MobileCrunch |  |
- Mobile Component Marketplace Verious Exits Beta, Partners With Elance
- Medialets Lands $8.4 Million For Mobile Rich Media Ad Platform
- Steve’s Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices
- Walmart Goes Mobile With New Apps For iPhone & iPad
- Schmidt: Motorola Mobility Won’t Get Preferential Treatment (Not That It Needs It)
- Shazam, Delivery Agent Partner To Let You Buy Your Favorite TV Characters’ Stuff
- 8tracks Brings Its Handcrafted Mixtapes To Android
- PayPal Updates Its Android App With Support For NFC Payments
- My Witness Catches Bad Guys In The Act
- Scanadu Raises $2M: “Check Your Body As Often As Your Email”
- Eric Schmidt: Microsoft Pushes Patent Deals Out Of Fear Of Android
- Facebook Acquires Team Behind HTML5 App Platform Strobe; SproutCore Lives On
- Updated Apple Store App Makes For Less Painful Retail Experience
| Mobile Component Marketplace Verious Exits Beta, Partners With Elance Posted: 09 Nov 2011 04:54 AM PST  Verious, the one-stop shop for mobile app components and TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 finalist, is today emerging from its beta period with a bang. It’s announcing a partnership with online employment platform Elance, which will bring over 25,000 mobile professionals to Verious’ existing network of mobile component developers. Through the partnership, Verious will offer two new categories within its marketplace: “Find Contract Developers” and “Find Mobile App Projects.” These sections will serve to connect product managers, brand managers and business owners with mobile developers on development projects. Developers will be able to list their capabilities, qualifications and ratings from past projects for others to see, while also bidding on the current projects posted to the site. Also new is a suite of Small Business Solutions which Verious will offer to businesses looking to quickly launch mobile apps. Businesses will have access to pre-built “white label” apps from a range of providers starting at $399, plus access to a developer community who can help customize their app’s landing pages, splash screens, buttons or who can alternately build new apps from scratch. Expanded license management capabilities for components and SDKs are available now, too. Verious is entering an increasingly crowded market with its mobile component marketplace, where competitors now include Chupa, Appcelerator’s Open Mobile Marketplace and Binpress, to name just a few. Each outlet attempts to differentiate itself from the others through the platforms supported, the size of the listings on the site, their feature set, or some other factor. For Verious, it appears to be going after the “one-stop shop” label, with these recent moves which sees it not only listing mobile app components, but offering services associated with app building as well. The company, founded in 2011, has $800,000 in seed funding and is backed investors including Charles River Ventures, X-G Ventures, plus angels Mark Britto, Iggy Fanlo, Gil Penchina, Krishna Vedati, Thomas Schulz and Zain Khan.
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| Medialets Lands $8.4 Million For Mobile Rich Media Ad Platform Posted: 09 Nov 2011 03:48 AM PST  Medialets, which provides a rich media ad platform for mobile, has raised another $8.4 million in equity funding according to an SEC filing published this morning. We’ve contacted the company to learn more about the investment, but it’s likely the funding was partly or entirely provided by earlier backers Foundry Group, DFJ Gotham Ventures and/or 500 Startups. Medialets has raised a total of $18.4 million in funding to date. Some of our earlier coverage: Medialets Updates Universal SDK With Third-Party Rich Media Support, New Mobile Ad Formats And More Medialets Launches Muse, A Creative Project Management Dashboard For Rich Media Mobile Ads Adobe Just Made Medialets Its Mobile Ad Server
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| Steve’s Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices Posted: 08 Nov 2011 10:59 PM PST  The year was 2008. I was at an event focused on mobile, sitting in on a roundtable discussion with several folks from key companies in the industry. One gentleman was from Adobe. The iPhone had launched the previous year, famously without any support for Flash. A lot of folks were up in arms about this — including several at this table. The guy from Adobe assured everyone: mobile Flash would be coming soon. And it was going to be wonderful. The notion that Apple wouldn’t include it on the iPhone because of performance issues was pure hogwash. The same thing was said in 2009. The same thing was said in 2010. The same thing was still being said in 2011. So you’ll forgive me when I snicker a bit at the news tonight that Adobe plans to cease development of their Flash player for mobile devices. Jason Perlow has the scoop for ZDNet, and it’s a doozy. Here’s the apparent forthcoming announcement from Adobe on the matter:
This announcement, along with talk of a focus on HTML5, should be out in the next day or so, according to Perlow. Yes, Adobe is ending their efforts to get Flash onto mobile devices. But again, that’s odd, since all we’ve heard out of the company for the past 3+ years was either how mobile Flash was coming, or how it was just about to be perfected. While it did finally come — in June 2010 for Android — it was far from perfect. That’s putting it nicely. Put less nicely, it sucked. The technology on mobile devices was never ready for primetime. As Harry McCracken put it this past February: Mobile Flash: Always Exciting, Always Not Quite Here Yet. In that post, McCracken noted that Motorola was touting full Flash support as a big selling point of their then-new Xoom tablet. But there was an asterisk. Flash would not ship with the device itself. It would come later. It would always come later. Things got really heated in April 2010, when Steve Jobs took to Apple’s website to write a missive against Flash. Simply titled, Thoughts on Flash, Jobs destroyed the technology in 1,700 or so words. Perhaps most damning were his thoughts on mobile Flash in particular. The key parts:
This letter prompted an ill-advised advertising campaign (which they ran all over the web, even on TechCrunch) by Adobe in which they proclaimed: “We Love Apple”. It was transparent and lame. Worse, it was just about the weakest response possible. Adobe didn’t address any of the issues Jobs brought up. They tried to be cute. They brought an advertisement to a gun fight, as I noted at the time. When pressed, Adobe would only call Jobs’ dismissing of Flash “a smokescreen“. And they would continue to promise that the technology would soon be perfected. Better, Adobe’s platform evangelist summed up his feelings with: “Go Screw Yourself Apple“. It’s sad that Jobs is no longer with us to see this day. But the truth is that he probably didn’t need to see it — he knew he was right. In his post, he outlined the need for a move towards technologies like HTML5, and now that’s exactly where Adobe is heading. Steve gets the last laugh.
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| Walmart Goes Mobile With New Apps For iPhone & iPad Posted: 08 Nov 2011 09:00 PM PST  Today, Walmart is launching an updated iPhone application and a new iPad app, in an effort to better connect customers’ offline and online shopping experiences. The iPhone app in particular brings a number of new features, including voice-enabled shopping list creation, barcode scanning and integrated manufacturers’ coupons, while the iPad app offers the ability to find items both online and at the local store. The two applications are among the first products to ship from @WalmartLabs, the recently formed group in Walmart’s Global eCommerce unit, which arose from the retailer’s acquisition of social media startup Kosmix earlier this year. The group is also behind Walmart’s new social shopping Facebook app, Shopycat, which will recommend gifts for friends based on their Facebook activity. Although social integration is not present in the new apps just yet (that’s coming, though), they do offer some cool tricks of their own. For example, you can talk to your iPhone to build your shopping list, without having to pause or speak each item individually. That means you can say “milk, eggs, bread, laundry detergent, swiss cheese, cold cuts” all in one breath, and the app knows to separate each item onto its own line. The speech component, like that found on the new iPhone 4S, is powered by Nuance. However, in this case, it’s baked into the app natively, allowing for backward compatibility with all existing models of iPhone. Shopping lists can also be updated manually or via barcode scanning, similar to other shopping list applications already available in iTunes. But unlike many of those apps, Walmart’s app will include the pricing information and a running total in real-time as the lists are built. Another useful feature for Walmart’s budget-conscious shoppers is the customized integration with Coupons.com. As you add items to your list, you’re able to immediately “clip” the associated coupon, if one is available. Coupons.com has its own app in the iTunes App Store, but it will not be integrated with Walmart’s, we’re told. When complete, the shopping list can be emailed to family and friends. A final notable feature in the updated iPhone app is the item finder, now in beta. This displays the in-store aisle location of each item in your local store. In the future, Walmart plans to build on top of this feature in order to sort your shopping lists and map out your path through the store for increased efficiency and speedier shopping. The newly launched iPad app, offers many of the same features as found on the iPhone, but expands upon the inventory checking functionality to include access Walmart.com inventory as well as local inventory. Both apps provide access to product information details, including customer ratings and reviews. As for Amazon, Walmart’s main online competitor, Gibu Thomas, Walmart's Senior VP of Mobile and Digital would only comment that Walmart now has 3,800 stores in the U.S. and sees “Internet-scale” traffic in its brick-and-mortar locations every week, during which time 140 million people shop in its stores. Although he wouldn’t draw a direct comparison with Walmart’s efforts and Amazon’s, the increasingly integrated experiences of online, offline, mobile, and soon social, will clearly play an important role in Walmart’s competitive strategies in the months ahead, potentially turning the retailer’s foot traffic into online customers.
