All of the surveys leveraged Survey Monkey to poll respondents, but the most complete of the three polled the Survey Monkey Audience (SMA) network, racking up 1,124 responses. About 70 percent of respondents from the SMA survey said their spending on entertainment wouldn’t change if priced in the $20-$25 range. But while the majority of users predict no change, the number who say they would spend more outnumber those who predict they would spend less by three to one.

According to Greenfield, that group appeared to be price-sensitive and more likely representative of today’s average consumer that respondents from the other surveys. Those who expected to spend more would be doing so because they saw cost savings from concessions and parking outweighing the difference in price and convenience of watching at home. In addition, some respondents suggested that they were unhappy with the current moviegoing experience.

In aggregate, the survey shows that Hollywood studios would likely make more revenue with the collapse of movie windows. More importantly, those sales would come with better margins since they wouldn’t be sharing with exhibitors. The fear seems to be that putting pressure on the theatrical window could cause some exhibitors to go out of business, which would in turn destroy that distribution channel.

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AT&T is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to impose network buildout conditions on Dish’s satellite spectrum –- requirements that would be passed onto AT&T if it acquired the satellite TV provider. Meanwhile, Dish insists it plans to use that spectrum to build a commercial LTE network to challenge the reigning nationwide mobile operators, including AT&T. These are hardly the actions of two companies about to tie the knot.

What we’re witnessing here is some very cynical pre-nuptial gamesmanship. According to TMF Associates satellite communications analyst Tim Farrar, Dish is playing AT&T off its competitors by threatening to partner with MetroPCS to build a nationwide LTE network over its satellite broadband and 700 MHz spectrum. To muck up Dish’s plans, AT&T is insisting to the FCC that the satellite TV provider face the same strict rollout requirements the commission imposed on fellow satellite spectrum holder LightSquared: An LTE rollout covering 100 million people in 33 months and 260 million in less than 6 years.

As Farrar wrote in his blog:

This submission is a blatant attempt by AT&T to put a thumb on the scales, as the FCC weighs up the appropriate balance between buildout mandates and clawback of any windfall. The reason for AT&T’s action at this very late stage in the process appears to be that DISH is trying to play off AT&T’s prospective bid against a potential venture with MetroPCS. MetroPCS would certainly be unwilling to commit to a 260M POP buildout, so if the FCC conceded AT&T’s demands, they would be the only game in town and DISH would lose its leverage in price negotiations. We’ll find out soon enough if AT&T’s gambit succeeds, but few would bet against [Dish chairman] Charlie Ergen’s poker playing skills after the events of the last year.

AT&T may seem like the bad guy here, but Dish’s motives are just as suspect. In an FCC filling Thursday, Dish maintained it plans become a competing mobile operator, launching an LTE network that would compete with the big 4:

The overly aggressive and unrealistic schedule AT&T advocates would likely set DISH up for failure or force DISH into unfavorable business arrangements with large Commercial Mobile Radio Service (“CMRS”) carriers.  It would erect artificial barriers to DISH’s plan to construct a new mobile broadband network on its own or consideration of partnerships with smaller companies, and could threaten DISH’s ability to roll out a retail service.  In short, an impracticably tight schedule would be a triple loss for consumers, the Commission, and DISH.

But as my colleague Stacey Higginbotham wrote when Dish first applied for permission to build LTE, Dish’s proposal sounds more like a financial gamble to cash in on the skyrocketing value of mobile broadband spectrum, rather than a legitimate bid to become a wireless competitor. One big clue is Dish’s insistence on deploying an LTE-Advanced network in order to “enter the market for the first time with the most advanced technology.” Of course, LTE-Advanced was just finalized as a standard so Dish claims it will have to wait several years before commercial equipment is available.

That’s absolute malarkey. LTE-Advanced is an iteration of LTE technology, not a completely new network. Claiming that you must wait until LTE-Advanced equipment is available before building a network is kind of like insisting you can’t move into a house before the shag carpeting is installed. There’s nothing stopping Dish from building an LTE network this year and evolving it into an LTE-Advanced network in 2013 or 2014.

Supposedly we face a spectrum crisis, but no one is acting like it. Instead of using public airwaves to deploy real networks, operators seem to be playing high-stakes poker with their licenses. AT&T’s motives may be self-serving, but maybe in this case it’s right. If it forces strict rollout guidelines on Dish’s spectrum and then buys those licenses, we may actually get a new mobile broadband network – rather than a bunch of operators whining about how they don’t have the spectrum to build them.

Poker Image courtesy of Flickr user Ross Elliott
Tower Image courtesy of Flickr user Nikhil Verma

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If there was a bright spot in the latest quarterly results from the New York Times, it’s the fact that the newspaper’s metered paywall has attracted almost 325,000 subscribers willing to pay a monthly fee for the site. Despite all the celebrating from the pro-paywall camp, however, that bright spot was more than overshadowed by the other dark clouds in the numbers — including the fact that print advertising revenue continues to decline, and the paper’s former online jewel About.com got whacked by Google’s algorithm updates. Anyone who takes on the job of CEO at the media company is going to have to start thinking creatively about its business, because all the easy money has already been made.

Although the paywall and related print-subscription deals helped boost circulation revenue by almost 5 percent in the NYT’s media group — which includes the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune — and digital advertising revenue was also up by about 5 percent for the quarter, neither of those things were able to compensate for the continued drop-off in print advertising. Print ad revenue fell by almost 8 percent, which helped push the NYT’s fourth-quarter profit down by more than 12 percent, and for the full year the company reported a loss of $40 million.

Paywall revenue isn’t even close to making up the gap

The New York Times didn’t provide any helpful charts that would make the reality of this situation more obvious, so one blogger decided to come up with his own. Paul McMorrow, an editor at CommonWealth magazine, put together a chart that shows the contrast between the NYT’s advertising revenue, circulation revenue and its total revenue:

According to newspaper-industry analyst Ken Doctor, the NYT is probably pulling in about $86 million or so from its digital paywall — or “metered access,” as the paper likes to call it, since you get to read 20 articles for free before you get hit with a request for your credit card. But that’s not even close to being enough to make up for the decline in ad revenue, both print and digital, which dropped by 7 percent in the quarter.

One of the biggest problems for the Times is that its former online star About.com, which the company bought in 2005 for $410 million, has seen both its profitability and revenue-generating ability implode in the wake of an update to Google’s search algorithm — a change that was designed to penalize what the company called “low quality” content sites, or what some call “content farms.” In the most recent quarter, the NYT said About’s revenue fell by 26 percent, and profit fell by a staggering 67 percent.

As McMorrow’s chart shows, the Times is still far under water in terms of revenue, despite the benefit of its paywall. As I’ve argued before, there’s nothing wrong with having a paywall — although in many cases it amounts to building a wall of sandbags around the print newspaper edition, which provides most of the ad revenue — but if a paywall is your only strategy for responding to digital disruption of the media business, then you are almost certainly doomed, whether you are the New York Times or not.

Which way will the new CEO go — towards the past or the future?

So what should a new CEO be looking at to revitalize the NYT for a digital age? Ken Doctor suggests that the paper needs to look beyond just subcription revenue and focus on how it can target those 325,000 digital subscribers — since it knows who they are and where they live, and it already has their credit-card numbers.

I would take it one step further, however, and suggest that the new CEO think about some of the suggestions about “reverse paywalls” that have been made by journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, and also by former Washington Post managing editor Raju Narisetti (who is now at the Wall Street Journal in a digital role). The main principle behind this idea is that regular readers should get more than just a sales rep hitting them up for a monthly payment — the fact that they are a devoted fan should entitle them to earn rewards, whether it’s money off their subscription for interacting with the paper, or offers that others don’t get.

The NYT has taken a few steps towards trying to build relationships with its readers through what I’ve called the “levelling up” process that it recently added to its comment section, where readers can achieve preferred status for good behavior. Those are the building blocks of a relationship that the paper could use to its own benefit in all kinds of ways, many of which could generate new sources of revenue — real-life events, for example, which has been one of the things that has helped turn The Atlantic around, or a line of e-books based on the newspaper’s original reporting.

Another thing the NYT could — and should — be thinking about is what the role of an information provider is in the digital age. Is it to act as a gatekeeper for certain kinds of data and try to reimpose the scarcity that used to exist in the print era? Or is it to find partners to distribute that information in as many ways as possible, and to think of the paper as a data platform, as The Guardian has with its open-platform project? One way looks to the past, and the other to the future. Which way will the NYT go?

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users jphilipg and Giuseppe Bognanni

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These are just a few recent transplants but they show how New York increasingly makes sense as a headquarters for certain start-ups, especially those with ties to finance, fashion, media, retail, advertising and increasingly big data and location-based services. ConsumerBell relocated to New York from the Bay Area in May and Take The Interview, which started in Boston, is moving as well. The relocations fuel the continuing momentum behind New York, which has eclipsed Boston in the number of VC deals and is now becoming a destination for big companies like Facebook, which announced an engineering campus here and eBay, which bought Hunch and plans to build out a New York office.

Close to brands and retailers

I talked with Snapette founder Sarah Paiji about why she chose New York after building up a lot of connections in Silicon Valley and Boston. She said despite the presence of Facebook and Google in the Bay Area, it made more sense to be near brands and retailers, who are mostly based in New York. Snapette, which recently moved into Dogpatch Labs, is a kind of Pinterest for the real world, with users supplying images of products that can be found in nearby shops.

Snapette co-founder Sarah Paiji

“We are about fashion and shopping. We want to drive foot traffic into local stores. We also take a lot of meetings with brands and retailers and we have over 30 boutique partners in New York. In Palo Alto, it just doesn’t make as much sense to stay,” Paiji said.

PlaceIQ, a Boulder, Colo. location startup, also announced a move to New York in December, saying it wanted to be closer to partners and customers and the general ecosystem. PlaceIQ has built a vast database of locations down to the block level that can be used by advertisers to better target consumers without tracking them individually.

New York has changed

Duncan McCall, CEO and co-founder of PlaceIQ said he had no interest in ever relocating to New York. But over the last year after making a lot of visits to see customers, partners and company investor IA Ventures, he realized the city had changed and was now a logical home for his start-up. And he was tired of traveling so much and saw the value of more face-to-face meetings. He just moved into a new temporary space in the last few days and is hunting for more permanent digs.

“I previously spent some time in New York and I thought the technology business isn’t big enough, there’s not enough talent and there wasn’t a business around data. But that’s changed dramatically in New York,” McCall said. “Over the last year, it’s grown on me. The people and the investment scene are great and with the customers and ecosystem, it became obvious that if we want to maximize our chances, we have to be in New York.”

Qwiki's new SoHo headquarters

Qwiki, which helps produce multimedia information videos, announced its move in December and relocated into a hip SoHo space. CEO Doug Imbruce said in blog post that despite being known as a Silicon Valley company, the company saw New York as the place to become a medium for people to tell stories and share opinions. Qwiki needs to be close to where the most content was produced and that’s New York, he said.

Local strengths

Not every company will be tempted to make the move. But these recent transplants show there’s plenty of incentive to do so. With so much media and advertising here, a company like Qwiki can tap a lot of media partners as it pursues more publishing tools for users. Snapette is closely aligned with the fashion industry and revolves around location, something New York is becoming good at with Foursquare, Hyperpublic, LocalResponse. New York’s big data scene has also risen to the fore, building on the experience of the finance industry which has long been involved in data. Now with ventures funds like IA Ventures, which looks primarily at big data opportunities, there’s more momentum here in building data start-ups.

Paiji and McCall said the move to New York comes with trade-offs. Paiji said it’s harder to find talent and for a start-up mostly made up of women, they get less attention from men now that they’re away from testosterone heavy Silicon Valley. And, McCall said he doesn’t have ready access to skiing like he did in Colorado.

Not ready to topple Silicon Valley

SA 500 job fair

New York has also lost some start-ups including Think Near which moved to Los Angeles and BankSimple, which moved to Portland. And many companies still flock to Silicon Valley to make their big break. The Valley still has an edge in investment dollars and talent and has a culture built around entrepreneurship that has flourished for decades thanks to companies like Apple, Google, eBay, Facebook and others.

New York has to continue building its start-up culture and fix its talent crunch problems, which could be alleviated by a new applied sciences university and programs like the HackNY, the Turing Fellowship and SA500. But with more investors, incubators, start-up infrastructure and companies moving in, New York is increasingly an appealing place for start-ups. Will it topple Silicon Valley any time soon? No, but it’s showing that it’s becoming a competitive tech destination for start-ups convinced that if they can make it there…

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According to data from Quantcast, Taboola has reach of more than 110 million unique visitors a month. Of those viewers, more than 65 million are in the U.S. alone. As a result, Taboola generates more than 300 million recommendations every day, CEO and founder Adam Singolda told me by email.

While Taboola, which provides a widget for recommended videos, has traditionally been used by news publishers like the New York Times who are trying to expand their available video inventory and advertising revenues, it’s been tapped by two new partners in the live streaming vertical. Ustream and Major League Gaming now both make Taboola recommendations available to their viewers.

With the move to provide recommendations for live streaming viewers, Taboola has had to add capabilities beyond just the contextual targeting that it typically uses to match up video recommendations for users. Because videos are live, the recommendations engine doesn’t have as much data to go on. So Taboola is providing recommendations based on behavioral targeting while viewers are watching live streams.

Outside of the live video market, Taboola has also added new partners. Those include BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, Food Network, The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Caller, Ask Men and Gannett’s Navy Times. With some of those publishers, the Taboola video widget is on every page of their websites.

As publishers try to expand their use of video, they need ways to highlight the content that they’ve produced. Taboola can not only provide recommendations, but can also expand the amount of video available to viewers by recommending those from other publishers and sharing revenues between them.

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I hit up some web pages that I recently bookmarked to help me flash images on my GSM Galaxy Nexus and I can validate what Droid-Life is seeing. The CDMA stock images for the Galaxy Nexus, for example now show a status of “archived, for reference only.”

I’m reaching out to sources to see what this means, because it could imply nothing more than the removal of developer options in the Settings screen of the CDMA Galaxy Nexus. But if not, I wonder if this is Verizon’s effort to gain complete control over the software on its Galaxy Nexus. It’s worth recalling that Verizon was expected to get the original Nexus One, but that never happened and no explanation was ever provided. It’s not a stretch to think that a control issue at that time entered into the situation.

The other possibility here is that this is related to Google Wallet and Verizon’s push for its own mobile payment solution in Isis. A Google statement provided to The Verge indicates this to be the case. If Verizon does have ownership over the Galaxy Nexus software, the handsets could lose a key advantage: Gaining the most recent software updates before other phones. That attribute is a key selling point of the Galaxy Nexus and if this does happen, I’m sure current owners of the smartphone will be upset.

Update: On a Google Groups page for Android Contributors, the following clarification was written after this post:

For various technical reasons, recent CDMA Android devices implement core telephony functionality in .apk files provided in binary form by the carriers. To function correctly, these .apk files must be signed by the so-called “platform” key. However, when an individual creates a custom build from the AOSP source code, they don’t use the same signing key as these CDMA flies were signed with.

The result is that these files don’t work properly, and pure AOSP builds running on these devices can’t place calls, access mobile data, and so on. Because we aim to make sure that we are as clear as possible about the degree of support that devices have, we updated the docs over atsource.android.com to reflect this reality.

We will still make available as many as possible of the closed-source binaries for these devices, and Nexus devices will continue to have unlockable bootloaders. And, of course, GSM/HSPA+ devices are still supported, as are any other devices we’re able to support. We’ve simply updated the documentation to be clearer about the current extent of CDMA support.

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Lane, who became executive chairman of HP on September 22, 2011 (he had been non-executive chairman since November 1, 2010, the start of HP’s FY 2011)  logged more than $10 million in total compensation — the bulk of it in stock and options — for the fiscal year, according to the HP proxy.

But check out the numbers for yourself.

Other highlights from the proxy:

Meg Whitman who famously took the HP CEO position in September for $1 in salary, gets $16 million in stock and options. Former CEO Leo Apotheker walked away with $30.4 million when he was fired by HP last September.

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However, those longing for innovation in broadband here in the U.S. can hope that there are bigger plans in the works. With a fiber to the home network and gigabit Wi-Fi Google could take a cue from the recent launches in France and in the U.S. of mobile networks that lean heavily on Wi-Fi. Then Google could build a network that offers truly ubiquitous broadband within the confines of Palo Alto, Calif., and maybe later in Kansas City.

From the application to the FCC, which was spotted by Stephen Crowley,

Google Fiber seeks to test Bluetooth and Wi-Fi protocols and performance (including coordination of Wi-Fi channels between devices and in the presence of foreign signals) within an integrated access point as part of a fiber residential gateway. This line of testing will reveal real world engineering issues and reliability. The planned testing is not directed at evaluating the radio frequency characteristics of the equipment (which are known), but rather at the throughput and stability of the home networks that will support the equipment, as well as its basic functionality.

Right now, the current Wi-Fi technology (802.11n) tops out 600 Mbps, which means Wi-Fi becomes the bottleneck if you have a gigabit network coming into your home. 802.11ac’s multi-gigabit speeds would go a long way to opening up that pipe. But while chip companies have produced silicon for the next generation Wi-Fi standard, the standard itself isn’t ratified, nor are those chips in any real products that have passed through the FCC’s approval process. This application may be one of the first application for a commercial next-gen Wi-Fi device, although Google asked the FCC to keep many of the details confidential.

Of course, such powerful Wi-Fi and a fiber-to-the-home network opens up many more possibilities than mere super-fast home networking. Google could use its residential gateways and the fiber connection to blanket an entire town with incredibly fast Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth) networks. These technologies would give Google the tools to make broadband truly ubiquitous both inside and outside homes, which is a goal I’d love to see.

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Appleton was alone, flying a small Lanceair experimental aircraft, according to the Boise Weekly. The plane reportedly crashed around 9 a.m. between two runways.

In its statement, Micron said:

Our hearts go out to his wife, Dalynn, his children and his family during this tragic time. Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large.

Trading on Micron shares was halted on the news.  In 1984 2004, Appleton was injured in another plane crash when his stunt plane crashed in the desert near Boise, according to this EETimes report.

Appleton joined the Boise-based semiconductor company in 1983 and was named president and COO in 1991. Three years later, he was appointed CEO and chairman, according to his company biography.

In addition to his Micron duties, Appleton served on the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association and of National Semiconductor. He was also a member of the World Semiconductor Council.

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Screenshot of Doxo healthcare (click to enlarge)

Doxo, the Seattle startup that makes “digital file cabinet” software, has thus far focused on giving users a single place to manage regularly occurring bills for services such as telephone, cable, and credit cards. But now, the company is taking on a much bigger and more complicated system: Healthcare.

Doxo is announcing Friday that a number of major healthcare provider systems have signed up to send medical bills and receive patient payments through the online service. According to Doxo, its new clients comprise 40 hospitals and 3,000 physicians, and include Saint Luke’s Health System, Advocate Health Care and Advocate Medical Group, Novant Health, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, University of Illinois Medical Center, Rockford Health System, and Rush-Copley Medical Center.

It’s a big coup for the Doxo, which was founded in 2008 and launched its service to the public in mid-2011. The company has raised $15.3 million in venture capital from Sigma Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ VC firm, Bezos Expeditions. Doxo is free for consumers, and the company charges the businesses who sign up to send bills through the service. According to Doxo CEO Steve Shivers, companies pay for the service because it saves them a significant amount of money compared to paper billing — and the healthcare space can especially benefit from this type of savings.

“Hospitals send invoices to patients three times, on average, before they pay it,” Shivers said. “So for a $10 copay, they’re spending $10 to $15 just to collect it. This is an industry that has runaway costs, and from a consumer standpoint there’s runaway complexity.”

But of course, it’s not easy to convince complex, entrenched industries like healthcare to try something new. That’s why it’s a big deal for Doxo to have inked these initial contracts. The hope is that after this initial batch, many more healthcare providers will be emboldened to sign up to do paperless billing through Doxo, Shivers said.

“Since we launched to the public last summer, the first providers we really signed up were what I call more conventional categories like banks, credit unions, alarm systems,” Shivers said. “But healthcare has been one of most important verticals for us to get into. We have these six providers signed up now, but the healthcare industry is huge. This is just the start.”

I think it’s a great move: The time for healthcare to really adopt technology is right now, and going paperless is a great first step toward that goal. Many health providers have websites that patients can create profiles for, but the reality is most people don’t go to the doctor enough to create a log-in ID and remember a password. So we end up getting paperwork sent in the mail that often goes ignored, since many of us prefer to do our bills online. It’s a big cycle that ends up creating stress for consumers and costing healthcare providers lots of money. There’s a big opportunity here, and it’s nice that a startup like Doxo is gaining a good foothold in the space.

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Nokia Hello leverages NFC, or near-field communications, chips to link two phones together. Instead of trying to speak the translation, you simply tap your phone to someone else’s and the translated text appears in their native language. There are other ways to do this of course: Some translation apps read words aloud, for example. But this solution is quiet so it could be used in a noisy environment or by someone who has hearing challenges.

As positive as the project sounds to me, I think the Nokia researchers may be taking things a little too far. In a blog post describing Nokia Hello, it sounds like the team is hoping for a full quiet-zone in the workplace:

The team working on the project estimate that the need for speech interactions with work colleagues could be eliminated entirely by 2015. Excellent news for those working in multilingual environments or who despise their workmates.

The multilingual environments part I get, but good for people who despise their workmates? Way to spread the cheer, Nokia! That funny tidbit aside, the project does show another smart use for NFC; a technology we typically associate with contactless mobile payment solutions such as Google Wallet.

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At the end of 2011, the total number of 3G subscribers hit 100 million, accounting for 15 percent of all mobile connections, according to the report. That huge uptick in data connections makes Latin America the second-fastest growing global region, just behind the Middle East/Africa market. The region also passed 100 percent penetration in 2011, which means many customers are now sporting multiple devices.

Wireless Intelligence predicts mobile data adoption will only accelerate. The monthly run rate of 3 million 3G additions in 2011 is increasing to 4 million this year. By 2016, 3G and 4G connections will account for just under 50 percent of total subscriptions. Two operators, Columbia’s UNE and Uruguay’s Ancel, launched commercial LTE networks in 2011, while AT&T extended its LTE network to Puerto Rico. The research firm also counted 12 new HSPA+ networks going up in the region since June.

Total CDMA connections saw a huge drop, falling from 6 percent of total connections two years ago to just 2 percent as of the new year. In December, Telefonica shut down its CDMA networks in Ecuador completely, but the global operator will deal its biggest blow to CDMA in June when it packs up Brazilian operator Vivo’s 2G network, the region’s largest.

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On its surface, Skin Scan’s app operatesas one might expect: users take a picture of a mole; the photo is sent to Skin Scan’s servers; Skin Scan’s algorithm analyzes the image; and results are sent back to the user. The app won’t diagnose any condition, but will visually point out abnormalities and will rate moles from low-risk to high-risk. It also refers users to nearby doctors. It’s Skin Scan’s mobile delivery model that makes it so potentially valuable, though.

As co-founder and CEO Victor Anastasiu explained to me, the company is building an analytic database to help make sense of the information it’s uncovering. Using users’ location data, for example, Skin Scan can map the world based on frequency or severity of lesions. Over time, Anastasiu said, Skin Scan should be able to determine how rates are improving or worsening, which is important because skin cancer is often best analyzed over time.

Building time-space models based on mobile data is nothing new, of course. Companies such as Google and Apple are already using anonymous location data to map traffic flows, and another SmartCamp finalist, BitCarrier, is peddling a system to city governments that lets them see traffic flow in real time based on wireless location data and react accordingly.

But Skin Scan has grander plans than even a database. Mircea Popa, another Skin Scan employee, brought up the possibility of disrupting the dermatology system as a whole. One of the company’s next steps is to digitally connect doctors and users via its platform. If doctors can examine patients’ moles without in-person visits, it saves everybody time and money. For offices that are particularly overbooked, Popa thinks Skin Scan could get them to the point where they see only the most-serious cases via office visits.

These are long-term goals, though. For now, Skin Scan is working to gain enough users to get its algorithms as accurate as possible (they’re about 70 percent accurate in assessing severity, Anastasiu said, compared with about 85 percent by dermatologists) and to build a meaningful global data set. Whether or not Skin Scan succeeds, though, its ambitions should resonate with others who want to effect change by leveraging the global reach and broad accessibility of mobile devices.

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The proliferation of these products shows that augmented reality, a technology which has a conference of its own, is going mainstream as more people carry smartphones, are always connected and want the latest and greatest experience.

San Francisco-based Nukotoys will be on hand to show off NUKO trading cards, which pop with animated monsters when viewed through an iPad, iPhone or iPod. The Monsterology cards, now in beta, will let kids collect, trade, train and play with 3D unicorns, cyclopses and sea serpents, the company said.

Digital Tech Frontier will show off its new Popar book line. The books are encoded so that a user with a webcam and a PC, will see 3-D, moving images — rocket ships blasting off, planets spinning, etc. — as they read.  (See video here.)

Other AR-adopting toy makers include Character Options, which is using the technology in its new Appgear shown at the London Toy Fair last month. And perennial fan favorite Lego is using AR in its Life of George game and in some of its product packaging.

There are many potential uses for AR. Hewlett-Packard was on the road at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and other venues showing off Autonomy’s Aurasma for retail and other applications. Bodymetrics demonstrated an AR fitting room at CES; some realtors are using AR to make house listings more compelling.

With more than 184 million iPhones on the planet, plus all the other iPads and smartphones out there, the addressable audience for AR goodies will only grow as will applications beyond fun and games.

Feature photo courtesy of  Flickr user antjeverena

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On the what is it category, it appears to be homebound, so it could perhaps be a set-top-box style device, or a new addendum to Google TV. Here’s what Google’s application, which was filed in December, offers in terms of information:

Google is developing an entertainment device that requires testing outside the laboratory environment. The device is in the prototyping phase and will be modified prior to final compliance testing. … Users will connect their device to home WiFi networks and use Bluetooth to connect to other home electronics equipment. This line of testing will reveal real world engineering issues and reliability of networks. The device utilizes a standard WiFi/Bluetooth module, and the planned testing is not directed at evaluating the radio frequency characteristics of the module (which are known), but rather at the throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device, as well as the basic functionality of the device. From this testing we hope to modify the design in order to maximize product robustness and user experience. Utilizing the requested number of units will allow testing of real world network performance and its impact on applications running on the device, so that any problems can be discovered and addressed promptly. (emphasis mine)

Google asked to test 252 devices between January 17 through July 17 in Mountain View,Calif.; New York, Cambridge, Mass. and Los Angeles. Its employees will have them, so maybe you can hit a Google employee’s home to watch the Super Bowl and then start sniffing around.

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