DEMO Fall 2006

06/10 - So, I was granted temporary absence from the Innovation engine-room at Vodafone last week and spent 4 days in sunny San Diego for Demo Fall. In between the presentation sessions which consist of each selected company getting a 6 minute window to communicate their product benefits, I had a wander around the demo booths, checking out the full stories and hearing a bit more depth to what the companies have on offer. The overall event is very well organised with extremely slick timing, good topics and an engaging presenter and audience crowd.

There was a whiff of pre-crash exuberance in the air, noticeable by the amount of funding some presenters had already closed, ralph lauren company t-shirts and some questionable job titles.
The event clearly demonstrated to me the amount of mobile innovation that is ramping up in the valley. There is a rapidly growing wave of innovation which is initially focused on the US market, but with local validation and Series B/C rounds of funding, I expect these solutions to come this side of the pond next year. This should act as a motivator for European mobile innovation as we have a much more advanced market in terms of user adoption, awareness and device sophistication. Now is the time to get your products to market!!
Another observation was that many products are going to market directly, without the endorsement and distribution by the mobile operators/carriers. The long sales cycle, questionable marketing commitment and long NPD cycles of most operators has simply put the innovators off and made them explore new routes to market, most of which involve directly marketing the products to consumers. There was also quite a bit of predictable operator beating, which made me occasionally duck and dive to avoid being lynched!
A full list of the products launched can be seen here. Given that a number of competitor operators read this blog, I'm not going to divulge a detailed view on the very "hot" mobile products, but there was a lot of great blog coverage of the event, the best IMHO provided by Graeme Thickins @ tech-Surf-Blog

"Instant" Voice Messaging, BubbleMotion & Pinger

Bubble Motion, a provider of short voice message solutions, announced last week that it had raised US$10 million in series B funding from Sequoia Capital US and India. The company plans to use the funds to increase R&D and market and deploy their product offering more globally. Bubble Motion offers a compelling voice messaging product which is similar to a "push to talk" experience. The A party simply dials the recipients number with a couple of digits preceeding the full number, dials and records a message. The B party receives a SMS with a number to dial to pick up the message. I like the concept of a voice SMS but I think the pre-dial is a bit clunky as most of us dial direct from the address book.

Pinger, funded earlier this year by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers is currently beta testing a similar service, currently restricted to US users only. The Pinger difference is that theres no need to key in the digits that preceed the B party number - Pinger lets the A party simply speak the recipient(s) name and record the message. Message retrieval for Pinger is similar to BubbleMotion.
Both products offer the consumer a SMS type message experience but using voice. Although in the case of Pinger it sounds like the A party might have to download something (you dont need to with BubbleMotion), the B party can get the message regardless of what device they have and what network they're on.

Kiboze - IM buddylist powers group messaging

Kiboze has launched a new service that unleashes the potential of the IM buddylist. The service enables users to use their buddylists to create and manage group text circles. The user can then text these circles from their mobile and the message will be intelligently delivered to the recipient on either IM or via SMS (if the B-party isn't online). With 80% of people between the ages of 14-29 in the US owning a mobile phone and the majority of them using text messaging to communicate with peers, the opportunity is huge.
I asked founder Jay Cody a few questions...

abigidea?: Can you sum up in one paragraph what Kiboze is all about?
Jay: Kiboze extends IM with group text messaging. This integration allows us to let people connect to their friends through text messaging but using the many relationships we have already defined in our "buddylists". To date the buddylist has been held ransom by the Instant Messaging platforms. Kiboze wants to free the buddylist and make it available as a phone book for group text messaging reaching our friends no matter where they are. Kiboze users simply send one text message to Kiboze and we'll pass that message onto their friends. If those friends are in front of a computer, the message will be sent via IM, if they are out and about they'll get the message via a text message. Set the buddylist free!


abigidea?: Does Kiboze enable the reply-to-all functionality that SMS is currently missing?
Jay: Yes, anyone can use Kiboze to create and join "groups". Now all people have to do is send a single text message to Kiboze and Kiboze delivers that message to everyone in the group. This obviously saves users money and the aggravation of trying to coordinate so many people.

abigidea?: Who pays?
Jay: Kiboze is a totally free service.

