There’s been lots of debate about whether mobile apps or the web have the upper hand when it comes to making content for smartphones, and when it comes to using it. Some interesting insights from Nielsen out today on how in the case of mobile shopping, for now the main audience in the U.S. seems to be much more interested in using the mobile web over store-specific apps.

The research, which took into account data from some 5,000 Android and iOS smartphones in the U.S., doesn’t spell out how much money is actually spent on mobile web versus apps. And it looks like at least in the period covered by the research — which included the holiday shopping season — the results may have been particularly skewed by the sheer force of Amazon.

Nielsen notes that combining both mobile web and apps, the top five retailers’ sites — Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target and Walmart — reached 60 percent of smartphone users. But as you can see in the table above, apps appeared to attract half as many users as mobile web sites did each month.

Nielsen also notes, for what it’s worth, that men are more likely to use apps than women, who opt for mobile web sites. And more men than women visited Best Buy on mobile, while Target and Walmart attracted more mobile women. eBay and Amazon, it seems transcend these lines, attracting both in equal measures.

But as you can see from the table below, it seems like the market had something of an Amazon effect on it: Amazon’s own mobile website had a disproportionate amount of traffic compared to the others. That could have contributed to the overall picture of apps having less usage than the mobile web sites:

But whether retailers are using apps or mobile web (or ideally both) to target users, there seems to be another, probably more important message about the state of mobile shopping, and what retailers should be focussing on fixing:

In the case of both apps and web, while users spiked during the holiday season, that was not sustained by any of them: “By January, active reach was back to October 2011 levels,” notes John Burbank, president of strategic initiatives at Nielsen.

Nokia and Microsoft, sitting in a tree. K.I.S.S.i.n.g. First came WinPhone, then comes ARM tabs, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!

If an unconfirmed Digitimes report is to be believed, Nokia is set to release a 10-inch Windows 8 later this year. The report says the tablet would hit the streets sometime in the fourth quarter, which would likely make this tablet among the first batch of Windows 8 tablets. It’s reportedly built on a dual-core Qualcomm ARM chipset allowing Nokia to keep the price competitive with the iPad.

But the timing is perfect. A Nokia tablet, if it’s built to the same quality standards as the Lumia 800/900 smartphone, is exactly what Microsoft needs to kickstart Windows 8 and properly fight the iPad.

Right now Nokia is winning. The company leapfrogged HTC and Samsung in just one quarter to become the top Windows Phone vendor. Consumers are loving the Lumia product line; The Verge’s Chris Ziegler declared that he might replace his Galaxy Nexus with the 900. They’re great products and are quickly making fans. By the time this tablet rolls around, it’s completely plausible that Windows Phones, led by the quality Nokia Lumia line, will be the new iPhone alternative. People are going to want companion tablets.

There is still plenty of room for another tablet platform. iOS is the dominant platform, but outside of highly curated devices like the Fire and Nook Tablet, Android has so far struggled. A Windows device led with a smart and powerful marketing campaign could break the iPad’s tight grip.

Microsoft needs an instant fan favorite to get Windows 8 off the ground. Samsung, Asus and HP’s recent stumbles show they cannot be trusted with such a task. Windows 8 does not need a clusterstorm of Galaxy Tab-ish devices. The platform needs a flagship device to rally behind. Nokia is the only vendor I would trust with the task. I’m that taken by the Lumia 800/900.

It wasn’t that long ago that Nokia was all but dead. But then they signed a deal with Redmond that essentially saved the company by forcing it back to its mass-market roots. The company is still producing a gaggle of low-cost handsets, but its affordable Lumia Windows Phone product line is classic Nokia: solid plastic feel, a forever battery life, and reliable software. Hopefully a Nokia tablet would be more of the same.

Digitimes cites sources at upstream component suppliers for its info. There’s really no way to verify the report. However, Nokia has long talked of a Windows 8 tablet; one is on its way. It’s going to have a seemingly no-win situation no matter when it launches. If this latest report is correct, the Nokia tab would have to battle not only the new iPad but also likely a new Amazon Fire. If Nokia pushes the launch until 2013, it would have to fight for market share against the new new iPad. Still, it’s important to remember that it’s never too late to launch a great product. Hopefully a Nokia/Windows 8 tablet will be such a device.

If you are among those who feel that we see too many infographics these days, be prepared for a little more eye candy: Visual.ly, which offers an online tool to create instant visualizations of data, is launching its first public product out of beta.

The service will let users take publicly-available data such as information from a Twitter hashtag or a Facebook feed, and then select a template (currently five, with each having two to three variations within it) to instantly visualize it. It will also team up with third parties and brands to offer other data feeds to users: one, for example, will involve sports statistics from ESPN.

While infographics seem like the kind of thing that would mostly be the domain of number-crunching analysts and journalists, created for consumption by the wider public, the use of Visual.ly’s beta — launched last year — testifies to there being a bigger audience for actually making these pictures firsthand.

Stew Langille, the company’s founder and CEO, tells TechCrunch that since launching that beta, it has seen the creation of over 11,000 infographics and seen 2 million visitors per month. And more than than 500,000 people have used the specially-created Twitter Visualizer since it launched in July 2011.

“There’s a reason why we’re seeing so many infographics,” he says. “It’s because it’s just a better way of telling a story.”

The company also continues to work directly with companies to create custom infographics for news organizations as well as brands — these have included Showtime, Smirnoff and Cisco — and Langille concedes that for now this is where the company’s primary revenue generation lies. Another important partnership for Visual.ly, he notes, is with Tableau Software, the business intelligence software company — that could point to the kind of place where Visual.ly might land itself one day.

But for now, the company, which has raised $4.4 million to date and is likely to go for another round in Q4, is still focused on building out more ways of visually representing data and ways of then offering that for use by everyday people. Langille, and his co-founder Lee Sherman, both hail from Mint.com, and as with that site, which attempts to make personal money management tools into something usable by everyone, the idea is that Visual.ly can also have a wider remit.

He talks of the impact that blogging sites like WordPress, Pinterest and  even Facebook’s Timeline — in itself a kind of constantly changing infographic — have had on how people have chosen to be creative online.

WordPress he singles out also for the role that “crowdsourced” design has played to usher in that process: the idea is that someday Visual.ly will have the same kind of design repository for representing information, and that information could then be used anywhere. “We want to turn data into something that is really beautiful and usable.”

Over the holidays, eBay and PayPal both pushed the term ‘couch commerce,’, in which consumers use their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches. In fact, eBay launched a new feature of its iPad app called Watch With eBay, which allowed users to shop a selection of items on the marketplace related to what they are currently watching on TV. Today, eBay is separating out the feature into a standalone, free iPad app.

The Watch With eBay app surfaces merchandise related to what consumers are watching on television, from the latest fashion trends at red carpet awards shows to sports memorabilia, to DVDs, signed autographs and other items related to favorite shows and actors.

As eBay says, a reported 86 percent of mobile Internet surfers use their smartphones and tablets as their “second screens” simultaneously while watching their favorite shows. While many consumers look to eBay with a specific intent for an item, eBay believes there is tremendous potential in engaging people when they are not necessarily on a shopping mission.

The app itself includes a program guide consumers can use to access content related to their favorite television shows in real-time with the ability to curate content by category. Users tap “Watch with eBay” and type in their zip code, cable provider, channel and the program they are currently watching; and using show and event-specific key word searches, the app will surface relevant merchandise from the more than 300 million listings available on the eBay marketplace.

Consumers can browse or choose to eliminate a keyword to pull up the most relevant listings. For example, a New York Yankees fan watching a Yankees vs. Red Sox game can filter out “Red Sox” and view listings only for the Yankees.

Another feature called eBay Celebrity gives users an inside look at featured celebrities’ favorite items, and eBay will curate shopping results related to the celebrity picks and provides the option to donate to a benefiting charity at check out. Some celebrities will interact with consumers through original content, video and message boards.

As eBay mobile VP Steve Yankovich tells us, “apps on TV don’t work. It’s about providing a second screen experience.” He feels the app’s ability to add product discovery to the TV watching experience will attract a lot of consumers. Already he says, Watch With eBay on the marketplace’s standalone app has become a popular feature among users.

The online video market in China is a fragmented scene dominated by national portals where sites like YouTube don’t even get a look in; but today sees that market move one step closer to consolidation, with the news that the two largest video portals, Youku and Tudou, will be merging in an all-stock deal, to take control of nearly half the online video market in the country.

The merger caps off a period of intense rivalry between the two, which included spars over TV rights and the ability to index each other’s content on respective sites. Now, it seems all that is water under the bridge: the companies say in a release that the new company will be known as Youku Tudou, and shareholders in Youku will own 71.5 percent, while Tudou shareholders will have 28.5 percent.

The combined entity, according to figures from iResearch (via TechInAsia), will control 49 percent of the Chinese online video market, with the next-biggest being Xunlei at only 11.3 percent.

The market for online video in China is still in its early days — Analysys International says that the market only brought in $267 million last year — so this deal could be seen as laying the groundwork of sorts for the next step ahead.

Indeed, Youku and Tudou are playing this as “the next phase in online video development in China,” in the words of Youku’s CEO and founder Victor Koo. Most significantly, that will include unprecedented audience scale against which to sell advertising as well as have leverage in premium content negotiations. But it will also mean a huge content library, the most extensive distribution/bandwidth infrastructure and the biggest portfolio of technology to improve the experience and better monetize it.

But although the two are combining, it looks like Tudou intends to retain its own distinct brand in the group. That is important because although its market capitalization is smaller — $402 million compared to Youku’s $1.93 billion (FactSet Research Systems via WSJ), its audience still made up 18.8 percent of all video streams in the country pre-merger. That points to some customer affinity and loyalty that would be crazy to abandon in a market with so many choices.

The companies say that both boards have now approved the transaction, although it is still subject to SEC clearance in the U.S. because both are publicly listed. The two are holding a call later today to talk more details, with a live webcast at 8 a.m. Eastern time to be broadcast here.

There are loads of startups trying to build a social TV experience that goes beyond checking in to your favorite TV shows. Now social TV app Peel is taking a stab at it, and it’s aiming at one show in particular: American Idol.

The new version of the Peel app (which, to be clear, is not officially connected to the show) will provide a parallel experience as you watch. As each contestant takes the stage, you can tap the screen to either boo or cheer them — not just once, but as many times as you want. Maybe one cheer for their song choice, and then a boo as they stumble, and then three cheers as they hit a particularly tough note. A sliding bar shows how much the entire participating audience has booed and cheered, and you can boo and cheer the judges as they rate the singers. Plus, there’s a button to tweet your thoughts as you follow along.

Once one singer finishes, the app automatically slides the next contestant in place for the same treatment. (Apparently this synchronization is achieved through the amazing technology of having someone watching the live show on the East Coast and hitting a button as each new singer goes on — the timing is then transposed to other time zones.) After the voting is done, the results are displayed in a leaderboard, showing how the performers stacked up against each other, and with iTunes links to download the songs.

Vice president of marketing Scott Ellis demonstrated the app for me last week. He says the company is trying to strike a balance, creating an app that’s engaging but not so much so that it completely distracts you from the actual TV. This initial attempt is more on the simple side, and over time, Peel will probably add more features. For example, Ellis says he’d like to add a button allowing people to cast their vote for their favorite contestant on American Idol itself (i.e., determining the real winner, not just the one in Peel). The company could also add slides with additional content for various commercials, as one possible monetization strategy.

This experience could be extended to other competitive reality shows too — Ellis says Dancing With The Stars is the next likely candidate. However, he also says the format might be tweaked to fit with other television genres as well, like drama.

You can download the Peel iPhone app here.

The history of location-based social discovery apps is a lot longer than the current hype surrounding Highlight and Glancee, currently darlings of the South by Southwest festival.

Back in 2007 TechCrunch’s founder Mike Arrington noted the existence of social mobile apps like Lime Juice, Rummble, Mig33, ZYB, Mocospace, Aka-Aki, Nokia Sensor, Dodgeball, Mobiluck, MeetMoi and Imity, just to name a few. The problem was none had critical mass, in part because smartphones were still thin on the ground. Nokia’s Sensor app was way ahead of its time, but only worked on Nokias and via Bluetooth to “see” who was around you. Aka-Aki had a little more success out of Berlin for a while but in recent years has been eclipsed by newer players. Badoo remains the one to beat in this sector, with 115 million users and many using it via mobile apps.

The first uses of these types of location based ‘social discovery’ apps appealed, shall we say, to the baser instincts: hooking up with people for fun and frolics. But there’s a new use on the block and it’s rearing its ominous head at South by Southwest: recruiting.

I first became aware of this when a friend in a startup posted a comment on the status update of Venture Capitalist, who in turn was complaining about the battery-sucking properties of Highlight. They said:

“Our recruiter has been using it to find really solid digital people he wants to poach.”

Bingo. Because the very interesting aspect of these new apps is this: They are usually set to expose your profile in public as a default. Few people are enabling “friends of friends” only on the privacy settings, and perhaps there are plenty of people at SXSW who feel relaxed about discovering new people anyway.

Even then, you only need to be a friend of a friend of a recruiter and they will be able to look into your Highlight profile and check out whether they should be wooing you for a client.

Is this going to lead to companies asking employees not to use these apps? Will we see lawsuits along the lines of those we’ve seen pop up around people’s use of LinkedIn, in terms of making themselves open to offers from other companies? It’s very, very early days – so who knows. Apps like Workaround.me don’t run in the background yet, though they probably will begin to soon enough.

So the next time you’re approached by someone at a tech event and it turns out they’re a recruiter, check whether they got to you via your social discovery app or not. The answer may prove very to be interesting.

With $10.5 million in funding behind it, Wrapp, an app that lets users buy gift cards from a variety of retailers and send them on as presents, is now launching in the UK as both an Android and Apple app, its first step beyond Sweden in an international strategy that will also see the company come to the U.S. later this year.

To kick off the service, the app is offering gift cards from a variety of top UK retailers — a sign not only of how these shops believe enough in the product to give it a try, but a mark of where the app’s creators are looking to pitch the business longer term. The list includes ASOS; the retail group Aurora Fashions (which includes high street fixtures Coast, Oasis; Warehouse and Karen Millen); and the gym chain Fitness First.

Wrapp only launched in mid-November 2011 in Sweden but in that time it has seen some impressive growth, with 150,000 consumers buying nearly 1 million gift cards since opening for business.

Although many retailers have moved into offering their own mobile apps to drive sales, Wrapp believes it fills a hole in the market for aggregating all of these together in the area of gift cards: “Most retailers have their own apps, but they also like to be grouped with others for visibility, just as they like to be on high street and in shopping malls,” says Hjalmar Winbladh, a co-founder and CEO of the company.

And similar to Shopkick, the point of the app for those retailers is to actually drive more sales in the brick-and-mortar environment. But there are also signs of how Wrapp is not just about bricks-and-mortar plays: also included in today’s launch list is iSubscriber, covering magazine and newspaper subscriptions for 2,000 titles, as well as the language learning software Rosetta Stone and Theater Tokens, which lets users buy tokens to exchange for theater tickets at some 240 different venues.

But there is also a limit to how far this will go. Winbladh notes that Wrapp has no intention of taking any steps into becoming a kind of mobile wallet, managing the shopping experience on behalf of others. Indeed, that is a space that has become increasingly crowded with many other players, too.

The UK is a fitting first international market for the company: the country already has a £4.5 billion industry in gift cards, which already account for 12 percent of retail sales, according to the UK Gift Card & Voucher Association. It also helps that the UK has a very big smartphone (and iPhone) market, with more than 50 percent penetration.

And that’s because at the moment, to gift or use a gift card with Wrapp, you need either an iPhone or Android smartphone: to collect a gift card you click on the link sent to you in email, text message (SMS) or on your Facebook wall, which lets the user automatically download the Wrapp app. To use the card, you select the card you want to redeem, and then show the resulting barcode to the cashier, which then gets scanned to complete the transaction. You can see how eventually this app could be extended to work on non-smartphone devices, too.

Wrapp is worth watching not just because it is tapping into a service, gift cards, that has yet to be really disrupted, but also because of its impressive list of founders and backers. Winbladh is known as a serial entrepreneur in Sweden, and this is his fourth startup. The first, SendIT, was sold to Microsoft in 1999 for $128 million. He also founded the VoIP giant Rebtel.

Other founders include Andreas Ehn, the founding CTO of Spotify; Carl Fritjofsson, strategy advisor to Groupon.se; Aage Reerslev, founder of mobile browser Squace; and Fabian Mansson, former CEO of H&M and Eddie Bauer, who now serves as Wrapp’s chairman. (That also begs the question of when H&M might join the Wrapp party: Winbladh laughed mysteriously when I mentioned this to him on the phone, so it may be that we’ll see that announcement come up soon enough. That would be a big boost for the company, given how popular H&M is in its home country of Sweden, the UK and the U.S.)

Investors, meanwhile, are also an illustrious bunch: they include Greylock Partners and Atomico, the VC firm formed by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype, KaZaa and other companies, and Creandum. As part of the most recent round from January, Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman joined Zennström, and Creandum partner Johan Brenner on Wrapp’s board of directors.

While Windbladh would not say what the rest of the company’s plans might be in terms of its international expansion, the languages listed as supported by the app in its App Store view could point some way to an indicator of where it might be expanding next: they include, in addition to English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Romanian, Russian and Spanish.

March Madness is about to start, and for many friends and co-workers, that means it’s betting time. This year, however, RRE Ventures-backed startup numberFire wants you to make those bets based on real data and math.

The company just launched a new Facebook app called the March Radness Challenge. The problem, says CEO Nik Bonaddio, is that most people have no idea who’s going to win each game in the basketball tournament. That’s where numberFire comes in, bringing what Bonaddio calls a “MoneyBall-ish” approach to sports: “The data is there, so let’s use math and the power of big data/distributed computing to unlock the secrets of what’s actually going on, and then use that to understand what will happen next.”

The app allows you to create a March Madness pool, and it handles all the scoring. As you’re filling out the bracket, it also displays a “need help?” link. If you click on it, you’ll see the numberFire projection for the game, as well as the analytics and data behind that projection. That way, you’re not just betting based on instinct and sentiment. (Disclosure: I know pathetically little about March Madness, but TechCrunch writer Rip Empson assures me that the app is “cool” and “crazy smaht.”) (Yes, he said “smaht” in an email.)

numberFire also partnered with StubHub to offer $50 gift cards as a prize to the biggest groups in the app, and with Thrillist for recommendations on where to watch the games. (Thrillist is also helping with marketing.) And if you pick every item correctly, you’re eligible to win a $100,000 prize.

Today sees the launch of one more venture capital fund backed by a large European telecoms carrier: Orange, the retail face of France Telecom, is teaming up with the advertising giant Publicis and Iris Capital Management to start OP Ventures Growth, a new $400-million-plus fund to back French and other European technology startups.

Orange and Publicis are contributing half of those funds, $200 million (€150 million) with the total to be used both for seed capital/early stage investments, as well as later rounds; and the deal will see the carrier and ad giant effectively become minority partners (24.5 percent each) in Iris.

The move underscores how the older guard of media and communications are continuing to invest to make sure that they, too, are in the thick of newer innovations — and they are using the vehicle of VC cash to get there. The move comes just a week after Telefonica also announced more startup activities — the launch of its Wayra incubator — and amidst reports that the Spanish carrier is gearing up,  within days, to announce another significant investment in a startup.

OP Ventures says it will be looking to invest up to €15 million ($20 million) in individual projects. Meanwhile, seed and early-stage investments will likely be more in the region of up to €3 million ($6 million) per project.

These will be divided into three groups: OP Ventures Growth will target established companies in France and Europe, providing up to 15 million euros per project; OP Ventures Global will invest in start-ups outside Europe, also with funds of up to 15 million euros per project; and OP Ventures Early Stage will provide seed-capital and early-stage investment of up to 3 million euros to young companies in France and Europe, the company said in a news release. The group says in a release the first two are “immediately operational” with the third to come online by the second quarter of 2012.

This is not the first time that Orange has acted as VC — or the first time it has partnered with Publicis to do it.

Orange has stakes in both the streaming music service Deezer, as well as 49 percent of the online video site DailyMotion, for which it paid $80 million. Both of these were strategic investments for the company: it has an extensive IPTV/mobile operation in France and has integrated both of these services into those offerings, using them to upsell its customers into more advanced services.

(Orange also has extensive holdings outside of France, including a mobile JV in the UK with T-Mobile called Everything Everywhere, as well as mobile operations across the rest of Europe and in emerging markets like Africa. It has not made as much of a converge play in these other markets, as it has in France.)

The Deezer investment, a minority share of an undisclosed amount, has also seen Orange taking the service into other markets like the UK, but last month, TechCrunch understands that while Orange decided to keep its stake in Deezer, it decided not to increase its investment in the company; this new activity may have been one reason why.

Orange also announced in November 2011 that it was teaming up with Publicis for a $300-million VC fund. It’s unclear whether today’s announcement is the transferring of that fund, or a new one altogether. (We’re finding out.) Update: An Orange spokesperson confirmed to me that this is the same tranche of money that Orange and Publicis announced last November, not a new round of investment.

Within OP Ventures, Orange and Publicis Groupe will each have a minority 24.5 percent interest in Paris- based Iris. Iris’ management meanwhile keep a controlling 51 percent interest. The company will continue to be run by Iris’ Pierre de Fouquet and Antoine Garrigues, with the supervisory board including Maurice Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe and Gervais Pellissier, deputy CEO of France Télécom-Orange, who becomes deputy chairman.

Partnering with Iris for the fund is a smart move for the other two: the company has been around since 1986 and has contacts in the investment communities of some 18 European countries, where it has in total invested $1.1 billion. Iris already manages funds for some of Europe’s biggest public venture funds, including the European Investment Fund and French public investor CDC Entreprises (Groupe Caisse des Dépôts). Some recent investments include stakes in Mediastay, an online games monetization platform; Berlin-based search-engine optimization company Searchmetrics; and Clear2Pay, a Belgian company specializing in payment technology solutions.

For a lot of people, Chris DeWolfe is still best known as the co-founder of pioneering social network Myspace — but even with that big name success under his belt, it’s fair to say he is not resting on his laurels just yet. For the past two years he has been heads down building an increasingly powerful social gaming company SGN, which was recently previously known as MindJolt, that is aiming to give Zynga a run for its money by making games that bridge Facebook, mobile and the web.

We talked to DeWolfe this weekend at the South By Southwest Interactive conference. You can watch the interview in the video above to see him discuss the lessons he learned after selling Myspace to NewsCorp, why Zynga and Facebook could start to lose an edge post-IPO, SGN’s huge female following, and more.

When I first heard the news of Peter Bergman’s death, it came in the relatively old fashioned form of an email from my brother. He’d seen a tweet about it, and figured I’d heard already. Peter was one of four who made up the Firesign Theatre, and suddenly there would never be another chance to take them for granted.

For all of my adult life, I’ve orbited in the outer regions of their solar system. In college, I abandoned the curriculum to play their records late at night on the 40 watt campus radio station. It was the birth of what was called underground radio, then Album Oriented Rock, as FM took over the airwaves. The new Firesign record was a cultural event, right up there with a Beatle or Dylan release, and equal in its power to sink into the DNA of the times.

Inevitably, or as inevitable as I could make it, I was in the room with them as they wrote the script for what became the Martian Space Party, a short film I directed and produced with the group about the National Surrealist Light Peoples Party presidential political convention. This was 1972, the year Nixon broke into the Watergate, most likely to get the goods on John Lennon before he could give peace a chance. Lennon wore the film’s Not Insane campaign button until he won his fight to stay in America.

The magic of the recording studio gave way to the personal computer, the Internet, and social media. The world Firesign modeled in their surreal vision of the near future has become the default. We still love to repeat the catch phrases, the touchstones of our love-in with infinite possibility, but now they are the language of Likes and retweets, OMG and LMFAO, check-ins and iPads. How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all? Easy. It’s called Facebook.

When we’re young, we think we’re immortal. And if we live that way, we are. Losing Peter Bergman is the cruelest of jokes for a generation now struggling with being whittled down to a size we thought we’d eluded. The Sixties was a time for authorized magical thinking, banned by the government as a favor to the “leaders” of the Movement. All we were saying was give war a rest. What were we thinking?

The Firesign spoke as one animal with four heads, as Robert Grossman illustrated on a cover of one of their famous records. With Bergman gone, you’d think that voice was stilled. I feared so, until I listened again with the new day. Even on his last netcast, as he raked over the pinheads in the race for losing to Obama, you could hear the glorious joy of being right AND being funny about it. For what Firesign knows, and so do we who’ve been incurably infected by them, is that when we laugh, we’re eyes wide open.

One of the four, I don’t remember which one, said the Firesign Theatre is a state of mind. In fact, it’s a country of mimes and one of which I’m proud to be a citizen. The more Peter’s swift and sudden death stings and terrifies, the more grateful I am for the forces that brought these four poets together as they did that other four. Even now, I can hear Peter clear as a bell reminding us in some random conversation with a conviction that brooked no argument even as it sounded faintly absurd: “There are no accidents.” Except maybe this time.

In 1973 I traveled to New York to see my mother in the hospital, where she’d just undergone a second mastectomy after 5 years of remission. Her illness had brought us together after many years of estrangement, and though I knew of her work translating and dubbing the classic New Wave films of that time, she had no idea of who I was becoming as an adult. I was in town to premiere the Martian Space Party at a WBAI benefit concert and make a deal with New Line Cinema to distribute it with Reefer Madness.

But first, I lugged her 16mm projector into her hospital room and set it up to project on the wall opposite her bed. As we sat in the afternoon gloom and the movie unspooled, my mother was transformed by her delight in the love of language, the magic of the group’s verbal alchemy, the fact that somehow her son had something to do with this. Today my eyes are filled with those same tears of joy, how insanely lucky to know these 4 or 5 crazy guys at all.

It’s not just startups that are trying to push what’s possible with mobile advertising — the Gap recently completed an ad campaign combining traditional transit ads with geo-fencing technology.

Here’s how the campaign worked: The Gap worked with out-of-home ad company Titan to place ads at bus stops and other transit locations in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. Then Titan created geofences around the ads, which activated the mobile part of the campaign for people who were nearby. In other words, you might see a Gap ad at a bus station, then while you’re waiting for the bus to arrive, you open up Words With Friends, which serves another ad, this time with a coupon for $10 off a $50 purchase. (If the app is running in the background, the ad could still deliver if you open the app within two hours of leaving the area.)

Chris Gayton, Gap’s senior director of media and brand engagement, says the campaign was a good way to “close the loop” by giving someone incentive to come into the store right after Gap has delivered its big, colorful brand message. And the results are promising. Gap and Titan say the campaign, which ran from Feb 20 to March 6, delivered 2.5 million impressions, with a 0.93 percent clickthrough rate. (San Francisco did the best, with a 1.17 percent CTR.) That’s pretty good compared to a standard mobile clickthrough rate of 0.2 percent.

Gayton says he’s definitely interested in experimenting with similar campaigns in the future. And while the initial effort was focused on coupons (because that’s an easy way to track how many sales the ads are driving), the technology could also be used to deliver ads that go beyond a static image, say by including a video or a link to more information.

Dave Etherington, Titan’s senior vice president of marketing and mobile, adds that this is part of a larger shift in out-of-home advertising market (a category that includes billboards and all the other outdoor advertising that you say).

“The lines are kind of blurring,” he says. “You’re only a click away now from rich brand experiences and purchases.”

Instagram, the photo-sharing app that has taken a definitive lead on iOS, said it has surpassed 27 million registered users today at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas.

Co-founder Kevin Systrom didn’t disclose daily active users during his fireside chat with TechCrunch editor Alexia Tsotsis. But he did say of all the users who have been active in the last week, 67 percent of them used the app yesterday.

“It’s Facebook-level engagement that we’re seeing,” Systrom said.

He didn’t really offer any clarity on rumors that the company is raising $40 million at a $500 million valuation.

“Good companies are always fundraising,” he said. “Whether you’re meeting people or considering firms, you’re always fundraising. But it doesn’t mean we’re active. We’re trying to create a long-term, viable company that doesn’t come and go with fads. It should be something that lasts and creates meaningful value.”

Systrom also had one more thing up his sleeve — he showed off the company’s upcoming Android app. He waved it around very briefly on-stage, but he didn’t give a full demo. (That’s for later, and the company tells us they aren’t totally ready for a walkthrough yet.)

“In some ways, it’s better than our iOS app. It’s crazy,” he said.

Co-founder Mike Krieger added that folks over at Android have been pretty impressed with the way the app leverages the platform. It’s taken awhile to come to Android simply because the company was focused on scaling on iOS, Systrom said.

“I don’t think it took us so long. We just had priorities. Had we tried to be both on Android and iPhone at the same time, it would’ve been tough to innovate in the way that we have,” he said.

He was also coy about what Instagram’s business model will ultimately end up being. The app currently doesn’t have any advertising and it doesn’t have any in-app purchases. Path, in contrast, sells some filters. (But it also has far fewer users with the latest publicly shared figure being 2 million registered users.)

“We have a visual platform and advertisers like visual mediums. They like TV and magazines, but attention is moving online and they want to switch,” he said. “I do believe that Instagram has put a stake in the ground and we’re growing more quickly than anyone. Is there something in there we could do to make it a multi-billion dollar business? I think we can figure out something along the way.”

Launched in the fall of 2010, Instagram grew out of some unsuccessful experiments in location sharing. While the company would have been too late to a crowded space that included Foursquare and ultimately Facebook Places, Systrom and Krieger saw that their beta users were sharing tons of photos.

“I was not super pumped up about location-based services. But I saw that what Kevin was doing was more about sharing the story of a place,” Krieger said.

Systrom added, “Burbn never really failed. We just never really let it fly.”

They quickly turned around a native iOS app that seemed to marry elements of paid camera app Hipstamatic with social features. It was perfect timing since the iPhone 4 was just arriving on the market and the device finally had a camera that produced photos of comparable quality to what point-and-shoot cameras could do. Apple also had an installed base of iOS devices that was finally large enough to produce the network effects that Instagram needed to take off.

