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Tomorrow, Motorola will announce that it plans to replace Google's location services on its Android phones with Skyhook 's location engine. By default, all Android devices currently use Google's own location services to determine a phone's location based on GPS data from the phone and the location of nearby Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. Skyhook, which pioneered this method to determine a device's location, made its name as the default location provider for Apple's iPhone and desktop operating systems. Adding Motorola to its partners will give Skyhook a strong foothold in the booming market for Android phones and applications. Sponsor Developers Won't Have to Change Anything The first Motorola devices with Skyhook's location services as the default will ship later this year. According to Skyhook, developers won't have to make any changes to their Android apps to work with Skyhook's location engine. Motorola will simply replace Google's libraries with Skyhook's Core Location services. As location becomes a more important part of a growing array of mobile apps, being able to quickly determine a phone's location even when inside and without a line of sight to the nearest GPS satellites becomes a necessity for developers. Skyhook, which launched in 2003, pioneered this system of using Wi-Fi access points to determine a device's location. Clearly, the engineers at Motorola felt that Skyhook's solution is currently superior to Google's services. Over the last few months, a number of the Android developers we talked to voiced frustration with the quality of Google's location services on Android. Indeed, some of the most popular location-based applications on Android like ShopSavvy and Flixster already use Skyhook's Android libraries instead of Google's built-in services. Discuss
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Android: Motorola Replaces Google's Location Engine With Skyhook
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If the future is all about touchscreen interfaces, then performance of the screen in registering where it's been touched is pretty important. International design firm Moto ran a robotic finger test on 6 leading touchscreen smart phones to see how well they registered a robot's loving touch. Some of the phones did remarkably poorly, like the BlackBerry Storm and the Motorola Droid. The iPhone, Google Nexus One and HTC Droid Eris all did quite well. Check out the video below to see the tests and marvel at the apparent differences between touchscreens and their performances. Sponsor Robot Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo . As Sadat Karim writes on Neowin , "Hope is not lost though, as Moto Labs concludes that they do expect these problems to be remedied in the future as touchscreens mature and gain further traction in the industry. Commitment and competition will ultimately deliver seamless touch experiences for all consumers over time, since phone makers are continuously perfecting their products." To see touchscreen hardware nerds duke it out over the test, check out the Moto Labs blog . How about you, readers? Have you felt the difference in performance across some of these handsets? See also: User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload Discuss
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Test Shows: iPhone Touchscreen Still the Best
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What a week for StatusNet , the open-source, microblogging service that serves as the foundation for i denti.ca , one of the first services to emerge as a focal player in the movement around the real-time Web. Last week, the company launched StatusNet Enterprise Network , a microblogging service with a support program for the corporate market. Initial customers include Motorola Corporation and Canonical Ltd. And yesterday, they announced a significant update that demonstrates they will be an open-source alternative to the proprietary microblogging services that cater to the enterprise. Sponsor StatusNet is an exception in the enterprise market. It's an open-source software project, started by members of the open source and wiki communities. The enterprise service is priced on an annual basis. It ranges in cost from $1,000 to $10,000 per year. Customers get access to different levels of service based on package they choose to purchase. For example, at the $1,000 level package, the service includes access to the forums. It includes email support and response time within one day. A $10,000 package includes six hours of best practice consulting and response within one hour to support requests. Open-source software is proving to be a winner in the enterprise. As we noted earlier this week , a number of enterprise providers have committed developer communities. Alfresco Software is a shining example. According to Matt Asay , the company has grown every quarter since its launch in 2005, "with its last quarter seeing a 30-percent quarter-over-quarter increase on an already large base." With a committed developer community, an open-source enterprise provider can show significant improvements in its product. Today, StatusNet released StatusNet 0.9.0 , the latest version of its software, representing eight month of development by the StatusNet developer community. The feature list scrolls down the page. It includes leading edge support for OStatus , the new distributed status update standard based on PubSubHubbub , Salmon , Webfinger , and Activity Streams . Significant: StatusNet now has no fixed content size. "Notice size is configurable, from 1 to unlimited number of characters. Default is still 140!" This could possibly mean that the service can be similar to Tumblr or Posterous that fits into the enterprise. Other updates include: Support for location using the Geolocation API. Support for OAuth authentication in the Twitter API. An authentication plugin for LDAP servers. Support for Facebook Connect We expect that StatusNet Enterprise will rise fast as a contender in the enterprise market. It's extensible, has the features that the enterprise customer wants and it has a strong developer community. That's a winning combination that makes StatuNet a potential open-source star in the enterprise. Discuss
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Will StatusNet Be Another Open-Source Star in the Enterprise?
