Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

• Palm Kills WinMo as Pre Loses Momentum | GigaOm
  Trying to stay afloat in the smartphone market, Palm is ditching Windows Mobile and placing its bets on its own webOS. Windows Mobile has been losing market share, this move ends their five year long relationship.
• Memo to StartUps: Stick to solving problems | eConsultancy
  Techcrunch's Sarah Lacy contends that start-ups should seek to change the world. Patricio Robles offers a strong counterpoint that good entrepreneurs are problem-solvers, not megalomaniacs, and successful innovations often start with modest goals.

• Google's DoubleClick Launches New Marketplace For Display Ads | TechCrunch
  Google's new Ad Exchange creates an open, real-time marketplace making it easier for online publishers, ad networks, and agencies to buy and sell display advertising space. The system includes real-time allocation, greater control over where a display ad appears, new payment system and a revamped user interface.

• Bloomingdale's fall fashion campaign taps mobile to engage customers in-store | Mobile Marketer
  As part of the department store's fall campaign, "Lights, Camera, Fashion," mobile is being used to allow customers to vote on short films displayed in-store and online. It's both an attempt at collecting marketing data as well as offering something more than traditional print advertising.

• RealGames Announces Federation of Studios Mobile Porting Solution | Gamasutra
  RealNetworks has announced the Federation of Studios, an initiative that will allow mobile game developers to port their products across eight different operating systems and 130 different carriers. They propose to create a simple way to reach more than 2 billion customers worldwide.

• Report: Mobile Sites Are Not Improving | MediaPost
  While more and more people are using mobile websites, evaluations have shown that their quality is not improving. On a scale of 100, the average score was 52.

• Microsoft targets Google's mobile dream with Bing | The Register
  With predictions that mobile will one day surpass PCs in the search market, Microsoft is building Bing to present results suited for mobile phones. Tweaks such as location awareness are being included in search algorithms for a more relevant result.

• Windows Mobile 7 to emphasize social networking? | FierceMobileContent
  Adding to the speculation surrounding the next Windows Mobile update is a Microsoft job posting with tags "mobile phones" and "social networks." The description goes on to state their aim to build a "mobile social platform."

• Text-to-Speech Technology Reaches an Inflection Point | The New York Times
  For those with speech impairments, text-to-speech technology is to the point where it can aid in their communication. Software is now available for iPhones and netbooks to make this possibility more affordable.

• Google: Apple Totally Rejected Our Google Voice App | Mashable
  The last we heard was both Apple and AT&T flat out denying the rejection of Google's Voice application. Now Google picks up with the politics and accuses Apple of lying, stating that they actually did reject the app.

Motorola And Blockbuster Team Up For Mobile Movie Downloads [Silicon Alley Insider]
Blockbuster is partnering with Motorola to offer direct streaming of their content on mobile. The move comes after Blockbuster has announced a deal to offer streaming on Samsung TVs and DVD rental machines to compete with Redbox.

Ringing Cell Phone Turns On Oven, Spooking Owner [textually.org]
A man in Brooklyn has discovered that when his cell phone is called, his oven turns on. The glitch has yet to be fixed, as technicians are trying to understand how this new functionality works.

eSPIN and United Sample Partner to Launch Surveys4Teens [Yahoo! Finance]
Hearst's online teen network eSPIN and United Sample have teamed up to launch a new social networking portal survey4teens.com, a place for teens adn yougn adults to take surveys and share opinions.

Mobile App Ads Cause Concern for Advertisers [mad]
The Central Office for Information in the U.K. has called on mobile ads to link back to mobile friendly sites. It is estimated that only 5% of mobile ads actually link back to a mobile site, a poor user experience that hurts a brand's image according to advertisers.

Survey: Two-Thirds of Mobile Users Guilty of Drunk Texting [Mashable]
Research from Buzzd has found that 68% of mobile users drunk text. Other findings include 85% of respondents relying on word of mouth for places to go and things to do.

Dangerous QR Code Advertising for District 9 [PSFK]
Last year we noticed the QR codes on posters for Notorious in the NYC subway. Now for the promotion of District 9, criminal-like yellow tape strips with QR codes have been spotted in major cities. One in NYC is actually on subway stairs, though, perhaps not the best location to stop, take your cell out, and read the QR code.

Window Phone Concept Mixes Transparency with Weather Forecasting [Unwired View]
Seunghan Song has designed a Windows phone that changes according to the weather forecast--the screen becomes wet when it rains, white when it snows, and goes to writing mode when blown on it.

How Smartphones Are Making Wi-Fi Hot Again [GigaOm]
According to Om Malik, the presence of PC-quality browsers on smartphones and webkit-based browsers, as well as the growing popularity of social-networking services such as Twitter and Facebook as communication tools, have boosted the demand for wireless data. These tools demand data connectivity, and people want to check them while on the go. This spurt in usage has left the carriers that long saw themselves as Wi-Fi’s enemy coming around and embracing the insurgent technology.

Lombard Street To Become Giant Candyland Game Today [The Alley]
To mark the 60th anniversary of Candyland, a life size version of the board game will take place today in San Francisco.

Europe Examines Reports of Exploding iPhones [NYTimes]
Reports of a few exploding iPhone/iPods in France and Britain have led the European Commission to launch an investigation.

North Koreans Love Their Spotty Cellphone Service [engadget]
A year after North Korea launched its own 3G network, reports are estimating that almost 30% of Pyongyang residents have one. The devices are obviously under tight government control but even an isolationist dictatorship cannot prevent the rise of mobile.

• 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.