iCon

I'm on holidays at the moment in Athens and have brought along a couple of books to devour, one of which is "iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business ". I've finished it and its a great read. There's been a lot written about Mr Jobs but I think this is first book that can put his (and his teams) achievements in perspective in the three industries he has impacted (music, computing and film). I'm even more convinced that Apple must have some big plans for the mobile space - it plays so well on their skill-set, the combination of hardware, software and user focused design.
I think the Motorola s/ware distribution deal is an industry distraction while their talented team of engineers devise something that can shake-up the mobile device space. Bring it on....Ill have two! ;-)

International GPRS settings

Heres a handy link to all the settings you need, wherever you are in the world.

Batteries Congress 2005

saw this - can you imagine how exciting this conference would be!

Who will Google buy next?

Heres a view from Kuro5shin on who might be in Googles sights...

Yahoo buys DialPad

Yahoo has acquired DialPad in a move to strengthen their VOIP play. Who's next to be eaten up? Skype, Teltel, Vonage, Yak, Net2Phone???
Om Malik broke it yesterday, press release here
Update 06/09 - teleo just got bought by Microsoft

Vodafone Simply

Due to who my employer is, I haven't really been able to write much about the Vodafone Simply offering that was launched a couple of weeks ago. However, there's been quite a lot of misunderstanding in the press about how Vodafone has gone against its 3G ambitions etc - rubbish!
Anyway - here's an article from Steve Wallage in the Feature who seems to get it!

Defensible emotional advantages

In this post, BusinessWeek talks to Pierre Omidyar about connecting people together using the internet. Mr Omidyars language is full of adjectives which describe basic human emotions scuh as "trust", "empower", "discover", and "influence".
It got me wondering if a defensible technological advantage is realy so important nowadays?? maybe a defensible emotional advantage is more important to a business plan and product. I think this is more than merely marketing spin. Products that are built from the ground up to appeal to human emotion, desire and need tend to be so much more successful.

Another UK MVNO...

"Extreme Mobile" here

Nokia Sensor

Real-time P2P location-based bluetooth-enabled community messaging from Nokia (link here). Reminds me a bit of what the guys at TagTxt were/are trying to do.

Weightlessness...

my next long weekend trip is gonna be here ;-)
from the redferret

Mobile Search

Mobile search is going to be a big topic. And its not just a case of putting a mobile interface on to an existing web service. The mobile environment presents opportunities for intelligent search (location, environment, advertising etc) and also a number of challenges (keypad entry, screen size, display limits to results etc). yahoo and google have recently entered this space and 4Info and Caboodle are the new start-ups to watch.
14/07 - also Medio Systems
29/09 - "mobile operators fear the Google effect" - VNUNet
05/10 - JumpTap (similar UI to MotionBridge)

mHealth

watch-style mobile device that can measure your health condition and transmit it over a wireless network. I expect this kind of device to have a wide appeal, particularly if coupled with a decent web-app which can interpret the data, offer advice, training, targets etc.

SIMYO MVNO launches in Germany

KPN have lanuched SIMYO MVNO in germany - similar pricing structure and offering to EasyMobile in the UK, and co-incidentally similar branding colours as well. Could this be a defensive move before Easy arrive in Germany?

G’zOne TYPE-R

This is a water-proof, shock-proof, everything proof phone just launched in Japan with stopwatch, torch, compass, buzzer etc.

Schwinn Electric Stingray

v cool

Oooh - open-source VOIP?!

go here (via the register)

Economist Innovation Summit - Nov 05

go here

new venture - Sonopia

Juha Christensen's (former head of MS Mobile) new stealth venture

Location-aware Media Networking Operators & Intercasting Corp

This is an extremely well articulated and insightful blog on the future of content, media and the concept of Location-aware Media Networking Operators (LMNO's). Given the current environment, shift in market dynamics and excitement and optimism around mobile, I believe is a very plausible vision of how things will evolve. The author Shawn Conahan, is CEO at Rabble. Wavemarket (crunkie) is in a similar product space.

Innovate Europe 05 - Zaragoza, Spain

go here

Google acquires DodgeBall

Dodgeball have been early pioneers of "location sensitive mobile social software" - essentially connecting you to your mates via your mobile, depending where you all are. Its more evidence of Google buying product innovation (rather than creating it in house), but also goes to show that theres some serious thinking going on about how to connect their (currently) disparate product offerings (search, blogger, adsense, picasa, orkut, gmail etc) together. I suspect that for Google, Dodgeball is one piece of a compicated strategic puzzle that they are working on.

Blogger Mobile

Yesterday the blogging population saw the announcement of Blogger Mobile - for US based mobile users, they can start blogging with minimal effort and set-up hassle. Just send a picture/text to go@blogger.com and you're up and running. The service sends the user a web link and a code which can be used to view/edit the blog. Bloggers who already maintain a blogspot can register existing blogs against their registration code.

This is an interesting development for a number of reasons:

1) It demonstrates how important the mobile phone is for the future of blogging. The mobile is the perfect tool for adding pictures/text to your blog. Most of us (!) spend a lot of time away from our PC's/laptops but the mobile stays with us.

2) It could mark the change from blogging being a niche activity to a mass market phenomenon. Simplicity is absolutely critical to running up the adoption curve and so many products remain niche because they havent managed to overcome provisioning complexity. This is the brilliance of what Four11 and Hotmail did with email. They turned email from a product that needed an ISP, modem, PC, pop3 address, smtp config etc into something that required 2 minutes of registration time in an interenet cafe or a friends PC. Blogger has reduced the provisioning complexity down to a couple of steps.

3) It suggests that Blogger has done some form of deal with US operators (not all of them). This is interesting for me because I think European operators might have a different attitude given their commitment to the upkeep and maintenance of their walled gardens.


Despite all the positive press, I still think there's room for improvement, because fundamentally the average mobile user is not familiar with sending with pictures or text to an email address. We send stuff to numbers.

BuddyBuzz

go here

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