Cell phone software start-up set up by ex-NUS students making waves

SINGAPORE: A local start-up by two former National University of Singapore (NUS) students has scored a major coup.

The software invented by the company is now the main component of a 3G trial service by StarHub.

The mobile phone software company, called Mozat, has remained low-key despite making waves in the industry.

One of the two men behind the start-up is 32-year-old Michael Yin.

Born in China, the former NUS student has a simple mantra - mobile phones are the future.

In 2003, he and another student, Jet Tan, got $100,000 each from the NUS and the Economic Development Board to fund Mozat.

And it only took two years for the start-up to break even.

"I was always dreaming of starting a business, even back in Shanghai. But the problem with Shanghai is that we can't find good enough people. Singapore is ideal for start-up location because it's a hub of all the talents in the region. I cannot meet my partner, Jet, in China because it's too big. But it (the meeting) happened a few days after I arrived in Singapore," said Michael, who is now the CEO of Mozat.

Mozat's Morange software is a major part of Singapore telco StarHub's recently announced 'PhingoActive' service.

The software brings together various applications, like E-mail, blogging and chatting, under one platform.

More interestingly, it allows mobile phone users to link up to their PC's hard-drive or even get access to external shared folders.

So, users do not have to carry all their MP3s in their mobile phone.

The company may be a modest one, with only 35 staff members.

But it already has two offices in Guangzhou and Shanghai.

William Klippgen, Director of Mozat, said: "Mobile phones are extremely powerful these days and network connections are very fast. So you have a very powerful tool in your hand but it's not being utilised. There's a huge gap in terms of making use of that power."

And to fill those gaps, plans are already underway for the company to go big in China, India and Europe.

Eighty percent of Mozat's staff in Singapore are former NUS students, more than half of them from overseas.

For Michael, he has just applied for his Singapore Permanent Residency.

He is fully aware of the recent heated debate on foreign talent in Singapore but remains unfazed.

"No matter I'm in a taxi or anywhere......my pronunciation, can tell (I'm) from China. They (taxi drivers) always give me a big smile, never get any bad experience," he said. - CNA/ir

Final hammer drops on M1's mobile auctions

By WINSTON CHAI

DESPITE receiving an overwhelming response from consumers, the final hammer has quietly dropped on M1's popular mobile auction service.

Introduced in June last year, the offering allowed customers to bid a range of snazzy handsets like the Nokia N80 and the O2 XDA Atom at the operator's mobile portal - MiWorld Mobile - for as low as $1. Customers will have to incur data charges when they log on using their phones to place incremental bids ranging from one cent to a dollar.

Industry sources told BizIT the company had pulled the plug on the offering and an M1 spokesman confirmed the move.

'We offered m-Auction for six months, and it ended in November last year,' he said.

This curtain call came despite the immense popularity of the service. According to M1, five to eight handsets were put up for auction every week and during the six-month period, it received more than 150,000 bids from customers. The results are hardly surprising given the auction platform is a sure hit with bargain-hungry Singaporeans as evidenced by the growing popularity of sites like eBay and Yahoo.

Moreover, each placed bid also served to boost the M1's mobile data revenue, a feat which all three local telcos are trying to achieve with the availability of higher speed networks and the proliferation of third-generation (3G) multimedia handsets.

As sales of 3G phones in Singapore continue to soar, operators have been pulling out all the stops to get consumers to do more with their new-fangled handsets. These include promises of video calling, faster Web surfing, and even the ability to watch TV on-the-go.

According to statistics from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the number of 3G subscriptions stood at 953,400 in January this year, representing nearly one-fifth of Singapore's total mobile subscriber base.

When queried, M1 said it took down m-Auction as it is 'evaluating the service' and 'exploring' enhancements. However, the company did not confirm plans to re-introduce the offering.

S'pore firm develops social networking tool

S'pore firm develops social networking tool

It connects mobile phone and desktops to same service, writes AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY

A SINGAPOREAN IT company, Velvet Puffin, will today release a unique new social networking service here and in the United States that allows users to instantly communicate, create and share various multimedia content with others, either through a mobile phone or desktop computer.

Speaking to BizIT, R Chandrasekar, president and CEO of Radixs Pte Ltd, the parent company of Velvet Puffin, said the service, also called Velvet Puffin, is the first of its kind in the world.

It provides connectivity and cross communication between existing instant messaging solutions like MSN and Yahoo! and repositories of content like YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe.

Mr Chandrasekar said the service also allows the sharing of user-generated content. He noted that till now, other sites have attempted to capture individual features of desktop-based social networking sites on the mobile phone, 'but this effort has been fractured'.

'By aggregating all features associated with social networking, Velvet Puffin creates a holistic mobile social networking experience . . . Whether users are at their desktop computer or on the go with their mobile phone, no functionality is lost.'

Velvet Puffin's operating system - MXI - allows all user-generated content, including videos, photos, blogs and more to be delivered on mobile phones or computers in real time. The Velvet Puffin official added that the service is completely carrier independent and software is offered at no cost to the consumer as a free download.

On the PC, Velvet Puffin provides a 'socially active desktop' environment allowing users to be always connected to friends. Users can also access shared content without the need for a Web browser, Mr Chandrasekar said.

'Instantaneous alerts are generated to notify 'buddies' on both the desktop and the mobile device whenever new content is posted,' he added.

Radixs was founded in 2002 by Mr Chandrasekar and his childhood friend Sam Hon. Radixs owns and licenses the flagship Motion eXperience Interface (MXI), a mobile data operating system built on open standards, which serves as the backbone of Velvet Puffin.

Explaining the inspiration behind the idea, Mr Chandrasekar observed: 'As users, we had poor mobile experience in relation to services and functionalities when compared with the desktop . . . We could not understand why we should put up with a stripped down experience on mobiles.'

This drove the two to find a solution, he said. 'We believe that the user experience through any access devices should be consistent and rich and that is reflected with Velvet Puffin. Communication and the need to network is an inherent human trait and we have merged both of that with our approach in Velvet Puffin.'

Explaining the business model of Velvet Puffin, Mr Chandrasekar said users will enjoy the service for free and the company's revenue streams will be generated through contextual advertisements (much like ads on Google), licensing of service to mobile operators and royalties.

'Contextual Ads will be served on both the desktop and mobile phones. Ads delivered to users are specific and relevant to their usage patterns. For example, a user who searches for Liverpool videos will be served relevant ads such as Liverpool merchandise. This ensures that users will find ads that are being delivered useful,' he added.

Through contextual ads, advertisers will get a greater return on investment as they are targeting their ads to relevant target groups, he added.

'Google serves contextual ads to desktop users. Our model is similar in that regard. However, we have the benefit of an integrated desktop and mobile service.'

The second revenue stream will come from licensing of the service to mobile operators as they represent another distribution channel, Mr Chandrasekar said.

'Operator licensees of the service will co-brand Velvet Puffin and distribute it to their captive user base. Velvet Puffin will generate additional data revenue for operators and we plan to do a revenue split with the operators on incremental data revenue generated through Velvet Puffin,' Mr Chandrasekar said, adding that the company is in talks with a major regional telco in this regard.

