M1 lowers 3G data prices

M1 lowers 3G data prices By Aaron Tan, ZDNet Asia 17/4/2006 URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,39352523,00.htm

SINGAPORE--Mobile operator MobileOne (M1) has slashed the price of its unlimited 3G data plan by 65 percent, in a bid to spur mobile broadband adoption in the island-state.

According to a statement Monday, M1 announced that from May, its premium SunSurf 100 3G data plan will cost S$68 (US$42) a month, instead of S$199 (US$124). The company hopes that the move will help align the benefits of 3G with that of fixed-line broadband, and make the service more affordable for business and individual users.

Rivals SingTel and StarHub currently price their unlimited 3G data plans at S$208.95 (US$130) and S$105 (US$65) respectively. Elsewhere in Asia, Malaysia's Maxis offers unlimited 3G data plans for RM120 (US$33) a month, while Hong Kong's 3 Hong Kong subscribers have yet to see unlimited 3G data packages from their mobile operator.

Said M1 chief executive officer Neil Montefiore: "The challenge for M1 is to help our customers access information, regardless of time or place. This very economical data plan will make it very convenient and cost-effective for our customers to switch from fixed-line broadband to 3G mobility."

He added: "We want to set a new price benchmark for wireless broadband access and to this end, the attractive rates we are offering should help increase 3G adoption as well as data usage."

Subscribers of M1's Sunsurf 100 3G data plan will receive a free Vodafone Mobile Connect Card (VMCC) that allows them to track data usage.

Montefiore also revealed M1's move to high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA), dubbed 3.5G.

"M1 customers can look forward to much faster data speeds with the upgrade to HSDPA by the end of this year, taking wireless Internet access and the advantages of mobility in Singapore to a whole new level," he said.

Asian operators have been publicizing their HSDPA plans in recent weeks. Maxis expects to launch HSDPA services by year-end. Other countries in the Asia-Pacific region that plan to do likewise include China, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan and Australia.

Hot to trot

Hot to trot

Mar 30th 2006
From The Economist print edition

A new service hopes to do for texting what Skype did for voice calls

TALK is cheap—particularly since the appearance of voice-over-internet services such as Skype. Such services, which make possible very cheap (or even free) calls by routing part or all of each call over the internet, have forced traditional telecoms firms to cut their prices. And now the same thing could be about to happen to mobile-phone text messages, following the launch this week of Hotxt, a British start-up.

Users download the Hotxt software to their handsets, just as they would a game or a ringtone. They choose a user name, and can then exchange as many messages as they like with other Hotxt users for £1 ($1.75) per week. The messages are sent as data packets across the internet, rather than being routed through operators' text-messaging infrastructure. As a result, users pay only a tiny data-transport charge, typically of a penny or so per message. Since text messages typically cost 10p, this is a big saving—particularly for the cost-conscious teenagers at whom the service is aimed.

Most teenagers in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, pay for their mobile phones on a “pre-paid” basis, rather than having a monthly contract with a regular bill. Pre-paid tariffs are far more expensive: bundles of free texts and other special deals, which can reduce the cost of text messaging, are generally not available. For a teenager who sends seven messages a day, Hotxt can cut the cost of texting by 75%, saving £210 per year, says Doug Richard, the firm's co-founder. For really intensive text-messagers, the savings could be even bigger: Josh Dhaliwal of mobileYouth, a market-research firm, says that some teenagers—chiefly boys aged 15-16 and girls aged 14-15—are “supertexters” who send as many as 50 messages per day.

While this sounds like good news for users, it could prove painful for mobile operators. Text-messaging accounts for around 20% of a typical operator's revenues. With margins on text messages in excess of 90%, texting also accounts for nearly half of an operator's profits. Mr Richard is confident that there is no legal way that operators can block his service; they could raise data-transport costs, but that would undermine their own efforts to push new services. Hotxt plans to launch in other countries soon.

“The challenge is getting that initial momentum,” says Mr Dhaliwal. Hotxt needs to persuade people to sign up, so that they will persuade their friends to sign up, and so on. Unlike Skype, Hotxt is not free, so users may be less inclined to give it a try. But as Skype has also shown, once a disruptive, low-cost communications service starts to spread, it can quickly become very big indeed. And that in turn can lead to lower prices, not just for its users, but for everyone.

MySpacenomics

MySpacenomics
Commentary: Who's influencing consumption now?

By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Apr 13, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- These days a couple of ways to get distribution on the Internet are to make friends with the kids on MySpace, and those prolific opinion writers in the blogosphere.

Perhaps this doesn't come as a surprise to those in Silicon Valley. Over the last six months, a number of startup founders, CEOs and venture capitalists have said to me that a good way to get their service noticed is to get someone on MySpace to start evangelizing.

Indeed, MySpace -- the explosively popular social network site owned by News Corp (NWS) -- represents the generation Y consumer -- those born between 1981 and 1995. At 57 million strong, this demographic is the largest consumer group in the history of the U.S., according to OnPoint. See OnPoint site.

In other words, MySpace, which saw 36 million unique visitors in March and 19.6 billion page views, can drive consumption habits across the Web.

The traffic numbers are starting to bear this out.

Apparently, someone at MySpace has been proselytizing about the virtues of Technorati, which is the de facto search engine for blogs. San Francisco-based Technorati claims to capture about 95% of the blogs in existence. (The other 5% of blogs not indexed are private.)

Traffic to Technorati doubled to 1.8 million unique visitors in March from 962,000 in February, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Technorati CEO and co-founder David Sifry visited the MarketWatch studios earlier this week to explain why his service saw such explosive growth in traffic in a month's time.

 Watch my video interview with Sifry

Sifry said the traffic increases were due to the rise in blog popularity. Technorati now tracks 33.7 million blogs, about 60 times larger than the blogosphere three years ago. MarketWatch is helping to expand the blogosphere as Frank Barnako's blog was just launched this week.

The biggest drivers of traffic had always been the usual suspects, Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner's (TWX) AOL and Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN.

But according to Nielsen//NetRatings, nearly 15% of traffic from users logging on at home and going to Technorati came from MySpace blogs. In February, Technorati received no traffic references from MySpace, according to the Internet-traffic measurement company.

Given MySpace's significant audience base, any reference from MySpacers would give any service a nice boost.

YouTube has watched its traffic explode. In March, the video-hosting site saw 12.8 million unique visitors generating 486 million page views, which equated to the same number of page views to Google Video, NBC Universal, Walt Disney's (DIS) ABC.com, CBS Television combined. About 2% of YouTube traffic came from MySpace blogs. That's not a heck of a lot, but enough. Additionally, MySpace users are helping to create the videos. As of today, there are 5,378 videos tagged "MySpace." Other video and photo-sharing sites are also allowing their services to be easily integrated with MySpace in order to capture the MySpace generation. Go onto Slide.com, a photo-sharing site and you'll see a big banner that says: "Show off your pics on MySpace profile with Slide."

MySpacers could lead consumer trends, as long as News Corp keeps the technology robust enough to support their virtual lives. Here's an idea, why not start a MySpace consumer confidence index?

Now, before I'm accused of being hyperbolic, I do acknowledge that it's easier said than done.

Yahoo (YHOO) was once the place to go too.

Nonetheless, MySpace has the user today. So, there's much that can be offered to this virtual playground filled with eager experimenters and creators.

Services that specialize in areas such as health, business, or sports could create search boxes so that MySpacers can do specified searches in their space.

For instance, if someone is interested in trading stocks only, this would-be stock trader might want a little search box on his blog that only provides stock-market information.

MySpace started off as a place where would-be musicians could get noticed. It's not hard to imagine that others in that virtual world have other passions as well.

Imagine the possibilities?

Link to me please

Besides MySpace as a traffic driver, links have become the means to getting noticed as well.

Technorati's Sifry and I looked over the Technorati top 20 blogs. Boing Boing is No. 1 with 66,219 links from 20,223 sites. This site saw traffic jump to 760,000 unique visitors. Engadget is No. 2 and at No. 3 is PostSecret. Post secret has 64,307 links. It started off as a school project and a place where people could post secrets.

This blog fits the criteria of what makes a blog popular. The PostSecret blog writer is prolific and the subject matter is compelling, said Sifry. Being prolific and authoritative gets you an audience.

But there's more to it than just being a big mouth with an insatiable desire to share thoughts. It's about scratching someone's back so they can scratch yours.

"Getting even larger requires a lot of linking," he said. "If you "really want to drive distribution, you have to give it away," he said. For instance, many bloggers write mere snippets and link like crazy. Yes, I've taken note of many of them. They're considered the curators or synthesizers, said Sifry. If you link to someone, there is a higher probability that they will link back to you.

"Hyper-linking is a form of etiquette," said Sifry. "It's a way of tapping someone on the shoulder with a sign of respect."

Sign of respect, or an in-kind gesture? You decide.

'I'm the Google of... '

Last week, my column on search investments received a lot of attention. Ever since I quoted the founders of Truveo and Krugle referring to themselves as the Google of their respective specialties, I've received a number of e-mails from others who want to be Google, and maybe even better.

For instance, I received an e-mail with the slug: "Vertical search that's Smarter than Google." That came from someone at Ziff Davis Group alerting me to a new search engine focusing on the gaming space. This nameless search engine will be announced at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), to be held in Las Vegas in May.

Other search sites I was alerted to were Pixsy, a visual search site, Wandic.com, a search site for local search, and RedZee, a site that offers kid-safe Internet searches. Hmm. That could be interesting.

Meanwhile, Google finally got its voice patent granted. Bear Stearns analyst Bob Peck alerted me to the fact that Google was just granted a patent from the U.S. Patent Office. According to the patent office, "the voice patent provides search results from a voice search query."

Even though Google had tried to test this voice technology out several years ago, it has no plans on using that voice search technology any time soon, according to Google spokesperson Barry Schnitt. "Prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications," he said. Google also confirmed that it purchased the rights to a search technology developed by a 26-year-old PhD student at University of New South Wales. Read about the technology.

We're only 10 years into the commercialization of search. And, in the last five years 130 new search startups have been invested in by the venture community. I'm sure we're just getting started.

Mobile communities could fill 3G pipes

Mobile communities could fill 3G pipes

By Marguerite Reardon Story last modified Thu Apr 06 06:57:40 PDT 2006

LAS VEGAS--Social networking Web sites such as MySpace.com, which will soon go mobile, could become key applications driving data usage on new 3G wireless networks.

For years, mobile operators, which have spent billions of dollars to upgrade their networks to 3G wireless technologies, have tried to get customers to do more than talk on their cell phones. Despite their efforts, the vast majority of revenue still comes from voice calling.

But that could change in the next few years. A lot of fuss has already been made about people watching TV on their cell phones and downloading music over the mobile Net, but there's another application that could also generate significant 3G data usage--social networking.

"Carriers have invested a lot of money in their networks," said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. "And at this point it's a lot like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see which applications will stick. I doubt there will be any single killer application, but social networking on mobile phones could certainly be one that generates usage."

Within the last year social networking and community Web sites on the fixed-line Internet have really taken off, especially among teens and twentysomethings, who spend hours online creating profiles and sharing photos, videos and blogs.

MySpace, the most popular of the social networking sites, has more than 67 million members, and it adds roughly 250,000 members every day. MySpace is ranked as the second-most visited Web site on the Internet in terms of unique users, after Yahoo, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Last year Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the company for $580 million.

Though MySpace may be among the most famous of these sites, it's certainly not the only one on the Net. There are dozens of them, including Facebook.com, which is geared toward college students. There are also photo-sharing sites, such as Flickr, that have created popular online communities.

In the past, people using these services could access them only from their desktops or laptops. But now social networking is going mobile, allowing people to use their cell phones to upload pictures or send updates to blogs.

In March, MySpace announced a deal with the soon-to-be-launched wireless reseller Helio. And earlier this week, Facebook announced deals with Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless to enable users to post messages to their Facebook profiles via SMS text messaging. Flickr also lets people post photos from their cell phones and view them from handsets as well. Sprint Nextel has created its own photo-sharing site, called PCS Picture mail. It's expected to launch this spring.

There also are new companies in the game, such as San Diego-based Intercasting, which is offering a service called Rabble. Like MySpace and Facebook, Rabble lets users create profiles so they can share photos, videos and blogs with other members of the Rabble group. Cingular and Verizon Wireless have already signed up to offer the service, charging customers $2.99 per month for access to the community.

Ubiquitous and wireless In many ways, cell phones are the ideal tools for social networking and building online communities. Not only are people rarely without their phones, but today's handsets come equipped with sophisticated tools as well, such as cameras and digital music and video players and recorders, that can be used for documenting life. Mobile-handset makers Nokia and Sony Ericsson are even embedding technology into some of their phones that's designed to make it easier for users to upload pictures and text to blogs. These phones are solid tools for people wanting to share photos, video clips or songs with their online communities.

"Cell phones have become essential accessories," said Anil Malhotra, chief alliance officer for Bango, a company that helps wireless-content providers charge users for accessing their content. "And they're also perfect capture devices. You can take pictures, record sound, send text messages. It's a great tool for creating your own content."

What's more, those in the teen and twentysomething crowd--the biggest users of online social networks--also happen to be some of the heaviest users of mobile data services such as text messaging and downloadable ring tones.

As major mobile operators in the U.S. roll out their new 3G wireless services, more people are using them to create their own mobile Web sites. A German company called Peperoni Mobile and Internet Software, which since 2001 has provided software tools that let people all over the world build their own mobile Web sites, said it has seen an increase within the last six months of people using its software to create their own mobile Web pages. Though the company has only about 500,000 users today, it says it's signing up new ones at the rate of about 20 percent to 25 percent per month, many of them in the U.S.

When people publish a mobile Web site, they don't want to think about which phones people will use to view it. That's why network operators and cell phone makers need to work together to make it easier for users to have a unified experience.

--Marcus Ladwig, chief operating officer, Peperoni

"Phone penetration in the U.S. has pretty much caught up with Europe in the last couple of years," said Marcus Ladwig, chief operating officer for Peperoni. "And now we're seeing a lot of these people wanting to use the capabilities on their phones to share images and other things, so they're using our tools to build their own mobile Web sites."

Peperoni struck a deal earlier this year with Bango to allow its users to set up shop on the mobile Internet. Bango's technology lets people who've created mobile Web sites charge for content they distribute on their site.

Fixing the bugs Experts say these are still the early days for the mobile Internet in general. And there still are significant issues that need to be worked out. For one, cell phone makers have been building products with different mobile Web requirements, which makes it difficult for software developers to adapt existing Web pages for the mobile Internet.

"When people publish a mobile Web site, they don't want to think about which phones people will use to view it," said Ladwig. "That's why network operators and cell phone makers need to work together to make it easier for users to have a unified experience."

Another problem is that the sophisticated cell phones capable of taking pictures and playing video and music are expensive, with some costing as much as $300. Additionally, people uploading or downloading information from these social networking mobile Web sites will also have to pay for the bandwidth they use while doing so over the mobile network. Prices on data packages vary between $10 and $25 per month.

And even though mobile operators want people to use their new 3G services, they've been reluctant to give up control of where customers go on the mobile Internet. Some carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, restrict users to their own menu of services.

And some experts, such as Forrester Research's Golvin, are skeptical that cell phones will ever be able to offer enough functionality to replace PCs when it comes to creating and sharing content.

"Cell phones are great enhancements and tools for existing bloggers or for people who are already sharing photos online," he said. "Cell phones might be good for updating sites on the fly, but the PC is still the best place to sit down and organize your content."

