Mobile

Things that aren’t static

Coast: Barcodes On The Beach With BBC’s New Mobile Content Service
The BBC has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard Labs and Gavitec to provide a digital collaboration based around the BBC TWO series, Coast.
The trial will allow roving ramblers to reach for their phone and call up site-specific extra audio and WAP content from the programme using “visual triggers” and their mobiles phones.
The system employs data codes – which look much the same as your average barcode on a tin of beans – and hikers with Series 60 camera phones will be able to read these codes and connect directly to BBC content.
Although rarely seen on UK streets, data code technology is big in Japan, where it’s used for linking to personal information from business cards and providing extra info from posters and magazine advertisements.
The BBC trial will involve placing the data codes on plaques at 100 locations around the UK. Users will need to download the free HP and Gavitec-developed software from bbc.co.uk to access the service.
Less well-equipped trampling travellers can access a rich WAP site by texting COAST to 81010, while harassed parents may be able to earn some peace by letting their kids take part in the SMS text quiz provided.
For phone-allergic types, the BBC will also make MP3 audio from the project available as a free download from bbc.co.uk.
The content aims to add local information and colour, with simple narrated pieces about the area, short dramatisations and contributions from local people (“Gerrrrofff my land, townie!”).
The audio pieces are short’n’ sweet (less than two minutes long) so users won’t be hit with a tractor-sized phone bill and are designed to stimulate an interest in finding out more about each location.
Mark Jacobs, Executive Producer of Coast Mobile scrubbed down his wellies and enthused: “We’re very excited about this latest trial from the BBC. Not only do we get a chance to use cutting edge mobile technology, but we also get to give our audience an enriched location based multi-media experience exactly where it makes most sense – where they are standing.”
Those taking part in the trial will be invited to participate in a series of questionnaires and interviews on their mobile experience to see if it’s a hiking hit or a meandering miss.
BBC
18 July, 2005
UK Is Wi-fi Hotspot Hotshot Of Europe
A report from consultancy firm BroadGroup has revealed that the deployment of wireless hotspots in Europe have soared by 67 percent in the six months up to May 2005.
BroadGroup’s research surveyed 122 service providers in 29 countries with the UK triumphing as the hotshot hotspot of Europe, impressively boasting 34 percent of all Wi-Fi hotspots in Europe.
Wi-Fi growth has been spurred on by steadily falling access charges – albeit slowly.
Weekly subscription packages have plummeted at the fastest rate, falling over 62 percent in the first half of this year.
The study discovered that the vast majority of Wi-Fi access is bought on a pay-as-you-go basis rather than via a regular contract, with only a measly 10 percent of all access being through pre-pay deals.
As many a disgruntled transatlantic traveller may tell you, Wi-Fi access in Europe still remains considerably more pricey than the US market, although the report suggests that “price declines are continuing to trend downwards” (I think this means, “prices are going down”).
As the wireless revolution continues, other services designed for mobile workforces are also set to increase.
Industry analysts Berg Insight have predicted that mobile location-based services (LBS) will be worth € 274 million (~US$331 ~ £189) this year, with sales set for super soar-away growth as operators pile on more data-based services.
Some operators are already keen to exploit the burgeoning LBS market, with Vodafone recently introducing their Vodafone Navigator service, turning mobiles into GPS location devices with mapping technology.
A growing demand for fleet management and monitoring dispersed workforces is also expected to boost global LBS take-up.
BroadGroup
18 July, 2005
Vodafone: Women Can Use Mobile Phones Shock
With a survey that could be described as pointless fluff at best and patronising drivel at worst, Vodafone D2 have trotted out the details of their ‘Women and Mobile Phones’ market research survey.
After interviewing 1,044 female mobile phone users aged between 14 and 49, Vodafone produced the astonishing conclusion that women are informed mobile phone users who know what they want.
Gosh! Whatever next? Women like food too?
