There is a lot of hype and hope in the U.S. around taking social networks mobile, but mobile social networking is still in the fledgling stages in the West. In Japan, it is already a reality. One company in particular, DeNA, has taken Japan by storm with its mobile SNS/virtual world/gaming platform Mobage-town. DeNA opened a US office in San Mateo earlier this year, with plans to offer an English… → Read More
Over one billion cell phones have been sold worldwide in the last year, but in the US or Europe, the mobile Internet is still catching on relatively slowly. There even was a heated debate in the blogosphere just recently whether the mobile web has a future at all. However, this has never been a question in one specific region of the world: In Japan, since 2006 more people have been accessing the… → Read More
The World Wide Web consortium or W3C announced new standards that it hopes will make mobile Web browsing easier. Published as a W3C recommendation, the groups says it Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 “condenses the experience of many mobile Web stakeholders into practical advice on creating mobile-friendly content.” Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, leader of the W3C Mobile Web Activity program, said… → Read More
Webmonkey has posted a nice pro/con list of the ever-evolving mobile Web experience. While we all agree using the Web on mobile phones (from the iPhone to the Instinct) has come a long way, its still not good enough to chuck the laptop. So despite the handiness of quick reference sites, mobile e-mail and GPS directions, getting real work done on tiny screens isn’t very practical, reading long… → Read More
Hey, how many iPhone 3G’s were sold during that first weekend? Oh, that’s right. How could I forget? IT WAS ONE MILLION, in case you didn’t hear. Well, now with so many users accessing the Mobile Web, some are saying that it has reached a “critical mass”. Images of plutonium accidents race through my head, but in reality it has more to do with marketing and advertising than anything… → Read More
I guess people can’t be having that hard of a time inputting web addresses on that fiddly keyboard, because the total people browsing with an iPhone has passed up the years-old WinMo for an impressive 0.09 percent of the browser market. Just below the iPhone, Windows CE accounts for 0.06 percent, and just above it is Windows ME, amazingly enough, with 0.43 percent. This could change, though… → Read More
I love Facebook, and I love the mobile Web. That is why I’m on my knees thanking Facebook for the new mobile version at m.facebook.com. It’s one of the best looking and most functional mobile social networking sites out there. From it, you can do pretty much anything you can do on Facebook proper; check your email, poke your friends, view photos, all of it. And it’s fast, so even… → Read More
Yesterday I went along (proof) to the demo by Refresh Mobile of their new service: Mippin. Refresh – backed by Accel Partners – is best known for creating the Mobizines service (which in many ways almost became a noun in it’s own right) only last year. The idea there was that site owners could have their content wrapped in a Mobizine java client and have advertising set against… → Read More
Until an Apple person stands up in front of a bank of journalists and bloggers tomorrow and utters the name of the carrier to win the iPhone, we won’t know for definite. However it is hard to ignore the wave of stories out today naming 02 as the network, with Carphone Warehouse as the independent distributor. These chime in with our own story that 02 won the iPhone deal some weeks ago, after… → Read More
Longtime player in the UK mobile scene Enpocket is to be aquired by Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia. Boston-based Enpocket provides technology and services centered on mobile advertising. Enpocket’s platform delivers mobile advertising across multiple formats including SMS, MMS, mobile Internet advertising, and video. Nokia plans to used the deal to accelerate its mobile advertising… → Read More
TechCrunch France has broken a story saying the iPhone will be launched in France with Orange at a 300 euro price-point. The phone will be available from 29th November and announced on the 24th September during the Apple Expo in Paris. Going against predictions so far, the story says there won’t be any unlimited data plan (as there is in the US) nor will the phone be a 3G version of the iPhone… → Read More
Blyk, the much anticipated ad-supported mobile network, is to reveal its colours soon. A press conference is scheduled for Monday 24th September. Announced earlier this year, Blyk will offer free calls to its audience of 16–24 year olds via targetted advertising on their phones. The launch is timed for the start of the new school term in the UK. The virtual operator is using the Orange network. → Read More
SEEDCAMP COVERAGE: In Japan and South Korea it is so common now for people to whip out their cell phones and use the camera to connect to online content from a newspaper or magazine that it is no longer commented on. This wave of adoption has yet to go mainstream in Europe or the US, but plenty of companies are trying to get in early before consumers arrive. The technology – not unlike… → Read More
LG and Yahoo! announced today that Yahoo! Go 2.0 service will begin shipping on LG’s mobile phones. The service is said to redefine the mobile Internet experience for users. With its unique design, users are able to personalize content and search efficiently with Yahoo!’s oneSearch function. The service also features Yahoo! Go widgets, personal channels for email, local information… → Read More
Opera arguably reinvented the mobile browser with the original release of Opera Mini. The innovation of Opera Mini was to be able to fit four quarts into a one pint jug. By putting most of the guts of the browser into a smart proxy layer, they were able to create a smart browser that could be downloaded and installed on most phones, not just so-called smart phones. Opera’s new Mini… → Read More
If you’re on your phone and see something along the lines of “Punch K-Fed to win an iPod!,” with an animated GIF of the mook, you can blame Yahoo!. The geniuses at the Y have decided that your mobile phone screen is a prime place to show “graphical advertisements,” which sounds a lot like banner ads to these ears. If you’re on a metered data plan (most cell… → Read More
The Etech Conference (2007) is once again shortly upon us. It begins March 26th and goes on for 3 days until 29th March, 2007. This year it will be at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California. If you think you have a cool technology worth showcasing, then why not submit your proposal. The submission deadline for all proposals is October 9, 2006. Speakers will be notified by October 30… → Read More
This morning’s paper featured something interesting: a full page ad for 3 featuring the Nokia N73 with the Yahoo! Go application front and centre. 3 has certainly been daring where others fear to tread, recently launching a partnership with Skype, and now Yahoo! One wonders how this meshes with 3′s over-all content strategy since the Yahoo! Go application essentially makes the phone… → Read More
Like London buses you wait an age for one to come along and then two appear at the same time!? Yesterday I heard about two UK start-ups. TruPhone and ConnectMeAnyWhere that want to save you money by routing your calls over the internet rather than via traditional telephone operators. Truphone is a piece of free software, you download, that enables Mobile over IP (MoIP). Once downloaded, you… → Read More
In the world of Mobile Web 2.0 applications, ShoZu has been an early winner. When it was launched last October, it was the first widely distributed application to support Photo sharing directly from the mobile. and promotion on Flickr and other sites gave it an early boost. Cognima CTO Andy Tiller wowed the attendees of Mobile Monday London in March of this year with a live demo of ShoZu… → Read More
In the burgeoning world of mobile-social communities, you’ve got to have a differentiator. Pinppl (pronounced by some as”pineapple,” though definitively pronounced “PIN People” by its founder, Paul Anthony) delivers the goods by building a community exclusive to Blackberry users, all based around the ubiquitous Blackberry PIN. The PIN is Blackberry’s own… → Read More
Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish, two well known UK speakers on topics concerning the mobile web, have just finished writing their new book “Mobile Web 2.0” Below are some of the hot topics this book covers. Mobile content and the changing balance of power (The power of user generated content) I am not a number, I am a tag (The impact on the telecoms industry’s management of numbers)… → Read More
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