LSQHA Blog Reviews » Mobile

Millions of People Now Get Live Streaming Video Sent to Their Phones

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:27:53 +0000

Live video, from around the world, streaming right through the phone in your hand: that’s pretty incredible. It’s not science fiction anymore, it’s now something that millions of people have experienced. San Francisco’s Justin.tv announced today that almost one and a half million people have downloaded the company’s live-video-stream-viewing app to their iPhones in the first month it’s been available. From Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech , to the Future of Money conference, to a lot of content I don’t care to watch, Justin.tv is definitely getting traction. This isn’t the only company fast finding a lot of consumer interest in mobile video streaming, either. Sponsor Competitor Ustream made a similar announcement when it hit the iTunes store in January, saying more than one hundred thousand people downloaded that app in its first 24 hours. Ustream has Justin Bieber content, which you may consider an asset or a liability, depending on your perspective. (Personally, I just love Justin Bieber. I know he loves me back and I want him to be a part of my family. ) The point is: People love live streaming video to mobile handsets. Justin.tv said today that it has made major stability updates to its app (sometimes these things still feel like tin cans with string between them), and added push notifications to alert users when their favorite live shows are broadcasting. The iPhone app already contributes about 20% of the company’s total new account sign-ups. We don’t know how many downloads the Ustream app has seen since it first entered the iTunes app store and was featured prominently there, but if we assume that the same one half of one percent of users will have rated the Ustream app as have rated the Justin.tv app, then Ustream would have seen well more than 11 million downloads so far. Presumably if the app had in fact passed 10 million by now, we would have heard about it. The moral of the story, though, is that live streaming video sent to mobile phones is here and people like it. Live video broadcasting from mobile is much, much less popular of course, but content creation is always less popular than consumption. It’s exciting to imagine how a more mature mobile, live-streaming video market will look. I’m ready to watch all kinds of things happen live on my phone. Discuss

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Millions of People Now Get Live Streaming Video Sent to Their Phones

Akamai’s State of the Internet Report

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Digital platform company Akamai has released its latest State of the Internet Report . The report covers the last quarter of 2009. Among the findings are the persistence of Russia as the top location for attack traffic and of South Korea for speed of web connections.The number of unique ports attacked has increased by almost three times what it was in Q3. Sponsor The single oddest statement in the report is Akamai’s contention that “slightly more than 465 million unique IP addresses, from 234 countries, connected to the Akamai network- 4.7% more than in the third quarter of 2009, and 16% more than in the same quarter a year ago.” Given that most countries in the world recognize between 194 and 196 countries, it is difficult to understand how even the most liberal definition of country could result in Akamai’s total. Here are a list of important and interesting trends that Akamai has identified in Q4. Attacks Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 198 unique countries around the world. Russia remained the top attack traffic source, accounting for 13% of observed attack traffic in total. The United States, China and Brazil took second and third and fourth place for a total of 20%. Akamai observed attack traffic targeted at more than 10,000 unique ports. Users Akamai observed a 4.7% increase (from the third quarter of 2009) globally in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai’s network. Ending 2009 at 465 million unique IPs. The metric grew 16% from the end of 2008, and nearly 54% from the end of 2007. The United States and China together contribute 40% of unique IP addresses in the world. The Scandinavian countries have the highest number of IPs per person. In the U.S. it was New Jersey that took that honor. There are 32 countries with fewer than 1,000 unique IP addresses. Speed South Korea retained its lead as having the most high broadband (over 5 Mbps) and the highest average speed (12 Mbps). In the U.S., the state of Delaware retained its lead, growing to 72% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater. Delaware also maintained the highest average connection speed in the United States, increasing to 7.6 Mbps. Over 40 of the mobile providers surveyed had average speeds of over 1 Mbps. Two out of three U.S. mobile providers lost speed for the second quarter in a row. Discuss

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Akamai’s State of the Internet Report

