Ikea Augmented Reality Concept-coming to a smartphone near you (maybe)

For those of you who missed it, last August an AR concept for IKEA was launched based on a simple premise of allowing customers to picture what a certain piece of furniture would like in their home. The concept reflects the increasing possibilities of Augmented Reality to marry the real with the digitally-enhanced world within sound commercial solutions.

The application, of which you can see some screenshots below, allows users to view an overlaid picture of the desired piece of furniture and place it within the intented position in a room by viewing the room through the mobile device's videocamera.



The user can also save the picture and send it via MMS if they wish to do so.

While it may be some time before these types of applications become mainstream, the current prediction for smartphone sales suggests this will be sooner than you think. Smartphone sales that support AR apps account for less than 20% of the overall global market but are growing fast and are predicted to reach 50% of the mobile market within the next five years.

LG $10,000 Chocolate Mystery-deadline set for midnight on 30.09.09

Following the interest my earlier blog post arose over the mysterious $10,000 reward offered by LG for returning one of 5 LG Chocolate phones manufactured with serial numbers:

· 802KPAE821224

· 803KPBF578597

· 803KPXV578330

· 803KPVH578503

· 803KPJP923836

...I am publishing a short update here.

The good people at the PR agency managing the LG Chocolate Reward have told me that the phones in question were produced between February and March 2008. This date is found in the identifier label as shown in the picture with this post. The next numbers in the label indicate the factory, so you can see that the 5 handsets were made in the same factory of PyungTaek in Korea.

So if you have one of the lucky phones, you need to be sharpish in contacting LG by mailing them at:inform@lge.com. The deadline for returning them ends at midnight on the 30th September 2009. $10,000 plus a brand new BL40 phone could be yours!

Facebook and Nielsen launch joint ad effectiveness product

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook new COO, more recently VP of Global Ad Sales at Google, talked today to the press about the launch of the joint Nielsen/Facebook product to measure the effectivess of ad campaigns on Facebook web and mobile platforms.

Dubbed Nielsen Brand Lift, the new service is designed to help Facebook demonstrate that online ads on their social network are effective...as Facebook is expected to turnover more than $500m in the latest reporting year (most of which from ad sales), it is essential that they convince advertisers that this ad spend pays off. Ad sales for Facebook increased more than 70% this year compared to last year thanks to its growing user base, now exceeding 300m globally.

After their acquisition of Friendfeed earlier in the year, Facebook steps on the gas again to maintain its social networking supremacy and introduce a tool that will undoubtedly help justify ad spend. This is even more important as more and more of their users move to the mobile platform in order to educate advertisers of the high impact and effectiveness of this medium.

uLocate and NAVTEQ's Traffic.com team up on iPhone

BOSTON's uLocate has been steadily building up its WHERE LBS platform to be able to deliver a wide range of applications and services across the major carriers in the US. Its strategy is paying off, as it sets to deploy yet another useful service, this time on the iPhone by teaming up with NAVTEQ owned Traffic.com.

Below is an extract from uLocate's press release of the 14th of September:

Traffic.com is the largest provider of traffic related data in the U.S. with coverage in 124 major metropolitan areas, providing fastest and shortest routes to commuters based on real-time traffic and incident data and traffic patterns. Joining Traffic.com’s comprehensive data with uLocate’s expertise in location-enabled mobile application development and award-winning WHERE® platform provides commuters with a traffic service that will help them reduce time spent driving.

“Traffic.com is the #1 traffic-only website in the U.S., helping commuters save time and frustration in their daily lives” said Jeff Mize, Executive Vice President of Sales from NAVTEQ. “We are delighted that uLocate will leverage the brand by enabling the services on Traffic.com across mobile with their proven WHERE platform.”

The Traffic.com application’s advanced features and functionality includes:
• MyTraffic™ personalized drives that are synced with the Traffic.com website to allow users to create customized routes.
• Unique JamFactor™ calculations to quickly inform drivers of the severity of traffic delays using real-time data as well as historical speed flow.
• Real-time, color-coded traffic flow moving maps that can be panned or zoomed to quickly view area traffic congestion or set to GPS mode to move along with commuters built on the NAVTEQ MapTP platform.
• Comprehensive incident data that includes accidents, construction, events, weather and congestion.
• The ability to save favorite roads and road segments for quick access through the traffic dashboard.
• Top traffic hotspots by city or selected roads.
• Mass transit data from local transportation departments.
• Location-enabled discount offers from relevant and trusted merchants enabled through NAVTEQ’s LocationPoint advertising platform.

Traffic.com’s data comes from GPS probe devices, commercial and government partners, center staff members, and a proprietary network of 1,000 digital traffic sensors, creating the most comprehensive traffic data available. Sensor networks update real time speed and volume information every few minutes and incident information is updated continuously throughout the day by local traffic operations staff.

Expect an Android, Palm and Blackberry version soon.

The $10,000 LG Chocolate mystery

LG took out a quarter page advert in the Financial Times yesterday to announce that it was 'globally searching' for 5 of its Chocolate phones, with the serial numbers: 802KPAE821224, 803KPBF578597, 803KPXV578330, 803KPVH578503 and 803KPJP923836.

In what could be the most expensive mobile handset global hunt ever, LG offers a $10,000 reward per handset returned to them. The advert refers readers to the LG Mobile web page for more information. You can click here for more details.

However, the company remains cryptic as to the reason of the recall and even imposes a deadline for returning the wanted handsets by the 30th September 2009, somewhat unusual for a product recall.

The mystery remains over LG's unusual advert, with observers torn between it being a rather unorthodox marketing ploy or a quest to recover experimental microprocessing chips accidentally inserted into the handsets in question.

Android misses handset growth target for Spain

BARCELONA

Since the launch of Android devices in Spain in April this year and up until last week, only a very limited range of handsets from Taiwanese manufacturer HTC have been available on the market.

An article in today’s Expansión reveals that this is set to change, with Samsung launching its Galaxy model on Monday and Motorola looking to launch its Dext model in November.

However, all of this is unlikely to alter the fact that Android’s target for an installed base of 6m units in Spain by the end of 2009 will not be met. Current estimates show that Android devices represent only 2% of the handset market share in Spain. Whilst the push by new manufacturers entering the market, coupled with HTC’s launch of the Tattoo model may drive market share up a notch or two by the end of the year, Android still has to compete with other smartphone platforms with more established user bases.

Market estimates for an overall market share of 8-10% by the end of the year seem over-optimistic, and it appears more likely that they will not materialise until the choice of handsets and embedded services significantly improves.

Acrossair muscles into Augmented Reality (AR) arena with iPhone app

London-based Acrossair recently rolled out its own take on the Augmented Reality (AR) story, by releasing an application that allows New Yorkers to point their iPhone camera at any city street and get an overlay of how close and in which direction the nearest subway stations are.

Hold the phone flat and it shows all the subway lines in coloured directional arrows.Raise the iPhone and it will point you to the nearest subway station, with distances shown.

You can see a quick demo video here:





Acrossair is clearly pitching itself against media darling Layar and, with its nifty new applications, muscling itself into position to grab some of the AR limelight.

Competition is clearly hotting up, not only in the US but also in Japan, where Tonchidot launched its own iPhone app, Sekai Camera that adds a social networking dimension to AR.

This definitely remains an area to keep close tabs on, with new smartphones enabling new consumer applications that were perhaps unthinkable until only a few years ago.

Facebook for Android -coming soon

The summer holiday season being in full swing, it is that time of the year when 'real' news gets replaced with products of the rumour mill.

Speculation over what the future may bring once the industry movers and shakers are back in their office seats is rife.

One rumour to have recently hit the web is the launch of a new Facebook app for the Android platform. This would be a logical step for Facebook, having recently announced the launch of a revamped iPhone application (which will allow video uploads in addition to current photo uploads).

However, it seems Facebook is relying on external resources from the Android team at Google rather than managing all development in-house, so exactly when the app will be released involves a large degree of guesswork.

A Facebook launch on Android would give a big boost to Android's positioning vis-a-vis the iPhone, at a time when over 12 new Android devices are due to hit the market worldwide in Q3 and Q4 of this year.

The Android Market still has some catch up to do with respect to the iTunes app Store, with many apps still failing to project that sleek finish and desirability endemic to all things Apple.

Plus, if we look at a chart of daily worldwide releases of new apps on the Android market over the last 100 days (courtesy of androlib.com), things seem to be plateau-ing at Android and a new stimulus is required to pick up the momentum if Android is to realise its potential as a serious contender to the iPhone.

Centrl iPhone LBS App to feature Push Notification

I have been reviewing several apps on the iTunes store over the last few days to see what is the current state of location-aware apps with a social networking element.

I came across New York based Centrl even before I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Murat Atkithanoglu, Centrl's founder, and found the app to be one of the best in its class, both in terms of feature range as well as simplicity of use.

