Cash pours in for U.K. student with Web idea

Cash pours in for U.K. student with Web idea If you've been struggling to come up with a million-dollar idea, don't read this

News Story by Peter Graff DECEMBER 29, 2005 (REUTERS) - If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.

Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is more clever than you are. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.

Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.

He had the brainstorm for his million-dollar home page, called, logically enough, www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking about how he would pay for university costs.

The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up his logo. A 10-by-10-dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.

Tew sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $1,000, he issued a press release.

That was picked up by the news media and spread around the Internet, and soon enough, advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels with links to their own sites.

So far, they have bought up 911,800 pixels. Tew's home page now looks like an online Times Square, festooned with a multicolored confetti of ads.

"All the money's kind of sitting in a bank account," Tew said from his home in Wiltshire in southwest England. "I've treated myself to a car. I've only just passed my driving test, so I've bought myself a little black Mini."

The site features testimonials from advertisers, some of whom bought spots as a lark, only to discover that they were receiving actual valuable Web hits for a fraction of the cost of traditional Internet advertising.

Meanwhile, Tew has had to juggle running the site with his first term at university, where he is studying business. "It's been quite a difficulty trying to balance going to lectures and doing the site," he said.

But he may not have to study for long. Job offers have been coming in from Internet companies impressed by a young man who managed to figure out an original way to make money online.

"I didn't expect it to happen like that," Tew said. "To have the job offers and approaches from investors -- the whole thing is kind of surreal. I'm still in a state of disbelief."

Java browser makes wider Web accessible to more cell phones

Opera quietly releases Mini browser worldwide Java browser makes wider Web accessible to more cell phones

News Story by Nancy Gohring

DECEMBER 20, 2005 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Users of Java-capable cell phones anywhere may find browsing the Web easier and cheaper now that Opera Software ASA is allowing anyone to download its Opera Mini application. The official worldwide launch of Opera Mini is planned for January but Opera has quietly lifted restrictions that previously allowed only residents of some Nordic countries and Germany to download the application, a spokesman has confirmed.

Typically, full Web browsing is reserved for users of smart phones or handsets with powerful processing capabilities. Opera Mini is designed to improve on the limited Wireless Application Protocol surfing available on many phones, allowing users of Java-capable cell phone to surf the Web.

Cell phone users download the Opera Mini Java application, under 100KB in size, to their phones. The small client communicates with servers operated by Opera that strip down the size of Web pages, making them quicker to transfer to the cell phone and rendering them to fit on the small screen of the phone.

"The idea is that you shouldn't have to buy an expensive smart phone to browse the full Web," said Eskil Sivertsen, a spokesman for Opera.

Opera is hosting the back-end servers and cell phone customers can download and use the application free of charge, except for the fees related to using the mobile networks. Using Opera Mini should reduce fees that customers pay their cell phone operators, because the system compresses the size of Web sites by 70% to 80% before sending them to the handset, Sivertsen said. Most mobile data users pay based on how much data they download.

Users must have a cell phone capable of downloading a Java application. Sivertsen figures that there are 700 million phones being used today that are capable of downloading Opera Mini.

Opera is also offering Opera Mini to operators and content providers that can offer a branded and customized version to their users. The operator or content provider could host the back-end servers themselves or hire Opera to do so for them. Once users have the Opera Mini browser on their handsets, the operator or content provider can push content or special promotions to the browsers for users to see when they launch the browser. Opera is testing Opera Mini with operators and content providers around the world, Sivertsen said.

Opera Mini is meant to coexist with Opera Mobile, a full-fledged browser. Opera Mobile is designed for smart phones and can do anything a browser on a desktop computer can do, Sivertsen said. Opera Mini, in contrast, can be used on less-powerful handsets and has only limited support for advanced JavaScript and other advanced Web site tools.

Opera quietly enabled the download of Opera Mini to be able to prepare for the increased traffic on its servers before the official launch next month. The download has previously been available to cell phone users in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Germany.

The worldwide availability of Opera Mini was noticed recently by a mobile phone enthusiast who posted his find on Monday to the All About Symbian community Web site.

Reprinted with permission from

For more news from IDG visit IDG.net Story copyright 2005 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Gmail goes mobile

Published Monday 19th December 2005 11:24 GMT

Gmail users can now access their account on the move as search giant Google launches Gmail Mobile

The small screen support for the popular e-mail account means that users can access their Gmail account from their mobile phone, using the URL http://m.gmail.com.

According to Google, the page will automatically optimise its interface for whatever phone you are using, adjusting it depending on the size of your mobile phone screen. The service also allows users to open attachments such as photos, Microsoft Word documents and PDF files.

One interesting feature is the ability to reply to e-mail by calling your contact - once you have a phone number for the sender in your Gmail contacts list. The new service should work on most mobile phones - although Gmail has a list of phones that it knows definitely support the service.

The latest moves come amid fierce rivalry between Google, Yahoo and MSN, who are all competing for users. Yahoo already offers a mobile version of its e-mail service, and upped the storage capacity of its accounts to 1GB. MSN offers 250MB of storage to its users. However, Gmail is still under test and is not offered on general availability to users. Users need to be invited by another Gmail account holder, or if they are in the US, they can use their mobile phone to get an invitation code. The company is attempting to protect the services - and its users - from spammers who could sign up for the accounts to reach Gmail customers.

Google has added a host of new services to its Gmail account since the launch, including "bottomless storage" that is continually upping the service's storage from 1GB up to the present 2.6GB (and counting!). Also announced in recent days was the addition of an auto-responder service, letting recipients know that the email account holder is away or unavailable.

IPass to acquire GoRemote

IPass to acquire GoRemote

By John Cox, NetworkWorld.com, 12/12/05

In a bid to extend its services to branch office workers and enterprise teleworkers, iPass announced this week plans to acquire GoRemote Internet Communications.

The idea behind the buyout will be to create a package of authentication, reporting, management, and device administration services for a diverse enterprise workforce: employees who are on the road constantly, such as sales people or field service technicians, and remote employees scattered through numerous branch offices or working from home.

Both companies offer an array of managed services for enterprise workers outside of a headquarters building. iPass has focused on creating secure connectivity, over any network interface, to the enterprise. GoRemote has made its mark with somewhat similar services, but mainly targeted at branch offices and employees working from home, says Ken Denman, CEO of iPass in Redwood Shores, Calif.

The deal, valued at $76.5 million, is a cash offer of $1.71 per share of GoRemote stock. The combined company will have annual revenues of over $200 million, Denman says. The transaction should be final by March 2006, pending approval by GoRemote shareholders and the relevant regulatory agencies.

This is the third acquisition for iPass in the past year. Previously, the company bought Safe3w, which made software for device authentication, and Mobile Automation, which specialized in mobile device management. The two deals were part of a plan to enhance the iPass client application to monitor, manage, and report on hundreds or thousands of mobile devices that an enterprise might have deployed outside the headquarters network.

Denman says GoRemote's Milpitas, Calif. headquarters operations will be moved about 25 miles to the main iPass facility, and some number of duplicate positions will be cut. He says he expects the merger to yield a range of savings by eliminating those positions and merging various administrative functions.

All contents copyright 1995-2005 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Cellphones as Change Agents

Cellphones as Change Agents
At a FORTUNE dinner, business leaders and academics discussed how technology—especially wireless communication—is changing the world.
Dec 09 2005
By David Kirkpatrick
Fortune.com

What was the only weapon that struck back at the terrorists on 9/11? Self-organized civilians, armed with cellphones.

"A bunch of people on Flight 93 were scared out of their minds," said Stewart Brand at a recent FORTUNE dinner in San Francisco. "so they formed a spontaneous network and figured out what was going on using their cellphones. Then they did something about it." Empowered with the knowledge that terrorists had crashed other planes into the World Trade Center, they fought back. Presumably that's what led Flight 93 to crash in Pennsylvania rather than hit the White House or Capitol. Meanwhile, the massed forces of the U.S. military were essentially helpless.

Brand, the near-legendary figure who founded the Whole Earth Catalog back in the 1960s, set the tone for the dinner early. FORTUNE gathered about 20 smart people from business and beyond to answer one utterly elemental question: What's new? The aim was to help determine what subjects to feature at next summer's Brainstorm 2006 conference, which FORTUNE will host along with the Aspen Institute.

