I’m continuing to look at Nokia’s Ovi services this week. Having taken a first look at photo sharing and gaming, it’s the music store this week which continues the trend of being a ‘mixed bag’.

—-

So, it’s the end of my first week with an N81 8GB testing the suite of Ovi services. I wrote here about the first impression of Ovi Share (picture and video sharing) and N-Gage (the gaming platform) and in the last few days I’ve been looking at Nokia Music Store.

It’s hard not to compare the Nokia Music Store with iTunes Music Store - they provide the same service. There’s a substantial catalogue of music (all the current artists I looked for where present and correct - I suspect less mainstream ones may be a bit more hit-n-miss, but we’re talking about a ‘mass-appeal’ service here) with the option to download via PC or direct to mobile. Unlike iTunes, both the PC and mobile variants of the Nokia Music Store are web-based (the mobile client wraps it with an icon, but the interface is all browser), but the functionality is broadly the same. Two key difference I noted were that Nokia Music Store only allows previews via the PC interface and it adds an unlimited streaming of the catalogue (also PC client only) for a monthly fee. In the UK prices are closely matched (79p per track for iTunes v 80p per track for NMS) and both employ DRM - Apple’s Fairplay system and Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM respectively. Apple also provides non-DRM content via iTunes Plus, which Nokia don’t, but the Windows Media DRM system is supported by a range of vendors (although notably not Apple) potentially giving more choice over other devices to play you music on.

So how does it work?

OK, but not great. This image tells you all you need to know about the PC version:

The service is clearly badged beta, but I’d expect better from such a large firm. OK, so I’m on a Mac in this instance which, quite apart from marking me out as a genius style guru hipster, isn’t really such a minority platform any more. But even when I am on a PC, I wouldn’t choose IE as my browser - or expect a modern website to demand it - so I’m locked out. I did grudgingly fire up IE6 and poke around. It’s functional and quick with al the features you’d want for music, but it lacks a bit of style in the presentation and there’s no podcasts or video content (yet). The usual Ovi annoyances exist here - a yet another logon ID and password to remember and no tie-in with any of the other services, but you’ve come to expect that from Nokia now… haven’t you?

However, Nokia have been actively pushing the service giving out PIN codes and marketing so I’d expect things on the usability front to improve. This was a promotion at Waterloo Station in London recently:

The mobile client, however, I think leaves a great deal more to be desired. Accessed from a menu icon it gives the impression of being a dedicated application, but in fact just loads the standard browser. This in itself isn’t a serious problem, but means the entire experience relies on good wireless coverage. On poor connections I found myself unable to navigate the interface on several occasions as graphics failed to load. The site itself may also have some reliability problems as it seemed to break more frequently than other sites, but further testing is needed there. The other drawback with using the browser without making it clear to the user that they’re browsing the web is that the soft buttons do ‘browser’ actions which don’t always make sense through the flow of the application… The ‘back button is a prime example - when the final download screen broke it took me ‘back’ to a page that told me I had already downloaded the song - not the actual page I had come from.

The other annoyance is the number of clicks it takes to purchase a song… It really does feel tortuously slow and if a page fails to load or is broken having to repeat steps of the process exacerbates that glacial sense of progress. Take a look at this sequence where I’m downloading one of the free ‘Green Room’ promotional song

Arghh…. click… click… click…

Once downloading, the window can be hidden (finding it again is buried in a fairly unintuitive location though) and tracks automagically appear in the music player. Failed downloads are alerted via a pop-up message, but it self-cancels so if you miss it or have put the phone out of sight whilst it downloads you’re no wiser. Crucially though there is a ‘re-download’ option for such situations.

On that basis I was more than ready to give Nokia Music Store a C- and move on - it’s good enough as a default offering, but it won’t be hard for any other provider who can produce a more usable interface and pleasent experience to better it - Vodafone’s Musicstation service stands out as a prime example, but there’s no reason it would be restricted to network operators. Access to the music catalogue is the main barrier to entry hear…. BUT…

I think Nokia may have a shot at the beginnings of a successful effort here. Their soon-to-be-launched ‘comes with music‘ initiative has been widely derided in the press and cost a few executives their jobs, but I think it’s the sweetener that could get people hooked… Effectively from mid-2008 when you purchase certain Nokia handsets they will come with one year’s allowance of free music from the Nokia Music Store - not streaming access, but unlimited access to the catalogue of downloads to keep even after the year is up. Of course, this could be financially crippling for Nokia as they have to pay the record labels for every track downloaded, but if they can stay the course I think a good-sized music library they have downloaded will keep people on the Nokia platform and might just be enough to get them hooked.

Watch this space.

—-

I’ll be wrapping up with an overview and look at Nokia Maps next week, so drop any questions you have into the comments and I’ll do my best to cover them.

I arranged to meet with Scott Weiss, Executive Director of Human Factors International (HFI). HFI are a world leader in usability and Scott is their mobile/handset uber-expert. I wanted to know what he thought of the iPhone, Blackberry and other manufacturer efforts and where we were headed in the future.

Scott, (also author of a book on Handheld Usability, Amazon link)

Instead of just talking with Scott, I recorded a QIK video. He made some fascinating points — check out the 12 minute conversation below:

Thanks for taking the time, Scott!

I’ve been sitting watching the developments of Zyb for a long time now, ever since the hit the public airwaves. With millions of contacts now under management and with a clear strategy of offering a simple, easy address-backup service that gets folks in the door, I was looking to see what they’d do next.

Well here’s a sneak peak. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll have got a note about their ‘Q2 2008′ social phonebook. That can’t be far away now.

I’ve got some details for you. I’m going to publish their words:

The mobile address book is the feature on the phone that we use most often and is where most people store the contact information of the most important people in their lives – family, friends and close business colleagues. Yet, there has been no innovation around the mobile address book in over a decade. In fact, let’s be honest, whilst we’ve been able to interact with friends on the internet in ever more innovative ways, the mobile phone address book has remained a pretty dull and static experience. We want to change this.

Very exciting, eh?

Our developers have therefore been working hard on a new service that will transform our experience of our mobile phone address book - into a live and interactive experience of your contacts. The new service is called the ZYB Phonebook and we’re really excited about being able to share it with you in Q2 2008.

Here’s some screenshots:

Now let’s get into some nuts and bolts:

The ZYB Phonebook will, for example, enable you to:

* see the live physical location of your friends – if they want to share it with you!
* see their availability for a call including the time zone they are in if it’s a different time zone to yours – so you don’t wake them up in New York
* share your calendar with people – if you’re maybe working together at a conference for a week
* receive their online activity streams from services like Facebook and Twitter – getting the latest status of your closest friends whilst you’re away from your computer
* see the photos they have just posted on photo sharing sites like Flickr
* and of course, for the nearly quarter of a million of you who are already using ZYB, continue to receive auto-updates of your friends’ contact details as well as an online back up on zyb.com of all of the contacts, calendar events, photos and text messages on your mobile – so if you lose or change your mobile, you haven’t lost your most valuable data

Well that’s going to be very interesting, isn’t it? It looks to me to be an application, not a mobile web based service… it’s well placed to garner significant attention, not least from a wide variety of players with an interest in this space.

It’ll be free to download and it’ll work on most Nokia and Sony Ericssons from the get-go. Bring it on…

More news when I have it! For now, get yourself signed up on Zyb…

After my post last week on boycotting paid-for wireless internet access services, I was surprised to see that Roadchef, operators of 20 motorway service stations across the UK, have, it appears, launched free wireless internet for their visitors.

I report this on the back of my brief stop off over the weekend at the Watford Gap Roadchef to get some fuel. I didn’t go inside and check out the free internet. Instead I just did a QIK and headed back to the car (I was on a time limit).

I think it’s reasonable to infer that every other Roadchef is offering free internet — via BT’s Openzone service. The next time you’re at a Roadchef, check it out and let me know? I had a look on their site but found no reference to the free WiFi.

It looks to me that Roadchef have done a deal with BT Openzone to take care of the charges that would normally apply to customers. Here’s my ‘geez, free wifi?’ QIK video:

By the way: I was up in Bolton, near Manchester, at the weekend watching the local team thrash Sunderland a fairly satisfying 2-0. For the benefit of the Americans who emailed me about Football on Saturday, here’s the QIK of the Sunderland fans getting stuck in:

I kid ye not.

I Kid. Ye. Not!

Godiva, recognized around the world as the leader in fine chocolates, has decided that the mobile internet isn’t for them. Screw that! Instead, they’ve created a customised mobile application for Blackberry users to enjoy the Godiva purchasing experience whilst they’re on the move.

This is smart thinking. If you think about the state of the mobile web in North America (don’t mention the MOTOROLA RAZR), then you’ll recognise that mobile commerce isn’t that sexy an experience. Not when you’re talking about paying lots of cash for bits of chocolate.

There are a ton of Blackberry users in America. Most Blackberry users have cash or some sort of disposable income. Or a credit card. And, one imagines, as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs goes, are quite happy to spend a few minutes browsing and buying chocolate on their Blackberry.

This is what you’re missing:

– Quick access to Godiva Chocolatier’s most popular products.
– The ability to complete a shopping transaction in less than thirty seconds from a BlackBerry smartphone, without having to endure the frustration of using a mobile browser.
– Rich product descriptions and full-color images.
– Address book integration, which provides the ability to input shipping information with just a few clicks.
– A “One-Touch Store-Locator” that utilizes GPS or cell-tower location to automatically identify stores close to the user’s location. This also includes integration with BlackBerry(R) Maps to provide point-to-point navigation and directions.
– Secure transactions and password protected buying.

Shit hot. This really is very smart.

Wanna try it out? Of course you do! Pick up your Blackberry and head to www.godiva.com/mobile on it.

This is the site you’ll end up at: http://app.digby.com/godiva/

Hark! ‘Tis this a mobile applications developer I see before me? Yes indeed: Digby is, according to the news release, the premier mobile commerce platform provider whose goal is to radically improve the mobile purchasing experience for consumers around the world. Nice!

Here’s a quick peek at the Digby site. I really like the American way of doing things. Think BIG and make it work as per expectations.

The Digby Mall actually enables you to buy a whole load of things — from flowers to books to chocs from your Blackberry. I’ll need to take a more in-depth look at this.

It’s a bit disappointing that there’s no special offer, eh? I’m willing to bet that every US-based Blackberry owner reading this post would get out their Blackberry, download the application and place an order — if Digby or Godiva offered the first $10 transaction at no cost. Or something like that.

The biggest challenge is getting mobile users to install the application. THEN it’s getting them to remember to use it. Maybe we’ll see something like this.

Meantime I can’t use this at all because I’ve just realised my new Vodafone Blackberry is mobile-email ONLY. ONLY. No web browsing or data AT ALL. Arse.

It’s the end of day 2 with my new Nokia Ovi-equipped phone. Over the next fortnight I’ll be giving the various services a workout, but this time it’s just about first impressions.

=====

Ever since I first posted about it I’ve wanted to take a proper look at the Ovi services- Nokia’s online service offerings for media sharing, gaming, music and maps - as a complete unit, but unlike many other contributors I’m not a daily N-Series user or even equipped with a camera in my S60 device, so the nice people at WOM World have leant me an N81 8GB and a set of bluetooth headphones to give it a work-over.  There’s no conditions or talking points - just a device capable of running all the services on my everyday tariff.

Talking of the hardware, whilst this isn’t the focus of the article, I should give some background… Launched mid-2007 the N81 8GB is by no means a class-leading device - it’s bested by the N95 and N82 easily on specs - but launched at the same time as Nokia’s music store with dedicated music and gaming keys and it’s obviously intended to complement these services.  The large internal storage is well suited to media use and the built-in stereo speakers are also strong indicators of its intended use. The H903 headset (a pendant-syle) features a similar keypad layout and finish and looks a good way to test the music services.

Unboxing the handset, as ever, it’s good to note that the Nokia automatically notes the network I am connected to and sets up the data and MMS access points automatically.  Similarly, the download icon on the main menu presents a nicely familiar list of S60 applications and I quickly download a few old favourites I can’t be without - Ovi aside, this will be my main handset for the next 2 weeks.  So far so good - I’m up and running with minimal fuss.

It’s not all good news though, the gloss plastic feels cheap and hollow - disappointingly so for a handset at the more expensive end of the market - and the many, poorly distinguished buttons on the front fail the ‘girlfriend test’ early on.  The presentation is confused and a bit intimidating - with a little explanation (in lieu of reading he manual) she happily navigates the main menus, but it’s too easy to hit the small silver media button and switch the view to a completely different view.

Ready to try some Ovi I search the device for a menu… nothing.  I look through the ‘downloads’ and ‘catalogue’ items… nothing.  Oh well… I suppose the service is still in beta, but I expected Nokia to be pushing it a bit more.  ‘Beta’ is a tag we’re all used to seeing on everyday web services, but I guess this is staying below the radar despite the bells and whistles launch.  No problem, I open the phone’s browser and navigate to www.ovi.com speculatively having seen the full-browser version.  That does the trick and although the main site is a bit light on details that I’d like I find a link to the N-Gage gaming site, create a login and download the client.

I’ve not been a regular gamer for many years, so am a bit apprehensive, but N-Gage immediately feels like a well polished product.  From within a single well-presented client I’m able to create my profile to utilise the social features and browse a catalogue of games.  There’s some big names listed with current titles and everything is available for a trial play.  I’m really surprised by the quality of some of the titles - it’s not going to embarrass a dedicated handheld but the responsiveness and video quality is much better than I would have expected.  Even my first game of Tetris for a good few years is well presented and makes good use of the dedicated gaming keys on the ear-piece which feel well placed and make gaming an involving two handed process.  I can see myself ditching some of the usual video podcasts on the train next week and getting back to  few games.  Kudos Nokia.

The other feature I decide to try out at a friend’s party is the photo sharing feature.  Before I leave home I access it via the Ovi website again and am disappointed to note that one of the earliest criticisms - the need for separate accounts for all of the services - is still the case… when you have a name as common popular as ‘Smith’ finding something consistent and memorable can be tricky!  Still, the process is slick and the site itself feels very simiar to Flickr.  I note it’s still using the Twango (pre Nokia aquisition) name despite the Ovi branding.  Over the course of the night I snap away pictures and am impressed to see the Share application will use Flickr and Vox as well.  Less good is the need to individually upload each image as taken.  It works, but during the evening the process begins to grate.  The image quality of the 2MP camera is also really poor - the phone has a bright flash, but it doesn’t seem to be able to use it well.  I ditch all of the pictures I take during the evening - in the poor light of the bar they’re worthless and pixelated.  The next day I take a few snaps in good daylight - these are better and it’s nice to be able to select the public or private channels for sharing from the phone with a greater range of embed codes than Flickr.  However, long-term I’m not sure I could live with the click-intensive client… we’ll see.

This morning I quickly played with the music store as I sat on the train.  However, of the free tracks available, only one would download and the clumsy client together with Shaggy informing me that it is a ‘mad mad world’ was enough for me to decide to give up and look at that more closely later…. not a good start though.  Sound quality through the buetooth headphones was very impressive though.

—-

More as it comes during the weeks.  Please let me know if there’s any features or questions you’re particularly interested in via the comments!

ZygoHubs formally launched recently and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Whilst Twitter is a great mobile social networking tool, sometimes — more often than not — I find I want to connect with a team of people privately and immediately. That’s where Zygo comes in. ZygoHubs allows anyone to set up their own group messaging service. Each group gets a single telephone number through which any member can contact the whole group instantly. Wicked.

So, one text sent to your ZygoHubs number is relayed to everyone subscribed to the group. And any reply from a group member is relayed to everyone. Bish bash bosh — before you can say ‘wicked’, you’ve got real-time group text conversations. This is exactly what I’ve been hunting for. Try out the service at www.zygohubs.com — you get 50 free credits.

Or, if you like, get out your phone and join my test group — ZYGO-SMS by simply texting JOIN to +44 7714 989651. Now, ZygoHubs model is clearly based around usage fees. Five quid buys you 70 credits — so that each outgoing text costs 7.1p. £100 buys you 1800 credits at a rate of 5.6p per credit. Considering the fact that the ZygoHubs service is international, I think this is a reasonable price to pay for the functionality.

The service has been operational and under trial for 18 months so they were able to send me these rather wicked use-case-scenarios:

First, Bob set up this private Ski group:

Bob Spencer, who set up a ZygoHub with a group of friends so they could keep in touch whilst on a skiing holiday, said: “With a group of 13 people inevitably there were varying skiing abilities within the group and different ideas about activities each individual wanted to take part in during the holiday. Sending text messages to each member of the group separately would have been prohibitively time consuming and considerably more costly. Being able to send one message which would reach every member of the group meant the organisation of the holiday and group was significantly easier than previous years.”

This must have been a brilliant way of managing activities on the slope. Love it.

What about business?

BBM Law, a small and very busy firm of legal aid solicitors based in London, has been using the ZygoHubs service since September 2006. Neil Baxter, a partner at the firm, explains: “We’re legal aid solicitors and the nature of our work is quite unpredictable. Most of us are out and about during the day - visiting clients at police stations or courts. Before we started using ZygoHubs, keeping tabs on everyone was a headache. Using the ZygoHub we can send one message asking where everyone is and when they are likely to be free. In the past we would have had to ring each solicitor individually, so Zygo helps us to save a lot of time. Using texts is often easier, as when we are at court we either need to have our phones off or on silent.”

And finally, getting personal…

Another ZygoHubs user, Fiona Mackay set up the service for her group of thirty-something former school friends naming it ‘Girly Gossip’. “Unfortunately we don’t live that near each other anymore so we can’t get together that much - but when the ‘Girly Gossip’ chat starts hotting up – it feels like we’ve never been apart! It’s such a great way to keep in touch with the old gang”, she explains.

There is definitely a market for this kind of service. The key challenge will be getting the message out to the consumers. It’d be rather smart if one of the operators jumped on board and white-labeled this as a bolt-on offering.

Give it a go and let me know what you think? And try out the SMS Text News ZygoHub by texting JOIN to +44 7714 989651. Remember you won’t be billed anything — it’s the group owner who pays.

Or are you just pleased to see me?

Neon-touch navigation. That’s what the new LG Secret is sporting, amongst other goodies — including, apparently, the thinnest 5 megapixel handset on the planet, 116 grams, 120 frames per second at 320×240 and 30 frames per second at 640×480. Quad band, carbon fibre body… iiiinteresting. More here.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the device later on.

Mr Uber Mobile, James Whatley, is uninspired by the mobile industry this week. I get this now and again. It happens — it’s strange, but there you go. You’d think that the launch of two new Nokias would have got him moving? Not really. How about the brand new Nokia N95 8GB he’s brandishing? Not really. Things are so back to front that, traditionally a loyal Jaiku user, Whatley has even been playing round more on Twitter.

Over to him:

- - -

I’ve been scratching my head for some time about what to write… I’ve had such bad writer’s block lately that Ewan actually gave me the week off last week.

To be honest – I’m still kind of stuck…

So here’s a roundup of the stuff I’ve been kicking around in my head lately:

Microblogs:

I’m hooked on Twitter.

I haven’t left Jaiku, not by any stretch. But do have a strange addiction to all things Twiterry at the moment… Don’t shoot me. It’s just the scope of the damn thing.

Put it this way:

On Jaiku I have a community. In twitter I have an audience.

Nokia:

Two new music phones announced yesterday, anyone notice? No? Yes? Meh.
I tuned in for the webcast when I nipped out for a latte yesterday and…
Well… Kinda wished I hadn’t.

*yawn* - Don’t just take my word for it, read what other people thought too.

Digs aside, (music phones ain’t my thing), but keeping the theme:

I’m really loving my new Nokia BH-501 Bluetooth earphones; a gift from a good friend at CTIA. Cheers for those, you know who you are.

Those earphones, combined with my new found love of Mobbler (Last.fm scrobbling S60 client) has made my music experience/sharing/social experience complete.

Earphones on, Mobbler on, Music on; Mobbler scrobbles my tracks on the move, uploads them to Last.fm, the feed from that goes into my Jaiku… and my lifestream is complete!

Well the music part of it anyway. It all makes me very happy. Good times.

Unfortunately: Earphones on, (Bluetooth Connection), Mobbler on, (Internet Connection), Music on also equates to the battery life of about 3-4hrs.

“She needs more power Cap’n!”

When will the handset manufacturers realise that us power users, as well as numerous functions also require uber batteries to support them! The N96 battery sent a few shivers across the blogosphere when it was announced (weighing in at 950mh only) but the Product Manger assured us that the applications had been optimised to use as little power as possible. We shall see…

What else?

Networks…

First up – Newsflash – Nokia N78 confirmed expected to arrive on Vodafone within 6wks. Nice.

Sticking with Voda - Thanks for the N95 8GB guys!

I really felt a bit icky when I first received it (special treatment and all that) but I’ve grown to like it – the screen is the big sell for me.

Shame you guys don’t do the N95-1 (original, silver flavour) anymore. I prefer being able to remove my memory and just dump music, images etc onto it over a card reader. Putting 6gigs of tunes on my phone when I first received it was an overnight process… and I really wish I was kidding.

And – this is a phone fault, not a network fault – the onboard ‘Mass Memory’ is SO SLOW it’s ridiculous. I often keep my SMS/MMS/Emails off of the phone memory, just to keep it free etc… I recommend NOT doing this with the 8GB. Makes using the messaging functions virtually impossible.
The S-L-O-W memory access also makes the recording of any video (straight to mass memory) equally futile. The image jerks continually and freezes and and and… Well it’s just rubbish.

So if I want to make any kind of recording I have to change the camera memory from mass to phone, record the video, then change the memory back, then transfer the file over…
Seriously, it’s PAINFUL.

Just a shame Vodafone don’t stock the N82.

I’ve touched upon this phone in the past and, having trialled the device at length (thank you WOM World) I can tell you that it is arguably one of the best handsets on the market today. 5MP camera, GPS, auto-screen rotation… etc etc… Something that makes it standout from the crowd in particular however is the Xenon Flash. Wow. Just WOW. I never thought the introduction of just one feature would change the way I feel about a device.

Two examples of picture quality:

The only reason I haven’t actually jumped ship and got one is that it’s on o2, and you all know how I feel about them. However, if you’re not in the UK – find out from your carrier where you can purchase the N82. Seriously it is that good.

The good news is for UK readers is that the N82 (as well as the N81 – meh) have both just been confirmed for release on 3UK next month.

So if you’re looking at upgrading or simply getting a new device/contract – then make sure you check this baby out.

Bad points? There are two that I personally know of.

The screen size. Now this one is arguable. I’ve recommended the N82 to four different people already (all of whom have gone on to purchase one) and they’ve reported no problems. But, having been an N95 user for the best part of 18mths now, getting used to something smaller took a little while. N95 users take note.

The buttons. Now these buttons suffer from ‘Marmite-Syndrome’. You either love them or you hate them. I *thought* I would hate them. I really did. They put me off. All I can say is: Try it. I found that actually they weren’t that bad at all. Depends how dexterous you are really, but don’t judge a book by its cover as it were…

But aside from that? Solid phone.

And that’s about it from me this week. Don’t know why it’s a bit hotch-potch, or as Ewan would say ‘all over the shop’, but it is.

I’m off to go play with an Archos this afternoon. Should be fun. Will report back next week…

Been playing around with ShoZu vs Location Tagger vs Flickr vs OVI etc as well.

Got a few other things percolating around upstairs but I guess I’m a bit bored really. Nothing new/exciting going on…

Someone send me something cool to play with huh? Get my brain working…

Cheers.

- - -

Don’t write off o2 entirely, James. Perhaps it would be interesting to get you to use o2 for two weeks as a test?

I’m also quite pleased the N82 is coming to Three UK. That’ll be my upgrade then…

If you have anything that you think James should look at to help him out of his mobile malaise, yell!

This week, through a haze of man-flu, I’ve been thinking about how mobile services and operators bill for their services and why it’s all a bit backwards.

====

In the UK at the moment there is a big fuss about bank charges - the fees you pay to a bank if you exceed an agreed overdraft, bounce a cheque or similar. The law says that whilst it is OK for banks to charge fees on these occasions to cover their expenses, they cannot charge a penalty (apologies to anyone with any actual legal knowledge who will probably be wincing at that over-simplification). Campaigners have now realised that it doesn’t cost £30 to issue a standard letter and so the whole thing has gone to the High Court. A lot of banks are beginning to look unpleasantly greedy and unsympathetic to their customers.

Although clearly not a legal issue, I think other service providers - mobile network operators particularly - would do well to note what is going on at the moment though and realise that quite aside from anything else penalising customers for wanting to consume (this does not relate to the consumer’s ability to pay - it isn’t a credit issue) more of your service isn’t going to win hearts and minds…

Take 3UK’s mobile broadband offer as an example - in all other respects an excellent value service, but a typical case. Additional megabytes over the pre-purchased bundles cost 10 pence:

1GB per month costs £10 - effectively 1 pence per megabyte. The excess use charge is ?10 times that rate.

3GB per month costs £15 - effectively 0.5 pence per megabyte. The excess use charge is ?20 times that rate.

7GB per month costs £25 - effectively 0.3 pence per megabyte. The excess use charge is ?30 times that rate.

So the highest monthly-rate subscribers pay a penalty of a 30-times multiple in price if they exceed the bundled amount and this is typical across all the network operators.

Clearly excess use can’t be free - but there’s not a good reason for this sudden hike. It has been argued to be a capacity issue - the operators want to prevent excess use to ensure quality of service for all - but a consumer can simply buy several connections if they wish… their supply is not limited by network capacity.

Certainly pre-paying for service should make it cheaper and guaranteeing to purchase larger blocks of service should provide a cost saving - even my schoolboy economics can grasp that, but once exhausted why should the best customers - those who provide the most predictable revenue streams - be punished for attempting to purchase even more service? Cynically, I suspect firms build their pricing models to scare consumers away from maximising their use of the bundles, which increases margin (AMPU).

So what’s the answer? I think it’s the ‘per month’ element that is skewing things here. Back in the ‘bad old days’ it made sense to bill ‘line rental’ by month, but now we also pre-purchase quantities of service within these monthly payments and there’s no need. If bundles of messages / data / international calling were identified separately they could simply be charged as needed…. Used up the 200 text message bundle you purchased before the next billing cycle? Just purchase another at the same price - it lasts a month too, starting today. It could be a manual process or automatic with the usual ‘maximum spend’ controls to protect against unexpectedly large bills. Firms really looking to attract and retain customers could go further - offering to retrospectively upgrade the bundle to a higher one or allowing it to last longer than a month in low-use periods, but now I just want to have my cake and eat it…

What do you think?

Messaging services company Esendex recently launched their developer competition — and it’s one that I hope you’ll give some attention to.

The competition gives applicants the chance to show off aspiring ideas in the world of text messaging with the winning entrant receiving a guaranteed cash prize of £1,000 and a chance at commercial success.

It’s quite simple: You just need to come up with a smart use of two-way texting. Two-way text messaging is massively undervalued by today’s marketing professionals and mobile developers.

Only this morning I got a text message from my gym telling me that next week I’ve got the opportunity to bring a friend to work out for free. Excellent. I was sat with a friend when I received the text so I asked him. He wondered if this ‘offer’ meant that he could visit the pool too. Or just the gym. We didn’t know. I replied to the text message with a question — only realising that the text message’s originator address was set to the gym name. I couldn’t reply. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. It’s NOT good enough. If you text me, I should be able to text you. There are FAR TOO MANY one-way text applications out there. Crazy. Text is a two-way medium.

Ergo I am pleased that Esendex are encouraging developers to look at this issue and come up with some innovative new applications for two-way SMS.

As well as the first prize of a grand, one runner-up will receive five hundred pounds — and a further five will receive fifty pound Amazon vouchers. The Esendex news release points out that:

Participants may even be able to promote their applications to the press and customers through the competition.

I can go one better. I’ll do a write-up on the winner, runner-up and the five finalists. Plus a few videos. I’m going to see if I can catch Adam shortly to get his perspective on two-way messaging.

I’ve got a particular interest in this competition — I’m a judge, along with Mr Mobile himself, Mike Short, Chairman of the Mobile Data Association (and top chap in R&D at o2) and Adam Bird, Esendex Managing Director.

Esendex have also graciously contributed toward keeping the lights on here at SMS Text News by becoming an advertiser for a short term — I am very grateful for that.

If you’re a half decent mobile developer or a person with an idea then I would really like to see you hop to it and enter the competition. There’s no excuse, actually — Esendex are providing demo accounts with 250 SMS credits and a UK virtual mobile to test with. You can use their API to send and receive messages — and it really is simplicity itself to setup. With just a bit of PHP code, for example, you can be up and running in seconds.

Should you find yourself based in the United States then good news, that 1,000 pounds first prize works out to nearly $2,000.

I’ve been busy thinking of two-way SMS application ideas all day.

Right now I need to get my hair cut but the hair place I usually go to is shut. I can call and leave a voicemail to ask them for an appointment. But that’s 1900s technology, voice. I want to text now. And have them reply back tomorrow morning with a date and time.

I’d like to be able to text my gym. In fact I’d like for my other half to be able to text-book the ‘body pump’ class she’s planning on going to tomorrow morning.

I recently paid for my parking by text thanks to Verrus. That’s a good two-way app. Obviously the likes of Texperts and AQA are excellent two-way services. But how about a dice-throwing text service? It’d be rather good to text ‘throw’ to a number and have the service reply back with a number between one and six. Or a decision making service — equivalent to tossing a coin. Or an on-demand Bible quote. Or a Simpsons quote. Or the ability to query the temperature in Val D’issere, or any city. Or the ability — and this is something I worked on ages ago - -to text my hotel and ask them to do something for me, and get a reply back from the concierge.

The application form is here and the terms and conditions (they’re light and straight forward) are here.

I can’t wait to see the entries!

I really don’t make many phone calls. At all. I’m not doing much mobile e-mail of-late either.

It’s not that I’m a particularly anti-social sort (honest!) it’s just that my current project keeps me in an office surrounded by the people I need to speak to routinely. Similarly as I’m commuting by car to this client I’m doing less browsing on the move (they really frown on that on the M25).

Not much of a start to an SMS Text News post, but there is a point here… My work-day has changed and I’m appreciating a different side to my mobile day: specifically calendaring. The project I’m working on is just starting up - there’s literally hundreds of clients, suppliers, sub-contractors and team members arranging meetings, briefings, reviews and interviews and it’s a challenge to remember where I should be and when. My E61’s home screen maps out my day and I furtively glance at it during meetings to see if anything new has been added since I was last at my desk…

So?

Perhaps I’ve been spoilt, but e-mail and browsing by mobile no-longer really feels like a second-class experience as it did a few years back with my first company-provided XDA. Sure, it’s different to the big-screen laptop experience, but not worse or (much) slower. So it’s frustrating, as I come to rely on it so much more, to feel so limited by my mobile calendaring…

The basics work well - either the E61 or the iPhone both present clear and useful views and manipulating individual items of my primary calendar is simple enough, but I feel like I’m wearing blinkers… I have calendar tunnel-vision. On the desktop I have my team’s calendars side-by-side on screen - I can see who’s going where and can often tell more about a meeting from the cluster of diary bookings than the published agenda. It’s a kind of crude visualisation of my data. Outside of work too, I’m a bit of a calendaring nut pulling in all the information I need… My Mac has all the obvious stuff added in - public holidays downloaded from Apple’s own repository, but also stuff more specific to me: school holidays and the local college’s term dates are useful to know when the local roads and trains will be busy (it makes a huge difference). Also, I’ve also got the match calendar of the local rugby team (who’s stadium is opposite my home) and the events schedule of the Twickenham Stadium - an 80,000-seater venue which is a popular music venue and the home ground for English Rugby which is nearby - when it’s an major event day the roads are closed and you can’t go anywhere fast…  Flights, hotels and travel bookings are also imported directly from my Tripit feed.

All of this information is imported into my desktop calendaring programs by subscribing to iCalendar feeds - the calendar equivalent of a blog’s RSS feed. Much of it is published directly in that format - Google Calendar has been a saving grace here allowing people to easily create and publish community event details - and for the remainder I use Yahoo Pipes to scrape web pages and transform data into iCal format.  With more and more services adding the feature I’m increasingly able to subscribe direct - to friend’s availability (from a Plaxo ‘busy’ feed) or their travel plans from Dopplr.  It’s becoming mainstream…!

So why can’t I handle these feeds properly on my mobile devices? Exchange synchronisation on my E61 (via Roadsync or Mail for Exchange) can’t process or add this type of data. iTunes sync for the iPhone does copy this data (if selected), but it’s presented indistinguishable from my regular calendar items.  I want the same choices of presentation and the option to subscribe directly…  I want options to import reminders or just to view reminders. I want it done… properly.

Dear Jim,

Please could you fix it for me to have proper calendar support in my mobiles. I’m not really sure what’s going on at the moment.

Regards,

Ben

I got my new Nokia E90 from Vodafone. After leaving it in the back of that limo (bad call) in Las Vegas, I was without my primary number for about two weeks.

I set up the device quickly. I put in the sim card, called Vodafone, got them to activate the sim and bish, bash, bosh, the phone was operational.

Then I walked out the house to a social event arranged by my other half. She was driving so I sat in the car and used Mail For Exchange — which I’d downloaded from Nokia and Bluetoothed from the Apple — to synchronise my entire calendar, contacts, tasks on to the handset.

Perfect.

I *love* the simplicity. OK, so it’s not entirely that simple. I have to remember my rather annoyingly complicated username from Fasthosts and this is something that my mother, certainly, couldn’t be bothered to setup.

But it does work, and beautifully. In fact I have about 8 Nokia devices that are all synchronised in this way. It is genius. If I add a contact or a calendar entry on one device — or on Outlook, for example, it’s immediately synched across all phones.

Mail for Exchange renders me, more or less, device independent. I could use an N73 in the morning, an E61i at lunch and my E90 in the evening — all have the critical address book/calendar data synchronised continually.

But unfortunately we — that is, the industry, or, more precisely, Nokia — hasn’t evolved to the point of synchronisation of handset settings.

It’s a TOTAL ARSE when I try to type ‘Ewan’ with my new E90’s T9 and get two word choices: ‘Exam’ and ‘Exco’.

Surely it’d be quite easy for Nokia to create a .mac style system to take a copy of my phone dictionary and various other settings (themes, that sort of thing) and sync them from handset to handset via the web?

Or — perhaps since most people only get a handset every year (is that more or less still accurate nowadays?) maybe this isn’t such a big deal?

Right.

Today I was going to publish my third and final part of ‘The Joy of Ku’.

What with Jaiku’s recent announcement that YES they are re-opening registrations and that NO Google are not turning out the lights on our beloved life-streaming app.

What announcement am I talking about? Well here’s this from Jaiku’s own Jaikido blog:

“We’ve been working quietly for a while to port Jaiku to Google infrastructure. Today we’re taking off our welding goggles to announce Jaiku will be one of the first apps to run on the new Google App Engine.

The Google App Engine enables applications to leverage powerful Google technologies and scale up to millions of users without infrastructure headaches.

Jaiku will be fully deployed on the Google App Engine in the near future. Andy & co. are working hard to ensure the port is a success and we will make a further announcement once the port has been completed.”

Fantastic news!

Jyri was quoted on Jaiku later on that day as saying:

“…if all you notice is an increase in speed and reliability and re-opening of registrations, we’ve been successful.”

Brilliant.

However – today I will not be finalising my Jaiku opus. Something has reached my shores this morning that NEEDS to be blogged. I could NOT believe it when I read it. Could NOT!

The reason why I’m so annoyed about this is that I’ve been kicking around an article for while that reviews the quite frankly, fantastic Nokia N82. At the moment the Nokia N82 is (in the UK anyway) an o2 exclusive… The piece was going to end something like:

‘On o2? Get an N82. Not on o2? Move Networks and get an N82’.

However, that will no longer happen.

No Sirree bob.

News has come to me this morning from Vero Pepperrell, Chief Blog Mistress at Taptu, that The Register is reporting that o2 3G customers are being capped/throttled/limited to speeds of 128Kb/s.

128Kb/s!!!

A quick 3G speed test on my Vodafone N95 8GB hits me with slap bang on 300Kb/s.

That’s 3G only (not 3.5G aka HSDPA).

That’s more than double what o2 offer! And that’s before we even think about leaping onto 3.5G!

According to Vero, some smart chap over at 3G.co.uk did a speed test on the o2 network and here are the results:

GPRS 44kbit/sec
EDGE 145kbit/sec
3G 112kbit/sec
HSDPA 124kbit/sec

WOW. I am amazed.

iPhone owners on o2 using the EDGE network are getting FASTER connections than anyone on their 3G network!

*gasp*

I don’t really have much else to add to be honest…

My N82 review is still in the pipeline (as is my final part of the Joy of Ku), but I really must say RIGHT NOW that if you’re considering getting a new handset and you want to experience the wonders of the Mobile Web (over your network) then DO NOT go to o2.

I just needed to get that out of my system.

The FULL story is here on The Register – including updates and quotes from o2

And again – huge props to Vero at Taptu for waving this in my face first thing this morning.

It’s struck twice three times recently… (Is there a vehicle in North America not sloshing about with Ewan’s consumer electronics?) the ‘curse’ of the SMS Text News contributor has seperated bloggers from their beloved devices by loss and destruction. And it’s got me thinking - none of my handsets are insured other than any unintended coverage I have via home-contents or employer’s travel insurance and none of those policies are designed to facilitate a very rapid replacement. Both James and Ewan are Vodafone customers, opting to take the insurance offered as an add-on to their airtime agreement, but who should I use? My network operator(s’) or an independent, and how can I be sure that I get cover that suits me?

…

[This is where I would have normally put a picture, but you try and illustrate something that's gone missing!]
…

Ignoring my ‘pub phone’, a 3 Skypephone, which I specifically selected in part for its low cost, my two everyday handsets have retail replacement costs of £239 for a Nokia E61 and and £269 for an 8GB iPhone respectively (although it seems I would need to re-start my O2 contract to get another ‘official’ UK iPhone - higher figures are quoted elsewhere for handset replacement only, but I can’t find O2 or Apple’s confirmation of this). Not a patch on the £330 for an N95 or a whopping £624 for an E90 (apologies to international readers - these costs are likely to vary substantially internationally, but I’ll just use my local pricing to demonstrate the point), but enough to put an upsetting-sized dent in my Visa card if I lost them and there would also be costs for replacement SIM cards and potentially unauthorised call costs before I could cancel the account.

So that’s the cost of the cost of the phones, what about the cost of insurance? Looking across the market it seems to range from about £4 per month to £8 per month for a single handset in my price range, which is considered ‘mid’ or ’standard’ by most insurers and notably all the network operators contract out their insurance to 3rd parties, so independently-available policies can often match their terms (their prices generally fall in the middle to upper end of the price band). Annoyingly, some people are obviously cashing-in on the iPhone name though charging £8 per month for ’specialist’ iPhone insurance when identically-priced handsets on the same policy terms cost less than £6 per month…

What about the policy detail? [I've omitted some 'common sense' or universal elements]

[UPDATED: with thanks to commentators who noted my error]

NatWest, Ulster Bank, LloydsTSB and Barclays all sell policies from Lifestyle Services Group.  These are all associated with ‘extras’ packages complimenting banking packages and cover repair or replacement of a phone (2 phones for joint accounts) to a value of £300 (Ulster Bank) /  £500 (Natwest, Standard LloydsTSB) / £2000 (premium LloydsTSB accounts and Barclays) per phone, the SIM card, loss / theft / damage from attended or secure places, unauthorised calls up to £1500 (all except Barclays) / £2000  (Barclays) accessories to the values of between £200 and £250 (varies between policies).  A £25 / £50 excess for the 1st / subsequent claims (Natwest and Barclays), £30 (LloydsTSB),  £30 / £50 excess for the 1st / subsequent claims (Ulster Bank) is payable and  claims are limited to 2 per  year.   Notably Ulster Bank’s variation of this policy also excludes ‘Devices with a PDA and/or Qwerty functionality’.

Three also offers a similar policy from LSG: £25 excess, up to £500 for phone and SIM, covers loss / theft / damage from attended or secure places and includes some accessories. However, it doesn’t appear to cover unauthorised call costs.

Vodafone’s insurance is also offered by a 3rd party, but appears to be specific to them. It offers a £25 excess, provides for repair or replacement of a phone (may be re-conditioned) up to a value of £600, covers loss / theft / damage from attended or secure places and includes up to £200 of accessories. Notably it excludes loss or theft not reported to them within 24hrs or to the police in 48hrs. It doesn’t appear to cover unauthorised call costs.

CPP Phonesafe offers its own policy via what appears to be its parent company and T-Mobile also re-sell it. It offers a £50 (£25 via T-Mobile) excess, provides for repair or replacement of a phone (may be re-conditioned) up to a value of £400, covers loss / theft / damage from attended or secure places and also acts as an extended warranty. It excludes accessory cover but provides for unauthorised call costs up to £1000 for the 12 hours prior to reporting it to the network. Notably it excludes phones without a SIM card in.

Orange’s cover is provided by Allianz. It offers a £15 excess, provides for repair or replacement of a phone (may be re-conditioned) without any maximum value, covers loss / theft / damage from attended or secure places and also acts as an extended warranty. It excludes accessory cover and unauthorised call costs.

O2 offers 2 policies, both from ACE European Group Ltd. They offer a £25 excess, provides for repair or replacement of a phone (may be re-conditioned on standard policy) without any maximum value, covers loss / theft / damage from attended places, covers accessories up to £200 (premium) or £25 (standard) and unauthorised call costs up to £3000 (premium) or £1000 (standard). Notably the premium policy also provides for replacements overseas and guarantees a new handset.

Talkcover, Insurance4mobiles and Cover4phones all re-sell Equity Red Star’s policy. They offer a £25 excess (for theft / damage) or £50 (for loss), provides for repair or replacement of a phone (a handset of similar age or ‘equivalent value’ ) without any maximum value, covers loss / theft / damage from attended places, excludes accessories and covers unauthorised call costs up to £100. Notably it excludes convertible cars, but the various firms offer discounts and benefits as a ‘no claims bonus’.

Insurance2go offers 2 policies, both underwritten by a Lloyds syndicate. They offer a £100 excess (for months 1-3 of the policy) and £50 (from month 4) for 3G phones - half that for 2G phones, provides for repair or replacement of a phone (to it’s value at the time) with a maximum value of £750, covers loss (premium policy only) / theft / damage from attended locations, excludes accessories and covers unauthorised call costs up to £1000. Notably claims in the first 3 months require payment of all 3 monthly premiums before the claim can be processed and thefts / losses not reported to the police within 24hrs are also excluded.

JS Insurance offers a policy from AXA Insurance. They offer a £50 excess for 3G phones - half that for 2G phones, provides for repair or replacement of a phone (to it’s value at the time) with no maximum value, covers theft / damage from attended locations, excludes accessories and covers unauthorised call costs up to £1000 for 24hrs after the loss.

Foneshield offers what appears to be their own custom policy via a provider called Albion.  It is a theft-only policy (from attended places and occupied vehicles) with an excess of £50 and provides for repair or replacement (possibly with a refurbished handset). Accessories and SIM cards are exluded, but a loan phone is available (£50 fee).  Foneshield also offer a Sharia-compliant policy, a first in Europe, but this is not described on their site at the time of writing and it is not clear if this describes the current product or a new one to be launched.

Carphone Warehouse (no carphones, not a warehouse) offer 3 policies via Norwich Union, but there are so many bands, exceptions and exclusions (not least the entire ‘3′ network) I got fed-up reading their website and gave up. Sorry.

Other things to note are that the mobile operators only cover phones sold on their contracts and although many advertise replacement handsets within 24 or 48 hrs none of the policies I read made any mention of this so it is firmly in the ‘if it suits us’ camp.

So, a mixed bag, but definitely a few options that look reasonable to me. Cost-wise, taking the life of my phones as 18 months (the normal life of my phones and the duration I’m committed to on both my current air-time agreements… ‘new toy’ purchases don’t really count here) that means it will cost between £72 and £144 over the life of handset to cover it - £108 on average, a round of drinks short of half of the handset replacement cost. The miser in me says that I haven’t lost a phone in more than 3 years, so it’s not worth it, but I have been stung with £100 of unauthorised call-charges on a lost SIM and I’ve had enough near misses (thank you to the man on the train who passed me my phone out of the window as it pulled out of the station - you are an anonymous hero) to know it’ll happen soon enough. So, yes, I think it makes sense… just. Especially if I can get the cost below the average via one of the multiple device policies which pushes price towards the lowest end of the scale. So which one shall I go for?

None as it happens… What I didn’t mention above about the policy terms is that even the most ‘generous’ policy I can find excludes devices older than 6 months and whilst my iPhone is 5 months old, my E61 is too old and apparently un-insurable! I suppose there is a thriving market on eBay for new-ish phones where I could get a replacement for a lot less than the retail price, but I wanted a more rapid replacement and cover for the other bits too… Oh and the last eBay phone purchase I made left me well out of pocket - it really is a scammer’s paradise (thank you West Midlands Police for all your no help… but that is probably a story for another time).

So what do I do?

At present I’m considering taping them to my hands…

The zzzPhone: The first mass-consumer customisable mobile handset.

I can’t tell you how exciting it was, a few months ago, flicking through the zzzPhone order form and choosing the specification of my new handset. GPS or no? How much memory? Size of camera? Did you say 7 megapixel? Heh. It was brilliant.

I ended up just buying a standard handset at $149 (70 odd quid) just to begin with.

And it arrived. I had it shipped to my US address despite the fact that this version wasn’t meant to work in the States.

And what, ho, Brabantio? It’s arrived.

I got back to the hotel room, switched off everything and took a deep breath. Right, then. Let’s open it up.

First, let’s be clear: zzzPhone isn’t a fraud, it isn’t make believe. They’re a team of committed people and I’ve been talking with Jesse, their US representative, regularly. So if you’ve any questions about the device, go ahead and post them below and I’ll get answers pronto.

Thank you to the custom chappies who saw fit to rip open the package and resealing it with an elastic band:

And the box, let’s have a look at that:

There’s a bit too much of that spongey fat font for my liking. I’d like to see something a little bit more ‘branded’. Still.

Dual SIM? I forgot! And it’s got a touch screen. Forgot about that too. Replete with stylus, I might add. I won’t be using that myself.

And the specifications on the side? Let’s have a look:

And a closer look at the device picture:

Always time for a bit of an arty shot:

And now, let’s open the box!

Woosh. A manual! I wasn’t really expecting a manual — your average purchaser of a zzzPhone, I reckon, could probably get by without one. I suppose it’s a necessary addition.

Under the manual? Here’s the phone itself:

Closer:

Yes those are chinesey looking characters — or are they Arabic? — on each of the keys. Interesting.

And two batteries:

Smart. They’re big mothers too.

Speaking of big — that’s the zzzPhone too. It’s a big device. It fits lightly in your hand, but it’s a little bigger than your average Nokia.

It’s actually Sony Ericsson P990 sized. That’ll be your camera there:

3.2 mega pixel, Carl Zeiss?

This zzzPhone would definitely double as a useful anti-mugger device too:

Here it is next to my Blackberry Curve:

I opened up the back. There’s the two sim card slots:

Plus a 256mb (supplied) SD card:

The stylus is bottom right…

It’s a non-standard (at least, to me, anyway) port. I was hoping for standard mini-USB so that I only need to continue to carry one lead. Slightly different with the zzzPhone:

You get a USB cable and charger in the box.

And I got this handy ‘cell phone flash light’ that you tape/glue to the back of your phone:

A wee gift!

The battery is a huge mother. I’m pleased you get two. Here it is pictured next to the Samsung BlackJack II battery:

Let’s switch it on, eh? I spoke to Jesse earlier wondering why the device was able to operate even when I’d taken the battery out. That really confused me. “It’s got a 20 minute integrated backup battery,” he replies, “Although the newer version we’re about to launch doesn’t,”. That’s a brilliant offering, a 20-min bit of extra juice to rely on, he goes on, “I was watching a movie on that little battery alone.”

Smart.

I’m liking the idea of having two ‘call’ buttons to press — button 1 calls, I imagine, with your primary sim card and vice versa:

If the device itself is big, then so is the screen. Massive. Bright. Nice:

I set up the clock:

It’s running an operating system by the name of Nucleus (website). I haven’t come across that myself. The next version of the device (available soon) will work everywhere (including America) and it’ll be running Windows Mobile 6.0 (no word on 6.1 upgrade as yet).

It doesn’t, alas, work in the States yet so I’m getting SIM Access Error messages together with ‘activating’ messages. I’ll try it properly when I hit the UK later this week.

So. Well, it’s definitely real. For quite a while a lot of readers have been emailing and commenting on the site wondering when the device was going to arrive. You can go ahead and place orders now via www.zzzphone.com for the next version of the device. I’ll see if I can get hold of one of those to look at shortly.

It’d be inappropriate to comment on the day to day usability of the device at this stage. I’ve not really had much of an opportunity to use the device as yet since it’s not US compatible. But I will definitely be giving it a run-through this week and I will report back.

Even the taxi drivers in Vegas tell me that 2-3 days is enough. I’d been in the city for nearly 6 days when I decided to take a stroll through the MGM Grand on the off chance there was something interesting to be found.

As it happens, there was. As I got toward the exit I heard the roar of a lion come across the Casino sound system. This isn’t an entirely new experience. The constant jingle jangle of slot machine noises mixed in with the latest music hits seems to numb everyone, especially the fat women in oversized XXXXXXXL Vegas T-shirts, complete with genuine 40 minute old mustard & ketchup stains pulling on the slot machine levers like genetically modified oompa loompas.

I continued walking then once again I heard the roar of a Lion. I spotted a grouping of annoying looking tourists (A subcategory of German tourist, I reckoned, based on the above average sampling of male and female mullets on show) with cameras out. Then I spotted the Lion cage.

Ah yes, Vegas. Tucked away in the corner of the Grand is a large glass cage filled with polystyrene looking ‘rocks’ and, one imagines, lions, somewhere. As I walked closer, I caught sight of two animals, stretched out, lying on top of what appeared to be a glass (or strongly reinforced plastic) walk-way that led through the cage. The bonus being that you, as a puny mullet-sporting human, could stand in this walk-way and gaze up at the two huge lions dozing a few feet above.

Cameras at the ready, along with tired and overused explanations of ‘wow’. Dear me. The lions were doing the sensible thing and ignoring everything. They looking, to me — I’m no expert, mind — entirely bored out of their mind. They were doing absolutely nothing except dozing and, I felt, glancing in no small amount of pity at the tourists brandishing flashing cameras at them. There is, if you’re feeling a bit existentialist, little difference from the cheeseburger filled Texan snapping away with his $40 Sanyo and the dozing lion waiting ’til it gets fed.

I documented parts of the experience for you, dear reader. I too, jostled with the Germans and Texans and ‘got in there’ for the photo:

That, there, is a lion, doing sod all. And that, I realised, is why the exhibit owners were busy pumping a lion’s roar (different every time, I might add, they must have an array of roar samples to play every 10 minutes) into the vicinity to give some degree of excitement and authenticity.

Here, then, is a picture of the enclosure:

To the left, you see the glass walk through, yes? Do you see the lions sitting doing nothing, above the staring, gaping tourists? Right, now turn your attention to the chap on the far right inside the cage.

Yes, inside.

That caught my attention. Everyone else was busy looking at the animals. I was wondering why the chap, and a colleague, were standing 10ft away from a pair of very certainly wannabe man eaters.

Even more interestingly, I noticed the chap was actually texting.

10ft away from a dozing lion and he was texting.

On a Helio Ocean, no less.

I walked through the walkway to get a closer photo.

I couldn’t get the angle to actually capture a picture of the handset, but take it from he, it was an Ocean. His chap to the left was also arsing about on his phone.

Don’t ask me what they’re doing. I imagine they are, in some way, taking care of the lions. Otherwise I can’t quite think of a decent reason for their location.

I’m willing to bet I’d have a rather challenging time knocking out a text message inside a lion cage, even if they were dosing. So, to these two chaps, I say kudos. And, er, don’t make the text message too long, eh?

I trust both chaps had their phones on silent as well. This would be the entirely wrong time for your WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO ringtone to start screaming around the cage as two annoyed lions raise their heads and stare at you intently.

In case I haven’t quite got my point across about Vegas in the previous passages, allow me to finish with this picture:

This is inside the walkway underneath the lion enclosure. Yes. That is a flat screen TV. And Yes, that TV is showing footage of the lions wandering about their plastic cage. And yes, there are people staring.

There isn’t much for the lions to do inside the small cage except sleep. So I expect the TV footage is there as a sort of apology for those who really wanted to see lions, er, doing something.

2 hours ’til I leave Vegas. Can’t wait…

What do mobile consumers really want? It’s a question that troubles me and, when I’m sat in interviews or conference calls with service providers, a question that I continually pose myself. Would someone use this? Can I see my normal mobile user (”normob”) friends using this? Could I see it gaining widespread adoption?

I regularly place myself in the middle of normobs from all walks of life. It’s a critical requirement, I think, when you’re looking at high tech, highly sexy mobile applications, devices and services on a daily basis. You can get carried away and end it’s far too easy to end up drinking the industry’s (or, indeed, your own kool-aid).

This week Jonathan Jensen is pondering the issue and focuses on cost — a massively overlooked and highly influential motivator when it comes to normobs with a pathological fear of bill shock.

Over to Jonathan:

- - -

What does a typical mobile consumer really want from their service? We know what the mobile operators are offering but does that really hit the spot with the Normobs out there (yes, there’s a theme here!). I know what I want but I’m far from being a typical consumer!

To get some answers I sat down my favourite Normob, Jo, and asked her if she was happy with her mobile service. The answer - generally yes, but …

Jo’s biggest issue is around tariffs.

She pays a fixed fee for a minutes and texts bundle which seems fair value, except … lots of stuff isn’t included.

She needs to call a 0800 number to place an order – that’s free from a landline but from a mobile it’s a chargeable call and it’s outside the tariff bundle.

She wants to send me a photo of something she’s seen in a shop – that’ll be extra because picture messages aren’t included.

She’s going to update Twitter by SMS – they use a 07 ‘mobile’ number that her operator has deemed is not only excluded from her SMS bundle but is charged at a premium rate of 25p! Instead she could go to the Twitter website and update there but that’ll be a chargeable data call – no idea what that’s going to cost.

Still, she can call me on my Truphone number – hang on that’s apparently not a ‘real’ mobile number so that’s extra too. And so it goes on.

Suddenly her tariff bundle is looking a bit flaky! Lots of stuff is excluded and Jo’s got no idea what her monthly bill is going to look like.

What Jo wants is to pay a fixed fee that includes all her usage up to a given value. If she hits the limit she can stop spending that month or pay a bit extra. If the monthly fee isn’t enough for her regular monthly expenditure then she can opt to pay a higher monthly fee.

What would also help Jo here would be weekly SMS alerts summarising her expenditure by calls, SMS and data so she always knows where she is.

She could probably go to her operator’s website and dig out the information but why should she? Surely her mobile operator could push the information out to her handset.

And handset manufacturers should also take note. Jo’s big handset gripe is around the T9 predictive text dictionary.

Why, after about 10 years of T9, can a user still not edit the dictionary? I’ve shown Jo the hack to delete the dictionary folder (when you’ve installed a S60 file browser) but that’s definitely outside the Normob world.

And while we’re on the subject of T9, why doesn’t it present the most used word for any given combination of letters instead of coming up with that bizarre word you used once.

So, something for both operators and handset manufacturers to think about; this is what one customer would really like to see.

- - -

Just one customer. That’s what just one customer would like to see. If you sit down any normob and get them into the correct mindset, you’ll get similar kinds of feedback that Jonathan got from his friend Jo. It doesn’t take much — just a few pointed questions — to set off a waves of niggly complaints and annoyances.

When I read the paragraph relating to ‘fixed fee that includes ‘all her bill usage up to a given value’ I immediately thought T-Mobile UK Flext. That’s exactly what that plan offers. Although there are tons of exclusions such as 0800 numbers and so on. In this area I think the industry is unlikely to give a monkeys. If anything, the industry are dependent on this kind of bill farming as it’s where they’re able to make sizable ARPU increases in the short term. Alas, the short term view totally winds up the consumer making them highly resistant to trying anything that costs money. The industry would be far better served with their customers paying money for something they really want to use and value, rather than being stung for silly prices to 0800 numbers.

Anyway, that’s a discussion for another day. Jonathan, thank you for that!

You can read more from Jonathan at his site, www.sevendotzero.com.

Maybe it’s the 24 hour sound of money being well and truly spunked up the wall as you walk through the casinos or the plastic nature of Las Vegas that gets to you after one or two days — whatever the catalyst, James Whatley has found himself undergoing several epiphanies this week, most notably when it comes to S60, Facebook and phone user interfaces. Hit it, James…

- - -

And before you all call ‘April Fool’, this idea came around when I was invited along by Debi Jones of Mobile Jones to attend a roundtable discussion hosted by Airwide and MobileMessaging2.com entitled:

“Web 2.0 comes to Handsets — New Issues and Upside for Monetizing the Mobile Web”

It started with a brief overview from Steve Bratt, CEO of the W3C about Web 2.0 and the similarities with the Mobile industry etc… And then we broke out into four separate groups to each discuss particular questions.

Our table had the not so easy task of answering the following:

“What are the three capabilities consumers will want in the future and what can the mobile industry do to help enable this?”

So, aside from the obvious ‘Consumers have NO IDEA what they want!’ rant I could’ve launched into, I was sitting there with a few folk chucking around such themes as personalized UI, location-based services and, my personal favourite, passive contextual awareness, (I’ll come back to this one at a later date).

Chatting away, sharing ideas, brain working overload… I had an epiphany:

“Scrap S60, give me facebook!”

The people at the table looked at me a little dumbfounded and I went onto explain it further…

“Rip out the standard UI in this handset (waving N95) put in facebook!”

The comments came thick and fast:

“Well, I like MySpace. Can’t I have a MySpace phone?”

“Didn’t Helio do that already?”

“Yeah. But you customize the UI couldn’t you? Give users that choice…”

“Ok. Give users the choice to customize their UI…”

“Blah blah blah…”

And that was cool and ok, it answered one of the three things we had to find and stuff… However, I think this is something that bears further thought.

What is Facebook?

By its own definition it is a Social Tool.

(Not a Social Network – you and your friends are the Network, not facebook – remember that one kids).

What is a mobile phone?

Also a Social Tool.

So my question is this: Why not converge the two?

I’ve spoken about facebook in the past and how the users can be segmented in different ways etc. But fundamentally, at the most basic level, facebook is when you think about it an extremely active contacts/address book, right?

Right.

Pour that into a handset and what do you get?

I’ll show you:

Your Contacts? Sync’d with facebook Friends.
But not only do I get numbers I also get pictures, updates, status etc.

Your Calendar? Sync’d with facebook Events.
But you get more detail, who’s coming etc (all linked across the different apps etc)

Your Games? Scrabulous anyone?!

What about SMS/Email/MMS? You’ve all sent a facebook message before right?

Your Camera? No change here. Oh, aside from photos being stored to your facebook gallery.

And Fun apps? If you read this blog I’m going to assume you’ve installed an app onto your phone before. You may well have even installed an app on your facebook too… see the link?

Don’t forget the Internet? Ahh… Here’s the killer see.

Facebook currently has no internet per se. No search. No Google box etc… That would be your link off and out of the facebook garden as it were. But hey, you never know with fb – they may well have Search on their roadmap.

Thinking about mobile search, searching the handset, like the current desktop search on the N95 or ‘Finder’ on any MacBook, would be like facebook!

Searching for ‘mobile geeks’ and i’d be shown the event, the group and also any and all of the contacts in my address book that are part of said party.

What about my favourite app, Jaiku? Build it in.

Status updates on facebook? The mini-feed? That becomes your life-stream right there.

It could work.

Think about it.

The number one thing that people hate about changing handsets is relearning the UI: “Aww man, I’m still getting used to it” etc…

What if the UI was the same?
What if you knew how to use the UI before you took the thing out of the box because it’s the same UI that you use every day on Facebook?
And all that’s before we even begin to talk about the trusted relationship that the consumer already has with facebook as a brand…

…

…

Ok, so – taking a breath – maybe the web UI is not built to work on a phone. Maybe having a ‘facebook phone’ would be almost as bad as Helio’s ‘MySpace Phone’.

But why not have the facebook engine running underneath a very basic UI. With all the information embedded and layered underneath each contact or event or picture, creating context sensitive content…Makes sense huh?

I guess what I’m getting at is the ideas and principles behind the semantic web, on your mobile.

It doesn’t have to be facebook. It could be anything. Just join the dots.

What do you think?

So I’m sat in the CTIA keynote hall and it’s a bit of an arse, frankly. Firstly, everyone and their dog was already here at quarter to nine in the morning (for the 9am start) so every single seat was taken. Hundreds of folk standing, and, well, there must be a good three or four thousand sat taking in the presentations. There’s a continuous Blackberry glow across the hall as people busily check their email every few minutes.

I’m typing this as the top chap at the FCC (called Kevin Martin) — very young looking, by the way — is giving his keynote. It would, unfortunately, be a lot easier if he’d just emailed the text to everyone instead of reading it. I suppose you have to read text when you’re from the FCC incase you go off-piste and end up with a wardrobe malfunction. It’s very annoying though — and not just limited to the FCC chap — when people are reading their speeches and they re-re-repeat words. Winds me up. I can’t quite remember much about what Kevin said as a result.

Lowell McAdam, Chairman of CTIA, jumped on stage and talked without the aid of a written speech. At least, it looked that way. Lowell was at pains to point out that the American wireless industry is all about the consumer. COUGH. Hardly. In fact, I could have rebutted almost single point he made. He painted a very positive viewpoint of a flexible and happy-to-help industry, delighted to reduce prices for the consumer. And he made it very clear that outside regulation in the American industry is highly unwelcome. I think a better definition would be words to the effect of: backward, poor customer service, stuck in a 1970s telecommunications monopoly mindset.

Dan Schulman, the CEO of Virgin Mobile USA popped on stage wearing what looks like a sweatshirt and slacks. No beard though. His job is to introduce everyone’s personal friend, Sir Richard Branson. He doesn’t bother reading an introduction. He knows what he wants to say. He gives an overview of Richard and within moments, the man himself bounds on stage, relaxed, rested, looking a billion dollars.

He grabs a glass of water, sticks his hand in his pocket, takes a deep breath and says hello. Within moments he’s charmed the audience and he starts chatting. Just chatting. He weaves a story about his background, the Virgin brand, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Rail and on, touching on Virgin Mobile now and again. There were a lot of promos, a few (no doubt well practiced) jokes (”UK Patent Office: “The brand ‘Virgin’ is too rude to patent.” Branson: “Surely it’s the exact opposite of rude?”) along with an announcement about Virgin/Google’s joint plan to put 30 people along with a Noah’s Ark of animals on Mars in 10 years — called Virgle. Heh. Wired has all the details or go straight to the horse’s mouth here.

Branson made a key point about the cyclical nature of the world economy. In today’s tough (or about-to-be-tough) times, he pointed to consumers tightening their belts as both a challenge and an opportunity. We shall see. Is prepaid the way to go during the downturn?

Sir Richard is giving one of the keynotes at CTIA Wireless this morning. I’m heading off early to make sure I get some sort of seat. I hope there’s power for the laptop

I wonder what he’ll be saying? If there’s a chance for questions at the end, I am definitely going to try and ask him what mobile phone he uses.

Maybe he’s like the President or Prime Minister and doesn’t actually bother? (Tony Blair only got his first mobile after leaving 10 Downing Street).

[UPDATE: April fool! So, it's past midday in London therefore, I'm afraid to report that, as per the text below, this was an April Fool]

Google, the world leader in search, has, this morning, announced the purchase of Vodafone’s entire business, in a deal valued at approximately $200 billion — a substantial premium over Vodafone’s $160bn market value yesterday. Presumably to make the deal happen and dissuade other bidders from getting ideas.
The deal gives Google direct control of the mobile handsets (and, of course, mobile search revenue) of at least 250 million wireless subscribers around the world. Arun Sarin, due to speak at CTIA Wireless tomorrow, is reportedly delighted with the deal — he is to become VP of Global Wireless Strategy for the new entity.

No name changes as yet. It’ll still be called Vodafone but off the record, quite a few people reckon that we’ll shortly be calling Vodafone by the moniker, ‘GW’ (that is, ‘Google Wireless’). All handsets will have a direct Google search box on the standby screen — no messing around with having to load up web browsers and get connectivity before Googling. It’s a good idea. Sergey and the team at Google have made no secret that the mobile web is the way ahead. Just like they’ve done previously with huge search deals to lock in traffic (I’m thinking AOL, etc.), it makes sense to lock-in a whopping percentage of the Western economy’s wireless subscribers.

Vodafone, previously looking to standardise on a few platforms, including Symbian, is shortly to implement Google’s Android across most of it’s handsets. That should be exciting. Particularly since Nokia have apparently agreed to support Android on their upcoming N-Series line-up — in a bit of an unexpected bloody nose to the S60 chaps.

The best news is for those triple-A-rated mobile customers who, despite being on 35 pound/month contracts, always seem to get monthly invoices in the 150 pound range. Well, no more. Starting August 1st, all data and standard calls are free. You simply pay a standing $10 or £10/month fee for your subscription. Google doesn’t want your per minute or per meg data revenues. It wasn’t your supernormal search revenues. That should put the cat amongst the pigeons.

Bring on August 1st. Congratulations to all at the Google Wireless Team and, of course, nice one to the Vodafone Direction Team. That’s a pretty good exit and I’m sure the market will be delighted.

Presumably Google will shortly own half of Verizon — but no word yet on whether they’ll do a full acquisition of ‘America’s most reliable network’ as yet.

More on this soon.

Oh, and remember it’s April 1st in London right now, ergo this post is 100% inaccurate… let’s be clear — ONE HUNDRED PERCENT — inaccurate. April Fool.

But geez it would have shaken up the industry if accurate, eh?

I managed to miss most of the launch coverage of O2’s new combined backup and blogging platform ‘Bluebook‘ (technically a re-launch, as another service had existed under that name previously), but spotted the beautiful advert on TV and decided to try it out.

The marketing majors on the backup feature - all your text and picture messages either sent or received will be backed-up, you can also backup your contacts (as offered by Mobyko and others) and share some of this content with friends. On the site itself, ‘Blueblog‘ has a little more prominence offering a Moblog-like mobile blogging platform. On the face of it this is excellent - a network operator is embracing mobile blogging and content sharing whilst providing a really valuable ‘zero-effort’ backup medium for texts and content… However, it’s not quite that cut and dried - I’m giving this a ‘C+ Must try harder’ grade at present.

—-

Sign-up: O2 are really marketing this at the moment and there’s a large advert on O2.co.uk. I follow it and a fairly standard sign-in / register screen awaits. I missed the small-print on the bottom left that explains that if you already have an account on the O2 website (I do) I can use those credentials, so I create a new account. I’m really impressed when I notice the prompt: “You can register any mobile phone for any network”… Good show O2!

I decide to try this and enter the details of my Three handset - it has more content to be backed-up any way. It beeps receipt of a validation SMS and all is going well…

Damn. It appears that ‘any network’ means ‘any network that is O2′. Great. There’s no way around this so I have to start over with my O2 handset. Not impressed - and I’m not the only one. On a second try it completes, but not without a few odd errors:

It also later gives-up on handset selection for contacts backup. This only works for certain Nokia and SonyEricsson models (I am using the iPhone), I’m guessing using the ubiquitous SyncML approach.