iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Thursday, June 25, 2009
News Category: Mix

Google launched its new AdSense for Mobile Applications beta, allowing iPhone and Android developers to add Google-sourced contextual ads to their products. According to a post on the company’s official mobile blog, Google has already has a successful trial run of the service with a small number of partners, including Sega, Shazam, and Urbanspoon, and are now offering the advertising solution to a larger group. Interested developers can visit this site to learn more about the program and to apply for the beta service.

iPhone developer Tapbots has posted internal numbers showing the adoption rate of iPhone OS 3.0 for users of its Convertbot application. The results include device and OS version for each day in June, and count only users using the latest version of the application—1.3. For iPhone Convertbot users, who outnumber iPod touch users nearly 6-to-1, the percentage running OS 3.0 jumped from around 8% on June 9-16 to 79% as of June 22%, an impressive number considering the upgrade had only been available for five days at that point. iPod touch users appear to upgrading at a slower pace, with just over half of users having upgraded to 3.0 as of the 22nd. When taking into account the discrepancy between iPhone and iPod touch users, the overall 3.0 adoption rate sits at 75%.

The iPhone 3GS sports a faster version of the PowerVR SGX graphics chip than previously believed, according to a group of iPhone developers. Mac Rumors reports that the developers have found extension files on the 3GS named “IMGSGX535GLDriver,” suggesting that the new handset uses a version of the chip—the SGX535—designed for “high end mobile, portable, MID, UMPC, consumer, and automotive devices,” as opposed to the lower-end 520 that was previously suspected to be in the device, or the SGX530 chip found in the Palm Pre.

Google has announced that uploads from mobile phones to YouTube have jumped 400% since Friday’s launch of the iPhone 3GS. One of the most-publicized new features of the 3GS is the ability to shoot and edit video directly on the device, then upload it to YouTube or MobileMe, or share it via email or MMS. It is unclear, however, exactly how much of the jump is attributable to the iPhone 3GS given the continued influx of video uploads from Iran.