“Mobile has created a totally different dynamic for discovering apps,” Systrom said. “You’re sitting in a bar and your friend is taking some pictures and then you ask what app they’re using.”

The app was soon a home run that quickly secured a top ranking among photography apps and then a consistently high ranking on the free app charts. On the first day, 25,000 registered users showed up. The challenge soon became about scaling the back-end and infrastructure.

“From then until now, it’s been a hockey stick,” Systrom said. “We’ve been very lucky with scaling. The difference is that we’re served out of the cloud and we can call up instances with the demand. We also have a fantastic team that focuses on scale.”

Just months after that, the company picked up a $7 million Series A round led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from Baseline Ventures, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, Chris Sacca and Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo. Benchmark partner and Facebook alum Matt Cohler joined the board.

Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Nir Eyal (@nireyal) and Katy Fike, PhD (@innovate50). Katy is a gerontologist and partner at Innovate50 while Nir is a founder of two startups and blogs about technology and behavior design at nirandfar.com.

As web watchers, entrepreneurs, and investors search for the next big thing, they’d be wise to focus on innovations that can be easily adopted by technology novices. A recent string of companies, including Groupon and Pinterest, have found success outside the early-adopter digerati by building products simple enough to be used by just about anyone.

Designing with tech novices in mind can mean the difference between staying niche and going mainstream. Here are three principles for designing software for people Silicon Valley too often disparagingly calls “normals.”

1. What’s it for?

Don’t tell them “how it works” or “what it is” and certainly don’t tell them how wonderful your company is. Just tell them in big, uncluttered, blatantly obvious terms what your service is for. Novice users need to know when your service would be useful in their lives.

Take a look at Twitter’s homepage for new users. It says simply, “Welcome to Twitter. Find out what’s happening, right now, with the people and organizations you care about.” Same story at Facebook. “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” Brilliant! Now the tech novice knows, in no uncertain terms, when and why these sites would be useful. Twitter is for knowing what’s happening and Facebook is for connecting and sharing.

2. Where Do I Push?

We know what you’re thinking. “Sure, Facebook and Twitter can use one-sentence taglines because new users come to their sites having heard all about them already.” Well yes, but that’s the point. Most people today hear about sites from someone else. Your job is to help them fulfill the expectations they have for your service as quickly, and convincingly, as possible.

But how do you help new users fall in love with your site? Take them on a romantic walk. Software should provide a guided path, like a pleasant stroll, where users enjoy the experience of learning what the service can do for them. Too many companies dump new users on the site after registration, expecting them to fend for themselves and figure out what to do next. Instead, think of your new users as dating your site and guide them through a graceful, intuitive, and delightful get-to-know-you process. For technology novices, learning to initiate, navigate, and personalize the experience is particularly important. Novices also appreciate a tolerance for error; actions should not feel risky or permanent, but rather fluid and easy to undo if necessary.

For example, when Twitter’s exemplary on-boarding teaches new users how to use the service, it also asks about their interests and immediately uses this information to curate and personalize the experience. During the process, irrelevant functionality is disabled so that the user is guided by just a handful of clearly labeled potential actions.

3. Solo But Not Alone

Too often sites ask users to log-in with their Facebook credentials before earning their trust. Doing so may disaffect novice and experienced users alike. Many novice web users have novice web friends and may not have many contacts online. Others would like to connect with new people outside of Facebook or *gasp* prefer not have a Facebook account at all. On the other end of the spectrum, members of the tech-savvy crowd are shying away from using the Facebook log-in for third party sites, as they become increasingly wary of yet another app threatening to spam their friends. In both use cases, when a site forces users to create an account or log-in with Facebook before they are sure they want to use the service, it risks losing them for good.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t give users the option of logging in with Facebook eventually — we’re just advocating for making them fall in love with you first. Websites should be valuable and engaging to new users before they sign up for an account and even if none of their friends have joined. For example, Pinterest allows unregistered users to browse freely before creating an account. Users are asked to log-in with Facebook only after they decide they want in. And even after they join they can start re-pinning, liking, and commenting right away, with or without their friends joining the service.

Go Ask Grandma

Certainly, having a particular user in mind is key to designing products to fit their specific needs. However, even if your target user is not a web novice, ensuring that your site is usable by even the least experienced visitor will pay off. Everyone appreciates an intuitive interface, one that anticipates the user’s next step. To take a product into the mainstream, it must be simple. It must cater to people who don’t care what the technology can do, just that it can get their job done.

This is where large, yet untapped, opportunities still lay waiting for entrepreneurs who can build simple solutions to overly complex problems. A good relationship with Grandma and Grandpa might help, too.

[image via YouTube/minder213]

Today at SXSW, Marvel announced a partnership with Autonomy’s Aurasma platform to lets users watch video trailers of books they see in stores, as well as 3D animation, recaps, and other augmented reality extras by holding their phones up to comics. That means 3D super heroes will soon be stepping out of your print books. Marvel will release free iOS and Android apps to power the augmented reality experiences as part of its Marvel ReEvolution revamp.

New lines of “Marvel Infinite Comics” written especially for digital are also on the way.

Aurasma demoed the augmented reality experience and it was quite impressive. A phone, screencast to a projector, showed that when pointed at an Iron Man comic book, a giant 3D Iron Man appeared in front of the page, flexed his metal muscles and hovered around complete with sound. Aurasma debuted its AR engine at CES in January

Marvel representatives explained that the goal is to “build out DVD and Blu-Ray extras into the comic book itself.” Whether users buy a print or digital version, they’ll get to check out animated videos, pencils, colors, and primers on past issues in a series. The features will appear in a several month-long Avengers Vs. X-Men run later this year.

Marvel Infinite Comics will be “the first marvel comics built strictly for digital. They’ll use parameters of your iPhone or iPad. It’s a new canvas for storytelling.” Readers will still control the pacing, but starting with the Nova series, panels of the digital comics will be slightly animated to make them feel alive.

Editor’s note: Ryan Sutton-Gee is the co-founder and CEO of Y Combinator-backed PlanGrid, which offers builders the ability to store, view, and manage blueprints on an iPad. Follow him on Twitter @rsuttong.

The basic process of any construction project goes like this: A person with a lot of money (called The Owner) decides that, for whatever reason, they want a building and so they go hire an architect. This architect in turn hires a bunch of engineers and all of them start furiously designing the building until The Owner seems happy enough to move forward. Once that happens, the design is printed on piles and piles of paper and then handed to the construction team who starts the actual construction.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but the interesting thing to note is that this entire exchange of information is digital — up until the point where the actual construction takes place. Because all the design information is digital, tons and tons of amazing software have been created to make that part of the process better and more efficient. In fact, architects and engineers have gotten so good at being efficient, that all together they now typically only make up 8% of the total cost of a building. Meanwhile, the poor guys in the field have, by many estimates, gotten worse and worse.

Enter the iPad and other tablets.

Tablet computers will be the things that change all of this. Although the things they do better than laptops — smaller, more durable, longer battery life, doesn’t need a table to be useable — seem more evolutionary rather than revolutionary, in the context of construction field workers, it’s the difference between using a tool that almost works and a tool that can actually get the job done. It’s basically the first computer that is truly usable in the field and as a result they are already starting to be rapidly adopted by construction companies. The third-generation iPad and the improving Android tablets are only going to accelerate things, and so over the next few years we’ll undoubtedly start to see software that will transform construction as much as AutoCAD transformed architecture and engineering.

Here’s just a short list of some things that will transformed in the next few years as the iPad delivers computing to the construction site:

1. Adios, blueprints: The first thing that will disappear is paper. It’s expensive, always out-of-date, and with this new push for green buildings, The Owners are asking their contractors to ‘go paperless’.
2. Much better communication: Here’s a process that happens every time some guy in the field needs clarification from the architect on how to build something: He leaves the job site, heads to the construction trailer, grabs his set of blueprints, heads back to the job site, looks at the problem and makes notes on his plans, heads back to the trailer, scans the plans, goes to his computer, opens his email, sends the scan to the architect, and then walks all the way back to the job site. This takes at least 20 minutes every time someone has a question! With the iPad, he’ll just open up his blueprints app, markup the problem, and send out an email right there.
3. Hello analytics: One of the most frustrating things about running a construction company is that you are constantly writing these huge checks, but you have no idea what is actually going on in the field. No field computing, means no field data, which means you have no idea that your electrician, who you picked because he was 10% cheaper, is 30% slower than the other electrician you used last time. The Google Analytics/Palantir for construction is going to really change how things are done.

And that’s just the beginning. There are already multiple construction focused apps coming on to the market, such as AutoDesk’s AutoCAD WS, Bentley’s Navigator, and my company PlanGrid, but as time goes on we will undoubtedly see more and more useful tools come to market.

Don’t be fooled by Bing Gordon’s buttoned-up sounding job title as a partner at top tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers — he’s known as easily one of the most fun people to talk to in the tech industry. So when we saw him in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive conference this weekend, we pulled him aside for an interview with TechCrunch TV.

His career first took off as an executive at Electronic Arts in the earliest days — so he’s an expert of sorts in all things gaming (and these days, gamification.) Today, Gordon leads up Kleiner Perkins’ sFund, which is dedicated to investing in next-generation social apps such as Path, Klout, Flipboard and Shazam. He also sits on the boards of Amazon and Zynga, among others. In short, he’s about as plugged in as it gets to what’s going on in the tech world.

Watch our pretty wide-ranging chat above to hear his insights on gamifying without gimmicks, how the Facebook IPO will impact the startup ecosystem, why tech applications today need 10 million users to be taken seriously, what the next golden ticket is for mobile apps, and what separates the amateur founders from the pros.

Editor’s note: Roger Katz is CEO and co-founder of social media engagement company Friend2Friend. His career includes management and consulting roles at companies such as Photobucket, Agilent, Brocade, Quantum, Bell Labs and Pacific Community Ventures, as well as a number of startups. Follow Friend2Friend on Twitter @f2f_tweets.

Every vote counted on Super Tuesday. The results coming down to the wire, with Mitt Romney narrowly beating Rick Santorum by only 0.8% in the Ohio primary. While some may argue that the issues elevated Mitt above the rest, as a social marketer I can’t help to wonder if social savvy determined the winners and losers.

Are 2012 Politicians Social Leaders?

Both marketers and politicians alike know that inspiring and motivating fans/supporters to share your story is an incredibly powerful influence. Once someone has decided to support a candidate, does the candidate encourage them to share that choice with friends? Do they make it easy? Do they make fans break a sweat? I decided to take a quick look this week — focused for comparison’s sake limited myself to Facebook — and summarized my observations below.

Barack Obama: 25.4M fans

Obama’s 2012 “Are You In?” campaign (recently expired) simply asked fans to share their statement of support with their network, and invite their network to join. It included a leaderboard-style “gamification” mechanic that rewarded fans by telling them how many people were inspired to join the Obama campaign as a result of their wall post.

Obama’s team chose a nice “man of the people” cover photo, fist bumping a blue-collar worker, and a “Pinned” post that when I looked had 75K likes, 21K shares (more than ¼ the likes, which is a very high number) and 25K comments (almost ⅓ of the likes!) since it was posted less than two weeks ago (February 26th).

The Obama team did an exemplary job telling his life story through milestones — from his infamous birth certificate printed on a mug to his first job at Baskin-Robbins, when he met Michelle, and more.

Key Learning: His “I’m In” campaign was simple. It did not request the fan to do much of anything other than what they already do on Facebook — typing, and clicking “Share.” No friction, no fuss. The Obama Facebook experience is comprehensive, professional, and authentically irreverent, with lots of content that is easy to share with fans.

Mitt Romney: 1.4M fans

The cover photo includes a bold photo of Mitt Romney and his wife, surrounded by supporters. His Pinned post includes Super Tuesday photos, with engagement at 106 shares, 2.7K likes, and 1.5K comments when I last checked.

