Variety Magazine hosts its first ever Entertainment Apps conference from 8:30am – 6:30pm on Thursday, December 1^st, 2011 at the Sofitel Hotel Los Angeles.

Naushad Huda, CEO of Textopoly has been invited to speak at the conference, which features other entertainment industry mobile experts like Elias Plishner, SVP Worldwide Digital Media, Sony Pictures Worldwide Marketing and Distribution, T.J. Marchetti, SVP, Digital, Disney, Chris Hewish, Head of Global Interactive, DreamWorks Animation, Ted Hong, CMO, Fandango, Alex Barkaloff, Executive Producer, Lionsgate, and many more leaders in the space.  Produced by Concurrent Media, the event will provide insights on how media and entertainment companies are using apps to distribute premium content, enhance viewer engagement and create new revenue opportunities.

The conference will cover topics such as movie distribution via social-networking platforms, social viewing apps for movies and TV and monetization strategies.  Naushad will speak about HTML5 vs. Native Apps; more specifically, answering questions such as: Will HTML5 really allow web-based apps to do everything that iOS and Android apps can do? This panel will focus on the advantages/downsides of developing entertainment-oriented apps in HTML 5 vs. native platforms. How quickly are media companies shifting focus from proprietary platforms to HTML 5? Where should developers focus their resources?

Please join us for this exciting and unprecedented event, and share this note with your friends and colleagues.   Registration is accessible by this link – click here.

Variety Magazine Entertainment Conference

Naushad was invited by Tech Coast Angeles to a live 1 hour interview (Video!) and Q&A session hosted by Barbara Seymour on Vokle to share his insights on how to develop a mobile strategy. Those who watched the session live had the chance to ask, and have answered, mobile strategy questions such as:

1. What can you tell us about the adoption of Mobile Tech?
2. What are the Pro’s and Con’s of outsourcing mobile development?
3. What features can be added to a mobile app to make it stand out?
4. When building a new mobile app: when should we do a web app, when should we do a native app?
5. What is the hottest mobile marketing trend?

Of the 1,300 U.S. consumers that participated in the InsightExpress study, 67% of men and 54% of women, said they would reach for their mobile device before asking a salesperson for help. With the technology to check prices, find deals and locate out-of-stock items at other locations these stats are not too surprising. According to Joy Liuzzo, Vice President, Director, mobile research at InsightExpress, retailers that are not connecting with consumers this holiday season could leave millions on the table. Another piece of interesting information is that half of those who participated in the survey intend on spending more that a few hundred dollars on holiday gifts, and 46% said they would use their phone to shop throughout the holiday season.

With mobile technology constantly changing, waiting in those long lines outside retail locations will soon be a thing of the past.

Happy Holidays!

Without music I can’t get through the day without going insane. Pandora’s awesome mobile app allows me to stream songs directly into the palm of my hand via smartphone. For a consumer, Pandora offers a large selection of artists, easy interface, and high quality music. Not to mention the app is completely free. However, for marketers and big brands alike Pandora is a goldmine of opportunities. This ”fun app” is one of the best ways to bolster brand awareness, engage consumers, and increases fiscal results.

According to Luxury Marketing Pandora’s traffic is 65% mobile device based and allows targeting based upon listening preferences, making Mobile Banner Ad’s within the app the ideal place for big brands to allocate their marketing efforts. Pandora is by no means a “traditional” advertising channel and there are plenty of big brands that are looking for ways to break the mold of “old school marketing”. Luxury brand Nordstrom’s is one such big brand. The company aims to drive consumers to stores via banner ads that offer a store locater with directions.

Pandora takes the guess work out of the question “where is my target audience”. Within the app, consumer demographics can be segregated by a stations genre ensuring a brand will have a higher ROI per advertisement. For instance, a Pandora station for “Lady GaGa” is bound to have listeners who value high fashion, high culture, and clothes that are trendy. Nordstrom’s placed banner ads on that station alone to target the fashion guru’s of the world. The combination of Pandora and mobile banner ad’s is a marketing tool that is down right effective. In the fiscal year of 2011, Pandora has 23 million active users and is projected to grow 21 percent annually and reach 159 million active listeners worldwide by fiscal 2021 according to Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt. Pandora is so successful that is gaining more consumers per year than sales staff. With such a growth in mobile music, mobile marketers need to start incorporating banner advertising with Pandora to engage consumers. In the near future QR codes will die, but Mobile banner ads are here to stay.

Long Live the Mobile Banner Ad!

QR Code Example to Non-Mobile Web

Yes it’s a dramatic title but the widespread muscle-memory misuse of QR codes by an overwhelming majority of advertisers in print is like a slow death to those of us who live & breath mobile.  Seems like every time I pick up a newspaper, a magazine or walk by any printed material there is a QR code – starring at me, poking at me, taunting me to scan it.  After all, I should scan it; I’m in mobile! As I pull out my phone and slide it ‘on’, and slowly move my finger towards the QR scanning app there is a part of me that braces for disappointment. It brings back memories of going to Toys R Us as a kid hoping that as we walk by the shiny bikes and I ask my parents for a bike that today they would say yes. . . as I scan this QR code I’m hoping that I’ll be interacting with a mobile optimized landing page with features that I can interact with. Sadly, just as when I was a kid, I didn’t get the experience of that shiny bike but instead new diapers. And as I scan yet another QR code, the experience is similar to what a diaper is made to hold – shit.

I wonder if it’s the advertiser, their agency or the pesky ad-sales rep at the publication who didn’t think to warn the advertiser before they unleash these terrible experiences onto the world. If a consumer is made to use his mobile device to gain information about your brand, and when he uses his mobile device to participate in a mobile tactic (the QR code) then he should get a – duh! – mobile experience! He doesn’t want to zoom and scroll all over the crap experience you gave him. He doesn’t want to try and figure out where on your massive site he should be looking as he browses on the 4 inch screen. And yes, he will hate on your brand for making him go through this frustration!

Overall there is a tear in the thin strategic fabric. There is a gap in knowledge about how to use the QR tactic properly and give the consumer a complete mobile experience. This gap sometimes extends to ‘mobile’ as a whole. Mobile encompasses many tactical solutions such as QR, AR, Mobile Web, Apps, SMS, etc and each tactic should be thought through not only for the mobile experience but also how to harmoniously have it work with other digital and traditional strategies.

I’m done with scanning QR codes. Oh, and when NFS hits the streets the same rule applies – give the consumer on mobile a mobile experience not a desktop one!

“HTML5 enables Textopoly to translate the hyper creative concepts of our imagination into engaging and instantly immersive mobile experiences, blurring the line between advertising and entertainment,” says Textopoly CEO Naushad Huda.

Yamaha HTML5 Animated Mobilesite

Yeah, we’re pretty F*&#! good

Check out the Release: http://leep.me/xI

Check out the site yourself on your iOS or Android handheld: www.yamahaboats.com

Yamaha HTML5 Animated Mobile Site – Pop-up Window!

I like Clear Wireless. For those who don’t know what Clear Wireless is, it’s an ISP that uses 4G to connect you to the Internet. It’s just the data plan portion of your cell phone plan. When you order Clear you get a ‘modem’ that you just plug in for power, and that modem is now the hotspot to which you can connect several devices for fast internet all through the 4G wireless network! We have one as a backup at the office and I generally will surf on 7mps down. Not bad for $40 a month.

I think giving consumers a choice on who they use for an ISP in their home or office is awesome. It’s a grim scenario when I hear that only X or only Y serves my area and I have to use them – still not sure how that still works. Must be an old Ma’ Bell trick!

The question still remains in my mind on why Cox didn’t go down the Clear (no pun intended) route of just selling internet connectivity via wireless networks when it was part of the conglomerate that won the spectrum auction for $2b+ back in 2006? (To jog your memory: http://leep.me/xx)  - Instead Cox decided to become a mobile wireless carrier. . .we’ve seen how this plays out (see many MVNOs from the last decade).

(After I wrote this an interesting article was published by PC Magazine about ISPs offering $10 a month internet services to those who have at least one child in the Free School Lunch Program.)

I asked a good friend of mine, a veteran in the mobile space (@james_monaghan http://twitter.com/james_monaghan) to tell me in how to best describe HTML5. James, being the clever Englishman that he is replies that HTML5 is a “Significant milestone in the maturation of mobile web application delivery.” One of our own top developers (Keivan!) had a similar sentiment and was kind enough to share with me an awesome presentation he found – the presentation itself is in HTML5 (!) so please view it on Firefox, Safari or Chrome – our good friends at Microsoft are a bit behind. http://slides.html5rocks.com/

Also, to see some HTML5 hotness in action check out some Textopoly work in HTML5 that will blow your mind:

http://bit.ly/iDPOQj

http://leep.me/v2

Enjoy – and give us a ring to talk about Rich Media & HTML5 – we’re on it!

All data, stats, and charts credited eMarketer.com

You may be wondering, what exactly do those old folk use mobile phones for? Thanks to the Pew Research Center’s dedicated research we have all the answers.

Go ahead and take a look at the chart below, enjoy!

The most common uses for mobile internet in Japan are accessing email, weather information and using search functionality. As the adoption of Android and the Apple iOS continues to grow exponentially year over year it will be interesting to see what the Japanese mobile internet trends occur. Can anyone say Angry Birds in Japanese?

(Post by Tyler Woodward, our crackerjack Intern: tyler[at]textopoly[dot]com, thanks buddy!)

(Santa Ana)—Santa Ana College (SAC) has launched a new mobile website that offers easy access from any smartphone. When a student or prospective student accesses www.sac.edu from his or her smartphone, the site automatically redirects the browser to the new mobile site.

“We are excited to embrace this new technology,” said Norm Fujimoto, vice president of academic affairs at Santa Ana College. “Our students and would be students are constantly accessing information through their mobile devices and we want to satisfy their needs for quick and simply navigated information about the college.”

The SAC mobile site was developed through a partnership with Santa Ana College, Textopoly, Inc., and its higher education innovation group—Republic of Digital. The mobile site evolved through the collaborative efforts of the Republic of Digital team, student intern Andrew O’Melia and the SAC Web Committee.

Since 2007, O’Melia has been enrolled part-time in the college’s digital media program. With 12 years experience as a graphic designer, he is working on his associate degree with plans to transfer to a four-year university.

During his three-month internship, O’Melia helped design the mobile site’s user interface elements and the graphics for the header bar. Textopoly and Republic of Digital’s, internship program helped incorporate a real-world project into an invaluable experience for O’Melia.  He was front and center when the final designs were presented by the Republic of Digital team to the clients—members of the SAC Web Committee.

“Since working on the SAC mobile site, I’ve really fallen in love with the process of designing and developing interactive media,” said O’Melia. “It’s not something I could have learned in the classroom and I’m now working as creative director with two application development companies.”

The mobile site features quick access to many of the most popular links on www.sac.edu,

including a campus map Google API, phone directory, class schedules, Webadvisor, library information, safety and security guidelines, continuing education information, counseling scheduling, help and frequently asked questions, plus ‘click to call’ phone numbers and links to the college’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

“It’s vital to think about a mobile site as not a simple shrunken version of the desktop site, but instead to wrap strategy and genuine insight around the build of the mobile site from the perspective of the user,” said Naushad Huda, CEO of Textopoly.

The site is compatible with mobile browsers found on a range of devices, including Android, iPhone, iPod, iPad, and BlackBerry. Since the mobile site has gone live, Android devices and iPhones top the list of devices accessing the new site.

According to Morgan Stanley, the volume of mobile users will outstrip the number of desktop Internet users by 2014. According to a report by Gomez, 52 percent of consumers are unlikely to return to a website they had trouble accessing by phone. What is even worse—40 percent said they would likely visit a competitor’s website instead.

About the Rancho Santiago Community College District

The mission of the Rancho Santiago Community College District (RSCCD) is to respond to the educational needs of an ever-changing community and to provide programs and services that reflect academic excellence.  Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College are public community colleges of RSCCD, which serve the residents of Anaheim Hills, East Garden Grove, Irvine, Orange, Santa Ana, Tustin and Villa Park.  Both colleges provide education for academic transfer and careers, courses for personal and professional development, customized training for business and industry, and programs to train nurses, firefighters and law enforcement personnel.

About Republic of Digital & Textopoly, Inc.

Textopoly is a multi-award winning mobile marketing and advertising agency that concepts and executes customized campaigns for brands and agencies. Whether it is through SMS, the mobile Internet, Mobile Media or Apps, they bring the brand straight to the users. Textopoly has worked with brands including Yamaha, Google/Admob, Microsoft Advertising, Paramount Studios, Bluefly, Rutgers University, Kikkoman, NBC, Sports Club of LA and many more.

Republic of Digital is a higher education focused innovation group within Textopoly whose focus is to partner with educational institutions and bring next generation mobile strategies & solutions to better interact and communicate with their constituents. Visit ROD at www.republicofdigital.com.

Santa Ana College Mobile Site

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/02/no-comment-angry-birds-in-convenient-bra-form/

So if a man sees this item in an intimate moment does that mean a ‘red light’!?

Television has long ago left our Plasma screens and creeped into laptops, desktops, and different media players. And now, it is making the transition to mobile. Of course, sinking into your favorite chair with an ice cold beer and leaning back to watch your favorite shows on a huge screen is a luxury to be treasured. But being able to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother while waiting in a doctor’s office instead of flipping through a 5 year old copy of Home Living might just be the next best thing.

If TV comes to mobile on a wider spectrum, making mobile an even more prevalent part of our everyday lives, what do you think the impact will be on the mobile advertising industry? Let us know!

How? The basic process is:

1. Download an application called Astro File (or similar apps);

2. Download an application called 4shared (or going to 4shared website);

3. Search/download android apps from 4shared;

4. Use Astro File to database the files;

5. The phone installs the downloaded files.

(Visual tutorial at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8u5slHSSfU.)

Anyone who can download an application can hack the entire Android market place. This is clearly a red flag that the marketplace is too open. If these applications gain popularity (which, they are bound to), there will be no incentive for developers to develop paid applications for the Android OS. Beyond free apps, an open marketplace is a great marketplace for viruses. So, Android, where’s the regulation?

Michael here: Just thought I’d chime in with another viewpoint. The iPhone, with all it’s restrictions and walled gardens, isn’t much different. A jailbroken phone can easily download any app in the App Store, free of charge, at the touch of a button. iOS developers are also reporting extremely high piracy rates. Some have seen rates as high as 90%. Clearly a closed and regulated store isn’t the solution. I think at some point we’re going to have to accept that as long as copyright laws exist, pirates will find ways to break them.

Michael has a great point. So what do you guys think – should developers focus on restrictions or accept that rules are meant to be hacked?

If Apple refuses to support something (Flash) and then fully backs another product (HTML5), the world will usually follow. Recalling Conan’s recent review of the iPad 2: “You’ll buy it no matter what we say.” Yes, it was a jab at Apple. Yes, it was a hilarious video. But does the message change? Not really. Apple is a giant in the industry and with the magnitude of iProducts alone, any developer would be remiss not to develop HTML5 advertisements.

But aside from the Jobs endorsement, there are numerous new things that HTML5 brings to the table. Alex Linde, Yahoo’s director of mobile advertising, summed it up perfectly: “With iPhone, Android and others now adopting HTML5 we have, No. 1, a standard that allows us to ‘write almost once, run almost everywhere,’ No. 2, an installed base to do it at scale and No. 3, enough bandwidth and screen real estate to do something really interesting for the consumer.”

But, can HTML5 do what Flash did? Yes, and more. Users can swipe products across the screen, drag and drop, spin, flip, and generally control their experience with the advertisement. The glory of HTML5 is summed up by Apple. [Cool HTML5 examples.]

So far, HTML5 is dominating the mobile and tablet market, while Flash is holding its dominance in the computer world. Whether HTML5 expands its reach or Flash steps up its technology for mobile (or both) time will soon tell. Regardless of the channel, we are bound to be impressed by the innovative ways companies try to get their consumers to interact with the brand.

Non-profit organizations must use innovative forms of advertising because they cannot exploit the usual tools of ‘cool’ advertisement – sexual appeal and alcohol – to promote campaigns for rain forest preservation, or civil rights, or human trafficking. They must use the art of human emotion and ethical perspectives with a hodgepodge of events like auctions, selling tickets for art exhibits, restaurant profit turnovers, etc. The bottom line is that a nonprofit organization needs to either get the supporter in front of the website to donate or at an event where a supporter can donate. It does not need to be this complex anymore.

Within the last few weeks I have seen more and more articles pop up about how nonprofit organizations should implement mobile apps, mobile sites, and mobiles ads. I must admit, now that I look back, I find it shocking that it took this long for brands to see how applicable and efficient mobile marketing can be. After all, 85% of people read an unread text message within 15 minutes of receiving one. Compare that to 15% of readers who actually open an unread email (and that’s actually considered a good rate for email marketing!).

Nonprofit organizations, this is your wake up call. Your target audiences all have a cell phone! They are more then willing to support you; after all, you do have their contact information and monetary donations. Now give them something back that they can carry around with them, aside from their big hearts and pocket. Give them the luxury of convenience and accessibility, the art of modern technology with the oldest of traditions – helping others.

Whether you want a mobile ad, a mobile app, a mobile site, or even an SMS alert system, stop limiting your fans. Engage your devotees’ day or night and build a modern mobile relationship both parties can benefit from. And if you are worried less people will donate, just let the numbers do the talking. Last year, over $50 million dollars were given via mobile donations. And this is $50 million through a channel that has yet to utilized to its full potential. Can you imagine if all nonprofit organizations allowed supporters to make a mobile donation and to access company information whenever they pleased? The predictions are insurmountable. Isn’t that impressive?

Demographic wise – you are probably catering to a more mature and affluent demographic. Today’s generation, both young and old, is one of mobile addiction. Extend your reach to all age groups with the use of mobile marketing and advertising, and watch your support list go through the roof. Do your country a courtesy, and provide a healthy alternative to sexting and Facebooking, inspire our youth to assemble and become an active participant in the global community – to make a difference right through the palm of their hands, with one click.

It’s that simple (and brilliant!).

So, for current nonprofit organizations that are utilizing mobile marketing, I applaud you for staying with modern modes of promotion. But please, question your mobile components and make sure that 1) your mobile site is actually optimized for a mobile phone and not simply a trans-coded redirect from your regular website and 2) that you are utilizing the best mode of mobile engagement for your organization (i.e. mobile site, mobile ads, mobile apps, mobile donation, SMS alerts, etc.). For nonprofit organizations that are currently not utilizing mobile marketing and advertising, what are you waiting for?

While getting coffee I began chatting with some folks in the same building. As social norm dictate, we respectively inquired about what the other did. When I said “mobile marketing and engagement,” the immediate response was, “So you send out mass texts to everyone?” … Not exactly buddy.

Mobile marketing is still relatively new, and while people in the industry are talking about its evolution and how HTML5 and iAds allow for even more interaction with mobile users the rest of the world is still trying to get a grasp on what mobile marketing is at the most basic levels.

In a visual format,  Google’s Mobile Marketing campaign for AdMob shows it best. Mobile marketing is much more a part of people’s lives than most realize. Every time an ad pops up when you’re playing Angry Birds, or when a redirect link appears in a text message, browser that pops up after you scan a QR code, or when you use a mobile site, you are using something created by a mobile marketing agencies like Textopoly. So what’s next?

Before I go on, I have a disclaimer: this blog is NOT about predictions, there are plenty of those out there. Nor will you hear me utter the now banal phrase “the year of mobile”. Instead, I’m just going to give a perspective on where I see a key area within the sphere of “mobile” going – the key area I speak of is mobile advertising.

Just the other week Google/AdMob released some staggering numbers. Google/AdMob is now receiving 2 billion ad requests per day, a data point which has quadrupled over the past year. With mobile impression numbers staggering to Everest heights, there has to be a way to stand out from the masses. And, there is.

Mobile sites and Mobile ad experiences are getting their sexy on. The graphics are top-tier, the information requested from the user is minimal and to the point, and the content is becoming more and more evolved. With platforms like iAd “you get access to the Apple audience, the world’s most engaged, passionate, and loyal consumer” who “engages with iAd ads for an average of 60 seconds per visit.” 60 seconds is a long time to capture someone’s attention. With technology like HTML5 it is easy to fill 60 seconds with multimedia and graphical content allowing for more advanced advertising on mobile devices including tablets all within a browser environment.

So where is mobile advertising going? To a world where the companies and customers can have a conversation through technology. A world where customers can directly give feedback through how far they are willing to engage in a company’s mobile advertisement. A world that’s eons beyond a text message.

Allyson Kapin’s article ‘Jumo: A Social Network #Win or #Fail?’ summarized a few perspectives a handful of people expressed about Jumo. From statements like “Jumo needs to question what makes them different” to “I don’t see Jumo filling the gap” and “the space is already crowded”, I was surprised by the lack of encouragement. After the earthquake in Haiti, mobile made news about the numerous amounts of donations it accumulated in just a matter of hours. mGive alone passed along $37 million in mobile donations to Haiti Relief funds.

So what are non-profits waiting for? Why is another addition to the nonprofit family a crowd? Well, because mobile is not being utilized as a mediator, a tool almost 5 billion people in the world hold in their pocket. Mobile is the ultimate social network.

Who are the top ten global brands?

Coca Cola, IBM, Microsoft, Google, General Electric, McDonalds, Intel, Nokia, Disney, and HP.

What do all top ten global brands of 2010 have in common?

Besides 90% of these brands originating in the US and having an extremely high monetary value, they all have a mobile component.

So what do Jumo, mobile, and successful brands have in common?

Jumo, make yourself a competing brand name for nonprofit organizations seeking to change the world, one global issue at a time. Create a presence with your brand and connect users around the world via mobile and utilize all of its components. That is how you reach the masses effectively and efficiently, and this is how (like Haiti) you will see passionate global issue devotees not only follow and support Jumo, but have them use mobile to help their favorite organization make positive and recognizable change. But before you do all that, you need a multi-award winning agency that has experience with branding. Well, here we are and we already have ideas for you. I look forward to seeing your brand flourish.

Read Full Article at http://leep.it/sJ.