mobilemarketing

Verizon’s got this crazy challenge going on over at the teaser page for the R2-D2 Edition Droid 2, wherein users are given clues that lead to special codes. Once one person finds and inputs one of these special codes, everyone gains access to a new section of the site, and the original finder scores themselves a free handset.

Fortunately for D2-devotees everywhere, the force was strong with a gent named David Holt.

Following the clues lead David to a Star Wars book on Amazon, and copying that book’s ISBN into the code input screen unlocked a handful of pictures of the R2-D2 Edition Droid 2′s thematically-matched dock. (Want to know how it all breaks down? You can follow the trail of clues here.) It’s essentially just a white dock with “Star Wars” scribed on the back — but you know what? Sometimes, including this time, simplicity just works.

Oh my, how I love some good ol’ fashion mudslinging.

“Flash Websites? There’s A Phone For That.”

To any ne’er-do-blog-read layman, the full page ad that Motorola just put in the New York Times might just seem oddly worded. To anyone who has even considered considering themselves a gadget geek — or has, at least, turned on their TV anytime in the past year and a half and seen Apple’s “There’s An App For That” campaign — there’s no question who this one’s aimed at.

This isn’t the first time Moto has done this. Heck, it’s not even the second. Moto pulled out two separate full page ads (here’s one, and the other) during the iPhone 4 Antennagate madness, lambasting Apple with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

This one isn’t quite as clever as either of those ones; and the whole matter of Flash on the iPhone is neither original nor fresh, by any means, and “There’s an App for that!” jokes are up there with “Yo Momma” jokes and Borat quotes on this list of “Jokes that one guy just won’t stop using”. But Flash is something that nearly all consumers would recognize (Thanks, Youtube and/or Farmville!), so juxtaposing your handset’s support for it against the competitions lack thereof probably isn’t a bad idea. Even if Flash on Android doesn’t really work that well.

Image credit: Ben Forta on Twitter

The X Factor has launched an exclusive mobile app for the Ovi Store that can keep Nokia users up to date with developments on the talent show.

The X Factor has launched an exclusive mobile app for the Ovi Store that can keep Nokia users up to date with developments on the show.

Motoring site Auto Trader has kicked off a £2m cross-platform campaign to promote its mobile platform.

Space NK is planning to overhaul its online presence, as the global beauty firm looks to grow its ecommerce offering.

The Royal Mail has launched the world’s first “intelligent stamp” that works with iPhone and Android apps using augmented reality technology.

Motoring site Auto Trader has kicked off a £2m cross-platform campaign to promote its mobile platform.

Rating: Upgrade Dext/Cliq using Milestone 2.1? Surely, not

For a moment, it looked like it was possible to upgrade a Motorola Dext (Cliq) handset to Android 2.1 using the settings provided for the Motorola Milestone. Especially since this was ‘official’ advice coming from the Motorola Mobile Devices Contact Centre (UK). Disappointingly it doesn’t work. Attempting the alternative suggestion – a full factory reset, prompted immediate interest in apps backup software. This opens up a new quagmire.

GoMo News‘ dilemma (as relayed to Motorola UK) was that … “Every time I attempt to check for any system updates I get this message – “The upgrade attempt has encountered an error due to a failed login. Please try later.”

Unfortunately, the handset had been saying that for weeks. We’d searched the FAQs to no avail, so we tried Motorola’s previously very helpful service.

The first suggestion was to download Motorola’s ‘Motorola Software Update’ application for the PC. This was already installed but GoMo got very excited when the support message said ” (Choose your phone to be Milestone)”.

That meant an update to 2.1 – just one short of Froyo (2.2). Not bad for an Android 1.5 handset. Don’t bother to try it with your Dext/Cliq because it doesn’t work.

So Plan B is to perform a factory reset. Motorola UK very wisely adds, “You might use some backup applications from the Android Market.” Too right.

A factory reset will, of course, wipe all the apps you have to lovingly downloaded. The obvious answer is to backup all the apps to the handset’s SD card or a PC/Mac.

This GoMo News hack had fully expected such a facility to be included in the £25 upgrade to Motorola’s Media Link package. The only media formats that this app backs up are photos and videos. Not apps.

A quick trawl of the Net (because Android market and Cyrket weren’t too useful) produced references to MyBackup from Rerware. Only the trial version is free so we haven’t tested it.

