Link: Nearly 30 Million Amercians to Have Music Phones By End of Year

JupiterResearch has found that although US consumers are continuing to acquire music-capable mobile phones, only few take advantage of those capabilities. According to a new report only about five percent of consumers report sideloading songs onto their phone (i.e., transferring digital songs from a PC to a phone), and only two percent report downloading songs over the air.

Thus, although some 27.9 million US consumers are expected to have music phones by the end of this year, the music functionality of the phone will remain significantly underutilized.

Link: BBC NEWS | England | Death crash driver admits texting

The BBC are reporting that a 19-year-old driver has admitted sending a text message whilst driving shortly before causing a fatal crash. The incident, which happened in November 2006 near Newcastle Airport, resulted in the death of a 74-year-old County Durham grandmother.

Rachel Begg pleaded guilty to causing the death of County Durham grandmother Maureen Waites by dangerous driving. At Newcastle Crown Court, the judge warned Begg, of Whinbank in Ponteland, that a prison term was inevitable.

Ms Waites, a self-employed hairdresser, from Wellfield Road North in Wingate, was on her way to pick up a relative from the airport when she died. Judge John Milford QC adjourned the case for a pre-sentence report and said: “This will determine the length of the custodial sentence you will receive in due course.”

If I was looking to hire a PR team, there’d only be one place to look right now in my opinion. You’ve got to take your hats off to the PR bods at Apple - it seems at the moment not a day goes past without a plethora of Apple and iPhone-related stories hitting both the online and offline press.

Here at SMS Text News, we like news stories about mobile. We find them, blog them, analyse them, and occasionally do a bit of complaining. In the early days of the iPhone hype, we’d jump on anything about the elusive device and blog it. However, if we did that in the past few weeks, not only would you think you were reading an Apple PR site, we’d probably have to hire a whole team of bloggers just to cover every story.

Take this example. A quick scoot around Google News produces 7,997 articles on the iPhone from the last 24 hours - and it’s not all the same story. Reg Hardware is reporting a US Analyst alleges it’s already hitting Palm device sales. The Inquirer says four different networks are tipped for the European exclusive rights. The Boston Globe says Apple investors may have set their hopes too high, after the companys market value passed $100billion in May on the back of iPhone fever. iTWire are quoting a Gartner analyst, who reckons the handset will be a ‘game changer’.  And finally, from my random selection, Scientific American are running a story that German manufacturer Balda are quite chuffed that Apple are busy ordering a huge amount more touch screens from the company.

There’s coverage good and bad in there. Whatever your thoughts on the old saying ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’, I think it’s easy to agree that Apple are getting a huge chunk of coverage out there at the moment.

Has the iPhone’s moment been and gone, even before it’s launched? Whether the press frenzy will die down after this Friday’s US launch remains to be seen.

Ethical music festival Two Thousand Trees has become one of the first festivals in the UK to introduce mobile ticketing, thanks to a tie-up with tixmob.

The festival, to be held near Cheltenham on 13th & 14th July, is giving fans the ability to receive the tickets direct to their mobile phone - or for those buying multiple tickets, to have them delivered direct to their friends mobiles.

James Scarlett, organisers, Two Thousand Tress Festival said, “The ethos of the festival is very much one of sustainability and laid back consideration. That stretches to the ticket too. Using tixmob we are happy that we are helping reduce our environmental impact by reducing the need for paper based tickets as well as giving festival goers a convenient, hassle free way to buy tickets.”

To book tickets, visit www.tixmob.com - or to find out more about the Two Thousand Trees festival and view the line-up, head over to www.twothousandtreesfestival.co.uk

I’ve just had a note in from HTC. Get in! I’m going to work with their PR to see if we can’t redress the balance on Windows Mobile devices.

I was having a play with LivePerson and thought I might as well stick it up and see how it works here on SMS Text News.

So if you’re reading this in a browser, you’ll see a picture of me on the right of this screen. If I’m awake and operational, you’ll be able to click the image and it’ll pop up a private chat window.

I think it’s neat.

BING BONG.

Every time someone enters the site, one of my computers plays a BING BONG sound, as though the virtual SMS Text News shop door has just opened. It’s been getting a bit annoying as I keep stopping whatever I’m doing to go and peer at you all.