2 More Weeks Until the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit – Register Today!

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:50:00 +0000

There are just two more weeks until the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 , so we invite you to register now . Be a part of high-value, intimate conversations with people working throughout the world of mobile, from garage developers to industry luminaries. The summit will take place May 7, 2010 , in Mountain View, California and will be an exploration of the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. We are looking forward to some amazing discussion and debate about mobile with participants like : Sponsor Deb Schultz of Altimeter group Patrick Chanezon, Don Dodge & Bob Meese of Google Ted Morgan of Skyhook Wireless Scott Raney and Tom Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures Adam Blum of Rhomobile Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Brent Simmons of Newsgator Technologies Patrick Burns of DASH7 Alliance As with our first event, the Real-Time Web Summit last October, the Mobile Summit will be in the “unconference” format. Laura Fittion, founder of oneforty.com , had these thoughts about ReadWriteWeb’s last summit: “There were a lot of investors there and it was a great dialogue between startups and investors. The unconference format was great because it got away from the bogus who-is in the real-time Web, and made it who-wants-to-be. You didn’t have to be big and influential to get your ideas across – if it was a good idea then it got heard. It wasn’t just Twitter, it was many things real time, defined pretty expansively.” How Unconferences Work What’s an unconference all about? Here’s the idea: Convene an incredible group of people, frame the discussion, ask important questions, then guide participants in building an agenda for the day to maximize the value of the event and minimize hot air. Martin Källström, CEO of the real-time blog and feed tracking service Twingly brought his team over from Sweden for our last event. ” Last year we happened across one of Kaliya Hamlin’s unconference events,” he told us. “We spent a couple of hours there and it was an amazing experience. The unconference format is an amazing way for things to happen; it gets everyone to lower their defenses. By opening peoples’ minds to ‘this is about whatever we want it to be about”, they look at how they can create value. ” Or, as Google’s Brett Slatkin said when using the elite FooCamp events as a way to explain the unconference format: “Foo-style [unconferencing is] always way better than talks.” As with our previous event, the Mobile Summit will be facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin , who in our opinion is the best in the business at this style of event. We’re using the same venue too, the beautiful Computer History Museum. Mobile was one of our top five trends last year and continues to undergo explosive growth , so our aim with this event is to help you navigate the opportunities. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of mobile! Because it will be you – the attendees – who ultimately set the agenda. You can begin adding your suggestions now. We will have two main tracks at this Summit, Development and Business . Here’s a sample of some of the topics we’ll explore in both of these tracks: Geo-location services – what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing – as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations – the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking – how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things – the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality – the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based – Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. If you’re a company in the mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire , WorldMate , Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo . The ReadWriteWeb team is excited about our second event and we can’t wait to discuss the opportunities in Mobile with you on May 7. You can find banners and logos to link to our event here , if you’re so inclined. We hope to see you on May 7! Discuss

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2 More Weeks Until the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit – Register Today!

Android: Motorola Replaces Google’s Location Engine With Skyhook

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:05:16 +0000

Tomorrow, Motorola will announce that it plans to replace Google’s location services on its Android phones with Skyhook ‘s location engine. By default, all Android devices currently use Google’s own location services to determine a phone’s location based on GPS data from the phone and the location of nearby Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. Skyhook, which pioneered this method to determine a device’s location, made its name as the default location provider for Apple’s iPhone and desktop operating systems. Adding Motorola to its partners will give Skyhook a strong foothold in the booming market for Android phones and applications. Sponsor Developers Won’t Have to Change Anything The first Motorola devices with Skyhook’s location services as the default will ship later this year. According to Skyhook, developers won’t have to make any changes to their Android apps to work with Skyhook’s location engine. Motorola will simply replace Google’s libraries with Skyhook’s Core Location services. As location becomes a more important part of a growing array of mobile apps, being able to quickly determine a phone’s location even when inside and without a line of sight to the nearest GPS satellites becomes a necessity for developers. Skyhook, which launched in 2003, pioneered this system of using Wi-Fi access points to determine a device’s location. Clearly, the engineers at Motorola felt that Skyhook’s solution is currently superior to Google’s services. Over the last few months, a number of the Android developers we talked to voiced frustration with the quality of Google’s location services on Android. Indeed, some of the most popular location-based applications on Android like ShopSavvy and Flixster already use Skyhook’s Android libraries instead of Google’s built-in services. Discuss

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Android: Motorola Replaces Google’s Location Engine With Skyhook

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 24 April 2010

cgseo — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Time is running out to register for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 ! It’s going to be the premier place to explore the latest mobile development trends – both the technology and the emerging business applications. And since it’s an unconference, you’ll be able to analyze, think and create the future of mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! Sign up now. How do you like your events guide? You can import individual events into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file, or even view it as a world map . Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 29 April 2010: San Francisco, California Green:Net 2010 Calling Internet entrepreneurs! A Greentech conference for you. From Vinod Khosla and Steve Jurvetson to Jerry Brown and Bill Gross, our speakers at Green:Net 2010 will be focused on one thing: how the Internet and IT can be leveraged to save the planet. Could this be the theme of your next startup? Attendees will gain insight into the huge new technology markets that are about to be unleashed. What is Green:Net ? Green:Net is where green and IT meet. While alternative energy gets a lot of attention at most green conferences, only the The GigaOM Network’s Green:Net offers a specific point of view on how the computing and Internet technologies will provide the tools needed to fight climate change. Subscribers of ReadWriteWeb click here to buy your limited supply $150-off ticket. 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O’Dell, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code “rww” to get 10% off registration . 3 – 6 May 2010: San Francisco, California Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco brings together the designers, developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketing professionals, product managers, and business strategists – from startups to enterprises – that are building the next-generation Web. Along with a vibrant Expo Hall and plenty of networking opportunities, four main conference tracks cover a spectrum of Web 2.0 topics from business strategy to Web design, user experience, developer hacks, community building, real-time, mobile, cloud computing, user-generated content, and more. Featured speakers include Chris Anderson, Ben Huh, Charlene Li, Kevin Lynch, Hilary Mason, and Brad Stone. Register today . 6 – 7 2010: San Francisco, California Social Gaming Summit

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 24 April 2010

Weekly Wrap-up: Deleting FB Apps, Open Web vs. FB Connect, Adobe Gives up on Apple, And More…

cgseo — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 13:00:00 +0000

It took Sarah Perez’s post How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should) a little more than 24 hours to become to the top-viewed post of this week. In a week filled with Facebook news, it certainly hit a nerve. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010. We wrote about how the Internet of Things can be an Internet of Cows, new tools to visualize the real-time Web, and how augmented reality developers can win $5,000. Read on for more. Sponsor Story of the Week: Delete Those Facebook Apps How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should) This is What a Tweet Looks Like XAuth: The Open Web Fires a Shot Against Facebook Connect Adobe Gives up on Apple, Welcomes Android Is the New Facebook a Deal With the Devil? Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 1: Design & Development More coverage and analysis from ReadWriteWeb ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit Join us for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7 in Mountain View, California as we explore the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Be a part of the discussion on geo-location services , augmented reality , native app vs. browser-based , commerce and marketing , mobile social networking and the Internet of Things. Sponsorship enquiries: sales@readwriteweb.com . Mobile Web Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 3: Emerging Markets Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week Top 10 YouTube Videos About Flash Mobs More Mobile Web coverage Augmented Reality Budding AR Developer? Put Your Creativity to Use and Win $5,000 Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps More Augmented Reality coverage Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Our Newest Research Report We’re pleased to announce ReadWriteWeb’s latest premium report, Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Analysis of the Leaders, the Challenges and the Future . This report will help you develop a sophisticated understanding of Augmented Reality (AR), the mobile and Web technology that places data on top of a user’s view of the physical world. The research included will help you decrease your AR development time to market by learning from the first wave of early adopters. AR offers a new marketing and product paradigm for a high impact, high value customer experience. More than 1,000 AR campaigns were kicked-off last year and we expect to see many more in 2010. In this report, we profile key AR development companies, their campaigns as well as development lessons learned. For more information or to buy the report, visit here . Internet of Things Internet of Things Can Make Us Human Again As Cattle Rustling Increases, So Does the Need for RFID More Internet of Things coverage Real-Time Web PostRank Launches New Tools to Visualize the Real-Time Web YouTube Streams IPL Cricket Live In U.S. More Real-Time Web coverage . Don’t miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb’s report, The Real-Time Web and its Future . Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app . As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we’ve made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes . ReadWriteStart Our channel ReadWriteStart , sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark , is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. The Art of the Email Pitch Tips for Networking (Beyond Just “Social Networking”) Got an Exit Strategy? Lessons From Foursquare and Yahoo ReadWriteCloud Our channel ReadWriteCloud , sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing. The Largest Cloud in the World is Owned By A Criminal Network Google’s Eric Schmidt Gushes About HTML 5 Google’s Vint Cerf on Private Clouds v. Public Clouds Enjoy your weekend everyone. Discuss

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Weekly Wrap-up: Deleting FB Apps, Open Web vs. FB Connect, Adobe Gives up on Apple, And More…

