There’s an interesting read online from the BBC about the convergence happening between our digital and physical lives thanks to the wonders of mobile technology. A quick quote from the article:
“IBM’s master inventor Zygmunt Lozinski explained his vision does not simply involve accessing Second Life from your phone - it involves using your mobile as a bridge between the virtual world and the real world.” (emphasis mine)
A good read especially because of it’s highly sought after status on Techmeme today and the implications that it has about people’s growing understanding on what mobile really has to offer and how it compares vis-a-vis the beloved Web 2.0.
There are three passions in my life: mobile, politics, and horses. Mixing two out of three of those isn’t bad.
Sona Mobile just announced that they have created a strategic partnership with the New York Racing Association (NYRA – owner and operator of Belmont, Saratoga, and Aqueduct). Imagine, you’re in the clubhouse, sipping your Saratoga Sunrise, watching Edgar Prado race his little heart out and you don’t have to miss a minute of the post parade to place your wager!
Under the terms of the agreement, Sona Mobile will develop a web-based wagering platform which will allow racing fans to access real-time racetrack information and securely place wagers on all races. Phase I of the project will include online registration, access to track information and online wagering capabilities. Phase II will provide streaming videos of all races, access to real-time user account information and account funding features. It will also deliver additional racetrack information including scratches and real-time race results. Both phase I and II are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2007.
Here is a an interesting way to get people to go outside and play. Presenting the “Come Out & Play Festival” which will take place in my New York City from September 22nd to 24th. The festival aims at taking advantage of the recent explosion of street play games such as the City Wide Pac Man cell phone game (which I recently learned was done by Tim Chambers of Media 50’s cousin) and GPS tag.
So for two days week NYC will become a giant gameboard to what looks like some pretty cool street games, some of which, if not most, are cell phone based.
Some cell phone based games of interest include, a real Wall Street player game called the Insider, the camera phone based scavenger hunt game snagu, the must have GPS enabled phone game Crossroads, the always elusive SpyText game the SMS criminal catching game Sleuth, a cell phone driven urban adventure game called The Go Game, a bluetooth capture the flag game called Conquer the Quarter and a mobile storytelling game that a lot of people are talking about called Manhattan Story Mashup. The artist / flickr addict in me is particularly fond of the Manhattan Story Mashup in which players move around Manhattan, taking photos of words from stories, written by visitors on the Manhattan Story Mashup website while the game goes on. The resulting illustrated stories will be shown on large public signs in Times Square in real-time and on Manhattan Story Mashup.
I swear, each one of these games is worthy of a post all its own. Check them all out.
Too often, street games are only discovered after they’ve finished. Come Out & Play is an opportunity for you to experience these games for yourselves. Unfortunately, the scheduled the festival during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, so I will not be able to participate… but if anyone does and they want to blog about it here on MOPocket let me know.
This brings mobile gaming to a whole new level and really captures the idea that the mobile device is one that we always have on us, wherever we are and must, therefore, always take into account our surroundings… unlike the PC I am typing on now.
Anyways, not gonna wax philosophical on you. Have fun!
You can create your own ringtones, create your own wallpaper (and even sell them)… the day is comming when soon you will be able to invent your own mobile game… but until that longtail day there is the Hungarian based Mobile Games Database which allows you to create your own unique game for your mobile phone!
Simply put the companies technology allows you install a game onto your computer of which you can upload personal images for automatic insertion into a free mobile game.
For now its a Java shooting game so careful which persona who load up.
I want to talk with you today about a little Canadian company doing big mobile things that I discovered during last months Mobile Monday Global Summit in Helsinki, Finland. Yiibu is a small team of creative types with one obsession—creating unique and engaging content for emerging mobile technologies and devices. But that explanation does not even merely come close to their creative skill and the powerful aspect of mobile medium that they have tapped. When Stephanie Rieger (cofounder and head of content strategy and design) first showed me some of the Flash Light Symbian Series 60 based content that Yiibu has designed I immediately fell in love with it.
You see, sometimes mobile games like Snake are not enough for those “passing the time” moments on the Subway or in the doctors office. A lot of the time I don’t want to start a game that I know will get interrupted. Sometimes I just want a quick little application that I can I have fun browsing around on and perhaps even learn something in the process (a lot like how I leave the History or Discovery Times channel on in the background while I work or clean). Well, along comes Yiibu which, as they say on their website “creates small lifestyle and learning applications for those ‘in-between-moments’ you spend with your mobile devices.”
Take their “A Wee (Illustrated) Guide to Tropical Fish” as an example. It’s simply a Flash Light application that lets you surf through various illustrations of Tropical Fish from the Common Clown Fish to the Yellow Tang. Various parts of the fish are marked with numbers that when pressed (on your keypad) teach you about the distinguishing mark or quality of the fish that they are pointing out (so you can recognize it the next time you go Scuba Diving). Clicking down on your phone’s navigator will bring you to a second page with some good “General Information” like “Clownfish live in a mutual relationship with the poisonous sea anemone…” and that page is followed by the always interesting “Quick Facts” and “Did you know” type of information.
Another fun application they built especially for the Mobile Monday Global Summit was a culturally-themed guide to some of the 12 countries participating in the Summit in Helsinki. Picking a country brings you to the countries page where the guide (standing in front of a creative commons Flickr picture) greets you in the countries native language and tells you various facts about the countries mobile sociology such as percentage of mobile penetration and interesting facts like “Did you know that 82% of Americans are irritated by loud or annoying cell phone users in public spaces.” My favorite “Did you know” fact is Singapore’s where, apparently, they have created a a battery that runs on human urine so that you can make that emergency call in case your battery dies. The last option plays the countries national anthem which I thought was a nice touch, educational and extremely cool. If you do not have Flash Light or a Series 60 phone you can play with an online mobile emulator version that does everything but play the national anthem part.
Yiibu has also created a great tongue-in-cheek guide to copyright, fair use and Creative Commons. In this “Tale of Two Fish” we are introduced to two clownfish: Creative Commons Fred and Copyright [name which cannot be said]. Through a very nicely laid out style we follow Fred through a fantastic journey with all the things you can do with the different types of Creative Commons licenses. It was a real fun way to clear up some baffling issues that often come with trying to understand the CC. Sadly, Copyright [name which cannot be said] had no comment as to what you can do with him and asked you to contact his agent.
Another great application that they offer, and one that is more “environmentally” friendly than it is educational is a game that emulates everyone’s favorite pastime (especially after moving or something like that) bubble wrap popping.
My one complaint about the design of some of these products is the relatively small font size used. If I had to squint and move closer I know that people like my dad would get no use out of it at all. But I am sure Yiibu will figure out a way to make it readable for everyone.
Yiibu’s products also harnesses the power of another ubiquitous nature of the mobile industry, “the pass back.” The “pass-back” was first coined by mobile video mongols who see short cartoon kid-like mobile video’s as the perfect thing a mother can use to occupy a cranky kid in the back seat. Mom is driving. Kid in the back seat is crying, cranky, bored, whatever. Mom picks up her cell phone and turns on or tunes into some kind of kid-oriented mobile video and passes it back to her kid. Kid shuts up and is entertained (or throws the mobile phone out the window). Well, what if instead of passing back a video I a can pass back one Yiibu’s mobile learning applications (of course that only works for a certain age but still). This past weekend while visiting San Francisco I entertained my friends “sans-sit-still” daughter Avery Renee with the Tropical Fish Guide (and she was into it).
But Yiibu is for all ages. The Flash-Light created content is entertaining enough for kids but not annoying enough to deter grown-ups from using it to learn a quick thing or to. Its kind of like the Muppets in which Jim Henson mastered the art of disguising adult issues in a kid friendly setting. Anyways… I am blabbering.
I have some great ideas for things people would use these types of applications for. Why not create one for various cities so that people can learn some quick and interesting facts while commuting in a city that they are visiting. Or how about a tool that teaches you the basic language skills you have to learn when visiting a foreign country. These are the types of things that Yiibu’s design and application skills are perfect for.
The applications require that you have Flash Light on a Series 60 phone… two things that most American’s do not have but I am gambling to say will start dropping into American pockets soon enough.
What Yiibu has done is tapped an area in the mobile market place that is so simple its huge: quick, easy and ubiquitous learning on your mobile phone. Yiibu’s products are everything a mobile phone application should be in that it allows you to use a mobile phone the way its meant to and supposed to be used, what author of “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian” Mizuko Ito would refer to as “a medium of lightweight ‘refreshment’ analogous to sipping a cup of coffee or taking a cigarette break.†And the great thing about it is that you are learning something at the same time.
I cant believe it was only two days ago that I was standing in one of the Nokia HQ building in Espoo, Finland (just outside of Helsinki). The tour was arranged as a second day of special stuff for the press during the Mobile Monday Global Summit.
It was incredible! The building was beautiful, simple and not Nokia logo’d out like you would expect a corporate headquarters to be. Anyways, they had a great hall prepared for us which had a really interesting display of what I want to call Nokia phones throughout history.
