brings « Funlimited

31Jan

T-Mobile Wants To Help Small Business “Get Paid Fast,” Brings Square Credit Card Reader To Retail Stores

T-Mobile continues to throw some weight behind the mobile payment movement, as they have become the first wireless carrier to offer Square credit card readers at a number of their retail outlets. This isn’t the first instance of T-Mobile utilizing the Square payment reader as a tool to lure in small business customers as they began offering Square readers… Read more

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20Jan

Bing Brings Postagram To Sundance, Sponsors Postcards For The Movie Stars

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Postagram, the mobile app from Sincerely that lets you create and mail real-life postcards from your phone photos, has worked out a clever real-world integration with Bing for the Sundance film festival this weekend. A street team is wandering the snowy roads of Park City, Utah, taking photos of attendees, collecting their addresses, and mailing them Bing-sponsored postcards.

“Your mailbox has a few bills in it, and other boring stuff like that. The thing that’s going to stick out is when you get a card with pictures of you or your friends,” founder Matt Brezina explains. Especially if it’s a photo of you with your favorite actor. The Sundance Postagrams show the Bing sponsorship logo on the backing board for the photo, and include a link to get a free postcard courtesy of Microsoft’s search engine.

Sincerely’s main business model is still charging for the mail. Brezina isn’t sharing too much about these revenues, but he notes that the average person who sent Sincerely Ink holiday cards this past season spent $23 (each card costs at least $1.69). Sponsorships, meanwhile, are turning out to be an interesting secondary revenue stream. The Bing deal isn’t the first event that the company has done. The Kansas Speedway previously used it as part of a promotion at a NASCAR event, where fans could get photos taken with the cars, drivers, and trophies, then receive the branded mailings.

Brezina tells me that he’s been getting a lot of inbound inquiries from other companies around doing more things like this. Physical postcards may not be something that people will care about in the future as the world gets more and more digital, but right now they’re a key way to share and commemorate the good times, and that makes them a natural tie-in for event sponsorships.

More broadly, consider the Bing (and Kansas Speedway) deals as another indicator of large companies getting savvier about marketing to key audiences. Bing also has a Foursquare integration and a GroupMe setup to get people into its Bing Bar at Sundance. Facebook pages and Twitter accounts may be the bedrock of social media marketing today, but these other companies offer unique ways of reaching people, that cut out the noise from the larger services.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

Bing, brings, movie, Postagram, Postcards, Sponsors, Stars., Sundance

20Jan

Time Warner Cable’s New iPhone App Brings Live TV To The Small Screen

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Time Warner Cable is today launching a new iPhone application that allows customers to watch live television from their iPhone or iPod Touch device as well as control, manage and program their DVR. With the new app, users can browse the TV guide, favorite channels and search for programs by title or episode name.

There is a small catch to all this live TV-viewing, of course: it only works within the home.

The app joins TWC’s iPad app, released back in March 2011 and the Android app launched last month. The new iPhone version is actually a universal app, meaning one download now supports both the phone and tablet platforms.

As you may expect, you can’t watch live TV just anywhere – the iOS device has to be connected to the home’s Wi-Fi network in order to function. It also offers a number of features typical for TV provider mobile apps, including a remote control functionality, the ability to program your DVR (this feature also works remotely), and the ability to configure parental controls, among other things.

The app is fairly backward-compatible, however, as it works on iPhone 3GS and up, iPod Touch (3rd or 4th gen) and any iPad, all of which have to run at least iOS 4.3. Customers will also have to have the Navigator set-top box or a DVR in their home, as other models may not function properly.

TWC isn’t the first to add mobile phone support for its TV service. Comcast’s app arrived on the scene in May 2011, Cablevision launched on iOS in August and Verizon FiOS has FlexView, which works on the iPad and Android (but not iPhone).

TWC TV for iOS is available here on iTunes.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

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12Jan

Vodio Brings Personalized Video Recommendations To The iPad

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Vodio is a new iPad app that’s somewhat along the same lines as iOS app Shelby.tv. Like Shelby, it also brings you videos being shared by your friends on social networks. But where Shelby.tv only focuses on those “socially shared” videos, Vodio instead uses its social features to bring “a dash” of personalization to its video recommendations.

In Vodio, you get to see what the crowd is watching too. To get started, you configure the app around your interests, by telling it which categories of videos you like to watch. For example, Comedy, Entertainment, Movies, Music, News, Science, Sports, Tech, etc. You can even drill down into these categories further to select the sub-categories that match your interests. So in Sports, you could choose Basketball, Football, Soccer, Tennis, etc. But you can also customize your favorite content sources. Yes to Fox Sports, perhaps, and no to the UFC.

Great idea, in theory. In practice, Vodio seemed a little buggy. You can check the content sources you want to include, but good luck un-checking them. Tapping the categories again does nothing. Apparently, that’s by design. You don’t un-check your channel selections. You go into “Edit” mode and remove them. OK then.

Maybe that seems like a minor complaint, but it’s very unintuitive to have a one-way checkbox. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. (The company says it’s working on this).

Petty complaints aside, the rest of Vodio’s user interface is attractive and fun to use. You swipe horizontally to move between channels and vertically to scroll through the videos in those channels. In addition to the personalization and (optional) social networking connections, Vodio simply shows you what’s hot on various video sharing platforms and from top media publishers. Videos come from TV shows, networks, comedy sites like College Humor, NASA, newspapers, newswires, movie trailers, music videos, blogs, and more. But for now, the only supported players are YouTube, Vimeo, AOL Video, Facebook Video and Daily Motion.

Vodio Labs Ltd., the company behind Vodio, was founded in early 2011 by Jonathan Messika, Uri Twig and Ishay Weinstock in Tel Aviv, Israel. Last July, it raised a 200K Euro seed round led by Kima Ventures, with Jaina Capital and Orefa Investment participating.

The company is now working on simplifying the channel set up and personalization process, adding more video-driven features like HD enabling, and partnering with premium content players.

The Vodio app is a free download from iTunes here.

View full post on TechCrunch » Mobile

brings, iPad, Personalized, Recommendations, video., Vodio

10Jan

[CES 2012] Gametel Controller Brings Physical Gamepad To Mobile Devices

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By David Ponce

Another day, another Bluetooth connected gamepad for mobile devices. Each iteration tweaks the features a little bit, but I did manage to get my hands on this particular one, the Gametel. It’s sturdily built and has an expendable clasp that can accomodate more than just one phone. As long as your device is less than 5 inches in width, you can have it sitting right above the controller. You can of course use this with tablets as well, but you’ll have more of a console/controller interaction rather than that of a mobile gaming device. And unlike previous devices I’ve seen, this one is compatible with around 150 games.

This accessory has been available for a while in Europe and should make it across the pond sometime in Q1 of this year. You can expect a similar price than its European counterpart, and that’s around $60.

[ Product Page ]