MobileGuru.nl

Google Voice launches its very own phone booth

Peter Evers — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:32:32 +0000

Remember how every new medium needs to refer to an old medium before people finally understand its value? People finally understood the value of TV when they were showed a classic play on a tv screen. The first thing on the radio was people reading books out loud. And to get people used to making free phone calls (like we all did when we were young and helpless in the pre-mobile era) Google introduces their brand new phone booth. The phone booth promotes Google’s free phone call service Google Voice and will pop up at universities and airports across the US somewhere before the end of this year. The phone booths allow visitors to make free calls, just like the collect calls we made to tell our parents we were in trouble (or on holiday ;) ). Obviously if everyone would have an Android phone with Google Voice installed on it, these phone booths would be completely redundant.Similar Posts:

Guru Gear helps you to find the good stuff

Peter Evers — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:35:50 +0000

So today, just one day before my holiday, I was looking for all the right books to read. It was quite a hard job to pick the right ones. There’s so many titles that people I work with have been telling me about and there’s so many great books I read about on blogs and websites about the digital industry. It wasn’t easy to pick the right ones, but I managed to make a good selection. And then I thought about what I just did. I had essentially been curating an enormous selection of books. With all my knowledge and experience in the mobile atmosphere, I knew exactly what I needed to read.

And because I made the selection, I can now tell others. So that’s exactly what I did. I added a “Guru Gear” section to my website. In this section you can find all the products I’m writing about and all the books that have inspired me to write those articles. Keep an eye on the selection, because I will change it every once in a while. Chances are you might find something useful in there. And by buying it through Guru Gear, you’ll make a donation to this site too, at the exact same price as anywhere else. How’s that for a win-win situation?Similar Posts:

Amazon starts selling apps…or ‘active content titles’

Peter Evers — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:47:26 +0000

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Amazon, telling me they released the first two Kindle active content titles. So Amazon has officially kicked off their app store now. Although they prefer to call them “active content titles” instead of apps. When I wrote about Amazon’s announcement of the Kindle App Store earlier this year, I did mention that “..the e-ink technology is an opportunity to build apps people use for a longer time than just reading an article or playing a game, think crosswords or sudoku’s…” And, although this was an easy one, the two titles Amazon are releasing are from the same category. They are Shuffled Row and Every Word and to be fair, they are far from impressive. Both active content titles are classic games in a Kindle template.

However, I have to admit it’s hard to come up with very compelling app ideas when the e-paper makes it impossible to use any sort of motion. But let’s wait and see if the Active Content for Kindle will offer us more than revivals of old-school games.
Similar Posts:

iPhone users are very, very loyal

Peter Evers — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:01:04 +0000

Since the second quarter of 2010 Android is the leading smartphone operating system in the US. With 32% of US based phones running on Google’s OS, it seems that the big volumes of Android phones that are flooding the US market have finally resulted in the biggest piece of the pie. Apple comes in third with 22% of the market, after Blackberry, having 32% of the market. And as with many things, it seems that the US market is a great predictor of the European market. More and more, it seems that Android, iPhone OS and Blackberry are the three operating systems at the top of the market. Nokia does have a large EU market share too, but doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a compelling operating system and is rapidly losing out smartphone market share.

So when we zoom in on the three big players, what can we learn? Well, Nielsen Research released some interesting insight about customer loyalty among these brands today. Like displayed in the graph below, Blackberry users are the least loyal ones, and iPhone users the most loyal customers. An impressive 89% of all iPhone users doesn’t want anything else than an iPhone, while only 42% of Blackberry users want another Blackberry as their next phone. Android comes in second, with 71% of Android users not willing to switch to another brand. Interestingly, 21% of Android users wants an iPhone.

