Mass Distraction is an art project covered by SmartMobs.

[Before outlining their social etiquette conversation-starter, I have a blogging etiquette issue. Smart Mobs credit the source of the article as Cool Hunting. Fair 'nuff.

But the image they've posted (above right) is linked to Textually. Textually also quote Cool Hunting as the source.

So it seems to be a case of Smart Mobs seeing the story on Textually (apparently) but not crediting them in their blog. In fact, I understand that Emily posted both articles in this case.

But it got me thinking, blogwise, would this be good etiquette, or doesn't it matter? I always try to credit the site where I see the info I'm writing about, as well as the original source. This seems to me to be more honest, as the site where I saw the story has uncovered it for me to write about.

With my style of blog (where I try to provide "editorial" or commentary on the story, rather than simply breaking stories) it doesn't matter to me if I credit the sources. But if you're news-type blog, there's arguably some kudos in being seen to uncover the story itself. A parallel might be The Sun newspaper quoting its deadly rival, The Mirror as the source of a story. It would never happen, though allegedly they both routinely use each other's news stories.

I'm not (to make it clear) accusing anyone of being unethical here. But I do think it raises an interesting blogging etiquette issue.

What do you think? Or don't you care? Is it an important blogging issue or should we just get on with blogging?]

Anyway, back to Mass Distraction. They’ve noted the social etiquette problem that you’re in mid-conversation with someone and your mobile phone rings. Some just answer it immediately, indicating that the phone call is more important that they “real” conversation they’re having. Other sort of look shifty and answer it in a “do you mind?” kind of way.

There is no actual answer to how to do this correctly, as we haven’t developed accepted “best practice” or “good manners” for this relatively new social maneuver.

Mass Distraction have designed three jackets that are aimed at providing possible solutions - or perhaps more accurately, aimed at provoking discussion of the area.

In the example above, for instance, the jacket contains a handheld game that you can give to your friend while you’re on the phone. The game stops when your phone call does.

Neat.

Textually covers a story about a new launch of US-based DialaCard.

The idea is that you take a pic on your camera phone, add text and send it to them. They’ll then print a post card and send it out for you.

So let’s get this right.

You take a picture, then invest some time in a witty caption. Then change the settings on your phone, coz they’ll be “out of the box” wrongly configured, if it’s like the UK. And spend a silly amount of money sending it to DialaCard. Who then charge you more money to print a copy and more money to post it.

Hmmm. Call me Mr Sceptical.

I really hate being critical of entrepreneur’s dreams. But I’m sorry, assuming you’re in the tiny minority who ever send an MMS is the first place, wouldn’t you just send the thing straight to its intended recipient in the first place?

Or even put it on your PC, put the caption on with Photoshop (if you can send an MMS. you’ll certainly be able to edit a photo) and email it free. And if you can do this, you’re certainly not going to be the type of person who knows someone without email.

Sorry, chaps.

England lost in the quarter final of the European Championship tonight.

Ho hum. What’s new?

Well, technology is what’s new. If the men in the grey (albeit Armani) suits who control Football allowed technology into the game, England’s winning goal would have been allowed and the story would be different.

It’s not fair on the players. It’s not fair on the fans. And it’s certainly not fair on the referee. If the referee has any doubt about a match winning decision, why the hell can’t he see the replay, like everyone else?

So here’s a message to the men-in-grey-suits:

I know it was brave to allow referees to have the technology called “whistles” all those years ago. And that technology improved the game didn’t it? So, maybe allow some more of this new-fangled stuff into the game to prevent fuck-ups like this in the future. It worked once, after all.

Secondly, whose idea was it that Richard Branson could referee?

YAFRO (Yet Another Friendster Rip Off) but of a different kind.

According to the Social Software blog Dogster allows you

Based on Friendster, it allows you to post pictures of your pooch and meet up with new Pup Pals. There are over 26,000 dogs online to search through, each with a profile that includes information such as breed, size, hometown and favourite walk.

What’s that got to do with mobiles? Well you take them for walks, don’t you?

160 Characters announces Cardiff based company, W2Wave has built an SMS domain checker

A simple text message request will check to see if an internet domain name is available or not.

By sending DOMAIN NAME followed by DOMAINNAME to 81551 a response is sent with whether or not the name has been registered. The service costs 25p for each request.

One word really. Why?

It seems to me that the mobile services that work best are:

1. Stuff you use on your mobile (ie games, ringtones etc)
2. Stuff you can use to kill time when you’re out and about
3. Stuff for people without (regular) access to a PC
4. Stuff you need to do urgently and can’t wait to get back to the PC
5. Stuff that’s relevant to your immediate location

Are the anymore, anyone?

It also seems to me that this service falls into none of the above. I’ve bought a fair few domains in my time. And I just can’t see myself ever spending 25p to check something that I could check for free back in the office.

More to the point, anyone who’s ever tried to buy a groovy name will know that the first 250 or so you think of are taken. So it’s going to be rather frustrating to keep spending the dosh only to be constantly disappointed. And when you do find one? You have to wait until you get to the PC anyway, to buy it.

Sometimes people launch services because it’s possible. Video calling springs to mind. But just coz it’s possible, doesn’t mean that people will use it.

Good luck to them and maybe it’s very clever from a technical point of view or something, but it seems to me to be just a simple database interrogation. Hardly showcase stuff.

Hmmmm. Or maybe I’ve missed the point.

Text bullying is big problem in some schools - in other words, sending an SMS of a threatening or nasty nature to someone in your peer group.

In fact, a recent UK survey says that 1 in 4 kids

had been subjected to bullying either via text or email and that many of them never reported it.

The problem is made worse simply because it’s in a written format - thus whatever natural inhibitions felt by the bully are removed from the equation. Watch what even a mild mannered kid writes in an SMS or in an Instant Messenger/chat forum and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Can you imagine Lord of the Flies if they’d had texting then? [Book idea for someone!]

The problem is compounded by parents’ and teachers’ failure to even be aware of the issue in many cases. If someone’s getting bullied in the solid world, there’s often evidence - bruises or missing dinner money, for instance. But mental cruelty can be just a damaging, if not worse.

So it’s great to see Vodafone in New Zealand trying to do something about it with the launch of a new initiative designed to combat Text Bullying (via Technodirt).

Unfortunately, they’re addressing the effect, not the cause. In other words, bullying doesn’t happen BECAUSE of text messaging, it’s merely the latest tool to be employed. It’s the same argument as saying that the net should be banned because of the paedophiles who use it. The unfortunate fact is that low life and scum will use any new technology, as much as the good guys. So let’s look at how we can stop bullying per se, not just text bullying.

Because even if you solve the text bullying, the bully will just move on to another means of tormenting their victim.

But if you really want an effective campaign to stop text bullying, here’s the answer. Forget counseling. Forget advice. All you need to do is to warn a bully to stop it or they get cut off from their network. Simple.

Though I appreciate there are some operational issues, they’re not insurmountable and after all, written evidence of the crime is readily available in every case.

As I’ve said before, talking away a phone from a kid these days is far worse than grounding them. You remove the essential ingredient of their social and sex lives. They become, in effect, a non-person, a persona non-mobile.

This is a very serious threat and one any kid will take notice of - believe me.

Of course, you still have the problem of bullying. But not via this medium.

When Nokia launched their new wave messaging idea we commented that it would be great for gigs (well, and heckling actually).

Well, it seems it’s already happening. Michael “Mr Cool” Tchong’s Trendsetters email newletter (sign up here) comments:

At a May 29 Toronto concert, Blink 182 asked attendees to pull out their lighters. When few people heeded the call, the lead singer announced, ìWeíre in the age of the Internet, everyone pull out their cell phone!î Within seconds, a sea of lights illuminated the audience. Says our Toronto Cool Hunter, ìEveryone could not believe how amazing it looked.î

And sooo much cooler with Wave Messaging.

The BBC Reports on a survey conducted by Teleconomy - Me, My Mobile and I.

As a reader of this blog, I’m sure none of the findings will be especially surprising but it’s well worth a read.

The main findings are:

26% say they couldn’t live without mobile

For children, phones are not so much about communication as a device for downloading things such as pop news, games and ringtones.

and that

10 to 14-year-olds - dubbed M-Agers - are rapidly becoming the most sophisticated users of phones.

“These people have their phone on 24 hours a day. They are frightened of missing a call because to not be available is to cut oneself off from one’s social network,”

In other words, for M-Agers (I prefer the Text Generation, myself) their mobile is the central pivot of their lives. Take it away and you’ve effectively isolated and emasculated them - they become a non-person.

It’s also worth noting that these kids are tomorrow’s grown ups (worthy of Ronald Reagan that line!). back to my mantra:

The mobile will do to the PC what the PC did to the mainframe.

The Yankee Group have announced with absolute certainty that

mobile data revenues will double to $50 billion over next five years

Phew! That’s a relief then. With voice calls in decline (a fact, not a guess) it would be jolly worrying for the telcom industry if something wasn’t going to come along and replace this lost income.

So now, the operators can take this report to their shareholders and make reassuring noises and everyone will be happy.

Of course, it might be complete coincidence, but you don’t hear of many reports that paint a pessimistic view of data traffic (or anything else for that matter). But then who would buy such a report? Not the operators, as it’s not what they want to hear or what they want to tell their shareholders.

Funny that.

I wonder what would happen if analysts had to publish an analysis today, of what they were saying 5 or 10 years ago about what would be happening now?

It’d be interesting wouldn’t it?

But, leaving my cynicism of analysts aside, I’m sure that mobile data will explode over the coming years, otherwise Iíd find a new passion. Iíd also suggest that theyíll actually increase by 223.758 % in the next five years, but hey, I can stick a finger in the air as well as anyone can.

However, my forecast assumes that the operators start looking at how they can actively encourage data traffic. And that means fostering the development of applications AND content that consumers really want. This kind of market innovation rarely happens within giant companies like operators, so the big question Iíd be asking as an operator shareholder wouldnít relate to how many reports theyíd purchased that month but:

How is your company actively fostering the development of creative applications that will drive data traffic in the next 5 years? What is your strategy for achieving this?

The amazing and well-documented success of DoCoMo owes itself mainly to the way they approached this challenge.

And if operators donít develop and act on this strategy, itís the modern equivalent of building railway tracks, while hoping and praying that someone, somewhere will think up a way to use them.

SmartMobs blogged a new Mobile Social Networking service - WhoAt

a social networking and dating site designed for mobile phones. You tell it where you are and it tells you where your friends and nearby potential friends are. It works via mobile phone browsers (WAP/WML and XHTML-MP), SMS, and standard web browsers. New York and San Francisco are the first target regions. I asked Jamie Byers, who sent the pointer and description, what makes WhoAt different from similar sites, like Dodgeball. Jamie replied:

- WhoAt also introduces users to people they don’t know, rather than only friends and friends-of-friends, using a dating-like matching system.
WhoAt is made for mobile browsers and use via laptops / handhelds,
whereas Dodgeball appears to be SMS only.

“When you can see a bandwagon, it’s too late” as Lord Hanson said. Now VC’s are bored with the Online Social Networking bandwagon, here’s a new one to emerge, methinks - YAMSNADA. Yet Another Mobile Social Networking and Dating Application
Actually, unlike the online version, which still seems to me to be an idea in search of a business model, the mobile version may make sense. It’s much more realistic to expect people to pay for services on their mobiles, as they always have done.

I can also see that in usability terms, the impulse to look for a date or a friend NOW lends itself better to mobile. Impulse services are also greatly enhanced by the recipe “add alcohol” and if you’re sitting in bar after a few drinks….

The trouble with mobile though is more about critical mass. Imagine I’m a hip young dude in downtown New York (I know it’s difficult, but try to imagine) and I fancy hooking up with a cool girl or a FOAF (Friend of a Friend). So I whip out my mobile and get surfing on WhoAt (or similar service). And (as it’s early days for them) there’s no one in my area.

So I try a gain a few days later with the same result. And then try again….and give up.

The key difference between online and location-based mobile social networking is the fourth dimension - time. Online it’s relatively easy to get critical mass , as I just need to recuit some like-minded people. In a mobile context, I need to recruit them AND have enough of them that they’ll be in certain places at certain times. Mathematically (though I have no idea how to prove this!) it’s going to be incredibly less likely that you’ll find someone by adding this new dimension.

So the answer must be to marry online with mobile. Neither can succeed big time (ie in VC type returns) without the other.

Friendster should buy them….

By the way, if you’re interested in this social networking thang, check out Scott Allen’s blog here. It’s sister site to this one.