Monthly Archive

Thanks to the fabulous Fresh Creation

Currently I am busy setting up Mobile Monday Amsterdam. A chapter of the well known international network. Have a look at the blog.

BTW we also have a Twitter account

We try to organise the first meeting on the 4th of June. Is going to be tight..

If you want to join, partner or sponsor. Send me an email..

Currently I am in the process of organising a new open network event in Amsterdam The Netherlands. I am planning to host it once a month. Very informal style. With one or two speakers per event. The ambition of these drinks is to integrate the mobile industry especially with the more traditional industries(internet, IT, advertising, Retail, etc). I see that the mobile industry is still pretty isolated and it is time to change that.Want to help me organise these drinks, wish to speak on one of these evenings or ofcourse want to participate please let me know.

(via PSFK)

The New York Times recently reported on a company called ShopText that is enabling users to purchase products instantly through their mobile phone and charge it to their credit card. 

The NYT writes:

To use the system, a consumer must first place a phone call to ShopText to set up an account, specifying a shipping address and card account. After that, all purchases can be made by thumb.

When ShopText receives text messages about donations or products, it charges the credit card it has on file for the buyer, then, if appropriate, sends the product from one of its warehouses around the country.

“E-commerce only represents a fraction of total retail — the thing that holds it back is it’s tethered to an Internet connection,” said Mark Kaplan, founder and chief marketing officer of ShopText. “The cellphones link products to media. When people get the impulse to buy, they have their cellphones.”

Print advertisers in particular are excited about how the new technology will increase readers interaction with magazines and loosen the death grip internet has held over non-retail impulse shopping.

We imagine this must resolve a few dilemmas for folks on holiday who just can’t decide whether to spend the day at the beach go out shopping - why not both!   Watch out for more and more print ads displaying text-message codes. 

Widget support for S60 was announced today. Demos are available in Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco and Nokia CEO CTO Tero Ojanperä is starting web cast now 13.15 CET. Developers can use standard Web technologies such as AJAX, HTML, CSS, Java Script and easily create small applications, Widgets, for users. Widget support will be part of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and makes S60 developer platform even stronger. Widget is an embodiment of S60 Web Run-Time. Web Run-Time allows Web developers to build new Widgets for mobile and even migrate existing widgets from other platforms to S60 with minimal effort.

Web Run-Time lowers the barrier to develop applications for mobile. No need for Symbian programming experience. No need for application signing. Do it fast and distribute on Web for everyone. Use common Web tools, documentation will be available. When bringing existing Widgets to S60, few things has to be taken into account. Screen is smaller, no mouse, two softkeys: options and exit. The core of the existing Widget can be utilized and migration is easy. We have worked with several companies to create demo Widges and usually migration took only few days. I’m impressed.

Ebays, Amazons etc. big Internet names are already on mobile but I believe this is a great step to make long tail available on mobile. We have had the best mobile browser which is making billions of Web pages available for S60 users. But now there is going to be easy way for every Internet company to make mobile user experience even better. Widgets make access to Web services fast and pleasant.

With Widgets smartphone users gain instant and easy access to commonly used Web services. In the first phase Widget functionality allows access to Web and displays information for user in mobile optimized way. Widget user experience on S60 is similar to any other application (Symbian or Java). Widgets can be downloaded and launched in similar way that other applications. Several Widgets can be run at the same time and be seen and switched from multitasker menu.

Open to new features. This has never been more true than today.

Thanks to MRKTNGman

Nokia launched Nokia BetaLabs today.

Nokia is continuously working on new ideas and innovations and improving our current applications and services. Please try them out and give us your feedback on how we can further improve them. Your feedback goes directly to the development teams that are working on the applications.

Nothing remarkable yet..but anyway a nice first step..

Thanks to Tommi’s S60 Applications blog

Just read this post on Mashable about “dead” Dodgeball. Interesting to see how services develop and why some succeed and others fail..

Dodgeball, the text-message based social networking service, seems to have been left for dead.

Dennis Crowley, the founder of Dodgeball, and Alex Rainert have both left the sinking Dodgeball ship. Acquired by Google in 2005, Crowley insists that Google is not providing the resources necessary to innovate their service, let alone keep up with recently popular Twitter and newcomer Jaiku. Crowley and Rainert have decided to quit Google, leaving Dodgeball to fend for itself. An announcement from Crowley says that the whole experience at Google was frustrating, “especially as we couldn’t convince them that Dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.”

In the end, that leaves Twitter the reigning chief. Not that their dominance was in question as of late, but Dodgeball is sure to meet its end very soon. It’s a shame that Google never built up Dodgeball, considering the current and future mobile market, but then again, Google has $3.1 billion deals to tend to.

UPDATE:

Thanks to BlueAce here some more info from the guys themselves:

So…. Alex and I quit Google on Friday.

It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I’m actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.

So, what’s next? Starting today (Monday!) I’m joining the kids at area/code who are knee-deep in building all sorts of Big Games (remember PacManhattan? ConQwest?). Alex is moving on to IconNicholson where he took a gig as a Creative Strategist focusing on mobile and emerging technologies. (And sorry, but I don’t know what Google has planned for dodgeball going forward.)

ps: Clear your calendar for this Saturday (April 21). A whole crew of us are dj’ing to celebrate our escape. (details + invite coming soon!)

Great PDF on Mobile Gaming…

A couple weeks ago Microsoft acquired speech recognition player TellMe. Now Google offers a speech recognition local search application for the phone.

With this application, Google is blending the PC with the mobile phone, and will be creating another revenue stream for keywords.

Can you see the opportunity for “mobile search” and “mobile find” with this application?

Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

* search for a local business by name or category.
You can say “Giovanni’s Pizzeria” or just “pizza”.

* get connected to the business, free of charge.

* get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.
Just say “text message”.

And it’s free. Google doesn’t charge you a thing for the call or for connecting you to the business. Regular phone charges may apply, based on your telephone service provider.

Thank to: The Pondering Primate