One of the biggest parts of Microsoft’s keynote back in Barcelona, during Mobile World Congress, was the fact that Windows Phone 7 Series would finally do what everyone had been wishing for: integrate Xbox LIVE. They did show a couple screens of the hubs and subsequent tiles, and what it would all look like by the time this holiday season rolls around, but we were missing the most important part. We needed to see it in action. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that time has come. But, what we’ve been presented with has taken things to a whole new level …
It looks like Google has decided against releasing new iPhone apps for the time being and has focused most of its mobile development efforts on web apps instead. While the Buzz web app is very good, however, it can’t quite rival the speed and comfort of using a native iPhone app. Fiam’s Buzzie is the first Buzz app for the iPhone ($1.99 – iTunes link) and even though it is still missing some features …
Mobile Roadie, the popular do-it-yourself platform that allows bands, celebrities and regular users to create iPhone apps without knowing how to program, just announced that it has now expanded its service to Google Android. With this new service, Mobile Roadie users can now create and manage both Android and iPhone apps simultaneously. Dolly Parton, Ashton Kutcher and Madonna are among today’s launch partners. A Mobile Roadie-based Taylor Swift app is also in the works.
Mobile Roadie is mostly targeted towards musicians, athletes, politicians, celebrities, blogs, conferences and venues, though you could also use the service to create your own vanity app …
The Windows Phone 7 news kind of threw us a bit this week. It had almost no mention about how it would serve the enterprise. It almost seemed like Microsoft had given up.
Now we are starting to see some reports about how Windows Phone 7 would fit for the mobile enterprise. And it makes us wonder. Will the Windows Phone 7 better serve the enterprise than the iPhone? …
Google Buzz could quickly become the most popular location-based service on the Internet. Not only does Buzz integrate itself into Gmail, which will give it a large mainstream user base, but Buzz also puts geolocation front and center on its mobile sites. In addition, the new Buzz layer in the Google Maps mobile interface makes it incredibly easy to find geotagged Buzz messages around you.
Twitter introduced its own geolocation API in August 2009, but very few users and developers actually use it today.
While location-based apps and services like Foursquare and Gowalla (which launched its own API today) have quickly grown in popularity, only 0.23% tweets currently include location data. Unlike Buzz, however, neither Twitter itself nor any of the popular Twitter client really put geolocation at the center of their applications …
Apple clarified rules for iPhone app developers on Friday, allowing them to serve advertising to users based on location — but only if the app uses the same location data to “provide beneficial information.”
This is good news for the advertiser community, because it means they’ll have some access to iPhone apps. It’s also good news for users, because they won’t be bombarded with location-based ads while using games, productivity tools, or other apps that don’t have anything to do with where they are. But they will encounter them while using apps that also use the location data to provide a desirable feature …
Location sharing social network Foursquare saw traffic to its site triple in the last two months since November, according to new numbers from traffic analyst firm Hitwise today. The service has seen unprecedented media coverage lately and is no doubt sending more updates to Facebook and Twitter, prompting the growth in visits back to Foursquare that Hitwise is measuring.
Foursquare announced a fascinating deal with Canadian newspaper chain Metro late last month that would deliver local editorial content to users depending on the locations they check-in from. We called that deal a sign that the era of location-as-platform has arrived …
Just a few days after releasing Firefox for the Nokia N900 handset, Mozilla just announced that it is also making good progress on an Android version of Firefox. According to Firefox developer Vladimir Vukićević, development of Android for Firefox is progressing quickly. While there are no plans for the release of an official alpha version just yet, Vukićević has already managed to compile and install an early version of Firefox for Android …
Currently, the Android version is still running the standard Firefox desktop user interface and not the Firefox Mobile/Fennec interface. According to Vukićević, this is meant to ensure that Firefox will work on any Android device, including those with larger screens …
