A day in the Internet (infographic by MBAonline.com)

Created by: MBA Online

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Instagram has 9 employees and a valuation around $500M

Instagram, the popular photo sharing app for iPhone, is about to raise $40 million, which should give a valuation of $500 million to the firm. That's for a company that at last count had only 9 employees and hasn't really started trying to make money yet. Instagram has seen spectacular growth, getting more than 15 million users in less than two years, and was adding them at a pace of a million every couple of weeks toward the end of last year.

Founder Kevin Systrom told BI that he hasn't decided exactly how Instagram will make money, but he's confident that there's an opportunity.

"The question is, is there an opportunity beyond group buying, search advertising, to make a whole lot of revenue on the iPhone, on Android. I believe the answer is yes, that's what we're going after".

Instagram has never spent a dime on marketing. It appears that Facebook has tried to buy Instagram with no success so far.

For more information and an interview with the founder see:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-27-year-old-built-one-of-the-fastest-growing-apps-ever-without-spending-a-dime-on-marketing-2011-11#ixzz1oe9eq8EX

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-has-only-a-handful-of-employees-but-may-soon-be-valued-at-500-million-2012-3?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=10%20Things%20In%20Tech%20You%20Need%20To%20Know&utm_campaign=Post%20Blast%20%28sai%29%3A%2010%20Things%20You%20Need%20To%20Know%20This%20Morning#ixzz1oe8mPQww

14 best Google Chrome Apps

Here are the 15 best Google Chrome Apps according to BI Intelligence.

1-PadMapper makes apartment hunting tons easier.

PadMapper leverages Google Maps, Craigslist, Apartments.com, and Move.com to make for an immersive apartment hunting application

2-Springpad keeps track of everything you need to remember.

Springpad keeps track of notes, pictures, bookmarks, recipes, to-do lists, and more, and it syncs across all of your computers and mobile devices.

3-Offline Gmail gives you the flexibility of Gmail, even without an internet connection.

Gmail is the email service and email client of choice for millions of people, yet if you're left without an internet connection, it's easy to feel helpless.
The Offline Gmail app for Chrome downloads your mail to a local folder on your computer and enables you to send and compose emails without an internet connection. Pretty convenient.

4-AdBlock is one of the most popular Chrome apps ever

AdBlock does one thing, and it does it well: remove banner ads from the websites you visit, including popular destinations like Facebook and YouTube.

5-Cryptocat is a private chat room for you and your friends

Cryptocat is an ultra secure encrypted chat room for you and friends. In order to join your conversation, friends need a unique code identifier.
Cryptocat even works on your Android or iPhone.

6-Here's the best way to read on your computer.

Kindle Cloud Reader is your gateway to reading all of your Kindle books on your computer.
The user interface is great, and the app even saves the entirety of the current book you're reading for offline reading.

7-Access great 60 Minutes videos with this app.

The 60 Minutes app includes all the segments you see on TV, plus interviews and behind-the-scenes commentaries.

8-Aviary is like Photoshop, but free and in your browser window.

Aviary can make Chrome a little bit sluggish, but considering it's a free Photoshop alternative that lives inside your browser, it's a must-try. Most of the photo manipulation tools you've come to know and love are all here.

9-Scratchpad stores little notes and pictures you want to remember.

Scratchpad hangs out in the bottom corner of Chrome and stores every little thing you need to remember, like pictures, to-do's, and more. It syncs with Google Docs.

10-SlideRocket is like PowerPoint but in your browser.

Like Aviary, SlideRocket takes a desktop staple application and sticks it in your browser, proving that you don't need a powerful computer to run productivity apps. SlideRocket is a new take on slideshow creation. It's a modern version of PowerPoint, and even lets you export slideshows for easy viewing on mobile devices.

11-Take a look inside your body with this app.

BioDigital Human takes advantage of new WebGL 3D technology to let you peer inside the human body and learn about what you're made of.

12-The New York Times even has a Chrome app.

The New York Times' Chrome app turns browsing your favorite newspaper into a fresh and new experience. There are even keyboard shortcuts to help navigate pages.

13-Write Space gives you a distraction-free writing environment.

Looking for a distraction-free writing environment on your computer? Write Space is a full-fledged text editor that requires no internet connection and saves your document every time you type a new letter. It saves the document to your computer, so you don't have to worry about losing it somewhere in the cloud.

14-Weather Underground's Chrome app is both useful and handsome.

Weather Underground's Chrome app combines some of the most accurate forecasts with beautiful high definition (if not necessarily relevant) images from around the world

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-google-chrome-apps-2012-1?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Tools%20Select&utm_campaign=Tools%20Select%202012-01-05#weather-undergrounds-chrome-app-is-both-useful-and-handsome-17#ixzz1mgeOWiI7

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Apple most popular apps, music and movies of 2011

Apple just posted the 2011 edition of iTunes Rewind, its annual promotion of what it considers top picks at the iTunes Store, the App Store and the iBookstore. The content is divided into music, movies, TV shows, apps, books, and podcasts, and from there further broken up into subcategories.

In music Apple has chosen Adele as the artist of the year, for instance, and the Foo Fighters' Wasting Light as the album of the year.

The top iPhone pick is the photo sharing tool Instagram, while the top iPad app is the photo editor Snapseed. Some examples of movie and TV show winners are The Tree of Life for best indie film, and Breaking Bad for best TV drama.

TEDTalks has taken best video podcast, and the best audio podcast is NPR's Fresh Air. At the iBookstore, Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife has been selected as the top novel, with Michael Lewis' Boomerang coming in for best nonfiction. A special "best enhanced book" spot has been given to Caroline Kennedy's Jacqueline Kennedy, which integrates historic audio, photos, and video of the former First Lady.

Apple's lists are not necessarily the bestsellers. The top-selling iPhone app was Angry Birds for example, and the leading book was Kathryn Stockett's The Help.


Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintellignece.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

ABI Research estimates that 44 billion mobile applications will be downloaded by 2016.

ABI Research estimates that 44 billion mobile applications will be downloaded within the next five years.

Also a new PwC reports shows that more than half of the 3,282 smartphone owners surveyed use their smartphones for three activities each day: basic communication, accessing news, weather or sports and social network usage. And over the next two years, more than 40 percent of those surveyed expect their activities to increase across 14 different areas, such as travel and healthcare management thanks to apps.

For programmers, it validates the mobile app economy, even as the industry debates the value of platform-specific software as compared to increasing functionality through HTML 5 and the mobile browser.

Source: http://gigaom.com/mobile/why-the-mobile-app-economy-will-keep-growing-quickly/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @ InfocomAnalysis

The most popular music apps in the USA

here are the most popular music apps for android and iphone.

Source: http://gigaom.com/2011/11/11/tunein-radio-rises-to-the-top-among-streaming-music-apps/

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter:@InfocomAnalysis

Great innovation serie: #1 = Word Lens

Once per month we will discuss a great potential new innovation. Today to start the serie we will talk about the mobile app Word Lens. For $10 you can access an English-Spanish (vice versa) translator on your cellphone. Trough scanning, a smartphone camera can access this app with no need for Internet or Wi-Fi connections.

New languages are coming soon, such as French.

The owner of the start-up (Otavio Good) received many takeovers offers. He has sold his previous start-ups in video games (Secret Levels) for $15M to SEGA in 2006.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Forrester forecast an Apps market of $38 billion by 2015

With the exponential growth in the smartphone and tablet sales, applications should reach $38 billion by 2015. The market exists only since four years, with the launch of the iPhone. They are competing now with Google’s Android Market, Microsoft’s Apps Marketplace, BlackBerry’s App Place and HP’s Palm App Catalog. Apple’s iOS platform, offers apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, has around 350,000 apps. In 2010, mobile applications accounted for $1.7 billion in revenue globally. Mobile apps downloads jumped from 300 million in 2009 to 5 billion in 2010.

Apps are forecasted to become more ubiquitous like the GPS application on smartphones, or the new Near-field communication technology. By 2015, app sales for tablet devices alone are expected to reach $8.1 billion — way up from the roughly $300 million generated by tablet apps in 2010.

Forrester predict also that apps will push a new era of cloud computing, where content is stored online and accessible across multiple devices at any given time. Apple should lose important market share in apps in future years, but will still experience decent growth in apps revenues.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

The universe of Twitter apps

Here is a graph from Readwriteweb categorizing 150 Twitter applications :

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

The most popular Apple apps

Here is a list of the most popular Apple apps:

All-Time Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. Doodle Jump
2. Tap Tap Revenge 3
3. Pocket God
4. Angry Birds
5. Tap Tap Revenge 2.6
6. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
7. Traffic Rush
8. Tap Tap Revenge Classic
9. AppBox Pro Alarm
10. Flight Control

All-Time Top Free iPhone Apps

1. Facebook
2. Pandora Radio
3. Google Mobile App
4. Shazam
5. Movies by Flixster
6. The Weather Channel
7. Google Earth
8. Bump
9. Skype
10. Paper Toss

All-Time Top Paid iPad Apps

1. SoundHound
2. StickWars
3. FlightTrack
4. Backbreaker Football
5. Calorie Tracker
6. BlocksClassic
7. iFart Mobile
8. GoodReader for iPad
9. Cro-Mag Rally
10. Ambiance

All-Time Top Free iPad Apps

1. Pandora
2. Google Mobile App
3. Movies by Flixster
4. Google Earth
5. Yelp
6. Fandango Movies
7. Remote
8. iBooks
9. Bible
10. Solitaire

Louis Rhéaume

Infocom Intelligence

louis@infocomintelligence.com

The most important applications of the Internet

Business Week just published a list of the most important applications (most used) of the web in 2010.

Application     Traffic share
Category

1-Data                    28.1%
2-Online video        26.2%
3-P2P File sharing   24.9%
4-Other file sharing   18.7%
5-Voice and video     1.7%
communications
6-PC Gaming            0.7%
7-E-mail and Instant   0.3%
Messaging
8-Gaming Consoles    0.2%

It appears that streaming video (both TV and movies) has surpassed peer-to-peer sharing (which are mostly pirated files), and will become the largest volume of video traffic on the Web, according to Cisco Systems.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

7 trends affecting business mobility in 2011

Yankee Group proposes 7 trends affecting business mobility in 2011, based on a US survey.


1. Mobility becomes critical for customer responsiveness

Mainly for

1. Improving customer responsiveness (52%), 
2. Providing mobile access to existing applications to improve worker productivity (44%)
3. Transforming business processes to improve operational efficiencies (28%)
4. Providing mobile technologies to improve employees' work-life balance (19%) 
5. Fostering collaboration with customers and partners (18%)
6. Fostering worker-to-worker collaboration (14%)
7. Supporting employee-purchased mobile devices for business purposes (9%)

2. Mobile professionals drive mobility forward

Can be categorized in three segments:

1. Mobile professionals (46%), Senior executives, managers, consultants, other knowledge staff, admin. 
2. Field Force (36%), Field salesforce, field service
3. Specialty/other (17%), delivery personnel, drivers, factory staff, physicians.

 Individually Liable Purchases Will Continue to Influence Mobile Device Decisions (58%)

 3. Enterprises embrace consumerization of mobility

For 44% of firms mobility is perceived as a good way to improve employees productivity

4. Smartphone diversity explodes

Among the leaders:

1. Blackberry OS
2. iPhone
3. Windows Mobile
4. Android
5. Palm OS
6. Symbian

iPhone and Android have momentum.

5. Mobile applications fragment beyond e-mail

6. Cloud and mobility collide

7. 4G emerges, but slowly

More managers understand what 4G is and how important it is to enhance productivity of employees.

Conclusion

• It is important for organisations to make a mobility map
• In smartphones, consumer vs business is blurring.
• 4G solutions will be more important than the 4G technology.
• Cloud for mobile applications will surge a lot in 2011.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Native applications versus mobile browsing popularity

Mobile customers will download around 25 billion mobile applications by 2015.   While apps are becoming popular, people often prefer the mobile Web.  In a Adobe's survey of mobile users, the company asked 1,200 U.S. consumers about their behavior with regards to the following categories: consumer products & shopping, financial services, media & entertainment, and travel.  Users prefered mobile Web experiences over apps in the products & shopping and media & entertainment categories. 66% said they prefer mobile Web to apps (34%) in these categories.  However, for social media, music, "self-contained" experiences like games and maps, consumers chose apps over the Web.

Native data applications, now account for 50% of all mobile data volume according to a new report from Finnish mobile analytics company Zokem. While the mobile Web browser was still the most popular smartphone "app," the use of native apps outside the browser is growing faster than mobile browsing itself.  A native app is an application available on a mobile platform such as Apple, RIM, android, etc.  The study analyzed over 10,000 smartphone users and 6.5 million smartphone application usage sessions in 16 countries during 2009 and 2010.  It appears that smartphone users with a data plan launch their mobile Web browser at least once a month and, on average, spend 300 minutes browsing the Web on their device, a figure which is comparable to mobile voice usage.

While the browser is still the most popular of all smartphone apps with 54% of data application time (time spent interacting with the app) and 50% of data volume, native applications (excluding the browser itself) now capture 46% of data application time and 50% of data volume.

The study also found that Facebook's native application is used by 12% of active smartphone users who engage with the app for 188 minutes, on average, per month. Twitter has a smaller monthly user base (only 4% of active smartphone users) but they average 311 minutes per month on the app.  Thus, we can affirm that users of Twitter use much more the mobile web.

A few years ago, smartphone Web browsing accounted for 70-80% of mobile Internet use, but now that number is largely shrinking in terms of relative use.  The trend towards increasing use of mobile apps over the Web browser is due to the fact that, in most cases, apps provide the best user experience.  For instance, a native YouTube app is faster than the use of mobile web browsing the web site of YouTube.  

With many platforms and operating systems available such as: Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, Palm's webOS, Windows Phone and Java for feature phones, developers will have to decide between "going native" or promote a mobile website instead.

Source: Readwriteweb.com

Louis Rhéaume

Infocom Intelligence

louis@infocomintelligence.com

Does Research in Motion (RIM) is still a contender in wireless?

It appears that RIM web usage is growing, which is not the case of Apple's iPhone OS web usage. In fact, Blackberry users have doubled their Web presence over the course of the past year.

The data is from Statcounter:

Although the chart clearly shows Android's rise in terms of Web usage, it surprisingly shows Blackberry's increased market share, too.

It appears that RIM should not be discarded as as serious contender in the corporate and consumer sector. However, increased Web usage only shows that RIM users are doing more mobile Web surfing, not necessarily that the platform as a whole is making a comeback, but the new Blackberry OS (version 6), available now on the Blackberry Torch, offers a much-improved Web browser based on the open-source WebKit technology, the same technology that's used on the iPhone and on Android. Thus, we can expect more Blackberry devices in the future, and Blackberry users' Web usage will certainly grow even more.

For developers targeting Blackberry users with mobile websites or services as opposed to native applications, this increase in browsing are good news. But if you're looking to get the most return on investment for your native applications, you still need to look at the raw numbers of native application users on the top mobile platforms.  Android has the biggest momentum and most attractive ROI per app. 

Louis Rhéaume

Infocom Intelligence

louis@infocomintelligence.com

10 great Android applications

Here are 10 great Android applications:

Android is the mobile platform of Google. It reached its 100,000-app milestone last week. It is about two-thirds less than the number available in Apple's App Store, but Androis ecosystem is the fastest growing mobile OS. More than 200,000 Android phones are activated daily. iPhone activates more than 275,000 per day. 