The company's third revenue model involves generation of royalties from device manufacturers who pre-load Velvet Puffin client in their mobile phones.

Mr Chandrasekar and Mr Hon, both 26 years old, were classmates and, before setting up Radixs, took up several freelancing projects since they were 17 years old. They are born and raised in Singapore.

Both hold an advanced diploma in computer science. They deferred their degree programmes in computer science from Monash (for Mr Chandrasekar) and Portsmouth University (for Mr Hon) to focus on Radixs full time.

Velvet Puffin has received US$10 million in funding from both institutional and private investors in Asia.

'We are in our second round of funding and major investors include Purple Ray and Artisan Encipta while the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) was a Seeds investor,' Mr Chandrasekar said.

Headquartered in Singapore, there are currently 60 Radixs employees worldwide.

'We have a diverse team comprising Singaporeans, Indians, Chinese, Britishers, Australians and even a French Canadian . . . (software) developers make up 80 per cent of Radixs workforce,' Mr Chandrasekar said.

SMS will remain the dominant force in the region

SMS still No.1 in Asia, study finds By Farihan Bahrin, ZDNet Asia 26/2/2007 URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,61992389,00.htm The outlook for text messaging in the Asia-Pacific region remains bright, according to a new study from Portio Research released Tuesday. Despite strong challenges from other mobile messaging services--such as mobile e-mail and mobile instant messaging (mobile IM)--short messaging service (SMS) will remain the dominant force in the region, the study outlined. Portio analyst John White told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail that there will be estimated 1.4 billion additional mobile phone users in Asia by 2012, and SMS revenue in the region will mushroom from US$16 billion in 2006, up to US$22.7 billion in 2012. White added that regional SMS traffic within the same period will explode, fuelled by a flood of new subscribers and handset purchases in the Asia-Pacific. The number of SMS messages will spike sharply from 967.7 billion in 2006 to a staggering 2071 billion messages by 2012, he predicted. In contrast, Portio's outlook is different for the North American market. Mobile instant messaging (MIM) is forecast to supplant SMS as the mainstream messaging service within the next four years due to the proliferation of smartphones and wireless Internet, its study showed. White said that although there will still be more SMS users than mobile IM users, "our study forecasts the number of IM messages to grow more than SMS messages in the United States sometime after 2011". In Asia, doubt remains over IM's ability to ever topple SMS as the mainstream messaging service. "SMS will remain the dominant peer-to-peer messaging service in Asia-Pacific, as IM will require the user to have 'always-on' services like GPRS or 3G," said Alex Chau, senior research manager at analyst house IDC, in an e-mail. Chau noted that in developing countries like India, China and Thailand, users are still using just the basic services, such as voice and SMS. Portio's White agreed with this assessment. "We do not see this trend in Asia…mobile IM will be popular in Asia, but not as popular across the whole region as SMS," he said. The Portio analyst added that, while mobile e-mail--another messaging competitor--will become popular, it is unlikely to pose a major threat to SMS revenues within the next few years. "Mobile e-mail will continue to grow very healthily in the enterprise sector," White observed. "But outside Japan, mobile e-mail will have little impact on mass consumer markets, only with the elite, high-end smartphone users."

Singapore - Wi-Fi Prosecutions Misguided

I have been watching with growing concern the prosecution of individuals in Singapore for Wi-Fi theft. The whole premise for such a prosecution is misguided, and shows a lack of understanding of the underlying technology and the regulatory framework under which it was launched. Wi-Fi is a standard for data transmission over unlicensed radio spectrum. The rules governing this usage were set in the U.S. by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As the protocol and equipment gained popularity, demand forced other governments to allow the same usage. The key here is that the radio spectrum being used is unlicensed. Like CB radios in the 70' and 80's, anyone is allowed to transmit and receive on this spectrum. There are no offers of privacy or private property, this is public spectrum. Once Wi-Fi became widely available, people quickly realised that their data was at risk if they transmitted without some sort of encryption. Equipment manufacturers, not governments, responded by offering first WEP (Wireless Equivalency Privacy), then stronger forms of encryption when WEP was shown to be hackable. Wi-Fi transmitters are designed to broadcast their availability, and for Wi-Fi receivers to search for all available networks. Any modern laptop will automatically list all available networks that can be "seen". In my own flat, I can see at least 12 networks, at least half of which are not encrypted. There has been an analogy proposed that tries to equate Wi-Fi mooching with physical entry to someone's house. "Just because I leave my door unlocked, does not mean you are free to enter". This analogy is completely wrong. Wi-Fi is designed to send a welcome message to anyone operating with Wi-Fi compliant hardware. The proper analogy is "You are welcome to come into my house unless the door is locked" In this case, silence, or inaction, on the part of the network owner is consent. The real culprit in this sad state of affairs is the person who attaches a Wi-Fi transmitter to his home wired network, and knowingly fails to turn on basic encryption. Such individuals are breaking the terms of their ISP agreements which prevent further distribution or access by individuals other than the subscriber. Stop ruining the lives of children by giving them inappropriate criminal records, and start going after the real problem, those who are too lazy to use equipment properly.

Social Networking by Cellphone

More Companies Roll Out GPS Services That Locate Your Friends -- Or Your Kids By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO January 16, 2007; Page B1

John Peattie was worried that some of his friends would be late for a 7:30 p.m. movie so he turned to his cellphone to track their whereabouts.

With one click, the 22-year-old chemical engineer pulled up an electronic map of the San Francisco area with his friends' locations pinpointed. From the map, he could tell that some were as much as 45 minutes away. "We basically knew they weren't going to make it," he said.

The new buddy-tracking tool is from Loopt Inc. and is available from wireless operator Boost Mobile, owned by Sprint Nextel Corp., Reston, Va. Loopt is one of a host of companies putting a fresh spin on social-networking services by adding in a new element: phones equipped with Global Positioning System receivers. GPS is used to determine an object's location based on how long it takes for a signal to reach the object from satellites. Loopt alone has roughly 100,000 users since it kicked off last fall. [Cellphone]

Many young people are obsessed with two things: social networking and their mobile phones. Companies have been trying to cash in on combining them, but up until now, nobody has found an approach that has really caught on. News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook Inc. recently launched offerings that help people connect to their Web sites from their phones but the services don't allow users to do much more than they could do online.

Now, GPS technology is adding a new dimension to wireless social-networking services, letting cellphone users find each others' locations -- just as GPS-equipped phones are becoming more prevalent, partly in response to federal rules that require carriers to make it easier for emergency officials to locate cellphone users. An estimated 63% of mobile phones sold in North America in 2007 will have GPS or assisted GPS functions, up from 55% of phones sold in 2006, according to market researcher Gartner Research.

"The race is just beginning in this area," says Clint Wheelock, vice president of research for ABI Research.

Indeed, Sprint Nextel has launched "Family Locator," a $9.99-a-month service that lets users track the locations of family members -- or at least their cellphones. (The company is marketing the service as a way to provide "peace of mind" for parents.) And a host of start-up businesses and wireless companies, including Helio, jointly owned by South Korea's SK Telecom Co. and EarthLink Inc., of Atlanta, are turning to the technology to tap the social-networking trend, helping users find their friends on the screen using a combination of GPS technology and cell-tower triangulation.

GPS-equipped services like Loopt that help users find their friends' mobile phones generally work anywhere in the U.S. and can zoom in to show a city or zoom out to show the country. For now, the appeal of the services seems largely limited to urban areas or college campuses -- places where users are more likely to meet up with friends on the fly.

Services that broadcast a user's location to other people do raise some serious privacy and security questions. A number of parents and privacy advocates worry that some people could sign up for, or hack into, the new services and employ them to stalk users. FRIEND SPOTTING • The News: Wireless providers launch services that help customers find friends' locations in near-real time. • The Background: It is happening due to the spread of GPS-equipped phones. • What's Next: To succeed, services must ward off privacy concerns and strike deals with more carriers.

Some privacy advocates also are worried that the government could use location information to spy on people. "Accurate location information can reveal many things about people's lifestyle they may wish to keep quiet," says Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights group based in San Francisco. "And young people may be likely to freely advertise their location without considering the implications."

"Location services do raise some special privacy concerns," says Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, which is jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of the U.K. In response, Verizon Wireless has implemented a host of privacy measures. For instance, to sign up for a location-based service like "VZ Navigator," an application that uses GPS to tell users where they are, what is around them and give them driving directions, a user must accept the service's terms and conditions, which includes allowing Verizon Wireless to gather information about the location of their device. The company says it doesn't store any GPS information after users close out the session.

The GPS feature, which is built into the phone, isn't always active. It generally starts tracking when the user launches location-based service. Even when applications like Loopt are running, users can elect not to have their information shared with other users by pressing a button.

Sam Altman, 21, hatched the idea for Loopt two years ago while a sophomore at Stanford University, where he is currently taking a leave of absence. He was looking for two friends he wanted to have lunch with and wondered: wouldn't it be cool if I could look at my cellphone and see whether they were already nearby?

At the time, he turned to his classmate Nick Sivo, now Loopt's chief technology officer, who told him the system he envisioned was impossible because GPS phones weren't widely available. That has changed.

Once users download the Loopt application to their cellphones, and invite and verify their friends, they can click on the application icon to view a map that will display their friends' locations as green dots. (Their friends also must have Boost and be members of Loopt.) They also can go to another screen to look at messages, or photos, the user's friends have tagged to their locations.

There are other players in the field. Rave Wireless Inc., a New York mobile services and applications provider, is using GPS technology to power a new service called "Entourage" that allows users to make their location available to friends in their Rave address book. Kamida Inc.'s Socialight service requires you to tell it where you are by sending it a text-message with your location. Once you "check-in" by doing so, it allows users to leave text-messages for other people who have checked into the vicinity.

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

location-based service via the Asia Maps

Nokia unveils new mobile services Nokia has introduced two new services that aim to let mobile users blog hassle-free, as well as explore and navigate routes whilst they travel.

The Finnish phone maker on Monday announced it has partnered blog company Six Apart to integrate Vox--a free personal blogging service--in Nokia's N-series multimedia phones, as well as Singapore-based GIS maker (geographic information system) Agis to introduce a location-based service via the Asia Maps application.

Users of compatible N-series handsets such as the Nokia N93i, which was also launched on Monday, can upload videos and photos, as well as update their blogs directly from their devices to the Vox blogging service, according to Nokia.

Video and photo files will be hosted on Vox's site, but users can also post the content on popular blog and Web 2.0 sites, such as Google's blogger service and MySpace, by copying the URL of the media content and inserting it into the blog entry, said Jawahar Kanjilal, director of rich media, music and games business programs at Nokia Multimedia Asia Pacific.

However, this works only if the secondary site supports such content, Kanjulal told ZDNet Asia.

Search and locate Users of Nokia's N95 mobile phone--expected to be available in the first quarter of this year--will be able to use Asia Maps in a range of countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Through Agis' Asia Maps application, users can view detailed maps of major cities in the six countries on their N95 handset, search for locations or points of interest, activate GPS (global positioning system) for turn-by-turn navigation guide, plan routes and bookmark favorite destinations for easy reference, according to Nokia.

In addition, N95 users can use the turn-by-turn voice navigation feature at no charge for up to 60 days after the service is first activated.

Keith Liu, head of games and Internet experiences at Nokia Multimedia Asia Pacific, said "more cities will be introduced through the application" in the coming months.

Liu added that Asia Maps also provides users "the ability to request for points of interest around any given point on the map".

"Even if you are familiar with a city, you may not know how many restaurants there are around your current location, and what kinds of cuisine they serve," he said. "With Asia Maps, a simple query can produce this result, giving you a more varied experience in the city that you're in."

Kanjilal also noted that "most people in Asia will have their first [route] navigation experience more likely on the mobile phone than any other portable device".

N-series duo release Nokia also launched the latest members of its N-series family. Dubbed Nokia N93i and Nokia N76, both handsets are 3G-enabled and run on Symbian and Nokia's third edition Series 60 software platform. The new devices are equipped with 16 million-color 2.4-inch displays and microSD memory expansion.

Measuring 106.5mm (length) by 52mm (width) by 13.7mm (height), the N76 is a clamshell mobile that Nokia is also marketing as an easy-to-use portable media player. The phone supports Bluetooth and USB 2.0 connectivity and features dual-displays, dedicated buttons for quick access to the device's musical functions and an industry-standard 3.5mm headset jack.

The N76 is one of the first Nokia devices to come pre-loaded with games developed by CELL, a Japanese Flash-based games developer. The phone is pre-loaded with five mini games, each taking up no more than 20kb of file space. Users have the option to purchase additional games online via the Catalog application in the phone's menu.

The company's flagship N93i--weighing 163g--features Wi-Fi connectivity and can capture DVD-quality MPEG-4 movies at 30 frames per second via its 3.2-megapixel Carl Zeiss lens.

According to Nokia, the N93i also features on-device media editing functions, TV-out connectivity and comes bundled with Adobe's Premier Element's 3.0 video editing application.

ZDNet Asia's Farihan Bahrin contributed to this report. Farihan is a freelance IT writer based in Singapore.

Oz to bring social networking to cell phones

Oz to bring social networking to cell phones

By Reuters Privately held Oz Communications, a maker of wireless messaging technologies, will announce on Wednesday a new product allowing people to access social network sites over their cell phones.

Oz will offer a technology that lets cell phone companies and handset makers load a connection to social networking sites onto phones in a bid to capitalize on the growth of community Web sites like News Corp.'s MySpace and Google's YouTube.

The company already provides technology that lets people access e-mail and instant messaging services from MSN, AOL and Yahoo over their mobile phones, with such customers as Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA.

Oz will offer the product in the first half of 2007 and is in talks with leading wireless carriers, phone makers and social networking sites for the service, said Chief Executive Skuli Mogensen.

"Clearly the user experience will not be the same as on a desktop (computer)," Mogensen said in an interview. "But the mobile phone has other attributes that are so appealing we think it will fly."

The growing use of cell phones embedded with digital cameras will encourage its use as a device to share photos and video on the spot, he said.

Oz expects to record revenue from the new technology in 2007 and believes social networking revenue could eventually contribute equally to its business with the more established e-mail and instant messaging services, Mogensen said.

The company has already loaded such e-mail or messaging services onto 70 million devices in North America.

