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Thermaltake Mobile Fan 12 External USB Cooling Fan 12CM AF0007

On the heels of announcing a payments partnership with Facebook, PlaySpan is making another announcement regarding the startup’s UltimatePay payments product. PlaySpan is launching UltimatePay Mobile, a virtual currency and micropayments monetization widget for smartphone platforms. The initial private beta launch will support Android phones and Nokia phones with WebRuntime installed.

UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience.

UltimatePay Mobile gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game.

Of course, PlaySpan isn’t the first startup or company to bring in-app payments to Android phones; PayPal, Boku and Zong all offer in-app payments libraries to developers.

PlaySpan, which recently raised $18 million in new funding, already has a number of partnerships with a number of gaming and media companies, including Ubisoft, Sanrio and others. Perhaps the company can leverage some of these relationships to offer UltimatePay in publisher’s mobile games.

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PlaySpan’s Ultimate Pay Brings In-App Mobile Payments To Android…

Facebook's made no official push into the smartphone universe -- to date, we've been left using various mobile apps to connect with J. Timberlake, Marky Z. and the rest of the crew, but it looks as if the preeminent social networking site of our generation (ahem) is just about ready to clear the air on at least one issue. The invite above recently landed in our inbox, requesting our presence at "a mobile event at Facebook HQ" in Palo Alto, California. Naturally, we'll be on hand from NorCal bringing you the blow-by-blow, and we're interested to know what you think will be on deck. Will we finally see the Facebook phone that it quickly shot down? The Nexus Two with a borderline-criminal amount of Facebook integration? The resurgence of using pastel colored tin cans to connect Jane and Joe? Whatever the case, we're sure It's Complicated.

What's on Facebook's mind? Mobile event set for November 3rd originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Oct 2010 12:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s on Facebook’s mind? Mobile event set for November 3rd

We got our first taste of Navigon's MobileNavigator for Android way back at CES last January, and since then Googlephone users across Europe have been merrily navigating around using the thing. Finally, Americans get our chance, with Navigon announcing a North American release. This version includes maps of the good 'ol US of A, downloaded to the storage card (1.5GB worth) to enable full offline navigation, though you'll need a connection to get traffic updates. There's an improved Reality View Pro mode, which shows "photo realistic 3D views" of street signs and, the cream of this frothy app, a new Reality Scanner mode. This Layar-like view overlays nav and POI information over a real-time stream of the world from the phone's camera, letting you spot that Stuckey's from afar. The app hits the Android Market today for $39, but that's one of those limited time deals. After two weeks it jumps up to $59, so don't be slow with the clicking.

Continue reading Navigon MobileNavigator finally hits American Androids, includes augmented reality POI view

Navigon MobileNavigator finally hits American Androids, includes augmented reality POI view originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Navigon MobileNavigator finally hits American Androids, includes…

GrubHub, a service that lets you order food for delivery or take out from local restaurants online or by mobile phone, released a new iPhone app and an Android app in beta last week. The company also revised its native Web app to take advantage of HTML 5 features like geolocation and client-side storage.

The new apps feature a GPS-enabled restaurant search. Users can find the restaurants that deliver near their current location, or choose to manually enter a delivery address from their smart phones. The app will display restaurants in the GrubHub directory that deliver to that location.

The GrubHub geolocation features should make it easy for travelers to order take out when they’re camping at a client’s office and don’t know what’s nearby, or if they’re too tired to leave the hotel but don’t want room service.

The GrubHub iPhone app is free to download from the iTunes app store. The beta Android app is also free, and can be downloaded by visiting the Android marketplace and searching for “grubhub.”

GrubHub, a Chicago-based venture backed company, gives its users access to food delivery service from more than 4,000 restaurants in U.S. cities including: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Boulder.

Like the original GrubHub site, the company’s mobile apps allow users to order food for delivery without having to deal with phone calls, busy lines or inept order-takers from their smart phones. If they prefer a little human talk time, however, the new apps let users tap to call a restaurant without having to dial and multi-task first.

GrubHub-listed restaurants deliver everything from pizzas, American Chinese and comfort food, to higher end fare and local specialties. Mike Evans, GrubHub co-founder and COO said in a press statement “These new mobile apps make ordering food from anywhere that much easier… Mobile orders comprised 1 percent of our total revenue [in 2009]. With the growing popularity of our mobile apps, we project mobile orders will comprise 10 percent of GrubHub sales by the end of 2010.” That represents about $7 million spent on food-to-go, the company estimates.

The new apps also let users read menus, reviews, and ratings before placing an order; search by specific items, restaurants, or cuisines from the home screen. The iPhone app lets them: save multiple addresses, past orders and credit card info so they can order regularly from a home, office or local watering hole without re-entering all their info again.

GrubHub’s Android app, currently in public beta, doesn’t have all of the same data-saving capabilities of the native Web app or the GrubHub iPhone app, yet.

Matt Maloney, the chief executive of GrubHub told TechCrunch: “In our first seven days out there, we didn’t even announce the app and our mobile orders increased by 50%.” He also added “Users wanted this because mobile is becoming the preferred platform for interacting with your local businesses. I pretty much only order from my phone now myself.”

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GrubHub Delivers Android Beta, New iPhone App

There’s no absolute formula for success in the mobile app world — but if there was, ngmoco would probably be amongst those closest to having it figured out. Just about everything they touch (Gun Range, WeFarm, Rolando, and their Plus+ gaming network) turns to gold; unfortunately, the only stuff they’ve touched so far has been exclusively for iOS.

Back in February, ngmoco CEO Neil Young said they were “encouraged” by Android’s growth, but that they’d be sticking with the iPhone for the time being. Oh, how quickly a big ol’ cash injection can change plans; just a month after an estimated $3-5 million investment by Google Ventures, ngmoco is seemingly looking to dive head first into Android development.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

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Google’s Investment Pays Off: Ngmoco Building Plus+ (And Possibly…

There is no question that Android’s share of the smartphone market is growing by lleaps and bounds. Earlier today, Nielsen came out with some more evidence that Android keeps rising. It published some very provocative numbers today suggesting that Android’s share of new smartphone subscribers surged past new iPhone subscribers in the U.S. during the second quarter, commanding 27 percent of recent smartphone purchases compared to 23 percent for the iPhone.

