Russell’s had a lot to say lately about mobile search and its implications and implementations. Mobile information company 4INFO’s got a great post on its blog about how people have been using its services… but it’s not exactly what you think.
Somebody somehow managed to confuse the 4INFO shortcode (44636) with another persons, and sent a number of messages regarding some relationship issues to it. There’s a string of gems, like:
11/16 7:27PM: I WON’T. UR SECRET IS SAFE WITH ME. I’D BE 2 EMBARRASSED 2 TELL ANYONE. HE’S A DUMB ASS. I AM SORRY UR HEART HURTS.
It gets really hilarious when the person includes a city name in one of the messages, and 4INFO’s server dutifully responds, thinking it’s a request for a phone number or something. After getting a little confused, the person actually starts using the 4INFO Yellow pages lookup:
11/22 6:18AM: ‘SURVEILANCE EQUIPMENT ASKEW MISSISSIPPI 38621′
Plenty more hilarity over at the 4INFO blog, check it out.
A company’s come out with a new study saying that moblogs can reduce churn by 70%. Of course, the company behind the survey sells moblogging software, so I’m a little skeptical. I can’t imagine that moblogs would give people a reason to stay with a particular carrier ahead of other things like pricing, coverage or service but there’s one way I can think of that moblogs could engender customer loyalty — lock-in.
Carriers are used to locking customers to their service with measures like long-term contracts with high early-termination fees, and locked handsets. They’re pretty effective, but don’t always apply to prepaid users or because of regulatory restrictions. That’s where these kind of “soft” lock-ins come into play. They foster loyalty not because people necessarily want to stay, but because if they leave, they’ll miss out on something.
The company says the biggest barrier to operators is getting people to use the blogs. Sure it is — because the more a person posts to their moblog, the more they’ve got to lose should it disappear. It’s the same idea for carriers that only let users get photos off their phones by uploading them to a carrier photo-album service. If somebody stands to lose photos they care about because they want to switch carriers, they’ll think twice.
It’s possible to make the argument that this is a competitive differentiation, or something like that. But instead of doing it through lock-in, why not do it by offering the best open service possible? License something like Cognima Snap, or help users get Lifeblog going. Offer them an easy way to post their content to an open system; don’t hold their photos, content and memories ransom.
GPS Tracks have launched their GlobalPetFinder, which does what it says on the tin - enable pet owners to find their pets.
GlobalPetFinder works by attaching a 5 oz device (140 grams if you’re a. modern b. non-American) to the pet’s collar. This enables owners to track their pets and monitor the temperature of the environment, in case they get into danger that way. Maybe hop into the fridge or something.
On small animals it works by rendering them completely unable to move as their collar weighs too much. So you always know where they are - where you last put them. Actually, disappointingly, it’s only recommended for animals of 30 pounds or over (13 kilos). But I think that the devices will get smaller and be able to cater for a wider range of pets.
Unlike, child tracking services, that I’ve criticised many times (eg here and here, this seems a very good use of LBS - actually one of the best I’ve come across.
Firstly, it offers pet owners a solution to their worst fears. While it’s facile to compare a parent’s affection for a child, with a pet owner’s for a pet (especially gerbils), it is in the same ballpark of emotion. Therefore, you have a motive for people to pay for this.
Secondly, thank heavens, pets go missing much more than the average kid, so there’s a very real need for it.
Thirdly, none of the privacy or breach of trust issues apply. I mean, who cares if Fido feels violated?
Finally, whereas kids will find a way to game the tracking system when they want to, pets just aren’t up to it.
Nice idea, chaps.
But, the price means you have to love your pet very, very much indeed to get them one of these. $349.99 to buy the tracking device, $34.99 connection fee and then $17.99 every month. Frankly, this seems way over the top - even though they’re selling via Neiman Marcus. We’re a long way off seeing Homer popping one on Santa’s Little Helper but there is certainly an opportunity for a more mass market variant and that’s for sure.
