It’s Friday, and what better way to celebrate than a few classic ringtones to take you down memory lane? Only, these ringtones have a really nice sound, as they’re accompanied by Italian drummer Andrea Vadrucci (aka Vadrum). This guy totally goes to town to a medley of memorable ringtones, and you can’t help but watch it over and again.

Here’s the link if you can’t see the embedded video.

What ringtone do you have?

(Thanks to Rawsocket for the video link)

Miyowa, the mobile instant messaging geniuses, recently hired Scott Stonham as their VP of Product Marketing. I’ve been following Miyowa for quite a while particularly since they’re focused on educating and assisting the behemoth mobile operators of our fair planet understand and implement mobile instant messaging for their subscribers.

I always enjoy seeing how people respond to the more or less standard set of SMS Text News questions — I find it fascinating to read viewpoints from people in the industry. Thus, let’s get going with Scott’s Q&A…

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1. What was your first handset and network?
A brick-like, bright green NEC phone on the Vodafone analogue network. I was a student at the time and remember I had trouble fitting it in my bag with my books and files. Nonetheless, I was the envy of the class until upstaged by a Motorola StarTac. I remember my phone falling out of my bag in a lecture and causing physical damage to the wooden benches.

2. Describe your current mobile setup.
I currently have a Sony Ericsson K550im on Bouygues, and an HTC MTEOR on Vodafone UK. I use the K550im for my mobile messaging needs, particularly for Microsoft Live Messenger and Yahoo Mobile Messenger using the Miyowa powered clients from Bouygues.

3. How much was your last bill?
My last personal bill was £128. I don’t know how much my last corporate bill was. The biggest “bill shock” incident I experience came whilst preparing a demo for 3GSM in Cannes. Vodafone called me to ask if I was still in possession of my phone, as the bill had just triggered the £4,000 alert threshold!

[You were lucky, Scott! They didn't bother phoning me when I ran up a 1k data bill in Cannes! - Ewan]

4. What’s your background?
Having a strong technical background is essential in this industry, no matter what your role or speciality. I graduated with a First class degree in Cybernetics and Control Engineering from Reading University, UK, having designed and built a three-wheeled robot that learned how to move and hunt for food. With Terminator skills in my veins, I made the obvious career move into a software role at a credit card authorisation company, and with a number of successful projects under my belt, I headed for the bright lights of Vodafone. I spent the next six years working my way through software, leadership and product roles in their UK, International (later to become Vodafone Global), Interactive (later to become Vodafone Multimedia, and then Vizzavi), Multimedia and Global business units. Having spent a number of years on Vodafone’s location services projects, I left to lead the market development activities for SnapTracks’ (Qualcomms’) gpsOne(TM) Assisted GPS products across EMEA. My next role as Marketing Director at Openwave took me firmly into product management and marketing capacity, working across Europe and driving their location services and mobile advertising activities.

5. How did you end up with your current company?
I was looking for something new and exciting, in a company that wanted to make a difference, and would give me the opportunity to help make that happen. During this process, I was approached with the role at Miyowa. Out of the numerous roles I had looked at, Miyowa ticked all the boxes.

6. Give us an overview of what your company does? Key clients?
Miyowa is dedicated to delivering value to our customer, driving adoption and usage of messaging data services. We are the market leader in Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) client technology, with support for all the major IM communities across more than 300 mass market devices, and growing at around 50 new devices per month. At this rate we plan to support worldwide MIM deployments on more than 1000 devices by the end of 2008. Behind the clients and helping deliver the compelling, engaging and addictive user experience needed to stimulate and grow MIM revenues, Miyowa provides industry leading Mobile Instant Messaging Gateway platforms and business intelligence services. Our client and gateway products are Mobile Advertising Ready, and currently being used in market trials to prove the value of the MIM inventory.

Miyowa has more than seventeen customers, across both the mobile carriers and mobile device vendors. Of our publically announced customers, Orange Group, KPN and O2 are our largest accounts.

7. What do you think is right with the mobile industry?
The mobile industry addresses the basic human need to communicate and be part of community, and continues to change our live more rapidly than any other technology on the planet. Awash in talent and exceptional people, innovation is never far away and although we often get caught up complaining about “12-18 month deal cycles”, in those months a lot tends to happen, relatively speaking.

8. And what’s wrong with the mobile industry?
Long deal cycles. Seriously, my feeling is that market saturation is stifling innovation in the mature markets at a time when competitive differentiation should be most important. The industry continues to face the bit-pipe threat and must either adapt and overcome through innovation, or acquiesce and embrace a new world of bit delivery.

9. If you had to buy a new mobile handset tomorrow, what would you get?
I plan on purchasing the HTC TyTn II. My background tends to bias me towards Qualcomm based devices, especially when they come equipped with Assisted GPS.

10. Rate the UK network providers in order of preference with a one line summary of each.
First: 3 – For the impact it has had, its vision and alternative business approach

Second: O2 – for the understanding of its customer base, and ability to target services accordingly

Third: Vodafone – For being the yard-stick, and setting the standards. I’ve always been a Vodafone subscriber, so too have my family. You know what you’re getting with Vodafone.

Fourth: Orange – It has had some great ideas, and been well positioned to bring innovation to the industry, but is often understated

Fifth: T-Mobile – Personally, I just haven’t seen T-Mobile do that much around the UK, unlike Germany and the USA. Perhaps I’m being unjust, and am simply not its target demographic. However, its Web’n’Walk service certainly helped the demolition of those garden walls, which in my book is a good thing.

Of the MVNOs, Virgin is top of my list.

11. What’s the hottest mobile service to catch your eye recently?
Whilst trying not to be too biased, I would have to say MIM. The reason I joined Miyowa was because of the potential MIM has to bring to the mobile industry. I see MIM as much more than just “another way to communicate”, and as an underlying framework for the future of mobile applications. MIM has the opportunity to deliver on not just the promise of next generation messaging, but will also lead the pack on IMS enabled applications, support the emergence of mobile advertising and make Mobile2.0 a reality.
Beyond MIM, it’s the wealth of new location enabled services coming to market on the back of GPS equipped devices. One that caught my eye in particular, mostly as a demonstration of the kind of ideas that the developer community can come up with if given the tools, was SatLav.

12. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
There are quite a few individuals I admire, but to avoid the Oscar acceptance style speech, I’d like to answer this in terms of groups of people:
First, I admire those who work in the standards world. In my opinion, it takes a very special type of person to do this, and having worked with people who fly half way round the world to exotic locations, just to spend 5 days locked in an air-conditioned meeting room debating the merits of one call flow vs another, I have to acknowledge their work, since the industry would be a very different place without them.

Second, TAT. The Astonishing Tribe of Sweden are, in my opinion one of the leaders in forward-looking, slick UI designs. I met them for the first time at a conference in Amsterdam, and realised I had already seen their work in many different places. I guarantee you will have seen the Photo River concept in handsets today.

Thirdly, I have had the privilege to work with a number of dynamic and energetic people who decided to give up their comfortable lives in the hi-tech world and move to far-flung places to help the less-privileged. I admire them for both their achievements in this industry and the courage and compassion they have shown when moving on.

13. What services do you use the most on your handset?
In order of use: MIM, Voice, SMS, Music, Navigation, Camera, Photos

14. Do you have any pets?
Yes. 2 cats, 2 tree frogs, 11 fish, 2 tortoises, 1 macaw and 5 stick insects, previously we have kept 2 lizards, 4 chipmunks, and 2 chinchillas.

15. What’s the last thing you saw at the cinema?
Ocean’s Thirteen, Die Hard 4.0 and Transformers

16. What’s your ringtone?
The Whistler by Claude von Stroke on my MTEOR and Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin on my K550im

17. When did you last send a picture/video message — and who was it to?
Two weeks ago, to a friend whilst on a train to London.

18. What sites to you read to keep up to date with what’s going on in the mobile industry?
I don’t rely on any one or two sites, but in my browser cache today are: The Register, Telco2.0, BBC, WebUser.co.uk, MobileEurope.co.uk, eurocomms.com and, obviously, smstextnews.com.

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Scott, thank you very much for taking the time to answer!

Broca, the secure messaging specialists, have been coming across my radar frequently across the last few months so I thought it would be rather good to put some questions to their top man, Ian Price (Managing Director). Here we go!

1. What was your first handset and network?
It was a BT issue phone – the size of a brick – which I was given on joining. On Cellnet, naturally. I still have it in the garage.

2. Describe your current mobile setup.
Nokia N70 – nothing particularly sophisticated although I do have some (legal) SMS forwarding software on there to show people how unsafe plain SMS is.

3. What’s your background?
English Lit degree specialising in Old and Middle English. Started out in consulting where I wrote the Cable & Wireless business plan for what became One-2-One (now T-Mobile). Then joint a fledgling cable TV company in Camden and got headhunted by BT to lead the fight back. Spent 11 years with BT launching among other things the BSkyB partnership, BT 1571 and BT Click&Buy. Left BT to start up Digital Payments, the mobile top-up solutions provider part-owned by Vocalink.

4. How did you end up with your current company?
I was approached by 2ergo while at Digital Payments. They had bought the patents that Broca’s technology is based on. Broca demerged from 2ergo in March this year.

5. Give us an overview of what your company does? Key clients?
We are in the advanced messaging business with two products based on our patented technology: SAMS (Secure Advanced Message Service) makes SMS content 1) password protected 2) encrypted and 3) recorded delivery. The second product is Acquire which is targeted at data capture requirements. We have a number of channel partners that resell the products such as Vodafone, Rapide and Infinite Solutions. Recent wins through partners include Malaysia On Line. Also trialling Acquire with a major handset manufacturer and European network.

6. What do you think is right with the mobile industry?
GSM is a basically sound technology which gives most consumers 90% of what they need AND works in the developing world. It is a truly global technology – 2.3bn consumers can’t be wrong.

7. And what’s wrong with the mobile industry?
Disastrous lack of handset standardisation pushes the cost up for anybody trying to innovate in the industry.

8. If you had to buy a new mobile handset tomorrow, what would you get?
Nokia N95. Could be regarded as a safe choice but my main use is for business. I can hook one up to a projector and do on-screen demos.

9. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
I would have to say Barry Sharples and Neale Graham of 2ergo as the first two. For one thing, they might read this. Genuinely, though, they have done great things in the mobile technology area. I would also pick Peter Erskine who has just announced he is leaving Telefonica/O2. I worked for him when he was at BT and remember when he took on what was then Cellnet.

10. What services do you use the most on your handset?
Aside from the everyday ones, I have been known to place the odd bet using the Blue Square Java Sportsbook I downloaded. I am pleased to say I am well ahead on aggregate – I must get round to placing something on the Hatton fight.

11. Do you have any pets?
Big domestic fault-line here: I and our 13-year old son are very strongly pro-dog. Wife anti. She seems to have the casting vote in spite of being in the minority. My son and I have been reduced to taking dogs out for a walk at the Dogs Trust in Harefield.

12. What’s the last thing you saw at the cinema?
Beowulf with my son. Either they’ve taken liberties with the original or I skim-read it at University too quickly and missed all the sex…

13. What’s your ringtone?
I’ve come to the conclusion that my musical taste is too esoteric to find a ringtone that suits – I was with someone yesterday at T-Mobile who has Cantaloupe Island but only the US3 version as he can’t get the original. Rather than be reduced to that sort of compromise, I prefer to stick with the default.

14. When did you last send a picture/video message — and who was it to?
I have never sent one. Received one once from my cousin who had her picture taken with Trey from the apprentice. (“You’re nothing to me” if you remember…)

15. Anything else we should know?
Watch out for a new consumer application we are planning to launch in Beta very soon. You will hear about it here first so watch this space…

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Ian, thanks for taking the time to answer those questions.

If you’d like to do a Q&A, drop me a mail.

Alfie and his team have just gone live with CityClickers — a pan-European moblogging service launched in conjunction with the LG Viewty. I grabbed him for a few minutes and fired these questions at him to answer:

1. What is CityClickers?
City Clickers is a Pan European moblogging competition, asking people to send in images of people they feel reflects the true style of their country. The site has been launched in Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, and France. The site has a big blog partner network specifically for this competition, co-ordinated and arranged by the lovely folk at Shiny Shiny. This is the first competition of it’s kind I believe, a Pan European moblogging competition with some amazing prizes.

2. CityClickers is based on your moblog platform — was it a ton of work to create the CityClickers microsite?
Well, the moblog:UK site is the hub for all the promotional work we do with clients, where essentially they have a branded promoblog (promotional moblog) within the site, and it is promoted to our site users. City Clickers is the first use of a new product we have developed, which provides clients with a seamless moblogging microsite for one off promotions, or for an ongoing presence. The software allows us to create a client promoblog at a specific URL, with the user journey being entirely contained at that address. At the same time this is a great solution for a brand to run a promoblog competition in a microsite fashion, the moblog still benefits from promotion to our audience and members at moblog:UK, so we think it’s pretty nifty. Working with a client like LG means that there was certainly a certain amount of to’ing and fro’ing to get everything just so, and there will always be that element of one on one work.

3. You must be pleased?
The site has gone down a storm, and we’re really pleased. Using moblogging at the core of a promotion like this is a great move, for any brand. Moblogging has always traditionally been a bit niche, but with flat rate data, widespread understanding of MMS, and applications like Shozu or Trutap for one touch moblogging, the practice is really poised for widespread adoption. We’ve worked with some incredible folk over the years who have helped us really spearhead moblogging out of the niche -whether it’s a moblog for Ronan Keating (http://ronankeating.com/moblog) or an activist moblog for Greenpeace (http://moblog.co.uk/blog/greenpeaceuk), these efforts have, I hope, driven moblogging forward in the UK.

4. I saw you’re doing this in conjunction with Shiny Media — how are they involved?
Shiny Media came to us with the idea and requirement. We’ve worked with Shiny on a few things in the past (http://moblog.co.uk/blog/mychemicaltoilet) and they also have their own personal moblogs with us, so they really *get* our platform and what it’s capable of. They are coordinating all the partner blogs throughout Europe on this as well. I think that’s what’s interesting about this is that the ‘blogosphere’ is so often dominated by our cousins across the Atlantic that this is a great example of a cohesive European approach, harnessing the power of blogs, as well as mobile.

5. There are a lot of mobile marketing companies reading SMS Text News. What’s the rough cost for them to deploy a moblogging microsite with your technology?
We have different solutions for different sorts of clients and their requirements, with full platform builds such as The Big Art Mob for Channel 4 (www.bigartmob.com outreach activist moblogs within moblog:UK such as those for Actionaid (moblog.co.uk/blog/actionaid) or Greenpeace, and promotional moblogs such as those we do for bands, either run from a seperate URL like Maximo Parks, at www.maximoblog.com , or/and within moblog:UK. The cost is quite variable, but clients can get a full branded moblogging site with promotion at moblog:UK beginning at £2k, so it’s an enormously affordable and customisable solution.

Without giving away the particulars of our City Clickers build, our microsite solution is around 5k (UK Pounds) for a 3 month campaign, which includes a technology license, design, promotion at moblog:UK, URL registration and administration, as well as an MMS keyword for the UK. At this price point it’s something which even a marketer who hasn’t yet done much in the mobile blogging arena can try out.

6. What benefits is the technology realising for the brands you’re deploying it with?
Where do I start? Clients are able to include their own advertising in sidebars, they are creating databases of users who MMS into their moblogs, reach a high end tech savvy audience who are actively engaged in mobile blogging in the UK, and are reaching into the ‘content as advertising’ ethic, which it seems is where so much of our engagement with brands is heading these days. Clients can customise a message to be sent to those taking part in a promotion direct to their handsets as soon as that person has sent some content, closing the web/mobile gap.

7. How’s it going over at Moblog.co.uk?
We just launched today, but I think it will go down well. We haven’t done a competition yet which had this European scale, so prizes and participation are open to all and not only our UK members, which is ace. We’ve always had a great engagement from members, since the competitions we run are always closely in line with what people enjoy and can get into, ordinarily with a bit of a tech. slant.

8. What handset are you sporting at the moment?
I’ve been using the Nokia N95 on 3’s X-series gold for a while now. Can’t believe how great the phone is to use (well, battery life), and there is something incredibly novel and somehow amusing in being able to switch on GPS wandering down the street and watching your position change X-series on this device is also where it really comes into it’s own, so I can’t wait for flat rate data to be the norm rather than the exception in the UK.

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Alfie, thanks for taking the time!

If your company’s doing something nifty in mobile, drop me an email and let’s do a Q&A!

I first met Martin Smith (right) Co-Founder of Frith PR (and it’s parent, Sonus PR) on a cold day in October when I was hunting for advice on positioning one of my companies. Since then (and after a very successful acquisition driven by super PR), I’ve referred many a mobile or telecoms related business to Martin and his Co-Founder, Patrick Smith, for advice and perspective.

When I told Martin I was planning a Los Angeles Unlimited Drinks, I was delighted when he immediately called up and offered support as a sponsor — and readily agreed to come along to the event. It was shortly after then that I realised I hadn’t actually blogged much about him. So I demanded a Q&A! And here we are:

What is the one piece of advice you would give to companies to improve their profile?
I think most companies would do well to think more deeply about how they position themselves in the market. It is not enough, for example to decide that you are a ‘leading vendor of mobile data solutions’. So are hundreds of other companies so that description doesn’t resonate with anyone.

How does PR differ in the United States compare to Europe?
Some things are just the same. You need to pitch the story to the right people at the right time in the right way. I have to say though, conditions can be quite different. My PR skills were forged in the fire of the UK tech PR market, which has to be the toughest tech PR market on the planet – UK journalists are often proud of being highly cynical, plus UK agencies often have smaller budgets than their US counterparts without correspondingly smaller expectations.

And what are the biggest differences you see between the US and European wireless markets?
For me, the most interesting difference is people’s relationships with their devices. In Europe the mobile phone is so much more of a fashion item than it is in the United States. This recent post from Dean Bubley is a good example of one way in which that’s true.

What’s the most interesting story you see out there in the wireless market?
The US Federal Communications Commission’s 700-MHz auction is really interesting, partly because of the present-day political maneuverings and partly for its long-term potential to disrupt the status quo.

Who do think is the most interesting company in mobile right now?
Google. In the last 12 months, Google has been staking a claim on more and more aspects of the wireless experience.

How has PR changed over the last few years?
The rise of ’social media’ has to be the most significant change I have seen, and that’s clearly very much a work in progress. The PR industry is currently working out how to embrace this crazy, new world without forgetting the basics.

Why was Frith PR (and parent Sonus PR) set up as a telecom specialist?
We felt that technology had become so pervasive that it was no longer meaningful to be a ‘technology’ PR expert, so we founded the agency as a ‘telecoms PR’ firm, narrowing the focus and increasing the level of expertise we offer to clients.

Who’s your dream client?
I don’t necessarily have a dream client per se, but I do have a dream type of client - the type of company for which you know you are making a tangible, positive difference. That usually means a company where they are actually doing something really interesting or different and where your client contacts are humble enough to remain open to advice.

What’s your current mobile handset?
I have a couple of mobile phones. One is a Nokia E61, plus I have a Samsung SGH-A707. I am itching to get something new though.

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Martin, thanks very much for taking the time!

If you’d like to pick Martin’s brains, get him in San Francisco on +1 415 848 3035 and tell him I sent you or get in touch via these details.

Ben Harvey returns with his weekly Friday afternoon column - and this week he’s looking into his crystal ball and making some predictions for the future.

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Looking back through the history of mobile telephony always reminds me of those terribly clichéd film montages of time-travel; you know the ones – pages fluttering down from calendars. Seasons whirling forward at the blink of an eye, with trees squirting up from the ground and with the hands of clocks whirling around like rotorblades. It’s all happened so very, very fast. And, were I not the incredibly bright and capable young man that I am, I should be quite intimidated by the speed of such change.

To recap, we’ve gone from using cinderblock-sized walkie-talkies (useful in an area of London about the size of an urban-fox’s piss-marking territory) to the current state of play, when we’re blatting music & video files around to our friends all across the world on handsets the size of a Toffee Crisp.

However – it’s always easier to look back in time than it is to look forwards; hindsight, as we all know, is easy. This is why your history teacher at school found it so hard to impress women. It’s also why Mystic Meg never buys lottery tickets. So – I’m going to stake my reputation on the line here and make some bold predictions. Some of these are wild stabs in the dark, others have been painstakingly assembled, the bricks of logic carefully tamped with the sticky mortar of intuition. Or something.

Anyway, here we go, listed in nothing by a rough chronological order…

Handsets will get no smaller, just heavier

Ben Elton, as a stand-up comic, has a lot of faults; he’s been using the same routine for fifteen years, for starters. Dressing like he mans reception in a Job Centre doesn’t endear him to us much, either. However, in his other guise as a novelist he did once make his own prediction about the future, which is that technology can only shrink down to a certain level before you start losing your computer-keyboard down the back of your sofa cushions, or accidentally put your stereo through the washing-machine because you left it in your trousers. He’s quite right – certain technologies have to have a minimum size because, even though they could be far smaller, you’d never be able to find the bloody things.

Look at memory-sticks, which have to be at least the size of a stamp; otherwise you’d need tweezers to get them in or out of your camera. Look at iPod shuffles; miniscule things. Again, they could be far smaller but the size of the buttons on the frontage dictates a maximum size (you flick the on/off switch with your fingernail as it is). As long as human beings are using their fingers to operate technology you’ll always be constrained to a minimum size for any tech appliance. A case in point were those calculator-watches that you needed a sharp pencil to use. Classy.

Handsets are exactly the same. Even current models are forced to sprout buttons and switches on three or four of the six sides available; routing everything through a touchscreen, á la iPhone, won’t help, because, again, the fat, greasy, sausage-like digits of the average person mean that things can’t be any smaller, styli being about as popular with the general public as Michael Barrymore at a pool-cleaner convention.

One thing that manufacturers of handsets will have to keep an eye on, though, is density. Because although mobiles aren’t going to get any smaller, they’re certainly going to get heavier. Cameras will have more sophisticated lenses. Batteries will become more compact, more powerful (Fuel Cells being a subject for a future article – but in the meantime…) and speakers gain more and more clarity and ooomph. The upshot of this is that your average handset, in five or six years, will be so dense that it may as well be made out of lead.

This in turn will have side-effects – braces on men will make a sartorial comeback, since your trousers will instantly be pulled to ankle-level under the tonnage of your mobile. Women will have to have to rent Sherpas to carry their handbags, or perhaps pull them around on cute little trolleys. Also, instead of calling a hitman to whack someone that you dislike you could always just batter them to death with the phone itself.

Reducing Carbon Footprints will be important for about thirty seconds

They’ve recently started banging on about how damaging to the environment the IT industry is. And I think they’re quite right – not in terms of global-warming, or using the world’s resources to make PCs you throw away after three years, but more the damage to the water table that all the world’s IT consultants, programmers & engineers do every weekend when they get hammered & wee in inappropriate places whilst waiting for their taxis.

However, much in the same way that Saint Geldof of Bob jumps, hand in hand with Bono, onto every passing political bandwagon it must also be the case that the guns of the environmentalists will be trained, sooner or later, on the mobile industry. Admittedly, we have been treating the atmosphere to radiowave-bukakke for twenty years and, yes, egging various African civil-wars on (so that we can steal all their lovely lithium) could be seen, by unfavourable eyes, as not being in the best traditions of honour & good sportsmanship.

Anyway – when we have a thankfully brief period of biodiesel-fueled, wicker-cased handsets, don’t worry. Like all environmental fads, it will last just as long is takes everyone to become happily blasé, and then we can all revert to our ivory-clad Motorolas. You know. The ones with the seal-pup leather finish.

Integration into Everything

Cash is dying on its arse. In 2004 in the UK, for example, card purchases outweighed cash purchases for the first time in all retail sales (figures weighted to exclude cocaine & stripper-rental) and has been falling steadily ever since. Governments across the world are quietly putting the feelers out to fund studies into totally cashless economies, partly to track money-laundering & crime, and partly to stop counterfeiting, but mostly because money costs so much. Printing all those notes. Smelting all those coins. Holding all those focus-groups to decide who goes on the next £20 note (Sir Bob of Geldof, anyone…?), it’s all such a bloody expensive process. The sooner we can be rid of the folding paper-stuff and slap it all on an ethereal data carriage of some sort, the better and that, my friends, is where the phone will come in.

People talk a good game when it comes to “convergence”, and it does seem a bit of a far-off concept, but it’s an inevitability. For example, now that cameraphone picture-quality is now – officially - uncrap, the digital camera will increasingly be sidelined into a specialist product for photographers. The next generation of handsets & bandwidth options (including the next gen. of GPRS, whenever they decide to pull their heads out of their backsides) will bump Blackberrys (or is that Blackberries?) firmly into obscurity; you watch what happens to Blackberry unit sales when the iPhone comes out.

So; where am I going with this? What I’m saying is that, as financial transactions move more and more into a realm where they become pure data then they’re going to need a device to go with them capable of encryption tasks. And it’s not going to be all that long before we start to see respectable computing power in handsets, when you think about it. Email, internet, data storage, VOIP calls, TVOIP, probably even some bastardised ID-card nonsense, too.

…which leads us nicely onto…

Your phone will not be a phone anymore

It’s a good word, isn’t it? Fone. What is that, one and a half syllables? It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s everything. Everything except accurate, because it’ll be completely wrong in a very short period of time. It says that it’s a phone, not a wallet. It calling it your phone, not your node to the internet, to your email, to your own data and to the codes you need to start your car or open your front-door. It’s denoting something that’s just a telephone, not your entire world.

So, when people do start to re-name that dense, blinking lump of technological potential they’ll probably call it something crappy and generically sci-fi, like a “link” or a “slab” or a “unit”. If I try and stake a claim on immortality, and suggest that they call it a “Harvey”, do you think anyone will notice…?

…I mean, do I have to write a note to the UN, or what…?

Ben Harvey returns for another observation for a Friday afternoon, fresh from a week of relaxation in Portugal.

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They say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone – mostly, this is true, especially in the areas of money & being happy with your own body. However, it really stands out, of course, when you detach yourself from all your links, all your connections with friends and colleagues and business and go on holiday. And then don’t like it.

I’ve just returned from a week away in Portugal and I am incredibly, incredibly glad to be back. The relief, as the wheels of the plane kissed down onto this green & pleasant land (at least, as pleasant & green as Heathrow can be. Duty-free absinthe springs to mind, for some reason) was incredible – it rose off me like steam. I’m not a nervous flyer, even when storm-fronts over Spain kicked our little flying tube around the sky and flung my poor gin everywhere, but I did get the feeling that the crap, wonky technology upon which Portugal relies may have somehow infected even the hallowed, proud vehicles of British Airways.

Don’t get me wrong. Portugal has a plethora of smashing things about it, and the people there are embarrassingly friendly, but the same laissez-faire attitude that defines the relaxed, sociable, three-hour lunch-break culture is a total anathema to two things; business & technology. It’s telling that a country that receives whopping subsidies to spunk on everything else (building pointless motorways, stealing all our fish…) has a still-dormant telecoms market that’s totally dependent on foreign providers. Not even its own government wants to throw money away on communications, and that’s saying something.

All of this got me thinking – recently, our own market here in the UK seems to have taken the tiniest of pauses, a quick breather, just to catch up with itself. The relentless push from providers & retailers, unbroken now for a decade, for better handsets, better packages and the general rabid-pace of weaving services into every new gadget, laptop and media-device has led – quite naturally – to a certain plateau. It’s not a mid-life crisis, because (in my unhumble opinion) the industry is, relatively, in its early twenties; but it does share certain similarities in terms of wanting to make sure it’s in a place, a state that it actually wants to be in.

This self-awareness, snapping as it does across an entire industry simultaneously, is as rare as a rocking-horse turd, and so we should savour it. It’s the equivalent of those charming football matches they used to have at Christmas in the trenches of World War One; a time to catch up with friends and not feel too pressured by your competitors, and have a bit of a snigger at the Italians as they feel the repercussions of attempting slide-tackles in a minefield.

However, before you know it this brittle, short-lived bubble of calm will burst and it will be back to the status quo of relentless development, of non-stop rivalry and the buzzing - albeit breathless - rush of life at the bleeding-edge of business which, let’s face it, is why you read this website in the first place. But, bloody hell, isn’t that preferable to the alternatives? We’re privileged, as it were, to work where we do and to do what we do. My reasons are as follows:

Exhibit A: Portugal

There’s a reason why you never hear about network executives hurling themselves in desperate despair out of their windows when they fail to make sufficient headway in this territory – it’s because none of the networks give the faintest of shits. I must admit to being staggered that this country has landlines, let alone the Star-Trek level of underlying technology to be able to send a text-message. I saw no shortcodes on adverts. I saw no media streamed between people in streets or in bars or in offices. The entire nation was bereft of BlackBerry and the only bluetooth available was a type of chewing-gum. But they’ve got great coffee, though, so…you know. That’s OK..

Exhibit B: Japan

There’s a reason why you never hear about network executives hurling themselves out of the windows in Japan, too; they find ritual disembowelment to be rather more effective, in times of corporate disappointment. Japan, as you’re no doubt aware, is so far ahead of us in terms of mobile usage, capacity & capability that it’s not even funny. A full and rather more useful essay on Nipponese telephonic culture will be forthcoming just as soon as I’m able to squeeze Ewan for the cost of the air-fare, but needless to say it’s roughly comparable, market to market, as our car industry is to theirs. The upside, of course, to being second-place in terms of turnover & innovation is that we don’t have to listen to the happy mewls of Hello Kitty handsets which is, as I think you’ll agree, a small price to pay.

Thus: in conclusion, I’m glad to be back in the UK if only because we’ve got the balance right; we’re pushing all fronts forwards but not so fast we’re over-extending. The Great Unwashed are still hungry for newer, better kit. Everything, basically, is respectable. Where else, really, would you rather be working…?

Anyway. Enough patriotic flag-waving. I must leave you now – I’m off to the Chinese embassy to get a work permit.

- - - - -

Hilarious stuff, thanks Ben!