One chap’s been clicking across the site for 26 minutes so far. It’s quite fascinating. He did a Google search on no alarm sound reminders on the treo and found the Vodafone Treo 750 MicrosoftHell post where he’s no doubt been reading all the seething comments from other Treo users.

Come in, come in!

I’ve had LivePerson on for about two hours this evening whilst I’ve been working. Alas, only one person has initiated a chat with me (Thanks Jeb!) so far.

If you see me online, say hi. You don’t need to have a reason.

I’ll switch it off if I’m sleeping or out at a meeting. And if the bingbonging gets too annoying or the page-load becomes an issue, I’ll dump it. Meantime, don’t be a stranger!

Link: Free eBay Mobile Alerts By Text Message (SMS) at eAuctionAlerts.com

Just had word in from Nate at TxtDrop.com about the launch of his new eBay mobile alerts service. Called eAuctionAlerts, it offers a free service to remind people when their specified eBay auctions are about to end.

Although eBay offer a similar service, they charge $0.25 per alert - whereas eAuctionAlerts is completely free at present. It will work with most of the international eBay sites (including the UK), unfortunately they only support US and Canadian carriers right now. Nate says there are plans to add international carriers in the near future - so watch this space!

Alan Lougher is a Welshman who’s now, sensibly, living in Florida. (The weather here in London has been rubbish recently).

Alan is Chief Executive of Group2call — he founded the company, which operates from sunny Lake Worth, in late 2006. He dropped me a note to introduce the company and their services. They’re a startup and if their product list is anything to judge them by, they’ve hit the ground running very, very fast.

Group2call, as the name suggests, is all about connecting groups of people via voice and text messaging. For example, their services are used by oodles of sports team coaches who have to face the regular arse of phoning 20+ people every time a training match is cancelled by the weather. That is pure genius. I automatically thought text messaging however the Group2call service will also allow the team coach to record an audio message for it to be then ‘called’ out to people. Smart.

The pricing looks eminently reasonable.

Alan and his team have recently launched a specialist version of their services for schools and companies who need to be able to issue emergency broadcasts via a single text message to hundreds or thousands of people immediatey. For example, organisations located in Florida definitely could use some assistance I’m sure.

It’s important to remember that Floridians live in more or less continual danger of being blown away — something quite unfamiliar to your average British chap like me who’s complaining about ’spitting’ rain. Florida even has it’s own Hurricane Centre. They don’t mess around. This warning was issued a few minutes ago via that site:

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAMPA BAY AREA - RUSKIN FL
713 PM EDT MON JUN 25 2007

So I’m all in favour of anything like this. I think it should be implemented by every single institution — company, school, university, whatever. The moment there’s news of a hurricane or any emergency, everyone should be sent a text.

Not just hurricanes though. Think other emergencies — particularly the positively inept management at Virginia Tech recently. Screw sending an email. Get a text or a voice message through to everyone.

A little more on how it works:

Once a group has been setup in the user’s account, they can record a voice message, type one in as a text-to-speech (TTS) message as well as enter text that will be used for the SMS message.

Then, a keyword is assigned to that particular group.

Now here’s the simple part, when an emergency arises the user just texts the keyword to a short code number we provide and our system will start calling all the phone numbers in that group as well as send an SMS message to that group. We can call hundreds of phones a minute, upto 3 phones (cell, work, home etc.) as well as email AND SMS the message simultaneously! Recipients of the text message can also respond to the message too (such as “I’m safe” etc.).

Very smart indeed.

Link: GigaOM Vonage: The Last Stand «

These are desperate times for Vonage: it is losing a lot of customers, otherwise why else would it offer  a $3.99 a month (for a year) deal to the defectors. Judi Sohn, a defecting customer, sums it up best when she writes, “Getting garbage at discount still stinks.”

Vonage is not having a good day. Or a good year. Om’s got the gossip at the link above.

For me, however, I’ve always wanted Vonage to work. I really liked the idea. Never worked for me though. Never properly. People kept on asking me to call them back on a ‘better line’…

All my trials and tribulations of Vonage are right here.

I was in London earlier meeting a business colleague, who’s just arrived in the country for a couple of weeks. Rather than pay his horrendously expensive roaming charges, he got hold of an O2 prepay SIM and a top-up card. So far so good.

I spoke to him last night and explained how to top-up, and he duly went down to the local corner shop, swipped the card, paid his £20 and left a happy man. However, when he came to switch on the phone this morning for the first time, it came up as ‘SIM unregistered’.

