Archive for Mobile Email
by Ewan Spence
December 9, 2007 at 8:15 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile Email, Instant Messaging, Communication, Symbian, Messaging, WIMM
While at the recent Nokia World conference, both Darla Mack and I decided to ask a number of people just what a mobile message was? Darla’s posted up her responses, but I shall now do mine in the form of a podcast and the spoken word. Over to our guests to find out their thoughts…
MM20 Podcast: What Is A Mobile Message [00:03:05m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
by Debi Jones
December 8, 2007 at 11:32 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile Email, mobile social networking, Instant Messaging, Messaging, WIMM
A recent discussion between most of the bloggers of Mobile Messaging 2.0 resulted in a disagreement. We were turning over various topics in our collective mind that might be interesting to our readers and us. As we deconstructed these topics, a starting point of sorts emerged on which we could bring our different perspectives in the hope of providing insight into how some parts of the mobile ecosystem interpret the language of mobility. That starting point is logical and simple although we found the answer may not be so.
What is a Mobile Message? Going around the virtual room to gain agreement on a starting point for considering other topics, it became apparent that the defining characteristics of applying the label mobile to any message was not a point on which we agreed. Over the next week, MM2 will consider this question, share our own perspectives and views relative to our position within the mobile ecosystem and invite you, our readers, to join in the discussion.
The components of a mobile message include the network, the device, the transport (e.g., SMS, MMS, email). Is the mobile network required? Or is it enough to use a mobile device on some other network, for example, wi-fi? A purist might say that the SMS transport is required to qualify the distinction of a mobile message versus merely a message sent electronically. Given the spirited discussion that took place between us, readers can expect some considered opinions and lively disagreement.
The marketing language from operators to consumers specifies text messaging, email, picture messaging, video messaging, voicemail messages, and Voice SMS. What about the mobilizing of social networks and the associated messages? What about mobile IM, chat, etc.? What about social gestures such have been popularized by social networks like nudging, poking, smiling or following? Consider Vibetonz and sending emoticons…are those mobile messages? And finally, do the semantics matter?
Let us know what you like, dislike or were bored by in this process as we hope to do more conversations on shared topics in the coming months. And now, enjoy.
by Debi Jones
November 20, 2007 at 7:05 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile Tech, Events + Conferences, Mobile Email, mobile social networking, Instant Messaging, FOMM, Venture Capital, Under the Radar, 3Jam
Venture capitalists Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners, and Veneet Buch, Blue Run Ventures, speak from an investors perspective on “The Future of Mobile Messaging.” While attending Under the Radar - Mobility last week at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, I had the chance to ask Tim and Vineet about their predictions on the future of mobile messaging. They have different ideas about what will be the most critical aspects of messaging and the role of mobile network operators in those developments.
To toggle between the two interviews, click on the “Play Now” link associated with the interview you wish to listen to.
Tim Chang on FOMM [6:39m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
Vineet Buch on FOMM [6:23m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
by Ewan Spence
November 12, 2007 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, SMS, Mobile Tech, Platforms, Mobile Email, Nokia, Instant Messaging, Communication, FOMM
In all the fuss over technology, I wanted to take a step back and think about what the next form of messaging will be, and if we can’t do some logical thinking about it.
We all have five senses, touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell (and the arguments about there being a sixth sense too, that’s hard to explain, it’s a psychic connection, inside of your brain, so you can understand people like Shirley McClain are best left to The Animaniacs). Whatever form the next form of mobile messaging is going to be, it’s going to be using one of the first five.
While Nokia have piloted a touch screen with feedback (so that touching an on-screen key feels like a key), I think the vibrate alert on most mobile phones is about as far as we’ll get with touch – although I’m sure some enterprising programmer will come up with a morse code signaler it’s not going to be mainstream. Taste and smell are also something else I think we can safely ignore – scratch and sniff movies never made it out the drive-in 50’s movie scene, don’t expect Verizon to hail this as the next great boundary.
Which leaves hearing and seeing. So, audio, pictures, and moving images in some form or another. Seeing works for images and video is naturally a combination of seeing and hearing – plus of course we shouldn’t forget text or rich media (text, images and layout) content, which comes under seeing.
What about how it gets to your device? Well let’s talk timescales. You’re going to be having some form of communication with another person – and it’s either real time, or ‘delayed.’ So let’s take these and throw them into our senses and see what we can get.
Real Time Hearing
This should be obvious – it’s the core function of a phone, and what every single handset has to do. Important to remember that any service complements the full duplex audio of voice calls.
Delayed Hearing
An obvious way to supplement voice calls is to have an answering machine, where people can leave you messages for you to listen to at a later date. Again you’d be hard pushed to find a cellphone plan that doesn’t include voicemail in some form. And don’t forget a number of these allow you to forward just a voicemail to someone else, without actually having to phone them, Of course this is all network based, forcing you to dial in. It is possible on some smartphones to record audio, and then send that as data, so here’s one avenue that isn’t being fully exploited – although some carriers in the Far East make a great play on this.
Delayed Reading
Get some text, read it, and if you can, reply to it. Your classic SMS (Short message service) takes you to 160 characters, and MMS (Multimedia Message Service) originally took you up to 100K of textual data.
Real Time Reading
Strangely, the chat room experience hasn’t really made it mainstream on mobile phones yet, although you could argue that SMS just about manages to be real time with two people. Certainly the likes of IRC can run on devices (WirelessIRC running on Nokia S60 devices proves that to critical acclaim), but I’d regard the speed of text entry to be too slow for mortals (as opposed to 14 year olds) to do real time chat on current devices.
