Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
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mSpot stores your music* in the cloud, makes it available anywhere**
3 people liked this
Whoa there, vaquero -- don't get too excited just yet. As with just about every other gratis backup service on the web, there's a catch you should know about with mSpot's latest endeavor. The free limit is right around 2GB (exact size is TBD), so if you've got more than a second generation iPod's worth of audio, this here service will only serve as a tease. For those who fall under that threshold, there's plenty to love, and if you're down for ponying up, you'll be able to secure 10GB for $2.99 per month or 20GB for $4.99 per month. Launched today at Google I/O, this "freemium" music cloud service essentially syncs your entire music library (either in iTunes or a user-designated arrangement of folders) with mSpot's servers -- provided your library is less than 20GB, of course -- and then makes it available anywhere. Phones and other computers should have no issue tapping in (though only Android will be supported out of the gate), and the app itself runs quietly in the background in order to check for new additions / subtractions and mirror said changes in your online library. For now, the service is available by invitation only through mspot.com, with public availability slated for next month. Size limits aside, the service worked well for us in our limited testing, though that first 20GB upload is a real pain over Time Warner Cable's obviously capped Road Runner internet. Oh, and if you're bummed about not being guaranteed an invite today, you shouldn't be. Hit that source link and enter "engadget" as the password -- the first 500 get immediate access, but once they're gone, they're gone. *20GB tops, buster!
**Only on Android, Macs and PCs at first, chief!
Continue reading mSpot stores your music* in the cloud, makes it available anywhere**
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Mocapay Chosen To Bring Mass Mobile Marketing To New York Restaurants
The NYSRA will leverage the embedded marketing engine within Mocapay’s unique mobile platform to generate and distribute targeted mobile marketing campaigns for the New York City Chapter, and to inform its members about pertinent legislative issues, industry news, seminar and event updates and additional relevant information.
Mocapay will also provide detailed campaign analytics including full customization of campaigns and promotions through an organization-specific dashboard. The dashboard platform provides tools that will allow the NYSRA to build targeted campaigns and monitor real-time feedback to help track the effectiveness of specific campaigns.
Probably most important to the partnership is Mocapay’s ability to offer the NYSRA the only mobile solution in the marketplace that enables a secure, patented mobile payments solution. Mocapay offers its end-to-end mobile platform solution to merchant issuers of closed-loop loyalty, gift, and private-label credit, as well as financial institutions that issue open-loop prepaid, debit, and credit.
“Mobile is becoming one of the restaurant industry’s more effective tools to communicate with customers and drive traffic to restaurants,” said Andrew Rigie, director of operations, Greater New York City Chapters, NYSRA. “Our relationship with Mocapay reinforces the trend the industry is seeing regarding the need to adopt and integrate mobile technologies including mobile marketing campaigns to support customer acquisition and retention.”
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Velti Files For $200M IPO To Advance Mobile Marketing Technology
In a move that would mark the first IPO from a sole mobile marketing provider in the U.S., Velti plans to use the net proceeds to repay its outstanding indebtedness and to fund its strategic plan for global expansion. The company also plans to bolster its newly released mGage platform.
Velti has been trading on the AIM stock exchange in London for four years now, and the company said it expects to trade under the symbol VELT on the NASDAQ. The company has been posting impressive revenue numbers as well, indicating in the filing that its annual revenue has grown to $90 million in 2009, a year-over-year increase of 45 percent from $62 million in 2008.
“We believe our integrated, easy-to-use, end-to-end platform is the most extensive mobile marketing and advertising campaign management platform in the industry,” said Velti in the F-1 form filed with the SEC. ”Our platform further enables brands, advertising agencies, mobile operators and media companies to plan, execute, monitor and measure mobile marketing and advertising campaigns in real time throughout the campaign lifecycle.”
Velti has worked hard to integrate its platform into the heart of the mobile value-chain which lies with mobile operators. The company says 14 out of the top 20 global mobile operators are using its platform, with over 450 total brands, agencies and carriers using its technology in 35 countries.
