I’ve published two blogs about The Messaging Centre ("TMC") so far — the first was about their SMS service for appointment reminders and the second, more recently, was about how their recently introduced SMS communications system for Tubelines was very well received. 

I took a closer look at what TMC were doing.  Two way SMS services administered via web browser (a la hotmail) is nothing new per se — it’s all about the marketing & communication as well as effective service delivery to the client.  Witness TMC’s solutions for Recruitment, for example.  TMC appear to have been particularly effective at this judging by their recently client announcements.

I shot them a mail to see if I could connect with one of their management team and put some questions to them and was delighted to be able to do a Q&A with founder Peter.  I really do enjoy reading the answers that people from within (and from without!) the industry give.  It’s fascinating!   Plus, also look for Peter’s timely comments about Vodavader and roaming costs

So, to begin with I started with the usual first two questions and went on from there.  Ok, here we go:

1. What was your first mobile phone?
I originally had a car phone as that was all that was available. The first hand held mobile I owned  was the NEC9A which was a bulky but powerful mobile, soon after I had a Motorola 8500.

2. What is your current personal mobile strategy? (e.g. device types, networks)
I like a phone to be a phone, and yet have all of the bells and whistles on it. I tend to use most of the functions on a phone such as camera video call Data transfers and synchronisation with my Outlook. I have yet to start using it with Email though and use a Sony K800i.

3. What is your business background prior to TMC?
For 12 years I ran a successful mobile phone company called Tancroft - supplying phones and contracts to corporate and consumer customers alike, employing up to 25 people and connecting several thousand handsets a month.

4. What was your motivation to setup TMC?
I felt continuing in mobile handsets was too much of a struggle. Essentially because of the relationship with the networks I found many users were not in direct control. During the time I was a dealer I had seen so many of the independent service providers swallowed up by the networks that I decided a career change was required.   I identified text messaging as a remarkable business tool that very few organisations at that time understood, and so as a consequence sold Tancroft to peruse the development of TMC and the software behind it.

5. Can you give us 3-4 examples of the kind of solutions and services you provide for clients?

Tubelines:
(Manage the infrastructure for the Northern Piccadilly and Jubilee lines)

We supply their control centre which essentially managers all of their engineering staff and allows the administrators to inform all of the appropriate people in an instance to a problem on the network. Furthermore we assist in the management and support of mobile devices within the organisation, and the day to day general communications of non - essential information.

Squeeze:
(London based Event bar managers and drinkologists)

Squeeze provides temporary bars to venues such as V concert, Glastonbury, NottingHill, Henley Cowes etc. Required with these bars are qualified bar staff. Squeeze experienced difficulties due to having to call hundreds of people to get the staff required for  numerous  venues and events. Since they have deployed the technology from TMC, they can now simply communicate  to groups  of employee’s by sending specific text messages, offering work opportunities and  also enable staff to text back confirmation of  their availability. "TMC have managed to automate a difficult time consuming and problematic part of our business substantially reducing our costs, and more importantly reducing the amount of time required to manage and book our temporary staff" Duane Shepherd, Director.

Star Radio
(Part of UKRD with radio stations across the UK having in excess of 500,000 listeners per week.)

We have given Star the ability to communicate directly with both their listeners and the radio DJ’s directly from an online computer, allowing the station to have an on going and personal dialogue with their listeners and manage and store their listener’s data at the same time. They take advantage of our free of charge auto reply service using one of TMC’s virtual reply numbers. 

6. From an industry viewpoint, how do you find your customers are reacting to mobile services? Is it still ‘a dark art’ or do you feel more and more businesses are reacting positively to the medium? 
I believe our product gives corporate organisations of all sizes the ability to get far better use from Mobile devices. I think staff are far too quick to pick up a phone and dial a mobile. I see my roll as one that educates organizations and helps them understand that Mobile devices can help enhance internal communications and business continuity. A great deal of information needs to be passed between employees and by giving their staff the ability to use a text platform to communicate - the rewards are substantial. SMS technology can help reduce cost, staff time, limit disturbance (such as being interrupted during a business meeting or working when half way up a ladder!) caused by constant calls to mobile users. SMS can also help regarding storing business information and can reducing the amount of stress and wasted time that inevitably comes with a voice call. Finally unlike with a voice call there is a full audit trail of messages with confirmation of delivery, and the ability for the recipient of the message to reply. 

Organisations that have embraced this technology have in most cases not looked back and have had very positive feed back from staff customer managers and administrators alike along with reduced stress,  reduced costs and easier flow control and management of information.

7. What’s right and what’s wrong the with mobile industry today?
Big question, but to bring up one point  - fleecing, on roamed calls especially on international networks owned by the one big supplier Vodvader - use the GSM Luke!!

8. Can you give us a quick summary about what you think of each major UK network?
I wonder about the level of cooperation between these allegedly independent companies as there seems to be so little competition between them, however in the context of my industry all of these incumbents see text messaging as non vital and have not woken up to the needs of texting in the corporate market, an example of which is it is impossible to get any service level agreements from any of these companies.

9. What are the most used functions on your mobile? 
Texting

10. What sites do you regularly visit for mobile related news and opinion?
160characters.org and the GSM association.

11. What mobile related services or applications have you seen recently that have really caught your eye?
Streetmap on 02, OnMobile, AQA. 

—

Thanks for taking the time Peter!

I’ve been talking to Alex on and off by email and over IM for quite a while now, particularly as he’s been making some really valid (and brilliantly cynical comments and contributions) here on the blog for some time.  As Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of SendMyTxt, his comments come with the context, awareness and experience of one who works day to day in the mobile industry.   (You won’t believe what his current ringtone is, though, make allowances as he’s a Spooks fan — I can’t wait for the next series.)

Reading through the answers to his questions as I marked them up to publish, I couldn’t help but smile in recognition of some of the situations and points he makes about the industry. 

Right then!  To the questions… mobile brick phones at the ready!

1. What was your first phone and network?
A Motorola M400 (the dreaded flip without a flip) on One2One. In fact, I’ve got it in my hand at the moment. 300 grams of pure brick power. I got it back in 1994 for my 18th birthday, and it cost £350 from a car audio shop in Dulwich, South London. All my birthday money went on it, which is sad really - nowadays kids seem to be able to get new phones with their pocket money each week, and still have change left over to top up and blow all their credit on ringtones!

2. What is your current mobile configuration? (Handsets, networks and so on)
After a while of trying to live with two handsets - one for work and one for personal, I gave up and stuck with the work one. It’s a Sony Ericsson P910i on a Vodafone group tariff, which is fab as we get to share minutes, texts, and can call each other (or the office) for free. However, there’s not much love lost between us and Vodafone - which is why we’re changing to Orange. My new shiny Nokia N80 is sitting here waiting for number porting.

3. What was your first exposure to working with the mobile industry?
I put together a monitoring system for BSkyB’s website back in about ‘98 - which alerted the webmaster via SMS if anything went down. It relied on a load of modified paging software, and an old analog modem that dialled up to each network in turn to send a text. They didn’t charge anyone for the service, so given a big enough bank of modems you could have theoretically run a ‘free sms’ website.

4. What is your current day to day role?
I’m CTO (and co-founder) of SendMyTxt, a mobile services company based here in the UK - so day to day my role is quite varied. We operate a flat company structure and all ‘muck in’ with the daily chores, so I can be working through the technicalities of a new interconnect one minute, on the phone to a customer the next, and then later might be in a pre-sales meeting. Variety is not only the spice of life, but keeps your brain ticking over - and helps breed new ideas and ways of thinking.

5. When was the last time you sent a picture message and a video message?
Got to admit it’s not been for a while. I got a cross-network MMS the other day, which downloaded about 50% and promptly aborted itself - taking the MMS notification with it. Last time I sent anything was when I got a parking ticket, and couldn’t get the photos I’d taken off my phone - so I sent it to my email via MMS.

6. List the UK mobile networks and give your experience of them?
Here’s the interesting thing - it’s always changing. My opinion of them a year ago is so different to now, and will probably change in the future. But anyway, here goes.

Vodafone - Used to be great in all ways, the leaders, innovators, and all round rock solid network performance. Nowadays, having spent too much money on F1 drivers to advertise their brand, I feel they’ve lost their way. Oh, and we’ve had nothing but trouble with our handsets - which is why we’re going to Orange. As for the SMS side, hmm. Got to say that a lot of the time their SMS platform - both premium and free to user - seem to run like treacle having a race with a milk float.

Orange - I’m more impressed as each day goes by. Their continued innovation and ‘different way’ of looking at things fits in well with my ethos. Remains to be seen how great their handset service is, as I’ve never used Orange for my primary mobile service.

T-Mobile - still have nightmares from the one2one days. No matter how much rebranding they do, I still think of their awful customer service, technology and general drabness from back in the day. Personally you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming to use them as a main handset provider, but that’s just my 10p worth.

O2 - Used to be good, but where’s the spark gone? I remember Genie being the best thing since sliced bread - but O2 in their infinite wisdom killed it off. Shame, it had real potential.

3 - I had a 3 Motorola phone ages back. Wasn’t at all impressed by the quality of the network (I seemed to spend most of the time on O2), and the 3G features weren’t all that. Fast forward to today, and well, maybe it’s just me being sucked into their marketing and PR spin, but I’m impressed. They seem to be constantly innovating.

