Orange & Bebo tie-up

The Times reported that Orange and Bebo are close to closing a deal to enable Orange customers to interact with Bebo while out and about...

"The tie-up — Bebo’s first with a mobile operator — will allow Orange customers to edit their Bebo profiles, update their blogs and find friends on the online “hang-out” without sitting at a personal computer.

The service, the latest in a series of alliances between cult internet brands and mobile operators, will start in Britain this summer, with extension to other markets expected later.

Bebo, which has amassed 31 million users in the two years since its launch, hopes that the link will enable it to extend its reach in its target audience of people aged 18 to 24.

For mobile operators such as Orange, the ability to market well-known PC applications can be a critical tool in attracting and retaining customers in fiercely crowded markets".

Flurry Update and Director of Marketing Role

There's some great news from the Kings of Mobile Email - Flurry. Not only have they raised a whopping $3.75m Series from DFJ, Draper Richards and follow-on investors Borealis, they are now looking to recruit a Director of Marketing to compliment their existing team.

If you haven't upgraded to a whoppingly expensive mobile device and subscribed to an even more whoppingly expensive mobile email service, simply go to flurry.com and get it sorted. It works, it works really very well and it uses a tiny amount of your monthly data allowance (it will even show you how much on the web site).

If you're a senior marketing dude, you understand brand, entry strategy,
proposition, positioning, pr and comms, and you're looking for a hot role with great start-up based in San Fran - read on:

Job Title: Director of Marketing
Description: Flurry is a leader in the growing field of next-generation mobile services. Our flagship product is an easy-to-use mobile email and RSS solution that works on hundreds of different cell phone models and thousands of email providers and carriers worldwide. It is the first service to be introduced by flurry based on our Mobile Services Platform, a platform designed to provide high-performance, consumer friendly applications.

We're seeking a smart, creative, enthusiastic, and experienced marketing executive to help us build the brand, drive consumer adoption of our products, lead overall marketing and communications strategy and manage related marketing programs.

Responsibilities:
• Establish overall marketing and communications strategy and strategic positioning
• Lead all aspects of engagement marketing for flurry and all its products. Candidate will design, implement, and manage strategies to increase user acquisition, retention, usage and monetization. Special emphasis in viral marketing and community growth around the service
• Create corporate and product communications plan
• Lead and manage all public relations activities
• Work closely with product, development, and management teams to achieve business objectives through effective marketing programs
• Manage production of marketing collateral and marketing budgets
• Establish and manage affiliate relationships
• Build and keep to schedules and budget; meet or exceed department goals
• Define key metrics to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs

Requirements:
• BA required; MBA strongly preferred
• 5+ years of consumer marketing experience, with emphasis on online consumer marketing
• 3+ years of management/leadership experience
• Proven track record of success in acquiring users for consumer products
• Experience managing outside agencies (e.g., PR)
• Strong business acumen, keen analytic skills and direct marketing experience
• Excellent verbal and written communication, presentation skills, and relationship management
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup environment

This position reports to the CEO and would be based in San Francisco.

to apply for this, visit www.flurry.com for contact information

Interview with VF R&D - Vodafone Betavine

I recently did a post on the Vodafone Betavine launch, and thought I would follow it up with an interview with one of the project team that was involved in creating it. So I got in touch with Stephen Wolak, Web Technologies Manager at Vodafone Group R&D , one of the key project proponents.


abigidea: hi Steve, how are you doing?
Stephen W: I am pleased that we managed to launch Vodafone Betavine in January as promised ...

abigidea: How's Newbury?
Stephen W: I like Newbury, it is small and does not have a cinema but it is very friendly and a great place for families. People still say hello to you in the street ...

abigidea: What handset are you currently using?
Stephen W: I am using a Nokia N80

abigidea: Whats your favourite mobile application or service?
Stephen W: Flickr via Shozu. I really enjoy creating a photographic trail of my life ... a photoblog ..

abigidea: Can you summarise for the readers what Betavine is all about?
Stephen W: Vodafone Betavine is all about mobile and internet communications. It is a platform and set of tools to enable developers and early adopters to work together creating new things and socialising those new things, applications.

We would like it to become a hub for creation of new concepts and technologies applied to communications.

abigidea: So developers can test out new apps with a hungry audience - do you vet the apps first?
Stephen W: We are as open as we can be, we do not vet applications as such but do perform a quick AV scan to protect our users from known viruses.

abigidea: How long has the project been in the works?
Stephen W: It has taken the team 7 months to develop using open source software components.

abigidea: Was it difficult to achieve this in a company the size of Vodafone?
Stephen W: It was surprisingly easy! We came up with the concept in May 2006, got approval in June 2006 and delivered the website in January 2007 ... Clearly we had to consult to a range of people to ensure that what we were doing aligned with the Vodafone Group Strategy and complied with good governance but there was a lot of support for the concept from the beginning.

abigidea: How do you see Betavine evolving?
Stephen W: We are going to introduce an open source website soon and also start some student competitions. Beyond that we would like to experiment with APIs on the website, for developers to try out new services.


abigidea: Much of the mobile blogosphere complains about operators and their apparent lack of willingness to support the developer community, hindering the overall rate of innovation. Betavine is a huge step in the right direction, but do you think we'll ever get to the developer utopia of a comprehesive API on to the operators infrastructure (e.g. offering location, presence, billing, messaging, voice and more)?
Steve W: yikes! That is a good question ... I really believe that Vodafone Betavine is a valuable platform for developers, from all areas, to use to promote their applications and get valuable feedback.

abigidea: Thanks for your time Steve - good luck with the project
Steve W: Your welcome.

Vodafone BetaVine

As it's my last day at Vodafone today, I thought it only appropriate to use my last few hours constructively and do a post on a great intiative being led by our Group R&D team - a collaborative mobile innovation portal called Betavine.

"Vodafone Betavine is a testing ground for the latest concepts and technologies in mobile and internet applications. It allows people to test their ideas in real-world conditions, with others who are knowledgeable and interested in developing mobile applications for the future".


Take a look today and you will find a directory of mobile applications, discussion forums (including open source, API's, resources and Apps), and a Developer Zone where you will be able to create a project forum, solicit input and feedback from other members, and test/trial your application with a willing community. The site is a work in progress so naturally there are some sections that are "coming soon".

This is an altrusitic contribution from Vodafone designed to foster more information, more transparency, more discussion and ultimately more innovation. I hope that this will eventually evolve in to what many have been craving for years; an operator "API" that provides access to location, presence, device data, customer profile, billing and more.

Paul Walsh @ Segala had the exclusive here


Screenshot 1 - displays most popular downloaded mobile applications together with device compatability and popularity. Screenshot 2 - Forum listings.

The Wildest Mobile Applications

John Tanner wrote a great piece in Telecom Asia last week documenting some of the craziest mobile applications currently on offer around the world. Some beauts include the ghost detector, the halal meat verification service and the lie/love detector, while others are actually quite appealing (to me anyway) - the spyphone, car alarm and power walking! Full article here

Mobifeeds - RSS & atom on your mob

Dont bother downloading an RSS app for your mobile, simply browse your favourite feeds at mobifeeds.net. For anyone out there who has mistakenly enabled auto-RSS downloading on their mobile without an off-net data tariff, they will appreciate this less wallet-busting alternative. Works a treat with Opera Mini.

Mobipod - UK Mobile Podcasting Trial

MobiPod have recently started a UK trial of a new mobile podcasting service. You get the podcasts for free (although you do have to pay for data transfer) and the podcast selection includes comedy from Sowerby & Luff's Comedy 365, and a Mobipod pick of entertainment and music. The service has been put together by Linked Media (creators of Britcaster) in partnership with technology solution provider Bamboo MediaCasting.
"Full track, 30-40 minute podcast updates are delivered off-peak or overnight, and are waiting on the handset for one-click access at the user's convenience - such as during their daily commute to and from work. The Bamboo service platform supports Java, Symbian Windows Mobile, and BREW-based cellphones, and can efficiently distribute large files of any type, which means long-format podcasts and video clips can be part of the content mix".

Clicktoscan from RealEyes3D

I cant remember which film it was in, but James Bond often had a tiny camera which he used to take pictures of documents in safes that he had broken in to at some bad-man evil-doers home. Well, if you have a camera phone, you can now do the same, and you dont need to wait for the film processing!
One of the VC's at I-Source pinged me the other day to tell me about the beta launch of a new service called Clicktoscan. The service uses some very smart image optimisation technology from portfolio company RealEyes3D, enabling end users to digitise and optimise real-world scriblings, forms or documents in to clear digitised pdf's. For me, the best use of this is capturing the office whiteboard - being able to take a picture of the whiteboard at the end of a workshop and produce a pdf copy of the output, all with a simple snap and send from my mobile phone.
Setting up the service is simple - you need to register at the clicktoscan website, and then any images you send to their email address will be optimised and converted to a pdf which you can download from your account on the website. The service supports both b&w and colour and requires a minimum resolution of 1.3 megapixels.

Jaiku - Rich mobile presence

Jaiku have recently launched a Beta version of their Series 60 presence application, that enables you to see the presence status and location of your contacts. Personally, I'm a fan of presence, provided that it complements existing apps and is not provided as an application in its own right. In this case, Jaiku have used it to pimp up the Series 60 address book but you need your friends to also be using the app to garner any real value from it. It also seems to be quite a resource hungry app with a noticeable impact on battery life and data usage (estimated at 10Mb/month). And once you've installed it, its tricky to remove..

