Gaming applications seem to be the new Eldorado for a lot of promising start-ups. With Foursquare, you can be the mayor of places you visit in real life. MyTown is another application which allows you to mix physical and digital worlds. Soon, another web application will explore a new facet of gaming: EpicWin.

The game allows users to transform their to-do list and chores into a social game. Picking up dry cleaning, sending an e-mail, remembering your girlfriend’s birthday, buying bread … your daily life is full of boring tasks.

With EpicWIn, you will enjoy your to-do list.

Concretely, EpicWin is a mobile application that puts gaming back into users’ lives. According to their website, “it’s a streamlined to-do list, to note down all your everyday tasks, but with a role-playing spin.”

When users complete theirs tasks in the real world, they win badges. Moreover, they can increase the attributes of their avatar who could become for example the “CEO of Pain” or the “Mistress of Task Domination.”

EpicWin is made by Rexbox, who were responsible for the visual design of LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation 3. EpicWin is an interesting new example of a gaming application with a social networking aspect (users can share with their friends on Facebook and Twitter each time they win a new item).

The application isn’t available yet, but is set to launch first on the iPhone and then on Android. There is no official release date or price, but it appears that this new app will hit the market next month. A perfect time, as our summer vacations come to an end.

Conferences in bold are in Silicon Valley

July 2010

WorldComp July 12-15, Las Vegas NV

OSCON July 19–23 Port­land, Ore.

Retail Mobile Executive Summit July 19-21, SF

GeoLoco, July 21, SF

For­tune Brain­storm: Tech July 22–24 Aspen, Colo.

Netroots Nation July 22-25, Las Vegas, LV

Web 3D July 24-25, Los Angeles

Black Hat USA, July 24-26, Las Vegas, NV

Geoweb, July 26-30, Vancouver, Canada

Sum­mit at Stanford July 27–29 Palo Alto, Calif.

Super­nova July 29-30 Philadel­phia

August 2010

CRM Evolution 2010 Aug 2-4, NYC

Founder Showcase, Aug 3, Mountain View, CA

Singularity Summit Aug 14-15, SF

Search Engine Strategies (SES) August 16-20, SF

Seattle Geek Week August 13-20, Seattle

Affiliate Summit East Aug 15-12, NYC

FITC 2010 (Design and Technology) Aug 17-19, SF

pii (Privacy, Identity, Innovation) Aug 17-20, Seattle WA (Seattle Geek Week)

Gnomedex Aug. 19–21, Seat­tle (Seattle Geek Week)

UX Week Aug 24-27, SF

Mobile Insider Summit Aug 25-28, Lake Tahoe

West Coast Research Symposium on Technology Entrepreneurship Aug 27-28, Eugene, OR (University of Oregon)

Social Media Insider Summit Aug 29-Sept 1, Lake Tahoe

VMWorld 2010 Aug 30-Sept 2, SF

September 2010

Gov 2.0 Summit Sept. 7-8 Wash­ing­ton D.C.

The Security Standard, Sept 13-14, NYC

Going Green: Silicon Valley Sept 13-15, SF

DEMO­fall Sept. 13–15 Santa Clara, Calif.

WITI’s Women and Tech­nol­ogy Summit Sept. 12–14 Sil­i­con Val­ley, Calif.

Social Media Strategies Summit, Sept 15-17, SF

GigaOM Mobilize September 18, SF

Oracle Open World September 19-23, SF

ComputerWorld Business Intelligence and Analytics Perspectives Sept 20-21, La Jolla, CA

GPU Conference Sept 20-23, San Jose

MobiCom/MobiHoc Sept. 20-24, Chicago, IL

EmTech@MIT (MIT Emerging Technologies Conference) September 21-23, Cambridge, MA

Think Mobile Sept 23, SF

Smartphone Games Summit Sept 24, SF

Web of Change Sept 22-Sept 26 Cortes Island, British Columbia

AMA 2010 Marketing Research Conference September 26-29, Atlanta, GA

iPhone/iPad Developer Conference September 27-29, San Diego

Techcrunch Disrupt, September 27-29, SF

Local Mobile Advertising, September 27-29, Dallas, TX

IABB MIXX Expo Sept 27-28, NYC

October 2010

B2B Marketing Summit Oct 4-5, Boston, MA

CyborgCamp Oct 2, Portland, OR

InfoCamp Oct 2-3 Seattle, WA

ACM UIST Symposium (User Interfaces) October 3-6, NYC

Business Communications Strategies Summit, Oct 4-5, Washington, DC

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit October 3-7, Washington, DC

Fortune Most Powerful Women Conference October 4-6, Washington, DC

Search Marketing Expo East Oct 4-6, NYC

GTEC Ottawa, October 4-7, Ottawa, Canada

Digital Music Forum: West Oct 6-7, Los Angeles

Inbound Marketing Summit October 6-7, Boston, MA

International CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment Oct 6-8, SF

CITA Enterprise & Applications Oct 6-8, SF

Online Com­mu­nity Summit Oct. 7–8 Sonoma, Calif.

High Ed Web October 10-13, Cincinnati, OH

Virtual Goods Summit October 12-13, SF

Blog­World & New Media Expo Oct. 14–16 Las Vegas, Nev.

Interop October 18-22, NYC

Dig­i­tal Hol­ly­wood Fall Oct. 18–21 Santa Mon­ica

International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Analysis Oct 20-22, SF

Adobe Max October 23-27, Los Angeles

Online News Association Oct. 28–30 Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

November 2010

iPad Summit Nov 1, Santa Clara, CA

Cloud Expo Nov 1-4, Santa Clara, CA

Online Video Platform Summit Nov 2-3, Los Angeles

Streaming Media West Nov 2-3, Los Angeles, Calif

Dow Jones VentureWire FASTech Nov 3-4, Redwood City, CA

Group 10 Nov 7-10, Sanibel, FL

Enterprise 2.0, Nov 8-10, Santa Clara, CA

PubCon Nov 8-11, Las Vegas, NV

Web 2.0 Sum­mit Nov. 15–17 San Fran­cisco

Semantic Web Summit Nov 16-17, Boston

Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit Nov 17-19, Las Vegas

December 2010

WiMax Forum Latin America Dec 1-2, Fort Lauderdale, FL

eBook Summit, Dec 16-16, NYC

Canadian Innovation Exchange Dec 7, Toronto, Canada

Inter­ac­tive Local Media Dec. 8–10 Santa Clara, Calif.

The Future of Film Summit Dec 8, Santa Barbara, CA

Ubiquitous Learning Dec 10-11, Vancouver, CA

Technology Conference and Expo Dec. 13-15, Washington DC

The majority of U.S. internet users now connect to the internet via portable computer or mobile phone. The latter is especially popular among minorities.

Six out of ten American internet users connect via phone or portable computer, using a wireless connection to do so, according to a Pew Internet Research study. Nearly half of the study’s respondents have access to wi-fi or a mobile connection to access the internet with a laptop, 10 percent more than did so last year. And 40 percent of these surf the web, send emails or instant messages from a mobile phone. Mobile is becoming the preferred method of connection. “Even if portable PCs have become mainstream in the last few years, a significant number of people are turning to phones as the principal way to access the internet,” said Aaron Smith, the report’s author.

Minorities Represent Largest Percentage of Users

As far as user demographics, Hispanics and African-Americans use the mobile web the most. Nearly 90 percent of Hispanics and African-Americans possess a mobile phone (compared to 80 percent of Caucasians), and they use more mobile tools, as well. Three-fifths of African-American mobile owners use their phone to access the internet. And while users between the ages of 18 and 29 are still dominant, the other segments are beginning to catch up.

Multifunction Phones

It’s not surprising that Pew notes that respondents now use their phones in more ways that before. Three-fourths of respondents use their phones for taking pictures, and more than a third use them for games, videos and music. Over half also share multimedia content with friends. “For many, the phone has become absolutely necessary for work and play,” said Smith.

Patent-holding company NTP filed lawsuits late Thursday afternoon against several major mobile phone industry brands. The same company sued Research in Motion, manufacturer of the BlackBerry handset models, for infringing on NTP’s technology. The company asserts that its innovations form the foundation for many wireless e-mail systems and that these corporations have been using its tech illegally.

While NTP only targeted RIM back in 2006, the suit now covers Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola. As The New York Times reports, "Its critics have said that NTP has consistently inflated the importance of its innovations and that it is the very model of a patent troll, a company that produces no product or service other than licensing demands and lawsuits." However, The Wall Street Journal comments that "Ron Epstein, a licensing lawyer hired by NTP to negotiate deals with the smartphone makers, said the intellectual property developed by [co-founder Thomas] Campana is legitimate and crucial to how wireless email is delivered today."

RIM ended up settling to the amount of $612.5 million, including a perpetual license to NTP’s technology.

While reports claim the suit could win NTP several hundred million dollars, others say there may be no more money in this thread of suing. Since advancements are made so quickly, the email systems technology in question could now be different enough to be outside the jurisdiction of NTP’s claims. Regardless of the outcome of this specific lawsuit, the Times explains that this type of work has already had effect on the patent economy. Big tech firms now seek out relevant patent clusters rather than ignore them. The WSJ article suggests if NTP does win, the amount will be less than the RIM settlement, since the current defendants will have been aware of that lawsuit and prepared some sort of legal work-arounds.

Young people are driving online video usage and advertising acceptance, as shown by a study from Media research consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc, sponsored by Metacafe. Other key findings from the "Magid Media Futures 2010: Online Video" show that fifty percent of Internet users watch online video once a week or more, up from 43 percent in 2009. Within this group, the mean amount of time spent is 4.6 hours. 85% of males 18-24 watch online video weekly or more as well as 67% of the 18-34 demographic. 68% of Females 18-24 Watch Weekly

Online video growth is expected to grow at a rate of over five percent in the next year. Additionally, many consumers are interested in connecting the computer to their television in order to watch online video on their set - about 38 percent are somewhat or very interested in doing this. Media professionals do not have to worry about Internet video cannibalizing traditional TV, according to this study - it appears to have minimal perceptual effect on live TV viewing.

Short format video is very popular - eight out ten genres of video are short format, rather than full length TV episodes or films. 3 out of 4 respondents watch some sort of professionally produced short form clips regularly, across all age groups. Nearly one-third of viewers find these videos as or more entertaining than full length shows that they watch on TV - 28 percent think they are more entertaining than TV.

55 percent perceive online video ads as or more acceptable as TV commercials, and only 24 percent find them less acceptable. Among younger users, the percentages are more favorable - eighteen percent of males and ten percent of females aged 18-24 found online ads more acceptable while older users tend to view online and TV ads equivalently.

Smartphones and high-speed internet explain the passion for subscriptions to mobile services that give access to news or entertainment information. SMS remains the main transmission channel.

The Latin American mobile-content services market will see enormous growth, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan. The firm predicts double-digit growth between now and 2014. In 2009, the market reached $2.5 billion and more than 60 million users. The passion for the sector is due to two principal factors: the adoption of high-speed mobile internet and the arrival of smartphones on the market, as well as other tools for content visualization, like tablets.

Information Services Lead by SMS

According to the study’s figures, SMS-based information services about subjects like soccer, horoscopes or the economy are the primary source of revenue for this sector, accounting for 65 percent of total revenue. Following these are music and game download services. Brazil and Mexico lead this sector; Brazil counts nearly 40 percent of the market’s total users, and Mexico, 30 percent. Venezuela, Argentina and Chili are falling behind these two.

Argentina, Chili and Venezuela Falling Behind.

Argentina, with the most notable market of the three, only accounts for 15 percent of total consumers. All three of these countries have reached the saturation point in their number of mobile users, with each exceeding 100 percent penetration rate. Even if television and video still represent a tiny part of revenues related to mobile content, Frost & Sullivan predicts that this multimedia content will see strong growth in the next five years, profiting especially from the launch of mobile app stores by the main South American mobile operators.

When looking to purchase a new cell phone, consumers are not brand loyal - they are looking for the features they need and find out about different handsets using Internet search. So claim findings from search giant Google and Web analytics company Compete, announced last month on the AdWords Agency Blog by the Google Tech Marketing Team.

Citing their numbers, "Wireless Shopper 2.0" reports that there are currently over 450 handset models available in North America, with ten new handset launches per week. To navigate this glut of wireless devices, consumers have developed certain patterns of behavior that adhere to general themes:

• No brand loyalty: When they first begin looking, 42% did not have a a specific wireless carrier preference, 78% did not have a manufacturer preference (such as Apple, RIM, etc)
• Design first: 45% purchased a new smartphone for the features, 22% "had to have" the phone they saw and purchased
• Web search: 62% "who searched for a newly launched mobile device purchased one," the average consumer conducts thirteen searches throughout the process

Purchasing a new phone is more than ever dictated by cool new phones - purchases due to available upgrades through a provider are down eleven percent, such as the standard "New-for-two" subsidizing of a new handset for another two-year contract. Feature-driven purchases are up twenty percent, and model driven purchases are up seventeen percent from 2008.

As for smartphone-specific behavior, many consumers are choosing these Web- and application-enabled devices. 65 percent of smartphone purchasers are switching from other mobile phones. Many wireless carrier customers are switching carriers to purchase them, as the study showed more carrier veterans owned regular cell phones than not. Additionally, smartphone owners place higher stock in specific models than their cell phone owner counterparts. These customers also do more pre-purchase online research.

Research and analysis group Latitude looked to children in their recent study to provide an unfettered view of what people see their devices doing for them in the future. Led by Jessica Reinis, the project asked kids under the age of twelve a single question: “What would be really interesting or fun to do on your computer or the Internet that your computer canʼt do right now? Please draw a picture of what this activity looks like.”

While there were both variety and patterns in responses, fewer than expected were deemed impossible to tackle by developers today, like time-travel or teleporting. The rest fell into the realms of device interface, communication and creativity.

A high level of requests centered around the immersive potential of digital media - 38 percent more of this type of media content, in fact. An example of such content is three-dimensional functionality, which concerned ten percent of respondents. Other types of responses in this vein included devices that can create physical objects like food, or that can somehow bridge the digital and physical spaces.

Human- or personality-synthesis capabilities also won a large majority of inspiration, with 83 percent of kids wanting interactivity advances. Advances like "responsive virtual environments, 3D games, “homework help” computers, etc." were popular ideas.

Another popular theme is more direct interfaces - 37 percent of children had technology innovation dreams that did not include keyboards, mice or other traditional input devices. As alternatives, twelve percent incorporated touchscreens, eight percent favored visual controls, and four percent hope for telepathic connections. Half of respondents depicted themselves in their drawings, the device being thought of as an extension of oneself, according to Latitude.

Older kids were more concerned with social tech: 56 percent of ten-to-twelve year-olds contributed ideas in this category, such as ways to better connect not only with close friends and family, but to kids far across the globe.

Nearly one-third of proposed tools were meant to create something, be it a "a Web site, a game, a video to be shared, a physical object, etc." Kids selected creative pursuit a close second to gaming for favorite online activity.

When you like a friend’s post on Facebook, you contribute to the 65 million daily Facebook likes. Think about it, that’s more than one daily like for one out of every nine Facebook users.

Facebook growth has slowed a lot, according to figures from Inside Facebook. New U.S. sign-ups dropped from 7.8 million in May to 320,800 in June.

For the most part, the people joining Facebook right now are either younger or older than the 18-44 demographic that first filled up Facebook. The largest growth among U.S. users is among 13-17-year olds, followed by people in the 45-54 and 55-65 groups.

Interestingly, of the 45+ group, a sizable larger percentage of women are joining Facebook than men. In the 45-54 group, it’s a matter of 2:1, with 98 thousand women becoming new members, while only 48 thousand men did. Among older users, the difference is not quite as big, but it’s still there: 78 thousand million female sign-ups versus 45 thousand men.

Fifty percent of Facebook users log-in daily. If one thinks of one’s own behavior, that’s not really surprising. But when one telescopes that out to 250 million people – a sizable chunk of the world’s population – that’s incredible. The 65 million likes mentioned at the top of the article represent 26 percent of Facebook users.

It’s boring to pull out platitudes when talking about Facebook. But when you see a still-young service that can get 1/100th of the world’s population to undertake an action – any action – on a daily basis, that’s still an awesome feat, no matter how bored we are of Facebook stories.

There’s just something fundamentally cool about images projected on water. If it’s drops of water instead of the surface, that’s even better. If the images are in 3D – you might be onto something mind-blowing.

So Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute has developed something that might be mind-blowing. AquaLux 3D creates 3D images by using multiple layers of precisely controlled water droplets.

The technology grew out of efforts to build safer car headlights, headlights that would make driving in the rain easier by ensuring that as much light as possible was able to shine through raindrops.

AquaLux 3D projects images on layers of timed drops of water. The layers are timed in such a way that drops in the front do not block drops behind them. Right now the system generates four layers of drops falling at 60 per second.

“By carefully generating several layers of drops so that no two drops occupy the same line-of-sight from the projector, we can use each drop as a voxel that can be illuminated to create a 3-D image,” said Srinivasa Narasimhan, associate professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon

The system will be used for displaying video images and text, and envisaged for use in interactive games, exhibitions and theme parks.

“One unique aspect of AquaLux 3D is the potential for physical interaction,” Narasimhan said. “People can touch the water drops and alter the appearance of images, which could lead to interactive experiences we can’t begin to predict. We look forward to the day when creative people can fully explore the potential of this display.”

The researchers will discuss AquaLux 3D July 27 at SIGGRAPH, the 37th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, in Los Angeles.