MobileCrunch |  |
- AppRedeem Launches In-App Deals To Drive Users Of Free Apps To Their Paid Versions
- Microsoft Sued For Collecting WP7 Location Data Without Consent
- Ex-MySpace VP Takes On Postagram With Postcard On The Run
- Sprint: AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Would Destroy Jobs, Here’s A Study To Prove It
- Pogoplug Debuts New Hardware For Streaming To Mobile Devices
- Mosaid Acquires 2,000+ Nokia Patents, Will Handle Licensing & Litigation For A Cut
- PlayHaven’s New Platform Lets iOS Developers Tweak Their Apps On The Fly
- Appsfire Announces Open Source UDID Replacement For iOS: OpenUDID
- Strobe Launches Game-Changing HTML5 App Platform
| AppRedeem Launches In-App Deals To Drive Users Of Free Apps To Their Paid Versions Posted: 01 Sep 2011 04:55 PM PDT  In January, AppRedeem raised $750,000 from SV Angel and Blue Run Ventures to offer mobile app developers innovative, effective solutions aimed at driving app installs and engagement. Since then, the startup has been quietly working its way into a hot new category: Deals. Today, the Mountain View-based startup is officially announcing AppRedeem Deals, a new mobile in-app promotional network that rewards users for continued app engagement, while helping developers to drive conversion to paid versions of their apps. To test the waters, the startup began with “The Moron Test Section 2″, currently the third ranked free app on the iTunes app store. To use this app as an example of how AppRedeem Deals works, when a Moron Test user reaches “Game Over”, AppRedeem presents a promotional discount for Moron Test’s paid app. The startup is currently offering 50 to 100 percent off those paid apps from within its free counterpart. Unlike Tapjoy, said AppRedeem Co-founder Sheffield Nolan, AppRedeem Deals aims to ensure that people taking advantage of the discount have already installed the free version without any incentive, so the motivation to buy the paid version is fully aligned with that of Apple and its policy. According to Nolan, this enables users of the free app to take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade at no cost to them, whereas for developers, their paid apps are then monetized more effectively, and they get to use those promotional dollars targeting people who already tried and enjoyed their apps. The paid version of Moron Test jumped up to the fourteenth spot on the App Store after the developers integrated their free app with AppRedeem Deals. Since launching the beta 6 weeks ago, AppRedeem membership has grown from 55,000 to over 580,000 — in other words, membership has grown by more than 34K members per day since adding Deals. Here are the key numbers that came from the first 6 weeks of AppRedeem ‘Deals’. Nolan tells me that, at first, AppRedeem will use their new deals network as a customer acquisition tool. At present, they are not taking a cut of the discount they are offering gamers, so all the money earned from the discounts is going straight to the developers. The team plans to offer cuts and take a small percentage of the deal in the future. The startup’s next focus, the co-founder said, is to begin helping developers drive increased engagement of their apps, and to begin implementing deals with more partners to enable further functionality to promotional offers for in-app purchases. In the last week, Nolan said, AppRedeem hit profitability, so they will also be looking to raise a series A round in the coming months. (They will also be announcing the addition of a top executive of a big deals company in the near future.) For more, check out AppRedeem at home here. AppRedeem is an early-stage, high-growth promotion and advertising platform that drives mobile application engagement. World-class firms – Gilt Groupe, Groupon, and others – use AppRedeem today to fuel their...
