Alfie Dennen, ever at the forefront of mobile technology, sent me a note about another service he’s involved with: Peekabootv.com. 

It’s been very much in stealth mode until a day or so ago and it’s now available for one and all to enjoy at http://wap.peekabootv.com via your nearest mobile browser. (See the screenshot to the right).

Similar in concept to 3’s Seemetv offering, Peekabootv.com enables users to generate cash by uploading their own content and allowing others to download it.  For example, I could go out now and start taking some wicked video footage of some skateboarders and upload it to Peekabootv.com — you’d then pay a few pence to view my videos
(a portion of which, I receive back).

It’d be no doubt far more interesting and far more profitable for me as the content owner if there were some sort of skin involved.  I’m thinking naked cheerleader skateboarding, for example.  But I digress.

There’s a lot more to the offering.  If you’ve got a good audience of mobile users, simply give the chaps at Peekabootv.com a call and they’ll implement a custom version for you.  Rather useful if you’re interested in exploiting your existing communities and increasing ARPU at the same time. 

Take out your phone, point it to wap.peekabootv.com and give go…

If I read Justin’s latest email correctly, they’ve now given Mobileglu users the ability to send pictures *to* Flickr as well as view them.  Very cool indeed.  I’ve just re-enabled my flickr account and I’m going to try this out shortly.

I wonder if Justin and the team there couldn’t do something with Doug Richard’s new Hotxt.  It seems that if you combined both Hotxt, Mobileglu and BuddyPing, you’d have a super dooper product set.  In fact it looks like an ultra compelling next step for Hotxt, Juize or Crickee: keep the punters on the application, keep them using it.  Give them more and more reasons to not to click the ‘write new message’ link from the main phone menu.

If I meet anyone connected with the mobile industry, I always ask them if they can give me a hot recommendation.  Just a few sentences on a company, service, product or person that they really rate in the marketplace.  No limits.  It’s always interesting to see what people suggest.  My latest ‘hot’ recommendation comes from David Murphy of Mobile Marketing Magazine.  He’s chosen to highlight a ‘hot’individual — in the form of Jonathan Bass, Managing Director of mobile marketing agency, Incentivated.

Here’s what David had to say:

As a company, they seem to be doing some great work and are active on the conference circuit, promoting mobile as a channel.  (I should declare at this point that they are one of my advertisers!) When I had the idea for Mobile Marketing Magazine six months ago, Jonathan was the only agency person I spoke to who wanted to meet me, took a real interest in what I was doing, and more than anyone else in the agency field, has come good on his promise to feed me stories whenever he has anything to talk about. And he knows his stuff.

Dataserve, Livingwell, British Airways — the last three client press releases on the Incentivated website!  They can’t be doing too badly ;-)  A quick Google and I found this interview with Jonathan, featuring his picture. 

Plus: If I was ever going to go back to having a proper office (I prefer the flexibility of being a barbarian at the gate, working from the laptop on the beach), I’d certainly like to hold fort at No. 1 Love Lane (the Incentivated London headquarters address).

Link: Communities Dominate Brands.

You called a special number to join in the mobile karaoke. You sang your song into the recording. You then listened to it, that you were satisfied with it. Then you entered your song. And others would listen to the songs and vote.

Conceptually this is brilliant. And what of the usage? Finland has a
population of only 5 million people. 1,862 brave Finns sang songs into
Mobile Karaoke to join into this common man’s Idols contest. 150,000
separate individuals called in to listen to these songs, to vote on
them ! 

And the whole activity generated 1.95 MILLION separate
listening/voting sessions in Finland. More than the total traffic
generated by the voting activities of the "real" Finnish Idols show on
TV. And obviously congratulations to Mea Karppinen, the lady who won
this contest.

Fascinating — absolutely fascinating!  I know about 10 people who would use this immediately, and I do mean immediately.  Then my whole group of friends would go in and listen, guaranteed!

Check out the entire post at Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore’s blog, Communities Dominate Brands.

Link: 160Characters Association.

