Look up the location of friends' phones using Loopt

Loopt allows you to share your mobile location with others and you to view theirs on your mobile phone (on a nice map too). You can create a profile - with privacy settings, set-up events and invite people.

It's only available on Boost Mobile in the US, but I'm sure they're hammering on all the other operators' doors. Their site doesn't indicate the costs of the service though.

The UK has seen the launch of several of these services since 2003, when the operators made their subscribers' location information available to third parties:

• mapAmobile
• Locate Mobiles
• FindAMobile
• TraceAMobile
• ChildLocate
• KidsOK (out of business)
• Areyouhere
• Disney has also pulled back from launching its service which included child tracking functionality.

There appears to be two schools of thought: social bar-hopping & parental paranoia. As far as I know, none of these services have been a success (although mapAmobile was acquired by Carphone Warehouse).

The reasons for the failure are three-fold:

• the commercial cost each location look-up
• the accuracy of the service using cell-id or even triangulation
• the regulatory issues surrounding the service makes implementation very clumsy. (Imagine the public outcry if a paediophile tracked a child's location - it just doesn't bear thinking about).

Even in Japan, where phones not only have GPS, but A-GPS (Assisted GPS), which is significantly more accurate, then these services haven't been a huge hit.

The only service that has made some inroads are 'where am I?' and 'find my nearest' - both of which are entirely selfish & don't have a social angle (and best offered by the operator directly).

Update (October 26th):
Nokia have released their all singin', all dancin' N95 with GPS and a mapping application. Nokia have also licensed GPS software from Trimble for their handsets.

The story of Friendster - lessons to be learnt

Great story about the rise and 'fall' of Friendster from NY Times.

KISS & make it work, before worrying about the competition & diversifying.

T-Mobile permits VoIP on its network

T-Mobile falls in line with other UK operators by permitting VoIP - but only on its highest data package. Those on the £44 web 'n' walk Max can make VoIP calls, those not prepared to pay the additional £15 surcharge may see their connection speed slashed.

T-Mobile have also reversed its (ridiculous) decision to prohibit IM on its network.

This segmentation strategy makes sense - and I'm surprised that other operators don't have similar policies to protect their voice revenues.

Perhaps because the type of user that this effects is cost insensitive and therefore would make a network voice call rather than a VoIP call. Perhaps because of the effort of detecting and policing VoIP on their network.

Privacy 2.0 - a lack of privacy CREATES community sites

Venky Harinarayan makes some excellent points about Privacy 2.0 on VentureBeat.

Privacy 1.0 operated in a binary world: information about a consumer was either totally private or totally public....

The reality is that a consumer’s expectation of privacy changes as they participate more fully on the Web. Rather than expecting absolute anonymity, or absolute visibility, consumers as publishers of media now have expectations similar to that of media companies.....

This is Privacy 2.0 — the consumer as a media publisher, who expects all the rights and protections afforded to traditional media publishers.

Yeah, but a KEY point about that misused moniker, Web 2.0 (I'm pretty sure he means social software), is that some lack of privacy (detractors might say 'abuse of privacy') is essential to kicking off and growing a so-so site.

If it was all a gated community and you couldn't see anything, then is it a prison or an exclusively wealthy community??

If you implement highly ethical privacy policy, then the service becomes much harder to use, particularly for the casual user and creates a much higher barrier to entry.

Does Privacy 2.0 require an 'Experts Only' warning? It ought to, but the Marketing dept would have a fit.

Is there a need for Privacy levels? Yes, but I don't see a strict technology solution here - only time and consumers' familiarisation with the issue can patch up the difference between expectations and reality.

FON releases wi-fi router which lets you access grassroots wi-fi community

FON, that well-funded 'start-up', has released 'La Fonera', their own, branded a wi-fi router. Once you're a FON user, you can access others' Foneras, ie FON's community of wi-fi hot spots, for free in return for allowing other registered users to access yours.

Fon's CEO Martin Varsavskk talks about it here.

Nice idea. But what's really nice is the price: $5. And I've just bought a hub for $40 last weekend :(. There's half a dozen in downtown San Diego at the moment.

Barablu demonstrates free calling between wi-fi enabled S60 mobiles

Barablu demonstrated VoIP calls from Nokia Series 60 handsets (E & N Series to be precise) at GSM Asia yesterday. (cf Skype problems with their version of Skype Mobile).  

Will link to the press release on Barablu's site when I find it.

Skype Mobile hits road blocks & Skype 3.0 beta

Skype's mobile offering on Symbian devices, Mobile Skype, appears to be hitting a heap of technical problems, according to Silicon.com. 

The release was slated for later this year, but Skype have now pulled back from specifying a date.

More Skype news from ITExpo in San Diego that I attended last week: Skype 3.0 beta will be coming out in mid-November. It features 'plug-in support' - less impressive than it sounds - it is simply a tab that lists Skype third party applications that users can click on and install.

Rebtel - connecting people by local numbers

Rebtel permits two people in different countries to dial local numbers to connect each other. Here's the deal:

1. You enter numbers into your Rebtel address book.
   
2. Next to each entry, there's a local telephone number (local to you, the caller).
   
3. You dial that number and your friend's phone rings (even if it is one the other side of the world.)
   
4. They answer. (The call appears to come from a local number to them.)
   
5. They hang up (you stay on the line).
   
6. They call you back on their local number.
   
7. You can talk for the cost of a local call.

The whole concept is very nice indeed. In calling the UK, it failed at step 5 - the recipient couldn't hang up and call me back - I was still on the line. 

If they called me in US and I hung up and called back, then it worked fine.

I'm sure Rebtel will have other innovations to follow. (See also Jajah)

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.