(* Source: Steve O'Hear *)

Steve says...

Location-based social networking could soon go mainstream with today’s news that Nokia, the world’s leading mobile cellphone manufacturer, has acquired Berlin-based Plazes.

Founded in 2005, Plazes lets “friends” update each other about what they are doing when and where, resulting in a Twitter-like activity stream but with integrated geo-tagging. Users can then subscribe to any of their friends’ activity streams or to groups of friends, as well as to specific locations known as “Plazes”. Updates can be done either on Plazes.com or by mobile phone (via text messaging) or using a number of third-party applications that utilize the Plazes’ publicly available API.

Now that Nokia has acquired the service, “if all goes well” we can expect Plazes to be “made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices”, according to the official Plazes blog

A few key takeaways from the announcement…

• It’s more evidence that Nokia is moving away from being purely a hardware manufacturer into a fully-fledged Web service company, with it’s consumer-facing Ovi brand.
• Nokia is placing a massive bet on Location-based Services. The company now includes GPS functionality in almost all of its most recent handsets, and has been bundling its own mapping software (based on a previous acquisition of Gate5, another Berlin-based startup). Additionally, Nokia is in the process of acquiring NAVTEQ, the world’s largest data mapping company.
• Plazes is still on track to release a native iPhone client, suggesting that Nokia understands the importance of network effects over platform exclusivity. No location-based social network will be able to go mainstream if it is limited to friends who use a particular handset or platform.

Moving forward, it’s clear that mobile, combined with location, represent the next social networking frontier. As evidence, Google’s Android developer contest is littered with location-based social applications, and the official iPhone SDK has already given birth to a number of location-aware social networking apps. What’s not clear yet, however, is whether the eventual winners will be established social networking services such as Facebook or Twitter that add location-based functionality or newer or specialized entrants who build in location and mobile from the get-go.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

The platform wars are going mobile. Whether it’s the iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows Mobile, the mobile platform that will win in the end will be the one with the best and broadest collection of applications. To give developers a little extra financial motivation, funds are being set up to invest in them. Google announced a $10 million Android challenge back in November, and Kleiner Perkins announced its $100 million iFund for iPhone-only startups in March. Now, it looks like Research in Motion is about to announce its own $150 million Blackberry Partners Fund (site not up yet) to spur applications and services for its mobile device.

VentureBeat

headline here

Posted by brian tiong at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Paul Resnikoff  *)

Mobile phones are frequently viewed as a distinct media environment, separate from other platforms like PCs and television.  But as mobile devices increasingly assume computer-like characteristics and reach beyond carrier-provided signals, their status as a separate platform is starting to erode.  "The question is whether it makes sense anymore to license for a platform, or if we are now talking about a pervasive experience," said Ted Cohen, head of digital consultancy TAG Strategic, during an executive roundtable at MusEXPO in Los Angeles on Monday.

Cohen pointed to an oncoming generation of handhelds that include WiFi browsing and offer easy connectivity to PC-based collections.  Indeed, that future is already among us, and the emerging media consumer is clearly a cross-platform animal.  "It never made sense to license separately for mobile," said Ian Rogers, former head of Yahoo Music and current chief executive of Topspin.  "Mobile will eventually start to look more like the internet, and at that point, it stops making sense to view it as a completely different model."

Others etched a similar vision of convergence.  "It will be very difficult to tell the difference between a laptop on WiFi or WiMax and a mobile device, and you might make phone calls on both," said Chris Barton, strategic partnership development manager at Google.

But the ex-Yahoo Rogers touched upon the somewhat restrictive nature of the current mobile platform, one heavily controlled by carriers.  And that mostly defines today's landscape for mobile music and media, at least for those wanting to promote, sell, or acquire content on handhelds.

For carriers and major content owners, the present-day environment offers an easier mechanism for controlling customer billing relationships and extracting dollars from content.  "It really comes down to where the billing relationship is," explained David Pakman, chief executive of eMusic.  And that existing relationship makes its advantageous for carriers and other stakeholders to preserve the existing landscape.

But despite that carefully-crafted moneymaking machine, attendees continued to question the power of mobile platforms to deliver solid, independent revenue streams.  One pointed to a growing threat from tiny, flash-based storage cards, easily swappable among users.  Another pointed to side-loading among users, who predictably want to extend their massive, PC-based collections onto their devices.

Meanwhile, consumers are now getting ready for a beefed-up iPhone, perhaps the vanguard of a more sophisticated, powerful mobile device class that is stretching beyond carrier-imposed limitations.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: James Quintana Pearce*)

The market for rich media advertising on mobile—in the form of TV, video, games, user-generated content (UGC) and music—will reach $2.79 billion by 2012 predicts Screen Digest. The bulk of this will come from mobile TV advertising, tapped to hit $2.44 billion globally by that time, a figure which is pretty close to that predicted by Juniper. This is predicted to be more than 20 percent of mobile TV revenues, although there are bigger opportunities in free-to-air markets like Japan and South Korea rather than subscription markets like North America and Europe. Screen Digest warns that without its own metrics mobile TV “will struggle to be considered a stand alone advertising channel”. Mobile video-on-demand will claim $336. million by 2012. The other forms of rich media content aren’t predicted to bring in a lot of revenue, but will “provide a valuable source of innovative marketing opportunities for brands aspiring to connect and interact with their customers”. By 2012 60 million ad-funded games will be downloaded annually, predicts SD. (release)

Posted by brian tiong at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Sean P Aune *) 

Sean says...

While we all wait for firmware 2.0 for the iPhone an iPod Touch, there are still plenty of games out there help distract you from work. These nine represent but a fraction of what’s waiting out there; we’ve had some fun with ‘em, and hopefully you will, too.

BattleFleet - The classic game of hunting for the enemy navy to sink it while hiding your own.

D & D Roller - Why carry around a bag full of dice like the old days? Whip out your iPod Touch or iPhone, hit this site, and start rolling the dice for your games.

HeadsYouWin - In this modern day of credit cards, sometimes you simply don’t have a coin to flip, this iPhone/iPod Touch web application will solve the problem for you.

Kenny Rogers Roulette - Not only is it roulette on your iPhone, but you get to see Kenny Rogers staring at you!

Kingdom Game - A real time strategy game where you control a kingdom, buy defenses, buy and sell goods in the market, build diplomatic relations through embassies and more.

Lights Off - Click a square to turn a light on or off and see what happens to th squares around it. The ultimate goal is to turn off all of the lights.

Reversi - Also known as Othello, Reversi is a popular and old game, and now you can play quick games where ever you may be.

Tetris - It just wouldn’t be mobile gaming if there wasn’t some way to play Tetris on it.

XBox Live Friends - Add your friends Gamertags to the app and you can check their online status and gamer card from anywhere.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: eMarketer *) 

Are mobile marketers moving ahead or merely spinning their wheels?

Posted by brian tiong at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Erik reports... 

Daem Interactive has developed Skuair, new technology that it is calling the next generation of 2d code readers. Skuair isn’t limited to reading barcode lines and numbers but can read product logos or images. Skuair works with any mobile phone camera and is easy to operate. The user simply takes a picture of an advertisement or product logo and a low resolution image is sent to the recognition server and an associated URL is returned. The user can receive a variety of multimedia content from the company or person who owns the image

User generated tags will be launched later this year. A short demo of how Skuair works.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Dan Neumann *)

Ah... it's good to see 2D black & white barcodes moving into the airline space in the US and Canada. Saving trees makes sense.  Colorzip, a company I consulted for late last year has 3D color barcodes that have launched in Singapore.  How are we doing, Andrew?

Posted by brian tiong at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

Microsoft has started to ramp up its MSN Mobile portal, rolling out ads and additional content for users. The portal already had search tools, quick access to various applications and mobile content for your phone. Now there are additional content like options for purchasing movie tickets, ringtones, wallpaper, games and video clips for mobile users.

