Not surprisingly, Valentine’s Day spurred lots of last-minute Web searches and phone calls — and the Google mobile ads team just published a blog post highlighting how much of that activity happened on smartphones and tablets.
For one thing, last-minute searches for national restaurant chains grew across-the-board, but they grew the most on smartphones — between February 7 and February 14, these searches increased 359 percent on mobile, compared to 142 percent from desktop computers and 135 percent on tablets. People were also more likely to search for flowers from their phones, and to select the “click to call” or “get directions” options in florists’ ads — mobile searches for flower-related terms increased by 227 percent, direction requests increased 514 percent, and people became 560 percent more likely to “click to call.” → Read More
Seattle-area startup Puzzazz began as a creator of online, mobile, and e-book puzzles. But they’ve established a new core technology that might end up being a bigger draw than their Sudoku apps. They call it TouchWrite, and it lets you draw letters and numbers directly on the screen instead of tapping them on the on-screen keyboard.
A modest achievement in some ways — basic handwriting recognition goes back decades — but the fact is that the ability to draw a B or 7 right on the screen is handy, and more natural to puzzle-doers than the alternative. But more importantly, it’s a fundamental method of interaction that none of the touchscreen e-readers have implemented, and Puzzazz is in a position to make their solution the official one. → Read More
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If you’re not familiar with Jim Gaffigan, you should be. He’s one of the funniest comics standing and he’s a kind, gentle soul with a mid-westerner’s sensibility and a hilarious bit about Hot Pockets. Like Louis CK before him, Gaffigan just announced that he’s filming a comedy special in DC next month and will make it available for a $5 download – with one dollar going to The Bob Woodruff Foundation, an association to help wounded veterans and their families.
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Greenstart, the San Francisco-based startup accelerator dedicated to the cleantech industry – and more importantly, to making it “sexy” enough to attract investors – announced its second cadre of of companies this week. This time around, the organization is tightening its focus to concentrate solely on the intersection of I.T. and cleantech, specifically in areas of smart grid, the built environment, consumer services and transportation.
It’s also being highly selective in terms of the startups accepted into the program. Of the 152 applicants, only five companies got in. → Read More
A new site called Frank & Oak wants to take the headache out of clothes shopping for men between 20 and 35.
The site is a new product from men’s clothing company ModaSuite (a startup based in Canada and backed by Real Ventures). With Frank & Oak, CEO Ethan Song says the company is aiming at a younger audience (ModaSuite’s customer base is more in the 30-45 range), so the clothing is more affordable and the process is simpler. → Read More
As one big tech merger gets approved by the EU, another might get kicked back into play. Today, Cisco launched an appeal against the purchase of Skype by Microsoft, a deal that was originally unconditionally approved by the regulators back in October 2011. → Read More
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I’ve been waiting for this one. Bram Cohen is the Chief Scientist and co-founder of the P2P file sharing service BitTorrent. And he may also be one of the guys most responsible for the decline in the music industry. So I asked Bram, when we sat down together earlier this week at SFMusicTech, whether he did indeed have any responsibility for killing the music business. → Read More
Once upon a time wireless carriers offered unlimited data plans. Consumers signed the contracts, got their iPhone or Droids and went on to enjoy the smartphone revolution. Along the way streaming video and music hit it big and social media exploded into new demographics. All these things require data, but no worries — the carriers said we had unlimited data. Consume all you want, they said.
But then a glowing lightbulb appeared above some carrier’s executive’s head, suddenly realizing data is an untapped source of massive revenue. Unlimited plans were replaced by tiered data and fear-mongering marketing campaigns were launched to scare consumers into buying more data than they need. Carriers allowed current subscribers to keep their unlimited plans but they aren’t safe forever. Now AT&T is aggressively throttling users in an attempt to purge users from the open data bar.
The sad thing? AT&T is targeting their best customers with these attacks, many of which have plenty of better options now. → Read More
Interest targeting? Sponsored Stories? Advertisers need a whole new skill set to succeed in social, and Facebook must dispense this education to keep revenue growing. To smooth the learning curve, Facebook currently offers two introduction programs for first-time advertisers.
FastTrack sets up brands and medium-sized business with an ads rep consultation and best practice-filled resources, while Start To Success gives small businesses expert phone support and a $50 ad credit to experiment with. Understanding breeds confidences breeds big spending. → Read More
PJ Gurumohan, CEO of tablet publishing startup Genwi, likes to talk about creating unique experiences tablet, rather than just porting over an existing website. A good example of what he has in mind: Tweek, a new app that Genwi (pronounced “Gen Y”) has created with Times Internet Limited.
