What Voda are up to...

See WSJ or Gigaom coverage....

Vodafone Station

Here's a great new product from Voda, recently announced by Vodafone Italy for launch this summer. An ADSL gateway with a detachable HSDPA dongle, it gets us one step closer to a personal connectivity solution from a single provider with a single bill.

It also has a huge USP in they way it solves the typical horrid broadband provisioning experience - you normally have to sign up to a provider and wait a number of weeks or months until your connected. The VF Station includes a detachable HSPA dongle so you can be up and running immediately with connectivity, and when the fixed-line connection is activated, the remotely-managed backhaul switches from HSDPA to ADSL. And when you need to be out and about, you simply detach the dongle from the gateway, and pop it in to the side of your laptop. Very neat, and a great FMC product solution.



More info here

via TeleGeography

Vodafone InsideOut 4 2ndLife

Vodafone have launched 'InsideOut' for fans of SecondLife, enabling you to call and text within SecondLife and between SecondLife and the real world. So as your directing the construction of your new condo in ever-bright city , you can call and text people in the real world from your virtual mobile device.
Vodafone is handing out free HUD's (Heads Up Displays) from a Vending Machine in Vodafone InsideOut Island - they allocate you a virtual mobile number (currently a +49 german number) - and you carry the HUD around with you in SecondLife to make calls and text to other residents within SecondLife and people outside as well.
Until the end of November all calls and texts are free, although Voda reserve the right to charge from this point onwards.
The HUD could evolve to provide location alerts to other users within SecondLife, notification and live-streaming of real-world events in to SecondLife, and a neat monetisation model for online to offline communication.

Vodafone MobileScript

Just heard that Vod have released a device optimistation script for Betavine developers....

"Vodafone MobileScript is an ECMA script extension that allows developers to access device functionality in a very simple manner. The goal of Mobilescript is the creation of a common framework in order to easily and quickly develop new services in mobile platforms, using a ECMA Script Open Source engine including new features which enable the developer to control new actions and events in the terminal".

Download from here
More info here

CEBIT-Vodafone shows Internet (Skype) calling on mobile - Starfish

"HANOVER, Germany, March 15 (Reuters) - Vodafone (VOD.L: Quote, Profile , Research), the world's most international mobile phone carrier with over 200 million subscribers, showed Internet-calling for mobile phones with Skype, which it said it may launch in the future.

Code-named Starfish, Vodafone showed the application in the future zone of its booth at the world's biggest technology trade show, CeBIT. It has yet to decide whether it will start offering consumers the service, which could eat into its traditional mobile voice telephone business".

via Reuters (full article here)

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.

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

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

more here

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

in the regsiter and also in unstrung