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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

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

Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps

cgseo — Wed, 21 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 Part 1 we explored 3 important design and development issues for the Mobile Web. Now in Part 2, we look at 4 classes of mobile applications that have become popular in 2010: geo-location , Internet of Things , Augmented Reality , and mobile social networking . 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 Geo-location Services In January, RWW Co-Editor Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote that the era of Location-as-Platform has arrived . Using leading location mobile service Foursquare as an example, Marshall wrote that "the mobile location 'check-in' is fast becoming the hot new status message type online." He added that "it was only a matter of time until 'where you are' became a platform to build added value on top of just like 'who you know' has on social networking sites like Facebook." 'Where you are' is the new 'who you know'! The use cases for location data include showing nearby restaurants and ratings, mobile advertising, local news, events, and Wikipedia data about local buildings. That's impressive enough, but imagine the possibilities when you add data from sensors . As I wrote in January, one use case that should become reality soon is receiving a real-time update of traffic conditions via sensors embedded in the road. What else can we do using location as a platform? We'll discuss this in-depth at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit . Internet of Things As well as sensor applications, there are other emerging applications for mobile that intersect with the Internet of Things trend. They include barcode scanning, using your phone as an RFID tag and reader, and using your phone as a proximity sensor. As we explained in January , as well as your mobile phone reading and acting on sensor data from real world objects, the phone may also be used as a sensor itself. For example the iPhone has a built-in accelerometer, which is basically a motion detector. This is used for game control and also for re-sizing your iPhone display from portrait to landscape. The iPhone also has a microphone (which can be used as a noise sensor), a proximity sensor, and an ambient light sensor. Barcode scanning and its applications is a fast growing market in the mobile world. The most popular form of 2D barcode is the QR Code (the QR stands for "Quick Response"), which became popular in Japan and is now gaining traction in the U.S. and other markets. There are many emerging opportunities to utilize sensor and RFID data, which again we will explore at the Mobile Summit on 7 May. Augmented Reality Augmented Reality has been one of the hottest trends in mobile for about a year now. ReadWriteWeb even created an extensive report about AR and its market and development opportunities. We think that 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 this year. In our report, we profiled key AR development companies, their campaigns as well as development lessons learned. In a recent post, Chris Cameron (the author of our AR report) noted that practical application is the golden ticket of Augmented Reality . As an example he pointed to the junaio iPhone application, which competes with Layar and Wikitude in the AR browser space. junaio recently announced that its formed a partnership with BART, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system, to bring live train data to the app. junaio takes advantage of the API provided by BART to not only place locations of nearby stations in a user's field of vision, but also estimate arrival time of trains at each station and display that live in real-time using AR. Mobile Social Networking A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez concluded that "the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC." The study found that during the 2.7 hours per day that people in the U.S. spend on the mobile web, 45% are posting comments on social networking sites, 43% are connecting with friends on social networking sites, 40% are sharing content with others and 38% are sharing photos. Sarah commented that it's no surprise to find that the rise of the mobile phone corresponds with the rise in Facebook's popularity, because "it has become a do-anywhere activity that captures people's attention whenever they have free time, instead of an activity that requires people make time for it." Sarah concluded that mobile social networking is an easier activity to participate in now that it's been unchained from the PC. This of course has big implications for entrepreneurs and application developers, which we will explore at the RWW Mobile Summit. In Part 3 of this series outlining 10 big trends in Mobile in 2010, we will look at Mobile Business trends. 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 2: Apps, Apps, Apps