When I met up with him today, I did the usual SIM and handset swapping to make sure it wasn’t anything simple. Alas, it didn’t work. So we took a trip to one of the numerous O2 stores in Oxford Street. Hoping they could just tap a few keys and make it work, I explained his trouble, and handed over the info. ‘Sorry sir, you’ll have to speak to O2 Prepay customer services’, said the assistant, waving a cordless phone in his hands and already dialling the number. He then went off to talk to a bunch of tourists who were eyeing up an N95. About £450 without a contract, incidently, and definitely not available on prepay!

Anyway, I spoke to a very helpful customer service rep at O2. ‘Sorry sir, it appears that SIM card has expired. It’s so old we have no record of it on the system, and, well.. you know if you don’t use a prepay SIM for six months it disconnects? We could put in a reconnection order but that’ll take 24 hours at least’.

At this point, I was a little confused. I’m sure that prepay SIMs didn’t used to expire. Why could they not just reactivate it? And where had his £20 gone?

In the end we fixed it by purchasing a new SIM card (a bargain at £4.99), then typing in a rather horrendously long network code on the handset, which assigned the old top up swipe card to the new SIM card and transferred the top-up he made. Apparently if your top-up card isn’t actually assigned to a SIM card, it acts like a gift card - so the balance remains on that card. Confused? I was. But it sort of makes sense.

So, 20 minutes later, £4.99 expenditure, and the loan of an O2 in-store cordless and their sofa, and it was all sorted. However, what would have happened if someone with local knowledge of the mobile market (plus knew where the nearest O2 store was) wasn’t there? How many business people visiting the UK do the same thing, only to find they can’t get it working, or even worse have splashed a load of cash on a SIM on Ebay or made a top-up only to find their money has disappeared down a black hole?

Mobile entertainment company ROK have announced today they’ve acquired data optimisation and compression specialists Blubox Software.

Commenting on the acquisition, Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman of ROK said “Blubox have created the most powerful, user-friendly and original compression technologies for the management of digital imagery and data files that we have yet seen and, with our core interest being in mobile phone applications, we know there is a massive potential, worldwide, for this technology in the mobile phone space in addition to, and in conjunction with, the online service.”

If you’ve never heard of Blubox before, here’s the scoop. They’ve got technology that typically compressed JPEG images by about 80% - which means you can upload those pics faster from your phone, and use less data in the process. They’ve also got a nifty PC application that allows you to manage, encrypt, upload and compress your photos.

The implications for this sort of technology being used on mobiles is potentially huge. Even though phones nowadays are coming with increasing amounts of storage, the resolution of digital cameras on mobiles is also increasing - so space is still at a premium. Factor in the average £3/meg data charge, and you could quite easily splash a tenner just uploading a handful of photos. By reducing the file size by up to 80%, you could benefit from less memory usage, faster upload and splash a lot less cash on getting the photos up to your favourite photo website, like Flickr.

The fake Arun Sarin columns I posted a ages ago still amongst the most read on the site. So, I’m looking for someone who has a bit of knowledge of the industry to knock me up a weekly secret diary of Arun Sarin along the lines of Fake Steve Jobs.

Or perhaps focusing on another high profile mobile industry veteran.

If you reckon you might enjoy it, drop me a note — ewan@smstextnews.com.

Picture 18
Originally uploaded by smstextnews.

I’ve got a Jaxtr widget on the blog right? All I get from it are heavy breathing Indians and French folk who definitely don’t want to be speaking to me.

Now and again I get voicemail alerts — I log in and find that the voicemails are invariably 2-3 seconds long and consist of a ‘hung up’ tone when played.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Got any experience with Jaxtr?

Wanna know more about Jaxtr? Check out this reaaaaaally American technology TV show review:

[american] It’s all coming up on TEKK NOWWWWWWW [/american]….

mobile-icon
Originally uploaded by smstextnews.

A chap called Chris emailed me this afternoon with a new icon that he’s proposing as an industry standard ‘mobile’ icon. I like the concept of it.

Just as there’s an industry standard RSS feed icon, Chris reckons there should be one for mobile web.

He’ll have a site up soon with more perspective and when he does, I’ll publish it here.

I’m absolutely tired of dissing Windows Mobile.

