“AdMob’s new Interactive Video Ad Unit brings together consumers’ love of watching videos on their mobile device with advertisers’ goal of providing an interactive, social experience for consumers,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO, AdMob. “We are excited to create new ways for advertisers to engage with consumers on their mobile devices and for the developers behind the most popular and engaging iPhone applications to effectively monetize.”

The Interactive Video Ad Unit will be sold primarily as an interstitial that will automatically play as an application loads. This auto-play implementation delivers a captive, engaged audience similar to video interstitials on the traditional PC web. It will also be available through a banner ad unit where consumers will click to play the video. The ad unit features customizable interactivity buttons within the video player, putting users a touch away from deeper brand engagement with an advertiser as they experience branded video content.

In addition to Android, fring is supported worldwide on thousands of Symbian S60, iPhone, iPod touch, Windows Mobile, J2ME and Linux devices.

Known Issues (Will be fixed in the next version):

- GSM contacts do not appear in fring’s buddy list on the Motorola DROID device
- Call disconnection tone may be heard a few times when terminating a call
- SIP and SkypeOut calls are not yet available on the Motorola DROID device

When you sign in to Social Beat, they can easily view friends’ activity, news feeds, status updates and new photos. You can even post new status messages and tweets, send comments and messages, and receive updates from their personalized news section through a single stream on their mobile phone in real time.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

As with websites, there are two basic categories of user interaction you can track: pageviews and events. Since mobile apps don’t contain HTML pages, developers simply determine when their apps should trigger pageview requests. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. The data gives insight into how your users interacted with the app.

Developers can also track visitor actions that don’t correspond directly to pageviews using Event Tracking. These user actions can include views of embedded videos, button clicks, downloads and more. App developers can then use this data to understand which features are most popular and inform decisions about which features should be promoted or prioritized for further development.

For £35 a month over 24 months and an upfront fee of £99, the package includes unlimited texts, 3 to 3 calls, unlimited data, skype-to-skype calls, 750 call minutes and Spotify Premium service.

Charlotte Blanchard, Director of Products & Services at 3 says “This partnership continues our commitment to bring popular internet services to our customers. Spotify Mobile is a fantastic digital service which gives consumers the ability to enjoy and share music in an affordable way.

[via slashgear]

The application provides a college community with real-time access to the information they need, virtually wherever they happen to be, including class information, student and faculty directories, scheduling, administration and community information, social networking, ticket purchasing and fundraising options, along with campus wide alerts such as weather conditions or class cancellations.

“Where college students once had to wait in long lines at the Registrar’s Office, or set up an appointment with the dean, AT&T now puts at their fingertips information when they want it over a device and service that is an integral part of their daily life,” said Chris Hill, vice president, mobility product management, AT&T Business Solutions. “UpperClass from AT&T is another example of AT&T’s commitment to deliver innovative wireless applications that drive value for students, faculty, staff and alumni.”

 In addition to retrieving scheduling information, the service allows students to use smartphones to track their GPAs, get maps to building locations, monitor balances or add money to campus spending cards, see what’s on the menu at the campus dining hall, and even request an escort from campus security. Parents can use the service to monitor students’ schedules, grades, spending balances and get campus news. Faculty can see dynamic reports on their projects and their students’ progress, while alumni can check team scores, buy tickets to events.

Users of the free Shazam application will have the ability to discover up to five songs per month and have the option to share their discovered music. Premium users will get unlimited tagging capabilities plus additional features that include:

• Access to Shazam’s Tag Charts which indicate what music and which artists are hot and are being tagged by Shazam users in country
• Recommendations for similar tracks based on the tagged songs and artists
• Biographies of tagged artists and bands
• Music and album reviews, and discographies

New users will be offered the opportunity to trial the full-featured Shazam application for seven days, after which they will be prompted to purchase it or revert to the limited, free edition.

At launch, the Shazam applications on Windows Marketplace for Mobile will be available in English in more than thirty markets around the world. Shazam expects to roll out multi-language versions in the coming weeks.

[via mobileburn]

mIQ, available October 12, will come standard for any new Best buy Mobile smartphone customer as part of the Walk Out Working free in-store smartphone setup. Other smartphone users can also sign up for the free service at http://miqlive.com. The service includes 1GB of storage and is currently compatible with smartphones running BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 operating systems like the BlackBerry 9700, Bold, Tour, Nokia E71 and N97, HTC Pro 2, Samsung Omnia II, and T-Mobile Dash 3G.

“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”

The first one billion application downloads was done in nine months announced in April, and the second one billion downloads was much faster with more iPhone users in the world.