They then sat us down and talked extensively about their new E-Series phones coming out, which I did not mind sitting through again because I am really excited about the release of the E70. Actually all the E Series phone look pretty kick ass even though they are designed especially for Business use. Its the open WLAN (and for the E70 the Qwerty keyboard) that make this series shine!
Of course, there was no comment to my question regarding when these phones will available in the United States. “When the operators are ready” was the general gist of the answer. No answer to the follow up question as to whether or not recent FCC approval of the E70 was any indication.
Then they let us walk around and see first hand what their phone’s can do. I spent a lot of time with the new photo application’s for the N Series phones and watched, for the first time, as some one printed a nice quality photo from a phone.
Then I played some amazing and actually enjoyable 3D mobile games being especially made for N Series phones. But best of all I got to play them on a N93. These games rock! and included a fun little fishing game (where I swear I could feel the tug on the line) a great golf game and a cowboy shooter that I did not want to stop playing. They essentially brought the N-Gage experience to regular phones and for that I thank I thank Nokia.
But best of all was the amazing customer service I received. Some of you may remember me talking about how I was having problems with my Nokia 6682. The phone lagged when moving between operations sometimes taking up to 5-7 seconds to switch to the front page to the contacts or menu page. The phone also took an insane amount of time to load up (sometimes way over a minute and a half) only to fade slowly to white and start up again (the second time doing it successfully).
Well, lucky for me my phone was having those problems when I was there so I did not have the problem of everything working fine when showing the gadget to the expert. The two Nokia people who watched me, smiling, demonstrate my phones bug were actually shocked and swore that they have never seen anything like that before. Patric Ojala, the technology manager of games BP, brought me to the other side of the building to a back-tech room where I guess you could say the Nokia Genius Bar (Nokia help desk for you non Mac users who would not get the joke) was. The Nokia Genius looked at the problem and then told me I had an ancient Symbian S60 operating system on it. It was a 3.something and the current OS was something like 6.something. That was a real shocker for me considering the phone was only a month old since I bought it… are they just shipping inferior S60 phones to the United States?
Anyways, he took my phone into the back, Patric took me to another place to play with more phones (and the E70) which was in the middle of their cafeteria and then 30 minutes later my phone was done and ran beautifully! With the most recent S60 OS on it
So thank you Nokia for a wonderful time and for fixing my phone!
Pictures of my Nokia experience in Finland during the Mobile Monday World Summit can be viewed here .
Those trashy romance novels are coming phones! Harlequin Enterprises Limited, one of the world’s leading publishers of women’s fiction today launched Harlequin On The Go a mobile application created for women offering a variety of entertainment choices, including daily-serialized novels by best-selling authors.
The service, which has been approved by all us carriers, will allow fans of the romance novel series the opportunity to download a chapter a day from Harlequin authors onto their mobile phones. Women will be able to access new serialized content every day, as well as review previously downloaded chapters that they may have missed reading over a 30-day period. Every month, three new stories will be available for access.
But Harlequin To Go also allows its romance readers the availability to get in on the action… game action that is. Women will be able to enjoy games such as “Six Degrees of Kissing†— a mix-and match pursuit where celebrity couples are connected by who kissed who in their movie roles A daily pop culture poll will let subscribers know what the rest of America thinks about the latest happenings. And fans can even learn how to write a romance novel via Writing 101.
“Harlequin On The Go means you will never be caught without great reading again,†says Pam Laycock, Executive Vice President, New Business Development and Strategy. “We are always searching for exciting new ways to reach readers. In addition to being a groundbreaking new format, this application introduces a fun and refreshing new way for women to enjoy the Harlequin experience. This mobile application is a key thrust in our digital delivery strategy which also includes downloadable audio and eBooks.â€
A subscription will cost you $2.49 a month (a little less than half of a Harliquin Book)
The technology is being provided by Vocel a leading push technology company.
Reading books on a mobile is not for me but I have seen some innovative reaches into this area. Some of which where shown to me by Rudy at M-trends (link pending).
Like with mobile video, screen size and location have a lot to do with how and where people “read” books on their mobile phone. Honestly, I think trashy romance novels are perfect for this type of medium as they are the types of thing woman like to glance at during different interval moments during the day. But then again, I do not read these novels so I cant claim to try to claim knowledge on the sociological practices of the subject.
I will have to ask my friend Christina, you know who you are, whom this post is dedicated to.
Your mission begins now and its all in the palm of your hands. Your mobile phone is a portal into the world of CTU. Use it to control the mission and guide Jack Bauer and other CTU agents through the longest day of their lives.
As an addicted fan of the hit Fox Television Show “24” who also happens to write about mobile technology, I could not pass this one up for a post. Apparently, while I was in London on holiday the BBC had a great write up on a new mobile game based on 24. According to the article, the Scottish mobile gaming company i-Play actually managed to squeeze all the tension and drama that make the show famous onto the tint screens of our mobile devices.
The mobile version promises to be “wrapped in the look and feel of 24” but, “rather than create a something that lets players take on the role of Jack Bauer, the game puts you in charge of Jack, as well as of several other leading characters.”
The game includes the signature digital clock countdown which makes up part of the game in that it is made up of short missions that need to be completed with a number of minutes.
Overall, the mobile 24 game consists of a good collection of mini-games which include everything from puzzles, to driving really fast through obstacles to infrared location action.
The aim is simply to complete everything as in as little time as possible and this technique is effective in creating an atmosphere of tension. And as the BBC puts it “this proves to be a successful marriage of TV and gaming, as casual games like these work best on mobiles.”
The rest of the review I will have to leave up to BBC since trying to download the game from i-Play was unsuccessful. Every model phone version I picked was incompatible (8 of them) and others I chose did not work as well. SO I have no idea what kind of phone one needs to download this game. Perhaps its a special CTU phone
Hurry up and play the game (if you can), before its to late… or as Jack Bauer would say, “Your Running Out Of Time!”
When I first heard of Klonies I thought to myself…”Oh my God not another asian like avatar program” and wondered why such a substantial company like Comverse would be promoting it so heavily. Then I met fellow mobilists Xen Dolev and her colleague Tal Dagan at the Comverse booth at 3GSM and quickly figured out that if anyone was going to deliver a on the fly user defined multimedia command line interface for really cool customizable avatars on a phone, and do it correctly, its going to be a company like Comverse.
So, what are Klonies? Simply put they are avatars that allow real personalization to identify users when they call or SMS someone else. Target towards 13-18 year olds, the Avatar that I create, which can either be a boy, girl or monster, will appear on any other person’s phone I call or SMS (the reason why they have “monster avatars” is because they found that some boys are a little “uncomfortable” dressing up an actual person).
The Avatars can be created and or updated via an online account or directly from your mobile phone for real time changes in self-expression. So if I am going out to play basketball, I can quickly put my avatar into a jersey and a pair of shorts and place him or her on the courts all from my mobile.
Klonies can also be used as my alter identity on the web, when I chat with friends over instant messaging or on my blog or web page.
Now, the avatar business is nothing new. Its huge in Korea where almost every 15 year old, both boys and girls, have avatars, 40 percent of which change it at least once a day. In the United States and around the world custom avatars are extremely popular on Instant messaging services like AOL AIM. Comverse wants to bring that phenomena to the mobile phone.
And they have a really tight application to do so. The interface allows one to easily dress, change and customize ones avatar via a plethora of personalized items and themes. Theme topics include everything from sports, lifestyles and music/celeberties with enough options to make no two avatars alike. The avatars look really good and have brief entertaining moments of animation.
What I was also really impressed by was Comverses business strategy for the whole thing. “Originally we wanted to charge for a good deal of our original content,” Tal told me. “But then we realized that we did not want to be fooling our customers like that. All of our avatar options are just as high quality as the other so there is no real reason to pay for one over the other.” So Comverse did the next best thing: branding.
Say, like in the example of above, I am going out to play a game of basketball so I change my avatar to the appropriate background and dress. But I am also a huge New York Knicks fan and think that it would be really cool to have my avatar represent who I am even more by sporting a New York Knick’s Jersey. Comverse is making this possible. Tal showed a plethora of branding options to chose from, from the New york Knicks, to the Yankees to the Rangers (yes I picked NY teams for example’s on purpose). And not just sports, but movie, music and other entertainment logo’s and paraphernalia will be made available as well.
What makes avatars so special, as well as a powerful branding solution, in my mind, is that they allow a user to create a moment of of self expression on another person’s phone. Unlike the mobile phone wall paper, the mobile avatar allows one to define a signature of self expression on another person’s phone every time you call or SMS. No one has to be around to hear your self-expressing ring-tone or call you to hear your self-expressing ring-back. A little bit of you appears on the phone of every call ypu make. With the ability for “self-expression” being one of the driving forces behind ringtone and ringback sales, Avatars are only the next logical step provided they they can up the self expression ante, and that Comverse has done so well.
Turning a phone call into a moment of self expression, with something as fun and cute as Klonies, is probably the only legitimate way I can think of of creating push content for a mobile phone. Of course, you will always have the option to turn your avatar rendering off, but with little guys and girls so cute, fun and (excuse the photoshop speak) well rendered who would want to.
On an aside note, I think that Comverse should also use the same model to allow other types of self-expression beyond just avatars (perhaps then capturing a whole new age group with the same technology)
I already blogged about how this years SXSW festival is incorporating some pretty nifty mobile applications to this years festival, well turns out there is even more mobile fun going on in Texas during that time in terms of mobile technology then anyone wouyld have ever thought.
The festival promises to be an experiment in gaming and application development for mobile devices.
The DCI is looking to address the current influence of mobile devices on our culture. Mobile devices have had a tremendous effect on our society and we are interested in how that new audience might best be communicated to in this new medium. It is our belief that this new medium offers special consideration that have yet to be suitably identified; the least of which is viewing size. Other considerations for this new form are cost per download, as well ergonomic concerns, etc.
MobileFest2006 is looking for mobile content submissions that explore the mobile lifestyle. The concept is most interested in content made for mobile devices, not so much made by them, although we certainly encourage you to push the envelope. Our criteria are extremely broad and we only ask that you keep word “mobile†in mind.
The areas of interest are in mobile application and mobile film
So here is the call for entries pitch:
Call for entries: MobileFest2006 is looking for content created specifically for mobile devices, excluding laptops and table PC’s. Works in development will be considered as long as a “reasonable demo†is made available by the deadline. We will also consider previously designed work for this portion of the competition.
More Entry requirements:
- Made for mobile devices
- Submissions must be received by 12am on March the 5th.
- Submissions by email if under 2mb or mailed in the form of a CD. We will also allow for a location from which to download the submission.
- You may submit for any platform so long as it’s a mobile platform.
- A brief synapses of work(s), including what you used to create it, no more than 200 words as well as a 100 words biography of the company and developers.
- Entries must contain documentation, including without limitation, game rules and objectives, and instructions for using the device in question (joystick, game pad, touch screen, etc)
- If the Game Entry requires special equipment or hardware, such as force-feedback hardware, stereo-vision glasses, other headgear, graphics or audio cards, entrant must provide the necessary equipment and in such numbers so as to enable jury members to play the game. These items can not be returned!
- All submitted works must have the company name, name of work, and which portion of the festival you are submitting for game or application.
- No unauthorized use of copyrighted materials
- No nudity, violence, or extreme violence
- Submission are the entrants own original creation
- Submission will not be returned
- Neither the DCI nor any other party associated with the Contest is responsible for late, lost, damaged or misdirected Application/Game Entries.
- Address for delivery:
Requirements for Film: (man, what I would do with some time on my hands)
DCI Mobile Content Film Festival 2006
An experiment in film for mobile phones
Presented by the DCI, San Antonio Film Commission, HBMG Foundation/ArtSpark, and Critical Mass Interactive
Excerpts to premiere at C3 festival March 14th 2006
Deadline March 1st 2006
Submission time limit between 30-90 seconds
Screening online at dcitexas.org
The DCI is looking to address the current influence of mobile devices on our culture. Specifically, accepting the proliferation of mobile phones in our society and how to best communicate using this new delivery tool. It is our belief that this new medium offers special considerations that have yet to be suitably identified, the least of which is viewing size. Other considerations for this new form are cost per download, as well ergonomic concerns, etc. It’s only recently mobile phones have been able to reliably deliver, and in some cases record, video content. We wonder what the potential of handheld devices as cinematic tools of expression and experimentation is, and more importantly how might smaller screens affect the way we view video? Will 90 second soap opera episodes become the latest downloading trend? Lastly, how might the cinema change to conform to this new delivery medium?
Call for submissions: MobileFest2006 is looking for entertainment created specifically for mobile phones. You are welcome to submit all genre types, between 30-90 seconds in length. (No exceptions)
More Submission Guidelines:
- Made for viewing on mobile phone
- Submissions must be received by 12am on March the 1st.
- You may use any acquisition format you chose but submissions must be on miniDV format SP tape only
- A brief synopses of work(s), including what you used to create it, no more than 200 words as well as a 100 words biography of the artist(s).
- All submitted works must have the artist name, name of work, and which portion of the festival you are submitting for.
- No unauthorized use of copyrighted materials
- Submission are the entrants own original creation
There’s an interesting read online from the BBC about the convergence happening between our digital and physical lives thanks to the wonders of mobile technology. A quick quote from the article:
