Coming to a shop near you....(in the US)

Low-cost GSM/CDMA mobile handsets with a pre-paid amount, straight out the box from Hop-on!

Update - 30/06/05 - $34.50 GSM handset offered by hop-on for india

Zyb - global SMS from PC/web to mobile

Zyb provides global SMS from PC or web, to mobile. Theres a whiff of Skype branding/site feel about it

Skype 4 SmartPhone (!)

Get Beta here

Apple iPhones...

There has been quite a lot of press about Motorolas problems in convincing mobile carriers to order lots of phones with Apple iTunes. This is partly because they have conflicting attitudes on who should control music download, and how much they should charge.
Just a thought.....whats to stop Apple manufacturing a mobile/iPod and distributing it through their existing network of iPod resellers. Customer buys a pre-pay SIM and pops it in the back of the iPod. So maybe Apple could also be an MVNO?

'Intelligent' Bookmarks

Joshua Schachter, a rather clever chap of Memepool and GeoURL fame has just received funding (undisclosed but less than $5m) for his social bookmarking venture http://del.icio.us from Union Square Ventures, Amazon.com, Marc Andreessen, BV Capital, Esther Dyson, Seth Goldstein, Josh Koppelman, Howard Morgan, Tim O'Reilly, and Bob Young.

That’s quite a board and quite a network....!

It’s an old idea revamped though, riding on a new wave of VC investment in all things that leverage the communities and related intelligence around what we do on the web. "Social bookmarking" is close to my heart. Back in good old '98 when I was fresh out of Uni, I co-founded Skip2 Technologies, an Internet software co that enabled users to store, manage and share bookmarks via the web. The idea was good, but the business model and execution was poor. Despite a number of interested VC's we never raised any funding, but did sell the company to MyNet, my second start-up in 2000. So if you’re wondering what Social bookmarking is, let me try and explain....imagine in your browser you have a set of folders, lets call one "Holidays", and another "restaurants". As you chug along through life, you add links to your favourite hotels/holidays cottages, beaches etc in the "Holidays" folder. Likewise with "Restaurants". Now, connect that information to your social network (friends, family, colleagues etc) and you have a very powerful and socially relevant source of information on where to eat, where to stay etc. It’s powerful because you are more likely to visit somewhere that as been referred to you by a friend. Google ads are all very well, but the most accurate, trustworthy and relevant referral is from someone you know, who can provide feedback, experience, tips, other links and info.

Del.icio.us has quite a few features up and running already. Each user has a separate URL from which you can access your personal links via the web. You can see the number of other people who have listed the same link, and then see their link lists. You can also link to other people through interests or key "tag" words within the context of the link. So if I link to a site about "cornwall cottages" I can also see who else has tagged the same link, and others can search the links to see if there are any links that reference "cottages cornwall". The service doesn’t appear to have any privacy controls at the moment.

The Del.icio.us business model isnt clear yet. At Skip2, our plan was to mine the aggregate demographic information of the user base that visited a specific site which we then intended to sell to site owners to improve insight, advertising accuracy and experience. Another option was to enable users to sign-in to other sites using their Skip2 username/password - the .Net passport approach. Blink tried to do a similar thing. Del.icio.us faces competition from De.lirio.us (an open source copy), www.furl.com and www.spurl.com.

Del.icio.us is very basic and a bit geeky, but with the new influx of funding, Joshua and his team will be able to transform it into something more usable, consumer focused, and clever. Good luck to them...

Nokia/Yahoo

Yesterday, Nokia announced a partnership with Yahoo to pre-install a range of Yahoo Internet services (email, search, entertainment) on Series 60 devices. This is the first significant step I have seen from a device manufacturer to include content services in the device., which until now has been traditionally controlled by the operator. For Yahoo, it is clearly an excellent distribution route, and I suspect we will see further announcements with other device manufacturers. Maybe they will go a step further and start an MVNO. And why not - if EasyMobile can be up and running with 40 people on the pay-roll, this route is low-cost and just extends Yahoo's market reach. Yahoo Email customers are likely to have a closer brand affinity and realtionship with Yahoo than they might with O2, T-Mob or Vod. Then maybe AOL and MSN will follow suit? Would do the world of good for mobile data services....

07/11 - Yahoo! to launch own phone on Cingular

Emotion translated through technology

read more here

ZipCar

This is a great car rental model. Source: RedFerret - one of my Top10 blogs..

Hybrid Satellite-Cell Networks

This article talks about two companies that are combining satellite and cellular networks to provide end to end coverage. Add in to the mix other technologies such as WiMax, and you have a much less capital intensive network infrastructure. This should ultimately translate to lower cost mobile services for the consumer.

Jamdat acquires Tetris rights

I think for $137m, Jamdat got a bit of a deal. Of all the mobile phone games out there, Tetris is has a huge following already in the non-mobile world, and given its play format and style, it translates very well to the mobile world (04/05 4th top best selling game in UK). And its sooo addictive. Theres been loads of hype (and VC activity) around mobile gaming over the last six months. Theres now a lot of competition in the mobile gaming sector and its a challenge to find new game formats that will be financially successful. The margins will improve as handset standardisation improves because much of the cost of game development is in reformatting the title for different types of handsets.
For Blue Lava Wireless (the Tetris mobile owners), $60m in cash and 4.05m shares in Jamdat stock should keep them in cocktails and suncream for the next 15 years in Honolulu, at which point the Jamdat rights to Tetris expire!
press release here

Operator handset "protection"

ARgghhhh! there must nothing more annoying for customers who have bought a 5/600 euro handset, and when then try and transfer pictures from it to their computers, they find that the Object File Transfer has been blocked. The operators do this on a lot of phones to prevent people being able to transfer wallpapers/ringtones etc to another device (cos DRM isnt quite there yet). Interestingly "vanilla" devices (e.g. non operator tampered) now sell for almost 30% more on Ebay than operator customised ones. Shows what the market thinks of the operators efforts to improve the handset UI/experience!!!!!

Google results

Eric Schmidt must be smiling today with Googles incredible results. These have over-shadowed Ebays results which were also impressive. I, along with many others outside of the US were early advocates and promoters of the Google search experience and it still riles me that we didnt get a chance to participate in last years IPO.

Bangladesh Village Phone Program

This is a great example of how companies with a social conscience can improve their local environment, help the population and increase profit at the same time.

Odeo - creating a podcasting marketplace

Evan Williams (co-founder of Pyra Labs, Blogger) left Google last October to co-found Odeo. Evan writes "Odeo aims to enable this new distribution channel and medium by creating the best one-source solution for finding, subscribing to, and publishing audio content".

3 Blogger gripes

1) When a user edits a post, then selects publish, the application publishes the article but stops once it has completed the process. Why doesnt it automatically return to the "edit post" view?
2) Im not sure I "get" the publish process. it seems unecessary...why cant the blog just be published automatically on a periodical basis, or every time a post has been made. Now i expect some may sit back aghast at the sheer stupidity of this comment, but I think applications like these need to work in ways that are currently familiar to users (e.g. writing an email) , or align with existing behaviour.
3) My user stats are very wrong.

Did you escape?

If you did, here is the second room...

Skype Update

Wow! 100m customers (35% active), new SkypeIn product (for increasing your call circle to those who dont (yet) have skype) and new Skype Voicemail (in case you cant answer your SkypeIn calls).

Can you escape?

There are less than 4000 people in the world who can escape this house. So have a try.

http://flash.qbol.net/pl;p/youxi/images/04042203.swf

There are 13 items hidden in this room in order to let you get out of thisroom.If you found:0-6 items, your IQ is very low, total idoit6-8 items, Low IQ, u r an idoit9-10 items, u r normal11-12 items, your IQ is high, above the average.13 items found and get out of the room, there are less than 4000 people in the that world can do it.

Orange MVNO deal with Tele2

Link

Googlezon

A vision of the media industry in 2014...

democratising innovation by using "lead-users"

...in The Feature

Patent for real-life Matrix

here

Mobile radio content feeds

I know that a number of Nokias (and others) have a built in FM transmitter, but there are many popular handsets that dont. Radio is a ubiquitous music experience that is understood and appreciated by the masses. MSpots approach to wrapping this in to the device mediaplayer for a monthly subscription is smooth. What excites me are the future possibilities of this; podcasts, video streams, purchased music, audio books, live user-generated radio broadcast feeds etc...

Phling!

Phling! is a new service for mobile phones that acts as the glue between your phone, your PC, and your IM contact list to enable sending multimedia between the three. It’s not an MMS protocol, so it avoids leaving you with any per-message charges, instead using peer-to-peer technology via the internet connection on your phone to relay the data. You can send pictures, voice and text messages to IM contacts, to your home PC, or to your mobile blog via your phone, all for free — at least, while the phling! service is still in beta. What’s the catch? For now, it only works on three phones, all Nokia: the 6600, the 6620, and the 7610, and you have to have one of the listed data plans from AT&T, Cingular, or T-Mobile

Rabble

the Rabble team can clearly see a shift in traditional mobile content creation and distribution models . They appear to be developing some form of platform to allow end users to connect to each other and share, manage, subscribe and download media produced by other users.
Intercasting Corp are running a Rabble beta. Unfortunately I dont live in the US so I cant register and see what theyre up to. Definitely one to watch....