Category: Tech news

I loathe using some websites. Twitter and Facebook are horrific on the web when compared to their iOS/Android apps. I simply refuse to use Zillow’s website; I’ll wait until my kids are done with the iPad to look for our new place. The same is true for Tumblr and other sites. The mobile first strategy is in full force and Microsoft needs to hop on board.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is forcefully pushing the PC into the post-PC era. It’s a touch first interface with the Desktop mode allowing for a more traditional Windows experience. But if Windows is to succeed, apps need to be the top priority and as a user of the Surface RT, it’s clear Microsoft does not agree.

I’ve been using the Surface RT a lot more recently. I want to like it. I want to have it in my life. I’m a Windows guy and I just wish I had a companion device like the Surface to supplement my desktop. When traveling, I use a MacBook Pro and iPad. They’re a wonderful pair, but so far, I’ve yet to find the same sort of synergy with the Surface RT and Windows 8 desktop mainly because of the lack of compelling apps outside of Microsoft’s ecosystem.

Three months after launching there still isn’t a reason to buy a Windows 8 tablet.

Do you want these things on an 11-inch screen with a questionable keyboard?

Microsoft proponents will tell you that Office is the strongest selling point for Windows 8 tabs. That’s true. It’s the only reason I see as well. But do you need Office? Do you need a full-featured word processor or all-powerful spreadsheet editor? Do you want these things on an 11-inch screen with a questionable keyboard? If so, and I’m sure some people do, an Ultrabook would probably suit their needs better than a Surface RT — they better fit on airline trays anyway.

As it’s been explained countless times, the Surface RT runs Windows RT, a version of Windows written specifically for ARM processors. Because of this, standard Windows programs do not run on the Surface RT, or any other Windows RT tablet. You cannot install Chrome, Spotify, Scrivener, Steam or any other normal Windows program. Worse yet, the apps that are available in the Store are pure garbage compared to their iOS/Android counterparts — including our TC app. Even Surface fanboys on Reddit show the shallow depth of the Store’s library with this list of favorite apps.

In short Microsoft has left the Surface RT rot by not supporting its ecosystem.

Access to the web is no longer good enough. “Pin any website to the home page to make it its own app,” says Microsoft. Remember who else tried that? How did that work out?

Access to the web wasn’t good enough when RIM launched the Playbook in 2011 without any apps. Instead the company touted its full-feature web browser. It wasn’t until nearly a year later the company made it easy to port Android apps that the tablet finally started to take off. Now, with BlackBerry 10, BB set out on a quest to launch the platform with as many apps as possible. BB10 launched last week with 70,000 apps. Windows RT is three months old and it seems that Microsoft is still behind in terms of app counts.

It’s been said that BlackBerry went to great lengths to get apps for BB10. We’ve heard that the company went as far to pay developers to port their apps (something that Microsoft has some experience with). We’ve heard from others that BlackBerry did all the work internally to port some apps. Ignore the methods; the company hustled. BlackBerry did what it needed to properly support its upcoming platform. A modern mobile system is only as good as its apps.

I’m not alone in wanting to like the Surface RT. Surface owners are going to incredible lengths fixing Microsoft’s underwhelming ecosystem. Hopefully Microsoft is watching the self-inflicted pains Surface RT owners are suffering just to keep their devices fresh.

Surface owners are going to incredible lengths fixing Microsoft’s pitiful ecosystem.

Surface RT users have taken to jailbreaking the Surface RT to supplement the OS’ lack of compelling apps. There is a community currently porting open applications to Windows RT — but these apps are not/will not be available through the official Windows Store. Quake 2, anyone? Worse yet, they’re classic Windows applications and not touch-first apps. This action will quickly lose its appeal as more and more owners grow tired of the hassle.

When a product has to be jailbroken, something is wrong. Apple quickly learned this. Hackers beat Apple to the punch and launched backchannel app stores prior to Apple itself. In fact, Apple has closely watched this active community and implemented many enhancements and functions first developed by these users.

