The handsome boys over at the search engine company Prodege (the first search engine to custom brand and incentivise search) have have created an image search site called YOWGO, a search engine dedicated to the concept of searching for images to send to your phone.

The “send to phone” service is being provided by Mixxer, the former ringtone turned multi mobile media company. “Prodege is the first engine company to utilize this tool and offer this free service to users,” says Scott Dudelson COO of Prodege.

Its really simple actually. Say, for example, I wanted to put Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as the wallpaper on my phone. But the campaign does not provide this service. Well as simple search for Romney on YOWGO provided me with a plethora of material to use… now how do I get it on my phone. Underneath its picture is a little link that says ‘Send To Phone.’ This opens up a Mixxer site that allows you to enter your phone model and number and send away (it even lets you edit the picture). In no time you receive a WAP Push SMS with a link to a mobile website where your phone will then prompt you to download the picture. Thats it, your done.

I think the implications for this are pretty huge it terms of making it easier to deliver user user generated content to the mobile phone… but it also makes such things are mobile viral delivery more viable.

Of course there are some possible legal implications to all this but for now its a really fun and obvious idea.

Prodege works with bands to create a network of branded and incentivized search engines. They even let you download a search toolbar of your favorite band. Prodege currently provides this unique type of search service to bands, artists and organizations as Maroon 5, Drake Bell, Shinedown, Hinder, Wynonna, Meatloaf, Andrew Dice Clay, A Change Of Pace, K Fed, Prize Wish. Plus also check out there very own Search Win Merch engine.

Technorati Tags: 08 election, romney, prodege, yowgo, search engine, k fed, meatloaf

Just the other day I was talking with some colleagues wondering why there where never ever “Bushism” ringtones that become widespread. I mean, there have been cases of people making Bush blunder ringtones, but the real question is why political ringtones have not caught on and why no one is standing up and trying to distribute it on a mass scale.

Well just in time for the 08 elections, Ringtones08.com is hoping to make Ringtones the new bumper sticker and lawn sign. Simply put RingTones08.com is a free site that user the power of myxer.com to let anyone upload and download ringtones about the 2008 election. Thats a key element, not only will they create and distribute election teemed ringtones but they will also let you, or anyone (i.e a campaign) use their site to upload ringtones of their own for viral distribution.

For More Visit My Blog At TechPresident

Technorati Tags: 08 election, ring it on, ringtones08, myxer, election 08, election

When you have a specific ringtone in mind, it is not always the easiest of tasks to find it, especially when it’s a more obscure song. If you don’t know this already you simply must realize that I am a huge Weezer fan. My favourite song is Only in Dream, amazing, but not as commonly found as Buddy Holly or Beverly Hills. My ringtone quest is long. Of course I have to search a few providers before I finally find what I am looking for. Well my friends, this task just got a whole lot easier. I, with great honor, would like to introduce you to one of the first metasearch engines for mobile related content, brought to youthrough the partnership of UpSNAP and MuseGlobal.

“Mobile metasearch technology from MuseGlobal searches multiple mobile sites simultaneously. For example, if you are looking for a particular ringtone, rather than going to ten different mobile sites one-at-a-time, which will take you 30 minutes or more, you now go to UpSNAP.com and put in one search only. UpSNAP will then search all ten ringtone sites at once and deliver sorted, de-duplicated and uniform results instantly.”

Tony Philipp, UpSNAP CEO, was looking for a better way to organize and deliver content to customers of its free and subscription mobile services. “There are unique challenges in providing a usable and functional mobile search experience, and with the huge influx of personal entertainment choices it became apparent that a mobile metasearch solution was needed,” states Philipp. “In essence, UpSNAP will function as a one-stop shop for mobile users who want instant access to wireless features such as mobile radio, ringtones and games.”

The metasearch works both through a web interface on any page of UpSNAP.com, or via SMS (shortcode = 27627) . More information on using the service can be found here and here.

Myxer.com (a service of mVisible), known for being a place where you can easily make and share mobile content (especially, but not limited to Ringtones), today announced the launch of MyxerMagic – a free download that lets users send any online image to their mobile phone right from their existing web browser (kind of like the Google Send To Phone extension but goes way beyond text!). From my first looks at the product it appears that MyxerMagic truly eliminates the need for file downloads, format conversions, serial or Bluetooth connections, and other tedious operations that have previously been required to get content to mobile phones.

The browser extension can be downloaded for free at www.myxermagic.com. Essentially, It extends the functionality of Internet Explorer or Firefox to add a “Myxer - Send image to phone!” command into the right mouse-click menu. Users also have the ability to send images to friends’ and family members’ mobile phones (spam potential?).

But of course, for those of you that are anal about your mobile content , MyxerMagic comes with a powerful web-based image editor to re-size, re-shape, or otherwise manipulate images to best fit a phone’s display. Like all of Myxer’s functionality, MyxerMagic works with ANY mobile device (that accepts MMS) and is carrier-independent, meaning it doesn’t matter which provider the user’s phone is with or what plan they are on.

“Myxer is about more than just customizing your mobile phone with ringtones and wallpapers – it’s really about leveraging the respective strengths of the internet and the mobile phone to make digital content easily discoverable and accessible anywhere you are,” said Myk Willis, founder and chief technology officer of mVisible Technologies, Inc., the company behind Myxer. “MyxerMagic completely rewrites the rules of how user-generated content is consumed, because for the first time ever, all digital content is one click away from being mobile content.”

And he is right! In the future Willis envisions expanding the service to be able to pull ANY web content, from video, sound clips video, text, whatever, thus truly turning any web content into mobile content.

The potential for this taking off is huge. The ability to scrape content form any online venue or site or home-page (besides creating possible copy-write issues) has immense possibilities especially in the areas of viral marketing and messaging. Imagine something like a politician saying something stupid. Within an hour its on the web and within another our people are simply ubiquitously right clicking their mouse and sending the sound clip to their mobile phone as a ringtone. Or perhaps a picture of Tom Cruise delivering a baby on the side of an LA freeway makes its way onto the web. Technology like Myxermagic makes it easy to spread it to mobile wall papers throughout the country.

Of course MMS message rates will apply but I think that MMS has finally found an application to bring it to the marketing forefront.

Technorati Tags: sms, ringtones, myxer, myxermagic, google, phone pictures

Maine is not the only state that is taking advantage of the youth medium we call the cell phone this election. last Monday Michigan’s Coalition For Progress unveiled their mobile “My Future” campaign which harnesses the power of this cutting edge technology to engage young voters in this upcoming election.

While the the coalition using the medium to push out messages like “Did you know that Republicans in the Legislature want to make it legal for pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions? Vote Nov 7 - Move MI forward!” like the like Lamarche campaign, the coalition also looks beyond SMS as simply a push out message tool.

The coalition is also holding a contest where someone can text VOTE1 or VOTE2, all the way to 5, to 388873 and they’ll receive a trivia question about Republican Governor nominee Dick Devos. The trivia questions are silly and a little funny. Each of the questions are multiple choice. If you answer correctly you get one message back and, of course, if you answer incorrectly, you get a different one. The really cool thing is that the questions and answers are phrased in such a way to educate and reinforce the coalitions message. And, because they are not officially a campaign, the SMS trivia will enter you into a sweepstakes in which two people will receive a 30g video iPod with the Coalition For Progress’ logo emblazoned on the back.

I would imagine that on election day a Get Out The Vote message will also be sent and somehow tried to be made viral.

With that all set up the only problem is making people aware of the mobile campaign, a real challenge when its launched only a week before the election. They have a television ad. The ad focuses on an instant message conversation with a young woman encouraging her friends to join “MyFuture,” a Coalition project that centers on young voters. The television add is probably one of the best shortcode placement in a television ad I have ever seen.

The spot is airing on cable systems across Michigan during the final weeks of the campaign giving voters information on key issues and motivating them to get out and vote on Election Day. It also will be airing statewide on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The coalition has also purchased AdWords to drive folks to sign up. I do not know anything about signs and what not… a week before the election its probably hard to put the Text: Join To 388873 on lawn signs but signs in universities and youth hangouts help as do radio and newspaper placements.

The coalition also has ringtone’s which can be downloaded here. They are pretty good.