These figures represent new smartphone purchases over the preceding 6 months.  In terms of total smartphone subscribers in the U.S., the iPhone still has more than twice as many as Android, with 28 percent versus 13 percent.  But that number was flat for iPhone from the first quarter, while Android’s share rose from 9 percent.  (Blackberry is still bigger than both with 35 percent share of total subscribers, and 33 percent of recent subscribers).

The relative gains of Android compared to iPhone could very well signal a tipping point for Android.  Perhaps the weight of all 20+ Android phones and multiple carriers is finally collectively beating the iPhone, and there will be no looking back.  Or maybe the fight is not yet over.

According to this data, new Android subscribers passed iPhone subscribers in the second quarter, which ended on June 30.  The new iPhone 4 was announced on June 7, but not available until June 24th.

In other words, this data only includes one week of iPhone 4 sales. The flat market share line may very well be indicating nothing more than the end of the iPhone 3Gs product lifecycle. Many people who wanted a new iPhone delayed their purchase in anticipation of the iPhone 4. Yes, the iPhone 4 has some antenna issues, but those do not seem to be affecting sales.

Can Android keep on taking market share among new smartphone buyers, or will the iPhone bounce back next quarter with the full force of iPhone 4 sales behind it? Like they say, one data point does not make a trend.

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Data Showing Android Pushing Past Apple Does Not Include iPhone 4

People don’t send postcards anymore. Why bother when you can photo MMS a friend? Attempting to restore some of the social experience behind photography, SwingVine has created SwingVine Gallery, an app that attempts to bring back some of the mystique and enjoyment of social photo sharing.

Using your iPhone’s camera and GPS, the SwingVine Gallery app allows you to send a photo to a friend “secretly,” a photo that they are unable to see unless they also participate by sending a photo back, sort of like a mobile game of photo tag.

While both the idea and the app interface are simple, SwingVine gallery does have its appeal, as it’s pretty hard to resist wanting to see whatever photo postcard is under wraps. I genuinely felt a level of excitement as I waited for my “secret” postcard to be revealed (It was, of course, a photo of the Eiffel Tower).

The app, expected to arrive in the app store within the next 24 hours, also functions as a photo album, with all the secret photos you receive being saved alongside your own personal photos. “Our goal is capturing people’s lives visually” says co-founder Ling Bao.

For those that can’t wait until it drops, you can try out the feature on the web here.

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Postcards Go Virtual With SwingVine Gallery For The iPhone

ComScore just released its smartphone market share numbers for March through May, and unsurprisingly the trend continues from previous months. Android phone saw the most significant growth in market share in May, up 4.0 percentage points to capture 13.0 percent of smartphone subscribers. Of course, despite Android’s gain, RIM and Apple dominated, with RIM taking 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent share. Microsoft saw a 13.2 percent share and Palm rounded the top five out with a 4.8 percent share. In total, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period.

In terms of manufacturer share, the report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.4 percent market share. LG ranked second with 21.5 percent share, followed by Motorola (21.2 percent share), RIM (8.7 percent share, up 0.5 percentage point) and Nokia (8.1 percent share).

For the three month period from March to May, comScore reports that 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Across the board, comScore’s numbers show mobile phone users in the U.S. are interacting more with their phones. In terms of actions, 65.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in May, up 1.4 percent versus the prior three month period. Mobile browsing also increased to 31.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points). Subscribers who used downloaded applications comprised 30.0 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.

While Android smartphones were the only type of phone to see a gain in market share for the three month period, the platform is still way behind Apple’s mobile user base. Android still has a ways to go in terms of market share before it can be seen as a major competitor to Apple, but it is nice to see that the platform is slowly gaining a larger user base.

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comScore: Android Continues To Gain Smartphone Market Share

HP’s buyout of Palm may have won them webOS, but it doesn’t seem to have won them many friends within the company. There are only so many names within Palm that are so oft-mentioned that I could name them off hand — and of those, the talent seems to be disappearing left and right. First to go was interface mastermind Matias Duarte, followed shortly thereafter by Rich Dellinger, best known for coming up with webOS’ incredible notifications system.

And now, they’ve lost another; I’m hearing from an unshakably solid source that Lynn Fox, Vice President of Public Relations, left the company earlier this week.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

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Palm Loses Their Ex-Apple PR Head, Lynn Fox

Best Buy just announced that pre-sale orders of the iPhone 4 can be placed starting tomorrow, June 15. Apple. Pre-sale orders can be placed at any Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile standalone store nationwide.The iPhone 4 will be available for purchase at Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores June 24.

The iPhone 4 was announced a few weeks ago during Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Its notable features are, of course, the extremely high resolution screen, video chat capability with FaceTime, and the new form factor.

Walmart will also be carrying the phone come June 24, but will not be accepting pre-order. And you can pre-prder your new iPhone through Apple starting June 15. Best Buy was also chosen to carry Apple’s iPad as well.

The new phone, which comes in black or white, costs $199 for a 16GB version and $299 for 32GB. The June 24th date is for the US, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The rest of the world will get it in July.

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iPhone 4 Pre-Sales At Best Buy Start June 15, In Stores June 24

After exploring the mobile and Internet landscapes in Shanghai and Beijing, the GeeksOnAPlane (GOAP) group (30+ techies mostly from the Silicon Valley) continued their Asian field trip to Korea today. In Beijing, the GOAP attended two of China’s largest tech conferences: CHINICT, “the largest conference on China tech innovation” (which was livestreamed on TechCrunch), and the “Global Mobile Internet Conference” (GMIC), both of which are held in the city every year.

The GOAP got in touch with and gained unfiltered insight from dozens and dozens of local entrepreneurs, VCs and industry observers during the conferences and the events that took place around them. What follows are just a few learnings and impressions the GOAP group picked up during their China web crash course in Beijing (the size of the tech landscape is summarized in my previous post).

