Apprentice App Challenge: The app market is already overcrowded, but there’s money to made. You can be sure something has jumped the shark when it even tangentially involves Donald Trump. Count apps at that point. On the latest episode of The Apprentice U.K., the challenge was to create a mobile phone app. The challenge was to come up with an app in 24 hours. The real takeaway is that the app gold rush is clearly attracting get-rich-quick schemers, dreaming up ways to make millions off a fart application or some such nonsense. Check out how The Apprentice’s UK version of The Donald, Lord Sugar, described the app world: You didn’t need to go to a bank and ask for millions of pounds in investment. “You used your brains to come up with a product that you could develop quite simply and you can go and put it up on the Web and make some money. Because that’s the beauty of this business.” It sounds so easy, much like building a gold coin collection as a path to permanent financial riches! Don’t hold your breath for a big payday, considering the apps conceived included “Slangatang,” a soundboard app for regional dialects and Ampi-App, another soundboard but this time for animal noises. Digital Spy
Augmented Reality Coming Soon: LG’s Optimus 3D smartphone will be released this summer, and it features the world’s first augmented reality browser. LG partnered with Wikitude to create this augmented reality browser. Check out the vid. Mashable
Wikitude World Browser 5 from Wikitude on Vimeo.
Mango: Microsoft has a lot planned for their Windows Phone Mango, but there won’t be official announcements until the fall. Until then there are of course speculations. Rumored new features include the Bing application (which means barcode scanning, OCR, QR tag recognition, and scanning of books, CDs, and DVDs), and Bing Audio, a Shazam like feature that recognizes songs. There will also possibly be a dictation feature for text messages. Ars Technica
No Chrome for Tabs: Google announced on the second and last day of I/O that they will not be bringing Google Chrome to tablets. Sundar Pichai, Senior VP of Chrome, said that they will continue to focus on Chrome for laptops. Endgadget
Mobile OS Maze: If you are a developer, how do you choose which platform to develop your app for? Check out Wireless Week’s platform-by-platform overview of advantages and disadvantages of the top mobile operating systems for developers. Wireless Week
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Dentsu’s support of a Black-owned podcast tries to do its part to fill the advertising inequity gap
The Dentsu-backed More Than That with Gia Peppers kicked off season 3 last week, featuring several major advertisers (and Dentsu clients) including Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Kroger and Mastercard.
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The Athletic’s Sebastian Tomich is looking beyond ads and subscriptions to reach profitability
The Athletic's path to profitability is set for 2025, and to achieve this goal, chief commercial officer Sebastian Tomich is focused on more than just selling ads directly to prospective advertisers.
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How newsroom unions intervene when members get laid off
Amid the recent wave of media layoffs, here are some of the ways newsroom unions are intervening.
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SponsoredAdvertising predictions that will shake up the media industry in 2023
Chris Kelly, CEO, Upwave Like many people, marketers and advertisers were ready to see 2022 come to a close. A year that started off promising was assailed by inflation, layoffs and the disastrous effects of RSV, the flu and additional COVID strains. Still, despite an uncertain outlook for 2023, there are plenty of reasons for […]
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Despite Q1’s slow start, publishers are bullish about events revenue for 2023
Publishers like BDG and Apartment Therapy are banking on events revenue to give them a leg up in 2023.
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Media Briefing: The case for and against monthly and annual subscriptions in the battle for retention
There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for improving retention in a subscriptions business. While annual subscribers might stick around longer for some, other publishers will have better luck with monthly plans.
