We’ve all suspected that the majority of revenues in the iPhone/iPod touch ecosystem were in the applications. Now we know, thanks to GigaOm.

What this infographic doesn’t address though is the high switching costs for iPhone users. Once you’re invested in an app and a platform, it’s hard to leave it behind. (Which is why I can’t wait for an iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network.)

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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The Money’s In The Apps is a post from: TechStartups.com

Earlier this month, Jack Dorsey of Square told the attendees at LeWeb that he wanted the dongle for the Square mobile payment system to be free. Square allows anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch (and wifi) to accept credit cards by swiping the card using said dongle.

Almost simultaneously, Verifon announced their own mobile payments hardware and software – which is definitely not free.

Today, in preparation for CES, Mophie announced yet another hardware and software combination for accepting credit cards.

If you have an iPhone, you may know Mophie as the producer of the Mophie Juice Pack and Juice Pack Air, the iPhone cases with built-in backup batteries.

Square’s solution uses the audio jack and is decidedly very small while the Verifon and Mophie solutions enclose the entire iPhone and use the Dock Connector.

While it’s good to have choice and competition in the market, the winner will be determined by three key factors:

1) Usability of the Software: While these are very functional devices, don’t underestimate importance of the software. The one that’s most “iPhone-y” will be highly desirable.

2) Marketing: Verifon has a vast network and partnerships while the startups do not. Innovation is important but marketing and distribution will be more challenging for them.

3) Cost: Businesses of all sizes are concerned about the cost of their credit card processing fees but small businesses are especially sensitive. The cost of the software, hardware and merchant account will ultimately drive acceptance. Dorsey is smart for wanting to get the Square dongle into the hands of as many businesses as he can.

Who do you think will take this market?

[PocketLint]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Mobile Credit Card Payments Heating Up is a post from: TechStartups.com

If you’ve used Apple’s iTunes, you know what the Genius feature is. It’s a recommendation engine that uses your existing music to find more that you might like.

A few months ago, they added Genius support for Apps, too. The only problem is that the algorithm they use is too simplistic. When you use an app as the basis for analysis and recommendation (also called the “seed”) the Genius algorithm then recommends the top ten apps that users of your seed are likely to own. It makes no other assumptions.

Appsaurus wants to put the genius back into app recommendations.

For .99 cents, the application runs advanced algorithms in the background to determine what uses will like. Launching Appsaurus will provide you with a short-list of moderately popular apps and ask you to select the ones you like. If you don’t like any of their selections, you can tap the big red button at the bottom that says “Nothing Good? Tap to Reload” and the app will give you some more options.

You can customize your search by selecting options such as “Non-Game Apps” or “High-Quality 99 Cent Apps” or select your own criteria. Start from their and you’re more likely to find stuff you like.

Probably the best action you can take is to manually input your favorite apps into Appsaurus so that the recommendation engine can use those as seeds. once I entered even a few of my favorite apps I immediately started to find apps that were more to my liking.

The only downside is that Appsaurus doesn’t have access to the apps that you have installed and the frequency in which you launch them. Hopefully Apple will allow this in the future.

Appsaurus is available now and well worth the 99 cents if you’re tired of surfing the app store for interesting things to install.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Appsaurus: Genius Evolved is a post from: TechStartups.com

iPhone car mounts have been around forever but the introduction of turn-by-turn navigation software on the iPhone 3G, we’re starting to see more of them that power the handset and improve the reception of the GPS antenna.

Magellan’s Premium Car Kit has a couple of bells and whistles that you might find interesting.

First, you can use your iPod Touch as a navigation system – that’s right, the Magellan Premium Car Kit includes it’s own GPS receiver so you don’t need an iPhone to use it.

Second (and most interesting) is that Magellan doesn’t require that you use their mapping software. That means (in theory) you could load up the free and community-powered Waze navigation software and use it with Magellan’s mount. Heck – you could even create your own!

This makes Magellan more likely to get my dollars as it doesn’t lock me into a hardware/software combination and would minimize my switching costs. [Magellan]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

Magellan Introduces GPS Mount for iPhone – With a Twist is a post from: TechStartups.com

Last week I introduced you to the Dragon Dictation iPhone app from Nuance Communications. Today, Nuance brings us a “fast, accurate, and smart way to search online content on your iPhone” with Dragon Search.

Using the speech recognition technology found in their other products, Dragon Search for iPhone [iTunes Link] enables you to search Google, Yahoo!, Bing, iTunes, Twitter, Wiki, or YouTube using nothing but your voice.

The interface is simple: you’re presented with a button. Tap it to perform your speak your query and perform your search.

I performed a quick vanity search for my name and the results were perfect. The initial results appeared in Google but you can toggle between services by tapping or dragging the logos at the top.

The app takes advantage of the integrated iPhone apps as much as possible.

For instance, Google results that are related to locations will launch the built-in Google Maps for iPhone application when you tap them (though it requests your permission, first). Results from a YouTube search immediately launch the YouTube app when you click on a video.

For me, the real test of this app will be while walking around New York City. If it can filter out the background noise recognize more complex queries, it will be a winner.

Dragon Search is currently free in the iTunes App Store but Nuance has indicated that it’s an “introductory price.” Get it while you can.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Speek To Search: Nuance Introduces Dragon Search For The iPhone – Free is a post from: TechStartups.com

Occipital, a software shop with only two developers, has parlayed some hard work and savvy development into an iPhone app that has currently earned them $1 million dollars.

The $1.99 application, RedLaser [iTunes Link], uses its real-time barcode scanning capabilities to quickly compare prices and find deals on any product with a UPC, EAN, UPC-E or EAN-8 barcode.

Founded by Jeffrey Powers and Vikas Reddy in 2008, the Boulder, Colorado-based company was funded by TechStars.

Now that their app is selling around 6,000 copies per day and recently featured on Martha Stewart Living and in the Wall Street Journal, raising additional funds shouldn’t be a problem.

In addition to its own applications, the company has opened up its SDK to allow other developers to use their RedLaser Component Tool Kit. A visit to the Occipital web site indicates that Occipital is also involved with the Snapture photo application by Snapture Labs and FoodScanner by DailyBurn with the latter application obviously using the Occipital barcode scanning technology. Hopefully we’ll see more apps based on this technology in the future.

I love a good success story. Kudos to the Occipital team.

[MobileCrunch]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Two Guys. One iPhone App. $1 Million. is a post from: TechStartups.com

If you wanted to record video on your iPhone or iPhone 3G, you had only one option: jailbreak it and install Cycorder or some other software that was available through Cydia or Installer.app.

When the iPhone 3GS was released with video capabilities, there were those of us that thought surely Apple would never allow video recording on the previous generation phones as this is a key feature of their higher end device and it could cannibalize sales.

Well we (read: I) were apparently wrong.

Currently, two video recording apps are available: the literally named Camcorder [iTunes Link] and the more Apple-y named iVideoCamera [iTunes Link]. According to TUAW, the frame rate and audio using Camcorder are nothing to rave about, but it works as tested on the 3G and 3GS. The only downside of this app (and its a steep downside) is that you can’t retrieve the videos from your device. So, you’d better like them a lot if you’re going to keep them around and hope that your phone doesn’t crash.

iVideoCamera, which TUAW (nor I) have tested does enable you to retrieve the video from your phone, either by saving it to your Camera Roll or sharing it on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. Here’s the steep downside on this app: resolution is a HUGE 160 x 213!

Crazy. Reminds me of the old days of CUSeeMe…

Both apps are 99 cents and available now.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

Video Recording Comes to the iPhone 3G and 2G is a post from: TechStartups.com

The Boxee Beta has been found on BitTorrent. It’s free. It’s beta. It’s open source.

So why should we care?

Well, I care as I can load it up, test and review it before the official release. Of course, I can’t – it appears to be a Windows release and the Boxee team has reworked the entire graphics system to take advantage of Windows Direct X video.

That said, the hype around the Boxee Beta has been masterfully managed by Avner & Company. Perhaps this is just a well-timed “leak?” (If it is, I applaud it. This is smart “Web 2.0” marketing…)

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

Boxee Beta Hits BitTorrent is a post from: TechStartups.com

Over at GigaOm, Sebastien Rupley speculates on whether Google will renew it’s search and advertising deal with Mozilla on or before November 2011, when the deal is set to expire.

One could understand why this speculation might occur – Google is moving ahead with its cross-platform, open source browser strategy via Chrome. Providing financial support to a competing browser may not seem like good business sense for the Google team.

Since Mozilla generates more than 90% of it’s revenue from the search box in the Firefox browser, Sebastien believes that non-renewal of the deal could be “an enormous financial blow” to Mozilla.

This is true. If Google decides not to renew the deal, it would be disastrous for Mozilla.

But the deal will get done. Here’s why.

Stats

According to W3Counter.com, Internet Explorer (6.x, 7.x and 8.x) had 51.14% share of the browser market in the month of November 2009 while Firefox (2.x and 3.x) had 31.85%.

Chrome? 4.58%.

How long will it take Google Chrome to grab enough market share from Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple and Opera for it to even consider killing off it’s revenue stream from Mozilla?

Before you answer that, let’s not forget: Mozilla makes Google a lot of money.

Until Chrome’s share of the browser market equals that of Firefox, Google won’t even consider dropping their deal with Mozilla – and even then, it’s unlikely. In addition to destroying a revenue stream for themselves, causing the death of a competing open source browser would tarnish Google’s image as the company whose quest is to “not be evil.”

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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The Google-Mozilla Relationship Will Continue. Here’s Why. is a post from: TechStartups.com

Speaking at LeWeb today, Jack Dorsey talked more about Square, his new mobile payments startup.

The company plans to launch an API that will allow Square to connect to other financial systems and book keeping software. That’s helpful and in my mind, absolutely necessary to get small businesses using the sytem. The bigger news?

Dorsey and Square want the payment dongle to be available for free.

How, exactly, they will make that work remains to be seen. Since it uses an audio jack, it’s possible that we’ll see Square running on other platforms besides the iPhone, though that will likely require changes to the hardware to connect to, say, a BlackBerry.

The Square team is working on the private beta while beefing up system security, which will need to be a major focus of the company if they’re going to interconnect with a variety of financials systems.

I, for one, am interested to try this out. I have members of my extended family that could use Square to enhance their businesses.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Jack Dorsey Wants Square Dongle to Be Free is a post from: TechStartups.com

While that might sound hyperbolic, consider these facts:

1) Bandwidth has become plentiful in the U.S. (though we still lag behind other countries)

2) Hardware capable of displaying full HD video is cheap – and getting cheaper (more on this in a moment)

3) Local storage is dirt cheap – you can easily store terabytes of video in your home.

To my mind, the one critical piece missing from all of this is discovery – that means deep search and person-to-person recommendations.

I will now make the age-old mistake of using myself as a Case Study of One.

In my living room there’s a 37″ 1080p HDTV, an original Roku box that delivers Netflix Streaming and Amazon Video On Demand, an upscaling DVD player and a recent model MacBook that I use with Boxee for online video, ripped DVD’s and occassionally Netflix or Amazon VOD.

Last but definitely not least is my Verizon FiOS set top box that delivers stunning 1080p HD and includes a DVR capable of HD storage and playback.

The only thing that’s kept me from ditching the last piece of gear is my ability to find a lot of the content that my family normally watches, online. This includes myriad shows from the likes of the Science Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, SciFi (Now SyFy. Don’t get me started on that one…) in HD as well as the occassional episode of Cold Case, Criminal Minds and Dancing with the Stars. (For my wife. Really.)

Given my tendency toward gadgetry and the interwebs, I could probably find all of these shows and more in full HD online, either through services like Hulu or via torrent trackers.

But really, who has that kind of time? I certainly don’t.

So, the cable box stays.

The Clicker app for boxee may increasingly change all that, but the boxee integration is key.

While the Clicker app aggregates data on video content from all over the web, only a certain amount of that content is available within boxee, so they limit the search results to what you can actually play. Also, even if you find something on the web that you want to watch in boxee, it’s not always a trivial thing – sometimes it requires adding RSS feeds, etc. so this is much more convenient.

Like the Boxee app itself, the Clicker app is designed for use with a simple remote and while I haven’t tried it with a keyboard, that should work, too.

The Clicker may also drive a groundswell of requests for new content online.

For instance, I mentioned earlier that Discovery Channel gets a lot of play in our house – my son and I love to watch MythBusters together. Searching for MythBusters on clicker.com results in a message that says “Unavailable Online” but then provides you with an email link to “Alert the distributor that you’d like to see it online.”

As Boxee, the Clicker and other video apps become more popular, I could see this impacting the decision making of distributors like Discovery Communications.

I would be remiss if I left out all of the great content that is produced solely for IPTV deliver. Just about anything you can think of can be found on Clicker.com but again, Boxee shows only a subset. Availability will improve over time.

The Boxee Box

The mythical Boxee Box was also introduced last night. Designed by Astro and produced by D-Link, the box outputs HDMI, optical audio and comes with a couple of USB ports. No word yet on what’s actually inside – D-Link will have the pleasure of announcing that at CES in January. Presumably it will come with some storage capacity but my guess is that’s what the USB ports are for – external mass storage. That would explain the inexpensive $200 price tag. (More images in the gallery below)

My upgrade to the Boxee beta for Mac is pending but I’m looking forward to observing its impact on my family’s TV habits. Unfortunately, until Adam and Jaime go online, the cable box will stick around for our weekly episode of MythBusters.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

Boxee and The Clicker Could Help Me Ditch My Cable Box (Maybe) is a post from: TechStartups.com

Last week I wrote about the boxee remote Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X. The comments I received – both public and private – asked if something like this was available for Windows / Linux / Google Chrome / Amiga / DOS / (insert your favorite OS here).

Of course, I told them to Google it.

As it turns out, it is available for Windows and Linux, but not as you might think. It’s available as a Kludget. (A what!?)
Kludgets were inspired by the Mac OS X Dashboard – they’re shiny little applications that run on your desktop with one major exception – the Kludgets Engine brings support for Yahoo’s Widget Engine (fomerly Konfabulator), Microsoft Gadgets, and Google Desktop Widgets, and Opera Widgets.

Features of the Kludgets Engine include:

• MacOS Dashboard Widgets support
• Opera Widgets support
• Open Source (LGPL)
• Cross Platform (Windows,Linux)
• WebKit Technology (HTML5)
• QT Nokia Framework

That’s a load of ambition for a small open source project but by all accounts, it delivers. Most widgets will work on the Kludget Engine running on Windows and Linux.

The Kludget features solid documentation and devleoper support, too with attractive, easy-to-read instructions for creating your own cross-platform widgets.

Go ahead – run that boxee remote!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Kludgets: Klumsy, Lame, Ugly, Dumb, but Good Enough is a post from: TechStartups.com

I’m a marketer by trade and admittedly, persnickety about branding – particularly visual presentation. My specialty is “branding on a budget” which works well for my small business clients.

So you can imagine my displeasure when searching for small business ecommerce services. Sure, most can be customized but any real customizations (those that live up to my standards and budget) usually require a significant amount of professional services by designers, coders, etc.

I’ve always been a fan of RapidWeaver for developing quick, attractive web sites – including simple ecommerce sites. Thanks to some recent exploration of RealMac Software’s RapidWeaver Add-on’s Directory, I discovered CartLoom. (Screenshots after the break)


Created by YadDab Software, makers of PayLoom – the original ecommerce plugin for RapidWeaver – CartLoom takes ecommerce to another level while still maintaining integration with RapidWeaver. That means you can have an ecommerce platform with all the features you expect from a fully-hosted solution including thousands of products, discount codes, sale pricing, bundles – allowing for discounted pricing on multiple item purchases, automated digital delivery of software and other intangible goods – including product activation codes, integration with PayPal, Authorize.net and PayPoint and shipping rules with full support for attractive RapidWeaver themes.

Of course, you don’t need RapidWeaver to use CartLoom but it’s certainly a bonus. To add CartLoom to an existing site, all you need to do is enter your products into CartLoom and add code snippets to your site.

The only feature on my wishlist for CartLoom is built-in support for managing affiliate programs. At the very least, I’d like to see support for third-party affiliate management software.

If you operate an ecommerce site or ar considering it (oh – and you use a Mac) you owe it to yourself to check out RapidWeaver and CartLoom.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

CartLoom + RapidWeaver Help Small Business Ecommerce Look Good is a post from: TechStartups.com

(I’ve opted for my own music during ths post, but I’m still using OmmWriter.)

As readers of this blog may know, I love boxee. I run it on a spare MacBook I have in my living room connected to my HDTV but I’ve never been particularly happy with the remote control options.

The Apple Remote is a bit too simplistic and I find it unreliable, usually due to a bit of latency. I downloaded the boxee remote app for my iPhone and while it works great, you need to leave the application running and the phone on during use. Given the battery drain on the iPhone under normal use, this just isn’t practical for “channel” surfing. It works pretty well for movies, though since I find that I don’t use the remote as often.

Shorter length content is a different story.

When I’m watching, say, TED Talks I want the ability to skip back to review what the speaker may have said or when the talk is over, quickly switch to another one.

I also find that often times, I’m simultaneously using my laptop, twittering and generally just multi-tasking.

Apparently artist and developer J. Celestino behaves the same way and noticed the same thing because he created a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget just for this purpose.

It turns the MacBook on your lap into a remote control for your boxee machine, regardless of what OS it might be running on – OS X, Linux or Windows.

All you need to know is the name of your boxee machine or the IP address and you’re ready for a little remote control fun.

The software is free and available for download now.

Thanks, J!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Boxee Remote Dashboard Widget Turns Your Mac into a Remote Control is a post from: TechStartups.com

If you’re looking for inspiration, try this:

1. Find an online application that you admire, one that you feel confident has a great product and is experiencing growth
2. See if they have an open API
3. Build an app for the X platform

There are plenty of app developers building businesses off the effort of others by leveraging the latter company’s API.

A great example of this is 37Signals, an application software company based in Chicago. The smart folks at 37Signals have built API’s for all their applications turning them into platforms for outside developers.

Let’s look at their Basecamp application, an online tool for collaborating on projects.

Basecamp uses lots of AJAX in the UI so a simple mobile web implementation isn’t as useful (or attractive) as the original browser version. However, 37Signals has created a robust API that others can leverage to connect Basecamp to other web applications or to provide access to Basecamp on other platforms, like the iPhone. Search for Basecamp in the iTunes App Store and you’ll find nine applications that support the service, plus a few more that are limited to supporting Basecamp’s time tracking features.

The cost of these iPhone apps range from free to $12.99. While the free apps are good for the casual user, advanced users will definitely want one of the paid apps. Taken a step further, some of these companies also offer Basecamp apps for the BlackBerry, Symbian and Android platforms. They may be betting on Basecamp as an application worth supporting, but they’re not going to bet on only one handset platform.

For those of you who took the time to read this entire post, here’s a bonus idea for you: BatchBlue, makers of the very cool and useful BatchBook application, offers an API but to date no one has come forth to create an iPhone app for it.

The only thing holding me back from using BatchBook is the fact that it doesn’t have an iPhone app. Someone create one, please? I’ll be your first customer.

What other companies have an API that you can leverage?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Opportunity in Others: How to Build a Business Using Open API’s is a post from: TechStartups.com

Network World discusses a German startup called Impossible Software that pretty much lives up to its name. The six-person outfit has created software that lets video watchers change aspects of the videos they are viewing – while the videos are playing.

For example, the company has a demonstration video at its website (see here) in which the colors of a kitchen change according to viewer input. It’s pretty amazing to consider the possibilities.

Say you’re watching an ad for a new consumer automobile. As the car appears, you think, “Hmm … what if it came in green?” And presto, the car switches from black to green mid-commercial.

Hi-def? Yup. Real-time? Yup. It’s aptly called JetStream Video.

The real challenge may be selling the need to clients. If Impossible Software can craft effective pitches that show how much companies need their offering (and maybe didn’t know they needed it), they stand more than a fighting chance in the crowded online video market.

I think the folks at Impossible Software have done an incredible job and deserve accolades for their impressive achievement. Certainly there’s a cost involved there that they’ll have to recoup through acquisition of significant advertising accounts.

Have you heard of Impossible Software before? Do you think its technology makes it stand out or is just a curious gimmick?

Impossible Software: A Video Startup You’ve Gotta See is a post from: TechStartups.com