So I have been using Txtmarks in cahoots with CaringBridge in order to keep friends and family alert about my fathers condition and recent trip to the hospital. Of course, if Caringbridge were smart enough to build a mobile application and or incorporate an SMS alert system I probably would not have had this come up.
To pay for the service Txtmarks puts an advertisement (provided by 4info) with a randomly generated short URL link at the bottom of each text. Unfortunately, during a text alert to family and friends about an upcoming surgery some people received variations of this (read the url on the bottom)
I dont think Best Buy meant to imply that as a”gift idea.”
Some of the less tech savvy family and friends that subscribe to the “Stuart Alerts” (you know the ones who I had to manually sign up for the service with their phones) were a little bit “bewildered” as they thought I typed that in.
Now I am not blaming anybody or anything but I would have thought that 4info would have removed such possible strings from their generator. But really, its just a funny little but somewhat shocking accident. I dont mean to make that much of a big deal out of it.
See, I love Caringbridge, but when I am running around the hospital I don’t have time to open up my laptop and write a post. Sometimes a quick “Surgery was a sucess” is all that people need. So, Caringbridge… give me a call and I will relive my mobile evangelist consulting days and tell you why you should team up with a company like Whoop and or Singlepoint and or Flyscreen (or, shoot, even Textmarks).
And I will do it for free… well it seems like I just did… but since you guys are Non-for-profit I am sure these guys will cut you a good deal as well… just tell them that I sent you.
That way I can keep everything centralized and use Textmarks for my more savvy events.
Of course, if I just payed for the Textmarks service like a good boy it probably would not have happened either.
AllDroid and the XDA-devs have managed to get Android 2.1, complete with Sense UI, running on an HTC Hero. This assumes one is using a GSM Hero, so that leaves Sprint and the Verizon Eris in the cold for now.
It would be interesting to find out if this makes the noted lag on the Hero, ESPECIALLY the CDMA versions, better or worse.
IDC, a Market Research firm, has issued their regular report on the top selling smartphones. The period in question is the 3rd Quarter of 2009 and no-one should be surprised to hear that the iPhone is on it twice. There’s one Android phone on it, the MyTouch3G, but that debuted in the 3rd quarter, as I recall, so not such a shock. The Hero, Moment, Driod etc are all 4th quarter devices, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The Pre made a surprising showing, moving from 8th most popular in Q2 to 6th in Q3. A good sign, but as noted, a lot of new phones came out in Q4, so don’t be surprised to see it get knocked off the list entirely.
A bigger surprise is number five, the Blackberry Storm. That’s right, no II. It’s interesting that with all the vitrol heaped on this device online, it still outsold the Pre, MyTouch, and came up right behind the iPhone3G.
Not surprising is the lack of WindowsMobile devices, as all the new stuff came out in Q4. The rest of the list is utterly dominated by Blackberries, both old and new.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for that 4th Quarter report to see if the Driod really was a gamechanger….
If you’re looking to try out Android and don’t want a Droid for some reason, Best Buy has a deal for you. $99 for the Samsung moment or HTC Hero. These are pretty compelling deals, and they’ll be running through December.
Can’t help but think that while the deal may be good for Sprint and Best Buy, it may not be the best news for the Palm Pixi. Why pay $99 when you can get two just-as-good phones with larger screens and GPS? If you really need WebOS, the Pre’s just $50 more.
There have been rumors for months, but it’s now official… AOL is now the proud new owner of Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising network and mobile ad-serving and management-platform provider that now will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL’s Advertising.com division.
“AOL is one of only four at-scale advertising businesses on the Internet, and the acquisition of Third Screen Media gives us a very strong position in the fast-growing mobile space,†said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “It also lets us offer advertisers a more complete set of solutions, from display advertising to search and now a superior set of mobile solutions.â€
Recently, AdMob, the mobile advertising company teamed up with mywaves, a mobile video company, to build a click-to-video mobile advertising system.Coca-Cola will be one of the first advertisers to test out the new system.
Users who click on an ad on their phone will go to a landing page where they will have the option to watch a video, as well as save the video or pass it to their friends via MMS if they feel so inclined.The Coca-Cola landing page will direct users to Coke’s “Bottle Films†animated shorts which are also available on www.coca-cola.com.
I can’t wait to hear about the results.I personally wonder how long it would take in the US to load these videos and how many users will actually sit around and wait. Though, nevertheless, I think it’s a great idea and leaves a lot of room in the future for growth in mobile advertising.
At CTIA, Yahoo announced its launch of a mobile advertising network that will allow marketers to place ads not only on its mobile services, but also on those of other online publishers. The Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network will allow mobile publishers to have syndicated advertising served on their mobile content and services. Publishers will be able to select the ad formats they want to have run, such as display, sponsored links, video or in-game placements.
“Yahoo! has become a leader in the global mobile Internet by leveraging the reach and popularity of our innovative mobile services for consumers and our competitive expertise in digital advertising,” said Steve Boom, senior vice president of mobile and broadband, Yahoo!. “Now, we are enabling publishers to grow their own mobile businesses by taking advantage of our unique experience, technology and services.”
Launch partners in the Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network include MobiTV, the global leader in mobile and broadband television and music services, Opera, the leading provider of Web browsers for mobile devices, and go2, the leading location-enabled mobile content network in the U.S. The first advertisements will go live in the second quarter of 2007. Yahoo! plans to expand the number of partners in the Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network over the coming months.
Given Yahoo’s track record on mobile I cannot hide my excitement on this announcement.I think Yahoo will set the pace on mobile advertising.
Third Screen Media, a provider of mobile advertising software and services, today announced that the Fox News has joined the growing list of media companies enabling their mobile advertising initiatives through the use of Third Screen Media’s mobile ad management and delivery platform, MADX.
Jeremy Steinberg, Vice President of Digital Media Sales and Business Development for FOX News commented, “Fox News is always looking for new opportunities to expand the brand and the mobile sector provides many possibilities that will both benefit the viewers and advertisers.â€
A blog post by Simeon Simeonov, a VC and blogger, has been well covered in all the usual places this past week. Although it lacks any serious novelty, it’s a good compilation of a lot of known facts
and an interesting shot at guessing what Google’s most famous vaporware looks like. Things to note that are not covered are Eric Schmidt’s comment on cell phones being free, him being on Apple’s board, Google’s existing forays into mobile search, their US mobile portal’s recent changes (has anyone else noticed them because I haven’t heard much about it), their click to call ads, the new
integration with German BWM navigation systems, (mentioned but barley) previous Orange Google Phone speculation (mostly hyperbolic as seen here) among more. This is definitely something to keep a close eye on because just as many doubted the iPhone, you can never be too sure what who will do next.
Thank god football season is over!! Why? Because I HATE the sport and also because it means baseball is around the corner! Anyway, I am in the minority on that one. Over the last 20 or so years viewer-ship has skyrocketed and the Super Bowl has become much more than just the big game; it is also a chance for advertisements to shine.
Budweiser: Teamed up with Ipsh! to created real-time voting for fans who registered on the website. Once the commercials started, fans sent votes via SMS to voice their opinion on each Budweiser commercial. In return for the fan’s effort, they were given exclusive access to a secret commercial online or through their mobile. Results were fair. Each of the ads (10 in all) reviewed about 1,400 votes each.
Pizza Hut: Also teamed up with Ipsh! to conduct a mobile scavenger. Codes were displayed throughout the commercials and once found, fans simply sent in a text message and were automatically entered for a chance to win everything from cars to free music download. Many people missed the codes and were not able to participate.
Sprint: Offered a NFL Mobile product that provided daily made-for-mobile coverage from SBXLI host city Miami, with the carrier’s NFL Mobile service also delivering news and information, video highlights and a live, uninterrupted stream of cable’s NFL Network. Sprint will also launch Super Bowl XLI Navigator, a GPS-based application providing street-level maps and turn-by-turn directions charting the South Florida area. But little of this content was unique to mobile phones.
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Emerald Nuts: Gave fans extra mobile content like ringtones, but you had to go to their website to find it.
I have not seen many numbers on these campaigns yet, but I think the idea has potential. I mean, if you are at a Super Bowl party it is not likely you are going to run into the other room at your friend’s house and start suffering the web about products your just saw on TV, but alternatively, I can see people checking out additional content on their mobile phones while at parties. I think the reason we saw such a small number of votes for Bud is because they made people register ahead of time on the computer. Mobile needs to be more instantaneous, spur-of-the-moment impales engagement. Lets make it easy on our mobile users and not ask them to plan ahead too much. Maybe next year will be a winning year for mobile.
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