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| Microsoft Sued For Collecting WP7 Location Data Without Consent Posted: 01 Sep 2011 03:35 PM PDT  While Apple has been catching much of the flak for collecting iPhone and iPad user location data without consent, it turns out that rival Microsoft may have been quietly up to the same. A recent class action lawsuit filed in Seattle district court alleges that Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system collects users’ location data, even after offering users the chance to opt out. That Microsoft can work with location data is itself no big secret, but what makes this case so egregious is that users are apparently given a choice, and are then summarily ignored. The offending bit of code rests in Windows Phone 7′s camera application. When fired up for the first time, WP7′s camera app asks users if they want to allow the device to use their location. No matter what option is actually selected, the device begins to collect the data anyway. Much of the poking around was done by Samy Kamkar, who was able to determine that not only was location and identifier data being transmitted, it started even before users had the chance to make their decisions on-screen. Kamkar’s packet analysis, pictured above, shows what information is being transmitted: the device’s model number (in this case a Samsung Omnia 7), device ID number, time and date information, and longitude and latitude readings. The lawsuit claims that Microsoft’s actions were part of a plan to create a location-aware marketing system which would generate ads based on the device’s physical location. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, but it seems like an awfully large risk for Microsoft to take for something so mundane. In a similar situation, Apple was successfully sued for the same offense, albeit in a slightly different jurisdiction. Ironically, after Locationgate first started making headlines, Microsoft sent a letter to Congress stating among other things that Windows Phone 7 will not store any location data unless a user has “expressly allowed an application to collect” it. Microsoft has yet to release an official statement, but it’s probably because they’re busy dusting themselves off after falling off of their high horse. [via InformationWeek]
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| Ex-MySpace VP Takes On Postagram With Postcard On The Run Posted: 01 Sep 2011 10:00 AM PDT  Look out, Postagram: there’s another player embarking on the quest to turn everyone’s smart phone photos into real-world postcards. This morning, Josh Brooks (previously the VP of Programming and Music at Myspace and Head of Content at Project Playlist) is launching the endeavor he’s spent the last year working on: Postcard On The Run. It’s a quick, easy, and relatively cheap way to free your photos from the digital cage that is your iPhone’s photo library and get them into the mailboxes of your friends and family. They’re also launching as a platform to allow other developers to add photo printing/mailing to their own apps. I’ll be honest: I didn’t really get the concept at first. Having spent the last many years of my life living too many hours a day online, the idea of printing out a physical photo just to add a few lines of text and ship it across the country seemed a bit… wasteful. But then I actually gave the app a spin… and within about 30 minutes of creating my first postcard, I’d created another ten. In the age of the digital camera and Facebook, photos have become filler — trivial tidbits that we blindly click through in an effort to be everywhere at once. There’s something kind of magical about taking a digital encapsulation of an experience, making it real and tangible, and sending it to directly someone’s real inbox instead of their virtual equivalent — as if to say “I genuinely, honestly wish you were here.” The application is about as simple as can be: pick a photo, crop it as desired, add some text to the back, and send it off into meatspace (beginning at 99 cents a pop.) There’s no reason to complicate the process here, and they don’t. Now, how does Postcard On The Run differ from Postagram and other such services? At its core, it’s a very similar idea — and that’s very much okay. In a service space like this, competition is good for everyone: the companies will be pressured to innovate faster and battle to keep costs low, with the added perk that multiple companies can spread and market a concept considerably quicker than one can alone. With that said, Postcard On The Run does have a few cool tricks up its sleeve:
Postcard On The Run is also launching as a B2B service, with an SDK that allows third-party developers to integrate photo printing/shipping services as a means of optimization. They’re currently working out SDK partnerships on a case-by-case basis (even the revenue split is case-by-case; for some partners it’s 70/30, others it’s 50/50), but interested developers can get more information here. You can find the free Postcard On The Run app for iOS here. Postcards start at 99c each.
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| Sprint: AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Would Destroy Jobs, Here’s A Study To Prove It Posted: 01 Sep 2011 09:35 AM PDT  It’s no surprise whatsoever that Sprint isn’t down with the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, and with good reason. There’s no telling just how severe the effects of this deal may be on Sprint, but we know for sure that it won’t be good. So with no other option, the carrier has campaigned against the merger since day one. We’ve seen statement after statement, release after release… but this time Sprint is taking a new approach. Today Sprint threw their weight behind a study which debunks claims made by AT&T and the Economic Policy Institute that this merger will create “tens of thousands of jobs,” and even goes so far as to say the deal will result in a reduction of American jobs. The study was commissioned by Sprint (surprise!) and conducted by David Neumark, professor of Economics and director of the Center for Economics and Public Policy at the University of California at Irvine. It focuses mainly on the EPI’s analysis of the merger and their conclusion: that the increased capital investment made by AT&T will, in turn, increase American jobs. Neumark’s issue with this is that the EPI’s conclusion rests solely on increased capital investment, rather than the overall effects of the merger. AT&T recently promised to bring back 5,000 call center jobs that had previously been outsourced abroad. The company also said the merger will result in no call center job losses, though in the official documents AT&T admits that some “force reductions” would occur. Neumark also notes that AT&T’s logic behind the job creation claims is based on one figure: $8 billion in increased capital expenditures. The only problem there is that the figure is unclear. AT&T may very well pump an extra $8 billion into its business, which would increase jobs, but that’s only if the investment in capital expenditures T-Mobile would have undertaken are less than $8 billion.
The study concludes that if AT&T/T-Mobile’s net capital investment is reduced by $5 billion, that would result in 34,000 to 60,000 jobs lost. Neumark also cites AT&T’s history with mergers, and the way those have affected job creation/loss in the past. “Since 2002, AT&T has eliminated over 107,000 jobs relative to the growth in employment that would have occurred from the acquisitions that occurred during that time period. This evidence is consistent with AT&T's past mergers generating job loss,” he writes. Here’s what AT&T has to say about the study:
Obviously, there’s much more than job creation to consider when it comes to this deal. Anti-trust issues and the potential stifling of innovation carry just as much weight. The possibility that AT&T’s network will be significantly improved will also play a major role in the decision. But in the end, the statements made by both sides must be digested with a hefty helping of salt. AT&T stands to gain quite a bit if it wins T-Mobile, and its statements on the matter will be framed accordingly. In the same vein, Sprint stands to lose and the claims made within its commissioned study require an equal amount of scrutiny. It all comes down to the DOJ and the FCC, and as it stands now, AT&T still has a long battle ahead of them. T-Mobile is a mobile telephone operator headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile has 101 million subscribers making it the worlds sixth largest mobile...
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| Pogoplug Debuts New Hardware For Streaming To Mobile Devices Posted: 01 Sep 2011 08:57 AM PDT  Cloud Engines, Inc., makers of the Pogoplug line of devices and accompanying software, are launching a new hardware product today called Pogoplug Mobile. The device works like the company’s current Pogoplug product – you attach your hard drive or drives, plug it into your router and instantly have your own personal cloud. In short, it’s like a NAS (network-attached storage) box for your home. But with the new Pogoplug Mobile, the system has been optimized for use with mobile devices. It’s more of a “mobile accessory,” says CEO Daniel Putterman. That’s why you’ll soon find it on the shelf next the Bluetooth headsets, and not hidden away in the hard drive aisle, he says. Pogoplug devices have typically appealed to the DIY, “host-it-yourself” crowd, who eschew using the cloud storage offerings maintained by big companies like Google, Amazon, Apple or Microsoft, or the online services from smaller startups like Box.net and Dropbox. Instead of paying for storage as a service, often through monthly or yearly fees, Pogoplug only requires a one-time investment: the cost of the hardware and software. For Pogoplug Mobile, that price is $79.99 – a bit cheaper than the original device, which is still $99. The software product, which also works with the newly launched hardware, is $29. However, the software is an optional, if highly practical, add-on. With the Pogoplug Mobile device, which works with iOS and Android via mobile apps, there are new features that the original Pogoplug doesn’t offer. For example, Pogoplug Mobile automatically backs up the photos and videos on your mobile phone to your home network. For those familiar with Google+’s “instant upload” feature for Android users, the effect is the similar. Requiring no effort on your part beyond the initial configuration, your mobile photos and videos are not only archived for you, but also converted to streamable and bite-sized formats for easier mobile sharing. Users can control whether the syncing occurs over 3G or Wi-Fi, and whether the original media, the converted file or both should be sent back home. Android users also have the option of syncing additional directories, too, via the Settings. So why would anyone want to use a Pogoplug when there are other options out there? As noted above, some prefer a one-time charge over a recurring fee, while other simply prefer being in control themselves. Plus, even in the case of Apple’s forthcoming iCloud, only the most recent 1,000 photos are stored in the cloud for 30 days – in order to not lose them, you still have to sync your device to your PC or Mac to keep them forever. With Pogoplug, there’s more of a “set it and forget it” appeal. Still, despite its desire to be seen as more of a mobile add-on, the company will likely be challenged to explain these sorts of differences to end users, who are wooed by Apple’s “it just works” marketing surrounding iCloud. Why buy hardware when Apple does everything for you? Indeed, why think at all about where files live and in what format? Although Pogoplug has always had a bit of geek appeal, its desire to go mainstream is clearly visible with this product launch. Whether it can cross over remains to be seen.
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| Mosaid Acquires 2,000+ Nokia Patents, Will Handle Licensing & Litigation For A Cut Posted: 01 Sep 2011 08:36 AM PDT  While the patent wars continue to rage on, a recent move by Nokia may signal an aggressive new stance on handling patent infringement. Canadian IP firm Mosaid has announced a strategic purchase through which they gain control of nearly 2,000 patents out of Nokia’s library. The price tag for such a hefty acquisition? Absolutely nothing. The patents, while originally filed by Nokia, were in the possession of Luxembourg-based Core Wireless Licensing. As the new owner of the patents, Mosaid will spin Core Wireless off into its own entity to handle licensing and litigation of Nokia’s technologies. Instead of having to pay out of pocket for Core Wireless, an agreement has been struck to split the income generated from licensing agreements and settlements against patent infringers. Mosaid’s share of the proceeds will be 1/3, with the remaining funds going to Nokia and Microsoft respectively. Of the roughly 2,000 patents Mosaid now has in their vault, CEO John Lindgren claims that a full 1,215 of them are viewed as essential to the use and operation of wireless systems — much more than the 500 found among Nortel’s patents. With his company looking at a potential hostile buyout by local competitor WiLAN, the acquisition may help to stave off that bit of corporate unpleasantness. Still, the fact that Mosaid is currently teetering on the edge of being acquired may actually help Nokia in the long run. Big companies have been on the receiving end of Nokia’s patent-related ire, with Apple being one of the Finnish company’s most recent targets. Now that the Nokia’s financial performance is tied to that of Mosaid and the Core, Nokia has a pretty slick deal going. It would be in Mosaid’s best interest to play the bulldog and aggressively pursue not only licensing opportunities, but hefty settlements against companies that infringe on the Nokia patents. Meanwhile, Nokia benefits from whatever Mosaid manages to bring in, but without looking like they’re going on a wild suing spree. Well played. [Globe and Mail, via The Next Web]
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| PlayHaven’s New Platform Lets iOS Developers Tweak Their Apps On The Fly Posted: 01 Sep 2011 08:15 AM PDT  The iOS App Store is quite the volatile place. Even if you manage to fight your app up to the top of the charts, keeping it up there is an entirely new challenge. You’ve got to know exactly what’s working with your users — and more importantly, you’ve got to be able to mix things up quickly when you find things that aren’t. Alas, mixing things up quickly on the App Store is inherently a bit difficult. Even if you can crank out everything required for your app update in a week or two, you can never be too sure if Apple’s review process will take a day, a week, or a month. This morning, PlayHaven is launching a new platform that allows iOS developers to launch and test content campaigns within their apps without requiring another trip through the approval arena.
The idea is pretty simple, but it’s a clever one: PlayHaven’s platform lets developers design and fire off what they call “Dynamic Overlays”, which are essentially quickly customizable HTML5 pop-ups that engage the user and can fire off underlying code. Now, what the hell does that mean? Here’s some examples of what you can do:
These are the most obvious ideas, but there’s plenty of room for creativity here. These Dynamic Overlays can be triggered by just about anything: scheduled dates, version number, accessing a specific part of the application, etc., which should make them pretty flexible. PlayHaven also makes it pretty simple to figure out what’s working and what’s not, with a full analytics dashboard sitting on the backend. So you launched a campaign in your crazy space shooter advertising your new zombie flower-planting game, but no one is clicking? Tweak the graphic to make the zombie a bit bloodier and your flowers a bit brighter, push the new overlay, and measure the changes in click-throughs and conversion rate on-the-fly. PlayHaven has quickly found some pretty serious traction for the platform, already naming heavy-hitters like Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja), DistinctDev (The Moron Test), and Glu (with their bajillions of games) as committed partners. You can find more information on PlayHaven’s new platform here. PlayHaven is a real-time mobile game marketing platform with a reach of 35 million unique users, driving 100 million monthly game sessions. Since its launch in May 2010, PlayHaven...
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| Appsfire Announces Open Source UDID Replacement For iOS: OpenUDID Posted: 01 Sep 2011 06:59 AM PDT  Appsfire, a mobile application marketing platform, is introducing its own solution for the issue created by Apple’s decision to phase out developer access to the UDID (unique device identifier) on iOS devices. It’s called OpenUDID. As you may have guessed by the name, this is an open source UDID initiative. In other words, it’s an attempt at creating a non-proprietary solution that aims to replace all that was lost, and in which all stakeholders can participate. The change to UDID access was noted in a recent set of iOS5 release notes, where it was listed as "deprecated." The UDID, for those unaware, is an alphanumeric string unique to each Apple device, which is currently used by mobile ad networks, game networks, analytics providers, developers and app testing systems, like TestFlight, for example. In some cases, developers are even using the UDID to verify whether users are accessing their app from a new device. By removing access to the UDID in iOS5, Apple has thrown an entire ecosystem into chaos. Last week, mobile gaming network OpenFeint introduced a its UDID alternative called OFUID, which provides a solution for the gaming developer community. Users who opt-in to OpenFeint’s new single-sign on system thereby give the developer access to this OFUID, a universal account system for the gaming network's cross-platform users. The OFUID lets developers track users’ behavior across apps, and helps with their ad targeting efforts. But this system was criticized as being an incomplete UDID replacement, and for its proprietary nature. The newly proposed OpenUDID will be different. Says Appsfire:
The company says that it wants to work with others to provide a reliable proxy and replacement for a universal unique device identifier on a per device basis. It also wants to enable OpenUDID to be accessed by any app, supply open-source code to generate and access the OpenUDID for iOS (and later, Android), and incorporate, from the beginning, a system that will enable users to opt-out. That latter requirement is in there because the new system should “match Apple’s initial intent,” explains AppsFire. Apple isn’t saying why it made the decision to remove the UDID. It may have made the change in response to previous privacy concerns or as a way to pre-empt future concerns. But in either case, it’s clear the company is taking a step to further respect its users’ privacy via the UDID removal. The new open source system should respect Apple’s decision in the matter. Appsfire has published a simple Objective-C class that provides a one-line replacement to take advantage of the OpenUDID on github. All mobile app developers are invited to join in the testing process now, the company says. The URL http://OpenUDID.com also points to the new github page. AppsFire produces a discovery platform for both iOS and Android mobile applications that allows users to share and distribute their favorite apps.
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| Strobe Launches Game-Changing HTML5 App Platform Posted: 01 Sep 2011 06:58 AM PDT  Today, Strobe Inc. is launching a new platform that helps developers build HTML5-based Web applications for desktops, smartphones and tablets, and centrally manage them from a single interface. The launch is a major leap forward in HTML5 app development. From one interface, teams can manage code (both test code and production code), configure the app’s deployment across platforms (Web, Android, iOS, etc.), add additional services (social, push notifications, authentication, etc.), and even track analytics within an easy-to-use dashboard. In short, it’s a comprehensive platform that makes building apps with Web technologies, like HTML5 and JavaScript, not just possible, but easy, straightforward and fast. The company was co-founded by Ruby on Rails Core Team member Carl Lerche, Ruby on Rails, jQuery and SproutCore Core team member Yehuda Katz, and Charles Jolley, formerly the JavaScript Frameworks Manager for Apple. At Apple, Jolley worked on Apple’s Web products like MobileMe and iCloud. He’s also the creator of the open source JavaScript framework, SproutCore, which powered Apple’s Web services and is now a key part of the Strobe platform. In addition to SproutCore, Strobe also uses PhoneGap, the popular HTML5 app platform. PhoneGap lets developers author apps using Web technologies then deliver them in a native wrapper to the iTunes App Store, Android Marketplace and other app stores. It also happens to integrate nicely with SproutCore. What Strobe Offers Now vs. What’s Coming Soon Although the Strobe platform aims to offer a complete set of tools for building apps and deploying them across platforms, while in beta testing, some of Strobe’s features are still limited. For example, the analytics product is coming in a few weeks and the only mobile platforms supported at this time are iOS and Android. Also, the social addon, which lets developers add Facebook and Twitter sharing features to their apps, is the only one available now. But these are only temporary restrictions. Strobe already has plans for more platforms on its roadmap, and will soon launch addons for authentication, push notifications and persistence (data-saving). In some cases, Strobe will write the addons itself, but in other cases, it will partner with service providers. Although no deals have been confirmed at this time, backend-as-a-service providers like Parse and StackMob immediately come to mind as good fits for Strobe integration. Using Strobe To Improve App Discovery By combining an app’s desktop Web version with its native version (built with Web technologies), Strobe isn’t just simplifying the development, deployment and tracking of apps, it’s also opening up more mechanisms for discovery too. Strobe developers can configure the Web version of an app to point to the native app, in order to help convert the app’s casual users in more engaged native apps users who are more likely to spend money on virtual goods and upgrades. Also, by typing the two experiences of native and Web together, the Strobe social addon can be configured to help users share exact points within a mobile game, for example, which anyone on the Web could click on via a shared link, and immediately play. That’s potentially a discovery tool more powerful than rankings, press releases, blog posts, recommendation engines or monetization schemes. Discovery, which is one of the toughest challenges the app industry has ever faced, is the ultimate end game for Strobe, and the HTML5-powered apps it helps build. The Strobe developer preview is now open and pricing info is available here. Strobe previously raised $2.5 million Series A in December, led by O'Reilly AlphaTech and Hummer Winblad. It will raise another round closer to the time of its public launch, planned for later this fall. Strobe Inc. provides software and cloud services for touch-centric applications on the web. Based on a blend of technologies, like native, HTML5 and SproutCore, Strobe apps offer a high-quality...
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