Ad Dynamo has announced its entry into Brazil today.

“Brazil represents an enormous growth market in both online and mobile advertising, and we’re very pleased to be launching here with a relevant and established player such as Realmedia,” says Sean Riley, CEO of Ad Dynamo.

Though today is the official launch date, Ad Dynamo has been quietly building traction in Brazil over the past couple of months. The global contextual ad marketplace brings more choice to the market currently dominated by Google. Website owners who work with Ad Dynamo get paid faster than any other ad network can offer, and advertisers now have an additional avenue to reach their targeted audiences within Brazil.

Realmedia serves more than 3,4 Billion ads per month in Brazil and represents a very interesting proposition – this is a market where Ad Dynamo launches with real traction and critical mass.

Sean Riley, CEO Addynamo

Couple this with Ad Dynamo’s global publisher network of more than 26,000 websites, Brazilian advertisers have a compelling option to market their businesses both within Brazil and abroad.

Over the next month, Ad Dynamo will be launching a Brazilian Portuguese version of the site and introduce Brazilian Real support for both publishers and advertisers. In addition, Brazilian based publishers have the option to be paid in their local currency, the Ad Dynamo Debit Card is already available as an alternative form of receiving funds – publishers that qualify get their very own Visa card that is automatically topped up monthly with the revenue they earn by placing ads on their website.

According to Peter Gervai, Managing Director at Realmedia “Realmedia consolidated its story through the areas of technology and media in vertical sites. Our plans for the next year includes  expanding the range of products we offer to the market and increasing participation in various forms to meet the consumer at the right time. Partnering with Ad Dynamo is an important step on this path, especially because Ad Dynamo is as dynamic and agile as our market. “

South African banks and retailers are likely to be slow to adopt near-field communications (NFC) technology for mobile payments because of the high costs of installing point-of-sale terminals and other enabling infrastructure. That’s the word from Tim Walter, Executive Head of Marketing at Nashua Mobile, who says that there is little appetite among institutions to drive adoption of yet another new point-of-sale payment technology just as the end of their protracted rollout of the EMV credit card standard is in sight.

NFC is a short-range wireless technology that will eventually allow people to use their mobile phone as a wallet. It will enable consumers to make secure payments to compatible point of sale terminals or to another user’s smartphone. NFC has proven itself to be a viable technology in field trials in countries such as the US, and South African banks (like ABSA) are reportedly also trialling NFC. But, as yet, there are not enough NFC compatible handsets in the market, nor is there a compelling commercial model for the rollout of the technology in South Africa, says Walter. The only brand to actively deploy NFC on new handsets is RIM with their latest Blackberry devices.

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For a long time, the only major file syncing service with a decent cloud backup option was Dropbox, and its cross platform compatibility across all your devices made it a firm favourite. Google was always rumoured to be readying “GDrive”, but it just never appeared. But a few days ago Microsoft announced that they are finally bringing Skydrive syncing clients to other platforms than Windows, so it was only natural that now was the perfect time for Google to also jump into the file syncing pool.

Google Drive is free, and users will get 5GB of cloud based storage for free. Google of course has the advantage of having pretty decent editing tools available in the shape of Google Docs, and Google Drive will also have some pretty great collaboration services as well. For example – if you share and collaborate on a document, you can keep track of comments from other editors in the document, regardless of the type of file, be it video, photo, PDF etc.

Just like Dropbox, you sync your Google Drive across devices, and your stuff is also safely stored in the cloud, in case anything happens with it. But Google’s Search speciality makes the cloud storage even more powerful – using OCR (optical character recognition), Google can scan your documents for all their included text, and then you can just search for text. Very much like Evernote.

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From today, Vodacom and Cell C will have the new, lower priced Nokia Lumia 710 phone available at R3999.

The new colorful device was designed to bring the Windows Phone smartphone experience to a new lower price point, without sacrifices. It combines the powerful social and Internet experience of Windows Phone with the ability to take pictures in almost any conditions and share with friends in seconds, as well as access to thousands of the most popular apps and exclusive Nokia services, like Nokia Drive.

Based on the Windows Phone 7.5 release, the Nokia Lumia 710 smartphone has a broad range of social-network focussed features:

• People Hub in Windows Phone displays all call, text, email and social network interactions with any individual contact in an integrated view, with the ability to group contacts and pin favourite groups and individuals to the start screen for live updates and easy access to the people who matter most.
• Faster, easier Web browsing experience with Internet Explorer 9 and one-touch Bing search.
• Nokia Drive delivers a full-fledged personal navigation device (PND) with free, turn-by-turn navigation and dedicated in-car-user-interface.
• Nokia Music introduces MixRadio, a free mobile music-streaming application that delivers 100s of channels of global and locally-relevant music. Also integrated in Nokia Music is Gigfinder, providing the ability to search for live local music events.
• With the 5MP camera, anyone can take pictures and share on social networks in seconds, even when the phone is locked.

The Nokia Lumia 710 can be personalised with a choice of white or black front finish and additional inter-changeable back coloured covers, very much like the covers from the Nokia 5110 days.

“We are very excited to be bringing the next device in the Lumia range to South Africa. The Lumia 710 offers the same functionality as the Lumia 800 at a lower price point, and is perfect for consumers that thrive on being socially connected. This again highlights Nokia’s commitment to delivering the latest smartphones with localized services to the South African market,” says Colin Baumgart, Nokia South Africa General Manager.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is still one of our favourite handsets, so we cannot wait to get our hands on the Lumia 710.

As Apple continues to release the latest iPhone 4s, the successor to the iPhone 4, many companies and creatives have used it an opportunity to invent and update unusual and unique cases in which to protect the very important device. With its simple and sophisticated design, it may very well appeal to some owners who want to add some character and even crank up the functionality of their iPhones.

Here are just five of some of the cool and quirky iPhone cases around:

1. The Magna Doodle Case

Way before there were touchscreens and iPads, many kids found the joy of writing and doodling with the Magna Doodle or variation there of. Called the iFoolish, purely for its ridiculousness, this iPhone 4/4S case designed by Basic Principles lets owners have fun with their very own portable Magna Doodle and mini stylus. For a sense of nostalgia or if you can’t seem to find an iPhone App to entertain you, this case is for you.

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Pricing for the new iPad 3 (or just “the new iPad”) has just been announced by the Core group, and the pricing is similiar to what iPad 2 pricing was before it was discounted to clear stock for the iPad 3rd Generation. With pricing starting at R5000 for the base 16GB model with Wifi, we reckon it is still very good value for money. The new iPad launches on 27 April, and here is the full pricing rundown:

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The Afri-Tech Technology and Digital Marketing Summit will be taking place in Johannesburg in May 2012 for a three day event.

The innovative framework of this conference is intended to create cross-functional solutions in the areas of Health Care, Education, Banking & Finance, Networking Solutions, Digital Marketing and Science & Technology.

Speakers include:

• Ross Thomasson – Regional Director for Africa, Vodafone
• Doug de Villiers  - CEO, Interbrand Sampson
• Thebe Ikalafeng – Founder, Fin Week Marketing Services
• Marieme Jamme – London based CEO and blogger
• Dr Thomas Mensah – Chairman, Lightwave and Wireless Corporation

Event Details:

When: 14th – 16th May 2012

Time: Event starts at 9am

Where:  Sandton Convention Centre, Maude Street, The Forum, Sandton, Johannesburg

For more information and to register click here. 

I have recently sat in meetings where the content specialist seems to believe that mobile content should be dumbed-down or at the very least shortened.

I’m not exactly sure where this idea has come from but I have a feeling that it has something to do with the size of the screen dictating the length of the content and/or the level of intelligence of the user. This is a massive assumption backed by very little research or understanding of the user, user experience with their mobile devices and any knowledge of the data and mobile operator relationship to the user.

Let’s break this down.

Handsets

For some odd reason the term “mobile” has become synonymous with the word “iPhone” and/or “smartphone” in recent months. This is a huge mistake when building for mobile.

The definition of a smart device needs to be broadened and we need to get a better understanding of what we’re dealing with.

Below is a graph which illustrates quite nicely which handset manufacturer controls the African market. The answer in short: Nokia.

The basic premise to remember here is that once a user has loaded up your piece of content, the chances are they won’t navigate away unless the receive a phone call. Why? Because most of the devices out in the market aren’t able to effectively multi-task. Even considering the iPhone should make you think about this: If you shift from the iPhone browser, to an app and then back to the browser, very often the page will force a reload and make the user not only lose their place on the page but have to reload the page and spend more of their airtime doing so. (more…)