Author: TheAppleBlog.com

Offerpal Media this morning said it has acquired Tapjoy in a move that signals the advancement of offer-based ads into mobile. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Offerpal specializes in the kind of pitches that have quickly become very popular on social networking sites such as Facebook as a way to generate revenue and enable users to enhance the gaming experience. A casual gamer who accepts a trial offer from Netflix, for instance, could be rewarded with extra levels, while a fan of a mafia game could get a weapons upgrade by taking a survey.

Tapjoy delivers a related service for mobile developers looking to monetize their apps. The company offers free content or in-game upgrades to users who agree to download additional applications.

But offer-based online ads have been increasingly coming under fire, as evidenced by this scathing piece from Michael Arrington last fall over at TechCrunch. Facebook and Zynga are facing a class-action lawsuit from users who claim they were scammed into paying for things they didn’t want, or into giving up personal information. Facebook banned the Zynga title FishVille, leading the social gaming company to pull the plug on all cost-per-action offers until further notice. And Offerpal, which has raised about $20 million in funding since its founding three years ago, tapped a new CEO just a week after the company was accused at an industry event of running “scammy” ads.

Offer-based ads have yet to gain much momentum in wireless, which is still in the very earliest days of in-app advertising. But as Offerpal’s pick-up of Tapjoy indicates, the concept is positioned to quickly expand beyond online gaming and into mobile phones.

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If you have hundreds or even thousands of songs in your iTunes library, then it’s more than likely there are some songs which you’ve forgotten you even own — you can’t listen to every single one at the same time, after all.

By using iTunes’ Smart Playlist feature, however, you can create a playlist of songs which you haven’t listened to in a while. You can get iTunes to look through your music collection, work out which songs you haven’t listened to in a while, then present them all in a list for you.

1. Create a new Smart Playlist by going File → New Smart Playlist. Alternatively, if you hold ⌥, the + button at the bottom of the window will change to a gear icon. Click this to create a Smart Playlist a bit quicker.
2. Set up a rule using the Last Played option. Change the second option to ‘is not in the last’, and the text box on the right will change into a smaller text box and another dropdown list.
   
3. Enter a period of time using the options on the right. The amount of time you use is totally up to you, although I recommend a shorter amount of time for small iTunes libraries. To give you a sense of perspective, I chose 3 months for a 165 song library, and the playlist ended up only containing 8 songs.
4. Make sure to keep the ‘Live updating’ box checked, otherwise your playlist won’t update with other songs that match the search parameter after the playlist is created.
5. When you click OK, the playlist will be created and populated with songs that match you criteria you specified. The name of the playlist will be highlighted, ready for you to type in a custom name for it.

As long as you kept the Live updating option turned on, iTunes will automatically add and remove songs from the playlist as its data changes. This means that you’ll always be able to listen to something you haven’t heard in a while! Just remember to choose a sensible length of time for the playlist; too short, and you’ll end up with a massive playlist that you won’t be able to listen to all of before it changes. Too long and there’ll only be a few songs in there.

There is, however, one thing which will mess up your playlist. iTunes only updates the Last Played field if you listen to the whole song. Therefore if you skip a song you don’t like, it won’t be counted as a play and could ultimately end up in your playlist. To combat this problem, all it takes is one extra rule in your playlist.

If you’ve already created the playlist, you can right-click and choose Edit Smart Playlist to add the rule using the same window from before.

1. Add a new rule by clicking the round + button to the right of the first rule.
2. Change the first option to Skip Count and the middle option to ‘is less than’, then type a small number such as 2 or 3. This accounts for any accidental skips you may have done.
   
3. Click OK and any songs with a skip count higher than the number you chose will be removed from the playlist, keeping only the ones you like in there.

Of course, you may have changed your mind about songs you didn’t like 3 months ago. For this reason, I choose not to implement this extra rule into my playlist.

I’d like to begin by telling you that there isn’t a single thing I haven’t heard said about my name. So, that said, here’s what you’d find written if I had a Wikipedia page:

• Yes, I do look small in that photo. That’s because I’m only 16 (and the photo has been resized).
• In regard to #1, I know more than you might expect about computing*.
• I write from my house which is tucked away in the South-East corner of England, so expect posts which seem to have been written in the middle of the night.
• This is my first proper move into the world of tech writing, so I dare say you’ve never heard of me before.
• I first switched in 2007 with the receipt of my 20″ iMac, which I still have today.
• If you visited me, you’d find the iMac, a late-2008 MacBook, two iPhone 3GSs and two iPod touches (2nd generation).

I’m joining TheAppleBlog as the newest How-To and tutorial writer. Look out for my series of ‘Quick Tips’ which will hopefully teach you something useful in a short amount of time. I’m open to feedback, argument, insult etc. in the comments area of my posts, so chatter away.

If you have trouble sleeping at night, try reading my stream of dullness that is @jobbogamer on Twitter.

* Contrary to popular belief, not all teenagers sit on MSN and Facebook all day long.

It wasn’t too long ago that the path to success for mobile carriers was a straight one: Simply offer compelling handsets at competitive prices and maintain a top-notch network and your customers would be happy. And for those that weren’t, manage a competent customer-care division. That model is rapidly changing, though, as we reach the point of market saturation.

Carriers in Western markets have precious little room for growth unless they poach customers from their competitors. Cell phone penetration in the U.S. stands at 89 percent, according to CTIA, and Chetan Sharma pointed out earlier this month that mobile’s market penetration in America is 99 percent for people over than the age of five. The increase of machine-to-machine connections and the coming wave of connected consumer electronics (non-phones) will help, but carriers will have to evolve beyond being simple network operators if they’re to thrive in the coming world of mobile data.

Another factor beyond market saturation is at play here, too. Mobile is no longer just about being a provider of wireless phones and connectivity; it’s about adding value with applications that leverage Web 2.0 features like presence and community and combining them with mobile’s unique characteristics, such as portability and location awareness.

While the rise of mobile Web 2.0 is a looming threat for network operators, it also presents an opportunity to develop and market more compelling “over-the-top” offerings — applications and services from carriers that can be targeted at users on other networks. In my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, I’ve taken a closer look at this topic, with a special focus on AT&T’s Buzz.com offering. I’m sure we’ll see more examples as carriers attempt to make a very difficult transition beyond their established business model into uncharted waters. What kind of opportunities do you see?

Image courtesy of Flickr user kevindooley

Nuance is killing the SpinVox service, informing its users, which are located in the UK, via text that their accounts will expire within a week. The move — which prompted an outcry on Twitter — marks the end of a very popular voice-to-text service from a very controversial company.

SpinVox was founded in 2003 as a London-based startup aimed at transcribing voicemails into text. The company landed $200 million in funding — including $100 million at a $500 million valuation two years ago — thanks to a customer base of large carriers, which resold the service to their users. But the wheels started to fall off last year when SpinVox struggled to repay a $48.8 million loan and allegations surfaced that transcriptions were being done by call center staffers — not a speech-to-text algorithm, as the company had claimed. Nuance ended up pocketing SpinVox last December for a mere $102.5 million in an effort to better compete in the voice recognition space against Google and Microsoft.

The acquisition was largely driven by SpinVox’s list of corporate customers, which includes Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Vodafone Spain and Skype. Nuance, in explaining its decision to shut down SpinVox’s service, said its mission is to market offerings “as a standard feature in mobile service plans locally and globally.” Indeed, pulling the plug on the consumer service is logical given SpinVox’s inability to develop a viable business model. But as all those tweets indicate, investors aren’t the only ones hurting from SpinVox’s demise — so are many of its soon-to-be former users.

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Image courtesy Flickr user jp.ubiqua.

Palm shares plunged in late trading Thursday after the company posted yet another dismal quarter and warned that revenue for the current one will fall far short of Wall Street expectations. The company will have to take substantial charges to help its carrier partners eat through excess inventory, and whatever luster once existed for its flagship Pre is long gone. The question now is, who’s going to pick up Palm?

Palm’s last-ditch gamble on webOS has been a disaster. The operating system — which debuted last summer on the Pre — has received solid reviews, but an utter lack of effective marketing from Sprint — and more recently, Verizon Wireless — shackled handset sales. And an upcoming partnership with AT&T — which looked to be Palm’s last chance at redemption — is reportedly fizzling already after the carrier delayed the launch of webOS handsets, slashed its order and cut its marketing budget.

So what are Palm’s options? CEO Jon Rubinstein is projecting a “stay the course” attitude, saying better training of Verizon Wireless sales staffers will begin to pay off — a questionable theory given the flat-line demand for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus so far. Producing a tablet would be an interesting strategy, as James over at jkOnTheRun suggested yesterday. But the market for tablets is still very uncertain, and there’s little reason to believe Palm can move a different kind of hardware when it can’t sell phones. So a suitor will likely sweep in and pick up Palm, snatching up webOS — the company’s most valuable asset — and a sizable patent portfolio. Here’s a quick rundown of the most likely (or most highly speculated) candidates for acquiring Palm — including their odds of doing so:

• Google : The most intriguing play on the board, Google might be compelled by Palm’s patent portfolio, as Gizmodo noted yesterday. What’s more, Google and Palm both operate Linux-based mobile operating systems, which would make it easy for Google to cherry-pick the best features from webOS and add them to Android. Google could easily afford Palm, and as a bonus would keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor. Odds: 7-1
• Dell : The Texas computer vendor joined the smartphone space a few months ago, launching handsets in Brazil and China, and will soon launch an Android-based device through AT&T. But its late entry means Dell will have a hard time differentiating its hardware, and coming to market with its own mobile operating system, app store and developer community could be a great way to stand out from the crowd. Odds: 7-1
• Hewlett-Packard: HP’s tiny smartphone business is dissolving in the superphone era. Picking up what amounts to a turnkey mobile OS would be a huge — if costly — move to attract attention and breathe life into its mobile business. Odds: 11-1.
• Nokia : Nokia has long been mentioned as a potential buyer for Palm, but successfully marrying the two has become an increasingly difficult proposition. Nokia already claims the world’s most popular smartphone OS in Symbian, and its Maemo — um, sorry, I mean MeeGo – operating system appears to be its long-term strategy. What’s more, Ovi has gained impressive traction in recent months. Adding another platform to the mix would only serve to distract Nokia just as it finally appears to be regaining its focus. Odds: 25-1
• Motorola : Another hardware maker that might be compelled by the idea of owning its own OS, Motorola’s $8 billion in cash ensures plenty of capital to pocket Palm. Yet despite what Om suggested earlier this year, taking on a mobile operating system would likely be more than Motorola could handle, given its difficulty in regaining its once-dominant market share in smartphones. Marriages of two weak players from different spaces rarely end up happy. Odds: 30-1
• Microsoft : Palm and Microsoft seemed like a great fit just a few months ago. But that was before the gang from Redmond went public with its plans to scrap Windows Mobile in favor of Windows Phone, an impressive, consumer-targeted platform set to debut late this year. Windows Phone may fail gloriously, but there’s no reason to bring another OS into the fold — and webOS is largely considered to be Palm’s most valuable asset. Odds: 35-1
• Cisco : An acquisition of Palm would enable Cisco to immediately expand beyond infrastructure into the mobile consumer market. Such a move wouldn’t exactly be unprecedented for Cisco, which last year bought the maker of Flip Video camcorders for $590 million, but maintaining a mobile operating system is a far more sophisticated endeavor than simply churning out camcorders. Odds: 40-1.

This is only a partial list, of course, and new potential suitors are sure to emerge as Palm begins to circle the drain. The clock is ticking, and there’s almost no hope Palm can reverse course at this point. So someone in the mobile space might be able to do very well by picking up a dying company at a cut-rate price.

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Image courtesy Flickr user nathangibbs.

Deep discounts are helping to push smartphones beyond early adopters and hardcore business users and into the hands of mainstream U.S. consumers, according to figures released this morning from The NPD Group. But those lower prices are stalling revenue growth, and demand for the sophisticated handsets may suffer once network operators do away with all-you-can-eat data plans.

Smartphones accounted for 31 percent of the overall U.S. handset market in the fourth quarter of 2009, up substantially from 23 percent during the same period a year ago. That growth can be directly attributed to the fact that prices for smartphones are often slashed within months (or even weeks) after they first come to market. But those price cuts are also why year-over-year smartphone revenue growth in the U.S. was just 21 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, down dramatically from 37 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

“Although we are seeing more expensive models among the best-selling handsets, carriers are now offering some popular smartphones for less than $100,” Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD, said in a prepared statement. “As the average price of these highly capable devices continues to fall, the price of data plans and ease of use will emerge as more significant factors to limiting consumer sales growth.”

While handset manufacturers will surely continue to make smartphones easier to use for non-techies, it’s that other factor — the price of data plans — that is a looming headache for smartphone makers. Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless have increasingly spoken of the need to scrap unlimited data offerings in favor of metered offerings that will see prices increase for those who consume the most data — which will result in at least some degree of backlash from users who’ve long been accustomed to paying a flat monthly fee for as much data as they (or their phones) can handle.

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Marketing Handsets in the Superphone Era

Image courtesy Flickr thejessie.

Worldwide shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased 92 percent in 2009, according to figures released this morning by Berg Insight, as the technology has become a standard feature in smartphones and mid-range feature phones. But GPS is also poised to become increasingly common on the kind of ultra-affordable phones that many mainstream users carry. Which means the potential market for GPS-enabled apps is about to get a lot bigger.

GPS is a key component in many of the location-aware smartphone apps that have become so popular in recent months. Both Foursquare and Gowalla use GPS to determine a user’s location, and lesser-known (but more practical) navigation titles like Waze leverage it as well. Usage of GPS on feature phones has largely been limited to carrier-branded navigation apps, however, by users whose handsets can’t support app distributors like Apple’s App Store or Google’s Android Market.

That is sure to change, though, as GPS makes its way onto the kind of handsets that are often given away free with a service contract in the U.S., or are available very cheaply without a contract elsewhere the world. That opens the door for developers of location apps to build offerings for cheaper phones and deliver them through distributors like GetJar, which provides apps for a wide range of phones. What’s more, Berg Insight notes that GPS functionality will begin to gradually improve starting next year as chip makers add support for the Russian GLONASS satellite system and leverage location information from cell networks and Wi-Fi connections. So while more users with cheap phones will soon be able to access the kind of GPS-enabled apps that have gained dramatic traction lately, those with high-end devices will find their location-based apps improving over the next few years, too.

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Location: The Epicenter of Mobile Innovation

Image courtesy Flickr mikebaird.

Presence-enabled communities will be the “primary market driver” behind mobile demand for Web 2.0 applications and services that will generate $18.9 billion in 2014, according to figures released this morning from Juniper Research. Carriers will have a chance to tap into that market if they can effectively evolve beyond their traditional role as network operators.

As loosely defined by Juniper, mobile Web 2.0 features the web as a platform for applications and the user as both creator and consumer of content. That broad definition includes offerings such as mobile Skype as well as basic chat services, social networks and location-aware services such as Foursquare and Gowalla that feature community. A combination of ads, data charges and premium services will be among the key revenue streams, Juniper said.

The market for mobile Web 2.0 is one that AT&T is trying to tap with Buzz.com, a new, Yelp-like social recommendations site that will likely embrace presence management as it matures. (The offering, which is aimed at helping users find the right local business based on reviews from friends and family, launched in January and is in closed alpha.) The problem for operators, though, will be in getting their apps in the hands of users on other networks. That’s an entirely new strategy for carriers, which have long deployed products and services solely to attract new subscribers and hold on to the customers they already have. If AT&T or any of its competitors can make a go of it, they could tap an entirely new business model beyond merely being mobile network operators.

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Image courtesy Flickr user trekkyandy.

Setting up your OS to your liking can be an art for some. What if you need to set up Snow Leopard to present every user with the same look and settings? By following these steps you can have every user who logs into the machine receive the same look, feel and preferences that you desire. What we’ll be doing is creating a new user, setting it up to look how we want, then copying the settings so every new user will get those preferences.

Setting Everything Up

1. Login under your admin account and open up Accounts pane in System Preferences.
2. Click the + to create a new Standard user.
3. As an example, we’ll use the name testuser.
   
   
4. Log off and log back in as testuser.
5. Set everything up the way you want. I customized the Dock, Safari’s home page and the Finder preferences.
6. When you are done customizing, log off the testuser account.

Copying the Files

1. Login under your admin account.
2. Navigate to the /System/Library folder in Finder.
3. Right-click on the User Template folder and choose Get info.
   
4. By default, you cannot browse this folder. Change the permissions so Everyone has Read & Write permissions.
   
5. Now we can open up the User Template folder & copy the English.lproj folder to your desktop. This will be our backup copy in case we want to restore it back.
6. Open up Terminal and navigate to the User Template folder.
   cd /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj
7. Copy the testuser folder over, which will replace the defaults. You may get errors about some files that can’t be replaced. I haven’t seen it cause any issues though.
   sudo cp -R ~testuser/* .
sudo cp -R ~testuser/.* .
8. Change the permissions for the User Template folder back so everyone has No Access again.
   

Test it Out

1. Create a new user to verify everything worked. I used the name testuser2.
   
2. Log off as admin and log back in as testuser2.
3. You will now see your customized settings. These will be used for all new users created on the system from this point on.

Conclusion

To put everything back the way it was, log in as admin and copy the English.lproj backup file on your desktop back to the /System/Library/User Template folder.

If you have a lab of Macs but aren’t using Open Directory, this is a nice solution to maintain some control over the OS presentation. This change will only affect new users. It has no effect on existing users, so keep that in mind. If you start getting constant requests for more customizations similar to this, setup a Snow Leopard Server and start using Workgroup Manager. The changes can be much easier to implement but the Server solution has a larger price-tag for that convenience.

Microsoft has said that it will require applications developers for its upcoming Windows Phone OS to sell their apps exclusively through the company’s official storefront, reversing a long-held strategy of allowing a host of third-party retailers to sell Windows Mobile offerings. It’s a move that’s sure to destroy some of the developer goodwill Microsoft has worked so hard to build up in recent weeks.

WinMo users have long been able to download apps from distributors such as GetJar, PocketGear.com and Handango in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile. But the new policy will force developers to comply with Microsoft’s content and technical regulations to bring their Windows Phone wares to market. (Microsoft said business customers will be allowed to distribute apps outside Windows Phone Marketplace.) Astoundingly, the news came just hours after Microsoft showcased its Silverlight technology and released developer tools for Windows Phone to make the OS more attractive and sway developers into its camp.

Microsoft is following the lead of Apple, of course, which has consistently angered developers by refusing to allow third-party distribution of iPhone apps and by employing inconsistent approval policies for its App Store. Apple can continue to employ such a strategy thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the iPhone, but Microsoft obviously doesn’t have that luxury. Supporting third-party retailers would surely hurt Microsoft’s overall revenue, but the overwhelming majority of users will take the path of least resistance and shop at the source rather than seek out smaller vendors. So the company would do well to immediately issue some clear-cut approval policies for its upcoming app store — or, better yet, to rethink the strategy entirely.

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Image courtesy Flickr user Corey Templeton.

Microsoft is betting that Silverlight — a web application framework and rival technology to Adobe’s Flash — can help it woo mobile developers to its upcoming Windows Phone operating system. So far, at least, the strategy appears to be working.

The gang from Redmond used its MIX10 event in Las Vegas this morning to release some free developer tools as well as to demonstrate some of the first third-party applications written for Windows Phone, which seeks to embrace mobile entertainment in ways Windows Mobile simply couldn’t. Corporate VP Joe Belfiore showed off a slick mobile version of the 3D Xbox title The Harvest to demonstrate Silverlight’s capabilities, as well as a news app from AP and a multimedia journal that leverage the technology.

Microsoft also trotted out some impressive third-party partners. Developers who’ve signed on to build atop Windows Phone include EA Mobile, Foursquare, Pandora and Sling Media. Microsoft still faces a challenge in growing that list, though, thanks largely to the fact that Windows Phone will be incompatible with Windows Mobile and won’t debut until late this year. But if the company can continue to secure third-party developers and offer an impressive app catalog as the first devices come to market, Microsoft may find itself back in the game with the Apples and Googles of the smartphone world.

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Images courtesy Microsoft

The Nexus One is coming to Verizon — no, really, two months after a deal was announced by Google, the device is on its way. HTC has begun shipping the CDMA version of Google’s Nexus One to Verizon Wireless, according to a report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (hat tip, Digitimes). The nation’s largest carrier will begin selling the gadget in the next few weeks, joining T-Mobile USA, which has supported the “Google phone” since its January launch. But that won’t do much to boost Google’s mobile effort unless Mountain View throws some real marketing muscle behind the Nexus One.

There’s a lot to like about the Nexus One, which Om has praised as “the best Android phone yet.” The phone rocks the powerful 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and solid mobile browser, and is closely integrated with applications from both Google and third-party developers. But sales have been tremendously disappointing, prompting Goldman Sachs last week to slash its 2010 sales estimates for the Nexus One by a whopping 70 percent.

That lack of movement can be directly traced to an almost utter lack of marketing for the phone. (That’s a lesson Palm has learned with its Pre. Twice.) Google’s promotion of its flagship device consisted largely of a placing a modest link on its home page, and carriers — which are rightly terrified of their brands being elbowed out of the way — have only minimally backed the gadget. Worse, the phone is available only through Google’s online store, which most smartphone shoppers surely don’t even know exists. And that model isn’t likely to change with Verizon Wireless, as Kevin at jkOnTheRun noted last week.

Google has said since January that the Nexus One would be coming to Verizon Wireless, and the company is wise to combine its impressive hardware with Verizon’s rock-solid network. But if Google is really going to move the needle with its flagship device, it’s going to have to back it with some big-budget marketing campaigns.

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Image courtesy Flickr user pittaya.