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Google Takes On Mobile Location & Social, Launches Latitude API
Since the beginning, Latitude has failed to catch on with users due to the fact that it hasn’t quite catered to what most users want in an LBS service- which primarily means the ability to “check-in” and other social functions made popular by the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown.
With its new API, Google can now allow third-party developers to come up with their own apps that take advantage of Google’s immense location services- which could end up spelling trouble for similar startups that have had to build their location database from the ground-up.
As many have noted, an inhibiting factor to Google Latitude since the beginning is the fact that it’s continuously updating a user’s location instead of basing it around the concept of checking-in, which users (and developers) seem to be much more keen on. Through the new API, Google allows this to change if a developers wants it to.
“We’ve also learned that making your phone’s continuous location available in the background is tricky to do accurately and efficiently — just imagine your phone’s battery life if several apps were continuously getting your location in different ways,” Google explained in a post on the matter. “With this in mind, we built a free and open Latitude API that lets the third-party developers you choose start using your updated location in new ways without reinventing the wheel.”
What’s interesting is that Google is using the new Google Places API that assigns IDs to individual places, which positions itself perfectly for check-ins. As TechCrunch notes, this could be an early indication that Google is for building a unified place database that so many have hoped for.
It’s apparent that Google has more up its sleeve in the world of mobile location and social networking, as it definitely won’t tread lightly once it gets the ball rolling. It should be interesting to watch what happens, that’s for sure. As a glimpse into what Google envisions for its new Latitude API, it gave some pretty cool examples during the announcement;
- Thermostats that turn on and off automatically when you’re driving towards or away from home.
- Traffic that send alerts if there’s heavy traffic ahead of you or on a route you usually take based on your location history
- Your credit card accounts to alert you of potential fraud when a purchase is made far from where you actually are.
- Photo albums so your vacation photos appear on a map at all the places you visited based on your location history.
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Mobile Local Search Users to Reach Almost 1.5bn by 2014, According To Juniper
Juniper attributes much of its projection to the advancement of GPS technology in not only smartphones, but in feature phones as well. “While technical advances in handset screens, user interfaces, processors, memory and graphics handling technologies had previously contributed to the launch of high spec, but relatively high cost, mobile devices from leading vendors, their features – including GPS – were gradually migrating into mass market devices,” the report states. “At the same time, GPS unit prices and form factors had improved considerably making integrated GPS much more cost effective and design friendly.”
The debate between the mobile Web and mobile apps come into play as well, as Juniper predicts that while browser-based services will dominate the local search market, applications purchased via app stores will take a growing portion of the information services market, particularly template apps providing city guides and entertainment guides.
“The sharing culture of Web 2.0 is increasingly shaping the way many location based services and location enabled apps develop,” explained Dr Windsor Holden, author of the report. “Social networking application usage has continued to grow at an explosive rate, while mobile driven apps such as Loopt and Brightkite have extended the Web 2.0 concept further with the introduction of geotagged content”.
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Google TV is on The Way
Never a stranger to grand ambitions, Google may be ready to outdo itself.
It’s been formally announced that Google is teaming with Intel and Sony to create Google TV, a bold effort to integrate its Android software into TVs, Blu-ray players, and a Google TV-top box simply called a “Buddy Box.”
If it sounds like an endeavor aimed squarely at Apple TV, you would be correct.
Google TV, however, is poised and ready for battle with entities beyond Apple. In many ways, Google is taking on the cable and broadcast television industries with a new – and potentially revolutionary – effort that will link the Internet with televisions in a manner never before seen in the digital age.
“With Google TV, consumers will now be able to search and watch an expanded universe of content available from a variety of sources including TV providers, the web, their personal content libraries, and mobile applications,” Google gushed in a statement about the launch.
“The Google TV experience is complemented by the ability to watch streaming video from leading content platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and YouTube. Google TV will also have the capability to run apps from the Android Market.”
The arrival of Google TV could be a significant development in both the worlds of entertainment and advertising, as content providers and mobile marketers must now challenge themselves to address a new way in which millions of users may soon absorb content.
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PayPal’s Mobile Payments Library Comes to Android
As the business of mobile commerce continues to boom with no signs of retreat, the expansion of PayPal’s Mobile Payments Library comes as no surprise. With greater demand, PayPal naturally wants to provide as many vendors as possible with the ability to add checkout functionality for donations, personal payments, and physical goods and services sold through apps on the Android phone without having to worry about keeping customers’ personal financial information secure.
We recently announced the open beta of our Mobile Payments Library for the iPhone and the developer community is already putting it to good use.
In addition to the newfound Android territory for PayPal, the digital commerce solutions provider also rolled out the PayPal X Toolkit for Google App Engine (GAE). What is it? According to PayPal, it’s a platform for developing and running Web applications and services on Google Cloud. Developers can then “easily and securely” incorporate payments in their applications and services built on GAE platform.
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CEO Of Millennial Media Responds To Google/AdMob Approval
Response to the approval by the FTC on Google’s acquisition of AdMob is already starting to flow in. First up is a statement prepared by Paul Palmieri, president and CEO of Millennial Media, who currently resides over the largest reach of any mobile ad network;
“As one of the very few key market makers in the mobile advertising space, we applaud the FTC’s decision today to approve the Google/AdMob deal. Although Millennial Media didn’t have a direct dog in this fight, we were a willing participant in industry data and information sharing with the FTC. And, one of the largest outcomes of this deal is that the FTC recognized how competitive this market is and can be-provided it remains an open ecosystem. The burden is now on regulators, and Apple in particular, to preserve an open and competitive market that will provide the most choice and value for developers and consumers, no matter how tempting it is to do otherwise.”
Millennial also sent over some interesting stats from an IDC report about the current estimated market share for mobile ad networks:
- Google &AdMob: 21%
- Millennial Media: 12%
- Yahoo!: 10%
- Google: 10%
- Microsoft: 8%
- Quattro Wireless: 7%
- Jumptap: 6%
- AOL: 2%
- Nokia: 2%
- Other: 31%
More industry response to follow, stay tuned.
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Mobile Mix For April: Android Ad Requests Grew 77% For The Month, 282% Since Jan.
Posted on 21 May 2010
Most notably, Millennial indicates Android ad requests grew 77% month over month, and an impressive 282% since January. RIM remained the second largest OS on its network for the ninth consecutive month with a 3% increase for the month and a 17% share of total ad impressions.
Apple on the other hand showed an 8% decrease, but remained the number one OS on its network with 62% of total smartphone impressions and 35% of total U.S. impressions.
Also notable was HTC, who for the first time entered the top 5 device mix and represented the largest increase within the top 15 manufacturers in April with a 2.5% impression-share increase month over month. HTC’s affinity for Android-based devices will likely help push the company to the top of the ranks very soon.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
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May 19, 2010 4:00 AM PDT
Smartphones come to prepaid wireless market
The price of owning a smartphone is getting a lot cheaper thanks to some new aggressive plans from prepaid wireless companies.
Boost Mobile and MetroPCS have already been offering smartphones as part of their prepaid wireless plans. And over the next several months, other competitors, such as Leap Wireless' Cricket brand and Virgin Mobile will be adding smartphones to their lineups.
For years, the post-paid business model has dominated the U.S. cell phone market. Consumers signed lengthy contracts and wireless providers subsidized phones to the point where some handsets are even free. Meanwhile, the prepaid market in the U.S. was largely left to consumers who were young, price-sensitive, or considered credit risks. These customers paid for their cell phone service in advance and they bought the phones outright without any subsidy.
| Prepaid smartphone offerings | ||
| Major prepaid service providers | Smartphone | Service plan cost per month |
| AT&T | Not offered | Not offered |
| Boost Mobile (Sprint Nextel) | RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 ($249) | $60 for unlimited voice, data, texting, and e-mail |
| Cricket (Leap Wireless) | Kyocera Zio (Android OS)* | Not available |
| RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530* | Not available | |
| MetroPCS | RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 ($349) | $60 for unlimited voice, data, texting, and e-mail |
| Samsung Code (Windows Mobile OS) ($249/$174 with summer promotion) | $50 for unlimited voice, data, texting, and e-mail | |
| T-Mobile USA | All T-Mobile smartphones can be prepaid through FlexPay/Average price $400 | $60 for 500 voice minutes, and unlimited data, texting, and e-mail |
| (This includes all T-Mobile Android phones, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry devices) | $70 for 1,000 voice minutes, and unlimited data, texting, and e-mail | |
| $80 for unlimited voice, data, texting, and e-mail | ||
| Tracfone | Not offered | Not offered |
| Verizon Wireless | Not offered | Not offered |
| Virgin Mobile USA (Sprint Nextel) | RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530** ($299) | $35 for 300 voice minutes, and unlimted texting, data, and e-mail |
| RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530** ($299) | $50 for 1,200 voice minutes, and unlimited texting, data, and e-mail | |
| RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530** ($299) | $70 for unlimited voice, texting, data, and e-mail | |
| *Leap Wireless has announced that it will introduce two smartphones for the Cricket service in the second half of the year. Pricing information is not yet available. | ||
Tough economic times have enticed many consumers to cut costs and sign up for cheaper prepaid plans. According to a recent study released by the New Millennium Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, new prepaid wireless customers exceeded the number of new contract subscribers who signed up for service in the fourth quarter of 2009. This is the first time that prepaid services have outsold post-paid or contract services, the group said.
But cheaper cell phones only go so far. One of the biggest challenges facing prepaid wireless operators is the fact that they have lacked cool phones. For the last few years, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the nation's two biggest cell phone providers, have used exclusive deals with cell phone makers to win customers. AT&T has the iPhone. Verizon Wireless has the Motorola Droid. But providers like Leap Wireless and Virgin Mobile were left offering basic-feature phones.
That is changing. Prepaid operators are now adding smartphones to their product portfolios, which will open the market to a new set of customers and could possibly spark a price war.
"Adding smartphones as an option in prepaid means that prepaid is no longer a compromised offering," said Neil Lindsay, chief marketing officer for Sprint Prepaid products. "Now we will be able to offer a range of products and applications that customers want, so we can compete better with traditional post-paid services."
Offering smartphones on prepaid service plans is especially important because smartphones are the future of mobile. The growth in sales of these Web-enabled devices is outpacing that of traditional-feature phones. Within the next few years, smartphones are expected to overtake traditional cell phones in terms of shipments. As consumers make the switch from feature phones to smartphones, prepaid wireless companies want to capitalize on these upgrades by offering more affordable plans than the bigger wireless providers offer.
"Smartphones unlock part of the market for us," said Al Moschner, chief operating officer of Leap Wireless. "We are trying to remove barriers. And the lack of advanced phones for a post-paid customer to become a prepaid customer was a significant barrier. Our strategy is to continue to add functionality and applications and give consumers choice so they can decide."