After talking about his experience with mobile phone retailers last week, SMS Text News reader Ben Harvey is back with a little Friday afternoon entertainment. Just don’t ask him about his day…

- - - - - -

I’m having one of those days. Like it or not, you and your mobile are partners and, like an old, married couple, one of you wears the trousers in the relationship and the other one merely pays for everything. And I’m afraid to break this to you, but you’re not the one who has to worry about catching his dong in his zip.

I’m having one of those days. A day that’s hit me with a nasty mix of bugs and idiots, all channelled through my handset like ghosts through a ouija-board.  Bugs can, of course, be anything; your handset won’t synch with your laptop. The router at Caffé Nero needs to be reset but the work-experience boy behind the counter doesn’t know how to do it, so instead of happily sniggering at The Register whilst drinking your coffee you’re stuck trying to decrypt that one Italian tabloid that’s always left in the bloody paper-rack.

…we’ve all been there…

Idiots, on the other hand, should be avoidable, but they always manage to pester and annoy – the call-centre agent ringing “to see if you’re happy with your package”. Some anonymous spiv on the make who spams you with business cards simply because you’re at the same meeting as him and he now wants you in his “human web”. Or – and call me old-fashioned, here – you just have a bad phone call, one which terminates with you flinging your phone at the wall and screaming “well, f*** you then!”.

…I mean, seriously, the Samaritans aren’t what they used to be…

I’m having one of THOSE days, a mix of technology not doing what it’s designed to, of people not doing what they’re supposed to and life – at least, that portion of it pumped through fibre-optics truck cabling, a mast or two and thence into my delicate little ear-hole – isn’t going quite according to plan. You look down at your handset, you feel the weight of it in your hand and think…I wish I could be rid of you. Just for a day.

But there’s an old saying. Beware of what you wish for.

This is a big ask, but I’m going to imagine, now, that that wish came true. Imagine a world without your mobile. It’s such a vital, vital thing to so many of us now that it’s hard to re-adjust your head to a time – before 3G, before colour LCDs, before text messaging, before the car-phone – when the only calls you could make were from chunky lumps of plastic that lurked on your desk and had a curly wire stuck up their arse.

What is it…say, fifteen years? 180 months of the most phenomenal development that any industry in the history of history has ever, ever seen. People sometimes point at the personal computer as being the prime example of a field that’s undergone incredibly swift progress; they’ll mutter things about the internet and then round off their argument with Moore’s Law, that twee, soundbitish little maxim that computing power doubles every eighteen months.

Well, I’m going to introduce you to Harvey’s Law. This is an equally twee maxim that the indispensability of your mobile – in whatever form it takes – doubles every twelve months. I have to put my hand up at this point and admit that this isn’t the first time I’ve named something after myself, Harvey’s Law joining a few other inventions (notably a modified vodka martini called Harvey’s Sugar Thermometer. It’s got jam in, you’d love it), but my point stands; again, imagine a world where you are – quite literally – tied to the telecoms network through woven strands of copper. How primitive.

Think back. Can you remember business without mobiles? It was hideous. The minute someone went more than ten meters from their desk they might as well have been on the moon. Not just for obvious derelictions of duty, like attending a meeting or driving down to a different office or branch, but even for popping out for a sandwich, for a cigarette, for a piss. Now, you can get in touch with someone in roughly four or five tiny flips of your thumb. Then –  such a long time ago – then it was a nightmarish game of telephone-tag between your secretaries. A mere ten years later (people used to call that length of time a decade, by the way. Now it’s known as a Tony) and we’re all connected through the cellular network, through the air, with secretaries now relegated to the dustbin of history, along with answering machines, cassette-tape, Ministerial Responsibility and yo-yos.

Think back. The way we socialise now is different, better, faster, more liquid. Something as simple as popping out for a drink now is ripe with possibilities – ten seconds of texting another friend, then another, to entice them out often, for example, leads to the best, most enjoyable evenings. This spontaneity is priceless. Before mobiles? You’d spend half an hour organising a handful of people to meet up. Didn’t previous generations have anything better to do with their time…?

Think back. Romance. I used to envision Victorian England to be the most hazard-fraught time to start dating – should you manage to actually get an evening alone with the object of your affections, after dodging her angry father & evading her psychotic chaperone, then you run the risk of getting fatally impaled on a shard of whalebone as you’re trying to get her bra off. But now, now I find it incredibly hard to even start to put myself in the situation of not having a mobile – it’s not just the little things (you’re in a bar, you get a girl’s number. But no phone! What do you note it down on?) but it’s critical to every stage of a relationship these days; from the opening texts, increasing in flirtyness until a date’s arranged. And then the date itself – imagine trying to meet up in anywhere in, say, Zone 1 when you can’t drop a quick voicemail to tell them that you’ll be late, or that you can’t work out just which Starbucks they actually meant, or that you can’t come at all because you’ve found someone prettier.

I actually get sent that last one a lot.

I say all of this not to harp on about why your mobile is great, or how lucky you are to have it, or just how clever you are to belong to an industry that’s advancing far faster than the bovine throngs can keep up with – I’m saying all this because, on the sort of day that I’m having, these thoughts might stop you from taking a handset-shaped chunk out of the plaster. Because, on such a day, the very last thing you need is to talk to gum-chewing Donna in Insurance Team 6.
There is, of course, one final reason why it’d be a bad idea to turn the clock back a Tony – you’d have to explain to your grandmother, again, just what a “mobile phone” was.

“That’s very modern, deary. I bet it needs a lot of wire…”

- - - - - -

Thanks Ben!

Courtesy of this week’s edition of celeb gossip email Popbitch ..

Orange are preparing a novel Glastonbury competition. They have a bull fitted with GPS in a field in Cornwall, which is divided into squares. Guess which square the bull is in at mid-day each day for two weeks before the festival and you could win tickets. Except, we hear from Cornish friends, that the location of the bull has got out, and there are plans afoot to “interfere” with the beast…

Heh dear me. Bet you thought from the headline this’d be about something else eh?

Me (Alex) and Ewan (Ewan) were sitting in the pub last night, as you do, having a catch-up and a few beers. Or rather, I was having a beer and Ewan was demonstrating his insatiable appetite for orange juice and lemonade.

We’d had our mobile handsets out on the table for a while, showing each other some really cool apps, when I noticed I hadn’t had a play with his new Nokia N95. We’d both got our E61’s with us, and I had my N80 as well just for the purposes of taking photos.

Putting the N80 and N95 side by side, it was spooky. They’re almost the same size, and at first glance look virtually identical. The buttons are slightly different on the N95 whilst closed, but the main physical difference - it ‘clunks’ better.

If you’ve got access to an N80 and an N95, try it yourself. Open the N80, close it again. Then open the N95, and close it again. The N80 feels heavy, clunky and oversized when opening it compared to the N95 - which feels quite light and almost paper thin.

It could have been the beer, and the fact it was late, but I think we might be on to something here. So, next time you go looking for a phone, check out how it slides and glides. It could make all the difference.

Link: BBC NEWS | Scotland | Tayside and Central | Students create ’sensual’ phones

I couldn’t resist a quick blog post about this.

Students from the College of Art, Science and Engineering’s product design course have created six phones to support “intimacy and sensuality”. They include the Aware, which sends a tingle down your back if a friend is nearby and the Boom Tube, which allows people to make music together.

The Aware sounds, er, interesting. That’s a picture of it above. A mobile phone in a necklace.. fascinating concept. I’m sure Mrs. Perkins, the next door neighbour in Rentaghost, had a similar thing all those years back - but she used hers to inadvertantly wish for things to happen.

Just need a big manufacturer to go with the concept now, and who knows - soon we could be raving about the ‘Nokia Bling’ (exclusively available from Elizabeth Duke at Argos).

Link: YouTube - Conan - iPhone Commercial

Apologies if you’ve seen this spoof ad before, but if you haven’t - it’s worth a look!

I invited Nate, founder of free texting service, TxtDrop.com if he’d like to do an SMS Text News Q&A. I always find it massively exciting to see how people answer these questions as it gives an excellent insight as to what mobile industry entrepreneurs (Nate, in this case) are thinking.

So let’s begin!

1. What was your first mobile handset?
It was an old Motorola. I actually can’t remember the model, but I remember that it was to big to fit in my pocket!

2. What is your current mobile strategy? (i.e. Handsets, devices, networks)
Right now I’m using RIM’s Blackberry 8703e with Verizon Wireless. It has everything I’m looking for right now in one device - email, voice, and data.

3. What price plan are you using right now?
I don’t remember exactly, but it’s usually around $100 a month. I have a pretty basic voice plan, along with an unlimited data plan and a tethering option, so I can connect my Blackberry to my laptop for private high speed internet access when I need it.

4. What’s your background?
I’m fascinated by technology and the internet. Always have been. I became interested in telephony around 2000 or 2001, when I started testing services like Net2Phone, which at the time, was so cool to me. I eventually became more and more interested in all aspects of telephony, especially VoIP, Open Source PBXs, and of course mobile phones and mobile technologies like SMS and MMS. I created my first successful mobile website, TxtDrop.com, in September 2005 because I really wanted a free text messaging application for my own use.

5. What sites do you regularly read to keep up to date with mobile?
Textually, SMS Text News, Ringtonia, press releases at PRWeb.com, and Jeff Pulver’s blog (http://pulverblog.pulver.com) is one of my favorites because he’s always talking about the next big thing. He blogs a lot about his traveling and what technologies the US is missing out on!

6. What was your mobile bill last month? What do you think is a fair amount to pay for your mobile service each month?
$130. I think my bill should really be under $100 a month.

7. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
I really don’t know that many people in the mobile industry, so my list is limited, but here goes:

Jeff Pulver - Jeff has a great blog, which isn’t specifically related to the mobile industry, but nonetheless, has introduced me to a lot of next generation communications companies and technologies. He’s one of the most influential people in the telecommunications industry, in my opinion. It’s amazing that he even has time to blog as much, and as in depth, as he does! I really admire all he’s done in the VoIP industry (he was even a co-founder of Vonage).

Steve Jobs - Breaking into the mobile industry and trying to compete against companies like Motorola, LG, RIM and Nokia isn’t an easy task! Especially when your used to making computers and music players. But Steve Jobs seems to have put in a lot of time and effort into the iPhone and it looks like it will pay off for Apple.

