While it is true that the original game is downloaded for free, the add-ons can be quite expensive, and can cost upto ₤70 each. It is also true that the progress of the game without these add-ons can be painfully slow.

It has been found that 65% of revenue generated in the App store comes from “freemium” games. When children play these games, they are possibly tempted by offers displayed within the game to use the credit card details of their parents in order to upgrade or purchase additional features.

When such apps are downloaded by children who get lured into purchasing these add-on features, it is the parents who end up getting quite a shock when they have to make the payment for the purchase.

A group of parents has gone ahead and filed a suit against Apple saying that it is very easy for children to download these apps without authorisation from the parents. Apple requires credit card details to be filled in once and future purchases can be made with just a password.

Apple had asked for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that it is possible to disable the in-app purchasing feature.

US District Judge Edward Davila has however turned down their plea, as the games are addictive in nature and parents are often not aware of the child’s antecedents until it is too late.

While it is possible for parents to get a refund, it is an extremely tedious process, and Apple would do well to put in more controls, by which children cannot easily misuse the credit card or password in the first place.

Roger McNamee a technology investor and co-founder of Elevation Partners in Menlo Park, California was recently interviewed by Margaret Brennan for Bloomberg Television. According to his analysis Apple Inc. is the only company that is making a profit on their mobile business at present.

McNamee says that both Google and Microsoft are losing a lot of money just trying to keep up with Apple.

His view is that “In order for other companies to compete with Apple’s iPad and iPhone, they have to go outside of the application model and use the HTML5 programming language to “create a new Web.”

Elevation Partners is an investor in Facebook. McNamee says that Facebook is also losing money as far as mobile is concerned. However, Facebook has a slight advantage over the other websites as several websites sign on new users through Facebook, and these users will eventually gravitate towards mobile.

He also believes that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the best entrepreneur, even better than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Of course he feels that the losses on mobile are only a temporary situation. He says “I don’t think these guys are going to roll over and let Apple own things forever.”

The fact that these companies manufacture tablets and handsets for Google, means that Google is the actual target of Apple’s attacks, although indirectly.

Apple has files suits against the above firms for multiple patent infringements across multiple countries, pointing out “slavish copying” of design and “look and feel.”

The European court has recently ruled in favour of Apple. The court has banned the sale of Samsung’s latest Galaxy tablet in most of Europe. Apple has also filed similar suits in Australia.

While the lawsuits so far are only aimed at the handset manufacturers, Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co, said that Apple is really concerned with the software being used by these devices.

Since the Android software being used in these devices is similar to their iOS 5 they have decided to take action. Thus it is Google that will effectively bear the brunt of the lawsuits.

Though Apple is the market leader of smartphones, the free Android software on Google’s phones, could affect Apple eventually. The Android software is being activated on 550,000 devices daily.

If Apple can win some injunctions against this free software, consumers would be forced to pay for the use of the Android OS and this could make the Android OS less popular than it is.

At present Apple holds 75% of the market share for tablet devices. But this is expected to come down to 39% by 2015, while Android’s share will go up to 38%.

This war over patents had initially been kicked off by Google, when they sued Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies for the acquisition of 6,000 patents from Nortel.

Similarly, last October, Motorola sued Apple for violating 18 patents in its iOS-based devices,. Now Apple has sued Motorola for violating 6 of their patents.

“It’s clear that the tablet wars are going to be fought on many, many fronts,” Michael Gartenberg, technology analyst with Gartner.

Microsoft, Apple and Oracle have come together to buy old patents of Nortel. Having done that, they are now asking manufacturers to pay a fee of $15 for every Android system they wish to use on their mobile devices. This fee makes it more expensive for phone manufacturers to use the Android apps in their phones, compared to the Windows Phone 7.

Google’s official blog claims that the imposition of this “tax” for these dubious patents is a means of fighting Google through litigation rather than competing by developing their own patent-worthy technology.

The U.S. Department of Justice should ask Microsoft and its partners to license the said patents at a reasonable price as it does not approve of the acquisition of patents as an anti-competitive tool.

In the meantime, Microsoft has responded to this allegation, saying that Google had also been invited to bid jointly for these patents, but had refused.

Google, in turn, replied saying that joining the group would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners, thus making sure that they were unable to assert themselves against these patents. It would also mean that Google would end up paying for something that would actually hamper the growth of their platform.

Microsoft has further said that Google refused to join the other companies because it wanted to buy these mobile patents for itself, to assert against others. Clearly, the last word on this issue is yet to come, but in the meantime, it will be the end users who suffer as they will end up paying heavily for the use of the patents.

Apple acquired a feature called ‘Siri’ from voice recognition software provider, Nuance, last year. Siri is personal assistance software, with the added benefit of voice control.

Siri will function like a mobile search engine, and will take oral instructions from the user, through voice recognition technology.

When a voice command is issued to the iPhone 5, it will reportedly go through services such as Yelp, OpenTable and others to provide the required information or service to the user.

While voice recognition services and voice activated search have been around for some time, Siri will be the first mobile search service that can do more than just deliver search results. That in itself, could give search giant Google sleepless nights – this innovation by Apple could mean a considerable setback to their business.

It is, of course, a known fact that so far, voice-recognition-based services have faced several problems, such as distortion caused due to background noise and inability to handle even slight changes in voice modulation. However, it is bound to be only a matter of time before such obstacles are overcome. If Google intends to keep their place in the mobile search market, it would be essential for them to start working on this matter at the earliest.

Nielsen has also corroborated this information in the USA. According to them, the average amount of data being consumed by users is higher than ever before.

In particular, users of iPhones and Android based phones are consuming very high amounts of data.

The average smartphone user consumed 435 MB of data per month in the first quarter of 2011 as compared to only 230 MB per month in the first quarter of 2010. That is an increase of 89%.

The report further reveals that the top 10% of users are consuming 109% more data than they did last year, while the top 1% of users are consuming 155% more data than they did last year.

It is also of interest to note that those using Apple’s iOS consume an average of 492 MB per month, while Android users are consume an average of 582 MB per month.

In spite of this huge jump in data usage, the revenue generation of mobile operators continues to remain more or less static. This is because the cost of data consumed has gone down quite drastically from 14 cents per MB last year to the present 8 cents per MB.

A recent report had also pointed out a similar trend, wherein, the projected revenues of mobile operators are likely to reach $1 trillion by 2016, but their handling costs will go up at an even faster rate, thus leading to a financial disaster, if corrective steps are not taken soon.

While each operator will have to take individual decisions about what would best serve their purposes, it might boil down to them having to gradually discontinue unlimited data plans, which are very popular at present, and instead introduce usage based structured plans in the near future.

Update: US mobile operators are already resorting to the uninnovative approach of limiting mobile data use. Verizon will introduce tiered pricing on July 7. While this might be a good way to limit damage quickly, it leaves plenty of room for a smart start-up to offer unlimited packages and win public favour quickly.

For the past four years, the top place in the Brandz 100 list was held by Google, but this time they have been toppled over. Apple’s iPhone has been doing very well and is indeed very popular but this change in valuation is largely being attributed to the iPad.

Apple has increased its valuation by $137 billion or 859% since 2006, when the Brandz Top 100 list was first introduced. Since last year, Apple has increased its valuation by $153 billion or 84%.

Google has fallen to spot number 2 and has also lost 2% in terms of valuation, in spite of the fact that their Android OS is doing quite well.

Popular social network Facebook has also entered the top 100 list for the first time this year and is placed at number 35 with a valuation of $19.1 billion.

Amazon has shown the greatest rise in position from number 46 last year to 14 this year, with a valuation of $37.6 billion.

Technology based companies held 6 out of the top 10 spots in the list. These were Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, AT&T and China Mobile.

Among the losers in this year’s ranking were Nokia, which has fallen 38 places and is now ranked 81, and Nintendo, which has fallen 47 places and now ranks 79 in the list.

The Brandz index uses various parameters to judge the top 100 brands in the market. These include brand equity surveys and financial data from analyst reports. The future growth potential of the brand as well as the bond it has with users is taken into consideration.

In fact, studies conducted recently have indicated, that not only a large number of users already use smartphones, but a sizable portion of the rest plan to start using one within the next 3-6 months.

Several mobile operators have also announced that they intend to launch app stores in the near future. This will make it easier for users to download the apps they want.

Some of the popular manufacturers such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry already have their own app stores. As would be expected, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS are the most popular among the users of smartphones.

Not only do users of iOS and Android OS download more apps, they also use each of these apps more frequently than users of other smartphones.

It has been found that users of Apple’s iPhone have an average of 48 apps, while Android OS users have 35 apps and Blackberry RIM users have 15 apps on their handsets. Additionally, 68% of iPhone users and 60% of Android users access their apps frequently everyday, while only 45% of RIM users do so.

In order to improve their odds, other manufacturers must keep in mind that they need to encourage their developers to come up with good apps, by keeping the process of app certification simple, as well as providing them with transparent revenue sharing systems as incentive.

Developers on the other hand, should keep in mind that a good app is one, which is not just interesting at first glance, but continues to hold ones interest and provides some valuable service or facility.

Media Tablets are slate devices that support touch, and run a lightweight operating system. Some examples of media tablets are Apple’s iPad and the recently released Samsung Galaxy Tab.

According to Gartner’s forecasts, sales of these tablets are expected to touch 20 million this year, and grow to over 200 million by 2014.

Carolina Milanesi, Vice President of Research at Gartner, believes that the media tablet is closer to a smartphone than to a mini-notebook or a personal computer, and hence, is likely to become very popular. Many would argue that this might not be the reason consumers buy media tablets, but instead could be the reason many don’t! However, it doesn’t change the fact that media tablets have become one of the most talked-about new gadgets of the year.

It is expected that in 2010, North America will be the clear leader in the market for media tablets, with 61% of the market share. By 2014, international markets are expected to hold 57% of the market share.

While the average size of the tablet is about 7 inches at present, it is likely to go up to 10 inches by 2014, due to newer features that are likely to be incorporated.

A media tablet requires a Wi-Fi connection or a 3G cellular connection, or both, to be operational. At present only about 50% of tablets manufactured have both modes of communication in-built. By 2014, this is likely to change as 80% of tablets are expected to have both 3G and Wi-Fi communication capabilities.

It is highly likely that media tablets will initially be perceived only as notebook add-ons for official use. They will most likely evolve and soon be used for personal reasons such as video viewing, playing games and reading books.

51% of 1,654 people surveyed by online coupon site MyVoucherCodes say they see the Google search engine logo more than 50 times a day. Considering a typical working day to be 8 hours or 480 minutes long, this means that users see the Google logo approximately every 9 minutes.

According to the same study, Microsoft is the next most popular logo and 15% users say that they see its logo most often, while 11% say that Facebook is the most seen logo.

“Which logo do you see the most during an average day?”

About 47% of users say that Google is their homepage or they navigate to the Google page first. 53% users use the site to check spellings and 52% say that they access Google Search between 10 and 20 times daily.

Data from Hitwise indicates that Facebook accounted for 17% of page views in the U.K. in June 2010. It was found that 1 in 6 page views in the U.K. were served by Facebook, which means that Facebook is undeniably one of the most important websites for online advertisers to focus on.

According to Hitwise data, while Facebook accounted for 7.14% of all internet visits in U.K. in June 2010, Google accounted for 9.59% in the same month.

Among social networks alone, Facebook held 54.5% of the market share in that month.

The total number of smartphones that have been sold in the second quarter of 2010 is around 63 million. During the same time last year, the number was 41.9 million. Moreover, 118.3 million smartphones shipped in the first six months of 2010 is which is 54% higher than the 76.8 million phones that were sold during the first half of last year.

HTC and Samsung, both Google Android partners, showed a growth rate of 128.6% and 172.7% respectively.

Nokia is still the largest smartphone supplier with a 38.1% market share and is followed by Research In Motion (RIM)’ Blackberry, which holds 17.8% market share. Apple is in third position in the smartphone market, with 13.3%. HTC is next with 7.6% and Samsung has 4.8% share of the market.

Ramon Llamas of IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team says, “The worldwide smartphone market will continue this explosive growth in the second half of 2010, setting up a critical starting point for 2011.”

While Nokia and the Symbian OS are at the top of the market, Google’s Android OS is growing the fastest. In the second quarter of 2010, Android had a market share of 17% compared to just 1.8% in the same period last year. Android is now only one percentage point behind RIM.

In this fierce battle, the one company that has not fared well is Microsoft. They now have only 5% of the market share compared to 9.3% last year. They hope to be able to rectify this situation soon, with the launch of their new operating system.

Apple is rumoured to be considering ending its partnership with Google and moving on to Bing instead. In fact, they have already included Bing as one of the search engine choices on Safari.

More worryingly for Google, the recently acquired mobile advertising network, AdMob, will reportedly be blocked by Apple. iPhone users constitute the largest market segment for AdMob.

In order to avoid regulatory problem, Apple is shutting out AdMob in a rather sly manner. The iPhone manufacturer has changed the developer agreement for the iPhone in such a manner that AdMob could be completely excluded from its services.

The new agreement states that ad networks will be allowed to share data only if the data “is provided to an independent advertising service provider.” In case there was any ambiguity, Apple goes on to clarify that “an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent.”

Google develops mobile devices – Nexus One. Google has its own operating systems Chrome OS and Android for mobile. And Google is the driving force behind the Android development environment. Thus, the new agreement squarely shuts out Google-owned AdMob.

Apple has only recently announced the availability of iAds, its own ad-serving platform, and has already generated $60 million worth of commitments for mobile ads that will run in the second half of 2010. While the amount is almost negligible compared to the $23.7 billion that Google earns from advertising, the fact that it was done in just 8 weeks is definitely noteworthy. Also, these commitments have been made by well reputed brands such as Unilever, General Electric and Citigroup.

Colin Gillis, a financial analyst at BGC believes that mobile ads could generate 10% of Apple’s revenue by 2012.

While Google’s mobile operating system, Android, is doing quite well, it is still ranked fourth worldwide behind, Nokia’s Symbian, BlackBerry’s Research in Motion and Apple’s iPhone respectively.

Although the Android operating system was first made with the intention of using it for mobile phones, it is now being used in other devices such as netbooks and tablets PCs.

Victoria Fodale, an analyst at ABI Research, has estimated that by the year 2015, the Android Operating System will be the base for 33% of Linux-enabled smartphones.

According to Fodale, one of the important reasons for the sudden growth in the popularity of the Android, is its flexibility, as it can easily be modified to suit different products.

Jen-Hsun Huang, the Chief Executive of graphics chip supplier, Nvidia says, “The good news is that we finally have an operating system to unite behind.” He further says, that Windows is not suitable for tablets, as it is too big and has too many features.

In quite a contrast to Huang’s opinion, however, computer and device makers, Asus have announced that they will be launching a Windows-based tablet next year.

One should not forget that Android has yet to globally overtake the popular Apple OS X operating system, which is used in the extremely popular iPhone and iPad. With Apple having sold 1 million iPads in just four weeks after it was launched, manufacturers have realised that there is a great demand for tablets and they will surely try to cash-in on that demand soon.

Intel, Nokia and Samsung have also announced 2 Linux-based operating systems, “bada” from Samsung and “MeeGo” from Intel and Nokia.

Verizon’s Chief Executive, Lowell McAdam, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We’re working on tablets together, for example. We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience.”

He has not yet set a date by which this tablet could be launched nor has he mentioned which company would manufacture it.

Andy Rubin of Google feels that in the future software developers could write programmes that would run on both Android mobile phones as well as on the tablet, in the same manner as apps are being used on the iPhone as well as on the iPad.

The iPad, created by Apple and supported by AT&T, has become so popular that rivals of both these companies are trying hard to regain market share lost due to the launch of these devices.

As consumers use their mobile phones for a wider variety of purposes, from downloading content to browsing the Internet, it is but natural that the demand for light-weight portable computers is on the rise worldwide. The demand for netbooks, tablets and e-readers is growing. This is confirmed by the fact that Apple sold 1 million iPads in just 1 month after its launch.

Google had offered a first glimpse of the Chrome OS for Tablets back in February, just after the launch of the iPad, which led many to believe that Google was planning to release its own Apple iPad or Amazon Kindle rival. The latest announcement is a small surprise, only because they’ve decided to use Android OS, which is more mobile-oriented rather than the Chrome OS, which is more desktop-oriented.

Verizon-Google’s new device will offer many interesting services and high transfer speeds. McAdam believes that the system of one-price plan per device is likely to change in the near future and users will have to pay more for the facilities they will be provided with.

