Joe Murphy – Librarian, Innovator

New data from comScore shows that there are now 104 million smart phones in America, Google’s Android operating system now boats 50% of the platform share, Apple claims just under 30% and is 3^rd in mobile subscribers, and mobile content usage is up cross the board.

Press release – “comScore Reports February 2012 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share”

comScore reports that:

• “234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices” in the last three months
• There are now 104 million smart phones in America, representing a 14% rise since last November.

Platform Share:

• 50% platform share for Google’s operating system, this is up 17% over the last year ago.
• Apple can claim 30.2 % platform share, up 5% since last year.
• RIM % Microsoft each lost 3.5 and 1.3 percentage points in platform share.

OEM Market Share:

For first time, Apple reached the third spot in device market share behind Samsung and LG.

Mobile Usage:

Each area of mobile usage (Text message, Downloading apps, using mobile browser, social networking, playing mobile games, listening to music) was up over last three months.

Here are the percentage rates of total mobile users who did the following activities on their devices.

• Sent Text Messages – 74.8%

• Downloaded and Used apps – 49.5%
• Mobile browser – 49.2%
• Social networking – 36.1%
• Mobile gaming – 32.3%
• Music  - 24.8%

All of this data is from comScore’s report.

Whew there is a lot of technology news today. Here are some highlights and what they mean for our industries.

There is little I love more than art museums. So this story made my day:

The free Google Art Project expands and adds Google+ integration. Now includes “artwork from 151 museums in 40 countries.” See the Mashable story and the Google Blog post.  Also: extended search features (”Using completely new tools, called Explore and Discover, you can find artworks by period, artist or type of artwork, displaying works from different museums around the world.”), image quality of Street View inside museums has been improved, and viewers can now build a personalized art gallery from the full collection with the My Gallery feature (Pinterestish?)  The Google Art Project is on Google Plus.

iPhone Outsells Competitors:

The iPhone on AT&T and Sprint is outselling its smart phone competitors “and selling at roughly equal volume to all Android smartphones at Verizon.” http://allthingsd.com/20120402/iphone-outselling-all-other-smartphones-combined-at-sprint-and-att/?mod=mailchimp#

Timehop adds boards:

Timehop adds Pinterest-like boards feature where you can favorite your year old social memories.  “Social Media Memory App Timehop Adds “Pinterest for Your Past” http://allthingsd.com/20120402/social-media-memory-app-timehop-adds-pinterest-for-your-past/?mod=mailchimp Two major web trends colliding: self curation of social activity. I would personally rather see a “Pin this memory to Pinterest” feature, but will be trying out this new option.  This quote reveals the importance to us: ““Basically, we’re making Timehop more social and interactive and turning it from a purely consumption experience (read a daily email) into more of a place for social interactions on the Timehop website,” co-founder Jonathan Wegener said.” The strategy of transitioning consumptive content to service oriented models.

Amazon and Content Stores:

“Amazon testing in-app purchases, enters app store battle with Google & Apple” From VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/03/amazon-in-app-purchases/ Will compliment Kindle Fire as a content driver. Ironically, the Amazon App store will also charge 30% for in app purchases, the same rate that caused such a guffaw when Apple instituted it, and which drove Amazon to release its Kindle Cloud Reader to avoid such fees.

Mobile and Social Payments:

Belgium start up Paycento uses Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin to make quick one click online payments. See this Reuters story.  These accounts can be associated with a Paycento account, and uses the easy model of the social share and utilizes a micro payments model as opposed to subscription based access.   “We want to make it economical for the merchant, for the publisher to offer something at any price point,” says Paycento’s founder, Pieter Dubois, revealing the paywall model provided by this product.

Google buys a payments technology company, TxVia, which focuses on the prepaid cards segment.

From AllThingsD This move may help address the struggles Google Wallet has faced.

Starbucks Teams up with Google Offers for Promotion:

Starbucks to Provide $5 Off $10 Gift Cards via Google Offers http://mashable.com/2012/04/03/starbucks-gift-card-google-offers/ Google Offers is Google’s daily deal service that is included in Google Wallet

Biggest Telescope, Most Data:

The science nerd in me enjoyed this news story about the Square Kilometer Array, the largest radio telescope ever built, meant to “look farther out into the universe – and farther back in time – than any other instrument.”

