Ever wonder which method of reading is better for you — electronic screen or printed text?

The answer: There is no difference.

“There are no disadvantages to reading from electronic reading devices compared with reading printed texts,” according to a study by Research Unit Media Convergence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in cooperation with MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH, operator of the ebook platform Libreka!.

The study was conducted after readers in Germany became skeptical about reading from electronic devices like ereaders and tablet PCs compared to traditional printed books.

Participants in the study read a variety of texts with different levels of understanding on an Amazon Kindle 3, Apple iPad and in print. Their reading behaviors and brain activity were examined using an EEG machine and eye tracking tools.

The study proved that reading from an electronic device instead of print has no negative effects, contradicting the misconception from German readers.

“There is no (reading) culture clash – whether it is analog or digital, reading remains the most important cultural technology,” said Professor Dr. Stephan Füssel, chair of the Gutenberg-Institute of Book Studies and spokesperson for the Media Convergence Research Unit at JGU.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO: Use Amazon’s Kindle Lending Feature

Although there are no differences in reading performance on a screen or a printed book, one group of participants displayed faster reading times when using the iPad.

Even in today’s digital age, most of the participants in the study stated that reading printed text is still more comfortable than reading from a screen. But ebook use is certainly on the rise, especially now that libraries have begun checking out ebooks. One recent report found that ebook checkouts at libraries rose 200% in 2010.

What do you think? Do you prefer reading a book in print, or from your ebook or tablet?

How do you read?

via Science Daily

More About: books, ebooks, ereader, Kindle

Remember iAds? Apple’s mobile ad format that was designed to inject emotion back into advertising. It was supposed to be one of the pillars of iOS. Apple even paid $275 million to acquire Quattro Wireless for its mobile ad technology.

iAds haven’t been the smash success that Apple envisioned they would be, though. Advertisers initially put down $1 million or more on the ad campaigns, but the price of iAds steadily dropped until they reached $300,000 in July 2011 — a drop of 70%. Perhaps that’s why Andy Miller, the former CEO of Quattro Wireless and VP of mobile advertising at Apple, left the company to become a venture capitalist.

So what went wrong? Were iAds fundamentally flawed? Did Apple not understand the needs of advertisers? Was the demand simply not there? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but the result is the same: iAds underperformed.

That’s why I was intrigued when I first saw AdJitsu, the newest product from visual-browsing startup Cooliris. The company develops a group photo-sharing platform, but recently it created a standalone business unit called AdJitsu. The goal is to use Cooliris’s visualization technology to create compelling 3D ads for mobile devices.

On Thursday, Cooliris will release its first AdJitsu ad in the U.S. It will appear in the AOL Editions iPad app. The ad (which, for some reason, I’m not supposed to talk about, but you can easily find in the next issue of Editions) focuses on 3D elements that allow users to play with the ad, interact with it through the gyroscope and accelerometer and play with it via a variety of touch controls. The ad is also fast to load because AdJitsu isn’t using HTML5 or WebGL, but PageKit, its proprietary developer toolkit and platform for the product.

The numbers also back up the effectiveness of the ads. The company’s first ad campaign for the Samsung Galaxy S II garnered an average clickthrough rate of 3% with people spending an average of 70 seconds on the ad. Those are impressive stats for a mobile ad. The typical CTR for mobile ads is less than 1%.

It’s not perfect by any means, and Cooliris doesn’t have the cross-platform leverage that Apple can offer advertisers, but AdJitsu utilizes the capabilities of mobile devices (gyroscope, accelerometer, touchscreens, location) in ways that I have yet to see iAds duplicate.

Despite some blockbuster acquisitions, mobile advertising is still in its infancy. Nobody has really found the holy grail of mobile advertising — little banner ads at the top or the bottom of the screen simply don’t cut it, and more advanced ad products have yet to catch fire.

For mobile ads to be truly compelling, they will need to plug directly into what makes a smartphone smart. AdJitsu is a good start, but there’s still more to be done to make ads feel more natural on our tablet devices.

More About: Adjitsu, cooliris, Kleiner Perkins

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For nearly two years, the casual game market has belonged to Angry Birds. The megahit app has been downloaded over 400 million times and boasts 30 million daily active users.

For Rovio, the developers behind the juggernaut, the success of Angry Birds has led to movie deals, increased funding and rumors of IPO plans.

Mashable interviewed Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, to talk about the success of Angry Birds, the state of developing for multiple platforms and Rovio’s future beyond defeating the pigs.

Q&A with Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio

The success of Angry Birds is truly breathtaking. How has its success changed your approach to developing not only the game itself, but also running the company?

The company is much larger than it used to be. We currently have 160 people compared to 20 a year ago, and we’re expanding rapidly in publishing, licensing and animation. As the company has grown, running it has become more complicated. But we haven’t changed our basic focus: excellence in everything we do.

Angry Birds is now a franchise — it has toys, apparel, Halloween costumes, lunchboxes, a movie is in the works. What is the challenge of balancing these aspects with also continuing to focus on game development?

We don’t really see these aspects as competing. The expansion into franchising is a natural extension of people’s enthusiasm for Angry Birds. The game is still very close to the core of our brand, but we see Angry Birds already as a broader entertainment platform.

Are games still at the heart of Rovio’s mission, or have your ambitions as a company expanded because of success and opportunities?

Game development will continue to be an important part of the company, but for more than a year, we have actively driven the strategy of becoming an entertainment media company. Angry Birds is our biggest brand, but will definitely not remain our only one.

After launching successfully on the iPhone and iPad, you ported Angry Birds to other platforms, including Android, webOS, PlayStation, etc. What platform is your favorite? Do you still design for one OS and then port to others or do you take a more agnostic approach?

We love all platforms! New web technologies are of course particularly interesting, as they allow the same experience on multiple platforms. We are still developing for a number of platforms simultaneously, when necessary — native experience is still often the best, and the best possible user experience is what drives our development.

Angry Birds was designed as a touch game, yet now it exists on Macs, the web browser and on video game consoles. How difficult has it been to translate the experience from touch to an object like a mouse or game controller?

We have to make some adjustments, but the general gameplay has stayed the same. We think the game experience translates very well across different platforms and controllers. Judging on just game content alone, we have a very impressive game with a lot of longevity and replay value. Touch controls are just another flavor of the Angry Birds experience.

