Google announced via their mobile blog today that they have launched a beta version of adsense for mobile apps.

Adsense for apps means inserting ‘context relevant’ mobile ads into applications and comes off the back of what google describes as a successful trial period.

Inserting ads into applications certainly seems like a good idea from a app publishers point of view. In theory ads can help fund an application, especially those that are given away for free. Inserting ads that are relevant to the app and its users makes even more sense, right? Better targeting means more clicks, means better results for publishers and advertisers. So far so good.

What about the user, what do they get out of ads inserted into applications? One could argue that what they get is a free app, i.e. without ads supporting app developer’s revenues, then the apps won’t continue to exist. So, shut yer face and stop complaining.

However, ads that take the user away from the application can seem rather counter-intuitive from a usage point of view. The ads that we’ve seen on some of the trial platforms are sometimes appearing on key screens and at key user journey points. Clicking on them takes the user away from the app, and can interrupt the user journey. It’s pretty much the same model as we’ve seen on mobile internet display ads. You are either consuming content or engaging with an ad, you can’t do both.

In some cases the destination sites that the trial ads have been pointing to have been full size PC web sites. Still, just a trial, right, so maybe in the future advertisers will be encouraged to build a re-formatted site, or plug into a transformation engine, or better still just build a simple mobile campaign site.

Another option, in our opinion, is for the publisher to actually host the campaign within the confines of the application. What this means is that the advertiser effectively takes over a part of the app, it can be a window onto a mobile site (transparent within the app), along with banner calls to action, so it doesn’t even require much bespoking in terms of format. What it would have though is a ‘back button’ back to the app, so once you are done with the ad ‘pages’, you can carry on with your app activity. We think this would improve CTRs (as consumer’s would be less reluctant to ‘break’ their activity, as they are actually only ‘pausing’) and allow for a more seamless experience.

Whatever the destination. We think than in-app advertising needs an approach that recognises that their are times when it is good for the user to click on an ad, and times when it is less desirable. We’ve advised on this in the past, nothing earth-shattering, but we think that, amongst other things, ads should appear at natural break points in the user journey, ideally when the core commercial or functional activities have been completed.

Motorola “Razor” phone has probably inspired the manufacturer of the first shaver-phone. Indeed, since 19th March 2009, you can buy a phone with a built-in electric shaver on this website : http://www.solomobi.com/viewproduct.asp?pro_id=2567.

While some might think it’s a genius idea (“Great, you don’t have to lose time in the bathroom every morning, you can just do that in the bus!”), I am more sceptical about its convenience. You have to clean your mobile thoroughly after each shaving if you don’t want to put your hair back on your face and there’s a risk that all those hairs find their way inside the phone and damage the circuitry. And honestly, I don’t want to find hair on my seat every time I take public transport.

Plus, for sensitive-skin guys, it doesn’t even come with shaving balm, or after-shave.

Thankfully, this hybrid phone has other more standard features, like dual-SIM slots, a 2.6 inch touchscreen, a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth support and an FM radio player. All for only $97.

So, buy it if you want, but guys, please only use the shaver in case of a real hair-related emergency (or else we’ll avenge ourselves by shaving our legs in public.)

Good grief.

Despite trying hard not to look, I grudgingly watched the usual fluff around the iPhone S.

And, after last year’s happy approval of their ‘development’ approach, I am a little disappointed with this year.

OK, I was waiting for the Nano, I’ll admit. I stand by Nokia’s principle that no device that requires two hands to work it will ever be ‘mass market’. I was hoping that it would be smaller and simpler and do the whole calling and texting thing better. I was hoping for haptic touchscreen and bigger soft buttons and a little device to fly me over traffic jams to work.

Alas. Instead we get, when you strip away the fanfare, an attempt to catch up with the G2.

Firstly, I saw the use of the S nomenclature, and my mind went to the RAZR tail end devices, using all sorts of letters and numbers to differentiate an increasingly out of date device. Then we had a trawl through the features.

A compass… that works with Google Maps. Sound familiar? Geotagging images… now where did I see that before? And at last, a camera that is only 2 years behind the competition. And video! Wow! Like NEC’s had in 2002!

The UE is of course lovely. But it is no longer unique. The Pre is also good, if poorly launched and under developed. The G2 is excellent, although HTC have to sort out their finish problems. In many ways it is so far ahead of the competition that the developers haven’t caught up to it’s awesome capabilities. That whole two finger touch thing is now just a part of what all smartphones need.

