NAVTEQ RELEASES NAVIGABLE MAPS FOR ARGENTINA

NAVTEQ has released detailed navigable map coverage for Argentina. It includes over 200,000 km of road network across the entire country and up to 260 attributes per road segment. These road attributes enable navigable solutions to support route guidance. The maps include addresses, as well as over 3,600 named city or hamlets. “The increasing adoption of global positioning systems (GPS) technology in Argentina creates opportunity for Personal Navigation Devices (PND) and hand-set manufacturers, as well as telecommunications carriers to develop navigation and location-based services,” said Jim Dineen, director and general manager of NAVTEQ Latin America. Founded in 1985, Chicago-based NAVTEQ has presence in 42 countries. -Smarajit Dasgupta

VIRGIN MOBILE OFFERING MOBILE SHOPPING TOOL SLIFTER

Virgin Mobile USA is now offering location-based mobile shopping application Slifter allowing Virgin’s five million customers to search and share products and promotions at neighboring retail locations. Slifter provides access to over 300 million products at more than 150,000 local and online retailers and offers price and availability information, deals, and detailed directions to stores. One can also create a mobile shopping list with favorite products and promotions. Slifter is available on all Virgin Mobile USA phones at no additional charge on VirginXL and the mobile web. "Virgin Mobile USA is excited to bring another great solution to our members. We think that the Slifter site is amongst the best mobile shopping experiences available today. Its a blending together of search and location information that really gives our members an advantage in finding the products they want, at the right price, at the most convenient retail location,” said Wes Radez, Director of Mobile Content at Virgin Mobile USA. -Smarajit Dasgupta

VIANETIX DRIVING DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER MOBILE CONTENT

While much has been made of mobile carrier efforts to capture additional service revenue and to avoid becoming simple bit pipes, mobile services consulting firm Vianetix is advancing the idea that mobile Domain Registrars, who have been selling .mobi top-level domains since 2006, are well positioned to get in on the mobile content business. Mobile technology providers have traditionally focused on mobile operators as their distribution outlets, but now see domain registrars as an alternative outlet.

Domain registrars currently engaged in creating mobile Internet sites include goDaddy.com, mobiSiteGalore, mfinity, handango, netbiscuits, crispw, NeworkSolutions, BuildMyMobi, Dotster, thumplay, Peperoni, and Swift. About 20 registrars control 80% of worldwide domain registrations. Many global brands have launched mobile sites, including Ericsson, Samsung, Vodafone, Google, BMW, NBA, Nokia, Rolls Royce, BusinessWeek, Microsoft, Obama, BankofAmerica, McGraw2go, Visa, Zagat, and AAA.

Despite the position of registrars and corporate interest in mobile sites, Vianetix founder Glenn Roland believes many companies are don't view registrars as an alternate content distribution channel, and that registrars will have to aggressively pursue this business in order to achieve such recognition. In order to succeed in the mobile Internet site creation business, Registrars will have to begin to deliver a "higher-touch" service than that which they deliver in traditional Internet hosting.

Separate from the content site creation opportunity, Vianetix sees an opportunity in the "domainer" market in which companies actively buy and sell domain names. Current "domainers" include Maveron LLC, Perot Investments, and the Jacobson family. The top four dotMobi name sales are poker.mobi at US$ 150,000, ringtones.mobi at US$ 145,000, news.mobi at US$ 110,000, and hosting.mobi at US$ 101,000. -Stuart Whitaker

ADMOB MOBILE ADVERTISING TRAFFIC TRIPLES IN PAST YEAR. ADMOB MOBILE ADVERTISING TRAFFIC TRIPLES IN PAST YEAR

AdMob announced that the number of requests on its mobile ad network rose from 1.5 billion in September 2007 to 5.1 billion in September 2008. The increase is attributable to a combination of organic growth and the addition of thousands of new mobile sites and applications to its network. The number of sites and applications in AdMob's network increased to mover than 6,000, with 4,308 publishers requesting ads in September 2008.

The Apple iPhone generate 103 million ad requests in September 2008 and is now the number 4 handset behind the Motorola RAZR, Nokia N70, and Motorola KRZR. In the UK, the Nokia N95 is now the leading handset with 9.7% of the requests. -Stuart Whitaker

APARTMENTS.COM OPTIMIZES FOR MOBILE, OFFERS SEND2PHONE LISTINGS

Apartments.com has made its more than three million apartment listings available through web-enabled mobile phones. The Apartments.com site has been optimized for mobile browsing and lets renters conduct fully customizable search of all apartment listings on Apartments.com through a mobile phone. Other than "Apartments.com Mobile Web," Apartments.com also offers a "Send2Phone" feature allowing renters to send information about an apartment listing from the Apartments.com site to their mobile phones as a text message. Chris Brown, VP of product management at Apartments.com, said, "After taking into consideration multiple operating systems, mobile devices and carriers, Apartments.com has created a user-friendly experience for renters on the mobile web, delivering apartment listings, photos, and detailed information through a rich data format conveniently accessible from any web-enabled mobile phone and carrier." Apartments.com is a division of Chicago-based Classified Ventures LLC. -Smarajit Dasgupta

CHACHA AND ROCK THE VOTE TEAM UP ON US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Chacha announced that it has partnered with Rock the Vote to deliver answers to engage and inform young voters as well as to provide voting, polling, and related information for the November 4th US presidential election. Questions sent to RTVOTE (788683) will be answered by politically-trained ChaCha guides who will provide informed, non-partisan answers.

ChaCha has over 35,000 Guides and has answered over 30 million queries since launching in January of this year. Rock the Vote's mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change.

We posted three separate questions via SMS text today, the day the service launched (verbatim):

"What are the positions on climate change?"

"What are the hours for absentee voting?"

"What are the odds, the line, on the presidential race?"

We will report the results when answers are received. -Stuart Whitaker

DECARTA’S CONNECTED NAVIGATION SERVICE NOW AVAILABLE COMMERCIALLY

deCarta has made available its real-time, two-way connected navigation (CNAV) service for PNDs and smartphones. The CNAV service is offered to existing and new PND suppliers, carriers, handset manufacturers, consumer brands, automotive OEMs, and in-vehicle service providers. It provides components to deliver a full-featured, customizable connected navigation application. CNAV’s location-aware capabilities include real-time and predictive traffic-aware routing; corridor search allowing relevant and practical results for searching along a route; finding cheapest gas nearby; sending information to device from user's PC; and weather information. "Connected navigation not only enhances the driving experience for the user but is also a significant point of market differentiation for navigation device manufacturers and associated service providers," said J. Kim Fennell, president and CEO of deCarta. "We're excited about our deployment plans within the high-volume PND channel and look forward to the first wave of deCarta-enabled CNAV devices as they're introduced into the market for the holiday buying season." The first major customer is expected to deploy PNDs utilizing deCarta's CNAV technology in late October. -Smarajit Dasgupta

NOKIA MEDIA NETWORK ADDS MORE US PUBLISHERS

Fox News, A&E Television Networks, Bio Channel, HISTORY, and The Hollywood Reporter have joined the Nokia Media Network, a global mobile advertising network. Tom Henriksson, head of Nokia Interactive Advertising said, "These additions fortify the Nokia Media Network's reach in the United States, which has already been a well-performing advertising network, especially for advertisers in the entertainment, automotive, and mobile content sectors." These additions join other flagship Nokia Media Network publishers such as Reuters, CNET, Agence-France Press, Unidad Editorial, Hearst, and AccuWeather; operators like Sprint and Airtel; and Nokia services like Nokia.mobi. -Smarajit Dasgupta

YAHOO'S ONECONNECT WANTS TO CHALLENGE GOOGLE ON THE IPHONE

Yahoo's oneConnect is a native iPhone application intended to integrate contacts, social networks, and communications. Yahoo! plans to integrate contacts from Yahoo!, iPhone, and social networks. Yahoo! Pulse is intended to enable users to see what's happening on social networks including Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube. Support for SMS and Yahoo! Messenger is planned as well. Released as a "preview" in September, we tried version 1.0.1 but, unfortunately, didn't have much success with the application. While the application was able to retrieve Yahoo! contacts and messages, we couldn't integrate contacts from iPhone and received a server error each time we tried to connect with Facebook. (We don't know what the source of the server error is). We look forward to trying a successful implementation. -Stuart Whitaker

PICOLLATOR.MOBI BRINGS MOBILE SEARCH WITH IMAGE-BASED QUERY

Picollator.mobi offers a mobile search solution that lets users upload a sample image from their mobile phone, or use just a couple of words to specify the request. It returns relevant web pages, pictures, and links. Picollator.mobi supports the majority of mobile devices with Opera Mini browser. Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 platform can be also used with some limitations. Picollator is powered by Recogmission algorithms that find web pages using a combination of images and text. Recogmission has also launched a Picollator plug-in for desktop browsers allowing search for similar images right from the browser. The first version of Picollator plug-in is designed for Microsoft Internet Explorer use, with the FireFox release expected soon. -Smarajit Dasgupta