You introduced in-app purchase with the Mighty Eagle to what looks like great success. Do you see adding in more options for in-app purchase to your titles in the future?

It’s definitely something that we’re looking into. The key here is not providing just content purchases, but exceptional experiences. Consider the Mighty Eagle: You get a new character, a game aid, new gameplay goals and achievements — Mighty Eagle is not just another in-app purchase, but a real extension of the game.

The mobile games space is very different than it was in 2003 — what advice would you offer to startups who are entering the mobile gaming space today?

The important thing is to focus on quality and the fans. If you make a great product that people enjoy, the downloads will follow naturally. You also need to plan for the future. With Angry Birds, we’re not providing just an app. We’re providing a service with regular content updates, lots of engaging content through our fan community, and so on.

What comes after Angry Birds? Are you going to develop other game franchisees, and if so, what is your target platform?

Angry Birds is of course our biggest focus, and we have many fantastic things in the pipeline. Regarding other gaming franchises, the short answer is “yes.” We have a number of development projects on the drawing board, and we also have a great opportunity to use our reach as a publisher to take other developers’ property to the market.

1. Smartphone Apps

Where the revolution began: Angry Birds first released the game onto Apple's iOS in December 2009.

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More than 72 million Americans accessed social networking sites or blogs via their mobile devices in August, a figure that represents a 37% jump from the same time last year, according to data compiled by comScore.

The bottom line: Social networking by way of mobile devices is on the up-and-up.

comScore estimates that nearly one-third of all U.S. mobile users are now accessing social media services, and that close to 40 million Americans are doing so on an almost daily basis.

“This behavior is even more prevalent among smartphone owners with three in five accessing social media each month,” says Mark Donovan, comScore SVP for mobile.

Of course, with the increase in mobile social activities, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are experiencing a measurable influx in mobile activity.

Facebook’s U.S. monthly mobile audience grew 50% year-over-year to 57 million, while Twitter’s mobile user base skyrocketed 75% to 13.4 million monthly users, according to comScore. LinkedIn also jumped to 5.5 million monthly U.S. mobile users, a 69% increase over the previous year.

The most predominant change in mobile social networking behaviors, according to comScore, is that more mobile users are accessing social media via mobile apps. More than 38 million folks accessed a social networking site or blog via an app in August, representing a 126% change from one year ago.

But with 42 million U.S. mobile users accessing social media sites via a mobile browser, the browser still remains the most popular mode of social networking on mobile — for the time being.

Mobile Social Access

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Image courtesy of Flickr, Ed Yourdon

More About: ComScore, Mobile, mobile social networking, Social Media

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Is Samsung now the leading smartphone manufacturer? One unnamed source sure wants us to think so.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Samsung shipped more than 20 million smartphones in its most recent quarter. If this report is accurate — bear in mind Samsung does not disclose its smartphone shipment figures — that would make Samsung the largest cellphone maker by volume, besting Nokia and current smartphone champ, Apple.

Samsung’s well-regarded Galaxy S II has found massive success globally. It bowed in the U.S. last month and has appeared on carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile in the last few weeks.

In its fourth quarter earnings, Apple reported selling more than 17 million iPhones. Apple CEO Tim Cook predicted record iPhone sales for the December quarter. Meanwhile, Nokia reported shipments of 16.8 million smartphones.

Shipped vs. Sold

Because Samsung doesn’t release data about shipments of its smartphones, its difficult to address the veracity of this report. While it seems plausible that the Korean-based giant shipped 20 million smartphones, that doesn’t necessarily mean all of those phones were actually sold to end users.

Apple breaks down its sales in terms of units sold, not units shipped. That means any phones remaining in inventory do not count towards the company revenue totals.

Still, even shipping 20 million phones — assuming these rumors are true — would be quite an accomplishment.

Galaxy Nexus Rising

Earlier this week, Samsung and Google unveiled the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android phone to ship with the device unifying Android 4.0, AKA Ice Cream Sandwich.

Although Google continues to struggle to sell large quantities of Nexus-branded phones, the line is important because it sets new “best of breed” guidelines that all other Android handset makers should look to follow.

That’s a real boon to Samsung — which continues to battle Apple in court systems across the world.

More About: android, apple, Galaxy S II, samsung, smartphones

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The NHL’s L.A. Kings will become the first pro sports team to add full game elements to their website and social networks, the team recently announced.

Game elements, or “gamification,” refer to adding a game-like experience to a non-traditional source. The Kings are creating “The United Kings Family” in partnership with Bunchball, a gamification company. Fans will be able to earn points by watching videos, posting on the Kings’ website, sharing news on social networks like Facebook and Twitter and participating in a variety of other online and offline activities.

Users will earn online badges and trophies while working their way up a digital fan leaderboard. Earning points will also unlock exclusive rewards such as signed merchandise, personalized messages from the players, behind-the-scenes videos, private arena tours and more. “All of the things you can’t buy we want to be able to reward them with,” says Jonathan Lowe, the L.A. Kings’ VP of marketing.

Bunchball has worked with major brands to add gamification elements, but working with a pro sports team was a bit of a no-brainer. “They understand fan dynamics, that is their business,” says Steve Patrizi, Bunchball’s CRO. “The fans are ultimately their business, so they understand how to relate to fans better than a lot of other companies.”

Adding gamification to a hockey team is at first a little confusing. Sports teams often have dedicated fan bases from the get go. Gamification is a great tool for engaging an audience and drawing in new users, both things a sports team doesn’t normally have to worry about, thanks to local patronage. Gamification, however, can make a huge organization like the L.A. Kings feel more personable and help fill seats and move merchandise even when the team isn’t doing well, Patrizi explains.

The Kings’ also have to compete against hometown sports teams such as the Lakers. “When you look at California, compared to Montreal, We have what people say is a “non-traditional” hockey marketplace,” Lowe says. The Kings don’t have to compete with other hockey teams for local fans but they do need to compete with other, sometimes more popular, teams playing different sports. “In terms of marketing a hockey team, our fans are overwhelmingly passionate … about spreading their love of the team. Hockey fans tend to be more tech savvy, more active online,” Lowe says.

The Kings themselves have tried to be more tech savvy, including launching a team-selected Pandora channel, weekly web deals and keeping an active blog. The gamification layer is certainly a first for pro sports but, while the Kings may be the digital guinea pigs, expect to see gamification coming to a team near you.

More About: gamification, gamify, Social Media, sports

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Media is changing. In fact, our very concept of what media is is undergoing a transformation as well. I can explain the changes or I can simply show you this video. You’ll think it’s adorable, but it’s sure to make traditional media types’ blood run cold. Watch and then we’ll continue.

Isn’t it cute the way the baby keeps trying to touch, swipe and otherwise engage with the dead-tree magazine pages? Each tap might as well be a knife in traditional media’s heart. This child is a part of the generation that will someday rule the world. Physical magazines and newspapers will seem like sad, silly things to her. Only of use to doddering fools who remember a simpler time.

I’m one of those fools.

In my lifetime, I have seen media and journalism go through tsunami-sized changes. I fell in love with journalism, newspapers, TV, TV news, movies, and books when all of them were discrete objects. Synergy was reserved for science and not a word used to describe media entities. Our lives were pleasantly modal. I watched TV, on which I saw sitcoms, cartoons and the afternoon news anchors (no, the 24 news cycle did not exist). I read books — lots of them — went to the movies and read my parents’ newspaper. Everything in its own neat little drawer.

Lead is Dead

The digitization of the news started in the 70’s with the retirement of lead type and introduction of computer-based galley and layout systems. These were all seen as improvements in the newsroom and news cycle. I visited two newspapers back then (The Daily News and The Rocky Mountain News) that both extolled the virtues of new technology — none of them could have foreseen what was to come.

Fast-forward to the mid ’80s where those same digital creation tools arrived on the desktops. This was the first step in the re-democratization of news. It put powerful tools in the hands of small-town newspapers and individuals who wanted to produce professional-looking content and print it out at printing plants or in decent quantities on their own laser printers.

CNN introduced the 24-hour news cycle in 1980, but it would be years before anyone would believe it made sense or was in any way necessary. Traditional media and network news still ruled the day.

Back then, newspapers were still reaping the benefits of the digital change as they reduced costs and continued to expand (and sometimes gobbled each other up — Times Mirror devoured numerous rivals, for example). The arrival of a national newspaper — USA Today in 1982 — was the apex of print news ubiquity, but in no way threatened local newsgathering and media. Movies and TV spent most of the ’80s grappling with new competition from an ever-expanding number of cable channels. Yet, some of the most popular cable networks, like HBO, served mostly as clearing houses of all the dreck (and some of the good stuff) movie studios delivered to theaters earlier in the year.

This was the state of things until the mid 1990s and the arrival of the World Wide Web on the Internet.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Most traditional media, like TV, cable news, movies and many magazines, ignored the web. It was clunky and slow in those early days. There was no broadband, just a sputtering dial-up network that was best at serving primarily text-based (pure HTML) pages with a few GIF images thrown in. There were some, though, who saw the potential.

I was working at Ziff Davis’ PC Magazine back then. A publication devoted to technology, PCMag had been in print since 1982 and “online” for years — though only through Electronic Bulletin Board Services and CompuServe. The Internet was a natural fit for PCMag and publications like it. Soon they were posting magazine content online after it hit newsstands and slowly building out original online content teams.

Things started moving quickly back then, and as some media outlets began embracing the web, the web met them with improved connectivity and display options. Soon we had 56Kbps modems and DHTML for simplistic in-browser interactions.

In the meantime, thousands of newspapers and magazines (as well as most networks and movie studios) mostly ignored the web. They either put very little effort into their web entities or weren’t online at all. At the time, this made perfect sense. Magazines, in particular, made virtually all of their profit from print ads. They charged $60K to $100K or more for a single full-page color advertisement near the front of the book. Magazines like PCMag were 400 pages at the time, 40% of which were ads. You do the math.

Traditional media advertising partners stepped rather slowly into the online advertising space in the mid-to-late ’90s and the ad deal numbers were comparatively low. Initially, there was some excitement because people were clicking on banner ads in big numbers, but those response rates soon dwindled to 1% and then below, and I remember some people wondering if, without advertiser support, the Internet would simply fade away.

A lot happened in those early years, including the first bubble that popped only five or six years after the Internet really got started. In hindsight, these were all growing pains. Unfortunately, they may have emboldened magazines, newspapers, networks and studios. Far too few of them had recognizable digital strategies in 2000.

Tipping Point

It was around that time that I returned to PCMag, after working in the purely digital space for four years. PCMag, like most magazines, was transitioning. Ad pages had fallen precipitously and online pageviews were growing. Over the next five years, PCMag re-positioned its online presence from a sideshow, to the center of the business. Other magazines and newspapers around the country (and world) were also watching ad pages decline and most were slow to realize just how much reader interest they were losing to instant news their audience could find online. Sure, a plethora of 24-hour cable newsrooms was having an impact too, but the overriding sentiment was that traditional print media was trapped reporting yesterday’s news, while the web and cable were reporting news as it happened.

By the middle of the aughts, broadband access was more than five years old, and starting to blanket the nation and developed world. The web was consistent, reliable and jam-packed with countless news websites and video feeds and shows. Newspapers and magazines that had long ignored the web were scrambling to capture the eyeballs and obvious advertiser interest, but they had a very big problem: 80 to 95% of their revenue came from a combination of advertisers and subscriptions. Shifting resources to something that had little-to-no revenues up front was risky because it inevitably meant cannibalizing their core business. Subscribers who saw all the content they paid for in print available for free online were in revolt.

A Massacre

Between 2005 and 2009, many in traditional media faced a number of inevitable decisions: Shut down completely, find a print/online hybrid solution that satisfied advertisers and readers, or shut down print and go all digital. PCMag made the latter decision on my watch in 2009. We actually made the decision the summer before, and I’d venture we’d been preparing for it for years. The website survived to this day and is, I think, healthy. Hundreds of magazines and newspapers were not so lucky. Many closed shop. By one count, over 500 magazine shut down in 2008.

As things grew dire for traditional media, its core foundational principals took another whack to the chin: Social Media.

Even as the web and broadband exploded in the early part of this century, media still thought it knew how to deliver news and content. They reported. They wrote. They delivered on their own schedule and through the medium of their choice: the web, TV, movies, paper, CDs, books. With the arrival of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, traditional media lost its tenuous grip on the flow of news and information. It was, in essence, a further democratization of content, very much like the one we saw in the early ’80s.

