MobHappy

Presidential Debate - on Mobiles

Tonight's Bush/Kerry debate can be seen on your mobile, if you live in the US.

Something of an historic moment, I think you'd agree. And one that will so unimpressive to future generations as it'll be as normal as sending an SMS is to us.

I'm not sure what the audience will be when you factor it's only on Sprint and you need to subscribe to MobiTV, which costs $9.99 a month. But for that you get "ABC News Now", NBC Mobile, MSNBC, CNBC, Discovery Channel, College Sports Television, The Learning Channel, FOX Sports, Comedy Time and more (apparently). So a pretty good deal if you want TV on your mobile.

It's also interesting that they've adopted the "mobile" side of the great language divide, rather than the "cell phone" one.

Yet Another Java Portal

MTV have announced that they're the latest media owner to hop on the Java portal bandwagon, according to New Media Zero. This follows similar announcements from Celador, Endamol and The Sun. The portal will be available as a WAP site initially with Java expected to follow.

Stand by to repel a deluge of similar announcements.

I can warn them though. Developing java apps across a meaningful range of handsets is difficult and time consuming = very expensive.

And as I've written before, this isn't the Holy Grail everyone thinks it is.

As far as MTV is concerned though, I think that their brand has pretty good credentials for mobile:

The MTV brand is a perfect fit for developing a direct-to-consumer proposition,' he [MTV UK head of interactive Matthew Kershaw] said. 'Our forte is in not letting people get bored, offering entertainment for short attention. For instance, you can watch Jackass in a minute and a half.'

In fact, perhaps more than any other, they pioneered the whole grazing approach to entertainment - a never ending buffet of entertainment bite-size snacks.

YAKTI

TechDirt writes about another kid tracking scheme - or what I call a YAKTI (Yet Another Kid Tracking Idea).

These start-ups certainly seem to be flavour of the month and indeed, it's rumoured that it's another bandwagon the VC community is attempting to clamber on board.

I briefly flirted (for about 3 minutes) with a start-up along these lines in the aftermath of the high profile abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman back in August 2002. As a parent principally, I thought that it would be good to be able to keep a virtual eye on my kids like this.

But a few minutes thought exposes it as absurd.

Firstly, the mobile phone will be the first thing an abductor will get rid of. Actually, this is precisely what Ian Huntley, the murderer of the two girls, did in that case. Most people know about the possibility of tracking phones, in the same way as they know about tracing landlines.

Not wishing to be too gruesome, the same will apply to an embedded RFID tag in a kid's arm or leg. It (the RFID tag) will be removed somehow and dumped. Remember the scene in The Matrix where Neo has his RFID tag removed when traveling in back of the car?

Could an RFID tag be disguised somehow? This would be pretty difficult as it's designed to broadcast its location!

The other reason why you might want a kid tracking device is to make sure that they're where they should be (school, for instance) and they don't go where they shouldn't (perhaps a pub or staying over night with their boyf). A kind of parental Big Brother.

I mean Big Brother in the Orwellian 1984 observational sense. Not that they'll have develop scouse accents, loose 20 IQ points and be filmed faking sex on TV.

The trouble with this Geo-Fencing idea (buzz word du jour) is that it's pretty easy to fool too. It's simple - you leave your phone where you're meant to be or give it to a friend to look after and they stay where you should be.

Having said that, to a kid, having to go out without their phone is a pretty powerful incentive to stay where they say they'll be. Most simply can't operate socially without one thse days. But I fully expect that most kids who have something to hide will have a second phone for when they want to get up to naughtiness.

Given that the two main reasons for tracking kids are invalid, I can't see that these services will succeed.

In any event, call me quaint and old-fashioned, but how is a kid meant to grow a sense of responsibility and independence is she has to behave in a certain way because she's being watched 24/7?

I'm pleased to say that TechDirt agrees with this point of view and writes that relying on tracking schemes mean "that the kids aren't taught more important awareness/street smarts skills that would help them to avoid, prevent or escape any potential abduction".

As with most parenting issues, your best chance of success is good communication. Not that that's an easy answer either :-)

It seems that in this case, technology isn't solving any problem on the one hand and just providing another way (to paraphrase Larkin) for mums and dads to fuck up their kids, on the other.

Did you know...?

That until last year bringing your mobile to school in Lousiana was punishable by 30 days in gaol.

Fortunately, they're a little more relaxed these days.

Dumb Phone Demand

The Taipei Times reports today on a call for dumb phones by Asian Telecoms executives. Dumb phones are low cost basic models, which just offer voice and sms.

These phones would open up new markets of people who can't afford the fully featured phones that are now basically standard:

"To realize this untapped potential, there is a need for us to put the emphasis on developing low-cost technology for Asian markets, not just networks but also handsets," Lim [chief executive of SingTel Mobile] said, noting a "general reluctance" to make cheaper phones.

Sachet marketing (see here and here) is the new big thing. By repackaging/rethinking how you sell your products, you can leverage the huge volumes represented by the low income customers in developing countries.

Sachet marketing is a reference to Unilever's pioneering work in India with Sunsil and Lux shampoo, where the product was sold in affordable sachets, rather than bottles.

So can we see a return to the old models of yesteryear?

Actually, I noticed quite a few kids are using clanky old Nokia's these days. It's a retro cool thing in their case. The one pcitured is curently on eBay of £10 as I write.

Location Based Fishing!

Blister Entertainment have launched North America's first GPS-based cell phone game - Swordfish.

Players use satellite technology (GPS) to scan for and find virtual schools of swordfish. Once they've found a school of fish, they have to go to its physical location and then use their mobile phone like a fishing rod to try to hook and land the big one. They compete with other players to make the national high score leader board.

It's currently only available on Bell Mobility's network across Canada.

Location based gaming is still in its infancy, but I predict that it's going to be big and may well drive the initial take up of LBS. If operators can see real revenues, they may well change a little of their focus and start to make this thing happen.

If that scenario does pan out, we'll see developers take the market more seriously and drive some real innovation into the sector. Currently, the development community is being hindered rather than helped in their efforts to innovate in LBS.

It is always a source of awe and wonder to me that the operators make life so difficult for the drivers of innovation in the value chain. You'd have thought they'd be falling over themselves to give them practical and financial assistance.

Ogo O No

I was going to write a post slagging off the text and IM only Ogo from AT&T which seems to be reported everywhere yesterday and today. Yes, that's right, it doesn't have a voice call facility.

Hello ....(I was going to start) don't you guys realise that texting might be cool, but your killer app is still voice. Like, you know, that's where the majority of your money comes from?

But then Russell Beattie already wrote it, so go look there. I couldn't have put it better myself.

Clever chaps these Russell people, generally :-)

Russell

PS Didn't someone try an SMS only device in the UK about 3 years ago, that failed miserably?

Bluetooth over 100m

Electronics Talk reports that "SiGe Semiconductor has expanded its series of Bluetooth integrated circuits with a miniature power amplifier optimised for portable consumer electronics" and a lot of other techie stuff that I didn't understand :-)

Bottom line though, it means that Bluetooth can now work in a range of about 100 meters, rather than 10. This suddenly makes Bluetooth a very powerful tool, that can be used as much more than to back up PDA's and run mobile phone headsets.

[Note to Bluetooth headset manufacturers - why do you make your products so uncomfortable to wear? Hint: Things you wear are meant to be comfortable and preferably stylish. Given the choice, I'd choose comfort in preference to something that pulls out my hair and numbs my ear after 3 minutes, but looks cool].

There's been much talk, for instance, of social networking meeting mobile devices using location feeds. In other words, you can find people with similar interests at a conference, or a shared love of Italian food and long walks for dating. If iPods came with Bluetooth, you could even pair up with people with similar musical tastes and swap tracks you don't have.

Actually, I think there's also an angle in dating and musical tastes. Or how about promiscuity and dating? Your phone alerts you when someone with similar interests and one night stands are near :-)

The problem is that location feeds aren't accurate enough for this yet. But Bluetooth could be the answer, especially when it has a range this far.

But one of the problems with Bluetooth is that there's no revenue model inherent in the protocol. Download a file or ringtone and the operator takes a cut of data revenue. With Bluetooth, it's free, so it could potentially cannibalise a huge amount of data revenues.

Am I exagerating? I don't think so actually. If I want to send you a photo and I know I'm going to see you in an hour or so, will I pay or wait until then? I think you'd find that most people would wait. Or use Courier File Swapping.

Of course this also raises the horrid spectre of BlueSpam, pioneered by The Economist already.

Pic shows a monument being unveiled to Harald Bluetooth, who united Denmark and Norway.

Mobile --> TV

The Hindustani Times reports that Hutch TV has launched "a multi-channel, TV-on-Mobile service, accessible over its EDGE-enabled network".

13 different channel are offered "ranging from news and current affairs to business, sports, fashion, travel and entertainment" and can be viewed on Hutchison and Orange networks.

Looks like we're going to get some answers pretty soon to the question "Do people want TV on their mobile?"

Obviously, the answers won't be definitive yet, as even if people don't watch, it doesn't mean it won't succeed eventually. Price, quality and content are just some of the variables determining success.

I favour the "don't want" camp unless the content is reformatted into sushi-TV or originated with mobile viewing in mind.

Cleanliness is next to Mobileness

Meet Chibi Groomy cunningly disguised as a cute cuddly key ring.

But his little-wittle chamois tummy-wummy is designed to clean small screens like mobiles and PDA's.

Spotted on Pop Gadget.

AOL Moves to Mobile

AOL is trying to get itself as the Instant Messenger programme of choice on the mobile phone.

CNet reports

The AOL Mobile Developer program, announced Monday, is meant to reduce the time manufacturers spend creating AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) software for their handsets, a spokeswoman said. Typically, handset makers and cell phone service providers must work one-on-one with AOL, which is a time-consuming process.

AOL says it also wants to ensure that AIM software on different manufacturers' cell phones is compatible, the spokeswoman said. To do so, the company based its new developer program on a set of mobile messaging standards created by the Open Mobile Alliance, which promulgates interoperability specifications for mobile devices.

Apparently, Motorola, LG Electronics, Samsung Telecommunications America and Siemens have already made about 20 phones under the programme. And Nokia and SE "likely candidates" to sign up.

Two things puzzle:

1. Why isn't the handset industry interested in creating its own platform?

Sure, it makes sense that IM on your phone can talk to IM on your PC. And AOL does still have an awful lot of subscribers that can be converted from PC to mobile.

But AOL is also the IM which refuses to be compatible with everyone else's (Yahoo, Hotmail etc).

Why not partner with Yahoo - then everyone could talk to everyone else, apart from AOL users.

2. Why is Microsoft apparently letting this happen, without a fight?

Allowing AOL to dominate mobile IM is potentially very very damaging for Windows Messenger, especially if AOL won't let people outside its own messaging app. It means that you'll have to have an AOL account on your PC to use IM on your phone.

I appreciate that the handset guys wouldn't want Microsoft to get their IM platform on the phone, by the way :-) But I wonder how seriously they're trying?

The piece ends with a few interesting stats:

U.S. cell phone carriers say a rather paltry 18 million instant messages are sent each day over their networks--on personal computers, more than 1 billion messages are sent daily via AIM alone.

There is plenty of room for growth. Just 20 percent of all instant-messaging users send a mobile message at least once a week.

18 million may be small in comparison with PC messaging or SMS. But it's a significant slug of volume in these early days. And IM has that potential killer app for mobiles - presence. As any IM user knows, this allows you to tell people before they try to contact you (by IM or other means) what you're doing and if you can be interrupted.

That's going to take a hell of a lot of stress away from the mobile.

That's a Tree??

There's an unfortunate side effect of mobile phones. And I don't mean the "Yes, I'm on a train" conversations we overhear everyday.

Mobile phones mean that we need mobile phone masts.

These used to be ugly things that looked just like, well...mobile phone masts. But now they're ugly things that look like, well.... mobile phone masts badly disguised as trees and stuff. It's like an elephant hiding at the beach by wearing a pair of sunglasses.