I’ve had enough of it, I really have.

I met ANOTHER guy the other day sporting a Windows Mobile handset.

“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s brilliant,” he responded, “I love it!”

“Shit!” I thought, reaching for my SMS Text News business cards, “Maybe I’ve found someone I can actually blog!”

I grabbed the guy, sat him down and explained I ran this site and that I really would like his opinions.

“So,” I began, “Tell me about your device, what do you love about it?”

“Well, it’s just amazing. I really love it,” he starts, “Although I do have to reboot it about 3-4 times a day, especially when it hangs or cashes,”

My face dropped.

F*** it. What do I have to do to find someone who actually uses these devices without trouble?

Seeing my face, he asked if my new Nokia E61i needs a few reboots each day.

I looked at him with a degree of horror.

Er no. No. No it doesn’t. Maybe if you overload it, as I often do, with a ton of things, it might slow… but crash? Rare. Now and again you’ll get an application error, but, you know, we’re talking rare.

So.

I’ve had enough.

I emailed HTC’s PR and asked to be put in touch with whoever does their PR in the United Kingdom. After an abysmal time with that iPAQ over the weekend, I am desperate to:

a) Find some people who LOVE their Windows Mobile devices without immediately telling me how many times they crash.
b) Check out some of the latest HTC handsets and try and redress the balance of reporting here on SMS Text News.

I’ll let you know if I get any response from HTC.

If you can help, by the way, let me know?

Link: Google To Acquire GrandCentral

Google is in acquisition discussions with telephone management startup GrandCentral, we’ve learned, and we have a high degree of confidence that the deal has actually been closed. We are trying to nail down the acquisition price.

Remember the one-number-to-rule-them-all company, GrandCentral?

Well they started, got running, then got bought for fifty million.

Nice.

CHAMPAGNE ON THE GRANDCENTRAL BOYS!!

We’ve got a ton of news to deliver this week here on SMS Text News.

Normally we’d have been publishing like no tomorrow — however I decided to give it a rest this morning by way of a test. I’d strongly welcome your feedback on publishing volume.

Now and again many readers have commented that there’s a ton of news — sometimes upwards of 10 posts a day — published here. It’s oft commented that we publish too much. We could cut it down. It’s also oft comented by many readers that the volume is good.

So my research question to you is this:

When you checked the feed today and found nothing new published today, how did you react?

Yours,
with a ton of stuff to post,

Ewan & the SMS Text News team

Link: Virgin Mobile celebrates birthday with free SMS offer

Happy Birthday to Virgin Mobile’s South Africa operation - they celebrated their first year in the market on Friday. And to say thank you to their customers, they’re offering free Virgin to Virgin SMS until this coming Sunday (June 30th).

Peter Boyd, CEO of Virgin Mobile SA, has also said that part of the proceeds from any new subscriptions purchased before this Sunday will be donated to homeless charities, and will go towards the purchase of blankets for the homeless.

Virgin Mobile, who use operator CellC’s infrastructure, are believed to have around 150,000 subscribers at present - according to an article in the South African Sunday Times. They also quoted Virgin boss Richard as saying “Virgin Mobile has cracked the South African mobile telephony market many thought was oversaturated and impenetrable. We are growing from strength to strength and we are here to stay.”

Link: New Program Sets to Protect the Public from Premium Rate Phone In Competition ‘Rip Off’s’

Premium Rate expert Richard Howard has called for an independent accreditation program to monitor competitions run via premium SMS and voice services in the UK.

“No doubt the last few weeks have certainly been some of the darkest in Premium Rate History. I’ve been disgusted by the number of high profile phone-in services that haven’t been giving users an equal chance to win and believe that the overwhelming amount of negative coverage regarding competitions via phone and SMS is in danger of permanently scaring such services with a “rip off” stamp where as in reality only a fraction of such services are deliberately run against ICSTIS’s Code of Practice.”

“I have long believed that the public have been crying out for a recognizable & trusted stamp that validates competitions run by Premium Rate, a scheme that independently confirms the cost per entry, the prize, who runs the promotion & explains how the winner is selected. And so due to public demand I will be leading the launch of such a program.”

The scheme called “Fair Play Competitions” is the first of its kind will encourage premium rate competition promoters to join to verify that their competition operates not only to ICSTIS guidelines but also to the Fair Play Competitions program’s strict moral code.

