Nokia took to its blog today to introduce Xpress Now, an enhanced version of its Xpress browser. Made for Asha devices, the web app delivers personalized content suggestions based both on your personal preferences and those of the browser’s “more than 80 million monthly users.” These new recommendations come courtesy of three separate browsers views: What’s Hot, You May Also like and Most Liked. The categories are largely self-explanatory, and we imagine suggested content will be more spot-on after the app has been around for a few months. For the time being, though, Nokia Xpress Now is in beta in India, and it should make its away to other countries later in 2013.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Nokia
Source: Conversations by Nokia
Jolicloud, which last October pivoted yet again — to become Jolidrive: a “entry point”/dashboard for accessing third party cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and also social accounts like Vimeo and YouTube — has taken the next obvious step on this new product path and added a search function to flesh out its role as a cloud content (re)discovery service.
Apple pulled discovery service and daily deal app AppGratis from the App Store. So far, AppGratis is not communicating on the issue and users can only speculate about what the issue is. Sometimes, Apple pulls an app because its latest update crashes or because the app uses a private API. Then, the developer has to submit a new release to return to the App Store. But there could be a bigger issue. Back in October, Apple added a new rule in its iOS developer guidelines. It reads: “Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.” As a reminder, AppGratis curates apps from the App Store, provides a short description and make paid apps free for a day. At the time, AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat answered that Apple was probably going after low-quality copycats, not AppGratis. AppGratis is all about discovery and helping independent developers thanks to its revenue-sharing deals. Yet, other popular discovery apps have been affected by Apple’s new guidelines. For example, as PocketGamer.biz notes, AppShopper was removed from the App Store and has yet to make a comeback. AppShopper provided a way to search the App Store that competed directly with Apple’s own App Store. Moreover, users could be alerted when an app was on sale, effectively reducing developer revenue per user. That’s why many other scenarios are still possible. Maybe AppGratis uses a private API or breaks an insignificant guideline and Apple won’t put the app back in the store until an updated version is submitted. As always, developers are at the mercy of Apple’s review team. The team often contacts developers to require some changes to an app in order to stay in the store. Paris-based AppGratis has coincidentally raised $ 13.5 million in January. With 7 million users and the ability to lead to up to 500,000 downloads for a single app, the company is not a newcomer. If Apple wanted to stamp out AppGratis, it could have done it a few months ago. All there is left to do is to wait for Apple’s final say. For now, existing users can still use the AppGratis app. Maybe a few UX changes or infrastructure changes will be enough to make the app reappear in the App Store. We have reached out to AppGratis and will update this post
Video distribution platform Ooyala wants to get more people watching more video on more devices. That’s it’s job, right? Well, ahead of NAB, the company is launching a couple of features that will help do just that. That includes a new discovery engine that its clients can use to extend the amount of time people spend watching their videos.
The app stores are overrun, and there’s little way to get noticed until you break into the charts. So Google has just announced a new AdWords unit called “Click-To-Download” mobile ads that lead directly to iTunes and Google Play. With a similar design to Facebook’s app ads, Google is reaching out its hand for a cut of the paid discovery market emerging as every company in the world goes mobile.
Mobile video startup Viddy is launching a new iOS app, which it hopes will help users create and discover more interesting videos. To do so, it’s doubling the length that videos can be, and giving users more tools to spruce them up. It’s also providing users with more tools to find relevant videos based on their interests and location.
Burpple, the social discovery app that seeks to connect food lovers from around the world, just released their 
Rather than trust your friends and favorite Pages to post interesting stuff, Facebook is taking news discovery into its own hands with “Articles Related To…”. This special feed story shows you popular links that lead to content mentioning Pages you Like. It could be the next step in Facebook’s master plan to take on apps like Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite, keep you on site, and make publishers pay
Back in July, we 
Serial entrepreneur Michael Breidenbrücker — founder of Last.fm and RjDj — is joining the team behind Zurich-based app discover startup, 42matters, maker of the Playboard app for Google’s Play Store. Playboard is a sort of Flipboard for app discovery — powered by algorithms but curated by editors, with personalised recommendations.
Streaming music startup 
Last month, news broke that the YouTube iOS app — which had been pre-loaded on all iPhones since their launch — would be 
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by 
A couple years ago, a few Stanford grad students and former Yahoo and Powerset data scientists got together and 
The iPad is a wonderful device to watch videos on, and a number of startups are aiming to provide users with interesting new ways to discover the best videos to watch. Most of these apps — like 
It was just last September that we 
Seven years in,
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