Report From SMX West: An Overview Of Augmented Reality Mobile Apps
I was sitting in the mobile app panel at SMX West when the subject turned to “augmented reality.” Some great live blogging of the presentation by Cindy Krum is on her RankMobile site.
Augmented reality is basically presenting some kind of digital overlay on top of a view of the “real world.” Think about [...]
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Google Goes for Browser-based Voice for iPhone
Six months after Google said that Apple rejected a Google Voice app for the iPhone (Apple maintained that the app was merely under review, a process which usually takes about a week), Google has finally decided to circumvent the ban. VP of mobile apps engineering Vic Gundotra told the Crunchies Voice would get on the iPhone “one way or another.”
Here’s another: they’re going for a browser-based Google Voice (like the rest of us are using). This option was formerly less viable, but now Google has improved the mobile version of their site for iPhone and Palm Pre users.
The controversy, of course, is that Google Voice allows users to make calls and now send text messages without charge, and without using the minutes in their carrier’s plan.
The New York Times documents the improvements:
Of course, iPhone users were always able to point their mobile Web browser to m.google.com/voice to access their Google Voice accounts. But plenty of things didn’t work right. For example, making calls was a two-step process and the outbound caller ID feature didn’t work, meaning that whoever received the call couldn’t see who was calling, which is one of the more compelling features of Google Voice. [Senior product manager for Google Voice Vincent] Paquet said that all those problems have been solved, and that the new version of Google Voice also offers free text messaging.
Naturally, Google maintains that this isn’t a strike against mobile carriers, just a response to the high demand they’ve had from mobile users with browsers capable of interpreting HTML5.
What do you think? Is this a fourth volley this month in the budding Google/Apple war? How will Apple respond?
SES Chicago ‘09: Day Two Live Blogging
Day two of SES Chicago 2009 is just about complete. Here is some of the live blog coverage from today. I may add to this coverage later on today, but if you spot anything I missed, feel free to comment with links.
Cool Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality – It’s a Brave New World from [...]
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Connect Propelled Facebook Past MySpace
In case you missed it, Facebook is pretty popular. As of June 2008, they’d beat MySpace in terms of total unique visitors worldwide (ballooning to twice as many uniques as MySpace in January 2009)—and even in the US, one of the few Facebook-is-#2 holdouts, Facebook has caught up to MySpace. Hitwise takes a look at the stats—and they say that Facebook Connect gave the popular social network the boost it needed to achieve world domination.
Hitwise mentions other factors that have helped FB: the new layout, mobile apps, especially for the iPhone and BlackBerry.
Another is certainly the Facebook Connect program, which allows users to share stories in their news feed and make comments on websites and blogs. The program launched in beta during July of last year, then officially launched to developers in early December. The number of websites participating in Facebook Connect has grown quickly to over 15,000 websites (globally) including CNN.com, NBC.com, ABCNews.com, Hulu, WashingtonPost.com, The Huffington Post, and others.
Most convincing, of course, is the cold, hard data:
While it’s obvious that the members of Facebook Connect have helped FB gain some visibility and perhaps even legitimacy, personally, I’m still a little skeptical that Connect did all that. What else was going on then?
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that such a sudden, steep climb came from a snowball effect alone.
What do you think? Is it just a coincidence, or was Connect really the tipping point (for the US, anyway—Facebook had already beat MySpace worldwide at that point)? Do you use Facebook Connect?
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NBC Goes Mobile With Investment
NBC understands that the future of television may have less to do with TV’s. As a result, the company has made a move into the mobile ad space by investing in the mobile ad network Greystripe. The funding is said to have been made to assist the sales team headquartered in New York in selling more ads across the 1,000 mobile apps and games on over 1,400 devices that Greystripe can provide.
Greystripe, a mobile advertising network that distributes ad-supported games and applications, said it secured $2 million in funding from the Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture fund co-founded by GE and its NBC Universal unit, ending a Series C funding round. The funding and a new strategic partnership with NBC Universal give Greystripe an edge in the hyper-competitive mobile ad world.
This ‘hyper-competitive’ market is projected by some to reach $2 billion per year in 2014 so there is certainly a lot at stake and getting in now rather than after the ship has sailed shows that at least NBC is paying attention. That can’t be said for all traditional media that has traditionally been slow on the uptake of the most current ways to reach consumers
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As more evidence of just how the advertising world has changed one needs to look no further than other investors in Greystripe up to this point
Today’s funding news marks the second time a major media corporation-backed fund has invested in Greystripe. Steamboat Ventures, Walt Disney’s venture capital arm, led Greystripe’s Series B funding round in 2007, injecting $8.9 million into the ad network. In addition to receiving capital from NBC Universal, Greystripe will partner with the media corporation’s big-name properties, such as the Sci-Fi (sic) Channel, Bravo and MSNBC, to provide ads on its mobile applications. At the same time, NBC Universal can now sell ad space within its mobile apps to advertisers through Greystripe’s mobile ad network.
Yup, that’s Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC and ESPN among others. While this type of ‘partnership’ is less and less unusual it still shows just how much the advertising world has changed over the past several years as a result of the Internet and mobile computing / browsing.
One major competitive differentiator for Greystripe, notes their CEO Michael Chang, is that the network can serve ‘flash-like’ ads on the iPhone. The iPhone does not support flash yet but Greystripe apparently has some kind of workaround / variation on the flash theme that was attractive to a broadcast company like NBC.
Maybe mobile is finally here. If the networks are on board that means there can’t be too many adopters left out there.
Google AdSense for Mobile Applications Goes Into Public Beta
Google had been testing AdSense on mobile apps for the iPhone and Android in a kind of private beta with roughly 10 partners, including Pandora, Shazam and Urbanspoon. Now the program is opening up to apps developers and publishers who meet some criteria (among them, a 3 month commitment, 100K+ page views). Google said that [...]
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