1-Intuit.  I worked for Intuit in 2000, in order to test a real time portfolio management stock market software.  It never came in the market.  But Intuit is still a real incumbent in finance software.  Intuit acquired Mint, which allows users to manage each aspect of their finances from their smartphone, is a big part of that strategy. Mint users can download their bank, credit card and other account information at Mint.com (the site uses bank-level encryption), the app displays expenses in categories like restaurants, groceries, and health and fitness. You can also set spending goals and receive notifications if you're over-budget for the month. The only functions missing on the app are the ability to display data in pie charts and custom graphs and suggestions about how to save your money, which are all offered on Mint's website. 


2-Amazon Kindle Reader 
It is the Android version of Amazon's Kindle Reader is the best thing to happen to Android users who often find themselves alone with just their phone. While the quality of an Android Kindle reading experience depends on the size of one's screen and one's ability to find a shaded area -- it's too hard to make out the words in bright sunlight -- reading one of the 725,000 books on Android is not much different from reading on the Kindle itself. Users can bookmark, add notes and highlight passages and look words up via Dictionary.com.  The app also allows books bought on Amazon to be shared between phone and Kindle at no extra cost.


3-Yelp
Yelp integrates mapping technology that directs users to locations as they walk -- in a pop-up, interactive Google map. The Monacle feature allows lost users to see a red dot on their screen as they hold their phone up on the street, helping guide them to the exact location of where they want to go. One problem: while users can draft restaurant/shop reviews from within the app, they can only publish the write-ups by going to Yelp's website.


4-Slacker Radio 
Pandora is a leader, but Slacker Radio offers a greater number of songs and playlists searched and compiled by genre artists. The resulting playlists seems to be a little more relevant to our tastes than what we heard via Pandora. Despite the annoying audio ads that come with the free version of the app, the Slacker experience -- especially the paid versions, which are either $4 a month or $47.88 a year - exemplifies what we've come to expect from Internet radio: the ability to customize our own "radio station," more allowance of song skips and the option to cache our stations, so we're able to listen to songs even when in an area without wireless accessibility.


5- Bump
Bump's technology, available for iPhone and Android users, allows folks to exchange contacts, pictures and calendar events between two phones by tapping them together. Users can also connect on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn using the app.  Additionally, Bump, downloaded so far by more than 10 million users, can be used for mobile payments, enabling PayPal app users to transfer money by bumping phones.


6-Advanced Task Killer
Owners of Androids like the Droid X and the HTC Incredible might not realize that Android apps often run in the background, draining the battery and slowing down functionality. Advanced Task Killer shuts down these programs (with a user's permission, via a checklist like the one above), but keeps the essential services running to free up memory.


7-Astrid
Astrid provides users with a customized to-do list. Users start by adding simple tasks - a wake-up alarm or "buy milk," for example - then follow up with tags that help with prioritization. Astrid tracks the time spent on a task; we like the encouraging, youthful language that pops up with the reminders, like: "You said you would do it: Edit Android App Story."  It also syncs with Google Tasks.


8-Barcode Scanner 
It is targeted toward avid comparison shoppers, Barcode Scanner lets Android users scan a product's barcode with the camera phone; the app then pulls up prices, reviews and shipping labels associated with the item. Users can discover if a book found at a Barnes & Noble store is cheaper online or at a competitor's store or website. The applications, powered by Google, can also scan QR codes - those big, square-shaped barcodes often placed on companies' websites that contain URLs, addresses and contact information.


9-Dial Zero
Dial Zero provides a directory of toll-free customer service numbers for over 600 companies, allowing users to bypass the automated recordings to more quickly reach a person.


10-Seesmic 
Seesmic allows users to manage Facebook and multiple Twitter accounts and updates in one easy-to-use interface. Founded by French blog guru Loic Le Meur, this social media-managing space is crowded with similar apps, but Seesmic seems to work a little more seamlessly and also lets users record and upload videos to YouTube, share photos on yFrog or TwitPic and shorten URLs.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Are we entering in a second Internet stock market bubble?

Everybody knows the Internet bubble of 1998-2000.  Valuations of most firms with a link with Internet got very high valuations and after lost a lot of value in 2000-2002.  At that time a firm with the name .com was found sexy by acquirers and represented a great potential takeover target with the exchange of shares (which were only going up) instead  of cash.  After the crash, firms surrounding the Internet, which had a poor business model, lost most of the time 90-95% of their values, or went bankrupt.  E-commerce mutual funds which had 200% return in one year and a half, like Altamira E-commerce fund lost 90% of their value in 2001-2002.


Time has changed and the web 2.0 has seen the emergence of new sexy players such as Youtube, sold to Google and Facebook, just to name a few. I just read that Facebook's value has triple in 2010 only.  Social networks is the new sexy sector and now you can find a 4 years old firm like Zynga, which is a social video game firm, with a value higher than Electronic Arts, which is 28 years old firm in video game.  Zynga is now valued on the secondary market at $5.27 billion on SharesPost, where Zynga employees can sell shares that they own in the private company. EA is worth $5.24 billion in public trading on the Nasdaq stock market. The SharesPost listings are thinly traded compared to EA’s stock, but it is perhaps the only real measure of the value of Zynga’s stock at any given moment. Several hope that Zynga will go public, but it hasn’t any plan yet. 


I simply don't understand why people will pay real dollars to use virtual currency in virtual games. Zynga is expected to grab roughly a third of the $1.6 billion market for virtual goods in the U.S. in 2010,  thanks to virtual goods sales.  Zynga got the momentum when in the middle of 2009 they launched FarmVille, which is still the No. 1 game on Facebook with 57.4 million monthly active users. With such popular games, Zynga can cross-promote its titles and advertise them as well, allowing it to turn lots of its games into huge hits. In addition to FarmVille and Texas Hold Em Poker, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Cafe World, Treasure Isle and PetVille all have more than 10 million users. Overall, Zynga has 214.5 million users. CrowdStar has 54.2 million monthly active users, and EA is No. 3 at 44.7 million users. EA bought Playfish for $400 million in the fall of 2009, but is still behind Zynga in that area.  However, EA’s online game revenue is at $750 million in the current fiscal year, or around 20 percent of overall revenue, is significantly bigger than Zynga’s online game revenue, which the only source of revenu of Zynga.  The largest independent maker of video games is Activision Blizzard, which has titles such as World of Warcraft. 


It appears that the market values Zynga as equal to EA in market share, so it is deeply discounting the rest of EA’s nearly $3 billion or so in traditional video game console and PC game revenues. It seems that Zynga is truly overvalued and in some sectors of the Internet, like the Web 2.0 we are in the presence of a second Internet bubble.


Another example of this is Apple, which has 83% of the market capitalization of Exxon Mobil.  Apple has a P/E ratio of 20.8 and Exxon a low 12.8.  It is true that Apple is one of the best innovator in the world and has created a dependency for its customers toward its proprietary platforms, such as iTunes and Apple Apps store.  Apple is more a telecom firms and a content firms than it was before, as an hadware firm.  The potential of its mobile advertising network is huge.  The question is can Apple create on the long term 83% of the profits of a firm, such as Exxon Mobil?  I explained in previous comments that the dependency of Internet mobile can create huge values.  However, I have a certain doubt that it would represent a long-term oligopoly, such as gas with Exxon Mobil.  We are much more dependent right now (and in the medium term) toward gas than toward Internet Mobile access and its ecosystem (apps, music, etc.). In a bubble it won't mean that P/E ratios will diminish in the short term, but in the medium and long term, there will be important depreciation of overvalued Internet stocks.


Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com