Similar Posts:

There’s something in between e-ink and LCD, it’s called IMOD

Peter Evers — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:04:18 +0000

In my last post about how the Kindle and iPad are companions instead of competitors, Ernst-Jan Pfauth asked an interesting question in the comment section. He asked if there’s a device on its way that merges the iPad’s color screen and video capability and the Kindle’s e-paper technology. The answer is yes. This autumn not-so-fancy tech company Qualcomm releases it’s Mirasol e-reader. It uses a brand new technology, innovated by Qualcomm itself, called IMOD. IMOD stands for Interferometric Modulation. Which basically means that the screen isn’t back lit, but utilizes the light that shines on the display to energize the screen. How’s that for some environment friendly technology? Below are two clips, depending on what you’re interested in, watch the first one for an explanation of the IMOD technology or the second one for a demo of the Qualcomm Mirasol.

Similar Posts:

The iPad and Kindle are companions

Peter Evers — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:42:50 +0000

Let’s settle this once and for all. I’ve been writing quite a couple of articles about the Kindle and the iPad. For a lot of Apple fanatics it feels like Apple’s is taking on yet another company that thinks they can build better products than them. But it’s not like that at all. The Kindle could be considered as a tablet computer, but it has only one real thing it’s really good at: letting people read books. An iPad has a screen with backlight, and everyone knows proper reading sessions will eventually be very uncomfortable for the eyes. However, the iPad is great for much more other stuff like video, gaming and browsing the web. I’ve been trying to explain this to people quite a lot, but Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, definitely did a better job than me on this on TechCrunch TV today. Have a look, it’s just six minutes. Don’t have the time or no sound available? You can read the most important quotes below the video.

“We don’t need full motion video, the Kindle is all about reading. People want a purpose built device, where every single design decision has been made in order to optimize the reading experience.”

“You know what the number one thing is that people are currently doing on their iPad? They’re playing a game called Angry Birds, where you throw birds at pigs and then the pigs blow up. You know what the number one thing is that people are doing on their Kindle right now? They are reading a book by Stieg Larsen.”

“Kindle Books are buy-once, read-everywhere. With WhisperSync you can read a little bit on your Blackberry, read a little bit on your iPad and then for a two hour reading session you get the Kindle in.”

“Most people have never even seen an e-paper display, they do a double take, because it is so different.”

“I think we live in a multi-device world, you’re going to have an iPad, a smartphone, a laptop, and when you want to sit down and read a 300 page book, you have a Kindle.”

“Every internet connected device is good for Amazon, because they make it easier for people to shop on Amazon. Every new device gives us an incremental tailwind.”

“From the data we’re getting from WhisperSync we’re seeing a strong usage pattern. We can see people moving between devices all the time while they read a book. That’s why we are so focused on buy-one, read-everywhere.”

Similar Posts:

There might be a virus on your Android phone

Peter Evers — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:18:28 +0000

Sorry for the potential shocking title, but according to mobile security company Lookout the massive success of the mobile application has caused a rapidly growing number of mobile security threats. The founders of Lookout already demonstrated this back in 2005, when they exposed private data of celebrities attending the Academy Awards ceremony. The rise of mobile apps has made this threat even bigger, because lots of mobile apps you have probably installed on your phone access your private data in a potentially insecure way. To make sure your private data is safe you can download the free mobile virus scanner, Lookout’s main product. It is available on Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

To further research the potential danger of mobile apps, Lookout has started the App Genome Project. In this research project 300,000 free applications have been scanned on potential security risks. And only days after the release of the results there are already a couple of apps that are heavily blacklisted, such as all wallpaper apps by Android developer Jackeey. Over a million users have downloaded these wallpapers, needless to say, you might want to check your phone and uninstall them. And, although no one wants to give away his or her private data without consent, these rogue apps do not have access to your Google Checkout Account. So don’t worry about that.

In the infographic below you can see the results that came out of the scanning of 100,000 Android and iPhone apps (yes, iPhone user, you might be at risk too). Click it to enlarge it.

Similar Posts:

The great power of Foursquare badges

Peter Evers — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:05:26 +0000

What once started out as a kinda nerdy service, Foursquare has now reinvented itself and closes some interesting commercial partnerships. The social networking service that helps you check-in at places you go to, like bars, restaurants and clubs, has recently started a partnership with the American cable network VH1. The partnership consists of celebrity tips on places to go and trying to win the VH1 Fanatic Badge that gets you unlimited access to Livenation concerts for a year (check out the commercial). This kind of partnership just has to work, VH1 can steer Foursquare users to the places they like them to go to, by sending out celebrity tips and on top of that, they encourage users to check-in as much as they can to earn a special badge, resulting in maximum exposure on Foursquare. No banner can top that, for sure.

And it’s not Foursquare’s first clever partnership. Earlier this year they partnered up with Warner Brothers for the movie Valentine’s Day and selected fifty romantic venues in New York, that users could check-in to earn a special badge to go and see the film. Also, they partnered with the American TV show How to make it in America for which they designed four special badges for users that checked-in to the places from the show. And that’s not all, Foursquare has other great deals with Zagat (weekly “Meet the Mayor” interview about restaurants) and Harvard University (special Harvard badge).

I remember seeing a talk by Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley at Mobile Monday Amsterdam back in November last year (see clip below). It was pretty inspiring to hear him talk all about the value of the data Foursquare was collecting and the plans he had with it. One particular thing I remembered, is that the fact that Foursquare only seems to be about nightlife is just a result of the prototype they started out with. The prototype got really popular and they had to keep the service working well, so had no time to set Foursquare up for other types of behaviour. But in a way, you can use Foursquare to stimulate any kind of behaviour. For instance, parenting, Foursquare could give out their special incentive, the badge, if parents check-in with their kids at healthy restaurants or theme parks. This way, Foursquare educates parents, and stimulates the actual execution of this education through badges. I can totally see this work for any kind of behaviour.

Similar Posts:

The affiliate model is the way forward for mobile and social media

You’re not a true mobile guru without a mobile app

Peter Evers — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:03:57 +0000

That’s what I thought when I woke up this morning. So since I don’t want to have my regular iPhone and Android developers working on my own iPhone and Android app (they got lots of other projects to work on!), I decided to look for some easy alternatives. After a couple of thoughts about outsourcing the project to India or Russia, I googled for some online tools to build your own iPhone and Android app. As I was hoping for, there are a couple of tools for that. The one I found best is iSites, praised by Mashable’s Ben Parr, who built a great app for himself using iSites. Building the Android and iPhone app using iSites only took me a couple of hours, and I don’t have any programming experience. Publishing it costs 299 dollars for an iPhone app and 99 dollars for the Android one, which isn’t much, but the guys at iSites were very kind to give me a nice discount. I just pressed “publish”, so I will let you know when they are ready to be downloaded. And remember, these apps are built with an online content management system for apps, they’re not custom made….or are they? Exactly.

Similar Posts:

Flipboard makes you wish you had an iPad

Peter Evers — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:13:40 +0000

Flipboard is the name of a new iPad app. And it might just be the name of the app every iPad owner has been waiting for. Flipboard is best described as simply ‘a social magazine’. It makes a magazine out of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends, combined with some Twitter lists, blogs or news sites, recommended by Flipboard. According to Robert Scoble, one of the most influential tech watchers around, this app completely justifies the acquisition of an iPad. It is the killer app he has been waiting for. And to be fair, it does look absolutely smashing. It looks a lot better than Read it Later’s product “Digest”, a web service that turns your saved articles into a magazine format. And not only the looks are good, this is exactly what I need in terms of functionality. I hate plunging around the internet, going to hundreds of websites, or fiddling around with an RSS reader that just gets you depressed whenever you look at it. I need something I can look at, and read, without any clicking and going to other websites. The content is just there, in a slick interface and moderated by all of my online buddies. Now all I need is an iPad. Give me another week and I’ll tell you how Flipboard works for me. Below is a very very promising demo clip, here’s an interview with one of Flipboard’s co-founders or you can just download Flipboard.

Fun fact! Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher is one of the investors in Flipboard. Not just a pretty face…Similar Posts: