Press release

May 23rd 2012 ­ StrongMail, a leading provider of digital marketing solutions for email, mobile and social media engagement, have announced a strategic partnership with Velti, the leading global provider of mobile marketing and advertising technology. As part of the partnership, StrongMail will enhance its cross-channel capabilities by integrating Velti’s advanced mobile marketing platform into Message Studio, StrongMail’s flagship campaign management solution. According to a StrongMail Mobile Marketing Survey also just announced, 45 per cent of businesses are leveraging mobile as a marketing channel, and 70 per cent of businesses expect to see their mobile marketing budgets increase in the next year.

With only 27 per cent of businesses currently leveraging mobile messaging in cross-channel communications, there is an opportunity for businesses to adopt this tactic to increase customer satisfaction and revenue ­ and StrongMail’s partnership with Velti will enable marketers to implement successful, integrated programs quickly and easily.

“Today’s consumers want brands to communicate with them on their terms and via their preferred channels, and we can now make it easier than ever for marketers to meet these expectations via our Velti partnership,” said Scott Ollivier, vice president of products at StrongMail.

“Whether email, mobile or social media, StrongMail is empowering marketers to engage customers in meaningful cross-channel conversations that foster customer loyalty over the long-term.”

“Marketers are beginning to realize mobile¹s ability to drive meaningful
interactions with consumers,” said Amit Chaturvedi, General Manager, Media & Technology Solutions at Velti. “Velti ensures that marketers entering the mobile channel are driving real results through established best practices and vertical-specific campaign templates via the mGage platform. We look forward to helping StrongMail take advantage of this unique opportunity by expanding their mobile offerings.”

About Velti

Velti is the leading global provider of mobile marketing and advertising
technology and solutions that enable brands, advertising agencies, mobile operators and media to implement highly targeted, interactive and measurable campaigns by communicating with and engaging consumers via their mobile devices. The Velti platform, called Velti mGage, allows customers to use mobile and traditional media to reach targeted consumers, engage the consumer through the mobile Internet and applications, convert them into customers and continue to actively manage the relationship through the mobile channel.

About StrongMail Systems

Every day, StrongMail is empowering leading brands to engage and grow their customer base through email marketing and social media. From the world’s largest enterprises to the hottest daily deal sites, StrongMail is helping smart marketers boost the performance of their programs with cutting-edge lifecycle email marketing.

Go on. Go on. Just try scanning it.

It has always been GoMobile News contention that the drinks [alcoholic beverages] industry is one of the biggest implementers of QR [2D] barcodes as a business sector. Certainly in the UK. And we quite agree that there is some very creative thinking behind the majority of their campaigns. Our only question is … Do you guys ever bother to check these things actually work? GoMobile News has just struggled with one QR campaign from Jameson and absolutely failed on a second one from Guinness. This really isn’t helping build consumer confidence in QR codes, you guys.First let’s take the QR code we discovered on a beer mat which declares, “Try Jameson with ginger, lemonade or apple and a few good friends.”

What was wrong with this campaign? Short answer? You need a really decent camera inside your smartphone to be able to read the actual QR code because it is too small and indistinct.

Firstly, GoMobile News tried scanning the code with a BlackBerry. No joy. Then we moved onto our trusty Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango phone.

We really did expect this smartphone to be able to handle the QR code reading but it didn’t.

Incidentally, on the Lumia we tried both the ScanLife Classic and NeoReader QR code reading apps.

Something of a first for us, NeoMedia actually generated a crash report when we made the umpteenth attempt to read the QR code on the Nokia smartphone.

However, when we scanned the QR code with ScanLife on the superb Motorola RAZR Android smartphone (which we reckon is totally underrated), we instantly got connected to the Jameson site.

For our curious readers, the code takes you to http://m.jamesonwhiskey.com. Now the first screen you see is – quite rightly – an age verification page.

Shouldn’t someone have bothered to ensure that this page was mobile friendly because it took us ages to be able to fill in the requisite data using the RAZR’s standard browser?

But at least it worked. The Guinness QR Cup was far more ingenious but it doesn’t work at all.

We traced this story back to The Dieline web site here and it’s impressive.

Somebody has created a Guinness glass that sports a QR code which only works when the glass is filled with a porter [dark ale] such as Guinness.

It won’t work if the glass is empty (aaah!) or when it is filled with lager (sacrilege)!

The snag? Well, when you actually scan the QR it takes you to a shortcode which is http://bit.ly/hOvdU4. That’s a capital ‘o’ not a zero by the way.

That URL is currently pointing at a site called ‘livepint.com’ which is parked for its owner[s].

So why has everyone printed that it, ” tweets about your pint, updates your facebook status, checks you in via 4 square, downloads coupons and promotions, invites your friends to join, and even launches exclusive Guinness content?”

Because they haven’t bothered to do any research and GoMobile News does. That’s the difference.

Press release

May 25th 2012. InMobi, the largest independent mobile advertising network, has announced a partnership with MediaCom, one of the world’s leading media agencies, whereby MediaCom will deploy InMobi’s rich media ad creation platform Sprout, throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Sprout platform streamlines the creative development workflow and reduces the friction in mobile advertising campaign management through its ability to create, distribute, and optimise mobile rich media campaigns. MediaCom will use Sprout to create high-engagement HTML5 ad units and deliver innovative, effective mobile rich media campaigns for its advertisers across EMEA.Additionally, MediaCom will benefit from the robust reporting capabilities Sprout offers, including custom event tracking and engagement rates to maximise mobile rich media campaign effectiveness.

Steffen Krabbenhoft, Head of Mobile EMEA at MediaCom, comments, “As our advertisers invest more of their marketing budgets into mobile advertising and requiring robust reporting features, MediaCom was looking for a best-of-breed partner to help deliver this.

We were impressed with the technology and reporting capabilities of Sprout. InMobi’s rich media solution, delivers a highly compelling offering for large global advertisers; we are thrilled with this partnership.”

Rob Jonas, Managing Director and VP of Europe and the Middle East, at InMobi concludes, “Rich media on mobile devices is increasingly critical for brand advertisers, and MediaCom’s commitment to this is confirmed by this unique partnership.

MediaCom is one of the most innovative, forward-thinking agencies in the world and we are very excited about our new relationship.

We look forward to enabling MediaCom to deliver best-in-class mobile rich media creative executions for their advertisers and are confident they will push the boundaries of what is possible on this exciting new media.”

About MediaCom

MediaCom is one of the world’s largest Media Communication Specialists, with billings exceeding $26 billion (Source: RECMA) and 116 offices in 89 countries around the globe. Our ‘People First, Better Results’ philosophy drives our strategy and reflects our belief that putting People – employees, clients and consumers – at the core of our business leads to optimum business results.

The MediaCom family of companies includes such leaders in their fields as: MediaCom Interaction, our global digital and interactive marketing agency, with future-forward proprietary technology that works to grow clients’ businesses.

MediaCom Direct, our direct response experts, creating close, measured connections with consumers; MediaCom ESP, entertainment and sponsorship specialists that connect brands to consumers when they are most open to product messages; and MediaCom Business Science, focused on helping clients achieve maximum sales return. MediaCom Worldwide is a member of WPP, the world’s largest marketing communications services group, and is a part of GroupM, WPP’s media agency group which is the largest worldwide.

About InMobi

InMobi is the largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on five continents, InMobi provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. The network is growing and now delivers the unprecedented ability to reach 587 Million consumers, in over 165 countries, through more than 93.4 Billion mobile ad impressions monthly. The recent acquisition of Sprout, a leading HTML5 authoring platform for mobilerich media, helps expand the InMobi offering to creative agencies and brands.

InMobi is venture-backed by investors including: – SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. The company has offices in Bangalore, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo.

Frankfurt Messe, Frankfurt, Germany
http://m-days.messefrankfurt.com

The 8th M-Days. This event claims to be the congress trade fair for mobile communication, sale, devices and content solutions in German speaking countries as well as one of the biggest in Europe.