The expanded portal will first launch in the U.S. and branch out from there. After the success of the FOX Sports Channel on MSN Mobile, it’s clear that more niche content will make the mobile portal more attractive to a wider range of users. This seems like a good opportunity for more integration of recently acquired MusiWave as well.

Having added in more content, the mobile portal is now primed for advertisers. Banner and text ads are being rolled out on MSN Mobile. Initial advertisers include Paramount Pictures and Jaguar Cars. Microsoft isn’t the only one building out its mobile portal. Every other major player, from Yahoo to AOL to Google is doing the same. In terms of direct competition, AOL’s been heavily layering the ads as of late, and Google will probably have an even stronger push once Android is completed.

So Microsoft, which has a mobile platform as well, will also be able to hold initiatives on both fronts. Mobile advertising overall has been seeing a good amount of development as well, with AdMob playing up its device-specific programs and a renewed attention towards mobile content (games, etc.) that can be leveraged for advertising as well.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: John Kullman *) 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: John Kullman *)  

Nokia’s latest study, ‘A Glimpse of the Next Episode’, predicts that within five years a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media groups. Trend-setting consumers from 17 countries were asked about their digital behaviors and lifestyles. Nokia also used information gathered from its 900 million customers and views of leading industry figures to reach the conclusion that you will control 25% of the world’s entertainment by 2012.

“From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call ‘Circular’. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups - a form of collaborative social
media,” said Mark Selby, Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia.

Nokia also looked at four emerging trends that will make entertainment more collaborative and creative as we move towards Circular Entertainment. These trends are listed as, Immersive Living; Geek Culture; G Tech and Localism.

Immersive Living is the rise of lifestyles which blur the reality of being on and offline. Entertainment will no longer be segmented; people can access and create it wherever they are.

My favorite is Geek Culture. (I always wanted to be a Geek but I didn’t fit in.) This triumph marks a shift as consumers become hungry for more sophisticated entertainment. As Geek Culture rises, consumers will want to be recognized and rewarded - the boundaries between being commercial and creative will blur.

G Tech is an existing social force in Asia that will change the way entertainment will look. Forget pink and sparkly, it is about the feminization of technology that is currently underway. Entertainment will be more collaborative, democratic, emotional and customized - all of which are ‘female’ traits.

The report uncovered a locally-minded sprit emerging in entertainment consumption and Localism will become a key theme of future entertainment. Consumers will take pride in seeking out the local and home-grown.

The good news about this report is that much of the entertainment will be created and distributed on mobile phones. These are the perfect devices for capturing images and sounds on-the-fly and then editing the content with music and graphics. One person in a peer group may take the pictures, a second edit the sequence of pictures and a third add music before the production is sent to the group as entertainment.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : NextGreatThing *)

Allison says :

Artists and labels have been exploring different ways to market and monetize their music beyond MySpace. We just heard that Sony BMG is going to be selling J Lo’s latest album, Brave, on a fancy wooden flash drive (for $70!!) Meanwhile, artists are dropping their labels like bad habits. AmieStreet, MOG, Pure Volume, Indistr, Sellaband, Navio, Roadsound, iFanz, RCRDLBL, iMeem, Popfolio… These are just a few sites out of hundreds they can use to do promotion, distribution, and sales. In addition to the bands we mentioned last week, even the Oldies are going new media; the Eagles, Joni Mitchell and now Aretha Franklin have all dropped their labels to try the digital model.

The next frontier is the handset. Mozes has taken a step there by enabling bands to text fans updates and messages. The real application, though, will be mobile social networking sites, like the newly launched KylieKonnect for Australian singer Kylie Minogue. The dot mobi site (www.kyliekonnect.com redirects to ourtribe.mobi) lets fans blog, communicate with other users and upload images and video all via mobile phone. There is a Kylie’s own blog, a newsfeed and place to buy Monogued-up wallpapers and ringtones. The site, set up by New Visions Mobile, will allow Kylie’s fans to establish a closer connection with her (or the illusion of one), and she will likely profit off it through site sales. Unfortunately for fans, Mashable reports that you seem to need a European-based mobile number to register, just going to show that this sort of technology not as widely embraced (and developed) in the U.S. as it is in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Posted by brian tiong at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Timesonline *)

Nigel Kendall says :

The video games industry was told yesterday: “Television used to be accused of corrupting the youth of today. Now you are.”

David Mitchell, the TV comedian, was talking to 750 representatives of the industry at the 25th Golden Joystick Awards, which are decided by public vote. In that quarter of a century, Mitchell observed, video games have gone from “being a few dots dancing around a TV screen to a full-on film that you are in”.

Generations of creative Britons who once dreamt of making films and cracking Hollywood are now just as likely to seek fame and fortune in the video games industry.

Tom Dowding, 25, is a graduate in computer science from Bristol University. He has been playing games since he was 10 and last year set up Mobile Pie, a developer of games for mobile phones. His efforts were rewarded at the Golden Joysticks with a prize of £2,500 and a work placement with Electronic Arts, one of the world’s biggest video game developers. Mr Dowding’s winning game is called Let It Grow.

“You install it on your mobile phone, then, using your phone camera, you nurture it and make it grow,” he said. “Then you post your growing flower on Facebook.” He has licensed the game to a distributor.

For many would-be developers, mobile phones offer a way of making games and minimising expense on programming. A leading game, such as the recent Halo 3, can cost $70 million (£34 million) to develop and a mobile game a fraction of that. The possible rewards are vast. Halo 3 outstripped many blockbuster films in the week that it went on the market, generating sales of $300 million.

Video games have quietly overtaken older entertainment forms such as films and popular music. According to the latest figures from Elspa, the industry body, game software sales in Britain for the first half of 2007 were £519 million, 17 per cent more than in the corresponding period of 2006.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Rachel Konrad *)

SAN FRANCISCO - News Corp.'s MySpace will offer members of its popular social network free Internet phone calls with a new feature based on eBay Inc.'s Skype service, the companies announced Tuesday.

Users with a Skype account will be able to click a single button in their MySpace profile to call the computer or telephone of another member, so they could reach people in their network even when they're not online. The service will be available in 20 countries starting in November.

MySpace, the largest social-networking site with 110 million members, will share revenue from the deal with Skype, which allows customers to place long-distance calls using their computers. Skype, the Luxembourg-based division of eBay, has 220 million registered users.

Standard PC-to-PC phone calls will be free, but users must pay for "premium" options such as their own personal phone number, voice mail, call forwarding, and the ability to make calls from a computer to land lines or cell phones.

Executives would not disclose other financial terms of the deal, which comes as both companies strive to expand membership amid growing competition.

One of MySpace's biggest rivals is fast-growing Facebook.com, which has more than 47 million active users — including at least 200,000 new registrations per day since January.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Kristen Nicole *)

Webcam avatar community fix8 has raised $3 million in a series a round of funding from Vickers Venture Group, which is a Singapore-based private equity firm. We first covered fix8 here.

You may remember that fix8 lets you create animated avatars with your webcam by reading your expressions and gestures. There are loads of tools that you can play around with, including fix8’s wide selection of avatars, and other accessories like voice manipulation, graphics and editing tools. These clips can then be embedded in your website or social networking profile, or use it for your instant messaging client like AOL, MSN, Skype or Yahoo Messenger.

fix8 has recently teamed up with Pringo for distribution purposes, Stickam , also Shanghai Media Group to create AuditionsTV, which makes interactive tv audiences able to participate during live or taped programs. Coming up, fix8 will be offering a mobile solution, which will surely extend the ways in which its avatar creation tool can be used for communicative purposes. See here for more avatar creation sites.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Worldsinmotion *)

Posted by brian tiong at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Jason Fry *)

New Efforts Try to Make It Easy

Last week Starbucks began testing a new service letting those with iTunes on their laptop, or carrying an iPhone, identify and download songs playing in the ubiquitous coffee bars.

