links for 2007-09-21

September 21, 2007 | Comments

links for 2007-09-20

September 20, 2007 | Comments

Tomi Ahonen, Mobile 2.0 conference

September 19, 2007 | Comments

Starts out with a bizarre list of the least successful Web 2.0 communities. Promoting his new book, "Digital Korea":

Every Korean home will have a home robot in 10 years. Korea has highest speed, lowest cost broadband in the world. In Korea broadband exceeds per capita - there's more broadband than people. 75% of cellphones in Korea are 3G. The majority of internet access in Korea is already mobile - the car is seen as the next place for the net to reach.

Tomi's gone a bit madder since I last saw him talk....

In India operators have rolled out a "background noise" service for use during calls.

Today in Japan 44% of all cellphone users actively click on advertising they receive via mobile.

Cameraphones designed for the under-10s sold by KDDI.

Think beyond screen size and keypad issue: "why can't the mobile phone read my mind?"

1/3 of students in Korea send 100+ text messages every day. This enables "near-telepathic connectivity". SMS is used to share secrets privately between friends, even when they're within speaking range.

30k business brands in South Korea are on Cyworld. 500k items of content for sale,

Kart Rider in Korea, making all its money from gifts and personalisation. Has professional players, is free-to-play. 25% of all Koreans have driven it.

Ends with a sales pitch for his books. Bit rude considering he's running 25 minutes over. Finishes with 3 thoughts:

  • "User-generated content is not just rubbish: it can be high-quality content"
  • "All major brands will be in the mobile web 2.0 space"
  • "We don't need subscriptions or advertising to monitise mobile web 2.0; we can do this by customisation, gifts and so forth"

Mobile 2.0: What happened to Mobile Web 1.0, Dan Applequist

September 19, 2007 | Comments

What happened to Mobile Web 1.0, Dan Applequist

References the BT Cellnet Silver Surfer: "Surf the net. Surf the BT Cellnet."

Peter Erskine, April 2000: "This is the turning point for the mobile Internet"

A marketing message no-one could decode, a service nobody wanted to use. Most major telcos in the western world made the mistake of marketing WAP as the internet. What's different now? Hardware has caught up: devices have "real software" and work out of the box. Data tariffs have dropped massively. Networks are better. We have a "rise of standards" (don't get this one: wasn't WAP as standard as could be?)

The guys working on the WAP standards were horrified that the word WAP appeared in marketing literature; it wasn't intended to be something consumers knew about, but a way of delivering value-added services to the phone.

"Mobile Web is now used for the long tail". Dan gives Flickr, Facebook, Amazon as examples - but are these long tail? They seem quite major services to me.

"Web adapts to users device and service" (cough Vodafone cough).

Downloadable, connected applications too. Jaiku referenced as an example of content more compelling on the phone than on PC.

SMS is becoming IM, mobile blogging. MMS becoming media sharing. Operator portals giving way to content search. Java games giving way to connected applications. PSMS billing giving way to mobile stored value accounts. etc.

Operators changing from gatekeepers to jumping-off points for the mobile web.

"Mobile Web 2.0 needs to learn lessons from Web 1.0: It's 1997 again"

links for 2007-09-19

September 19, 2007 | Comments