The new Near Field Communication application for android helps you connect with people via Facebook easily. All you have to do is touch two phones together and it will share Facebook details with each other. This is by far one of the most interesting applications that enable quick social media connection via Facebook.

It not only makes things easier for Facebook account holders, but also makes life easy for many groups and organizations that have a Facebook account or a fan page.The Near-field communication (NFC) ameliorates the troubles of tricky first social step situations. Although, it works only if both the mobile phones in consideration have NFC and have installed and registered for NFC. It is available in the android market and can be easily downloaded.

This app can be compared to Nokia‘s newest tap share technology. Social communication was never so easy and fun, because all you need to do is to give your smart phones a loving embrace for letting NFC transfer your Facebook details across.

And lets not forget the option to remove unwanted additions from your friends list.

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) will be launching its own application that will help users upload photos of potholes on the road and even track its progress in real time. The application will be available for Android based mobile phones.

The MCGM has been severely criticized from a long time in regards to the bad state of roads especially during the monsoon season. The new app has been created with Pune based tech provider Probity Soft at a development cost of close to Rs. 60 lakh (Rs. 6 million). The app will be available to download on the MCGM website.

Though the application is available only on Android phones for the moment, Probity Soft will soon develop similar apps for other popular mobile platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry.

According to Rahul Shewale, standing committee chairman at MCGM,

“The system will prioritize the maintenance system. It will be uploaded with the history of all roads, with detailed information on the trouble spots”

The application allows users to upload photos which goes to the concerned authorities. Once this is done, the MCGM marks the potholes on a real time map with a red dot. Once the pothole has been repaired, the authorities update the map and a green dot is marked in the place where the road has been repaired. This makes tracking progress for regular travelers more efficient.

With the government body resorting to modern technology, it can be rightly said that the MCGM has finally taken some ‘concrete’ measures for developing the roads.

These are the list of 12 apps that are to be included are as follows -

1. SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts

2. Bejeweled – Electronic Arts

3. N.O.V.A. – Gameloft

4. Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft

5. Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft

6. Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps

7. DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org

8. iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org

9. Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org

10. Nobex Radio™ Premium – Nobex

11. Shazam Encore – Shazam

12. Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo

The company has also gone further to claim that more apps are in the running for a further date. The estimated value of all the 12 apps together is a total of $100.

Free technical support will be available for enterprise customers for one month whereas a one month extension on contract will be added for current customers. For those who do not avail of a technical support contract, RIM will offer a one month trial for this particular service.

The BlackBerry power failure which hit last week was considered to be one of the most devastating outages in the history of the brand as millions of BlackBerry users around the world were denied access to applications and e-mail services.

On one side, a gesture such as this is considered very noble of the company. But the more important  question that arises is, “Is such a gesture a justification to what BB users had to endure in the past week?”

With the new application, users can turn the screen of their cell phones into a virtual ‘Chalni’ (Sieve) to see the moon. The Chalni is used as part of the Karva Chauth ritual.

The new application has been created by keeping in mind the younger, cosmopolitan Indian women who easily adopt technology.

Says Bhuwan Gaurav, the head of Marketing at Tanishq,

“With young girls and the newly married bahus, being active on social networking sites, like facebook, such an app will surely create buzz amongst women. We are confident that this kind of an initiative will help the brand engage with traditionally rooted modern Indian women at a newer level. This is yet another example of great synergy of our rich Indian culture with technology and we at Tanishq are happy to bring to our customers.”

The Karva Chauth application is the first of its kind and runs on Android, iOS and Symbian platforms. The app can be downloaded free of cost on the Tanishq Facebook Page.

Many marketers are trying to reach their target audiences during the upcoming festive season. With the new application, Tanishq has gone a step forward in blending traditional values and technology.

As a unorthodox promotional activity, the software making giant will be giving out 25 free Windows Phones accompanied with the Mango OS to users that come up with a creative story as to why they hate BlackBerry devices.

The novel idea was initiated by Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph. In order to spread word about the competition, the social networking website Twitter was used.

Talking about the competition, Ben Rudolph wrote in a tweet that, ‘#DearBlackberry users: frustrated w/ your BB? I want to help! Tell me y u want 2 upgrade 2 a #windowsphone – I’ve got 25 to give away.’

After the status was put up, many respondents were eager to spew venom towards BlackBerry. The tweet generated a lot of comments, with many users expressing their displeasure towards RIM.

A couple of days back, BlackBerry services in many countries were obstructed due to technical errors. This led to a lot of resentment towards the company as people could not access their mails and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

Microsoft, which has started rolling out its new Mango devices took this as an amazing opportunity to belittle their competitor while managing to promote the Mango OS powered phones at the same time.

The competition has been generating some interesting comments. Apart from BlackBerry, the iPhone maker Apple is undergoing severe criticism as well.

One user commented, ‘BB, you left a really bad taste in my mouth, Apples are sour and I hate Icecream Sandwiches. Give me Mango! #windowsphone.’

Considering that last year, Apple launched a television campaign targeting Microsoft, this move can be called as a befitting revenge.

Though BlackBerry has not reacted yet, it will be interesting to see if RIM comes up with their own smear campaign against Microsoft.

