For those of you who enjoy marathon races, the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) is one of the largest in the world. It is the eighth-largest in the world, fourth-largest in the U.S., and the largest such race with no prize money — hence it’s nickname, The People’s Marathon. Past races have had participants from as many as 50 countries. At a course length of just over 26 miles, there’s a lot for runners to prepare for and onlookers to track. Mobomo’s new, first of its kind RaceMate(tm) mobile app is exactly what you need to enhance the MCM race-day experience. The app is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch,  iPad, and Android Phone.

RaceMate is packed with features, including a countdown timer, a course map, pre-viz animation, a pace calculator and more. The embedded marathon map not only shows landmarks such as aid stations, water & food spots and mile markers but actual GPS-based locations of race participants. Track your favorite runner in real-time.

Can’t make it to the race? With an expected 30K runners and many more spectators, not everyone can or wants to be present. The Location-Based Services (LBS) mobile technology used in the RaceMate app means that you can cheer on and track your favorite runner on race day without being present. Both runners and spectators will need their smartphones; however, market research suggests nearly 85% of runners own a smart phone and that almost half of race participants will carry a smartphone will carry a smartphone during the marathon (MCM press release).

More info: The 35th Annual MCM takes place on Oct 31st, 2010, in Arlington, VA. The Marathon Tour starts Oct 20th and passes through several American cities on the way to Arlington. An associated free two-day Health and Fitness Expo starts Oct 29th and includes a Speaker Series as well as over 200 exhibitors. The marathon race itself is open to runners aged 14 and up. For more details, visit the following links:

• Marine Corps Marathon — Official site. Will provide race split times and finisher data.
• Wikipedia — MCM profile.
• Mobomo RaceMate mobile app for the iPhone. Only $1.99, available now through iTunes.
• RaceMate iPhone App Facebook Fan Page.

The Android edition of RaceMate is now available at your favorite Android app marketplace.

Upcoming, Spring 2011: editions for other races in Los Angeles, London and Boston.

Need advice on how your business can leverage the mobile platform? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app idea or mobile campaign needs.

Leadership and Values offers a fun game-style interface as well as visual help screens to help you navigate your way through the app. Choose from the stack of 52 cards listing possible core values and drag each card into one of three columns: “Definite core value”, “Maybe core value”, and “Not core value.” After you’ve grouped all 52 cards into the three columns, you can browse each stack to verify your choices or move them to another stack.

The next step is to select your top 5 core values. Edit your Top 5 stack until your satisfied. The Leadership and Values app then displays a beautiful screen quoting one famous or semi-famous person for each of the five core values that you selected.

This iPhone app is designed to promote core leadership values and enable students, teachers, and alumni to interactively discover their top leadership values. Using a fun step-by-step process, the user is educated on Concordia’s core leadership values, and is ultimately presented with a personalized result. This project demonstrates how Mobomo can create engaging mobile applications to educate individuals. Similar interfaces can be developed, for example, for FTC consumers to learn “how to” file a complaint or order a truly free credit report.

Get the Leadership and Values iPhone app free from iTunes or the Apple App Store now.

Need advice on a mobile app for your business? Just want to know how you can leverage the mobile platform in general? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app idea or mobile campaign needs.

QuickQ’s unique selling proposition? Temporary music lists for those times you’re waiting in airports, in line somewhere, impromptu parties or a quick playlist to help you get to sleep. QuickQ achieves this by letting music items disappear from your playlist as they finish playing.

Get QuickQ now from iTunes for only $0.99, and use the attractive help screen, with overlaid notations, to get up to speed with on your temporary playlists.

Need advice on a mobile app for your business? Just want to know how you can leverage the mobile platform in general? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app idea or mobile campaign needs.

Search

Search for a domain name and automatically see availability for various popular TLDs (Top Level Domains) including .com, .net, .org and more. (Search results appear after every character typed, provided you stop typing.) If a domain is free, Network Solutions’ registration price is listed beside it. Otherwise, it’ll be marked as “Taken.”

Whois

If a domain you’re searching for is already registered, use the built-in “whois” feature to get information on the registrant, in case you want to dig further on the listed registry and make the owner an offer.

Brainstorm

Is your first choice of domain name taken? Why not get creative and use the Brainstorm feature?  Enter a keyword or two, spin the wheel or shake your phone, and you’ll get a random combination of related domain names. Want more flexibility? Specify advanced options including hyphenation, geography, digits, misspellings and more. From the results list, you can also retrieve a list of expired domains, premium domains, and more.

Shopping Cart

Found the domain you want? Pop it in the shopping cart and keep looking. When you’re ready, make your domain purchases directly from your iPhone. The sliding scale lets you specify registration durations of 1, 2, 3 and 5 years. Pay by credit card by logging in to your Network Solutions account, or create an account. Not comfortable with paying from the app? Use the “call” feature to call Network Solutions on your phone and make your purchase that way.