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To all those companies and developers focused exclusively on iPhone apps: Watch your back. The Android platform is catching up, and none too slowly. As Android's growth continues to explode since the release of the Droid, only the most foolish of app shops are not planning to expand beyond Apple's walled garden. One developer, in fact, wrote that his app, which was showing modest, double-digit daily sales late last year, now reports that his app is making $13,000 a month. When that kind of opportunity exists for a single app, why would developers put all their eggs in one basket, a.k.a. the "Jesus phone"? Sponsor A few weeks ago, we told you, "As of December 2009 4 percent of all smartphone owners now use a phone running some version of the Android OS. That's an increase of 200 percent since the previous survey released in September. "Respondents were also asked about their plans to purchase a smartphone in the future. Among those who planned to purchase within the next 90 days, 21 percent said they would now choose Android." It's this growth that helped fuel the success of Eddie Kim's app, Car Locator. In a blog post today, the developer revealed that his Android app "started as a little side-project while I was vacationing with my family, turned into a few extra bucks for lunch money every day has continued its upward trend and is now beyond my wildest fantasy of what could have been possible. " Car Locator is a pretty simple application: Users save their location when they park their cars, and the app navigates them back to their cars later. The app was available in free and paid versions with varying feature sets. The paid version originally sold for $1.99, and the price was later increased to $3.99. Kim has done no marketing for the app, but it did win third place in Google's Android Developer Challenge 2 . When Motorola's Droid was released, Kim saw his first major spike in sales: "In the first 2 months, the app saw sales of about $5-6/day. Nothing too fancy," he wrote . "But starting November 7, there's been a significant uptick in sales, peaking on November 9, where the app saw $44 in sales. Sales have since settled to about $20/day, but it's probably too early to tell if this will hold." Little did Kim realize that his sales had just begun. To date, the free app has been downloaded 70,000 times, with paid app sales at about 10 percent of that figure. "The application was netting an average of about $80-$100/day, until it became a featured app on the Marketplace. Since then, sales have been phenomenal, netting an average of $435/day, with a one day record of $772 on Valentine's Day. Too bad I didn't have a Valentine's date this year - we would've gone somewhere real special!" (Catch that, ladies?) Kim also stands by the Android platform, saying, "Some may be quick to point out that a featured Android application is only able to net $400/day, while top iPhone apps make thousands However, I still think that Android is only a fraction of what it will eventually become . Each release of a new Android handset gets me excited, as it means a wider reach for the Marketplace." Folks, if you've been longing for a much-hyped app to make its way to the Android Market, forward this article to the developers and marketers in charge. There's money to be made there, and the userbase is only getting bigger. Discuss
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Watch Out, iPhone Devs: One-Man Android App Nets $13K Monthly
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The Guidewire Group just launched its Innovate!100 competition to highlight the most promising companies of the year. Early-stage startups are encouraged to submit applications and compete in one of 22 pitch slam events across Europe and North America. The winners will receive more than $2 million dollars in development services and consulting. In addition to being an international competition, one of the things that makes this contest different from other events is the fact that shortlisted companies' assessments will be made public. ReadWriteWeb caught up with former DEMO producer and Guidewire Group President Mike Sigal to find out why he's sharing his company's secret sauce through something called the G/Score . Sponsor Contrary to popular belief, the G/Score is not a rating of your startup's street smarts. The score is the Guidewire Group's attempt to rate your company across a variety of categories and help you improve your prospects. The company's assessors include VCs, journalists, economic development strategists and executives from companies like Microsoft, Motorola and Research in Motion. Scores are assigned to demystify what investors, media and partners yearn to discover - namely, are you a fit? Says Sigal, "Investors have a fiduciary duty and it's not our place to give investment advice. What we're doing is creating a resource to highlight companies and make them accessible to the greater community... The response from entrepreneurs is that fundamentally, if it means that we'll save them time by connecting them with the right people, they're all for it." While the top company scores will be made public for the Innovate!100 Program, entrepreneurs who choose to work with Guidewire on subsequent G/Scores have the option to keep their scores private and apply for re-scoring after correcting their weaknesses. Because all pitch slam finalists will be judged using the scorecard, those applying should consider the following questions as they pertain to the Guidewire methodology: Business This part of the G/Score is all about the nature of your business idea. 1. Concept: Is there a need for your product? Is it a large enough lead to warrant action? Can you prove this need? 2. Market: How many people does your product impact? Do you have a chance to be potentially disruptive to market leaders? 3. Competition: Who else is competing for your market's attention? (Your market can't be everyone in the entire world, but Sigal explains that online banking software providers might see cheque books as a competitor.) Execution This section is all about reality, not projections. Here you are expected to give a picture of your everyday business. 1. Business: How many users, partners and major stakeholders do you currently have? What is your adoption rate amongst them? 2. Product: Does your product exist or is it just an idea? If it does exist, do you have user traction? If you were to stop providing a service today, would your customers have noticeably worse lives? Team Having a team of famous second-time entrepreneurs is great, but not if you've only got engineers. Have you got a well-rounded team of individuals who can fulfill the responsibilities of running a successful business? Business Model A revenue stream is not a business model unless it has been proven through a repeatable process. In his own words, Sigal says, "This section is all about the Benjamins. Are you making money and can you continue to make money over time?" Funding Are you self-funded, seed funded and/or VC funded from $2.5 million to more than $25 million dollars? To apply for one of the Innovate!100 Pitch Slam events go to Innovate100.com/program . Registration for the program is $75 dollars USD and includes 2 pitch slam registrations, access to online pitch training and inclusion in the program promotions. European entrepreneurs should start applying now as the first event kicks off in Barcelona on March 1st. Discuss
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Innovate100: Enter to Be The World's Most Promising Startup
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