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Patent Troll Buys ADAPTIX (And Its 4G Technology Patents) For $160M

Posted: 13 Jan 2012 04:51 AM PST

adaptix

The 4G wireless technology space is heating up, so expect vultures.

Acacia Research Corporation, a massive patent holding group with dozens of subsidiaries in the business of exploiting intellectual property by means of lawsuits and aggressive patent licensing schemes, this morning announced that it has acquired ADAPTIX, a 4G wireless technology company that originally started out in 2000 under the name Broadstorm and was owned by PE firm Baker Capital.

Acacia Research is paying $160 million for the company, which has $10 million in cash, primarily to obtain ADAPTIX’ portfolio of 230 issued and pending patents in 13 countries.

The patents in question are said to cover a broad range of 4G technologies, including OFDMA and MIMO.

Guess what’s going to happen next.

Fujitsu Japan Rolls Out 2 “Girls-Only” Cell Phones

Posted: 13 Jan 2012 02:23 AM PST

fujitsu featured

Do women need special cell phones? Certain companies, such as Deutsche Telekom or Samsung, seem to think so. Now Fujitsu Japan is ready to roll out [JP] not one but two handsets specifically designed “for girls”, a feature phone and an Android model.

The Android phone, the so-called F-03D Girls’, has been developed in cooperation with popular teenage fashion magazine Popteen:

It comes with a waterproof body, special lights at the bottom and around the camera (see below), pre-installed (and extra-cute) photo frames, and pre-installed apps specifically designed for a female user base.

Technically, the F-03D Girls’ features Android 2.3, a 3.7-inch LCD with 480×800 resolution, 1GB ROM, 512MB RAM, an MSM8255 1.4GHz processor, an 8MP CMOS camera, Wi-Fi IEEE802.11b/g/n, 2.1+EDR Bluetooth, a TV tuner, an e-wallet function, and a microSDHC card slot.

The F-06D Girls’ is one of the very few new feature phones that are coming out in Japan. Fujitsu designed the handset with nicola, another teenage fashion magazine:

Buyers get an original tote bag, a stylus pen (the phone has a 3.3-inch touch display) to decorate pictures (see above), an 8MP camera, various nicola wallpapers, 39 different photo frames, and a total of 3,010 pre-installed emoji for cuter emails. Like its Android counterpart, the F-06D Girls’ is waterproof.

Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to start offering both Fujitsu phones on January 20.

Survey: 80% Say Social Networks Had No Influence On Holiday Shopping Decisions

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:16 PM PST

Dislike Ecommerce

Social networks could one day revolutionize how we get shopping recommendations, but not yet. Instead, tablets are causing the biggest shakeup in ecommerce. 80.2% of 1000 holiday shoppers said no, personal connections on Facebook or another social networking site did not influence their shopping decisions. Other findings of Baynote‘s annual study include that 48.6% of tablet owners made a purchase through their big mobile device, and that email was the channel with the most useful promotions.

Baynote’s entire 2011 holiday shopping survey of 1,000 shoppers between Cyber Monday and Christmas Eve (2.9% margin of error) is available in exchange for an email address. Baynote provides ecommerce personalization services to companies including Dell, AT&T, and StubHub. It’s technology compares a site visitor’s browsing patterns to those of other shoppers to power recommendations of relevant products to view next.

[Update: I'd bet most people are at least subtly swayed by social networks in terms of what products they're aware of and trust. Humans are not entirely accurate when reporting their own behavior in surveys. Respondents may have been subconsciously influenced when making product decisions.

Even so, this survey illustrates that the majority of shoppers are not yet overtly influenced by social networks.The survey could also be interpreted to mean that already 20% of shoppers are directly influenced to make a purchase because of sites like Facebook. That is a significant number and indicates that a strong social media presence that drives positive word of mouth can help a retailer's business.]

Amazon’s Price Check app recently stoked fears about “show rooming” — the practice of trying out a product in a brick & mortar store but then purchasing it online, which can hurt local merchants. However, Baynote found the opposite is usually the case with 93% of surveyed consumers having researched a product online and then purchased in a physical store.