The iPad is a great device not because of the hardware. It’s special because of its access to new content. B&N was the first company to see this and developed the first generation Nook Color to be a portal to B&N content rather than a mobile productivity device. Others including Amazon, Google and BlackBerry followed suit. But Microsoft.

Listen, the Surface RT, and likewise, the Surface Pro, are fantastic examples of hardware. They feel like devices from the future with their full-size USB ports, microSD card slots, and, in the case of the Pro model, a Wacom active digitizer screen. But past the hardware, there is little reason to get excited because of the inherent limitations of Windows RT.

Microsoft has yet to get that the consumer electronics game is played with new set of rules. Hardware is no longer good enough. The web is no longer good enough. To be successful products have to provide consumers with a complete experience. That’s why every Apple mobile device since the iPod has been successful. That’s why Android is dominating the mobile wars. And that’s why until Microsoft can attract a large set of app developers to its Windows RT ecosystem, the ARM-based platform will go nowhere.

Intuit’s Mint has one less competitor now. Adaptu, a Portland-based startup that positioned its mobile wallet as an alternative to Mint, is closing its doors. The company announced the change via its website and in emails to its subscriber base. According to the company, the decision was made because Adaptu didn’t want to have to transition away from its free model in order to remain in business.

The company is now working with users to transition them off the platform before its final shutdown on February 20, 2013. Users are receiving both emails and mobile alerts, and Adaptu has updated its main website, as well as its social media channels with the message about the closure. Support teams are staffing the support@ email address, too, in order to answer users’ questions before the final shuttering.

Things at the company started to look questionable when co-founder Mark Brundage left for Salesforce in May 2012 where he now serves as “Director of Customer Success.”

In addition, Adaptu owner StanCorp Financial Group has been in a bit of financial trouble itself lately, reports OregonLive. The insurer announced last month it would cut 100 positions company-wide, as it struggled to grow earnings. The article also noted that Adaptu only saw 2,000 uniques per month to its website (per Compete data).

Checking with SimilarWeb, it’s clear the company was on the decline over the past year:

The service competes not only with Mint, but also with LearnVest and HelloWallet, all of which the company recommends to its users in the online FAQ about the closure. While Adaptu can’t help users transition data itself, it is offering a CSV export option for transactions. User accounts and other data will be deleted from company servers on 2/20/13, the FAQ notes.

Startups fail all the time, but Adaptu was not exactly a bootstrapped effort. Rather it was a subsidiary of a larger entity, which makes its closure a bit more unique. The product was a decent-enough Mint competitor, but its mobile wallet functionality didn’t seem to offer users a compelling enough reason to switch. Personal finance, despite its huge importance in our everyday lives, isn’t something that can easily attract massive numbers of users. And for a breakout hit to occur, we need more than an incrementally improved version of Mint (if you can even argue Adaptu was that). We need a groundbreaking new way to manage and track our money. You know, like Mint was when it first debuted.

Full text from the website, excluding the FAQ, reads:

Adaptu was launched as a free service to help people gain better control over their financial lives. Over the past few years, we have been humbled by our customers’ enthusiasm for the content and tools we provide on adaptu.com as well as our mobile apps. Instead of expanding the service in ways that would have required a transition away from a free model, we have decided that the time is right to discontinue the Adaptu service.

Jailbreaking has returned, and already servers are overloaded. Today, a group of iOS hackers styling themselves as the Evad3rs team has released a usable jailbreak for the iPhone 5, as well as any other iOS device capable of running iOS 6.0 or 6.1, with the exception of the Apple TV (3rd generation). The process of jailbreaking devices has grown more difficult through the years. This is thanks to security improvements on Apple’s side and the lack of new bootrom-level exploits that would allow long-lasting jailbreaks on an entire family of iOS devices, regardless of the incremental iOS software updates that regularly patch the holes that jailbreaking software now exploits.

