When I made the decision to “go it alone” last week with this blog, that’s exactly what I thought I was doing - going it alone.

But it so happened, that with only a few days notice, the highly respected editor of TheFeature was in Munich last weekend (seeing Siemens) and we arranged to meet for a beer (or four). I’ve known Carlo Longino until then only via the occasional email.

However, I’ve also known Carlo as someone who was totally on the same wave length as me when it comes to writing about mobile technology. Many a time I have started to write a post, only to find it has already been written comprehensively by Carlo (or equally often by Mike Masnick at TechDirt and regular contributor to TheFeature). I know that they found themselves beaten to the post by me, on occasion too.

Not many people know that TheFeature’s owner was Nokia. While they never interfered editorially or tried to set the agenda in any way, they felt that it was important for the industry to host quality writing and debate. They have now decided that TheFeature’s work is done and are shutting it down. While this is very sad for the industry, I respect Nokia’s decision and indeed, their foresightedness in starting the venture in the first place.

But I’m delighted to say that this also leaves Carlo free to join MobHappy, as my partner. We want to continue the best traditions of TheFeature of quality comment and opinion on everything happening in mobile technology. As both Carlo and I have always tried to do, we want to bring you the news that matters and try and analyse why it matters. And we have a unique combination of in-depth knowledge of both the US and European markets, respectively.

We really hope you’ll enjoy MobHappy and become active in your comments and vociferous in your opinions. If you’ve got ideas for article you’d like to see - or even write yourself - please email us or leave a comment. Oh - and don’t forget to pass the word to friends and colleagues who might like it here too, please.

Because this has all happened rather quickly, we’re stuck with pretty basic design and functionality right now, for the site. This will be improved in due course, but if you notice anything you’d like us to change, please feel free to point this out.

Anyway, enough navel gazing and back to writing. We really hope you enjoy MobHappy.

The International Herald Tribune had quite a good round up on Monday about the current state of play in the Location Based Services market (via the excellent Pasta and Vinegar) and why wi-fi location might be better, or certainly a compliment to, GPS.

The basic problems with the sector are:

1. Lack of usability

Will we never learn to make mobile applications simple and
intuitive? If the average person (not the average technically literate
engineer) needs a user manual, they probably won’t use the application.
This, above all things, is iPod’s strength - you can work out how it
works in a few minutes.

SMS is easy to learn (though not very user-friendly as an
interface). MMS is hard, especially if you expect the user to
reconfigure their phone.

LBS technology is hard to use. It must become easier.

2. Compelling Applications

Or lack thereof.

Most people know the area they’re in pretty well, most of the time.
Therefore, find-my-nearest-ATM/resturant has very limited appeal to
most people. And for the tiny minority who might find it useful from
time to time, they have to remember how to use the service - back to
clumsy usability again.

Besides which, it’s far easier to use a Social Navigation Interface
(as I recently heard it called - where?) otherwise know as asking
someone the way.

What we need is good, relevant applications build with the user in
mind. These innovations will almost certainly not come from operators,
but from indie developers and they can’t get their hands on the API’s.

Which brings us onto…

3. Operators

LBS has nose-dived in priority for most operators. They look at
early failures and cite them as evidence that LBS doesn’t work. Well,
that’s true if you do the same thing again and again, but why not try a
different approach?

I heard a rumour that LBS was about 24 in terms of priority for a
large Euro operators and I think that’s probably representative.

At the same time, as being low on the corporate development path,
they guard the API’s from people who might be able to do something with
them AND try to charge silly money for any feeds they do give out. Are
operators the only industry in the world who don’t realise that
starting with high prices and eventually being forced to drop them,
slows down adoption of their services?

The IHT article finishes with a rather odd quote from Kenneth Hyers, an analyst with ABI Research:

"For any new service to be successful, no matter what it is, it can’t
require a whole new way of thinking," Hyers said. "MP3 players have
become popular because they followed in the footsteps of the Walkman,
which for the past 25 years has gotten people used to listening to
portable music."

Yes it’s true, the iPod was able to stand on the shoulders of the Walkman. But the Walkman was a whole new way of thinking, surely?

As I wrote yesterday, successful technology is governed by Motivation
and Opportunity. Is there a compelling reason why people might want to
use it? Is there a tool that gives them the Opportunity to realise that
Motivation, at an acceptable cost?

So far, LBS has suffered from lack of motivation - there’s just no
reason why people want to use it. So give us some more interesting
applications please.

If we don’t get this, LBS will never take off, which will be a shame. Or it’ll take off in a way that works round the operator network, which would be stupid.

Apologies for the sporadic posting of late, there’s been a lot of things going on. In any case, things will be back to a more normal and productive state here on the MMB very shortly.

A nice example of new marketing in the form of a Lynx (deodorant) ad
made solely for the web. Will people send it to each other? Well I’m
sending you to see it aren’t I?

Like the recent FCUK work, the brand isn’t even mentioned.

Link here.

Dr Michael Bull, a British sociologist, specialises in studying
people’s listening habits as they’re on the move. So he used to be into
Walkmans and now is known as "Professor iPod". His basic theme (if you
can summarise a man’s work in a sentence) is that people like iPods (or
Walkmans) because it allows them to feel in control of their
environment and to cut themselves off from what’s happening in the
world around them.

If you envisage the average commuter journey in London, New York or Tokyo, you can see that this might be reasonable.

But his recent survey of 1,000 iPod users has concluded that they "hate their cell phones" and because of that

As entertainment and gaming companies - to say nothing of direct
advertisers - brainstorm ways to connect with millions of potential
customers on their mobile technology, Bull says it will be a tough sell

Hmm. All generalisation are wrong, including this one.

While the relative handful of iPod users (in comparison to mobile
users) may relish the opportunity to create their own oasis from time
to time, this doesn’t mean that no one wants games on their phone, for instance.
Indeed, even if every iPod user eschewed mobile gaming, it wouldn’t
dent the mobile gaming industry, as there’s just not enough of them, by
comparison.

Equally, I know from my own work that some people love to receive
mobile commercially based conversations (aka mobile marketing) - if you
get it right, people text back their thanks. Sure, this new form of
marketing is more difficult than the old interruptive sort and people
are becoming more adept at screening ads out of their lives. But to
write off a whole industry because some iPod users say they’d prefer
not to have their mobile interrupt them, seems to be a little over the
top.

Anyway, the iPod is going the way of the digital camera soon. While
there will be a chunk of the market who want their own cultural fashion
icon, the vast majority will be listening to music on one device only -
and that’s never going to be the iPod.

The area of academia I would find interesting is if there’s any
relationship between happiness/success and unhappiness/inadequacy
depending on the mix of music you carry around in your iPod. Music is a
powerful mood influencer, so do Leonard Cohen fans have a bleaker view
on life than say, Busted fans?

I think we should be told.

Story source: Personal Tech Pipeline.

Beleaguered record execs are desperate for some good news. Despite
the Grokster case, P2P file sharing will go on unabated and besides
which (as Ben Hammersley points out) it does only apply to the US. A file sharing network is still valid in most of the rest of the world.

One of the straws they clutch at is ringtones. Once completely
ignored by the record industry (rumour has it that these people are paid
to go to work), ringtones are now a $4 billion revenue business,
in spite of their early scorn. So they now view the business as their
saviour.

"This is not a fad that will go away in the next year or so," said
Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business at Sony BMG Music
Entertainment.

But I think that’s exactly what it might be. A fad. A fashion. A
Tamagotchi. A Space Hopper. A Pokemon. A Beanie Babe. An iPod [There's a great website listing fads by decade here, for a trip down memory lane].

Actually, that’s not quite true. People will still get ringtones on
their phones. But, as a business, I think the bubble may be about to
burst big time.

Why?

Firstly, kids are getting fed up of getting ripped off. They’re going
to stop buying tones at three times the cost of an iTunes download. 99c
has become the "worth" of a track at the most. You can get an "all you can rent" model from Yahoo!
for $4.99 a month or you can go and eat your fill for free, with almost
guaranteed impunity, from a P2P network. So why do the record companies
and other retailers think they can carry on charging $4 or $5? Such
predatory pricing is madness.

Like murder, most technology change
is driven by motivation. Now all they need is the opportunity to end the
rip off. And that’ll come when the knowledge of self-created ringtones
and P2P filesharing of ringtones becomes more widespread.

Industry giant, Nokia, is committed to making this happen, with a spokesperson declaring that Nokia wants to encourage people in

"making ringtones, icons and other content and
giving it out free to other users" and that already "free tools that
people can use to create high-quality ringtones and icons are the most
popular downloads on our website".

More recently, Nokia launched their Sensor,
that many pundits see as a social networking tool. Sure, you can also IM over
Kazaa. But make no mistake, its primary function is file sharing - or
that’s what it’ll be used for.

As well as Nokia, there are loads of smaller independents offering
file sharing tones or the means of making and distributing them.

But, is there any evidence of this happening? Well, there are early
signs, for sure. In the UK, one of ringtones’ more mature markets, an ad in The Sun is lucky to breakeven - down from a return of 5 - 8 times only a year ago.

So there we have Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. Motivation and
Opportunity - the two essential ingredients for adopting new
technology. I forecast the ringtone gold rush is over.

My friend, The Pondering Primate, has an excellent idea for linking the physical and digital worlds with Shot Codes.

Shot Codes, are codes like the one here. You take a picture of one
with your camera phone, which instructs the phone to open its browser
on a specific web page. The one above is for this site, of course, if
you want to try it.

The PP suggests a great application for eBay. Say you’re running an
auction and you want to maximise local impact. Maybe for something
better sold locally anyway (like a bike), but want to tap into eBay’s
familiar platform. You can print out a flyer, complete with Shot Code,
to put in your local supermarket. People "click" on the Shot Code and
can see the price reached and place a bid - all from the comfort of
their own phone

That’s a pretty cool, real world application, just begging to be taken up.

Don’t worry, I will write about other stuff soon, but here’s another interesting story about mobile payments.

Crandy is the first independent
company in Europe to be issued with an E-Bank Licence. This allows them
to operate a mobile payment system and believe me, these things aren’t
easy to get hold of. They’re a German operation, though their website
is in English, French, Spanish and Turkish too, which gives an idea of
their ambitions.

Their major success so far has been in Germany, with 200,000 users,
largely driven by word of mouth as the mainstream press seems intent on
ignoring them. What’s also weird is that despite their relative success
and apparently excellent product, I’ve never heard of them until some of
their people left a comment on my blog. Is it just me, or has anyone
else heard of them? Please leave a comment.

Anyway, Crandy allows you to do a number of things with your mobile.

You can transfer money to other Crandy users and top up your prepay
card, from your phone. These are very important services. Partly, as
they drive recruitment of members organically. But partly, as they
cover the time lag between recruiting a member base and having
merchants on board - there’s no point in having a payment method that
you can’t use while everyone waits for merchants to be arrive.

However, increasingly, you’ll be able to use Crandy to pay at vending
machines and parking meters. And to purchase mobile content. They even
allow users cheap phone calls and sms.

So, do they pass Buckley’s First Law of Mobile Payments:

If the transaction process is any more complicated than using a credit card or cash, it will never succeed.

Let’s take, as an example, paying at a vending machine. Here’s what you do:

- You dial or sms the telephone number of the machine
- Select the product you want
- If you have sufficient credit, the machine dispenses it

Yep, I’d say that passes Buckley’s Law.

The operation uses real money ie it’s not deducted from your phone bill.
You have an account, which you can top up - automatically from your
bank account if you wish. So that seems easy to use too.

Oh and it has a Java version.

I’m going to have a deeper look around, but for now, I’d say it has
most of the features of a winner in this space, including being
incredibly cheap (or free) to use, cutting the mobile operator
completely out of the value chain. If it takes off, it’s going to do
real damage to Premium SMS.

One to watch, definitely.

Simpay was launched with much fanfare about 18 months ago, with the mission to start a Pan-European payments system for mobile phones. It was set up by a consortium of leading operators, mainly Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Telefónica Móviles.

The focus was micro-payments (less than Euro 10 or $12). I’m not sure why anyone would want to focus on one payment bracket, in the first place. I don’t think users think like "Oh, it’s a micropayment I’m looking to make and thus I’ll use my mobile phone in this instance, but I know that if it was $15, I’d use my MasterCard."

Once T-Mobile had dropped out, it looks as if the others have called it a day too. Their website has been taken down and now merely says:

Following the decision of one of its founding Members not to launch Simpay for the foreseeable future, the decision was made today at a General Meeting of Simpay not to pursue its activity on a pan-European scale as originally planned.

Instead, Simpay’s operations will be scaled back with immediate effect. Member operators will be able to exploit Simpay’s intellectual property rights at a national level, although international interoperability remains a goal. The members will make known their individual plans in due course.

This is an attempt at face saving, but can’t hide the fact that it’s been a failure on a grand scale.

Everyone involved is being tight-lipped about why it failed. But just trying to keep the shareholders happy and informed must have been an nearly impossible task. I’m also reminded that the camel is a horse designed by a committee.

In my view, the model that will bust into this billion dollar market will be led by entrepreneurs with a vision and a dollop of burning ambition, not a bunch of employees seconded to a co-ordinating body.

It’s a hot space, that’s now wide open. Banks don’t seem to want to play and operators seemingly can’t get it together. Who’s going to make a hell of a lot of money, then?

Story: The Register, who bizarrely didn’t seem to grok it was T-Mobile who had dropped out. They could have read it here a few weeks back.

Welcome to my new blog - I’m hoping that the readers from the old one (The Mobile Technology Weblog) will find me quickly enough!

Starting from scratch again is like addressing a large football stadium
with every post (I had 80,000 readers before) and suddenly finding
myself muttering to myself in a darkened room. However, I am sure that
I want to be more in control of my own destiny and that this is the
right move for me.

Good luck to Creative Weblogging and whoever takes over the blog.

However, for various reasons, the parting happened very quickly. So I
had to get this blog set up and launched immediately - and it shows.
It’s missing some of the functionality I’d like and lacks quite a lot
on the design front. Design for me is strange - I can tell good design,
but I don’t seem to be able to create it myself.

So please bear with me while I refurbish the place. Hopefully, the
environment won’t distract you from the reasons you come here, which (I
hope) is the writing. And if you can help with the odd bit of html
tinkering behind the scenes, I’d be very grateful and happy to give you
full credit.

You’ll find all the archives here from The Mobile Weblog, should you want them. And they’re also on the old site.

The best way to access this site is via www.mobhappy.com.
If I do change my mind, I’ll just repoint that url at where ever I
happen to go to. I feel pretty sure though that I’ll be here for a
while.

Finally, if you have found me, it would be great if you could pass the
word on to other people who might be readers, or you think would enjoy
reading this blog.

Cheers

Russell