Sniff goes live officially in the United Kingdom next month. It’s available on mobile operator o2, so anyone with an o2 handset reading, I’d appreciate you trying it out. I’ve got an o2 Blackberry, so theoretically I can try it out when I’m back in the UK. (I’d be dead impressed if you were able to ‘locate me’ with Sniff and you were sent a map of my Las Vegas location)

That’s what Sniff is all about. Friend Finder. You can, via text message, look up where your friends are in some detail.

Here’s what the release says:

sniff is a permission-based application that lets consumers locate their close friends in real-time, automatically, anytime and anywhere with their mobile phone or from Facebook. Additionally, sniff is the first ever Facebook application to automatically locate friends in real-time using mobile location technology. With seamless Facebook integration, finding friends is just a few clicks away.

Once consumers receive permission from their friends, using sniff is as simple as sending an SMS text message. sniff provides consumers with a detailed map view of their friends’ locations - making meeting up easier than ever before. sniff is already wildly popular in Sweden with over 80,000 users since its recent launch and growing rapidly.

Obviously privacy is a key issue. Every single one of those 80,000 users would have switched off right away if you weren’t able to completely configure your privacy settings. The ‘er, I’m at the office’ explanation won’t work too well when your girlfriend can see you’re at the pub with one text message.

CEO Brian Levin has a handle on it though, commenting:

“We are very mindful of our users’ privacy, with varying permission levels, sniff allows consumers to manage if, when and how their location information is shared with other parties. In addition, users have the ability to set-up notifications via SMS of key events such as being located or invited by another user to be part of the sniff network.”

It’s not a free application. You have to pay for it via a premium rate text message. Fair enough. If Sniff are using location based services, they’ll be paying THROUGH THE NOSE to the UK carriers for this. Off the street, your average LBS lookup costs 10p. Buy in bulk and you’ll get some discount. (But the idiot operators don’t quite get proper pricing strategies, we know this.)

It won’t just be o2 in the UK. They’ll have all major networks live soon — and they’ll be expanding to the States, Canada and France in due course.

I’ve been waiting for a decent location based friend finder style service for a while. Something like Dodgeball but that doesn’t need you to specifically update your location all the time.

Here’s how it works:

50p per sniff, eh? Hmm. I think that might be a leeetle bit too expensive when you factor in the ’standard network message rate’ which may well bring the total consumer cost to near 60/65p per ’sniff’. That would be positively annoying. But it’s the idiot operators charging per lookup that is the problem.

Or it’s a really stupid model. Someone told me you can get ‘unlimited lookup’ queries from the UK networks for a flat 2 grand a month. If that’s the case, charging nearly 60p a go for a lookup is highly, highly silly.

But, let me step back down off my pricing high-horse and see how it gets on.

More at www.sniffu.com.

Closing out the Mobile World Congress, Ericsson has unveiled its Multimedia Communication Suite, which will be integrated into newer devices such as the W760. The suite is part of the address book and allows users to control the flow of information to friends, including presence with avatars, photos, and will even allow users to share applications.

According to Claes Odman, head of Multimedia Solutions at Ericsson, “We see from studies that the communication patterns are changing, messaging type of services is dominating and the demand for enriched communication is here. With our Multimedia Communication Suite we can take the consumer experience one step further, making it easier with intuitive interface and allow people to communicate in a richer way.”

Sounds good to me. Also encouraging is the fact that MCS is in line with the industry standard of Rich Communication Suite, which is a group of operators, infrastructure, and handset manufacturers which have joined up to make sure the future of mobile communications is interoperable between each other.

Checked out Swirl Connect at all? It’s a location-based mobile friend finder service. It enables users to stay connected with friends, experience what their friends experience as it happens, meet new folk on the go and find out about places of interest nearby.

Speaking of places of interest — that’s what Swirl’s been working on. They’ve now got 100,000 ‘placemarks’ (Placemarks are places of interest than can have shared photos and notes posted to them) which means that almost any US user is going to, I imagine, find a placemark that they’re familiar with. Smart move.

Another smart move? Well, the Swirl team have made sure that almost every single Motorola handset is supported — along with Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson (although no N95 as yet, it seems). Good policy, given the huge, huge handset population in the States.

Here are just some features:

* View connection status for your buddies, and find out if they’re online or mobile
* Find your friends’ locations or destinations on a map
* View the photos your friends have taken and the places they’ve visited
* Get real-time alerts of your friends’ activity
* Instant message friends on their PCs or mobile phones
* Group chat with your friend list
* Use Quick Talk to phone friends (like Push to Talk)
* Share photos, places, and notes with other Swirl members

Just downloaded it…

Jaiku, one of the best mobile applications on the planet, has had a fairly compehensive update. I’m going to write a lot more about this later on.

Link: Jaikido Blog

The key updates:

- The choice between longer battery life or more up-to-date presence (a much requested feature).
- Reading and writing comments from and to your contacts.
- Go back in time! Using the ’stream view’ for your contacts, you can see what they were doing and saying in the past, not just their most recent post.
- More than just Jaikus! You can also see when your contacts have posted to flickr.
- Improved presence view, to make the most of your screen real-estate.
- A whole raft of usability improvements, based on what our users have been telling us they need, including an even easier to use interface, and a progress meter, so you can see what’s happening.
- More optimal data transfer and connection maintenance, giving you more bang for your wireless data dollar.
…and all the essential (but not that interesting) stuff like bug fixes, speed improvements, that sort of thing.
- Oh, and let’s not forget - a spiffy new manual for this client.

Get it on your handset at www.jaiku.com/mobile/ (you’ll need to quickly create an account if you don’t have one already).

Not even 24 hours after I posted about Twitter, and moaned about the cost of text and the lack of a nice phone app to take care of my tweeting (as it’s called, apparently), Kevin very kindly posted the following comment:

i had similar issues w/ twitter and sms coming down the pipe so i created a java client as another alternative… no sms fees, automatic updates, advance features like replying, direct messages, auto updating , etc.

Thanks Kevin, much appreciated! I’ve installed it, had a play, and works a treat so far. You can check it out at www.tinytwitter.com - or go straight to www.tinytwitter.com/m/ from your mobile to grab a copy.

Twitter has been talked about here on SMS Text News numerous times in the past, but I’ve got to admit when Ewan asked me to write a blog entry about them, I drew a blank. I’ve heard their name, seen a bit of press coverage, and read his blog entries, but never really had a chance to play with the service. So, with it being a rainy day here in London, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

The basic premise behind Twitter is staying in touch with your friends, and keeping them updated with what you’re doing. It’s sort of like Jaiku in a way in the sense that you’re ‘micro-blogging’ your activities, and there’ve been many words written on the similarities - and differences - between the two. I won’t go into great detail comparing the two right now as I’ll be here all day

Having signed up for a Twitter account, I added my mobile by texting in a confirmation code to a +44 long number. It’s yet another service that uses the 07624 Manx numbers, so rather kindly T-Mobile charged me international text rates. Within a few seconds, I’d got a confirmation text back from Twitter, asking me what I was doing at the moment. Another text back, and another 24p, and within a few seconds my current activity was on my Twitter profile.

So far so good, but it’s a lonely existance with no friends on Twitter so I invited myself to Twitter using a different email address, signed up a separate account, and registered another mobile. Then I sent a text to Twitter from the second mobile. One confirmation text back later, and my first mobile beeped with a new text from Twitter, with details of what my ‘friend’ (ie myself on the second phone) had just posted.

I’m quite impressed with the service, but three things concern me. First, cost to me. Admittedly Twitter have recently made some changes so there’s now a mobile compatible site, but that’s a pain in the arse. I mean I have to fire up my browser on the phone, hit the site, login, type in my status, etc etc - unlike Jaiku where I just flick through to the app that’s running in the background and tap a few keys. Playing with Twitter so far whilst writing this post means I’ve racked up about six or seven texts to the 07624 number, and at international rate (thanks, T-Mobile!) I’m down by nearly £1.50. That’s not good, and would be a real barrier to me using the service regularly.

Second, how does it make money? Jaiku have an app, there’s none of this fiddling around with texts. Twitter, however, have rather kindly forked out for a stack of texts to my mobile just in the last half hour. Admittedly they’re likely to be making a penny or so from each text I send them, but no way does that cover their cost of texting me. The more people I add, and the more status updates I sent, the more expensive it’ll get to them.

The third thing is real world usage. Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed with Twitter. But how long will I realistically use it? I got a bit bored with Jaiku after a week or two, and with the aforementioned costs of running Twitter by text it won’t take long (probably til the next bill comes in) to realise it’s a rather costly way of telling everyone minute by minute what I’m doing each day.

