Their is now an SMS platform that I sure every radio station is going to be signing up for… Feedtext Inc’s SMSJock leverages on the power of the mobile phone for a better interaction and communication between radio station disc jockeys (DJs) and their listeners.

The press release continues:

With SMSJock, there are no more busy lines, a common cause of irritation and frustration among listeners who want to communicate with their favorite radio station disc jockeys, whether to simply talk to them or request for their most-wanted song or songs. For a small fee, listeners can now interact with their radio station DJs practically worry-free.

SMSJock is a Web-based application tool that’s available for free to radio stations, and gives them the ability to receive Short Message Systems (SMS) messages or text messages from their listeners’ mobile

phones. At the same time, SMSJock also allows DJs to broadcast to their listeners’ phones like news, events, promotions, and other activities via text messages, thereby facilitating an effective, two-way

communication between radio stations and listeners.

I mean, its basically a simple SMS broadcasting and networking platform but I really like and appreciate the way its being marketed to a specific demographic which means that the platform will more than likely a evolve to cater its niche.

[more at SMSTextNews]

Technorati Tags: feedtext, smsjock, sms, text messaging, radio

The blogosphere is buzzing with news about how Alltel Wireless the owner/operator of the nation’s largest wireless network has just announced the signing of a deal with satellite radio broadcaster XM Radio to create “XM Radio Mobile”.

The thinking is the newly created entity, XM Radio Mobile will initially bring 20 channels of satellite content to a variety of compatible handsets for $7.99 per month. XM will push out data to include the song title, artist and album. Genres in the initial release are likely to include music from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, Top 20 Hits, Alternative Rock, Hip-Hop/R&B, Indie Rock, Blues, Country, Latin and more.

But to tell you the truth it exactly the future capabilities of cell phones and network infrastructures such as 3G EV-DO and HSDPA not to mention 4G innovations such Wimax and city-wide and municipal Wifi that I think may make an infrastructure like pay for satellite radio irrelevant in the near future.

Don’t get me wrong. I get the convenience of having all the technology on one device. But as more and more handsets are dual mode wifi and network friendly and as such things as Wimax and or municipal wifi become a reality I am betting that the often overlooked services like commercial free home grown or professional internet radio (which is big in social networking worlds like Second Life) will be more widely used and available. I can also see certain networks make deals with Internet radio stations (or a company that owns a bunch) to have them on the deck or as a premium service.

In other-words wifi and wimax will become the new way to stream commercial free or just plain old free radio. This will also cause a boom in the home-grown radio market where anyone can have their own radio station. Hey I am just looking to the future here.

It will also become an easier way to distribute podcasts.

I see that satellite radio sees this to and that is probably why this deal was made. And there is no question that Alltel XM users will use it, for now. The question is whether they will in the future if IP radio streaming to mobile handsets ever makes it off the ground, which I predict it will.

Technorati Tags: alltel, wifi, wimax, xm radio

Interesting article in TechNewsWorld about the transition of podcasting to mobile audio players to cell phones. Just consider it. There are tens of millions of iPods and about 700 million PCs already capable of playing podcasts. This is nothing compared to the 2 billion mobile phones now in use around the world. And as more and more of these phones come with more computer like features and memory, more and more people will be listening to podcasts on their already “always on” device.

Plus, two companies that have been around for a while now, UpSnap and Pod2Mod are making “Cellcasts” even more possible buy allowing users with “basic phone models” the ability to listen to Podcasts.

UpSnap, which currently delivers 100 free podcasts, allows users to listen to the podcast of their choice by simply dialing a number. UpSnap’s major competitor Pod2Mob allows for the same features but also allows users to get podcasts to their phones wirelessly by sending a text message (UpSnap will be releasing a text messaging service in a couple of weeks).

Pod2Mob already claims to have built a database of users well into the 100 thousands.

UpSnap and Pod2Mob also solve the problem of getting podcasts onto the phone. I mean, if people are not downloading ringtones from data enabled SMS links or wap browsers then its very difficult, for most, to just get the ringtone put on your phone , let alone podcasts.

With so many more cell phone users then pod users the article is enthusiastic that “within six months, more people will listen to podcasts via wireless phones than via iPods” and will thus increase the amount of cellcasting enthusiasts from the thousands to the millions.

This is especially the case as more and more of the cell phone technology out there gets better smarter and more capable of handling music download and playing.

And of course all of this has only added to all the Apple iPhone related hype

The article points out that mobile podcast may or may not have to develop new formats to deal with the mobile medium. by, of course, becoming shorter.

Perhaps a longer broadcast would be sliced into 30-second “chapters,” so that if users are interrupted by a call, they don’t have to listen to the program from the beginning again. “The mobile phone is a new publishing medium that’s every bit as different from the Web as the Web is from print,” says Bill Valenti, executive vice-president at Melodeo and former CEO of Tegic, a developer of software for mobile phones that was acquired by Time Warner’s AOL.

Or perhaps a person can just utilize the pause button that either automatically or manually triggers when a call is taken. Either way, as the mobile phone begins to mesh with things like music players and video players I do not really see this being a problem.

What the article is big on, and what scares me a bit, is advertising: While it’s still in its infancy, mobile podcast advertising and sponsorship is revving up quickly and could eventually surpass the traditional podcast ad market in size.

In many ways, advertising on mobile podcasts makes more sense than plain podcast ads. As with a video iPod, a cell phone ad can feature audio, graphics, or video. With a phone, though, a user can immediately respond by calling a marketer’s call center or by wirelessly surfing the advertiser’s Web site.

No. No it doesn’t. As fellow mobilists Oliver Starr and myself have warned time and time again there is a great annoyance factor that must be taken into account when it comes to unsolicited advertisements (especially in a device that you carry around in your pocket) and it is important to point out that the eventual download or listening to podcasts on a mobile device from or on a network data plan means that phone users themselves will be paying for the ads (in data costs). This would not be fair.

So, while podcasts are still files that have to be manually installed into a phone the advertisement scheme might work. But once you start asking users to download advertisements at their costs things get trickier. Even advertisements with the UpSnap and Pod2Mod model are not fair since you are asking users to use up minutes listening to ads on a podcast.

But the question really is, when podcasting comes to a networked enabled mobile phone… is it really podcasting anymore or just another media that can be downloaded onto your phone, the same way Verizon allows you to download shows or music over its Vcast services.

The whole point of a Podcast, in a sense, was in the mediums limitation. A podcast was something that you had to download from your PC internet and either listen to their on your PC or dump it into your portable mp3 music player to listen to on the go. Of course, people that have started or will start to listen to podcats on their phone will be doing so by these same means. However, it is not to hard to imagine a near future when faster mobile data speeds and better phone equipment will allow people to download a podcast directly from the wap enabled browser on their cell phone or (duh duh duh) from some j2me or brew enabled client that some company will invent that links up to an updated database of podcasts and enable downloading directly to ones phone.

Are these still podcasts or just down loaded radio or video shows?

Technorati Tags: cellphones, ipod, mobile, pod2mob, podcasting, podcasts, upsnap