Mobile : Page 1
posted 11 mins ago
GSMA Says It Has ‘Contingency Plans’ In Place For MWC Strike. I’m Getting A Bike
This is definitely one way for unions to get some attention for their cause: as of this time of writing, public transport employees in Barcelona will be striking during the Mobile World Congress trade show, due to take place between February 27 and March 1. That means no buses and no metros (subways) for an event that last year attracted more than 60,000 people to the city — many of whom did not walk or take cabs and limos across the sprawling Spanish metropolis to get around the event — not the easiest to navigate even in the best of times.
The organizers, the GSMA, is getting understandably worried that this news is going to hit the event hard: the idea of logistics chaos will end up keeping some people away, and those who do show up could end up leaving with a bad taste in their mouths for the future. → Read More
posted yesterday
Chart:InFourYears,AppleSoldMoreiPhonesThanAllMacsEver
If anyone has any doubt that iPhones, iPads and other iOS devices are the future if Apple, just take a look at the chart above from Asymco. Â It shows all iOS products sold cumulatively versus all OS X products ever sold (Macs) over the past 28 years. The iPhone has only been around for four years, but in that time more iPhones have been sold than all the Macs ever sold in Appele’s entire history.
The total number of Macs sold is 122 million. In 2011 alone, if you tally up all the iOS devices including iPods and iPads, 156 million were sold—more than all Macs ever sold. In one year. → Read More
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posted yesterday
U.S. Cellular Reveals Additional LTE Markets, Expected To Go Live In 2H 2012
While larger carriers like AT&T and Verizon are duking it out to cover the country in LTE signal, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there are other contenders in the ring too. Case in point: U.S. Cellular, the nation’s sixth largest wireless provider, announced earlier today that they plan to light up their forthcoming 4G LTE network in 14 additional states before the year is out.
U.S. Cellular revealed earlier this month that their LTE network would go live some time in March, and would initially cover “select cities in Wisconsin, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas.” → Read More
posted yesterday
Linden Lab Acquires Game Studio LittleTextPeople To Build Beyond Second Life
Independent game studio LittleTextPeople made waves at GDC with its eponymous interactive fiction game. Now it’s been acquired by virtual world pioneer Linden Lab, who will use its team and tech to create standalone products outside of its sole game Second Life. LittleTextPeople says it brings a “simulator able to model social practices and individual personalities”. That means the new Linden Lab games could be have the “rich emotional dialogue of a novel, rather than a fight scene in an action movie”. → Read More
posted yesterday
Ridiculously Pricey Lumia 800 Bundle Available Now In MS Retail Stores
We’ve talked about the Lumia line quite a bit in the past few months, but the series is finally starting to feel real. Just last week the 900 was made available for pre-order, and today we’re seeing reports that the staggeringly high-priced Lumia 800 bundle is just hanging out on Microsoft store shelves waiting for some new Windows Phone fans to stroll in.
Along with the phone itself, which is compatible with AT&T’s network, you’ll get a Nokia Play 360 Bluetooth speaker, Nokia Purity HD headphones and a Luna Bluetooth headset. Unfortunately, that means you’ll be paying $899 for a phone that should probably cost you around $150-$200 (with carrier subsidies) and getting a whole bunch of stuff that’s nice and all but that you never really wanted to begin with. → Read More
posted yesterday
Andrew Mason: Groupon To Begin Offering Deal Personalization Abroad Later This Quarter
At the Goldman Sachs Internet and Technology Conference in San Francisco Thursday, Groupon Founder and CEO Andrew Mason took to the stage to talk about the daily deal behemoth’s newly-minted position as a public company, its roller coaster ride both leading up to and since its IPO, as well as plans for the future.
There was a lot of pressure bearing down on Groupon in the months leading up to its emergence on NASDAQ, with many grumbling about its overvaluation and undercooked business model, among other things. After listing its initial offering at $26 a share in November, the company’s stock today has dropped to $20 a share, after a series of ups and downs. → Read More
posted yesterday
FTC Finds Privacy Problems In Children’s Apps, But Suggested Changes Will Impact All
I believe the children are the future. (What, too soon?) But in the case of the new FTC report on mobile applications for kids, which references the current data handling practices employed by mobile developers, the children are the future. They’re the future indicators of how our personal information needs to be handled in today’s mobile app ecosystem.
