Mobifun’s Weblog

FEED, a Boulder, CO-based mobile payments firm, has raised $3.25 million in its first round of funding (via AC). The round came from Lacuna Venture Fund and other investors. The company is focusing on the Boulder market for now, saying it wants to build up critical mass of retailers and users. It says it has about 200 merchants currently accepting FEED mobile payments. It has a goal of having 10,000+ Boulder residents and students using Feed by the end of this year. When it goes national, it will compete against a few others like Obopay, which just raised a big $29 million round.

Via Moconews

An interesting move from Google, even though Yahoo tried doing this a bit and then backed off it: WSJ says Google is working on a hybrid mobile content search service that will help consumers find and purchase mobile content such as ringtones and games…this is separate from its pure mobile search efforts that it has been working on and deploying over the last few years.

Among the plans: users would search for a piece of content and would get back a list of companies that provide it, with links. Later one Google would charge for premium placement. In some senses this is similar to Google’s effort in music industry, where if users search for an artist on the service, it comes back with options to buy songs from various stores, among other results. Not sure if this music directory service has been a huge hit…probably not.

The story says Google has been working with content companies on this for months now, but the project has been delayed due to technical difficulties (read: porting it to all kinds of devices, I presume), and there is no clear timeline on a launch. Sounds like one of those side project Google allows its employees to work on. More when we find out

Google Image Search traffic is not to under-estimated. In some of the relatively busy sites I run traffic from Google Image Search accounts for almost 10% of the incoming traffic. The Image Search folks usually do not stick around very long, but there are a few quick tips you can implement to make the most of that traffic.

With a perfect post on “17/19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images“, Dosh Dosh has done a great job of listing the ways you can increase traffic from the Image Search sites (which he can actually implement on his lovely Anime images on every post). Obvious tips include using the ALT and image-name wisely with relevant text & keywords as well as setting the image preferences in Google Webmaster Tools, but there were a few less-known tips that are worth mentioning.

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digg_url = ‘http://www.digg.com/apple/How_Apple_Can_Win_The_PC_Battle’; digg_bgcolor = ‘#ffffff’; digg_skin = ‘compact’;According to Richard, just a year ago Apple’s share of the computer market was close to 2%. Now MacWorld and CNet are reporting that - according to NDP research -

Apple’s Desktops Now have crossed 10% and the MacBooks now closing on 15% of the laptop market. This puts MacBooks in 4th place behind HP, Toshiba and Gateway. The figures are likely to increase in the 3rd quarter, which is traditionally strong for Apple, because of the back-to-school sales.