Weekend Reading: Mobile Marketing, by Cindy Krum

cgseo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:00:00 +0000

One of our favorite new trends here at ReadWriteWeb is the quickly growing field of mobile technology and how we can take more of the Web along with us when we leave our computers. Because of the expanding popularity of smartphones and mobile data use, startups these days need to develop plans for marketing their brand on mobile devices at very early stages of their development. Cindy Krum, CEO of Rank-Mobile , a consulting firm focused on mobile marketing and SEO, is the author of this week’s featured read, Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are . Sponsor With chapters on mobile advertising, mobile web development and search engine optimization, Krum’s informative book is a great resource for first time entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the mobile platform. There is also an entire chapter to the iPhone, a testament to the device’s influence on the mobile Web space. “The iPhone has brought mobile Web access and mobile search to the masses,” writes Krum. “The iPhone represents only 8% of the mobile handsets but roughly 75% of the mobile search, and iPhones now account for one out of every 333 Web hits worldwide. The desire for Web access and Web search was always there – it was just being slowed by the bad user experience that other mobile phones provided.” “The desire for Web access and Web search was always there – it was just being slowed by the bad user experience that other mobile phones provided.” – Cindy Krum Krum also includes case studies from prominent businesses which have used mobile platforms to market their products. These include Nike , Nationwide Insurance , Land Rover , Visa , Corona Beer and CNN . I was disappointed to not find any mention of the efforts being made by numerous companies to use augmented reality for mobile marketing, but the book does include the use of quick response (QR) codes . Various types of bar codes and QR codes are described, as well as case studies of companies that put the technology to practical use. The book itself even joins in the QR fun by including a ScanLife EZ Code on the back cover. ScanLife is a mobile application and short code provider that allows companies to market specifically to camera phones. Users take a picture of the code using a ScanLife app and can be redirected to various forms of mobile content. The strange thing about the book’s implementation of the ScanLife code is that it failed to include any mobile-specific content. After scanning the code with the ScanLife app on my iPhone, Safari launched and took me to the book’s homepage. Yes, Safari on the iPhone is a fully capable web browser, but it would have made more sense to create a website optimized for the iPhone’s smaller screen. A similar code I found while on a recent trip to Las Vegas took me to a special mobile promotion page with a video and special hotel rates. The lesson to be learned here, and from other forms of mobile marketing, is that the content used should be native to the devices it is being viewed on. Simply adding a link to your normal webpage on a mobile device is not making the best use of the technology. The marketing the hotel used in the above example was a much better implementation because it provided me with exclusive content that was also optimized for viewing on a smaller screen. It isn’t enough to market to mobile phones; companies must be sure to make the content unique and native. Much more can be learned from the book and from the advice provided straight from the CEO of a company in the trenches of mobile marketing. Research shows that smartphones could become used more than personal computers in just a few short years, so getting ahead on mobile marketing strategies is an important step for any early-stage company. If you want to learn more about mobile trends, be sure to register for our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7th in Mountain View, California. Photo by Flickr user William Hook . Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to ReadWriteWeb by Pearson Education and Que Publishing . Discuss

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Weekend Reading: Mobile Marketing, by Cindy Krum

Why You Should Come to the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7th

cgseo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:29:50 +0000

May 7th, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California: the ReadWriteWeb crew is hosting some of the smartest people building the future of the mobile world and you to come together for a wonderful day of brainstorming, conversation and innovation in action at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit . Who’s speaking? You are. ReadWriteWeb events are facilitated in the increasingly popular unconference style, in which smart people are convened and take it upon themselves to pack a day full of value from start to finish. We’ve got an awesome group of people signing up to attend and you should add your name to that list. If you’re going to the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco May 4th-6th, stick around one extra day for a power-house mobile event immediately following. There’s a whole lot to talk about. Sponsor Who’s Coming to the Summit? Featured participants include…. Don Dodge, Google Scott Kveton, Urban Airship Dion Almaer, Palm And people from… SimpleGeo Intuit Flickr Rhomobile And many more… Generously Sponsored By… CallFire WorldMate Alcatel-Lucent IPEVO Media Sponsors… MIT/Stanford Venture Lab EComm The One Club How Unconferences Work What’s an Unconference all about? Here’s the idea: convene an incredible group of people, frame the discussion, ask big important questions, then guide participants in building an agenda for the day to maximize the value of the event and minimize hot air. That’s the recipe we’re following, with the capable guidance of professional unconference facilitator Kaliya Hamlin. Kaliya has been facilitating events like this all around the world for almost 10 years. Martin Källström, CEO of real-time blog and feed tracking service Twingly brought his team over from Sweden for our last event (we had 10 international companies represented that day). “Last year we happened across one of Kaliya Hamlin’s unconference events,” he told us. “We spent a couple of hours there and it was an amazing experience. The unconference format is an amazing way for things to happen, it gets everyone to lower their defenses. By opening peoples’ minds to ‘this is about whatever we want it to be about’, they look at how they can create value.” Or, as Google’s Brett Slatkin said in referencing the format of the elite FooCamp events to explain unconferences: “Foo-style [unconferencing is] always way better than talks.” You will not want to miss this event. Our last event in October got rave reviews from participants and if your work is related to mobile – you should make sure you participate in the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit . If you’re a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire , WorldMate , Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo . Discuss