7. Name three innovative mobile services or applications that you’ve seen recently? Say why you think they’re good.
Oh gosh, this is a hard one. Some of our customers at SendMyTxt have come up with some really impressive services over the past few years, but I wouldn’t want to favour any particular one. In terms of stuff that isn’t related to work, I’m still impressed with Shazam - it’s both lost and saved me a few quid in pub bets over the years. Nothing much in the UK has really grabbed me recently.. so I’m either so used to SMS that nothing seems new anymore, or we really aren’t innovating like we used to (see my rant about the networks!)

8. What’s your ringtone?
Depends who’s calling. At the moment my main tone is the theme from the TV series Bewitched. I usually make my own ringtones from CDs and the like, so I get exactly what I want and don’t have to pay for it

9. Which are the most used applications and services on your main handset?
My web browser for accessing email on the go (Gmail and Outlook Mobile Access), and (rather shamefully) Solitaire. I’d never really played cards until I got stuck on a long train journey one day, so fired it up and learnt how to play. I hope I can find a version on the N80, otherwise I’m gonna have to carry both phones around!

10. Which three people do you most rate in the mobile industry?
Tough call. John Davies at Cable & Wireless is a top bloke, and although he’s a bit far away to have a pint with since he emigrated to New Zealand, I owe him quite a few. There’s so many other people I’ve dealt with over the years that have come and gone, probably too many to mention here though. Oh, and of course you Ewan. The man with the master plan. I really enjoy reading your blog and contributing, long may it continue..

11. What was your mobile bill last month? What do you think is a fair amount to pay for your mobile service each month?
Actually I don’t know.. I only ever know it’s been a high usage month when I get a rather pissed off beancounter on the phone asking whether I ever get the chance to sleep. Most of my bill nowdays is data, as I’m always on the ‘net when I’m out and about.

12. How many times have you voted for Big Brother? Assuming you did - or pretend you did - do you think you should get your money back since they’ve put a whole load of those housemates voted out back in?
Actually I don’t think I ever have. Not intentionally anyway. As for the whole refund malarky, well I’m undecided. I mean, do people really think their votes do anything? I’ve always had the funny feeling things like these are rigged..

13. What sites do you regularly read to keep up to date with mobile?
Yours of course.. The Register is good for mobile news too. Also sites like BBC News are a great way of seeing a mobile industry story from ‘the other side’ of the fence. It’s good to take a step back and see how the real world views something.

14. What one issue or technological advancement would you like to see with the mobile industry? What are you looking forward to?
Introducing multicast properly and allowing straight to handset broadcast. Wasn’t ‘high speed data’ the whole point of 3G? Why is mobile TV coming over DAB then? You might as well just strap a freeview box to a mobile. If operators gave proper data access and worried less about crap like video calling and walled proprietary multimedia content, it’d create a proper truely open platform for content providers to give consumers what they want.

15. Where do you stand on mobile vs ipod?
I have 1Gb of memory on my SE phone, and regularly keep it loaded up with music, movies, and TV programmes. Watched virtually half a series of Spooks a while back on my little screen. Certainly passes the time on long train journeys.

16. Have you ever bought anything from a shop (ie not a ringtone) via your phone?
I’ve occasionally bought access to sites and services by text before, but apart from that.. can’t say I have.. I’m setup for Paypal Mobile, but still yet to find a real use for it. As for using my browser on the phone, ecommerce can be clunky at the best of times - so I doubt I’d bother try on my mobile.

17. What’s the last movie you saw at the cinema?
Er, this is rather embarrasing. It was the Brit Flick ‘Confetti‘, with Jimmy Carr, Martin Freeman, etc. Got to admit I’m a great fan of torrents, DVDs, and Sky+, so with the £8 plus for a cinema ticket nowdays I’m usually more inclined to stay at home and spend the money on popcorn, chocolate and beer instead. I also keep meaning to go see movies, and by the time I get around to it they’re not on release anymore. Last one I pencilled in to see was ‘The Da Vinci Code’, but wanted to read the book first. Having read the book, the film wasn’t on anymore. Got to wait for the DVD now.. but at least I can transfer that to my mobile and watch it on my travels

Thanks for taking the time, Alex!

Thank you Nick at MX for rising to the challenge and sending me some questions.   I was just sat staring at my empty mailbox thinking… ‘right…er.. I’ll need to phone someone and beg for some interaction‘ when your questions arrived.

Nick writes:

Hi Ewan,

Right - question/s for you!!

What is your favourite third party application/service which is primarily based around each of the following technologies:

A) SMS (Premium, and Non Premium)
B) MMS
C) Voice
D) Video
E) Downloadable application
F) Wap/mobile internet (inc I-mode)

——

Ohhh my!  Good ones!  Spent a lot of time thinking on this one…. 

Ok, my favourite third party applications/services based around:

SMS
There is always a place in my heart for text to screen.  Ever since we began working with Teletext to provide the moderation and content control for their Chat-a-Box service (which also powereed the text to screen for Big Brother 2, I think it was).  I was secretly amazed and delighted at the technology — ‘LOOK!!! It went from my phone… my PHONE!! To the screen! LOOK it’s on TV!!’ — although, of course, I kept a straight face as much as possible in meetings.  I thought it was a wickedly good way of encouraging people to interact with a TV show.  Also: one of my proudest moments has been standing in a capacity club  and being jostled out the way by people trying to see the screen (our Impulse service) so they could text their message to it.   As for direct premium services, I still think that in terms of immediacy and value, 82ask.com rocks.

MMS
I’ve been thoroughly disappointed with the way the medium has been implemented.  Absolutely ridiculous.  I am SEETHING with annoyance.  The moment MMS hit the market, I had big plans for it.  Huge plans.  We already had a huge audience of people texting our screens in nightclubs — and I was blown away when we received our first picture message.  It came through as a text message saying ‘please visit vodafone.co.uk to pick this up’ … however I thought it would be brilliant to extend texting and offer pictures-to-screen.  However, the implementation by the networks has been nothing short of appalling.  I’m pleased that prices are much cheaper — I’ve also begun to use the medium myself a lot more and, crucially, have my friends reply WITH picture messages.   A lot of the time, over the past years, I’ve felt a bit of a plum being the only one sending picture messages — with my friends replying saying ‘cool’ by text — or calling and saying ‘er, it didn’t work’.   I think one of the best MMS applications I’ve seen has been the iTAGG mobycards.com service — or, the Vodafone Live Postcard service — I used that to send picture postcards to my gran quite a lot! 

Voice
Gosh?  A voice application.  Hmm.  Oh, I know: GenieOne.  I absolutely loved GenieOne.  Did a blog on it yesterday actually.  It was an integrated multimedia voice and email service, way ahead of its time.  I used it for a good 30-40 minutes a day when I was travelling regularly.  My favourite feature was this:

• I’m sat driving and I need to get a message to someone.  Perhaps someone in the office, to ask them to do something — when I don’t need to speak to them real-time or if they are in meetings.
• I call GenieOne from the mobile.
• I create a new message by typing in HETT on my phone.  It says ‘Do you mean HETTY BROWNE’ and I press 1 to confirm.
• I then record a voicemail message for Hetty.
• GenieOne then sends the audio message, ‘from’ my email and attaches the audio as an easy to play wav file.

Absolutely wicked.  It would also read your email to you as well.  Not brilliant, but you know, it worked.

Video
Now I think Video is a challenge.  I don’t use many mobile video services at all.  I am forever recording mobile video.  I thought the ability to dial into a video shortcode and view movie trailers was rather neat — an MX service if I recall!    I have, for the purposes of research only, spent a little while looking at some of the videos on the Three SeeMeTV service.  Very enlightening indeed.  I am a fan of the Sky News 8pm show that allows you to call in on your 3g phone and make your comment via video.  I think that’s very, very cool indeed.

Downloadable Application
Gosh that’s far too difficult to pick just one.  I use ShoZu at least 10 times a day.  Just a quick look down the recently used ‘My applications’ list on the N90 reads: - lifeblog, opera mini, buddyping, hotxt, reporo, shopqwik, crickee, mobileglu, ROK, Sky by Mobile, tex2me.

Wap/mobile internet (inc I-mode)
I found the i-mode email very efficient indeed — just, alas, it’s not built for the amount of spam and mail I get.  I think it’s a wicked application for someone who uses email now and again though.

Ok so WAP and/or mobile.  Well the BBC mobile services are just phenomenal.  I read them a lot on the train via the Blackberry — they’ve just started doing video on the mobile too.  For a while there, I used my Sony Ericsson W550i to check and reply to email via Google Mobile Mail.  It was a very cool service.  I eventually swapped back to using the Blackberry though. 

I once used Amazon to order a book via WAP.  Just to say I’d done it.   I have, since the beginning of time, used ents24.com to check cinema listings — way back when I was using a Sony Z5 mobile and using WAP — the same time that British Telecom was spending millions trying to get everyone to ’surf the mobile internet’ with WAP.  Heh. 

This morning I threw open the door to questions and there was just one person standing there in the bright sunlight: Natasha, NY property magnate and infamous mobile phone dinosaur.  I can remember being horrified one day to find out that Natasha had actually been given a Blackberry by her sensible brother but had kept it in its box, unopened, under her desk for almost a year.

However when she finally did start using the Blackberry after repeated petitions, she’s never looked back and frequently uses it across all continents.  So, thank you Natasha for the questions and here we go with the answers:

1. What does your new Blackberry do that your old one doesn’t?
   Well, the key issue is that I can use GoogleTalk on it.  Although it might have been possible to do this on the old one. 

