Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

In response to both customer complaints and competitive advertising assaults, AT&T is taking action to improve its network performance. The company has released an iPhone application, Mark the Spot, which lets users submit locations with weak reception using GPS coordinates. The idea is to use the crowdsourced information to help direct and prioritize investments in their infrastructure.

This is a move that not only puts the brand in good light, but also provides utility for AT&T. Here we see customers becoming part of the overall creation of a brand through the giving of time to report dropped calls or a coverage gap. Of course playing the crowdsource card works best with a certain level of participation, which AT&T seems to be getting. Mark the Spot currently ranks number seven in free downloads on Apple's App Store.

• Industry Pitching Cellphones as a Teaching Tool [New York Times] - CTIA is making the case for cellphones in the classroom and, you know, it makes sense. By pitching them as a viable educational tool due to their inexpensiveness (relative to laptops) and convenience, they're also tagging a trend that's been sweeping developing countries like India and Brazil, where mobile users have essentially skipped computers and gone straight to handsets.
• Surgeons send 'tweets' from operating room [CNN] - We mentioned surgery tweeting awhile back and it happened again the other day. Let's just hope no one @'s your surgeon that hilarious kitten video during your appendectomy.
• Shazam Seeing 1M Song Tags a Day [Media Bistro] - Shazam seems to be a hit for Apple's App store, generating about one million song tags a day. It is not to be confused with its semantic cousin, Kazaam, which did not generate millions of anything.
• Microsoft targets its own smartphone store [Financial Times] - Microsoft is hoping to borrow some application thunder from Apple and Android by putting out the news that a Windows Mobile storefront is brewing.
• Mobile Web Becoming a Necessity [Media Bistro] - Mobile data plans are a necessity. If you're on this site, you probably already know that. However, in a recent survey by Nielsen, for Tellabs, they found that 71 percent of those surveyed agreed. Internet is the most popular reason (duh), followed by e-mail and messaging. :D
• Implementation of Universal Phone Chargers [Mobile Burn] - Universal phone chargers! It may seem minor, but if you've ever been to a friend's house and found your phone gasping for air and about to go under - only to discover that your friend doesn't have a charger to fit your set - then you know why this is hot.
• Twitter Triumphant [Mobility Site] - In this great piece by Zealot, Twitter is positioned as the horse on which to pin our colors in the race towards actually connecting the world via web. It's not that it's doing anything essentially new, it's simply doing it in a unique, easy and engaging way. It requires only a matter of seconds to drop into someone else's world and, in turn, bring them into ours.
• The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives [New York Times] - As John Markoff points out in this piece, social map applications are quickly turning us into Sims-esque characters on a grid, with flashing green lights above our heads.