Author: Frederic Lardinois

Twitter just announced that it has acquired Mixer Labs, the company behind GeoAPI.com. GeoAPI is a service that allows developers to easily add geolocation data to their apps. Twitter just launched its own geotagging API a few weeks ago. Even though a number of mobile and desktop Twitter apps like Seesmic Web and Birdfeed support Twitter’s geotagging API, only a very small number of users are currently making use of this feature.

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According to Twitter founder Ev Williams, the company “will be looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API in useful ways that give developers behind geo-enabled apps like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and other powerful new possibilities.”

It’s important to note that the Mixer Labs GeoAPI is not tied to Twitter. GeoAPI offers tools like a reverse geocoder that can take GPS coordinates and turn them into human readable information and a service that can find media files and status updates related to a specific place on Flickr, Twitter or YouTube. Mixer Labs also offers an iPhone SDK. Judging from Twitter’s announcement, the GeoAPI will continue to work while Twitter figures out how to best integrate its current geotagging API with Mixer Labs’ GeoAPI.

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Since 1955, when Sears mistakenly printed NORAD’s phone number in its catalog instead of the number of its Santa hotline, NORAD has offered Santa-realted services by phone. Now, working together with Google, NORAD continues to offer the same service online during the holidays. Starting at 2 p.m. ET (GMT -5) on Christmas Eve, the newly enhanced Santa Tracker will go live.

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This year, Google will use the Google Earth plugin to power noradsanta.org. According to Google, over eight million people used the site to track Santa in 2008.

In addition, Google also now offers a mobile site (m.noradsanta.org). In keeping with the times, NORAD also offers a Twitter account this year where “you can keep up with news about Santa’s flight.”

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In 2009, the average U.S. Internet user spent 13 hours per week online. This number is down slightly from last year. Thanks to the large interest in the presidential election and the financial crisis, the average Internet user was online for roughly 14 hours per week in 2008. According to a new poll from Harris Interactive, users between the ages of 30 to 39 are the most active Internet users. On average, this group is online for 18 hours per week.

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Overall, the average time online for U.S. Internet users has gone up from seven hours in 1999 to close to nine hours in 2003 and up to 11 hours in 2007. We should note that these numbers only include adults. According to Nielsen, which looked at all U.S. Internet users, the average usage per week is closer to 17 hours.

98% of All Computer Users in the U.S. are Online

The number of adults who are online has not changed since 2007. In total, 184 million adults regularly surf the Internet at work, home or school. While the number of adults who are online has not changed, the number of adults who access the Internet at home has increased from 66% in 2005 to 76% in 2009. Ten years ago, only 56% of all adults accessed the Internet from home. In total, 98% of all computer users are now online.

While users between 30 and 39 are the most active Internet users, those between 25 and 29 are the most likely to spend more than 24 hours per week online. 25% of 25- to 29-year-olds surf the Net between 24 and 162 hours per week – sadly, Harris Interactive doesn’t tell us how many of these users actually spend every minute of the week online.

Online Shopping

With regards to online shopping, Harris found that 50% of adults bought something online in the last month. Not surprisingly, 30- to 39-year-olds are the most active online shoppers.

How High Will These Numbers Go?

Given how popular online video and social networks have become over the last few years, chances are that the average number of hours spend online will continue to grow slowly over the next few years. U.S. Internet users who watch TV online watch close to 18 hours of online video per week already. In the U.K., the average Facebook user spends close to three full days per year on the site. Without doubt, however, there will be a natural limit to how much time per week people will spend online.

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Taptu, a mobile search engine that specializes in indexing mobile-friendly websites, just launched a new version of its iPhone app. The new app now includes real-time search results, which are powered by OneRiot. In addition to including these real-time search results, Taptu also worked hard on improving the speed of the app and on providing more relevant search results. Taptu offers apps for the iPhone, iPod touch (iTunes link) and Android, as well as a mobile optimized website.

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Taptu first integrated real-time search results from OneRiot in its mobile web interface and in its Android app last month. The mobile apps definitely provide a far superior way of using the service than the mobile site, however.

There are two ways to access real-time search results in the app. The homepage now displays the hottest trending topics, and a single click on one of these opens up OneRiot search results.

In addition, you can also do a normal search and then select “latest buzz” from the options menu right next to the search box. This same menu also allows you to restrict search to images, videos, blog or Wikipedia articles, as well as to sites and blogs about sports, news or apps.

