MobileCrunch |  |
- Watch This Phone Survive A Dip In The Drink Thanks To HzO
- Novatel Shows Off The Globetrotting Verizon Jetpack Hotspot
- T-Mobile Debuts The Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G
- IK Multimedia Adds MIC Cast, STOMP and MIX to their iRig Line
- Pyxis Mobile Raises $17M, Rebrands As Verivo, Pivots To Licensable App Platform
- Pressly Launches Electionism, A Tablet-Only HTML5 News Publication
- The Daily To Come Pre-Installed On Verizon Android Devices Starting With Samsung Galaxy
- Popular Like Voxer
- New “Showtime Anytime” App Brings Showtime’s Movies And Shows To The iPad
- iHeartRadio Launches Developer API
- Peel Launches New Social TV App For iOS
- Medialets Turns On Private Marketplace For Mobile Ads
| Watch This Phone Survive A Dip In The Drink Thanks To HzO Posted: 10 Jan 2012 09:06 PM PST  If it’s not immediately obvious, that image is of a Samsung Galaxy S II being submerged in a glass of water. While that sight would cause many a mobile buff to break down in tears, this particular phone continues to work fine thanks to some impressive waterproofing technology from HzO. It’s not exactly the newest thing we’ve seen here at ShowStoppers, but it’s easily the one I wished I could have for my phones immediately. In short, the process goes like this — the waterproof thin-film coating is turned into a gas in order to be applied to the device in question, which allows for full coverage of its internals. The process sounds pretty complex, so don’t expect to be able to do the same in your garage anytime soon. Still, the end result is undeniably impressive. In addition to the Galaxy S II taking a swim, an iPod nano was thrown in there for good measure with no ill after effects in sight. As it stands, HzO is currently in talks with hardware manufacturers in an effort to get their waterproofing process used in future devices, but they’ve got some considerable support as it stands — Li Ka-shing just recently acquired a $3 million stake in the company.
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| Novatel Shows Off The Globetrotting Verizon Jetpack Hotspot Posted: 10 Jan 2012 07:30 PM PST  We’re no strangers to Novatel Wireless — their aircards have been saving us on a regular basis this week — and now they’ve swung by our part of the ShowStoppers stage to show off their new Jetpack mobile hotspot for Verizon. The Verizon Jetpack sports an OLED display and support for Verizon’s 4G LTE network but perhaps more importantly, it also has full support for global roaming. Trying to surf the web in Venice? Go for it! Need a solid data connection outside the Louvre? Not a problem. Of course, you’ll have to shell out quite a bit for that privilege, but hopefully you’ve got a corporate checkbook picking up that tab. No word yet on availability, but hopefully it arrives before summer rolls around and all you tourists start travelling en masse.
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| T-Mobile Debuts The Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G Posted: 10 Jan 2012 05:00 PM PST  Just two years ago, everyone at CES was asking one question: Where are all the Android phones? If anybody asked that same question this year, they’d be met with blank stares and guffaws. This show has been jammed with Android phone after Android phone since before it even officially started. The latest one off the line is T-Mobile’s Galaxy S Blaze 4G (bit of a mouthful, eh?), which is the third device to play friendly with T-mobiles 42Mbps HSPA+ network — which, by the way, just saw a bunch of expansion. Alas, while it’s nearly 3 pages long, T-Mobile’s announcement of the Blaze 4G is pretty light on details. So far, the only things we really know about it are that it’s 42Mbps HSPA+ compatible, that it has a dualcore 1.5Ghz Snapdragon CPU packed inside, and that it’s shipping “later this year”. No price, no specific launch date, and a bunch of specs left mysterious for now. Meanwhile, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network saw a bit of expansion, with the 42Mbps network rolling out in 12 new markets and their slightly less speedy 21Mbps network finding its way to 9 new spots. Alas, the announcement also fails to mention.. which regions these are. We’ll update this post as soon as we find out. T-Mobile also mentioned that they expect to receive AWS spectrum in 128 markets as a result of their deal with AT&T falling through. Update! Just heard back from T-Mobile. While they couldn’t share any more details on the Blaze 4G specs, they outlined which regions saw expensions. 21Mbps 42Mbps
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| IK Multimedia Adds MIC Cast, STOMP and MIX to their iRig Line Posted: 10 Jan 2012 12:59 PM PST  IK Multimedia unleashes a plethora of new hardware this week at CES 2012 within their iRig line. This triumvirate of products look to make it easier than ever to use iOS devices, live and inline, with analog musical instruments like guitars, bases, vocals and regular DJ consoles. I have used several of their devices in the past with excellent results, so I am stoked to see how this new group of products perform. This miniature microphone looks to be a smaller, more compact version of their previously released iRig MIC (which I have to say I love). I have the older, larger version right here in my computer bag and use it constantly for recording interviews and voice overs. The tight pattern noise cancellation on the original iRig MIC is excellent and is extremely useful in loud situations (like CES). The new, smaller iRig MIC Cast promises similar noise canceling, in a smaller more compact package. If matches the original in that arena, it stands to be an excellent in-the-field microphone for mobile devices. Check back for updates after I get my hands on one. Here are the detailed specs straight from the press release:
Offering live monitoring is a nice touch and very useful for interviews. You definitely don't want to record a whole conversation only to find out you had the microphone too far away, etc. iRig MIC Cast costs $39.99/€29.99 (excl. tax) and will be available in Q1 2012 from electronic and music retailers around the world. For more information: www.irigmiccast.com This interface for using IK Multimedia's excellent AmpliTube guitar modeler, finally makes it practical to use your iPhone as a tone source for live guitar or bass use. The form factor of the iRig STOMP is that of a traditional Stompbox guitar pedal, which allows for "hands free" use. More press release specs:
I've toyed with the idea of using AmpliTube as the sole source for playing upright bass at small gigs, but the inability to truly "bypass" was always a deal-breaker for me. This could enable that scenario. We'll see. iRig STOMP costs $59.99/€44.99 (excl. tax) and will be available in early Q2 2012 from electronic and music retailers around the world. For more information: www.irigstomp.com
Again, IK has developed hardware that mimics traditional setups for DJing, yet added an easy way to use iOS devices as the source, enabling compact setup. I doubt this will ever actually supplant the true sounds and art of vinyl DJing, but surely anyone that has shlepped a huge stack of records to a show could appreciate the smallness going on here. In any event it looks like it could be one part of a DJ setup. Pricing and availability is as follows: iRig MIX costs $99.99/€74.99 (excluding taxes) and will be available in February 2012 from electronic and music retailers around the world. Pre-orders are already available from the IK Multimedia online store and other selected resellers. For more information: www.irigmix.com
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| Pyxis Mobile Raises $17M, Rebrands As Verivo, Pivots To Licensable App Platform Posted: 10 Jan 2012 11:42 AM PST  Every business seems to want its own mobile software, and now Pyxis Mobile is transforming to help companies build apps for themselves. Previously, Pyxis created apps for enterprise financial services companies, but today pivots to offer its app development platform directly to clients. The company has rebranded itself as Verivo Software, and taken a $17 million funding round from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, as well as existing investors Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital. The new funding will build on the combined $7.15 million secured in Pyxis Mobile’s Series A and B rounds. The money will go towards marketing, product development, recruiting, APIs, and growing its global presence with new offices in Europe and Asia. Rather than having to work with an outside vendor to issue updates and support, Verivo’s platform will let clients take care of everything in house. Clients can build apps with a drag-and-drop interface, deploy them across device types and operating systems, and manage functionality changes. The shift from Pyxis Mobile to Verivo has been 16 months in the making, so the platform has already been utilized by several clients beyond financial services. Sales companies like Bunzl have built field operations apps for their employees, Indiana State University offered a campus information app to students, and health tech companies like Healthrageous have used apps to retain customers. Other clients include Allstate Insurance, Halliburton, and Oracle. Enterprise mobility software demand is booming. Verivo saw license bookings increase by 220 percent and revenue run rate up 50 percent in 2011. By distributing the development power, Verivo can improve its platform in a scalable way instead of fixing the apps of individual clients.
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| Pressly Launches Electionism, A Tablet-Only HTML5 News Publication Posted: 10 Jan 2012 11:01 AM PST  Following its November launch, OnSwipe competitor (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly is bringing another major media outlet’s content to the tablet interface. The company is today announcing the launch of a new publication called Electionism. The app was built for the Media Lab, an internal product innovation team inside The Economist Group, which includes The Economist, CQ Roll Call and other businesses. The new app offers coverage of the 2012 election in the U.S., including insight, analysis and other content from The Economist and CQ Roll Call. A section called the “Latest from Twitter” aggregates tweets from candidates, political pundits, publishers and other organizations, while a “Noted Elsewhere” section allows Economist journalists to share links to what they are reading. Like some other media outlets, including the iPad-only The Daily or the Financial Times’ own app, the Electionism app was built for tablet computers – it doesn’t exist as a newspaper or in any sort of printed format. In addition, if you try to visit the site from a desktop web browser, you’re alerted to the fact that the app is for tablets only, and pointed over to The Economist instead. The difference between something like The Daily and Electionism, however, is that the latter is an HTML5 web app – not an iOS app or Android app built using native code and sold in an app store. Pressly CTO Peter Kieltyka previously referred to his company’s product as “Sencha for tablets,” meaning that Pressly is meant to serve as a framework for building HTML5 web applications for the increasingly mobile-optimized web. The current version of the app supports the iPad (iOS 4.3+), the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Kindle Fire, the company says. Earlier this month, The Financial Times Group, which owns a 50% share of The Economist Group, acquired the development firm that built its own HTML5 web app, a move indicative of publishers’ growing interest in HTML5 . Pressly’s other big customers are also publishers, including The Toronto Star and Ziff Davis, which recently brought its tablet shopping experience Logicbuy to the iPad. If you’re using a supported tablet, you can view Electionism in action here.
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| The Daily To Come Pre-Installed On Verizon Android Devices Starting With Samsung Galaxy Posted: 10 Jan 2012 09:39 AM PST  The Daily, News Corp’s tablet news reader app, will no longer be iPad-only. A deal has been struck with Verizon to pre-install an Android version of the app on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 this month, with more Verizon Android devices to receive The Daily in the future. Verizon customers will get week’s free trial of the app before the $4 a week / $40 a year subscription cost kicks in. This distribution deal could significantly increase The Daily’s readership and sales by relieving Android users from having to go out and download it. Existing Galaxy Tab 10.1 users will receive the app bundled with a software update this month, while new buyers will see it on their home screens. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 has been confirmed as one of the next devices to come with The Daily pre-installed. The Daily hit 1 million downloads in May about 4 months after launch, and was the 3rd highest grossing iPad app of 2011 without being pre-installed. This bodes well for the Android sales from this distribution deal. There’s no word from News Corp as to when or if Android device owners on other carriers will gain access to The Daily. Presumably if the app has been successfully ported to Android, the only thing stopping wider distribution is an exclusivity deal with Verizon. The iPad exclusivity deal lasted about a year, so it could be 6 months or a year before AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers gain access to Murdoch’s news reader.
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| Posted: 10 Jan 2012 09:29 AM PST  Back in late November I wrote about a walkie-talkie mobile app called Voxer that had looked like it was starting to break into the big leagues of mobile communication. Since then, it has, at various points passing a few competing walkie-talkie app startups… and also Facebook, Skype, and most other mobiles apps for that matter, on both iOS and Android. It’s been among the top three top apps in the social networking category on both iOS and Android over the past month and a half or so here in the US. That’s included the #1 spot on iOS for 25 of those days and #1 on Android for 22 of them. It’s also regularly been in the top 25 overall in the app stores, only getting temporarily displaced by a rash of heavily marketed games for a few days here and there over the holidays. Beyond app store rankings, I’ve also been hearing that downloads have been averaging around 200,000 per day. Company vice president of growth Gustaf Alstromer confirms this range, saying that the “number changes every day but that’s in the ballpark.” What’s driving all the new growth and usage? People who want the walkie-talkie social experience like what Nextel phones used to offer, where you push a button on the interface to stream a quick message to a friend or group. Because you’re basically just recording short clips of yourself, other people can go back and listen to the recordings later on if they’re in the middle of something else. Think of it as the voice version of text messages, in a way that won’t cost you minutes on your phone plan. The app appears to have first taken off with young people in black communities in Cleveland and other US cities, with other users around the world hearing about it and joining since then. It’s been getting a few media hits — celebrities like Soulja Boy and Kevin Durant have talked about it, and passionate users have written songs about it. CNN also aired a segment on it a few days ago, where the cable news serviced interviewed founder Tom Katis about how the app came out of his experiences as a special forces communication specialist in Afghanistan — he needed a better way to help people communicate in the heat of battle. Voxer has since gone global, and is currently among the top 25 social networking apps in more than 60 markets, according to app tracking service App Annie. On the backend, infrastructure service providers Joyent and Basho Technologies have also been working to support the growth, with the latter recently issuing a press release bragging about how it has helped Voxer scale up using the open-source Riak database. Where to, now? It’s too early to say how long it’s going to be a hit. Some users on Twitter claim to be bored already, or annoyed by the spammy way it shows you any Facebook friend or phone book contact who adds it. But the company thinks it’s on the leading edge of a bigger change — Alstromer notes that seven out of the top 15 apps in the social networking category in the app store have voice functionality. “If you get the opportunity to re-invent voice communication beyond the traditional phone call,” he says, “what do you do? Removing the interuptive part of phone calls is a good place to start.” The app is currently free but the plan is to add some premium features at some point. You can download it for iOS here and for Android here.
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| New “Showtime Anytime” App Brings Showtime’s Movies And Shows To The iPad Posted: 10 Jan 2012 09:02 AM PST  Showtime is today joining HBO GO as another premium cable channel that’s bringing its content to mobile devices. Through the new iPad app Showtime Anytime, customers can now watch Showtime’s original programming, including its TV series, movies, sports and documentaries anywhere there’s an Internet connection. The content is only available for Showtime subscribers, of course, a list which includes just AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS for now. Comcast customers will be able to access Showtime’s content through the Xfinity TV service, but the Showtime Anytime app is “coming soon” for those customers, the company says. The app provides mobile access to Showtime’s top shows, like Dexter, Weeds, Homeland, Californication, Shameless, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, Episodes, The Borglas and The Real L Word and will offer access to upcoming series like House of Lies and Inside Comedy. The network’s movies will be available too, starting with The King’s Speech, Blue Valentine, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, I Am Number Four, The Twilight Saga: New Moon & Eclipse and others. Sports programming includes Showtime Championship Boxing, Inside NASCAR, Strikeforce Mixed Martial Arts and more. iPad users can navigate through the app using a “My list” option that lets them create a personalized list of favorite shows and can share their viewing habits by “liking” and “following” their favorite shows on Facebook and Twitter, or posting to either social network from the app’s interface. The app supports play shifting, too – meaning that it lets you pick up where you left off when you change devices. That will have more impact when the app arrives on the iPhone and Android platforms in early 2012. You can grab Showtime Anytime for the iPad here on iTunes.