Lenovo: Mobile will be 10-20% of Revenue in 5 Years

cgseo — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:16:35 +0000

PC maker Lenovo announced today that the company expects its mobile Internet products to account for 10%-20% of revenue in five years' time. This statement comes from President and COO, Rory Read, delivered at a media briefing that coincided with the launch of the newest Lenovo "LePhone" smartphone device in China. With the phone, a handset running the Google Android mobile OS, Lenovo hopes to grab a good-sized chunk of the still-emerging Chinese smartphone market. Sponsor Interestingly enough, Lenovo had, in early 2008, sold off its mobile phone unit to focus solely on its PC business. But as the financial crisis hit, companies delayed refreshing their corporate desktops and laptops in an effort to save money, a move which heavily impacted Lenovo's bottom line. Last year, the company decided to once again diversify their offerings by bringing back the mobile unit. In January, Lenovo launched an improved "Ophone" device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, its first smartphone since the $200 million reacquisition of the once-discarded mobile business, returned to the company in November of last year. At the time, Lenovo execs said the phone would be central to the company's mobile strategy. Today, they're echoing that sentiment. According to Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing, mobile Internet devices will overtake traditional PCs in the next five years. And Read reminded everyone that the smartphone market in China was only now emerging. "It's just the beginning," he said. PC Manufacturers Focused on Mobile Lenovo isn't the only PC manufacturer making changes in this direction, with smartphone launches laser-focused on China especially. Dell, for example, announced in November they would launch an Android-based handset called the Dell Mini 3 that would be sold only in Brazil and China to start. The company is also hard at work on an Android tablet, a colorful consumer-targeted device apparently being called the "Dell Streak." Acer, too, has a line of smartphones running both the Windows Mobile OS and Android, available outside the U.S. in parts of Europe and Asia. HP, although still more focused on PCs, is set to launch its first "new-wave" tablet in the form of the HP Slate , a multi-touch lightweight device running Windows 7.

Op-Ed: Objects Aren’t Social

cgseo — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:01:29 +0000

I first began writing regularly about the Internet of Things about a year ago. Now it's bubbling up in the mainstream press and we're also beginning to see web apps that are attempting to reach, if not quite a mainstream audience yet, then certainly the iPhone and Android-toting geek community. We've moved beyond the cutesy Internet-connected bunny rabbits and we're now onto barcodes to stick on everyday objects . A new web service called tales of things just launched, which aims to attach stories to objects. It follows on from a similar service that got a good amount of press at SXSW this year, StickyBits . Both services want to get people to 'tag' real world objects, by sticking barcodes onto them and adding information about the object onto the Web (often via mobile phone). The idea is that this will make the objects 'social.' However, I think this is doomed to fail and here's why... Sponsor Tales of things asks on its homepage: "Wouldn't it be great to link any object directly to a 'video memory' or an article of text describing its history or background? Tales of Things allows just that with a quick and easy way to link any media to any object via small printable tags known as QR codes." Both Tales of Things and StickyBits are going to struggle to get mainstream adoption. And it's not because people just won't stick barcodes onto objects - although that is a short-term pain point that both of these companies will likely fail to overcome. No, they won't get mainstream adoption simply because the Internet of Things isn't going to be just another social network platform . What's unique about the Internet of Things is that it adds a huge amount of new data to the Web and allows real-world objects to become part of the cloud network. For example, sensors on a busy road communicate with your car to tell you of impending heavy traffic. Or when you walk into a shop, the store messages your phone to tell you that an item you've been looking for is in stock and on special. I met StickyBits founder Seth Goldstein at SXSW and he told me that his company aims to create a "social object network." Trouble is, I just don't think that Internet-connected everyday objects have much social value. Say I tag a book that I bought and attach the following 'memory' to it: "I read this book in the summer of 2010, it was a great read. I'd give it a 4/5." Even if I wrote a much more in-depth review, what value does that have on a single object? If I uploaded that review to Amazon.com, then it's put into context and gets aggregated with other reviews to form ratings and other 'wisdom of the crowd' intelligence. But on the object itself - my copy of the book - the review has limited value. If a friend of mine happened to scan my book with their phone, they'd see my review...and then probably head straight to Amazon.com to see what other people thought. Or perhaps check out what their own social network thought, via an app like Glue (a social network based on the media you consume - see our most recent review ). Objects aren't social, they never were and they never will be. The real value of Internet-connected objects is that they can become part of the network, which means they can connect to one another and they add more data to the giant computer we call The Cloud. But social networks aren't going to form around single objects, other than perhaps public ones - like the Eiffel Tower, for example. But then you are just talking about a location, which the likes of FourSquare and BrightKite can take care of. The Internet of Things is about utility, not social networking. Neither Tales of Things nor StickyBits offers much in the way of utility, that we can't already get from sites like Amazon.com or existing social networks. Let me know if you agree, or not! Discuss

Weekly Wrap-up: Twitter in the Library, iPhone Gets Multitasking, Goodbye Google Gears, And More…

cgseo — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Our number one post this week was that Twitter's archives will soon be housed in the hallowed halls of the Library of Congress. There's got to be joke about librarians shushing tweets in there somewhere. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010. We wrote about Internet of Things threads you'll be wearing soon, a real-time trip into Twitter's past, and that augmented reality is going to the fishes on the Discovery Channel. Read on for more. Sponsor Story of the Week: Twitter in the Library of Congress Twitter's Entire Archive Headed to the Library of Congress Apple Announces iPhone OS 4 with Support for Multitasking 10 Smart Clothes You'll Be Wearing Soon Goodbye, Gears - Google Docs Boots Plugin for HTML5 on May 3rd Top 10 YouTube Videos About Facebook New Google Docs Features: Added Co-Editing Capabilities, Similar To Google Wave 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 Where Does Android Register on Google's "Evil" Meter? Opera Takes a Back Seat to Safari on the iPhone Microsoft's New Phone Gets the Social/App Balance Wrong More Mobile Web coverage Augmented Reality Discovery Channel Puts AR In Front of Millions of Eyeballs 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 10 Smart Clothes You'll Be Wearing Soon DASH7: Bringing Sensor Networking to Smartphones More Internet of Things coverage Real-Time Web Google's Twitter Timeline Lets You Explore the Past Microblogging vs. Blogging: 5 Ways to Create an Open Twitter Alternative 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. Entrepreneurs Under 30: Advice From Your Peers Mary Meeker's Internet Trends: The Future is Mobile Apple's Game Center: More Opportunities for Social Games Developers ReadWriteEnterprise Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations. New Google Docs Features: Added Co-Editing Capabilities, Similar To Google Wave Social Media Analysis: SAS Makes Its Play ReadWriteCloud Our channel ReadWriteCloud , sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing. Weekly Poll: What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean? Drupal Founder Takes on Jive Software Another Cloud Computing Acronym To Drive You Bonkers Enjoy your weekend everyone. Discuss

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Weekly Wrap-up: Twitter in the Library, iPhone Gets Multitasking, Goodbye Google Gears, And More...

Glympse: Real-Time, Private Location-Tracking May be the Winning Formula

cgseo — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:14:22 +0000

A Redmond-based startup is introducing a location-based social sharing service called Glympse . With a mobile application that works on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices, users share their location (aka a "Glympse"), allowing their friends to see that location on another phone or on any other Internet-connected device. Senders can customize who gets to see the Glympse they post, whether the recipient is just one person, a group, or even everyone they've added as a friend on a social network like Facebook or Twitter. The interesting twist to this service isn't the location-sharing aspect, of course - there are dozens of companies that allow for that today - it's the service's real-time nature and the thoughtfully included privacy features. Using a patent-pending timer option, Glympse users specify how long their location is visible to which select group of friends, with a maximum time of four hours before the location data expires. Sponsor Location is Not a Game, It's a Utility Unlike the current crop of location-based social networking services (think Brightkite, Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, etc.), Glympse isn't designed to find nearby friends, share tips about local businesses or collect rewards for check-ins. It employs no game mechanics to encourage participation - that is, you aren't given badges or points the more you use it. You don't get to become the "mayor" of a place by checking in there the most, like you do in Foursquare. In fact, Glympse can hardly be called a "mobile social network" at all. Glympse is more like a utility, and that may what ensures its success long after everyone tires of "checking in" just because they can. There are a number of scenarios where Glympse may prove useful. Their PR team says they've seen its earliest users sharing locations related to cross-country road trips, marathons, paragliding flights and afternoons of skiing. Although those standout occasions may give Glympse a "wow" factor, it's in answering the everyday "where are you?" type questions where Glympse could prove be the most useful. In the "What is Glympse?" introductory video , the company says sending a Glympse is easier than making a call or sending a text. That's not necessarily true, though. Calls and texts are sent with the push of a button where Glympse requires a multi-step process that begins with installing the application on your mobile device, if supported . But as mentioned later in the video, many states have banned texting or making phone calls while driving. That's where Glympse comes in. Before you leave work, school or your home, you could send out a Glympse. For the time you specify, those permitted to see your location can track where you are at any given moment in real-time courtesy of your phone's GPS capabilities. Live Updating Maps and Privacy Features That's right - Glympse doesn't "check you in," it tracks you. Much like those pricey "family locator" cell phone add-on plans do, but for free. The service also addresses the privacy issues surrounding location-sharing, even going so far as to work with a safety group called ConnectSafely.org when designing the service. In Glympse, adding friends isn't an "all or nothing" endeavor. That is, you don't choose whether to just accept or reject friends. You accept friends, then group them accordingly ("family," "friends," "work," etc.). Later, when you're ready to share your location, you choose which group or groups should see it. Only want the spouse and kids to tune in? Share a Glympse with family. At a large conference where you want to meet up with colleagues? Send a Glympse to your "work" group. And so on. Facebook Integration: A Plus, Not the Selling the Point Much of the news coverage related to Glympse's launch has to do with its Facebook integration. That's an interesting option to be sure, especially since Facebook plans to announce their own location-sharing service later this month, according to reports. But whether or not Facebook users actually care to see the locations of their friends is another matter entirely. Many Facebook users simply use the network to catch up with friends and family they don't get to see every day by posting on their wall, chatting via Facebook's IM service and by browsing their shared photos, videos and links. Whether or not a friend is on their way to a meeting right now may be completely irrelevant information to these users. Like the intrusions from other apps and games, Glympse's Facebook updates - which come via a large, embedded map placed in the News Feed - could very well end up being hidden from view by Facebook users who simply aren't interested in seeing that sort of data. In other words, it's arguable that Glympse's Facebook (and Twitter) sharing features aren't necessarily the key selling points of its service. Real-time live data, the utility aspect of the tool itself and its built-in privacy features, however, are. Hopefully, mainstream users will understand that before mistakenly dismissing it as just another Facebook app clogging up their News Feed with noise. Discuss

