Category Archives: Apple
Apple may have to pull Pokerstars iOS app
Rating: Aussie report does features a Mr Xenophon. Hmmm
We’re pretty sure that this story isn’t intended as a joke but on April 1st it is hard to tell. Anyway, according to reports which first surfaced in the Canberra Times, an iOS poker app may be illegal in Australia. Called PokerStars, it appears to let players to bet real money. Its existence has angered one Australian senator, Richard di Natale, who is quoted as saying that Apple has “an obligation to take down apps that are against Australian law.” He also claimed that people in Australia are not allowed to lawfully play online poker under the Interactive Gambling Act. Continue reading
Hey, you get off of my iCloud
Rating: GoMo reader not too happy with male mail feature
The first must-have accessory for any keen iPhone user, it seems, is a personal computer. Have you ever tried to active an iPhone without one? Anyway, the second disadvantage to not possessing some kind of PC or Mac is personal data backup. One GoMo News reader has discovered this to his cost since he is in the habit of frequently losing his handset or dropping it into a sink (loo), etc. Which is a pain because he kept on losing all of his contacts and email. No problems, we told him. Just make sure you set up the iCloud on your smartphone next time you use it. Except we hadn’t realised just how useless the iCloud Mail feature is. Continue reading
Apple’s iWatch could face patent challenges
Rating: More than just a legal dispute over names
GoMo News has already speculated in a previous story – ‘Apple faces major challenges over iWatch‘, that the iconic US company (Apple) is facing seriously technological challenges. If it truly is determined to introduce a digital watch (iWatch. In our view the only real path to follow is to use low power Bluetooth between a watch and a mobile device – iPhone, iPod or iPad. What we hadn’t appreciated before, however, was just how far an Italian manufacturer of digital watches, i’m Watch has actually got. Continue reading
Guest Post: The future for iAd
by Sultan Khan, CEO with AdMaxim
When Apple unveiled iAd back in 2010, it seemed the mobile advertising equivalent of Nirvana. Here was state of the art technology that enabled advertisers to create beautiful in-app rich media ads to target a ready-made community of iOS device users. Three years on and the picture is more complicated. The short answer as to whether iAd has a future has to be “Yes.” iAd has a number of rich interactive ad types and is backed by Apple which already has a sizeable footprint so it will always be attractive to advertisers. Continue reading
101: Direct operator Billing/Direct Carrier Billing
Sponsored by txtNation
Within the mobile and cellular worlds, there’s a growing appreciation of the true worth of DoB (Direct operator Billing) or Direct Carrier Billing as it is often referred to in North America. Essentially DoB is an easy way of making payments to purchase goods or service by placing the charge against a prepay or postpaid mobile phone’s bill. Mobile network operators (MNOs) and MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) alike see Direct operator Billing as a means to regain ground lost to the online majors such as Google (Play); Apple (iTunes); and Amazon in mobile commerce (m-commerce). This is especially true now that MNOs and MVNOs have come to accept that their own portals cannot compete effectively with the online giants. We suggest you contact a DoB specialist (such as txtNation) for a full list of territories in which DoB/DOC is offered. 1 Continue reading
Apple’s WifiSLAM purchase impacts LBS advertising
Rating: Wif-fi best for indoor location
It appears that the major players in the mobile sector have spotted something of a big flaw in the potential for location based advertising. Once you have enticed smartphone owners inside a mall, how do you deliver precision messages to them? After all, it’s extremely unlikely that the GPS receivers inside their phones have direct line of sight with a satellite. For some time now, there have been ‘intelligent’ versions of GPS technology such as A-GPS (Assisted GPS). But the real answer lies with w-i-fi top up which is why Apple has recently acquired the indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM. Continue reading
Windows Store apps pass magic 50,000 mark
Bunging developers $100 for every app made seems to be working
Microsoft’s initiative to pay developers $100 for every app they make for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 looks to be paying off, with 50,000 programs now available. The landmark number was passed at the weekend [March 2013], according to industry watcher MetroStore Scanner, which says that an average of 279 apps have been developed daily in March alone, reversing what had been a rapid decline. Continue reading
Smart devices could backfire on Apple & Google
Rating: Big watch is watching you
There’s been a great deal of buzz surrounding the latest outing which Googles’ ‘Glasses’ got at the recent SXSW show in Texas. GoMo News can fully understand the benefit of a ‘heads-up’ display on a set of glasses which would provide a very user friendly UI linked to some kind of mobile device. But the latest reports claim that the glasses will start to capture images using a forward facing camera. Google apparently hasn’t learnt a thing from the furore surrounding Street View. Invasion of privacy is written all over it. There’s also been some very detrimental publicity surrounding cameras in watches which won’t help Apple’s iWatch. Continue reading
Apple faces major challenges over an iWatch
Rating: It will have to use Bluetooth 4.0 to succeed
There have been so many stories speculating about a ‘forthcoming’ smart watch from Apple, that you would have thought that the iconic device manufacturer had actually announced the iWatch. Which it hasn’t, of course. However, the idea is by no means new and ironically Apple’s arch rival – Microsoft dabbled in smart watches as long ago as 1995. Does anybody else remember the Timex DataLink watch? here at GoMo Towers we still have two examples and were always big fans. Where Microsoft went horribly wrong was with its SPOT ( Smart Personal Objects Technology) watch. This utilised unused parts of the FM spectrum to receive information such as the weather. The big mistake here was that a SPOT watch couldn’t be used worldwide. If an iWatch is to succeed it must have global appeal. Continue reading
Apple in hissy fit over challenge from Samsung’s new Galaxy
Samsung’s latest iPhone challenger has spurred Apple into an unprecedented attack on its South Korean rival, again slighting its new S4 Galaxy offering and sending out emails to its own customers espousing the benefits of its products.
In what looks to be further proof that Apple is rattled by the threat to its smartphone dominance by Samsung, Phil Schiller – the Californian giant’s marketing boss – has also set up a web page talking up the iPhone. Continue reading
Where are the stalker apps when you need them
Rating: GoMo News fails to track down Abba’s Agnetha Fältskog
About three years ago there was a big scare that the typical smartphone had mutated into a celebrity stalker’s weapon of choice. A typical headlines was ‘iPhone apps could encourage celebrity stalkers’ written by our old chum Jack Schofield in The Guardian here back in 2010. So when a young reader begged us to tell her what app she needed to try to track down ex-Abba singer, Agnetha Fältskog in London. We thought there’d be no problem helping her out. Wrong. Most of the apps have disappeared. So have some of the web sites, too. It might work for Justin Bieber fans but anyone less famous – forget it. Continue reading
Chance remark by China’s Lenovo boss sends BlackBerry’s shares soaring
And it’s not the first time Lenovo has hinted of a takeover
Takeover speculation sent shares in handset maker BlackBerry 14 per cent higher on Nasdaq last night [11th March 2013], despite analysts pouring cold water on the rumours. The surge in BlackBerry’s stock price came after Yang Yuanqing, CEO of giant Chinese PC maker Lenovo, told a newspaper that his company could be interested in buying the troubled Canadian manufacturer at some point in the future. Continue reading
Guest Post: The Samsung Juggernaut – will it keep being the Next Is what?
by Rupam Gogoi who works with FindYogi
Remember the Samsung ads which carried the ‘Next is what?’ as an advertisement ending monologue? Well, Samsung has moved in the direction that its ads promised it would move. Next is what wasn’t just a tagline or an ad slogan with Samsung, It has been the mantra of the direction in which its products have moved, most noticeably in the last five years. It was the trailer to what its products would soon be in the mobile industry and market. In the ensuing years of the next is what slogan, Samsung went on to launch its most popular products in the Samsung Galaxy S series and the Samsung Galaxy Note series. Continue reading
Digital rewards drive massive CTR hikes says Ifeelgoods
Rating: Campaigns on iAds are generating CTRs as much as 12x higher
Ifeelgoods is claiming that its digital promotions platform is providing substantially increased click-through rates (CTRs) when using mobile as a marketing channel. In particular, it says that mobile digital rewards promotional campaigns on Apple’s iAds (run via its platform) are generating CTRs as much as 12 times greater than standard discount offers. What Ifeelgoods has seen in its iAds campaigns is that users click on promotions offering digital rewards (such as credits) massively more than they click on promotions offering standard discounts (like 20 per cent off). Continue reading
