VC analysis of Intermix sale

On Bill Burnhams blog here

Learn stuff with your iPod

Dictionary with a database of more than 35,000 words with multiple parts-of-speech for each headword, and a Thesaurus with over 35,000 English words and phrases. Go here

Good articles on Vodafones approach to VOIP and fixed-line displacement

in the regsiter and also in unstrung

Electronic Paper

Fujitsu have developed a new type of paper that can store a colour image without needing an electricity supply. link here

iPod Flea

This is funny

The fair has arrived in Düsseldorf....its huge!

Mobile aggregators

heres a good list of UK mobile aggregators, courtesy of Orange.

Were not afraid!

Following the horrific terrorist attacks on my beautiful home town of London, this blog has been set up to reflect the defiant attitude of the public.

Tarolini sniffing the Athens pollution!

Google to boost T-Mobile?

T-Mobile has announced that customers with Internet viewing capable devices will be presented with the Google search page as a default start page. It represents a strategic shift away from the promotion of T-Zones, to pushing a more natural Internet experience, that mirrors the way customers currently use the web.
I cant applaud T-Mobile for doing this because its common-sense. The "walled-garden" approach protects the brand and monetises activity but it stiffles innovation and experimentation. It restricts mobile customers to a range of bread and butter data services that come with a one size fits all approach. It doesnt make any consideration for locality, age, interests, profession, social-circles, tastes and income. This doesnt mean that by defaulting Google, all this will be solved. It does however, demonstrate that operators are beginning to think along more traditional and proven Internet behaviour models. Search is the deafult start for most of our Internet activity, and with the proliferation of mobile optimised Internet sites we are now seeing sufficient content to make the experience credible.
The "walled-garden" has always received a lot of criticism outside of the operator community much of which I belive is unjust. With all service or product creation, you are limited only by your ingredients and imagination. The "walled-garden" offerings have grown up around fairly poor ingredients (wap 1.0 , closed-O/S, b&w screens etc), but now the produce of offer has changed. With the recent advancement in device capapbilities, continuing subsidisation (in europe anyway) and lots more standardisation, the climate has changed and the opportunity apparent. Operators will need to focus on developing 3rd party products (technical + commercial) to maintain their control of the value-chain or they may find themelves squeezed by their vendor partners (Nokia Premiernet).
I suspect that Google must also be quietly chuckling away.....

iCon

I'm on holidays at the moment in Athens and have brought along a couple of books to devour, one of which is "iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business ". I've finished it and its a great read. There's been a lot written about Mr Jobs but I think this is first book that can put his (and his teams) achievements in perspective in the three industries he has impacted (music, computing and film). I'm even more convinced that Apple must have some big plans for the mobile space - it plays so well on their skill-set, the combination of hardware, software and user focused design.
I think the Motorola s/ware distribution deal is an industry distraction while their talented team of engineers devise something that can shake-up the mobile device space. Bring it on....Ill have two! ;-)

International GPRS settings

Heres a handy link to all the settings you need, wherever you are in the world.

Batteries Congress 2005

saw this - can you imagine how exciting this conference would be!

Who will Google buy next?

Heres a view from Kuro5shin on who might be in Googles sights...

Yahoo buys DialPad

Yahoo has acquired DialPad in a move to strengthen their VOIP play. Who's next to be eaten up? Skype, Teltel, Vonage, Yak, Net2Phone???
Om Malik broke it yesterday, press release here
Update 06/09 - teleo just got bought by Microsoft

Vodafone Simply

Due to who my employer is, I haven't really been able to write much about the Vodafone Simply offering that was launched a couple of weeks ago. However, there's been quite a lot of misunderstanding in the press about how Vodafone has gone against its 3G ambitions etc - rubbish!
Anyway - here's an article from Steve Wallage in the Feature who seems to get it!

Defensible emotional advantages

In this post, BusinessWeek talks to Pierre Omidyar about connecting people together using the internet. Mr Omidyars language is full of adjectives which describe basic human emotions scuh as "trust", "empower", "discover", and "influence".
It got me wondering if a defensible technological advantage is realy so important nowadays?? maybe a defensible emotional advantage is more important to a business plan and product. I think this is more than merely marketing spin. Products that are built from the ground up to appeal to human emotion, desire and need tend to be so much more successful.

Another UK MVNO...

"Extreme Mobile" here

Nokia Sensor

Real-time P2P location-based bluetooth-enabled community messaging from Nokia (link here). Reminds me a bit of what the guys at TagTxt were/are trying to do.

Weightlessness...

my next long weekend trip is gonna be here ;-)
from the redferret

Mobile Search

Mobile search is going to be a big topic. And its not just a case of putting a mobile interface on to an existing web service. The mobile environment presents opportunities for intelligent search (location, environment, advertising etc) and also a number of challenges (keypad entry, screen size, display limits to results etc). yahoo and google have recently entered this space and 4Info and Caboodle are the new start-ups to watch.
14/07 - also Medio Systems
29/09 - "mobile operators fear the Google effect" - VNUNet
05/10 - JumpTap (similar UI to MotionBridge)

mHealth

watch-style mobile device that can measure your health condition and transmit it over a wireless network. I expect this kind of device to have a wide appeal, particularly if coupled with a decent web-app which can interpret the data, offer advice, training, targets etc.

SIMYO MVNO launches in Germany

KPN have lanuched SIMYO MVNO in germany - similar pricing structure and offering to EasyMobile in the UK, and co-incidentally similar branding colours as well. Could this be a defensive move before Easy arrive in Germany?

G’zOne TYPE-R

This is a water-proof, shock-proof, everything proof phone just launched in Japan with stopwatch, torch, compass, buzzer etc.

Schwinn Electric Stingray

v cool