I’ve talked before about how cameraphones are proving their social value, whether it’s as sousveillance tools, or empowering stupid criminals, or how they’re helping supplant actual memories with digital ones. But, I’m fairly convinced I’ve been missing the real value of cameraphones: to provide evidence to our friends for otherwise unbelievable anecdotes.
I say this after taking the photo above with my phone last night, as some random guy decided he needed to show my friends and the tattoo he’s had inked from his shoulder blades down to the back of his knees, which involved not just taking off his shirt, but dropping his pants (in the middle of a bar’s patio) as well.
Full story and marginally NSFW image after the jump.
So I’m enjoying some beers on the patio of a bar last night with a couple of friends, when some guy comes up and starts talking to us. Eventually, he gets up to leave, asks if we like tattoos, rips off his shirt and does a few hip shakes to drop his pants, revealing the huge tattoo you see here. Stunned, but not immobilized, I grabbed my phone and snapped the photo (gotta love how quickly Sony Ericssons switch to camera mode by just sliding the cover open).
So, now, it’s immortalized, proof that it wasn’t something imagined in a drunken haze. And, of course, thanks to MMS and email, it’s made its way throughout Austin by now.
By the way, the guy seemed to have some strong objection to taking the tattoo any lower on his legs; however, his next step will apparently be “getting the front filled in”. Judging by how, uh, deep some of those drawings on the back go, I’d say that’s gonna hurt a bit.
Sony is the latest console maker to announce parental controls for its platform, according to CNN. The new PS3 will join models from rivals Microsoft and Nintendo that allow parents to veto the machines’ ability to play rated video or games.
While the big three need to show that they’re doing something to avoid Government legislation or even law suits by parents whose kids have been “corrupted” by this material, I can’t help feeling that for most people, this is merely paying lip service to the problem. The vast majority of parents simply won’t understand how to activate the controls, even if they know about them in the first place. And I bet that someone somewhere finds a way to hack round the controls and the solution will be all over the net within a few months or weeks.
Even if that weren’t true, the kids will find ways to access material if they want to badly enough. I know my son plays GTA at friends’ houses, which we won’t allow him to own himself, as he’s only just 13. It’s not that we’re down on GTA especially, it’s just that there’s plenty of material of a similar rating that I do think he’s too young for. GTA is the thin end of the wedge.
All you can really do as a parent is keep the home free of this kind of stuff, by monitoring casually what they’re watching and playing and hope that this does the trick. But controls like Sony’s seem pointless apart from a few geeks who double as parents.
Sony’s not getting great press from bloggers, what with one thing and another, are they?
A BusinessWeek article about rap group Public Enemy was in my RSS reader this morning, its description saying “The hip-hop group sees wireless music as a way to air its radical views — and make a little money”. The group’s Chuck D has been involved in digital music for a long time, through the Rapstation site and other efforts, so I thought Public Enemy might be up to something interesting.
If they are, they didn’t share it with BusinessWeek. Apparently they’ve got an album that’s been out for a while, and this week — get this — they’ll sell ringtones from it. Even taking into account BusinessWeek’s generalist focus, passing this off as innovation in mobile music is a bit over the top.
Part of the reason that mobile music has failed to take off quickly has been that people with vested interests blur the definition of what it is. Ringtones may be musical, and they may be played on a mobile device, but ringtones aren’t mobile music. And mobile music isn’t ringtones. It’s more than a question of semantics, it’s an issue of purpose. Music is entertainment; ringtones are expression. Kids don’t buy ringtones just because they like they way they sound, they buy them because of what they say — messages like “look, I’m cool, I’ve got this ringtone like the other kids”, or “look, I’m cool, I’ve got this unique ringtone”.
Blurring the two causes problems: take, for instance, Sprint’s recently launched music store, which delivers full tracks to phones for $2.50 each. Some people justify the price by saying people will pay a premium for being able to download songs anytime, anywhere, then finish it off by saying, well, if they pay $2.50 or more for a 30-second ringtone, $2.50 for a full track is a bargain. It’s hardly a bargain with the standard going rate for PC downloads at 99 cents per song, and $2.50 per track makes $18 CDs look cheap.
But it’s not a bargain when you consider the premium price of a ringtone over a PC download is for the personalization aspect — in essence, it’s more valuable to many people to project an image about themselves than to entertain themselves with a song. Treating mobile music in the same regard as ringtones won’t work, nor will basing the price of one on the other. They’re both musical, yes, but thinking of them as similar media with similar uses and similar goals will result in failure.
There have been plenty of stories detailing why Research In Motion says it’s not afraid of Microsoft in the mobile e-mail space. While it’s true that RIM probably shouldn’t fear MS too much, there are plenty of other companies it should fear — not the least of which are its carrier partners.
The threat from Microsoft is pretty simple on its face: a recent upgrade to some of its Exchange server software added push e-mail capability, meaning that a Blackberry server acting as a go-between from a corporate Exchange server to its users’ mobile devices isn’t necessary. But it’s really a little more complex. Not every enterprise uses Exchange, and of those that do, not all use the version that supports push e-mail. RIM, with good reason, shouldn’t be too scared of Microsoft.
But it’s the emerging rivals over its other shoulder it should be worried about, led by mobile operators. Without a doubt, those that sell Blackberries are happy with the increased data spending they bring. But they don’t like having to give RIM a decent chunk of change for every Blackberry subscriber, and also don’t like having their users locked in to a relatively small range of devices.
Check out the breakdown of Vodafone UK’s new business e-mail offering that uses technology from Visto. It’s cheaper for enterprises, supports a wider range of devices, and even uses less data than Blackberry. Vodafone’s giving up some data traffic revenue in exchange for (presumably) paying out less to Visto than it does to Blackberry, and also hoping for some price elasticity in that lower prices will lead to more customers. Vodafone’s also bundled in a hosted low-cost device management system that should be simpler for IT departments to handle than the similar Blackberry solution.
So how does RIM compete with Microsoft’s low price? By offering a better service. But how are these new rivals competing with RIM? By offering a better service, and a better price. That, not Microsoft, is what RIM should be scared of.
Blink have just launched a really great sounding Bluetooth game, based on the traditional English game of Conkers.
If you just went “WTF?”, Conkers has its own entry in Wikipedia, that sound suspiciously like something Douglas Adams made up. But here are the rules of the original game:
1. Take a large, hard conker [Horse Chestnut] and drill a hole through it using a nail, gimlet, or small screwdriver. (This may be done by an adult on behalf of the contestant.) Thread a piece of string through it about 25 cm long. Often a shoelace is used. Tie a large knot at one or both ends of the string, so that the conker will not slide off when swung hard.
2. Find an opponent. It is to your advantage if you can find an opponent with a conker smaller and softer than yours.
3. Take it in turns to hit each other’s conker using your own. To do this one player lets the conker dangle on the full length of the string while the other player hits. To hit, hold the string in one hand with the conker held above it in the other hand, then swipe at the opponent’s conker, letting go of your own nut but keeping hold of the string
The winner is the player with the in-tact conker at the end and there’s a complex scoring system, which makes cricket look simple.
Fast forward to today and you can now play conkers on your phone over Bluetooth. You tie your phone to a shoelace and hold it up…..
Seriously, players connect over Bluetooth to bash each other’s conker in the virtual fashion.
In the original game, there was what could easily be the first variant of the “cheat” which has become so prevalent in gaming. Players would do things like bake their conker in an oven or varnish it to achieve a harder, more destructive and indestructible conker. So it’s nice to see this carried over into the virtual game too - you can undertake the equivalent of baking your virtual conker by powering it up by connecting with Bluetooth to other mobile phones.
What a damn fine idea.
A further nice piece of news is that Blink will make the code open source shortly, so others can create new variants of Bluetooth, short range gaming. It could bring a whole new lease of life to the good old British Pub.
Image from the One Brand Group.
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