And the librarian in me appreciates the challenges and opportunities of managing such huge amounts of data. “The instrument will generate an exabyte of data every day – that would be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes – more than twice the information sent around the internet on a daily basis and 100 times more information than the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) produces.” http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/what-to-do-with-1000000000000000000-bytes-of-astronomical-data-per-day/

Online Piracy is Down, but so too are Sales.

“French anti-P2P law cuts back pirating, but music sales still decline.” Arstechnica story.

Slideshare integrates with Google+

Slideshare announced in its email digest today and on its blog that the social slideshow and document platform, has opened up to Google Plus Hangouts with an app. Techcrunch story.

Path updates Further Address Security:

You may have noticed an update to the Path update today; here is part of what the update includes. http://blog.path.com/post/20371369060/protecting-user-privacy-path-2-1-1 http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/02/path-hash-contact-data/

Facebook Search:

Former Google employee leads Facebook search team. “Facebook Delves Deeper Into Search” from BloombergBusinessweek

Gathering analytics for email marketing

BrandMyMail / recently extended from Gmail to also now encompass Outlook, also now includes some social metrics. Might help with tracking and assessing library marketing initiatives. From Mashable

In the Discussion of Socially Interactive eBooks:

“Is making books social a good thing or a bad thing?” “Every form of media has migrated online and benefited from conversation.” – Clive Thompson.   Thompson is right that “being able to see what other people have said about a book and to talk about it and respond to it is going to be a freakishly huge boon for books”” because a true value of knowledge containers is their ability to spark conversation and facilitate social knowledge synthesis.

This is key as libraries adapt to their ongoing evolution as facilitator of knowledge creation.

In Location:

Foursquare partners with Delivery.com to allow users to check in to a restaurant that they are ordering delivery from. http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/03/delivery-com-foursquare/ Maybe Foodspotting could do similar next so I can Foodspot and give credit to where I got the food from?

Not just articles, but Video is also marked to be “read” later:

For Read It Later (an Instapaper competitor), video content as opposed to text is often bookmarked.  Read It Later’s success with video came in part from video bookmarking and in-app streaming features.  From Gigaom See the Read it Later blog post. “Video saves in Read It Later are up 138%, and YouTube is our most-saved domain; The median length of a video saved in Read It Later is nearly 30 minutes”

Pinterest Shake up:

My favorite thing about the shake up at Pinterest we have been hearing about with cofounder Paul Sciarra’s departure is that his new position at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is “entrepreneur-in-residence.” Libraries would do well to create such positions.  http://www.dailydot.com/news/cofounder-paul-sciarra-officially-leaves-pinterest/

Tumblr joins Facebook Timeline:

“Sharing your posts on Facebook just got a billion times better.” http://staff.tumblr.com/post/20360231254/you-know-whats-cooler-than-a-million-times-better Mashable story

And last but definitely not least – Instagram for Android is finally available:

Download the Instagram app for Android on Google Play http://instagr.am/android/ More from Gigaom http://gigaom.com/mobile/oh-snap-instagram-for-android-is-here/ “Instagram’s website is currently receiving 10 million page views each day, adding up to some 300 million page views per month, co-founder Kevin Systrom told GigaOM.” http://gigaom.com/2012/01/06/instagram-website-traffic-stats-300-million-monthly-views/

Instagram now has around 30 million users.  Impressive numbers for a mobile first and up until now iOS only, service. I want to see what beautiful pictures you Droid users add to Instagram.

Some brief pieces of technology news for today, Monday April 2, 2012.

1/2 of US households own an Apple product, Consumer Reports list iPad as top tablet, iPhone & Android users form separate tribes, Zynga & Draw Something, camera apps primer, Pinterest news and uses.

New iPad very well received:

“98 Percent of New iPad Owners Satisfied With Device” http://allthingsd.com/20120402/98-percent-of-new-ipad-owners-satisfied-with-device/ “The new iPad’s high-resolution Retina display was cited by 75 percent of those polled as the device’s best feature. Long battery life and 4G LTE capability were also highly rated…” Report came from this ChangeWave Survey http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2012/ipad_20120402.html

From Consumer Reports –“ New Apple iPad tops our tablet Ratings.” http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2012/04/new-apple-ipad-tops-our-tablet-ratings.html

In related news – “Half of U.S. households own at least one Apple product” http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/tech/gaming-gadgets/household-apple-products/index.html

Apple devices dominate in cities, Android in rural areas. “How Big Cities Can Lead to Small Thoughts” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577307943076491220.html “users of iPhones and Android devices constitute two distinct “tribes,” with far more contact among members of each tribe than between tribes.”

Zynga and Draw Something maker:

After Zynga’s purchase of Draw Something maker OMGPOP, the game developer has seen a large increase in use. “OMGPOP Draws Zynga’s Daily User Traffic Up By 25%” http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/31/omgpop-draws-up-zyngas-traffic-a-25-increase-in-total-daily-users/ Draw Something is bigger than Zynga’s most popular Facebook games.

Mobile photo apps:

“A Crash Course In Cool Camera Apps” http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/01/techcrunch-primer-a-crash-course-in-cool-camera-apps/ A primer on mobile photo sharing apps, one of the biggest mobile trends for the last year. I wrote about how to use Instagram in library settings in my upcoming book.

In search -

“Serge has built a mobile search engine that uses voice, music, vision, barcode, QR code, location, augmented reality and video recognition technology to connect users directly with brands.”  http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/the-serge-sdk-can-find-almost-any-brand-you-shoot-with-your-smartphone/ Sticking with trend of using the image element of the viewed object to connect to its digital components, as QR Codes do.

In Pinterest news:

“Flash Sales Giant Gilt To Offer Special Discounts To Pinterest Pinners” http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/flash-sales-giant-gilt-to-offer-special-discounts-to-pinterest-pinners/

“Gilt Groupe Samples Group Buying Model on Pinterest” “Pin it to Unlock” promotion http://mashable.com/2012/04/02/gilt-kids-pinterest-promotion/

“Pinterest Becomes Sales Driver for Major Home Goods Store” http://mashable.com/2012/04/02/pinterest-wayfair/

“Need More YouTube Views? Try Pinterest” http://mashable.com/2012/02/28/pinterest-youtube/

Some bits of technology news impacting us today, March 30, 2012.

New pay wall model from Google, Smart phones hit 50% penetration, cost saving with tablets in class, Google selling its own tablets, keep an eye on Path, HTML5 mobile search platform, & more

50% of US mobile phone owners now have a smart phone.

Report from Nielsen reveals that Smartphone penetration has reached half of the US market. “More than two-thirds of those who acquired a new mobile device in the last three months chose a Smartphone over a feature phone” (Nielsen).

New pay wall model – the survey question? Neat.

Google unveils a new model for monetizing online content that requires readers to fill out brief surveys before reading proprietary content.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/29/google-consumer-surveys/
http://mashable.com/2012/03/30/google-survey-paywall/
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-google-hopes-new-consumer-surveys-can-substitute-for-paywalls/
http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home

Costs per student for tablets in classrooms will in fact be lower than that for traditional classrooms.

But some of those savings may take time. The Department of Education and FCC held a dialog with technology companies and publishers to discuss the costs saved with a switch to tablet friendly classrooms with some neat findings and projections.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/fcc-hosts-digital-learning-summit/11211
http://allthingsd.com/20120329/why-tablets-in-the-classroom-could-save-schools-3-billion-a-year/?mod=ATD_iphone
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-chairman-digital-textbooks-all-students-five-years

Google may begin selling tablets of its own.Remember its Nexus One smart phone?

WSJ Article

Cannot disregard Path.

Path, the impressive mobile photo sharing turned life streaming app gets Spotify’s Head of Special Projects. This means more growth for Path, so keep this app on your radar. See my older post about Path – http://bit.ly/pathupdate
AllThingsD story

In mobile search

Give everything.me a try. This HTML5 mobile Web app provides personal and local search results
From Allthingsd