IBM closes acquisition of Unica Corp.
IBM has closed its acquisition of Unica Corp., advancing its ability to help organizations analyze and predict customer preferences and develop highly targeted marketing campaigns.  

Customer relationships are a top-of-mind issue for CEOs, according to a recent IBM study which found that 95 percent of CEOs leading top performing organizations believe that getting closer to the customer will be the key to delivering on their business goals over the next five years. 

Unica?s recent performance underscores market interest in creating a consistent and relevant customer experience. 

In the past year, Unica added nearly 450 customers, including Air France, Autodesk, Hilton Hotels, O2, Qualcomm and United Airlines. 

IBM expects to continue that momentum through a broad software portfolio for marketing organizations, including WebSphere Commerce and recently acquired technologies from Sterling Commerce, Coremetrics, and now, Unica.

With the closing of this acquisition, approximately 500 Unica employees join IBM?s Software Solutions Group. 

EToro launches social trading App for Android
EToro?s financial trading platform has gone mobile with the launch of an Android application.

With OpenBook for Android, traders have the freedom and flexibility to trade on the go and participate in social trading on the move using an operating system that, according to Gartner and IDC, will become the second most widely used  in the world.

EToro?s OpenBook provides financial  traders with real time feeds of other traders? positions, profits and strategies.

The platform enables users to view, share and even copy their chosen trader?s moves in real-time.
By enabling traders to follow and interact with each other, OpenBook breaks barriers between traders, accelerates knowledge sharing and shortens the learning curve for users that want to bring their trading experience to the next level.  

ADITIC publishes mobile metrics from its ad network
Sofialys, a leading French mobile advertising specialist launched a performance-based (CPC) ad network, ADITIC, just over a year ago.

Since then, the company has been focusing on bringing audience to its global network by directly signing publishers and building partnerships with key mobile ad networks. 

Since its launch, the ADITIC marketplace has gone from strength to strength and currently makes over 2 billion ad requests available each month across its 20 countries of more than 500 registered mobile publishers and 150 advertisers.

According to the latest figures, more than 60 percent of ADITIC?s traffic comes from applications rather than the mobile Web.

An overwhelming proportion of this traffic is generated by iPhones, while Android traffic has also experienced a sharp increase in recent months.

The company also points out that interestingly, in global terms, Nokia handsets represent the highest percentage of overall traffic on the network (29 percent), followed by the iPhone (21 percent), Samsung (13 percent), LG (6 percent) and SE (5 percent).

India set for mobile social networking boom
The number of mobile social network users in India is expected to reach around 72 million by 2014, driven by the reduced cost of smartphones and the launch of 3G services, which will enhance the consumer experience, according to the latest research from global telecoms, media and technology adviser, Analysys Mason.

The number of online social network users in India has grown by 43 percent to approximately 33 million unique users as of July 2010, with India emerging as the seventh largest market globally.

According to the report, the increased number of social network users is driving the number of mobile social network users (around 10 million in 2009), representing around 2.2 percent of the total number of mobile subscribers. 

Operators and handset manufacturers have started taking several initiatives to address this emerging opportunity. However, both need to expand their addressable base of consumers and focus on service innovation to increase the penetration of social networking in India.

Young people and young professionals are driving the adoption of mobile social networking in India, accounting for 70 percent of the total number of users in 2009.

In terms of gender, males account for 56 percent of the total number of mobile social network users in India.

DeviceAnywhere introduces automated smartphone testing for enterprises
DeviceAnywhere will introduce Test Automation for Smartphones at CTIA.

The enterprise product helps companies solve the challenges they face in reliably developing and supporting mobile applications for their employees and customers.

Accurate automated testing is essential for enterprises supporting mobile applications, as software failures put enterprises at risk and affect their credibility to their customers and stakeholders. 

With Test Automation for Smartphones, users can easily create simple or complex test scripts to test any mobile application, Web site or content.

They can flexibly create manual, partially automated, and fully automated tests, which can be run at the tester?s convenience.

Results are automatically saved to a Web-based reporting interface, accessible by colleagues in remote locations.

Opera and NetSweeper bring security and content filtering to the mobile Web
Opera Software and Netsweeper Inc. have announced today a partnership that will provide added security and Internet content filtering to operators who ship and distribute the Opera Mini browser. 

With Netsweeper?s technology, Opera will be able to offer mobile operators increased ability to block phishing, fraud, viruses, trojans, malware, access to adult content or other sites, services that are deemed inappropriate, and also add in an extra level of security, especially for enterprise networks.

This new solution leverages the latest caching technologies and is capable of processing interactive, user-generated Web 2.0 content that will further strengthen online user protection.