Foursquare has announced an update for its iOS application that offers additional functionality to its users in the form of check-in to events as well.

With the update, Facebook users now will be able to check in to events like movies, sports, and concerts. Besides, they will also be able to access or discover other fellow users on the list for their availability on the event too. But that is just the major addition in terms of functionality.

The iOS users will now be able to access comments and photographs. While being at the event, users can always choose to be ‘here now’ so that other users can be notified about that too.

Last but not the least, the update also increases the size of the tap targets making it more comfortable and easier for users to comment see and even locates their friends or fellow Foursquare members.

The updated applications for Foursquare can be located at the iTunes application store on devices, or users can follow this link to update the application.

Gameloft has officially announced an Android based application of the world famous card game UNO.

The developers at Gameloft have tried to recreate the same gaming experience that the original card based game offers. But, here users would not have to wait for all the players to join in before a game could be started.

Users can play the game with different computer opponents in the offline mode as well as with human opponents joining via UNO servers from around the globe or with friends over WiFi or Bluetooth network. The rules of the game have been kept the same but with a twist to modify the rules as per need to some extent.

The UNO game for Android is available only in the HD mode. Hence, it will only be able to run on phones which have 800MHz processors or more. Also, the online playability will only be available for high end phones only.

There is only one version of this application available which is compatible with both smartphones and tablets. The price of the application is slightly on the higher side and might restrict some users from downloading the application on their device. Users will have to pay a sum of Rs 137 approximately to get this game.

The application can be downloaded directly on the Android 1.1 and above devices from the Android Marketplace or alternatively user can also follow this link to download it also.

To cash in on the popularity of Bollywood actor Salman Khan, Hungama has created a special page on its website offering exclusive images, music and videos of the superstar. The page is titled ‘Bhai Special’.

The service also gives you access seamlessly over the web and mobile. Consumers and fans can also leave messages for their beloved superstar, which may give them a chance to meet Salman Khan in person.

Commenting on this initiative Siddhartha Roy, chief operating officer, Hungama Digital Media, said, “With digital media, consumers now have the very best of entertainment content on their fingertips. The ‘Bhai Special’ is an endeavour to bundle content that consumers are searching for and present it in one convenient destination page. This allows them easy access to content they are most interested in, helps them discover content that is specific to their taste.”

He added, “Hungama will introduce bundling of content on a more regular basis in the future. These bundles will range from being celebrity specific, to festival based, or even tied in to various occasions.”

The ‘Bhai Special’ has the same pricing models as the rest of Hungama.com- Rs 10 for single downloads, Rs 20 for the value pack of 4 downloads, Rs 99 for the Super Value pack for 99 downloads on 30 days and the monthly subscription of Rs 99 for unlimited downloads. The service is compatible with over 400 mobile handsets as well as personal computers.

Those who say living without a phone is difficult may find there are people who really mean it. A new App for blind people, VizWiz, may just end up changing their lives for the better.

There has been some development of assistive technologies such as speech-recognition in recent times. VizWiz takes these technologies to the next level by making use of a crowd cloud to help blind people.

The app believes that technology is fragile most of the time because of rapidly changing reality. OCR (optical character recognition) scanners find it difficult to read older and handwritten documents, and speech-recognition software programs do not understand accents well enough. VizWiz has tackled the problem differently. It depends on real human users to help blind people.

VizWiz is available on iPhone, and is a free application which enables blind users to take the help of remotely situated, visually able people to tackle their visual problems, such as telling them the colour of a T-shirt.

So, how does it work?
Blind users take a picture from their iPhone, speak a question into it and upload it to the app.

VizWiz volunteers examine the photo and send their answers back. In the trials conducted by the app developer, blind users found the app useful and it took them about 27 seconds on an average to get their answers from the human cloud. The fact that a human cloud would be answering visual questions has potential because even when the technology fails, human volunteers may still be able to pitch in with their solutions.

Smartphone apps are really a rage these days but if a report by Nielsen presents true picture, developers of mobile apps will be a worried lot. According to the Nielsen report, few apps outside the top 50 get much user attention.

Nielsen analysed the data from on-device meters installed on thousands of Apple iOS and Android smartphones. (iOS data is not yet out), and the analyst found some very interesting patterns.

The average Android owner spends 56 minutes interacting with mobile applications and mobile websites every day. In that span of 56 minutes, about two-thirds of the time is spent on mobile applications, and one-third browsing the mobile Web.

Does that mean mobile web has a bleak future, well not really. This report is based on USA data, but in Indian and other developing market it is feature phones which dominate. As features phones do not support much of applications, it is the mobile web which takes precedence.

Nielsen says that the top 10 Android applications are responsible for 43 per cent of all the time spent by Android consumers on mobile apps. The top 50 apps account for 61 per cent of all time spent. That means that almost all the 2.5 lakh apps on the Android market see minimal use and vie for a pie of the remaining 39 minutes.

Current top 10 apps on Android are YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon Kindle, Facebook, Pandora, Angry Birds, Dragon Fly, Words with Friends, Advanced Task Killer, and Angry Birds Rio.
The top 10 paid apps are Cut the Rope, Beautiful Widgets, Fruit Ninja, PowerAMP Full, SwiftKey X, Robo Defense, ROM Manager, Doodle Jump, SoundHound, and ADW Launcher.

Amongst these apps, 40 per cent are games and the rest are utility apps and media and social networking apps. There are few business apps even in the top 50.

The report definitely points that applications have more potential than the mobile web. So the device manufacturers need to focus on adding better App support to their devices and operating system. Media planners will also have to revise their mobile advertising strategies.

What is good for the consumer is that with these findings out, we will get better phones with better application support and developers coming out with better apps and not just filling up the Android market (or any other app store) with just about any app.