Homemade 3G/Wifi StompBox...

"A Stompbox is a home-brew WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network) router. In more human terms, it's a compact little box that gets data from cellular towers and re-shares it for multiple computers to use".
go here

IBM next generation mobile devices

heres a link to the next generation mobile device research team at IBM. Super high-resolution organic LED (OLEO) displays, Linux OS's and voice enabled Bluetooth!

Vodafone and Google team to create innovative mobile search experience for mobile phone users

more here

Demo & 3GSM

It's that time of the year again.... texhibition month
the Demo 06 conference is being held in Phoenix, AZ, and 3GSM starts on Monday next week in Barcelona. For more info on Demo, read Oliver Starr at MobileCrunch (my favourite is Riya, an automatic face-in-photo recognition technology). I dont think Im going to be able to make it to 3GSM this year, but I expect there to be a lot of new product buzz, some of which I will try and post about next week.

Google makes Independent front page...

This is the Independents front page today.
The analysts over-excitement and 2000'esque type trading does feel like a bad case of deja-vu.

Kajeet - new US MVNO

Kajeet is currently in start-up mode, having recently raised $27m in first-round funding. 'Kajeet' (an anagram of the founders kids names, and a name I expect they will change) is targeting the tween segment, and the wallets of their parents. Im not hugely familiar with the US operator market but it appears that their focus in on addressing the younger customer who isnt tall enough for an Amp'd or Boost type offering. There is plenty of room in improving the service experience for this segment.
Parents needs to keep in touch with their kids and keep track of where they are and what they are doing on their phones. I expect that the product offering will include a number of kid orientated devices, ranging from the simple 3 button type terminal, up to the pre-teen multimedia flip. I also expect that the proposition will be targeted to parents on the basis of family-connectivity, safety, cost and content control.

Via MobileCrunch

AdMob - mobile advertising

Omar Hamoui, one of the chaps behind Fotochatter (see August 05 post) has put on a flak jacket and started the "worlds first pay-per-click" mobile advertising broker, Admob. He clearly has some seriously huge competition but this industry prefers 'Davids' to 'Goliaths' so I expect Admob to pick up a lot of business for their pure courage. "Who dares wins" as Del Trotter once said...

22/03/06



21/04/06



23/05/06



28/06/06



31/07/06

30/08/06

Update 12/09 - Admob raises Series A from Seqouia

iTuneMyWalkman

Ilari Scheinin has written iTuneMyWalkman, which is an iTunes script that synchronises the contents of iTunes playlists with your mobile phone. The point of it is to give you a an iTunes/iPod type sync experience with your mob. Neat.

Group mapping - frappr

Google maps meets groups, with photos, forums and fun

Teleflip

Need to send an email to a mobile phone? Not sure whether the recipient has mobile email configured, or whether they have a mobile email address provided by their network operator ?? Then, if you live in the US - Teleflip has an answer. Simply send an email to the recipients mobile (cellular) number @ teleflip.com and they will forward it on at no cost to you. IP tracking and limitations apply ;-)

iSpott - mobile scavenger hunt

Global mobile gaming is beginning to happen and iSpott is early evidence of this. Sign-up and they will send you text of things you have find during the course of your day - a starbucks cup, an empty road, shop window etc + you earn points for every spott you make. Not my cup of tea, but I like where its going....
With a bit more promotion and a richer, more interactive gamng experience (involving circles of friends, national/geographical teams, prizes etc) I think this could be huge.

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!

2006 Diary of Mobile related exhibitions & conferences

go here

Flickr Retrievr

This is mad...draw a sketch in the box and it runs a search of all images in the Flikr database - try it out. Im not exactly sure why I want this, but I like it nonetheless. A very tidy webapp

CLESH - mobile video

The folks at Forbidden Technologies have launched CLESH (Clip, Load, Edit Share) a web-based application that enables you to upload video clips from your PC or mobile phone, then edit them (add music, delete frames, add library footage/sounds) etc. Once you're done, you can then share the finished showreel via email, blog, bluetooth etc. Very neat, and a key ingredient for growing the user generated content revolution. Could evolve (or be incorporated) in to services like Grouper and YouTube.

Mobile Gmail

WAP access to your Gmail account at http://m.gmail.com
Neat features:

• Automatically optimizes the interface for the phone you're using
• Opens the attachments you receive in messages, including photos, Microsoft Word documents and .pdf files
• Lets you reply by call to people whose phone numbers are in your Gmail Contacts list
  

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 ;-)

blogging break...

I'll be taking a break from abigideaing over the next month as Im off down under to explore Australia...happy christmas and have a great new year!

Yahoo eats del.icio.us

Oooh - del.iciou.us got bought buy Yahoo last Friday. Dunno for how much, but its clear that Yahoo understands how tagging is going to make our web so much easier and intelligent to navigate. I've noticed a couple of months back how my search preference for particular topics was increasingly moving over to del.icio.us. If it was/is a topic related to technology, internet or mobile I would tend to go to del.icio.us first.
The Yahoo acquisition now has the capability to make the del.icio.us experience avaialble to everyone and to grow the topic and tag spread away from the geekish to more mainstream common requests. This in turn will feed a more time sensitive, friend relevant and context targeted search experience which may just be enough to tackle Google?

One other thing - the Yahoo M&A team are doing a damn good job - Oddpost, Flickr, Dialpad, Del.icio.us, all in under 18 months. They dont appear to be paying over the odds, and these targets are all examples of high growth synergistic (is that a word?) complimentary businesses that can add real value (usage data, IPR, engineering and product knowledge) to the Yahoo product stable. Yahoo brings a mass market productisation engine and an exit!

previous posts:
15/06/05 Yahoo buys Dialpad
04/05/05 Intelligent Bookmarks
08/07/04 Yahoo eats Oddpost

Mobile micro payment via SMS - SMSAXS

A neat (and simple) micropayment service that works via SMS in most of Europe (US coming soon). Current tariff rates include 0.49€, 1€ and 3€.






1. Your customer selects an item to purchase and chooses "Pay with smsAXS"
2. Your customers are sent to smsAXSís secure site to enter their mobile numbers. smsAXS accepts, authorizes, and processes payments instantaneously by connecting directly to the major Mobile Network Operators. smsAXS enables you to accept Vodafone, Orange, 02, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile all through one provider.
3. Once your customers are billed a password is sent directly to their mobile phone.
4. When they enter the password in the smsAXS form, they are automatically redirected to your site to collect their item. The smsAXS-hosted pages can be customized to match the look and feel of your website
5. You customers can access the premium content for the entire period of validity agreed on the transaction page (pay-per-view or pay-to-subscribe)

Mobile Flickr - mobup + shozu

"Mobup is a small J2ME application that manages photo uploads on Flickr from your mobile device built using the Flickr APIs. Once installed it gives you the possibility to shoot your photo and add title, tags and description from the same applications with optimal user experience and to post the shooted photo on your blog".

"ShoZu is a FREE cool app that makes uploading images from your camera-phone to your Flickr photostream simple".

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 :-)

Million Dollar Homepage

I realy wish I had thought of this!

Skype clutter

I took a look at the Skype website this morning and was amazed at how much product there is - maybe too much? Recent months have given birth to a number of new OS platform versions, beta versions of the standard windows version, SkypeIn Beta, Skype Zones Beta, Skype Groups, WeeMees, Skype Buttons - ok, you get my point?
Their web designers and product managers do a good job of laying it out clearly and explaining it well but there is a real danger that Skype ends up running ahead of itself and alienating a growing segment of curious mass-market customers who, as a result of the skype PR blanket, are checking them out and seeing if they "get it" in order to sign-up. Skype needs to somehow seperate the key sign-up benefit and process from the peripheral benefit for the more adept and accustomed user. Maybe they should put the additional product options behind the customer sign-in and match the product placement with the activity profile of the sykpe customer? This way, the prospective new user will clearly understand why and how they should sign-up, and they will be able to upsell more services as customers get more confident and explorational with the service. Ebays 10 years of knowledge in web-apps should be put to good use in doing this.

KidsOK

Mobile phone tracking technology allows you to send KidsOK a two-word text whenever you wish, wait a few seconds and receive a pictorial map with the location of your child's mobile marked, without ringing or texting your child's mobile. More info here