abigidea?: If the user isn't Kiboze registered, then you say the message is delivered via IM. Doesn't this miss the point of it being a "mobile" service?
Jay: The point isn't about being a mobile service; Kiboze wants to be a valuable service that allows our users to reach ALL of their friends, regardless of communication channel. Kiboze will get your message to your friends whether they are in front of the computer or out and about with a mobile phone and whether they are registered at Kiboze or not. This is totally unique and of tremendous value to our users. Finally, one text to reach them all.

abigidea?: Do you plan to incorporate support for Skype?
Jay: Skype is on the roadmap with many, many other exciting enhancements to the Kiboze service.

abigidea?: what's the Beta telling you?
Jay: We are in the early phases but the excitement is definitely there. A couple things have really frustrated users before Kiboze:1) Telco's refusing to create a viable alternative for group text messaging2) "Closed" mobile services that make your re-connect with your friends all over again before you can use the service. We already manage our friends in social networks like MySpace and Facebook, IM networks like AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! as well as Email accounts and mobile phones. It's exhausting and the users are starting to revolt!. New services that are asking us to re-connect yet again are really paying the price.People love Kiboze because they can use their EXISTING contacts as defined in the buddylists and reach them from anywhere with a simple text message. That has definitely been a highlight of the beta so far.

abigidea?: What's juicy on the roadmap?
Jay: Without getting into too many details, lets just say that more and more location-based services should be available soon. It really is all about local knowledge. That knowledge might be where your friends are or what events are happening nearby. Location will continue to be a major point of focus at Kiboze.

abigidea?: What your current funding status?
Jay: We are a small but dedicated team that has successfully self-funded Kiboze to date.

abigidea?: Who's behind Kiboze?
Jay: Kiboze has a great mix of people. We share a passion for technology and specifically mobile applications but our backgrounds are quite diverse. Some of us have developed, marketed and sold advertising and editorial systems to some of the world's largest media companies like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Some have specialized in search technologies and others in satellite communications. It's a great mix of talent that has come together to make Kiboze a totally unique and valuable service.

Kiboze currently supports AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and GTalk.

Great Truphone blog post from Martin Geddes

In this post, Martin raises some brilliant points and gives an excellent overview of Truphone. It should be evaluated in the context of the other contenders in this space.

SDSL (Slow Digital Subscriber Line)

Here in Germany, Deutsche Telekom is getting huge flak from the local (and european) regulators over it not wanting to share access to its new VDSL network. It claims that because it has to invest billions and gazillions in the network, it should keep it all to itself so that it can differentiate in a crowded market.
I find this quite an odd debate to be having, given that if you take a look at incredible download rates I seem to be getting at the moment, it appears that they need to invest in a DSL and then ADSL network first. They claim I'm on a ADSL line, but I now have the evidence to show that its actually a 14.4k modem in the local exchange going via a secret hidden second telehone line in to my flat!

Google AdWords goes mobile

RCRWireless reported yesterday that Google have quietly soft-launched the ability for AdWords customers to create a mobile campaign with functionality to develop ad and marketing capaigns, set a daily budget for ad expenditure and pay per click or per call. So we may soon start to see google ads incorporated in to our mobile-web browsing, something that AdMob have been providing with rapidly increasing success since January (they are currently offering a free $20 campaign to new customers).

See previous post on AdMob (Jan 06)
12/09 - Update - Admob raises Series A from Sequoia

Biggest QR code ever?

By Tim Rogers on Flickr

QR Codes on Wikipedia
Semacode on Wikipedia

My del.icio.us list of companies trying to commercialise this use case.

01/09 Update - the CEO of Kaywa pinged me to tell me that you can generate your own QR code for a URL, phone number or text or SMS by going here. I've just downloaded and tried out their reader for the N70 and it works brilliantly. This is an excellent way of making the non-mobile world mobile (posters, ads, biz cards, ingredients, instructions, menus).

(the Kaywa QR code for this blog)

Chuck D @ Mobile Content World

Last year we had P Diddy headlining at CTIA, and I just noticed that this year Chuck D is presenting the opening speech at Mobile Content World 2006 in London - how cool is that! I remember meeting him when he was doing a guest appearance at a Public Domain promotional concert at the ICA - nice bloke!! ;-)

Futuretext: Mobile Web 2.0

Ajit Joakar & Tony Fish have teamed up again to write a new book that addresses how the web 2.0 extends to the ‘wider Internet’, describes the seven principles of Mobile Web 2.0 and other impacting factors e.g. rollout of IMS, WiMAX etc.