And we go around pretending that they are actually trees.

And of course, we now have a web site entirely devoted to these bogus bushes (no political comment intended) at FraudFrond.com.

There are 130,000 cel towers in the USA alone. A whopping 25% of these are "stealth" towers -- i.e. Lying Lumber -- so that's over 32,000 fake trees.

How many can you find?

Send us a pic of your favorite tower, and we'll send you a wooden nickel! (Get the pun? I love puns you have to point out.) (Ps: The above is a lie: we won't actually send you a wooden nickel. They're probably really expensive.) (But we would be excited to see pics of towers. We'll post them on * FraudFrond Spotter's page.) And please send us any RARE finds. (Fake weeping willow?)

Makes you SPIT

First there was Spam, then Spim (unsolicited messages via Instant Messenger) and the next big thing is Spit - messages via Internet Telephony, so says SlashDot about this New Scientist article.

Qovia, based in Frederick, Maryland, have recently filed two patent applications for technology to thwart spit.

Internet telephony involves making phone calls using the internet instead of traditional phone lines. Also known as voice-over IP (VoIP), it is rapidly rising in popularity thanks to the fact that internet connections are becoming faster, and because it is cheap - it avoids the taxes levied on landline calls.

VoIP uses internet protocols to send information, meaning one message can easily be sent to thousands of recipients. Qovia thinks this means the technology is likely to appeal to spammers. The company ran a simulation showing that a computer could be programmed to send 1000 messages per minute over VoIP.

Winn Schwartau, an electronic security consultant for InterPact in Seminole, Florida, warns that our voice-mail boxes could become clogged with salacious and bogus advertising messages, just like our email inboxes are today. And distributed denial-of-service attacks launched by armies of automated “spam-bots” could tie up targeted customers’ phone lines constantly, he says.

And you thought that the odd call from a conservatory salesman was bad.

And that's not the end of the matter. VOIP can also be used to spread viruses. O brave new world.

Russell

PS If you're wondering why I've got an image of a scruffy dog to illustrate this, that is the legendary Spit the Dog. The puppet was the side kick of Bob Carolgees, star of UK kid's TV back in the 70's. The basic idea is that Bob would ask spit a question. Then Spit would err....spit. You had to have been there :-)

The heartless bastard sold the little fella off earlier this year to publicise his new web site which sells candles. Well, I'm not giving you a link you dog seller, you.

Voice Controlled Phones

Soon we'll be able to forget fiddly mobile controls and tiny keyboards and control our phones by voice commands. Hurray and we all live happily ever after!

At least that's the premise at the start of an article at Technology Review. But then as you read on, it's full of caveats like "someday soon you may also find yourself dictating a text message into your phone" and "eventually mean the end of pecking at keyboards."

And you realise we heard the same thing in the early 90's about speech recognition with PC's. I might be wrong, but it's still only a tiny market.

I suspect that the same might be the case here. I think better mobile keyboards might be the answer in the shorter term like this.

Checking out Tom Hume's blog I see he's making much the same point, but from a slightly more informed technical stand point :-)

Tom also asks "What would the ability to easily enter larger volumes of text add to our experience of using mobiles?..."

Well, if the market goes the way I think it will, this is actually very important. If we can find a way of inputting large amounts of our own data (call it "typing" for convenience) the mobile will be transformed into a kind of micro PC. It'll do all the mobile stuff. And if you dock it into a keyboard/monitor combo you'll be able to blog, create word processing, spreadsheets and presentations on it.

Most of this can be stored off-device and accessed anywhere. The real work will be done by huge central servers. Think BlogLines, Google and Flickr.

That's the future I think.

Locative Media

There's an amazing list of Locative Media initiatives at yproductions - so called after one of my favourite quotes. "When you come to a Y in the road, take it." Yogi Berra. A great call for action, worthy of Tom Peters himself.

The list includes many old faves like Uncle Roy All Around You and PacManhattan. But also loads I've never come across.

Many are kooky art projects (which I love) and many are bids for more mainstream success.

There's about a day's worth of material here. Enjoy.

3G - It's Big in Japan

It's difficult to get a true picture of the Japanese mobile market. It's particularly important for mobile as it was the first to launch 3G and is still one of the only major 3G successes to date.

I've been reading a trial copy of "3G success in Japan: Waves of Disruptive Innovation" by Gerhard Fasol, PhD. You can download a copy yourself if you click here (click on the "Try" button).

One has to be careful translating the Japanese experience wholesale to other markets. It's not the same at all (see pic of loo paper vending machines, by way of illustration) - but many of their experiences ring true from what's happened so far in the UK.

We believe that one of the reasons for the success of 3G in Japan was, that 3G was not introduced as “Premium Services” for VIP customers at high fee levels, but on the contrary, 3G services in Japan are introduced in many aspects as a discount service, bottom up. In our direct observation 3G achieved mainstream breakthrough from Spring 2003 onward: not with top paying business users, but with young people, high-school students at discount fees.

This is certainly true of 3's experience - it's only when they dropped the price that things started to take off. Having said that, this also coincided with service improvements and handsets that looked OK. There's also a potential problem in that if you build your service on a price platform, others can undercut you and it's going to bugger your ARPU projections.

One area 3 might have learned lessons from however is this:

You may find several surprising facts about 3G’s success in Japan. One of these facts is, that the arguable most rapid and successful introduction of 3G was and still is without video telephony services.

I've long argued that this is a service most consumers don't want anyway, so I can't say I'm remotely surprised. But in any event, it would make sense to delay launching this type of service until phase 2. You need a critical mass of people who are able to call each other for this kind of thing to work. Otherwise you're gagging to video call someone (let's assume) and you can't.

Despite Vodafone's dominance elsewhere, they have been singularly unsuccessful in Japan, accounting for less than 1% of total 3G subscribers. This has partly been their inability to get customers to trade up. But it could be yet another example of the Law of Leadership I wrote about earlier.

As far as the future is concerned, stand by for some huge disruption:

Second wave of disruptive innovation: some carriers are preparing now to introduce TD-SCDMA in Japan from 2005 which was developed in China. This could mean, that Chinese mobile phones can be used in Japan and vice-versa, creating a combined China+Japan market, which would be truly disruptive and could bring spectacular new developments.

It looks like a great report if you want more info on the Japanese 3G market and reasonably priced at Euro 412.

Come on Barbie, Let's Go Mobile

Mattel in India have launched a Barbie doll, impeccably dressed as always, but also with her own must-have accessory - a mobile phone.

But this is no toy - the mobile works. Barbie's owners can Instant Message Barbie and friends who have a Barbie too. Plus the look of the phone can be changed to match her clothes. It's priced at R 1199 (USD 26), according to The Statesman.

Whatever next - a phone for dogs? Ahh, we had that last week.

Caveat - I can't find any corroboration of this, but if it isn't true now, it will be shortly.

My best idea for Barbie was producing clothes for kids, so that they could dress like her. Mattel didn't think kids would like this - they were joking, right? Now as a parent, I'm glad it never happened. Don't tell her I wrote this, but Barbie is a bit errr...tarty in her dress sense and I wouldn't like my kids copying her in quite that way.

O2's 3G Plans

Al Ries and Jack Trout's seminal book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" is a great and very readable book - for marketers and non-marketers alike. It's short and doesn't fall too deeply into the "Who Moved my Cheese" trap of over-simplification.

Their first immutable law is best demonstrated by the question; Who was the first person to fly the Atlantic, solo?

Most of you probably know it was Lindbergh.

So, who was the second? A chap called Bert Hinkler..... apparently. Indeed, even detailed biographies of the man fail to recall this feat, focusing on his achievement of the first solo flight from Australia to Britain.

So their law is: The Law of Leadership "It's better to be first than it is to be better".

I was reminded of this with today's announcement of O2's 3G plans in the UK. Silicon.com reports

Dave McGlade, O2 UK CEO, said in a statement: "O2 understands that in mobile it's not about being first to market but delivering on customer service promises... As an industry we have a track record of hyping technology before it is ready. Instead we should be launching it only when it has the right customer experience. At O2 we are committed to breaking this cycle."

It seems that O2's plans for now are restricted to a combined wireless offering called O2 Connection Manager. It brings together GPRS (sometimes called 2.5G), 3G and wireless LAN connectivity, through deals with The Cloud and BT Openzone.

No plans it seems to rival Vodafone's 10 handset mega-launch in November.

Actually, this announcement smacks far more of face-saving post-rationalisation for being beaten off the blocks by the rampant Vodafone - again. I think they just haven't got a product ready to launch.

Anyway, back to the guru's: "in spite of the evident superiority of the Lindbergh approach, most companies go the Hinkler route. They wait until the market develops. Then they jump in with a better product..."

There are examples galore, from the world of technology and non-technology alike. The classic one is obviously Coke, who was first to launch and still brand leader, despite Pepsi being "better" (in taste tests anyway).

In fact, think any category and you'll usually find this applies. Have a guess at the first college to be founded in America. The leading one - Harvard. The second? The College of William and Mary, an excellent institution, I'm sure, but not especially famous nor could it be described as "leading".

Think Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile - who was the second person to run it?

Of course, there are other laws and I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule. But generally, you should rush your product to market, because being second or third is invariably the wrong approach. When it comes to launches, 80% of the way there is good enough. Hell, if it works for Microsoft.....:-)

In fact, there's a much better example closer to home to illustrate this whole point. Guess who the leading brand in mobile is in the UK? It's Vodafone, in case you don't have the figures handy.

Guess who was first to launch a network in 1984? Yup - Vodafone again.

Objects of Pity

The Idaho Statesman has a nice anecdotal round up of how central the mobile phone suddenly seems to have become in the US.

Danielle Oremus lives the angst of being 15 years old and not having a cell phone.

"People are kind of like 'Whoa, I'm sorry,' when I tell them," said Oremus. "You get pity."

The cellular-less Timberline High School sophomore is a rarity among her peers. When a group of eight or so teens were approached and asked if they had cell phones, there was a mad scramble for their backpacks to show off their phones. Only one of those eight didn't have a phone.

This is all the more telling as we're talking about Idaho here, not hip New York or LA.

Meanwhile the caption to the pic at the top is "Bryanna Gates, 15, answers her phone moments before realizing friends Lexxie Heimer, 15, and Jordan Langworthy, 15, were calling her from just a few feet away during lunch break at Timberline High."

It's happened to us all. But there should be a name for this. How about a Close Call?

Location Based Insensitivity

What is it with people who work in Location Based Services? Either they're insensitive, lack any form of emotional intelligence or they're just plain stupid. You decide.

First we have Aligo CEO Robert Smith jumping in with his size 9's, narrowly managing to avoid suggesting beating employees who aren't where they should be. Then we have the sickly named TeenArriveAlive which in case you missed their message, means that if you put one of their stickers on your car and pay $10 a month, your kid won't be killed while driving - talk about attempted emotional blackmail.

Now we have Gizmodo reporting on a sweet little quote from cuddly Xora CEO Sanjay Shirole. Good ole Sanjay says about employees being not where they're meant to be:

There's no electro shock--yet,"

As Gizmodo says:

The only thing classier than creating a technology that will eventually be used to tie workers into virtual corrals - I'm not joking, it's in the article; called "geofences" - is to make a joke about using the system to abuse workers. Hilarious!

Don't get me wrong - LBS tracking can make businesses much more efficient in all sorts of ways. But checking up on employees isn't the USP of these services. And any company planning to use them to spy on employees has de facto got itself a serious staff problem.

LBS Analysis

Frost & Sullivan, John Younghusband, analyst gave a telephone briefing on the state of the Location Based Services market yesterday.

You can listen to a recording and see the slides here.

John's presentation outlines why LBS, despite its early promise just doesn't seem to be happening. This is partly poor technology (inaccurate and clunky) and partly poor content.

