Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

We will once again tackle the topic of polyglot versus best of breed PaaS at VentureBeat’s CloudBeat conference in a few weeks, a topic that only touches a sliver of how PaaS should be talked about.

Unfortunately, PaaS, as defined and delivered by most, has generally been a fisherman’s tale; a story of over promise and under-deliver. If the industry faces down a few tough topics, PaaS can be back on track with a truly transformative vision.

Here are three topics the panel won’t have time to cover, but should:

The next five years will be shaped by private, not public PaaS

Surely, anyone reading this is saying “Are you kidding? Every developer I know uses public PaaS and it’s the future!” While this might be true for independent developers, this is not true for professional developers in the enterprise. The fact is, custom application workloads running inside enterprise datacenters are not easy targets for moving to public PaaS. They are mired in regulatory and security concerns, have capabilities hard-coded for their enterprise environments, and require physical proximity to massive datasets.

This puts enterprises in the tough spot of having to “pass on PaaS” for a huge number of their workloads. Lucky for them, Private PaaS gives enterprises the same agile operating model as public PaaS, but without the adoption hurdles. This will drive workloads to PaaS, and help all of us. PaaS environments are starting to focus on hybrid cloud outcomes, which means these workloads, can then “migrate” from private resources to public ones through the PaaS. The result is that private PaaS is the easy to adopt, high return option that will ultimately drive public PaaS adoption by acting as the logical layer that pushes workloads to public environments.

PaaS as we know it is dead: cloud architecture “enabling” platforms will rule

To date, PaaS has been a story focused on easing the deployment and management burdens of applications. Essentially, standing up “old” stacks in an abstract way thereby making easier for developers to get their apps deployed and scaled since these distracting workflows are commoditized.

While valuable, this is a tactical view of the cloud. Cloud has driven a fundamental change in how applications are written and architected – so much so that we now refer to “cloud applications” as a category.

What is a cloud application? Typically, it’s any application that is some combination of multi-tenant, mobile, distributed, or web-scale. These “architecture patterns” are ridiculously hard to build. What’s worse is that *most* PaaS’ (there are some, but not many) do absolutely nothing to help developers build cloud applications. Kind of ironic that cloud architected platforms don’t help developers build cloud apps, isn’t it?

Some vendors with strategic vision, however, are reshaping the landscape with PaaS offerings that can enhance web and SOA applications and “inject cloud DNA” into those applications. The result? Developers can build next generation application architectures – like multi-tenant architectures that salesforce.com put on the map – with little to no effort or skillset change. These “cloud architecture enabling platforms” will define a new gold standard in PaaS, killing off any technologies whose “vision” is to deploy applications.

Near term, PaaS will end up being a cost cutting war

A corollary to my point above is that PaaS vendors have lost site of a bigger vision for cloud platforms and will soon find themselves competing on price.

Most PaaS technologies will converge on common, deployment oriented feature sets where incremental increases in “how fast something deployed” will be the biggest differentiating factor. As a result of the lack of unique differentiation, price cuts will ensue. This is a direct reflection of a near sighted view of the market, and if vendors don’t focus on moving PaaS from deployment to next generation application development, they’ll find themselves in an unfortunate business model.

The crew on the PaaS panel at CloudBeat has outlined a great discussion, but if we had 30 more minutes, I’d attack these larger topics in the market. As PaaS spending continues to grow, taking the aforementioned challenges head-on will guarantee that PaaS becomes the transformative layer it was intended to be.

Sinclair Schuller is the CEO and Co-Founder of Apprenda.

He has deployed more than a dozen, paying enterprise private PaaS solutions, just not “deployed” small apps. Sinclair therefore has a unique perspective on what enterprises are considering when look at next gen apps and modernizing existing app portfolios and how PaaS (public, private, hybrid) need to build, support AND deploy these complex app architectures.

Web services diagram: Shutterstock

So you’ve got an idea for a “big data” application, but building it seems to be a nightmarish prospect.

A startup called Continuuity, which raised $10 million today, has struck a chord with developers who are struggling to build big data apps on top of Hadoop. Continuuity promises to make it easier by offering a suite of tools that extend across the various stages of software development from “prototype to production.”

In a nutshell, the company makes it easier to build, scale, and deploy Hadoop apps both in and outside the firewall. Continuuity’s AppFabric hosting platform is built on top of Hadoop and related technologies.

The founding team of seven engineers had previously built Hadoop and HBase (Hadoop’s NoSQL database) deployments at technology giants like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook.

This is one of several young companies that claim to unlock Hadoop’s untapped potential. For instance, Platfora recently launched a product to help its users “make Hadoop amazing” by crunching raw data and turning it into actionable business insights.

Hadoop is viewed as an unruly problem child in certain traditional circles and has been criticized for failing to integrate well with traditional business intelligence (BI) applications.

“Continuuity is poised to disrupt the market by merging big data and cloud to introduce a new application development opportunity for all developers,” said Mike Dauber, Principal at Battery Ventures, the firm that took part in the funding. He praised Continuuity for its lofty mission to “become the center of gravity for the Big Data application development ecosystem.”

In addition to Battery Ventures, investors in the round included Ignition Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Data Collective, and Amplify Partners. Battery Ventures’  Roger Lee will be joining Continuuity’s board. The Silicon Valley-based startup closed a sizable $2.5 million seed round in January and has been focused on building out the product ever since. With this infusion of capital, the company will roll out an aggressive go-to-market strategy and expand its team of developers.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Bridging clouds used to be the domain of rainbows and magic carpets. Now with the proliferation of cloud applications, technology companies are taking on this lofty task. A group of 14 European partners have banded together with €8.4 million to launch a major research initiative called PaaSage.

The goal is to develop an open and integrated platform to support the lifecycle management of cloud applications. Cloud computing has changed the IT industry by making software development more efficient, but according to this consortium, the available platforms and APIs are insufficient.

Paasage’s approach will be to provide an Integrated Development Environment that gives developers a greater ability to build applications. The objectives are:

• 1. To contribute to the design and standardisation of an open, powerful, and expressive modelling language for Cloud-independent modelling of enterprise systems with the desired preferences and constraints, focusing on architectural styles and characteristics of the Cloud computing paradigm.
• 2. To provide an intelligent Integrated Development Environment (IDE) supporting the modelling language and supporting the developer in the task of optimising the application.
• 3. To provide mappers and engines that allow a modelled Cloud application to be deployed and executed in a distributed environment across multiple heterogeneous Cloud providers. The execution will thereby observe the specified execution characteristics and adjust itself accordingly at run-time.
• 4. To define metadata relevant for Cloud services, and provide mechanisms to acquire the metadata and performance indicators from running applications and to reuse the historical metadata available on the services in the application design and deployment.

“PaaSage will provide the relevant means to significantly improve programmability, usability and performance of Clouds beyond current state of the art approaches,” said scientific coordinator Keith G Jeffery.

The intended impact is to support developer throughout the full application lifecycle by reducing cost, avoiding lock-ins with one provider, allowing transparent use of heterogeneous infrastructures, increasing the knowledge of best practices, simplifying management of services and infrastructures, and enabling integrations and deployment.

The project  is supported by the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics. Of the €8.4m, €6.3 comes from the European Union. Flexiant, a company which provides cloud orchestration software, has joined the initiative along with these organizations. Read the press release. 

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

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This is a guest post by entrepreneur, Wendy Lea

Last month, as Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference took over downtown San Francisco, it was clear that company has mobilized its customers and partners into becoming an army of allies.

It’s easy to see that one critical element of the company’s cloud empire has been partnerships, whether it’s with heavy hitters like Deloitte and Accenture or smaller but essential niche tools like Docusign. However, for the aspirational startup and young companies watching, it’s the success that Salesforce had with those smaller tools in AppExchange that’s most intriguing.

Many of these companies have identified app marketplace partnerships as the ticket to growth. What they don’t all realize is that while there’s an undeniable advantage to standing on the shoulder of a giant, it takes more than an icon to make a partnership truly successful.

Of course, partnerships and marketplace visibility helps raise awareness, but that alone will not drive growth. Having a clear strategy and tactics is where many companies fall short.

Don’t just ask, “how fast can we get to the app store?” 

With this singular thought, they rush around, scheduling a flurry of meetings, getting permission to use a logo on a website, putting out joint press releases — all things that count toward partnership metrics but don’t really lead to any substantial benefit for the customers.

To get the results that matter, you have to ask yourself some initial questions upfront, before you even start the search for the right partners.

If you can answer these questions honestly, you’ll be on track to form a marketplace partnership that actually increases your revenue by opening up new markets, adds necessary depth to your product. Once in the app marketplace a persistent effort to cultivate reviews, update content, and enhance the product offering is required to sustain momentum and grow the partnership as well as achieve results with existing and new customers.

What’s your mission?

Are you investing in an app marketplace strategy in order to acquire new customers or sell to the ones you already have? It is possible to do both but having clarity of purpose is necessary in order to invest your resources for maximum impact.

Do you have the right Biz Dev people?

Business development is quite often a dumping ground for smart people who don’t fit in other parts of the organization, however just having smart people with a title does not make for a successful business function.

Relationships are hard and good relationships make for good business so when you are staffing a business development function you must ask yourself if you are hiring people that you would sit across the table from, people who carry with them the professional gravitas of being able to get something done.

Have you listened to your customers to understand the limitations of your product?

There are core product features and there are nice to haves that in the eyes of customers are must have. Both are important but quite often the latter can be accomplished through complimentary product offerings that do not require diverting core engineering resources from strategic product roadmap and maintenance requirements.

Can you each bring value?

In every business development discussion with a partner there should be a frank and open conversation about the product gaps that each company can fill. If a business relationship is based entirely on the limitations of one side’s product offering the result will be a relationship that is exclusively transactional in nature.

How will you collaborate?

Location and time matter, if a prospective partner is not aligned with how you company views “market time” then the result will be frustration. If your partner is remote you will have to have a strategy for how best to work around joint project and campaign work, including a cadence for status and check-in to surface issues and support each other’s work.

Are you prepared to divest control?

Trust is a key ingredient in any partnership and the central element in trust is a belief that each party will do what they say to support the relationship. Trust in your partner means letting go of the reflex for command and control, it also means accepting that there are things that your partner is good at which you are not, otherwise you would not be working with them in the first place.

Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction, a social business platform that helps companies engage their customers through open and transparent conversations that increase customer satisfaction, product insight and enhance customer loyalty.

Wendy founded The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, strategic advisor, and board member for a long list of start-up companies.

Follow her on Twitter at @WendySLea

Top image via Shutterstock

Two months into an experiment that caters to the ideals of developers and consumers alike, the social platform App.net has revealed the particulars of how it plans to create incentives for the creation of top-notch applications.

App.net is a social network and framework that borrows the concept of the status update but uses it for good, its creator Dalton Caldwell claims. On App.net, people pay an annual fee of $50 for the right to post, and developers purchase the rights to create apps. App.net encourages both audiences to cultivate networks and experiences free of the ravaging effects of noisy, data-hungry advertisers. The philosophy is in direct opposition to the ad-based, occasionally developer-hostile models employed Twitter and Facebook.

Thursday, the startup, which is backed by its believers, shared more of its plan for fostering a superior platform by introducing a developer incentive program that rewards app-makers with cash — at least $20,000 each month — for making apps that people love.

“We have spent a lot of time thinking about how to create a system that actually incents the creation of innovative, imaginative, and useful apps,” Caldwell said in a blog post. “With this in mind, we are implementing a system that is driven by direct feedback from members.”

The program, which commences October 1, will include an email survey sent to users each month. The survey will ask users to rate each of the applications they use, and App.net will use the ratings to generate a score for each app. An application’s score will also factor in usage statistics.

Participation in the program is optional for developers, but those that opt-in will be eligible for a percentage of the incentive pool should they score high enough.

“By way of example and not in limitation of the foregoing, if the combined score for all Applications in the Incentive Program is 100, the Incentive Payment for an Approved Developer with an Application score of 10 would equal $2,000 (or, 10/100 x $20,000),” the program documentation explains.

Caldwell, who would did not share the number of active App.net users, highlighted the early success of the platform and cited the growing collection of applications, in statement made to VentureBeat.

“Having a great suite of apps is our biggest priority,” he said. “That is why we are doing this initiative.”

Emerald city photo via Shutterstock

Your company’s IT department has the power to wipe personal data from your smartphone  – a responsibility it doesn’t want, and certainly never asked for.

Today, a San Francisco-based startup, MobileSpaces, has pulled in $3 million in first-round funding from Accel Partners to scale its technology that can keep employee’s personal data off-limits.

David Goldschlag, founder and CEO of MobileSpaces

“If you ever leave the enterprise, they reserve the right to your data,” said David Goldschlag (pictured, left), the company’s founder and chief executive, and the former vice president of mobile at McAfee. To prevent data disasters, it has developed a mobile workspace, which segments professional apps from personal ones.

This project has been brewing for several years. During his time at McAfee, the Internet security and virus protection provider, Goldschlag noticed that corporate IT teams were often given “too much visibility into their employees personal data.” There is a growing trend that has contributed to this problem: bring your own device (“BYOD”).

When we use devices like tablets and smartphones interchangeably in our professional and personal lives, it’s a huge headache for IT. They are under pressure to maintain centralized control over corporate data, including mobile apps and email, and to manage network security.

MobileSpace’s solution is simple. Using a UI marker (the tiny blue icon in the screenshot, left), employees can demarcate any of the applications used for work (company email, Salesforce, Yammer, and so on), thus enabling IT to safely gain access to that data.

“We are enabling the enterprise to comfortably let its apps run and coexist with personal apps,”  Goldschlag explained in an interview with VentureBeat.

To succeed, the company will need to overcome some stiff competition. Tech giant, VMware, has its own mobile virtualization offering, and there are a number of mobile device management (MDM) companies that are major players in the space. Goldschlag also counts Good Technology, a mobile security provider, as a key competitor.

As part of the financing, Richard Wong, an Accel partner, will join the company’s board.

Mobile security image via Shutterstock

Not satisfied with Apple’s updated privacy policies, members of a congressional subcommittee dedicated to consumer protection have gone directly to the makers of social iOS applications and are demanding answers on how these apps access personal data.

G.K. Butterfield and Henry Waxman, ranking members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sent inquiry letters Thursday to makers of 34 different social applications, including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Path, Pinterest, Socialcam, Foodspotting, and even Apple, which makes and distributes the Find My Friends location-based application.

The letters represent the congressmen’s third attempt to get to the bottom of a data privacy scandal involving many of today’s hottest social networking companies. The issue came to light after it was discovered that Path and many social applications access, transmit, and store personal data including address book information and photos. Butterfield and Waxman, with the expressed interest of wanting to protect consumers, have sent Apple two formal inquiries and are now routing around the gatekeeper to get to the heart of the matter.

The letters delivered Thursday are mostly identical in nature and include nine different questions designed to determine the exact types of information app makers collect from users, their policies governing collection and usage, their understanding of Apple’s policies, whether they transmit the data in question, and if they store that data (and for how long).

“We are writing to you because we want to better understand the information collection and use policies and practices of apps for Apple’s mobile devices with a social element,” the congressmen said in the letters. The letter delivered to Twitter is included below.

Several of the questions ask for specifics on data collection practices. One question reads: “At any time, has your iOS app transmitted or have you stored any other information from or about a user’s device — including, but not limited to, the user’s phone number, email account information, calendar, photo gallery, WiFi connection log, the Unique Device Identifier (UDID), a Media Access Control (MAC) address, or any other identifier unique to a specific device?”

The congressional committee is requesting that application makers respond to the questions in written form no later than April 12, three weeks from today. The congressmen did not detail how they plan to address application sellers they believe violate the privacy rights of consumers, but did indicate that they hope to build a “fact-based understanding of the privacy and security practices in the app marketplace.”

Photo credit: THEMACGIRL*/Flickr

Contemplating expanding your business to Asia? Sign up for a free VB webinar this Thursday 3/22 at 1pm PT. You’ll benefit from actionable tips and lessons learned as VB Executive Editor Dylan Tweney moderates a lively discussion with a group of Silicon Valley CEOs about their experience in using Singapore as a hub for Asian expansion. There will also be an attendee Q&A portion directly following the session. For full details, go here.

BetaBait, a service focused on connecting startups with beta testers, has launched a slick new redesigned site to complement a new set of a features that will give early adopters more feedback tools.

One of the company’s co-founders is long-time VentureBeat contributor Cody Barbierri. He told us that he started the company because he saw a clear need in the market, with so many startups in Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley, but not enough tools to help get testers lined up. But he admits the first iteration of the site looked plain, so it needed a fresh coat of paint to introduce some new features.

When the service launched in mid-December, it was centered around e-mail lists where BetaBait members could receive a single e-mail every day listing several beta apps. But now the company has moved in new direction and launched an “online discovery” service where users and startups can see all the submitted apps online. There are also individual app pages that include more info, a voting mechanism, and Facebook-based commenting.

“The initial design was based on the simplicity of the email service,” Barbierri said. “Now that we are creating an online discovery platform as well, the design needs to reflect a greater user experience for both startups and early adopters.”

Barbierri said that BetaBait has thus far attracted more than 1,000 startups and more than 5,000 testers. Membership is free for startups and potential beta users. Social networking applications are the most popular type of submission, with business-focused apps coming in second.

The Bridgeport, Conn.-based company is self-funded at present. The company is working on a small scale, but it hopes to attract outside funding in the near future.

You can take a look at the new site design below:

Fish kiss photo: Blaj Gabriel/Shutterstock

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple has finally weighed in on the widespread practice of apps uploading all the data from your address book to their servers: Apple doesn’t like it. At least, not without you granting explicit permission to the app first.

Companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Foodspotting, Yelp, Path, and Gowalla have been uploading your contact data, often without making it clear that’s what they’re doing. According to Apple, if those apps aren’t explicit about what they’re doing, they’re in violation of Apple’s App Store rules.

“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” Apple said in a statement provided to VentureBeat. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

The guidelines do not, however, specify any information about encrypting or hashing the data to secure it during the transfer process. The guidelines also say nothing about whether the company can store the data on its servers after uploading it. As long as an app company provides information about how the information will be used, it’s in the clear.

Apple’s guideline 17.1 states that “Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user’s prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used.”

When asked if Apple planned to increase the security measures to protect users’ data during uploads, Apple had no comment.

The story started when Path, a photo-centric social app, was caught sending users’ address book information to their servers and not offering an opt-in upon starting the app. Path issued an apology after the story became widespread, after explaining that the address book was only used to help people find friends on Path.

Since Apple’s guidelines were already in place, any application uploading data like this would be in violation of Apple’s policies. It seems, however, Apple has not been enforcing the issue during its intensive review process. The unspecified “future software release” will presumably put some bigger stakes into the ground, making its rules harder to bypass.

Some of the apps in question have said that they do not store the actual data, but the transfer process still opens the opportunity for cyber criminals to intercept transmissions. Congress recently got involved and is demanding that Apple answer questions about its guidelines.

“This incident raises questions about whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts,” congress members G.K. Butterfield and Henry Waxman wrote Wednesday in a letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

According to a Congressional spokesperson, Apple has not currently responded to the letter.

Rolodex image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

IBM announced its own “bring your own device” manager today, as well as its most recent acquisition, Worklight, which helps companies focus on developing applications for multiple operating systems.

BYOB, or bring your own beer, used to be the simple way to get a party going. You’re at a party, you’re thirsty, but oh wait, you brought that six pack. Now you don’t have to awkwardly ask the hostess where the fridge is, wonder if you’ve had too much of her stock, or reach into your pocket to subsidize the party costs. Nope, it’s easy sailing because you brought your own beer, and you’re in control of it.

But it’s that personal control that is scaring IT departments in the bring your own device trend.

IT managers get concerned thinking about the thousands of wild devices roaming their networks. Different companies have come up with solutions to connect those devices and control them, and IBM is now one of them.

The company’s endpoint manager is a product of IBM’s acquisition of Big Fix. Big Fix was a management tool for a number of different devices including laptops and point of sale hardware. Under IBM, that reach now extends to mobile phones and tablets. The software can restrict e-mail access to phones acting oddly, or outside of its normal routine, wipe specific company information from a device that has been lost or stolen, and allows IT staffers to manage the system from one interface.

Apps are also a concern for the BYOD age. It’s hard to monitor apps across different operating systems as well as deploy your own internal applications. IBM’s newest purchase, Worklight, takes care of this by connecting devices’ applications to the respective company’s IT system for monitoring and deploying apps. It works across multiple operating systems including iOS and Android.

Devices image via Shutterstock

Dale Carr is CEO of Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia-based ad network LeadBolt.

Android developers are getting just 7% of the revenue that Apple iOS developers are getting, according to a recent article that quoted research by Piper Jaffray. The article’s premise was that developers will obviously go where the money is, so Android will continue to struggle when it comes to drawing in more developers. This got me really thinking … could this be right? If it is, who are all the developers on my company’s ad network?

It really is amazing what you can do with statistics.

First, the 7% statistic relates to revenue earned from the sale of apps, so it doesn’t include ad revenue. Second, it uses revenue numbers from the life of Apple’s App Store, which has obviously been around a lot longer and is much further up the growth hockey stick than Android.

Some more stats to confuse the issue:

According to research by Inneractive, click-through-rates (CTR) on iOS are more than double what they are on Android, but the cost-per-thousand (eCPM) is only 30% higher. This would indicate that Android developers are getting more bang for each click. Combine this with another recent statistic that Android generates twice the ad impressions of iOS and you have Android earning more in real dollar terms from ad revenue.

So, perhaps a more considered approach is required in comparing the revenues developers make off the two platforms.

Apple has built a closed ecosystem. It heavily regulates the App Atore and does not look favourably on revenue generated outside of this environment. Ad revenue is the major hole in its “atmosphere”. It cannot, for obvious reasons, close the hole. It has tried to be part of the leakage through iAds. Given its current mindset, it is in Apple’s interest to control this outflow from its incredibly full bucket.

On the other side you have Android. Open source, open environment, open market. Added to the mix is that Google, the developer of the Android platform, is an advertising company. Wouldn’t it be in Google’s interest to ensure the ad revenue floodgates open as wide as possible?

The last piece in this puzzle is to look at monetization trends. Almost 90% of all apps that are downloaded are free and involve no in-app monetization. In fact, according to Distimo, growth in the top paid apps for the 12 months to July was only 7% compared to 34% for the top free apps. Apple’s recorded revenue comes from a slowing trend for paid apps, while 72% of its revenue is from the 4% of apps with in-app purchase models (note: in-app purchases were only introduced to Android Market in March).

While Apple continues to limit revenue outside of its ecosystem, the continuing proliferation of smartphones (at increasingly lower prices) and therefore the increasing number of app users who will not pay for that usage, means that Apple apps will be forgoing a growing monetization segment. In contrast, Android’s open environment, and the ability for developers to use premium ad methods may mean that Android developers are in fact following the money.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Though it still has nothing on the Apple or Google mobile app stores, Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace now has more than 30,000 applications available for the Windows Phone 7 platform, according to Windows Phone App List.

Microsoft has struggled to make a dent in the app market share against Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems, but at least it’s putting on a good face when it comes to releasing a large selection of applications. The Windows Phone Marketplace had 25,000 apps on July 2, so app additions are moving at fast clip.

Apple’s App Store now has more than 500,000 apps while the Google Android Market has more than 200,000 apps. The 30,000 measurement may not sound like much compared to those numbers, but it’s more impressive when you consider the Windows Phone platform is less than a year old. Microsoft is trying to spur development by paying higher profile companies to make Windows Phone apps, as well as coaxing webOS developers to move to the Windows Phone platform since HP decided to stop manufacturing webOS devices.

With the upcoming Windows Phone Mango update, Microsoft is hoping it can once again put its platform in the spotlight and attract new consumers to its products. New Mango phones are due out soon from the likes of HTC and Nokia, and we expect these powerful devices will show off what Windows Phone can really do.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After a few well-publicized launch mistakes, the much-anticipated Skype for iPad application is finally here.

“Skype for iPad is beautifully designed and optimized for the iPad,” wrote Rick Osterloh, head of product management for Skype, on the company’s official blog. “The large iPad screen is perfect for bringing Skype video calls to life, in either landscape or portrait view, and because it is on the iPad, Skype video calls can be made at the beach, in a car or even lying on a couch.”

After a leaked launch video a month ago, the app was prematurely launched early Tuesday morning and immediately pulled from the App Store. “To ensure your best Skype experience, we’ve temporarily removed Skype for iPad which went live prematurely today,” the company said via Twitter.

And now, just hours later, the official version is out. The Skype iPad app is a better general video calling solution than Apple’s FaceTime because it works across multiple platforms, including PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. The app does everything you’d expect it to, with two-way video calls, instant messaging and SMS texting, and it even works over both 3G and Wi-Fi.

Skype is not the first all-platform video chat iPad app out the gate. Fring, a similar but usually lesser quality service, launched its own iPad app in late June. That app was notable in that it offered free group video chat.

Additionally, Skype made news recently when it partnered with Facebook to bring free one-on-one video calling to Facebook’s more than 750 million users. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted that more features, such as group chat, would be coming in the future.

Microsoft paid $8.5 billion to acquire Skype back in May, and the deal will go through as long as regulators approve. The deal means Skype will likely see integration with popular Microsoft services like Kinect, Windows Phone 7, and Office 365.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

I’m sure my fellow iPad owners have been there. You’re sitting on the couch chatting with someone on FaceTime and think, “Why the heck can’t I video chat with more than one person?” Well now you can give it a shot.

Fring on Monday released the first iPad app to offer four-way video chat, and it’s completely free. It works for the iPhone and iPod touch as well, and works over Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G. Those devices will also offer group chat features. That said, we’d recommend sticking to the iPad and using it over Wi-Fi because you’ll want screen real estate and a strong connection for those video streams.

Fring currently offers apps for iOS, Android, and Nokia devices. It’s possible Fring’s app was released today because Skype will reportedly release its own iPad app on Tuesday.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve always had technical troubles with Fring on iOS and Android. Oftentimes, video calls simply wouldn’t connect, and if they did work, the connection always needed to be incredibly fast to have a chance at clear images. I will certainly give this new version a shot, but I’m not going to hold my breath for a great experience.

Last month, the Israel-based Fring raised a reported $10 million in a Series C round of financing, which brings their funding to more than $30 million. Investors include North Bridge Venture Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, and Veritas Venture Partners.

Fring’s retro-style promo video for the new group app is below:

The application, dubbed Project Spartan, won’t be the first case of a popular tech company going around Apple’s limitations by building a web-only app. Google’s already covered that ground well with its Gmail, Docs, and Maps HTML5 apps. Other notable companies that have decided to work around Apple include the Financial Times and Playboy, which have both released web-optimized HTML5 apps that allow users to subscribe to their content.

The most interesting part of Project Spartan is that “80 or so” third-party developers, including FarmVille and CityVille publisher Zynga, are working with Facebook on it, according to the TechCrunch report. In theory, Facebook members would be able to open Facebook through mobile Safari and then access a collection of games and applications. So Facebook would have its own application offerings tailored for Safari—paid and unpaid—that could run from the web and not have to pay Apple a dime.

If the report is accurate, Facebook’s Spartan could change how companies pursue app development. If it’s ultimately more profitable to build a web app that can charge subscriptions or offer other types of content that Apple won’t allow, developers will move in that direction. Another important reason developers could move to HTML5 is that web apps are easier to maintain and update than apps tailored for a specific device, as you don’t have to wait for a user to download the latest software update.

Yesterday, it was reported Facebook was working on another big project—a photo-sharing iPhone application that aims to beat other photo apps. Nearly 6 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook each month, so it seems completely reasonable for the company to be exploring its options with photos.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s App Store, the store in which iPod, iPhone, and iPad users buy and download applications, has surpassed 500,000 approved applications according to a combined estimate by Chomp, 148apps, and Chillingo.

Since its debut in 2008, a year after the company launched the first version of the iPhone, the store has witnessed considerable success amongst developers — paying out nearly $1.4 billion in revenue — and users, who have downloaded a total of more than 15 billion apps.

The three startups, whose businesses operate on the iOS ecosystem, have also put together a comprehensive infographic to surface some of the key statistics from the milestone. Most interestingly, the 500,000 apps were built by 85,569 unique developers, include around 185,000 free apps, and are priced on average at $3.64. Games are the most popular category of apps (15 percent), followed by books (14 percent), entertainment (11 percent), and education (8 percent.)

Among the most popular paid apps are Angry Birds, The Moron Test, Moto Chaser, and Flight Control. According to 148apps, buying every application on the store would require a 7.5 terabyte iPhone and $891,982.24.

In comparison to the App Store, the competing Android Market, responsible for Google’s Android, has an estimated 294,000 applications according to Fortune.

Apple has yet to confirm the milestone, but it will most probably do so at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference next month. CEO Steve Jobs is expected to discuss the future of the iOS platform at the event, as well as show off the next iteration of its operating system, OS X Lion.

Currently in a private beta, the startup targets mobile developers and looks to provide them with a complete solution to host, manage, and deploy their mobile applications. It also offers developers the ability to create APIs, push notifications, measure analytics, integrate with social graphs like Twitter and Facebook, and monetize their application, essentially reducing the hassle for them to build out basic and rudimentary features of each application.

StackMob is currently focused on the iOS platform, but will eventually work across all platforms, including Android and Windows Phone 7. It currently offers its base services for free and charges developers for each additional functionality, working from a freemium model.

Four years ago, YCombinator-funded Heroku looked to do the same for developers on the Ruby on Rails platform, and went on to quickly become a popular choice for developers on the platform. The startup raised $13 million and eventually sold to Salesforce.com for a reported $212 million cash. If growth in the mobile app ecosystem is of any indication, StackMob has the chance to reach similar bounds.

The startup is based in San Francisco and has a team of five. The round was led by Trinity Ventures, with existing investors Harrison Metal and Baseline Ventures participating.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive mobile trends at our fourth annual MobileBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the rise of 4G and how it delivers the promise of true mobile computing. MobileBeat is co-located with our GamesBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.

nSphere

Peekaboo Mobile, which participated in one of VentureBeat editor-in-chief Matt Marshall’s DEMO challenges just weeks after launching, began as an iPhone application that, when launched, would show users local deals around them. Deals were either entered by the company as it signed up local businesses willing to offer a coupon or by other users who might come across an already established deal. The company claims that it has since generated more than 50 million users across its iPhone and Android apps.

One perk from the acquisition is that any local businesses running coupons will now be able to do so for free. All monthly or yearly fees have been waived.

Specifics of the acquisition were not disclosed, but several publications noted it was in the seven figures. The Peekaboo Mobile team, including founder’s Michael Fruzzetti and Ben Dolgoff, will be joining nSphere to manage the company’s mobile initiatives, including several commerce apps that plan to launch in the coming months.

Though founder Ben Dolgoff wouldn’t provide a ton of information on the coming apps, he did say they would would be completely different from the deal app and will be created for different niche categories that will use nSphere’s massive database of information to help deliver an array of information back to the consumer. Dolgoff also noted the company plans on expanding its mobile team to around 15 people, mostly mobile developers.

The Boston-based Peekaboo Mobile, founded in March of 2010, recently secured an angel round of funding for an undisclosed amount from Apricot Capital.

Calling all mobile executives: This April 25-26, VentureBeat is hosting its inaugural VentureBeat Mobile Summit, where we’ll debate the five key business and policy challenges facing the mobile industry today. Participants will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. The invitation-only event, located at the scenic and relaxing Cavallo Point Resort in Sausalito, Calif., is limited to 180 mobile executives, investors and policymakers. We’ve pretty much finalized the invite list, but have a few spots left. Request an invitation.

Chief executive Bill Gross (pictured) mentions that the company is working to become the best “Twitter partner” for the ecosystem with the recent acquisition, but after buying another Twitter company Echofon earlier this month, it may be gobbling up applications in the attempt to offer a  robust and attractive communication package, which may be in direct competition to Twitter.

Currently, the company offers three Twitter applications, UberTwitter, Echofon and Twidroyd, each offering iPhone, Android and Blackberry users an easy way to manage their Twitter profiles.

UberMedia also offers several more tools, including ad product FollowMe, to help in building more followers, and UberChannels, a way to aggregate and filter Twitter content.

The Pasadena, California-based company was founded in 2010.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It looks like smartphone owners are pretty cheap, despite carrying around flashy and often expensive devices.

Prices for paid applications on app stores fell by about 16 percent in 2010, and free applications that make money off in-app purchases grew increasingly popular when compared to 2009, according to a new report by Distimo.

The price of the average application on Apple’s app store fell 12 percent, while the prices for BlackBerry applications fell 24 percent. Android applications were actually 1 percent more expensive in 2010 across the entire marketplace. But the top 100 applications on the Android marketplace were 9 percent cheaper than they were a year ago. The prices of the top 100 applications across all marketplaces fell by around 28 percent.

The $1 to $2 price point was the most popular choice for developers looking to sell their applications. The number of applications at that price point grew to 27 percent of all applications, up from 22 percent in January. The number of applications costing more than $5 fell to 15 percent of all applications across app stores, compared to 21 percent of all applications in January.

More applications on Apple’s App Store switched to a freemium model, which lets users download applications for free and then makes money by selling premium services through the application. About 34 percent of all revenue generated by App Store applications came from in-app purchases on free applications. Half of the revenue generated from the App Store came from paid application sales.

The top free applications across all app stores generated around 3 million downloads each day last year. Paid applications generated around 350,000 downloads each day. Those numbers exclude app downloads on and after Christmas in order to give a more accurate picture of the marketplace.

The most popular category for applications on Apple’s App Store was business-oriented applications, where downloads grew 186 percent when compared to a year earlier. Apple has been charging into the enterprise space for a while now, but still has a while to go before it catches up with Research in Motion’s 55 million BlackBerry users. Applications for viewing comics were the most popular on the Android marketplace, and entertainment-focused applications were the most popular on the BlackBerry app marketplace.

Nokia’s struggles continued with its Ovi app store in 2010. The Ovi store trailed behind Android and other competitors with around 25,000 free applications and 18,000 paid applications. The cost of paid applications across the Ovi store fell 29 percent, and the top 100 applications on the Ovi store were 61 percent cheaper than they were a year ago. Free applications were more popular than paid applications because many Nokia users were unable to apply the cost of each app to their monthly phone bills, according to the report.

Despite having a smaller marketplace, the Ovi store grew the most quickly — with the number of free applications increasing by about 900 percent, and the number of paid applications rose 258 percent. The Apple App Store, which has around 300,000 applications, grew steadily — the number of free applications on the store grew by 174 percent, and the number of paid applications grew by 111 percent. The number of applications — both paid and free — in the Android Marketplace grew by about 270 percent to 130,000 when compared to 2009.

The RunKeeper iPhone app uses GPS locating to track your distance, time, elevation, pace and path on a map and has caught the eye of several major investors since the company was founded two years ago, primarily because it has kept up with rapidly developing technologies.

The app now has features that ­let others watch your progress, live, online, as they trace your mileage and can see varying levels of your workout. In addition, it now offers mobile fitness training and routine plans to help runners train for events.

It also raised eyebrows last year when founder and CEO Jason Jacobs ran the Boston Marathon (pictured) dressed as an iPhone to promote the business.

The Boston-based company has raised $1.51 million thus far, including $400,000 in seed money from LaunchCapital last fall, along with angel investors Viewlogic founder Will Herman, BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter and Compete.com CEO Don McLagan.

Its latest round of funding was led by well-known Silicon Valley VC firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which has poured money into startup darlings Bit.ly and Foursquare, and included several new unnamed angels and all its former investors.

“We liked [OATV managing director and co-founder] Bryce [Roberts] and the OATV gang from the minute we met them,” Jacobs said in a company blog post today. “Bryce (who also invested in our friends at Foursquare) is an avid cyclist, and like us, is a big believer in mobile/social/fitness/quantified self.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Microsoft seems to have a new mantra: When all else fails, shoot for a bigger audience.

All of Microsoft’s top-downloaded paid applications for its newest Windows Phone 7 mobile devices are games — much like other mobile operating systems — compared to just one for its older Windows Mobile operating system, according to a report by Distimo.

Microsoft is running a pretty well-known and reliable play to reclaim its share in the mobile operating system space. More than half of Microsoft’s applications on its Windows Phone 7 operating system are now less than $2, compared to less than 40 percent of apps on its old Windows Mobile operating system. That’s in line with other app stores. Its app store has grown to around 3,000 applications in just over a month. That’s compared to only 1,350 applications available for Windows Mobile after the operating system has been out for a year.

It’s a marked shift in Microsoft’s strategy, since its presence in the enterprise mobile operating system space has diminished. Windows Phone 7 finally brought Microsoft’s mobile operating systems into an age that is dominated by apps. The phone is geared much more toward typical consumers, like the iPhone and many phones running on Google’s Android operating system.

A lot of Microsoft’s refocus may have to do with Research in Motion (RIM)’s presence as a smartphone maker of choice for the enterprise. RIM currently dominates the enterprise mobile phone market with around 46 million customers. Apple is also charging into the enterprise space. Both of these operating systems are, in their own ways, superior to the classic Windows Mobile operating system.

That leaves little room for operating systems that are late to the party. Windows Phone 7 came out about a month ago and has since scrambled to catch up with the rest of the smartphone market. The mobile operating system has already picked up 15,000 developers in a short period of time and is growing quickly. But Apple and RIM already have the jump on Windows Phone 7. They’ve been playing in a market dominated by apps for a few years now.

That isn’t to say Microsoft can’t reclaim its presence in the enterprise space. Microsoft is able to integrate its Office applications into its mobile interface. The closest thing to that on other mobile operating systems is Documents to Go by DataViz. But that company was acquired by Research in Motion, which quickly killed support for the WebOS mobile operating system — so the future of that application on competing platforms is unclear.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

MyTown, a mobile check-in game for iPhone and iPod Touch, today announced its global availability. While the company claims global access, it’s really just available in the 29 countries that can access the Apple App Store and Google Places.

MyTown, built by Booyah, reminds me a lot of monopoly, but without the board and family. Players can buy locations that are close to them and have other players who check-in to those places pay them rent — all in virtual currency. Once the owner collects a certain amount of rent, they can upgrade to increase the location’s value and thus earn more from rent. Back to Monopoly, it’s like going from owning Baltic Ave to Boardwalk.

A new feature with the game’s global availability includes integration with Google Places, a directory of real local businesses. Users can now locate and lay claim to any location that appears on Google Maps. Within those locations, the game also allows users to scan barcodes to unlock virtual currency.

Other location-based services are available globally, including popular mobile check-in game Foursquare, which started its global push at the end of last year and now covers the entire world, and Gowalla.

San Francisco-based MyTown has raised close to $29.5 million in funding and claims to have more than 3.5 million users in just a few months time. With the global availability, the app may continue to see rapid growth.

Location Labs offers three main service. Each gives developers a way to develop location-based apps that generate revenue. Geofencing tells applications when a user enters a specific area, while the universal location service can remotely locate phones within a network of 180 million consumers. Lastly, privacy management lets users control their location is shared.

With the new information, Location Labs can now deliver to developers what it’s calling a ”place-based predictive model” of using user’s location behavior to send more relevant content and ads.

A recent example of Location Labs tools can be found in a recent partnership with Placecast for their ShopAlerts service, a mobile marketing tool that businesses can customize, which uses location-triggered text messages sent from brands to consumers who opt into the service. It does not require end users to download an app to their phone.

If CityGrid Media doesn’t sound familiar, you might remember them as CitySearch, a local guide website. The company rebranding is a culmination of a company revamp that began almost three years ago.

Location Labs also rebranded itself recently, changing from WaveMarket. While one might think a name change comes about when a company is in trouble or changing focus, WaveMarket claims it was profitable – 10 million in revenue - and even thinking about an IPO.

The San Francisco-based company has raised $26 million from venture capitalists including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, BlueRun Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Intel Capital.

Offerpop

Offerpop has developed three Twitter tools intended to better engage with followers. The New Follower tool can be used to automatically welcome your new followers. The Offer tool lets you set up a special page to drive your followers to learn more about specific offers or campaigns. The Exclusive tool creates a private page that hosts promotions or deals only viewable by your followers. And finally, the Viral tool helps you gain new followers through word-of-mouth. For example, if a tweet is retweeted at least 50 times, the deal will become available (similar to some GroupOn offers).

The service is available through a monthly subscription. Customers with fewer than 500 followers pay $100 per month, fewer than 5,000 pay $250 and, finally, less than 25,000 pay $999 per month. This is a pretty ingenious revenue model, considering that the company’s tools are ultimately meant to build a social community. It’s creating a growing revenue base for each customer as they continue using Offerpop applications and gain more and more followers. It will be interesting to see if customers do continue using the applications once they hit a certain community size.

Competitors may include other early stage companies Buddy Media and Wildfire Interactive that have tools for managing social pages, or doing things like one-off quizzes, sweepstakes and polls.

The New York City based company, founded in 2009, only has several customers, including City Sports, Dymocks, iGreenBuild.com, Layla Grace and Overnight Prints.