In recent weeks we've heard Apple tout its new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. We've seen Microsoft show off improvements to its Zune music player, talk up the player's ability to share music, and unveil Zune Social, a new community site. Cellular-service providers such as Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless (a Verizon/Vodafone joint venture) and AT&T continue to sell songs over the air and experiment with various music-related offerings. And what about services that recommend and stream music, from Pandora to Rhapsody?

There's a flurry of activity around a common theme: making digital music truly mobile, instead of contained in music players that get topped up at desktop PCs. But what will be the effect of this newfound musical mobility? Could it mark a substantive change in the digital-music experience? Or will wireless buying and sharing remain mere offshoots of the familiar PC/MP3 player ecosystem?

Currently, both buying and sharing are largely restricted to the PC. Music players with wireless capabilities – such as Sandisk's Sansa Connect -- are fairly new. Meanwhile, the cellular-service providers' efforts have largely been stillborn -- because until fairly recently they wanted to charge as much as $2.50 for a download, despite the fact that iTunes had made $1 a de facto standard. Why the high prices? A number of reasons, from the record industry's desperation for an alternative to the iTunes model to infrastructure costs that cut into already razor-thin margins on downloads. Wireless carriers were stuck with a bad choice between a low-margin business or a low-volume one.

The carriers have accepted 99-cent downloads and tried to escape the low-margin trap by expanding their musical offerings to include access to streaming music, ringtones and ringbacks, music videos, the ability to "sideload" digital music from PCs to phones and even services that "listen" to snippets of music and identify the song.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Caleb Booker *)

We started off in Skype voice chat, but then he met me in Second Life at the same time. Using tools his company haven't even named yet, he was able to broadcast video of our avatars meeting through Skype. (Click the picture for full-size.) They still consider it technology in the pre-alpha stage, and won't feel like it's ready for consumers until they have it running in much higher detail. Even at the low resolution, being "in" Second Life through Skype and, in addition, seeing myself through multiple camera angles at once was a pretty impressive experience.

This was, of course, just the beginning. He switched from Second Life to a custom environment they had built with the Unreal 2 engine and again, streamed it right through Skype. The great part about using an engine like this one was that they were able to import high-detail AutoCAD files and make them look extremely realistic. Soon I was watching a high-quality alien avatar from Mars Attacks! exploring the environment in real-time. Below is a video of the world he had walked me through that they apparently built over the course of a few days.

Recently Rigby showcased the technology at the Copper/Cobre Conference. All of the other presenters went up and showed PowerPoint presentations. Rather than show a series of AutoCAD sketches, he plugged his laptop into the projector and walked the crowd through a 3D rendering. A copper smelter in the U.S. retained him to create a "virtual furnace" that not only showed the schematics in high resolution, but had walls lined with photographs of how everything is supposed to look as you assemble the machine. Not only that, but you can actually enter the furnace itself and (through color coding) see how everything is supposed to fit together.

Even though his company has already been retained by a few engineering firms for more work, Rigby sees more applications for high-resolution custom worlds. He's currently in touch with several galleries in London to create scale models of the buildings with high resolution art renderings inside. People could download them for a token fee (maybe five dollars) and collect them over time as the gallery updates itself with new exhibits. Also, since "Unreal 2" is a server-based platform, you could walk around these little worlds with your friends.

MellaniuM has only been experimenting with the possibilities since September of last year and has already shown some great innovations. If they keep up this pace they'll be the ones to watch in the future.

 See Video

Posted by brian tiong at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Techcrunch*)

Roi Carthy says :

Zlango

For those of you unfamiliar with Zlango, the company created a new language based on slightly over 200 icons in categories such as People, Actions, Places and Feelings. The Zlango offering was originally aimed at injecting life and excitement into the ever popular but boring SMS, however, the company’s jump into the Web space indicates an understanding that engaging users requires Zlango to extend itself beyond a pure mobile play.

