Few mobile offerings have a longer - or more uninspiring - history in the United States than barcodes. But the odd-looking little images may finally be going somewhere.One of the first consumer-facing mobile barcode applications in the United States came to market about 10...
The New York Times secured on-deck placement with AT&T Mobility. The nation's No. 1 carrier said it inked an exclusive, four-month deal to link to the newspaper's mobile site from its wireless portal."Consumers want immediate access to breaking news, and a wireless handset is...
Google Inc. kicked things off at the Macworld Show in San Francisco by unveiling a streamlined version of its iPhone interface.The interface, which was launched last month, serves as a single access point for Google services including Gmail, Reader, calendar and Picasa. The Internet...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and...
This "openness" thing is contagious.Yahoo Inc. is the latest to court third-party developers, announcing its intention to "enable and lead a mobile ecosystem" to spur the creation of mobile applications. The company unveiled a developer platform and said it will support "mobile-optimized applications" such...
There is no shortage of reasons why traffic on the wireless Web hasn't matched the sky-high forecasts of a few years ago. But one of the biggest stumbling blocks may also be the most overlooked.A recent study from JupiterResearch found that nearly twothirds of...
The biggest upset of this football season may have been Appalachian State University's victory over Michigan. But for the mobile-marketing industry, it came the day ESPN had more visits to the NFL content on its mobile Web site than it did to the same...
Want to know how long the line is outside your favorite club on a busy Saturday night? Or the guy-to-girl ratio at a bar before you pay the cover?That's the promise of BuzzD, a new local-search/networking service from mobile pioneer Nihal Mehta. "It's the...
Regional, flat-rate carrier MetroPCS Communications Inc. has brought Cellfire Inc. on deck to offer its subscribers direct access to mobile coupon and discount offers. Cellfire enables users to find and use deals that are delivered to their handsets."The addition of Cellfire mobile coupons and...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and...
Microsoft Corp. has jumped into the mobile advertising fray. MSN Mobile customers in the United States will begin seeing banner and text advertisements as soon as today.Microsoft said the ads will all conform to the Mobile Marketing Association's mobile advertising guidelines. Paramount Pictures and...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our Monday feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Jupiter Research's Julie Ask, Current Analysis'...
Editor's Note: Welcome to a special edition of our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Jupiter Research's...
Nokia Corp. is taking steps to become a more competitive player in mobile advertising, with an announcement last week that it would partner with Handmark for an end-to-end mobile solution for the latter's Pocket Express application.Google Inc.'s announcement of an Open Handset Alliance on...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works...
Motricity Inc. sees more than just a mobile search engine in InfoSpace's mobile business. It sees a kind of wrecking ball.The Durham, N.C.-based mobile content company is putting the finishing touches on its $185 million acquisition of InfoSpace's mobile operations, which was announced last...
THE MOBILE BANKING SPACE saw several shifts last week, as Qualcomm Inc. announced that it will acquire mobile banking company Firethorn Holdings L.L.C. for $210 million, and AT&T Mobility launched a Firethorn-supported platform that will be preloaded on its handsets starting later this year.Analysts...
Publishers are trying to strike a delicate balance in these early days of the mobile Web: How do you offer enough eye candy to a make a site compelling without overloading the limited processing power of most mobile phones?Online site operators face a host...
Bango unveiled a link that allows users to send online content to their mobile phones.The Bango Button was created for blogs and social networking sites as a way to bridge the gap between computers and mobile phones. A user can place the icon on...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Reality Check, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. We've gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile content industry to give their insights into the marketplace. In the coming weeks...
Yet another set of mobile advertising guidelines will be released this week as the dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) unveils a 44-page document for companies looking to target wireless users.The group, a nonprofit offshoot of mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd., hopes to foster growth of...
Mobile banking providers ClairMail Inc. and mFoundry announced a new partnership and their first joint customer: BB&T Corp., which operates financial centers in 11 states.The two mobile banking companies are joining forces to offer a "triple-play" of mobile banking options: messaging, mobile Web and...
Want one of those ".mobi" suffixes for your wireless Web site? Get out your checkbook.The company behind the mobile-only top-level domain closed its first online auction earlier this month, raking in more than $850,000 as it hawked 100 mobile Web addresses to the highest...
You know all those early adopters everybody in this industry likes to target? Even they don't see their phones as little multimedia devices.A recent study from interactive marketing firm Avenue A/Razorfish found that 64% of "connected consumers" in the United States never use their...
