Mobile video chatting is great, provided you have a free hand to hold your smartphone or tablet. So what might a hands-free video phone look like? For now, it would be big and bulky, but it could work. Take a peek at this prototype that DigInfo noticed: It’s created by NTT DoCoMo(s dcm) and uses multiple cameras to capture most of your facial movements and any scenery behind you.

Unlike traditional video chat services of today, this system renders you as a realistic looking avatar. While that seems like a step backward, I can think of a number of instances where I’d welcome it: An early morning video chat while still in bed or on a bad hair day, for example. (My solution for the latter is a hat, but now that’s a tell-tale sign of bad hair at GigaOM HQ!)

The large headgear certainly isn’t practical, but as a prototype…

Early complaints that the new iPhone 5, made of lightweight aluminum, is easily scratched or nicked are being taken seriously: Bloomberg reports that iPhone 5 production has slowed due to an attempt by Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn to correct these quality control issues at the factory level. As a result, the devices aren’t shipping with the machine-like efficiency we’ve come to expect from Tim Cook’s Apple(s AAPL).

While Apple SVP Phil Schiller reportedly gave the brush off to a customer who complained — 9to5Mac published his email response to a customer where he said it was “normal” for aluminum products to be scratched with use — Apple apparently took action anyway. According to Bloomberg:

The scrapes, which sparked complaints with the iPhone’s debut last month, are due to Apple’s decision to use a type of aluminum that helps make the smartphone thinner and lighter. Senior Apple managers told executives at Foxconn…

Facebook has officially reached the 1 billion monthly active user milestone, a great round number to trumpet for a company that’s been struggling through some post-IPO blues. The achievement was expected at some point, but is still impressive in its own right.

Facebook, which launched in 2004, took four years to get to its first 100 million users and hit 500 million users in 2010. Now it has 600 million users just on mobile. In those eight years, Facebook users have generated:

• More than 1.13 trillion likes
• 140.3 billion friend connections
• 219 billion photos uploaded

“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” said co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post. “I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to…

Wireless Intelligence has compiled its annual ranking of global carriers by number of mobile connections, and not much has changed from last year’s list. China Mobile(s chl) still dominates the list with nearly 700 million subscribers, and the composition of the remaining 19 is roughly the same, according to the analysis arm of the GSM Association. If there is an underlying trend visible, though, it’s that Asian operators are gradually displacing normally dominant Western operators.

Vodafone(s vod) and Latin America’s America Móvil (s amx) kept second and third rankings, but India’s Bharti Airtel replaced Telefónica(s tef) at No. 4, and it’s within spitting distanced of breaking into the top 3. Asian operators China Unicom(s chu), China Telecom(s cha), Indonesia’s Telkomsel and India’s Idea Cellular all rose in the rankings. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless(s vz), AT&T(s t), T-Mobile-owner Deutsche Telekom, and Russia’s VimpelCom(s vip) and Sistema groups all fell in…

In 2008, when Facebook (s FB) introduced Facebook Connect, a way for folks to use their Facebook credentials to other websites and services, it was pretty obvious what Mark Zuckerberg’s long term goal was: controlling the identity infrastructure of the web. Once you do that, then you get access to all sorts of data and you are always relevant.

The mobile app revolution has only accelerated the adoption as more and more apps are using Facebook’s connected identity. And if there were any doubts, Mark lays them to rest in this interview with Businessweek (emphasis ours):

That way we can start to build interesting products like News Feed, or show who’s online for chat, or rank your friends so they’re in the right order for a search. But even when we were at half a billion people, you got these large-scale services like Skype or Netflix (NFLX) that also…

Apple’s iOS (s aapl) still dominates among app developers, but it may be losing its edge.  According to a recent GigaOM Pro survey (subscription required), both iOS and Android (s goog) use is growing, but app developers are adopting Android at a faster rate. The web-based study surveyed 352 app developers on everything from who they are to where they sell their apps to how much money they make.

It asked them which platforms they currently use and which they plan to develop on next year. The growth in the percentage of developers using Android to create mobile apps is nearly twice that of iOS; and it’s four times as fast (on Android vs iOS) for tablet apps.

On Wednesday at an Advertising Week event in New York, a group of marketers sat down with Tumblr executives to talk about their experiences working with the micro-blogging site’s five-month-old ad products. The marketers, who were from Adidas and Coca-Cola, had plenty of positive things to say about their campaigns, but chief among their future requests was one thing: analytics.

In reply, Lee Brown, Tumblr’s new head of global sales, said, “Stay tuned.”

Apparently, they didn’t have to stay tuned for too long. This afternoon, Tumblr announced that it’s partnered with Union Metrics to offer the first comprehensive analytics platform for brands and marketers. (Hear more about Tumblr’s strategy from CEO David Karp at RoadMap).

Through social media data provider Gnip, Union Metrics will access the full firehose of Tumblr data to help brands make sense of the activity on Tumblr’s over 70 million blogs and 32 million…

Apple has enjoyed a significant app ecosystem lead, but Android has now caught up. This removes a unique iOS selling point, and it also makes it easier for iPhone users to switch to Android when they next upgrade. Apple needs new control points, and mapping is a key answer for them.

As the mobile game is shifting from hardware to services, Apple needs to have more deep services of its own, rather than relying on competition. Important mobile service platforms include mapping, commerce and payments, social, and search. Across these categories, other companies are in the lead, not Apple. Of all the things that Apple might invest their vast cash in, maps is actually an important and strategic control point.

Maps and navigation are very popular on smartphones all around the world. Location is one of the few ways people organize and understand their world, which is why maps are…

Imagine a day when your phone has all of your health information. It knows your goals, your time horizons and what activities you need to focus on to achieve those goals. It knows your schedule, whether you like to do things alone or in groups and who you like to train with. It knows what you eat, how much you’ve slept and all of your vital signs in real-time.

Based on the information it collects, your phone will lay out a plan to help you live a healthier life. It will notify you when it’s time for an activity (i.e. taking a pill, going on a walk or taking your blood pressure), and adjust this plan as you go, based on what is and isn’t working. The more it learns about you and others like you, the more effective its guidance will become. There will be a day when the…

Netflix (s NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings had some choice words about Amazon’s Prime Instant video streaming service when quizzed about his competitors by the Wall Street Journal:

“It’s really about low-cost shipping, but why is video in there? It’s kind of a confusing mess.”

Hastings has in the past dismissed Amazon’s (s AMZN) video subscription efforts as well, and tends to point instead to HBO and its HBO Go service as its real competitors. That’s despite the fact that Amazon has been ramping up its content library in recent months. Earlier this month, Amazon singned a deal with Epix that will give its subscribers access to the Hunger Games, Avengers and other movies previously exclusive to Netflix.

There have been rumors in the past that Amazon would spin off its video service from Prime to turn it into a full-blown Netflix competitor, but the company has repeatedly denied…

Three months after T-Mobile USA’s CEO Philipp Humm quit to move to Vodafone(s vod), the carrier finds itself welcoming its new chief. Deutsche Telekom has named former Global Crossing CEO John Legere to take over its US mobile arm.

Legere, 54, will officially change offices on Sept. 22, when interim CEO Jim Alling will return to his old job as T-Mobile’s COO. From his resume, Alling Legere seems like an odd choice. Global Crossing, which was acquired by Level 3 Communications(s lvlt) last year, was a submarine cable operator providing the fiber connections that link continents, not a consumer-facing wireless business. Legere had a stint at Dell Computer(s dell), but the last time he worked at a retail carrier was in 1998 at AT&T, and even there he wasn’t working in the cellular or consumer side of the house. He managed AT&T’s Asian wireline business operations and headed up…

The pipe dream for companies trying to make money from mobile data is to know exactly when users are near a particular business and to hit them with the perfect ads to win their business before they’ve moved on. As it stands, however, it’s still quite difficult for software to determine what businesses consumers actually frequent, as opposed to the ones they just happen to hang out by. However, adding the right data into the mix or taking mobile payments mainstream could change everything.

Prospects vs. shoppers

The gap between where we are and where we want to be struck me on Monday as I was reading about Sense Networks’ new Retail Retargeting service. The service aims to help mobile advertisers reach consumers based on where they’ve been and what businesses they’re likely to be nearby again. So, if someone is nearby a Target (s tgt) three times a day, five…

3D printing is moving closer to the mainstream.  Makerbot Industries, the Brooklyn startup that makes 3D home printers, is opening up its first retail location in downtown Manhattan.

At a Wednesday press conference, CEO Bre Pettis said that in describing Makerbots to those unfamiliar with 3D printing, he has to say, “You have to see it to believe it.”

“This is where you can go to see Makerbots in action,” he said.

The retail location will certainly help the company get its name out to a broader audience of consumers and elevate the 3D printing space in general. Today’s Wired cover story will no doubt boost its profile too.

On Wednesday, the company also unveiled its newest desktop 3D printer , the Replicator 2, as well as new software, called MakerWare, to help “drive” the Makerbots. It also announced an experimental version of its new printer, the Replicator2X, which targets…

As far as online video goes, Google (s goog) is still the one to watch. The company, which owes its video popularity almost entirely to its independent subsidiary YouTube, maintained its lead as the U.S. video property with both the most unique monthly viewers as well as the most engaged viewers, according to data released today by comScore.

Youtube’s viewers on average watched 443 minutes of content, nearly eight times the engagement of video sites for runner up Yahoo. There were no big surprises but a few changes: Grab Media, Inc. entered into the top 10 video sites in viewership, bumping off Turner Digital. Facebook (s fb) dropped both in unique viewers and in minutes viewed, matching No. 10 Amazon with 16 minutes per viewer.

For the last three years, I have been the CEO of the education technology company, Rafter. Combined with my experience as an executive in the mobile space at Intellisync, this has provided me with some unique insights into the mobile generation gap and what colleges specifically can do to embrace mobile on campus.

Professors once saw the mobile phone as the enemy to productive learning, with students tuning out of lectures to text and call each other. But this massive invasion of smartphones and tablets also provides opportunities for new educational possibilities.

Students now have access to adaptive learning technologies, more robust in-classroom engagement, mobile checkout processes, mobile price comparisons in on-campus stores, and even peer-to-peer resource sharing. These services are collectively used by millions of students, who find them engaging and valuable resources.

Equally important are the types of educational content that students can access, the ability to leverage…

After falling behind Facebook (s fb) in online display advertising revenue, Google (s goog) is back on top.

According to a new report from research firm eMarketer, the search giant is expected to earn $2.31 billion in U.S. display ad revenue, up 38.5 percent from last year. Facebook, on the other hand, will bring in $2.16 billion, up 24.4 percent from last year.

Google’s earnings will comprise 15.4 percent of the total $14.98 billion display ad market in the U.S., compared to 14.4 percent for Facebook and 9.3 percent for Yahoo. Microsoft and AOL trail with 4.5 percent and 3.6 percent respectively.

The total display ad market is expected to grow 21.5 percent, eMarketer estimates, fueled by the growth of both Google and Facebook’s ad platforms, the expansion of online ad inventory, mobile growth and additional spending on digital video advertising, particularly on YouTube.

An earlier forecast from eMarketer…