TIL is the Internet and mobile arm of Times Group, which publishes the Times of India. It already offers iPad apps for the Times of India and other publications, but with Tweek, TIL CEO Rishi Khiani says the company is trying to do something different — use “smart, interactive packaging” to reach a young, urban audience. → Read More
“A good scalpel makes a better surgeon. Good communication makes a better doctor.” The future of medicine in the U.S. is clear. The days of the “do more, bill more” model of reimbursement are numbered as it has produced one of the most inefficient healthcare systems in the world. While there are many unknowns regarding the future model, one thing is crystal clear — highly effective communication will separate the winners from the losers.
The quantum improvement in the depth and breadth of communication seen in the consumer Internet and in the consumerization of the enterprise (iPhones, Yammer, etc.) has yet to fully impact healthcare… → Read More
As mentioned in yesterday’s earnings call, Zynga revealed that the company’s zCloud, its private cloud infrastructure has been scaling significantly in the past year. At the start of 2011, only 20% of Zynga’s daily active users (DAU) were in the zCloud. A year later, nearly 80% of Zynga games’ DAU reside in zCloud, and 20% in the public cloud (powered by AWS). Today the company is revealing additional information about the zCloud and how much data is being transmitted through its infrastructure.
Zynga has been quietly investing in powering up the zCloud over the past few years, explains Allan Leinwand, Zynga’s CTO of Infrastructure. As Leinwand explains, the infrastructure looks, feels, and operates similar to the AWS public cloud, but allows for greater performance, scale and reliability. zCloud physically resides in Zynga’s private datacenters and is designed specifically for social games in terms of availability and performance. And Zynga has created tailored automation tools for large server environments and built custom monitoring and management tools. → Read More
Tablet publishing platform Onswipe is launching its content recommendation throughout its network of publishers today — introducing a Outbrain like feature where readers are given choices of articles from its thousands of partners in realtime. (Readers can access the feature by tapping on the Rocketship in the bottom right corner of the page.)
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Motorola has already confirmed that the Xooms, Droid Bionic, Razr, Razr Maxx and the Droid 4 will get a hefty helping of Ice Cream Sandwich this year, but the company has added a few more devices to its ICS upgrade schedule. The Photon 4G, Atrix 4G, Atrix 2, and the Electrify will all see Android 4.0 at some point during the course of 2012.
Motorola lists most of the devices for a Q3 release, with just a few getting Q2 treatment, so there’s still quite a road ahead for you Gingerbread-packing phandroids. → Read More
Following five months of work, location-based Q&A platform Localmind is launching its biggest release today since its original debut with the arrival of Localmind 2.0. The newly revamped platform represents a shift for the company, which, as you may remember, sits on top of Foursquare, allowing you to pose questions in real-time to those checked in at local venues.
Today, the company is expanding its focus by allowing users to ask questions of local “experts,” even if they’re not currently checked in to a given location. However, answers can still be replied to in real-time, preserving the sense of immediacy found in the original product. → Read More
Not yet familiar with digital storytelling platform Cowbird, despite recent glowing coverage from the likes of Wired and The Washington Post?
Well, if you like reading, seeing or listening to a good story as much as I do, you will be mighty glad I’m introducing you to the site today. → Read More
Remember when that Samsung product marketing manager Ryan Bidan let slip a few details on the next-gen GalTab and/or Galaxy Note? He mentioned the inclusion of an S-Pen, 3D gestures (courtesy of a front-facing camera), and voice controls. Well, it would seem that further proof of the product he was detailing has trickled out, and just like the last time, it’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth.
According to the Verge, Samsung posted an invitation to its Samsung Developer Day at MWC which just so happened to mention a Galaxy Note 10.1. Presumably, this would be a larger version of the Galaxy Note that excludes a 3G/4G radio but keeps the S-Pen. → Read More
Buck, the mobile payments company formerly known as Billing Revolution, is launching its new, single-click credit card checkout today, which allows shoppers to pay for goods or services without an account, username or password. Coinciding with the launch is news of where you can actually use the service: the company has lined up several new high-profile customers, including Glamour, SpyderLynk, Papaya Mobile and credit card processor Braintree.
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You can’t call StackMob a “backend service provider for mobile” anymore, because as of now, it’s a full end-to-end solution. The cloud-based platform for mobile developers is today launching hosted HTML5 services that tie to StackMob’s backend, making it the first platform offering integrated HTML5.
Developers can use the new service to host full HTML5 apps for desktop, tablet or mobile, or can use it to host the HTML5 running within their native apps.
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Local Response, a social advertising platform that allows local businesses to respond to the “check-in” with marketing campaigns, is launching a pro version of its analytics and action platform for marketers.
LocalResponse’s DirectResponse product aggregates real-time social media check-‐ins from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and dozens of other services to provide a simple interface for local businesses to directly respond to their most influential and valuable customers. What makes LocalResponse compelling is that it analyzes massive amounts of data in addition to check-ins from the Twitter firehose, photo sharing sites and more to find other forms of check-ins. These could be posting a picture on Instagram of a dish from a restaurant or Tweeting that you are visiting a particular bar. → Read More
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