Twitter Opens Up Tweet Performance Analytics To All, For Free

Twitter now provides you with pretty extensive metrics and analytics for the performance of your tweets via its Ads dashboard (via TNW), in a move that looks designed to get more people (including individuals) aware of and using the Twitter Ads platform. The new free analytics dashboard access allows anyone to see the performance of their tweets, including how many Faves, Retweets and Replies each has received, as well as letting them sort by “Best, Good or All” for at-a-glance ranking of tweet performance.
Besides letting me know that I’m pretty terrible at Twitter, it’s a great tool for anyone who might want to check their actual reach and engagement without signing up for a third-party product or using a Twitter client from an outside developer, some of which have these kinds of tools built in. It reveals things you might now have known about Twitter, like the fact that posts which do well in terms of Faves and Replies don’t seem to do very well at all in terms of Retweets, and vice versa.
You can also download all the information as a CSV for later use, and see how many people are clicking on the links you tweet, which is pretty useful for anyone who wants to track exactly how much Twitter is helping them in terms of drumming up engagement. All of which is to say, this could become a treasure trove of data for marketers, although it does seem to lack some data in terms of actually populating these fields for me in my own personal dashboard.
This has previously all been content given over to Twitter’s business customers looking to build an ad following, but so long as Twitter has the resources in its ad department to support it, making the tools more accessible to all is a good way to adds more input channels to its overall revenue picture. Even if individual bloggers and “social media experts” aren’t huge catches in terms of constant revenue, they each add to the sum total, driving Twitter’s potential profits up.
To gain access, just navigate to ads.twitter.com, sign in with your Twitter credentials and click the “Analytics” link at the top of the page (you don’t actually need to bother with the Twitter Advertising sign-up process

Tablet screen choice overkill: Samsung's 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 vs. 8-inch version

Samsung on Monday touted its Galaxy Tab 3 line and the ability to have a size for every technology buyer. The problem: It's not clear that the tablet buyer will really care about a 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 and an 8-inch one.

The Galaxy Tab 3 family, available in the U.S. July 7, comes in three flavors---7 inch, 8 inch and 10.1 inch. I question that intermediate step in screen size. Is there a market of folks who really care about that extra inch of screen or is Samsung having trouble making a decision.
Samsung's strategy is to have screen sizes for everyone. The Galaxy S4 smartphone is huge. So Samsung now has a smaller version. From the phone to the TV, Samsung hits those sizes.
The issue here is that at some point, the screen as competitive advantage strategy will wear thin. Samsung noted that the "Galaxy Tab 3 portfolio has something for everyone." Perhaps Samsung is just throwing screens against the wall to see what sticks.
For its part, Samsung's marketers are already struggling with the distinction between the 7- and 8-inch screens. From Samsung's release:

The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is aimed at consumers who are in the market to purchase a portable tablet with all the features and reliability they need to stay connected throughout their daily activities. Built for portability, the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 allows users to consume and manage content on-the-go. It is compact enough to easily slide into handbags or a jacket pocket so that consumers on-the-go will appreciate its compact size and lightweight design.
The premium Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 product is thin, lightweight, feature-packed and powerful, making it the ideal portable tablet for on-the-go performance. With Samsung’s built-in Reading Mode, the Tab 3 8.0 is the perfect e-reader-sized tablet.

Google: We did a 'pretty good job' on EU antitrust concessions

Google's general counsel said the search giant has done a "pretty good job" in addressing the European Commission's concerns over alleged anticompetitive practices in the region.
However, the EU's Competition Commission will likely demand further concessions from the company in order to appease its worry that Google is taking advantage of its dominant position in the search market.

Google's senior vice president and general counsel Kent Walker said in the blog post on Monday that it has been "discussing [its search] innovations with the European Commission as they have reviewed our search and advertising business." (Walker did omit the fact that nobody has a voluntary "discussion" with the European Commission over potential antitrust concerns.)
He noted that Google submitted proposals to address each of the four points highlighted by the Commission "in a constructive way," adding that they are "are meaningful and comprehensive, providing additional choice and information while also leaving room for future innovation."
"That’s why we focused on addressing the Commission" specific concerns, and we think we did a pretty good job," he said.
But it comes just less than a month after EU Competition Commission Joaquin Almunia said that the search giant "should improve [its] proposals," once it completes analyzing the responses it receives from Google's rivals in the region.
Those rivals, such as ICOMP, a lobbying group and named complainant — which includes Microsoft and four other rivals as its members — aren't happy, indicating that Google may have to go back to the drawing board.
"The current package is clearly insufficient. It is really unlikely if the current proposal can be improved to such a point where it can be effective," said ICOMP's lawyer David Wood speaking to Reuters last month.
Whether or not Google thinks it did a "pretty good job" or not, it rests entirely on the Commission's shoulders to decide if the company will face a fine of up to 10 percent of its global annual turnover for infringing years. In total, that could amount to €2.9 billion ($3.8bn) based on the company's 2011 global revenue.
ZDNet put in questions to the European Commission's spokesperson outside of business hours in Brussels, but did not hear back at the time of writing.

BlackBerry Q10

Take heart BlackBerry diehards, your day is finally here. The BlackBerry Z10 was just a warm up and a promise to the QWERTY faithful that their device would come. The BlackBerry Q10 runs the all new BlackBerry OS 10.1, based on bulletproof QNX, and it's wildly modern compared to the OS on the BlackBerry Curve and Bold. And yes, it has a hardware QWERTY keyboard that won't let you down. Throw in a 3.1" AMOLED touch screen and you've got the Q10. The internals are identical to the touch screen slate BlackBerry Z10, and though the hardware can't compete with the most powerful Android phones, it doesn't need to because the OS is optimized for the hardware inside (much like Windows Phone and the iPhone are highly optimized for specific hardware). The phone has a 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage. The BlackBerry Q10 will be available on all major US carriers and on many carriers overseas. Here in the US at launch, it's $199 with contract ($99 down plus $20 monthly payments on the newly contract-less T-Mobile). The OS and basic navigation work just the same as on the BlackBerry Z10, so we won't go into great detail in this review. The OS supports multi-tasking via active panes (small windows that tile across the multi-tasking screen), and it has several screens for the app launcher (app icons). BlackBerry Hub is your unified inbox for all notifications from emails to texts, to missed calls and alarms. It's easy and intuitive and you needn't leave the Hub when replying to emails, social networking messages and texts. In fact, there are neither icons nor a separate app for your various email accounts, though there is an SMS/MMS icon. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare are preloaded. Box and Dropbox are pre-loaded as is BlackBerry Maps (not the strongest mapping and navigation solution we've seen), a shortcut to the YouTube mobile site and Documents to Go for mobile MS Office compatible work. The OS comes with a file manager, PIM apps that can sync with MS Exchange and other services like Google, POP3/IMAP/Exchange, weather, a clock, calculator, Adobe Reader, a games portal and a compass. The BlackBerry Q10 has dual band WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and a GPS with digital compass. It has a rear 8MP camera with an LED flash (the same as the Z10) and HDR mode that comes courtesy of OS 10.1. BlackBerry World is your one stop shop for apps, music and video. As we noted with the BlackBerry Z10, the app selection doesn't yet come close to competing with iTunes, Google Play for Android and even the Windows Phone app store. The OS and ecosystem are very young, and we hope to see more apps as time progresses, though this in part depends on how many folks buy OS 10 devices (developers need a reason to make apps, after all). Still, some popular apps are here like Skype, MLB at Bat, Angry Birds, Google Talk (a RIM app), TuneIn Radio and Wisepilot (navigation).

BlackBerry Q10 Video Review

Design and Ergonomics

The Q10 looks like a modern interpretation of older QWERTY smartphones. I wouldn't call it a stunning phone (it may be nearly impossible to make a phone with a hardware keyboard look uber-sexy), but the black model's carbon fiber back appeals to the car geek in me and it's strong too. The phone's face has a clean and modern look with attractive metal strips between the key rows that make it easier to find your place on the keyboard in the dark. The phone isn't very thin, but the hardware keyboard and removable battery don't allow for impossible thinness. The back cover slides off to reveal the removable 2100 mAh battery, micro SIM card slot and micro SDXC card slot.

The metal volume rocker with center action button is the same as the Z10's, and it's easy to locate by touch but stiff enough that we didn't activate it by accident. The power/sleep button is up top as is the 3.5mm combo audio jack. Both the micro USB and micro HDMI ports are on the left side. The 2MP front camera and notification LED that blinks urgent red when messages and alerts are waiting sit above the display and the speaker is on the bottom edge. Our black model's back is grippy but not sticky and feels good in hand. The phone is relatively small compared to today's gargantuan smartphones and the Q10 is a bit shorter than the Z10. The Q10 feels sturdy and the sides are reinforced with metal underneath the plastic.

Calling and Data

BlackBerry phones are typically excellent voice phones, and the Q10 on AT&T didn't disappoint. Our call recipients thought we were calling from a landline phone and likewise incoming voice was clear with average volume by cell phone standards. This is an excellent phone for calls. Data speeds according to speedtest.net were in line with today's LTE 4G phones and our BlackBerry Q10 averaged 25Mbps down and 16Mbps up on AT&T's LTE network in the Dallas metroplex. The phone played nicely with our Jawbone and Motorola Bluetooth headsets and our BMW's built-in Bluetooth for calls.

Keyboard

Gone are the trackballs and optical nav pads found on older BlackBerry smartphones. The touch screen replaces them, though purists will likely lament the further travel to the screen vs. the nav pad. I have no qualms with the thoroughly modern touch screen and I suspect the days of auxiliary navigation elements have passed. The keyboard is pure joy for hardware keyboard lovers and it maintains the sculpted waterfall keys we loved years ago on the BlackBerry Bold 9900. The tactile keys make it easy to tell when you're on target and it's clear if you've wandered from your desired key. The usual BlackBerry keyboard shortcuts live on: double press the space bar for a period, for example. BlackBerry OS 10.1 brings a host of hardware keyboard tricks including typing "tweet" followed by a message to send a new tweet, and "BBM Joe Blow" to start a BBM to Joe. The keys are tactile and clicky, and for those who love their hardware keyboards (some 70 million strong use BlackBerry phones worldwide), it won't disappoint.

Display

At 328 PPI, the Q10's display has sufficiently high pixel density that text and graphics always look very sharp, even though the 720 x 720 resolution won't win any competitions with current smartphones. The challenge is the 3.1" size: OS icons and text are reasonably easy to see but text in web pages and documents is tiny. That's the price you pay for the hardware keyboard that consumes much of the front face real estate. Even with mobile sites, I often had to pinch zoom to make text easy to read and desktop sites have absolutely tiny text. As with BlackBerry smartphones of old, be prepared to zoom when viewing web pages. Email and text messages are easy to read since the OS handles font scaling, though you'll have to scroll often to read through a medium length email. The Super AMOLED display has very good color saturation and contrast and it's viewable outdoors.

Horsepower and Performance

In an Android phone review, this is where we include many different benchmarks and analyze speed in detail. As with Windows Phone, that's not necessary here, not just because myriad benchmark programs don't yet exist for BlackBerry OS 10, but also because the phone's software is completely optimized to perform well on the hardware. This is a quick and responsive phone and the UI maintains speed after several days of uptime. The active panes are here, just as with the BlackBerry Z10 running OS 10, and these are miniaturized windows where your running apps sit when minimized. Tap one and it runs full screen with no significant delay, just where you left off. The OS handles memory, so some apps may not update when running minimized as active panes, but if you have 9 or fewer running, they generally do update. The thoroughly modern webkit web browser with Adobe Flash is very fast and is competitive with other platforms in terms of speed and website compatibility.

Battery Life

Unlike the BlackBerry Z10 that launched with just OK runtimes that improved with OS updates, BlackBerry clearly focused on battery life with the Q10 knowing it had to compete with the OS 7 BlackBerry phones it supplants. Thanks to the small display, relatively undemanding CPU and a large 2100 mAh battery, the phone delivers impressive runtimes. We routinely managed two days on a charge with moderate use that included Facebook, Twitter and 3 email accounts updates, 45 minutes of voice calls, 30 minutes of streaming HTML5 video via YouTube and an hour of web browsing each day.

Camera

Like the BlackBerry Z10, the Q10 has a 2MP camera on the front and an 8MP camera with LED flash, backside illuminated sensor and a fast f/2.2, five element lens on the rear. Though BlackBerry OS 10.1 introduces HDR shooting for better high contrast exposure, the camera is hobbled by a simplistic UI with few controls. Yes, the iPhone has few camera settings and controls, but Apple has a way of making users forgive them because photos and videos come out looking great without having to fiddle endlessly with settings. With the BlackBerry Q10 camera, I often feel that its good hardware fails to meet the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Nokia Lumia 920 challenge because the software isn't as good as it could be and I'm not allowed to tweak settings to help it.

With good, even lighting, photos are sharp and colorful. With stark outdoor sunlight or poor indoor lighting, HDR really helps bring out detail in dark areas. Video stabilization is decent but not nearly as good the optical image stabilization on the Nokia Lumia 920. That said, with proper lighting, the BlackBerry Q10 captures sharp and colorful shots and fairly smooth 1080p video. And it's certainly leaps and bounds ahead of Curve and Bold cameras. If you're upgrading from an older BlackBerry model, you'll be in heaven.

Conclusion

The BlackBerry Q10 brings the traditional BlackBerry smartphone into the modern age. I suspect it's enough to make BlackBerry loyalists happy, though I doubt iPhone and Android users will flock to it (that was the BlackBerry Z10's job). It's fast, stable, and secure and it maintains enough of the UI conventions of older BlackBerry smartphones to make existing BlackBerry owners feel a bit less lost. It's an enjoyable hardware QWERTY smartphone in a world where that form factor has all but died. Will it start a BlackBerry revolution? I don't think so, but it may just be what the doctor ordered to stem the exodus to other platforms. Is it a fantastic smartphone given today's excellent competition? Not such much unless you're a QWERTY lover or a BlackBerry fan. The tiny display and lack of apps hold it back from broad appeal.

Website: www.blackberry.com

Price: $199 with 2 year contract on most US carriers

Hands on: Samsung Ativ Tab 3 review

What's that? Another Samsung Windows 8 tablet running atop an Intel Atom Z2760 CPU that uses polycarbonate for a chassis and looks a lot like the Galaxy Tab 3 range that was recently announced?
Yes, indeed: that's what Samsung has just unleashed on the unsuspecting public with the Ativ Tab 3, most thinking they were safe from the deluge of tablets that the South Korean firm was throwing onto the market.
It's not fair to disparage the new Windows 8 tablet just because it looks so similar to other devices from the mothership - it's actually a decent device in its own right.

• Best Windows 8 tablets: all the tablets reviewed

For a start, it's the thinnest Windows 8 tablet in the world and has 2GB of RAM to power things along.

It's not running Windows RT either, so you'll have a full whack of OS power to play with when it comes to programs to use - the Windows 8 interface works effectively on the 10.1-inch screen and, while the 1366 x 768 resolution looks a little grainy, it's acceptable because Samsung tells us is going to be skewed more towards the 'affordable' end of the market.

The 550g weight is also another real selling point, as while its Ativ Q sibling is a rather chunky unit that may cause your arm to fall off on the train, this comes in with a much more sprightly mass (yes, we know mass isn't technically the right word there).

The battery life is another of the Ativ Tab 3's selling points, tagged to last for 10 hours, which is good enough for 'most' long haul flights, according to Samsung's official press materials. It's always good when these things are absolute, isn't it? Lest a slew of returns occur at Hong Kong's airport, with disgruntled Ativ Tab 3 owners annoyed at the lack of power they encountered whilst watching Van Wilder: Party Liaison for the fifth time on the flight.

The ports are much less generous than on the Ativ Q or the other Windows 8 laptops, with only a microUSB, microHDMI and microSD slot showing that you can connect to other devices. In fact, it's actually the same as the Samsung Galaxy S4 - so if you own one of those, you'll be set. Actually, no, that's not true as the HDMI and USB ports are combined on the smartphone. Sorry about that.

The S Pen makes a lot of sense on the Ativ Tab 3 as the 1024 levels of sensitivity can be applied to a wide number of applications throughout the device, which makes it really easy to annotate text or direction, which we can see many using this device for thanks to the ultra-light weight on offer.
Microsoft Office Home and Student edition is pre-installed on the Tab 3, meaning out of the box it's going to be a useful addition to those looking for a more simple laptop substitute, and if the price isn't too destructive, we can see this turning a few heads in your local computing emporium.

Side Sync can be used here too: this allows you to pop a Galaxy S4 (as well as other Android-based smartphones) next to the unit, connected through wires or wirelessly, and the mouse cursor will be able to use the smartphone as a second screen, giving you the ability to drag and drop files across from one device to another.
As you can see at the event itself, the Galaxy Tab 3 will come with its own natty cover, that works via magnets to provide a stand AND A KEYBOARD for anyone that doesn't want to preserve the super-thin frame of the Ativ Tab 3, and instead wants to stop it getting smashed in a bag.

As you can see, the material is a plastic, but it has a certain heft to it that's pleasing. As mentioned, it makes your Ativ Tab 3 so much thicker, but given you get protection (and the option to magnetise on a keyboard) we'll accept it.

Early verdict

It's fashionable to bash Samsung tablets due to the fact they don't seem to have a dedicated purpose half the time: they're either made with low specs or offered for far, far too much money.

In the case of the Ativ Tab 3, we get the feeling that could be about to change. The Windows 8 market is quietly gaining traction, and the sheer number of extras on offer here make it an attractive proposition.
We're awaiting a price before making any rash calls but we were quietly impressed with the Ativ Tab 3, despite the cheap feeling plastic and flexible chassis.
Samsung needs to start pushing down into the lower end of the tablet market when it comes to price, and this could be the device to do it.

iOS 7 beta 2 released, brings its magic to iPad

We got to see quite a bit of iOS 7 back at WWDC 2013, but we only saw it working on an iPhone. Well, we've got some good news for big screen Apple devs, as a new iOS 7 beta's been released OTA and it now works on the iPad. Of course, the new beta also brings the usual nebulous "bug fixes and improvements" for all devices, and among those improvements is the addition of the Voice Memos app and Siri's new voices in English as well. It's available now, so if you're in the beta, you best get to downloading!
via:engadget.com