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We get the strangest e-mails in the MobileCrunch tips line. Sometimes people will write in to tell us about their day, using us as an archaic, vacuum-esque livejournal. Other times (and quite often), internet newbies fail to realize this isn’t a store, and ask us when we’ll have such and such item in stock. Less often, we’ll get random little gems of self-created goodness that I’m never quite sure what to do with; they’re not news, per se, but they’re still rather interesting.

Such is the case with this concept video (after the jump) from Swedish design house Ocean Observations. It looks rather flashy and neat, but I’m left wondering: would anyone use it? It’s like OS X’s Expose feature, tweaked for iPhone app screens. Tap the home button, and up to 9 pages of homescreen are shown in a grid. Tapping any of the displayed pages will jump you directly to that page, allowing you to skip from page 1 to page 8 without swiping 7 times…
Read on at techcrunch.com

New research performed by online search advertising company Chitika suggests mobile users are far less likely to click on ads than non-mobile Internet users. In fact, they’re about half as likely, the study shows based on a sample of 92 million impressions. Could that be true? Wasn’t it the other way around?

First, we should note right off the bat that Chitika is an Internet advertising company that’s decidedly not into mobile advertising according to its own website, so that brings along a large truck carrying bags filled with grains of salt. That said, it’s worth taking a look at how they got to the conclusion, so we can reach our own.

Chitika claims to power advertising for over 55,000 sites, serving ads based on 2 billion monthly impressions. Of the 92 million impressions cited in the study, approximately 1.3 million or 1.5% of the lot came from mobile browsing. The ads that were shown on mobile devices were exactly the same as the ones displayed to non-mobile users, rather than comparing standard online advertising with mobile-oriented ads…
Read on at techcrunch.com

The long-awaited flood of Google Android devices is about to hit the market, which should help bring more cool applications to new AndroidAndroid phones.

Motorola will be the next big manufacturer to announce its Android phone. The company plans to formally unveil it at an event on Thursday in San Francisco. Motorola has already been reaching out to developers to get them on board to create new applications that it hopes will drive demand for the new phones.

Mobile applications for smartphones are hot. The fact that Apple’s App Store has had more than 1 billion downloads after only being around for a year means that smartphone users are hungry for applications that make their phones more useful and fun. But developers, whether they are large or small, have limited resources and time, and they must choose which platforms to develop applications for first…
Read on at cnet.com

iPhone applications are becoming increasingly common — and convenient — ways for users to access their documents, photos and web services. The only real problem is that because the iPhone lacks a distinctly user-controllable file management system, accessing your existing documents from within those applications is often difficult, if not impossible.

Storage and collaboration service Box.net has just launched its OpenBox Mobile API, which offers developers the ability to integrate the Box.net platform into their apps.

What this means is that users will have the ability to access their content stored on Box.net within their favorite iPhone applications. So if you use the Quickoffice [iTunes link] application, you can access your documents stored on Box.net, make edits and then e-mail the new copy…
Read on at mashable.com

Despite having one of the most popular online photo services in the world, FlickrFlickr has done things the hard way on the iPhone. That is to say, for browsing photos they’ve made you go through their optimized website, and for uploading you had to do it through email. Both worked fine, but were not as seamless as a native iPhone application. Now they have that as well.

Yahoo’s Flickr app has just gone live in the US App Store. After only a little bit of time using it, I can tell that I’m going to like it. The main screen is a fairly mesmerizing slideshow of photos from your contacts on Flickr. There is an upload button that is easily accessible right on the main page, and the upload process is nice and easy. You can obviously name your picture and give it a description, but you can also easily manage what set to put it in, and what tags to give it. And the privacy settings are very clearly displayed on the upload page…
Read on at TechCrunch.com

For US customers, the biggest complaint about Apple’s spectacularly successful iPhone — in many cases the only complaint — is the quality of AT&T’s wireless network. This has led to rampant speculation that the iPhone will be moving beyond AT&T in 2010 or whenever its exclusivity agreement ends.

However, yesterday’s New York Times addresses the strain iPhone users place on AT&T’s network and questions if any US wireless carrier would fare better.

When it comes to data usage, iPhone users are in a league of their own. According to the Times, not only do iPhone customers use the web and stream video, music, and download applications more than the average smartphone users, they also use more than ten times the network capacity.

This aligns with JiWire’s recent WiFi usage study (which matched a previous study released by Boingo), that showed that nearly 98% of all mobile devices connecting to public WiFi networks were either iPhones or iPod touch devices. Nielsen also issued a report looking at iPhone users and how they use data back in June…
Read on at mashable.com

The Apple/Google VoiceGoogle Voice fiasco just got more interesting. Toktumi, a startup that lets small businesses build office-caliber phone systems with their mobile phones and computers, just had its application Line2 approved by Apple — nearly three months after it was originally submitted. The powerful service allows business employees to assign two phone numbers to their iPhone: one that they can give to family and friends, and another that can be given to business contacts, with features that allow for call filtering and a professional-grade voicemail system. But it’s also notable for its many similarities to Google Voice, an application that Apple has kept out of the App Store for months now.

The story so far: late last July, Apple abruptly pulled all third party Google Voice applications from the App Store, explaining that they somehow were duplicating the iPhone’s native functionality. Later that day, we broke the news that GoogleGoogle’s official Google Voice client had been barred from the App Store, sparking a media storm and a FCC inquiry into Apple’s rationale for the ban…
Read on at techcrunch.com

While you’re enjoying a cup of joe in a local cafe, the folks sitting around you typing on their laptops and smartphones could very well be purchasing something online. Nearly 38 percent of people who use a cafe’s Wi-Fi say they make an online purchase during their visit, according to the findings of a report released today from mobile media company JiWire. Of those, more than half say they’re making a personal buy, while just 15 percent say they’re making a business purchase. In addition, the iPhone and iPod touch are hugely popular with the cafe crowd, the report reveals. The two Apple devices account for a whopping 98 percent of mobile gadgets used in cafes with Wi-Fi. About 54.2 percent and 43.4 percent of people using Wi-Fi in a cafe say they use the iPhone and iPod touch, respectively…
Read on at gigaom.com