It boasts: -

Developer stage of the various operating systems – create your consumer or business app

Congress- and trade fair stages designed to engage with decision makers

A strong media presence via the publication GFM Nachrichten and MOBILEDOTCOMMS, all year PM’s published

87,000 print and 231.000 online researched contacts
February 5th-6th 2013

adeven, which specialises in the verification and optimisation of mobile advertising campaigns for publishers and advertisers has just received seven-figure funding fromVC firm, Target Partners. The financing will support the company’s international growth. Adeven analyses the overall context of mobile advertising campaigns, including the number of screen inserts. The company focuses on apps and mobile websites. “We process over 20 GB of data from Apple’s app store alone, and extract more than 100 billion individual data points, which we analyse, evaluate, and prepare,” commented Paul Müller, CTO with adeven.

Paul’s app publishing company, Rapidrabbit, has generated over ten million downloads, worldwide. Christian used madvertise to help build one of the leading mobile players in Europe,and expanded the publisher network from 70 million to over two billion impressions.

Olaf Jacobi, a partner at Target Partners, was convinced of adeven’s strong growth potential. He argues, “Adeven fulfils the prerequisites for international success: – stable and innovative technology combined with a first-rate team with many years of market experience.”

Adeven’s algorithm-driven ADJVST Campaign Analyzer and ADJVST Campaign Optimizer bring together digital media and data into a powerful mobile solution that improves targeting, optimisation and analysis of both direct response and branding campaigns.

Christian Henschel, CEO with adeven, said, “Customised mobile advertising solutions offer publishers and advertisers more effective and targeted campaigns, resulting in increased revenue.”

He added, “To many, mobile advertising is sort of a black box. And we turn the lights on, if you will.”

Mobile social gaming specialist, GREE, is bringing the power of mobile to famed online brand – Moshi Monsters, created by Mind Candy. This move will bring together 60 million globally registered Moshi Monsters users and GREE’s 230 million worldwide users. The partnership will kick off with the launch of two new Moshi Monsters mobile games on the GREE Platform, set for release in Q4 2012. The pair will deliver fully localised mobile games in multiple languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin.

Moshi Monsters is a leader in the online industry and has built a great and loyal following,” said Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO with GREE.

He added,”GREE believes the relationship is a great opportunity to further illustrate GREE’s on-going commitment to bringing quality content for all gamers to the new platform.”

Michael Acton Smith, CEO with Mind Candy, commented, “Our fans love tablets and smartphones so we’re really excited to take our much loved characters and stories to these new platforms.”

Building on its huge online success, Moshi Monsters is expanding its brand beyond the computer and now the mobile screen.

The company now boasts an array of physical products,including:- toys; the Number One selling kids magazine in the UK; a Nintendo DS video game; a video on demand platform (Moshi TV); a music album; books; membership cards; and trading cards.

It’s a surprise, therefore, that Mind Candy didn’t move into the mobile arena much, much earlier and is therefore a real feather in the cap for GREE.

As part of its move into the mobile gaming industry Mind Candy is building an in-house team to handle mobile partnerships and the internal development of all mobile titles, including several games and apps set for release throughout 2012.

In the Moshi Monsters online world, players choose from one of six virtual pet monsters to create, name and nurture.

Once their pet has been customised, players navigate their way around Monstro City, taking the daily puzzle challenge to earn ‘Rox’ the (virtual currency named after our cat).

Technology has given a lot of power to everyone. For some this is a good thing and can be used positively but on the other hand, it is sadly being used negatively by many. Technology is bringing more negatives than positives as a result of which, children and people are exposed to things they should not know. These could include sexual content, interaction with unknown people which could lead to other menaces like drug dealing as well.It is easy to fool people online as both of the parties can never be sure of whom they are interacting with on the other side.

On top of that, people now want even more advancements as we are all like children who are never satisfied with whatever they already have.

Video calling is quite common amongst people now and sadly, a wife recently watched her husband die during a Skype call.

Such an incident will have an effect on that woman for the rest of her life and she will never be the same again after helplessly watching her husband die in front of her eyes through the eye of a camera owing to technology.

On top of that, technology has given us so much power that we ourselves are not able to keep track of it and we misuse it every day.

For instance, children misuse the internet everyday and parents are never able to catch their child red handed. Why? Because technology has given children so much power that they can get away with almost anything.

This is the reason why some Spyware applications have proved to be useful and have provided some check and balance at least for the parents.

Obviously it is not easy to keep track of the activities everyone around us is involved in but at least it is a good start.

Once parents keep a check on their children, they would not be able to view explicit content or get involved in negative activities as freely as they do right now as a result of which, the children around them would also get affected.

Therefore, at least a small change would be brought and people would start thinking that there can be a check and balance in technology as well if required.

When we say technology nowadays, we usually refer to smartphones and computers which are used by almost everyone in our day to day life.

Keeping track of smartphones is the most difficult thing as they are the most personal device probably on the face of this planet, which gives the most features to each of its user.

Spyware applications have proved to be useful in tracking their activities as well which can help people control technology to some extent and probably bring life back on earth.

Author Bio:

Stella Rabecca has been in the business of providing quality information on Smart Phone Monitoring. Her main expertise lies within the spectrum of Blackberry Tracking software and Android Tracking which are making waves in the technology world today.

Spot the AGA

Those with a smartphone or tablet, can download the relevant app from Google Play or the Apple iTunes App Store.

This provides a visualization of the AGA iTotal Control oven’s controls which can be manipulated by touchscreen.

Those with other smartphones or laptop PCs can achieve the same thing via AGA’s web portal.

However, those who don’t have access to the mobile web at the time can choose to use text/SMS instead.

They can text their oven with simple commands such as “baking oven on” or “all ovens off” and will receive a reply confirming the action has been taken.

The Everything Everywhere M2M Management Platform will provide AGA with a self-service portal through which it can quickly and securely access and manage all account information.

This provides the company with complete control over all SIM accounts and the potential for integration with CRM systems.

Connection profiles, Call Detail Records and Tariff bundles can all be managed by AGA directly through the portal, as well as the direct ordering of additional SIM cards.

“Working with an iconic British brand such as AGA to create the iTotal Control oven has proved just how relevant M2M and connectivity is to everyone, even if they never imagined having a conversation with their ovens before!” said Marc Overton, vp for wholesale and M2M with Everything Everywhere.

The iTotal Control AGA oven will be available in the UK from June 1st [2012] and set you back a cool £10,090. However, you’ll be joining a very exclusive set because Everything Everywhere let it slip that AGA has initially ordered only 250 SIM cards!

Of course, you’d have to keep the passwords safe otherwise you come down in the morning to find an irate ex has turned the ovens on all night.

A new service recently launched in the Caribbean’s Dominican Republic has showed hot it is possible to expand popular online services to low income mobile subscribers. The new service is called vSocial and is being offered by the local mobile network operator,VIVA, to its 700,000 subscribers. The service is based on software supplied by ForgetMeNot Software and enables regular handsets to use ‘internet-free apps’ to send and receive internet messaging on any GSM phone with SMS.“People across the island now have access to internet-free Facebook, email and online chat apps on any mobile phone at any time, all from the palm of their hand,” commented Jose Holguin, manager for value added services with VIVA.

The stats for the Dominican Republic are extremely interesting. Nearly 40 per cent of the Dominican Republic’s 10 million inhabitants have access to the internet, of which 2.2 million are on Facebook, for example.

Although there are 90 mobile subscriptions to every 100 people, only 2.4 per cent of the population have a mobile internet subscription, according to figures supplied by Internet World Stats.

The VIVA deployment instantly triples that figure, ForgetMeNot claims, transforming even the most basic mobile handset into a virtual smartphone.

vSocial is built on ForgetMeNot Software’s Optimiser Platform, which provides internet-free apps that convert Facebook actions and updates, emails and messages from chat services like Windows Live Messenger and GTalk into SMS and USSD format, and vice-versa.

Thanks to vSocial mobile subscribers can participate on Facebook without the need for internet connections;contracts; high-end smartphones; software downloads; or even data connections.

Paul Roberts, a director with ForgetMeNot Software, observed, “The internet-free mobile app environment provides the opportunity to change the relationship that mobile subscribers in Latin America and across the world have with their phones, regardless of the make or model of the handsets.”

ForgetMeNot started to roll out its software services in Africa and targets the three billion or so mobile subscribers around the world who do not typically have the advantage of widespread internet and data access.

It seems a “rapid shift” away from users accessing Facebook from desktop computers over to access from the mobile web and from mobile apps is being touted as the chief factor behind the decline of Facebook’s share value. So much so that there’s already been a class action launched in the USA. US-based law firm Robbins Geller has filed the action in a court in Manhattan. According to the UK’s Daily Mail here … The lawsuit states, “The true facts at the time of the IPO were that Facebook was then experiencing a severe and pronounced reduction in revenue growth due to an increase of users of its Facebook app or website through mobile devices rather than a traditional PC such that the company told the underwriter defendants to materially lower their revenue forecasts for 2012.” It’s a sign that the web giants still haven’t worked out ways to make money from the mobile sector.

The crux of the matter is that one of the banks backing the Faceboook IPO (Initial Public Offering) was Morgan Stanley.

It is alledged that Morgan Stanley changed its estimates for Facebook shares after a May 9th [2012] filing of an amended Facebook prospectus with the SEC.

In that filing, it is alleged that the Bank expressed caution about revenue growth due to a rapid shift by users to mobile devices.

The view was that mobile advertising to date has been less lucrative than advertising on desktops.

GoMobile News finds all of this a bit bizarre. Facebook has about 900 million users worldwide and if anybody should be able to make money out of location-based advertising, then it surely must be a huge social network provider?

There surely must be plenty of opportunities for in-app advertising for a brand and company the size of Facebook, too?

We also think that Facebook isn’t ‘thinking-outside-the-box’ enough on how to monetise its service from mobile internet users.

It has a brilliant opportunity to act as an apps store. It could even do the unthinkable and provide apps for Apple iOS users that don’t have to go through Apple’s iPhone Apps Store.

This whole fiasco shows that the mobile advertising industry still really is in its infancy.

Android could save H-P

Luckily H-P says it hopes to reduce the number of redundancies by offering an early retirement programme.

A spokeswoman described the cuts as “setting H-P on a path to extend our global leadership and deliver the greatest value to customers and shareholders.”

Well, even the most loyal of H-P’s supporters wouldn’t claim the company could do that with webOS as it choice for market leading tablets.

GoMobile News thinks that H-P should follow the lead of the techies and introduce dual boot (webOS & Android) tablets. See our previous story here.

The same could possibly apply to H-P’s latest smartphone – the Pre 3, although there would appear to be little point in dual boot. Android on its own would be enough.

As far as GoMobile news can tell, nobody’s actually managed to port Android onto a Pre 3 successfully.

Although some raving nutter has posted a video of the Pre 3 booting into Android on YouTube (see below) but all it seems to do is turn the handset into a clock, though.

Here at GoMobile News we think there is a market for a combined tablet and smartphone package. Rather than installing 3G (or even 4G) into the tablet itself, simply offer a compatible handset which makes ‘tethering’ [turning the handset into a Wi-Fi hot spot) a doodle.

One last point – the chief victim of these cutbacks is Dr Mike Lynch, CEO of HP’s Autonomy division. Autonomy being a UK company before H-P acquired it. Wonder what Dr Lynch might do next?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQY6DZj8RCI. Alkl

Although Google’s Android mobile OS was supposed to rule the world by now, support for developing apps for Android is actually waning. That’s according to Appcelerator, which provides a platform for developing for Android, iOS and HTML5. The company has regularly surveyed the 300,000 developers currently in its network. The data shows that over the past three Quarters, interest in developing mobile applications to run on Android platforms (both tablet and smartphone ) has fallen off more than 10 per cent.By contrast, interest in developing for the iPhone dropped only slightly but interest in developing for the iPad has remained consistently high. The least popular mobile OS out of the four is Android for tablets.

It would be great to know how Windows Phone 7(W7 Mango) and BlackBerry compared amongst this developer community but Appcelerator doesn’t support those platforms natively.

With massive Android device sales plus around 850,000 activations daily, in theory Android should have come to dominate both the tablet and the smartphone market by now.

Why hasn’t it? Appcelerator says developers most often point to: – the fragmentation of the platforms; the lack of standard device images and feature sets; and the difficulty of app monetisation

So instead, Appcelerator sees Apple and its iOS devices (iPad, Iphone, AppleTv) continuing to their upward trend amongst developers on its network.

To explain the company’s ‘Four steps to creating a mobile [app development] strategy, the company is running a webinar on May 24th [2012]. More details here.

The webinar will be run by Michael King, Appcelerator’s principal mobile strategist, and formerly Gartner’s research director for mobile.

One question he hopes to answer is, “Why does the average mobile app cost a million dollars to build?” Obviously when it shouldn’t cost anything like that much.

Make sure you’ve registered first with Appcelerator here, otherwise you might miss out.

Webinar: 4 Steps to Creating a Mobile Strategy

Date: May 24th 2012
Time: 9:00 AM PDT
Presenter: Michael King

Why does the average mobile app cost a million dollars to build?

There is a better (and smarter) way to approach mobile. By using a scalable mobile development platform you can get to market faster, control your costs, and scale quickly.

Register with Appcelerator here.

Viewdini is a new service from the USA’s Verizon Wireless network which aims to simplify access to video content for the operator’s mobile phone customers The company describes Viewdini as a portal that makes it easy for subscribers to search and view video content. Content includes films, TV and other sources of video files. The objective here is to highlight Verizon’s 4G (LTE) network capability. Which is, of course, fine if you are lucky enough to be standing in a location which supports LTE. Content providers which Verizon Wireless appears to have already signed up for this US based service include Comcast Xfinity; Hulu Plus; mSpot; and Net Flix. The company is hoping to add Verizon FiOS any time now. “Working with a wide range of providers, we’re giving our customers a simple and intuitive way to find shows, movies and other videos from the sources they have relationships with and discover new sources of video as well,” said Dan Mead, CEO with Verizon Wireless.

Viewdini will act as a mobile video aggregator that will enable users to search for thousands of titles from some of the USA’s leading video content providers. Users can search by video title; topic; or performers name.

Viewdini will let customers know which services have mobile video for streaming, and whether it is available at no additional charge, by subscription, to rent or for purchase.

A simple click will also provide related content and information like cast and crew info and links to similar titles.

Initially, Viewdini will be made available to Verizon Wireless customers who possess Android 4G LTE devices. The requisite app should appear in Goggle Play (formerly Android Market) sometime in May [2012]. It’s not there yet.

Verizon also claims that versions of Viewdini for other mobile operating systems (it hasn’t mentioned Apple’s iOS, so that probably means Windows Phone 7/Mango) are “expected to be added soon”!

Press release

May 23rd 2012. Performance marketing and technology company Tradedoubler has announced its campaign to help clients and affiliate marketing partners identify and harness the latest opportunities in online and mobile commerce. The campaign reflects Tradedoubler’s determination to help customers navigate their way through the hype and confusion around mobile marketing. Its launch is accompanied by a revitalised website and brand identity, unveiled today. Emerging communications technologies and an increasingly social, mobile and empowered consumer base are driving massive changes in the way people research and purchase products and services.E-commerce sales in Europe are forecast to grow by 16.1 per cent to £197.19 billion (€232.76 billion) * in 2012, representing around one in seven retail sales in the most mature European markets.

M-commerce sales are set to grow 40 per cent each year for the next five years**, yet Tradedoubler estimates that just eight per cent of European retailers have a transactional mobile site or application.

Tradedoubler believes that this lack of uptake reflects widespread confusion and concern among organisations about where and how to best invest resources and how to address technical and ethical obstacles such as platform and device fragmentation, user experience, security and data privacy.

“M-commerce is already starting to transform the retail landscape and this trend will only continue and escalate,” said Urban Gillström, CEO, Tradedoubler.

“The data is breath-taking. Our mobile traffic is already generating more than two million sales per month. No advertiser or online publisher can afford to ignore such an opportunity.

We live in an anything, anytime, anywhere world and companies need to develop and implement powerful offerings that seamlessly integrate e-commerce and m-commerce to meet the needs of consumers and the challenges of competition.

We appreciate that this is a daunting prospect for many advertisers and publishers and we want to help.”

Tradedoubler was the first pan-European network to offer an integrated e-commerce and m-commerce affiliate network to help advertisers extend online programmes to users on mobile devices.

It followed up earlier this year with the launch of Application Download Tracking (ADT) for iOS and Android. This enables companies to measure the ROI on App downloads and track leads and in-App purchases.

Tradedoubler has an award-winning publisher network and with its ability to accurately record whether a sale was generated by an affiliate’s PC site, mobile site or App, it has the technology to ensure that publishers are accurately rewarded and that advertisers are able to assess the success of individual elements of their cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Reinforcing its commitment to helping advertisers and publishers meet the challenges of mobile and tablet-generated commerce, Tradedoubler has also hired an international mobile team who will share their knowledge and expertise with advertisers and publishers new to this space.

“These are exciting times for the digital marketing industry and for Tradedoubler,” said Rob Wilson, Market Unit Leader North West. “Customers across the UK are responding enthusiastically to our expanding suite of e-commerce and mobile solutions as the benefits of extending affiliate programmes to mobile devices become clear.

We want to build on this to reach out to partners and potential partners – including merchants, affiliates and agencies – who may be unsure about where to start in the mobile arena or how to progress beyond the first steps. Customers across the UK will also benefit significantly from our re-launched and enhanced website.”

,bold>*Online retailing: UK and Europe 2012’, Centre for Retail Research
** Mobile Commerce Forecast, 2011 To 2016’, Forrester Research

About Tradedoubler

Tradedoubler is a performance-based digital marketing and technology company. Tradedoubler helps its 2,000 advertiser clients reach their business goals via its network of over 140,000 publishers, improving their digital marketing results, both online and on mobile.
Tradedoubler has a unique reach, being able to address around 70 per cent of Europe’s e-commerce consumers. The company recently expanded into Latin America in response to client demand for its expertise. Among Tradedoubler’s advertisers are Apple, American Express, Dell, Disney, Expedia and CDON.

source: Sunday Times

Recently, GoMobile News was reading one of the excellent technical answers to a reader’s question in the UK’s SundayTimes Don’t Panic section, when it struck us that we’d failed to report on our solution for a very similar problem. The best way to describe our answer would be as an “extremely long-winded approach to transfering contacts from a dead iPhone to another iPhone or regular smartphone device.” But this solution does actually work. Nevertheless, both problems stem from how Apple’s iTunes PC software has been storing its data. In a nutshell, though, we took an iPhone with a completely illegible screen and no Home button and managed to transfer the handset’s contacts to a BlackBerry via an old Nokia.The chief problem lies with where iTunes decides to store your addressbook.

As the Sunday Times reported, early versions of this package could keep the ‘master’ copy of the addressbook either on the PC or on the handset itself.

Which could be confusing for the handset owner. So, with the latest version – we reckon it currently is around version 10.6, you can sync the handset to a supported email service.

The Sunday Times suggests you create a brand new email account for this very purpose – say on Gmail or Yahoo! Mail.

But that doesn’t really keep the addressbook on your computer. Not everyone wants to use the iCloud, either.

GoMobile News stumbled across a useful alternative. Windows 7 doesn’t support Outlook but buried away in the OS is a facility called ‘Contacts’ which you can use in conjunction with iTunes.

To get to this facility, simply type the word ‘Contacts’ into the search bar at the bottom of the Windows Start menu. This will show you your contacts file.

So now connect the dead iPhone (it still works even if you can’t see the screen) to the PC. When iTunes recognises the device, click on the iPhone’s Info tab.

Next tick the Sync Contacts and then select which service you want to Sync with and in this case choose Windows Contacts.

Once you have successfully synced all your contacts, open Windows Contacts and select Export. Now here’s the clever bit. Don’t pick the .csv (comma separated variable) option.

Instead, select vCards. This will create individual vCards for each of your contacts and store them in a dedicated Contacts folder.

The reason for this choice is that email systems and each handset manufacturer appears to use completely incompatible .csv formats and you’ll end up tearing your hair out trying to get it to work.

Now we just so happened to have an old Nokia E61 lying around doing nothing. So we fired up the Nokia PC suite and imported the entire addressbook in .vcf format.

The addressbook on the E61 had been previously deleted so we could now copy all the contacts from the dead iPhone onto it. The next move is to copy the contacts from the Nokia onto the SIM card.

Here’s another twist. The iPhone uses a micro SIM card (and its owner had forgotten to copy all the contacts to the SIM when the handset had been working).

So you acquire a microSIM adapter (they cost £1 at most) and insert it into the Nokia E61. Then you select all the contacts in the handset’s new addressbook and copy them to the SIM.

Voila! You now have a SIM with all your old iPhone contacts on it. When we tried this, there was room on the SIM for all but around seven contacts.

Once you notice you’ve lost a contact, merely look up their vCard on the PC and type the missing information in manually.

Our reader with the dead iPhone took the opportunity to migrate to a RIM Blackberry now that she’d got all her contacts back.

Readers can modify these steps for their own purposes. You could reverse the whole process and copy contacts from a BlackBerry onto an iPhone, for example.
Have fun.

You have to subscribe to the Sunday Times web site to read the Don’t Panic answer to “I lost my contacts when I synced my iPhone.” Those who are subscribers try searching here.

Press release

May 21st 2012. Mindspeed Technologies, the industry leader in technology for small cell base stations, today announced that it will form a joint development lab with China Mobile Communications Corporation to support the operator’s recent deployment of Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) femtocells.“With close support and collaboration from chip vendors and infrastructure companies like Mindspeed, femtocell technologies in China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA network have achieved commercial deployment.

This joint development brings a significantly improved customer experience and further demonstrates that small cells will play important roles in wireless broadband services,” said Gu Yihong, assistant general manager at China Mobile Jiangsu Suzhou Branch.

“The convergence of TD-SCDMA, TDD-LTE, GSM and Wi-Fi is a fast evolving technology trend, and we appreciate TD-Femto ecosystem companies like Mindspeed that are driving this shift with mature solutions.”

“Mindspeed is delighted that China Mobile is deploying TD-SCDMA femtocell solutions in Suzhou using our technology,” said Raouf Y. Halim, chief executive officer at Mindspeed.

““We believe an enhanced collaboration with the world’s leading operator in the TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE area will allow Mindspeed to deliver the best performance on next generation small cell solutions.”

Mindspeed’s Transcede family of processors are complete NodeB and eNodeB SoC solutions that support concurrent 3G and long-term evolution (LTE) processing in a single device, including TD-SCDMA, wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA), evolved high-speed packet access (HSPA+) and both frequency division duplexing LTE (FDD-LTE) and time-division duplex long-term evolution (TDD-LTE) with a roadmap to LTE-Advanced (LTE-A).

Combining 3G and LTE processing capabilities into a single chip is more cost effective for OEMs and the inclusion of a carrier-class physical-layer (PHY) software solution for both 3G and LTE will accelerate time to market, while simplifying development and reducing risk.

Mindspeed has the most complete portfolio of small cell SoCs in the industry, from residential to enterprise to pico/metro applications. All Transcede family devices are supported by a complete, carrier-class software reference design to accelerate time-to-market schedules.

The reference design includes RF module integration, a real-time Linux board support package and standard-compliant PHY implementation for LTE and W-CDMA and TD-SCDMA, with associated utilities and test scripts.

About Mindspeed Technologies

Mindspeed Technologies is a leading provider of network infrastructure semiconductor solutions to the communications industry. The company’s low-power system-on-chip (SoC) products are helping to drive video, voice and data applications in worldwide fiber-optic networks and enable advanced processing for 3G and long-term evolution (LTE) mobile networks. The company’s high-performance analog products are used in a variety of optical, enterprise, industrial and video transport systems. Mindspeed’s products are sold to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) around the globe.

More information from www.mindspeed.com.

About China Mobile

China Mobile Communications Corporation (‘China Mobile’) was founded on April 20, 2000, with a registered capital of RMB 51.8 billion, and assets of more than RMB 1000 billion, possessing the largest mobile network and customer base in the world.

