MobHappy

Airline Social Networking

Back in July 04, I wrote a piece about the possibilities of social networking on planes, wondering in any airline would pick up on it.

Well, they don't seem to have done, but that hasn't stopped entrepreneurs from going into the space. AirTroductions arrange for like minded travellers to hook up while flying, for any purpose people normally want to meet each other - social or business networking or joining the mile high club dating.

You start off with a profile, including your objective. Then say when you're flying and they give you anyone matching. If you like the sound of the match, they put you in touch, take a $5 fee and you arrange to sit next to each other.

Very nice idea. The only issue with any of these concepts is that if you try it a couple of times and don't get a match, you'll give up. Therefore, establishing critical mass quickly is imperative - easier said than done.

That's why I can't help feeling that this would be better as an airline initiative. A MoSoSo app for use on the plane would be cool too.

Good luck to them though. Sometimes an idea does spread if it's good enough and the timing is right.

Story from Cool Business Ideas, via Business Week.

Two, Make That Two Uses For Video Calls

Following yesterday's post, 3 UK has found another use for video calls -- to check in with a mobile-equipped spy camera.

There are certainly plenty of nefarious uses for this, as Emily at Picturephoning points out. But this is actually quite useful, as well. I could never remember if I'd shut the garage door at the last place I lived, and something like this would have been great for my peace of mind! It's even got infrared night vision.

Person-to-person video calling remains unpopular, but there are plenty of potential applications for video calls when you think of it as a platform.

(Image from Pocket-lint.co.uk)

3 Finds A Use For Video Calls

3 UK is touting a new video-call service where subscribers can dial into a live camera... in a pen full of turkeys. The camera's set up to show turkeys -- wearing nametags or something -- roaming around "a special 3G pen". Users can watch, and if they see a bird they like, they can get an SMS with information on how to order it from the farmer for Christmas dinner.

Yes, you read that right.

Apparently the owner of the farm is a 3 user, and approached the company with the idea to show off his farm. As the company puts it, "Bosses at 3, renowned for breaking new ground in the application of 3G, were happy to help." Yes, this is breaking new ground, without a doubt.

I like turkey as much as the next person, but this seems a bit odd to me, and isn't quite what I had in mind when I talk about a need for compelling applications. What's next, rigging up a shotgun and letting you shoot your own turkey via 3G, like that hunting web site some guy wanted to set up? I guess 3 and the farmer have party poopers like me in mind, too: if you don't want to get one of the turkeys to eat, you can elect to save one and have it sent to a turkey sanctuary to live out its days, for just £30 extra.

You Sitting Down?

One of our recurring themes is the importance of mobile as the dominant form of net access in the future, and Russell's lately addressed this point both in regards to Microsoft's off-base mobile strategy, as well as how mobiles will become people's primary means of net access in developing markets more quickly than in mature ones.

But why will this happen? Well, apparently, one key driver in the US will be that we love to use the Internet in the bathroom, according to a new survey on Internet use here, with more than half the people that had used Wi-Fi saying they'd used it in the bathroom.

I'm going to resist the temptation to take this in one direction (I'll leave that to you all to do on your own), and actually make a reasonable point here: I wonder how many people have messed with their phone, looked at old messages (or sent new ones), or played a mobile game in there. So, if people get bored enough in the toilet to want to take in a Wi-Fi equipped laptop, I smell an opportunity for mobile content.

I'm not necessarily advocating bathroom-focused news or something, but think of the bathroom experience as a microcosm of the many other empty moments in the average day where people are looking for something to kill some time. "Is this something somebody could do in the bathroom?" might not be a bad question to ask about your new service or application.

Can I Phone a Friend?

One of the lifelines offered to contestants struggling to answer a question in TV's insanely popular "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" is to Phone a Friend. The friend, if chosen wisely, will come up with the correct answer and the lucky player is on their way to riches.

It struck me that life's increasingly like that. Sure, we've heard of people phoning their mates in the middle of pub quizzes and the like. But, how about this:

".....two teen girls surveying the cosmetics aisle in Portland, Maine's Target store. Low-slung jeans, tiny purses, standing hand on hip, consulting each other about colors and brands. Then one flips open a sparkly cellphone, speed dials, and asks someone in the know: "So does Almay test on animals?" They move down the aisle a little. "How about Sonia Kashuk?" " Iconoculture on Teen Ethics.

A more formal way of doing the same thing is Cellphedia, whose founder Limor Garcia (yet another NYU graduate) and I shared a platform at Wikimania (pictured).

You use Cellphedia by smsing a question to a central server, which then distributes the question to a group of volunteers. If they know the answer, they sms the server, which sends it on the the person asking the question. Limor calls it a cross between Wikipedia and Google.

You can see examples of the type of questions here and they range from things like "Whats the word 4 injection under the skin. not into vein" Answer: Subcutaneous to "Is lamb red meat?" Answer (just in case you were wondering): Yes.

Currently, the the system works by offering the questioner the first answer received. Some would argue that this makes the answer potentially flawed. However, counter-intuitively there seems to be little evidence that many wrong answers are actually submitted. If you are the first to reply, you have to be pretty confident that you're right and the kinds of people who subscribe to these services are probably knowledgeable enough and aware enough of their own limitations to hold back when they're in doubt.

The outcome is very similar to Wikipedia - with so many people contributing in a largely unsupervised way, you'd expect it to be riddled with inaccuracies, both accidental and deliberate. But somehow, it just works and this is the spirit and result that pervades Cellphedia.

But whether you rely on your friends or a service like Cellphedia, you've never been closer to instant knowledge about anything you need to know, even when out and about. This has profound implications for society, not just for makers of animal-tested cosmetics and producers of quiz programmes.

Just When You Thought Mobile ESPN Was Expensive...

What with the $500 phone and the $65 to $200 per month charges, you'd be hard pressed to find a more expensive carrier than Mobile ESPN. But a new MVNO's been announced that takes the crown.

Japanese mobile content company Faith will soon launch its Voce MVNO in New York and Los Angeles that's aiming to be "exclusive": the $1500 sign-up fee and the $500 monthly charge for unlimited voice and data should see to that. This is totally bizarre.

For those big fees, customers will get new high-end handsets every 4 months, as well as a concierge service. If you can afford the $500 a month, you can buy your own phones, and you've probably already got a concierge, in the form of an AmEx Centurion card or a personal assistant. It's a strange attempt at differentiation -- but one I wouldn't be surprised to see work.

While commoditized mobile service as a luxury item is a bit of a stretch, this is one of those things whose luxury status is really derived solely from its price, and there have been plenty of those that have been successful at separating rich folks from their money. The point of MVNOs is to market to niches, but this is the first one I've seen whose niche is people that love conspicuous consumption.

FT's Mobility Special

The FT had a nice round up of mobile society at the weekend.

It's nothing that readers of MobHappy won't be familiar with, especially if you've read Smart Mobs too. But it's nice to see that the FT follows where we point ;-)

Here's a couple of choice quotes for you:

"Japanese teenagers say that messages have to be returned immediately, or at least within 30 minutes, or a social convention has been violated. Forgetting to take your mobile with you or letting the battery die are considered among the greatest of social misdemeanours."

Actually, this is true of the UK and increasingly, the US these days.

and

"It has also become a way of easing the transition from the real to virtual world. Before dialling someone’s telephone number or in the run-up to a face-to-face meeting, a stream of text messages lays the ground. “You don’t make voice calls without checking availability first,” says Ito. “The ringing telephone is quite a rude thing.” With proper texting etiquette, the phone only rings when you want it to, and face-to-face meetings are choreographed by an elaborate ritual of advanced messages."

I've noticed this tendency to cross over from kids into business as well. Increasingly, people will initiate an IM before an unscheduled phone call to establish availability.

But, let's leave the last word to HP:

“This is like watching the beginnings of the world wide web,” says Dick Lampman, director of Hewlett-Packard’s research labs. Trying to predict exactly how this personal communications revolution is going to change your life is likely to lead to the same kind of hyperbole - and mistakes - that characterised the early dotcom days, he says, but “you can see the early pieces of it, joined up, in the mobile phone world”.

What's interesting here is that even two years ago, calling this a "revolution" would have been challenged. Now, it's just accepted as fact.

Well, Microsoft excepted, I guess.

Link spotted on The Pondering Primate

Mobile Monkeying Around

A leading Japanese primate specialist has claimed that Japanese Youth is regressing to show many of the characteristics of apes in the wild. And the cause? Yes - the ubiquitous keitai or mobile phone.

They have started to form tribes with their peers, who essentially live out on the streets and have lost the ability to distinguish between private and public space. They hang out in districts like Shibuya (mentioned extensively in Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs) and

If they get hungry while they're strolling around, they simply get food by going into a convenience store, buying something and sitting down outside on the curb to eat it. If not that, then they just hang around for hours in fast food joints."

The primate specialist says the actions of the dearuki-zoku closely resemble behavior patterns in chimpanzees, which tend to travel in groups, walking around for a long time without going to any specific place, then eating and disposing of their wastes in the same place before bedding down on piles of grass whenever and wherever the inclination takes them.

This is indeed a familiar sight in Japan, but also in Western cities, like London. But it's only come about because their families feel that they're in touch via their mobiles and therefore "safe". However, Professor Masataka claims that the potential for communication is actually rarely used - and there's a significant rift appearing between parents and children, many of whom seldom see or speak to each other.

Nothing to do with apes, but he also claims that technology is starting to deprive us of brainpower - we don't have to remember phone numbers any more and GPS means we don't have to be aware of our surroundings. This deprives us of certain thinking and cognitive skills.

Personally speaking, I moved to Munich 18 months ago and my car came fitted with a GPS nav system. Despite being a relatively small (1 million people) and compact town (a nick name is "Toy Town"), I don't have clue how to get around it without the nav system. My spacial awareness of the city is zilch, whereas I can drive across London, where I lived before, like a black cab driver.

But we'll leave the last word to Professor Masataka:

"Some may criticize me for likening the behavior of humans with monkeys, but having studied primates for so long, I can clearly say that it's a fact the proliferation of IT has made human behavior closely resemble that of apes.

And that's also perhaps how, Best Beloved, the Pondering Primate got his name.

When Your Phone Says Something About You

It's not surprising at all to see MVNOs go after more and more niche markets rather than just small spenders -- I posted a couple weeks back on a new virtual operator in Germany that's aimed at the Turkish population -- but things are getting slightly esoteric with the news that got around this weekend about a Dutch carrier for pot smokers.

Much more interesting, though, is Denmark's GAYmobile, which is aimed at -- you guessed it -- gay people. It sounds pretty typical MVNO stuff: a focus on cheap prices, with some added services geared toward its particular market (services "that are gay all the way", apparently). It's not too surprising to see this in Denmark. Not because of any particular societal reasons, but since it's the most mature MVNO market in the world. Once the value MVNOs have driven prices down to a low and equal level, they've got to have something more to differentiate, and this is an attempt to get people to buy into a phone company with which they can identify.

Ringtonia pointed out one aspect of GAYmobile in particular: it might offer "subtle ringtones that indicate the user's sexual preferences". Until they get that up and running, they suggest "I am what I am" or anything by ABBA. I can't imagine that this is the first time ringtones have been used to indicate peoples' sexual preferences (gay, straight or otherwise), but it's a fairly fascinating idea. It's also one that reinforces the idea that so much of what we call phone personalization (ringtones, wallpapers, etc.), is about self-expression. It's all about showing we're part of a group -- whether it's the cool kids at high school, fans of a football team or of a particular sexual persuasion. Ringtone sellers and faceplate makers have been taking advantage of that for quite some time; more MVNOs will begin doing it as well.

Spot The Base Station

I saw this on Digg earlier: Can You Spot The Hidden Cell Towers?

Nothing new or earth-shattering, but some relatively amusing pictures of base stations and antennas hidden in palm trees, cacti, or, my personal favorite, big plastic rocks.

Mobile Sousveillance Does It Again

We've had some debate of what's the proper term for sousveillance/ coveillance/ equiveillance, but I'm pretty sure this is sousveillance -- a youth in London filmed a cop putting his friend into a garbage can.

