Cell Phones Are Alive and Well in Ecuador

Cell phone culture is alive and well in Ecuador. Whether you are walking through a traditional market in a small village or a town like Cuenca in the center of the country where expats and retirees are buying up property (population 50,000), there's a cell phone in hand.

It's not uncommon for older women (mid-forties to early fifties since they tend to marry early here) in traditional costumes to be carrying their grandchildren on their backs and be talking on a cell phone in the middle of a market or on the back of a pick-up truck.

Room for Foursquares?

A few weeks ago, Shane Richmond published a post on The Telegraph's blog questioning the point of Foursquare. Having previously been searching for similar answers, I had suggested to him a presentation by US agency JESS3, on where location-based tools might change for the better. Shane very kindly credited us with the suggestion in his post as he searched for his answers (thanks, Shane!).

I have been playing around with location-based networks to further understand them and their relevance in business (if you stop by Omobono HQ, check in on both Foursquare and Gowalla!). There is a clear application for consumer facing brands but is it the same for business-to-business?

So, I  put this question to you: what is the point of Foursquare, etc. and is there space for location-based networks in B2B's growing portfolio of digital tools?

PhoneTell Builds "Impossible-To-Find" Numbers into Your Phone

Yesterday, PhoneTell announced a new mobile app for Android phones that incorporates “IMPOSSIBLE-TO-FIND” phone numbers into the app so you can easily access that information instantly from your Android phone.

Convenience at your fingertips is the idea. We've all had the experience of searching for a hard-to-find phone number and coming up short, particularly at times when we need to put our hands on the number quickly. PhoneTell has added hundreds of the most difficult, hard-to-find, buried-five-layers-deep and at the bottom of a web page in mouse-type numbers into its mobile application for Android phones.

Essentially, anyone with an Android phone can download PhoneTell free from the Android market or GetJar starting today. Whether you’ve lost your luggage and need the 800# for the airline baggage claim or you’re trying to locate the customer service number for Amazon.com, Apple, Paypal, Toyota, MasterCard or Dell, PhoneTell instantly provides you the precise phone number to reach a real live person to solve your problem.

Launched earlier this year at TechCrunch Disrupt, PhoneTell expands phone number search beyond your mobile phone address book, connecting you to your "personal cloud" of contacts in Gmail, LinkedIn or Salesforce.com, as well as contacts in the “public cloud” such as Yelp!, Yellow Pages, White Pages and Bing– all in one app. PhoneTell instantly scours these data sources and with its patent-pending algorithms, searches, verifies, de-dupes and delivers ranked search matches instantly to your phone.

The new list of additional phone numbers is comprised of hard-to-find customer service numbers (e.g. Direct TV, Disneyland Resort, the Geek Squad, PayPal), unlisted numbers and national 1-800 numbers. These are numbers that you can’t get by calling 411 and are impossible or nearly impossible to find on the Internet. Some hard to find numbers included in PhoneTell are Amazon Customer Service, American Airlines Baggage Claim (haven't we all needed that more than once or twice), AOL Customer Service, Apple Customer Service, Ameritrade Customer Support, Bank of America Credit, eBay Customer Service and IRS - Individual Taxes among countless others.

RepairPal for the Android Now Available: Car Repair at Your Fingertips

Today, RepairPal launches a free Android App, bringing the functionality of auto repair to a growing mobile platform. RepairPal's RepairPrice Estimator, industry-leading directory of shops and dealerships, and instant roadside assistance are now available for Android mobile devices.

RepairPal’s mobile apps have nearly 1 million users and now are adding Android support, which will enable consumers to get RepairPal’s proprietary RepairPrice Estimates for each of the 40 car makes, 100 most common repairs and services, and 42,000 zip codes RepairPal covers, access one-touch roadside assistance anywhere in the U.S. (no membership required) and find quality shops and dealerships, including user reviews and ratings, via RepairPal’s GPS-enabled directory. You can get more information and check out their mobile apps here.

Who's Crafting New Marketplaces in Social Commerce?

The TechCrunch Social Currency event addressed a number of interesting topics including e-commerce/social commerce, mobile advertising, social gaming, geo-location services and online payments. In the panel on Social Commerce, moderated by TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid, we hear from some of the leaders in this space.

Aaron Batalion, CTO and Co-Founder, LivingSocial

Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO, gWallet

Kevin Hartz, CEO and Co-Founder, Eventbrite

David Marcus, CEO and Founder, Zong

Christian Taylor, CEO and Founder, Payvment

Below: David Marcus of Zong

"We do mobile payments and have partnerships with 200 carriers in 41+ countries. We allow people to buy things on their cell phone. We try to really get targeted so we can remove all the friction of a transaction. You have to integrate into carriers and build infrastructure. You have to build a payment structure with the proper back-end activity – it took us nearly 10 years to build it. With regard to social commerce, if you consider that there are several layers in social commerce (group buying), couponing and the local stuff like FourSquare, none of those apps have everything. When you walk into a place that offers coupons, you can be told, i.e., oh your friend bought this and you can also get it for half price.”

Below: Christian Taylor of Payvment

"There's stuff out there, 'if I become a fan, you get a discount' – we’re excited about where credits is going. It works great for digital goods, which is exactly what Facebook is focusing on. We hope it eventually gets into our space. We hope to provide the defacto payment platform.”

Below: Gurbaksh Chanal of gWallet

On Facebook versus gWallet, he says, “Facebook does a good job with credits, but if you look at the offers approach, they’re not doing it right. They’re not an ‘offer’ company, they’re a platform. It’s different than going to a landing page of a brand, which is the demand we create and provide. Over the past ten months, we have brought 120 major brands into the category – they love the space and love social gaming – every premium publisher would make more money through us and if they don't, we’ll write them a check for $20,000. We’re trying to take advantage of curiosity."

Below: Aaron Batalion of LivingSocial

"Our key consumer incentive is if you can get 3 of your friends to buy, yours is for free – what’s built into that is trust from people you know. Because we focus on hyperlocal, more trust is inherently built in…..people recognize something if its local.”

Below: Kevin Hartz of Eventbrite

“We’ve been doing a lot of experiementation with Facebook; we have various integration points with Facebook. Events are naturally social – you find about events in a social environment, i.e., what your friends are attending and doing. When Connect came out, and we saw the organic growth. We see this as a vector for fast growth, so we have integrated into Facebook and also Twitter with great success. Events and ticketing is very transactional – Facebook does some things very well but they’re not a transactional business.”

Stoppelman & Hanke on the Local Web: Engagement & a Little More Groupon?

On Friday at TechCrunch's Social Currency event, there was an interesting panel discussion on the Local Web with Yelp's CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Google's VP of Product Management at Google, John Hanke. Moderator Erick Schonfeld says that he find himself using these local apps like Foursquare & Gowalla to see what’s around him, but adds: "I want it to tell me for this category of things to tell me what’s nearby and then also what’s nearby and who has a deal.”

Below John Hanke and some of his insights into what's happening with the local web right now.

"It’s a great time to be building a company in this space.”

"We’ll see a lot of simplified local, things like click-to-call and we’re going to start to see the RPMs go up, so the money will be there so we can start to build businesses. What we’re seeing the confluence of gaming dynamics, and offers through services like Groupon. We'll also see advancements in HTML 5 and lots of services emerge in the geo-loco area."

"The success of Groupon is that there’s a direct relationship. Coupons are one way to get people through the door and close the door. It’s about understanding about when people is asking about a place, we want to show local results that are relevant & add meaningful information to that place – we want to add relevance. A good local site adds good rich information and doesn’t just regurgitate.”

Adds Erick, "the success of Groupon is the social component, it's not between a single consumer and a merchant, but it's about bringing togehter a group of people (30-40), so they can offer a discount for that group. There's value to the consumer and value to the merchant."

Below Yelp's CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and his insights.

Re: the advertising and promotional opportunities, there's the growing popularity of connecting people when they’re searching for something local and tracking that info – it will make it easier for companies to advertise. That’s part of the success of Groupon. Hopefully we’re moving towards a world where we track those decisions.”

"I’m not sure the group concept is as big of a deal as offering great values for consumers."

Below is the video of the fireside-chat with Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman and Google's John Hanke:

Because Groupon was raised so many times in the Stoppelman/Hanke interview, I decided to include the interview that Schonfeld and Arrington did earlier in the day with Groupon's CEO Andrew Mason:

Madison Wisconsin: Land of Cows, Cheese, Beer, Fairs & Whoaah Start-Ups

There's a cool post over on TechCrunch about the growth of technology start-ups in Madison Wisconsin, soon to be the Silicon Valley of the Midwest? Madison-based GeoHuddle Steve Faulkner wrote a guest post sharing the latest and greatest from some of the start-ups in the area, including his own, which is a start-up that develops community geothermal heating and cooling systems.

When I visited Madison (only once in my life), I was taken to a county fair and given a ton of cheese, although I couldn't find a nice glass of wine anywhere to go with that fabulous mid-west cheese. Beer baby beer, along with cows, farms and sports. Now, entrepreneurs are emerging, and start-ups are launching. I learn from their overview that "Madison was recently ranked as the 7th most innovative city in the country by Forbes magazine – just above perennial powerhouse Boston, MA."

As for technology specifically, below is a summary of the companies Faulkner lists that are worth knowing about:

Entrustet: It's about security baby.....get it from the fact they have 'trust' baked into its name? With Entrustet, you can store your digital assets -- online accounts and files on your PC -- and either have them transferred or deleted when you pass away. Kind of cool - they pitch it as Will for your digital life. Sounds really useful.

Virent: The Virent team is commercializing a proprietary sugar to hydrocarbon conversion process developed at the University of Wisconsin. This means they can take biomass and directly convert it to gasoline, which has attracted a lot of interest from the oil industry. Most recently, they received a $46 million dollar investment from Shell.

PerBlue: Ahhhh, blue. I tried hard to get 'blue' into a company name once. Perblue is all about social gaming in a mobile world, mostly known for their game Parallel Kingdom, which currently has over 150,000 players worldwide and was the first location based RPG for the iOS and Android platforms. What's very cool is that PerBlue was founded by University of Wisconsin students with their own limited cash, and continues to grow organically without traditional funding.

Alice: This service allows you to purchase home essentials directly from the manufacturer and have them shipped, for free, to your door. Based on your user profile, it will also remind you when it is time to restock on common items. (egads, now a service that knows how wquickly I use things but hopefully not how as well. Useful for busy people who want things automated but at some point, it will all hit us how much personal information we're giving away to vendors - this isn't about Alice, it's about the growing trend that all services are creeping into our personal data and lives).

Metworked Insights: They do social media analytics, largely for big brands such as Kraft, Omnicom, PG&G and others in its league. Their tool listens to conversations, analyzes them and then gives you data based on that analysis, narrowing down what is most useful for the brand.

Original post here.

John Battelle Interviews Fred Wilson

At the Geo-Loco Conference this week in San Francisco, John Battelle interviewed VC Fred Wilson on stage, including the 'word game' - see results below:

JB: Research in motion – FW: Not good

JB: Facebook – FW: Juggernaut

JB: Gowalla – FW: It’s tough being the second fiddle

JB: Hewlett Packard – FW: Great company

JB: HP Palm - FW: Great acquisition

JB: Microsoft – FW: Dinosaur

JB: Apple – FW: Evil

JB: Boxee - FW: Promise

JB: Google – FW: Challenged (John asks: does Google have the DNA as a company or should they let someone else light it up for them? And on what they should do? Fred says they should buy Facebook.

Below are three videos of the interview in nearly all its entirety.

Airlines & Airports Need to GET Technology Faster

The New York Times has a piece on technology and social networking for travelers - how airlines, airports and travelers are using social networking as a way to what, make traveling easier? Perhaps a little less painful if you can connect with a like-minded person when you're stuck at the Detroit or Delhi airport for hours.

Yet, the article references a survey of 84 of the world’s largest airports done by the Airports Council International earlier this year, which found that 96% offered Wi-Fi connections, and 73% had connections throughout their terminals. The survey reports that 45% offer the service free; the rest charge an average of about $8 an hour. Hmmm, so if I'm stuck for 6 hours because of a technical difficulty, I have to pay $50 to stay connected and get my work done, more than I pay for a month's service at home.

The piece talks about increasing availability of Wi-Fi at airports yet I still struggle to find 'reliable' connections even in places that tout they have it and then, they overcharge. Thanks to Verizon Wireless (AT&T obviously has also in the states but only half as reliable in my experience), I don't have to be hostage to airports' expensive connectivity plans that are often sketchy anyway. And while we're at it, what about the lack of power outlets? On every trip, I am on my hands and knees looking for the only one or two power outlets in the waiting area and 9 times out of 10, someone is charging their iPhone on it.

So I learn that "more than 10 airlines in North America, including American, Delta and Southwest, are wiring their planes for Internet access, and major foreign airlines like Lufthansa are introducing new technology that will let customers connect on transoceanic flights. And, as many as 1,200 commercial airliners in the United States will have Wi-Fi capability by the end of the year, according to Chris Babb, senior product manager of in-flight entertainment for Delta Air Lines."

Apparently Lufthansa has consulted with members of the FlyerTalk service to potentially develop an iPhone app so people can tap into the power social networking from anywhere. (a Blackberry version coming later). How it would work? A built-in GPS allows users to find fellow fliers who might be nearby. It also has a taxi-sharing feature that travelers can activate upon landing. I LOVE THIS ONE BTW and this is so logical and overdue I can't believe no one has launched something like this earlier.

It's great that the travel industry is starting to embrace technology, but frankly, they need to embrace it faster AND make it less painful to use - more power outlets, free wifi in airports and hotels, and easy-to-find and use mobile devices where you can connect locally at your new destination without the need to go through weeks of advance research to figure out the best mobile option for your four day stay. It needs to be easier and it needs to be cheaper so that not only the business traveler who can expense his $100 for the day wifi charge can benefit.

Mobile warriors have to stay connected in order to be productive on the road otherwise, staying home and doing a Skype call or virtual conference may prove to be a more productive and less stressful alternative.

Facebook's Erick Tseng on Mobile

Matt Marshall of VentureBeat interviewed Facebook's Head of Mobile Products at Facebook Erick Tseng at the MobileBeat Conference in San Francisco yesterday. Tseng talked about Facebook's mobile strategy and encouraged companies to think about leading with mobile rather than building mobile apps as an after thought.

Part I:

Part II: