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  • Google Android Ousts Nokia Symbian From Smartphones Top Spot

    // Gradly // Android, blog, google, Nokia, Symbian No Responses

    Reuters reports that for the first time in over ten years, Nokia’s Symbian is no longer the world’s number one smartphone platform. The new king? Google’s Android.

    In the fourth quarter, phone makers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones globally, roughly seven times more than the year-earlier quarter, compared with Symbian’s sales of 31 million, according to Research firm Canalys.

    Of course it should probably come as no great surprise that a free, multi-manufacturer operating system is shipping more units than one running on just the single company’s hardware. That said though, this is without doubt the start of a new era and one that could possibly spell the end of Nokia as we know it.

    With hit hardware like the Samsung Galaxy S line along with a rash of hardware coming in 2011, Android shows no sign of slowing down. With each new OS release comes new features, more bells and whistles and a bit more spit and polish. Currently Google claims over 300,000 devices are being activated each and every day, so it’s safe to say sales aren’t going to slow soon. Now it’s down to the hardware manufacturers to produce the hardware to go along with the OS.

    Meanwhile the folks over at Nokia haven’t had it quite so good. In just over 2 years since Google launched Android, Nokia has seen its market share slump from almost 50% to less than 31%.

    With new Chief Executive Stephen Elop at the helm, the former Swedish giants will be hoping to start moving in the right direction sooner rather than later. Could that include the use of Android on its handsets? That’s the rumor going around the tech blogs over the last few weeks and few could argue against it. Nokia needs a more modern OS for its class-filled hardware and Google’s offering is getting better each release.

    A match made in heaven perhaps?

    [via: redmondpie]

  • Watch volunteers translate Egyptian phone messages in real-time

    // Gradly // blog, google, News, Rants & Raves, Twitter 1 Response

    Don’t believe in the power of crowdsourcing yet? Well, if initiatives such as Wikipedia and Ushahidi haven’t convinced you, the video below should pretty much negate anyone’s doubts about just how monumental a force crowdsourcing has become.

    Earlier today, in response to the continued blackout of the Internet in Egypt, Google announced that it had set up phone numbers in Egypt for protesters to call into, that would then automatically be turned into voicemail messages, that would then be tweeted out on the account @Speak2Tweet.

    As if that wasn’t cool enough, a number of volunteers outside of Egypt (you know, where the Internet still works) decided to collaborate online to get those voicemails – which are mainly in Arabic – translated into English and then we’re guessing that these will then tweeted out yet again (or perhaps they plan to put them all up on some kind of website?).

    We captured a Google Docs spreadsheet just now of volunteers translating the phone messages left by Egyptian protesters at lightning speed. The video below is in real-time – we did nothing to speed it up. Either watch it and be in awe, or go right to the spreadsheet and watch it continue to update (or better yet, if you can translate Arabic to English, lend a hand!):

    Update: We originally assumed that these translations would be retweeted out somehow, but we have yet to see evidence / the tweets yet. We’ve contacted Google (which most likely do not actually have any official connection to these volunteers) to see if it is aware of any efforts to get these translations tweeted out again, but regardless, the effort and the spirit of these volunteers speaks for itself. We’ll update as soon as we find out more information.

    [via: thenextweb]

  • SCARY MOVIE 5 Has Been Announced

    // Gradly // blog, Facebook, Movies, News 1 Response

    In an attempt to prove that Scary Movie’s jokes weren’t funny 11 years ago and still aren’t today, The Weinstein Company announced this morning on Facebook that Scary Movie 5 is, indeed, happening. Yup. Groan. Anyway, other than the simple statement, “Scary Movie 5 is announced by The Weinstein Company,” there haven’t been any other details announced, including no word on whether or not Anna Faris will reprise her role as Cindy Campbell.

    So, is this a good announcement? Probably not. But in the franchise’s defense, the previous film (Scary Movie 4) was released about five years ago, which is plenty of time for the filmmakers to rethink what worked and what didn’t.

    Each film cost under $50 million to produce and they’ve brought in over $818 million worldwide.