China Mobile (Hong Kong) Group Limited is wholly-owned by China Mobile. China Mobile (Hong Kong) Group Limited, as of 31 December 2010, holds 74.21% equity interest in China Mobile Limited (“listed company” for short). The listed company has wholly owned subsidiary companies in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) as well as Hong Kong SAR. China Mobile Limited was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. Currently, China Mobile Limited is the world’s largest telecommunications company by market value.

China Mobile has been selected in the world’s top 500 by the U.S. “Fortune” magazine for 11 consecutive years, and the latest ranking is 87th. With its brand value rising, it has been named as one of the world’s most powerful brands by the “Financial Times” for 6 consecutive years. In addition, it was recognized on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 4 consecutive years, being the only company selected in Mainland China.

Well, if you want a entry level W7 Mango phone, then the obvious option is to acquire yourself a Nokia Lumia 610. Thanks to our friends at Clove Technology we can now assure our UK readers that they will be finally able to get hold of this device by Friday [25th may 2012]. if you want to order it from Clove you can visit them here. A little bit of investigation has show that there are potential suppliers of the SIM-free (unlocked version) of this Windows Phone 7.5 device for slightly less than Clove’s asking price. The big question is will the 610 support Wi-fi tethering and NFC? But then you have to enquire about delivery charges and taxes to be absolutely sure.

The point here, however, is that this is almost exactly three months after the initial announcement of the 610 [27th February 2012].

Nokia’s rivals take three months to develop a completely new model not three months to deliver on an announced product.

GoMobile News stands a good chance of being jealous of those purchasing the 610 because it reputedly supports ‘tethering’.

Which means you can use the handset as your own personal Wi-fi hotspot hanging off the back of the handset’s 3G connexion.

It is well worth considering what the actual specifications of the 610 will be if you purchase it right now.

One very good reason for this is that an NFC-enabled version of the 610 smartphone was announced by Nokia at the recent WIMA NFC show held in Monaco just ten days ago.

There has been fervent speculation – even on the official Nokia Support Discussions site here that the Nokia Lumia 900 has NFC embedded but it’s not active.

That’s a bit like the Motorola RAZR which might have an NFC capability hidden inside its components but not yet activated. See our previous story here.

So which will be Nokia’s first W7 Mango handset capable of supporting NFC: – the 610 or the 900? Who can tell?

The important point is that once Nokia 610s finally get out there into the wild, will problems with Windows Phone 7.5 apps finally surface?

After all, the important difference between the 610 and GoMobile News‘ own trusty Lumia 800 is that the 610 has less memory. (See our previous story here).

Finally, there’s the question of how much you can expect to pay for the 610 in the UK – given that it is an entry level model and price is therefore key?

GoMobile News found a very interesting page here on Google’s online price comparison site.

It shows that Unlocked Mobiles appears to be able to undercut Clove Technology’s price of £180.00 (including taxes) by offering the smartphone at £164.98 here.

GoMobile News wouldn’t normally worrying too much about pricing, but when Nokia is attempting to play in the low-cost smartphone sector with a W7 Mango phone such things matter.

According to the Mobileweb Company, mobile websites that it operates typically see uplift in mobile site traffic of more than 90 per cent. That’s because they are fully optimised for mobile search discovery, the company claims. Whilst Mobileweb’s own recently announced research shows that iPhone users grab the lion’s share of mobile web access (55.7 per cent), the company still urges brands to adopt a cross device mobile strategy. Less than 10 per cent of potential customers have an iPhone. The stats that Mobileweb has just released also have one highly surprising statistic.

Those with Sony handsets generate more mobile web traffic that those with either RIM BlackBerries or Nokias.

Samsung devices were second after Apple iPhones in generating 9.2 per cent of traffic; HTC devices third with 6.6 per cent; and other devices generated well over a quarter (28.5 per cent) of all mobile web traffic.

Sony’s share of the traffic was 5.6 per cent followed by RIM with 5.1 per cent and Nokia trailing way behind with 1.5 per cent.

However, Mobileweb sees the mobile services it operates accessed by up to 300 different mobile devices each month.

Mobileweb argues that its report shows that an impressive return of investment can be achieved if the customer experience is good and services deliver value quickly.

For the services it operates, Mobileweb Company typically sees more than 50 per cent of customer visits result in a measurable outcome; a call, booking, purchase or potential visit.

It also shows how important mobile search is for attracting new customers.

With the likes of Google, who command more than 95 per cent of mobile search activity, treating mobile websites very differently there is a great opportunity for organisations to gain prominence for their brand through well optimised mobile services and content, Mobileweb claims.

It also says that organic search is a very effective low cost way for a brand to get in front of potential customers.

However, most sites and underlying content are very poorly optimised and mobile search is overlooked, Mobileweb says.

“The challenge for many brands taking their first steps in mobile is they are in danger of alienating potential customers through poor experience,” argues Martin Wilson, md with the Mobileweb Company.

“Others are failing to recognise the value of search in driving customers to their brand.”

The company points out that Gartner [in 2010] predicted that by 2013 more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online and says that currently the mobile web is estimated to be growing 8 times faster than the PC web environment.

“The growth rate certainly shows the increasing importance of mobile and why it is critical that brands start to invest in building a mobile presence in the right way,” Wilson added.

Being something of purists, here at GoMobile Towers we were extremely reluctant to defile our HP TouchPad by taking off its native webOS. However, unimpressed with the apps available for this superb tablet, especially when we learnt the dual boot option was working extremely well. So it was off to our good friends webOS Nation for some really simple advice on how to perform this upgrade. We regret not having dug out the totally unofficial Google apps whilst we were about it. Anyway, we can confirm that Android 4.0 (Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwich) works really well on the TouchPad. A warning to anyone who wants to perform the same feat- you’ll need patience because any tiny mistake means the install fails.

First of all, you must ensure your desktop (we use a regular Samsung NC10 notebook running Windows 7), is fully up and running with Java.

As we’ve warned previously here with our advice on installing Amazon Kindle on a non-US TouchPad.

In order to communicate effectively with the TouchPad via Java, you need to ensure that you’ve installed the correct ‘Novacom’ software drivers.

Next you need to establish exactly where the Novacom files are. In our case they were under /Progam Files/Palm, Inc. Note the exact spelling here. You need both the space and the comma between ‘Palm’ and ‘Inc’.

The latest files you’ll need will be on the official Cyanogen Wiki site here but we downloaded most of them from Goo.

The files you’ll need are ACMEInstaller 2; ClockworkMod Recovery; moboot; and CyanogenMod 9 for TouchPad.

These are normally compressed (zipped) files and mostly you don’t need to decompress (unzip) them. So now copy the ACMEInstaller 2 file to where you found your novacom files (in our case /Palm, Inc.

Now you need to create an installation directory on the TouchPad itself. In Windows, all you do is use Explorer. Connect the TouchPad to the PC via a USB cable and when the PC recognises it, tap on ‘USB drive’.

You should now see the TouchPad as a new drive (say, E:). Go to that new drive and create a new folder called ‘cminstall’. Once again, get the spelling right. No capitals, etc.

Next you need to copy the three files to this new folder from wherever you downloaded them to on the C. Probably ‘/Downloads’. Make sure Windows knows they are zip files with a .zip file extension.

At this juncture you can install the unofficial Google apps if you are a naughty person and have found the googleapps.zip file. Copy that to cminstall as well.

Note: We think the instructions we were following had a mistake at this juncture. To fix the situation, we unzipped all the files from the cyanogenmod9 file and copied them over to the cminstall folder. It seemed to do the trick.

Right the real fun starts now because you are effectively going back to the good old days of MS-DOS. If you don’t know how to do this, simply open the Windows Start menu and type the word ‘cmd’ into the search box at the bottom left of the menu. You see the good old DOS prompt.

It’s necessary to get to the exactly directory where you put the installation files. Use the ‘cd’ (change directory command to do this. So in our case it was cd c:\Program Files\Palm, Inc. Get the spelling right.

At this stage it’s necessary to get the TouchPad into ‘recovery’ mode. First find the volume button and make sure you know which way is ‘volume up’.

Now shut the TouchPad down by pushing the Power but and then select Shut down. Once it is off, hold the volume UP button down and simultaneously hit the Power button.