Textually and The Times call it "a twist" in happy slapping: apparently a couple of police officers went to a park where some kids were supposed to be throwing conkers (horse chestnuts) at people. The two guys started filming the police, and wouldn't stop, and one of them ended up in the bin. That must be some of that new community-based policing people are talking about...

Anyhow, they've got the video, and are considering legal action, and the cop's under investigation too. The lesson here is that nothing is really secret anymore -- everybody's carrying a recorder of some kind around.

That Didn't Take Long

I pointed out last week a company's new offering that tracks users' content on mobile networks and gives them rewards if it gets passed around by other users. Today, as part of its "new strategy", 3 UK announced See Me TV that pays users 1p every time their video gets downloaded by another user.

Users upload a 30-second video clip, which then gets put on the channel with other submissions, and every time somebody clicks, the user gets a penny (which is then PayPal-ed to them once they've racked up 10 pounds -- or 1000 downloads). 3 gives a few details about navigation, saying the clips will be divided into categories, with the most popular clips at the top of the menus -- which sounds like it's going to be the content deck scenario all over again, where the top entries get all the clicks. I'm assuming there will be a way for users to send "check this out" messages about specific videos to their friends as well.

The press release also mentions "editorial guidelines" -- which presumably means the videos will be reviewed to make sure they're not happy slapping vids or something. Seems like if this takes off, that would be an awful lot of overhead.

I Have Seen The Future Of Mobile Content...

... and it's blue, apparently. Lots of companies are lining up to sell mobile porn -- with unclear results -- and today brings news that sex advice videos from "The Lovers' Guide" will be available on 3 UK. Despite my generally gloomy outlook for mobile porn (I'm still struggling to come up with "use cases"), I actually think this one might work out pretty well.

The videos are 30 to 60 seconds long, not only in line with the preference for bite-sized content, but short enough to sneak in when somebody might really need it. The mobile phone is a pretty good delivery mechanism for the content, too. It's an intensely personal device, not one that people tend to share and one that can be taken somewhere a bit more private that a big PC or TV set, and the content is easily disposable -- all things that could lower the potential for embarrassment people might feel accessing this kind of content. (Thought I guess all those could apply to porn, too...)

But mobile's also an interesting platform here because of the potential for recurring visits -- if the service is set up so that users can quickly and easily find the relevant information, I'd think there's a decent chunk of 3's users that would check in time and time again. The thought of a subscription service, even, with regularly sent, um, advice, makes the mind boggle.

I noticed The Lovers' Guide also have "The Young Lovers' Guide", which appears to be a little more standard sex-ed fare than the version for adults. This seems like it would be a good fit for mobile as well, particularly since it offers young people a sense of anonymity when accessing it. I guess this isn't porn in the strictest sense, but maybe my pessimism in sex-related mobile content is unfounded. Maybe.

Encouraging User-Created Content

MocoNews has an interesting post about an Australian company named Amethon that's come up with a system to let carriers track user-created content. Basically users can register content they create by sending it to a special short code where it gets tagged, then can pass it on to their friends. Carriers can then keep track of how many times it gets forwarded, presumably building in some sort of reward system where people that create compelling content get rewarded if it gets passed around.

User-created content is a bug buzzterm for the mobile industry, but is the value in the content itself or giving people access to the tools to create it? For instance, the vast majority of personal blogs don't get a very high readership, but peoples' enthusiasm in creating them isn't based upon that. Take Nokia Lifeblog, for instance -- its value is as a tool, not that it makes your content popular or that it delivers some kind of reward to the user.

People don't necessarily create content because they want it to be popular. In fact, quite a lot of people go on creating content knowing it's not popular. But maybe Amethon is hoping this will be the mobile version of Google AdWords -- the (often wrong) idea that anybody can throw AdWords up on their site, regardless of the content, and rake in the cash certainly delivers a lot of impressions for Google to sell, and perhaps the company is taking a similar angle.

Gambling Epidemic

In the old days (actually only a few years ago) gambling in the UK required the punter to make a bit of an effort. You either had to go into a rather intimidating and scruffy bookmaker or go to a casino - few and far between and a little intimidating to the average man on the street too.

There were other options; you could stick some money in the fruit machine in a pub, though the payouts were restricted to a few pounds;make a bet by phone if you were in the know; have a private poker party; visit a race track. But essentially, it wasn't easy to make a casual bet and that's the way the law was designed.

Nowadays, we have online gambling and it's really all changed. Virgin Money, in conjunction with tabloid newspaper, The Daily Mirror ran a survey recently which found that 93% of adults with internet access had placed at least one bet. It's difficult to imagine something else that 93% of people would have done - maybe as something as ubiquitous as clicking on a link would come close. This is something your Mum has probably done if she lives in the UK, which is one of my definitions of mainstream.

Half the 2,000 people in the survey said that they'd started online gambling in the last 6 months, which says to me that word of mouth is clicking in. We have a true viral epidemic.

What this seems to show is that the easier you make it for people to gamble, the more they will. It's not just a question of accessibility, online betting also offers anonymity. Your Mum doesn't have to explain to the neighbours or your Dad why she's suddenly spending a lot of time in the local bookies.

There's a strong argument that with even easier and even more anonymous gambling coming to your mobile, this will show explosive growth too. Without trying to be too prurient, this doesn't seem like a good thing to me. Some people are known to get addicted to gambling and others certainly get into trouble financially - you could argue that the two are the same actually.

Maybe this should be one area where operators should be encouraged to retain some parts of the wall in their garden.

Photo from Flickr.

Digital vs. Actual Memories

I went to see some concerts up in Dallas a couple weekends ago, and was struck by how many people were taking pictures with their mobile phones and calling people and holding their phones up for them to hear. What surprised me wasn't that people were doing it, but rather that they were doing it constantly, and in such great numbers (in my own bad cameraphone shot to the right, you can sort of make out the glow from some phone screens. And that's Coldplay on stage, if you were wondering).

That got me to thinking -- at what point do we quit having actual memories and start relying just on our digital ones? Plenty of people seemed more involved in taking photos all the time, or trying to record songs on their phones, then actually watching and listening to the show. It's as if being able to document they were at the concert -- via photos, music, messages or phone calls -- was more important than actually being there. Is that the flip side of having so many media recording devices with us all the time? Recording something "for posterity" takes precedence over the experience?

The excellent 43 Folders had a post a while ago on creative cameraphone uses, and they're all about using it as a "a ubiquitous capture device" to document all kinds of things. It's sort of the same concept, replacing our own memories with digitally stored ones, although the motivation is a little different. The memory of where you parked the car is something more functional than emotional, and using a picture to supplant your memory of it is pretty reasonable.

But trying to replace those more emotional memories seems a little odd to me. Perhaps it's just a reflection of how technology has changed our perspective -- maybe people don't make a distinction between their own memories and their recorded ones any more.

Peace, Beauty and Mobile Phones

At the end of the last ski season, I wrote a little rant about people using mobiles on the piste. There's nothing more irritating than having the peace and tranquility of the mountains shattered by a ring tone followed by a loud voice talking about which ski hut to meet in for lunch - and that was even pre-Crazy Frog days. Or, having to ski round someone who stops abruptly on the piste to answer their mobile.

Well, it seems as if I'm not the only one, according to a story in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. It seems that an adventure tours holiday operator has banned mobile phones from its trips - travellers have to hand in their mobiles and they are returned at the end of it.

The operator specialises in "once in a lifetime" trips to places like the Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru or climbing Kilimanjaro. It seems that quite often during these expensive, special moments a mobile would trill, ruining the experience.

One such victim was 10,000 feet into the ascent of Kilimanjaro, when some idiot phoned the office:

"I couldn't believe it," Mr Bishop said. "We were just putting up our tent at a campsite on the Machame route up Kilimanjaro when this guy - I think he was a businessmen or a politician - suddenly started talking on his mobile in a loud voice.

"There I was in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, looking out over the savannah... and all I could hear was 'in the second paragraph, line four can we take out the word...'.

No one is a more enthusiastic promoter of mobile phones than me. But there's a time and a place for them and if people can't behave responsibly, an outright ban seems to be the only solution.

Mobile Manga

When an industry starts to change, it's like a large tree being felled. It starts off imperceptibly, but rapidly accelerates until it comes crashing down. As an example, the world's first camera phone was only launched in Japan in November 2000. And now Nokia is the leading digital camera maker in the world.

One of the latest sectors experiencing the dizziness of the TIMBER! effect seems to be Manga comics in Japan, according to Japan Times. Putting Manga on mobiles only started in 2003, spurred by 3G availability, and already is showing signs of killing its paper based parent.

Paper-based publishing is actually experiencing a double whammy onslaught from mobiles. Even before Manga was available on phones, sales had started to decline in line with the growth of mobiles. This is attributed to young people spending their disposable income on their phones, communication and content. But now the phone itself has become a publishing channel, this effect is accelerating.

Indeed, many famous Manga creators are apparently considering bypassing the old publishers and going straight to market via Ketai (mobile phone).

Of course, the mobile is really well suited to reading comic strips on the mobile - unlike say, a text-based book. With displays of either page scroll (navigation by scrolling up and down the page) or even better, picture card (one frame at a time), the user experience is just as good - if not better - as the "real" thing.

I wonder what the next industry will be to fall to the mighty mobile? MP3 players? Certainly. The PC itself? I think so anyway.

Virgin Mobile Exploits Pester Power

Virgin Mobile's hot New York agency, Mother, have created the Parental Enlightenment Kit, according to Adverblog. The idea is to give kids some tools to pester their poor, long-suffering parents into buying them a mobile - you can tell I'm a parent of mobile-phone age kids.

Tools include stuff like T-shirt stickers ("Do you love me? Yes __ No __") to The Instigator - a cutout version of a mobile phone. The idea is the kid nonchalently starts talking into it and when the parent asks where they got it, they can introduce the subject.

It's quite funny and as Martina points out, it turns teens and tweens into little guerilla marketers.

If my kids tried something like this though, I might eventually give in. But I'd equally nonchalently not buy them a Virgin phone.

Disaster Relief and Mobile

It's clear that mobile can play a bigger role and be a bigger help in disaster relief and recovery. Now, we've just got to figure out how.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the mess that's been the recovery (btw, you can help), I've been mulling over how mobile could fit in, apart from going down. Let's review what there's been so far:

• Operators are accepting donations via SMS. While this is commonplace in other countries, this is the first time I can think of it being used here in the US. It sounds like it's pretty successful, too.
• We got an email the other day (that sounded suspiciously like astroturfing, but whatever) about DirecTV setting up a channel for people to hit with text messages. Found some more details later, and it's basically a message board for people to try and let relatives know they're safe.
• SMS and SMS-to-email is being pushed as an effective way to get messages into and out of affected areas.
• Free phones are making their way to evacuees along with other goods.

There's been a lot of talk around the web about "Recovery 2.0", or how to use Net and communications technologies to help improve the next response. SMS is getting a small amount of attention, but mobile should be at the heart of it. Obviously, that means the networks need to be hardened, but there's more that operators can do than just get bigger tanks of diesel for their generators.

For instance, when T-Mobile got its network back up in New Orleans, it allowed access to its network for all GSM users, not just its own. While domestic roaming is the norm in some countries, it's the exception rather than the rule here. When large chunks of networks go down, every operator should allow access to its network for other company's customers. If the government doesn't want to mandate this as part of a state of emergency declaration, the carriers should agree to it themselves. It's commendable that T-Mobile did this; it would be great if other carriers, especially CDMA ones would step up too.

There are other services that could be reconfigured to better support victims. Mark Cuban points out that ringback tones could be utilized to let people announce information about themselves, rather than just getting "all circuits are busy" messages. He also suggests there be a short code information service that people could ping and use to receive and send information.

Paramount, though, is figuring out a way to maintain service when the networks go down. Slate's got a good explanation of why people's phones may still not be working, even if they're out of areas where cellular networks were damaged -- the local network hubs in individual area codes may be down, and unable to properly route calls. It's easy from my position of having very little technical knowledge about the operations of phone networks and switches to say that it should be easy to figure out a way to route around this problem... but shouldn't it be?

