Down Time

Microsoft released a beta refresh for Windows Live Essentials which saw a new feature in Messenger allowing people to chat with their Facebook friends just like talking to their Messenger friends. However, this ability was not made available on the Web version of Messenger and people could only chat to their Messenger friends. But this looks set to change.

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On the Windows Live Phone service (which Microsoft has recently tweaked), that we wrote about last week, it can be seen that a refined header is being used with a few new options and it features Facebook Chat integration. When hovering over the Messenger link in the header a Facebook category appears on this site. The status of contacts is shown just like within Messenger, if a friend is available to chat to they have a green icon and an orange one for away; if you are also friends with them in Messenger then they can also be set to busy which is a red icon.

The chat box has also been tweaked to reflect the Facebook Chat addition as it is now possible to select which chat protocol is being used for the conversation. This feature also allows people to select SMS as a chat option. This feature has also leaked in upcoming Windows Live Messenger 2011 Screenshots.

One final feature that was spotted by Liveside is that when a user is signed in to Messenger on a PC it’s not possible to have a conversation via Web Messenger as Messenger windows will now force themselves to be used. However if a user is not signed in to Messenger then it is possible to chat to people in the browser. Before this refinement it was possible to chat to people via both Messenger and Web Messenger at the same time. (Signing into Messenger when conversations in Windows Live Phone were open sees them closed, however when navigating to a different Windows Live site the conversation reopens. Microsoft have yet to update the Web Messenger across most of the Windows Live sites.)

It has been rumoured that Microsoft will make available a release candidate of Windows Live Essentials 2011 soon and it’s likely that at a similar time they will also update the Windows Live sites.

When Google introduced their instant live search earlier this week, some curious web enthusiasts looked towards Bing to answer back at Google, including Long Zheng from istartedsomething.

Back in August 2009, Long Zheng developed a tool using Bing’s public API’s that gave the search engine an instant live search. What’s more shocking is, this could have easily been added to Bing, with as much as a simple JavaScript file, according to Zheng.

12-months later and Bing still hasn’t included any feature similar to instant search, however, during Apple WWDC 2010, Bing showed off a brand new version of the site, powered by HTML5 with some very exciting and cool features.

The early future Bing preview showed a smooth transition between your query and your results, a feature close to instant search. The HTML5 version of Bing also included a quick tab preview of weather, maps and other features just by hovering over the menus, reducing the amount of clicks and page loading.

The video also demonstrates a brand new mobile version of Bing, including endless image scrolling and seamless transitions between images, all using the iPhone or iPod’s touch screen. The mobile Bing preview also includes the background image, giving the appearance of a native app, all within Safari.

Bing in HTML5 could be Microsoft’s response to Google’s instant search, and we could likely see this being released by the first quarter of next year, right around the Internet Explorer 9 launch.

Google initially rejected the ad shown here for keywords like "google eric schmidt" saying it violated its policies on using trademarks in ads, although it does allow their use in some cases.

After initially rejecting three AdWords ads submitted by a major critic of its policies, Google has now approved the ads following a complaint by the advertiser.

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Last week Consumer Watchdog--an intense and sometimes disingenuous Google critic--submitted three text ads to Google designed to promote the over-the-top video it created of Google CEO Eric Schmidt in order to criticize Google on privacy issues. The ads targeting keywords such as "Google CEO Eric Schmidt" were purchased on September 2, the same day Consumer Watchdog released the video, but Google rejected them the next day citing its policy on trademarks in the text of ads, according to John Simpson, a spokesman for the group.

On Thursday, Consumer Watchdog complained about the ad rejection in an open letter published on its site, and a Google representative confirmed Friday that Google had overturned the original decision but did not admit making any error.

"As the trademark owner, upon becoming aware of their letter, we decided--regardless of whether these particular ads violate our policies or not--to authorize them to run," a Google representative said.

Google's policy on trademarks in text of ads allows advertisers to use trademarks when "the primary purpose of the landing page of the ad must be to provide informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term." Consumer Watchdog's ads linked to a site called InsideGoogle.com, which is extremely critical of the company but is basically just a blog.

