Erply, a point of sale and inventory software provider from Estonia, is looking to jump into the ring with Square and Verifone by offering an iPad payment dongle that will process credit card swipes similar to Square but also handle NFC payments. Read more »
Skype’s purchase of GroupMe has largely revolved around the communications side of the deal. But a big component is also GroupMe’s plans to monetize conversations by presenting local offers and discounts that help people make group decisions in real time. Read more »
For mobile developers looking to engage their users, push notifications have become a key tool in drawing users back into apps. Notification provider Urban Airship told me it has hit 5 billion push notifications since it delivered its first message a little over two years ago. Read more »
Foursquare has increasingly shifted its sights from the present to the future, looking at how it can help recommend relevant places where people should go. But we’re seeing that the location-based network is also finding a lot of opportunities in leveraging the past. Read more »
Just months after introducing what looked to be one of the most promising challengers to the iPad, Hewlett-Packard said it is getting out of the webOS business and discontinuing its Touchpad and webOS phones. The company is now looking to “optimize” the value of webOS. Read more »
Foursquare has talked about evolving beyond the check-in, but that doesn’t mean the check-in is dead. Now the location-based social network is adding event check-ins for locations featuring movies, sporting events and concerts. Event check-ins automatically tell people what you’re doing, not just where you are. Read more »
AT&T is doing away with its $10 tier for 1,000 text messages a month for new customers, making it a choice of between a $20 unlimited plan or 20 cents per text message. AT&T said the new text messaging pricing won’t affect existing customers. Read more »
Verizon’s turning on its LTE network in 15 cities and expanding 4G coverage in 10 cities, bringing more than half the U.S. population under its next-generation wireless network on Thursday. Since its launch in December, Verizon’s LTE network now covers 160 million people in 117 cities. Read more »
Android users have about 250,000 apps to choose from but most have little use for any of them outside the top 50. New data from Nielsen found that 61 percent of the time spent on apps by Android users are in the top 50 apps. Read more »
GroupMe, a top contender in the group messaging app space, was born out of a hackathon but managed to find success by executing on its vision. The founders sat down with me and looked back at how the first year has gone since the service launched. Read more »
IAC introduced its mobile incubator program Hatch Labs in March, calling it a technology sandbox where innovative mobile ideas can be prototyped. The first graduate, Blu Trumpet, is now launching and is taking on the problem of app monetization for publishers and app distribution for advertisers. Read more »
Zynga is expanding its mobile ambitions by apparently picking up New York City-based developer Astro Ape Studios. The gaming powerhouse, which is preparing to go public, has been increasingly looking to shore up its mobile efforts, which has not be as successful as its Facebook business. Read more »
Skillshare, the peer-to-peer learning start-up I profiled recently, has raised $3.1 million from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. I reported in my profile that the two VC firms were close to funding Skillshare’s Series A round and now it looks like it’s official. Read more »
The money in mobile apps is increasingly tilting toward freemium apps and that is helping companies like Tapjoy, which said it now has 10,000 apps that are using its monetization and distribution platform. The company is also delivering more than 1 million ad completions every day. Read more »
Mobile advertising companies are turning their small ad real estate into showcases for immersive 3D ads that could potentially achieve much greater engagement than traditional static and dynamic banner ads. Amobee today is announcing new 3D ads that use technology from Cooliris. Read more »
Fab.com, which began as Fabulis, a gay social networking site, has managed to find success by pushing a funky curated catalog of unique design products and trying to be as social as it can. The startup is now revamping a core feature called its inspiration wall. Read more »
How about that for some big news on a Monday morning? The $12.5 billion deal for Motorola Mobility has huge implications across the mobile and living room markets and could signal a stronger position for Android as it fends off patent infringement claims from Google rivals. Read more »
Google’s $12.5 billion bid for Motorola is about a lot of things, but one of the biggest assets in the deal is Motorola’s patent portfolio. UBS has put together a chart looking at some of the biggest patent-related deals recently and how much they’re worth. Read more »
Google is delving into the Android hardware business and is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The news is a shocking turn for the fast-growing Android ecosystem, which was built on Google’s platform but didn’t include any actual hardware built by the company. Read more »
The escalating patent battle provides a moment to reflect on how the implementation of patents have strayed from their intended use. Mark Shuttleworth, who leads the Ubuntu Foundation, had some thoughts on the matter, saying that patents are misunderstood, misused and are outdated in many ways. Read more »
Come August 20 and 21, the next Instagram and Hipstamatic could emerge in New York City, ready to do battle in the increasingly tough photo app market. Those are the dates for the Photo Hack Day, billed as the largest photo hackathon for developers. Read more »
Millennial Media is using its 50th mobile intelligence report to look at some of the changes that have occurred since the company began its reports in March 2009. It marks an era in which the smartphones have gone from techie tools to almost mainstream devices. Read more »
Google is cautiously optimistic about its roll out of games on Google+, calling it the first steps in an ambitious plan to turn the social network into a powerful platform. Google is content to move slowly as it builds for a bigger future for Google+. Read more »
Google is upping the competition with Facebook by turning on games for its Google+ social network, the company announced today. The first titles include Angry Birds from Rovio, Bejeweled Blitz from PopCap and most notably Zynga Poker from longtime Facebook game developer Zynga. Read more »
Android Market is paced by a number of very prolific app makers and it also sees more updates per app than the App Store, according to app ratings analytics and discovery firm Mobilewalla. The company found that Android users are also focused more on popular apps. Read more »
DreamIt Ventures graduated its first New York class yesterday, sending 14 new start-ups into the wild. The summer class tackled education, e-commerce and app publishing and a few used video conferencing in interesting ways. Here are few that stood out to me. Read more »
Microsoft is looking at speech technology in the Mango update of WP7 to help the platform get back into the smartphone game. But with Apple also positioned to announce Nuance technology in iOS 5, it shows that speech is becoming table stakes in the smartphone wars. Read more »
BankSimple, the next generation mobile bank start-up, has raised $10 million as it prepares to launch. The new financing is led by existing investor IA Ventures and also includes Shasta Ventures and should help the company scale up for a public debut later this year. Read more »
Kickanotch — a Kansas startup that is building a one-stop app management and monetization platform for media companies, starting with radio stations — is now coming out with RevKick, a content- and ad-management tool that lets companies easily deploy, manage and monetize their apps from one dashboard. Read more »
Wi-Fi provider Towerstream is turning its superfast Manhattan Wi-Fi zone into a distribution platform for daily deal apps in a bid to monetize its wireless network, the largest in Manhattan. The company is partnering with BlisMobile, which will handle the app distribution through its AppZone service. Read more »
Speech technology is poised to be a game-changer for smartphones, especially as they get embedded into operating systems and hardware. Nuance CTO Vlad Sejnoha said speech is transforming from an alternative to text input into a powerful tool that can connect users more quickly to information. Read more »
Mobile data efficiency isn’t a sexy feature that moves a lot of apps and devices, but it’s increasingly going to be a selling point, as mobile consumers look for savings in an data-capped world. Onavo says it can save iPhone users about $1 billion a year. Read more »
Gamification, that buzz word panned as hype by some, has increasingly won over companies, investors and even research firms like Gartner, which now predicts half of all companies will use gamification by 2015. So what’s next? How about gamification certification? Read more »
Tech stocks are being punished by the downgrade to America’s triple-A credit rating, with leaders like Apple, Google, Cisco and HP taking it on the chin. Debt concerns and fears for the global economy are dragging down stocks, particularly tech shares that have been performing well. Read more »
UPDATED: GetJar just passed 2 billion downloads and has been pushing its independent app market hard, specifically on the Android front. It has recently started giving out free apps, similar to Amazon’s App of the Day and has also pushed out an Android client. Read more »
Skillshare is riding the P2P wave and has built a platform for users to offer real-world classes of any kind to interested students. It is expanding to San Francisco and Philadelphia later this month and is closing its Series A round soon. Read more »
Analyst Chetan Sharma, in a new white paper, said the impact of mobile, which has been on focused mostly on higher self needs, is now shifting to more basic issues like health care. It’s in these more utilitarian areas where opportunities exist. Read more »
Google and Microsoft traded more barbs today in their patent squabble. Google said Microsoft’s offer to jointly bid on the Novell patents was a trick. Microsoft said today Google is only interested in using patents against others. The rhetoric, however, doesn’t improve Google’s fighting position. Read more »
New York doesn’t have to rival Silicon Valley; it can be its own success story, with its own unique culture. And that is what the region should be looking at first, rather than trying to gain some bragging-rights parity with the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more »
LocalResponse, a targeted marketing company, has bought social TV start-up Philo as it looks to expand its service to TV check-ins. The company will soon be able to deliver targeted tweets to users as they watch a commercial on TV. Read more »
