The New York Times writes how Emoji, long popular among cellphone users in Asia, is enjoying some mainstream success.

... emoji, which are the more elaborate cousins of emoticons -- those creative combinations of colons, parentheses and other punctuation that people use to drop a facial expression into a text message or e-mail.

But unlike emoticons, emoji don't require tilting your head sideways to make sense of the image. They are a kind of pictorial alphabet stored on a phone that can be displayed in place of the regular keyboard, making it easy to tap out a visual message.

Outside their native Japan, emoji have been available to in-the-know smartphone owners for some time via add-on applications. But now they may be on the verge of going mainstream in the United States, thanks in part to Apple's latest update to its iPhone software. The latest version, iOS 5, comes with an installed library of emoji that can be turned on as an "international keyboard" in the device's settings.

"Text as a medium is particularly dull when it comes to expressing emotions," Professor Sundar said. "Emoticons open the door a little, but emoji opens it even further. They play the role that nonverbal communication, like hand gestures, does in conversation but on a cellphone."

Whimsical Texting Icons Get a Shot at Success

The iCow mobile-phone app, invented by an organic farmer outside of Nairobi, Kenya, is just one example of the country's growing high-tech entrepreneurial culture. Love the name. From the Christian Science Monitor:

As an organic farmer outside of Nairobi, Su Kahumbu could see the challenge that her cattle-herding neighbors had in handling the expenses of their most precious assets, the female cow.

So, Ms. Kahumbu came up with iCow, a mobile-phone application that allows herders to register each individual cow, and to receive individualized text messages on their mobile phones, including advice for veterinary care and feeding schedules, a database of experts, and updated market rates on cattle prices. It's an example of how high technology can help out even in the low-tech business of agriculture, in which 80 percent of Kenyans make a living.

Charging a few shillings (a Kenyan shilling is worth about one cent) per SMS for iCow's services, or a few hundred shillings per month for a jerry-rigged wireless network may not seem, at first appearance, to be the way to make a typical African fortune. But on a continent with nearly a billion people, nearly half of whom have at least a basic form of technology in the form of a cell phone, small-scale low-cost technology solutions may become a huge area of growth for a large number of individual innovators.

"If we can only do what I'm trying to do with iCow, riding on the back of technology, we can make a huge impact on ordinary people's lives," says Kahumbu.

iCow.

Although religious applications for mobile devices have been around for a while, Ignio creators boast their app is the only one that helps Catholics live, share and track their faith. The Boston Herald hosts this report from the Associated Press:

A new iPhone application gaining popularity across the country tracks users' religious activity -- everything from reading Scriptures to posting prayers -- and reflects it in the flame of a virtual candle tied to the app that grows larger and brighter with every completed task. Stray from the path and the flame burns out -- only to be rekindled if another user physically "bumps" mobile devices with the holder of the extinguished flame.

The free app called Ignio -- "ignite" in Latin -- was released last month as an innovative way for Catholics to encourage young people to be more active followers.

After downloading the app, Ignio appears on the cell phone screen as an unlit candle. Ignio users can choose candles with images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, St. Francis or other Catholic symbols.

To spark the candle's wick, the user must physically "bump" or repeatedly tap iPhones with a current Ignio user.

The flame stays lit as long as one participates in a variety of spiritual activities, such as posting prayers on Ignio, commenting on friends' prayer requests, using the app to find a nearby church or just to "check-in" to let friends know you are at church or were there that week. Ignio also keeps track of how often one reads the prescribed daily Scriptures and verses found on the app.

An interesting use of the Bump api. As smartphones become more commonplace we will see greater application to those with specific interests and needs.

iPhone app tracks Catholics' religious fervor

Gigaom reports on the astonishing success of WhatsApp:

WhatsApp is now delivering an eye-popping 1 billion messages a day on six different platforms, which it claims puts ahead of any other independent messaging apps. GOGII's textPlus, for a little perspective, announced in June it had crossed the 10 billion text messages sent milestone since launching in June 2009. WhatsApp is the number one paid social networking app in the Apple App Store, and has more than 10 million downloads on Android with 369,270 user reviews, more than almost any other Android communication app. And it's used in 250 countries (ed- there are only 196 countries) on 750 networks. While the market has consolidated, WhatsApp has kept its head down and continued to execute.

"People appreciate a good product, a stable system. They want to communicate easily and use a product that just works."

I was constantly surprised at just how successful the app seemed to be considering the frustrating problems I experienced daily. Frequent long lag times between launching the app and it connecting to their servers meant that many times I had to resort back to sms. Many times it would never connect at all. But when the lag was short the app worked wonderfully. Though not near as feature rich, iMessage has proven to be far more reliable.

From the WhatsApp blog: "Just how much is 1 billion messages? That is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and 11,574 messages a second". Wow!

Gigaom

The NYTimes reports that the FDA clears medical apps to assist with diagnosis.

Mobile MIM is among a handful of medical apps that the F.D.A. has cleared for diagnostic use. Many others will probably appear as more smartphones and tablets make their way into the pockets of doctors' white coats or onto their office desks. In preparation, the F.D.A. is working on guidelines for such apps, and in September it conducted a two-day public workshop for feedback.

[...] called Mobile MIM, made by MIM Software, can turn an iPhone or an iPad into a diagnostic medical instrument. It allows physicians to examine scans and to make diagnoses based on magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and other technologies if they are away from their workstations.

Only a small subset of the myriad health apps coming to the market will actually need the agency's regulatory attention, said Bakul Patel, a policy adviser at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, an F.D.A. unit in Silver Spring, Md.

The focus will be on apps that help with a specific diagnosis, or transform a mobile device into a currently regulated medical device. For example, an app to turn a smartphone into an EKG machine to determine whether a patient is having a heart attack would qualify for a close look.

Those Scan Results Are Just an App Away