But this new “evasi0n” jailbreak has been well worth the wait – especially for those bordering on a bit of iPhone ennui and those looking to take back control of their iPhones in order to break out of the restrictions Apple has set in place. A usable jailbreak opens up access to a world of unapproved applications, free and paid, through the alt app store known as Cydia, as well as a whole host of other controls and tweaks that can change the otherwise hard-coded defaults on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

The jailbreaking “scene” has seemingly died down a bit over the years, as Apple slowly rolled out changes to its operating system that have addressed some user complaints: the introductions of and support for an Android-like notifications drop-down; widgets (also in that drop-down window); Facetime over cellular (3G/4G); more granular control over notifications and privacy; and more. But perhaps jailbreaking’s decline has been one of perception and not representative of a real decline in user interest.

To give you an idea of scale, recent figures released by Jay Freeman, who owns and operates the Cydia store, show 22.8 million devices were running Cydia over the past two months. Although that may be a small sub-section of the some 500 million iOS devices sold to date, it’s a significantly sized user base. And every time a new jailbreak comes out, Cydia breaks new records, which reflects the growth of the iOS ecosystem as a whole. It will be interesting to see if it can do so again, or if those in search of more control, quality OS design and a broad app ecosystem have gone ahead and switched to Android in the meantime.

The link to the evasi0n jailbreak is here, and it works on Mac, Windows and Linux. Do be aware that there are scammers out there trying to take advantage of this release, so only use the official evasi0n software if you choose to proceed. A full Q&A about the jailbreak and other questions are available here.

Oh, and if you’re looking for someone to thank – the @evad3rs are @pod2G, @planetbeing, @MuscleNerd, and @pimskeks.

Update: The downloads are already exceeding pageview limits, so be sure to check out the list of errors listed below the main links.

Wow! 270,000+ active users on evasi0n.com!!! #evasi0n

— pod2g (@pod2g) February 4, 2013

“@evad3rs: It’s live. evasi0n.com#evasi0n”But they overloaded google’s download b/w… XD

— semaphore (@notcom) February 4, 2013

Image credit, top: @iPadJailbroken on Twitter

British soldiers are testing out tiny 4×1-inch mini surveillance drones throughout Afghanistan. “We used it to look for insurgent firing points and check out exposed areas of the ground before crossing, which is a real asset,” said Sgt. Christopher Petherbridge.

The toy-looking Black Hornet Nano can fly for up to 30 minutes with a top speed of 22 mph, or a range of about one half-mile. U.K.-based Marlborough Communications landed a £20M ($31) contract to build a large hive of 160 buzzing helicopters.

The drones were originally developed by Prox Dynamics for search and rescue missions and can be flown automatically using pre-programmed GPS coordinates.

Now, I’m not a fortune teller, but something tells me a version of the Black Hornet Nano is going to be the hottest Christmas toy sometime in the near future.

Eros Resmini, who oversaw developer relations for mobile-social gaming network OpenFeint through its $104 million acquisition by GREE, just left the Japanese gaming company not long after it transitioned its platform building strategy back to headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. He’s taking an entrepreneur-in-residence role with Peter Relan, who created gaming-centric incubator YouWeb and was a co-founder of mobile game developer Crowdstar, OpenFeint and HTML5 gaming startup Spaceport.

Resmini couldn’t share any details on his next project, except that it won’t be in gaming and it will be something that will “reshape the startup growth landscape.”

“I had a real great opportunity to learn about building and scaling companies. Now, it’s about trying something new,” said Resmini, who was most recently a senior vice president of marketing and developer relations at GREE. “The gaming industry is going through a period of maturity and consolidation, but that didn’t have any bearing on my personal decision.”

OpenFeint was one of GREE’s first big-ticket acquisitions to enter the U.S. market. The company, worth $3.4 billion on publicly traded markets, is one of Japan’s two most prominent mobile gaming platforms. With slowing growth opportunities in the local market, both GREE and its rival DeNA have probably spent somewhere near $1 billion on splashy U.S. acquisitions and hires to pursue reach in the Western markets.

