Following up on its earlier report on iOS browser market share, ad network Chitika today released new results from a study which analyzed the impact mobile computing has had on traditional web browsing trends. In examining traffic across its network from August 2011 to February 2012, Chitika says that Windows web browsing market share has declined by almost 10%.

To determine its findings, Chitika analyzed data from hundreds of millions of ad impressions covering a cross section its network of 120,000 sites. Although a large sample size, we need to point out that this study is limited only to sites on the Chitika network. To be definitive, a larger study across multiple ad networks is still needed.

However, the data is interesting, especially in light of Chitika’s earlier discovery that iOS web traffic now surpasses that of Mac OS X. The firm theorizes that the new research, which involves an observed nearly* 10% decline in Windows web browsing market share, is due to the increase in browsing from mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. That is to say, mobile browsing is eating into traditional PC-based browsing. But the drop may also be the result of decreased PC production in 2011 arising from the component shortages that occurred during the recent monsoon season. The monsoons led to flooding in Thailand, which disrupted factories, and therefore overall PC production.

On its own, data like this could be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, but other signs that we’re entered the “post-PC†era have already arrived. For example, earlier this month, analysts at Canalys reported two major shifts in computing trends: one, that smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and two, that Apple has become the world’s largest PC maker, assuming iPads are counted as PCs.

With that data in hand, Chitika’s insights into its own network feels more like further confirmation of the ongoing trends, and less like some weird fluke occurring with a niche number of websites.

* The chart shows a drop from August 2011 (78.3%) to Feb. 2012 (71.4%), which would be a 6.9% drop. But the percentage change between the highest and lowest points referenced in the study come out to 9.66% which rounds up to 10%. 

Ethical Community, an online, eco-friendly marketplace (which has plans for a snazzier name in the works!), has secured a £200,000 ($316,640 USD) round of seed funding from a syndicate of angel investors, the company is announcing today. Founded in 2009, the marketplace has signed up over 850 sellers from around the world, who have now listed over 7,000 eco-friendly, organic and natural products including clothing, jewelry, health and beauty products, food and drink items, pet items and more.

The new investors include AlertMe.com CEO and ASOS.com board member Mary Turner, founding partner at Alchemy Partners, Robert Barnes, venture investor Kelvin Au, and CEO of Orange Advertising Networks, Giuliano Stiglitz.

The company was started by entrepreneurs Liam Patterson and Jason Dainter, who had the idea to connect customers to sellers in a more personal way. People want to hear the stories behind the products, explains Patterson. “To conscious shoppers, this story is more important than the visual appearance of the product,†he says.

As someone who is often the recipient of gifts like handmade, dye-free soaps and homemade jewelry, I know from first-hand experience that it’s the story that convinces the eco-friendly shopper to make their purchase. I never receive just the item in question as my gift, I also receive the card telling me about the story behind the product, as well as a personal anecdote regarding the item’s makers.

To be able to make that same one-on-one connection on the sometimes more impersonal platform of the web is a challenge, but one that seems worth the attempt. To personalize the experience, sellers can now create blog posts on the Ethical Community website to share their stories and interests, as well as post videos from their homes or workshops.

Ethical Community, which is based in the startup-friendly Shoreditch area of London, says it will use the seed funding to grow its seller and shopper base, continue its expansion plans, and launch an improved version of the site in the spring.

Admits co-founder Dainter, the focus until today has been acquiring great sellers, but now they’re working on rebranding. “To be honest, the name and brand needs a revamp, and the funding will help in that respect. Structurally, we have a lot of changes coming.â€

One of those changes will involve making the video system a more predominant part of the site, and integrating it more heavily into the social feeds.

“Our brand is very much about the personal connection with buyers and sellers. Video is a great way to do that, so we’re intending to build on that,†Dainter says.

Clipboard, the web clipping service founded by former Overture vet Gary Flake, has just completed the acquisitions of two competitors, Amplify and Clipmarks. The startup, which is taking on the challenge of reviving social bookmarking, is backed by many top notch investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, SV Angel, Betaworks, DFJ, First Round, CrunchFund (note: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is a founding partner in CrunchFund) and others.

Current Amplify and Clipmarks users will be invited to join Clipboard via email, but anyone else can request an invitation to the Clipboard private beta directly from the the service’s homepage.

As per usual, terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but users are in the process of being notified now. An official blog post will also go up later today, serving as “official notification.â€

For those unfamiliar, both Amplify and Clipmarks served similar interests: social bookmarking. To be clear, Amplify is actually owned by Clipmarks, LLC, but functions as a separate service. Amplify allows users to clip excerpts from an article, photos, videos, and other content, and then share those items across social media. It was more of a utility for posting content to multiple networks at once (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, WordPress, etc.). Meanwhile Clipmarks, an older service, did much of the same, but focused more on publishing clips to your blog, emailing items to friends or even printing them out. It also once included a Digg-like feature that allowed the most popular bookmarks to “pop†up to the top of the site.

In 2007, TechCrunch reported Clipmarks may have been acquired by Forbes, during a time when Delicious still reigned in the social bookmarking space. But instead of improving on the original Clipmarks product itself, Forbes spun it back around as a new service called Amplify.

Although social bookmarking once seemed to be a bit of a holdover from the Web 2.0 era, the recent success of startups like Pinterest have shown that there’s still life in this category yet, especially if you leverage the social backbone of Facebook to go viral and combine that with a more appealing, visual user interface.

On that front, Clipboard announced a design refresh earlier this month that clearly puts it in Pinterest’s territory. Web clips now appear as tiles with thumbnail previews, action counters and annotations (hashtags), and are laid out on the page as tiled boxes of varying sizes.

The most intriguing thing about Clipboard at present, however, is its current list of investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, CrunchFund, DFJ, SV Angel / Ron Conway, Betaworks, First Round Capital, CODE Advisors, Founder’s Co-Op, Acequia Capital, Vast Ventures, Ted Meisel (former CEO of Overture and now at Elevation Partners), Blake Krikorian (former CEO of Sling and now an Amazon board member), and Vivi Nevo.

Clipboard isn’t the only startup outside of Pinterest working to revive social bookmarking, others in this space include Snip.it, Snipi, and the newly relaunched Delicious.

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?

In the FTC report titled “Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures Are Disappointing,†the agency found that applications on both the Apple App Store and the Android Market did little to provide information about their data collection practices. The majority of the time, there’s no way for a parent to read an app’s description to make any sort of informed decision about whether it’s appropriate for a child.

Apps are capable of accessing a variety of personal information, including a person’s name, their contacts list, their call logs, unique identifiers, precise location and more. Apps are also capable of connecting to social media and often contain ads, which opens up other vectors for data collection.

As Alexia already pointed out, much of the problem with the current set up and the privacy issues it causes has to do with a general lack of enforcement by the mobile application stores themselves (i.e., Apple and Google). The FTC backs this up, basically saying that without proper enforcement of the stores’ own guidelines, developers have little incentive to comply. And certainly, they have no incentive to go above and beyond to provide special disclosures to parents.

What’s more, the FTC suggests that mobile applications designed for use by children may even be in violation of COPPA, aka the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. This rule requires operators of online services, including interactive mobile apps, to provide notice and get parental consent prior to collecting information from children under 13. Over the next 6 months, the FTC will be reviewing apps to determine whether some are in violation. Likely, many are.

But the root of the concerns detailed in this report have to do with  the fact that there is no easy, common, standard method to understand what an app does behind the scenes or why. The FTC plans to address this issue in 2012 through a public workshop where it attempt to define how “mobile privacy disclosures†should work, including how they can be “short, effective, and accessible to consumers on small screens.â€

Already, Apple and Google have their own ways to alert users to apps’ access requests. iOS apps display pop-ups when an app wants to use your location, for example, while Android asks you pre-installation if you agree to allow the app access the data it requests, which is then listed below. Neither of these means are effective enough to provide a deeper understanding of what data the app may be after, (like address book, as was the case with Path), but also whether that data is shared, with who, and for what purposes.

The creation of such a “mobile privacy disclosure†as the FTC describes would clearly not be a kids-only venture in light of recent events. And if additional parental controls are needed to thwart potentially invasive data-sharing behaviors as related to children’s apps, it’s an obvious next step to make those same controls available to all.

That may not be a bad thing. After all, why shouldn’t developers implement the technical solutions that prevent problems like addressgate from occurring in the first place? Why shouldn’t apps be more careful about which data they request? The answer, of course, is that they should, and probably more of them would if rushing to market in the app gold rush wasn’t such a priority.

In many cases, apps in violation aren’t “evil†so much as they’re a result of lazy coding, young developers and mistakes getting overlooked. Put governmental requirements in their way, and the exponential app growth slows down. Code has to be checked again and again. The app review progress gets longer. Maybe Google has to actually implement an app review process for Android apps. Apps will be submitted, rejected, and resubmitted over and over while code gets cleaned up. All in the name of privacy. Again, that may not be a bad thing, but it will definitely change the game.

Lost Crates, a subscription service that previously focused on boutique stationery goods (as if there was a demand for such a thing!), is today announcing its relaunch and expansion into several new verticals. The company is one of many in the crowded subscription services market where startups send you stuff by mail, often for low monthly fees. With Lost Crates, however, there’s more of designer goods aspect to its service, and its fees definitely put it into the “luxury†category.

Stationery will still offered, but there are also five other themed packages featuring housewares, foodie items and eco goods, plus a curated selection of the co-founder’s favorites and a package that highlights the best goods from a different region every month.

It seems hard to believe that people were ordering stationery goods packages through subscription (to be clear, we’re talking mainly paper and pens here), but co-founder Jack Wheeler claims there was a small demand for those types of items. However, he admits now that stationery may not be the best vertical to be in.

“The reality is that stationery isn’t as big of a market as we thought.†(No, really?) “But it wasn’t doing poorly,†he adds. “If it was, we would have gotten rid of it. We still have quite a few subscribers.â€

Wheeler declined to give exact numbers but says Lost Crates has several hundred paying users and has grown each month. With the relaunch, the company wants to shift into the designer goods market, but will do so using subscription model, instead of say, flash goods or traditional e-commerce. It’s a service that seems like a fit for the Fab.com shopper who wants a little more serendipity to their purchases. “It’s like Christmas in a box,†Wheeler says of the company’s packages.

Oh, to be rich and bored!

I’m kidding, of course. (Err, a bit.) Still, the luxury client is obviously a key demographic being targeted here, comprising around 85% of the Lost Crates user base to date.

“Our normal subscriber is someone who is interested in a particular field, or is passionate about one of our themes, or just wants to be surprised and delighted every month. It’s our job to send them really interesting things that they might like,†says Wheeler.

Lost Crates’ pricing reflects the luxury demographic it’s after. Prices range from $38/month to $68/month, depending on the package. There are quarterly packages available, too, but the monthly fees remain the same.

Besides stationery, the new packages include the following:

Wheeler, whose passion for design came from childhood, growing up in an architect’s home, is actually a former Groupon employee working in sales and business development. (That’s a change!) Lost Crates‘ leader, founder Danny Levi, also has passion for designer goods, and founded a subscription service for men’s skincare and grooming called Get Fresh Kit.

Lost Crates has a bridge round of funding (in the hundreds of thousands) from its parent company, Chicago-based Sandbox Industries. Sandbox’s venture fund has also incubated Doggyloot, Cake Style, Lab42 and many others.

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.â€

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.

To use Glassmap, you first have to authenticate with Facebook, then invite those friends you want to share your location with. For obvious reasons, it’s not going to immediately start tracking all your Facebook friends upon first launch – it’s an opt-in experience, and one that requires either an iPhone or Android. However, even if you don’t explicitly invite a Facebook friend to join, but they install the app on their own, they’ll show up in your friends list. If you would prefer they don’t see your location, you can toggle a switch to block them.

Overall, the app itself is simple. There’s nothing much more to it than a Google map, a settings screen, and list of online and offline friends. But in this case, the simplicity works in its favor – the app is incredibly easy to use.

Glassmap was founded by Geoffrey Woo, Jon Zhang  and Jonathan Chang – three Stanford engineers who dropped out from their Stanford MS programs to start the company. They specialized in distributed systems, circuits, web and mobile development and industrial design.

It’s this background that helped them design what may be Glassmap’s best feature: its relay technology. Before, typical location-sharing apps would drain a smartphone’s battery at about a rate of ~5% drain/hour. Glassmap, however, claims to be an order of magnitude (~0.5%/hour) more efficient. To accomplish this, its servers dynamically push and pull data from client devices. The server, which stores the state or context of all Glassmap clients, has more data than any one client has. This framework allows the app to take advantage of what’s happening locally and socially around the user to fix location more efficiently than having the app update every few minutes or as you change cell towers.

“For example, if it’s 3 AM at night, and no one’s actually trying to look for you, there’s no reason to actively update your location all the time,†explains Woo. “But if I’m trying to meet up with you, I can pull in your location data dynamically, and I can do that in real-time, without killing the battery.â€

Although today is Glassmap’s public debut, it was actually soft-launched earlier this year on college campuses, starting with Stanford, where it’s now used by an estimated 10% of undergrads. As of today, Glassmap is live on 10 college campuses, and the company’s goal is to reach 50 more over the next 3 months.

While the big goal is to build a better location-tracking application through technology improvements, there’s also a company philosophy that realtime location sharing is the future. They believe that startups like Foursquare, which requires manual updating, represent out-of-date technology.

“We think that check-ins are an artifact of technology. We think that they’re a middle step in what location sharing will eventually be like,†Woo explains. “Having to pull out your phone and manually tag a location is pretty low-tech.â€

He’s really not kind to the lowly check-in, referring to check-ins as everything from “a fad†to “a novelty†to “a lot of work†throughout our conversation. But while Foursquare, for now, seems married to the concept of the check-in, it could move to automate or speed up the process for its users, while avoiding the privacy concerns of automated location tracking.

What Glassmap pushes us to ask ourselves, is whether our realtime location can form the basis of a new social service beyond the college kid set, or whether realtime tracking an area that’s still best for family locator apps.

Glassmap thinks it can be both. “We think there’s so many applications for location,†says Woo. “while we’re focusing on the market we understand the best [colleges], we want to be the general, de facto location sharing service. That is the ultimate goal.â€

The team was a part of this summer’s Y Combinator program, and also has funding from SV Angel and StartFund.

With today’s reveal of the next version of OS X - OS X 10.8, aka Mountain Lion – Apple is more deeply integrating its iCloud service into the operating system itself. No longer will storing your documents in the cloud feel like an extra, value-added feature – it will feel like part of the OS itself. The cloud is just another drive, Apple seems to say, and saving to the cloud should look and feel no different than saving to your Documents folder or your Desktop.

The idea, of course, is not novel. It’s what startups like Dropbox are doing today: making a drive that appears like any other, but that can be accessed from any machine. While on the surface, it’s easy to dub iCloud “Apple’s version of Dropbox,†the truth is actually more complex: it’s about building a new computing paradigm.

In testing the new iCloud integration in Mountain Lion, a file could be open in multiple locations – say, your Mac, iPad and iPhone – and when a change was made, it would appear almost instantly across all three devices in real time. You don’t have to wait for a notification, or reload the file. It just appears. While the immediate thought is that iCloud is rapidly turning into Apple’s own, improved version of Dropbox, it’s also a fierce competitor to Google Docs, and the long-rumored Google Drive.

With Google, however, the philosophy is that file creation itself can be migrated to the cloud. An online office suite is “good enough,†if not as good, as a native one. And “good enough†will win due to ease of use. With almost a completely opposing view, Apple’s iCloud is doing the reverse: bringing the capabilities of the cloud to the richer, more robust native apps. This includes not just office apps in iWork, but through the use of developer APIs, it will extend to any apps that need to be iCloud-enabled. Although today, iCloud support is more limited for third-parties, the APIs will improve in time. Eventually, any app running on the Apple platform (desktop or mobile), will have the tools to move data between its different installations.

To make the transition to the cloud seamless, Apple has embedded the cloud deep into the new version of OS X, right down to the “Open†and “Save†dialog boxes. Mac Store Apps will be able to immediately save to either the local file system or iCloud. The iCloud is also baked into the Finder, showing a realtime list of files, sorted by application. And managing those files has an iOS-like flair: you drag and drop them on top of each other to make a folder, for example. And even the background here looks like the iOS springboard.

But Apple’s iCloud is not just about building a better Dropbox – it’s about keeping everything in sync: Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Notes, Photos, Accounts, and more.

For now, the end user sees iCloud as this Internet location, as represented by a new choice to make: “save to iCloud?†As if the iCloud is merely an online storage bin! But this almost feels like a transitory step between the world we’re accustomed to  - that of physical hard drives – and a future in the cloud. The funny thing about this in-between step is that it somewhat misrepresents the cloud in its attempt at simplicity. The cloud is not actually a “hard drive in the sky†(hello, Microsoft). It’s a fabric that allows us to maintain a single computing environment, no matter where we are or what device we use.

Greenstart, the San Francisco-based startup accelerator dedicated to the cleantech industry – and more importantly, to making it “sexy†enough to attract investors – announced its second cadre of of companies this week. This time around, the organization is tightening its focus to concentrate solely on the intersection of I.T. and cleantech, specifically in areas of smart grid, the built environment, consumer services and transportation.

It’s also being highly selective in terms of the startups accepted into the program. Of the 152 applicants, only five companies got in.

“We’re trying to make cleantech a little sexier in the investment community,†explains Greenstart co-founder Mitch Lowe who runs the program alongside five other entrepreneurs and greentech/cleantech believers. “Cleantech has gotten kind of a bad rap lately, and we want to show that this intersection of cleantech and I.T. has a lot of good investment opportunities,†he says.

To keep the quality of the startups high, Greenstart only selected the few startups it felt would really appeal to investors. But the plan is to ramp up the numbers so that, by next year, the accelerator will have around 12 to 15 companies per program, meaning it will work with at least 30 per year.

Despite the small size, round two is actually one startup larger than Greenstart’s first group, which only included four companies out of 129 applications. The high bar, however, has led to some success in terms of its goal of investor appeal. Of the initial four, one is approaching the close of a Series A round, two are doing mid-six figure angel rounds closing this month, and one is not yet in need of funding.

With the launch of the second cadre, Greenstart is also launching an in-house design practice which will be led by its new COO, David Merkoski, the former Executive Creative Director of frog design. The organization realized the need for design talent in this space during its first run, says Lowe.

“There tends to be a high aptitude for development and a high understanding of design importance, but so far that cleantech/I.T. connection hasn’t inspired designers to be a part of that founding team yet,†Lowe says. “In general right now, entrepreneurs are still driven to create the next Facebook instead figuring out the next Opower,†he explains. “The responsibility is on us and others to show that it’s just as exciting – if not more exciting – to do something in this category.â€

Eventually, the goal is to build out a team of designers, but the program will launch with Merkoski and five junior designers and interns.

With the next cadre underway, participating startups receive all the typical benefits – mentoring, discounts, office space, etc., as well as $25,000 in seed funding. The companies (below) will demo to investors when the three month program completes. Here’s a sneak peek as to what they’re up to:

Growing Energy Labs
Founders: Ryan Wartena, Cris Wagner
Growing Energy Labs enables advanced communications between energy storage, generation and loads via their ‘micro-utility in a box’.
Twitter handle: @growingenergy

kWhOURS
Founders: Colin Davis, Greg Davis, Shobin Uralil
kWhOURS develops a mobile data collection and management software platform for building energy auditors, reducing the time and cost of performing energy audits.
Twitter handle: @kWhOURS

Ridepal
Founders: Nathalie Criou & Mark Melville
Ridepal makes it affordable and simple for any size company to offer employee shuttles.
Twitter handle: @RidePal

Scoot Networks
Founder: Michael Keating
Scoot is a stealth startup transforming local transportation.
Twitter handle: @ScootNetworks

Smart Grid Billing
Founder: Henrik Westergaard
Smart Grid Billing intelligently shifts small business and residential energy consumption off peak, selling the shifted watts as a ‘power producer’ to ISOs.
Twitter handle: @SGBill

Following five months of work, location-based Q&A platform Localmind is launching its biggest release today since its original debut with the arrival of Localmind 2.0. The newly revamped platform represents a shift for the company, which, as you may remember, sits on top of Foursquare, allowing you to pose questions in real-time to those checked in at local venues.

Today, the company is expanding its focus by allowing users to ask questions of local “experts,†even if they’re not currently checked in to a given location. However, answers can still be replied to in real-time, preserving the sense of immediacy found in the original product.

The problem with Localmind’s previous version, as anyone who used the product could tell you, is that the people checked in to a given location may not necessarily be the best ones to answer your question. While, sure, they could tell you whether the bar was crowded or whether the tuna was the special for the night, the limited use cases (and, frankly, the need) for this feature limited the product’s growth. Outside of buzzy events like SXSW where Localmind first took off among the early adopter crowd, the real-world need to ping someone with immediate questions about local businesses was far less pressing.

What people more often want to know are broader questions than those relating to the current situation found in a given venue. They want to know if it’s true that this food cart has the best tacos, or if that French place is family-friendly or more often frequented by couples having a quiet night out. They want to know about parking situations, outdoor activities and general “things-to-do†type recommendations.

More importantly, they want answers they can actually trust. The latter is the hardest part of the equation, and something that user ratings and reviews sites have always struggled with. Does that unhappy customer have an ax to grind? Was that review or tip slyly posted by the business owner himself?

Although Localmind is not a user review site per se, it offers some similarities as it also relies on crowdsourced opinions as its main value driver. So, in order to make the A’s of Localmind’s Q&A’s more trustworthy, the service uses a suite of algorithms to surface experts based on their actual activities – going out, checking in, leaving tips, etc. – as opposed to the Facebook graph of “likes.â€

Over time, Localmind learns who’s an expert in what, and what types of questions they prefer to answer, then routes those questions appropriately. Today, the Localmind experts answer 90% of questions, typically in three minutes time.

While the new focus on a broader reacher is an important step for the company, there’s still the potential issue of growing the service’s expert network. For Localmind to prove its value outside of dense urban areas like NY, or tech hotspots like San Francisco, it may need to find ways to surface answers through less real-time means.

The new version of Localmind is live in the iTunes App Store here.

Buck, the mobile payments company formerly known as Billing Revolution, is launching its new, single-click credit card checkout today, which allows shoppers to pay for goods or services without an account, username or password. Coinciding with the launch is news of where you can actually use the service: the company has lined up several new high-profile customers, including Glamour, SpyderLynk, Papaya Mobile and credit card processor Braintree.

The way Buck works is that, at first, it does require a more traditional checkout process, including entry of the appropriate data like credit card number, expiration date, etc. The difference is that after that initial transaction, your phone then becomes a mobile wallet in the sense that any other Buck-enabled merchant will automatically recognize that you’re a member of the Buck network. You won’t have to type in your information again the next time you check out on a Buck-powered site.

The platform also supports SMS notifications for receipts, and all major card types (MC, VS, Amex, Discover) are supported.

In addition, Buck doesn’t have to be only for web-only merchants. With the new Glamour integration, for example, Buck will be powering the purchases of beauty products advertised in the pages of the magazine’s March issue, tying together print and mobile. Meanwhile, thanks to the deal with credit card processor and payment gateway Braintree, Buck will be offered to the company’s thousands of merchants as another payment option.

Obviously, a solution like Buck’s is only truly helpful when multiple merchants adopt the same platform, so today’s news of at least a few more major brands getting on board is a promising step for the young company. Other Buck customers include Condé Nast, L’Oreal, Mocospace, Grindr, Thornton’s, Big Fish Games and more.

Launched in 2008, the startup raised $6.6 million in Series B funding last spring, led by DCM and SK Telecom Ventures. In October, it was also one of the companies selected for DCM’s A-Fund investment, which aimed to encourage Android entrepreneurs.

You can’t call StackMob a “backend service provider for mobile†anymore, because as of now, it’s a full end-to-end solution. The cloud-based platform for mobile developers is today launching hosted HTML5 services that tie to StackMob’s backend, making it the first platform offering integrated HTML5.

Developers can use the new service to host full HTML5 apps for desktop, tablet or mobile, or can use it to host the HTML5 running within their native apps.

“We had to start with backend first because it takes much longer to build in the flexibility and scalability,†explains StackMob CEO Ty Amell, “but now that we have that system down, now we’re launching our hosted HTML5 solution.â€

What this means is that developers can now upload and run their HTML5 from StackMob. The company is also offering GitHub integration to make doing so even easier. There’s a service hook for StackMob, so when developers push changes to their GitHub account, StackMob will pull those changes and put them onto Amazon’s S3. The company has also created a streaming API, where it will stream and cache those resources for its developers.

The benefit for developers is two-fold. First, they no longer have to worry about hosting their own HTML5, it’s just a part of the StackMob service. (And there’s no fee increase to use the feature). Secondly, with hosted HTML5, there’s the ability to tie in to other StackMob features, both current and forthcoming.

For example, thanks to the GitHub integration, StackMob can keep track of the history of the HTML5 deployments, and offer developers the ability to roll back changes. But in the long run, there are other benefits to hosted HTML5.

“There’s a lot we can do to increase the performance of HTML5,†says Amell. “We can push these out to CDNs, we can do a lot of internal caching, we can do adaptive serving where we look at what URLs are being served and we pre-fetch the next one,†he explains. “We can do things around developer tools where we add JS templates, making your app use HTML5 app cache out of the box. There are a lot of different technologies that we can add in the future that we can do because we host [HTML5].â€

Also planned for the future is a build service, where developers can add native wrappers to their HTML5 apps (iOS, Android, BlackBerry Windows Phone). This will arrive by Q1, followed by advanced access controls, the use of CDNs, and auto minifying.

For StackMob, going the HTML5 route has always been on the roadmap. The company envisioned itself being an end-to-end service from the beginning, but now was the right time to make that shift, according to Amell. “We’re getting very close to where there’s a massive increase in network-connected devices,†he says. “It’s smartphones, tablets, cars, thermostats, cars, TV, even consoles – so when we think mobile that’s what we’re thinking.â€

He’s also a big supporter of HTML5 as a platform. “Eventually, HTML5 is going to win because of this network-connected device world. You’re not going to have the ability to write for whatever proprietary language all these platform devices are going to be on,†he explains. â€Even your toaster is going to be network-connected and have to talk to the cloud.â€

Wait? Even my toaster? Oh dear lord.

“I bet you it will happen. Less burned toast.â€

Flash memory maker and storage system technologies provider SanDisk announced today that it has acquired FlashSoft, a company focused on caching software products. Going forward, SanDisk will sell FlashSoft’s products both as standalone software, as well as offer them in combination with its other products, including SAS, PCIe and SATA enterprise solutions.

The company says that it expects the acquisition to be neutral to its earnings in 2012 and accretive in 2013, but additional details were not provided.

FlashSoft is currently the maker of software for Flash Virtualization which lets customers increase application performance and virtualization capability while reducing hardware and operational costs. The software is available for Windows, Linux and VMWare platforms.

With SSD-based caching, the most frequently accessed data resides close to the CPU in high-performance memory – this is how it offers the touted performance improvements. For customers, the end result is smaller, more cost effective storage configurations, which, in turn, allows them to deploy more virtual machines per server.

Through the acquisition, SanDisk is moving towards becoming a complete solution provider for enterprise and cloud customers by offering SSD-optimized software, including those from third party providers.

Update: Alongside this news, comes word that Divergent Ventures is exiting FlashSoft, one of its portfolio companies. Divergent was an early stage investor in FlashSoft in April 2011. It previously exited from Pliant Technology, another flash memory technology company, in 2011.

Clear, the heavily-anticipated touch-based to-do list app, is launching in the iTunes App Store tonight. And by heavily anticipated, I mean this app was getting tech blog coverage based on demos, previews and teaser videos.

Why the big draw for what’s typically been a rather ho-hum app category, the lowly to-do list? Clear is pure eye candy, for starters. But it’s also representative of a major leap forward in smartphone app design, as it’s been built from the ground up for the touch interface. The app is based solely on the use of now-common gestures: swipes, pulls and pinches. There are no buttons with Clear, and yet, it’s surprisingly simple to use. In fact, that’s the point.

If your current to-do list app needs are complex, you may not be in the market for Clear. But if you’re regularly turning to a simple to-do list app, or even the iPhone’s built in notepad to make your lists, Clear is definitely going to wow you.

The app is unique in that it forgoes common navigational elements – like buttons positioned either at the bottom of the screen or towards the top – in favor of an all-gesture interface. If you don’t know how to swipe and pinch, you could be lost for a second upon first launch (err, mom). But Clear’s design is meant to tap into what’s already common knowledge among smartphone users: you can swipe, pinch and pull down on on-screen elements to interact. Who needs buttons?

Somewhere, Steve Jobs, no fan of buttons (obviously – look at the iPhone, there’s just the one) is smiling.

With Clear, there are only a few gestures you need to in order to use the app: pull down on a list to add an item, swipe to the right to complete an item or to the left to delete it, pinch apart two items to insert a new one in between, and pinch vertically to close the current list and see all the lists in the app. Lists are also color-coded with a heat map to show the most pressing tasks at a glance. (See video below).

That’s it. It’s a quick learning curve, and what’s more, doing away with buttons can actually speed up the process of using to-do lists once you realize that’s how it’s done. Clear even pushes you to simplify here, too, by limiting to-do items to just 30 characters.

“There’s so much crap trying to get your attention in other to-do apps, you don’t even bother typing things in on the iPhone app version,† proclaims the app’s co-creator Phill Ryu, “with Clear it’s so fast it’s sometimes even fun.â€

But is the world ready for a buttonless app?

“Yes!†Ryu says, “Have you seen babies play with an iPad? They love swiping and manipulating things directly one-to-one on the screen. There’s nothing more natural than that on a touchscreen device.â€

He’s got a point. This weekend, I watched in amazement as a one-and-a-half year old unlocked the iPad, tapped a folder, launched Netflix, browsed the queue and launched his favorite cartoon. Jaw-dropping, really. Clear is the kind of app that’s been designed for him, and for this new generation of smartphone users who grew up with gestures. Forget backward compatibility for those sad sacks who remember Windows and other things with archaic user interface concepts like “menus†and “buttons.†Design for the future. How can you not love the idea?

The app itself has an interesting background, too. It’s a joint project between Realmac Software, Milen Dzhumerov, founder of The Cosmic Machine and Clean Cut Code, and a new studio called Impending Inc. This is the first launch for Impending, which was founded by tap tap tap partner, the above-mentioned Phill Ryu and David Lanham of the Iconfactory. Prior to Impending, the team has been involved with a number of high-profile and popular apps, including Twitterific, MacHeist, Classics and more. Not a bad way to kick off your studio’s debut.

Impending has also been working on another project for the past year and a half, but isn’t talking about the details just yet. They’re working with a very talented team, however, including some of the “usual suspects.†And yes, we’ll probably be obsessed with that app, too.

Clear is available for $0.99 / £0.69 / €0,79 from the App Store on iPhone and iPod Touch here. It goes live at 8 PM PT.

Following this month’s debut of Lilyhammer, Netflix’s first scripted series, word is that the company is now preparing to launch a second original show. The company has ordered 13 episodes of Orange is the New Black, a comedy from Jenji Kohan, the creator of Showtimes’s Weeds. The show is based on the memoir of a communications exec who served time for drug charges in a women’s prison.

The deal is being confirmed by Bloomberg (via SFGate, AdAge), who spoke to someone “with knowledge of the situation,†but rumors surrounding the negotiations for this show have reached as far back as November. According to an earlier report from Deadline, Netflix was finalizing a deal for Kohan’s series through Lionsgate TV, where Kohan has a development deal. Netflix is already partnered with Lionsgate, as it had agreed in April 2011 to stream up to seven seasons of the studio’s popular AMC show Mad Men.

Bloomberg’s report states that Netflix will have first rights to the new show from Weeds‘ creator HBO, but Weeds is actually a Showtime series. That’s the only aspect to the report that raises a red flag. Everything else seems to be confirmation of the previous rumors.

The new series may be exec produced by Liz Friedman, the co-exec producer of House, according to Deadline’s previous report. As for the show itself, it tells the tale of Piper Kerman, a communications executive at a nonprofit, who spent a year in the minimum security correctional facility in Danbury, Conn. after being convicted for her part in a drug smuggling and money laundering scheme she was involved in back in college.

Orange is the New Black is the second show whose production will be financed by Netflix. The company also has the exclusive distribution rights to Lilyhammer as well as new episodes of Arrested Development (planned for 2013), but is producing the Kevin Spacey vehicle House of Cards, announced back in March. That show, an adaptation of a popular British miniseries (which Netflix outbid HBO and AMC for), is expected to debut later this year.

According to Bloomberg’s report, announcements related to Orange is the New Black as well as another deal with Gaumont International Television for a 13-episode horror series Hemlock Grove may arrive as soon as next week. No word yet on when those programs will be available for viewing, but Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos told the outlet there would be five original shows available for streaming by mid-2013.

Despite its long and boring name, Cisco’s “Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update†is one of the more fascinating data-filled reports you’ll read this year. The report examines the dramatic growth we’re seeing in the mobile Internet space, including the massive demands for mobile data, the growth of mobile video, and the rise of the smartphone as new gateway to the web itself.

Globally, mobile data traffic grew 2.3-fold over 2011, more than doubling for the fourth year in a row. The traffic even grew faster than Cisco had earlier predicted: they had pegged growth at 131% year-over-year. In actuality, traffic grew by 133%.

In 2011, mobile data traffic was 8 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000 (597 petabytes vs. 75 petabytes). That was only a dozen years ago, but it may as well have been eons.

And, in one of the report’s more telling figures, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth by the end of 2012. By 2016, there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita. That year, there will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules. Again, the number will exceed the world’s population at that time (7.3 billion).

VIDEO

The mobile web’s growth, and its unending need for more data, more connectivity and more bandwidth, shows no signs of slowing. One of the top activities for mobile users in particular, is mobile video. For the first time, video accounted for over half of all traffic (52%). This is, in part, due to the increases in connectivity and phones capable of video viewing. By 2016, video will be over 70% of traffic.

Video’s growth can also be attributed to the increases in devices that can do more, faster at greater speeds, which help to impact the global bottom line in terms of data usage. Case in point: 4G phones, only 0.2% of mobile connections, are already accounting for 6% of mobile data traffic. By 2016, 4G will reach 6% of all connections, but 36% of total traffic, or 9 times that of non-4G phones.

The top 1% of mobile data subscribers, meanwhile, account for 24% of data traffic. And smartphones as a group, still a minority representing only 12% of the total handsets in use today, now account for over 82% of global handset traffic.

MOBILE CLOUD

In some cases, mobile cloud apps are video apps (think YouTube and Netflix), but other times they’re music (Pandora, Spotify), gaming, or social networking apps. But the increases in mobile connectivity have allowed what would otherwise be limited hardware devices to function as tools for media consumption.

A user with an 8 GB smartphone who streams music and video will consume more content over 2 years that can be stored on the device itself. And a smartphone owner who uses Netflix, Pandora and Facebook will generate more than twice the volume of traffic as generated by a smartphone owner only using email and web apps.

SMARTPHONES

Smartphones are growing in popularity and usage, too, as indicated by the increases in the group’s data traffic demands. In 2011, the average smartphone usage nearly tripled, up from 55 MB/month last year to 150 MB/month today. By 2012, over 100 million smartphone users will be using over 1 GB/month of data. And by 2016, the monthly global smartphone data traffic will pass 10 exabytes per month, with the average smartphone generating 2.6 GB/month, a 17-fold increase from 2011′s average.

FEATURE PHONES

Even though the perception in developed markets like ours is that smartphones are everywhere, the majority of the mobile market is still using basic handsets. In 2011, these devices accounted for 88% of the mobile landscape, and their mobile data usage increased 2.3-fold to 4.3 MB from 1.9 MB last year. In other words, even “dumb phones†are getting smarter, and capable of consuming more mobile data.

TABLETS

But the mobile web is no longer accessed by handsets alone. Tablets are a growing group, too, with their own data demands. The number of mobile-connected tablets tripled last year to 34 million, each generating 3.4 times more traffic than the average smartphone (517 MB/month vs. 150 MB/month for smartphones). By 2016, tablets will be 10% of global mobile data traffic.

Or, in what may be my favorite number from the report: by 2016, mobile-connected tablets will generate almost as much traffic as the entire global mobile network does in 2012, 1.1 exabytes per month. (The global network will reach 1.3 exabytes/month next year). Think about that: the tablet Internet will grow that quickly to become the size of this year’s mobile Internet. If you’re working on anything in the mobile space and have put off addressing how you’ll meet the needs of the tablet user, you’re already behind. And it goes without saying that if you’re building for the web and haven’t addressed mobile, you’re basically just lost.

ANDROID VS IPHONE

Finally, what good mobile data could refrain from weighing in on the Android vs. iPhone battle? In terms of data consumption, it appears Android is winning (well, using more data – I’m not sure if that’s “winning.â€) As Android apps are freer to run in the background, the figure is not so surprising. But this is also a function of Android’s increased global market share. Today, Android devices’ data consumption is 29% higher than Apple devices in terms of megabytes used per month per connection.

There’s tons more data in this report – I’m barely scratching the surface. To read more, head over here.

Design-focused startup Fab.com is launching a new type of shopping experience today with the debut of what it’s calling “Weekly Speciality Shops.†These new stores will be targeted across five of Fab.com’s well-performing verticals: Kids, Pets, Foodie, Vintage Modern and Fashion. These are not Fab.com’s top verticals, however, but are those that appeal to particular segments of shoppers.

As the name implies, the new shops will have sales that occur weekly and last for seven days, as opposed to Fab’s standard 3-day flash sales.

The company made the decision to move into longer sales within these verticals based on data gathered from monitoring sales, analyzing social media shares, studying data, and doing user surveys. In the end, the decision was that these customers could be better targeted by separating them out from Fab’s normal flash sales.

“When we looked at the data,†explains CEO Jason Goldberg, “we saw certain categories on the site sold out really quickly, but we didn’t have the depth on our site…we wanted to go deeper into these categories,†he says. To that end, the company has added hundreds of designers over the last few weeks to support the new shops.

Each of the Weekly Shops will feature several hundred sale items and will also include new opt-in email mechanisms by category. In other words, if you want to be alerted to Kids’ weekly sale items, but not Pet stuff, you can now do so. The additional email configuration settings can now be found in Fab’s Email Preferences screen, where users can also customize notifications for Daily Sales, Weekly Previews, Inspirations and Invites.

The lineup for the weekly sales is as follows:

By the end of last year, Fab says it housed 3,000 items on its site per day. Now, it’s approaching over 10,000. It also now has over 2 million users. At the heart of this growth is the way each type of design category, demographic and shop theme is offered and presented on the site, something that’s no longer as simple as finding great stuff and throwing it up there to see what works, as CEO Jason Goldberg admits was how the company operated back in the beginning. Now the focus is more on building the brand: “we want people to think of Fab when they think of design,†he says.

With the addition of the Weekly Shops, Fab.com can no longer really be called just a “flash sales†site – its 3-day flash sales are only one of the ways to find items. Already, Fab offered month-long pop-up shops around specific themes, and now these weekly sales are available as yet another way to have an extended shopping experience on both web and mobile.

Oh crap, it’s Valentine’s Day. Did you just remember, too, courtesy of that clever Google Doodle? The blogosphere will be filled today with last-minute gift ideas and other such ephemera related to this mushy holiday, and while I’m refusing the V-Day pitches as a general rule, there is a startup announcing its launch today that’s actually kind of fun. The company is called Walnuts, and it’s a Facebook app that can automatically build you a digital or printed book of your best Facebook photos and status updates, or even those belonging to a Facebook friend. Last-minute gift idea? Yeah, sure. But not a bad gift the other 364 days of the year, either.

The idea for a printed out book featuring your Facebook data is hardly novel. (See, for example, MySocialMemories, Yearbound, egobook, BookofFame, etc., to name just a few.). However, the Walnuts book has a couple of special features. For starters, unlike many of the Facebook photobooks, it doesn’t just support building albums out of your own data – you can also enter in a friend’s name to build them a book instead. Of course, you’ll need to be Facebook friends with the person in question in order for this to work.

After entering in the required info, the book is automatically created for you, using either your top status updates and photos (those that have the most likes, comments, etc.) or you can specify a particular photo album or albums to use instead. Any content you don’t want can be “Xâ€ed out from the book after it’s done.

The resulting book has the appearance of a hand-written journal, as opposed to a more professional, typewritten creation. This is by design, says founder Helen Spaull. “Another photobook I was playing with came up with sort of impersonal content, like ’63% of your friends are male.’ It’s infographics,†she lamented, “It’s not human, it’s a little bit soulless. As a customer, I want the most human, most valuable content on each page. I don’t really want to know about the word I used most often…I see [Walnuts] as more like a scrapbook.â€

With its handwritten font and support for pulling in things like photos’ comments, that is the resulting feel for the app’s creation. But it’s still very much a work in progress. I’d like to be able to re-arrange the content on the page, or pick out specific friends’ tags or status updates’ by keyword to determine what gets featured. These sorts of things may be implemented further down the road, says Spaull.

In the near future, a forthcoming version of the app will allow you to customize who’s included in the “Hall of Fame†section (which shows all your Facebook friends’ profile photos in the beginning of the book), the ability to add or remove individual status updates instead of just the status update pages themselves, and other sorts of customizations.

The book is available in softcover ($9.90 med., $12.90 lrg.) or hardcover ($19.90), but can be shared in its digital format via Facebook post for free. Remember: it’s the thought that counts! (Also, have you seen what roses are selling for today? Yikes.)

Walnuts has under $100K in seed funding at present through a single investor.

Seattle and London-based nFluence Media emerged from two years of stealth mode to announce it has raised $3 million for a deal-targeting technology whose first application will be a daily deal aggregating iPhone app, due out later this month. However, the company is not necessarily just another player in the overly crowded “daily deals†space. Instead, the technology being funded here is an anonymous self-profiling system that can expand into other verticals, including future uses with mobile carriers, cable/satellite TV operators and shopping mall owners.

The new round was led by Voyager Capital (Bill McAleer) with contributions from 17 angels in the Alliance of Angels. Along with the news, comes the announcement that Tom Huseby will be chairman of the board at nFluence. Huseby and nFluence co-founder Brian Roundtree (CTO) know each other from previous collaborations at SnapIn, where Roundtree was CTO. That company was later acquired by Nuance Media for $235M back in 2008. nFluence’s other co-founder and CEO is Henry Lawson, also the Chairman of MediaEquals and Cogniti.

The forthcoming iPhone app called dealBoard, due out in February, will be unique in the deal aggregating space because it will allow users to build a consumer profile without submitting any personal information. That means no names, no email addresses, no zip codes and no phone numbers. To build up consumers’ preferences, the app’s users will be walked through the company’s proprietary “brand sorter†technology, which from the sounds of it, makes detailing your preferences about shopping behaviors and interests into something more akin to a game than a traditional quiz.

The idea that you could receive daily deals without opting in to deal spam will appeal to the more privacy-minded and those who simply want a better way to access deals.  Imagine: no more unwanted emails about “spa packages†and “25% off kiteboarding lessons†which you delete on arrival. Hooray! But to be clear, information about you is being collected, including that which you voluntarily share, location info, your phone’s OS, browser and unique ID, your likes and dislikes, demographic info, etc. – it’s just not being linked to your personal information and identity.

“People don’t like most email and marketing and rightfully so,†says CEO Henry Lawson, “they are inundated with unwanted, mistargeted or stalker-like ads, offers and messages. With our technology, we’re able to return control of a consumer’s profile to the person it belongs to, the consumer, not some technology black box.â€

nFluence isn’t the only company to think to aggregate and target deals – that’s both Yipit’s and Google Offers’ game plan, too. The difference is that those competitors aren’t targeting the offers anonymously as nFluence plans to.

The dealBoard mobile application is said to pull in over 35,000 offers, including those from retailers and deal providers like Groupon, LivingSocial and Gilt Groupe. For obvious reasons, no emails will be sent – the offers appear within the app only, according to user preferences. More details as to the specifics of how this technology will work will be available alongside the new app’s launch.

