Private Beta Invitation For Gearhead Gal's Friends

Get an invite-only first look at a cool mobile location app!

My friends at Geodelic are launching the private beta of their GeoGuide product and you can help out by creating your very own personal city guide. And by participating in this beta, you can also enter to win a new iPad. I have already created mine, Gearheadgal's Diners & Dives, my homage to Guy's Triple D on the Food Network. No doubt you'll have your own ideas! Got favorite places to take your dogs for a hike? Know the finest flea markets? Have fun finding your inspiration, but hurry, the contest ends in a few weeks.  Click here now and submit your idea so you can build a guide that might win you your very own new iPad!

Could Amazon buy Hulu? WTIA Predicts for 2010

The Washington Technology Industry Association 2010 Predictions Dinner was held tonight in Seattle and that meant an entertaining evening of crystal ball reading and supposing. Is Twitter mainstream enough to make revenue and a profit in the next 12 months? The Seattle technology community is skeptical unless someone acquires it. That prospect was not wildly expected. Is Google going to end up with a stock price north of 700? The sentiment was much more favorable. The panel thought Google was poised to continue it's innovation trajectory with Internet services driving their technology across mobile and home electronics, going way beyond the PC.

One area the panel avoided was VoIP and wifi, which given their mention of Google's phone plans, and the momentum locally around Clearwire and nationally around free wifi, it was a little surprising not to see the topic emerging as a more mentionable factor in the panel's 2010 vision.

But no surprise, folks in Washington Technology are pulling for Microsoft to come through on Windows Mobile and Amazon Fresh to succeed where Home Grocer before had failed. A prediction that Amazon will acquire Hulu, was based on a belief that paid content is inevitable.

The common thread through this evening's postulations and hypotheses is the consumer. In past incarnations of these dinners, IT managers ruled. Today it is about the market for end users. Irrational as these business predictions may seem to you, the fact is the thing that matters most is the consumer.

Kudos to John Cook for corraling and unleashing the panelists using the right balance often lacking in moderators.

Mobile Apps - What Are They Good For?

Listening to the industry leaders speak about the application market in mobile, I am convinced the debate around the mobile web boils down to two camps - those who believe that applications will replace web browsing and content discovery and those that believe it won't. At the root of this tension appears to be two things: 1) whether apps will be valuable enough to consumers to monetize to the degree long tail websites have been for advertisers, and 2) how to measure success of an application after the initial transactional download.

As I hear the various stakeholders - carriers, application developers, content publishers - debate how the value chain must develop to service revenue goals, I am struck by how mobile applications serve so many purposes for marketers. For some, mobile apps are simply a part of an integrated marketing campaign, meant to service new customer acquisition goals. Other mobile apps help national advertisers localize offers through the use of the phone's GPS or cell tower coordinates.  A mobile app may simply add new chapters to an existing consumer-product brand story by offering opportunities to create or retain loyalists in a deeply entertaining or innovative way with the brand.

So, mobile apps - what are they good for? Read some of my thoughts after Rutberg WI09 here.