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Motoblur gets connected with new features

At Mobile World Congress 2011, Motorola introduces several new features to its Motoblur to improve connectivity.

Bonnie Cha Former Editor
Bonnie Cha was a former chief correspondent for CNET Crave, covering every kind of tech toy imaginable (with a special obsession for robots and Star Wars-related stuff). When she's not scoping out stories, you can find her checking out live music or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California.
Bonnie Cha
2 min read
Motorola Cliq 2
The Motorola Cliq 2 will get the new version of Motoblur in the coming months. Josh Miller/CNET

BARCELONA, Spain--With the exception of the European versions of the Droid Pro and Xoom, it looks like Motorola will be light on the hardware announcements here at Mobile World Congress 2011, but there's still some news coming out of good ol' Moto.

Today, the company announced several enhancements to its Motoblur software, all designed to increase connectivity with your contacts and services.

The first feature is called Connected Music and it's a sharing and discovery tool for music. With it, you can share content with your friends and follow what they are listening to as well.

Connected Music also provides recommendations based on similar tastes and allows you to purchase tracks. If that weren't enough, it will stream lyrics while songs are playing, so no more excuses for singing the wrong words.

Next up is Connected Gallery. It combines photos and videos from various social networking sites and photo services, such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and Photobucket, so you don't have to open each application separately to view albums. Pushed updates can also alert you when new media is uploaded or someone comments on your photo.

Last but not least, there's Aloqa. This is a location-based mobile push platform that allows third-party applications to offer users with information about events, places, deals, and so forth through "channels" based on their current location. This is an opt-in service, so you can enable it only when you feel like doing so.

These new features of Motoblur will be made available to the Motorola Atrix 4G and Motorola Cliq 2 as an upgrade. Motorola said devices using the enhanced Motoblur software will begin shipping in the coming months.