Mediaboss Marketing

The new Nokia 112 (left) and Nokia 110 (right) give users web-browsing access at a low cost. Image: Nokia

Dont look now, but Gadget Lab is actually excited by a couple of feature phones.

Nokia isnt just focused on bolstering its position in the smartphone market. The company on Tuesday unveiled two new feature phones the Nokia 110 and Nokia 112 that will bring web browsing, social networking and gaming to budget-conscious consumers and emerging markets.

The Nokia 110 and Nokia 112 will both cost less than $50 without contracts, and will run on Nokias Series 40 operating system. Users will have access to the web through the Nokia Browser, which reduces data consumption by 90 percent by compressing websites to a cloud-based server, according to Nokia. This will keep data costs down for Nokia 110 and 112 users.

Both phones also feature Facebook and Twitter access directly on the home screen. And in its aim to target younger customers, Nokia will make 40 EA game titles available to Nokia 110 and 112 owners to download for free. On board theres also an FM radio and a media player that can play both music and video.

Both feature phones have a 1.8-inch TFT LCD screen, a VGA camera, dual SIM card capacity, and MicroSD slots that support up to 32 GB of storage. The main difference between the two devices lies in battery life the Nokia 110 gets up to 10.5 hours of talk time, while the Nokia 112 offers 14 hours.

While these definitely arent the kinds of phones youll want to wait in line for, both models pack a lot of features at a minimal cost. And Nokia definitely needs to give its feature-phone sales a boost. According to its Q1 earnings, Nokias feature and basic phone sales dropped 16 percent, mainly due to competition from microvendors in emerging markets. Differentiating its phones with web browsing and social-network access, at a low cost, is a sensible move for the company.

The Nokia 110 is set to ship in the second quarter for 35 euros, or around $45, and the Nokia 112 is scheduled to ship in the third quarter for 38 euros, or around $49.

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Nokia Brings Web Browsing, Social Networking to New Low-End Phones

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Alliance Health Networks, the leading social networking company serving consumers and the healthcare industry, today announced that it has acquired Medify, a leading provider of data-driven treatment information, to offer patients and caregivers the industrys most comprehensive social engagement platform.

Alliance Health will integrate Medifys unique treatment insights across the companys growing portfolio of social health networks some 50 condition-specific sites that serve more than 1.5 million registered users. Likewise, Medify will integrate user-generated content from Alliance Health properties into its products. Medify.com will also remain a standalone website, providing aggregated research generated by its award-winning data analytics and knowledge extraction platform to help consumers and health care providers search and compare information across every health condition, treatment and drug.

Since its founding in 2010, Medify has raised venture capital from Voyager Capital and several leading angel investors. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Medify co-founders Derek Streat (CEO) and Jay Bartot (CTO) will join the Alliance Health leadership team as senior vice presidents, bringing deep expertise in business and technology development to help scale the companys social engagement platform. Streats career has focused on solving hard problems to help people in their everyday lives. As a member of the initial executive team at Classmates Online, Streat oversaw corporate development strategy, taking the company from inception to $100 million in revenue and 60 million subscribers over six years. Streat also held executive positions at Unitus and was a co-founder of Adready.

Bartot has co-founded and led the technology development of several data analytics companies, including Farecast.com, an innovative consumer travel site that was acquired by Microsoft and became the cornerstone of its Bing Travel site. He was also a cofounder of AdRelevance, an advertising measurement platform that was acquired by Nielson/NetRatings. The full Medify team, which includes key members of the Farecast engineering team, will remain in the Seattle office, which Alliance Health will expand to complement its product and engineering teams at its Salt Lake City headquarters.

As social networks continue to transform industries and change the way people live, Alliance Health remains focused on empowering people to successfully navigate their personal health journey, free and independent of the healthcare system, said Stead Burwell, CEO of Alliance Health. The acquisition of Medify brings us two critical elements powerful data analytics technologies and an extremely accomplished team which reinforce our status as the industrys most robust social engagement platform. Combined, we will be in the best position to help consumers make smart health care decisions by providing a unique combination of relevant knowledge and tools for every drug, treatment and condition.

Medifys patent-pending technology mines more than 20 million studies of real patient experiences from disparate data sources, includingresearch studies from researchers, doctors and other medical professionals,and presents them on an easy-to-navigate website. An additional 5,000 new studies are added to the site each day.

As the state of healthcare continues to evolve, transparency becomes an increasingly important factor for consumers striving to manage their patient experience. Through the Medify acquisition, Alliance Health will be able to offer more comprehensive access to relevant health information across all of its properties, including Medify.com, to aid consumers as they make important health decisions, including the ability to:

We could not be happier about the opportunities this new relationship brings, said Streat. We are so like-minded in our commitment to transforming healthcare through social networking and data analytics that its made joining forces a natural fit. I look forward to working with the Alliance Health team to integrate our products, capabilities and knowledge in order to bring people together and give them access to the tools and support they need to best navigate their health journey.