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mSpot stores your music* in the cloud, makes it available anywhere**
Whoa there, vaquero -- don't get too excited just yet. As with just about every other gratis backup service on the web, there's a catch you should know about with mSpot's latest endeavor. The free limit is right around 2GB (exact size is TBD), so if you've got more than a second generation iPod's worth of audio, this here service will only serve as a tease. For those who fall under that threshold, there's plenty to love, and if you're down for ponying up, you'll be able to secure 10GB for $2.99 per month or 20GB for $4.99 per month. Launched today at Google I/O, this "freemium" music cloud service essentially syncs your entire music library (either in iTunes or a user-designated arrangement of folders) with mSpot's servers -- provided your library is less than 20GB, of course -- and then makes it available anywhere. Phones and other computers should have no issue tapping in (though only Android will be supported out of the gate), and the app itself runs quietly in the background in order to check for new additions / subtractions and mirror said changes in your online library. For now, the service is available by invitation only through mspot.com, with public availability slated for next month. Size limits aside, the service worked well for us in our limited testing, though that first 20GB upload is a real pain over Time Warner Cable's obviously capped Road Runner internet. Oh, and if you're bummed about not being guaranteed an invite today, you shouldn't be. Hit that source link and enter "engadget" as the password -- the first 500 get immediate access, but once they're gone, they're gone. *20GB tops, buster!
**Only on Android, Macs and PCs at first, chief!
Continue reading mSpot stores your music* in the cloud, makes it available anywhere**
SouthernLINC Launches Motorola i1 Rugged Android Phone
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
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Visa launches iPhone case that enables wireless payments, NFC style [Japan is laughing at us]
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Visa, the company that probably gave you a few debt issues as a young college student, is releasing an iPhone case that enables wireless payments. Here’s how it works: The case is a glorified microSD card reader. The microSD card is what holds all the NFC circuitry required to make payments. It’s built by DeviceFidelity. Now I know what a lot of you are thinking right now, the IntoMobile team is thinking the same thing, why not simply release DeviceFidelity’s solution for the millions of smartphones that already have microSD card slots? Android, Symbian, RIM, most featurephones, all these platforms have microSD card support … yet Visa decided it was wise to build a case for an iPhone.
We’re just thrilled that the mobile payment space is finally starting to get some traction. With Square recently becoming available to everyone, now this … it shouldn’t be more than a year or two until you’re either using, or know someone who uses, wireless enabled payments on their mobile phone. Just last week Juniper Research predicted that NFC payments are going to increase by a factor of four over the next four years.
I’ll believe it when I see it. The problem here isn’t the technology. NFC can be shoved into any number of smartphones today. It’s the banking industry. Who will “own” the customer once NFC takes off? Will the bank own the relationship to the NFC chip? Will the operator? Will a consumer be able to switch between banks without the need to switch mobile phones? What about MasterCard and American Express, where are they in all of this? Visa is trying to stay ahead of the curve by being early, but time and time again it’s been demonstrated that the company that doesn’t something first, isn’t necessarily the same company that does said thing the best. Every time Steve Jobs gets on stage, he pounds his chest about how many credit cards the company has on file. Wait until he decides to launch “iPay” or whatever he decides to call it.
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Gameloft makes select games available for direct download, not available on Android Market
Downloading applications outside of the Android Market takes a little more work on the user’s end, but it’s not at all hard. User’s must go into the setting of their devices, and enable downloads from ‘unknown sources’ to be able to download outside of the Market. From their you can download applications and install them to your Android phone at will. With applications like Linda File Manager, enabling the ‘unknown sources’ will allow a user to download any sort of file type, as long as the microSD card has ample space available. The option to download applications outside of the Android Market can appeal to developers who want to give out a beta application to testers without releasing it into the market place.
In an email to Wired.com, vice president of publishing, Baudouin Corman said that the company thinks Android is still in its early stages, and they want to make their games available in more than one place to find the ‘optimal system’ for users to get access to their games. He would be right. Android still has ways to go to get the saturation of games that the iPhone AppStore now enjoys. Newer, more high-end Android devices should appeal more to developers that want to write a graphics intensive game for the platform. Those devices can’t come soon enough.
Corman also mentioned that the company has released 30 different titles in the Android Market. Unfortunately, with my Nexus One (running the Sense UI, I might add), a “Gameloft” search only returns 10 results. Same with my MyTouch 3G. While titles like Asphalt, and Assassin’s Creed show up in the search, a lot of the games are a little less appealing – that is, unless you like Uno… a lot. For more appealing games like Iron Man 2, Avatar, and Spider-Man Toxic City, you’ll have to go to the Gameloft website in order to download them.
