Author Archive
by Oliver Starr
July 5, 2007 at 10:00 am · Filed under On Blogs and Blogging
I have a small favor to ask of you. Please help me to improve the blogging experience. You may have noticed recently the profusion of buttons such as the “digg” or “sphere it” buttons that have started sprouting up all over the web. Ostensibly these buttons are designed to facilitate the posting of stories that readers find interesting on other sites to help these stories gain more attention. Judging by the frequent with which these buttons now occur I’ve been wondering just how much of a difference they make - who’s doing all that clicking? Is it you?
To find out I’ve created two surveys; one is aimed mostly at content creators and aims to discover how you choose to put buttons on your web site, which buttons you choose, why you choose them, and what sort of benefits you think you’re getting. The second is more for folks that tend to “digg” stuff rather than for those hoping to get “dugg” and win the “dugg lottery”
If you could be so kind as to take a couple of minutes from your busy day to answer one or both of these surveys I will be truly appreciative. I will also be happy to share the data I collect with anyone that actually completes one or both surveys.
Survey One: for Bloggers
Click Here to take survey
Survey Two: for Blog Readers
Click Here to take survey
Thanks for your help!
by Oliver Starr
June 19, 2007 at 8:39 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
Having recently attended the Global Mobile Messaging Conference in Monte Carlo I had anticipated having quite a lot to report. However the best plans are sometimes laid to waste by the most unexpected of circumstances. Having a migraine while at the show didn’t help but the thing that made reporting the show truly difficult was the paucity of truly interesting stuff happening.
In fact, as a group I’d say the MM2.0 bloggers would issue a collective shrug to best describe what we though of the event. As far as I’m concerned the only notable trend was a decided focus on the part of all the carriers on Instant Messaging or IM. If you’re a web denizen you’re probably yawning about now. However, before you toddle off for a nap let me draw a few conclusions for you about why this is something to keep abreast of, what it means for the mobile ecosystem and why after all this time the carriers are suddenly excited by 1999 technology.
Let me start with the last part first. Actually, let me start by blaming the folks at Twitter. It’s all their fault. At least that’s how it seems to me because so far as I can tell that’s the only thing really different between least year and this that could account for the sea change in attitude that the major telecommunications companies have about truly contemporaneous messaging.
While I don’t think that the general public knows about Twitter sufficient to classify it as a social phenomenon, I’d say that the technology community is entranced enough by this particular application to call it a Techno-Social Phenomenon. The funny thing is that in its most basic form (which is how it is mostly used since the more complicated things that one can do with Twitter require injecting commands into the URL which is something beyond the average user) Twitter is nothing all that unique. In fact, an associate pointed out to me recently that AOL’s AIM instant messenger could have been Twitter nearly ten years ago but the developers added too much functionality. In fact, all that Twitter really is if you think about it is presence (I am online; or not) and status (I am washing dishes and hate it).
This exact same information lives in your AOL/AIM buddy list - it’s your status and the clever use of your away message. The only difference (aside from the field for chatting that AIM includes) is the fact that with Twitter you can participate in the public sharing of your presence and status formation whereas with AOL, the presentation of this information is reserved for people that are already on your buddy list or vice versa.
At present, Twitter, and lesser known but similar Jaiku are all the rage among those in the know - the early adopter crowd that always has the cooler phone, the Google Invite and the job with stock options. Okay, maybe those are just my coolier than thou “co-contwitterers” but you get the idea. Pause a moment for a pitying thought for poor AOL. Even when they get it right they can’t get it right.
Even today there’s what? Fifty-three million active users, and over 100 million or so registered AIM users? And like I said above, AIM is just Twitter with more easily accessible features. But are the cool kids playing in AIM? Sure we might have an AIM address - I use mine to register for sites that demand registration to get to the good stuff - but do I EVER check that mailbox? Ever is just Never minus an “N” as in Nope - I don’t.
I hope this irony doesn’t escape you. In about 1997 AOL already was providing a service recognizable by today’s standards as IM and yet due to their lack of cachet with the techie crowd an agile little start-up operating out of a funky loft in San Francisco might end up with a comparable market cap on a fraction of AOL/AIM’s user base in a time frame so short as to be almost unimaginable.
The thing is, AOL/AIM could still win. They probably won’t because they don’t seem to think tangentially but if any of their astute executives had been at the Global Messaging Congress they might have come to the realization that playing nice with the likes of Sprint, Vodafone, Telus, and Orange could be the key to a renewed period of growth.
The Telco’s suspect (and I think they’re probably at least partially right) that IM is going to move up the ladder of importance quite a lot this year. This is a good news, bad news situation for certain since IM will probably hurt SMS numbers maybe even substantially. Since SMS is a hugely profitable service for the Telco’s it probably worries them a good deal that companies like Twitter have figured out how to run their services over HTTP instead of SS7 resulting in nothing aside from some data charges for the use of the network, a far cry from the ten to fifty cents a message pulled in via SMS.
Oh well, just like voice, the party couldn’t last forever. I am sure that the carriers are sorting out new ways to extract their fifty pounds per man, woman and child next month and the one after that too, voice revenue or no, SMS revenue or no and IM revenue or no. In a worst case scenario the carriers can do to all of you what they seem to think they can do to me - have math errors in their favor adding up to tens of dollars in extra charges on each and every bill I get. Yeah, I audit them.
What? You don’t believe me? Check my Twitter - you’ll see. 
by Oliver Starr
June 19, 2007 at 12:35 am · Filed under Mobile Applications
I’ve been holding my breath like a petulant toddler waiting for the day when TalkPlus announced that their application could be used with Symbian devices. At long last (and over a year from when I’d first heard about this) I can let out a long exhale. The company that purports to be able to rewrite the definition of what is possible with a mobile phone is the brave move of “throwing the application to the bloggers” to take their accolades (or lumps) come what may.
In a wise move TalkPlus has retained Andy Abramson of Comunicano (who developed and continues to run the Nokia blogger outreach program that has received so much critical acclaim) to oversee the selection of bloggers and the administration of this hi-scrutiny beta. Disclosure: I am a participant in a number of Comunicano’s bloggger outreach programs including the Nokia program and the TalkPlus program as well.
As soon as I heard about the opportunity to test TalkPlus I jumped over to the private site and completed the sign-up and installation of the TalkPlus client on my Nokia N95 Smartphone. So far so good. The sign up and installation have gone off without a hitch. Now I’ve got to see about testing the application…
Of course you are probably wondering just what TalkPlus does. In short, imagine a high end desk-phone like the kind you would expect to see in some CEO’s office. Multiple lines, check, instant conference calling; check, intelligent call routing; check again. Ability to originate a call from a German exchange so you can talk locally to your German friends while you are in Los Angeles? Check. What??????????????
Yup, this is where TalkPlus started raising eyebrows a couple of years ago. It seems that with some VoIP-tastic engineering they’ve concocted a secret telephony routing sauce that will save you money, simplify your phone book and in a twist that apparently added about a year to their development time while they tried to figure out how to not totally alienate the carriers in spite of this cost saving coup de grace.
There’s more actually, but since I wrote about this previously back when I was the author of MobileCrunch I’ll just post an excerpt of that article below. Stay tuned for an interview with TalkPlus CEO Jeff Black and my first hand impressions after actually using this bleeding edge technology.
excerpted from my former blog MobileCrunch was this portion of a post on TalkPlus functions
In case you haven’t read about the company previously, TalkPlus, which refers to their advanced suite of telephony services for mobile devices as Voice 2.0 brings VoIP call management tools to mobile phones. So what does this mean? Well, the ability to have more than one phone number mapped to a single phone for one, and also the ability to deliver outbound caller ID information as multiple different identities
The difference is far more than cosmetic though. Let’s say you have a mobile with number xxx-xxx-xxxx. You could have a second TalkPlus number that is yyy-yyy-yyyy that would ring also to your mobile. Moreover when people from area code yyy call you on your yyy number they are making a local call, as are you when you call them. The same goes for your xxx number.
According to TalkPlus (and their original demo from DEMO Fall) you can have both domestic and international numbers on the same phone and again get the same kind of localized access for each. This functionality however is for the future as what they are planning on rolling out henceforth is basic second number functionality- in essence the xxx-xxx-xxxx/yyy-yyy-yyyy example I just provided.
There’s more to the offering however. Talk plus allows you to exquisitely customize the behavior of the phone on a per-caller basis. Some people you never want to hear from can be directed to receive a fast busy signal every time they call whereas your dearest Mum - well - if you really want her to, you can make is so that she can reach you all the time, even cutting through the do not disturb option that currently doesn’t exist on a cell phone unless you use the “off†button.
The customization does not stop there. Using the call management functionality that is accessed online you can also control voice messaging providing a different outbound message for each number as well as controlling quite specifically options for reviewing messages - even specifying that messages from certain callers are heard before anyone else. All in all the features sound like a vast improvement over current mobile telephony options and I’m sure that I will find them very useful provided that the company does in fact finally make good on its promised beta for those that have been waiting so (im)patiently.
To this point Jeff assured me that the passwords that were circulated during DEMO Fall are still good and that everyone that is still so inclined can have their promised trial just as soon as they launch the service. If the technology were any less impressive this author would be inclined to turn a deaf ear, however, I clearly recall just how wowed I was during their demonstration and it is probably for this reason that I was so disappointed in their prior failure to launch the service before.
Following the launch of the basic TalkPlus service with only a single additional number, the company plans to enable multiple additional numbers per single mobile number as well as further improvements to include international as well as domestic numbers.
In any event, it looks as if the company is now on track to keep the promises they made back in 2005 and I for one can’t wait to give the service a try and see if it’s every bit as exceptional as their VC’s and more than one blogger hope it to be.
by Oliver Starr
May 28, 2007 at 10:42 am · Filed under Software
I liked the idea of SpinVox when I first heard about it. The company takes your inbound voice messages and converts them simultaneously to text messages sent instantly to your phone and email sent immediately to your computer. It also archives a copy of the actual recorded message that you can listen to by calling your voicemail just like in the days when that was what you HAD to do to get your messages.
Like I said, I liked the idea of SpinVox when I heard about it but now, having used the service for about 3 weeks, I’m not sure I could live without it. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but truthfully, this system is so far superior to traditional “call to hear ‘em” messages that it is an improvement roughly comparable to the difference between a corded and cordless phone in your home. Bigger, even.
The problem with conventional voicemail is that you have no real idea what the call you missed was about until you do that which you hadn’t wanted to do when the phone was ringing - interrupt what you were doing and pick up the receiver. Granted, calling voicemail isn’t the same as actually making yourself available to the person on the other end of the line but you might as well have. If the message is important, you’re going to have to call them back anyway, and if it’s not - well - it still resulted in you doing something other than what you had been doing when the phone rang.
From my perspective what SpinVox is really about is putting the control back in the hands of the person receiving the call. Instead of being at the beck and call (literally) of anyone with your number you can let the calls you don’t want (or can’t answer for whatever reason) ring through to the SpinVox service confident in the knowledge that if what the caller has to say is sufficiently important that they choose to leave a message, you’ll be getting that message as a text within moments - preventing you from having to do anything more than steal a quick glance at your phone to view the message and determine what course of action you wish to take.
Having every message archived as an email is another nice touch, saving you from having to listen to a dozen saved messages on your phone just to get someone’s number. Another nice touch is that each message is given a unique message ID number. Entering this number at the prompt when listening to your messages over the phone (the old-busted way) allows you to skip directly to the message you are interested in without having to listen to all the other stacked up detritus that tends to clog conventional voice mail boxes as we use them as a substitute for a good secretary, good note taking skills, a good memory or a combination of all three.
This second innovation is one of those “a-ha why didn’t I think of that?” ideas that is completely logical once you hear it but which took more than a decade and a certain kind of genius to make a reality. In my humble opinion this elegant solution is far superior to Steve Jobs new “Visual Voicemail” if only for the reason that it doesn’t require that you have access to a dedicated interface to take advantage of the feature. So long as you know your voicemail number (or can remember to hit the asterisk at the beginning of the outbound message after dialing your own phone number) you can access this indexed voice mail from any phone at any time. Not bad, huh?
When I tell people about SpinVox the first thing that they ask me about is how reliably it translates what people say to text messages. My answer is that it does a job that by all accounts is surprisingly good. Far better than what you’ve experienced if you’ve tried to use voice recognition software on your computer at home. In fact, so far I’ve only had two messages that weren’t perfectly translated and the mistakes were as follows: I have a friend from the Netherlands named Wibe. (Pronounced something like: veehbeh) Spinvox interpreted this as Weaver. Not bad. B”Oliver, it’s Arkady” became Oliver ___ in North City… of course if you heard this fellow speak you’d probably find it nearly impossible to understand him yourself. So again, I don’t think this is too bad.
In comparison, I met with some folks the other day that were using a competitive product that I won’t name since I haven’t reviewed it myself. One of them showed me a message he had just received that said:
“Tim. I get this, get this, this ??? it ??? get that.” Now, maybe this was a joke. Maybe his dog was calling him? Maybe someone with Wernicke’s Aphasia? Or maybe the system isn’t so good. I do know that he asked if I could hook him up with a SpinVox account so it is safe to assume that from what he saw SpinVox is superior to the competitor in his opinion. While I can’t say that I know this first hand, I tend to believe it is true. What I can say for certain is that they can have my SpinVox service back when they pry the handset from my cold, dead hand. (yes. it’s that good.)
DISCLOSURE: I liked SpinVox so much that I approached the company and am now helping them with some product strategy and evangelism in Silicon Valley.
EXTRA: As a result of this evangelistic role I can dole out the occasional freebie SpinVox account so here’s what I am going to do. If you’d like to try SpinVox for free, let me know why you’re deserving of the service in a comment on this post. I’ll hand out up to five free accounts to the comments that I determine in my sole opinion are those that seem most deserving of an account. (Mind you this is done at my discretion and my discretion alone so no whining, my decisions are final)
by Oliver Starr
May 15, 2007 at 11:50 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0
Now you’ll have to take what I say with a grain of salt here since disclosure demands that I admit that I do not have and have never had a child. In spite of behaving like one from time to time I’m thus forced to also admit that I don’t have the parenting experience that would make me an authority on the topic, either. However I’ve seen enough kids and have enough friends with that affliction (just kidding) that I do at least have a reasonably well developed opinion on kids with mobile phones and it is this: they do “think different”.
Just read a family of four’s mobile bill and you can see what I mean: Mom 1032 minutes of voice 2 incoming text messages, Dad, 764 minutes of voice, 0 text messages, Tina age 16 2055 minutes of voice (yes, she’s grounded) and 547 text messages(for a year), Will age 13 27 minutes of voice 445 text messages (Will will be mowing the lawn til he’s 60 to pay for his usage, “incidentally).
This is representative of a new paradigm unfolding right in front of our eyes. Kids are using mobile phones as instant messengers or status devices. They have the ability to maintain a near constant “back channel” connection with their principal friends even as they talk on a land-line or engage in a meat-space conversation. In some sense I think we’re witnessing a quasi evolutionary change in terms of the human ability to multi-task.
The truth is that as adults virtually all of us are terrible multi-taskers. We’re fairly adept at quickly switching from one activity to another a thousand times during a typical day but truth be told most of us can only really do one thing at a time; or at least one thing well at a time. From my observations kids seem to be overcoming this limitation and this is particularly evident in how they use their mobile phones.
Not only are many of these mini-robo-sapiens able to text message using multi-tap or T9 by touch, they can do so while engaged in a intense conversation with someone at the other end of a phone that is being cradled between said cy-child’s ear and shoulder - her other hand being erstwhile engaged manipulating the PS3 controller to blast alien hordes from the black sky; protecting earth being a trivial task compared to a really hard game like Halo. What makes this even more impressive is that it’s clear this advanced new life form isn’t even breaking a metaphorical sweat while carrying on all these tasks. In fact, so remedial is the game that she can beat the computer in spite of the fact that because of how she’s holding the phone she is actually viewing the display sideways!
You may think I am exaggerating perhaps? Well, you can try to stave off those Freudian feelings of insecurity by denying reality or perhaps sign up for a cybernetic-multi-tasking implant that can bring you up a notch or two on this brave new evolutionary scale. Either that (hopefully they’ll be available in the next few years) or else face the reality that we’re going to fall further and further behind this somewhat terrifying generation of digital demigods. Maybe we’ll be fortunate and they’ll treat us with respect and compassion sort of like cherished antiques. And maybe, if we’re really lucky, when they speak to us they’ll do so using methods and devices we can understand - and slowly - after all it should be obvious that people THAT BUSY can’t possibly be bothered to repeat themselves just because WE don’t get it…
Truthfully, I’m not certain if Darwin would have used the word “evolution” to describe this change in ability from one generation to the next but then again, perhaps he would have. Another truth is that a lot of us aging “uni-taskers” find this multi-tasking “constant partial attention” - as my friend Marc Orchant calls it - very annoying. In fact at times I find this behavior so annoying that it occurs to me that perhaps it’s a good thing that I don’t have children of my own. After all, there’s another word that Darwin knew that is much less ambiguous when put into action: extinction.
Author’s Note: The principal topic for this new community blog is Mobile Messaging 2.0. As such, it falls to me and the other authors writing here to discuss as wide an array of technologies and methods as we can. The brief accounting above is but one glance into a not too far distant where our kids have surpassed our command of the digital domain and are the true controller of the Mobile Messaging 2.0 Medium.
