Archive for July, 2007
by Nancy Broden
July 31, 2007 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Studies + Research, Usage + Usability, Mobile Email
Cnet News posted a special report a couple of weeks ago on the messaging habits of teens and what that may portend in the future.
Teens are using their social networks - be they PC-based or mobile - to communicate with their friends. Email is used only when they need to communicate with adults or to manage “business relationships”. What they mean by this is that they do not use an application dedicated solely to email in order to message their friends. Messaging in the context of social networks is far more compelling than a bland, utilitarian email app.
Many teens (and adults, in increasing numbers) maintain several networks - Facebook for school friends or alumni, LinkedIn for business contacts, MySpace to meet new friends, etc. They are choosing to communicate with one group or another based on the type of network, and there is a reasonable expectation for the type of interaction based on the commonly understood purpose and nature of the network. None is this is possible using a traditional email application.
Does this behavior by teens portend the death of email? I think it’s unlikely. My own research indicates that the tools we use to communicate change along with our lifestyle or stage of life. Bland email apps, be they on the PC or mobile, will continue to serve a purpose. What I do foresee is messaging being transformed by the power of social networks and becoming a richer, more contextual form of communication.
by Debi Jones
July 30, 2007 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Carnival of Mobilists
Mobile Messaging 2.0 is proud to host the Carnival of the Mobilists for the first time. This 84th edition features wide ranging topics from the mobile industry including tips for saving money on mobile service when traveling abroad to analysis of the iPhone to a conceptual depiction of the mobile context. Once again, the CoM delivers the best editorial on mobility from across the web by experts who are in the industry and others.
SMS
The CoM leads with my favorite post of the week. SMS is the darling of the mobile industry for subscribers, service and application providers and carriers/operators due to it’s value delivered across the whole of the ecosystem. It is the cornerstone of mobile messaging, off portal content delivery, service monetization, and to date, mobile social activities and applications. It’s importance and impact is well known to most of us, but one article features it’s power and success in the context of the War in Iraq.
Untold Text Stories: SMS in IRAQ, Paul Ruppert, Mobile Point View
Access to mobile phones and SMS is having it’s most profound effects in developing countries. One such story is the following article from Smartmobs.
Disaster response, Relief and Mobile Phones, Howard Rheingold, Smartmobs
SMS is also center stage in this CoM offering.
Happy Birthday SMS, Anders Borg, Abrio
MoSoSo
Mobile Social Networking and mobile social media are upcoming applications that many believe hold the elements of the “killer application” for moblity, at long last. Two features in the CoM this week consider the state of MoSoSo and current efforts from the companies planning to crack the adoption barriers.
Social Networking by Mobile, Scott Smith, The Mobile Weblog
MoSoSo Experts: Twitter, MOKO, JuiceCaster Podcast Panel, Debi Jones, mobilejones
iPhone
Few words on iPhone fatigue. Don’t succumb, yet. The CoM this week features two important articles on the iPhone and it’s meaning that aren’t the typical fan rant/rave chatter. To understand the important and salient aspects of this story for our industry I encourage you to read both.
I’ve seen the future…and it will look allot like an iPhone, Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian
Exactly how many phones did you sell, Mr. Jobs?, Michael Mace, Mobile Opportunity
Mobile Web
One web, or multi-web - that is the question. The CoM entry that contemplates the questions thoroughly.
Apple versus the PC - Now for the real Mobile Web, Barry Welford, Stay Go Links, Public Diary on the way to a patent…or two.
Nokia Devices
Puzzling over Nokia naming conventions used to be a parlor game at mobile conferences. It’s great to see the tradition being carried forward into mobile blogs.
N800, Why an N-Series?, Ricky Cadden, Symbian Guru
On the more technical side of life, network connection time outs can be painful when trying to accomplish tasks from a mobile phone. Here’s a quick and effect “how to” for pain relief if you’re carrying a Nokia N71.
Disable network connection time-out on Nokia N71, Tam Hanna, Tam’s S60 Blog
Carriers/Operators
Experiences with carriers/operators worldwide vacillate from the adoring to the indifferent to the hating and to the absurd. This week’s CoM offers two evaluations of carriers/operators in the context of recent high profile events with the carriers/operators under inspection. One from the perspective of a subscriber to Amp’d Mobile’s now defunct service and the other from an observer, outside the coverage of the service by about 4,000 miles. Varying perspectives continue to inform our love-hate relationships with carriers/operators.
My Amp’d Mobile Experience, Dennis, WAP Review
Sprint’s customer service shows greater issues in US telecoms, Tom Gordon, The Mobile Weblog
And now for something totally different. How about a carrier/operator that provides service completely free, but that you can’t join?
Free Ad-based Mobile Service, now that’s more like it, Abhishek Tiwari
International Travel
Still waiting for that true world phone experience most of us have the experience of shocking roaming rates or incompatible network frequencies across continents. Finally, tips and tricks from an international athlete and mobile subscriber on how to save money on mobile service when traveling.
Traveling Overseas and Saving Money on International Calls, Jimson Lee, Speedendurance
Mobile Industry
Compared to the PC industry which stretches back to the late 1970s, the mobile industry is still young and poised for phenomenal growth minute-by-minute and certainly over the next five years. We continue to search for ways to define and describe mobility and learn from users on the optimal uses of the technologies available. The cliche “Necessity is the mother of invention” holds true in so many examples coming from the developing world on the uses for mobile technology.
Mobile Phone Reporters, Emeka Okafor , Smartmobs
The Elements of the Mobile Context, Enrique Ortiz, about mobility
That’s the Carnival for this week. I know you’ll be informed and educated through the various thoughts, opinions and analyses on offer in this week’s edition.
Next week’s Carnival of the Mobilists will be hosted at Paul Ruppert’s Mobile Point View. Next time!
by Imran Ali
July 30, 2007 at 2:35 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, SMS, User Interface, Platforms, Voicemail
I’m loving the notion of peephole messaging, covered today in Gizmodo.
The peephole camera records video and audio of visitors to your home storing messages for later retrieval…now wouldn’t it be wonderful to have those messages forwarded, perhaps via MMS, to your mobile handset with the option to unlock the door for friendly visitors or trusted workers?
During my time at France Telecom, such ‘telemetry services’ - the ablility to invoke remote control of your home - were the R&D division’s ultimate fantasy - the kind of billable events telcos have wet dreams about! Unfortunately, it seems consumers simply didn’t have the need to remotely operate their curtains or be billed each time they did so…
However, I believe that M2M telemetry services have a role to play in the future of mobile messaging, particularly as users increasingly invoke web services such as Doppr and Twitter lingo through mobile command lines.
I wonder if we’ll see Twitter commands such as ‘d timer 45 pay parking meter’ evolve into general purpose nano-formatted command messages for any service or appliance. Perhaps one I’ll be able to message my door with the command ‘d frontdoor unlock in 45 minutes’…
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by Russell Shaw
July 30, 2007 at 9:04 am · Filed under SMS, News
“She loves me, she loves me not..”
Back when I was in the dating market, I often sent out responses to Match.com ads placed by women whose profiles sounded promising.
Then- more than once, I admit- I checked my email on my BlackBerry, looking to see if the women I contacted wrote me back. But because I didn’t want to associate my business-related BlackBerry email address with my Match.com account, that meant using a third party Web-based service to go into my Comcast account and get all my messages.
But now, Match.com is launching an expanded cell phone application that will send text messages to subscribers when they have an incoming email message from another Matc.com user.
MatchMobile, which is headed to the U.S., UK and Canada soon, will also enable searching for potential matches from cellphones.
There will be a $5 monthly fee for the privilege of answering as well as reading incoming emails from other Match.com members you’ve reached out to.
“If you are having a conversation with someone and want to continue it on the go, you can. It cuts out the waiting,” Match.com Chief Executive Thomas Enraght-Moony told Reuters. “As people become more and more accustomed to being able to do things while they are on the go, this becomes a more natural part of what they do.”
Match.com cites data from M:Metrics that some 3.6 million U.S. cell phone subscribers used a mobile dating service in May of this year.
Two questions:
What about winks? Considering that Match.com already emails you when you have a wink, will they now text you about this as well? Hey, that’s the way she and I started! With Winks on Match!
As we come to the close of July, and we are well into the sociable summer where lots of people meet each other at outdoor events thrown by friends- how many of those cell phone subscribers have found what and who they were looking for?
by Imran Ali
July 30, 2007 at 8:42 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Usage + Usability, Voicemail
Phonevite’s recently launched invitation and announcement service (screencast here) is kinda like a ‘voice Twitter’, enabling users to record voice messages which are then forwarded to a number of recipients who can then RSVP the sender. Phonevite’s not too dissimilar to YackPack, but the ability to RSVP with basic ‘Yes/No’ voice prompts makes for a neat user experience.
This feature got me thinking about voice UIs in general; it’s fair to say that text and voice are the natural UIs for telephony and yet, despite the proliferation of mobile commands lines, we see little development of voice interfaces.
I’m interested in hearing readers thoughts on voice interfaces - are we missing important UI ideas, is voice technology too difficult to develop for or is the user experience simply not suitable for general purpose applications?
I wonder if call center frustrations could be addressed by handsets could download IVR scripts from call centers and enable users to interact locally with a voice application…?
