How Mobile Apps Help the Car-Rental Business

The big issue, for mobile applications or any other uses for mobile devices in other areas of business, is the value proposition. Using a mobile, instead of some other mechanism, has to offer enough value to displace an existing behavior.

It appears mobile apps now offer value both for end users of the Zipcar service, and Zipcar itself.

Launched two years ago, Zipcar's app for iPhone and Android devices has been downloaded by 400,000 people, who use it to locate the nearest available car. That has made it much easier for customers to find cars wherever and whenever they want one.

Now the company has expanded to 55 cities and 225 college campuses in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom.

By letting customers book cars spontaneously with their mobile phones instead of making reservations ahead of time on PCs, Zipcar has found a much easier way to manage its challenging logistics.

Unlike a big car-rental company, Zipcar arranges many short-term rentals in widely distributed locations.

Customers must return the car to its home spot, which is often on a side street. You can see why the ability to return a vehicle using nothing more than a mobile device is useful. A mobile can find an available car closest to where a user is, and allows a user to easily figure out where to leave the car once the rental period is finished.

How Mobile Apps Are Disrupting the Car-Rental Business

E.U. Not Worried About Net Neutrality

“The European Union (E.U.) has sufficient legal safeguards in place to prevent the Continent’s telephone operators from selectively managing consumer access to the Internet and no new restrictions are needed,” says Neelie Kroes, the commissioner for the E.U.’s digital agenda.

So the E.U.’s executive arm had opted to take a wait-and-see approach on the so-called network neutrality issue.

So far, the E.U. continues to believe that competition is sufficient to prevent the abuses network neutrality supporters tend to worry about, namely anti-competitive behavior by ISPs who own content assets, or erection of the access equivalent of content paywalls.

Perhaps oddly, where competition in the U.S. market includes a strong facilities-based cable and a strong facilities-based telco in nearly all markets, plus a couple to several mobile providers plus two satellite broadband providers, plus an occasional fixed-wireless provider, most E.U. nations have one dominant telco providing access to all other contestants, though facilities-based cable providers are becoming established, or are established, in the United Kingdom, for example, and mobile networks also offer broadband access.

It isn't always clear to some observers why multiple facilities-based competitors provide "less competition" than one network, albeit one with strong wholesale requirements. Wholesale "one size fits all" access is a good thing, one might argue. Multiple networks, each free to customize access offerings, arguably is better.

E.U. Not Worried Over Net Neutrality

Facebook to Offer Email?

Facebook’s Project Titan has been building a web-based email client, and some believe a launch is coming within days. If Facebook adds an email client, do you care? How would you use it, and do you trust it?

Facebook Jumping Into Email Game

iPad Users and Intenders More Likely to “Cut the Cord”

People who own iPads, and those who say they will buy an iPad, are more likely to cancel their multichannel video entertainment subscriptions, says Michael Greeson, The Diffusion Group founding partner and director of research.

About 34 percent of iPad owners surveyed by TDG say they might cancel their multichannel video entertainment service in the next six months, more than twice the rate among respondents who say they intend to buy an iPad (14 percent) and three times the rate among average adult broadband users (10 percent).

The study suggests 13 percent of iPad owners are "highly likely" to cancel their multichannel video service in the next six months, twice the rate among respondents who say they want to buy an iPad (six percent) and three times the rate among average adult broadband users (four percent).

About 36 percent iPad owners and 30 percent of respondents who say they want to buy an iPad are likely to downgrade their multichannel video service in the next six months, compared with 21 percent of average adult broadband users.

Some 27 percent of iPad owners say they are "highly likely" to downgrade their multichannel video service in the next six months, compared with 14 percent of respondents who want to buy an iPad 10 percent of average adult broadband users.

Though the typical caveats apply (users don't always do what they say they will), one might draw any number of conclusions from the survey data. Some users might value their iPad experience enough, and derive low enough value from multichannel TV, that they are shifting spending from TV subscriptions to device purchases.

It might be that iPad ownership and demand for multichannel video services are correlated behaviors, but that the iPad purchase decision is not directly related to the lower evaluation of TV subscriptions. In other words, most iPad owners might be people who for other reasons have a lower view of the value of multichannel video.

Or, one might conclude that the iPad is having a real impact on the linear video market, allowing people to more easily drop their multichannel TV service and consume their video online. No matter which scenario makes most sense, all the potential explanations would seem to be negative for linear video.

iPad Users and Intenders More Likely to “Cut the Cord”

Charter to Levy Usage Caps

It appears Charter Communications broadband access customers will start seeing usage caps in December 2010. Subscribers to Charter Communications "Lite" and "Express" services will be capped at 100 GBytes of usage per month.

Subscribers to the "Plus" and "Max" services will be capped at 250 GBytes per month.
Subscribers to the "Ultra60" service will be capped at 500 GBytes per month.

Charter will not charge overage fees for those who exceed the caps, but their accounts may be suspended.

Charter Follows Comcast With Broadband Usage Caps: Tech News

Yahoo: 20% Layoff Rumors

Yahoo is rumored to be preparing for a lay off of 20 percent of its total staff.

Yahoos Freaking Out Over 20% Layoff Rumors

Mossberg on Samsung Galaxy Tab

Internet Commerce Seems to Boost TV Shopping

Rather than hurting home shopping channels, the Internet has actually helped make consumers more willing to buy merchandise without first seeing or touching it in a store, says Barton Crockett, senior analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, who covers the space. 'If you're comfortable buying online, you'll be comfortable buying stuff delivered to you by a TV shopping network,' says Mr. Crockett.

We might have predicted the reverse state of affairs, with Internet shopping cannibalizing TV-based shopping activity.

The Golden Age of TV Shopping - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Broadband Access is About More Than "Home"

It's always difficult to assess the state of broadband access, in the United States or anywhere else, when multiple forms of access are available. In Austria, for example, wireless increasingly seems to be preferred for broadband access. In the United States, it might be worth noting that people access the Internet, using broadband, in all sorts of ways beyond the connections they use at home.

Fully 74 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by Connect South Carolina indicate they use broadband at home. But an additional 33 percent also report they use it at work, while 16 percent say they use broadband provided by a public library.

About 12 percent say they use broadband at someone else's home, seven percent, five percent at schools, three percent at hotels, two percent at airports and two percent at community centers.

More broadband use at home, virtually everybody would agree, is a good thing. The point is that people already seem to be using broadband in a variety of ways that suggest a narrow focus only on at-home broadband does not tell the whole story. About 54 percent of respondents say they use broadband at some location other the home.

About four percent of respondents say they use mobile broadband for their notebook computers or PCs, about 20 percent say they have mobile broadband on their smartphones, while five percent say they have both smartphone broadband and a separate PC access subscription.

view the full results here

Forrester Finds Most Users Read, Listen or Watch, Don't Post

Though use of social networking is darn near universal these days, Forrester Research continues to find that the percentage of social media and social networking users who actually create content has not grown, and in fact, might be shrinking. "Behaviors that require creating content have seen no substantial growth in adoption since 2009; in fact, some behaviors have experienced attrition,” says Augie Ray, Forrester Research analyst.

More than 80 percent of online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month, Forrester Research has said. But most users do not actively create content. In some studies, Forrester has found that 24 percent of online users create content, while 37 percent post responses.

Some 51 percent maintain personal profiles, while 73 percent of online users read blogs, watch online videos or listen to podcasts.

Among online users 35 or younger, social networking is nearly universal, with 90 percent participating in some way. Among those 55 and over, about 66 percent now are participating.

Whether the failure to "contribute content" is a problem or not is a matter of opinion. Not every person who uses social media might find content creation appealing. In and of itself, some of us would not consider that a "problem." To use the older analogy, lots of people read books. Not many write them. These days, the web makes self publishing very easy. But tools do not necessarily change propensity to "create."

Forrester also finds a growing user concern about privacy issues, which might or might not be related to the desire and willingness to create content.

read more here

Samsung Galaxy Tab Gets WSJ App

E-book 4readers and tablet devices fascinate print publishers and print advertisers for obvious reasons. The devices offer a potential way to protect or advance the former print content business, using a display that complements the typical newspaper or magazine layout and format, while offering a bigger canvas for display advertising as well.

It remains to be seen how well paywalls work, and if they do, for which publishers they will work. To date, the Wall Street Journal has been the salient example of a print product with enough uniqueness to sustain a profitable "paywall" version online.

But other publications will start to erect their own paywalls, so we'll get a better test of how "extensible" that model might be.

The new Samsung Galaxy Tab, though, has a new wrinkle, supporting an Android app that delivers the Wall Street Journal digital edition app will download the Digital Edition of the WSJ on the tablet "at about the same time that the physical edition is being delivered to readers."

The app subscription is $3.99 per week. You might ask what the difference is between the existing online product and the app, and the answer is that the app provides a download, while the existing online product provides a more-traditional web browser experience. Each user will be the judge of which format provides a better experience.

Samsung Galaxy Tab to be first Android device to feature WSJ app - Phone Arena

How Hollywood Uses Augmented Reality

Augmented reality now is being used by content companies to enrich user interaction with content promoting movies.

How Hollywood is fueling the adoption of augmented reality | Econsultancy

Android Number 2 Smartphone in Third Quarter

Android accounted for 25.5 percent of worldwide smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2010, making it the number-two operating system. It was particularly dominant in North America.

The third quarter of 2010 produced record sales of more than 81 million communication devices based on open operating systems (smartphones).

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grew 35 Percent in Third Quarter 2010; Smartphone Sales Increased 96 Percent

BlackBerry PlayBook will get an under $500 price

BlackBerry PlayBook will get an under $500 price tag - Phone Arena: BlackBerry's 'professional tablet', the PlayBook, will get a price tag of under $500 at its launch in Q1 of 2011.

The 7-inch tablet at that price would undersell the $599 3G Galaxy Tab by Samsung.

BlackBerry is aiming to release the tablet in the first quarter of 2011 in North America through retail stores like Target and Best Buy on one hand and service providers on the other. Globally, the PlayBook will be made available in Q2 of 2011.

Windows Phone 7 Goes on Sale in the United States

Although consumers love their phones, there is growing annoyance with the distracted behaviors people exhibit while their heads are buried in their phones, Microsoft argues.
Most U.S. adults indicate they have witnessed examples of bad mobile phone behavior, yet relatively few have admitted to engaging in such behavior themselves, a study suggests.
Seventy-two percent identified bad mobile phone behavior as one of their top 10 pet peeves, but only 18 percent of mobile phone owners admit they are guilty of displaying such behavior.
Forty-nine percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 have tripped or walked into something while walking and texting or e-mailing on their mobile phone.

Windows Phone 7 Goes on Sale in the United States