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Why You Should Come to the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7th

Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 3: Emerging Markets

cgseo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:00:00 +0000

In preparation for the upcoming ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit , we’re outlining the 10 leading trends of the Mobile Web in a 3-part series of posts. In this the final instalment, we look at three markets for mobile which promise to be hugely valuable: commerce , cloud computing and health . As a reminder, in Part 1 we covered design and development issues and in Part 2 we looked at trending mobile apps such as geo-location and AR. We’ll explore these and other trends with you at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit , a 1-day event we’re running on Friday 7 May, in Mountain View, California. That’s the day after Web 2.0 Expo (2-6 May), so we hope you’ll extend your trip to the West Coast to help us define the future of mobile! To be certain of getting a ticket, we invite you to register now . Sponsor Commerce As more and more consumers use smart phones, how can businesses utilize this channel? That’s one question we will analyze at the RWW Mobile Summit. Consider these statistics: nearly one quarter of the mobile web, according to a recent report from mobile search engine Taptu , is made up of shopping and services . Taptu surveyed about 326,000 sites that are optimized for touch-screen browsing and found that the largest concentration of these sites falls into Taptu’s “shopping and services” category. In total, Taptu found 83,000 mobile-enabled commerce sites, ranging from mobile shopping assistants to banks and mobile real estate sites. According to Taptu, mobile shopping and services sites make up close to 25% of all mobile-friendly sites in the company’s index, followed by sites in the “photo and design” category (17.7%). Social sites rank third with 9.2%. Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010: – Part 1: Design & Development – Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps In a recent report , Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker Meeker claimed that mobile will revolutionize e-commerce. She cited location-based services, push notifications, transparent pricing, and instant mobile delivery as four potential areas where this will occur. Mobile advertising is also a growing segment. In November, Google acquired AdMob , a mobile display ad serving platform, for $750 million. In January Apple acquired Quattro , a relatively unknown mobile advertising network, for an estimated $275 million. Later in January, Opera bought AdMarvel . In April, Apple announced an advertising platform called iAd . Cloud Computing According to a recent study from Juniper Research , the market for cloud-based mobile applications will grow 88% from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, says Juniper, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new web standard HTML5, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise. Explained ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez in February, “there are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google’s Gmail and Google Voice for iPhone. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud.” Health Mobile health applications will play a large and important role in shaping the future of the health care system, wrote Mike Kirkwood at the mHealth initiative conference in February. He wrote that mobile and wireless health applications “directly impact the individual’s health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don’t become “lost” in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider.” It’s not just from within the health system where mobile services will change health care, it’s also in the applications that consumers are downloading to their smart phones. In February I surveyed the latest health and fitness apps on the iPhone platform . For example, an iPhone app called Diamedic allows diabetics to record their blood sugar levels and insulin doses. Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010: – Part 1: Design & Development – Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps We’d love to discuss these and other mobile topics with you at our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 . See our announcement post for more details. If you’re a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire , WorldMate , Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo . Discuss

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Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 3: Emerging Markets

Is Apple Booting iAd’s Competition from the iPhone?