Although the new report makes recommendations specifically for children’s applications, there’s obviously an undercurrent of outrage and violation underway now (thanks mainly to addressgate). People, not just parents, need to control and understand how and why their data is being collected, used, and shared, and what that really means. The question is, how is this done? → Read More
posted yesterday
Yes, Hipster Is (Almost) Sending Someone Into Space
Ah, Hipster, the startup whose promotional ideas are either brilliant, obnoxious, or brilliantly obnoxious. This time the company, which allows you to share digital postcards, has outdone itself — it’s promising to send one of its users into space.
Technically, Hipster is offering a ticket on a Zero G flight in a modified Boeing 727 — so it’s a space “experience”, rather than, you know, actual space, but that’s probably the closest that you’ll ever get to being the next Neil Armstrong. The winner will be selected randomly from users who sign up and send at least one postcard between February 10 and March 10.
CEO Doug Ludlow says the company likes to challenge itself to come up with crazy, viral promotions every few months. First, there was Hipster’s cryptic launch page, which got a huge response. Next, it recruited engineers by offering $10,000 in cash and a year’s supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon. → Read More
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posted yesterday
New Swype Beta Packs Support For Ice Cream Sandwich
Don’t get me wrong — Ice Cream Sandwich’s stock keyboard is pretty fantastic, but after having spent the past year or two Swyping my way though text messages and emails, most other modes of text input just feel slow in comparison. Thankfully, the latest Swype beta has just been made available, and with it comes full support for Google’s latest and greatest mobile operating system.
Aside from being able to slip and slide your way through a few lengthy missives, Ice Cream Sandwich users can also take Swype’s Nuance-powered voice dictation for a spin. → Read More
posted yesterday
Death To Feature Creep! Bump 3.0 Dumps All But Contacts and Photo Sharing
more, More, MORE. STOP! Rather than cram more features into Bump 3.0, the team behind the 75 million-installs mobile app combed the data and brushed off all the features no one used. Now, instead of letting you wirelessly share apps, music, and calendar events with nearby devices, it only allows contacts and photo sharing. That’s a better user experience, and examples other developers should follow.
→ Read More
posted yesterday
Snag Last-Minute Concert Tickets With The New Thrillcall iOS App
We all love music. I mean, when’s the last time you heard someone say they didn’t like listening to music? But for some of us, plugging in some ear buds and cranking a jam or two on the iPod just doesn’t cut it. If that sounds like you, please allow me to introduce you to one of the newest apps to grace the iOS platform: Thrillcall.
Thrillcall has taken its live music discovery site and transformed it into a mobile app to let you find and purchase tickets to live music events when you’re out and about. The app has exclusive offers for shows and makes finding a local concert much more simple. → Read More
posted yesterday
With Users Viewing 100M Photos/Month, Pixable Taps Hashtags To Help Sort Pics
Since its name began appearing on blogs and in media early last year, and launched officially at DEMO in March, Pixable has been able to sustain that buzz — no easy feat in a world saturated with photo apps. That’s because millions of photos and videos are shared on social networks every day, making it difficult to find the ones that matter amidst the noise. So, Pixable pulls that fire hose of images and videos from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo, aggregates them in one place, and then gives users a number of sleek categorization, sorting, and editing tools to help them find the most relevant content. → Read More
posted yesterday
YC-Backed Glassmap Launches A “Find My Friends” For Facebook Users
YC-backed Glassmap is a new mobile application publicly launching today that presents a viable challenge to realtime, location-sharing apps like Apple’s Find My Friends or Google Latitude. Where those two competitors focus on enabling social experiences on top of their own platforms or ecosystems, Glassmap is enabling a third alternative: realtime location tracking built on top of Facebook’s social graph. Yes, it’s like a “Find My Facebook Friends.”
However, this app isn’t using Facebook check-ins to track your friends – it’s actually tracking them in real time, by running the app passively in the background. And that’s where Glassmap’s killer feature comes in: the startup is using “relay” technology to minimize the typical battery drains associated with realtime location-sharing apps today.
→ Read More
posted yesterday
With Clik, Your Smartphone Can Control Screens Everywhere
You’ve probably heard of Kik Messenger, a phone messaging app with the backing of Union Sqaure Ventures and RRE. It turns out Kik was just the beginning of the company’s plans — today it’s launching Clik, which is even more impressive.
Put simply, Clik can turn your phone into a remote control for any screen with a browser.
CEO Ted Livingston demonstrated the app for me earlier this week. Here’s how it works: You point your desktop browser at ClikThis.com, which generates a unique QR code. Then you open the Clik iPhone or Android app, aim the camera at the screen, and the app uses the code to figure out which device you’re trying to control. Once it’s synced up, you can select YouTube videos from your phone, and they’ll play on the screen. → Read More
posted yesterday
Yes, It’s True: Kids Are Tablet Fiends. And Gaming Apps Are The Winners
If you own a tablet and have children, chances are that this will not come as news to you. For those who don’t but work in mobile, it’s something worth remembering when you’re concocting up your next big product: Kids are crazy about tablets.
According to some research out today from Nielsen in the U.S., in households that own a tablet, seven out of 10 children under the age of 12 use them. And that usage is on the rise: those numbers are for Q4 2011, and are a nine percent increase on the quarter before. → Read More
posted yesterday
Samsung Galaxy Note Review: Head-To-Head With The Galaxy Nexus And Streak 5
If last week’s showdown between the Droid 4, Droid 3, and iPhone 4S didn’t get your blood pumping, prepare yourself for the heavyweight round. We’ve got the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy Note going up against the Dell Streak and the beastly Galaxy Nexus.
Obviously the Streak is a somewhat older device, but it’s very similar in size to the Note which should give former Streak owners a good idea of what to expect out of the Note. Meanwhile, the GalNex is yet another huge screen that Note enthusiasts are probably considering, as well.
Onward! → Read More
posted yesterday
OS X Mountain Lion Brings The Mac Into The Game
Gamers, start your engines, lift your fruit-slicing swords, and lace up your Temple-running shoes.
Game Center, Apple’s gaming/social hub for iOS, has finally made it’s way over to the more mature Apple OS, OS X Mountain Lion. This is huge. Not because you’ll be able to enjoy the features of Game Center while playing around on your Mac (which will likely be great fun, too, I’m sure), but because gaming will now bust through the platform barrier allowing you to duke it out with anyone on just about any Apple device. → Read More
posted yesterday
Facebook’s Mobile Net Widens As Orange Turns On Access In Africa
A significant announcement today that could have a big impact on Facebook and its mobile strategy: the mobile carrier Orange, part of France Telecom, announced that it is rolling out a new service that will let those using even the most low-end mobile phones to access the social network in Africa, where Orange has operations in 20 countries, covering 70 million subscribers.

The move is important because data access — both fixed and mobile — is still very minimal in many parts of the continent: Orange notes that on its own networks in Africa, only between seven and 15 percent of subscribers access data services of any kind. This gives Facebook (and potentially others) a way of getting around that issue and building up relationships anyway. → Read More
posted yesterday
Opera Snaps Up Mobile Theory, 4th Screen For $26M In Mobile Ad Push
Mobile browser company Opera today announced that it has acquired the mobile ad networks Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising. The move is not just another sign of the ongoing consolidation in that space, but also of the need to bulk up to better compete with the likes of Google with more full-service solutions.
Opera will be paying $18 million for Mobile Theory and $8 million for 4th Screen, with potential earn-outs bringing in an additional $32 million and $6.5 million respectively in 2013 and 2014 → Read More
February 15th, 2012
The Address Book Fiasco: Another Reason For Apple To Get Its Social Platform Right
After a week of confused coverage around which mobile app developers access user address books and how they do it, we are finally getting a product-level resolution. Apple says today (in time to beat back some inquiring congressmen) that it will start requiring developers to ask for explicit user permission in order to access these contacts.
The new interface, slated for its next iOS operating system release, will provide a permissions notification to users after they install an app, similar to how it currently requires users to approve location sharing or push notifications. This change will add some arguably unnecessary friction to users of apps that pull address books — and a lot of developers will be affected, as 11% of free iOS apps were accessing address books as of the start of last year, according to one study.
→ Read More
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Insurers World — Acquired by Enservio.
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
Insurers World — Acquired by Enservio.
SharePoint911 — Acquired by Rackspace.
Zimo Communications — Acquired by J2 Global Communications.
Juliet Marine Systems — Received $9.67M in Series A funding
DN2K — Received $1.5M in Series A funding
ProMAC — Received $10M in Debt funding from Metropolitan Equity Partners
July Systems — Received $15M in Unattributed funding from Updata Partners, Intel Capital, and Westbridge Capital Partners
Ruckus Wireless — Received $21.7M in Unattributed funding
Metropolitan Equity Partners — Invested in ProMAC.
Intel Capital — Invested in July Systems.
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Westbridge Capital Partners — Invested in July Systems.
Founders Fund — Invested in Backplane.
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
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