With a lot of the focus in the mobile universe on Android, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and what is happening in the smartphone segment, it’s easy to… Read more at paidContent »
A look at some of the big stories in mobile today:
» Amazon could have two sizes of tablet in mind for a launch: a seven-inch mod… Read more at paidContent »
Everyone likes to talk about the boom in smartphone use, but the reality is that even in the most advanced markets, there is still a long wa… Read more at paidContent »
Hurricane Irene is heading toward the East Coast. New York City, Washington D.C. and many other large cities are in its path. It appears Twitter has replaced TV as a tool of information and hysteria, which is both good and bad. Read more »
While my iPhone 4 still mostly satisfies my needs, I have to confess: For the past two weeks, I haven’t been exactly faithful. I’ve been testing out Samsung’s latest and greatest, the Galaxy S II Android smartphone. Here’s how I feel about my indiscretion. 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 »
Mobile payments — payments initiated by a phone for a transaction at a physical point of sale or online — will total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015, and many predict they will soon begin to replace a typical credit card transaction. This report analyzes and forecasts the mobile payments industry, from its current technologies to the companies implementing them and the trends we can expect in the coming months. Much of the near-term growth of mobile payments will be driven by near-field communication (NFC) technology, but QR and 2D bar codes, mobile POS systems and SMS transactions are also important platforms for companies to consider when creating business models and strategies. Meanwhile, services from the likes of MasterCard, Nokia, Amazon and Google offer examples for others to follow and clues into the future of the industry. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Research in Motion, T-Mobile, Zong and Groupon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Now that Facebook has thrown its hat in the ring, there are quite a few choices for mobile messaging on the iPhone and other iOS devices. The three big ones are Facebook Messenger, Google+ and iMessage. Here’s a chart comparing their features and abilities. Read more »
Hot group messaging startup GroupMe is dealing with a trademark dispute from a fellow New York startup called Groupie, which is opposing GroupMe’s trademark application on the grounds that the names are too similar. The case highlights the rising competition in the group messaging market. Read more »
Twilio, which provides a service so companies and web services can add voice or SMS to their menu of options, now will offer developers the option to use all IP communications as well as the old-school phone and mobile networks. Read more »
The second quarter of 2011 in mobile was all about smartphones, thanks to Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and mobile data consumption ramping up. In the tablet space, the iPad lacked any real competition, though that dominance will surely fade as more and more alternatives — from Cisco, HP and others — emerge. Elsewhere, location-based marketing finally made some headlines, and the groundwork for near-field communications looks to be finally falling into place. Additional companies in this report include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Research In Motion. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Verizon stops offering unlimited plans on Thursday for new customers, and much like when AT&T halted its unlimited plans last June, the world will not end. However, it will get more confusing for both consumers and developers. What else could Verizon have done? Read more »
A new data and visualization project called the Connected States of America helps bring some focus into the way mobile phones facilitate communications and shows how conversations and text-messages bind areas and regions together, even ones that are far apart. Read more »
Twitter is using a service provided by a telco spin out to access telco APIs for its new photo service. As part of this move it–and other developers– may have found a crucial key to making money for themselves and even for telecommunications providers. Read more »
Toronto-based interactive user experience design firm teehand+lax have created an awesome look at what iMessage could become, if Apple truly wants to bring iOS and OS X together. They also suggest cool new ways in which iPhones and Macs communicate with one another. Read more »
Pinger, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup that initially dealt in web-based voice messaging, has launched a free service for sending texts over a web browser. The new feature, dubbed Textfree Web, could well bridge the gap between traditional SMS and the quickly growing mobile messaging market. Read more »
Not long after Steve Jobs’s keynote, a lament went out about apps and services iOS 5 and iCloud will render obsolete. However, after reviewing early reports of iOS 5, I’d argue that many “threatened” apps will still hold a place in the hearts of users. Read more »
This week Apple unveiled iMessage, a feature that enables iOS users to exchange text messages and images without incurring carrier messaging charges. Despite headlines to the contrary, though, iMessage is not going to kill the cash cow that is SMS, for at least three reasons. Read more »
Sprint has quietly hiked its text messaging rates for businesses that send text alerts over its cellular network. But ESPN, The Weather Channel and MSNBC have all opted to cease sending free messages to Sprint users altogether rather than pay the new fee. Read more »
VoxOx, the all-in-one phone, fax, instant-messaging, text-messaging, and file-sending application, is now offering an app for iOS. While the mobile app doesn’t have all of the features of the desktop application, it may be useful for those who juggle lots of communication channels. Read more »
If you need to securely share data like a password, bank account or credit card number, Lockify is an easy way to do so. Once your message has been encrypted, you are given a link that can be sent via email, SMS or Facebook private message. Read more »
As most of the world is aware, Facebook launched its Social Inbox feature last week. The unified messaging system pipes online and mobile communication functions people use — SMS, instant messaging, Facebook chat messages — into a single inbox. On the face of it, having just ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
ChaCha said it will stop delivering text messages to T-Mobile USA customers if the carrier moves ahead with a plan to charge businesses for texts. ChaCha probably won’t be the last company to take such a drastic step in response to the proposed toll. Read more »
This morning I was prompted to check my phone bill, and found that I have been using less than 500 minutes a month for past six months. Wow! We really don’t talk anymore! In the last few decades, our daily modes of communication have changed entirely. Read more »
Mobile giving campaigns are being launched for the relief effort after Chile’s massive earthquake Saturday. Texting campaigns raised more than $41 million following January’s earthquake in Haiti, but is that indicative of how much we’ll use text to donate in the future? Vote in our poll. Read more »
Venmo is quite simple — it allows you to send payment to your trusted contacts by using SMS. “This is one of the first things I’ve done where my mom understands what I’m doing,” is how co-founder Andrew Kortina put it during an interview today. Read more »
Apple can ban all the apps they want, but that apparently won’t stop Google from giving iPhone customers access to Google Voice. As of this morning, iPhone owners can now point mobile Safari at a Google Voice website to gain access to a much more full-featured […] Read more »
Viacom has been allowed to withdraw some 250 of the more than 60,000 video clips it’s suing YouTube over for copyright infringement, including around 100 that were uploaded to YouTube by Viacom employees or agents, reports MediaPost based on a recently released court filing. The move […] Read more »
The nation’s largest wireless carrier has blocked a major offering from one of the nation’s largest text-alert services. Verizon Wireless Friday night informed customers via SMS that they would no longer be allowed to use some ad-supported services from 4INFO. Read more »
Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging. […] Read more »
