(* Source: Fash and Mash *)



GQ Style magazine has launched a new iPhone app in partnership with designer e-commerce site Mr Porter, the men’s arm of Natalie Massanet’s Net-a-Porter.
The GQ Style Guide labels itself the essential men’s fashion manual, offering advice on “what to wear, how to wear it, and where to buy it”.

Daily updates cover everything from the best suits, shirts and shoes, to the latest trends from the catwalk shows.

There’s also an “Ask the Style Shrink” section, dedicated to answering fashion questions, and a “How to Dress” reference for specific events.

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(* Source: PopSop *)



For Beck’s, beer always goes hand in hand with art—this year, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s brand is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its Art Labels project by launching a plethora of themed activities (the recent Beck’s Art Crawl exhibit if one of them) revolving around creativity. In collaboration with Mother London, the brand has started an ambitious three-year initiative dubbed The Green Box Project, celebrating art, independent talents and technology at the same time. Beck’s is offering artists from various creative fields (not only visual) a unique opportunity to get their pieces showcased in the groundbreaking virtual gallery for people to ‘unlock’ them via augmented-reality in “the visually stunning and technically pioneering” Green Boxes designed by Jason Bruges—they will be located across more than 80 countries in major cities of the world including London, Miami, Milan, New York and Rome to name but a few.

As part of the project, Beck’s will select 1,000 works submitted by creative individuals, fund and put them on display via 6.5 feet glowing cubes. The most surprising thing here is that no art pieces are visible to the naked eye there—to see them, you should use a special mobile application that allows to locate the nearest Green Box, start the augmented-reality experience, learn more about the ways to participate, etc. (so far, the apps available only foriPhones and iPads, but soon Android users will also be able to marvel the art and watch the related content).

From July through September, the brand will distribute “30 Green Boxes holding exclusive virtual pieces by renowned artists in the US, UK and Italy,” the official website states. “You have, so to speak, a pair of glasses that allows you to experience what is inside of the Beck’s green box. Every box is filled with a piece of art, fashion, music or design or a combination of those, because we’re talking about those four passion points of our target consumer,” commented Peter van Overstraeten, global marketing manager for Beck’s , to AdAge. For the launch of the project, on July 4 Beck’s unveiled the first work by Belgian-born artist Arne Quinze—he created a giant 200-feet virtual intense orange-red flame coming out of the torch of the Statue of Liberty (the initial piece didn’t require the box to view it—people can see it via the green box as well as the Statue of Liberty through their smartphones).

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(* Source: Brand-eBiz.com *)



Kylie Minogue has partnered with EMI and social games outfit 3ME to develop the Access All Areas mobile gaming app. AAA’s collection of games aims to test fans’ knowledge of all things Kylie… as well as agility, memory and skill, we’re told.

“We think Kylie is the perfect artist to launch this unique social gaming format as she has a very engaged, varied and loyal fan base,” says Dan Duncombe vp of digital marketing at EMI. There are a wide variety of games to challenge the biggest Kylie fans on their knowledge and fun games to share with friends. The viral opportunities within this game make it appealing for fans to encourage friends to participate and compare their scores.”

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(* Source: Laura Feinstein *)



While it would be nice if you could bring your best-friend along every time you needed a second fashion opinion, the truth is that sometimes those whose opinions you value most aren’t always at your disposal. While photo-capable phones like the Droid or iPhone have made sharing digital dressing room pictures a breeze, what if your trusty style guru is indisposed?

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(* Source: PopSop.com *)



MTV 

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(* Source: Mark Terry *)



DJ Alex M.O.R.P.H. has signed up to music social network Flowd’s Frequent Fans programme. The trance deejay will be using the platform to engage with fans for his performances this summer. He will be debuting the new and unreleased track Connected on Flowd, and the music destination’s users will be sent a mobile coupon which they can use to download song for free. The DJ is the first artist to provide content as exclusive as an unreleased track on the platform.

“Artists are beginning to embrace mobile social marketing to build their fan base and promote their latest activity,” says Tommi Laitinen, SVP, Flowd. “As artists take advantage of Flowd, the industry is recognising how useful our application is at building robust loyalty programme tools.”

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(* Source: PopSop.com *)



Bacardi 

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(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)



Not content with hitting up Mr Cab Driver himself, Lenny Kravitz, for their recent ad campaign, the Jeep brand is rolling out an innovative digital promotion, which lets users map their favourite tracks online.

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(* Source: PR Newswire *)



In Spring 2011, A|X launched A|X STYLEPAD™ – a multimedia, interactive create-your-own ad app that gives exclusive access to the captivating world of A|X Armani Exchange. The app gives iPhone and iPad users creative control to design "their A|X", selecting the background, casting the model from supplied images, and add a personalized message by writing text over the image to create a one-of-a-kind ad to save or share with friends on social networks.

With the application, Armani Exchange brings together three marketing trends – exclusive content, online entertainment, and social networking – in a unique and interesting way. Operated by an in-house cross-functional team, these initiatives are an evolution of our marketing message, linked to strategic goals and integrated with other marketing initiatives.

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(* Source: Tim Stevens *)



They're a growing threat, these simple games with their simple designs, simple controls, and simple graphics. They don't offer the full, premium experience that the real gamers want. They aren't hardcore enough. They aren't serious enough. They're just too... casual.

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(* Source:  Brand-M *)

(* Source: Steve Mullings *)  

“At Sony Ericsson, we are always looking for ways to reward consumers with exclusive experiences they can enjoy on their Xperia smartphones,” says Pieter Pierle, director of the brand’s global account. “David Guetta is a natural partner for us – he is a truly global star and understands the importance of communicating via social media.”

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Display Advertising

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 (* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)

(* Source: Olivia Solon *)

This has to be one of the most bizarre things I have seen today. Vodafone is challenging F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, to race against the speed of its improved mobile data network in The Netherlands.

Vodafone is calling for 28,800 Facebook users to join the race in a virtual car on Facebook. The time it takes for Vodafone’s network to download all of their profile pics (around 288MB) is the time Hamilton has to beat.

The actual race is taking place on a secret 2.7km track on 13th September and the race will be aired live on Facebook. Hamilton will be in a Mercedes Benz MP4-23 F1 car.

Users can sign themselves up to form part of the Facebook car on a special Facebook page. You can literally add your profile pic to a virtual outline of a car and can then navigate around the car seeing who else is involved.

While I completely appreciate the idea of pitting the speed of the broadband against something really fast like Lewis Hamilton in a supercar, I find it very hard to comprehend how to draw any sort of meaningful comparison from the race. So I decided to do a bit of calculation:

Vodafone claims to be able to have speeds of up to 28.8Mbps, which by my calculations (actually by Media Road’s converter’s calculations) would mean 3.6MB per second, would mean that it would take 80 seconds to download 288MB of photos.  80 seconds is almost enough for Lewis Hamilton to complete a lap of Silverstone, which is 5.9km long.

I don’t see how Hamilton could possibly lose?

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(* Source: Steve Cheney *)

Editor’s note: Guest author Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies. His last guest post was on Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs

Steve says...

The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.”

Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this.

Apple eliminated this friction by innovating at the confluence of hardware and software—hit one button mid-call and the feature just works. It really is amazing (yes, I am channeling Steve Jobs).

But FaceTime is just a teaser of Apple’s deep integration capabilities. Below the surface of hardware / software, Apple is on the cusp of differentiating on a much deeper level, a result of its strategy to vertically integrate at the component level. The advantages of integrating so deeply are subtle but incredibly powerful.

Feature Bloat in Components Benefits Apple:

I recently discussed why innovation in mobile is happening at an unprecedented pace. One primary driver is incredible component innovation.

But this rapid innovation—which is good overall—causes a negative byproduct: “feature bloat.”  The HTC EVO, which crams in 4G wireless, epitomizes this best (sorry, but mobile 4G is not ready for primetime, and I firmly believe Apple won’t even include it on next year’s iPhone 5).

The temptation for companies to differentiate via features is a virtuous cycle: component vendors (Broadcom, TI, Qualcomm) compete aggressively based on integration levels. Handset OEMs like HTC push vendors to release features prematurely, and they make component decisions based on availability of bleeding edge (but often buggy) technology.

This leads to a “kitchen sink” mentality, which conflicts with customer development frameworks, ironically driving a maximum feature set. Pressure from handset OEMs is a driver, but component vendors also tend to use competitive analysis to shape their marketing requirements. Steve Blank made some excellent insights into why this leads to feature bloat. The poor reviews of the HTC EVO are proof that—though alluring—additional features don’t always speak to consumers. Especially when they kill your battery overnight.

Apple thinks much differently about adding features. While the HTCs of the world “differentiate” blindly based on available technology, Apple innovates only when it can create a superior, well-integrated user experience.

Right now this virtuous cycle of feature bloat is accelerating in system-on-chip (SoC) development for the reasons I outlined above. And Apple is poised to sidestep it by vertically integrating and producing chips which mirror its minimalist product strategy.

Supply-Chain Transparency is an Enormous Unspoken Benefit for Apple:

Perhaps even more powerful is an unspoken advantage afforded to Apple’s SoC designers: vertical integration gives them explicit knowledge of what’s happening across the entire component ecosystem and value-chain.

How? Every component vendor in the world visits Cupertino to share its “secret” roadmap—despite the fact that Apple now competes in SoC development. The dangling carrot of an Apple design win simply outweighs any aversion to sharing. This transparency from other chip makers is extremely powerful, since handset OEMs plan several generations out (e.g. Apple is undoubtedly in concept stages with iPhone 6 and the A6).

Apple can learn Broadcom’s chip plans and mull over whether to bring portions of the digital logic related to GPS and WiFi on to the A6. New technologies like NFC for payments—bring in-house or purchase discrete? There are dozens of permutations, each with design challenges, benefits, and risks.

By extracting data from suppliers, Apple’s chip team has a feedback loop into product planning. All of this collective wisdom adds up, helping Apple decide what to roll-up, buy, license, or outsource. Imagine seeing your competition’s entire feature roadmap, and then planning your own SoC strategy. It’s like seeing your neighbor’s wife naked, and deciding afterward whether you’re interested, even though you’re already married.

Cisco has used a similar vertical integration strategy to its benefit in the enterprise for many years (Broadcom and Marvell pitch Ethernet fabrics despite the fact that Cisco builds its own switch chips). But in mobile, Apple is the only company who owns all three elements of the value-chain—hardware, software and chip components (outside of Samsung). Nokia divested its component division to STMicro, and Ericsson and Motorola spun off theirs as well.

As multicore ARM-based chips accelerate, and as software / hardware integration becomes more of a differentiator, Apple engineering teams will out-innovate competitors at the intersection of these three levels (again, antenna issues aside). It’s much more difficult for Google, Motorola, and others to cross-pollinate information from their own independent silos.

In tomorrow’s smartphone wars, this transparency into the entire mobile value-chain will give Apple an incredibly powerful advantage. This strategic implication wasn’t lost on Steve Jobs when he made the decision to vertically integrate and compete with the giants in the semiconductor world.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Ronen Halevy *)

One of the things many people enjoy with BlackBerrys is the ability to BlackBerry messenger friends and chat between smartphones. It does not look like RIM is ever going to open up BBM to other smartphones but WhatsApp is trying to step into that market with their Smartphone Messenger.

WhatsApp Messenger lets you chat between BlackBerrys and iPhones just like BBM. You can share pictures, video, and audio between the phones. They are also working on Android and Symbian apps to round out the offering.

You can find the free trial at www.whatsapp.com/ota/ or read more at www.whatsapp.com.

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(* Source: Chris Shunk *)

The resounding successes of the iPhone and iPad have Apple shareholders dancing in the streets, but one area in which Apple hasn't been as successful, however, has been business applications. In fact, until recently, Apple retail stores used Windows-based devices to ring up orders. Now, Mercedes-Benz aims to be among the first companies to change that paradigm by bringing the popular iPad tablet into its showrooms.

The program, called Mercedes-Benz Advantage, puts the iPad into the hands of the automaker's sales force. With the iPad and Mercedes' new sales tool app, associates will have lightning-fast access to the latest deals, while also providing a quicker turnaround time for customer credit application processes. Benz also says the iPad will help speed up the time it takes to turn-in a leased vehicle. Andreas Hinrichs, Vice President of Marketing for Mercedes-Benz Financial, contends the Apple tablet will "provide a competitive advantage to our dealers by increasing their service levels through a more flexible financing process."

We dig that Mercedes is thinking outside the box to deliver an expedited shopping experience, but even better, we love the fact that the Apple iPad might help customers avoid the dreaded trip to dealership's finance room. Hit the jump to read over the press release.

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(* Source: Amy-Mae Elliott *)

1. Leveraging Cell Phone Sensor Data

Your cell phone is constantly sending geodata back to its carrier base, but that’s not all most handsets are capable of recording. The iPhone alone boasts not only a location sensor, but also a light sensor, proximity sensor, compass and accelerometer. Take into account there are over 50 million of these devices around the planet; the potential amount of data that could be captured with them is immense. While there’s potential in improved leveraging of real-time location data from phones now, what’s even more exciting is the increasingly sophisticated sensors coming to future phones, such as temperature meters.

2. More Location Tagging

As a memory trigger, location can be as powerful as smell, says Stump. Geo-tagging items such as e-mails or business meeting notes would be a clever way to remind users about events or conversations. For example, you may not remember meeting Bob Smith and discussing his start-up (and almost certainly did not if it happened very late at a The Next Web party after a few Dutch beers!) but if the method of communication was tagged with a visual reminder of the bar you stood in when the conversation took place, you’re going to have a better chance at recalling it.

3. Platforms Merging

Stump does not suggest that Gowalla and Foursquare are about to become FourWalla, but we may well see social gaming platforms merge with location-based services. For example, two games or a game and a service could live in the same virtual world if the team-up was mutually beneficial and added value for the user. For example, love-it-or-hate-it Facebook game Farmville could see players check in to a local farmer’s market to sell their produce. These kind of cross-platform mergers would increase a game’s long-term interest and stickiness.

4. Games Going Beyond the Checkin

So you’re mayor of Bob’s Coffee Shop, woo-hoo. Although the relative freshness of location-based social games is keeping folks interested now — and is in fact attracting new players by the droves (Stump says that Foursquare sees 100,000 new users every 10 days while MyTown sees 100,000 new users every day) — this won’t always be the case. The games are going to have to go beyond checkins to increase interest. A current example of this is stickybits’s integration with Foursquare. Stickybits lets you tag an object with a QR code and then map it with an image that goes with you around the world. Expect to see more developments like this soon.

5. Making Sense of Location Data

As it’s a new area, not all companies are being an intelligent about location data — especially real-time examples — as they could be. We will soon see more connections made from the information and more graphing done to understand it. We will begin to ask not only where people are going but also why they are going to certain places. As interest in a fellow user’s location declines the further you are from it, and interest in an event likewise declines the further in the past it was, a way of capturing and using real-time location data is needed to best leverage the potentially powerful information.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

CEO David Hyman is introducing the service’s new mobile functionality. This is a major step for MOG, and may be an inflection point in the success of the service. Up until now, users have been restricted to using MOG’s streaming music service on their computers. That’s fine for casual listening at work, but as we’ve seen with the success of the mobile versions of Pandora, users want mobile. And that’s what MOG is unveiling today. Read below for my notes.

Hyman kicked off the talk with some background information. MOG Music Network, the editorial-based site hosted at MOG.com, reaches 16 million unique visitors a month. In December, the company launched Mog All Access, its streaming music service that costs $5/month for all-you-can-eat streaming music. The company is getting 17% conversion from its 3 day free trial (which is high). MOG, Hyman says, is a music service people will actually pay for. But the key will be portability.

MOG’s mobile applications for Android and iPhone will launch in Q2, featuring on-demand streams, downloads, MOG Radio, your library and playlists, High Quality audio, and a $10/month price tag (which includes both mobile and the web version of the service).

First, MOG showcased its Android application. As with the desktop version of MOG, users can stream any song on demand (they can also edit their playlists and upcoming song queue). Along with playlists and individual songs, users can also tap into MOG Radio, which generates a playlist of songs based on one of your favorite artists, albums, or songs (it’s a bit like Pandora, but you can dynamically adjust the content of your station using a slider and can jump to new songs as many times as you’d like). One other very slick feature: on Android, the service will feature voice commands, so you can simply say the name of the artist you’re looking for.

Next, MOG showed off the company’s iPhone application. In general, MOG is looking to keep the interfaces of the iPhone and Android applications consistent.  From a feature perspective, the iPhone and Android applications are identical (save for the Android voice search), and the applications are being developed side by side.

All of MOG’s on-demand streaming functionality looks great, but the killer feature is offline downloading. Using this, users can tap on a song or album they like and choose to download it to their iPhone or Android device, allowing you to seamlessly use the application when your phone doesn’t have connectivity. Hyman says that other offline services that have caching just cache your playlists — MOG lets you select any playlist or album on the site and immediately begin downloading it. Mobile web streaming and downloads will default t0 64kb AAC+ but users have the option to download 320kb/s files (which would obviously take much longer.  Streaming and downloading works over Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE.

Regarding whether or not MOG was worried Apple would turn down the application, Hyman said that historically Apple has allowed other subscription-based applications that feature local caching (he alluded to Spotify, which was previously accepted by Apple). But as always, nothing is certain with the App Store.

MOG will be facing off with plenty of competitors. Last fall, Spotify released applications for both iPhone and Android, but the service still isn’t available stateside. Pandora has become very popular on mobile devices, but it doesn’t let you play any song you’d like on demand (it’s free, so plenty of people are willing to overlook that). From a feature perspective, Rhapsody is most similar to MOG (especially once it gets offline playback for its iPhone application, which is coming soon), but it’s $15 a month compared to MOG’s $10.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

It’s becoming increasingly common for the web’s many publishers to offer their own native smartphone applications in addition to mobile-optimized web versions. But few web publishers have the resources to actually develop an app for themselves. iSites is a new service launching today that allows publishers to quickly build applications for the iPhone, allowing them to create a customized and branded app in as little as 10 minutes. And soon, you’ll be able to use the platform to simultaneously publish Android apps from the same platform.

Of course, you’re not going to be able to build out a particularly complex app in ten minutes, but if your primary goal is to syndicate your stories to users, with basic features like browsing by categories and the ability to ‘favorite’ stories, this will suit you just fine. Building an app is straightforward: first, you tell iSites which RSS feed it should include in your app. You can also include feeds from a dozen popular web services like Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, and Wordpress.  Once you’ve figured out what content you’re going to include, you can tweak the color scheme of the app, add your own logos, and attach an icon and a description to include in the App Store.

Once all that’s done, you submit the app and wait for it to appear on the App Store (iSites handles the submission process). Once the app is live, you can log in to your iSites account to view analytics on the app’s performance, including which content in your app is the most popular.

One of the nice things about iSites is that even after you’ve deployed your app, you can modify the various feeds the app is pulling content from. And soon, you’ll be able to deploy apps to both the App Store and Android Market (the Android version is currently in Beta testing, with release planned in the next few weeks). Changes made using iSites (like your app’s layout or feeds) will be reflected on both your iPhone and Android apps.

iSites costs users a flat fee of $25 for the standard version, or $99 a year if you want to be able to include your own AdMob ads. The service is currently being used by a number of clients, including university papers like The Daily Californian, The Stanford Daily, and The State Press.

iSites certainly isn’t the first player to offer a solution for helping publishers build mobile apps — we’ve been seeing similar tools for nearly as long as the App Store has been around, with competitors including AppMakr, Mobile Roadie, and plenty more.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: PSFK *)

Nike is giving us their taste in mobile marketing with True City, an iPhone app with the tagline ‘Making the hidden visible.’ It combines social elements with current mobile technologies to create a next-gen city and travel guide for six European cities.

With each city comes a host ‘tastemaker’ to guide users to lesser known community attractions. For Paris, it is BKRW founder Jay Smith. Of course Jay’s perspective alone is not enough, as an addition to each host there is a second tier of designated contributors and a third of so called ‘civilian’ contributors. Everyone is encouraged to add their own finds, geo-tagged, throughout a city. The best, or most popular, will have an opportunity to join the team of Nike insiders. It appears that Nike is reaching for an army of hyper-local, mobile-connected advocates.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Gagan Biyani *)

Gagan says...

Some mobile startups do something that can’t be done online. Others copy an online business and bring it to mobile. And then there are companies like Scoutmob [iTunes link]. They take a great online business and make it ten times better by allowing you to take advantage of the service on-the-go.

Scoutmob is Woot on mobile, done on a local scale. Scoutmob provides location-aware coupons directly to your mobile device. They launch in Atlanta, and their first offer is for 50% off at Murphy’s, which is a 4-star restaurant according to Yelp. The offers, according to CEO Dave Payne, have a rapid expiration time (in this example, 24 hours), so you need to use the coupon within one day. They’ll have a different offer every day, so don’t weep if you can’t fly into Atlanta by midnight – you’ll be able to hit up Octane Coffee Bar and Lounge tomorrow.

For those of you who caught it, one obvious downside is “they launch in Atlanta.” That’s not to say Atlanta isn’t a cool place (hey, they brought us Coca-Cola and the Dirty Bird), but just that I doubt there are as many iPhone owners there as in San Francisco or New York City. That said, Dave’s existing business, SkyBlox, is a company that provides WiFi to 2,500 local businesses in Atlanta, so they’ve got an incumbent customer base to draw on for their offers.

Scoutmob seems to be entering an interesting business at a great time. Real-time and location-based mobile apps are hot as balls right now, and the virtual coupon business is making headlines too. Of course, it’s also super crowded – as there are many location-aware coupon apps on the iPhone, including Yowza!, which has made headlines because its founder is Heroes star, Greg Grunberg.

An interesting side-story (and a knock against Scoutmob) is that Dave has no technical expertise himself and does not have a technical team to make or maintain the application. Instead, he outsourced the technology to a web developer friend from college who didn’t know Objective-C. How the hell did he make an iPhone app with Push, a native UI and geolocation with a web developer? He used Appcelerator’s Titanium product, which enables web developers to create iPhone and Android applications. I’ve sat down with CEO Jeff Haynie, and Titanium, which is free, seems to be a cool way for web developers to create native-looking iPhone apps without having to code in Objective-C.

Scoutmob is available on the iTunes store and their first promotion is today.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Goldman *)

Landline TV is a New York-based production company that specializes in comedy. Here is their version of how Google's new phone destroys the competition by systematically terrorizing iPhone's users.

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(* Source: John Biggs *)

Jonh says...

What AppMakr lacks in vowels they make up for in coolness. AppMakr is a dead easy app design engine that allows you to enter a URL or search term, pick a few images, and publish an app to the App Store in a few minutes.

The service uses RSS feeds and searches to build a comprehensive feed of your website or “personal brand” that is updated automatically. You can then push the app live for $199 or download the app to your own machine for $499.

The pricing is a little weird. Here’s the official skinny:

$199 – The Easy Way: AppMakr Publishes Your App
Submit your app in minutes, with AppMakr as the publisher. Skip the difficult parts of making an iPhone app, like having to work with Xcode and figuring out the app certification and provisional process. You can even insert your own ads in the app. Apps built with this option will have a small AppMakr logo on the app splash screen.

$499 – You’re In Control: Publish Under Your Own Brand
Take control of the app building process by creating an Apple Developer Account and loading your certificates into AppMakr. We’ll take care of the rest, including the provisioning, building and management of your apps. You’ll also be able to test apps on your own phone with Ad Hoc builds.

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }

You can also hire the company to help you for $120 an hour, although that’s not really necessary.

The process is simple. You first enter your URL or search terms. The system searches for feeds and media and then places it into a browser. You can also grab logos from your disk or a URL. The simulator demos your app as you build it.

You then ad various feeds including YouTube, Digg, and TweetMeme data. The main feed shows on the front page while subsidiary feeds appear when you tap buttons at the bottom.

The current templates do not allow for “static” pages – About pages, for example – but that is coming.

The company just launched last night and we saw it live at a CES event. It seems like a great way for personal micro-brand-aware individuals to monetize their current feed value through the use of highly targeted data chunklets in a mobile context. Ha! Just kidding. But if you have a blog, it’s worth looking into.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Daniel says..

Twitter seems to be the hottest thing in tech recently — if you look at TechCrunch, it averages at least 3 posts a week about Twitter. But the bigger question is, who is really using Twitter? Many of you might think that, as with most of the latest gadgets and technologies, teenagers are using Twitter, but you’re wrong, and here’s why. Matthew Robson, a 15 year old intern, over at Morgan Stanley, wrote a report on how teenagers are consuming media, and why Twitter isn’t the hot topic in high school halls.

If you look at technologies trending with teens right now, it’s Apple devices (iPhone, iPod), smart phones (Blackberry, Palm), and then social networks (Facebook and MySpace). At least that’s what I see from hanging out with 1,500 other teenagers in high school every day (I am 16 years old). But why not Twitter? Well, because Twitter is a different type of social network than Facebook. Facebook is about connecting people, and sharing information with each other. The way my friends and I see it, Facebook is a closed network. It’s a network of people and friends that you trust to be connected to, and to share information like your email address, AIM screen name, and phone number. You know who’s getting your status messages, because you either approved or added each person to your network.

With Twitter, it’s the exact opposite. Anyone can follow your status updates. It’s a completely open network that makes teenagers feel “unsafe” about posting their content there, because who knows who will read it. Sure, you get emails notifying you when you have new followers, but that doesn’t compare to the level of detail you get when someone on Facebook adds you, and you get their information.

According to June, 2009 comScore numbers, 11.3% of visitors to Twitter.com in the U.S. are ages 12-17. Internationally, in May, 2009, only 4.4% of visitors were younger then 18.

Twitter is also seen as more expensive to keep up with than Facebook. Most of my friends spend their time playing video games, watching TV, surfing online, and text messaging to actual friends who you know will reply back. In an economy like this, most parents don’t want to spend the extra money on unlimited texting to total strangers. So why spend money on sending SMS updates to Twitter, when you can send updates to someone you know will read it and reply?

Facebook has a more dedicated community than Twitter, which is why teenagers want to use it. Maybe the reason Twitter still isn’t considered mainstream quite yet is because Gen Y isn’t the early adopter this time around.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Mark Hefflinger *)

The founders of gadget news blogs Gizmodo and Engadget have teamed to launch GDGT, a gadget-focused online social network.

The site was launched on Wednesday by Pete Rojas, the founder of Gizmodo and co-founder of Engadget, and Ryan Block, the editor of Engadget.

The site will not produce original news content or reviews, as do Gizmodo and Engadget, but instead aggregate news and reviews, and allow users to post their own gadget reviews.

Users can also create profiles and list their stable of gadgets, as well as wish lists.

Block told The New York Times that the gadget blogs focus on only 5% of a device's lifecycyle, the "lust phase," while GDGT will address "the 95 percent of the time you own the product there is nowhere to go. We are building the place where you can live with your gadgets online in perpetuity." 

See site here

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(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Here is another comparison between the war happening on the mobile content space.  The list of applications that are listed as popular are an interesting measure to what people look at in terms of content on their mobiles.

Robin says...

When Nokia launched its Ovi Store for mobile applications a month ago, it was clear that - despite its less than stellar launch - it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the Finnish mobile juggernaut’s efforts as meaningless. The company may be struggling to stay relevant on the software and services side, but with a reach like Nokia’s on the handset distribution level I think it goes without saying that a lot of eyes are firmly fixed on Nokia’s initiatives in the field.

There was some criticism about the lack of content on the Ovi Store at launch day, particularly because of the fact that a lot of big names were lacking, but I figured I should give it at least a month to see if and how many developers would flock to the platform. Now, I think it’s time to take a look at where they stand after that month, and I thought I’d start by comparing the content offering to that of Apple’s App Store, the central application marketplace for iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

This is evidently not really a fair comparison, since Apple’s App Store has been around for almost a year now, while Nokia is still getting started. Still, it’s worth noting that a lot of the big names on the Internet - whether we’re talking about social networks, search companies or game developers - are still missing on the Ovi Store.

A quick and dirty comparison (note that my top lists for the App Store may differ from yours depending on your location, mine being Belgium, Europe):

Social networks

Ten popular apps in the App Store (free and paid mixed together):

- Facebook
- Skype
- TweetDeck
- Nimbuzz
- fring
- LinkedIn
- Truphone
- AIM
- Tweetie
- BeejiveIM

Ten popular apps in the Ovi Store (free and paid mixed together):

- Gravity (a Twitter client)
- Insy
- Friendster
- ThumbDive
- Hi5
- GyPSii
- IM+ For Skype
- See-Fi
- Twittix (another Twitter client)
- Facebook for Nokia

News and information

Ten popular apps in the App Store (free and paid mixed together):

- BBC World News Live
- NY Times
- AP Mobile
- France24
- Thomson Reuters News Pro
- CNN
- Wall Street Journal
- L.A. Times
- The Telegraph
- USA Today

Ten popular apps in the Ovi Store (free and paid mixed together):

- Daily Star
- Daily Express UK
- France24
- AP News
- Reuters
- The Straits Times (daily newspaper, popular in Singapore)
- The Star (Malaysian newspaper)
- The Guardian
- CNBC
- Breaking News

Music

Ten popular apps in the App Store (free and paid mixed together):

- Sirius XM
- Pandora Radio
- Shazam
- Y! Music
- imeem Mobile
- PocketGuitar
- AOL Radio
- Last.fm
- KCRW Radio
- Ocarina

Ten popular apps in the Ovi Store (free and paid mixed together):

- Mundu Radio
- NME
- MusAic
- Midomi
- Nokia Internet Radio
- Tunerific
- Bandfan
- MixPack
- Mozart Killer
- MyRMX

I could go on with a number of other categories, but I think you’ll agree the trend is clear: Nokia so far hasn’t attracted many familiar names on the Internet to develop and/or submit applications to the Ovi Store.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Brian Solis *)

Twitter connects people through a rich and active exchange of ideas, thoughts, observations, and interests in one, highly collaborative and promising ecosystem. The Twitterverse advances micro interaction and connections through an expanding network of applications, engendering the potential for macro reach and resonance online and IRL (in real life).

Posted by brian tiong at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

Earlier this year Pinch Media released a report on the state of the App Store, describing some of the trends it had seen as developers tried to monetize their apps. The verdict: advertising on free applications simply can’t match the payoff from even the least expensive ‘paid’ applications, and would require an unobtainable $8.75 CPM to reach the same income per install.

AdWhirl, the iPhone advertising platform formerly known as Adrollo, begs to differ. Since launching last month, the company has signed on over 10% of the top 50 applications in the App Store and is serving 250 million ad impressions per month. And their data tells a different tale.

According to co-founder Sam Yam, one of the fundamental flaws in the Pinch Media report is that it assumes that applications only show a single ad impression per user interaction (in other words, every time you open a free app, you only see one ad). Yam says that applications actually tend to serve 3-5 impressions each time a customer interacts with them, with even higher figures for some especially engaging applications. And when you divide that $8.75 CPM by 5, things become much more reasonable.

The AdWhirl report, embedded below, says that applications that crack the top 100 in the Free Apps list make $400-$5000 a day - a wide range to be sure, but even at the low end that works out to around $12,000 a month. Among these top apps, AdWhirl is reporting an impressive $1.90 eCPM and 2.6% CTR. And while applications that do reach the peak position in the App Store eventually lose steam, revenue tends to remain consistent over time after the initial dip (see the graph below). Of course, making it to the top of the Free Apps list is easier said than done, and most developers make far less than $400 a day. But the same is true of the vast majority of paid applications too - in fact, there’s actually less competition on the Free side of the store.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael says...

SMSGupShup, a Twitter-like service in India, is getting a ton of buzz over here in the U.S., too. In an interview with CEO Beerud Sheth now says the service now has 20 million users (and that’s without an appearance on Oprah), nearly all of which are in India. That’s up from 7 million late last year.

The service can only be accessed via SMS, which works just fine for India’s 400 million mobile phone users (there are just 40 million broadband Internet users, Sheth says). Users sign up and use the service all via text messages. They never need to visit the website at all.

The service’s main variable costs are fees for text messages, and Sheth says that they’ve had to implement caps to keep costs under control. But as the service grows, says Sheth, they are able to negotiate much better pricing. Already SMSGupShup accounts for 400 million monthly text messages, around “5%-6%” of the total Indian market.

Three months ago the service added advertising to messages. Three months in and they’re making $150,000/month in revenue. Not bad for a SMS-based service.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Vic Gundotra *)

This guest post is written by Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering for Google’s mobile and developer products. (Prior to Google, he spent 15 years at Microsoft, most recently as their GM of Platform Evangelism.) Vic credits his now-7-year-old with forecasting the importance of mobile data access, and now carries at least 4 phones at all times. Fortunately, he had two kids before adopting the possibly-prophylactic habit.

Focus on the mobile user, and all else will follow

Simpler data, better browsers, and a smoother experience

Today the mobile industry finds itself in a unique position to do right by its users:

Worldwide phone penetration continues to climb at a break-neck pace, with over 4 billion mobile subscribers at last count.¹ (In comparison, the PC industry is forecasted to see its sharpest unit decline in history.²) Prevailing economic conditions will accelerate this trend, as users consolidate pricey communication services into cost-effective, all-in-one mobile devices.³ And for the first time ever, half of all new connections to the internet will come from a phone in 2009.⁴

Google’s mobile traffic reflects these milestones — having quintupled since 2007⁵ — and it underscores users’ appetite for mobile data services. But as a community of operators, device manufacturers and software providers, we continue to get in their way. In short, and as a general rule, we make it too costly, too unfamiliar, and too difficult to do anything beyond voice calls.

In reply I offer up three suggestions: simpler data plans, better web browsers, and a smoother on-device experience. And in each case I’ll use Google traffic numbers as a proxy for total internet usage and user happiness.

Disclaimer: As a Google employee using internal data to carry the weight of this article, I owe it to the reader to lay bare my economic incentives: the company I work for has a financial interest in the broad and sweeping adoption of the Internet-as-we-know-it. Indeed, more internet users leads to increased web usage, which often leads to more Google searches and downstream ad clicks. I use Google data because it’s what I know best, and because it reinforces my industry-facing remarks, but make no mistake: I’m fundamentally interested in what’s good for the mobile internet. It just so happens that this is also good for Google. With that said, I hope you’ll find value in the words and data that follow.

Flat is the new phat

Consider MetroPCS, a regional carrier in the United States with just over 5 million subscribers on their 2.5G CDMA network. Over the past year, their Google search volume grew over 2.5x more quickly than another global carrier with 10 times as many users, and a 3G network.⁶

Metro’s “secret” is a free month of web access at signup, with the option of flat-rate, unlimited data thereafter.⁷ As a result nearly half of Metro’s subscribers use the web on a regular basis. (It’s also worth mentioning that MetroPCS was recently recognized for excellence in customer satisfaction.⁸)

In contrast, many operators subject users to a labyrinthine set of data options, from pay-as-you-go to daily caps with significant overage charges. Now, can you imagine paying your at-home internet provider for every page load? Or needing to know the size of a website before visiting it? Or managing your monthly download quota across your entire household? It’s simply not practical, and it’s all the same internet, so why do we treat mobile users as second-class citizens? Case and point: my colleague’s January phone bill contained 27 pages of itemized data charges, spelled out in excruciating detail.⁹

Unless we declare flat the new phat — and soon — I fear Occam will do something terrible with his razor.

They want it all, they want it now

Users “get” the web, and they’ve known for over 10 years that the browser is the thing that takes you there. Likewise, more and more of today’s killer applications are the Amazons and Facebooks of the world, not software that you download to a local machine. So it should come as no surprise that mobile users want phones (and browsers) that put a fully-featured internet in their pocket.

For example: the availability of a modern web browser explains why iPhone and Android users — just 13% of the high-end market¹⁰ — represent nearly 50% of Google’s smartphone traffic worldwide.¹¹

Similarly, users of the T-Mobile G1 and its newer WebKit browser search Google 20 times more often than Nokia Series 60 users.¹²

The simple truth is that mobile users have wanted fast and full web access all along. Consider two quick facts about Google search behavior: the “tail” of PC and iPhone queries is significantly longer than that of feature phone queries;

“One web will triumph.”¹⁴ Users want all of it. And they want it now.

Friction is fugly

In the early days of mobile search, customer feedback was clear: “I can’t find Google on my phone.” And in hindsight it makes sense: unintuitive device menus and preference panes mandated 20+ mind-numbing clicks just to locate portal content¹⁵ — nevermind “off net” sites like Google. This Frankenstein’s monster of OEM, carrier, and 3rd party software made it impossible to discover — much less enjoy — mobile data services, and showed a complete disregard for users’ on-device experience.

Thanks to an influx of smarter phones, many mobile users can now reach 3rd party software with a single tap or click. And in Google’s case, this desktop-like experience increases search traffic by many orders of multitude.¹⁶

Why? Because it provides a frictionless onramp to search results. Likewise, and prior to its v5.0 release in February 2009, Google Earth saw more activations on the day of its iPhone launch than any other day in the product’s history. Why? Because the iPhone’s App Store and on-screen layout make it easy to find, try and access mobile data services.

And herein lies the rub: users appreciate well-written software, but ease of use and on-device navigability are critical preconditions for usage. (After all, if you hide a tree in a forest, who cares whether someone hears it fall? Chances are they’ll never find it anyway.) The proliferation of app stores is a positive step in this direction, as are efforts on the part of OEMs to give developers unfettered access to low-level functionality.

We have to surprise and delight users with fast and fluid interfaces. Friction is just fugly.

- Sent from my Android phone, with a WebKit browser and an unlimited data plan

1. ITU, 2009
2. Gartner, 2009
3. comScore, 2008
4. eMarketer, 2008 and 2009
5. Google internal
6. Google internal
7. MetroPCS, 2009
8. J.D. Power, 2008
9. January phone bill, redacted
10. Canalys, 2008
11. Google internal
12. Google internal
13. “Computers and iPhones and Mobile Phones, oh my!”, 2009
14. Opera, 2008
15. http://www.biz-lib.com/products/ZMOMX.html
16. Google internal

Posted by brian tiong at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Trendspotting *)

I'm not big fan of predictions but have a look at what trendspotting is saying about 2009.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says... 

Tapulous, the company behind Tap Tap Revenge, has announced that the popular iPhone app will hit 1 million installs some time this weekend. The app is the second we’ve heard from to hit the milestone (Facebook reached it last week), and is another testament to the extremely rapid growth some applications have seen on Apple’s newly launched App Store.

Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem says that the application has been downloaded about 900 thousand times since its launch, and expects to hit the 1 million user milestone over the weekend. Tapulous’s iPhone Twitter client Twinkle is significantly less popular, with around 80,000 installs, but it was released after Tap Tap Revenge. Decrem notes that there is a total install base of about 5-6 million iPhones and iPod Touches running the 2.0 firmware (which is compatible with the App Store). With about 1 million downloads, this puts Tapulous applications on around 20% of all devices - a very impressive feat.

One of best features in the original version of the game (which was only available on hacked iPhones) was that users could create tab sheets and play the game with any song in their iPhone’s library. Unfortunately, Apple prohibits any developer from accessing the iPhone’s library with a native application, so Tapulous has been forced to come up with a different way to introduce new content to the game. For the time being they’re offering free downloads of new songs directly through the app, but these songs have all been submitted to the company by indie artists (impressively, 2.5 million songs have been downloaded so far).

As it turns out, a number of record labels have taken notice of Tap Tap Revenge’s quickly growing install base, and are eager to use it as a means of exposing users to new music. Decrem says that the company is in talks with both indie and more well known artists to create a premium package of songs, which will likely be released in the App Store as a separate game for a small fee. Subsequent packages will also likely be released as their own independent games, as Apple does not currently offer a way for developers to sell new content from within an application.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Paul Glazowski *)

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(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says... 

As one of the most popular forms of communication in the world, SMS has become a favorite channel for advertisers to reach out to their audience. Everywhere we go, billboards and TV shows try to convince us that we should “Text MAGIC to 9340″, with promises of goodies like free ringtones and coupon codes.

Now Tagga, a Canadian startup launching today, is looking to help you create your own SMS campaign. The service is currently live in Canada, but is still smoothing some things out with American carriers so it may not work quite yet on your phone (the company says any issues should be resolved over the next few weeks).

To create a campaign, users first designate what keyword they’d like to use. For example, we might choose to use the word “Tech”. From then on, any user to text “Tech” to 82442 (it spells TAGGA) would receive whatever content we’d decided to distribute. The company says that users won’t be allowed to namesquat the keywords, as it will delete any accounts that are inactive for too long.

For most people, Tagga offers two pricing plans. The first option allows users to create free campaigns, but 80 of the 160 characters on each text messages are reserved for ads from sponsors. The site also offers a paid premium account at 20 cents per message delivered which eliminates the ads.

Tagga also has a plan in place for “publishers”, who can use the service to offer their readers a sort of short form RSS. Publishers can choose to include ads as part of their message campaigns, but unlike the standard program, they receive a revenue share from each ad. To participate, members have to prove that they are actually generating unique content, as opposed to spamming someone else’s blog material.

Tagga has a huge market to try to capitalize on: there were an estimated 1.9 trillion text messages sent in 2007 alone. But the company will face steep competition from a number of more mature services that do nearly the same thing, like Mozes, which recently closed an $11.5 million round of funding. To help differentiate itself, Tagga is offering keywords for free (Mozes charges $5 per month), but this plan may backfire if Tagga is unable to handle the rush of name squatters.

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(* Source: eMarketer *)

It's not just the phones.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: eMarketer *) 

"I heard it through the grapevine…" or maybe on my mobile phone.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pandora’s internet radio has always been one of those sites that was really cool in concept, but too inconvenient to ever go mainstream. The service was long tied to computers only, and while it eventually expanded to special internet radios and some mobile phones, it still has yet to become a household name. But with the launch of Pandora’s new iPhone app last Friday, it looks like the service is about to hit critical mass. It’s a free, mobile, digital radio station that only plays music you like and lets you skip the stuff you don’t. And it rocks.

The personalized music service employs a small army of 50 musicians to create a “Music Genome” that describes each song according to 600 attributes. Listeners input a few of their favorite artists, and the site analyzes the Genome to serve up an endless stream of recommended music.

We introduced the app last Friday, when we called it our “flat out favorite application so far”, and since then it hasn’t failed to impress. Streamed music plays flawlessly over Edge and 3G networks - during a 40 mile drive I didn’t once run into any kind of skipping or static. Even better, the app currently has no advertisements playing, though we can probably expect that to change.

Unsurprisingly, Pandora’s usage stats are overwhelmingly positive. Pandora is currently the fourth most popular free app on iTunes (behind Apple’s Remote, AIM, and WeatherBug), and has reportedly been seeing a new listener every 2 seconds. Usage over the weekend hit an all-time high for the service, with 3.3 million tracks streamed to iPhone listeners alone. Perhaps more impressive is the retention rate of listeners, who are averaging over an hour of listening per day.

If there’s one thing that could kill the service, it’s ads. Pandora is going to need to monetize the app somehow - let’s hope it allows us to pay an upfront fee (say, $10) to avoid the annoying interruptions that have made listening to traditional radio a painful experience.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *) 

Jason reports... 

The iPhone, with cult-like users and location aware technology, is the perfect social networking device. Earlier this year we speculated that someone would emerge with a killer social networking app for the iPhone. It turns out that there are lots of contenders.

Loopt

Loopt - Think of Loopt as a simple social network to find local businesses, message friends and send status updates with where you are (using the iPhones location technology). And a key difference with Loopt and many of the other networks below: you can meet new people who are nearby, if they choose to share that information. If everyone used this, you could see who’s single in a bar before you approach them (and flirt with them by phone first), and know the first name and job of everyone at that cocktail hour at the tech conference. We’re big fans of Loopt, and will have more news on them later today. For now, download the free application here.

Limbo

Limbo - Limbo is another geo-aware social network that behaves like a mashup of Twitter, Loopt, and Whrrl. One of the app’s most compelling features is its grid-like diagram that visually groups your friends according to what they’re doing (for example, all of your friends that are Out Drinking will be lumped together, even if they aren’t necessarily drinking in the same place). The app accomplishes this feat by forcing users to select from a predefined hierarchal list of activities (while this might sound restrictive, the list is pretty comprehensive). This categorization allows users to see what they’re friends are up to without having to sift through each of their messages.

On the geo-positioning front, Limbo allows users to interact users who are within a close radius (about a quarter mile), in a manner that is similar to Loopt. You can download the app here for free.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Steve O'Hear *)

Steve says...

Location-based social networking could soon go mainstream with today’s news that Nokia, the world’s leading mobile cellphone manufacturer, has acquired Berlin-based Plazes.

Founded in 2005, Plazes lets “friends” update each other about what they are doing when and where, resulting in a Twitter-like activity stream but with integrated geo-tagging. Users can then subscribe to any of their friends’ activity streams or to groups of friends, as well as to specific locations known as “Plazes”. Updates can be done either on Plazes.com or by mobile phone (via text messaging) or using a number of third-party applications that utilize the Plazes’ publicly available API.

Now that Nokia has acquired the service, “if all goes well” we can expect Plazes to be “made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices”, according to the official Plazes blog

A few key takeaways from the announcement…

• It’s more evidence that Nokia is moving away from being purely a hardware manufacturer into a fully-fledged Web service company, with it’s consumer-facing Ovi brand.
• Nokia is placing a massive bet on Location-based Services. The company now includes GPS functionality in almost all of its most recent handsets, and has been bundling its own mapping software (based on a previous acquisition of Gate5, another Berlin-based startup). Additionally, Nokia is in the process of acquiring NAVTEQ, the world’s largest data mapping company.
• Plazes is still on track to release a native iPhone client, suggesting that Nokia understands the importance of network effects over platform exclusivity. No location-based social network will be able to go mainstream if it is limited to friends who use a particular handset or platform.

Moving forward, it’s clear that mobile, combined with location, represent the next social networking frontier. As evidence, Google’s Android developer contest is littered with location-based social applications, and the official iPhone SDK has already given birth to a number of location-aware social networking apps. What’s not clear yet, however, is whether the eventual winners will be established social networking services such as Facebook or Twitter that add location-based functionality or newer or specialized entrants who build in location and mobile from the get-go.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

The platform wars are going mobile. Whether it’s the iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows Mobile, the mobile platform that will win in the end will be the one with the best and broadest collection of applications. To give developers a little extra financial motivation, funds are being set up to invest in them. Google announced a $10 million Android challenge back in November, and Kleiner Perkins announced its $100 million iFund for iPhone-only startups in March. Now, it looks like Research in Motion is about to announce its own $150 million Blackberry Partners Fund (site not up yet) to spur applications and services for its mobile device.

VentureBeat

headline here

Posted by brian tiong at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Paul Resnikoff  *)

Mobile phones are frequently viewed as a distinct media environment, separate from other platforms like PCs and television.  But as mobile devices increasingly assume computer-like characteristics and reach beyond carrier-provided signals, their status as a separate platform is starting to erode.  "The question is whether it makes sense anymore to license for a platform, or if we are now talking about a pervasive experience," said Ted Cohen, head of digital consultancy TAG Strategic, during an executive roundtable at MusEXPO in Los Angeles on Monday.

Cohen pointed to an oncoming generation of handhelds that include WiFi browsing and offer easy connectivity to PC-based collections.  Indeed, that future is already among us, and the emerging media consumer is clearly a cross-platform animal.  "It never made sense to license separately for mobile," said Ian Rogers, former head of Yahoo Music and current chief executive of Topspin.  "Mobile will eventually start to look more like the internet, and at that point, it stops making sense to view it as a completely different model."

Others etched a similar vision of convergence.  "It will be very difficult to tell the difference between a laptop on WiFi or WiMax and a mobile device, and you might make phone calls on both," said Chris Barton, strategic partnership development manager at Google.

But the ex-Yahoo Rogers touched upon the somewhat restrictive nature of the current mobile platform, one heavily controlled by carriers.  And that mostly defines today's landscape for mobile music and media, at least for those wanting to promote, sell, or acquire content on handhelds.

For carriers and major content owners, the present-day environment offers an easier mechanism for controlling customer billing relationships and extracting dollars from content.  "It really comes down to where the billing relationship is," explained David Pakman, chief executive of eMusic.  And that existing relationship makes its advantageous for carriers and other stakeholders to preserve the existing landscape.

But despite that carefully-crafted moneymaking machine, attendees continued to question the power of mobile platforms to deliver solid, independent revenue streams.  One pointed to a growing threat from tiny, flash-based storage cards, easily swappable among users.  Another pointed to side-loading among users, who predictably want to extend their massive, PC-based collections onto their devices.

Meanwhile, consumers are now getting ready for a beefed-up iPhone, perhaps the vanguard of a more sophisticated, powerful mobile device class that is stretching beyond carrier-imposed limitations.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: James Quintana Pearce*)

The market for rich media advertising on mobile—in the form of TV, video, games, user-generated content (UGC) and music—will reach $2.79 billion by 2012 predicts Screen Digest. The bulk of this will come from mobile TV advertising, tapped to hit $2.44 billion globally by that time, a figure which is pretty close to that predicted by Juniper. This is predicted to be more than 20 percent of mobile TV revenues, although there are bigger opportunities in free-to-air markets like Japan and South Korea rather than subscription markets like North America and Europe. Screen Digest warns that without its own metrics mobile TV “will struggle to be considered a stand alone advertising channel”. Mobile video-on-demand will claim $336. million by 2012. The other forms of rich media content aren’t predicted to bring in a lot of revenue, but will “provide a valuable source of innovative marketing opportunities for brands aspiring to connect and interact with their customers”. By 2012 60 million ad-funded games will be downloaded annually, predicts SD. (release)

Posted by brian tiong at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Sean P Aune *) 

Sean says...

While we all wait for firmware 2.0 for the iPhone an iPod Touch, there are still plenty of games out there help distract you from work. These nine represent but a fraction of what’s waiting out there; we’ve had some fun with ‘em, and hopefully you will, too.

BattleFleet - The classic game of hunting for the enemy navy to sink it while hiding your own.

D & D Roller - Why carry around a bag full of dice like the old days? Whip out your iPod Touch or iPhone, hit this site, and start rolling the dice for your games.

HeadsYouWin - In this modern day of credit cards, sometimes you simply don’t have a coin to flip, this iPhone/iPod Touch web application will solve the problem for you.

Kenny Rogers Roulette - Not only is it roulette on your iPhone, but you get to see Kenny Rogers staring at you!

Kingdom Game - A real time strategy game where you control a kingdom, buy defenses, buy and sell goods in the market, build diplomatic relations through embassies and more.

Lights Off - Click a square to turn a light on or off and see what happens to th squares around it. The ultimate goal is to turn off all of the lights.

Reversi - Also known as Othello, Reversi is a popular and old game, and now you can play quick games where ever you may be.

Tetris - It just wouldn’t be mobile gaming if there wasn’t some way to play Tetris on it.

XBox Live Friends - Add your friends Gamertags to the app and you can check their online status and gamer card from anywhere.

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(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Are mobile marketers moving ahead or merely spinning their wheels?

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(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Erik reports... 

Daem Interactive has developed Skuair, new technology that it is calling the next generation of 2d code readers. Skuair isn’t limited to reading barcode lines and numbers but can read product logos or images. Skuair works with any mobile phone camera and is easy to operate. The user simply takes a picture of an advertisement or product logo and a low resolution image is sent to the recognition server and an associated URL is returned. The user can receive a variety of multimedia content from the company or person who owns the image

User generated tags will be launched later this year. A short demo of how Skuair works.

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(* Source: Dan Neumann *)

Ah... it's good to see 2D black & white barcodes moving into the airline space in the US and Canada. Saving trees makes sense.  Colorzip, a company I consulted for late last year has 3D color barcodes that have launched in Singapore.  How are we doing, Andrew?

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(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

Microsoft has started to ramp up its MSN Mobile portal, rolling out ads and additional content for users. The portal already had search tools, quick access to various applications and mobile content for your phone. Now there are additional content like options for purchasing movie tickets, ringtones, wallpaper, games and video clips for mobile users.

The expanded portal will first launch in the U.S. and branch out from there. After the success of the FOX Sports Channel on MSN Mobile, it’s clear that more niche content will make the mobile portal more attractive to a wider range of users. This seems like a good opportunity for more integration of recently acquired MusiWave as well.

Having added in more content, the mobile portal is now primed for advertisers. Banner and text ads are being rolled out on MSN Mobile. Initial advertisers include Paramount Pictures and Jaguar Cars. Microsoft isn’t the only one building out its mobile portal. Every other major player, from Yahoo to AOL to Google is doing the same. In terms of direct competition, AOL’s been heavily layering the ads as of late, and Google will probably have an even stronger push once Android is completed.

So Microsoft, which has a mobile platform as well, will also be able to hold initiatives on both fronts. Mobile advertising overall has been seeing a good amount of development as well, with AdMob playing up its device-specific programs and a renewed attention towards mobile content (games, etc.) that can be leveraged for advertising as well.

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(* Source: John Kullman *) 

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(* Source: John Kullman *)  

Nokia’s latest study, ‘A Glimpse of the Next Episode’, predicts that within five years a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media groups. Trend-setting consumers from 17 countries were asked about their digital behaviors and lifestyles. Nokia also used information gathered from its 900 million customers and views of leading industry figures to reach the conclusion that you will control 25% of the world’s entertainment by 2012.

“From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call ‘Circular’. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups - a form of collaborative social
media,” said Mark Selby, Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia.

Nokia also looked at four emerging trends that will make entertainment more collaborative and creative as we move towards Circular Entertainment. These trends are listed as, Immersive Living; Geek Culture; G Tech and Localism.

Immersive Living is the rise of lifestyles which blur the reality of being on and offline. Entertainment will no longer be segmented; people can access and create it wherever they are.

My favorite is Geek Culture. (I always wanted to be a Geek but I didn’t fit in.) This triumph marks a shift as consumers become hungry for more sophisticated entertainment. As Geek Culture rises, consumers will want to be recognized and rewarded - the boundaries between being commercial and creative will blur.

G Tech is an existing social force in Asia that will change the way entertainment will look. Forget pink and sparkly, it is about the feminization of technology that is currently underway. Entertainment will be more collaborative, democratic, emotional and customized - all of which are ‘female’ traits.

The report uncovered a locally-minded sprit emerging in entertainment consumption and Localism will become a key theme of future entertainment. Consumers will take pride in seeking out the local and home-grown.

The good news about this report is that much of the entertainment will be created and distributed on mobile phones. These are the perfect devices for capturing images and sounds on-the-fly and then editing the content with music and graphics. One person in a peer group may take the pictures, a second edit the sequence of pictures and a third add music before the production is sent to the group as entertainment.

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(* Source : NextGreatThing *)

Allison says :

Artists and labels have been exploring different ways to market and monetize their music beyond MySpace. We just heard that Sony BMG is going to be selling J Lo’s latest album, Brave, on a fancy wooden flash drive (for $70!!) Meanwhile, artists are dropping their labels like bad habits. AmieStreet, MOG, Pure Volume, Indistr, Sellaband, Navio, Roadsound, iFanz, RCRDLBL, iMeem, Popfolio… These are just a few sites out of hundreds they can use to do promotion, distribution, and sales. In addition to the bands we mentioned last week, even the Oldies are going new media; the Eagles, Joni Mitchell and now Aretha Franklin have all dropped their labels to try the digital model.

The next frontier is the handset. Mozes has taken a step there by enabling bands to text fans updates and messages. The real application, though, will be mobile social networking sites, like the newly launched KylieKonnect for Australian singer Kylie Minogue. The dot mobi site (www.kyliekonnect.com redirects to ourtribe.mobi) lets fans blog, communicate with other users and upload images and video all via mobile phone. There is a Kylie’s own blog, a newsfeed and place to buy Monogued-up wallpapers and ringtones. The site, set up by New Visions Mobile, will allow Kylie’s fans to establish a closer connection with her (or the illusion of one), and she will likely profit off it through site sales. Unfortunately for fans, Mashable reports that you seem to need a European-based mobile number to register, just going to show that this sort of technology not as widely embraced (and developed) in the U.S. as it is in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

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(* Source : Timesonline *)

Nigel Kendall says :

The video games industry was told yesterday: “Television used to be accused of corrupting the youth of today. Now you are.”

David Mitchell, the TV comedian, was talking to 750 representatives of the industry at the 25th Golden Joystick Awards, which are decided by public vote. In that quarter of a century, Mitchell observed, video games have gone from “being a few dots dancing around a TV screen to a full-on film that you are in”.

Generations of creative Britons who once dreamt of making films and cracking Hollywood are now just as likely to seek fame and fortune in the video games industry.

Tom Dowding, 25, is a graduate in computer science from Bristol University. He has been playing games since he was 10 and last year set up Mobile Pie, a developer of games for mobile phones. His efforts were rewarded at the Golden Joysticks with a prize of £2,500 and a work placement with Electronic Arts, one of the world’s biggest video game developers. Mr Dowding’s winning game is called Let It Grow.

“You install it on your mobile phone, then, using your phone camera, you nurture it and make it grow,” he said. “Then you post your growing flower on Facebook.” He has licensed the game to a distributor.

For many would-be developers, mobile phones offer a way of making games and minimising expense on programming. A leading game, such as the recent Halo 3, can cost $70 million (£34 million) to develop and a mobile game a fraction of that. The possible rewards are vast. Halo 3 outstripped many blockbuster films in the week that it went on the market, generating sales of $300 million.

Video games have quietly overtaken older entertainment forms such as films and popular music. According to the latest figures from Elspa, the industry body, game software sales in Britain for the first half of 2007 were £519 million, 17 per cent more than in the corresponding period of 2006.

More here 

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(* Source : Rachel Konrad *)

SAN FRANCISCO - News Corp.'s MySpace will offer members of its popular social network free Internet phone calls with a new feature based on eBay Inc.'s Skype service, the companies announced Tuesday.

Users with a Skype account will be able to click a single button in their MySpace profile to call the computer or telephone of another member, so they could reach people in their network even when they're not online. The service will be available in 20 countries starting in November.

MySpace, the largest social-networking site with 110 million members, will share revenue from the deal with Skype, which allows customers to place long-distance calls using their computers. Skype, the Luxembourg-based division of eBay, has 220 million registered users.

Standard PC-to-PC phone calls will be free, but users must pay for "premium" options such as their own personal phone number, voice mail, call forwarding, and the ability to make calls from a computer to land lines or cell phones.

Executives would not disclose other financial terms of the deal, which comes as both companies strive to expand membership amid growing competition.

One of MySpace's biggest rivals is fast-growing Facebook.com, which has more than 47 million active users — including at least 200,000 new registrations per day since January.

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(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

Webcam avatar community fix8 has raised $3 million in a series a round of funding from Vickers Venture Group, which is a Singapore-based private equity firm. We first covered fix8 here.

You may remember that fix8 lets you create animated avatars with your webcam by reading your expressions and gestures. There are loads of tools that you can play around with, including fix8’s wide selection of avatars, and other accessories like voice manipulation, graphics and editing tools. These clips can then be embedded in your website or social networking profile, or use it for your instant messaging client like AOL, MSN, Skype or Yahoo Messenger.

fix8 has recently teamed up with Pringo for distribution purposes, Stickam , also Shanghai Media Group to create AuditionsTV, which makes interactive tv audiences able to participate during live or taped programs. Coming up, fix8 will be offering a mobile solution, which will surely extend the ways in which its avatar creation tool can be used for communicative purposes. See here for more avatar creation sites.

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(* Source : Worldsinmotion *)

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(* Source : Jason Fry *)

New Efforts Try to Make It Easy

Last week Starbucks began testing a new service letting those with iTunes on their laptop, or carrying an iPhone, identify and download songs playing in the ubiquitous coffee bars.

In recent weeks we've heard Apple tout its new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. We've seen Microsoft show off improvements to its Zune music player, talk up the player's ability to share music, and unveil Zune Social, a new community site. Cellular-service providers such as Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless (a Verizon/Vodafone joint venture) and AT&T continue to sell songs over the air and experiment with various music-related offerings. And what about services that recommend and stream music, from Pandora to Rhapsody?

There's a flurry of activity around a common theme: making digital music truly mobile, instead of contained in music players that get topped up at desktop PCs. But what will be the effect of this newfound musical mobility? Could it mark a substantive change in the digital-music experience? Or will wireless buying and sharing remain mere offshoots of the familiar PC/MP3 player ecosystem?

Currently, both buying and sharing are largely restricted to the PC. Music players with wireless capabilities – such as Sandisk's Sansa Connect -- are fairly new. Meanwhile, the cellular-service providers' efforts have largely been stillborn -- because until fairly recently they wanted to charge as much as $2.50 for a download, despite the fact that iTunes had made $1 a de facto standard. Why the high prices? A number of reasons, from the record industry's desperation for an alternative to the iTunes model to infrastructure costs that cut into already razor-thin margins on downloads. Wireless carriers were stuck with a bad choice between a low-margin business or a low-volume one.

The carriers have accepted 99-cent downloads and tried to escape the low-margin trap by expanding their musical offerings to include access to streaming music, ringtones and ringbacks, music videos, the ability to "sideload" digital music from PCs to phones and even services that "listen" to snippets of music and identify the song.

More here 

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(* Source : Caleb Booker *)

We started off in Skype voice chat, but then he met me in Second Life at the same time. Using tools his company haven't even named yet, he was able to broadcast video of our avatars meeting through Skype. (Click the picture for full-size.) They still consider it technology in the pre-alpha stage, and won't feel like it's ready for consumers until they have it running in much higher detail. Even at the low resolution, being "in" Second Life through Skype and, in addition, seeing myself through multiple camera angles at once was a pretty impressive experience.

This was, of course, just the beginning. He switched from Second Life to a custom environment they had built with the Unreal 2 engine and again, streamed it right through Skype. The great part about using an engine like this one was that they were able to import high-detail AutoCAD files and make them look extremely realistic. Soon I was watching a high-quality alien avatar from Mars Attacks! exploring the environment in real-time. Below is a video of the world he had walked me through that they apparently built over the course of a few days.

Recently Rigby showcased the technology at the Copper/Cobre Conference. All of the other presenters went up and showed PowerPoint presentations. Rather than show a series of AutoCAD sketches, he plugged his laptop into the projector and walked the crowd through a 3D rendering. A copper smelter in the U.S. retained him to create a "virtual furnace" that not only showed the schematics in high resolution, but had walls lined with photographs of how everything is supposed to look as you assemble the machine. Not only that, but you can actually enter the furnace itself and (through color coding) see how everything is supposed to fit together.

Even though his company has already been retained by a few engineering firms for more work, Rigby sees more applications for high-resolution custom worlds. He's currently in touch with several galleries in London to create scale models of the buildings with high resolution art renderings inside. People could download them for a token fee (maybe five dollars) and collect them over time as the gallery updates itself with new exhibits. Also, since "Unreal 2" is a server-based platform, you could walk around these little worlds with your friends.

MellaniuM has only been experimenting with the possibilities since September of last year and has already shown some great innovations. If they keep up this pace they'll be the ones to watch in the future.

 See Video

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(* Source : Techcrunch*)

Roi Carthy says :

Zlango

For those of you unfamiliar with Zlango, the company created a new language based on slightly over 200 icons in categories such as People, Actions, Places and Feelings. The Zlango offering was originally aimed at injecting life and excitement into the ever popular but boring SMS, however, the company’s jump into the Web space indicates an understanding that engaging users requires Zlango to extend itself beyond a pure mobile play.

Today’s launch kicks off Zlango’s roll out of a number of social-oriented features. Two of the most notable features available today are:

• Zlango Composer – A Flash driven composer featuring an on-the-fly “Text to Zlango” translator (see screenshot), making it a snap to create fun messages. Messages can be shared, emailed or embedded across a number of social sites (thanks to integration with Gigya).
• zMess – Zlango’s version of a micro-blog. This is an area for users to view public messages, or private ones with groups of friends. Unfortunately, support for threaded comments is not included.

On the business front, the most notable achievement of the year is a partnership with Nokia to preload the Zlango into handsets. Zlango is now also deployed at all three Israeli operators, and has inked deals with operators in the Philippines, Ukraine, Malaysia, Finland, and Indonesia.

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(* Source: Larry Gentille *)

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(* Source : Adam Ostrow *)

Donnerwood Media, the parent company of the Meez virtual avatar service, has raised $500,000 from Battery Ventures. Meez allows users to create custom avatars that can then be shared in IM and on most social networks.

Earlier this week the company announced a partnership with Vringo to create avatar ringtones. Meez previously raised $4.3 million, and we profiled the company last August.

[via]

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(* Source: Techcrunch *)

Michael Arrington says:

We’ve been tracking emerging mobile-only social networks such as ZYB and Mocospace and Mig33. All have unique selling points (Mocospace is dead simple to use, ZYB has a rich set of potential users from their address book backup service, and Mig33 has a VOIP tool that has attracted over seven million users), but there’s one solid gold feature that none yet have: physical presence detection and information exchange with other users.

This is the Holy Grail of mobile social networking, and one of the main reasons for taking the networks off the desktop/laptop environment in the first place. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Knowing when your friends are around, and having the ability to meet new people who share your interests (even if it’s just that you are both single), will drive massive usage of networks. But, as with many new services, a chicken and egg problem looms. Until everyone is using this, there is no real reason for anyone to use it. Meetro, an instant messaging service that finds friends based on location, has struggled to gain users over the last couple of years for this reason.

Technical barriers aren’t an issue - cell phone tower triangulation and bluetooth solve a lot of the problems of locating users and transmitting information between phones. What’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.

The Failures

There is a trail of failed attempts at getting this right. Nokia released Nokia Sensor nearly three years ago. It broadcasts information about yourself to others via bluetooth. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, although it is still available for download. Google’s Dodgeball is another example that’s fallen flat - it tells friends (and friends of friends) who are within 10 blocks of you where you are and what you are doing.

The New Experiments

A bunch of new startups are giving this a shot, too. In a post yesterday TechCrunch UK mentions Germany’s Aka-Aki, Paris-based Mobiluck and MeetMoi (the lone U.S. startup). Another startup is Copenhagen-based Imity. It’s not surprising that most of the innovation is occurring in Europe. The current approach is to get java-based software on the phone - very few U.S. carriers and handsets allow user-based installs of java apps.

More here 

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(* Source : The Guardian *)

28 Weeks Later

Richard Wray says:

Next week's DVD release of the zombie-flick 28 Weeks Later will bring a revolutionary marketing widget, widely used in Japan, to the UK for the first time.

The film poster contains a square box full of black and white dots known as a QR - quick response - code. It contains information that can be decoded by the camera on a mobile phone with the right software installed. A huge poster showing nothing but a QR code has already gone up in London's Shoreditch to advertise the DVD.

These "bar codes" are widely used in Japan to store everything from web addresses and phone numbers to product details. Rather than laboriously typing in a person's phone number or an internet address into a phone, these codes give one-touch access to a wealth of information that can then be stored on a phone.

Japan's immigration service even stamps passports with codes detailing passenger's names and visa status. The 28 Weeks Later codes include details of the DVD's release and links to other material on the internet.

While many top-of-the-range phones such as the Nokia N93 already contain readers, anyone with a camera phone can install software that reads QR codes from companies such as i-nigma and Kaywa. They can even create their own codes.

For the mobile industry QR codes are both a way of making it easier for customers to get to their favourite websites using their mobile and a possible way of generating mobile advertising revenues.

Industry experts believe the time is right for QR codes in the UK. Over half the UK's mobile users have one while 95% of new phones sold include a camera. The first generation of QR codes in this country, however, are likely to be significantly larger than the 1cm x 1cm found in Japan, because most British camera phones have a lower resolution than in Asia.

Philip Makinson, consultant at industry experts Greenwich Consulting, said QR codes are likely to be little more than a bit of fun in the short term but could attract consumers to do more than just make calls and send texts.

"QR codes could help drive not only the take-up of high-end camera phones but make more people aware of the mobile internet and more conscious of the potential their phone has to store information about products and services," he said.

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(* Source: TechCrunch *) 

Mike says... 

The Twitter team must have had a Red Bull machine installed at the offices, because suddenly they’re launching new stuff left and right.

They recently added search and Gmail import features to the service. And on Friday they are launching a new area of the site called “Explore” where they’ll list some of the tools people can use to interact with Twitter off the site itself. Along with Explore they will also be releasing a new visualization tool called Twitter Blocks - “an abstract way to navigate your Twitter neighborhood or block.

Twitter sent us these screen shots but we haven’t had a chance to see it in action yet. Cofounder Biz Stone says “It’s a crazy, interactive, animated 3D application so it’s easier to understand when you interact with it.”

Twitter brought in Stamen Design to help with the project, the same team behind some of the Digg visualization tools launched last year.

Motorola is sponsoring the new Explore site. Screen shots below:

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(* Source:Newyorktimes *)

Eric Pfanner says: 

Nokia, via Reuters

Songs can be put onto Nokia’s new phone, the N81, without using a computer, a feature the Apple iPhone does not offer.

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(* Source: Reuters *)

Anthony Bruno says:

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(* Source: BusinessWeek *)

Neal Sandler says:

The startup proposes video sharing on mobile handsets—already, Universal Music Group is on board

The idea for his new startup came to Jon Medved two years ago at London's Heathrow Airport when he was trying to reach the Hertz (HTZ) call center. While waiting on hold, the Israeli venture capitalist was forced to listen to audio ads from Hertz about the various cars available. It suddenly struck Medved that it would be far more effective for Hertz to serve up images or even videos of cars.

Thus was born the idea behind Vringo, a startup launched last year by Medved and David Goldfarb, a leading Israeli mobile software expert. The idea is to capitalize on the popularity of social networks and digital video, marrying them with the phenomenon of downloadable audio ringtones—a business that already racks up $6 billion in annual revenues for mobile operators and content owners worldwide. Medved describes Vringo as a "sort of ICQ [instant messaging] combined with a personalized YouTube (GOOG) on your cell phone."

With conventional audio ringtones, customers download a short music clip—say, the theme to Hawaii Five-O—onto their own phones. Whenever somebody calls, the song plays instead of a regular ring. Aside from some possibly annoyed people in the vicinity, the only person who enjoys it is the owner of the phone.

Vringo Defined

Vringo's video ringtones turn that model on its ear. To use the service, customers join the Vringo community for free and install a small piece of software onto their phones. Then, when one Vringo member calls another, instead of a ringtone, the recipient of the call is treated to a video clip chosen (and paid for) by the sender. Every call thus becomes an opportunity to share content and to establish identity—the wireless equivalent of the "hey, dude, check out this YouTube video" culture of the Internet.

If it catches on, Vringo has the potential to be about far more than just sharing clips, though. Advertisers are intrigued by the idea of using mobile phones to pitch their products; Vringo offers the possibility of adding viral marketing to the mix—essentially, having enthusiastic consumers spread the word for you. What's in it for Vringo users? Instead of paying for a clip, a caller might get five minutes of free talk time for sending his buddies copies of a new ad.

More here 

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(* Source: Nick Gonzalez *)

Nick says...
 
People really hate cell phone keypads for data entry.

Anyone who’s called customer service knows voice guided phone applications aren’t new, but they’re a good way to navigate menus and enter text. And applications like Spinvox which incorporated speech recognition to turn verbal voicemails into written text messages, and TellMe, which uses voice recognition to power local search, are useful and popular.

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(* Source: Techcrunch *) 

I have been using this web application for more than a year and recommending it to my phone careless friends, it's evolved a little now.  

Mike says... 

The idea of taking an address book application and turning it into a social network isn’t new - Plaxo just did it two weeks ago.

Now ZYB, a Danish startup, is using the mobile phone contact list as the center of the network, and the company doesn’t have the emotional baggage that still lingers with Plaxo and makes many users hesitant to trust them (I, for one, forgave them long ago).

Zyb first launched in mid 2006 as a service to back up your mobile phone. Through a relatively painless process, users can auto-sync their contacts and calendar to ZYB’s servers. It’s useful in the event of a lost phone, but the web interface is actually much easier to use to enter new contact and calendar information, too. The service, which is free, has about 200,000 active users (mostly in Europe).

ZYB, realizing that people add most or all of their close friends, co-workers and family as mobile phone contacts, has now built a social network to leverage those connections. You can add anyone on your contact list as a friend, which sends a request to them to add you as well. Users have standard profile pages to add photos, comments, etc. And they can also text/sms in status updates which appear on their profile, and friends can choose to subscribe to those status updates via text as well (very Twitter-like).

ZYB is free to users, although the company says they will eventually add premium services like Outlook-sync for an additional fee.

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(* Source: 901am.com *)

Cristina Ledesma says:  

Shockwave, one of MTVN Kids and Family Group’s leading sites for casual gamers, announced an agreement with Nokia to deliver Shockwave’s portfolio of Flash Lite mini games to consumers through the Nokia Content Discoverer client, embedded in millions of Nokia devices available in markets around the globe.

The agreement, which represents the first instance of a branded Flash-based games catalog on Nokia handsets, will offer Nokia consumers across multiple countries in Europe and Asia a quick and fun casual gaming experience on their mobile device. Initially, Shockwave will make available more than 20 games from the Shockwave Minis catalog, including Downhill Train and newly created games such as Happy Hours. Games based on popular MTV Networks properties will launch in the future.

“Nokia is pleased to offer the Shockwave Minis line-up of Flash Lite games to our customers,” said Damien D’Souza, head of branded content, Forum Nokia - EMEA. “Shockwave Minis make it easy for mobile handset owners to jump in and experience a fun, casual game playing experience, at a great value.”

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(* Source: John Gartner *)

You can take it with you -- if the "it" is user generated content on mobile phones. According to Jupiter Research, revenues from UGC on social networking sites will grow 10 fold between 2007 to 2012 to $5.7 billion.

That's incredible growth for the MySpace's and Facebook's of the world, especially considering the content is free. MySpace is the current leader in the space, with 3.7 million users checking in with friends via phone in a month.

So what will be the biggest marketing opportunities to reach the well-connected youth? Music and video are the most likely mediums, but don't underestimate location-based shopping. Two friends are IMing online and can't decide on where to dine or grab a drink -- hello geolocated advertising.

I believe Jupiter's numbers are a bit high, but there's not doubt that the socially inclined will be served with peer-to-peer distractions to prevent them from ever logging off. This will make for great conversation as people out and about will spend more time texting and less time talking to the real people right in front of them.

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(* Source: Techcrunch *)

I suspect that this is only the start of the iPhone revolution.

Michael Arrington says... 

Customizable home page site Netvibes released a pre-beta version of their site for the iPhone earlier today at m.nv1.netvibes.com. This version of the site doesn’t look like much on a normal browser, but it definitely does the job on the iPhone.

The already minimalized Netvibes is pared down even further for the iPhone to a single column of widgets. There are few graphics to speed load time.

I use Netvibes as a quick hit RSS reader for my most important feeds. It does an even better job on the iPhone and I plan to bookmark a special Netvibes page with the 15 feeds I read multiple times per day.

Keep a lookout on the Facebook blog this evening, too. Facebook PR says they will be announcing the iPhone version of the site shortly. Update: It’s launched.

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(* Source: Techcrunch *) 

Michael Arrington says...

A pairing of the two most hyped tech products of the year: Facebook released what is arguably the single best iPhone-customized website to date at iphone.facebook.com. Like the Netvibes iPhone site which launched late yesterday, it isn’t much to look at in a normal browser. But open that thing up in an iPhone and you’ve got a very usable site.

The site uses javascript to avoid page refreshes, although there is still some lag in moving around the site (this is an iPhone issue). The main navigation tabs - Home, Profile, Friends and Inbox - are at the top of the site. Click on any person and see their profile, wall or photos via a horizontally scrolling interface.

Overall I’d give this a top rating except for the occasional javascript error that crashed it out. Given that this hasn’t officially launched yet, I’d actually expect more bugs than I was able to find.

I have not seen a better iPhone website than this one. If you have, let me know. A lot of startups are going to look to this as the gold standard. At least for now.

Look for an announcement on the Facebook blog sometime this morning.

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(* Source: Kerry Miller *)

New startup Mozes is trying a new model to captivate advertisers and consumers—offering its platform for free. Will its gambit work?

When the Plain White T's ran a backstage pass giveaway with Mozes during their tour last fall, around 50% of audience members participated each night, the company says.

 

• View Slide Show

Among marketers, mobile has been hailed as the next big thing for years now, but in the U.S., actual adoption has lagged behind the hype (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/23/07, "The Sell-Phone Revolution"). With the exception of a few big brands, most advertisers have taken a wait-and-see approach when it comes to mobile marketing campaigns. Now Mozes, a 14-person startup from Palo Alto, Calif., with $5 million in venture funding, is hoping to give both advertisers and consumers an incentive to experiment, by offering up its text-messaging platform for free.

While its service is available to anyone from individuals to school groups to small businesses, Mozes is targeting the music industry, promoting its Web-based platform as a free tool that bands can use to connect with fans on their mobile phones, notifying them when concert tickets go on sale, for example, or running text-to-win contests. When the Plain White T's—a band that topped Billboard's Top 100 singles chart in July—ran a backstage pass giveaway with Mozes during their tour last fall, around 50% of audience members participated each night, the company says.

1,000 bands with 20,000 fans

Unlike many of the other Web startups targeting the music industry (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/26/07, "Close Harmony: Bands and Web 2.0"), "Mozes does not want to be a community," Porter says. Instead, he wants to create "a branded network." Porter says that addresses one of the thorniest issues for both consumers and marketers—privacy—because fans can register their information on Mozes just once for multiple bands, knowing they can easily opt out at any time.

If the concept catches on, texting the name of a band to the Mozes short code (66937, or M-O-Z-E-S) will be as familiar to music fans as typing it in a MySpace URL. Once the audience is there, Mozes, like MySpace (NWS), can charge advertisers for the same tools it gives away to bands for free, while also making money from the sale of premium content like music downloads and from on-site advertising.

The company has already done small mobile campaigns with a few advertisers, including Microsoft (MSFT), Mozilla's Firefox browser, and Dippin' Dots ice cream. And since the Mozes beta launch in April, 2006, Chief Executive Dorrian Porter says he has signed up more than 1,000 bands, which have amassed mobile lists of as many as 20,000 fans.

So far, the artists with the biggest mobile fan lists, or "mobs," on Mozes are mainstream stars like Fall Out Boy and R. Kelly, but big-name indie acts like the Postal Service have established Mozes accounts, too—a result of Mozes' strategy of reaching out to individual band managers and smaller indie labels at the same time it went after partnerships with majors like Disney's (DIS) Hollywood Records and Universal/Motown (VIVEF.PK).

"Personal touch"

"For us, it's really a no-brainer. It's just another way to reach people without spending any money to do it," says Jordan Kurland of Zeitgeist Artist Management, who established Mozes accounts for several of the bands he manages, including the Postal Service. The cost consideration is an especially strong draw for indie bands that wouldn't be able to launch mobile marketing campaigns on their own.

More here 

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 (* Source: Robert Levine *)

EMusic, the nation’s second-largest online music seller after Apple’s iTunes, plans to announce a deal with AT&T today that will allow people to buy songs from independent labels through their cellphones, without the need to go through a personal computer.

Several services, including those run by Sprint and Verizon, let people buy songs directly over the air. But they focus on songs by mainstream performers like Prince, who has a deal with Verizon. EMusic sells music only from independent labels, a category that these days includes the new album from Paul McCartney as well as obscure punk bands. The arrangement with AT&T Mobile Music will make those songs available just as easily as the more conventional ones.

Nearly all of the 2.7 million tracks eMusic has the rights to sell will be available through the service, which will work on several handsets by Samsung and Nokia.

“We know that we have a lot of customers in the segment that eMusic is trying to reach,” said Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data services for AT&T’s wireless unit.

Record labels have long believed that selling songs in mobile phone-based music stores will encourage impulse purchases. EMusic will encourage consumers to browse, reading about bands and hearing snippets of songs to discover music they might like.

Tracks will cost more than they do over the Internet — $7.49 for five songs, as opposed to $9.99 for 30 at the online site — because of the expense of sending them over a mobile network to a user’s phone. For that price, however, users can also get another copy of the song, which they can download from the Internet as an MP3.

EMusic, which is owned by Dimensional Associates, the private equity arm of JDS Capital, currently has a marketing deal with AT&T to encourage consumers to “sideload” their phones with MP3s from its existing Internet store — meaning that they can plug their phones into their computers to transfer the music. But this will be its first time selling music on a mobile network.

More here 

More related articles 

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(* Source: Nextgreatthing *)

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(* Nextgreatthing.com *)

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(* Source: Kristen Nicole *)

Buzzwire has launched its beta service for streaming mobile media. The service lets you create your own programming lineup and view it on your mobile phone. Buzzwire has received an undisclosed amount of funding by Matrix Partners and Spark Capital.

This service offers acess to a music and video library, which includes live Internet radio streams. The content provided through buzzwire comes from feeds found across the Internet. From international news to sports and entertainment, buzzwire is looking to provide content for all preferances. Content can be added to Buzzwire by users as well, via feeds. Search and collect the music and videos you like, and create your own streaming playlist of sorts. These playlists can be shared with friends as well.

The service will be offered through certain mobile networks, but will be available directly to consumers during the beta test phase. So far, Buzzwire works on most 3G phones, including the Motorola Razr, Samsung Sync and recent versions of the Palm Treo, and for a limited time is available directly to consumers. Buzzwire is scheduled to launch its service later on this fall, when access will be provided through select mobile providers.

While partnering with certain mobile networks can ensure face time with a large number of mobile consumers, limiting service to select carriers could hinder its growth potential in the end, and in some cases may compete with mobile networks’ own streaming content offerings, such as Verizon’s VCast Mobile.

Similar services include MeeVee and MyWaves.

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(* Source:Mack Collier *)

Over the last year or so, 'event-blogging' has become more popular. But the Asheville Citizen-Times is upping the ante as The Smashing Pumpkins roll into the North Carolina town for a 9-show gig.

Susan Ihne explains:

Music is not my forte. I had no idea who the Smashing Pumpkins were when they announced a nine-day play date in Asheville.

Thank goodness for Entertainment Editor Tony Kiss, who quickly put it in perspective: This is a BIG deal.

When the 8,478 tickets sold within minutes, I knew he was right.

And then with $20 opening night tickets scalping for $950 or more, I decided I’d never doubt him again — at least when it comes to music....So, when Kiss puts his seal on a big deal, we start planning.

Smashville.com

A couple of weeks ago, we launched a social networking site called smashville.com to connect band fans from around the world.

It’s where you’ll find our coverage — photos, video, audio and stories — of the band’s time in Asheville.

Fans are invited to share their thoughts in blogs, photos and video at the site throughout the band’s stay. About 60 have signed up so far.

Before each show, we’ll have a video of the smashing of something pumpkin. A ceramic pumpkin, a can of pumpkin filling, a frozen pumpkin pie, and a plastic pumpkin — whatever we can find.

The paper ran an article yesterday claiming there were 'about 60' members signed up at the time. I just checked and the site says there's 182 now. Members have already added numerous pictures and videos of the band, mostly concert shots.

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 (* Source: Reuters *)

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(* Source: Kristen Nicole *)

Treemo, the media-sharing service with mobile phone optimization, announced its Libertad contest in conjunction with the release of the “Libertad” album by the band Velvet Revolver. See here for entry details.

This mobile contest lets you submit content from your cell phone, share ideas and comments about the new Libertad album, and telling Velvet Revolver what the new album means to you. Upload videos, photos and stories. Winners are voted by the Treemo community, and get a trip to see the band in concert on August 18 in New York City, as sponsored by Treemo, Velvet Revolver and Sony BMG. Airfair is provided by Farecast. Among the first contests to occur simultaneously on the web and the mobile phone, for a user-generated social network, Treemo is garnering attention as a marketing platform in the right way.

Going.com took a similar approach for the promotion of its launching in various San Francisco and New York, providing airfare and concert tickets as a prize for a few lucky winners.

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(* Source: Ryley Bane *) 

 









Using NYC graffiti artist Jesus Saves “drip” txt, technology video artists Paul Notzold and Adam Chapman have created a way to engage cell phone text messages delivered from around a city into instant graffiti messages which are then projected on various city building walls. Using a customized gateway system to receive and transcribe text messages into the artist’s script, plus various projectors, and a specific public space, messages are transcribed and instantly written out in a conversation style, resulting in an engaging interactive street performance.

Called “TXTual Healing,” the concept is to promote interaction with public spaces using an “always on” technology—text messaging and cell phones—in a way that promote conversation publicly rather than just privately. For example, for a TXTual Healing performance, people receive a simple flyer with instructions and a cell number on how to send their texts. Texts are displayed in speech bubbles, usually from a window on the side of building as though the occupants were talking, and put together as though the texts are interacting in a conversation for onlookers to read—and then interact with as well by texting themselves.

As Notzold describes, the concept is to use cell phone technology to trigger dialogue and action and create content for a staged performance to the public. By using various city landscapes to project the text messages and speech bubbles, it also gives viewers an opportunity to consider their surroundings and how they share their world with others.

As we’ve reported more often in the last year, video and technology street art have become important tools of expression among a youth culture that has grown up with communication and self-recording devices. These concepts have also been used by a handful of progressive brands to promote their concepts in unique advertising campaigns, such as moving pictures on subways, “running” animation across several blocks of storefronts, or on the sides of buildings. By using text messaging and interactive art on buildings, these artists are connecting modern devices with art and performance that can’t help but move onlookers to engage, whether through texting themselves to see if their messages will appear, or at least read what’s written by others.

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(* Source: Random Culture *) 

The homepage of YouTube just featured a great video that integrates online video and text messaging. The video, entitled "Text-Your-Own Adventures of Spiderman", allows viewers to vote via text message to decide what the fate of Spiderman will be in the next video installment. You can watch it below:

The video was created by a sketch comedy group called The Late Night Players, from Boston, Mass. It won't be long until we see an advertiser doing something similar. Mark my words!

I'd love to see a website for the effort, where we could see where the vote tally stands, and maybe even toss out some ideas for what Spidey turning evil would look like.

Update: When you text in your vote, you'll receive an email back that prompts you to register or login to Mozes.com, where you can see the alternate ending you voted for. If you haven't heard of Mozes, you should check it out. Great way that brands and others can utilize text messaging.

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(* Source: Brad Stone and Matt Richtel *)

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(* Source: Jeff Squires *) 

Jeff says...

An appropriately named new service called BuyYourFriendaDrink.com is enabling people to do just that.  Users can go to the website, enter in their friend's cell phone number and the amount of money they want to spend ($5 - $250) and a text message will be sent to person on the other end with a redemption code.  That code is then handed over to participating bars and drinks are served.  Each transaction includes a $0 .99 processing fee.

 more here

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(* Source: Wireless Watch Japan *) 

We’re thrilled to see Walt Disney Japan step into the mobile social networking space in March with this announcement [in Japanese only] for their public launch — on all three carriers’ official portals — of Wonder Days. In the most simple terms it looks very much like Habbo Hotel meets Mickey Mouse, however you need not take our word for it.. watch WWJ’s first-to-web video demo. and see for yourself!

It’s no surprise that many of the popular and established fixed-line service offerings have been making the leap onto Japan’s wireless web. Tokyo-based DeNA has several perfect examples for auctions and social networking with Mobaoku and Mobaga-town respectively. Moba (game) Town is a free service, and available only on mobile, which has attracted just over 3mln members since it’s launch last summer. The hook was to provide free games, with over 30 titles to choose from, supported by advertising and micro-purchases — using MobaGold - for premium avatars. In the same way that instant messenging and presence of friends applies to online products (like the Twitter craze) it’s easy to see the evolution of mobile communities connecting anywhere and anytime will become a defacto standard for the next-generation.

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(* Source: ABI Research *) 

The world market for mobile marketing and advertising is expected to be worth about $3 billion by the end of 2007, according to a recent study from ABI Research. By 2011, the value of this market will reach $19 billion, including mobile search and video advertising. ABI Research also expects some of the highest levels of spending to come in the broadcast mobile video space. By 2011, it will surpass SMS as a source of mobile marketing spending, due in part to mobile broadcast networks' presence in all major markets. In 2011, ABI Research expects spending for broadcast mobile video advertising alone to reach $9 billion.

But for this market to reach its full potential, carriers, advertisers and marketing companies must utilize multiple technologies and business models to bring their messages to mobile consumers. "Mobile advertising and marketing is a risky, albeit enticing business," says principal analyst Judith Rosall. "Unlike the PC, a mobile device offers a uniquely personalized communications channel. Carriers worldwide have quite a bit of information about their end-users: name, sex, age, geographical location. And depending on the handset and plan their users have purchased, the carriers probably also know something about their economic status and credit record. But they don't like to release this information to third parties because they want to protect and control their customers."

Mobile marketing and advertising is also at varying levels of maturity, depending on the market or country, says Rosall. In Europe and Asia, mobile marketing is fairly well developed. However, early-adopting brands in the US are still in the process of testing the water. They don't typically allocate a set percentage of their annual budgets to mobile. In turn, major ad agencies are still relatively inexperienced with mobile marketing campaigns, and reluctant to utilize location-based services and technologies such as MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and mobile search that are still in the early stages of deployment. Their slow pace in exploiting opportunities in mobile marketing and advertising, however, has opened the door for a number of specialized agencies, aggregators, and other enablers.

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(* Source: Kristen Nicole *)

(* Source: eMarketer *) 

What's your favorite telephone station?

If you are like most mobile users in the US, you don't know how to answer that one. That is because few people currently listen to music on their phones, according to "The Mobile Audio Media Study" by Telephia and Arbitron.

Despite all the buzz surrounding Apple's iPhone, only about 6% of US mobile users have listened to mobile audio during the previous 30 days. That includes music and other audio downloaded wirelessly, free FM radio delivered to phones, subscription radio services and "sideloaded" music transferred from a PC. The "other audio" category includes content like mobile podcasts.

Those who do listen to music and other audio on their phones consume more media (excluding TV) than the general mobile population. Each week, mobile audio users spend about an hour more on the Internet, and over 30 minutes more watching streaming video on PCs, than general mobile users.

Price is the main thing holding people back from listening to mobile audio. Respondents said that the content wasn't worthy of a subscription fee. Ad-supported free content is music to some ears, though, with more than 60% of current mobile audio users saying that ads are a fair price to pay for free tunes.

eMarketer Senior Analyst John du Pre Gauntt says that getting consumers to pay outright for mobile content, without ads, is a hard sell.

"To date, the mobile platform is the only interactive medium where the typical user shoulders 100% of the cost of both network access and the content/service that rides on top," Mr. Gauntt says. "Small wonder why mobile operators and content providers are finding that after they tap early adopters and enthusiasts, continued growth of the paid download market for music, let alone video and games, is proving to be a much harder slog than they imagined."

eMarketer estimates that mobile advertising in the US will approach $5 billion in 2011, up from $421 million in 2006.

Apple's iPhone will increase the number of mobile audio users in the US. iTunes giveaway and promotional spending will follow, as it did with the iPod. The only question is how much.

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(* Source: Aaron Tan *) 

The Asia-Pacific mobile subscriber base is expected to reach 1.14 billion by the end of this year--thanks to robust growth in the region's emerging markets, according to new research by Frost & Sullivan.

In a statement released Wednesday, the analyst company noted that the Asia-Pacific mobile market grew at a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent between 2002 and 2006. At the end of last year, there were 950 million mobile subscribers across the region, with a mobile penetration rate of 30.9 percent.

More here 

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(* Source: James @ Trendcatching.com *) 

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(* Source: James @ Trendcatching.com *) 

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How hated is the thought of mobile marketing?

In theory, very hated.

Most people (90%) say that they are not at all interested in getting ads on their mobile phones, according to Harris Interactive.

In theory, that leaves less than 10% of users as an audience for mobile marketing.

In practice, the audience is much larger. As with any medium, once mobile ads are associated with something of value, user interest shoots up. If incentives are involved, it shoots up considerably.

Think about the Internet a decade ago. There was still some debate as to whether companies should be on the Web at all — would corporate influence stifle the free flow of ideas on the fresh new medium? Once companies did move online, consumers were initially reluctant to give out personal information. It took incentives and opt-in agreements to overcome their hesitance.

Right now, mobile is the only interactive medium where the typical user pays for both the cost of network access and the content it delivers. Mobile operators and content providers are finding that besides early adopters and enthusiasts, it is tough to find buyers for paid mobile music downloads, let alone video and games.

Introducing mobile advertising into the revenue mix changes the picture. Many users say that they would be willing to receive mobile marketing in exchange for incentives, so offering free applications, subsidized airtime or other goodies makes sense.

Over a third of adult mobile phone users say that they are willing to accept incentive-based advertisements. Of these, 78% say the best incentive would be cash. Other incentives that resonate include free minutes, free entertainment downloads and discount coupons.

As for ad formats, over half (56%) of those who are at least somewhat interested in receiving ads on their cellphones say they would prefer to receive them as text messages, while 40% would like to receive them as picture messages. Less than a quarter of adults would choose to receive them as videos, while others would have them sent as e-mail, voice mail or something else.

eMarketer estimates that mobile ad spending in the US will reach $4.8 billion by 2011, up from $421 million in 2006.

eMarketer senior analyst and mobile specialist John du Pre Gauntt says that current mobile business models practically beg for an infusion of ad dollars.

"Despite the best efforts to convince people otherwise, there is no mobility 'premium,'" says Mr. Gauntt. "Over time, the justification for charging a 100%-300% markup on a piece of content or service simply because it is delivered over a radio channel will not wash when the same content is available online to be synched with a handset."

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(* Source: Mark Hefflinger *)

U.K. mobile network operator 3 UK announced that it has partnered with San Diego-based Intercasting to provide its 3.75 million subscribers with access to social networks including LiveJournal, Xanga, Vox and BlackPlanet from their mobile phones. "Users will get a social networking experience tailored for the data and media capabilities of their phones, helping to drive adoption and repeat usage over the 3 network," said Rob Wells, head of mobile broadband at 3 UK.

 
More
http://tinyurl.com/355o6t

http://www.three.co.uk

http://www.intercastingcorp.com

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(* Source: b-side *) 

The ColorCode project I have been working on for the past 6 months (that I could not talk about) has finally launch in Singapore (first country in the GSM world outside of Korea and Japan) with Singapore Press Holding. 

 

"Our aim is to make it a part of life in high-tech Singapore. Over time, we want these codes to be everywhere, in newspapers, on T-shirts, signages, name cards, birthday cakes, and so on, and zapping them will become as natural as breathing," says Mr Leslie Fong, Executive Vice President of Marketing, SPH.

While Europe and the US are still wondering what QR codes are, ColorZip has developed ColorCode to allow mobile phone users to launch, download and/ or purchase anything, from Wap/ Web pages to music ringtones, to mobile video, to purchasing concert tickets.

The information is not in the barcode itself, but on a remote server accessible through the code. So when you scan a ColorCode with your mobile phone, it connects to a server and downloads information, then presents it to you.

Try it out... all you need is a phone reader that you can download for free. 

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(* Source: Pete Cashmore *)

Social networks are moving into the mobile space so fast that it’s hard to keep up. Montreal-based wireless messaging company Oz is announcing today that they’re taking a range of social networks mobile - Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, Blogger and others. The launch is really aimed at cellphone companies and handset makers, and it’s an extension of their existing services: offering mobile email and IM from MSN, AOL and Yahoo. Existing customers include Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, with around 70 million instances deployed in North America. The client will start appearing on mobile phones in early 2007, they say, allowing users to browse, post comments, upload photos and video clips, join discussions and receive alerts when their friends update their profiles and blogs.

MySpace users can already access the site on mobiles using specific phones from Helio, and MySpace now has a mobile division. YouTube Mobile is on the way for Verizon phones, and there are scores of third party services that will put social networks on your phone (Orb, for one). We can expect social networking to become a key feature on handsets in 2007.

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FriendsTribe, which launches today in invite-only beta, is a mobile social network from New York-based Luxinteract Inc. The service works everywhere in the US, they say, since it relies on text messaging. Among the features: tag your favorite venues (restaurants, clubs), upload images and video clips, create events and invite your friends from your cellphone.

What’s more, there’s a keyword system that lets you request information from the service: send an SMS message to 87130 and include words like “GROUP” (send message to group), “AT” (send your location to friends), “GET” (get the location of your friends) or “BLOG” to interact with Friendstribe. If you forget any of these keywords, you can text “KEYWORD” to see the full list. Text messaging is the smartest way to create mobile social networks, since it ensures there aren’t any compatibility issues - these keyword systems are becoming common. Another neat feature allows you to set a radius for the messages you receive - only receive messages from friends who are within a 15 mile radius, for instance.

On the site itself, users have profile pages with a photo, a network of friends, a collection of their recent photos and videos and even friends of friends. You can also explore photo galleries of certain locations - photos of New York, for instance, are sent via SMS to a special email address. Likewise, you can explore venues and see them plotted on a Google Map, read blog entries and browse events. Further down the line, they plan to add band pages, ala MySpace Music or Bebo Bands. Perhaps there would also be an overlap with Mozes or Broadtexter, which allow fans to get updated on their favorite bands via text messaging.

Friendstribe is off to a good start - the basic features are there, the interface is acceptable, but they’ve yet to add anything that really makes them stand out from the crowd. It’s also worth asking whether mobile social networks should really be standalone, or whether they’d be better as an addition to an existing network. MySpace Mobile, for instance, is said to be ramping up over the next few months, while YouTube Mobile is expected in 2007.

For these new networks, the two options seem to be: build a large audience in a certain locale and get acquired based on the size of that audience or (more likely) get acquired by an existing service that wants to integrate mobile into its offering. Unlike web-based social networks, however, mobile socnets are still relatively scarce, meaning that there’s less competition.

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