mobilemarketing

If you spend a lot of time in a web publishing environment, it pays to be aware of all the little things that make writing and layouts work — and not work. The wrong line height or kerning/font combination can be disastrous to readability. You can, of course, read books on the subject, but a ready reference tool can be had in this Typography Manual app, which looks about as to-the-point as such things can get.

It does in fact comprise a short book, along with some handy tools for the printer or publisher like conversion tables and a font ruler. It doesn’t have an iPad form yet, unfortunately. $4 in the App Store.

[via NotCot]

Disclaimer: You brick your phone doing this, don’t blame me. I’m just letting you know you can do this, not telling you that you should.

That being said, if you’re feeling saucy and want to download the latest version of Android for the EVO now instead of waiting until it rolls out naturally, you can do it. You just have to download the update directly from HTC, and do some magic with recovery mode and your SD card. You can get the full instructions from here.

[Via Gizmodo]

Get your funny hats and noise makers ready, Droid owners: it’s party time! As long as the note that Verizon just sent over to our buddies over at Engadget holds true, the Droid should be seeing Android 2.2 grace its screen as early as next week.

It won’t be the first Android handset getting the update treatment, but you’ve gotta commend Verizon for staying on top of these updates even as they prepare to make the handset obsolete.

In greek mythology, Cetus was a term for massive, serpentine sea monsters. In Samsung rumor-ology, Cetus is a term for an unannounced Windows Phone 7 handset.

Thanks to the good ol’ Bluetooth SIG, we’ve got a few details on what exactly will make up the Samsung Cetus’ not-so-mythical innards (including a bit of a surprise. A front-facing surprise.) What we can glean from the SIG posting:

• Windows Phone 7-based
• 800×480 4.0″ AMOLED full touchscreen display (presumably Samsung’s Super AMOLED)
• 5 megapixel camera
• 802.11b/g/n
• Bluetooth
• FM Radio

aaaaand.. *drum roll*

• Front-facing “video call” VGA Camera

While front-facing cameras aren’t exactly groundbreaking tech in the world of mobile phones, this is the first Windows Phone 7 handset to be confirmed as having one. More interestingly is that it’s specifically listed as a “video call” camera (as opposed to just a self-portrait camera). Microsoft has never confirmed official Video Calling support for WP7 — they’ve either got a trick up their sleeve, or Samsung built up some video-calling tech of their own for the handset. Or everyone’s hoping Skype will reverse their anti-Windows Phone 7 stance.

Also worth noting is the handset’s model number: SGH-i917. As long as Samsung is keeping with their traditional model numbering, anything that starts with SGH and ends with 7 is AT&T-bound.

Remember the CrunchGear Geek Weekend series, where we attempted to show some fun stuff to do in various cities across the U.S.? Yeah, we kind of let that peter out, didn’t we? Also, there are lots of great non-geek things to do in and around cities. This is especially important for families: the kids might be more interested in Tecumseh! than the early television museum. With the A Day’s Outing website, and now its new iPhone app, you can quickly find all sorts of interesting things to do.

This is a super simple app, and provides a nice front end to the website. You plug in what kind of activities you want to see, a date range (today, this weekend, next 7 days), and define a range (5 miles, 30 miles, 60 miles, etc). The app will query the A Day’s Outing site and return a list of things going on. You can toggle between list view and map view, and you can get driving directions to any destination you select.

If you don’t have an iPhone, you can simply use your smartphone’s browser to access the website to get the same functionality: it’ll just involve a bit more scrolling around on the page.

I like the presentation of this app. I find it calming. It’s simple and uncluttered. My only gripe is that the back button is a little too small for my meaty fingers.

If you’re making a cross-country road trip with your family, or just visiting in-laws for the weekend, A Day’s Outing ought to let you find something interesting to do. It’s only $3.

Waitrose has launched its first iPhone app and mobile website, following a boost in the number of browsers accessing Waitrose.com via mobiles.

GoMo News has rounded up the day’s hottest Android news and links. From malicious wallpaper; to mobile search; to Eric Schmidts dreams of $10 billion a year, we’ve got it.