Internet users are spending a bit more time these days socializing on Facebook than searching on Google, according to new data from market researcher ComScore.

In August, people spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, accounting for 9.9 percent of the total number of minutes they spent online for the month. That inched past the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent of total time, that Net users spent on all of Google's sites combined, including its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, and Google News, ComScore said Thursday.

For the month, Yahoo proved the third most popular online hangout, with people spending 37.7 million minutes, or 9.1 percent of total time, on Yahoo sites. In July, Facebook slipped past Yahoo in the number of minutes spent online for the first time, noted ComScore.

The latest stats contrast with August 2009 in which Internet users spent less than 5 percent of their time on Facebook, about the same amount on Google sites, and almost 12 percent of their monthly minutes on Yahoo.

ComScore also cited data from August 2007. Back then, Web surfers spent less than 2 percent of their monthly time on Facebook, under 4 percent on Google, and slightly more than 12 percent at Yahoo.
To compile its figures, ComScore relies on feedback from a panel of around 2 million users as well as data captured from various Web sites.

Facebook recently hit the 500 million member mark. Some reports indicate that its growth, at least in the United States, has slowed the past few months following its meteoric rise the past few years. However, the network still has considerable room to grow outside the U.S., particularly in such countries as Russia, Japan, and South Korea, according to ComScore.

One country where Facebook has caught on is India, where it recently surpassed Google's Orkut social network in the number of users. The latest data from ComScore shows that Facebook's membership grew 179 percent in India year over year to 20.9 million users. Orkut's membership grew 16 percent there year over year to 19.9 million people.

Facebook update its security setting on almost daily basis to prevent its users from any kind of hacking and tracking. So now Facebook has launched a new security feature that will let users log out from any device remotely. This is designed to protect users who access Facebook from multiple devices, but will also help safeguard users against hacking.

According to Facebook;
“Have you ever borrowed a friend’s phone to use Facebook and then forgotten to log out before you handed it back? Maybe you logged in from a public computer, but accidentally walked away with your Facebook session still active. Now, you can see if you’re still logged in on other devices and immediately log out on those devices from one central control in your account.”

The upgrade is rolling out gradually to all users. Once it’s live for you, access is via the “Account Security” section of your Account Settings page. You should be able to all your active sessions along with information such as the login time, device name if you’ve previously named it through the login notifications feature, the approximate location of the login based on IP address, and browser and operating system.

The blog post notes that if someone has accessed your account without your permission, you should be able to shut down the unauthorized log-in before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.

This update makes a lot of sense. In the mobile age, people are increasingly accessing Facebook from multiple locations and devices, and a central way to manage that would be very handy. Also, while the blog post describes the example of unauthorized access as “unlikely”, I know several friends who have had their accounts hacked or accessed in some way and their status updates filled with spam. While some less technically minded users might find using this feature a bit daunting, there are quite a lot of people who have enough technical savvy to make good use of it.

Facebook has now become worlds most used Social Networking website by almost every age and type of people around the world. So do you know that the average age of a Facebook user is 38 years old? That information comes from the team at Flow town, who has compiled the latest demographic statistics about Facebook users and social network usage in general. Perhaps more surprising was that the vast majority of users are now older than 38 years old, illustrating that the company has come a long way since first launching exclusively to college students.

One other interesting statistic found in the data was that users who are 18 to 29 use social networks almost as much as they use email. Other reports have recently suggested that the younger users (younger than 18) use social networks more than email. Check out all the details in the chart below!

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Hot on the heels of Microsoft starting to advertise Internet Explorer 9 there is now a leaked video (first picked up by Softpedia) of the browser demoing the user interface and speed. Despite looking like a fake video, We understands the video is of an old, internal build of Internet Explorer 9 which was given to employees to test.

