Welcome to the 21st Carnival of the Mobilists!!! It is an honor to be hosting this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists here at MOpocket! Its hard to believe that the Carnival is now 21 which means, to remind my European readers, that the Carnival can now legally partake in alcoholic substances and download pornography in the United States! Just in time for the Gathering of the Mobilists over at CTIA in sin city Las Vegas! Which I have just been told by Rudy via Skype is now booked.
Any-who, thanks for all those that submitted articles to this weeks coming of adult age (american version) Carnival of the Mobilists! There is some really top notch writing this time around so lets get started.
MOBILE + SOCIETY
First off, Mr Rheingold over at Smart Mobs posts about a really interesting interview that he and Mimi Ito gave on Keitai (thats japanese for mobile phone) culture, a favorite subject of mine.
MOBILE MARKETING
Troy Norcross over at consumer-preference.com’s mobile marketing and spam blog tells it like it is when it comes to concerns over mobile marketing for children. Go Troy! Protect our kids!
While we are on the subject of kids, check out Stowe Boyd’s blog in which he, citing two of our very own mobilists) chimes in on the extremes of cellphone identity from both ends of the spectrum.
WOMEN IN MOBILE
Rudy from M-Trends continues the much needed Woman in Mobile series with a tribute to Judy Breck a digital integration genius who is doing many wonderful things for this world. He’s got a way with mobile women I tell ya….
OPERATOR/CARRIERS
Ok, there are two really good posts about EU’s decision to Ban Roaming charges. The first comes from Ian Wood (aka the Digital Evangelist) in which he discusses what good can come of all this (besides not having to pay tariffs while roaming). Then, Tomi T. Ahonen of the communities dominate blog chimes in with some ideas of his own on what the carriers should be doing now.
MOBILE APPLICATIONS
The boys over at Mobhappy have a nice little piece on the “Free Stuff for Advertising” phenomena and how it is infiltrating the mobile space. Russell thinks its not so pretty.
In her usual fun but elegant style Darla Mack of the same named darlamack blog shows the signs the an SMS explosion is on the cusp here in the States as more and more SMS services are being displayed on adds and by adds but how, already, its being taken over by the 1-900 sluts and hunks who all want to text with you for only 99 cents. Can you txt dirty?
APPLE STUFF
Dennis’ from Wap Review sent in a post that as a Mac user i enjoyed immensely. I am surprised to, now that I think about it. What will it take for more Apple specific mobile sites to pop up… an Apple Phone?
Everyones favorite Pondering Primate (one day you will have to tell us where all this monkey business came from) The Vanilla Gorilla thinks so with his post on the potential of Apple’s move into the mobile sphere and the possibility of them becoming a mobile marketing powerhouse.
POLITICS
Lady Xen that cute Klonie Israeli from over at Xellular Identity ponders real political SMS voting. For people really interesting in this subject also check out what a company called Mobile Voter is doing regarding SMS voter registration here in the States… via Textually
TECHIE STUFF
Daniel Taylor over at Mobile Enterprise Weblog writes a treatise on the role of IT and the human IT management processes where he clarifies what he meant by a “Hobson’s Choice for enterprise IT” in an earlier carnival post.
Ajit Jaokar from over at open gardens writes about how Ajax will will replace both J2ME and XHTML as the preferred platform for mobile applications development.
Well, thats everyone. If you think I left you out let me know
Before I get to to my post and my choice post of the week I just want to say how great it is to be a part of this mobilists community. All of you have been so nice in helping me and MOpocket out during these its early days and your kindness and advice have meant the world to me. I have enjoyed meeting those of you who I have met and am very much looking forward to meeting those of you that I have not yet met
MY CHOICES
Ok, my choice post of the week goes to a new blog in general. I want to introduce my fellow mobilists to the newest addition to the mobilist weblog world… mobileactive.org a community of activists dedicated to exploring ways of using the mobile medium for social good and other types of activism. Of particular post importance please check out Ken Bank’s (the founder of FrontlineSMS) post on riding the MobileActive wave.
FROM MOpocket
As for my post of the week I want everyone to take a look at my my post (and I am sorry Dorrian for not having done this sooner) on an amazing new SMS service and technology here in the states called Mozes.
If you are in the UK don;t forget to help end the Seal Hunt by texting the word “Ban It” to 60123 (more info)
Well, thats all! See some of you at CTIA!
Next weeks carnival of the Mobilsists is at Helen Keegan’s Musing of a Mobile Marketer (no rest for us CTIA wanderers, we are hardcore mobilists!)
The Carnival invites new writers about mobile as well as old friends to participate - you don’t need a special invite. Send your entry no later than next Wednesday, April 5th at 9PM PST to: mobilists@gmail.com. And, if you have any feedback about any of the posts, the idea behind the Carnival, or its format or style, please leave a comment as we’d love to hear from you. For more information regarding the Carnival of the Mobilists visit here.
Thats all and thanks for visiting and remember to come back often!
I have been wanting to blog about the Palo Alto startup Mozes for some time now but my busy life style over the past couple of weeks did not provide me with the necessary time to give this amazing technological service the time it deserves. I first introduced to Mozes by Vice President of customer experience Aaron Clark at the Politics Online conference in which he spoke on a panel concerning mobile technology and political advocacy. Aaron was actually a last minute addition, taking over for Oliver Starr who, being wowed by Mozes earlier, recommended that someone from the company take his place when he had to back out at the last minute from speaking. I had the privilege of meeting up with Aaron and the other panelists a day before there actual panel begun. When Aaron began explaining what Mozes did a glaze fell over our eyes, at least that is the way he explains it which actually may not be to far from the truth… Mozes is one of those wonderfully simple “god why did I not think of that” applications that is at the same time, because of its simplicity, hard to explain in words. But once the other panelists and myself got the live demo in the hustle and bustle of a catering hall getting ready for the award ceremony and cocktail hour of the days event, we where all easily floored and knocked off our feet. I could not get enough. I asked for more examples. So, I will to everything I can to try and explain it to the best of my ability but I also strongly recommend trying it out for yourself via the various examples that you will find throughout and at the end of this post all of which I have been assured are up and running. This is a product of which actions really do speak louder than words.
Officially launched in Beta 3 weeks ago during the SXSW music festival, Mozes is, simply put, an amazing mobile bookmaker that puts the information of the world quite literally at our finger tips allowing one to “see it, text it, save it” as it were. The concept is wonderfully simple. Text a registered keyword or other information like an ISBN number to the short code 66937 (MOZES) and go about the rest of the day. First off, shortly after sending off the SMS, you will receive one in return with more information if its relevant. But that is not all, when you get to a PC and sign into your Mozes account, your keywords are there. with more information, waiting for you to turn your offline rendezvous into real online experiences and connections. You can even get the information forwarded to an email account.
Mozes and its CEO Dorrian Porter have already made some important connections with companies like Amazon.Com (which allows you to SMS an ISBN number to bookmark the book as well as recieve for info) and O’Reilly Media which used the technology at its Make Magazine’s Maker Faire in April as a way for individuals to get more information about a person or project they saw there. At SXSW I met up with Mozes employee Andy Stack who was promoting Mozes Beta release by telling people to text the keyword SXSW to 66937 as well as helping connect fans to participating bands by allowing a fan to text the bandname to 66937 and receive an SMS back with band info as well as the usual online bookmark that allows the fan access to more online material once his or her hangover wears off To experience some of the bands that set themselves up to use Mozes on the road try it out yourself and text “lzlove” or “uncleearl” to 66937. I also know of one Mozes employee who has allowed his real estate broker to use Mozes to help sell his and other houses by instructing passer-bys to txt a keyword to the Mozes short-code in order to receive more information about the home as well as further contact information.
Mozes even has some kick-ass deals with radio stations around the country that allow you to text in the name of the radio station to the Mozes short-code which will in turn send you back the name of both the artist as well as the song currently playing as well as links to full lyrics and places to buy or download the album. You will never have to ask what the hell that song is playing on the radio or who the hell sings it again. They are also doing similar stuff with television starting with the hip CurrentTV.
But the truly great thing about Mozes is that anyone can do it. Eventually, anyone who signs up for Mozes gets one free keyword that can send up to 1000 a certain amount of free messages making Mozes the first company ever to democratize the mobile playing field. For those that have not read my article on SMS fundraising (or do not know what a short is) a short code is a special telephone number, shorter than a full telephone number, that is specifically designed to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones and they are extremely expensive ranging anywhere from $500 to $1000 dollars a month. With Mozes you do not have to go through the hassle of dealing with the carriers or third party vendors for a simple word of mouth campaign, they have done that already… just sign up and start using, let Mozes do the rest. In short (and pun intended) Mozes parts the Red Sea of cost and hassle that has prevented a plethora of opportunities from entering the mobile marketplace and now makes it possible for anyone to start their own mobile campaign for whatever the venue and or cause.
If you are reading what I am writing then you are getting the idea. Mozes connects the phone to the internet without waiting for the phone to become a internet solution turning your mobile phone into a personal remote that enables you to ubiquitously request information.It thus allows online actions and connections to take place at anytime and at anyplace with or without an internet connection at the moment one is inspired to do so and, most importantly, with the stuff that matters most to you, whether it be music, film, television sports politics, a product whatever… For a marketer, it is a great way of using mobile SMS technology as a marketing tool while at the same time enabling a future online relationship later on, where content can be easier linked to and played with. For the mobile user it makes sure you don’t forget what you wanted to know when you wanted to know it and for the marketer, well, it makes sure that you mobile customers just don’t forget.
To try Mozes for yourself. Text the keyword “MOpocket” to 66937 (Mozes). After or before receiving an SMS reply from me you will, if you do not yet have a Mozes account, receive a text message from Mozes providing you with a confirmation passcode needed to sign up for an account. After receiving the pass-code go to Mozes.com and enter your mobile telephone number and the passcode in the area that says “First time users log on here.” Once you are logged in you should find a MOpocket bookmark in your Mozes acount which means that you are ready to roll! Have fun. The possibilities are endless.
Who would not ant to save this guy, right? As the seal hunting season opens the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is launching a major campaign at stopthesealhunt.com and on cell phones all across the UK. Starting yesterday, IFAW launched advertisements, like the one showed above in the Sunday Mirror and has already received well over 10, 000 responses which, according to Jed Alpert, CEO of Politxt (the political arm of his Rights-Group media) the company responsible for the back end technology of the campaign, is an unbelievable numbered response rate for a newspaper ad. IFAW will be displaying the add in various UK newspapers throughout the week and will be putting them up in the London tube some time in early April.
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When sending the txt message “Ban It” to the shot code 60123 mobile users received…
Mobile Voter, in partnership with Music for America, has won a sizeable grant to register thousands of young voters at concerts across the U.S. this summer! The grant is coordinated by Young Voter Strategies and funded by Pew.
After sitting through several “mobile web” dominated panels at SXSW, where the topic of text messaging and other interesting traits of the mobile medium never came to surface , it was a “Sweet Relief” to meet up with Scott Dudelson. The founder of Music For Charity Productions, the 26-year-old Dudelson was at the Austin music, arts and technology festival promoting an SMS fundraising effort for Sweet Relief, a non-for-profit organization that provides financial aid for artists who are older, unable to work and cannot pay for medical and or other needs. Dudelson was not there for the Interactive part of the SXSW festival, his badge was exclusively for Music. But his text messaging, fundraising and music mashup was right on the cusp of both worlds and was one of the most interesting and practical integration of the mobile medium into different media that I saw at SXSW.
[For more the more in-depth story visit my blog at Personal Democracy. ]
Ok, so I am finally back and ready to blog about what went on concerning the world of the mobile medium at SXSW Interactive (and the festival in general). There where a couple of good panels panels that talked about mobile technology related things (as well as the ones that had mobile in the title) but as far as anything truly ground breaking being discussed in those rooms I would have to say that there was not much.
There where two panels dedicated to mobile technology both of which were put side by side with the keynote speakers. Its a little late in the game for me to be commenting on them in detail now, however, my overall reaction to them is important as to the main point of this post which is that when it came to discussing the mobile medium as SXSW, actions spoke louder than words.
The first panel was on demystifying the mobile web. The conversation basically came down to questions concerning whether to use XHTML or XHTML-MP and how to deal with the different mobile browsers installed on all the different types of devices. While these issues are important, one does not have to be involved in the mobile technology web space for to long to realize that an entire panel discussion on such an issue kinda focus’ on the wrong things. As Carlo from MobHappy put it, just as important is taking a more holistic view of mobile design and considering how to create services and applications that fit the mobile lifestyle and workstyle, as opposed to just making something that looks nice on a phone. Carlo’s argument goes in line with my favorite perception on this issue that when looking at Internet technologies from the perspective of PC based Internet most American mobile users and businesses perceive the mobile Internet as ‘second-rate’ access, something good to have when you don’t have your PC or laptop. It’s good for making phone-calls (and in America even that is questionable). The problem with this model of Internet, when applied to the mobile medium is that it assumes a universally desirable technological resource whereas the mobile medium both infiltrates and adapts to the structures of existing practices and places. An economic understanding of the mobile revolution can only go so far. A different means of information technology communication did not only develop out of economic necessity but also came to be precisely because alternative trajectories of IT and communications discourse could and needed to exist.
So what the Japanese model teaches us is that the “American†way of thinking about and perceiving the Internet is not the only way and that portable, lightweight engagement to quote Ito again, form an alternative constellation of ‘advanced’ Internet access characteristics that stand in marked contrast to complex functionality and stationary immersive engagement. The differences here are between networked infrastructures that base themselves on a cross-cultural universal model (the PC internet) and a network built on a true network of shifting localities and cultures (the mobile medium). Neither one is better than the other, that’s not the point here. The point is to show that they are different and that problems only occur when one discourse dominates the way we perceive the other.
Fellow Mobilists Kelly Goto was one of the only ones that got this and spoke to this issue (which if you read her blog you know she would) but the conversation kept pushing toward the technical nuances of the issue. As Carlo concluded in his post on the panel: Understanding mobile design isn’t just understanding WML and XHTML and Openwave browsers vs Access browser. It’s about understanding the types of content and information people want to access on their mobile devices, and how best to arrange and organize it. Adding in the eye candy is easy once you’ve got that down.
The second panel on Content Distribution Over the mobile web, flanked by Craig Newmarks keynote speech was mildly more entertaining and hit more of the important “usability” issues of the mobile web. But there was nothing mind blowing or earth shaking here and most of it, again, was mobile web based. In fact, I was utterly shocked how none of the mobile panels (or panels that incorporated mobile into their discussions of convergence) discussed other more popular and functional mobile technologies such as SMS or Voice services.
I would have to say that some of the cooler more relevant mobile discussions occurred, as they normally do at tech conferences, in the hallway and at the after parties and via the SXSW infrastructure itself. I already wrote a post on how the entire SXSW festival has brilliantly incorporated mobile technology into the entire information retrieval part of the event.
The conference set up what they are calling the SXSW ToolBox which will allow attendees to view schedules and cast votes from your cell phone, watch trailers and clips from the festival on your iPod® or PSP ®, or use the SXSW clickguide® to help navigate vast number of opportunities that SXSW has to offer. The festival’s SMS service allowed me to receive special notices and alerts via their Online Registrants Directory. The alerts where specific to my badge type from last minute schedule changes, Special Events, to Flash happy hours, scheduled party reminders and more.
The music festival has even more to offer when it comes to mobile technology such as getting the band schedule to your mobile phone by just sending a text message with the band or clubname. SFXW will then text-message your mobile with band and showcase information. The service will also sport an American Idol text message like voting system for your favorite band. It costs $1.99 a vote and your mobile number will be entered in a drawing to win 2 FREE Platinum Badges for SXSW 2007! Simply TXT MSG: “sx vote.band ‘band-name’” to 56658. Those also attending the SXSW Film Conference and Festival will also be able to vote for their favorite film to win the SXSW 2006 Film Audience Award. Simply TXT MSG: sx vote.film filmname to 56658 by 5.pm March 14th.
But also hitting the music scene where some pretty neat SMS applications. The Sweet Relief Music Fund,
with the help of groups such as Mobile Accord and Music for Charity Productions held (and is still holding) a “Sweepstakes of Swag” wherein by texting the word “Heal” to the shortcode 50555 your next phone bill will be charged $4.99 which will benefit the the Sweet Relief musicians in need fund as well as qualifies you to win some rare and cool memorabilia donated from the likes of Beck, Joe Strummer, Merle Haggard, Keith Urban, the Pixies and more.
This was not an official SXSW project but it was there in full force during the festival.
Also roaming around the crowds of loud young music fans was a new SMS service called Mozes which actually was celebrating its quasi launch date last Wednesday. I plan on writing more on Mozes in a bit, this post is already to long and to try to do a brief write up would not do this amazing startup any justice. Simply put, Mozes allows live ubiquitous SMS bookmarking based on keywords. I SMS the word SXSW to MOZES (66937) and I receive an SMS back and a marker on my Mozes account based on whatever it is the owner of the keyword wants me to see. Every new subscriber gets a free keyword. Anyways, more on this in a bit.
While a good number of panel discussions at SXSW where mind blowing, interesting and fun… when it came to mobile technology its clear that we have a lot of biases to overcome. But at least if the important stuff regarding the mobile medium is not being talked about, there is evidence (oddly enough at the same event) of it being done which, most likely, is more important in that it will be these things that will be talked about next year and thus guide the American mobile scene in the right direction.
Wow has it been a week already! I got to get my mobile self together and start posting again. Anyways, this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists is over at C. Enrique Ortiz’ Mobility Weblog. Lots of great posts this week, so check it out.
This weeks Carnival of the Mobilists is over at Mobile Society, also known as Martin’s Mobile Technology Page. So if you want to read some of the best and most interesting posts on mobile technology you better head on over there.
MOpocket.com got mention again, of course.
From the Carnival:
Mobile Internet and Politics: Justin Oberman has sent me a link to his recent blog entry where he reports about what some people do not get about the political mobile buzz during the recent “Politics Online” conference. He was invited as a speaker to talk about the mobile Internet in politics.
Im a looking forward to seeing some of my fellow Mobilists this weekend at SXSW!
My first reactions on the mobile scene during day one of the Politics Online conference can now be read at my blog over at Personal Democracy where I am the Mobile Technology and Politics Correspondent. In it I discuss fundamental misperceptions that a lot of “internet” people have about mobile technology. More to come today as two panels, one of which I am speaking on, are dedicated to our favorite subject.
Welcome to the 21st Carnival of the Mobilists!!! It is an honor to be hosting this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists here at MOpocket! Its hard to believe that the Carnival is now 21 which means, to remind my European readers, that the Carnival can now legally partake in alcoholic substances and download pornography in the United States! Just in time for the Gathering of the Mobilists over at CTIA in sin city Las Vegas! Which I have just been told by Rudy via Skype is now booked.