Android can $10 billion a year

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a lot of confidence in the Android platform. He believes that the combined revenue from advertising and mobile content purchases will top $10,000,000,000 every year.

http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/7/30/google-android-will-earn-10-billion-year/

Careful what you download – wallpapers can be deadly

It is widely known by now that a lot Android users could have had private data stolen by malicious wallpaper apps. Once installed, they collect information from your phone – there’s no real evidence at the moment that the data has been used for anything damaging, but it reinforces how careful you should be to read those warnings your Android gives you when you try to install an app. If a wallpaper wants to connect to the internet from your phone, think twice.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1725670/black-hat-android-wallpaper-apps-stealing

Google dominates mobile search

Google has been the leader in on-line search for a long time now – but according to StrategyEye it is even more dominant when it comes to mobile. Googles’ overall search share is 90.57%, but on mobile it is 98.29%

ACCESS to move software to mobile

ACCESS is a software company that has been around since 1979, developing for connected and mobile devices. It bought out the owner of the Palm OS, and has developed its own mobile operating system based on Linux. It has now announced it’s support for the best-known OS based on Linux: Android. ACCESS will begin to release its software for the platform immediately.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/ACCESS-Joins-the-Open-Handset-Alliance-149993.shtml

Comcast releasing digital video app for Android Comcast has an app that allows you to record your Digital Video Recorder (DVR) from your phone. So you can line up your favourite shows to record while you’re on the move. The company has now announced that this app (already available for iPhone) will now come to Android as well.

http://blog.comcast.com/2010/07/xfinity-voice-reinventing-whats-possible-with-your-home-phone.html Android Tablets for everyone! Both Samsung and LG have announced that they’ll be releasing tablet computers running on Android this year. To a great extent, the iPad popularised the idea of tablet computers, so it’s no surprise that a lot of Android partners will be trying to emulate that success.

Samsung: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66T16720100730 LG: http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/7/30/lg-confirms-launch-android-tablet-q4/

Sprint is releasing Android 2.2 on the EVO 4G on August 3. Mark you calendars because if you have an EVO 4G, you’re on a ride to Froyo-town.

Sprint will be the first wireless carrier to bring the latest version of Android to its customers. The Android 2.2 software release provides a significant number of feature enhancements, including:

Voice Dialing Over Bluetooth. Application Storage on External Memory, giving users more storage room for all their apps. Camera 4-way rotation allows the camera icons to rotate with the camera. Improved Browser Performance including a faster JavaScript engine and Flash 10x Support improving the user’s ability to view videos and available content associated with web pages.

500 Internal Server Error

TripAdvisor is a digital resource for tourists and holidaymakers – and it has announced a new deal with Nokia. While TripAdvisor already has free apps available on iPhone and Android, the Nokia deal is a bit bigger. Not only is it coming to Ovi as an application, it’s also being built into Nokia’s own Ovi Maps service – arguably its most successful Ovi product.

What’s the story with Ovi Maps?

When Ovi Maps was re-launched earlier this year, it dropped a bomb on the navigation community. It was a fully-featured navigation service, with turn-by-turn navigation and an option to download the maps you needed – so you could still navigate yourself even if you had no coverage. The service is powered by one of the premier digital mapping companies, NAVTEQ – which Nokia bought out for $8 billion in 2008. Ovi Maps is completely free to use for anyone with a Nokia.

What’s TripAdvisor?

It claims to be the world’s largest travel site – it stores a huge amount of information that anyone planning a trip can access, and use to plan their holiday. The vast majority of the content is user-generated, and it covers a huge amount of information: you can get reviews for holiday locations, restaurants, hotels, trip “guides”, rental information and loads more.

What’s their deal? The TripAdvisor for Nokia app is much the same as the apps for other platforms. It lets users search and browse content from TripAdvisor, either by keyword or based on the users current location. It also allows users to post reviews from the app, so you can update as you travel.

More importantly, the Ovi Maps service will have a dedicated TripAdvisor service built into it. When using your Ovi Maps service to navigate or search, you can choose to be fed information sourced from TripAdvisor on the locations you’re passing.

What we think?

This reminded me of the recent deal announced between two very similar servicers – Telmap and Lonely Planet. But where that deal was mostly centered around advertising, this one seems to be more about crowd-sourcing. There’s a growing trend towards more open editing when it comes to navigation. Services like OpenStreetMap put the actual maps in the hands of the user, rather than just the reviews and travel information. But it’s an interesting movement to note: the more mobile navigation gets, the more control the end-user has over the content.

Our buddy Wille in Sweden sent us some thrilling video of the International Dia Del iPhone in Sweden where Swede, blonde, ruddy, and beautiful to a one, lined up to get them some Facetime-capable phones.

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren't 100,000 applications available in the store - yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps been submitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009. The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps and games are available in the United States, necessarily. Not all markets are counted, even, so AndroLib claims it may potentially undercount the number of apps, although it's safe to say there's somewhat of an error margin either way as with every data aggregation.

The iPhone 4 went on sale today in seventeen more markets around the world. Here in Ireland, we’ve been treated to a running commentary on just how fast it has been selling out across the country, thanks to Twitter. And it has just now announced that there is not a single iPhone left for sale in Irelands’ capital Dublin, saying “all the iPhones in Dublin city centre have been snapped up already.”

What’s the story? O2 Ireland Shop has been keeping Ireland up to date on just how fast the most-popular-smartphone-in-the-world-TM has been selling out.

It has also, rather helpfully, been responding to queries that Irish iPhone fans have been sending:

What we think?

If nothing else, this shows that O2 knows its customers. If you were standing in line to buy an iPhone today, where would you be checking for updates?

Perhaps the most amusing outcome was the tweet sent five hours ago stating the iPhone 4 is now available on-line… and one hour later another stating it was now out.

Independent mobile app store Getjar has reached 1bn downloads, according to the company.

Here is Friday’s round-up of mobile marketing and advertising news from GoMo News. Google releases location-based ads for both iPhone and Android; local business searches surge on mobile; and direct marketer Knotice puts more into mobile.

Google introduces location ads

On both iPhone and Android, Google display ads will now include location info. Advertisers will be able to embed map information with their banners. Users who see the ads (either in an app or in a browser) will be able to expand them to get a precise location for the business being advertised.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/29/google-location-mobile-display-ads/

New release from Knotice focused on mobile marketing Knotice is a digital direct marketing company – its Concentri platform handles email, mobile and web marketing. The newest release is almost totally about mobile, though, as Knotice claims “the explosive growth of mobile marketing, combined with rapid smartphone adoption by consumers, has paved the way for marketers to better engage consumers while they are on the go.”

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/knotice-announces-new-software-release-expands-mobile-marketing-feature-set-99460884.html Local businesses need to go mobile According to figures released by ComScore and the Yellow Pages Association, local businesses searches are booming on mobile. They claim that the number of searches for local businesses on mobile has grown faster than any other use of mobile devices over the last year.

http://searchengineland.com/more-people-go-mobile-for-local-47543

The five most powerful mobile phone makers in the world are being hassled by smaller companies, according to the International Data Corporation (ID). Its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker shows that worldwide interest in smartphones is shaking the boat, and threatening the security of the Top Five.

Who are the Top Five? Nokia, Samsung, LG, Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson are the leading manufacturers, both by market share and units shipped. But some of them are starting to look a little shaky, thanks to the disruptive influence of smartphones.

Going Up:

Sony Ericsson and RIM both performed well over the last year – bolstered mostly by a focus on smartphones.

Going Down:

Nokia is still the biggest mobile maker in the world, but it’s consistently poor performance in the smartphone market has seen its market share and profits fall.

Holding Steady:

Both Samsung and LG are hovering. Samsung has had a bad year in terms of revenue, but its much-anticipated Galaxy S line and other touchscreen devices are expected to boost profit in the near future. In contrast, LG already has successful high-end and touchscreen phones on the market, but has seen profit margins drop due to overspend on R&D and marketing.

The Competitors:

The Top 5 are being harried by three smartphone-focused companies in particular: Apple, Motorola and HTC.

Apple: You can’t talk about smartphones without talking about Apple. Sales of the iPhone have been so phenomenal that for many “smartphone” is synonymous with “iPhone”.

Motorola and HTC: both of these companies have seen huge success through a focus on Android smartphones. The DROID series from Motorola is the highest selling Android in the US, and HTC has released a slew of popular devices including the Desire, Hero and EVO.

What we think?

I find it hard to imagine that Nokia will be shaken from the top spot any time soon. True, it hasn’t released a device that really presents a challenge to the smartphone market. But smartphones aren’t the only driver of the mobile industry. There are huge markets coming on-line across the world, including Africa, India, rural China and others, which need to be quickly supplied with cheap, useable handsets. I can’t really see HTC or Apple filling that need. Whereas Nokia has built an empire on cheap, long-lasting handsets. Its biggest competition will come from indigenous manufacturers like ZTE.