on the platform and the difference is night and day. If these two apps (LinkedIn, Twitter) are any indication of the type of official apps we can expect from popular brands the future looks quite bright for the Windows Phone platform.

Are there any more official apps that delivers a great experience? Let us know what they are so that others can get in on the action. Drop a comment below.

Even though Windows Phone always had Twitter cooked native into the OS, it was always lacking Live Tile support which forced you to go third party for extra features. It seems that everyone using Twitter on WP used a third party app. Using iOS and Android, the Twitter app has always been pretty good, and really good with the altest releases. So much that my third party app of choice has gotten shelved. Now Twitter for WP has gotten some update love in a big way with a major refresh. Kicking off things with some Live Tile support that will better keep you connected with all those customizable tiles. Now you will not have to rely on any more third party apps for your start screen to have a true Live Tile notifications.

Twitter for WP8 version 2.0.0.1 also includes:

*  Integrated right into your Windows Phone with faster performance, lock screen, and custom Live Tile that show your notifications
*  Direct access to your favorite profiles and lists optimizing Windows Phone "pinning" functionality
*  Streamlined navigation brings you the new Home, Connect, Discover and Me tabs
*  Engage with the best Twitter content available in the Discover tab, as well as Trends, browse categories, find friends, and suggestions about Who To Follow
*  Enjoy your Retweets, favorites, follows, mentions and replies in the Connect tab, or filter your mentions and replies only

Head on over to the Windows Phone Store for your update and enjoy.

Have you ever tried to cheer your team on by posting Facebook statuses? Its an okay experience and hopefully a few of your friends care enough or know enough to get in on the fun. This year’s Super Bowl was the first in history where Twitter was a socially relevant way of connecting with those who share your same passion. So it comes as no surprise that Twitter users pumped out a whopping 24.1 million Super Bowl game tweets.

Let this be a lesson to you all. You’re not alone in this world and even if you feel that way some times try adding a hashtag to your ramblings and you’ll soon find there are another thousands, if not millions, that “get it” and you. I watched a game with one friend but we were able to enjoy the game and laugh at all the hilarious responses to a pretty good selection of Super Bowl commercials. Good times with good people that get it! Whatever it is.

Source: CNET

According to Twitter’s blog post, they have been getting hit pretty hard this week by some very sophisticated attacks and may have had up to 250k users information compromised. Twitter has:

indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users.

Twitter has reset the passwords to those accounts and revoked the session tokens. Twitter has said that this is not the work of any rank amateurs either and that is a very sophisticated attack that would be on the same level as the NY Times and Wall Street Journal experienced this week also. Those attacks are reportedly being carried out by hackers in China but Twitter has not directly indicated that this was the case here. They did decide to go public with the attacks in an attempt to help gather information.

So if you try to log in to Twitter and you password needs to be reset you might have been one of the small percentage affected by the hackers today.

For more information head over to Twitter’s Blog

Via: Social Steak

Just when you thought you’d been social enough, right before you’d done enough networking for a lifetime, here comes one more social network to invade your personal time!

The latest offering for the butterfly in you is called Vine. Yes yes, I know, not the best name, but we’ve certainly seen worse. To be honest, the giant behind this new comer carries with it enough mind share to make you forget the name, it could have been called rusty pipe and we would all still be interested.

The good folks at twitter (the jolly @ giant behind Vine) are looking for another “what is it?” “where did this come from?” hit. Twitter was unique enough to create a good following (pun intended) before its fully realized functionality had even kicked in, that’s special. Could they go two for two?

So what is Vine? Simply, a video sharing social networking experience. It is done in true Twitter fashion, minimalistic. Users will be able to share videos no longer than 6 seconds to their friends. Perhaps that’s super cool to some of you, perhaps its silly or maybe you’re just not excited because it has been done a few times over in the past year or so, but what makes Vine a bit more special is the way the videos are shot and edited.

Video is recorded by holding your finger on the screen, remove it, and the recording stops. This allows you to seemingly splice random clips together for a great short story, .gif style! It really is a bit tricky to explain, so take a look at the video below.