Simultaneously, countless bloggers were setting up what might be called daily or hourly online newspapers where they opined on their topic of choice. These destinations probably hurt niche publications most. Those small, vertical magazines (think Cat Fancy) thrived on serving a target audience, but only once or twice a month. Blogs hit the topic hourly.

Books, magazines and newspapers, which are closing to this day, are probably the most visible victims of the changes in media consumption and creation, but TV and movies have clearly had to make some adjustments as well.

All Your Media Are Belong to Us

With the introduction of TiVo and cable DVRs, consumers started skipping commercials. Panicked advertisers have since resorted to stuffing product placements inside shows and finding creative ways for their partners to sponsor entire shows and segments (which is retro if you remember the ’50s). Movies now compete with a number of streaming and on demand options (not to mention super-large screen TVs) that now make the act of going out to the movies redundant.

Making matters worse is that all of these digital mediums now overlap. Those who have worked in traditional media for decades now find themselves delivering text, video, audio, and more for a single story. Content has to have the same ubiquity as our ever-present smartphones. All the while, marketers and advertising partners press for better ways to engage the audience and measure their response.

All of which has led us here: a crossroads. The creation of content is now an amalgam of skills that I worry most universities have no idea how to teach. Advertisers enjoy measuring response, but still don’t see the same kind of numbers they’ll find on a single episode of Two and a Half Men. And some believe print (newspapers and magazines) will inevitably fade away. If I could ask the little lady in the video above what she thought, I imagine she’d say, “what’s a newspaper?”

Even if our little video star can’t answer these questions, Mashable’s Media Summit can. Be sure to register, attend and/or watch as industry leaders discuss how we got here and where media goes next in this lively, one-day event.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, arakonyunus, lucentius, and Wikimedia Commons, Evan Amos.

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U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to make a statement at 2 p.m. ET about the killing of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Reports of Gaddafi’s death began circulating Thursday, but the U.S. government has not yet confirmed it.

Obama made a similar televised statement to announce the killing of Osama bin Laden. You can watch the live stream here at 2 p.m. ET.

SEE ALSO: 25 Twitter Reactions to Gaddafi’s Capture and Death [PICS]

More About: barack obama, Gaddafi

Be careful the next time you scan a QR code, because it might just cost you money and wreak havoc on your smartphone.

That’s the warning from Kaspersky Lab, which has noticed the first instance of QR code tampering. The incident took place in Russia last month and hoodwinked consumers who thought they were downloading an Android app called Jimm. The code actually contained malware that sent SMS codes to a premium rate number that charged for each message.

Tim Armstrong, a malware researcher at Kaspersky, says premium rate numbers operate similar to 900 numbers in the U.S. The four- to five-digit numbers charge for each incoming text, wringing cash out of unsuspecting users. Armstrong says that it’s much more difficult to set up such numbers in the U.S., but cyberthieves will soon be able to create global premium rate numbers that could theoretically attack American consumers the same way. Infected QR codes could also be used for phishing scams, Armstrong says.

Robert Siciliano, an online security analyst at McAfee, says that infected QR codes are new on the scene. “It’s just hitting the radar in the security community,” he says, adding that it’s a “pretty brilliant scheme.”

Both Armstrong and Siciliano say that consumers shouldn’t be over-cautious about QR codes at this point. Armstrong notes that there’s a interim step between scanning the code and launching an app in which consumers can determine if they’ve been scammed. “If it’s a game and it’s requesting SMS, then you know something’s wrong,” he says. Siciliano, meanwhile, says a good rule is only to click on QR codes by a known vendor or advertiser.

QR codes are more popular in Asia and Europe than in the U.S., but many advertisers, including Taco Bell and Calvin Klein, among others, have employed them. They’ve also showed up on rooftops and on a tombstone.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, youngvet

More About: phishing, QR Codes, security, trending

Facebook wants to help you find a job. The social network announced on Thursday that it has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Labor and three employment-related agencies in an attempt to decrease the country’s 9.1% unemployment rate using social media — a project that may eventually include a Facebook jobs posting system.

The new partnership brings formal job hunting content to Facebook — which some recruiters already prefer over LinkedIn — for the first time.

As part of the initiative, Facebook has launched a new “Social Jobs” portal that makes easily accessible educational content and tools from its partners at the Department of Labor, National Association of Colleges and Employers, DirectEmployers Association, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. It plans to promote this page in the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates and Puerto Rico.

Facebook has also promised to conduct surveys about how job hunters, recruiters and college career departments use social media.

The most interesting aspect of the new partnership, however, is a plan to inch Facebook into job listings territory. Facebook’s statement announcing the partnership mentioned “systems where new job postings can be delivered virally through the Facebook site at no charge.”

What shape such a job posting system would take, and whether Facebook has any solid plans beyond research to pursue one, are still not clear. A job board that lives on Facebook could put the social network in direct competition with sites like LinkedIn and Monster.com.

“We’re not going to limit ourselves to what’s possible today,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable. “Instead, we’re going to devote resources to develop the innovations that are going to help the job seekers of tomorrow. We’re going to invest in research in new technologies that will deliver jobs virally at no charge and expand opportunities for people to create social job searching experiences online.”

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ilbusca

More About: Facebook, jobs, trending, U.S. Department of labor

We’ve had plans to build the world’s largest real-life Facebook wall at our New York City headquarters for some time — and we still plan to do so.

But in the middle of planning, we found out the wall we intended to adorn would be changing. In fact, all of our walls are — because we’re moving to a new office.

As the Mashable team gets settled into new digs in August, you can help us finish decorating. We’ve extended the deadline to opt in to our real-life Facebook wall to September 1. To participate, click the “connect” button below and we’ll use that to pull your profile picture. Then Social Printshop will print a giant poster of readers’ Facebook avatars.

We hope to connect with as many of you as possible by September 1. A big thanks to all our fans who have already participated!

Connect To Participate

We appreciate your readership, community and support, and this is a small way of saying thank you. Here’s a rendering of what the wall might look.

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The magazine industry’s current interest and investment in tablets beyond the iPad can be described as tentative at best.

It’s not terribly surprising. Even by the most conservative of estimates, the iPad will make up the lion’s share of worldwide tablet sales for the next three to four years. Nearly seven of every ten tablets in consumers’ hands at year’s end will be iPads, Gartner forecasts.

By comparison, Gartner estimates that Android will own 19.9% of the tablet market by the end of 2011, followed by QNX (5.6%, used by the BlackBerry PlayBook), webOS (4.0%, used by the HP TouchPad) and MeeGo (1.1%).

Given early indications that the Android-based Motorola Xoom and Galaxy Tab are not selling well, that RIM has shipped — not sold — a mere 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBooks, and that HP’s webOS TouchPad tablet has garnered only lukewarm reviews, those numbers even strike us as a little ambitious.

(Asus’s Android tablet appears to be selling well enough to compensate for the rest of the Android tablet category, however.)

Despite evidence that sales of non-iOS tablets will not take off for the next few years, a number of news organizations have launched one-size-fits-all apps for Android tablets to complement their multi-platform, “all access” subscription offerings, and a few have even developed apps for RIM’s QNX platform and Palm’s webOS software.

But very few magazine publishers have released full-fledged apps (by which we mean more than PDF-like copies sold through apps like Zinio) for the newer crop of tablets. Magazine apps typically require a substantial investment in terms of resources, as each edition must be formatted uniquely from its print counterpart rather than automatically refreshed from a feed.

It’s for that reason that so many publishers previously waited to see if the iPad would make a sizable impression on the market before developing apps for the device, and why an even larger portion have not yet allocated resources for developing other tablet editions. (If you recall, more than a few publishers made similar mistakes waiting to see if the web was here to stay.)

Many have opted instead to focus on and build out their iPad editions — that is, if they’re not still struggling to launch on the iPad in the first place.

Despite slow development, we have been both impressed and, frankly, a little puzzled by the way Sports Illustrated has tackled each new device, churning out unique, richly interactive editions of its magazine not every month, but every single week.

Why, we wondered, is Sports Illustrated bothering to produce editions for these other tablets, when all evidence suggests it will be some time before the devices reach consumers’ hands in significant numbers? Why not allocate more resources to print, which still brings in the majority of their ad revenue, or enrich its iPad version instead?

A Substantial Investment

In terms of time and staff, the requirement is substantial. Sports Illustrated‘s design team, headed up by creative director Chris Hercik, must format the issue at a 16:9 ratio in both vertical and horizontal formats for the iPad, at a vertical 16:9 ratio for the HP TouchPad, and at a 4:3 ratio (horizontal only) for the Samsung Galaxy and Motorola Xoom.

Side by side: the same elements rendered for print (left), iPad (center), and Galaxy Tab (right).

Furthermore, unique functions must be built for each platform. In a recent music-themed double issue, Sports Illustrated was able to embed iTunes songs in the iPad edition, but other tablets had to link out to Amazon’s music player so that readers could listen to songs.

The publication has been able to do all of this without staffing up, but by working harder, faster and, ultimately, more efficiently.

Beginning Thursdays, editorial determines what long-term stories will make the print issue while brainstorming creative extensions for the tablet editions. As major events occur throughout the week, additional stories are assigned by vertical editors (i.e. the baseball editor, or the football editor) for print as well as the web.

The design team formats each issue for print and tablets simultaneously, closing print Monday night, the iPad and HP TouchPad editions on Tuesday, and Android versions on Wednesday.

It’s an impressive feat. While many magazines are still struggling to put out one tablet issue per month, often bringing in a “tablet editor” and other staff to oversee its production, Sports Illustrated is releasing four each week, having seamlessly integrated each of them into the existing workflow without making significant new hires.

What Sports Illustrated Stands To Gain

Editor Terry McDonell at the Sports Illustrated offices in New York.

The work will pay off, Sports Illustrated Group editor Terry McDonell expressed in a recent interview with Mashable, and indeed it already has. Sports Illustrated‘s digital revenue was up 22% between 2009 and 2010, and is on track for double-digit growth again this year.

Other magazines that were quick to adopt the iPad, such as Wired, have reported similar gains in digital revenue since launching iPad editions.

“We’re placing bets across the table, because we don’t know where we’re going to be in 18 months. But [other tablet platforms] are going to grow,” McDonell said.

What’s essential, he explained, is giving readers access to Sports Illustrated wherever they are. It’s part of the all-access subscription strategy the publication rolled out in March, which enables readers, in theory, to access Sports Illustrated in the form most convenient to them — print, web, mobile or tablets — at any time.

Among magazines, all-access is an unusual strategy — until last week, no other magazine of which we are aware has rolled out a similar offering. Glamour, Esquire and The Atlantic, to name three examples, released nearly identical, paid and notably static magazine products for both print and the iPad (which, until recently, had to be purchased separately), and have a web operation, run under a separate online editor, that produces live, freely available content independent from the magazine.

The problem with the latter strategy is that the web arms of these magazines are more like franchises than true embodiments of their respective brands. Most of the content is produced by a different staff with a different voice and, inevitably, a different standard of content quality. Furthermore, readers are unable to seamlessly access all of the content a publication produces. They must seek it out through a combination of print, apps and browser navigation.

Ultimately, the latter three are doing their readers — and their brands — a disservice by a) failing to enable readers to access all of their content on the devices and platforms most convenient to them, and b) keeping that content inconsistent in form, quality and voice across platforms.

This is ultimately why there is a good chance that Sports Illustrated stands to succeed — not only through digital revenue increases, but by carving out the model that other successful magazine publications will inevitably imitate.

More About: apple, galaxy tab, Gartner, Google, hp touchpad, ipad, magazines, media, motorola xoom, Sports illustrated, tablets

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Can’t we all get along? Old Spice‘s attempt to freshen up its 18 month-old “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign continues as old Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa and new Old Spice guy Fabio square off via YouTube.

The “Mano a Mano en el Bano” fight, which was hyped on Monday with challenge and response videos from Fabio and Mustafa, respectively, is actually a popularity contest. The two have created competing videos asking viewers to vote for them as favorites. To ensure social media buzz, Mustafa also encourages viewers to express their support via “Liking, sharing, tweeting, commenting, posting or all other things smart Internet people do.”

Though Old Spice seems to have set up Fabio as the fall guy by presenting him as a bit of a bully, he gets the better lines in the two videos. “Hello old Old Spice guy — who’s gross” says Fabio, sounding like a 13 year-old girl. “To old Old Spice guy, welcome to your nightmare. Starring Fabio. With story written by Fabio and directed by Fabio. Stunts done by Fabio. And delicious catering including homemade treats and sliced fruit, of course, by Fabio.”

