Leaders in the geo-targeting space include Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt (plus LooptStar). They are similar in many ways, but each offers a different twist on an increasingly familiar theme. They enable local businesses to find and attract consumers in new ways, such as offering coupons or special offers to regulars based on how many times they’ve come in. Like many start-ups, none have mastered the monetization aspect of mobile marketing, but there are clearly endless opportunities here.

In order to give people incentive to use the apps, various forms of social “rewards” are used that essentially turn exploring your city into a game. We are social creatures, and while some of these rewards may seem meaningless or frivolous, there is an attraction to them as they create an element of social status within communities. A large part of the appeal to people in large cities with lots of friends is to make sure you never miss the action, but I believe the jury is still out as to the real social value of this once the initial allure wears off a bit.

While this isn’t intended to be an in-depth review, I’ll discuss some interesting distinctions of each:

Foursquare – I’ve been on Foursquare for about a year now. It’s been amazing to watch the database of local places grow since it depended on the community to enter locations. Now it’s rare that I go somewhere that isn’t already there. The person who frequents a location the most becomes the “mayor” and some establishments give benefits for that position. You collect virtual badges for achieving certain things, like being in a place with at least 50 other people (Swarm) or hitting 4 clubs in one night (Crunked). You get the idea. Foursquare made a gamble by creating a new database of locations and friends, but it seems to have paid off. The most compelling thing about this is the special offers that are based on your location. When you check in somewhere, the app will tell you if there is a nearby special, or one at the place you are (a free drink for 10 check-ins for example). While Foursquare has exploded in the past year, I haven’t seen a congruent explosion of the specials offered by businesses.

LooptStar is a spinoff of Loopt, which was historically a more informational type of app. Their new entry enters the “rewards” space more heavily. The thing that LooptStar does that I believe will give it an advantage is use Facebook Connect to leverage the largest existing social network rather than wait for everyone to find their friends on yet another new one. They were later to the game, but I believe this will give them an edge in the long run. In LooptStar you become a “boss” rather than a “mayor.” But the rewards look to be more tangible than FourSquare.

Gowalla benefits from being on all major mobile smart platforms, including Blackberry and Palm. They also rely on partnerships with existing travel-related services to offer “trips” and share those with your friends. While Foursquare provides community tips based on your location, Gowalla focuses more on directly exploring your friends’ favorite locations to learn more about what they like rather than the community at large.

All of these apps feature basic sharing with your Twitter and Facebook feeds to let people know what you’re up to. Yelp has entered the space by adding check-in to its feature set and you can bet that Google is going to be all over this with its massive business database and Android mobile platform. The problem these sites have is that they have established brand and culture that make it harder to break into new areas.

While this space is fascinating to watch, it still has a long way to go. The apps depend largely upon smart phones such as iPhone and Android, which represent the minority of the mobile market. Also, I feel that any app that requires you to actively check in to a location rather than simply knowing where you are is going to appeal more to geeks and early adopters than the majority of people. It can be very distracting to interrupt your social experience. “Wait guys… I have to check in here first…”

What’s the alternative? Remember Minority Report, when Tom Cruise’s retinas were scanned everywhere he went? In that version of the future, you didn’t even need a device to tell the network where you were. Cameras were so ubiquitous that they knew anyway. Scary? A bit. Possible? You bet.

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In order for a website to display in a way that is at all useful on many mobile phones, a wholly separate site design is needed.  See Katie Hawkey’s article in this ePiphany for more on the actual details of mobile website formatting. The decision as to whether a mobile format for your website is necessary requires some cost-benefit analysis.  Lets consider some statistics and trends.  The percentage of total web traffic over mobile phones was at 1.26% by the end of 2009, having doubled over that year (source).  I was unable to find any more recent numbers, but given the trend it would be reasonable to put it near 2% by now.  A more telling number is that 35% of US adults say they access the internet with their phones, up from 25% in 2009 (source).

So, a really significant number of people are using phones to look at websites, although they probably still use their computers more often.  But if they check your website once and it comes out all jumbled on their phone, you have left a bad impression.  Another wrinkle is whether a visitor’s mobile browser even needs a separate mobile-formatted design.  Smartphones like those on the iPhone and Android platforms have web browsers which can view websites pretty much the same as desktop web browsers.  Other phones, including all current Blackberry models, have web browsers with a very limited way of presenting websites.

23% of US mobile phones users had so-called smartphones in Q1 of 2010, although 35% of these were Blackberry users (source).  So that means about 85% of mobile web users would likely need a mobile-formatted version of your website in order to get much use out of it. I’d say that’s a pretty compelling case for making implementation of a mobile web design a priority.

Note however, that smartphones are trending to overtake so-called “feature phones”, perhaps before 2012 (source).  And Blackberry is set to release a new operating system with a fully-fledged web browser sometime this year.  So the absolute need for mobile-formatted designs will wane.  I as an iPhone user actually still appreciate mobile-formatted websites though.  Sometimes it’s nice to be able to pull up a website and quickly browse it without having to zoom and pan, although I do still always want a link available for the option to view a site in its original format, if the mobile format comes up automatically.

To wrap up here, I wanted to touch a little bit on “apps” in relation to mobile web browsing.  Firstly, if you don’t have any new functionality to put into an app that isn’t already in your website, don’t bother!  It’s not worth your expense to develop an app for multiple smartphone platforms, and there is significant effort to do separate ones for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.  Especially when users of those phones would likely prefer to just use their browser rather than have pointless app clutter.  But, if you do have a good reason for developing an actual smartphone app, you’ll then need to consider the market share statistics and trends there too, which I’ll spare you the details of after the feast of stats above.  But Astek can help you to both navigate those considerations, and to build the actual apps.  Got an idea?  Talk to us.

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We recently asked Astek staff and friends to use Light Beam in front of a long exposure camera to draw original light art inspired by a series of 1949 LIFE photos featuring Pablo Picasso drawing in the air with just a flashlight.

http://www.life.com/image/72386434/in-gallery/24871/picasso-drawing-with-light

We couldn’t be more pleased with the results! Our “Light Beam Artists” used the steady beam as well as strobes at various speeds to create some really cool works! We video taped their movements to produce these images as well! I can’t decide which I like looking at more, the video of the “light dances” or the beautiful final images! Please check out our videos and let us know what you think! If you want to submit your own Light Beam drawings we encourage you to do so at our Light Beam for iPhone 4 Facebook Page!

If you want to have a website that is truly optimized for web browsing on both personal computers AND mobile devices, you need multiple versions of your site. Just the idea of maintaining multiple versions of a website may be a non-starter for many companies. But wait! Did you know you can update multiple versions of your site at the same time?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Content is Water, Templates are Vases
A Content Management System (CMS) is key to easily managing multiple versions of your site. To understand how this works, let’s look at your site content – the text, images, pdfs, etc. – as being separate from the template it is wrapped in. This is the essential principle behind any CMS (check out my article on how a CMS works). Web pages consist of a template with a header, footer, and sidebars that surround the content. For example:

Think of your content as water that will fill the shape and size of the template you pour it into…

You can make your mobile template a completely different shape, size and layout from your original site, but, if built correctly, the exact same content that is populating your original site will “pour” in and fill your mobile site perfectly. When you make a change to your content in the CMS, that edit will “pour” simultaneously to both your website and your mobile site. In other words, you make a change in one place, your CMS, and it updates both sites.

Of course, like a small vase, your mobile site cannot handle as much content as your larger site. You will need to carefully select what content is available through your mobile site. Once that decision has been made, the template for your mobile site can be designed and built to only request certain kinds of information from your Content Management System. For example, perhaps your mobile site will only show upcoming events, contact information and an about page and will not show newsletter archives, board minutes or other less visited content.

Example: Fandango
Let’s look at one of the progressive, early adopters of mobile technology, Fandango, and how they “pour” their content into their regular website and a completely different mobile version of their site.

Here is a screenshot showing the content you’ll find on their regular Website under “In Theatres”/“Opening This Week”:

Here is the same content on the iPhone App:

You can see instantly that the App runs from the same central Fandango CMS as the website but the iPhone App uses templates that pull limited types of content and format that content in a way that is most easily browsable for mobile users. Notice how much more information about each film is given to the iPhone user upfront? This reduces the need for them to load multiple pages to gain that information. You can also see how the Fandango App has limited ads.

Can I Do That?
As Fandango shows, the same content can be “poured” into very different templates to give the user the impression they are having a completely customized experience. This idea can be applied to any website, (even yours!) If your site runs off of a CMS, like Astek’s Webany, then you can pour your existing content into a mobile template. All you have to do is choose the content you want to feature and build a few additional templates!

What are you waiting for? Create your mobile site today!

The Astek team is pleased as punch about our latest iPhone app, a flashlight that takes advantage of the new LED camera light in the iPhone 4.

But Light Beam is much more than just a flashlight! It’s the app that could save your party AND your life!

Light Beam is the iPhone 4’s brightest and easiest flashlight using the built-in LED flash! It includes a strobe light and SOS emergency beacon.

Features:

• Uses iPhone 4 built-in LED for brightest light possible.
• Intuitive, elegant design.
• Flashlight: Auto-on when app is opened for quickest access.
• Strobe Light: Bring the party with this ultra-bright strobe light. Or increase visibility for extra safety on your bike at night. Easy-touch slider allows you to control the speed.
• Emergency SOS Signal: Activate with the tap of a button. Beams a repeating SOS Morse code signal via the LED light.

Download Light Beam for iPhone 4 now!

Here’s a screenshot of Light Beam:

Check it out and if you don’t have an iPhone 4 please tell your friends!

There was a lot of buzz this morning about when exactly iPhone users could get the iOS 4 update via iTunes since Apple gave no time for the release today.  It seems like it was made available at 10 AM PST.  And yeah, I know that because I was checking with some frequency.  I have a 3GS version of the iPhone, which is the last hardware version they made, before the iPhone 4 which is just being delivered this week to the early adopters.

3GS owners get most of the benefit of the new system update, with the exception of the Face Time videoconferencing feature which uses the new phone’s secondary camera.  The new iMovie app will also only be available for the new hardware apparently due to intensive processor requirements. 3G users get everything else except multi-tasking, and strangely, no wallpaper configuration either.  And 1st generation iPhone users are totally out of luck here.

In any case, I’ll say that my favorite thing about the new OS so far is the All Inboxes feature, which combines my work and personal email in one place.  So I no longer have to poke poke poke between them.  It also collates your email by thread, which is something I’m used to as a gmail user and appreciate.  Folders for organizing my apps is also nice, and I like the ability to now easily set the background for my home and lock screens.

The multi-tasking functionality seems pretty cool too.  I’ve played around with the interface for browsing and switching among concurrent apps.  It’s a pretty slick UI, no surprise.  I’m looking forward to the ability to listen to audio outside of the native iPod app while browsing email, the web, etc.

Here’s a couple good rundowns with more information about what iOS 4 is all about:

• A higher-level list of 6 highlights.  #1 is very important – update your apps in the app store to get the full benefit of multi-tasking!
• An in-depth walkthrough of almost everything that’s new in this version.  Very readable though.

It’s true.  The availability of cheap cameras, editing software, and online video hosting services has set an extremely low barrier of entry to the world of digital video.  However, to a beginner, putting all the pieces together might be a little intimidating.  Not to fear!  Getting a video on the internet is only as complicated as you want to make it, and you can maybe even do so using resources you already have.  If you use the one-take editing technique, you can skip the video editing software part altogether.  Just shoot your video, and upload it directly to a free hosting service like YouTube.  Let me outline the basic choices you have for each of three main areas: cameras, hosting services, and editing software.

Cameras

Webcams and Mobile Phones
I start with these together since you may already have one or both!  These days, many laptops and monitors come with embedded webcams, and most mobile phones can take video.  Some phones, like the iPhone for instance, can upload video directly to YouTube.  It doesn’t get any easier than that!  And if you don’t have a phone that takes video, or an embedded webcam, buying a webcam may well be the cheapest way to get started.  You’re not going to get HD quality at the low end of the price scale, and you’ll be constrained by having to be connected to your computer, but you can find useable webcams for around $20.

Point & Shoot Still Cameras
You may also already have a point & shoot still camera that takes video.  And if you don’t it’s a great way to enter the world of video since you’re not committing to a video-only device.  Many reasonably priced, small form-factor cameras actually take really high quality video, even HD.

Flip
The Flip line of video cameras is a little phenomenon.  It’s a specific brand, but deserves highlighting all by itself.  The simplest possible design and interface makes these little cameras super-approachable.  And they pack a lot of value too.  You can get one that takes 1 hour of HD video for $200, or 2 hours for just another $30.  When you’re ready, you “flip” out the built-in USB plug and stick it right into your computer to transfer the files.

A Note on Transferring Files
If you have a phone that transfers video directly to a service like YouTube, well lucky you.  If you are taking video with a web cam, then it’s being saved directly to your computer.  Otherwise, before editing your video or sending it to a hosting service, you need to get your video files from your camera to your computer.  This is a super simple process.  You either plug your camera directly into your computer or take out its memory card and use a card reader.  Most Windows or Mac configurations will then prompt you to transfer the files.  Otherwise, your camera or card should appears as another drive that you can copy the files from.

Hosting Services

So you’ve shot your video and you want to share it online now.  The most well known service for this is certainly YouTube.  And it’s really just a matter of creating an account there, selecting the video file on your hard drive, and filling in some information about your video.  Then you can share the direct link to your video, or use what’s called an embed code, which is a little piece of HTML, to “embed” the video on your blog or other website.  Vimeo is another popular service, similar to YouTube.  Some people prefer it for various kind of subtle aesthetic and technical reasons.  Check them both out and see what appeals to you.  Note that Facebook has really easy to use video hosting capabilities too.  You may already have an account there, and if you only want to share your video with your Facebook friends, that may be a good way to go.

Editing Software

If you want to take it to the next level with digital video, and be able to splice together multiple video files, add music and effects, then you’re ready to look into video editing software.  There is a wide range of offerings out there.  For a first crack at things, you’re probably most concerned with price and ease of use.  There are some free ones out there.  Windows users may already have a copy of Windows Movie Maker (WMM).  If not, you can download it for free from Microsoft.  Note that it is pretty limited, especially the newer “Live” version.  Although the new version was stripped down specifically to make it even more approachable than the already streamlined original version.  So it is both free and easy.

Mac and Linux users can look to a free program called LiVES, which is actually quite robust.  For some, it may still be a little too complicated.  If you’re really into the Apple way of doing things, you should probably check out iMovie.  If the iLife software suite didn’t come bundled with your Mac, you can get it for $80.  iMovie, like Windows Movie Maker, is stripped down and limited in some ways, to make it as user-friendly as possible.  I’m sure Apple purists would argue with gusto that iMovie succeeds at that aim way better than WMM.

Now get out your clacker and bullhorn and start calling ACTION!

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After tinkering a bit, I realized it’s very simple to switch the phone back into 2G mode. And guess what? I now enjoy the stable 2G reception from AT&T I used to. I have multi-hour-long conference calls with confidence. I can move around and not worry about dropping the call.

For data I typically just leave the wifi connected, which gives me high speed data most of the time (home, office, etc.). But if you find yourself sitting in the park or on the road needing to surf faster, just switch back to 3G. I wish the phone could use 3G for data and 2G for voice, but it’s a minor quibble.

To summarize, switch your iPhone to 2G mode and you’ll have:

Pros:

• Better voice reception and quality
• Longer battery life
• Envy from other iPhone users

Cons:

• Slower data speeds
• That nagging feeling that you’re not using the latest and greatest technology

So how do you do it? Just follow these steps:

1) Press the “Settings” icon/app from your home screen.

2) Press “General” (7th option).

3) Press “Network” (3rd option).

4) In the “Enable 3G” bar, it should say “On.” Press this and it will turn “Off” as shown below.

5) Just click your home button or back to “General” to save. It will take a few seconds to switch over, and then you’re good to go! If you need your faster 3G data, just switch it back any time.

Google is many things to millions of people. What started as an innovative way to search the Web back in 1998 has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful companies, now delivering results for more than one billion searches every day using its highly guarded secret sauce. Put simply, Google is what makes the Web usable.

Recently Google has taken great strides to integrate its numerous products and services into a suite of business applications called Google Apps, which can help you with corporate email, shared calendars and documents, groups, websites, and video.

The services are all Web-based, which means you don’t have to worry about servers, maintenance, etc. Just make sure you have a Web connection, get through the basic set-up, and you’re good to go. All the services are seamlessly integrated with each other at a fixed low per-user cost. Google even provides a handy cost savings calculator if you’re using Lotus or Exchange.

As much value as the Business Apps give you, Google’s free apps can deliver even more value. I encourage you to look into:

• Google Analytics to see how your Web site traffic is doing to improve marketing strategy
• Google Alerts to have industry or brand-related articles and comments delivered right to your inbox
• Google Reader to keep all of your blogs and RSS feeds in one place

While Google’s unofficial slogan has emerged as “Don’t be evil,” prominent tech leaders such as Steve Jobs have publicly objected to Google’s claims of holistic do-gooding. Let’s face it, Google is still an enormous company with responsibility to its shareholders. Good and money don’t always line up conveniently in that model, despite the best intentions.

Google continues to face challengers in the search space, such as Facebook, especially as social media continues to fundamentally change the way people access the Web and search for information. More and more people would rather get answers from people they know than the search giant. But stay tuned — Google may just master social search yet.

Keep your eyes open for Google’s latest experiment to revolutionize the way American’s access the Web with the fiber-to-the-home network.

Let me know if you have any questions about Google for Business or increasing your search rankings!

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