Apple and Google aren’t the only ones gunning for market share. Dell and Toshiba have also announced that they are working on a tablet, and Hewlett-Packard has said that they plan to buy over Palm to start their own line of tablet PCs.

Unfortunately, most of the technology giants such as Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Facebook rely on companies that generate their power from coal. The use of coal to generate power adds to the carbon foot print.

It has been estimated that by 2020 data centres will consume 1,963 kilowatts of electricity, which is more than the power that France, Germany, Canada and Brazil jointly consume at present.

Tom Dowdall of Greenpeace said to the BBC that the availability of smartphones and netbooks is increasing the demand for cloud computing, which requires companies to invest even more in huge data centres.

However, instead of trying to use greener sources of energy, most of the companies are only concerned with efficiency.

Facebook, which is developing its first custom-built data centre in Oregon, will use an evaporative cooling system to cool their servers. Pacific Power, the company that supplies Facebook power, uses more coal than the U.S. average.

Over 380,000 people have joined English and Spanish language groups on Facebook set up by Greenpeace to pressurise Facebook to use 100% renewable energy. Facebook, however, claims to be helpless as they have to rely on the local power grid.

Microsoft uses a similar air cooling system but claims to use 100% hydropower in their data centre in Dublin. Yahoo! also uses hydropower for their data centre in Buffalo, New York.

Dowdall says, “We would like to see more examples of companies using purchasing power to drive an increase in renewable capacity.”

Google is the only tech giant that has truly pulled its weight and has invested in a number of environment protection and green energy related initiatives.

Photographs, illustrations and Flash videos have been uploaded onto Chromium, which is the open source project behind Chrome and Chrome OS.

While Google hasn’t specifically stated so, it is assumed that the photographs indicate what the tablet version of Google Chrome will look like. Certain bloggers are quite convinced on this point, simply because the illustrations were uploaded by Glen Murphy, who is the designer for Google Chrome.

It is widely expected that there will be several versions of the Chromium user interface for tablets, since Chrome OS has to be compatible with several different types of devices. These devices will have to meet with certain minimum specifications laid down by Google, in order to ensure the OS performs optimally.

One particular type of tablet could potentially become Google’s flagship tablet computer, just as the Nexus One has become The Google Phone.

It is likely that the first Chrome OS based notebooks will be launched by the end of the year. They will be manufactured by third party hardware manufacturers.

Google is sticking far too many fingers into the mobile pie to leave any mobile provider comfortable. They’ve stomped over other mobile search engines, mobile operators, mobile application platforms, even mobile operating systems and are developing their own Operating System which will compete with the Apple Mac OS.

These facts do not seem to have gone down well with Apple, and undisclosed sources revealed to BusinessWeek that for the past few weeks, Apple has been in talks with their one-time arch rival, Microsoft, which is also a rival of Google.

The talks have been centered around the possibility of making Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the default search provider on the iPhone.

If the deal between Apple and Microsoft is finalised, users will have to actively change the settings on their iPhone, if they then wish to use Google as their search engine.

At present, Google’s position as the default search engine earns them a considerable amount of money from mobile search advertising on the iPhone. This revenue is then shared with Apple. Needless to say, Google would lose out on this revenue if it is replaced by Bing.

If Bing does become the default search engine on the iPhone, Microsoft will not only get a higher market share in mobile search but will also earn significant revenues from mobile search advertising on iPhones.

Realistically, though, even if Apple and Microsoft could put aside years of rivalry, which is still going strong (look at the I’m not a PC, I’m a Mac ads!) and strike the deal, one wonders how long it will last, especially since Microsoft is also believed to be working towards making its own smartphone.

Add to that, speculation that Apple might try to develop its own search engine definitely precludes any relationship with Microsoft, as the last thing Ballmer and company need is more competition in search from yet another major rival.

Chitika recently conducted a study that revealed that users of Microsoft browsers and operating system have a tendency to click on advertisements more than users of other services such as FireFox, Safari, Chrome etcera. Not only that, even users of Windows click on ads far more frequently than users of other operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux.

The findings of this study are significant as it was conducted using a sample of over 130 million impressions across 80,000 sites.

The details emerging from the study are as follows:

• Internet Explorer users on average have a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.05% compared to 0.66% for Firefox users, 0.50% for Safari users and 0.21% for Chrome users
• Windows users have a CTR of 0.92%, while Mac users have 0.52% and Linux users have 0.46%

These findings have been indirectly validated by TechCrunch, where reports that users of Microsoft’s search engine Bing have a higher CTR than users of other search engines. Bing users have a CTR of 1.74% as opposed to 0.98% for Google users and 1.37% for Yahoo! users.

TechCrunch insinuates that the higher CTRs from Microsoft users is because these users are more gullible and easier to dupe than others, which has ruffled a few feathers, even though it is probably true.

Microsoft users don’t click the most, though. AOL, which is a much smaller network has the highest CTR of 2.5%.

The report says, “The emergence of devices such as the iPhone and HTC Dream (G1) that deliver truly compelling Internet experiences has generated discussion of which Web consumers will use on mobile – mobile Web sites or HTML sites.”

This question is what must have encouraged AdMob to undertake this survey. The survey was based on data collected from ad requests on their own vast network of about 7,000 mobile websites and 1,600 apps, and also from details provided by Gartner.

According to the findings of this report, smartphones have a smaller market share compared to other handsets, but they still account for almost 3 times the usage compared to the usage by other handsets.

Some of the findings of the survey are listed below.

While the iPhone OS holds only 8% of the market share, it is responsible for 43% of mobile web requests and 65% of HTML use.

The Android OS has even less than 1% of the smartphone market share but it generates 3% of the mobile web requests and 9% of HTML requests.

On the other hand the Symbian OS which holds a huge chunk of the smartphone market share – 52%, carries only 36% of requests for mobile web usage and a mere 7% of HTML usage.

The survey also found that 24% of requests made from the U.S. were made using a Wi-Fi network. The iPhone, iPod Touch, Sony PSP, HTC Dream (G1) and HTC Dash are the most popularly used Wi-Fi handsets.

The study concludes that overall, mobile Web sites are used far more on smartphones than HTML sites on those phones which operate on the RIM and Symbian operating systems.

Google continues to top the list, growing in value from $86 billion last year to $100 billion in 2009, which represents a growth of 16%. Google is followed by rival, Microsoft, which climbed up one position from last year with a current value of $76.2 billion – also up 8% over last year.

Yahoo! has fallen from number 62 last year to number 81 this year, and its value has also fallen, from $11.5 billion to $7.9 billion.

Other technology brands in the top 10 are IBM at number 4 with a value of $66.6 billion, Apple is at number 6 and is valued at $63.1 billion. China Mobile is placed at number 7, with a value of $61.2 billion, and Vodafone, which is a new entrant in the top 10 list, is at number 9, with a value of $53.7 billion.

Mobile operators have seen brand value rise, for the most part. O2 and AT&T have especially benefited from the launch of the iPhone, both seeing double-digit rises in brand value. The top 10 mobile operators by brand value are:

Among the non-technology-based companies, General Electric (GE) has taken quite a beating, as the brand’s value has fallen from the number two position last year, to number 8 this year.

Ten of the companies in the top 25 list are from the technology sector. Further down the list is Amazon at number 26, AT&T at number 28, Cisco at number 30 and eBay at number 54.

Quite surprisingly, the value of some of the brands has gone up substantially this year, in spite of the effects of the worldwide recession, which only goes to show that good companies can do well even in tough times.

In the UK, brand value for some of the brands in the list has fallen. Marks & Spencers, in particular, has seen a 48% fall in brand value over the past year.

The 10 most valuable brands in the UK are as follows:

Magpie is a pay-per-tweet service through which brands can pay individuals and companies to promote their products.

Nothing wrong with that. What many Twitter users find objectionable, though, is the fact that well known and established companies like Kodak, Adobe, Skype and Apple are paying consumers to advocate their products, or in other words, say something good about the company or its product in their Twitter stream, without actually disclosing that they’ve been paid to do so.

The obvious question such a system raises is, how much of this “appreciation” is genuine?

A lot of people would certainly be tempted to earn a few quid by endorsing a product, even if they have not actually used it, or worse still, they are not entirely happy with.

Magpie works on a keyword-bidding system. When the advertiser’s keyword matches the words used in a tweet, the advertiser can bid on it. The highest bidder will get to tap into that twitter user’s account to promote their products. Advertisers have the choice of bidding on a daily basis or on a cost-per-thousand impressions basis.

Users with more contacts earn more money through the Magpie system. An additional 30% commission is paid to Twitter users on the transaction fee for each new advertiser that signs up to advertising on the stream for a whole year.

According to ReadWriteWeb, most of these companies might not be directly involved in buying these tweets. It is more likely that their outside agents are doing so. The end result, however, remains the same in the eyes of the consumer.

Such false advertising will hurt these companies more than helping them, as people will start to doubt the integrity of their services and products.

Examples of sponsored tweets from Apple, Skype via Magpie

In the first incident, a blogger reported that Apple was launching a laptop for just $800. This was a lie, of course, but was inadvertently repeated by the New York Times, giving far too much credibility to that lie.

What one blogger wrote may not have carried much weight by itself, but something written in a reputable publication such as the New York Times, which has a huge circulation, was read by a very large number of people and also believed to be true.

Given the present market conditions, most readers thought of this as a very good offer, and rushed to buy this new laptop. This initially raised the price of Apple’s stock, but when the truth came to light, the prices dropped sharply.

Only two weeks later, a young 18 year old blogger reported that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, had suffered a heart attack. This not-so-innocent lie was again unwittingly repeated by Henry Blodget on the CNN website and soon Apple stock holders were running for cover, thus causing another dip in the stock prices.

An investigation is being conducted, to see if the blogger was trying to make some money by manipulating the stock prices. So far no evidence has been found to prove it. While those in favour of non-censorship of blogs, have so far maintained that blogging is a harmless activity, and allows one to express ones thoughts and feelings without interference, these incidents will force free speech proponents to look at another aspect to blogging, wherein lies can be intentionally spread and eventually cause untold harm.

The more important lesson, though, should be learned by so-called “journalists” at the major news channels who print any random gossip without even investigating how true it is.

Brandz Top 100 identifies the most powerful brands in the world. The ranking is based on results from a survey conducted across 1,00,000 people and financial data from the ranked corporations.

Google’s total brand value has increased 30% and is now estimated to be worth around $86 billion. Peter Walshe, global account director at Millward Brown says, “Google’s rank has been driven by fantastic financial performance and equity value.”

Microsoft did not fare badly either, ranking third, with a 29% increase in brand value. Yahoo!, however, fared very badly, being one of only four brands in the technology sector to lose brand value. The Yahoo! brand fell 13% to make it worth just $11.5 billion.

The top five brands, Google, General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-cola and China Mobile (in that order), are therefore the same as last year, and each company has increased its estimated value by 15% to 39% in the year.

Apple is a new entrant in the top 10 list at number 7. Its value is $55.2 billion up a whopping 123% from last year, when it was at number 16. The jump in Apple’s brand value has been largely owing to the success of its new products iTouch and iPhone.

Mobile Operator, Vodafone, was the top ranking British brand, up 12 places from last year, with a 75% increase in value to $36.9 billion. It was followed by Tesco, HSBC, Marks & Spencer and Barclays in the ranking of the top UK brands.

Overall, the mobile sector showed the strongest growth in brand value, followed by technology, personal care, fast food and luxury. Porsche topped the ranking of brands with the highest brand momentum, while Louis Vuitton had the highest brand contribution.

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iPhone’s UK launch comes in time for the holiday season, and is accompanied by a $200 price cut in the USA to drive further sales over Christmas. Carphone Warehouse, the UK’s biggest handset retailer, will sell the phone in partnership with O2.

Apple will sell the iPhone in Germany via T-Mobile and in France through Orange. The release date for these countries is set to coincide with that in the UK. The partnerships were all selected based on the potential coverage and network size.

The feature set that will be made available in the UK is nearly the same as that in the US, except for the availability of visual voicemail, European language keyboards, quick access to currently playing tunes, use of firmware version 1.1.1 and the ability to turn off EDGE roaming.

While 3G access will not be made available till 2008, according to Steve Jobs, the O2 iPhone will provide free WiFi access to UK users through 7,500 hotspots powered by Cloud.
Google, meanwhile, will definitely launch its own-brand handset, dubbed GPhone but has yet to finalize the handset’s specifications, OS, production contractor and operating partners, according to sources at Taiwan handset makers who spoke to DigiTimes reporters.