Build a Mobile Electronics Prototyping Kit Inside a Suitcase

Not everyone has a ton of space to build their DIY projects, which is why Digital DIY forum member Baldor decided to build theirs into a suitcase.

The suitcase is handmade, but any old suitcase should work. Included inside is a set of breadboards, voltage regulators, voltmeters, different development boards, and more. Beneath all that is another layer with various cables and power supplies. It's a completely contained system that can be packed up in a matter of seconds. If you don't have a ton of space for your electronics projects, this is one way to group it all together in a tiny case.

Prototyping Case | Digital DIY via Hack a Day

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Durov, Out For Good From VK.com, Plans A Mobile Social Network Outside Russia

In the drawn-out game of will-he, won’t-he, Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte.com, Russia’s top social network with over 100 million users, is now out for good from the company with an unceremonial dismissal conveyed via a newswire report. So what’s next? “I’m likely to start building a mobile social network this year,” Durov tells TechCrunch.

The idea, it seems, is to develop the new, un-named service outside of Russia. He didn’t say this, but I suspect the idea is to build on the groundwork Durov has already laid with Telegram, one of the new breed of mobile messaging apps that encrypt your data to keep it safe from prying eyes.

When we contacted Durov to ask about his future plans, he wrote back saying he was no longer in Russia.

“I’m out of Russia and have no plans to go back,” he wrote in the exchange. “Unfortunately, the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment.”

Durov says that the latest move from VK.com’s shareholders, which was based on a technicality in how Durov “resigned” a month ago, is the final nail in the coffin for him and the social network. Ironically, the shareholders still appear to be offering a position to Durov as a chief architect.

I’ve learned never to say never in Russia, so who knows what might happen next on this front. But at least for now Durov is saying this is really the end.

“I’m afraid there is no going back,” he said of VK.com, “not after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities. They can’t stand me.”

The back-and-forth between Durov has been going on for many months now, and has become a tangle of issues in the process.

They involve not just ownership of the successful company — often called the Facebook of Russia for its popularity and also its user interface design — with Internet powerhouse Mail.ru now controlling a majority of shares, but also what role the government plays in controlling content on VK.com.

In the wake of several political conflicts both domestically and in neighboring countries like Ukraine, VK.com has become a platform for people to rally support for positions, often in defiance of the Kremlin and Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.

Durov has been resistant to those who have tried to restrict freedom of expression on the platform, and he believes that this is at the heart of the leadership fight, as he told us a month ago, and then re-confirmed in more statements on VK.com last week. You have to wonder how and if the odd appearance by Edward Snowden on Russian TV, on the subject of government surveillance online, sits in relation to all of this.

Even beyond all of that murkiness, the situation is messy. Shareholders have been playing up publicly the role of other issues as spurs for leadership change at VK.com.

There are questions, for example, about where VK.com sits in terms of its wider business — it’s the subject of ongoing negotiations, suits and threats of suits about copyright infringement because VK.com is also a very popular platform for streaming and exchanging media.

And there are Durov’s wider interests, specifically around his Telegram app. Telegram had a surge of interest in the last couple of months because of a perfect storm of sorts: Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp has seen some turn away from the popular messaging app and look around for alternatives; and in general the public has started to become a lot more interested in apps offering “secure” services that do a better job of keeping their data away from commercial and government data gatherers. One of VK.com’s shareholders, United Capital Partners, has criticised Durov’s focus on Telegram at the expense of his attention on VK.com.

For now, it looks like VK.com’s deputy chief executive Boris Dobrodeyev and executive director Dmitry Sergeyev are running the network on an interim basis.

Will the smart, connected automobile be the next big thing in mobile?

As I write this, Apple is currently showing off Carplay integration at the New York International Auto Show using partners Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai. All three companies will be releasing cars equipped with CarPlay latter this year, bringing us the next generation of ‘smart’ connected automobiles.

Meanwhile, Google is also working with automotive partners to push forwards its own Android-powered initiative under the banner of the Open Automotive Alliance. Of much less significance, Microsoft is even brewing its own Windows-based solution. Each of these platforms and initiatives have their own potential pros and cons, and each will likely appeal to different types of users, just like mobile devices such as the smartphone do today.

Will ‘smart’ connected automobiles have as big of an impact on the world as smartphones?

The big question, however, is whether ‘smart’ connected automobiles will have the same impact on the world as the smartphone has. In just a few short years, the smartphone has grown from a niche device to a near-essential way of life for many of us. Not only does the smartphone improve our communication with the world around us, it also helps us better manage our time through select apps, works as a navigation tool and so much more.

Right now, smart connected cars are mostly a niche, primarily aimed at those that are either driving luxury cars or are merely tech obsessed. But 5, 10 years out? Could the smart, connected automobile eventually have the same or even more of an impact than smartphones have had on our modern world? Absolutely.

As automobiles increase in complexity, a smarter connected system makes sense

While I’m using the word ‘smart’ car, the reality is that today’s cars are already plenty smart and much more complex than those of just a decade or two ago. There was a time when you’d push on the gas and a cable would open the throttle, that’s not the case these days. For most vehicles, stepping on the gas sends a digital message across the CAN (Controller Area Network) bus, which in turn causes an engine controller to increase throttle.

Every aspect of our car is already connected tightly through the power of modern computing and speciality sensors.

Every aspect of our car is already connected tightly through the power of modern computing and specialty sensors. And that’s just the beginning. I’m sure you’ve seen commercial for — or perhaps you own — a vehicle that can park itself or will warn you when it comes too closely to another automobile. There’s also initiatives to take this further and bring true auto-pilot to select vehicles in the not-so-distant future.

As the powers of our automobiles advance, a flexible operating system and organized platform will be needed to ensure it all plays nicely together. It’s unclear what platform will rise up to take on this challenge, though all the big players of the mobile world seem interested in getting involved before the market explodes.

What kind of functionality should we expect from a “smart connected car?”

That’s a tough question. Like the smartphone, you can expect these next-gen smart automobiles to start out fairly modestly. For lack of a better way to describe it, we are in the RIM or PALM age of high-tech cars right now. While there are already systems in place, most of them are primitive and don’t function as smoothly as we like, and they are also mostly developed in-house by select automotive manufacturers.

There’s a real need for a platform that will break ahead and help push automobiles to new directions that current infotainment/connected systems just don’t do.

There’s a real need for a platform that will break ahead and help push automobiles in new directions that current infotainment/connected systems just don’t do. We need the connected automobile industry’s equivalent to the iPhone. Whether you like Apple or not, it’s hard to deny that the iPhone was the pebble that started massive ripples of change for the smartphone market. Carplay could be this pebble of change for automobiles or if it could be Google, that’s still undecided at this stage.

As for the type of functionality we’d like to see from connected smarter automobiles within the next decade? Here’s our predictions, or rather, our wishlist for special features from the ‘car of tomorrow’:

A seamless, connected infotainment experience

We’d love to see an infotainment system that works seamlessly with your existing mobile devices, and can perhaps even communicate with your home PC and other devices using the power of mobile broadband. To be fair, most of this is already possible in existing solutions, but Carplay and Google’s OAA initiative are looking to take this experience to the next level.

Some of the things we hope this leads to is better syncing of information to and from your mobile devices. For example, you could use your phone to bring up navigation information outside of your car, and your GPS in the car automatically would turn on and display these details.

Cars that talk with one another

Imagine a seamless communication system between the automobiles around us. Many luxury cars already have sensors and mini-cameras that monitor your vehicle’s proximity to others, with the power of Android or even a custom car OS, it would be amazing if smart cars eventually communicate anonymously with one another on the road to share proximity data and other information that could prevent accidents.

What this means is that your car could even alert you and tell you to pull over to side of the road or take another route because an accident is up ahead, with the information of this accident coming straight from the automobile(s) that were involved in the collision.

Flavio/Flickr

Your mechanic could know what’s wrong before you have a problem

A smart connected car might someday have a setup process not unlike when you first set up your Android mobile devices. That means you would link your Google Play account, set up your default email address and so forth. What if it also meant you could choose a “trusted mechanic” to add to the list, such as a local shop or perhaps a dealership?

A few months (or years) later your car might not be showing any signs of issues, but as soon as the car is aware there’s an issue, it would have the power to report the problem to its operating system. From there, the car would send the CEL (Check Engine Light) details and other diagnostic reports over to a chosen mechanic. The mechanic could then contact you and ask if you want to set up an appointment to have your vehicle looked at.

Don’t worry, your car has the wheel

It would be nice if our cars had the ability to self-drive, or at least take over in select situations. While full self-driving might still be a bit of a ways off, imagine that you start to drift off to sleep, smart sensors in your car recognize that you aren’t focused on the road, they relay this information to your car, and it takes over while blasting a sounded alert to wake you up so you can take back control over your car.

A car that knows what you want

A connected car would know when you need gas and could suggest the gas station closest to you with the lowest possible price.

My car might follow me around as I go to the store or visit friends and family, but it knows little about me. The car of tomorrow will know where you are going, it will know your driving habits and it will be able to give you recommendations based on your own interests.

Your car will know your favorite restaurants and automatically brings these top choices up first when you ‘ask’ your car to suggest something. Additionally, a connected car would also know when you are likely to add gas (maybe you always do it when it gets to a 1/4 tank) and could suggest the gas station closest to you with the lowest possible price.

Your connected car could also make playlist suggestions for your music collection, it could give your traffic alerts and intelligent rerouting. The list goes on.

Carplay — Extreme Tech

Hurdles that stand in the way

The idea of a future where smart connected cars provide us active notifications and make ‘smart’ decisions on our behalf might sound cool, but it probably also seems more than a little impractical at this point. Of course, ten years ago, a quad-core computing device that makes calls and runs millions of apps would have seemed a nice but far-off idea as well, and yet here my Nexus 5 sits next to me on my desk.

If Google, Apple, Microsoft and their manufacturing partners can create a standard that works flawlessly, we’re going to not only see more smart/connected cars in the near future, we are going to see their capabilities expand dramatically in the next few years. Of course, there’s some very real hurdles in our way that will need to be addressed before connected ‘smart’ cars can truly live up to their full potential.

4G LTE, who’s buying?

First, the idea of bringing mobile broadband into our cars might raise a few questions. The 2015 Audi A3 is the first vehicle to offer integrated 4G LTE in our cars, though Ford, GM and several other manufacturers are working on doing the same. Audi’s solution uses AT&T, but it’s not free. Instead, consumers will need to spend either $99 for six months or $499 for 30 months.

While consumers of higher-end vehicles like an Audi might be okay with paying extra for web access, those owning a Dodge or Ford might not feel the same way. Right now, 4G LTE in your car is almost 100% about entertainment, but five years from now your car may be sending diagnostic information to your car maker, communicating with cars around it using the web, and so much more.

Before we reach this point, we need to determine who should be responsible for fronting the costs. Obviously AT&T and other carriers aren’t going to give us free service, so it comes down to whether the car owner should pay, or whether the cost should be worked into the automobile’s sticker price.

Trust issues

This is a big one, to be honest. A new survey is going around talking about consumer’s fear of future technologies. While the survey doesn’t talk about connected cars, the survey did suggest 50% they wouldn’t be willing to take a ride in a driverless car.

A car that communicates with others on the road and can take over the wheel is going to have some PR issues. While these features are cool, manufacturers will need to find ways to ensure security, privacy and safety if consumers are to fully embrace the idea of a connected smart car. That includes removing distractions when possible — after all, do we really need more distractions as drivers?

Reliability

While Google Android is fairly reliable, your phone can still crash, get malware or have other issues. Having a problem with your phone is annoying, but it’s not life or death. If you automobile is glitching, things could be much more serious.

The first wave of connected, smart cars will be nothing more than infotainment devices so this isn’t a real problem just yet. It is something that will need to be addressed as these cars evolve into machines that can self-drive and ‘think’ for themselves on the road, though.

Having a problem with your phone is annoying, but it’s not life or death. If you automobile is glitching, things could be much more serious.

Those are just three possible ‘issues’ standing in the way of the connected, smart super-car’s future, and there are likely many more. Bottom-line, connected cars are about to get more and more commonplace, but they still have a way to go before they truly impact our lives at the same level that smartphone have. Could we be there in just a few years, however? Maybe.

Try Offline Messaging On Mobile With Firechat

Chat applications are a dime a dozen, covering almost any conceivable niche you could think off. But so far there hasn’t been a chat app that focuses on local, "off-the-grid" communication. Such an application would let you chat with nearby people at sports events, concerts and the like without exposing your identity and without needing to be on the same Wi-Fi network. Firechat is here to fill that gap.

Firechat is an offline and anonymous chat application that runs on both Android and iOS. Firechat is built on the developers’ own mesh network technology (as well as iOS 7′s Multipeer Connectivity Framework), letting you chat with nearby users without needing an Internet connection of any sort.

Recommended Reading: 10 WhatsApp Alternatives For Your Smartphone

Firechat is available for both Android and iOS. Note that Firechat requires iOS7 and above, and should work without any issues on most Android devices less than 2 years old. We’ll be looking at the Android version in this article, but the two versions are almost identical in terms of interface.

Getting started With Firechat

Once you’ve downloaded the app and installed it, just sign in by providing your preferred username. No extra information is needed.

Firechat Features

Firechat has two different chat modes, accessible from the main interface.

"Everyone" is a global chat mode that lets you chat with up to 80 randomly selected users from the same country, and requires an Internet connection.

"Nearby" is the local, off-the-grid messaging option. The range for off-the-grid messaging differs according to platform: 30 feet for Android and 100 feet for iOS. However, the Android version supports Open Garden’s multi-hop mesh network, so the range will increase with the number of users using the app (this feature will come soon for the iOS version).

Like most messaging apps, you can send both images and text to other users (although it looks like the Android version doesn’t have support for sending images just yet).

There’s also a Settings screen accessible from the upper right corner of the interface in the Android version. You can change your display name, choose whether you get notifications for Nearby Messages, and Tell a Friend, which opens up the standard Android Share with friends menu. The Share option on the chat screen does the same thing.

Limitations

One thing to bear in mind is that the two versions are not (yet) compatible in offline mode. However, the developers are confident that they will be able to bring inter-platform messaging to Firechat eventually.

Firechat is a somewhat barebones chat application, but the novel focus on local, off-the-grid messaging should make it popular for a certain subset of users, particularly those looking to communicate with fellow attendees at sporting events, concerts and the like.

The big thing with Firechat, though, is the potential it shows. After all, if Google’s interest is anything to go by, mesh networks might just be the thing of the future.

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How to set a mobile data limit on the Galaxy S3, S4 or S5

Kris Carlon 2014-04-12T14:00:01Z2 days ago

Kris Carlon

Putting down roots in Berlin after six years of traveling is a major step for Kris Carlon, who has spent more time living out of a tent lately than sitting at a desk. Kris comes to the AndroidPIT Editorial Team via a lengthy period spent writing on art and culture in Australia and other places he has lived. He joined the Android community while resurfacing in civilization back in 2010 and has never looked back, using technology to replace his actual presence in other people's lives ever since.

Data limits are the bane of many people's existence. They're a necessary evil but always seem to run out just when you need them and then you get hit with crazy excess charges or 'shaping' that cuts your data flow to a trickle. Galaxy devices make it nice and easy for you to set a mobile data limit to avoid running out of data entirely or bringing on some bill shock at the end of the month.

Holding the reins when it comes to data usage is essential in these LTE/download booster times. / © AndroidPIT

On the Galaxy S3 just hit Settings > Connections tab > Data Usage > Set Mobile Data Limit and enter whatever data limit you like before you get a warning. Our screenshots are an international Galaxy S3 running Samsung's Android 4.3 firmware.

The Galaxy S3 on Android 4.3: set mobile data limit. / © AndroidPIT

On the Galaxy S4 it's exactly the same path: Settings > Connections tab > Data Usage > Set Mobile Data Limit. Depending on what version of Android you have or what custom ROM you might be running, the path may be slightly different. Our screenshot is an international Galaxy S4 running Samsung's Android 4.4.2.

The Galaxy S4 on Android 4.4.2: business as usual for setting a data limit. / © AndroidPIT

The Galaxy S5 is slightly different due to the new TouchWiz, but it's just as easy: Settings > Quick Settings > Data Usage > Set Mobile Data Limit. Our Galaxy S5 is, of course, running the straight-out-of-the-box Android 4.4.2 firmware.

The Galaxy S5 on Android 4.4.2: slightly different look thanks to the new TouchWiz. / © AndroidPIT

Note: You will only see the Set Mobile Data Limit option if you have a data enabled SIM card inserted.

Do you use this feature? What other ways do you keep track of your data usage?

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Use Wikipedia's Mobile Site for Easier Split-Screen Research

Accidentally getting redirected to a mobile version of a website on the desktop can be obnoxious. However, as reddit user Holy_Jay points out, Wikipedia's mobile site makes split-screen reading on the desktop much nicer.

To access the mobile version of a Wikipedia page in your desktop browser, you can simply change "en.wikipedia.org" to "en.m.wikipedia.org" in the URL bar. So, for example, the Wikipedia link for Lifehacker would change from this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifehacker

To this:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifehacker

Now, instead of getting a cramped, two- or three-column view when you bring the size of your window down, you'll get a simple one-column view with plenty of readable text.

You can sometimes perform a similar trick on other websites, though the method of accessing a mobile site may differ greatly depending on how the developer implemented it. Some don't use URL redirects, while others (like our own site) will automatically switch to a mobile-optimized view by simply resizing the window to a smaller size. Go ahead and try it now!

LPT: If you need to split-screen wikipedia, use wikipedia mobile | Reddit

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After Killing Intro For iOS, LinkedIn Gets Deep Integration On Mobile Via Samsung Partnership

Score a small victory for Android users. Earlier this year, LinkedIn killed a clever app called Intro, which used an engineering hack to inject information from LinkedIn and its Rapportive service into your iOS emails. But the service was deemed too risky for the way it intercepted emails on behalf of users before augmenting them with the additional data, and was later shut down.

Today, however, select Android users will have access to similar functionality, the company says. Those who buy the newly released Galaxy S5 smartphone will have the ability to access LinkedIn data from not only their email, but also their calendar and contacts applications.

In a blog post announcing this news, LinkedIn touts this as a “first-of-its-kind integration,” explaining that they’ve teamed up with Samsung to make this possible. Unlike on iOS devices, where LinkedIn had to hack its way around the fact that Apple doesn’t offer an extensible framework, the partnership with Samsung means that, this time around, LinkedIn no longer needs to intercept your emails in order to inject its code.

To get started, Galaxy S5 users will need to download the LinkedIn application to their new handset, then authorize the native applications to sync with their LinkedIn account. After doing so, they’ll then be able to view the same sort of profile data Intro once offered iOS device owners, including LinkedIn users’ profile pictures, job titles, and work experience.

But instead of only appearing in the email client, this data is also available in the Calendar and Contacts app, too, allowing you to pre-brief yourself or refresh your memory about those you’re soon meeting with, or get an update on your contacts’ latest news from the native Contacts app.

We’ve asked LinkedIn if it’s working on any way to bring this functionality to a wider number of Android users through additional integrations to be rolled out in the future (Samsung or otherwise), but haven’t yet heard back. We’ll update with that info, as provided.

More here.

App.io Turns iOS Apps Into Playable Mobile Ads

App.io, a startup offering tools that allow iOS applications to run in the browser for testing or demo purposes, has now taken the next logical step: it’s bringing its technology the world of mobile advertising. With the company’s newly launched mobile ad product, developers can create ad units that are basically functional copies of their mobile app or game that consumers can play for a set amount of time, before having to download the native application in order to continue.

The company, previously called Kickfolio and backed by over a million in seed funding, has been developing its technology over the past 18 months, and today has more than 15,000 developers using its desktop browser product. Its service is reminiscent of an earlier Facebook acquisition called Pieceable, but instead of rendering apps in the browser using Flash, App.io uses HTML5 technology.

To date, App.io’s developer customers have run over 2 million interactive demo sessions via the desktop browser, and while the company declined to comment on revenue figures or growth, the company’s head of Biz Dev David Truong notes that its customer base has included “Fortune 500 companies and billion dollar startups.” (Those customers are under NDA, so he wouldn’t provide names, however.)

Before publicly launching the mobile app ad product, App.io worked with a few early clients to test the technology, and has now seen over 200,000 impressions of its interactive ad units. Conversion rates, so far, have been high – reportedly 3 to 5 times higher than similar ad units (meaning rich media or video ads, also run on App.io’s partner ad networks.)

Developers interested in testing the technology for themselves upload their simulator build to App.io, and optimize it for the mobile ad experience by removing things like login screens or tutorials, for example. App.io will then vet the ad and approve it, and it will then begin to run on the partner ad networks (also still under NDA, but there are several networks involved.)

The company is still exploring how to charge developers, and is considering a number of models, including CPI (cost per install), CPM (cost per thousand), CPCV (cost per converted viewer) and even possibly a new model based on the LTV (lifetime value) of the user.

“The cost is very similar to video ads – cost per completed demo,” Truong explains. “We’re essentially creating the industry standard, so are still experimenting with ad unit costs. We’ve had a lot of interest to charge CPI, but based on the high quality of the users (lifetime value),” he continues.

“Due to our infrastructure and economics, we’re able to cost our ads at a very similar – and sometimes the same – as current ad offerings like video or standard CPI campaigns. A good industry standard CPI cost for high quality users could be between $2-$3 per install,” says Truong.

The ads are both HTML5 and MRAID complaint, meaning they can technically run on any MRAID complaint ad network – those that are capable of running rich media mobile apps, in case you’re not well-versed in all the ad network lingo here.

For consumers, the ad experience begins as either a banner or interstitial which, when tapped, launches into a full-screen playable game. Users can then play the game for a set amount of time, then a full-screen conversion button appears prompting the user to download the app from the App Store to keep playing. If they want to buy the game, they can tap that screen to go to the App Store and install the app to their mobile device.

App.io says it tracks the entire ad funnel from the impression, first tap, length of interaction, tap to the App Store, device install, and in the future, the Day 1, 7 and 30 retention metrics and cohort LTV.

The mobile ads are iOS-only for now and are optimized for iPhones and iPads, Truong says. But they could easily be run on Android in the future, since they’re HTML5 streaming technology. “It would be as simple as changing the App Store link to the Google Play link,” he notes.

Interested developers are being invited to trial the ads. More info on that is on the App.io blog here.

Apple Could Finally Adopt NFC On iPhone For Mobile Payment Plans And Touch ID

Apple’s 2014 roadmap was laid out in pretty considerable detail by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier this week in an investor note, and while ordinarily analyst predictions aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, Kuo has a solid track record of actually getting things right. Among Kuo’s predictions are larger iPhones, a Retina MacBook Air, improved Apple TV, iPad with Touch ID and iWatch launch later this year. But one small detail could have more potential impact than all the rest: NFC inclusion in iWatch and iPhone devices.

Apple has never thought much of NFC, at least when it comes to its own devices, and has avoided building the communication tech into its gadgets for years while the Android competition turned it into a device default. NFC had a lot of early buzz, but for the most part, its usefulness for the average person comes in its ability to act as a handshake tech to ease the process of Bluetooth pairing. It still has some utility as a mobile payments transfer tech, but even with mobile payment options built into Android phones that support it, it hasn’t taken off in that regard.

If Apple starts building NFC into its devices, as Kuo reports it will, that could all change. While Apple now offers iBeacons Bluetooth LE-based tech, which could replicate the payment functions of NFC, support for the other tech would mean broad compatibility with existing hardware that more and more merchants have now been adopting with their in-store point-of-sale systems. Both types of tech are early, but NFC has the virtue of having had longer to find its feet.

As Finextra notes, the WSJ reported earlier this year that Apple was looking to develop a mobile wallet for iPhone, using the existing iTunes accounts the company already uses for purchases within its own software and retail store ecosystem. That would give Apple an instant network of over 600 million users with credit card information on file, making it likely the largest mobile payments network of any kind without even trying. And with NFC, Touch ID could be used to authenticate those payments, or even to authenticate identify for store loyalty or other purposes, too.

Apple has previously patented tech related to NFC and mobile payments, and Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned that payments was part of what drove the inspiration behind creating Touch ID, the fingerprint-based authentication tech on the iPhone 5s. Touch ID is reportedly coming to iPad Air 2 in 2014, as well, which expands the pool of potential payments applicability even further. Apple may have seemed disdainful of NFC in the past, but it has a habit of waiting on new and emerging tech until it becomes genuinely useful to a large swath of consumers, and NFC could be just about at that point, and a key route to Apple’s domination of the mobile payments space.

Microsoft Office Mobile

Microsoft Office Mobile is the official Office companion optimized for your Android phone. You can access, view and edit your Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint documents from virtually anywhere. Documents look like the originals, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. When you make quick edits or add comments to a document, the formatting and content remain intact.*

KEY FEATURES:
Access documents from virtually anywhere:
•    Cloud – With your phone, you can access Office documents that are stored on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint.
•    Recent Documents – Office Mobile is cloud-connected. The documents you’ve recently viewed on your computer are readily available on your phone in the recent documents panel.
•    Email Attachments – You can view and edit Office documents attached to email messages.*
Office documents look stunning:
•    Great-Looking Documents – Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents look great on your phone, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt Graphics, and shapes.
•    Optimized for phone – Word, Excel and PowerPoint have been optimized for the small screen of your phone.
•    Resume Reading – When opening a Word document from OneDrive or OneDrive for Business on your phone, it automatically resumes at the place where you left off reading, even if you last viewed the document on your PC or tablet.
•    Presentation Views – The Slide Navigator view in PowerPoint lets you browse slides faster, while speaker notes help you practice your presentation.
Make quick edits and share*:
•    Documents Remain Intact – Formatting and content remain intact when you edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents on your phone.
•    Create – You can create new Word and Excel documents on your phone.
•    Comments – You can review comments that have been made in Word and Excel documents on your phone and add your own comments.
* Sign in with a free Microsoft account to create, edit and save documents for home use. A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to create, edit and save documents for business use. Qualifying plans include: Office 365 Small Business Premium, Office 365 Midsize Business, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4 (Enterprise and Government), Office 365 Education A3 and A4, and Office 365 ProPlus.
Requires a phone running Android OS 4.0 or later.

Size : 27M
Current Version : 15.0.2720.2000
Requires Android : 4.0 and up

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Facebook will soon be taking chat out of its mobile app, forcing users to download the dedicated Fac

Facebook will soon be taking chat out of its mobile app, forcing users to download the dedicated Facebook Messenger app if they want to continue to use chat. Read more on TechCrunch.

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Gowalla Founder Josh Williams Raises $2.1 Million To Have Another Go At Local Mobile Discovery Apps

Gowalla founder Josh Williams is nothing if not consistent.

After several years spent building location-based mobile apps and products for his own company, as well as Facebook, he’s back with another venture that’s focused on improving the way we explore our everyday world.

As you probably recall, Gowalla was one of the early location-based social check-in apps, aimed at helping users to pinpoint where they were and what they were doing, so that friends may find them.

Later, using the data that users had volunteered, the company pivoted slightly to be about creating guides and tools for discovering new things in the world around you. But soon after the launch of Gowalla 4.0, the team was acqui-hired by Facebook.

Last summer, after working on Facebook Pages, Location, and Events products, Williams left the company. And shortly after that he founded a new venture that they called The Last Guide Company along with former Dropbox and Facebook designer (and Gowalla alum) Adam Michela.

The idea was to use all the things that your mobile phone knows about you to make it fun to go out and explore the world. Since being launched, the brand name has been shortened to Last, and Williams and Michela recruited front-end Developer Tyler Stalder, illustrator and designer Brian Brasher, and photographer Daniel Agee to help them out along the way.

While Williams is staying mum on what the initial product created by the team will be, he did tell us that, like Gowalla and the Facebook products that he worked on, Last would be focused on harnessing the power of mobile phones and physical location to improve the way that users interacted with the world around them.

“How do we take your phone and what we understand about you and where you are in the world to make it easier for you to go out… and explore?” Williams said.

That functionality will be at the heart of whatever Last comes to market with later this year. And, whatever it is, will come as a bit of a departure from what Gowalla was more than five years ago.

In part, that’s because the world has changed. As Williams told us, the idea of using your mobile phone to pinpoint your location is not quite as novel today as it once was.

“When we first built Gowalla, it was on the first smartphone the masses had access to. Location was novel, and… coming out of the gate, there were a lot of people who hadn’t seen anything like it before,” Williams said. “Now everything uses location, even the things you don’t think of as being location-based.”

Our phones now also know a lot more about us these days, including our likes, dislikes, relationship status, where we’ve been to, and where we’re going. With all that data, Last could theoretically provide much better local discovery and recommendations than what’s currently available.

To push its vision forward, the Last team raised $2.1 million in seed capital led by Freestyle Capital. Along with its investment came money from firms that had previously put money into Gowalla, including Greylock Partners and Founders Fund.

Other investors in the round include Google Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, Designer Fund, BoxGroup, Launch Fund, SV Angel, Fuel Capital, Slow Ventures, Ruchi Sanghvi, Pete Cashmore, Tom Conrad, Todd Jackson, Tom Watson, and Semil Shah.

Crittercism Raises $30M More, Inks Mobile App Performance Deal With New Backer Accenture

Some big news today from Crittercism, a startup that operates a platform for companies to monitor their mobile app performance with customers including the likes of Netflix, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Pinterest, Home Depot, AT&T and a number of other Fortune 500 names.

It has raised another $30 million in funding, from a mix of VCs and strategic investors led by Scale Venture Partners with participation also from InterWest Partners, VMware and Accenture. Crittercism and its investors are not revealing any valuation at this time.

Separately, Crittercism has secured a significant deal with new minority investor Accenture that will see the consulting and outsourcing giant use Crittercism’s technology in its bigger mobile enterprise offering that designs, builds, tests and manages applications for enterprises, dubbed Accenture Application Factory.

And Crittercism is also releasing new services of its own, in the form of a new API and “zero-touch App Wrapping solution”, which will mean that Crittercism will not require source code to monitor an app.

The $30 million investment brings the total raised to date by Crittercism, which started as an AngelPad company, to $48 million, with past backers including Google Ventures, Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures.

Crittercism is one of the many companies out there riding the wave of mobile app usage worldwide, brought by the popularity of smartphones and tablets. A year ago, when Crittercism raised a round led by Google Ventures, the company estimated that it was already monitoring some 500 million devices for crashes and other performance issues. Andrew Levy, Crittercism’s co-founder and CEO, tells me that this number is now well over 1 billion.

This speaks to another trend: as the mobile app ecosystem matures, those companies that use apps as part of their business are becoming increasingly focused on quality.

Levy tells me that the investment will be used “to expand our channel efforts” with partners in South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, as well as invest a lot more in “enterprise initiatives” — a place where both Accenture and VMware (now newly interested in mobile enterprise with its acquisition of AirWatch) will likely play a key role. While Accenture is coming out today with information about how it’s involving itself with Crittercism as more than just a simple investor — it will effectively become a reseller for Crittercism’s mAPM product — it’s not clear yet how VMware will leverage its stake.

“There are a ton of great to market opportunities,” Levy says of its relationship with its new strategic investors. On VMware, he says that “they are becoming a lot more serious after AirWatch and that is very interesting for us. They are one of the cloud enablers that has figured out their mobile strategy. They’re not just sitting on the sidelines of this.”

Although the company is based in the U.S., it’s had a long-standing place in driving its business outside of the country. In fact, Levy tells me that Crittercism’s first paying customer was Qype, the user-generated reviews platform that was bought by Yelp in 2012.

But while a lot of the opportunity today has been on the B2C and B2B fronts — with the B2C playing a role particularly in driving that billion user number — ScaleVP partner Andy Vitus believes that the longer term opportunity may be in a third category altogether, in the slightly more nebulous category of the Internet of things, where we are talking about machine-to-machine communications.

“I do think Android is becoming the operating system of choice for the ‘headless Internet’,” he says. And while Crittercism already has some clients using is solutions for M2M deployments, “over time Crittercism will be able to push even more into that. You won’t even have a person to report that something has gone wrong,” making Crittercism’s solution even more essential.

Up to now, most of Crittercism’s efforts have been focused on mobile app solutions but it looks like its sights are being raised in more way than one: the API will let enterprises integrate mobile app performance management into a wider dashboard where they are monitoring other apps (for example server-based apps); while the zero-wrapping solution will give companies a way of monitoring apps even if they have not developed them in-house. This is an essential product when you consider that many companies outsource this kind of work (opening the door to how Accenture may use the tool), or use off-the-shelf solutions.

As a part of the funding round, Vitus will join Crittercism’s board. Accenture’s minority investment will also give it a seat on Crittercism’s advisory board.

Spotify Launches a New Design on Desktop and Mobile

Spotify launched its biggest ever revamp that spans browsers, desktops and smart devices. Here's what it looks like.

It's been six months in development, but music streaming giant Spotify has now rolled out its new "dark" redesign across desktop and mobile platforms. On the surface, the new Spotify delivers revamped typography, rounded iconography and a stylish theme that's all intended to give your music some visual pop. It's not all bells and whistles, though.

While the functionality you're used to remains intact, Spotify now looks to put content to the fore through its Your Music feature, making it easier than ever for you to find, save and organize your collection, all of which is then seamlessly synced across your devices. Hit the link below to read more, or check it out in Spotify's video above.

Spotify Paints it Black with New Look | Spotify News

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Mobile App Usage Increases In 2014, As Mobile Web Surfing Declines

New data from app analytics provider Flurry released today states that native app usage on smartphones is continuing to grow at the expense of the mobile web. The company claims that users are now spending 2 hours and 42 minutes per day on mobile devices as of March 2014, up from 2 hours, 38 minutes as of a year ago. Meanwhile, mobile app usage accounts for 2 hours and 19 minutes of that time spent, while mobile web usage has dropped from 20% of the U.S. consumer’s time in 2013 to just 14% – or 22 minutes per day – as of last month. Says Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf, the changes indicate that the mobile browser has become just “a single application swimming in a sea of apps.”

Flurry, which gathers its data from its network of over 450,000 mobile applications installed on over 1.3 billion devices worldwide, clarified to us that it also uses comScore to determine its figures on mobile browser usage and mobile applications. Meanwhile, it uses NetMarketShare for the distribution of the browser usage. In other words, be aware that company is combining data from different sources with different methodologies here, so take that as you may.

In the new report, Flurry also examined which app categories remained most popular year-over-year, and found that gaming still dominates mobile usage with 32% of time spent on iOS and Android devices (same as last year), while Facebook remained a strong second with 17% of time spent on mobile.

However, it’s interesting to note that Facebook exhibited a slight decline year-over-year, going from 18% of time spent in 2013 to the 17% now reported, (which includes Instagram), says Flurry. Though it’s still a lead by a wide margin in terms of time spent, even that slight decline can help explain why Facebook would spend big to expand its user base and market share elsewhere on mobile, the way it did via the WhatsApp acquisition.

Facebook, combined with Twitter (1.5%) and Social Messaging apps (9.5%) grew to 28% of time spent on mobile, up from 24% last year, indicating the broader shift from socializing on Facebook to sharing within smaller, more private messaging applications.