One other idea I've had for a use of SMS is to better help in donations. One problem in soliciting donations after an event is the lag time between an organization putting out the call for particular items and that message making its way around to people. For instance, groups will often say "the one thing we need most is X", and within a few days, they'll be inundated, even overwhelmed with those items. Letting people opt-in to some sort of donation alert could better help this and devote resources to more badly needed items. Groups could send out messages saying they'd gotten enough of item X, and now they need Y, and so on. Here in Austin, the city had to stop receiving donations at one location because they simply ran out of room. With an alert system, they could quickly and easily direct people to a new location with items. It could even be used to rally volunteers: "are you interested in helping? if so, just respond to this with 'YES'".

This is all just off-the-cuff thinking in the immediate aftermath, but it's clear from this event, the tsunami and other disaster that there is clearly more that can be done to use communications technologies to help. What am I missing here? What are your thoughts?

Photo courtesy American Red Cross.

Harry Potter and the Special Features

"That's it? No special features or anything?"

Emma, aged 9, after being read the last chapter of a Harry Potter book.

What have we created?

Source Iconiculture.

Can you speak up a Little?

One of the annoying side effects of living in an iPod world is that I frequently find myself having to repeat what I just said, as the other person turns off/down their iPod.

And at the risk of sounding like a real old fart, I'm always muttering warnings to my kids like "it's too loud, you know" to which they respond "What?" as they turn down their iPods. At which point, I repeat myself (again).

It's gratifying then (at least for my personal credibility) that doctors in Australia are saying that iPod users (well, any MP3 users actually) are risking long term hearing loss as they are playing them TOO LOUDLY.

In fact, a random survey found that 25% of owners were listening at dangerous volumes - which is thought to be in excess of 80 decibels. By way of comparison, a busy street is 70 decibels and a pneumatic drill is 100.

Apparently, the first danger sign is a ringing in your ears.Or that could just be because your companion has just slapped you round the head as they get fed up with saying everything twice, everything twice.

You have been warned.

Story via W2Forum (registration required). Image from iPod Lounge.

What's That, Sonny?

TechDirt reported last week about a phone developed by Fujitsu for DoCoMo for the elderly. Among other features, it slows down speech to 70% of real time, so old folks can understand what you're saying to them on the phone.

Frankly, I'm not sure oldsters need to slow speech down - they may be a little deaf perhaps, but do they need this?

Anyway, I think a great application for this technology would be for when you're trying to talk to someone in a language that isn't your own. I live in Germany, for instance, and struggle daily with the fiendish tongue. But when on the phone, I just go to pieces and pathetically ask "sprechen sie English?" to which the normal reply is "a little bit", followed by perfectly constructed sentences that most Brits wouldn't be capable of.

But if I could slow them down a little, it would actually give me half a chance of understanding.

Also, if I could insert one of these things into my wife's brain (she speaks English and German exceptionally quickly) we might be able to practice German conversations as a family, from time to time.

The good thing about the approaching Oktoberfest (a must-visit attraction at least once in your life) is that "Ein Bier" is pretty easy to ask for - one of the first language skills I mastered.

More Mobile Sousveillance

We've had some debate, both after the recent London attempted bombings and about a week before about the term "sousveillance", and whether it (or "coveillance" or perhaps "equiveillance") is appropriate for people keeping an eye on each other, particularly at the police's behest.

Whatever term we decide on, it's going to become much more common: Emily at Picturephoning posts today how police are asking people in two towns in England to report antisocial behavior via MMS. They're looking for documentation of graffiti, vandalism and so on so they know where to focus their resources. They emphasize, however, they're not looking for people to get themselves into trouble by trying to catch people in the act, but rather the aftermath and damage done.

Youview, the company powering the service, hopes to use these towns as a proving ground, then roll it out for the other 400 or so Anti-Social Behavior police units in England and Wales. I'll offer two pieces of usability advice to help them achieve that: first, get an easily remembered short code rather than using "07739 888 558" -- it's doubtful that all but the biggest supporters will add that to their contacts. Second, find a way to make sending the MMS free -- while the cost is 25p or less, that's still going to hold down the number of people sending in messages. While the mobile phone does make this sort of thing easy, it's important to take it a step further and make it even easier for the user.

Image courtesy Hastings Borough Council

Local Content Delivery via Mobile

Ewan Spence pinged me this morning to point to his latest venture, The Edinburgh Fringe Podcast. Starting next week, he's going to be doing a daily 30-minute podcast of/from/about the festival with interviews, reviews and all the rest. This got me thinking that distributing this sort of thing to mobile phones could get pretty cool.

Ewan's cracked the nut of one big problem that plagues a lot of podcasts (just like it does blogs): boring content. Producing a tightly targeted show like this around an event is a great idea, particularly when it can act as a resource for people participating in the festival. But getting it right to mobiles would be even better. Events like this can quickly eat up peoples' downtime, and even though sitting in front of a computer waiting for the file to download and sync isn't that big an imposition, it would be even better if it would download automatically to your mobile, so it's there waiting for you when you get some time. It's well-suited to the idea of bite-sized content: I may not sit and listen to the whole thing from beginning to end all at once, but rather in little bites throughout the day: one interview here, one interview there.

The podcast isn't unlike the daily papers published at trade shows or festivals, although it's got the potential to be much more compelling. But part of the problem with those publications is that you've got to sit down and read them -- but listening to audio content can be done while doing plenty of other things, as we do already with our iPods or phone conversations.

We're going to see more and more of these types of podcasts pop up, and there are going to be a good number of them that get significant commercial sponsorship (speaking of which, I'm sure Ewan wouldn't refuse some ads!). For instance, Perrier sponsors the Comedy Awards that are a pretty big part of the Fringe -- they could do a show centered around the comedians up for the award, which could help extend the audience beyond just those that get tickets to their shows. But making the leap to getting podcasts sent right to mobiles is a bit of a stretch, requiring some tinkering with data pricing and so on. But mobile operators sponsor plenty of events with some real fluff content -- here's an opportunity for them to do something cool, whether it's for the Fringe or other events.

There's a lot of potential for the mobile audio market outside just music. We're already seeing travel content for iPods -- things like a DIY audio guide to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and other travel guides. But why not make these available for downloads or stream to mobiles (yes, I'm aware of the file sizes, speeds of GPRS, data costs etc etc etc, but let's look a little ahead), so if I'm out on vacation, I can access the content at any time, without having to remember to sync my MP3 player or walk around with my nose in a guidebook? I'm going to have my phone with me anyway, so just put the content on it.

Image from The Edinburgh Fringe Podcast Moblog.

Sousveillance Hits the Big Time

I'm not real happy to revisit this topic, but after examining how mobile phones played into media coverage of the earlier London attacks, I was interested to see the Metropolitan Police make an appeal for cameraphone images and other footage taken in the four relevant areas before or at the time of the incidents today. People can submit via the www.police.co.uk Web site, or via MMS to 07734 282 288 (is an operator or messaging provider going to stump up and support this for free?).

Looks like sousveillance is playing out -- and this instance will only bring it further into the mainstream. It's hard not to see phrases along the lines of "This guy was creepy, so I took his picture with my phone -- just in case," becoming commonplace.

Mobile Phone Service Shut Down in New York

Reuters reports that mobile phone service has been switched off in 4 busy New York commuter tunnels, due to security fears, since the London attack last week. While no specific reasons have been given, it's thought that mobile phones have been used to trigger bombs in previous terrorist attacks. Two of the tunnels have subsequently resumed the service.

This is a tricky area though.

One could argue that if we change the way we live, the terrorists have "won" and the only response is "business as usual".

Equally, the authorities must do everything in their power to ensure potential attacks are thwarted and that the people are kept safe. Even though the Madrid bombings, for instance, were set off via the alarm function on a mobile and thus, suspending service would be ineffectual in this scenario.

However, at least one Boing Boing reader is trying to organise a protest movement and public pressure seems to have forced the NYPD to open up the remaining tunnels this afternoon.

Rationally, even in today's always-on culture, not being able to use your phone for small part of your journey to and from work can only rank as a minor inconvenience. But the phone has come so central to our lives that even a few minutes deprivation is seen by many as an impossibility.

London 7/7 and Mobiles

I want to extend my condolences, thoughts and best wishes to London and its people following yesterday's brutal and cowardly attacks. I hope all our London-based readers are safe and that those directly affected find comfort soon. Without making light of the tragic events, I want to take a look at the role mobile phones and technology played.

The most striking example was the widespread circulation of photos and videos taken with mobiles in the aftermath of events. While people have been using blogs and tools like Flickr to report their own news and images and share information for quite some time, and mobile photos have made their way into mainstream media, never before had user-generated content, much of it from mobile phones, played such a big part.

British news organizations had received their first images from the public within minutes, and some footage was on air within 20, relaying the vicious nature of the attacks. Very quickly, there was footage from inside Tube trains revealing the confusion and panic of the immediate aftermath of the blasts -- changing the nature of reporting from the professional polish of news crews arriving after an event to amateur footage showing a much more human side of things. User-generated content even went deep into the oldest of old media: The Guardian says (reg req'd, unfortunately) the image used on its and the Daily Mail's front page was sent to the BBC by a member of the public (image 8 in this slideshow).

Beyond the role mobile technology played in news gathering, there were plenty of articles about how mobile networks strained to keep up with demand; how text messages fared better; how operators gave priority on networks to emergency workers and authorities, though contrary to many rumors, the government did not shut down the cellular network.

But just as the Asian Tsunami highlighted the need there for early-warning systems -- and suggested how mobiles could play an important role -- Paul Golding's done a good job of wondering what the intial lessons for mobile networks from yesterday's London tragedy will be, suggesting a number of crisis-management features. The overloading of mobile networks is a serious problem on many levels -- first because they're relied on by emergency services for vital communications, but also because it's important for people to be able to communicate to friends and family their condition and whereabouts. Given the high level of connectedness we enjoy at all times because of mobile phones, email, IM and the like, there's the absolute expectation that we'll be able to use our phones in times like this -- times when it's most important.

Some operators said they shifted yesterday to half-rate coding, a measure that reduces voice quality and increases capacity, but Golding has a few more ideas -- the most interesting of which is a "roll call" measure allowing users to be hailed and respond if they're ok. This message could then be played for callers trying to reach someone if the network is too overloaded to connect the call. But in any case, he makes it clear that there's room for active crisis-management protocols for operators to put into action for events like this.

To echo Paul's last comment, we can all hope these types of things won't ever be needed, be it in London, or anywhere, as the result of another attack. But being prepared doesn't have to mean being afraid.

School Girl "Hostage Phone"

I was chatting to a 13 year old daughter of one of my friends over the weekend. She goes to a boarding school not far from here, complete with Harry Potter style dormitories.

When they go off to bed, they have to place their mobile phones in a big, locked strong box to stop them smsing/phoning/playing games and every other thing you can use a mobile for these days. And they collect them in the morning.

The interesting thing is that it's not an excuse to say that you haven't got a mobile - it's just not credible.

It's also strange that the teachers don't seem to have thought about all the second phones the girls keep, just for this purpose. It's last year's model that gets locked up overnight, leaving them free to use the new one all night if they wish.

So first we had the shag phone. Now we have another example of why someone might want two phones - the Hostage Phone.

I wonder if there are any more examples of two phone ownership...

Political Bluejacking Rescues EU Constitution Humiliation

An interesting spin off of Sunday's EU Referendum in France was that supporters of the "YES" vote were urged to campaign by Bluejacking (if you're thinking "huh?" read this):

"If you have a Bluetooth-enabled mobile, you can 'bluejack' militantly until Sunday. Rename your mobile 'vote yes' and when you're on public transport or in a public place, set your phone to seek out other Bluetooth-enabled devices."

Obviously, it wasn't a staggeringly successful concept as the "NO" vote prevailed. But who knows if humiliation, rather than a narrow defeat, would have resulted without the Bluejack element?

Actually, this is a pretty desperate campaigning tactic. Bluejacking is fun, but it's hardly a worthy or valid marketing technique. It's about on a par with marching up to someone, slapping them in the face with a kipper and declaring "vote for me".

That's not to say that mobile marketing can't be made to work, by any means. It's just that, like corporate blogs, you need to understand what you're doing before jumping in - and that normally requires someone with proven expertise to help you do it.

Story source: The Guardian.

How to make friends on the telephone

As part of my occasional foray into the archive, I thought you might enjoy this from May last year:

There�s a very amusing booklet from the 1940�s at Contact Sheet. It�s full of startlingly obvious advice about how to use the Telephone. Stuff like �Be sure of your number� and if you choose to ignore this little gem �Apologize for
wrong numbers".

But then I thought. Actually, wouldn�t it be great if today�s technologists:

1. Understood that their users don�t have the same grasp of their technology that they do.

2. Explained how to use their technology clearly, simply and in congruence with contemporary society.

What�s especially ignored is some kind of etiquette in using this new stuff � like Making Friends on the Telephone. Nowhere is this more apparent than Instant Messaging, but it applies to SMS, email, chat and pretty much everything else.

Taking IM as an example, this is leading to huge problems with kids. Since most communication is non-verbal and since the keyboard removes inhibitions, many a child has got themselves into hot water with their peers over an IM conversation. Giving away too much too soon is a common mistake, to be regretted at leisure. As is passing on dodgy gossip or a quickly regretted bitchy remark.

And, like the Telephone guide, there�s no older generation to explain the rules � they don�t know, as they have no experience. So a world (and IM is a world) where kids make the rules is going to be a pretty brutal one.

Remember Lord of the Flies?

Fake Calls on the Mobile

Mike at TechDirt reports that people are pretending to make calls on their mobiles, to get them out of embarrassing social fixes.

So next time you see a Norman No-Friends at a party madly chatting and laughing into his mobile, his phone might not even be switched on. Why not call him, if you have the number, and giggle when it rings?

It seems the practice is pretty widespread actually. Do you do it? Leave a comment and let me know.

Let Them Have Phones

The Australian Government have identified that having a mobile is essential to success for today's job seekers. Strange that no one thought of this before.

After all, you need to be able to make and take calls from would-be employers and a mobile is a pretty expensive indulgence if you're claiming unemployment benefit.

So they've started to give out "loan phones", which has increased a job seeker's chances by a massive 30%.

So simple, yet so effective. If only all politician's ideas were thus.

Image shows the previous initiative.

Source: Textually reporting a story in The Age. Having said that, the link to the story in The Age doesn't work, but if Emily says it was so, then that's good enough for me :-)

Wind Up Mobiles and Wallpaper

Not that we ever doubted that we're obsessed with mobiles, as a culture. But if you had missed it...

Firstly, from Japan, we have Keitai Vyuun (via Gizmondo) which means, roughly, "mobile zoom". What you get is a pair of stick-on wheels for your mobile, which you can wind up and race....presumably against other mobile phones.

Something so utterly pointless is going to be mega-huge this Summer.

And then we have a rather memorable quote from Jay Cordenberg (via Iconoculture):

"Even a night out with the girls seems to be an occasion to change their [mobile] wallpaper - to match their shoes or handbags."

OK, admittedly, Jay is the publicist for Crazy Fun Babe, a Canadian wallpaper seller. But that doesn't mean to say it's not what happens.

Is Mobile Phone Jamming the New Bluejacking?

There seem to have been a flurry of people lately, claiming to jam mobile phones - for "fun". Or maybe it's a flurry of stories, which all seem to lead back to the New York Post one here.

You can buy one in the US for upwards of $250, which seems quite a lot of money to spend just to annoy people - or perhaps to stop people annoying you.

Having said that, the fine (in theory) is $11,000 for using one, which implies it's a brave or a rich person's game.

If you're puzzled by the Bluejacking reference in the headline, you can read more here. More harmless fun for kids!

Dinner Invitation

San Francisco artist, Marc Horowitz, was on the set of a shoot for Crate & Barrel (dinnerware). He scrawled this message on a white board, as a kind of joke.

dinner with Marc 510-872-7326.

The photo made it to the final catalogue, which went to about a million homes.

So far, Marc has had over 5,000 calls, some from cranks, as you might expect. But some inviting him to dinner across homes throughout America.

He's on a 70 dinner tour, with a book and film in the pipeline. See the video here.

Why don't you give him a call?

Valentine's and Dating Bluetooth Stuff

OK, I know I'm a day late with this stuff, but you're unlikely to actually use some of these things.

Firstly, we have Popgadget featuring Hugm's. These bluetooth connected light-up devices send an sms hug via your mobile when you squeeze them.

It gets better (or worse, depending on how curmudgeonly you are), the sms hug varies according to how long you squeeze these things - Long squeeze: 'hhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuggggggg'; Short hard squeeze: 'hhHHUUUUUUugg'.

Then Textually reports on an art project in London that's a mobile riff on the ancient art of carving love messages on trees.

Each participating tree has an embedded LED device embedded in the bark and a unique phone number to sms to. You send your message to the tree and it's displayed in lights.

When you leave, the message disappears but if you return, so does your message as the tree "remembers" you. It's not clear how this works, but we can assume some kind of locative signal (perhaps Bluetooth again?).

And finally, you missed the opportunity to participate in the official Bluetooth Valentine's Day, where you could send suggestive icons to the object of your affections.

This one means "Get a new haircut" and this one

Fancy going dancing? (I hope).

Obviously for the romantic souls among you, you can use all these ideas everyday for the loved ones in your life. They may start to treat you a bit strangely however - you have been warned.

Teens and Mobile Phones

"The Text Generation" is New Zealand's most comprehensive survey on teen cellphone use, released today by NetSafe, the Internet Safety Group. Once again we're reminded quite how central mobiles are in young people's lives - and there's no reason to suggest that Kiwi Teens are any different from anywhere else. Well, apart from the sheep thing, obviously.

Some quite surprising snippets, even for jaded mobile watchers:

41% had "no idea" how big their monthly spending was on mobile charges. The highest was $1,900 (US $1,350) a month. One kid admitted spending $1,800 a month, mainly on sex lines and stole money to support his habit.

Actually 13% said they stole to pay their bills.

Text bullying seems to be a big concern/issue.

Nearly half had started a relationship by mobile and 25% had finished one that way.

29% used them in class time, including taking unflattering pics of teachers and recording their teachers outbursts and rants for later sharing.

2% claimed their parents didn't know they had a mobile.

So, if you want to control a teen in your life - just threaten to take away their phone for a while. You'll kill their social life, their sex life and their blackmail-the-teacher material.

Source: New Zealand Herald

Walking 5 miles for a Recharge

Many villagers living in the Romanian village of Ciosa own mobile phones, even though the nearest electricity is 5 miles away and only accessible on foot.

That's commitment for you.

Source:New Kerala

Happy Slapping, son of Tango

Back in the mists of advertising time, there was quite a famous ad for Tango (a soft orange-flavoured carbonated drink in the UK). The advertising was very youth oriented and really tried to "push the envelope".

One execution involved a Tango drinker who is surprised by a very obese, naked bald man coloured from head to toe in orange (who was meant to represent the drink�s shocking orange taste - geddit?). So the fat orange guy runs up to the Tango drinker and slaps him violently across each cheek before disappearing.

It was only a matter of days before kids all over the country were slapping each other's cheeks. You can download the ad yourself (Orange Fella) here in a site I tracked down specially for you, along with some other classic British TV ads.

A later execution, I seem to remember had to be withdrawn as it showed the Orange Fella slapping people on the ears, with the results of burst ear drums up and down the country.

Anyway, fast forward from the relative innocence of yesteryear and we have Happy Slapping. This involves teens going up to innocent strangers and slapping them. Meanwhile, their mates film the action and the slappees' reactions on their mobiles for later delight and edification.

Rumoured Happy Slapping attacks include a man being hit from behind with a spade (ouch) and a girl being drop kicked, Kung Fu style.

I'm not sure that this is really widespread or a typical press over-reaction. But as it tends to involve women and people less able to defend themselves, it's not a very nice thing to be happening, even if it's an isolated incident. It's obviously going to be a defenseless person as victim, as your average 15 year old is hardly going to slap a 6"6' rugby player type, as he's likely to have the camera shoved where the sun don't shine.

I'm not condoning this kind of thing in any way. But, from a purely social science perspective, these videos are passed around primarily by Bluetooth. Local Free Messaging/File Sharing is something I've said has been happening for some time.

How long before the ringtone file sharing thing starts to go mass market?

Forehead Advertising

Blogging A-lister Doc Searls writes about Brandy, a 21 year old mum, auctioning off her forehead to advertisers.

Last April Fool day, a bunch of colleagues and I were fooling around with some press release ideas. We came up with the concept of a group of desperate entrepreneurs who offered to tattoo their foreheads (permanently) if their website traffic hit a certain figure.

The idea was that this was a last ditch attempt to save their company which their VC's were about to close down.

Desperate Entrepreneurs Agree to Anus Tattoo on Foreheads

The team behind TagText are in big trouble. Their VC backers have threatened to close the company down, following "one of the most disappointing website launches ever." Despite spending significant sums on marketing, virtually no one has visited the site, "if you discount friends and relatives of the founders".

To counter this, the team have agreed to a blatant and frankly desperate publicity stunt. Depending on the number of people who visit www.tagtext.com, Ben, Nick and Russell have agreed to a series of increasingly obscene tattoos, in increasingly public places.

The humiliation starts at 10,000 visitors, when Ben, Nick and Russell will get a TagText logo discretely applied to their inner thigh. But the more visitors, the higher the stakes, until for 100,000 visitors, they pledge to get a puckered anal sphincter indelibly carved into their foreheads.

"It's a kind of frying pan or fire situation" says Ben philosophically. "We lose our company or we have perfect strangers pointing and laughing at us for the rest of our lives. I wish I could say that I have the full support of my wife, but I haven't dared tell her yet."

"Yes" adds Russell "it's a pretty weird situation. One half of me wants the site traffic obviously. But on balance, I'd really urge you not to go. Well, 10,000 I can cope with, but frankly, 100,000 would be my worst nightmare. How do you think my kids would feel if they have a Dad with an arsehole tattooed on his head?"

TagText offers free downloadable characters for mobile phones.

"We're still trying to work out a business model" says Nick. "But lots of website traffic has got to be a great start, right?"

We talked to a pal in PR, who rubbished the idea and said it was totally unbelievable. Well, Brandy isn't the first case of life imitating "art" and won't be the last either.

On the other hand, maybe our PR chap was referring to the fact that we'd have VC's investing in the first place as the "unbelievable" part....

It is Morning in Africa

It is morning in Africa and
As the sun rises over the plains
The gazelle awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the fastest lion
It will be dead.

It is morning in Africa and
The lion awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the slowest gazelle
It will die.

It is morning in Africa and you had better start running.

Source: unknown.

I spotted this on Anatu Day's Blog via Emergic. It sums up today's society rather well.

Gotta run - have a fast week :-)

Mobiquette

There's a nice piece in the Taipei Times about how mobiles are changing aspects of society.

While I've covered most of the ideas at some point (like deadline softening and voyeur camera phone photos), one of the angles is that formerly phones were related to a place, whereas mobiles relate to a person. In other words, if you were in say, a colleague's office or even a friend's home and the landline phone rang, you'd probably answer it.

This isn't necessarily so with a mobile as it's much more closely associated with the person and it would be a far more intimate act.

But we're also programmed to answer a ringing phone which leads to a sense of frustration when we hear an unanswered phone ringing in public.

We're also programmed to listen more intently to conversations we can only hear one half of - our brain assumes we're the intended recipient. This explains why overheard mobile phone conversations are so annoying - it's because they're intrinsically frustrating.

Text a House

SMSeenHuis ("Text a House") is a Dutch service that allows mobile users to text the Real Estate boards outside residential houses.

In response, they get details of asking price, address, number of rooms and square footage, along with the Real Estate Agent contact details. Participating real estate ag