M’Loyal uses the principle of loyalty cards to engage with consumers of a particular brand. Using the service, many brands can enhance communications with their consumers and understanding various buying behaviour patterns.

The service lets you segment your target as well as give out virtual loyalty cards with special offers like discounts, rebates etc.

M’Loyal has leading brands like VLCC, Forever New, Mochi, Baskin Robbins,Mango and many others as part of their client list. The service has been able to reach out to more than 5 million customers through these brands.

Vineet Narang, CEO of MobiQuest said,

“Indian retail industry is fast adopting technology to scale up operations and understand the consumer. With mobile penetration increasing every day, mobile phone is an ideal tool for customer acquisition, retention and engagement. Acquiring customer information and tracking purchase behavior is key to the growth of a retail brand. M’Loyal, allows brands to build a database of most relevant and visiting customers, tag each customer bill to identify, track and measure customer pulse. We are proud on the fact that today we have crossed 5 Million consumers on M’Loyal platform.”

According to MobiQuest COO Sabina Kamal, coupon redemption is growing significantly. Brands using M’Loyal have seen 21-24 % in redemption rates. Because of this, many retail firms have seen the potential the platform has to offer for them in the future.

With India’s vast base of mobile phone users and increasing use of Digital Media, it won’t be long before other brands start using innovate social media to reach out to their target markets.

Since the last two years, sales of RIM’s BlackBerry phones has shot up considerably in India. Keeping in mind the potential of this market, Consim India has launched the applications for their services.

The applications have several unique features to appeal to the users. In the IndiaProperty App, users can find properties via an advanced search which let you choose properties according to various filters like price, locality etc. A ‘Locality Search’ option lets users find properties near their current location using GPS. Many other interesting features have been added to the app as well.

In the BharatMatrimony App, users can browse through other accounts and find other members with similar interests. The app lets you upload photos from your phone on your profile.

Mr.Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO of Consim said,

“The mobile apps developed with the support of BlackBerry will create useful and enriching experiences for our members while on the go. We believe that the app will go truly viral due to its deep integration with BlackBerry Messenger.”

The main objective of launching these apps was to increase their reach and let users have a better browsing experience

“Mobile apps will help us reach consumers on a brand new level. We are intensely focused on creating the best search experience to be a meaningful part of our members’ lives, and to provide our services when and where they need them. Together, the IndiaProperty and BharatMatrimony apps will empower members in new ways to carry their partner and property searches in their pockets”,

Janakiraman said.

The applications can be downloaded free of cost of cost on the BlackBerry App World pages for IndiaProperty and BharatMatrimony

With the growing popularity of app downloads, users can expect many service providers to develop applications for the BlackBerry in the near future.

According to reports from news blog All Things Digital, CEO Tim Cook will declare the release date on the 4th of October in a press conference.

If the reports are indeed true; it coincides with earlier rumours about the iPhone 5 being launched in October.

The source went on to say that Tim Cook will preside over the press event along with other important Apple dignitaries. This move will help him gain the confidence of investors and fans in his capabilities as CEO.

It is not sure if ex-CEO Steve Jobs will make an appearance

during the press conference, but his presence would make a significant difference to the event.

With the phone’s launch in sight, it will be interesting to see how competitor Samsung, who filed  a patent infringement lawsuit against the iPhone 5 will react to this news.

The legal battle between Apple and Samsung has being going on since quite a while with each brand trying to get an upper hand. In June, a U.S. Jury denied Samsung’s request to inspect the iPhone 5.

Apple had filed a similar request earlier in the year, but their demand was to inspect the already released Samsung phones. The rival companies have around 23 law suits pending between them since April.

According to Samsung, the fifth version of the iPhone will have near-field communication (NFC) technology on its platform. Apple has neither confirmed nor denied this statement.

“Just after the arrival of the iPhone 5 here, Samsung plans to take Apple to court here for its violation of Samsung’s wireless technology related patents, for as long as Apple does not drop mobile telecommunications functions, it would be impossible for it to sell its i-branded products without using our patents. We will stick to a strong stance against Apple during the lingering legal fights”,

a Samsung employee said.

Apple had managed to win a victory over Samsung when they managed to ban the Samsung Galaxy  10.1 tablet in Germany earlier this year. This new move by Samsung seems to be the perfect counter attack against Apple.

According to research2guidance, the German based agency that carried out the research, said that Symbian has got the highest potential user base and although its users may not be as active as Apple’s iOS downloaders, they still generate substantial downloads for the publishers.

The research also shows that individual downloads are still high on platforms like BlackBerry’s AppWorld and Windows 7 Marketplace.

The report states

‘the Q2 2011 results of our smartphone application monitoring report indicate that those applications published on the less popular platforms, such as WP7 marketplace or Blackberry’s AppWorld, generate significantly more downloads compared to the Apple App Store.’

It was seen that Nokia’s Ovi Store had 160% higher downloads as compared to Apple’s App Store. This figure is not going to go down well with Apple whose major USP is the app store.Looking at these stats, we can expect many developers to rush into the Nokia market. This new development has given the war of the apps an aggressive new turn.