Orange is launching three new low-priced Android smartphones for people who live for Facebook in an attempt to lure more of its global customer base into the smartphone fold. Roughly 50 percent of Orange’s European and African customers have smartphones today, but the operator thinks it can boost that number by another 10 or 15 percent if it provides not only inexpensive devices and data plans but also cuts through the application clutter of the typical Android smartphone, focusing on social media applications that its less technically savvy customers are already well familiar with.

“There are over 400,000 apps in Android market, which is mind boggling,” Orange Group Devices vice president Patrick Remy said in an interview today. “We believe that there is a certain point where that level of choice will become a bit too much for our customers, that they’ll become a bit lost with that level of complexity.”

Orange polled its customers over what mobile data features would coax them into buying a smartphone. “One name kept coming back on a consistent basis,” Remy said. Several iterations of the Facebook phone have emerged from companies like HTC and INQ, but Orange opted to work with directly with Facebook and TCL, which makes handsets via license under the Alcatel Brand, to create its own line of devices. Remy said Orange wanted to make the phone Facebook-centric, but not Facebook exclusive. By allowing customers to utilize the fill capabilities of the Android platform, they would then gravitate to other applications and platforms.

But Orange is doing plenty to keep Facebookers happy. The phones are designed to make the device almost an extension of a customers Facebook account. Facebook birthdays are automatically loaded into the Calendar client, contacts are synched with Facebook friends and photos automatically populate the phones’ photo albums. A physical Facebook key allows performs a variety of functions depending on what the customer is doing on screen. If the customer is surfing the Web, a press of the Facebook button automatically loads a link. If pressed in the camera mode, the photo is posted as an update, and so forth. Many of the features are similar to those designed into the HTC Status used on AT&T’s network.

It’s first device is the Orange Vancouver (Orange has a thing for phones with city monikers like Boston and Monte Carlo), which will launch in Romania with a price tag of 100 Euros (USD 5) with 9 Euro monthly plan, including 50 minutes of voice, 200 SMS and 60 MB of 3G data. Facebook usage is excepted from the data limited, leaving social networks to update their statuses, send messages and upload and download photos to their hearts’ content. Orange plans to launch two other Android Facebook phones at even lower price points (though without 3G) will begin offering them in all of its markets from continental Europe to sub-Saharan Africa through 2012.

Unlimited Facebook access won’t be available in every market. So far, Orange is only planning to make that a basic feature in Tunisia and Romania, though in other countries customers can subscribe to special unlimited social networking plans. The idea is to make customers feel comfortable with data by not metering their data usage on their favorite application, Remy said.

It sounds simple enough, but customers might find themselves confused as to what exactly counts as Facebook and what doesn’t it. A link update, for instance, is no longer under the Facebook umbrella once a customer clicks on it and exits to the browser. A YouTube video embedded in friend stream could be particular problematic. Opening the video means opening YouTube’s Android app or website, and nothing can drain a 60 MB plan faster than streaming video.

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It’s like Christmas in July Arduino fans. The Italian open-source hardware platform just scored a number of new add-ons and a pair of fresh iterations that are sure to keep you tinkering and hacking for some time. First up is the Arduino Ethernet — which, as you may have guessed — sports an onboard Ethernet jack. You’ll probably want to pick up a USB Serial Adapter to program the ATmega328 chip but, once you’ve loaded your code, it can be hooked up to the web without the need for a Ethernet shield — and an optional PoE (Power over Ethernet) module means you’ll only need one cable for all you net-connected projects. The DIY scene’s favorite microcontroller was also blessed with the new Arduino ADK board, a take on Google’s accessory development platform. And, if you’re not sure where to get started, you can pick up an entire kit for €249 (about 2) that includes not only the ADK board, but a huge pile of sensors and components, and the Mega Sensor Shield to arrange them on. The ADK alone will run you €59 (), while the Arduino Ethernet costs €39.90 () with an additional €14.90 () for the PoE module. Can you say a synonym for awesome?

Continue reading Arduino delivers Android and Ethernet toys for all the good little DIYers

Arduino delivers Android and Ethernet toys for all the good little DIYers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our phones are about to undergo another revolution. They have already shifted from devices designed for phone calls to computers that connect us to the web, but in the years ahead, they will also become the means people capture physical and analog data about the world around them and transfer it to the web. Today people are using smartphones as heart monitors, calorie trackers and pedometers, and as more and more people buy smartphones, the number of people trying these apps out will rise.

But to communicate with sensors on your body, in your home, in a medical setting or even with an exercise machine, your handset needs a radio (actually both devices need a radio) and that radio should be able to transmit data over short distances using a minimum of power. Several companies and technologies are vying to provide that radio technology as I detail an article at GigaOM Pro (subscription required). While I provide more information in the GigaOM Pro article, below are a few of the players and their respective PAN technologies hoping to gain a toehold in the handset.

Bluetooth Special Interest Group: Bluetooth, which is a specification for sending data over short distances is the dominant means of connecting headsets to phones. Now it’s also used in a variety of mobile-health applications such as blood pressure and glucose monitors.

Bluetooth has the advantage of already being integrated into most handsets, but its critics claim that it is a battery suck. However, a low-power version of Bluetooth (Bluetooth Low Energy) is on its way and will solve some of the battery life issues, says Mike Foley, the head of the Bluetooth SIG, in an interview. However, most devices today don’t have the Bluetooth Low Energy chips (although they contain other iterations of Bluetooth radios), so it will take a few years until those radios are in most consumers handsets.

