Tucked away in the pages of the popular location social networking service Plazes (one of the few technologies that actually bring the concept of physical presence to the web) is a web page explaining how to “Plaze” yourself via SMS. This is a great option for those that do not have the Plazes Mobile software on their phone.
Via Plazes SMS you are able to use Plazes with simple SMS messages directly from your mobile phone. Via SMS you can now “Plaze” yourself (set your location), pull your Plaze contacts (and thus tell your contacts where you are and see where they are) information and even locate the nearest free wifi (which I think is a really cool feature!).
I think this is a really great move for Plazes. I have said over and over again that SMS is the key into the mobile universe. While the WAP / phone software feature was nice, it was a little cumbersome and not as quickly ubiquitous as this SMS service is.
For now there is no shortcode involved and its only available in the United States and Germany. Anyone can text to the German or Us number but it will be an international text message
RCR News is reports on a recent ruling made by the U.S Copyright office. “The purpose of the software lock appears to be limited to restricting the owner’s use of the mobile handset to support a business model, rather than to protect access to copyrighted work itself,†said Marybeth Peters, register of copyrights.”
This means that mobile-phone subscribers beginning Dec. 1 can keep their handsets to use on other wireless networks when they change cellular operators and now have legal precedence for it.
However, “While we are still reviewing the decision, it is clear that the order does not prevent carriers from locking handsets—it only removes a legal tool carriers have used to enjoin persons who unlock the handset without the carrier’s consent,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA, the national cell-phone carrier association.
One little blurb, with huge implications for the industry…
So, I am not going to go into details on how this happened (or how the topic of cell phones came up) but this past Thanksgiving weekend I had the (getting) rare opportunity of seeing a Motorola StarTAC in the wild (but you can see the very pretty dress she had on behind the phone).
This young lady, like most StarTAC users, was very defensive about her “out of date” phone claiming that she would not give it up for the world and until it dies and goes to cell phone heaven she will continue using it.
For those of you that need a cell phone refresher the StarTAC was unveiled in North America in January 3, 1996 as the “StarTAC Wearable Cellular Telephone.” At the time this AMPS phone was the smallest cell phone on the market and was an immediate success. The young womans phone was a later introduced CDMA version running on Verizon. It was also the first vibrating phone, “VibraCall”, the first vibration feature on a phone. It was then only used by Motorola, as they held the patent[1].
The phone was phased out in or around 2000 but a nostalgia release was made in the StarTAC 2004 in Korea.
Her version must have been a later version because she said she was able to both send and receive text messages.
She claims that the phone has a megahertz level that cannot be made anymore and thus has amazing reception when compared to her other Verizon using friends.
Cant validate that but one thing is sure… they sure do not make them like they used to.
Besides the fact that when you are text messaging you do not have to hold the cell phone up to your head, text messaging is now good for your health for other reasons, wherever you are.
usually when I give speeches on the use of mobile in marketing I always begin by asking the audience to take out their cell phone and open up the application that gives them first aid information. The usual experience is that no body
First their is this interesting article from the BBC about how Mobile Phones are being used to track diseases such as HIV and bird flu in developing nations.
The software is designed to allow field workers using handsets to send and receive data on disease outbreaks along with patient and drug information.
The project is a collaboration between technology firm Voxiva and the trade association for mobile operators, GSMA.
Trials of the relatively low-cost application are underway in Rwanda, Africa and in Indonesia.
When a disease is spreading rapidly, health authorities need information that is bang-up-to-date
Rob Conway, GSMA
The program works by sending the data through the general packet radio service (GPRS) network, and if this is unavailable, it can divert to an SMS data channel, normally used for text messages.
It is programmed using java language, so can work across different handsets and operators. [read]
Then there is this article that is has been floating around on how UK Citizens are now able to access important health information by SMS.
‘Health-SMS’ utilises the power and popularity of SMS text messaging to help raise the awareness and understanding of health issues amongst the general public. [read]
MobileActive has a great article on a new mobile-to-Internet video communication service called Veeker and their debut of their mobile phone as a video capture and communication device during this year’s U.S. election.
Veekers “Veek The Vote” received over 750 mobile video messages from Americans using the video camera in a mobile phone to show the world where they stood on Election Day (thats a lot compared to Rock the Votes 24 submissions and Video the Votes 96). “Veek the Vote 2006†was the result of a partnership between Veeker and YouthNoise (www.youthnoise.com), the Internet’s first social network for youth dedicated to social change.
“I appreciate the work that activists from across the country, like those on VeekTheVote.com, have done to identify existing problems, and to help protect the rights that we all enjoy,” states recently re-elected U.S. Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) about Veek the Vote 2006.
This of course is a good idea for the sustainable future of Green Phones. Gizmodo found a cell phone prototype that runs on solar energy. While not ideal yet lets work on it!!!
File This One Under Mobile Stumble. Came across this bumper sticker on a New York City Subway platform… so I investigated. Brought to you by the same people that brought us SendSMSNow.com and NightLifeTexting.com (for club promoters) TextToRent.com is simply put a mobile alternative to apartment hunting… which in New York City is very much needed if you ask me. Usually, you find a great listening and call only to discover the apartment is already taken. They claim that the speed in which text messaging works gives you an extra over the “regular†apartment-hunter. The free service essentially lines up brokers that send text message to your phone regarding apartments you may want.
Its really simple. Apartment hunters sign up for the service providing all the information about the type, price range, location etc that they are looking for. Brokers in cohorts with the service find matches per user and pay TextToRent 4 bucks per text message they send.
Right now the service covers Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens but they hope to add the New Jersey Hoboken area. If it works they may even expand to bigger cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.
But they already have competition. Check out SmarterAgent which I wrote about a while back.
So, as many of you may or may not know I am doing work for Rave Wireless, a Wireless company specializing on integrating the mobile medium into the campus life for millions of students in Universities and Colleges across the country. Rave has a very powerful application and UI, not to mention an amazing business model.
But they also have a pretty interesting blog called “Rave Thoughts: Mobile Campus Life” which really is one of the few mobile technology weblogs focusing exclusively on the relation between the mobile medium and higher education… and it explores this relationship on many interesting levels. The other blogs in this category include Stephanie Riegers Ketai Blog and Judy Brecks GoldenSwamp.
So, if you are into issues relating to how universities, students and colleges can harness the power of the mobil medium I strongly recommend you bookmark this blog and keep your on eye on it. As part of working with Rave I will of course be contributing to the blog. But the blog already has some pretty talented bloggers on board/
So, as many of you may or may not know I have started working with Rave Wireless, a Wireless company specializing on integrating the mobile medium into the campus life for millions of students in Universities and Colleges across the country. Rave has a very powerful application and UI, not to mention an amazing business model.
But they also have a pretty interesting blog called “Rave Thoughts: Mobile Campus Life” which really is one of the few mobile technology weblogs focusing exclusively on the relation between the mobile medium and higher education… and it explores this relationship on many interesting levels. The other blogs in this category include Stephanie Riegers Ketai Blog and Judy Brecks GoldenSwamp.
So, if you are into issues relating to how universities, students and colleges can harness the power of the mobil medium I strongly recommend you bookmark this blog and keep your on eye on it. As part of working with Rave I will of course be contributing to the blog. But the blog already has some pretty talented bloggers on board/
Cnet just put out a kind of no brainer article on SMS spam and its negative impact the potential to hurt future mobile marketing efforts.
From the article:
Between 2005 and 2006, the volume of text message spam that reaches subscribers is expected to grow by 60 percent, according to market research firm Ferris Research. Because cell phone operators understand the potential damage unwanted messages can have on their customers’ willingness to accept any kind of text-based marketing, they’ve taken aggressive steps to nip it in the bud.
“We have everything to lose if text spam becomes as endemic as e-mail spam, and absolutely nothing to gain,” said Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wirless.
This is sooooooo true. Recently, during my work on the mobile part of a political campaign some of the campaign staff came to worried that because they signed up to the mobile alerts service they where now receiving Spam. When I asked them to show me what the message was it was simply a message from Verizon telling them that they where going over their minutes.
Even the Mobile Genus Oliver Starr from Mobile Crunch was once heard saying “If my phone becomes a mindless buzzing, personal pop-up in my pocket, I’ll trash it and not use it.†(Great quote right?)
Anyways, interesting read. I myself have been subjected to SMS spam and also think its a bad bad thing… but then again who doesn’t.
Tucked away in the pages of the popular location social networking service Plazes (one of the few technologies that actually bring the concept of physical presence to the web) is a web page explaining how to “Plaze” yourself via SMS. This is a great option for those that do not have the Plazes Mobile software on their phone.
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