Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

• Social Shopping Takes on New Meaning With Newsfeed Purchasing | Advertising Age
  Individual e-commerce stores are being fragmented into "hundreds of millions." By placing retail stores into banner ads, and soon Facebook news feeds, Alvenda brings shopping to the consumer instead of expecting the other way around.
• Would you pay for the mobile version of the WSJ? | The Baltimore Sun The Wall Street Journal's Rupert Murdoch has plans to begin charging the publication's mobile users $2 a week. Online subscribers will have to pay $1 a week and those who do both print and online will have free access.
• Opera Mini 5 beta browser strikes it rich | cnet
  Introducing an update to their mobile offering, Opera has included tabbed browsing, a password manager, navigation overhaul, and a speed dial landing page.
• Domino's Pizza Launches New iPhone Optimized Ordering System | Reuters
  While not yet a local application, Domino's has launched a new mobile optimized ordering system. It brings the company's popular desktop Pizza Tracker to iPhones, the Palm Pre, and Android phones.
• Aardvark's iPhone App Is The Best Way To Use The Service Yet | TechCrunch
  Social search engine Aardvark has released its new iPhone app with push notifications making on-the-go crowd sourced Q&A  more possible.
• App of the Week: Turn Your Phone Into a Mouse | The NYTimes
  The New York Times has picked Mobile Air Mouse as their App of the Week. The software uses an on screen interface and the iPhone's accelerometer to mimic the functions of a traditional mouse.
• iTwinge: The Keyboard Sleeve That Turns Your iPhone into a BlackBerry | Mashable
  One of the top complaints about the iPhone is the lack of a physical keyboard. Although with a few obvious flaws, the new iTwinge keyboard sleeve offers to fix this problem for those craving a BlackBerry-like typing experience.
• It's time for Donut! Android v1.6 launched for developers | MobileCrunch
  For Android developers, the previous "Cupcake" has been updated to version 1.6 and named Donut, packing in some new features. Donut includes user interface fixes, a battery usage system, Android Market improvements, and CDMA support.

Yesterday we covered some of the latest startups at TechCrunch 50 conference that build upon human behaviors, here are a couple more worth a highlight:

Allison

Aardvark

Ranking at #42 on Time’s annual list of the best websites, Aardvark takes a new approach to online Q&A. To get answers and opinions, many people ask their own trusted networks. But the truth is, there’s only so many times you can go back to the well before you’re blocked. Aardvark lets you ask friends and friends of friends a question for objective opinions from presumably likeminded people. Just send Aardvark a message through IM, like you do when talking to a friend. Aardvark figures out who might be able to answer, and asks on your behalf. The incentive is karmic – you answer questions so you’ll get answers too. Plus, people love to dish out advice, it’s human nature—online and off.

Reming

Did You Know?

I don’t consider my dad the most technologically cutting-edge guy of the Baby Boomer generation, so when he sends me an email I tend to always give them special attention (mainly because I know how long it takes him to send them). So when he sent me this YouTube video yesterday, I was super impressed and surprised.

The video, Did You Know?, is a presentation that addresses the technological, educational and social changes my generation and future generations will face in the coming years. Apparently the presentation started out as a PowerPoint presentation for a faculty meeting in August 2006 at a high school (why weren’t my HS teachers this cool?). Soon the presentation spread virally on the web. And now, between original versions and updated versions, over 20 million people have viewed the presentation. Although it may be somewhat outdated (I think the last update was in 2008) and maybe some of you have already seen it, the themes still ring true and are more relevant today than ever.

If anything, it pushes the dialogue regarding how our generation is going to deal with the immediate and constant changes in business landscapes, technology and globalization and how we need to better educate future generations for an ever-changing world.

Mike

Go Postal "Print Your Life" App

You know those awful 80’s postcards you see at airports? Think swimsuits, big Wayfarer sunglasses, animals with quotes and big, bold copy. They’re classic. Every new city I’m in I’ll find the worst and exchange them with a friend. I’ve noted they’re becoming obsolete with the insertion of purely skyline postcards. Enough with the Space Needle already!

So, with the assistance of goPostal iPhone app, I’m turning my nose on airport postcard kiosks and recreating my own for only $1.29/each. Snap a pic (in your best 1983 pose and clothes), input some text and choose an address from your directory. You’re done in less than one minute, or however long it take to put on a Muscle Beach thong.

Amanda

Photo of Hong Kong

This is really cool: The picture of Hong Kong goes from sunrise to sunset by dragging your mouse from top to bottom of the picture. Photo technology at its best!

Matt

Mobile Mini Projectors

While the Optoma Pico, the first mobile mini projector hit the market last year, two new competing models will be entering the tech space in September. WowWee’s Cinemin Swivel and 3M’s MPro120 will be released at $350 apiece next month. Both gadgets are capable of plugging into an iPhone or many other smartphones and project video onto any surface, such as a wall or ceiling.

With battery life allowing for movie play over 2 hours, plug-in speaker capabilities through an audio jack, easy plug-and-play set up, and an ability to rotate the projection to many different angles, the Swivel appears the stronger of the two new models. However, the MPro’s battery lasts twice as long, comes with a tripod stand, and has sharper contrast in its projection. The MPro does not have an external speaker jack though, so it’s a matter of weighing preferences (video vs. audio).

Andrea F

In-Fusio Bites the Dust

Once an international leader in mobile games and applications, In-Fusio has officially shut down after fighting the last few years to stay afloat after raising funds and being acquired by Zenops…

• Sentiment Analysis Takes the Pulse of the Internet | NYTimes.com
  An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world’s unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data.
• Sharks vs. Cats!! on Tumblr
  The ultimate battle of the memes is going down on Tumblr right now. Users tag posts #shark or #cat to join the fight. 3 days left before the winner is decided.
• Twitter to roll out commercial accounts this year | VentureBeat
  Co-founder Biz Stone said the company is in the first phase of rolling out commercial accounts that will entice business users to pay for premium services like detailed analytics. After that, the company might move into building business-oriented application programming interfaces (APIs), creating a “commercial layer” over the social network.
• A Tall Tale: Did Twitter Really Save Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”? | AllThingsD
  Earlier this summer, Twitter was blamed for torpedoing movies like “Bruno” and “Funny Business.” Now it is being heralded for giving Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” a big boost. How much power does the micromessaging service have? Can Twitter save the economy?
• How social media became a weapon in the battle for App Store approval | Mobile Entertainment
  Facing Apple's strict approval process, developers are trying to force their hand by creating an online buzz around apps before they're submitted through blog posts and video demos in particular.
• 10 Things Your AR App Must Have to Succeed | The Future Digital Life (via everydayux)
  The iPhone OS3.1 release will connect the hype of Augmented Reality with the hype of the iPhone, and this list details what any good AR app (any app in general, for that matter) should have.
• CHART OF THE DAY: Twitter's Boom Around The World | Business Insider
  Over the last year, Twitter's traffic has exploded 15X to 44.5 million worldwide unique visitors in June, according to comScore. But Twitter's growth story isn't just limited to the U.S. and North America, where only about half its traffic comes from, according to comScore.
• Personas: Visualizing Your Online Identity | PSFK
  A component of the MIT Media Lab’s “Metropath(olgies)” installation, which looks at the non-stop flow of communication and information in the modern world, Personas delivers a data portrait of your online identity by combining natural language processing and Internet search tools.
• 50 Best Websites 2009 | TIME
  Time Magazine released their annual list of top websites. Flickr tops this year's roundup, which also includes the ubiquitous Twitter, ask-a-friend's friend engine Aardvark, music streaming site Spotify, gaming hub OMGPOP, and private file-sharing platform drop.io.
• Seventeen's Fashion Finder | Seventeen.com (via Cynopsis Digital)
  Seventeen Magazine's Fashion Finder iPhone app, which allows users to search for local availability of clothes, shoes and accessories by look or price point, has displaced Zippo's virtual lighter app as the top app in the Lifestyle category with over 75,000 downloads.
• Rhapsody iPhone App | Geeky Gadgets
  Music streaming site Rhapsody has submitted an iPhone app for approval to Apple for approval that offers on demand music streaming. In the past Apple hasn’t approved music streaming apps, as they might compete with with iTunes. In the past Apple hasn’t approved music streaming apps, as they are obviously concerned about competition with iTunes, if Rhapsody is approved it will give iPhone users access to over 8 million tracks and all of its radio stations.
• Mobile Phone Web Sites Top Online Growth In UK | Nielsen Wire
  Mobile phone websites were the fastest growing sector online in the UK with a 58% increase in unique visitors from 7.7 million in July 2008 to 12.2 million in July 2009, according to Nielsen. Drinks brands such as Ribena, Baileys and Coke were reportedly a major factor in this sector's growth.
• Microsoft OneApp Unlocks the Potential of Feature Mobile Phones in Emerging Markets
  Microsoft announced OneApp, a new software application that enables low-end feature phones to mimic the functionality of smartphones with easy access to mobile apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and other apps and games.