Proving that mobile payments is a hot topic, Business Week (no less) has followed my lead and written an article on the topic (thanks Irakli for sending it over).

The article comes to pretty much the same conclusion as me - namely, that the usability of the service will be key. Or as a spokesman for Visa says:

“For U.S. consumers, it has to be simple to use,” says Tom J. Manessis, Visa’s head of emerging opportunities. “To click through six menus is not simple.”

I think that applies to just about any country, not just the US actually. Nobody likes poorly designed interfaces and complex transaction paths.

Let’s hope that this is more than mere rhetoric though and that they truly understand and apply 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.

Thanks to everyone who came to Munich’s first (world’s first?) BlogFest last night. There was a nice mix of bloggers and would-be bloggers who turned up. And thanks for being prepared to speak in English, for my benefit!

It was really interesting to meet the local talent, exchange ideas and just hang out in the balmy Summer evening. Even some Podcasters turned up!

I didn’t get the chance to speak to everyone, but some interesting blogs were:

Minga.de - started in November last year and already number 22 in Germany. It’s run by about 10 “citizen journalists” and just covers local news and issues in Munich. Patrick and Matthias.

Thomas is a “proper” journalist as a day job, working for a leading computer magazine. I like it when journalists join the blogging conversation instead of going into denial. Even if blogging is a threat to journalism, ignoring it, simply isn’t a smart strategy. The link above is to his private blog. The professional one is here.

Our Podcasters were Kathrin and Arik (if I can read my writing) who work for Audible.com and write AudibleBlog, a publisher of audio books here in Germany. I guess this makes them a very natural Podcaster, but well done for seizing the opportunity.

We’re planning to have another meeting in September, if anyone wants to come along. By which time the German blogging scene should have grown somewhat.

Patrick also tells me that Nico Lumma of Blogg.de is organising another meeting for bloggers in Munich. Details here. Nico probably knows more about the German Blogosphere than anyone, as Blogg.de tracks it and provides extensive stats.

Russell
PS And of course, no one did turn up in lederhosen. Oh well, maybe next time, I’ll wear mine.

KDDI says on June 15th, it sold the 10 millionth download from its Chaku Uta Full service.

The service launched in November 2004, boasts a catalog of 30,000 songs, and it now selling 2 million tracks per month and growing. It passed the 5 million mark just in April, after taking two months after launch to hit the 1 million milestone.

I’m looking at a few options currently to launch a stripped down version of this site, optimised for mobile browsing. After all, it is about mobile
Do you think this is a good idea? Would you use it? It’s a little more work for me, which I’m happy to do, if there’s a demand.

Leave a comment with a “yes” (as a minimum) and we’ll see if it’s a good idea.

Russell

James at Moco News writes that BT is launching a new radio service for mobiles today. For non-Brits, BT is the old government monopoly, privatised in the 80’s and being mainly a landline player, when they floated off the mobile operator, O2.

LiveTime will pilot with Virgin Mobile (a MVNO) and have 50 radio stations and the ability to download tracks for a small fee. They’ll also introduce other services like video.

I think this in a very interesting developments, as I’ve long argued that mobile and radio make a much better marriage than all the fuss over mobile and video. If you’re out and about, radio is easier to absorb than TV, as you can see what’s happening around you - handy for when you’re crossing the road or riding a bicycle , for instance. Here’s a fuller argument, wot I wrote at The Feature.

Also very interesting is that the official word from BT and Virgin is actually spinning this as digital TV to mobile, with radio mentioned as an afterthought;

The television service offers Virgin Mobileís customers access to live digital TV 24-hours a day, and features the UKís first mobile Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), so customers can see whatís on now, whatís on later and even set an alert to remind them when a favourite programme is about to start, up to a week ahead. Ultimately, Virgin Mobile TV will also let customers record their favourite programmes to watch later on their mobile.

I can’t find anything on pricing, but I assume it’s going to be a subscription model and since it’s broadcast, data charges aren’t applicable. At least that’s the way I read it.

Personally, I’d be inclined to launch a “sound” service with just radio. Then a “sound and vision” for all the full package of TV and radio bundled together. I know which one I’d subscribe to.

I wonder what reception will be like?

OK, this has not a lot to do with mobile and everything to do with tech. It proves to me that beneath my sophisticated marketing exterior, I am, at heart deeply geeky.

YubNub is both a website and a plug in for Firefox. It’s then simply, and rather brilliantly, a command line for the web.

As an example, I currently do a lot of image searching on Google, for my blog. To get there, I typically type in the image description into the Google Search Box in my Firefox Browser. It returns results for the Web, I click on “image” and I’m there.

But with the YubNub plug in, I type in gim (Google images) and then the description and I go straight to the search results. So if I want to find a picture of a cat, I type “gim cat” and get a page full of moggies, like the one above.

That’s the principle. So “am russell buckley” gives you the search results on Amazon for me and shows you my book. “wikip gnome” takes you straight through to the search results for gnome on Wikipedia.

But the extra cool touch is you can set up your own command lines. Just enter a command (that hasn’t been taken) and a website url and you have your own command for everyone to use.

YubNub was put together in a 24 hour programming competition by Jonathan Aquino. Which frankly makes me bow down in awe.

Way to go, Jonathan!

Story spotted on the excellent and ancient UK-Netmarketing forum in old London towne, posted by Edward Cowell of Neutralize. Clearly a man with his finger on the command line of search engine marketing.

If you’re a blogger and plan to be in Munich this Monday (20th) come along to our BlogFest!

It’s a very informal affair, involving no agenda, some beer and meeting other bloggers.

The venue is SAX, Hans-Sachs-Str. 5 and we’re meeting at 7.30 ish. The table is booked in the name of “BlogFest” - and will hopefully be outside if the weather holds.

Hope to see you there. Groupies welcome ie if you’re just into blogs and haven’t started your own yet, please come anyway.

Image from Guzzling Cakes.

One of the huge successes in the last few years on the net, has been the blossoming of Wikipedia. I regularly consult it nowadays for information and with increasing frequency.

If you don’t know about Wikipedia, here’s a very brief catch up. It’s a multi-authored, free, multi-lingual knowledge repository. Anyone can update or correct it in real time (which is a bit spooky), so it’s really the people’s encyclopedia.

Clearly, this also means that facts can be wrong, as you’re relying on the voluntary contributions of ordinary people, not necessarily experts in their field. Facts could be wrong accidentally or deliberately - although encyclopedia terrorism is a bit of a sad way to spend your time. However, the contributors are self-policing, with errors corrected and information being added all the time.

There are over a million articles available now, in contrast to the traditional Encyclopedia Britannica’s 65,000. Personally, I’ve never found a mistake, but I’ve never found one in EB either, though there are apparently quite a few.

One of the most exciting things that’s going to happen in the next 10 years, in my view, is that the Wikipedia will move into the physical world. It may not be a Wikipedia initiative (ie it might be a new and different organisation that makes it happen), but the principles will transfer and apply.

Let’s look at how this might work.

You’re in London and are standing in a pleasant, sunny street in Camden Town. City life is going on around you and you fancy the idea of knowing a little more about where you are right now.

Using your phone, as if it was a PC mouse, you uncover snippets of information from the world around you. You click on an old house in the road and a wealth of digital information comes onto your phone screen. Some contain video and audio links.

You learn that the house is on the site of one lived in by Charles Dickens’ wife after their separation. You’re interested in Dickens so you poll the area and find that there’s actually a tour of Dicken’s Camden Town that afternoon.

Out of curiosity, you look up how much this kind of house would be worth, what local rates and taxes are. And you read a review of a local citizen’s view of schools in the area.

Moving on you see a tree, which looks unusual and casually click on it to reveal its genus. Then you click on car you like the look of, to find out how much it would cost second hand (2003 model), where you might be able to find one and what the gas consumption is like.

You get the picture, I’m sure. But how does this all work?

The information would be from a variety of new and existing online sources. Some compiled especially for the Mobile Wikipedia by citizen contributors, some merely linked to sites that are already there. Citizen journalists would create the physical world links and then edit how the information was presented online - probably when they were back at a terminal more suited to the purpose. This might be a PC, or when they were able to dock their phone into a larger screen and keyboard combo.

Like the original Wikipedia, it would have potentially unlimited links and content and would be self-editing.

Technically, there are two choices. The low tech version would be a physical link, which was visible to the user. An example, might be a Yellow Arrow with a code to input into your mobile. More sophisticated, something like a Shot Code which allows you to take a photo of it with your phone and thus link you to the information.

Realistically, these methods are not too good long term. We can’t have Yellow Arrows stuck all over the place, after all.

Much better and altogether slicker would be something along the lines of the Siemens Digital Graffiti. This would allow you to discover links manually. But in the short term, while the world was being populated with links, your phone would alert you when a link was in the area and provided you’d activated that facility and that the alert corresponded to a stated interest.

This would allow three people to walk down the same street together. Anne gets nothing sent to her phone. Bill gets Wikipedia style information on everything available - he’s that kind of guy. Charlie gets a marketing coupon for a secret sale a local man’s clothes shop is giving - he’s such a fashion victim.

So, to be clear. No marketing messages if you don’t want them. And these would be targeted to your profile and preferences.

So will Jimmy Wales, the man with the vision, money and drive to make Wikipedia happen rise to this next challenge? Or will someone else pick up the gauntlet and create this huge legacy that few people ever have the opportunity to even contemplate?

Net Imperative report on a speech by Simon Waldman, head of Guardian Unlimited.

[For non-Brits, The Guardian, is a left-leaning, intelligent broadsheet newspaper. See below for Yes, Minster's famous amusing analysis of the Brit newspaper scene. The Guardian is also on a par with the BBC (a high compliment, indeed) for "getting" digital trends.]

Simon clearly sees the major trends in publishing and broadcasting at the moment and it’s a nice round up of many of the issues I write about here. Regular readers won’t find anything new here (OhMyNews, Citizen Journalism, blogging, RSS, blogging, PodCasting and BitTorrent) but if you’ve just started coming here, it’s a great catch up.

It’s also good to know that someone from traditional publishing can see the trends so clearly. Many in old media are like rabbits transfixed in headlights, aware that there’s some issues but not knowing what the hell to do.

Others see a few symptoms and desperately try to change tiny bits of their product. CNN’s coverage of blogs is a great example. Essentially, they react to the threat of blogs by getting newsreaders to read verbatim from blog sites. Not the most compelling TV and Jon Stewart has done a very funny broadcast about it on Comedy Central. It’s worth a look if you haven’t seen it already.

What they should be doing is figuring out how to take the best of the old and marry it with the opportunities presented by the new. Not easy, in fairness.

But what could TV channels in response to their viewers real needs to express themselves?

And how could they change the distribution of their product to meet people’s needs to control when they view it? The latter’s an easy one for me and one I’ve suggested before. Make available a legitimate internet download channel in return for micro-payments. If they don’t legitimatize it today, “illegal” content will continue to thrive and it’ll damage them badly in the longer term. Sooner or later, they need to introduce this, so why not, for once, do it sooner? Learn from the record companies’ denial phase and do it now.

Sir Humphrey Appleby (pictured above) of Yes Minister’s Guide of Brit Newspapers:

The Times is read by the people who run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by the people who think they ought to run the country. The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Independent is read by people who don’t know who runs the country but are sure they’re doing it wrong. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country. The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be run. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who still think it is their country. And the Sun’s readers don’t care who runs the country providing she has big tits.

CNN reports that eBay bowed to the pressure of the community yesterday and withdrew all sales of Live 8 tickets.

Tickets were awarded on the basis of an sms lottery and started appearing in hours on eBay for 100’s of dollars. But good old Sir Bob, branded eBay as an electronic pimp and condemned the auctions as against the spirit of the event.

But that’s not all. On Sky News, he urged people to go on eBay and “mess up the system”:

“Everyone should go on and pretend they have got tickets for Live 8 … otherwise go on and bid ridiculous amounts of money for the tickets already on the site,” said the feisty Irish rocker.

His call didn’t go unheeded. Within minutes, bids for hundreds of dollars turned into millions and eBay was flooded with false auctions.

eBay had no choice but to back down quickly from their previous “there’s nothing illegal about selling them” to “we’ve listened to the eBay community”. They should have seen this one coming, I think, when Sir Bob first made his displeasure known.

But it proves that there’s nothing so powerful as a community that has decided to act in unison. Even mighty corporations and governments must bow down to its wishes. Community power has arrived, but we ain’t seen nothing yet.