In the video, it can be seen that the user interface bears a resemblance to the leaked image of Internet Explorer 9 from last month but features older icons, gradients and buttons. Neowin has been informed that the leaked image is how Internet Explorer 9 will look when released as a beta next week. Therefore, the video above doesn’t display an accurate image of how Internet Explorer 9 will appear.

The rendering engine used for this build of Internet Explorer 9 appears to be the same as the most recent version of the developer platform preview of Internet Explorer 9. The speed at which the browser loads and functions in the video is expected to be similar to how quick the beta version will be.

Long Zheng has just spotted that Microsoft is already starting to advertise Internet Explorer 9 Beta ahead of its official launch next Wednesday. The banner advert was spotted on TechCrunch and it’s likely to be found on many other sites across the web.

The advert features a few quotes from people and web sites that who played with previous versions of Internet Explorer 9. The advert focuses on how Internet Explorer 9 will allow for a different kind of internet than the one we are used too telling readers to “get ready for a more beautiful web”. This has been the tag line used with Internet Explorer 9 ever since Microsoft announced they would be holding a special event for the launch of the beta.


Microsoft announced back in August that they would be holding an event in San Francisco on September 15th where Internet Explorer 9 Beta would be announced. It is unusual for a company to put so much emphasis on a beta version of a piece of software which suggests either Microsoft have got a lot planned for Internet Explorer 9 or have more to announce than just a browser.

An image leaked in late August that is rumored to be of Internet Explorer 9 but there have been many who have questioned the image’s authenticity.

Microsoft has been providing developer access to the much improved Internet Explorer 9 rendering engine on a regular basis. The company has been stressing that developers shouldn’t have to worry about which browser will be rendering a web page but should be able to just write code for all browsers. To that end Internet Explorer 9 will be far more standards compliant than any other Microsoft browser to date and appears to far faster than any previous versions of the browser, its now almost as fast as Google Chrome and Apple Safari.

Everybody is quite exciting about Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Now the wait is over Microsoft has released a beta refresh of its Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack (SP) 1 to selected PC and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) partners, company officials confirmed on August 30.

Microsoft made the refresh build — the build number of which is said to be Build No. 7601.17077 — available to a select group of testers on August 27. There’s no word (so far) on whether there is anything new in that refresh.

The spokesperson said Microsoft would not comment on whether the company will release to the public another interim SP1 build before the first service pack is released to manufacturing. Microsoft officials said earlier this summer that the company is planning to deliver the final SP1 code in the first half of 2011, and the spokesperson said on August 30 that Microsoft is still on track with that stated release date.

The server version of SP1 includes two new virtualization-focused features: RemoteFX and a dynamic-memory adjustor for Hyper-V. I’ve heard speculation that the server version of SP1 is what’s holding back the delivery of the client version, but have not heard this from any Microsoft officials.

Microsoft released a public beta of SP1 in mid-July.

Microsoft officials have been adamant that consumers and business customers don’t need to wait for SP1 to deploy Windows 7 and/or Windows Server 2008 R2. Still, a number of business customers use the release of SP1 as a milestone in terms of planning their deployments of a new operating system.

Google has fixed an issue with Gmail that caused a small percentage of its accounts to repeatedly send email messages over and over.

The bug, which affected less than 2.5 percent of the Gmail userbase, according to Google, involved odd behavior including the repeated messages. The bug was resolved Thursday night, according to Google's Google Apps dashboard.

"The problem with Google Mail should be resolved," Google's tech support staff wrote. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

The bug affected at least two writers for PCMag.com, who initially dismissed thoughts of a bug, suspecting that their PCs may have become infected with malware. The repeated messages also resulted in several Gmail users being added to spam lists, including www.Backscatterer.org and www.SORBS.net, according to WgtnDan, a user who posted to the Google Gmail support thread describing the problem.

At a press conference announcing the integration of Google Voice and Gmail this week, Google executives were asked about the number of Gmail users. Executives declined to provide an exact number, although comScore numbers cited by The Wall Street Journal put the number at over 160 million, putting the maximum number of users affected by the bug at about 4 million users.

Hijacked accounts, promises of free iPads, IQ quizzes, and ring tones - these are all part of a massive spam attack hitting Facebook right now.