His main Facebook app, “Stand with Mitt,” really puts fans to work and requires a significant time investment to complete the actions. Here, supporters are asked to download a PDF, print it (preferably in color), write on it, take a photo, upload the photo, enter their email address, and send the photo to the Romney team for possible inclusion in a photo gallery on Facebook.

The oddly named “What’s your take?” app is slightly more socially savvy, asking followers to answer the question “Have you ever volunteered for a campaign?” While it’s unlikely anyone would want to share any answer other than “Yes, Loved it,” it is a good effort. Some of the options in the app don’t appear to work, but the comments are interesting. And it’s good to see the campaign managers have let negative comments stand.

Key Learning: The “ask” in the “Stand with Mitt” app has significant barriers to participation. Though the resulting photos are fun, engaging and provide an interesting look into the face of a Romney supporter, the Romney team should have made the whole process considerably easier and simpler. This campaign feels a lot like one that would have been popular in the early 2000s, and featured on a campaign microsite. It just doesn’t feel like an activity tuned for Facebook users. You’d have to be a pretty fervent supporter to go to the trouble of doing this.

Ron Paul: 898K fans

Given that Ron Paul supporters are generally thought to be in the 18-39 age group, it’s surprising that his Facebook presence isn’t more sophisticated. The “Ron Paul Facebook Promoter” offers a confusing and poorly designed campaign that requests a name, email and phone number, and also asks fans to change their profile picture to show their support for the candidate. The campaign selects a photo for you, and provides instructions on how to download that photo, and then tells you how to change your profile to the Ron Paul sanctioned photo. Paul seems to have devoted more of his resources to his websites, which are complete and highly comprehensive. (His “Choose Your State” app on www.ronpaul2012.com has 608K shares, 62.5K tweets, and >750K shares by other means.)

Key Learning: While the effect of seeing Ron Paul’s brand on every one of a fan’s Facebook posts would be a good brand coup, most savvy Facebook fans would not only already be aware how to change their Facebook profile photo, but probably would also want to add their own personal “spin” to something as critical as that photo. But while Paul hasn’t fully embraced Facebook, he does appear to have made more effort to embrace social sharing on his website.

Newt Gingrich: 293K fans

Newt Gingrich’s Facebook page is focused less on putting his small number of fans to work, and more on soliciting money for his campaign. His “Donate” page, “Sign Newt’s Energy Petition,” and intriguingly named “Newt Live Cam,” all send fans off Facebook to his www.newt.org site. There are various petitions to sign, and in the past week, the Gingrich team added a “States with Newt” app that lets fans visit pages such as “Delaware with Newt” to drive local community action. As this app indicates the number of fans in each state — in the case of Delaware 67, with the largest being Florida, with 2,584 fans — it points more to the lack of following, than a healthy grass roots movement.

Key Learning: Little effort is put into encouraging fans to share their support of Gingrich on Facebook with friends and family. Asking for name, email, and location before spinning the fan off to www.newt.org, indicates little understanding of the potential social power of Facebook. Gingrich would have been more authentic to himself by engaging fans in sharing his views on Facebook, rather than using the space to primarily ask for donations. Facebook users value authenticity, and conversational debate, and tend to avoid places where they don’t see those traits.

Rick Santorum: 160K fans

Rick Santorum’s Facebook page is full of things to do, though most are not on Facebook. The first link provided takes you to a “Fundly” page — conveniently pre-populated with your Facebook credentials. Other links take you to ricksantorum.com. The Santorum team has, however, provided a tempting “like-gate” where fans are rewarded with a free e-book of something called “Santorisms” — essential quotes and images of Rick Santorum in a PDF file.

Key Learning: The Santorum team did provide exclusive content behind a like-gate — a decent social marketing convention — but wasted the opportunity. They should have taken that PDF e-book content and made each and every quote and photo shareable by fans. That would have made a perfect, viral social content-sharing campaign and would play to the reasons that fans love their candidate, and gives them something to share that tells their friends why they love that candidate.

This November the Winning Candidate Will Keep it Simple, Yet Engaging

Successful social campaigns are actually quite simple. Make fans/supporters work, but don’t make them work too hard. The most engaging campaigns have an interaction that’s clean, simple, fun, and rewarding — with as little friction between click and share as possible.

Respect the social context and don’t send the fans to your website. Keep the fan where they want to be — on the social network where they encountered the campaign — and give them something to share. Content speaks volumes, and political candidates do have a lot of, ahem, content to share.

Social media represents a huge potential to engage followers both locally and nationally. Social media lets fans volunteer without even leaving their seats. Politicians must learn how to put advocates to work on their campaigns and make it easy and fun. Chances are the candidate that masters engagement and grassroots community-building will find themselves in the White House after November’s election.

Facebook is slowly rolling out a mobile interface change that lets you Like or comment on posts with a single click, I discovered this week and the company has confirmed. By making it quicker to Like, Facebook will be able to gather more data to refine its feed sorting algorithm while making content consumption faster and arguably more enjoyable. Previously, you had to tap a ‘+’ button beside posts to reveal separate Like and comment buttons, but soon all users will click on different sides of a combined Like / comment bar to leave feedback.

Sure, this is a subtle change, but it will affect over 110 million iPhone and Android users every day, plus everyone who visits m.facebook.com. With its rich-media feed stories, streamlined feed reading will help Facebook compete with Twitter’s inherently less exhausting text-only mobile feed.

Honestly, I find the combined Like / comment bar kind of ugly, but it’s already getting me to Like more posts. I only have to pause my voracious feed scrolling for a split-second to Like a funny quip or pretty picture, rather than having to interrupt my flow to open the feedback controls. It makes me more likely to leave feedback on Facebook than on Path where I need to choose between emotions, or Twitter, where I have to click through or slide open a post to favorite, reply, or retweet. These Likes will trigger more notifications that inspire return visits.

Beyond the improved user experience, more Likes mean Facebook’s EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithm can more quickly learn what and who you want to see more of. The lack of this data prevents Google+ from properly promoting and hiding posts in its feed. Vic Gundotra yesterday said this was preventing G+ from opening an API to let third-party apps post, which is partly responsible for a lack of content on the search giant’s social network.

With the barrier lowered and no limit to how many Likes can be doled out, you can show gratitude far and wide.