Operators especially haven't got behind LBS, focusing their efforts on other forms of content (ringtones and the like). Plus, they've essentially frozen out third party developers (traditionally the source of innovation in this market) by a combination of pricing and making it difficult to get access to location feeds in the first place.

Frost are foresting a market worth just £200 million by 2007, which is practically insignificant in the context of the overall industry.

But it's only going to happen if the operators get behind it at some point. And it's suggested that privacy concerns might be holding them back.

Having said that, Directive E911 in the US means that the US has the potential to lead the market for LBS, as they're much further ahead.

Oktoberfest

I have a touch of beer 'flu today as I was out last night at Oktoberfest - or Wiesn, as locals call it. And yes, I've gone native enough to don lederhosen.

While I've obviously heard about this event, it's the first time I've been and it really is something you have to experience.

There's 14 "tents" to choose from to drink your beer in. But a tent is like calling Everest a hill - each holds about 6,000 people. Each tent had its own character - I was at Augustiner-Festhalle as a guest if Hillert & Co, a much talented local advertising agency.

This tent has a reputation for being a little quiet (see photos). Which begs the question, what are the noisy ones like? There's something very pagan about the whole thing - an orgy of friendly drunkenness, singing and generally a fantastically debauched atmosphere.

Great beer, great company (having to speak English to me after a few mass of beer is truly a test of lingual competency), great music (which won't travel!) and great fun.

You really must come next year!

Sex and Drugs and Mobile Phones

The Streets' new video has been banned from just about everywhere. Even the former wild-child-turned-boring-old-granny MTV has relegated it to a post 11 pm slot. You can download it here if you want to see what the fuss is about.

Apart from proposing that drugs are pretty endemic in youth culture (not really news) it's interesting, as a central theme is....the mobile phone. The opening scene shows the hero and girlf getting cut off on their mobile and exchanging text messages to arrange to meet up. Then he has to go to the door in the club so he can get "bars on my phone". And then he wonders why she doesn't "text me when they're near".

Great song, cool vid.

Awesome Wave

Nothing to do with mobile - well, I guess the guy is moving!

Check out this truly awesome surfing feat on this gigantic wave, spotted on Tom Hume's blog.

Mobiles are GOOD 4 Kids

Talk about going out on a limb - this guy's fallen off the end of the branch.

David Butler, chief executive of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said in a speech at the LibDem Conference that he did not believe handsets posed a risk to children by heating up their brains. "From a perspective of pupil performance, it can enhance things, because that heating effect actually improves the neuron transfers between neural pathways, and therefore your thinking ability goes up," he apparently said.

Strangely, the fringe meeting was sponsored by.....O2. Must be some kind of coincidence.

Mr Butler claims he was briefed on this by a "British Professor" but declined to name this chap.

Mr Butler then left for home planning to spend the evening heating his children's heads with a blow torch. Actually I made the last bit up :-)

Source: The Scotsman.

Lip Reading Phone

How fiendishly clever.

Engadget reports that an Israeli company

has developed a $200 cellphone for the lip-reading deaf; the caller’s voice is electronically mimed by a character on screen, whose lips can be read.

The downside might be that this could threaten the jobs of a whole bunch of professional hearing signers who translate for the deaf everyday in schools, colleges and on TV, to name a few.

Woman Thwarts Attacker with her Mobile

WisTV reports that a Connecticut woman used her mobile phone to help catch a sexual predator:

Hartford Police arrested 25-year-old Kywan Gunn on Tuesday. They say a woman used her camera phone to take a picture of Gunn's car, then sent the photo to police. She allegedly recognized him as the man who attacked her in a residential area just days earlier.

He's currently on bail for $1 million.

Sun with New Pricing Model

It's interesting that Jonathan Schwartz's Blog scooped Sun's PR people by a day when he revealed the launch of Sun's new Pay As You Go pricing for its supercomputing.

Jonathan is Sun's CEO, by the way, not some investigative journalist. Is this a sign that blogging has come of age?

Create your own Music Festival

Ever wanted to run your own Music Festival? - well now you can with Lynx.

You've got a budget, you choose the food, drink, staff and DJ's and open the gates. Will you throw a great party or go bust?

Pretty cool!

By the way, I have no connection with this campaign, whatsoever - just in case you wondered.

Mobile and MP3 - with Lyrics!

Sometimes I'm genuinely flummoxed in a "wow, I'm really living in the future kind of way. Picture Phoning has a piece about new model mobiles in Korea. One of them has "mobile caption service which displays lyrics of the song played on MP3 phones in real time."

How cool is that?

And something for the techies one phone has a "3-megapixel camera" as well as a TV receiver.

Vodafone's 3G

So, the mighty Vodafone has announced a launch date for 3G in the UK, according to Tech Digest. November 1st is the day - in time for the Christmas rush.

If I was a rival operator, I think I'd be getting pissed off at always watching Vodafone romp home first.

They're being cagey with the launch plans though. They'll have a range of 10 handsets (though not necessarily from Day 1). But nothing on the launch, marketing or positioning plans.

I wonder if they'll make the same mistake as 3 and major on video calling? But then launching by emphasising your Achilles Heel (no one to call) isn't terribly clever.

I also wonder if Vodafone and 3 will be able to video call each other, out of interest?

From their earlier foray into 3G (with a PC data card) I'd say that email on the move might be high on their agenda. It damn well should be anyway.

Mobile Content Rant

I picked up this inspired little rant by Martin Tobias on Paid Content, on Tom Hume's Blog.

Martin's a VC and successful entrepreneur and obviously "gets" the mobile thing too. I told you there were some good VC's :-)

I have a real problem with the current myopic fascination that mobile content companies have of trying to get me to "subscribe" or pay per XXXX (use, download, play, etc.) for content created by someone else. I am not aching to pay more monthly bills. I HATE monthly subscriptions. There are a million ways for me to feed my hyper American consumerist ego to have more "stuff", is that really the only promise of mobile devices? To sell me more stuff? And digital stuff at that on a small screen and two small ear buds?

Why did I buy the phone in the first place? To call people. To make connections with family, friends and business associates. Why not pivot products and services around those axis? The best devices today are not just content consumers, they can be content creators. Are name brand music talent the only people capable of making ring tones?

My ringtone is a voice recording of my daughter saying "pick up the phone dada". Would it be valuable to her grandparents to have a similar ring? What about a service that changed a grandparents ring tone through all their children and grandchildren over time? Why can't I publish ring tones I create on my phone or PC and get paid for them? I believe mobile content creators need to start considering the phone as both a consumption and creation platform, not just a POS terminal.

Communication is what the mobile is about - otherwise called P2P. It's always P2P that turns into the 800lb gorilla stomping around the block. Think SMS, voice calls, Hotmail, email, eBay, file share and I think Flickr might be one too.

Having said that, let's not forget the sheer size of the paid for content market. Here's some stats which will boggle your mind, if you haven't looked at them lately (from Fasol Blog):

Global mobile phone ring tone market (source: Consect LLC, WSJ) in 2004:

W Europe: US$ 1.5 billion (37.5%)
Japan: US$ 1.0 billion (24.0%)
Korea: US$ 0.5 billion (12.5%)
US: US$ 0.3 billion (7.5%)
ROW: US$ 0.7 billion (17.5%)

How can I help You?

This blog is beginning to attract a significant number of readers now - which I'm really pleased with. I hope you like what I'm writing.

If you're in the mobile business (or thinking about going into it) please feel free to ask for help or my opinion or anything you want really - publically or privately. My email address is

russell at mobhappy.com

Or leave a comment.

I know a lot of people in mobile who might be useful to you and have been in the business since the early days of SMS taking off. Just give me a shout if you'd like something - apart from money :-)

Equally, if you want something publicised within the industry or have a juicy job you want to tell people about, let me know. I'm not going to promise that I'll feature it, but if I think it'll be interesting to everyone else, I almost certainly will.

And how can you reciprocate by helping me. Well, I'll answer that with a story.

One of the ex-editors of GQ in the UK, was a larger than life character who lived fast and did die young (he OD'd on Coke).

Hoverer, during his tenure, it was also his habit to take advantage of his position and sleep with young female members of his team.

In one such post-coital moment, one of these young ladies was heaping praise on his prowess and making suitably appreciative noises. Our editor simply quipped:

"Don't yell me - tell your friends."

So if you know someone who's interested in the mobile space, drop them an email and tell them they're missing out :-)

Bad Breath Phone

According to Reuters, Siemens are launching a phone that can detect and alert you when you have bad breath or "if [you] are giving off offensive smells".

Personally, I think that the announcement is timed to coincide with the start of Oktoberfest (or Wiesn, as we lederhosen wearing locals call it) is no accident. For those of you who don't know, Wiesn is when Germans really let their hair down for a couple of weeks. And I mean really.

The party attracts about 6 millions visitors who come to sit in huge tents, drink liters of beer (or mass, as they're called), eat fatty pig and pretzels, slap thighs, sing, get drunk and use their special phones to check their breath the next morning.

Well, they will now anyway.

Seriously though, I can see this kind of thing being a surprisingly big hit.

MMS is (still) Dying

After my blog on Mobitopia and expanded here as more evidence came to light, the legendary wireless writer, Eric Lin, wrote one on The Feature. Check it out.

Eric comes to very similar conclusions to me, albeit from slightly different angles, even linking up my article and the other two as I had. Thereby proving, beyond all reasonable doubt, that we must be right :-)

Seriously, lack of feedback is the writer's curse and it's easy to off in the wrong direction sometimes. So it's very flattering that someone with Eric's experience and perception agrees with an argment you're making.

Stelios - One Trick Pony?

Is it me, or does it seem that good ole millionaire next door Stelios launches a new venture every month, which then seem to disappear without trace?

We covered his Virtual Mobile Network Operator launch in June. But I can remember (off the top of my head) hotels, cinemas, Internet cafe's (still going I think, but still loss making, allegedly), cruises and coaches.

Apart from the airline, I'd be genuinely interested if anything else has succeeded - or is it too early? This isn't really as critical as it might sound. As an entrepreneur, you can never enjoy real success until you've experienced failure, at some level.

And EasyJet was a huge achievement, despite being handed the start-up funds by Dad. While this route to funding is denied to most of us, no start up on whatever scale is ever errr...easy and he's obviously a canny business man.

Why no repeat though? He's obviously more a "big picture" kind of guy than a hands-on grafting execution merchant. So has he lost the execution guys who made EasyJet happen, or what?

Anyway, another new new venture. Tech Digest reports that he's now going head to head with iTunes, by joint venturing with Wippit. Along with Yahoo, Microsoft and a host of others who have noted Apple's success.

The company plans some downloads as cheap as 25p, so no prizes for guessing the strategy or the name of the new company. Oh ok, here's a clue E _ _ _ Music.

Announcement: I'm not going to be launching a rival to iTunes.

Unsolicited SMS is Bad

Brand Republic reports via Textually on a blindingly obvious piece of research by Cable & Wireless.

"Among the key findings were that unsolicited text messages were more than twice as likely to irritate their recipients than outbound telemarketing if received outside of working hours."

I suppose it needs to be said if some marketers don't understand this. But where do they practice their marketing art? In a hole in the ground with no reading material, no access to customers or to the web? Can't they even ask themselves how they'd like to be spammed?

Next week's research comes from the European Pedestrian's Association. Apparently, most pedestrians don't like being run over. Drivers - take note if you don't want go upsetting them.

Mobile dating in Japan

Ketai Log is "an occasional Web diary by a group of Tokyo college students who are researching the changing role of cell phones -- keitai -- in Japanese society". This extract is by Hiroki "Azzie" Azuma on go-kon, or matchmaking parties.

In a go-kon, which typically takes place in a bar or similar spot, a group of males sits in front of females, then each person whispers to the next person about which guy or girl is cute or hot. Under the table, they type letters on their keitai and show the message to their neighbor, but they don't send it. A message would read something like, "I think Yumi at the left is hot, so don't get your hands on her," or "Today's go-kon sucks." It's like a confidential conference. Then, if you get along with someone, you might exchange each other's number, or you could take her home. Or sometimes, you would be careful not to exchange numbers. The game is difficult, but interesting.