A social networking service would appear to users as an icon on a cell phone menu. Selecting the icon would bring the customer to a list of the most popular networking sites among hundreds of nascent Internet communities.

"If a new community arrives and becomes a major hit, our solution allows mobile operators to introduce that new community," Mogensen said.

Oz recently closed a $34 million round of financing. The company is based in Montreal and employs about 230 people.

Story Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Bluepulse 2.0 Does Not Disappoint

Natali Del Conte

21 comments »

Mobile phone application company bluepulse released version 2.0 today to rave reviews on our sister site, MobileCrunch.

Blogger Oliver Starr could not say enough about the new platform. “I’ve seen quite a number of mobile applications in the last twelve months and many have been very comprehensive but I do not believe that I’ve seen a single platform that had as many different functions as bluepulse 2.0; especially not one with the diversity of widgets or the ability to run on so many phones,” he writes.

Bluepulse 2.0 is a full-fledged multimedia platform that allows users to socially network, create detailed user profiles, chat, text, and link to Flickr, Gmail, Digg, and more. In fact, the Digg widget allows readers to read news, log in, Digg stories, participate in comment forums, and blog and email stories.

Starr writes that this mobile application is groundbreaking for two reasons: because it works on virtually any phone, and because of a combination of the user profiles and the broadcast messaging capability which will allow for “highly targeted broadcast mobile advertising.”

New Phone Uses GPS To Locate Your Contacts

New Phone Uses GPS To Locate Your Contacts

"Palo Alto-based Loopt Inc. has announced an agreement with Sprint Nextel to immediately begin offering their cell phone mapping service to all 3.8 Million Sprint Boost subscribers (Sprint Boost is a service specifically targeting the under-25 market). This service will [1]notify users when another subscriber in their contact list is within 25 miles, providing a real-time map displaying their contacts' locations. According to the article, the only apparent privacy safeguard is to provide users the option to 'temporarily cut out from being spotted by their friends.' Given a retailer's propensity to package together extra services, and the average user's lack of knowledge regarding their phone's capabilities, this new service seems ripe for abuse."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/New-service-tells-buddies-locations-on-a-cell-phone/2006/11/14/1163266537262.html

The Future of Mobile Phones: Instant Messaging Meets SMS

LOOSE WIRE By JEREMY WAGSTAFF The Future of Mobile Phones: Instant Messaging Meets SMS November 3, 2006

Wandering around a recent mobile-phone expo in Singapore, I was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to collapse in a heap on the floor. It might have been the heavy load of conference papers and trade magazines I was carrying, but I think it was more the dull realization that for all the progress mobile phones have made, we still don't really understand what we're dealing with. Mobile phones, for all their whiz-bang-ness -- music, cameras, TV -- are at their core still a simple communication tool. It's why we love them. So why has so little changed?

Take SMS, also known as short messaging or texting, for example. At a similar mobile-phone expo six years ago, everyone was telling me that we'd soon be sending photos, video clips and multimedia messages via an enhanced version of SMS called MMS. In fact, SMS still dominates nonvoice mobile-phone revenues, while MMS has been a big disappointment.

The problem is that most providers in the industry don't seem to understand why SMS is so popular. It's not evidence that there's a big market for fancier services than SMS; SMS messages work for the very reason that they're not fancy. I can send an SMS message to more or less anyone anywhere in the world who has a mobile phone, and be pretty sure that they'll receive it and, because it's simple text, that they'll see it as I intended it to be seen.

But cellphone manufacturers need to make money, so they're selling us fancier gadgets with lots of bells and whistles, some of which we actually use. Mobile operators realize they have to try to make some of these extra services work (such as mobile TV), although they still aren't clear how they're actually going to make money out of them. On top of that, with more of us accessing the Web on our cellphones, they are terrified that they'll just become a commodity business like Internet service providers.

It isn't surprising, then, that SMS remains the big hope for the mobile industry. Now the idea isn't necessarily to build a more sophisticated service atop SMS, but to improve on the existing service. There are several competing visions of how to go about this, but they share a similar idea: Because we're kind of wedded to them, our phones could actually do a lot of things better than our computers.

So how about, for example, grafting SMS onto its similarly successful Internet cousin. Instant messaging -- sending short text messages in real time to buddies on the same network -- is hugely popular, and not just among teens. Quite a lot of businesses rely on it. Now a number of mobile-phone service developers are hoping to convince operators that mobile instant messaging, or MIM, is their savior.

It isn't a bad idea. One appeal of instant messaging is the idea of presence -- you can tell whether your buddy is online, busy in a meeting or eager to chat, before you actually send him a message. Imagine you could tell all your buddies that you were in a meeting, simply by switching your phone to silent -- your MIM icon would immediately indicate that you were unavailable. This is a feature included in software from United Kingdom-based Followap Inc., whose representatives are in Singapore trying to persuade Asian carriers to adopt its service. And it makes sense -- in a way. The idea of presence is useful when we're sitting at our computers, but might be more useful with our mobile phones, since they move around with us, allowing us to give all sorts of new information if we want ("bored, in the mall," "tired, still waiting at the luggage carousel," "framed, about to enter prison" or whatever).

Instant messaging and presence now are increasingly intertwined on the Internet with voice calls, through free or cheap services such as Skype, the Luxembourg-based Internet phone service owned by eBay Inc. of the U.S. But as mobile-phone networks get faster at handling data, and phones begin to include the capability to switch from the expensive cellular network to cheap or free wireless or WiFi networks, the three elements -- messaging, presence and voice calls -- are going to fuse further. So while Skype has been a little slow in making its service available on all mobile devices, other developers have sneaked in, including U.K.-based Barablu Ltd., which offers Skype-type software that allows free voice calls between WiFi-enabled-phone users, and cheap calls to traditional networks. Barablu Chief Executive Pascal Isbell is at the expo to convince operators to offer his service to their customers. "If they don't do it," he says, "others will."

Another option: Netherlands-based LogicaCMG PLC, whose products store and forward two-thirds of the world's SMS traffic, believes that to make money, carriers need to look at their customers differently. Already, says LogicaCMG's mobile-messaging marketing director Steven van Zanen, operators know each customer well, since they handle all those customers' traffic. Mining this traffic -- including usage patterns, location and contents of SMS messages -- could help them provide more tailored services to individual customers. "People want the killer application after SMS," he says. "But in fact it will be determined by the individual."

For sure, the mobile phone could be a lot smarter than it is -- not so much in terms of features, as in how it connects me to my friends and data. But having trampled these expo corridors of undelivered promises a few times before, I'm not jumping up and down quite yet.

ZYB

Another chunk of V3RT comes to market. ======================================

https://zyb.com/Default.asp

What is ZYB?

Enhance your phone ZYB creates a backup of your contacts and calendar. You can share your contacts and calendar with your friends, family, sports club etc. and manage your mobile

Works with your phone ZYB works with more than 200 different mobiles. Your mobile just needs to be able receive and send data (the same as you use to go to the internet or download a ringtone)

ZYB is free (forever) All the basic features for securing, manage and share your mobile are free. Some special functions (that you can easily do without) cost 2-4 euros per year.

