Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

In an app economy, there ought to be a way to give. Now there is, with a new feature in iTunes, users can deliver specific mobile applications to their friends and family.

On the drop-down box on each application’s page (next to the “Buy” button) there’s now an option that says “Gift This App.” From that point, you then just enter in details like name, e-mail address and the message that you want to include.

While this has been possible with music albums, and there are app gift cards, this simple little feature could be great way to surprise a loved one on any given day.

[via mashable]

One could argue that time-tracking was one of the first digital utilities to go mobile, just look at the wrist watch. Now with smart devices and app stores, designers have gone all in and developed a variety of creative clocks.

Creative Applications explains why:

Time is a concept easily understood and eagerly visualised amongst artists. The collection of apps below show not only how time can be visualized but also the sheer imagination that exists out there.

From U-LOCK to 365 Alarm Clock, check out CAN's collection of  creative clock apps here.

PEPID has released a medical application for the Palm Pre. The new PEPID app is designed specifically for the device’s  Web OS and provides healthcare providers access to life-saving protocols, drug interactions and other patient care information directly from the device.

The company is also developing the app for other devices and operating systems, and the next big release will be for the Google Android platform.

“PEPID contains the most extensive drug database on the market today, thousands of disease profiles and medical conditions, medical and dosing calculators, a drug interactions checker, along with numerous illustrations, laboratory values, and a differential diagnosis generator, all available on the Palm Pre.”

Smartphones have been playing a powerful role in the healthcare industry as of late. With anywhere access and unlimited information, users now have accessible, and even life-saving tools. A man survived the earthquake in Haiti with the help of an iPhone first-aid app that taught him how to treat his wounds. The NPR iPhone app also helped a doctor save a woman’s life after a stroke. While some see mobile as a channel for entertainment, it is proving itself to be useful in emergency situations as well.

Twuition.com is a new web-based application that automatically responds to tweets with information about product pricing, local weather and maps of restaurants. All you have to do is tweet a specific hashtag, such as #twuitionweather New York City, NY.

The response you get is relatively quick, taking about three minutes, and it looks like the above image. Along with the tweet, the platform generates an advertisement for each response.

Blast Applications, a premier creator and developer of iPhone, Facebook and Twitter applications launched Twuition. The app will also tell you the current national debt, translate text, and can find nearby locations. For example, once typing '#twuitiontranslator hello French' it will respond with “Bonjour.”

Dino Luzzi, CEO of BlastApplications, says that this application allows mobile users to stay on Twitter when on their phone. "The idea is for Twitter users not to have to leave Twitter while they are online to find out from these apps," Luzzi said. "It also makes it more convenient at the same time if they want to meet their Twitter friends at a restaurant or location of their choice..."

A new site, app.itize.us, curates some of the best designed iPhone apps available in the app store (both free or paid). The site presents apps that you may not have heard of or seen before.

"it is intentionally a very small hand picked selection compared to what is currently available via the app store (now upwards of 100k) due to the fact that its very difficult to find many of these apps since they are not part of any of the top rated/grossing lists."

Three creative featured apps on the site:

• Vellum: A simple drawing app that looks like a pencil drawing with a minimal user interface.

• Stay: The object of this game is to keep the shapes balanced on the scale; the app has creative graphics that look like water colors.

• Beats: This is a user-friendly DJ mixing app with a BPM counter, advanced DJ metronome and a key-mixing aid.

Telecommunication companies are worried about current developments in the world of the mobile internet. There is a change in user habits and behavior, the popularity of using multiple social networks and applications that stream video and audio is growing. The difference between the traditional use of mobile internet (e-mail, chat, and sporadic visits to different sites) and the social network use of mobile internet is that the latter is ongoing and constant. Social networks become, with each new cycle of innovation, environments for constant exchange of information, and with ever larger data transmission, whether in the form of applications, videos, pictures or other files.

Miguel Dorneles, Manager of Products and Operations at FOX Latin American Channels, tells us that 2009 consolidated "live blogging" activities and established once and for all a term that is becoming increasingly popular (even among non-digital mainstream players): the so-called "social media." For Dorneles, 2010 is the year of the socialization of the media, which in his own words means “we’re becoming part of a communication layer that once was one-way, almost dictatorial, that now begins to govern a world apparently more proactive and feedback-based”.

Fixed networks in the U.S. have been preparing themselves for this expansion of internet use for at least the last four years, but now the expansion in data use is also happening in the mobile networks. Mobile carrier AT&T experienced an increase in network traffic because of the overwhelming amount of data downloaded by iPhone users. Over the past three years, AT&T's data traffic increased 4932% due to data-heavy iPhone use. This is an increase of almost 50 times over what it was in the fourth quarter of 2006.

According to Andre Bodowski, a marketing manager based in New York and Sao Paulo, the “data use explosion is just beginning and it will not only affect AT&T, but other U.S., European and South American operators as new “Google” phones and new Blackberry models allow for ever greater expansion of video, audio and constant streaming of data to mobile phones”.

Mary Meeker, analyst at Morgan Stanley draws attention to the challenge of mobile internet and mobile social networking. Meeker said that 2009 was the year that mobile internet had gained momentum. To her there is an inflection point where a technology becomes popular, accessible and self-sustaining. In the case of mobile Internet, this inflection point occurs around 20% of the total of all mobile users. This mark of 20% has already been reached now for several years in Japan, and more recently in Western Europe and the USA.

Observing the dynamics of the market in Japan in light of significant penetration of 3G networks (currently around 90%), Meeker has observed a convergence point where important mobile platforms have become the main form of social networking. Today, access to social networking through mobile networks is three times larger than the access via fixed networks, which naturally puts a strain on the infrastructure of wireless networks, because people remain connected at all times and because of the fact that the size of the files exchanged is much larger than with regular mobile internet use.

Much still remains to be done to develop and increase mobile social networks. Phones have to allow easier typing and carriers have to introduce more features, like the possibility to capture and share full motion videos, for example, in order to make this a truly rich experience.

But what is clear is that mobile networks are every day more attached to the development of the Internet and applications that thrive in this environment and the use of these applications will grow despite questions on whether or not the business model will be profitable. The best proof is the phenomena of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, where usage has grown exponentially even though their balance sheets do not necessarily follow the same trend. So to conclude, wireless companies need to be prepared to withstand this new mass use of the Social Networks and applications.

Edvaldo Acir is currently Head of Business Development at FOX Latin American Channels and works with digital media since 1998. He has a Master degree in progress at UNICAMP (research about mobile market) and a Post Graduation degree at ECA/USP in Advertising and Marketing (research about internet and mobile market). Contact: edvaldoacir [at] uol.com.br

Advertising agencies are becoming more creative when it comes to designing marketing messages for smartphone devices. While most iPhone users might tend to avoid these ads, companies like Medialets are using interactivity to get users involved. The NPR app for the iPhone just launched one of these ads yesterday, which will promote the release of Vampire Weekend's new album, "Contra."

It is first displayed at the bottom of the app, but if you click to expand, it takes up the entire screen. Then if you shake the device, it edits the video right there on your screen. Since you can actually interact with the video by shaking your iPhone, Medialets is assuming that the ad will generate more hits. If you decide that you love the song and the video, you can click to buy the album directly through your iPhone.

We wonder, will many people take the time to interact with ads like this on their phone or will this strategy be like all others, with ads that people try to avoid?

[via techcrunch]