Sprint Ambassador Program Update – MLB
Another email from Sprint about Major League Baseball on my mobile:
Did you know that throughout the month of October MLB fans can track, listen, watch and play throughout the Playoffs all the way through the World Series>MLB.com WAP:-Follow scores, news, pitch by pitch and more.
MLB.com Gameday Audio:
-Listen to all the Playoff games and World Series game live, without blackout restrictions, choose to listen to the Home, Away or the Spanish announcers.
MLB.com Gameday plus Audio J2ME application:
-Follow all the Playoff and World Series action live. Watch the streaming results, track your fantasy roster and listen live to all the games.
MLB.com Video:
-Watch Recaps from every Playoff game to the last out in the World Series. Follow each team as it advances towards the World Series with highlights and MLB.com expert commentary.
-Watch MLB.com’s Fastcast daily for interviews and previews of upcoming games.
-Watch the MLB.com Baseball Channel live for interviews, game previews, call in show, specials and more.
To access all of the above on your handset navigate to: Wireless Web>Sports>MLB.com.
Comments: For the raving Sports Fan or those who have their favorite team in the Post-Season Playoffs, it’s a great way to stay in touch where ever you are…just don’t get caught listening to the game while in church!
Silicon Valley WebGuild Event: Mobile Advertising
Silicon Valley WebGuild: Mobile Advertising (click for video)
Overview
Google, Yahoo, Nokia, Admob Mobile advertising is a fast growing slice of the online marketing mix. It is expected to reach $10 Billion by 2010 according to the Mobile Marketing Association. Leading content providers, brand advertisers, and enablers are beginning to sell mobile specific campaigns. As traditional channels for advertising, like TV, radio, and print are becoming less effective, marketers are seeking new mediums to reach and engage with consumers. Join this panel of industry experts to explore the opportunities and challenges of mobile advertising.
- Will mobile change advertising in the same way as the Internet
- Could mobile advertising subsidize many mobile services (as advertising supports many TV and online services today)
- What are brand advertisers expecting to see and pay for in mobile advertising
- Do consumers want advertisements and how will it affect the user experience
- What are some of the technological issues and where are the early adoptions taking place
| Moderator: | Julie Ask VP & Research Director, Jupiter Research |
| Panelists: | Michael Bayle, General Manager, Global Monetization, Connected Life, Yahoo! Sanji Fernando, Senior Manager, Business Renewal, Nokia Ventures Omar Hamoui, CEO and Founder, AdMob DNS (Did Not Show), Google |
Before I start reporting on this it was pretty significant to note that the panelist from Google was a no show, even though the event was on the Google’s Campus. I’ve been somewhat amazed at Google’s marketing efforts don’t seem quite thorough or consistent. I have seen them at tradeshows where they have a booth, simple to recruit people, but not to market or show technology relevant to the topic of the event. But even on your own campus, you should still be able to bring out a last minute “bench warmer” who can fill in and be on the panel!
Some of my thoughts:
Mobile advertising is going to be a long time before people like Madison Avenue Agencies and Fortune 500 consider it to be a viable medium. The way to track users and build credible statistics are sorely lacking, but not at the fault of the ad networks like AdMob or Google, but more to the idea that technologies such as AJAX and Javascript are almost non-existent on mobile browsers today.
Mobile browsers need to be honed and further developed in order to make it a viable option for marketeers and brands to consider the value proposition on what current is a very inexpensive option to reach consumers.
Demographic profiles about users need to be managed carefully since privacy and usage are carefully guarded by the mobile operator and less likely to be given to those who want to profile and build meaningful statics and reports.
This is an evolving space where it will take a few years for a mature model to be accepted as part of the complete advertising and marketing package of a company.
Sprint Ambassador Program Update – Game Arcade
Received another email from the Sprint Program. This time, it was incredibly terse and to the point!
Did you know that you can demo games for your mobile phone right on your PC using Sprint Digital Lounge Arcade?
Check it out! Go to sprint.com/arcade
So I went to the site and lots to see!
The game loads just as it would on a mobile, but on your desktop. The version appears to be to the full version, but the difference is that Sprint has set a time limit to try out the full version of the game. It takes a little getting used to, using the mouse to click on the buttons of the handset image, but the display of the game is really nice. After you try it out on your PC, there are a set of links to get the game onto your Sprint phone. This is a nice added feature to really help the user who barely knows how to access their phonebook or text message acquire gaming content.
MOTODEV Summit – San Jose: TU 207 Funding your Business with Motorola Ventures
MOTODEV Summit – San Jose
| Session: Title: Speaker: |
TU 207 Funding your Business with Motorola Ventures Harshul Sanghi Managing Director, Motorola Ventures Motorola, Inc. |
| Summary | Motorola Ventures identifies cutting-edge technologies and helps turn great new ideas into thriving businesses which complement Motorola’s total business strategy. Representatives from Motorola Ventures will provide insight into the key characteristics they look for when investing in a company. Through success stories of current portfolio companies learn what it takes for your company to be considered for strategic investment. |
Takeaways from this session about Motorola Ventures:
- Annual fund of $100 to $150 MM; Year to Date, the entire fund is $500+ MM
- The team is 15 individuals in (Sunnyvale, CA, Schaumburg, IL, Lexington, MA, Basingstoke, UK, Beijing, China, Tel-Aviv, Israel)
- Their annual deal flow is approximately 2500 business plan reviewed and out of that, 20 get funded. Harshul joked that that amounts to 2480 rejections!
- For any Motorola Ventures investment, it must meet three main criteria
- The company must have significant strategic impact to Motorola
- The company can succeed as a stand alone business without Motorola
- The company must be able to show financial success and exit strategies
- The fund invests in typically a “B” round of funding, but is willing to get in at the “A” round as well. It will not participate in the Seed stage or typically not anything after the “B” round. Their overall ownership in the company as a track record is roughly 20%
- 70% of the portfolio is in the mobile space and 30% is in other areas where Motorola is producing products or services around those sectors (ie. set top boxes, semiconductors)
- Current areas of interest are: End-to-End Mobile Solutions, Mobile Advertising, LBS, Social networking, WiMAX, Mobile Commerce, and Web 2.0
MOTODEV Summit – San Jose: TU 206 Working with Carriers – A View from the OEM
MOTODEV Summit – San Jose
| Session: Title: Moderator: |
TU 206 Working with Carriers – A View from the OEM John Ellis Director, Carrier Market Development, Ecosystem and Market Development, Motorola, Inc. |
| Panelists: | Carrier Market Development Team, Ecosystem and Market Development, Motorola, Inc. |
| Summary | As software becomes more of the compelling piece of the mobile story, developers from around the world are converging on and engaging in the mobile device space. However, developing for an embedded, consumer-oriented device that is strongly regulated brings new challenges for many developers. In Working with Carriers, Motorola will discuss topics developers need to consider as they move into the exciting world of mobile software. |
Takeaways from this session:
- If you are trying to sell to a mobile operator, there are two main things to think about:
- FOCUS: Target the markets that the carrier is focused on. Doesn’t make sense to pitch a Youth application, if the mobile operator targets enterprise users
- SPIN: Listen to the message of each mobile operator and make sure you incorporate that into your pitch when trying to sell to a mobile operator. If you don’t weave that into your story, they will think that you don’t understand them
- Make your application or service carrier grade*. Since mobile operators are concerned about providing services that are always available, taking shortcuts and creating and application that does not work well within a given network does not bode well for joint success. Make sure that you thoroughly test the application and work out all the bugs. Quality is important!
- When a problem occurs with your application, typically it is the mobile operator that will have to field the issue. Typically it will cost the mobile operator $7.00 USD/call!
- If you are trying to get your application or service pre-loaded onto a handset, look at what is on the handset today and offer something different and compelling, not just a copy or similar application or service to what is there now.
- Also, Motorola touts to use them as a conduit to get to the carrier; direct selling might be too hard.
- A number of $0.20 USD was thrown out as an example of a royalty of what a developer might get if their software is pre-loaded onto a handset.
* Carrier grade: A term that implies a system that is designed to have increased availability and timeliness to meet the requirements of a modern communications network element.
Reference: OSDL Japan
MOTODEV Summit – San Jose: TU 205 Generating Revenue for your Apps…
MOTODEV Summit – San Jose
| Session: Title: Moderator: |
TU 205 Generating Revenue for your Applications across Go-To-Market Channels Paul Leeper Director, Business and Market Development, Ecosystem and Market Development, Motorola, Inc. |
| Panelists: | John Phillips, VP, Business Development, Astrawave Diane Krakora, Founder, Amazon Consulting Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners Monica Hamilton, Vice President of Content, Handango Peter Castanon, Senior Manager, Marketing, Motorola, Inc. |
| Summary | Mobile software is not an example of “if you build it, they will come”; you need to make sure that people can find your application. Promoting, marketing and selling applications is an industry wide challenge for developers. Panelists will discuss the challenges and opportunities that developers face when taking their applications to market globally. This panel brings together experienced carriers, developers, retailers, publishers and Motorola experts who will reveal key techniques that work and common pitfalls to avoid. The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions and participate in the discussion. |
This started off as a rather calm session, but quickly erupted into one of the most entertaining sessions at a conference that I have entertained in years! While none of the comments were rehearsed, it was certainly good to see people speak from their heart about issues that they are trying to solve and promote. The saucy “Brit”, John Phillips from Astrawave was getting quite candid with the firecracker, Monica Hamilton from Handango. Both were very opinionated, but passionate about what they had to say regarding mobile content. At one point, John was directly commenting to Monica about her company’s services, surprised the audience and kept the panel attentive and lively.
A few takeaways from this session:
M.Hamilton, Handango
- Subscription-based content is highly lucrative. When you can find a way for consumers to continually coming back for more.
- In 2007, she doesn’t believe there is a killer mobile application; The Killer Application = A High Quality Application
- Make your application simple and easy, it’s already complicated enough to use most phones
J.Phillips, Astrawave
- Enable and accept PayPal on your site
- Create a loyalty program. Give customers something in return for their business. He sited the example of Mozilla Firefox and how they actually make money selling their paraphernalia
- Leverage the existing customer base. They can be your biggest advocates for your product or service
T.Chang, Norwest
- Look at the Top 100 web sites in the US and see how they can benefit and go mobile
- Look at the Top 100 mobile sites in China and see how they can benefit and get a web presence
- Mobile development and marketing mobile will be different regionally, so be aware of how things change as you go into different geographic markets
In Flight Mobile Services Revisited
With this latest announcement, it looks like a new company, OnAir has taken over where Boeing’s Connexion group has left off. Or course, who better to take over than Boeing’s rival, Airbus, who is a part of OnAir’s joint venture. Rather quickly, it has signed up RyanAir, KingFisher Air and AirAsia. The interesting part is that OnAir will install it’s in flight mobile service on both Airbus and Boeing airplanes.
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Personally, while I think being connect, where ever you go has some great benefits, one needs to weigh the social impact of allow this kind of service on board.
Pros:
- Accessibility, even at 10,000m in the air, you can receive make phone calls, txt messages, wap surfing, etc.
- Works for short haul flights and even over the Atlantic or Pacific.
- Increase in revenue for the airlines, hopefully the pricing will go down as more and more usage occurs.
Cons:
- Safety could be compromised as a result of people engaging on phone calls, games, and more and ignoring announcements from pilots, flight attendants
- Noise pollution from loud talkers could be just as annoying as baby crying
- Privacy concerns for business people conducting meetings, leaking sensitive information without knowing it
- A greater need to have in-seat power plugs and heavy demands on a supplementary power unit for this
- If the price is not adjusted accordingly, the adoption rate could be low and overall mounting operating costs could be another failure.
Suggestions:
- Mobile phone zones on the plane for private calls [if Virgin Atlantic has a bar on the upper deck of their 747s to segment the plane, perhaps segmenting the plane for “call booths” might work?
- Power to shut off mobile phone service during take-off and 30 minutes after take-off. Also shut off service 30 minutes before landing and during landing. For flights shorter than two hours, disable voice calling, but enable txt, email and WAP.
- Offer per flight, an all-you-can-eat, inclusive data plan. This would hopefully encourage people texting and IM vs. phone calls.
- Require all mobile phone users to utilize a headset and prohibit speakerphone usage (again, reduce distractions and potential noise pollutions)
- FAA, Airline Union groups, Airline management to agree on clear and stiff penalties for people who ignore safety and announcements from pilots or flight attendants.