Retailers on and offline that want to reach consumers with promotions should focus on email. 62.5% of respondents said email was the most useful way to receive promotions, trouncing direct mail (16.7%), search engine results (11.8%), and daily deals (4.9%). Only 2.5% said Facebook was the most useful promotion channel. This indicates there is plenty of room for innovation in social network delivery systems for promotions, such as Facebook Page tab apps, ads, and Sponsored Stories.

The breakout success of this year’s holiday shopping season was the tablet. Half of tablet owners purchased using them, meaning 8% of all consumers are now tablet-based shoppers. Retailers should therefore be thinking about how to optimize for that screen size.

Urban Airship To Shutter SimpleGeo Services In March, With Factual Picking Up The Slack

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:09 PM PST

47529v7-max-250x250 (1)

Yesterday, we wrote about Urban Airship, the startup that gives developers a simple way to build in-app purchases and push notifications into their mobile apps, and how the company has been on a tear of late. They recently hired Skype’s former strategy czar and yesterday hit 10 billion notifications pushed. Not bad for a two-year-old.

On top of that, Urban Airship acquired SimpleGeo at the end of October for approximately $3.5 million. Considering that the two startups had some months before struck a strategic partnership, and both provide location-based services for mobile developers, the acquisition made sense, even if the price was lower than many had hoped. (And SimpleGeo Co-founder Joe Stump left the company post-acquisition, following Co-founder Matt Galligan.)

At the time, it was unclear what Urban Airship would be doing with the terabyte-plus of SimpleGeo location data. Today, that became clear. Simply put, it looks like it’s curtains for SimpleGeo’s services. Urban Airship said this afternoon, after the requisite internal discussions, talks with customers, and hand-wringing, that it will “wind down the availability of the current versions of [SimpleGeo's] Places, Context, and Storage over the next few months”.

The target date for pulling the plug officially will be March 31st. Obviously, this is not good news for SimpleGeo’s customers, so in order to make sure its customers aren’t left out in the cold, the company said that Factual will be picking up the slack. The LA-based startup will be migrating developers over to its service, as the company offers its own API with location information, similar to that which was provided by SimpleGeo. A loss for SimpleGeo means a win for Factual.

Factual has been providing SimpleGeo with their Places data since June 2011, so Urban Airship hopes that it will be able to facilitate a smooth transition to Factual’s API to continue with access to that data. Urban Airship is also offering customers an additional list of replacement services here.

Furthermore, the startup will not be charging for use of Places, Context, or Storage services through March 31st, and will be offering existing SimpleGeo customers up to six months of its Pro Plan for no monthly charge. (More here.) Smacks of a bit of guilt, doesn’t it?

Urban Airship said that it is basically determined to focus on its product development efforts, which means that it will be taking the best parts of SimpleGeo to beef up the location and context capabilities of its push notifications, while the rest is for all intents and purposes kaput. This wasn’t unforeseen considering the departures from the company post-acquisition, but it’s probably not what the SimpleGeo founders had in mind a year ago.

For more, here’s Urban Airship’s blog post.

Eyes On: The Nokia Lumia 900

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:19 PM PST

Ah, so close yet so far. Nokia’s new flagship Lumia 900 handset was on display here at CES 2012, and though we couldn’t quite get our hands on it, we did the next best thing — we shot some video.

While the Nokia Lumia 710 technically led Nokia’s U.S. Windows Phone charge, the newly-announced Lumia 900 for AT&T is likely to be the one that gets phone fans’ hearts fluttering. With its 4.3-inch AMOLED display, 1-megapixel front-facing camera, stylish polycarbonate design and support for AT&T’s fledging 4G LTE network, it could soon be the Windows Phone to beat in the United States. For a while, anyway.

That being said, Nokia could face some stiff competition from devices like the HTC Titan 2, a whopper of a new Windows phone from HTC that sports (among other things) a 1.5GHz processor and a 16-megapixel camera. Even so, while some customers will end up choosing one over the other if they decide to buy a Windows Phone, either purchase would help grow the Windows Phone platform as a whole.

Personally, I’d be inclined to go for a 900 thanks to the fact that it will be available in the same cyan hue as its little brother that Lumia 800 does. There’s no official release date or price as of yet, but Nokia’s representatives assure us that it will hit store shelves within a few months.



