MobileCrunch |  |
- Smart Bar: Japan Gets Another Special Android Handset
- Ex-Googlers Launch Mobile Travel Guide To Kill Lonely Planet; Raise Funding From Chris Sacca & More
- Notifo Slips Into The Deadpool
- Vodafone Launches Their First Silicon Valley R&D/Investment Center
- Twitter’s Next Focus: Simplify And Unify All Interfaces
- Who Spends The Most Money In Freemium Games?
- J.D. Power Report Weighs In On Smartphone Design Vs. Performance
- Dear All Photo Apps: Mobli Just Won Filters
- Smartphone Got You Down? Verizon And Motorola Have Some Good Advice
- Samsung Nexus Prime Support Page Pops Up, Rumored Specs Trickle Out
- Motorola’s New Facebook Phone Revealed
- Fingerprint Grabs $1.4 Million, Taps Veteran Team To Create Mobile Learning Network For Kids
- Sony Ericsson 2011′s Xperia Line Will Get ICS, But Where’s Everyone Else?
- Smule’s MadPad Turns Your Life Into A Video Soundboard
- Taptu Receives $3.5 Million in Series B, Will Launch White Label Social News Aggregator Tapform
- Watch Out Amazon: GetJar Launches A Full Catalog Of Premium Android Apps For Free
| Smart Bar: Japan Gets Another Special Android Handset Posted: 09 Sep 2011 02:19 AM PDT  First KDDI’s iida INFOBAR, then Sharp’s clamshell Android phone HYBRID oo7SH, and now the so-called Smart Bar [JP]: Japan is getting more and more specially designed Android handsets. As you can see on the pictures, the Smart Bar adopts the “traditional” candy bar form factor but is actually powered by Android Gingerbread. The device is manufactured by Huawei and will be distributed in Japan by mobile carrier eMobile. Targeted mainly at female users, the phones comes with a 3-inch WVGA touch display (LCD), 512MB RAM and ROM, a 5MP camera, a microSDHC slot, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, IEEE802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (tethering for up to 5 devices is possible), IrDA SIR infrared, GPS, and W-CDMA/GSM support. It’s just 51mm slim and weighs 114g. eMobile plans to start rolling out the Smart Bar in Japan on September 22 (price: US$390).
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| Ex-Googlers Launch Mobile Travel Guide To Kill Lonely Planet; Raise Funding From Chris Sacca & More Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:17 PM PDT  In the days of yore, travel guides were written by intrepid travelers who spent months scribbling in diaries and field journals, or by teams of adventurous souls exhaustively scrap booking their travel experiences into the Lonely Planets of the world. Over the last decade, however, the Web has produced an untold number of personal travel blogs, digital photo albums, community-built travel guides like Tripadvisor and Wikitravel, and cool travel resources like Gogobot. Today, Jon Tirsen and Douwe Osinga, two ex-Googlers, are officially unveiling their new mobile travel guide Triposo, which doesn’t want to just throw out the old model, it wants to do what Google did for the world’s information: Aggregate that sucka and make it easily searchable. Simply put, Triposo is based on the simple idea that travel guides can be designed in the same way that Google based its aggregation and search on some kick ass algorithms. And a little bit of indexing and semantic icing to boot. To that end, travel guides like Triposo are possible today, because the content is there. Sites like Wikipedia, Wikitravel, and Openstreetmap have swaths of travel-related content, and Triposo wants to be the site that ranks that content so well you’ll never have to use another preachy, paper-based travel book. The environment will thank you. Thus, the Triposo algorithm takes travel information from seven of the biggest open source aggregators (and several closed resources as well) and serves its users with content that’s relevant for them. Without any human interference, Triposo COO Richard Osinga tells me, the startup produces travel guides, with information on sightseeing, nightlife and restaurants, all ordered by Triposo’s algorithm — and complete with an easy-to-use (and offline-enabled) map. That very offline functionality in and of itself makes Triposo’s free mobile apps worth downloading. Along with its web app, Triposo also offers 30 free destination guides for iOS using the same approach. The startup plans to release an iOS world guide, in which users can download a complete travel guide for any destination in the world, next month. Android users, on the other hand, can already find a world travel guide and guides for select cities here. Triposo has been polishing its travel content algorithms for over a year now, and launched a swath of city guides for iOS and Android to test the algorithmic waters and user response. So far, people are using the guides on average of 20 minutes per session — so far, so good. But the end goal for Triposo is really to hone its all-in-one world travel guides, so that users can pick a destination anywhere across the globe and easily find the best cities and destinations to visit. But how does Triposo choose these recommended destinations? “One of the things we also use