- Properly educate passengers and overtly over communicate to them about proper usage and etiquette.
| Conclusion: As the Airline Industry is struggling to provide exceptional Customer Experience in the air, I like the fact that they can see innovative approaches to enhancing the offering to flyers. However, this need must be tempered with their ability to manage expectations and not overwhelm passengers with features and services than end up being their downfall and give customers yet another thing to complain about to weary and overworked Airline Customer Service.I hope that I can get the opportunity to use it when OnAir has been implemented, should be exciting to see how this takes-off (pun intended). |
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Portable Gaming Mobile Device Battle Royale
With the Apple iPhone launched, who’s next to enter the ring and claim victory in the all-out Mobile Device Battle Royale?
So the iPhone has been out for a few months now, the supply has met the demand, happy cell phone users abound, so what’s next? While the bravado from Steve Jobs and Apple is not likely to be repeated, there are several other brands who could launch a mobile device and create similar icons. Here are a few potentials:
Dell
Dell has technically entered the mobile market by offering integrated EVDO or HSDPA data chipsets as part of the notebook computer. They entered the mobile music player/PDA market and bowed out. The company can write a book about creating the mobile computing market. And as the computing platform is shrinks from setting it on your lap to holding it in your palm, they will face quite a bit of competition from HTC. Dell’s relationship with Microsoft and Linux gives them quite a few options for the OS. They also have a large customer base of enterprise customers which could be ripe for a Dell mobile device.
In an interview by Edward F. Moltzen, CMP Channel, of Michael Dell, the question of a Dell mobile phone was brought up:
CRN: Apple is set to come out with its iPhone in the next few weeks, perhaps next month. What’s your thinking about that? Is it a competitive threat? Will we see a dPhone, a Dell phone or anything of that nature?
DELL: When you look at the space that exists between, let’s say, a cell phone and a PC, there are all sorts of products that are put out there, proposed, experimented. Some of them have gone on to relatively nice success. But many haven’t. It’s sort of an area of great experimentation.
Nobody knows exactly what the right device is. It’s not a two-inch screen, it’s not a 15-inch screen. There are all sorts of tests in there. There are some reasonably successful products. It’s an area we’re paying increasing attention to. I wouldn’t look for anything in the short term for us there, but we are certainly looking at it, as there is dramatic growth in next-generation wireless broadband networks. People want to take the Internet with them. It’s something that’s very interesting to us.
Source: CRN Interview: Dell Chairman & CEO Michael Dell, 8:00 AM EDT Wed. May. 16, 2007
Nintendo
Nintendo has a long history of portable computing with its Gameboy line. A lot has changed from the black and white low resolution LCD with a cross controller and two buttons and a cable to connect two devices together. Nintendo now sports a wireless bluetooth connection and could easily morph it’s next installment with a WiFi and cellular mobile connectivity. Network gaming as well as downloading software from a service can also be benefits to encourage addiction. While they seem like an unlikely candidate to build a mobile phone, I am sure it is on someone’s whiteboard and roadmap at Nintendo. The active development platform is geared towards gaming, but could easily be opened up for application development. A few weeks ago, on GigaOM shared some similar thinking:
But now comes the iPhone, loaded with features and still riding heavy buzz, pushing into the game space, Nintendo’s territory. How should they respond? Well, the DS already comes equipped with a microphone and wireless connectivity; add a Skype-type application, and the two systems would be in more direct competition. (With lower price and greater install base giving DS the edge.)
Source: GigaOM: Nintendo DS and iPhone on a collision course
It would be an interesting crossover/intersection point when the “game console companies” decided to begin to target other applications aside from gaming. The Nintendo Wii offers Weather and messaging capability as a start. Purely by install based only, Nintendo could outpace the Apple iPhone.
