Remember when people used to compare their phones by the tech specs? Pixels for the camera, MP3 player, etc? Luckily that’s not the case anymore: today no one cares of the hardware (sure the hard-core geeks will always do…), what makes the difference is the software: the services and the content. Alas in 2009 lingo: the APPS.

The numbers are impressive: 65,000 apps on the App Store in less than a year. Still something is wrong with the user experience: the discovery process. Once you download an app, it sits there and you might as well forget why you downloaded it. The App Store experience is autistic and often times apps are used for as much as one time…

So welcome to Appsfire, a über-app with one mission: helping you share your apps and discover new ones. To be clear, you do not really share the apps themselves, but the names of the ones you select. Your friends will see your list and have one-click access to download them, from the App Store.

In order for the app to work, you have to install it on your machine first, so that it can scan and index your iTunes backup file. And then you’re ready for sharing. The reason of this extra-step is explained by AppsFire on their blog: Basically Apple does not let you read what’s on your iPhone. Each app has its own sandbox and except maybe the contact book, no app can communicate with another app making the listing of your own apps impossible from the iPhone.

Peace&Love to Apple and its limitations…

So here’s how the app works.

1) Download AppsFire on your machine

2- (optional) Select the apps you want to share and choose your favorite network: Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, widget, link. (In my case Facebook didn’t work …but the app is still in beta so a few kinks are still being ironed out. Other technical limitations as the indexing are well known also - not all the apps, even some famous ones, are yet recognized by the AppsFire engine). [Update: please make sure you download the latest Appsfire version, which should be able to view all your apps].

3) Download the App on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app will let you share your apps via email in a rather smooth way. Or you can discover new ones. The options are Top Downloaded Apps, Top Apps in Your Area and Apps from a few Internet celebs: Loic Le Meur, Corvida, Louis Gray, etc.

Overall kudos to AppsFire for their job.  A few thoughts:

-Reviews: being able to review the app a friend recommends,before being kicked out of Appsfire into the AppStore, should be a priority.

-Sharing- It would be nice to have Facebook Connect  in order to make the sharing a smoother user experience.

-Multiple Bundles & Alerts- Why not allowing various bundles for each user so that the sharing could be more targeted? like My Idiot Apps, My Useless/Useful Apps, My MustHaves etc. Additionaly, I’d like to see an option to send a simple alert to my friends if I add an app to one of the bundles that has already being shared.

-Friends Feedback – Why not letting your friends acknowledge that they liked the apps you shared with some sort of feedback mechanism (Apps Downloaded by XX friends or App Liked/Hated by XX friends).

We’re just in the infancy of the app store “revolution”. So it’s nice to see some innovation popping up. Once AppsFire will be ready for prime time, there will be infinite ways to make it a money maker. From the usual suspect (affiliate links) to analytics, the most valuable one: what are people most shared apps by geo-location or demo (via Facebook), what are the most frequent bundles, super- sharing options for business accounts (e.g upload of email lists, etc).

For now, go get yourself some (Apps)fire!

AdMob is out with its latest Mobile Metrics Report, which is based on the usage behavior found on various applications and web sites across its ad network. For the month of July,  AdMob decided to spice up its network data with survey results from 1,117 users of iPhone, iPod touch and Android devices.

The key findings of the survey have had the blogosphere go ah and oh about the potential App Store business.  What are those key findings?

In AdMob words:

• Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod touch owners download an average of 18 per month
• More than 90 percent of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
• Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
• iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users.
• Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month

From there, the math seems easy: as GigaOm points out, there are some $200 million worth of applications sold in Apple’s iPhone store every month, or about $2.4 billion a year.

Why I don’t buy it?

-Users surveied are a skewed sample who had to have downloaded at least one free app.

-Distribution of free vs paid apps: is there a report showing what’s the breakdown for the AppStore and Android? Without it, it’s hard to tell if Android users are really less inclined to buying premium apps than the AppStore customers.

-Payment Method: it’s a no-brainer for an AppStore user to go through the payment process, all you have to do is login into your iTunes account. For Android users on the other hand the purchase is much more “conscious” .

-Does this sound like a reliable claim? “Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month”. Every month? Maybe users who participated to the survey and/or who download AdMob apps are more engaged/addicted than the average user. Others have questioned the reliability of this claim.

-What type of applications were selected for the survey? Surely some categories will have more rabid fans than others: game users might download a new game every few days. But if you’re after utility apps or business ones, why would you download a replica of what you have, every few weeks?

-The “Freemium” model or “cheap is here to stay” claim. Respondents said that their number one reason for purchasing an application was because they tried and liked a free version. This might back up developers’ cries for a demo capability on the App Store. Or it might be again a consequence of the skewed sample of users: those most likely to answer a survey, maybe are also the ones more inclined to use free apps first.

There’s a fascinating new trend in the mobile application space: Augmented Reality.

The technology, which superimposes graphics and information on live camera feeds, is not new, but the newest generation of smartphones are about to make it mainstream.

So what is Augmented Reality and what’s the big deal? AR is a graphics-oriented technology that blends sounds, haptics, and even smell to the natural world. So for example picture yourself using your cell phone to view the real world through its camera lens and while doing so, being able to interact with it. How? You could get twitts of the people all around you or the playlists and music streams of your neighborhood or see who built that statue that you’re staring at…

Now stop dreaming, you’re not a sci-fi nerd anymore! This is happening now…And Augmented Reality App space can already count on big investors.

USC and Nokia have partner to work on the next frontier of AR. “While there is no limit on future applications for augmented reality experiences on mobile devices, the enabling technologies behind complex augmented reality are still in the research stages,” said USC professor Ulrich Neumann of the Computer Science Department in the Viterbi School of Engineering. 

Apple too has patented its own AR technology for mobiles. And a new breed of start-ups is betting on the future of AR for mobile devices.

Dutch start-up SPRXmobile, is one of them. Its cell phone browser Layar, is an app for Android phones that provides information about points of interest as you’re seeing them: real estate listings, job posts and reviews.

Unfortunately you can not get this app on your iPhones or in the US. Apple resistance to making its live video feed API public, has hindered the roll-out of Layar and many similar AR apps on the mainstream iPhone platform. A few companies have  protested and signed a petition.

The revolution that AR can usher has not been stopped though, and sooner or later we will start interacting in a totally different way: with content, with the environment that surrounds us, with brands. As an artist you could offer apps to interact during your live gigs (sell your music or send a personal playlist or card to your fans with links to videos or to your site).As a end-user you could point to a movie poster and download reviews, find the closest theater, buy a ticket, maybe get one for free with a 3D coupon on your phone, and that is what Nokia’s Point and Find will soon allow you to do. As a retailer or brand you could offer information and promotions when they are most relevant (in-store and on-pack like Lego’s digital box); learning could become pervasive instead of compartmentalized into the books experience…

Watch these videos for some amazing inspiration and start getting ready for a new era….

Nearest Tube

The first version of the app, which has already been submitted to Apple, will cost $1.79 per city and will support two U.S. cities to start — New York and San Francisco. Apps for London, Tokyo and Berlin have also been submitted.

TwittARound

You hold the phone in front of you and then get a view of tweets based on their location data — as long as the user has decided to share that information. TwittARound isn’t available on the App Store yet

Virtual Graffiti

Amazing 3-D mapping application today that captures the real world and then lets artists draw graffiti all over it. Check VentureBeat coverage for more details.

TAT Augmented ID

This utilizes facial recognition software (supplied by Polar Rose) to visualize the digital identities of those around you.

Zagat

The latest application from NRU and Zagat for Android phones that finds restaurants and bars near you.

Wikitude

Austrian company Mobilizy launched Wikitude, an augmented reality browser based on the Android platform using information from Wikipedia, user-generated recommendations from Qype and the photo-sharing community Panoramio. It is a travel guide that can annotate landmarks and mountains.

At Wimbledon this year, Mobilizy worked with I.B.M. to develop an application for the T-Mobile G1 phone that displayed real-time information about matches in progress, as well as dining and transportation options for fans.

Recommended Readings

Game Alfresco Blog

Kicking Reality Up A Notch – NYT

Startups looking to make money by enhancing reality- VentureBeat

The Experience Revolution: How Augmented Reality is about to change how you live, advertise and brand- Simon Mainwaring

Augmented Reality On iphone Delayed, But Hardly Prevented – ThinkArtificially

AR Consortium

Last week, TRVSDJAM, the combined force of Travis Barker and DJ-AM, released their newest mixtape via Twitter, offering a free download of their newest mixtape in exchange for a tweet.

By tweeting “Download the new #trvsdjam mixtape ‘Fix Your Face Vol. 2 – Coachella 09′ in exchange for one tweet! http://twitter.trvsdjam.com/”, tweeters receive a free download via an application built by Culture Jam Labs.

As you can see in the pre-populated tweet, a special hashtag – #trvsdjam – is included in the twit, with the goal of making it a top trending topic on Twitter.

A brilliant and innovative use of Twitter as a Marketing Platform.

How did the campaign go?

Travis Barker and DJ AM have a combined 230k+ followers on Twitter.

By looking at TweetMeme it appears that so far 12,350 have retweeted the message. That translates into a 5% conversion rate.

The Twist chart shows the trends over the last few days. Clearly there was a peak as soon as the twit was broadcast, then the buzz quickly dried out.

So how do you measure the success of such a campaign?

-Buzz: the story definitely picked the interest of the music community and the social media one. The coverage includes big names as Hypebot,  MusicAlly, ProHipHop, TechCrunch, Mashable, and the list could go on…just try googling it.

-TwitterBuzz: the initial twit reached an audience of 230,000, the combined followers of Travis and DJ AM. It was re-twitted roughly 12,500 times. Assuming the average number of followers is still 70 as stated in a January poll,that translates into a reach of close to 900k users! Not trivial for an operation that probably costed the two musicians less than $5k (the development of the app).  According to Twitterholic, a Twitter tool that keeps tracks of your followers, both Travis and DJ AM kept growing their “followership” but at a rate that is pretty much in their average for the last few weeks. So this doesn’t seem to be a secondary byproduct of the initiative, but probably it wasn’t in the plans either.

-Conversions/Sales: as stated before, conversions could be measured against the total number of followers at a 5% rate or against the total reach, at a about 1.5%. How many of those downloaders were already followers? How many non-followers? How many were real fans? How many of those downloads will translate into new fans that attend live performance and buy the artist’s music? Will they be able to keep messaging to those users? Send them a follow-up?

These seem to be legitimate questions, and it’s up to each musician to gauge the success of his own initiative based on his goals.

Early Twitter conversations were tagged as life-casting and mind-casting, because early adopters were mainly geeks. But always more and more musicians are jumping on board, embracing the potential of Twitter as a marketing tool and new medium, what I would rather call a “FanCasting” because it is not really about sharing your personal life neither your knowledge. It is more about building and nurturing the Tribe of your True Fans, as brillinatly explained by Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin.

There are plenty of examples of musicians who use Twitter to connect with their fans and engage them, offer free music,  twitt a live show.  And many examples of companies supporting and educating artists in this new effort: TopSpin, ArtistsHouse and Plugola are just the first who come to mind.

To conclude heres An inspirational video from a few months back: Steve Lawson interviewed by Andrew Dubber

Steve Lawson from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

The annual San Francisco Music Tech Summit collects experts and entrepreneurs dealing with the ways technology is transforming the music industry.

A few highlights from this year’s edition gathered throughout the blogo/twittershepere:

-A RIVER OF (SMARTER) DATA

Digital music is still in its infancy. There’s definitely more than playlists, music in the cloud and artist pages. And a few innovative companies promise to have the answer.

-Say good-bye to editorial picks and dummy collaborative filtering. The future is a gigantic “music brain” that is fed by the massive river of unstructured information that is the Internet in a continuous learning process.

At the Music Recommendation panel, the Boston-based EchoNest demoed its product which spiders millions of blog posts, playlists and forums and draws from both the sonic analysis and text mentions to create smarter recommendations. The much-hyped Spotify will be soon deploying the EchoNest engine through its Expand Playlist feature.  Paul Lamere blog post is a recommended read for a better understanding of the engine’s ins and outs.

A different way to tackle the issue of discovery comes from theSixtyone with its Digg-style platform.

-BandMetrics

What are people talking about and what are they saying? Can the stream of data be analyzed to help bands improve their online presence and be used a prediction engine?

BandMetrics is trying to crack the nut. It is still a beta but the promise is alluring: using semantic, it aims to provide the tools to track the dissemination of, and sentiments towards, your music online. It demo’ed its product to the attendees of the summit and announced the release of a new music data exchange format.

-A SOCIAL EXPERIENCE: CONNECTING BANDS WITH FANS. IPHONE AND MOBILE

There has never been more opportunity for musicians to take control of their careers. Recording and career promoting technologies are now in the hands of the artist. At the same time, there is lots of competition out there among artists.

ILike brand new syndication platform, demoed at the conference, is meant as a tool to help artists’ marketing and distribution efforts. It allows them to update tour dates or band photos on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Bebo, Hi5, etc., from a single dashboard. iLike also allows artists to create and submit iPhone Apps for their band using a template powered by iLike.

Mobile was obivously a hot topic. Pandora’s CEO boasted some amazing metrics from its mobile experience: 5 million users through the Iphone and counting 18/20k new ones every day.

The bottom line  perfectly summatized by Boothism in his blog post

• Social networking can be an effective tool, but it’s not the Holy Grail. You should have a plan before going in and be active with your network-respond to fans, answer questions, interact and be fun! On the flipside, more and more bands and brands are hiring “community managers” to manage their online presence.

• Bands cant depend on the technology, the labels or anyone to control their careers, they have to take control themselves.  It’s a scary prospect for a lot of creative folks, but with the industry the way it is, not knowing your audience and your business model=yes, the soupline.

• By taking control of their careers many more musicians will be able to eat and live comfortably off their music, but we’ll likely see a decline in super mega ultra obnoxiously rich rock stars.

-BUSINESS MODELS?

TopSpin Ian Rogers claims that given a reason to buy, fans want to and will pay for premium content and services. Initial data, gathered in the beta phase ,prove that the average transaction value goes all the way up to a  $22 and in one recent case, 84% of the paying users opted for the premium tier price over the lower one.

But why wait for customers to come to you and chose whether they want to pay and for what. Griffin’s Choruss project pushes for a forced subscription model where college students are “volontueering” a monthly fee for p2p activity. The legal aspects of the project are still obscure, as well as how the indie and unsigned bands could participate to it

A BLANK CD

Producer Danger Mouse and rocker Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse have decided to go against EMI legal threats and release their new CD, Dark Night of the Souls, as a blank CD  reading, “For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.” The CD comes with a book of photos provided by film-maker David Lynch.

The album, which has been one of the most hotly anticipated albums of 2009, features Iggy Pop, Black Francis (of the Pixies), the Flaming Lips, Jason Lytle, James Mercer (of the Shins), and Julian Casablancas (of the Strokes) and others all contributing original material.

It is available for free streaming on NPR

WILCO

Wilco on Wednesday began streaming its new album, “Wilco (The Album),” in its entirety from its Web site.

The band believes that hardcore fans will pre-order the new album
regardless, or attend its live show later this
year. Wilco also asked users who have downloaded the record illegally to
donate to Chicago-area charity the Inspiration Corporation as penance.

It’s StoreMania again. This time thanks to RIM.

At CTIA, the new Blackbery App World was announced. The store has hundreds of apps available at launch, and RIM says it expects around a thousand to be available in its first week. Like Apple’s store, RIM’s offers both free and paid apps that download directly to your device.

The Blackbery Store has a nice inteface, but some oddities. The main one is that it is only available for relatively recent BlackBerry models–the ones with trackballs, starting with the Pearl which means that millions of people with older models can’t use the app store.

Besides the details, what’s interesting is that as for the IPhone, RIM plans to focus its Store on Music. RIM’s president Mike Lizaridis pitched the Store in his CTIA keynote by pointing out that not only is it sponsoring U2’s upcoming world tour, but there’s a ton of music applications: Slacker, Pandora and Shazam, iheartradio and Will.i.am’s DipDiv. RIM has also secured an exclusive with Ticketmaster, which allows people to buy tickets to shows. In addition, BlackBerry is  supporting both Windows Media Player and iTunes to allow people to get songs on to the device and is rolling out Bluetooth devices that are plugged into your car or home stereo, so you can listen to your music on your BlackBerry without having to dock it.

It didn’t take long for the Iphone App Store to become a paradigm shifter in the music industry and mobile entertainment space.

A few milestones from the last few months

-Pink! launches a branded Iphone app, FunHouse, to promote her new album. The app is sort of bare-bobe, with 30-second previews of songs from the album, photos, news and a discography and obviously direct links to buy Pink’s back catalog from the iTunes Store.

-SnowPatrol follow with the release a 3-D interactive booklet, a very artsy one with lyrics and videos.

-David Cook sells his single LightOn as an app with a virtual lighter, for double its normal Itunes price

-it’s then the turn of the Nine Inch Nails with their edition of the Guitar Hero-like app for the iPhone and iPod Touch which lets you tap along to 13 songs from The Slip and Ghosts I-IV on the famous game’s three note tracks. It costs $4.99 in the US, and ties in with a competition for NIN gig tickets and a signed guitar.

-Innovation continues with the Deadmau5’s iPhone app ($3 on iTunes) that lets you load any of 10 quantized Deadmau5 tracks into a dual-track playback engine, which works  like a professional DJ software while being easy enough for anyone to experiment with.

-In February The President of the United States of America release four albums as an iPhone application that costs just $3. The app includes the four albums whose rights are owned by the band, as well as rare recordings, live tracks and demos. They’re all streamable playlists – which doesn’t come as a surprise since their singer is also a mobile music veteran, now VP of Business Development at Melodeo (the maker of nuTsie a software application that can stream your iTunes playlists to any web-connected PC, your Blackberry and your Facebook profile).

-It’s then the turn of free apps for Lady Gaga, the Pussycat Dolls, Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, the All American Rejects, and Keri Hilson. The apps include video content from the artists’ Kyte channels, as well as branding and advertising, click-through links to buy music and merchandise, a built-in RSS reader to pull in news updates, and community features like chat, comments and sharing. Kyte has a partnership with both Sony Music and Universal Music Group.

As predicted by Wired, the AppStore has changed the way music is merchindised and bands interact with their fans. RIM is following and for sure it doesnt want to be just a follower. So more is to be expected.