The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘mobile’

See that image above? It’s notable for two reasons: I’m fairly confident it takes the much coveted title for “Hardest to read leaked document ever”. It, in all of its tiny text, confirms that the Sprint HTC Hero and Samsung Moment will be upgraded to Android 2.1 soon

Here is the original:
Sprint Moment and Hero to get Android 2.1 in “the coming weeks”

We haven’t heard all that much from Siri, the venture-backed startup that is working on virtual assistant applications for smartphones.

Still well below most people’s radar, the company raised $24 million in venture capital and recently released its first app for the iPhone after nearly a year of development.

But that doesn’t mean the startup has a lack of ambition: they’ve just hired Gummi Hafsteinsson, who has led several of Google’s most successful mobile product initiatives as Senior Product Manager for the past 5 years, as their new VP of Product. Hafsteinsson originally joined Google’s mobile group in July 2005 and first managed the Google Maps for Mobile product.

More recently, he led development of Google’s voice-powered search app for all the major mobile platforms – iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Symbian. He reported directly to Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering.

Prior to joining Google, Gummi founded and ran a company called Dimon Software that produced mobile enterprise connectivity software designed to enable enterprises to access corporate IT systems from any mobile device.

His experience in developing scalable applications for multiple platforms tells us Siri is working on making its virtual personal assistant product cross-platform. Its proposition was compelling enough to bring home the award for most innovative Web service at the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, by the way.

In other news, Siri is now available for iPod touch devices, integrated Twitter into the service last week and is closing in on a quarter million early users.

(Photo by Peter DaSilva for the New York Times)

Not an easy thing to conceptualize indeed, but according to eMarketer there will be more mobile Internet users in China than the entire population of the US by the end of this year.

For your reference, the 2010 estimate of the size of the United States population stands at roughly 310 million people according to Wikipedia, so that’s a shitload of people browsing the Web from their phones right there.

The report, which you can purchase here, also says the number of mobile Internet users in China will grow fast to reach a staggering 957 million, and that the country will count approximately 1.3 billion mobile subscribers by 2014.

eMarketer points out that those mobile Internet users do not currently monetize as well as smaller mobile audiences in, say, the States, which means that mobile advertising spending levels in China are still low relative to the size of the mobile Web user base. Also, the company highlights another key trend in China, which is that mobile subscriber growth is actually slowing while mobile Internet user growth is accelerating.

More in this blog post (via Twitter).

(Photo credit: Flickr / lime*monkey / CC BY 2.0)

Mobile analytics startup Motally is bringing in a seasoned analytics executive, John Forese, as the startup’s new CEO. Forese was previously Nielsen Mobile’s Senior Vice President of Product Management. Additionally former Google Vice President of Product Development, Doug Garland, has joined Motally’s board of directors.

Prior to his tenure at Nielsen Mobile, Forese was a senior vice president at mobile metrics and research company Telephia where he led overall product strategy and had P&L responsibility across the company’s product lines. Telephia was eventually acquired by Nielsen in 2007. Forese also worked at several telecom and technology based start-ups, including Flashpoint Technologies, Netro and Pacific Bell Mobile Systems.

In addition to their new CEO, Motally has also elected Doug Garland to its board. Prior to joining Google, Doug was an executive in residence at the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Earlier, he was a senior vice president at Yahoo!, where he led the launch of the broadband access business and the company’s mobile efforts.

Motally has been expanding and innovating at a rapid pace over the past several months. The startup just launched an analytics platform for mobile game developers, rolled out an extension of their mobile analytics to include content developed on Apple’s iPad and released a flexible API.

Currently, Motally supports analytics for applications on the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms as well as the mobile web. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.

We’re happy to announce the rollout of a mobile version of TechCrunch. We know how spotty wireless coverage can be, and how frustrating it can get to wait for a ton of extras to load while you’re staring at 2.5″ screen and can’t see them anyway. To that end, this version is stripped down to the bare essentials to ensure quick load times and ease of use. It’s based on the WPTouch theme by BraveNewCode.

It’s not an app – it works with any touch-enabled browser. You can, of course, add it to your home screen for easy access to the latest in technology news. Thank you to Bing, our launch partner for the mobile version.

To see the new mobile version, just go to techcrunch.com on any touch-screen mobile device. We’ll be adding full support for non-touchscreen models soon.

We’ll be improving on the design in the coming weeks, so tell us your thoughts in the comments.

They’re in our homes, and they’re in our schools. There they sit, silently, eating our power . Even if you unplug your phone, they keep devouring power

Read more here: 
AT&T ZERO to save the planet one phone charger at a time

Oh thank God for Rockstar . We’re short-staffed today, plus it’s nice outside and I’m very easily distracted by the weather, so what better way to pass the time than by watching fancy trailers?

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Video: This is what Red Dead Redemption looks like

When it rains, its pours. We just found out yesterday that Android 2.1 hitting the Moto Droid sometime in March was a pretty sure thing, and now we’ve got an exact date. And the best news of all: It’s really, really soon.

See the original post: 
Android 2.1 to hit the Motorola Droid very, very soon

If we were to take everything the rumormill said as gospel, we’d tell you that the Motorola Cliq XT launched in all of its Android glory on March 10th . Given that it’s now nearly a week later and the Cliq XT has yet to hit the shelves, we’d say that the rumormill is a dirty, dirty liar. Or, you know, something changed at the last minute

Read more:
T-Mobile Cliq XT to go on sale tomorrow for $99?

Roland just started shipping the AC-33 Acoustic Chorus Guitar Amplifier. This cool gadget is world’s first battery powered amp built specifically for acoustic guitar. With a 30-watt amp and 5 inch speakers, you’re not going to rock Knebworth with this thing

Read more from the original source:
Get Ready to Take Over the Coffeeshop