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| Schmidt: Motorola Mobility Won’t Get Preferential Treatment (Not That It Needs It) Posted: 08 Nov 2011 12:40 PM PST  Eric Schmidt is continuing his Asian tour, speaking today in South Korea. Two sensitive topics came up: first, the question of whether Motorola Mobility would be getting special treatment if and when the deal closes. His response, as reported by Reuters: “we will run it sufficiently and independently, that it will not violate the openness of Android…we’re not going to change in any material way the way we operate.” I believe him. Because really, they don’t have to. Who is it that needs to be whipped into line when it comes to Android handsets? Not HTC and Samsung. The handset makers are all happy as clams, selling lots of units and competing on easily-inflatable numbers like screen size, resolution, and CPU clock speed. They’re making lots of money and lots of handsets. Google wouldn’t want to spook their cash cow by making Motorola the Android poster boy. No, it’s the carriers who are the bane of Google’s existence. Android’s biggest problem is arguably fragmentation. Carriers are the largest holdup in producing the updates that unify the Android ecosystem, and they hold too many cards. Apple foresaw and preemptively solved this problem by tying the phones’ updates exclusively to iTunes, and now it may be time for Google to make its displeasure felt. I sense a development in the Android world, an acknowledgment of the fragmentation problem and a solution along the lines of asking manufacturers to test a safe vanilla install for all handsets, up to date with the latest version of Android the phone will run. Users should be able to update to this at any time. It shakes things up, sure, but I’m afraid Google and the others can only weather this bad publicity for so long before it starts degrading the platform among people who normally don’t care about version numbers. The other thing Schmidt was asked about in South Korea was the bit from Steve Jobs’ biography calling Android a “stolen product.” Schmidt demurred on the topic, calling Steve a “fantastic human being” but couldn’t resist addressing the topic: “I would also point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort.” Sure it did, Eric, but it looked like this: Just saying.
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| Shazam, Delivery Agent Partner To Let You Buy Your Favorite TV Characters’ Stuff Posted: 08 Nov 2011 12:34 PM PST  Well, I’m not sure whether to be worried about our impending laziness or thrilled that I can now shop while I watch TV (without the help of the Home Shopping Network). Shazam, potentially one of the most magical apps ever, has partnered with Delivery Agent to let you discover consumer products in TV shows and ultimately purchase them. First to jump on board with the service is NBCUniversal, more specifically the program Covert Affairs, with other programming to follow. Just like you Shazam music you love, the service will let you tag Covert Affairs episodes, which will then serve up different products that are relevant. So let’s say that Covert Affairs main character Annie is getting dressed on the show, and you notice that her outfit is exactly what you’ve been looking for. Simply tag the episode and voila! Delivery Agent pulls any items available for purchase right into the Shazam app. Along with apparel and accessories within the programming, this new service will also let users buy program-branded goodies, like a Covert Affairs mug or t-shirt. In all honesty, the shopping selection probably won’t be that great at first, and obviously not everyone is a Covert Affairs die-hard. But if this thing blows up the same way Shazam did, you’ll want to be able to tell your friends you were doing it before it was cool.
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| 8tracks Brings Its Handcrafted Mixtapes To Android Posted: 08 Nov 2011 11:24 AM PST  Music fans, listen up! 8tracks (the self-proclaimed “social, curated alternative to Pandora”) is now available on Android. For the unassociated, 8tracks is a massive collection of handcrafted playlists built, for the most part, by the music-obsessed. It’s one of those things that takes a bit of tinkering to wrap your head around… until suddenly, you find yourself 40 playlists deep with a monstrous collection of new tunes behind you. It’s the music lover’s music discovery engine. This new Android app isn’t their first endeavor in mobile — in fact, the 8tracks iPhone app launched way back in April. With that said, this app isn’t just a quick port — it’s seemingly been rebuilt from the ground up with all of the mechanisms and design paradigms Android users would expect. In other words, it feels right at home on Android. For those just diving into 8tracks (do it!), know that the service comes with some limitations: the same artist can only appear in any given mix twice, playback order is randomized after the first playthrough, and you can only skip a handful of tracks per day. When you’re willing to tune in and tune out, though, playlists from the likes of VICE, Pitch, Ghostly, Spin Magazine, and Resident Advisor should make you the hippest kid in Hippsville. You can nab the free app from the Android Market right over here. If you’ll excuse me, I have like 70,000 Adele/Jay-Z dubstep mashups to catch up on. Click to view slideshow.
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| PayPal Updates Its Android App With Support For NFC Payments Posted: 08 Nov 2011 10:58 AM PST  PayPal updated its Android application today and has added one notable new feature: support for NFC payments. Using NFC, or near field communication, two PayPal users with NFC-enabled phones can send and receive money using the mobile app. The feature, which was previously announced over the summer, also includes a “Request Money” widget that can be added directly to the Android homescreen. To use the widget, you simply tap it, enter an amount and then bump phones with your friend. On your friend’s device, they’ll see the request and can then enter their PayPal password to send you the money. PayPal notes that its implementation of NFC involves “P2P” mode which means that it will work with the majority of NFC-enabled phones, not just the Samsung Nexus S. The updated Android app also includes a few non-NFC features, including a newly redesigned landing screen, auto-complete from your phone’s address book and other UI improvements. The new app is available here in the Android Market.
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| My Witness Catches Bad Guys In The Act Posted: 08 Nov 2011 10:38 AM PST  It’s not often that you’re attacked by a random stranger, but if/when it does happen preparedness is the key. Think back to your karate days, carry pepper spray, use the buddy system, and stay alert. And when all that fails, download the My Witness app on your phone. In the rare case that you actually have the opportunity to snap a picture of your attacker, you’ll be glad you did. While our 911 service is evolving to allow for text, video and images, the reality of those improvements is still years away. The My Witness app won’t act as a full-fledged replacement for that (in fact, it isn’t sending information to 911 at all), but it may just save your life. Or at the very least, help the authorities catch the bad guy. Here’s how it works: after installing the app, simply enter in your own contact information, as well as the email addresses of three emergency contacts. All you have to do is enter information once and it’s stored for good. So let’s say couple hypothetical weeks later, you’re walking home from a hypothetical bar late at night when you start feeling hypothetical eyes on the back of your head. Hypothetically speaking, you’re being followed. At that point you have one of two choices: you can call the cops on someone who is possibly 100 percent innocent or you can load up the My Witness app and get ready to snap a pic. If the stalker ends up being a danger, take a pic (you know, since the cameras on our phone’s are all about the speedy shutter) and the app immediately and automatically sends the picture to the email addresses you provided, along with your location and phone number. At an idea level, this makes a lot of sense. Muggers tend to get away with their crimes, but this could throw a little justice into the mix. However, in practice I don’t see this being as useful as we’d like. Taking a crisp, quick picture with your phone is hard enough, but taking a picture of a criminal attacking and/or stalking you borders on impossible. Past that, email isn’t necessarily the most immediate way to get a hold of someone either. Then again, phone makers have grown increasingly focused on the camera. The iPhone 4S, for example, has an upgraded shooter, along with a camera button on the lock screen to take quick pics. Still, it may not be quick or stealthy enough to capture a criminal in the act, though it may be a great way to witness and document crimes from afar. The My Witness app is available now from the Android Market and Apple App Store for $4.13 and $3.99 respectively.
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| Scanadu Raises $2M: “Check Your Body As Often As Your Email” Posted: 08 Nov 2011 10:20 AM PST  Meet Scanadu, an innovative health tech startup I daresay you’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future. It’s not the easiest of tasks explaining what the company is building at this point, but let’s call it a personal, mobile, auto-diagnostics product – they refer to it as a Medical Tricorder. Founded in January 2011 by a team of entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds, the roots of Scanadu actually go way back. One of the company’s founders, and its chief executive officer, is Walter De Brouwer – something of a legend here in Belgian entrepreneurial circles, and beyond. He says he had the basic idea for a personal health monitoring service back in 1999 when he was working at the renowned Starlab research institute, which he jump-started alongside MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte. And from watching Star Trek. “Sci-fi stories are business plans in disguise,” De Brouwer tells me, referring to the invention of the mobile phone, which was inspired by the Star Trek communicator. “I’ve tried to build the Tricorder once before, in 1999 at Starlab, but the technology was too immature.” De Brouwer says the idea resurfaced in his mind in 2006, when his son was hospitalized for 3 months following a serious accident. So he conjured up the idea of using one’s smartphone as a personal doctor of sorts, leveraging many of the things modern cellphones can do to help people auto-diagnose and manage many of the easily identifiable health conditions that may arise. Scanadu’s first product, the ‘Medical Tricorder’, is built specifically with parents with kids in mind, and to help avoid expensive trips to hospitals based on insufficient information and/or anxiety. "Today, the health tools in your home probably consist of a thermometer and a box of band-aids. We can do a lot better," says co-founder and COO Misha Chellam. The company has worked with IDEO to create a video that captures its core vision well that includes the quote I used for this posts’s headline, albeit paraphrased. You can watch it below. Scanadu has raised $2 million from a network of global angel investors, including Playfish co-founder Sebastien De Halleux, and is currently moving the team from Belgium to the San Francisco Bay Area (the lab is being established at NASA’s Research Park). The company is building a core team of biomedical engineers, software and hardware developers, and AI specialists. They also have a Medical Advisory Board that includes Stanford-affiliated Dr. Daniel Kraft and Dr. Jordan Shlain, founder of Healthloop and Current Health. Scanadu is currently seeking technology partnerships with telemedicine and diagnostic technology startups, and hiring more people to join its quest to build a personal ‘pocket doctor’.