Will Twitter last, or is it just another Web 2.0 mobile geek fad? Only time will tell..

If there’s one thing that winds me up, it’s the teleconference marketplace.

It is abysmal. Ridiculous. Ever tried organising a sodding teleconference on the fly? You can’t. It’s just impossible.

You have to arse around with pin numbers, access numbers, and 0870 take-the-piss-rate numbers.

It only works properly if you’ve got an office decked out in mahogany paneling and a very nice lady called Gemma at your beck and call to sort out all the crap in-between.

Sorry..are.. you… on… is… Is Keith?

Keith?
Yes

Keith?

Are you on Keith?

Right. Is Hetty on?

Where’s Het?
HELLO?

Oh you’re there?

Hi can anyone hear me?

Yes. Geez that’s loud. Sorry HI?

Keith, are you on?

…

God, it is just DIRE. Absolutely DIRE. The worst of it is, you’re often doing this with some of the most important telephone meetings in your business careers. At least, in my experience, anyway. I hardly ever do conference calls for normal business stuff.

The amount of times I have *GENUINELY* been sat for 30 minutes trying to get into a conference call or wait for very important people to get ON to a conference call…. it’s just terrible. It winds everyone up. It takes up a lot of time. And worst of all, it’s stupidly expensive.

It makes everyone look like school children with tin cans and bits of string.

It’s a market ripe for a bit of disruption.

And thankfully, the disruption has arrived. This morning. Today! In the form of Voible. I will be posting a lot on them — I have tombes of stuff on them and what they’re doing. It’s hugely exciting! I’ve been NDA’d up to the hilt for quite a while but now they’re coming out of stealth mode, I’ve been given permission to start rocking with some information.

Chief Executive is Ed Hodges and the two technical geniuses behind it are Dan Lane and Jay Fenton. I’m talking seriously technical. Past the Uber Geek and into the realms of proper double-hard-bastard seriously technical. Dan has a RFID chip in his arm that enables him to open his house front door just by walking up to it. I mean seriously tech!

I know Ed very well and as a result I’ve been able to act as voyeur as their service has evolved and taken shape (strange, watching — as an entrepreneur, I’m used to getting stuck into things not sitting back staring). It’s been quite a trial not being able to talk about them up until now.

If you’re wondering where Voible came from, the background is here on this post from November last year. I was raving about them then. I still am!

They’ve taken the unique voice platform that they’ve been working on for a good few years and have begun to ‘productise’ it for the mass market.

The first out the door is FlashConference. It is a bit of pure sex, it really is. I defy anyone to look at the service and not involuntarily react with an ‘ohhhh, coool’.

Let’s be clear: If you’ve got a mahogany paneled office in Mayfair, you’re probably ok getting your teleconferences setup by your PA. But for the rest of us working in the real-time business world where instant and collaborative communication is critical, the facility to setup a flash conference, from your handset in four clicks is invaluable.

Absolutely invaluable.

Ed explains it thus:

One key feature of the Voible One suite is FlashConference. This allows you to make ad-hoc conference calls instantly with the advantage of taking into account the participants presence and availability, all controlled from the mobile phone. The days of booking expensive conference calls with everybody dialing in are gone. You can now create a conference call from your mobile or participate in a conference directly, all bound together in the Voible One suite.

Here’s how it works.

1. Load up Voible. It’s a 37k applet that sits on your Symbian 3rd Edition handset. (If, by the way, you’re still using a shite Motorola, upgrade yourself from the 14th Century to the 21st Century then come back).

2. Voible interfaces with your handset’s address book. Transparently. You can’t tell any difference from the normal Nokia interface. Just put a check mark next to the folk you want to conference with.

3. Vobile does the rest. Confirm these are the folk you want in your call…

4. Then hit ‘Start FlashConference’ and the applet initiates a conference call to all participants. You’re billed near wholesale rates so it’s very cheap — as cheap as possible, basically.

Or you might like to schedule a FlashConference? If you do, everyone will be notified by text and then called at the appointed time.

Or if you want to invite someone not in your phonebook, no biggie. Just fantastic. I will use this all the time.

I can imagine walking down the road and flipping out the handset and getting both Joanne and Natalie on the phone to see how they both are and deciding when and where we’re going to meet next week.

I can visualise where I’d rely on this service to quickly connect me to the management team of one of my companies, immediately, with priority, without any arsing around.

And let’s not get into mobile presence… some of the features they’ve got coming are just breathtaking.

They’re accepting limited beta applications at the moment so if you’d like to be one of the first to try this service out, fly over to voible.com and stick in your email address.

More, much, much more on them soon.

This is rather neat — thanks to Malcolm for sending me the link. It’s a fascinating use of mobile messaging technology, location based services and social communities — all driven by text. Have a read — there’s a lot more on the link below.

Link: eblockwatch - Fight Crime using Technology. Connecting U 2 community power!

Eblockwatch has two main functions.

One is to collect information on criminal activity and turn it into intelligent data then disseminate this information to the relevant members.

The second is to assist its members through its members.
We work on the philosophy that a member must look after themselves, their loved ones and those around them and collectively we look after each other.

Eblockwatch is a network of networks. Neighbourhood watch, police task teams, specialized industrial support teams, security companies and police reservists, South African Women’s Agricultural Union with its 10000 members scattered across South Africa, Township patrols, and most importantly over 29000 ordinary South Africans.

Each member is requested to spread the word as the more members in the loop the safer our members become.

While being a member of eblockwatch is free, we do offer a panic button facility for your cell phone and SMS alerts for crimes reported in your area.

Caught this via CeeDee’s Jaiku…

Link: Disney Mobile shares subscriber stats | News.blog | CNET News.com

In a press release issued over the weekend, the company said 30 percent of its subscribers make use of its GPS location-tracking services. Parents who use the tracking feature do so about every other day. The company also said that about 30 percent of Disney Mobile’s location requests are made from the Web and 70 percent from the handset.

Saw this comment on the Podtech article about Radar…

Link: Demo of photo conversations on Radar.net | ScobleShow: Videoblog about geeks, technology, and developers

By Raimo van der Klein | April 5th, 2007 at 10:51 am Nice.. Big competitor for Jaiku

Nonsense! It’s nowhere NEAR a competitor.

Stefan of Ringnokia.com posted this link recently about Radar.net. Here’s the video interview of the CEO:

I’m going to check it out. My first instinct is that I want all my pictures on Flickr. Or on Moblog. Not necessarily on Radar.net.

My next issue is I’d like it all on an application, not a mobile web page…..

But. Open mind, open mind. I shall take a look!

My friends aren’t quite getting this whole nano or picoblogging thing. I think nanoblogging is a better term. People know what that means. Picoblogging, on the other hand… well… it’s a bit techie.

I had to text Ed and and tell him to update his Jaiku. Which sort of defeats the objective, doesn’t it?

Everyone else on my list is either offline (shouldn’t be allowed) or … well… yes, they’re offline. My dad is getting it. Now and again, that is. At least he’s got the application on, though.

Hetty, well, she was using it really well with me — and then — disaster! I happened to mention that she should look out for her data bill, being a Vodafone user. At £2.35 a meg, that’s a shocker of a potential bill. So she’s stopped using it temporarily.

I’m a bit alone on Jaiku. No one’s using it yet! Come on folk!

Right, I talked to Hetty about her suspending use of Jaiku. I asked if it was just the data costs that stopped her using it. Her answer?

Yep all cos of the costs. I liked it but would only use it if it was free. Certainly not worth paying for.

Arse. She’s right, of course. At £2.35 a meg, who would? But it cuts deep into my mobile soul to read ‘Certainly not worth paying for’. From a fiscal point of view, she’s correct. But alas she’s applied the costs of the (Vodafone) data to Jaiku and stopped using it. How disappointing.

This is a super, super example of how the data pricing, particularly in the UK, is really nailing the mobile market. When people get bill-shock (or in this case, pre-bill shock), they generally react negatively. In this case, all the good that was being done for Jaiku, for the mobile market in general, was wiped out immediately. The application was simply switched off.

(That is, until she gets a better deal….)

I’ve come up with a cunning plan to test out Jaiku to see just exactly how it works.

I have created a Jaiku username called ’smstextnews’ (feel free to add). The moment of truth will be when I get to my Hotel in Hartlepool. I want to see if Jaiku picks up the cell id labels from it’s database or whether it is entirely user programmed. I’ve defined all the cells in that area you see.

Ahh, but they’re T-Mobile cells that I’ve defined. Could be a problem. We shall see, eh?