Amy Gahran's List: Z USC mobile week 2011

• unless you’re working in technology, it seems there is a limited take up among journalists in use of mobile to consume PR-related content.  A PR Week / CC Group survey bears out our own research among users of PR Newswire for Journalists (PRNJ) that they tend to prefer desktop tools to mobile ones when it comes to reviewing PR material.  But this is changing.  The surge in social network usage via mobile is impacting how everyone interacts with phones, and over half the media (both new and ‘old’) who access PRNJ or PRNewswire.com own a smart phone and over a third would consider accessing these sites via mobile phone.

   
• journalists  look for story ideas and research using blogs and social media sites
• t-to-consumer/customer/shareholder/stakeholder communications

• The key for us here is understanding our audience and how they want to engage.  What is exciting for PR and marketing professionals is the nature of the engagement if we get it right.

   
•  Personally I’m looking forward to the day when ‘mobile’ is as ubiquitous and noteworthy as wallpaper.

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• Its colors and sharpness don't quite pop like the iPad's, but that's only noticeable side by side.
• It's got two cameras — a 2MP front-facing one, and a 5MP one in the rear. It can shoot 720p video, and even output it through its HDMI cable. That doesn't necessarily mean you can fill it up with HD movies and expect to play them all on your HDTV — it didn't support much of the video that I loaded up for testing — but the capability is there. 
• the Adobe Flash that Honeycomb tablets are famously supposed to support is not ready yet, so I was unable to test it.
• All of this performance doesn't seem to have a real negative impact on battery life: After testing over the past few days, I can concur with the 10-hour battery life statement made by Motorola.
• included in the purchase price is an upgrade to Verizon's blazingly fast 4G LTE network. We don't have the details on that yet, but for people who don't mind paying for wireless service, it will certainly be a nice bonus. 
• it's a fair bet that even a modest iPad refresh will include both of those.
• What's more up in the air is whether or not Apple will answer Honeycomb's user interface advantages. I am very close to loving the home screen, five panels that can hold not only icons but floating bits of applications, called widgets. Flip through YouTube videos or newly purchased e-books, scroll through e-mails or grocery list items, get social media updates from Facebook and Twitter, all without leaving the home screen.
• in Honeycomb, most of the widgets still appear to be sized for a phone. I want big widgets. I want to be able to resize a Gmail inbox widget to fill half a screen, or to view eight browser bookmarks at a time, rather than just four. Alas, it's early yet. Tablet widgets will continue to evolve, presumably making me increasingly happier as they do.
• A tablet is only as good as its apps
• Where the original Samsung Galaxy Tab was really only made for books and video, the Xoom represents the start of a real computing platform. But the Xoom itself is leading a posse of tablets coming to a wireless carrier or retailer near you, among them the LG G-Slate and the 10-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. Supposing you are dead set on Android, which one would you choose?

• it's such a bummer that Android tablets are priced so high.

  I don't like to freak out about pricing, but the 3G/4G version I reviewed costs $600 with a 2-year contract, $800 without. Even when the Wi-Fi-only Xoom comes to market later this spring, it will cost $600. That's too much. 
• It should be obvious that if Apple stays $100 cheaper than the competition, it will soundly beat said competition. Normally, companies have to charge less than Apple to keep up.

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• he app takes advantage of graphics hardware acceleration, which allows the display of high-quality graphics and 3D animations. That’s one of the features of Android 3.0, which debuts in tablets such as the Motorola Xoom in a short time.

• One of the interesting features is iReport, which CNN relies upon for user-generated content, such as photos and videos from ordinary citizens.

   

  Such apps are common on the Apple iPhone and iPad. But Google really needs to get marquee apps running in a beautiful way on Android tablets, if it has any hope of catching up with the iPad. The tablet market is going to be the subject of a huge tug-of-war this year.

• The free app, which is similar to CNN's app for Apple's iPad, the current leader in the tablet space, differs in that it lets tablet users submit their own news to CNN iReport.

  The iPad doesn't have a camera to let users to take photos of news events or film themselves giving their own takes on the news. By contrast, some Android-based tablets, like the Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, do include front and rear-facing cameras.

  The new app aims to bring citizen journalism into the tablet age.
• Bloggers have noted a lack of apps designed specifically for tablets that run Google's new Android operating system.
• Many apps designed for Android phones will work on tablets, too, but they don't always run as well as those designed specifically for the tablet's larger screen.
• "Google really needs to get marquee apps running in a beautiful way on Android tablets if it has any hope of catching up with the iPad. The tablet market is going to be the subject of a huge tug-of-war this year," writes Dean Takahashi.
• Apple on Wednesday is expected to unveil a new version of the iPad, which is rumored to include a camera.

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• Its report found that mobile applications are overtaking mobile Web browser usage in terms of monthly use

• Zokem's January 2011 study looked at over 2,200 smartphone users in both the U.S. and the U.K. Although apps are growing in popularity, they haven't yet become the top usage category on smartphones - messaging is still #1. Messaging, which includes text, multimedia, email, and instant messaging, accounts for 671 minutes of usage per month (active on-screen time).

   

• Although, in total, apps are overtaking the Web in terms of usage, there are certain categories where the mobile Web is still used heavily. News, search and commerce categories receive more usage from mobile Web browsers, with 86%, 85% and 66% of mobile Web browser users using them monthly, respectively, says Zokem.

   
• multimedia and other entertainment is most popular within native applications, with the one exception being adult entertainment. This category sees 15% of Web browser users accessing such sites per month. That finding is likely related to the restrictions on adult apps per Apple's iTunes guidelines, which does not permit adult content.

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