Centrl gives users the power to search for people and places but also special offers within their immediate vicinity. All this may sound familiar, but make no mistake. Centrl comes packed with a whole series of nifty, practical features in what is clearly a thoroughly thought out application.

You can save not only your favourite places but also special deals of interest (such as money off coupons), with the option to share that information with people in your buddy list. Centrl also remembers your last location, so that even if you are relying on the Wi-Fi you can still get relevant information around you.

Needless to say, both Facebook and Twitter accounts can be connected to Centrl making importing contacts easy. Plus, Centrl comes with a public chat function, allowing members to talk in real time to their buddies nearby.

And when it comes to content, the user has a choice from a number of providers, from Yelp to 11870.com to Oodle.

The real innovation will be the upgrading of the app to include Push Notification (available within iPhone OS 3.0) , alerting users to messages when the application is not actively running in the foreground. This is a key feature for social networking apps and is increasingly seen to be indispensable to maintain activity levels of the community.

If you have an iPhone, I encourage you to check Centrl out-it is a free app and is available on the iTunes store.

Marketing to the right audience on iPhone and iTouch

As the market for smartphones in general increases (they account for over 10% of mobile phone sales, up 12.7% in Q1 2009 compared to growth of 9.4% for standard phones, according to Gartner), and the segment captured by iPhone in particular increases (now accounting for close to 11% of overall smartphone sales as opposed to close to 6% a year earlier), it is useful to take a closer look at the new demographics of an iPhone user.

According to statistics for the US released by AdMob for the first 5 months of 2009, only 26% of iPhone owners are below the age of 24 (see chart pictured courtesy of AdMob).

That means that if you are targeting the youth segment (or 'Digital Natives') the iPhone may not be the best option for you. In contrast, iTouch users have a considerably younger age profile, with over 70% being under 24. While the device itself carries its limitations (you need a Wi-Fi network to do pretty much anything apart from listen to music), the spread of (free) Wi-Fi means that there are untapped opportunities to exploit the iTouch in order to address the youth segment.

I haven't seen a marketing insight report on the iPhone (in the sense of an in-depth qualitative study of a group of iPhone users conducted through one-on-one or group interviews over an extended period) but this could shed some light on whether the reality is that kids are getting their hands on their parents' iPhone and effectively sharing the within the same household.

The appeal of the iPhone and its exquisite aesthetics certainly represent a pull for kids and if cross-sharing is indeed taking place, this would mean that the 'real' proportion of the youth segment using the iPhone is much greater than the quantitively measured 26% being reported.

Layar Augmented Reality-Now Open for Developers

I first came across Layar at Mobile 2.0 Europe when I met Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald (aka DutchCowboy to Twitterers) and he demo'd the latest version of his augmented reality software on a G1 Android device.

I had previously taken a look at all the companies entered into the Mobile 2.0 start-up competition and, out of all of them, it was Layar that had really captured my imagination.

Why? Firstly, because it was something new (though not the first of its concept, it is certainly the best marketed augmented reality mobile software to date) that immediately brought to mind the famous Terminator movie, where Arnold Schwarzenegger, as The Terminator, scans the street and an overlay of information about the height and weight of people ahead of him is projected onto his vision.

Secondly, because I believe that the future of mobile is all about interacting intelligently with the surrounding environment (or location) and information overlays on street-view maps point in the right direction of this.

Today, Layar announced that it is opening up for business with developers, allowing access to its platform to a new wave of digital map layer pioneers. 50 developer keys are to be provided to interested companies from around the world.

You can see the full press release about this here: http://bit.ly/RgwTP

Mobile 2.0 Europe-Priya Prakash presents Nokia's vision on 'Beyond Free'

BARCELONA -Priya Prakash (formerly at Flirtomatic) presented Nokia's vision on what she see's as the customer's perception on what is (or should be) free on mobile. One of the insights included the fact that customers can perceive greater value from a mobile proposition purely by the fact they have to pay for it. More insights are in the presentation here.

Publish Post

Mobile 2.0 Europe-roundup

BARCELONA -Mobile 2.0 Europe has come and gone again this year, attracting once again some of the finest mobile minds and entrepreneurs to Barcelona.

The (now 2-day) European showcase of mobile startups and trends in mobile this year gave everyone some extra food for thought with Tom Raftery on Mobile Sustainability and Regine Debatty on Mobile Culture.

Tom gave a thought-provoking presentation on why most telcos are not doing enough about achieving sustainability (with some squirming in the front seat from Carlos Domingo of Telefonica but pleased faces from Vodafone, with Tom's thumbs-up of their corporate web policy on green issues).

Regine offered a visually pleasing interlude of examples of not-for-profit mobile art and culture, with examples of giant SMS mobile screen projections (SMS Guerilla Projector) on the backs of innocent pedestrians (check out www.we-make-money-not-art.com) .

The panel on 'Beyond Free' managed to top last year's after lunch panel (on the role of Mobile Operators in fostering innovation) in terms of provocative debate, fuelled by some diverging points of view between Inma Martinez (Moderator) and Ian Ginn (seasoned web/mobile entrepreneur).

The conclusion from the panel, if there was one, is that mobile startups are still seen as an (un)necessary evil by most VC's but are treated as misunderstood children because they don't fit in the VC's risk/return equations.

You can find all the links to the presentations on the official event site here. A big round of applause to Rudy,Carles and the rest of the Mobile 2.0 Committee for organising (and pulling off) yet another great mobile event in Barcelona.

I will post some of my videos of the presentations by Ted Morgan of Skyhook Wireless and Priya Prakash of Nokia, starting with this one below:

Call for Mobile Entrepreneurs:VentureBeat invites coolest iPhone and BlackBerry developers to submit entries

The good folks over at VentureBeat, one of the leading sites for news about Tech, Money and Innovation, are organising their annual MobileBeat event in San Francisco on the 16th July, with the theme of 'It's the Application, Stupid' (love the title).

They are now calling for submissions from mobile entrepreneurs worldwide to enter their TopStartup Award and get a chance to pitch their idea in front of over 400 leading industry experts, execs and VC's.

Last year over two hundred companies were considered for the awards, which went to firms such as AdMob and Loopt. This year the competition shifts to mobile applications and services, with 50 finalists to be determined and a final 14 to present live at MobileBeat on Thursday July 16^th.

Startups must complete and submit the following form by June 30, 2009 for consideration-so apply now if you are interested (you should be) by clicking here.

Some rules:

-Fifty finalists will be announced on July 2^nd on Venturebeat.com. Voting will then be open to the public to select the top seven companies per sector.

-Seven finalists from each category will present for five minutes each to the MobileBeat audience determined by judges as to avoid any vote manufacturing.

-Nominees must be younger than three years old. Special consideration will be given to companies that are launching for the first time.

Have a cool iPhone, Android or Blackberry app? Why not go for it-it could be your lucky break!

uLocate's WHERE launches on Palm Pre

As of today, WHERE announced that it is live on the Palm Pre and is already the 5^th most popular application in the App Catalogue.

According to Pam Deziel, vice president, Developer Marketing, Palm, Inc. "WHERE is a best-in-class application that brings together local and social information in a compelling UI, and we believe that it will prove to be very popular with Pre users.”

On the Pre, WHERE has been able to weave its local and personal content into webOS’s linked contacts, layered calendars, multitasking, notifications and of course its GPS capabilities to deliver a seamless real-world experience. For example, users can see the nearest gas stations to their location ranked by price, find local movies and insert show times into their calendar, or find the nearest Starbuck's with Wi-Fi access.

You can find a shortened version of the press release below:

"WHERE®, the premier location-based application from uLocate Communications, is available on the new Palm® Pre™ phone via the on-device beta App Catalog. Running on the new Palm webOS™ mobile platform, Pre brings together your important information from where it resides – on your phone, at your work or on the web – into one logical view.⁽¹⁾

WHERE is the ultimate local application for mobile devices. It quickly helps put the people, places and things consumers are looking for at their fingertips. Local content available through WHERE includes everything from the weather, news, and restaurant reviews, to the cheapest gas, movie show times, and the ability to connect with other users on the WHERE Wall™.

Palm Pre is designed to make users’ lives easier by bringing them the people, events and information that they need all in one place. WHERE builds on this unique personalization to provide an exceptionally strong local and social experience to consumers.

”We are thrilled to expand our availability to Palm users with this new and innovative application for the highly anticipated Pre phone”, said Walt Doyle , CEO of uLocate. “Palm has done a great job with webOS, and has allowed us to integrate the features that our consumers love about WHERE with the functions of the device such as calendar and contacts. This integration has helped us deliver a very rich user experience.”

Wireless Industry Partnership-WIP Connector

Involved in the mobile or wireless industry? Are you developing mobile applications and need to connect to like-minded people to stay abreast of developments or simply to share your experiences?