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by Ewan Spence
July 30, 2007 at 6:18 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, SMS, User Interface, Platforms, Software, Usage + Usability, Mobile Applications
I’ve always joked that the best user interface for me and my mobile – given I’m a complete control freak for my computing devices, would look something like this…
But interfaces have moved on since those days, with icons, gui’s sliding fingers, predictive keyboards and so on. Or have they? Gina Trapani has pointed out over on Lifehacker the number of services that are using SMS messages to send commands directly to the system – in many cases returning the information to the handset in the same format.
And it strikes me that this is the perfect example of the evolving nature of connected applications. We’re now at the “Windows 95†level – where we have got the job of getting our smartphones online pretty much sorted (remember the headaches of Windows 3.1 and the TCP/IP stacks? Exactly). We’re starting to see services online start to use the Web Browser, or putting together their own client, but there is still a huge (sometimes undocumented) range of SMS commands you can send directly.
And then there’s Twitter.
And while I think mobile applications are nowhere near Windows XP/Vista/OS X levels, I don’t think we’ll ever ‘downgrade’ the use of SMS as a command line to the world. Not only is it just convenient, but it’s very human centric. By this I mean it’s not scary (like calling up .bash shell scary) to the regular user. And those regular users are people who are used to texting friends and asking “where the restaurant is†– a perfect scenario for texting Google Maps or Yellow Pages.
What we need now is some natural language parsing, so that regular sentences can be sent to our Web 2.0 apps. Rather than “D Here Restaurant†“I need to get from where I am now to Valvona and Corolla.â€
by Darla Mack
July 30, 2007 at 3:25 am · Filed under Mobile Applications
I was recently notified by a reader that support for the Yahoo! Go Mobile version 1.0 is ending.
Some users are being alerted via text message to update to the latest version 2.0. Now what I could never understand is why didn’t they make the new version more user friendly such as the 1st version. What made 1.0 so popular was the fact that it had the cool messenger app built right in. I think this was replaced by the addition of Flickr in the new version.
Support for 1.0 will end on August 27th. To download Yahoo! Go Mobile 2.0 visit here.
by Ewan Spence
July 27, 2007 at 2:20 pm · Filed under MMS, Software, Mobile Applications
So what was the biggest message of last week? My money is on Harry Potter. And while I’m not going to talk about the plotlines here (much as I am tempted to bring up my theories on some of the romantic pairings), the voraciousness of fandom may well have pointed out one possible new angle on content distribution.
When we talk about Mobile Messaging, we are looking both in the short term, but also occasionally with our heads held high, and our “We Love Trelawney†tea cosies firmly in place. I’m looking at the sheer volume of information that was shipped out in ‘dead tree’ format to make the midnight openings special and I’m thinking there must be a better way.
While letters and faxes still hold a place in the legal world, but for general day to day communication in the Western World, they have been surpassed in many cases by email and attachments. Even now, Email is threatening to go the way of Albus Dumbledore and be replaced by the MySpace’s and Facebooks of the current Social World. Each copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows weighed in at close to 1 kilogram (the sixth book actually broke this weight barrier in the UK edition). All this to make sure that at one point in time, people could start queuing up to read the words of one person.
And now for the science bit.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, condenses into a plain text file of around 1.1megabytes. With work, modern text compression tools will bring this to 650 kilobytes. Split this up into a bundle of chapters and it’s well within the regular 100K size limit of an MMS – and with devices such as the Sony Ericsson able to handle up to 300K per MMS, we’re not far off, with current technology, being able to deliver an entire book in a single MMS. We could use Email or a Push-WAP solution to do this right now if there was a proven demand.
Yes there was a certain social ennui of gathering at the local bookstore dressed as wizards, but that’s a lot of paper, a lot of ink, a lot of fuel to manufacture them, to distribute them, and then to implement a system as robust as any digital DRM system to embargo them (and like any DRM system, one leak and suddenly everyone has a copy; a discussion for another time).
And while it might not be best placed for a book that sold more than most of the Hollywood Box Office on launch weekend, for the smaller author looking to get established and build up ties to fandom, the electronic, direct to handset method could be an important tool in the 21st Century. Al lthese books have electronic versions on the authors computer, with a few tools, 15 minutes conversion, and a switched on internet head, distribution becomes a one click process.
by Debi Jones
July 27, 2007 at 3:18 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, ATT
Many mobile prepaid service plans in the US still require a per SMS charge. Most charge for sending and receiving and include a premium charge for sending to other countries. Have you ever sat down to figure out how much you’re really paying for this frictionless and convenient mode of communication?
The Plans
ATT
- $.15 send & $.15 receive - domestic
- $.20 send & $.15 receive - international
- $4.99 200 message bundle
- $19.99 unlimited messages
Verizon
- $.10 send & $.10 receive domestic to other Verizon phone
- $.15 send & $.15 receive domestic to other carrier
- $.25 send & $.10 receive international
- no bundles
Sprint/Nextel by Boost Mobile
- $.10 send & $0 receive
- $5.00 unlimited messages
Virgin Mobile MVNO via Sprint
- $.05 send & $.05 receive
- $4.99 200 message bundle
- $1.99 50 message bundle
A Bit of Math
SMS max message size is 160 characters. One character equals one byte. There are 1024 x 1024 or 1,048,576 bytes in 1MB.
So there are 1,048,576 / 160 or 6553.6 SMS messages in 1MB of data.
NOTE: this assumes you use all the characters available in every message which none of us do. Some examples of really short messages show up on my phone frequently like “Ready?” “You home?” “Let’s go.” For illustration purposes and easier math, I’m assuming all 160 characters per message are used.
Calculating message traffic per MB these prepaid subscribers are paying the following rates.
Fun Facts
ATT
- $983.04 per 1MB of message data - domestic
- $1310.72 per 1MB of message data - international
- $163.84 per 1MB of message data - 200 message bundle
Note the unlimited amount depends on how many are sent, but for illustration lets’s say you sent and received 1000 SMS. You’re per MB charge is $131.07.
Verizon
- $655.36 per 1MB of message data - domestic to other Verizon phone
- $983.04 per 1MB of message data - domestic to other carrier
- $1638.40 per 1MB of message data - international
- no bundles
Sprint/Nextel by Boost Mobile
- $655.36 per 1MB of message data
- $32.77 per 1MB of message data (assuming 1000 messages per month)
Virgin Mobile MVNO via Sprint
- $327.68 per 1MB of message data
- $163.84 per 1MB of message data - 200 message bundle
- $260.83 per 1MB of message data - 50 message bundle
No wonder the Internet is jealous of mobile data! Oh! and Happy 15th to SMS.
by Chetan Sharma
July 26, 2007 at 11:58 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
Vint Cerf is a legend in the industry. Widely known as a “Father of the Internet,” Vint is the co-designer with Robert Kahn of TCP/IP protocols and basic architecture of the Internet. Google Kirkland hosted an evening with him and as expected it was a packed house. Of course, the fine dining experience was part of the deal.
The topic of the talk was “Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century”
It is always inspiring to hear the best minds speak, especially someone having such a deep historical perspective as Vint. The full-house was glued to their seats as he took us on a journey from the starting point of creating a network and a protocol that will form the backbone of the what we know today as the Internet and then ended the talk with an update on his work on Interplanetary Internet.
However, what was fascinating was he started his presentation with the “potential” of mobile as an access means. He referred phones as programmable devices and Information appliances rather than mobile phones. His strong emphasis on mobile esp in the developing world gives insights into the reason (and it is quite obvious) for all the recent activity at Google w.r.t. mobile. Mobile as a commerce and payment device where people can exchange minutes (as currency) and buy goods, complete transactions offers a great opportunity esp. if geo-location services are involved.
He complained about the inability of US to provide symmetric broadband services to its masses while other countries are zipping it by in terms of penetration and broadband availability. He didn’t think streaming video is going to be a big issue in the future (though it consumes 36% of the HTTP traffic (which consumes 45% of the Internet traffic) as people will just download the file instead of streaming with multi-gig network pipes.
He also talked about the democratization of content where people can contribute a single word to wikipedia or a whole page to a blog and as such the barriers to participation have dropped down to zero.
Then, he got into Interplanetary Internet, something you don’t hear everyday. But, the experiences, and the technical decisions made were quite fascinating. The Delay Tolerant Networking protocol they developed for communicating with various nodes in the solar system also got adopted by the DOD and is currently in use in Iraq. And, the application it is being used for is Chat.
He was quite funny and thoughtful with life full of experiences and achievements.
At the end of the talk, I asked him - “You talked about the potential for mobile but given that the current state of closed gardens unlike the evolution of the Internet, how do you see the potential being realized?” Of course this was in reference to the all the 700MHz discussion that is consuming the industry right now. It is a pivotal moment in the industry and the consequences could be enormous.
He gave a pretty thoughtful response and this coming from a guy who spent several years in the telecom world (yes, he is with Google right now but he is very genuine and Carriers should talk to him to take history lessons)
“Our industry needs to realize that their new business models that will evolve that will benefit everyone in the ecosystem, if we are more open, have more open platforms, open networks, open devices. We are participating in the 700MHz debate and we are trying to persuade people that by opening the network, new opportunities will emerge. The current state of affairs is of course closed gardens. The alternate route is when more devices use alternate networks and more smart devices are introduced. I was kind of disappointed by iPhone, they could have done so much by opening up the device”
Overall, a great evening and I was fortunate to participate in the discussion.
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