Live Mobile! 21-22 November 2012 Get a good

More than 150 companies participated in the Live Mobile.
International and Russian mobile industry trends, the differences of the investment climate in Russia and the world, the impact of the mobile industry in the investment business, all of these important and exciting event participants discussed topics on the second day of the conference.
The first day was no less exciting than the second.

Billions of players and how they play the game? Simon pried from Flurry shared his thoughts on this.
Using the latest analytical data, Simon explained how consumers play mobile games, what are the main trends in their behavior, and how they will change in the future. Simon said the best use Flurry analytics to improve key indicators of mobile applications.

Babayigit Akin, manager of strategic alliances at Facebook, said that along with the Facebook mobile application developers have access to more than a billion audience.

They can communicate with this huge number of users through their mobile devices, and use viral channels to distribute their applications with efficient tools such as App Center and the Open Graph.

We should also highlight the excellent technical reports from Olega Pridiuk and Ken Noland Company of Unity3D.
Many thanks to the organizers of the conference, see you soon on the air!

Read More: livemobilecongress.com

Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820 now shipping

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced that the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820 will reach the first operators and retail outlets in select countries this week. Both phones will appear in stores in France and the UK this week, then Russia, Germany and further select markets throughout the rest of November*.

In the US, AT&T will introduce the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820, Verizon Wireless will sell the newly announced Nokia Lumia 822, and T-Mobile will offer the Nokia Lumia 810. All three will have phones in stores in November.

"After seeing the enthusiastic response to the incredible innovation in the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820, we're eager for people to start experiencing the phones for themselves," said Jo Harlow, executive vice president, Nokia Smart Devices. "We are focusing our efforts on working with partners who recognize the value of that innovation, and who are committed to helping Lumia and the Windows Phone platform break through in key markets around the world."

The Nokia Lumia 920 includes the latest Nokia PureView camera, capturing five times more light than competitor smartphones for bright pictures without flash, even indoors and at night. It also features built-in wireless charging, making it easy to keep the battery topped up throughout the day, as well as a better-than-HD display. The Nokia Lumia 820, Nokia Lumia 810 and Nokia Lumia 822 offer exchangeable covers in a range of vibrant colours, including the option to add wireless charging. Like the Nokia Lumia 920, they boast the world's most sensitive touchscreen and Nokia ClearBlack display technology for easy visibility in the brightest sunlight. All phones come with the full suite of Nokia navigation applications, including Nokia City Lens, as well as Nokia Music for unlimited music streamed directly to the phone.

Operators and retailers will announce local pricing and exact availability for each country. Read More: nokia.com

Nokia introduced a mapping platform Here: PC, iOS, Android and Firefox OS

San Francisco, California - Today Nokia introduced HERE, the first location cloud to deliver the world's best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems. With the new brand, HERE, Nokia aims to inspire a new generation of location services and devices that make the mobile experience more personally significant for people everywhere.

"People want great maps, and with HERE we can bring together Nokia's location offering to deliver people a better way to explore, discover and share their world," said Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop. "Additionally, with HERE we can extend our 20 years of location expertise to new devices and operating systems that reach beyond Nokia. As a result, we believe that more people benefit from and contribute to our leading mapping and location service."

Pushing location beyond Nokia
To further extend its location services, Nokia is launching a maps application for iOS under the HERE brand. Based on HTML5, it will include offline capabilities, voice-guided walk navigation, and public transport directions. The application is scheduled to be available for free download from Apple's App Store in the coming weeks.

Nokia further announced a strategic partnership with Mozilla to bring new location experiences to the Firefox OS. Nokia plans to debut a mobile Web version of HERE Maps for the new Firefox OS next year. The companies are working together to give people the best mapping experience on Firefox OS.

"Mozilla is a leader in HTML5, building the Web as a platform for developing compelling applications, and location is a key part of that platform," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla Vice President of Products. "We are excited to work with Nokia as the combination of Firefox OS and HERE's location platform provides rich possibilities for mobile application developers to create amazing experiences for users."

