Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

This week was chock full o' interesting finds, and our staff shares all the details...

Michael

Crimemapping.com
More than 800 police departments have contracted with Internet-based crime-mapping services. The services take live feeds from police record-keeping systems and automatically post to the site (others are crimereports.com and everyblock.com).

Look up your home address with each site, as some are more focused on certain geographic areas. I entered my neighborhood in Manhattan and according to crimemapping.com there has been only one crime committed in the past week: Assault. Now I know for a fact that I’ve been booked for robbing at least 3-4 old ladies in that time...

Then I looked at the area where I grew up (Oakland, CA) and that was more of a reality. I’m sure officers, in choosing to utilize these services, deal with balancing a dialogue with the community and keeping sanity and peace at the same time. You can sign up for email alerts, but it is missing an SMS-alert or even an MMS-alert with fugitive pics.

Jeremy

Phish Fan Live-Streams Concert via iPhone
Jam band super-group Phish recently reunited for the first time since 2004, and fans have taken an interesting approach to documenting the new round of live shows. Not content to merely audio record the show or send twitter updates to followers, some fans have gone so far as to “live stream” the concerts using their mobile devices, sending live video feeds to viewers on the web. Using Ustream, a free live streaming service, close to 3,500 fans sent a live broadcast of show to those watching at home using their iPhones. Though this sort of live event streaming has been done before by the concert organizations and companies, this marks a new stage in the growing trend of “livestreaming,” bringing it to a highly personal level. Now if only we could find a better band than Phish to record…

Allison

almost.at
Tapping into the massive amounts of UGC content about specific events (like videos of a Phish show), this site aggregates what people are saying and showing online about an IRL occasion. It pulls in feeds from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, bit.ly, Tiny URL and TwitPic, which you can view as its posted in real time on a Tweet Deck-style dashboard. And it isn't just tech conferences and tweetups--while the homepage features the JavaOne Conference and the NYC Digg Meeetup, it also shows Tiananmen Square, Obama's Speech in Cairo and National Doughnut Day.

The event space is already suffering, and I can't help but thing that it's not just the recession, but platforms like this that enable us to attend virtually without paying the price of admission--or even getting dressed.

Chris

Swoopo.com
Swoopo is an online auction site that crosses over ecommerce into entertainment. Its unique auction format makes for a fun way to shop and to score major deals. They mainly sell electronics but will from time to time have different items like cars or a bar of gold.

Here’s how it works: users buy bids in advance at $0.75 a pop. Bidding is as simple as clicking the button. Each bid increases the price of the item by $0.15 and adds 20 seconds to the countdown. Once the countdown hits 0, the person who bid last wins.

So the company makes money on the bid price as well as on each bid placed. And you get to buy cool stuff at well below msrp….if you have the stamina to outlast your fellow bidders.

Laura

Digg Ads
Like others of its highly-trafficked ilk, social bookmarking hub Digg has long tried to turn clicks into dollars. After dabbling in the usual solutions, namely Microsoft ads and Google Adsense, they’ve now taken matters into their own hands. This week marked the launch of Digg Ads which, interestingly enough, adhere to Digg’s social “survival of the fittest” mantra. Users can approve or “digg” ads of their liking just like articles, raising their visibility. However, the benefit of this model to marketers transcends digital love: It dictates their bottom line as well. In this so-called “social advertising platform” ad rates will correspond to ad popularity. In other words, ads that resonate with users will save marketers money. Time will tell whether this model succeeds and Digg admits that it’s a work in progress, but I think they are on to something here. Seems like when brands are incentivized to create compelling content, everybody wins.

Reming

Cryptic Canvas
Huge movie fan? Prove it! To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Empire Magazine is presenting “The Cryptic Canvas” an Breughel-like online painting that has 50 great films within the last 20 years hidden within the picture. After providing your email address, your task is to find and correctly identify them. Helpful hint: Don’t try this at work! It will take up your whole afternoon!

Andrea D.

6500+cool facts
Are you amazed by people who dominate at trivia, have an interesting tidbit to add to every conversation or seem to pull random facts out of thin air? Want to become one of them? There’s an app for that. 6500+cool facts is an iPhone fact generator that displays a new piece of uncommon information with a quick shake or slide across the screen. The best part? Your new found knowledge base will set you back a recession-friendly zero pesos. By the way, did you know that they sell toupees for dogs in Tokyo?

Samantha

LG GD910
For the ultimate in geek accessorizing, LG will be releasing its GD910 next month. Finally, you can do your video calling through your watch (I mean, who checks the time on those things anyway?). Even Inspector Gadget would be jealous. Unfortunately, Americans will be missing out on the wrist action, but techies in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Latin America will all have the chance to wear their video calls soon enough. That is, if they’re willing to fork over what will likely be a very exorbitant amount of money.

David

Chinese Company Shows Windows XP Phone
With all the buzz about smartphones becoming desktop replacements, a developer in China has come up with a mobile, actually more of a pocket-sized computer, that runs on Windows XP. Technology of China just presented what it calls the ‘world’s first Windows XP phone’ at the Computex exhibition in Taipei this past week. The phone features a 4.8 inch touchscreen LCD display, a sliding QWERTY keypad and a 120 GB hard drive, and runs completely on the Windows XP desktop OS. The phone will go on sale in China in three months and will be compatible with China’s proprietary TD-SCDMA 3G mobile standard. Now it seems we can have Windows XP Blue Screen of Death experience on mobile too!

Andrea F.

Oprah: Tech’s Latest Trendsetter
Because if Oprah says it’s good you know it has to be…