Ringz Android In-App Purchase Hack

Great innovation by the team to take some models that are working on the iPhone (acquiring in game currency by buying additional apps) and bringing it to the Android platform.

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Is in flight Wifi a luxury?

Insiders admit that fewer than 10 percent of all of the people who step on a WiFi-equipped plane are logging on to the Internet.

And most passengers who do log on are doing so free of charge, thanks to an endless series of no-cost trials, sponsored promotions, at-the-gate coupons, and other gimmicks.

For those few willing to pay, Aircell, which controls GoGo pricing, has cut tariffs furiously and repeatedly since the service went live last year. Aircell’s first price sheet asked passengers to pay $12.95 a session on American Airlines, which only offered GoGo on flights longer than three hours. As the service began appearing on shorter flights, there was a lower price point ($9.95). Then came a $7.95-a-flight option for passengers using GoGo with BlackBerries, iPhones, or other WiFi-enabled mobile devices. A $5.95 price was introduced for the shortest (less than 90 minutes) flights. Then came a daily pass ($12.95) and a monthly pass (30 days of unlimited usage for $49.95, now reduced to just $24.95). via Portfolio

So is it a luxury that most passengers are unwilling to pay for?

Or are most passengers unwilling to pay a full month’s internet fee for just a few hours during a period of time when communication isn’t all that important.

I suspect that moving toward a prepaid minute model, like the cell phone industry, would drive more usage by lowering the initial cost barrier without changing users’ expectations that the service will be free. The US auto industry shows us that if you provide too many incentives over too long of a period, you destroy margins.

Buy your first 120 minutes for $3 and then when you’re in the middle of a movie or streaming music and loving your experience in the plane, keep buying a little bit more at a time. Just like casual games.

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The 40-30-30 Rule: Why Risk Is Worth It :: Tips :: The 99 Percent

The 40-30-30 Rule: Why Risk Is Worth It
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by Michael Schwalbe

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Many of the strategies employed in competitive and recreational sports are applicable in business and our personal lives. One lesson I learned from alpine ski racing was the “40-30-30 Rule.” During training, early on, I tried to go fast, and I also focused on not falling. On a ride up the ski lift, my coach told me I was missing the point. He explained that success in ski racing, or most sports for that matter, was only 40% physical training. The other 60% was mental. And of that, the first 30% was technical skill and experience. The second 30% was the willingness to take risks.

via the99percent.com

Great post on taking risk. For most entrepreneurs, the physical component of skiing is rolled into the risk taking, so starting a company is 70% risk and 30% technical skill.

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Developers moving away from Android

“We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,” Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference…We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android” via Reuters

Let’s estimate the number of Android devices sold at about 2.5M (250k Droids, 1.5M G1s, 500k Dreams and a handful of others). All things equal, one might expect sales of Android apps to be 20 times less than iPhone since there are more than 40M iPhone/iPod touches in the wild.

But game developers aren’t seeing a linear relationship between devices volumes and app sales according to this anecdote. Instead, sales are an order of magnitude less than expected. Why?

Payments is the major driver: it’s much more difficult to buy an app on Android than Apple. Distribution is the second: Apple has a desktop experience in iTunes for browsing applications which is integrated into the stack and into people’s lives, which can’t help but drive distribution. And third, the integrated hardware and software provide a identical and consistent development environment for app developers.

App store application policies be damned, you can’t argue with users and their dollars.

Two potentially large issues for Android: device and market fragmentation, and payments

One of my fears for Android is in five years, it’s very similar to J2ME - a “universal language” distributed over 500 different models of phones, each of which has a slightly different implementation of the standard, different hardware specifications (particularly screen size) and a horde of different market places each with a different subset of applications.

Carriers are seeking to create their own stores. Handset makers also have this option and Google will operate one as well. Needless to say with certain applications available on particular app stores, user confusion is inevitable.

I hope the developer tools associated with the platform make cross device testing and porting simple and provide seamless user experience. This is a Herculean task given the pace at which new devices are released and the breadth of Android deployments and customizations. But it will be essential to ensuring a vibrant app ecosystem - and of course a simple way to pay for things.

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Developers moving away from Android

“We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,” Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference…We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android” via Reuters

Let’s estimate the number of Android devices sold at about 2.5M (250k Droids, 1.5M G1s, 500k Dreams and a handful of others). All things equal, one might expect sales of Android apps to be 20 times less than iPhone since there are more than 40M iPhone/iPod touches in the wild.

But game developers aren’t seeing a linear relationship between devices volumes and app sales according to this anecdote. Instead, sales are an order of magnitude less than expected. Why?

Payments is the major driver: it’s much more difficult to buy an app on Android than Apple. Distribution is the second: Apple has a desktop experience in iTunes for browsing applications which is integrated into the stack and into people’s lives, which can’t help but drive distribution. And third, the integrated hardware and software provide a identical and consistent development environment for app developers.

App store application policies be damned, you can’t argue with users and their dollars.

Two potentially large issues for Android: device and market fragmentation, and payments

One of my fears for Android is in five years, it’s very similar to J2ME - a “universal language” distributed over 500 different models of phones, each of which has a slightly different implementation of the standard, different hardware specifications (particularly screen size) and a horde of different market places each with a different subset of applications.

Carriers are seeking to create their own stores. Handset makers also have this option and Google will operate one as well. Needless to say with certain applications available on particular app stores, user confusion is inevitable.

I hope the developer tools associated with the platform make cross device testing and porting simple and provide seamless user experience. This is a Herculean task given the pace at which new devices are released and the breadth of Android deployments and customizations. But it will be essential to ensuring a vibrant app ecosystem - and of course a simple way to pay for things.

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Online local ad market facts/figures

Some interesting statistics about the local advertising market from a Piper Jaffray report:

Local ad market is significant and growing at 5% CAGR

Total local spending is about $80B down 7% y/y
Local online spending was $11.8B in ‘08 growing to $12.3 in ‘09

SMBs are moving online slowly but lack infrastructure and understanding

26% of SMBs have invested in some form of SEM
56% of SMBs do not have a website

SMBs are highly ROI sensitive and look to leads as indicators of success

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The secret to making a big business in local news

Your name in the paper. That’s it. That’s the secret.

The Secret

If your name were in the paper, you would read it. So would your friends and family. And you would start to read every paper.

Local news sites lack the most important part of local news: stories about people. Like Narcissus, we want to read about ourselves. We want to see and be seen, to admire and be admired.

Small newspapers as exemplars

In Geoffrey Moore’s Dealing with Darwin, there is the story of a remarkable newspaper in a small town in North Carolina. What distinguished this newspaper was greater than 100% subscription rates for the city. In other words, not only were all the town residents buying the paper, but so were residents of neighboring towns.

How did the editor achieve this?

He refuses to print Associated Press articles, national and international news. His rationale: no one wants to read the same news in a local paper as a national paper.

Instead, his journalists are compensated as a function of the number of distinct residents named or photographed in an article. He made the same realization. Simply, people want to read about themselves and others.

Get the social in local

Local news sites need to get people involved, instead of today’s boring crime reports, local sports and weather. With Facebook, Twitter and other services, it’s easy to pull all this data out of the ether and aggregate it, creating a customized version of People magazine for a neighborhood.

For more proof, look at the success of New York Times wedding pages (huge fees are paid to appear here), university alumni magazines (I only read mine to see who is mentioned) and the continued success of magazines like New York and San Francisco containing collections of photos and stories of socialites.

One way of getting there

Build a mobile app for residents to submit photos with one line descriptions. Aggregate by latitude and longitude/neighborhood, and post it to the web. The business case is clear: see Jeff Jarvis’ presentation.

If you’re interested in building something like this, give me a shout: ttunguz at redpoint dot com. It might be the next big thing in mobile and local.

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