Another buy for Google, with the acquisition of SocialDeck, as announced on its homepage. Just last week, we posted an info-graphic about Google’s acquisition history. One of the revelations from this graphic happens to be Google’s recent foray into gaming—and while this buy is no exception, it also thrusts them further into the social media market. According to Chris Morrison at Inside Social Games, this could put Google head-to-head with Facebook as he writes, Google’s gaming interest is obviously with Android. But it’s also reportedly working on a social platform to rival Facebook; Google’s technology plans could be advanced by SocialDeck’s experience in extending the social experience across multiple devices. With tha

BlackBerry Torch has launched, and it’s running RIM’s latest operating system, BlackBerry OS 6. After months of agonizing debate over RIM’s ability to keep pace with today’s smart phones, the Canadian manufacturer has revealed a product that rethinks much of its old designs. But as with all BlackBerry devices, several messaging and navigation functions are built into the design of the phone, remaining central to the BlackBerry user experience. Still, it’s the user experience that’s witnessed the most change. A universal search tool has been added to the BlackBerry Torch, along with intuitive organization around media (videos, music, photos). The slide-phone has a touch screen as well as a full keyboard, and supports portr

We expect to see a new BlackBerry later this morning, giving RIM a chance to regain its place in the smart phone market. But amidst the excitement of the new product reveal, RIM is also battling governments on the global front. The United Arab Emirates in particular is considering a ban on several RIM products, citing security issues. The ban would take place in October, applying to domestic and roaming RIM users. What the U.A.E. government wants is local servers in the country, and subsequently the ability to monitor RIM consumer data. As it stands now, RIM’s servers are outside of the country and consumer data is encrypted. RIM issued a statement this morning, assuring that its networks are secure and it has no plans of giv

YAPPER, the self-service tool for creating mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad Android and BlackBerry devices, has launched two full-featured mobile apps for news organizations today. One for Palo Alto Online and the other for West Seattle Herald, the apps combine mobile news distribution with engagement tools for a complete offering to clients. Short for Your APP MakER, YAPPER is the brainchild of SachManya. The team earned early acclaim with its product launch earlier this year, winning the Best of Show award at 2010 Macworld DEMO. One of its key features is the built-in marketing tools YAPPER offers its clients, and rightly so with a starting price of $299 for its DIY services. For the print industry, shifting to the online world was

AdMob has released its May Mobile Metrics report today, outlining the rapid growth of smartphones over the past two years. The mobile ad network also noted that while smartphones have been quick to penetrate the global market, there's still some disparities across regions, for the distribution of devices used to access the Internet. For this year's report, AdMob revisited the mobile themes of the past two years. The primary data centered around ad requests on networks and devices. From the Mobile Metrics report, we can see the growth of mobile ad requests, doubling to 46% worldwide. The iPhone and iPod Touch combined brought less than 2% of worldwide ad requests in May 2008, but now Apple and Google's Android dominate nearly half the

iPhone sales are gaining on BlackBerry's, according to a report by Forrester Research. While RIM's BlackBerry is still the most popular device for business users, the iPhone is closing the gap. In so many words, the iPhone is better than the BlackBerry, and RIM had better watch out, before it gets left in the dust entirely. Granted, RIM has taken steps to regain its footing, announcing plans for improvement around its OS and platforms, hoping to lure developers back to its camp. However, with market share suffering and the iPhone 4 hitting stores today, there's plenty of trouble for RIM to overcome if it hopes to keep BlackBerry the dominating phone for enterprise. All the while, Apple's been hard at work shaking the iPhone "toy" i

The world is loving the notion of a smartphone.  Google and Verizon are pushing hard on Android while the iPhone dominates. The Mrs is looking to take the leap into the world of smartphones.  Up until this point, she has used a traditional cellular phone and an old fashioned Palm Z22.  The combination has worked okay, but the requirement for frequent manual syncing of the Z22 due to recurring data loss is frustrating.  It is time for a change. As I am reviewing options, the realization has struck me that what really matters is the OS.  I define the OS as not just the software that runs on the phone but also the supporting infrastructure.  Apple has masterfully innovated through their iPhone OS and complement

It’s only been an hour since RIM’s beta app release. Just the trademark Twitter “T” was impressive to me. The app has a very clean look and feel and everything is where it should be. If this is a beta, what do you call Ubertweet’s version? The upside with this app is that you have the options of adding twitter replies to your Blackberry messages application. Almost makes it business like right? Spell check also comes in handy for those who think and type in blasts of words (I REALLY need this option). This great for RIM as they try to validate themselves in a young person’s mind. This is also good for Twitter since they didn’t have a favorite twitter app for Blackberry. The common things to view on the top level are: home

If you’re in the mobile space and you’re not paying attention to Android, you’re not doing your job. [Warning: there’s going to be a lot of numbers thrown at you here.  I’ll try to make sense of it all in plain English towards the end. –mrh] About a week ago one of our sponsors, Millennial Media, sent over their monthly SMART report. Buried within the report was an infographic with a new statistic regarding the percent change in ad impressions coming from Android based devices, showing that they were up 25% month-over-month. Mack McKelvey from Millennial told me later that this was “the largest month over month increase the OS has had on our network.” There is always a wealth of data contained in the SMART report,

Firms in the enterprise market can be divided into two kinds -- very large enterprises with particular compliance requirements and smaller enterprises in which internal policing is lax. Research In Motion's BlackBerry dominates the compliance-sensitive, large-enterprise market with essentially 100% market share. The reason for this is relatively simple: BlackBerry has a consistent record of catering to the needs of these companies. What are those needs? They all revolve around security and manageability, but most specifically they revolve around the compliance department and legal exposure. A large compliance-sensitive enterprise that needs to protect itself against lawsuits needs to police its employees hard. It needs to ensure that