This post about competitive dynamics has been stewing in my mind for months now and it’s still a work in progress.  At its heart is a framework for thinking about a common type of tech company:  the aggregator.   The aggregator takes disparate items, gathers them, and presents them as a unified front.
Aggregators can exist for [...]

Lions, Tigers, and Spyware on Phones, Oh My!
Mobile spyware is the focus of the tech media’s latest frenzy. It started when a hacker discovered that the Pre sends back location data about users to Palm.  Next, a blogger ‘discovered’ that certain iPhone apps also phone home.  The frenzy came to a head when [...]

(This is the second of a two part post.  The first part contains a profile of a startup.  This part contains numbers and analysis related to that startup.)
First, some background.  I became interested in the mobile coupon business space a few years back when I started thinking about how mobile coupons could effectively be applied [...]

(This is the first in a two part post. Part one contains a profile of a startup.  Part two contains numbers and analysis related to that startup.)
Mobile Spinach is a small and ambitious Bay Area startup focused on the mobile coupon space.  The company is still at a very early stage — seed funded [...]

Image by emilychang via Flickr

To say that Apple’s App Store is thriving would be an understatement.  There have been 800 million downloads across Apple’s 30 million iPhones and iPod Touches — meaning on average each device has downloaded 27 apps.  The App Store now has over 25,000 apps and 250+ are added every day.
In such [...]