Emily From Textually - Emily has a great site, Textually.org, which keeps me in touch with the mobile industry. I’ve been a frequent Textually reader for over 2 years now and it’s also how I found SMS Text News. Don’t know what I’d do without it!

8. Do you have any pets?
A cat.

9. What one issue or technological advancement would you like to see with the mobile industry? What are you looking forward to?
I’d like my Blackberry 8703e to have a camera! I’d like to see high speed networks rolled out in more cities, especially smaller ones, across the United States. I live in a very small state, and we ALWAYS get things last! It kills me.

I’m really looking forward to video calls, whether it’s with another mobile phone user or someone at their computer. Also, I’m looking forward to better video playback support on mobile phones, like the day when your able to play YouTube videos as well as Quicktime videos on the same mobile handset.

10. What’s your ringtone?
The CTU ringtone from ‘24′.

11. What’s the last movie you saw at the cinema?
300.

12. What services do you most use on your handset?
Email, the web, and SMS.

13. What’s the hottest mobile service to catch your eye recently?
Radvision’s PC-to-Mobile 3G video calls! Wow.

14. When did you last send a picture / video message — and who was it to?
About a month ago when I was testing out a picture messaging service I’m creating. The message was to myself. I’ve never sent a video message.

15. What new mobile companies have caught your attention this year?
Radvision and Loopt.

16. What is the best thing and the worst thing about the mobile industry?
The best thing about the mobile industry is that it keeps evolving, getting better and more sophisticated

The worst things about the mobile industry, in my opinion, are the closed nature of most mobile applications and the competing technologies in the US that are not compatible with each other, such as EVDO and EDGE, as well as CDMA and GSM. Also, it’s terrible when mobile carriers intentionally disable certain features or don’t plan to support features on the phones they offer!

—

Nate, thank you for taking the time to do this! Fascinating!

If you’d like to do an SMS Text News Q&A, drop me a note.

Now, this is a big one. It’s a two-in-one with both founders (Ed & Tom) answering the questions. Masbi is a secure mobile development company — I’ve used a screenshot from one of their recent Playtech mobile casino games there to the right.

Let’s take in a bit of background before shooting into the interview:

From their recent press release: The company is the leading developer of transactional software for the constrained environments of today’s mass market mobile handsets. It also has world leading experts in the fields of mobile usability, networking and security.

Founded in late 2001, Masabi began by launching a range of mobile phone games before moving into the mobile application sector with its ground breaking viral distribution and web interaction technology – as seen in the applications Pick the Prez (www.picktheprez.com) and the Iraq War Cost Calculator (www.iraqcost.com). The company has a number of high profile clients from across a range of industry sectors, publicly announced examples of which include: Playtech, the Tote, the Liberal Democrats and Vodafone WildLive!. Based in London, Masabi is wholly self-owned and self-funded.

That last bit got my attention If you’re looking to invest in mobile games developers…

Anyway, I put my favourite questions to both Ed & Tom. First you’ll see my question, then you’ll see their responses underneath. Let’s kick off with the first question!

–

1. What was your first mobile handset?
Ed - It was the Ericsson T10, nice size but as it could only display about 5 characters on screen at once, reading texts was a nightmare…

Tom - some kind of NEC analogue brick, I really can’t remember the model - the next was the Nokia 3210 though, an excellent phone which looked good and was easy to use.

2. What is your current mobile strategy? (i.e. Handsets, devices, networks)
Ed - I currently use a Samsung D600 on O2. I’ve had it for about a year and am due an upgrade, but haven’t seen anything recently that’s made me go wow.

Tom - in general I always advise other people to go Sony-Ericsson, but after my old K600 I switched to a Samsung Z400 hoping it would be as nice as my old D500 - sadly it isn’t, with terrible battery life. I agonised for ages about an SE W950 for the 4Gb flash, but bought an 8Gb iPod nano instead and I’ll wait until something gets me excited - like Ed, I haven’t seen much recently that’s really cool and I get to play with pretty much everything that comes out. Contract is with Orange, who I’ve stayed with since the NEC for no particularly good reason…

3. What price plan are you using right now?
Ed - err, I’m really not sure I think it’s a business price plan which weighs in around the £50 quid per month mark.

Tom - some business price plan which covers a few company phones and some test SIMs. I try not to look at the bills…

4. What’s your background?
Ed - I started working in PR and Marketing consultancy for mobile tech companies at an agency called AxiCom straight out of uni in 2000. My clients included the likes of Symbian, Real Networks, Trigenix as well as whole bunch of companies which make core network and RF technologies. In 2001 I saw a prototype Nokia 7650 at Symbian (their first smartphone) and thought that 1980s home computer games could work pretty well on it. From there I called up Tom (who’d just completed a computer science degree at Cambridge) and together we signed up the Rights to a number of titles from Superior Software who were the top publisher on the BBC Micro - making games like Repton, Galaforce, Strykers Run - and so Masabi began.

Tom - I started in IT with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in my gap year which taught me that it wasn’t just amateur programmers who made mistakes. Then computer science at Cambridge, some great experience in the US at the tail end of the dot com bubble leading to my first redundancy (along with half the rest of the company), started an IT consultancy with some friends looking for a market we could tackle, got the phone call from Ed and here we are as Masabi.

5. What sites do you regularly read to keep up to date with mobile?
Ed - SMSTextNews is obviously a given also:

www.theregister.co.uk
www.theinquirer.net
www.tomhume.org
www.unstrung.com
www.mobhappy.com
www.kewney.com

Tom - stacks of them, from the obvious big IT/mobile sites through to more specialist feeds like Akihambra News and all the ‘new release’ sites and feeds I can get hold of like PhoneScoop, GSMArena etc. GSMArena need to do an RSS feed, that would make life much easier…

6. What was your mobile bill last month? What do you think is a fair amount to pay for your mobile service each month?
Ed - It was around the £50 mark. I think it’s pretty reasonable, as I do make a fair amount of calls and use a decent amount of data. Although I’m not particularly price sensitive on such things.

Tom - honestly no idea, it’s all mixed in with our test SIMs etc. The bill is pretty fair except for the roaming charges - I cannot see how anyone can justify £1.50/min when roaming in Estonia, it is just ridiculous, so I’ve got myself a PAYG SIM there too which is very cheap.

7. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
Ed -

1. The folks at Issuebits who make AQA - I think this service is really neat because it just works across all handsets and anyone who uses SMS can use it. It’s also kind of ironic that it came from ex-Symbian folks as it’s basically the antithesis of a smartphone application.

2. Richard White at AxiCom - I worked with Richard for about 4years and he is still there working with an ever growing team of clients and his knowledge across the industry is massive. The funny thing about the mobile world is how everything interconnects and effects other pieces of the ‘puzzle’. He is completely connected to companies in everything from billing to mobile search to UMA and he’s my first port of call when I’m wondering what services are possible and what will and won’t work.

3. The Masabi Dev team - without wishing to make this sound like one big love-in, I’m constantly amazed by the quality of the apps that they make and how they get them to run even on phones like the Nokia 3510i.

Tom -
1. Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity is very switched on and writes very knowledgable blog posts which I generally agree with, and he knows his US bias and acknowledges it. Too often people assume the entire world works the same, and when it comes to mobile it doesn’t.

2. Tom Hume runs a good blog, and FP put out some good stuff so I think he can code. He’s also a very nice guy and he knows akaido, so it pays to be nice

3. Steve Jobs. The man redefines paradigms. Before the iPhone, battery life was important - after the iPhone, we will all be happy with a fixed non-changable battery that dies after 16h of music (less with a few calls). Did you hear them cheer when he said how great this was? And he pulled it off whilst offering a mammoth 1 year warranty on a $500 phone that requires a 2 year contract; trully the paradigm has shifted and we should be very grateful Though I’m probably just bitter we won’t get to develop for it; my big hope is that the iPhone forces the incumbents to actually bring some innovation into phone interfaces, I see the unit itself probably selling several hundred thousand units which means it will go down in history as a niche phone with reasonable sales.

8. Do you have any pets?
Ed - nope.

Tom - no. I did consider trying to buy a robotic fish once because I could just drop in new batteries if it died…

9. What one issue or technological advancement would you like to see with the mobile industry? What are you looking forward to?
Ed - There are some neat handset things, which have been demoed for a couple of years but have yet to make it into a phone, stuff like micro-projectors and the wireless power thing that the Splashpower guys have. Also it would be good to see some innovation in user inputs/user interfaces - I think this will be the one thing that the iPhone will force the likes of Nokia, Motorola et al to do.

Tom - I would love to see JavaME properly integrated into phones, which would be an extremely difficult feat to pull off well but would allow it to break out of the Java/Games/Funbox Sub-menu ghetto and lead to serious improvements in phone functionality. SE seem to be making most progress in this area as their Java Platform 7 features true multi-tasking MIDlets and support for almost every API, but we need a whole step up to really fulfil the potential.

10. What’s your ringtone?
Ed - Airwolf - I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed by that.

Tom - always on vibrate. I have considered adapting the intro of Pitchshifter’s Microwaved but I don’t have the sound skills to do it properly…

11. What’s the last movie you saw at the cinema?
Ed - Mission Impossible 3

Tom - Borat, in Estonia so we got no translation for the Russian bits We don’t get so many films in Tartu, but I really wanted to see A Scanner Darkly as I enjoyed the book ages which I read in one session on a balcony in Positano when I had insomnia. Normally I pick stuff up on DVD though, which after the first 200 films is starting to become a storage problem…

12. What services do you most use on your handset?
Ed - It would have to be voice. I do use a wide range of other apps and services, but I think voice is always going to the main thing for me.

Tom - for me voice, SMS, Java. I use my EOS or my Ixus for photos (depending on how much alcohol I’ve consumed) as phone camera’s just don’t cut it yet, and after much deliberation I decided 8gb is the minimum amount of space I can get away with for a music player because I can’t be bothered with the hassle of swapping over songs on a daily basis - I never know what I want to listen to.

13. What’s the hottest mobile service to catch your eye recently?
Ed - Well I’d have to say the secure mobile casino apps we built for Playtech which are available from www.centrebetmobile.com and http://www.casinotropezmobile.com However, shameless plugs aside, I’ve also been impressed with Spinvox’s stuff.

Tom - Google maps Java client was nice.