Wireless: Cellphones get VOIP

Wireless: Cellphones get VOIP By Eric Sylvers International Herald Tribune

Published: October 2, 2006 Skype and similar services have brought the world free calls from computer to computer and cheap calls from computer to phone for those willing to download software and speak while staring at a computer screen. Now a Swedish start-up called Rebtel is using the same technology, Voice Over Internet Protocol, to bring cheap international calls to cellphones. It takes a few minutes to set up an account with Rebtel, and users must do it online at the company's Web site. But once done, the service can be used to call any country in the world from any mobile or fixed-line phone in 37 countries, including the United States, Japan and most of Europe. The mobile and fixed-line numbers of family and friends abroad are entered on the Rebtel Web site, and the company creates a local number that forwards calls to each foreign number. The user can then call internationally by dialing the local numbers and paying the local calling rate. In addition to a base fee of $1 a week that is charged only for weeks the service is used, Rebtel charges a per-minute fee that varies by country called, usually 2 cents to dial fixed-line phones and about 25 cents for cellphones (though calling a cellphone in the United States costs 2 cents). But even the per-minute cost can be avoided. For each contact number a customer enters on the Rebtel Web site, the company creates a local phone number the contact can call. So if a Rebtel user in Paris enters on the Web site the cellphone number of a friend in San Francisco, the person in Paris will be given a local number to call, and a San Francisco number the friend can call. To avoid the per- minute cost, the customer in Paris calls his or her local number, the person in San Francisco answers, then hangs up and calls back his local number. "Now you can make cheap calls from the beach and not just from in front of your computer," said Hjalmar Winbladh, Rebtel's co- founder, chief executive and a self- declared "serial entrepreneur" who sold his previous start-up to Microsoft. Winbladh and Jonas Lindroth founded Rebtel in January, though they had been working on the idea for about a year before that. Services were first offered in July for a trial period and then officially started in September. Winbladh declined to provide sales or profit targets. Since initially signing up customers in 35 countries, Rebtel has added 2 and plans to include 10 more by year-end. "For us, getting $1 a week for unlimited calls is a good business, but for somebody like T-Mobile, it's bad business because of all the costs the company has," Winbladh said. "We are an organization with 20 people - our entire cost base is probably less than what it costs T-Mobile to run the reception in their headquarters." With $20 million in financing raised last week, Winbladh, 37, said Rebtel now had the money needed to get the company to profitability. Index Ventures and Benchmark Capital each invested $10 million in Rebtel, money that will be used to expand to more countries, develop new services and pay for marketing. "We look to invest in businesses that explode traditional ways of doing things by coming up with a better product," said Danny Rimer, a general partner at Index, which also invested in Skype and sold its stake when eBay bought the company last year. Rimer and Winbladh declined to say what percentage stake Index received in Rebtel for $10 million. "We don't think this will be any more successful than other new services where you have to do several steps to make a phone call," said Klaus Czerwinski, a spokesman for T-Mobile. "People prefer simplicity." Mobile phone companies already use Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, to lower prices and keep customers. Though their services are more expensive than Rebtel's, and in most cases the user must have special software on the mobile phone, analysts say they expect the prices to fall and the services to be simplified. Since Rebtel customers pay local rates to call abroad, Rimer and Winbladh said the success of the company was at least partly linked to increased use of calling plans in which people pay a flat rate for a large or unlimited bucket of minutes. Such plans are prevalent in the United States but not in Europe or Asia, where per-minute calling plans dominate. "We certainly have done quite a bit of analysis," Rimer said, "and we think bucket plans are the inevitable relationship that will develop between mobile phone companies and their customers in the next few years." Skype and similar services have brought the world free calls from computer to computer and cheap calls from computer to phone for those willing to download software and speak while staring at a computer screen. Now a Swedish start-up called Rebtel is using the same technology, Voice Over Internet Protocol, to bring cheap international calls to cellphones. It takes a few minutes to set up an account with Rebtel, and users must do it online at the company's Web site. But once done, the service can be used to call any country in the world from any mobile or fixed-line phone in 37 countries, including the United States, Japan and most of Europe. The mobile and fixed-line numbers of family and friends abroad are entered on the Rebtel Web site, and the company creates a local number that forwards calls to each foreign number. The user can then call internationally by dialing the local numbers and paying the local calling rate. In addition to a base fee of $1 a week that is charged only for weeks the service is used, Rebtel charges a per-minute fee that varies by country called, usually 2 cents to dial fixed-line phones and about 25 cents for cellphones (though calling a cellphone in the United States costs 2 cents). But even the per-minute cost can be avoided. For each contact number a customer enters on the Rebtel Web site, the company creates a local phone number the contact can call. So if a Rebtel user in Paris enters on the Web site the cellphone number of a friend in San Francisco, the person in Paris will be given a local number to call, and a San Francisco number the friend can call. To avoid the per- minute cost, the customer in Paris calls his or her local number, the person in San Francisco answers, then hangs up and calls back his local number. "Now you can make cheap calls from the beach and not just from in front of your computer," said Hjalmar Winbladh, Rebtel's co- founder, chief executive and a self- declared "serial entrepreneur" who sold his previous start-up to Microsoft. Winbladh and Jonas Lindroth founded Rebtel in January, though they had been working on the idea for about a year before that. Services were first offered in July for a trial period and then officially started in September. Winbladh declined to provide sales or profit targets. Since initially signing up customers in 35 countries, Rebtel has added 2 and plans to include 10 more by year-end. "For us, getting $1 a week for unlimited calls is a good business, but for somebody like T-Mobile, it's bad business because of all the costs the company has," Winbladh said. "We are an organization with 20 people - our entire cost base is probably less than what it costs T-Mobile to run the reception in their headquarters." With $20 million in financing raised last week, Winbladh, 37, said Rebtel now had the money needed to get the company to profitability. Index Ventures and Benchmark Capital each invested $10 million in Rebtel, money that will be used to expand to more countries, develop new services and pay for marketing. "We look to invest in businesses that explode traditional ways of doing things by coming up with a better product," said Danny Rimer, a general partner at Index, which also invested in Skype and sold its stake when eBay bought the company last year. Rimer and Winbladh declined to say what percentage stake Index received in Rebtel for $10 million. "We don't think this will be any more successful than other new services where you have to do several steps to make a phone call," said Klaus Czerwinski, a spokesman for T-Mobile. "People prefer simplicity." Mobile phone companies already use Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, to lower prices and keep customers. Though their services are more expensive than Rebtel's, and in most cases the user must have special software on the mobile phone, analysts say they expect the prices to fall and the services to be simplified. Since Rebtel customers pay local rates to call abroad, Rimer and Winbladh said the success of the company was at least partly linked to increased use of calling plans in which people pay a flat rate for a large or unlimited bucket of minutes. Such plans are prevalent in the United States but not in Europe or Asia, where per-minute calling plans dominate. "We certainly have done quite a bit of analysis," Rimer said, "and we think bucket plans are the inevitable relationship that will develop between mobile phone companies and their customers in the next few years."

Searching for a mobile interface

By Spencer Kelly Click presenter

Nearly a quarter of phones returned for being faulty are working properly, a recent survey suggested. The problem is people just cannot figure out how to use them.

