iHobo

iHobo is an odd premise to say the least – You watch over after a homeless young person who sits on your iPhone for three days like an adult human tamagotchi. In the process you’ll find out what challenges homeless people face daily, and how you can at least try to help.

As you can see from these screenshots, he sometimes will just wander off – leaving you to wait, and muse on those homeless people that exist all the time, 24/7 – but you never pass in the street.

The app is clearly dividing audiences, and generating some interesting discussion in the reviews about the issues of homelessness, and what point exactly is being made (along with some bugs).

It’s a good showcase of how the low barrier to entry for mobile apps is generating some exciting new work, not just for the gaming and commerce sectors. Along with the usual ‘share’ functionality, you can also donate to Depaul UK straight from your iPhone, a nice touch to make a tangible difference.

Admitedly, there’s not a huge depth to it; you can only give the guy a sleeping bag, money or food depending on his current state. iHobo does make a salient point though – if you neglect the homeless, he gets into serious problems.

Oli Newton on the mobile advertising opportunity

Naturally, social media folk tend to focus on how dramatically the digital landscape has been altered by the daily emergence of new social technologies, platforms and modes of interaction.

Touchscreen handsets and operating systems revolutionised the volume and manner in which the UK uses mobile to interact with eachother, brands and the internet (usage grew 28% to 11m people last year alone).

However, this mobile boom requires infrastructure developments beyond the app store or an update in Tweet Deck or Facebook for iPhone.

i-level’s prolific Head of Emerging Platforms Oli Newton discusses in his recent article for U Talk Marketing the need for ad serving technologies to develop and standardise if brands are to reap the benefits of this dramatic increase in use and opportunity.

He also reveals his latent desire for a mobile sponsored Britney reunion in 2020.

Oli’s full article can, (and should) be read here (you could even click that little button that says ‘recommend this article’)

Ocado i-phone app shows a brand that understands its customers

Jam favourite Ocado is the first supermarket delivery service to launch an i-phone app. For those of us too busy or disinclined to negotiate the supermarket isles, the Ocado application signs directly into a users delivery account so that you can add groceries to your shopping basket wherever you are and whenever you remember. Allowing access to the full Ocado range, the application doesn’t cut corners and pulls in huge quantities of user data from favourite purchases (red peppers and basil if you must know) or re-ordering a previous weeks lists. Always on top of innovation, the i-phone app perfectly epitomises Ocado’s brand values in delivering excellent customer service with a considered and pioneering execution.

Social drives mobile and mobile drives social

30% of the UK use mobile internet a month (says the IAB) and over the last couple of years, we’ve seen the use of social media on mobiles explode.  For an increasing amount of people, it’s the focus of their mobile web usage and several telcoms brands have run marketing around this.

(source: comScoreM Metric MobiLens Survey ‘07-’08)

However, this changing consumption of social media means that social services have had to change, placing more and more emphasis on quick conversations.  For example, in a bid to keep up with micro-blogging platforms, Facebook has focused on short comments.  Users can now make these about pretty much anything, but the key theme is that most of them are quick thoughts.

In addition, services and mobiles let you upload an increasing variety of content when you’re on the move.  This then sits alongside the more deliberate (often more  polished) content that has been added through web services.  Over the next year, the most successful social platform will be one that seamlessly combines mobile usage and short content with the rich content and contacts we’ve come to expect from online services.