14. When did you last send a picture / video message — and who was it to?
Ed - 2003 to my girlfriend. She still hasn’t received it.

Tom - I’m sure I sent one once, but I’m struggling to remember when. I did receive one the other day from a friend in Geneva, who was buying me a Ribcap skiing helmet substitute (http://www.ribcap.ch/) which you can’t really get outside Switzerland - I wasn’t sure whether to go with a Palmer or a Marley so I needed to see them on someone… that is a valid use for MMS, but I never really could think of many others. I went with an anthracite Palmer, if you’re interested, and it’s very nice but too warm for this season

15. What new mobile companies have caught your attention this year?
Ed - The mobile search and ad serving folks seem to be the folks getting the most attention at the moment. I think in this quite an interesting area, although it will be interesting to see how they all compete in the long term when faced with the likes of Google and Yahoo.

Tom - plenty have caught my attention, but not always for the right reason so I won’t name any. A lot of people are piling in to a number of industries (2D barcodes, SMS-via-java, …) and some of the ideas are good but they are hitting the same barriers we have always fought - not every idea can be achieved in the mass market, and one of our core philosophies at Masabi has always been that if you have a product that can only be achieved on Symbian/Windows Mobile you better have a very good reason why you want to throw away 90-95% of the potential marketplace else we won’t build it for you. We’re not interested in products which we know will fail and a lot of our work involves guiding clients through the options, even if we end up without a sale at the end of the day.

16. What is the best thing and the worst thing about the mobile industry?
Ed - The worst thing is Java network settings, but I’ll let Tom go into detail on that more eloquently than I can. The best thing is the opportunities for small, self-funded companies - if you take Masabi as an example, we founded a company with literally nothing more than time, effort and some computers and we just announced a deal to build a complete mobile solution for a listed company with a billion-dollar market valuation.

Tom - I’m not sure I have the energy to go into Java network settings in any more detail I’m afraid! Suffice to say, if you have spent many billions on a mobile network infrastructure and employ many hundreds of people doing… whatever it is they all do… I genuinely do not understand how you could fail to ensure that the phones you sell work properly. I could go on. Best thing? I love working in a market moving at such a pace, that can potentially touch every person in the world.

–

Absolutely fascinating! Gents, thank you both for taking the time to answer the questions!

By the way: If you’re working in mobile — or a related area, drop me a note (ewan@smstextnews.com) and let’s put the same questions to you?

In answer to my earlier blog post, this afternoon I was at the Hutchison HQ - ‘Hutchison House’, in Battersea.

Normally I get a nosebleed if I go anywhere near south of the Thames, but I’m ok if, as you see in the picture to the right, I can still see the water

Why was I there? Well, I was invited by the X-Series team including Darren and Simon, to come along for a chat. Me and Adrian of dqdx (more about Adrian here). I asked Darren if I had to revise the ins and outs of the Three price plan structure before attending. I wondered if there would be a written test. Heh. He assured me there would be no tests. Just a chat. With biscuits.

If you recall, I’ve been particularly vocal about Three in the past (View all posts about X-Series), generally — in fact — usually overwhelmingly positive.

However, at the same time, with my companies no longer working full time in the mobile industry, nor deriving substantial revenue from the sector, I’m quite content to tell it like it is. Or at least, how I see it. You can read me going hot and cold on X-Series here.

So, I thought it would be rather interesting to meet with the team. No agenda per se. Just a chat.

Further, I thought it would be good to meet Frank Sixt, HWL’s Group Finance Director, and Doug Hamilton, Global Creative Director. Shit hot. Both of them.

Frank is the one you’ll often see blogging at the X-Series blog, normally under the Suits 2.0 category.

I made a choice not to blog any specifics, as it wasn’t an interview. So here’s a summary.

I found it rather refreshing to speak to a network operator. Directly. No arse. No PR. No spin. It was rather weird discussing mobile services with a network operator so frankly, but the enthusiasm and passion was what really stood out.

To contrast the experience, I told them the story of me contacting Vodafone’s Press Office last year simply to ask what phone Arun Sarin used. I thought it would be quite interesting to find out. Colleagues from the industry told me I was mad. I’d be turned down immediately. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought I’d try anyway. I knocked up an email and ……. They declined it. Obviously. Commercially sensitive info, that. Heh. There was a chuckle from the Three team at that point There’s clearly somewhat of a massive gulf in culture between “Old Europe” (Vodafone et al) and the new prince on the scene, Three. Watching the team talk and discuss X-Series, you quickly appreciate that this is a company run by passionate people, concerned about providing excellent service. Make a comment or a suggestion and you can see them process it in real-time. Consider it. React to it. And give you a quick ‘yay or nay’ on the spot. Nice. Smart. A billion miles away from that chap from Orange that I saw speak at Nokia World. (The one who prompted me to almost yell ‘HOGWASH!’ from the back of the room).

I was asked what drew me to X-Series initially, I replied ‘unlimited data’. That was my initial sweet-spot. Second was the commitment the network gave by surrounding their offering with the likes of Skype, Melodeo, MSN, Yahoo and so on. I told them they’d got X-Series spot on in terms of delivering a brilliant set of services at the right price point. They’ve a lot more coming. All very exciting.

Bring up the subject of the less than stellar past reputation of Three and the chaps nod firmly with good grace. I wondered if people would side-step the issue or if the room would turn to ice Not at all. With network performance nigh on the total opposite of some of the horror stories from years gone by, the challenge now is communicating this to the marketplace.

I congratulated them on the X-Series blog. I explained I was suspect at first. Well, not just me. I think quite a lot of people were. I made the point that everyone and their dog is used to one dimensional tosh from the network operators in this country. The X-Series blog initially looked to suspect eyes like an exercise in wishful thinking.

‘Is that ACTUALLY the CFO replying,’ I wondered openly, ‘Or is it the PR chap? Did Frank even take a look at the blog? Is ‘xseries.typepad.com’ even in his browser address history?

Yes. Totally. If you have a look through the X-Series blog, you’ll see where Adrian emailed the X-Series blog to ask about my issue with 3Mail. They responded to it quickly and directly. At that point I was pretty impressed!

Can you imagine getting a responsive reaction like this from someone at faceless o2? Er, no.

Connect that with the face I was then, a month or so later, sat in the same room as the chap discussing the issues, and well, Suits 2.0 works. If you’ve got a question or an issue with X-Series, email them and they’ll respond, either privately by email or publicly on the blog.

Just like if you walk into your local store and ask if the guy is getting any wholesale packs of those Lindt mini chocolate eggs, 9 times out of 10, the shopkeeper will probably tell you, ‘well no, but, listen, if you’d like a few packs, I can get them from the cash and carry.’ You know, that’s someone responding to customer need or opportunity. Factor that up rather a lot and that’s what you’ve got with Frank and the X-Series team. Obviously it’s a bit more challenging to deliver all things to all people, but there is certainly the desire to do as much as possible. Top cover from a senior director such as Mr Sixt (named on Forbes Who’s Who no-less!) is just what you need with a service like X-Series.

So if you have a wickedly good idea that you reckon a network operator should adopt, don’t hesitate to look up the X-Series blog and whack them a note.

What else did we discuss. Hmmm.

Ah yes, I reckoned the MSN-as-poster-boy strategy was excellent. I talked about having people email me and talk to me about ‘that phone that does MSN’. Excellent branding. That and Yahoo too. Brilliant to walk past the Three stores and see the branding. I’m sure that’s drawing quite a lot of interest.

I also made the point that it’d be nice to get a fuller service from Three in terms of their shops. Walk into any Vodafone store and they can bring up your account on screen and start selling to you right away. Not so in the Three stores — they’re simply for new accounts only. If you want service, you have to call. I don’t mind calling. But if I’m standing in the store brandishing cash, wanting to buy an N93, they’re not easily able to do so. That’s not a quick fix though.

I also described my use of the podcasting application, Melodeo. I explained that I’ve substituted the N73 as my in-car-podcast-service and that it really does work well streaming live.

On reflection, I should have actually asked everyone here reading the blog for questions here and then put the questions to the team when I met them today. That could also have been quite incisive. I’ll see there’s an opportunity to do so later on, perhaps in more of an interview style.

My summary: X-Series = Brilliant, more people need to know about it, more people need to be converted to it.

I’ve talked now and again with Oren of mobile messaging services company, eMoze and I asked him to tell us a little bit more about himself and his company.

Here we go…

1. What was your first mobile handset?
I have to think about this for a moment because the only thing that stands out in my mind is that it came with it’s own luggage. It must have been a Motorola of some sort.

2. What is your current mobile strategy? (i.e. Handsets, devices, networks)
I’m thrilled with my current I-mate K-jam. It’s a little slower than I expected but I get a world of work done on it. I need more memory for this device I’ve got to sweet talk someone in the office into giving me a free MINI SD memory card.

If anyone has a free MINI SD card for me, You can send it to the “Needy Oren” Fund to help frustrated Imate users such as myself!

3. What price plan are you using right now?

4. What’s your background?
Online Marketing Manager with 6 years of Experience. Currently managing the online marketing for emoze.com a Free Push Email solution.

I’m also Married and the proud father of an incredible 4 year old girl named Shely and a 1 Year old girl named Lior who are the center of my world.

I grew up in Montreal but now living in Israel, raising my family here & enjoying the weather.

I updated a few blogs in my spare time.

http://oren-media.blogspot.com
http://pushmail.instablogs.com

5. What sites do you regularly read to keep up to date with mobile?
Mostly forums such as
http://www.modaco.com/
http://PPCSG.COM
http://mobile9.com

and the great people at
http://coolsmartphone.com

I’ve recently discovered smstextnews.com and you can now consider me a fan!

Mobilemonday is a must to stay up to date with mobile industry news.

And one I have to slide in here for good mesure, http://www.emoze.com cause I’m working so hard on it.

6. What was your mobile bill last month? What do you think is a fair amount to pay for your mobile service each month?
It must have been about $150 or so, I’ve been pretty good with staying within my data plan but once i’m out of the office on business this is going to double, easily!

7. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
I’m still very fresh to the mobile Industry to give specific names of people I admire but there are some incredibly creative and talented service providers that make this industry so competitive and interesting.

I do have to give mention to Benny Ballin, emoze CEO who is the reason I’m on board within the mobile industry.

I’m finding that Mobile related bloggers and forums are Extremely open minded and supportive of eachother which makes work feel a lot less like well Work!

8. Do you have any pets?
Not at the moment, still waiting for my baby daughter to grow up a little more before we introduce a new dog to the family.

9. What one issue or technological advancement would you like to see with the mobile industry? What are you looking forward to?
The fastest technological advancement I’m looking forward to seeing within the mobile industry is price cuts PDA devices in order to make them mass market solutions. Breaking the boundries of where and how we stay connected & work is a change that will effect our every day lives. I’m looking forward to that moment immensely.

10. What’s your ringtone?
Let Me Hear You say Ya-ooo BY the Out there brothers.. But it’s constantly changing. I’m crazy about ringtones and any sound I could customize on my device.

11. What’s the last movie you saw at the cinema?
Arthur and the Invisibles: Luc Besson’s a genious, this is a very fun one to watch.
I’ve got to also mention Blood Diamon which is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

12. What services do you most use on your handset?
emoze: Free Push Email solution - emoze pushes, in real time, all Outlook & Lotus notes content including emails, calendar, contacts and tasks directly onto the mobile device and vice versa.

Downloadable free at: www.emoze.com

13. What’s the hottest mobile service to catch your eye recently?
Hottest Mobile Service… I’ve been playing around with so many but Opera mini is one I’m using very frequently. Hubdog is a service that I enjoy alot as well, freshly generated blog content on my device at all times. No need to print articles anymore, I take them all with me.

14. When did you last send a picture / video message — and who was it to?
Not recently, One of the biggest drawbacks on my device is it’s weak camera, all the pictures come out looking yellowish and green.

15. What new mobile companies have caught your attention this year?
The one I work for, emoze, For a couple of reasons:
1. The staff here is very dedicated to distributing our free service, we all strongly believe in pushing the mobile world forward.

2. There are a few very impressive changes ahead that many of our users are anxiously waiting for.

3. The Free Toys. Theres a lot of devices running through the office and it’s always fun to get try them all out.

16. What is the best thing and the worst thing about the mobile industry?
The best thing is that on one hand it’s advancing quickly and we’re all in for the ride.

I’ll be at the 3GSMshow in Barcelona next month, That should be great!

The Worst thing about the industry is that data packages are tieing the industry down. Users are clueless when it comes to the plan they’re or that one even exists. A lot of clarification needs to happen from the providers for all of us to come out on top.

—

Thanks Oren!

If you thought SMS Text News readers were amongst the best, brightest, sexiest and most notable of the world’s mobile community, then you’d be dead rght. Well done.

Nice to see you here, by the way.

Pull up a chair.

I’m always surprised to meet, talk and interact with SMS Text News readers. It’s phenomenally exciting. Do you remember Whatleydude? You will. If you’ve been reading around the blog comments now and again you’ll have seen his comments. A lot of the time I talk with people and I don’t really know who they are or what they do as a day job or occupation. So I hadn’t actually engaged with Whatleydude (James) as to his background or profession, we’d just been knocking about some mails. I thought it would be good to get him to answer the standard SMS Text News interview questions and see where it went.

Well. Oooh it’s an interesting one. Have a read.

Without further ado, James….

1. What was your first mobile handset?
I honestly don’t know.
It was a horrific piece of machinery that I got given for Christmas in 1997!
All I remember about is that it had an extendable aerial (which I broke off pretty sharpish - whoops), no caller ID and a ‘design your own ringtone function!’

It was on Vodafone and it was PAYG. Shocking…

The same applies to the phone after that one - no idea what make -

But I can however tell you that my first memorable handset was the Nokia 3210 - ahh… the wonders of Snake!
And T9!

w00t!

But yeah - started off on Vodafone - dilly dallied with Orange and Three - but always came back to VF. Also - I’ve pretty much the same mobile number now for 12 years! That’s gotta be a record surely?!

2. What is your current mobile strategy? (i.e. Handsets, devices, networks)
My current mobile strategy?
Eh?
You what?

*emails Ewan*

Ah… I see!

I’ve got an N73 currently - I play around with a lot of handsets - on my desk right now for instance I have an N95, a Nokia 6680, N80 and another N73.
I really need a Java handset though - maybe if I steal someone’s K800i… Hmm.
Sorry!

Getting distracted!

Why do I have all these phones on my desk?

Well - I guess I’ll come to that later on in this Questionnaire!

My next handset will probably be the N95.. and I’m giving serious thought to moving Operator too.
Although VF have got ’til March (apparently - ahem) to sort out their data etc…

(I’m a Nokia fiend - always have been - although I once tried those NEC phones that launched with H3G - lets not talk about that though eh?)

3. What price plan are you using right now?
I’m on something stupid like 3000 mins pcm + STC
(I discovered yesterday that I’m on an 18mth contract - I am not amused)

*runs off to check*

Anytime 3000 3G STC 50 VC + 40Pds 3G Extras Pack for 34Pds - whatever that means… I know I know - I should pay attention - but I really don’t.

4. What’s your background?
I’m a fellow Essex boy like yourself chap - Canvey Island born and (in)bred.
What? Webbed feet are handy?!
Hahah - moved to London in my 20s to have a crack at working in the city.
I worked for LWT, GMTV, The Storm Trooper’s Gazette (sorry - The Daily Mail)

And then an amazing thing happened…

Bear with me - life story time!

I was tinkering along at The Mail enjoying life etc and - via a mobile forum http://www.talk3g.com - I discovered the BBC had a mobile service which was supposed to be better than WAP. So I thought I’d give it a go on my (then) N70.

I couldn’t get it to work.

So I emailed the BBC and told them it was rubbish and they were too (in as many words).

I got an email back from a guy called Kevin Cunnington at Refresh Mobile telling me that he could fix it and that the N70 was capable of the BBC (Mobizines!) Service and that I should try this.. and try that and and… etc etc.. but no matter what - I couldnt get the bloody thing to work!

Anywhoo - the long and short of it is - I ended up getting it working one weekend after lots of fiddling and playing with various settings - so I Kevin emailed back to let him know that a) I had got it working and b) How much I enjoyed the service.

So yeah - he emails me back and offers me a ‘mystery prize’ from their website (I’d give you the link but they’ve since taken it down), this website had all sorts of things on it - generally boys toys and various other firebox kinda stuff y’know?

At the very bottom of this website it said something along the lines of:

“Or - spend a day in the office and meet the team! If we like you - we may even give you a job - Refresh Mobile is always looking for fresh ideas from innovative people…”

So. You can see where this is going can’t you?

I went along - met the CEO, Scott Beaumont - had a really long (and kinda geeky) conversation about the mobile industry and the Mobizines product and where it was and where it was going and yeah - all was well.
Unfortunately I was doing accounts at the time (YES - ACCOUNTS - AARGH) and Refresh Mobile wasn’t looking for any accountants…
Hmph.

Three months later I decide to start looking for a new job - figured I’d drop Refresh a bell, see how they were getting on - Scott & Kevin were both pleased to hear from me and invited me in for another chat.

That was the evening of Wednesday 8th June 2006.

By Friday lunchtime I’d quit my job at the Mail and signed the contract with Refresh.

I am now currently ‘Mobizines Manager’ at Refresh Mobile - working on various projects such as WAP, CRM, Quality Testing, Product Marketing and general Product Management…

However - now here’s the big ‘revelation’ - my name is James Whatley - I have an online tag - it’s Whatleydude.

Go on - Google ‘Mobizines’ & ‘Whatleydude’ - have a look what you get…

Yup - that’ll be me - ‘posing’ as a user evangelising the service!

So yeah - time to come clean - I work for Refresh Mobile and I work on the Mobizines Service.

Thing is - I REALLY believe in this service and I think everyone should have it - so in my defence - I was bigging up the service before they hired me! So the use of the word ‘posing’ is kinda wrong really. I AM a user of the service - I’ve just been kinda neglecting to mention that I work for Mobizines..

*whistles innocently*

So yeah - I guess they hired one of their biggest fans - I’m a paid user!

…I hope no one hates me! I know I’ve been a surreptitious about my evangelising - but now it’s all out in the open I can be honest about who I am, what I do and who I work for.

Sorry - didn’t mean to go off on one - but I’ve been needing to get that off my chest for a while.

I spoke with my CEO about it this morning and he gave me the ok - I mean Whatleydude is my tag - so I need to reclaim it as it were y’know?
I’ve been blogging since March (www.myspace.com/whatleydude is my main one - but I have others) last year (when I buggered off to Thailand for two weeks and checked myself into a detox spa - http://www.spasamui.com - everyone should go!) …and I’ve had an online presence for around 10yrs now (as that tag).

I also run a gaming forum http://s8.invisionfree.com/ThePGF - gaming being my initial interest that brought me online in the first place… that has now developed to Mobile!

I think I now look at more mobile sites than I do gaming…!

*spots next question*

Ah ha!

5. What sites do you regularly read to keep up to date with mobile?
OBVIOUSLY smstextnews - but also

http://biskero.org
http://talk3g.co.uk
http://ringnokia.com
http://darlamack.blogs.com/darlamack (sometimes)
http://technokitten.blogspot.com
http://www.flash-lite.de

But I also read/use (not entirely mobile)

The Register - we all know this one
Talk3g.co.uk - that mobile forum
IGN.com - for films and sometimes gaming
spoNg - gaming news
http://www.rogerandjames.blogspot.com - comedy blog by me and my mate Roger
http://www.alondonsingtonwrites.blogspot.com - the dating scene in London (written by a buddy of mine - again makes me laugh)

Oh and obviously my own forum (which has a phone section!) The PGF - http://s8.invisionfree.com/ThePGF - where the main chat at the moment is all things Wii related.

I love my Wii - ahem.

I *think* that’s it - although I’m sure I’ve missed some…

6. What was your mobile bill last month? What do you think is a fair amount to pay for your mobile service each month?
I HONESTLY don’t want to say - it was a bit hideous - the good thing is I get my data charges back on expenses BUT - you do the math.

It’s three figures…

I’m kicking off at Vodafone at the moment because MMS is no longer part of my bundle - which, quite frankly is ridiculous… But yeah - I’m giving them two months.

7. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
Personally - I guess Scott Beaumont for a start, (no corporate sucking up here - seriously) Mobizines was born out of a management buy-out at T-Mobile which he personally headed up.

And to give me a job based purely on my passion for the product and the mobile industry is something that I will for ever be in his debt for!

Secondly - I’m a big fan of most (if not all) mobile bloggers - there’s no real one that stands out for me but that whole ‘community’ (of which I hope to eventually be a part of) is growing. And people are sitting up and taking notice. The example being: Bloggers being invited to the big Mobile Industry events around the world. Nokia/Motorola/SE etc want YOU to use their product and enjoy it and then they want you to blog about it.

Over the past 6mths I’ve read a lot of articles regarding ‘How to get bloggers to blog about your product’ or in most cases ‘How NOT to get bloggers to blog about your product’ - its a tough one.

I guess that’s why I’ve come clean about who I am and what I do etc as I know eventually I would’ve been found out/discovered - which doesn’t do ANYONE any favours!

Thirdly?
I haven’t got one - I’m hoping to go to 3GSM next month - so maybe someone will impress me there!
:o)

8. Do you have any pets?
Nope. It’s a bit annoying really - I love dogs and I used to have one - but I’ve recently discovered I have a potentially fatal allergy to all kinds of animal fur.

I spend my time with my Wii.

Brilliant.

I s’pose I could get a tortoise..

OOO!
just remembered!
I’ve got a Nintendog called Bruno!
lol

9. What one issue or technological advancement would you like to see with the mobile industry? What are you looking forward to?
I must admit - I am intrigued about the iPhone. I’m itching to see if it will have the massive impact a lot of people think it will.. Now the dust has settled things are becoming clearer about the product.

The UI looks pretty special - but other than that - *shrug* - d’ya know what I mean?
I am a big fan of convergence - I recently filled in a Nokia survey in regards to the N73 and in doing so I gave away the fact that I only carry my phone. No Blackberry, no MP3 player/iPod, no PDA/Organiser, no Diary etc etc..

More convergence - that’s what I want.

Oh - and that thing they did in Japan? With the move to standardise every phone charger?!
WHY ISNT THAT WORLDWIDE?!

NOKIA! Please STOP changing EVERYTHING. Memory cards & Chargers being my key example…

Grr..

10. What’s your ringtone?
The Killers - When you were young
My phone only rings briefly as I pick it up sharpish - so that opening guitar is fine by me.

Message wise I had the ‘woo dini’ of a Jawa up until about two days ago - right now I’m experimenting with the ‘3D Tones’ - we’ll see eh?
Incidentally - I upgraded my N73 from standard to Internet Edition thanks to Stefan’s instructions over at Ring Nokia..
Good work fella.

11. What’s the last movie you saw at the cinema?
Casino Royale.

If you’ve seen it - ’nuff said.
If you’ve not - hit ctrl T and book your ticket now!

12. What services do you most use on your handset?
Obviously Mobizines first - I must admit that I HAVE to as part of my job but I actually READ it if you know what I mean?
Ok - so I might not read Shoewawa - but Pocket-lint for instance - I read everyday.

What else?

Agile Messenger - can’t be without this one.
Yahoo Go! - Great App.
MP3 player - I go spare if ever I forget my earphones.
Opera Mini - (although I use Safari sometimes)

My active standby is: Mobizines/Contacts/Calendar/Agile/Bluetooth/MP3 player.

13. What’s the hottest mobile service to catch your eye recently?
Yahoo GO 2.0 on Java - it’s about time they caught up with the Java users. Reporo & Widsets are doing well also - its good to have a bit of competition! Sky Mobile is also a very good idea - and that’s the kind of convergence I’m talking about. Setting your Sky+ to record from your mobile? Brilliant stuff.

14. When did you last send a picture / video message — and who was it to?
*check sent items*

I sent an MMS of me pulling various stupid faces to a friend of mine who I knew was feeling down. It made her laugh. Job done.

Before that - I sent a pic of my new cowboy boots (I love them) to a friend of mine… No really.

15. What new mobile companies have caught your attention this year?
Pass. I keep an eye on Widsets and Reporo (who’ve done well with their CPW deal). But that’s about it - I need to improve this area of my knowledge base…

16. What is the best thing and the worst thing about the mobile industry?
Worst - Data charges & unclear tariffs.
T-Mobile Web n Walk/X-Series on Three - THATS the way forward.
There’s your answer.

Saying that - something that me seethe recently - my mate’s Dad, been with T-Mobile for yonks - on an old one2one contract(!) his last bill was for something like £160-odd quid and he’d used 270mins and sent 10 sms’.

Ok - so he’s 65yrs old and isn’t that savvy.
BUT - T-Mobile should’ve seen this and recommended a new contract to him.

THAT really annoyed me.

Thank you James! Thanks for taking the time!

I’m going to be doing a lot more Q&A interviews shortly. If you’d like to do a Q&A drop me a mail. Don’t be shy about it.

If you work anywhere near the mobile industry, if mobile is a passion, or if you’ve something to say about mobile, then you qualify to do a Q&A.

It’s really easy: I’ll email you out a list of questions, (usually at least 10/15 questions), you return’em whenever you wish and I then publish the set of questions and answers, with a photo, if you’ve got one, or perhaps a logo plus a link to your site.

Just mail me at ewan@smstextnews.com saying you’d like to do a Q&A and I’ll shoot you out some questions. (If you’re able to tell me a bit about yourself in the mail, then I can try and customise the questions a bit more.)

Here’s a recent example featuring Stefan of Ringnokia.com.

I’m pleased to be able to bring you an SMS Text News EXCLUSIVE report from our man on the ground, Steve Procter.

EMBARGO — 4th December 2006

4th December 2006, LONDON - It was announced today at a clothing retail conference in Amsterdam that a brand new global clothes retailer is to launch early in 2007 with what is seen as a revolutionary new business model.

TatMart will not sell clothes but instead signup customers on 12 or 18 month contracts, during which time they can come in to any of the planned 200 stores worldwide and select an unlimited number of pieces of each item (tops, shirts, skirts/trousers, shoes, underwear) which will technically be rented for the duration of the contract (note that there is a fair usage policy to this which limits the total number of pieces to 23).

Customers will pay an attractive monthly fee for the service and at the end of the contract will be able to upgrade their items to the latest fashions and renew their contract for a further 12 or 18 months.

Only 3 fashion houses have been chosen to supply TatMart although it is rumoured that all of these are using the same OCM (Original Clothing Manufacturer) in China.

Initially each fashion house has produced just 10 pieces for each of the items to be offered but it is expected that throughout the first year this range will drastically increase and there will be options for customers to upgrade mid-contract to the latest styles.

At this time it is believed there will 7 different tariffs to cover everyone from small children through teenagers, young adults and even business people. There will be a seperate range of business suites and office shoes on the business package, together with a special business clothes advisor in each store who is fully trained in the art of power dressing.

Tariffs will range from £12 to £55 per month. It is not understood at this time how a pay as you go scheme will work although company officials have confirmed that they are investigating methods of making this idea work as “it is believed it will be very popular with many of the young people”.

Each of the initial 200 stores is to have a coffee shop; and curiously a strange clause at the bottom of the press release states that security staff will be told to stop people entering the shop carrying any other coffee or food items.

Cups of TatMart branded coffee will be priced at £7.50 per cup, although an “all you can drink” tariff will be available for £37 per month (with a fair usage policy we found in the smallprint that limits a person to 16 cups per month).

Other well known brands of tea and coffee will be available but a “corking fee” will be charged for these, making the total cost per cup £12.35 - and these will not be included in the all-you-can-drink tariff.

At ClothConf in Amsterdam where TatMart was launched yesterday, Tim Bryce-but-Wim, head of refreshment services said that:

Coffee and cake services are very important to us as they will help cover the huge costs of leasing the incredible centre-of-town landmark properties that we have taken on. Local councils and government, especially in the UK have levied huge taxes and retail licences on us and so it is important that we find a way to claw those setup costs back without hitting our monthly contract fees for clothing rental.

A retail industry expert listening in on the conference was heard to utter the words “hogwash” but as yet this rumour cannot be confirmed.

Whilst TatMart has leased 200 of the most incredible landmark sites around the world (one being the corner of Regent Street near Oxford Circus in London, one of the capitals most expensive retail properties), it is said by industry experts that security in the stores will be very “controlling”.

All clothes will be mere demonstration pieces, using similar looking materials but of a much cheaper fabric and sown together without the same degree of care that final items will have. They will also be tethered to the racks to ensure people cannot walk out with them. However TatMart confirmed that they will have a few pieces of the real merchandise held behind the counter for those customers who insist on trying them on.

All staff are to be on commission and it is rumoured that certain pieces carry better commission and so will be pushed harder.

Because the clothing items are technically being rented from TatMart, there will be an optional insurance policy that staff will be pushing. It will cost £78 per year and cover clothes for all risks worldwide; except countries where there is a current conflict or potential natural disaster or lots of rain. Items left in cloakrooms or lockers will also not be covered.

In addition, any items being worn by other people (for example if a customer lends a jacket to his brother) will not be insured. Customers should read the insurance smallprint because these clauses were only found on page 4 amongst half a dozen other rather revealing clauses.

Finally it can be revealed that whilst this is a new global initiative, UK customers who wish to go and shop in any of the TatMart shops abroad will have to pay an excess of £38 per item that they purchase in the overseas stores. Furthermore, we have discovered that all clothing items contain an RFID chip and the contracts clearly state that clothing is for UK use only.

TatMart intends to install RFID monitors at its Manchester, Gatwick, Heathrow and Luton airport shops as well as in all of its overseas branches. If anybody is detected wearing a TatMart item at the airport or overseas then their account will be charged an additional £4.50 per day that it is being worn outside the UK.

Customers who wish to signup for an account at TatMart will need to take full photo ID and a bill showing their address to their nearest store. The process is said to only take 30 minutes whilst TatMart check the persons credit and take all their bank details for the 12 or 18 month contract.

Once signed up they are then able to come into the store whenever they wish and take a ticket for the next free member of shop staff who can show them round the items of clothing and talk them through the seasonal fashions and which items of clothing they believe will work best for the customer.