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| Eric Schmidt: Microsoft Pushes Patent Deals Out Of Fear Of Android Posted: 08 Nov 2011 09:01 AM PST  Microsoft may be preparing for a big Mango push here in the States, but the Wall Street Journal reports that Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently took them to task at a press conference for claiming that Android devices infringe Microsoft-owned patents. “Microsoft is not telling the truth on this issue, and they are using tactics to scare people because they are scared of the success of Android,” Schmidt said. Microsoft has targeted several Android device manufacturers in recent months, with big names like Acer, HTC, and Samsung agreeing to Microsoft’s terms. According to a recent blog post by Microsoft General Counsel and EVP Brad Smith, “companies accounting for more than half of all Android devices” have entered into such licensing deals with Microsoft. Though the specifics of the deals are never fully disclosed, Microsoft receives per-unit royalties from each of the companies that have accepted their terms. Just this morning it was revealed that Microsoft aimed to add another name to their long list of licensees: Huawei CMO Victor Xu said to the Guardian that the Chinese OEM was approached by Microsoft to sign a similar agreement, and that negotiations were currently “in progress.” Is Microsoft really afraid of the little green robot that could? It’s certainly possible, considering that Android remains the most-used smartphone OS in the United States and has considerable footholds in many other major markets. The United States will soon be subjected to (another) big Windows Phone push, but Microsoft will still be able to collect royalties on Android hardware should the wave of Mango-powered devices fail to strike a chord with consumers. While Microsoft certainly has quite the racket running, I’m not convinced that it was born out of fear when it comes to Android. I think that even Microsoft realizes how difficult it would be to dethrone Android, and their string of licensing agreements makes them appear content to capitalize on their success. Even if Microsoft does manage to claim the top spot, you had better believe they will continue to collect those royalties. If anything, it seems like an insurance policy intended to pad Microsoft’s coffers regardless of how things turn out.
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| Facebook Acquires Team Behind HTML5 App Platform Strobe; SproutCore Lives On Posted: 08 Nov 2011 08:40 AM PST  Facebook has apparently completed yet another small acquisition, snapping up HTML5 app distribution platform company Strobe. In a blog post, Strobe founder (and creator of open source JavaScript framework SproutCore) Charles Jolley says the Strobe service will continue to exist in its current beta form. SproutCore will live on as an independent project, he adds.
Strobe’s platform, which debuted back in September, helps developers build HTML5-based Web applications for desktops, smartphones and tablets, and lets them centrally manage them using a single interface. Sarah took a close look at Strobe when the service made its formal debut. The company had raised $2.5 million from O'Reilly AlphaTech and Hummer Winblad. Update: as expected, this is mostly a talent acquisition. A Facebook spokesperson says:
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| Updated Apple Store App Makes For Less Painful Retail Experience Posted: 08 Nov 2011 06:14 AM PST  The holidays will soon be upon us, and with them will come the inevitable clogging of our nation’s retail arteries. How fortunate then that Apple has just released an update to their Apple Store app that allows customers to streamline their shopping experience. Next time you walk into an Apple Store with the app in tow, you’ll be able to bypass all that “human interaction” nonsense by using the app’s new EasyPay feature. Users with an iPhone 4 or 4S can scan the barcode on a number of accessories to pay for the product with the credit card connected with their Apple ID. The receipts are generated and stored in the app, so even the most nitpicky security guards shouldn’t offer much of a struggle as people waltz out the door. The app also packs support for Apple’s Personal Pickup, with which users can order a product from a certain Apple store from within the app and pick up it later. The turnaround time from order placement to pickup can be as little as an hour, but we’ll soon see how well this claim holds up once shopping season kicks into high gear. If you happen to be a bit pickier than some and want a product that isn’t currently available, you’ll be given a rough estimate as to how long you’ll have to wait. Not all of the additions are quite as flashy: there’s a new menu dedicated to tracking orders, which customers in Canada and China can also take advantage of. As long as you’ve got a device running iOS 4.2 or later you should be golden, but iPad users should be aware that the app isn’t optimized for all that extra screen space.
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