Engadget confesses mystification over this little device, the GadgetyII Bluetooth P2P AV system.

Especially since the P2P part implies that to use it with another G2g, youíd be communicating directly via Bluetooth, and thus you must be within Bluetoothís distance. Which is basically the same room.

But the “same room” comment ain’t necessarily so. Bluetooth can be used up to 100m away and recent experiments have allowed a range of 1km. The reason that the range is normally only 10m is a power issue and if these guys have found a way round that….

Here’s what I’ve wrote in January about what I called Local Free Messaging.

Oh dear. More bad news for MMS. Kids are bluetoothing and IRíing like crazy. Believe me, Iíve seen this happening and itís my job to know about stuff like this.

And kids are using it to swap their own pics, ringtones, images, wallpaper ñ you name it. The same way as SMS grew in spite of the operators, LFM is growing too. But thereís no revenue model for operators and indeed, no way to track how much itís really happening. So if this is all media hype and bullshit, prove it

It that’s right, this device could be for Local Free Messaging, which I think kids will love. Whether they’ll love it enough to want a separate device for it though, remains to be seen.

On the other hand, it could be a an electronic thumb for all we know.

If you don’t live in Germany, or can’t get to Munich for 16th November, don’t bother to read anymore of this post. Unless you know someone who might be interested, in which case forward this on to them - they’ll thank you for it.

But if you can come to Munich for 16th November, we’re launching the German branch of Wireless Ecademy. It’s a networking event with some short presentations and takes place after work - so you don’t have an excuse not to come.

I’ll be speaking on Location Based Services, but only for 20 minutes, so don’t let that put you off
There’ll also be, what we think is the first Speed Networking session in Germany!

So if you’re interested in mobile or wireless, come along and meet colleagues from Siemens, Microsoft and Intel (to name a few) as well as saying Hi to me.

You can get more info here and register - first come, first served.

Hope you can make it.

Russell

Here’s an (unattributed) quote from the recent Web 2.0 conference via Emergic:

“More cell phones are sold in four days than all the Apple computers in history.”

I know it’s comparing apples with err…mobile phones, but it’s still pretty impressive.

UPDATE: Russ Beattie emailed me that it should be “all the Apple iPods in history” I thought it sounded impressive! Thanks, Russ.

Boing Boing reports on one of those ideas that seem pretty pointless if you’re over 25. But if you’re under 25, it’s utterly crovey.

TalkNow, by Mobilehookup, allows members to chat/flirt on their mobiles for 5 minutes, without revealing their phone numbers. After that, if both parties decide they want to go further, they can find out each other’s details.

The service is a spin out of their SMS based dating/flirting product where singles can initiate a contact with an SMS via Mobilehookup. TalkNow allows them to get a little closer, without compromising anonymity.

It’s a kind of phone-based speed dating.

The Sun Sentinel reports that a 15 year old boy repeatedly stabbed a classmate with a screwdriver in their Florida school because he thought he’d stolen his mobile phone.

He’s being charged with attempted murder.

Cartoonist and Creative Director, Hugh MacLeod has an interesting take on the current Kryptonite scandal which has been circulating via the Blogosphere. In case you missed it, Kryptonite make iconic bike locks. It was recently discovered that they could be very easily opened with any cheap Bic ballpoint.

Over to Hugh’s scenario:

DAY ONE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they’re not. You guys are assholes.

Funnily enough, I bought a bike lock yesterday and guess what brand I didn’t buy?

Of course, blogging isn’t necessarily the whole answer. Every company should have a strategy in place for just such a problem and how to minimise the damage to the brand. This might be as extreme as recalling every single Kryptonite lock sold in the last 5 years, if the alternative is to bleed slowly to death from here on in.

But creating an effective dialogue with your customers and press is certainly at the heart of such a strategy and blogging could have been an important part of that. If they’d reacted quickly and honestly, they could have won sympathy and respect.

Instead they’ve chosen to stick their heads up their arses and hope the problem will go away. It won’t. This has never been a wise course to follow, but nowadays it’s nothing short of disastrous.

According to the BBC (and how can you argue with them?) the phrase “mobile phone” was first used rather earlier than you’d have thought. 1985? 1980?

No, actually 1945.

Although “mobile” as in “Hi, I’m on my mobile” didn’t come in until 1986.

Back on June 15th, I blogged a piece about what I called MobileFlashing

I thought of a new type of cyber crime I’d share with you - MobileFlashing - as I have now called it.

Obviously, I’m not condoning this, but it will happen. Assuming you can find someone with a video phone in the first place!

Well, according to the UK’s Sun newspaper (via The Feature) it’s now happened - but with MMS rather than video to start with.

STUNNED Rosie Godfrey rang a helpline about her new camera phone ó and a customer services man sent four snaps of his WILLY.

An Orange spokeswoman said: ìWe have apologised unreservedly for the distress.î

What more can I add?

Other than to note that Orange’s phones, along with everyone else’s, still don’t work out of the box. Which is just plain silly.

Russell

PS By the way, the picture isn’t of Mark Tomlins, as Mr Murduch’s News Corp doesn’t allow use of its images without permission.

October 17th was the day that the web was officially born just 10 years ago.

That day a company called Spry introduced a product called
“Internet in a Box.” For the first time, you could trot down to
a store, buy a software package, take it home and have everything
you needed to connect to the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Spry later became a part of CompuServe, one of the first of the
online services. It was the biggest of them in 1994. Then
CompuServe was acquired by America Online (AOL) which then merged
with and was devoured by Time Warner.
Source: Wally Bock’s Postcard from the Digital Age.

Looking back, it would have been impossible to foresee the deep changes at all levels of society this would set in train. Try to remember life pre-email (offices were noisy places as everyone was on the phone!), pre-Amazon, pre-eBay, pre-Blogging and when you got your live news and weather on the hour from TV or radio. Industry news for your sector arrived once a week in a magazine. And job searching was done from hard copy too. Networking was done face to face or by phone and it was really tough to get hold of people.

Obviously, I’ve missed out loads of things in this brief analysis. But it’s staggering to think that this has all happened in just 10 years (OK 10 years and 3 days).

I wonder what the next 10 will hold for us?

Just as it would have been nearly impossible to speculate 10 years ago, it’s even more difficult now, as technology is changing something like 4 times faster than 10 years ago. As Bill says, you tend to overestimate change in the next 2 years and underestimate it in the next 10.

There is one thing I can be sure of. If 1994-2004 was the age on the PC and the web, 2005 - 2015 is going to be the age of the mobile phone and the web. The PC is ready to be packed off into retirement to make way for its rampant, vulgar young offspring and now we’ll really see some changes.

What a fascinating time to be alive!

Russell

One of the most incisive “marketing” books in the last 10 years is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. It’s not really about marketing per se, but how viruses spread, including virus ideas.

I won’t write any more about The Tipping Point here, other than to say if you’re reading this blog, you MUST read it as you’ll find it interesting, stimulating and informative.

Seth Godin, one of the most marketers of this generation, has been lucky enough to preview Malcolm’s next book and rates it very highly. So, add Blink to your New Year’s reading list.

Anyway, Malcolm’s also written a thought-provoking Manifesto for Change This (another Godin project) called The Talent Myth that dispels the idea that employing talented people isn’t necessarily the great idea it might seem. The organisation itself is more important than the a star-obsessed culture.

I would love to offer you a few choice morsels to whet your appetite.

But it’s produced in a restricted PDF format that doesn’t seem to allow cutting and pasting. Which is very un-Godin-like as it makes it very difficult for bloggers and others to quote from it and so communicate the essence of the manifestos. I wonder why.