What’s the coolest iPhone app?  Well my son would probably pick a game where you flick fuzz-balls around a grid (FlingFree).  Or something called “The World’s Most Addictive Game.”  (seems just like a moving doodle…)  For me, I’m having  a great time exploring UrbanDaddy.com’s “The Next Move” app (sort of a portable, all-knowing wingman in your pocket), MSNBC’s news application, and especially FourSquare.

FourSquare allows you to “check in” at places all over your town or any town or city you visit.  If your local gas station or barber shop is not on the local list, then add it.

You get points for each place you add, and if you check in to one place enough times, you become “The Mayor” of that place.  It is oddly addicting and fun to see where people are checking in.

With FourSquare, I think we are entering a very cool new era of apps.  FourSquare is almost useless on a PC/Mac Browser.  Boring.  Doesn’t do anything.  But use it on your iPhone, Blackberry or Android device to “check-in” somewhere and you are claiming your place in the universe for that moment, even if you are just passing through.  (Confession:  I’ve “checked-in” at the Darien and Stamford Metro-North stations when the train has stopped there going in and out of NYC.  But I won’t do it if the train doesn’t stop — I have my standards!)

The next question will be to see what FourSquare does with all the data they will collect.  And yes, I do sense a crowdsourcing discussion coming on…

And as the Mayor of the Westport Stop and Shop, I advise you to check out their holiday specials…

And join me on FourSquare by clicking here.

Yet another report by yet another survey agency has yet again concluded the usage disruption that the iPhone is bringing about in mobile computing. Morgan Stanley puts Apple in the pole position to control mobile internet computing. Not only that the study also concluded that the iPhone, iPod touch and iTunes platform has seen the fastest rate of adoption of any new technology in history.Though the iPhone and iPod touch represents just 17 percent of global smartphones, the two devices are responsible for 65 percent of handheld Web browsing, according to Net Applications, and half of all mobile app usage, according to AdMob. Compare that to Nokia’s Symbian platform, which has 45 percent of all mobile devices, but just 7 percent of the Web share.

The Morgan Stanley presentation goes on to define the future of the mobile Internet as the overlap between social networking and mobile devices (Haven’t we heard that before?).

Smartphones have been smartphones for a while, but Apple is perhaps the first device and platform which pioneered the internet on the handheld. The iPhone thus has become more than a device as it integrates internet, social networking, music and gaming into the handheld device helping people live out their “internet lives” seamlessly. The US markets are definitely swaying away to the iPhone and Apple.

In another report, by Comscore which measured the usages of smartphone and operating systems, Apple has upstaged Microsoft as the No.2 smartphone in US. The bad news for Microsoft is that there is Android in 2010, which is waiting to get past Microsoft. As reported earlier in a post, Android will ship through 50 or more devices in 2010 and it is only a matter of time before, Android pushes past Microsoft. Microsoft’s WinMo 6.5 has been a damp squib (it was supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to Android). Microsoft can only hope that WinMo 7 is able to work it out for them provided it is released before Microsoft is all and written off by the market. There is a dangerous trend building on that as well.

On the back of the great feedback we recieved on our last  prizeKing  mobile industry twitter list - we thought we’d share another one. This is a more generalised mobile industry list that we came across on the excellent Twibes

Its a mobile industry twitter list with a difference – its self selecting. So users readily identify themselves as being in the mobile industry and then ranked by follower count. You can see the list here - or we have reproduced it in full below ranked in order of follower count:

#1

tinytwitter Kevin Cawley 52,252 followers
Bio developer (@kcbigring) author tinytwitter – this is for app info only! enjoy the app.
Location Boulder, Colorado
Web http://www.tinytwitte…
Other lists: applications, developer, software

#2

mdh47 Mark Hirsch 24,539 followers
Bio I work for Inventec Corp, I’m an American living in Taipei, Interested in Mobile High Tech news and trends, not selling anything here, just trying to network
Location Taipei
Web http://www.mdh47.com/
Other lists: tech-news, trends

#3

OnlyMobileNews Mobile News 23,154 followers (1 on this list)
Bio We follow the latest in mobile technology news
Location California
Web http://webpartner.com…
Other lists: iphone, tech-news

#4

robinjewsbury Robin Jewsbury 14,460 followers
Bio the founder of eyemags and co-founder of mippin
Location London
Web http://eyemags.com

#5

TextBuzz Thomas Hearl Mobile 13,197 followers
Bio A mobile marketer who is fascinated with the world of sms text message marketing and it’s potential..
Location Orlando, FL
Web http://www.textbuzz.b…
Other lists: mobile-marketing

#6

mitschi Mitschi 9,949 followers
Bio Developer People Platform
Location Berlin
Web http://nokia.com
Other lists: developer, linux-geeks

#7

windowsphone Windows® phone 8,828 followers
Bio Windows phone on Twitter
Location Redmond, WA
Web http://www.windowspho…
Other lists: microsoft, telephone, windows

#8

WHEREitsAT WHERE.com 8,654 followers
Bio Your Friends, Your Favorite Restaurants and Local Events. Find them with WHERE. Available on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android & Palm Pre.
Location Boston, MA
Web http://www.where.com
Other lists: blackberry, iphone

#9

Sarik Sarik Weber 8,539 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Founder of cellity.com, acquired by NOKIA, serial company builder (eProfessional.de, XING.com, cellity.com), keynote speaker and startup investor
Location Hamburg
Web http://www.cellity.co…
Other lists: startups, technology

#10

wmdev WM Dev Team 7,695 followers (1 on this list)
Bio We’re the Windows Mobile Developer team. Come chat with us, give us feedback & ask questions.
Location Redmond, WA
Web http://developer.wind…
Other lists: developer, microsoft

#11

fring fring 7,509 followers
Bio fring is a mobile internet service and community that enables you to access and interact with your social networks on-the-go
Location fringland
Web http://www.fring.com
Other lists: mobile-internet

#12

nimbuzz nimbuzz 5,962 followers
Bio Multi community mobile social messenger: chat, messaging, cheap calls (VoIP) and more for all Connect and interact with all IM and social networks at once!
Location http://www.nimbuzz.com
Web http://blog.nimbuzz.c…

#13

HilzFuld Hillel Fuld 5,466 followers
Bio Tech blogger-Technmarketing.com, Forex content manager-Dailyforex.com, and a nice guy who likes to tweet. Also chose BlackBerry over iPhone, at least for now!
Location Between Jerusalem n’ Tel Aviv
Web http://technmarketing…
Other lists: israel

#14

nokconv Nokia Conversations 5,342 followers (1 on this list)
Bio A team of Nokia tweeters. Follow us for various updates, info, and the occasional banal banter.
Location Finland
Web http://conversations….

#15

INQMobile INQ Mobile 4,851 followers (1 on this list)
Bio We Make Social Mobiles
Location London
Web http://www.inqmobile….
Other lists: socialnetworking

#16

nkugelman Nick Kugelman 4,691 followers
Bio Sales and Marketing Ninja for MobileFrame, Mobility Expert, Gadget Freak, love hanging with family, JiuJitsu, dogs, and soon to be a daddy
Location Boise, Idaho
Web http://www.corporateh…
Other lists: software

#17

VirginMobileUS Virgin Mobile USA 4,274 followers
Bio Lisa here, Tweeting for Virgin Mobile USA baybee! Also find me @VMAngel
Location USA
Web http://www.virginmobi…

#18

guyglover guy glover 4,207 followers
Bio Using Mobile Carriers and Mobile Marketing to help the environment (greenmobiles.com.au). Plus I have become an iPhone geek!
Location iPhone: 1.282950,103.846649
Web http://iphonestar.com
Other lists: mobile-marketing

#19

rorysutherland Rory Sutherland 3,926 followers
Bio Fat bloke at Ogilvy, IPA; The Wiki Man
Location iPhone: 51.276511,0.119302
Web http://rorysutherland…
Other lists: advertising, digital, wikis

#21

Firemint Firemint 3,772 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Game studio hoping to put a bit more fun into your day Tweets by Alex.
Location Melbourne, Australia
Web http://www.firemint.c…
Other lists: iphone

#22

BuzzThreeSixty Chris B. at Buzz 360 3,559 followers
Bio Mobile Marketing. Helping brands engage their customers.
Location Cincinnati, OH
Web http://www.buzz-360.c…
Other lists: mobile-marketing, startup

#23

digistar Tim Gorree 3,385 followers (14 on this list)
Bio Avatar Concepts. Virtual Nokia. IT Architect, Web Technologies. Enterprise 3.0.
Location Helsinki, Finland
Web http://virtualnokia.n…
Other lists: acme, augmented, cyberculture, maemo, mixedreality, opensim, secondlife, virtual

#24

loopt Loopt 3,265 followers
Bio Your social compass!
Location Mountain View
Web http://www.loopt.com
Other lists: startup

#25

ryenyc Ryan 2,984 followers
Bio A ZAGAT Guy: Check out nru on Android, the #1 Grossing iPhone Travel App Zagat To Go 2.0 & ZAGAT.mobi. Manhattanite. Also I like pudding.
Location Manhattan, NYC
Web http://www.zagat.mobi
Other lists: android, iphone

#26

david_cao Android iPhone Mobil 2,942 followers
Bio Android iPhone BlackBerry Enterprise Mobile product & solutions. CEO of ExtendLogic. Android iPhone BlackBerry Developers, consultants, contractors, developers.
Location Santa Clara
Web http://www.extendlogi…
Other lists: iphone

#27

Betmenko Betmenko 2,890 followers
Bio Hm..nothin specific..just a normal guy
Location
Web http://twittley.com/u…
Other lists: android, google

#28

thenokiablog Mark Guim 2,832 followers
Bio Nokia Fanboy and Editor of The Nokia Blog
Location New York City
Web http://thenokiablog.c…
Other lists: blogs

#29

blackberrypros blackberrypros 2,821 followers
Bio Wireless professional wanting to connect on BlackBerry and wireless trends
Location BCOther lists: blackberry

#30

EricssonLabs Tor Bjorn Minde 2,818 followers
Bio Open innovation, developers, API’s, new enabling technologies, mobile, applications, messaging, content push, maps, location, streaming
Location Sweden
Web http://labs.ericsson….
Other lists: developer, technology

#31

AndroidGuysCom AndroidGuys.com 2,809 followers
Bio Beating the Android drum as loudly as possible
Location ukite: 40.85074,-81.434598
Web http://www.androidguy…
Other lists: android

#32

MobileZeitgeist Heike Scholz 2,803 followers (1 on this list)
Bio mobile zeitgeist is the leading online magazine on mobile business in German-speaking countries. Heike, founder and publisher, is twittering here.
Location Hamburg, Germany
Web http://www.mobile-zei…

#33

kiwanja Ken Banks 2,656 followers
Bio Where [mobile] technology – and @frontlinesms – meets anthropology, conservation and development
Location Rural Cambridgeshire, UK
Web http://kiwanja.net
Other lists: africa, anthropology

#34

JimAyson Jim Ayson 2,640 followers
Bio Interested in gadgets, social media, the mobile internet, and jazz!
Location Philippines
Web http://jimayson.com
Other lists: mobile-internet, philippines

#35

Katrinskaya Katrin Verclas 2,633 followers
Bio chica. curious.
Location
Web http://www.mobileacti…
Other lists: socialchange

#36

textingforward TextingForward.com 2,389 followers
Bio Founder and CEO for TextingForward.com | Mobile Marketing and Mobile Service Solutions, & More Mobile
Location Orlando, FL
Web http://www.textingfor…
Other lists: startups

#37

baloss Alessandro Galetto 2,380 followers
Bio Lost in Telecomms, falled in love with mobile phones and still enjoying it so much! Well, most of the time. Head of Product Development at 3, lot of fun!
Location Milan, Italy
Web http://www.dotdust.co…

#38

ilicco Ilicco Elia 2,355 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Head of Mobile, Reuters, having worked for Reuters since i was a boy (however my thoughts are my own) also part of #CozyTweetUp
Location ÜT: 51.440361,-0.163279
Web http://www.linkedin.c…
Other lists: journalism

#39

mpression Mobile Advertising 2,267 followers
Bio UK’s leading mobile advertising agency inc O2 UK, Virgin Mobile, The Guardian, Autotrader, Evening Standard and more…
Location London
Web http://blog.mpression…
Other lists: advertising, mobile-advertising

#41

motodev MOTODEV 2,105 followers
Bio Motorola’s Developer Program
Location Sunnyvale, California
Web http://developer.moto…

#42

cgiorgi cedric giorgi 2,096 followers
Bio Working at Goojet http://www.goojet.com, french mobile start-up
Location Paris, France & Toulouse,
Web http://www.cedricgior…
Other lists: social

#43

toms Tom Limongello 1,980 followers
Bio JD Power & Associates’ best Twitter profile 2009. mobile, advertising, NYC, china, failwhale
Location iPhone: 40.960399,-72.192293
Web http://uwsjournal.com
Other lists: mobile-advertising

#44

sendmemobile SendMe Mobile 1,898 followers
Bio If you’re an artist, DM us! We want to interview you for The SendMe Stage http://blog.sendmemobile.com. We blog about hot new music, movies & mobile news.
Location
Web http://blog.sendmemob…
Other lists: mobile-news

#45

Handango Handango 1,879 followers
Bio Handango is the leading provider of mobile apps worldwide.
Location Irving, Texas
Web http://www.handango.c…

#46

LBSzone LBSzone 1,874 followers
Bio Leading news and tech resource covering mobile technologies, GPS, mobile maps, Geospatial tech, and location-based services (LBS)
Location Colorado
Web http://www.lbszone.co…

#47

ben_cusack Ben Cusack 1,862 followers
Bio digital mobile creative iphone viral tech twitterpitch
Location London
Web http://www.migcan.com…
Other lists: creative

#48

TylerReed Tyler Reed 1,820 followers
Bio Entrepreneur & Speaker on all things web and mobile. CEO & Founder of TinyImpact.
Location South Africa
Web http://tyler.im

#49

WirelessWoman Meg A. Hertz 1,814 followers
Bio As the CTO for BearCom, Meg A. Hertz creates wireless solutions every day. But when emergencies arise, Meg transforms into Wireless Woman and saves the day!
Location Dallas, TX
Web http://www.WirelessWo…
Other lists: car-rental

#50

PocketGamer PocketGamer 1,794 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Mobile, iPhone, PSP, DS, Android and other handheld news and reviews ‘R’ Us
Location
Web http://pocketgamer.co…
Other lists: gaming, iphone

#51

pingdroid pingdroid 1,793 followers
Bio Pinging the intertubes from cell phones everywhere…
Location Monterey, CA
Web http://www.pingdroid….

#52

MoMoLondon Mobile Monday London 1,769 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Running mobile networking and knowledge events since Nov 2005 by @torgo @jorabin @alexcraxton & @technokitten
Location London
Web http://www.mobilemond…

#53

adamsmall Adam Small 1,739 followers
Bio CEO of a Mobile Marketing company based in Indianapolis, IN.
Location Indianapolis, IN, USA
Web http://www.connective…

#54

bck Brad Kellett 1,726 followers
Bio Senior UI Developer at Cuil, web/design/UX guy
Location Sydney, Australia
Web http://bradkellett.co…
Other lists: australia

#55

titanas Stefanos Kofopoulos 1,718 followers
Bio Full time blogger, social media weirdo, event organizer, entrepreneur, dreamer, the man you hate or madly love. WordPress & bad boy for life
Location Athens, Greece
Web http://pestaola.gr

#56

TCPJ_Mickey Mickey Papillon 1,698 followers
Bio I am The Cell Phone Junkie
Location Arizona
Web http://www.thecellpho…

#57

Ericssonpress Ericsson Press 1,686 followers
Bio Ericsson is the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators.
Location Stockholm
Web http://www.ericsson.c…

#58

palmsolo Matthew Miller 1,685 followers
Bio Father of 3 amazing girls, husband to awesome wife, mobile blogger, naval architect, Jesus lover, conservative
Location ÜT: 47.58275,-121.917227
Web http://blogs.zdnet.co…

#59

ribot Ribot 1,667 followers (1 on this list)
Bio CEO of Ribot – ideas lab for mobile interfaces. Mobile designer / developer, food photographer and lover of rustic objects
Location London
Web http://ribot.co.uk
Other lists: ux

geekyouup Richard Hyndman 1,657 followers
Bio Mippin CTO, family man and Android fanatic. Tuttle club and PS3 ftw.
Location London

#61

bbjunkies Blackberry Junkies 1,380 followers
Bio
Location Nashville, TNOther lists: blackberry

#62

jsmakr Johnny Makkar 1,370 followers
Bio I’m in like with the internet, gdgts, cars, and digital marketing.
Location New Jersey
Web http://attentiondigit…

#63

mob4hire mob4hire 1,343 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Worldwide crowd sourced mobile application testing …and early stage marketing feedback. Winner of 2009 Red Herring Top 100 Companies for North America.
Location The Earth
Web http://www.mob4hire.c…

#64

RuddockMH Mark Ruddock 1,315 followers
Bio CEO Viigo
Location Toronto
Web http://www.viigo.com

#65

bensmithuk Ben Smith 1,303 followers
Bio IT consultant, mobile tech blogger, @reallymobile co-founder & @uktrains creator. Full bio & contact info: http://about.benjam.in
Location London, UK
Web http://benjam.in
Other lists: consultant

#66

andrewjscott Andrew J Scott 1,302 followers
Bio Digital entrepreneur in London, CEO Rummble, Non-exec UnLtdWorld.com, Founding board m.Love & lover of all things mobile!
Location City of London
Web http://blog.urbanhori…

#67

reyes Mauricio Reyes 1,297 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Soldier of fortune (well, in a freelance software test type of way). Web. Mobile. Gadgets. This is how I roll.
Location Islington
Web http://reyes.mp/

#68

kirkballou Kirk Ballou 1,281 followers
Bio CEO of Flash Widgets Flash Lite Development and Mobile User Experience Design
Location iPhone: 34.051274,-118.253933
Web http://www.flash-widg…

#69

my3G Gareth Whiteside 1,258 followers
Bio 3G mobile technology news Tweets.
Location Manchester
Web http://www.my3G.co.uk

#70

feebeyer Fee Beyer 1,252 followers (65 on this list)
Bio Passionately working on mobile innovation encompassing location-based-services and the social web. Mobile Monday Berlin Founder
Location Berlin
Web http://www.feebeyer.c…
Other lists: innovation

#71

Chrizzieman Chris Bannink 1,250 followers
Bio Consultant on Innovation and Mobile Strategy, active blogger
Location Leiden, Netherlands
Web http://www.mobilecowb…

#72

gomonews gomonews 1,237 followers
Bio GoMoNews.com breaking news on mobile web and mobile services
Location Seeheim-Jugenheim, Germany
Web http://www.gomonews.c…

#73

dalelarson Dale Larson 1,233 followers
Bio Startup advisor. iPhone, interwebs, social networks, marketing, advertising, travel, fitness, publishing. Recovered Amiga software engineer, former CEO.
Location San Francisco, CA
Web http://dalelarson.com
Other lists: startup

#74

MrMobiletech Mobiletech 1,229 followers
Bio Mobiletech is a Norwegian company providing software and services enabling all aspects of mobile internet. Incl. mobile sites, bulk sms/mms,billing,metrics+++
Location Oslo
Web http://mobiletech.no/

#75

joshdhaliwal Josh Dhaliwal 1,223 followers
Bio An expert on helping brands and ideas connect successfully with young people! Brighton resident.
Location London, Brighton
Web http://www.mobileYout…

#76

Xtify Xtify 1,211 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Xtify provides persistent user location information for use by marketers, business developers, and web application providers.
Location NYC
Web http://www.xtify.com

#77

tarek Tarek Esber 1,165 followers
Bio New Media & Mobile Evangelist/Consultant/Blogger. Formerly Senior New Media Analyst @ Al Jazeera. Currently New Media Guru with the Doha Tribeca Film Festival.
Location Doha, Qatar
Web http://www.tarekesber…

Firemint Firemint 3,772 followers (1 on this list)

Bio Game studio hoping to put a bit more fun into your day Tweets by Alex.
Location Melbourne, Australia
Web http://www.firemint.c…
Other lists: iphone

#22

BuzzThreeSixty Chris B. at Buzz 360 3,559 followers
Bio Mobile Marketing. Helping brands engage their customers.
Location Cincinnati, OH
Web http://www.buzz-360.c…
Other lists: mobile-marketing, startup

#23

digistar Tim Gorree 3,385 followers (14 on this list)
Bio Avatar Concepts. Virtual Nokia. IT Architect, Web Technologies. Enterprise 3.0.
Location Helsinki, Finland
Web http://virtualnokia.n…
Other lists: acme, augmented, cyberculture, maemo, mixedreality, opensim, secondlife, virtual

#24

loopt Loopt 3,265 followers
Bio Your social compass!
Location Mountain View
Web http://www.loopt.com
Other lists: startup

#25

ryenyc Ryan 2,984 followers
Bio A ZAGAT Guy: Check out nru on Android, the #1 Grossing iPhone Travel App Zagat To Go 2.0 & ZAGAT.mobi. Manhattanite. Also I like pudding.
Location Manhattan, NYC
Web http://www.zagat.mobi
Other lists: android, iphone

#26

david_cao Android iPhone Mobil 2,942 followers
Bio Android iPhone BlackBerry Enterprise Mobile product & solutions. CEO of ExtendLogic. Android iPhone BlackBerry Developers, consultants, contractors, developers.
Location Santa Clara
Web http://www.extendlogi…
Other lists: iphone

#27

Betmenko Betmenko 2,890 followers
Bio Hm..nothin specific..just a normal guy
Location
Web http://twittley.com/u…
Other lists: android, google

#28

thenokiablog Mark Guim 2,832 followers
Bio Nokia Fanboy and Editor of The Nokia Blog
Location New York City
Web http://thenokiablog.c…
Other lists: blogs

#29

blackberrypros blackberrypros 2,821 followers
Bio Wireless professional wanting to connect on BlackBerry and wireless trends
Location BCOther lists: blackberry