For a closer look at Taptu’s feature set, also have a look at our review of the service’s web app.
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OneRiot, one of the leading real-time search engines, just announced the launch of a new advertising product for real-time apps. RiotWise Trending Ads will give OneRiot’s partners a feed of ads related to currently trending topics on the Web. These ads can, for example, be integrated in a user’s stream of updates in Twitter apps or displayed as regular mobile ad units. Digsby, for example, plans to place these ads directly in its users’ streams, but because the units are delivered as a feed through OneRiot’s API, developers are free to use them in whatever way they see fit.

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OneRiot’s ad network, RiotWise, launched about two months ago as a closed beta with roughly 20 partners. The new RiotWise Trending Ads program was built on top of this network. The network will feature a mix of CPM and CPC ads.

2010: It’s All About Monetizing the Real-Time Web

As OneRiot’s general manager Tobias Peggs told us earlier this month, “2010 will be all about monetizing the real-time Web.” Real-time advertising, however, comes with its own set of challenges. While Google AdSense, for example, can take its time to learn about what works best for a certain keyword, advertising systems for the real-time web have to work with a different set of signals and react to an environment that is always in flux. In this context, it makes sense for OneRiot to launch a product that focuses on trending topics and not on trying to match an individual user’s stream to the right advertiser.

Initially, OneRiot will work closely with developers to ensure that the initial implementations of the RiotWise Trending Ads work well for users. For now, developers will have to get approval to use the new ads by applying through the OneRiot Developer Network. The company plans to roll out the program more aggressively in the next year.

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Opera just released the first pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. While most users generally only think about Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome as the major players in the current browser wars, there can be no doubt that Opera is working hard to push browser development forward as well. This latest alpha version shows that Opera has worked hard to speed up the browser. Carakan, the new JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5, is up to seven times faster than Opera’s current engine. The new version of Opera also adds a number of new features like an enhanced private browsing mode and a new graphics engine that can be hardware accelerated.

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The new alpha is currently only available for Windows and OSX users; a Linux version will follow soon. Download links can be found at the bottom of this page.

New Features

Along with the focus on speed – an area where Opera used to lead before WebKit-based browsers like Safari and Chrome became popular – the company also included a number of other enhancement in this early version of 10.5. Windows 7 and Vista users, for example, will notice that the browser is now closely integrated with the desktop environment and makes use of features like Aero Glass in Vista and Aero Peek and Jump Lists in Windows 7. On the Mac, Opera can now make use of multi-touch gestures like the three-finger swipe and Growl notifications.

Other new features include a new “private tab” and “private window” mode that actually works far better than similar features in other browsers. You just have to right-click on the tab bar and select “private tab” to start the private browsing mode in this new tab, for example.

Opera also updated the look and feel of the browser’s in-line page search and password manager.

It’s All About Speed

The focus for Opera, however, is clearly not so much on bringing new features to the browser (the current Alpha doesn’t even support Opera Unite, for example), but on testing the new JavaScript engine. When we spoke to CEO Jon von Tetzchner about the state of the browser during LeWeb earlier this month, he stressed that the company was very focused on improving the speed of the browser. He did say, however, that the JavaScript engine was only a small part of this effort and that the company was also looking at other bottlenecks that are slowing the browser down. The fact that that the new image rendering engine is already pre-wired for hardware acceleration is a good example for this (though the feature isn’t turned on yet). We will bring you more of our interview with von Tetzchner after the holidays.

In our own tests, Opera performed remarkably well and this new version clearly shows that it would be unwise to underestimate Opera in the browser wars. We should note, however, that this is still a very early alpha version and that the browser is likely to crash occasionally.

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Ribbit Mobile, which offers a set of VoIP services that is very similar to Google Voice, just launched its first iPhone app (iTunes link). The app allows users to check their voicemail, read voicemail transcriptions, forward voicemails by email and create a “to-call” list based on these messages. The app uses the iPhone’s native phone app to make calls and the default SMS app to send text messages.

Ribbit also gave us 500 invites to hand out to our readers. If you would like to get one, just read on to find out how to claim yours.

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In terms of features, Ribbit Mobile, which launched in November, compares very well to Google Voice. While the interface takes some getting used to, the ability to make and receive calls right from Ribbit’s website through the Flash-based interface is extremely useful while traveling, for example. For a more detailed look at Ribbit Mobile, have a look at our in-depth review from November.

Focus on Voicemail

Your voicemail inbox is the central focus of the app and the way the app handles these is exemplary. Once you click on a message in the inbox, the app switches to a new view that displays details about the call (name of caller, number, date and time). Here, you can also listen to the message and read the transcript (Ribbit offers both automatic and manual transcriptions). From here, a small bar at the bottom of the app also allows you to respond to the message by phone, SMS or recorded voicemail. In addition, you can add the caller to your to-call list and forward transcripts and audio by email.