Innovation & Adoption of Business Models: The Chinese way

Before CHINICT and GMIC took place, Benjamin Joffe from Asia-based digital strategy consultancy +8* | Plus Eight Star delivered a primer during the Startup2Startup Beijing event on how innovation in China works, and how local companies adjust proven business models from abroad to meet the peculiarities of the Chinese market.

There’s a ton of valuable information on these and other topics in Joffe’s presentation (embedded below):

A lot has been written about how quickly China’s web entrepreneurs rip off successful concepts from the US and elsewhere, with one local VC half-jokingly at some point telling the GOAP group: “Every site that gets on TechCrunch is sure to have at least one Chinese clone a week later!”.

But there are some startups that don’t just churn out 1:1 copies. Instead, a few clever entrepreneurs find twists to make concepts working abroad more China-friendly or mash up existing, successful ones to create original offerings. One case in point is a startup called Lashou whose eponymous service marries Groupon with Foursquare-like mobile mechanics. I had the chance to talk to Lashou CEO Bo Wu during the Startup2Startup Beijing event, and according to Wu, user numbers are currently exploding.

This presentation provides more insight on how Lashou works:

China’s mobile web: The three finalists of the GMIC startup competition

CHINICT and GMIC were held at the same time in Beijing (Thursday and Friday), forcing the GOAP to choose between the two conferences and me to decide about which event I should report back (I attended both). I have a personal penchant for covering yet unknown startups (and CHINICT was livestreamed on TechCrunch), so I decided to cover the launch pad that took place at the GMIC.

Find short profiles of the three finalists below. The selection highlights three mega trends that can currently be observed in China’s mobile scene: the fragmentation in hardware and software, the rise of mobile gaming, and the low number of people who are ready to make payments over the cell phone.

Multi-platform solution by Crossmo
Crossmo is a “cross-mobile” solution that has already been licensed by a number of top tech companies, including Motorola, Orange, Baidu and a number of Chinese operators. Orange, for example, runs its Chinese App Store based on Crossmo, basically as a white-labeled, generic “iTunes” for non-Apple platforms.

For end users, Crossmo intends to solve the fragmentation problem in the mobile space by offering an online data management and synchronization tool for cell phones that’s completely hardware agnostic. Just connect your phone to your PC, and the service backs up, synchronizes and pushes all mobile data (music files, ringtones, wallpapers, and other content) into your own personal online “Crossmo Space”.

Cross platform engine by Softgames
Alexander Krug, CEO of Berlin-based Softgames, said that when it comes to offering mobile content across different platforms, his company has an edge over established gaming giants such as Zynga or Playfish. The Softgames game engine apparently makes it possible to “rapidly” design a social mobile game and then distribute it across a total of six platforms (i.e. iPhone, Android, or Java). SoftGames also pitched CrimeCity at the GMIC, a browser-based mobile RPG that’s available on “all devices and platforms”. Like many foreign mobile content providers, Softgames is currently looking for distribution partners in China and other Asian markets.

2C2P Mobile by 2C2P
Market research firm Gartner expects the number of mobile payment users worldwide to ballon to 190 million in 2012, up from the 70 million counted last year. And since 85% of those 190 million people will be based in Asia/Pacific, Singapore-based e-commerce payment solutions provider 2C2P is looking at a huge future market for itself. The core offering in the mobile area is 2C2P Mobile, a solution for cell phones that uses QR codes, Bluetooth, BUMP and other technologies to transfer money between different credit/debit cards without friction. The company was selected as the winner of the GMIC startup competition.

Find a larger cross section of local mobile startups in my previous article on the 3G Industry Summit in China from last year.

Many thanks to the CHINICT and GMIC organizers for the special treatment the GOAP group received.

Challenges for China’s web and mobile companies

China’s high-speed Internet industry is already huge, still offers plenty of room for even more growth, produces one startup after the other, is eager to globalize quickly, and has – unlike its counterparts in many other Asian countries – an iron grip on the domestic market.

But Silicon Valley and the planet’s other technology hotbeds still have a bit of time to breathe before the dragon takes over, as even in China’s web market all’s not well. The GOAP heard local mobile and web entrepreneurs and VCs deploring the

• lack of valid industry data across a number of tech sectors
• strict legal and political frameworks (one industry veteran told me he checks if his popular micro-blogging service is still online every morning, as Twitter is blocked by the government)
• low online spend (just one telling example: the ARPU in China’s social gaming sector is said to be 5-20 times lower than in the US and other regions)
• insufficient online payment systems (still low circulation of credit cards hampers growth in e-commerce and other areas)
• overheated VC market
• trouble for young startups to find seed capital and angel investors
• lack of competent staff (especially engineers)
• propensity of highly skilled team members to quickly quit even successful startups to join others or set up their own
• lack of innovative power in the industry (Korea invented the virtual goods-based business model, Japan invented the mobile web, and China?)
• rampant copycat culture (which is not really a China-only phenomenon)
• fierce domestic competitive environment in the mobile and web fields
• and other factors (for example, copyright problems or the fact that no foreign entrepreneur- with one exception – has realized a sizable exit in China so far).

After gaining a 10,000 foot overview of China’s tech scene, it’s now time to explore what’s currently hot in Korea, the next stop of the GOAP Asia tour. The GOAP will be attending a Korean startup pitch event and the Startup Weekend Seoul (the country’s first ever), before moving on to echelon 2010 in Singapore.

For information in real-time, follow the adventures of the GOAP via the #goap hash tag (the official Twitter account is here). GOAP pictures are being uploaded regularly over on Flickr.

Photo credit: Craig Fisk

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GeeksOnAPlane at the GMIC And CHINICT Tech Conferences In Beijing:…

Over six months after announcing its plans to acquire leading mobile ad network AdMob, Google has finally closed the deal. The news comes a week after the FTC unanimously approved the deal, after holding it up for months as it decided whether or not to block it on antitrust grounds.

When it finally reached a decision, the FTC pointed to Apple’s recent entry into the mobile ad market with iAds as evidence that there would still be plenty of competition in the nascent mobile advertising space (an argument that we made before, as did many others). The FTC may have also been swayed by blog posts from developers questioned during the FTC inquiry who felt that the deal should go through. Some developers also wrote that they felt like the FTC had an agenda and that they were being pressured to say things that would hurt Google’s cause.

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Over Six Months Later, Google Finally Closes AdMob Acquisition

Google has just updated the pie chart on its Android Developers site that shows just how many Android users are running each version of the mobile OS. The latest stats: 32.4% of users are on the most recent version, Android 2.1. That’s a rise of 5.1 percentage points since mid-April. But the bulk of users are still running earlier versions — 29.4% are on 1.6, and 37.2% are on 1.5.

This data is important to developers because it indicates how fragmented the market is, and which operating systems they should ensure their applications are compatible with. As we’ve noted before, the fact that over two thirds of Android users are still tied to an outdated operating system is a serious problem — for example, anyone who isn’t on 2.1 can’t run the official Twitter app. (Google may address this at its I/O conference later this month).

One other reason this is interesting: Google is now updating this OS pie chart more frequently. There was a four month gap between the previous updates that stretched from January 2010 (before the Nexus One was released) until mid-April. The latest updates came only a few weeks apart.

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Android OS Distribution Chart Updated, Inches Slowly In Right…

The Norwegian software company has yet to make any announcements of its own, but Opera has acquired email service provider FastMail.FM, according to a message posted on the latter’s company blog.

The terms of the agreements are not disclosed, but the Australia-based company in a notice said it will continue to run its email service, which has been in operation for over 10 years.

Here’s the announcement:

Some exciting changes will be occurring with FastMail.FM. FastMail.FM has been acquired by Opera Software, the developers of the Opera web browser. For more information about Opera, please visit www.opera.com.

This is great news for FastMail.FM users. FastMail.FM will continue to run and grow as the reliable email service you’ve known for over 10 years. We’ll be combining forces with Opera’s technical teams, expertise and products to develop new and innovative products.

FastMail has included a FAQ, in which it says that users who wish to NOT transfer their accounts over to Opera have to go into settings and indicate just that. Not acting upon the email the company sent out to its users or actively accepting the transfer will result in Opera assuming control over the mailbox and the account registration details.

As to the reason for selling, FastMail says the market was getting increasingly competitive and that Opera’s expertise in web browsers and especially the mobile market would help the company grow and take on the next big challenges in running and building an email service.

Some FastMail.FM staff will be making the move to Norway, and the company says it has already been working with Opera’s technical teams to exchange expertise, and to develop new products. It will be interesting to see what eventually comes out of this deal.

This is Opera’s second acquisition this year – it had earlier spent $8 million in cash to buy mobile advertising startup AdMarvel.

Update: the official release just hit our inbox:

Oslo, Norway – April 30, 2010 – Opera Software today announced that it has acquired Web-based e-mail provider FastMail.fm. The acquisition will enable Opera to expand its current messaging product portfolio and deliver cross-platform messaging to a wide range of devices, including computers, mobile phones, TVs and gaming consoles.

Headquartered in Australia, FastMail.fm has forged a reputation for responsiveness and reliability. The company already offers some of the most advanced Web-based e-mail platforms for consumers and small business customers and has been lauded for its approach to security, focus on innovation, and support for open, interoperable standards.

Since the release of Opera 4 in 2000, Opera’s desktop browser has included its own innovative e-mail client. Following this acquisition, Opera will be able to offer a consistent e-mail experience across all products. Opera currently has more than 50 million users of its desktop browser and more than 55 million users of Opera Mini, a mobile Web browser that works on almost all handsets available today.

“The newest generation of Web users will discover the Web through a mobile device. Having world-class messaging capability alongside a rich and compelling Web experience is essential. By combining forces, Opera and FastMail.fm can offer messaging on any device. This will enhance the value Opera provides to consumers, while assisting our operator partners in reducing customer churn,” says Rolf Assev, Chief Strategy Officer, Opera Software.

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Opera Software Acquires Email Service Provider FastMail.FM (Updated)

Good news for Opera (and its legions of fans around the world): the company has just announced that its mobile browser Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store.

The app will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on which market you are located in.

The iPhone app was shown off by the Norwegian software company to a small circle of reporters at the most recent Mobile World Congress (us included).

Opera then officially submitted Opera Mini for iPhone to the Apple App Store on March 23, when we wondered out loud if it would ever be approved.

The answer to that question is yes, contrary to what many believed would happen. I guess they can take that counter down now.

Opera Software claims Opera Mini for iPhone is up to 6 times faster than the native browser thanks to its compression and server-side rendering technology, based on internal tests, and after having tried it at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona myself I have to say it’s definitely zooming.

When the app was first submitted to Apple for approval, Opera told me that they hadd analyzed the App Store policies in great detail, and that they were completely certain of being 100% compliant – looks like they were right.

Earlier today, Opera disclosed that it now counts over 100 million users, about half of which are using its mobile browser products. The company also offers Opera Mini 5 beta for Android phones.

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Surprise, Surprise: Opera Mini iPhone App Gets Apple’s Stamp Of…

Twitter has just announced that it acquired Tweetie, the very popular and highly polished Twitter application for the iPhone . The application will now be called “Twitter for iPhone” and will drop from $2.99 to free, with developer Loren Brichter (who makes up the one-man startup Atebits) joining the Twitter mobile team. Twitter also plans to launch Twitter for the iPad, which Brichter will be involved with.

It’s a move that manages to be both jarring and unsurprising at the same time. Unsurprising, because Twitter investor Fred Wilson recently wrote that Twitter developers needed to stop “filling holes” in Twitter’s product and instead build entirely separate businesses. And just this morning, Twitter launched an official Twitter for BlackBerry application, so another mobile application shouldn’t come as much of a shock. And yet, the iPhone is a platform where Twitter has a very strong third party presence, and Twitter has no doubt been benefiting from the contributions of these developers. Tweetie is extremely polished and is arguably the best, but there are plenty of other quality applications that are getting hung out to dry. Still, a move like this seemed inevitable.

