Motorola announced the introduction of Motoblur, a new user interface solution debuting in conjunction with the 
Cliq, the handset maker's first Android-powered smartphone, coming from T-Mobile USA later this fall. Motoblur manages and integrates communications tools spanning from email to social networking, syncing updates, posts, messages and photos from sources including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Gmail. According to Motorola, Motoblur automatically delivers updates to the Cliq's homescreen in easy-to-view streams--users are not required to open or close other applications to view the updates. "It's alive," said Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha during a press event Thursday. "Think of it like the text bubbles in cartoons, with new information pushed to you all the time."
In addition to Motoblur, the Cliq boasts one-touch access to Google mobile services including Google Search by voice, Google Maps with Street View, YouTube and Picasa. Email and contacts are also supported by Yahoo, Windows Live Hotmail and other POP3 and IMAP e-mail services. The Cliq also combines IM support for Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. In addition, the Cliq features a 3.1-inch HVGA touch-screen display, a 5 megapixel auto focus camera with video capture and playback at 24 frames per second, a 3.5mm headset jack, and music player with pre-loaded Amazon MP3 store application, Shazam and iMeem Mobile.
Motorola said it plans to open up its Motoblur application programming interfaces in an effort to galvanize third-party development for the solution. "Over a period of time--we're not there yet--we'll allow the APIs to be available so people can develop many more applications than we can think of ourselves, but it'll take us a little bit of time to mature ourselves to a place that we could open up APIs," said Jha in an interview with PC World. Jha added that Motoblur is more geared to consumers and prosumers than the enterprise market: "I think you we will see us address [the business] market with subsequent devices."
For more on Motoblur:
- read this release
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