3Jam (Rely-All text messaging) launches

3Jam, mentioned previously, which provides 'Reply-All' functionality for text messages. Unfortunately, it is significantly clunkier than some of the offerings from yesteryear (eg Group Messaging from Vodafone Ireland and Orange UK from circa 2002).

Here are some of the commands:

• Add a friend to your 3jam address book: add john brown 14123423534.
• To send the first text message along with the 3jam initiation, include a dot (.) after the 'text' command and then type your message: text John Kyle Jane . Hey guys what up?

Looks like lots of hard work to me!

All change

No postings for a while - why the peace and quiet for the last month?

I got married at the end of September in Cambridge, UK. Following our honeymoon, we've moved to San Diego, California to where my wife's job has transferred. So it has been pretty frenetic over past 4 weeks!

So, I'm looking to hook up with some people that know the internet / mobile space around here. Get in contact if you're in the area!

Vodafone provides broadband in UK

Mobile operator moves into fixed line, piggy backing off BT, launching by year end, according to the BBC.
Fixed mobile convergence is coming: service providers are bleeding into each other's territory and we can anticipate blood all over the floors and walls, once these brands really start to collide into each other.

Voice over 'Plane', no; Data absolutely

Somewhat astonished that the airline industry is so committed to voice on airplanes - see excellent article from the Economist.

And 82% of respondents agreed with the statement "I don't want people talking on their phones during flights."

Nope, IMHO.

Milton Keynes to get WiMax network

Milton Keynes will be the first town in the UK to get a WiMax network - by the end of 2006, according to BBC News. Pipex said it hoped to have Wimax deployed in eight UK towns by 2008.

Google Talk Adds Voicemail And File Transfer

As of the end of July (sorry it's late - been busy with hols and house decorating!), Google Talk now has:

• much requested File Transfer, including directories (with sub-directories too).
• Voicemail - if you're not around, the voicemail is sent to your Gmail account with the VM as an attachment.
• Music Status - displays what music you're listening too. Supported Players are: iTunes
  Windows Media Player, Winamp, Yahoo Music Engine. More interesting is that the top songs this week are displayed here. This play list doesn't match the charts - conclusions anyone??
  

Cross VoIP client from iSkoot: Skype, GTalk & Yahoo

Although iSkoot have only got a Skype client that works on mobiles at the moment (not a bad start!), they mention their intention to include Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. The Trillian of VoIP!

Interestingly, iSkoot & Skype have signed a co-marketing agreement - but looking at it in detail, I think Skype have simply certified iSkoot.

Barablu streams video to a mobile

Barablu is a cross-device VoIP client (PC, PDA & phone), similar to Skype. (Disclaimer: I have done some consulting to Barablu.)

Barablu now permits mobile phones (selected phones only) to receive the other party's webcam (to their mobile phone). See explanation.

Ebay rejects Meebome widget

Ebay doesn't like Meebome's widget on any of their auction pages, according to the ongoing dialog between Ebay and SiliconBeat here, .

Fascinating - why the hell did they buy Skype if not to enable dialog between sellers and buyers??

 

Meebo widget allows your website visitors to chat to you directly from your site

If you've got a web page where you'd like to communicate with your visitors, meebo me allows you to see the people who are visiting your web page and chat with them. 

It's a little widget that you add to your page that allows your site visitors to chat to you (the web site owner) using  meebo's excellent service.

Fastap Keypad arrives in the US

OK, if you've ever seen one of these keypads on a mobile mobile, you just know they're a winner. Between the ordinary 1,2,3 keys on a mobile phone, a Fastap keyboard has full alphanumeric keys around the corners of the numeric keys (slightly raised from the numberic). See close-up of some models. LG AX490 (pictured) has been released for Digit Wireless in the US (from 160Chars - I credit Mike Grenville @ 160 with the story because he showed off his Fastap phone to me last year.) Makes sense that this is released in the US, given the popularity of Blackberry. If T9 and predictive texting unleashed SMS, what will a Fastap keyboard do?

Skype Office Toolbar released

Release of a Skype Toolbar for Office apps happened last week. Technically, it isn't that hard to do once you've created a toolbar for Internet Explorer.

REALLY useful if you're ploughing through a list of contacts in Excel for example. It's simply another way that Skype is further (usefully) embedding itself into the fabric.

QR codes on buildings and in fields

Those that know me well, know that I am big fan of QR codes and how they can enable the mobile internet.

Scenario: a camera-phone takes a photo of the 2D bar code (as above) and the phone decodes it and launches a browser at the web page that is encoded in the bar code. (Very big in Japan.) Mobile discovery made easy, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway this article, claims that the largest QR code ever created is 10 metre square one that was projected onto a building in Ginza, Roppongi Hills and Shinjuku (ie Central Tokyo) for Northwest Airlines.

This got me thinking about large QR Codes.

• A QR code created by selectively turning on and off the lights in a building to create the code (An organisational nightmare, I admit!).
  
• A QR code made by ploughing a field. (Similar to crop circles and ploughing pictures).
  

Any others, people?? Cars or humans in a car park?

Gizmo & Jajah offer free international calls

At the end of June, Jajah started to offer free calls to users in United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. (Jaja sets up the call using landlines or mobiles - no need to download an application). The only catch to this seemingly very generous offer is that both caller and receiver have to be registered to use Jajah.

Now Gizmo Project is offering free calls to 60 countries now. (Catch: both caller and receiver have to have downloaded Gizmo, but you can call your contact on their landline or mobile.)

Doesn't it remind you of the 'landgrab' of the late 90s? It's a race to the bottom of the barrel that can easily end in tears.

Poor usability and lack of service pre-configuration results in dismal mobile experience

Poor usability, mis-selling and lack of service pre-configuration are blamed for the UK mobile industry wasting millions of pounds on ‘No Fault Found’ returns of mobile devices - 63% of mobile devices returned as faulty are in perfect working order. With each device returned costing operators, manufacturers and retailers in the order of £35, the overall bill to the UK mobile industry is approximately £54 million in wasted expense. According to a report from WDSGlobal. .... never mind the lost revenue opportunity, the increased difficulty of reselling to a mobile user who has had a poor experience. Conclusion: You gotta get it right - particularly on a mobile.

Yahoo-Messenger IM interconnect

Yep, it has finally happened (apparently). MS Messenger users can now IM Yahoo users at last. Just like when SMS interconnect happened, we can anticipate an upsurge in usage. Bad news for stalwarts like Trillian and my favourite, GAIM, who provided IM interconnects.

I say apparently because you simply log into the Live website, agree to the terms and then log into Messenger. Except that Messenger server is down.....

Tribe to be bought by NBC???

Apparently it has got as far as a letter of intent, according to this article.

In comparison to the spectacular MySpace price tag, this looks dirt cheap - the end of the road for sky-high SNS valuations?? Particularly so, if you recall that Tribe raised $3m in February. Perhaps not. Apparently, the community / number of users isn't worth much, but the platform is.

Facebook might be ruing that rumoured offer of $750m.

Sport 'n' Skype

Above is a plot of the number of SkypeOut calls from Brazil, during Brazil's match with Croatia on 13th June.

I wonder if the same effect will occur this weekend with Mauresmo winning the Ladies' Singles at Wimbledon yesterday and the French team playing in the World Cup this evening? What do you reckon?

Friendster is granted a patent on social networking

Red Herring reports that Friendster has been granted a patent concerning entering a personal description and relationships to other users, mapping relationships and degrees of separation and connecting to others through these friends.

To be precise:

The Friendster patent’s main claim applies to networks that limit relationships to a certain number of degrees of separation - for example, you cannot connect to someone who doesn’t know someone who knows someone you know.

Interestingly, the article makes mention of other patents:

Six Degrees of Separation, another failed social networking startup, had obtained a patent on social networking technology in 2001. It was bought at auction in 2003 by the founders of LinkedIn and Tribe.net.

Note also that ol' Friendster, despite being too successful for its own good, resulting in dismal server performance, IS actually making money from ad sales in US and SMS in Asia (users pay to recieve alerts when users update their profile). 

Google AdWords like Product Placement in grocery stores

I went to a Cambridge Usability Event on Monday night: Nick Lansley made an interesting presentation about enabling partially sighted people to use Tesco.com more effectively.

In the chatting afterwards, I was struck by the similarity between Google Adwords (and paying for your position on your ad specifically) to product placements in grocery stores, whereby the washing powder manufacturer pays a premium to the retailer to place his product at chest height, rather than at ankle level (where the own brands are).

So it ain't all that new. As Sherlock Holmes said, "Everything comes in circles - even Professor Moriarty. . . It's all been done before, and will be again."