PixelPipe: Upload Content Once, Get It Practically Everywhere!

We all have distributed social presences online -- photo sites, video sites, social nets, blogs, vlogs, etc., and it can be rather cumbersome to upload content to relevant locations. What do you do when you want to add a new photo to Flickr, MySpace, Bebo, FaceBook, and Blogger?

Well, most of us visit the relevant sites and manually upload to each.

That is, until we get started with Pixelpipe.

Here's how CrunchBase describes what they do:

A service that allows users to publish media once through the Pixelpipe gateway and have it published out to over 45 online destinations. Choices of media include photos, video and audio files. Destinations include most of the popular social networks, micro-blogs, photo/video sites, blogs from around the globe as well as online storage as well as a few generic interfaces like Atom, FTP and email to allow the user to publish to their personal destinations.

It works on PCs, natch, but also iPhones, Android, and some other smart phones.

It can deliver content to a huge range of social media and other sites -- let me say that again, a HUGE range. And more are being added constantly.

Here's a video about the iPhone app. but the service works the same on other phones as well.



Pixelpipe is a great app whose time has definitely come. Download it today and get started!

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imeem Goes Android! Encore Encore!

Regular readers of this blog know that I like imeem, which is why I am excited to tell you about their new mobile ad platform, which is paired with their Android-based imeem application.. I really like this concept because it combines so many youth-centric things – giving it a great opportunity to attract and hold viewers and advertisers.

Imeem originally launched its Android app about a month ago, and it has already climbed to the top 10 Android apps, and is the number one streaming music app for that fast growing mobile platform.

This is not one of those announcements wherein vaporware is heralded. In fact, imeem already has a major advertiser lined up to market its newest product. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

Kia Motors America (KMA) is the first brand advertiser to leverage imeem's new platform, using it to promote the Kia Soul, an all-new compact SUV launching next spring in the U.S.

As part of a cross-platform advertising campaign, Kia Soul will have a branded display presence across the imeem for Android user interface, as well as a featured Kia Soul-branded Internet radio station on the application. In addition to its mobile advertising program, Kia Motors will have a presence on the imeem.com service through a profile and display advertising on media streaming pages throughout the site.

“Kia Motors wants to reach its target audience through creative campaigns that complement their style and fast-paced way of life,” said David Schoonover, Customer Relationship Marketing Manager for Kia Motors America. “imeem helps us achieve that goal by connecting our brand with a youthful community and an engaging social music experience that fits the Kia Soul lifestyle.”

“imeem has created a way for advertisers to live at the center of consumers' social music experience,” said Jason Meil, executive vice president and director of Innovations at Initiative, Kia Motors' media, marketing and digital company. “Working with imeem will enable Kia Motors to meaningfully tap into an engaged community where millions of people express themselves with music and media on a daily basis.”

By offering ads in this integrated application, imeem can provide real cross media opps with that highly desirable social media component that more advertisers are seeking out.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Android Market: Sales R Looking Good!

No, it didn't open with the same fanfare as the iTunes App Store. but the Android market is showing great results in its first week of operation.

This according to a new research report from Medialets, the phone app ad network I have written about a couple of times before. Medialets was a first mover in bringing the value of ads to Android just as it (and others) have to iPhone apps.

What do the data show? Well, Medialets reports the following (taken from their blog):

Highlights

(1) 167 Apps have been downloaded between between 667,000 and 2.9 Million times.

(2) Downloads are being driven by 41 apps, which account for between 73% and 83% of all possible downloads.

(3) Two applications, Pac-Man by Namco and The Weather channel generated the most downloads (50,000 - 250,000).

(4) Although download ranges can be very large, growth on the low-end was still nearly 80% during the first week.

(5) 5 Categories account for 61% of all apps.

(6) The number of apps has nearly tripled since launch, led by the Games, Tools and Productivity categories.

Applications By Category

Android Market applications totaled 167 as of 10/29. The top 5 Categories with the most apps accounted for 61% of all titles: Tools, Games, Lifestyle, Multimedia, and Productivity.

The report also shows steady growth for the number of titles available:



Watch the Medialets site for more info on this rapidly growing business.

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Motorola's Android Phone Coming "Soon"

Information Week is reporting that Motorola is feverishly working on its own Android phone.

An excerpt:

The unnamed Android-powered smartphone from Motorola will be like HTC's G1 in that it sports a touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, according to BusinessWeek. But the Motorola Android smartphone is expected to cost around $150 and will reportedly feature heavy social network integration.

While it hasn't been confirmed, more than likely this means the handset will have information from a user's Facebook and MySpace contacts integrated into the address books without having to launch a separate application. Adding credence to the report, Motorola even had a job posting on Monster.com, now removed, looking for software engineers for an Android "social smartphone."

Motorola definitely needs a souped up smartphone. Their share of new handsets has been in a nosedive for two years. I gotta say that a good phone at a $150 pricepoint might be just what it needs. Though I do wonder what sort of margin they'd have at that pricepoint, given that the phone will be touch screen and all tha'.

Date for the launch is unknown.

Naturally, this is also good news for the Goog. More handsets are essential to their open platform strategy.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Medialets Goes Android: iTastic!

As you know I have a lot of heart for what the people at Medialets, the iPhone ad network specializing in deeper and more engaging marketing experiences in apps are doing. Well, as you can tell from the headline, it is no longer appropriate to call them an iPhone Ad Network, because they are quickly broadening their offerings. Their announcement last week of a beta test of new Android analytics and ad offerings is big news for both the company and the Android initiative.

I was fortunate enough to meet two of the founders two weeks ago at their offices in NYC. CEO Eric Litman and VP Marketing Rana Sobhany were kind enough to tell me about the short and remarkable history of this outfit, which went from that metaphorical back of a cocktail napkin concept to a broad array of analytics and offerings in about a month. Their passion is infectious, and it was very clear to me that their vision was a lot larger than being one of the six or so ad networks for iPhone apps.



Medialets Chairman and CEO Eric Litman


Medialets VP Marketing Rana Sobhany

The announcement of Android analytics and ad offerings must be welcome news to every carrier but ATT. The iPhone is really a transformative device that positioned ATT at the center of what may well become a revolution in how, when, and why we use phones. It does so, ironically, by essentially allowing developers to sidestep that absurdly draconian development and approval process that has historically limited innovations in cellular. Here's an excerpt from Eric Litman's blog post on this topic:

The world of mobile changed when Apple introduced the App Store. Historically, developers have had to contend with lengthy, often expensive negotiations and certification procedures with carriers to bring their applications to market, and more often than not, the challenges of working in that environment have limited the number and quality of developers willing to undertake the effort. With the App Store, the process has been reduced to a simple submission and review cycle.

Combining that with centralized discovery, distribution and payments for applications has led to a new model for mobile app developers that significantly opens up the possibility of building sustainable - even venture scale - businesses around mobile applications. But the App Store is just the beginning. Google was quick to recognize the power of this distribution model and earlier this year announced their own App Marketplace, which like Apple’s App Store, bypasses carriers and lets developers market directly to consumers through the Marketplace.

Android offers similar opportunities for other carriers. It'll get the carriers out of their own way in the race to drive innovation and differentiation in the category. More from Litman's blog post:

Mobile operators not selling the iPhone today need strong, competitive offerings to convince consumers to buy something other than the iPhone. Much like we’ve seen historically on game consoles, many future mobile phone purchases will likely be influenced by the applications available for the platform. Android and the App Marketplace give carriers a potentially viable alternative to the explosive application market for the iPhone, and with the might of Google behind the platform, we may see development activity that equals or even surpasses that of iPhone developers.

It is naturally welcome news for developers as well, because they will be able to make things for Android, and indeed port their current iPhone offerings to Android. More installs means more use occasions means more money through ad support! Means more development, natch.

I am inspired to see how rapidly this company is making moves and getting things done. We need drivers like Eric and Rany in mobile so that perhaps...just perhaps...we will finally have that year of mobile marketing that the industry has been promising since about the time that the Constitution was signed in 1789.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Reportedly Magical Android G1 Phone Turns Out To Actually Be...Just a Pretty Cool Phone

I am tired of breathlessness on new phone announcements. C'mon people, they're just phones. They can be cool, they can be eminently useful, but ultimately, they are phones. Well, perhaps that is not exactly correct. They are actually a cross between a phone and a PC. But you get the point.

We've lived through a couple of months of iPhone 3G mania, and now here's Google's answer to it.

So just to clarify a couple of things, this is an android and is magically remarkable:



And this is the Android phone (photo from this ReadWriteWeb post.) which is a pretty cool phone.



(Note, the icons don't actually float out of the phone. THAT would be pretty magical. But it doesn't happen, so we are back to pretty cool.)

RWW points to the following feature set:

Features Demoed In The Promo Video:

Touchscreen - You can swipe across the screen, use a long press to access more features, drag-and-drop
Music - one-click ordering from Amazon confirmed
Music player is built in - one long press lets you access more features, like song options
Gtalk IM included
Address book can take you right into Google Maps
Google Maps: Directions/Traffic View/Street View; can do panning in Street View thanks to the touch screen
In "Compass Mode" the scene moves as you do
In the web browser, there are onscreen controls to zoom in
You can open multiple web pages in Google's browser
There's a search button on keyboard
A long press lets you share a link (URL) from within the web browser
For apps, there's the Android Market, complete with user ratings and OTA downloads
Pacman!



It's a TMobile phone, so the 3-G footprint is less developed than ATT's for iPhone.

Hey, I am not rapping the phone. But I do want to gently point out that it is just a cool phone. Just like iPhone 3G was a cool phone. Choose your flava, people, because from where I sit they seem pretty similar! Though I do like the bona fide qwerty keyboard. Bona fide meaning actual keys. I don't like the iPhone one.

And at $179, it's a bit cheaper with that 2 year contract. Preorders have begun!

Oh wait, you better read this first, from the TMobile site:

"If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50 kbps or less. Your data session, plan, or service may be suspended, terminated, or restricted for significant roaming or if you use your service in a way that interferes with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users."

So you can watch A LITTLE BIT of YouTube, but don't expect to actually...entertain yourself every day... ;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.