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Time is running out to register for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 ! It's going to be the premier place to explore the latest mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. And since it's an unconference, you'll be able to analyze, think and create the future of mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! Sign up now. How do you like your events guide? You can import individual events into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file, or even view it as a world map . Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 29 April 2010: San Francisco, California Green:Net 2010 Calling Internet entrepreneurs! A Greentech conference for you. From Vinod Khosla and Steve Jurvetson to Jerry Brown and Bill Gross, our speakers at Green:Net 2010 will be focused on one thing: how the Internet and IT can be leveraged to save the planet. Could this be the theme of your next startup? Attendees will gain insight into the huge new technology markets that are about to be unleashed. What is Green:Net ? Green:Net is where green and IT meet. While alternative energy gets a lot of attention at most green conferences, only the The GigaOM Network's Green:Net offers a specific point of view on how the computing and Internet technologies will provide the tools needed to fight climate change. Subscribers of ReadWriteWeb click here to buy your limited supply $150-off ticket. 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration . 3 – 6 May 2010: San Francisco, California Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco brings together the designers, developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketing professionals, product managers, and business strategists - from startups to enterprises - that are building the next-generation Web. Along with a vibrant Expo Hall and plenty of networking opportunities, four main conference tracks cover a spectrum of Web 2.0 topics from business strategy to Web design, user experience, developer hacks, community building, real-time, mobile, cloud computing, user-generated content, and more. Featured speakers include Chris Anderson, Ben Huh, Charlene Li, Kevin Lynch, Hilary Mason, and Brad Stone. Register today . 6 – 7 2010: San Francisco, California Social Gaming Summit
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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 24 April 2010
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Last week, we wrote about the art of the elevator pitch , that short and hopefully impactful speech one should be prepared to give. But face-to-face interactions aren't always possible, and even though they may be preferable, it's important to practice the written form of the pitch as well. Investors (and tech bloggers, I would add) are inundated with emails. As with an elevator speech, you need to craft your email to attract and hold your reader's attention. Here are a few tips. Sponsor 1. The subject line matters. Don't leave this blank, and don't write something vague like "introduction" or "pitch" or "idea" in the subject line. At least include your company name, but better yet include something that makes the email seem interesting to read. 2. Introduce yourself. Personalized emails go a lot farther than those sent from the marketing department. While attachments like resumes and press releases are sometimes appropriate, you should give a quick introduction to yourself at the beginning of an email. Your introduction should include the key details: who you are and why the recipient should know you. 3. Know your audience. Demonstrate some evidence in your email that you know who the recipient is. Make sure you are targeting the right person with the right message. 4. Pictures say a thousand words. If possible, include images and videos. These can help the recipient quickly assess your product or service. Be respectful of file size limitations. 5. Make it easy to reach you. Every email should contain a signature. And every signature should include all the possible ways to reach you: phone number, email address, Twitter account, Skype name, and so on. You need to be a click away. 6. Make it happen. Don't just send emails with vague discussion about potential follow-up. Propose a follow-up. Arrange a meeting time and place. As with the elevator speech, it is important to be yourself. Remember to be respectful, even though the interaction isn't "in person." Discuss
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The Art of the Email Pitch
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While services like Gowalla and Foursquare still haven't become household names outside of the early adopter market yet, the technology behind these apps is now solidly mainstream. According to a new survey by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), about two thirds of iPhone owners now user location services at least once a week. Taking all cell phone users into account, 22% of adults between 25 and 34 use location services at least once a week, mostly to locate nearby points of interests, shops and services. Sponsor Focus: Location-Based Apps and Advertising The survey also asked users how likely they are to take action on location-based advertising on their mobile devices. According to the MMA, about half of those users who noticed ads in location-based apps took some action. On the other hand, only about 37% of respondents who noticed ads while sending or receiving text messages took any action based on these commercial messages. For those we noticed ads while browsing the web, this number was only 28% (which still seems rather high to us). Given that most people use location-based apps when they are already looking for a certain store or product, it makes sense that these users are more likely to respond to ads than people who are just browsing the web. Are Users Really Willing to Let Apps Track Them Passively in Return for Discounts? "Consumers are interested in allowing their phone to automatically share their location in exchange for perks, such as free use of mobile applications and mobile coupons." Interestingly, the MMA survey also notes that "consumers are interested in allowing their phone to automatically share their location in exchange for perks, such as free use of mobile applications and mobile coupons." While mobile coupons and other perks are definitely interesting to consumers, passive location services that track consumers in return for discounts have never really been tested in the wild. These services may sound good on paper, but the privacy implications of using these apps are hard to neglect and it remains to be seen if users are actually willing to give up their privacy in return for a 10% discount at Crate and Barrel. Chances are that we will see more of these passive tracking services once the iPhone 4 operating system arrives later this year. The current generation of the iPhone's operating system doesn't allow apps to run in the background and track your location, but this will be possible in the next version of the iPhone OS. Discuss
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Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week
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Today, we got the chance to sit down with Aprimo, an on-demand marketing automation company that has built their software business around scaling their own cloud infrastructure with VMware vCenter . Aprimo has optimized its offerings to scale with customer growth and leverage best-in-class hardware to match innovation in the software layers it develops. In this discussion, we found less need for discussing private vs. public cloud. Instead, we found more focus on performance and speed-to-market as key drivers for moving a virtualization strategy into personal cloud infrastructure reality. Sponsor The story of Aprimo starts with virtualization - and has led to the company defining the boundaries of its cloud offering and product architecture around the benefits of scaling resources on demand. Aprimo uses a Microsoft .Net three-tier architecture with MSSQL in the back-end. All of the three tiers (front-end, business logic, database) run in virtual containers that are monitored with vCenter. Performance is the question that Aprimo studied when bringing vendors on board. The company has relationships with 3Com, Cisco, and HP for the three key parts of the technology stack. vCenter joins these offerings together and offers the company quick response to new customer requests. Like many business, marketing can come in waves and this architecture is designed to scale around the unknown and to be agile enough to support the marketing calendar. Here is a diagram showing the core services VMware vCenter is focused on: We had the chance to explore the customer experience of build-your-own-cloud with John Gilmartin, Director of Product Marketing at VMware. We asked him if VMware sells clouds, or if instead its tool build clouds. What we found is that it is a bit of both. Like a data center itself, or a complex application, building your own cloud can be a multi-faceted event. Customers are using vCenter as a building block to manage the resources and enabling automation around business processes. By thinking of automation as the line in the sand between virtualization and cloud, we can easily see how connecting business processes focuses on the best place in harnessing on-demand resources for business benefit. Some of the areas of focus we the Aprimo team took on as the company to optimize its virtual resources into its cloud. Design and optimization of resource pools Database tier optimization and support new dynamic customer scaling Designing for performance with vendor evaluations Leveraging best practices from VMware on tuning and finding bottlenecks Processes for spinning up new users automatically across all resources Out of these focus areas, we found database scaling the most interesting to consider. It seems clear that as build-your-own-clouds grow, database performance, concurrency, and process integration are ripe for further optimization. What we learned from Aprimo and VMware vCenter is that launching a cloud infrastructure is a combination of virtualizing computing resources and designing the automation of the right business and technical processes. Reaching the stage of an effective cloud depends on how the team thinks about connecting software, sales, and infrastructure together as a process. Making a commitment to your own cloud can bring a company together - from sales manager to developer. This join can position an organization to win customers and grow the business due to an increase in the end to end agility of the organization. Is your business ready to cook up a cloud recipe of your own? Discuss
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One Approach to Growth: Build Your Own Cloud with vCenter in the Middle
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At the most recent Apple keynote , Steve Jobs announced Apple's upcoming advertising platform called iAd . Included as a part of the OS 4.0 update, the mobile operating system upgrade due out for iPhone this summer and iPad later this fall, the iAd system aims, in its very Apple-ly way, to make mobile advertisements "delightful," meaning ads worth clicking on, engaging with and viewing. What Jobs didn't mention, though, is how Apple plans to give iAd its head start: by kicking out the competing analytics and advertising platforms now thriving in nearly every iPhone app today. Or so it seems. Sponsor Developer Reports App Store Rejection Due to Analytics Inclusion Last week, technology news blog VentureBeat caught wind of a story where Apple had rejected an iPhone application because it, according to the email sent to the developer, "is not appropriate for applications to gather user analytics." Not appropriate, you may ask? Since when? Apparently since Apple released their updated iPhone Developer Agreement. Alongside the SDK 4 beta , made available shortly after the announcement in early April, the developer contract was updated, too. Specifically, the clause in question, section 3.3.9, reads, in part (more here ): Notwithstanding anything else in this Agreement, Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third party without Apple's prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited. To date, the changes detailed in this clause have been overshadowed by the one preceding it - in Section 3.3.1, Apple banned the use of cross-compiler tools for building iPhone applications, like the one Adobe was just about to ship , for example. But in the long run, it's Section 3.3.9 that may have more impact on the industry as a whole. "FEAR" You may have not heard too much about this change because no one actually knows what's going on thanks to Apple's par-for-the-course policy of refusing to clarify its meaning. Plus, the companies who may be the most heavily affected by an analytics ban - services like Flurry , MediaLets , Motally , Localytics , and SimpleGeo , to name a few - don't want to talk about it. On record that is. But after a dozen or so phone calls and emails, we're starting to see a picture forming and it can be summed up in one word: FEAR . "Nobody wants to be the canary in the coal mine," one source told us, referring to the radio silence we're getting from these companies when you would have otherwise expected to hear outcry, or perhaps even anti-competitive claims. Some companies, off-record, say they are afraid to complain . If they do, they could be the next to be banned. Another source reported that a number of their company's clients weren't submitting updates to the iTunes Application Store because they were worried that the updates, with the analytics included of course, would be rejected. Instead, the clients are leaving their older applications in place since it doesn't appear that Apple is going back through all the current apps and booting out those that already include analytics within them. "Maybe the older apps are grandfathered in?" they wondered aloud. The fact that no one knows, not even the big name, big box retailer that sits at the top of the latter's client list, is a testament to how Apple likes to do business. Here's the agreement, read it, sign it...and that's the extent of the communication. As to those who did manage to get someone from Apple to talk about it? The answer was simply: "read the agreement." But if Apple holds true to what's written there, it sounds like it could spell doom for mobile analytics and ad firms, especially the small-time players beloved by independent developers. iAd, Anti-Competitive? What no one will say - again, on record, that is - is that the changes have a whiff of anti-competitive behavior to them. The issue at hand: Apple is preparing to launch iAd, an advertising platform based on the newly-acquired Quattro Wireless technology, a company that was the second choice for Apple after the Admob deal fell through. "We tried to buy AdMob, but Google snatched them up because they didn't want us to have them," Steve Jobs said during the April keynote. "So we bought another smaller company, Quattro. But we're babes in the woods." But these "babes" are toting means guns, some say. A couple companies see the language in section 3.3.9 as a direct shot at AdMob in the same way that the changes in 3.3.1 were a shot at Adobe. That is, instead of allowing Google to get its mobile advertisements onto the iPhone, Apple can keep them out via the new analytics/ad ban. Whether or not that's the case is certainly up for debate. But considering that the Google/AdMob deal is still being researched by U.S. antitrust enforcers, regulators aware of the issue. Word has it that Google even pointed it out to the FTC, just in case. Continue Reading: Next page, "A Second Opinion" A Second Opinion: Privacy Concerns Others, however, say these changes aren't really about analytics, ads and anti-competitive behavior as much as they are about privacy concerns. In speaking with Alan Chapell, chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association Privacy Committee and whose firm advises companies on privacy and data strategy, the changes to Apple's agreement have to do more with consumer privacy than anything else. With language that refers to "geo-location" and targeted advertising, a good bit of Section 3.3.9 is about how location-based applications should behave. With the rise of location-based services especially and location-based social tools like Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla, and others, privacy is at the forefront of everyone's minds these days. ( Including ours ). There are no standards for location based data yet, Chapell explains. No rules about how such data should be used, retained, shared and so on. In addition, Apple is under heavy pressure from regulators to protect the privacy of its customers. And if the third-party analytics providers do something which comprises that privacy, it will be Apple that gets in trouble. "This debate is about privacy and innovation," Chapell notes, "and finding a balance between the two." Unfortunately, even if Apple chooses never to enforce the new rules, explains Chapell, the changes will have an indirect impact on innovation in this area. The next round of ad networks, analytics providers and other in-app data-sharing tools will be less likely to be funded. Not Just Funding at Risk... These changes won't just affect the funding of services like those noted above, though, they could affect how services are developed for the iPhone. Take for example, Xtify , a location-triggered geo-messaging system now available for Android ( previous coverage ). The company's VP of Business Development, Joshua Schmiffman, says they're still figuring out what this all means, but they will have some location-triggered functionality for the iPhone. "We are going to try," he says, "but it may not be exactly 'real time.'" That is, if it ever comes to the iPhone at all. Backup Plans: 1st-Party Analytics, "Trust in Apple" As for Localytics , a small-time analytics provider for mobile apps, the decision is to focus more on the company's soon-to-launch enterprise solution. The upcoming offering will allow application publishers to directly collect and process app analytics data, without going through a 3rd party. Ashish Chordia, CEO and Founder of AppDiscover , an iPhone application development and analytics company, is also generally unconcerned with the changes. "While the wording of the terms in section 3.3.9 is quite strict, Apple will not enforce this specific term," he writes in an email. "Enforcing this term would mean rejecting a huge number of apps. Moreover these analytic services are very important for a healthy market for free / ad-supported apps, so that there can be transparency behind the CPM / CPA pricing." On a call, he tells us that several of the company's analytics-enabled apps have made it into the App Store since the agreement was released. Essentially, Cordia believes that Apple will selectively enforce this restriction, but it won't affect applications like his. "Looking Forward to More Insights" Outside of public statements like those received from Flurry and Motally (the latter: "We've reached out to Apple for clarification and are looking forward for more insights into the policy."), the backchannel whispers are that this whole iAd thing is worrisome right now, but not deadly...at least, not yet. But when reading through the initial hands-on reviews of iAd, like the recent one from ad agency Hill Holiday which spoke of iAd's impressive granularity, there are concerns that Apple wants to now dominate where the third-party analytics providers once did. In the meantime, you can count us among those who are also "looking forward to more insights" from Apple. But we're not holding our breath. Image credits: Toy Story iAd, Hill Holiday ; Steve Jobs, gdgt Discuss
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Is Apple Booting iAd's Competition from the iPhone?
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