Text and Drive

Do you text and drive?

Early this morning, when I was listening to the radio on my way to school, this question popped up from the radio and I suddenly realized that I text and drive all the time! according to the official government website for distracted driving, 20% of crashes resulting in injury in 2009 are involved of distracted driving. I was cirious about what is distracted driving, so I did some research on that, there are mainly three types of distraction: Visual; Manual; and Cognitive, visual distraction takes your eye off from the road and manual takes your hands off from the road and cognitive takes your mind off from driving.

TEXTING is the most alarming distraction because it involves ALL THREE TYPES of Distraction.

It's kinda scary, isn't it?

Texting became one of the most popular activities on phone in the passed couple years, especially for teens, texting became the most popular communication method when they are at home, on the road, etc.

Luckily the state of Washington regulates texting (talking to phone) and drive when people are on the road. Police will give fine to anyone who violate this regulation but I do think other parties should do something as well. Some of the apps on iPhone and Blackberry help driver to control and prevent distracted driving, for example, ZoomSafer automatically locks your phone when you on the road. 

Do you text and drive?

Apple's iAd V.S. Google Mobile Ads

When Apple lunched their iPhone OS 4. 0 to the market last Spring, Steve Jobs introduced their new mobile advertising platform - "iAd" at the same time. iAD is a platform that attached with all the mobile apps on iPhone/iPod/iPad, it shows up when users open the apps and provides links that direct them to the websites and easily direct back to apps as the users wishes. Due to the big consumption of iPhone apps users, Apple is expecting to sell and serve a lot ads and developers will be receibing 60 percent of iAD revenue.

 Now, one year pasted. unfoutunately, it didnt turn out as Apple expected, iAd didn't get too much share from the mobile Ads market. Google AdSense for Mobile Applications Platform works incredibly well and dominating the mobile apps advertising market, compare to iAd, it is cheaper, easier and not too much regulations like iAd requires.

In my opinion, developers compaline about iAd due to several reasons, one of the biggest reasons is the price. According to their policy, At a cost per click of $.25 on the platform of iAd, apple gets $.30 for every dollar that consumer make in the app store for "hosting fees",which gets a lot money from the developers.
Also there are some barriers that Apple created has been limiting developers engagement with consumers, for instance, iAd has a strict examination process and it doesn't allow developers use videos, HTML 5 mockups and demos.

Apple should change their polices and maybe even reduce their price in order to compete with Google in the mobile Ad Market.


What do you think?