intensively for our ranking algorithms are photographs”, said Co-founder Douwe Osinga. “We have a collection of a few million travel photos geotagged — with time stamps. How many pictures are taken at a place, at what time, on what day: That all helps us decide how important a location is”. Of course, an algorithm-based company is only as good as its, well, algorithm. At the end of the day, travelers may prefer to receive personalized recommendations on destinations from their friends, or people they trust. (Or self-curated as one commenter pointed out.) And from this perspective, Triposo’s human-less recommendation platform may not suit everyone; but at the same time, it’s nice to have a free mobile app that works the same for everyone regardless. It may miss the mark for some, but the iPad app looks great, and so far, the algorithm hasn’t let me down. Amsterdam, here I come. Along with platform unveiling, Triposo also told TechCrunch that it has raised $525,000 in seed financing from angel investors, including Chris Sacca, Taher Haveliwala, Google Wave Co-founder and Google Maps Lead Engineer Lars Rasmussen, and InterWest Partners. The founders said that they will use this new infusion of capital to continue optimizing its algorithm, working towards the goal of becoming the best possible web and mobile destination to answer: Where should I go next? The question, however, for Triposo, is what their revenue model will be when the money runs out. Premium features? Paid apps? More to come. For more on the interactive travel guides startup, check them out here. Let us know what you think. Travel content algorithms: Yay or nay? Triposo makes free, interactive travel guides for mobile devices. Using an algorithm based approach Triposo focusses on presenting the most relevant options for a traveler at any given moment in...
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| Notifo Slips Into The Deadpool Posted: 08 Sep 2011 05:08 PM PDT  Notifo, a YC-backed company we once described as a “simple mobile notifications platform for anything”, is shuttering the windows and heading for the deadpool. The idea was simple enough: Notifo would pipe real-time notifications from just about anywhere — be it Twitter, or Hacker News, or Github, or Facebook, or any Growl-compatible app on your computer — to your mobile device, long before most of these services had apps that could handle that duty themselves. Later down the road, Notifo doubled down their server’s functionality by tossing in free user-to-user chat. Alas, the product just never managed to find a userbase. In a world where just about every service has come to have an app of their very own, a service like Notifo has unfortunately become a bit redundant. Meanwhile, competing alternatives like Boxcar (on the app side) and Urban Airship (on the publisher/server side) have filled in any lingering gaps. Notifo founder Chad Etzel says he’s already moved on to another job (Update: according to his personal blog, he’s now at Twilio. Congrats, Chad!), while co-founder Paul Stamatiou moved onto PicPlum (which we covered here) a while ago. Notifo will stay functional until the server money runs dry — but from this point on, there will be no further development effort. Company: Notifo Website: http://notifo.com Notifo is a mobile application and platform which allows any web site or service to easily create mobile notifications. While it’s currently only an iPhone app, the plan is...
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| Vodafone Launches Their First Silicon Valley R&D/Investment Center Posted: 08 Sep 2011 04:59 PM PDT  Vodafone. It’s a brand that most folks here in the states would, at first pass, almost certainly chalk up as “that one European company that puts their name on a bunch of And yet, Vodafone is essentially the biggest wireless carrier in the world. They’re the top carrier by revenues, and second to only China Mobile by subscribers. Oh, and they own 45% of Verizon. In other words, they’re kind of a big deal — and now they’re lookin’ to get in on some of that Silicon Valley action. This evening, Vodafone is opening the doors to the Vodafone Xone (the sign store ran out of Z’s, so they just rolled with it.) Xone is a brand new research and development center in Redwood City which will serve as, amongst other things, a means of assessing potential investments for their Vodafone Ventures group. But wait, there’s more! Vodafone’s new shop will also:
It’ll probably be a few weeks before Vodafone really settles in and starts diggin’ around for startups to usher in, but folks interested on getting their foot in the door early can find more info here. Do note, though, that (at least from my early conversations with them) it sounds like Vodafone is primarily interested in investing in companies with a product they’re ready to expand globally, rather than Angel/Early-seed stage startups. Vodafone Group is a mobile telecommunications company. The company has a significant presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and the United States. In the United...