I've also added their blog widget (see right) which links to the phone client showing whether I'm callable or not (not that anyone cares about this though!) still - it works!

Update 24/07 - This app eats more battery than 3G! I'm almost having to recharge my phone twice a day now, and so far it has been impossible to uninstall or remove. Not a happy bunny!

Oh, Don't Forget... SMS Reminders

Type in your mob number, when you want to be reminded, and what you want to be reminded of, and this service will send you a text. Nice & simple. It also provides an example of how Mobile Party Pays (MPP) can be useful in avoiding complexity in application design through the avoidance of account creation and billing detail submission - although the downside is that you might get spammed.

Vodafone MyPC "Mein PC"

I work in the Future Products team in Vodafone and we focus on new mobile product development in the 18 month to 36 month timeframe. We identify, evaluate and trial new mobile service propositions. Because of this, I have to be selective and somewhat shallow in what i write about on this blog. However, today is different because I can for once talk about something that weve been working on which is now available to the general public.












For the last few months, our team here in Germany has been working on a new mobile service currently labelled "MyPC". The service enables Vodafone customers to get a variety of content streamed from their home PC to their mobile phone; pictures, music, videos and if you have a TV card, you can access a live TV stream direct to your mobile - timely, given that the World Cup kicks off here in Deutschland today ;-)
We have been working on this with very nice folks over at Orb for the last few months and the implementation is now available to Vodafone customers in Germany who have a UMTS (3G) phone and broadband connected home PC. To get the TV stream you will need a TV card from an outfit like Hauppage. The service is free of charge until the end of September, and you need to be on the Happy-Live tariff in order for the service to work (all Vodafone UMTS Live customers are automatically provisioned with Happy-Live).

MyPC works on most mobile handsets with a few notable exceptions; Motorola V3x, Motorola 1050, Motorola V980, Motorola C980, Samsung ZV10, Samsung ZV30, and the Samsung Z107. This is an aweseome service (yeah, im a bit biased) which demonstrates how mobile operators can leverage customers existing content assets. Its also a practical example of how the home environment can be mobilised, a topic that I expect will see significantly more activity in the coming months.





Press coverage in the Register and Engadget Mobile

Zyb release 2.0

Back in May 05, I posted about a SMS service from Zyb which enabled users to send text from their PC, the web or a mobile. Something prompted Zyb to shut this service down and refocus their product strategy on something else. They chose Mobile Sync & backup, which is now what they offer if you visit their site.
I tested the service this morning on my Nokia 6680 and it was a breeze. A short simple registration initiated a configuration SMS which created a new sync profile. I then initiated the sync and you can watch in real time as the Zyb web interface hoovers up your contacts, and organises them within the contacts tab of the webapp. The service also supports Calendar events and To-do lists. It also offers a recovery mode, so should you lose your phone, all you need to do is simply connect the new one to Zyb and your contacts, schedule and tasks are recovered.
A very elegant example of SyncML in action, and although it has some competition from the like of Mightyphone and Phonesync, the service experience is so well executed it should attract a lot of usage which will pave the way for a premium paid-for version.

Mig33

Hot on the heels of Hotxt and Tex2me is Mig33 which provides cheap international calling, support for both MSN and Yahoo IM, and cheap text. You can also set up a chat room for group chatter amongst buddies.
Java and Internet required...

Mologogo - mobile phone, cell phone tracking

Free service that enables you to track the movements of a friend/enemy/lover from your own phone or the web. Works on Nextel and Boost, with GPS and Java enabled devices.
mashups + mobile = massive!

Semapedia

The technological child of wikipedia and semacode, semapedia acts as a physical extension to the usefulness of wikipedia. A bit like various NFC apps I've seen, it enables you to visit a physical place, take a snap of the semacode graphic, which in turn is translated in to a wap display of information on the place you're at. It works in a similar way to YellowArrow, but uses semacode graphics and provides the visitor with the ability to edit the information as well.

Thanks for the link Wolfgang ;-)

SillyAnt - Encrypted mobile voip

"Free download of encrypted voip software for Nokia 6630, 6680 and N90 Symbian phones - realtime, full duplex, encrypted voice-over-IP connection for subscribers of GPRS and 3G networks. The initial version has GSM codec without encryption, but next releases will support elliptic curve cryptography based on private/public keys".

Thanks for the link Ian :-)

Mobile encyclopedia - Cellphedia

This is a cell phone application that promotes the sharing of knowledge. It allows users to send and receive encyclopedia-type inquiries between specific, pre-defined groups of users, through Text messaging. Users can register on this site and start building the quick-reference Cellphedia-type encyclopedia entries, by asking other users and answering other users' questions wherever cell phone service is available.

Mobile P2P File Sharing

The first mobile Peer 2 peer file sharing applications for Symbian are beginning to appear
Take a look at Symella.

Thanks for the tip Bruno

Skype 4 SmartPhone (!)

Get Beta here