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Nearly 50 percent of the mobile workforce carries more than three devices, causing them to stay connected longer, according to the latest quarterly Mobile Workforce Report from iPass, a Redwood Shores, CA-based enterprise mobility service provider. This combination of technology and connectivity blurs the role of devices between work and home. Signs are indicating that after the smartphone, the future enterprise device of choice for mobile workers will be an iPad.

Breaking the chain of connectivity is increasingly difficult for mobile workers — of the more than 1,100 mobile workers surveyed by iPass, 94 percent are always connected or occasionally connected, even while on vacation. When iPass asked why the disconnected are pulling the plug, the responses indicated more situational reasons such as a lack of signal, as opposed to a conscious effort to stay offline.

While 97 percent of survey respondents carry two or more devices, iPass finds that those who carry a single device are opting for a smartphone over a laptop. A few years ago, I would have expected more workers to choose the laptop in a single device scenario, mainly because of the software and functionality benefits that a portable computer offered over handsets at that time. But the combination of fast-maturing smartphone hardware, a greater range of wireless broadband coverage and more complex software applications has altered the device of choice. The smartphone isn’t yet replacing a laptop for every task or for every mobile worker, but smaller and thinner mobile devices are reducing the relevance of bulkier notebook computers.

In line with a theme of laptop replacement are tablet PCs — which have existed in the business world for nearly a decade — and Apple’s iPad. When iPass asked mobile workers if they planned to purchase a Tablet PC or iPad in the next six months, 26.3 percent said they intend to purchase an iPad while just under 7 percent are planning to buy a Tablet PC. These purchases aren’t all fun and games though — 90.6 percent of those who have or plan to get an iPad are expecting to do some work on the slate device and nearly 20 percent said the iPad would be mostly for work or solely for work.

The intended use for iPads in the enterprise should concern traditional PC makers for a few reasons. The iPass report results aren’t an outlier — today’s Wall Street Journal confirms that both employees and employers want iPads for productivity, citing several examples of how businesses are adopting the tablet. And as previously noted, the Tablet PC — a Microsoft Windows platform that debuted in 2001 — had relatively little traction in the past and is now getting relegated to a has-been by many mobile workers. Thanks to various remote desktop solutions and improved support for enterprise-level security software features in iOS 4, Apple’s iPad appears poised to invade the Windows workspace.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why the iPad is Right for the Enterprise

GigaOM

In the “risk factors” section of its IPO filing on Friday, content-creation company Demand Media raises an interesting possibility: that Google — which Demand said it relies on for about a quarter of its revenue, via cost-per-click keyword advertising — could decide to use its own expertise in keyword search trends to compete with the algorithm-driven content company, whose initial public offering is planned for later this year. Specifically, Demand says that the search giant’s access to the data from billions of searches could give it a “significant competitive advantage” over the soon-to-be-public startup.

Demand’s main business consists of creating content — text, photos and videos — that matches what Internet users are looking for, which also happens to be what advertisers are willing to pay the most for, in terms of keyword-related ads. So if Demand’s algorithm determines that the hot trend is looking for high-end digital cameras, it will pay writers and photographers to create content that matches that interest, and then try to maximize the revenue it gets from keyword-related advertising through Google. As the company that sees search trends in real time and buys and sells ads around those searches, Google is perfectly placed to take advantage of that, Demand notes in its SEC filing:

Google’s access to more comprehensive data regarding user search queries through its search algorithms would give it a significant competitive advantage over everyone in the industry, including us. If this data is used competitively by Google, sold to online publishers or given away for free, our business may face increased competition from companies, including Google, with substantially greater resources, brand recognition and established market presence.

But Google doesn’t create content, right? That’s true, for the most part. But the giant web company does handle a lot of user-generated content, including videos uploaded to YouTube and photos posted on Picasa (and subsequently attached to locations on Google Maps) — as well as millions of blog posts published through Blogger. It’s a bit of a stretch to assume that Google will suddenly turn into a content-creation company, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. And there have been some interesting signs that the search giant might be considering the idea, including a patent that Google was awarded involving a process that would “identify inadequate search content.”

The patent — whose listed inventors include Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian and the head of Google’s Webspam Team, Matt Cutts — describes using a search engine’s statistics about search queries and the relevance and quality of the pages that show up in response to detect when there are “underserved” topics, i.e. topics where there aren’t many good search results. Google then describes how this information could be passed on to publishers and content creators as a suggestion for what content they might want to create in order to show up in Google’s results.

This could be done either for free, the patent says, or publishers could be charged a fee for the information or be required to show related ads (two options that are specifically referred to in Demand’s regulatory filing), or Google could create a topic marketplace, where publishers could see what topics were underserved. Andm the patent describes how a search engine with such information could provide an “automated content-generation system” that aggregates information related to queries and topics that have inadequate results, or could even be used to create “stub” articles on wiki sites such as Wikipedia.

It’s worth noting that the “risk factors” section of an IPO filing is designed to lay out every possible threat to a company, no matter how small or unlikely. So the simple fact that Demand refers to Google competing with it is no guarantee that this will actually come to pass — and even if Google does decide to follow through on what it describes in the patent, it could decide to work with Demand rather than going into direct competition with it. It’s also true that Google has plenty of other ways of causing trouble for Demand, including devaluing the company’s commodity content by tweaking its algorithms.

All that said, however, the prospect of Google using its dominance in search trends to take a controlling interest in the new marketplace for auto-generated content is certainly an interesting one.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Will Games Help Google Figure Out How to Be Social?

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Abysim

GigaOM

We told you this week about a new look for Bing Maps, which at first glance gave the maps a cleaner look, removed the white “glow” from around place names, added a “Dynamic” map type, and well, apparently a lot more.  Justin O’Beirne, on his blog 41Latitude, has posted a series of pretty exhaustive comparisons of the new Bing Maps to Google Maps and the old Bing Maps. 

He comes to some conclusions:

As you can see from my examples, this was not some incremental improvement that Microsoft gave to Bing Maps—no, this was a vast overhaul. In truth, it seems as though Microsoft has left nothing unchanged in the “new” Bing Maps. And yet even though the “new” maps are unusually light on detail (especially in how few cities they seem to show), they’re now among the most aesthetically pleasing maps on the web.

On an unrelated note, I find the similarities between Windows Phone 7’s UI and the “new” Bing Maps to be quite curious: both use Segoe fonts, both are unflinchingly minimalistic, and both are dramatic breaks from their predecessors. Maybe this really is a new direction for Microsoft.

We won’t even try here to do justice to Justin’s analysis, complete with a/b animated comparisons and covering everything from font changes (from Arial to Segoe), to Highway shield symbols:

to a level by level critique of what’s on each Bing Maps zoom level, with what Justin sees could be some improvements to Bing’s new approach.

He’s finished four Bing Maps related blog posts so far:

Bing Maps’s Redesign- The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Improving Bing’s “New” Maps — Part 1

Improving Bing’s “New” Maps — Part 2

Other (Minor) Things I’ve Noticed about the Bing Maps Redesign

with a promised Part 3 still to come.  We have to commend Justin for all the effort he’s put into these posts, great job, and hope the Bing Maps team is paying attention!

(via @BingMapsDev – John O’Brien)

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Steve Ballmer starting a presentation.
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