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By Steve Mullins. Berlin-based online radio outfit Aupeo has launched an app to bring high-quality streaming music to the iPad. The app is fully integrated into the tablet’s music player and streams music from a whole raft of genres – from classical, through to electronic and hip-hop-  while its cool animations run across the iPad screen.

By Steve Mullins. Mobile advertising should be doing better, says Deloitte in its Addicted To Connectivity: Perspectives On The Global Mobile Consumer report. After all, it has an inherent advantage in driving what advertisers love best – response. Plus, there is no other advertising medium which makes is so easy for a target customer to respond.

“Recipients of an advert displayed on a phone can click to be taken to a website, they can click to make a call… to the advertiser, they can use the device’s navigation facilitation to guide them to the advertiser’s store,” says the report. “There is no other advertising medium which offers this versatility.”

By Steve Mullins. Fourteen million mobile users in the US – more than 6% of the total mobile audience – scanned a Quick Response code on their mobile device in June 2011, says comScore.

The research also found that a mobile scanning a QR code during the month was more likely to be male (61% of the code-scanning audience), skew toward ages 18 to 34 (54%) and have a household income of $100k or above (36%)

BMW has launched the Ultimate Drive, a mobile social app which allows users to not only discover the best roads to drive on in over 50 countries, but to rank and share those cool byways via Facebook, e-mail or other GPS devices.

Once the user has fired up the app, it displays nearby stretches of road which others have contributed as the best ones in the area.

By Maria Stadtmueller. Mobile brand HTC Corp has announced a strategic partnership and investment with headphone maker Beats Electronics, of Beats by Dr Dre audio experience fame.

By Mark Terry. Topshop will be the first brand to partner with gaming platform SCVNGR starting 5 September when it launches a campaign for students. Participants will be able to play a bespoke SCVNGR game via a smartphone app to complete fashion-themed challenges and get exclusive offers.

Anyone within a 500 metre radius of a UK Topshop store can play the game as long as they have downloaded the app for iPhone or Android. Players choose the rewards they want and then tackle the tasks required to accumulate the requisite points.