Cisco today said it is curtailing further investment in Cius, which announced in June of 2010 as an enterprise rival to Apple’s iPad.

“Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today,” OJ Winge, Cisco’s senior vice president of the TelePresence Technology Group, said in a blog post. “However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases.”

Evidently, the Cius didn’t prove to be much of a rival to anything. And with the “consumerization of IT” taking off in enterprise and more companies embracing Bring-Your-Own-Device programs for their employees, the device was just never able to gain any momentum. Realistically, it was probably doomed from the start. By the time Cisco managed to get Cius to market, a large percentage of the Fortune 500 and Global 500 were already testing or deploying the iPad. Effectively, the niche it was intended to address had been filled. And so Cius will now be quietly laid to rest in the company graveyard, next to Umi, Cisco’s ill-starred consumer TelePresence product, and the much-loved Flip pocket video camera.

Additionally, it said it is partnering with four software providers to gain access to 50,000 small- to medium-sized merchants.

Meanwhile, tomorrow will be exactly a year since Google launched its mobile wallet.

So, you ask, which large technology company is winning the race to gain the hearts and wallets of consumers and retailers?

Pretty clearly, it’s neither.

Google may have gotten off the blocks first, but ever since, it has been plagued by execution issues and management departures. In contrast, PayPal has a lot of institutional advantages, but it still has a long way to go before it is synonymous with Visa or MasterCard.

Here’s just a snapshot of the two companies’ advantages and disadvantages:

Google:

Pros: It has relationships with 25 national retailers, totaling 140,000 locations.

Cons: It bet too early on using near field communication technology. Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, is the only provider so far that is backing it and it’s deployed on only six Android devices.

PayPal:

Pros: There are 110 million people using PayPal worldwide, who are on track to spend a record $7 billion in mobile payments this year using PayPal on the phone.

Cons: The company is expecting to deploy with 20 retailers by year’s end, but based on the 16 retailers announced yesterday, I calculated that it has access to about 16,000 U.S. locations (far fewer than Google Wallet). That does not include the thousands of locations that those 50,000 small- to medium-sized retailers would contribute if they signed up for it.

Clearly, it is still early days.

And when you look at the broader market opportunity, the race is not just between Google and PayPal. All of the incumbents, including American Express, MasterCard and Visa, have announced digital wallet strategies. And then there are the start-ups, such as Square, which is seeking a $4 billion valuation in its next funding round.

There are two points to be made on the debate between PayPal vs. Google Wallet that can’t be stressed enough: PayPal has the user base, and it has the technology with the lowest barriers to entry.

In theory, if a consumer has signed up for the service from their PayPal account, they will be able to conduct a transaction using their mobile phone number and PIN – without changing carriers or phones. Likewise, merchants won’t have to upgrade their point-of-sale hardware.

In an interview, PayPal President David Marcus acknowledged there’s a chicken and egg problem: Without a lot of locations, there won’t be a lot of consumers using it. But this year is about learning and testing, he said, and next year, “it will be about iterating and full-on execution.”

If you asked the folks at Google, I’m sure they would agree. A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but already, there are signs that Google has learned a lot and has started to pivot.

Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst with Aite Group, believes that Google is distancing itself from NFC and from being the merchant of record.

“I think they will follow the path of least resistance, because for them, it’s not about payments — it’s about advertising,” he said. “It’s about pay-for-performance marketing. Just like how they get paid for a click-through on the Web, they want to get paid when you walk through the door — but no one is monitoring that.”

Last month, Google purchased TxVia, a little-known payments technology company, another sign that it’s changing directions.

Tony Felice, a senior strategist for Red Door Interactive who has worked with TxVia in the past, said TxVia and Google Wallet together can be very powerful. He said TxVia has all the banking relationships, which will help enable payments, gift cards and other services, and also has the ability to produce analytics about what consumers are doing and spending money on.

“Together, they will be able to get a 360-degree picture from the moment of truth to purchase,” he said. “In order to do that, you have to pull in disparate sources and synthesize it in a single place. The transactional data from TxVia is just one piece of a puzzle.”

Oglesby said despite Google’s hiccups, it’s not yet out of the race.

“It’s been a slow-growing situation, and there’s been big turnover on the executive team, but they are reassessing the situation and have made an acquisition,” he said. “I wouldn’t say they’ve screwed up because no one has run way ahead of them. They were leading the market, and tried an approach, and now there’s other approaches for them to try.”

Shutterstock/Péter Gudella

One of the agency’s mandates is to make sure that the carriers are securely protecting the information they collect from their customers. For example, phone companies have to protect the databases that store the information on call records and other data.

The question on what steps they must take when it comes to information on devices is a tricker one. The FCC looked into this question back in 2007. At the time, the carriers contended that information stored on phones wasn’t information they were collecting, but rather data being voluntarily entered by consumers.

However, the FCC thinks it might be time to revisit this given revelations last year that there is software, such as that from Carrier IQ, that is preinstalled and collecting information that users are largely unaware of and unable to control.

“Since the Commission last solicited public input on this question five years ago, technologies and business practices have evolved dramatically,” the FCC said in the document seeking comments. “The devices consumers use to access mobile wireless networks have become more sophisticated and powerful, and their expanded capabilities have at times been used by wireless providers to collect information about particular customers’ use of the network — sometimes, it appears, without informing the customer.”

The FCC isn’t taking issue with the collection of such information, but rather is examining what duties the carriers might have to encrypt or protect such information. Carrier IQ doesn’t encrypt the data it collects, but does store it in a binary format not generally accessible to other applications, the company said.

“We haven’t gone to that extent because we haven’t needed to,” Carrier IQ Vice President Andrew Coward told AllThingsD on Friday. “If the industry decided we needed to, then we would take that step.”

Carrier IQ is also taking steps to allow customers to see the information that is being collected about them by their software.

Following the comment period, the FCC could decide to, among other things, take no action, clarify its existing rules or propose new rules.

[Image via / ]

And when it comes to the company’s major markets in Western Europe, Maitre said things are in pretty good shape. Windows Phone, Android and iOS have paved the way for a solid set of options for both high-end devices and even midrange ones, often sold prepaid and, in some cases, under the Orange brand name.

But when it comes to serving the next 6 billion potential smartphone customers, Maitre said that none of the major operating systems is really lightweight enough from either a cost perspective or from the amount of bandwidth consumed.

In an interview Thursday, Maitre likened it to when he was growing up in France and his family had a two-cylinder Citroen. He idolized the huge eight-cylinder cars coming out of Detroit in the 1970s. And while those cars did enjoy a moment in the sun, the world realized that with more cars out there, gas wasn’t unlimited.

In the end, the car makers like Toyota that created fuel-efficient vehicles fared better.

While conventional wisdom is that low-cost Android devices will bring smartphones to the developing world, Maitre says even Google’s OS is too resource intensive. It may have started out as a four-cylinder or six-cylinder car, he says, but with the latest Ice Cream Sandwich release it is every bit the gas guzzler that iOS and Windows Phone are.

Maitre said that Orange is committed to building 3G networks in all of its markets, but that it needs more energy efficient vehicles, if you will.

“I cannot run an eight-cylinder car because it is too expensive,” said Maitre, a senior vice president at France Telecom’s Orange unit. The average selling price of phones in Orange’s developing markets is $54. And while customers might be willing to spend an extra $30 to get a smartphone, they can’t spend another $100.

“If we are not in a position to give them a smartphone at $80, we will miss the six billion,” Maitre said, adding that Orange is committed to having smartphones that hit that price. “If I cannot have Microsoft on it, if I cannot have Android, if I cannot have iOS, then I will look somewhere else, mostly likely in China,” Maitre said.

Already the company is looking at a variety of options including Mozilla’s Boot-to-Gecko project and mobile Linux options like Tizen, in addition to low-cost Android variants coming out of China.

Phones also must become more bandwidth-efficient, Maitre said, because, like gas for cars, bandwidth is a limited commodity.

Today, he said, there are about a billion people crowding the airwaves, most of whom use less than one gigabyte of data per month.

“Tomorrow, seven billion people will use bandwidth and all use [in the range of] five or six gigabits,” he said. “The bandwidth will start to become a very valuable resource.”

The analysis, from online advertising network Chitika, finds that those stodgy old PCs still produce just under 80 percent of Web traffic, with smartphones accounting for 14.6 percent and tablets making up 5.6 percent.

Other findings of note, Windows Phone now accounts for a third as much traffic as BlackBerry devices. Undoubtedly its market share is far less than that, but its more powerful browser and larger screen likely make it more conducive to Web surfing.

Also, as it has seen in the past, Chitika said that tablet and mobile phone Internet usage peak in the evening hours. That’s when people leave their computers for a bit and pretend to have a real life, while nonetheless staring at their phones or sitting on the couch watching TV and simultaneously pawing an iPad.

Speaking of iPads, Chitika says that 95 percent of tablet Web traffic comes from an Apple device, compared to phones, where Apple’s share is 72 percent, compared to 26 percent for Android devices.

On the desktop, Chitika says that just over 85 percent of Web traffic comes from Windows machines, compared with slightly more than 13 percent stemming from Macs.

Approximately a half-dozen people — the core of what remained of the Enyo engineering team — have been hired by Google, and will start at the company next month. Enyo is the HTML5 app-creation framework that HP is in the process of turning into an open source project.

Google didn’t strike a deal with HP to acquire the technology, according to a source, but has been talking with individual workers over the past month. Rather, each of the workers making the move was hired individually by Google, with the team set to regroup at their new employer next month.

While it’s not 100 percent clear what the team will be working on, Google has been a big proponent of HTML5 apps, particularly as it looks to boost its Chrome OS effort, which depends on there being lots and lots of Web apps out there.

Also unclear is what HP will do with what remains of the webOS effort it had said it would help fund as an open source project. The webOS unit had significant layoffs earlier this year, and many of those who remained have since moved on, from former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein on down throughout the business and engineering ranks.

Google’s hiring of the Enyo team was first reported by technology news site The Verge.

Update: In a statement, HP reiterated its commitment to Enyo and webOS:

“We’re pleased with the traction Enyo has gained to date and plan to continue its development along with the open source community,” HP said. “The Open webOS project is on schedule and we remain committed to the roadmap announced in January.”

Chart/data courtesy of Forrester Research

SimpleAir said that the agreement was confidential and did not announce terms of the deal.

The Marshall, Texas-based company sued Apple back in September 2009. A trial had been set for April, but the two companies reached a tentative deal at the courthouse just before the case began, SimpleAir said.

The firm has also sued a number of other companies in the mobile space, including Microsoft, Nokia, Sony Ericsson (now a part of Sony), Samsung, LG, Huawei and HTC.

SimpleAir bills itself as “an inventor-owned technology licensing company with interests and intellectual property in the wireless content delivery, mobile application, and push notification market spaces.”

The revamped social networking app presents a sleeker user interface that’s easy on the eyes, with a bolder font and smooth animations.

Photos and video are also displayed in full screen in your stream, for a more visually appealing experience. If you happen to come across a photo in your stream that strikes your fancy, you even have the ability to download the image right from Google+ and use it as your wallpaper.

Google also made some changes to make the app easier to use. You can now “+1” a post right from the main page, and edit posts inline. And a new navigation ribbon that slides in and out gives you quicker access to the app’s other functions.

All of these enhancements were rolled out to the iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system) app earlier this month, but one feature unique to the Android version is the ability to create a “Hangout” video chatroom.

Hangout is a function in Google+ that allows you to make a video call to a group of people. Previously, you could only join a Hangout call in progress using the app, but now you can create them using the new navigation ribbon. There’s even an option to ring a contact’s phone when a Hangout request is sent.

Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social at Google, said all of today’s improvements were made in the company’s quest to create “a simpler, more beautiful Google.” I’d say the company was pretty successful in achieving that goal.

You can try it out for yourself by downloading the new Google+ app for Android from the Google Play Store.

That said, one thing has clearly shifted. Microsoft is now taking on Google directly, given that the Motorola deal closed on Tuesday. So a German court decision Thursday that certain Motorola Android products infringe on Microsoft patents can officially be chalked up as Microsoft’s first direct hit to Google.

The ruling was actually a split one, as the court ruled that Motorola does infringe on a patent related to text messaging but does not infringe on another patent related to localization.

“We’re pleased the court agreed today that Motorola has infringed Microsoft’s intellectual property, and we hope Motorola will be willing to join other Android device makers by taking a license to our patents,” Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard said in a statement.

Motorola, meanwhile, was pleased that the court ruled in its favor on the other patent. As for the one it was found to infringe on, Motorola told AllThingsD that it “will explore all options, including appeal.”

“This is one element of a global dispute initiated by Microsoft,” Motorola said.

Google said on Thursday it is adding support for in-app subscriptions, allowing apps or services within apps that are paid for on a monthly or annual basis. The subscriptions will be auto-renewing unless a customer chooses to stop them.

“Developers just set the price and billing interval and Google Play manages the purchase transactions for them, just as it does for other in-app products and app purchases,” Google Play product manager Ibrahim Elbouchikhi said in a blog post.

The move comes roughly a year after Google added in-app payments. Google says that 23 of the top 24 grossing Android apps use in-app payments and that revenue from in-app payments exceeds that generated from paid downloads. Google has also added support for carrier billing in a number of markets.

Game makers have been among the most aggressive adopters of in-app payments and are expected to be among those that gravitate to subscriptions as well, though the option will be for any Android app.

One of the first companies to adopt the new subscriptions will be Glu Mobile, which plans to offer a virtual currency that can be used across a number of its games, including Frontline Commando.

Glu senior VP Adam Flanders said subscriptions, which it already offers via Amazon, boost the value and experience for customers, while also boosting retention of those customers.

Also planning to use the new feature is music site Qello, which will start offering an “all-access pass” to its library of concerts and documentaries to its Android app. The company already offers that option on iOS and the Web.

Google said that, for developers already using in app payments, the move to add subscriptions will involve adding just a few lines of code.

What we didn’t know, however, is that Facebook was essentially building its own version of a standalone mobile photo-sharing application, ostensibly to compete with Instagram before it took over the mobile photo-sharing world completely.

How do I know that? Because Facebook will launch the product this afternoon in Apple’s App Store.

It’s called Facebook Camera, and it’s essentially Instagram redux. One, it’s a standalone Facebook application, separate from the Facebook app proper, much like the company’s Facebook Messages app. Facebook Photos product manager Dirk Stoop told me in an interview this morning that it’s an instant portal to one of Facebook’s largest use cases: Photo sharing.

Secondly — and I cannot stress this point enough — Facebook seems to have learned a heck of a lot from Instagram. Photos in Facebook Camera are full-bleed, spanning the entire width of the iPhone’s screen (which was probably tested when Facebook tweaked the photo experience for mobile last week). You’re able to comment and “Like” photos directly from the stream. And, of course, there are filters (albeit ones with names nowhere near as fun as Toaster or Valencia).