Hands-On With The Sony Ericsson Xperia S From CES

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:29 PM PST

I’ve never been a huge fan of Sony Ericsson. The phones are fine, I guess, and I certainly commend the company’s drive to differentiate. The Xperia Play is a great concept but it failed to really take off.

Today, however, I was very impressed after taking a good hard look at the new Xperia S. It’s not the thinnest phone at .4 inches, nor does it have the biggest screen, but it is something fresh which is more than I can say for most Android Gingerbread phones.

The phone is very boxy, and even has an extra bit of hardware on the bottom that seemingly has no purpose. Still, I don’t mind it since it adds something new to the look of the phone with that thin strip of clear plastic. I also tend to frown upon white phones, but the Xperia S is a sexy little beast in white.

Spec-wise, this new phone continues to impress with a 4.3-inch HD Reality Display powered by Sony’s Bravia Engine. The screen boasts a 720p resolution, joining ranks with the Galaxy Nexus, the LG Spectrum, and the HTC Rezound.

Under the hood you’ll find 1GB of RAM, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and a memory card slot with room for up to a 32GB card.

Another impressive feature of the Xperia S is its 12-megapixel rear-facing camera that is capable of video capture in 1080p, along with a front-facing shooter for video chat.

All in all, the phone feels great in the hand and looks hot. The corners are a bit “sharp” but not at all uncomfortable, and the purposeless extra hardware along the bottom doesn’t make the phone cumbersome at all. Oh, and if gaming’s your thing than you’ll be happy to know that this phone is Playstation-certified.

Sony promises that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will head to the S eventually, but we have no word on pricing or availability yet so stay tuned.



MoPho’s New App Lets You Order Photo Prints & Products Via Your iPhone

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:18 AM PST

mopho

Dying to stick your awesome iPhone photos on a t-shirt, coffee cup, or mousepad? Yes? Good. Of course there are a million places you can do this on the desktop-sized Internet (you know, that thing with all the linked webpages which you access by typing letters on a keyboard into something called a “browser?”), but now there’s a more compelling option: there’s an app for that.

The app, from Penguin Digital, is called MoPho, and it’s the first to use the company’s Penguin SDK which will soon allow any mobile developer to integrate the same option for ordering photo products into their own apps.

Using MoPho (which I’m really enjoying saying, by the way), iPhone users can take a photo or choose one from the camera roll and then pick a product on which to emblazon their artful photography. Or baby pictures. Or kitty cat. Or whatever.

The current photo product lineup includes mouse pads, mugs, key chains, beverage coasters, frosted glass steins, HD aluminum art, re-stickable posters, t-shirts and (as of a minute after publishing this) custom iPhone cases.

MoPho will show you what the product looks like before you order and lets you adjust the photo by zooming, rotating and scaling. You then enter in your shipping and billing info and checkout, paying with either Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express (via Authorize.net). Prices are reasonable enough, e.g. t-shirt for $22, water bottle for $19.99, mousepad for $12.99, etc.

But perhaps the niftiest thing about the app is what’s powering it: the Penguin SDK. Similar to Sincerely’s “Sincerely Ship Library for iOS,” which lets developers integrate photo printing and postcard functionality into their apps, the Penguin SDK will do the same for photo products.

The company hasn’t yet opened up the Penguin SDK publicly yet (it’s coming in roughly a month), but said they would provide early access to the first 25 TC readers who sign up via their form.

Penguin Digital was started in 2010 and is led by founder Josh Friedman and CTO Andy Minkstein (both also of PicsCliq). The company has $1 million in seed funding from N.Y. investors in a round led by Globis Capital.

Vodio Brings Personalized Video Recommendations To The iPad

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:44 AM PST

vodio-home

Vodio is a new iPad app that’s somewhat along the same lines as iOS app Shelby.tv. Like Shelby, it also brings you videos being shared by your friends on social networks. But where Shelby.tv only focuses on those “socially shared” videos, Vodio instead uses its social features to bring “a dash” of personalization to its video recommendations.