But even though GREE spent $104 million for OpenFeint, which had 75 million users at the time of the sale, the company ultimately shut down the mobile gaming platform late last year. As other large companies including Facebook have seen, it is strategically difficult to build a platform on top of someone else’s platform — namely Apple’s iOS.

GREE has a two-prong strategy in the West — one is to become a major first-party game developer. They’ve done that through deals like the $210 million acquisition of Funzio. Second, it’s to replicate the model they have in Japan where they are also a platform provider that earns revenue through distributing and taking revenue share from third-party games.

The OpenFeint deal was about building out this platform strategy. But in shutting down OpenFeint, GREE ultimately decided to move their platform-building strategy back to Japan, which resulted in layoffs for some local U.S. employees. The U.S. office, which now has more than 500 employees, has since switched to focus mostly on game development.

“These things are always tough when you’ve invested time into them,” he said. “I certainly had a lot of fun building up OpenFeint. I think it will live on out of Japan going forward.”

Betable, a gaming platform that enables developers to use real money instead of virtual currencies, just signed one of Canada’s largest independent developers Frima Studio.

Frima, which has about 350 people and is based in Quebec, is opening up a real-money gaming division called 3OAK. Instead of going their own way with acquiring gambling licenses in different countries, Frima said they chose Betable to fast-track the process. Betable is a real-money gaming platform that already has a gambling license in the U.K., so that third-party developers can incorporate real bets in their games without having to go through the legal hassle of getting their own permits.

“They’ve already secured legality, which is a blessing to us,” said Mikael Lefebvre, who is a director of Frima’s 3OAK studios. “It makes our life much easier.”

This is a big year for Betable as the company is trying to get ahead of a wave of developers moving into social casino style games like slots and Slingo. At the same time, a difficult economic recovery has made more domestic states at least consider loosening online gambling regulations to improve their finances.

Zynga recently made its first moves toward enabling real-money gaming by applying for “preliminary finding of suitability” from the Nevada Gaming Control Board and partnering with bwin.party to offer real-money bets in the U.K.

While Betable hasn’t said how many games or developers it has signed or how many players it reaches so far, the company has disclosed partnerships with developers like Big Fish Games, Digital Chocolate, SGN, Slingo and Mandala. Big Fish, in particular, is a noteworthy client because their game Big Fish Casino is consistently one of the top 20 grossing iPhone games in the U.S.

Betable’s belief is that the casual gaming market is going to change over the next 18-24 months as some developers choose to pick up real-money betting and suddenly acquire a host of new “whales” or lucrative players. Those developers will suddenly be able to spend more on marketing, boosting costs for other similar game makers.

At the same time, real-money gaming creates its own unique set of challenges. Managing a game economy with real money is different from one with virtual currencies, where the developer needs to tweak currency sources and sinks properly to avoid inflation or deflation. Betable also says that it legally needs to manage the direct relationship with a game’s real-money players.

The company recently raised a round of funding from investors including Greylock, CrunchFund, Yuri Milner’s Start Fund, Founders Fund, True Ventures, Path co-founder Dave Morin, former Wikia CEO Gil Penchina, Delicious’ Josh Schachter, StockTwits’ Howard Lindzon and LOLApps former CEO Arjun Sethi. It also poached a few people from Zynga’s ranks including the former vice president of mobile Ya-Bing Chu and the guy behind Zynga’s bwin.party deal, former Zynga vice president of business development Jonathan Flesher.

Between multiple simultaneous press conferences and sinking funds into a questionable Super Bowl commercial, BlackBerry is keen to make sure that its BB10-powered hardware is still on your mind. Really, the only thing that BlackBerry hasn’t been very comfortable talking about in public is when exactly the Z10 will make its long-awaited U.S. debut.

Those are announcements best left to carriers, and thankfully they’re not immune to leaks — according to a handset launch calendar obtained by TmoNews, BlackBerry’s Z10 will make its T-Mobile debut on March 27. Sadly, the calendar lacks pricing details, but I wouldn’t expect T-Mobile to stray too far (if at all) from the $199 price point Verizon has already advertised.

Sorry, BlackBerry fanatics — it was no secret that BlackBerry was eying a March launch window for the Z10′s domestic debut, but a launch late in the month may only making that sense of gadget-centric yearning even harder to bear. Meanwhile, the Z10 has already launched in the U.K. (where it seems to be doing rather well), and our neighbors in Canada will be able to pick one up come February 5 (i.e. tomorrow).

While at the company’s New York launch event, CEO Thorsten Heins pegged the Z10′s domestic launch delay on the extensive testing process that carriers are putting it through. Though just about every major carrier in the U.S. has pledged to support the Waterloo-based company’s new hardware, there’s still no word on when they plan to push them out the door. That hasn’t stopped them from talking about their plans in broad strokes though — Verizon will exclusively carry the white Z10 spotted before the platform’s launch, and Sprint plans to skip the Z10 in favor of the slightly more traditional Q10 when it launches some time in April.

Turns out, the 27th could be a very big day for any T-Mo customer looking to pick up some shiny new hardware — other releases slated for that day include LTE-friendly versions of the Galaxy S III and the carrier’s Sonic mobile hotspot.

Amazon, like competitors Hulu and Netflix, is set on producing original content for its Instant Video library.

Along with various children’s series, the company is also working on six new comedy pilots which users will then vote on, deciding who keeps on filming and who shuts down.

What we didn’t know, until now, is that Amazon is clearly investing quite a bit in these pilots, hiring big name actors for lead roles. In fact, TechCrunch has learned exclusively that John Goodman will be playing one of the lead roles in Alpha House.

Alpha House is a comedy written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau, which follows four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC.

John Goodman has been a well-known actor for some time now, starring in the Golden Globe nominated Argo film, which came out last year, as well as many other beloved films and TV shows like the Big Lebowski and Roseanne.

Work on the pilots has already begun, but there’s no word on when the finished products will be ready to air.

Google recently changed its payout schedule for Android app developers, moving from a window that saw developers paid two days after the month ends, to a new window where the payout date is 15 days after the month’s end. The move will allow Google to hold onto payments longer, which benefits the company of course. But when Google informed developers of the change, it cited “new forms of payment” as the reason for the lengthened window.

In public, a few developers have posted their outrage and/or general confusion to sites like Hacker News and Reddit, speculating that the move, in reality, was prompted by everything from a need to fight spammers to the desire to keep money in the bank longer, where it could grow interest. This response has to do more so with the language Google used to explain the shift, rather than the actual change itself. The company told developers that the move will allow it to “better serve your users and create more revenue opportunities for you,” which is what developers are reacting to.

For small-time developers, it’s hard to see the benefit of having to now wait an extra two weeks for payment. As one developer told me, this could be “the difference between making rent and not” for some app makers. For bigger developers, the move isn’t as damaging, it’s just more of a nuisance. After all, Apple pays out even later, so this isn’t entirely unprecedented here.

But while the big news for developers is the change to the payments window, what jumped out at us from the Google memo is the part where Google introduced the change as coming “while we introduce new forms of payment.” New forms of payment, hmm? Google already supports Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover via Google Wallet integration for buying apps and in-app payments. Carrier billing is available in some markets as well. It even has gift cards.What’s missing?

We’re secretly hoping this has to do with that forthcoming option to keep an ongoing “Google Wallet balance” in the upcoming (leaked) version of Google Wallet. When Google rolls out its new, universal Google Wallet plastic card, it’s also introducing a system that will allow end users to deposit money into Google Wallet from their checking account, as well as withdraw it. This would make Wallet operate more like PayPal.

And having a floating cash balance in Google Wallet could, in turn, encourage more users to pay for apps or buy in-app items. According to the leaked info, the cash transfers take up to three to six days to process. That doesn’t necessarily translate into a direct need for another two weeks of processing time on Google’s end, but it could certainly impact the flow of transactions in Google Play.

Pure speculation at this point, of course, but it’s as plausible an explanation as any. More to come.

Full text of the developer email below:

Hello,

We are committed to providing you with a consistent and reliable payout experience while we introduce new forms of payment to better serve your users and create more revenue opportunities for you. In order to do so, we are shifting our payout date to 15 days after the month’s end.

Starting in February 2013, we will transition you to a schedule from being paid two days after the end of the month to 15 days after the end of the month. In an attempt to ease the transition, we will make two interim payments before you are completely shifted to the new payment schedule as follows:

– February 2nd: Payment for January sales
– February 15th: Payment for February 1 – 13 sales
– March 15th: Payment for February 14 – 28 sales
– April 15th: Payment for March sales

And every month after, you will also receive payment on the 15th.

We remain committed to offering a best in class marketplace for developers to sell their apps. These changes will allow us to ensure users can buy your apps and we can transmit payments to you in a reliable fashion.

If you have any questions, please contact Google Checkout Merchant team at http://support.google.com/checkout/sell/bin/request.py

Thank you for your continued support of Google Play.

Regards,
The Google Play Team

Image credit: AndroidPolice

Last night’s Super Bowl was a nail-biter, but most of today’s conversation will likely center around the ads, not the Raven’s last-second safety or Jacoby Jones’ 108-yard kick return.

But which ads were the best?

Using second-by-second audience measurement data from over 30,000 anonymous households using TiVo, TiVo’s Research and Analytics arm narrowed down the top ten most engaging ads of the big game. This is measured by how many users were watching at “play” speed, as well as whether or not there was a bump in viewership during the ads, relative to the surrounding 15 minutes of programming.

As it were, no tech hardware companies made the top list. Samsung’s ad featuring Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen was pretty funny, but not enough to nab a top spot. BlackBerry’s ad, on the other hand, was total garbage.

Instead, Taco Bell’s “Live Mas” ad, featuring old folks acting like kids again, was the most engaging ad of the game.

TRA also indicated that user-generated ads are a growing trend, as viewers actually had a part in three of the top ten commercials, including two Doritos commercial and the adorable Audi “Prom” commercial. Previewing ads before the Super Bowl also seems to help increase engagement, as nine of the top 10 ads from this year were released ahead of the game.

1. Taco Bell – “Viva Young”

2. Doritos – “Goat for Sale”

3. Hyundai – “Pick Your Team”

4. Doritos – “Fashionista Daddy”

5. GoDaddy.com – “Perfect Date”

6. M&M – “Anything for Love”

7. Skechers – “Man Vs. Cheetah”

8. Pepsi – “Pepsi Next Drink It To Believe It”

9. Audi – “Prom”

10. Volkswagen – “Get In. Get Happy.”

With the debut of BlackBerry’s new BB10 OS and its accompanying handsets, many have questioned whether the revamp is enough to pull iPhone and Android enthusiasts into the BlackBerry fold. But a new research note from CIBC analyst Todd Coupland suggests that BlackBerry may be appealing to users on other platforms just as much as it’s exciting loyal BlackBerry customers.

“In Canada 50% of preregistration at the carriers are not currently Blackberry users,” Coupland said. “This was a surprise and a datapoint that will be watched closely in other regions.”

It’s unclear just how many pre-registrations have been made for the new BlackBerry Z10 all-touch handset, set to launch in March, but according to a Rogers’ spokesperson, “consumer interest is definitely strong.”

As it stands, BlackBerry (rebranded from RIM) is fighting for the third place position after bleeding market share for the past half decade. The chances that BlackBerry will overtake iOS and Android are relatively slim, considering that the two powerhouse platforms comprise more than 90 percent of global shipments in the past year.

However, BlackBerry does have a fighting chance for third place against Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8, which is a relatively new player in the global mobile ecosystem. Many believe it will all come down to the enterprise, and with BYOD becoming a growing trend, the odds are stacked in Microsoft’s favor considering the easy integration with Windows 8.

In any case, BlackBerry seems off to a great start, thanks in no way to this horrible Superbowl ad.

[via BGR]

Telefonica Digital, the tech arm of carrier giant Telefonica, has been making a lot of consumer-focused acquisitions and investments in the last year — and now it’s showing that it has an equal interest in enterprise verticals, specifically in e-health: today it announced the acquisition of a controlling stake in Axismed, a chronic care management provider based in Brazil. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A spokesperson from Telefonica told TechCrunch that this is the carrier’s first investment into e-health, and that the enterprise will continue to remain a focus for Telefonica Digital investments, alongside more consumer-service-focused investments like its stakes in app search Everything.me and mobile payments startup Boku; its acquisition of video chatting platform Tokbox; and more.

“The deal is part of the company’s global strategy to focus on the e-health market, which is one of a number of areas in which Telefónica Digital is developing new innovative products and services,” Antonio Carlos Valente, CEO of the Telefónica Group in Brazil, said in a statement.

The first intention with 10-year old Axismed, Telefonica says, will be to expand the monitoring service across all of Brazil, and then move it into other markets. In total Telefonica has services in 25 countries, covering 314 million customers.

Axismed already works with healthcare providers in the country to help monitor some 180,000 outpatients. Telefonica has a 90-million customer base in the country through its Vivo subsidiary, and the idea will be to integrate Axismed into Vivo’s infrastructure to contact and monitor patients using mobile apps, SMS, video streams, and so on, to cover biometric data around glucose levels, blood pressure, and so on. Brazil’s National Health Agency ANS says there are some 48 million people in the country taking some form of supplementary healthcare on top of state plans, and the private companies that serve these patients will be target one, before Telefonica looks to take the solution to other markets outside of Brazil with the promise of reducing healthcare costs.

It looks like Telefonica is taking an exploratory step in Brazil with this acquisition but that it intends to replicate and expand the solution elsewhere if it’s a success:

“The market potential for remote patient management in Brazil is significant,” said Matthew Key, Chief Executive of Telefónica Digital, in a statement. “The structure, the potential and the maturity of the market and the important role of private health care providers means that Brazil could take a lead globally in rolling out these services. With Axismed, we can deliver a complete end-to-end solution to the market, helping to improve quality of life for patients with chronic conditions.”

Fiksu, a Boston-based app marketing startup, is today rolling out support for Facebook mobile app install ad optimization. The company previously supported optimizations for display ads, video ads, incentivized installs and more, but the move to add Facebook is a testament to the social network’s growing influence as a way to drive app installs for publishers.

The added support comes at a good time – Facebook’s mobile app ads are now used by one-fifth of iOS’ top grossing developers, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who shared this information on the company’s latest earnings call. And the potential is there to grow beyond that as well, given that Facebook now reaches 680 million users on mobile daily. Combined with the fact that Facebook already knows what users “like” and what their friends are clicking, these ads are rapidly becoming a viable user acquisition channel for app developers going forward.

According to Craig Palli, VP of Business Development, the move to add Facebook support was partly due to the company’s core strategy, but also from “numerous” client requests to integrate social media into their ongoing acquisition strategies.

The new Facebook platform integration is accomplished using REST-based APIs that allow granular control and refinement of mobile app install ads and other Facebook products, Palli tells us. The campaigns begin by casting a broad net across the Facebook audience and channels, he explains, and then begin to narrow down the target based on the data gathered regarding clickstreams, downloads, and performance parameters. Fiksu isn’t charging more for the added option, but is instead rolling it into its current packages.

More and more app marketers and analytics firms are now ramping up to take Facebook into account as an important mobile player, including recently Localytics, which this November began tracking Facebook mobile app install ads on its platform. Another company, AdParlor, also recently shared data with TechCrunch which indicated that Facebook’s app install ads could indicate big revenue potential for developers.

The pay-per-install market may not last forever, especially given Apple’s history of discounting paid installs once any “cheating” tactic begins to actually work. But in Facebook’s case, growing app installs through News Feed clicks may have a longer shelf life – at least until Facebook over does it, causing “ad blindness” in its user base. (That’s a dangerous line to cross, of course – after all, when was the last time you clicked a banner ad?)

But for now, expect to see more of this Facebook app install optimization in the near-term from Fiksu competitors, as the industry gloms onto to the next big thing for driving new users to apps in the over-crowded app store market.

Nokia’s slide down the mobile rankings continues: StatCounter figures for January 2013 show Apple dislodged the Finnish mobile maker for the first time as the most popular mobile vendor in terms of global internet usage. The figures come from StatCounter GlobalStats and are based on analysis of more than 15 billion page views per month to the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

According to the research, Apple took the top spot in the ranking — which covers mobile devices such as smartphones and the iPod touch but does not cover tablets — with Cupertino taking just over a quarter (25.86 per cent) share. However Apple’s share was down 2.81 percentage points on the year ago period, when StatCounter pegged its share at 28.67 per cent — meaning a declining Nokia ceded its place to the iPhone maker, rather than Apple growing to outstrip it. Nokia’s January 2013 share is pegged at just over a fifth (22.15 per cent), down 15.52 percentage points from its January 2012 share of well over a third (37.67 per cent).

“Apple has been handed the number one spot despite its falling usage share. A decline in Nokia usage from January 2012 to January 2013 means the Finnish company ceded the top spot to Apple,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter, in a statement.

The rising star in StatCounter’s chart is Android OEM Samsung. The Korean mobile maker leapt up from 14.84 per cent in January 2012, to snapping at Apple’s heels with more than a fifth (22.69 per cent) this year — up 7.85 percentage points.

Slicing the data by region, Apple is shown to have a far greater lead over Samsung in the North American market — taking around half the marketshare versus around 14 per cent for Samsung:

In Europe, Apple’s lead over Samsung narrows again — to just below 40 per cent vs around 25 per cent for Samsung:

In Asia it’s a very different picture, with Nokia holding on to its lead — albeit, also with declining share — and Samsung in second place with just over a quarter of the market. Apple is relegated to fourth place with just over five per cent share:

Last month StatCounter figures suggested iOS’s appeal in Asia was on the wane – with Apple’s share of mobile devices in Singapore web traffic it analysed dropping from 72 percent in January last year to 50 percent this month, while Android’s share climbed from 20 percent to 43 percent.

What Andre Cassagnes thought of today’s beeping and whirring playrooms we don’t know. We do know that the former electrician, born on September 23, 1926, created his iconic toy after noticing how graphite clung to a thin film of plastic while he was marking up a light switch decal. He tinkered with the idea for a while and created the L’Ecran Magique in 1959. Ohio Art licensed his idea in 1960 and the red-framed device was born.

The inventor died on January 16th of unknown causes.

The toy went on to great acclaim. Named one of the top 100 toys of the 20th century it played an integral role in many of our lives. Its limitations gave it glory and one shake is all it took to get rid of our transgressions. For many of us it was our first experience in mechanical drawing and what was LOGO but an electronic Etch A Sketch? That we, as pre-digital kids, could put something on a screen was a mesmerizing proposition and that kids still love this toy is a wonder.

The toy played an integral part in the life of Bryan, Ohio residents where, until 2003, the Etch A Sketch was built. The town moved manufacturing to Shenzhen, devastating the employees who brought the Etch A Sketch to life year after year.

“Etch A Sketch has brought much success to the Ohio Art Company, and we will be eternally grateful to Andre for that. His invention brought joy to so many over such a long period of time,” said Ohio Art president Larry Killgallon.

Cassagnes attempted to recreate his success and built a toy with a globe-shaped screen and a car game. Nothing received quite the same acclaim. In his later years took up kite-flying. Some would say it’s sad to be remembered for only one creation but, I would wager, Cassagnes’ gentle, quiet toy is a noble memorial to its creator. In an era of distraction, there is something beautiful about a toy that can create anything you can imagine using two simple dials and a blank screen and something important about a toy that will forgive your mistakes with a few soft shakes.