Dynastream Innovations (ANT): Dynastream, a subsidiary of personal-navigation powerhouse Garmin, has created a low-power, short-range wireless technology called ANT. The benefit of ANT is that it consumes much less power than Bluetooth or ZigBee chips, but it’s not yet widely available in handsets. However, at this year’s CES, ANT had some wins with TI, introducing a combined Bluetooth and ANT chip, and Sony Ericsson (admittedly not a big player in the smartphone industry), who said it would deploy ANT in its handsets. Other fitness-focused devices such as the Fitbit (see disclosure) also use ANT.

Apple: Apple modified Bluetooth to make it more power-efficient to create its PAN technology, which powers the radio inside the Nike pedometer. It could also end up in other devices designed to attach to Apple gear such as iPads, iPhones and iPods. Apple notes that its proprietary radio technology operates in the 2.4 Ghz band, as does Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ANT and other technologies. In addition to its program with Nike, Apple also has fitness machine makers embedding compatible radios and sensors inside their machines to communicate with iPhones and iPods.

However, the future for personal area networks won’t belong to one standard or one company. Most likely a variety of radios will make it on smartphones. For more on the coming battle for personal area network supremacy and the technologies and players involved, read the full analysis at GigaOM Pro.

Image Source: flickr user Faizuddin

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

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Sunday drivers wipers are at heightened danger from aerial abuse following a rash of foolhardy avian attacks in broad daylight. It seems some types of bird have attempted to consume wipers in order to obtain the rare mineral nutrition which can be found in some varieties of rubber. One outstanding incident hit the head lines in the BBC when a group of angry inquisitive birds at a park in ride situated in York deprived the cars of their valuable rubber wipers. Some of the owners claimed to have lost as many as eight sets of replacement wiper blades over the period and were agast to discover the culprits were a flock of starving avians. According to some unnamed sources in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds the birds are drawn to the wipers by the mineral parts, which can be garnered there by an active young bird. In order to fight this recent annoying trend motorists have been advised to perform some common steps like coating their wiper blades in aluminium sulphate to antcipate any would be vandals.

One person was quoted as being appauled after revealing who the guilty party actually were, he went on to say how it took numerous weeks before he found who the true culprits were. After driving home one evening he soon found to his apprehension the rubber was stripping from his wipers, after buying several sets of replacement wiper blades he went back to his car one evening and found a trail of rubber. One way this whole scenario could have been avoided was purchasing some silicone replacement wiper blades, silicone is not known to be discovered in the diets of many animals and also represent much better value for money over the long term. Your basic rubber wiper blades will cost in the region of five to twenty pounds but only be good for approximately one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand cycles. Your basic silicone wiper blades however will be reasonable for as many as two million individual iterations and keep on going for much longer.

But that’s not all; silicone wipers have many great properties which aid the intrepid car owner, in cold weather aspects your basic rubber wipers will stick to the wind screen. Not so with silicone, they have a slick slippery property to them which stops them from sticking to the glass in the cold. Another problem with rubber wipers besides being on the menu for crows is that they are prone to become fixed rigid and inflexible in below zero driving conditions. Silicone wipers do not have this problem, they are resistant to all kinds of temperature extremes, both hot and cold; they will abide their miraculous abilities. In the heat basic rubber wipers become too soft and physically stick to the wind screen, silicone wipers do not melt; this is why you often find silicone used in cooking equipment and even on space shuttles. Another great property is that they are resistant to erosion by water and pollution such as ozone and sulphuric acid, this is why your common rubber wipers perform so poorly in comparison.

For the common wipers it is average to divine around one million different iterations across your windscreen, this equates to around 700 miles in sum, so it should come as no surprise that the average rubber wipers sustains heavy breakage during its life time. Even the highest quality rubber replacement wiper blades is therefore accessible to attrition and tear, not only mechanically but also chemically, as rubber is affected with pollution such as ozone to author even more damage.

Even the basic constitutents such as water and high and low temperatures can cause damage to a rubber replacement wiper blades quite quickly. Not to mention sunlight or ultraviolet rays which errode the rubber, all of these things will have a huge detrimental effect on the life span of a wipers. Things to analyze when buying replacement wiper blades include your location and the climate you have at that location. A person who lives in a climate with different winter and summer seasons should consider changing their wiper blades at least once a year, further en route to the equator the temperature goes up and the need to replace your wiper blades is less. For this reason it is vital to consider the type of apparatus used to manufacture your replace wipers, rubber is no good, and it degrades rather quickly. A better alternative is silicone, silicone wiper blades take value of the many great qualities associated with the essence. Many people simply do not purchase replacement wiper blades because they are undecided as to what wiper blades are appropriate for their car. Well let me tell you that any wipers is agreeable with any car, it is a matter of choosing how much you want to spend. Silicone wiper blades although a little bit more expensive actually last many times longer than even the best premium quality rubber wiper blades so they therefore brandish excellent value for money. It is considerably more amenable to change your wiper blades today than it was only a few years ago, there is no need to buy any tools or special attachments you simply slide the wipers out from the wiper arm manually with minimal effort and replace it with you new wipers, easy.

Despite this it is still apparent that the bulk of people are still not replacing their wiper blades often enough, in fact this has become such a puzzle that one company has even began producing a wipers with an indicator telling the user how much longer the wipers should be worn. This wear indicator is like those located on batteries or even tooth brushes and acts as a basic reminder to the user to replace the wipers when it gets too low. The indicator alters from one colour to another to indicate the class of wear, first it starts as a yellow and transitions to a black as time goes on. This author certainly commends this company for taking steps to confirm the safety of the public and raising awareness to the issue of wipers safety, hopefully this product will encourage more drivers to check their wiper blades more often.