In a blog post announcing the news, Twitter CEO Evan Williams explains the logic: people are going to iTunes, searching for a Twitter application, and not finding one so they give up (this sounds like a problem with iTunes search, but perhaps people really just want to see ‘Twitter’ in the application’s title):

Careful analysis of the Twitter user experience in the iTunes AppStore revealed massive room for improvement. People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they’re not finding one. So, they get confused and give up. It’s important that we optimize for user benefit and create an awesome experience.

This all comes less than a week before Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, where I suspect the company will try to steer developers down a path that they won’t be paving over any time soon.

Of note: Twitter’s post does not mention anything about the Tweetie desktop application, which is available exclusively for the Mac. Don’t be surprised if this becomes ‘Twitter For Mac’ eventually.

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Twitter Acquires Tweetie

Here’s a phrase many of you will remember, probably from the late 1990s: “Yeah, I’d get a cell phone, but I don’t want to be on, like, an electronic leash, you know?” People had land lines, pagers, car phones — the pocketable mobile phone was still a luxury and, to some, an unwanted responsibility. Over the next 10 years or so, the mobile phone gradually reached such high levels of market penetration that it’s quite difficult to find anybody without one. It is simply too practical and affordable to refrain from at this point. However, in the last few years, as smartphones and texting have become the default mode of communication for many people, the tone has changed again; the electronic leash is returning.

Why is this? It’s actually pretty simple: once a tool reaches a certain level of integration with the social and communication norms of a person, it receives the same level of cognitive consideration as, say, speech. Do you wonder whether you should end a text message with an exclamation mark, a period, or nothing at all? This is because texting and email are approaching the same level of integration with our daily lives as the speech and gestures we’ve been using for millennia.

Continue reading…

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The Smartphone: A Shackle Once More

Mobile entertainment startup mSpot is extending its Mobile Movies site, which will let users stream full-length movies on their mobile phones, on the web, so you can enjoy mSpot’s online streaming movie service on your computer.

mSpot has struck deals with Paramount, Universal, Image Entertainment, and Screen Media Ventures to stream full-length movie rentals to users’ PCs and cell phones, allowing you to switch between both devices as you pick up and leave off throughout a movie. The PC streaming functionality builds upon the mobile movie service mSpot launched last year. The service includes 1000 titles that can be streamed to both a computer and mobile device.

The service works on over 50 different handset devices – including the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Android, Windows Mobile and others. Users can stream individual movies for $4.99 each or join a monthly Movie Club: $9.99/month for up to 4 movies, $12.99 for 6 movies, or $15.99 for 8 movies.

Of course, mSpot’s main competition is Apple, which lets Mac, iPhone and iPod touch users, download and sync movies and shows onto all of their devices via an AppleTV. But mSpot And mSpot will face other series competition from Netflix, when the company eventually moves into the mobile space.

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mSpot’s Mobile Movie Streaming Service Expands To The Web

Last time I was in India I wrote about the amazing business model innovation that had allowed telecom operators to make money on a paltry $6 a month per average user. That compares to a desired average monthly payment of $50 or more in the U.S.

The results have been phenomenal—550 million people in India have phones, and it has transformed the poorer service economy by giving them an affordable way to be reached and arrange jobs. Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country. Even in slums where people live on less than $2 a day, everyone has a phone. If “Slumdog Millionaire” was more accurate, Jamal wouldn’t have had to go on TV to find Latika. He could have just called her, or worst case, called a few friends until he found her number.

It’s unequivocally India’s most successful infrastructure achievement —despite some mounting concerns about the effects of all those towers dotting nearly any urban rooftop that can hold one. And a host of exciting applications are being built on top of this invisible thread that connects a disparate country with a vast terrain and even bigger gulfs in language, literacy, income, religion, language and living standards

But amazingly, when Rajiv Mehrotra (pictured below) looked at the existing telecom penetration in India, he saw failure. What about the people who can’t afford $6 a month or live too far to get service? Don’t they deserve to be connected as well? The result was VNL, a company that’s already gotten a good deal of press and acclaim for its dead-cheap, low-maintenance, Ikea-like easy-to-assemble, solar-powered base stations that extend existing mobile footprints into rural villages for a fraction of the price, allowing the remotest, poorest villages to have mobile phones in every household at drop-dead low prices. “We are the bottom of the bottom,” boasts Mehrotra, practically daring competitors to try to play his low-cost, super-durability game.

The World Economic Forum named it one of 26 Technology Pioneers, and just last month VNL won the Mobile World Congress’s Green Mobile Award. Time called it a “Tech Pioneer that Will Change your Life” and Fast Company named it one of the world’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world.

I met with Mehrotra at the company’s headquarters in Gurgoan during my November trip to India. This time I wanted to see its technology live in villages and hear first hand what the impact had been. I traveled to a village that had now had phones for about seven months to see how the technology had changed their lives. Of the 500 families spread across this area, almost all of them had a phone—and most for the first time.

The majority of the people I spoke with said the first calls they made were to family members, and that the biggest impact was the ability to stay in touch with family, to know when there was an emergency and be able to respond quickly.

But there have been business effects too. One man (pictured here) has a business operating several trucks traveling between this village and Delhi and before he’d have to ride on a bike between back-and-forth to coordinate them. Now he can sit at home and just call the drivers. He installed one of VNL’s small base stations on his roof, and he said it had increased his standing among his peers—he is frequently the one called on to settle disputes now. And now they can just call him. Similarly wives will call husbands out in the fields when its time to come in and eat, rather than trudging out to get them, allowing them to focus on kids and the housework.

Another woman (pictured below) I spoke with was a widow with six kids and 21 grandchildren. (So many, she actually had to ask someone else how many she had.) As grandkids clambered in and out of her lap, she explained that she gets pension checks from the government, but the delivery used to be spotty. Before her phone she had no recourse but to travel to Delhi to inquire about it. Not exactly something she relishes, having lived her whole life in this village and only been to the big city twice. Now she can call the office and gives them an earful. Not surprisingly, the checks have started to come more regularly.

