Rishi

Just like mobile apps, TV apps come in a variety of categories and features, offering information, entertainment and social media networking through the living room screen. Your selection of apps expands the functionality of your TV set in the same way mobile apps define what you can do with a smartphone.

The key difference, though, is that the TV is often at the center of home and you’ll likely share the app experience with your family and friends. It is no surprise that the list of popular Samsung TV apps includes video sharing, games for family and education apps.

Just last week, Samsung Apps, our TV app store launched in February 2010, celebrated the milestones of 1,000 registered applications and 10 million downloads. With help from our Samsung Apps colleagues, Samsung Village took a look into different types and features of the most-sought Samsung TV apps.

By number, the game category accounts for a quarter of all the apps listed on Samsung Apps, followed by information, education and lifestyle.

As televisions become smarter and our app developing ecosystem grows, Samsung is excited to provide more apps and content that will help you enjoy the smart life!

"Who wants a tequila shot?" Randi Zuckerberg shouted over the thump of "Baby One More Time," Britney Spears' breakup anthem. It was nearly midnight on a rainy Wednesday in September, and more than a dozen friends gathered by Randi, the older sister of Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of Facebook, were crowding a private room at the Midtown karaoke club Japas 38. "Yay!" cheered the crowd as their host hoisted a carafe of tequila in the air and circled the tables, pouring shots. The air smelled of stale beer and soy sauce.

After salt was licked, plastic cups drained and limes squeezed, she grabbed a microphone and belted out a rousing version of "I Will Survive." In August, Randi Zuckerberg, 29, quit her job at Facebook, where she had been among the first two dozen people hired. Most recently, she was the director of marketing. In its early days, Zuckerberg was a buoyant presence, representing her reticent brother to an eager press. Later, she earned attention (not always favorable ) singing at company functions with a band composed of colleagues.

And she came up with the idea for Facebook Live, the social network's video channel, which has featured interviews conducted by Facebook executives with Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama. Now Zuckerberg has started her own business, RtoZ Media, to help companies take advantage of social media. "This is the launch party of Randi Zuckerberg!" she said at the club, beaming.

Zuckerberg, who lives in a rented house in Palo Alto, has ambitions beyond the internet. "I want a talk show," she said two days earlier over drinks at the Mercer Hotel. She also wants to sing on Broadway. And she is interested in philanthropy: while in New York, she conducted live online interviews with participants of the Clinton Global Initiative and worked the red carpet at a UN gala.

Older women who are mentors, Zuckerberg said, have warned her that she must tone down her flamboyant persona, but she refuses to take heed. "This is a new world we live in, and it should be possible for a woman to be taken seriously and still do what she loves," she said. Three weeks after the karaoke night, she spoke at a conference sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange. She then traveled to Warsaw to talk to 2,000 telecom and media executives about social media. And the estate of Michael Jackson hired her to be the host of an online show on the pop star's Facebook page. "Every article written about me now refers to me as Randi Zuckerberg, Mark's sister," she said. "Maybe one day that won't be what people say about me."

Zuckerberg was born in 1982 and grew up in Dobbs Ferry, NY, a Hudson Valley town about 40 minutes from Manhattan. She is older than Mark by two years and has two younger sisters. Early on, her parents signed her up for piano lessons, but she longed to sing. She enrolled at Harvard in 1999 and studied psychology after being turned down by the music department, she said, because her piano skills were lacking. She continued to sing, using the stage name Randi Jayne. In 2002 her brother joined her at college.

Google has announced its much-awaited new phone, the Galaxy Nexus, and also released a new version of its Android phone software. Codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 will be available to existing Android users soon and is available to software developers now. The Galaxy Nexus will launch in November.

Take a look at our backstory video for more on the vision behind this product and to understand why we think “a thousand heads are better than one”:

Among the Galaxy Nexus’s new feature are face recognition, allowing users to unlock their phones simply by looking at the phone’s front camera, a redesigned interface, an improved keyboard and a new application using Near-Field Communications (NFC) that lets two Android handsets share content directly.

The phone also replaces all physical buttons with software-based, moveable equivalents. The change allows a larger, 4.65” screen, which like the previous Nexus S model is slightly curved.

Running a 1.2Ghz processor, the Galaxy Nexus will be made by Samsung and also offers a high-definition display. It had been rumoured that it would be called the Nexus Prime, but instead the Korean manufacturer and Google have explicitly linked the device to Samsung's best-selling Galaxy range.

Writing on the Google Blog, the company’s Senior Vice President of Mobile, Andy Rubin, wrote that “Ice Cream Sandwich makes Android simple and beautiful, and takes the smartphone to beyond smart”.

Ice Cream Sandwich is the first version of Android to run on both tablets and phones, and Google has even created a new, optimised font for the purpose. Google claims that widgets have been improved dramatically, and also said that it would provide the “best mobile Gmail experience to date”, including some offline search options.

Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android yet, and it delivers a number of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text selection tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.

Here’s a glimpse of the “magic” of Google on Nexus S:



Web bookmarks now synchronise with Google Chrome, and zooming out of the calendar now allows users to move to different views, going from daily to monthly, for instance.
Although many phones, such as the newly announced Motorola Razr and the Samsung Galaxy SII offer 8 megapixel cameras, the Galaxy Nexus uses a 5mp version.

Rubin said that more than half a million Android devices are now being activated every day.

Announced in Hong Kong at an event originally planned for San Diego but postponed after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, reactions to the new Galaxy Nexus were broadly positive. Writing on technology blog This is My Next, Vlad Savov said that the interface, set-up and synchronising were all improved. He added, however, that on the pre-production models shown in Hong Kong “Android isn’t as swift and responsive as iOS or Windows Phone”.