Nokia also demonstrated an Android OS-based reference application and announced plans for the availability of a HERE SDK for Android OEMs in early 2013. This is aimed at enabling partners to create location-based applications for Android devices with Nokia's leading content.

Innovating modern mapmaking
To advance the 3D capabilities of HERE, Nokia announced the planned acquisition of Berkeley, Calif. company earthmine. The company's reality capture and processing technologies will become integral parts of HERE's 3D map making capabilities.

Nokia expects the transaction to close by the end of 2012.

"Maps are hard to get right - but location is revolutionizing how we use technology to engage with the real world," said Michael Halbherr, Executive Vice President of Location & Commerce and responsible for the HERE brand. "That's why we have been investing and will continue to invest in building the world's most powerful location offering, one that is unlike anything in the market today."

Using LiveSight(TM) to see more of the real world
As part of its announcement, Nokia introduced LiveSight(TM), a technology based on a highly accurate, 3D map of the world. LiveSight(TM) provides the most precise and intuitive augmented reality experience and uses a phone's camera viewfinder to make discovering the world as easy as lifting up a phone. Nokia City Lens, which was developed exclusively for Nokia Lumia devices, is the first application providing a LiveSight-enabled experience.

"Establishing a new brand is the right move for Nokia in the map and location business. Nokia's assets in this space are world class. We believe mapping and location will be increasingly important to developing next generation devices and services across a wide array of segments," said Crawford Del Prete, Executive Vice President and Head of worldwide research at IDC.
http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia.

Isocket Nabs $8M From Foundry, Tim Draper & More To Bring Modern Tech, APIs To Premium Online Advertising

Isocket a direct sales platform for premium online advertising, announced this morning that it has closed an $8 million Series A financing round, led by Foundry Group. New investor (and newly-launched firm) Costanoa joined existing investors Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, Accelerator Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, Blumberg Capital and a number of angel investors in contributing to the Series A raise. The round brings isocket’s total investment to $11 million.

As part of the round, Foundry Group Managing Director Seth Levine and former VP of Display Advertising at Yahoo James Beriker will be joining the startup’s board of directors. (Disclosure: TechCrunch uses isocket to power its direct advertising.)

So what is it about isocket that had these well-known investors and firms eager to open their wallets? According to Seth Levine, to date, a ton of time, energy and investment has been poured into taking the friction out of remnant inventory, which has resulted in a dearth of attention being paid to applying tech solutions to the premium side of the display advertising ecosystem. Furthermore, direct ad sales remains complicated and inefficient and aren’t allowing publishers and advertisers to effectively turn a profit, he said.

isocket launched in 2009 to solve this very problem, setting out with the simple goal of making it easier for advertisers and publishers to find each other and do business. In 2010, the startup went to market with its first solution, which targeted small self-serve advertisers, following that up the next year by launching BuyAds.com, an open marketplace for self-serve buyers that made isocket the first company to integrate with Google’s new DoubleClick ad server, says isocket founder and CEO John Ramey.

The motivation behind the approach, the CEO continued, was that, traditionally, premium advertising has been bought and sold by hand or through email attachments — this in spite of the fact that premium ads represent more than 75 percent of all online ad dollars. The problem has been that the vast majority of adtech built over the last decade has been to streamline the process around managing and selling remnant ad inventory, which gave rise to ad networks and exchanges, realtime bidding, etc.

Seeing a huge, unaddressed market, isocket launched what Ramey claims was an industry first — a programmatic platform for buying guaranteed display ad inventory, a process that was made easier by the fact that it had already developed this inventory through BuyAds.

isocket already had an advantage as an early mover in the space, and once it was able to scale its platform and offer programmatic direct sales via an API, customers started to take notice. Fast forward to the present, and over 1,500 publishers (which include AOL, Reuters and Gawker) and advertisers (like Salesforce, BMW and AppSumo) are currently using the startup’s platform.

Today, in conjunction with its new funding, isocket is launching its newest product, BuyAds Pro, an application dedicated to the needs of large-scale professional media buyers. For the many situations where demand-side platforms and realtime bidding are not the best way to buy online advertising,especially “guaranteed” buying, Ramey said, BuyAds Pros offers professional advertisers an extensive catalog of publishers, allowing them to buy real estate with one click.

In addition, the startup is also announcing that it has hired Mark Liao as its new CFO. Liao joins isocket from Yahoo, where he was most recently the VP of Business Operations and Operations Finance. He joined Yahoo in 2004 having been acquired as part of the management team at Overture. Liao joins a number of recent isocket hires, including Casey Saran from Admeld and Google and Lisa Backman from the Rubicon Project.

When asked why he decided to jump ship at Yahoo and join isocket, the company’s new CFO said, “The next big opportunity in online advertising is making the process of selling premium ad inventory easier for both buyers and sellers by replacing the spreadsheet with APIs and web apps. When direct ad buying and selling get easier, the tide will rise for everyone — advertisers get digital access to higher quality, guaranteed inventory, while publishers are able to properly monetize their best inventory.” As one of the early movers in the space, he said, isocket is in a great position to do just that.

The end goal? Ramey thinks that isocket can eventually become the Admeld for premium advertising. It’s a long way from a $400 million acquisition, but things seem to be moving in the right direction. Read More : techcrunch.com

EE's 4G prices, Apple's rubber band rebounds, Chromebook hands-on and more

Samsung refuted claims that its display business plans to end its LCD panel supply agreement with Apple, saying the report from a Korean publication was incorrect.

The Korea Times, citing an unnamed senior Samsung source, said Samsung was taking the step by the end of this year because it "believes its American partner is no longer a cash-generator due to the iPhone maker's stiffer supply-chain management structure." The United States Patent and Trademark Office has good news for Samsung, and Samsung has already shared it with Judge Koh in a late-night filing. In a non-final Office action the USPTO has declared all 20 claims of Apple's rubber-banding patent (U.S. Patent No, 7,469,381 invalid, including claim 19, which Apple successfully asserted against Samsung in the summer trial in California.

This is potentially huge for Samsung against Apple, because the "rubber-banding" patent - what happens when you scroll too far - was a linchpin in Apple's win. If Judge Koh agrees, she could overrule the jury and void many of the damages against Samsung. But it's a big if - this could be appealed and appealed. And in effect, Apple has got what it wants: Samsung (and Google) have already changed their software's scrolling behaviour. A non-patent that changed behaviours - and it's only cost millions in legal fees.
What happened? Google decided to stop fighting the desktop metaphor. Early Chromebooks, like Google's CR-48 and the first generation Samsung and Acer devices, were about as much fun to use as an airport computing kiosk set up to support Web browsing and nothing more. Chrome OS felt like a prison, like the desktop typically behind the browser had been hidden. That may have been nothing more than user expectation, but user expectation is part of the user experience, and that experience tends not to be positive when expectation is denied.

Earlier this year, Google made its Chrome OS browser window behave like a browser on a Mac or Windows computer--it can now be minimized to reveal a desktop with files and icons. Chrome OS has gained a menu bar at the bottom of the screen with Web app icons. Clicking on a device-related icon, like the battery, produces a free-floating menu pane, without any reference to the Chrome browser. There's a files folder, accessible from the Apps menu in the menu bar, that displays local downloads and remote Google Drive files. In other words, Chromebooks have adopted more legacy user interface conventions and are better for it.
Not too long ago, Google and Bing seemed fully focused on adding as many social features to their search engines as possible. For Google, that meant adding lots of Google+ features and for Bing it meant making the best out of its exclusive relationship with Facebook. Since then, though, it seems the two search engines' strategies have changed, with Google slowly deemphasizing social search and Bing going all in by adding more social features than ever. Read More : guardian.co.uk