July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

You’ve come a long way, baby.

The Weather Company announced this morning that its tablet and smartphone apps have been downloaded over 100 million times and that it is launching a updated service. My Friends’ Weather, which is integrated into those 100 million apps, will alert people to major weather events and breaking alerts that might be affecting their friends.

A hundred million apps is a pretty significant milestone, and it highlights the digital achievements of a company that once was known as the weather “channel.” It’s a success story for old media in a new era.

How did the old media company do it?

“We focused on an unusual aspect of mobile: What’s the habit that we’re trying to capture for users,” Cameron Clayton, The Weather Company’s head of mobile, told me this morning. “That’s really what’s driven our downloads but also our engagement. Average users visit 34 times a month … more than once a day. The question was: How do we become like your wristwatch … so essential that even if you know the answer you still check it?”

The Weather Company’s digital prowess was on display late last year when Hurricane Sandy pounded the Eastern Seaboard. The company had a record day on October 29, with almost 300 million pageviews on its site, 125 million views on its apps, and 9.6 million views on its YouTube channel. A week after, CIO Bryson Koehler told me that they saw a 1,000 percent traffic spike during Sandy, including a period when the company was serving a staggering 110 gigabytes of data each and every second.

The mobile portion of that record was broken just a couple of months later at Christmas, as new device owners checked wintry weather conditions, generating 137.5 million pageviews on apps on December 26.

With 100 million downloads, it’s no surprise that the company’s app is the top weather app on iOS and Android, as well as one of the top overall downloads. The company jumped on mobile quickly, originally releasing an app for iOS in 2007 — just after the iPhone’s launch — and an Android app in 2008.

The new My Friends’ Weather, which the company originally launched this past summer, will now alert you when Facebook friends might be affected by extreme weather conditions. Working with Travelers, the insurance company, My Friends’ Weather shows friends in areas where a National Weather Service alert bulletin has been issued.

That will no doubt be a favorite feature of grannies and moms, but it’s not just about worrywarts. The goal is to connect that circle of friends and family that you really care about, Clayton told me.

“I’m from New Zealand and a buddy lives in Hawaii,” he said. “We hadn’t spoken in a year when all of a sudden I saw a heavy surf alert for Hawaii. So I sent him a note: I hope you’re out in this surf. Three hours later I received a reply … he had been out, and the surfing was epic. We hadn’t spoken in a year … and that’s the sort of thing we want to do for everyone who comes.”

A hundred million apps, now with social. And surfing.

photo credit: lrargerich via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Proving that smartphones can really do just about anything, The Good Ear has developed an iPhone app that can analyze and treat hearing loss.

You may think this is a niche group of users, but according to a recent Johns Hopkins study, 1 in 5 Americans are currently experiencing hearing loss in some form. The big problem is that most of those people aren’t even aware that they have a problem. The company is one of five smartphone app developers competing at our MobileBeat Innovation Competition in San Francisco today. (Update: The Good Ear won the prize.)

The Good Ear’s “Better Hearing” app identifies where your hearing is weak, and for 99 cents a month, it offers a way to fix your hearing using Threshold Sound Conditioning (TSC). The company claims that your hearing will be improved by simply using the apps TSC features for 30 minutes a day over 14 days.

“The traditional hearing loss treatment has been to amplify the sound through the use of hearing aids, which are actual mini-amplifiers placed in the ears,” wrote cofounder and VP of business development John Nahm in an email to VentureBeat. “However, this amplification actually worsens the hearing by having the ear become used/trained to hear at a continuously increasing volume.

“In contrast, our technology identifies the frequency band that the user experiences the most hearing deficiency in, relative to the other frequency bands, and applies sound therapy at the barely audible level to prompt the ear to become trained to hear at lower volume levels for that problem frequency area.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Major electronics manufacturer Philips debuted a new line of headphones and earbuds targeted at Android phone owners at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

The company makes some of the best-sounding, affordable earbuds on the market, and now it is extending its focus to Android, which has the largest market share for smartphones in the world. While you can use any pair of standard headphones with an Android phone, these models are specifically designed to work with the Philips MyHeadset Android app that helps make music sound better.

There are four models in the lineup, with three earbud editions and one traditional headband headset. Each model has a microphone for hands-free use, and call management features to answer/end a call, reject a call, voice dial and redial the last number.

One other thing that makes the Android headphone lineup interesting is that if you go to a consumer electronics store, the number of iPhone-focused products heavily outnumbers that of Android products. Whether it’s the mobile section of Best Buy, Target or Walmart, the iPhone and iPod touch accessories always get more love. But as Android’s dominance grows and continues, we’ll likely begin to see more Android-specific offerings.

The Philips Android headphone line will go io sale in the second quarter of 2012. The models range from $30 for the least-expensive earbuds to $100 for the headband headset.

More photos from the upcoming Android line can be viewed below:

For more news out of this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Attacking smartphones with malware is to become a profitable business in 2012, according to a report by Lookout Mobile Security. Criminals took an estimated $1 million from Android owners this year, and the threat is only getting bigger.

“Bad guys will always follow the money, and with the meteoric growth of mobile devices there is more money to be made in mobile fraud than ever before,” the company said in a blog post.

It has taken mobile malware writers two years to accomplish what took many over 15 years on the PC, according to Lookout’s chief technology officer Kevin Mahaffey. Mobile is, in essence, the new frontier for people who make money through cyber attacks, and their efforts aren’t going to waste. The Android operating system continues to be a target for mobile malware. Users can expect to encounter attacks four percent of the time, a three percent increase from 2011′s prediction. Web browsing is also becoming a big threat, with 38 percent of Android owners encountering a malicious link — 40 percent if you only consider the United States.

So what exactly is infecting our phones? More cases of smartphone-specific SMS fraud are arriving in the marketplace. But many of these attacks have similarities to PC counterparts. For instance, botnets, malicious advertising and web browser links are becoming more of an issue for mobile devices.

SMS fraud allows a criminal to take over your phone’s messaging permissions to send and receive text messages to a “premium rate number.” Every time the number is used, that malware writer can charge you money. Some instances saw charges of up to $9.99 with the GGTracker Android infection, an attack that focused on US users. More recently, the RuFraud scam was identified. This attacked mostly Eastern European users who downloaded an app skinned to look like a horoscope, Twilight wall paper app, or free versions of popular games such as Angry Birds. When the person clicked through the initial start screen, they “agreed” (see photo right) to a terms of service clause that allowed the app to take over messaging privileges. The ToS was less than legitimate, however, and buried under links so users could not find it. Google removed 22 applications with the RuFraud scam inserted. Lookout expects that a few infected apps will re-enter the marketplace every few days.

Botnets, or a series of interconnected mobile phones that can work together to infect other phones on a large scale have been found. These have not, however, been used to their full potential. Attacks such as Geinimi, which originated out of China, have the ability to take over your phone after receiving commands from a remote server, according to Lookout. They can take your information and can attempt to infect other phones from your own.

Malicious advertising and web links are most similar to their PC counterparts. In order to become affected by malware, a smartphone user must simply click an infected link or advertisement that takes them to a malware website. This is where Apple’s usually protective iOS is actually put at risk. Jailbreaking is not uncommon with the iPhone and many people use jailbroken phones for interesting hacks intended for personal use, not for malicious attacks. For instance, some break into their iPhones to create interesting uses for the Siri application, run different carriers’ services, or port incompatible apps to older operating systems. Some of these jailbreaking websites, however, come with malware that piggy backs onto your newly vulnerable phone.

In-app advertising doesn’t come out unscathed either, with some “malvertisements” popping up right in the app itself.

There are new ways to speed up the process, which can save a malware writer time and money, and new mobile vulnerabilities to exploit. As in any business, the less money you spend on operating costs, the more you get to keep when the revenue starts pouring in. Mobile criminals want to find new, faster, cheaper ways of distributing their malware, and have seemingly figured out a way to automate the “packaging” process. That is, a criminal takes legitimate, existing applications and re-packs them with new mobile malware. The app still looks legitimate, but has picked up a malware hitchhiker. Lookout Mobile is seeing the rapid repackaging of apps exceed rates that are possible when done manually. Some repackaging attempts have been successfully completed in only seconds, thus criminals must have developed a technology to allow them to do this faster.

The other issue with the mobile operating system is the time it takes to update vulnerabilities. Sending patches out to the OS takes time, which means criminals can wring a vulnerability dry before a fix ever arrives.

Apps that are most likely to come with these mobile attacks are gaming, utility (such as flashlights and battery saver apps), and porn applications. Be careful when downloading these, particularly if you are downloading them from third-party app stores such as GetJar. According to Lookout Mobile, these third-party marketplaces are where malware writers try out their new tricks.

As we always advise, be careful what you click — particularly if you are an Android user — and keep a discerning eye in 2012.

[Android image via Shutterstock]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform now features more than 40,000 apps and games in its Marketplace, according to All About Windows Phone.

While Microsoft’s fledgling smartphone operating system is way behind in adoption compared to iOS and Android, there are signs that Windows Phone is poised to pick up a lot of steam in 2012, and its phones will feature less-expensive hardware options, 4G LTE and NFC capabilities. Several research firms, including Gartner and IDC, have predicted the Windows Phone 7 platform will be the No. 2 overall smartphone platform in the world by 2015. One thing that will likely help its growth will be Nokia, which has bet the house on Windows Phone 7 and recently debuted its slick-looking Lumia 800 and 710 smartphones.

Back in August, the Windows Marketplace hit the 30,000-app mark and hit the 35,000 mark in October, an indication that developers are beginning to see the value in having a Windows Phone app on top of having one for iOS and Android. Microsoft has been paying the development costs for some high-profile companies to make Windows Phone 7 apps, as well as coaxing webOS developers to move to the Windows Phone platform since HP decided to stop manufacturing webOS devices.

Apple’s App Store has more than 500,000 apps while the Google Android Market has more than 300,000 apps. The 40,000 mark may not sound like much compared to those much larger numbers, but it’s more impressive when you consider the Windows Phone platform is only about a year old.

To get an even better idea of Windows Phone 7′s app growth, take a look at the graph below: