Here's the zesty mobile marketing news from this week:
Charge your phone by yelling into it?
Seoul researchers are working on turning the energy from sound into electricity. Lead researcher Dr. Sang-Woo Kim told Business Insider, "The sound that always exists in our everyday life and environments has been overlooked as a source...Sound power can be used for various novel applications including cellular phones that can be charged during conversations." (Business Insider)
Mobile tagging's explosive growth
"Mobile barcode scanning has increased by 4,549 percent in the first quarter of 2011 on a year-over-year basis, according to a Mobio Identity Systems study," writes Mobile Marketer. Yes, you read that right: 4,500 percent. Increasing smartphone adoption and user awareness due to mobile tagging in ads are cited as the reasons why. (Mobile Marketer)
Beware of images with huge file sizes on mobile sites
Recently, a 254 KB image on drugstore.com's mobile site made the page load much slower and damaged its success rate, warns Internet Retailer. "Once the image was removed from the page, drugstore.com’s page load time and success rate immediately improved. This is a good example that no detail is too small," said a mobile performance analyst for Keynote Systems. (Internet Retailer)
35% of people use apps before getting out of bed
An Ericsson survey says that over a third of you wake up and grab your smartphones, with the most popular activity being Facebook. Over 250 million people access the social networking site via its app, Network World says. Dinnertime is when fewest people use their smartphones. (Network World)
Upcoming Senate hearing will address mobile privacy
Mobile privacy will be the subject of a Senate committee hearing later this month, spurred by consumer concerns about iPhones tracking and recording their whereabouts. “Consumers deserve to know exactly what information is being collected about them, how it is being used, and should be able to say no to undesired collection of information,” Sen. Rockefeller told Internet Retailer. (Internet Retailer)
What mobile marketing news did I miss? Let me know in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter