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Screenshots of common mobile flows.

Samsung may be approaching a point where it wants to take more complete ownership of the mobile experience it offers customers. Today, Galaxy phones offer Samsung’s mobile experience combined with Google’s mobile experience. Tomorrow, the electronics giant might look to eliminate or at least change half of that equation.

One way to accomplish this would be to adopt a new OS over which it has more control. Tizen, for example, may turn out to be a workable option. Reports that Samsung plans to launch Tizen phones in 2013 from earlier this week have now been confirmed by Bloomberg Businessweek, and Samsung has said that it plans to launch multiple Tizen phones this year.

According to a new survey, 63% of 18 to 34 year-olds would be comfortable using their mobile phones to make purchases, versus the older generation (35 and up). This “younger” generation is highly attached to their mobile devices when compared with the older group, too, with 65% reporting they “feel more naked” without their phones than their wallets. 34% of the older group felt the same.
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Men were found to think of phones as more functional necessities, while women had a more personal relationship with their phones. Men were also more willing to adopt mobile payments, as more men than women (51% vs. 40%) said they would be at ease with making purchases using their phones. More men than women (49% vs. 45%) also said they would be impressed by someone who paid a bill with a mobile phone instead of a credit card.

However, women’s personal relationship with their phone was revealed in other findings. For example, 50% of women feel more “exposed” without their phone, compared to 36% men

Since launching last year, Meridian has worked with a handful of prominent institutions to build indoor mapping systems from the ground up, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The service uses a unique combination of GPS and WiFi data to pinpoint the precise location of the smartphone user indoors. By opening up its SDK to developers, Meridian should see plenty more locations incorporate this technology.

Both Google and Bing offer indoor maps for airports, malls and other locations, but neither provide turn-by-turn directions or let users locate themselves on the map (aka the glowing blue dot) as one can outdoors with tools like Google Maps. Meridian also goes one step further and can advertise and direct users to specific items at a given location — a potentially powerful tool for retailers like Macy’s.

Mobile devices have their own set of Information Architecture patterns, too. While the structure of a responsive site may follow more “standard” patterns, native apps, for example, often employ navigational structures that are tab-based. Again, there’s no “right “way to architect a mobile site or application. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the most popular patterns: Hierarchy, Hub & spoke, Nested doll, Tabbed view, Bento box and Filtered view

8 reasons PayPal’s stock is up since 2nd quarter report:

1. Paypal is big. 117 million people have active PayPal accounts, plus millions of merchants, and PayPal processes 6 million transactions a day…

2. PayPal is growing. The company has 1,300 employees, and yet it’s managing double digit growth every year.

3. PayPal is leading in mobile. Despite all the talk (including here on Quartz) about startups like Square, Stripe, Braintree and the like, PayPal still processes way more payments than all of them put together.

4. PayPal has no trouble copying what works. Example, their blue triangular dongle is a knock off the the white Square.

5. PayPal has tons of room for growth. Online sales, mobile payments, new point-of-sale terminals replacing cash registers.

6. PayPal has wisely decided not to waste its time with mobile wallets. Consumers aren’t adopting them either.

7. PayPal doesn’t care how you use its service, as long as you use it.

8. The company’s new president

Keep these points in mind when planning your strategy:

Partnership
Launches work best in pairs! Choose a partner whose background gels with your app. For example, Ruckus Media just announced a unique partnership with New York City’s PBS station for the “Cyberchase” app in its math series.

Relevance
Find a way to tie your app to a current news or seasonal story. News outlets themselves know this better than anyone: just this month, the Washington Post launched a presidential election iPad app.

Audience
Don’t play to a stadium. Rather, cater to an small meaningful audience. Talking about specific audiences, there are even apps for nose-pickers — as well as lawsuits for alleged patent infringement on those nose-picking apps!

Cause
Share the wealth by helping a needy organization that fits your app’s demographic. This one really woke me up: did you know you could donate $0.25 to charity every time you hit the snooze button?

Relationship
Incorporate unique ways to address and engage…

App Booster is a software development kit (SDK) aimed at helping developers and publishers keep their users active and engaged within the app. It lets developers integrate a 2-way inbox, making it look like a native feature of the app and allows the developer to broadcast in-app notifications, in what Ohayon calls a “non-intrusive way”.