Update: PayPal files lawsuit to protect trade secrets: A reason worth fighting for. Read more on the PayPal blog here: http://bit.ly/jrSW90 - According to .Net Magazine Google estimates that by 2014, over 150 million devices will be NFC ('Near Field Communication') capable. Read more about the lawsuit here: http://bit.ly/l1HMpY
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We are very excited about the National Wireless Initiative. It confirms the growth and necessary direction that the US economy needs to compete in the decades to come. Smart and forward looking.
Here is what it promises:
Nearly Double Wireless Spectrum Available for Mobile Broadband: The President has set the goal of freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum for everything from smartphones to wireless broadband connectivity for laptops to new forms of machine-to-machine communication within a decade. Critical to realizing this goal are “voluntary incentive auctions” and more efficient use of government spectrum, estimated to raise $27.8 billion over the next decade.
Provide At Least 98% of Americans with Access to 4G High-Speed Wireless: Private investments are extending 4G to most of the Nation, but leaving some rural areas behind. The President’s initiative would support a one-time investment of $5 billion and reform of the “Universal Service Fund” to ensure millions more Americans will be able to use this technology.
Catalyze Innovation Through a Wireless Innovation (WIN): To spur innovation, $3 billion of the spectrum proceeds will go to research and development of emerging wireless technologies and applications.
We had known about this for a while and are very excited about it finally being rolled out in the next few days.
Let's make sure we understand how to set it up before turning it on. But after that our Google devices/applications will be safer from hacking. It will be worth it for those of us who use Google Applications on a regular basis. You are only required to do verification once and password authentication check every 30 days if you so choose.
Informa Telecoms & Media believes that the global mobile advertising market was worth US$2.3 billion in 2009. Over the next five years, the market is expected to show strong growth and generate revenues of around US$24.1 billion in 2015.
In 2010, the Asia Pacific Developed region (which includes Japan and South Korea) is expected to account for the largest share (43.6%) of the global mobile advertising revenues, but this will fall to 21.7% by 2015. The mobile advertising revenue share of all other regions is expected to grow during the same period.
In 2015, the largest share (30.9%) of mobile advertising revenues is expected to come from the Asia Pacific Developing region, driven by strong growth in China and India. North America’s share of the global revenues is expected to grow from 16% in 2010 to 18% in 2015 and Western Europe’s is expected to grow from 4.9% to 8.6% during the same period.
Just today I was thinking what the next thing would be, what the next Facebook would look like. Perhaps not a competitor but a new generation of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg did not coin the phrase "man is a social animal" it was Aristoteles. If the main motivator for human beings is living in society then our society is really being
From TechCrunch: Remember back in the day when Google was only activating 100,000 Android units a day? You should — it was May. By June, that number had jumped to 160,000 units a day. And today it now stands at 200,000 Android units activated a day. That’s pretty incredible.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed as much during a sit down with a group of journalists after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. When asked about how the Android platform is doing, Schmidt was practically glowing. He cited the recent quarterly shipment numbers (the ones showing total shipments passed those of the iPhone in the U.S.) and said that he just checked their own internal numbers this morning.
Have you ever bought something from amazon.com using your mobile device? Try it. It is convenient and easy and does not take more than 2 minutes. As a matter of fact, during the past 12 months, Amazon has sold one billion dollars through mobile devices.
"The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone, but we're excited by the potential of the new category of wireless tablet computers," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement accompanying the company's release of second-quarter results.
Buying from Amazon (and soon others) with your mobile means not having to find time to log into the computer, etc. Just pick up your phone and type amazon.com. Enter your search item and you will be re-directed to your item or near matches. Select your item, click add to shopping cart, check out with 1-Click. Your purchase should arrive within 3 days.
A historic turn of events for the print publishing business was reached recently as sales of the iPad version of Wired Magazine beat the print estimates of 80,000 copies.
Several sources confirm that 79,000 copies of the digital version of the magazine have already been sold. Both the print and the iPad versions cost $4.99.
Yes, this is the right magazine for the demographic but the mobility of the tablet device such as the iPad and coming mobile technologies such as the new iPhone 4G should now be clearly seen as the next step for the print industry.
Marketers are expanding their focus to include more ways to digitally and directly reach consumers, so their vendors must follow suit. It’s just smart business.
Nearly every major email service provider has announced social media integration plans in one form or another, and most have selected a mobile partner or are building messaging into their platforms.
In general, and in particular for direct marketers, mobile continues to represent tremendous opportunity. As we’ve seen with these acquisitions, the appetite for social and digital media technologies is growing.
We regularly make the point that marketers should have a multichannel strategy – one that includes email, online, mobile and social media. The more opportunities you have to reach a customer, the more opportunities you have to engage with them.
NPR's Marketplace's Steve Henn reports on one company that's diving right in.
STEVE HENN: If you locked a mad scientist in a room and asked her to create the ultimate marketing device, she might come back with something that would follow you around, track your desires, slip into your pocket and would always be on. In short, she'd hand you a cell phone.
Apple’s iPad hasn’t saved publishing just yet, with Conde Naste revealing just 365 sales of its iPad-edition of GQ, while fresh research claims the average iPhone app sells 101,024 copies. [Via 9to5 Mac]
“we think what we have to show you today will be the most transformative thing we have ever done” – Zuck during the F8 keynote, Pete Cashmore of Mashable agrees
MediaPost’s Research Brief recently highlighted a survey from Ruder Finn on how Americans use the mobile internet. The post is worth a quick read and provides some insight on how people use their phones (which is helpful for crafting a mobile strategy).
The survey, the Mobile Intent Index, showed the driving factor behind people using their mobile phones to go online is immediacy. And that people use their mobile phones as a “social connector” – with 91 percent of mobile users going online to socialize, compared to the 79 percent of traditional internet users.
Mary Meeker, an analyst with Morgan Stanley who’s an expert on Internet and mobile trends, gave a fast-paced talk at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It was packed with more points and more data than I can cover in a short post, but the big point was that the mobile internet is taking off — just like the desktop internet a decade or so ago, but much faster.
Meeker was speaking at Atmosphere, a conference that Google is hosting for chief information officers, so she concluded by offering four big ideas for CIOs:
1. “The desktop internet ramp was just a warm-up act for what we’re seeing happen on the mobile internet.”
2. The pace of mobile innovation is “unprecedented, I think, in world history.”
3. Consumer companies are taking the lead over enterprise companies.
4. “It’s more important than ever to listen to employees” about where to take your IT department.
Mobile marketing creates opportunities for timely and intimate consumer experiences, but is often poorly understood. And unlike online tactics like search, email, and social marketing, few brands have dollars set aside for mobile development, meaning business cases and ROI models must be cemented upfront. The good news is consumers are already mobile. Hundreds of millions of North American consumers are engaged with their mobile devices.
Many marketers are overwhelmed by the technologies and terminology that fall under "mobile." However, the foundational components of mobile marketing are straightforward, support core marketing and communications programs, and deliver clear and measurable outcomes.
Here are a few tips for making a mobile business case:
According from the latest report from AdMob, the Android operating system was the fastest growing year-over-year. Android's share of smartphone requests increased from 2% in February 2009 to 24% in February 2010.
Gizmodo confims that AdMob sees "a predictable continuation of what we'd seen before from the ad tracking firm—specifically, that Android is on a serious tear, thanks in no small part to the massive success of the Droid. But before, the iPhone seemed unassailable. Now, it's about to get trumped by Google's OS, on terms it defined. In the US, that is. The rest of the world's still warming to Android."
For this month's report, AdMob separate the traffic in our network into three categories – smartphones, feature phones, and mobile Internet devices – to examine the growth rates of
For publishers big and small who, for whatever reason, can't or don't want to build their own iPad or tablet application in-house, digital magazine distributor Zinio will be introducing an iPad application which provides readers with easy access to digital subscriptions and an online "newsstand." The company, which has been around for a decade now, got started by offering magazine reader software for desktop computers. Now that the mobile revolution has taken hold, Zinio has expanded their offerings to include subscription and reading experiences for magazine customers which are accessible no matter what device you use: Mac, PC, iPhone, web or mobile web and soon, iPad, plus - who knows? - maybe one day Kindle, too. Zinio's goal is to make it simple for publishers to get their content out there on any form factor, screen size or platform.
What many Android and Buzz users were waiting for: Google released a Google Buzz widget for Android phones that lets you post text and photos with a single tap. Like other mobile access points for Google Buzz, the widget lets you choose to tag your post with the location or place from which it was posted.
To charge or not to charge for access to proprietary content online is an old idea based on a new media paradigm. The paywall has been highly debated, tested, embraced and forfeited over and over again but media companies are not asking the right question.
The bigger issue with monetization is that media companies have failed to react to the changes that have taken place in the ecosystem and still insist in serving controlled content online as gatekeepers. Media companies need to be asking questions about structure, portability, business focus and models to become more flexible, accommodate user preferences, identify emerging trends and then avidly follow them.
Small, battery-powered gadgets make powerful computing portable but unfortunately, there's still a continual need to recharge the batteries of phones and other gadgets by hooking them up to a tangle of wires.
We are entering times where mobile geolocation will change our concept of privacy. Whether we embrace it or become afraid of it and how it is regulated greatly depends on how we choose to use it or abuse it.
Privacy has become more elusive since the internet era. Personal information posted online on social sites along with information collected through webcam services, street cameras, records stored by financial companies, etc., is all susceptible to be intercepted by 3rd parties.
However privacy issues become even more critical when we consider the mobile device: it contains a chip which constantly broadcasts your whereabouts. This locator has been monitored by government agencies since 2005 (FCC's E911) and is now standard on all new mobile phone models. Some devices will emit a signal even while turned off.
Tablets are illuminating the troubled path of the print publishing business by promising to create new ways of monetizing the publication's digital efforts.
Magazines the likes of Sports Illustrated and Wired have been looking to the iPad and other similar devices to help them re-capture their subscriber base and re-generate their business through new revenue streams. This move would allow them to once again become the "middleman" between the advertiser and the consumer through the production of multimedia content.
The possibilities of the tablet delivering profitability certainly exist but we do not know how long it will take for readers to adopt the new platform en masse or if they will be willing to pay for delivery of this multimedia content. How subscriptions and tablets are marketed will define these questions. There is a definite "coolness" factor involved and if the right price is set for each publication issue, adoption can be as fast as technology companies roll-out new devices.
Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos and more, and start conversations about the things you find interesting. You can use Buzz from your computer through your Google Gmail account, but the true strength of Buzz lies on your Smartphone. Buzz just hit the streets and we need to see how it is embraced and understand its implications. So far so good. The combination of location-based services and friends dialogue is interesting.
In fact Google's search technology adapts quite well to the mobile application both in relevance of recommendations and location-based services. Be ready to rethink your approach to privacy with the mobile interface and be careful to select "no location" before you post with your mobile phone if you do not want to reveal your whereabouts. Eventually you might feel tempted to do so, but we still live in a private society so reluctance to being open about location will exist.
Here's what you can do with Google Buzz for mobile:
- Post from your mobile phone and tag your location.
- Read what people are buzzing about near you.
- Follow your friends on the go.
Target's mobile efforts have reached a new high as the retailer takes the first step towards rolling out seamless mobile payments through 2D barscanning and tracking technology.
Target’s point-of-sale scanners make Target the first major retailer with the ability to scan mobile barcodes in all of its retail locations.
To take advantage of this new technology, shoppers need to currently purchase a physical Target giftcard either online or at the store and save its code information onto a secure account on Target's mobile site. Then, at the point of sale, mobile users retrieve appropriate barcodes to scan at checkout.
It is still necessary for shoppers to buy the physical giftcard either at the store or online but Target is already looking into providing seamless mobile payments to "reload" the value of the giftcard electronically which would completely eliminate the need to carry your wallet when visiting a Target store.
In Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile operating system was first introduced more than a year ago, and hardly made a ripple in the smart phone market – until now.
ChangeWave’s December 9-14 survey of 4,068 consumers shows the Android operating system roiling the smart phone market, with Motorola’s new Droid smart phone the biggest and most immediate beneficiary.
Among respondents who currently own a smart phone, 4% say they’re using Google’s Android operating system – a 3-pt jump since our survey in September.
But more importantly, 21% of those planning to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days say they’d prefer to have the Android OS on their new phone – a monstrous 15-pt jump in just three months.
The prospect of watching live, local TV shows on mobile phones and other portable devices is getting closer. Manufacturers this week are showing off gadgets can receive a new type of digital TV transmissions.
BMW has selected China for a world-first in advertising - personalized video messages delivered directly to cell phones.
The targeted messages, distributed Dec 21-24 in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, addressed individual customers with a holiday greeting that is uniquely tailored to a specific individual.
For BMW, being first in advertising innovation is second nature. The company that brought the world BMW Films and the eight part branded entertainment series “The Hire”, is now partnering with mobile technology provider Clip in Touch (http://www.clipintouch.com/) to engage their audience in a new way. Initial response to the campaign has been very positive, generating more test drives in a three day period than at any time this year.
BMW is growing quickly in China. Sales are up this year more than 40% to 90,000 units. For the launch of its new X1 series, the German luxury automaker recognized it needed to reach a younger demographic in the most relevant medium- mobile.
The Verizon/Motorola/Google mobile phone DROID arrived in stores November 6 and is causing a stir. The cost is $199.99 (plus tax on the full retail value $599.99) with a new two-year customer agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card.
You will probably want to consider buying an extra battery (I did not) to support heavy internet browsing and application use, although according to this test it is pretty good.
The Droid offers no global plan.
Tip 1: If you are having problems connecting from your PC to your Droid, look for a USB indicator on the notification bar of the phone... drag that down and tap on it... select mount, and it should just show up as a removable drive on your PC.
Emilio Castellanos is Co-Founder of Avanti Interactive, LLC, a company dedicated to helping businesses grow by implementing mobile, online content, social media and marketing strategies that create new revenue streams and extend brands, products and services across the new and changing market ecosystem.
Update: PayPal files lawsuit to protect trade secrets: A reason worth fighting for. Read more on the PayPal blog here: 
We had known about this for a while and are very excited about it finally being rolled out in the next few days.
From 
Have you ever bought something from amazon.com using your mobile device? Try it. It is convenient and easy and does not take more than 2 minutes. As a matter of fact, during the past 12 months, Amazon has sold one billion dollars through mobile devices.
A historic turn of events for the print publishing business was reached recently as sales of the iPad version of Wired Magazine beat the print estimates of 80,000 copies. 
NPR's Marketplace's Steve Henn reports on one company that's diving right in.
Apple’s iPad hasn’t saved publishing just yet, with Conde Naste revealing just 365 sales of its iPad-edition of GQ, while fresh research claims the average iPhone app sells 101,024 copies. [
Mary Meeker, an analyst with Morgan Stanley who’s an expert on Internet and mobile trends, gave a fast-paced talk at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It was packed with more points and more data than I can cover in a short post, but the big point was that the mobile internet is taking off — just like the desktop internet a decade or so ago, but much faster.
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By Emilio Castellanos
Tablets are illuminating the troubled path of the print publishing business by promising to create new ways of monetizing the publication's digital efforts. 
Target's mobile efforts have reached a new high as the retailer takes the first step towards rolling out seamless mobile payments through 2D barscanning and tracking technology. 
In Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile operating system was first introduced more than a year ago, and hardly made a ripple in the smart phone market – until now.
The prospect of watching live, local TV shows on mobile phones and other portable devices is getting closer. Manufacturers this week are showing off gadgets can receive a new type of digital TV transmissions.
BMW has selected China for a world-first in advertising - personalized video messages delivered directly to cell phones. 
The Verizon/Motorola/Google mobile phone DROID arrived in stores November 6 and is causing a stir. The cost is $199.99 (plus tax on the full retail value $599.99) with a new two-year customer agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card. 
