The Mobile world meets Babies through BabyTime and TweetPee

In a time where our mobile addiction has gotten so out of control that even our babies are using mobile devices, it looks like technology can’t wait to get in our hands.

How young can we go? How about just hours old. Newborns this year may be kept in touch with their mom using an iPad, like with the BabyTime program in a Los Angeles hospital.

Technology can also help make parents lives easier. Every parent knows that it’s a lot of work to take care of a baby and a major headache is having to change diapers so often. This is where Huggies comes in with TweetPee. It’s basically a sensor that you put over the diaper that alerts your smartphone when your little bundle of joy has left a package for you. The app will also help you manage your stock of diapers so you’ll know when you have to buy more.

If you are still wondering when your kid is old enough to have his first mobile, the answer is 4 years old. A new phone called “1stfone” is geared to children between 4 and 9 years old. It actually appears to be a very good device for kids since it can only send or receive calls from pre-defined contacts (like parents or family members).

Do you know any other cool mobile apps or accessories that have been made for babies or kids? Let us know on Twitter @Plasticmobile

Back in pre-historic times – we’re talking like 2005 here – when the hottest prefix for phones was “flip” and not “smart,” many mobile games were simple music editors.

Of course our phones have improved since then, as have our apps. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is using your phone to create amazing tunes.

TonePad (of iOS devices) is a great take on digital music making. The app is a 16×16 grid of dots. Horizontally, the dots are quarter notes and vertically, they are scaled from low to high. You can turn the dots on and off with a single touch to create simple one bar looping tunes.

If you know what you are doing you can create some pretty great tones for your phone. If you don’t know what you are doing, well at least you can finally find out what a smiley face sounds like. The pro version will let you save your tunes and use them as ringtones, but if you are just looking to fiddle around and see if you can compose the latest Justine Bieber pop sensation, the free version is all you will need.

Know any other great apps? Let us know on Twitter @PlasticMobile

Multi-channel, omni-channel, mobile channel, integrated channels – which channel is right, wrong…real? After two days of all this channel talk, our Marketing Team began to wonder if if all of these channels aren’t just a retailer’s illusion?

Amidst some very philosophical channel conversations, two ideas emerged as strong conclusions. The first is simply that customers don’t think in terms of channels or journeys; they think in terms of experiences. Whether they’re interacting with a retailer in store, online or on their mobile devices, the experience is either going to work out for them, or it’s not. These are the only two outcomes that matter.

The second is that, while all of these “channels” can be an excellent way to guide organizing and tracking initiatives and revenue sources, marketers can probably do better to look at each one as an opportunity to deliver their business offering. Overall, my thought is that if retailers obsess a little less about defining and labelling them, it’ll be easier to focus on making whichever channel or opportunity they choose actually work.

Tweet me @salomesallehy or the team @plasticmobile if you have any comments or questions about the conference, or if you agree or disagree with the many “bold statements” I’ll be making over the next few weeks.

The third annual eTail Canada event, hosted by WBR, just wrapped up three days of conferencing. The attendees were of two groups; Canadian-born retailers of varying sizes, and U.S. retailers (mostly of the larger size) who have or are in the process of entering into the Canadian market. As the day’s agenda unfolded and panel discussions continued, a significant  discrepancy between how well each of these groups understands their customer became very apparent, very quickly.

This may be a bold statement, something I’m known for, but it must be said that retailers with the American parents have seriously done their homework on the digital, mobile, Canadian consumer. They seemed to be well aware that their Canadian customers want variety, comparable (if not competitive) prices and they don’t want to jump through hoops of fire to get it. Groundbreaking news.

On the other hand, national-born retailers seem to be doing what I do when trying to play Ultimate Frisbee: running circles around myself, dazed and confused, wondering which way I should be running.

Tweet me @salomesallehy or the team @plasticmobile if you have any comments or questions about the conference, or if you agree or disagree with the many “bold statements” I’ll be making over the next few weeks.

Technology is getting better very fast. Day after day devices are getting smaller, faster, stronger, smarter. Our lives have changed a lot in recent years because of this. When technology helps people with disabilities though, it’s even better.

A pioneer in this field is Sumit Dagar. He is the latest person to use technology to help visually impaired people use the devices most of us take for granted. He created a smartphone for the blind. Braille is not only on the buttons, but also on the screen. It’s automatically generated depending on what the phone is doing (web browsing, maps, pictures, games, you name it). He presented his invention during a TED conference in 2011 and the phone should be available at the end of this year for about $200.

Another recent move to help people with difficulties was made by Google. Last month they released the app One Today for Android.

This app lets you donate $1 to a charity of your choice. Unlike Facebook likes, this app gives real dollars, which are far more helpful to people in need. With millions of Android users, the impact could be very significant. The social part of the app (visibility of friends donations) that Google has added in, is a brilliant idea that should drive more people to participate.

Google will of course not charge anything on your donations except the credit card transactions fees, which is 1.9%. Now we just have to wait to see this app on all platforms and in all countries.

Do you know any other mobile projects trying to help those in need? Let us know  on twitter @PlasticMobile

Smartphones are getting, well, smarter. All these features are hard to keep track off. I guarantee your phone can do things you have no idea it could.

The problem is that with all of these features, getting a handle on what your mobile is capable of is a tall order. Have you seen all the things the new Samsung Galaxy S4 can do? The user manual for that phone must look like a Psychology 101 textbook (and will probably be read just as often).

Drippler (available for both Android and iOS) knows what your phone can do. It scans your hardware, it scans your software, it scans manuals, it scans the web – basically, it does a lot of scanning. After this, it spits out some helpful tips for your mobile, including a daily tidbit to help you squeeze the most out of your device.

So if you want to know how to use your volume buttons to take photos, or tips for extending your battery life by 25%, or any of the other dozens of performance and hardware features, check out Drippler

What’s your favourite hidden feature on your phone? Let us know on Twitter @PlasticMobile

As the highest selling tablet in the world, the iPad is everywhere. Here are three incredible iPad stories coming out of the US last month.

1) Saved by iPad

A man was trying to get some nice pictures of a softball game in Iowa when an errant foul ball came directly at his face! The backstop netting between him and the field didn’t stop the ball but the iPad in front of his face probably saved him an injury. Don’t believe it? See the video.

2) An iPad stuck in a car’s bumper

A woman in Georgia drove for nearly one hour with a stranger’s iPad wedged in the bumper of her car after the device flew off the roof of another car, bounced on the roadway and landed in her car’s bumper. Amazingly, the iPad still worked and the woman was able to return it to its rightful owner. More details here.

3) Sworn in on an iPad (through the bible app)

Four firemen from New Jersey were about to be promoted to the rank of battalion chief but when officials at City Hall couldn’t find a Bible for the oath of office, it was looking like they would have to postpone. That is until they decided to simply use an iPad running a Bible app. More details and the video here.

Do you know of any other incredible iPad stories? Let us know on Twitter @PlasticMobile

Plastic President and co-founder, resident artist and one-woman mobile think-tank Melody Adhami was quoted by luxury daily again. This time, on the topic of mobile ads for luxury brands and the importance of a call to action.

When it comes to adding a call to action in Luxury brands mobile ads, Melody suggested, “I think a call to action can be very important and paramount to success, but in some instances I think great brands can get the message across loud and clear without saying a single word.”

“Luxury brands fall into the category of great brands that can get away with this.”

Of course sometimes a call to action is necessary, but mobile requires you to think within certain constraints.

“Because of mobile’s inherent screen limitations, brands need to pare down ads to the most basic essence and every pixel needs to be accounted for,” says Melody.

She also notes that, “Since words take up valuable screen real-estate, a call to action should be short, direct, clear and easy for the user to act on or follow.”

What are your thoughts on how major brands should be using the limited screen space of mobile? Let us know on Twitter @PlasticMobile

Twitter #Music is the latest offering from the folks at Twitter, and this app is proving to be kind of a big deal.

#Music lets you find the music you love and listen to it through iTunes, Spotify or rdio

First off, the UI puts Twitter to shame. It’s clear they have taken notes and learned lessons from Twitter for iOS and Android and applied them to #Music. After just a few minutes with the app you will be familiar with the features and how to navigate your way around.

With so much music out there, finding anything that’s any good can be a big issue. What Twitter is really pushing with #Music is the discovery element, to help people fall in love with bands they’ve never heard of. You can look at what’s popular, what’s up and coming, or what’s recommended based on what bands you follow on Twitter. For example, if you’re really digging the Top 40’s, then the “popular” tab is for you. It’s where you’ll find your Justins (Timberlake and Bieber), Snoop Lion and Alicia Keys.

In the “emerging” tab are the bands generating the most buzz on Twitter. It’s not clear exactly how this tab works since you would think the most popular bands are also generating the most buzz, but maybe the lists are mutually exclusive or something. This tab has some hidden gems, but it can be VERY hit or miss.

The real tab you will be spending the most time in is the suggested tab. #Music looks at what bands you are following on twitter, what bands those bands are following and cranks out some bands it thinks you’ll like.

Does it work? Well we plugged in a couple of our favourites and impressively it popped out a few more or our favourites. Even more impressively after spending some time with the app, it recommend several bands we had never heard of, but really enjoyed. This is the kind of discoverability Twitter is aiming for with #Music and makes the app well worth downloading

Have you tried the new Twitter #Music app? Let us know on the old Twitter tweeting app @PlasticMobile

After day one of eTail Canada the Plastic team is hard at working spreading some candy cheer and showing just how simple a mobile transaction can really be at the Candy Shop 2.0.

It’s an exciting time to be in ecommerce, with a 14% growth rate in Canada last year that’s showing no signs of slowing down for 2013.

Plastic CEO and co-founder Sep Seyedi kicked things off on day one with opening remarks, before moderating a keynote panel discussion on competing globally as a Canadian brand.

If you’re at eTail, swing by the Candy Shop and let us know on Twitter @PlasticMobile