Over at FutureWatch, the official N-Gage blog, ikona has revealed that they intend to officially launch Nokia’s new N-Gage gaming platform next week sometime. Nokia originally launched N-Gage several years ago as a product line, and was laughed out of the gaming industry. With only two poorly designed handsets, games only available on physical memory cards, and the slow networks of the time, the only thing Nokia really gained out of the experience was that - experience, and a TON of market research from users.

Fast forward to now, and you’d think Nokia would be doing everything possible to ensure that the new N-Gage platform did better than the original. Thus far they’ve done good, with the platform coming in the form of a downloadable application rather than a product line, support from major publishers such as THQ and EA, and higher speed networks with lower latency for sharing stats online.

So how could they possibly botch this one? By announcing that initially the platform will only be available to owners of the unpopular N81 handset, that’s how. Given that the N81 is being marketed somewhat as a gaming phone, with dedicated gaming keys hidden in the top of the handset, it’s a likely story, and not necessarily bad.

However, the big problem is that owners of the MUCH more popular N82, N95 8GB, and N95-1 (original) handsets all have an N-Gage icon in their menus, ready for activation and hours of mindless enjoyment. So what are these people to think when they hear that N-Gage is launched, but their icons don’t work?

Thus far, the new N-Gage platform is already potentially confusing consumers once again. Not a great start.

With all the hubbub over mobile ads growing, one has to wonder what’s to come of all the billboards all over the place. And what of other real-life advertising mediums? Enter Snaptell to save the day. Snaptell enables you to use your camera phone to get ad-related content on your mobile phone.

Using your phone’s camera, snap a picture of any ad - be it billboard, magazine, you name it. Send that pic as an MMS to Snaptell and then sit and wait a few moments. You’ll receive a response with cool content, typically videos, wallpapers, and WAP links. There is an online demo ad that you can use, or you can just go driving around. Supposedly it works with packaging, CDs, and DVDs, as well.

I think this is pretty neat, and a good way to get more mileage out of those physical ad campaigns. Leave a comment letting us know what you tried it on and how the experience was.

Via press release today, Nokia announced another game for their upcoming Ngage platform, called Creebies. First, do we all remember Tomagotchi’s? The little electronic keychains that housed, well, Tomagotchi’s, which required lots of attention such as feeding them, playing with them, and generally caring for them as you would a baby or small animal. Right, so then you also remember at least one friend who got one simply to let it die?

Nokia’s bringing that sensation back, only this time it will live on your mobile handset. Available in early 2008, Creebies are small ‘things’ that will live in your Ngage-compatible handset. Creebies come with a trailer and some cash, so you can feed them, care for them, and buy them accessories (is anyone still not seeing the potential cash cow on this one?). Creebies can even breed with others via bluetooth. Somewhat creepy for a first date, if you ask me, but oh well.

Count me creeped out if this is the sort of thing that we can expect from the new Ngage.

Nokia announced earlier this year that it was buying out navigation overlords Navteq for approximately $8.1 billion. Not only does Navteq offer maps to most of the industry players, they also own Traffic.com, offering traffic updates for nearly anywhere online.

Nokia also acquired Gate5 a few years ago, and in the past year introduced Nokia Maps for S60 and Windows Mobile, a mapping application that offers full maps and tracking for free, with paid upgrades for voice-guided turn by turn directions and city guides. Nokia also introduced the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet recently, with a GPS receiver built-in and oddly using Wayfinder’s mapping software.

Currently Nokia offers 4 handsets with GPS receivers built-in, with plans to offer a more complete lineup in the future. With the purchase of Navteq, Nokia now controls most of the world’s navigation and mapping platforms, as well as a wealth of research and knowledge.

It will be fascinating to see how Nokia integrates this into their new push for services, in addition to handsets. Stockholders today approved the Navteq buyout, with Nokia paying $78 USD for each outstanding share of Navteq. The Navteq brand will remain intact after the merger.

Sprint and MySpace announced that starting in early 2008, Sprint handsets will ship with a link from their homepage to the new MySpace Mobile website, currently in beta. The deal will also put direct links to other Fox Interactive Media sites on Sprint handsets, such as RottenTomatoes and FoxSports.com.

I don’t really know that this needed an entire press release, but it’s definitely interesting that MySpace was able to score a direct link from the homepage of Sprint mobiles, and Facebook doesn’t seem to be doing the same. Obviously it’s not difficult for the user to create their own bookmark, but having the link right there on Sprint’s launch page has be big for traffic.

Makes me wonder if there is a big market for a link from the carrier’s homescreen. I wonder if Ewan will be setting up a MySpace page to maintain from his new Sprint phone.

Just finished the SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks review! Phew!

heh

heh

Blogging the Israel trip

Blogging the Israel trip

Having arrived back from Israel, it’s now time for the Heathrow Express to London!

Having arrived back from Israel, it’s now time for the Heathrow Express to London!

Today was my first full ‘blogging’ day using Wordpress after having swapped from Typepad.

Whilst Wordpress is excellent in nearly every respect, it’s absolutely pathetic when it comes to any sort of content creation. I do mean: Pathetic. I thought smarter people than me had figured all this stuff out ages ago so that when I changed, it would all work.

All I want to do is select some text from a page that I’d like to quote and hit ‘post’. Then I want a little window to pop up with the quoted text sourced - a la typepad - then I want the option to upload a screenshot.

What’s more — and now I know I’m asking the Earth — I’d like this screenshot to be thumbnailed in my post, but when you click on it, you can see it full size.

This ain’t difficult.

There’s one plugin that does half of this. Another that does 25% and another that sort of does this, but then you need to manually edit the source code to make it work.

Won’t somebody PLEASE make it all work nicely? Perhaps someone has. If you’ve any suggestions let me know.

I have seriously thought about setting up a new blog on Typepad and using their little publisher javascript thingy to do the posting on SMS Text News — then have the Wordpress blog republish the Typepad feed.

I’ll muddle on.

Oh, and another thing, the email to blog stuff doesn’t work. At all. It’s perfectly fine if you write one line of text from your Blackberry and email it. Write anything more and it goes all MIME on you and posts pages of gibberish. I know there’s solutions but, quite frankly, I’m specialising now. Division of Labour ‘n all that. I really don’t want to have to sod about in the gubbings when I’m trying to blog stuff.

Anyway I’m quite happy with Wordpress otherwise.

Was thinking of going down to work at The Blue Boar again. I dunno if the wifi connection is working there though. Is it really, really geeky to phone them and ask before going?

Probably.

If you’re reading ‘live’ — that is, within the next 30 mins of this article being published, post your decision for me live.

The question: DO I GO TO THE BLUE BOAR?

All those in favour, post the comment ‘AYE’ and list out what you want me to get at the bar for you.

Just in case, here’s a reminder: The New Directions in Mobile event held by NMK is tomorrow.

That Lobster phone is burning a hole in my mind.

I was thinking about whether I should be getting it for research purposes.

Decisions, decisions.

I’d probably use it twice.

Student must pay £1,400 for one day’s calls on lost phone

A student has been told that he must pay Orange more than £1,400 after thieves are believed to have stolen his mobile phone and made more than 1,000 calls to premium rate numbers.

In the space of 19 hours, Jonathan Barnes’s phone was used to make 1,385 calls to television quiz channels charging 90p a time. The phone also sent 261 premium text messages.

Because the 20-year-old business student took nearly a day to report his phone missing, Orange has told him that he has to pay for the calls.

Caught this one in this morning’s Telegraph. It’s a challenging one. Whatever the explanation, it isn’t good enough to wait a day before realising your phone has been stolen.

He said he realised that the phone was missing the following morning but did not ring Orange to cancel the phone until later that evening.

See, you can’t do that. Not if it’s a contract handset. It’s like noticing you’ve lost your wallet or a credit card — you have to notify them right-away.

Your average 20 year old wouldn’t be able to function without a handset nearby them so it’s certainly unusual that Mr Barnes noticed his phone was missing in the morning but didn’t call Orange to report it. Most folk would be calling Orange half to report the missing handset and half to make sure Orange sent them out a replacement handset right away!

Here’s another issue here though. What stupid, stupid, stupid mobile operator reckons that someone who normally has a monthly bill in the region of £30-£40, would seriously be making £1,500 worth of calls in one day?

That’s where Orange have screwed up. Why didn’t this pop up on their ’strange usage’ screen? Why didn’t they give Mr Barnes a call when the bill got to £500?

T-Mobile, it seems, give me about +/- £100 over my average monthly bill before dropping me a text to let me know that I”m nearing my credit limit. Should I go over this limit, I need to call them to make a payment — not necessarily the full bill, just £20 or £30 to keep me within the limit. Eminently sensible for both parties.

I wonder why Orange don’t have this? Or perhaps they do… who knows?

Bebo Mobile Coming - Mashable! 

There’s long been talk of a mobile version of Bebo, the popular social network. Now it seems that Bebo Mobile is a step closer - mobile phone group O2 is in talks with the company, although discussions are still at the early stages.

Jeremy saw Pete’s note about Bebo and forwarded it over.

Bebo Mobile could be extremely powerful, but only if it’s designed from the ground up as something people would need to use on-the-go, rather than a bit-part add-on a la MySpace and Helio’s MySpaceified handsets.

There’s a huge difference between want and need in this context. A few hundred thousand people were converted to the Helio concept which very much looked like a standard handset with a MySpace java applet installed on it.

Clearly there’s quite a challenge if even 1 million MySpace users didn’t immediately adopt it.

So, it’d be interesting to see how Bebo would deploy it’s mobile services: Do what everyone else does? (Knock something up, stick it out, hope for the best) or sit back and carefully research and evaluate what exciting mobile services could be developed to make Bebo Mobile a critical requirement for a few million people.

