Damien Saunders » Mobile Internet

What kids do online: UK Internet Usage

Damien Saunders — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:56:25 +0000

Recent indepth report from New Media Age in the UK focused on the internet usage habits of kids.

Kids research is hard – the age group is from 7 – 13. They are already exposed to a lot of marketing, aware of trends and ‘peer pressure’, but still very much aware of having to please their parents all of the time. It’s also very difficult to ask questions about anything anti-social, illegal due to the young age and formative, questioning minds.

It also provides some great insights into what kids say they are doing with their mobiles, about a fifth or 21% say they are already going online with their mobile phones.

[via new media age]

What kids do online: UK Internet Usage originally appeared on Damien Saunders on February 7, 2010.

Where to start building mobile apps for large screens – mobile agencies beware

Damien Saunders — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:28:57 +0000

Where to start with building a mobile app or going mobile has been a popular topic for some time. Many FMCG brands and agencies are requesting only quotes for mobile apps – forgetting the less popular java app or branded mobile game. At the expense of budget – haha – focusing on a mobile app can be a costly exercise starting from about 10k to 100k plus.

Marketing Agencies and their Brands need to go and reconsider their mobile strategy – and if you’ve already built a mobile app – you maybe disappointed how it looks on the larger screen devices.

The announcement of a large screen Apple iPad and netbooks running Google Android will be exciting for consumers – essentially these are mobile devices with wifi and 3G mobile broadband. For marketers its another screen that needs its own plan.

Recently, I attended a workshop on an Android powered Netbook – the developers present, some of them with popular music apps were, with one voice crying foul about the screen size. It’s one thing to make an app work on small mobile screens – its another to make an app work on a 7″ wide screen notebook thingy.

2010 will bring a number of problems for mobile apps – the easiest strategy is to get someone in to help you build up your mobile website.

Where to start building mobile apps for large screens – mobile agencies beware originally appeared on Damien Saunders on January 28, 2010.

DROID takes the Android to a new level

Damien Saunders — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:55:14 +0000

DROID sales in the USA and the robo-promotional ads from Verizon has boosted Android sales, so much so that hits on my blog have started to double since the new phone went on sale.

Stats are good – Top searchs on Best Apps are going to my posts for Top Android Apps and 2 top Android apps from Google.

DROID takes the Android to a new level originally appeared on Damien Saunders on November 12, 2009.

Does building an iPhone App make cents? sense?

Damien Saunders — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:36:42 +0000

With the boom in the number of apps in the App Store (over 100,000) and total downloads in excess of 2bn … someone has got to be making money … right?

In part, the iPhone does offer a better platform for apps – it’s about to overtake RIM as the leading consumer smartphone, sold more than 34 million units and got some of the highest mobile internet usage rates we’ve seen so far.

It’s not fair to say that Developers, Ad agencies or Brands are making money out of the app store.

The problem is discovery – you have to do a lot to get your app to the Featured or Popular lists and that has got to start with spending money on good PR and a Viral / Word of Mouth campaign. For small time developers and startups, who might not account for these costs – they do expect GOOD PR and WoM to equal GREAT results.

Whatever you spend on building the app and promoting the app is not going to be made back in app revenue, consider that the majority of apps are given away for ‘free’. How does anyone make money?

I attended the NMAlive workshop in London last week which looked at Why You Need an App … I agree with all the presenters, which is you have to do something mobile … but expecting it to be a new revenue stream from Day 0 is misleading.

Does building an iPhone App make cents? sense? originally appeared on Damien Saunders on November 2, 2009.

10 Best Android Apps for your phone

Damien Saunders — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:14:41 +0000

Here’s a more up to date list featuring some of the best apps you must get on your Android phone. All of them are free in the Android Market. Some of them also have a freemium paid version. What’s good is that many of these you will use daily, but some of them will just sit on your phone and do what its supposed to do.

(update: Nov 21 – Cyrket.com has been offline for some time … but is now around again – but try www.androlib.com for these apps)

Subjectively, I’ve missed out the social network sites and the streaming music apps – I do that from home – or the in the case of music streaming … none of the apps currently work when your underground.

Do you want to disagree with what’s here or have your own list? Let me know …

1. WiSync

Manage your data sync settings for the Android – this is important if you are not on an unlimited data plan or you want things to only happen on wifi. WiSync allows you to control the background sync settings for your phone.

What I think is the WiSync should go a step further – I’d love to talk to them about how this can help when you travel. Already you can turn off any sync when not on wifi, but what about the option to allow sync on your home 3G network but not on any overseas 3G networks. Roaming settings are something to sync/think about too. It now also comes with ‘Locale plugin’ a feature I’ve not worked out what it is yet.

Get it here.

2. Wefi

Wefi is an app to manage the connection to wifi hotspots around you – it automatically shuffles through all the nearest hotspots to find out which ones are open and have internet access or need to go through a login process. This is good as many hotspots seem to be open, but when you connect, they don’t work. Team this up with Wisync and you got a killer combo.

I also suggest you go to your phone wifi settings and allow wifi to remain on when connected to the power supply. This way, any emails or other updates (news) are downloaded when you’re sleeping and your phone is charging.

Get it here.

3. Itube Status

Seems this has been removed

4. Twidroid

Twitter on your phone … its free and the most popular in the market. You can see why with all the features that are crammed in. I suggest you turn off the vibration and don’t set it to fetch all your tweets, or you’ll be playing with your phone constantly.

Get it here.

5. Barcode Scanner

Now the team at Google even love this app — combine the power of a barcode scanner with a Google search and you have a price check tool, an Amazon search solution or maybe you can use another app like Anobii and catalogue all your books.

Get it here

6. Advanced Task Manager

This app seems to have matured in its development and settled down in the last month. There probably are other ‘app killer’ apps around – but this has a great feature in that you can control what apps to kill. It used to have an auto kill all feature which ran every 2 hours, I’m glad to see that has gone as it usually meant my music or some other app would stop working just as I was in the middle of using it.

Get it here

7. NewsRob

NewsRob was one of the first apps I installed …NewsRob works with Google Reader as there is no official Google Reader Android app … its as configurable as you like in terms of how often to check, how many articles to store and settings for wifi / 3G network access.

It crashed on me once and sent an email back to the support team. The next morning I had an email from someone saying they were looking into my bug. I got a follow up email a few days later saying my problem would be fixed in the next release. Great service with a Smile.

Get it here:

Here’s two apps to show your friends

8. Compass

You can’t get lost with a compass on your phone (did’t you know it was magnetised) — right?

Now what does E 68 mean?

Get it here:

9. BeebPlayer (only in the UK)

Everyone’s favourite Granny had to have an Android app … its probably one of the best apps I’ve seen that was not made by the BBC’s iPlayer team. I guess history will tell if the app continues to work or be developed – or if the Beeb will turn off 3rd party access to its content.

Apparently this app only works with the Vodafone or 3 UK sims – but I’ve had success as well using this on O2.

10. Robo Defense Free

One last app that will give you days and days of fun … or months and months as it turns out. The free version has 10 difficulty settings but only one level … its also the most simple with only 3 towers and 3 upgrades. It’s by far the best executed tower defence strategy game.

Get it here:

There are a number of things I’d like to see better apps for … After rooting my phone with the Cyanogen build … I can …

- take screenshots

- use email from an Outlook Exchange app

I’ve noted few issues with the Android Market and I’ll blog about differences in app stores soon.

Damien Saunders

10 Best Android Apps for your phone originally appeared on Damien Saunders on August 11, 2009.

Content Providers & Digital New Media Players

Damien Saunders — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:27:24 +0000

Content Providers, Content Partners, Service Providers or Content Delivery – there is a long list of terms that you can be searching for on the internet to get you a list … but is there a consolidated list of whos who in the industry? Here’s just a few:

Arvato – (Europe)

Buongiorno – (Europe)

Fonestarz – (Head office is based in the UK)

Fox Mobile – (Germany) aka Jamba & Jamster

mmCHANNEL (Spain)

Musiwave – (France)

Phoneytunes – (India)

RealNetworks – (USA, Europe)

Starfish – (South Africa)

Zed – (Europe)

Want to add yourself on here … leave a comment and let me know.

Content Providers & Digital New Media Players originally appeared on Damien Saunders on August 3, 2009.

shhh – HTC Magic just lacks the Volume for a music phone

Damien Saunders — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:27:51 +0000

The HTC Magic came out recently, so far its a exclusive to Vodafone. As a phone it has all the features you could desire, but its music player needs an over hall – first problem is the volume, its just too quiet.

In a crowded room, on the London Tube or just working out at a gym the volume from the HTC Magic’s is just a whisper of what it should be – or am I going deaf?Critcally I’m one of those people that always has the volume set to full – to drown out the outside world and I use in-ear headphones so you don’t listen to my stuff.

I put the HTC Magic through its paces using the standard in-box headset, a bluetooth stereo headset and using my top end Sony headphones plus an HTC USB to 3.5mm adapter.

Thats right the HTC Magic only has a USB port for power and accsories, HTC says this might change in the future. The phone’s media player also only has a volume control and no equaliser tools – and no Android apps as yet have this.

HTC’s own headset

This is not one to wear in public or at the gym, its big and bulky with its own rectangular volume controller. The high notes and vocals sound clean – its good for midrange but lacking bass notes. Listening to Underworld’s Everything Everything was nice – the downside was the noise leakage as I could tell people on the Tube didn’t like it.

Bluetooth Stereo headset

Listening to the same Underworld album was just upsetting. The same headset coupled with the Sony Ericsson W715 provides a great aural pleasure. The HTC Magic bluetooth audio channel must have a volume limiter. I could hear everyone on the Tube and that annoying gym pump music.

USB to 3.5mm with Sony Headphones

This was the surprise winner … never using a USB to 3.5mm adapter, I thought it was going to impact the audio quality. Across the ranges, the audio sounds clear and vibrant. The volume passed through was also good enough to convince me to use it.

shhh – HTC Magic just lacks the Volume for a music phone originally appeared on Damien Saunders on May 13, 2009.

Android Market Best of Apps you must have

Damien Saunders — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:23:10 +0000

29 Sep 09: This is the better post to read: http://damiensaunders.com/2009/08/11/10-best-android-apps-for-your-phone/

Ok I’ve been using an HTC Magic for a few days now and I’m loving it … I’m so hooked I could almost get myself kicked out of the house, or have my ‘beautiful & precious’ phone smashed

Here’s what you too should try

there are so many free Apps in the Android Market that you can’t get bored. Given how much I use a phone and my focus on the mobiles and music, heres a choice selection

LAST.FM – its more a radio station here than the super Vodafone Last.fm Scrobbler (which you know I love)

NewsRob – it works with Google Reader – but I’m still not sure why there isn’t a GReader app?

Android-VNC-Viewer – once I got it working I loved it, but its a tiny screen, don’t use it for trying to control WinAmp or something, but its funny if you know how to use it to turn off windose

Toggle Wifi – its dead simple, but it still dont help if you then have to have a username or password for the wifi account

Barcode Scanner and Book Scanner – i love it … except when it goes beep in the bookshop (hehehe)

So whats missing?

a basic screenshot app like the s60 Symbian app
a VLC player for any videos
a WinVista fix as today you still can’t plug your droid phone into your Vista machine
a music store client that I’m happy to use

Android Market Best of Apps you must have originally appeared on Damien Saunders on April 27, 2009.

Nokia S60 Symbian Best Apps you should have

Damien Saunders — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:40:46 +0000

I’ve been using Nokia’s for a while now – N95, N95 8Gb and the E71

Here’s the top apps I put on any phone when I set it up

Vodafone Last.fm Scrobbler – gee I ‘made’ this .. but I love it so. Scrobble what you listen to while out n about, underground or overseas, check your charts and what your friends are up to. This s60 app is fuly symbian signed and tested on a number of Vodafone networks – and its the only scrobbler for the Nokia 5800 so far.

S60 Screen Shot – great for when you need that shot for the website, product reviews or whatever. Saves pictures as PNG, BMP or JPG and can also take them automatically every few seconds.

Google Search – works great once you install it you have a little Google Search box on your phone screen – its a killer ‘app’ or widget that will help drive mobile internet usage

Nokia Mail for Exchange – the E71 comes with a number of push e-mail apps, but this is the best so far. Really its only let down is that you can’t copy an email to a task or flag it for follow-up (but thats the same problem for Blackberry too).

Nokia S60 Symbian Best Apps you should have originally appeared on Damien Saunders on April 25, 2009.

UK Digital sales grow by 50% in 2007

Damien Saunders — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:12:35 +0000

The British Phonographic Industry, which represents the British recorded-music business, said total music download sales for the year topped 77 million, a 50 percent increase over 2006.

2.94m online music tracks were downloaded in the UK in the last week of 2007, according to the BPI, a record industry body. The figure is double that for the same time in 2006, when 1.47m tracks were downloaded, and nearly three times that for the same week in 2005, when only 1m songs were downloaded.

Source: http://www.strategyeye.com

UK Digital sales grow by 50% in 2007 originally appeared on Damien Saunders on January 4, 2008.