Other Features

Want to check on a previous domain search? Use the Search History feature. Need some help? Use the help screen or email, send feedback or call Network Solutions directly from your iPhone.

Get Network Solutions’ DomainStorm app free from iTunes or the Apple App Store now.

Need advice on a mobile app for your business? Just want to know how you can leverage the mobile platform in general? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app idea or mobile campaign needs.

Current Usage Situation

When the 4th-generation iPhone becomes available in the first round of countries on Jun 24th (preorders online in those countries starting Jun 15th), FaceTime will work only over WiFi, between two 4th-gen iPhones, only. There are consumers who will get the iPhone 4 for that reason alone. That’s a very limited usage scenario and not necessarily enough to win over sales of iPhone 4.

What’s Coming

However, there are some other parameters to the usage equation that are not yet taken into account.

1. Cellular networks: Availability over 3G or higher cellular networks. FaceTime over 3G has already been promised by Apple. I honestly don’t care about this given AT&T’s change in data plan pricing. So unless Apple gives AT&T a stern talking to about the data plans, or gives other U.S. carriers the iPhone, I don’t see this as a big deal.
2. Other phones: Usage over any other handset makers’ smartphones that are capable of replicating a similar experience.
3. Other mobile devices: Usage over any other mobile device with a front-facing camera, such as an iPad of the future, say in early 2011.

Apple is great a creating market demand where it didn’t even exist. Look at the iPod. Did we need iPods, given there were other mobile audio players? Of course we didn’t. But they created what became a classic consumer electronics device, and the technology behind the iPod seems to have helped fuel the development on the iPhone/ iPod Touch and iPad mobile devices.

History of Video Calling

FaceTime is not hardware, of course, but video calling has been something that at least North Americans have been promised for decades, and which seems to have stayed in the realm of science fiction, at least for the masses. Until now. We really do need one calling protocol to make it work, with the least technical difficulties, and by being first, Apple has the advantage.

Okay, Apple’s not first with video calling. A number of VoIP desktop applications — e.g., Skype — have had it for several years now. Also, video calling has been available for conferencing systems — but such systems are costly and definitely not for the mass market. Apple’s not even first with video on calling on smartphones, since a couple of devices were announced within the past few weeks. However, Apple will be perceived as first because of the open standard offering.

Mass Market Video Calling

I have no doubt that Apple can get most or all of the big players such as Microsoft and Google on board to support the FaceTime standard, and in doing so, they stand to further the company’s brand. Even if they don’t immediately convert non-Apple device FaceTime users to hardware purchasers. How could they get them to convert? By offering additional FaceTime features available only on the iPhone. By offering enterprise integration for FaceTime on the iPad (a future model, with a front-facing camera). By constantly reminding non-Apple app developers and users that 3rd-party apps get access to FaceTime features only with the Apple iPhone SDK.

However, Apple creates the market demand for FaceTime, I’m very certain they’ll do it, and video calling will likely be integrated into iPhone OS apps very quickly. Imagine gaming, social network, healthcare, distance education, tech support, service calls and many other niches having next-generation mobile apps with video calling integrated. Even social interaction will be forever changed. (For example, imagine families spread across the globe who will now be able to see each other during those long periods when they cannot meet in person.)

If Apple can convince the right players to join in, FaceTime is going to have a huge impact on mobile application usage and on the way humans interact.

Want to discuss a mobile app with video calling features for your business or projects? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app or mobile campaign needs.

If you’ve been off the planet for the past month or so, you can be forgiven for not knowing there’s a new iPhone, and much of its feature set was confirmed today by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his keynote address for WWDC in San Francisco. This 4th-generation iPhone is packed with new features — some of them catching up to competing phones, some surpassing competitors. Here’s a  quick list of what’s new, hopefully ending much of the speculation that’s been going on.

1. Availability: The release plan seems a little different than for the iPad, with five countries given first crack: US, UK, France, Germany and Japan being allowed online pre-orders on Jun 15th, and availability on Jun 24th online, at Apple and AT&T retail stores, and Best Buy and Wal-Mart. The rest of the release plan calls for 24 more countries in August, after the first five, then the remaining countries for a total of 88. According to the press release, the phone will be available in numerous countries by the end of July, including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
2. Battery: Larger battery, 40% more talk time. Specifically, 7 hours talk time on 3G; 10 hrs Web browsing on WiFi and 6 on 3G; 10 hrs of video playback; 40 hours of audio playback. Standby mode: 300 hours (nearly two weeks).
3. Bing search. While Google is still the default search engine for mobile Safari, the new iOS allows for you to switch over to Bing if you want.
4. Cameras: 5MP camera with 5x digital zoom and LED flash for low light conditions. Front-facing and rear-facing cameras.
5. Color: Black and white models.
6. Developer support: Over 1500 new APIs for developers to access 100 new features.
7. Display. The predictions were right: the iPhone 4 has 4x the pixels, for a whopping 960×640 screen resolution, at 326 ppi (pixels per inch). The new “Retina” display gives it a much higher contrast than 3GS — apparently 800:1 contrast ratio, giving it an almost paper-like quality for display text. (Print magazines often have a resolution of 300 or 600 dpi — dots per inch.) The 3.5 inch screen has a resolution that is almost 80% the size of the iPad.
8. Email, enhanced: Unified email inbox. Attachment support.
9. Form factor: It has a more squared-off form factor than before — but you probably knew that from all the photos of “leaked” prototypes. It’s supposedly 24% thinner than before and claims to be the thinnest (9.3 mm) smartphone on the planet. Overall, it’s 4.5 inches tall, 2.31 inches, and just under 5 ounces. Unfortunately, the new form factor means the iPhone 4 has to have a new dock. The iPhone 4′s alloyed metal rim is not only strong (5x stronger than steel), it acts as the the phone’s antennae (plural), to improve reception.
10. Gyroscope. The iPhone 4 has a 3-axis gyroscope that can more accurately detect phone motion in 6 axes — a plus for video gaming.
11. iAd ad network. Apple says that they have advertising commitments through their new iAd ad network for $60M in 2010 alone. Steve Jobs claimed this morning that iAds will steal 48% of the mobile advertising market.
12. iBooks. iPhone will get its own iBooks, which will allow for bookmarks and user sticky notes to be added to digital books.
13. iOS iPhone OS. Despite some talk about the name “iOS” being owned by Cisco, iOS is what iPhone OS 4.0 is being called. It’ll be available for download on older 3G and 3GS phones on Jun 21st, and (probably) preloaded onto iPhone 4. (However, some new OS 4 features will not be available for 3G phones.) The iPad will get an upgrade this fall.
14. Keyboard support, Bluetooth. Just as with the iPad, the iPhone 4 will allow you to add a Bluetooth keyboard.
15. Memory: 2×128 = 256 MB RAM. 16GB and 32GB models. Looks as if they did not manage to use the new 64GB flash drives made recently available — meaning predictions of storage capacities of 64GB and 128GB were unfortunately incorrect.
16. MicroSIM. Uses the new microSIM.
17. Microphones: Two, for noise-cancelling.
18. Netflix: Netflix is coming to the iPhone App Store free of charge, and it’ll allow starting a movie on the iPad and finishing viewing on the iPhone, or vice versa.
19. Networks: 802.11n WiFi, with added quad-band HSUPA.
20. Pricing: The phones are $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB. Wonder what they’re saving the $399 price slot for. The new 8GB 3GS model will be available on Jun 24 for $99.
21. Processor: A4 processor, just like the iPad.
22. UI features, enhanced. Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, “deeper” enterprise support.
23. Upgrades: If your AT&T contract is up any time in 2010, you are apparently eligible to upgrade to a 4th-gen iPhone immediately (as in Jun 24th or whatever date depending where you live). You have to extend your contract for two more years. If you’re merely eligible for a phone upgrade, you probably don’t qualify. However, I called AT&T and the very helpful CSR concluded that while my non-iPhone line’s contract, and that of my wife’s, ends Mar 2011, our LG Vu phones qualify for upgrades in Aug and Nov of 2010. We are eligible for a partial discount immediately. Meaning, we might have to pay $200 extra per phone over the new prices to change the LG Vu phones into iPhone 4, as well as get new iPhone data plans. However, according to what Engadget says that AT&T told them, if you already have an iPhone and want to upgrade it, you are eligibility immediately if your contract allows an upgrade any time in 2010. So please check your online account or talk to an AT&T CSR for verification. You can also dial *639# from your AT&T phone, but the resulting text message is not all that detailed. Ultimately, you might just have to walk into your nearby AT&T store and on Jun 24th and find out for sure.
24. Video chatting: It’s called FaceTime, and it allows two 4th-gen iPhones to video chat, but only over WiFi for now, with 3G support coming in the future. Given AT&T’s cellular data pricing plan changes, maybe that’s a good thing. Either camera can be used for FaceTime chats, in both portrait and landscape modes.
25. Video editing. Not only will the phone have HD video recording (720p@30fps), you’ll be able to edit video with a built in app, or with the upcoming iMovie for iPhone ($4.99).

So there you have it. There are all sorts of other features and details that are not listed here, but these are amongst the most important. The FaceTime commercial by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Jarhead) is below.

AT&T is giving some concession to keep the old unlimited iPad data plan — but the offered reason that very few people are using the full 5GB/month data cap doesn’t seem to hold water, especially with video calling coming. On the other hand, the claim that the new pricing will be more affordable for more people sounds like a spin on “we’re losing exclusivity soon, so we want to prevent financial bleeding before the fact by offering the lowest-priced data plans now.” Will Apple slap AT&T’s wrists over this ? Not sure, but by Monday, we should at least know what consumer electronics wonders Steve Jobs has in store for the rest of 2010, after Jobs’ keynote kicks off in the morning at WWDC.

Of course, it’s still fun to speculate until then, and now speculation is running towards multiple iPhone carriers in the USA, though not immediately. This is based on speculation about what Jobs meant at D8 this week when he said there might be an advantage to this, as well as other rumors that suggest AT&T’s exclusivity contract is coming to an end in Nov or thereabouts. This might be why AT&T has suddenly created several revenue stream opportunities for themselves around the iPhone and iPad, including specialized iPhone insurance, increased ETF (Early Termination Fee) rates, revised data plans that do not favor power users (i.e., probably most early adopters of the iPad), etc.

Other interesting tidbits out of D8: that the iPad concept predated the iPhone, and that the original project was called the Safari Pad. I guess the Newton was missed.

Looks as if AT&T doesn’t want too much bad publicity. Despite of one threat of a cease and desist to a blogger who wrote to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson [contact details] about the new iPhone/ iPad data pricing plans, they’re making some concessions. If you really really want the previously promised $30/month unlimited data plan for the iPad 3G, you can still get it, but with some conditions. If you don’t already have an iPad 3G, you have to order one before Jun 7th. When you get it, even if it’s after Jun 7th, you’ll be eligible to sign up for the original $30/mth data plan. Of course, if you already have the iPad 3G, you can get the data plan now, before Jun 7th.

So for some of us, that means we’ll have to race to order an iPad 3G. No word on whether any similar concession is available for the next iPhone, other than if you upgrade a current iPhone. (For example, as mentioned previously, I have an iPhone 3GS that I intend to keep, and thus my plan will stay at the 5GB/month cap. But I can upgrade my LG VU phone in August to a new iPhone. Unfortunately, I do not believe I’ll be able to get the 5GB/mth plan for that phone — which is a disappointment since my wife’s LG VU can be upgraded in October, and we were looking forward to video calling on the new iPhone. E.g., a feature that’ll eat up data.

Let’s look at some other stats. At an average of 1M units/month, they can easily top 8M units this year, beating out estimates of 5-7M units for 2010. The overall market for web-enabled tablet computing devices is estimated to hit over $8B by 2015, despite Retrevo’s study. Such contradictions often exist, and sometimes it’s a matter of creating the need or at least the desire. Apple managed it with iPods — I remember being part of a group of people that held out. I in fact never bought an iPod but both won a Shuffle and was given an iPod as a gift. The latter ceased to function after a year of heavy use; I’d fallen in love with it. Can Apple repeat their iPod success and make people fall in love with iPads, even when they don’t need them? (I believe so.)

Apple is already leading Android with  mobile devices in general. According to AdMob (which Google just purchased), iPhone OS-based devices are leading Android OS-based devices in the U.S. by more than a 2 to 1 ratio. Worldwide, the ratio is 3.5 to 1 in favor of iPhone OS. (With market advantages like this, is it any wonder that Apple stock price predictions for 2010 — made in Dec 2009 – Jan 2010 — suggest a $250-300 range?)

Whether Apple is maintaining any lead in the tablet market is hard to say without actually figures, given that tablet computer have existed for a while. Where Apple is lagging is with iPad-specific apps compared to iPhone-specific apps. Developers had to work with only a software simulator for the first round of apps accepted by Apple for the Apr 3, 2010, launch of the iPad. That probably hindered development significantly, and my own observation is that many such iPad-specific apps crash on occasion.

So if Apple can reboot the tablet computer market and create a demand, there’ll be room for loads more iPad-specific apps and maybe even 3rd-party peripheral devices. Whether or not that means the possibility of Windows-based tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or Silverlight Web application plug-in for developing iPad/ iPhone apps remains to be seen. For now it seems it’s not the case, even with suggestions for Apple to be more open.

Foxconn’s Taiwanese parent company Hon Hai has promised a 20% raise to all 420,000 employees, but says that this has nothing to do with the suicides and does not address the reportedly sweatshop-like work conditions at Foxconn. Foxconn had been playing Buddhist music, presumably to soothe workers, and apparently went as far as sending a letter to employees asking them not to kill themselves, which they retracted. In addition to manufacturing iPhones for Apple, it produces devices and components for Dell and HP.