Chances are you, like me, already have a Bebo account. If not, you can get one at www.bebo.com.

This is a pretty good deal, I reckon. I was having a flick through the mobile operator websites this afternoon just to see what was moving. Nothing at all.

You know what, the Orange site frontpage is useless from a shopping viewpoint. They’ve done a nice job of making it into a good portal (witness the picture of a smiling Michael Schumacher after yet anther grand prix win), but it’s very difficult to immediately see if they’ve got any good offers on.

I had a quick look at the terms and conditions to see if the unlimited data bundle was still off-peak. It is. Stupid.

Anyway upon visiting the Three site I saw this (pictured) offer. It filled me full of excitement. It looks exciting! The Yahoo logo is there adding a bit of pizazz and the phone screen is showing off the Yahoo Go services. What’s more, 800 texts and 1200 minutes for £22.50 (and then £45/month after 6 months) is reasonably good. Plus you get an N73 while you’re at it. I’d be tempted.

Flytxt are hiring a VP of Product Marketing. If you’re interested, talk to Pamir Glenebe there or drop me a note and I’ll connect you.

Here’s the role description:

Mobile is big and it’s personal. One billion handsets will be sold in 2006 and every day billions of mobile phone calls are made and text messages are sent. At the same time, the mobile phone is the most personal of life aids that technology has brought us. Addressing billions of individuals while acknowledging their individuality is the biggest challenge mobile marketeers face. Flytxt’s mission is to provide the tools to meet that challenge.

Mobile is new and dramatic. It allows marketeers to tailor campaigns in new ways not possible with other media, such as targeting different messages at different times of the day and getting immediate direct feedback from consumers. It opens up dramatic new opportunities for consumers to interact with marketeers, but these can only be fully realised if the marketeers have complete freedom to design and run their campaigns the way they want to, when they want to.
v
With the best product in the market, Flytxt is looking for a first class VP Product Marketing to drive its’ marketing strategy forward. The role reports directly to the Executive Chairman. Are you the one?

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » All Women Team Takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize 

The winning project, called Blogging In Motion, combined a camera, a handbag, a pedometer and the Flickr API to create a device that takes a picture after every few steps and then automatically blogs those pictures. The device was created by Diana Eng, Emily and Audrey, pictured to the right along with the device (I’m still tracking down Emily and Audrey’s last names).

I'm particularly pleased with the comprehensive blog searching facilties built into Wordpress.  The search box is middle right on every page.  Try typing a company or a term into it and see what pops up.  

Congratulations to Danny Fletcher and team at sharpmail.co.uk. I bought The Observer today (a Sunday newspaper here in the UK) and saw a frontpage story about the service written by Lorna Martin.

Ever wanted to unite two love-lorn friends in a romantic tryst with a single, well-phrased text message?

That’s Lorna’s spin on the service - a good introduction for the general public. Although it will be interesting to see if there’s any outcry about the service.

Sharpmail’s PR have done an excellent job at minimising any potential outcry by having Danny quoted as saying that they keep a record of every message sent - and by whom - just in case there are any serious abuses.

That said, if you begin to consider the legal ramifications, you get stuck in quite a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. One that has stumped the wife of a leading london Barrister, who, incidentally has a first class degree in law herself. I was trying to get her husband to give me a (free) legal perspective on the admissibility of text messages as evidence so I could publish it here. No luck - she’s a bit obsessed with babies to focus on important technical geekery

Eventually I used my pigeon law experience to conclude that to my (potentially flawed) knowledge, text messages do not constitute appropriate notice for any legal transaction.

However one would imagine that if necessary a skilled barrister could convince a jury that text messages are so widespread as to be an acceptable for of communication.

The whole debate goes to pot when services such as Sharpmail are introduced to the equation because that demonstrates the insecure nature of the text medium. Anyone can be anyone!

The sad state of mobile in the USA :: i-boy :: postcards from the blogosphere

Mobile content and services, which are for the most part overhyped and overpriced, are failing in the USA.

A good read.

(Thanks David)

I’ve been waiting for this one for a while as it’s quite an interesting one.  I checked the Virgin site this morning and woosh!  There it is in the list.  Wasn’t there the other day.  Have a look.

First off all, I gather that it’s a Windows Mobile phone, second it’s one of the first to do this type of TV to mobile technology, third it does DAB digital radio.  Finally, it’s a Virgin ‘own brand’ handset.
I was really thinking about going out to the Virgin store and buying it on pay as you go — it’s £199 and comes with £35 airtime credit.  I think it would be good to try this one out.

The TV service featuring ITV, BBC1, E4 and selected C4 coverage is free for 90 days — and £5 a month thereafter.

1.3 megapixel camera, 30mb on board memory and a stereo headset..

I would definitely impulse purchase this if someone put it in front of me.

But I’m seriously mulling over going to buy this a) to feed my ‘oooh a new phone’ habit and b) in the interests of finding out how the industry is developing.  In fact, I think I owe it to myself to get this phone.