   Another key issue is that I feel less of a dinosaur now that I’ve upgraded to the latest one.  It’s a male mobile phone ego thing.   The battery is ridiculously crap though.  That’s one thing I’ve noticed and I’ve only had the new one two days.  I wasn’t that impressed with the keyboard either, but I’m getting to grips with it now.  The screen is very, very good. 

   Also, I changed my service plan with it so instead of 150 minutes at £35ish/month, I now get 1,000 off-peak minutes at £18/month. 

2. How many current mobiles have you got, and list them please.
   - Nokia N90 on T-Mobile
   - T-Mobile ‘MDA Pro’ Windows Mobile phone on T-Mobile
   - Sony Ericsson K608i on Three
   - LG 8120 on Three
   - SLVR on Fresh (though I can’t make calls on it as I can’t get credit on to it)
   - Orange C500 on Vodafone
3. What was your first mobile phone and when did you acquire it?
   I think it was an NEC. It was actually quite good looking — everyone else was walking about with those brick ‘flip’ phones, and my NEC, I felt, looked quite modern and wicked.  That was the first one I *owned*.  Prior to that I’d used a Philips one that I borrowed from dad as he rarely used that one.  I got the NEC in about 1997 and I got it from a totally seedy Carphone Warehouse store — one of those little cubby-hole ones on Oxford Street nearby the Virgin Megastore.
4. How many contacts do you have in your address book?
   My Apple Address Book has 855 ‘cards’ — most contacts have at least 2 numbers, so maybe 1,600 numbers across about 855 people. 

I think I have actually met Steve Procter of iTAGG.com only once - at a big internet/mobile conference years ago.  However I know him.  At least, I feel I do.  We’ve communicated enough through the years, generally online, by email or by phone.  (That’s half of him on the left there).

We’ve used iTAGG at Neo One to deliver many of our mobile services — indeed, they powered a substantial amount of our functionality for our Impulse SMS Text to Screen service which was live to hundreds of thousands of users every night. 

Steve’s extremely well connected, well liked throughout the industry and he’s a nice chap.  In all my dealings with iTAGG, I’ve always found both he and his team approachable, friendly and very much willing to help. 

iTAGG really set my mind alight when they launched their original service, enabling anyone to buy a keyword on the iTAGG shortcode and use their SMS gateway.  Back when shortcodes were thousands of pounds a month, for a 12 month commitment, Steve and his team levelled the playing field — I reckon this was a  market-moving-moment. 

Other aggregators offered similar services — but couldn’t compete on price, nor on pure simplicity.  You sign up, you pick your keyword and within seconds, your account is live and you’re sending and receiving texts.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been sat talking with a client interested in doing something ‘mobile related’.  When we get down to the nitty gritty, the clients often balked at the commitment required to get their own shortcode. ("12 months?  A 12 month contract?  We only need it for 2 weeks").  So almost every time I’d wheel out iTAGG and more often than not, we’d go live with an iTAGG service instead of a dedicated shortcode!    Most recently we used iTAGG for some live text auctions we did for a client. 

Once or twice I have actually come out a meeting with a client at 4pm with a mandate to launch a service and had the facility actually operational by 6pm.  I used to love being able to exceed expectations by a few million miles for clients who thought it would take months to get things setup.   

It’s not just standard SMS capabilities though — it’s the whole shebang including premium SMS.  That usually gets people rather excited when I introduce iTAGG.    I really like the ability to get things setup without having to speak to anyone as we often developed in the middle of the night — the iTAGG control panel was wicked.  I’ve placed orders at 2am in the morning safe in the knowledge that my requirements are going to be automatically deployed within moments.  I say ‘was wicked’ — because iTAGG have recently changed their modus operandi, launching www.sms.ec - SMS EasyConnect — the next generation of their online control panel service.

Steve and his colleagues aren’t just iTAGG though.  They’ve a super dotcom heritage which has stood them in good stead for the continued successful development of the company.   So much so that I went to town with this Q&A and before I knew it I was at question 19.  Special thanks to Steve for taking the time to sit down and answer them all!   

Blackberry addicts, watch out for his blasphemous comments!

Here we go…

1. What was your first mobile handset and what network was it on?
It was a Nokia on Orange back in the mid 90’s.  Would love to remember the model but can’t find a picture anywhere.  But I remember it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and was definitely slinkier than all my mates - for some reason I decided to go for the best model available - the one that could hold, wait for it, 100 contacts!!!  And Orange seemed really great back then, I really felt a lot of loyalty to them.

2. Tell us about your current mobile handset strategy?

• Nokia 7650 on Vodafone
• Laptop / Vodafone 3g card
• 1GB memory stick 
• DAP
• Broken video iPod

Yes that should read DAP - "Diary and Pen".  Some people laugh at this, for someone who is "in mobile" but I have no PDA, preferring to write everything with real ink in my little diary.

The memory stick contains "absolutely everything" - best invention ever!  Turn up anywhere in the world, plug it in to a PC, turn on my Vodafone mobile (who I think have the best global roaming reach) and I am in full control of my business.

I absolutely refuse to have a Blackberry as am convinced this "always on" strategy taken by business people is a scary road for society to go down.  When clients call or email at 11:30 at night and expect an instant reply, I start to weep at how we are letting our personal lives slip into oblivion.

3. What services do you most use on your handset? 
Just calls and texting really.  I’ve just had a look at the other icons on my 7650 and…well they are utter nonsense - gimmicks most of ‘em.  But 3rd party apps I use…spinvox and AQA/82ASK (see below).  And occasionally iTAGG’s Mobycards MMS to Postcard service (I’d use it more but a huge Nikon usually does my pics; show me a mobile phone with a 12.4 mega-pixel camera that can shoot at 8fps and I may change my mind!). 

Oh and using iTAGG’s street map service when I’m lost - give it a whiz, just text MAP to 60300 (stnd rate + 50p) and it’ll lookup where you are and return a wap link to a colour street map! Just like O2 and Streetmap’s new map service but ours has been running for over 2 years

4. You’ve worked in the interactive industry for quite some time — tell us the background to your previous company?
My previous company was Easily.co.uk where we registered domain names and setup email/web hosting accounts.  I started it from my dining room (hey in California they do it in garages but in St Albans one prefers the living room startup!).  It was back in ‘99 when the internet buzz was going nuts and it was some of the funnest time I’ve had in business.  I’d been working in the City and just discovered the internet one day and have never looked back. 

I sometimes long for those crazy days of running around First Tuesday events listening to all the mad ideas and people almost throwing money at you.  Although saying that we always ran Easily from our own pockets and had a very simple business model, buy a name for a fiver and sell for a tenner - sometimes people forget today that commerce really should be that simple!  Previously to Easily I had done my stints in the City and at Logica but also had a crazy 4 years running my own scuba business and teaching people to dive in a pool behind Oxford Circus…oh and the odd trip to the Red Sea - but it was business you understand, we never had any fun!

5. What prompted you to look to the mobile industry for your next venture? 
A few years in to running Easily I discovered that my colleagues were great at the day to day running of a business whilst I was the entrepreneur that spotted new things and got them going; and well, mobile was just screaming out as the big new thing and it just seemed to have huge potential and be very exciting (and indeed it is a great game to be in).  That was back in early 2002 and our first system was to deliver goal alerts by text for the Japan worldcup - blimey is it 4 years we’ve been going!!  Does that make us Senior Players in this industry!?

6. Give us an overview of iTAGG. 
iTAGG is split into two halves: the consultancy/mobile marketing/solutions side - which basically means we are "Imaginateurs" and come and imagine, design, build, execute, report, hand-hold on anything to do with mobile on a consultancy basis.  We feel our vast experience and general loveliness sets us aside from many of the newer players who don’t know their wap from their j2me and wouldn’t know an icstis guideline if it fell on their heads from a great height

The second half of the business is for the smaller players and also developers across all industries; it’s a platform called EasyConnect and can be found at http://www.sms.ec.  Basically turn up, signup and be running your own mobile, text and mms applications, text voting, content delivery, premium sms and tonnes more in 10 minutes.  We compare it I guess to systems like Opera’s Dragon system, but unlike many ready-to-go platforms ours is all free to signup for (no setup or management fees) - just pay for the messages.

7. What recent services have you offered? 
EasyConnect is pretty new and we are launching a much more in-depth content delivery and billing part of this any day now.  Again this service is free to plug in to.

We’re also really pushing our sms aggregation as we have some amazing rates for bulk and premium sms payouts and feel the levels of professionalism you get elsewhere for this are scary - we hear a lot of horror stories when people ask to move to us.

We’ve also just become the first player in the UK to offer unified MMS and SMS keywords on a shared shortcode.

And finally we’re just going mad working with agencies and brands to add mobile in to the bigger marketing mix and create some sexy combined mobile and web applications.

8. Have you ever considered offering the iTAGG service in North America or other areas?
Do you know what, we never have.  We took the same decision at Easily and just feel that the UK has sooooo much potential that it seems silly to run off on a gold rush when there is so much still to do here.

9. Give us 3 recent examples of your work with customers?
We’ve done a variety of different things using j2me, wap, pure text and user-generated MMS for lastminute.com, Live8, Libdems, Labour party, Orange, Conde Nast, Friends of the Earth, Bosch and many many more.  In fact at the last count we had several thousand clients using us at all levels from designing, building and executing complete mobile apps and marketing services through to using our self service EasyConnect platform for all sorts of things; we see some weird and wonderful uses of sms that we would have never dreamt up in a million years.  It’s quite incredible the things people find to do with texting.