If you get the device into the recovery mode, the screen should be filled with a giant USB symbol. Now hook it up to your desktop computer.

When you are sure that Windows has recognised the Touchpad, go to the Command Prompt and type in ‘novacom.exe boot mem:// <ACMEInstaller2.zip. Not you need that space and the < chevron.

At this stage the TouchPad’s screen should spring to life and you’ll see a dialogue showing that the correct files have been installed and the TouchPad is rebooting.

When it does reboot, you should get a nice new menu which lists all of your boot options and one of them should jolly well be Cyanogenmod9.

If anyone knows how to increase the time you’ve got before it defaults to webOS from its default of five seconds please let us know. Because you’ve got 5 seconds to change the selection using the volume button and then pressing the Home button.

That’s it really. Our big thanks to webOS Nation without whom we would never have go there.

ONE HOT TIP: It is possible to b*lls up some stage of the installation process. In which case you’ll have a TouchPad that won’t do anything. THE SOLUTION. Hold down the Power; Volume Down and Home buttons simultaneously. Wait a while and it will eventually reboot.

May 17th 2012. Vizibility, provider of the online identity management platform for professionals and the enterprise, has announced the first-ever NFC Mobile Wallet Card as a standard feature for premium subscriptions. The NFC (Near Field Communication) beta program that was announced at the Southwest (SXSW) Conference in March is now closed. More information from here.Vizibility helps businesses and professionals control, share and track their professional online presence on the web or on the go.

Vizibility mobile business card users can now use NFC in addition to QR codes to wirelessly exchange contact information, share hand-picked profiles, video bios and other curated online content, view connections they have in common on LinkedIn and Facebook, download vCards, and track when and where their business cards are scanned.

Through Vizibility’s patented ‘Find Me in Google’ feature, users can even pick and rank the Google search results they want to show first and find out who is Googling them.

No App Required

It has never been more critical for professionals to have an easily accessible mobile online presence. More than half of all local searches now originate on mobile devices.

Facebook has 500 million users who have accessed their site with a mobile device. LinkedIn reported that mobile accounted for 22 per cent of unique visitors during the quarter, up 8 percent from the same period last year. However, most companies do not yet have mobile-friendly websites, and today’s social networking sites want users to download proprietary apps that make instant networking difficult.

Vizibility’s mobile business card is an HTML5 web app and ‘just works’ in the mobile browser with most QR code scanning apps and NFC-enabled smart phones on iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Vizibility is the first company to leverage the potential of NFC for mobile personal branding.

“The ubiquity of smartphones and growing popularity of mobile wallet services all underscore the importance of establishing and controlling a mobile presence online,” noted James Alexander, Vizibility founder and CEO.

“Credit cards aren’t the only thing we keep in our wallets today. Business cards and other networking tools will also find their place in our mobile wallets. Vizibility’s personal mobile branding solution is affordable, enterprise-friendly and sends the message that you and your firm are hip and innovative.”

Vizibility is a sponsor of this year’s TiECON 2012 Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and will provide individualized mobile business cards to thousands of attendees that can be easily accessed from a personal QR code printed on each attendee badge.

About Vizibility

Vizibility delivers the world’s first online identity management platform for individuals and the enterprise. Vizibility is in use at numerous professional firms including Duane Morris, Loeb & Loeb, Lowenstein Sandler, McCarter & English, Novak Druce + Quigg, among others. The company’s platform is integrated into the offerings of ALL-STATE LEGAL, Hubbard One (a unit of Thomson Reuters), 6FigureJobs, BlueSteps, Salary.com and many other websites offering online identity management solutions geared toward tech-savvy professionals. U.S. Patents 7,831,609, 7,987,173 and 8,095,534. Other patents pending.

May 15th 2012. ZTE Corporation will be partnering with the GSMA on the Smarter App Challenge, a competition which aims to select the most efficient mobile phone application worldwide. The winner will be announced at the GSMA Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai, 20-22 June this year. Entries are open to the general public.This follows ZTE’s collaboration with the GSMA at Mobile World Congress 2012, where ZTE provided Light Tab 2 devices to mPowered Brands VIPs.

The grand prize winner of the GSMA Smarter App Challenge will be awarded USD $10K and a trip to Mobile Asia Expo 2012 for the prize presentation.

Additionally, developers have the chance to win a ZTE Light Tab 2 simply by downloading the Challenge Brief and Assets.

ZTE has a strong focus on innovative application development. In 2012, ZTE will optimise its mobile applications platform and enhance cooperation with industry partners, in an aim to better serve customers.

Criteria for entry to the Smarter App Challenge includes developing a ‘smarter app’ – one which best protects the user’s battery life, uses the radio network in the most efficient way, is always connected and provides a positive user experience.

“The widespread adoption of smartphones and the explosion in mobile applications has forever changed the way that users communicate, access and share information, and through the Smarter App Challenge, we’re focused on working with developers to create applications that are optimised for mobile networks, improving the efficiency of applications and networks and offering a better experience for users,” said Ian Smith, E-Sim Project Manager, GSMA. “We’re very pleased to have ZTE on board as a partner for our very first Smarter App Challenge.”

The competition is being promoted through Facebook and Twitter. For more information on the Smarter App Challenge, please visit www.mobileappchallenge.com/smarterapp

About ZTE

ZTE is a publicly-listed global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions with the most comprehensive product range covering virtually every telecommunications sector, including wireless, access & bearer, VAS, terminals and professional services. The company delivers innovative, custom-made products and services to over 500 operators in more than 140 countries, helping them to meet the changing needs of their customers while growing revenue. In 2011, ZTE’s revenue increased by 29 per cent increase to USD13.7 billion. Its overseas operating revenue grew 30 per cent to USD 7.4 billion during the period, accounting for 54.2 per cent of overall operating revenue. ZTE commits 10 per cent of its annual revenue to research and development and has leadership roles in several international bodies devoted to developing telecommunications industry standards. ZTE is committed to corporate social responsibility and is a member of the UN Global Compact. The company is China’s only listed telecom manufacturer that is publicly traded on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges.

May 18th 2012. Apps consultancy and development house Chelsea
Apps Factory , in partnership with diving star Tom Daley, has  announced the launch of Tom Daley Dive, a diving game aimed at the Olympic athlete’s fans, diving enthusiasts and mobile gamers, available on iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. The new game challenges players to perform masterful dives in a fully realised 3D environment, with top scores displayed on a global leader-board.Tom Daley Dive challenges players to master the art of diving using timed touchscreen gestures to roll, twist and tuck their way onto the global leader board.

Tom Daley himself modelled his techniques for the game and players will be able to watch a virtual Daley show them how each dive should be done before attempting it themselves.

Other features of the game allow players to: -

• Have their best scores featured on the global leader board
• Have fun honing their dives in a special practice pool
  environment
• Unlock exclusive Tom Daley content by completing in-game
  challenges
• Replay their dives frame by frame to see how they performed at
  each stage of the dive sequence
• Share their in-game achievements with friends via Twitter and
  Facebook
• Unlock new venues such as Beijing, Barcelona and London
• Compete with other divers in the Championship for a chance to
  win gold

Mike Anderson, CEO of Chelsea Apps Factory, commented: “With the Olympics around the corner, interest in the athletes is really starting to build – especially so in Tom’s case because he’s already got so many fans and is tipped to be one of the biggest stars of London 2012. ”

That makes this the perfect time to release this app – not least because so many of us are now carrying smartphones capable of rendering the kind of immersive 3D graphics and gameplay we’ve built into Tom Daley Dive.

At Chelsea Apps Factory we pride ourselves on developing apps that are unique and exciting, taking advantage of what the technology can do to really engage with the end user – and Tom Daley Dive does just that.”

Tom Daley commented, “Apps are one of the best things about having a phone, and I jumped at the chance to create my own. There are no good diving games out there and I love how this game has turned out: it looks great and feels very realistic – although I’m a bit nervous my own score won’t make the online leader-board!

If the game helps raise awareness of diving and gets people excited about the Olympics this year, I’ll be really pleased.”