The April 2005 survey, undertaken by GfK, apparently confirmed that women are confident mobile phone users with a “sound knowledge and overview of mobile communications when buying mobile phones, using handsets and services and in many daily mobile communication applications.”
In other words, they can use mobile phones just like everyone else.
After wading through pages of the depressing minutiae contained in the report, I can reveal that one-third of women trust their own judgment when buying a phone, with the rest asking their husband, boyfriend, or a sales assistant (lesbians don’t seem to exist in this survey).
Vodafone’s survey tells us that women – just like the other half of the human race – are price conscious, with the operator’s tariff being ranked as the most important criteria (71 percent) for purchase, followed by the handset price (66 percent)
The report claimed to be “surprised” that the ‘typical female’ criterion of colour was only accorded a priority ranking of eleven out of a total of sixteen criteria.
Predictably, the most used functions were text messages (92 percent), alarm clock function (72 percent), calendar (56 percent) and ring tones (50 percent).
Neatly half of women use the camera on their phone with 37 percent of respondents citing the provision of Bluetooth for wireless data transfer as important.
In another startlingly obvious conclusion, the survey reveals that games are used most frequently by the 14-19 years age group, and that camera, video and music functions are becoming “increasingly popular.”
Wow. I bet you didn’t know that.
The report seems almost disappointed that the ladies weren’t lining up to register their approval of pretty pink phones with sparkly bits on, with half of all respondents stating that mobile phone accessories are unnecessary ‘fashion gimmicks.’
Plumbing the absolute depths of irrelevant detail, the survey found that more than half of the women said that their favourite place for making mobile calls is a comfortable sofa, with 43 percent sitting on the patio or balcony and 31 percent preferring to make calls in bed. Fascinating stuff!
There’s even a bit at the end where the report tries to link the impact of mobiles on relationships between men and women, but we’d just about lost the will to live by then.
And so the report drones on in a never-ending stream of dreary stats of little consequence to anyone – and with no comparative stats for men’s mobile phone usage, this survey is not only one of the dullest we’ve ever read (and boy, we’ve seen some corkers!), it’s completely meaningless too.
Vodafone survey
15 July, 2005
SMS Usage Rises In The US
Us in UK-land have long been fans of SMS messaging, with button-pushing Brits banging out 3 million text messages every hour, with 2.5 billions text being sent in January 2005 alone.
In the States, it’s a different story, where network inoperability has held back the medium, but new figures show that SMS is finally make an impact in the USA, as messaging soared 59% last year.
The figures emerged in the June 2005 edition of Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Cellular Data Metrics, which pointed out that the value of the US mobile data market has increased by around 80 percent.
Total revenues from non-voice services for the four biggest US mobile operators roared up to more than USD 1.2 billion in Q1 2005, compared to a comparatively miserly USD 689 million in the same period of 2004.
Kester Mann, Senior Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media has the answers: “Interoperability is fundamental to the success of messaging and has been the key limiting factor to SMS usage in the States in the past.”
“The near 60% increase in traffic last year would not have been possible if subscribers could have sent SMS only within their own networks”, he added, sagely.
GSM operator T-Mobile was particularly chuffed with its performance as its customers belted out a total of 3.6 billion messages during Q1 2005 – that works out at around 67 texts per subscription per month.
This total is more than double last year’s volume, and SMS traffic looks set to rise as operators like T-Mobile roll out attractively priced “unlimited texting” tariffs.
Just like in Europe, texting in the US has also been boosted by cheesy TV shows offering interaction via SMS.
“Thanks largely to SMS, data now typically contributes 6-10% of mobile operators’ total revenues in the States,” mulled Mr Mann, manfully.
“While this still remains some way below the industry average, it marks a significant increase from the 4% recorded this time last year and less than 2% at the beginning of 2003,” he added.
US text traffic still has a long way to go until it matches Western European levels – where non-voice services form an average of 15-16% of mobile operators’ revenues – and is unlikely to top the 48% of revenue generated by SMS-smitten Filipinos.
And while we’re in the mood to throw around some SMS-related facts, get a load of this UK selection, courtesy of text.it:
On New Year’s Day 2003, the number of text messages sent in one day topped one hundred million for the first time, and on New Year ‘s Day 2004, the daily total reached 111 million messages
On New Year’s Day 2005, the highest daily total ever recorded by the Mobile Data Association was reached, when 133 million messages were sent
UK text message figures for January 2005 topped 2.5 billion, with 2.4 billion sent in December 2004 and 2.2 billion for November 2004
92 million text messages were sent by Britons on Valentine’s Day 2005, compared to the estimated 12 million cards sent.
15 July, 2005
Palm Gets New Name, Ticker, Logo and HQ
palmOne transmogrifies into Palm, Inc today, following an announcement on May 24 that the company had acquired unencumbered rights to the Palm brand after buying out the share of the brand formerly controlled by PalmSource, Inc.
“I’m confident we’ll build our momentum even faster now that we can use the same term consumers and business people have always used for our products – PALM,” frothed Ed Colligan, Palm president and CEO.
“And while a lot has changed – our name, ticker, logo and headquarters – our vision remains the same. We believe the future of personal computing is ‘mobile computing,’ and we aim to deliver superior hardware and software solutions so that we can continue to set the bar in the industry.”
Clearly dizzy after overdoing the double Caramel Macchiatos, Palm talks lovingly about its new logo, claiming that it “builds upon the strong brand equity already established in the former blue Palm circular medallion, but the updated typeface suggests the trend toward digital content and an orange gradated background evokes energy.”
Page Murray, Palm vice president of marketing, was also in a state of ecstasy over the new design: “Our new logo takes advantage of the high brand awareness we’ve built over time through award-winning and commercially successful handheld computers and smartphones,”
Getting carried away on a wave of hyperbole, Murray waxed lyrical about the new logo: “It balances the past with the future, and signals to customers that they can expect to see a lot more of the name ‘Palm’ going forward in exciting mobile-computing products.”
Palm have a bit of a history with faffing about with their name. palmOne was created in October 2003 when the earlier Palm, Inc. spun off PalmSource and acquired Handspring, Inc.
The Palm brand was then shared between palmOne and PalmSource, but Palm claim that customers have come to identify the name Palm more with physical products than with the operating system that powers it.
We wish that they’d spend less time messing about with pretty logo redesigns, and got around to doing something useful – like creating the Wi-Fi drivers for the Treo phone promised months ago.
We wrote to them two months ago asking for a Palm Treo 650 to review and for information about the Wi-Fi drivers.
We’re still waiting for a reply.
Palm
14 July, 2005
SPV C550 Launched By Orange UK
It’s been a long time coming, but Orange have finally announced that their Windows Mobile-powered SPV C550 smartphone will go on sale later this month
The “Orange SPV C550 Great for Music handset” – to give its full name – is a compact mobile offering full smartphone functionality and a digital music player, sporting dedicated play, rewind and fast-forward keys.
Sporting a natty brushed aluminum finish, the phone can store up to 170 (presumably very short) music tracks on a removable 128MB mini SD memory card and comes pre-loaded with Orange Music Player, compatible with AAC+, WAV, MP3 and MPEG-4 formats.
The player integrates with the Orange World portal where Orange are hoping punters will be tempted into shelling out for some of the 300,000 music tracks available for download.
Songs downloaded through the phone’s Music Player software are DRM-protected, although the built in Fireplayer application will let punters remix their fave tunes into ringtones.
Media playback times for the C550 weren’t announced, but Orange’s own figures put it at 4 hours of talk time and up to 6 days of standby time.
The device, codenamed Amadeus, is a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz affair that’s big on connectivity, offering GPRS Class 10, USB, Bluetooth and Infrared.
There’s an integrated 1.3 Megapixel camera wedged into its diminutive 108 x 46 x 16 mm case, and the whole caboodle weighs in at a pocket-unruffling 107g.
With the smartphone being built around Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 2003 platform, it’s easy to blast off emails on the move and synchronise contacts, diary and calendar information with your desktop PC.
Matthew Kirk, Director of Devices at Orange was ready and willing to spin out the PR schmooze: “Since the launch of the first SPV handset three years ago, Orange has led the development of smartphones and provided its customers with a choice of the latest and most powerful devices. The Orange SPV C500 was the world’s smallest smartphone and today its successor provides the first realistic alternative to carrying around a separate MP3 player, phone and PDA.”
The SPV C550 joins Orange’s growing SPV range of Windows Mobile-based devices, which includes the SPV C500 phone, SPV M2000 PDA and the recently-launched SPV M500 mini PDA.
Pricing details are yet to be announced, but will, as ever, be dependant on contract.
Orange
Orange SPV C550
14 July, 2005
UK MobileATM Banking Service Launches
Cashpoint network The Link and IT bods Morse and have got together to launch a mobile banking service across the UK.
After an extended brainstorming session with much flip chart flapping, the creatives have christened the joint venture MobileATM, and the service will provide services to the 37 banks connected to the Link network.
Customers signed up to the service will initially be able to check their balance, authenticate Internet payments, and transfer funds from their mobile phones.
Plans are afoot to extend the service to facilitate mobile payments direct from mobiles with customers being able to pay for items such as tube tickets and parking meters.
Unlike most existing mobile banking services where customers are automatically sent banking text alerts to their mobiles, the new service will allow customers to request information only when needed.
Andrew Bud, chairman of mobile firm Mblox, said: “This marks an important step in the delivery of financial services via the mobile phone. Monitoring and controlling cash using mobiles is rapidly becoming part of the economy.”
First Direct’s text messaging banking alert service has already proved a hit with their customers with 400,000 of its 1.2 million customers receiving balance statements by SMS.
Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, the Co-operative Bank, Nationwide and Bank of Ireland are expected to be the first in line to use the service.
Users of the MobileATM service will need to have phones capable of downloading and running a small Java application, so those on older phones will have to upgrade or stick to bits of paper.
MobileATM
13 July, 2005
.mobi Domain TLD Approved For Mobile Phones
Consumers on the move will soon be able spot websites which have been specifically designed for mobile phones courtesy of the .mobi suffix.
The new suffix, which we originally picked up on back in March 2004 was approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will join the popular “.com”, “.org” and of course “.info”, and other top-level domain names when it goes live in 2006.
The new domain name was requested by a heavyweight gang of mobile phone operators and handset makers who teamed up to create a joint venture tasked with encouraging companies and Web site designers to create mobile-specific Web pages.
The member companies include Hutchison 3G, GSM., Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Telefonica Moviles, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
The companies hope that the new mobile-optimised websites will encourage consumers to upgrade their phones and access the web more while on the move – and thus generate lots of lovely lolly for their coffers.
“As .mobi will encourage the usage of advanced functionalities in mobile devices, the market potential for those devices will increase,” the companies said in a joint statement.
For some old timer designers it’ll feel like being back in the mid 1990s with the new mobile sites having to take into account the small screens, limited memory and frugal bandwidth available on mobile phones.
Although the new suffix makes perfect sense for British babblers (who call their phones ‘mobiles’), it’s a little more confusing for the Finns, where mobile phones going under the curious name of “kannyka,” which sounds like something that Ali G may have come out with. Aye!
ICANN
12 July, 2005
Skype Zones Offers Wi-Fi VoIP On The Move
Boingo Wireless and Skype have fluttered eyelids at each other, gone for a quiet snog and, ruddy faced, jointly announced Skype Zones, a partnership that offers global Wi-Fi access to Skype customers at (ahem) “revolutionary” prices.
Skype Zones will let Skype’s 45+ million users access the popular VoIP service via Boingo’s network of 18,000 Wi-Fi hot spots worldwide, using a customised Skype version of the Boingo Software.
Currently, unlimited Wi-Fi access for Skype Internet telephony calls is being charged at $7.95 (~€6.53~£4.50) per month, although terms and availability may change as the service is still in beta.
Customers can access Skype on the move via the Skype Zones software which includes Boingo’s Wi-Fi sniffer, connection management and roaming authentication capabilities.
Once connected, laptop flipping punters will be able to make Skype calls and access features such as presence, global user directory, contact lists and instant messages with the Skype software.
“Partnering with Skype demonstrates the evolution of public-access Wi-Fi to include VoIP and other value added applications by allowing greater connectivity and productivity on the move,” said David Hagan, Boingo president and CEO. “Skype’s convenience and call quality have made it as important to travellers as email, and we expect Skype usage to increase traffic and revenue at our network of hot spots.”
Fluffing up the big pink cushions of corporate love, Niklas Zennstrom, Skype CEO purred passionately about his new partner: “Boingo is a world-class company that offers Skype users unprecedented global communications mobility and accessibility, at an aggressive, market disrupting price.”
“Affordable broadband access is fundamental to open communications, and partnering with Boingo to deliver unlimited Skype access around the world at such a compelling price point will generate new customers for both companies,” he added.
The combined Skype Zones service is available immediately as a beta test, with Skype inviting user feedback to help them fine-tune the service.
The Skype Zones client is available for Windows PCs and can be downloaded from the Skype store or the Boingo Web site. The software includes a directory of Boingo’s 18,000 hotspots.
Monthly access to Skype Zones is $7.95 per month for unlimited Skype access or $2.95 (~€2.42~£1.66) for a 2-hour connection.
UK users may find the pricing offered by Ready To Surf a little more ‘revolutionary’, as it gives free Wi-Fi access to make Skype calls in 350 Internet locations across the UK.
Boingo
Skype
Ready To Surf
12 July, 2005
Camera Phones Used For London Bombing Coverage
The growth of photo and video-capable phones has resulted in news agencies sourcing more and more content from members of the public who have used their mobiles to record disaster scenes.
As the story of yesterday’s terrible bomb outrages in London unfurled, news agencies told their reporters on the scene to ask witnesses if they’d taken any images with their camera phones, with the main UK TV networks also running notices instructing viewers to send in any videos they had taken.
Elsewhere, Websites, bulletin boards and blogs also formed a valuable source for news agencies hungry for stories, with Sky tracking down and then interviewing a tube blast victim whose photo had been posted up on a Web site.
Mobile video footage also played a major part in news bulletins, with shaky mobile video footage taken from inside a blackened tube train leading some news updates.
Footage of the destroyed bus was also shown extensively on TV with Sandy MacIntyre, director of news for Associated Press Television News, paying US$250 (~£144~€209) for the amateur video clip.
Mobile-sourced footage was used by several US networks with some TV executives commenting that it was the first time that video taken from a mobile phone had been used during the coverage of a major story.
Jonathan Klein, CNN’s U.S. chief believes this “citizen journalism” will become a more important part of coverage in major news events. “No question about it,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk in terms of the increased democratization of the news media relating to blogs and the like. This is another example of the citizen journalist.”
Still images taken by mobiles were also extensively reproduced in newspapers all over the world, with a photo by commuter Alexander Chadwick appearing on the front pages of both The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as other international and domestic publications.
News organisations are increasingly relying on amateur photography and video to help tell major stories, with NBC News President Neal Shapiro describing yesterday’s coverage as “a portent of things to come.”
Jonathan Klein, CNN’s U.S. chief, also predicted that mobile phone footage will play a more important part in major news events coverage, bringing about what he describes as an “increased democratisation of the news media relating to blogs and the like.”
AP News
AP story
11 July, 2005