I’ve received a Facebook private message that appeared to be from a friend inviting me to an event titled “Get @iPad_ for Free Event!!”. (See below). Other users have reported wall messages and status updates with phrases like “u have to check out this website its glitchin right now and sending out ipads to everyone for free!”. Similar spam messages have appeared on Twitter, via hacked accounts.



A Facebook spokesman told IDG the iPad scam was affecting “an extremely small percentage of people on Facebook” but they took the threat seriously.
Meanwhile, Facebook users have also reported spammy chat messages touting IQ quizzes and mobile ring tones.

The messages say "LOL is this you?" and are accompanied by a link that looks like it leads to a video on Facebook, one victim told CNET. In his case, clicking the link directed to a Web page with a "404-Page Not Found" error message and his account sent the spam out to at least one of his friends, he said.
The spam was also reported on Twitter, but at this point the outbreak seems to be minor.

As we know Windows 7 is now become one of the most usage and successful windows after Windows XP. Everybody is now thinking When Will Windows 7 Overtake Windows XP ? And people are now really considering Windows 7 as compare to windows xp in many ways. I have noticed very strong evidence that Windows 7 has succeeded in a big way among early adopters and enthusiasts, who dominate the readership of a website like this one. I also see clear indications that businesses are adopting Windows 7 at a faster pace than in earlier Windows versions.

The monthly reports on operating system versions provide an ideal snapshot for my purposes, with data that goes back far enough to see meaningful trends. Using Excel, I plotted data from December 2008 (a month before the Windows 7 beta was made public) to July 2010 and then made some simple projections. Here’s what the chart looks like; actual Net Market Share data is to the left of the line in the center of the chart, and my projections are to the right:

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Yes, you can make a case for a hockey-stick growth curve with even a slight increase in the Windows 7 adoption rate. You could also argue for a slowdown, although I think that scenario is unlikely based on the overwhelmingly positive reception of Windows 7 in the market and where we are in the PC replacement cycle. The most likely scenario, in my opinion, is that the pace of migration from XP to Windows 7 will accelerate over the next two years as XP gets closer to its end-of-life date.

In the Net Market Share data, the percentage of Mac OS X use has remained in a very narrow range for that entire period. In December 2008, the total for Mac Intel and Mac OS was 4.45%. For July 2010, the Net Market Share report breaks usage by OS X version rather than hardware platform, but the total for OS X 10.6 and 10.5 is nearly identical at 4.42%. In between, the percentage of users never rose above 4.45% and never dropped below 4%.

As someone who’s watched every Windows release since the early 1990s, I find it remarkable that Windows 7 usage has overtaken Vista so quickly, roughly nine months after it was released. NetMarketShare noted that trend with its July 2010 report. That same crossover appears in the ZDNet visitor data I posted yesterday, except that it happened about 8-10 months earlier. If the broad PC market is still lagging early adopters by that same gap, then I expect Net Applications will report that Windows 7 has passed XP in usage sometime next summer.

Mozilla has released the latest beta for Firefox 4, making this is the 3rd beta in the Firefox 4 development cycle. Beta 3 is available in more than 30 languages, 10 more than the last update. The beta also enables Windows 7 multi-touch support, which allows users the ability to interact with the browser without the need of a mouse. Several JavaScript tweaks have also been implemented to give the user a more streamlined and faster experience.

Beta 3 also changes to the C++ representation of JavaScript, which enables Firefox to execute numeric code more efficiently, allowing for more streamlined graphics in web applications.

As with the past betas, the Mozilla Labs feedback add-on is included, giving a user the chance to submit any bugs or errors they find using Beta 3. Mozilla recommends users keep the feedback add-on enabled, as it gives Mozilla the ability to better track bugs and errors found within the browser. Mozilla states the feedback addition has allowed for more than a half-million testers to submit approximately 3,500 pieces of feedback every day. Additional statistics show that the majority of people using the Firefox 4 Beta are males, who use the web between 2-6 hours every day, and use Firefox for communication and entertainment.

Readers looking for the latest Firefox 4 beta can find it here.

Multitouch capabilities might be all the rage on portable devices, and Windows 7 had made much of the gesture and touch capabilities built into the operating system, but for now desktop Linux users have largely been left out in the cold. However, Canonical—the company behind the Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution—has announced that multitouch support will be included in Ubuntu 10.0 (codenamed Maverick Meerkat). The technology will add multitouch support and gesture interaction with applications, and although many applications will have to receive substantial interface makeovers to be multitouch-friendly, Canonical is working on folding multitouch into Unity, it’s lightweight netbook environment.

“The world’s expectations of software experience are being raised by advances in mobile computing. We are bringing that revolution to the Linux desktop: for window management and applications,” Canonical wrote in a blog post. “Though our work at the application level has only just started, we are certain that multi-touch and gestures will be central to the way we use Linux applications in future.”

Canonical is distributing GPL-licensed libraries so applications can develop multitouch interfaces, and has also posted a set of guidelines for building consistent multitouch interfaces.

For now, the multitouch effort is concentrating on high-end convertible tablet PCs; however, broader hardware support is expected, including support for 3M and N-Trig hardware, and eventually touchpads and input devices like Apple’s new Magic Trackpad.

China Unicom, China's second-largest telecommunications operator, may start selling Apple Inc's iPhone 4 in the mainland market in September, state television reported on Thursday.
"China Unicom has reached an agreement with Apple, and the iPhone 4 may enter the mainland market by as early as next month," the report said, citing a company statement released to the ongoing China Internet Conference in Beijing.

China Unicom officials in Beijing and Hong Kong declined to comment. Apple could not immediately be reach for comment.

"The rumor has been out for the last couple of days. It is something positive for China Unicom but not very significant as I think most subscribers find the price of the iPhone too high," said Victor Yip, a Hong-Kong based analyst with UOB Kay Hian.

Various news media have reported this week that China Unicom may become Apple's vendor for its popular iPad and iPhone 4 products. The reports have been unconfirmed by the company.

China Unicom, the sole telecom distributor of Apple's iPhone, has seen slow sales for the popular handset because of high subscription fees and stiff competition from lower priced Android handsets.

China Mobile Ltd, the country's largest provider, has also expressed interest in bringing in Apple's iPhone and iPad products.

Apple opened its second flagship store in China last month and is on track to have 25 retail outlets in the country by the end of next year. Apple executives said in April that they saw the Chinese market as a major growth opportunity.

Now Available: Apple iPhone 4 Black Smartphone 32GB

Microsoft has just released the next major version of the Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta suite. The package comes with a number of improvements, bug fixes and added features.

Microsoft originally released a Windows Live Essentials beta on June 24. Essentials includes the popular programs Windows Live Movie Maker, Mail, Writer, Sync, and Family Safety. The Windows Live team has aimed to ensure that the next version of Windows Live Essentials takes advantage of Windows 7 fully. All applications now use the new ribbon UI and integrate further into Windows 7 by using Jumplists. Windows Live Sync is also included which keeps your files synchronized on the web and across multiple PCs.

Microsoft also introduced several new features for Windows Live Photo Gallery, including photo fusing to blend photos together and improved facial recognition.

Download Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta refresh (English full installer)

Build number: 15.4.3001.809.

Some applications carry a different build number, so here is a master list of the versions:

• Movie Maker – 15.4.3002.0810
• Messenger – 15.4.3002.0810
• Mail – 15.4.3002.0810
• Photo Gallery -15.4.3002.0810
• Sync – 15.4.3001.0809
• Family Safety – 15.4.3001.0809
• Writer – 15.4.3001.0809

eBay's PayPal is in talks with Google to about adding its payment service to Android devices, according to a Bloomberg report Friday.

If the discussions to use PayPal for Android application purchases go well, the service could be available on smartphones with Google's software by the end of this year, according to Bloomberg's unnamed sources.