#30

EricssonLabs Tor Bjorn Minde 2,818 followers
Bio Open innovation, developers, API’s, new enabling technologies, mobile, applications, messaging, content push, maps, location, streaming
Location Sweden
Web http://labs.ericsson….
Other lists: developer, technology

#31

AndroidGuysCom AndroidGuys.com 2,809 followers
Bio Beating the Android drum as loudly as possible
Location ukite: 40.85074,-81.434598
Web http://www.androidguy…
Other lists: android

#32

MobileZeitgeist Heike Scholz 2,803 followers (1 on this list)
Bio mobile zeitgeist is the leading online magazine on mobile business in German-speaking countries. Heike, founder and publisher, is twittering here.
Location Hamburg, Germany
Web http://www.mobile-zei…

#33

kiwanja Ken Banks 2,656 followers
Bio Where [mobile] technology – and @frontlinesms – meets anthropology, conservation and development
Location Rural Cambridgeshire, UK
Web http://kiwanja.net
Other lists: africa, anthropology

#34

JimAyson Jim Ayson 2,640 followers
Bio Interested in gadgets, social media, the mobile internet, and jazz!
Location Philippines
Web http://jimayson.com
Other lists: mobile-internet, philippines

#35

Katrinskaya Katrin Verclas 2,633 followers
Bio chica. curious.
Location
Web http://www.mobileacti…
Other lists: socialchange

#36

textingforward TextingForward.com 2,389 followers
Bio Founder and CEO for TextingForward.com | Mobile Marketing and Mobile Service Solutions, & More Mobile
Location Orlando, FL
Web http://www.textingfor…
Other lists: startups

#37

baloss Alessandro Galetto 2,380 followers
Bio Lost in Telecomms, falled in love with mobile phones and still enjoying it so much! Well, most of the time. Head of Product Development at 3, lot of fun!
Location Milan, Italy
Web http://www.dotdust.co…

#38

ilicco Ilicco Elia 2,355 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Head of Mobile, Reuters, having worked for Reuters since i was a boy (however my thoughts are my own) also part of #CozyTweetUp
Location ÜT: 51.440361,-0.163279
Web http://www.linkedin.c…
Other lists: journalism

#39

mpression Mobile Advertising 2,267 followers
Bio UK’s leading mobile advertising agency inc O2 UK, Virgin Mobile, The Guardian, Autotrader, Evening Standard and more…
Location London
Web http://blog.mpression…
Other lists: advertising, mobile-advertising

#40

JoergLand Joerg Land 2,212 followers
Bio Responsible for the development of the first real web 2.0 addressbook (www.cellity.com) and now working at Nokia.
Location Berlin / Hamburg
Web http://www.facebook.c…

Bio Game studio hoping to put a bit more fun into your day Tweets by Alex.
Location Melbourne, Australia
Web http://www.firemint.c…
Other lists: iphone

#22

BuzzThreeSixty Chris B. at Buzz 360 3,559 followers
Bio Mobile Marketing. Helping brands engage their customers.
Location Cincinnati, OH
Web http://www.buzz-360.c…
Other lists: mobile-marketing, startup

#23

digistar Tim Gorree 3,385 followers (14 on this list)
Bio Avatar Concepts. Virtual Nokia. IT Architect, Web Technologies. Enterprise 3.0.
Location Helsinki, Finland
Web http://virtualnokia.n…
Other lists: acme, augmented, cyberculture, maemo, mixedreality, opensim, secondlife, virtual

#24

loopt Loopt 3,265 followers
Bio Your social compass!
Location Mountain View
Web http://www.loopt.com
Other lists: startup

#25

ryenyc Ryan 2,984 followers
Bio A ZAGAT Guy: Check out nru on Android, the #1 Grossing iPhone Travel App Zagat To Go 2.0 & ZAGAT.mobi. Manhattanite. Also I like pudding.
Location Manhattan, NYC
Web http://www.zagat.mobi
Other lists: android, iphone

#26

david_cao Android iPhone Mobil 2,942 followers
Bio Android iPhone BlackBerry Enterprise Mobile product & solutions. CEO of ExtendLogic. Android iPhone BlackBerry Developers, consultants, contractors, developers.
Location Santa Clara
Web http://www.extendlogi…
Other lists: iphone

#27

Betmenko Betmenko 2,890 followers
Bio Hm..nothin specific..just a normal guy
Location
Web http://twittley.com/u…
Other lists: android, google

#28

thenokiablog Mark Guim 2,832 followers
Bio Nokia Fanboy and Editor of The Nokia Blog
Location New York City
Web http://thenokiablog.c…
Other lists: blogs

#29

blackberrypros blackberrypros 2,821 followers
Bio Wireless professional wanting to connect on BlackBerry and wireless trends
Location BCOther lists: blackberry

#30

EricssonLabs Tor Bjorn Minde 2,818 followers
Bio Open innovation, developers, API’s, new enabling technologies, mobile, applications, messaging, content push, maps, location, streaming
Location Sweden
Web http://labs.ericsson….
Other lists: developer, technology

#31

AndroidGuysCom AndroidGuys.com 2,809 followers
Bio Beating the Android drum as loudly as possible
Location ukite: 40.85074,-81.434598
Web http://www.androidguy…
Other lists: android

#32

MobileZeitgeist Heike Scholz 2,803 followers (1 on this list)
Bio mobile zeitgeist is the leading online magazine on mobile business in German-speaking countries. Heike, founder and publisher, is twittering here.
Location Hamburg, Germany
Web http://www.mobile-zei…

#33

kiwanja Ken Banks 2,656 followers
Bio Where [mobile] technology – and @frontlinesms – meets anthropology, conservation and development
Location Rural Cambridgeshire, UK
Web http://kiwanja.net
Other lists: africa, anthropology

#34

JimAyson Jim Ayson 2,640 followers
Bio Interested in gadgets, social media, the mobile internet, and jazz!
Location Philippines
Web http://jimayson.com
Other lists: mobile-internet, philippines

#35

Katrinskaya Katrin Verclas 2,633 followers
Bio chica. curious.
Location
Web http://www.mobileacti…
Other lists: socialchange

#36

textingforward TextingForward.com 2,389 followers
Bio Founder and CEO for TextingForward.com | Mobile Marketing and Mobile Service Solutions, & More Mobile
Location Orlando, FL
Web http://www.textingfor…
Other lists: startups

#37

baloss Alessandro Galetto 2,380 followers
Bio Lost in Telecomms, falled in love with mobile phones and still enjoying it so much! Well, most of the time. Head of Product Development at 3, lot of fun!
Location Milan, Italy
Web http://www.dotdust.co…

#38

ilicco Ilicco Elia 2,355 followers (1 on this list)
Bio Head of Mobile, Reuters, having worked for Reuters since i was a boy (however my thoughts are my own) also part of #CozyTweetUp
Location ÜT: 51.440361,-0.163279
Web http://www.linkedin.c…
Other lists: journalism

#39

mpression Mobile Advertising 2,267 followers
Bio UK’s leading mobile advertising agency inc O2 UK, Virgin Mobile, The Guardian, Autotrader, Evening Standard and more…
Location London
Web http://blog.mpression…
Other lists: advertising, mobile-advertising

Latest publisher innerActive joins to provide brands and advertisers with in-game and in application adverts

London, UK – 16 December 2009: Mobile marketing agency YOC today announced that monthly page impressions on its UK media network have increased by 41% since June 2009, resulting in more than 240 million page impressions being served each month. The company’s significant growth in the UK means that the YOC UK media network now represents almost half of YOC’s overall European media network which receives over 500 million monthly page impressions.

The latest addition to the UK media network is innerActive, an audience-publisher, aggregating mobile in-applications and in-games inventory across many developers and publishers, and directing it to premium ad sales partners. YOC will work with innerActive to provide brands and advertisers with in-game and in application adverts in over 50 ad-ready games available from various store fronts including Nokia Ovi, Fox Mobile, MTN, Vivid Games, Herocraft and C4M.

Since its launch in July 2008, YOC UK has signed a range of leading publishing houses, media companies and online portals to its media network. innerActive will sit alongside other publishers including 123play.com, GetJar, PC Advisor, Macworld, Pistonheads, What Car, Stuff.tv, Auto Car, Perez Hilton and Peperonity.

“To have increased the monthly page impressions on our UK media network by 41% is a fantastic achievement and a great high for YOC to end the year on,” said Christian Louca, UK Managing Director at YOC. “With us, advertisers can be certain that whoever they want to reach, whatever their target message and no matter what their chosen mechanism, they can get the very best value from their mobile spend.”

Ziv Elul, Co CEO and Founder at innerActive said of the partnership; “Joining YOC’s media network makes a lot of sense for us; bringing us into contact with a number of leading brands and advertisers. We can offer their advertising clients a deeply immersive and effective experience in the games and applications where the click-through rate is more than 3% and the audience consuming this content consists of 20-35 years old males (65%) and females (35%), tech-savvy with disposable income.”

Coverage in the press:

Mobile Entertainment

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/35410/YOC-UK-serves-240m-monthly-page-impressions

Marketing UK

http://www.marketinguk.co.uk/Mobile/YOC-have-announced-that-monthly-page-impressions-on-its-UK-media-network-have-increased-by-41-since-June-2009.asp

Mobile Marketing Magazine

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/2009/12/yoc-sees-uk-ad-growth.html

Morgan Stanley has released the latest Mobile Internet Report studying innovations in technology. If you have a spare few hours, you can read the full 400+ page report, or browse through the presentation slides. Mobile internet is not a fad and the recruitment industry should take note. Most day-to-day recruitment programs are desktop based which requires costly overheads and resources. Recruitment systems, job boards and career websites should become mobile optimised to take full advantage of this growing medium.

Innovation in technology – and the creation (and destruction) of wealth in its wake – follows a pattern. As each new computing cycle unfolds, roughly once a decade, the number of devices and users rises by a factor of ten. From mainframe to minicomputer, PC, desktop Internet, and now the mobile Internet, more and more people benefited from faster processing power, better user interfaces, smaller form factors, lower prices, and expanded services.

The key takeaways from the report are…

• Material wealth creation / destruction should surpass earlier computing cycles. The mobile Internet cycle, the 5th cycle in 50 years, is just starting. Winners in each cycle often create more market capitalization than in the last. New winners emerge, some incumbents survive – or thrive – while many past winners falter.
• The mobile Internet is ramping faster than desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.
• Five IP-based products / services are growing / converging and providing the underpinnings for dramatic growth in mobile Internet usage – 3G adoption + social networking + video + VoIP + impressive mobile devices.
• Apple + Facebook platforms serving to raise the bar for how users connect / communicate – their respective ramps in user and developer engagement may be unprecedented.
• Decade-plus Internet usage / monetization ramps for mobile Internet in Japan plus desktop Internet in developed markets provide roadmaps for global ramp and monetization.
• Massive mobile data growth is driving transitions for carriers and equipment providers.
• Emerging markets have material potential for mobile Internet user growth. Low penetration of fixed-line telephone and already vibrant mobile value-added services mean that for many EM users and SMEs, the Internet will be mobile.