To continue to keep things fresh, Mustafa and Fabio are also reacting in real-time to commenters on Twitter and elsewhere. See the latest responses below.

Now for your vote: Do you think this campaign has jumped the shark or has Old Spice and ad agency Wieden + Kennedy managed to propel it beyond its apparent expiration date? Let us know in the comments.

TEAMOLDSPICEGUY - Cash | Old Spice Mano a Mano

You have supported TEAMOLDSPICEGUY for the best Old Spice guy. http://www.youtube.com/oldspice

Rules of Engagement

Isaiah Mustafa sets up the rules and encourages viewers to spread the word on social media.

Fabio Responds

Fabio predicts Mustafa's humiliating victory and mangles the English language.

Mustafa Says Thanks

Isaiah Mustafa thanks you for helping him triumph over evil by voting for him.

Fabio Says Thanks

Fabio gives you praise for voting for him.

Mustafa Answers Tweet

Mustafa responds to a comment from a Twitter user named @KissMyBlackAds who wrote: "Isaiah Mustafa challenged to a Duel by Fabio - Internet Duel of the Century?"

Re: @taylorphyllis | Old Spice Mano a Mano

Fabio responds to a tweet by @taylorphyllis with a Eurotrashy disco tune.

More About: advertising, Fabio, Isaiah Mustafa, MARKETING, old spice, twitter, wieden & kennedy, youtube

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Payment startup Jumio revealed a new technology Tuesday that turns a standard webcam into a secure credit card reader.

The technology, called Netswipe, uses secure video streaming to recognize and verify credit card information. Hold a credit card up to the camera, wait for it to initialize and then enter the 3-digit CVN number.

We think Jumio’s ideas are interesting, and for businesses that have a hard time with traditional payment processors or for consumers who are iffy about typing their credit card details into a form, this might be a solution.

SEE ALSO: How Mobile Payment Systems Are Redefining Commerce

We have to wonder though how much traction this idea will really have. Credit card readers were once built into computer keyboards and that trend never took off, partly because convincing businesses to adopt alternate payment technologies is difficult.

Still, for online purchases, this could be a better, potentially faster and safer way to make payments.

More About: jumio, netswipe, payment, startup

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Already using Google+? Follow Mashable’s Pete Cashmore for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as social media and technology updates.

Do you still consider yourself a noob when it comes to Google’s social platform? If so, we’ve got some handy hints to help you out.

From quicker sharing options to better content curation via savvy privacy settings, we’re bringing you 10 tips and tricks that will soon have you Google Plussing like a pro.

Take a look through the image gallery below and please share in the comments any Google+ tips we haven’t mentioned — your suggestion could be featured in a forthcoming Mashable article.

1. Add More Info to Your Profile Pop-Up Window

To most Google+ "strangers," you're just a thumbnail. If they do care to hover over your avatar, then you're a thumbnail with a few words of description, likely your company name, profession or location.

There's a simple "hack" that can make Google+ display much more info when someone hovers over your avatar -- similar to the appearance of Twitter.

Go to edit your profile, select the employment section, and in the first "Employer name" box, write your bio and check the "current" box. Whatever you have written should now appear when people hover over your avatar, as in the screengrab above.

Hat tip: Atom McCree & Simon Kemp

2. Organize Content With Circles

Circles are a useful tool for organization of content. Thanks to the fact you can create empty circles, there's a variety of organizational options open to you.

As Google+ currently has no way of bookmarking content (+1-ing a post does diddly squat, other than giving the poster a thumbs up), Plussers have devised workarounds.

You can create empty circles to "share" under different headings. Create a notepad. Make "bookmarks" for links you want to check out when you have more time, "read later" for longer posts and articles, and even "test" if, like us, you want to muck around on the service without annoying your followers.

Once you've set this up and shared content to your various empty circles, viewing that circle's stream will bring up all the Plus bits you wanted to save.

Hat tip: Evelyn Barney & Natalio Cosoy

3. Click on Profile Pics to Scroll Through

One really neat trick Google has built into Plus is the ability to scroll through all of a user's uploaded profile pics directly from the profile or posts page.

You can do this by clicking on the person's avatar image at the top left of the screen. If they have added more than one pic, Plus will flip through the album there and then.

While on one hand this is a handy way to see profile pics at-a-glance, some Plussers have gotten creative with the concept. Designer Phouthong Luong has two profile pics you can scroll through. They are the same except for the fact the second cartoon avatar winks!

Hat tip: Tom Paladino

4. Disable Sharing on Posts

One of our favorite things about Google+ is limited, rather than public, sharing. You can share a post with one person -- or the entire world.

However, there's nothing to say that one person won't click "share" to expose your previously private post to the entire world.

Thankfully, Google+ offers the ability to disable sharing on posts. If you've posted something you'd like to stay private, click on the drop down menu arrow at the top right of the post and select "disable reshare."

For obvious reasons this also disables "+mentions" in the comments of the post, even if you want to mention someone who has commented previously.

Do be aware this doesn't mean people can't screengrab your post, etc, but it will at least communicate that you'd like the post to stay private.

5. How to Find Post's Permalinks

If you want to find a post's permalink, it's simple. If the post was shared publicly, you can hit the drop down menu arrow at the top right and select "link to this post." This will open the post in a separate tab, allowing you to copy and past its URL.

If the post has limited sharing options, this setting won't appear in the drop down menu. Instead, click on the time or date stamp toward the top of the post. This will also open the post in a new window and reveal the URL, although not everyone will be able to view it.

Hat tip: Tom Paladino

6. Drag and Drop Content to Share

If you expand the "share" box, you can drag and drop content into it. This works for video, photos, links and even other Plus profiles.

7. Change the Visibility of Your Circles

Google+ displays all people in your circles at random on your profile. However, you can change the default options to show only certain circles and hide others.

In Google's own words, this is so you can "hide that weird aunt you’re embarrassed about, and show off the coolest people you know."

To change your circle settings, click "Edit profile" and then hit the circles boxes on the left of your screen. You can now choose which circles you want the world to see, and even decide whether to display people who have added you to circles.

8. Notify People About Posts

Rather than risk burying an important post in the stream, Google+ offers a way to notify people in a circle about the post, without having to add their Google+ username.

To set it up (and please, use wisely because we've all got overflowing inboxes these days), click on the circle you're sharing with (as per the grab above) and check the "notify about this post" box.

Spammers beware -- it only lets you activate this option for groups of up to 100.

Hat tip: Marvin Ryan Vista

9. Add Special Photo Effects in Google+

Did you know Google+ offers some cool, Picnik-style, built-in photo effects? There's even an "I'm Feeling Lucky" option!

Click on one of your photos to bring up the dark background view, then hit the "Actions" menu at the bottom right. In addition to useful options such as "Auto Contrast" and "Auto Color," you can also Cross Process, Orton-ize, or turn your image black and white.

As far as we can tell, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option will randomly apply an effect.

10. All the Google+ URLs

Did you know you can find Google+ at various URLs? There's:

http://google.com/+

http://plus.google.com, and

http://google.com/plus.

In addition, if you type in http://plus.google.com/me it will take you right to your own profile.

More About: easter eggs, gallery, Google, Google Plus, Google Plus Lists, how to, List, Lists, tips, tips and tricks

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Paste magazine will be premiering English folk-rock band Slow Club’s upcoming disc Paradise via still-in-beta startup Turntable.fm on Tuesday.

Slow Club’s sophomore album drops on September 13, but fans can check out tracks and chat with the band in Paste‘s Turntable room today at 2 p.m. ET. (And you can check out the first single, “Two Cousins,” below).

For the uninitiated, Turntable.fm is a series of chatrooms in which music is played by users. Five DJs can hold court at the same time, and members of the room vote on whether songs are “lame” or “awesome,” thereby garnering the DJs points. Songs are played via either Medianet or user upload, and one can only join a DJ room if he or she has a Facebook friend using the service. Right now, the service is U.S.-only for legal reasons, but it recently got a jolt of legitimacy in the form of licensing agreements with BMI and ASCAP.

A few weeks ago, we suggested that bands use the service to host new album listening parties, and in the weeks following we’ve seen more and more of them getting hip to TT.fm. Ra Ra Riot’s Mathieu Santos premiered his solo album on Turntable.fm (and effectively crashed the site in the process), as did the band Class Actress.

Currently, a lot of TT.fm’s top users are developers and early (techie) adopters, but perhaps more bands will continue to flock to the service as it continues to grow.

“Two Cousins,” Slow Club by Mashable

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Developers have already flocked to Evernote’s note-taking platform in droves to provide its 11 million members with additional utility. Now, six new application makers will vie for the crown of most inventive Evernote application or integration and compete for $100,000 in prizes.

The six finalists, being revealed Tuesday, are Colorstache, MyWorld, Notablemeals, Sniptastic, Touchanote and Zendone. Community members are being encouraged to vote for their favorites.

The finalists range from the practical to the fantastical. Zendone and Colorstache are more sensible in nature, for instance. Zendone focuses on applying a “Getting Things Done” methodology to notes, while Colorstache lets Evernote users browse and search for notes by Color.

The flashier MyWorld and Touchanote add spunk and character to the Evernote experience. MyWorld gives Evernote users an augmented reality browser for viewing notes, and Touchnote makes NFC note-tagging and association possible. More details on all of the finalists are included below.

The finalists were selected based on a few key factors: finish and polish of the application, utility, originality and integration with the platform. Each will be awarded $5,000 for placing in the contest.

“Evernote currently has over 6,000 developers working on software and hardware integrations using out API,” says Andrew Sinkov, Evernote’s vice president of marketing. “We wanted to see what would happen if we did a developer competition as an incentive. We’re pretty blown away by the results. We had over 1,000 developers enter the competition from around the world.”

The grand prize winner will be chosen based on community votes, the votes of celebrity judges and live judging at the startup’s first-ever developer conference in August. The winner will revealed at the event — the Evernote Truck Conference — and will take home an additional $50,000 in cash. Evernote will also award two additional submissions with $10,000 each in the wildcard and student categories.

Check out the Evernote applications below and share your favorites in the comments. Should you wish to attend the event, Evernote is offering the first 50 Mashable readers who register via this link (with the “ETCMASHABLE” discount code) a 50% discount.

Colorstache

Colorstache, by Reno Collective, offers Evernote users a way to browse and search their notes by color.

Touchanote

Touchanote, by Wiseleap, connects the capture and organization capabilities of Evernote with the convenience of physical NFC tags. Easily associate any note in your account with a real world NFC tag.

MyWorld

MyWorld, by Wikitude, allows you to save the places you love in Evernote, then view them on a map in Facebook. You can then share your favorites with friends and view the places they've been.

Sniptastic

Sniptastic, from Andrew West, is a set of developer tools that let you share and organize code snippets.

Notablemeals

Notablemeals, from John McLaughlin and Kal Michael, is an iPhone app that makes it easy to capture memories about meals.

Zendone

Zendone is a personal productivity tool based on the Getting Things Done methodology. It offers a simple, well-designed interface for implementing the GTD workflow, using Evernote for collecting and archiving projects and tasks.

More About: evernote, evernote trunk, notes, startup, Web Development

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The Digital Collaboration Series is supported by AceProject, a collaboration-oriented project management web application that empowers you to manage projects, tasks and time sheets. Create your free AceProject account here.

As anyone who has downloaded a song off of iTunes on their Mac and then watched as the same song popped up on their iPhone can tell you, cloud computing can be pretty cool.

But the cloud isn’t just for consumers. Entrepreneurs are finding they can get a business up and running quickly without having to buy servers or hire a CIO. Computing, like electricity or water, can be a monthly service that’s piped in at a fee.

It’s a relatively new model with lots of benefits and a few drawbacks — hence the strong interest. A Forrester Ressearch survey of small- to medium-size businesses found that 40% of businesses with 2 to 19 employees said using cloud service offerings was a “very high” or “high priority.” For medium-size businesses (20 to 1,000 employees), the figure was 25%.