More than this, it’s very lightweight. The app moves much faster than browsing photos within Facebook. And by introducing a separate camera app, it’s another way of bypassing the cumbersome, clicky process of adding pictures via the main Facebook app.

It would be nice if the main Facebook app could just work this well, but Stoop said that this app was the brainchild of the dedicated Photos team he spearheads. That means moving faster, and breaking — then repairing — things quicker.

“Having separate teams focus on their area of expertise allows us to innovate faster,” Stoop told me. “Which, eventually, helps to integrate features into the mainline product.” There’s hope, then, that Facebook’s main app will actually get better.

There is, of course, a way around all of this photo-sharing friction: If Facebook were to integrate with iOS just as Twitter has, iPhone users could instantly upload photos to Facebook, straight from the iOS camera app. Stoop didn’t comment when I mentioned as much in our conversation.

So yes, the app is slick. And yes, it’s a fast portal into mobile photo-sharing, the likes of which Facebook needs. But it’s skirting the billion-dollar elephant in the room: Why build another camera app when you just dropped a ton of cash on one last month?

Two things: One, the Instagram deal hasn’t actually closed yet. It’s still purportedly being probed by the FTC, and that could take time to finish. And two, Stoop’s team was most likely working on this product long before buying Instagram was ever a real possibility. Stoop confirmed to me that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and his team had nothing to do with building Facebook Camera.

But now that Facebook Camera is finally coming to the App Store a month after the Instagram purchase, the whole deal is starting to make a lot more sense. With Instagram’s rapid rise to prominence in quickly garnering a strong user base, Facebook had to have seen the writing on the wall. Tens of millions of users signed up in the span of two years. And the app surpassed 50 million downloads after finally being released on Android earlier this year.

In essence, Instagram was taking over mobile photos, and Facebook couldn’t wait around and watch the company snap up every user while still working on perfecting the Facebook Camera app.

It’ll be interesting to see just how Facebook integrates Instagram’s user base into Facebook over time. It’s odd, too, that Facebook would launch a standalone Camera app, especially when it’s likely that the acquisition will go through. Still, perhaps a mashup of the two apps is on the road map eventually, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that Instagram will maintain its autonomy.

Or perhaps Facebook itself doesn’t even know quite yet.

Lift co-founder Tony Stubblebine

Word of the company first came out last August, but since then the idea has changed quite a bit, co-founder Tony Stubblebine told me this week. The problem with earlier versions was a misguided foray into gamification, he said.

Lift’s purpose is still the same: It’s a mobile app to motivate people to reach their goals. And it’s still not out yet, so take all these early learnings with a grain of salt.

Where earlier versions had points, badges and levels, the prelaunch Lift has stripped all that away. Now it will be one part social — Lift community members make each other accountable and give each other positive reinforcement — and one part quantified self — users can see charts and graphs of their personal progress around health, education, happiness and productivity goals.

Everything in Lift is public to the community, so the goals tend not to be terribly personal — some popular ones are “eat breakfast,” “talk to a stranger,” “exercise,” “drink more water,” “do pushups” and “read.”

In recent testing, dropping gamification increased retention to 50 percent from 5 percent, Stubblebine said.

That’s only among a small elite group of early users, but it’s enough of a positive signal that Lift should be ready to launch in August, he said.

Originally, San Francisco-based Lift naturally gravitated toward gamification in the hopes that it could create a sort of “Zynga for good,” according to Stubblebine. But designing around gamification presented a few problems: It tempted complication in the product design, and it set up a rigid structure for people to succeed on preset terms, rather than allowing them to find their own motivation.

“If you build a game, you’re providing a fantasy,” Stubblebine said. “We basically replaced a fantasy with reality.”

The new Lift is an iPhone app that allows users to name their goals and join ones other people have started. Each time users meet a goal, they “check in” to it. Then, other people can give them “props.”

At least anecdotally, giving people information seems to be a far bigger driver of changed behavior than giving them points and badges.

Check out the above chart of Evan Williams’ quest on Lift to trim his incoming emails down to “inbox zero.” Seeing a chart of his inbox zero days starting the week of April 8 quickly motivated him to get to that point on a daily basis.

The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III will come with its own Siri-like feature called S Voice, but for other Android phone owners, there are a number of virtual assistant apps available from the Google Play Store. I spent this past week testing two of them, Vlingo and Speaktoit Assistant, on the HTC One X from AT&T. The apps aren’t exclusive to Android. Vlingo first launched on BlackBerry in 2008, and also works with Symbian and Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Meanwhile, Speaktoit began on Android in 2011, and now supports iOS, with a Windows Phone app arriving in June.

Both of the Android apps are free and let you perform multiple tasks using voice commands. Speaktoit is more conversational, capable of using context to answer questions like Siri does, but it needs a bit of training to work with casual phrases, which Siri does without training. Vlingo, on the other hand, performs better, but lacks the ability to create calendar appointments, which is an important feature for a virtual assistant, thus tipping the scale in Speaktoit’s favor.

Of the two, Vlingo is definitely more of your no-nonsense personal assistant. It doesn’t offer any friendly banter; in fact, unless you press the Read button or turn on the SafeReader function to read incoming messages, it doesn’t talk back to you at all.

Vlingo’s list of abilities includes basic tasks, like dialing contacts, as well as more specialized requests, such as buying movie tickets. However, it seems to me that the app’s inability to create new appointments should be a key feature of a virtual assistant app.

This became especially clear over the past week as I was planning a surprise birthday party. In all the chaos, it would have been nice to create appointments with Vlingo. As it was, Vlingo didn’t understand the command “Create new appointment,” and searched the Web instead.

Vlingo says that while the ability to create appointments and alarms is a frequently requested feature, it does not have details about when this function might roll out.

This is an unfortunate drawback of an otherwise solid app, as Vlingo’s voice-recognition software was accurate from the start. When dictating messages, I appreciated that the app capitalized letters at the beginning of a sentence, inserted apostrophes where appropriate, and understood commands for adding text to the subject line. Speaktoit does not do any of this.

You can use Vlingo to update your Facebook status, send tweets, and check into Foursquare, as well. I sent a tweet using Vlingo, and I liked that it brought up a separate window, so I could attach a photo, whereas Speaktoit only gives you the option to send.

Be aware that you will have to log into your social networks and email accounts on both apps, so they can perform such functions as accessing your address book for voice dialing. Both companies say they do not collect any personal data without a user’s permission or disclosure, but earlier this year, Vlingo was hit with several software bugs that resulted in the app gathering more data than intended. The company has since tightened its security protocols to fix the issue.

One other unique feature about Vlingo is its InCar mode. Though still in its beta, or testing, stage, you can use this mode to call, compose and send text messages or navigate to a place, all by voice. As long as you have the app open, you can say, “Hey Vlingo” to launch the voice-recognition system.

Speaktoit Assistant is an app that’s more like Siri in that it offers more personality when answering questions; it even adds a human touch with a customizable avatar. You can choose between a male or female assistant, and change its hair, voice and more. There’s also a simple microphone if you find the avatars to be cheesy.

Right from the beginning, Speaktoit looks to get more personal by asking for your name. Unfortunately, my assistant Sam and I didn’t get off to a good start, after she interpreted “body” for “Bonnie.” After four tries, I finally gave up and typed in my name. (We made up after I asked Sam to be my best friend, and she said, “I thought we already were.”)

Speaktoit uses Google’s voice-recognition system (Vlingo uses its own, but you can switch to Google), and the first few rounds can be rough. However, the system learns your voice as you continue to use it, so accuracy should improve over time. I found this to be the case in my testing.

Even so, there’s a bit of a learning curve with using Speaktoit. While the app says you can ask questions as you normally would in real life, I found that’s not necessarily true. For example, I asked, “How deep is the Pacific Ocean?” and Sam said, “I’m still learning about that myself, Bonnie. As soon as I know, you’ll know.” But if I asked, “Find depth of Pacific Ocean,” Speaktoit brought up Google search results.

Once you learn these tricks, Speaktoit serves as a good virtual assistant. It has several advantages over Vlingo, including the fact that it reads back answers out loud. The app also does a better job with location-based requests. With Speaktoit, you can ask, “What is today’s weather?” and get the forecast for your current location, but with Vlingo, you have to include the city in your question.

To be sure, neither Vlingo nor Speaktoit Assistant is perfect. Thankfully, they’re free, so you can try both. But with a bit of time and training, Speaktoit is a more capable virtual assistant, with its talk-back abilities, full calendar management, and better location-based results.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120524/for-hire-good-virtual-assistant-for-android/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20120524/mobile-app-bump-can-now-push-photos-to-your-desktop/ http://allthingsd.com/20120524/mobile-app-bump-can-now-push-photos-to-your-desktop/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 13:00:01 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=211834 Bump Technologies launched a new Web site feature on Thursday morning, allowing Bump’s mobile app users the ability to share smartphone photos to their computers by physically bumping the phone against the PC keyboard. The photos are hosted online, and users can choose to download the images to their hard drive or share them using a short URL. Previously, Bump’s mobile app allowed for sharing photos and contact information between mobile phones, but not directly to a computer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120524/mobile-app-bump-can-now-push-photos-to-your-desktop/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120524/scoutmob-attracts-investors-and-partners-by-saying-its-not-a-daily-deals-company/ http://allthingsd.com/20120524/scoutmob-attracts-investors-and-partners-by-saying-its-not-a-daily-deals-company/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 12:30:23 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=211750 Scoutmob was able to attract $3.25 million in new funding and a major new payments partner by pitching itself as a mobile company and not as a fledgling competitor in the daily deals space.

The Atlanta-based company’s mobile app tries to be a resource to consumers who are looking for local merchants and events, sort of like the Web’s original CitySearch service from years ago — except that it’s on mobile. The app also distributes coupons to restaurants, but instead of charging consumers for the deals, like Groupon does, they are free, and merchants pay a flat rate to Scoutmob each time one is redeemed.

Investors in the company’s second round include AOL Ventures, New Atlantic Ventures, Capital Broadcasting, Cox Enterprises and Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer. To date, Scoutmob has raised $5 million, which means that even if it wanted to, it doesn’t have the resources to go up against Groupon and LivingSocial.

In an interview, Scoutmob co-founder Michael Tavani said the company gets lumped into the daily deals category, but said that from day one, “we tried to differentiate ourselves and to be more of a mobile company.”

So far, the strategy has worked.

The app, which is available free on iOS, BlackBerry and Android, has 1.2 million users who have redeemed one million offers. To date, the company has launched in 10 cities, with varying success rates. Some markets, like Seattle, don’t have many deals yet, while other cities, like Atlanta or Washington, D.C., are used more.

Because of its emphasis on mobile, the company was also able to to score a partnership with payment processing company First Data Corporation.

“It’s crazy, we are a two-and-a-half year-old company, and every week we have the largest payment companies in the world contacting us,” Tavani said. ”They are worried that if they don’t have mobile engagement, then what do they have?”

First Data processes about 55 percent of all transactions in the U.S., and will help Scoutmob close the loop of offering a discount, making a purchase and earning loyalty points.

The new funding will be used to support the company’s next wave of product development, which will include building out a mobile rewards program with the help of First Data and other payment companies it signs up.

Tavani said it will work like this: When users make a purchase at a Scoutmob location using a credit card, they’ll accrue points automatically. Once enough points have been accumulated, they can be redeemed at any Scoutmob retail location.

Unlike traditional loyalty programs, which require consumers to go to the same coffee shop 10 times in order to earn a free coffee, Scoutmob will let consumers earn and redeem points by visiting any merchant in its network. It’s similar to frequent flyer programs, where miles can be earned at a variety of merchants and then redeemed at a handful of airlines.

“We want to be the equivalent of an airline reward program, but for local,” Tavani said. “That’s exactly what we want to be.”

Scoutmob has landed in a sector spanning local businesses and mobile payments, which is ripe from innovation and extremely crowded by well-funded start-ups and massively large incumbents. But Tavani argues that it’s a level playing field.

“There’s going to be multiple players and lots of winners,” he said. “Groupon and LivingSocial are two with a gigantic lead. But we can go out and visit merchants today — there’s no one preventing us from having those conversations.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120524/scoutmob-attracts-investors-and-partners-by-saying-its-not-a-daily-deals-company/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120524/ahead-of-big-retail-push-paypal-inks-deals-with-top-hardware-vendors/ http://allthingsd.com/20120524/ahead-of-big-retail-push-paypal-inks-deals-with-top-hardware-vendors/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 12:00:19 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=211833 In advance of the company’s press conference today, Paypal is announcing that it has secured partnerships with three of the top point-of-sales providers, giving it access to nearly 40 million terminals worldwide.

The partnerships are important because it makes rolling out PayPal’s in-store payments technology to retailers much easier.

PayPal is hosting an event at its San Jose headquarters later this morning to announce the next batch of retailers that are adopting the company’s in-store payments solution. AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes will be there to cover the announcements live, starting at 10 am PT.

To date, PayPal has deployed its service to all 2,000 Home Depots, but it has a long way to go in meeting its goal of having 20 major retailers by the end of the year.

One reason why PayPal is able to deploy its services to retailers so quickly is because it only requires sending out a software update to the retailers’ terminals — in other words, retailers won’t have to purchase all new hardware. This morning, PayPal confirmed it has signed up VeriFone and Equinox Payments, the largest and third-largest providers, respectively, which will handle those software updates. PayPal already had a relationship with Ingenico, the second-largest provider.

The relationships inked today are focused on solving back-end integration problems for merchants. But the front-end experience is all about the consumer.

At participating stores, consumers will be able to pay with PayPal by either using a PayPal-issued credit card or by entering a mobile phone number and PIN code into the terminal. Down the road, PayPal could also support near field communication technology.

All told, the three terminal providers manage about roughly 40 million terminals worldwide, representing a large majority of the terminals in existence.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120524/ahead-of-big-retail-push-paypal-inks-deals-with-top-hardware-vendors/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/good-lord-i-might-now-want-to-use-yahoo-search-again-product-dudes-talk-about-new-axis-browser-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/good-lord-i-might-now-want-to-use-yahoo-search-again-product-dudes-talk-about-new-axis-browser-video/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 03:14:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=211847

Yahoo introduced its new Axis browser tonight, with versions for the Apple iPad and iPhone, as well as plugins for the top desktop browsers.

The company briefed a media army on the product and the consensus is that it’s very good. My favorite headline from Gizmodo: “Yahoo Came Out With Its Own Web Browser and It Actually Doesn’t Suck.”

No, it’s even — dare I say it — innovative!

That it was done while Yahoo has been in such crisis is a minor miracle, I would add.

It’s a slick offering, which essentially eliminates the texty link-filled search page for one of pretty visual tiles and pull-downs and more. Think Pinterest of search and you have the general idea.

But let’s hear from the dudes who pulled it off (though please allow me to customize or hide the giant klutzy search bar at the bottom).

Here’s an interview I did with Ethan Batraski, who runs product for Yahoo’s Search Innovation Group, as well as Shashi Seth, who heads its Connections unit, about Axis (which I might note was the name of the group that lost World War II).

But better luck at winning the browser war here, since — in this case, at least — Yahoo deserves it.

And here’s the Yahoo press release on Axis:

Navigating a New Course In Search — Introducing Yahoo! Axis

Seamless Across Multiple Devices, Axis Re-defines Searching and Browsing

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 23, 2012 – Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today announced the availability of Yahoo! Axis, a new experience that re-imagines how people search and browse on the web. Axis offers the only search experience that allows you to enter your search, see and interact with visual results, all without ever leaving the page you are on. Axis seamlessly integrates with your favorite desktop browser and automatically connects your online experiences across multiple devices. Axis is available today for download across iOS devices and as a desktop plug-in for HTML5-enabled browsers.

“Our search strategy is predicated on two core belief — one, that people want answers, not links and two, that consumer-facing search is ripe for innovative disruption,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Connections, Yahoo! Inc. “With Axis, we have re-defined and re-architected the search and browse experience from the ground up.”

Visually rich, Axis provides an easy and efficient cross-device experience that today’s connected consumers want:

· Smarter, Faster Search with Rich Design: Axis gives people instant answers and visual previews so they can continuously discover and explore content without interruption. Encased in a sleek design, Axis keeps people moving forward rather than constantly returning to a page of endless blue links. Once on a search results site, Axis also lets people simply swipe or click to the next result.

· Connected Experience: Axis allows people to move seamlessly across devices. Upon downloading Axis, people can start a search on their computer, flip through the results while out on their iPhone, and finish the search at home on their iPad. Content can be easily shared by email, Pinterest and Twitter.

· Personalized Home Page: After signing in with Yahoo!, Google or Facebook credentials, Axis centralizes online lives with a customizable Home Page that provides direct access to their favorite sites, saved articles and bookmarks across all devices where Axis has been downloaded.

· Standalone Mobile Browser, DesktopPlug-In: On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Axis serves as a standalone mobile browser app. On the desktop,Axis is a browser plug-in that works with Firefox 7+, Safari v5+, Internet Explorer 9 and all versions of Chrome.

· Innovative Technology Backbone: Axis is built upon the Yahoo! Cocktails mobile development platform, which is designed for creating deeply personalized products that are built for connected devices first. Comprised of Mojito, an open source JavaScript MVC framework and Manhattan, a cloud-based hosted environment, Cocktails is a blend of open, standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and Node.JS.

To learn more about Yahoo! Axis and download the desktop plug-in, visit the Axis microsite and our company blog, Yodel Anecdotal. The new Yahoo! Axis App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or at www.iTunes.com/appstore/.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/good-lord-i-might-now-want-to-use-yahoo-search-again-product-dudes-talk-about-new-axis-browser-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/being-john-malkovich-means-youre-bored-and-youre-monkeying-around-with-an-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/being-john-malkovich-means-youre-bored-and-youre-monkeying-around-with-an-iphone/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 03:11:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=211862 The good news: Apple’s newest Siri ads feature John Malkovich, who’s pretty cool.

The bad news, if you’re an Apple fan: Just like Apple’s other recent Siri ads, these don’t make Siri seem very cool.

In the first one, there’s at least the suggestion that Siri will help Malkovich find a restaurant where he can get some sausage. So that’s something, at least.

But the second one, where Malkovich is sitting around by himself, just killing time with his iPhone, without any discernible purpose?

That’s pretty realistic, actually. But it’s not fun to watch:

But, like I said, Malkovich really is cool. There are a gazillion furniture-chewing scenes I could pick to illustrate this, but for some reason I’ve always been partial to his preposterous Russian poker heavy, from “Rounders”:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/being-john-malkovich-means-youre-bored-and-youre-monkeying-around-with-an-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/rims-head-of-sales-leaves-for-a-new-gig/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/rims-head-of-sales-leaves-for-a-new-gig/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 22:51:32 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=211777 Longtime Research In Motion executive Patrick Spence is leaving the company, the BlackBerry maker confirmed on Wednesday.

Spence, RIM’s head of global sales and a 14-year company veteran, “will be taking on a leadership position in a different industry,” RIM said in an email to AllThingsD. His last day will be June 15.

“The sales function will report directly into Kristian Tear, our newly appointed COO, when he starts this summer,” RIM said in a statement. “In the interim, the sales function will report to Thorsten Heins.”

Spence is the latest RIM executive to depart the company in recent months, following January’s appointment of Heins as CEO. In March, the company announced the departures of software CTO David Yach and Chief Operating Officer Jim Rowan.

The company has also announced two key hires — Tear, and new marketing chief Frank Boulben.

Spence’s departure was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/rims-head-of-sales-leaves-for-a-new-gig/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/to-combat-creepiness-whoshere-launches-in-app-video-chat/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/to-combat-creepiness-whoshere-launches-in-app-video-chat/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 22:35:02 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=211563 Last we heard from the social discovery-based dating scene, mobile app Girls Around Me was receiving much unwanted attention from the press. Using location check-in data from Foursquare, the app told you literally which girls were nearby.

It was, in a word, creepy.

WhosHere, another social discovery application used primarily for dating, is trying its hardest to fight that stereotype.

“We’ve put a tremendous amount of effort into not being creepy,” CEO and co-founder Bryant Harris told me. Users can fill out profiles however they wish, using a pseudonym or an avatar that isn’t a shot of their face. If two people are interested in one another, they can communicate via text or VoIP call within the app itself, without requiring phone numbers.

But there comes a point in e-dating where two people must take things to the next level. And texts and even phone calls can only tell a person so much.

In-app video chat, a feature that WhosHere is launching on Wednesday, is the next natural step for the app. It’s a way of moving forward in connecting with others without the peskiness of having to take the full leap of meeting in person. It’s also a way to verify someone is who they say they are before meeting in the flesh. After all, you never know who’s actually on the other end of a profile.

“Just like in the real world, you go through a progression of how you interact,” says COO Stephen Smith.

I’m not entirely convinced that the world is ready to move to dating via smartphone. But the app has garnered more than five million iOS installations since 2008, so at least some folks are smitten with the premise.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/to-combat-creepiness-whoshere-launches-in-app-video-chat/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/att-taps-samsung-galaxy-appeal-as-latest-prepaid-smartphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/att-taps-samsung-galaxy-appeal-as-latest-prepaid-smartphone/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 19:23:43 +0000 Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=211637 Warm up your thumbs, AT&T customers. The carrier just announced the Samsung Galaxy Appeal, the first of its GoPhone prepaid smartphones to have a sliding physical keyboard. The Android device also features a 3.2-inch touchscreen and a three-megapixel camera. It’s also eco-friendly, as the phone’s plastic parts are made of 80 percent recycled materials. The Galaxy Appeal costs $150 and will be available in Walmart stores starting June 5, and in AT&T stores on July 15.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/att-taps-samsung-galaxy-appeal-as-latest-prepaid-smartphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/as-social-discovery-apps-proliferate-sonar-aims-for-greater-relevance/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/as-social-discovery-apps-proliferate-sonar-aims-for-greater-relevance/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 18:30:32 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=211396 Smartphone-based social discovery is heating up. But after this year’s South by Southwest saw multiple social discovery apps debut, all touting similar features, it’s getting difficult for companies to differentiate within the space.

That’s why Sonar, one of the few apps in the category that has been around for a few years, is trying something new. Up until now, Sonar has acted much like its name would suggest: Walk into a room, and using publicly available data pulled in from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the app tells you who’s nearby, and what you may have in common with one another.

Sonar’s new tack, then, is honing in on relevance. The company launched an update to its app on Wednesday, focused on putting users in touch with others nearby that they want to see. Setting the new Sonar Status feature, for instance, is like sending a tweet out to your nearby connections, but no further. So if you’re, say, sending status updates about how awful the beer lines are at a music festival, that status will actually show up for others in your proximity — you know, the people who would actually care about that status update — but no further.

To boot, the company is also flipping on the ambient location switch, adding features that aren’t terribly different from recent competitors like Highlight, Banjo and Glancee. Essentially, the app will run in the background, sharing your location and status with those nearby without having to open the application.

Sonar insists, however, that its app will only send you push notifications if you’re near someone you actually know — in other words, a Facebook friend, or someone you follow on Twitter — instead of people you should know, a la Highlight or Banjo. And if you want to chat with someone nearby without broadcasting it to the world via Twitter, Sonar now lets users send private messages.

It’s an attempt to tackle a glaring issue in the social discovery space: How do we connect with relevant people, especially when relevance changes on a contextual basis? While I may not want to talk with someone I don’t know at a coffee shop, it may prove helpful to connect with other, less familiar people in your extended network when you’re both at a tech conference.

The great unknown at this point is Facebook, the behemoth that has its sights set on improving its mobile experience. Facebook just recently acquired Glancee, one of the competing apps in the social discovery space. It’s anyone’s guess as to how — or when — Facebook will use the technology.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120523/as-social-discovery-apps-proliferate-sonar-aims-for-greater-relevance/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120523/vend-rings-up-2-million-for-point-of-sale-technology/ http://allthingsd.com/20120523/vend-rings-up-2-million-for-point-of-sale-technology/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 18:19:43 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=211564 Vend, a start-up with offices in San Francisco and New Zealand, has raised $2 million to develop point-of-sale software that runs on any device, including iPads and legacy hardware found at the register. The round was led by Point Nine Capital in Europe. Vend, which has raised $3 million to date, says it has signed up 11,000 users in 80 countries and is processing one million transactions a month.

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