Then the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) is for you-membership is free and you get a monthly WIP Connector newsletter letting you know of upcoming events or developments from member companies.

The flagship event organised by WIP is the WIP Mobile Jam Session, now run both in the US and Europe, as a one-day event bringing developers the latest news and tools to allow them to get to market quicker and innovate more effectively. It has rapidly established itself as one of the leading developer events worldwide in terms of breadth of coverage and reputation.

You can find more details here.

Testing iPhone Apps on Real Devices

Mobiforge published today an interesting article by Wei-Meng Lee on the key steps required to test and deploy your iPhone app.

If you have successfully published on iPhone before, there will be nothing new for you, but if you haven't, the article gives you a simple guide for deploying your app.

The article kicks off by saying that "a repeated criticism from iPhone app developers comes from the difficulty they find in deploying their application to a real iPhone or iPod Touch. Apple, for better or worse, has designed a process involving many hoops that must be jumped through, and this has prompted developers to grumble, and others to explore alternative, non-official open tool chains, which do not require app signing. In this article, I will walk you through the steps you need to take in order to test your iPhone apps on a real device, be it iPhone, or iPod Touch, the official Apple way."

You can read the full article here.

Mobile 2.0 Europe-Future of Mobile Explored

BARCELONA- Mobile 2.0 lands in Barcelona once again next month courtesy of Rudy and Carles of Dotopen and is set to pack a real punch with the main conference on the 19th June being supplemented by a Developer Day the day before.

The main themes of what is now the 5th Mobile 2.0 event in the series (after the initial event in San Francisco) will be: Openness, Beyond Free, Play, Cloud, Context and Sense. Based on the various events I attended this year and the current phase of the global economic cycle, I anticipate that the whole area of new business models within the Beyond Free track of the event will stimulate the most debate.

The thinking up to last year was 'what is free on the web, cannot be charged for on mobile', but perhaps it is time to update this credo as the quality and performance of the mobile experience improves (and not just on smartphone devices).

The speaker line-up features the larger than life founder of Zyb, Tommy Ahlers and Marco Ahtisaari, CEO of Dopplr. Marco was in Barcelona last week to speak at the SIME Barcelona event, and announced there the future release of a Dopplr app on the iPhone and a re-orientation of their business to more of a 'Social Atlas' (read Social Network). It will be interesting to get his views on the future for mobile social networking..

You can find more info on the event here

Location in Mobile Social Networks

London-Location is at the very heart of the next generation of mobile services and the future mobile web. Last year, both Nokia and Google made big announcements highlighting location as one of their key strategic axes. Now Vodafone is keen to position itself in this space and its recent acquisition of Swedish navigation software provider Wayfinder is but the first step in that direction.

I presented the experience of GeoMe in launching a location-enabled mobile social network at the Informa Mobile Location Services 09 Conference in London on the 12th May, describing how to overcome some of the barriers to adoption, especially privacy, and new distribution channels that can be exploited for getting the product to market.

I was also priviliged to be in good company on a speaker panel on the next generation of location services together with o2, TIM, Qualcomm and content provider Spoonfed. The conclusion? To create demand, you need to offer a good product with a clear value proposition. Will 2010 be 'the' year of location based services? The answer: 'probably'.

You can see my presentation on Slidespace below:

Location Based Social Networking by Ric Ferraro

View more presentations from Ric Ferraro.

Dude, where's my Privacy-The Privacy Conundrum in Social Networks

I will be speaking next week at the Informa Mobile Location Services 09 Conference in London and one of the key subjects I was asked to present on was privacy.

One of the key issues has to do with semantics:what do we mean by privacy exactly? How private is private? My argument is that the privacy sphere, like it or not, is getting smaller and smaller for most people. Over time, the level of intrusion that each person is willing to accept in their 'private' sphere is also increasing.

I like to point to the example of Google Street View, as this is a full on example of a significant intrusion into everyone's private sphere which was accepted and ultimately embraced (I recommend you see also the example of the Japanese mashup of a Virtual Jog using Street View).

The other key issue is that legislation is dictating the approach that mobile social networks that use location should use. This is the key concept of 'opt-in', such that it is always down to consumer choice whether or not anyone has access to the location of a mobile subscriber.

This is fine as a preventive measure to assuage the public's fear of location based services in the interim period during which the key players (like Google) educate and inform about the benefits of location based services.

But ultimately, it is not the way in which 'push' services, somewhat of a marketing mecca in terms of delivering the right marketing message to the right customer in the right place, will be achieved.