In theory, it should be possible to manually back up you apps using a file manager program like eFile from Domobile but we haven’t tried it yet.

This raises an important question. What happens when you reload paid-for apps? Do they automatically re-install by recognising the handset’s IMEI?

Answers on a postcard please. [We're joking. Use Comments.]

November 16-17, 2010

Dolce Hayes Mansion, San Jose, CA

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Rating: We actually bothered to check

A very modest announcement on Nokia‘s Facebook page confirms that it has indeed secured an exclusive app for the X Factor 2010 TV show. This app will only be available from the Ovi store, so that means no Android or iPhone version which is something of a coup. Attempts to discover exactly what Nokia handsets can run it failed because it isn’t there yet despite a promised release date of today. Despite the claim that it has “the very first X Factor app. It will be available to download from the Ovi Store tomorrow [Friday 3rd September], it wasn’t actually there when GoMo News looked at 9.00 GMT.

Sometimes with Ovi, it’s necessary to reset your default handset to see the latest apps. However, the official stock shots from Nokia itself [shown here] feature a Nokia N8 and even when setting the default to N8 the app wasn’t there.

Another clue is that the official Ovi members newsletter announcing this app’s release hasn’t arrived yet. Anyway, what does it do?

Nokia says the app will feature all the latest news, gossip, videos, and competitions – all inline with the show’s four stages.

More ‘great’ features will follow shortly such as integration with Facebook and Twitter (Nokia’s offical tweet doesn’t mention the app either).

Getting an exclusive on a hit TV show like the X factor is a bit strange given that Nokia dropped its sponsorship of the TalkBack Thames (which also doesn’t mention the app) show back in 2007.

Instead leading British retailer, the Carphone Warehouse, has sponsored the show and used it to promote Nokia’s Comes with Music offering.

And given the app isn’t there yet, we can’t confirm whether it’s free or not.

It seems that when the Twitter for iPad app launched a few days ago, a few users were accidentally blessed with push notifications. Those privileges have since been revoked, but it seemed to confirm that the option would be coming soon.

Well, Twitter reached out to Mashable today to explain how it happened, as well as to confirm that push notifications are, indeed, coming to the iPhone/iPad soon, but it’s still being tested internally for the moment.

To quote the original article:

“When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users,” wrote a Twitter spokesperson. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app.”

“We’ve been testing push notifications internally,” the rep continued. “Push isn’t ready yet, but we look forward to rolling this out soon.”

This means that users of the app will soon get real-time notifications on certain types of messages — eg DMs or Mentions — making the app that much more useful as a communication tool.

And this comes so soon after we wrote about Notifio.

Last time we wrote about Notifo, we called it a “simple mobile notifications platform for anything” — and really, that’s probably the best way to describe it. You take your iPhone, install the Notifo app, hook it up to your favorite services (like Twitter, or GitHub) or any of the “Projects” (read: plugins, like Growl alert forwarding, or Chrome-to-Notifo ), and bam! You’ve got push notifications coming down to your iPhone from just about anything you could imagine.

All that notification sending takes two things: users to send the messages to, and a message pushing backend to handle all the heavy lifting — the same two things, as it just so happens, that one would need to create a basic instant messaging service. And so they have.

In an update to their iPhone app that went live this afternoon, Notifo launched a service they’ve had in the making for about four months: free text and picture messaging. Alas, it’s only built for messages from Notifo-user-to-Notifo-user, rather than Notifo-to-phone-numbers — but with all that messaging going on between users and the backend, connecting users with each other was really just the obvious next step.

Notifo seems to be less excited about the user-to-user messaging, however, than they are about something else this outbound messaging enables: bots. Now that Notifo users can send messages back to the backend, developers can build services that can “do anything” at a users command, using Notifo as the message handling middle-man.

Additionally, Notifo has tweaked their Twitter alerts system, Push.ly, to use Twitter’s just announced Site Streams beta, making them one of the first to do so. Wondering what the heck that means? In a nutshell: real-time push alerts from Twitter.

Yep. Now you can learn what celebrities are having for lunch the very second they tweet it out.

