It’s been a while since we last looked at Bluejacking, but it’s alive and well and seems to be going from strength to strength. At least, that’s what I deduce from a look round BluejackQ, which is the spiritual home of the movement.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my post in June 2004 for a definitive guide. But essentially, it involves ordinary mobile phone users (as opposed to commercial organisations) sending unsolicited messages (text and pics) by Bluetooth. The messages range from harmless and childish (in a good way) pranks - such as “your shoe lace is undone” - to perhaps initiating a friendly contact.

As Bluetooth messages aren’t trackable, unlike say, an sms, no one can say how popular Bluejacking is. But anecdotally, I’d say it’s big and getting bigger - perhaps even now crossing the chasm from early adoption into the early majority, if you know your Moore.

MobiLuck have clambered on board this bandwagon and just released version 3.5 of its short range, Bluetooth messaging system. This takes Bluejacking, which is actually rather a clumsy interface, involving using the entries in your phone’s address book, and makes the whole thing that much slicker and easier to use.

It automatically searches for other Bluetooth devices and alerts you when they’re found. This casting process is still quite a hassle using the normal method. It also has built-in virus protection, as playing around with Bluetooth messages from strangers’ mobiles is the digital equivalent of unprotected and promiscuous sex.

The interface is a lot easier to manage as well.

The app costs Euro 14.95 ($17.96) a year and is currently only available on Nokia Series 60 phones, although you can send to any Bluetooth enabled phone, providing that Bluetooth is in discoverable mode, obviously.

Apart from Bluejacking, there are MoSoSo applications, to find other people you might want to meet or network with in the immediate vicinity.

But also if you study kids, you’ll find that they quite often sms their mates who are in the same room - messaging is often a parallel communication channel, as opposed to an alternative one. For instance, they may want to take the piss out of someone else in the room, share a joke, communicate a private message or exchange those icky love notes that we’ve all sent back when we were teens (”i luv u” “i luv u more” “no u dont” “yes i do” kind of thing).

Of course, the great thing about Bluetooth is that it’s also a completely free-to-use channel, so you can send as many messages as you like, without paying a penny to your operator or anyone else.

MOTOCEO Ed ZNDR sounds pissed off: ‘Screw the nano,’ said Zander. ‘What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs? People are going to want devices that do more than just play music, something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users,’ he said.”

Fresh off Friday’s advice for Motorola, here’s a few observations from the opening morning of CTIA here in San Fran:

iPod nanos spotted walking around SF this morning: quite a few

Motorola ROKRs seen: none

Don’t hate on Apple because they’ve come up with something people want to buy, Ed. Watch and learn.

PlaceOpedia (spotted by Carlo at The Guardian) is a way of linking Location to Wikipedia, the open source encyclopedia.

It’s interesting as it combines a number of different trends (I nearly used the meme word there).

- It’s a low-cost mashup of two different, websites/services - Wikipedia and Google Maps.
- Like Wikipedia, content is generated collaboratively by the readers and users.
- It’s linking digital information to the real world, which is what Location Based Services is all about, in my view.

Last month I presented the idea to the Wikimania conference of using a location-enabled phone to access Wikipedia information about place where you were physically. Examples might be information on local buildings, residents or even property prices. One of the missing pieces of this puzzle would be to find editors to do the linking - the other being deciding what technology is best suited for it.

It seems to me that PlaceOpedia solves the first problem (assuming enough people contribute). So all we need now is an agreement about the technology - no trivial task admittedly.

The first choice seems to be if the solution is best to be a physical link that you can see (like ShotCode or SemaCode) or a virtual link that your phone sees (like Siemens’ Digital Graffiti). Ultimately, the latter type of concept will prevail - we can’t put barcode-type stickers all over the planet. But the barcode route does have the double purpose of alerting people to its presence and thus marketing the idea and encouraging the download of the appropriate mobile phone software.

But one thing is for sure. This is something that’s rapidly moving out of the concept stage into deployment. An idea whose time has come.

Following the earlier “you better hurry up” message for the Palms, I saw this pic of Motorola CEO Ed ZNDR on News.com, where he’s holding up a couple of phones that he says will be ready in December, ahead of schedule, the Q and a pink version of the RAZR.

There have been a number of stories over the past several months touting the strength of the RAZR and how it’s the harbinger of a design revolution that’s going to drive Motorola. It’s been a year or so since the release of the RAZR, and what’s it been followed up with, apart from the usual assortment of mid- and low-end wonders? The underwhelming ROKR and a black version of the RAZR. For a design “revolution”, not much is really happening. Motorola’s got a long way to go to prove that the RAZR wasn’t a one-hit wonder, and it’s still a little early to proclaim they’ve used it to turn things around.

We’re still waiting on the PEBL and SLVR design models, so let’s see when they arrive, and how they sell before we make any more proclamations. One more thing — drop the stupid names.

Just got this email:

“SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2005 — Ed Colligan, Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM) president and chief executive officer; Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect; and Denny Strigl, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless, invite the news media to join them for a press conference on Monday, Sept. 26, at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco beginning at 9 a.m. PDT.”

This is to announce the poorly-kept secret that is the Treo running Windows Mobile. This comes the same day as Palm’s stock took a beating after it posted a wider quarterly loss and gave a disappointing outlook. The only real bright spot is Treo sales, though they still are significantly behind BlackBerry and Nokia smartphone sales.

All of this comes after PalmSource was bought by Access, PalmSource itself having bought Linux specialist China MobileSoft last year.

So what’s all this mean? The Palm OS, if not already dead, is nearly there. I’d lay most of the blame on the continued lack of multi-tasking, something that’s becoming more and more essential in the smartphone world. It had been promised in Palm OS Cobalt, which as far as I’m concerned is holed up somewhere with UIQ 3.0 and may or may not be found. It’s been far too long since both were announced with no products or any real movement. While I’m fairly certain we’ll see a UIQ 3 device soon, I can’t say the same about Cobalt. Why else would Palm go to Windows Mobile and risk alienating its most loyal backers?

Palm choosing Windows Mobile opens up some interesting possibilities. The Treo’s nowhere near as popular in Europe as it is in the US, with Symbian and Windows Mobile ruling the continent. Ewan Spence over at All About Symbian speculates that perhaps Palm might like to license Symbian and UIQ, then make a Palm “skin” that would allow it to retain the familar Palm look and feel, unlike Windows Mobile.

Whatever Palm does, it too needs to get things moving. I’m not going to get into PDA sales, that market is dying and inconsequential. It sold 470,000 Treos last quarter, which is a pittance. Its sole smartphone product is just a continuation of something it didn’t even develop. It’s going to have a hard time surviving with just one product with such relatively low sales.

I’ll be in San Francisco next week at the CTIA show, delivering news from the show floor and the slate of interviews I’ve got lined up, staring Monday. So be sure to check back early and often.

First we had P2P music sharing, then video and film (via BitTorrent) and now we have P2P live TV streaming, according to the Big Picture.

It seems that some clever Chinese engineers have figured it out and now you can watch live TV on your broadband connected PC.

This is bad news for subscription channels, as it means we can all watch their broadcasts for free. And as music and video sharing have proved, these new technologies spread faster than a fast thing. Indeed, BitTorrent is said to now account for 35% of all traffic on the net.

The other victim will undoubtedly be Big Sport. Indeed, the driver in China so far is English Premiership Football - unfortunately only with Chinese commentary so far, but you could always turn the sound off and listen to Radio 5 Live or something.

But it’s going to be difficult to negotiate multi-million dollar exclusive broadcasting rights, when anyone can now easily watch for free from anywhere with a broadband connection.

Like the music industry, TV companies will be slow to wake up to this new threat. But it amazes me that they don’t do something - like at least allow a legal channel to develop quickly. If I want to watch The Simpsons current material in the UK, I either have to wait for two years and take out a subscription to Sky. Or I download it free on BitTorrent. If I want to pay a fair price - like $5 - or even an unfair price, I can’t.

One of the main reasons why Napster took off was because there was no legal alternative at the time. And it looks like the TV companies are going to make exactly the same mistake. Doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result each may not be the definition of madness Einstein claimed. But it’s certainly bloody stupid.

When an industry starts to change, it’s like a large tree being felled. It starts off imperceptibly, but rapidly accelerates until it comes crashing down. As an example, the world’s first camera phone was only launched in Japan in November 2000. And now Nokia is the leading digital camera maker in the world.

One of the latest sectors experiencing the dizziness of the TIMBER! effect seems to be Manga comics in Japan, according to Japan Times. Putting Manga on mobiles only started in 2003, spurred by 3G availability, and already is showing signs of killing its paper based parent.

Paper-based publishing is actually experiencing a double whammy onslaught from mobiles. Even before Manga was available on phones, sales had started to decline in line with the growth of mobiles. This is attributed to young people spending their disposable income on their phones, communication and content. But now the phone itself has become a publishing channel, this effect is accelerating.

Indeed, many famous Manga creators are apparently considering bypassing the old publishers and going straight to market via Ketai (mobile phone).

Of course, the mobile is really well suited to reading comic strips on the mobile - unlike say, a text-based book. With displays of either page scroll (navigation by scrolling up and down the page) or even better, picture card (one frame at a time), the user experience is just as good - if not better - as the “real” thing.

I wonder what the next industry will be to fall to the mighty mobile? MP3 players? Certainly. The PC itself? I think so anyway.

The tech sector seems especially prone to hype - it’s difficult to imagine that say, the ice cream cone industry suffers from quite as much hyperbole and over-claim.

So to really stand out and become a Super Hyper, you really have your work cut out.

But my nomination is the mobile anti-virus industry, most of whom have spent this year attempting to scare mobile phone owners into rushing out and buy their products - otherwise your phone will turn into a zombie and eat all your relatives and turn your brain to mush, or something.

Actually, all their stories are characterised by wild headlines, only to conclude that actually, one virus has been found “in the wild” on a whole continent. My favourite was this one where the CEO of a software company caught the virus and disinfected it with anti-software, provided by one of his anti-virus partners:

“Somehow, I’m not sure whether I pressed yes or no but it ended up in my handset. When I rebooted my phone, the anti-virus software said I have a virus and asked me whether I want to delete it from my inbox,” [he] said.

This is a man whose company makes and sells software, by the way, not some techno-ignoramous.

It rather came to a head yesterday with Sophos, another anti-virus company finally getting fed up and issuing a “why don’t you just shut up and get back in your box?” kind of statement and describing the latest claims to be “bonkers” (via Silicon).

While it is possible to get mobile viruses, the average user is more likely to get one than I am to ride to work this morning on a dolphin - and I live in land-locked Germany. And even if you do get one, you still have to agree twice to install it, so you have to be unlucky as well as stupid, so you’re probably not long for this world anyway.

One day, mobile viruses will be as big a problem as they are for PCs, but we’re a long way from that right now.

Virgin Mobile’s hot New York agency, Mother, have created the Parental Enlightenment Kit, according to Adverblog. The idea is to give kids some tools to pester their poor, long-suffering parents into buying them a mobile - you can tell I’m a parent of mobile-phone age kids.

Tools include stuff like T-shirt stickers (”Do you love me? Yes __ No __”) to The Instigator - a cutout version of a mobile phone. The idea is the kid nonchalently starts talking into it and when the parent asks where they got it, they can introduce the subject.

It’s quite funny and as Martina points out, it turns teens and tweens into little guerilla marketers.

If my kids tried something like this though, I might eventually give in. But I’d equally nonchalently not buy them a Virgin phone.