SMS Text News reader Daniel emailed me asking for the help of the ultra techie audience here on the site. Do you know much about certificates and Java for mobile? Perhaps you might be able to help. Here’s his enquiry:

Please help me with this enquiry. I’ve got a Java mobile application that i’m trying to distribute over the internet but whenever the users are trying to install the application and use it, a message keeps on appearing saying the application hasnt got a certificate.

Let me explain the process in downloading the application from the site. The users visit the site, completes the online registration form and by clicking on the download button, a txt file will be generated which will contain the user details, the JAR file which contains the application stored on the server gets extracted and recompiled again with the new txt file.

So whenever users try to activate the application on their phone, the information saved on txt file will be retrieved to authenticate them. Basically, the help i need now is identifiying which company i need to use to integrate the application with the security certificate as the way the application is download makes it a little bit complicated.

It’s definitely a complicated model that Daniel’s implemented. Any thoughts?

I was sent this enquiry this morning —

I’m looking for a content editor with mobile telco experience. 6 month contract to perm. Only need a couple of years experience of working in a similar role. Would you know anyone?

Thanks for your help.

If you know anyone who might be interested, ask’em to speak to me and I’ll connect them.

Hi there I’m hunting for someone to create me a blog editing application that will work on the Nokia E61i.

I need to be able to edit/add blogs on the go easily. Right now I arse about with the Wordpress web interface on the Nokia’s browser and it’s rather annoying.

I need to: -

1.) Add new blog posts (title, body, category)
2.) Edit and update existing blog posts (editing title, body, category)
3.) Be able to define the XMLRPL file location (it might not always be located at www.smstextnews.com)

I’m totally prepared to pay. If you’re interested or know someone who is, shoot me an email and tell me what cost you reckon you’d be able to do it for?

I need someone to write me a report — a comprehensive, in-depth one — about the mobile industry and how it developed in the United Kingdom. I need it as a ‘primer’ for someone who doesn’t know anything about the industry — but wants to have a good understanding of how the whole thing started and grew.

Here’s what I’m looking for in a bit more detail:

Describe the development of the mobile cellular industry in the United Kingdom, starting from it’s inception in the early 1980s through to the 3G license auctions and beyond to the present day.

Include key dates and milestones (for example the launch of new cellular operators, major acquisitions, brand changes and so on), together with supporting statistics and anecdotes demonstrating the development of the industry (e.g. Big Brother and X-Factor/Pop Idol really helped solidify the demand for text services).

In terms of size, think 40-50 pages with a few nice diagrams too.

If you’re up for doing it, please shoot me an indicative cost and send me a link (or samples) of your previous work. If you’ve got any recommendations for someone I should speak to, please let me know.

As ever, I’m ewan@smstextnews.com

Sonus PR have a big opportunity for you if you’ve got a mobile application that appeals to UK females.

A while ago I was lamenting what a total arse it is for mobile application developers who make a piece-of-genius service and who can’t easily get it out to consumers. The prospect of hiring a PR firm and paying them megabucks for months to establish you, before you see any results, is not good. Especially if you’re on a limited budget.

I lamented this rather strongly to Patrick Smith of Sonus PR who looked at me funny. That’s because they’ve been planning on doing something about this issue for some time.

They’ve created a mobile roadshow for mobile applications and service providers. They’re looking for about 10 or so companies that they can take round all the UK women’s magazines.

The concept is this: Package your offering nicely, together with the other 9 or so related offerings — and present it in easily consumable form to the magazine editors (who, by the way, are very receptive to this concept). Now they’ve got content for a nice two/three page spread on ‘your guide to your mobile life’ or similar.

Now, if you fancy being one of the companies included, have a read of this post from last week (Patrick from Sonus gives loads more details). Then drop Patrick a mail quickly (patrick.smith at sonuspr.com). The slots are filling up!

One of the biggest arses for companies operating in the mobile sector is actually getting normobs — normal mobile users — to read and hear about the vast array of super applications and services available to them.

You can of course spunk huge chunks of money on an above-the-line advertising campaign to reach out to your target audiences. That’s one way. The other, potentially much more valuable method is PR. It’s all about getting in front of people via trusted media sources. But that’s typically a dream if you’re a mobile start-up. The amount of companies I come across who just need a push… a small push into the consumer marketplace… and they’ll go ballastic… ahh. It is frustrating to behold. Which is why I’m pretty excited to present this opportunity.

The folks at Sonus PR have come up with a wicked idea to get your applications showcased. Over to Patrick from Sonus with more gossip:

- - -

Patrick writes:

If you’re targeting a female audience with a funky mobile application, we may be able to help. We’ve hit upon a great idea to take the mobile industry out to the mass market: a showcase of the very best mobile applications on the market for the leading consumer magazines, to show them what they’ve been missing! We will be targeting the likes of Woman’s Own or Bella. We are also going to offer this to companies that may not have the budget for a full blown campaign, but that would be interested in looking at a one-off project that will get them the results that they need?

We are going to bring together ten mobile applications, aimed at the female 35 – 60 age group, to create a showcase for a tour of National Magazine Company, IPC and Bauer publishing houses (they account for c. 90% of the women’s magazines published in the UK). Any app involved in this unique showcase is likely to get in front of around 30 of the UK’s most widely read women’s magazines.

We would like to invite companies that think they have a cool product to publicise to contact us and bid for inclusion in the tour. Because you will be part of a showcase of a number of applications, and this is a one off project, there are none of the huge cost implications of carrying out a tour of this kind on your own. Participation in this project would cost £2,500 where an equivalent project carried out alone would incur costs of around £15,000.

So, if you are looking to get in front of some of the most important women’s magazines in the UK, alongside some of the best new mobile applications, but don’t want to pay through the nose for a costly PR campaign; we invite you to contact us

- - -

Thanks Patrick. If this floats your boat — or even if you’ve already got PR representation, I think it could be worth getting involved. The kind of consumer awareness that Sonus are looking to generate with this tour could be instrumental for many companies in all kinds of ways. Investors, for example, like nothing more than reading about potential deals in popular media. If you’re possibly up for it, drop a note over to Patrick — his email is patrick.smith at sonuspr.com or talk to his colleague Caronline on caroline.tarbett at sonuspr.com.

I reckon we’ll do a feature on each of the 10 companies too.

An SMS Text News reader asked me today if I could recommend a company to provide both freephone and standard inbound numbers for major countries in Europe.

The only company I could think of from the top of my head was Windsor Telecom however I think they only specialise in the UK.

Any ideas?

Can you help James?

Mobile Handset manufacturers / suppliers wanted for strategic partnership

I am looking for partners within the mobile handset suppliers area, can anyone suggest companies to look at or open discussions. looking for unique handset designs that are carrier class / grade fit with a fanatical fanbase 19-24 and up to 35 market. Wi-Fi/Media enabled and fashionable but not gimmicky. will fit into fast moving sports category

If you can, drop me a note to and I’ll connect you.

A fellow SMS Text News reader contacted me to ask for a bit of assistance with Verizon.

He needs 2 minutes with one of the people who throws the switches to discuss whitelisting his mobile service. He’s tried the obvious route calling Verizon customer services who, of course, like any good mobile operator CS team, fully insist that there is no such thing as a head office and that CS can answer all queries. The trouble is, they knew nothing about whitelisting services.

So he’s hunting for a technical contact of sorts. Do you know anyone he should speak to? If so, please let me know and I’ll connect you both. I’m ewan@smstextnews.com.

Help your fellow SMS Text News reader!

I had the above enquiry in from an SMS Text News reader who’s on the hunt for one of those transmitters that can broadcast content - pictures, videos and so on, to phones in an area. I see them around all the time used with various marketing efforts. Any ideas where I can point the reader for a supplier in the UK?

If you’re hunting for a job and you’re a wickedly good business developer, you should talk to Pat.

Link: Want to earn $135,000 a year? come work for us at Roam4free

Having recently completed our first round of funding we are now looking for our first senior hire.
The below advert will be in Ireland’s business papers on Friday. If you feel you qualify drop me a line with the relevant documents.
Business development manager

CUBIC TELECOMS LTD. A COMPANY AT THE FOREFRONT OF GLOBAL WI-FI /GSM MOBILE PHONE TECHNOLOGY & THE PROVISION OF LOW COST TELEPHONY SERVICES. REQUIRES AN EXPERIENCED BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER.

THE BRIEF: BUILD A SALES STRATEGY TO DELIVER PRODUCT AND SERVICES TO THE GLOBAL MARKET. REPORTING DIRECTLY TO THE BOARD THIS IS A POST FOR A RISK TAKER, HIGH ACHIEVER AND PROBLEM SOLVER.

THE TASK: TO PARTNER WITH THE C.E.O. IN UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSLATING HIS VISION INTO A PRACTICAL AND WELL ORCHESTRATED SALES STRATEGY COVERING FULL LOGISTICS - FROM PRODUCTION THROUGH TO BUILDING AND SATISFYING CLIENT AND PARTNERS CHANNELS OF SALES, AND THE PROVISION OF AFTER SALES SERVICE AND SUPPORT STRUCTURES.
THE IDEAL CANDIDATE SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST 7 YEARS OF RELEVANT EXPERIENCE IN A SENIOR POSITION AND MUST BE ABLE TO DEMONSTRATE A NUMBER OF ACHIEVEMENTS IN THIS FIELD WHICH HAVE LED TO TANGIBLE GROWTH AND PROFITABILITY FOR THEIR EXISTING EMPLOYER. BASED IN CORK THE SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE MUST BE IN A POSITION TO TRAVEL WORLDWIDE IN ORDER TO LINK TOGETHER AND OVERSEE A SUCCESSFUL CHAIN OF PROCUREMENT, PRODUCTION, SHIPPING AND SALES OF CUTTING EDGE MOBILE PHONE TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES.

THE PACKAGE INCLUDES:
• SALARY IN THE REGION OF €100,000.
• COMPANY CAR
• SHARE OPTIONS
• MEANINGFUL TRAVEL AND SUBSISTENCE ALLOWANCES.

I just got word from Tom Gordon, mobile and games expert developer. If you’re on the hunt for a bit of expertise for a project, take this opportunity to talk with Tom as he won’t be free for long! He’s just finished doing some wicked stuff with pitch.tv.

He does a whole load of PHP/Web-based work, technical or identity architecture, systems, the whole shebang. Serious stuff.

His site is at http://cro.alienpants.com/.

SMS Text News reader Geoff (that’s not his real name, we’re doing anonymous, but it’s nice to use a name isn’t it?) emailed me this morning to ask about data roaming in France:

This may be an odd question coming from me but I guess you are the man to ask. I am going to France in a few weeks and plan to buy a new Windows Mobile GPS unit to replace my aging Garmin. Anyway, as my current network, 3, has no data roaming to France, I was wondering if you can advise me as to the best operator to go with. My wife is currently on 02 so I’ll just port her no. across and use that while we are there – I want to do some blogging, uploading of images, etc.

I immediately thought of Vodafone’s 90-odd quid a month data tariff that gives you 100mb of international data use each month. Very cool if you’re heading off to France but alas, not that good if you don’t want to commit to 12 months of 90 quid.

But if I had a card on that tariff I’d lend it to you Geoff. Maybe someone you know does?

Then I happened upon an idea. If you’re off to France — for a few weeks — it’s probably worth getting hold of a pay as you go sim card, right? And using the data on that? Although, I don’t know too much about France and it’s data policies, except that ONE network, is it SFR (?) still charges by the minute for data usage. That’s what I heard last time I was there, anyway.

So, do you have any ideas on what Geoff could do? All concepts appreciated.

Oh yeah, and while we’re at it Geoff… Windows Mobile? Deary me…….

Got this enquiry in from colleague Dan. He’s running a photography service and wants to know how best to send photos to phones for customers.

Here’s his message:

Can you point me at information on how to deliver photos from a website to mobile phones? I have a new photography website, which is very basic at the moment, people have to email me to buy prints or jpegs, but I am working on putting a database behind it which will allow online orders, with paypal, and as part of this I want to offer people the opportunity to buy a version which will be sent direct to their mobile.

His site is http://danshotme.com/.

Can anyone help? I think from memory, iTAGG provide some sort of dynamic photo service for mobiles. Any suggestions?

I had a note from Afreen to let me know about their company, textchatoperator.com.

If you’re hunting for such services, they might be worth a look:

I own a company that offers text chat services in India. There are many UK and US clients that Outsource text chat operation services to our company in order to reduce running cost. There are software that we use to send messages to UK and US mobile phone users.
Our chat operators are trained to handle multiple chat boxes and are fluent in English.
Our services is available 24 hrs per day 7 days a week.
Please consider outsourcing some of your text chat services to us. Our rates are as low as 3$ per Hr.
Eager to here back from you.

SMS TEXT NEWS IS NOT OFFERING JOBS AS TEXT CHAT OPERATORS SO PLEASE DO NOT WRITE IN TO APPLY!

Got this in the other week:

A ‘dream team’ of producers and promoters have collaborated to create a show to open in the west end of London that will feature technology as a key component. This Urban Acrobatic Dance Troupe has wowed audiences worldwide and this new concept shall incorporate the right partner in every aspect of the show to provide a truly unique entertainment experience for the audience, using mobile phones, texts, the web, blogs and screens. For further information please contact Alan Miller, alanvibe (at) aol.com

My first instinct was to suggest Alan talked with the LG Shine people to see if they’d be interested. I reckon they might.

Or maybe Nokia? Sony Ericsson? Perhaps even Three?

If you’d like know more, drop Alan an email.

I’m working with a company at the moment in the North East of England in a town called Hartlepool. The company does fulfilment, customer contact (they’ve got a wickedly good team of call centre agents) and warehousing. They’ve got an 35,000 square feet of secure warehouse space which, my back-of-the-fag-packet calculations tells me, is enough to store about 2.8 million Nokia N95s.

I did the workings thus:
- 2 Nokia boxes to each square foot, right?
- Assume you pile 40 boxes on top of each other, correctly stored in pallets, and so on.

So 2 x N95s, x 40 x 35,000 sq ft = 2.8 million.

The point of this post, however, is to ask you if you know anyone who might like to make use of this warehouse facility. It’s more or less free at the moment so I’ve got lots of ideas about how it could be used.

Got this in from Ophir, CEO of Mojungle a few minutes ago:

I saw your post today regarding Mojungle and wanted to update you on where we stand (I intended to do so in any case).

As far as the eBay listing goes it turns out that we’ve received so much interest from such a diverse group of companies and individuals that we have decided to change our approach. We have taken the listing down and will now be selling 5 copies of the platform/site/brand (or some combination thereof).

It turns out that essentially all interested buyers are looking to use the platform in different ways and are interested in capitalizing on different assets (ie: the core parsing technology vs. the site vs. the brand vs. the user base/traffic) and this approach gives Mojungle an opportunity to provide a more customized solution to various players at a price-point that will be lower than purchasing the package in a competitive auction. Note that we will still be offering exclusivity to any one buyer at a premium rate.

There’s still an opportunity to get hold of a copy of one of the best mobile –> web implementations I’ve ever seen. Talk to Ophir right away — email and contacts here.

Thanks for the update Ophir!

A colleague of mine asked me today if I could recommend a company that provides premium rate shortcode services worldwide, especially with a focus in Africa, Asia and particularly China.

WPR were the first who came to mind. I also suggested mblox.com

Can you recommend any companies that can delivery worldwide premium SMS connectivity?

I was chatting with Alex Kinch of SendMyTxt earlier. He’s working on a rather neat way of being able to deliver service to Ireland — supporting Vodafone, o2 and Meteor — but, at a lower cost and higher revenue margin.

So, if you’re on the hunt for Irish connectivity, do give him a call.

Got this in from an SMS Text News reader in London, UK:

Just been reading through your blog (like I do every day) and saw your post about Textmarks.com. I already have a platform running that supports arbitrary keywords (on arbitrary shortcodes!) which, although currently needing admin access, only involves entering a form field which could be exposed to the public, and is tied directly into my newsletter (SMS alert system) already - so the pieces are already there to do something like textmarks quickly and easily, with a range of services available to plug in. I even have a competition module already written.

I asked the reader if I could post this up anonymously on the off chance someone else might be interested in collaborating.  So, do you have a shortcode lying about?  ;-)   If I can connect you (or a colleague) to the reader, send me a mail.

I had this enquiry in from a reader tonight:

Do you know where I can get an external PCMCIA port that will plug in to a USB port of my brand new shiny modern wireless-ready (yeah right!!!) Dell laptop…the one that only comes with USB and no damn PCMCIA port for my Vodafone 3g card!! ??

I wrote back suggesting the reader check out the U132 USB Adapter for Cardbus Wireless Modems by Elan Digital Systems here in the UK.  It appears that you need a 32bit PCMCIA card reader to work with a UK Vodafone 3g card (OPTION branded). 

I’ve posted a picture of it here on the left. 

One Elan Digital stockist, IOStore.co.uk, have the 16bit card on sale for £70. No mention of the 32bit card reader availability though.

Has anyone else had a similar issue with their laptop — if so, what solution did you adopt?

Plus, if you’ve got a suggestion for other alternative USB PCMCIA card reader suppliers, send me a mail with the details or post a reply here?

I just got an enquiry from someone hunting for a premium rate SMS supplier in Pakistan. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I had an enquiry for someone looking for some SMS traffic statistics concerning the United Arab Emirates. I had a quick look around the web and didn’t come across any.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to look?

I got the following enquiry in from one of my colleagues this morning and thought I’d open it up to anyone reading:

Fella, we are looking into having this World Cup stuff converted for Mobile Phones (Video Content). Do you know anyone you could recommend?

So, know anyone who does video content repurposing for mobile? If so, either add a comment here (do put your contact details in the body of the comment so it’s published for everyone to see) or alternatively email me, ewan@smstextnews.com with some details and I’ll pass them on to my colleague.