See more here:
Alliance Health Networks Acquires Medify to Strengthen Social Health Networks for Consumers and Industry Partners

Investors are eager for Facebook to start trading later this week, and money is already pouring into social-networking stocks.

Stocks in the industry are up by an average of 5 percent today, according to our new researchLAB analysis tool (see partial screen shot below). That makes it the strongest group of the session so far, as the broader market churns with a gain of less than 0.5 percent.

Renren, often touted as China's version of Facebook, rallied 10 percent and is leading the group higher. The company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue yesterday afternoon, fueled by a surge in online gaming.

Zynga, which makes social-networking games including Facebook's FarmVille, is also leaping by almost 8 percent as investors champ at the bit for the Mark Zuckerberg's company to go public.

FB originally expected to sell shares for $28 to $35, but raised that range to $34-38 last night amid huge investor demand. That translates into a total valuation of about $100 billion.

The stock will join researchLAB's list of social-networking stocks as soon as it begins trading. Despite major volatility in most of the names, the group has outperformed the market so far this year, with a 21 percent gain.

(Screen shot courtesy of researchLAB )

More From optionMONSTER

Read more:
Social stocks rise before Facebook IPO

Social networking has become quite popular in the last few years, ever since Facebook became a world-wide internet sensation. Then along came Twitter, which also became wildly popular in this generation. Many people use these sites to check out what's happening with old and new acquaintances, or to let all of the people in their life know what the latest event is. But what many people don't consider when they get hooked on social networking is how the amount of time that is spent on these sites could be affecting us all.

America is one of the worst culprits of wasting our time on social networks. The websites themselves aren't the problem; it's the amount of time that we have allowed ourselves to spend on these sites. According to Nielsen, a global media research organization, Americans spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in 2011- equivalent to 101,000 years. And if that wasn't enough, get this: those minutes were only spent in the month of May. It is sickening to know that we spent that much time on a website at all, let alone in one month. What could we have done with those CCyears"? We could have improved America as a whole. If we had all just devoted that time to helping others or

finding solutions to some of our many growing problems, America could have been an altogether better nation in one month. Instead, we sat on computers complaining to the world about stupid things and telling everyone what we did that day, which usually wasn't anything

Sure, there are plenty of groups and pages for charities and foundations on Facebook, and that's great. But how many of those who cclike" those pages actually do anything about it? All we do is click the thumbs up button and BAM we think we're cccharitable." It means absolutely nothing. How about instead of CCliking" the page for a

charity, you actually go out and volunteer at the local homeless shelter? What if you spent half of the time you would normally spend on Facebook helping people who need it? Or maybe you could make real friends instead of virtual ones. You might even try spending a little more time with your family. The point is, we are investing too much time in social networking when we should be spending it living. When is this goin~ to stop? Time is too precious to waste on a screen. Log off and live.

Excerpt from:
Campus Star: Is Social Networking a pastime or waste of time?

An anonymous social networking website, with an accompanying smartphone app, seemed to help obese youths lose weight without fear of public ridicule, a researcher said.

Those who used the site, weigh2rock.com, self-reported a mean weight loss of 7.4 pounds, and those who used the partner app reported losing a mean 10 pounds over 4 months, Dr. Robert Pretlow of the Research Institute at eHealth International in Seattle reported at the European Congress on Obesity in Lyon, France.

"While weight loss from social networking is not as much as face-to-face weight-loss programs, social networking is much cheaper and much more widely available," Pretlow said in a statement.

Read this story on http://www.medpagetoday.com.

He said public social networking may promote obesity, especially if it lowers obese teens' self-esteem. Fears of social rejection and isolation may lead to sadness and depression, which can then inspire "comfort eating," especially of highly pleasurable food, Pretlow explained.

But social networking site where participants remain anonymous may help patients who are struggling to lose weight avoid feelings of shame and embarrassment. The idea is modeled after other programs in addiction medicine that emphasize anonymity.

"Programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Drug Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and Food Addicts Anonymous demonstrate that support groups are indispensable in the addiction treatment approach," Pretlow said. "The crucial point is that people remain anonymous."

He added that the group support component helps the obese patients tolerate withdrawal from problem foods and motivates them to continue their weight loss.

So Pretlow reported data on the anonymous obesity website he developed. Weigh2rock.com offers online forums, chat rooms, success stories, a weight-loss "buddy" program, and other tips for keeping pounds off.

Since the site started 11 years ago, Pretlow said, there have been a total of 17,628 users, with a mean age of 14.2, and a mean body mass index of 32.7.

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Smartphone App Helps Kids Fight Fat