We’re giving away iEarnedThat for free on the app store starting 6/30/10 !!!!  http://bit.ly/cKNePm

Our feature this week is written by Kidoc LLC, the parent and pediatrician developers behind iEarnedThat. Focused on motivational tools for families based on positive reinforcement, they provide an example of how a simple app in the palm of your hands can provide a goal-oriented activity for the entire family.

How do we motivate children to do the things they don’t want to do? It’s a simple question with no “right” answer, and it poses a huge challenge to parents of children of all ages. We asked ourselves this basic question when creating iEarnedThat. How can we help parents motivate their children to do what we as parents know is good for them?

Convincing a five-year-old to eat their vegetables or brush their teeth is a seemingly insurmountable challenge that often leads to bribery, parental frustration and negative attention. These obstacles can result in an adversarial parenting style with few results. Children are smarter than we give them credit for and learn to manipulate their parents and caregivers at a very young age. All too often, children are rewarded and bribed for negative behavior to stop an undesired action. Unfortunately, negative reinforcement tends to be a vicious cycle that perpetuates more of the same.

A theory embraced by many developmental psychologists, pediatricians and parents is positive reinforcement. Numerous resources point to this very simple, yet effective style of feedback and behavior modification for our children. Experts would agree: reinforcing good ideas and actions will yield more cooperative, happier and ultimately healthier children.

Our first iPhone app, iEarnedThat, was the product of an alliance of experts with diverse backgrounds. New parents Michael Docktor, a Pediatrician, along with his wife who is a Pediatric Occupational Therapist, teamed up with long-time friend and marketing guru Joshua Greenfield. Together they pooled their collective experience to come up with a simple, visually dazzling, and highly customizable tool to arm parents, teachers and therapists in this daily struggle.

iEarnedThat aims to tackle many aspects of the challenge of motivating children with a simple tool in the palm of one’s hand. Children (much like adults these days) are distracted easily and lose sight of their goals before they reach them. iEarnedThat is about keeping children engaged and excited, while reinforcing positive behavior to EARN a reward. A reward should be something that highlights positive actions to signify accomplishment of a desired goal. Our hope in designing this app was to allow the child and parent to work cooperatively toward a reward of their choice upon meeting a goal, such as doing homework or chores. Much like the star chart on the fridge, our primary maxim is to keep it simple, customizable and user friendly. Our talented developers built a visually stunning 3D puzzle to turn desired rewards into an interactive jigsaw puzzle that visually reminds children exactly what they are working towards.

We are not alone in believing that technology like the iPhone and iPad are going to be a way we educate our children in the not-too-distant future. These tools compliment traditional paper-based tools with rich, interactive, family experiences. Our hope is to empower parents, teachers and therapists facing so many other challenges with a simple, customizable tool to motivate the children in their lives.

For the original article, please go to this link: http://momswithapps.com/2010/07/27/how-apps-play-a-role-in-the-parenting-puzzle/

A study from wireless billing vendor Validas has revealed that Verizon Wireless smartphone owners are now exceeding the data usage of iPhone owners, who are currently restricted to AT&T. According to the study, average data consumption on Verizon smartphones is 421 MB as opposed to 338 MB on the iPhone. Out of all the vendors, Verizon Wireless has seen the largest data usage increase over the past year, jumping from 33.4% to 42.9%.

Since Blackberry devices were excluded from the study (and they compress data anyway), that leaves Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian and Palm’s webOS to blame (or thank?) for the Verizon phones’ data-hogging ways. But given Motorola’s extremelystrong Droid sales, most of that data usage is likely to have occurred with Droid devices like the Motorola Droid.

The 2009-2010 Validas study looks at year-over-year trends in wireless data usage across U.S. carriers. The data was drawn from 20,000 consumer wireless bills, analyzed from January through May 2010. To be clear, Validas did not detail the Droid’s data usage in the study versus the other phones. We’re assuming Droid data usage surpassed data usage on other phones. Below we explain why that assumption is a likely one.

Study Details

According to Validas executive VP of analytics Ed Finegold, the averages reported can be misleading. More importantly, “The key detail in this study that drives the average is that, by percentage, nearly twice as many Verizon Wireless smartphone users are consuming 500 megabytes to 1 gigabyte per month compared to AT&T iPhone users.”

When looking at those in the higher usage brackets, Validas found that over 2 GB of data were used per month by more than 4% of Verizon smartphone owners, while only 1.6% of iPhone users did the same.

Read the full article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/verizon_smartphones_droids_use_more_data_than_iphone.php

Hang on to your megabytes, folks, because it looks like the Brave New World of limited data is truly upon us. AT&T and Verizon tend to follow each others’ moves pretty closely — the two carriers regard each other as their nearest competitors, after all — and we’re hearing that Big Red intends to move to some sort of tiered bucket strategy on July 29. We don’t have details on whether the pricing will be identical to AT&T’s ($25 for 2GB, $15 for 200MB), but we imagine it’ll be within shouting distance if not. Of course, Verizon has been sending this message for a long time — even before AT&T was — so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that this is going down. You might say that Droid Does Caps, eh?

For the full scoop check out the original article: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/verizon-switching-to-atandt-style-limited-data-plans-later-this-mo/

Opera today released its Opera Mini 5.1 browser for Google Android handsets, making it the next major smartphone platform the Oslo, Norway, company hopes to conquer with a free third-party web browser. The Java-based client is popular because it brings a full web experience to lower-end devices while also reducing bandwidth — all browsing activities are funneled through Opera’s servers where the data is compressed up to 90 percent. The Android version of Opera Mini offers the same features as the browser on other platforms and adds pinch-to-zoom functionality.

When Opera brought its browser to Apple’s iPhone a few months ago, I questioned if consumers would actually use it. And now that the native Android browser is faster — I’m running Android 2.2, which adds speed optimizations, Adobe Flash 10.1 and a faster V8 JavaScript engine — it would be logical for me to ask a similar question: what’s the appeal of a third-party browser on Android? But a key aspect of mobile broadband has changed since I originally asked that question. In June, AT&T eliminated unlimited data plans on new smartphone contracts and other carriers are likely to follow (subscription required). Given that change, a web browser that compresses data suddenly becomes a bit more attractive for consumers that don’t want to pay data overages.

Read the full article here: http://gigaom.com/2010/07/14/shrinking-data-plans-may-help-opera-mini-grow/

Updated: AT&T changed its mobile data plans today — effectively putting an end to the all-you-can-eat mobile broadband pricing plans for smartphones.Having watched this space for the last year I knew that given the demand for mobile broadband and the capacity of the mobile networks, carriers were eager to end the practice of unlimited data because it wasn’t economically sustainable for them. As I wrote last July: “The carriers keep discovering that if you give people access to fat pipes, they’re going to use them. That’s good for innovation, but on the wireless side, it can cause problems for the carriers’ bottom lines.”

Why Usage-based Pricing Is Here The answer to that problem would be usage-based broadband, and in a GigaOM Pro piece (sub req’d) I outline how several of those pricing scenarios could play out. What’s key to understand here is that few folks in the industry believe it’s possible to offer the level of mobile broadband that people want on current wireless networks — even after carriers switch to more efficient technologies like LTE. An exception might be Clearwire, which has deep spectrum resources when compared with the other major carriers. Indeed, Clearwire’s Mike Seivert told me that currently its mobile customers consume an average of 7GB each month, a feat that would cost $75 a month on AT&T’s new pricing plans (on Clearwire it could cost $40-$55).

Clearwire, in which Sprint holds a 56 percent stake, has said it has the ability to stick with true unlimited service over the long term, and will likely use that as a competitive differentiator in its fight for customers among the major carriers. Meanwhile T-Mobile, the fourth-tier carrier, plans to offer unlimited speeds — until users reach 5 GB a month, at which point it will slow them down. There are no options to buy more bytes per month, and the slowdown will take place regardless of whether the network is congested or not. Kevin did a great job laying out AT&T’s new pricing in his story this morning, but here’s the quick summary version:

DataPlus — 200 MB of data for $15, which equates to $75 per GB. Customers that exceed the data cap will pay an additional $15 for another 200 MB.

