Nokia/Yahoo

Yesterday, Nokia announced a partnership with Yahoo to pre-install a range of Yahoo Internet services (email, search, entertainment) on Series 60 devices. This is the first significant step I have seen from a device manufacturer to include content services in the device., which until now has been traditionally controlled by the operator. For Yahoo, it is clearly an excellent distribution route, and I suspect we will see further announcements with other device manufacturers. Maybe they will go a step further and start an MVNO. And why not - if EasyMobile can be up and running with 40 people on the pay-roll, this route is low-cost and just extends Yahoo's market reach. Yahoo Email customers are likely to have a closer brand affinity and realtionship with Yahoo than they might with O2, T-Mob or Vod. Then maybe AOL and MSN will follow suit? Would do the world of good for mobile data services....

07/11 - Yahoo! to launch own phone on Cingular

Emotion translated through technology

read more here

ZipCar

This is a great car rental model. Source: RedFerret - one of my Top10 blogs..

Hybrid Satellite-Cell Networks

This article talks about two companies that are combining satellite and cellular networks to provide end to end coverage. Add in to the mix other technologies such as WiMax, and you have a much less capital intensive network infrastructure. This should ultimately translate to lower cost mobile services for the consumer.

Jamdat acquires Tetris rights

I think for $137m, Jamdat got a bit of a deal. Of all the mobile phone games out there, Tetris is has a huge following already in the non-mobile world, and given its play format and style, it translates very well to the mobile world (04/05 4th top best selling game in UK). And its sooo addictive. Theres been loads of hype (and VC activity) around mobile gaming over the last six months. Theres now a lot of competition in the mobile gaming sector and its a challenge to find new game formats that will be financially successful. The margins will improve as handset standardisation improves because much of the cost of game development is in reformatting the title for different types of handsets.
For Blue Lava Wireless (the Tetris mobile owners), $60m in cash and 4.05m shares in Jamdat stock should keep them in cocktails and suncream for the next 15 years in Honolulu, at which point the Jamdat rights to Tetris expire!
press release here

Operator handset "protection"

ARgghhhh! there must nothing more annoying for customers who have bought a 5/600 euro handset, and when then try and transfer pictures from it to their computers, they find that the Object File Transfer has been blocked. The operators do this on a lot of phones to prevent people being able to transfer wallpapers/ringtones etc to another device (cos DRM isnt quite there yet). Interestingly "vanilla" devices (e.g. non operator tampered) now sell for almost 30% more on Ebay than operator customised ones. Shows what the market thinks of the operators efforts to improve the handset UI/experience!!!!!

Google results

Eric Schmidt must be smiling today with Googles incredible results. These have over-shadowed Ebays results which were also impressive. I, along with many others outside of the US were early advocates and promoters of the Google search experience and it still riles me that we didnt get a chance to participate in last years IPO.

Bangladesh Village Phone Program

This is a great example of how companies with a social conscience can improve their local environment, help the population and increase profit at the same time.

Odeo - creating a podcasting marketplace

Evan Williams (co-founder of Pyra Labs, Blogger) left Google last October to co-found Odeo. Evan writes "Odeo aims to enable this new distribution channel and medium by creating the best one-source solution for finding, subscribing to, and publishing audio content".

3 Blogger gripes

1) When a user edits a post, then selects publish, the application publishes the article but stops once it has completed the process. Why doesnt it automatically return to the "edit post" view?
2) Im not sure I "get" the publish process. it seems unecessary...why cant the blog just be published automatically on a periodical basis, or every time a post has been made. Now i expect some may sit back aghast at the sheer stupidity of this comment, but I think applications like these need to work in ways that are currently familiar to users (e.g. writing an email) , or align with existing behaviour.
3) My user stats are very wrong.

Did you escape?

If you did, here is the second room...

Skype Update

Wow! 100m customers (35% active), new SkypeIn product (for increasing your call circle to those who dont (yet) have skype) and new Skype Voicemail (in case you cant answer your SkypeIn calls).

Can you escape?

There are less than 4000 people in the world who can escape this house. So have a try.

http://flash.qbol.net/pl;p/youxi/images/04042203.swf

There are 13 items hidden in this room in order to let you get out of thisroom.If you found:0-6 items, your IQ is very low, total idoit6-8 items, Low IQ, u r an idoit9-10 items, u r normal11-12 items, your IQ is high, above the average.13 items found and get out of the room, there are less than 4000 people in the that world can do it.

Orange MVNO deal with Tele2

Link

Googlezon

A vision of the media industry in 2014...

democratising innovation by using "lead-users"

...in The Feature

Patent for real-life Matrix

here

Mobile radio content feeds

I know that a number of Nokias (and others) have a built in FM transmitter, but there are many popular handsets that dont. Radio is a ubiquitous music experience that is understood and appreciated by the masses. MSpots approach to wrapping this in to the device mediaplayer for a monthly subscription is smooth. What excites me are the future possibilities of this; podcasts, video streams, purchased music, audio books, live user-generated radio broadcast feeds etc...

Phling!

Phling! is a new service for mobile phones that acts as the glue between your phone, your PC, and your IM contact list to enable sending multimedia between the three. It’s not an MMS protocol, so it avoids leaving you with any per-message charges, instead using peer-to-peer technology via the internet connection on your phone to relay the data. You can send pictures, voice and text messages to IM contacts, to your home PC, or to your mobile blog via your phone, all for free — at least, while the phling! service is still in beta. What’s the catch? For now, it only works on three phones, all Nokia: the 6600, the 6620, and the 7610, and you have to have one of the listed data plans from AT&T, Cingular, or T-Mobile

Rabble

the Rabble team can clearly see a shift in traditional mobile content creation and distribution models . They appear to be developing some form of platform to allow end users to connect to each other and share, manage, subscribe and download media produced by other users.
Intercasting Corp are running a Rabble beta. Unfortunately I dont live in the US so I cant register and see what theyre up to. Definitely one to watch....