Tom Daley is a double Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning diver whose exploits at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing won him over one million fans around the world. He specialises in the 10m platform individual and 10m platform synchronised diving events.

Daley was Britain’s youngest team-member at the last Olympics, and has won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Young Personality Award three times during his career.

The game is available to download free from the App Store for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad here. Users can purchase the full version for an in-app spend of 69 pence, which unlocks the full range of dives, the Championships, where the player can compete for gold and a range of Olympic venues.

About Chelsea Apps Factory

Chelsea Apps Factory is the UK’s fastest growing consumer & enterprise Apps consultancy and development house. Based in a converted factory in Chelsea, it has a client base of global companies and brands including Robert Walters, Vodafone and the National Gallery.

Press release

May 17th 2012 . Net Communities has announced that it is once again growing its digital advertising representation offering, thanks to a new partnership with Ziff Davis, one of the world’s best-known publishers of technology-based digital content products. This exclusive agreement enables Net Communities to represent the UK advertising inventory for Ziff Davis’ flagship property PCMag.com, as well as ExtremeTech.com, Geek.com, Toolbox.com and the newly acquired ComputerShopper.com.By partnering with Ziff Davis, Net Communities further bolsters its portfolio of hand-picked, world leading digital technology sites which feature trusted and comprehensive lab-based reviews of the newest and hottest products, many of which carry the world-renowned PCMag Editors’ Choice Award, the most trusted buying recommendation for technology products and services across the globe.

Net Communities is now offering high impact advertising opportunities on these sites, including sponsorships and custom ad units that can be targeted by category, brand, and audience.

“We are very excited to bring Ziff Davis Inc. back to the UK and to represent its signature brand PCMag.com, one of the oldest, most reputable properties in tech media,” said Andy Evans, Founder and CEO of Net Communities.

“Joining with Ziff Davis helps us expand our digital offering to provide UK agencies and marketers with the opportunity to reach an even wider audience than we already offer.”

Anurag Harsh, SVP of Partnerships and GM of Global Licensing at Ziff Davis, added: “We’re excited about the potential of our new partnership with Net Communities, one of the most innovative digital media companies in the UK that has become an expert at developing creative, integrated marketing campaigns to better serve its business partners. This will give our sites the opportunity to be a part of greater marketing initiatives and unique campaigns for UK advertisers. This was a key factor in our decision to go ahead with this promising exclusive agreement.”

With this new agreement, Net Communities reaffirms its position as the leading independent tech publisher and advertising network for digital advertising in the UK market.

About Net Communities

Net Communities was established in 1999 and is privately owned and operated by its founder Andy Evans. Since his management buy-out in 2008, Net Communities had grown from 5 to 30+ staff and its revenues have nearly doubled each year. It publishes a series of online technology titles including ITProPortal.com and ITReviews.com, which attract nearly 1.5 million unique visitors per month.

Net Communities’ wider digital offering comprises a portfolio of many highly popular online destinations, including Anandtech.com, BoingBoing.net,  Pocket-Lint.com, PhotographyBlog.com, Technorati.com and TheNextWeb.com. Today, the Net Communities’ digital portfolio reaches over 10 million unique visitors per month in UK, with an inventory of 500 million page views. Net Communities’ list of advertiser clients span Business Technology, Gadget, High Net Worth Individuals, Lifestyle and Entertainment brands including Dell, Epson, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Jessops, Lloyds, Microsoft and many other leading blue chip brands.

About Ziff Davis

Ziff Davis, Inc. is a leading digital media company specializing in the technology market, reaching over 50 million highly engaged in-market buyers and influencers every month. Ziff Davis sites include PCMag.com, ComputerShopper.com, ExtremeTech.com, Geek.com and Toolbox.com. Ziff Davis also operates BuyerBase, the most advanced ad targeting platform focused on tech buyers; and LogicBuy.com, a leading provider of deals and discounts on tech products. Ziff Davis B2B is a leading provider of online research to enterprise buyers and high quality leads to IT vendors.

National CineMedia (NCM) has recently upgraded its CinemaSync mobile technology. The company also plans to syndicate CinemaSync to other film and entertainment apps, allowing more film goers to interact with the cinema experience in a whole new way. NCM’s ‘Film Night Out with CinemaSync’ app is available for both Android and iOS but sadly appears restricted to the US market so GoMobile News couldn’t test it. To date the app appears to have had over 1.2 million downloads. The app is designed to bring the entire cinema experience to life via smartphones.The app uses image and audio recognition technology to sync with everything in the cinema environment.

CinemaSync can now deliver extended content, coupons and other value added deals directly to film goers on their mobile phones.

Content includes film posters and concessions plus NCM’s FirstLook pre-show offering.

In addition, when the trailers and feature film begin, Film Night Out with CinemaSync switches to ‘film mode’, dimming the screen and reminding film goers to silence their mobile phones..

“Some film goers are already using their mobile devices in theatres before the film,”said Ken Venturi, an executive vp with NCM Media Networks.

“So we designed Film Night Out with CinemaSync to enhance that experience and channel it in a positive, courteous direction.”

He continued, “With CinemaSync, film goers will get extra content and valuable offers throughout their lobby and pre-film experience, with the added benefit of an automatic reminder from the Sprint network to silence their mobile phone prior to the trailers and feature film start.”

With NCM’s Film Night Out app, film goers can plan a night out at the films with access to reviews, trailers, show times, cinema locations, ticketing by Fandango. It even suggests on fun things to do before and after the film.

Users can also share plans with friends and extend their film experience online through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and GetGlue.

The free Film Night Out with CinemaSync app is available for download from the iTunes App Store here or through Google Play here.

Regular readers may recall GoMobile News bemoaning the fact that when our trusty Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango handset was paired with a Bluetooth headset, there was no way to force the handset to auto-answer incoming calls. (See our previous story here. )Which is a major failing in our eyes. However, we managed to find one solution in the shape of Jabra hands-free car kit courtesy of our old friends at GN Netcom. You can pair your W7 Mango handset with this device and it has a button which you can push to answer an incoming call. Simples. The future, however, many lie with an intelligent rear view mirror system.The model GoMobile News utilised to prove our theory that pairing with a hands-free car system was the solution, was the Jabra Cruiser II BT SP. We had no trouble at all paring it with the Lumia 800.

Now the Jabra Cruiser is designed to clip over the driver’s sun visor. There were only two problems with using this particular model. Firstly at night the relevant button isn’t illuminated so it’s difficult to find.

Secondly, if you forget to charge the unit’s battery, the power lead to the Cruiser tends to get in the way of your vision. It might even be illegal to drive with it connected in the UK.

So when we saw some promotional material – courtesy of our friends in Shenzen (thanks to ZTE), concerning a car rearview mirror system with capacitance touchscreen, it caught our attention.

With a touchscreen, it may be possible to tap on the mirror to answer the incoming call.

After all, the NL-511GP, made by NEWLM Technology Development in Shenzen, very definitely has a Bluetooth Hands free kit capability. It also appears to have programmable touch buttons.

Bluetooth is not all that it has got. Inside this device is built-in GPS Navigation; TF (memory) card reader; and a FM transmitter for surround sound. You can also hook up a reverse view camera as an additional option.

NEWLM also appears to have a range of these GPS capable rearview mirror systems. However, the ML-511 GP appears to be the very latest addition.

What’s more, there’s even a price. They are $148 but only if you buy 100 or them. So if you have a spare $14,800 kicking about you could test our theory.

Barcode scanning specialist, ScanLife, has just released its latest [Q1 2012] report on mobile barcode trends. What’s interesting is that out of all the barcodes processed by Scanlife, Apple iPhone users have started to scan more. The traffic generated by iPhones grew 6 per cent from Q4 2011 and represented 45 per cent of all traffic. That’s almost equal to Android OS users with 48 per cent. BlackBerry OS only just managed to pip Symbian (4 per cent vs 3 per cent). Of course, there are other firms handling barcode traffic but this report gives a clue as to the size of the market. Total scans processed by ScanLife rose to 13 million scans which represent a 157 per cent increase from Q 2011. There was also an interesting change in which countries had the top number of scanning users. The USA dropped out of the Top Five whilst the UK entered it.Incidentally, the processed 2D barcodes may have been generated on the ScanLife Platform but also came from 3rd party generators.