The Benefits

Given that interest, such businesses should know what they’re getting into. Benefits include:

• It’s scalable. If your business takes off, it’s easy to adjust your computing needs. Most cloud-computing is billed at a monthly rate, like a utility. (Though there are often discounts for “reserving” space on a yearly basis to cut costs.) So, if your business grows, you can just order more server space.
• The provisioning cost is near zero. Chris Cera, CTO for Vuzit, a nine-person company in Philadelphia that makes document-viewing platforms, points out that with the cloud, you don’t have to set up a server and spend all the man-hours it takes to get one up and running.
• It can save money in other ways. Ray Huff, president of Russell’s Convenience, a Honolulu-based chain of convenience stores, says he cut a lot of costs just by having everyone in his company use LotusLive, IBM’s cloud-collaboration software. Russell’s is in the process of building new stores, so a miscommunication could result in costly errors. With LotusLive, there’s a timeline, so everyone can see who last signed off and the whole team can be on the same page, so to speak. “We’re saving a lot of money,” says Huff, noting that previous communication consisted of “FedEx and airplanes” as well as emails.
• There’s less IT infrastructure staff to manage. With cloud computing, you don’t need to hire a tech team, and a smaller team will save you money on payroll, benefits and more.

The Drawbacks

Of course, not all is rosy once you move to the cloud. Not for nothing was Gmail originally nicknamed “Gfail.” The downside of the cloud is that, just as with other utilities, when it goes down, you’re fairly helpless.

This point was illustrated on a grand scale when some of Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s cloud computing arm, went dark in April, taking down HootSuite, Reddit and Foursquare, among others. Vuzit, which is an AWS customer, wasn’t among the victims that time, but Cera says AWS has failed him before. “Sometimes it’s luck,” he says. “Many times we’ve been unlucky.” That was before before Vuzit got smart about using multiple geographic regions, Cera says.

Such outages, which, aside from price, appear to be the biggest knock against cloud computing, don’t have to be crippling. Cera and others recommend building redundancies into their systems and applications, which is the cloud equivalent of backing up your hard drive. But Cera acknowledges that sometimes that isn’t enough, either. “There are cases where even if you did everything right, you still would have gotten screwed,” he says. Of course, another way to minimize risk is to work with more than one cloud provider.

The other thing to keep in mind is cost. If your business is a startup, you may find that doing a cost-benefit analysis is tricky because there’s no track record. You’d have to imagine what it would have cost to buy the hardware and hire the staff and then assume everything went smoothly. Cera, who has looked at the numbers, says that there’s an easy answer to the question “Is the cloud cheaper or more expensive?” — “Yes.”

“Pound for pound, if comparing metal, the cloud ends up being more expensive,” he says. “But if you’re taking advantage of cloud features, I can guarantee it will be lower.” For his part, Cera says Vuzit spends less than $100,000 a year on cloud computing. He says one example of “taking advantage” is accurately estimating exactly how much computing you need and not buying too much or too little. If you buy your own hardware, you’ll probably initially buy too much and find yourself in a real bind if your business takes off and you have too little. Being able to adjust the amount like a thermostat may, like Cera says, wind up saving you money in the long run, but it will no doubt save you a lot of headaches as well.

Does your business operate in the cloud? Let us know your experiences in the comments below.

Series Supported by AceProject

This series is supported by AceProject, a web-based project management software that helps businesses of all sizes in 80+ countries, since 2001. The software offers a collaboration platform for organizations that need to manage projects, tasks, documents, and time sheets. Create your free AceProject account here.

Image courtesy of Flickr, karindalziel

More About: business, cloud, cloud computing, data, Digital Collaboration Series, enterprise, small business

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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: WhoIsLive

Quick Pitch: WhoIsLive lets you see who is viewing the same webpage as you and start conversations with them.

Genius Idea: Making every web page instantly social, with or without the participation of its publisher

What if every web page you visited became an instant chat room? Startup WhoIsLive is launching a browser plugin Tuesday that could become one way to find out.

The Internet Explorer and Firefox plugin creates a browser sidebar that shows you other users who are looking at the same web page. Using the sidebar, you can set a status message that everyone else on the page can see, or you can chat with people individually.

Theoretically, the tool can show you who is viewing your Facebook profile, allow you to ask for guidance from other shoppers on an ecommerce site or be used as a real-time discussion tool on blogs and news sites. The websites’ publishers don’t need to install anything for the plugin chat room to work on their sites.

But there is one rather huge caveat: Users can only see each other, not web browsers who haven’t installed the plugin — which means that a critical mass of users needs to be reached before the tool is useful. And before you can see who is viewing your Facebook profile, you’ll need to make yourself visible to people who might be monitoring their profiles with the same tool.

“It’s like anything else that is related to social,” explains co-founder Elad Natanson. “It’s a give and take. ”

The idea behind WhoIsLive is a great one. Companies like Marginize have long been aiming to build a social layer on the web that is based on what you care about instead of who you know, and enabling people on the same page to connect is a smart way to do it. If the tool gains widespread adoption, then Natanson’s prediction that WhoIsLive will “change the way that people use the Internet” isn’t unreasonable.

Getting to that critical mass, however, is the startup’s biggest hurdle. If it pulls it off, Natanson says WhoIsLive will sell a premium product to site owners that designates them as such in the chat list. Many services like WebsiteAlive and Livezilla offer similar live-chat customer service tools, but site visitors can only chat with the site owner. The premium product would also offer site owners personalized analytics.

“You always see the numbers,” Natanson says. “But in this case you can actually see who your visitors are … You can connect with them.”

Photo courtesy of istockphoto, ChristopherBernard

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.

More About: chat, marginize, startup, whoislive

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There’s a giant game of hide and seek going on in the UK thanks to a new promotion from French automaker Citroën that combines location-based apps and gaming.

The effort, called DS4Seekers, gives you the chance to win a new Citroën DS4. You get points by hiding and collecting virtual DS4s. If you do that successfully, you get points. Since one point equals one prize drawing entry, the more points you get, the greater chance you have of winning. If you use the mobile app for the game (which doesn’t appear to be available to U.S. users), you double your points.

The program, which launched earlier this month, uses Google Maps and Google Street View to find the invisible cars. If you’re within 1 kilometer of a hidden DS4, a location compass will show you which direction to go. Once you’re close to a hidden DS4, an onscreen pin will appear giving you the exact location.

Location-based games are an emerging category that may represent a big opportunity for marketers. Mini ran a similar program in Stockholm last year.

More About: citroen, gaming, Google Maps, google street view, MARKETING, mobile gaming

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