From a company called Blue Whale Systems Ltd., makers of a free mobile push application called BlueWhaleMail, there now comes a new push application: Facebook. Via the BlueWhaleMail app, you can be notified of your friends' status updates, wall posts, and news items. You also have the ability to send pokes, create wall posts, and email messages. The notifications you receive are displayed on your phone as soon as they as show up on Facebook...and there's no need for you to have to browse to the Facebook web site to either view them or respond.
Anyone who has the iPhone or iPod Touch can tell you that one of the best things about owning the device is the ability to add apps from iTunes App Store. Although many of the apps that we talk about here are the free ones like the social networking apps, the instant messaging apps, and the blogging apps, it's the paid apps that are making the store a financial success.
Music-based social networking site Imeem is getting a lot of the right kind of press currently, based on strong traffic growth and key deals with record labels. We last wrote about Imeem in March, when they launched a developer platform that enabled read/write access to user information and more. As we explained then, Imeem is a site where users can listen to licensed streaming music, as well as upload music and blog about it - all for free.
As SfGate.com reported tonight, Imeem is the third-largest social network in the United States after MySpace and Facebook; and it's now the No. 1 streaming music site in the US.
At last100 [a ReadWriteWeb Network blog], we love the iPhone as much as anyone. Yet we remain convinced that for all of Apple's innovation - especially on the mobile browsing front and major improvements in usability - the iPhone in its current incarnation will have significant but limited appeal.
There's only one iPhone, and in the smartphone market, one size doesn't fit all.
The TrendsSpotting blog has produced a thorough overview of Online China, collected from a variety of sources such as Universal McCann, CNNIC, Pew Internet, Hitwise, comScore and more. The report focus on three key themes: 1) China as an online leader, 2) the competitive landscape in Search, IM & Web 2.0, and 3) Business in Online China. TrendsSpotting says that these are "key indicators of the ongoing development of the dynamic Internet market in China." It's a great report, embedded below. You can also view it on Slideshare.
You've probably been in those meetings too: someone mentions a cool, "edgy" (uh-oh) youth-oriented campaign, and someone else says "video", and then someone else completes the axis of online evil with the word "viral".
It's been said over and over again, but maybe one more time would help: "viral" can be encouraged, it can be prayed for, but it can't be engineered. Your only hope is to create engaging, compelling content, and tell a terrific story... and then hope.
There's an interesting discussion going around about the possibility of T-Mobile taking some cues from Apple with an app store of their own. Instead of offering it to a specific phone, T-Mobile wants to take things one step further and open up a platform for all of their mobile devices. Who can blame them? Their current mobile store is equivalent to a mess when compared with Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. However what is it that makes the App Store so appealing and will more carriers follow suit?
If you've ever wondered what the headlines at the top of your Gmail inbox are, they're called "web clips", not ads. Gmail has a preselected amount of news headlines from various sites across the web that you can customize to have displayed across the top of your inbox as you check your mail. Now you're no longer stuck with the default selections and can add your own selections.
It's the weekend, so time for our review the past week's web tech news, reviews and analysis on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we showed you how to create a custom search engine using social bookmarks, found out why online video is set for a boost at the Olympics, analyzed a new mainstream RSS Reader, and checked in with Windows Live. On the trends side we answered Mozilla's call for visions of the future of the Web, also looked into the future of blogging, checked out what big brands are doing with social media for the Olympics, and analyzed the gender of the Semantic Web (yes you read that correctly).
Your mother's calling - and there are shoes on sale.
A new study released this week in the UK found that 80% of respondents said they were "happy to have [15 second pre-roll] video ads if it meant they could watch free video" on their phones. Almost nothing's shocking in the wacky world of mobile advertising-to be, but one thing we found absolutely horrifying in the discussion around the study was this: incoming-call ads.
