UPDATED WITH NEW TIME FOR BOB ON 2/12/12

There are two hot events going on February 29th during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year…  Depending on your interests, both are must-see events… (more…)

The annual AT&T Developer Summit at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas kicks off next Sunday with a hackathon on Sunday and a series of keynotes and smaller speakers sessions on Monday. If you’re heading to Las Vegas for CES, it’s worth checking out the AT&T Devcon beforehand.  Register here.  If you’d like to meet me at the show, ping me.

I recently sat down with Henry Vogel, the President and CEO of Apptera to talk about their new Android app, Poptuit.  Poptuit is a multi-faceted consumer-focused app that brings together your favorite people and merchants together with your phone’s dialer, SMS messenger, email client, camera, maps, social apps and more into one easy to use interface.  This app packs a punch and does a ton of things that normally would require several apps to do… It reminds me of a mobile version of Xobni mixed with a social address book, smarter Yellow Pages, Glympse and the new “Family and Friends” app Apple announced today for the iPhone 4s. (more…)

I was excited to hear about the launch of the new Amazon Kindle Fire last week… Who wouldn’t love a $199 tablet, except for the executives at Apple, Samsung, and Barnes & Noble?!  In launching the Kindle Fire, Amazon proves their validation that content is king… By offering this device at lower price point than any of its competitors (and likely not much more than cost of goods sold), Amazon is betting on  selling a TON of content to make up for its low hardware price.  It’s a smart strategy.

Here’s how Amazon’s Kindle Fire stacks up to its competitors from a hardware perspective: (more…)

In 2010, the most over-used buzz words in my more mobile-focused circles were “monetization” and “virality”. This year’s buzz word bingo winners are  “gamification” and “gaming mechanics,” which encompass both “monetization” and creating “virality.”  The mobile world is quickly catching on to what the gamers and social web folks have known for a long time – one of the best ways to get people to use your app is to improve engagement through gamification. While these two words are often over-used, it’s with good reason. Introducing gaming mechanics into your app can help drive usage in the short, medium, and long term. (more…)

I’m at Mobilize 2011 in San Francisco, and the “Mobile Payments 2012: Will This Be The Year?” is kicking off.  I share my notes below…

Karen Webster, CEO of Market Platform Dynamics is the moderator. Panelists are:

• Brad Greene – Senior Business Leader, Visa
• Chris Hylen – VP and GM, Payment Solutions Division, Intuit
• Dave Talich – VP, Global Product Management, Verifone
• Laura Chambers – Senior Director of PayPal Mobile, Paypal (more…)

As I mentioned in my post over the weekend, I’ve been doing business development consulting for a cool company based in Latin America called Movile, and today, they’re launching something pretty cool…Zeewe 2.0.  Here’s the press release:

Today Movile, the leading mobile services company, announces Zeewe 2.0 (go.zeewe.com), the new version of the pioneering HTML5 app store and directory for smartphones and tablets. Zeewe has more than 1.5 million users worldwide, and these users typically use at least 5 web apps that they discover on Zeewe.  Movile also announces the launch of several exciting new features for Zeewe including off-line mode which enables users to use the Zeewe store and select apps without an internet connection on iOS devices. Beside this, Zeewe also now offers developers a payment API that enables them to charge for Apps and transact in-app purchases. (more…)

For the past several months, I’ve been consulting for one of the biggest mobile companies you may never have heard of, if you live in North America, Movile.  If you live in Latin America, you will likely know Movile, as one of the largest mobile value added services companies in the region.  Movile is a diversified company with a portfolio of mobile products ranging from old-skool (wallpapers, alerts, ring tones, etc.) to incredibly progressive… Among Movile’s more progressive products are Mozca and Zeewe

Mozca is the leading mPayments platform and #1 processor of virtual goods payments on mobile in Latin America. (more…)

There’s another great conference coming up for developers.  “Web Directions Unplugged” will take place in Seattle May 12 and 13, and it’s targeted at folks that are designing and developing apps and games using HTML5.  They’re offering a 30% Discount for the Socialize Mobilize community with the code “socialize,” making the show just $695. (more…)

Over the years, users have spent tons of money on personalizing their mobile phones.  Even in the early days of feature phones, mobile users proved with their wallets that they were willing to go to great lengths to customize their mobile devices…  Mobile ring tones, ringback tones, wallpapers, phone skins, unique cases.  While a lot has changed in mobile over the years, one thing has remained the same… Users love to ‘pimp their phones’, and companies are lining up to help… One of the areas that seems to really be heating up is around homescreen personalization – particularly Android. (more…)