And this I think is the interesting point. There are a huge pile of handsets coming out towards the end of the year using Android. Some of them are business, some of them are slick toys for the gizmorati. Some of them, of course, are absolutely hideous.

But more phones means greater competition, means cheaper phones, means faster development, means better demographic targeting, means more app developers, means better apps.

So the iPhone, with it’s one phone a year policy, needed to essentially launch the competition to all these devices yesterday.

Of course, this twiddling is what Apple always do before launching something big. Think the first titanium Powerbook, the single unit iMac, and even the iPod. The year before there were all sorts of twiddly changes to old products that had pundits loking worried about a lack of innovation. So maybe we are about to see another blast into the stratosphere of design and UE.

For this year though, I’m not sure they’ve even caught up.

You probably know the chart-topping hit ”Kiss Me Thru the Phone” by Soulja Boy. But what you probably don’t know is that this song can become a reality!

Indeed an inventor living in France named Georges Koussouros created a phone which can, according to him “detect percussion speed, pressure, temperature, and sucking force of the lips, when you kiss it. An artificial mouth on the phone can reproduce same parameters to the kissphone receptor.” You can even record your favourite kisses and save them on your phone to repeat it as you please.

Funny concept, but I seriously doubt people will use it. I’d rather miss my boyfriend’s kisses a lot, than kiss this odd-looking device (did you see the mole looking power button on the upper corner of the mouth?) in front of everybody.

Anyway, it’s always good to know that such a funny phone exist, maybe it can help the pre-teens who want to practice their kissing skills…

Back in March we published a blog piece about the barriers to successful Bluetooth marketing. The piece was picked up by Gregor Isbister, Managing Director of Breeze Tech. Gregor kindly agreed to write a response to our original piece, in which he deals with many of the issues we raise. Despite the fact we think we know it all at WLM, we probably have to admit that Gregor is better positioned to analyse Bluetooth as a marketing tool, his company being an acknowledged leader in the field.

Gregor’s reponse is as follows:

” You raised a number of valid points; there are ways the technology can be used ineffectively by misguided marketers. When used in such a manner it is pretty much guaranteed to result in an unsuccessful campaign – and a complete waste of money. However, the technology can be used very effectively for communications – it’s one of the most used features on the handset and a feature consumers look for when upgrading. Consumers use the technology to exchange media with each other, so it is possible for marketers to also use the channel.

Firstly, marketers must understand one key factor; consumers have to activate Bluetooth then accept the incoming offer to pull and download the content, so it’s not a complete ‘push’ technology as is often perceived. This means you have to engage consumers and ask them to do something in order to receive the content. Appreciating this is an absolute must, and makes the other key factors fall into place.

Three Key Factors

In order to run a successful campaign you need the following three key factors:

1. A clear call to action.

You need to inform consumers to turn on Bluetooth. Only around 10% will have it on, so unless you’d like to miss 90% of the audience you need to ask them to turn it on. It’s worth also noting that for those who do have Bluetooth on, if there is no signage telling them what the content is, they’ll simply refuse it (as they won’t have a clue what it is – would you download a file when you don’t know who it’s from or what it is?). Also, if you do have Bluetooth turned on, it is very unlikely you would notice an offer to download content.  On most phones there is no audible signal, so you would have to be staring at your phone when the offer comes in. Therefore, a call to action is essential.

2. The content must be relevant/informative/attractive to your target audience.

Remember you’re asking people to take time out their day, activate Bluetooth then download your message – if the content is not appealing they simply won’t bother. At the end of the day, they have to accept the message to pull it down:

· What works: a Prodigy mp3 track at a Prodigy concert.

· What won’t work : a Girls Aloud mp3 track at a prodigy concert!

3. The activity should be in a dwell area.

Consumers are far more likely to stop what they are doing, activate Bluetooth and download your content if they have some spare time on their hands:

· What works: when someone is waiting at an airport/sitting on a bus or train/waiting at a train station.

· What won’t work: when someone is walking down the street/in the pub with friends/any other area where they are doing something or are otherwise occupied.

Where have campaigns failed in the past?

Campaigns have failed usually when they have been oversold by unscrupulous firms. Exaggerated claims include:

· Claim: “the range goes 100m”. Reality: the range of a mobile phone is around 10-15m.

· Claim: “everyone has Bluetooth switched on”. Reality: around 10% do.

· Claim: “the content gets pushed to the phone”. Reality: only an offer to download is sent to the phone, the user must opt to download the content.

The above exaggerations often result in the expectation that you switch on a Bluetooth marketing unit and every phone within 100m gets your content. This is simply not true, and only results in marketers questioning if the technology used in this way was spam.

When done well, the download figures can be huge. As a percentage the highest we’ve had is 86% downloading – however the above three key factors were nailed (i.e. we ensured near perfect conditions).

An example of this is as follows:

Call to action: the consumer was sitting in a promotional car at the motor show; in the passenger seat promo staff were asking them to activate Bluetooth.

Relevant content: they had queued to sit in the car, so we can be sure they were interested in free wallpapers for their phone!

Dwell time: they were sitting in the car, so were a captive audience.

Of course not all campaigns have such perfect conditions. However, we always make sure our networks have a clear call to action (included in the price), good content and are in a dwell area. We also only charge per successful download so there is no wastage.”

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Check it out at http://www.netvibes.com/welovemobile and don’t hesitate to add us as friends!

As we posted earlier, some of the crew are at The Mobile Advertising Conference in Amsterdam. With the company card. It’s not all play though, here’s Ben, creative director, in full flow during his presentation. By all accounts, it went down well, and he didn’t fall into a canal the night before.

That’s a successful conference as far as I’m concerned.

Myself and Ben are off to Amsterdam tomorrow to speak at the IIR Mobile Advertising 2009 conference.

We will be posting regular updates to the blog and to our Twitter We Love Mobile group http://twitter.com/WeLoveMobile. Follow us to hear more.

If you happen to be attending, please get in touch so we can meet up and have a chat about mobile (until around 6.30PM) then anything else you might like to discuss….

It was with much excitement and anticipation that my HTC Magic arrived on Saturday. Also dubbed the G2, the Magic is HTC’s second Google phone, and has just been released in the UK on Vodafone. I am mighty relieved to be leaving my old Nokia N95 behind, as the old dear was on her last legs. To be fair, she never seemed to really be comfortable handling video, more than two applications open at any one time, or keeping herself powered for more than a day….anyway that’s the past, let’s talk about the future!

On the looks front the Magic is very sleek, with a nicely contoured white plastic shell and a great big screen. All this plastic makes the phone feel a little on the light side, I’m not saying cheap, but it does feel like it could do with a little more weight when held in the hand. The buttons are on the small side, but nicely arranged - I am a little concerned that the lettering and icons are barely visible and could be worn away and disappear with time, but by then I should be familiar enough with the device (or will have moved onto the next hot model in town).

Now, I can only give a cursory view on the phone’s UI and software for the time being, because Vodafone, bless them, have not sorted my account out yet. More to come on this, but my first impressions of booting up the phone, exploring the homescreen, logging onto my google account over Wi-fi and doing a few e-mails are that;

1. The phone takes too long to boot - frustrating!

2. The screen is great, nice and clear with good resolution, but very smudge prone (not good for a borderline OCD sufferer like me)

3. The homescreen is laid out like a Tryptych, with a landscape view that divides over three screens, it feels a lot more organic than the iPhone. It seems you can drag and drop icons across the whole desktop. I particularly like this attempt to break the classic fixed homescreen paradigm. Cool.

4. Logging into google is very quick - as you might expect

5. Mobile internet over wifi is great, but zooming in and out of PC designed pages seems to require key presses rather than the screen pinching you can do on iPhone - but I may just not have the technique down yet

6. The on-screen keyboard (one of my main fears with the phone) is actually pretty good. I have small hands (and small gloves), so don’t suffer from ‘fat finger syndrome’ and for my money the keyboard is better than the iPhone, the text input UI is slick and generally feels good.

That’s it for now, my account with Vodafone is activated (fingers crossed) later in the week, so I’ll report back on how it handles everything over the network, including using Maps and the Android Marketplace.

Our friends at Cellphones.org have launched a nice little SMS update service where consumers can find out the latest information about Swine Flu.

If you’re in the US, just Text PIGFLU to 41411 and you will receive updates as news develops about Swine Flu.

Daily Updates will include:

• CDC/WHO Updates
• Information about New OutBreaks
• Information From Health Authorities

Updates will be sent from 1-3 times daily, containing urgent information such as new outbreak information, messages from health authorities and travel warnings as they develop.

See the original article here http://cellphones.org/blog/news/get-sms-updates-about-pigflu

We tried calling NHS Direct in the UK, to ask their opinion, but all we got was crackling……