You can find out more about the proposed scheme at www.fairplaycompetitions.co.uk

Link: Asia to beat Europe in mobile TV - industry execs | Technology, Media & Telecommunications | Reuters.co.uk

Asia is set to overtake Europe’s early lead in adopting mobile television broadcasting as Europe struggles to find available airwaves for broadcasts, industry executives at an Asian trade fair said this week.

“Out of the regions of the world this represents the most interesting at the moment,” Peter MacAvock, executive director of industry body DVB Project, told Reuters in an interview at the BroadcastAsia fair in Singapore.

Interesting news. Here’s the killer quote though:

“Everybody thinks mobile TV is a great idea, but when it’s time to get out the chequebook everyone starts to look at each other,” MacAvock said.

Link: Daily Express, Sabah, Malaysia — News Headlines

There’s been a few services launched recently that allow you to text a non-urgent crime report or tip-off to the police. Most of these involve some kind of automated system and tracking - however in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, things are a little different.

City Police Chief ACP Ku Chin Wah has apparently been giving out his personal mobile number for concerned citizens to text him. However, he’s been rather overwhelmed with texts, meaning he can’t always respond straight away.

The Chief said: “The public must call the city police hotline number instead of (calling or) texting to my mobile over a crime or any emergency because I will only check that phone when I am free [...] so it would not be a good idea to report a crime that needs the police’s attention right away”.

The article cites an example where a 49 year old man in Luyang sent Ku a text to report a break-in at his property on Tuesday. Although the text was received at 10.26pm, he didn’t get a chance to read it until around 12.30am.

This appears to be one of those ‘you couldn’t make it up’ stories. The idea is good in theory, but reporting crime to someones personal mobile is a bit pointless. If anyone reading offers mobile services in Malaysia, you could do no worse than give Police Chief Ku a call. You’ll find his mobile number in the original article.

Incidently the man reporting his house being burgled saw sense and called the proper police number, who sent out a patrol vehicle and caught a suspect in possession of a roll of electrical wire, believed to have been removed from the house. All’s well that ends well..

Link: News | Orange to offer targeted SMS ads - NMA

New Media Age report that Orange is to bring SMS marketing to their directory enquiry service. According to the article, after a consumer calls the service on 118 000, they will receive a text message with the information requested, along with a relevent advert.

Orange have teamed up with service provider PhoneSpots, who’ll be offering click-to-call, pay-per-click, impression-based and subscriptions to potential advertisers.

ARSE

I don’t ask for much, I really don’t. All I wanted to do was to try out this Windows Mobile device.

Spur of the moment thing. I’ve been meaning to try it out for a while.

It is NOT

SODDING

DETECTING

THE

SODDING

SIM

SODDING

CARD

I’ve been playing around with it, putting the sim card again and restarting THREE times.

It still manages to tell me I’ve got one new voicemail, irrespective of whether the sim card is working. That’s obviously been programmed by a total arse. It even gives me the option to call up my voicemail. I don’t even have a working GSM connection! What a piece of crap.

The next arse thing. You click on the phone service bit and the message pops up ‘Insert Sim Card’.

I’ve been trying to get the sim to work for about 5-10 minutes, right? Just after I posted the last blog.

I started on 100% battery power.

I’m now on 97%.

How shit is that?

Well. Windows Mobile truly is a PIECE OF SHIT.

I can’t be bothered to even do a Google search to try and resolve whatever SODDING problem is causing the STOOOOOOOOOOOOPID device to arse up.

Temporarily, that is.

I’ve had a new HP ipaq HW6915 sat on my desk for months. Normally I cannot stand to leave any new technology in it’s box. But, well, I’m no fan of Windows Mobile.

I like the concept of Windows Mobile but the reality is generally far, far worse — slow, can’t properly multitask, crap user-experience. Just try receiving email, opening an Excel spreadsheet, chatting to someone on MSN Messenger Mobile and then receiving a phone call. The devices usually come to a halt and then you spend five minutes waiting for it to switch off and reboot.

Anyway.

The N95 would normally be my weekend phone and I’d leave the E61 (with my email) behind while I go out and do things. Today and this weekend I am going to change things. I am going to take the HP iPAQ with me and see how I get on.

I’m just about to put Good Mobile Messaging on it. Have you got any recommendations for what other software I should put on it?