If you are over the vintage-ified look of Instagram, Hipstamatic or Disposable but too lazy to make your own card or just stop by Walgreens (or some other convenience store) to buy one plus a box of chocolates, do not worry. If you have an iPhone and a few minutes, you can create a multitude of awesome, cheesy and kinda adorable photos of you and your sweetie, whether that sweetie be in the form of a human, a cartoon cat or an inanimate object.
For better or worse, the digital revolution over the last 20 years has fundamentally changed the way people communicate. More precisely, the advent of the cellphone is one of the biggest changes in communication since the invention of the telegraph. People are now constantly connected wherever they go. It is easy to overlook that simple but profound fact.
Gone are the days where a husband and wife would go off to work and maybe talk once a day on the phone or when they arrive at home for dinner. Text messaging has change the very nature of relationships. A survey by mobile marketing app CheckPoints shows that 58% of people texted their significant other at least three times a day, while 25% texted 10 or more times a day. Talk about constant contact. Check out the infographic of CheckPoints' survey results below.
Google has taken an important first step towards finalizing its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Today the European Commission, the European Union's version of the Federal Trade Commission, approved the merger. The commission granted the approval, "mainly because it would not significantly modify the market situation in respect of operating systems and patents for these devices."
The rest of the regulatory chips should fall in line for Google and Motorola after E.U. approval. The merger still needs to be approved in the U.S., China, Israel and Taiwan, but the logic of the European Commission is sound. Motorola only took 2% of profits from the entire mobile industry last year. From an anti-trust perspective, Google could buy Sony Ericsson and LG and still not come anywhere near the combined market share of Samsung and Apple.
Update: The U.S. Department of Justice has also approved the acquisition. See below for details.
Google TV is supposed to be Android's entrance into your living room, the pioneering cusp of the "smart TV" revolution. It appears that it has been anything but. Since its release last year, only about 4,793,000 Google TV apps have been downloaded, according to Xyologic. While nearly five million downloads may seem like a success, six of those apps come pre-installed on Google TV devices, making up 92% of the ecosystem. Only 352,000 dedicated Android apps for Google TV have been downloaded.
While the idea of the smart TV is intriguing, consumers are still warming up to adoption. We expect that to change this year as more avenues for Internet-connected televisions become available and prices begin to fall. Google TV is just a small segment of the ecosystem with Apple TV, Roku, Boxee and Samsung all coming with solutions to connecting your living room to the Web.
2012 started with a flourish of new apps across iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The holiday season is the busiest time of year for app publishers but the follow up in January was equally impressive. That is a testament to the growing app ecosystem and the number of developers starting to program for mobile platforms. We take a look at some of our favorite new apps from last month below.
The app update section returns for the its fifth month and we found that fewer of our existing apps issued updates for new features or bug fixes than in months past. We also have a new treat in the Apps of the Month: a limited Staff Picks section where some of ReadWriteWeb's writers picked the apps they found most interesting during the month.
The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.
When Google announced that the Chrome browser would become its own operating system and run on netbooks, the thought around the tech community was that eventually Google would have to merge Chrome with Android. After all, what is the point of supporting two disparate mobile operating systems? The convergence has not yet occurred but may have taken a step further today as Google announced Chrome for Android available on devices running version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Chrome for Android is a win for everybody. Except, of course, most users. As of Google's latest Android platform numbers, only 1% of devices are running Ice Cream Sandwich. That will change as 2012 moves along with adoption accelerating from new device purchases and updates. Chrome for Android immediately becomes one of the go-to browsers on the platform, which is good for HTML5 development, reliability and security.
The rise of the app store has fundamentally changed the concept of software delivery. Gone are the days when zealous software companies sent users discs in the mail (oh, AOL, we remember you well) that ended up making better coasters than promotion. Many computers these days do not even ship with a CD-ROM drive and smartphones have never seen any type of physical downloads. The delivery mechanism of the application store is an often-overlooked revolution of the mobile era.
A Croatian startup named ShoutEm that provides a platform for iOS and Android app creation created a timeline infographic of the history of the mobile app store. Starting in 2008 with the advent of Apple's App Store, the game has fundamentally changed. Check it out below.
Mark Zuckerberg says he has always been reluctant to make Facebook all about the ads and less about the user experience. This is surprising, however, coming from a freshly minted billionaire who owns more than 25% of his own company and holds more than 50% of the voting power.
"Mark has an evangelical approach to advertising," Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Plc, the world's largest advertising agency told Reuters. "He sees Facebook as a vehicle to open up communication, not to monetize." Facebook's attitude toward advertising is finally changing. Users have started to notice, too. Today Facebook took that first step, claiming that sponsored stories for mobile will be coming "within weeks."
The growth of the mobile Web is on a steady rise. While pundits throw around words like "explosive" and "outrageous" the more precise word is probably "consistent." According to analytics firm StatCounter, users accessing the Web through mobile devices has almost doubled every year since 2009. In its latest report, StatCounter says that global Internet usage through mobile devices rose to 8.5%, nearly doubling the 2011 figure of 4.3%.
StatCounter's analytics only include cellphones, excluding tablets from the mix. The global leader in mobile Web use is Nokia at nearly 40% of usage. The firm believes that Nokia's global dominance is due to high penetration in emerging markets like India. Apple is a strong No. 2 globally, while leading use in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Microsoft could unveil a stand-alone Skype application for Windows Phone as soon as this month's Mobile Phone Congress, and Skype is expected to be standard on the mobile operating system when the company launches Windows Phone 8.
Skype was acquired by Microsoft in 2011 and a Skype client for Windows Phone had been promised by the end of last year. So far, Microsoft and its Skype unit have been quiet about the integration, but the Verge is reporting that company employees can now download a test version of Skype from the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Meanwhile, an internal Microsoft video that had been intended for executives at Nokia, is fueling more speculation about what features will be added to Windows Phone 8. Known by the codename Apollo, Windows Phone 8 is expected to be released sometime after the release of the Tango operating system, which is also expected at the Mobile Phone Congress.
