Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

The Death of the Tether? Verizon Wireless 4G for MSP

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At an event in downtown Minneapolis yesterday, Verizon Wireless announced “the world’s first large-scale 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network” to the Twin Cities, slated to come online “before the end of 2010” and will be “the death of the tether” according to Verizon sources at the venue.

Graeme Thickins and I attended the event for Minnov8, invited by Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners. Albert was coordinating the blogger outreach and we were thus able to connect with key Verizon Wireless technical staff in order to gain a deeper understanding of what they’ll be delivering on this new 4G infrastructure.

With Sprint and T-Mobile already in this market with their 4G implementations and AT&T coming with theirs in 2011, Verizon’s rollout was expected but both Graeme and I were intrigued by how Verizon Wireless was intending to differentiate themselves in this new 4G LTE space (besides just touting more coverage). What wasn’t expected was how strongly they positioned their IP Multimedia Services (IMS) as “enabling smart services” and APIs they’ll be offering and pushing hard.

For anyone not up-to-speed on all the deliverables, standards and technical aspects of the current state of wireless networking IMS—and the applications they were showing built upon these core services and their network—might have come across as something magical and Verizon-only. IMS is, however, an industry standard. Still, the promise of Verizon Wireless’ network speed and low latency should enable Minnov8 readers to capitalize upon this new 4G infrastructure and thus deliver your applications in a much more efficient manner and with great performance.

The good news is that Verizon Wireless is launching in 38 markets in 2011 and Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the first. The company expects 4G LTE average data rates to be 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) on the downlink and 2 to 5 Mbps on the uplink in real-world, loaded network environments. These speeds are significantly faster than Verizon Wireless’ (and other wireless providers) current 3G network speeds.

Verizon Wireless' 4G Launch for 2010 (click map for larger view)

But the real story for many of the invited I.T. professionals to this event—and to a lesser extent more technical geeks like us—were the IMS “enablers” (and their performance) which Verizon Wireless will be offering on their smart network. With only a cursory understanding of IMS and the sorts of enablers available to application developers, the promises of this new 4G network—coupled with IMS—will offer features and benefits that will surprise and delight any of us who are heavy wireless data users or those of you delivering mobile applications. …  [Read More…]

W3i Lights Up the ‘Net with Its Latest App News

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Okay, so there’s this company named Apple that I hear makes phones.  And people tell me there’s been, uh, a bit of news lately about some new phone of theirs?  Well, that media firestorm didn’t stop Minnesota’s W3i LLC from deciding to jump in with some news of its own, which is actually related to the exploding ecosystem around Apple mobile devices.  That would be apps.

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.)

iKenex Platform from DoApp

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The team at Rochester, MN-based DoApp just announced their new iKenex real estate platform built in collaboration with California MLS software firm Concentric Mobile. iKenex brings all the real estate data a realtor or buyer would ever need to their preferred mobile smartphone device, whether it is an iPhone, iPad, Android or Blackberry. Taking advantage of the mobile device’s built-in Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology, the iKenex app pinpoints where you are and delivers a home’s complete listing details in seconds.

This sort of innovation is sorely needed in the real estate marketplace today primarily due to the collapse that has occurred in the housing market. With its capability to make the process of selling and buying a home considerably more efficient for both buyers and real estate agents, iKenex promises to remove much of the typical lag time for realtors to communicate to buyers about properties or for buyers to wait around for a real estate agent to call or email when you’re on the hunt for that perfect home.

What might not be obvious from looking at the features of iKenex is this: DoApp and Concentric Mobile have done a remarkable job of creating a platform adept at aligning incentives in the residential real estate marketplace and making the process of communicating with buyers fast and easy.

Of course, the key to any platform is to provide an on-ramp to a market or technology which savvy businesspeople and developers can leverage. My impression of the iKenex platform is that it strongly aligns with the incentives of local, regional, state or even national companies that want to participate in the mobile/GPS real estate app space, but clearly can’t “play” with providers like Zillow and maybe couldn’t obtain decent ROI by building their own app. In addition, a realtor’s incentives seem obviously aligned with iKenex and how they could easily leverage what’s happening with their local listings and the areas in which they sell houses.

I asked DoApp CEO, Wade Beavers, if my assumption that their strategy about aligning incentives with iKenex was on the right track. …  [Read More…]

Lost in Minneapolis Skyways? FrypanDigital Has Your Lifeline

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FryPanDigital, a startup that intends to create “tasty apps” was founded by, “…two dudes who know nothing about application development, but wanted to try super hard to kick out an iPhone app.” These two have succeeded in “kicking out an app” and have released their new, free Minneapolis Skyway app for iPhone (their blog; iTunes link).

I met co-founder John Haddad at the Mobile March event a couple of months ago. He said that he’d keep in touch on the apps release and, true to his word, did so today and I thought I’d write a post immediately so you all could go and download this free app.

If you’ve ever spent any time hiking through the 8+ miles of skyway in the Minneapolis system, you know how challenging it is to find your way, locate that favorite deli or coffee shop you’ve been thinking about, or are heading toward to meet a friend for lunch and if you’re like me — a guy who detests pausing for several minutes to locate my destination on a skyway directory and then orient myself in the skyway labyrinth over-n-over again — this app will be a godsend and make it significantly simpler to ensure you and I don’t get lost in the skyway system.

For retailers and merchants who struggle to get the attention of potential skyway-walking customers (and face restrictions on placing signage in the walkways) this app promises to give them a new avenue to connect with customers as well as prospective ones. This is a struggle I know all too well since a few college buddies of mine once had a video rental store on the skyway system and every day multiple people would stop in and express surprise and delight that, “Oh good! There’s a video rental store in the skyway. How long have you been here?” even though they’d been in business at that location for several years. This app holds the promise of being both a fabulous tool for people to discover merchants and retailers but will also enable those retailers and merchants to deliver specials, deals and other focused advertisements through the app….  [Read More…]

MN Mobile Developers Clocking Millions of Downloads

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Local developers of apps for mobile devices, especially those designed for Apple’s platform, are quietly amassing large numbers of users for their creations, I’ve been learning.

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…. …  [Read More…]

Minnesota iPhone App Developers Talk iPad and OS 4

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I’m having so much freaking fun with my iPad, I almost forgot to post this week.  I started asking my developer friends about it almost as soon as I got mine last Saturday, so I’ve had this post brewing for days now.  Then, I’m finally about ready to post it, and Apple goes and holds its “sneak-peek” media event yesterday.  So, natch, I had to ask some of them for their reaction to that, too.

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.” …  [Read More…]

Mobile Technologies & Markets Explored at a New Event: MobileMarchTC

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Talk to strategists, financial analysts, venture capitalists and most internet or web startups and you’ll hear one word mentioned over and over again: mobile. It’s on everyone’s mind due to the sheer numbers of us globally who are walking around with computers in our pockets, the speed increases occurring in the mobile networks we use, a growing availability of Wi-Fi in coffee shops, libraries and many other public places, and the incredible success of devices like Apple’s iPhone and the 150,000+ applications available for it right now.

The respected analyst for Morgan Stanley, Mary Meeker, gave her annual presentation to the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on the state of the mobile market globally. One key statement she made is that the mobile market is growing faster than the desktop personal computer market did during the 1980s and 1990s, and that she believes that (based on that growth) more people will be connecting to the internet in five years with mobile devices than with desktop PCs!

It was within that context I was delighted to attend Mobile March Twin Cities (MobileMarchTC.com), an event Saturday that brought together business strategists, developers, startups, marketers and interested others, people who are keenly aware of the opportunity the accelerating growth in mobile adoption and use represents. There is a growing consensus amongst those of us in both the private and public sector

Put on by organizers Justin Grammens, Phil Wilson (also w/Minnov8) and Linda Cummings, this event was one of the first I’ve been a part of that started off by providing everyone with a context of the size of the market, the people that are using it, and even with how traditional media (e.g., Clear Channel, StarTribune and WCCO) are jumping headlong in to the mobile space.

The revelations that came out of that context setting were, to put it bluntly, a wake up call to those of us far too enthusiastic about smartphones, iPads and other new and sexy platforms emerging and instead, gave us all a firm foundation from which we can pursue opportunities in mobile. …  [Read More…]

Minnesota Startup Launches ‘Spark Radio’ iPhone App

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Is it possible to design a radio app that delivers the ultimate radio experience, complete with visually stunning graphics and social media capabilities, too?  Minneapolis’ own Handcast Media Labs LLC thought so, set out to prove it, and just launched the result on the iTunes App Store a couple of days ago.  It’s called Spark Radio (press release), and works on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s available for $5.99 at this link at the App Store.

I grabbed it the day it came out and have used it multiple times since, in a variety of situations — at home, on a road trip, even in a foreign country (Iowa) — and I must say I’m impressed.  Right now, I’m listening to a great station that’s all Grateful Dead all the time, which I discovered via the app. It’s called RadioIO Dead, and “Big Boss Man” has been my favorite track so far.  I’m on wifi in my motel room at the moment, and the sound is perfect — and I’m not even using an external speaker.  On the way down here to Des Moines, I used the app via my iPhone on AT&T’s 3G network (note: I was in the passenger seat!) to tune in multiple stations, including WSL in Chicago, and the sound was way better than any station I could tune in on the car radio.

Spark Radio not only gives you tons of station choices and social media features designed to make radio listening more interactive, but it also features visually stunning animations. Far out, huh? Its robust, visual radio tuner uses the guide from a company called RadioTime.com to give you access to more than 10,000 terrestrial and Internet-only radio stations worldwide.  Handcast says it’s adding new stations to Spark Radio daily, and will support more than 30,000 stations by April.  You can listen to precisely what you want to at any given time — music, talk radio, sports events, public radio, or special programming from around the world.  Its elegant interface lets you search for stations or programs by keyword, location, or the station URL, and you can browse programming by genre or location. (I’m still looking for two of my fav genres: rockabilly and surf.)  A GPS component lets you find local stations in any given city based on current GPS coordinates.

I took the opportunity to dial up the founder of Handcast Media Labs, Terry Anderson, whom I’d met in 2008, to ask if he’d be up for an interview. That follows. …  [Read More…]