Spotify takes music quality to the “extreme” on iPhone

If you’re a Spotify user with an iPhone, it’s time to pump up the volume.

The popular music streaming service has added support for extremely high quality 320 kbps music streaming and offline synchronizing — just about the best sound you can get from compressed music files.

Spotify originally offered low quality (96 kbps) and high quality (160 kbps) settings for streaming and syncing on its mobile apps, but an update over the weekend has … Continue Reading

500M cheap VoIP calls propel Rebtel to 15M users

Rebtel, the second-largest voice-over IP calling company behind Skype, announced major milestones today that prove consumers just can’t get enough of cheap phone calls.

The company says that it has surpassed 15 million connected users (it’s unclear how many of those are active) since its launch in 2006. Rebtel users have made over 500 million calls on the service and have chalked up over two billion minutes of international calls.

Rebtel offers mobile and desktop … Continue Reading

The “app economy” created 466K jobs, counting your developer’s favorite barista

Apps are everywhere these days, with founders from Instagram and Shazam starring in Super Bowl commercials. According to a new study from the non-partisan group TechNet, apps have created 466,000 American jobs since they arrived with the modern day smartphone in 2007. Dig into the data, however, and you’ll find only about a third of those are actual tech jobs.

It turns out that there were really only about 155,000 developer and tech support positions … Continue Reading

Path is grabbing names, numbers, and emails from users’ phones

A brief post from Arun Thampi, an iOS developer based in Singapore, has sparked an outcry among Path users. Thampi was poking around the Path API for a hackathon when he stumbled on request which sent his entire contact list including names, emails and phone numbers to Path.

"Now I don’t remember having given permission to Path to access my address book and send its contents to its servers, so I created a completely new “Path” and repeated the experiment and I got the same result – my address book was in Path’s hands," he wrote on his blog.

BlackBerry App World more profitable than Android, says RIM

Showing that it’s not quite dead yet, Research in Motion aimed to “bust a few myths” about its BlackBerry app ecosystem at the company’s Europe BlackBerry DevCon today.

RIM VP of developer relations Alec Saunders pointed out that the company is now seeing over 6 million daily downloads from its App World store, reaching 174 million per month (and over two billion downloads in total). But most importantly, Saunders wanted to dispel the notion that … Continue Reading

Microsoft now testing Skype for Windows Phone 7, could debut soon

After a surprisingly long delay, Windows Phone owners may soon be able to get their hands on a Skype app of their very own.

Microsoft is currently testing a near-final version of Skype for Windows Phone 7, and the company may be planning to launch the app at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, reports Tom Warren at the Verge.

Microsoft has been promising a Skype app for Windows Phone for some time. … Continue Reading

Showyou 3.0: Now with better video discovery and sharing for the iPad

After months of hard labor, Remixation, creator of the popular video discovery app Showyou, has released a new version of the app that works just as well for social media abstainers as it does for Facebook and Twitter users.

Showyou 3.0, available now for free on the iTunes Store, doesn’t look much different from past versions of the app on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find a richer and more rewarding … Continue Reading

Just Shopkick it: Mobile shopping app delivers $110M revenue to partners in 2011

More than just a nifty mobile app for consumers, Shopkick is also helping its retail and brand partners generate significant revenue. The company announced today that it drove more than $110 million in revenue to its partners in 2011, its first full year in operation.

The news comes on the heels of Shopkick’s massive growth announcements of 3 million active users and over 1 billion offers viewed. The success of the free Shopkick app, which … Continue Reading

Glooko raises $3.5M to sync diabetes glucose meters to iPhone app

Glooko has raised $3.5 million in a new round of funding that will enable it to release new versions of its solution to help people with diabetes monitor their glucose intake more easily.

The round was led by The Social+Capital Partnership along with existing investors. The company’s product is one more example of the “quantified self” trend, where people can gain self-knowledge through quantification of the things they do in life.

About 25 million people … Continue Reading

Contact information app Hello wants to replace your contact list

Evernote chief executive Phil Libin believes alphabetical contact lists are outdated. And even though his contact app Hello took off like a lead balloon, he hopes that updates coming in the next couple of weeks will help it kill the typical contact list and replace it with a mosaic of photos.

Ever since the note-taking startup Evernote launched, it has been on a quest to capture and organize every bit of data from your life. … Continue Reading

Watch out Craigslist: ShopSavvy launches Savvylistings, a dead simple mobile marketplace

Even with the advent of online marketplaces like eBay and Craigslist, it’s far too easy to accumulate junk that you’d be better off selling. Now there’s an easier way to sell your aging and neglected collection of vintage records.

ShopSavvy, maker of the popular mobile bar code scanning apps, is today announcing SavvyListings, a service that will let you offer anything for sale simply by scanning a bar code. Afterwards, you only need enter the … Continue Reading

Mobile data shrinking app Onavo raises $10M, working on compression for Android

Onavo, a company known for its iPhone app that shrinks mobile data, announced today that it has raised an additional $10 million in a second round of funding from Horizons Ventures and Motorola Mobility Ventures.

Guy Rosen, Onavo’s co-founder and CEO, told VentureBeat the  funding is an “excellent validation” of the company’s work. The company has won several awards and accolades for its seamless data compression technology (including top prize at our MobileBeat 2011 conference) … Continue Reading

Shopkick is on a mobile shopping tear with 3M users, over 1B offers viewed

Shopkick, the app that lets you earn rewards and deals simply by walking into a retail store, is kicking butt.

The company has pulled in over 3 million active users since launching over a year ago, it said today. And over a billion of its in-app deals and offers have been viewed.

Shopkick’s app communicates with a patent-pending device in stores, letting customers earn rewards simply by strolling into a store and looking at products. … Continue Reading

App-store-for-all Appitalism adds 300K free Android apps (exclusive)

Appitalism, an app store tailored for all phone platforms, has made more than 300,000 free Android Market apps available for download through its service, the company revealed today.

The main purpose to use Appitalism versus traditional app stores, argues creator and CEO Simon Buckingham, is that people have all kinds of devices. By using Appitalism, you can search for every possible app, not matter if you own an iPhone, Android phone, iPad tablet, Android tablet, … Continue Reading

App maker SkyGrid hits the big time with LG deal (video)

App maker SkyGrid has a plan to bring TV to your iPad. It’s also landed a promising partnership with huge Korean electronics maker LG to integrate its app technology into tens of millions of televisions.

We spent some time on the floor of CES last week talking with SkyGrid chief executive and founder Kevin Pomplun about his app and the new LG deal. (Watch our short, two-minute video interview below.)

“All you have to do … Continue Reading

Google: 250M Android devices activated, 11B Android Market app downloads

Confirming Android’s ridiculous growth, Google CEO Larry Page announced today on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call that there are 250 million Android devices activated.

Additionally, over 11 billion apps have been downloaded from the Android Market.

Apple announced in October that over 250 million iOS devices were sold (including iPads and the iPod Touch), which means that Android has basically caught up with Apple’s two-year head start in the smartphone market. Google added 50 … Continue Reading

Experimental General Motors tech brings car windows to life

Backseat boredom could become a thing of the past if experimental interactive glass technology finds its way into General Motors cars.

Currently in the prototype stage, a student project commissioned by GM envisages using smart glass technology to help rear seat passengers, particularly children, have a richer experience on the road.

Inspired by psychological studies that indicate car passengers often feel disconnected from their environment, GM asked students from the Bezalel Academy of Art and … Continue Reading

Customer loyalty is key to gaining a share of the in-app purchase riches

In-app purchases are predicted to dominate the mobile-app market in the next few years. Revenue from in-app purchases, worth $970M in 2011, is expected to rise to over $5 billion by 2015, and a study by Localytics highlights the importance of generating customer loyalty, in order for developers to gain a share in these riches.

With the majority of top grossing apps, such as Tap Zoo and Smurfs Village, now based on a freemium model, … Continue Reading

Cash in on your photo app with Aviary’s new photo editor

Continuing its quest for dominance in the photo arena, online editing suite Aviary announced version 2.0 of its photo editor today, bringing with it a slew of updated features and something enticing for developers: instant monetization for photo apps.

With the new Aviary editor comes a mobile software development kit that will offer virtual goods for purchase, including premium effects packs, original sticker packs (which includes things like holiday and season photo stickers) and branded … Continue Reading

Sony is bringing its Music Unlimited streaming service to iOS soon

Sony’s Music Unlimited streaming music service has been available on Android devices and PCs for some time now, but iOS users have been left out — until now.

The electronics company will offer a free iPhone and iPad app for Music Unlimited at some point this quarter, Tim Schaaff, head of Sony Entertainment Network said today at a small CES media gathering.

Additionally, the iOS app will offer offline caching for subscribers to Sony’s service, … Continue Reading