As manufacturers struggle to pack in more features, mobile phone users struggle to get them to work.

"There's a common idea in psychology that users can only cope with a certain number of choices at once," explains Geoff Kendall of Next Device, "And that number is roughly seven, plus or minus two.

"So anything more than between nine or five choices then users will get confused and actually only look at the top few items anyway."

With increasing depths of lists and menus making the user experience more complex, designers are looking for ways to help users to understand what is happening on the screen. A popular solution is animation.

"Some people think animation is just for eye candy, to make things look good, but it can actually enhance usability," said Mr Kendall.

"For example, on the Apple Mac when you want to minimise a window and you click the button to do so, to take it out of the desktop and away to an icon in the corner, the window appears to be hovered away into the icon.

"On one level that's just a nice visual effect, but on another level, new users who've never clicked that button before can instantly see what's happened to that window, where it's gone. So they can instantly click back on that icon and get the window back."

Keypad design

One solution is called Ninespace, an interface in which every level of the menu is presented as an animated 3x3 grid, with each option corresponding to a number on the keypad.

Perhaps instead of trying to build a menu system around the existing keypad, maybe it is the keypad itself that needs to change.

Certainly some makers have tried mixing things up a bit, with full qwerty keyboards for the serious typist, or crazy keypads for those that want to stand out from the crowd.

If manufacturers want to highlight the second function of a phone, for example its music playing capabilities, they can build in an extra set of controls.

When you just want to listen to tunes, swivel or slide the keypad out the way, and your phone becomes an mp3 player.

In fact it is in a digital music player that we find one of the few real breaks from the norm that really worked - the wheel that sits on the front of the iPod.

It is a user interface that dares to be different and ticks all the boxes - it looks cool, and actually makes life easier.

Whether or not Apple pinched the menu layout idea from Creative, the iPod has become an icon, its much-copied scroll wheel has become the centre of attention.

'Wheel of fortune'

Geoff Kendall believes the iPod is an example of a mobile experience that works.

"The scroll wheel gives you the same kind of dexterity as a mouse. Within second you can go from top to bottom of a list just by changing the speed your thumb rotates on the wheel.

"This is very different from an up and down cursor, when all you can do is just click through one item at a time over and over again."

I don't think the scroll wheel is the answer to all user interface problems Geoff Kendall, Next Device

Nowadays it seems everyone wants a piece of Apple's wheel of fortune. To really make a style statement, some manufacturers seem to think your controls have to be round - some even think that you can do away with the keypad entirely.

On one new phone we tested, the scroll wheel is all you have to navigate the menus, type texts and dial numbers, which can be a bit tedious.

"The iPod scroll wheel is exceptionally good at solving one particular problem, which is navigating through menus where there might be huge long lists of options," Mr Kendall said.

"The problem we have with mobile phones, for example, is that they do much more than just show lists of albums and artists and so on - we have to take pictures, send messages, take calls etc. So I don't think the scroll wheel is the answer to all user interface problems."

Virtual controls

So the wheel is best for lists, the keypad is better for numbers, and other controls are better for other functions. How do you fit that all on a phone?

The answer may be simpler than you think. The phones of the future will perhaps sport the user interface some believe is the best set of controls ever designed - a touch sensitive LCD screen where the buttons should be.

This virtual keypad will mean that whatever mode the phone is in, you get a different set of controls.

"You don't always need or want 12 keys, you might want a scroller, or a wheel, or a joystick, or a navigator, or one key, or three keys," said Nina Warburton of Alloy Product Design.

The idea of a virtual keypad is not brand new - PDAs have been using them for a while - but some designers believe there is still room for improvement.

"Virtual keypads have been tried before and they have experienced lots of problems," said Nina Warburton.

"One of the key problems with them is that you can't feel what you're doing, you're just touching a screen."

Motion sensors

By using a finely honed vibrate function, and audible clicks, it may be possible to recreate the feel of a button being pressed, or even a slider being slid.

Other phone makers are looking at even more radical user interfaces, such as taking a leaf from the new Nintendo Wii games console's motion sensitive controllers.

We have seen footage of a Korean phone with a motion sensor, which supposedly lets you write your numbers in the air.

But for any new user interface to go from good idea to workable product, serious money needs to be invested in its development.

"Even if something is better, users can be a bit reticent about taking it up if it is unknown," said Geoff Kendall.

"I think one of the problems that we have right now is that the market is very conservative.

"Manufacturers don't want to invest a lot of money doing something brand new if users aren't going to buy it if it isn't as thin as the Motorola Razr, for example."

So the question remains - will any manufacturer be willing to take the leap of faith to a new user interface? And if they do, will these new user interfaces catch on? Only time will tell.

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RE: Skype Wi-Fi phones to eliminate PC dependency

As someone in the connectivity and convergence businesses I'd be curious to see how reliably it actually connects to various WiFi hotspots: - made by different manufacturers - with different log in sequences and re-direct screens that make you accept terms and conditions etc. - with different authentication methods (enterprises with 802.1x enabled, e.g.) - with link security enabled (WEP, WPA etc.) - how do you enter the alphanumeric key on the handset?

There's a lot more to it than they probably realize... C>

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

I have been happily using the Linksys Skype wireless phone, but it needs Skype to be logged in and a base station attached to a PC. This sounds even better - any WiFi hotspot and go. _______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: Skype Wi-Fi phones to eliminate PC dependency

By Joanie Wexler

In a move that could slowly suck the life out of the cellular carriers' voice cash cow, Skype last week said its popular VoIP software will be available bundled with several standalone Wi-Fi handsets in the third quarter. The setup eliminates the need for connections to a computer to make free Internet phone calls.

Four handset partners will be assembling the devices, which will be available directly from the Skype online store. The hardware partners are Belkin, Edge-Core, NetGear, and SMC.

Skype said the devices will be usable with any personal, business or free public Wi-Fi access point that does not require browser authentication. The key point here is that you can make free calls Internet-to-Internet (or very inexpensive ones to those that terminate on the PSTN) without having to be tied to a computer. If the devices are popular, the cellular carriers (and landline telephony providers, too) will be facing further erosion of their significant revenues derived from voice minutes.

Granted, Wi-Fi coverage isn't nearly as pervasive as cellular coverage. And so far, the devices sound like they will be fairly expensive (about $250 to $300). Still, depending on your users' business habits, the capital investment could quickly be recouped in discarded fee-based cellular minutes.

The announcement adds yet another dimension to the evolving and converging world of telephone calling in which, for example:

* Carriers are considering dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular handsets and associated services. When you roam onto your company's own wireless LAN, you switch over to a less expensive per-minute rate.

* RIM, whose forte historically has been messaging handsets with cellular connections, introduced the Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry 7270 last year. The 7270 ties to your corporate WLAN and your IP PBX (via the SIP protocol), throwing some competition at the likes of Wi-Fi handset makers SpectraLink and Cisco. To date, however, none of these vendors' devices work with any old "open" Wi-Fi network; they must be used locally on your business campus in conjunction with your organization's own access points.

* Mobility server companies, such as Ascendent (purchased earlier this year by RIM), extend PBX capabilities to cellular phones and allow cellular users to leverage their business's dial plans, PBX features, and calling rates when connected to cellular networks.

Amid this evolving telephony landscape, will you consider using a Skype Wi-Fi handset? Why or why not? How might such a device fit into your company's wired/wireless/voice/data convergence plans? Enquiring minds want to know, so please send me a message with your thoughts.

Long live V3RT!

All the Good Ones Have Been Taken -- In Domain Names, Too It's hardly secret knowledge, though perhaps only Dennis Forbes has seen it in all its glory. There are roughly 47 million domain names that end with ".com," making that space the biggest and most prestigious piece of real estate on the Internet. Getting a URL listed as a dot-com involves, ultimately, checking in with a database at Verisign, the Mountain View, Calif., company that keeps tabs on the dot-com world, the way your state's DMV knows about which cars have which license plates. If you know who at Verisign to ask, you can get the complete dot-com list. Mr. Forbes, an analyst at Vastardis Capital Services, a New York mutual-fund service company, got it and has since made a hobby of studying the list, something he does in his spare time. He has, in the process, become the world's pre-eminent domainologist. His findings ought to be relevant to aspiring Web entrepreneurs everywhere. For the rest of us, they are an amusement. (Registering a dot-com domain costs around $9 a year. After the initial registration period is purchased, you have to re-register the name or risk losing it to someone else.) Most people trying to do business online will tell you that the good domain names are already taken. Mr. Forbes's research proves them out. For example, for every possible two-character and three-character combination -- including both letters and numbers -- all possible domains are taken. Virtually all English words with four letters are claimed; those that aren't are usually contractions, and Web rules don't allow apostrophes. All of the 1,000 most common English words have been snatched up. The word "a" appears more than any other, though most of the time, of course, it's just a letter in a longer word. The least-used common word is "consonant," Mr. Forbes says, which is in just 42 domains, including "consonantpain.com," which isn't a misspelling but a word game. Mr. Forbes checked the U.S. Census Bureau's 1,219 most-common male names, the 2,841 most-common female names and the 10,000 most-common surnames; all were booked. Not only that, but when you link the top 300 first names with the top 300 last names, 89% of the resulting combinations are taken for male names and 84% for female ones. Beyond single-letter words like "a," it's hard to say what is the most common word in all the URLs. It's the same for all short words that tend to be portions of other words. The most common word four letters or longer, though, is "home"; 719,000 domains have some sort of home in them. Given the economics of the Web, chances are that many of those involve refinancing: 114,700 URLs mention "mortgage," which is more than discuss "science," "nature" or "children." Because you might be curious, "sex" appears in 257,000 domains. It may be tied to one of the most popular uses of the Web, but the word itself is only the 89th most-popular in dot-com domains. Incidentally, what is perhaps the naughtiest English word -- the one with four letters -- appears nearly 38,000 times. So smutty is so much of the Web, that often the best way to figure out what a certain word might be doing in a domain is to think of the most indecent activity you could possibly imagine associated with that word. The word "imagine," for instance, appears in 3,700 URLs, one of which asks us to imagine a certain actress without her clothes. Half of all domains are between nine and 15 characters long; the average length is 13. A domain can have, at most, 63 characters, and there are 550 such domains. In fact, some people have made a haiku-like art out of 63-character domain names. "I hope you have a pen and paper handy cause this is a crazy long domain name man," says one. (Spaces have been added in the interest of readability.) "Did you know that you can only have sixty-three characters in a domain name?" asks another. There are other oddities in this fringe world of hyperlong domains. For example, each of the 26 letters of the alphabet has a domain in which the letter is repeated 63 times until there is no room left. While much has been made of domain names like business.com being bought and sold for millions of dollars, Mr. Forbes is dubious about the value of expensive domains. Most people now search for Web sites using a descriptive word or phrase, or else are introduced to a site by a friend or colleague who emails the URL. So, domains don't need to be short and snappy the way they had to be in the earliest days of the Web. A large percentage of these domains don't even have working Web sites attached to them. So why do people bother to register them? Besides whimsy, Mr. Forbes credits a lingering spirit of bubble-era speculation -- however improbable it may be. "Someone out there," he said, "is still hoping that someone will come along and form a corporation called uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.com, and when that happens, they will be sitting on a gold mine and will reap the rewards." Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com1 URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115326960876810574.html Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:lee.gomes@wsj.com

The Bar Code Gets a Hip New Life

Another of the V3RT services we defined becomes real... --------------------------------------------- The Bar Code Gets a Hip New Life Cellphone Services Read Codes On Ads, Products, Buildings And Link to Details Online By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO May 24, 2006; Page D1 While shopping at a Whole Foods store in Los Angeles, Richard Jefferson spotted a curious sticker with tiny black squares on a package of Yum Tum raw vegan pizza. Intrigued, he sent a text message to a number listed on the package and received a link prompting him to download software to his Sony Ericsson cellphone to decipher what turned out to be a bar code. The software allowed him to snap a picture of the bar code to be connected to a Web page with recipes and health tips from Yum Tum, a raw-foods brand in Los Angeles. "This could be huge," he says. A rising number of people are using new free services to connect to the mobile Internet by photographing bar codes. The codes -- either conventional bar codes or digital ones -- are showing up on more products, advertisements, books and even buildings. The technology is popular in Asia but previously failed to catch on in the U.S. after several attempts. Now, improving technologies and the ubiquity of camera phones are triggering a host of new bar-code services. Nokia Corp. has built its own bar-code reader into new models of two camera phones that are scheduled to become available in the U.S. this fall. Scanbuy Inc.'s. Scanbuy Shopper, expected to be live in the next few weeks, grabs Shopping.com prices and reviews, for example, from a Universal Product Code, or UPC. Nextcode Corp. has launched ConnexTo, mobile software for reading digital bar codes that are cropping up on food packaging and posters. NeoMedia Technologies Inc., which owns mobile-ad firms, will launch its bar-code reader PaperClick later this year. The codes are appearing gradually in grocery stores, embedded in business cards, on promotional posters and T-shirts and even near landmarks like the Chrysler Building, around where people placed a code linking to the building's Wikipedia entry. They are piquing the interest of advertisers who see the potential to serve up more relevant ads -- a trailer downloaded off a movie billboard, for instance -- and consumer-product companies trying to make products more interactive. The technology, part of the mobile industry's push to embed more functions and features into mobile devices, is still in its early stages, meaning the new services may only work with some camera phone models and service providers. While there is vast potential for the technology -- from downloading movies off billboards to helping diabetics purchase food safe for them to eat -- a range of hurdles have some questioning whether the applications are functional enough to succeed. SHOOT AND SCAN See more information on the programs that allow you to scan bar codes with your camera phone. Not all software programs can read all types of bar codes. This means consumers must, for now, pick and choose among services. Scanbuy, for instance, works with standard bar codes while Semacode Corp. uses a code standard called Data Matrix. When PaperClick launches it is likely to used a third symbology, Aztec. The new services also have some competition from other companies working to provide similar services off existing logos and images, not bar codes. Mobot Inc., owned by PaperClick's parent company NeoMedia, lets users snap images directly from a magazine or billboard. The user sends the picture to an address, and Mobot's technology reads the contours of the image stored in its database and sends a message back with the relevant content, such as promotion details. Companies are seeking to make the bar-code technology easier to use by preloading it on mobile devices. Consumers, who are turning to their phones for a multitude of functions from downloading ringtones to text messaging to mobile Web browsing, also appear more ready for the services, which are free excluding data fees. About 15% of U.S. cellphone users accessed the Web on their phone last month, according to Seattle-based mobile-research firm M:Metrics. While two Nokia models will come with bar-code readers standard in a few months, consumers for now have to get the software themselves. Most services can be downloaded to a camera phone by typing a Web address into the device's browser. Some applications, such as PaperClick, ask those who sign up for some demographic information such as age and location to better tailor the types of results they see. From there, users click on the application icon, hold the camera a few inches away from the code, and click as if taking a photo. (Some detect the code automatically and register it without clicking.) The software decodes the information, typically a Web link, and quickly directs the user to the relevant Web page. It's a new chapter in bar-code history. In the 1950s, two inventors filed the first bar-code patent, which included a sketch of a ring of concentric circles. In later decades the Universal Product Code, a symbol whose fine lines could be scanned at a checkout counter, for instance, emerged. Today, commercial uses of bar codes proliferate. Airlines use them to shuttle around baggage and delivery services rely on them to help track packages. Packages of Yum Tum's raw food use a new-style bar code that links customers to recipes and ingredient information. Scott Shaffer, 39 years old, a private investor in Boca Raton, Fla., recently went to the ConnexTo Web site to create his own bar code that he now puts on his business cards. Now, anyone with the ConnexTo reader downloaded to their phone can snap one of his cards to be routed to a Web site with his name, address, phone number and email. Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. already offer mobile versions of shopping Web sites or text-messaging services that pull up a few lines of abbreviated text per query. Scanbuy Shopper promises to deliver more information like reviews and comparison statistics through miniature Web pages. The new service, which will allow users without the appropriate camera phone or lens to key in the bar-code number manually, has also been updated to read codes in dim light and at odd angles. Textbook publisher Prentice Hall will be putting PaperClick smart codes in the next edition of one of its introductory-marketing textbooks expected to be released in January 2007. A handful of codes will appear in some entries in the text linking to further examples and related news articles. Nonprofit groups also are using bar codes for new purposes. A world-wide project called Semapedia involves people creating more than 2,500 codes that they are sticking to or near landmarks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or Machu Pichu. The codes link to the Wikipedia entry for the location. Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com1 URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114843472842861406.html Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com

