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

DynaTac is back!

When Motorola introduced the DynaTac in 1983, the worlds first commercial mobile phone weighed nearly 1Kg and cost about the same as a car! Now you can pick one up with new components and a colour screen replacement for just under $300 in China. Retrotastic!

Internet big boys muscle into mobile

Good article in the register

BlueBall - this is mad...

reminds me of the Honda ad.... go here

Vodafone 804sh

I don't usually write about specific devices (because so many other blogs do) but I thought I would break with the norm and mention a very neat phone that has quietly been launched by Vodafone KK (Japan).
The Sharp 804sh is a clam-shell design which comes in 4 different colours. It also comes with a number of particulary cool features:
1) Mobile wallet - supports Felica and enables customers to buy things with their mobile phone - debited from their mobile bill (transport tickets, electronic shopping and point of sale goods in specific shops).
2) Integrated compass - for all those Ray Mears fans - this is the phone for you - if you get lost - the phone can tell you north from south and east from west (uses no.3)
3) Finally, the coolest of them all - the Motion Control Sensor (MCS)- this is a very neat little chip in the device which recognises and responds to movements and opens up a whole host of new opportunities for handsets - from new interactive gaming scenarios (pointing a gun, swinging a golf club) to improving the accuracy of location technologies (AGPS cant tell very well what height you're at - e.g. what floor of a building you might be on).

This technology has been on the market since February on 2G devices, but this is the first time it has been incorporated in to a 3g offering. The motion control sensor element potentially represents a strong USP for Vodafone KK over the Christmas sales period and a strong technology advantage given that the IPR is owned jointly by Vodafone and Aichi Steel Corporation.
I demo'd this at the end of last year and although it was in prototype state, the user experience of the MCS technology is extremely impressive - it really makes you smile. I think the impact will initially be in the game space, and it should enable a step-change in the mobile phone gaming experience which will reduce the distance between the mobile and portable game players such as the PSP3, Nintendo DS and iGame(!)

outlook

Konfabulator doesnt think much of the outlook here in Düsseldorf over the next few days...

uConnect VOIP Converter

Just connect one of these in to the back of your PC and you can use any existing telephone to talk on Skype (e.g. analogue, DECT, corldless etc).