Mobile Groove

From searching for retailers and businesses nearby to conducting commerce and transactions, we have clearly come to rely on our mobile phones to access advice and make the right decisions.

We can do more with our screens — so it follows we will also come to expect more from our screens. It’s a dependence that spells opportunity for small business and companies that leverage mobile to deliver us information and experiences that are personal and engaging (hence valuable). Even better if com…

Voice — speech recognition and natural language understanding — are poised to transform our daily lives and disrupt all industries — not just mobile. Thanks to companies like Nuance Communications — which is also the speech-recognition engine behind Siri, the virtual personal assistant on the Apple iPhone — we are rapidly moving toward a voice-enabled future. We catch up today with Vlad Sejnoha, Nuance Chief Technology Officer, to get an inside track on the topics he will address at M…

Is texting more important than chocolate?

Yes – it is! A survey looking at our mobile communications and social networking behavior —conducted by YouGov and commissioned by Tyntec, a global mobile interaction specialist  — shows that the vast majority of young adults would happily live without basic necessities than give up their texting habits.

• 71 percent said they would be willing to give up alcohol, chocolate, caffeine, exercise or even a toothbrush for a week

• Millennia…

We continue our series of alternative mobile search app reviews and road tests with Hipmunk, a vertical search engine taking the agony out of travel planning. Instead of horizontally searching across the entire web like Google, Bing and Yahoo! (GBY), Hipmunk searches up and down through one topic area at a time. This laser focus on doing this one thing — and doing it well — allows Hipmunk to play in the major leagues.

Hipmunk was built from the ground up to search for hotels and fl…

In this companion post to our Hipmunk mobile search app road test I connect with Steve Huffman, Hipmunk Co-Founder, to discuss features in the pipeline and opportunities on the horizon.

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Hipmunk is a travel search engine, but there are other alternative mobile search apps and engines that also focus on travel. What makes you different?

At Hipmunk, we are trying to optimize the amount of time you spend on Hipmunk, and we want you to spend as little time as possible on Hipmunk. We’re not trying to …

The majority of mobile local search click actions were calls in 1Q2012. According to a report released by xAd, placing a call to a local business was the leading secondary action after a mobile-local search ad click.

• 58 percent of secondary actions post-search click led to calls, ahead of maps and directions (36 percent).
• Overall, the secondary action rate stood at a healthy 36 percent, with the click-through rate on search campaigns reaching just over 8 percent.
• SOURCE: http://www.xad.com/a

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