European consumer electronics provider, Vestel is set to launch world’s first Android TV game subscription service which will allow users to play Android games on TV using Android smartphone as the controller.

One can also play the same game on PC, TV, tablet and smartphone starting where you left the game last time on any of these devices no matter on which device you played it last.

All you will need to do is to subscribe to the service and buy a Vestel Smart Box Set-Top Box (STB). The set top box is an Android based device so you can do all that you do on your smartphone including web surfing, checking email, social network and much more.

The games will be provided by Extent, another company, which has partnered with Vestel. Extent’s GameTanium game services will be available to the users who have subscribed Vestel’s Smart set-top boxes. GameTanium has an extensive list of Android games. Besides, all the benefits of smartphone gaming interfaces including touch, drag and Accelerometer functionality – have been combined with GameTanium’s gaming experience.

In India, IPTV players like Airtel, Reliance, MTNL and BSNL can look at this service to diversify their offerings especially in the IPTV space.

“Exent’s vision is to provide consumers with the greatest gaming experience, anywhere they wish to be entertained. Expanding our built with GameTanium offering from PCs, smartphones and tablets to the next generation of TV set-top boxes is an important milestone in fulfilling our play anywhere vision,” said Zvi Levgoren, chief executive officer, Exent.

The service will be demonstrated at the Vestel booth at the 2011 IBC conference (for broadcasters) which is to be held September 9 &#151 13, 2011 in Amsterdam.

Following its partnership with Microsoft, Nokia has now announced that its Symbian devices will soon feature the hugely popular productivity tools of Microsoft.

These updates, which will be called as Microsoft Apps, will be available for all Symbian Belle devices including those which are upgraded from Symbian Anna. This will be the first time ever that the Microsoft collaboration and productivity applications would feature on Symbian powered devices.

The update, aiming at increasing productivity of Symbian powered mobile devices, is likely to be rolled out towards the end of this year.

Microsoft is offering a wide gamut of useful services for the users that include Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile &#151 For IM, audio and web meetings on-the-go; Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast &#151 for quick broadcast of presentations directly from PC to mobile; Microsoft OneNote &#151 for note taking with images while saving data on Microsoft SkyDrive; and Microsoft Document Connection &#151 for viewing documents stored on mobile, including email attachments as well as documents on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 sites.

This announcement also further strengthens Nokia’s earlier commitment that it will support the Symbian platform till 2016.

A new update of Google Maps App for Android devices has been released by Google. The new Google Maps 5.10.0 version brings ability to view places with 4 to 5 star ratings on the maps and ability to attach a photo for a place.

Besides, users can now quickly capture image of anything that relates to the place and upload it. So those looking for some visual cues about a particular place will be benefitted by the uploaded images.

Google has just acquired Zagat, which used to offer local search offerings for deals, places and consumer reviews about places. With Zagat’s popularity (in the USA), Google will add much more to the Google Maps.

Google, however, should provide an opt-out option for those who do not use the Places feature or at least an option to un-check any updates for the features that users don’t use from Google Maps app. This is because most of these features are region-limited and aren’t applicable across the globe.

You can get the latest Google Maps update from here.

Most of the users are willing to enter the freemium games, but not everyone playing the game spends the same amount of money.

According to Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, the younger players are more willing to enter the freemium games but are least willing to pay. There are less players between the age group of 25 to 34 years, but they are willing to pay more, so they are more attractive for the mobile gaming companies.

The word freemium combines the two words &#151 free and premium. In the freemium business model, the basic game is given free to all the users, but the company makes money by offering advanced features of the game in lieu of payment.

The younger users are more loyal users of the game whereas the older gamers are loyal but they pay on their way up the levels of the game. For the sake of simplicity, the Flurry report terms the younger gamers as generation Y and the older gamers as the generation X. The company studied the gaming behaviour of 1.4 billion gaming sessions played by about 20 million users.

Flurry says the results are hardly surprising, since younger users have more time and less money whereas the older gamers have less time and more money. That’s why, the younger users are more inclined to go through the grind to progress in the game whereas the older users pay their way to rise through the different levels of the game.

“For consumers who have more time (or less money), they can afford (or must be) more patient. Younger gamers, presumably high school and college-age, likely have more time but less money. So the grind is something they are willing or must commit to, in order to progress. And with more total available time throughout their days, they can play more frequently,” stated a blog post on the Flurry website.

Google has released the Blogger App for iOS devices &#151 iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

The iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad users can now write, edit, publish or delete blog posts on the go. Blogger app for iOS is compatible with the devices running iOS 4.0 or higher.

The new Blogger app for iOS comes with a simple and easy-to-use interface. One can create a new blog post by adding text, images, tagging and geo-tagging to successfully publish a mobile blog post. One can also add more than one Blogger platform based blogs.

The Blogger app doesn’t feature a full-fledged blog post editor, so it is quite likely that the professional bloggers may not use it extensively.

Users can also save a blog post as draft and also view the posts already published or saved as draft. There’s nothing exclusive or complicated added in the app. It has a nice minimalistic layout and fairly big buttons highlight their respective usage.

Despite facing tough competition from WordPress blogging platform, Google shows that it hasn’t given up on the Blogger platform. Just like the WordPress app for iOS, even this app suffers from same limitation &#151 too simple for serious bloggers. May be the complex features loaded blogging apps are meant only for tablets.

Citix, a popular web and audio conferencing solution provider, has announced its web meeting and collaboration tool based application – ‘Go To Meeting’ for Android devices.
With the use of this application, users of Android based devices can be a part of crucial meeting by simply accessing an email based link from any part of the world.

This application is not just a stripped down version of the web meeting solution provided by the company; it offers the same functionality to the user as the web version. The users get complete access to all the documents, reports and presentations shown on the screen and users can even zoom in and out of the content as per need.

With this application, users can also listen to the discussion and interact with others using the devices’ speakers and microphone.

The free App lets you use your Android device to join meetings hosted on a Mac or PC by anyone with a ‘Go To Meeting’ account.

Users need not to pay anything to use this application but to host a meeting, one has to pay a certain amount as per the company. Citix, however, offering a 30 day free trial service of “Go To Meeting”.

It can be downloaded from the Android Market or users can follow the link to download the same.