It didn’t last long.

After much controversy, the iPhone app store has dropped “Hottest Girls,” the first Apple-approved iPhone and iPod touch application to offer adult content.

The application, which serves up a host of topless models and other mature content, caused an uproar when news broke that Apple was breaking its somewhat squeaky clean reputation by including the application in its offerings.

The negative press, however, must have been too much to handle.

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography,” said Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr. “The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”

Despite claims from TechCrunch, the developers of “Hottest Girls,” that they were the ones to pull the app from the store, it is becoming evident that Apple was the deciding force that ultimately pulled the plug.

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Barnes & Noble has unveiled a new B&N Bookstore application for the Apple iPhone.

Providing access to millions of books now at the touch of your finger, Barnes & Noble worked with software partners Evryx Technologies and Spotlight Mobile to design, customize, and launch the new app, which is a red-hot download so far this week.

The app lets users take a photo of a book cover and, seconds later, the user gets all the information his or her heart could possibly desire about the title, author, publisher, etc.

More importantly from a business standpoint, however, consumers can use the app to purchase or reserve a copy of their desired title directly from the application.

The decision to plunge into the mobile realm isn’t new for the book giant. B&N recently bought digital book retailer Fictionwise for close to sixteen million dollars.

Given that Barnes & Noble operates nearly eight hundred bookstores in all 50 states, there is huge potential for this seemingly long-overdue app.

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Amazon.com search subsidiary A9 has scooped up SnapTell, a company, as we all know, that allows mobile users to take photos of products or advertisements to get special deals or more product info.

Although no dollar amount was ascribed to the acquisition, the development can prove quite valuable to SnapTell users, particularly those who download the application to their iPhone and then use their phone camera to snap a picture of an advertisement or a product and then send it to SnapTell in return for a variety of information about the product or the company that produces it.

SnapTell also has a database of “millions” of pictures of DVD, CD, book and video game covers. When end-users snap a photo of a cover and send it to SnapTell, they get information back about prices for the product at stores.

Looking to build upon their popularity, SnapTell is now taking their brand one step further.

“One of the most heard requests was how we could integrate better with Amazon’s fabulous shopping experience,” SnapTell said in a public commentary regarding the acquisition. “We should be able to do so pretty well now.”

Amazon created A9 in 2003 to develop search technologies, including Search Inside The Book, which lets users search for a book by character names or even obscure phrases.

SnapTell fits with A9 like a glove.

For more information, check out www.snaptell.com

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Even Harry Potter couldn’t save the publishing industry from a precipitous decline in sales that has severely impacted the publishing world’s ability to perpetuate the type of success it has experienced in recent years (if not decades).

As a result of desperation, some of the largest publishing houses in the world are looking into mobile marketing as a new way to introduce books and projects to the penny-pinched consumer.

Publisher HarperCollins is leading the way.

This week, the publishing giant announced a partnership with mobile marketing firm QMCodes to “introduce a 2D barcode scanning promotion.”

The promotion is designed, in particular, to push the upcoming title called L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad, star of MTV’s The Hills.

The campaign will let consumers access L.A. Candy related content, such as video clips by downloading an application from HarperCollins’ mobile site (or by scanning a barcode on the novel, which was just released). Read the rest

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Location-based marketing is a method that has a lot of potential, but relies heavily on the technology of mobile devices to really reach ubiquitous use by consumers.  As the transition to devices with GPS chips and enhanced triangulation technology, location-based services and advertising are finally coming into mainstream.

Mobile coupons, however, still remain the driving force in delivering true,  location-aware marketing to the masses and new services and start-ups are introduced everyday it seems.  Nowadays, marketers are able to identify where consumers are and push mobile coupons to them thanks to several new mobile marketing platforms. These new apps all offer easy redemption at point of sale, pay-for-performance fees and real-time campaign tracking, which are becoming staples of any mobile marketing campaign.

Knowing ones location automatically is crucial, apps automatically retrieve coupons via GPS negating the need for consumers to browse for offers, memorize SMS shortcodes or play with zip codes.  Redemption is also simple - after downloading the coupon, consumers display it on their mobile phone screen and show it to the store cashier.  The latter is still up for debate, whether to implement special barcode scanners at the point-of-sale, or to simply use special codes that can simply be typed into POSs.  Either way, the technology is catching on strong.

Some mobile coupon apps are already making their way onto Apple’s App Store and becoming very popular with consumers, and CellFire, a leading provider of digital coupon technology, is growing rapidly and seeding its technology to many other companies and retail outlets to implement.  While still evolving, location-based marketing wouldn’t be where it is today without the growing use (and need) of mobile coupons.

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With paid mobile apps and content growing in popularity, and people becoming more comfortable with the idea of using their mobile devices for payments, Bango has introduced a new secure and low-cost method for integrating credit-card payments into apps and digital content.

With increased smartphone usage and the evolution of the mobile Web, Bango has created an ”easy on” ramp to selling content on the mobile web as well as a solution to give businesses a low-cost, easy way to capture revenue from the growing number of smartphone users- users that are getting a lot more comfortable purchasing items using their devices much like they would on their PCs.  

With the new solution from Bango, anyone can offer credit card payments to their mobile visitors and refine their product offer, pricing and consumer experience, with the flexibility to upgrade to operator billing through Bango when they’re ready.  “With the current rise in smartphone users, a lot of businesses who have never considered mobile before, are now looking at how they can capture revenue from this new market,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP Alliances & Marketing. “And many of these smartphone users, such as those with a Blackberry or Google phone, are used to using the web on their phones, and are familiar with credit card services.”

The solution works by offering a similar experience to purchasing via credit card on the normal Web, and cuts out many unnecessary steps such as entering the card type and a full billing address.  This speeds up purchases, leading to more successful transactions across all mobile devices.

Read the rest

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As you guys might remember, last fall I liveblogged Under The Radar: Mobility. One of the companies I praised was Mojiva, which hoped to beat Google and other ad platforms by offering a self-serve ad purchasing service, which is differentiated by the fact that ads will be served on mobile Web sites according to keyword-based and location-based criteria.

So I was bummed when it seemed that one of the promising ways to monetize mobile looked like it was having problems. Commenters on my original post that mentioned Mojiva recently said that as of last weekend, ad publishers still hadn’t been paid for January revenue. And on the Mobility.mobi forum, a thread that began March 10 was rife with claims that publishers still hadn’t been paid. One user said he/she had always been paid on time by Mojiva until the start of 2009. All this gave rise to speculation that the company might not be doing so well.

When I asked the company for comment, I received this statement by Mojiva co-founder and CTO Krish Arvapally: Read the rest

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