Emerging Communications 2009

November 17, 2008 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Conferences, Events + Conferences, Mobile messaging 2.0

In recent weeks, the 2009 edition of the Emerging Communications conference has been shaping up with plenary and keynote submissions coming in thick and fast. I’ve again been asked to volunteer for the conference advisory board and help shape the programme along with the chair, Lee Dryburgh.

Next year the conference will return to its spiritual home at the San Francisco Marriott and will consider themes that overlap and criss-cross between the worlds of cellcos and telcos alongside the unfolding ecosphere of social media and hacker culture.

Between 3rd and 5th March, the agenda will explore everything from mobile social networking, open source handsets, video and voice tech and convergence issues to open spectrum, cloud computing, social computing, availability/presence and emerging markets.

I’m currently scouting for speakers and contributors on the bleeding-edge fringes of innovation and culture, particularly people and projects exploring uses in new cultures and gaining insights into how cultures and communities absorb and adapt technology for unintended purposes. Oh, and anything cool at the intersection of sociology, technology and art

Mobile Messaging 2.0 has been a great vehicle for surfacing such areas, so I’d love to hear from anyone working in such areas. We’ll hopefully be able to offer a discounted pass to MM2.0 readers shortly too - watch this space!

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SWIS: ‘See What I See’ Messaging from Verizon?

November 17, 2008 at 4:11 pm · Filed under Messaging, Verizon Wireless, Video

Verizon has partnered with mobile media services provider FunMobility in launching a person to person video sharing service–and implied mobile social network. The service is called “America’s Best Mobile Flix” or ‘aFlix.’ The service allows Verizon subs to create mobile videos and share their UGC with mobile connections across other operator networks. Essentially P2P interoperable mobile video.

Much like YouTube, customers can also review, comment, rate and share every video on aFLIX from their handset directly, and the best clips will be featured in a monthly “Best Videos” category. Users areVerizon automatically presented with the highest-rated video they have not yet seen when they open the aFLIX app. aFLIX will run alongside FunMobility’s existing America’s Best Mobile Pix photo sharing application.

What’s significant in this is the interoperable part. Mobile video has been advancing in the mobile commentariat, but has been taking baby steps with consumers. Transmiting video sharing from person to person is defacto video interoperability. If you look at the text messaging comparable–around 1996 when full interoperability occured for SMS in the UK, or 2002 when it occured in the US, the market exploded at a 6x multiple within 12 months. Just as SMS provided “here’s what I’m thinking” full video interoperability, as claimed, will provide SWIS services–’See What I See’

SWIS services can, if priced right, become the video equivalent of text messaging services. Keep your eye open on this one.

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SMS and the ‘Quantified Self’

November 17, 2008 at 2:50 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0

I’ve been following Kevin Kelly’s writings on the Quantified Self for several months, largely due to a fascination with a new generation of services and tools that enable users to log, track, quantify and visualise their behaviour such that they might glean insights into the impact of their lives.

Kelly describes such services as ‘tools for knowing your own mind and body’ and recently reflected on the ‘tracking of self’ using SMS as a medium for logging and submitting ‘life events’.

Of course Twitter has quickly evolved into a general purpose platform for broadcasting life streams, but more focussed services are emerging to help users capture those life streams with a little more utility.

Some like, TweetWhatYouEat are built on Twitter itself, others such as MyMileMarker, BrightKite and WattzOn are standalone services that help users track their fuel, travel and energy habits. Each is making true Galileo’s principle of ‘measuring what is measurable and making measurable what is not’.

At the last QS Show&Tell, Alex Rossi showed his Twitter apps Tweet What You Eat and Tweet What You Spend. Since then, Nathan Yau of Flowing Data has posted about this attempt to track his eating through Twitter. Nathan wrote a little bot to collect Twitter messages about what he’s eating and how much he weighs and stick them in a database, which he can then use to chart his progress. He asked on his blog whether, if he made this public, people would be interested in using it.

