In case you missed it, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, architect of Seadragon, and the co-creator of Photosynth demoed the truly amazing possibilities of augmented reality when integrated with mapping solutions at last week’s TED2010 conference.

The demo highlighted what’s possible with augmented reality, and what Microsoft is doing to leverage the jaw-dropping technology to bolster its mapping solution.  With augmented reality embedded into Bing maps, you’re left with a Google Street View-like interface that goes well-beyond anything offered today.  Things like the ability to walk indoors, look up at the sky to view astronomically correct data, view live-video of the location you’re looking at in maps, and view user-generated content and images layered directly on top of the mapping image are all possible with Microsoft’s new technology.

Of course, the possibilities when integrated with mobile devices will define mobile advertising, social networking and just about any other segment for a long time to come.  It’s an exciting technology and is becoming closer than ever to becoming a reality- or “augmented” reality if you will.  Hit the read more link to view the video, be prepared to be amazed…

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With news coming out of Barcelona — and the industry in general — being focused heavily on mobile apps, Bango has released some interesting stats related to mobile Web usage, proving that while apps are indeed a rapidly growing segment, the mobile browser remains the most important app on any mobile device.

Over the last 12 months, Bango has been analyzing traffic to a range of mobile Websites by sampling across 50 million phone users worldwide who have accessed third party mobile sites through its platform.  In the end, Bango realized a 600% growth in traffic, representing six times the amount of traffic recorded the previous 12-month period.

Interestingly, the average time on site was measured as 3 minutes, 21 seconds- averaged across user visits to all sites, compared with just over one and half minutes the previous year.  The analysis also measured the average number of pages viewed per visit at 5 pages, up from just over 2 pages per visit twelve months before.  These site-level figures have increased by an average of 230% compared to a year ago, with consumers visiting sites more frequently from their phones and browsing more pages over longer periods of time.  The key categories for mobile browsing are news, sports and general media sites (including newspapers), mobile content downloads, social networking and retail sites.

Bango attributes the continued growth in mobile Web usage primarily to smartphone usage, with Blackberry accounting for over 17% of the mobile devices recorded across sites.  The number of visits by BlackBerry users also exceeds any other device, including the iPhone.  Factoring in the relative sales growth across the different smartphone brands the data suggests that iPhone browsing has, if anything, slightly declined per user measured, which could be a result of consumers being directed towards apps instead of websites.

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Firefox is set to release an Android-version of its popular open-source mobile browser in the coming months- setting the stage for Mozilla, makers of the widely popular Firefox desktop browser, to become an equally dominant player in the world of mobile browsing.

A mobile version of Firefox has long been a desire for the droves of Mozilla faithfuls, and has been in the works for what seems like an eternity.  Honing the feature-set made popular with the desktop version, the mobile version is set to be a world-class mobile browser, taking full advantage of all the latest improvements and technology in mobile browsing.

With support for HTML5, CSS, Javascript and tabbed browsing, Firefox mobile will be the latest and greatest mobile browser available, but extending its reach is what Mozilla is focused on more than anything.  Being available on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices was the first step, but porting a version to Android will put it in the spotlight and expose the benefits to both parties.

According to AdMob’s latest mobile metrics report, Android was the #2 smartphone platform in the US in the fourth quarter of 2009 with a 27 percent share of mobile requests, or exactly half of the 54 percent share belonging to iPhone OS devices.  Though the iPhone continues its smartphone dominance, Android is growing at a break-neck pace, and could position Firefox mobile as a leading smartphone-oriented browser for the endless amount of upcoming devices sporting the Android OS.

Though inclusion on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the upcoming iPad will never happen due to Apple’s lock-down, Firefox mobile has a bright future.  As mobile browsing and operating systems continue to consolidate and a less fragmented experience evolves, Firefox will emerge a clear leader as it has in the desktop space.

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Alongside Millennial Media’s S.M.A.R.T report published today, Opera has released its monthly “State of the Mobile Web” report as well, showing usage and reach numbers from one of the most widely used mobile browsers in existence today- Opera Mini.

In fact, this month’s report states that Opera Mini users have matched the number of Opera’s desktop users for the first time ever, with over 46.3 million users.  From those users, Opera served up roughly 20 billion pages and compressed over 3 petabytes of data on a monthly basis.

Social networking, and in particular Facebook and Twitter, showed the strongest growth in terms of users accessing the services via Opera Mini, with Google, YouTube and Wikipedia coming in as top sites as well.  While growth around the world is skyrocketing, this month’s report focused on Southeast Asia to showcase usage and reach in that particular region.

In terms of growth rates in Southeast Asia- Vietnam and Indonesia lead the top 9 Southeast Asian countries in page-view growth (1,316.4% and 641.9%, respectively), while Vietnam and Indonesia also lead the top 9 Southeast Asian countries in growth of unique users (846.9% and 419.7%, respectively).  Brunei leads the top 9 Southeast Asian countries in page views per user, with each user browsing 987 pages on average each month- an impressive number no doubt.

Interestingly enough, among mobile Web users in Southeast Asia, Google is at the top of the rankings for numerous countries, with the very significant exception of Indonesia where Google is only at #6 and Yahoo! is at #2.  This is notable because the vast majority of Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia are in Indonesia.

It continues to amaze me how diverse usage, interaction, devices and so many other aspects are when comparing different regions of the world.  We all interact with our devices and the mobile Web in different ways, and that’s why reports like this — despite the accuracy of  reporting and sample size — are always interesting.

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Augmented Reality (AR) is a buzz word you’ll likely hear more and more in regards to mobile marketing these days, and for good reason.  The concept holds the all-to-important “wow factor” needed to engage consumers in an entirely new way, and keep them coming back over and over again.

While still in its infancy, marketing campaigns that integrate augmented reality are becoming more common everyday, and are increasingly mystifying consumers by letting them interact with various brands in a way never before available.  Marketers are quickly taking note and putting the concept to good use.  Accordingly, I wanted to showcase some examples of marketers and brands utilizing augmented reality in really cool ways.

Esquire magazine recently debuted an interactive AR issue of its magazine chocked full of engaging elements made possible by downloading a small piece of software and holding the magazine up to your webcam- see a video of the issue in action here.  Similarly, GE implemented AR into an awareness campaign a while back to show its potential and to improve awareness of its “green planet” agenda.  You simply print out a page with a special image printed on it, hold it up to your webcam and watch the AR magic happen.  See the video here.

Circ.us, a digital marketing agency making heavy use of AR, also created an impressive branding tool for Criss Angel and A&E that involved using AR to allow users to play 3D games using a print-out and their webcam- see a video here, or try it out for yourself.  Of course, it’s hard to mention augmented reality without thinking of Layar and it’s mobile AR browser that takes augmented reality mobile, and provides unprecedented potential for marketers.

These are just a few of many applications for AR that are already in use.  The future is undoubtedly bright for the concept, and as hardware, software and the implementation on mobile devices matures, the wow-factor will only grow larger.

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A new report published by Quantcast shows the mobile Web grew 110 percent in the U.S., and 148 percent worldwide in 2009.  Interestingly, the mobile Web still only makes up 1.26 percent of total U.S Web consumption, and a mere .99 percent worldwide- in other words, we still have a ways to go.

The growth was magnified by the proliferation of “full-web” -enabled smartphones over the past year, making the lines between the traditional Web and the mobile Web blurry at best.  Unsurprisingly, the iPhone/iPod Touch accounted for most of the growth in the U.S., but Android made the largest advances over the past year, overtaking RIM’s Blackberry with 12 percent of North American mobile Web pageviews.

The growing popularity of the Android operating system is apparent with Motorola’s Droid, just one of many Android-based devices on the market, which helped Motorola gain a 10x improvement in North American mobile Web share in 2009- despite it being launched late in the year.

Still, Apple finished the year with a commanding lead of 65 percent total market share of mobile Web access, though only 41 percent of which was attributed to the iPhone.  The iPod Touch accounted for 24 percent of Apple’s total market share even though it’s not connected to mobile data networks.  This fact alone proves the mobile Web could still grow by leaps and bounds even without wireless carrier connections.

With 2010 being aptly dubbed the “year of mobile,” the growth we’re expected to see should be even more substantial.  While Android and the iPhone seem to garner the most attention, Blackberry devices, Java-based devices (which still hold significant market share in countries such as Africa) and even Palm’s WebOS might continue to rise in popularity and market share this year.  Either way, it will be fun to watch the infinite battle brewing between everyone involved.

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Like Millennial Media’s monthly S.M.A.R.T report, Opera’s monthly “State of the Mobile Web” report gives an inside snapshot of how the mobile Web is being consumed around the world and how users are interacting with mobile as seen from one of the most widely used mobile browsers in existence.

In November’s report, released today, usage has once again skyrocketed over the previous month and November of last year with Opera reporting a total of 41.7 million users — more than double the amount of users in November of 2008 — and a 5.3 percent increase over October 2009.

Opera users viewed 18.8 billion pages in November, a 231 percent increase over the previous year, and generated over 285 million MB of data for operators worldwide.  It’s interesting to note that Opera compresses up to 90 percent of the data used by consumers, so without this compression, users would have viewed over 2.6 PB (petabytes) of data in November.  Overall data traffic was up 213 percent over November 2008, showing just how much the mobile Web has matured over the past year.

This month’s report also highlighted mobile Web usage and reach in Africa, where usage has grown exponentially over the previous year.  Ghana and Kenya, for example, lead the top 10 African countries in terms of page-view growth — 4,348.6% and 615.4%, respectively — while Ghana and Ivory Coast lead the top 10 African countries in growth of unique users-1,558.8% and 330.2%, respectively.  Kenya also leads the top 10 African countries in page views, with each user browsing 525 pages on average each month.

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