DataPro — 2 GB of data for $25, which works out to $12.50 per GB. Customers will pay $10 for each GB over the cap in a given month.

Tethering — $20 per month for smartphones, on a DataPro plan. This option does not provide additional data — it uses the 2 GB provided for in the DataPro plan.

Check out the full article here:  http://gigaom.com/2010/06/02/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-atts-new-pricing-plan/

“After AT&T announced this morning that it was backing away from its well-priced iPad data plans, many of our readers had questions about how this change would work, and how it would affect them both as Apple-specific customers and as AT&T customers in general. As we posted earlier today, starting Monday, smartphone users will choose between a $15 200 MB plan and a $25 2GB plan.

The “Unlimited” plan, including the prepaid iPad version and, eventually, the iPhone postpaid version, is headed towards dodo-ville — although it’s not quite as dead as you might think. I was lucky enough today to have the opportunity to chat with Seth Bloom from AT&T’s public relations team. As our Q&A revealed, iPad and iPhone customers will be able to continue using their existing unlimited plans. After Monday, however, the plans will no longer be made available for purchase.

Read on for the answers from AT&T.

I’ll admit that my first reaction to hearing AT&T’s announcement was more curiosity than disappointment. I’m a very light data user, so the idea that I might start saving $15 a month appeals to me. After talking to Bloom, I’m even less concerned about potential overage issues than I was early this morning. It looks like AT&T has addressed many of the running-over-your-limits issues that customers have encountered in the past.

Admittedly, heavy data users will be hardest hit. Existing unlimited plans will be grandfathered in but new ones are not an option. If you’ve relied on AT&T’s unlimited plan, you need to maintain your account or act quickly to establish one before the weekend. 2GB data plan users who use the new tethering option will especially have to watch their data volume.

Here’s our complete round-up of many of the switchover details that you’ll need to know.

Will the new data plans be prepaid or postpaid? Outside of the iPad, these are postpaid plans. The iPad will continue to offer prepaid data plans. Prepaid data is data you buy on a month-to-month basis rather than a contract-based plan where you pay at the end of each month.

What is changing on the iPad? As of Monday, you will no longer be offered the $30 Unlimited data plan on the iPad. Instead, you can opt in for a $25 30-day 2GB plan. However, if you have already signed up for the $30 Unlimited plan and are set with the auto-renew option in place, your unlimited plan will continue to renew for the indefinite future. Unlimited customers will not be cut off. Beware: if you cancel your auto-renewing plan, you will not be able to re-join it after Monday.

What about the iPad $15 250MB 30-Day Plan? The prepaid iPad $15 plan will not be affected at all by these changes. You will continue to receive 250MB (not 200MB) after the changeover for the same $15 cost.

What happens if I use over 2GB in one month on the iPad now? You will be able to purchase another month for another $25, with the data clock starting a new 30 days when you do so.

Will my unused data roll over? It will not, neither on the iPad prepaid plans nor on the iPhone (or other smartphone) postpaid plans.

What happens if I exceed 200MB on my postpaid plan? According to AT&T’s Seth Bloom, you will be able to call in or hop online and change that month to the 2GB plan so long as you do so before the end of that billing cycle. So if you have a bad month (or a really good month — it really depends on how you look at data flexibility), AT&T will offer more overage flexibility. If you do not do this, you will be charged $15 for each 200MB you use — and that can quickly add up to a lot of ouch. As Bloom added, “You can keep going back and forth between the two tiers.” So if you opt into the 2GB plan for a month, you can opt right back out the next month without penalty.

Can you do the reverse? Can you hop out of the 2GB plan to the 200 MB one when you see that you haven’t used much data that month? Bloom is checking into this for us, so right now our answer is: “We don’t know.” Sorry.

Can you add tethering for just a month? Say when we travel? Tethering does not require a contract, so you should be able to add the feature and remove it as needed for as many months as required.

What if I exceed 2GB on my postpaid plan? AT&T sells 1GB “bucket” increments at $10 each. They will charge towards the current month and will not roll over at the end of the month. So watch your billing cycle end-date.

Why 2GB? Why not 5GB or Unlimited? Bloom explains that this was a change in coordination with the other plans AT&T rolled out, and was not specific to iPad or iPhone users. “We looked at the amount of data that people are using,” Bloom explained, “And balanced what users were using in terms of [cell data] versus wireless. We think it’s a very very good plan even with 2GB.” AT&T set the 2GB limit to match what most users were commonly using. The plan allows most users to save a few bucks a month, with only the most data-demanding users paying a premium on top of what was previously offered.

What happens to users on the current iPhone unlimited plan? They get to keep that plan for the forseeable future. The changes do not affect iPhone users who are currently signed up for the $30/month plan or 2G iPhone users on the $20/month plan. If your plan lapses, however, so will your ability to keep unlimited data.

Hey, what about those 2G iPhone users? What happens to them? They are not affected by these plans at all, which only cover 3G data.

And new iPhone customers? They will not be able to sign up for the $30 data plan as of Monday. So if you add a line to your account? You’re out of luck for that new iPhone.

What about iPhone customers who want to upgrade equipment? Surprisingly enough, there’s good news there. You can keep your existing unlimited iPhone plan and migrate it to new equipment to upgrade or replace your handset, and even can renew your contract with that plan. However, when Apple introduces its new iPhone, it may offer new desirable plans at the same time. Bloom declined to comment on upcoming product announcements or special plans.

So, is the “iPhone plan” dead? The voice and texting plans remain unchanged. New iPhone users will be offered the $25/month 2GB plan instead of the current unlimited $30/month plan.

Why all the sudden raises in costs to consumers? Is it due to overtaxed infrastructure? “It’s the opposite,” said Bloom. “We’re doing something [in introducing these plans] that isn’t around at all. We’re introducing a $15/month plan that will make smartphones available to whole new sets of consumers. It’s much more affordable to them.” Bloom explained that AT&T looked at typical data usage across the existing AT&T smartphone customer base. According to AT&T’s research, about 98% of smartphone users consumed less than 2GB per month — I did not get a separate statistic unfortunately for iPhone users. “We developed a plan that costs less than the $30 plan, where customers can use it comfortably with a fair and easy-to-predict structure if they go over their limits. I think there’s a lot of value being added, consumers are getting what they need. For a vast majority of users they’re getting that for less money per month.” Bloom added that the AT&T infrastructure was not the driving force for the change, that the plans were developed according to historic usage data.

Are we going to see a MiFi-style option from AT&T? Bloom declined to answer, saying “I don’t think that there’s anything I can share on that topic.”

Read the full article here: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/06/02/candid-answers-from-atandt-on-the-new-iphone-data-plans/

“You’ve seen the commercials and heard that they’re “your minutes” so why is “your data” any different?

I’m old enough to remember when “rollover” minutes were first announced, and I was hugely impressed by the idea. The idea was — and is — simple: you pay for a certain number of minutes per month, and if you don’t use them this month, you can use them the next. This recognizes that some months you may use more and some months you may use less, but you can pay for approximately what you need. I’m assuming that it also allows the company to have some reasonable idea of how much network usage will occur on any given month, which benefits them as well. This seems like a nice, reasonable balance between offering “unlimited” calling plans but still providing their customers with a good value.

Since AT&T has started metering data usage for the iPhone 4 and iPad, it seems only logical to ask (and I know I’m not the first): why isn’t AT&T rolling over data too?

The almost-too-painfully-obvious-to-even-say-aloud answer is that AT&T will make more money by not offering rollover data, so they aren’t. I don’t expect this will change anytime soon. AT&T has done nothing to suggest they have any interest in providing value to their iPhone and iPad customers, but let’s imagine a different world, one where AT&T hoped to keep some of their iPhone customers, perhaps a world where other carriers had the iPhone and AT&T had to actually compete for their business.”

Read the full article here: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/08/wheres-my-rollover-data-atandt/

What’s the deal with the new AT&T data plans? Bits Blogs digests the data for us. A great read and perfect for PlanHawk fodder…

“One reason AT&T decided to pull the plug on unlimited data usage is  “data hogs,” those users who download a considerable amount of data each month on their mobile phones.

