Beta Labs - Yellowpages.com

Keeping up the Mobile Momentum

Check out AT&T Ad Solutions’ Matt Crowley speaking on a mobile advertising panel at the Borrell Local Advertising conference on February 9th.

The media landscape is constantly changing; new devices, technology and emerging platforms develop and often influence our daily environment.

While the PC is the current dominant means of gaining access to the Internet today, the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet will surpass the number of online PCs by 2012, according to interactive research company eMarketer. [Source: eMarketer, August 2009]

Mobile technology is a good example of how much of an influence new media has on our lives. I’ll confess that I have so many cool applications on both of my iPhones that my friends joke by asking if I ever use it to make a phone call.

With all the emerging platforms and developing technology, such as mobile, it can be a little overwhelming.

Matt Crowley, our VP of Sales Operations, will be on a mobile advertising panel at the upcoming Borrell Associates “2010 Local Online Advertising: The ‘Business of Making Money’ Conference” February 8–9 in New York City. I expect that many of these topics that affect us as developers, advertisers or even mobile users will be covered. Here are the panel details:

Who: Matt Crowley, VP of Sales Operations, AT&T Ad Solutions
What: 2010 Local Online Advertising: The ‘Business of Making Money’ Conference
Where: Grand Hyatt, New York City
When: “Mobile advertising – Panel” Tuesday February, 09, 2010
Borrell Associates “2010 Local Online Advertising: The ‘Business of Making Money‘ Conference” February 8 – 9

What do you think 2010 holds for mobile search and advertising?

Roger Park
Blog Editor

Attention Ruby on Rails Developers

Join us for the Second Annual LA Ruby Conference February 19-20, 2010.

Interested in learning more about Ruby on Rails programming development? Well, you’re in luck. On Feb. 19 and 20th the 2nd Annual Los Angeles Ruby Conference will be held at the Holiday Inn in Burbank, California. Don’t miss a series of training workshops on Friday as well as presentations at the main conference on Saturday.

AT&T Interactive will be represented by developers presenting on both days. Take a look at the schedule, speaker bios, and other details at the LA Ruby Conference website.

“Last year’s conference was a lot of fun, and it was great to connect with so many local developers. The lineup for this year’s LA Ruby Conference looks great. I’m really looking forward to it,” says Alf Mikula, Senior Software Engineer, AT&T Interactive.

We’re also happy to be one of the sponsors of the upcoming LA Ruby Conference. Visit LA Ruby Conf for more information and a link to register. For all you BetaLab readers out there, enter registration code “atti-betalabs” for a discount.

Hope to see you there!

Chris Padilla
Director, Industry Marketing

“Rails”, “Ruby on Rails”, and the Rails logo are registered trademarks of David Heinemeier Hansson. All rights reserved.

YELLOWPAGES.COM Launches Email & Share

Now you can share YELLOWPAGES.COM  listings on popular social media and bookmarking sites

Let’s say you just went to a really terrific local restaurant you found through YELLOWPAGES.COM and you want to tell your friends about it. Well, now you can share details about the business on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon through our Email & Share feature.

In the following video, AT&T Interactive Senior Product Manager Steven Lee gives a great informative demo on the feature.

Look for the “Email & Share” link on each YELLOWPAGES.COM listing. We invite you to try it out and share your feedback!

Roger Park
Blog Editor

2010 AT&T Developer Summit Recap

Chris Padilla, Director of Industry Marketing at AT&T Interactive, gives a short recap of this week’s AT&T DevSummit.

I just got back from Las Vegas and can honestly say the 2010 AT&T Developer Summit was a blast! The AT&T Developer Summit is an annual one day event hosted by the AT&T Developer Program. This year the DevSummit was on January 6 and held at the Palms Casino and Resort, one day before the International CES show.  It was a full day event giving attendees access to information about recent AT&T technology announcements and tools for developing applications on the AT&T Network and mobile devices.

Highlights from this year’s DevSummit include:

• Among others, keynotes and remarks by; Ralph De La Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, and Dr. Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm.
• AT&T Interactive’s VP of Mobile Engineering Srinivas Mandyam giving a presentation on “Creating Apps with Plusmo”, and explaining how the Plusmo acquisition will benefit the AT&T Developer Program.
• AT&T Interactive’s SVP and GM of Mobile Krishna Vedati sitting on an Executive Panel, answering questions from the audience.
• Late night “Code Camp” at Ghostbar, where developers coded and ran demos with the glow of the Las Vegas Strip in the background.

Calling All Mobile App Developers
The Widget Beta Program was also announced this year at the DevSummit. The AT&T Developer Program is looking for 50 developers who want to create innovative widgets using technology from Plusmo, a recent AT&T acquisition. If your idea is selected for the program, you’ll receive development support, access to new technology and more. Go to developer.att.com/widgetbeta for more information and to sign-up.

More detailed information on the event will follow, so stay tuned.

Chris Padilla
Director, Industry Marketing

Get your game on this football season with AT&T Interactive/Plusmo pro and college football free mobile app!

With the New Year upon us, many of you are probably thinking about attending family gatherings, creating New Year’s resolutions and … of course, football. Can’t stand being out of touch during the upcoming college bowls and NFL playoff games? Use Plusmo’s College Football Live on your iPhone or iPod touch to keep tabs on your favorite teams.

This app lets you:

• Get play-by-play action for top-rated college football teams in near real time.
• Personalized one-touch access to your teams’ live games, news and photos.
• Browse AP/Coaches/BCS polls, in-game live box scores, team schedules, news and game-time photos from the Associated Press.
• Use cool social features such as the ability to “Boo or Cheer” teams during live game play and “Smack Talk” with friends and other fans.

Download the free app in the iTunes App Store by searching for and installing “College Football Live!” from Plusmo or by clicking here.

Prefer pro ball? Download our free Pro Football Live! app by Plusmo.

Features include:

• “End zone-to-end zone” updates and scores, game schedules, stats, breaking news and game-time visuals.
• A set of social features to keep you connected at game time and help you feel like you’re in the bleachers — even if you’re not.

Download the free app in the App Store by searching for and installing “Pro Football Live!” from Plusmo or by clicking here.

Good luck to you sports fans this football season — and be on the lookout for YELLOWPAGES.COM on AT&T Fanzone.

Roger Park
Blog Editor

Happy Holidays!

The holiday season is here. Although a joyous time, we know how the holidays can be a little stressful. Last minute shopping. Last minute gift wrapping. Last minute traveling. Last minute holiday party planning. Last minute wondering what to do with your third fruit cake gift basket.

Take a breath and relax for a bit. Feel better?

We just want to use this moment to wish you Happy Holidays!

Up at the North Pole, Santa’s elves are finishing up the last touches. While Santa’s elves work hard during the holiday season, the brightest and best here at AT&T Interactive BetaLabs develop innovative ideas into great products all year round. No offense to the Santa’s elves in our reader audience. And you can count on us all year round to keep you updated with our new ideas and developments.

Once again we truly extend our best wishes to you and your loved ones this holiday season!

Roger Park
Blog Editor and Aspiring Elf

AT&T Interactive (ATTi) is recognizing the spirit of the Olympic Winter Games through a new YP.COM Review2Win Sweepstakes.

To enter, simply write a review about your favorite businesses on the new YP.COM Beta site and you and a guest could soon be headed to Vancouver to Cheer on Team USATM at the 2010 Olympic Games! Enter the Review2Win Sweepstakes and write reviews daily for additional chances to win a daily prize, and also try your luck daily at our instant-win game where you’ll have a chance to score some of our hundreds of Visa Gift cards.

$25-$500 Instant-Win Opportunities – Play Daily!
Create a profile on YP.COM Beta and write a review about a favorite business. Then register to play — if you get three matching Olympic Winter Games sports figures, you’ll instantly win a Visa Gift card valued between $25 and $500! You can review as many businesses as you like, but are limited to one entry per day.

Enter the Grand Prize Sweepstakes
Register for the sweepstakes to get an opportunity to win the Grand Prize — a trip for two to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. The random drawing will be held at the end of the promotion period. Log in and write reviews once each day to earn another entry into the Review2Win Sweepstakes.

The contest ends December 31, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. (ET) so don’t wait for your chance to win great prizes and to be part of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

Spread the Word
A “Tell a Friend” function allows you to share the Review2Win Sweepstakes with your friends and family to give them a chance to win, too. So every time you play, “Tell a Friend.”

See the new YP.COM Beta site for complete official contest rules.

Ratings and Reviews on YELLOWPAGES.COM

Last week we launched the Review2Win Sweepstakes on yp.com and YELLOWPAGES.COM. The sweepstakes should generate increased awareness of our ratings and review feature (games, prizes and trips are gauranteed to get our attention!) so we decided that this was a great opportunity to introduce Nicholas Perry – the ratings and reviews feature manager. We asked him to give us an overview of the feature and highlight why ratings and reviews matter in local search.

“People generally trust online reviews more than critic reviews and editorials. They want to read what other people thought about a business, learn why others rated a business highly or poorly, and get a better idea of whether they want to use that particular business or not. Ratings and reviews help a user differentiate between businesses that otherwise seem very similar.

On YELLOWPAGES.COM and yp.com we allow users to rate businesses on a scale of 1-5 stars and write a review of their experience with a business. We also aggregate reviews from other sites to increase the number of ratings and reviews that we provide to our users.

On the yp.com site, we use the reviews to help provide relevant results. If many users are praising a restaurant’s lasagna in their reviews, then that business may be a better match for a user searching for “lasagna” than other Italian restaurants

We filter reviews* for violations of our specific guidelines, such as profanity, slander, or spam. If a user writes an honest, factual review of a bad experience they had with a business, then that review will remain on our sites. We can’t control everything, but the more real users we have reviewing each business, the less impact fake reviews will have.

We present the reviews in order of review date. Recent experience with a business is most relevant to how the business is performing now, helping a user make a decision on which business to use.

We recognize the importance of including businesses in the ratings and reviews process. We allow businesses to reply directly on the site to each review so business owners can have an open dialogue with their customers for positive or negative reviews. This dialogue between consumers and the business can be very valuable to everyone. And, since we recognize that some businesses are also concerned about the quality of reviews we do allow businesses to opt out of reviews altogether. However, as online reviews are extremely valuable and important to consumers, the vast majority of businesses do allow users to review their business.

There are many prizes available during our Review2Win Sweepstakes, so take this opportunity to provide very valuable insight into local businesses that you love or hate. Your voice will be heard by our large user base and may help your neighbors make good decisions on which local businesses to use.

Watch for new innovations with our Ratings and Reviews feature in the future. We are currently in the process of developing new functionality which we plan to introduce in 2010. Of course, if you have any ideas that you’d like to see on the site, just drop us a note. All ideas are welcome!

Nicholas Perry
Sr Product Manager

* “We are under no obligation to monitor any reviews; however, we reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to monitor, edit and/or remove any reviews for any reason, investigate possible violations of our User Review guidelines, and enforce any rights available to us as a result of any such violation.”

New hotel widget on YELLOWPAGES.COM – just in time for holiday travel!

With over 39% of all travel bookings being made on the web*, consumers have high expectations of online travel resources. We believe we can meet these expectations and deliver a more satisfying travel planning experience with the new hotel rates and availability search widget, which will launch on YELLOWPAGES.COM and YP.com in November and December 2009 respectively.

With the widget consumers can easily check hotel rates and availability, and book a room. If users find their favorite hotel completely booked for their vacation dates, they can also search for other options through the widget.

Traveling during the holidays can be stressful, so relax while you’re planning: slip into your favorite flannel jammies, get a cup of hot cocoa and use the YELLOWPAGES.COM hotel rates and availability search widget to help plan your trip. Afterwards, drop us a note and let us know how it worked (the widget, not the cocoa). This is just our first phase, so stay tuned for more from your Hotels Vertical Team.

Steven Lee
Sr. Product Manager for Hotels Vertical

* PhoCusWright’s U.S. Online Travel Overview Ninth Edition

m.yp.com mobile website demo with Stephen Chappell

In the following video Stephen Chappell (our Director of Mobile Products) gives a short, informative demo of m.yp.com.

Watch the video, try the site – and let us know what you did or didn’t like.

Stephen is here at the office in Glendale so we can always put him in front of the camera if you need more info.