IM-Based Social Networking

Startup imeem thinks it has an insight.

By Wade Roush

With more than 70 million users, MySpace has proven that Internet users are hungry for Internet tools that let them network with friends, share photos and blogs, and advertise their activities. But MySpace is social networking for the masses. A growing number of Web companies are betting that Internet users want more sophisticated social-networking and media-sharing tools.

Last week we profiled one such outfit, Wallop, a Microsoft spinout that's building an immersive new social-networking environment scheduled to debut this summer (see "New Social Networking Technology Packs a Wallop"). But Palo Alto, CA-based startup imeem is going in a different direction. It's reconceiving social networking around a familiar platform: instant messaging.

The 21-employee company, backed by venture capital firm Morgenthaler Ventures, makes a downloadable application that complements existing IM systems, letting users build buddy lists, see rich profiles of each buddy, track who's online, and share photos, video files, and streaming audio instantly.

On April 8, Technology Review inquired about imeem's approach with CEO Dalton Caldwell, 26, who has dual Bachelor's degrees in psychology and symbolic systems from Stanford and is a former programmer for the open-source Jabber instant-messaging project.

Technology Review: What's the basic philosophy behind imeem, and what makes it different from other social networking services?

Dalton Caldwell: The focal point of imeem is instant messaging. We think the buddy list should be the focus of your social universe online, and for social media -- blogging, photo sharing, video sharing, audio sharing. You can tag things and see how the community is tagging things, you can rate things. In other words, the center of the imeem universe is you and your friends, and all the "stuff" around them. The stuff is what makes it interesting.

TR: What made the instant-messaging model attractive to you?

DC: I'm definitely a member of the IM generation. I'm 26. It was such an important part of my life when I was in high school. And it's continued to be this powerful social phenomenon. There's a similar phenomenon happening now with social networking. But if you think about the usage model of instant messaging -- always on, seeing who's present, dynamic interaction -- it's a much more social operation than just clicking on some social networking website. You could tell that the people who worked on the first generation of social networking services were not members of the IM generation.

V3RT goes live

A small startup VCEL (Virtual Communication Expression & Lifestyle) has unveiled a new [0]social networking service for cell phones. All you need to do to keep in contact with your friends 24/7 is to [1]create a profile with their website, download a Java application for your cell phone (more than 20 models are supported already), and send an invitation to your buddies. Here we go: you can exchange comments, pictures, plan on activities together, etc. You'd have the same control over your profile either from phone or from web browser. They have a nice Java applet for your page, so you can leave your buddies a voice message right from your computer and so on.

Links: 0. http://www.vcellvibes.com/ 1. http://join.vcellvibes.com/

Will the Mobile Phone Become the Dominant Internet Platform?

The personal computer remains the dominant platform for accessing the Internet around the world. However, in many countries Internet access via the mobile phone is actually outpacing wireless access from a notebook PC. After all, there is a massive installed base of mobile phones globally, and wireless networks are expanding every day.

According to A.T.Kearney, while in 2004 only 36% of mobile phone users browsed the Internet or downloaded e-mail, that figure rose to 56%. In Japan 92% of users went online via their mobiles.

In a study just released, "The Face of the Web," Ipsos Insight found that 28% of mobile phone owners worldwide had browsed the Internet on a wireless handset, up slightly from 25% at the end 2004.

Brian Cruikshank of Ipsos noted, "Accessing the Internet on a wireless handheld device is no longer a novelty for consumers in the major global economies. It's becoming a common, everyday occurrence for many people."

In fact, it was the Ipsos study that posited that mobile phones are poised to become the dominant Internet platform outside the home. "In the long term, many of today's PC-centric online activities could be complemented through the mobile phone or migrate to the mobile phone altogether, due to greater convenience and faster connection speeds," said Mr. Cruikshank. p>Mobile phone ownership is certainly on the rise around the world. The Ipsos survey showed ownership in major countries ranging from 61% of consumers in Canada to 95% in Japan.

Internet browsing via a wireless device is also growing in many global markets. France and the UK are exhibiting the strongest growth, while Internet usage via mobile phone in Japan also continues to grow rapidly. Today, four in 10 adults browse the Internet on their wireless handset in Japan, double the rate in 2003.

Over half (52%) of all mobile phone households today have sent or received a text message, and over a third (37%) have sent or received e-mail on a mobile phone. In general, almost all wireless device activities experienced growth in 2005 — including m-commerce, financial transactions, sending or receiving digital pictures and downloading entertainment.

Japan — followed by the UK, US and South Korea — leads the world in browsing the Internet via mobile phone for news and information.

All this activity aside, however, it should be noted that Ipsos found that the growth in Internet browsing on a mobile phone was flattening in some markets, specifically the US and Canada, where wireless Internet access via notebook PC appears to be emerging as the stronger out-of-home Internet platform.

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.