Meanwhile, new social category YouTube accounted for 4% of time spent. Entertainment (including YouTube) and Utility apps saw their shares remain the same at 8% each, year-over-year, while productivity apps doubled their share from 2% to 4%.

Flurry also notes that, combined, Google and Facebook likely command less than 25% of the total time the average U.S. consumer spends on mobile, while the top ten franchises according to comScore, account for less than 40% of the time spent.

Says Khalaf, “despite massive efforts by Google and Facebook, the market hasn’t consolidated and over the past couple of years, we have seen new franchises emerge in almost every sector of mobile.” These include apps like Pinterest, Snapchat, WhatsApp (acquired by Facebook), Waze (acquired by Google), Spotify and more, which on their own account for a percentage or two of the time spent on mobile.

In terms of apps that lost share from 2013 to 2014, the most notable example is Safari, which dropped from 12% to 5%. Non-Google, non-Apple browser dropped from 4% to 2%. Also on the decline was the “Other” category of apps, which went from 6% to 3% – but as a grouping of all the leftovers that didn’t fit into one of the main categories cited here, that doesn’t mean as much.

Also worth noting, time spent in native apps, 2 hours and 19 minutes this year is only up 12 minutes per day (or 9.5%) from last year – an increase that’s not as notable as the previous five years, the report found, which seems to point to a sort of leveling off in terms of how much time users have to spend on devices, and in apps.

Finally, Flurry reviewed mobile advertising, citing data from eMarketer that said Facebook earned 17.5% of the overall mobile ad revenues, which is in line with their share of time spent on mobile, while Google (including YouTube) earned 49.3%, or much more than their time spent. Non-Google, non-Facebook apps accounted for 65.3% of time spent but only saw 32% of ad revenues.

“This represents a massive opportunity for applications, including gaming apps to monetize through advertising,” says Khalaf.

Image: Shutterstock/PureSolution

Spotify No Longer Accepting New App Submissions, Plans To Extend Web API And Focus On Mobile SDKs

Music streaming service Spotify has announced that it’s no longer accepting new app submissions for App Finder, its own app directory for third-party apps that reside and operate within its desktop client. The move essentially means it’s shuttering its Spotify app platform play as we know it. However, existing apps that are API 1.x-compatible will continue to be available in the Spotify desktop app — as it moves focus to its mobile SDK for third-party Spotify integration and plans to extend its current, fairly limited, Web API.

The latter, whilst no details are forthcoming, could mean that Spotify-powered Web apps that reside outside of Spotify will finally be given a level playing field with those previously sanctioned apps that run inside of its desktop client. Could this be a win for a more ‘open’ web in regards to apps that want to integrate Spotify? We’ll have to see how this pans out but the move is certainly interesting.

At one point my understanding is that Spotify was going to integrate third-party Spotify apps into their web player and mobile apps but they cancelled that integration over a year ago due to the complexities involved.

Despite major brands and startups building official Spotify apps, listed in its App Finder — including Last.fm, musiXmatch, Rolling Stone, Soundrop and Tunewiki, amongst many others — there’s also a question mark over how successful its platform play has been overall. Spotify apps, accessible within the music streaming service’s own client, seemed like a great idea but it’s questionable if enough people were aware of and using them.

One startup I talked to last year admitted that its Spotify app initially gave sign-ups a nice bump but pretty quickly tailed off after the PR around the platform subsided and the app directory got fuller.

But perhaps the real story here isn’t about a failed platform but the shift to mobile, reminiscent of online gaming. Spotify pretty much says as much in its official developer update on the matter, noting that its mobile SDKs continue to be a major focus for the company.

“Partners have been asking us for a cheaper and easier way to own a presence inside Spotify and developers would like more ways to integrate Spotify with their own applications,” writes Spotify. “Pair that with the growing importance of mobile and we realized we needed to adapt.”

And adapt it has.

“Over the coming months we’ll be adding new features for partners in Spotify and expanding the features of our Web API, as well as releasing new mobile SDKs,” the company adds.

Automatic Album Maker Moment.me Launches A New Service For Mobile Event Websites

Apps that help users make sense of their ever-growing photo collections through automatic organization and curation would seem to make sense, and offer a service people need. But over the past year or so, we’ve seen these types of startups fail, pivot or simply stagnate. Everpix is no more, for example. Tracks shifted, launching a new app called Kanvas for photo-editing. Flayvr has yet to see mainstream adoption.

And today, Tel Aviv-based startup Moment.me joins the fray, with a new business that sees it distancing itself from the automatic, social photo album space, with the launch of a new service focused on building mobile websites for events.

These “microsites,” as the company calls them, are meant to serve as online pop-up shops for events, including things like concerts, sporting events, film festivals, and more. Today, information about an event can be found across the web, on the sites belonging to the artist, the band, the promoter, the sports team, the venue itself, and on blogs and social media, Moment.me co-founder Eilon Tirosh explains.

The new microsite creation service essentially repurposes Moment.me’s aggregation technology for this (the team hopes, eventually profitable) new venture, allowing event organizers, bands or teams to quickly launch a mobile website that serves as the hub for everything there is to know about the event in question.

The idea is to make building the microsite as simple as using any other consumer-facing service, with no coding required. After entering in the event time and location (or pulling in those details from a Facebook page), the service then pulls in the top content from social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, while also allowing for further customization, like adding maps, details on where to eat or drink nearby, links to ticket or merchandise sales, sharing features, and more. The resulting sites work well on any form factor, whether desktop/laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

While the basic microsite builder will remain free, over time, the company plans to introduce premium features for commercial events that will allow for additional customization or levels of engagement. Moment.me is also in discussions with others in the event industry, like ticketing companies for example, for further integrations.

Site creation is currently available online, though the company notes it will also be offered within the Moment.me iPhone application.

Moment.me was founded in February 2012 in Tel Aviv by Ronny Elkayam, Eilon Tirosh, and Boaz Adato. It has $1.5 million in seed funding from Blumberg Capital and other private investors.

Mobile Platforms, Smartwatches, And Golden Handcuffs

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah works on product for Swell, is a TechCrunch columnist, and an investor at Haystack. He blogs at Haywire, and you can follow him on Twitter at @semil

Ask three different smart, knowledgeable people in tech about their views on smartwatches, and you’re bound to receive at least four plausible opinions on the matter. As someone hilariously snarked on Twitter, “even a broken smartwatch opinion will be write twice a day.” Jokes aside, I’ve been getting more excited about smartwatches with the news dribbling out over the past few months and speculation rising. As Google and potentially Apple join the popular Pebble, along with companies like Jawbone, FitBit (which already claim wrist real estate), Runkeeper, and others, the looming, high-level question for consumers may not just be platform-specific apps and functionality, but the effects (and potential handcuffs) of mobile platform and ecosystem lock-in.

Here’s how think about the choices consumers may face, assuming they want technology on their wrists — which, depending who you talk to, isn’t a foregone conclusion. “If” Apple does eventually develop a device for the wrist, we’d expect it to run on iOS, to seamlessly set up and pair with the iPhone, and to interoperate with other iOS systems and some suite of apps. Based on Google’s initial tip of the hand regarding “Android Wear,” they may view the wrist as a new interaction frontier to extend the power of its anticipatory computing service, Google Now. For those who would rather not feel locked in by a mobile platform, a range of existing and new platforms will be on the market in different shapes and forms.