Sharp shared some 3D camera goodness with Pocket-lint, just before they announced it at IFA today. In particular, Sharp revealed that they are working on a prototype for the iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S that will use two cameras built into a mobile device to shoot 3D footage. The concept device uses a lenticular lens to allow viewers to see an image in 3D without the use of glasses, making it ideal for a mobile phone, or other device. Sharp was extremely close lipped about when and where the new camera would start showing up, but the rep did say they were planning on launching something before the end of the year. Sharp is also showing of two other 3D screens today, a 3.8 and a monstrous 10.1 inch.. Neither of which will require 3D glasses to work.

Mobile Marketer will not publish on Monday, Sept. 6, in observance of Labor Day. Enjoy the holiday weekend!

NEW YORK - Media brands are leaving no stone unturned to offer advertisers a package comprising mobile sites, applications, SMS alerts and social media integration.

Just days ago, Palm revealed a bunch of details surrounding webOS 2.0, which, as the name implies, is an upcoming major update to their webOS platform. Shortly thereafter, they released a big chunk of webOS 2.0 to a small section of their development community as part of a Beta program.

Almost immediately, someone unearthed one little bit that Palm didn’t intend anyone to find: a lingering mention of a virtual keyboard — something which webOS doesn’t have, and that Palm has yet to confirm as a feature.

So, what do you think Palm did? Did they pull the stone-face routine, and say they don’t comment on rumors and speculation? Did they send out an e-mail saying “Hey guys, we gotta be more careful!” and move on? Nope. They freaked the hell out.

That Beta program we mentioned before? It’s now closed until further notice.

Earlier, Palm’s webOS Developer Connection team tweeted out:

Because of the leak, we are freezing new admissions to early access for the time being. If you’re in queue, you’re going to stay in queue

followed by:

for now, if you didn’t get access, you can thank the leaker for causing this delay in us getting you access. sorry about this, folks.

Yep. Because one person had loose lips and decided to share something they were excited about, Palm is keeping a bunch of people who are eager to make crap for their platform from doing so. Palm, who has been having a hard time getting people to make stuff for their platform, is actively turning away (or at least cold-shouldering) people who are interested in making stuff, and pinning the whole thing on one guy. What. The. Hell.

To make things worse, this leak is about as trivial as they come. Palm has a webOS-powered tablet coming. Unless Palm’s expecting everyone to lug around a keyboard or their tablet is going to have some sort of monstrous keyboard built in, webOS will have to have a virtual keyboard.

Look, Palm. I love you. You’re the very bastion of breaking the mold, and I cheer for you to the point that MobileCrunch readers have often accused me of being crazy or on the payroll — but this.. is absolutely, jaw-droppingly stupid.

Leaks happen. Every single day, to every single company who is actively working on anything even remotely interesting. Even if you’ve got the nastiest NDA in the world, it dilutes pretty quickly as thousands upon thousands of people begin to carelessly sign it. If your goods aren’t leaking, it’s for one of three reasons: you’ve got insane security practices, your team is tiny, or because no one cares. The fact that someone was interested enough to tear through your SDK for hidden morsels and that media outlets started picking it up is a compliment. This is akin to that goofy kid in school shouting “NO, I HATE YOU!” and running away the first time they get invited to sit at the cool kid’s table.

Here’s what you do, Palm: Don’t want people knowing about something? Don’t put it in your SDK. If you forget to pull something, as seems to be the case here, just play it cool, remove it from the next build, and ride the hype-wave as people argue about whether such and such feature is actually coming. Don’t let employees comment on it, don’t go bonkers, and most importantly, don’t punish the people who actually seem to love your product.

While it’s confirmed that the @webOSDev account is run by someone at Palm, it’s hard to believe that this is Palm’s official response in the matter. We’ve reached out to Palm for something a bit more.. sane.

Update – What Happened:

We just got off the horn with Palm communications, whose official statement was… well, that they don’t talk about rumors or speculation, including stuff like this.

However, we also had the chance to speak with a source of ours who happened to have some inside knowledge of what all went down. Yes, the Twitter account in question is run by one of Palm’s Developer Relations guys. With that said, none of today’s events (from the finger-pointing tweets to the shutdown of the Beta program) were approved by the those who would generally make such decisions. One employee knee-jerked, choosing to punish the entire community for the actions of one.

Update #2 – Betas Back

Palm has just announced via the same Twitter account that the Beta has been reopened, saying that there is “No reason to make everyone pay the price here.” We obviously agree.