Facebook formally announced 2 new Credits programs

Today Facebook formally announced the roll-out of two new Credits programs that were first detailed a couple weeks back at the Inside Social Apps conference: buy with friends and frictionless payments.

Facebook described the two Credits programs on the developer blog:
Buy with friends gives people the option to share a discount with their friends after they make purchases in games.
After making a purchase, the user has the option to share a discount for the same item with their friends through the newsfeed. Their friends can respond by either going to the


game to buy the item, or simply making a purchase inline without losing the context of what they were doing on Facebook.

This function is by many people called a Groupon competition, however I think it has nothing to do with Groupon, it is just another way to bind users and game developer to FB Credits that FB makes more revenue. The approach is smart because it has benefits for the user and therefore the users will have higher acceptance.

The second product, frictionless payments, is essentially Facebook’s one-click buying solution, making it easy for users to stay completely within the game without breaking the experience. There’s no doubt that this should help increase transaction volume for Facebook. These services are limited to Facebook Credits which means they can only be used for virtual goods. Again another step to get more revenue. Till now developers did not need to use FB credits as payment method. But with the instant buy they need to move to Credits.

Developers have a deadline on 1st July to transition over to Credits.

Facebook takes more and more control over their 3rd party apps. These made FB big, but FB had no revenue coming through, which changes with FB credits. 30% of credit revenue goes directly to FB the rest to the developer.


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Linkedin Extended Search

Linked extended their search function which some really nice features. The results of the search include linkedin updates and tweets.
The search comes really handy when your are looking for a new job or if you want to hire somebody.
Within the search results you can narrow the results down by network connectionsby companies, Industry, Time, Location, School and Topics. You can save the search,  if the search results as wanted.This makes the tool very helpful and a strong player for certain information finding. HR people will like this is they always look for certain professions. Linkedin is improving a lot and need to do to ensure their IPO will work well.

Apple is changing rules again

In case you did not figure out yet, i am a big Apple user, maybe even a big Apple fan. But I am sometimes questioning certain approaches by Apple.

Last week, Apple did deny the Sony reader app for the app store. Not that i am a big fan of Sony, but their app is the only of the t4 big ones which allows me to use the ebook reader to rent books from my local library directly through the reader. This would have been a nice feature on the iPad.

However Apple does not agree on the approach that the user can buy on the iPad books to read on one of the readers without the vendors has to give Apple 30%.

Apple lives by the 30% rule. 30% off the iTunes songs, 30% off the paid app revenue, 30% off the iAds ad so on.

With Kindle on the iPad as an example, you can't buy directly in the app books, you need to go to the amazon website to buy the books. The book is then in the cloud and the app will sync it to your iPad.

Apple wants to avoid this because it does not make any revenue on it. But the question is, if this is even legal?

To make sound it pro customer and more legal, Apple came up with a pretty statement pro customer.
"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app," Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Let us face this, if Kindle must offer in App buy then Amazon would lose 30% on each book bought through the app.

If i understand the statement correct from Trudy Muller, then the answer is easy.
Kindle should offer a buy for consumers through the iPad app, but there should be two prices. A download now in the app price and a price when the consumer buys the book at amazon through web.
The first amount should be 30% higher than if the user buys outside the app.
Therefore Amazon does comply the ability to buy the book within the app and does not lose money for books bought through the app.

The beauty right now with the kindle app is, that it does not matter on which device the app is, the user can always read all books he bought before.

Does this change with the new terms?

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New York Times iPad app crashes again

There has been a lot of trouble since the NYTimes went from editor's choice to the full iPad app.
The app did crash all the time when trying to start or loading an older article. But with the 12/28/2010 everything went better. I was close to write a blog entry how fast the app now updates new content and how stable the app is.
But since two days i can't read any article. As soon i start the app it crashes the iPad completely ad let the iPad reboot, but actually it is not a real reboot.
I see the apple logo in the middle of the screen but it takes too short for a reboot and the other apps are still open when i open the app dock.
I had to uninstall the app and install again. Which means i had to log in again with my credentials. The app did work fine for one day and then i had to do the same again.

NYtimes has to improve a lot before they can start to charge for their app.
Last year they announced that beginning of this year they will charge the user. However it did not happen yet. I guess partly of their crashing issue and partly because Apple has their own idea how the the purchase shall work. For Apple there is not a daily subscription option and the buy has to be an in app buy with revenue share of 30% to Apple.


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ATT fears losing customers and pushes with ads

Only a few days left till Verizon will offer the iPhone and ATT gets cold feet.
ATT is sending to all their iPhone customers an email to show that only ATT customers can surf the Internet during taking a call. So simple but true. Everybody at Verizon will miss the feature. To compensate this problem, Verizon is offering for a limited time unlimited data, but don't be fouled, it won't last forever. I lucky wise could grandfather my unlimited data plan ATT.

The email from ATT offers as well 25% off on iPhone accessories.



My Tip, regardless of discount, you should stay with ATT if most of your friends are with ATT, if not still stay with it. I love the rollover feature, this allows you to use the lowest minutes plan, keep a few months under and you have enough minutes left for the rest of the year. And reading email or receiving an image during call is awesome and often in use. If you play a game which gets info over data, you don't need to stop it to take the call.

The pricing at ATT is actually around $5 better and the 3G (when it works) is even faster than Verizon. I had no problems yet but I don't live in NY or LA.

And if everybody moves to Verizon then the network might go down as well. Verizon website was down when the iPhone was announced, same for ATT when iPhone 4 came out at ATT. I heard Verizon did learn a lot from ATT mistakes, but I assume not enough to know that there might be a lot of website traffic when the iPhone is announced, so why should they then learned more in terms of updating their towers?

And one slight very unimportant thing if you are not a traveller. Verizon iPhone will NOT work in Europe and most other countries besides US, Korea and 38 other countries. 75% of countries are on the GSM network, but 20% on CDMA, and guess what network Verizon is on?

it is good that there is a Second Provider. Because i can reduce my iPhone bill by $20 (already did) by telling ATT I would move to Verizon. I stayed and got discounted. I love open market.

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America invented the iPhone but Germany is already a step ahead

Everybody is talking about social and Mobile and guess what, this is old news. Both should be normal and common like Internet. There is no need to call any both out, just have it as a part of your marketing.

What we should call out is augmented reality, the ability to combine reality with animated images like green screen in movies. The mobile devices are getting faster and better. AR is here and in 12 months as usual as Social, mobile or Internet. But at least it will be in everybody mouth like Social today.

America seems not ready for this. Almost the same as for QR codes. They are around for years and just now we start to see them here. Europe and Germany are using them for marketing since years. Now Germany is again ahead and shows how AR can work for you.
Last week Germans or Americans with German satellite TV had a chance to watch and interact with the world’s first augmented-reality TV show.
Viewers of Galileo, a quiz show (ProSieben channel), were able to interact with the questions on the TV screen by viewing and interacting with augmented reality versions of the questions on their iPhone screens.
The viewer needed to have Junaio on their iPhone to see the AR and interact. The app is created by a German company called Metaio.





And there is Audi (German car maker) which created a beautiful calendar with no cars, but if the user downloads an iPhone app and holds the iPhone in front of the calendar, the user will see the latest Audi models on the calendar.
Watch the movie here






I think there are reasons why i kann stolz Deutscher zu sein. Prost.
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iPad needs to be updated

We all know there is a new iPad coming and we are all speculating what features it will have.
I am almost positive two features will be not included. Neither are changeable battery nor a SD card slot.
Why? Because Apple has no mobile device which allows you to change the battery or has a SD card slot (i don't count notebook anymore as mobile).

But a few things we need are obvious.

1. Retina display
I am using as a smart phone the iPhone 4 (I guess in June the iPhone 5) and the screen of the iPad looks so bad now. When I got it new, i did not know better and thought how cool, but since i have the iPhone4, I wished the iPad had a better screen.

2. Cameras
I never thought I need a camera on the iPad, but since Skype works with camera on iOS it would make so much fun to talk to my family overseas from the backyard, the couch or kitchen without holding the heavy macbook pro. And to be honest I feel the iPhone screen is too small for video calling. It is fun but iPad would be so much more useful. Or webex with split screen this would be much better, i could do my conference calls at Starbucks.
Rear facing camera would be nice as well, not that I think I need it, but it would not hurt to have it.

3. Faster processor
Some movies or games are still not 100% smooth, and if they are, faster is always better. The real issue i have with office documents converted to pages or numbers. To edit them takes forever, sped would help.

These are the hardware wishes. For the iOS I have some more.

1. Multiple user login
Ok, i admit we have already two iPads, but still everybody is using my iPad, it would be nice to give my wife and son their own login with their own Apple account to download apps. The device is expensive enough to allow multiple user accounts.

2. Better data sharing.
Everything should be in the cloud or at least easy to share between the devices without the need to upload to mobile.me, to sync with iTunes or to email.
All apple devices in one household should have at least read access to all photo albums (maybe the function is already there and i don't know it) but I am so annoyed that i take pictures with the iPhone and then i have to send them via email to the iPad to post them in my blog. Why not automatically have access like calendar or address book?
I am fine if it does only work in same wifi network.

3. Real airplay
Same as above, but for all movies or songs. Why can't I watch a movie on my iPad from my iTunes library in the server room without work arounds through the browser or other devices?
Right now i can play from my iPad to my apple TV but not from computer to iPad. The iPad should be like the apple tv.



4. Support of any wifi printer
I hate work arounds, just help us to print to any wifi printer or at least to most of the big brands.

5. Microsoft Office
This is a call to Microsoft. I would be willing to pay the full office price if I could get it on the iPad. I work in America, I work in a country where you need office. Period.


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