Playing it Safe

Given that Apple didn’t allow the Google Voice app into the store, Ribbit clearly played it safe with this app. While it provides access to all the service’s voicemail features, the app doesn’t replicate any of the phone’s calling or SMS features. The app also doesn’t allow you to access your Ribbit Mobile address book. Sadly, this also means that you can’t use your Ribbit phone number to make calls and that the caller ID will always show your iPhone’s number. In the current version, it’s also not possible to see a list of missed calls that didn’t result in a voicemail. You can, however, choose to receive alerts for missed calls and new voicemails by SMS, email and instant message. You can set your alert preferences in the app and through the service’s web interface.

We understand that Ribbit probably had to remove quite a few features to stay on Apple’s good side, but the result of this is that the app misses quite a few essential features. Hopefully – now that Ribbit managed to get this castrated version of the app approved – the Ribbit team will soon be able add more of the missing features into the app.

Invites

Ribbit Mobile is still an invite-only service. If you would like to give it a try, just head over to Ribbit’s sign-up page and use the following invite code: RWW09
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Kynetx offers developers a single platform for building extensions for multiple browsers. Developers write their code in Kynetx’s own rule-based language and the service builds the actual extensions. Originally, Kynetx only supported Firefox and Internet Explorer, but a few days ago, the company also announced support for Google Chrome. Thanks to this, developers can now use Kynetx’s AppBuilder tool to build and deploy custom extensions for the three top browsers that offer a built-in plugin architecture.

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For now, of course, only the Windows version of Chrome supports extensions, but extension support for the OSX and Linux version is scheduled to arrive soon.

Kynetx is a universal browser extension that has a few similarities to Greasemonkey. The programming language for the extension is the Kynetx Rule Language (KRL) and the company offers an online editor for writing apps on top of Kynetx.

We should note that Kynetx doesn’t allow users to build every type of extension. The system is best suited for building plugins that add additional information to a website. Kynetx’s extensions use Action Cards to augment these sites. One example for such a plugin is this app that reminds users when a company offers a discount through the U.S. automobile services group, AAA.

For some more details about the company, have a look at this video interview Robert Scoble did with the company’s founder and CTO. The company also offers a good tutorial and documentation here.

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According to a report by Business Week’s Spencer E. Ante, Twitter’s search deals with Google and Microsoft made the company about $25 million – enough to turn Twitter into a profitable business in 2009. According to these reports – which Twitter did not comment on – the deal with Google made Twitter about $15 million this year and a similar deal with Microsoft generated about $10 million in revenue.

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The idea that Twitter made a profit from these deals is based on the assumption that the company’s annual operating costs are roughly $25 million. Twitter, of course, doesn’t release any information about its operating costs or the revenue it made from these deals, so we have to take this estimate with a grain of salt.

Bringing Costs Down

Business Week’s Ante also argues that Twitter was able to reduce operating expenses by renegotiating its deals with the telecom carriers that support the service’s text message system. Until this year, the cost of supporting the SMS system represented Twitter’s largest expense, though according to one source quoted by Ante, “now people are the biggest line item.”

Generating More Income

Earlier this year, Twitter also announced that it plans to create a revenue-sharing scheme that would allows Twitter to share in the profits generated by third-party applications and vice versa. The details of this plan are still under wraps, however, though at LeWeb, Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s director of platform, announced that the company would announce details about this plan early next year.

Chances are that Twitter is still looking into creating revenue from advertising as well. If the company really managed to be profitable based on the search content deals with Microsoft and Google, however, then Twitter will at least have a longer runway before it has to open up this revenue channel, which is likely to alienate quite a few users.

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Dailymotion, the Paris-based video sharing portal that is extremely popular in Europe, just launched its first set of iPhone applications. Dailymotion launched two apps: a free, ad-supported version (iTunes link), and a paid version for $5.99 (iTunes link) that does not feature any ads. The apps allow iPhone users to play videos from Dailymotion’s catalog of roughly 12 million videos. Dailymotion users can also use the apps to upload videos directly to the service.

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Until now, the only way to access Dailymotion from the iPhone was through a mobile-optimized web interface. Given YouTube’s position as a default app on the iPhone, this put Dailymotion at a significant disadvantage.

In terms of content, Dailymotion can’t really compete with YouTube, where users now upload more than 24 hours of video per minute, but the app can easily compete with those from other streaming video services.

One feature of the app we especially like is how easy it is to browse through different categories. This is also where Dailymotion’s international focus shines through, as the app also makes it very straightforward to restrict searches to popular videos in a specific country.

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