Believe it or not, the troubles besetting Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) were not the only life science stories coming out of the Boston area this week, although they sure grabbed most of the attention. So let’s get them all out of the way first:

—On Friday the 13th, the FDA said bits of steel, rubber, and fiber had been detected in vials of five major enzyme replacement drugs made by Genzyme, all manufactured at the company’s troubled Allston Landing plant in Boston. But the agency said that the problem affected only about 1 percent of Genzyme’s products, and that no serious side effects have been reported. In a statement, Genzyme said a review of its safety database “has not identified any safety concerns to suggest that patients treated with Genzyme products have been exposed to foreign particles.”

—On Monday the 16th, Genzyme got word that the FDA won’t approve its application to market its drug alglucosidase alfa (Lumizyme), a proposed treatment for Pompe disease, until the company fixes deficiencies at the Allston Landing facility, where it wants to mass-produce the drug in large batches. But Genzyme continues to make the drug in smaller batches and sell it under the name Myozyme.

—On Tuesday the 17th, shares in Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) fell 16 percent after Isis and Genzyme released the full details of joint clinical trials of mipomersen, a cholesterol-lowering drug that the two companies see as a potential successor to Pfizer’s blockbuster atorvastatin (Lipitor). The drug lowered “bad” LDL cholesterol levels by 25 percent on average, but in several patients it raised liver enzymes to triple their normal levels, indicating potential liver damage. In new trials, Genzyme and Isis say they’re going to study what side effects, if any, mipomersen causes at different doses.

—On Wednesday the 18th, Genzyme said it had decided to scrap an experimental kidney disease drug, an “advanced phosphate binder,” after a clinical trial of 349 patients showed that it was no better at ridding phosphorus from the blood of dialysis patients than Genzyme’s existing drug sevelamer carbonate (Renvela). Genzyme’s two existing phosphate binders, which generate $850 million per year in sales, go off-patent in 2014, and the company is anxious to find a next-generation treatment.

—In non-Genzyme news, Chelmsford, MA-based Zoll Medical (NASDAQ: ZOLL), which makes cardiac defibrillators and other emergency medical devices, released a CPR training app for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch that Ryan called the “most advanced” he’s seen. The “PocketCPR” app, which provides visual and audio instructions on proper CPR technique, could help lower the death toll from sudden cardiac arrest, which kills 300,000 Americans each year.

—Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS) of Cambridge, MA, said a 250-patient clinical trial showed that its drug naltrexone (Vivitrol), which is already used as a treatment for alcoholism, was more effective than a placebo at treating dependence on opioids such as heroin. The company plans to ask the FDA to approve this new use of the drug next year.

—Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners contributed to a $30 million Series B venture financing round for San Diego-based stem cell startup Fate Therapeutics. Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners led the deal, which also involved Arch Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, Astellas Venture Management, and Genzyme Ventures. Fate has collected about $50 million in venture funding all told.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace. Those companies’ products spread over the Internet like a virus. But why hasn’t there been a runaway hit like those in the mobile software world? Why does it take so much longer to build value, and a strong customer base, in mobile companies than in certain Internet startups?

Dan Shapiro had some entertaining thoughts on this yesterday, as he spoke to the Mobile Northwest 2009 crowd in Seattle. Shapiro is the co-founder and CEO of Ontela, a Seattle-based mobile imaging startup, and he’s a veteran of RealNetworks and Microsoft. I won’t do justice to his presentation, but here’s the gist.

Hotmail was one of the first examples of viral marketing. By appending the message, “Get your free e-mail at hotmail.com” (or some such) to the bottom of each e-mail, Hotmail helped pioneer a new method of promotion that was “basically free, highly measurable, and ridiculously effective,” Shapiro said. Its number of new subscribers jumped from hundreds to tens of thousands per day.

Maybe there’s something about the viral distribution model that doesn’t fly in the mobile world, Shapiro thought. In epidemiology, he pointed out, researchers use a parameter called the basic reproduction number to gauge whether a viral outbreak will spread or die out. The corresponding number in the Internet world tells you how many people a given user will “infect,” on average: Shapiro gave some estimates for Facebook (6), Gmail (5), MySpace (4), and Twitter (1.5). He argued that Twitter hasn’t been spreading virally; it has used more conventional marketing through word of mouth and the press.

“Heterogeneity in the target population is the best protection to keep you from being infected by viruses,” he said. That means some people have different levels of resistance, different behaviors, different types of contacts, and so forth, so not everyone will get infected by, say, the latest flu bug.

And that same kind of variety that makes individuals different is exactly why mobile isn’t viral, he argued. He cited some survey stats to explain how fragmented this market really is: There are roughly 500 different types of handsets, about 30 per carrier; about two-thirds of people (65 percent) don’t have a data plan; three out of four people (75 percent) are on a different carrier from you; almost that many (70 percent) don’t have a smartphone. And despite all the attention it gets, 98 percent of mobile users don’t have an iPhone. (iPhone apps are definitely not spreading virally, Shapiro said. He also argued that Tegic’s T9 predictive texting did not spread virally; it was pushed out by carriers and handset manufacturers in a dedicated partnership.)

“We will not see the Facebook, Gmail, or Yahoo of mobile until this changes,” Shapiro said. He added that he’s not advocating one standard mobile platform; he’s just saying how it is right now.

So his advice for mobile entrepreneurs and investors was:

—Be skeptical of anyone peddling viral marketing in mobile.

—Build a business model that doesn’t require big adoption.

—Pick a market segment that’s homogeneous. (Examples: BlackBerry corporate users, Silicon Valley techies.)

—Use ubiquitous technologies like WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and SMS texting.

—Wait… (”Things are getting better,” he said.)

Afterward, Shapiro said he thinks “Europe holds the future of the U.S.” Over there, wireless carriers have influence, but only about half of consumers get their services directly from carriers, versus about 90 percent in the U.S. “I think you’ll see the carrier role diminish,” he said, when it comes to mobile software.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

I sat in on a good venture capital panel yesterday at Mobile Northwest 2009 in Seattle. No huge arguments or chair throwing to speak of (we’ll see what we can stir up at the next few Xconomy Forums). But some solid and useful observations from Geoff Entress of Voyager Capital, and also a prominent Seattle-based angel investor; Adrian Smith of Ignition Partners in Bellevue, WA, an expert in telecom and wireless; and Puneet Tandon of Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA, who is looking to sign partnerships with top entrepreneurs in digital media and social networking. (You can also see some comments from mobile VC Tom Huseby’s keynote here.)

The panel was moderated by Tricia Duryee, the Seattle-based correspondent for mocoNews, a website that covers wireless telecommunications. Here are my quick “top three” takeaways from the discussion of the local mobile industry:

1. The panic may be over, but caution rules. Entress says he’s added nine companies to his portfolio this year, out of a total of 32 he’s involved in (and six mobile firms, including TravellingWave, Swype, Dashwire, and Treemo). “We’re definitely not out of the woods yet,” he said. “But 2010 might be a good year for selling companies.”

2. It’s not all about the iPhone. Entress and Smith pointed out that Apple has only 17 percent of the smartphone market, so there’s plenty of opportunity on other platforms, like the BlackBerry and devices that use Windows Mobile. “Apple has a huge amount of mindshare,” Smith said, “but the critical thing is the development environment around [mobile applications].” Tandon agreed, saying, “Barriers to doing business with us [carriers] perhaps have been lowered.” Entress stressed the importance, especially for startups, of trying to avoid “getting locked into any one carrier, handset, or operating system.”

3. Watch advertising, input technologies, and connected devices. Tandon pointed out that by sometime next year, there are projected to be 3.3 billion Web-connected devices, and 70 percent of them will be connected via wireless operators. That means carriers will be willing to pay to know “who are the social influencers in your subscriber base,” he said. Smith and Entress said Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob signifies that mobile advertising is here to stay—but that the deal was the “first one out” (like YouTube for video), so don’t look for anything near that sort of valuation again. Entress added that he’s working with a number of startups selling new ways of inputting text on mobile devices (using speech recognition, touch-screen methods, and so forth). For all our fancy gadgets, it seems we still struggle to communicate.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

To make it easier for small Web publishers to host videos on their sites, Cambridge, MA-based Brightcove will announce today that it is rolling out an “Express Edition” service starting at $99 per month.

The company’s previous lowest-end offering cost several hundred dollars per month. At the new $99 monthly level—which doesn’t require a monthly contract, as previous Brightcove packages did—users can store up to 50 videos on Brightcove’s servers and use up to 40 gigabytes of download bandwidth. (For $199 per month, they can store 200 videos and use 100 gigabytes of bandwidth; $499 per month will get them space for 500 videos and 250 gigabytes of bandwidth.)

“Nearly every sector of industry and society is embracing online video for marketing, education, and communications, so there is a huge opportunity” for a cheaper video hosting service, says Jeff Whatcott, Brightcove’s senior vice president of marketing. “Based on the research we’ve done and the demand we’ve seen from organizations of all sizes and scope over the past year, we’re confident Brightcove Express will be a success.”

Brightcove argues that free video-sharing sites like YouTube aren’t adequate for serious publishers because they limit videos to 10 minutes or less and don’t allow live streaming or control over advertising.

The Express Edition pricing is part of the new Brightcove 4 video platform being introduced today, just 13 months after the company rolled out its Brightcove 3 service. In recognition of the growing number of devices that consumers use to access video, the platform includes improvements such as support for developers who want to build video-driven iPhone applications.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

Here’s an iPhone application that could actually help people save lives. Zoll Medical, a maker of cardiac defibrillators and other products for the critical care market, says this morning that it has released a CPR training app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

This isn’t the first iPhone app of this sort that I’ve seen—but it’s certainly the most advanced. Chelmsford, MA-based Zoll’s (NASDAQ:ZOLL) “PocketCPR” training app gives users visual and audio instructions on proper CPR technique, and the software makes use of the accelerometer built into iPhones to measure the rate of a person’s hand movements when he or she is performing simulated compressions on manikins. The app is selling for $5.99. (For free, iPhone users can download an app called iCPR, but it doesn’t make use of the accelerometer to provide real-time feedback on how well the user is performing CPR.)

There are way too many iPhone apps for us to cover each individual launch, but the CPR training apps are an important category because they address a major health problem. The American Heart Association estimates that about 294,851 Americans per year receive emergency medical treatment for heart attacks, and multiple sources estimate that there are more than 300,000 deaths from cardiac arrest in the U.S. each year. According to Zoll, 70 percent of people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest when they are with family members or acquaintances. It’s too bad most Americans aren’t properly trained to perform the potentially lifesaving measure.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

Well, this does nothing to change the downward trend of early-stage software financings, but it’s good news nonetheless. Seattle-based Redfin, the online real estate broker and information discovery service, has announced a $10 million Series D funding, led by new investor Greylock Partners, the Silicon Valley venture firm formerly based in the Boston area. Existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Vulcan Capital, and The Hillman Company also participated in the round, which brings Redfin’s total funding to $30.8 million.

Redfin says it will use the cash “to scale its infrastructure for delivering extremely high levels of customer service, to expand into new markets and to invest in research and development.”

By most accounts, the company has had a very strong year, even as the real estate market has contracted and valuations have fallen. Redfin has generated its first profits, shipped what it says is the highest-rated iPhone app for real estate, and increased its website visits by more than 200 percent.

Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s CEO, talked about the significance of the new funding, and hinted at a goal of taking the company public. “Greylock’s experience developing some of the Internet’s most recognized consumer brands as well as its appetite for building large-scale public companies are a perfect fit for our ambitions,” Kelman said in a statement. “We believe that our ability to invest in technology and our consumer-first commitment give us a shot at reinventing a very fragmented, sales-driven real estate industry.”

Redfin was founded in 2002 and serves home buyers and sellers with real-estate listings, maps, analytics, tax records, and other information. Besides Seattle, it has operations in California, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington DC, and other metro areas. Redfin recently rolled out a new version of its website, which includes near-real-time data and photos of recent home sales, as well as links to blog discussions of listings, all on a national scale.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Healthcare deals are going one way, tech deals another. That’s my read from the past week in the Northwest, where we’ve seen some of the biggest biotech deals around, even as a prominent Seattle tech venture firm (and software financings in general) head south.

—Bothell, WA-based Alder Biopharmaceuticals scored one of the biggest biotech partnerships of the year, as Luke reported today. The company has formed a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) to develop Alder’s experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug, ALD518, and the deal could be worth more than $1 billion. In exchange for granting Bristol a worldwide exclusive license to develop ALD518 for all uses except cancer, Alder will get $85 million upfront, as much as $764 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, sales-related milestone payments that could exceed $200 million, and royalties on product sales.

—I took a look at the venture and debt financings for Washington companies last month (and the previous two months), and concluded that large investments in software startups aren’t coming back anytime soon. The data, courtesy of New York-based ChubbyBrain, shows most of the money is in healthcare and life sciences.

—Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire has secured an additional investment of $1.5 billion from Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Intel, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Google, a previous investor, is not participating in the round. The money will support Clearwire’s (NASDAQ: CLWR) deployment of its WiMax broadband network.

—Verathon, a Bothell, WA-based maker of ultrasound technology, has been acquired by Sarasota, FL-based Roper Industries (NYSE: ROP) as part of a pair of transactions worth a combined $356 million, as Luke reported. The price of Verathon’s sale by itself was not announced. The company develops a 3-D diagnostic imaging tool that helps doctors diagnose bladder disorders.

—One of Seattle’s most prominent tech VC firms will not be raising another fund or making new investments. Len Jordan of Frazier Technology Ventures confirmed the news as he announced he’s moving to Madrona Venture Group at the beginning of next year.

—Bellevue, WA-based Light Sciences Oncology has lined up $35 million in follow-up financing to develop its drug-device treatment for cancer, as Luke reported. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the deal gives Light Sciences the right to access a $23.3 million line of credit, and $11.8 million more if investors choose to exercise warrants. The company raised $40 million from undisclosed VCs last year.

—Seattle startup Movaya Wireless has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX, for an undisclosed price. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and focuses on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and mobile Web platforms. The company’s development team in China will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

The moderators of San Diego’s 9th Annual GadgetFest kept saying during Tuesday night’s showcase for new technology products that past winners have gone on to even greater glory and success. That may or may not be good news for the Motorola Droid that goes on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores nationwide. After making a cursory appearance at CTIA and perhaps elsewhere, the Droid debuted its impressive features and ended the evening as runner-up.

GadgetFest moderators Ken Rutkowski and Andy Abramson reminded the audience that Grand Central, a GadgetFest winner three years ago, was acquired shortly after the 2006 event by Google (and has since been transformed into Google Voice). They also pointed to Motorola’s Q Phone, Sling Media’s Slingbox, and the Truphone as paragons of GadgetFest virtue. All three devices were introduced at GadgetFest instead of the CTIA or other major trade shows, according to CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group that sponsors the event.

So expectations were high. But the Droid, with all its iPhone-slaying hoopla, finished the GadgetFest competition in a dead-heat with EcoDog, a local cleantech startup that trotted out Fido—a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill. The GadgetFest judges ultimately proclaimed EcoDog this year’s best in show after the Vista, CA-based company received perceptibly more-boisterous applause from the audience in the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall at Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters.

At the end of the show, while the judges were deciding how to resolve the tie, one of the moderators asked EcoDog founder and CEO Ron Pitt if he had anything more to say. He replied, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

So what are the up and coming gadgets that got previewed at GadgetFest? Here’s a rundown, just in time for the Christmas shopping season:

—TelCentris, the San Diego-based provider of unified communications services, presented an update to its VoxOx system, which aggregates voice over Internet technology, text messaging, instant messaging, serial conferencing, file sharing, and e-mail onto one user interface. As TelCentris executives explained to me in July, the company makes most …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Seattle-based Movaya Wireless, a mobile software startup, has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX. Financial terms were not announced. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and recently has been focused on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and other mobile Web platforms. The company has a development team in China that will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Andover, MA-based envIO Networks has spent several years developing a recommendation technology called “Social Genome” that helps mobile phone owners find applications they’ll like based on the preferences of their friends and acquaintances. Today envIO introduced software called Chorus that applies the Social Genome technology to the 100,000-plus apps in the Apple iTunes App Store. Chorus, which is itself an iPhone app, lets users see which other apps their friends are using and how they’re rated. “iPhone users already ask friends and colleagues about cool, new apps. Chorus makes it simple,” Linda Barrabee, a former Yankee Media and Jupiter mobile analyst who is an advisor to envIO, said in a statement.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

I can’t do justice to a comprehensive review of yesterday’s FiReGlobal (West Coast) conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seattle. Instead, I’ll just give a few of my key takeaways. The all-day event, organized by Strategic News Service, focused on how to solve some of the most pressing problems in technology, business, and society—in areas as diverse as broadband access, entrepreneurship, education, sustainability and the environment, political discourse, human health, and mobile devices.

The sweeping conference had the tagline, “Global technology driving local solutions.” Interesting, as that’s sort of the reverse of Xconomy’s mantra, which is reporting about local stories with global impact. But I think they’re two sides of the same innovation coin.

So, in “ESPN plays of the day” style, here’s my top 10 list from the conference (if only I had the video to go with it):

10. Setting up entrepreneurial zones. A panel led by Ty Carlson of Microsoft proposed denoting special “R&D zones” from Oregon to British Columbia geared toward supporting startups in fields like renewable energy, sustainable farming, and biotech. The idea would be to offer tax credits and other incentives to create a more entrepreneurial culture in the Northwest, especially in rural areas.

9. What government should and shouldn’t do. Investor and entrepreneur Martin Tobias of Seattle-based Kashless said, “Startups and investors can’t make a 10-year bet when you have a two-year tax credit.” Those conditions freeze out small companies, especially in costly ventures like energy. So government should create open markets and set minimum market sizes for new technologies, Tobias said. But it shouldn’t pick the technology winners themselves.

8. Northwest tech startups do the Olympics. Tom Guthrie, CEO of Seattle-based Twisted Pair Solutions, said his company has helped numerous agencies on the Olympic Peninsula inter-operate their radios—a key problem in disaster response and other scenarios. Twisted Pair, which is backed by Ignition Partners and other investors, is also working on a laser system to deliver broadband signals. Meanwhile, Paul Manson, CEO of Vancouver, BC-based Sea Breeze, talked about his company’s project to build a high-voltage, direct-current undersea cable between Victoria, BC, and Port Angeles, WA. This would be a fast, controllable power transmission component of a smart grid; it should be under construction by mid-2010, he said.

7. The world according to Dell. In a chat with Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service, Michael Dell said he is excited about China and the rest of Asia as fast-growing economies. He anticipates a U.S. recovery from the recession, but says, “I don’t think you’ll see an immediate snap-back.” And he likes South America as an emerging market (Dell does sales of more than $1 billion in Brazil alone). But Europe, not so much—he sees a lot of uncertainty in the workforce there.

6. Get ready for Dell smartphones. “Mobility is absolutely the theme,” Dell said. He was talking about the relative importance of desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices to …Next Page »

Comments (4) | Reprints | Share:        

Last time I checked, there were 85,000 iPhone applications in Apple’s iTunes App Store, a number that seems to grow by thousands every week. But most of those apps were dreamed up by developers, not by average users. Now there’s a way for anyone with a bright idea for an iPhone app to submit it—and, if other people like the idea enough, to see it get made.

It’s called Appswell, and it launched yesterday. The idea behind the Cambridge, MA-based startup, the brainchild of a young serial Web entrepreneur named Dan Sullivan, is to take advantage of the collective creativity of iPhone users to come up with the next great money-making app, and give everyone a chance to share in the proceeds.

Anyone with an iPhone can submit an idea to Appswell or vote on other users’ ideas. Each month, the company will turn the most popular idea into an app, and reward the creator with a $1,000 cash prize and a stake in future sales.

“Rather than a bunch of developers putting 20 things on a whiteboard, we think we have a method of engaging thousands of people,” says Sullivan. “For the consumer who has a great idea in his head but isn’t a developer and will never build it, we are narrowing the gap for getting that idea tested and vetted and turning it into reality.”

Appropriately, there’s just one way to submit an idea for an app: through Appswell’s own free iPhone app. (The app, and the company itself, were ready to launch back in mid-September, when I first met Sullivan. But like so many other companies, Appswell had to wait for weeks while the still-mysterious iTunes App Store approval process inched forward. Sullivan finally got the okay last night.)

The app itself couldn’t be simpler. To submit an idea, users simply create an account, click “Add your idea,” and enter a name, a category, and a short text description. Users can also browse ideas submitted by others by category, popularity, or recentness. If you see an app idea you like, you can vote for it, comment on it, or share it via e-mail or Twitter.

At the end of each month, Sullivan says, the company will hold a week-long, American Idol-style showdown between the five most popular app ideas. The winning idea will be turned into an actual app by Appswell’s developers—assuming that it’s pitched at general consumers, can be sold for $1 to $2, and meets Apple’s standards. The winner gets the cash prize plus 10 percent of future proceeds from the app.

The Appswell app is so new that users have submitted only a couple dozen ideas so far, some of which were seeded by beta testers, according to Sullivan. The most popular idea, as of this morning, was for a “sound board maker” that would let users make short sound recordings and edit them into comical audio clips.

Sullivan says he believes Appswell is the first company to try the crowdsourcing model in the iPhone app arena. But he thinks the experiences of companies in other markets—he points to Threadless’s T-shirts and Local Motors‘ car design competitions—bode well for his startup. The beauty of Appswell’s model, he says, is that …Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

Call it the iPhone “2G.” Two Seattle-area startups that start with the letter “G” are rolling out new iPhone apps today. OK, this would not normally make significant news for us, because new apps appear on a daily basis, but each of these cases provides an interesting update to the company’s mobile strategy, so here we go:

—Glympse has been on a tear since May, when co-founder and CEO Bryan Trussel said the Seattle-area company first started offering its location-sharing service on mobile phones. The idea of the software is that your friends and business contacts can get an immediate “glympse” of where you are on a map, automatically, for a certain amount of time that you set. Today’s announcement that Glympse is available as a free download on the iPhone is no surprise. Last week, the startup’s service was named a showcase application in Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and the company has been working on its iPhone app for some time. It’s all part of Glympse’s strategy to build a mass-consumer audience based on a free service, before working up to paid models and location-based ads.

—Gist has also been picking up steam, in a very different market. The Seattle-based company, led by founder and CEO T.A. McCann, focuses on giving consumers and business customers information about their e-mail and social-network contacts in a quick and easy way. The goal is to help people manage their relationships more efficiently, for example, by feeding them updates from all over the Web about their contacts. Gist opened up to the public last month, and McCann told me then that the company had done some optimization for the iPhone and was more broadly improving its mobile version. The new iPhone app, which is free, makes sense for busy professionals who want to scan the latest info on whoever they’re meeting next, from blogs, articles, and social media, right before their appointment. It also fits into Gist’s strategy for bridging e-mail, search, and social media in order to help people manage all that information.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

The co-founders who introduced San Diego-based Qualcomm’s wireless digital technology in 1989 envisioned from the early days that it would be ideal for the Internet. But Irwin Jacobs says now even he’s amazed at how many things a cell phone can do today.

A new generation of innovators is now using Qualcomm’s proprietary technology to develop new cellular devices and services in such fields as healthcare, transportation, and energy—and “None of that was quite obvious to us in the early days,” Jacobs said in a presentation at a wireless conference in San Diego yesterday. Yet the Qualcomm co-founder and his son, Qualcomm chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs, also say the wireless industry is pushing the limits of cellular networks by cranking out ever-faster wireless devices that feature more and more mobile data services. Many of the new products just over the horizon are driven by Qualcomm’s own advances in technology—including 4G smartphones, netbook computers, and palm-size wireless TVs.

Rapid changes in cellular technology and the potential for network constraints became part of a wide-ranging keynote address at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment conference in San Diego. Unlike most keynotes, though, Qualcomm’s father-and-son dynasty appeared together onstage for what was intended to be a living-room discussion with CTIA president Steve Largent, the former Oklahoma Republican Congressman and Hall of Fame pro football receiver.

Irwin Jacobs

One of their most interesting revelations came while Irwin, who turns 76 later this month, was discussing the technology advances that led to the current generation of smartphones. Despite rapid technology advances, the market for mobile Web-based services was slow to develop, and Irwin observed, “The iPhone was really a major breakthrough, in terms of developing a simple interface.”

Paul added, “We always used to talk about developing the killer app, and the killer app ended up being a simple user interface,” and he says most advances in computing capabilities and graphics technologies are now focused on making the interface even simpler to use. Paul, who was named Qualcomm’s CEO in 2005 and chairman earlier this year, says he envisions a future in which wireless technologies are “increasingly embedded in everything,” enabling a homeowner to use their cell phone to remotely control their TV, stereo, and lights.

According to Irwin, wireless networks provide cellular coverage for roughly 80 percent of the world population today, and he estimates there are …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It’s been a very busy week for news in the mobile industry. First, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) rolled out a one-click mobile payments service that promises to shake up the world of mobile-app developers and distributors. Then it seems like all hell broke loose, courtesy of the massive CTIA wireless expo going on in San Diego through this Friday.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s happening in mobile-device interfaces, iPhone apps, and other mobile news from the Northwest:

—In the area of speech interfaces, Seattle-based TravellingWave announced today at CTIA its “voice-powered text prediction” application for mobile phones. The idea is to combine keyboard-based text input prediction with speech recognition so you don’t need to press as many buttons, while keeping the text-entry process accurate and simple to use. TravellingWave was founded in 2004 and is backed by its founder, angel investors, and grants from the National Science Foundation.

—Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s Bing and Sprint said today that the upcoming Samsung Intrepid smartphone (available Oct. 11), which runs on Windows Mobile, will incorporate Microsoft’s Tellme software to enable consumers to use their voice to dial contacts, compose text messages, and search the Web for business listings, cafes, weather and traffic reports, maps, and directions. It’s the first mobile device to use Tellme, as far as I can tell.

—Seattle-area startup Glympse, which focuses on mobile location sharing, announced yesterday it has been selected as a “showcase” application within Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft’s recently announced mobile app store. So Glympse is now available on Windows phones with GPS, and is in private beta trials on the iPhone. Back in May, Glympse first launched its service on T-Mobile phones with Google’s Android operating system, and CEO Bryan Trussel talked with me about the company’s strategy.

—Who knew that developers in Portland, OR, had put out so many iPhone apps? Silicon Florist reported yesterday that the region is responsible for making more than 40 apps in the iTunes store, including prominent ones from Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods, and Zipcar. The list also includes Stanza, the hit e-book app developed by Lexcycle, which was co-founded by Portland resident Marc Prud’hommeaux. Lexcycle has since been absorbed into Amazon. (Don’t mess with Seattle.)

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It’s been just over a year since we first catalogued the iPhone apps originating from our fair city (and environs). Back then, mobile applications like Urbanspoon, Whrrl (from Pelago), and Jott were relatively new and just starting to take off, letting iPhone users do things like discover restaurants and events and dictate e-mails and text messages—can you believe it’s only been a year?

Now it’s almost impossible to keep up with the volume of iPhone apps coming out of the Seattle area, just on a weekly basis. Here are five that have caught my eye as of late, in no particular order—it’s not a comprehensive list, so if you know of any good ones I missed recently, please drop me a line at gthuang@xconomy.com or post a comment at the bottom of this story. Just from what I’ve gathered lately, it looks like a good mix of indie developers and corporations are creating new products:

iGlasses ($0.99)
A digital magnifying glass that helps you read fine print on things like restaurant menus and medication bottles. The app was developed by Brian Ward of Windward Partners (a real estate broker and attorney) and Jack Breese of the Washington Advisory Group (formerly a director of Microsoft Research).

Best Camera ($2.99)
A smash-hit photography app that lets you edit pictures (applying digital filters and effects) taken on an iPhone, and upload them to a communal online gallery or social site, as Wade reported last Friday. Developed by Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis, it’s going a long way towards making the iPhone the only camera most people will ever need.

DateCheck (free, though the services aren’t)
A background-check app that lets you gather information about your date, or any person—things like criminal records and data from social networks. Bellevue, WA-based Intelius rolled out this app at the DEMO conference in San Diego last week.

Learn That Name ($1, soon to be $2)
A quiz-style game to help you associate names and faces in your LinkedIn contacts. It was developed by a 14-person team assembled at last month’s Startup Weekend in Redmond, WA, and was introduced for sale early last week.

myStarbucks and Starbucks Card Mobile (both free, though lattes still cost an arm and a leg)
A store locator and mobile payment card, respectively. The Seattle Times and many other outlets reported on these, the first iPhone apps from the coffee giant, last week. The payment app is currently being tested at Starbucks stores around Seattle and Silicon Valley.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

[Corrected 9/28/09: Chase Jarvis is based in Seattle, not San Francisco. I regret the error and apologize to our Seattle readers!] Seattle-based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis is known for his arresting, color-saturated images of people in motion—skiing, swimming, somersaulting. He’s also known for (literally) trademarking the phrase “the best camera is the one you have with you.” His point is that you don’t an expensive SLR to take great pictures. You can do a lot with the camera in your pocket or purse—which more likely than not is a camera phone.

This week, Jarvis took his slogan to the next level, launching a trio of products—a book, an iPhone application, and a photo-sharing community on the Web—intended to encourage all photographers, pro and amateur alike, to get more creative with their camera phones. This cross-media campaign is a brilliant concept—both as a digital-arts-education project and as a piece of self-promotion for Jarvis and his studio—and it also happens to fit in really well with the theme I’ve been writing about in this space throughout September in “Seven Projects to Stretch your Digital Wings,” Parts 1, 2, and 3. So, if you’ve got an iPhone, go spend $2.99 on Jarvis’s app, called “Best Camera,” and consider today’s column Project #8.

Original

Jewel

Paris

Slate

Candy

There are more than 1,300 photography-related apps in the iTunes App Store, but as far as I know, Best Camera is the only one that comes with a dedicated community of other iPhone users. The app allows you to take a picture with the iPhone’s built-in camera, apply a range of cool digital filters and effects, and then upload your finished photo to a gallery that’s constantly being updated, in real time, with new photos from other Best Camera users. You can give the photos you like best a thumbs-up, and browse photos either by popularity or recentness.

In addition to introducing you to a bunch of other creative souls, Best Camera will let you play with your own images and perhaps invent your own new styles. That’s thanks to a surprisingly flexible interface for applying various filters to your raw images and changing the order in which the filters are “stacked.” The filters themselves go well beyond the typical gray-scaling, contrast-enhancing, or redeye-reducing algorithms you’ll see in other iPhone image editing apps: working with Übermind, a Seattle software development firm that specializes in photography-related applications for desktops and mobile phones, Jarvis dreamed up a dozen effects altogether, including four “signature filters” inspired by his own photographic styles.

It’s hard to describe the signature effects in words, but one filter, called “Jewel,” gives photos a warm, rich, almost antique look, while another called “Candy” creates an intense, high-contrast, caffeinated feeling reminiscent of Jarvis’s advertising photography. At left, I’ve lined up examples of the same photo from my own iPhone album, altered using the “Jewel,” “Paris,” “Slate,” and “Candy” filters, respectively.

As someone who loves to spend time looking at other people’s photos and trying to understand their styles—I could spend hours using the “Explore” feature at Flickr—I think the community feature of Best Camera is especially fun. It’s a nice feeling to upload a picture and then see it appear in the public gallery, which is accessible right from the app. You can browse the gallery from a desktop browser, too, at www.thebestcamera.com; the bonus, if you go there, is that the “recipe” used for each photo—that is, the combination and order of digital effects the photographer chose—shows up right alongside the image. (You can see all of my Best Camera photos here.)

Jarvis certainly isn’t the only professional photographer singing the praises of camera phones. Shawn Rocco, a staff photojournalist at the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, shoots with a long-since-obsolete Motorola E815 mobile phone. In fact, the American art world seems to be developing a bit of a fetish for …Next Page »

Comments (10) | Reprints | Share:        

In the mid 1990s, three on-ramps led us on to the information superhighway: AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe. For a monthly fee, users were served up a customized version of the Web offered by one of these network providers. They took a walled garden approach, offering applications only through their services and limiting e-mails within their networks. For a while, it worked. But soon, consumers and application developers alike were clamoring for more—and, fortunately, the walls around the World Wide Web came tumbling down. Untethered from these artificial constraints, developers created innovative Web-based applications, sites and services available to all—regardless of their provider—and consumers began logging onto the Web in droves.

The subsequent Internet boom that took place is well known. It’s hard to imagine where we would be now if those walls had remained. The Web 1.0 movement showed us that technological innovation flourishes when markets are open. Yet despite the lessons learned, we find ourselves repeating history in the U.S. mobile marketplace. With so much hype about the “mobile Internet,” did you ever wonder why we have yet to see a mobile start-up grow to the scale of an Amazon, Google, Yahoo or Facebook?

Clearly, the innovation and growth of Wireless 1.0 was led by Europe and Asia. The question is whether the U.S. will lead the Wireless 2.0 era. While our European and Asian counterparts understood and embraced open mobile networks early on, closed markets here in the U.S. constrain progress. Consumers here can’t buy just any mobile device with any software and use it on any network. The carriers argue that this level of control is necessary to ensure network “quality.” AT&T made the same argument about the quality of the landline network before the 1982 divestiture. But as of this writing I’m still unaware of anyone who bought a landline phone at Target, plugged it in at home and thereby brought down the AT&T landline network.

From 1999-2007, we saw an explosion of wireless innovation in Europe and Asia, where mobile devices weren’t limited to one network and developers could build and distribute wireless applications to virtually any mobile consumer. Japan had wireless Internet through NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode as early as 1999. Meanwhile, in Europe, the introduction of the open GSM standard created an environment where early interoperability and network openness were standard.

During this same time period, U.S. mobile innovation was largely sluggish, stuck in the walled garden model. While you could argue this was acceptable during that time period because our technology had not caught up yet, we only need to look at the iPhone and BlackBerry app stores to know that we are now capable of more. Apple—and the ecosystem that has surrounded it—has shown the world that an innovative company can create a great product with a direct-to-consumer path to market.

Smart phones (such as BlackBerry phones and the iPhone) are built on open technology by default, and carriers cannot block access to these devices. Apple has proven that a friction-free ecosystem can be built to allow independent software vendors (ISVs) to address this market. But alas, smart phones account for less than 25 percent of the market, and won’t exceed 50 percent for several years—an eternity in high tech. So for the foreseeable future, the vast majority of the U.S. mobile market will be comprised of feature phones, which only run software approved by the wireless carrier.

Herein lies the problem and the solution. What kind of innovations would emerge in the U.S. market if we could replicate for the 200 million feature phone users what Apple has created for the iPhone? I’m not talking about the iPhone’s elegant form factor or usability. Rather, I mean …Next Page »

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:        

A mobile application called Learn That Name, developed by entrepreneurs in the Seattle area, is getting props in a Wall Street Journal blog today, after going live in the iPhone app store late last week. Learn That Name, which helps you associate names with photos in your LinkedIn contacts, debuted at Startup Weekend in Redmond, WA, three weeks ago, winning an award for audience favorite. Team leader Eric Koester of Cooley Godward Kronish said the entire 14-person team has continued to work together and is planning to launch the app in the new Palm store when it goes live.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

If you’re under 25 or so, you probably don’t need much training on how to share digital photos, make a digital sketch, create an animated cartoon, make a personalized online map, or the like. I wrote the last three installments of my World Wide Wade column for everyone else: The majority of everyday computer users who are vaguely aware of all the amazing tools popping up in the digital media world, and who might even enjoy putting some of them to creative use, but who could use a few handy pointers.

But my “Seven Projects to Stretch Your Digital Wings” series appeared in three episodes over the course of two weeks, which isn’t too handy. So I thought it might be useful to list all seven projects in one place. Here we go:

1. Make a Digital Painting with Brushes. Relive your finger-painting days using the same iPhone app used by artist Jorge Colombo to create the June 1 cover of The New Yorker.

2. Start Lifestreaming with Friendfeed or Posterous. Set up a “lifestream”—2009’s replacement for the old-fashioned blog—as a locus for all your social media activities.

3. Document a Space with Photosynth. Use Microsoft’s amazing experimental software for collating hundreds of digital pictures of a single space or object into an immersive, three-dimensional environment.

4. Become an Amateur Podcaster with AudioBoo. Learn how to use this UK-born iPhone app to make mini-podcasts that all your friends can listen to.

5. Create a Short Animated Film with Xtranormal. Be the first on your block to script your own computer-animated short feature, using a nifty new “text-to-movie” technology.

6. Put Yourself on the Map with Platial. Learn the basics of photo-enhanced storytelling using digital maps.

7. Become a Virtual Architect in Second Life. Try your hand at building 3-D virtual objects inside the world’s most flexible and welcoming social virtual world.

Have fun and let us know what you created!

Comments (4) | Reprints | Share: