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2010 Mobile metrics

Written by Robin Wong. Posted on March 22, 2010. Filed under mobile. Tagged , , . 13 Comments.

Nice little PDF about mobile metrics from Admob.

I am T-Pain (in Robin’s ears)

Written by Andy Weir. Posted on March 9, 2010. Filed under Blog, mobile, production, Review. Tagged , , , , . 17 Comments.

This afternoon I have mostly been rapping. The song of choice – I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper). Robin is disturbed and frankly my rhyming skillz aren’t up to much. The author of this track – a Mister T-Pain, who despite his rather loose morals and disturbing lyrics released a rather nifty iPhone App last year – the source of my fun this afternoon. It allows you to sing along karaoke style to his latest instrumental tracks and record your own version. The app then uses AutoTune to try and get you to sound vaguely like a US Hip Hop megastar. It works – although my silky Geordie undertones are still present, it has made me sound a lot more in tune and in time. I won’t be giving up the day job though!

In a rather neat way you can then share with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or by email. And no, I will not be uploading my version. It’s terribly embarrassing and my wife might divorce me when she hears me singing some of those disgraceful lyrics. User’s can then listen to and comment on other people’s tracks as they are broadcast. As an added bonus you can then sing over any track in your iTunes library.

It’s karaoke with gloss. The autotune element makes it much more interesting than just a simple audio playback. It is produced by Smule who have pedigree in audio iPhone Apps. They produced sound tool apps like, leaf trombone, Zephyr, Ocarina, Sonic Vox, Sonic Boom. I am T-Pain takes it to the next level though, perfectly targeted at an engaged audience.

Get it here…

Missing a trick?

Written by Andy Weir. Posted on February 15, 2010. Filed under Blog, mobile, production, Review. Tagged , , , , , , . 37 Comments.

Is it just me or does the App store on the iPhone disappoint? Every time I use it I find it extremely difficult to find what I’m after. It seems that the idea of a stripped down App store for the iPhone platform is fundamentally self defeating for Apple. I look for apps when I am using my iPhone. I don’t look for Apps when I’m at my laptop (My laptop doesn’t use apps!), so it seems bizarre that the functionality of the iPhone App store is stripped right back from the one online. Apparently if I am looking on an iPhone for apps then I am only iterested in what is in the top 25 or what is being featured by Apple. Apple likes to tell us that there are 100s of thousands of Apps on the store but i only get to find out about the ones that everyone else buys, which limits the range to alarm clocks, simple games and expensive Grand Theft Auto type £5 revenue fests. Come on, there has to be more out there than this? I want Apple to have another go at this interface. I want the following:

  • I want to be suggested apps that friends of mine have bought.
  • People that downloaded this, downloaded this too.
  • I want to know what apps people in my city use.
  • I want to say what my job is and have apps suggested to me.
  • I want to subscribe to App alerts that tell me when a new app has been released that might interest me.
  • I want it to show me more.
  • I want Genius to work better. It just seems to suggest apps based on the fact I have one other app like it.

I want…. I want…… iWant.

Virtual Assistance + iPhone

Written by Robin Wong. Posted on February 6, 2010. Filed under mobile, work. Tagged , , , . 41 Comments.

Siri personal iphone assistantI’m intrigued to try out Siri on the iPhone, after reading Greg Roeken’s post and Dag Kittlaus’s mashable article. Siri is Dag’s little baby, and it brings the whole star trek communicator voice recognition a step closer apparently. It claims to translate requests like “find chinese restaurant nearby” by interpreting this into a web service request that returns data from APIs like opentable and yelp to give you information on where the nearest roast crispy belly pork is waiting for you.

This level of automation – taking the hassle out of simple search tasks – is a great evolutionary step for search and hopefully relevance. I guess the trick is being able to distinguish between different senses of taste and not just firing the same results back at everyone. For those with search/media heads on, how paid for search can have an impact to ensure staying at the top of rankings will be crucial, especially when more personalised taste is taken into account.

I’m going to try it out when it’s available in the UK app store.