Another man (pictured to the right) told me he felt more connected to the rest of India as a result of having a phone. This village is surrounded by mountains, and he said that he felt “imprisoned” and cut off, despite being just a few hours drive from Delhi. Now he has a renewed interest in politics and what’s happening in other villages and the country at large. This man had only had his phone for six months, but he expected it would change his life in ways he couldn’t articulate or imagine. “Since the day I got this, my life has already changed,” he said through an interpreter.

Indeed, Mehrotra says it’s already having a ripple affect on the politics of Rajisthan—the state between Pakistan and India where VNL did its first installations. Politicians come through and make promises and villagers demand their cell phone numbers and call to check up on whether those promises are kept. “They have to be accountable,” Mehrotra says. “They can’t wriggle out.”

These phones are not just a nice-to-have, they’ve quickly become a must have for these villages, deeply tied to the way they make money, participate in their government and retain closely important family relationships. And these ripple effects are only now beginning. Think of what the impact will be when there are better programs for marketing crops, saving money and even learning and game playing rolled out on these very basic phones. Life will always be different in a village or a city, but India can at least gain some basic common denominators between the two.

Mehrotra is a big believer in the Ghandian mantra: Change the villages and you change India. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has already built businesses rolling out satellite TV and landlines to rural areas, but he thinks this company will have a bigger impact than anything else he’s done and is the one with the real potential to go global. It bears noting that he’s invested all of his own money in the project—and it’s taken far more than he expected.

This is not a cheap venture—Mehrotra has invested more than $100 million in the last five years and is still investing more. But I’m not sure it could be built any other way. I don’t think there’s the venture capital appetite or risk profile in India to fund something like this and most of the mobile equipment companies Mehrotra talked to back when he started thinking about this insisted it couldn’t be done. Once he built it he’d take equipment and operator executives out to see it and they still couldn’t believe it. They were making calls to test the quality from different areas of the village trying to find pockets without a signal. “They were climbing on the antenna and shaking it like monkeys trying to break it and they couldn’t,” Mehrotra says.

From a business point of view, the operators love VNL because it cheaply expands their existing footprint. The equipment operators aren’t so sure. In theory, VNL isn’t competing with them because they’re not going into the cities. Now that VNL has proved this model works, could a larger established vendor steal the market? The best chance of that would likely come from a Chinese powerhouse like Huawei. That said, any vendor that builds such a low cost solution that’s too good will risk eroding his higher priced systems designed for urban areas. “They’ll say ‘Give it to me in the city too.’ ” Mehrotra says.

All these awards aside, this is the year for VNL to prove it’s really a viable business. And Mehrotra says there are some surprises in store. In terms of market, VNL is already rolling the technology out in other countries and in terms of product they’re not done with just simple mobile access. The countries are likely in Africa and perhaps Latin America, and my guess is the new functionality will entail turning on some kind of Internet access through the existing base stations. Expect much more on this newly minted international do-gooding darling in 2010.

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India’s Rural Cell Movement: Can You Hear Me Now?

I was planning on liveblogging Eric Schmidt’s keynote speech here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but a serious lack of any kind of Internet connectivity threw a wrench into those plans. I’m not too bummed about it though, because the whole thing was frankly quite boring.

Apart from some history lessons about the convergence of telecommunications and cloud computing, all we really got from Schmidt and fellow Googlers was that Android handsets are now seeing over 60,000 shipments on a daily basis, and some previews of add-on features for existing Google mobile products that were cool but not earth-shattering in any way.

I’m sure it’s nice for German speakers that they’ll soon be able to search Google using their voice in their native language, and the upcoming real-time translation element for Google Goggles is impressive.

But having Google’s Chairman and CEO fly over to Spain to mostly read from his notes and basically tell the audience of 1500 people (and many more thanks to the live video streaming) that mobile is going to be big and that the company is very committed to making its mark? Nothing short of underwhelming.

The question is: does it matter, really?

Having had numerous conversations with developers, handset manufacturers, mobile software companies and yes, even operators at this show, I get the feeling Schmidt really didn’t have to make a big splash at the event.

Android is taking care of that job quite nicely, and I’m sure that’s just the way Schmidt likes it.

I have more thoughts on this that I’ll post shortly, but I would also invite you to check out MG Siegler’s take, which is slightly more critical than most of the stuff I’ve heard about Google and its Android plans here at MWC.

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Eric Schmidt’s #MWC2010 Keynote: Underwhelming, But Does It Matter?

When the mobile payment service Square launched in December, VeriFone rushed to get its own version on the market. A couple weeks ago, they accomplished that with the launch of PayWARE Mobile. Now they’re looking to take out their competitor the good old fashioned way: out-spending them.

VeriFone is already heavily advertising its PayWARE Mobile product with huge ads in New York City taxis. As you can see in the picture, VeriFone is paying for big screen real estate on the screens that are in the backseats of all cabs in the city now. The ad shows a large picture of the device (a piece of hardware that you attach to your iPhone) and promises users that not only will they be able to accept payments with the iPhone with it, but that they will “never miss a sale.”

Obviously, this is the same thing Square does, but Square is a startup (co-founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey), whereas VeriFone is a large global company already making a ton of money in electronic payments. That said, Square has some money too, thanks to its $10 million round of funding, and $40 million valuation before it even launched. But it seems highly unlikely that Square would use any of its funding to counter these ads.

Instead, Square is going to have to keep touting the fact that their system is built for anyone to use, whereas VeriFone’s requires that you have a merchant account.

[thanks Brian]

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VeriFone Going After Square Hard. Ads In NYC Taxis Already.

With more than 140,000 apps on the iPhone alone, there is a real need for services which help you find the best apps. Apple’s iTunes ratings and genius recommendations only go so far. One startup attacking this problem is French-Israeli AppsFire, which just raised its first angel round. AppsFire was co-founded by former TechCrunch France editor Ouriel Ohayon and Yann Lechelle.

