Author: Serkadis

Google caused an uproar last week when it announced that it might pull out of China if it couldn’t start operating an unrestricted and uncensored search engine in the country. There has been a lot of speculation as to why Google would make such a move ranging from sanctifying Google to much more cynical views suggesting the bottom line is the mai… (read more)

The bizarre but catchy “Pants on the Ground” rap performance by Atlanta’s Larry Platt, during an audition for “American Idol,” now has two million views on YouTube and has spurred a plethora of comic knock-offs.

You can see the original below, as well as Jimmy Fallon’s version, in which he channels Neil Young. Surprisingly, it’s pretty decent.

Here are the videos:

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Socialite Kim Kardashian may be rooting for the New Orleans Saints to strike Super Bowl gold harder than anyone. The reality star, 29, and NFL-starring beau Reggie Bush have struck a deal: If the Saints win the Super Bowl, Bush and Kardashian will get engaged, The New York Post reports.

On The Tonight Show Monday, NBC’s Conan O’Brien invited viewers to vote on his next career move, amid reports that he will resign as host of late night show later this month.

“This is real. I have been invited to compete on ‘Dancing with the Stars,” he said. “There are so many jobs to choose from. I don’t know which one to do. I thought, why not let the viewers decide. Go to TonightShow.com and register your vote. My future is literally in your hands.”

Conan also thanked fans for the “I’m With Coco” Rallies that were held around the country on Monday to support him.

Kyle Busch might have failed to take his Joe Gibbs Racing-prepared car to the play-offs last season, but that seems to have had no negative consequences on his future deal with the team whatsoever. As announced by the team earlier today, the two parties have signed a long-term extension to Busch’s current deal with the organization.

According to the very owner of the team, Joe Gibbs, the duration of the new contract is for less than seven and more than three years, as reported by the NASCAR o… (read more)

Mobile advertising isn’t brand new — perhaps the most recognizable name in the US, Admob (since acquired by Google), was founded back in 2006 — but not until recently it has really kicked into high gear. In fact, the mobile ad market started heating up even as ad revenues were falling last winter. At that time, two drivers had emerged that were going to change the game.

Already in November 2008 Admob’s Jason Spero told us: “The iPhone market is exploding, Inventory is growing and advertisers are hungry for it. It’s mainly (1) apps using CPC ads to drive downloads and (2) brand advertisers eager to reach iPhone users.” According to our sources, by April 2009 these two drivers were strong enough to push revenues up again at some ad networks that were tuned into the changes — particularly Admob and Quattro Wireless, which was recently acquired by Apple. (I’ll get back to the topic of these acquisitions below).

And those drivers have only become stronger. For one, the promotion of apps has grown into a full-fledged business. Many of these campaigns center around getting a particular application in a “Top” list on the Apple App Store. For an example of how such a campaign works, check out this Admob case study on Flixster. The aim of these campaigns is to get an application into a “top app list”. After a larger one-time push, an application is expected to stay on it with less ongoing spending. Large games companies like Zynga, EA, Gameloft, Digital Chocolate, Glu, SGN, and some of the well-known consumer ones like Phillips and Flixster use display advertising to acquire customers through such tactics.

An even bigger testament to the demand for these types of campaigns is that the price of running them has been going up. In March 2009, analytics company Pinch Media (which recently merged with Flurry) published some impressive numbers on how the prices of such campaigns were on the rise. In October 2008, it took a free application $10k to get on a Top 25 list. In December 2008, it took $11k. And by March 2009, it took $20k. To get to the coveted No 1 spot in the App Store, it cost a company about $150,000. And when I asked my sources for recent prices, I found they’d gone up again: As recently as a couple of weeks ago, it took $250,000 to get a particular application to the No. 1 spot.

Secondly, “brand advertisers” have increased their spending on iPhone users. Back in the autumn of 2008, we identified that an increasingly larger chunk of spending is coming from four industries — TV and Hollywood, car manufacturers and dealerships, retailers, and financial services companies. These advertisers increasingly were buying ads based on experience they gained testing the medium in the summer of 2008. While the brand advertisers were mostly running so-called “multi-channel mixed campaigns” (campaigns that spread the message in various media channels like TV, events or mobile for that matter), the main driver for mobile were successes brand companies had particularly with iPhone users. It’s hard to estimate some numbers to quantify the trend. From conversations with mobile ad network executives, I’d say it has grown considerably. Examples of “brand advertisers” — non-mobile brand-name advertisers — who drive this trend are companies like CBS, Disney, Ford, Sears, Procter & Gamble and Bank of America.

Millenial Media’s monthly reports sometimes disclose figures of mobile ad spending on its own ad network. The company’s October report indicated that spending from gaming, music and movie sectors made entertainment the top vertical for mobile advertising. Retail and consumer packaged goods were also rising.

The trend is also supported by more and more so-called “premium” publishers developing applications for the iPhone. Premium publishers are non-mobile brand-name publishers like CBC, NBC or Elle. Brand advertisers are more willing to advertise with “brand” publishers and are also willing to pay higher prices. Smartphone-orientated mobile development platforms (like Appcelerator or Phonegap in the US or Golden Gekko’s Tino platform in Europe) have been getting sizeable traction with brands and marketing agencies in recent months, further confirming the trend.

As I said, Admob and Quattro Wireless were the most aggressive mobile ad networks to take early advantage of these trends. Admob, for example, focused early on smartphone-related product development like the iPhone download exchange or iPhone specific ad formats. Quattro is the no. 2 in in-app advertising after Admob, according to a source. In a research call for our MobileBeat conference in June 2009, Quattro Wireless VP Lars Albright disclosed to us that Quattro revenue had doubled in the 12 months up to that point, to a large extent due to its iPhone developer activities. Quattro had a particular program tailored to get brand advertisers to create campaigns around the iPhone. Essentially, mobile display advertising’s main growth driver in 2009 has been the growing number of smartphones and respective apps — specifically of apps designed to be free to the user by virtue of ad support. As more people were using apps, more people were seeing in-app display ads on their smartphones.

We also know that free applications supported by display advertising are the main driver of downloads from Google and Apple’s mobile app stores. Free applications outnumber paid applications in both app stores, with both companies putting a lot of effort into supporting the free app model. To support its search engine, Google prefers iPhone (and Android, Palm WebOS) users surfing the mobile web and using mobile search much more. In a phone call last September, a Google spokesman told us: “People are 50 times more likely to use Google search on the iPhone than on a WAP device.”

The contenders

While Admob and Quattro may have taken the early lead, they’re by no means the sole players in this market. There are more than a twenty other contenders vying for market share here.

Below is an estimate of U.S. mobile advertising spending for 2009, valuing the market at a total of $287 million, which names some of them. It was published by research company IDC a couple of weeks ago. Bear in mind that, as the market is still very early, mobile advertising revenue estimates/rankings are fraught with uncertainty. The bases of these calculations have been, and continue to be, challenged by the companies represented in them (for a discussion of the fairly reasonable IDC estimates see here, and for a discussion of a Nielsen estimate see here). According to Mobile Marketer, the IDC ranking calculated the revenue sizes of the mobile ad networks as follows:

• Millennial Media: $51 million, 18 percent
• AdMob: $40 million, 14 percent
• Yahoo: $32 million, 11 percent
• Google: $28 million, 10 percent
• Microsoft: $23 million, 8 percent
• Quattro Wireless: $21 million, 7 percent
• Jumptap: $11 million, 4 percent
• AOL/Third Screen Media: $7 million, 2 percent

The remaining 26 percent of market share is made up of other players such as Mojiva, InMobi and Greystripe, according to IDC.

As rankings such as these are often disputed, we also asked the mobile ad networks to comment. Mojiva decided not to answer. According to an Inmobi spokesperson, Inmobi is on track for a $15m revenue run rate based on its current business. Greystripe, which started as a mobile game ad network and switched to iPhone ads last November, told us it has tripled its business since then. Buzzcity — an ad network that’s missing in this overview — told us that it would have to report more than 80 billion ad requests annually for a potential revenue of $40m/year if it had reported its revenue on the basis of the IDC calculations. We already had estimated Admob’s revenue for 2008 at $42M, so the 2009 one is likely higher. Jumptap’s CMO Paran Johar told us that in Q4 2009, the company earned more revenue than all of 2008, suggesting momentum.

