The Gang talks with a data scientist (and accomplished applications developer) living here in the Twin Cities, Jamie Ostheimer. He is working with a string of startups and is deeply embedded within the world of data. Osterheimer has a PhD in Astronomy, a discipline all about the data (and no, not Commander Data from Star Trek Next Generation). Rather his focus is about the core data sets that power all of our analysis, driving insights and enabling us to gain new meanings from it.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: bluessmyth & the song “Down on My Luck” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Minneapolis startup TST Media acquires Wisconsin Sports Network site (Pioneer Press)
• Facebook’s $5 Billion IPO: The Next Google? Or The Next Groupon? 
• Zuckerberg Controlling 57% of Facebook Seen as Risk to Investors
• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad; Foxconn; Major Customers
• Was Google’s Disastrous January A Passing Storm Or Sign Of Things To Come?
• Employers added 243,000 jobs in January, pushing unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent 
• Jamie Ostheimer links: What Is a Data Scientist? (the diagram we discuss); Forbes article 

Upcoming Events:

• February 10-11: Startup Weekend Twin Cities III, U of M Carlson
• February 23rd: WordPressMSP at The Nerdery
• February 23rd: How to Leverage Digital Media to Raise Capital (a DealPen event at CoCo. Promo code for free ticket: dealpenfriend)
• February 24-25: MinneWIC (Women in Computing)
• March 16-17: Mobile March (Mobile 3D) (Call for speakers)
• April 7th: MinneBar, Best Buy headquarters
• June 5-8: eyeo Festival, Walker Art Center

Minnov8 Gang 155 – It’s the Data is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I’ve known of the Center for quite some time and been interested in what they describes as their mission to, “…enhance health and well-being by educating health professionals, empowering consumers, and fundamentally transforming the delivery of health care through the creation of interdisciplinary academic, research, clinical care, and outreach programs that advance integrative health and healing.”

Mary Jo Kreitzer, PhD RN

No question that new models of integrative healthcare are accelerating and what the Center is exploring is proving to be the right path. But an iOS app?

In order to understand a little more about the Center and to understand more about why they delivered an app, I talked with Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer, the founder and director of the Center and someone who brings more than 20 years of leadership and expertise to the field of integrative health and medicine.

I started off asking Dr. Kreitzer to give me some background on the Center and we took it from there…

U of MN Center for Spirituality & Healing’s Mobile App is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: “The Favourite” by Dig via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Tekne Awards-Finalists
• About Windows 8; Windows 8 Gets Sad New Blue Screen of Death
• Laptop, Tablet Differences May Fade, Intel Says (WSJ Digits Blog)
• DEMO Conference
• Graeme’s live-blog of DEMO Fall 2011; All Graeme’s posts tagged DEMO Fall 2011
• Video of onstage pitch at DEMO of Minneapolis startup Me&MyMoney
• The DEMO People’s Choice Award winner (and one of five DEMO God winners): Aurasma
• Interview with Ernest Grumbles on patents.

Upcoming Events:

• Tuesday, Sept 20th: Mobile Twin Cities
• Thursday, Sept 22nd: WordPressMSP
• Saturday, Sept 24th: She’s Geeky Unconference
• Minnedemo – Tentatively scheduled the first week of October
• Tuesday, Oct 11th & 12th: MIMA Summit 

Minnov8 Gang 137 – Major Mojo Baby! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson, & Julio Ojeda Zapata
Music: “Just Got to Boogie” by Matt Thorpe via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Google+; Cosmic Panda
• Google+ to Brands: Not So Fast
• Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and his first reaction to Google+
• Facebook, Skype and Microsoft’s Savvy Investment
• Apple 15 Billion App Store Downloads
• Apple Supply Chain Advantage
• About the Baby Boomer generation
• Google Makes Facebook Look Socially Awkward 
• Wifi Storage for Tablets and other devices
• UPCOMING EVENTS:
• Hacked! – Why You Should Care about Privacy in Social Media
• WordPressMSP July 28th meeting on Gravity Forms

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 130 – Tablets, Schmablets is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

That old black and white photo above of the woman holding some sort of portable videophone is from this surprisingly prescient Modern Mechanix article from 1956 that starts out with this:

“ON SOME night in the future a young man walking along Market Street in San Francisco may suddenly think of a friend in Rome. Reaching into his pocket, he will pull out a watch-size disc with a set of buttons on one side. He will punch ten times. Turning the device over, he will hear his friend’s voice and see his face on a tiny screen, in color and 3-D. At the same moment his friend in Rome will see and hear him.“

We can now laugh at how quaint this seems coming from a 1956 perspective, but when you think of the collision of technologies available to us today (e.g., GPS; fast wireless networks; Wifi; voice apps w/video; tools to develop and create apps) and the huge numbers of people rapidly acquiring mobile devices that are ‘always on and always connected’, you can understand why so many ‘marchers’ were marching forward at Mobile March. See the full 1956 Modern Mechanix article, scanned and on their blog, here.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: David Bennett Cohen is the artist & the song is “Blues for a Summer’s Dream” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• QR Code definition and 50 Creative Uses of QR Codes
• Lisa Foote MixMobi
• Mobile 3D presenters and specific mentions of Locate my Deal and Scrimmage
• Apple XCode & Appcelerator Titanium
• WordPress plugin: WPTouch (free/pro); TurboCSV & MapPress Free/Pro
• From 2006: Borsch’s Rise of the Participation Culture (PDF)

Minnov8 Gang 115 – Mobile March Marchers Marching is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Graeme Thickins and Tim Elliott (Phil is off this week).
Guest Host: Julio Ojeda-Zapata
Music by: Charlie Crowe and the song, “Vegas Hard Rock Shuffle” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Graeme’s DEMO adventure
  • Interview with Lief Larson and Tanner Thompson from Minnesota-based Workface
  • PhotoRocket
• Unemployment dips to 8.9 pct., 192K jobs added
• Apple iPad2
  • John Gruber’s thoughts on iPad2
  • Engadget editorial about the “post-PC” era
  • Wall Street Journal: Tablet Computer Demand Putting a Dent in PC Sales
  • iPad 2 wasn’t Apple’s big March 2nd announcement (via Beta News)
• Malware hits Android – Google Pulls 21 Apps
• Publishing discussion:
  • Wildly successful Austin, MN-based indie writer Amanda Hocking (article; blog). USA Today reports that her sales have exceeded $450k for the month of January 2011 alone.
  • Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite
  • Drupal distribution called “Open Publish”

• Upcoming Events:
  • Saturday, March 19th: MOBILE MARCH New part of this years mobile event…Mobile 3D (Note: Only a few tickets remain!)
  • Wednesday, March 23rd: Cloudcamp MSP
  • Thursday, March 24th: MSP WordPress User Group meeting
  • Saturday, March 26th: Overnight Website Challenge
  • Monday, April 11th: MinneWebCon

Minnov8 Gang 113 – Facetime Fever Flabbergasts? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: David Bennett Cohen playing “Cookin’ with Cohen” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• New Macbooks and iFixit tears down the new 15” Macbook Pro
• Daring Fireball’s take on iPad2
• Motorola’s Xoom Starts Tablet Wars With iPad (Walt Mossberg review)
• AllThingsD: Q3 4.5M tablets sold, 4.3M of them were iPads
• Android Book Market and Google Apps Marketplace
• Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSPWordpress) WordPress user group has a new site
• According to a white paper and video from Deloitte, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions 2011, which says there will be a significant consumer and enterprise shift away from the desktop and laptop PC in favor of mobile devices like smartphones, tablets and netbooks in 2011
• Google on mobile commerce. Square…and an article about how they’re now in a mobile payments war with Intuit
• Michael Robertson Launches Cloud-Based Radio DVR
• UPCOMING EVENTS:
  • Sunday, February 27th: DEMO (Graeme will be liveblogging it starting Monday morning, and is also using Fanchatter on his blog to aggregate all the DEMO conversation). Also, DEMO has partnered with FORA.tv to bring DEMO LIVE to audiences around the world.  The full program will be available starting Monday, February 28th at 9:00am Pacific Time, and later on-demand.
  • Saturday, March 19th: MOBILE MARCH New part of this years mobile event…Mobile 3D
  • Wednesday, March 23rd: Cloudcamp MSP
  • Thursday, March 24th: MSP WordPress User Group meeting
  • Saturday, March 26th: Overnight Website Challenge
  • Monday, April 11th: MinneWebCon

Minnov8 Gang 112 – Even Monkeys are Mobile is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

We’ve come a loooong way since 1990 and it’s likely this mobile thingy is gonna be big.  ;-)

Joining us on this episode of the Minnov8 Gang is Justin Grammens, co-Founder at Recursive Awesome, LLC, owner of Localtone, LLC founder of the Mobile Twin Cities User’s Group, and co-founder of Mobile March. During the “Gang Mentality” segment we’re pleased to have been joined by Lisa Foote, co-founder of  MixMobi and a pragmatic expert in the mobile space overall. She also speaks at many industry events (e.g., the upcoming Mobile March) and is a strategist with a global perspective on the mobile space.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Beyond the Pale is the artist & their song “Faral O’Garas” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• ZDnet report on Macworld 2011
• Macworld site 2011 predictions
• Windows Phone 7 devs get long-awaited pay day
• Tweet Aggregator, Paper.li
• iPad Cases w/keyboards
• Nokia CEO Elop Lays Groundwork for New Strategy, Hints May Be Open to OS Switch
• Gartner: App Sales To Top $15 Billion In 2011
• GlueCon and Glue Hackathon (Minneapolis won vote to be one! Date to be announced soon.)

Minnov8 Gang 109 – This Mobile Thingy Will Be Big! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Opening version of the New Year’s Eve favorite Auld Lang Syne was performed by J.E.L.L.i., and the closing version of the song was performed by Mario Ajero. Both made possible by the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• The Year in Review: Mobile Technology… The Rise of Apps, iPad, and Android
• Semantic Web
• Internet of Things
• Compellent’s sale could boost tech ecosystem
• Small Companies Look to Cloud for Savings in 2011 (WSJ)
• DemandMedia
• I, Cringely

Minnov8 Gang 105 – 2011 Tech Predictions is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Dom Duff & the song “March Azur” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• iPad means business
  • How to buy
  • To win a copy of “iPad means business”, email steve@minnov8.com with the code word we mentioned in the podcast. We will draw a name at random and announce the winner on Monday on Minnov8
  • “iPads Are Latest Weapon in Medical Sales” (Medtronic is one of the biggest corporate buyers)
  • One way Graeme uses his iPad
  • Apple’s iPad Luring Small Businesses
• Don Ball links: CoCoMSP; Network 2010; pariSoma; iPass; SoCoCo (Graeme’s interview at DEMO); James J. Hill Library and that incubator article in StarTribune.
• CrashPlan
• All social media experts “are actually the same person,” Wikileaks documents reveal

Minnov8 Gang 104 – We Are All Virtual Now is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week)
Music: LA Big Daddys & their song “Why I Sing the Blues” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• White iPhone in Minneapolis
• All social media experts “are actually the same person,” Wikileaks documents reveal
• Visi’s ReliaCloud
• Verizon LTE Blows Through Monthly Data Cap in 32 Minutes
• Verizon’s 4G Network Is Windows-Only, for Now
• Comedian Soupy Sales and actress Rita Moreno (starred in West Side Story)
• IDC: IT spending will shift from hardware to software; 25 billion app downloads in 2011
• Events:
  • Saturday, December 4th: (9:00am – 5:00pm) Coworking for startups
  • Thursday, December 9th, 7:30am – 9:30am: MHTA Annual CIO Panel

Minnov8 Gang 102 – Mostly Soupy, Trivial Sales is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The Gang has Julio Ojeda Zapata on this week to talk about a bunch of stuff…including Google’s killing of Google Wave.

Julio is the Pioneer Press’ consumer-tech reporter and writes a Tech Test Drive column about gadgets, apps and social media (among other things). He is the author of Twitter Means Business, one of the first books about Twitter (and his new one coming out tentatively titled, “iPad Means Business”). See his Posterous geekstream or contact him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Big George Jackson Blues Band & song “Tell Me” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Robert Stephens’ LinkedIn page showing he’s “Chief Technology Officer, Best Buy. Founder, The Geek Squad”
• Google kills Wave
• Rapportive for Gmail
• MailPlane
• Google.me
• FastMall
• Webcams.travel
• LogMeIn Ignition
• ChromeOS
• Jolicloud
• Quite differing views of the onrush (deluge?) of information—and our access to it via the internet—and what Nicholas Carr & Clay Shirky each think of how we’re dealing with it as humans.

Direct link to the show.

Minnov8 Gang 88: Google Waves Goodbye is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

St. Cloud-based W3i is in the app distribution business — in a big, profitable way (33 successive quarters thereof).  But till now that business has been all about desktop apps, and Windows only. Well, mark down yesterday as the day they entered the world of mobile, with this bombshell: W3i Launches New Incented Mobile App Distribution Service for iOS App Developers.  A separate version of the release, for consumers, gets more to the benefit: Consumers Can Now Earn Rewards for Installing Apps.  Those rewards, my friends, would be cash — for consumers who register at a W3i site called Apperang.com.

Naturally, app fanboys and girls everywhere loved the news — after reading about it on some of the sites they frequent the most.  TechCrunch (MobileCrunch) ran this story: Apperang Pays You Cash to Download iPhone Apps… Ka-Ching! And VentureBeat (MobileBeat) ran concurrently — amazing how that happens — with their take: Get paid to install apps with W3i Mobile Solutions and Apperang.  Numerous other sites and blogs picked up on it immediately, and Twitter was going crazy on it (just search on hashtags #apperang and #w3i).  [Oh, sure, there was a story in the StarTrib last week, too, but that didn't light up much of anything... <rimshot>]

I asked the CEO of a local app development company for his reaction to this W3i news, from a business perspective:  ”The model and integration W3i has developed for desktop distribution has been a huge success in the past, so I wouldn’t bet against them on making their mobile version a success,” said Wade Beavers, CEO of DoApp Inc. “For developers wanting to get a core base of users fast, it makes sense to use this service. The key will be how long those users keep your app, because that’s where the return on investment is.”

I also asked one of Minnesota’s most experienced iPhone app developers for his reaction: “Will app publishers readily jump to use this type of service? Small developers, maybe,” said Bill Heyman of CodeMorphic. “But small developers may not have budget to support this type of promotion… Will it be enough to hit the tipping point for more organic sales because of a higher App Store ranking? Well, ultimately, it would depend on how much a company wants to spend to buy a ranking.”

But, actually, W3i signed on some pretty successful big developers for its private beta before the announcement yesterday (the service is now in public beta).  That list of launch advertisers — just those that let W3i use their names for PR purposes — includes these firms, with the name of their app in parentheses: Big Stack Studios (Sigma), Inert Soap (FingerZilla), Booyah (MyTown), Gist (Gist), Thinking Ape (Kingdoms at War), Flixster (Movies), Slacker Inc (Slacker Radio), xCube Labs (My Health Records – Health n Family), and infinidycorp (Zombies vs. Aliens).

I’m sure we’ll be hearing about a lot more, as W3i tells me they are crazy-busy now following up with other app companies who are inquiring.

(Disclosure: the author has had a consulting relationship with W3i for providing PR services.)

W3i Lights Up the ‘Net with Its Latest App News is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

We revisit Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) through Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s experiences talking about the new iPhone 4 and his reliance on the iPad and HTC EVO 4G on his trip. Many other related subjects are explored to their logical conclusions.

Show Hosts: Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson (Steve Borsch was away this week).

Music by AjT “Apple Chunk Guitar” from Music Alley.

Discussed during the podcast:

iPhone 4 live blogs: Engadget | gdgt

Julio’s impressions of iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO 4G  on Your Tech Weblog

Simplenote app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Reeder app for iPhone and iPod Touch

Read It Later

Instapaper

Pulse News Reader app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Readability

Safari 5 Extensions blog

Xmarks extension for Firefox, Chrome and Safari

Apple TV Rumors at Engadget

Julio’s “Twitter Means Business” book website

Julio’s latest TWiT appearance

Events:

Social Media Breakfast, Twin Cities

fontconf

Unsummit 2010

MIMA “Crowd Source/User Generated Content with John Winsor” Event

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 82: Vicarious WWDC is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

• Apple sells 1 million iPads in 28 days. Took iPhone 74 days. Plus, Minnesota-based analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray estimated that Apple sold about 300,000 units over the weekend, similar to the 300,000 Apple sold the first day of sales April 3. He said the 3G unit was sold out in 49 of 50 stores he checked, suggesting that long term, 3G units will make up about 40 percent of all sales while Wi-Fi units will make up the remaining 60 percent. In related news, is the iPhone code ban facing antitrust inquiry? and Apple Policy Said to Prompt U.S. Allegation by Adobe

• HTC’s Incredible Android Smartphone Hits the Market

• Twitter Launches Embeddable Tweets and PCMag’s Lance Unaloff thinks Twitter is the new CNN

• Governor Pawlenty says Minnesota needs to be more competitive. Healthy state economies will play a critical role in future job creation, but Minnesota does not rank among the nation’s top 10 “growth performers,” according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study rolled out Monday by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

• KeyOn Announces Acquisition of Network Assets in Iowa and Minnesota. KeyOn is one of the largest providers of wireless broadband, satellite and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services in the United States, primarily targeting underserved markets with populations generally less than 50,000. (Good thing for rural Minnesota?)

• Google Acquires 3D desktop company Bump Technologies

• Microsoft’s IE Sinks While Google Chrome’s Market Share Triples

• Seven things you need to stop doing on Facebook and tech pundit Leo Laporte mentioned on TWiG 39 that he’s going to delete his Facebook profile over the incomprehensible social graph moves — and Leo’s inability to understand their impact on privacy settings (which he explains as, “If I can’t understand them…how can the average person!“) — made by Facebook at F8, their developer conference.

• Bill Gates says that Microsoft has some tablet projects in the works.

Newsbytes for Tuesday, May 4, 2010 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This past week, I thought it would be an interesting little project for me to do a survey of sorts as the basis for this blog post. What I did (totally unscientific, I admit) was ask all the Twin Cities-area mobile developers I happened to know just how many apps they have on the two major platforms, Apple and Android, and how many users have downloaded their apps to date.  It turned into a bigger project than I thought!  It required a lot of back-and-forth emails to clarify all their current offerings.  But I’ve sorted it all out as best I can, and you’ll see the results of that survey in the second half of this post.

The two most-experienced mobile app development firms in Minnesota I have known quite well for some time, having been a consultant to both in the past: DoApp and CodeMorphic.  These two firms began developing for the iPhone platform as soon as Apple released the SDK in March 2008, and had their first creations in the App Store from the get-go, in the case of DoApp (July 2008), and CodeMorphic soon after. So, it was no surprise to me, then, that these two have the largest numbers of downloads locally. But many more Minnesota developers jumped in after them, and still are jumping in. In fact, I learn about a new one almost weekly. Some publish apps in their own name, some only for clients, and some do both. (For apps developed for-hire for client companies, developers cannot track ongoing download numbers in real time — only their clients know, unless they tell them or otherwise publicize the numbers. But the developers can certainly make educated guesses, which some of them did for me for my survey.) What triggered this idea for a post was a news announcement one of the two big local development firms just put out …

DoApp Inc. Announces One Million Downloads of Its “Mobile Local News” App

Actually, it’s not one app; there are more than 100 of these DoApp “MLN” apps out there, because that’s how many customers (media outlets) have signed up with DoApp to date to use what is really an “app platform.”  It allows DoApp’s customers — TV news stations, newspapers, online publications, and radio stations — to easily brand the app for themselves and deliver their content via smart phones and other mobile devices, including the Apple iPad.  (DoApp has not yet submitted to Apple an app designed specifically for the iPad, though its many iPhone apps do work on that new device.) In its recent announcement, DoApp counted downloads for all its locally-branded Mobile Local News apps, including both Apple and Android downloads, in saying they have surpassed the one million number. The company first made the Mobile Local News app available in April 2009. For more about all of DoApp’s products, see the company’s web site.   (In the photo: Joe Sriver, center, Founder; Wade Beavers, left, CEO; and Dave Borrillo, VP-Software Development.) I conducted an email interview with DoApp founder Joe Sriver to learn more about the current status of his company’s Mobile Local News app business, which follows….

First, here’s a map showing U.S. coverage of DoApp Mobile Local News apps. Click on it to go a page that also lists, below the map, all the media properties throughout the country that have the company’s app.

Minnov8: Just out of curiosity, Joe, what percentage of the one million downloads you’re announcing for Mobile Local News are iPhone vs. Android?
Sriver: “Currently, the breakdown is about 60/40 in favor of the iPhone. Android has really been gaining a lot of ground in the last year. 2010 is a big year for Android.  We are seeing over 49 different brands of Android phones that are tapping our MLN app — a challenge to maintain.”

Minnov8: How many of your existing customers for this app offer both iPhone and Android versions? Does our local WCCO-TV, your first customer, offer both?
Sriver: “Our platform offers the native iPhone and Android versions for all our media outlet customers — WCCO included. We will also have a Blackberry WAP version debuting in the next month.  We’re seeing a new influx of iPad users accessing the news, too, so let’s just say we will have an iPad solution soon.”

Minnov8: Most all your customers for this app appear to be TV stations. Are any radio stations or newspapers signed up yet? Do you expect more of the latter two?
Sriver: “We have been signing newspapers as well.  In the last few months, we signed Journal Communications, which includes Milwaukee’s Journal-Sentinel, and the Los Angeles News Group, which includes several newspapers in the LA area. Our SBT News app serves the newspaper in South Bend, Indiana.  We have also signed Swift Communications, whose properties include many newspapers in the western and northwestern U.S.  With our recent announcements, a flurry of radio stations are contacting us, and our first radio station app will be out in the first week of May.”

Minnov8: How much are you seeing media outlets developing their own custom, native apps for mobile devices — as opposed to simply skinning your app and configuring it for use with their local audiences?  What’s the difference in time and money with your approach?
Sriver: “We’ve talked to many media outlets. A few of them have decided to do development in-house. Many of them call us back a few months later after they realize all the development requirements for iPhone and Android. They tell us our Mobile Local News solution is the fastest, cheapest, and most efficient method to bring their content to mobile. The money difference is huge for them because its the support that kills them, and we have a solution that fits to scale.  We’ve done nine major enhancements in 12 months already, and for a property to do so is a huge resource drain.  It’s just tough to keep up with technology.”

Minnov8: How does DoApp Inc. make money from this app — licensing?  Revenue share? Where does your “Adagogo” ad platform fit in here?  What portion of your customers for this app have ads appearing on it?  What revenue do you make from ads that appear on the app?
Sriver: “We offer a subscription model where stations can receive 100% of revenue from advertisements, or an advertising revenue share model, where news organizations pay a small set up fee and then share advertising revenue with DoApp.”

Minnov8: Are all current customers for the app in the U.S.? If so, any plans to pursue business in other countries?
Sriver: “Yes, all current news entities who use Mobile Local News are in the U.S.  We do have plans for news organizations in other countries. We can support translations right now, and we are working to reach out to the growing Spanish-speaking consumer market.”

Minnov8: Your original partner for the Mobile Local News platform was Inergize Digital Media of Minneapolis — and I remember having the initial discussion with them on your behalf in the fall of 2008. What role do they play? What percentage of the media outlets that have signed up to use your app were existing customers of theirs?  And what revenue split does Inergize get from this partnership?
Sriver: “Inergize brought many of their existing stations who used their web solution to the mobile platform via DoApp’s Mobile Local News. We’re working to establish other relationships and also extending our direct model to TV news/radio/newspaper properties.  The relationship works like this: DoApp provides Inergize’s partner stations with the DoApp Mobile Local News mobile publishing solution. A percentage of ad revenue goes to the station or newspaper, Inergize, and DoApp.”

Minnov8: What does 2010 hold for DoApp? What portion of your overall revenues do you expect will come from the Mobile Local News and Adagogo combined?
Sriver: “We will continue to build our base of news entities who use Mobile Local News.  MLN is the most popular platform for mobile news delivery in the U.S.  Our Adagogo ad platform is currently being used on all Mobile Local News apps. We will continue to grow Adagogo as well. DoApp is also focusing on mobile real estate. We have created what is arguably the most advanced real estate solution, combining cost savings capabilities for agents with simplicity for their clients — allowing mobile access anytime, anywhere via smart phones and other mobile devices.”

So, what about DoApp’s total stats, for all their apps?  Here are the numbers I got from Joe:

-What is the total number of apps DoApp has had accepted into the App Store? iPhone: 125 (all but about 15 are Mobile Local News apps). Android: 110.
-Paid vs. Free? iPhone: 4 are paid apps, the rest are free. Android: all are free.
-What is the total number of downloads of all your apps? iPhone: 4.5 million. Android: 600,000.  Total= 5.1 million.

So, where do other Minnesota developers stand as far as downloads?  Well, here’s that unofficial survey of mine, with respondents in alphabetical order, by company name.  The first happens to be the other large player in the iPhone market I referred to earlier, who may in fact have the largest number of downloads of all, although that cannot be verified:

CodeMorphic – Bill Heyman, Founder
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 50. (All under the names of clients.)
-Paid vs. Free? 20 paid, 30 free.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? CodeMorphic provided a conservative estimate (because its clients have the download figures): 3-5 million.  The most popular of CodeMorphic’s apps has been the NPR Public Radio Player, which the firm said had 2.5M downloads as of two months ago. It also did MPR’s app. Its other popular apps include the “Smarter Agent” real-estate app. Some national brands CodeMophic has done apps for do not allow the firm to publicly disclose them as clients, but these apps have broad reach, too. To see a selection of some of  CodeMorphic’s apps, see the firm’s portfolio page.)
-Do you have apps available now in the Android Market? None yet.

Mentormate – Bjorn Stansvik, CEO
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 1 (“MigraineMate”).
-Paid vs. Free? Free.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? 858.
-Do you have apps available now in the Android Market? None yet. (“LocationMate app to be launched, for both iPhone and Android.”)

Mobile On Services Inc. (BuildAnApp.com) – Scott Pearson, VP-Business Development - UPDATED
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 22. (“We’re still in beta.”)
-Paid vs. Free? All free.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? 4,000 iPhone, 500 Android. (“Will be a much different story in a couple of months.”)
-Do you have apps available now in the Android Market? Yes, 12.

MobileRealtyApps.com, and Performant Design LLC – Aaron Kardell, CEO
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 4. (“Soon to be 5.”)
-Paid vs. Free? 2 paid, 2 free. (“Soon to be 2 paid, 3 free.”)
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? 20,000.
-Do you have apps available now in the Android Market? No. (“But coming soon.”)

Mobile Roots – Lynn Smith, CEO/Founder
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 5. (Three are under Lynn’s name; two apps were developed by Mobile Roots for clients: “Margaret for Governor” and “Brazelton for House.” Two more apps are in development for political candidates.)
-Paid vs. Free? 1 paid (“What the Funkytown!” – $0.99), 4 free.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? 3,270.
-Do you have apps available in the Android Market? No. (“But releasing our first next week.”)

Recursive Awesome – Justin Grammens, Cofounder
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 7 public apps in the App Store; also 5 private apps for one client, which are installed using the limited “AdHoc” distribution method, whereby each app is manually installed on individual Apple devices.
-Paid vs. Free? 1 paid, 7 free.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? Estimate provided: 850,000.
-Do you have apps available in the Android Market? Yes, 6 — 1 paid, 5 free, and 1 in private development. Estimated total downloads for these: 60,000.

Refactr – Ben Edwards, Founder
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 2. (“And 2 more submitted.”)
-Paid vs. Free? All free to date.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps? One app built for Mayo Clinic: download number not known. The firm says its own app, “Flashbang,” has been downloaded about 20,000 times.
-Do you have apps available in the Android Market? None yet.

Tiny Mission – Bekki Freeman, Founder
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 3.
-Paid vs. Free? 2 paid, 1 free.
-What is the approximate total number of downloads of all your apps to date? 1600.
-Do you have apps available in the Android Market? No. (But “working on it as fast as we can type!”).

One thing that occurred to me as I was working on this survey over the past few days: it isn’t just software development firms that doing mobile apps — many of those being firms that do development-for-hire, and some of which are doing self-publishing of their own apps.  But there are also other types of local firms that are developing their own apps, some in-house, including startups whose initial product is a mobile offering, or has a mobile version. One such startup I just learned about is this one, based in Stillwater:

Nibi Software – Troy Peterson, CEO
-What is the total number of apps you have had accepted into the App Store? 1. (“An educational app called Nibipedia, which mashes all the educational Youtube channels with Wikipedia articles — so that, when reading an article, the app recommends relevant videos. It also tracks your research path for you so you can review later. We have several other apps in the queue. Apple makes taking an idea from conception to market so much easier than with traditional web apps. We’re stoked.”)
-Paid vs. Free? Paid – $1.99. (“But we’re offering it to teachers in our Facebook Group for free.” Presumably, that would be via the AdHoc distribution method.)
-What is the total number of downloads of all your apps? No specific number reported. (“It was just released, and has not been promoted. But we’ve had several hundred downloads already from people who became aware of it in the educational marketplace. It’s really designed for the larger display screen of the iPad, so we are setting to work to promote that in the next few weeks.” Presumably, that would mean an iPad-specific version of the app is coming.)
-Do you have apps available in the Android Market? Not yet. (“But we’re going to, for sure.”)

A footnote: I only contacted firms that I know to be developing for the Apple or Android platforms, but I make no claims that this is a complete list. One firm I contacted that chose not to report its numbers at this time was Handcast Media Labs, creators of the “SparkRadio” app (one of my personal favs), which is available for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad platforms. Another developer I contacted did not respond: Dan Grigsby, who was head of MobileOrchard.com, a company he announced recently he was shutting down.

Now we want your input: Who have we missed? Are you a developer doing mobile apps? Do you know of a Minnesota company that has released iPhone or Android apps?  Is your mother doing iPhone apps? How about firms based outside the Twin Cities? If so, please tell us in the comments!  Also tell us what apps you like.  And, lastly… is the iPad better than sex?

MN Mobile Developers Clocking Millions of Downloads is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music by George Fletcher’s Bourbon Renewal with the The Tequila Mockingbirds and the tune is “Rumble Groove“. Brought to you by Music Alley

DISCUSSED DURING THE SHOW NOTES:
+ FiRe: local iPhone audio app made by Audiofile Engineering in Minneapolis and used for last week’s podcast
+ Blue’s Mikey microphone for iPhone/iPod (Note that FiRe is available with this mic)
+ Comcast FCC ruling
+ Julio’s book called “Twitter Means Business”
+ MinneWebCon
+ Apple iPhone OS 4
+ Dan Grigsby @ Mobile Orchard shutting down
+ Adobe backlash (e.g., ”Go screw yourself Apple“)
+ Quit Whining About The iPad Interface
+ Twitter Acquires Atebits, Maker of Tweetie
+ ComicTwit
+ Minneapolis CrowdPitch
+ BusinessCard2 @ AlwaysOn
+ Sh*t My Dad Says (started on Twitter, now with its own site, soon a TV show with William Shatner)

Minnov8 Gang 74: Innovation is Driving Passions is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Here we go, then — five experienced Minnesota mobile app developers tell me, straight up, what’s up with iPad as relates to them.  And, after that,  I include some great insights from a couple of them about iPhone OS 4 — coming this summer for the iPhone, and soon after for the iPad. (Bring it on, Uncle Stevie!)

Joe Sriver, Founder, DoApp Inc. Joe, will your company be developing iPad apps?

“Yes, we do have plans for the iPad, first for our real estate product, then our other products. No ‘made for iPad’ apps are in the store from DoApp on day one, though.  But I did preorder an iPad for the team.”  In a story our friend Julio Ojeda-Zapata wrote in the PioneerPress on April 2, we learned that DoApp was frantically at work on the iPad version of it’s “Home Kenex” app, which is for home buyers and real estate agents.  Maps can be positioned alongside lists or photos of homes to make navigation easier and more intuitive than the cramped iPhone screen allows, said the story, facilitating better house comparisons.  iPad becomes “a coffee table-type of thing, with people in their agents’ offices cruising for properties on the device,” said the story, quoting DoApp’s Wade Beavers.  GPS capability will be added in an upcoming version of the iPad, so home buyers or agents will be able to pull up listings in their vicinity and “drive effortlessly towards them using satellite navigation.”

Bill Heyman, Founder and Lead Developer, CodeMorphic. Bill, what apps are you doing for iPad?  Redoing any of your existing ones?

“No existing apps.  What we’re doing are new ones for various clients.  Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say what they are.  I’m also working on a new game app I’m publishing myself, but I’m not ready to submit it yet. I’ll let you know when it’s getting close.”

I assume you now have an iPad in your possession? “Yes, I had one delivered to me while on vacation in Arizona this week.”

What are you finding in regard to how well your iPhone apps work on iPad? “They seem to work fine.
”

What about landscape mode?  Are you concerned that apps should work either way on iPad? “Apple has basically told developers that they MUST support rotation in their iPad apps.  Unfortunately, it can be a major PITA to support it well, but developers are going to have to bite the bullet now.
”

Any other comment? “I think iBooks is the killer feature of the iPad.  There’s been talk about the iPad developer gold rush, but no discussion about the author and independent content provider gold rush.  It’s going to happen — and I think it could be every bit as exciting as some of the apps.”

Matt Bauer, Founder, PedalBrain. Does the iPad fit in at all regarding your app? “Yes, it does — from a coaching or team director standpoint, to track athletes.”

I guess iPad isn’t too “mobile” as relates cycling, huh? “It will be a new application than what we have.  Likely a different app that we will charge for — probably like $20 or so.  I really see iPad apps being sold for quite a bit more than for the iPhone.  It won’t be till late summer we will think of doing an app.”

Your current app, of course, would work on the iPad, right? “App, yes — but hardware, no.  Apple hasn’t given the okay for iPad accessories from third parties yet.  Once they do, our hardware accessory will work.”

Terry Anderson, Founder, Handcast Media Labs. What’s up with you and iPad? “We also got our first iPad on Saturday.  We’re within a few days of having our next release of the SparkRadio app, which will work on either iPhone or iPad.  In the future, we will optimize a version for iPad that takes advantage of the increased screen real estate in a cool way, but that’s further out (maybe 45-60 days).  The visualizer screens on the iPad are stunning in full screen mode.”

Did I hear you dropped your price for SparkRadio on the iPhone from $5.99 to $1.99? “The price drop is temporary and is part of our experimenting with promotional tactics and pricing to see the effect on demand.

“Ultimately, we’re likely to end up with this scenario:  A free version called Spark Radio Lite that will be full featured, but will only stream 200 selected stations (maybe two weeks away)
…  A full version that will sell for between $5 and $6 (ultimately 30,000 stations) – so the price drop is temporary…  And note that both versions will support iPhone and iPad equally –  the software will detect the device and will load the appropriate interface… And we may come up with an enhanced iPad version, which could be sold as a separate product, but that’s down the road and still undecided.  Now that I see SparkRadio on the iPad, I can imagine a scenario where the iPad is docked in a stereo (many companies make them for iPhone and I assume we’ll see them shortly for iPad), and Spark is streaming audio and providing a pretty cool lightshow.  We think this will be a great way to expose the product and the graphics to a larger audience.  Very excited.”

Bekki Freeman, Developer, TinyMission. Please tell us about your firm’s experience, what kinds of apps you do, and what types of clients you work with.

“Tiny Mission started as an iPhone app development company.  Because of the high demand for applications, and especially integration between web apps and mobile apps, we’ve expanded to other mobile platforms, including iPad, and are eager to integrate these with enterprise systems.  Two of our clients are On Impact Productions and Fraser.  We work with both small and medium-sized companies, writing apps to enable their corporate and customer visions.”

How many apps have you published, and in what categories, for iPhone and other platforms? “Tiny Mission has published one iPhone application for On Impact Productions, and is preparing to submit a second for them this month, in addition to a BlackBerry and Android application.  We are submitting two iPhone applications for Fraser this spring, and are part way through development on an enterprise application that will be centered around the iPad.”

What are your plans for iPad apps, and what do you see as being different or challenging compared to iPhone? “We are very excited for the iPad because of the endless possibilities for very feature-rich applications.  The iPhone has been great for enterprise, but it is just too small to do complex business tasks.  We plan to bring web apps, smart phones, and the iPad together to fully integrate our clients’ business applications.  Our vision is for our clients to answer all of their customers’ questions and needs without ever going to a desk.”

——-

So, enter the Apple sneak-peek media event yesterday. CEO Steve Jobs outlined what’s coming in the next version of the iPhone operating system, called OS 4.  He highlighted seven new features:
•    Multitasking
•    Folders to organize apps
•    A unified inbox
•    iBooks is coming to the iPhone
•    More features for the enterprise
•    A social network for gaming
•    Mobile advertising with iAds

I asked Bill Heyman of CodeMorphic, What’s your reaction to the iPhone OS 4 sneak-peek announcement yesterday? “Multitasking is a great feature, of course, but still keeps the iPhone OS in control — to prevent bad apps from monopolizing the feature. It’s probably not enough for real-time, time-critical apps for the iPhone, but it’s a step in the right direction. Apple’s drawn a line in the sand for how apps are developed — Adobe Flash, Corona, and other platforms appear to be screwed, as they’re currently architected.  Basically, Apple wants native apps to use native code (Objective-C, C++, C, JavaScript).  So, for these other development platforms to survive, they’re going to have to ultimately be code generators for code types that Apple approves. I suspect Apple is following up the release of the iPad with the new iPhone OS to maintain momentum and to blunt criticisms of the iPad (and iPhone) as new Android-based tablets and phones start to appear in the next few months.”

I also asked Bekki of TinyMission, What are your impressions of iPhone OS 4? “Obviously, multitasking is huge.  We’ll be able to offer our clients’ users so many more options for delivering functionality, such as location-based notifications. Local notifications will give many of our small business clients the ability to offer reminders and user-specific content without having to manage external servers and user databases.  We believe our clients will really benefit from the new enterprise features.  The agility and flexibility of wireless enterprise app distribution and the improved data encryption are very exciting.  By breaking down barriers to enterprise deployment, Apple is opening up a whole new market segment with opportunities for companies like Tiny Mission to expand into.”

Finally, I wanted to ask Joe Sriver of DoApp about the *other* announcement that came out at Apple’s media event yesterday — that being their “iAd” platform — in light of DoApp having its own such platform, called “Adagogo.”  Joe, what’s your reaction to Apple’s “iAd” announcement?

“iAd sounds like a good product.  I haven’t delved too deeply into it.  It’s another network that we will look at adding to our Mobile Local News platform.   I guess I don’t see it as a big competitor to Adagogo, since Adagogo is built into our products by default.   It will become more of a competitor if we release an Adagogo API for developers to add Adagogo ads into their apps.  Obviously, it’s a potentially big threat for Google and Admob — or both together if that deal ever goes through.  Google has the resources to compete, so I’m not going too worried about them!”  Nice touch, Joe — spoken as a loyal former employee of Google…

Minnesota iPhone App Developers Talk iPad and OS 4 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6dMaX3ynmc

Minnov8 Gang 73: Minnov8 Meets the iPad is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

In the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart’s character Dobbs, and two other gringos, embark in to Mexico to find gold in the Sierra Madres, an area in great flux and riddled with banditos, but policed by the Federales. In one of the signature lines in the movie the banditos, trying to convince Dobbs and his cronies that they’re Federales, say, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!“ (usually misquoted as “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!“). There are several moral and philosophical questions in the movie and Dobbs dies, the banditos are killed by the Federales, the gold is lost and thus the analogy might as clear as mud: chasing opportunities won’t be easy but they’re out there; barriers and obstacles (and bandits) stand in your way; but we thought exploring opportunistic thoughts in this podcast was worthwhile.

Special Guest: For part of the podcast, Meg Canada joins us to talk about libraries, the iPad and more. Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and  social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “Santa Maria” by Will Kriski from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

Discussed during the show:

+ Past Events: CloudCampMSP (see Minnov8′s coverage here); IgniteMPLS; Social Media Breakfast;

+ Upcoming Events: Mobile March; MIMA; DEMO; SxSWi; MinneWebCon

+ Mobile: MixMobi; WordPress mobile plugins (Mobile Edition; WPTouch); Square (mobile commerce)

+ Devices: Apple iPad; Microsoft Courier; Dell Slate

+ Other: Google pagerank to require speedier websites?; Hacker News.

Minnov8 Gang 69: “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.