In the future, nFluence Media plans to expand the technology to other companies that want to target consumers, but who don’t need to collect personally identifiable information to do so.

Following its November debut, HTML5 publishing platform (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly, is preparing to launch its self-serve platform for bloggers. Planned to go live this spring, the platform will allow publishers of any kind – big or small –  to transform their WordPress sites, Tumblr blogs, Twitter updates and other social feeds into tablet and touch-friendly sites that work on the iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry PlayBook and Android tablets.

Until now, Pressly has been focused on bringing in major publications to its platform, and has signed up The Toronto Star, The Economist Group, plus a yet-to-launch NBC property, and an unnamed Canadian news site. Meanwhile, well-funded competitor OnSwipe, launched in June 2011, also has a few big names on its platform, including Marie Claire, Ryan Seacrest and Hollywood.com, to name a few, as well as popular tech reads like BetaBeat, TNW, Geek.com and PSFK.

With Pressly’s impending self-serve launch, the platform will be more on par with OnSwipe, which currently offers both a self-serve dashboard and WordPress plugin for making DIY iPad-friendly versions of sites and social feeds. However, unlike OnSwipe, Pressly aims to differentiate itself by offering its service across multiple tablet platforms (not just iPad – see above) as well as by offering support for the iPhone. If you’ve used FlipBoard on the iPhone, then you know that the swipe-and-flip metaphor doesn’t only work on large tablet screens.

In addition, Pressly offers a number of pre-built templates and additional customization options, if you want something with less of an “out of the box†look and feel.

The self-serve option will be a limited rollout initially, with just a few hundred bloggers allowed in at first. The sign up form is here, but Pressly is doing that manufactured word-of-mouth thing (which seems increasingly common, sigh) where you have share links to get bumped up on the invite list. Sorry about that. (It’s still a good product though.)

New data from app search firm Xyologic released this morning paints a picture of the relative success (or lack thereof) of the Google TV platform. By examining the install base for the apps exclusive to the Google TV platform, it’s clear that the Google media center product is still only attracting a niche crowd of early adopters. Of the nearly 4.8 million installed apps that are exclusive to Google TV, only 352,000 of them represent user downloads – the remaining 4,441,000 are pre-installed applications.

Xyologic, which has been following Google TV since August 2011, notes that there are 64 total apps which are exclusive to the Google TV platform, forming a total install base of 4,793,000. These would be the apps most attractive to the platform’s end users, as they’ve been customized and designed for the big screen. Watching for trends among this group can give you insight into the platform’s overall health and performance as well as Google TV user preferences.

Not surprisingly, the six pre-installed apps account for the top six apps by install base (4,441,000 installs). These include Napster for Google TV, Pandora for Google TV, CNBC for Google TV, TV & Movies for Google TV, Photos for Google TV and Twitter for Google TV.

The remaining exclusive Google TV apps that round out the top 10 include Redux for Google TV, CNNMoney for Google TV, Maps for Google TV, MotorTrend and Thuuz Sports for Google TV. These account for just 58,000 installs last month.

Xyologic also points out that Google TV’s exclusive apps have low ratings – something which seems to confirm “an underwhelming experience for users,†the company says in its report. Meanwhile, non-exclusive Google TV apps are seeing higher ratings but significantly lower number of downloads. The top non-exclusive apps currently include Classy Fireplace, Dragon, Fly! Free, CuevanAndroid, Google Music, aVia Media Player, Solitaire, Fireworks – the Best Free Game,IM+, BuddyTV  and tinyCam Monitor Free.

TL;DR: Google TV is not very popular. 

So far, only LG and Sony have shipped Google TV devices, and despite criticism regarding their looks, pricing and Google TV itself, both have decided to stick with the platform for now. At January’s CES, LG showed off its new Google TV set, for example, but hedged its bets by also rolling out its own Smart TV platform in the event of a total Google TV flop. Sony, meanwhile, launched a new Blu-ray player with Google TV baked in.

Google, too, continues to try and drum up interest for Google TV. Late last week, it teased “big improvements†for Google TV, then proceeded to underwhelm. The big news was an improved YouTube app. Hooray.

In an effort to continue tracking this space, Xyologic has launched an early version of its search service specifically for Google TV apps today which initially includes 170 apps in its index.

But the firm’s conclusion as to what this data means, mirrors that of most industry observers: it may be the early days for Google TV, but the industry is now moving to Smart TVs – those with apps, streaming, browsing, conferencing, etc. built in. Unless Google TV can find a foothold as the preferred Smart TV backend, its chances for success, especially if that rumored Apple “iTV†launches this year – could be slim.

According to news coming out of the Black Hat security conference this week, researchers have figured out a way to use the Square mobile payments system to access stolen credit card data. The ingenious thing about the hack demonstrated is that criminals would not even need to have the original stolen card present in order to use Square for fraud. Instead, they can convert magnetic stripe data into an audio file, use a stereo cable to feed it into the Square device (a small dongle that plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack), and - ta-da! - the illegal transaction completes.

This hack turns the Square reader, a dongle meant to support swiped transactions, into one that can be used for electronic-only transactions, reports CNET. Creative? Yes. A real-world concern? We're not so sure.

However, a second hack, which turns the dongle into a card skimmer is of more concern. And it begs the question: where is the hardware encryption Square promised us earlier?

Sponsor

Researchers Adam Laurie and Zac Franken, directors of Aperture Labs, discovered two different ways to hack Square, which they demonstrated at the conference. The first, which turns Square into a device that accepts cardless transactions, while interesting, is not as distressing as the second hack, we believe. In order for the first hack to work, it would seemingly have to involve a fraudulent merchant account, since the hardware involved would eliminate the possibility of face-to-face transactions.

It's Hard to be a Fraudulent Merchant on Square

But it's hard to create a dummy merchant account on Square, despite its "open to all" nature.

Besides simply making it easier for any individual to accept credit cards at dramatically lower rates, the Square system also takes advantage of the smartphone's sensors itself to determine a device's location when the card is swiped. Transactions that show a San Francisco Bay resident has all of a sudden gone on a shopping spree somewhere across the country, for example, would be an obvious red flag to Square's risk management department, just as it would be for those using traditional credit card systems. And Square's risk management is done in-house, in real-time. So far, that's been a successful strategy for the company - its fraud protection rate of 0.05% is lower than the industry average of 0.07% and has remained consistent over time.

In addition, one of Square's less-talked about features is its ability to track device IDs alongside these geo-coordinates and then cross-reference those with social signals. Yes, social media signals. When new merchant accounts are verified, Square looks at their social footprint: their Facebook page and number of fans, their Yelp reviews, Twitter followers and retweets, blog posts, Flickr photos, Google Street view, etc. All these things are taken into consideration before a merchant is determined to be a "real" person, and not a dummy account of some sort.

This matters because the hack in question would seemingly necessitate a dummy merchant account in order to work. After all, what merchant would let a criminal attach some sort of contraption to their smartphone during a face-to-face transaction?

Square as Credit Card Skimmer: This is the Real Concern

From the sounds of it, the above hack is not as worrisome as the second, which turns the Square reader into a credit card skimmer. This is the same sort of issue that VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron raised in March, posting an open letter to his company's website warning consumers of the dangers involved with Square's technology. Using the Square reader and a fake Square application, VeriFone was able to turn the Square device into a free skimming machine.

While reporters from sites like GigaOm, TechCrunch and Gizmodo initially attacked VeriFone as waging a smear campaign against its competitor, the issue it raised, however indelicately, was valid. The Square dongle did not include hardware encryption, which is (and should be) a concern. Without encryption, hacks that turn the dongle into a free credit card skimmer are not just possible, they're easy to do.

Laurie and Franken demonstrated their variation of this hack at the conference, using a program that included less than 100 lines of code.

Soon after the VeriFone debacle, Square itself admitted that hardware encryption was a necessity. At a Visa conference in April, Square Security Lead Sam Quigley announced that Square would begin shipping dongles that offer hardware encryption sometime this summer. Well, summer's almost up now, and apparently, the encrypted dongles aren't yet available. Either that, or the researchers were using an older dongle to showcase their hack. Franken told CNET that he had heard Square would be shipping new dongles, but CNET was not able to reach Square to confirm. (Square is difficult to reach, for what it's worth. We tried too.)

While the ingenious nature of the first hack is notable, the complexities to implement it in the real world make it less of a danger to consumers and merchants alike. In addition, as CNET noted, federal anti-fraud bank regulations in the U.S make it difficult for fraudsters to set up dummy accounts, too. Laurie suggested that criminals could pay legitimate account holders to operate as Square money mules, but frankly, that's a lot of effort when there are still much easier ways to commit fraud.

It's the second hack that should be concerning. Where's the hardware encryption that Square promised? When is it coming? Is it still coming? Why won't Square respond to reporters' questions about this?

Have you been waiting for more practical implementations of augmented reality (AR) technology outside of gaming and marketing initiatives? So have we. That's what makes the technology Zugara is launching now so interesting. It has teamed up with U.K.-based online clothing retailer Banana Flame to offer a virtual dressing room of sorts which lets online shoppers "try on" the clothes featured on the retailer's website.

Using the computer's webcam and Zugara's AR e-commerce software dubbed "Webcam Social Shopper," shoppers can immediately see what clothes look like on them and can ask friends for an opinion via Facebook and Twitter.

Sponsor

Of course, trying on clothes virtually isn't the same as trying on clothes in real life. You don't know how the fabric is cut, how tight or loose it is, how it will hang, how well it's stitched, or any of the other factors that go into making a real-world purchasing decision. However, it's a step closer to emulating that real world experience than anything we've ever had before. It's also kind of fun…well, when it works.

Using the computer's webcam, visitors to Banana Flame's website can instantly try on any of the clothing items it sells. To start the process, you have to step a few feet back from the computer, making sure the camera can see your face. The garment will then automatically position itself on top of what you're currently wearing. Using Kinect-like motions, you can then touch virtual buttons to make minor adjustments to the garment's position on your body. In fact, the technology seems similar to a Kinect hack that does basically the same thing.

You can also swipe your arm to navigate between the controls provided in the software. These controls let you change the garment's color, move it around or take a photo of you "wearing" the item. You can then immediately share that photo with friends via Facebook and Twitter using the software or download it to your computer.

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/ocVEvK9Sl34 ]

In theory, the system sounds great, but in practice, it still needs some work. For example, it was completely frozen when we tried to use it on our Mac (in both Safari and Chrome), but worked well on our Windows PC (in IE). This appears to be related to the software's use of Adobe Flash - the Mac webcam is not set by default to work with Flash. There's a workaround for this, but an average user wouldn't know to try it. And the website doesn't offer instructions.

Also, we have to admit, using AR in this way is not anything like actually trying on clothes.

But it's a start. And not just a start at using AR for virtual shopping purposes, but a start for AR to be used for anything that's not some gimmicky marketing push, like AR-enabled posters or sports tickets. For that, we're grateful.

In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for July 2011. This month, we found a lot of great new iPhone apps, some Android and tablet apps, and a bunch of "notable" application updates.

As always, share your thoughts on those we missed in the comments below.

Sponsor

iPhone & Android / Cross-Platform

Spott: This app uses your phone's GPS to point to map out nearby film and TV locations. Great for entertainment buffs. ($0.99, iTunes and $1.13, Android Market)

Nosh: This food-spotting and reviews app lets you photograph, share and track great places to eat and the meals you've had there. (Free, iTunes and Android Market)

Facebook for Every Phone: This new app brings Facebook to over 2,500 phones worldwide. To download, go to m.facebook.com or enter d.facebook.com/install in your mobile browser.

MyMoby lets families privately share their location with each other and send alerts when needing assistance. (Free, iTunes, Android and BlackBerry)

iPhone

Batphone: This experimental app uses the phone's microphone to record the sounds in a room to develop an acoustic "fingerprint" for that space. The idea is that this type of location-detection could be used in future apps when GPS is not available. There's nothing much you can really do with this app right now, but what a cool concept! (Free, iTunes)

Capture: Instead of wasting time hitting "record" or adjusting settings, the Capture app starts recording video as soon as the app launches. Finally, you can record the kids before the moment has passed!($0.99, iTunes)

Trover: Newly launched app Trover was an undiscovered gem until the big press push this month surrounding the app's update. With Trover, you can connect with others to discover places and things nearby using photo-sharing combined with geolocation. (Free, iTunes)

Summify: This new iPhone app delves into the social news space to deliver periodic summaries of the news from your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader. (Free, iTunes)

Trimit: This app summarizes webpages into either 1,000, 5,000 or 140 character summaries for easy reading and social sharing. (Free, iTunes)

Katango: Like the idea of Google Circles but happy on Facebook? Katagno automatically organizes your Facebook friends into groups, then allows you to share just with them. It's automagical! (Free, iTunes)

Evoz: This app turns your iPhone, iPod or iPad into a baby monitor by working with another iOS device connected over Wi-Fi. Put one device in the baby's room, listen on the other. (Free, iTunes)

Dragon Go: This voice control app understands the intent of your questions and opens the appropriate website to provide an answer (e.g., Reviews of sushi restaurants might open Yelp, music by Lady Gaga, starts playing a song on your iPod, etc.) (Free, iTunes)

Photovine: This new photo-sharing app comes from Google-acquired Slide (yes, we know, weird!) Fun, but invite only for now. (Free, iTunes)

ON Voicefeed: A great new app for iPhone, ON Voicefeed lets you set up custom voicemail greetings for different callers or groups of callers. A premium version ($9.99/year) adds unlimited greetings and voicemail storage. (Free, iTunes)

Foreca.st: From the makers of Hurricane Party, Foreca.st lets you share where you're going with friends, then lets you check in using Foursquare when you arrive. (Free, iTunes)

Flixlab: This app lets you easily make movies and slideshows on your iPhone which you can then share with friends on Facebook. (Free, iTunes)

OfficeDrop: You can scan, search, organize and archive your paper files, PDFs and other documents using this new iPhone/iPad app and view them either on your device or the Web. (Free, iTunes - additional storage available for a fee)

im360: With this iOS application you can check out an amazing collection of 360-degree videos from your iPhone (Free for Lite version or $1.99, iTunes)

Next Page: Android & Tablet Apps

Android

ABC News: The official ABC News app arrived on Android bringing top stories, video briefs, pictures, breaking news and more. Select cities also have access to local news. (Free, Android Market)

Do it (Tomorrow): A great new productivity (or procrastination) app for Android, Do it Tomorrow lets you keep track of your to-do's in an attractive, simple interface. Cloud syncing is available, too. (Free, Android Market)

AwayFind for Android: This app brings email management tool AwayFind to mobile users, letting you route urgent emails to your Android phone or tablet, read the whole message and reply. Push notifications are supported too. (Free, Android Market)

Vellamo Mobile Web Benchmark: This new app from Qualcomm lets you evaluate Web performance in detail so you can see which Android devices offer the best experience in terms of browser performance. (Free, Android Market)

Localicious: This new Android app from WhitePages helps you find popular nearby businesses, plus real-time tips and trends. Foursquare users can also use the app to do "pre check-ins." (Free, Android Market)

Scrabble Free: This month EA launched its first free Android game, Scrabble Free, which includes all the features you love and expect. (Free, Android Market)

Tablets

SwiftKey X: One of the best alternative keyboard interfaces for Android added a ton of new features, including better predictive intelligence and "cloud learning," which lets you optionally connect to Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and SMS to improve its predictions. Android Honeycomb is also supported. ($3.99 for Android phones, $4.99 for Tablets, Android Market or Amazon Appstore)

Crayola ColorStudio HD for iPad: Not just an app, but an app and pen combo, this new experience for iPad actually lets your kids color on the tablet with a big pen. No more crayon on the walls! Can't wait for my daughter to be old enough for this! (App is free in iTunes, iMarker pen is $29.99.)

Star Trek PADD: The app you nerds (ahem, self included) have secretly been waiting for: the PADD turns your iPad into an authentic-looking PADD from Star Trek. For practical purposes, you can read Star Trek news, but really, who needs practical? ($4.99, iTunes)

iUsers: This iPad app sets up your iPad for use with multiple users, each with their own mailbox, settings and apps. (Jailbreak only - add http://cydia.iblogeek.com as a source then search for iUsers)

Birds-Eye: An iPad app that shows you who's tweeting around you. Simple, but fun. (Free, iTunes)

NASA Visualization Explorer: An awesome app for space geeks, this new iPad app provides a direct connection to NASA's research news in an engaging format using photos and videos. (Free, iTunes)

iSheetMusic: Although it works on iPhone too, we like iSheetMusic on the iPad instead - it's easier to see. As you may have guessed by its title, this app lets you search for, buy and organize sheet music collections on your device. An audible and visible Metronome are included, too. (Free, iTunes)

Notable Updates

You may have missed the following app updates this past month. Here are a few worth mentioning.

Social

News/Info

Entertainment

Google / Other

AppMobi has launched a new "XDK," which allows developers to build HTML5-optimized applications for the Web or for mobile platforms. The resulting code can be used to deliver great HTML5 applications, like those found in Chrome's Web app store, but it can also be used in hybrid apps submitted to Apple's App Store or the Android Market.

The XDK itself is a Web app, and is available in the Chrome Web app Store for free.

Sponsor

XDK Means Cross-Platform

If you can write code using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, you can use the XDK to build an application, says appMobi. There's no need to learn Objective C or download any other SDK's. Instead, the new XDK lets you use industry standards to build your apps, as well as appMobi's own aUX javascript libraries, for things like transitions and scrollers.

The XDK also offers debugging tools with on-screen emulation, local-on-device and remotely anywhere in the world, without ad-hoc builds or security features, says the company. And it works on both Mac and Windows.

Works with PhoneGap, Offers Cloud Services

In addition, appMobi says the XDK is fully compatible with the PhoneGap HTML5 cross-platform development project, which recently launched into version 1.0. Like PhoneGap, appMobi's XDK also provides access to a device's native features, such as the GPS, accelerometer, and camera, while also offering touch interaction, gestures, vibration and more.

Developers building apps using the XDK can choose to integrate appMobi's other services, which aren't typically a part of an HTML5 development suite. These include things like in-app purchases, rich media push messaging, usage analytics, secure user authentication and live app updating.

HTML5 App School

Along with the XDK, appMobi launched HTML5 App School, an online resource for those new to mobile development. It provides detailed information on all parts of the development process, from conceptualization, through planning and development, to posting the app on app stores. The App School site also provides access to tools, libraries and other resources, forums, code samples, seminars and instructional videos.

What Do You Think?

Some of the early reviewers of the XDK noted they had trouble with Java, but others seemed to have no trouble. If you try it, let us know what you think in the comments below.

A company called iSpeech has launched a free voice recognition and text-to-speech SDK for mobile developers building apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. During its pre-launch phase, iSpeech saw over 3,000 developers sign up for its service and powered 1 billion conversions in the cloud. Incidentally, 3,000 developers is the same number that Nuance, makers of the paid Dragon SDK, recently advertised themselves, says iSpeech's CMO Yaron Oren. But that was after significant marketing efforts over the course of 6 months, he added.

The price of the Dragon SDK is a barrier to entry for many developers and businesses, the company believes. iSpeech wants to be the more affordable alternative.

Sponsor

iSpeech on Mobile Goes Freemium

The iSpeech service is free to all mobile developers, and is available to Web developers who want to use the same technology via the iSpeech API and online payment system. On the Web, prices start at $.005 per word, but on mobile it's free. iSpeech says it may offer some value-added services on mobile in the future.

iSpeech is already used in several well-known apps, including Car & Driver's Txt U L8r, TeleNav's Evie, plus the company's own DriveSafe.ly app, and more. Its SDK's and API's provide over 40 text-to-speech voices and include support for over 25 languages. Premium services, like celebrity voices or custom text to speech voices are also available. Developers can also optionally pay for the ability to increase speech recognition performance specific to their use case, when applicable.

Those interested in trying out iSpeech can do so by signing up here.

Update: iSpeech says its FAQ regarding mobile ads was out of date, so we removed the reference to the credit purchasing feature from an earlier version of this post.

Location-based media company JiWire reports seeing increases in the sharing of and the demand for local deals, like those offered by Groupon, LivingSocial and others, since last quarter. According to data from a recent survey, sharing of deals has increased by 21% and demand is up 20% from Q1 2011.

In addition, only 8% never buy local deals, up from 28% who said they never buy them just a few months ago.

Sponsor

JiWire has been tracking the adoption of deals among a segment of the population it calls the "on-the-go" audience, which consists of those using notebooks, tablets and smartphones outside of the home or workplace. So, to be clear, these are not universal trends. They only apply to the highly mobile user, who connects to the Internet, checks email or uses mobile applications while away from their home or office.

Still, that describes a large swath of the Internet-connected U.S. population today, and especially those participating in the local deals space. Simply put, the trends occurring within this audience are notable for the deals industry.

Increased Sharing

Since Q1, JiWire found that sharing local deals is up 21%. Now, 75% of the on-the-go audience are sharing deals regularly, the company says. The most popular way to share deals is email (35%), but word-of-mouth (19%) and Facebook (18%) are also regularly used.

Demand for Deals Up, Too

Demand for deals has also increased over last quarter, says JiWire, with 28% of consumers now buying deals once per month, up from 20% in Q1. As noted above, only 8% say they never buy deals, a decrease from 28% a few months ago.

Women Prefer Less Expensive Deals than Men

78% of people spend an average of less than $50 on local deals these days, but when comparing trends between the male and female audiences, there are some differences. Women are more likely to spend less than $25 on deals, JiWire notes, while men will spend $25 to $50 on a deal.

Image credits: Lead image, Hudson Horizons; Charts: JiWire

Group messaging app GroupMe launched version 3.0 today, adding a number of new features and updates, including full Web access, International support, a redesigned interface, direct messaging and more. But the most notable of the new features is a "Q&A" option called "Questions," which encourages users to start conversations.

Sponsor

What's New?

The updated app brings GroupMe to over 90 countries worldwide, with support for over 900 carriers. However, SMS-based chat is not available outside the U.S., only in-app chat is. The option to include non-smartphone users into a group chat session within GroupMe via SMS has always been one of the app's best features, so we hope that international markets will one day have the same option.

The company also announced that GroupMe is cross-platform now, with apps for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, but none of those apps are new as of today. The newest apps, those for BlackBerry and Windows Phone, were launched over the past couple of months, with the Windows Phone app launched just a couple of weeks ago. GroupMe did a soft launch at the time, so this is the first the cross-platform support is getting any press.

We like the Web access option that now ships with GroupMe, which allows you to start, view and manage all your groups and messaging from the Web. This is great for being able to pick up where you left off, by allowing you to seamlessly transition between devices. Too bad more mobile apps don't offer a complementary Web experience like this!

Also new is a Twitter-like direct messaging feature that lets two people have a private conversation, initiated by a tap on their GroupMe avatar.

Mobile Q&A with Questions

Of course, the biggest and most interesting of the new features is "Questions." The feature is in beta testing, but has been made available to any who downloads version 3.0 of the app. Questions don't have to be targeted directly at a private group, like the groups of family members or friends you already have configured on GroupMe. While that is possible, the app also supports the option of posting public questions by broadcasting to Facebook or Twitter. And respondents can answer via Facebook or Twitter, thanks to the included website address posted alongside the update.

 

According to GroupMe, the idea with questions is to initiate a group chat when the "what" is defined but the "who" is not. That is, you have a question, but you don't know who might have the answer. For example, "anyone want to go to a movie?" or "what is everyone doing this weekend?"

It's an interesting take on how to combine Q&A and social, which Facebook itself has seemingly failed to capitalize on with its Q&A services "Facebook Questions." Perhaps the key to social Q&A is the mobile component?

Of course, Facebook may have already realized that. One of GroupMe's biggest competitors is a similar group messaging app, Beluga, which is now Facebook-owned. But so far, Facebook has not done anything with the technology Beluga offers, and the app still runs as a standalone service. But as Beluga's (public) development slows down, apps like GroupMe that continue to innovate and move cross-platform have a chance at gaining a critical mass of their own. If we had to pick between the two today, GroupMe would now come out on top.

Mobile application developers believe that Google's new social network Google Plus will have more impact on mobile growth and adoption than Apple's iCloud, or even iOS 5's Twitter integration. This is just one of the fascinating findings related to Google Plus revealed within the results of a new developer survey led by mobile cloud platform provider Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC. Together, the two companies had surveyed 2,012 app developers to better understand their take on current and future mobile trends.

Sponsor

The interest in Google Plus is somewhat surprising, considering that the social network's age is still measured in weeks, not months. But, according to Appcelerator's VP of Marketing, Scott Schwarzhoff, developers often take the long view when considering new services such as this, thinking 12, 16 or 18 months out into the future.

For example, last year, Appcelerator saw developers were displaying great enthusiasm for Apple's iPad pre-launch. And it's now seeing the same excitement for Google Plus.

How Developers See Google Plus

At 25% of respondents indicating interest in Google Plus, the results show it ranking higher than other products and trends, including Apple's iCloud (22%), NFC (18%), iOS 5's Twitter integration (14%), Android patent issues (13%), Amazon's forthcoming Android tablet (6%) and the HP TouchPad (2%).

In addition to Google Plus' impact on mobile growth and adoption, developers also said they believed Google Plus could catch up to Facebook in the long-term. Two-thirds said that the new social network would be an asset for Google in gaining mindshare among consumers and developers alike in addressing both the Facebook challenge and the Twitter/iOS 5 integration.

Why Mobile Developers are Excited About Google Plus

The reason developers feel this way has largely to do with Google's ability to leverage Google Plus across a portfolio of products, including Search, Maps, YouTube and more, all of which also have a mobile presence.

Other popular responses to the "why Google Plus" question included positive sentiments about the innovations Google Plus delivered (e.g., Sparks, Hangouts and Circles), its overall user experience, and Google's ability to bake in Google Plus deeply into its Android operating system.

That last item is an especially notable key advantage over Facebook, which does not yet have a deeply integrated Facebook experience on any mobile platform in particular, although there are some phones, like the HTC ChaCha (aka the HTC Status on AT&T), HTC Salsa and INQ's Cloud Touch, which offer a Facebook-focused experience.

But for developers, there's an understanding that what Google Plus may soon offer is not just another way to integrate "social" into their mobile applications, but an ability to map a user's particular "interest graph" into their apps, as well. For example, if a user has a Google Plus Circle of friends who like to discuss movies, explains Schwarshoff, an app like Flixster could take advantage of that for a more personalized and customized social experience. Similarly, a photo-sharing application could allow you to share some photos with just a Circle of family or friends, instead of the general public or a wider network of "followers."

For Now, Facebook Still Wins

All that being said, developers aren't jumping to use Google Plus within their applications immediately. For one thing, Google does not yet offer developer tools for Google Plus (i.e., a Google Plus API - application programming interface) so it's not even a possibility at this time.

However, although Facebook is the API leader over the next 12-18 months, according to the survey, Google Plus and Twitter are tied for second place in terms of future API usage.

Of course, it should be noted that what any survey respondent says they will do and what they actually end up doing can sometimes be very different things. But Appcelerator's surveys in the past have usually been on target when it comes to spotting trends.

And lest you think that Appcelerator's core audience is biased towards Android developers somehow, you'll be interested to know that, in fact, the opposite is true. iOS apps make up 75% of Appcelerator's 25,000+ mobile applications. The apps are Web developers primarily, not those coding in Java or Objective C. Web developers are those who are most focused on building cross-platform applications, which makes this group's thoughts on Google Plus most interesting indeed.

It looks like Google Plus will soon see itself integrated into iPhones and Androids alike through mobile applications, even though Apple has anointed Twitter as its social network of choice.

Appcelerator & IDC's new mobile developer survey is out now, with details on a wide range of development trends including platform choice, developers' future plans and mobile industry challenges. Notably, the companies have now added HTML5 as a new option to rank among mobile development platforms, and its middle-of-road showing indicates that mobile websites are increasingly a complementary requirement for today's mobile developers.

Meanwhile, despite seeing a slight jump back to Q1 levels of interest, Android tablets remain a platform with a number of challenges, developers report. Explains Appcelerator, these tablets are in somewhat of a "no-man's land" in terms of developer priorities right now, as developers aren't sure what to make of the overall Android Tablet picture.

Sponsor

Ranking the Platforms

One of the big questions the survey always asks developers is where each platform ranks in terms of developer interest. As expected, iOS (iPhone, iPad) are doing well, with 91% and 88% of developer interest respectively, as is Android (Phone), with 87% interest. The Android Tablet platform still ranks high, too, with 74% saying they're "very interested" in developing for that platform. HTML5 comes in 5th (66%), above Windows Phone, BlackBerry, webOS, Symbian and MeeGo.

But even though Android Tablets rank well here, Appcelerator says that mobile developers are confused by the Android Tablet space, which remains fluid in terms of the changing nature of the OS itself, the hardware and the form factor requirements. This confusion is reflected in the historical chart (below) which tracks developers' interest over time.

In January, prior to Android OS's launch on commercial tablets, developers said that pricing was the most important issue to consider. And indeed, Android tablets that were priced higher or equivalent to the iPad have not sold well, it seems.

But now, developers see other issues as even more important than price, including the need for user interface improvements, phone to tablet portability, fragmentation problems, increasing the size of the app catalog and more.

These can be seen in either a positive or negative light, depending on your particular viewpoint. For example, Appcelerator says that these suggestions could now indicate that in developers' minds, it's a question of "how" Android Tablets will succeed, as opposed to an "if."

More details on the survey results can be found on Appcelerator's website here.

AOL is launching its entry into the increasingly crowded iPad magazine space with the new application AOL Editions. The app is somewhat similar to other high-profile efforts like The Daily, Flipboard, Plus and Zite, but attempts to find its niche by offering a personalized, social, once-daily experience which is also publisher-friendly.

But most importantly, in an effort to further define itself, AOL has made the bold decision to forgo real-time updates in favor of a magazine that you can actually finish reading throughout the course of the day.

Sponsor

Your iPad Newspaper, Again

Although you can schedule your download of AOL Editions for any time of day, the magazine is clearly designed to be the iPad equivalent of either the morning or evening newspaper. The idea is that it's the paper (or magazine, we suppose) which you would read over breakfast or after work, while relaxing at home with your iPad.

According to AOL's own internal research, morning and evening are the two times of day where people really engage with their iPads. And for this reason, AOL decided to forgo offering real-time updates within the application.

"So many things today are beeping at you with breaking news," explains Sol Lipman, Senior Director of Mobile at AOL, "we wanted to make something that was succinct and completable." He also notes that most iPad owners are sitting at a computer most of their day, and can get real-time news online.

With its focus on a once-per-day interaction, AOL Editions is like News Corp's app The Daily. But unlike The Daily, AOL Editions doesn't provide original content nor does it employ human editors.

Instead, the content is sourced from a limited selection of top sources and it uses smart algorithms that learn your preferences as you tap through and read stories. These automated bots track things like what you clicked, how long you read an article and what topics you tend to prefer, among other things. Users can further refine the personalized experience by connecting to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and by choosing their favorite sections during the setup process.

Personalization Features

Each of the 15 sections (e.g. Design, Tech, Business, Family, Health & Fitness, Sports, Entertainment, Travel, etc.) can be edited to include your favorite sources and subjects. You can also sync with iCal and Facebook to see your events, meetings and birthdays on the magazine's homepage. And articles can be saved and shared by email, Facebook or Twitter.

The app offers a few cute touches, too, like a delivery notification that mimics the sound of a paper boy or girl riding up on a bike and throwing a newspaper on your doorstep and a section showing today's weather on the magazine's cover where the mailing label would be on a traditional publication.

There's also an interesting feature that involves using keywords for even more refined personalization. Each article is tagged with keywords, which themselves are sourced from Wikipedia entries about the article's subject.

Sources themselves, like BusinessWeek or CNN, for example, can also be selected as keywords.

"Personalize!," shouts the header where the keywords are displayed, "Tap the check on the things you want to see more of and the X on things you don't."

That seems straightforward enough for even non-geeks to understand.

Pageviews for AOL Properties & Others

Of course, this is an AOL product, so it leverages its own properties here, including Huffington Post, and all the brands that now fall under Arianna Huffington's watch as Editor-in-Chief, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, the local news content from Patch and others. It does not, however, appear to give any sort of weighted preference to AOL brands as news sources, as far as we can tell in our tests. It did however, attribute an article of mine here on ReadWriteWeb to the editor, Richard MacManus instead of me. And it put a slash in "Read/WriteWeb," even though we dropped that ages ago. But in the grand scheme of things, these are minor quirks and easily resolved.

Download for Free

AOL Editions is a product from AOL's "Mobile-First" group, a group whose focus is to develop new brands for AOL, like the recently launched music app AOL Play. With AOL Editions, the hope here is clearly to deliver a way to increase pageviews at AOL properties, within the context of an iPad application for consuming news. Editions sends readers directly to the article's website when tapped. It doesn't strip out text or ads, or attempt to reformat the article in an iPad-friendly format. It is displayed as the publisher chose, including inline photos or video, when applicable.

AOL Editions is a free download for iPad. You can learn more about Editions here. The download is expected to go live at midnight, perhaps sooner.

Layar, maker of the Layar augmented reality platform for mobile, has today announced Layar Vision, a platform extension that enables phones to "see" and recognize real-world objects, including posters, magazines and newspapers. With Layar Vision, the goal is to provide brands and print media publishers' with new ways to engage their audience using augmented reality experiences.

Sponsor

About Layar Vision

To use Layar Vision, developers must first upload reference images to Layar's servers. Those images are then used to extract the fingerprint of the object so it can detect, track and augment the object with audio, video and/or animated 3D objects, as specified. Currently the system only supports 2D images with 3D models on the target objects. Layar Vision will be able to instantly detect up to 50 target objects at launch.

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/8KFjlpnMhmw ]

The company says there are some limitations to what the technology can recognize and track. It works best on planar surfaces, like posters, magazines and newspapers, as mentioned above, as well as billboards, flyers, book covers, CD covers, paintings and other surfaces with "a minimum amount of discriminative texture and detail." This is different than Qualcomm's recently released AR SDK for iOS (the Android version was already available), which can track both planar objects as well as simple 3D objects like a box.

The Layar platform is already in use by over 10,000 developers who work to build AR experiences for smartphones. These experiences exist both as layers within the Layar smartphone application itself, as well as in third-party apps using the Layar Player. The Layar app has been installed 10 million times, and now has over 2,500 layers, the company says.

Where and When

Developers can expect to see Layar Vision included in the newest beta of the Layar Platform, arriving in the coming weeks, says the company, but no exact date was given for the launch. For developers using the Layar Player in their own apps, they can expect to see Layar Vision in the Q4 release, on both iPhone and Android.

In addition, to kickstart development, Layar is hosting a contest called the "Layar Creation Challenge," offering a total of $55,000 in cash prizes. The top 10 developers with the best and most useful concepts for Layar Vision will receive between $2,500 and $15,000. You can learn more about Layar Vision and the contest here.

Ansca Mobile, in partnership with InMobi and PapayaMobile, has today announced LaunchPad, a suite of marketing and analytics services targeted towards mobile application developers using Ansca Mobile's Corona SDK. The services will allow developers to better market their apps, increase distribution, improve monetization and better understand their audience, the companies say.

Sponsor

Marketing

The idea behind LaunchPad is to give developers a jumpstart on getting their application noticed. For starters, Ansca Mobile has provided a Marketing 101 Guide that will walk developers through all the steps needed to get an app discovered.

They've also patterned with app review sites Technobrains and AppShrink.com, where they have negotiated discounts to get developers featured reviews. And if a developer wins "App of the Week," they get a free review. Ansca says it will also select other applications for additional app reviews and placements.

Analytics

The included analytics product in Corona has also now been improved too. No longer will app developers have to create app ID's through a third-party provider, a task which the company thought was "a little bit clumsy." Starting today, developers will have access to easier-to-use, basic analytics, no app ID required.

Gaming

On the gaming side, Ansca partnered with PapayaMobile to offer developers access to its network of 22 million users worldwide. PapayaMobile's SDK has now been integrated into Corona's SDK, and the game network API have been unified under a single gameNetwork" library interface.

Monetization

For monetization, Ansca parntered with InMobi's advertising network, which serves over 36 billion ads across 165 countries. In tests, Ansca Mobile says it seeded the new library to select developers and found that InMobi generated up to 3 times more revenue than AdMob.

New SDK and More

The LaunchPad release comes alongside the latest version of the Corona SDK, which includes the features, improvements and bug fixes from the daily builds of the last 4 months. The back end has been updated for faster build times, too, especially for Android which is now 2.5 times faster than the previous public release. The new release also bundles several 3rd-party tools, with 30-day trials, including Corona Project Manger, Kwik, and Spriteloq.

Full release notes are here.

I don't hate the Toshiba Thrive Android tablet, which is probably the nicest thing I can say about it. Although heavy, it has a lot of ports. And it feels less heavy than it looks, I found. It runs a newer and more stable version of Android Honeycomb than some of its competitors do, too, so there are handful of geeky new features to enjoy. Overall, it's not a bad Android tablet.

But at the end of the day, the question still remains: who will buy this tablet over the iPad?

Sponsor

I've been in search of a great Android tablet - one that would lure me away from the iPad. But I haven't found it yet. I can't even say the Thrive comes close, because frankly, anything heavier than the iPad 2 is non-starter for me.

Need More Ports? Thrive Has That. (Also, Lots of Extra Weight)

Android tablet makers have been criticized for focusing more on specs instead of on the overall ecosystem. And if any tablet is guilty of this, it's surely the Toshiba Thrive. This tablet is more like a laptop, sans keyboard, especially if you go by the number of ports it offers. There's a full-sized SD card slot, an HDMI port, a USB 2.0 slot, a mini USB port, a docking port, plus the usual headphone and power jacks.

Maybe all those ports are what make the tablet so beefy. It's .62 inches thick, which is double that of the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1. And at 1.66 pounds, it's closer to the iPad and the Xoom (1.5-1.6 lbs) in weight than the iPad 2 (1.33 lbs). These small differences matter a lot when you're talking about portable gadgets. After using the Thrive for reading, for example, it became uncomfortable to keep it propped up.

The Thrive also has a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 pixel display, the same as the Motorola Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1, the same 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor as the Galaxy Tab and a better camera than the Tab (5 megapixels vs. the Tab's 3 megapixels). Both have a 2 megapixels front camera, too. (If you really care about specs, you can delve into more of them here. We don't review hardware in this way, however.)

But What Can You Do with the Thrive?

What's more important is not the processor speed and pixel density, but what you can actually do with the tablet you purchase. Apple's iPad has an answer for that question, with over 100,000 native iPad apps, and 425,000 apps in total that work on both iPhone and iPad, combined. And it has iTunes, the marketplace for movies, TV shows, music, podcasts and educational content. The iPad no longer struggles to answer the question, "what can you do on a tablet?" It's now trying to limit the responses to the question of "what can you NOT do?"

That's not to say Android isn't making advances in this area. This spring, Google released an update to its Market which allowed users to rent movies and stream them to their devices. More recently, the mobile Android Market was updated so users could start the purchase process from their mobile, as opposed to only on the Web. But these are still baby steps, when you look at the larger challenge of reaching equity with the iPad.

For what it's worth, the Thrive takes a big step forward in trying to answer the question of "what to do" with the inclusion of pre-installed software applications. Although sometimes unwelcome, in the case of the Thrive, the apps aren't what we would call "bloatware." That's especially true since some of them that normally come with a hefty price tag are provided for free. The paid apps that ship with the Thrive include Quickoffice HD, LogMeIn Ignition and Kasperky's Tablet Security. There are also a ton of free apps pre-installed, like Angry Birds, Backgammon, Toshiba's own e-reader app "Book Place," Google Books, several card games, NFS Shift (a racing game) andThe New York Times.

I also really liked the bundled PrinterShare app, which easily found my Wi-Fi printer and let me immediately print out photos, webpages, documents, messages, contacts, Gmail, and more, without any hassle. Too bad that you only get 5 free prints before having to upgrade to the paid version, though ($12.95 from Toshiba's own store). That's the kind of thing which Toshiba should have thrown in for free to make the tablet more competitive. It's really a great feature.

Pure Honeycomb 3.1…if You Like That sort of Thing

On the software front, Toshiba's Thrive is notable for the fact that it's the first to ship with Android 3.1, the latest version of Honeycomb. That means you can do nifty things like resize your homescreen widgets and enjoy other minor user interface improvements, like a bigger "recent apps" list. And if you like Honeycomb, you'll like the Toshiba Thrive because at the very least, Toshiba didn't bog down the operating system (OS) with a overlay like Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC's Sense.

But...

Well, I'm just going to say it.

I don't like Honeycomb. I don't think it's a great tablet OS in its current state. I don't think that relocating the menus and controls that you find at the bottom of Android smartphones to the top of the screen on Android tablets makes sense. As you move back and forth between your Android phone and tablet devices, the swapped layout gets confusing.

Plus, everywhere you look, there's some sort of button, control or menu system: search is accessed in the top-left, access to the apps menu is at the top-right, navigation buttons are in the bottom-left while notifications and the clock are in the bottom-right, similar to what you would find in Windows PC's "system tray." Because really, if you're going to rip off a design, you would copy from Windows?

But it's unfair to criticize Toshiba for Google's design choices, and my own personal preferences. If you're an Android geek at heart, you might enjoy Honeycomb quite a bit. If so, you'll enjoy it more on a Toshiba Thrive.

At the end of the day, the Toshiba Thrive is a good enough Android tablet, maybe even one of the better ones, but it's not a good enough answer to the question "why not an iPad?"

The Thrive is available in 8 GB ($429.99), 16 GB ($479.99) and 32 GB ($579.99) models.

Mobile application search and discovery service Chomp has released its June 2011 report on app search trends and found that, for the second consecutive month, paid app downloads on Android have increased. The increases are small; paid Android app downloads increased just 2% from April to May and only 1% from May to June.

And in total, only 6% of all Android downloads on Chomp's network were paid.

Sponsor

In other words, these small jumps don't seem to signify any major shift in the overall trend involving the dominance of free apps on Android. However, it will be interesting to watch this space to see if this trend continues. After all, over time, even small increases can add up.

The 1% increase on Android was spread out across multiple price levels, but the $4.01 - $5.00 range saw the largest jump, from 0.1% to 0.6%. The most popular categories were games, utilities and entertainment.

In comparison, iOS app developers saw a 4% increase in paid apps last month, over May. The ranges seeing the most growth there were the $0.99 and $1.99 price levels. The $4.99 price level also saw an increase, going from 0.8% in May to 1.0% in June, while the $9.99 price level declined from 0.3% in May to 0.1% in June.

In addition, the word "free" was the number one search term across all countries sampled on Android, through the Chomp app for Android.

On iOS, the company saw much more diversity on search terms, although "games" was a popular query.

 

American Express' new digital payments platform Serve has just announced its second operator partnership here in the U.S. will be with Verizon Wireless. This news follows last month's report that Sprint would also integrate the Serve platform into select Android phones on its network.

According to Verizon, its customers will be able to sign up for Serve accounts on both Verizon phones and tablets, although it did not specify which devices those would be.

Sponsor

Serve, which can be funded by a bank account, debit or credit card, or from another Serve account, does not require users to be American Express card holders. Instead, it's aimed at those who don't rely on credit cards. With Serve, customers can shop both online and offline, anywhere American Express is accepted.

Verizon Wireless customers will be able to use Serve to buys goods and services on their mobile device in just a few clicks. The process is easier than entering in a credit card number by hand, because all that's required to checkout using Serve is your mobile phone number.

American Express and Verizon will also team up to use Serve as a way to source, distribute and enable the redemption of online and mobile offers with participating Serve merchants. The offers and coupons customers redeem at checkout will automatically appear in their Serve accounts, which can be viewed and managed online and on mobile.

In addition, both companies are working with Payfone, a mobile payments startup which American Express invested in this spring.  Payfone helps to combine mobile authorization and payment services with the Serve platform. This allows customers to pay for both digital and physical goods using just their phone number. Payfone is unique as it leverages the security built into mobile operator networks to fight fraud. With Payfone, the customer's SIM card, device ID and location are tied to each customer's account for more secure transactions.

Merchants interested in learning more about accepting Serve can visit www.serve.com/billmyphone.