This is also one of the first campaigns to work directly with an aggregator to create its campaign, in this case DC based Singlepoint (also the sponsor of Mobile Monday DC)

Technorati Tags: coalition for progress, mobile, muy future, pat lamarche, michigan, my future, devos

Everyone is talking about it. News Corp the new owners of MySpace has just announced that they bought 51% of Verisign’s ringtone business Jamba (known as Jamster in the US, and also known as the Crazy Frog people) for 187.5 million dollars. All this for the purpose of, News Corp says, of expanding its mobile content sales.

News Corp owns Fox… and their are already Family Guy mobile content. But among its first offerings will be ringtones, wallpaper and short clips from the popular Fox animated series The Simpsons.

News Corp will of course also leverage its mobile content sales through MySpace which is a pretty nice space to be able to sell mobile content…

[WSJ Via Textually]

Technorati Tags: myspace, newscorp, jamster, jamba, crazy frog

During my travels to LA for the CTIA I stumbled upon this expired mobile marketing scheme by Pepsi. 1 in 3 gets a Ringtone” says the label. The ringtones are described as original tones from top artists and probably are. To entice you more the label on the bottle also tell you that you have the chance to win a Motorola music phone which means its either a RAZR, ROCKR or a SLVR. I would pass on that, or ell it on ebay.

But it was not just ringtones you could win. Some of the ringtones where video ringtones (how that works in the US I have no idea). Basically, a winning code will unlock any of over 150 music files that can be downloaded to mobile handsets. The sweepstakes was also promoted across Yahoo Music and several other Yahoo properties.

Pepsi called this “Cool Tones and Motorola Phones.” It was also known as part of Pepsi Smash in that it promoted and gave away exclusive content from that site.

Nevertheless, the only thing mobile about the campaign was the ringtone and the (possible) phone. There is no SMS involved in entering this sweepstakes. Nope, this is just a regular look under the cap, see if you won and go the website to claim your prize type of deal. Alas, I did not win and the sweepstakes was already over (since 8.20.06) so I could not follow through with the prize to see how it worked. But I would imagine that the ringtone would be delivered via SMS.

Even though this is an old campaign and nothing new (in the world of Pepsi and Ringtones) I wanted to blog about it because I am wondering about the concept of giving away free ringtones, from the carrier perspective at least. There are only so many ringtones an average person will put on there phone… I am sure that a cool exclusive tone from Pepsi will mean that that person will not purchase a ringtone in the future. Did Pepsi or Yahoo Music (who powered this concept) have a deal with carriers or did the carriers only make money via SMS delivery and data downloading cost? It would seem like they would not like the concept of ringtone give-aways or even music give aways for that matter now that they are also getting into the music download business. Not that I care or anything, but from a “carrier relations” perspective it may be an important thing to think about.

Technorati Tags: pepsi, yahoo, pepsi smash, ringtones, motorola, ctia, nokia n70

Some of you may have started noticing a mobile content search engine appearing on the top of MOpocket’s text section the last couple of days. That, ladies and gentleman, is Mogmo, MOpockets sponsor for the month of September.

A product of Tamej Software (a software company focused on mobile content and decisions for mobile sales.), Mogmo is a search engine specifically designed to help you fine the mobile content that you are looking for. Everything from games, ringtones, images and even themes for you mobile device are only a search click away.

I would not just put any old mobile content search engine at the top of MOpocket… so give it a try and you will see what I mean.

Technorati Tags: mogmo, search, tamej software

The Schwarzenegger for Governor “Join Arnold” campaign has just added a couple mobile components to their strategy and website.

For More Visit My Blog At The Personal Democracy Forum]

Hello! And Welcome To the 41nd Carnival of the Mobilists brought to you by MOpocket and Khosla Ventures who awards $250 to the author of the best post each month. This weeks Carnival also has a special dedication in honor of my parents Stuart and Paula Oberman (pictured above) who celebrated their 32nd Anniversary last Friday August 18th. My mother is looking for a new cell phone and is open to suggestions :-). I love you Mom and Dad, thanks for everything and I hope we celebrate another 32 anniversaries and more!

There are a lot of great contributions to this weeks carnival but before we get to them their is some Carnival and Mobilist business that we have to take care of. REMEMBER, IF YOU FIND YOUR BLOG MENTIONED HERE IT IS ONLY COMMON COURTESY TO LINK BACK. If you don’t my parents may be very disappointed in you ;-).

MY JEWISH MOTHER SAYS VOTE NOW!

My mother told me to remind you that If you have not already done so please go over to the Carnival website and vote for July’s best post. This is an essential part of the now well sponsored Carnival by Khosla Ventures and such great stuff should not go to waste, my mother says. Its always good to listen to your Jewish mother If you vote maybe she will cook you her famous brownies… yummmmm.

DAD SAYS LETS PARTY IN LA.

Always the party social networking man (he is the CEO of a major insurance brokerage firm) my father feels obliged to tell you about the 2nd CTIA Gathering Of The Mobilists and urges those interested to RSVP and attend. “My son and other influential mobilists will be there,” he says, “it would be insane not to try and make it. The event will be held at Cicada Restaurant on Tuesday September 12, 2006 and invitations are limited. For more information visit the information source for the event at Rudy’s M-Trends.

And by the way, if anyone out their is looking for insurance and or an insurance broker you should contact me as me and my brother can take special care of you. We have some amazing policies for technology companies and firms, even web freelancers. The company is a very well known and highly respected insurance brokerage.

And now, as my parents dance to their wedding song… I present to you this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists:

We Begin With Carnival Newcomers Or At Least Blogs That Are New To Me

Sprint’s $3bn 4G Gamble

Kevin Evan’s in Kevin’s Mobile Industry Commentary, a blog I just discovered because of the Carnival, talks about Sprint’s move to WiMax and, to be frank, tells it like it really is. [Read]

Access’s Latest Press Releases

Tam Hanna has a Palm specific blog titled TamsPalm: The Palm OS Blog in which he deconstructs Access’ latest press release about the growing momentum of Access’ Linux OS Platform for Palm. [Read]

Now Lets Talk About Mobile Influences On Our Lives And The Way We Live Them

Can Mobile Devices Help You Get Things Done?

Mat Miller over at ZDNet in his Mobile Gadgeteer Blog has a great article about the everyday life and mobile devices which discusses the ways in which we organize our lives and get things done via our mobiles. [Read]

Mobile Phones, Social Coordination, Urban Environments

Howard Rheingold from Smartmobs has an interesting little ditty on “hyper-cordination” and the way mobile technology is influencing our societal ergonomic discourses (especially regarding the philosophy of waiting). [Read]

Connecting Cultures Through Music

From the Mobilist daddy himself, Rudy De Waele of M-Trends.org sends in an article he wrote for Vodafones Reciever Magazine in which Rudy talks beautifully and eloquently about the ways in which mobile technology makes music into a social networking phenomena the likes of which we have never seen. While Rudy’s article is meant to be about music specifically it has some real buried treasures deep inside its discourse that can be used to discuss the greater impacts that mobile technology will have on our smartmobby like existence. [Read]

Lets Get Technical For A Moment Here

I am Now Cingular 3Gified! Or Am I?

My own submission to the Carnival in which I talk about my run in with Cingular’s (an America’s) UMTS and HSDPA standards, its technical difference with its European counterpart and why that means I can;t really use it yet. [Read]

People Over Process And IT In Mobile Workforces

Rod McLaren’s blog over at Mobbu has a really interesting article that I was intimidated by at first but then found actually really enjoyable and interesting. So don’t get the “IT” jargon get to you ever wanted to know if a synchronous/asynchronous data model between mobile device and a server mean that users can get horribly out of sync, leading to catastrophic real-world failures to public service infrastructures that need it the most you need not worry says McLaren. [Read]

The Mobile Service Architecture Specification

C. Enrique Ortiz in his same-named titled Mobility Weblog points to an article he wrote in the Sun’s Mobility Development Center which, he says, introduces JSR 248 and next generation platform for Java ME devices. See how the pieces of the new platform fit together. I link to his blog, the rest is up to you. [Read]

Mobile Technology and Politics, A Favorite Topic Of Mine

Women Voter Registration Goes SMS Mobile

From the Personal Democracy technology and politics blogosphere we have a post about the ways in which a Women’s voter registration organization is using the ubiquitous nature of mobile technology and SMS to increase voter registration drives amongst women. [Read]

BBC Wap Use Flourishing In Africa

From the mobile technology and political activism blog MobileActive Ken Banks from Kiwanja.net writes about how Africa (and in particular Nigeria) is dominating international mobile phone access to the BBC website and how this is a great example of what the economics of broadband versus mobile phones means in developing countries. [Read]

Why Not Learn Something On You Mobile Every Once In A While

Mobile Learning Reading List

I blogged about this post from Stephanie Rieger’s blog Keitai: Mobility, Culture and User Experience earlier on MOpocket and I am glad to see in this weeks carnival. Simply put its a collection of projects and resources that Stephanie has collected regarding the theme of mobile learning and education. [Read]

Little Kids Need Converged Mobiles

Judy Breck, my literal NYC neighbor (she lives like one block from me) writes a reaction to a New York Times Article about kids going back to school with laptops and cell phones in her blog Golden Swamp. Her concern is with yet the not so easily converged uses of these technologies for children and discusses how the convergences between the two can be better improved. Judy, we still have to get coffee sometime, ping me. [Read]

Although, Lets Not Forget The Importance Of Mobile Marketing

Google Coupons - But Where’s the Mobile Element?

Russell Buckley over at MOBHappy sends in his thoughts on Google’s lack of mobile thinking vis-a-vis creating the ability for local business to coupons against their products and services via Google Maps allowing users to simply print them and then then redeem them as usual. Join the debate [Read]

Yelp Mobile

Dennis the WAP expert from WapReview applies his expertise to analyzing and critiquing Yelp’s Mobile site. For those of you that don’t know, Yelp.com is a site featuring user generated reviews of businesses, services and attractions mainly in major US cities. [Read]

What Can Your PC Do For Your Mobile

Nokia PC Suite Wishlist

Listen up Nokia! The Mobile Diva herself, Darla Mack in her newly decorated Darla Mack blog talks about the often underestimated power and beauty of Nokia PC Suite and talks about a few features she would like to see in future versions with the with the newer S60 devices and all the cool new features installed. I would just like to add that I wish they made one for Mac. [Read]

How to Share Your 3G Connection

Martin Sauter of Martin’s Mobile Technology Page (aka Mobile Society) takes a break from his summer holiday to talk about what I basically would tart to think about as Fon for mobile data. Simply put, Martin describes how to share your 3G connection using the Internet connection sharing functionality of Windows XP. Anyone try it on a Mac? [Read]

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Dear Mr Leonid Iakovlev. You submitted the link http://wblog.livejournal.com/15992.html#cutid1 which does not link to a post or an article. So I do not know what you want me to do but the Carnival rules are rules. So I will just mention that you sent this in in case an error was made.

THE POST OF THE WEEK

As part of Khosla Ventures‘ sponsorship to the Carnival they pay-out 250 dollars to the best post of the month the contestants of which are decided by the various sites hosting a Carnival during that month. It is therefore my responsibility to vote for a post or article that I believe merits this type of attention and award. It is therefore, on those grounds that I award Rudy De Waele’s Connecting Cultures Through Music article the honorary Stu and Paula Oberman post of the week award and therefore submit the article into the voting pool for Augusts mobile technology post of the month. Congratulations Rudy! As an extra bonus my mother has agreed to cook you a batch of her famous brownies, yummm.

In Conclusion…

Well, thats it for this Carnival. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I have had writing it. And if this was your first visit to MOpocket then welcome and I hope to see your referral links here again soon Stop and stay a while, read some old or new articles and enjoy.

Next weeks Carnival of the Mobilists will be hosted by MobileActive. Full a full list of upcoming Carnivals visit the Carnival websites schedule page.

For a full list of past Carnival of the Mobilists visit here.

Want to submit an article to the Carnival of the Mobilists or perhaps even host? Don’t delay, its really easy. Just visit the Carnival’s about page for more information and instruction.

To send my parents a happy anniversary message send an email to Stuart and Paula Oberman via Bluesites_at_aol.com

Technorati Tags: 3g, 4g, access, bbc, carnival of the mobilists, cotm, dad, education, elections, fon, google, i.t, insurance, khosla ventures, kiwanja, learning, linux, mobbu, mobile, mom, mopocket, music, nokia, oberman, palm, pc suite, politics, sms, sprint, sun, vodafone, wap, women