This is the third annual 160 Characters Mobile Messaging Awards run in association with Informa Telecoms and Media. In 2005 there were more than 110 entries from 23 countries on 5 continents - see here for the 2005 winners and the 2005 short list.

If you’ve provide any sort of mobile technology or service, I strongly recommend entering these awards.  That’s not just because my company won an award there a few years back! ;-)  Unlike many, these awards are judged by a proper expert panel of people who do know what they’re talking about.  I look forward to seeing the shortlist and the winners as it’s always an interesting result.  Far better than the oscars and none of the tears too. 

Here’s the panel this year: -

• Mike Short, Chairman MDA and VP Technology for 02
• Angel Gambino VP commercial strategy and digital media, MTV Networks UK
• Marek Pawlowski, editorial director at PMN and MEX conferences
• Mark Smith,  Communications Director, GSMA
• Guido Gybels Director of New Technologies, RNID
• Paul Walsh CEO, Segala M Test
• Philippe Herbert Partner of BANEXI VENTURES PARTNERS
• Mike Grenville, founder and chairman of 160 Characters

The entry deadline is 28th April (details here) — don’t wait until the last moment like we did (which caused a heck of a lot of stress on our part). 

Here are the categories:

1. Best Customer Device, Accessory, Application or Software for text, email or image messaging
   
   Judges will look for the device that stands out as having messaging
   friendly features such as making text input easier for users, and or
   the capture, storage and sharing of images.

    

2. Most effective network Infrastructure or platform for SMS and/or MMS
   Awarded to the product that has enhanced the existing messaging
   network. This service will provide greater volume capacity, security or
   reliability.

    

3. Best messaging application: Consumer
   Awarded to the company with the product or service that has stimulated the use of messaging by consumers.

    

4. Best messaging application: Business
   Judges will
   be looking for innovative and practical ways that enterprises large or
   small have been able to make the best use of mobile messaging in their
   business using this application.

    

5. Best messaging application: Public Sector or "not for profit"
   Awarded
   to an organisation that has used mobile messaging with best effect to
   provide an effective information or feedback service, alerts or
   awareness campaign.

    

6. Best new mobile email and/or IM application(NEW)
   New
   messaging types go mobile and the judges will be looking out for the
   application that makes it easy to use on a mobile device.

    

7. Most useful new M2M messaging application  (NEW)
   As well as being used by humans, there are many ways that SMS can be
   used such as for remote metering, field data, health and transport
   telematics. Judges will want to see the most useful machine to machine
   real world application of SMS.

    

8. Award for the biggest impact of mobile messaging 
   In this category the judges will be looking for either a messaging
   service or the application of mobile messaging at an event or other
   project. As well as SMS it may also include MMS and mobile email.

I don’t think we’ve got anything that would qualify as an entry ourselves.  I reckon Moblog, BuddyPing or Mobileglu should be contenders.

I was catching up with Oli Barrett this afternoon. He’s always been heavily involved in the mobile and interactive industries.  The latest venture that he’s involved in is SockRush.com — not quite your high end mobile technology start-up — instead, a wicked service that sends you 4 pairs of socks for under a tenner, whenever you want them … OR you can have them send you a load every month.  Really innovative!  This will fix a lot of annoying problems for a lot of people I know

Anyway, I challenged Oli to give me his viewpoint on the best (hot) mobile application, service or company that really stuck in his mind recently.  He meets a ton of people in and out of the industry — it’s always useful to get his perspective.

Here is his answer:

I love 82ask.com because it’s so beautifully simple.  Text them any question and they’ll text you back the answer for a quid.  Brilliant! I use it a couple of times a week when I’m out and about, away from Google, and need a quick answer to something.  A mobile service which saves me time – how refreshing!

Oli Barrett, Sockrush.com

You know he’s right.  I’ll need to use it more often I really will. 

I had a note from Jonathan Madnick to let me know about his super service: US Shortcode Whois in which he’s listing every single US shortcode number, it’s vanity alternative (e.g. 20369 = "20FOX"), its website and its general purpose.

Not only is this a super reference resource, it’s an excellent record of what’s going on in the US shortcode marketplace.  For instance, I’d never come across Pop Solutions (22767) before.  Also interesting to see that Lagardere, for example, have two shortcodes to their names for the purposes of text chat. 

Very worthwhile, very smart.  This is definitely one of those sites to bookmark and refer back to. 

Incidentally, if you know of a US shortcode that’s not listed, drop Jonathan a note via the site and let him know. 

Find it here: http://www.usshortcodeswhois.com/

I’m not sure if something like this exists in the UK — last time we needed a UK shortcode, Nick Ris at MX Telecom whacked me over a spreadsheet of the available ones.  Crucially it didn’t list the ones taken nor show what they did.

BURNING hot in the middle of sunny England is Mobileglu from the makers of BuddyPing. 

I often walk about this world thinking that many people in the mobile industry are on a different planet.  When I see new product offerings I’m often staggered that people would let it go live let alone have the confidence to call it revolutionary, or worse, call it a mobile portal ("walled garden") and expect you to pay £3 to view some busty babe.  Stupid ideas inhabit the planet and the industry and wind me up something chronic. 

So it’s with delight that I got a mail from Justin pointing out the existence of Mobileglu.  There’s nothing to see quite yet, but don’t think this is vapourwear at all.  I witnessed the sheer speed and quality of the development that went into BuddyPing over the past months so if that’s anything to go by, Mobileglu should be really exciting to behold.

The thing I find most exciting is the way in which Justin and his team are able to get inside the mind of a mobile user and understand what they want.  This is not design by comittee.  What’s more, they take your feedback and act upon it.  The next day. 

So picking this text from the Mobileglu homepage:

Do you ever wish you had access to your life on the web on your mobile in one place ?

Yes!

 

mobileglue brings together del.icio.us, flickr, upcoming.org, and all
your feeds into one mobile application? mobileglu does it all for you:

Oooh baby

• mobileglue will pull the data from your flickr, upcoming.org and del.ici.ous accounts
• after optimising the data, it will then present it using a little java application on your phone
• and it doesn’t cost a penny!

I can’t wait to see it.

Visit http://www.mobileglu.com and register your email to be notified when there’s something to see! 

I was just having a look at Alfie’s blog and came across this blog post:

VOIPSTUNT: errr. Hang about, so this gives me *free* calls to any landline in 37 countries, *and* I get a free VOIP in number?

Ok, this I have to try. More later.

The site he’s referencing is www.voipstunt.com.  I’ll give it a go and see if it isn’t some April Fools joke!   Nothing like a bit of competition to keep the market moving. 

VNUnet is carrying a story confirming Microsoft has managed to get Sony Ericsson to license the Exchange ActiveSync protocol to:

..Enable wireless synchronisation between Exchange Server 2003 and Sony Ericsson’s forthcoming P990 and M600 smartphones.

I’ve marked this as hot because getting your contacts on to a Sony is extremely annoying.  Their proprietary stuff just doesn’t work that well……… I tried it with my K700i and well, I only managed to get 700 of my 3,500 contacts on it.  That’s useless to me. REALLY useless. 

So I hope that non Exchange users such as myself will be able to use ActiveSync on a stand-alone M600 to get my contacts and calendar synched?  If not, I’ll come back and mark this blog COLD!

Link: Here

Another hot one for today.  So I’m not an o2 user.  I don’t know anyone who uses o2.  That’s apparently 15 million people who I don’t know at all.  Weird, eh?  I’m sure someone in my address book actually uses o2, but I’m not aware of it. 

Anyway I thought it was time to mark this as a hot service:  o2 business will allow you unlimited calls to anyone else on o2 for just £21.91 a month.  I imagine that’s excluding VAT.

I’m marking this as hot because of what it represents.  I really don’t think any of us should be paying per minute charges to talk to someone else on our supplier’s network.  Not when wi-fi and voip are catching up quick.  When London’s completely wi-fi, I’ll be the one walking about with a voip handset paying nothing per minute to talk to my colleagues instead of paying upwards of 50p a minute on some service plans.

I like the way the market is moving.  I’m waiting for the other networks to follow suit.  Otherwise I’m swapping myself and everyone I know to o2. 

All the details on the o2 unlimited service plan: Here

I had to do another note on BT’s recently upgraded SMS to landline service.  I was listening to the Chris Moyles podcast last night (www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/) and they’d sent a few texts to a landline and recorded Tom Baker’s voice delivering the message.

It is officially a hot service!

Hats off to the folks at BT.  It’s phenomenally good, really well pronounced and delivered.  Previously, with that robotic woman, you could basically make out the message but you had to listen carefully.  Now, the new service with Dr Who (or, if you like, the guy from Little Britain) voicing, it’s phenomenally good quality.  REALLY good. 

All you have to do is send a text to a landline number and it’ll be converted and automatically read by Tom Baker. 

The only trouble: Well… as a Little Britain fan, I’m now used to Tom Baker’s voice delivering the commentary for the show.  So it’s quite funny to get a text from him.  Heh.  Excellent service.

I will need to try it and see if they’ve got it saying "Ewan" properly (i.e. "Youan").  If I’m texting anyone’s landline, I’ve always written my name ‘Youan’ just in case it read it out as Eeeee-wan.  Which isn’t the way to go.

I really enjoy talking to the movers and the shakers in the industry and seeing what’s turning them on.  It’s a great way of keeping your mind open and accepting to change! 

So first off the block is a recommendation by Ed Hodges, web 2.0/mobile strategy @ Accenture.

He says:  "My coolest gadget has to be the Nokia E70 coming out in the second quarter of 2006.  It forms part of Nokia’s new business phone range.  It’s the most complete, compact, functional phone I’ve ever seen covering all the comms spectrums with WiFI (802.11b), Bluetooth, 2 & 3G, GPRS. 

It’s real power comes from its form factor, not only are these comms technologies part of the deal, but a 2 Megapixel camera, 75 mb memory, SD expansion slot and full QWERTY keyboard are also included.  All put in a phone not much bigger than the (European) market leading 6230i.

And he continues….

Finally, as if that wasn’t enough, the E70 includes VOiP support (now that’s an interesting business model!) and integrates with Blackberry Connect and other 3rd party email push clients. Phew! what more could you want?"

I think it’s safe to assume that Ed will probably be buying this one ;-)  I had the old one of these… the 6800 I think it was, with the folding out keyboard.  Bring on the E70!

I managed to get hold of Ed this afternoon to ask him to nominate a service, piece of hardware, company or person that he reckons is hot in the mobile space at the moment.  I’m going to try and ask more movers and shakers for their recommendations in the coming days and weeks.

Meantime, I’m going to put up Ed’s suggestion in a moment.

As well as tracking SMS, mobile and related news, I wanted to highlight companies, services, products and people that are hot. 

Here’s a service I’ve been using and watching for a little while now:

buddyPing is a way to find your friends, events, venues and pretty much anything in your local area with your mobile. Just text or use the buddyPing client to tell us your location and we will automatically find any local things and tell you their location for free.

Online and *on* your phone
You update your location with a simple SMS — however with the release of the new client, things are definitely hotting up.  You can download and install this wicked little java app to continually update your locations while you’re on the move.  The whole service is very simple to use — my only regret is that at the moment, I’m hooked to my desk so I’m not changing my location much!  But when I’m out doing copious amounts of meetings from next week, I’m going to be loving it!

Phototagging
Phototags have recently been added — think a cross between Flickr, Google Maps, and del.icio.us, allowing users to bookmark your area via picture message direct from your mobile.  Smart!  I can’t wait to see how this grows. 

Justin and the team at buddyPing HQ (currently 115.2 miles away from me — courtesy of buddyPing) are really working hard on pushing the whole mobile social networking model from the geeks like me into the mainstream (Check out Justin’s blog). 

I’m username ew4n on buddyPing — go ahead and add me — I’ll see you on there!

http://www.buddyping.com