I know its a little late but like Rudy said it is the first week of summer. Anyways, incase you have not already seen it the 129th Carnival of the Mobilists is over at by good friend Rudy’s M-Trends blog.
Rudy, who has been more busy than ever, did a great job and was right to pick up on the theme of LBS or location based services. While many phones have had built in GPS for a long time now, the comming of the iPhone 3G with built in Assisted GPS is going to boost the LBS space like nobodies business. So go on over to Rudy’s carnival and check it out.
IAC joined forces with WaveMarket to create Ask Mobile GPS, a GPS-enabled lifestyle application featuring the best of Ask.com, Citysearch, and Evite.com, along with instant location finder and turn-by-turn navigation powered by the Global Positioning System. With this application, you’ll be able to easily find the nearest starbucks without first having to figure out where you are, view the address and get directions to your evite party you are on your way to, and broadcast to your friends your location.
“With Ask Mobile GPS, your cell phone is like the remote control for your life. With the bundling of GPS with our lifestyle brands, your phone knows exactly where you are, so there’s far less hunt-and-peck entering of information on the keypad when you’re out and about,†said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “We’ve adapted our brands specifically for mobile phones – we’re not force-fitting content that should be read on a computer screen onto a cell phone.â€
Before you get too excited, its currently only available on like 5 Sprint phones. Check here to see if you are one of the lucky ones. Maybe its just me but, I think they should have waited to have at least a few more carriers before they rolled out the application.
They don’t call it a mobile phone for nothing. Its with you at work, dentist, and even the store; providing you instant access to your contacts, email, and the World Wide Web. It’s no wonder that someone has finally mixed the mobile phone with the shopping mall.
NearbyNow is a location based text message search for products, sales, and brands in the local mall. NearbyNow gives each mall its own shortcode and retailers buy keywords. For example, at the Westfield Valley Fair mall, signs say “text ‘VF’ to the short code ‘NEARBY’ (632729) to search this mall for any product, brand, or sale.†Next, consumers can search for specific products, brands, and to locate the best sales within the mall. As the slogan says, NearbyNow turns online browsing to in-store buying.
I think NearbyNow is a great idea, but I don’t know if this is a service people are ready for. In a mall setting I see three kinds of shoppers:
1- people, like myself, who only go into certain stores and we already know which ones those are,
2- mall rats just killing time and not buying,
3- the helpless gift shopper who has no idea where to turn.
So NearbyNow’s target audience is this 3rd group, the helpless gift shopper… which leads me to a few questions: How many people in this third group are text message savvy? How many of them get cell phone service in the mall? How many are going to realize there is such a tool? Is knowing what stores to go into enough? Maybe there should be an added query that gives gift ideas for certain types of people like gifts.com. What I am getting at is that I am just not sure that there is a big enough group to market to. Yes, in the future I think this will be a widely used tool, but now… I have my doubts.
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
Moconews reported via 14U News the other day that AOL Germany plans to launch a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)some time this year. According to a Berliner Zeitung interview with AOL Germany’s CEO Charles Frankl the service will essentially be a pocket extension to AOL’s internet platform providing AOL customers with AOL’s communicaiton and content services (probably along with AOL advertising) in the palm of their hands.
AOL users will have access to AIM, photo albums, blogs and more via the AOL mobile phone service.
Take photos for example. At the present moment eight out of ten mobile phones have camera’s. With AOL [mobile phone service] our customers will be able to in the future load their pictures onto the Internet or exchange the photos with other AOL members via their mobile phone. Our customers will also see an AOL starting screen, which can be personalized. Essentially, Whether you prefer weather, AIM, Blogs or news you can get to your favorite [application] with just one click. [this translation from the German is a very loose one based on my poor but manageable German skills]
Frankl had no comment as to whether or not the service will provide a flat rate data plan needed to make such a service attractive to Europeans (most European wireless operators do not yet offer flat rate data plans like they do here in the United States… and it is costing users a tiny fortune). On that note, there is no word from AOL’s base about whether or not AOL will launch an MVNO here in the States and compete with MVNO’s like EarthLink and SK Telecom’s MVNO Helio which similarly offers its “members” mobile access to social networking sites like Myspace and other internet services.
AOL just released a social networking platform of their own called AIM Pages which integrates with people’s already well established AIM buddy list. AOL would do good in trying to leverage these programs by either launching their own MVNO or making a deal with a carrier to make these services more easily available and manageable from a mobile phone…. Especially with all the hyped news lately about how IM will overtake text messaging (an argument I have some qualms with but will save for another post). And it is more than obvious that AOL wants to enter the VoIP /telecommunication game when it it announced a new AIM service (AIM Phoneline) that allows free telephone calling. I mean, lets face it. AOL is in a lot of trouble lately (even AOL Germany, the company making the venture into an MVNO is up for sale) and the only thing they got going for them, the only product they offer that people (both subscribers and non-subscribers) really still use anymore is AIM… and until AIM Pages they have done almost nothing to leverage that. Which was why I was shocked when Frankl’s response to the question “Will you permit usages of services such as Skype?” was “If the customers wish, I do not have anything against it.”
AOL does produce AIM platforms for various mobile devices as well as a plethora of mobile services. Mobile AIMing, however, which AOL makes available either through Mobile WAP (not a nice experience), text messaging (a costly experience) or their own software (which is neither the prettiest or easiest thing to use) has so far for me not been such a pleasant experience. I used to, for example, get my AIM messages forwarded to my phone via text message. For one thing this got really expensive really fast as most people sending AIM messages from the computer did not keep in mind the 160 character limit creating multiple messages for me to handle. And then came along the problem of AIM Robot Spam, “girls” asking me to look at their profiles which where obvious links to porn sites. Anything that facilitates spam on a phone is not a good thing…. so like my old AOL email address I shut mobile AIM text messaging down. So then I went to buy the AIM software for the phone I had at the time (which was the Treo 650). The software was very buggy, did not sign in all the time and even when it did it would not run in the background when I went to do other things (one time it even let me sign in using my old password after I changed it). I now have their Symbian S60 version running on my Nokia N70 which is horrible. It does not put your contacts in the familiar groups they appear in on your PC and, like the Palm, appeasr to have problems running and staying connected when I navigate elsewhere on the phone. Both solutions had, of course, the same problem with AIM spammers.
AIM Spamming is also a problem they will have to solve if they wish to truly embed it with a wireless service.
To the platforms credit and future potentialities, however, I did once use AIM mobile to ask the Moviefon robot about movie times and locations. And I have seen it run pretty smoothly on Sidekicks. So its not a total loss and their is a lot of room to grow on this if AOL does it right… which they probably wont. When it comes to catching up to new ideas AOL still runs at Modem speed…. and because they are still running at that speed their chances at being ingenuity leaders in the next big thing, in this case mobile, is even more unlikely.
To their credit, it is not like AOL does not “get” mobile, especially if their recent purchase of Tegics “T9,” the application on your phone that makes it easier to input text on a dial pad with predicative text, is any indication. And while I was at CTIA this year I stopped by the AOL booth where they showed me a pretty array of mobile applications and software such as a Location Based Enabled CityGuide Mobile application, a MapQuest GPS navigator platform as well as a mobile browsing service that, like Google’s, automatically adapts web pages to mobile screens (which got a pretty good review at WapReview). Another thing they showed me was a Shozu like application that allows AOL Pictures users (AOL members and AIM users alike) to automatically post photos taken with their mobile device to their AOL Pictures account, regardless of their wireless carrier. Lets not forget mobile.aol.com where you can get access to other AOL content such as AOL Search (powered by Google)AOL Mail (which AOL also has a mobile application for), news, weather, sports, entertainment and the Yellow Pages. AOL Mobile’s website also has the usual Ringtone, Wallpaper sales (via Zingy) as well as a pretty easy to use “Mobile Dashboard” in which you can register your phone to work with various AOL mobile features such as “reminders,” IM text forwarding and set things like quite time (features cannot yet be changed from the phone itself). Besides selling ring-tones and wallpaper and its IM to Text option, AOL has not made any other ventures into the realm of SMS text messaging… which you think it would with its big emphasis on using things like keywords to navigate AOL channels. So all that mixed with the recent news of potentially launching an MVNO means that AOL understands, like Google CEO Eric Schmidt that “Mobile is going to be the next big internet phenomenon. It holds the key to greater access to everyone - with all the benefits that entails.”
Two things, however, are going against AOL. One is their usual lack of pace in taking on the next big thing. They seen to always be chasing what’s hot and cloning it with a “we can do it to” attitude. It is not a company that likes to gamble or take risks.
The second issue is whether it is really relevant that AOL makes this move at all. In his interview, Charles Frannkl the CEO of AOL Germany said that an AOL MVNO will allow AOL customers to access AOL features easier on their mobile phone. But AOL is reportedly loosing customers, a world-wide loss of a few million a year in fact. This has lead to AOL looking for other ways to make revenue such as through advertising on their new freely opened website portal. But supposedly, the loss of direct customers is having a noticeable negative impact on web traffic and use of other AOL services. As the Economist pointed out in a recent article.
AOL estimates that just over half of its unique monthly visitors are subscribers, rather than surfers with no other connection to the firm. So as subscribers leave, AOL will steadily lose page views. Moreover, each subscriber generates about six times as many page views as non-subscribers, says Henry Blodget, president of Cherry Hill Research, because subscriptions represent households rather than individuals, and because AOL members are heavy internet users.
This has led to a desperate campaign inside AOL to find all sorts of ways to increase web traffic from non and former subscribers as well as a website and search engine over-run with ads (so badly that it is reported that AOL employees don’t even use their own search engine). Purchasing Weblogs Inc, AIM Pages and reaching out to the blogosphere in general has been just some of their strategy as they wait and see if their parent company, Time Warner, will loose its patience and just sell the company… that is if they can find a buyer. Warner has even been trying to sell AOL Germany and other parts of AOL Europe for sometime now.
So is an MVNO a solution for a company that is loosing its costumer and loyalty base at a few million a year? Sounds like a bad business idea to me. The other applications are nice but are one in a dozen of similar applications that are out there and in which case the AOL brand name does not help in their ubiquitous usage rates. I think that, for the most part, only AOL subscribers will use AOL mobile products and as I said, that number is dwindling.
AOL does, however, have a real opportunity to lead way in Mobile IM with AIM. The question is whether they will do it in a timely matter before some one else, like the carriers or MySpace or Google or Skype beat them to it. AIM, for now, remains the largest IM social networking platform. If anything can hurt it, it has to be having another IM platform dominate the mobile sphere. If Skype, for example, gets put on every handset and is made free and easy to use… it will become the “always on” IM platform that everyone has on them and thus has the potentiality of becoming the default IM platform rather quickly.
Making AIM and all of its features the ubiquitous choice for Mobile IM would also do a lot to help boost its MySpace competitor AIM Pages and help really bring social networking to the mobile world.
Heard about this on the 10 o’clock news last night. A company called MobileParking is attempting to revolutionize the world by allowing you to use that cell phone of yours to find a parking space. Exciting! What is it? A special GPS satellite combo that looks for gaps in the side of the road? So, the lady on the news was really vague about it so I had to look it up (I probably would have looked it up anyways). Turns out it is a full voice (remember that thing that Mobile Phones were originally made to do) feature.
MobileParking claims that they can find you a parking space in 30 seconds. Here are the steps.
1. Call (800-PARK-123) from your mobile phone.
2. Provide your final destination.
3. Our Operators direct you to the closest available parking space.
The MobileParking Operator can then either verbally provide Garage and final destination directions to you or send an SMS text message to your telephone. Driving directions help Customers reach the Partner’s parking facility and walking directions help Customers reach their final destination after they’ve parked their car. The Mobile Parking Operator can, of course, also provide pricing information for the garages you are about to store your car in.
Your MobileParking Account is linked to your credit card and allows you to pay for parking charges at participating Partner Garages. which, interestingly enough, allows these garages to arrange promotions, discounts and loyalty awards via the service.
You sign up for the service at the MobileParking and pay as you use with no other charges. The cost of them finding you a parking space is $1.75, charged to your credit card. IF they cannot find you a space then there is no charge at all.
I guess a text messaging solution would be to dangerous since driving and texting do not mix. But it would be cool to eventually see whatever database the “operators” are using get incorporated into a GPS system like TOMTOM
Check here to see if your city or a city you are traveling to is participating.
The folks over at DCist.com, a website completely dedicated to the daily and nightly activities that take place in our nations capitol, just launched a BETA SMS service called LastCall which allows users to tap into many different aspects of DC life while on the go. Using your cell phone you can tap into DC Metro schedules, OpenTable reservations, concert listings via Here’s a Hint, movie showtimes and weather.
The service got its name because it is the last source of information you need to consult during your night on the town.
All a DCer has to do is send a text to 202-299-7949 or save that number in their contact as Lastcall. After that its all just text and send and get the info you want. Its free (with standard service charges applying of course) and seems relatively easy to use.
For example, to see if your favorite restaurant can accommodate your party of 5 at 7′oclock using the OpenTable all you need to do is send “ot dupont 5 700p” to the number above.
But here is the best thing about the service. It is entirely home brew. The platform is unique in that it acts as its own SMS gateway provider. They essentially, as Tom Lee one of the projects originators put it, “rolled their own” using nothing more than a Linux Machine, an unlimited SMS plan, some open source software and a cracked-screen cell phone that Tom bought for $1.50 on Ebay.
Now, Tom fully admits that this is not an “enterprise solution” as he sites that throughput - particularly for outgoing messages - is poor. But he also points out that for now, it is more than adequete for their needs. Obviously, the entire home brew system will meet a quick and timely death once traffic increases, nevertheless, it does not take away from what these guys have done for the little guy wanted to get involved in the mobile media space in some small way.
As Tom put it “Short codes are of course not an option. And I’ve received dire warnings from SMS gateway vendors that T-Mobile will put an ancient gypsy curse on me if they find out (although the T-Mo reps I’ve talked to haven’t yet said anything negative). But the setup seems quite stable, and for <$50 in parts (excluding a Linux server I already had) and the $30/month SMS plan, it may be an attractive option for light-duty SMS projects that are working on a tight budget.”
I think that T-Mobile only cares about over-abusive use of SMTP gateways (in which you use the email address of every telephone number to sent text messages). As a colleague of mine pointed out “as long as traffic is light, you just look
like a very text happy teenager to the carrier. however, i’d bet that as soon as a carrier thinks that you’re something other than a teenager, you’ll get a call - especially if the service is advertised or if you’re making $ from it…”
Nevertheless, this could be huge for small groups such as activists and non-profits, baking clubs or bowling teams that wish to harness the mobile medium in some small way.
Tom is not the first person to do this however. For a similar type application that you can run off your desktop (and is especially made for non-profits in developing countries) check out Ken Banks from Kiwanja.net’s FrontlineSMS system which I first wrote about here.
Plazes, the popular German built Web 2.0 Social Networking technology that brings the concept of physical presence to the web and thus coined the phrase “to plaze” just released a Beta version of its mobile platform. The mobile Plazer works a lot like its big brother. The main difference between the desktop and the mobile version is that the mobile version uses GSM/3G cell tower IDs to identify your location instead of a router´s MAC ID. Once it figures out where you are, it will immediately present you with a list of Plazes that are nearby of which you can either identify being currentky at or create a New Plaze if your option is not present. If the cell tower is unknown to Plazes you have to input an address for your current location and you will receive a list of Plazes for the immediate vicinity of the Plaze (i.e. the restaurant you are) is at that location, choose that one from the list and you´re done. If not you can create a new Plaze and you will be put there instantly.
Not only will this allow Plazers to keep track of there buddies on the go… but for the first time it will also allow people to Plaze places that do not traditionally have Wifi hotspots, like your favorite 5 start restaurant, theater or Grandma’s apartment.
To make it work, the Plazer app needs a working internet connection. This should be plain internet, but WAP also seems to work. I have been connecting using my Cingular GPRS connection and while that is not a 3G cell tower, yet., it is working just fine. The application uses as little network traffic as possible with Plaze setting estimating taking up to no more than 20kb of network traffic for creating or selecting a Plaze. Plazer also sends periodic pings to the server to keep you online, that also causes network traffic. It’s 7.5kb per hour maximum. But be warned and switch it off, if your not sure about your data plan or are data roaming.
For now, only those Mobile-Suave American’s carrying Series 60 Symbian phones will be able to get a taste of what Plazes Beta-Mobile has to offer. But even then it will only be a taste since most of us American S60 carrying mobilists are not yet connecting to a 3G GSM tower (unless of course you are lucky enough to live in one of those cities where Cingular is testing out there HSPDA network. S0 for now, American’s capable of using the service while out and about in the United States will have to rely on the manual input. Which is fine… the UI makes it really easy. Its just the dial-pad that makes it annoying (still waiting for that Nokia E70).
But its a great sign of what is about to come, and I know for a fact that the people over at Plazes are already contemplating what the inevitable integration of GPS into mobile phones means for their application. When it comes to location tagging no one seems to have grasped it better then Plazes.
Of course there are a few bugs and bound to be more. But first of all, its Beta and that is what Beta is for and secondly, the overall truth is that Plazes mobile brings mobile location tagging closer to an everyday reality than most applications trying to do the same thing before it.
Looks like a company called Mobile Signal launched a text based social networking service that combines SMS and location based services (LBS) that will give subscribers the opportunity to communicate with people who share their personal or business interests in their vicinity via their mobile phone or PC. They also expect to boost mobile operator revenues by at least €30 million inside two years.
The technology can be accessed via a java menu that can be either be preinstalled on the handset or downloaded from the Mobile Signal website free of charge. The application can also sit directly on the SIM card in a mobile handset to enable extended features and one-click usages.
Once the tech is in full swing an SMS will alert users when there are people in the same location who share a whole host of similar interests such as sport, music, films, politics or even romance.
Whether it is a young backpacker arriving at an airport in a new country, or a businessman attending a congress alone, by activating Mobile Signal on their phone they will be made instantly aware of those nearby who also like to meet others sharing something in common.
The service will allow any person anywhere the availability to meet people who share things in common. I can just picture spontaneous flash-mob’s for the lonely traveler coming out of this. It would be a cool way to meet people when traveling by yourself or with a loved one.
Or as Dan Ake, Mobile Signal’s CEO, “Mobile phone users now have the freedom to reach out and communicate with people they’ve never met, according to personal and business interests. This is digital communications with a face, revolutionising the way people get to know each other.â€
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 know its a little late but like Rudy said it is the first week of summer. Anyways, incase you have not already seen it the 129th Carnival of the Mobilists is over at by good friend Rudy’s M-Trends blog.
They don’t call it a mobile phone for nothing. Its with you at work, dentist, and even the store; providing you instant access to your contacts, email, and the World Wide Web. It’s no wonder that someone has finally mixed the mobile phone with the shopping mall.
