In a 10-minute video interview I did with Robert while we were having coffee and rolls before the general session started Thursday morning, we covered a range of topics — including the recent announcement that Best Buy is acquiring managed services provider MindShift for $167 million. I also got a sneak preview of other topics Robert was going to talk about in his opening keynote:

All the videos I shot at Defrag 2011, including three other interviews, are posted on my YouTube channel.  In addition, I have a photo set of the Defrag event on Flickr (213 pix) that documents my view of the proceedings over the three days. In some of the photos, you’ll be able to pick out several Minnesotans who attended this 5th edition of Defrag.  Startups represented included AsystMe, enStratus (a sponsor), FanChatter, KidBlog, Rifr, TST Media, and Zingstring.

Here are those screenshots showing a selection the tweets during Robert Stephens’ keynote:

Robert Stephens Rocks the #DefragCon Crowd is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, and Phil Wilson

Discussed during the show:

• MN-Based Cloud Startup enStratus Secures Series A VC Investment
• MHTA Tekne Awards (MHTA site; BizJournal article)
• Returns aren’t in on Best Buy’s VC venture
• Google’s new GoMo – Google Creates “GoMo” Portal To Help You Mobilize
• New in Google Reader: a fresh design, and Google+ sharing  and Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision?
• Google Releases Gmail for iOS…then pulls it
• HTML5 and a great site with demos called,”HTML ROCKS”
• Square’s Card Case iOS App Adds Support For Hands-Free Payments, Twitter Integration For Merchants
• Groupon IPO 
• Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet
• Kidblog; Minnov8 Gang podcast with the co-founder; Graeme’s video with key folks about hitting 1M users

Upcoming Events:

• Friday, November 4th (weekly): Frontend Masters Workshop Series
• November 8-10: Defrag (Denver & MN startups going include: Zingstring, AsystMe, TST Media, KidBlog, FanChatter… enStratus is a sponsor)
• November 8-10: JAMF Software National User Conference 2011 @Guthrie Theater
• Wednesday, November 9th: Hacks/Hackers Twin Cities – “Newsrooms, Open Source, and the Maker Culture”
• Saturday, November 12th: ProductCamp Minnesota 3
• Saturday, November 12th: Code Slingers Challenge 
• Tuesday, November 15th: Mobile Twin Cities

Minnov8 Gang 144 – Smartphones & SmartScooters? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins (Phil Wilson is off).
Music: “Give Blues a Chance” by “Mean Gene Kelton & the Diehards“ via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Apple iPhone event announced for next Tuesday 
• Amazon Kindle “Fire”
• Chris Espinosa, Apple employee #8 (and still at Apple) personally blogged about the troubling nature of the Kindle Fire “Silk” web browser and the security implications
• Amazon has Palm in its shopping cart — will it click Buy?
• Microsoft Shores up Samsung & HTC with Android patents
• Kris Layon will be speaking at MIMA Summit
• Capella’s iPhone app (there is also an Android version)
• English Books for Thai School – Can You Help? 
• “Facebook Won’t Like This Apple-Twitter Union” (FastCompany)
• “Amazon’s ‘Silk’ Browser Is Revolutionary: Here’s Why It’s So Important” (Business Insider)
• “The One Huge Reason Amazon Will Not Beat Apple” (Business Insider)

M8 Gang Podcast 139 – Capella U Mobile’s Kristofer Layon is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins (Phil Wilson is off).
Music: “Leave This Town” by Jake Lear via Music Alley.

DISCUSSED DURING THE SHOW:

• The launch of three local news apps for the iPad in one week: St. Paul Pioneer Press, StarTribune & WCCO
• Lots of Android tablets (shown at CES…not yet all shipped) and Ars Technica explains Android Fragmentation

UPCOMING EVENTS:

• Sunday, August 22nd, Noon-4pm MinneBar-B-Cue
• Friday, August 26th, 8am, SMBMSP: Social SEO with Lee Odden
• Thursday, September 8th, 5-7pm, MN Cup 2011 Final Awards Event, U of M McNamara Center (NOTE: the finalists in six divisions to be named August 19th)

The Minnov8 Gang will off the next two Friday’s and back on Friday, September 2nd with an all new show!

Minnov8 Gang 135 – Take a Tablet is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Mobile is changing dramatically and the strategic-level changes are a challenge to stay on top of, which is why we have Lisa Foote on as our guest for this podcast. No one in the Twin Cities is on top of the mobile space like Lisa is, and the Gang did a lot more than our usual homework to prepare for our time with her. As such, there are several fabulous links below that you’ll undoubtedly find enlightening if you’re at all interested in the mobile market (and where the “OMG!” about the death of feature phones comes from).

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott & Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week).
Music: “Only the Bird Knows” by Kelly Richey via Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

PAST WEEK: 

• AT&T to implement data throttling in early October
• Robert X. Cringeley on ISP Bandwidth Caps are Really Rate Increases
• Sprint signs with Lightsquared for LTE
• Is Best Buy’s CEO “overpaid”?
• Taking it slow in the midwest. Pando study of download speeds

GUEST SEGMENT: Lisa Foote, CEO and Co-Founder of MixMobi (Twitter)

• Worldwide Mobile Phone Market Grew >11% in Q2; Feature Phones Decline
• What do Nielsen’s latest numbers tell us?
• ATRIX smartphone/laptop
• Lightsquared
• Nokia smartphone sales down 32 percent in Q2 2011, profits drop 41 percent 
• RIM COO Retires & Layoffs 

UPCOMING EVENTS

• CoCoMSP Kickoff Party on Saturday, July 30th
• CoCo Minneapolis Hackathon (held weekly), August 3rd

OTHER

• Porkys, the movie (Phil’s all-time favorite?)
• Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales up 41% to $6.57 Billion
• Amazon in 2011 is where Walmart was in 1991

Minnov8 Gang 133 – OMG! A ‘Feature’ Phone? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott & Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off this week).
Music: “Running from the Law” by Mean Gene Kelton & the DieHards via Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• NASA on the tech made possible due to our space program
• Apple blows out quarter; New Macs (Air; Mini); Mac OS X Lion; Lion Downloads Top One Million in First Day; Apple to buy Hulu?; Disappearing $69 iPad 2 triggers buyer outrage at Sears; Tablet PCs Threaten PC Dominance
• Google blows out quarter; Brand pages on Google+; Vic Gundotra On How Google+ Handled Brands: “It Was Probably A Mistake”
• Microsoft Beats Expectations but Microsoft Posts a 30% Increase in Profit, but Sales of Windows Are Weak; Mary-Jo Foley: Microsoft worldwide tablet operating-system share at 5 percent; Anybody Who Thinks Microsoft Is Going Out Of Business Is Nuts — Here’s Why
• UPCOMING EVENTS: WordPressMSP on July 28th on Gravity Forms; CoCoMSP Kickoff Party on Saturday, July 30th (note slow link…be patient)

Minnov8 Gang 132 – Hot Enough for ‘Ya? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins & Phil Wilson.
Music: “Blue n Boogie” by Norman Hedman’s Tropique via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Can Google+ Sustain Growth Beyond Early Adopters?
• Google blows out their quarter
• Amazon tablet (NYTimes article)
• TMobile Announces Twin Cities 4G
• Phil is at Conclave Learning Conference for radio folks. Saturday is the RAIN summit
• Steve’s post on the Google Chrome extension security problem
• UPCOMING EVENTS:
• July 28th, 6:30pm-9pm at The Nerdery: WordPressMSP Meetup on Gravity Forms
• Saturday, July 30th, 7-11pm: CoCoMSP/Project Skyway Launch Party 

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 131 – Deals Baby! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

You might think the most important thing happening in T-Mobile’s world would be AT&T’s impending (but not yet approved) deal to acquire the company, and that was of course the first question we brought up with Adams.  Naturally, he could provide no more information than what’s been publicly announced. But he had much more to talk about. “We’re not slowing down. We’re not waiting for the acquisition,” he said. “Minnesota is a very important market for us, and we continue investing heavily and adding staff here.”  Across the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, T-Mobile has invested more than $43 million in continuous network upgrades since the start of 2010, according to Adams, and now has more than 350 cell sites operating 4G service in the Twin Cities area.

Which brings me to the most exciting news that T-Mobile was announcing yesterday:  T-Mobile’s Faster 4G Network Now Available in the Twin Cities — America’s Largest 4G Network is now twice as fast in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  Its super-fast “HSPA+42″ (as in Mbps) network is now available “in the majority of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area,” the company’s release said, and customers will experience “speeds twice as fast as T-Mobile’s current 4G network on compatible devices.”  Before you start hyper-ventilating, it also states this:  the recently introduced Rocket® 3.0 laptop stick, its first HSPA+ 42-capable device, offers “average download speeds on our HSPA+ 42 network approaching 10Mbps, with peak speeds of 27 Mbps.”  Okay, it”s not 42 — but, trust me, I’ll take it!  

[By the way, I've been a T-Mobile customer since sometime in the early to mid-'90s, counting the two predecessor companies they acquired, Aerial and VoiceStream.  Then, soon after, I also became a customer of AT&T Wireless, well prior to the Cingular merger.  And I continue to be a dual-carrier-household guy. Net-net: can't wait to see how well I'm treated after the merger -- I've earned it, haha.]

Back to T-Mobile in Minnesota.  I was impressed with these stats the company shared with us:

•  T-Mobile has more than 825,000 customers in the Twin Cities area.

•  Its sales organization in Minnesota numbers more than 380 national retail locations, corporate and partner-owned stores, as well as third-party retailers.

•  The company has 540 employees in the Minnesota-Wisconsin region — in retail stores, enterprise sales, mid-market/B2B, small business/B2B, operations, finance, engineering, local marketing, human resources, and other functions.

• Data traffic on T-Mobile’s network in the Twin Cities area has increased about 330% in the past year.  (Wow!)

Tim Adams was joined by Scott Goldberg, a T-Mobile senior communications manager based in Chicago, and a great guy.  Steve Borsch and I enjoyed bringing both him and Tim up-to-speed with the breath and scope of the Twin Cities tech and mobile community.  In particular, I had some fun chatting with Goldberg about Chicago’s longtime tech-gossip guru, Ron May, whom he knows well (and whom I’ve met).  I couldn’t help but bring up the recent May Report email newsletter that mentioned 160 people showed up for Chicago’s latest BarCamp.  Big whoop — I pointed out, with much glee, that we had *1200* at our recent BarCamp event!  That would be MinneBar 2011.  [Note to Luke, Ben, and crew:  they were taking notes feverishly.]

Two other recent news announcements from T-Mobile really impressed me. It’s clear they’re a serious competitor for your wireless business. Announcements like this prove it. These product offerings are national in scope, not just for the Twin Cities. The first is some really consumer-friendly news, while the other new product announcement will surely get the attention of small businesses:

May 23:  T-Mobile Offers Monthly 4G Plans Featuring Unlimited Talk, Text, and Web With *No Annual Contract*

June 30:  T-Mobile Bolsters Options For Small Businesses with Flexible, Multi-Line Shared Pooling Plans

We wish T-Mobile, Tim Adams, and his entire Minnesota-Wisconsin crew all the best as they move forward!

UPDATE (7/15/11):  One thing I forgot to touch on was T-Mobile’s Customer Care, which gets high ratings in surveys and really does set them apart from the bigger players. I can attest that is the case, after my many years as a customer, and being able to compare it to AT&T’s (and actually even Verizon’s, too, when I once attempted to become a customer). But what struck me was a line that Tim Adams used, that T-Mobile people are all about “right-fitting the customer.” What that means is they don’t try to push stuff on you that isn’t right for you.  They want to ensure that each customer gets just what they need, and only what they need. They even hold free smartphone classes in certain of their stores, to help people learn how to use them, or even if a smartphone is right for them.  These classes are extremely popular, Adams said, “packed.”

One other thing I wanted to add was a link to some very interesting stats about consumer 4G adoption from recent surveys by Nielsen and Retrevo.

T-Mobile Shows It’s Serious About Minnesota, “Not Slowing Down” 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.

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. Justin covers the startups that will be demonstrating their mobile apps next Friday evening (the night before Saturday’s MobileMarchTC) during the Mobile 3D event.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: John Gilliat is the artist & the song is “Nylon Heat” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Social Media Club
• CNN tsunami live blog
• Windows Marketplace hits 9000 apps, to reach 10,000 app milestone mid-Marc
• Mobile Nation
  

Upcoming Events:

• Saturday, March 19th: MOBILE MARCH. New part of this years mobile event…Mobile 3D (Note: An additional 25 tickets just released!)
• 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 114 – Racing Toward Our Mobile Future 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 then shift our discussion to another area being impacted by the “wisdom of the crowd“, namely the newspaper and magazine industries. We talk about Rupert Murdoch’s new “The Daily” iPad app and whether it—following the old publishing model of a small group writing and deciding on content being published once as one, big chunk of content—is the future of newspapers and magazines or is it one where the crowd decides what are the most important stories and then drive them to the top?

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Brian Kelly is the artist & the song is “Smiling South” via the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

Minnov8 Gang 111 – The Throng Can’t be Wrong 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.

Founded by Justin Grammens, Phil Wilson and Linda Cummings in 2010, they point out the essence of the event on their website, “…Mobile March offers two tracks of learning; Mobile Development and Mobile Business. By offering content that appeals to mobile developers, business people, and users we also hope to facilitate a greater understanding between the constituencies that make mobile happen.  Whether you make money with mobile or just use it to stay connected, we invite you to join us for Mobile March.“

If you’re keeping track of the explosion in mobile devices (and networks like Verizon beefing up their networks with 4G) then you’ll instantly understand why this is such a timely and important event for you to attend.

Twin Cities Premier Mobile Event is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

While the Gang could discuss the “why” and “what it means for developers” at length with each other when it comes to the newest entrant in the app store shift the Mac App Store, our frequent contributor, Julio Ojeda Zapata, was kind enough to recommend and invite in this episode’s guest, Michael Wray.

Michael is the president of Mariner Software, a very impressive, two decade old Mac, PC, iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad software firm here in Minneapolis. Besides the groundbreaking Mac apps they’re known for, this company had apps early on in the iPhone App Store and five (with one pending approval as you’ll hear about on the podcast) in the Mac App Store. Listen to what Michael has to say about his experiences with this new model of software distribution.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson with Julio Ojeda Zapata.
Music: Guitar Jack is the artist and the song is, “Roadhouse.“
Music made possible by the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Cox Digital Solutions Acquires Internet Broadcasting’s Local Network Business
• Mac App Store:
  • Which iPhone flavor? Factors for Minnesotans to weigh (Julio’s article)
  • Local software developers hope new Mac App Store clicks (Julio’s article)
  • Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: App stores a clear and present danger
  • Mac OSX Lion Sneak Peek
• Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else
• Bloomberg Game Changers documentary: Steve Jobs

Minnov8 Gang 107 – Is the MacAppStore Good or Bad? 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: Clintone and the song “Full Circle” via the podsafe music network Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

Minnov8 Gang 87: More Buzz About Mobile 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.

Image courtesy of Apple, Inc.

As Minnesotans continue to embrace the always-on and always-connected online world — and mobile startups here continue to clock millions of app downloads with their offerings — there is no question that our ability to richly communicate with one another, be more productive, work when and where we want to, and have the world’s knowledge at our fingertips (provided our mobile carrier connection is operational!) took a big leap forward today with Apple’s introduction of iPhone 4.

Taking the stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) Monday, CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone, a product we unfortunately had already seen in some detail due to April’s leak at tech site Gizmodo, but still eagerly anticipated.

Priced at $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB (same as the previous generation 3GS now priced at $99) iPhone 4′s features are impressive: a 5 megapixel camera (which Jobs pointed out was technically far superior to other smartphone manufacturers with even more megapixels); a camera in the front for videoconferencing and one in the back for photos; the rear camera lit with an LED flash; and recording software for HD video capture; and a 960 x 420 display that’s roughly twice the resolution as the 3GS model, now rendered permanently inferior to this new model with its cutting edge features.

The operating system driving this new phone, dubbed “iOS4″ instead of “iPhone OS 4″ since it will also be available to run the iPad come Fall, adds multitasking, clustering apps in “folders” and more. These features are key to keeping up with competitors — like that of Google’s Android operating system running devices such as the recently shipped HTC Evo 4 — but many pundits and bloggers are dissecting Jobs’ keynote and some are wondering if this new hardware and software will be enough to stave off competitors (like Google) and keep the iPhone sales momentum going?

According to analyst firm Nielsen in their “iPhone vs. Android” report, “As of Q1 ‘10, Nielsen data shows that 23% of mobile consumers now have a smartphone, up from just 16% in Q2 ‘09. Between Q4 ’09 and Q1 ’10, Android and iPhone’s share of the smartphone market grew by 2% each. At the same time, smartphone leader Blackberry lost 2% share to fall to 35% of all smartphones while Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS also lost 2% to fall to 19%.”

While this data certainly indicates that Google is accelerating and iPhone sales continue to grow — though this data was compiled before today’s iPhone 4 release as well as Friday’s introduction at Sprint of the HTC Evo 4.

About the Sprint HTC Evo 4 release — a smartphone that runs Google’s Android operating system, Fortune magazine wrote Monday that, ”Friday sales of HTC EVO 4G marked the largest quantity of a single phone sold in one day ever for Sprint – the record was previously held by both Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre. In addition, the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.

So, take the two previous record holders, tally up both of their sales for their first three days. The EVO sold three times that total in just one day. Estimates were for 50,000 to 100,000 Pres at launch so that would put EVO somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 units.”

Pretty impressive numbers and it shows that the iPhone — the now “old” 3GS or this new iPhone 4 shipping June 24th — has good competition from Google and the handset manufacturers who’ve opted to leverage the Android operating system. Though Google’s debut in the smartphone OS space is intriguing, counting out Microsoft, RIM (Blackberry), Nokia (and what HP might do with their recent acquisition of Palm) would be a mistake since each has strengths that will likely see each of them growing market share in the mobile arena.

Is iPhone 4 enough? That’s an open-ended question without a specific answer, but suffice to say that the dozens of heavy use iPhone users I know are all going to upgrade to iPhone 4 (as am I). Using the HTC Evo 4 last evening at a Best Buy store it was clear the operating system is nowhere near as elegant and responsive as the iPhones, though I’ll admit it had a better display, camera and was faster than the iPhone 3GS I had in my pocket.

Comparing the brand new HTC Evo 4 (currently state of the art in Android phones) with my “old” 3GS version isn’t a fair comparison. A better one would be comparing the HTC Evo 4 with this new iPhone 4. Doing so will demonstrate that Apple just made another quantum leap forward in a smartphone experience which is likely to continue to accelerate Apple’s sales of iPhones within the globally growing mobile category.

iPhone 4: Is it enough? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.