In Vodio, you get to see what the crowd is watching too. To get started, you configure the app around your interests, by telling it which categories of videos you like to watch. For example, Comedy, Entertainment, Movies, Music, News, Science, Sports, Tech, etc. You can even drill down into these categories further to select the sub-categories that match your interests. So in Sports, you could choose Basketball, Football, Soccer, Tennis, etc. But you can also customize your favorite content sources. Yes to Fox Sports, perhaps, and no to the UFC.

Great idea, in theory. In practice, Vodio seemed a little buggy. You can check the content sources you want to include, but good luck un-checking them. Tapping the categories again does nothing. Apparently, that’s by design. You don’t un-check your channel selections. You go into “Edit” mode and remove them. OK then.

Maybe that seems like a minor complaint, but it’s very unintuitive to have a one-way checkbox. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. (The company says it’s working on this).

Petty complaints aside, the rest of Vodio’s user interface is attractive and fun to use. You swipe horizontally to move between channels and vertically to scroll through the videos in those channels. In addition to the personalization and (optional) social networking connections, Vodio simply shows you what’s hot on various video sharing platforms and from top media publishers. Videos come from TV shows, networks, comedy sites like College Humor, NASA, newspapers, newswires, movie trailers, music videos, blogs, and more. But for now, the only supported players are YouTube, Vimeo, AOL Video, Facebook Video and Dailymotion.

Vodio Labs Ltd., the company behind Vodio, was founded in early 2011 by Jonathan Messika, Uri Twig and Ishay Weinstock in Tel Aviv, Israel. Last July, it raised a 200K Euro seed round led by Kima Ventures, with Jaina Capital and Orefa Investment participating.

The company is now working on simplifying the channel set up and personalization process, adding more video-driven features like HD enabling, and partnering with premium content players.

The Vodio app is a free download from iTunes here.

Following LG Patent Deal, Microsoft Execs Taunt Google On Twitter

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:10 AM PST

Boxing gloves pair red

Microsoft this morning announced that it has signed a patent licensing agreement with Android device manufacturer LG, its eleventh deal of the kind.

Microsoft says effectively 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the United States today are covered under its patent portfolio, not mentioning the fact that they’re also suing Motorola Mobility and NOOK maker Barnes & Noble over their Android devices.

Continuing a tradition that we hope will stand the test of time, Microsoft’s head of communications, Frank Shaw, took to Twitter to taunt Google.

First, Shaw tweeted “Hey Google – we are the 70% #anotherandroidlicense” with a link to their press release, and later said:

The second one is of course a bit disingenuous, since pretty much every player in this industry employs patents as weapons, will at some point, or wishes they were in a position to do so.

Shaw isn’t alone in his endeavor to try and get a response out of the Google camp, by the way.

Here’s Brad Smith, Microsoft’s EVP and General Counsel, tweeting:

And here’s Horacio E. Gutiérrez, Corporate VP and Deputy General Counsel, tweeting:

We love this stuff. We want more. Come on, Google, it’s your turn. Keep this going.

Update - no comment needed:

Microsoft Strikes Another Patent Deal With An Android, Chrome OS Device Maker: LG

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:08 AM PST

lg

Microsoft has signed a patent licensing agreement with LG, maker of tablets, phones and other consumer electronics devices running Android or Chrome OS.

This marks the 11th deal with a device manufacturer leveraging Google’s operating system software; other major agreements were struck with the likes of HTC, Samsung and Acer, among others.

Now that the LG deal is done, Microsoft says more than 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the United States today are covered under its patent portfolio. Evil, or genius?

Either way, Android is turning into quite a cash cow for the Redmond software giant. No wonder Google refers to their methods as pure extortion and a sign that they’re afraid of Android.

Terms of the deal with LG were, per usual, not disclosed, although it’s worth pointing out that Microsoft says it expands upon a pre-existing agreement between the pair.

We’re anxiously awaiting Google’s response to this announcement.

StrikeAd Strikes £2 Million Second Round From DFJ Esprit To Expand

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:33 AM PST

strikead

StrikeAd, a London and New York based mobile advertising startup, has secured a £2m second round investment from VCs DFJ Esprit expand further internationally. The investment follows a first round finance from Germany-based venture capital firm eValue announced in February 2011.

Read more at TechCrunch Europe.