The videos produced by Vine really do have a uniqueness about them, perhaps enough to carry it through to a decent buzz. Vines are then shared to your in app feed, at which point your followers can like, comment and share to their Vine followers. Options to share on twitter and Facebook are also available. Although there was a bit of a spat between Facebook and twitter over allowing Vine to reference APIs to allow friend imports. Also worthy of gossip, Vines shared on twitter are embedded, meaning a preview of the vine is up front and center, a simple click starts the video. One must wonder, was this what the instagram twitter thing was all about? Did twitter play their hand to protect their new baby? Interesting.

In the end, I think Vine will do fine as an artistic outlet for those who have the gifted vision of cinematography,and maybe even one day, it would be the next instagram, where people get a hold of it and post ignorance all day long!

As of right now, Vine is only available on the iPhone, look out for an Android version and hopefully a Windows Phone version soon.

In the world of smartphones we see many fads, fashions and phases, often propelled by software, firmware or hardware of the time, be it personal assistants, instant messengers games, video calling or photo-sharing or what-not. Some of them have gone on to become tools and mediums for communication, work or enjoyment that we have come to rely on, others have faded into the ghosts of memories past.

What makes these fads so popular, and why don’t they all stick around? What factors contribute to the success or failure of an app, and what causes a popular application or tool to die a sweet death?

In an attempt to answer this question, I will focus on the case of instant messaging and communications on mobile platforms, although some examples of games and other kinds of applications  may apply to some aspects of this article too.

A brief history of mobile messaging

For as long as I can remember owning a mobile phone (Oh Nokia 5110, how I miss you) the SMS message was the norm for communication with anyone you knew who owned a mobile phone. The moment you saw someone you knew, or even just kind of knew, using a mobile phone, you’d get their number and every evening you would send messages back and forth between all of your contacts until you ran out of credit, at least that’s how it was for me back when I was a spotty faced teen in school. Almost all mobile phones small enough to fit in your pocket had the SMS facility, meaning that you could literally “text” (yes, this is now legitimately a verb, as is “party”) anyone in your contacts list with a mobile number, and the popularity of texting grew as fast as mobile phones could sell.

Fast forward to the days of Myspace, seems like a century ago, huh? Well, it was only about half a decade ago that you were sitting there at your Windows XP powered computer, fighting all the adware, bluescreens of death and viruses to check who had commented on your Myspace profile, listening to your favourite band’s latest uploaded b-side in the profile music player after waiting for it to load for fifteen minutes so that it wouldn’t skip, and playing with your new mobile phone that could surf the net. Maybe you were one of the few youngsters who got a Blackberry after having played with your friend’s dad’s Business Blackberry and deciding you’d liked it, otherwise you most likely had a colour screen Nokia with a 1.3MP camera, polyphonic ringtones and enough memory for twelve 128kbs MP3s, selected wisely by you. You had discovered that you could run your Myspace and MSN Messenger (SLOOOOOOWLY!) through your mobile phone’s WAP browser. WOW!  You would spend hours when not at a PC messaging people who were sat at their PC from your mobile phone, they would be getting bored and complaining that you were writing so slowly while you had to wait at least a minute for your WAP browser to update your MSN Messenger screen so that you could read anything your friends had written to you, and your replies seldom went through.

Moving on to the advent of touchscreen phones, BBM had just taken off, everyone who didn’t have a Blackberry would have an application to get online via MSN Messenger or Skype, and after Facebook Chat was invented, people would flock to that instead of MSN, these apps were mobile hits, and are still very popular today. We still use Ebuddy and IMO clients frequently to check our MSN, Facebook Chat, Skype and other services, however, you may have noticed already that a service was mentioned in this paragraph that is virtually unused these days…

What has changed?

These days the most popular mediums for mobile messaging are Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, official Twitter and Facebook applications and iMessage. Other services commonly used include Tango for messaging and video calling, KIK messenger, Line messenger, Google Talk and several multiple IM clients. We have the ability to send “free” messages, make free calls or connect a video camera “free” to anyone around the world, for as long as we are paying for an internet connection (or connected to someone elses…).

We rarely need to wait for a message to send, and when we do, it’s because the recipient is in a tunnel or has no battery in their phone, we have true mobile instant messaging and instant communication.

What does this have to do with the success and failure of apps and services?

Do you still use BBM? Does anyone you know still use it? Is your Facebook timeline still full of people updating their status to inform you of their latest BBM pin? if you own an iDevice, do you still send as many iMessages as you used to? Do you have as many contacts with iMessage or Facetime that you could just message or call as you did a year ago?

I would imagine that your answer is most likely no to all of the above.

Why is that?

Well, let’s have a look at the possibilities…

I remember a few years ago when BBM hit the height of its popularity, everyone wanted a Blackberry to be on BBM, those who didn’t want a Blackberry wanted an iPhone, and if you couldn’t afford a decent phone you went for an Android (sorry Android fans, back then Android was a terrible system… I say WAS.).

Everyone wanted to be on BBM, every teenager who wasn’t a recluse would sit on their Blackberry typing away on that plastic keyboard to their friends, everyone who had a partner with a Blackberry wanted to get one to connect to Blackberry chat too to keep in touch with their boyfriend or girlfriend on it (sorry, their “bf or gf”), even giving up their prized iPhone 3GS or HTC Whatever to get in on the action / be in their with their partner.

Apple followed suit and built iMessage and Facetime into their handsets so that you can message or call anyone with another iOS device as long as you have their number or email address in your contact book, no more fooling around with pins that look like the text written under a barcode like you had to on BBM, you could just message someone and if the message turned blue, it was a free message via your network, magic!

What was the problem with BBM and iMessage? Your friends had to own a Blackberry for you to be able to send them a BBM message, or an iPhone/iPad/iPod for you to iMessage them, if you had a different phone you couldn’t instant message them unless you were both on Facebook chat, Skype or MSN Messenger at the same time. And people were rarely on these services while out and about. Unlike iMessage and BBM, these services are built around PC internet access and require you to be online constantly, sending and receiving data, both killing your battery and using up your data plan regardless of whether or not you are sending and receiving messages or video calls. And what about the poor folk with either a cheap little Android device, or even a techie-friendly top of the range Android of the time who could access neither service?

Cue Whatsapp and Viber. Many multi-platform messenger services exist, however none have been quite so popular or successful as these two, bringing free instant messages and calls to iOS, Android, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Symbian and all the other little mobile OSes we rarely hear about in the first world (Bada, anyone? Maemo and Meego ring any bells? No? Don’t worry.) and rendering the proprietary messaging systems practically obsolete. Now you can call, text or send picture messages to anyone with any modern smartphone regardless of their OS, as long as you have their number that they use in Viber or Whatsapp. With another application, Tango, you can make a free video call, Skype style but without the battery or data usage of Skype.

Where does that leave OEMs that have based their current business model on their proprietary services? Well, RIM are in pretty bad shape right now, how often do you see people with a Blackberry these days? How often… Okay, I played that question game earlier in the article and you saw the results. RIM lost their place in the market as a business smartphone to the iPhone and placed their popularity eggs in the BBM basket. Whatsapp caused an earthquake that caused the mighty BBM basket to fall, and RIM are still picking up the pieces, while Windows Phone 8 has taken their place in the market and consumer mind-share.

Apple, a company well known for using tactics of using proprietary hardware, software and gimmicks are also finally showing signs of cracking under their own weight, having grown too big for their boots and refused time and again to use generic hardware (such as micro-USB recharge ports, HD standards, and sim-card sizes for example)  and they are beginning to stagger while Android (particular Samsung’s variety) and Windows Phones, all of which don’t use proprietary software or hardware to try and gain control over the consumer, are growing steadily.

What do you think? Do you think proprietary hardware and software is a good thing? Do you dislike it? Do you use BBM or iMessage regularly? Do you think RIM can make a come back or that Apple will fall like Goliath? Do you think multi-platform is the way to go?

Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments section below!

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How involved in technology your children are is only half of the equation in its impact on them. The other half, of course, is the degree to which you are savvy in both your understanding and use of technology. The research indicating that children spend, on average, more than 7.5 hours a day in front of a screen (not including school and homework gives a persuasive sense of the typical young person’s relationship with technology. Your children may not be average; they may be more or less involved with technology.

So here’s an exercise for you. Estimate your children’s use and frequency with each of the forms of technology (i.e., TV, smartphone, video games, Internet). If your children are within the “normal” range of technology use you will probably be surprised, and maybe even shocked, at how much time they spend in the digital world.

So, how did your children develop their relationship with technology? In all likelihood, from your relationship with technology. You influence your children’s exposure to technology in two ways. First, whether consciously or otherwise, you determine the technology to which your children are exposed and the frequency of its use. You buy it for them, give them permission to use it, and provide them with the time and space for its use.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, you model the presence and use of technology in your own life. In doing so, you’re constantly send your children messages about the role that it should play in their lives. Think about how often you, for example, watch television, play video games, surf the Internet, or check your email, and you’ll probably see the kind of relationship that your children have or will develop with technology.

To help you better understand how tech savvy you are and your relationship with the connected world, take the exercise you just did for your children and apply it to yourself; in what form and with what frequency do you use technology? You may also be surprised at how much time you devote to technology.

Insights into the relationship that you and your children currently have with technology acts as a starting point from which you can use the information in my new book, Raising Generation Tech, to help you ensure that technology is a positive and healthy force in their lives.

The Future

My concern is not in technology itself; we cannot and should not try to slow or halt the inexorable march of progress. My interest is in our children’s relationship with that technology and my concern is in how technology will affect them. Will they be passive recipients—dare I say victims?—of technology who allow it to change their lives for better or worse without consideration? Or can we teach our children to be masters of technology and deliberately harness its tremendous value while minimizing its risks?

The answer to these questions will depend not only on the technology itself that is developed, but also on our exploration of how new technology will influence our children’s lives. Could anyone have predicted how the latest communication technology would change the world in which our children live? Well, in broad strokes, Marshall McLuhan did foresee the future more than 50 years ago. For the sake of future generations, we should continue to do so. Good questions to ask include:

1. What are our goals for this technology with our children?
2. How will it impact their intellectual, educational, physical, social, moral, and spiritual development?
3. How will it affect how our children use their time?
4. What benefit will it bring to our children?
5. What costs might arise from its use for our children?

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The Law of Unintended Consequences can be seen everywhere in our technological lives. Consider the Internet, smartphones, texting, Facebook, and Twitter. Here’s a satirical and fictitious quote attributed to twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey about his invention on theonion.com: “Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them. When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means—such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime—I couldn’t believe they’d ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless.”

Though clearly speaking with tongue firmly planted in cheek, who would have predicted that technology would play a key role in the election of a president or the promotion of freedom in countries such as China and Iran. At the same time, who would have thought that mobile phones would be used by terrorists and drug dealers to further their causes or that texting while driving would increase the risk of a car accident 23 times. It’s still far too early in the evolution of technology to know what its impact on children will be. Of course, we can never know a priori all of the unintended consequences of any new technology, but reducing their number could make the positive effects of new technology all the more beneficial and its negative effects more manageable and less destructive.

Let’s not forget that technology is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. What should that end be? Enhancing the quality of our children’s lives and fostering their fullest development, hopefully. Yet can we can say unequivocally that the latest technology is doing that? The answer is clearly no. As a result, it’s our responsibility as parents to ensure that the technology to which our children are exposed is well understood and used by them in ways that take full advantage of its many benefits while reducing its potential costs.

Yes, let us continue to nurture emerging technology to further leverage all that it has to offer. At the same time, the journey of progress should be guided by us, not lead by the technology itself. To do otherwise would be to take the risk that the technology will lead us a down a road of unintended consequences rather than our leading the technology down a road of our choosing. And our children will be the victims of our negligence.

This post is excerpted from Dr. Jim Taylor’s new parenting book, Raising Generation Tech: Preparing Your Children for a Media-fueled World.

As I sit here low man on the Totem Pole with Uncle RZA (Ramon) running the ship these days,k I can now enjoy life and Mobility Digest a little more without the overwhelming pressure to crank out content, answer questions, and worry if someone is going to blow up the site! Instead, I can worry about stupid stuff like the newest hash mark on Twitter called #ButUGotThatiPhoneTho

I have been cracking up for the last 5 minutes reading! Former Admin Editors Note, some material is very offensive. Shocker right? You have been to Twitter before yes?

@Ratchet2English: U still won’t buy a  decent weave… #ButUGotThatiPhoneTho

@2ChainzLyrics: Ducks feeding you bread at the park… #ButUGotThatiPhoneTho

@Marie215_: Roaches Twerkin in your Bathroom… #ButUGotThatiPhoneTho

Like I said, a lot of it ain’t the most politically correct, but since I don’t have to be politically correct anymore, have fun with it! If you didn’t like this post, please complain to Ramon and send him my warmest regards! LMAO!!!

Seriously, he is doing a great job! Now back off to low rent slackin’!