Sprint’s New Mobile Ad Network Pinsight Media+ Promises Better Targeting, Metrics and CTR

I spent the last two days at the Sprint Open Solutions Conference as a guest of Sprint which is the third largest US mobile operator. The event, which used to be called the Sprint Developer Conference, has been broadened to include more business related content but there are still many technical sessions targeted at consumer and enterprise mobile app developers. There were a couple of interesting presentations on mobile advertising. It’s no secret that the revenue per click or impression from ads … Continue reading

Carnival of the Mobilists #252

Photo: Fabiana Zonca – Some rights reserved Welcome to the latest edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists, a recurring showcase of the best recent blog posts on mobile topics. This month’s Carnival offers a fine selection of posts from all areas of the mobile ecosystem. In The End of Cross-Platform Mobile Operating Systems Richard Monson-Haefel at Ambient Strategic Mobility argues that tightly integrated mobile ecosystems à la iOS are the key to success for mobile platforms. Agree or disagree? Sachendra Yadav at Technology, … Continue reading

Hands On With Bolt Browser’s xAD Local Search

Bolt browser recently started returning results for local searches from mobile local search and advertising company xAD. According to xAD the partnership will give users more relevant results and added features like reviews, offers, maps and directions. Currently live in the US only, xAD results will soon start appearing for Bolt users in Germany, U.K. and France. I gave xAD a try with a few local search queries.  Results were generally pretty good. For most queries xAD returned results that were as … Continue reading

Opera Launches Appcelerate Program For Mobile App Developers

Yesterday at APPNATION Opera Software announced the availability of Appcelerate, a program intended to help with the discovery, distribution and monitization of mobile apps. Appcelerate lets developers place their apps in the Opera Mobile Store, a web based app store at mobilestore.opera.com/ that works in all browsers. The Opera Mobile Store is a featured Speed Dial link on the start page in Opera Mini, the world most popular mobile browser with over 100,000 users. The Opera Mobile Store is available … Continue reading

Bolt Browser 2.5 – HTML5, Geolocation, Improved UI and Ads

Click images to view full size. Bitstream released a new version of the Bolt Java ME browser at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday. It’s Bolt 2.5 and new features include support for more HTML5 features including  the Geolocation API, the ability to play Facebook videos and some subtle tweaks to the UI that make it more touch friendly and reduce the number of clicks needed to perform common actions. Download Bolt 2.5 from: boltbrowser.com/dnld.html (PC) or boltbrowser.com/aindex (mobile … Continue reading

Making Money In Mobile – Issues and Strategy

Photo: Some rights reserved by AMagill One of the recurring themes at this week’s Mobile 2.0 conference was how exactly do you make money in mobile? It was the topic of a couple of panels but no clear answer emerged. In talking with other attendees during breaks I found a fairly high level of frustration about revenue opportunities in mobile. It’s not easy for free lance  app developers and mobile web publishers to make a living from their work. Most … Continue reading

How To Keep Ads From Breaking Your Mobile Pages

I try to build mobile sites that work on everything from an old wml-only browsers to iPhones and the latest Android “Superphone”.  It’s more work but I believe it’s worthwhile. Supporting more devices brings in more traffic and hopefully makes users of old devices smile when they find a site that actually works on their phones. I use adaptation to vary page and image sizes and MIME types to suit the capabilities of various devices. BlackBerrys, iPhones and most modern  … Continue reading

Mobile 2.0 – Advertising Tips for Mobile Web Publishers

I spent the last two days at the Mobile 2.0 Conference – Silicon Valley. This is my fourth Mobile 2.0 and like the previous three was a first rate event with great speakers and panels and attendance by a global group of mobile entrepreneurs and developers. It was ably organized and run with great attention to detail by Greg Gorman, Mike Rowehl and Peter Vesterbacka with off-site support from Rudy De Waele and Daniel Appelquist . The event was two … Continue reading