OpenWaspa

Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish at OpenGardens have created OpenWaspa - a fully fledged 'showcase' for innovation in the mobile data industry. It should officialy launch next month.

JamPod

I want one of these

EasyMobile and why MVNO's prosper

MVNO's are refreshing. Comviq in Sweden, EasyMobile and Virgin in the UK, Boost in the US to name but a few. They are not lumbered with baggage. They have the freedom to create clear and compelling propositions that take advantage of many of the mistakes that old-school operators have made. They are not trying to be all things to all people. They know their market, and they tailor their offerings so that it does what their customers need it to do. They are the new market entrants who arrive with a message of disruption, anarchy and championing the customer (Orange did this way back in 1994, and they built a network!).
Easymobile launched this week in the UK with a very simple voice and text proposition, based on a SIM-only offer (no high SAC's), Internet billing, and a single pricing plan which excludes any monthly contract. For a large portion of the mobile population, this encapsulates exactly what they need from a mobile; good network coverage, value for money, and a simple pricing structure. It is easy to understand and leverages the brand values that Easy Group has established in the UK (and Europe) with services such as EasyJet (low-cost, no frills air travel) and Easy4men (low-cost, no fuss male grooming products).
Boost Mobile has been extremely successful in the US and is a testament to the team at Nextel who had the foresight and courage to experiment with customer segment specific brands. The Boost Mobile example is an interesting one because it is owned and operated by Nextel. Its an example of an operator launching its own MVNO to compete with its own existing and established customer base. Other operators have toyed with MVNO's but only from a network re-sell perspective, and that was partly enforced by the regulators. I think many of the old-school operators see MVNO's as meaning margin erosion and brand dilution, but they are missing the point. Surely it is better to lose customers to yourself (albeit under a different brand), than to someone else? And the fear of margin erosion is false. Comviq has consistently reported margin percentages in the 50's and 60's!
The MVNO landscape is going to hot up - EasyMobile has plans to launch in another 11 European countries and the founders of Boost are launching a new MVNO called Amp'd in the US. Surely this calls for a re-evaluation of the old-school operators MVNO strategies?

TheWebLogProject

The first open source, FREE, grassroots movie to support and promote the blogosphere where featured stars, producers, fundraisers and actors are the bloggers themselves

SociaLight

Here is another example of a Mobile Social Interaction platform

Screencasting

This is an interesting method of delivering a tutorial/lesson/explanation/help/ direction etc, although the subject matter doesnt justify 8 and a half minutes. The experience is a bit like listening to a the directors cut on a DVD.

W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951

'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'

Mobile Adult Content Revenue to Total $1 Billion in ‘05

Blood hell!

Interestingly Juniper isnt predicting massive growth in the US - land of liberties and freedom?

Cool handset design prototypes from KDDI AU

here

Ireland

Just got back from a two day visit to Dublin. Met some great people, and had a pint of the Black Magic. Am amazed at the innovation ecosystem they have there. If youre a start-up in almost anything, there is huge amounts of support from the government, and a strong network of personal connections which helps things get done...

Google thinking about VOIP

The Times reckons Google might be looking to launch a Sykpe style VOIP product....
they have an excellent distribution channel, several billion users and loads of cash...makes sense!

The "Bloggies" 2005

the list here

The end of 2004, the emergence of a mobile future, operators need to collaborate?

Over the last year there have been some really exciting developments in the mobile industry - each and every day I have seen more and more evidence of the foundations of what the future of mobile is going to look like. The buzz words are location, blogging, podcasting, presence, video, pictures and context. Start-ups have begun exploring these niche areas and are developing services to connect mobile users together according to their interests, tastes, location, music. Few however, appear to have connected the different media together in to a comprehensive mobile experience. Its early days though, and perhaps plans for 2005 and beyond address this. It comes as no surprise that these developments are happening outside of the operators’ product development teams. They're happening in small start-up companies based in Calfornia and Israel.
Operator collaboration:
A key success factor for these kinds of mobile experiences is that they function across operators that they interconnect with multiple networks. You can’t leverage the "network effect" unless you have access to all customers on all networks. This may prove hard for some operators to swallow, and a mind-shift may need to take place before these kinds of mobile data services take off. The operators have traditionally developed, launched or endorsed data products which are exclusive and wihtin the "walled gardens" of their own networks. For example, many operators spent millions developing proprietary IM services. It took a while before they realised that a proprietary IM network goes against the whole principles of a networked application. For IM to fly, you need interconnection with existing IM services such as MSN, ICQ etc. Other examples are Chat, Email and Calendars. The mind-set is still unfortunately commonplace.
Operator bypass?
Mobile operators need to collaborate more to drive data usage and increase revenues. The success of the Internet was mainly down to the fact that it was a network of hardware and software that talked a common language - this fosters an innovative environment where external parties can develop new products and services which are accessible by all.
Clearly, there are a different set of considerations for the mobile operator, however, they must start to at least investigate and understand the new possibilities of cross-operator collaboration. They have been doing it for years with roaming; SMS, MMS etc - and these are the services that account for the lion’s share of revenues.
Some start-ups have sensibly decided to bypass the operators. I've seen beta ready messaging clients that incorporate IM, PTT, Email, Content and Address books, in to a single application. You download it via the web, and you effectively have messaging capabilities for the price of a few Mbs of GPRS traffic each month. This should be giving operators the heebie-jeebies but most are still focused on defending margin and protecting market share. I suspect that the MVNO's will be the first to embrace new business models and these emerging data services. A few years from now we will see a very different landscape. This is why it is such an exciting time to be in the mobile industry - the boundaries, business models and value-chains are changing. I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I can witness this change and participate in it. Bring on 2005!

Peer-to-peer TV?

here

Crunkie - Geo-location blogging

Wavemarket are involved in this example of geo-location blogging

MusicGenome

This company is doing some realy smart stuff on music intelligence. the principe is similar to the Amazon feature that tells you what other books people bought but it is so much cleverer. MusicGenome has a shed load of IPR relating to music algorithms and the mathematical structure of music. they are working on a mobile app (symbian/smartphone/java) that will ask you if you like a couple of music samples and based on your response, it can suggest (with staggering accuracy) other pieces you may like. You can then download, buy, listen etc. I tried a demo and was loving it.
Presumably the same science is equally applicable to other content (ringtones, films, games etc)
(Apple would love to get their hands on this for the next generation of "intelligent" iPods)

More on Podcasting from the Independent

1Gb/Second "over-the-air"!

here

Good article in The Feature about phones n fashion

Will the telephone's transition from appliance to fashion accessory change the ways we think of ourselves and interact with each other? Link here

Skype spam

A weird thing happened this week - i got two unwanted calls on Skype from random characters. im not sure what they wanted, maybe it was user error but i hope this doesnt continue to happen cos it could realy damage the Skype experience...

Spleak Beta....

link here

Podcasting

This is a very cool, new, emerging and exciting technology - a bit like a TiVo for your iPod....read more here. Its another example of how end users are becoming content creators and distributors.

mHealth

Any ideas on whats going on in the mhealth space? ive seen a couple of demos of how we can use mobile technologies to connect ourselves to other people for training purposes, arranging "workouts" etc, but none of these seem appropriate for the mass-market, and most of them require a very complex combination of GPS, PDa's and Bluetooth mobile. We need something dead simple, something like a pedometer that sends you a daily SMS, or a heart-rate monitor that gives you a daily/weekly summary....any thoughts?

YellowArrow Launched

This is antoher example of Geo-location blogging (kind of). It has an artisic spin to it, and demonstrates the interest that humans have in places, locations and objects.

the DemoMobile 15 for 2004

list here