How to Read AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Reports: “makes it so much more important for free apps to be utilizing effective marketing strategies to help them garner their share of that traffic in an increasingly competitive market environment.”

AdMob was purchased by Google today for $750m.

(Via The Appency Press.)

Bob Tedeschi writes about the iPhone as the Model T of the mobile te4chnology realm

“Today’s smartphones can do almost anything a PC could do in 2007, but in a couple of years smartphones may have enough computing power to enable much more sophisticated applications that truly take advantage of the device’s portability.”

“This idea, labeled ‘the third cloud’ by David P. Reed of MIT, underscores the most profound change for smartphones currently coming to the market — namely, that they need not communicate with the carrier at all.

‘Carriers used to control everything, and now the tables have utterly turned,’ Dr. Lippman said. ‘That’s what’ll make the future so interesting.’”

(Via New York Times.)

Touted as a touchpad for your existing Mac or PC. Touchpad Pro is also great just as a wireless mouse for controlling your Keynote, or Powerpoint demonstration.

Before the iPhone (BiP) I used Salling Clicker with a Windows Mobile phone and bluetooth to control presentations remotely. I tried using Remote Buddy, but found the AJAX implementation too unreliable.

TouchPad Pro just works, and because it uses VNC is very easy to configure on Leopard machines that have screen sharing enabled.

This week the North American telecom consumer is being treated to two remarkable events:
- The launch of a mobile handset from a former computer vendor (where the carrier, AT&T, is an afterthought for the consumer)




- The launch of all you can eat mobile calling from Tmobile (as long as you are using GSM over 802.11)

For the last two decades telecom service providers mistakenly thought that consumers cared about their networks and that they were willing to pay to use them. They spent a lot of time, and money, leaping from one TLA (three letter acronym) to another looking to improve coverage and data transfer rates.

The iPhone, and Tmobile combined GSM/VoIP phones, provide fast all you can eat data, and all you can eat voice – if you are within range of a WiFi hotspot.

Both use 2G GSM networks to provide voice calling but if you want to take advantage of “the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device” then it helps to be close to a Hotspot. Similarly if you want to talk for hours and not use any ‘voice minutes’ then jump on a nearby WiFi network. The WiFi connection does not have to be provided by the telecom service provider, any WiFi that will let you connect will do.

Is this what service providers had in mind when they first started to talk about convergence? That everything, voice and data, would end up on somebody else’s IP network?