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The FastFood Nation Goes Mobile

Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Fast-food, eating out, are in the DNA of this country.  Food is everywhere, 24/7, accessible, inexpensive. And now also at your fingertips.

Not a day passes without a new “food” app making the headlines. Gluttony meets GadgetsMania. It’s fun. It’s as fast as it can get,  thanks to store locators and in-app ordering. It’s convenient, even more convenient thanks to special discounts and coupons. Soon, apps will also allow you to pay for your fast-food fix within the app!

-Make it Fun: The PizzaHut case

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6 Ways To Look At Twitter Lists

Posted on 01. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

This week, Twitter made its new Lists feature broadly available. Lists allow you to enumerate a collection of  Twitter accounts, and then easily read updates from just those accounts. Others can view your lists, and choose to follow them as well. Here are 6 ways to look at the future implications of the Lists.

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After AdWords and AdSense, Is AdFriends next?

Posted on 31. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

On October 26^th, Google rolled out the first release of its new Social Search, which pulls results from content posted on the Net by your most trusted sources, your friends.

It is still an experiment. To activate the social search feature, users have to opt-in and create a Google Profile with the list of their social networks. Google will do the rest, by indexing their social graph and applying its search algorithms to match the queries with the content posted by the users’ friends. The user becomes the link to what he posts.

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The March Of The Droids: HTML5 and Android 2.0

Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

The end of the Iphone monopoly is not going to happen in one day and with one single device. Don’t expect the masses to suddenly drop their I-cult and let them rant about the misses of the Droid, as Motorola and Verizon Wireless unveil their new creation to the world. Because they will.

Why I don’t care of what they’ll have to say?

It’s no secret that the iPhone App Store has been a walled garden. Mobile platform developers like Apple can and do control what runs on their devices in various ways: prohibit plug-ins (Flash),  keep their live video SDK secret, or simply forbid the app (Google Voice).

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Google Voice: Building An Open Network World, One Disruption At A Time

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Picture an open network world with open devices, where carriers are mere pipes, that only run the network and charge for the bandwidth, and consumers are free to pick their devices, applications and calling mechanism. This world is getting closer every day, thanks to the continuous innovations of Google Voice.

Google Voice

Recently Lifehacker reported how users have been using Google Voice to make unlimited wireless calls. Indeed, most carriers have plans that allow to call certain favorite numbers without eroding minutes. So what happens when your Google Voice number becomes one of them?
This is exactly the threat that has been terrorizing the carriers this past summer, when Google voice mobile app started showing up. The Android version is the one to look at: it tightly integrates with the address book, allowing you to make ALL calls through Google Voice.

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Nike Mobile Marketing – Just Right!

Posted on 26. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

If there’s one company that never fails to wow its audience with its mobile marketing initiatives, that company is Nike.

The Nike Id Iphone App

Take their new IPhone app, Nike Id. It could have been just another app to customize a pair of sneakers and locate the nearest store. But there is more than that. The app doesn’t just put colors in the right places on trainers designs, it also allows users to create new ones, by using iPhone images or pictures from the phone.

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Dympol: Paid To Play, Where Music And Brand Marketing Meet.

Posted on 21. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

What can save Recorded Music? Is it the magic of Free? Fans funding their artists? 5-cents downloads? A new slate of start-ups is emerging with radically innovative solutions.

Fan-funding seems a fascinating alternative, but the scalability of the model raises serious concerns. Sellaband, Slicethepie, the just announced Pledge are just a few names in the category.

Dympol, a New England based start-up, is advocating a different and unique proposition. Get paid to pay is the tagline of the company: by working with sponsors that believe in the value of music, Dympol is able to offer discounts that help fans buy more for less, while helping recording artists and labels earn more.

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ChangeHowWePay: PayPal And The Future Of Payments.

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Payments is an area that has long suffered from a lack of innovation. At the Web 2.0 Summit, today, PayPal announced that it is opening up a platform to developers on November 3. The move towards open API is a game changing one with a grandiose ultimate goal: make cash obsolete.

“How will you change the way we pay?”: the question is open to everybody. Tweet your ideas via Twitter with the hashtag #changehowwepay, all responses are collected at changehowwepay.com. Or sign-up for PayPal X Innovate 2009 conference which takes place November 3-4, 2009 in San Francisco and participate to a mega think-tank with PayPal developers as mentors!

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Music Videos New Frontier: Augmented Reality

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Music and Innovation hardly get together and, when they do, the War of the Roses is a more likely scenario than Star Trek. Not always though.

Augmented Reality might be a peaceful exception. A new wave of music videos is indeed emerging, with the promise to enable new creative ways for artists to interact with their fans.

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Mobile Game Changers

Posted on 18. Oct, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

It’s been a week dense of potentially game-changing facts for the mobile industry.

MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY BECOMES MORE REAL

Until now, the development of mobile augmented reality apps for the Iphone has been hindered by Apple’s decision to keep the API for the analysis of live-streaming private.

The Game Changers: Visual Media Lab at Ben Gurion University and HIT Lab NZ.

The scientists from the two computer teams have released a software  that lets anyone perform on-the-fly analysis of live streaming video on the iPhone and they have made it public through AR specialist GamesAlFresco.

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