10. What mobile related sites do you read regularly?
Well apart from Ewan’s great blog which is indeed the best mobile-themed blog for it’s real honesty and plain speaking - we need more like it!  I tend to hang out more on the general new-media sites such as Digital Bulletin and The Register.  I am also a big fan of New Media Age which I’ve read consistently for 7 years!

11. Pick 3 people that you admire and rate in the mobile industry and give us 2-3 lines about each.
Ooh dear I may have to get a tad negative for a split second…we could do with a few new faces that can really kick some butt and make things happen, and happen quicker.  In certain areas such as the operators I’d go as far to say that there is a massive lack of anything even remotely close to inspiration.  The mobile industry is very cut-throat and there are an awful lot of people just out for themselves.

12. What’s your ringtone?
It’s the tone that is used on the phones in 24!!  When I was hunting for something simple and discreet and not a high pitch shrill (whoever designs the speakers in handsets should be shot) this came up - I love it!

13. List out the most interesting mobile applications you’ve seen/heard of recently?
Spinvox.  My final project at university was text-to-speech (ok so what they do is the other way round) and when I first made that BBC Micro say "great but now lets go for a beer" it was quite a feeling of achievement.  So I know the pains they must have gone through to make Spinvox simply brilliant - although they do need to work on the accents of us Northerners which it occasionally fails to convert.  But…one of my colleagues simply hates the concept.  So it just proves how hard it is to create an application that everybody wants; perhaps no such thing exists and we should think more about how you tailor experiences to cater for the many different tastes out there.

The other is AQA (similar to 82ASK).  The idea of texting "anything" and getting an answer is simply brilliant.  But again both AQA and 82ASK could go soooooo much further with these services.  I like simplicity, but after a few years of operation I think it’s time to stretch the parameters a bit.

14. What new mobile companies have caught your attention this year?
It’s how text and mobile is used by small businesses that makes me feel it’s all worthwhile.  The client of ours who has a small local sandwich shop and delivers to local businesses.  Text him your order each morning from your desk and he delivers it.  Simple.  Nice.

15. What’s good and what’s bad with the mobile industry?
Good: New ideas every day.  Some real invention and creativity out there - although unfortunately not enough budget left over for marketing so a lot of the ideas go unseen; that is really sad.  You never know what sector you’ll be talking to next and what great ideas will be running through your head as you help a client figure how to use mobile in their business.

Bad: There are a few players wanting to get in to mobile that are back bedroom, hotmail toting, 12 year old burger flippers; you know the sort…john27@hotmail.com looking for "a revenue share" model ;-)  Luckily there are enough people we speak to that have great concepts with a real budget that these fools are just a bit of a joke in our office.

16. How do you react to Google’s ‘the web is now mobile’ viewpoint. Do you share it?
Ooh not sure I’ve followed that one, but let me think…"the web is now mobile"…hhmmm, so they reckon the whole web can just magically appear on mobile handsets and we’ll all carry on usual!?  Well something there doesn’t sound right.  Having come from the web world and sold 250,000 domains and about 100,000 websites I can honestly tell you that most people in web don’t know nuffin about mobile, and most of those in mobile know nowt about the web.  So all in all, I think we are in for a rough ride whilst people try and combine the two.  Ultimately and theoretically yes, of course we should just be able to look at a handset or PC or TV screen or even the screen on our microwaves, and see exactly the same information, but it just ain’t gonna happen without real inspiration, experience and dare I say it, making a lot of mistakes along the way.  So maybe the phrase is "the web will be mobile one day".

17. Send me a picture message or a video of something (with a description) — your desk, the office, anything — to me and I’ll publish it here with your interview.
Photo of our offices attached [left] and if you fancy a desk-share with us in a laid back converted warehouse near London Bridge then just ask…

18. What’s next for iTAGG?
Aside from all the great B2B stuff, we’ve decided to have a bit of fun with something directly for consumers…lets just say it’s all about user generated MMS images and if it takes off should make an absolute tonne of money for charities!!  I guess we just want to use our expertise in building combined mobile and web apps to give something back.  Watch this space…

—-

Steve, thank you very much for answering the questions! 

If you’d like to get in touch with Steve, you can do so at www.itagg.com or on +44 (0)20 7981 9775.

I don’t recall how I first came across ShopQwik.  I think I’d posted a wicked article about Reporo and how easy it was to buy a DVD via the service, when I saw a note from Mark of ShopQwik saying words to the effect of ‘if you liked Reporo, wait until you see what we’ve been working on‘.   I thought this was a pretty bold claim to make — and I also thought, ‘oh, another Reporo? Hmm‘.

A few weeks later though, I was able to get access to ShopQwik’s first version and check it out.  My first reaction was ‘where are all the books and CDs to buy?‘ — for some reason I thought Mark and his team were working on a shopping trolley style service similar to Reporo.  Not a bit of it.  When I fired up the application and saw the menu items, I could see that Mark’s bold claim was well founded.

‘Book flights? On your mobile?‘ I thought.   I sat for a while and considered the possibilities.  Shop for flights, car hire, hotels, resorts.. on your mobile?   I then picked up the mobile, my notepad, pen, car keys and headed out the door to the pub way down the road for a good lunch.  About an hour later I got a phone call from a client telling me I had to be in Cannes on Monday (it was Friday) and I should take care of my hotel and flight. 

Ah hah.  An opportunity to put ShopQwik to the test!  I’d had a play with it already but I wanted to see if it was meaty — sure, it could probably get me a room in London — but Cannes? 

I flipped out the mobile, brought up the application and began flipping.  About 5 options later I had a whole array of hotels ready for booking.  I tried flights.  A few flicks later, yup… there was a flight leaving Stansted at about 8pm on Sunday.  I almost booked.  Then, in true Scots style, I remembered that I’d configured ShopQwik with my personal credit card details — and not the company card. 

For a few weeks now I’ve been sitting debating the concept of booking travel arrangements on your handset with friends and colleagues from around the industry.  At first, quite a few people dismiss the concept saying they’d definitely wait until they get to their computer.  I thought this too — until I realised that I didn’t ‘enjoy’ booking my travel to Cannes.  It was work related.  There was no pleasure, per se, in booking it.  In fact it was a bit of an arse.  If I’m booking a £20k ocean cruise, well, then, yes, I’ll spend a good time researching it on the web and probably book it online too.   But for run of the mill and more frequent I-need-to-go-to-Cannes-on-Monday trips, I think ShopQwik is extremely useful. 

The concept of being able to see pictures of the hotel on the handset is wicked.  The fact that all booking references and details are kept on ShopQwik is extremely valuable.  No faffing around with bits of paper.
I can really see the potential with their service.  I can imagine myself sat on the train speeding home on a Thursday evening wondering what the cost would be to jet away on Friday… then just booking it! 

I asked Mark if he’d have time out of his rather packed schedule to do a ‘10 questions with’.  I was delighted when he readily agreed.  It’s actually 15 questions this time — here we go:

1.  What was your first mobile handset (and network)?
I think it was some nokia carry case thing (we’re talking way back)

2. What’s your current handset strategy?
I use a Sony Ericsson M600, SE W800 and a Nokia 7610 (best phone ever if you ask me). I’m with 02 on their £75 a month tariff, which has no large data amount with it for some reason.

3. Tell us a bit about your background?
I come from a travel and merchant banking IT background.

4. Why ShopQwik?  What was the inspiration?  Give us an overview of the service and your objectives.
Well, I’m always forgetting stuff, not losing it but just not taking it with me. I’ll remember my passport and bags but forget my reference number on a piece of paper on the kitchen table. I never forget my mobile so having something that marries the two together was something that I was looking for.

Booking flights and hotels on a phone is not something you’d immediately think people would do because it would be too hard to use and take to long to book etc. We agreed with all of that and set ourselves a target of 90 seconds to book something or it wasn’t worth doing. After many revisions I think we’ve cracked it.

5. How have you found the challenges with developing applications for mobile?
It’s not bloody easy! Actually, it wasn’t easy at the start at all. It’s like programming a 386 from years ago, but after a while you start to do things faster and we have very few problems today with producing a lot of content very quickly indeed.

6. When did you last use ShopQwik to buy something?  What did you buy?
I use ShopQwik to buy stuff all the time. I’m over to Dublin this week, so I booked my flight yesterday and I’m off on holiday to the Greek Islands at the end of the month. Again, flights and hotel all booked on my phone saving me around £185.

7. I need to get away from all this email at some point.  Recommend a hotel, somewhere in Europe, that I can book on ShopQwik?
I’ve wanted to go to Barcelona for ages, so I’ve booked Le Meriden Barcelona on the handset the other night for a weekend in August. I can bring up the booking info at any time so I can see the details and pictures of the hotel, which is great for showing your friends where you are going.

8. List 3 other mobile applications and/or services that you really rate.

• I like the Flickr integration apps, I think things like that are very clever and everyone should use them. I will on holidays this year.
• I like the Reporo app as well. Its very well done and they’ve got over 30,000 people signed up now so they must be doing something right.
• My next app after ShopQwik. (Cheeky I know but I’ve seen it and its great!)