Here's what this crew thinks is new: Power is flowing toward the individual thanks to technology. And these empowered individuals are changing just about every aspect of society with information acquired online. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president, spoke of the "fundamental disruptions that are occurring because we are all connected to one another. The terrorist attacks in London were not covered by the media," he noted, "but by the people in the tube. The people became the media." Many used their camera-equipped cell phones to shoot and distribute images of the damage. Schwartz went on to note that "there's a radical shift underway in who is responsible for creating knowledge and information."

The dinner's discussion frequently touched upon one technology that is critical to how the world is changing and getting connected—cellphones "The world absolutely, totally, underestimates the importance of the cellphone," said Richard Newton, dean of the School of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. According to many of our dinner guests, the cellphone is the perfect recipient of online data, especially as it evolves into a $20 videophone and TV. There's no information that you get on your PC that you won't soon be able to get on your phone. The information that will flow to peoples' phones in real time—about prices, markets, risks, and what other people are doing—may alter government, media, entertainment, corporate structure, and how and with whom we conduct business transactions. It will even, several said, contribute mightily to reducing the economic divide that is still the world's greatest blight—by giving the poor inexpensive access to information.

But Gary Hamel, the author and consultant, got impatient with all this optimism. He says there's a dark side that emerges from connectedness and all the new information available to people: "In 1750 the per capita income gap between the richest and the poorest country was 3 to 1. Today it's 200 to 1. So we can sit and talk about connectivity, and yet people in poverty are just connected enough to know how bad they have it, out of which comes a tide of resentment and anger."

The conversation also turned to all the new ways that people are organizing themselves using online tools, and how that may change institutions. Diana Farrell, who heads the McKinsey Global Institute, suggested that "the next organizing units won't be governments or organizations as we know them." Hamel, among others, pointed to Wikipedia.org, the collectively-produced, open-source encyclopedia I mentioned in this column last week, "Fed Up With E-Mail? Try a Wiki," and said "we're seeing a fundamental shift in how we think about aggregating human effort." He continued: "Big companies are going to be the last to get this…How do you change the DNA of large organizations?" To which Michael Patsalos-Fox, who heads McKinsey's operations in North America, replied: "Maybe that's just an impossibility…Maybe the corporation as we know it will actually break down into networked units of some sort."

Michael Marks, CEO of Flextronics, found himself exasperated by that scenario, and jumped to defend big companies. He announced that Flextronics employs 125,000 employees in 30 countries, and is having no trouble hiring or managing them. "You cannot believe how many people in the world want to be part of a big company." Ironically, Flextronics happens to be among the world's largest cellphone manufacturers.

The two-hour conversation ranged far more widely than can be reported here. While there was some consensus on the big trends, such as connectedness, there was little certainty about where they're taking us. Hamel may have summarized it best. "Change has kind of gone hypercritical," he said, "yet we have no idea what it means for society, how it's going to change human relationships, or government, or big organizations." A bit scary perhaps, but it's all plenty of fodder for what will likely be an amazing Brainstorm conference next year.

FMA - Easy management of SIM, Phonebook, and PC

http://fma.sourceforge.net/index2.htm

FMA is a free1 powerful phone editing tool allowing users to easily manage all of the personal data stored in their phones, via a number of different connections methods. FMA allows easy management of Phonebook (both SIM and Phone memory), SMS, Profiles, and Files stored on the phone. FMA can also allow you to pickup and dial calls directly from your PC. FMA is fun and much more; whatever you want it to be, it is whatever a mobile phone should have :-) (Currently based on Sony Ericsson T610 features set).

FMA - It's Magic! Download latest FMA package and see by yourself. You could read about some user experience before doing that. Currently FMA supports officially Sony Ericsson phones only. Other manufacturers and brands will be addressed in next major version. The SourceForge.net Site Status page reflects the presence of a known issue with the accuracy of recent download statistics. Download statistics shown on this page for recent dates may be inaccurate (they will be corrected in the future); rankings based on these statistics may be skewed.

Electronic Arts to Buy Jamdat For Role in Mobile-Games Field

Electronic Arts to Buy Jamdat For Role in Mobile-Games Field

By NICK WINGFIELD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 9, 2005

In a major endorsement for the fastest-growing portion of the videogames industry, Electronic Arts Inc. agreed to acquire Jamdat Mobile Inc., a leading publisher of games for wireless phones, for $680 million in cash.

The deal, the largest ever for EA, of Redwood City, Calif., highlights the swift growth of mobile gaming. Mobile gaming has taken off in recent years as more sophisticated handsets with color screens became commonplace and faster wireless networks gave publishers a practical way to download games.

Revenue from mobile games in the U.S. is still relatively small compared with that from PC and video consoles, EA's mainstay businesses. But growth in the market is outpacing these two categories. This year U.S. mobile-game revenues are expected to more than double, reaching about $567 million, estimates PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. About 11% of mobile-phone users in the U.S. say they regularly download games onto their mobile phones, according to a survey by Telephia, a research firm that studies the wireless market.

PHONE & GAMES

 

• Mobile Games Produce Gold Rush¹
10/11/05
 
• Cellphone Users Boost Carriers With Games²
10/11/05
 
• Jamdat Purchases Rights to Tetris³
4/21/05
 
• EA to Make Games for Mobile Phones⁴
9/30/04
 

Larry Probst, EA's chief executive, predicted mobile games will be an important contributor to EA's growth. "We like to lead in whatever business we involve ourselves in," Mr. Probst said in an interview. "We think (Jamdat) can help us grow faster in this area."

Mitch Lasky, CEO of Los Angeles-based Jamdat, will lead EA's mobile games business after the deal is completed in March.

EA's decision to acquire Jamdat, best known for cellphone versions of games like Tetris, Bejeweled and Jamdat Bowling, also underscores the challenges established publishers have had getting a big share of the mobile-games market. EA, the world's leading publisher of videogames, has a mobile-games division that publishes cellphone versions of games such as Madden football, but the group has lagged behind Jamdat and others.

Greg Ballard, CEO of Glu Mobile Inc., a Jamdat competitor, said large publishers have underestimated the complexity of the mobile-games market. Although the graphics of mobile games are often primitive compared to console and PC games, mobile publishers have to ensure the titles work on a much larger number of devices. Mr. Ballard, for one, says Glu must test games on over 200 models of phones.

EA's acquisition of Jamdat "may be a signal to everyone watching that even the world's largest games company couldn't do this on their own," he said.

Jamdat has been a beacon of sorts for the mobile-games industry. After the company filed for an initial public offering of stock in June 2004, venture capital flooded into the market. As a result, industry executives and analysts say the sector could now see a wave of consolidation.

The Jamdat deal is a large one for the games industry. Outright acquisitions of sizable publishers are rare, in part because licensing deals for popular entertainment and sports brands often can't be transferred to a new corporate owner. Jamdat's Mr. Lasky said EA will be able to assume control of "virtually all" of Jamdat's licenses, including those for two of its most popular games, Tetris and Bejeweled.

EA anticipates the acquisition will result in a charge to earnings of between 10 cents and 15 cents a share in the company's fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in March.

Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield@wsj.com⁵

	URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113408062494217731.html
	Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112899083325165054.html (2) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112899111528465062.html (3) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB111404910669812868.html (4) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB109416773576408777.html (5) mailto:nick.wingfield@wsj.com

Google to Go: Web Access On Gadgets Gets Better

Google to Go: Web Access On Gadgets Gets Better

Retooled Sites Are Faster,
Easier to See on Small Devices;
Checking eBay From Your Cell

By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 7, 2005; Page D1

The nation's biggest Internet companies have begun a major push to make it easier to access the Web from cellphones, BlackBerrys and other mobile devices.

Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are rolling out small-scale versions of their familiar Web sites that are specifically designed to work effectively on mobile screens. EBay.com, Mapquest.com and CNN.com are among those that have also edited and shrunk their sites for viewing on even the tiniest display.

Last week, AOL launched a mobile Web site that allows individuals to search the Web for content from local pizza places to celebrity photos by typing in search terms from a gadget keyboard. The site also includes links to news, sports, entertainment and weather reports.

Yahoo recently introduced a mobile shopping service that allows users to comparison-shop from portable devices. Typing in the name of an item pulls up product, merchant and price information. Last month, Google, drawing on its maps feature, launched Google Local for mobile, a service that allows users to search for local business locations, locate them on a map, and even call the merchant by clicking on a link.