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| iHeartRadio Launches Developer API Posted: 10 Jan 2012 08:05 AM PST  Clear Channel’s streaming radio service, iHeartRadio, is launching its developer program today, which includes an API that allows third parties to integrate iHeartRadio’s content and services into their own products, websites and applications. iHeartRadio now offers over 850 radio stations across the U.S. from 150 cities. With the new API, developers can access several of the service’s features, including its live broadcast and digital-only stations, its “custom stations” feature and social media integration. With the custom radio option, users can make their own stations in a similar fashion to Pandora. In iHeartRadio’s case, stations are customized based on favorite songs, artists or genres. 11 million songs are available on the service along with a “discovery slider,” which lets users opt for more discovery or more familiar tunes, depending on their mood. In the brand showcase, now live on the iHeartRadio developer site, the company lists big names like Xbox 360, Toyota Entune, Yahoo TV and Grace Digital as partners who are already using the iHeartRadio API in their own products and services. iHeartRadio isn’t the only streaming service attempting to build a music platform – everyone is. MOG’s API is now allowing auto and consumer electronics makers to integrate the service into their products, Pandora is notably found everywhere from cars to refrigerators, Spotify has a newly-launched app platform, and Rdio has an API, just to name a few.
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| Peel Launches New Social TV App For iOS Posted: 10 Jan 2012 07:50 AM PST  You may remember Peel as the maker of the pear-shaped hardware device which sits in between your smartphone an TV, turning your phone into a universal remote control. Today, as promised, the company has updated its companion mobile application with more social features that allow you to share the shows you’re viewing, see what your friends and family are watching, post recommendations and comment on others’ posts. Dubbed “Peel 2.0,” the newly refreshed app works as a standalone interface for social TV viewing or it can be paired with the Peel Smart Remote Device, sold separately. Upon first launch, the new Peel app asks you to help configure its recommendations, by telling it your zip code, TV provider, as well as your preferred genres of TV programming (e.g., sports, news, soaps, thrillers, comedy, drama, etc.), then ranking them in the proper order via drag-and-drop. You can also optionally include your age range and gender for more targeted recommendations. Once set up, the app’s “Top Picks” section will feature Peel’s personalized suggestions. And the more you interact with the app, the better these recommendations will become. In addition to the Top Picks, buttons at the bottom let you switch between TV shows, movies and sports. The last button takes you to the Social section, where you can view the activity feed of your friends’ activity. You can connect to Facebook to find your friends, and then view their favorite shows, within the app, too. Your activity is not shared out to social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, unless you explicitly tap the “Recommend” button for the show in question. That will make users a bit more careful about sharing outside of the app, as a “recommendation” holds more weight than something like “I’m watching….”, which is what competitor GetGlue does, for example. Others in this increasing crowded social TV space include IntoNow, yap.TV and Comcast's Tunerfish, to name a few, which gives Peel a lot of competition. But Peel’s interface is pretty nice – you can flip through shows with a swipe and scroll through each section’s filters with a little wheel at the top – so the app is fun to use. You can grab Peel 2.0 for free here on iTunes.
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| Medialets Turns On Private Marketplace For Mobile Ads Posted: 10 Jan 2012 05:54 AM PST  Buying mobile ads across different apps and mobile sites is a highly inefficient process today. There are dozens of ad formats, about 85 percent of mobile ad inventory goes unsold, and it is difficult for advertisers to reach the scale they require. Mobile ads are ripe for a marketplace to make it more efficient, but publishers are wary of ad marketplaces, having seen how they pushed down average prices per impression on the desktop web. Today, Medialets is launching a private marketplace for mobile ads which attempts to address the problems of both mobile publishers and advertisers in a unique way. To protect app and mobile web publishers from the brutal commoditization marketplaces tend to impose on prices, Medialets allows publishers to set pricing floors and even price their inventory differently for different advertisers. They can add whitelists of advertisers who can buy their mobile ad inventory and adjust those permissions per campaign. This allows them to block Chevy ads if they are running an exclusive Toyota sponsorship, for instance, or more generally control the quality of the advertisements which appear on their apps and mobile sites. For advertisers and media buyers, they can manage their own whitelist of premium apps and mobile sites, pushing out their campaigns to multiple mobile publishers. The marketplace supports direct buys, guaranteed pricing, reserved pricing, and real time bidding. They can keep their mobile ad units in a central repository, deploy them to the mobile publishers on the marketplace, and measure their effectiveness. The private marketplace is invite-only, and today launches with 40 publishers and top brands.
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