Mobile Roadie, a provider of a dead simple mobile app building platform for iPhone and Android apps, recently announced a new “Pro” version of the platform that allows for even more customization and functionality.

The platform offers a beautiful interface to design apps, allowing full customization of menu layouts, colors, buttons, and fonts.  The new Pro version also supports multiple categories of content, a global search for users and newly designed landscape views, just to name a few.

The new platform has already been used by some big names to create some pretty impressive apps.  Three examples include the Wynn Las Vegas, indie electro label Ninja Tune and music and lifestyle publication The FADER.  ”We are very picky and controlling when it comes to brand integrity,” says Andy Cohn, EVP and Group Publisher of FADER Media, Inc. “Every single part of our user’s engagement has to experience The FADER brand and culture.”  The FADER is also offering exclusive content available to view when people download their app.

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Opera recently released its State of the Mobile Web report for June, showing decreases for the first time in all three growth categories — unique users, pages viewed and data consumed.

While there were decreases across the board, Opera attributes it to “certain countries where we have experienced some technical and political challenges that now are about to be solved.”  Still, Opera had over 59.4M users as of June 2010 – a 3.2% decrease from May, but an increase of 124.7% since June 2009.  Opera users viewed over 27.3 billion pages in June, down 3.4% since May, but an increase of 161.8% since June of 2009.  As for data consumed, users generated over 416 million MB of data for operators worldwide.  Since May, the data consumed went down by 4%, but is up 147.1% since June of 2009.

This month’s report was focused on the mobile Web’s role in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and as such, listed the top 5 global sports sites in terms of usage during the month of June.  ’Goal.com’ came in at number one, followed by ‘livescore.com,’ ‘fifa.com,’ ‘m.championat.ru’ and ‘m.espn.go.com’ respectively.  Also highlighted was mobile Web usage and trends in Africa.

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Amazon is ramping up efforts to expand the popularity and ubiquity of its hugely popular Kindle eReader.

This week, the online retail giant announced that a new, smaller, lighter, and faster Kindle – with 50% better contrast to boot – will soon arrive at an advertised price of $189. But as Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder & CEO, noted, “If you don’t need the convenience of 3G wireless, we have an incredible new price point–$139 for Kindle Wi-Fi.”

“At this price point,” he added, “many people are going to buy multiple units for the home and family.”

In a move that clearly aims to take some of the momentum out of Apple’s iPad as the newest eReader phenomenon, Amazon is pushing the all-new Kindle by emphasizing its updated bells and whistles, which include an electronic-ink screen, a 21% smaller body, a 15% lighter weight, 20% faster page turns, one month of battery life, double the storage to 3,500 books, and built-in Wi-Fi.

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Google today announced new location-aware mobile display ads for both iPhone and Android devices, introducing iAd-like expandable ad-units that incorporate maps for click-to-call and other rich functionality.

Advertisers will be able to check a “location extension for display” box and their ads will become geo-enabled when viewed in mobile browsers or apps.  It works by including a small double-arrow in the ad-unit, that when touched, expands into a full ad that includes a map overlay with the business pinned on a Google Map.  In addition, the map overlay includes two large calls-to-action for “get directions” and “click-to-call.”

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Distimo published its latest report on mobile apps today, highlighting some interesting tidbits for the mobile app ecosystem.  This month’s report focuses once again on in-app purchases, as related to the many app stores it covers.

Distimo includes data from the Apple App Store — separating data for iPad and iPhone apps — as well as Blackberry App World, Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.  Probably the most interesting finding this month was in relation to in-app purchases between iPad apps compared to iPhone apps.

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Millennial Media published its latest S.M.A.R.T report for June this morning, showing that the US mobile Web has grown by 3% — from 75.3M to 77.4M active users.

Millennial’s US unique audience reach also increased 2% since May’s report, growing from 61.5M to 62.9M users month-over-month, showing an impressive 81% reach of the mobile Web.  As another interesting demographical stat, the report states that Hispanic and Black multi-cultural audiences continue to lead in mobile data usage in the US, with Millennial’s June rankings of the top US mobile DMAs being comprised of high multi-cultural populations.  The top 5 DMAs for June were Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Sacramento.

This month’s spotlight was on the Entertainment ad vertical, as the industry as a whole in embracing mobile in a big way.  For example, a 300% increase in DVD-release campaigns since Q2 2009 signaled recognition by movie studios that mobile advertising can be used to effectively drive results across all product release windows — i.e. motion picture releases, DVD releases, VOD and more.

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Apple has announced a new feature for its iAd network that allows app developers to promote their apps within other apps, helping to curb the problem of app obscurity as the App Store continues to grow exponentially.

The new feature, dubbed iAd for Developers, uses the same network used to serve rich media advertisements to also promote similar apps that are relevant to the user-experience.  For example, if you’re using an app to look up movie showtimes, you might see a banner pop up for another app — movie-related or otherwise — granted the original app is using iAd.  You’d then be able to look at the basic information about the app, and if you wanted to, buy and download it without leaving the original movie app.

To use the service, developers first have to register and then speak to an iAd representative about their budget and the specifics of their campaign, but the service allows developers to also use keywords to exclude competitors from placing iAds in their apps.  Pricing and other details have yet to surface, however.

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