Can you imagine having a vibrating magnetic tattoo inked on your arm that one day may be used to alert mobile phone users to phone calls and text messages? I guess you won’t be able to use that excuse – “I didn’t hear my phone ring” anymore.

A Finnish company describes the technology as stamping or spraying “ferromagnetic” material onto a user’s skin and then pairing it with a mobile device. When a call or text comes in, the magnetic field could cause vibration of one short pulse, multiple short pulses, few long pulses… strong pulses, weak pulses, so on and so on..

I am sure this is something that the younger generation will explore and utilize. How far and rapidly we have come since the rotary phone.

Ready to assist Korean mobile app developers, ComboApp has now opened their first marketing branch focused solely on providing marketing solutions to the Korean marketing community.ComboApp’s Korean marketing division is fully staffed with native Korean speaking marketing professionals hand picked for their unique understanding of the mobile development industry. Their team provides Korean developers with a perfect opportunity to introduce their products to the English speaking marketplace, increase their prospects, and grow their business on a global scale.

About ComboApp: Founded in Chicago, ComboApp is a mobile marketing agency specializing in providing marketing solutions to developers which are as flexible and scalable as they are effective.

Over the next few years, banks, startups, mobile carriers, and tech titans will compete to make your mobile phone a mobile reality. Any of these companies could theoretically control the multitrillion-dollar U.S. payments industry. Here are the players and how they are positioned now.

Banks – have millions of customers, existing merchant relationships, and of course, most of our money.

Prediction – “They’re risk-averse, and they tend to be technology laggards. I can’t see them innovating here,” says Nick Holland, a mobile tech analyst.

Merchants – To lure consumers, some merchants have launched their own mobile-money platforms. A Starbucks app, for example, lets users load cash onto their mobile phones.

Prediction – Merchants are too self-involved to lead the general charge; it’s more efficient for them to partner with a bigger player, like Google Wallet, says Mark Beccue, a mobile-commerce analyst at ABI Research.

Hear about all the latest Mobile Developer Jobs at FoneGigs.com

Startups – free from the confines of bureaucracy, they are sparking the best new ideas in the mobile-payments space.

Prediction – They will get snapped up by the big guys. For example, Punchd and Zong now play for Google and eBay, respectively.

Credit-card companies – Merchants already have thousands of Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass terminals, which give the credit-card companies lots of leverage if tap-to-pay  becomes the mobile-payments standard.

Prediction – Credit card giants don’t interact with customers directly – so they are partnering with bigger players to do that. For example, Visa licenses its payWave tech to Google.

Mobile carriers – experts at processing payments. Recently, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all joined forces to create Isis, a forth-coming mobile payments network that now touts support from the big four credit-card companies. Sprint linked up with Google Wallet.

Prediction – mobile carriers are not known for major innovation. They have also been mum on the specific of Isis. “Just because there are partnerships does not necessarily mean theres’ anything real there” says David Evans, founder of the tech consultancy Market Platform Dynamics.

Paypal – The leading digital-payments platform boasts 100 million users; $3 billion worth of mobile transactions; a robust suite of fun, useful smartphone apps, and PayPal Access, a Facebook connect feature that aims to streamline the entire virtual – payments process. It is also working on a cloud-based NFC alternative that would allow customers to pay for products by using their phones to scan bar codes for by entering their mobile numbers and a PIN at existing payment terminals.

Prediction – For all of these ambitions to come alive, strong relationships with physical retailers are needed, which has not been a priority for PayPal.

Tech Titans – Amazon and Facebook could easily  make plays for the mobile-payments pie. But so far, Google and Apple are leading the way. They’ve got assets aplenty: great relationships with consumers, more pull with physical retailers than PayPal, an active culture of innovation, and, because they both outfit market-leading smartpones, control over when NFC chips could become standard. Most analysts agree that Google Wallet – with its sleek interface, ad-based business model, and rising adoption rate – is a big, bold step in the right direction.

Original article, Mobile Melee, by Philip Butta, appeared in Fast Company, December 2011.

Want to work for a young and exciting San Francisco-based company specializing in a revolutionary mobile payment service? This company is the first of its kind offering a true “lifestyle commerce” experience that simplifies everyday transactions for all users. They are looking for strong talent to seize the market opportunity!

Send your resume to Eric at Eric(at)FoneGigs.com or 832-590-0478.

Hear about the latest Mobile Developer gigs at FoneGigs.com

Here are the following jobs available:

Senior Frontend Engineer – As the senior frontend engineer, you will translate rough design concepts into innovative working solutions, establish consistency, and optimize user experience. We want someone that gets excited from building a site users love.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

Senior Backend Engineer – As the senior backend engineer, you will design and implement extremely high-volume, fault-tolerant, scalable server systems. You will work closely with the team to design, implement and iterate features quickly.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

Blackberry Developer - You will be responsible helping build the BlackBerry application for a revolutionary mobile payment service. This is a full time position in San Francisco, California. You will have good product sense, an understanding of the mobile app ecosystem and strong personal initiative.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

iOS Developer- You will be responsible helping build the iOS application for a revolutionary mobile payment service. This is a full time position in San Francisco, California. You will have good product sense, an understanding of the mobile app ecosystem and strong personal initiative.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

Sr. Android Engineer – You will be responsible building the Android application for a revolutionary mobile payment service. This is a full time position in San Francisco, California.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

If interested, send your resume immediately to Eric Melchor at Eric(at)FoneGigs.com.

Very similar to PC Web, there are some simple things you can do to help improve the visibility of your app in the App store. Here are 10 things you can do to improve your ranking:

1. Use keywords in the app title and developer name. For example, a user searching for “fun” sees a number of apps with “fun” in the title in the top search rankings.

2. Use numbers or the letter ‘A’ in the app title – Using a blank or listing your app with a number at the beginning of the name ensures that the app will be featured near the top of the results in the “sort by name” view under a specific category.

3. Encourage reviews – Only about 0.5% of users leave a review, but one element to the Apple store search algorithm appears to be the number of reviews. Write your own reviews, encourage friends and family, as well as users.

4. Use price drops – a quick way to move up the charts is to reduce the price of your app. For example, one game experimented by cutting the price to 99 cents from $4.99 for four days. Previous to the price drop, the app had been ranked at around 60 in top paid apps. Afterwards, it shot up to second place within 24 hours.

5. Make you app icon active – This is a visual trick that can be very powerful as it catches the users eye.

6. Make the most of your screenshots – make sure the screenshots you display are as attractive a possible and draw people in to want to use the app.

7. List your app in directories – List your app in third party directories and aggregators. Each listing links to your iPhone app store page from within a relevant category to help drive users, downloads and reviews.

Original story by Mjelly

Looking for new and creative ways to reach your audience via mobile? Check out Millennial Media’s new suite of mobile advertising tools that allow advertisers to deliver cutting-edge mobile ads on their platform. Here are a few of their offerings:

• Mobile Circular: Advertises up to 20 products within a single creative. In market for more than a year, Millennial Media’s Mobile Circular allows brands to replicate a traditional free standing insert.
• 360° View: Enables consumers to interact with an object and rotate it 360° in any direction, highlighting a product’s features in a rotating, customizable format.
• “Smash It”: Interactive game unit that prompts users to tap certain objects on the screen to gain points, while avoiding other images that will cause them to lose the game. Players can easily post scores to social media sites, driving viral interest in the ad.
• The Cube: Supports up to six images—one on each “side” of the cube. The cube is navigated by four arrows that rotate the cube in the guided direction to give the appearance of a 3D view.
• Media Gallery: Enables advertisers to display a series of different images that progress from left to right. Image progression can be user initiated through swipes or taps from the consumer, or the images can load automatically.

Original story featured in Mobile Marketing Watch ”Millennial Media Takes Mobile Creative Tools to The Next Level for Brands and Agencies.

Next time you use Google Maps or Google Earth, check to see if there is a QR code on top of the building you are looking at. Sounds strange, but that is exactly what Phillips & Company has done with the top of its roof. People can use their qr code scanner to learn more about the business. Whether or not it will prove to be an effective marketing initiative, the idea itself is interesting.

Original article from Mobi Ad News – QR Codes from Space

If you read FoneGigs with any regularity, you don’t need any convincing on the need for a strong mobile marketing program.  But I recently came across a mobile agency whose approach to creating and budgeting mobile marketing efforts felt really new and refreshing.  Instead of trying to sell in an expensive marketing program that would require a client to cut from others areas, VMBC (www.vmbc.com) addresses one of the most vexing questions facing most marketers as they look to establish a viable presence on the mobile platform: where do I find the money to pay for this?

VMBC has been in mobile since before any of us really called it mobile.  In their 15 years in business, they have pioneered commercial use of voice messaging, early SMS efforts, and large-scale messaging programs.  Their background is in the technology end of the business, building the systems to deliver more efficient and cost-effective messaging programs.  In fact, it’s only been in the past two years that they have evolved into a full-service mobile agency, although in that time they have built a client roster that includes five F100 retailers.

 Hear about the latest Mobile Developer & Marketing gigs in your City at FoneGigs.com

As the team at VMBC sees it, budgeting for mobile as a cost center misses the whole point of the platform.  In their eyes, when it’s done right, mobile is actually a profit center and your mobile program, taken as a whole, should actually be generating incremental revenue.

“Doing it right” means following a very specific formula for creating and launching a mobile program.  It starts with building a community, creating a viable messaging database that will allow you to immediately begin generating a measurable ROI.  Once you have an audience in place, the focus expands to engaging that community, delivering content and offers that will further their connection to the brand and continually affirm their decision to have allowed you into their mobile life.  Finally, you can focus on selling to the community, using not only messaging but a wider array of mobile programs to drive incremental sales and the profit that pays for the entire program and still contributes to the bottom line.

Now, none of that is brain surgery.  They just seem to be better at it than other agencies we’ve seen.  And I think their success comes because they never take their eye off what they consider the single most important aspect of any program: building your messaging database through legitimate and verifiable opt-in. They are a little vague on exactly how they accomplish this (understandably), but their “secret sauce” for opt-in speaks for itself: over the past four years, they have opted-in more than 10 million customers into various client databases, and currently drive between 50,000-100,000 new opt-ins every month.

If you, like most people I speak with, know that mobile is becoming the preeminent marketing platform for any brand but don’t really know how to launch and support a mobile effort, I would definitely recommend checking out VMBC.

You’ve definitely seen them.

Perhaps you’ve seen them on a business card, an M&M’s magazine ad, in Times Square, or even on the bikini bottoms of a British beach volleyball team.  They are those little square boxes with the black and white squiggly patterns inside of them.  They look like a miniature crossword puzzle on steroids.

Scan them with your smartphone and, bingo, you get something back immediately on your cell phone.  It’s the latest mobile marketing craze and they are called QR Codes.

A QR Code is a specific matrix barcode that is readable by bar code readers that are easily downloaded to smartphones.  QR Codes have been popular in Japan and Korea for many years, but marketers in North America are just beginning to realize their potential.

When a user scans a QR Code with his smartphone, he might receive a video about the product, more detailed information than is available on the packaging, or even a shortcut to download an app.  Virtually anything that you can put on a web site can be received when a consumer scans the QR Code.  It’s easy to see why savvy marketers are using them.

According to the first ever study of their use by ComScore, 14 million Americans used a QR Code in a recent month.  That’s 6.2% of the total American mobile phone population.  Users tend to be young adults (53.4%), male (60.5%), and high income (36.1% earn $100,000+).  Simply put: QR Codes are most likely to be used by the market segment that advertisers covet the most.

While QR Codes are certainly sexy and fun to use, marketers should not rely on them exclusively for their promotion.  For most marketing efforts, it is important to also offer a text message marketing promotion as well since texting provides far greater penetration, at least for now.

One of the other raps against QR Codes is that ordinary black and white codes don’t provide sufficient branding.  One company’s QR Code, therefore, looks like all of the others.  Some companies are alleviating this concern by the use of “Custom QR Codes” which provide the company logo or brand within the QR Code itself.

Sometimes it’s hip to be a square.

Bob Bentz is President of Advanced Telecom Services (Wayne, Pennsylvania) which provides mobile marketing solutions such as mobile web sites, apps development, text message marketing, and Custom QR Codes to businesses and organizations.  Follow Bob Bentz on Twitter (@BobBentz) or Bob Bentz Linked In account.

I like doing it every now and then when I have time – access Twitter on my iPhone. But overall, what are the percentage of mobile users who access Twitter on their Smartphones?

Pew conducted a telephone survey in April and May of 2011, and found that 15% of Smartphone users access Twitter. Also interesting is the percentage of people who participate in a video call or chat. I do this all the time using Skype.

Original article featured on Mobile Marketing Watch.