Nokia N-Gage
Nokia has been tinkering at merging its dominance in the mobile phone market with portable gaming for almost 4 years (N-Gage first launched on Oct. 7, 2003). While it has undergone a few incarnations (N-Gage, N-Gage QD, and N-Gage QD Silver Ed.), it never proved to take off unlike the Nintendo Gameboy/DS series or Sony PSP. I suppose true portable gamers still like the brand and titles that with “traditional gaming companies” even though Nokia has the Symbian S60 platform and had cellular connectivity via the GSM chipset. Partly to blame is the timing of all this, as Nokia perhaps was ahead of its time for mobile phone games took off on a variety of platforms, and not exclusively on the N-Gage. Java and BREW are also software platform alternatives that also added to the clutter and confusion about all the portable gaming choices out there. Nevertheless, Nokia is still considered a pioneer for having the concept right, just a market timing and execution problem. Relative to Nintendo and Sony, Nokia did not have the same caché and consumer marketing savvy. Neglecting the the North American market proved dangerous for the success and unit sales, but that can be attributed to the sales channel of going through then Cingular or T-Mobile, and some limited distribution with Electronics Boutique and GameStop. These are extremely limited in comparison to Amazon, Best Buy, ToysRus and other retailers/e-tailers that can move volumes. Another hurdle to overcome is the extremely hypercritical reviewing process by analysts, gamers and bloggers who rip any console or game apart the moment it’s available. If it can withstand the rabid gamer criticism, along with titles to select from, then it will be great to see the unit sales climb. Unfortunately, after much hype, it was not even close to meeting expectations.
But the experiment has not deterred Nokia. It’s new strategy of enabling more handsets and expanding the software, wooing game houses, seems to be a smarter play for Nokia. Instead of focusing efforts of a single mobile device, use the catalog of existing and upcoming handsets to tout the gaming features. Set to launch in November 2007, I, like many others will be watching closely to see how this next salvo for portable gaming will connect.
Sony PSP
Sony. Playstation. PSP. These three words are enough to conjure volumes of pictures in one’s mind. Aside from the lackluster sales of the PS3, the PSP has been a huge hit. Lots of titles. The ability to play movies via the optical drive (UMD). Memory stick expandability. Even a camera, GPS receiver and Digital TV receiver attachments. IrDA and WiFi connectivity. Hmmm, sounds like the making of a metamorphosis in disguise. The PSP also has a web browser built-in and an RSS reader. All that is needed for the next generation PSP is a mobile chipset, bluetooth and it’s off to the races. Like Nokia N-Gage, the Sony PSP is a serious contender for mobile phone/gaming console. I wonder what the political impact and organizational dysfunction would occur if Sony Entertainment was competing with SonyEricsson Mobile Communications (SEMC). Convergence is still happening and who knows what the stable model will look like.
More Microsoft grumblings. While Microsoft WM6 is forging ahead, the Zune as a phone sends a loud signal to licensees of the WM platform: Co-opetition.
While the company has been playing it hot and cold during the past few months, it looks like Microsoft might have some sort of iPhone competitor on its roadmap after all. At this week’s Citigroup technology conference in New York, Mindy Mount, corporate vice president and CFO of the Microsoft’s entertainment and device division, said that it’s not “unreasonable” to expect a photo and music-centric Windows Mobile device with a touchscreen in the near future. Users “tend to have one phone for personal as well as work [use],” Mount said. “Being able to do pictures and music is something that consumers are going to want, so it’s a natural thing for us to want in our product roadmap.”
Source: Daily Tech Rag
So what does this all look like and mean? Well, pick your partners and distribution channels wisely. Do a lot of focus groups and internal product reviews. Then do some more. Consumers are getting increasingly critical and savvy about what they want with the portable-mobile-gaming-multimedia-life-altering devices. Retailers, e-tailers and Mobile Operators are all battling for the unit sale and subscription. And lastly, locking down and fostering the development community is just as important as the gamers. Nurture the entire mobile software development lifecycle, don’t ignore a single link in the ever-growing chain.
Happy 20th – GSM!
It was on 7 September 1987 that 15 operators from 13 countries signed a memorandum of understanding that led to the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), the first pan-European mobile standard and, subsequently, the first global mobile standard.
“The 1987 agreement is widely regarded as the foundation of today’s global mobile-phone industry and the birth of one of the greatest technological achievements of our age,” said Rob Conway, chief executive of the GSM Association, on Thursday.
Source:
GSMA
In celebration, the GSMA has put together 20 Facts about the past twenty years:
- There are 2.5 billion GSM connections worldwide
- There are 1.2 million new GSM connections every day
- In 2006, cellular services accounted for 1.6% of the global economy
- More than 1 billion mobile phones will be sold this year
- Mobile operators have spent more than $234 billion building GSM and 3GSM** networks since 2002
- More than 80% of the world’s population are covered by GSM networks
- The world’s best selling phone is the Nokia 1100 which has sold more than 200 million units
- Nearly 7 billion text messages are sent every day*
- The first text message was sent in 1992. The msg was ‘merry xmas’
- The world’s biggest GSM markets are China (445m), Russia (160m) and India (137m)
- All 220 countries have GSM or 3GSM** networks operating today
- There are more than 150m 3GSM** connections
- 85% of the world’s mobile connections are GSM
- The world will reach 4 billion mobile connections in Q1 2010
- 350 million people will have access to wireless e-mail by 2010
- Over 60 countries have launched Mobile Broadband (HSPA) networks
- People spend 40% more time on mobile calls than they did in 2000
- Annual mobile advertising spend will be $14 billion in 2011
- It took 12 years to get to 1 billion GSM connections, and just thirty months to get to 2 billion
- 64% of mobile users are in emerging markets***
Sources:
1,2,10,11,12,13,17,19,20 Wireless Intelligence 6,16 GSMA 3 GSMA/Wireless Intelligence.
4 “Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grew 17 Per Cent in Second Quarter of 2007″, August 2007
5 Gartner – Forecast Summary: Mobile Network Infrastructure, Worldwide, 2004-2011; May 2007
Forecast Summary: Mobile Network Infrastructure, Worldwide, 2003-2010; January 2007;
Forecast: Mobile Network Infrastructure, Worldwide, 2002-2009; October 2005
15 “A Democratisation Process Will Bring Wireless E-Mail to the Masses, Says Gartner” July 2007
7 Nokia 8 Informa 9 MDA 18 Strategy Analytics
* Data from Q1, 2007
** 3GSM refers to W-CDMA and HSPA
*** Emerging markets listed on GSM World: http://www.gsmworld.com/emh/emerging_markets.html
Whilst every care is taken to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this material, the facts and estimates stated are based on
information and sources that, while we believe them to be reliable, are not guaranteed. In particular, it should not be relied upon as the sole
source of reference in relation to the subject matter.
No liability can be accepted by the GSM Association or Wireless Intelligence, its members, directors or employees for any loss occasioned
to any person or entity acting or failing to act as a result of anything contained in or omitted from the content of this material, or our
conclusions as stated. Wireless Intelligence has no obligation to update or amend the research or to let anyone know if its opinions change
materially. GSM refers to the GSM family of technologies, which includes GSM, WCDMA and HSPA.
Semantic Web on Mobile — Caboodle Networks
Back in March, 2006, I wrote about Mobile Search and how the big players, Google and Yahoo were not connecting subscribers to content like ringtones and games. So if the big guys don’t get it, then what are the little guys doing about it?
MCN today announced that it acquired Caboodle Networks, bringing Semantic Web and recommendation to a mobile search management platform.
Caboodle has the know-how and the patents to deliver recommendations based on the user’s context and the intelligence to tackle age-old semantic search problems such as Jaguar (the car) and jaguar (the cat). It doesn’t have a silver-bullet solution, per se, but it does go a long way toward disambiguating similar search terms.
…
With Caboodle under its belt MCN can create the associations between content and successfully cross-sell and up-sell the users to similar content. Caboodle doesn’t index content; it relies on taxonomies and contextual information to categorize it and play matchmaker between users and the content likely to matter most.
Source: MSearch Groove
As MCN has some installations in Finland, Japan, and Thailand, they are definitely off to a great start. The novel approach at addressing the problem of finding relevant content becomes increasing important and more and more people rely on using their mobile to search.
A few weeks ago, Google published that their mobile search jumped 35% in the May-June timeframe (Source: mocoNews). While the methodology in calculating this number is not attributed to one event, it serves, in my opinion, as a general gauge that mobile search is on a slow simmer vs. heating up. Google Mobile Map queries make up a large part of these inquires which helps to generate utilization of their enormous server farm and in return provide more and more usage data to derive and build incremental improvements. I’m still waiting to see how well it can handle the off-deck/on-deck scenario of mobile content and services instead of providing web results on your WAP browser or transcoding information from the web.
So as the end of 2007 is near, roughly 18 months has past since I last wrote about mobile search. So what has changed? Well, we’ve reached the Awareness Phase. The Awareness that Mobile Search is here. We’ve reached the Education Phase — telling people what mobile search should be defined as. Perhaps still refining it. And we are probably at the early stages of the Implementation Phase, where companies are attacking the problem, building solutions, and refining it based on the refinement of the definition of mobile search. And the parallel track of Implementation is that mobile operators, on and off-deck portals, mobile content and services, Web 2.0 players are all looking at implementing some kind of mobile search to their feature sets of their mobile distribution channel.
Let’s hope mobile search can accelerate to to the next phase, where the mobile search engine wars ultimately benefit the consumer and not chose to steal our change purse or get us into a compromising head lock.
Moto Bluetooth Headset and Pandora on Sprint
As promised from my earlier post, my review of the Motorola MotoROKR S9 bluetooth headset. Thanks to Sprint and FedEx for making it possible.
Headphone Comments
- Overall an attractive looking package for a headset. The simplicity and red and black color combo look appealing.
- The overall weight is heavier than the Samsung Upstage, but I’m assuming the rubber and battery make it heavy.
- Putting the headphones on is a bit cumbersome at first, since you’re not sure how much you can bend it.
- Taking the headphones off is a bit cumbersome too, and if you don’t use two hands, one of your ears tends to pinch your ear.
- Maybe it’s because I have a big head, but after a few minutes, the headphone tends to pinch my ear lobe, but it’s not too uncomfortable.
- Bluetooth pairing was simple and quick. Oddly, when I tried to pair the S9 with a few other headsets, it only push audio into one of the earpieces and not both. Leads me to believe how device may process stereo vs. mono output.
- With the bluetooth active, there is a slight hiss when low or no sound is being heard. When music is playing, the sound is pretty decent. The bass and treble quality are perhaps as good as it can get with earbud-type magnet speakers. I’m biased for wanting more bass, but these will do.
- As these headphone do not cover over the ear, they do not block out 100% of the surrounding noise. They rest just inside your ear.
Oddities
- It seems that after I paired the headset to the handset, the audio did not seem to come through the headset when navigating. I tried to look for a setting to promote the audio output to the headphone only, but could not find the controls.
- When I loaded a game, the sound instantly transferred from the handset to the headphones. Quitting a game returned the sound back the handset.
- In using Pandora with the Samsung Upstage and the Motorola S9 headphones, the audio work through the headphones. With the available controls, it seems not possible to switch between the handset and headphones for audio output.
- Voice calls to and from the phone did not always work through the headphones, I will continue to see if this is a software problem or bluetooth oddity that seems to happen sometimes with some of the other bluetooth capable mobile devices that I have.
Verdict
I used to always be listening to music and almost always have a pair of earbuds or headphones on. These wireless headphones get rid of the pesky cord while being able to attach it to my mobile device. The battery life is good, claiming play time up to 6 hours, talk time up to 7 hours, and standby time up to 150 hours! I guess I need to go out and get the iPod nano bluetooth adapter
Mobile Phone Usage Allowance – From AT&T Wireless
From the press release:
With AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless online service, customers can:
- Limit the number of minutes that their children can use a wireless phone.
- Set limits on text and instant messages.
- Establish a dollar amount for download purchases, such as ringtones and games.
- Control the time of day and days of the week that the phone can be used.
- Block calls and text messages to/from numbers they don’t approve.
- Filter access to Internet content that is inappropriate for children.
Comments:
- I think this is a great first step for carriers to help foster responsible usage. But I would also argue that parents need to take equal responsibility in understanding what kind of power they give to their child that comes with a mobile phone. It’s similar to a driver’s license: “It’s not a right, but a privilege.”
- That having been said, there seems to be a few limitations to the Smart Limits feature. For example, if a phone switches over to WiFi network (in the case of the iPhone), then all content controls or usage limits are not enforced. Another flaw is if the device is roaming outside the AT&T network, the controls do not work either. This is because the authentication needed cannot extend to roaming partners as well as the delay in billing back to the account can sometimes take weeks if not months.
- At $4.99/month, this seems to be an outrageous price for the value provided. If anyone has an AT&T Family Plan, it should be included in the price, *not* a separate line item.
- Similar services from Disney Mobile or kajeet which are targeting children have similar services to provide limits on usage.
- Lastly, while kids need to be taught responsibility, it would seem that corporations should/would also have a similar type of application in place to help control spending? Particularly with premium content downloads and potentially blocking certain websites where they can export company sensitive information.
Source: AT&T News Room