Pissing on your chips?
A Cellphone Powered by Urine: "Physicists in Singapore have developed a battery that can be powered by human urine."

OK, so I've had a chance to (very quickly) scan through Yahoo! Go and read a bit more about it. The demo earlier this week was fairly impressive, but I wondered how it *felt*.

It seems a bit monolithic for my tastes - a 1.8mb native app is a significant download, particularly given that it's essentially a bundle of separate services: syncers for mail, calendars and photos and a load of bookmarks. There doesn't seem to be any syncing of news stories which seems like a missed opportunity: I already have an address book and calendar on my handset, but a news reader would be something *new*. This seems ideal to be broken down into separate apps - I'd be prepared to bet that most Yahoo! customers only use a few of all the available Yahoo! apps, but they're being treated as if they all use them all here.. Me? I don't use any Yahoo! services to any extent, and this app doesn't persuade me to. Now, if they gave me Flickr syncing, and used that to tease me into using other Yahoo! services, that might be more compelling. Shozu gets it right here, I think.

On some handsets, like the 6680, there seem to be problems. But the 6680 is pretty tight on memory for anything - Orange Homescreen + iSync zonked it out for me and made it unusable (with the camera only working 30% of the time), so I don't think we can blame Yahoo! for this. Perhaps they should warn 6680 owners though; this might be particularly pragmatic considering that for a while the 6680 was *the* handset for mobile/techie early adopters. For a more recent handset with more memory like the N70, Go seems a bit safer. I'm still very nervous about installing third party software onto my handset which alters how it works though (Yahoo! options pop up in my message reader now) - and keeps asking me about it. No, I don't want you to sync. No, I don't want a Yahoo! theme for my phone. Christian sees this integration as a feature; perhaps these concerns are just paranoia on my part.

Overall, Yahoo! Go seems rather niche. It's a nice stake in the ground for Yahoo! to demonstrate that they're taking mobile seriously, but practically speaking how many high-end Series 60-owning folks make use of so many Yahoo! services, want to use them when they're mobile, and want to pay for the privilege? We're back to the standard mobile problem of reach vs functionality, and this app is firmly wedged up at the functionality end of that curve. I'd be more impressed by a set of (perhaps simpler) apps which tease a significant chunk of Yahoo!s UK audience away from their desktops and onto their phones.

As an aside, I also find the use of proprietary protocols to do syncing confusing, when Yahoo! are simultaneously pushing their SyncML efforts elsewhere (which look great, though I've not tried them).

Christian's comment that the app will be preloaded onto S60 handsets is *very* interesting though... handset vendors and Yahoo joining forces to take on carriers? Hmm...

A VC: Jealousy: "Fat chance guys.  The consumer is already paying for the Internet connection.  They aren't going to stand for another monthly payment to the service provider because the service provider has to pay the Telco too.  Double dipping doesn't work as a business model generally speaking and certainly not in a commodity business where there are less barriers to entry every day."

Who says the customer has to pay? Why can't a service provider, making money out of the customers they service, pay for this and roll it into their costs?

Via Devi, Orange unveils new 'Calling Tunes' service: "Calling Tunes, as it's known, lets Orange punters choose music to play callers while they wait for the phone to be answered."

Google acquires Reqwireless: "The article below has some thoughts about why they were bought out, but I think it has to do with creating a small app that allows Google to serve ads"

Yep. I've heard (through t'grapevine - no NDAs broken on this blog!) that Google are interested in combining AdSense and mobile. Hey - it makes sense: classifieds and mobile are a good fit, just like puzzles and mobile: small chunks of targeted content, familiar in nature, time-sensitive, and high-value (to the right person at the right time).