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| Twitter’s Next Focus: Simplify And Unify All Interfaces Posted: 08 Sep 2011 02:54 PM PDT  During his sit down with the press today, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo offered up some good information. Some of it was in the form of stats, some was in their thinking on the business model (get this: occasional ads in the stream). But he also revealed something that was probably overlooked, but is important: the upcoming unification of Twitter’s various interfaces. I had actually been hearing whispers about this for a few weeks now. Right around the time that Jack Dorsey ousted several product managers in one fell swoop, I was hearing this return to simplicity was going to the focus. And a part of that means creating #newnewtwitter to replace #newtwitter. In talking about the “core product” today, Costolo noted that step one going forward was “simplifying the interface”. “We want Twitter to be dead-simple between different clients — you’ll see interfaces become more consistent,” he said. From what I’ve heard, this means an interface more like the mobile clients and less like the multi-pane views of New Twitter and the iPad app. That’s interesting since the iPad app influenced the web app. Now things may be headed back. Twitter would like a way to have a nice, clean single stream of Tweets again, I hear. More advanced functionality would be handled in a tucked away but simple manner. Most importantly, the plan is to unify the controls and functionality across web, mobile, tablet, etc. One Twitter to rule them all. You can get a glimpse into this thinking by visiting Twitter’s newer web apps. And all of this makes the pushback against third-party Twitter clients make even more sense. Twitter wants and needs to control the experience. At the same time, Twitter is also focusing on a way to surface information that users may find important, but may not match a social graph. Costolo noted that during the recent Arab Spring uprisings, people were coming to Twitter to look for information, but would have to do so via a hashtag, and that was cumbersome to most. “We want to figure out an interface that captures the roar of the crowd, as well as the volume,” he said. It’s also important to note that 40 percent of Twitter’s “active” users don’t actually Tweet. Instead, they lurk and browse. Costolo feels that simplifying the interface will help users like this, and there may be ways to get them more engaged by retweeting and replying at first, instead of explicitly Tweeting. No word on when we may see #newnewtwitter, but I would imagine it will be sooner rather than later. Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to...
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| Who Spends The Most Money In Freemium Games? Posted: 08 Sep 2011 10:50 AM PDT  So, you’re ready to make a freemium game. You’ve got the designers, you’ve got the coders, and you’ve got the rough idea for what you want the game to be about — now, who the heck are you making it for? As the latest installment in their series of data dives on the topic, research firm Flurry has parsed out the data for which age group spends the most time and money in freemium games. Any guesses how it’ll all work out? (Hint: one group spends more time, while another spends way more money.) To cut right to the chase: 18-24 year olds spend the most time in-game, but 25-34 year olds are spending far more money than anyone else. Perhaps even more surprisingly: even in second-to-last place in terms of time spent, the 35-54 year old group is spending more than any group except for the “Shut Up And Take My Money” 25-34 year olds. This data is pulled from Flurry’s analytics tool, which is built into around 110,000 iOS/Android apps with a cumulative install base of around 20 million. So, what can we take away from all this? At a quick glance: while you probably shouldn’t go all out and make the goriest, booty-filled freemium game the world has ever seen (if only because Apple would give it the boot in a heartbeat), it might not be as important to be as overly kid-friendly as smash hit freemium games like Smurfs’ Village might lead you to believe. If you focused on making a game that the 18-39 year old crowd would dig, there’s plenty of potential to walk away with quite the cash pile. Of course, this all makes a good amount of sense: save for exceptions, getting older means less disposable time but more disposable income (until people hit 55+, apparently, at which point they just seem to stop caring altogether). To a 13 year old on their summer break, the grind of the game is the game. To a 25 year old churning away on their coffee break, it’s worthwhile to buy some disposable e-goods that help them get to the meat of the game that much quicker. Flurry increases the size and value of mobile application audiences, already helping more than 50,000 companies in over 100,000 applications across iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and J2ME platforms....
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| J.D. Power Report Weighs In On Smartphone Design Vs. Performance Posted: 08 Sep 2011 10:40 AM PDT  Sometimes it seems like phone manufacturers are locked in a race to deliver the fastest, most feature-packed phones, but sheer power does not a great phone make. According to a recent report from J.D. Power and Associates, the specifics of a device’s design goes a long way in determining how satisfied its users are. Users of devices with touch screens, for example, are more likely to be satisfied with their phones than users who only have physical keyboards. While I wouldn’t try to convince a dyed-in-the-wool BlackBerry aficionado of that, the scores are pretty conclusive: on a 1,000 point scale, purely touch screen devices rated the highest in satisfaction (817 points), versus devices with just a physical keyboard (782), and devices with a mix of both (785). Physical size and weight are also key determinants of satisfaction: smartphones whose weight comes in at or under 5 ounces receive the highest satisfaction ratings, and that trend even carries over into feature phones. Satisfaction scores also peak when a smartphone is nice and skinny, with phones at or below the .45-inch level topping the charts. Apple claims the “Highest in Customer Satisfaction” crown in the smartphone category for the sixth consecutive time, which makes sense considering their zeal for design. In fairness though, it helps that they only really ever run with one new smartphone design at a time. HTC’s second place finish, on the other hand, means the Taiwan-based company can manage to hold their myriad smartphone offerings to a strict standard of performance and design. While useful in some respects, J.D. Power’s results don’t really break any new ground. Going by their criteria, the “ideal” smartphone would be thin, light, and powerful: in short, what every manufacturer is aiming for anyway. Research like this can almost be dangerous to manufacturers, as it paints a picture of a specific kind of phone that people will theoretically be most pleased with. Differentiation and quality are the ways to thrive in this industry, and if everyone suddenly decides to make the same kind of device, only the consumers lose.
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| Dear All Photo Apps: Mobli Just Won Filters Posted: 08 Sep 2011 08:25 AM PDT  In my previous post about Mobli, I claimed it would be the break-out photo sharing app of the year. I went to say that like Instagram, it has something special in between the pixels. I backed that up with a starting figure — users were spending an average of 33 minutes on the site. (The latest stat the company shared with me is that on average, there are 3.4 pictures added per user per day.) Stats aside, today Mobli is kicking it up in a major, major way by introducing a new breed of photo filters that not only put every other photo app’s on the defense, they set a new bar for user convenience and possibilities for brands. Let’s dive in: Server-side Filter Effects: Maybe it’s the geek in me, but I’ve found it surprising to learn that most people around me didn’t realize that applying and switching back-and-forth between filter effects within photo apps is a major battery guzzler. Well, it is folks. See, applying filter effects puts a computational strain on any CPU and/or graphics chipset, which means of course, sucking more power to make that happen. What Mobli is doing is pushing the computational heavy lifting server-side. This has two major benefits: First, it means less power-guzzling on smartphones’ already lacking battery packs. Second, it means that adding additional filters no longer requires an act of download of any sort on behalf of the user. New would filters just ‘appear’ in the app. The new version of Mobli features 22 free filters. Location Filters: What’s really exciting about pushing the filters server-side is that doing so kicks the doors wide-open to brand-new filter possibilities. Examples? Think filters that are geo-based, venue-based, time-based, etc. Let’s look at a couple examples: Say you’re at a conference, where folks regularly take photos of the stage, the exhibition floor and other attendees. With Mobli’s location filters, the app would recognize that users are at Disrupt, for example, and bango, there would be a ‘Disrupt’ filter. See the screenshot below to see how that would like. Now say you’re at the Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona annihilate Real Madrid (again)… Barça could work out a deal with Mobli for filters that would frame photos taken in the stadium in club colors, or stamp them with images of team players like Messi, or newly signed Cesc Fàbregas. Clearly brands could have a field day with the possibilities presented with Mobli’s location-based filters. Of the 22 filters, 7 are location-based, including: TechCrunch Disrupt, Silicon Valley, Vegas, NYC, LA, Omaha, and Canada. A few examples are at the bottom of the post. In other Mobli news, with the new version being released today the company is also leveling the cross-platform playing-field. Brand new Android and Blackberry versions are now available, and are identical in terms of functionality to their iPhone app predecessor. For the developers in the crowd, Mobli has also been working on an API. It’s still behind lock and key, but you can apply for access, here. To all the other photo sharing apps: Your move.
Mobli is a real-time visual media platform made up of subject-based channels such as people, places and topics. Mobli enables users to see the world through other people's eyes!
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| Smartphone Got You Down? Verizon And Motorola Have Some Good Advice Posted: 08 Sep 2011 08:07 AM PDT  Are we in the post-PC era or aren’t we? A tipster sent in this Verizon “quick tip” that suggests the best way to keep your smartphone fresh and fun is to reboot it once a day.
Now this is wrong on many levels, the least of which is technical. The smartphone is not “a computer,” it is a mobile device and, as such, it should be designed to run unhindered for days if not months at a time. To suggest that it needs to be “refreshed” with a reboot is to admit that the software consistently fails on a daily basis. Android, for example, runs a Linux variant at its core. The garbage collection, process handling, and storage control features should run seamlessly and without complaint. If Verizon is suggesting their products – and I’m pointing to both Android and iPhone devices here – are unable to perform in this regard, then they are essentially admitting they are selling junk. Why am I harping on this point? Well, considering it’s an actual Verizon/Motorola suggestion – and one that their sales representatives may cite when someone comes in to complain about a device – it shows a wildly irresponsible level of ignorance and a certain disrespect of the consumer. Suggesting that your phone needs a good hard reset every day is akin to admitting that all of the problems associated with various smartphones – random reboots, overheating, battery run-down – aren’t the manufacturer’s fault (or even Verizon’s fault) – they’re your fault. I’ve heard – and experienced – far too many phone horror stories to accept that the manufacturers aren’t to blame. They rush undifferentiated, untested garbage to market, depend on untested builds of an OS, and then blame us for their failures. Then frustrated users get to hear bored techs mumble something about “rebooting your phone” and, although there is something wrong at the core of these devices, consumers accept their fate. In a post-PC era, we should be able to trust our mobile devices. A PC, in theory, shouldn’t be rebooted every day and a cellphone should never be rebooted unless you’re replacing a SIM card or a battery. For Verizon to suggest this is like a Geek Squad hack sucking his teeth for a minute and then saying “Well, we need to reinstall Windows if you’re getting a memory error.” It allows the manufacturer to fob off claims of failure with the age-old tech support technique of “rebooting the damn thing.” [Image: Valeriy Lebedev/Shutterstock]
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| Samsung Nexus Prime Support Page Pops Up, Rumored Specs Trickle Out Posted: 08 Sep 2011 08:01 AM PDT  If the model number GT-i9250 means nothing to you, you best brush up on your mobile news. It’s supposed to be the next Google phone, the Nexus Prime, and the first phone to run the much anticipated Ice Cream Sandwich. But the rumor mill has had its way with this one. We’ve heard juicy bits that seem entirely plausible and others that are downright false. Today’s bit would be a dummy support page for the i9250 as shared by an unidentified GSM Arena tipster. The page itself is pretty barren, with a couple How-to and FAQ links that don’t even belong to the Prime. But the tipster seemed to know quite a bit about the phone, including information that squashes earlier rumors. This is where we get out our salt-shakers and proceed with caution. The first thing we need to know is that that leaked user agent profile that everyone believed to be for the Prime was actually the UAP for the Nexus S. That’s not to say that the Prime doesn’t exist or anything drastic like that, but more likely that they’re using the Nexus S Profile as a placeholder for the Prime. That said, the tipster claimed that “Nexus Prime” is merely a codename, and that the official Google phone moniker for this model will be the Samsung Galaxy Prime. When that User Agent Profile leaked, the first thing everyone made a huff about was the 800×480 screen resolution. No worries guys. First of all, the flagship Ice Cream Sandwich handset will most certainly have a more impressive resolution than phones that have been launched over the last two years. But past that, GSM Arena‘s tipster also mentions that the Prime will sport a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD display, which could mean that we’ll see the same resolution as we do on the Galaxy Note: 1280×800. The tipster also mentioned that the Prime will take on the same contoured display as the Nexus S, and have a waist line of just 8.8mm. Oddly enough, the source said that Samsung has opted for an entirely metal chassis on this little guy, which is quite the deviation from its usual plastic casing. We’re not sure how much that’ll affect the weight, but it could be a nice step up if they can keep it light. Finally, the tipster expects a launch around the end of October. This matches up nicely with Eric Schmidt’s promise of an October/November time frame for Ice Cream Sandwich, which could very well be the best part of the Prime. Drool on, fellow phone geeks. Drool on.
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| Motorola’s New Facebook Phone Revealed Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:58 AM PDT  Motorola’s no stranger to shoehorning social media into their devices (I’m looking at you, MotoBlur), but a new device passing through the Bluetooth SIG website reveals just how serious Motorola is about Facebook integration. Before we go any further, I’ll have to ask you to lower any expectations you may have about a Motorola Facebook phone. A little bit more. And… there we go. The EX225 is Motorola’s first phone with a Facebook button, joining the illustrious ranks of the HTC ChaCha/Status, HTC Salsa, and the, erm, Vodafone Blue 555. Unfortunately, the EX225 seems to skew toward the Vodafone as far as execution goes, as it seems to lack any smartphone DNA and only has a 2.4-inch display. It’s tough to tell given size of Motorola’s image, but UnwiredView thinks it’s running a BREW-based OS, which makes sense given Motorola’s recent feature phone offerings. It’s a GSM device, and the fact that a dual-SIM variant (the EX226, naturally) exists likely means the device is going to get some global play. No word yet on domestic availability, but I’ve got a hunch the EX225 will end up positioned as a quick messaging device with an ostentatious name on AT&T. Big Blue still wants to be able offer token devices for customers who don’t necessarily want smartphone data rates, and the EX225 has just enough appeal to act as a transition phone. Users will be able to get a taste of data, and once they’re hooked, a full-blown smartphone will likely be in their futures. Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI) is a data communications and telecommunications equipment provider that succeeded Motorola Inc. following the spin-off of the mobile phones division into Motorola Mobility Holdings,...
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| Fingerprint Grabs $1.4 Million, Taps Veteran Team To Create Mobile Learning Network For Kids Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:55 AM PDT  If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it thousands of times: Children are the future. Both literally and figuratively, that’s a hard one to debate. Now then, if adults are adopting digital technologies at an astounding rate, to better their own lives, connect, and learn, why not the world’s whippersnappers? Some might balk at the sight of a five-year-old on an iPhone, but when digital devices and technology become means not just to make money off of young people through games or carrier contracts, but tools of early education, the critics quiet down significantly. We’ve covered a few cool young startups, like Motion Math and Launchpad Toys, which are mixing some serious learning with more than an ounce of fun — in an effort to make mobile devices educational resources for kids. Today, Fingerprint, a new startup based in San Francisco, is joining in on the wave of mobile education for kids — with a round of early funding and a team well-versed in children’s entertainment and education to boot. In an effort to build a network of learning and entertainment apps for kids, the startup is today announcing that it has raised $1.4 million in seed funding from K2MediaLabs, THQ, Reed Elsevier Ventures, and Suffolk Ventures. As to its team, Fingerprint was co-founded by CEO Nancy MacIntyre, who was executive vice president of product and marketing at LeapFrog Enterprises, and Kevin Wendle and Daniel Klaus of K2Media Labs. It also has Heather Regan (the former COO of Everloop), CTO Brad Edelman, who was previously the founder and CTO of PlayFirst, as well as Darren Atherton on board, who was formerly Head of Production and Online at LucasArts and previously worked at both EA and Mattel. According to Fingerprint’s website, the team collectively generated over $4 billion in revenue, 500 million downloads, 200 video games, 100 interactive books, and 12 technology patents. Even if these numbers are bloated, the team is familiar with the space to be sure. But, so what? As the market for education and gaming apps for kids grows, there are still plenty of challenges to be faced; namely, parents have a tough time finding appropriate (and truly educational) content in overloaded app stores, let alone staying engaged in their kids’ digital play experience once they find suitable apps. Within a few years, millions of kids will be using Android and iOS devices, so Fingerprint is aiming to make sure that kids from ages three to eight — and their parents — are provided with a shared fun and educational experience, while delivering a platform that allows developers to showcase clean, well-designed apps. To do this, Fingerprint will be launching applications that include features that enable social sharing and communication between kids and adults, gameplay snapshots for parents, a recommendation engine for new games based on users’ patterns of play and progress, as well as a virtual reward system that encourages kids and parents to stay engaged. Of course, to build a truly robust and meaningful platform, Fingerprint needs to offer compelling business opportunities for developers — so the startup has created a distribution network for third-party developers that enables them to design and deploy their games so that they can easily be discovered, downloaded, and shared by Fingerprint users. To this end, the team says that it will allow developers to “fingerprint” their games, which means that they’ll be able to easily tap into sharing and engagement features that expose their apps to new audiences and reduce customer acquisition and support infrastructure costs. Additionally, the Fingerprint CEO said, developers will be able to integrate the platform’s tracking tool that collects data so that parents can see what their child is learning and how they’re progressing through the apps — as well as recommending what they should play next. To kick things off, starting in October, Fingerprint will be launching four flagship applications, which users can get an early taste of here, whereafter it will begin working with third-party app developers to design and distribute new titles. Touch devices present an incredible educational opportunity for young people (hell, PCWorld even called the iPad the Toy of the Year in 2010), and while there are some interesting startups out there making headway, the market remains largely untapped. It’s not a zero sum game, and educational app developers have the opportunity to create cross-pollinating and collaborative communities (or networks) of apps that provide distribution and innovation opportunities for developers, as well as amazing resources for kids. That’s what Fingerprint seems to be doing: Going after high end content that brings education to kids, but also making sure that developers are along for the ride. It’s a smart play, and it will be interesting to see how Fingerprint positions itself going forward. More to come, to be sure. For more, check out Fingerprint at home here. Fingerprint is the first kids’ learning and entertainment platform, providing sharing and engagement opportunities between kids and grown ups across mobile devices and the web. Its network of quality...
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| Sony Ericsson 2011′s Xperia Line Will Get ICS, But Where’s Everyone Else? Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:03 AM PDT  With an October/November launch window more or less confirmed, the next burning question is which devices will get to benefit from the Ice Cream Sandwich treatment first. Motorola’s Sanjay Jha mentioned last month that he’d like his company to be first to market with an ICS device, but now another vendor has thrown their weight behind the latest update. Today, Sony Ericsson has announced their support for the forthcoming version of Android, with all of their 2011 Xperia smartphones shipping with support for Ice Cream Sandwich. Of course, this announcement says nothing about the actual logistics of the situation. Sure, flashy handsets like the Xperia Ray and the Xperia Arc will be privy to an ICS update, but SoMobile’s Sony Ericsson source makes no mention of availability dates. All devices that will get the Ice Cream Sandwich update will reportedly be upgraded to Android 2.3.4 first, which is curious since Sony mentioned that process would start as a phased rollout in October. Unless Sony Ericsson plans to stick very tightly to their timelines, that likely would push their ICS update window into November or beyond. However murky the plan may be right now, at least Sony Ericsson has made it known. The competition, on the other hand, has remained largely quiet in the face of an Ice Cream Sandwich war during the coming months. How will their ICS rollouts play out? Samsung’s in a good position here: their Nexus S handset was the first in the world to run Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and recent buzz points to them carrying that same distinction for the Ice Cream Sandwich update. That said, if their Gingerbread rollout track record is any indicator, it will take a few months for ICS builds to start making their way onto their other devices. While Gingerbread first hit on Samsung’s Nexus S in December 2010, Motorola scrambled for months to get their Gingerbread builds out to their devices. In fairness, a majority of Motorola’s devices run custom interfaces that required a bit more fine-tuning, but that could all change now. Thanks for their new relationship with Google, it stands to reason that Motorola may be in a privileged position when it comes to ICS access. Sanjay Jha’s wish for being first to market probably won’t come true, but with Google’s support, those updates may come at a much faster clip than before. UPDATE: Sony Ericsson has come out and denied any Ice Cream Sandwich update plans. In a statement to SlashGear, representatives from SE said that “when it comes to future platforms of the Android OS, we will make them available to consumers in a timely manner, as long as they improve the user experience and are viable from a hardware point of view."
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| Smule’s MadPad Turns Your Life Into A Video Soundboard Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:01 AM PDT  From the “click-clack, click-clack” of your car’s turn signal to the honking of a passing bus, life is a symphony of sound — there’s just no one conducting. This morning, Smule (makers of many a fine/remarkably clever iPhone app, from Leaf Trombone to I Am T-Pain) is looking to change that with their latest iOS app: MadPad. By capturing short, everyday sights/sounds and arranging them for playback at your fingertips, MadPad turns the world into your beatbox. Their demo video probably explains it better than I can (though I’ll do my damnedest in a second): Make sense? MadPad lets you capture those fleeting sounds (that turn signal click-clack, that bus honk, a barking dog, a finger snap, or anything else) and arrange them into a video soundboard. Each sound (and its accompanying recorded video) is laid out at your fingertips, and tapping any of the soundboard’s squares fires off its paired event. A few dozen taps and a good bit of experimentation later, you’ve gone and turned those random sounds into something resembling a melody. Recording each sound is remarkably easy — far more so than I expected, actually. After you set a button to record (and set the ambient noise level), the app can automatically monitor for a volume spike and intelligently edit down your clip accordingly. Or you can just do things manually and hope for the best. Once you’ve figured out your grand arrangement, videos can be recorded and exported to YouTube with just a few clicks. Who knows! Maybe you’ll be the next Jack Conte (minus the sweet beard.) Interestingly enough, this app wasn’t actually built entirely in-house by Smule. It began its life as a project of Stanford student Nick Kruge, only to be adopted a few months later as Smule’s first trip into the publishing world. While it’s not nearly as graphically rich as some of their in-house efforts , it’s just as polished and well-built as anything else we’ve seen come from Smule. Plus, it’s really friggin’ fun. The app is available now, and can be found for $0.99 for the iPhone and $2.99 for the iPad Smule is a creator of Interactive Sonic Media for mobile platforms. Smule’s first product, Sonic Lighter, is a virtual lighter iPhone application that launched on September 24, 2008....
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| Taptu Receives $3.5 Million in Series B, Will Launch White Label Social News Aggregator Tapform Posted: 08 Sep 2011 06:57 AM PDT  Taptu, a social media and social search company, announced today its plans to expand beyond its current lineup of mobile apps in order to include a new, white label offering called Tapform. As the name implies, Tapform is a platform for publishers, developers and hardware manufacturers interested in building their own social news aggregator. The launch will be made possible by way of Taptu’s newly-received $3.5 million in Series B funding from U.K.-based DFJ Esprit and French firm Sofinnova. Although social news is clearly a crowded space at the moment (see Flipboard, Zite, AOL Editions, Tweetmag, Pulse, etc.), Taptu offers a unique feature it calls “DJ’ing” the news. This refers to Taptu’s ability to let its users mix streams from various media sources like blogs, Twitter, RSS feeds and more. Taptu itself also offers 12,500 streams built by its own editorial team, for those who aren’t as interested in the hands-on content creation business as they are in the consumption. And the majority aren’t – only 10% of Taptu’s customers use the DJ feature. Says Taptu CEO Mitch Lazar, the key difference between his company’s product and competitors is the search technology that powers the app – a technology that has been around for over 5 years. This core engine is what Taptu is all about. It was only recently put into the new interface – the mobile and tablet offerings you see today. The repositioning began in May 2010, with a relaunch in November and then iPad and Android tablet apps following this April and May, respectively. Although Taptu won’t disclose the number of installs it has, it’s happy to talk growth and engagement numbers. Specifically, 60% of the company’s growth has come since the launch of the tablet apps in April (iPad) and May (Android). Also, 50% of its customers have now become monthly users. And Android users are more engaged than those on iOS, comprising 60% of the traffic, with 2.5 visits per day and reading 19 stories. iOS users visit twice per day and read 12.5 stories. Prior to this announcement, Taptu has been working on deals to get its app pre-installed on tablets. We should see the first results of those deals sometime around the holidays, on the Android platform. Taptu is a social and media technology company. We build innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of...
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| Watch Out Amazon: GetJar Launches A Full Catalog Of Premium Android Apps For Free Posted: 08 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT  Today, third-party mobile application store GetJar is publicly launching its GetJar Gold service, which has been in beta testing for the past month. The new service presents a viable challenge to Amazon’s Appstore and its time-limited “free app of the day” by offering an entire catalog of premium Android applications for free. The apps are high quality, ad-free and are available for download at any time. At launch, GetJar Gold will feature 50 titles, including Fruit Ninja THD, Age of Zombies, TuneIn Radio Pro, Solo, and Splashtop Remote Desktop. Their combined value is around $60.00. GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs says that new apps will be added daily. In fact, the company has nearly closed a deal with another big “recognizable” name in the mobile app industry, but cannot disclose details at this time. (Please be Angry Birds!) Only premium (paid) applications without in-app ads are considered for the new store, which operates under a different model than the retail app stores from Apple, Google and Amazon. Elsewhere, developers share a percentage of their premium app’s sales with app store provider, usually in a 70/30 (developer/app store) split. With GetJar, however, the company pays the developers for the applications on a per install basis, which ensures developers get paid. GetJar, in turn, generates revenue by offering sponsored listings within GetJar Gold to other application developers. Using a model similar to Google AdSense, developers bid on how much they are willing to pay per install. The bids can be as low as 1 cent or as high as $1.50 to $2.00 per user. The higher the bid, the higher the ranking in the GetJar Gold search results. Also like Google, sponsored apps are clearly labeled and highlighted using a different color (blue). Says Laurs, this model works because mobile users tend to download more than one application per session. Consumers also happy to try out the sponsored apps when relevant to their interests. But most importantly, this model works because when apps are free, users are more likely to download them – 10 to 20 time more likely, GetJar finds. GetJar Gold is now available on the GetJar.com website, mobile site and in its standalone Android application here.
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