Archive for the ‘General’ Category

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 Checklist: Which to Build First – Mobile Website or App?
      By Shaun Zelber,  November 5th, 2010 :: General

Excellent Article from ReadWriteWeb

Developers looking to reach the mobile audience (and who isn’t these days?) have to determine which mobile platforms to code for, which ones to skip and how to approach the design for their mobile website itself.

But before even getting started, there’s one question many small companies have to face: which do you build first? Do you build the mobile website before or after building a mobile application, be it for Android, iPhone, Blackberry or whatever platform you want to reach? Or would you be better off starting with an app?

On the Technology.Inc website, we came across a helpful resource for developers struggling to answer that question – a checklist of six items that should help steer developers in the right direction. According to this list, the following factors should be weighed (we’re summarizing the findings here, for more in-depth explanations, please read the original article):

Checklist

  1. Utility: To reach the broadest audience, you need a mobile website. If you go with an app, you’ll have to continue to develop apps for the most popular platforms.
  2. Need: Local businesses (think restaurants, retail shops) do better with mobile websites because customers generally just need basic information like a phone number or address. When the product is a service, like finance or transportation, apps are better. Apps are also better when usage is heavy.
  3. Traffic: Apps are better for situations when you want to push a lot of information to customers, or when repeated interaction is likely. Also, if your website is already seeing a lot of traffic from mobile devices, you should launch a mobile site promptly.
  4. Content: Text-based content often does well on a mobile site, while media-rich content is generally better within an app.
  5. Availability: If you rely on and see a lot of search engine referrals for discovery about your business, you should consider building a mobile website. Mobile searches will reveal your site, but would not point to your app.
  6. Cost: If cost is an important factor, consider a mobile website, which costs 50%-80% of the cost of building your main website. The article also quoted Aaron Maxwell of Mobile Web Up, a mobile design firm for businesses, saying that a well-done mobile app can cost as much as $35,000-$50,000 on each platform. (There are low-cost alternatives, however).

It was also interesting to read the comments on the article, which also offered some insights into this dilemma. Said one commenter, Rob Woodbridge, “the decision between a mobile website and a mobile app is not a real question: If you or your business have a website, mobile is just another platform that it needs to work on. Period.” That’s a sentiment that we think most will agree with.

He also points to another article which deftly explains when you do not need “an app for that.” For example, if your mobile app doesn’t make money for your business or enhance it in some way, if it doesn’t stand out in a crowded market, if you don’t have the resources to commit to it or if you could be more successful leveraging something already out there, then you may want to forgo app development, the article says.

Another commenter, Andew Milne, pitches in as well, saying that the “app space is designed for a specific job,” while the mobile Web “can be more fluid if designed well.”

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 Mobile Application Development Trends
      By Shaun Zelber,  October 18th, 2010 :: General

Interesting post on MobilOpen’s LinkedIn group :

If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner looking into the mobile application industry, either to ride the wave or to capitalize on the fact that your customers are spending more time with their phone, this post could come in very handy :)

Bellow you may find some thoughts on how the Mobile Development industry will evolve in the nearest future.

1. Micropayments
Micropayments within mobile applications can be used to upgrade basic app to a premium version, purchase game items, digital content or even small gifts for friends. Mobile bill payments and micropayments for digital content consumption continue to grow in the future.

2. Enhanced Security
Better security for mobile application platforms is expected. This is especially important when more users are conducting financial transactions and life streaming using their phones.

3. Business App Store
With all the mobile platforms targeting their app store towards average consumers, the introduction of a business app store is imminent.

4. Location-Based Technology
Location-based technology or GPS technology received the most buzz in 2009 and we expect it will continue growing this year.

5. Social Based Applications
Social networking activities certainly do not end when you leave your computer. We are already seeing a great number of people tweeting and updating their Facebook status on-the-go, not to mention those who are posting videos and photos to services like Twitpic and 12seconds using their mobile phone.

6. Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.

7. High Entry Barriers for Fledgling Developers
Developers that are new to the scene and without much support will face trouble getting user adoption. Not only that there are already tons of mobile applications out there, established developers have better advantages in terms of capability to introduce new features over a short time span as well as the resources to adapt and test their applications on new platforms.

8. Mobile Application Advertising
The increasing number of mobile application users opens up another advertising channel for brands and businesses. This is definitely good news for developers.

9. Importance of Marketing for Applications
There are already hundreds of thousands of mobile applications out there. In order to stand a chance, developers or mobile application entrepreneurs need to know how to market applications developed by them.

10. HTML 5 – Native Apps vs Web Apps
How will it affect the mobile applications space? Well, phones with a mobile browser that has HTML 5 rendering capabilities will be able to run web applications directly without any downloading and installation of apps. As for developers, there will no longer be a need to develop for different mobile platforms.

What other trends do you think will be likely this year for the mobile applications industry?

Your opinions are welcome!
Kristina Kozlova
Altabel Group Company
www.altabel.com

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 Skype in Facebook
      By Shaun Zelber,  October 16th, 2010 :: General

Skype is integrating with Facebook thus making it easier to call chat with friends.

Skypeme“The essence of the Skype experience is communicating with the people you care about,” said Rick Osterloh, Skype’s head of consumer products.The new Skype for Windows will include a Facebook tab. This means that for the first time Skype users can keep up-to-date and interact with their Facebook news feed including posting status updates, commenting and liking directly from Skype. Added to that, the Facebook phonebook in Skype allows users to call and text Facebook friends directly on their mobile phones and landlines.And if your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact, then users can make free Skype-to-Skype calls.

Group video calling is available in beta form as a free trial.

“We’re working with companies such as Skype to make it easier to find your friends anytime you want to connect,” said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook’s developer network.

‘New market’

The move is seen as a natural one for the world’s biggest social network, which is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users across a range of media.

The deal makes this space a lot more interesting and indicates a different direction of where communications could go.

Right now phones are owned by the cellular networks. This partnership is big enough and deep enough, it could point towards a different kind of telco in the future.

Skype has around 560 million registered users and 8.1 million paying users. The Luxembourg-based company said that people spend an average of 520 million minutes every day talking to one another on the service.

Facebook has more than 500 million users, helping the two companies close in on around one billion users, though there will be some overlap.

The deal comes amid fevered rumours that Facebook plans to launch a phone of its own.

Meanwhile Skype is gearing up for a $100m (£62m) share issue.

The new Skype version 5.0 for Windows is available now. There has been no announcement about when Mac or Linux versions will follow.

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 Google beyond all expectation
      By Shaun Zelber,  October 16th, 2010 :: General

Article Contributed by Eric Dosquet – eric@athenepartners.com

No we are not talking about any privacy respect but financial results. Google announces an excellent Q3/10 with profit increase of +33% at 2.17 billion US dollars. Expenses are limited to +22% and, as a result, Google shares gained +10% yesterday.

Impressive numbers that calls for some introspection. Let’s take a moment. What is google all about?
Mid 90′s, two students developed a web search engine to facilitate exploration of the uprising world “wild” web. Remember, at this time Netscape, AOL and Altavista were leaders; where are they now?.
Today, Google is everywhere: search engine, advertisement, IM, social network, OS, browser, map, geolocalization, mobile apps and… hoo, green energy… This shows several things:

1- Our modern world has experienced more disruptive technological changes than ever.
“If you want to know your future, know your past” said Nietzsche. Indeed, major discoveries called change of times: printing spread knwoledge, steam engine led to an industrial revolution, aeronotics reduced time, antiotics reduced deceases etc, etc. Today, we experience several revolutions at the same time: internet, genetics, nanotechs, greentechs, robotics. What kind of change will it calls for us? This echoes Gutemberg and printing: spread of knwoledge, debates and … protestantism. What shall be our schisms?

2- Computing and mobile are now in our everyday life.
Real time information places you in the middle of a whole. You are not isolated in the middle of a small community but an interacting part the biggest: humanity. That a change of world bringing high expectation and enthusiasm. But also dependence. Who are you without internet services? A second class citizen. Can’t we consider the access ton internet/ telecom as a fundamental right?

3- The need of a global regulator.
When citizen and democratic actions are under way in China, Burma or Iran, internet is censored or shutdown. United Nation cares. When Microsoft controls the majors parts of the IT value chain, FCC or EU cares.

Now back to Google. This firm has contributed, in a significant matter, to facilitate our everyday life, proposing tools and services, offering alternatives in plutocratic markets. But this giant is now a close friend that knows everything of you: who you are, where you are, who you are talking to, what you said and how you behaved way back years ago.
We are not here simply talking about simple monopolistic risk, but ethics that states and regulators hardly manage to impose. Are our technological changes compatible with laws and ethics? Are we freed or enchained by the internet? What is the place for introspection in a world over-flooded by informations? What is the world that we want?

This is what Google explains us. Their history reveals History, beyond all expectation.

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 Top 25 Telcos in World in 2009
      By Shaun Zelber,  April 19th, 2010 :: General

Rank Group Total Connections (millions) 1 Market
1 China Mobile 525331266 2
2 Vodafone Group 309580257 23
3 Telefonica Group 202333430 20
4 America Movil Group 186544900 17
5 Airtel Group
 169486523 18
6 China Unicom 147587000 1
7 Deutsche Telekom Group 127919986 12
8 Telenor Group 101367838 10
9 Sistema Group 99317515 6
o/w MTS Group
 97800700 5
10 Reliance Communications 93795614 1
11 France Telecom Group 93437439 26
12 MTN Group 92125000 19
13 Verizon Wireless 91249000 1
14 AT&T Group 85120000 3
15 Telkomsel 81644000 1
16 Telecom Italia Group 72014714 2
17 Weather Investments Group 69140419 5
o/w Orascom Telecom Group
 67498615 11
18 VimpelCom Group 64595623 8
19 Axiata Group 60586000 5
20 Portugal Telecom Group 58996826 2
21 Idea Cellular
 57611872 1
22 Tata Teleservices 57329449 1
23 BSNL 57223482 1
24 China Telecom 56090000 2
25 NTT DOCOMO Group 55519222 2
46 Zain Group
 24945965 6
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 Will Mobile Phones Change Retail Forever?
      By Mandala,  January 4th, 2010 :: Advertising, Apps & Sites, General, News & Events, Uncategorized

by Mark Jaffe   www.mobilemandala.com

There was a lot of passionate response to the post a few weeks ago “Will Mobile Phones Replace In-Store Retail Salespeople”. Even more reason that these three announcements this week caught my eye:

■  The Aberdeen Group published a report that stated in 2008, the total of digital signage market revenue stood at $766 million and is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2014, growing at a healthy CAGR of 20%.
■  The London Daily Mirror reported according to unnamed sources that Nokia is planning to begin rolling out embedded NFC (near field communications) kits into its entire line of Symbian phones beginning Q3, 2010. The Finnish giant already has NFC in selected handsets, such as the 6216 Classic.
■  Malaysian manufacturer Fonelabs will produce two million low cost (under $100) NFC enabled phones in 2010
What do these three items have to do with retail? First, just as a refresher, Near Field Communication (NFC) is “a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance.” In other words, if you have an NFC enabled phone and opt-in, your mobile phone will be able to communicate with another proximate electronic device automatically.

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 Google Launches Real-Time Search
      By Mythili Ramasamy,  December 9th, 2009 :: General

Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages.  Google (Google) real-time search updates as stuff is happening around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query. It works on mobile too (at least iPhone) and Android (Android) for now). Here’s a video demo from Google:

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman

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 Exclusive Offer : 100% mobile platform of blogs, dating and mobile directory – High natural growth – Leader in France∞
      By Guillaume,  November 30th, 2009 :: Advertising, General

BeMob’s and Tekora, ground breaking start ups in the mobile internet sector have decided to sell their social networking activities so as to concentrate on their main activities. They decided to regroup their social networks as a bundle but can be sold seperately if need be

Overview of the the social networks for sale :
The leading social network in France and growing world wide :

  • 2 Mobile micro blogging services including : text, photos, videos, podcast…
  • Dating service, largest mobile site directory in the world and customizable personal start page
  • Optimized as a webapp on all types of mobile devices
  • 10 millions de pages views per month (50% in France)
  • 5 K euros of ad revenue monthly (non optimized)
  • White label platform optimized for brands who wish to create a mobile social networking tool
  • Growth obtained purely via viral means

Included in sale :

  • Source code properly documented
  • Tech hand over
  • Chandover of contracts and ad revenue

Documentation:
If you are interested please feel free to download the PDF document which goes more in depth.
Presentation : bundle_igloo-MobitypeSales-proposal.pdf
Portfolio : 20091130_bundle_portfolio

Contact : bundle@texom.com

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 Google’s acquisition of AdMob
      By Shaun Zelber,  November 10th, 2009 :: Advertising, General, News & Events
admob_google

http://www.admob.com/google

Yes finally it has happened… we have speculated for years exactly when would Google munch AdMob. I guess that they held out till the right time… the $750 million time.

I am personally very excited to see this finally happening. Having worked with AdMob for several years it is great to see a good idea and great execution paying off in the mobile arena. AdMob have really set up a great business and are pleasant to work with. So for me it is a great news to see them joining with Google who has really made forays into the mobile sphere with Android over the past year or two.

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 Ten Tips for Designing Mobile Widgets
      By Mythili Ramasamy,  October 21st, 2009 :: Geek & Tech, General, News & Events

Some wise tips on “Designing Mobile Widgets” by Rajesh Lal, Senior Engineer, Nokia shared at 2009 Maemo Summit.

Growing pervasiveness of mobile widgets has created every mobile app designers a challenging role to play within a limited space. Only 1 percent of Mobile Widgets are successful.

What makes some widgets thrive and used by millions, and others with equal functionality bite the dust ?

Rajesh demystified the ‘invisible’ layer below the surface with 10 pragmatic tips, which covered some of the most useful and often ignored standard design principals and the tip & trick to apply them in mobile context.

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