Kelly observes that many of these services are using SMS messages to allow users to post events to online databases, bypassing what would otherwise require complex coordination of disconnected devices, networks, payments and regulatory overlays.

Interestingly, the proliferation of ‘quantified self’ services - as chronicled recently by the Washington Post - raises some interesting questions on whether such services will ultimately need common vocabularies, syntax and interoperability.

Read more at Self Tracking Through SMS and Bytes Of Life.

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The Name’s Bond - Bringing a New Advertising Message to Mobile

November 16, 2008 at 1:27 pm · Filed under Advertising, Apple, Communication, Marketing, Mobile Applications, Mobile Tech, Software, Video

Mobile phones are incredibly personal devices, and that means that people will pay a lot more attention to what is on, and what is shown, on the screens of their smart phones. That’s one of the arguments that the advertising industry is hoping will allow mobile advertising to take off. But while the application of advertising on mobile web sites still hasn’t caught fire, a number of PR companies and developers are already working on different angles to capture the mobile screen and put their message in front of users.

The recent Bond film, Quantum of Solace, has spawned an interesting application for Apple’s iPhone. Websites for films are now common currency, and the marketers have now created a good template for a mobile application that helps promote a film. Of course with connected devices the dividing line between a mobile website and a mobile application is lessening, there’s a lot of synergy between these two products.

But back to the application. Acting as a hub it pulls in both the trailers for the film, and information about the film that’s updated on a regular basis (based around a blog concept), as well as links into the music store to buy the theme tune to the film. Craig Rubens does wonder why you can’t buy movie tickets for local screenings, but perhaps that’s asking too much at this moment in time – this idea of a mobile application/advert is still in its infancy.

Think of it like a demo for the film, in exactly the same way as you get demos for applications (although strangely demos of applications are in short supply in the iPhone App store, as Darla points out here). I’m expecting to see a lot of these in the near future. And perhaps in the future once you finish watching the film at the cinema you’ll get a discount on items like the soundtrack, or even the ability to purchase it from an online media store.

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Missing Out on Demo’s and Trials in Apple’s App Store

November 10, 2008 at 5:46 pm · Filed under Apple, iPhone, iPhone 3G

One of the things that I miss when using my iPhone 3G is the option to demo an application before seriously considering purchasing. Yes app descriptions are given to users on the App store, but does it really support the users need?

I hate to pay money for something only to find out that it wasn’t up to par, in serious needs of updates, or simply not what I expected it to be. So why no demos in the App store?

Is this an Apple thing or a developer thing? Is Apple so quick to get that cha-ching while leaving the consumer wondering why they made the initial purchase in the first place?

I think the App store should take lessons from online software sites such as Handango and at least offer a way, other than just a plain description of how the app should work, and offer trials and demos. Maybe that way user reviews wouldn’t be so negative and consumers would be able to give the app a fair trial before ruling it out. What say you?

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Nokia Launches Mobile Millenium for Traffic Updates

November 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm · Filed under Development, GPS, Mobile messaging 2.0, Nokia

Launching today (11:59 PM PST to be exact) Nokia in partnership with UC Berkeley and NAVTEQ will launch Mobile Millennium to offer free traffic information to GPS enabled Nokia’s and non Nokia devices. The java application will be available for download later this evening and video demo will also be available on the site.

According to the website, the initial pilot program will focus on users who drive between the San Francisco Bay Area and Lake Tahoe ski area, though all Bay Area residents with smart phones or internet access will be able to receive traffic information that includes probe data.

The project is being run by Nokia, using Navteq’s expertise in aggregating traffic data and the University of California at Berkeley for networking smarts.

The pilot will operate over four to six months and up to 10,000 members of the public community can participate.

American drivers should be able to download the (free) software later today at http://traffic.berkeley.edu/.

via: Tech Radar

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You Cannot Censor the Internet

November 10, 2008 at 8:46 am · Filed under Activism, Communication, Development, Mobile Etiquette, Mobile messaging 2.0, News, Notable + Quotable

Historians always like to point out that the Internet is derived from a military program called Arpanet – a project designed to ensure that locations could continue to communicate even when the nodes of communication on a direct path between them were destroyed, presumably by a nuclear strike on US soil. The idea that the internet can route round any physical problems is one of its strengths, but in the 21st century, it is the routing around the meta-physical road blocks that could be the internet’s greatest feature.

The UK Government is currently considering plans to legally prevent news outlets publishing stories that the Government deems is harmful to the Country, and ergo the Government (report in The Independent). The current system of DA-Notices used is on an advisory basis; ie “would you mind awfully not mentioning this, chaps?†although a governmental committee is wanting a legal mechanism to be put in place.

The problem is that this will not work. And the internet is the reason why.

Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report illustrated this with the case of Prince Harry. A member of the UK Armed Forces, as a member of the Royal Family the inclination was to keep him away from the front line, but the Armed Forces came to an agreement that the UK press would not mention he was shipped to Afghanistan until he returned. The UK media collectively agreed to this deal, and the public was none the wiser.

But Drudge, a US political blogger, was under no gentleman’s agreement, and published the story. The public found out, and the general impression was that they were not happy with the press colluding with the Armed forces and HM government.

How exactly would forcing the UK Media to legally not publish this make any difference? And is this law going to apply to the UK bloggers? Are we going to be told what we can and cannot blog about? Or will it be a case that when something is blogged that the media have been banned from, the blogger is going to be hauled away for trial (which of course can’t be reported about…).

Oppressive regimes like China are barely able to keep ahead of the stream of news from the internet with their ‘great firewall,’ and the addition of laws in the Western World to gag the mainstream media will have not a single means to leverage the national and international power of the internet. Governments cannot control the media, and in many countries the freedom of the press is an almost sacred right. The internet hands that power to individuals in the connected world, and that is not something to be afraid of.

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Global Roundup

November 6, 2008 at 10:28 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0

A few items have caught our eye from around the world in recent weeks, here’s a quick global snapshot of some interesting mobile messaging stories…

Dubai…

Kenya…

Nigeria…

Pakistan…

United Kingdom…

United States…

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Swype: Innovating Text entry for touchcreens

November 6, 2008 at 9:46 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0

One of the more interesting on technologies show at the recent TechCrunch50 was Swype, a keypad technology that purport to increase the text entry speed of touchscreen devices - what’s more one of the brians behind T9 text entry, Cliff Kushler, is the inventor and CTO.

Swype combines by two principles of the iPhone that are oddly not used in tandem - an onscreen keyboard coupled with gestures, familiar to users of all multitouch screens and trackpads. In a continuous motion users simply trace a path from key to key to assemble a word or phrase, in a manner not too dissimilar to the old Palm stylus motions.

The company claims that users can exceed fifty word-per-minute using this method, approaching the speed of entry of a full-size PC keyboard. Indeed, the company is pitching the technology beyond mobile handsets to other electronic devices, ranging from kiosks and TV remotes to games consoles and computers.

The demonstration videos are certainly impressive, though its unclear how universal this particular input mechanism can be, though it’s not hard to imagine seeing ‘Swype Inside’ licensing on many classes of future device, notably touchscreen phones.

Check out the demo videos here and here.

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The Twiller Memorandum

November 6, 2008 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Twitter

Uhoh, looks like the texticular obsession of our culture is now extending to the novel, with the arrival of the ‘Twiller’, novelists who are replacing their traditional long form medium with bursty 140-character chapters of prose.

As noted by the New York Times several weeks ago, Matt Richtel has for 2-3 months been writing a ‘real-time thriller’ an Memento-esque story of an amnesiac man Twittering his fragmented recollections of a criminal act. Richtel’s experiment has seen derision from some quarters and some have stated that it’s less a novel and more a limited ARG.

With 206 ‘episodes’, Richtel’s follower count has doubled to 800 since the NYT article was published, indicating that its a niche with more than a little interest.

Judge for yourself at http://twitter.com/mrichtel/ or catchup on the story so far, here.

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