Penny Mobiles – Mobile phone news, reviews & information

There is just no way to escape advertisements these days. We all know that Apple is implementing the new iOS 4’s iAds feature (expect to see more of this once the whole antenna debacle has toned down a notch), but aside from the more obvious advertising features, there is one other factor that tends to influence consumer’s decisions: social networking.

We all know how effective word of mouth advertising can be. While the average person does not need to listen to the recommendations of his or her friends, a few words from a choice individual among peers who a person truly admires or respects is more than enough of an endorsement to give a purchase a reason.

Now imagine that scenario on with the element of social networking on your mobile phone. Receiving a quick message or Tweet from close friends saying how nice it is to visit a certain establishment or to purchase a certain product will be a very strong influential factor for many people.

This is not just a one sided influence either. As effective as social networking can be, it is the accessibility that smart phone technology (as well as WiFi and 3G network access) gives that makes this a very potent element for marketing. And of course, the social network gives the messages more potency than standard mass forwarded content on mobile phones. After all, receiving spam messages on a mobile phone is never good, but reading about updates directly from friends is considered enjoyable.

Research firm Gartner has been gathering data on how people’s social networking habits tend to influence and affect their purchasing decisions. This influence is a crucial factor that has to be considered by marketers if they want to successfully advertise a product in this day and age. The study covered about 4000 consumers across various territories in the world during the last quarter of 2009.

The last trend on the internet that has taken solid roots is the ability to take old videos, convert them into digital format and upload on the net. Photos are significantly easier, simply upload the existing digital images (or simply scan old photographs) and users are ready to go send these contents into Facebook, YouTube, Picasa and other media storing and sharing websites. User generated content is the main bulk of today’s online media, and that volume is not going to stop growing anytime.

Thanks to the standardization of digital cameras on mobile phones, there are now more and more people who are able to instant web celebrities, news reporters or simply sources of funny content. There is plenty of freedom here, which brings us to the main question, should this be controlled?

So far, having the ability to upload content on the internet has not been the cause of trouble, many people are able to report crisis and emergencies as they happen –which speeds up the verification process that some groups need before they can mobilize. Any user with a video capable smart phone and access to the internet can instantly share with others the latest events.

While this freedom cannot be caged up, it should still be self-managed. Several months, back, Google Executives took the fall and blame for an uploaded video to the now defunct Google Video service. While the content was not created by Google, the Italian government still found it proper that the company be held responsible for the content that their site possessed.

In many ways, people should be more conscientious about what they shoot and more importantly, what they upload. Many people now feel anxiety when performing in large crowds or even private locations –not because of performance anxieties, but that worry that someone in the crowd would record the whole thing on a mobile phone, and upload it to Facebook where the whole world can see it.

Microsoft’s Window Phone 7 is going to be their biggest move in the mobile phone industry. For many years, they have stayed within the business market, creating their own niche for the Windows Mobile operating system. But as the number of smart phone users increased –and the type of users started to range from business users to the general market, Microsoft has seen the need to create an operating system that appeals to the larger crowd.

Looking at the preliminary versions of the Windows Phone 7 operating system, one cannot help but be impressive by how neat and stylized the interface is. The screens slide and sweep from side to side, panels (or tiles) swivel from the background to the foreground and buttons pop up in smooth fluid animations that create a sense of composition.

Accessing content could not be easier, with just a few taps of the screen; you can be instantly updating all your social networking accounts with a single status update. With a few more taps, you’re at the contact screen viewing all the latest updates online. And just a menu more and you can be instantly uploading new images and content to your favorite social networking site and adding tags to the photos –all using the WP7 interface.

It does not stop there. Zune integration means that you can instantly get access to a large library of media content online –no need to hook up with wires, the WiFi access is more than enough for this sort of task. Silverlight and the MSN player will also be included as well.

Microsoft’s Xbox Live service will also be present in the OS, which means that players now get to earn achievements for their hard work, and they can even connect to their exiting XBL accounts as well.

Last week we looked at what you, the user, can do to protect your privacy on Facebook. Today we’re taking another look at the recent changes to privacy settings. According to Facebook, the changes that they have made to the privacy settings page have been done in order to provide users with a better way of controlling and managing the privacy settings of their information –and ultimately, give users the decision of how much their information will be made available to the public.

In many ways, this decision is a success on the part of the many people who have protested and complained against Facebook’s growing lack of care in regards to data privacy. Many have commented on how much of the information on Facebook’s profile page used to be viewable only to a user’s friends, these days, these one private bits of information can now be seen by the public and can even be found through search engines on the internet.

Taking a quick look at the new privacy settings page, there are some key highlights in the changes that has been made:

The first thing that Facebook has done is simply the number of things users need to change. Originally, there were up to 50 various settings that had to be toggled manually before all of a user’s information can be made private. Now, the new control panel will let users do that with only 18.

These 18 categories have been carefully selected as well; Facebook has actually done a great job of allowing users to manipulate the privacy controls of over 100 types of user content and information into that small number.

Lastly, the sheer number of pages that users have to edited has been reduced drastically. The original settings pages had users clicking many pages worth of controls before everything got covered –and with that volume, it was easy to miss certain things.

Of course, the problem is far from over, Facebook still has a long way to go before it deserves and actually earns the trust of its users. But for now, there is plenty that Facebook’s users can be thankful for.

Facebook has already announced that they will be offering new ways for people to edit the privacy settings. It is promising that the social networking site is starting to find solutions –if not a bit too slowly. For the most part, people simply need to wait it out for the next few weeks and try out the new features as they arrive. But for those who are truly concerned about privacy, here is a quick guide on how to change the settings.

First off, head over to your friends page; the first thing that users need to do is organize friend’s lists. Sorting out your friends from your family and from your officemates is a great way to avoid those embarrassing moments when you accidentally invite your folks to a drinking party. This will also be an important part of the next step.

Head over to ‘account’ and go to privacy settings. This is basically where you get to access every aspect of your account –there is no real sense going through every single item, but be sure to check every option starting from the top (which starts with “personal information and posts” all the way down to your “block list”).

The last part will be Facebook’s apps. To access the settings for these, go to ‘account’ and access the application settings. Now, here is the clincher, you should set aside plenty of time for this. An hour would be fine if you only have a handful of friends and several applications,  but if you have thousands of friends and hundreds of apps, you might want to set aside a whole afternoon –especially for changing the app settings.

And if you are not too sure, you can simply delete any app that you have no intention to keep, always remember that many of these apps are authorized to access user account details.