9. What’s your ringtone?
All standard ones I’m afraid. Boring I know but I’m not into the personal ringtone thing.

10. What’s the most used feature on your handset, aside from ShopQwik?
Texting and picture messaging.

11. How much was your phone bill last month?
Too much! About £120, which is way too much if you ask me.

12. List the UK networks and tell us what you think of them?

O2
pros: Best network by far.
cons: The Data plans are not as good as T-Mobile

Vodafone
pros: First to market with most things
cons: Same data plans as O2

T-Mobile
pros: Best data plan anywhere
cons: Coverage not as good as the top 2

Orange
pros: Great Ideas
cons: Data plan a bit better than O2 & Voda but not as good as T- Mobile

3
pros: Cheap & Great TV ads
cons: Everything else

13. Which one person in the mobile industry do you reckon is a complete star?
Paul Ray. The guy’s a genius.

14. What websites do you regularly check?
Smstextnews.com
Biskero.org
Adobe.com
BBC.co.uk
RTE.ie
Thisislondon.co.uk

15. Last piece of music you bought?
The Fat boy slim compilation last week. His cd always seems to get borrowed and never quite makes its way back.

—

Thanks very much Mark!

I’ve been following 82ask.com ever since it launched.  The simplicity and value of the service really astounded me — it’s one of just a few truly innovative services.  I can remember thinking the consumer brand, 82ask, was a work of genius.  Not only is it distinctive, it also spells out their dedicated shortcode.

Generally speaking, if you work hard enough, you can probably an answer to your question from Google — indeed, if you’ve got your handset in front of you, Google Mobile is pretty efficient.  However, if your question is a little more complex than ‘What’s the capital of Australia’, you generally need to do quite a lot of re-querying and clicking about to get the answer.  As mega networker Oli Barrett put it in a quick interview I did with him a while ago:

I use [82ask] a couple of times a week when I’m out and about, away from Google, and need a quick answer to something.  A mobile service which saves me time – how refreshing!

I’d never used it myself until last week.  This wasn’t through design — it was because I’d never had a good enough question.   I didn’t want to waste the 82ask team’s time with an inane ‘test’ to see if they could tell me how many bunny rabbits there are in Northern Ireland (900,000 according to the 82ask Telegraph Interview).  I already bought the concept — I already got it — so I waited until I really, really needed to know something and whacked off the question.  The answer arrived almost instantaneously.  Phenomenal.  What’s more, I couldn’t tell you the 82ask shortcode.  I can’t remember it.  It doesn’t matter.  I just whacked in 8-2-a-s-k and sent off my message!   

Justin Davies of BuddyPing in his recent interview raved about the service, so I was delighted when I got the opportunity to put some questions to Sarah.

As always, I started off with a few standard ones and then went on from there.  Off we go!

1. What was your first mobile? Make/model/network

I can’t remember the exact model. I was at University, it was in 1999 and it was a pay-as-you-go phone on Orange.

2. Talk us through your current personal mobile strategy - what device(s) are you using and why?

I only really use my phone for texts, calls and email so I have a Motorola V3 for the texts and voice and a Blackberry for the emails!

3. Give us an overview of 82ask. Is this your first venture? What prompted you to setup the service?

Yes, 82ASK is my first foray into running a business. Basically, 82ASK enables anyone on any of the six UK mobile networks to text any question to 82275 and receive an accurate answer in minutes. We were the first service of its kind to market, and we think of ourselves as a ‘mobile find’ (rather than ‘mobile search’) solution. We charge £1 for each answer – if we can’t answer (which is really rare), we don’t charge you, and we don’t charge for clarification or customer service.

The idea for the service hit me in 2003 when I worked as a Financial Analyst in the City. Slaving away into the wee hours one night my boss sent an email asking me for more research and I thought, I wish I could charge for this. Which quickly led to, I should charge for this! My friend Thomas Roberts (who was also at UBS with me) and I worked flat-out setting up a trial service, answering questions ourselves 24/7. Investors were initially sceptical, but the results did the talking.

People loved it (and continue to do so!), just as we knew they would. The idea was really exciting, and still is, especially when people understand just how flexible and applicable it is to their daily lives!

4. You must get asked this one quite often - but I’m still curious: Can you give us some recent sample questions sent to the service?

That’s something I never get tired of! Just when you think you’ve been asked everything, people throw these brilliant, unexpected questions at us. We always use the best sources for the questions, and customers can check out the ones we use for each answer we send them on our website.

Here are a few recent ones that raised some eyebrows, with our answers:

Q: What are the main differences between Marx and Weber’s theories on social stratification?
82ASK: Marx said wealthy exploit the working class so they won’t advance. Weber said that it was not just this but shaped by status and power differentials.

Q: How long would it take a cow to fill the grand canyon with milk?
82ASK: An average cow produced 29 litres of milk, produced 10 months per year. This is 8839 litres of milk per year. The Grand Canyon is 40 Billion cubed metres. It would take one cow 4.5253988 x 10^3 years to fill the canyon.

Q: which town in England has the dirtiest birds?
82ASK: The dirtiest birds are in London, esp. the pigeons. This is due to smog, but apparently, even the pigeons in Trafalgar Square don’t wash in the fountain!

Q: How tall is a Smurf?
82ASK: Papa Smurf is said to be ‘3 apples tall’. This would mean that Papa Smurf is approximately 10-12 inches tall.

Q: What are the four amino acid motifs which form the rep associated protein needed for rolling circle replication and what are their functions?
82ASK: E.coli Rep (replication associated protein) is a ssDNA helicase &has 4 domains: 1A, 1B & 2A (which bind ssDNA & ATP/ADP) & 2B (which may be regulatory).

Q: Where in London can I get real bone from a hip and a jaw? Animal or human?
82ASK: Smithfield Market is your best place to pick up stray bones as it its home to many fine old-fashioned butchers.

Q: How many badgers would it take to support the Empire State building?
82ASK: Emp. St. Bdg. is 365,000 tons. Weight of adult euro (not usa) badger av. 11 kg. So according to Newton’s third law you would need 30,102,040 badgers.

Q: How many Lego blocks would it take to make a life sized Everest?
Modelling Mount Everest as a cone, approx volume is 2500 cubic kilometres. Lego brick, approx volume 5cm3. 5×10e+17 (500,000 quadrillion) Lego bricks.

5. Do you have any additional services coming soon? What sort of innovations do you see on the horizon for your customers?
Yes, some really cool things are in the pipeline. We are lucky in that respect as we are able to understand what products and service our customers would like by analysing their responses to answers we give out. So we work on developing additional services that we know 82askers want.

6. List the UK mobile operators and your experiences and views of them.
I think all of the operators have an interesting time ahead of them ensuring they can maintain their hold in the industry.

Vodafone:  Feedback from our users are that Vodafone is still charging its customers too much for roaming abroad. Our service can be accessed from a UK handset from anywhere in the world, and whilst our charge to the customer is always the same, high roaming tariffs with inflated SMS prices act as a potential barrier for growth across the industry.

O2: O2 are very good at doing the glossy, sexy stuff like their recent Streetmap integration. They really are trying to position themselves to be at the forefront of user experience – particularly with global positioning technology and rich media downloading to handsets. Having said this, there have been major issue with the 3G content being overpriced and substandard in quality. What also lets O2 down is its inconsistent levels of customer service, which although is cross-network issue, is something that 02 is regularly criticised for. Networks need to get the user-experience / customer service balance right if they want their customers to experiment with new product and service offerings.

Orange: The best advantages of the Orange World Access packs are the reduced out-of-bundle rates for data access. Orange’s smartphone series with integrated Windows Mobile 5.0, shows that it is a serious contender within the business usage space, competing against the corporate services heavyweights like Blackberry. I was on an Orange contract for many years, and never had any major issues with service. I think Orange’s pay-as-you-go packages are still one of the more competitive deals offered by a major network.

3: Have come back fighting from a relatively negative brand perception a few years ago, to become a leading voice on rich-media mobile content. 3 continues to be both innovative and different.

T-mobile: The relatively new web ‘n walk tariff shows that T-mobile are serious about bringing a breath of much needed fresh air to the data charging debate that surrounds the UK and European mobile industry. So far, consumer resistance towards mobile web has been mainly price-related. Hopefully by bringing out more pioneering pricing packages that address the question of data tariffs, T-Mobile will start prizing open the mobile-web consumer gateway for other networks to follow suit.

7. What websites and blogs do you regularly read?

http://www.smstextnews.com/   
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default.stm 
http://www.mobhappy.com/
http://mobilemediabusiness.blogspot.com/
http://battellemedia.com/
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/

8. a) What’s the most innovative newest mobile service or application you’ve come across in the last month?

• ShoZu – I’m loving their new ZuCast feature (www.ShoZu.com)
• Anthropics’ Face Store – addictive fun! (http://facestore.com/)

8. b) What mobile service/application do you recommend we should try out?

• 82ASK!
• SpinVox

9. List four people in the mobile industry you really rate - why?

Tricky one – there are so many!

Mike Short, 02
I think Mike Short is great and really works to develop and grow the industry. He is a champion of ‘Mobile User Experience’ which is an issue particularly close to my heart – and one that urgently needs to be addressed by the industry.

Ben Wood – Analyst at CCS
What Ben doesn’t know about the future of the mobile sector, frankly isn’t worth knowing. He has more than 12 years experience in the mobile sector, providing thought leadership on SMS, 3G, mobile data. What makes Ben stand out from the crowd is his real understanding on what makes mobile users actually want from their handsets. He is probably the most cited mobile analyst, with regular comments appearing in the FT, Wall Street Journal and Business Week, and broadcast appearances on business programmes for the BBC, CNBC and CNN.

Mark Bole, ShoZu
Mark is a smooth operator. He has successfully grown the ShoZu brand from its Cognima heritage, winning countless international awards in less than a year. Mark is a good example of what the mobile industry could be capable of, if it threw out conventional thinking and focused on what users really want. His blog is always insightful and well informed.

Ari Virtanen, Nokia Multimedia
I saw a presentation that Ari gave in Helsinki a couple of months ago titled “Convergence in Mobile Internet Communications” and was completely blown away with his passion and vision he has for mobile technology. Ari’s conviction that mobile phones are inherently changing the way that society interacts and functions totally lends itself to our philosophy at 82ASK.  Handsets are much more than voice communications devices and have been for some time now. Services like 82ASK can turn any mobile phone into a back-pocket concierge assistant.

10. What else do you use your mobile for (other than calls/text)? (Eg do u download music? Take pics? Etc)

I’ve become addicted to playing mobile games on the tube. It allows me to unwind after a stressful day. Tetris and backgammon are my favourite on the V3 and I love Brickbreaker on the Blackberry. I also take occasional photos and video clips using the camera on my V3.

11. What’s your ringtone?

It is one of the standard ringtones. I have a real problem with ‘novelty’ ringtones particularly when they start ringing out for all to hear on the train. I’m all for diversity… but I like to be discreet!

12. How much was your mobile bill last month?

V3 was about £50.

13. If you needed to buy a shortcode, who would you talk to?

Aggregators like MX Telecom and mBlox, have made it really easy to purchase both temporary and long-term shortcodes. Fast SMS has also got a really good level of customer service – particularly for  mobile marketing newbies. I think that the current availability of shortcodes offers marketers a cost-effective and alternative way to look at what mobile can do for them. Instead of using traditional marketing routes to drive users to their mobile programs, they should be considering how to create and deliver a mobile extension of their Website or printed collateral. ITAGG are very good at providing complete mobile marketing solutions.

14. What’s good and what’s bad with the mobile industry?

Good: It is still a relatively new industry driven by constant innovation with brilliant people with real belief in the industry. The best thing is probably how fast everything moves – the pace and volume of innovation is sometimes really exciting. Services such as mobile IM, MMS shortcoding, Mobile TV are all emerging as exciting growth areas within the sector which reflect the consumer appetite for mobile as a converged media platform.

Bad: Complete lack of standardisation – each part of the industry appears to pull the consumer in opposite directions. What is apparent is that there desperately needs to be more emphasis on the user experience and allowing the customers to lead the demand.

15. What’s the last film and single/albums you bought? Any good?

I bought 4 films in Virgin the other day:

• 7 Samurai (is an old favourite)
• Team America (laugh-out-loud funny!)
• Serenity (excellent)
• The Constant Gardner (both intelligent and moving)

I use 82ASK texperts to advise on new film releases – and they’ve never let me down (so far…)!

—

Thank you Sarah! 

I remember the first time I met Tom at London’s Quo Vadis on Dean Street a good few years ago.  I had first ‘met’ him a while before that — not physically, but online.  I’ve been a copious user of a heck of a lot of internet communities since before there was really a defined ‘internet’ space.  So when I connected with Tom, swapped backgrounds and anecdotes, I felt good — because it’s always a bit comforting when you come into contact with people who have similar ideas and thoughts.

Way back in the 2000s, our company, Neo One, was heavily involved in
the provision of moderation or content control services to the new
media industry.  So I’d come across Tom’s firm, Alienpants, once or
twice in the course of work.  From memory it was a year or so after I’d come across them when we finally spoke. 

There are some people in this world that simply cannot ‘get’ talking via any other medium than in the physical world.  You have a discussion with them by email, by instant message or IRC — and decide everything.  All is good.  But they still insist on ‘having a meeting’.  Very annoying when it’s just not needed.  Well, Tom is one of those people who gets it, who gets the application of technology and how to use it to mutual success.  I get the impression that he, like me, would much rather complete a deal or a transaction online — rather than trekking 50 or 100 miles to sit and smile at each other.   ;-)

So we’ve only met once — and, well, I’m a huge fan of Quo Vadis myself, so together with his company, I really enjoyed the lunch.   If you do have occasion to visit the restaurant, you’ll generally find it frequented with ‘media types’.  Publishing and media in general.  Movies, TV, magazines.  It’s especially interesting to go and earwig the conversations of these old media tycoons who have absolutely no idea what a blog is, let alone a shortcode.  ;-)  I got quite a kick out of sitting there discussing ideas and concepts with Tom and having these designer-clad medjaaaa people trying to listen in to what he was saying.  Heh.

Tom’s company, Alienpants, has been around the block: They’ve got a substantial amount of experience across the new media landscape — I’m continually surprised and delighted to hear of their exploits!  A particular favourite is their game-tips-by-SMS service, GTIP.

So, to the questions:

1. What is your association with the mobile industry?  What’s your occupation?  What’s your background?
I’ve been involved directly with mobile content since 2001 when my company took over moderation services for the Game Network in the UK, swiftly followed up by the first (to our knowledge) game news SMS alerts service, then the Game Guru SMS to TV live program, and our flagship GTIP [launch press release] game cheats SMS service (which has now made it’s way onto T-Mobile in the UK and Germany ).

We’ve also dabbled with other types of content, including wallpapers, ringtones and game distribution, and are putting a fair amount of effort into delivering existing PC & Console games news and reviews content via mobile platforms. We also license some of our bespoke SMS and mobile content management software to Mindmatics Ltd, are working with one of the carriers on some new mobile games-related services, and provide all the daily content for mobgames.tv, Monstermob’s leading mobile games portal.

My title is C.E.O., and I do a little bit of everything, from coding to content management to editorial, along with the usual bitsand pieces that come with running your own company.

I also contribute these days to the Mobile Weblog (www.mobile-weblog.com) as a regular ‘blogger’, alongside a couple of other sites.

2. What was your first mobile phone? Make/network?
Oh, it was too long ago to remember and was in a different country. I think it was some type of Nokia back in 1996. It weighed a significant amount, the battery didn’t last too long and the call quality was pretty bad, but it served it’s purpose.

3. What current mobile devices do you use?
I currently have a Nokia 6630 as my daily phone, along with an old SonyEricsson I use for WAP testing. There’s a Nokia 7650 lying around as well, but that’s more for use as a paperweight than enything else. I also have a Sony PSP which I use a remarkable amount, especially since we run a PSP-formatted games news website. The mobile is being replaced soon, although I haven’t decided which handset to get yet given the limited choice in the UK. There’s a couple I would like (like the Xcute S500 which I keep going on about), but the handsets that catch my eye generally don’t make it over here.

4. Most used feature on your devices (apart from calling/texting)?
I use my 3G handset as a modem when I’m out and about. Well, not strictly a modem as I use a GPRS connection rather than as a normal modem which runs far too slow I also use it to check email whilst I’m away from the office.

5. Name a mobile related service or product that caught your eye in the last week?
There’s nothing in the past week that’s really caught my eye in terms of mobile services or products. I did notice Tiggdo the other week as I have an interest in RSS readers, but other than this nothing has really stood out.

6. Name a recent blog you’ve found interesting (mobile related)
I read yours every day I recently resubscribed to Monty’s Mobile Gaming Outlook, and I do enjoy reading Afternoon’s Journal and Moconews, along with Mobhappy.

7. Who do you rate in the mobile industry that I could contact  to put the same questions to them?
You should try Neil Holroyd at T-Mobile or Antony Douglas at O2, if they have time, along with Russell Buckley & Carlo Longini at Mobhappy, both guys I have a lot of respect for, despite not having met either of them. If you can catch him, you should also interview Paul Munford of PlayerX.

——

Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions Tom!

I first met Justin in Pizza Express Baker Street a few months ago to learn more about buddyPing (and MobileGlu).  We had almost met quite a few times (schedule conflicts, emergency cancellations, total diary screw-ups by me… and so on) — so it was with a bit of relief that we finally actually connected face to face. 

Here’s how the buddyPing site defines the service offering:

buddyPing is a great way to find friends, events and pretty much anything in your local area with your phone.  Just text your current location to us and we will send you a text with the location of your friends and anything happening in your area for free.

When we met, I was encouraged and excited by Justin’s passion and incisive understanding of technology.  He has led the development of buddyPing and mobileGlu aggressively — to the point that his company, NinetyTen, is experiencing super growth. 

It’s not a surprise.  A while ago I can remember suggesting that he and Alfie of Moblog.co.uk talk to see if they could integrate their services. Within the weekend the connection was complete and operational.  This sort of quick development — continuous iteration upon iteration is what excites me.  It’s fascinating to see applications and services evolve — particularly if the development is headed by someone like Justin who ‘gets it’.

I asked him if he could answer a few questions for a profile here as I reckoned it would be good to get a ‘techie’ perspective.  I was delighted when he agreed.  So, here we go.  We start off with the now usual ones then I tried to get a bit creative

1. What was your first mobile handset & what network?

It was a brick of a Nokia around 2000 (I have no idea what phone it was!) on what was then One2One (now T-Mobile)

2. Describe your current mobile setup.

I have a few phones as I am going through a transition period from one setup to another.  I used to own a Treo 650 on Voda, an SE k608i (using the Voda SIM), and my main setup now is a Nokia N80 on Orange, which I have been after for about 6 months.  I take advantage of the free data on my Mac when I am not in WiFi range out and about.

3. How much was your last mobile bill?

Relatively low at £58.  That was because all of the data traffic I used was included in Orange’s 1G a month for the first three months.

4. What was the spark that led to the development of buddyPing?  What came first? NinetyTen or buddyPing?

Well, buddyPing came about after I heard about Dodgeball in the US.  I thought the idea was fantastic, but needed to be available to the world.  I also felt there were huge limitations to widespread use because your were located by the venue you were in.  I decided to write buddyPing so that it was usable by anyone in the world, and much more general.  For example, if I was in Balham, where I live, I can just tell buddyPing I am at Home, Balham.

As time went on, I used buddyPing as a way to try new things out in mobile and location services, and over the past 9 months, I have learnt a lot from user interaction, what is good and what is not which has allowed me to put that learning experience into buddyPing version 2.  I never started buddyPing to make money, it was all about me trying out cool stuff on the mobile and now I am hooked.  It was only when I saw a load of people sign up and use it that I started to take it very seriously and started NinetyTen Ltd to look after what was then my little side project.

I think mobile communities will be very big.  Think about it, the people that use MySpace love community, and they love their mobile.  Those two things together are very powerful as you have access to content "feeders and readers" whenever they have a mobile signal.  But a big thing about being mobile is your spatial presence.  Is it relevant to someone that they see that a picture someone took was actually 3 miles from them, or that an event that is happening is just round the corner ?  Of course!  That is why I really think Mobile + Location + Community is a very exciting space to be in, and one which will only grow in the next 12 months.

5. Cut and paste 10 lines from the BuddyPing java code and comment them.

It is about 1,500 lines of Java code, and I would have to past a pretty good chunk to show anything cool, so not at the moment

[ok, so I was going out on a limb here.  I didn't realise the code was so small -- I thought there would have been tens of thousands of lines!  - Ewan]

6. Since you’ve gone live with BuddyPing, what surprised you about how the users adopted the service?   Can you give some examples of how BuddyPing and Mobileglu are used.

BuddyPing is being used by most people to just find their friends.  We have found that a lot of people in the London area use it, and that is probably because I sub consciously focused on London because that is where I live.  One great way I heard it was being used was by a guy who runs a car club and wanted to be able to get his members to "tag" where they spot certain cars.  Things like this will be a lot easier to do in the future.

As for MobileGlu, most feedback I have is exactly what I designed it for.  A lot of people use it to sync up their data before travelling to work in the morning to read all their headlines.

Regarding the user’s of buddyPing, I really thought it would be only early adopters who used it, but found out very quickly after the initial early adopter rush of sign ups that most of our users are of the MySpace generation.  Normal, sociable people.

7. What do you think is right and wrong with the mobile industry today?

What is right about the industry is that nearly every person has a mobile phone that is not tied to a desk.  The Internet helped people become more tech friendly, and realise technology can be useful on a one to one basis.  A mobile phone is a terminal to large amounts of data that can be queried and also constructed in the palm of your hand as long as you have a mobile phone and network coverage.  The mobile phone is effectively a person from the service provider’s point of view, and a portal from the user’s point of view.  That is a powerful combination.

What is wrong is the complete opposite of the utopia I just described.  The phone manufacturers are providing amazing functionality in handsets now (WiFi, Flash Lite, 3G etc.) which cannot be fully utilised to provide this two way access to data because the cost of GPRS/3G is just so high.  No one, including me wants an extra £20 on my bill at the end of the month because I read my email, upload some pictures and read my RSS feeds.

And from first hand experience the cost of using my mobile abroad is just ridiculous.  I was in the US, and it cost me about £5 per Meg of data I used and a few pounds a minute when I made or received a call.  People do need to travel, and not all of those can write off their mobile bill to their company (the same reason the Train companies charge a fortune when travelling in peak hours).

8. If you had to buy a new mobile & price plan tomorrow, what would you choose?

I would probably stick with the N80, but switch to T-Mobile for their lovely all you can eat data for £8 per month (I like mobile data!)

9. List 5 feeds from your Mobileglu account.

• BBC World News
• Mashable
• SMS Text News (of course!)
• MobileCrunch
• TechCrunch

10. What are the most used features on your handset (apart from calling/texting)?

Email has got to be it. There are two things I just cannot be without, and that is my mobile and email.  My Treo 650 is a wonderful emailing machine for sending.  The N80 sucks because it doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard.  That is the biggest thing I miss.  But the phones are of course targeted at different uses.

11. Rate the UK network providers in order of preference with a one line summary of each.

T-Mobile - Not for their coverage (I have heard it sucks), but for innovation in their price plans, data plans and trying out converged strategies with Nokia

O2 - Rock solid Cell network, innovative in some of the services they have (Streetmaps on your mobile), and I think one to watch when it comes to convergence of mobile services

Orange - They are trying to be innovative with Orange world, good handsets, and decent customer service in my experience.

Vodafone - You gotta love them for trying, and also the sheer amount of operations around the world.  It is just a shame they hemorrhage money on things like Vodafone Live

3 - Well, their walled garden approach says it all.  They had the change to totally change the mobile industry, but chose to increase revenue in the short term.

12. What’s the hottest mobile service to catch your eye recently?

It has to be 82ASK, I use it pretty much every weekend when at the Pub with friends and one of "those" weird questions come up.  I like the service, but from a commercial point of view can see that the overheads involved must be massive.  I really hope they can continue because it is an excellent example of homegrown mobile innovation.

13. Name one person you rate in the mobile industry and say why.

I know this is a get out of jail answer, but anyone who has the balls to do something cool in the mobile space will get my backing anytime.  I have made no secret of the fact that I am more than happy to give advice and feedback to any startup in the mobile space because I know a guy or girl in their bedroom trying something in a tough (both technically and commercially) industry deserves the support to succeed which is sometimes difficult to find. 

The Web 2.0 phenomenon is something that is not happening in the mobile space because the technical know how is usually hidden behind a company.  In Web 2.0, all the information is readily available, and the "Free Software" movement has helped to get people up and running quickly.  Linux and GPL software is where I came from, so I guess this is why I feel strongly about this.

14. Which company or organisation do you think the industry is generally underrating at the moment?

I think Skype Mobile is something that *could* help to disrupt the Operators, but they will be hampered by the cost of data.  I think companies need to push services around data because it will help to force the hand of operators, and also allows new people to innovate in the industry.  You can do cool stuff with SMS, but for widespread innovation, better services, realtime information etc., data is the key, and until the mobile industry realises they should be acting as a pipe for Voice and Data, we need people to push these types of services to force their hand.

—

Justin, thank you very much!

Noah Glass is President and Co-Founder of Gomobo.com ("Mobo" - which is short for ‘mobile ordering’).  I made the rather British mistake of getting the timezone wrong in New York, so that when I finally connected with Noah, it was 43 minutes late.   He was gracious enough to automatically adjust his diary so that we had time to talk.  I sent him the following questions to answer last week and caught up with him on the phone to learn more about Mobo and find out how people were reacting to the service.

In short, Noah is stoked, full of energy and, as you might imagine, incredibly busy.  He and his team launched the service officially on 2nd May 2006 — and are already rocking and rolling across New York, having recently added five new take-out restaurants in the Rockefeller Centre — Dunkin’ Donuts, The Grill, Tossed, Subway, and Yummy Sushi.  I can just about remember their locations from when I was last there.  Cool, eh? 

It’s a compelling service. 

• You register online at gomobo.com to setup your account (free). 
• You browse the restaurant menus and create your favourite sandwich/meal configurations. 
• Then, when you’re ready, you either use your mobile browser or text message to order your meal. 
• You get a note back from the restaurant letting you know when to pick-up. 
• No need to worry about cash.  That’s all handled by the Mobo system (which automatically debits the correct amount from your credit card, configured no your account.) 
• Turn up at the restaurant’s special pick-up ‘Gomobo’ area, quote your name — and woosh — walk away with your sandwich. 

No queues. No cash to worry about, no need to repeat your favourite order over and over.  I love it, I think it’s a wicked concept. 

Thus I thought it would be interesting to pose a few questions to Noah.  I started off with the regular ones (’first cell phone etc.’) then I moved on to a few more about Gomobo.com and the American mobile industry.   Here we go!

1. What was your first cell phone? When did you get it?

My first cell-phone looked a little bit like a Zach Morris Saved By The Bell cell phone. It was a QUALCOMM DUAL BAND phone from Sprint and rarely ever got reception. That was the year 2000. I had no idea what a text message was.

2. What handset(s) do you use now and why?

Now I use a Treo 700W through Verizon, which…uh…looks a little bit like a Zach Morris Saved By The Bell cell phone. It’s got broadband connectivity, holds thousands of contacts, and keeps me organized. Best of all, it lets me go Mobo through our WAP-site at www.gomobo.com/go.

3. Are you the only founder of Mobo?  How did you decide upon going ahead with the concept?  Was there a defining moment that pushed you over the edge to start the service? (stuck in a queue of 25 hungry New Yorkers, for example?)  Did you need a lot of investment?

I’m the idea-guy, but the company was co-founded by several other innovators in the mobile software, e-commerce, and retailing arenas. I decided to go ahead with the concept when we built our prototype and saw the reaction of restaurants, customers, and investors. Everyone was asking, "when can I get this at the Starbucks near my office?"

I lived on Wall St. for two years when I first moved to the City. The Starbucks at 45 Wall St. (picture) was so packed every morning that I started refusing to go. A bit of caffeine-withdrawal made me determined to find a better, faster way that worked for users and restaurants at the same time. We raised an initial round of funding in June 2005 that has enabled us to build a world-class team and launch in New York City over the last couple of months.

4. How are you finding peoples’ attitudes to mobile services — is   there broad take-up or do you think New York (and in particular America) is still getting used to text messaging?

Text-messaging has truly arrived in the US over the past year or two. It used to be that only exchange students knew what an SMS was. Now it’s become ubiquitous.  And while Mobo is a leading-edge service, we’ve found fanatical users of all ages and all levels of comfort with technology.

Technology companies tend to create solutions for problems that don’t exist, especially in the mobile payments space. There are a lot of really cool mobile payments services that will never be used by the broader population after an initial hit with early adopters. I trust that Mobo is an exception to this rule because we built this service to solve a real-life problem. Mobo provides such a compelling time-saver value to users that it will become the standard way of ordering food.

5. How complex is it to integrate your service into a shop?  Is there  a lot of hardware involved?  How much are you having to change the  way they do business?
(e.g. do they have to assign a team to service Gomobo requests?)

We’ve found a way to get restaurants up and running on Mobo in 20 minutes and for under $100 of cost per restaurant. While that may not sound so impressive to the average reader, start to imagine the complexity of ordering a mere Latte. Size? Decaf or regular? Extra espresso shot? Type of milk? Any of our 31 flavor shots? Hot or Iced? Whipped Cream? See the complexity here? Now imagine a menu with 200 items. Mobo has built an incredibly scalable service and I think this gives us a sizeable advantage over the inevitable new market entrants.

6. Your company overview says you’ll soon be launching other time saving services (e.g. cinema/parking meters) — which do you think you’ll do next?

I’m very excited about listening to our users on this one. People have been really interested in the parking meter concept, but I think movie tickets and taxis are pretty cool applications, too. We’ll see.

7. Have you looked at offering the service in some of the ultra-text-obsessed nations in the Far East?

We’ve definitely looked at China, Japan, and the Philippines, but the US is our pilot market and one we’re hoping to make our name in.

8.  How often do you use Gomobo and what’s your usual order?

I use it at least three times a day. Checkout my blog entry called "Founder’s Faves" on the Mobo blog at
http://blog.gomobo.com

9. Do you think you’ll stay with text messaging as your primary medium or would you consider offering customers a java applet or a web/wap service that would give them the option to configure their sandwich on the fly (instead of at the desktop)?

The WAP service (www.gomobo.com/go) is actually the first thing that we built and what our team is most excited about. Through the WAP site, users can configure orders on the go. A rich client is something that we’ve been thinking about, but I think WAP is the best medium in the long-run.

10. Finally — what other mobile service or product has really caught your eye recently & why?

• Gozomo (www.gozomo.com) is my choice for mobile content
• I’m also obsessed with www.mologogo.com

GPS technology will open up a whole lot of cool location-based-services (LBS) through Mobo, like our taxi application. Imagine a world in which you could hail the nearest available taxi from your phone, have it know exactly where you are and where you’re going, and pay through your mobile. When LBS hits, Mobo will be there…

And thus ends Noah’s Q&A.  Thanks for taking the time, Noah!   

As the son of a gourmet food author, you’d perhaps expect Noah to have some excellent suggestions of using Gomobo.com to order some gorgeous meals.  As per his answer to question 8, he doesn’t disappoint.  Do check out his recent blog on the subject for proof - my mouth was watering after the first sentence.  Here’s one that I could use right now:

New York Burger Co.:
I do The Big Deal with the Turkey Burger again and again and again.
"This is New York’s Best Burger" (AOL Cityguide 2005). With a salad with balsamic vinaigrette and Diet Coke for just $8.75, I’m full-bellied and happy.

I’ll have the above, please.  Oh, sorry - I meant two, please.   ;-)

I, like a ton of people, have been reading Emily Turrettini’s Textually.org for years.  More recently, I’ve also been a fan of her picturephoning.com (dedicated to camera/video enabled mobiles) and Ringtonia.com which focuses on mobile music.

She been publishing on the internet for over 10 years so I’m not surprised to see that Google lists 46,500 pages containing the phrase "Emily Turrettini".  A browse through the first 10 pages of results surely demonstrates Emily’s been around the block when it comes to the web, blogging and observing trends in mobile.   That, and the 11,000 mobile-related entries across her blog sites.

Way back in 2003, I can remember being tickled pink at Emily posting a note (this one) about our Impulse SMS-text-to-screen service which we’d recently launched.  I was quite startled by the response we got from that one blog post and I was immediately hooked as a subscriber.  Soon after I began not to bother obsessively reading traditional ‘old media’ like New Media Age here in the UK — while they sometimes carried interesting stuff, Textually.org repeatedly trumped them all and still does.  If we had news to get out, my priority was to hope that Emily published it.  So, when we launched Text-A-Vet, I was stoked when Textually covered it.

It is with this in mind that I also hoped Emily would take some time out and answer a few questions I had from her.  Her posts are always direct and succinct — so I wanted to know a little more about her. 

Here we go:

1. When did you start Textually.org — what was your motivation?
Textually.org is a network of 3 blogs related to cell phones and they launched in February of 2003.  I had been publishing an SMS Chronicle in French on my blog Netsurf.ch for three years previously. I figured the time was ripe to publish cell phone news in English - after reading Americans were voting on American Idol by SMS.

2. What was your first mobile phone? When did you get it?

It was a Nokia 6110 in 1999.

3. Describe your current mobile setup — e.g. phones/3g data cards? (Please don’t tell me you use a 5 year old Nokia!)

I have a Nokia 6111, I change phones every six months. It’s actually not the latest model, nor as sophisticated as my previous phone, but it’s the friendliest, most fun phone I’ve ever had. I have access to Vodafone Live, but find it tedious to navigate and video offerings are still slim.

4. If you’re on a train or have a spare five minutes, what do you use your mobile for?
(e.g. mobile web, texting, moblogging?)

Texting only if I need to. Talking disturbs the other passengers. I generally read.

5. You’ve got a huge archive of content on textually.org.  Could you pick three memorable posts from your archive and comment on them?

Impossible! Between the three blogs, there are over 11′000 entries. But I just blogged a great cell phone isolation concept found on WMMNA called "The mobile Scarf". Definitely my favorite today.

(e.g. perhaps you might pick 3 innovative services or products that you wrote about a few years ago?)
I’ll answer this one on the light side.

From the archives:
- The breast enlarging ringtone from Japan was an all time favorite
- More recently the teen buzz ringtone, inaudible to anyone over 20
- Though I’ve never seen it work, I Iove the idea of air messages, like SK Telecom’s Air Beam service that displays text messages in the air or Nokia’s 3222 model which allows a similar feature which they call wave messaging.
- A cell phone signal jamming device which is actually not a device but simply wall paper

6. Which would you rather receive on your birthday:
a) A birthday card
b) A birthday text message
c) A birthday MMS video
d) A birthday phone call

A phone call.

7. Do you have any pets?
Just wild ducks - from June through October.

8. What’s the most exciting mobile service/product you have seen this week?
I thought this was interesting technically, though humiliating for employees. NTTDotComo just announced a breath-alcohol sensor for cell phones, so bus and trucking companies can tell from remote locations if their drivers have been drinking. The driver breathes into the sensor and the results of the test are transmitted via FOMA’s network to a personnel manager’s computer.

9. What is your ringtone?
The theme song from The OC as a general ringtone. My son’s caller ID ringtone is 24’s CTU phone ring and my husbands caller ID ringtone is a song from Alain Souchon. My text message alert says "Anybody there?".

10.  What’s the last album you bought and the last movie you saw at the cinema?
I just bought a CD with songs by Serge Reggiani. Last movie "Volver".

11. Suggest a mobile blog that we should be reading?
Mine of course and all the links on my blogroll. My favorite mobile blog of the moment is  http://21talks.net/

12. What is the best thing and the worst thing about the mobile industry?
I’m more interested in the way people use their phones than what goes on between the industry players. In terms of usage, there are so many wonderful things to say in favor of cell phones - In our part of the world we think mostly of how they have made our lives so much simpler, always being able to reach someone when needed - parent/child, friend, business partner. But elsewhere or for certain minorities like the hearing impaired, they are truly a God send.

And in developing nations, they are contributing to drive the economy and bridge the digital divide. Also, cell phones have proven to be an empowerment tool, enabling activists to organize, assemble and demonstrate, or get the message out if a government or politician is playing foul. Some day hopefully when it happens, cell phones will be recognized as one of the factors in bringing down the North Korean government, as word gets out or gets into the country through cell phones. Governments can no longer enforce total blackouts - not for long.  And also wonderful, through text messaging campaigns, charities have a new and easy way to raise money.

The worst usage of cell phones is everything involving the dark side of human nature. Happy slapping, violation of privacy issues, abusive sousveillance, terrorists using cell phones as remote controls to detonate bombs…

—

Well, thank you Emily for taking the time to answer my questions! 

Emily Turrettini links:

• Textually.org
• Picturephoning.com
• Ringtonia.com
• A wicked interview of Emily by Rudy De Waele
• Emily’s co-authored book on blogs, Blog Story on Amazon.fr