I think it’s a smart move for the company. They aren’t locked into the Android Market like they are with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s App Store, so trying to get come extra cash from a different place seems like a logical step. Gameloft had reported that they sell about 400 times more games on the iPhone than Android. If Android doesn’t get its fragmentation issues sorted out, I wouldn’t expect this to change anytime soon.
Starbucks Offering Discount to Foursquare Mayors
Through June 28, Starbucks is offering select users of the Foursquare social networking service a $1 discount on Frappuccino beverages. Users must be the Foursquare "mayor" of the Starbucks location, and the offer can only be redeemed once. Though other venues have offered discounts to Foursquare users in the past, the Starbucks offer is the largest deal to encourage use of the location-based social site, which offers users points and "badges" for reporting their presence at various locations and events. The deal also may signify an edge for Foursquare over competitor sites like Gowalla, MyTown and Booyah, which all offer a similar style of location-based networking. Foursquare currently offers a dedicated app for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry platforms, as well as a mobile site for other users.
from Starbucks
more info at Mashable »
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Nokia partners with Harman to 'standardize' cellular infotainment
Though Microsoft, RIM and possibly Google are already vying to be the center of the automotive infotainment push, a certain Finnish phone manufacturer says it wants to take charge -- in what seems to be the latest phase of its Terminal Mode initiative, Nokia's tapped infotainment provider Harman to "standardize" the interface between phone and car. Like Harman's last in-dash venture, a touchscreen and physical controls will be the focus, while your handset (rather than an Intel Atom) does the heavy lifting. Connected via Bluetooth or USB, your Nokia will play music, deliver Ovi Maps, respond to voice control and more, with the entire phone display duplicated onto the car's larger touchscreen for easy access and a set of auto-specific apps planned for Nokia's Ovi Store. It all sounds pretty swell, but it's still not clear how the companies intend to standardize anything beyond their balance sheets; we're not sure how much Nokia will appreciate you connecting a Droid to their Ovi-powered car. PR after the break.
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In2Pay is the name of Visa and DeviceFidelity's money-grubbing iPhone case
Visa has been trying to finagle its way onto mobiles for quite a while, and its latest attempt, done in partnershipwith DeviceFidelity, has now been named as the In2Pay system for iPhones of 3G and 3GS varieties. Built around an app ensconced on a MicroSD card inside that oh-so-special iPhone case, this offers contactless payments anywhere that Visa's payWave is available, as well as secure access to buildings and computer networks. Yep, that sounds like it's definitely going to end in tears, but the brave cash collectors are pressing ahead. Trials are still set for the second quarter of this year, which makes them imminent, and soon thereafter we'll all be making our ill-advised purchases with even greater ease. Video and full PR after the break.
Monday, May 17, 2010
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Mobile Marketer Velti Files To Raise Up To $200 Million In U.S. IPO
from mocoNews
Mobile marketing firm Velti has filed to raise up to $200 million in a U.S. IPO. The company, which provides a platform advertisers use to manage their mobile ad camapaigns, says it will use the proceeds to pay back all of its $39 million in debt, as well as for “general corporate purposes.”
Velti has been trading on the AIM stock exchange in London for four years, so its financial status was already known. (It raised $17 million in its IPO there in 2006). The company’s F-1 filing does however provide some updates: Its revenue was $90 million last year, up from $62 million in 2008. Net income was $6.2 million, compared to a $6.2 million loss in 2008. And Velti paid $3.6 million for Ad Infuse, the U.S.-based mobile ad startup it purchased a year ago.
Velti expects to trade under the symbol VELT on the Nasdaq stock market. The offering is being underwritten by Needham & Co., RBC Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity, and ThinkEquity.
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