The improved sites are one more response to an increasingly on-demand culture. Business are struggling to adapt as consumers use the Internet to get what they want, whenever they want it, from the latest episode of a television show to a map with directions to a new restaurant.

The effort to shrink sites that were initially designed for use at desktop computers with large color monitors is akin to what television studios are doing to make episodes of TV shows such as "Lost" appear crisp and sharp when played on the video iPod.

The wave of development comes as mobile Internet use, considered for years to be sluggish and frustrating, appears to be taking off. The percentage of U.S. wireless subscribers who use their cellphones to browse Internet pages has doubled to 12% since last year, according to NPD Group, a market-research firm in Port Washington, N.Y. And Seattle-based M:Metrics Inc., a market researcher, estimates that more than 24 million U.S. subscribers over the age of 13 accessed the Internet from a mobile device in October.

Most cellphones are wired to access the Internet (95% of new cellphones sold in July, August, and September were Web-enabled, according to NPD Group, up from 81% the year before). To do so, users launch their Internet browsers from an icon on their screens and start browsing by typing a Web address into a search field. Alternatively, they can scroll through a list of menus to access popular sites and services already preloaded on the phone, such as mobile versions of ESPN or the Weather Channel.

But to start browsing, consumers usually have to sign up for a separate data service, of which there are many types. Consumers who want to add Internet browsing to their existing voice plans can buy data plans for $19.99 a month or less depending on the provider. (Plans may run as high as $90 if they include access to corporate email.) For those who expect to do less Web browsing, lower usage plans also are available. Cingular Wireless, for instance, charges $4.99 for one megabyte of data, the equivalent of viewing roughly 100 news headlines.

Some users of newer cellphones may find their phones already active for Web browsing. In those cases they'll typically be charged several cents each time they access a site. While some companies charge small subscription fees for premium content that users must download an application to receive, such as customized sports scores, most of the sites and services themselves are free. But they may not be free of advertising for long. Some content providers are looking at ways to use advertising on the miniature Web pages, seeing it as a way to reach targeted audiences. For now, however, most companies are keeping their mobile-optimized sites ad-free while they work on attracting users.

Richard Lichtenstein, a 23-year-old associate consultant at Bain & Co. in New York is an avid user of his Web browser on his T-Mobile BlackBerry. The browser has helped him resolve friendly debates, find the Web site of a band before a concert and locate pictures of movie stars. But at around $40 a month, without voice service, he says if Bain weren't paying for the perks, he probably wouldn't either.

The overall move to Web pages designed for small screens is still in the early stages. In many cases, when you access any Web site from a mobile device, you may see the text and graphics of the normal page awkwardly condensed. But such distorted layouts are becoming less common, as companies take advantage of faster wireless networks and more powerful mobile devices.

Sites tailored for mobile -- the availability of which varies depending on the device and carrier -- typically have only a few links listed on the home page and few or no graphics clogging the screen. The URLs of these sites may be identical to their parent sites or may require adding "mobile" or "wireless" somewhere in the address.

Internet giants Yahoo, Google, MSN and AOL are leading the mobile Web push, but other sites are gaining popularity as well. Among them are mobile versions of ESPN, Mapquest, sites that list movie show times, such as Hollywood.com, and a range of travel sites.

John Ludwig, a founder of Ignition Partners, a venture-capital fund in Seattle, says when his favorite sports teams are playing, he will check scores on his BlackBerry using ESPN around 40 times during each game. While a fan of the mobile Internet, Mr. Ludwig, 45 years old, doesn't like common hassles associated with it: the slowness of the network and the number of necessary clicks. Waiting for a screen to refresh can take anywhere from three to 10 seconds, a seeming eternity for those used to broadband service.

Marc Karimi, a 22-year-old student at Stanford Graduate School of Business in Stanford, Calif., says accessing Web content on a cellphone isn't worth the time. After he bought a new Audiovox cellphone, he went on a browsing frenzy using the little keys to check things like movie times, directions and restaurant phone numbers. The data costs only came to an additional $5 on his $65 cell phone bill. But after two months of heavy use, he says he was bothered by the slow speeds and now keeps it only in case of an emergency.

But problems such as Mr. Karimi's may slowly start to disappear. Content and service providers say they expect service speeds to improve as wireless networks get faster. And some are already taking steps to reduce browsing time.

Last month Cingular Wireless, a joint venture of San Antonio-based SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. of Atlanta, revamped its Internet service to cut the average time it takes to look up a listing on the Web by more than half, a company representative says.

Designed-for-mobile advertising, perhaps a tiny banner ad that appears on the top of a screen, could take off within the next year, predicts Heidi Lehmann, chairman of the advertising standards committee of the Mobile Marketing Association, a Boulder, Colo., trade association.

Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com¹

	URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113392267580515883.html
	Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com

New mobile-phone roaming services are on the way

New mobile-phone roaming services are on the way

Services from Roamware help operators spur greater user interest over and above offering them cheaper fees

By John Blau, IDG News Service December 05, 2005

Ask some corporate globetrotters what they think about mobile-phone roaming and they'll most likely say they love the service, but hate the pricing and miss some comfort functions. Then ask teenagers using prepaid mobile-phone calling cards and don't be surprised to hear that many of them have never heard of it.

All of this could change soon thanks to some new technology and growing competition among operators.

"Roaming is going to become simpler and cheaper," said Mohan Gyani, chief executive officer (CEO) of Roamware Inc., in San Jose, California. "Market forces are driving this."

Today, only about 15 percent of the millions of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone customers in the world use roaming, largely because of high prices with little transparency and the fact that the service isn't available to many prepaid customers, who represent 75 percent of all GSM mobile-phone users, according to Gyani.

Now many mobile-phone companies, especially those operating in saturated markets, hope to generate additional revenue from roaming by offering lower prices and new services and by targeting prepaid users, Gyani said. He pointed to Vodafone (Profile, Products, Articles) Group PLC as one of several big operators now pushing roaming service.

Roamware has developed a few new services to help operators spur greater user interest in roaming over and above offering them cheaper fees. One of them is what Gyani called the virtual home-environment service, which allows customers traveling outside their home networks to continue using many familiar functions, such as pressing and holding a key to retrieve voice mail.

Another is traffic redirection. This service allows operators to direct roaming customers to preferred partner networks abroad, for pricing or quality of service reasons, according to Gyani. "Take customers who want not only voice roaming but also data roaming," he said. "With this service, operators can put them on the network that offers both."

Today, about 30 percent of the existing global roaming customer base is prepaid. There are some technology reasons for this low level of usage, including limited operator compliance with the CAMEL (Customized Application for Mobile network Enhanced Logic) standard required to provide intelligent roaming services and real-time billing.

Roamware has developed a service that overcomes many of these technological challenges. Prepaid customers using the service receive a text message via SMS (short message service) when they cross the border asking if they want a local number. If they say yes, their prepaid minutes are transferred to that number. The service also allows calls made to customers' home numbers to follow them outside the country.

Roamware is currently working on several new services, including one that will allow roaming customers to avoid paying an international fee for retrieving voice mail messages stored on the server in their home network, according to Gyani.

Another service under development is what the CEO calls the "voice SMS." Customers receive a text message when someone has left a message. They can press a button to be connected directly to that message instead of having to call up their voice-mail box and listen to all the options and other recorded messages.

But perhaps one of the biggest areas of growth for roaming services is not voice but data, according to Gyani. "Moving forward, we will need to deal with issues of how data services, whether mobile or wireless, follow roaming customers," he said. "There is huge potential in data-roaming services."

Some people will increasingly make VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls over Wi-Fi and WiMax networks or use devices supporting multiple technologies, such as dual-mode phones, which offer access to mobile and Wi-Fi networks, according to Gyani.

"Some people have been projecting an end to roaming," Gyani said. "They couldn't be more wrong. We're going to see huge demand for roaming services as prices fall and technologies converge."

Fed Up With E-Mail? Try a Wiki

Fed Up With E-Mail? Try a Wiki Using the same technology behind the popular Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, Socialtext and other companies are giving businesses innovative alternatives to group spam. Dec 02 2005 By David Kirkpatrick Fortune.com

As far as Ross Mayfield is concerned, e-mail in the workplace is a disaster: “It’s being used for more than it was intended for. With cc’s, we’ve stretched a point-to-point medium into a broadcast medium.” Of course, he would think so. As CEO of Socialtext, a three-year-old software company, he has an alternative. Mayfield met with me recently for lunch in San Francisco to talk about how Socialtext’s wiki applications give businesses a new way for their employees to communicate.

You probably know something about wikis because of Wikipedia, the astonishingly successful open-source encyclopedia, which is rapidly becoming its own alternate Internet. If you aren’t acquainted with it, go right now to Wikipedia.org, look up anything you care about, and prepare to be amazed. “Why will we ever again need any other form of reference?” you may wonder. Wikipedia is created by readers. Anyone, even you, can alter any entry. Despite that, it is a reliable, accurate source on almost everything. If someone contributes erroneous information— intentionally or unintentionally, a devoted group of volunteers monitor and correct it—usually in minutes.

Socialtext is one of several companies bringing the same concept to corporate communications. Its software gives employees tools to create shared conversations and collective dialogues without using e-mail. One of Socialtext’s rivals includes another cool company, Jotspot, founded by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, who were among the creators of Excite, the breakthrough search engine launched in the mid-90s.

Plenty of other products aim to facilitate group communication, notably Microsoft’s SharePoint, which is working to add blogs and wikis. Because of Microsoft’s formidable market share in corporate software, Mayfield sees SharePoint as Socialtext’s main competitor. Other players in related businesses include IBM’s Lotus Notes, Microsoft’s recently-acquired Groove, and Intuit’s QuickBase. At this point, commercial wikis, such as Socialtext’s and Jotspot’s, have a tiny fraction of the corporate market compared to more established players, but I believe the simplicity of the wiki could ultimately prevail.

“We’re doing social computing,” says Mayfield. “It’s something that Microsoft Office was never meant to do. Office is all about creating a finished product—a brilliant PowerPoint or another document that someone does in isolation. Meanwhile, enterprise software chains people to top-down processes with rigid business rules. And the glue that’s been holding it all together has been e-mail.”

Mayfield, now 35, and three co-founders launched Socialtext in 2002 with $5,000. Working from home for the first year, they hosted the company’s entire business on a used $400 eMachines PC. This year the company grew up, bringing its total capitalization to $4.6 million. In August, it opened its first office in Palo Alto, Calif., but 16 of its 20 employees still work from home. (They communicate using wikis and blogs, of course.) Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a white-hot Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, enterprise software giant SAP, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and Joi Ito, a Japanese venture capitalist. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, joined the board in October.

Socialtext claims that 10 FORTUNE 500 companies are among its 50 customers, which include the BBC, Nokia, and the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. At Dresdner a good portion of the company’s entire Intranet—for about 7,000 employees—is now being turned into wiki format. Employees can even alter information posted on a wiki by the human resources department. Mayfield, a passionate believer in the bottom-up ethic of the Internet, says that Socialtext won’t restrict the ability to edit wikis to certain employees, even though that would be easy to do. He wants to stay true to the wiki spirit of collaboration and trust. So far, at least, it’s been working. “In three years we haven’t seen one single case of someone deliberately damaging corporate a wiki,” he brags.

Wikis can either be permanent or set up for a short project. Content can be posted to a wiki in several ways, including by e-mail. A wiki can also generate e-mail, but only if you ask it to. You can set up the wiki to alert you, for example, if your boss posts something new, so you won't have to receive every last announcement about a lost notebooks in your e-mail inbox. “E-mail is pushed to you,” says Mayfield. “You have no control over what goes into it. But a wiki uses a ‘pull’ model of attention management.”

“If you let go of a little bit of control you get back participation and innovation,” Mayfield insists. And, of course, his example is Wikipedia. It was originally called Nupedia, a for-profit attempt to develop an online encyclopedia written by experts. Only when Wales and his team gave full control over to readers did it begin to flourish and grow rapidly. At the end of October, there were Wikipedia versions in well over 100 different languages with a total of 2.5 million articles. The English language edition alone includes 825,000 articles.

Businesses can also use free wikis. More than two million copies of open-source wikis (which generally have fewer features than Socialtext’s software) have been downloaded from the open-source website SourceForge.net. Mayfield himself intends to make a full-featured, free open-source version of Socialtext’s wiki available by April. Once companies decide the service is essential, he hopes Socialtext can charge them for hosting it.

Given how overtaxed we all feel at work, it’s inevitable we will need new, more efficient ways to work together and collaborate. E-mail won’t go away, but tools like the ones Socialtext offers prove that there are other—sometimes more efficient—ways to get work done. (And if you disagree, I’m sure you won’t hesitate to e-mail me about it.)

Questions? Comments? E-mail them to me at dkirkpatrick@fortunemail.com.

The CueCat Is Back - mobile phone scanning/recognition

The CueCat Is Back By Elizabeth Biddlecombe Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69668,00.html

02:00 AM Nov. 28, 2005 PT

The adage that cats have nine lives applies to electronic cats, too. The ill-fated CueCat bar-code reader has been reincarnated as a cell-phone application that recognizes corporate logos.

In 2000, the CueCat scanner became a symbol of tech-industry cluelessness. Distributed to millions of magazine subscribers, the scanner redirected readers to advertisers' web pages after they scanned a bar code printed in the magazine.

But few people used it, and the CueCat became the target of almost universal derision.

Now it's back -- in German mobile phones.

The German branch of Coca-Cola is promoting its CokeFridge portal by encouraging readers of teen magazines Yam!, Starflash and Mäedchen, to take pictures of a special logo with their camera phones.

After e-mailing the picture to the Coke portal, a mobile game and the CokeFridge java application is dispatched to the sender's phone.

The CokeFridge promotion offers chances to win tickets to the FIFA World Cup, as well as download music, ringtones and games.

The technology behind the campaign was developed by California-based Neven Vision.

"We hyperlink the visual world," said Harmut Neven, the company's CEO. "Users should come to expect that every billboard is not just a billboard -- it's a big shining link to mobile content."

Neven Vision's object-recognition technology was developed by Neven as part of his academic work developing sight for robots.

It has a variety of uses, from translating restaurant menus into foreign languages, to helping the Los Angeles Police Department spot gang members.

"You can't reach teenagers just with a TV spot," said Julia Haselmayr, brand PR manager at Coca-Cola in Germany. "We stress mobile marketing very much here in Germany. The mobile phone is very important for teenagers, our target group."

96,900 high-speed 3G users in S'pore

96,900 high-speed 3G users in S'pore

By ANGELA TAN

EVEN before StarHub launched i-mode, Singapore's high-speed 3G subscriber base had more than doubled since July to hit 96,900 in October, according to figures from the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

The take-up figures compare to 66,200 in September, 47,700 in August and 37,500 in July.

While the IDA statistics do not show the breakdown among the three mobile operators - Singapore Telecom, StarHub and MobileOne (M1) - it is believed that SingTel and StarHub continue to enjoy the lion's share of the 3G market.

In September, SingTel was reported to have enticed more than 30,000 3G users into its camp, with its promotional offer which priced video calls at the same rate as voice calls. StarHub had around 23,000 3G users while M1 had signed up 12,500.

StarHub only went on the aggressive in November when it launched its i-mode services with its 100 local and foreign content sites, shortly after SingTel launched 16 live 'mobile TV' channels for cellphones in an effort to boost sluggish local uptake of 3G technology.

At the i-mode launch, StarHub said it was targeting 50,000 i-mode users by the end of the first year of launch. i-mode is a mobile-Internet platform developed by Japan's NTT DoCoMo which allows users to access the Internet with just one click of a hot button.

IDA said total mobile penetration rate in Singapore continued to inch higher, reaching 96.6 per cent in October, compared to 96.2 per cent the previous month.

Total mobile user base was 4.19 million users, compared to 4.18 million in September. Total post-paid user base slipped marginally to 2.61 million in October, from about 2.64 million the previous month. Total prepaid users also slipped slightly to 1.48 million. The total number of SMS messages rose to 748.39 million in October, up from 720.44 million.

Cellphone data services popular

Cellphone data services popular

Mobinet 2005 results in line with Singapore trends, with GPRS and MMS traffic growing 50-80% yearly, reports AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY

A GLOBAL study shows mobile phone users are increasingly comfortable with mobile data services and that 56 per cent of them access the Internet at least once a month and 33 per cent download music on their phones.

Asia-Pacific countries such as China, Korea, Japan and Australia continue to lead the world in terms of penetration of mobile phones, according to the latest Mobinet study of how 4,000 mobile phone users in 21 countries use their handsets.

The study has been conducted eight times since 2000 by management consulting firm AT Kearney and Judge Business School, Cambridge University.

In Singapore, even though the third-generation (3G) mobile telephony user base is still fairly small, data services in the form of GPRS (general packet relay service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service) are growing substantially, according to AT Kearney.

'The results of the Mobinet 2005 study are very much in line with trends in Singapore,' said Chua Soon Ghee, a senior manager with AT Kearney's communications and high-tech practice in Singapore.

'Although the 3G user base in Singapore has been fairly modest so far, we are seeing GPRS and MMS traffic growth of 50-80 per cent,' he said. 'In addition, operators are rushing to offer the latest mobile entertainment service - mobile TV - in anticipation that there will be users willing to pay for it.'

Mr Chua said the study suggests that news and sports programmes are likely to do better than entertainment shows, 'unless operators are targeting the under-25 market for 3G services'.

The study found that more than 50 per cent of handsets worldwide are less than one year old and have robust multimedia capabilities that are increasingly understood by their users.

Fifty-six per cent of multimedia mobile phone users said they use their phones to access the Internet or check e-mail at least once a month - a significant jump from the 36 per cent in last year's Mobinet study.

Almost two-thirds of users said new services and functions are easy to understand and enjoyable to use. And even among older mobile phone users, less than half complained that new functions are difficult to use.

'The increase in multimedia phone penetration is especially rapid in places such as Australia and New Zealand, where growth has been more than 70 per cent over the past year . . . This bodes well for mobile data adoption in Asia-Pacific,' said Mark Page, AT Kearney vice-president and leader of the Mobinet study.

'The growing penetration of new multimedia phones is the catalyst for mobile data adoption and there is a clear relationship between average revenue per user and the age of the phone the customer uses.'

People who have recently replaced their handsets are more likely to be heavier users of data services, Mr Page said. 'Placing new handsets in the palms of the best customers offers the best chances of success (for the telcos).'

The growth of music downloads on phones has been explosive. One-third of multimedia phone users have downloaded music at least once a month on their phone, up from 21 per cent a year ago.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Japan leads the pack with 52 per cent, with China and South Korea behind, on 42 per cent.

Two-thirds of multimedia phone users expressed a desire for time-sensitive TV content such as news and sports rather than entertainment shows, although there is a stronger desire for music TV, movies and soaps/reality shows among users under the age of 25.

The study indicates that mobile operators still face challenges in bringing the price and quality of data services in line with consumer expectations.

'One-third of mobile phone users are concerned about the cost of mobile data, and about half say they are not willing to pay more than $5 per month for it . . . Thirty-five per cent of consumers cited poor content as the reason they don't access multimedia services, a considerable increase from just 8 per cent in 2004,' Mr Page said.

Simon Bell, a professor at Judge Business School, said: 'This is unsettling for operators that have been investing heavily in proprietary portals and content.' Perhaps it suggests they should seek more partnerships with established online portal brands and media companies, he said.

The study recommends that operators shift their marketing focus to encourage repeat use and service loyalty, using pricing along with improved content and customer interfaces. To win new customers, AT Kearney expects operators to do more extensive market testing, implement easier-to-use, content-rich services, and offer low-price alternative packages.

'Indeed, 70 per cent of mobile phone users say price remains the primary factor in choosing an operator,' Mr Page said.

According to AT Kearney's Mr Chua: 'The study suggests that local operators such as StarHub and SingTel will find significant receptivity among users for their commercial i-mode and 3G TV services, which has a strong combination of rich content and easy-to-use interfaces incorporating one-step access to the Internet and mobile TV content.

'The trick, however, is to encourage repeat usage and service continuity after the initial rush of experimentation, he added.

'This will require operators to offer compelling pricing, and content that is continually refreshed. Assuming that operators continue the current 3G services launch momentum and follow through with affordable pricing, we expect 3G uptake and usage to rise significantly in the coming year after a modest start.'

Mobile middleware to generate $1.4 bln by 2009

Mobile middleware to generate $1.4 bln by 2009 Posted by ZDNet Research @ 7:10 am

In 2004 and 2005, the mobile middleware market again experienced strong growth and a flurry of acquisitions, customer wins, and new product rollouts. This has created real momentum in this market, which has now cracked the $500 mln, mark and witnessed a mobile middleware vendor breaching $100 mln in revenue. IDC currently forecasts this market to increase to $1.4 bln in 2009, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.0%

Rogers Wireless & Motorola Drive 'Push Email' to Consumer Markets

Rogers Wireless & Motorola Drive 'Push Email' to Consumer Markets Fri 25 Nov 2005

TORONTO and REDWOOD SHORES, CA, Nov. 22 -- Rogers Wireless and Motorola Canada announced the availability of MyMail push email service on the Motorola RAZR V3. Now for the first time, Rogers Wireless' business and individual customers are able to take advantage of the first Java-based push email made available for a GSM Handset. MyMail, powered by Visto Mobile, gives customers all the benefits of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)-like device in the sleek form factor of a razor-thin mobile phone. The end result is a superior user experience and real-time access to email, contacts and calendars - with a simple flip of the phone.

"The MyMail service together with the Motorola RAZR V3 is the ultimate combination of productivity and personal style," said John Boynton, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Rogers Wireless. "Now, Rogers Wireless customers can make better use of time spent away from their PC with a sophisticated yet easy-to-use service that helps them save time. Because this compelling service is so simple to use with access to address books, emails and calendar wherever you are, we are confident we have put in place an offering that addresses already existing needs and desires across our entire, ever-expanding mobile community."

By simply downloading the MyMail application over the air (OTA) to the Motorola RAZR V3, business-centric customers will immediately be able to receive, send, and delete messages and stay synchronized with their Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino email and PIM services while away from their desk. These corporate email users will have the choice of selecting either the Visto Enterprise Server (VES) or the Desktop Redirector Application (DAC), depending on the organization's size, scope and business requirements.

For personal email access (POP3 or IMAP), the customer simply downloads the MyMail application OTA and enters their account credentials.

"The introduction of push Email on the Motorola RAZR V3, one of our most popular and iconic handset models, gives people more incentive to stay connected in style - whether for work or play," said Mike Hortie, president of Motorola Canada. "MyMail makes the Motorola RAZR V3 even more of an essential all-in-one mobile device."

"It has been our belief all along that Visto's push technology combined with attractive device form factors would accelerate penetration throughout the market, providing both enterprises and individual users the ultimate in choice and freedom," said Brian Bogosian, chairman, president and CEO of Visto Corporation. "With Visto Mobile and the Motorola RAZR V3, Visto and Motorola have combined technology to provide Rogers Wireless with an elegant and robust solution that will be attractive to the broadest subset of mobile users."

Pricing and Availability

MyMail from Rogers Wireless, powered by Visto Mobile, is available now on the Motorola RAZR V3 with a Rogers Wireless Data Service Plan (DSP). Data service plans begin at $15/month and are available in packages up to $60/month, depending on the mobile customer's personal needs and/or business requirements. The Motorola RAZR V3 is available for $99.99 for a limited time with a three year airtime package from Rogers Wireless. For more information, visit www.rogers.com/mymail

unmetered email services

Email, it’s become a vital part of our everyday existence. We depend on it for both our business and personal lives and yet very few of us have access to it on the move. Vodafone is about to change all that though and it invited an exclusive group of journalists to its posh digs on Park Lane to spill the beans. Somehow, I was also let past the security guards.

In what turned out to be a highly significant announcement, the company unveiled three new unmetered email services and unprecedented new levels of remote device management and customer support. Between the packages everyone is catered for too: from high level enterprise right down to consumers.

So given that you’re primarily readers of a consumery-type nature we’ll jump straight into what this means for the man on the street. In a word: Nirvana (not the grunge band). Users who pick the Vodafone Business Email ‘Personal’ option can get unlimited access a POP3 or IMAP email account including all attachments for just £15 per month. Should you have a contract in excess of £40 anyway, the cost is just £10 (all prices include VAT).

Full push email functionality is offered, meaning real time delivery along with the ability to view the more commonly sent file formats like those used by Microsoft Office, pdfs and multimedia. Eight handsets will initially be available with the service: the Sony Ericsson P910i, Nokia 9300, 6680, Vodafone v1620, VPA compact, HP hw6510 and Motorola MPX220 (top). Coming soon are the Vodafone v1640 (above), v1240 and Nokia N70. If you own one of these handsets already Vodafone can upgrade the software on it remotely and you’ll be up and running. Unsurprisingly, customers can also add the email package into their existing contracts at any time and everything kicks off on 1 December.

As for the ‘Enterprise’ edition of Vodafone Business Email essentially this is very similar but, like software, it is dealt out on a licence basis. A firewall server licence is also required which costs between £485 and £2,500 depending on the size of the business (though it’s free until 31 May) and its an extra £32.90 on top of each employee’s monthly contract.

FedEx equips couriers with wireless devices

Clive,

The end of an era - FedEx goes GPRS - and in HONG KONG! ============== FedEx equips couriers with wireless devices By Vivian Yeo, ZDNet Asia 25/11/2005 URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,39293488,00.htm

Transportation player FedEx Express plans to equip 50,000 couriers located in 60 countries with wireless devices by 2008.

The FedEx PowerPad, a Windows Pocket PC-based device, is Bluetooth-enabled and uses GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) connectivity. The handheld is able to capture signatures electronically, and couriers can access dispatch information without having to go back to their dispatch vehicles.

The new FedEx PowerPad will replace the FedEx SuperTracker developed 20 years ago.

Linda Brigance, FedEx's vice president and CIO for the Asia-Pacific region, told ZDNet Asia in an interview that with the new features, a courier using the new device is expected to save between 10 seconds and 35 seconds at each location.

The device was piloted in Hong Kong early this year, according to Brigance. Response from customers towards the project, which was completed last month, was "very positive", she added.

"We've had some good take-back from our Hong Kong experience, which we've been able to learn and [improve on] for the other countries," Brigance said.

Brigance noted that FedEx will commit US$200 million globally in new wireless technologies and implementations. The investment will be carried out over a period of five years.

In the Asia-Pacific region, FedEx targets to implement over 2,500 devices by 2007. Besides Hong Kong, the FedEx PowerPad will be made available in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Korea, New Zealand, Guam and Macau.

Extending the popular RSS 2.0 Web syndication format to make it "multidirectional"

Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) Corp. is extending the popular RSS 2.0 Web syndication format to make it "multidirectional," allowing it to be used for synchronizing information such as contacts and calendar entries across different applications, the company said.

RSS 2.0 is best known as a way to let Internet users subscribe to content from Web sites that support RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. When content on a site is updated, the RSS feed informs the subscriber, often with a summary of the updated content and a link to it.

Microsoft is developing a set of extensions to RSS so that it can be used for exchanging and synchronizing content that is updated by two or more parties. Its goal is to take what is essentially a one-way publishing mechanism and make it multidirectional.

The company published version 0.9 of the specification, called Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) for RSS 2.0, on its Web site earlier this month and is seeking feedback for a final version.

To understand what the extensions hope to achieve, imagine two PC users who wish to share and coedit a list of items using an RSS feed. Both people publish their lists using RSS with the sharing extensions, and both also subscribe to the other's feed.

Whenever either of the two updates their list, the changes are added to their feed and incorporated into the list of the other subscriber.

The extensions "enable feed readers and publishers to generate and process incoming item changes in a manner that enables consistency to be achieved," Microsoft said. "In order to accomplish this, SSE introduces concepts such as per-item change history (to manage item versions and update conflicts) and tombstones (to propagate deletions, and un-deletions)."

The specification could be used to keep contact lists synchronized across a user's various devices, such as a PC, PDA (personal digital assistant) and mobile phone. Or it could be used by family members (or co-workers) to synchronize entries they wish to share from their personal calendars, explained Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's recently hired chief technical officer, in a posting on his blog.

Ozzie's involvement in SSE is no surprise -- he created Lotus Notes, which lets workers update and synchronize calendars, documents and other files with each other. Notes was part of the inspiration for SSE, Ozzie said.

After joining Microsoft he met with some of its product teams, including Exchange and Outlook, and thought about ways of synchronizing information among Microsoft products, as well as with those of other companies, he wrote. Soon after, SSE was born.

"In just a few weeks time, several Microsoft product groups ... built prototypes and demos, and found that it works and interoperates quite nicely," Ozzie wrote. It's too early to say which Microsoft products will use SSE, and code won't be released until version 1.0 is ready at a future, unspecified date, he said.

Microsoft has a checkered past when it comes to "extending" technologies it does not own, raising inevitable questions about its intentions with RSS 2.0. Sun Microsystems (Profile, Products, Articles) Inc., for example, sued Microsoft for extending Sun's Java technology in a way that prevented some Java applications from running properly on Microsoft's software.

"Microsoft is notorious for developing what it calls 'standards' that are actually 'Microsoft standards,'" said Chris Harris-Jones, a principal analyst with U.K. research company Ovum Ltd.

Still, Microsoft said its aim is to define "the minimum extensions (to RSS) necessary" to achieve its goal. It released the specification under the Creative Commons license, which is also the license used for RSS 2.0, and it said it is not aware that it owns any patents related to SSE. If it finds any, it said, it will offer a royalty-free patent license on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms."

Ovum's Harris also wondered why Microsoft picked RSS 2.0 rather than a similar syndication format, Atom. RSS is far more widely used, but Harvard University, which currently owns RSS 2.0, has said it does not plan to update that specification any further, according to Harris. "RSS 2.0 is frozen; it's not going anywhere," he said.

Atom, on the other hand, was submitted this year to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardization, Harris said. "It would be nice if Microsoft would support Atom, and then submit SSE for standardization alongside it, so it all becomes part of an internationally recognized standard," he said.

"Otherwise -- and I'm being very cynical here -- you might end up with Microsoft's RSS, which only Microsoft uses, and Atom, which everyone else uses. So you end up with two standards, one for Microsoft and one for everyone else. But then maybe that's too cynical, even for an analyst," he said.

Microsoft said it picked RSS in part because it is a very simple technology. The SSE extensions could be used with Atom "in principle," the company said, although the version developed does not support it.

The SSE specification can be used with the OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) format, used for creating hierarchical lists such as categorized music playlists, Microsoft said.

A FAQ about SSE, including an explanation of how it works, is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/ssefaq/

The SSE efforts are distinct from Microsoft's other RSS work, it said, such as the planned support for RSS within Vista, and Simple List Extensions to RSS, which can be used to let Web sites publish lists, such as photo albums or music playlists.

The Million Dollar Homepage

Honey, where's that list of business ideas I came up with when I was loaded? If they make Alex Tew's story into a movie, the critic's blurb in the ads would read, "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll stand up and salute."

You'll laugh. Everyone did the first time they saw The Million Dollar Homepage, created by Tew in August with the intent of selling off the screen real estate to advertisers for a dollar a pixel in 100-pixel blocks until he made his million. What a wacky Web.

You'll cry. Usually just after hearing that Tew has made $623,800 so far, and realizing that it could just as easily have been you.

You'll stand up and salute the wonderful weirdness of capitalism when you learn that the Briton's exercise in commercial chaos has actually worked, effectively snagging click-throughs for the advertisers.

What do the pros make of this ... this thing that flies in the face of all of advertising's basic principles? A post on American Copywriter lists the steps they go through: denial, resentment, bargaining, depression, blogging.

Ajax in your pocket

Ajax in your pocket

Nokia is readying its new web browser for S60 3rd edition. It is based on the WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari Web Kit. These components are themselves based on KDE's Konqueror KHTML and KJS open source projects. Application developers will benefit from the browser's modular architecture and open interfaces and content developers will have access to high volumes of compliant browsers, which make it faster and morecost-efficient to develop content that works on a range of devices.

http://www.symbian.exvn.com/page.cfm?article=0xd5b87732b2880ec8ed8f6c02fd751607.5.9076

In the meantime, Opera is starting Opera Platform. Opera Platform applications are true web applications that have access to the phone's functionality through the Opera Platform DOM interface (provided by the Application Player) and can communicate with servers using XMLHttpRequest. The Opera Platform SDK iscurrently available for Symbian OS phones with S60, and is free.

http://www.symbian.exvn.com/page.cfm?article=0xd5b87732b2880ec8ed8f6c02fd751607.6.9076

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [05] Open source portal from Nokia

Nokia launched opensource.nokia.com, an Internet portal for its open source software projects. Nokia is currently working on several projects, such as the open source browser for S60 (see story [04]), an S60 NNTP reader and Python for S60. The projects presented in the portal enable Nokia to share mobile software knowledge and innovations with open source developers. The portalitself is built on top of Nokia's open source semantic web architecture.

http://www.symbian.exvn.com/page.cfm?article=0xd5b87732b2880ec8ed8f6c02fd751607.7.9076

Find more Symbian OS related open source projects.

http://www.symbian.exvn.com/page.cfm?article=0xd5b87732b2880ec8ed8f6c02fd751607.8.9076

fascinating new service provided by Kenya's largest mobile phone

On Nov. 10, the BBC World Service "Newshour" <http://tinyurl.com/8xqup> included a segment about a fascinating new service provided by Kenya's largest mobile phone operator, Safaricom <http://www.safaricom.co.ke/>. In May 2005, the company introduced Sambaza <http://tinyurl.com/9re25>, "an airtime sharing service that enables our prepaid subscribers to share airtime with their family and friends."

Because Safaricom now has more than 3 million subscribers in Kenya (about 10% of the 33 million population), many of whom are in remote rural areas, Sambaza has become an element of a burgeoning small-scale consumer economy <http://tinyurl.com/cynz3>.

Most poor rural people in Kenya and indeed the rest of the developing world have no access to banks. It's very difficult and expensive for their urban relatives to send money to the people back home. Enter Safaricom. Anyone with a mobile phone and a Safaricom account can now transfer minutes of airtime from one phone to another, even across the country, at no cost.

During the radio program, a commentator noted that if someone in the backcountry needed to buy a chicken, her son in Nairobi might send her enough mobile-phone minutes to cover the cost of the purchase. Mom could then pay for the chicken by transferring its price to the phone of the seller. Voilà: the Kenyan equivalent of an electronic payment. That micropayment might then allow Mom to cook the chicken and sell chicken-on-a-stick for a profit. Voilà: Mom is now part of the microeconomy.

Under these circumstances, anyone with a Safaricom mobile phone can even become the equivalent of a bank. Even people without a phone can use the services of someone able to transfer this new electronic currency back and forth among users, opening up tremendous possibilities for development using micro-loans <http://tinyurl.com/cyxwc>.

What are the security implications? Well, if the volume of monetary transfer becomes significant by local or even international standards, it will not be long before criminals try to take advantage of it. Safaricom and any other mobile phone operator interested in establishing this kind of parallel currency will have to invent effective security measures, including identification and authentication, to prevent theft.

Another issue is that governments will not stand idly by as a parallel economy develops that precludes taxation. I predict that the more successful these electronic currencies become, the more frantically governments will strive to monitor, regulate, and tax the transactions. Since all the credit transfers must go through Safaricom servers for verification and adjustments of balances, it will be easy for the tax agencies to get their hooks into the new economy.

Let's hope that the perennial problem of endemic governmental corruption does not destroy a promising new technology with great potential for microeconomic community development.

HSBC bans cameraphones

HSBC bans cameraphones to protect Will

Just in case Canary Wharf workers sing

By Tony Dennis: Tuesday 15 November 2005, 10:36 IN AN effort to stop bank workers from benefiting from Prince William' s work experience stint at HSBC's HQ in Canary Wharf, the management have banned the use of cameraphones.

Obviously the existence of online sites like scoopt.com - where registered users can sell pictures taken with their cameraphones - has come to the notice of top brass at HSBC. The ban was just part of a series of instructions circulated to employees in an email memo leaked to The Sun.

But Wills doesn't need a cameraphone, what the poor boy obviously needs is a sat nav system. The young Prince took two hours to drive just seven and a half miles across London. He wasn't aware that a major road tunnel had been temporarily closed.

StarHub launches i-mode services

Look at the ridiculous data pricing. People don't want pay as you go, they want "all you can eat" We figured that out 20 years ago. The cellcos are terrified that if they do flat rate data, people will start asking for flat rate voice...

=====================================

StarHub launches i-mode services

By ANGELA TAN

STARHUB, Singapore's second-biggest phone company, yesterday launched its i-mode service, hoping that the 100 local and foreign content sites, as well as an easy-to-use handset, would entice 50,000 people to sign up over the next 12 months.

'We are targeting 50,000 i-mode users by the end of the first year,' StarHub spokeswoman Jeannie Ong said, repeating a projection made in January.

i-mode is a mobile-Internet platform developed by Japan's NTT DoCoMo which allows users to access the Internet with just one click of a hot button.

StarHub chief executive Terry Clontz said that i-mode is a unique and robust platform that optimises the delivery and presentation of data, images and video from the Web to the handset.

StarHub's i-mode users will also be able to conduct mobile transactions such as booking cinema tickets or doing online banking, and access news from sources like The Business Times and The Straits Times, as well watch Eurosports on their mobile phone.

The telco has tied up with OCBC Bank to provide mobile banking services. OCBC customers will be able to check account balances, transfer funds - and even pay bills.

Subscribers have a choice of three i-mode enabled phones from NEC and Samsung, priced from $368 to $688.

Offered over StarHub's 2.5G and 3G networks, users can choose from three packages. Light users can opt to pay as they use at 1.05 cents per kilobyte; frequent users can pay a promotional rate of $5.25 for $20 of data traffic until April 2006; and heavy users can pay a special rate of $10.50 for the first three months until April 2006.

Besides subscribing for StarHub's data plans, i-mode users may need to subscribe to specific content providers to access their sites.

Chan Kin Hung, StarHub senior vice-president for mobile services, said that the telco shares up to 85 per cent of the subscription revenue with its i-mode content partners.

Social Networking 3.0

Social Networking 3.0

The third generation of social-networking technology has hit the Web, and it's about content as much as contacts.

By Wade Roush

If there were a competition for "Internet Buzzword of the Year", 2004's winner would have been "social networking," as a cohort of companies such as Ryze, Tribe, LinkedIn, Friendster, Spoke, and Visible Path, rolled out new or improved services that let Web users create online mirrors of their circle of real-life acquaintances. The idea was mainly to let users build online profiles that advertised their interests and to help them connect with friends and friends-of-friends around one of those interests -- whether it be finding a job, making a sale, or repairing an old motorcycle.

But with the exception of Friendster and Myspace, the initial response to these services among average Internet users was sluggish. Many users signed up for one or more services, created online profiles, formed connections with a few acquaintances, and drifted away, uncertain about how to use the networks.

But today, not only have all of the companies survived; they're experiencing record growth, introducing new technology and new money-making features, and being joined by sophisticated new competitors such as iMeem. Moreover, they're joining the parade of sites offering "rich media" -- the big buzzword of 2005 -- by encouraging users to share their own content online, including photos, videos, music, and other digital files.

Social networking, in other words, is finally becoming a real business with a convincing product.

"A year ago a lot of our users were pretty unclear about what they could do," says Konstantin Guericke, co-founder and vice president of marketing at LinkedIn, a social network focusing on business connections. "They knew they were getting invitations to join the network, and they knew how to accept invitations, and sometimes they sent their own invitations--but they weren't sure what else to do with that."

A year later, LinkedIn's membership has grown from 1 million to 4.2 million, users are conducting 5 million searches a month for potential contacts within their own networks, and the company has launched several revenue-producing features, such as paid subscription options that allow members to search profiles outside their immediate circle of friends and friends-of-friends.

Rather than simply passing requests for introductions back and forth through their networks -- which was about all they could do a year -- LinkedIn members are using their networks for practical purposes like finding job candidates, locating business and legal services, and coordinating group activities.

What makes all this possible, says Guericke, is the user-generated content LinkedIn holds in its members' profiles, such as resumes and testimonials. "First, we are a search engine. But second, we are a publishing platform -- about yourself and what other people say about you," Guericke says. "It just creates a more powerful business."

Second Coming

Psychologist Stanley Milgram established in the 1960s that any two people on earth are connected to each other by a series of, on average, six intermediaries -- an idea that was later popularized through John Guare's play "Six Degrees of Separation" and the subsequent film adaptation. By the late 1990s, entrepreneurs realized that the Internet could become the perfect medium for connecting people to others beyond their first- or second-degree acquaintances.

But the first generation of free social-networking websites, such as sixdegrees.com, dried up even before the dot-com boom ended. That was partly because, like most other dot-coms, the sites lacked revenue-producing business models. But it was also because the technology hadn't evolved into a usable form. Users had little idea what they could actually accomplish through their online social networks.

The post-crash boom in online advertising -- and especially the 2001 advent of Google's AdWords advertising program, which shows keyword-based ads alongside content such as users' profiles -- finally gave social-networking companies a way to convert website traffic into dollars, without having to take the perilous step of charging members a subscription fee. As many as 30 social-networking startups were launched between 2001 and 2004, backed by tens of millions of dollars in venture capital. (See "Internetworking," April 2004.)

But sites like LinkedIn, Friendster, and Tribe still offered little more than the ability to create online profiles and invite friends to link to those profiles. Members raced to see how many connections they could build, as if the size of one's network were more important than the quality of its members.

By late 2004 or early 2005, the novelty had begun to wear off for some. "When [LinkedIn] was first created, I thought it was interesting and thought it'd be beneficial to have my information there, both for me to contact people and for them to contact me," wrote Russell Beattie, a software developer at Yahoo, in an April 2005 blog entry. "I gave it plenty of time to be useful, but it just hasn't done anything at all for my life."

At that very moment, however, LinkedIn and other companies were beginnning to add features that made the value of an online social network clearer, at least for some users. In March, for example, LinkedIn launched a feature that helps job seekers find contacts at companies where they want to work; LinkedIn makes money by charging $10 for each message a user wants to send to a potential employer through the network. Other new revenue-generating features include a job-posting service and LinkedIn for Groups, which creates online networks confined to organizations such as college alumni associations.

Friendster, for its part, boasted by far the largest social network online by 2004, with over ten million users. Then the company endured a painful user backlash over poor site performance and a plague of hoax profiles called "fakesters." But now Friendster is staging a comeback, in part by introducing a raft of services that help members trade digital content.

"We've listened to our user base very closely, and we're also paying attention to what the competition is doing, and we've formulated a new strategy that is really about personal media," says Jeff Roberto, a marketing manager at Friendster. For example, users can now create blogs, control the appearance of their profiles, upload up to 50 photos, watch slide shows of the photos most recently uploaded by their friends, post classified ads that link back to their profiles, and share audio and video files stored on their PCs using peer-to-peer technology provided by Grouper.

"The uptake we've seen has been incredible," Friendster CEO Taek Kwon said in October, about a month after the new features were introduced. "We've seen substantial increases in media being uploaded, profiles being customized, and people posting classifieds."

Friendster's current membership: 21 million, with 9 million of those users returning to the site every month.

Friends or Buddies?

The newest players in social networking, such as Palo Alto, CA-based iMeem, may have a long way to go to catch up with the likes of Friendster -- but their technology is already leapfrogging that of their older competitors.

iMeem hopes to attract members by building all their activities not around a virtual representation of their social network, but around instant messaging technology. Indeed, the company's name is a combination of IM, for instant messaging, and "meme," meaning an idea spreading through a network.

As an undergraduate in psychology at Stanford University, iMeem co-founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell wrote a thesis about instant messaging's role in workplace collaboration. The wave of social networking applications that emerged around 2001 intrigued him, he says, but "from the first time I saw this stuff, I didn't think it was interactive enough. It was too much just lurking and watching people from afar, but not in real time. It seemed to me the center of the universe [in a social network] should be a buddy list rather than a friends list."

That's exactly how iMeem works. A downloadable application similar to Yahoo Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger, iMeem is built around a buddy-list window that shows a user which of her friends are online. From that window, she can send and receive instant messages, join group chats, keep a blog, and share photos, videos, podcasts, playlists, and the like with other users using a peer-to-peer system related to the technology behind the original Napster.

Aggregating all of these functions into one program sounds like a recipe for information overload. But Caldwell believes that iMeem users will act as each others' media critics, perhaps bringing real effectiveness to the much-heralded idea of "collaborative filtering." "There's too much stuff out there," Caldwell says. "Too much data, too much content, too many blogs. Collaborative filtering is one of the most important things that's happened on the Web over the past couple of years. It's holding back the tide of overstimulation."

It could be argued, of course, that supplementing one's everyday, real-life interactions with virtual ones through social-networking sites simply adds to the overstimulation. But if users weren't gaining some benefit from their online networks, they wouldn't be signing up by the millions. In the future, membership in an online social network may seem as commonplace as belonging to a more traditional organization like the Boy Scouts, the PTA, or the local Neighborhood Watch. The only difference? By ponying up a subscription fee or enduring online ads, you'll be paying for the pleasure.

Beep. It's from Hamlet. 2B? NT2B?=???

Business Times - 18 Nov 2005

Beep. It's from Hamlet. 2B? NT2B?=???

(LONDON) Woe un2mnkind! The text message is trying to summarise the great poet John Milton and a respected British academic thinks this may be a smart new way to teach literature.

A British company offering mobile phones to students has hired John Sutherland, professor emeritus of English Literature at University College London, to offer subscribers text message summaries and quotes from literary classics. The hope is that messages in the truncated shorthand of mobile phones will help make great literature more accessible.

'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,' the company, Dot Mobile, said in a press release.

Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy is rendered: '2B? NT2B?=???' At the end of Romeo and Juliet, 'bothLuvrs kill Emselves', while Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice concludes when 'Evry1GtsMaryd'.

'Woe un2mnkind', is part of its summary of Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton actually wrote: 'Woe to the inhabitants on Earth.'

'Dot mobile's unique service amply demonstrates text's ability to fillet out the important elements in a plot. Take for example the ending to Jane Eyre - MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus. Was ever a climax better compressed?' asked Prof Sutherland. That's 'mad wife sets fire to house' in English. - Reuters

3G update

3G update

By Joanie Wexler

Carriers seem to be hastening the buildout of their broadband mobile data networks - perhaps feeling a bit of competitive pressure from mobile WiMAX, expected in 2007?

Sprint Nextel said last week that it has expanded its fastest mobile data WAN service, launched in July in 34 markets, to more than 141 major markets and 250 airports nationwide.

The carrier says the Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) service, based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology and offering download speeds of about 400K to 700K bit/sec and bursts to 2M bit/sec, will be accessible on various devices to about 150 million people in over 220 major markets by early 2006.

The service is accessible via Sierra Wireless or Novatel Wireless PC card, Windows Mobile 5.0-powered smart phone and handsets from Samsung and Sanyo Electronic. Sprint Nextel also said it plans to make available an EV-DO PC card from UTStarcom for accessibility later this month.

Flexible pricing plans start at $39.99 per month or $59.99 monthly for unlimited access (with a voice subscription). Verizon Wireless reestablished the industry price point at $59.99 a month for all-you-can-eat mobile data in September, when it dared drop its EV-DO price from $79.99 a month by 25%.

Verizon Wireless' Web site now claims that its competing EV-DO network service is available in 171 markets covering more than 140 million potential customers, or "pops," and including more than 68 airports.

Meanwhile, on the GSM side of the house, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) service is available in six markets from Cingular Wireless and is expected to 15 to 20 by year-end. By using a derivative of the technology called High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) the services will reportedly match the average stated speeds of EV-DO.

Nokia to Buy Intellisync To Bolster Mobile Email

Nokia to Buy Intellisync To Bolster Mobile Email

A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP November 16, 2005 11:05 a.m.

Nokia Corp. agreed to buy wireless messaging firm Intellisync Corp. as the cellphone giant tries to bolster its mobile email service for companies.

Under the terms of the deal, Intellisync stockholders will receive $5.25 a share in cash. The price is 5% below Intellisync's closing price Tuesday of $5.54 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Nokia said the offer gives Intellisync an implied enterprise value of about $430 million.

Intellisync, San Jose, Calif., is one of several companies that compete with Research In Motion Inc., the maker of BlackBerry email devices. Carriers like Verizon Wireless use Intellisync's software to provide data services and mobile email to customers' smartphones and PDAs. Its mobile email software is also used by corporations like Pfizer and Domino's Pizza.

Espoo, Finland-based Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, recently launched a mobile email service for companies and their employees. Under the service, users are able to send and receive email through their corporate accounts or via Web-based email such as Microsoft's Hotmail. Acquiring Intellisync would allow Nokia to offer its customers the ability to connect practically any device to any data source or network.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2006. Intellisync, which was founded in 1993, lost $13.4 million on revenue of $59.5 million for the 12 months ended July 31. The company has around 450 employees.