Built from the ground up with brand integration in mind, photo-quiz app Nomino actually does what more publishers with native ad models should be doing -- forcing sponsors to be more creative.

The New York Times Co. earlier this year rolled out a pair of apps -- NYT Now and NYT Opinion -- as lower-priced sign-up options to help bolster subscription growth. The former is a curated version of the "Times" that includes articles, videos and slideshows and costs $8 a month, while the latter offers full access to the paper's opinion pages for $6 a month.

Foursquare took steps last week to further distance itself from the check-in, with a new logo that replaces the check-in symbol with a red-bordered "F" it calls a mix "of a map pin and superhero emblem." It also previewed the latest version of the Foursquare app home screen, which also does away with the check-in checkmark and emphasizes local search.

Beacons may appear more attractive to retailers than they do to consumers for now. The technology promises to add yet another disruption to an otherwise enjoyable shopping experience. Is getting buzzed by your store as you enter the door really going to become part of the in-store experience?

"Banners" were barely mentioned during this session on mobile ad formats at this week's OMMA Premium display in LA event. In fact, these youngish makers and consumers of mobile underscored how uncool advertising is generally.

One of the most interesting contributions that mobile phones have made to pop culture so far is the genre of silly distraction. Part of the aesthetic of mobile entertainment seems to be pointless whimsy. We have to start wondering if there is in fact a point in that.

The digital audio channel gets in our heads and in our lives in ways that are unlike any other media form. We need to explore ad and promotional formats that take advantage of these patterns.

What does content look like when it is built from the ground up as a mobile experience? The guys at theScore are working on it. You take a layered approach to serve multiple user modes, but most of all, you need people who are themselves mobile-first.

A lot of mobile UX innovation comes in the little things that make an app or site feel as if it is in conversation with us. Let's kick off a week highlighting some big and small bright ideas in mobile with a couple of cases where it is less about "responsive design" than about a design being responsive to us.

Whether Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr will pay off remains to be seen. But in the year or so since it purchased the blogging platform and social networking site, it has become more of a mobile acquisition. Most of Tumblr's monthly traffic now comes from mobile devices, compared to only about a third when it was bought by Yahoo in May 2013.