They claim the 7 priniciples of Mobile web 2.0 are:

• Mobile content and the changing balance of power (The power of user generated content)
• I am not a number, I am a tag (The impact on the telecoms industry's management of numbers)
• Multilingual mobile access (Everyone, Everywhere with a phone running .. )
• Mobile web 2.0 and Digital convergence (Mobile web 2.0 is a driver to digital convergence)
• The disruptive power of Ajax and mobile widgets
• Location based services and Mobile web 2.0 (LBS has never quite taken off. Will mobile web 2.0 help?)
• Mobile search : Much more than Google on your mobile phone.

Both Ajit and Tony have been stong proponents and faciliators of innovation in the mobile industry and consequently they have a lot of valuable and challenging insight on this space.

P.S make sure you ask for a hard copy cos the last "book" I ordered from them was only ever given to me as a pdf and I'm still not quite ready for an entirely digital world ;-)

The future of Mobile Voice & Text?

I've written previously about numerous mobile messaging services that are all targeted at taking a piece of existing mobile operators voice and messaging revenues. In Europe alone, these revenues are in excess of €250bn, and consequently this category presents a lip-licking opportunity to VC's, entrepreneurs and existing industry players

The last couple of years have seen a number product launches from the likes of Hotxt , Text2me, and Pica who are all trying to move SMS volume away from the operators monetisation mechanism (the SMSC) by allowing P2P application based messaging over a data connection. All require users to have the same application installed which presents a barrier to uptake due to the fact that not every one in a communication circle will have the same type of device – i.e. that supports J2ME. In younger age segments where users are more likely to have the latest, coolest and funkiest devices, then the chances of the communication circle having compatible devices is higher and a common messaging experience achieved.
Other apps including Mig33, Vyke, Woize, Skype, Truphone (deserves its own post) and now Nimbuzz include the mobile voice use case, providing mostly Java apps that allow you to make a call over you data connection, again avoiding the operators billing mechanism (apart from data charges) and offering non-member connection via cheap international wholesale termination rates (similar to Skype-Out).
I expect we will see a load more applications like this over the coming months, all in the same product space but with a slightly different product approach and spin. The big open question is which ones will prevail? On the current radar, Skype has the best chance of succeeding, principally due to having the financial and marketing muscle of an industry leader and an established non-mobile user base in excess of 170m. Other players that can quickly impact this space are mobile and fixed operators, who both have an existing customer relationship and billing mechanism and in the case of the mobile operators, a forced distribution channel – the device.
Another interesting aspect of this space is that the application offerings are increasing acting as integrated user experiences for what were previously silo applications (e.g. email, IM, blogging, content). Examples such as Pica, combine communication (email, chat, IM, voice messaging and text) with a range of community features (moblogging, personal profiles, emoticons and voicecast) offering users a single device destination for interacting and communicating with circles of friends and like minded users. Pica has now over 3m users, predominantly in China but raised $10m from Bluerun back in Dec 05 which could easily support localization and business dev. efforts in US and Europe.

These examples provide evidence of an increasing trend which is likely to gain traction over the coming years and IMHO presents a credible threat to operators which should be monitored. Applications like Pica give us an idea of what the future of mobile comms may look like, and serve as a valuable reminder on how fragmented today’s mobile experience is.

Read also Nimbuzz featured in MobileCrunch
12/09 - see also HelloSoft
12/09 - see also NootMobile
15/09 - see also Fring
10/10 - see also Berggi
18/10 - see also Reporo
29/11 - see GigaOM

Google acquires Nevenvision

Google announced on Tuesday that they had acquired Nevenvision, a small but well armoured visual search/recognition leader with significant IP and a smart team. Google had been rumoured to have been looking in to Riya but jumped on nevenvision instead. Google has mastered the interpretation, analysis and monetisation of text-based search requests, and Nevenvision takes it a step further in doing the same for images. Nevenvision had(has) an interesting product portfolio with a viable solution for mobile phone image search. With Infotrends predicting 228 billion images being taken on camera phones by 2010, exceeding the number of photos taken on digital still cameras and film cameras combined, this looks like a prudent and timely purchase.

