Marketing Pilgrim

When you think about geotagging, what do you think of? GPS coordinates appended to a Tweet? Picking the location you took a photo on Flickr?

How about notes from your friends? As customary, the US Patent Office recently published a patent filed by Yahoo in July 2008, and in that patent, geotagging takes on a whole new meaning. Instead of assigning pictures a location, you can actually leave notes at a location, accessible via mobile, and networked with your friends. Want to let your friends know what your favorite restaurant is? Add a tag. When they’re in the area, their phone will let them know about your tag. And that’s just the beginning.

Google continues to bring more and more functionality to the Google experience and in a huge coincidence the latest improvements only run on Android phones. Hmmm……wonder why they would do that?

In a nutshell, Android devices can now access searches made on your computer or other devices. If you do a search query on your desktop then hit the road with your Android phone you can now have that search available on the go. The Official Google Mobile Blog states

I hope it doesn’t get much worse but the war of devices between Apple and Google is quickly deteriorating into a war of words. This type of war never ends well when it is played out in the public forum. Steve Jobs has set a very low bar with regard to standards by some of his words following the iPad announcement. Considering how he sounded after the announcement one wonders if the naming of the device explains his ‘moodiness’.

Wired magazine reports

The Federal Communications Commission recently began an inquiry into exorbitant early termination fees in mobile phone carriers’ contracts. The investigation began when Verizon raised its early termination fee to $350 (from $175) for smartphones. Now the FCC is making the inquiry formal and full-blown—they’re asking the four major mobile carriers and Google about their early termination policies.

Yeah, that’s right. Google. I know they’re selling a mobile phone now, but Google isn’t a service provider. Well, we can all rest assured—a little—the FCC’s letter to Google acknowledges that T-Mobile is the service provider. However, T-Mobile received a letter of its own. So why single out Google of all the hardware providers? (Just wait.)

Six months after Google said that Apple rejected a Google Voice app for the iPhone (Apple maintained that the app was merely under review, a process which usually takes about a week), Google has finally decided to circumvent the ban. VP of mobile apps engineering Vic Gundotra told the Crunchies Voice would get on the iPhone “one way or another.”

Here’s another: they’re going for a browser-based Google Voice (like the rest of us are using). This option was formerly less viable, but now Google has improved the mobile version of their site for iPhone and Palm Pre users.

The folks at Apple just need to wake of in the morning to create news of all sorts that could shape the online world in many ways. First, there’s the talk about some profits in Q1 that would make any company happy (The company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share). There’s all the hubbub about the announcement of their new tablet device on Wednesday which is apparently the worst kept secret in quite some time.

The review site Yelp has been interesting to watch over time. It gets a lot of interest from different businesses like Google who was interested buying it. Then it gets more investment from VC’s when those deals don’t pan out. It has been vilified for business practices and then has worked to make the service more ‘balanced’ as well. Regardless of your point of view of the service it certainly has established itself as the leader in the small business online review space. This month’s Inc. magazine’s cover story is on the service (take note of the what not to do story that opens the piece ….. creepy.)

While Google has been trying long and hard to corner the mobile search market as much as it has the landline one, they still have a lot to learn about mobile search advertising. Just yesterday, they added the option for AdWords advertisers to target only mobile users with full browsers, such as the iPhone and Android offer.

Advertisers will also be able to segment by specific phones and phone OSes, so if they’re selling a product specific to a single type of device, they won’t waste money on clicks from other device owners.