Mobile marketing and advertising company Velti (which bought AdInfuse in 2009) reported a revenue of €52.5 million in 2008. According to a source, the revenue will be north of €100M for 2009. Another ad network that’s not named in the overview, Amobee, does not disclose revenue numbers but says it has the largest inventory of operators globally across over 25 countries, thus possibly placing its revenue figure ahead JumpTap, the leader in the North American operator market. Also, what few Adwords and Adsense customers know, Google frequently re-purposes web PC ads for mobile. Ads that users mean to be displayed at the PC get transcoded and run on mobile. This means that calculations based on mobile web impressions like the one done by IDC make Google’s mobile advertising business appear bigger than it actually is.

So with all these players seeing growth — and given the recent acquisition of Admob by Google and Quattro by Apple — it’s clear that some of the behemoths out there are watching the space for a strategic way in. Which raises the question: After Admob and Quattro, who’s next — which of these mobile ad companies are particularly suited for the next acquisition?

Well, stay tuned. I’ll be answering that question in a follow-up story shortly.

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Continue reading Teenage Engineering OP-1 synth gets the hands-on treatment (video)

Teenage Engineering OP-1 synth gets the hands-on treatment (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This morning, after many months of rampant speculation over the enigmatic Tablet, Apple officially invited scores of press to a special media event to be held January 27. The debut of the Tablet seems all but a given according to most reports, but there are some secondary announcements that also stand to be huge — especially the rumors that we may also see the launch of iPhone 4.0. This afternoon, Fox News “confirmed” that we’d being seeing the latest iteration of Apple’s hugely popular mobile OS for the first time. Should that be the case, there’s also a good chance we’ll see launch of a very important new feature: background applications.

First things first. While the title of the Fox News article is “Apple Tablet, iPhone 4 Launch Confirmed for January 27″, the body of the article later says that it’s “likely” that Apple will unveil those two products (along with an updated iLife suite), and also notes that Apple is known for suddenly removing features or products from their announcements at the last second — none of which makes the news sound totally concrete. That said, there are plenty of reasons why iPhone 4.0 could be making an appearance alongside the Tablet, and why it will bring background apps with it.

We’ve discussed the probable connection between the Tablet and the iPhone OS since as early as last May. With iPhone OS, Apple took Mac OS X and stripped it down to the basics to turn it into a compact and powerful mobile operating system. The tablet will almost certainly have more horsepower than the iPhone, but it would still stand to gain from the power and space saving attributes of the mobile OS (albeit a modified version). Our suspicions got further support less than a week ago, when we saw reports that the newest releases of the iPhone OS was actually being held back because some of its code alluded to the unannounced tablet device. Given these ties, it would be logical for the iPhone 4.0 OS to make its debut alongside the tablet.

But the Tablet OS will need to bring some new features with it. For one, it will probably need to allow users to run multiple apps at the same time. Most people don’t particularly care (yet) that they can’t do this with their iPhones, because the screen real estate is so limited and they don’t view the device as a handheld computer (even though it is one). But that won’t be true with the tablet — in light of its larger screen, users will expect more functionality, and the inability to run multiple apps would grow frustrating quickly. With that in mind, if Apple has already established a paradigm for running background apps on the tablet, it would make sense to finally bring it over to the iPhone too.

The iPhone’s current lack of background applications is one of its most glaring weaknesses compared to other mobile operating systems, most notably Android and Palm’s WebOS. Apple’s reasons for withholding the functionality before now were obvious: running multiple applications can drain the device’s already-strained battery more quickly, and forcing users to manage which apps are open adds an extra layer of complexity. It was the right choice then, but it’s time for things to change.

Plenty of developers have already had their applications hampered by their inability to run in the background. Messaging clients have to rely on the iPhone’s Push notifications, which can only display a single alert at a time. Music players (other than the built-in iPod app) close down as soon as you try to do anything else on the phone. And location based apps have to rely almost exclusively on the “check-in” model popularized by Foursquare, because they have no way to passively monitor your location. Consumers may not be frustrated by these restrictions yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they look enviously at their Android-toting friends streaming Pandora and running Skype or Meebo in the background.

And Apple knows it. As far back as last May we were hearing that Apple was having serious discussions about how to implement background applications.  As it did with copy and paste (which iPhone users had to wait years for), Apple is clearly taking its time to get it right the first time.  Now, with the imminent release of the tablet, Apple may have finally settled on a solution.  If the Fox News report is correct, that could be revealed as soon as next week. But even if iPhone 4.0 isn’t announced for a few more months, it seems highly likely that background apps will come with it.

Image via Gizmodo. And no, it isn’t real.

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Vanilla Forums, an open source community forum software technology, has raised a $500,000 (CAD) Series A funding. Vanilla Forums was a Techstars summer 2009 company.

The round was led by Montreal Startup, with participation by eonBusiness, Norseman Capital and Klein Venture Partners. Vanilla Forums, a Montreal-based startup, will use the funds to expand its marketing, development, and sales efforts.

Vanilla has also released its forum hosting platform and additional premium features. According to Vanilla Forums, their hosting platform enables customers to quickly and easily deploy a community forum solution without having to write a single line of code.

Vanilla also released two new premium features, custom domains and ad-removal, with plans to release additional premium features including custom CSS, single sign-on, and forum analytics in the future.

The company already has over 300,000 users, including companies like O’Reilly Media, Rackspace, Mozilla, and more.

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The inventor of the world’s first video and imaging system for seats, CruiseCam International, today inaugurated a new distribution center in North America, as the first round of inventory for back orders of 1,000 multi-patented camera mounts produced in China arrived at the new facility yesterday.

The facility soon will include a showroom for the first CruiseCam store. The center technicians and a service coordinator will conduct beta testing of the company’s latest product, a DVR (digital v… (read more)

From the Citroen DS3 anti-retro, we’re back to the 60’s with this Opel Corsa “Color Race” version from General Motors. The model is based on the Kadett B Rallye 1900 which was produced from 1969. The modifications are purely aesthetic, and include the very bright colours of Sunny Melon yellow, Casablanca white and Magma red.

The Color Race Corsa also has 17-inch alloy wheels in bronze effect, panoramic roof and leather steering wheel. The engine range is the same with the 1.4-litre petrol with 80 or 100 hp, and the 1.7 CDTI with 130 hp and a fuel consumption of just 4.5 litres per 100 km. The Opel Corsa Color Race will be available only in Germany at a cost of about 15,560 euros. The Corsa Color Race video is after the jump.

Opel Corsa Color Race version

A year and a half ago, we had an interesting discussion here about whether or not the Fourth Amendment and your right to privacy extended to information you stored online via any sort of “cloud” service. The arguments basically fell into two camps, with some citing the “third party doctrine,” which basically says that once you gave up info to a third party, you no longer have any right to expect it to be kept private. This argument came from a lawsuit (Smith v. Maryland) that basically said phone numbers you dialed were not “secret” because you were supplying them to the phone company. Of course, the other side of that argument is that it’s ridiculous to extend this concept to online storage, noting that the Supreme Court had recognized in the Katz case (about wiretapping public pay phones) that the Fourth Amendment applies to “people, not places.”

It looks like this debate is kicking off again, with a discussion on News.com over whether or not the Fourth Amendment covers information stored in “the cloud.” It tackles some of the same ground that we covered a while back, but points to a recent law review paper on this topic (pdf) by David A. Couillard.

The paper does a good job separating out the thinking here, and explaining why the Fourth Amendment absolutely should apply to information you store online. As it notes, while the Smith case said that phone numbers dialed might not be private, that did not extend to the contents of the phone call itself. And that’s key. The reason that the phone company gets the phone numbers dialed is because that information is key to it delivering its service of connecting the phone call. So you can make a reasonable argument that while such information (the information needed to initiate a service) might not be subject to privacy protection, everything else communicated or stored via that service still deserves those protections.

The issue is that right now we really don’t know how the courts feel about this — and you can bet this is going to become an issue that shows up in the court system before too long. Hopefully, the courts will recognize that any “third party doctrine” when it comes to the Fourth Amendment is limited to a very narrow subset of information provided for a particular purpose, rather than all information stored on third party servers.

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Google has thrived as a web company and has made a killing selling ads everywhere online. Its advertising options are almost as diverse as its cloud products, but there is still one frontier where Google has struggled and where it failed to make much headway, the old media. It gave up on its radio and publishing ventures last year and its last remaining fo… (read more)

If you’re one of the ones involved in the Opel business, you surely heard about CEO Nick Reilly’s letter submitted to employees last week in which he talks about a number of topics, including the future of both Opel and Vauxhall and their relation with North America.