I find a couple of things are fascinating about this.

Firstly, they're using their phones to write and communicate messages, but not send them. A kind of local scribble pad, if you like.

Secondly, note that they're doing this under the table while flirting, whispering and generally interacting. In other words, without even thinking about it, so deeply ingrained is text messaging into their culture.

I know kids can do this all over the world. But it never ceases to amaze an old fart like me with giant thumbs, how fluent and fluid this form of communication has become.

Finally - why no RSS links guys?

Tivo for Spoken Word

Being only slightly xenophobic, German radio is shite. Since I moved here 6 months ago, the one thing I miss is having good old BBC Radio 4 on in the background. It really is the jewel in the BBC embarrassingly rich crown of broadcasting excellence.

All is not lost though, as I can listen to Radio 4 on the web and don't have to listen to an endless loop of the Smurfs and Nina and her red balloons on Bayern 3.

Anyway, as a spoken word freak, I love speech radio, talking books, news and anything else I can get my hands on. So I really, really welcome the idea behind iPodder as featured on Poynter Online.

iPodder is an application that uses RSS to determine when a new MP3 is available, then downloads the MP3 and places it on your portable audio device. Essentially, it is a Tivo for Internet radio shows.

I love the Tivo analogy.

I've written before about everyone having their own personalised radio station. This brings an offline version to us all, as well - and it's here now.

I think Internet radio could be one of those paradigm things we used to read about.

Picture shows Alistair Cooke who died last year. Possibly the greatest spoken word broadcaster the world has ever seen - or will see again. You can listen to some of his historical broadcasts in the BBC archive.

Carnival of the Capitalists

The latest Carnival of the Capitalists is up - an eclectic mix of the best blogs of the week. Check it out at Voluntary Xchange.

Muddlethink at The Sun

Poynter Online reports that The Sun, the UK's largest newspaper is to scale back its web presence, to improve its hard copy circulation.

As reported by newsletter e-consultancy, managers at the newspaper conducted a survey that discovered the paper was losing about 90,000 readers a day to its website, which offers the same content as the paper but for free.

Mike Butcher (who also blogs at mbites) writes

that in the pure entertainment field where The Sun operates, online readers have little reason to buy the newspaper after having checked the website.

I think what The Sun is apprently missing here is what might be called a Publishing Strategy.

In other words, what exactly are the roles and objectives of the online and hard copy publications in the portfolio?

Clearly, both can sell advertising and it's naive to think that those 90,000 "missing" readers will go straight back to buying the hard copy. So those eyeballs will go elsewhere and a potential revenue stream is lost.

But more importantly, what should the web site actually be doing? Well, a number of things really, to complement the hard copy, not compete.

Firstly, it should be used to sample the hard copy and to tease the reader into splashing out real money. This means re-writing and re-presenting copy, rather than simply putting the same content online.

Secondly, it should be doing things that hard copy publishing isn't so good at. This revolves round creating community and interaction with its readership, to tie them into the brand.

But, here's a theory. Maybe, just maybe, they know all this - they're not stupid, though Mr Murdoch is known to be anti-new media. Could it be that they intend to replace the web site with a revenue generative J2ME portal they announced a few days ago. After all, while the web is free, people have been shown to pay for mobile content.

Actually, I doubt that this is the case though. I think the problem is that they're looking for black and white solutions to very subtle marketing issues.

And thinking about it, I bet the J2ME initiative disappears quietly in the few month's time too.

In any event, the web grows stronger every day, while hard copy newspaper publishing is in long term decline and has been a long time before the web started to encroach. So to turn away from the future, just because it's hard, seems to be like being in denial.

The web isn't going to go away just because The Sun can't crack it. If anything, it'll accelerate The Sun's decline.

MMS's Slow Death

Last week I made my maiden Blog on Mobitopia, a loose collective of cool minds from the mobile world. You can read it here. [I've also pasted it in at the bottom of this article, for my future reference.]

The subject I was addressing was why MMS still isn't taking off. And today, as if it were needed, even more evidence comes out.

The Inquirer reports (via Textually) on a survey conducted by Continental Research. It makes grim reading.

-- 36 per cent of cameraphone users have never sent a photo message (MMS) compared to 27 per cent in 2003.

-- Plus the average number of messages sent per month per user has dropped from 6.1 to 3.7 messages. This is against a background of 7.5 million cameraphone users against 3.5 million in 2003.

This means that in real terms the number of MMS messages sent has risen to only 27.7 million per month compared to 21.3 million.

As I said in my Mobitopia blog, part of the problem lies with education.

Only 11 per cent of handset owners regard themselves as technologically savvy while nearly one third (29 per cent) are technophobes who shy away from the latest innovations.

This is in the context that (as every technical help desk jockey knows) lay people always over-estimate their tech skills.

Hmm. They gotta do something different, as what they've done to date just isn't working.

UPDATE: In the Mobitopia blog, I made the point that the operators need to look at classic trial mechanics to get people to start using MMS - and that bundling pricing was the wrong marketing technique for trial.

Textually reports today (what would we do without it?) an article in Australian IT.

Vodafone in Oz has increased use of MMS by 1000% (admittedly a very small base) by allowing "their customers to send pictures over their network for free."

In other words, by using a classic trial mechanism.

A spokesperson said:

"We recognise that this is a new technology, and at 75c a message, some people may be too worried about making a mistake," she says.

"Offering free picture messaging is intended to create a comfort zone, to make PXT just a normal part of mobile phone use. "

Admittedly, this is not the most sophisticated trial mechanic in the marketing manual and it may cause problems down the line, when they attempt to start charging for an hitherto free service. But it's certainly one way of encouraging trial of a new and untested service.

Mobitopia article:

Mobitopia's latest writer - so new we haven't even sorted out his account yet - Russell Buckley of the Mobile-Weblog has contributed the following:

Textually writes about a report published by IT Analysis.

It makes grim reading and yet again highlights that MMS just isn't happening, with 99% of data revenues coming from plain old text messaging.

This isn't like WAP, over-hyped and derided on launch, but sneaks up while no one's looking to achieve mass usage - 14 billion page impressions in 2004 are now expected. MMS just isn't gaining any kind of traction.

We're told that interoperability issues were solved last Spring (appallingly and ridiculously late, but let's not harp on). Having said that, I wouldn't be remotely confident of an MMS arriving and if the message was mission critical, I'd confirm by another means too. But maybe that's quaint and old-fashioned.

You can now purchase bundles of MMS, which brings the cost down. But bundling assumes that your audience know what it's buying. In other words if a guy on the street comes up and offers me a bargain price for Hoojamas, am I going to take him up on that if I don't know what they are?

Bundling is completely the wrong marketing technique if you want to encourage trial. It's the right one to use if you already have an established base of users, who you want to encourage to use more. Trial mechanics are different kettle of fish altogether.

We also have two more core problems though:

1. OOB

Handsets must work Out Of the Box. Asking non-technical customers (99.9999% of them) to change settings on handsets is simply not realistic. And why should they change the settings if they don't even know if they want to use the Hoojamas in the first place?

The whole industry needs to get serious about this issue - retailers, operators and manufacturers. Because it's not going to get better without this basic idea being implemented.

Even if they need to do something as drastic as send someone around to everyone purchasing a new phone, it needs sorting. In reality though, there's less expensive solutions to making devices work OOB and to educate users.
2. Usability.

Sure, handsets need to be used easily - that's pretty basic. If I want to send an MMS, it needs to work intuitively and elegantly. But, actually handset interfaces are pretty good these days (generally) and that's not what I'm talking about in this context.

What I mean is that without some tools, MMS's (over and above a simple snapshot) are hard to compose, from an artistic point of view and even if you have the aptitude, they'll require much emotional and artistic investment. It's a bit like inventing a service for people to send each other jokes. It's a nice idea, but not many people can think up jokes, so you'd need to give them some material, templates and guidance.

It's the same with MMS and though we know people invest a lot in time and emotion in composing SMS, introducing images and sound into the equation makes it intimidating unless you've got an artistic bent.

As a side issue, such tools, templates and content should be provided for free by operators, at least in the short term. Instead, they provide over-priced content, which is difficult to navigate and then charge you again for sending it. It's a bit like a restaurant charging you extra to use the cutlery.

Personally, I'd also look at employing a bunch of witty creative types to create MMS's which have to chance to go "viral" - or be passed on to friends and friends of friends. We've seen this happen with email and SMS and it'll happen with MMS, given the right material. Maybe, new material can be released to the right individuals with cool credentials every week, so they can be the first to impress their mates. Far fetched? It works for these guys with email - if you can pass their cool test first.

Finally, a new problem on the horizon, as if it wasn't bad enough already. There's apparently an issue with WYSIWTG (What You Send Isn't What They Get) with handsets. So the pic you're sending isn't what your recipient actually sees. Or, the images that "networks deliver don't match the megapixel images that users think they're sending".

Oh dear. That doesn't make it any easier.

Russell Buckley

Mobile Study Buddy

Smart Mobs has a piece from the Korean Times about exam revision material being published via mobile devices:

Koreaedu, the nation’s leading online education firm, will launch services providing lectures via personal multimedia player (PMP) through a business alliance with Iriver.

The mobility-specific educational services will start on Sept. 22, when Iriver, the sales unit of local MP3 maker ReignCom, releases the PMP-100 in stores.

Koreaedu will offer lessons from 12 top lecturers for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), and students can download them free of charge with a PMP-100.

The device itself:

The PMP-100 is equipped with a 3.5-inch liquid crystal display monitor and storage capacity of 20-40 gigabytes, which can store up to 100 hour-long lectures.

The gadget is an all-in-one handheld device, which allows users to view full-motion video, listen to MP3 music, record voice messages in real time, view still images and play games.

It makes Duke's iPod offer look positively 20th Century.

Video Calling is Good

OK, mea culpa. I've scoffed at the idea of video calling in the past.

But it seems that this 3G application does have an audience who value it, after all - deaf people.

Tech Digest reports that 3 in Sweden has cracked this niche market:

Apparently, the company has an awful lot of deaf customers, thanks to the opportunity video calls give those with hearing impairments to use sign language over the phone. Because of this, the company has just launched a special web page with sign language pages (see here) and is working with the Swedish Deaf Organisation (SDR) to evaluate and develop 3G services that will help signing people over in Sweden.

The article concludes:

Nice to know that 3G can be useful after all.

I couldn't have out it better myself :-)

Art --> Mobile

Nokia has launched The Connect to Art initiative, as a new alternative way for distributing and viewing contemporary art, according to We Make Money Not Art.

According to Kati Åberg [one of the first audio visual artists to be featured], "Mobile phones literally bring art into the palm of your hand, making the experience personal and entertaining. The works of art are close to you, genuinely within reach, right in your breast pocket next to your heart, and you alone can view them and own them."

The initiative is expected to expand Internationally and across other forms of art, like music. If your phone is compatible (selected Nokia phones, funnily enough) it can be downloaded free.

Original link via Textually.

I blogged for Mobitopia last week about how the industry should be making viral content as one way to get MMS going:

I'd also look at employing a bunch of witty creative types to create MMS's which have to chance to go "viral" - or be passed on to friends and friends of friends. We've seen this happen with email and SMS and it'll happen with MMS, given the right material. Maybe, new material can be released to the right individuals with cool credentials every week, so they can be the first to impress their mates. Far fetched? It works for these guys with email - if you can pass their cool test first.

This is the kind of thing I meant, though perhaps with a little mainstream appeal.

I think it's a shame that Nokia are taking a parochial view of the project, by restricting compatibility. As long as it's branded Nokia, who cares if it can be viewed on a Moto or Samsung?

There's a certain delicious irony in putting your brand on your rival's phones.