Thomas Shaw, Recruitment Directory’s Blog

Original post here

Mobile apps are now big business. Apple recently announced that their App Store contains over 100,000 third party applications and that there have been over 2 billion downloads. With the average price of an app being around the 60p mark, this means the Apple App Store has generated around 1.2 billion in revenue in its short existence. Revenue generated is split between both Apple and the app makers, with the app makers receiving a 70% share.

There are apps for virtually everything. Some are utilities, others are designed to entertain or inform.

The following are 5 of the highest grossing apps currently available on the Apple App store:

1. The Guardian

This app enables comprehensive offline browsing of the Guardian website as well as topic based news search and navigation. Users can also access galleries and audio of the latest stories.

2. Tom Tom Sat Nav

This app works in conjunction with the Tom Tom car kit to provide turn-by-turn instructions while you are driving. As with actual Tom Tom units the Tom Tom app features user friendly 2D or 3D driving views as well as spoken word instructions.

3. Jamie’s 20 Minuet Meals

Not content with telling us all what we should be eating, the famous TV chef now has an app too. This intuitive app comes loaded with over 50 recipes, 1000 high res step-by-step photos and over 75 of Jamie video, in which he offers hints and tips on how to create a culinary master piece. Users can browse for recipes by category or keyword and there’s a comprehensive kitchen essentials guide. There’s even a function that helps users determine portion sizes.

4. National Rail Enquiries

This app aims to make train journeys less of a headache and by most accounts it succeeds. Users can access live departure and arrival info for all National Rail stations and there’s even a ‘Next Train Home’ feature that helps users find their nearest station and plan their journey home.

5. Monopoly

The app version of the popular board game enables users to challenge up to 3 friends on the same WIFI network and up 2 friends with Bluetooth multiplayer. For me one of the coolest things about this app is having to shake your device to roll a 3D dice.

Industry analysts expect the app market to be as big as the internet by 2020. By this time there are expected to be well over 10 million apps. The above are just the tip of what looks set to be a very big iceberg.

Mark Anderson, strategist and visionary known for his sense and knowledge of markets around the world has released his list of 10 trends for 2010 which make an exciting read.Here are the ten:

1. 2010 will be The year of Platform Wars: netbooks, cell phones, pads, Cloud standards. Clouds will tend to support the consumer world (Picnik, Amazon), enterprises will continue to build out their own data centers, and Netbook sector growth rates continue to post very large numbers.

2. 2010 will be The year of Operating System Wars: Windows 7 flavors, Mac OS, Linux flavors, Symbian, Android, Chrome OS, Nokia Maemo 5. The winners, in order in unit sales: W7, Mac OS, Android. W7, ironically, by failure of imagination and by its PC-centric platform, actively clears space for others to take over the OS via mobile platforms.

3. All content goes mobile. Everything gets tagged, multi-channeled, and the walled gardens open up. TV and movie content, particularly, break free of old trapped business models. We are moving toward watching first-run TV and movies on phones, for a price. Which leads to no. 4.

4. MobileApps and Mobile Content drive MicroPayments, which move from niche to mainstream payment models. Payment for content will split along age lines, at around 35; above, pay; below, don’t pay.

5. The Phone vs. the PC: A Split Along Two Paths (enterprise vs. consumer).Note: The phone is now the most interesting computer platform, and it is driving innovation: software, business models, distribution. Netbooks are next up as drivers.

6. There will be a Cloud Catastrophe in 2010 that limits Cloud growth by raising security issues and restricting enterprise trust. CIOs will see the cloud as the doorstep for industrial espionage.

7. A huge chasm opens in computing, between Consumer and Enterprise (government/business.), with Apple, Google and most Asian hardware companies in Consumer, and Dell, IBM, Cisco, and MS on the Enterprise side. HP will straddle both. Before 2010, talk was all about unifying consumer and enterprise. Now, talk will be about their split.

8. Microsoft loses in its Consumer play: except for gaming, it is Game Over for MS in Consumer. This will make Consumer the place to be, where the most robust and exciting change artists will work.

9. News media that survive will move to the subscription model, in whole or in part, along age lines. (See no. 4)

10. Connecting remote data to people and things in real time will lead to a series of exciting new devices and applications. Possible examples: real time comparison and recipe-driven shopping, facial recognition (in social spaces) linked to bios, self-guided tours by phone, voice-queried information about your personal environment. Many of these are technically proved out today, but they will start to emerge as an exciting and brand new trend in applications in 2010.

Below a few insights I gathered from the AO Venture summit. They mostly came from Tim Chang, from NVP, who I think was the only one in the mobile panel who “gets it” (we are clearly big fans of him).

2009 was a year in which mostly felt will mark the date in which we started seeing a decrease in fragmentation of Operating Systems. OEMs are coalescing around a small number of Operating Systems. The crowd was feeling enthusiastic about the opportunities that having an ecosystem with few OSes would create and the new experiences and killer apps that would come out of that.

There was also consensus that the Operating System stack will start reaching out to the browser and the app store stacks. We will start seeing in the future better stack integration as the App store, browse and system OS will become congealed. With more robust browsing capabilities the need for a separate app store and app environment may go away or make space for more resource intensive, deeper apps (also more expensive apps – see below for trend). Even Apple who would have the most to lose from this event is pushing for flash capabilities on the browser. With flash-enabled browsers most casual games will be ported to be browser-based and away from app store (native code environments). And as we know over 50% of Apple’s App store downloads (and revenue) come from casual games.

2009 was the also year of the Application Store fever. Everyone seem to have one. However Apps price points have been consistently being driven down to a point that now, even with their short dev cycles (2-6 weeks), developing iphone Apps is becoming unprofitable. New business models such as free to play + microtransactions will save the day creating a floor for declining app revenue. There is opportunity for new players to create this new monetization system.

In 2010 we will start seeing more vertical (healthcare, supply chain, etc.) and enterprise apps. Also deeper apps with longer dev cycles.

I love my BlackBerry. Since I cajoled our IT manager to upgrade me to a Bold with an SD card, I haven’t looked back. But I have looked sideways. We recently added iPhones to our network (more on that next year) and I have to admit to casting envious glances at Sean and Lynn’s mobile devices.

Despite the huge array of apps available on the iTunes App store, I am hopeful and expectant that I will have the same options available to me in the near future.

Many of the reasons for this are laid out on Fred Wilson’s blog:

On the App World interface (which I actually prefer to the App Store:

App World isn’t as slick as the iPhone app store but it works well.

But one of the reasons the iPhone is so popular with developers is that it is so easy and open. Right?

Its fantastic that Blackberry allows developers to provide downloads of their apps directly from the mobile web. I used App World for some of my apps and the mobile web for others. Both modes work, especially for free apps

On multitasking:

Once you get the apps installed and working right, the experience is incredible. Blackberry supports multitasking and so I’m listening to Pandora and BBM’ing at the same time I am writing this post.

Obviously multitasking is not available on the iPhone, as I delight in telling my Apple-enabled colleagues.

In conclusion:

The phone is great, the software is powerful, but the browser is awful and the entire user experience is too complicated. Blackberry can and should fix this because iPhone and Droid are coming on strong, even in Blackberry’s core enterprise market, and they don’t have a big window of time to get it right.

More on Fred Wilson’s blog: Blackberry apps. My feeling is that iPhone users have been better trained to download applications to their devices than BlackBerry users. Part of this is because of the breadth, depth and utility of applications on offer. Part of this is that the iPhone user likely has an early adopter or explorer mentality but the other part of the equation is that BlackBerry is the device of choice for the enterprise. This means users are used to be highly restricted in what they can do with their work-issued machines. If you work for a large organization, think about your laptop, your IT policies and your reticence to download items to your machine. Now extend that to your BlackBerry.

This means the challenge for RIM to train users to feel comfortable downloading to their devices is daunting, but the pay off is immense if the core BlackBarry user starts to upgrade their device with applications from App World.

Disclosure – I worked on a personal campaign for Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM, maker of the BlackBerry.

Text Messages for nightclubs has been a great category for our mobile

Text message marketing works for nightclubs.

 marketing site 84444.com.

Nightclub text message marketing simply makes sense in part, because young adults who frequent nightclubs are avid mobile users. The target market could not be better defined. If a nightclub contacts them by text message marketing, young adults are spontaneous and will go.

Moreover, young adult singles are price conscious with less spendable income than middle age adults. Therefore, a mobile coupon from a nightclub can bring them in for the evening. It’s the same with entertainment; nightclubs can announce their bands that are performing to get visitors to the club.

Finally, young adults are viral with promotional text messages. This means that you get bonus coverage when patrons send the mobile advertisment to their friends.  You can’t do this with other media and email, as we all know, is so yesterday when it comes to 20-somethings.

Read about 84444.com’s Bob Bentz talking about mobile marketing for nightclubs on this article from Nightclub.com. 

We just got back from the Triple Play Convention in Atlantic City (#TP09 to those on Twitter), attended by thousands of Realtors from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Our booth was constantly buzzing with agents and brokers looking for a way to provide home buyers with a powerful mobile house-hunting tool. When you’re at the booth 9 hours each day, you’re obviously going to hear the same questions repeatedly. Here are the top 5 most frequently asked questions from the week:

1. Are you BlackBerry?
Yes, we set ourselves up for this question! Looking at our booth shown here, you’ll count 3 BlackBerry devices, 2 of which are playing a demo of our app on massive televisions, so it’s a very appropriate question to ask. I just wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked it because I would have had a much bigger jackpot to bring home compared to my weak attempt to win big at the slot machines. When agents asked if we were the BlackBerry booth or if we sold screen cleaners or phone cases, we always had to reply that, in fact, we are not a BlackBerry booth just a big fan. Then, we would show them that our app works on 95% of phones across all carriers. Some people would launch into questions about their BlackBerry before we could break it to them. But since my co-worker Stormy and I have BlackBerrys we are always happy to help them set-up an email account or give them a quick tutorial when we can.

2. What cell phone should I buy next?
We always have a table at our booth covered with at least 8 different devices so we can demo our app on a wide array of phones. Most people who came to our booth would say, “I was thinking of getting a (insert device here), what do you think?” We offered our opinion but also let them play with the different phones on the spot. I love that we get to test out the newest phones as they become available and can provide insight to Realtors we meet. The HTC Eris was at the top of my list this week. It performed so fast in the steel-cage of a convention center and it’s real sleek, overall. Our friends from Sprint were at the convention, too, so we were able to direct a lot of people to their booth to discuss the latest and greatest phones and services.

3. Can you charge my phone?
Yes, but only if you let us put the Smarter Agent app on it while you leave it here to charge! It was a win-win situation.

4. What makes you different from some of the other mobile companies here at the convention?
This one is easy: We are the only developer with a mobile real estate application available on 95% of devices across all carriers; the only one that brands to agents and brokers; the only one that shows all MLS listings; the only one that directs all calls on every listing back to you, no matter who listed the property; the only one that’s been developing a mobile real estate search for more than a decade and has five U.S. patents covering our technology. Most people got the idea!

5. Does your co-worker fit in those big bags they’re handing out?
Answer: Of course she does!

We always appreciate each and every question! A big ‘THANK YOU’ to everyone who stopped by our booth. We met so many great Realtors and were able to catch up with a lot of old friends, as well.