First of all, Reilly emphasized that Vauxhall will continue to remain a British brand while Opel will live on at a global level. However, the two will be named "Opel/Vauxhall" when referring to the European activities, … (read more)

Fernando Alonso revealed, during a chat session he had with the Ferrari fans on the team’s official website, that he has already arrived at Maranello for the pre-season seat-fitting with the Scuderia. As you all know by now, Ferrari are currently tackling their last development stage of the 2010 challenger, and the seat-fitting is crucial for Fernando Alonso before the testing season kicks off in early February.

As Felipe Massa has been racing Ferraris for years, the Spaniard is the only one … (read more)

As announced back in December 2009, Nelson Piquet Jr. completed his second NASCAR test, after taking a Red Horse Racing Camping World Truck Series machine for a spin on the New Smyrna, Florida track.

After no prospects opened up for him in Formula 1 and after refusing one offer, as he says, the Brazilian-born may make his NASCAR debut from as early as the Daytona race in February.

I could’ve been there if I wanted to. A team offered me to be there. I just thought I was sick and tired of a… (read more)

Mazda UK has announced the introduction of the Mazda3 1.6 Tamura special edition, which will be available from February 1, 2010.

The edition is based on the TS model and is enhanced by a sports styling kit, consisting of sports front grille, side skirts and sport bumpers), front fog lamps, bespoke badging and free metallic paint. The exterior color range offers a new metallic paint (Aluminum Silver Metallic) two regular Mica colors (Black Mica and Velocity Red Mica), and the unique-to-Tamura … (read more)

Martin Luther King was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement in America. He was a clergyman by profession but had the most prominent actions when it came to the rights of Africans.

BlatantNews.com

He was born in the year 1929 and became a Baptist Minister. He was killed on April 4, 1968. He was staying at Lorraine Motel and was shot while he was standing on the Balcony of the second floor. He was killed by James Earl Ray. He was captured two months after Martin Luther’s death from London Airport.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso admitted that his desire to compete in Formula One and win more titles for the Scuderia has not changed at all during the past few years. Although he spent the last couple of seasons in the middle of the F1 field – or even in the rear of it, as it happened through the majority of 2009 – the Spaniard is still very much excited when thinking of driving an F1 car.

Talking to the Italian tifosi during a chat meeting on Monday, the 2-time world champion assured them that … (read more)

So we always hear about how hard it is to get an iPhone app approved by Apple, but here’s an interesting case; an 11-year-old boy managed to not just write an app, but get it approved, and now he’s donating some of the proceeds from the sale of that app to a children’s hospital.

This kid didn’t just teach himself how to program, but he also managed to get the app approved, something that many adults can’t seem to manage. The app is called iSketch and it’s a drawing and painting program with your choice of brushes, and colors, along with the ability to send your drawings via email. Now 11 year old Cameron has committed to donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of his app to the Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA in Westwood and Santa Monica. That’s something you have to respect no matter how old you are. Normally we find it hard to get excited about iPhone apps (well, except for Button) but this is something worth passing on, if only to help Cameron with his donations. If you want to know more, here’s a link to his blog as well.

Here’s the letter we got today from Cameron’s father:

Hi.

My son Cameron is 11 years old and, last year, he had a medical problem that prevented him from participating in the physical activities he otherwise enjoys. (He is nearly fully recovered.) During that time, Cameron became interested in computers, and he began to read anything he could get his hands on. He watched Stanford University professors on iTunes, scoured the web for articles on programming and taught himself several different programming languages. (Neither my wife nor I have any idea how to program.) Cameron began to focus on the iPhone and iPod touch devices as the “apps” offered for sale for use on those devices seemed really cool to him. He began to work on a few different apps. After completing some summer camps on programming and continuing to read and learn, Cameron finalized an app, which he calls iSketch, and submit it to Apple. The app, which is a painting/drawing program, was approved by Apple for sale on its App Store in December. (He has since updated it several times..)

Inspired by the care he received at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, Cameron has dedicated a substantial portion of the proceeds from his sales to purchase entertainment and electronic items for Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA’s Child Life/Child Development programs in Westwood and Santa Monica so that pre-teens and teens will have additional age-appropriate options available to them during their Hospital stays. Cameron’s sales so far have been good, but he hopes to accelerate them so that he can donate even more to the Hospital.

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