Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

Disney Takes Web Surfers to the Lab to See Which Ads Work [NYTimes]
By tracking eye movement, heart rate, skin temperature and facial expressions, researchers are attempting to decipher how people consume media on emerging platforms, including the web and mobile.

Text Mining Provides Marketers With the 'Why' Behind Demand [Ad Age]
In other consumer research news: 7-11 and other brands are turning to text mining of conversations on blogs, Twitter or other social-media sites in order to identify the emotional aspects and reasons--the "why"--behind consumer behavior.

The ‘Mayors’ of Manhattan Meet and Compete [NYTimes]
Demonstrating how passionate they are about the new location-based service, top Foursquare users ("Mayor" status in the game) staged a bar crawl meet-up across Manhattan bars they called the "Town Holler," inspiring other cities like San Francisco to do the same. Meanwhile, Mashable calls foursquare, who we interviewed back at SXSW, the next Twitter.

Booyah Will Capitalize On Giving iPhone Users Sense Of Achievement [moconews]
Like Foursquare, Booyah is a new example "prescriptive social software", i.e. an application that encourages certain user behavior and turns life into one big game. The app, (from the team behind World of Warcraft) rewards users for doing things like updating their status, which they hope to brand as a "Booyah Moment" (good luck with that.)

Nissan Unveils IT System, iPhone App for New Networked Car [GigaOM]
In a move towards the "car 2.0," Nissan has unveiled the ultimate "mobile" vehicle. The electric, fully networked car has an iPhone application and a system called EV-IT, which will connect the company’s upcoming plug-in vehicle to a global data center via mobile networks.

Sprint Buying Virgin Mobile USA For $483 Million To Boost Prepaid Offer [mocoNews]
A huge industry move today, as Sprint is buying Virgin Mobile to extend its prepaid offering and reach. Sprint hopes to cross-sell its products as well to the Virgin customer base.

Why is Apple Stifling Google Voice for iPhone? [Fast Company]
Third-party Google Voice apps have been removed from the App store, and Google's own GV app has been rejected by Apple. It seems that Apple/Google rivalry is to blame, but AT&T is probably defending its turf as well.

Stay Tuned for Bluetooth on Your TV [GigaOM]
The movement to put Bluetooth into television is gaining momentum. LG just announced a new line of Bluetooth-enabled TVsets, joining Sharp and Samsung. The technology gives consumers the ability to use their mobile phones as a remote control, connect wireless headsets to the TV, and stream music from an MP3 player to their TV, all without a wire.

Age Demographics of Top Social Networks [BitBriefs]
The age demographic data for 2008 clears some misconceptions about social networking sites. The most popular amongst 13-18: MySpace. 65+? Facebook.

Mobile Spam Very Discomforting for Three in Five Japanese [What Japan Thinks]
Data from Japan shows that 93% of Japanese hate mobile spam (wonder who that 7% is that like it). The data highlights the personal relation that users have with their cell and how intrusion creates a vivid response.

69% Of Adults Don't Know What Twitter Is [The Business Insider]
LinkedIn and Harris report that 69% of adults do not know what Twitter is. 12% of those surveyed also said that twitter was only for young people, and 50% of advertisers think it will grow (12% of consumers think that).

Handsets

Google G1's First Impressions [Wall Street Journal]
The first Android handset, the G1, was introduced this week by T-Mobile. Despite mixed reviews, WSJ’s Walt Mossberg pretty much summed it up when he said, “The G1 is a powerful, versatile device which will offer users a real alternative in the new handheld computing category the iPhone has occupied alone.”

Video released demonstrating Google-powered Android apps [Mobile Crunch]
Coinciding with the G1 intro, Google released a demo video to show off the preloaded Android platform. It looks very… Googley, stocked with basics like Search, Maps, Gmail, Contacts, Calendar and IM (Google Talk).

Samsung Camera Phones: Pre-Loaded with Barcode-Reading Software [Marketing Vox]
Starting in October, Samsung phones in Spain, Italy, and Denmark [US and Mexico soon after] will come standard with ScanLife mobile barcode recognition software which decrypts photographed barcodes.

Auto

Nissan, NTT DOCOMO and Sharp Jointly Develop World's First Mobile Phone with Built-in Intelligent Key
Kiss your keychain goodbye. Nissan, NTT DOCOMO and Sharp have developed technology that lets you start your car with your phone. Nissan's Intelligent Key system, which uses a Sharp handset, is available NOW as a standard feature in various Nissan vehicles—in Japan, of course.

LBS

Nokia viNe: Location-based content sharing [Mobile Arsenal]
Nokia will soon make its latest location-based content sharing service called viNe available on its Beta Labs site. Based on the Nokia Sports Tracker, it lets you not only share routes, but also pictures, sounds and videos recorder along the way.

Art

Chanel Mobile Art by Jaha Hadid
The concept of “mobile” isn’t just about handsets. The legendary architect Jaha Hadid has constructed a giant mobile art piece for Chanel. It will be traveling from Hong Kong to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo to New York’s Central Park.

Trends & Research

Making an Educated Choice in the Cleaning Aisle [Ad Age]
More and more, consumers want to know where their products came from, and brands are telling them. Seventh Generation’s new campaign uses a mobile web app to do this: people can use the app to look up ingredients at the point of purchase, in the grocery aisle, to determine what's “safe.”

Americans text more than they talk [CNET]
According to Nielsen Mobile, Americans now send and receive an average of 357 text messages per month, a nearly 5.5 fold increase when compared with 2006. Much of the 2.5billion text messages per day in America come from 13-17 year old teens, who average 1742 messages/month.

Social Networking

TechCrunch50: Talk to the Dead with Virsona [PCMag]
Feel like you need a clone to manage your online social life? Virsona may be your answer. Their community has “Virtual Personas” that are “created to Reason, Remember and React in the same way that a living, fictional or historical person would.” The service uses Q&As, chatlogs and other inputted data to churn out “typical” IM responses for community members, Marilyn Monroe, even your dead dog.

New York Times Launches TimesPeople Social Networking Site [Mashable]
The Grey Lady gets social with a new site that allows users to share recommendations, comments, ratings and reviews of NYT content.

Accessories

Sony Ericsson Intros Bluetooth Watches for Women [Gearlog]
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Fossil has paird with Sony Ericsson to create the women’s MBW-200 line of Bluetooth-enabled watches. They will “display caller-ID, vibrate when a call or text comes through,” and allow you to reject or mute a call using the watch.

Marketing

Paramount’s Eagle Eye Mobile Campaign [Fierce Wireless]
At USA Today’s Ad Week panel “Going Mobile, the Possibilities are Limitless…”, Sandi Isaacs from Paramount talked about this mobile campaign for Eagle Eye (launching this weekend!!!). The interactive sweepstakes mimics the movie theme with a sort of mobile-driven scavenger hunt. They just called us back to tell us to go see the movie.

Unilever Increases Teen Awareness with Multi-Faceted Mobile Campaign [Mobile Marketing Association]
Unilever recently teamed with Nokia to release a phone in Brazil that was customized to deliver desired product information (in this case, shampoo). With mobile booming in BRIC, partnerships like these will probably be more common, with the phone itself acting as part of the message.

Subway, Best Buy advertise on Hothand’s University Mobile Network [Mobile Marketer]
Best Buy Mobile and Subway are helping Hothand expand its University Mobile network, which uses the mobile wap and SMS to promote intramural and recreational activities on campus.

Opinion

Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds. [New York Times]
It's the digital dialectic: For all the new technologies that increase our productivity, there are others that distract us. On balance, though, Twitter is your friend.

Health

Trend: Health Phones [Cscout]
Pedometers and heart rate monitors made their debut in this year’s Wireless Japan Expo. Between this sort of self-prevention and the sure to come advances in patient monitoring and health information exchange – cell phones could become your first (and last) aid kit.

Web service tells you what stresses you out [CNET]
RSS readers and social media feeds can make us feel like Lucy at the chocolate factory — it’s hard to keep up. A new service called Me-trics helps you to manage all this technology — with technology, of course. It correlates your stress level with the other things going on in and around your life using a simple mobile interface.