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:15:23 +0000

At the most recent Apple keynote , Steve Jobs announced Apple’s upcoming advertising platform called iAd . Included as a part of the OS 4.0 update, the mobile operating system upgrade due out for iPhone this summer and iPad later this fall, the iAd system aims, in its very Apple-ly way, to make mobile advertisements “delightful,” meaning ads worth clicking on, engaging with and viewing. What Jobs didn’t mention, though, is how Apple plans to give iAd its head start: by kicking out the competing analytics and advertising platforms now thriving in nearly every iPhone app today. Or so it seems. Sponsor Developer Reports App Store Rejection Due to Analytics Inclusion Last week, technology news blog VentureBeat caught wind of a story where Apple had rejected an iPhone application because it, according to the email sent to the developer, “is not appropriate for applications to gather user analytics.” Not appropriate, you may ask? Since when? Apparently since Apple released their updated iPhone Developer Agreement. Alongside the SDK 4 beta , made available shortly after the announcement in early April, the developer contract was updated, too. Specifically, the clause in question, section 3.3.9, reads, in part (more here ): Notwithstanding anything else in this Agreement, Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third party without Apple’s prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited. To date, the changes detailed in this clause have been overshadowed by the one preceding it – in Section 3.3.1, Apple banned the use of cross-compiler tools for building iPhone applications, like the one Adobe was just about to ship , for example. But in the long run, it’s Section 3.3.9 that may have more impact on the industry as a whole. “FEAR” You may have not heard too much about this change because no one actually knows what’s going on thanks to Apple’s par-for-the-course policy of refusing to clarify its meaning. Plus, the companies who may be the most heavily affected by an analytics ban – services like Flurry , MediaLets , Motally , Localytics , and SimpleGeo , to name a few – don’t want to talk about it. On record that is. But after a dozen or so phone calls and emails, we’re starting to see a picture forming and it can be summed up in one word: FEAR . “Nobody wants to be the canary in the coal mine,” one source told us, referring to the radio silence we’re getting from these companies when you would have otherwise expected to hear outcry, or perhaps even anti-competitive claims. Some companies, off-record, say they are afraid to complain . If they do, they could be the next to be banned. Another source reported that a number of their company’s clients weren’t submitting updates to the iTunes Application Store because they were worried that the updates, with the analytics included of course, would be rejected. Instead, the clients are leaving their older applications in place since it doesn’t appear that Apple is going back through all the current apps and booting out those that already include analytics within them. “Maybe the older apps are grandfathered in?” they wondered aloud. The fact that no one knows, not even the big name, big box retailer that sits at the top of the latter’s client list, is a testament to how Apple likes to do business. Here’s the agreement, read it and sign it…and that’s the extent of the communication. As to those who did manage to get someone from Apple to talk about it? The answer was simply: “read the agreement.” But if Apple holds true to what’s written there, it sounds like it could spell doom for mobile analytics and ad firms, especially the small-time players beloved by independent developers. iAd, Anti-Competitive? What no one will say – again, on record, that is – is that the changes have a whiff of anti-competitive behavior to them. The issue at hand: Apple is preparing to launch iAd, an advertising platform based on the newly-acquired Quattro Wireless, a second choice for Apple after the Admob deal fell through. “We tried to buy AdMob, but Google snatched them up because they didn’t want us to have them,” Steve Jobs said during the April keynote. “So we bought another smaller company, Quattro. But we’re babes in the woods.” Some say that the added language to section 3.3.9 is a direct shot at AdMob in the same way that the changes in 3.3.1 were a shot at Adobe. That is, instead of allowing Google to get its mobile advertisements onto the iPhone, Apple can keep them out via the new analytics/ad ban. Whether or not that’s the case is certainly up for debate. But considering that the Google/AdMob deal is still being researched by U.S. antitrust enforcers, regulators aware of the issue. Word has it that Google even pointed it out to the FTC, just in case. Continue Reading: Next page, “A Second Opinion” A Second Opinion: Privacy Concerns Others, however, say these changes aren’t really about analytics, ads and anti-competitive behavior as much as they are about privacy concerns. In speaking with Alan Chapell, chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association Privacy Committee and whose firm advises companies on privacy and data strategy, the changes to Apple’s agreement have to do more with consumer privacy than anything else. With language that refers to “geo-location” and targeted advertising, a good bit of Section 3.3.9 is about how location-based applications should behave. With the rise of location-based services especially and location-based social tools like Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla, and others, privacy is at the forefront of everyone’s minds these days. ( Including ours ). There are no standards for location based data yet, Chapell explains. No rules about how such data should be used, retained, shared and so on. In addition, Apple is under heavy pressure from regulators to protect the privacy of its customers. And if the third-party analytics providers do something which comprises that privacy, it will be Apple that gets in trouble. “This debate is about privacy and innovation,” Chapell notes, “and finding a balance between the two.” Unfortunately, even if Apple chooses never to enforce the new rules, explains Chapell, the changes will have an indirect impact on innovation in this area. The next round of ad networks, analytics providers and other in-app data-sharing tools will be less likely to be funded. Not Just Funding at Risk… These changes won’t just affect the funding of services like those noted above, though, they could affect how services are developed for the iPhone. Take for example, Xtify , a location-triggered geo-messaging system now available for Android ( previous coverage ).