Real Time Watching
Video calls – the classic sci-fi of having a camera on you and conversing that way. It was demo’ed in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, and the technology is on pretty much every single 3G enabled handset. It’s here, it’ll improve over time, but are we going to see an uptake on it?
Delayed Watching
Think a mix of podcasting, video calling and voicemail and you have one of the missing elements in the matrix that isn’t talked about. It’s not something that the networks provide in their infrastructure directly, but there’s nothing to stop you doing a little home recording on your hone, and then get the option to send it on to other - normally via email or MMS, but don’t discount ‘broadcast’; options such as a direct upload to YouTube.
Breaking it down into the areas like that, and you see that the actual properties of a mobile message are all pretty much covered in today’s modern devices. So looking for gaps isn’t going to find the next form of mobile messaging. After all blogs had been about, and SMS had been about, but it wasn’t until Twitter came along that the idea of ‘blogging SMS’ took hold in the technology market (and even then people are still working out what Twitter actually is).
No the future of mobile messaging isn’t going to be filling a product gap, it’s going to be exploiting the existing technology in strange ways, with new twists, and a crazed mind coupled with some VC funding to let them work on it for six months. To be honest I can’t wait to see what the next idea is going to be.
by Ewan Spence
September 21, 2007 at 7:26 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, SMS, Software, Events + Conferences, Podcasts, Mobile Applications, GSM, Mobile Email, Carriers, mobile social networking, Nokia, Ovi, Instant Messaging, Communication
As mentioned in our previous post from Tech Crunch 40, Debi and I sat down to talk about the five companies who won through to present on stage - namely Cubic Telecom (www.cubictelecom.com), Yap (www.yapinc.com), Trutap (www.trutap.com), Ceedo (www.ceedo.com) and Loudtalks (www.loudtalks.com).
There’s a lot to discuss, from business model, geographical challenges (both in distribution and acceptance), the might of the carriers and the handset manufacturers, and all the issues that a start-up in the mobile are going to have to deal with.
MM20 at Tech Crunch 40, pt 2:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
by Darla Mack
August 2, 2007 at 2:35 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Usage + Usability, Mobile Email
Recently, Nokia announced the availability of its Mail for Exchange business solution for 2 of its Nseries devices. N95 and N73 users can now use the application.
Maybe I’m not catching on to the push email buzz that much and its because I don’t quite get it. To me its like loosing the remote control and forgetting how to manually change the channel on the TV. I know email is important, but so important that you actually forget to check your device for new emails?
I’m not bad mouthing the concept, but in my recent time blogging it seems that consumers have considered this as a factor on whether or not to keep their current devices. After the release of Mail for Exchange for the N95 I’ve seen comments and emails saying that now they will keep their N95’s.
I use SpamArrest for my email and Nokia’s built in email client on my N95. I’ve actually tested the timing on when mail appears on the server and to my device and it seems to be a delay of a few seconds. Depending on my laptop connection sometimes I receive the email to my mobile before SpamArrest. So whats all the hoopla about?
Now let me clarify some things a bit. The majority of the people that I’m referencing to who are interested in push email are yahoo, msn and google users. I’m not talking about employees that actually need to be connected to an exchange server of some sort.
by Imran Ali
August 1, 2007 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, Voicemail, Mobile Email
Standardised messaging formats such as MMS and SMS do a great job in delivering messages between devices from various manufacturers, carriers, applications and operating systems.
However, each time I upgrade my mobile handset - there are few consistent mechanisms for me to migrate the messages held within my phone. Sure, I can fire VCards and VCals between phones, but why no format for transferring my messages?
Texts, photomessages and voicemails are the bearers of the emotional bits that matter to us and yet we risk losing them each time we change handsets.
Perhaps we need a VInbox format, that can help us to move our messages - intact and whole . Technologies such as RSS and IMAP can provide some such capability, but I want to be able to move that precious last voicemail from a dying relative to my Gmail account for safekeeping; I want the intimate, playful texts from a girlfriend to stay with me whenever I upgrade phones.
Emotional bits matter, they’re important, valuable - and billable. The Web 2.0 industry gets this, but why don’t carriers and handset manufacturers? Answer - carriers want to make the network valuable and the handset a commodity…handset guys want the opposite.
Users will be left to construct their own solutions - and when they do, the incumbents will wonder why they didn’t think of it first…
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 Russell Shaw
July 14, 2007 at 5:22 pm · Filed under Mobile Tech, Mobile Applications, Mobile Email
Of late, I have been receiving numerous invitations to add specific people to my LinkedIn list. Business associates, publicists, former college classmates, a woman I used to date in a galaxy long ago and far away.
Sorry, I have been running behind. Yes, I know I need to catch up and add these people.
But you know something? When I looked at my LinkedIn list just a little while ago, I noticed something was missing.
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have an IM icon next to each listed name?
Here’s how it would work. When you register with LinkedIn, you add your IM or even email details. You go thru a Preferences menu in which you indicate if you wish to “publicly” list this info, keep it “private,” or reserve the option of providing messaging icons on a case by case basis.
Then, when I add you to my LinkedIn, or you add me, icon(s) for obne or more of the messaging services I specify comes up. Then, via my mobile or desktop device, I see your name on LinkedIn, and click one of the IM icons next to your name.
Then we’re really LinkedIn.
Do you think this is a good idea?