Copyright ©1995-2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

Singapore startup takes on BlackBerry market

Singapore startup takes on BlackBerry market

By Aaron Tan, ZDNet Asia 5/4/2006 URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,39348402,00.htm

SINGAPORE--A local startup has unveiled a Java-based mobile application suite that could give Blackberry a run for its money.

According to Michael Yin, CEO of Singapore-based Mozat, the company's mOrange software for cellphones combines commonly-used Internet services into a single application.

Developed by a 10-man development team, mOrange includes push e-mail, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, Webcam, remote desktop access, calendaring and contact list services, Yin said. The tools, developed at a cost of S$500,000 (US$308,900), are platform-independent and work on top of 3G (Third-Generation) and GPRS (general packet radio service) cellular networks.

"We hope to be the Google of the mobile world," Yin said, adding that the software and its accompanying services will be offered for free. mOrange will be officially launched in June this year.

Mozat is targeting young professionals and students who may not have ready access to Research In Motion's Blackberry push-email devices. Future iterations of the software would allow the company to provide paid services such as Internet telephony, Yin said.

Beta testing for mOrange started in February this year, and Mozat has since gathered more than 100 users who signed up to evaluate and provide feedback on the product, Yin said.

"We hope to attract 500 million users within the next three to five years," he said.

The push e-mail tool in mOrange can be deployed by users of Web-based e-mail services such as Gmail, as well as corporate e-mail applications based on Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes and POP (Post Office Protocol).

Yin said POP e-mail support means companies no longer need a BlackBerry server or purchase server software from the likes of Good Technology, to deliver push e-mail to employees' mobile devices. Telecommuters can also reply to and send e-mail messages on the go, together with file attachments, according to Yin.

He also assured cellphone users that the mOrange service is reliable, and that the company is mindful about ensuring data security.

"Our infrastructure is made up of both Windows and Linux servers, and can support up to 100,000 concurrent users," he explained. "User data is also encrypted with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology, and is as secure as the BlackBerry service."

Another popular feature among mOrange beta testers, Yin said, is remote desktop, where users can drag-and-drop files into a designated folder on their PCs and access it through their mobile devices. "This allows sales representatives, for example, to [browse the folder and] pull out product brochures for their customers directly via their mobile phones," he explained.

With the push RSS, he added, users will be automatically informed each time their favorite Web sites are updated, including stock alerts, entertainment news and blogs.

Mozat has also worked with local shopping malls such as Wisma Atria, to provide live camera feeds to mobile devices. These users can also watch video streams from Webcams that are attached to their PCs, on their cellphones, Yin said, noting this application can be used for surveillance purposes. He added that this service can be used to stream live traffic video, and monitor traffic conditions, of major highways and roads in Singapore.

Several local and overseas telecoms operators including StarHub in Singapore, Canada's SaskTel, South America's Tigo as well as Vodafone, are currently evaluating mOrange, Yin said. But he could not put a time frame on when the telcos would introduce the software to their subscribers.

Yin noted that as telcos face falling revenues from voice traffic, applications such as mOrange could encourage consumption of data services among cellphone users, and increase the service provider's average revenues per user.

Mozart's company profile Founded in 2002, Mozat received first-round funding worth S$600,000 (US$370,860) from Singapore's Economic Development Board and the National University of Singapore. The company is now in talks with several venture capitalists in Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, to secure another round of funds that will be pumped into product research and development.

Social Networking Goes Mobile

Social Networking Goes Mobile MySpace, Facebook Strike Deals With Cell Companies; A New Set of Safety Concerns By LI YUAN and REBECCA BUCKMAN April 4, 2006; Page D1

In a development likely to generate dismay from some parents and teachers, social networking sites MySpace and Facebook are going mobile.

Tens of millions of teenagers spend countless hours logging on to such sites, updating their profiles, posting pictures, writing blogs and exchanging messages. Until now, the services have been largely tethered to desktops or laptops. Now, Facebook Inc., a popular social-networking Web site among college students, and Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless are starting a service that will make it possible for users to post messages on Facebook's home pages or search for other users' phone numbers and email addresses from a cellphone.

MySpace, the most popular social networking Web site in terms of unique visitors, has made a deal with wireless venture Helio Inc. that later this spring will allow MySpace users to do such things as send photos and update the blogs on their MySpace online profile by cellphone. Others who access that profile would instantly be able to see and read about what's happening at, say, a local hot spot.

Wireless companies are pushing to offer more social-networking features because the young people that gravitate to these services also tend to be the heaviest users of text messaging, picture messaging and ring-tone downloads. These services are becoming increasingly important as growth in cellphone service subscription is expected to decline and rate competition intensifies.

Some parents, educators and law-enforcement officials have concerns about the potential dangers of social-networking sites. Some of the sites have been accused of exposing children to risqué content and sexual predators. The possible role of MySpace also surfaced in separate investigations into the deaths of two teens, one in New Jersey and one in California. Jo Anne Swyers, a lieutenant at a sheriff's department in Dodge County, Wis., says the new wireless social-networking features will make it harder for law enforcement to protect children.

All major cellphone carriers say they offer free parental-control services. Parents can either disable or lock data services if they want to keep their children from using social-networking services, or they can call the providers to turn off features. Chris DeWolfe, MySpace chief executive officer, says that the Web site "takes our users' safety very seriously" and reviews pictures and other materials. Helio says it will require MySpace users to affirm that they're 18 years or older when signing in. AirG Inc. has a staff of 15 that monitors traffic and filters out inappropriate words, pictures, and numbers and texts that look like phone numbers and addresses.

The cellphone services of MySpace and Facebook, so far, have been mostly limited to text messages, and some new features don't go much beyond that. John Harrobin, a Verizon Wireless vice president, says safety concerns about social-networking sites are one reason the company's deal with Facebook is limited to text messaging for now. A Facebook spokeswoman says that extending some Facebook services to cellphones "doesn't pose any additional privacy risks" since the same privacy settings and controls that people put on Facebook apply to phone services.

While scaled-down social-networking services have been available to cellphone users for a few years, the latest deals aim to make the sites' core features and functions available anywhere. Previously, such mobile features consisted of updates and alerts via text message that often required users to log back on to the Web site to respond. The new features, while not the equivalent of using the full Web site on the go, are a significant step forward for the social-networking concept, in some cases allowing users to look up names and browse message boards wirelessly.

Social-networking sites have become hugely popular on the Internet by allowing users to create personalized Web pages and share them with others. In February, Facebook sites had 10.5 million unique visitors, compared with 37.3 million visitors to rival MySpace.com, according to research firm comScore Media Metrix, which makes it the second most-visited site on the Internet, behind Yahoo.com of Yahoo Inc. Facebook has recently talked with media and Internet companies, including Viacom Inc., about possible partnerships or being acquired by them. News Corp. last year paid $580 million, plus a $69 million loan, to buy the parent company, Intermix Media Inc., of MySpace.com.

Cellphones can also take social networking beyond what is possible on computers because they make it possible to identify the approximate location of callers. Cingular subscribers, for example, have access to CoolTalk, a service from AirG, and Rabble, developed by Intercasting Corp. Users of these services can specify whether they want to search for other members within a one-mile, five-mile or 20-mile radius or search by ZIP Code, neighborhood or city. Once they get in touch, users can communicate by phone, text message or even send photographs before deciding to meet. So if the other person is nearby, such as in a coffee shop, the two people can meet immediately.

Wireless companies usually charge five to 10 cents for each text message received and sent. They also sell a bucket of text messages for $5 to $10 a month. Picture messaging costs much more. Sprint charges $5 a month plus bandwidth usage if phone users send only a few messages a month. For people who send a lot of pictures or want to browse the Web on their phones, Sprint recommends $15-to-$25-a-month data packages that allow unlimited usage.

Yesterday Facebook's new mobile services were made available to students at three colleges -- Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. They will be available to students at more than 2,000 universities by the end of this month and high-school users of Facebook by early May, company officials say.

Any phones with text-messaging capabilities can support the new Facebook services; students don't have to download special software or pay extra, though they may pay more total fees for data usage if they send more text messages.

Facebook also has moved its popular "poking" application to phones: Users "poke" others on Facebook by sending quick, blank messages -- recipients get a notification that says "you've been poked" -- that indicates someone is thinking about them. In addition, students can now use their phones to locate phone numbers or email addresses of other Facebook users; they send a text message to the address "fbook," a centralized directory that looks up the name. (Facebook users can use privacy controls to limit those who can access phone numbers and other identifying information.)

Industry analysts say that social networking on cellphone is still in its early stage, and it isn't clear if it will become popular. Cellphones that support more sophisticated services can cost as much as $300, which may be out of reach for many teenagers and college students. They also would have to pay an extra $10 to $25 a month for data packages.

--Jessica E. Vascellaro contributed to this article.

Write to Li Yuan at li.yuan@wsj.com1 and Rebecca Buckman at rebecca.buckman@wsj.com2 URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114411026875415973.html

Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:li.yuan@wsj.com (2) mailto:rebecca.buckman@wsj.com

Identity Theft - A real growth industry

While working as an R&D Manager at Visa in the mid-nineties, I had the chance to do a lot of thinking about payment systems, identity, trust, security - all the things that have to be present for value to be exchanged between parties. Visa was heavily involved with the then newly emerging field of public key cryptography as a way of enabling payments on the Internet. The problem was that the systems being proposed were hopelessly complex to use and to implement. Thinking about the societal implications of using certificates and computer stored identity, I became increasingly concerned about the potential for identity theft and false accusations. If everyone agrees that a method is secure, then there is a natural tendency to assume guilt if the method says the person is involved. As we have seen with fingerprints (not unique after all), DNA (not unique, but statistically significant), and biometrics (easily fooled by Jello), it is dangerous to rely on technology to ascertain identity to the exclusion of all other factors. My major concern about storing one's identity in a computer, or chip, or cellphone is what happens when it is stolen. Indeed, the fact that identity is available to be stolen guarantees that it will be. No amount of encryption mathematics is going to prevent misuse by the average customer who fails to safeguard what has now become the key to his entire identity and by implication, wealth. Which all leads to the recent release of a report by the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics in the US, entitled "Identity Theft, 2004". It appears that the identity theft industry has grown, and continues to grow, quite nicely. The press release headline for the report says it best -

3.6 MILLION U.S. HOUSEHOLDS LEARNED THEY WERE IDENTITY THEFT VICTIMS DURING A SIX-MONTH PERIOD IN 2004

Spy program snoops on cell phones

Spy program snoops on cell phones

By Joris Evers, CNET News.com New software that hides on cell phones and captures call logs and text messages is being sold as a way to monitor kids and spouses. But one security company calls it a Trojan horse. The FlexiSpy application captures call logs, text messages and mobile Internet activity, among other things. The software, released at the beginning of March, sells for US$49.95 and is advertised by Bangkok, Thailand-based Vervata as a tool to monitor kids and unfaithful spouses. The data captured is sent to Vervata's servers and is accessible to customers via a special Web site.

Similar surveillance software for PCs already exists and has raised the ire of groups fighting domestic violence, who fear it may be used by abusive spouses.

FlexiSpy has attracted a different kind of criticism from security company F-Secure, which has labeled the software a Trojan, or a malicious program that disguises itself as something innocuous.

"This application installs itself without any kind of indication as to what it is," Jarno Niemela wrote on the Finnish antivirus maker's corporate blog Wednesday. "And when it is installed on the phone, it completely hides itself from the user."

FlexiSpy could be used by miscreants as part of malicious software that targets phones, Niemela wrote. Alternatively, an attacker could try sending the program to phones via a Bluetooth connection and trust that there are enough curious people to install it. F-Secure has updated its security software for mobile phones to detect the program.

Vervata could not be immediately reached for comment, but in a question-and-answer section of the FlexiSpy Web site, the company insists that the program is not malicious.

"FlexiSpy requires to be consciously installed and configured by someone, unlike a Virus or Trojan which spreads automatically without any action," the section reads.

FlexiSpy is available for cell phones that run the Symbian operating system, such as Nokia Series 60 handsets. Vervata plans to release by the end of April a version for Research In Motion's BlackBerry, as well as for devices that run Microsoft's Windows Mobile Pocket PC operating system, according to the company's Web site.

Vervata is still working on "FlexiSpy Pro," which will log e-mail and multimedia messages, in addition to the other data, according to the company's Web site. That version will also include a "monitoring" feature that lets the user call the target cell phone from a preset number and listen in on what's going on in the background, in much the same way a baby monitor works.

The new MTV

March 23, 2006 The New MTV No, we're not talking about the music video channel, or referring back twenty years, a new eMarketer report examines the real and immediate opportunities presented by the newest video channel: mobile television. Full Article

Send $$$: PayPal to offer paying by text message

Send $$$: PayPal to offer paying by text message

By Reuters http://news.com.com/Send++PayPal+to+offer+paying+by+text+message/2100-1038_3-6053008.html Story last modified Wed Mar 22 23:01:21 PST 2006

Online payment company PayPal is preparing to offer a service that will let consumers make purchases or money transfers using simple text messaging via mobile phones, the company said on Wednesday.

The move by PayPal, a unit of online auctioneer eBay, marks a big step in bridging the worlds of e-commerce and the physical world of brick-and-mortar stores by giving consumers a pay-as-you-go option via phones, analysts said.

The service, known as PayPal Mobile, will be launched in the next couple of weeks in the United States, Canada and Britain. Other markets worldwide will follow for the world's biggest online payments service.

"PayPal is going to be launching a mobile-payments product," PayPal spokeswoman Sara Bettencourt told Reuters.

Word of the service had leaked out earlier on Wednesday when bloggers found links to test pages on PayPal's Web site describing it. Details can be found here.

Over time, the company may look to extend the service to the more than 55 countries and regions where PayPal is registered to transfer funds online, Bettencourt said. However, she stressed that PayPal has no specific plans to do so yet.

While designed to make online payments more convenient for the nearly 100 million existing PayPal users, the move to offer a mobile payment service holds out the prospect of reaching vast markets in the developing world where phones, rather than computers, are the main way to connect to the Internet.

PayPal Mobile will offer customers two options for transferring funds, be it for gifts or purchases, by phone to nearly anyone they choose, whether individuals or retailers.

Payments can be sent over a phone via text message or by calling an automated customer service system and using voice commands to transmit funds, according to PayPal's site.

"This is very important because it is going to create an awareness that your mobile phone is much more than just a device for talk," said Dan Schatt, an analyst with financial consulting firm Celent. "It allows you to make transactions."

In effect, the phone has become an electronic wallet.

In the United States, start-up TextPayMe now offers a PayPal-like service that allows consumers to send payments via text messages. Obopay is set to launch mobile payments with a companion debit card for purchases or cash withdrawls.

A leg up on other services Operators of mobile-phone systems in Britain, Europe, Australia, Japan and many other parts of Asia are well ahead in investing in mobile payment services. But PayPal's stringent verification system gives it a leg up on independent services as it appeals to a huge base of existing users, Schatt said.

One feature, called Text to Buy, would allow magazine readers, for example, to buy advertised items such as clothes, concert tickets or music or movie-video discs using their mobile phones, by sending product codes located in the ads.

A merchant receiving such a payment would then ship the product to the address stored in the PayPal user's account.

"It's basically just another way to access PayPal," Bettencourt said. "It's just like in the online world when you send a payment," she said. "All you are doing is sending a payment using your phone instead of your computer."

When introduced, mobile-phone users will be able to send a text message to 729725 (the spelling of PayPal on a numeric handset keypad) with the amount of money the sender wishes to transfer and the recipient's phone number. On the PayPal Web site, the company uses the example: "Send 5 to 4150001234".

A PayPal computer then calls back the text message sender on the phone and asks the user to enter a secret PIN to confirm the transaction. PayPal immediately notifies the recipient and tells how to claim the payment online.

The Web site shows a second option where the customer calls 1-800-4PAYPAL, enters a secret PIN, the amount of the transfer and the phone number where the payment is to be sent.

Story Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Bloggers on the go will soon have a new tool to help them keep their blogs up to date

Sony Ericsson teams with Google By Marguerite Reardon URL: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6044057.html

Bloggers on the go will soon have a new tool to help them keep their blogs up to date.

On Tuesday, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications announced a deal with Google to integrate the search company's Blogger and Web search features into Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

Using software preloaded on the phones, subscribers of Blogger.com will be able to update their personal blogs from their cell phones. Sony Ericsson claims it is the first company to offer an integrated blogging tool on its phones.

New products from Sony Ericsson

"We are seeing exponential growth in blogging, and consumers are turning more and more often to the Internet as a means of sharing information or images in personal blogs," Jan Wareby, corporate executive vice president for Sony Ericsson, said in a statement. "By working with Google, we're able to offer a quick and easy way for people to blog as they discover how convenient it is as a way to share words and pictures with friends, family and beyond."

The first phones to offer the new feature are the K610 UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) phone and the K800 and K790 imaging phones, which were announced Tuesday. These phones come with integrated 3.2-megapixel digital cameras with Autofocus, Xenon flash and a unique imaging technology developed by Sony Ericsson. The K800 is a dual-mode UMTS/GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) phone, and the K790 is a Tri Band EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) phone. Both will be available in the second quarter of 2006, the company said.

Sony Ericsson also announced that the Google search engine will become the standard search engine for all of its Internet phones. The search feature has been tightly integrated into the phones, so that consumers can directly activate a Google Web search option from whichever page they are viewing but without launching a new Web page to complete a search. Other phone manufacturers, such as Vodafone and Motorola, also have announced that their phones will use Google's search tool.

Sony Ericsson made several other announcements on Tuesday. It announced three new Bluetooth headsets: the HBH-IV835, HBH-GV435 and HBH-PV705 and a Bluetooth car speakerphone, the HCB-100, which offers up to 20 hours of talk time and 600 hours of standby time.

In addition to the new K800 and K790 phones, Sony Ericsson announced three new camera phones, the K510, Z530 Clamshell and the K310, as well as a new Walkman phone, the W300.

Nokia updates mobile blogging software

Nokia updates mobile blogging software Lifeblog 2.0 now lets users attach audio clips to their blogs

By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

March 08, 2006

Mobile bloggers using a new version of Nokia's Lifeblog software can automatically attach location, time, and relevant calendar information to photos, videos, and audio clips, Nokia said Wednesday. The new software, Lifeblog 2.0, will also allow users to attach audio clips to their blogs.

Lifeblog 2.0 comes in two parts: software that is loaded onto phones plus compatible software for PCs. Users can take photos and videos and make audio recordings on their Nokia Nseries phones, then upload the files wirelessly from their phones to an online blog, provided they have a blog set up through Six Apart. The PC software is designed to make it easier for users to organize and share the files, Nokia said in an announcement a day before the Bebit trade show opens in Hanover, Germany.

The Lifeblog 2.0 PC software is available for download now and the compatible phone software is expected to become available in April.

A new tagging capability can make it easier for users to find photos and other files, said Andreas Myka, research and development manager for Lifeblog at Nokia. Software on the phone detects photos as soon as they are taken and then looks for certain information to attach to the photo as a tag, Myka said in a phone interview. For example, the software finds information in the nearest cell tower that indicates which country the phone is in and attaches a tag with the country name as well as the time to the photo, he said.

The software also looks in the user's calendar and attaches any calendar entries as tags, he said. That could later help users identify the files based on the calendar entry, which could indicate that a photo was taken at a conference or during a holiday, for example.

While the tags can be automatically attached to the photos, for privacy reasons, they aren't automatically uploaded if a user then posts the photo to a blog, Myka said. The tags are primarily useful in making it easier for users to search for photos, videos or audio clips on their PCs or phones, he said.

Lifeblog 2.0 also improves the user interface of the PC software, Myka said. The software now works within Windows, making it easier for users to drag and drop files between programs, he said.

The first version of Nokia's mobile blogging software came out in 2004 but other phone makers have recently made announcements of services designed to make mobile blogging easier. Last week, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications introduced a new phone that is integrated with Google's Blogger application. Users can set up a new blog using the phone and take and upload photos from the phone to the blog.

Samsung Electronics is featuring photo blogging in a section of its Samsung Mobile stand at Cebit, but until the show floor officially opens on Thursday it's unclear exactly what type of mobile blogging capabilities Samsung will display.

Upcoming.org

Upcoming.org is a social event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Manage your events, share events with friends and family, and syndicate your calendar to your own site.

Cellular Service to Offer MySpace Phones

Cellular Service to Offer MySpace Phones

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology WriterThu Feb 16, 1:07 AM ET

The social networking site MySpace, hugely successful among teenagers and twenty-somethings, is about to become more ubiquitous with the launch of a cellular service that will let users read and post to the site for free.

The service and two accompanying phones will be launched in a few months by Helio LLC, a joint venture of Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. and South Korean carrier SK Telecom Co.

On MySpace, users keep personal pages with journals, communicate with friends and play games. It's a formula that has attracted more than 54 million users and the attention of media conglomerate News Corp., which bought the site last year for $580 million.

SK Telecom owns the Korean equivalent of MySpace. Called Cyworld, it is hugely popular among young South Koreans and can be accessed from cell phones.

"We're able to leverage a lot of that experience about how to take social networking and put it on a device," said Sky Dayton, founder of Earthlink and chief executive of Helio.

"What our target really cares about, this young consumer, is being connected to their friends and being connected to their world," Dayton said, contrasting Helio's idea to that of the major carriers, who are expanding sales of music, videos and games.

Helio's two phones, dubbed "Hero" and "Kickflip" will be based on Korean designs. Made by Pantech and VK Mobile, the phones will feature large color screens and cameras, but no QWERTY keyboards.

An exact launch date was not announced. Nor were prices for the phones and plans, but Dayton said they will not be prepaid. Apart from a monthly fee, access to MySpace will be free.

Helio will be a so-called "mobile virtual network operator," meaning it won't have its own cellular network. Instead, it will buy access to Sprint Nextel Corp.'s and Verizon Wireless' high-speed networks.

Other MVNOs include Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile.

Cingular PC Card enables worldwide mobile Net access

Yeah, sure, the pricing is sure to kick off a major mobile data revolution... =============================================

News Story by Nancy Gohring

FEBRUARY 13, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Cingular Wireless LLC said on Monday that it will soon offer customers a single PC Card that can be used to wirelessly access the Internet in the U.S. as well as around the world. Typically, operators that enable global wireless data roaming require users to have multiple PC Cards that operate in different parts of the world.

Cingular will start offering the cards and two subscription plans in March. One plan will cost $110 per month and include unlimited data use in the U.S. and 100MB of downloads in Canada and Mexico. The other plan will cost users $140 and will include unlimited use in the U.S. and 100MB of downloads in 24 countries, including Australia, China, France, Germany, the U.K., Italy and Japan. Cingular said it plans to add other locations in the future.

The card will cost $100 for customers who sign up for subscription plans.

The highest-speed network the card can connect to is High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which so far is mainly available in the U.S., but operators in Europe and elsewhere plan to introduce such networks this year. Where HSDPA networks aren't available, customers can use Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) or General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks. The card is also compatible with Wi-Fi networks.

The card has a retractable antenna, which Cingular says means users won't have to remove the card when transporting their laptops.

In September, Verizon Wireless Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC started a new service that lets customers use wireless Internet in more than 50 countries, but it requires customers to use two different PC Cards. The cards do not support Wi-Fi and cost as much as $380 and $230 each.

PVPro. It's small enough to fit into a cellphone or PDA

So you are sitting in a bar, or restaurant, or office, and you need to look at something that is way too big to see on a normal cell phone. But you have the new projector version. Pointing your phone at a nearby wall, you have a full screen view of the info (map, stocks, photos, whatever)

Kewl.

Matchbox-sized Laser Projector

[0]soupisgoodfood writes "[1]Light Blue Optics Ltd. have developed a [2]laser-based projector called the PVPro. It's small enough to fit into a cellphone or PDA. Some specs: Supports resolutions up to 2048x1280; No moving parts; Infinite focus; Green monochrome, with a colour version expected late 2006; Max consumption of 1.4W with an average of <350mW. Looks a like a good solution to the increasing problem of smaller devices trying to display more information."

Discuss this story at: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/02/15/1357258

Links: 0. http://soupisgoodfood.net/ 1. http://www.lightblueoptics.com/ 2. http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/laserprojectorscellphones.php

A Shopping Phone

A Shopping Phone

Toshiba mobile-phone software will offer online reviews of products by using bar codes.

By Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) -- Checking out the Internet buzz about a DVD, book or candy while on the go will become as easy as taking a snapshot of the bar code on the product.

Toshiba Corp., a Japanese electronics company that makes DVD players, laptops and nuclear power plants, has developed mobile-phone technology that searches for product reviews on up to 100 Web journals, or blogs, in 10 seconds.

Just use the phone's digital camera to snap a photo of the bar code of a product you're thinking about buying.

The technology can decipher if the blog chatter is positive or negative and tallies the count to show if a product is getting rave reviews or being trashed by consumers. That's useful if you're in a store about to buy an item.

Some of the more frequently visited blogs will also show up on the screen.

The bar-code information is sent wirelessly to a Toshiba server, which gathers data on blogs from the Internet and analyzes them, and then sends a reply back to the cell phone.

Toshiba expects to have information on thousands of products covering just about anything you might buy at a store -- from toys to electronic gadgets to food.

Toshiba plans to test the software at Japanese stores next month and hopes to offer it as a service on cell phones before April 2007, although details aren't decided.

Blog searches and bar codes that link to Web pages are already available on personal computers and portable devices, but Toshiba officials say their technology is convenient for shopping because it's for cell phones and carries out real-time blog searches from bar-codes.

First there was Flickr, then del.icio.us. Now there's TagWorld

http://www.tagworld.com/-/Main.aspx

First there was Flickr, then del.icio.us. Now there's TagWorld.

Flickr built an online community of photo sharers-a Web environment where not only friends, family, and colleagues, but the Web at large could see your digital images. By encouraging users to tag their photos-and even more, by turning tagging into a kind of online religion-the service created a worldwide photo database that anyone could browse and search by keyword.

Following in Flickr's footsteps, del.icio.us did much the same with bookmarks. TagWorld has gone one step further, letting you tag and share photos and bookmarks, files-even blogs. All from a single Web-based interface.

Famously, Flickr offers a Tags page where you can browse the site's most popular keywords. Click on "Japan," for example, and you can instantly jump from one photo with a tag of "Japan" to another. With TagWorld, though, when you click on a keyword, you can browse not only photos, but bookmarks, blogs, and all sorts of other uploaded content. TagWorld is an apt name.

Joining the community-which has, according to the site, 65,000 users-is wonderfully easy: Simply key in a username and password, and a wizard helps you build a public user profile and Web site, upload your first photos and bookmarks, and post your first blog entry. Once you're done, all this data is accessible from your own URL (on the TagWorld domain).

You can add photos and bookmarks at your leisure, upload files of any kind, and post videos (though, according to the company, copyrighted content will be removed). You can also link your site to those of friends, family, and colleagues.

Editing your site is as easy as dragging and dropping predefined multimedia modules from one place to another. If you'd like to add a video, for instance, you simply drag Tagworld's media player module onto your site and upload the appropriate file. You get up to 1GB of space free. (The service is supported by ads.) Soon you'll be able to purchase additional space, but prices haven't been finalized.

You can browse anyone's site, and anyone can browse yours. You can search for specific content by typing a keyword or two, or you can browse keywords at random via the Tags page. In its continuing effort to build a community, the service keeps a running tab of who visits your site (prominently displaying their photos), and other users are told when you visit their sites.

The site's search capabilities are particularly powerful. After entering a keyword query, you can sort your results in real time using slider controls. If you're looking for other users, for instance, you can limit your search to those of particular ages simply by moving an age slider back and forth.

You do have the option of browsing anonymously so others can't see that you've visited their sites, and you can control who has access to each piece of content you post to your own site. But at the moment, there's no way of controlling access to your entire site. The company says this sort of privacy control is on the way.

If you like, you can subscribe to particular user sites-each time someone posts a new picture, bookmark, file, or blog entry, you'll receive a note. You can't subscribe to individual tags, though-something we'd like to see.

Whether you're fascinated or confused by the new world of Web tagging, it's one you ignore at your own peril. Experts believe it's the future of the Web, and sites like Flickr, Del.icio.us, and now TagWorld are leading the charge. We recommend you check them out.

Sharpcast

Sharpcast (http://www.sharpcast.com/): Think Flickr meets moblogs meets cellphones meets the desktop meets Web sharing meets Picasa. Really cool photo library and sharing system. Supports editing, tagging, captioning, slide shows.

With Sharpcast Photos, it's never been easier to:

* Access your photos on your phone and the web * Back up your precious memories * Get your pictures from your phone to your computer * See your whole photo collection right on your phone * Recover lost photo albums

Learn More About Sharpcast PhotosFast. Simple. Intuitive. Sharpcast Photos brings your computer, your mobile phone and the web into perfect harmony so you can see and manage your entire photo collection from anywhere, at any time with the rich, intuitive view you're used to on the desktop. Full of one-of-a-kind features like instantaneous backup of mobile phone pictures, speedy catalog recovery and other completely worry-free photo features that only Sharpcast delivers, Sharpcast Photos equals simplicity.

Mobile operators target global IM service

Mobile operators target global IM service Rollouts to start over the next several months News Story by John Blau

FEBRUARY 13, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - BARCELONA -- Several of the world's largest mobile phone operators have agreed to offer instant messaging across their networks as part of an initiative to make IM service globally available and interoperable.

Fifteen operators, including China Mobile Communications Corp., Vodafone Group PLC, Orange SA, Telefónica Móviles SA and T-Mobile International AG, have joined forces to help kickstart the mobile phone IM initiative, which is being spearheaded by the GSM Association, the group said Monday at a press conference during the 3GSM World Congress.

The group also hopes to cooperate with Internet-based IM service providers, such as Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc., according to Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin. "We want to extend this service and make it a bigger experience for users," he said.

Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL already provide wireless access to their IM services, but this initiative's goal is to extend the availability and interoperability of wireless IM globally. MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger don't interoperate, although Yahoo and Microsoft are working to build links between their services.

In the first phase, the mobile operators intend to extend IM -- a widely popular service among PC users in the fixed-line telecommunications market -- to their combined customer base of 700 million users. Over the coming months, they expect other GSM operators to join the initiative, representing a potential global market of more than 2.2 billion people.

On the Internet, more than 300 million people around the world use IM, and about 12 billion messages are sent every day, according to the GSMA.

Unlike the free IM service available on fixed-line networks, however, the IM service planned by the GSM community will cost money, with the calling party picking up the tab.

Vodafone views IM as an opportunity to "add value" and create a new revenue stream, Sarin said.

The CEOs of six network operators attending the press conference declined to discuss pricing details.

A key requirement for providing an IM service to mobile phone users is interoperability to ensure that messages can be sent across networks around the world, said Sanjiv Ahuja, CEO of Orange. Operators within the GSM community have agreed to IM interoperability standards, he said.

Most high-end smart phones and many low-end phones are already IM-enabled, according to Ahuja. He expects IM to become a standard feature of GSM phones moving ahead.

The operators expect to begin rolling out IM services over the next several months.

Reprinted with permission from

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

Starhome claims key to mobile data conundrum

Starhome claims key to mobile data conundrum

Roaming specialist outlines flexible approach

By Tony Dennis: Tuesday 24 January 2006, 21:50 EXTORTIONATELY HIGH data roaming charges have effectively killed many new mobile market segments before they've even been introduced.

However, roaming services specialist, Starhome, believes it has the solutions in its portfolio which could help operators escape the current 'tariff trap'.

One of its products is differentiated billing. This ides enables operators to set different price levels depending on the type of traffic.

Currently consumers are charged on a 'per megabyte' basis for all data services. With differentiated billing they can set different charges for ringtones, pop videos and email messages.

This would overcome the ludicrous situation where it would cost around £100 to download a single iTunes track while roaming in the USA as opposed to 99 pence at home on the Internet.

The other weapon in Starhome's arsenal is its Data Charge Advisor. This would inform a roaming subscriber exactly how much it has just cost to send a picture (MMS) message back home, for example.

At present consumers are supplied with meaningless information such as how many megabytes they've consumed out of a monthly total.

Starhome's Alon Barnea, veep for business development, claims that the roaming market is huge. Only 50 per cent of travellers ever actually bother to 'roam' with their mobile phones [ie, use their mobile phones outside their home country].

He also reckons there are massive disconnects between the different departments within the typical GSM operator. The person in charge of roaming, he says, thinks purely in terms of voice services rather than data, while the person in charge of promoting content - such as music videos - doesn't consider roaming at all.

"The industry hasn't learnt at all," Barnea suggested. "The same mistakes that were made with WAP have been repeated with GPRS and are now being repeated with 3G."

In other words, mobile operators still haven't cracked how to sell data services properly

Opera to launch Mini worldwide

Opera to launch Mini worldwide

News Story by Nancy Gohring

JANUARY 24, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Opera Software ASA plans to officially launch Opera Mini on Tuesday, although this hosted mobile phone browsing service and application has already racked up about 1 million users.

As users browse, the Opera Mini application, which is designed for Java-enabled cell phones, communicates with Opera's servers that strip down the size of Web sites, allowing them to load faster and fit the small screen of the phone.

The Opera application and service are free, but mobile operators may charge users for connecting to the Internet.

In late December, Opera quietly extended Opera Mini from being available only to residents in select European countries to being available to anyone. But at the time, Opera said the service wasn't officially available yet and could be taken down at any time. So far, about 1 million customers have begun using the service, said Tor Odland, a spokesman for Opera.

Interested users can download the Opera Mini application three ways, including directly from Opera's Web site, http://mini.opera.com/ to their phones. In 30 countries, mobile users can instead send a short message to a specified number and have the application sent to them via text message. Finally, users can download the application to their computers and then transfer it to their phones.

To support the service, Opera has implemented more than 100 new servers, said Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera. He was reluctant to be more specific but said they run Linux and are massively parallel and massively redundant.

Opera is able to efficiently support the worldwide Opera Mini service by applying some of the same technologies it has developed for its browsers that are designed for small devices, Krogh said. In creating browsers for mobile phones and small devices, Opera has had to be mindful of small memory capacity and processing power. "That's something we can harvest now on the server side to prepare for the content transfer to the Opera Mini client," he said. "Since we spent so much time optimizing the Opera browser, we can now serve a lot of customers without too much computing power on the server side."

Opera also sells Opera Mobile, a browser designed for smart phones that has more features than Opera Mini and operates independently of Opera's back-end servers. By contrast, Opera Mini is a smaller application and is meant to bring browsing to low-end phones.

Reprinted with permission from

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

New Internet Firm Lets Users Locate Telephone Contacts

New Internet Firm Lets Users Locate Telephone Contacts By JESSE DRUCKER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL January 23, 2006; Page B4

A group of telecommunications-industry veterans has formed a company to offer businesses an Internet-calling service that lets users keep tabs on the whereabouts and communications activities of each other.

The founders of the company, called Tello Corp., include Jeff Pulver, a longtime Internet-calling pioneer; Craig McCaw, credited with building the first national U.S. cellular network; Michael Price, a long-time telecom investment banker now at Evercore Partners; and John Sculley, former chief executive of Apple Computer Inc. and PepsiCo Inc.'s Pepsi-Cola unit.

Beginning today, closely held Tello will offer a service that will let workers see on their computers or mobile devices whether the person they are trying to reach is on an office phone or cellphone or is logged on to instant messaging. If the person is off the office phone, Tello can let others know how long ago he or she last made a call.

Mr. Pulver says Tello aims to extend the "presence" feature that users of instant messaging have come to rely on, letting them know when other users are logged on and available. "For the last three years, I've been telling people that presence is a $25 billion industry that we don't know how to describe," said Mr. Pulver, a co-founder of Vonage Holdings Corp.

Mr. Pulver has long complained that Internet calling, while increasingly popular, is mostly used as a way to make cheap calls. The technology, known as voice over Internet protocol or VOIP, also could be used to develop a wide array of features that combine the Internet and phone service, he says. "I believe when [Tello] starts to take off, it will show that voice over IP is not just about cheap calling," he says.

Tello's chief executive, Doug Renert, a former executive at Oracle Corp., said the company will join forces with Cisco Systems Inc. and Avaya Inc., which make Internet phone systems for business customers.

The service is likely to raise privacy questions, as it will provide companies with another way to easily monitor the communication activities of their workers. Employees of different companies also will be able to keep track of each other if the businesses decide to link their Tello services together.

Mr. Renert said Tello can be configured by individual users to turn off the services. "It's not a Big Brother application," he said.

Mr. Renert said the service also will let multiple users work on tasks such as spreadsheets or Power Point presentations simultaneously.

A limited version of the service for individuals will be available free of charge. Users who download it will be able to track each other's cellphone and instant-messaging activities but not their home or office phones. The enterprise version of the service will cost $30 a user per year. Initially, BlackBerrys will be the only mobile devices it will work with, but others will be added.

social networking plus reviews/reputation

Two Wrongs Make a Right ARTICLE DATE: 12.26.05 By John C. Dvorak

There are two popular online concepts-ones I never thought much of-that, when combined, may add up to one of the most powerful mechanisms on the Internet, well worth following. I'm actually amazed at how two dogs can produce a winner.

The first concept is the social network. I've written about these before and have joined a number of them, including LinkedIn, Orkut, and others. Many are set up for socializing, such as Friendster. Others, such as LinkedIn, are for making business contacts, although my experience is that these ideas sound better on paper than they do in the real world.

The second online concept I'm referring to is collected public reviews. Epinions may be the leader in grass-roots reviews, but you tend to find things like reviews of your local restaurants, where people who run the restaurants post endless commentary. Amazon probably popularized the idea of shared reviews with its public book reviews. The problem with all these reviews-including Amazon's-is that they are often written by either shills or people holding a grudge, each providing the public with BS ideas from every angle. This makes the entire process completely useless.

Enter Yelp!. Here is one of the most distinctive ideas I've seen in a while, although it is nothing more than public reviews combined with a social network. But when you combine these two concepts, you actually end up getting useful information, because the people participating are more than just anonymous reviewers from who knows where. They are real people expressing their tastes and philosophies, and their collective wisdom becomes unlike anything I've ever seen on the Internet-at least anything in the territory I'm desscribing.

Here is what happens at Yelp: Say you are looking for a restaurant nearby. You can ask for a vicinity search based on a ZIP code. All the reviews for local restaurants appear and you select a few that sound interesting. Youcan then click on any given person's network of friends and get his or her reviews. It's easy to get a clue about where any particular person is coming from based on the reviews. What you get is the gestalt, if you will. If it turns out that a person likes Denny's and hates Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia, then that person is probably not someone who would be great at suggesting fabulous French restaurants, but he might be good at finding a coffee shop.

The way Yelp works is very much like the various computer-generated suggestion systems designed to determine that if you like A, B, and C then you'll probably like D, E, and F, since everyone else who liked A, B, and C liked D, E, and F. The information on Yelp could easily be used for this sort of automated, computer-aided analysis, but it's actually more fun just to do your own searches manually. By doing them manually, you kind of get to know people and gain some feeling for their tastes. The combination of computerized social networking and online opinions is powerful and useful. The combination also must be promising for people in the dating scene. When stepping back to consider the Yelp system as it now exists, there are a few points to note. First, the entire network seems to be populated by mostly Gen-Y yuppies, along with a lot of weird slackers, metalheads, and a few odd politicos. There are also quite a few tattoo mavens in the mix. It's actually fascinating for anyone over 35 to roam around the database. Marketing folks would have a field day!

Given the age of most people on Yelp, I'm surprised by how many of them call themselves "foodies." Although the site seems to lean towards restaurant reviews, many of the women, in particular, seem to be reviewing everything from the service at the local post offices to every imaginable spa and manicurist in the area. I ran into one poster who must have reviewed 20 high-end restaurants and 50 spas. It was as if she'd get taken out to dinner and then need two or three treatments in between. The other thing that kind of amazed me was the overall verbosity of this crowd. They write lengthy essays about just about anything from the neighborhood grocery store to the sausage selections at a ballpark. It's quite stunning.

One interesting use of sites like this is for avoidance behavior. This is a variation on an old trick you pull with wine waiters in restaurants. Ask them casually about wines you have already tasted and know well to see if they know what they're talking about. If not, send them away. This concept also works with Yelp. For example, on Yelp there is a review of Restaurant Gary Danko-probably the highest-rated restaurant in San Francisco at the moment, with universal 5-star reviews. Some punker vegan chick (for want of a better description) gave Gary Danko's one star, and her review was a 1970s-style rant against foie gras and veal. She went on and on about cruelty to animals, and I was wondering exactly why she went to an expensive French restaurant like this in the first place. Just to complain? Seemed odd.

Considering her idealism and attitude, I could look at all her other selections and discover all the places I want to avoid. People of this ilk tend to be boorish and offensive in more ways than one. When you live in Northern California you run into too many of them, and it's unpleasant. Now, accidental encounters can be minimized, thanks to Yelp. I'm not sure whether Yelp will ever scale enough to handle thousands of reviews of any single restaurant, or whether the mechanism can ever work forever, but right now it does.

All this said, I did join the Yelp group, posted a funny picture of myself, and within 24 hours I got my first message. You'll love what it was. In my Yelp e-mail box was a Nigerian Scam letter! I guess there are still a few bugs in the system.

Craigslist: 'Seeking human connection'

Craigslist: 'Seeking human connection'

By Matt Wells In New York

For a man with no plan, who describes himself as just another "line worker", Craig Newmark is doing alright.

Meeting the international media in Manhattan this week, the 53-year-old stood in his uniform of black jeans and grey shirt, trying to convince sceptical reporters that his eponymous Craigslist is not out to destroy the newspaper business.

Craig Newmark refuses to be pigeon-holed

The geeky former systems engineer for IBM has come a long way in the last 11 years.

The listserv, or electronic mailing list, he began for like-minded friends in the San Francisco Bay area now has "well over three billion page views" per month he says, which makes it the seventh biggest presence on the internet.

He may be breathing down the necks of Google and eBay, and he believes they share the same "moral compass", but like something from the plot of Revenge of the Nerds, his almost anti-profit business employs just 19 people, and is still based in a San Francisco living room.

Everything about Craig and the company he incorporated, almost reluctantly in 1999, makes no sense in business terms. But that is its genius, and the reason why its users love it, and swear by it.

His mantras, which he articulated again from the podium of the New York Foreign Press Center, are that it is a real and reciprocal online community that is "just trying to give people a break" across the 190 cities it serves.

He admits that they are going to have to hire some more people if they are going to expand on the current simple formula of exclusively English language-based zero-graphics design.

'No plan'

The site's only income derives from job listings in three US cities, though discussion is under way for charging a fee for accommodation postings - mainly thanks to huge traffic on the New York property pages.

It may occur to you that we don't have much of a business-plan, and you'd be right Craig Newmark

Everywhere else in the world it is free to every user, and although Craigslist still nets around $20m a year, it could be generating much more profit.

Ever since the first offer came along from Microsoft in 1997, Craig has been saying no to advertisers and buyout deals, and now "they've stopped bothering us" he said.

However, eBay did manage to buy 25% of the company in 2004, when a former employee unilaterally decided to sell his shares. Craig says the unexpected relationship has been beneficial so far.

"It may occur to you that we don't have much of a business plan, and you'd be right," he said. Few company founders could get away with that kind of pronouncement, but Craig Newmark is arguably unique.

"One of the reasons I'm not in management is because I am really really bad at hiring," he said. He introduced himself to the assembled reporters - from countries as diverse as Estonia, China, Mexico and Canada - as simply part of the five-person customer service team.

TV hero

There is one clear advantage to the self-deprecation however. When it comes to questions of his own pay and hard company figures, he can be convincingly vague: "We know we're doing okay. That we continue to do okay, that works for me."

Craigslist nets around $20m a year

If he looks and sounds like the antithesis of every business school model, it is clear that Craig's honesty and acumen when it comes to giving people what they want is highly effective.

Many in the media are beginning to dub him the assassin of classified advertising - the life-blood of the newspaper business. He rejects that charge, arguing that the internet itself is the real culprit. Newsprint is simply passe.

When he reached the podium, he gleefully compared his position to that of the fictitious president's press secretary in the US political drama, The West Wing.

As his current hero seems to be the cable TV satirist Jon Stewart, it is tempting to portray Craig Newmark as a liberal subversive - or an idealistic, digital age social worker - who is using his business to undermine conventional politics and morality.

But he refuses to be pigeon-holed: "We try to be driven by the values of the people who use us," he said.

"People have made assumptions about... my politics personally, and actually no-one knows what my politics happen to be... I haven't even articulated my politics to myself."

Human connection

One label that does stick, is that Craig is an indefatigable optimist. He is convinced that however large the list of cities gets, it will always be fed by a common desire for urban dwellers to help each other.

He spends much of his time these days weeding out the minority of "bad guys" who lie and scam their way through Craigslist, but the whole ethos is about self-policing and communal values.

With a portion of each site given over to dating, "erotic services" and "casual encounters", it is not hard to see for example, why only Istanbul has joined the Craigslist ranks from the Islamic world.

"The theoretical part of me thinks that the bigger we get, the less human connection people have," said Craig. "It doesn't work that way."

"People are still getting that sense of personal connection. Somehow we're maintaining that, by just trying really hard every day to do the right thing. It's a mystery."

Email Plugs Into Social Networking

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Email Plugs Into Social Networking | | from the faster-inbox-happier-rob dept. | | posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 03, @10:51 (Communications)| | http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/1451245 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Research recently released [0]SNARF, the Social Network and Relationship Finder. It works in the Outlook email client to prioritize and sort emails based on the relationship to the sender and other characteristics of incoming email messages. [1]Trusted Reviews wonders if 2006 is the year of ordering information and reports on [2]ClearContext, which does similar prioritization of emails as well as some email driven task management."

Discuss this story at: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/01/03/1451245

Links: 0. http://research.microsoft.com/community/snarf/ 1. http://trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=2307 2. http://www.clearcontext.com/