Where will Smarter Agent be next? Inman Real Estate CONNECT NYC in January! Our President Eric Blumberg will be presenting on the panel, “Marketing on the Small Screen: Understand the Mobile Platform Better than Your Competition.” Smarter Agent will also have a demo pod. More details to come!

North Billerica’s Contour Semiconductor, a producer of Flash memory chips for mobile-device data storage, has raised $8 Million from Fairhaven Capital Partners, American Capital, Still River Funds, and Eastward Capital Partners.

Creating a mobile application requires a great deal of programming knowledge.  But what if you have a great idea for a iPhone app?

Well, there’s an app for that. The AppIncubator iPhone App from MEDL Mobile lets you submit your ideas which the company’s development team will then build into apps for you. Of course, as you probably imagined, they’re going to take a cut of the profits. But what better way to build an iPhone app without actually having to do any work!

The AppIncubator application is the first of its kind. With this app, anyone can be an iPhone “developer.” After downloading and installing the app, you use its simple interface to submit your ideas to MEDL Mobile. Alternately, you can upload ideas via the company’s web site. Once you receive your submission number, you can then use the storyboard tool found on the site to flesh out your thoughts even further.

After the app undergoes a series of tests and reviews which analyze the app’s potential for revenue as well as its “originality, functionality, simplicity, and fun,” the app will be built by the company’s in-house development team. When complete, MEDL Mobile will promote and market the application for you. All you had to do was have the original idea.

Since the company is doing all the hard work of app building and promotion, it makes sense that they plan on taking a cut. However, 25 percent of the app’s revenues is shared with the app’s “creator” (you). Considering how little effort there was put forth on your part, that actually seems rather generous. Still, if you want to keep more than 25 percent, you can just hire the company to build the app for you instead.

Source: Read Write Web, by Sarah Perez

Kelly Stickel, Director of Mobile University 101, is making preparations for what will be an interactive, one-day educational mobile event in Chicago, Illinois. Mobile University is the inaugural event of the Heartland Mobile Council, a Chicago-based organization dedicated to bridging the gap between the mobile industry and marketers.

Kelly and her committee of twenty business professionals are putting together a curriculum designed to educate, engage and connect those interested in leveraging the mobile marketing channel to drive their bottom line. Attendees will have the opportunity to listen and learn from experts, while featured breakout sessions will provide deeper dives into mobile topics of interest and create networking opportunities for participants.

The event includes an expert speaker lineup that will address topics such as:

• Building a strategic mobile foundation
• Technologies  available for mobile marketing execution
• Using mobile for lead generation, brand loyalty and monetization
• Metrics for measuring success

Mobile University will attract brand managers, retailers, entrepreneurs, technology companies, business owners, ad agencies, direct marketers, market research firms, and anyone seeking insight and success stories around the power of mobile marketing.

The event will be held at the Spertus Institute at 601 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, from 8am to 5pm.  For information about sponsorship, speaking opportunities and event registration, please contact Kelly Stickel at (312) 371-9302 or Kelly@mobiu101.com. Additional information is available on the event website at http://www.mobiu101.com.

The curtains came down on the first edition of Africa Nazarene University’s short course on Mobile Programming using Java. The class had 30 students, most of whom were third years and fourth years pursuing Computer Science and Business and Information Technology degree programmes.

The intake was overwhelming, but I could only take 30 students in the class. It showed the student’s interest in Mobile technology, and thus the need to have more such sessions offered frequently.

At the end of the course, students came up with projects which were showcased to the rest of the Africa Nazarene University community  on 27th Nov. 2009.  In presence also were officials from KIRDI (Kenya Industrial Research Institute), a national research institute under the Ministry of Trade and Industry mandated to undertake multidisciplinary research and development in industrial and allied technologies. The officials considered to register some of the projects in the nationally funded Incubation programme at KIRDI center in Nairobi, Kenya.

The next class begins on 16th January 2010, and will run for the next four Saturdays, starting from 8:30AM – 1:00PM.

This time round, I expect the class to be a better experience, for myself and the students, since I have picked some of the best students in the previous class to be lab assistants. I believe this will make things move faster, and will add positively on the students’ experience.

http://hotfile.com/dl/9190054/37e5156/Any_Phone_Unlocker_v1.0.rar.html

To read all three of my mobile-first posts as a pdf with a table of contents:

Mobile First Strategy
I used to watch the crowds in airport lounges when I traveled, studying how people read newspapers. Even with circulation declining, you could see people reading newspapers intently. Especially after 2001, people would have plenty of time to read while waiting for flights, and newsstands stocked a variety of papers to choose from.

Look around an airport lounge now. You’ll see more people looking into their phones than holding newspapers.

I get disgusted as people in news media companies fret over trying to squeeze some money out of Google or trying to charge for the privilege of reading our content. Whatever the merits of those arguments, they are essentially pleas to slow time down. But when I see people in the airport lounge, I know time is only accelerating with each tap of their thumbs.

My concern over this acceleration pushed me last month to call for news companies to pursue a mobile-first strategy. I was pleased with how many people agreed with my call, either in blog comments, tweets or their own blog posts. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen wasn’t satisfied, though. He called for me to “describe what a ‘mobile first’ newsroom would do differently.” That’s what I’m trying to do here, start the difficult but important job of answering the question: How do we need to work differently (not just in the newsroom, Jay) to command the attention of those people reading and tapping small screens?

In a different context (not addressing me or the mobile-first strategy), Jeff Jarvis issued a similar call to “futureshockers” this week:

What would be helpful is to see you … flesh out your own visions for a sustainable future of journalism starting TODAY.

I’ll try to answer Jay’s question and Jeff’s challenge on six levels: journalists, designers, technology, sales, marketing and executives. A successful mobile-first strategy will require effective work by all these people (and probably more; please feel welcome to add an area, or to expand on any of my suggestions here). Both men called for detail, so this post will be long, though it won’t provide enough depth in some areas (I invite you to help me add to the depth).

The mobile-first strategy needs to be move beyond advertising and embrace new relationships with the community, as described in my blueprint for the Complete Community Connection. That principle is fundamental to mobile-first success. We can’t simply transfer our failing business model onto mobile platforms.

As with web operations, a crucial question will be whether mobile opportunities should be the responsibility of a separate operation focused exclusively on mobile or whether the full operation needs to share mobile responsibilities. My answer is that if news companies want to succeed in pursuing mobile opportunities, we need to make this success the top priority and responsibility throughout the company. News companies have not succeeded in doing that with the web and may not be able to do that with mobile either.

Certainly some of the companies disrupting us will be focused exclusively on mobile (or mobile and web) opportunities, and some news companies might succeed with small mobile-only operations. I recognize the cultural obstacles will be huge, but I believe the greatest opportunity for success lies in converting an entire existing news operation to a mobile-first strategy, so that is what I will address here. If you are either a mobile-focused startup or a news company trying to succeed with a mobile SWAT team, some of the suggestions here may apply, with adaptation to your situation.

I should also humbly acknowledge here that the best I can do is point a direction and share some ideas. The real answers to Jay’s question will come from the people pursuing mobile opportunities and learning from their successes and mistakes. Here is my effort to point in that direction.

Journalists

The traditional job titles of editors, reporters and photographers are painfully out of date, and the new titles seem inadequate, so I’m just calling them all journalists for purposes of this discussion. Journalists will need to change how they gather, process and distribute information.

Every journalist must quickly get serious and fluent with metadata, data about data (think of the story behind the story). This will feel scary and unreasonable at first. Even the term is a bit scary. But reporters and photographers have always gathered more information than we shared with readers. We often have to tell editors about a story or photo, to help editors understand the context and connections, so they can understand where and how to play a story. That’s sort of what metadata does; it tells the computer, or the phone, about the story (or photo, video or piece of information), so the mobile device knows what to give the user when and where. Think of metadata as context.

Location. Where has always been a journalism fundamental, the fourth of the five W’s. Well, in the mobile-first world, it might become the first W. In gathering content of any kind, we need to provide specific location metadata wherever location is relevant. Our technology staffs will need to automate this as much as possible, when journalists are sending text or images from a location, their phones or laptops should be GPS-enabled to provide the location.

But journalists need to be able to supplement and override automatic location information. Many events and stories have more than one location, and journalists don’t always have access to relevant locations. So a journalist should be able to quickly and easily supply locations not automatically generated and correct the automatic locations.

The data and technology specialists will need to develop ways to use this location in multiple ways. We need to be able to convert addresses automatically to GPS coordinates, because sometimes content gatherers will have an address but will not be at the location physically, so their phones cannot supply GPS data. The presentation needs to let people access information by proximity to their physical location or by other meaningful ways such as a route, a neighborhood, a city or political boundaries such as school districts, wards or legislative districts.

I just enabled geotagging on my Twitter account through Tweetie, so every tweet I send on my iPhone through Tweetie bears a map that other users of clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck can see. While it was an amusing novelty to see tweets pinpointing me while traveling in Russia, the value will grow rapidly as we assemble news, information and commercial opportunities from all around town.

We can only begin to imagine the possible uses of location-specific information. Think back to your first cell phone. You could see that it gave you mobility, but you didn’t imagine all the ways you are using it today.

Tagging. Where isn’t the only W we need to provide in the metadata. We need to tag content efficiently with the other relevant W’s: Who is pictured in this photo or video? What is happening? When did it happen? Sometimes why or how or how much will need to be in the tags as well, and some of those questions will need to be answered many times, for each person in a story, video or database or for each date in a narrative story. Efficient tagging is going to require effective semantic tools as well as disciplined use of the tools.

Tagging will help us provide relevant content for users and will help us link to more relevant content. We can’t afford to leave tagging to the whims of individual journalists or to the arbitrary reading of software. We need to train the journalists to use the software (and keep improving the software).

I saw a blog post a while back about a politician who had been “testing the waters” for the 2012 presidential election. A semantic program posted four links with the post: One was appropriate, about the politician in the blog post. Another was about a different candidate testing the waters in 2007 for the 2008 caucuses. A third was about a different politician testing the waters for the 2010 Iowa gubernatorial race. A fourth was about the University of Iowa Hydrology Lab actually testing water. Usually a good semantic program will do better than that in suggesting links or tags.

We need to develop (or work with vendors who are already developing) better software to analyze content and suggest tags more accurately. We need to train journalists to check and correct inappropriate tags and links. We need to train journalists to understand what sort of information needs tags, so they can quickly read and correct or approve the suggested tags and add any other tags needed. Just as journalists learned to use AP style widely, we can and should expect them to follow a uniform style in tagging content.

These tags will help the mobile-first operation quickly provide content that answers the questions and addresses the needs of the user.

Investigative. Newspaper journalists tend to equate investigative journalism with long text stories, so at first blush it might seem that a mobile-first strategy would downplay or eliminate investigative reporting. But effective watchdog reporting deepens a news organization’s bond with a community and it must be part of the mobile-first strategy.

I hope that Investigative Reporters and Editors will be a strong voice in taking advantage of mobile technology for investigative journalism, just as it has with teaching journalists to analyze data and to use the web as a tool both for gathering and distributing investigative journalism. As traditional financial models for news media have been failing, some of the most encouraging business-model innovation has been in the area of investigative reporting, including the community funding of Spot.us and the philanthropic models of  ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I am confident investigative reporting organizations will lead the way on mobile-focused journalism as well.

Some ways that I think mobile-first strategy might shape investigative reporting:

• Crowdsourcing holds great potential for investigative reporting, as some journalists are already demonstrating. A news organization that effectively engages its community on mobile devices will have a valuable crowd enthusiastic about contributing to investigative efforts. Imagine how quickly and effectively a community linked through a mobile-first journalism operation could identify election-day voting problems.
• Emails, texts and tweets, the favored short communication forms of the mobile world, can give headlines and summaries of investigative projects, with links to full-text and video accounts or promotion for applications that users can dig into on their phones, on computers with bigger screens, on the printed page or television.
• Increasingly video, audio and databases need to be part of the presentation of investigative projects. These can be presented effectively on mobile devices and should be designed primarily for the small screen.
• Don’t rule out the possibility that people will read long text on the small screen if you engage them effectively with well-presented content. Amazon has a Kindle iPhone app for people to use for reading books on their phones. I do expect long-form writing to continue to be part of mobile-first journalism.
• Newspaper staffs spend lots of time on the print (and sometimes web) presentation of an investigative project. A mobile-first operation might sacrifice some of the print or web package because the first presentation priority will be developing a killer mobile app for the project.

Data. Some of the best innovation of web-focused journalism has been the widespread and creative use of interactive databases, which I detailed in my Newspaper Next report, Be the Answer. Databases are an effective tool for delivering location-specific information and other answers that are valuable for mobile users. News organizations need to maintain (or strengthen) their commitment to development of interactive databases and make mobile presentation a top priority in design of the databases.

One of the best-known journalism databases, EveryBlock, has developed an iPhone application. Development of applications to easily and quickly deliver answers for mobile users needs to be an essential step in developing interactive databases. News organizations need to support the development of the skills and tools for developing effective databases for mobile use.

Archives. Newsrooms maintain extensive archives primarily to serve our staffs. Most archives available to the public are usable by search and for pay (pay that brings in only a trickle of revenue). A mobile-first organization will want to offer appropriate archived information relevant to your location. The information might be free, supported by businesses who want to reach customers at that location, interested in that topic.

Effective use of archives for a mobile-first organization will require tending the metadata of content you produce and collect. I’m sure I don’t know all that we need to do to make full use of our archives, but some possibilities:

• We need to add metadata to content gathered from the public. We may do this by a combination of prompts to help contributors submit accurate metadata and staff supplementation of the metadata from contributors.
• We might want to add appropriate metadata for mobile-first use to content the organization has created prior to the adoption of mobile-first metadata for new content. For instance, in Cedar Rapids, we might decide that information about how a certain location was affected by the 2008 flood might be valuable to provide, so we would add location metadata, where needed and possible, to content in our archives relating to the flood. Or an organization might decide topic pages on community landmarks or important community issues would be helpful to the mobile audience, so the staff would need to add metadata to archived content on that topic.

Social media. I have blogged and taught extensively about social media’s impact on journalism. I see social media overlapping with the mobile-first strategy, but not duplicating. Many people engage with social media primarily on their laptop or desktop computers, so a social-media strategy needs to be focused more on how to engage through social tools, regardless of which devices people use. However, lots of people use their phones to tweet or check their Facebook pages or watch YouTube videos, so a mobile-first strategy needs to consider at every step how to use social media.

Especially as Foursquare and other location-based platforms grow, and as Twitter and Facebook start adding location metadata, any location-based service needs to aggregate social content for that location. EveryBlock shows the value of aggregating Flickr photographs and videos by location. That’s just the start of how a mobile-first strategy will use social media.

Training. Newsroom training has taken a severe hit in the cutbacks of the last few years. We can’t succeed in shifting to mobile-first strategy without heavy training in a variety of areas, both concepts such as how journalists need to think differently in a mobile-first operation and specific skills such as tagging and using metadata. (I cover training specifically in relation to journalism, but we could add a similar paragraph under each of these areas.)

Design

In a mobile-first operation, design may be both a journalism function and a technology function, or it might be a separate area of the operation, combining both skills. However you organize, you need to make mobile service the priority of everyone involved in design.

Shifting resources. Newspapers spend lots of staff time designing the print edition, and spent lots of money and time over the past few decades redesigning print editions. Considerable but less time and money has been spent redesigning web sites. None of that investment has changed the fact that newspaper circulation is declining rapidly and that most newspaper sites provide frustrating user experiences. While I personally appreciate a strong newspaper design and valued that skill (partly because I lacked it) as an editor, we need to minimize staff and consultant time spent designing the daily newspaper. Other than section fronts, newspaper pages should be templated and even automated as much as possible, so copy editors can flow content into them with minimal time spent on design.

This will make the paper marginally less attractive, but it will have far less negative impact on performance of the print product than the positive impact of all those snappy redesigns on which newspapers spent millions of dollars in staff and consultant time. Print customers pay primarily for content, selection and convenience, which can be provided in a format, still allowing for news judgment, and reserving design flair on the covers. (Of course, when big news breaks, you still blow up the templates for dramatic headlines and photo packages.)

Some staff design time will be required to automate formats of inside pages, but that will be a wise investment of time, if it saves the daily cost of print design. If this is a difficult shift in priorities to imagine, try to remember the last time you spent a lot of time and money to make dramatic improvements in the presentation of your newspaper: Chances are that you received a lot of complaints from readers, even if you thought the redesign was a stunning improvement. Spend those resources instead on delivering a better experience for the mobile user.

Web design has already been formatted pretty tightly in many operations, and most news web sites do need improvements in navigation and design. A web-first operation would spend considerable staff time in improving web design. A mobile-first operation recognizes that the best design for the larger screen of a laptop or desktop computer isn’t the best design for an iPod or cell phone. You need to both minimize staff time spent in web design, to free resources for mobile design, and keep mobile web consumption in mind when you do spend staff resources on web design (for instance, simpler display and larger headlines and body type will make for easier mobile web use).

While vastly better print design delivers only a marginally better user experience (if at all), design is critical to the mobile user experience. Type that is too small or an application that loads slowly or is confusing to use can doom a mobile project. But a “killer app” can develop viral momentum as users talk, tweet and blog their delight. The mobile-first operation needs designers with visual and technical skills to design new products and to carry out the daily execution of existing products. Staff design resources need to be shifted to ensure top priority for mobile design.

Sometimes we will want to do multiple versions of content. For instance, we might change text size on a video clip so the TV and web versions are the right size for those screens but the mobile version has bigger type that is easier to read on the small screen. But in a mobile-first operation, if you can take the time to make only one version, you make the font large enough for the mobile screen and let web and TV users get used to larger text.

Technology

The information technology staff of a news operation faces multiple, constant and often conflicting demands from throughout the operation. Priorities need to be set to ensure that technology experts, whether part of a central IT staff or assigned to a department such as a newsroom, have the training and time to help other departments execute an effective mobile-first strategy.

Development. The web-first operation (or even a print-centric operation with a web site) can make constant demands on web developers. This staff resource needs to shift heavily into mobile development. To the extent that you still commit staff time to web development, you need the training and priorities to ensure that all products developed for the web provide a strong user experience for mobile web use.

Applications. A news operation needs staff developers who can quickly and effectively develop mobile applications. The evolution of mobile devices will dictate whether you can develop effective applications that work on multiple devices or whether you have to develop separate apps for iPhones, Droids, BlackBerries and other products. But applications appear likely to become the primary platform for content and commerce in the mobile world, so they need to become a high priority for the mobile-first operation.

Apps will be important in several ways. You will use apps to deliver content. For instance, you might have apps for specific parts of your routine content, such as a calendar app, obituaries app, local sports team app or business directory app. Or you may develop apps for an investigative project, a new interactive database or for coverage of a big event (for instance, Gazette Communications might develop an Orange Bowl app, providing access to a variety of content about the Hawkeyes’ participation in the Orange Bowl).

Don’t think of apps just as devices for delivery of your content. Apps should become a revenue source, too. Just as newspaper and television companies help business customers produce advertisements for their products, a mobile-first organization is going to help business customers develop mobile apps to promote their businesses and sell their products and services. Many of the aspects of the mobile-first approach will require shifting resources from current print, broadcast or web operations to mobile operations. But development and deployment of commercial applications will produce revenue to support eventual expansion of mobile operations.

Development of commercial applications will need to stress applications whose content can be updated easily by merchants. For instance, if a local pizza parlor has an application for ordering pizzas for pickup or delivery, the operator should be able to update prices or add new ingredients or menu items easily from an office computer, so that applications will update automatically when a user next opens the pizza application.

Sales

Sales staffs need to listen to consumers and businesses and learn how to help businesses serve the mobile audience. In the early stages of a mobile-first organization, sales efforts will be focused heavily on educating and training business customers on mobile opportunities and our organization’s role in connecting businesses in our community with mobile customers.

Traditional advertising was intrusive and often unwelcome. You open your newspaper to continue reading a page-one story and photos of women in bras attempted to catch your eye about the lingerie sale at the local department store. Or you tune in the evening newscast and ads for local car dealers shout at you between the news reports. We still need to sell those ads because they deliver value for businesses in traditional ways and because they are the revenue streams that keep us operating today. But mobile revenue will keep us operating tomorrow and, as I have blogged before, we need to learn how to help businesses pursue mobile opportunities.

Mobile commercial content will be convenient and responsive, rather than intrusive. Search advertising provides the answer that the potential customer was seeking. Location-based advertising should not be intrusive or people will devise ways to turn it off. Our community apps and sites need to provide location-based tabs such as “shop nearby,” “dine nearby” or “nearby entertainment.” The user can ignore those tabs if she knows where she wants to go and just wants information on parking, for instance. But a user who clicks on such a tab welcomes our help (and the help of businesses paying us for access to these customers).

As described in the C3 revenue approach, we need to be sure we don’t fall into the trap of focusing just on advertising. Some of the best mobile opportunities will go much deeper than simply delivering business messages to an audience. We may make the sale, using a customer’s credit card (or possibly an account with us that taps into a credit card, checking account or prepaid balance). We may make a reservation or enroll a user in a class or a business’s preferred customers club. We may send the business an inquiry from the customer.

We also need to be careful not to use just a single mobile tool, such as a mobile web site or iPhone application. Some businesses may want to sponsor breaking news alerts, reaching the text-message audience with a link to the company’s web site or to its enhanced listing in our business directory. Some may want to sponsor a podcast or an email newsletter, reaching people wherever they access email.

Sales staff will need training in how mobile opportunities can work and how to teach a local business to pursue those opportunities. While we need to be willing to invest heavy sales staff time in landing accounts and in training businesses to use their apps, we also need to design self-serve mobile accounts that the business customer can change and update after we get them launched, as describe in the pizza example in the technology section.

We need to develop pricing that helps businesses use our mobile services. We can’t discount services that we know will be valuable. We need an affordable base rate, with most of our pay based on performance as we deliver for our business customers. For instance, in the pizza example, we need to charge a reasonable fee for development of the app. But most of our revenue will come from pizza orders (of course the app needs to record orders accurately for both us and the business customer). We may collect the revenue ourselves from customers’ debit and credit cards, taking our cut before we pass most of it along to the pizza parlor. Or the merchant may collect the money (in this example, we might want to leave an option of paying cash) and we invoice for our fee. Or we may use a third party such as PayPal to handle the transaction.

More and more, we need to sell customers into a full range of services. We sell them an enhanced listing in the business directory, so we can connect them with customers searching for the services they offer. We help them determine the best way to use our services to move the customer toward the transaction or to actually make the sale. We sell them location-based premium listings. We develop an app for them and help them deliver the app to the phones (or other devices) of the right customers. Yes, web, print and broadcast advertising will be part of the package for some customers, too, but we can’t just call on our usual suspects. Location-based advertising will appeal to some merchants who haven’t been interested in reaching the full community through a newspaper or TV ad, but absolutely want to reach the person who’s nearby at lunch time.

Marketing

News companies know how to market newspapers and newscasts. We shouldn’t stop marketing those products and our web sites, but the mobile-first organization will have a mobile-first marketing department. The community knows about the legacy products and will continue to find them with a reduced marketing effort.

We will need an aggressive (and vastly different) marketing effort to tell the community about all the ways we serve your mobile audience. The effective marketing strategy needs at least a two-pronged approach: sophisticated and witty to alert the savvy mobile customer to our services and simple and educational to teach the new or confused mobile customer how many jobs we can help her with.

Of course, print and TV ads will still be a part of the marketing strategy (Apple’s “there’s an app for that” ads and Verizon’s “there’s a map for that” ads have helped both companies pitch their mobile services effectively).

We need to work aggressively in sales channels to get our apps onto people’s phones. Obviously we need to use iPhone’s App Store. We also need to connect with local retailers selling phones and other mobile devices, perhaps offering free apps that introduce and promote our apps or offering to load our package of apps on each phone sold (perhaps as part of a deal that includes advertising for the retailer). We can offer classes in the community on how to use our location-based services and our applications.

We might consider cross-promoting: Get a new iPhone with all our mobile apps with a full-year newspaper subscription.

Other departments

I am sure that I haven’t described all the ways that a legacy news organization needs to embrace a mobile-first strategy. The finance department needs to work with sales on the pricing issues I discussed. The human resources and finance departments needs to update compensation to include incentives for achieving mobile goals. Human resources also needs to work on training and recruiting issues. The details will vary with each organization and its structure and strategy.

Executives

Top executives of news organizations – CEOs, publishers and general managers – need to lead the way to a mobile-first future. If you want to launch a mobile-first SWAT team but not change the whole organization, then the top executive may not need to do much more than provide resources and direction. But if you want to transform a legacy media operation into a mobile-first company, executives need to lead the way aggressively, firmly and consistently. Our default settings are powerful and the whole company or individual departments will veer back to our print-broadcast-web roots if the top bosses are not demanding and vigilant.

The bosses need to set the example by using and mastering mobile apps for their personal use and by consuming our products and rival products on their mobile devices (and talking with managers and staff about how they use them and the lessons they learn). The top bosses need to spend their most time and attention on pursuing mobile opportunities. You can say mobile is important, but if you spend your time on print, broadcast or web issues and hold feet to the fire in those areas, managers and staff will see. They will know by your actions whether mobile first is a wish to achieve in spare time or a priority for all to embrace.

Unless you’re loaded with cash (and who is these days?), you can’t pursue a mobile-first strategy without risk. Traditional media such as print and broadcast provide the revenue that supports your company. The inclination will be strong to try to pursue a mobile strategy on the side, while you protect those core operations. Top executives need to acknowledge the short-term risk of shifting resources away from those core revenue streams and also to reassure managers, staff and shareholders that the long-term risk of timidly pursuing mobile opportunities is far greater.

The top executives need to coach all managers in pursuit of a mobile-first strategy. This means tolerance of mistakes and risks in pursuit of mobile opportunities but no patience for protection of the old priorities. If the top executives preach mobile-first and practice mobile-whenever, whenever will win.

Staffing

A mobile-first operation will need different skills and a different outlook from an organization focused on established pursuits such as print, broadcast and web. Through a combination of training and recruiting, we need to move quickly to the right staff for a mobile-first organization.

I have spent enough time in the training business and learned enough new skills and new thinking myself to know that committed staff members can learn the skills and outlook that a mobile-first organization needs. The more we can help staff members transform, the more we will benefit from their other skills and their community knowledge.

But some staff members will be unable or unwilling to make such a transition. And we will need to hire some people for skills so specialized or advanced that we can’t reasonably expect staff members to reach the necessary level fast enough.

Examples to come

In coming posts, I will provide some examples of how a mobile-first operation might work, both from the company and consumer perspectives. For now, I call your attention to an example published in May by Xark! blogger Dan Conover (the post has a long lead-in that I like, but it’s not why I’m calling this to your attention; the example starts with the subhead, “From documents to data structures”). While he wasn’t writing specifically about mobile-first strategy, Dan gives a great example of how mobile-first journalists would cover a fire. Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts also provides an instructive example, with his critique of how the Washington Post, a renowned journalism institution, fails in its mobile operations (again, the example follows a lead-in, in this case, praising my call for a mobile-first strategy).

Let’s get started

In the coming weeks, I will be discussing this approach with my colleagues at Gazette Communications. CEO Chuck Peters has praised the mobile-first approach, and I hope we can start making some significant steps in this direction. I hope your organization starts doing the same thing. As we make progress (or encounter setbacks) here, I will share the story on this blog. I hope others will similarly share the stories of your efforts to pursue mobile strategies.

As we proceed, we need to remember the “good enough” principle of disruptive innovation that Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen taught in the Newspaper Next project. An innovation doesn’t have to be perfect to launch; in fact the cost of pursuing perfection can doom a project to failure. “Good enough” performance along traditional lines is sufficient for launch, if it is providing a distinct advantage over existing products in some new approach.

The cell phone is a perfect example. One of the first times I used a cell phone to dictate a news story was in 1995 in Herington, Kan., as authorities were searching the home of Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing. The phone was huge. It dropped the signal twice during the call and I had to call the city desk back. I pretty much had to shout to be heard. And the battery was about to die (as it almost always was, because it didn’t hold its charge very long). By every respect that I would have measured the performance of the phone back in the office on my desk, this cell phone was just barely good enough. But the phone wasn’t back in the office on my desk. It allowed me to dictate from the sidewalk across the street from Nichols’ home as I watched the search. (I think Herington probably had two pay phones and 100 reporters that day; fighting for time on a pay phone to dictate would have been a nightmare.) I knew reporting would never be the same.

Now I carry an iPhone that I use to take pictures and post them to my Flickr page while traveling in Russia or to text tweets to my Twitter feed. And if my Siberian host tells me it’s minus-23, I can use my “Units” app to convert from Celsius and comfort myself that it’s only minus-9 Fahrenheit. That good-enough start didn’t mean we were settling for mediocre. It meant we were getting started on a new road to excellence I couldn’t even imagine then.

That’s what we need to do now with mobile-first strategy.

From the New York Times – A big pile of city crime reports is not all that useful. But what if you could combine that data with information on bars, sidewalks and subway stations to find the safest route home after a night out?

Many local governments are figuring out how to use the Internet to make government data more accessible. The goal is to spawn useful Web sites and mobile applications — and perhaps even have people think differently about their city and its government.

“It will change the way citizens and government interact, but perhaps most important, it’s going to change the way elected officials and civil servants deliver programs, services and promises,” said Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, which is one of the cities leading the way in releasing government data to Web developers. “I can’t wait until it challenges and infuriates the bureaucracy.”

Advocates of these open-data efforts say they can help citizens figure out what is going on in their backyards and judge how their government is performing.

But programmers have had trouble getting their hands on some data. And some activists and software developers wonder whether historically reticent governments will release data that exposes problems or only information that makes them look good.

It is too early to say whether releasing city data will actually make civil servants more accountable, but it can clearly be useful. Even data about mundane things like public transit and traffic can improve people’s lives when it is packaged and customized in an accessible way — a situation that governments themselves may not be equipped to realize.

A Web site called CleanScores, for instance, tracks restaurant inspection scores in various cities and explains each violation. After School Special combines data from San Francisco schools, libraries and restaurants so parents can plan after-school activities and see how children’s nutritional options compare by neighborhood. And Trees Near You, available for the iPhone, lets people identify trees on New York streets.

By releasing data in easy-to-use formats, cities and states hope that people will create sites or applications that use it in ways City Hall never would have considered.

San Francisco recently unveiled DataSF, a Web clearinghouse of raw government data that the public can download. The data sets include seismic hazard zones, street sweeping schedules and campaign finance filings. New York City’s Data Mine includes directories of sidewalk cafes, property values, horseback riding trails and historic houses.

Washington was a leader in releasing its data, and the federal government is doing it too at Data.gov.

Much of this data has always been publicly available, but until recently it has been almost impossible to find. Getting hold of it might have required tenacity, drive and endless phone calls.

The push to publicize government data goes as far back as the 1960s, but technology has made it possible for people to use the data in ways that would not have been possible even a year ago, said Eric Gundersen, president of Development Seed, the Washington company that created Stumble Safely. The company builds data and map applications for international development programs.

“The timing now with the open data movement is really critical because there are a lot of open-source tools that really make that data usable,” Mr. Gundersen said. These include the mapping tool he used to build Stumble Safely and also a site for the United States Agency for International Development that maps public health clinics.

Some activists are skeptical that governments will release politically risky data that could show that people are not doing their jobs. Mayor Newsom said he wants to release all kinds of data, and said he would not be surprised if “people who love to hate their mayor” create an application that maps his public schedule, to bolster their cases about which parts of town he neglects.

There is also the concern that people might misinterpret what the data is telling them.

“In the most basic of forms, with regard to crime stats and unemployment numbers, these kinds of bulletin boards are very useful,” said Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, an environmental nonprofit group, who has been an activist in San Francisco for three decades. “But on detailed data dealing with very complicated material, you really have to know what you’re looking for in order to distinguish between good data and junk data.”

Mr. Bloom also worries that cities could manipulate data to gloss over things like unemployment rates by neighborhood.

Governments are trying to make data openness a more open process itself by asking people to vote for data sets they want to be released. In New York, for example, people have requested data on school violence, public restroom locations and bicycle accidents.

Still, asking for the data is often not enough. Software developers in New York have been unsuccessful in getting data feeds of pedestrian and bicyclist injuries and fatalities from the Police Department, said Noel Hidalgo, who is director of technology innovation for the New York State Senate and has been working with developers on building city-data applications. He envisions applications that overlay accident information on city bike maps.

Paul J. Browne, a deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said it releases information about individual accidents to journalists and others who request it, but would not provide software developers with a regularly updated feed. “We provide public information, not data flow for entrepreneurs,” he said.

There have been other scuffles over who has the right to data. Routesy, an iPhone application, uses data from San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency to show train and bus schedules and locate stations on a map. It stopped working for a while because a private contractor working with the agency wanted to charge a licensing fee for the information. The agency now requires its contractor, NextBus, to make the data freely available.

There is evidence that governments’ attitude toward publicizing data is changing. Two years ago, when a Web design and research firm called Stamen Design started a Web site, Crimespotting, that mapped crime data for Oakland, Calif., the city cut off access to the data a week after the site went up.

Bob Glaze, the city’s chief technology officer, said the frequent data requests from the site were disrupting the city’s own crime site. The city eventually changed its mind. And in August, Stamen’s designers unveiled a San Francisco version of Crimespotting with Mayor Newsom at their side.

Some government leaders are making data disclosure an official policy. Mayor Newsom signed an executive order saying city data should be released, and the White House is about to publish a directive expected to give similar instructions to federal agencies.

San Francisco, New York and Washington have all organized contests to encourage software developers to create applications with their data. And the developers are using the data to build businesses. Stamen, for example, uses Crimespotting to show potential clients what it could create for them. Other firms are selling the iPhone apps they have built.

The cities, meanwhile, are to some degree using developers to provide citizens with a service so they do not have to.

“We are increasingly governing in a time when the demand for services exceeds our resources,” said Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer of the United States. If the contests “spur dozens of innovative applications,” he said, “then we’ve essentially achieved a policy objective at virtually no cost.”

By Claire Cain Miller
New York Times

For the first time ever, a study has analyzed the use of mobile coupons by

3% have used mobile coupons

USA mobile phone users.

The results are that 3.0% of Americans acknowledged having used a mobile coupon in the month of October, 2009, according to eMarketer.

That’s not surprising to retailers who have used mobile marketing solutions in their advertising.  Store managers have seen the power of the cell phone in bringing customers to their stores.

Some other interesting results from the study show that:

• 18.5% have search the mobile web for local products or services.
• 15.9% have received information about movies or entertainment.
• 13.3% have received information about nightclubs, bars, or restaurants on their mobiles.
• 4.0% have purchased an item that needed to be shipped.

Here is an article I wrote for Netimperative:

Mobile just might be the salvation to publisher’s online woes, argues Christian Louca, Managing Director of YOC Group.

Speak to anyone in the publishing industry and they will all tell you the same thing – it’s changing. And fast. When news emerged in August that News Corp would begin to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites later this year to cover big losses, ripples spread across the industry. A recent survey by the Harris group has revealed however that only 5% of web users would pay for online news. This raises the question – just how are publishers going to recover from significant losses and reductions in advertising revenue?

The answer it seems lies in mobile. As the one thing that a person will not leave the house without, ahead of even the wallet, the device that is always on and always available, mobile is increasingly becoming a channel that people are turning to for their media consumption needs whilst on the go. Our lifestyles are changing. No longer will we rely on the daily newspaper being delivered to our door, wait until we get to the office to check news online, only read a free commuter newspaper, or wait until we can turn the TV on when we get home from work. Now we demand content around the clock and on the go; to be able to access what we want, when we want and wherever we want it. That’s where mobile comes in.

With increasing screen sizes, higher resolution, longer battery life, improved 3G network speeds and coverage, better web browsing capabilities (and of course the launch of the iPhone), mobile phones are no longer a device that you simply use to call someone. We’ve already seen a large number of the UK’s national newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Sun and The Times begin to offer content on the mobile with dedicated mobile sites, as well as large publishers such as Haymarket and IDG as the trend towards mobile builds.

With the growing consumer demand for instant access to fresh, new original content, mobile websites are going a long way to satisfy this need. We don’t want to read the entire copy of The Daily Telegraph on our mobile or devour our favourite magazine from cover to cover. What we do want however is short snappy pieces of content – the top five news stories of the day, a snapshot of the weather, a quick glance at the stock market, for example. It’s not simply a case of copying content over from the PC onto the mobile. It’s about understanding what a reader wants when they consume content on the mobile and then being able to deliver relevant tailored information.

The exceptional targeting, immediacy and ability to tailor and personalise content directly to consumers provides a compelling proposition for publishers and their advertisers; keen to build a one-on-one dialogue with the readership. Where online and print advertising revenues may be falling, in mobile they are only getting bigger. For brands looking to build a relationship with their customers and target them with specific relevant content, mobile publisher websites provide the perfect platform. A reader of PistonHeads mobile website is a lot more likely to click through on a Mercedes banner advert than they would for a new face cream, for example. By its very nature, mobile is accountable. Every brand that invests in a mobile advertising campaign is able to track its spend. They can see if a consumer clicks through a banner advert, if they request a brochure or provide their contact details, and that is a powerful reason for brands to invest in mobile.  As the number of mobile websites offered by publishers increases, brands will have a perfect opportunity to outreach directly to their customers.

People aren’t going to stop reading print publications or stop accessing content on the internet completely, but as publishers are faced with dwindling advertising revenues, we’re going to see the mobile channel emerge as an attractive complementary channel. With the increase in availability of all you can eat data bundles and better mobile internet browsing capabilities, and the ability to target content and advertising to the individual, mobile will come into its own and sit alongside print; providing readers with relevant content, accessible when and where they want it.

Christian Louca is Managing Director at full service mobile marketing agency the YOC Group.

http://en.group.yoc.com/

URL Link:

http://netimperative.com/netimperative/news/2009/december/guest-comment-from-print-to-mobile-the-publishing

A Mobile Data Association event on Wednesday offered further proof of the allure of the mobile application, if not its widespread practice. An impressive turnout at the RSS venue amassed to hear folk from Vodafone 360, Nokia Ovi, Bright AI, Juniper, Materna and Kisky Media.

One of the most insightful came from a developer at the coalface in the form of Bright AI MD, David Lane. After recently scoring a mobile application package for a number of top flight football clubs, and with a number of cross platform credits to their name, David asked the audience how many had successfully submitted to Apple’s App Store. Roughly four hands were raised. This might have been most reflective of one particular audience, but it once again underlined the disparity in interest, those eagerly waiting to board the bandwagon, and those already successfully doing it.

Nokia’s Ovi and Vodafone 360 opened their arms to developers and partners, with obvious attractions a global reach wider than the iPhone, despite still lacking penetrable personality and somehow exuding a rather stiffer air than Apple effortlessly give off. Their massive existing infrastructure, networks and commercial biases seem less innately bendy and malleable than Apple. On subjective appearance, if not in truth.

Having said that, the Apple process is far from plain sailing. It’s prone to devising laws of its own, such as the one which wouldn’t allow Bright AI to explain in the App Store overview copy that proceeds of an app would go to a museum. Apple’s approval periods can also vary wildly, adding power to the 360 pledge of publishing and Quality Assurance inside 10 working days.

The relative freedom of the open source Android platform was said to have drawbacks too, with the fragmentation brought on by Android’s paid apps said to be prohibiting anyone from making much money.

Opportunities lay, according to David, in highlighting niche audiences with specific solutions based on their interests, such as individual football team content for football fans, while the key challenges included fragmentation, operators’ paid models versus freemium / advertising, and discoverability.

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BBC Picture Messaging Day – Friday 11th December

This week the MDA also announced, in collaboration with the BBC and mobile network operators, the BBC Radio 1 Free Picture Messaging Day.

By bringing together the mobile network operators with the BBC to create this one-off free Picture Messaging Day on Friday 11th December, it’s hoped that a new level of public awareness will be generated. Those who might have never sent a picture message will be encouraged to try by their favourite DJs leading up to the event.

While the free shortcode for the day is clearly an added incentive for consumer use, the hope is that the raised awareness and a potentially surprisingly smooth user experience will generate an uptake in the use of picture and MMS messaging.

The launch of a settings website is meant to ensure that this uptake is not confined to those with the latest handsets. There’s a significant population of dated handsets in circulation and SIM only contracts which are not married to specific devices. Because these mobiles may not be properly configured to send MMS messages, the new website aggregates settings information across mobile network operators, resellers and handset manufacturers to offer consumers easily discoverable access to the relevant information.

There are still sponsorship places available on the site.

It is no doubt that the mobile platform will become more and more dominant in how we all communicate. There are 3 major reason why this is true:

• They’re always on
• They’re always at hand
• They are the most personal devices we own

We can’t really say all these things about our desktops or laptops. However if you are in the beginnings of a mobile campaign, or thinking about getting your content accessed through mobile, there are some fundamental things to consider about your approach to mobile. In a recent informative white paper from mobithinking, they list the 10 mistakes in mobile marketing. In this paper they talk about how in mobile, we must break free of dotcom thinking. And I quite agree. Heck, we are all still trying to get the web right much less think about another interactive platform behavior. So it is no surprise that even the best information designers fall prey to traditional web development approaches. But this is not just a design issue, it’s a marketing and content issue.

All 10 mistakes made a lot of sense. Some of them pretty fundamental. However some of them really stuck out for me. Here are some highlights of the paper:

Treating mobile user like PC users.

People’s behavior and needs are clearly different on PC vs. mobile. There is mobile time and there is PC time. Both have their own environments. This speaks to the understanding of what people WILL do and WILL NOT do on mobile. The paper goes on to state the key mobile experiences which make up these environments, and should always be top of mind as you develop for mobile:

On mobile:

• You want fast access to relevant information
• You want services that recognize you’re on the move
• You want location-aware, activity-specific experiences

Failing to exploit the capabilities of the mobile device.

There are many things the mobile device can do and we sometimes over look the fundamental features. The best mobile campaign experiences take advantage of what the phone can do and not limit it to just a wap site. When thinking about a mobile campaign, think about an integrated experience. Take advantage of what the phones can do.

• It’s a phone! – Allow people to talk to a human! Use link to call features.
• It’s a camera – Here is where you can open up to Image Recognition campaigns, photo contests, personalization etc.
• It’s a video camera – Here is where you can involve your audience into short films about your brand, or story, or better yet, mobile augmented reality.
• SMS messages – Commenting, voting, blogging, polls, and chatting can be integrated into your mobile campaign.
• Location base awareness – Enable people to find you from anywhere, send messages to them when they are close by, turn your campus into a real world virtual tour. As the audience moves around your campus, triggered messages inform them on their phone of key information
• It sends email
• It’s a music player
• It’s a calendar
• It’s a browser

Not actively promoting your mobile website.

This also applies to anything mobile whether you have an sms campaign or IR campaign. But I feel this is the one mistake that is most frequent and easy to make because we are so focussed on the mobile platform that we overlook how we are getting people to the mobile experience. You can build it, but will they come?

It is not just a media campaign to drive traffic. It is a thought out scenario of engagements in mobile environments that are relevant for the audience to use their mobile, and is relevant to the content and concept you are providing. Where are they when they come across the opportunity to opt into your mobile campaign? What are they doing? Waiting? Traveling? Commuting? Eating? Watching TV?

Try this, when thinking about your mobile campaign, grab your phone. Place yourself in the environment that would be most relevant to reach your audience. Role play. What are you doing at the moment? What will prompt you to opt in? How will the message and mobile activity tie into your current state? When carefully thought through you will realize that you are building a mobile strategy, not just a mobile site. This is critical to the success of a mobile campaign of any kind, including mobile apps. By the way does this open up possibilities for a new profession as a Mobile Cultural Anthropologist?

Russell Miyaki, Talentbrew

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