Android app purchases currently are made using a credit card or Google's own competitor to PayPal, Google Checkout. PayPal is already available as an application for accepting and making mobile payments on several mobile platforms, including Android. The reported description of PayPal for mobile sounds like it would work in a more integrated fashion on Android, similar to how the iTunes Store works on Apple's iOS devices.

Both Google and PayPal declined to comment on the report.
Google's chief competition in smartphones, Apple, uses iTunes to handle payments for app purchases on its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

In June, PayPal announced a new service for app developers that will let them accept credit card payments using PayPal without requiring buyers to have a PayPal account, called Guest Payments. Software developers offer credit card payments for applications, in addition to PayPal's electronic transferring of funds between a buyer and seller.

Microsoft revealed this thursday that they are currently readying an Internet Explorer 9 public beta for September. Neowin believes this will be September 2.

Microsoft’s C.O.O. Kevin Turner announced the public beta date at the annual Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 29. Screenshots of an early build of Internet Explorer 9 leaked to the web earlier this week. The screenshots revealed that Microsoft is planning a download manager and add-on manager for Internet Explorer 9.

Microsoft originally unveiled Internet Explorer 9 Photos and concept at PDC 2009. IE 9 will take advantage of the power of the GPU for all page rendering and developers can exploit this using CSS, DHTML andjavascript. A new JS engine (codenamed Chakra) will also be built into Internet Explorer 9 with greater interoperability and standards support all round. Features such as rounded corner CSS support will be built in. In January, we revealed that Microsoft is planning to enhance tabbed browsing in IE9. According to a software patent, the Quick Tabs feature in Internet Explorer is likely to be enhanced with better functionality and greater tab management options.

Microsoft is also planning broader support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer 9 through its new script engine. Microsoft recently performed W3C Web Standards tests on IE9, including HTML5, SVG 1.1 2nd edition, CSS3 media queries, CSS3 borders & backgrounds, CSS3 selectors, DOM level 3 core, DOM level 3 events and DOM level 2 style. Microsoft, with the help of W3C, performed a total of 192 tests on a variety of browsers. Internet Explorer 9 scored 100% in all eight tests, while every other browser, except Firefox in DOM level 2 style tests, didn’t score perfect in any of the test categories.

After the successful launched of Google Nexus One Android based smart phones. Many mobile companies come out with their brand new and competitive Android brands like Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8 Android Smartphone and also Samsung doing their best to compete in market in Android.

HTC is one of the well known smart phone company today because of its effective and fully loaded smart phones but now HTC comes up with its EVO 4G Android based Smartphone. It is really getting popular now and its almost beat Google Nexus One market and hold a top position in top android phones chart. HTC EVO 4G is fully loaded Android based Smart phone with numerous inbuilt features like;

GENERAL	2G Network	CDMA 800 / 1900
	3G Network	CDMA2000 1xEV-DO
	Announced	2010, March
	Status	Available. Released 2010, June

SIZE	Dimensions	122 x 66 x 13 mm
	Weight	170 g

DISPLAY	Type	TFT capacitive touchscreen, 65K colors
	Size	480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches
		- Multi-touch input method - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - HTC Sense UI

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
	Speakerphone	Yes
		- 3.5 mm audio jack

MEMORY	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Practically unlimited
	Internal	512 MB RAM; 1 GB ROM
	Card slot	microSD, up to 32GB, 8GB included

DATA	GPRS	No
	EDGE	No
	3G	Rev. A, up to 3.1 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, WiMAX 802.16 e (Wi-Fi router)
	Bluetooth	Yes v2.1 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, dual-LED flash
	Features	Geo-tagging
	Video	Yes, 720p
	Secondary	Yes, 1.3 MP

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair)
	CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8650 1 GHz processor
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
	Games	Yes
	Colors	Black
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support
	Java	Via third party application
		- Digital compass - HDMI port - Dedicated search key - Google Search, Maps, Gmail - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration - MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA9 player - MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV9 player - Facebook, Flickr, Twitter applications - Voice memo

BATTERY		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh