New App Considers Your Travel Time When Providing Appointment Alerts

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Ripple Mobile

Quick Pitch: Ripple Mobile’s first app, OnTime, alerts you when you need to leave for your next event based on your current location.

Genius Idea: Business travelers have a habit of squeezing appointments into their schedules like they’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle. But in unfamiliar territory, it can be hard to gauge how much time is needed to travel from one meeting to another in a different location.

Enter OnTime, Ripple’s first app for iPhone (Android and BlackBerry apps are on the way). The app pulls in whatever calendars are loaded onto your phone, and uses the Google Maps API to help the user assign each appointment an address. It then sends push notifications when it’s time to leave for an appointment based on how much travel time is between your current location and destination.

Other apps send push notifications based on times that you enter, but OnTime is the only app I’ve found that will calculate based on my location AND give me turn-by-turn directions with travel conditions. There’s also an option to set alerts for a bit of cushion time before leaving for meetings, pick and choose which calendars to receive notifications for, and send an e-mail or text message if you are running late. When you arrive at your location, the app will ask you if you’d like to share it to Facebook or Twitter.

Except for a public transportation setting (president and co-founder Kevin Miller assures me this feature is on the way) and an option to check into Foursquare within the app (a future possibility), I can’t think of anything else I would want my appointment keeper technology to handle.

So far users seem to agree with me. Since the app launched on December 21, not a single person who has downloaded it has deleted it. While Miller isn’t disclosing how many people this includes, the app has appeared in the list of top 25 paid productivity apps. Average use frequency, which doesn’t include push notifications, is three times per day.

All of revenue from the app comes from its $1.99 price tag, so the fact that customers appear to be happy bodes well for business. In order to compete with free productivity apps — even less cool ones — OnTime will need to prove that it is far superior. Especially when the price on each version of the app raises to $4.99 thirty days after it launches.

In the future, Miller hopes to build more apps that will eventually integrate with each other. His next project involves an app that will make it easier to “connect, communicate, and stay in touch.” Without specifics, this sounds less than exciting. Then again, “an app that makes scheduling easier” probably didn’t do OnTime much justice while it was in stealth mode, either.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, StudioThreeDots

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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Hertz Spending Estimated $10 Million On Solar Rooftops In U.S. This Year

Rental car stalwarts, The Hertz Corporation (Hertz, NYSE:HTZ) revealed plans to install 2.3 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic systems at sixteen locations across the U.S. this year.

As the first piece of their solar initiative, Hertz completed construction of a 235 kilowatt system — that’s about the size of 60 typical U.S. home solar installations — on the rooftop of their Denver International Airport business (image below). According to a company press statement, that single system is expected to “produce 342,766 kilowatt-hours of AC output and will offset approximately 650,000 pounds of CO2 annually.”

Hertz plans to install fifteen other solar power generating systems, also rooftop installations, in facilities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania before the end of September 2011.

Richard Broome, Senior Vice President of Hertz, told TechCrunch:

“We went into this, obviously, thinking this would be environmentally sound. But to move ahead we needed it to be a financially positive thing, too.

The timing was also right for this. We’re taking full advantage of a range of federal and local grants and rebates on this, including the Treasury’s 1603 program.

Over the long term of this project, we anticipate a positive return on investment on the millions of dollars, and to see ROI in five to seven years.”

Broome would not confirm a total budget for Hertz’s solar initiative in the U.S..

Based on the company’s disclosure that it is installing some 2.3 megawatts of multi-crystalline solar photovoltaics, however, and drawing on pricing research from Solarbuzz, TechCrunch estimates that the company will spend up to $10 million on its first sixteen solar installations.

Multi-crystalline panels in the commercial solar U.S. market are priced at about $2 right now, and industry norms would add another $2 for labor, racking and other installation costs. Federal rebates could cover about 30 percent of those costs, and Hertz could find more support from state and local programs, as well.

Generating its own electricity could help Hertz weather the transition of its fleets from gasoline models to hybrid plug-in and all-electrics. In late 2010, the company announced plans to rent electric vehicles (EVs) by the hour to customers in densely populated urban areas and campuses.

Broome confirmed that Hertz is buying its solar photovoltaics from SolarFun (a.k.a. Hanwha SolarOne) a Chinese company; and has hired Portugal-based MartiferSolar to complete designs and installations; also retaining project management services from New York-based Global Solar Center for this project.

Global Solar Center was founded by chief executive Jack Hidary, a clean tech advocate, serial entrepreneur and former CEO of Dice.com. Hidary chairs and invested in another New York City startup Samba Energy led by his brother, Michael Hidary.

Samba Energy provided solar and investment analysis, and enterprise software — Samba SunSpotter — that will be used to help Hertz manage solar installations across U.S. facilities, ongoing. The company was founded in 2009, and is angel backed by undisclosed investors. It aims to help companies that have a multitude of facilities (Hertz has thousands in the U.S. alone) automate analysis of their expenses and returns on clean energy installations.

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Bloomberg: RIM working to let BlackBerry PlayBook run Android apps, but Dalvik's not the way

By Sean Hollister posted Feb 11th 2011 1:12AM We'd heard sweet, sweet rumors that RIM would include a Java virtual machine in the BlackBerry PlayBook and even bring Android apps on board -- and lo and behold, Bloomberg's corroborating those claims with no fewer than three anonymous sources. Where the new rumor diverges is that the Dalvik virtual machine used in Google's OS reportedly won't be part of the formula; RIM considered it, these sources say, but decided it didn't want to get involved in the Oracle / Google legal fracas. Apparently, the company's working on this secret project in-house and targeting a possible release in the second half of the year. We have to say, the ready availability of roughly 200,000 Android programs could be quite the shot in the arm if WebWorks and AIR don't produce killer apps right away.

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What Are the Skills of Tomorrow’s Journalist? [VIDEO]

As part of Social Media Week, Mashable hosted its fifth NextUp NYC educational series event Tuesday evening at 92YTribeca with a smart group of panelists exploring emerging skills of tomorrow’s journalists.

The event included networking, an announcement of Mashable Follow and a panel conversation with journalists. Discussions touched on the continuing evolution of technology and its effect on the journalism industry, as well as how journalists can better train themselves and improve their skills. For those who missed the event, Mashable‘s David P. Alexander produced the video above, with highlights from the event.

The panel, led by Mashable‘s Vadim Lavrusik, included:

Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University and blogger at PressThink.orgJenna Wortham, technology reporter for The New York TimesDrake Martinet, associate editor for D: All Things Digital/The Wall Street Journal DigitalLaurie Segall, money and technology reporter for CNN

The Kapost online newsroom platform manages the content production workflow for editorial teams, from concepts & assignments, through drafts and publishing, and into performance management, promotion and payment. Editors and writers spend less time on administrative tasks, can easily expand their set of contributors, have more visibility into what’s important in their newsroom, and, as a result, produce more content, better content, and produce it more cost-effectively. And Kapost integrates automatically with every CMS platform (WordPress Drupal, etc.). Kapost is a venture-funded company based in Boulder, CO.

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SwipeGood Raises $500K From Michael Birch And Others To Allow You To Donate With Each Purchase

Y Combinator-incubated startup SwipeGood, which allows you to donate to charity each time you buy, has raised $500,000 in new funding from Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, the recently launched Start Fund, Y Combinator, Ron Bouganim, MR Rangaswami (Sandhill Group), and Frederik Fleck (Richmond View Ventures).

Once you enroll your credit/debit card with SwipeGood, every purchase you make gets rounded up to the nearest dollar. So for a $50.50 purchase of groceries, $0.50 will be given to charity. At the end of the month, SwipeGood will send your total donation amount to the charity or cause of your choice.

To participate in SwipeGood, consumers have to enroll their credit card and the service will track your purchases, similar to the way Blippy works. Currently, the service integrates with American Expres, Citibank, Chase, Wells Fargo and others. The startup makes money by taking 5% of the donation.

Since launching in November, the startup has partnered with hundreds of charities, including Charity Water, Room to Read and Invisible Children. The startup also allows charities to create their own branded charity pages, which they can promote to their members to encourage them to donate via Swipegood. Co-founder Steli Eft tells us that branded pages have shown better conversions than monthly subscriptions.

I’ve always wanted to use the Bank Of America Keep The Change Program, but don’t hold accounts with the bank. Now that SwipeGood supports most major banks, it seems like a no brainer to join the service and do a little good with each credit card swipe.

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Gartner and IDC dispute Android's dominance over Symbian in Q4 2010

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users Reached 1.6 Billion Units in 2010; Smartphone Sales Grew 72 Percent in 2010

Apple and RIM Displaced Sony Ericsson and Motorola in Mobile Device Manufacturers Ranking
Egham, UK, February 9, 2011-

Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009 (see Table 1), according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales to end users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010.

"Strong smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 pushed Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) up in our 2010 worldwide ranking of mobile device manufacturers to the No. 5 and No. 4 positions, respectively, displacing Sony Ericsson and Motorola," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "Nokia and LG saw their market share erode in 2010 as they came under increasing pressure to refine their smartphone strategies."

Overall, the mobile device market showed less seasonality than in previous years in mature markets such as Western Europe and North America. Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users reached 32.7 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2010 as mobile phone sales to end users totaled 452 million units.

Shortages continued to affect popular components, such as camera modules, touchscreen controllers, and active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) screens, in the fourth quarter of 2010. "This situation will not ease until at least the second half of 2011. Shortages will be a long-term consideration for mobile device vendors, because other fast-growing categories of connected consumer devices, such as media tablets, are competing for the same components," said Ms. Milanesi.

White-box sales exceeded 115 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 360 million units in 2010 overall. Although white box sales helped boost mobile device sales to 1.6 billion units in 2010, it would be misleading to interpret this as market "growth" in the strictest sense. "What we see is an increase in addressable market for mobile device manufacturers as consumers shift their behavior to buying new phones from legitimate channels over second-hand and black market devices," said Ms. Milanesi.

In 2010, Nokia's annual mobile phone sales to end users reached 461.3 million units, a 7.5 percent drop in market share from 2009. The year-on-year decline is not solely attributable to Nokia's continuing deficiency in high-end devices but is, in part, the result of the growth of legitimate white-box sales. Nokia's share of the smartphone market dropped 6.7 percentage points from 2009. Nokia's future rests on the announcements it will make on February 11 and how well the company can execute on those plans in the limited time available.

RIM's overall mobile phone sales to end users in 2010 reached a total of 47.5 million units, an increase of 38.2 percent year-on-year (see Table 2). Performance in the fourth quarter of 2010 was particularly strong in Southeast Asia (Indonesia) and Europe (the U.K. and the Netherlands). These sales rested on aggressively priced prepaid offerings, as well as steady uptake of the BlackBerry Messenger service. Despite growing volume sales, RIM was unable to keep up with market growth and saw its market share decline from 19.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. At the end of 2010, RIM announced it will release its media tablet, the PlayBook. It remains to be seen if this move will help RIM strengthen its ecosystem.

Apple sold 46.6 million units in 2010, 87.2 percent growth from 2009. This growth is largely due to expansion into new countries and the ending of exclusivity deals, which has made the iPhone available through 185 communication service providers (CSPs) around the world. The end of exclusivity deals also encouraged CSP competition on tariffs and data plans, making the total cost of iPhone ownership more in line with other high-end smartphones. For 2011, Apple's main growth opportunity will come from adding Verizon Wireless to its list of CSPs in the U.S. Gartner analysts said Apple will maintain a stable average selling price, which favorably impacts margins at the expense of market share opportunity. However, Apple is not targeting the mass market, which is a fundamental difference in approach from Android.

The smartphone market remains concentrated in advanced markets, where buyers have more disposable income and where networks are fast enough to support smartphones' full feature sets. "Western Europe and North America accounted for 52.3 percent of global smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010, with smartphones accounting for close to half of all handsets sold in these regions," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. Intense competition affected shares at the top of the smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2010, continuing trends that we have seen throughout 2010.

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, ''Android grew 888.8 percent in 2010 and moved to the No. 2 position. Android sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 continued to be driven by broad availability of many high-end products from HTC (Desire range, Incredible and EVO), Samsung (Galaxy S) and Motorola (Droid X, Droid 2).

Symbian's market share dropped further in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 32.6 percent or 32.6 million units. This allowed Android to overtake Nokia's Symbian unit sales during the fourth quarter of 2010. However, the Symbian OS is also used by Fujitsu and Sharp as well as in legacy products from Sony Ericsson and Samsung. "This aggregated volume kept Symbian slightly ahead of Android," said Ms. Cozza.

The wider availability of the iPhone 4 helped Apple to maintain its share of the smartphone market to 16.0 percent in the fourth quarter 2010 and led the iPhone OS platform to reach the No. 4 position in 2010. "As a platform, iOS is in excellent shape," said Ms. Milanesi. With every iPad and iPod Touch sold, Apple increases the profile of iOS with potential iPhone buyers and strengthens its developer ecosystem.

"With the Mobile World Congress 2011 taking place next week, we can expect smartphones and tablets to be at center stage of the show, and a number of new application announcements such as 3D technology, improved user interfaces around touch, faster networks on LTE technology, and new forms of payments, such as near field communication available on smartphones," Ms. Milanesi said.

Additional information is in the Gartner report "Competitive Landscape: Mobile Devices, Worldwide, 4Q10 and 2010." The report is available on Gartner's website athttp://www.gartner.com/resId=1542114.

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