Today’s launch kicks off Zlango’s roll out of a number of social-oriented features. Two of the most notable features available today are:

• Zlango Composer – A Flash driven composer featuring an on-the-fly “Text to Zlango” translator (see screenshot), making it a snap to create fun messages. Messages can be shared, emailed or embedded across a number of social sites (thanks to integration with Gigya).
• zMess – Zlango’s version of a micro-blog. This is an area for users to view public messages, or private ones with groups of friends. Unfortunately, support for threaded comments is not included.

On the business front, the most notable achievement of the year is a partnership with Nokia to preload the Zlango into handsets. Zlango is now also deployed at all three Israeli operators, and has inked deals with operators in the Philippines, Ukraine, Malaysia, Finland, and Indonesia.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Larry Gentille *)

Posted by brian tiong at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Adam Ostrow *)

Donnerwood Media, the parent company of the Meez virtual avatar service, has raised $500,000 from Battery Ventures. Meez allows users to create custom avatars that can then be shared in IM and on most social networks.

Earlier this week the company announced a partnership with Vringo to create avatar ringtones. Meez previously raised $4.3 million, and we profiled the company last August.

[via]

Posted by brian tiong at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Techcrunch *)

Michael Arrington says:

We’ve been tracking emerging mobile-only social networks such as ZYB and Mocospace and Mig33. All have unique selling points (Mocospace is dead simple to use, ZYB has a rich set of potential users from their address book backup service, and Mig33 has a VOIP tool that has attracted over seven million users), but there’s one solid gold feature that none yet have: physical presence detection and information exchange with other users.

This is the Holy Grail of mobile social networking, and one of the main reasons for taking the networks off the desktop/laptop environment in the first place. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Knowing when your friends are around, and having the ability to meet new people who share your interests (even if it’s just that you are both single), will drive massive usage of networks. But, as with many new services, a chicken and egg problem looms. Until everyone is using this, there is no real reason for anyone to use it. Meetro, an instant messaging service that finds friends based on location, has struggled to gain users over the last couple of years for this reason.

Technical barriers aren’t an issue - cell phone tower triangulation and bluetooth solve a lot of the problems of locating users and transmitting information between phones. What’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.

The Failures

There is a trail of failed attempts at getting this right. Nokia released Nokia Sensor nearly three years ago. It broadcasts information about yourself to others via bluetooth. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, although it is still available for download. Google’s Dodgeball is another example that’s fallen flat - it tells friends (and friends of friends) who are within 10 blocks of you where you are and what you are doing.

The New Experiments

A bunch of new startups are giving this a shot, too. In a post yesterday TechCrunch UK mentions Germany’s Aka-Aki, Paris-based Mobiluck and MeetMoi (the lone U.S. startup). Another startup is Copenhagen-based Imity. It’s not surprising that most of the innovation is occurring in Europe. The current approach is to get java-based software on the phone - very few U.S. carriers and handsets allow user-based installs of java apps.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : The Guardian *)

28 Weeks Later

Richard Wray says:

Next week's DVD release of the zombie-flick 28 Weeks Later will bring a revolutionary marketing widget, widely used in Japan, to the UK for the first time.

The film poster contains a square box full of black and white dots known as a QR - quick response - code. It contains information that can be decoded by the camera on a mobile phone with the right software installed. A huge poster showing nothing but a QR code has already gone up in London's Shoreditch to advertise the DVD.

These "bar codes" are widely used in Japan to store everything from web addresses and phone numbers to product details. Rather than laboriously typing in a person's phone number or an internet address into a phone, these codes give one-touch access to a wealth of information that can then be stored on a phone.

Japan's immigration service even stamps passports with codes detailing passenger's names and visa status. The 28 Weeks Later codes include details of the DVD's release and links to other material on the internet.

While many top-of-the-range phones such as the Nokia N93 already contain readers, anyone with a camera phone can install software that reads QR codes from companies such as i-nigma and Kaywa. They can even create their own codes.