The investors are a group of successful French entrepreneurs (yes, they exist), including Marc Simoncini (CEO of dating site meetic.com), Jacques-Antoine Granjon (CEO of Vente-Privee.com), Xavier Niel (CEO of French ISP Free), and entrepreneur and angel investor Jean-David Blanc (who also recently invested in Square). The amount raised wasn’t disclosed but it is believed to be in the low seven figures.

AppsFire offers a simple utility app which makes it easy to share iPhone app recommendations with your friends. Since its beta launch last summer, more than 10 million apps have been shared, leading to hundreds of thousands of clicks to iTunes. It also highlights apps through its AppStar Awards. Recently, AppsFire started promoting its own short link for iPhone apps, http://getap.ps/, which opens up iTunes on both the iPhone and desktop computers to a specific app’s page. While you are waiting for iTunes to open up, information about the App appears on the landing page, developers who use getap.ps will get analytics on conversions and other stats. This America Life (http://getap.ps/thisamericanlife) and DailyMotion (http://getap.ps/dailymotion) are already using it.

The startup plans to move beyond the iPhone to other mobile devices with growing app markets such as Android and Blackberry. It also recently launched PasteFire, a way to share other things such as Web links, emails, phone numbers, and photos to and from your iPhone. It will start to give users app recommendations based on the content they copy in PasteFire as well. The whole focus of the company is to help people discover new apps and drive more downloads and sales of apps. Competitors include Appolicious, 16Apps, and others.

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AppsFire Draws In Some French Angels To Bankroll Mobile App…

Chances are you’ve never heard of Netbiscuits – I sure hadn’t. But the company operates one of the world’s largest B2B web software platforms enabling thousands of publishers to create, manage and generate revenue from mobile websites.

Netbiscuits serves the mobile Internet programs for brands like Yahoo, MTV, and eBay, and well known digital agencies such as Razorfish, Isobar, and ad networks like Google-owned AdMob. To give you an idea of its size: globally, Netbiscuits claims to deliver more than 1.5 billion mobile page impressions on a monthly basis.

This morning, the decade-old company announced that it has partnered with Universal Music Group to help the music company expand its line-up of direct-to-consumer mobile content and services, after a successful test run centered around a mobile website for Bon Jovi in November 2009.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Netbiscuits will essentially be aiding UMG in setting up and operating artist-branded mobile websites, which will give fans the ability to interact with other fans and to make purchases directly from their handsets. Based on the mobile websites, Netbiscuits also enables UMG to set up hybrid apps for several major platforms, including the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile devices.

UMG also plans to utilize the text messaging service that comes integrated within the Netbiscuits platform, providing music fans with SMS alerts whenever their favorite artists are in town.

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Netbiscuits Signs Tasty Deal With UMG For Artist-branded Mobile…

Let me start off by saying this: I really rather like the default Android homescreen. It’s simple, it’s functional, and above all, it’s endlessly customizable. Thanks to Google’s “do anything” approach to handling app development, end users have countless tools to trick out their phones anyway they want. That, as anyone who’s ever used MySpace knows, is a double-edged sword: the end results are usually range from the rare and wonderful to the terribly tacky.

The guys over at Larva Labs have taken a different, almost Facebookian approach. Instead of allowing users to directly get their hands dirty, they completely stripped down the Android into a sparse, information-oriented design they call SlideScreen, which looks something like a mashup between WinMo 6.5 today screen and HTC’s minimalist TouchFLO style. I was given the chance to play with a nearly final build of the app, which is slated for general release within the next few days, and for you info junkies out there, this may be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch >>

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SlideScreen for Android Borders On Information Overload (In A Good…

This morning, after many months of rampant speculation over the enigmatic Tablet, Apple officially invited scores of press to a special media event to be held January 27. The debut of the Tablet seems all but a given according to most reports, but there are some secondary announcements that also stand to be huge — especially the rumors that we may also see the launch of iPhone 4.0. This afternoon, Fox News “confirmed” that we’d being seeing the latest iteration of Apple’s hugely popular mobile OS for the first time. Should that be the case, there’s also a good chance we’ll see launch of a very important new feature: background applications.

First things first. While the title of the Fox News article is “Apple Tablet, iPhone 4 Launch Confirmed for January 27″, the body of the article later says that it’s “likely” that Apple will unveil those two products (along with an updated iLife suite), and also notes that Apple is known for suddenly removing features or products from their announcements at the last second — none of which makes the news sound totally concrete. That said, there are plenty of reasons why iPhone 4.0 could be making an appearance alongside the Tablet, and why it will bring background apps with it.

We’ve discussed the probable connection between the Tablet and the iPhone OS since as early as last May. With iPhone OS, Apple took Mac OS X and stripped it down to the basics to turn it into a compact and powerful mobile operating system. The tablet will almost certainly have more horsepower than the iPhone, but it would still stand to gain from the power and space saving attributes of the mobile OS (albeit a modified version). Our suspicions got further support less than a week ago, when we saw reports that the newest releases of the iPhone OS was actually being held back because some of its code alluded to the unannounced tablet device. Given these ties, it would be logical for the iPhone 4.0 OS to make its debut alongside the tablet.

But the Tablet OS will need to bring some new features will it. For one, it will probably need to allow users to run multiple apps at the same time. Most people don’t particularly care (yet) that they can’t do this with their iPhones, because the screen real estate is so limited and they don’t view the device as a handheld computer (even though it is one). But that won’t be true with the tablet — in light of its larger screen, users will expect more functionality, and the inability to run multiple apps would grow frustrating quickly. With that in mind, if Apple has already established a paradigm for running background apps on the tablet, it would make sense to finally bring it over to the iPhone too.

The iPhone’s current lack of background applications is one of its most glaring weaknesses compared to other mobile operating systems, most notably Android and Palm’s WebOS. Apple’s reasons for withholding the functionality before now were obvious: running multiple applications can drain the device’s already-strained battery more quickly, and forcing users to manage which apps are open adds an extra layer of complexity. It was the right choice then, but it’s time for things to change.

Plenty of developers have already had their applications hampered by their inability to run in the background. Messaging clients have to rely on the iPhone’s Push notifications, which can only display a single alert at a time. Music players (other than the built-in iPod app) close down as soon as you try to do anything else on the phone. And location based apps have to rely almost exclusively on the “check-in” model popularized by Foursquare, because they have no way to passively monitor your location. Consumers may not be frustrated by these restrictions yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they look enviously at their Android-toting friends streaming Pandora and running Skype or Meebo in the background.

And Apple knows it. As far back as last May we were hearing that Apple was having serious discussions about how to implement background applications.  As it did with copy and paste (which iPhone users had to wait years for), Apple is clearly taking its time to get it right the first time.  Now, with the imminent release of the tablet, Apple may have finally settled on a solution.  If the Fox News report is correct, that could be revealed as soon as next week. But even if iPhone 4.0 isn’t announced for a few more months, it seems highly likely that background apps will come with it.

Image via Gizmodo. And no, it isn’t real.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Will Next Week’s Apple Event Finally Bring Background Apps To The…

In case you weren't aware, Mobile-review's Eldar Murtazin is somewhat of a living legend around these parts. The Russian-borne phone guru manages to get his hands on an ample number of then-unreleased devices and juicy scoops -- but this time he might've just outdone himself with some apparent hands-on time with Windows Mobile 7. Here's what he's saying: the OS has been built on scratch, and none of the old WinMo 6.x apps worked. There's "a lot of horizontal movements, a lot of additional info by clicks... for WM users it will be a great step ahead. For market it's a copycat of Android 3.1/3.2 [sic] or iPhone." No direct comparison to Zune HD, except to say that it's a simpler UI than what he was seeing here, and also no clue on the kernel underneath. Still, the lack of legacy compatibility is either a huge bummer to the fan base, or if not that then Microsoft is preparing for a two-platform WinMo world. Then again, this is a purported early build, so who knows what's bound to change before the final release. There's a lot of other details if you're willing to check his feed, or just head over to WMPoweruser for the abridged / "good parts" version. Boy, February just can't come soon enough.

Early Windows Mobile 7 build given some hands-on time, incompatible with previous WinMo apps? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink WMPoweruser  |  Twitter (@eldarmurtazin)  | Email this | Comments

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Early Windows Mobile 7 build given some hands-on time, incompatible…

For the past four months, Amsterdam-based eBuddy has turned a profit, CEO Jan-Joost Rueb tells me, by offering advertising-supported services for free in combination with sales of a premium iPhone application.

The company, backed by $11.5 million in venture capital from Lowland Capital Partners and Prime Technology Ventures, markets a Web-based social network and instant messaging aggregator that enables people to sign in to their service once and stay connected to people through various platforms in one single interface where all of them are centralized.

It also offers a number of ways for people to use the service on their mobile phones, through a mobile web service, a Java-based messenger client and applications for iPhone and Android.

(Keep reading if you want to try their premium iPhone app for free, by the way)

Rueb informs me that the J2ME client in particular has seen phenomenal success, recently surpassing 50 million downloads. The free app is currently the most downloaded program as registered on GetJar, a one-stop shop for mobile applications, with more than 36.7 million installations (up from 10 million in March 2009).

Its iPhone applications (a free one and a premium one that goes for $4.99) are also quite popular: in total, the apps have been downloaded 3 million times since their debut in the App Store. The free version was released in July 2009, the paid app late November 2009.

eBuddy expected between 4% and 8% of its free app users to convert to the paid application, and says it is indeed currently hovering around a 6% conversion rate. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that its revenue from the premium app is thus about $900k, or $600k if you take into account Apple’s 30% cut. Conceivably, adding the revenue from ads on its free app, eBuddy is raking in around $1 million from its iPhone applications alone.

If you’re keen on giving the premium app a whirl for yourself: the first 1,000 users who purchase eBuddy Pro from the U.S. App Store and follow the instructions on this promotion page will receive an iTunes gift card worth $5, i.e. the price of the app.

In total, eBuddy has attracted about 100 million unique users, of which about a quarter uses the service at least once every month. These are heavy users: on average, 14 billion messages get sent via eBuddy per month. And don’t think all of them are using their cellphones: eBuddy’s Web application has seen 50% growth year over year, says Rueb.

Still, its strategy of having a feature-limited, ad-supported app in Apple’s App Store alongside a paid premium one with more bells and whistles, has resulted in close to 50% of the company’s revenues now coming from its slew of mobile products. Advertising accounts for about 60% of that income, and 40% comes from app sales today.

Rueb declined to share revenue numbers in greater detail, but said that the company has now been profitable on a net income basis for the past four months and is cash-flow positive, which means its mobile monetization strategy is clearly working out well for them.

A bit of good news for BlackBerry users, finally: eBuddy expects to (finally) ship a custom client for the platform in the next couple of months.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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How eBuddy’s Mobile Monetization Strategy Helped It Turn A Profit

Ads on the iPhone, just as ads on the web, are something most users want to avoid. But some of the ad companies that are specifically targeting newer smartphone devices such as the iPhone are becoming increasingly inventive with their approach to advertising. A good example of this just launched today in the NPR app for the iPhone.

In this app, the mobile analytics and advertising company Medialets is serving up an ad for the new album, Contra, by the band Vampire Weekend. At first, the ad just peeks out at the bottom of the NPR app, but if you click to expand it, it quickly takes up the entire device. So why would you want to do this? Because it’s a video for Vampire Weekend’s new song “Cousins” — and thanks to some of the iPhone’s unique features, you can actually interact with the ad, shaking your iPhone to change how the video looks.

Sure, it’s not a huge amount of customization, but it’s much better than normal methods of advertising and it creates a sense of interaction with the ad. Naturally, you can also click the screen to show an option that will allow you to buy the album on the device.

Companies like Google and Apple, two of the most important players in mobile right now, are scooping up some of these mobile ad companies left and right these days. Clearly, they think there’s a bright future for the medium as well.

Watch the ad in action below.

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An iPhone Ad Disguised As A User-Editable Vampire Weekend Music Video