Tag Archives: mobile

Got mobile? This is for you: Startup 2.0 Mobile Apps competition

Posted by alex on 11/05/2011 1 comments

Hey everyone! As you already know, our goal here at Tetuan Valley is to help foster a healthy entrepreneurial community, that’s why we love to spread the word of all types of cool competitions (specially the ones with global reach at their center).
We present you the Startup 2.0 Mobile Apps competition, a I quote:

Startup 2.0 2011 is a European contest for Mobile Applications. Founded in 2007, this non-profit event is a competition for startups that use 2.0 technologies whose objectives are to promote and reward the European startups (either created or willing to do so in the future) that work in the field.

The competition is ran by a very good friend of ours and it’s probably one of the best ones in Europe, you just need to check out last year’s jury to get an idea of how serious they take it (Techcruch, DLD Conf, VCs, Seedcamp, Seedrocket, etc.).

They’re currently accepting applications and they close them by May 27th, so be fast and good luck to all the teams! Get more info on their site and don’t hesitate in asking us more about it if you want

LBS, the perfect lab to create the next killer applications

Posted by Cirkana on 18/04/2011 None comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2011 Spring edition. This post is from the Cirkana team, formed by Clara Martin Cubero, Alicia Cañellas, Pau Olivella, Sergi Perez Lerin and Bernat Fabregat.

The increase in internet availability and the level of smartphone adoption, together with the improvement of usability, and the spread of apps, contextual data, and services offered on-the-go are the main factors that are defining the rise of Location Based-Services (LBS).

LBS groups a set of approaches and applications (i.e. Augmented Reality apps such as Layar, real time check in with FourSquare, venue reviews as in Yelp, social get-together as in Facebook Places, and so on) that leverages the ubiquity of internet connection with the contextual needs of the user. Wherever the users (and smartphones) are, there is a business opportunity…

…but what does the user get from a business LBS app?
We can depict the following main benefits for the user:

Obtain reviews and recommendations from other users before making a decision (i.e. search for a Chinese restaurant near a place)
Get promotional prizes and discounts for a product or service (i.e. individual or social e-coupons valid for a limited time or location)
Reach “social recognition” among other users, even in a competitive way, with potential business benefits (i.e. becoming a FourSquare mayor)

Interesting… but how can companies take advantage of LBS?
So far, the pioneering companies who are experimenting with these technologies are focusing their goals on:

Branding: To create an appealing, fun, and entertaining mobile experience that engages the user while empowering brand values and positioning.
Loyalty: To offer an innovative and worthy channel of customer service and interaction between the company and their users, as well as among users.
Attraction: To present an interesting proposal for potential users, and also, utilizing the social viral effect to spread current customer experiences to reach similar targets.

Ok, that sounds too much like “marketing”… what does it mean in terms of real business?
This is a new method and companies are learning. Currently these goals have been monetized through different business models:

Adverting: To display contextual and worthy ads in the user´s phone and get paid applying a “traditional” PPC model.
Couponing: To offer a discount (i.e. using a QR code or grouping users) to boost demand on the spot and sell inventory.
In-store walk-in: Drive traffic promoting your products by turning mobile visits into real visits and convert them into customers.
Pay per use: Even the most common service has either a free or freemium model, some companies (i.e. media) are charging for the app download.

Moreover, the inherent capabilities of measuring every movement, click, and action will help the companies to obtain a new and powerful user profile with real time analytics, user tracks, level of engagement, and a social graph. To unveil, learn, and understand this data will be the building blocks for marketers’ success.

Bear in mind that the next 1 billion online users will access the internet using their mobile devices. LBS will turn this huge potential into real and worthy business opportunities. This will be the biggest lab to create the next killer apps!

Speed Reading on Smartphones

Posted by veloread on 02/11/2010 2 comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the VeloRead.com team, formed by David Scarlatti and Luis Pérez.

If you feel the need of reading faster, and probably you do, specially for documents you are somehow obliged to read but you are not very interested in, you can benefit form the myriad of speed reading tools available to you.

Image: www.freeimages.co.uk

The first thing you should do is to learn how fast you read in deed. Maybe you are reading slower or faster than you think. There is no agreement on neither the “normal” nor the maximum speed you can achieve. But generally speaking reading at 250-300 wpm can be considered normal for an adult, and doubling this speed is quite realistic using speed reading techniques. These figures are valid for reading on paper, when reading on screen this drop between 10% and 30%. So take two or three different online tests form all this ones available and see where you are.

If you find you could read faster then you can opt for several ways of action:

Take a course at some specialist school, you’ll need to visit the school once a week a few months
Buy some self-study material and learn at home
Use any of the speed reading software available in the market

With any of this options you’ll learnt a bunch of techniques to increase your reading speed, and after a lot of practices and exercises you’ll master them and will be able to apply it to your usually reading sessions.

However, all this efforts are directed to change the way you read and are based on the hypothesis you have to deal with the texts as they are presented to you. This is very sensible when talking about reading on paper. But what about reading documents on the screen of a computer or similar device? In this case the constraints of the immutable printed document should not exist… and then, some of the techniques of speed reading could be used the other way around, adapting the text in a way it is easier to read.

Some ereaders allow you to change a few aspects of the text (font type, size, background color…), but still aim to resemble the printed page in order to reproduce a paper-based experience. This implies a lot of limitations specially when using small screens (about 3″) like in smartphones.

But there is still room to adapt the text to make it more suitable for speed reading if you forget about the concept of page. There are two main techniques you could benefit from using the right software:

Constant rhythm is essential to achieve higher reading speeds, you need to read words at the highest pace you can. In this sense it would be better if the text is presented to you following that constant pace instead letting you to establish it.
Chunking is the process of reading words in groups instead one by one. The bigger the chunk, the faster you read. It will help then if the text is presented to you already broken in the chunks you can deal with.

These two functions are available in the RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) tools. Unfortunately there is not RVSP alike software for smartphones.

Veloread is developing a tool based on RVSP which will allow you to read on your phone taking advantage of the speed reading techniques.

Veloread concept

WAP Billing

Posted by whereitsonspedeal on 18/10/2010 1 comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the Spedeal.com team, formed by Stuart Thomas and German Del Zotto.

Since I believe micropayments are one of the keys to full penetration of e-commerce, I would like to look specifically at WAP billing in this blog.

What is WAP billing?

WAP billing is where the user is billed through their mobile operator (Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, etc) so that they only need to confirm a payment without needing to enter personal or credit card details. WAP billing is used to fill a niche that is different from credit cards as they are designed for small payments under £10 or $10. Companies can take advantage of this, as it save on credit card transaction costs.

Businesses using WAP billing

So far it has proven particularly good for selling e-products such as ringtones, games, music, and e-gifts such as in the case of Fox Mobile, EA and Flirtomatic but there are also possibilities for database information or sale of metadata or SaaS based access to online software.

I see a real opportunity for business to use this as they are able to reach customers as they never did before, especially customers without credit cards, or unwilling to take the risk or spend the time filling out an online form with personal details.

Enablers of WAP billing

Netsize (netsize.com), PayGol (paygol.com) and Bango (bango.com) seem to be some of the players I have found so far that are enabling businesses to be able to accept WAP billing payments.

What we are looking at it how that can be feasibily included in our business model since operators tend to take a 45% commission. I will talk in later posts about how we either design our business model around micropayments or avoid them and whether WAP billing or other types are used.