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Glympse: Real-Time, Private Location-Tracking May be the Winning Formula

Just the Facts: Statistics from Twitter Chirp

cgseo — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:10:08 +0000

This morning's presentations from Chirp , Twitter's developer conference, have showcased the growth and the innovation of the service. A few of the statistics announced this morning include: Sponsor Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users 300,000 new users sign up per day Approximately 60% of them are coming from outside the U.S Twitter receives 180 million unique visitors per month 75% of Twitter traffic comes from third-party applications 60% of all tweets come from third-party apps Since the new Blackberry application was launched, it has accounted for 7 to 8% of new sign Twitter now has 175 employees, up from 25 one year ago There are 600 million search queries on Twitter per day There are over 100,000 Twitter applications Twitter gets 3 billion requests a day through its API 37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet While the company is making several announcements at Chirp, including the archival of all public tweets since 2006 with the Library of Congress, these statistics confirm the impressive growth and potential of Twitter. Discuss

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Just the Facts: Statistics from Twitter Chirp

What’s Next For Mobile Apps?

cgseo — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:16:18 +0000

Yesterday we looked at DASH7 , a wireless sensor networking standard that may play an important part in next generation mobile services - including location-based services, Internet of Things and social networking. In this post we analyze some use cases for DASH7, which also point to where the Mobile Web is heading. We'll explore long distance mobile advertising and mobile coupons. We'll also look at how location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla could evolve. Sponsor Extending Location-Based App Functionality Given the growth of location-based apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla in 2010, it's intriguing to think about what's next for these services. According to the DASH7 report, enhanced loyalty programs could be the next big thing. With a DASH7-enabled phone, the white paper states, "a user could set his or her preferences in the Foursquare or Gowalla application that would allow the user to be automatically "discovered" or "checked in" at the coffee shop/restaurant/gun store/etc. and thereby accrue loyalty points passively, i.e. by just being "in" the establishment, rather than requiring active/conscious user behavior to participate in the program." Even more advanced services could offer customized promotions created "on the fly", targeting a certain user's preferences. Mobile Advertising From Long Distance and On-The-Go A long-held goal of the Mobile Web - at least for retailers - is using mobile phones for mobile advertising, loyalty programs, couponing, and other 'personalized shopping' experiences. Of course there are privacy issues with these things, but nevertheless these scenarios are (finally) coming soon. NFC-enabled phones have shown glimpses of this functionality, via smart posters, kiosks and billboards. As discussed in a previous post, NFC technology is limited to a 4 centimeter range - so the phone needs to be held close to the media asset in order to initiate the data transfer. Also it requires a tag reader application to be installed on your mobile phone. According to an as yet unreleased white paper that ReadWriteWeb was shown, the DASH7 Alliance thinks that "a far larger set of customers would be willing to execute the same applications provided that they were executable a) from a longer distance, b) while moving, and c) in some cases, passively/without any conscious initiation of their own." DASH7 has a range of hundreds of meters and can be used while on the move. While point 3 might scare some privacy advocates, it's very likely that customers would need to opt in before they "passively" received such advertising messages. If this is still to abstract for you, here's a potential scenario: I'm driving down a street and I pass a smart poster pasted onto a building wall. This elicits a beep from my phone, because my phone has 'passively' scanned the poster and discovered something that I want to be notified about (I've opted into receiving notifications only about certain things). Because it's against the law to check my mobile phone where I live, I wait till I'm parked and then I check what the beep was for. Turns out that one of my favorite bands is playing in the city tomorrow night! The smart poster I'd driven past was an advertisement for that band. So I then proceed to book a ticket, using my phone of course. Mobile Coupons Mobile coupons are a hot area of activity already, with Google and others offering them. However, currently mobile coupons are limited to short-range and active receiving. Soon we might have long-range couponing, real-time interaction and 'passively' receiving coupons. The DASH7 Alliance white paper offers a scenario of Paramount promoting its upcoming movie Iron Man 2, using a smart poster. In the NFC scenario, someone could walk past the Iron Man 2 poster and download a 2-for-1 coupon to see the movie. However, according to the DASH7 Alliance: "...a combination DASH7/NFC-enabled smartphone could still support the default NFC scenario, but could also provide for a) longer distance distribution of the coupon b) "passive" acquisition of coupons according to a user's pre-defined "coupon acquisition criteria" (e.g. "auto-accept coupons for any movies starring Al Pacino" , and c) real-time interaction with the media asset (e.g. "answer the following three questions correctly and win a 2-for-1 coupon to see "Iron Man 2".)" Those are just some of the next generation mobile services we can expect to see soon, thanks to wireless technologies like NFC and DASH7. Let us know in the comments if you have other potential use case ideas! Discuss

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What's Next For Mobile Apps?

DASH7: Bringing Sensor Networking to Smartphones

cgseo — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:43:25 +0000

You think your smartphone is cool now? Wait till it gets RFID chips, then it'll truly be 'smart.' That's the promise of two emerging RFID-based mobile technologies called NFC and DASH7. We've already looked at NFC (Near Field Communication), which holds great promise as an enabler of mobile payments. Today we look at DASH7 , a wireless sensor networking standard that complements NFC. Both NFC and DASH7 may soon be a part of the mobile phone that you carry around everywhere - they'll enable mobile payments, building access, advanced location-based services, ticketing, and more. We spoke to Pat Burns, co-founder and president of the DASH7 Alliance , to find out what DASH7 can do. Sponsor DASH7 was originally created for military use - and it's still being used for those purposes. In January 2009 the U.S. Department of Defense announced a $429 million contract for DASH7 devices, to four vendors: Savi Technology, SPEC, Northrop Grumman, and Unisys. Pat Burns works for one of those vendors, Savi Technology. He also writes the DASH7 blog , which is an excellent daily read. According to an upcoming report by the DASH7 Alliance, which ReadWriteWeb got an early peak at, DASH7 is typically used for applications requiring low power, "bursty" wireless communication. The report states that DASH7 is "ideal for large area sensor networking or supporting reliable communication with things on the move." That means that DASH7 is going to be an integral part of the Internet of Things , as it can acquire sensor data and help run social networking applications that use sensor data. Both DASH7 and NFC are technologies that enable your phone to communicate with other devices. So for example, these technologies allow your phone to read a 'smart poster' (a poster with a barcode or chip in it). The major difference between the two is that NFC is a short-range communications technology, with a range of about 10 centimeters. DASH7 however has a much longer range, of hundreds of meters. DASH7 is also a low power wireless technology, meaning batteries can last for many years. The main disadvantage of DASH7 is that it can't handle high bandwidth data transfers. DASH7 competes directly with a wireless data protocol called ZigBee . However DASH7 and NFC complement each other, according to the upcoming DASH7 report. Both technologies can potentially be hosted on the same phone. The report states: "NFC is a short-range passive RFID technology whose "killer" application is the enormous-but-elusive mobile payments opportunity. in the future we will probably just ditch our credit cards and instead wave our smartphones next to a cash register or vending machine in order to complete a purchase. Enhancing NFC silicon to include DASH7 functionality will accelerate the adoption of NFC for non-payment applications and ultimately for NFC generally." The reason why DASH7 is hitching its wagon to NFC is that NFC has received the most interest so far by mobile handset manufacturers. Nokia is an early adopter of NFC, while both Apple and Google are rumored to be close to adopting it in 2010. Pat Burns told ReadWriteWeb that DASH7 could play at the intersection of location-based services, Internet of Things, social networking, and other mobile services. Examples include enhanced location-based apps, building automation smart energy, tire pressure monitoring, and in-transit temperature monitoring of perishable goods. We will look into these and other DASH7 use cases in Part 2 of this post tomorrow. Discuss

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DASH7: Bringing Sensor Networking to Smartphones