Loopt — perhaps the largest location-based social network, a network that uses your location to recommend places to go and inform you of friends around you — announced the acquisition of GraffitiGEO this week. Several industry observers and researchers are raving about the potential of location-based social networks for businesses and advertising. “Context awareness is critical when you want to buy something, and advertisers get higher targeting based on our patterns and social contexts,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Nadav Aharony in a recent BusinessWeek article.

Here’s a quirky story: Israeli iPhone app dev house ApParty released an app back in December 2008 called iFog (iTunes link).

The premise being that the user selects a photo which then has a steam effect superimposed upon it. The steam can be wiped away by running a finger over the screen surface. Blowing on the iPhone microphone fogs the screen back up.

Cute. Simple. And lucrative—it was bought 200,000 times for $0.99 a pop.

As soon as it was released, iFog climbed the iPhone app charts, reaching the number one download spot in most European counties and even made it into the top 20 in the US version of the App Store. Since then—unsurprisingly—sales have flattened to a steady pace of about 250 per week. Until two weeks ago, where out of the blue iFog’s sales surged again and more than doubled.

The two developers behind the app had no clue what the reason for this revitalization could possibly be.

A couple of days ago, the mystery began to finally unravel. A friend of one of the developers who happens to live in Miami asked whether it was possible that she saw iFog on TV. Fat chance seeing as ‘Television Ads’ isn’t on any line in the company’s P&L. The friend was able to recall though that she saw the app in a new T-Mobile myTouch commercial (embedded below). Lo and behold, none other than Dana Carvey is seen with the same exact app, except it actually happens to be a knock-off made for Android.

The ApParty guys added two and two together and realized that there was a spillover effect from the commercial, where iPhone owners that saw it rushed over to the App Store and found iFog.

Go figure, huh?

The T-Mobile commercial featuring Dana Carvey:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Following weeks of requests from open-source developers, HTC has released the Hero Android source code on their developer site.

In response to the mobile devs, HTC has previously stated it was waiting for its own developers to provide the source before releasing it publicly. As late as last week, HTC representatives had emailed developers saying, “At the moment we do not know when the kernel source for the Hero will be released,” and “We are still pushing our developers to provide us with the source code and for the links to be added.” Since the Android kernel is licensed under the GPL, this delay was creating both dissatisfaction and controversy in the community.

Sponsor

However, just as a few developers were beginning to talk about enforcement actions, the company posted the code, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Or something along those lines. GPL non-compliance and hints of internal process and delivery issues don’t mode well for the mobile manufacturer. After unfavorable coverage of the company’s “foot-dragging” on Slashdot and long threads of modev complaints, we do hope that HTC’s future Android projects will be more swiftly opened.

The Hero, as a device, is significant in itself, hence the enhanced perception of cruelty in HTC’s not releasing its source code sooner. It’s created huge waves in geek circles, beating out the iPhone for Gadget of the Year at the prestigious T3 awards and generating enough gadget-geek slavering to power a small city.

So, will the gadget geeks and modevs have to push for open sourcing every time a cool, Android-powered device is released? Where was the major malfunction that led to these delays? Were the HTC engineers thrown under the bus to allow leadership to save face, or do the HTC powers that be simply need to get their engineering team under control? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Discuss

As iPhone and Android users, it’s easy to forget that Facebook hasn’t been fully optimized for all touchscreen phones. Many of us sit here from the comfort of our sleek mobile applications, never knowing the drudgery that Palm owners have to face as they type in URLs to open their favorite services. Well Palm owners, you’re in luck. As of today, Facebook has redesigned its mobile site for touch devices (x.facebook.com and iphone.facebook.com) and launched a new domain name at touch.facebook.com.

Sponsor

According to AllFacebook, the company is looking to offer a consistent user experience across all devices, regardless of how Facebook is accessed. While this is a stopgap measure until Facebook applications are built for emerging touchscreen phones, the new site is a much better interface than the standard mobile iteration. In the past, mobile site users tolerated one long stream of notifications, messages, friend requests and invitations. For a power Facebook user, the single stream display was easily overwhelming. By improving upon the mobile experience, the company is removing the barrier to photo uploads, notes and status messages for these users.

In January, 20 million people were accessing Facebook on their mobile phones. By September, that number had more than tripled to a whopping 65 million mobile users. As the company continues to upgrade the mobile user experience, the rate of content generation appears poised for unlimited growth. To test the redesigned mobile site visit touch.facebook.com.

Discuss

Here’s a quirky story: Israeli iPhone app dev house ApParty released an app back in December 2008 called iFog (iTunes link).

The premise being that the user selects a photo which then has a steam effect superimposed upon it. The steam can be wiped away by running a finger over the screen surface. Blowing on the iPhone microphone fogs the screen back up.

Cute. Simple. And lucrative—it was bought 200,000 times for $0.99 a pop.

As soon as it was released, iFog climbed the iPhone app charts, reaching the number one download spot in most European counties and even made it into the top 20 in the US version of the App Store. Since then—unsurprisingly—sales have flattened to a steady pace of about 250 per week. Until two weeks ago, where out of the blue iFog’s sales surged again and more than doubled.

The two developers behind the app had no clue what the reason for this revitalization could possibly be.

A couple of days ago, the mystery began to finally unravel. A friend of one of the developers who happens to live in Miami asked whether it was possible that she saw iFog on TV. Fat chance seeing as ‘Television Ads’ isn’t on any line in the company’s P&L. The friend was able to recall though that she saw the app in a new T-Mobile myTouch commercial (embedded below). Lo and behold, none other than Dana Carvey is seen with the same exact app, except it actually happens to be a knock-off made for Android.

The ApParty guys added two and two together and realized that there was a spillover effect from the commercial, where iPhone owners that saw it rushed over to the App Store and found iFog.

Go figure, huh?

The T-Mobile commercial featuring Dana Carvey:

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Following weeks of requests from open-source developers, HTC has released the Hero Android source code on their developer site.

In response to the mobile devs, HTC has previously stated it was waiting for its own developers to provide the source before releasing it publicly. As late as last week, HTC representatives had emailed developers saying, “At the moment we do not know when the kernel source for the Hero will be released,” and “We are still pushing our developers to provide us with the source code and for the links to be added.” Since the Android kernel is licensed under the GPL, this delay was creating both dissatisfaction and controversy in the community.

Sponsor

However, just as a few developers were beginning to talk about enforcement actions, the company posted the code, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Or something along those lines. GPL non-compliance and hints of internal process and delivery issues don’t mode well for the mobile manufacturer. After unfavorable coverage of the company’s “foot-dragging” on Slashdot and long threads of modev complaints, we do hope that HTC’s future Android projects will be more swiftly opened.

The Hero, as a device, is significant in itself, hence the enhanced perception of cruelty in HTC’s not releasing its source code sooner. It’s created huge waves in geek circles, beating out the iPhone for Gadget of the Year at the prestigious T3 awards and generating enough gadget-geek slavering to power a small city.

So, will the gadget geeks and modevs have to push for open sourcing every time a cool, Android-powered device is released? Where was the major malfunction that led to these delays? Were the HTC engineers thrown under the bus to allow leadership to save face, or do the HTC powers that be simply need to get their engineering team under control? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Discuss

This week we’re joining in Google’s celebration of all things mobile to make sure you’re aware of the power you hold in your fingertips with YouTube on your phone. Not only can you watch millions of videos, but also you can upload videos directly from your device; maybe it’s footage of a breaking news event, the drama unfolding at the party Saturday night, or your baby’s first steps. Since we want to provide the best experience for each of you, we occasionally have different solutions for different phones — so read on to find out what’s available for yours.

Almost any phone with a browser can access the YouTube mobile website at m.youtube.com. (Some mobile phone operators offer a pre-programmed link, so if a YouTube link displays on your phone, click it to visit our site.) Once there, you can access your YouTube account, your favorite videos, your uploads and your favorite channels. You can also share, rate, and comment directly from the mobile website to other YouTube users. Or, if you’ve captured a great moment, upload your own video by sending it via MMS or email (sign in to YouTube and click here to get your unique address) and it will appear almost instantly on the website.

In addition to the website, you can also play high-quality YouTube videos with special applications on many devices, including Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, and BlackBerry Storm v1 devices. For devices not listed, it means that there were either technical limitations to getting YouTube on the phone, or the experience wasn’t a significant improvement over just visiting the mobile website. FYI, the apps for iPhone, Android and Palm Pre also support direct-to-YouTube uploads. To install the app on a compatible phone, visit m.youtube.com/app.

Keep an eye out this week as we tweet some useful tips and tricks for YouTube mobile. And be sure to let us know how you’re liking it and what we can do to improve the mobile experience. To get started, just Go Mobile!

Robin Norvell, YouTube Mobile Operations, recently watched “Mobile Tricks.”

Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

AVG launches its free antivirus suite as Microsoft crashes its party — “AVG Technologies has made itself into a familiar name on the Internet by giving users antivirus software at a pretty good price: free. Today, the company is announcing that the ninth version of its AVG antivirus software will be available in mid-October.”

How Fourth Wall Studios hid an artistic radio drama inside Halo 3:ODST — “Created through a collaboration of startup Fourth Wall Studios and Halo franchise developer Bungie, Sadie’s Story is a self-contained tale. It is a radio drama embedded within the world of Halo 3: ODST.”

Dell building an Android phone for the US (report) — “Since the phone will reportedly run on AT&T’s network, not only does this news add to Android’s roster of device manufacturers, but it also means the mobile OS will be on all four major mobile networks in the US.”

Review: First look at Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 on HTC Pure cell phone — “I tried it out on the new HTC Pure phone from AT&T, and the experience is a big step up from the crappy Windows Mobile experience of the past.”

Why Charles River Ventures sat out on Twitter’s latest round — “When Twitter raised its most recent round of funding at $1 billion, a few players were conspicuously absent, including Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures.”

And here are five more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or just fun:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce strikes back after Apple defection: “We don’t have any regrets” — “Days after Apple announced that it would be quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to its opposition to greenhouse gas limits, the Chamber has very publicly shouted back.”

The iPhone finally gets Flash apps — but not Flash websites — “When Adobe announced the latest version of its Flash technology, a bunch of writers jumped on the fact that Flash 10.1 would eventually work on most major smartphones, except Apple’s iPhone. Looks like we spoke too soon. Sort of.”

U.S. private equity fundraising plunges 70 percent — “This means much less money will flow to technology start-ups over the next few years.”

Amazon debuts payment system for mobile phones — “Amazon Mobile Payments Service, or Amazon MPS as they’d prefer you call it, brings the comforting yellow Amazon button to mobile phone screens.”

Surprise! Dating site OKCupid finds white guys get more replies — “This week in slightly depressing confirmations that the online world is not so unlike the offline one: dating site OKCupid tracked the behavior of nearly 1 million users and found that race is correlated with whether people reply.”

[Richard Wong, a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, submitted this piece to VentureBeat.]

Moile has never been hotter with the iPhone, Android,  the explosion in mobile advertising, and the rise of mobile apps, but, you’d never know it walking around the mobile conference called CTIA, held here in San Diego today.

The CTIA show that once was the key meeting place for the mobile industry seems less and less relevant with each passing year.  We wrote about this trend in early 2008, calling it “the end of the operator ecosystem,” the notion being that operators were losing their dominant gravity in mobile, and the “off-deck” or “open mobile” model was exploding as the next key wave in mobile.   

What does this “open mobile” thing mean?  Many of us who are mobile startup veterans often stood around at CTIA in years past, attending meeting after meeting to make sure we “got that Verizon deal” or “got that Vodafone deal.” These deals were transformative to our startup companies.  Companies of this ‘Soviet era of mobile,’ such as Phone.com or Infospace or Jamdat went public or were acquired for hundreds of millions on the strength of one or two key deals with operators.

This is no longer the case. The industry is opening up in a very healthy way – many innovative startup companies no longer need to work with the operators to get going.  Many startups are now using alternative “offdeck” modes of distribution such as buying mobile ads from Admob or using appstores such as Getjar.com or Handmark.com as ways to distribute, rather than “getting the ‘operator’ deal’.

This is goodness. It speeds up the pace of innovation for mobile startups and raises the tide for everyone in the ecosystem, the operators included.  Similar to AOL’s walled garden on the Internet circa 2001, the phone operator’s walled gardens have been cracking for a while now. But at this CTIA, traditionally an “operator show,” the lack of interest by participants punctuates the crashing of those walls.  The industry owes a thank you to Steve Jobs for the iPhone and now the Android team for really kicking those walls over.

So, some things that were interesting to me around the show that have helped drive this next wave:

The Android party is starting for real — The old mobile MENS club (Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens), is being swept away for good, to be replaced by a new generation of smartphone innovators  (see The end of the mobile MENS club).  It’s hard to recall just a short 5-6 years ago, before the iPhone, and before Android, how much the industry was controlled by what Motorola and Nokia chose to put in their phones, and the rise of these “Open OS” players means that consumers and developers now have a much greater say.  Most of these Android announcements have been reported independently, but interesting to see them together and the only buzz on the show floor are people checking out these devices.

Let’s see, with T-Mobile already in the Android camp, and AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon announcing at this show the movement towards Android, that’s ALL the major carriers in the US moving to include Android. While its taken 6+ years, nice work Android team.  Watch for the announcements at MWC Barcelona in February next year for Europe.

Here are the links:

• ATT and Dell announced an Android device (interesting, as the leading iPhone operator of course)  http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/07/dell-building-an-android-phone-for-the-us-report/
• Sprint announced Android on the Samsung Moment;
• Verizon announces launch of a range of feature phones and PDAs based on Android;
• T-Mobile adds to its holiday lineup of Android phones;
• Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola’s handset group announced a complete shift to working on Android in his keynote speech, and as a blow to Microsoft, in a roundtable talk, Motorola executives have talked about skipping the WinMo 6.5 platform and waiting for WinMo 7 in a year. Interesting also to see Dell skip WinMo for Android as well;
• Even Kyocera announced a new Android phone at the event yesterday.

“Off Deck” ways to distribute – In addition to new handsets, a key reason why the mobile operators have largely given up on their “walled garden” approaches is the rise of alternative or ‘off-deck’ modes of distribution.  Mobile advertising player, Admob, publishes a report monthly on its metrics, and on Admob’s network alone, there were 10.5 billion ad requests in August as opportunities to advertise directly to mobile consumers without having to do an operator “deal.” When added to the impressions logged by the Nokia, Google, Jumptap and other ad networks, that’s a lot of impressions to reach consumers.

Similarly, Getjar announced over 50 million app downloads of mobile apps in August.  The Apple AppStore announced over 2 billion apps downloaded since its launch in July 2008.  Other innovators are now learning how to use Facebook, and Twitter as social media channel for app distribution.  Simply put, all of these “off deck” distribution vehicles allow startups to get moving without requiring a long sales cycle to negotiate an operator deal. So that’s why fewer and fewer developers are making the trek to CTIA to “pitch their companies to the operators.”  To be clear, I think the operators can still be a powerful accelerant, and companies such as NIM, or TeleNav have benefited greatly from their carrier deals. But, it can be a tough, high-friction way to get started.

Other announcements:

• Yahoo Mobile home page — David Ko, head of mobile at Yahoo (and a super sharp mobile exec who took over from Marco Borreis this year), announced the new Yahoo mobile home page. This new strategy plays well to Yahoo’s strengths. in my opinion.
• BestBuy launches mIQ -– This service will help manage mobile services. Will this really work at scale?
• FCC & Net Neutrality — Boring, but very important for this Open Mobile revolution. Net Neutrality and “openness,” while value in Chairman Genachowski’s speech yesterday, were two of the key 4 points on the FCC’s mobile agenda.  While it will take a while to make all of this reality, the public policy posture, makes it harder to erect new barriers to innovation
• The normal alphabet soup battles shaping up for next year around 4G — WIMAX, HSDPA, LTE laden conversations were rife, but most of that was pretty quiet this year….

I’m not covering the event comprehensively. I just picked out the things that were interesting from one person’s perspective.  Mobile has been a tough space for startups these past seven years, and perhaps some of us are overly optimistic, but I believe this wave of “open mobile” will create some major winners just as the Broadband internet revolution (and dot com crash) helped the rise of world beaters such as Google, YouTube, Facebook and others.

(Disclosure: Accel Partners, where Richard Wong is a partner, is an investor in mobile companies such as Admob, Getjar, MetroPCS, Mig33, and NextG Networks – among others)