Overall, the ScanLife platform processed traffic from more than 5 million unique users.

The Top Five scanning countries contained more than a few surprises.

In at Number One was Germany followed by Mexico, Portugal, Brazil and then the UK. Both the USA and France dropped out of the Top Five (compared to Q4 2011).

ScanLife found the same thing as Nellymoser (see our previous story here) – namely that the most popular form of QR Code marketing campaigns are for delivering video.

Next in the list of uses comes app downloads followed by product details, loyalty programmes and links to social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

ScanLife observes that the fact that QR codes are being used to for CRM – with things such as sweepstakes, shows that loyalty programmes can be driven from any media.

Amongst those marketeers making good use of are quick-service Restaurants (QSR) – or the likes of McDonalds.

QSR made its debut in the Top 2D campaigns by industry. The most popular place to put a 2D barcode was on packaging but magazines were still there in fourth place.

What ScanLife didn’t say is what proportion of the 2D barcodes it processed used its own proprietary technology – the EZcode.

We know EZcode has some very big fans such as BARKCODE (see our previously story here).

You can download the ScanLife report free from here.

French supplier, Parrot, best known for its Android power vehicle audio centre – the Asteroid, has just launched a service which it is calling ‘TextFriendly’. The whole aim is to provide a service whereby any mobile phone user can manage his or her own communications such as text messages or emails – hands-free. Obviously, TextFriendly works using voice recognition technology but weren’t not sure which major player has provided it. Nuance, perhaps? We’re also guessing that it is actually a white-labelled offering – possibly from a company called QRC. Anyway, GoMobile News has tested the system out and provided it works really quite well. The snag is that we don’t quite know what the costs are.The first thing to do is sign yourself up for the service at http://www.textfriendlyclient.com.

This is far easier to do from the desktop than from the actual mobile phone itself.

For testing purposes, we signed in for the free trial. This almost certainly restricted what we were able to do but still enabled to prove the service really does work.

Judging from the sign up process, the service is currently supported in seven countries. The list includes: – USA, Canada, Spain, France, Australia and New Zealand as well as the UK.

The important point is that in order to utilise TextFriendly, you have to dial a local number.

In the UK this is a regular landline number so with any luck, you can use the service without going outside your normal allocated minutes.

Once you’ve efficiently signed up – and Parrot is hoping you will employ TextFriendly whilst using one of its many hands-free in-vehicle devices, you can then start adding in your personal data.

To import all of your existing contact details into the TextFriendly service, the system provides all the instructions you should need.

Basically, you export a .csv file from the likes of Gmail or Windows Live and that adds it to your online addressbook.

The system also enables you to set up a default email account for when you send your email messages.

You can also set TextFriendly to ‘Tweet’ or update you Facebook posts. All this can be done whilst travelling along hands-free.

Here comes the only tricky bit. How do you dial into TextFriendly whilst driving along?

The service suggests you use a speed dial number. However, we were testing the service using our trusty Nokia Lumia 800 W7 Mango handset.

WP7 has, of course, got voice recognition built in. All you have to do is hold down the middle (Windows logo) button and then tap of the screen against the ‘Speak’ icon.

Then you can say, “Call Text Friendly” and it will connect you to the service.

Overall, GoMobile News was really quite impressed with the service offered by TextFriendly.

We suspect, however, that given you have to pay for the full service, it is best suited to those with featurephones not smartphones.

Given enough effort, you could probably buy a number of apps that would provide all of this functionality.

It’s an interesting move, nonetheless. This is the mobile cloud competing against native apps and Parrot my very well have judged that there’s a market for such services.

May 16th 2012. MACH, the leading provider of cloud-based managed communication services, today announced the launch of its new Data Optimisation solution, which significantly lowers the cost of delivering data roaming and domestic services to subscribers for mobile network operators and MVNOs. Using sophisticated downlink data optimisation technology, MACH’s solution can enable reductions of up to 70 per cent on downstream data usage of smartphones. This minimises the wholesale cost of providing data roaming for operators and for MVNOs who have to purchase their wholesale data from host mobile network operators, and tackles bandwidth issues, allowing operators to improve profitably and offer more competitive and disruptive offerings.At a time when mobile data consumption is growing exponentially, network operators are faced with the significant challenge of providing quality high-speed data services while trying to minimise the costs associated with mobile data retail plans.

Alongside other techniques such as data off-loading, data optimisation is one of the technologies network operators are turning to in order to reduce costs and meet bandwidth challenges.

Using MACH’s application-oriented Data Optimisation solution, operators can significantly reduce the amount of data consumed by mobile apps, such as Exchange, Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter, when roaming.

Lokdeep Singh, Chief Technology Officer, MACH, commented, “MACH continues to innovate in order to help network operators find new ways of monetizing mobile data while tackling the challenges posed by increased data usage. While some data optimisation and compression technologies are complex and difficult to deploy, MACH’s Managed Service Delivery Platform architecture means that network operators can take an effective solution to market extremely rapidly. By reducing roaming data costs, operators can improve bottom-line profitability, or pass on savings to customers, thereby increasing competitiveness and end-user satisfaction and lowering the risk of ‘Bill Shock’ scenarios.”

Belonging to MACH’s cloud-based, M Serve portfolio of fast-to-market mobile data monetization solutions, the Data Optimisation solution is particularly appealing because it does not require a client on the handset, making it completely transparent to the end-user and simple to deploy.

The technology is based on patent-pending, application-oriented compression and optimisation that has been specifically designed to deliver industry leading data reduction rates for specific mobile applications.

MACH’s Managed Service Delivery Platform allows the company to accelerate the deployment of innovative, new ‘mobile data monetization’ solutions to communication service providers worldwide.

The platform hosts a number of core capabilities which can be built rapidly into new services to meet operator needs. These include real-time charging and billing, data Optimisation, and full interoperability functions, allowing the capabilities to be deployed across network technologies.

About MACH

MACH connects and monetizes the telecom world with its comprehensive and growing portfolio of cloud-based communication services, called MACH Embrace. It provides its 650 operator customers with solutions to monetize mobile data, simplify interoperability between networks, optimize wholesale processes and protect revenues. MACH is the largest provider of data and financial clearing solutions for wireless roaming and operates the globe’s largest and fastest growing open connectivity roaming hub, Link2One. It inserts the operator in the content and application value chain and serves the reseller and wholesaler community with its A2P messaging solutions. Headquartered in Luxembourg, MACH has offices in 12 countries. Its customers include Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Telus, Verizon Wireless and Microsoft, as well as enterprise messaging customers like KLM. For more information, visit www.mach.com.

In a new initiative, Google has got together with the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to release mobile data which should prove extremely valuable to marketeers. The pair has re-launched ‘Our Mobile Planet’ with help from the IAB and researchers Ipsos MediaCT. The data covers 40 countries in 22 different languages but it has also found which countries have the highest smartphone adoption. The answer is Australia, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Saudi Arabia and the UAE which all have more than 50 per cent of their population on smartphones. Which has led to Paul Berney, md for EMEA with the MMA to claim that the majority of smartphone adopters are in EMEA. The data can be accessed for free from thinkwithgoogle.co.uk/mobileplanet.Significantly, the seven remaining members of the Top 13 adopters are the USA, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland which all have more than 40 per cent smartphone penetration.

GoMobile News was interested to see how low the USA came (and there’s no mention of Canada)  given the regions undue influence on the smartphone sector.

Anyway, talking about this new resource, Greg Stuart, global CEO with the MMA, observed, “Understanding the mobile consumer is absolutely critical for marketers, and ‘Our Mobile Planet’ puts an invaluable resource in their hands.”

He also pointed out that users can create custom charts that will help them to analyse smartphone consumer behaviour and support data-driven decision making.

Paul Berney claimed, “These figures also point to a burgeoning global mobile movement as smartphone adoption grows exponentially worldwide, and send a strong message to marketers that they need to make mobile an indispensable part of their marketing mix.”

Full data downloads and executive summary reports for each country in the 2012 research are available from here.

The full Press rlease can be found here.