William Slawski has a good overview of Googles other recent acquisitions


Previous related post: NeoMedia acquires Mobot (Aug 05)

THE big idea...

Your reading "abigidea", and today my employer announced a new competition in the UK to discover THE next big idea...

"Sky One and Vodafone today announced THE BIG IDEA - the UK’s largest-ever search to discover the next great British invention or business idea. Voted on by the viewers, budding entrepreneurs will compete for a £100,000 investment in launching their idea or venture. Supported by a major outreach programme undertaken by Vodafone, regional heats will be held in Manchester and London in September. Contestants can download an application form at www.skyone.co.uk/thebigidea Produced by Ricochet Productions in association with Vodafone THE BIG IDEA will be broadcast on Sky One in the autumn, with extended programming on Sky Three. The show will be executively produced for Sky One by Steve Jones. Richard Woolfe, Director of Programmes, Sky One, Two and Three said: “From John Logie Baird to Trevor Bayliss, Alexander Graham Bell to James Dyson, we are a nation of brilliant inventors and I’m delighted that Sky One and Vodafone are teaming up for The Big Idea. It’s the biggest ever UK search for inventions or business ideas and anyone with a flash of genius can participate.”

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!

BVP Anti-portfolio

If you want an amusing read for a Friday afternoon, check out the Bessemer Venture Partners Anti-Portfolio, a page detailing all the deals they didn't do, including Ebay, Intel, Apple etc - Doh!

Mobiboo - UK's 1st Wi-fi Mobile Network

Mobiboo have recently launched in the UK with the first wi-fi mobile phone network. The network is being provided in partnership with theCloud and they currently offer three tiers of account, ranging from Free Trial (which includes a 07911 number, softphone and 1UKP credit) to the Plus + account which includes a Starcom L1000 wi-fi handset, free voicemail, 10ukp credit, 07911 number, free voicemail and "follow-me".
I think this is spot-on for the die-hard wi-fi starbucks addicted techno-freak, but this segment will always need a GSM mobile in their back pocket for moments when coverage is poor or unreliable. However, couple this with an MVNO deal, reliable network hand-over, and dual-mode handsets and you have reliable nationwide coverage. The tricky bit is going to be making this digestable to the mass-market consumer - ensuring the technology is hidden from the service experience so that they're not hopping for signal on one foot and balancing different call costs on the other.

Vixo - experimental social network using SMS

Vixo are running a SMS service that enables any group of mobile users to group message one another on a particular topic without (currently) incurring multiple SMS-sending costs. You can set up a topic (e.g. World Cup) and invite other users to join the group. The service includes a "trust" command which when applied in the context of the six degrees of separation, dictates which messages you receive, originated from your group circle. You can modify your "trust" levels (by changing what Vixo describe as the 'volume') to ensure that you only receive messages from close friends, or lower the "trust" volume to include anyone in the six degrees.
Currently only available to UK mobile users.

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.

JigSaw UK Wiki

The Jigsaw Uk Wiki is a great resource for new innovative projects, start-ups and organisations in the Internet, Mobile and Technology space, specifically originating out of the UK.

Futurescape, the creators of the wiki, say they have created the wiki as a "free resource so that young digital media companies and organisations can:
- Showcase new projects, nationally and globally
- Locate potential partners for future projects
- Find the most appropriate sources of advice and funding
- Build and use a knowledge base of experience and ideas for ways forward
- Discuss how to self-organise to make this sector even stronger".

WAMPAD - mobile search verticals

Wampad presents a fresh approach to mobile search. It offers a topic menu from which you can choose the domain which is most relevant to your search query, using best of breed information and content sources from which it extracts your results. For example, if youre looking for news, it draws on Google News, for movie info, you can search IMDB, for images it turns to Flickr and so on.

02/06 great in-depth review of wampad at wapreview

MyNuMo

Mobile Crunch recently profiled MyNuMo, which is an awesome new service enabling anyone to create and sell mobile content (vids, pics, ringtones etc). Further evidence of the "democratisation" of content.

related wiki post