For the mobile industry QR codes are both a way of making it easier for customers to get to their favourite websites using their mobile and a possible way of generating mobile advertising revenues.

Industry experts believe the time is right for QR codes in the UK. Over half the UK's mobile users have one while 95% of new phones sold include a camera. The first generation of QR codes in this country, however, are likely to be significantly larger than the 1cm x 1cm found in Japan, because most British camera phones have a lower resolution than in Asia.

Philip Makinson, consultant at industry experts Greenwich Consulting, said QR codes are likely to be little more than a bit of fun in the short term but could attract consumers to do more than just make calls and send texts.

"QR codes could help drive not only the take-up of high-end camera phones but make more people aware of the mobile internet and more conscious of the potential their phone has to store information about products and services," he said.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: TechCrunch *) 

Mike says... 

The Twitter team must have had a Red Bull machine installed at the offices, because suddenly they’re launching new stuff left and right.

They recently added search and Gmail import features to the service. And on Friday they are launching a new area of the site called “Explore” where they’ll list some of the tools people can use to interact with Twitter off the site itself. Along with Explore they will also be releasing a new visualization tool called Twitter Blocks - “an abstract way to navigate your Twitter neighborhood or block.

Twitter sent us these screen shots but we haven’t had a chance to see it in action yet. Cofounder Biz Stone says “It’s a crazy, interactive, animated 3D application so it’s easier to understand when you interact with it.”

Twitter brought in Stamen Design to help with the project, the same team behind some of the Digg visualization tools launched last year.

Motorola is sponsoring the new Explore site. Screen shots below:

Posted by brian tiong at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source:Newyorktimes *)

Eric Pfanner says: 

Nokia, via Reuters

Songs can be put onto Nokia’s new phone, the N81, without using a computer, a feature the Apple iPhone does not offer.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Reuters *)

Anthony Bruno says:

Posted by brian tiong at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: BusinessWeek *)

Neal Sandler says:

The startup proposes video sharing on mobile handsets—already, Universal Music Group is on board

The idea for his new startup came to Jon Medved two years ago at London's Heathrow Airport when he was trying to reach the Hertz (HTZ) call center. While waiting on hold, the Israeli venture capitalist was forced to listen to audio ads from Hertz about the various cars available. It suddenly struck Medved that it would be far more effective for Hertz to serve up images or even videos of cars.

Thus was born the idea behind Vringo, a startup launched last year by Medved and David Goldfarb, a leading Israeli mobile software expert. The idea is to capitalize on the popularity of social networks and digital video, marrying them with the phenomenon of downloadable audio ringtones—a business that already racks up $6 billion in annual revenues for mobile operators and content owners worldwide. Medved describes Vringo as a "sort of ICQ [instant messaging] combined with a personalized YouTube (GOOG) on your cell phone."

With conventional audio ringtones, customers download a short music clip—say, the theme to Hawaii Five-O—onto their own phones. Whenever somebody calls, the song plays instead of a regular ring. Aside from some possibly annoyed people in the vicinity, the only person who enjoys it is the owner of the phone.

Vringo Defined

Vringo's video ringtones turn that model on its ear. To use the service, customers join the Vringo community for free and install a small piece of software onto their phones. Then, when one Vringo member calls another, instead of a ringtone, the recipient of the call is treated to a video clip chosen (and paid for) by the sender. Every call thus becomes an opportunity to share content and to establish identity—the wireless equivalent of the "hey, dude, check out this YouTube video" culture of the Internet.

If it catches on, Vringo has the potential to be about far more than just sharing clips, though. Advertisers are intrigued by the idea of using mobile phones to pitch their products; Vringo offers the possibility of adding viral marketing to the mix—essentially, having enthusiastic consumers spread the word for you. What's in it for Vringo users? Instead of paying for a clip, a caller might get five minutes of free talk time for sending his buddies copies of a new ad.

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Posted by brian tiong at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)