Foursquare Updates iPhone App With Notification Tray, New Venue Screen Design

Foursquare rolled out an update to its Android app and website that included a notification tray. This lets you know when, for instance, you are ousted as a mayor of a venue, you receive comments on check-ins and one of your Facebook friends joins Foursquare.
The location-based service has now extended the notification tray to its iPhone app. You will now receive notifications when a friend completes a tip you have left; you and a friend have the same venue on your To-Do List; a venue you are at starts to swarm; and there are new comments or photos on a check-in you’ve commented on.

At the top of the screen, next to the Foursquare logo, there is a number telling you how many notifications you have. To see the notifications, tap on the logo. Easy! There is a settings page for notifications, which you can access by hitting the gears symbol on the top-right of the notifications screen, that lets you control which actions you receive notifications for and mute all notifications.

  

Foursquare has also redesigned the venue page. Here, you will be able to view more tips and it is easier for you to leave photos, tips and add the venue to your To Do List.
The app update comes after a busy period of activity at Foursquare. On Thursday, it launched a merchant API and tied up deals with LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe and others. The service now has more than 500,000 merchant accounts and hit 10 million users a few weeks back. The company also completed a $50 million funding round last month.
You can download the latest version of Foursquare on your iPhone now.

Google+ Reached 10 Million users

Google announced its second quarter earnings today and the numbers are a significant reversal from the slight dip the company saw in Q1. Google's gross revenue was $9.03 billion, more than what investors had projected.
CEO Larry Page kicked off the earnings conference call and described not only the financial data but some other notable figures as well: the number of Google Plus users, how much they're sharing, how widely Chrome has been adopted and the current activation rate for Android devices.

• 10 million Google Plus users
• 1 billion items a day are being shared on Google Plus
• 160 million Chrome users
• 550,000 Android devices are being activated a day, with 160 million overall users
• +1 Button is being served 2.3 billion times a day
• $9.03 billion in gross revenue, up 32% from last year
• $6.23 billion in revenue from Google-owned sites

Page broke Google's projects into three different categories: search and advertising, which are the core drivers of the company's revenue stream; high-usage products like Chrome and YouTube; and new products like Google Plus, Commerce and Local.
Those emerging products aren't monitized, he said, but they can generate "huge new business" for Google over time. He stressed that the company has experience monitizing successful products on a long-term basis. But that growth is also dependent on high customer usage, a point he acknowledged as he talked about Google's future health.
"We have made a good start," he said, "but we are at only 1% of what's possible."

China Looking to Buy a Chunk of Facebook

China trying to buy some Facebook. News has surfaced that a sovereign wealth fund representing the Chinese government wants to buy a substantial amount of Facebook stock. According to anonymous sources who spoke to Business Insider, China wants to own enough of Facebook "to matter."
Is China's interest in Facebook a simply a government-sponsored group of venture capitalists looking to get a piece of the upcoming Facebook IPO or is there something more complicated at work behind the scenes?

Google Maps gets downloaded maps for offline use on Android

Google Labs is a treasure trove of goodies that few users know about let alone use. Labs adds functionality to many Google products from Gmail to Docs, and now a new labs feature for Google Maps on Android will allow you to download map areas for offline use. Of course, since this is a labs feature and not fully baked in the use is pretty limited right now.

Ofcom broadband map reveals Internet speeds across the UK

Ofcom has revealed a map of British broadband, showing how widespread Internet use is, how fast our Internet connections are -- and how many people aren't actually fussed about the Web.
Ofcom has long complained that broadband adverts mislead us about speeds, and the map bears that out. Average speeds are much lower than promised by Internet service providers.
The map below shows overall performance.

Green areas are the best-performing, followed by blue and a weird apricot-y, kind of ecru colour. Purple and pink plumb the depths of broadband coverage. Check out Ofcom's map for layers that also show average broadband take-up, percentage of the population receiving less than 2Mbps, availability of superfast broadband, and average speed.
The map shows different views of the state of broadband coverage. The layer showing how much of the country benefits from superfast broadband makes for depressing viewing: only a small proportion of the country has widespread access to either Virgin Media cable, Openreach Fibre-To-The-Cabinet or Digital Region networks. Speedy areas include Bury, Stockport, Wolverhampton and Dudley, Bristol, Brighton, Windsor and Milton Keynes. By contrast, Northern Ireland is almost entirely covered by superfast broadband -- and yet hardly anyone uses it.
Even those areas that do have superfast connections aren't necessarily getting the top speeds promised by adverts. The average speed around the country is between 6 and 8 Mbps, with parts of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland averaging slower than 6Mbps. Edinburgh takes the crown for fastest speeds with an average of 10.1Mbps.
Rural areas will hopefully be better served under plans for Fujitsu to build a fibre network to 5 million homes in the sticks. Other plans include a Virgin Media scheme to string an ultrafast broadband network along electricity pylons.
Of course, not everyone actually wants to discover the wonders of the web. The average take-up of broadband across the country is between 60 and 70 per cent, and most of the South sees even higher use of broadband. But pockets of Luddism in Liverpool, Hull, Walsall, and most of Northern Ireland see more than half the population missing out on Facebook, hilarious memes and the latest technology news from this 'ere website. The fools!
That reminds us of a joke: did you hear the one about the Scouser, the the Irishman and the guy from Hull? It's very offensive but that's OK -- most of them will never know we said it.