by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Starbucks is launching a store-finding and menu-information application for the iPhone, and is testing a second app that will let customers use the phone as their Starbucks card.
by Sue Shellenbarger, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
I’ve always known my kids use digital communications gear a lot. But my cellphone bill last month really grabbed my attention.
My son had racked up nearly 2,000 incoming text messages, and had sent nearly as many. That means he was having more than 60 two-way communications via text message every day.
by Jessica Hodgson, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The country’s technology chief said that he would push the government to embrace blogs, wikis and social networking sites to achieve both greater efficiency and transparency.
Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.
Consolidation in the mobile ad industry continued on Tuesday when London-based mobile marketing company Velti announced its acquisition of AdInfuse, a small San Francisco mobile ad technology firm. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.
by Nick Wingfield, Staff Writer, The Wall Street Journal
Microsoft just started testing a new service, Vine, which is something like a Twitter for emergencies. It allows users to quickly notify neighbors when, say, a local river is about to flood or a rash of burglaries have occurred on the block.
Mobile marketing network 4INFO plans to announce Thursday that it has received $20 million in venture funding led by Peacock Equity, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance’s media, communications and entertainment business.
by Noam Cohen, Columnist, New York Times, Link by Link
The golfing star Natalie Gulbis recently joined the microblogging site Twitter, where she gives the public frequent updates of her life in short text messages, or tweets. First, though, there had to be a meeting between her media consultant, Kathleen Hessert, and other advisers.
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)
Analysts like to make bold predictions about the growth of mobile advertising. Most have overshot reality.
But at least one slice of the business appears to be catching on, according to marketers: ads sent via text message. A growing number of companies are using cellphone text messages to lend more interactivity to their ads. For instance, [...]
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