Despite all the speculation about what could adorn our wrists – and it is fun to speculate – there’s just no way to know what the big players will do, how good these new experiences will be (out of the gate), and whether even early adopters and fanatics will buy these new devices at the same pace at which we’ve been accustomed to buying cell phones. (I won’t try to reconstruct the countless posts on the matter here, though for reference, I’d encourage people to read Mark Gurman’s excellent post on Healthbook (for iOS, which should be noted, isn’t about a watch), The Verge’s piece on Android Wear (by Dante D’Orazio) and Benedict Evans’ great piece analyzing both experiences. Instead, I’ll try to run through what choices consumers may make based on the evidence today, though its based on hearsay and not matters of fact, yet._

In such an unknown world, having vibrant third-party platforms is not only healthy, it may also be what consumers want to escape the handcuffs of any mobile platform lock-in. In this scenario, outfits such as Jawbone, Fitbit, Runkeeper, and others may have enough institutional expertise (and focus and passion!) to make this transition and/or morph into new interfaces with the advent of new motion sensors. And then, there’s Pebble, the already-popular independent smartwatch-maker, headquartered right in Silicon Valley, composed of a team which has built and shipped newer versions of its watches to rabid fans. On Pebble, which already has partnerships with other third-party apps, users interact on their phones through a Pebble app that helps setup and control the watch. This allows users the option to switch mobile platforms and keep their smartwatch, with less of a lock-in effect. Whether mobile platforms will slap users on the wrist with their lock-in techniques, no one knows — but what is certain is that those in the market for smartwatches and/or sensor-based wearables (or even connected jewelry) won’t handcuffed nor left without plenty of choice. And that is a very exciting thing.

Photo Credit: Kim Carpenter / Creative Commons Flickr

Let’s End The Search For Mobile TV

Editor’s note: Tom Limongello is based in NYC and is VP of Product Marketing for Crisp Media.

Mobile TV has never been a thing. Since the Sony Watchman in 1982, we’ve been excited at the prospect of mobile TV, but no matter how good our devices are, there still seems to be something missing. As recently as this January, Josh Elman noted to John Borthwick that the results of the Homescreen 2014 study show that even now, no one keeps mobile video apps on their smartphone homescreens; we don’t even give YouTube or Netflix top billing.

That is not to say that those two apps don’t generate an enormous amount of mobile video views. But interestingly, they have not increased the average time spent watching video on mobile devices to a point where it threatens traditional TV sets.

You might say: Why do we care about watching TV on mobile devices when I’ll likely just watch TV on my biggest screen? I’m not arguing that the TV-viewing experience could ever be preferable on a mobile phone, but I do think that the discovery of content can and may already be better on mobile. Mobile might have the right set of constraints to require a real change in user experience, if not the underlying content recommendation technology.

As a result, video consumption on mobile is currently at two extremes: 1) slowing your scroll to wait for six-second Vines to load while you’re on the toilet, and 2) time-shifting massive TV series from the home when we need to prolong our life-threatening drama binges on our commutes.

The mobile televised revolution

The first mobile TV revolution happened before the iPhone from around 2005-2008 when a few measly million early adopters started double-paying for either MobiTV, MediaFLO from Qualcomm or VCast from Verizon Wireless.

One of the biggest businesses when the CTIA Wireless shows were still kind of a big deal was for TV networks to meet with mobile carriers to discuss TV content licensing deals. However, once the iPhone took off, we forgot all about mobile TV and watched the dawn of mobile video, powered by YouTube searches and Facebook and Twitter shares that enabled the Gangnam-style, billion-view explosions of 2012-14.

Now, nearly 10 years later, it might be time to tune in again. First, we need a distinction between what we mean when we say “video” versus “TV.”

Mobile might have the right set of constraints to require a real change in user experience, if not the underlying content recommendation technology.

“Video” is when you watch the one thing that someone else told you to watch. “TV” is a broadcast concept. Let’s call TV a time-based experience when you turn on a TV on the wall, computer or phone, and just start watching. The catch with TV for the consumer is that it shouldn’t be hard to change the channel and you shouldn’t have to know what you want to watch before you turn on the TV.

The TV experience becomes worthwhile to producers when consumers spend enough time watching TV that they see more than one video in a session, so there can be commercial breaks rather than pre-roll ads. With cable TV interfaces, channel changing is not worth the effort as the 1980s-90s pastime of flipping channels has devolved into scanning bloated menus that look like Microsoft Project and are not conducive to navigating with a remote control.

However, search is not the key to finding shows that you’ve never heard of before. For example, searching for “really good new TV” makes no sense, and automated recommendations are still not satisfying. In fact, the whole search model on desktop has been an easy target for companies like Aol and Turner to game results by featuring videos on well-trafficked pages or through SEM and SEO to get more views for videos that may or may not be the best or most relevant to watch.

The NYTimes’ David Carr mused recently that the universe of quality TV content is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. The new Netflix model of laying out full seasons of TV dramas that are suspenseful enough to get you to binge watch is only the beginning of an explosion of quality content.

Frederic Guarino, head of BD for Montreal-based boutique film production strategy and finance firm MediaBiz, considers this the moment before a global tidal wave of newcomers will start to compete with traditional U.S.-based TV networks. Amazon, Walmart-Vudu and Apple will be followed quickly by international players like Canal+, iTV, Scandinavia’s SVT and DR, and possibly even China’s Alibaba. “Your average TV series buff is now drowning in quality content and not necessarily able to find all of it.” So if there’s all these shows just lying around but no one company owns the best content suggestion interface, what will the industry do to solve that problem?

As Jim Barksdale says: “Two ways to make money in business: you can unbundle, or you can bundle.”

Cashing in on mobile TV

YouTube has succeeded in unbundling TV into mobile video, while multiple system operators (MSO) are trying to take bundled video to mobile and call it TV. MSOs like Verizon and Comcast carry with them nearly all the quality content creators via the television networks, and access to that content comes at a licensing and authentication cost across your devices. In its Q4 2013 Digital Index, Adobe said that iPads, iPhones, and iPods produce nearly 50 percent of play requests for TV Everywhere content.

I asked someone from the original MobiTV team about his experience in 2014, particularly as a parent, in attempting to unlock mobile TV for his family:

TV Everywhere has absolutely succeeded in that it’s enabled the media guys to keep their content behind a paywall without double-charging anybody; that was one of the issues with a MobiTV subscription, you had to buy your mobile content separately from your existing cable package.  However you need to authenticate with your MSO on every device you want to use, which requires your Verizon username and password you got the day they hooked you up…and probably haven’t used since.  In practice, you install the app on your iPhone or iPad, forget about it, and then when you actually want to use it you fire it up and have to authenticate it, which takes a couple minutes so it kills the instant gratification factor.

The MSOs and YouTube both may be too big to create an enjoyable new experience for mobile TV. 5by.com, which was recently acquired by Stumbleupon, uses a mood selector to automatically queue up video categories, and it does a great job of making sense of the vastness of YouTube content that’s out there that would otherwise never be watched. Shelby.tv, Frequency and ShowYou add socially shared videos from Facebook and Twitter to signal which videos should come into your playlist, and they use explicit interactions within their apps such as likes to discern popularity.

The biggest company that is aggressive in this space is Yahoo with two strong offerings made for mobile TV. The acquisition of Tumblr now has given Yahoo a machine for social referrals to TV tune-in. In the same Adobe Q4 Index report, we see that “half of visits referred from Facebook or Tumblr to sports related sites result in a video view.”

The Tumblr team has also found that TV brands are getting serious tune-in through animated GIFs. Sima Sistani, director of media at Tumblr, considers this behavior totally normcore. ”Let’s say I’m in my Dashboard, and I see a hysterical GIF from Jimmy Fallon’s latest rap battle. Now I’m captivated, and I click through to watch a video on his site. In an on-demand world, tune-ins can happen at anytime.”

Something has to change to make watching more than one video at a time enjoyable on mobile.

 Yet, even with high growth, only 6 percent of video starts come from social media referrals, and it seems to be limited to destination TV, such as live events or well-advertised dramas. Yahoo Screen is the company’s mobile TV pure-play product, and Marissa Mayer has written a huge check to NBC so that Yahoo Screen can stream the back catalogue of SNL. However, the challenge remains that if all you really want to do is watch a show that everyone knows, like SNL, then Yahoo still needs to solve the discovery challenge for the rest of its content, especially the non-sports ones like comedy.

When I asked if Facebook, and other social networks would just soon look more like TV platforms, founder and CEO of 5by Greg Isenberg said that wouldn’t likely happen without Facebook launching a new app, because mobile apps need to provide single-purpose user experiences.

For example even Facebook’s Paper, which only changed the reading navigation experience on Facebook, was different enough to require a new app so as not to cause a revolt from the user base. But something has to change to make watching more than one video at a time enjoyable on mobile. It’s possible that one of the things that holds mobile TV back, the fact that when using a smartphone you actually have to hold the screen with the same hands that you use to type, could inform a subtler UX that takes implicit metrics like “seen” instead of “tapped-on.”

If you look at the newest crop of mobile TV apps, a new, accepted interface for them is starting to solidify. All apps are moving toward minimizing the user interface into simple video players that show videos full screen and feature “tap to pause” and “swipe” to change channels. However there are slight differences in the UX of each of these apps, and one company that has yet to officially launch, called EndlessTV, thinks that its UX recipe can help it take the Pandora genome idea for music, and adapt it to fit your mobile TV.

A new model for broadcast TV

Once called Tip or Skip, a “Hot or Not” for products, the team at EndlessTV pivoted last year to experiment with video. Over the past six months, they’ve deployed 15 interest-based TV channel apps that would help them create and analyze content communities. Additionally, when EndlessTV launches its flagship app at the end of this month, it will use implicit metrics, such as average engagement time and percentage-viewed thresholds — instead of industry-standard metrics for video views, likes and shares — to power its content-suggestion genome.

The company’s hope is that these engagement-based metrics paired with interest-based channels will make automation watchable. Also, they found that the one big difference between trying to make a genome for TV rather than music is that in many cases, especially for news, TV requires an expiration date on certain content.

While watching the data from their 15 apps and 250,000 downloads, which are mostly on iOS, EndlessTV’s other job has been to woo TV producers to give them quality content for free, before it unifies its content into a single app offering. So, the mission of the new, bundled, Voltron of an app is to achieve the ultimate balancing act in promising users that “TV is free again” and promising TV producers that free TV is lucrative again.

“EndlessTV shares revenue with its content partners based on how long viewers watch their content, rather than how many interruptive ads are served,” Michael Weiksner, CEO of EndlessTV, explained. “This creates a positive feedback loop where viewers get better and better content, and content partners get better distribution and monetization for creating engaging content.”

To make sure that they solve for the business case, EndlessTV made a couple of interesting design choices for the app in the name of advertising and for getting the cleanest data for feeding their mobile TV genome. EndlessTV omitted the timeline scrubber from videos so, by design, you can’t adjust where you are in the video, and it removed all mention of the titles of what you’re watching.

By making sure that users only start from the beginning of videos, they have an idea of how engaging each video is based on both crossing a relevant threshold in the clip and time spent on each particular clip and can say to TV producers, ‘give us your most engaging videos’. Like their competitors, on EndlessTV ads would only show up in-between videos as commercial breaks instead of via pre-roll.

Also, by requiring a user to tap to pause the video before they can identify the video’s title, EndlessTV gets an additional display ad space on half of the screen for a standard 300 x 250, but doesn’t have to resort to overlays or interruption of content. Their favorite stat is that after they turned on their nascent mobile TV genome they were able to extend the session time of its users versus a control group by 3x.

The measure of success for EndlessTV and its other mobile TV competitors is to be able to monetize better than YouTube, so the bar is actually pretty low. But as Netflix grows in its subscriber base and continues to collect massive amounts of data, while keeping subscription prices low, these free mobile TV apps might prove an ally to TV networks and independent producers as they rethink their alliances with MSOs and consider their own direct to consumer offerings. Proving a concept like mobile TV is hard, so any success, like getting users to have a favorite app for their homescreen would be a major victory.

Image by Maksim Kabakou/Shutterstock

T-Mobile’s growth in the US mobile industry is amazing

JeepersMedia

In the United States, the cell phone industry is one of the hardest duopolies to break. AT&T and Verizon have secured around 75% of the smartphone market. Yet, T-Mobile has done just about the impossible and shown remarkable growth in 2013 and promise for 2014.

At the end of 2012, T-Mobile was down 9.8% and coming off their worst point of revenue growth along with being the only major company not offering the iPhone. Fast forward one year and T-Mobile has grown 8.5% to approximately 46.7 million customers. To put that in perspective, you will not find any other company growing that much in the same time frame. In fact, AT&T has been hovering at the 4% mark, Verizon around 8%, while Sprint is staying at approximately 0.5%. So, while other mobile companies had service revenue staying stagnant, T-Mobile showed positive results.

T-Mobile did it by ending early-termination fees for those switching to another carrier, allowing users to upgrade their smartphone anytime they want (in their “Jump” plan”) and with their Value Plans. Even with revenue increases of 10.3% to $6.83 billion, T-Mobile has received a mild response from Wall Street which had multiple agencies predicting revenues above $6.90 billion.

Either way, T-Mobile’s customer growth was fantastic with a reported 1.6 million net customer additions in the fourth quarter and gross customer additions up 80 percent in 2013. If we include the acquisition of MetroPCS Communications, T-Mobile added 4.4 million total customers in the fourth quarter of 2013. Citigroup’s Michael Rollins has noted that because T-Mobile had added 1.65 million subscribers in the Q4 of 2013, it was their “best branded postpaid performance in eight years,” at 869,000 net additions.

By the way, does anyone remember the doomsday scenarios that AT&T and their paid minions stated would occur if T-Mobile didn’t merge with AT&T under the $39 billion dollar deal?

“Customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.” – AT&T after their announcement that the merger with T-Mobile was dead”

Well, this week we learned that T-Mobile’s valuation has been recently raised to around $49 billion. Funny what happens when a company actually invests in improving their network and rethinks their strategy in the wireless marketplace.

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