Blio e-reading software still alive, will come preloaded on T-Mobile Android devices

Blio: Yes, our memories of this colorful ebook-reading software are starting to fade too, but now T-Mobile's about ready to yank it from the shadows of obscurity with a newly announced partnership.

Content provider Baker & Taylor will be responsible for installing the Blio Android app on "select future products from T-Mobile USA" and populating it with compelling content. The Blio store has grown to now encompass a healthy three million titles, both free and paid, and should you have the Windows version of its software, you'll get the sweet automation of having it sync with your mobile device as well. To get your reading started nice and early, jump past the break for the full press release.

Photo-Sharing Network Color Now Available for Android

Shortly after its initial launch on the iPhone, photo-sharing social network Color is now available for Android devices as well.

Well funded and ambitious , Color is already making big waves in the social networking world. Its premise is simple and could perhaps be described as “Twitter for photos,” but Color adds a little structure to the chaos: it knows your location and shows you pictures from people in your vicinity.

You can also share text and videos, but there’s a catch: everything on Color is public and visible to everyone. Sure, you won’t be sharing all of your private photos and videos on Color, but when you’re at a party, bar or an event, sharing some of the atmosphere with those nearby (and getting the same in return) sounds like a lot of fun.

Android users, have you tried out the app yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.
via Android Market

Sparrow 1.1 lands in the Mac App Store

The eagerly-awaited 1.1 update to the Sparrow email app US$9.99) has landed in the Mac App Store, adding the promised features and bug fixes.

The app now supports general IMAP, so for those of you who were waiting to add Yahoo, AOL, or MobileMe accounts to Sparrow and totally ditch Mail.app, you can now do so. For the many Mac users who use the app to access your Gmail accounts, Priority Inbox is now integrated into the app.

My personal favorite new feature is a dedicated view for browsing your unread email. Simply choosing "unread" from a tiny popup at the top of the inbox displays only your unread messages. There's also an unobtrusive formatting bar for messages so you're free to change the font, style, size, color, alignment, and indention, or even add a bullet list in the compose window.

One thing that made me surprisingly happy was the new three finger swipe multitouch gesture for showing or hiding the preview pane. On an 11.6" MacBook Air, it's nice to be able to minimize the real estate taken up by the Sparrow window.

If you've created contact groups in the Mac OS X Address Book, Sparrow 1.1 now supports using those groups for doing mass mailings to a team. The Sparrow team also fixed a long list of bugs in the initial versions, improved sync with Address Book, and improvements to the mail database, scroll performance, and memory use. The update takes little or no time to install through the Mac App Store, and for existing Sparrow users, it's a solid and welcome update.

Internet Explorer 9: The OS and Hardware Matter

It may seem odd, or self-defeating that Microsoft would invest so much effort developing a next generation Web browser that isn't compatible with Windows XP. The legacy Windows OS still enjoys greater than 50 percent market share--more than Windows 7 and Windows Vista combined. But, Microsoft sees the writing on the wall, and there is a key message with IE9: the operating system and hardware matter as much as the browser itself.

Microsoft could have developed a browser that was an incremental improvement over Internet Explorer 8 just for the sake of developing a new browser, and it could have maintained backward compatibility with Windows XP. However, doing so would greatly restrict what Microsoft is able to accomplish with that browser. At some point you have to cut the cord and move on to embrace the future rather than continuously coddling the past.

The line in the sand drawn by Internet Explorer 9 reminds me of the issues my kids face when it comes to PC gaming. All three of my boys are more or less addicted to Minecraft. Although the graphics make Pitfall on an Atari 2600 look advanced, the engine that drives the Minecraft world, and the sheer size of the virtual Minecraft world make it a demanding game on system resources.

My younger son can play it, but he is forced to disable many of the advanced rendering and graphics options, and still experiences significant lag. When he is playing alone, it doesn't really matter, but when playing online with others the lag can seriously impact gameplay. My older boys have new quad-core PCs with high-end graphics cards and can turn on every maxed out graphics option available and still get seamless, blazing speed from the game.

Minecraft can be played on both the older, legacy hardware, as well as on newer, more powerful hardware, but the game experience is defined by the capabilities of the hardware. That is where Microsoft has taken the browser with Internet Explorer 9--the underlying hardware platform and capabilities of the operating system are critical elements of the Web experience.

With Internet Explorer 9, the browser becomes a tightly integrated component of the operating system, and websites become applications that extend the desktop experience to the Web. In order to deliver adequate performance and provide the functionality Microsoft delivers with IE9, you have to have a solid operating system and hardware foundation.

Yes, Microsoft may alienate customers by not providing backwards compatibility with Windows XP. But, when those customers move to Windows 7--or eventually Windows 8--they will appreciate that Microsoft had the conviction to abandon backward compatibility in favor of a more immersive and integrated Web experience.

Social TV [VIDEO]

Interactive television experts gathered on Saturday at SXSWi in Austin, Texas to discuss the future of social TV.

Panelists, which ranged from the likes of Chloe Sladden of Twitter to Gavin Purcell from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, discussed ways in which they incorporate social media into popular television shows such as:

“No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain” and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

Fred Graver, the senior VP of Travel Channel, spoke to the audience about his initial skepticism regarding the integration of Twitter into “No Reservations.” “It wasn’t a no brainer for us.” said Graver. “The whole thing here is if you have 36-48 hours before the show premiers, do you want to spend your time talking about Tony (Bourdain) live-tweeting? And that was a big discussion but we decided, yes lets do it.”

Doing it proved to be successful for Graver and the Travel Channel, with “No Reservations” currently at more than 1 million “likes” on Facebook and an increasingly active Twitter following.

Watch the video for more highlights from the discussion.

Winamp 1.0 for Android launches with free music downloads

“Whipping the llamas ass” just got a bit rowdier for Android users. Winamp 1.0 for Android is now available and provides a handful of enhancements, adding the ability to stream and download free music from Spinner. Winamp’s creators have also improved the “Now Playing” screen with a cleaner and more streamlined interface — tapping said screen now reveals a new “Info” button which provides biographies, discographies, album photos, and links to articles written about the artist.

There’s also a new pop-up window that provides a snapshot of info when the track changes. Other tweaks include a redesigned home screen with new buttons for “Search” and “Free Music”; a revamped lock screen that mimics the “Now Playing” screen; integration with Android’s voice command system; and the option to skip songs by swiping across the screen. The update is available via the Android Market.

Google adds Smart Labels to Gmail’s repertoire

In a recent blog post, Google Software Engineer Stanley Chen revealed the latest addition to Gmail’s feature set, Smart Labels. The new labeling system, which can be turned on via the Labs section of Gmail, tries to help you automatically organize incoming email.

“Smart Labels automatically categorizes incoming Bulk, Notification and Forum messages, and labels them as such,” reads the announcement. “‘Bulk’ mail includes any kind of mass mailing (such as newsletters and promotional email) and gets filtered out of your inbox by default (where you can easily read it later), ‘Notifications’ are messages sent to you directly (like account statements and receipts), and email from group mailing lists gets labeled as ‘Forums.’” Smart Labels can be tweaked and customized to fit your workflow and function in harmony with Gmail’s Filters. The new feature is available to all Gmail users immediately.

Foursquare 3.0 for Android and iOS set to launch tonight with host of new features

Via a blog post today, foursquare founder Dennis Crowley announced an updated version of his company’s software that will be available to users “late tonight.” Reminiscing about his company’s past, present, and future, Crowley admits that he and his team have not been able to “expand the foursquare experience as much as they hoped to” over the last year.

But that all changes today. Focusing on discovery, encouragement, and loyalty, foursquare will deploy several new features to its iPhone and Android applications (version number 3.0).

Through a new “Explore” tab, users can input what it is they are looking for, getting recommendations from 4sq based on what’s around and where friends have visited.

The company will try to encourage users to continue to explore their world with a revamped leader board. “You’ll see that we’ve replaced our old leader board (and its simple points system and Sunday night reset) with a sliding 7-day barometer of you and your friends,” writes Crowley. “Check-ins now trigger points for dozens of different types of actions.” Loyalty will be addressed by offering merchants additional ways to reward “swarms, groups of friends, regulars, newbies, or everyone.” Merchants will gain access to the new controls later this week.

In closing, Crowley writes, “we’ve got really ambitious plans for the rest of the year and we’re excited to let you play with three big new pieces of the master plan.” Foursquare notes that an updated BlackBerry client is due out later this week — though it will not include many 3.0′s features — and that it is “working hard” on its Windows Phone and Symbian apps.