But the big question is: how many data hogs are there on the network and are they really slowing it down? Or is this a pre-emptive move to prepare for a new era of mobile billing where data far outshines talk minutes on a subscriber’s monthly bill?

In a press release, AT&T said: “Currently, 98 percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2 GB of data a month on average.”

That sentence left me wondering how many mobile phone subscribers actually go over two gigabytes of data each month. Two percent could be a huge number, especially on AT&T’s network.

Although AT&T declined to tell me exactly how many users are in the 2 percent bracket, we can estimate that it’s as high as 660,000 people.

Here’s my math: AT&T has 85.1 million subscribers. According to Patrick Hornung with Brunswick Group, a public relations company that works with AT&T, as of last quarter, 33 million of those phone subscribers reach AT&T with an “integrated device.” This includes smartphones and devices like the Samsung Magnet phone, which offer a full keyboard and limited access to the Web.

So, 2 percent of 33 million phones users is 660,000. Granted, this is the high end of the estimate, but we know it’s somewhere in that ballpark.

A little over half a million users going over two gigabytes a month isn’t necessarily a high number, and it isn’t affecting AT&T’s network, either. In areport released Thursday by PC Magazine, AT&T’s 3G data service was rated the “faster average 3G speeds” over its competition in the United States. (It was also rated the “least consistent” with the most dropped connections.)

That’s why AT&T used the word “currently” in its press release. The data numbers are rising, as are the revenues that AT&T can glean from higher mobile Web usage.

According to CTIA, the wireless industry association, as of December 2009, there were 49.8 million smartphones in the United States, up 22.9 percent from June of the same year, when there were 40.7 million smartphones in use. CTIA also reports that data revenues rose to $42 billion in 2009.

In addition, the research firm Parks Associates predicted last year that American mobile broadband use would reach 140 million people by 2013. Cisco has also forecast that data use on mobile phones and other wireless connected devices would double every two years through 2012.

Although AT&T would like its customers to think it is doing them a favor by charging less, or as the company said on Wednesday, making “it more affordable for more people to enjoy the benefits of the mobile Internet, ” the carrier is pre-emptively preparing for more data hogs and in-turn higher revenues when people surpass their allotted monthly data usage.

AT&T is also taking a big gamble with this latest move. Competitors, including Verizon and Sprint, will likely try to capitalize on the latest capped data plans and lure away already unhappy iPhone customers, who, it is estimated, make up almost half its smartphone customers.”

Read the full article here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/att-versus-the-data-hogs/

One more reason why PlanHawk is going to be the next necessary iPhone app.

“Thirty-four percent of U.S. cell phone users surveyed in May said they use their phone for recording video, according to a study released today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That’s up from 19 percent the year before, and while uploading video and watching it online may be less common today, that’s about to change. After all, what’s the point of capturing something if not to share it?

The shift, however, comes with hefty implications: a huge growth in mobile data traffic and the all-but-certain death of flat-rate mobile broadband pricing, as carriers follow AT&T’s lead in pricing mobile broadband.”

Read the full article here: http://gigaom.com/2010/07/07/mobile-video-capture-soars-now-brace-yourself-for-views-and-uploads/

Apple’s iPad sold three million units in its first 80 days at market, setting a pace likely to put it ahead of the iPhone and allnetbooks for first full-quarter sales. So what sort of run-rate can we expect for the device in 2011?

That’s difficult to say, given the limited sales data available. But Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi gave it a shot in a note to clients today, and the number he came up with is astonishing, though it’s quite a bit lower than the buy-side number that’s being bandied about these days.

“An analysis based on extrapolating sales trajectories of [the iPhone, iPod touch and all netbooks] suggests that Apple could sell a staggering 25 million iPads or more in FY 11,” Sacconaghi says. “We believe that current buyside expectations for FY 11 for the iPad are now at 20-25 million+ units, largely based on such an extrapolation.”

Read the full article at http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100708/bernstein-2011-ipad-sales/