Mobile Insight Vol: 9
Issue 357 March 19th 2007
Big boost for mobile barcodes
Surfing the
mobile Internet will have become a piece of cake by
2009, thanks to 2D barcodes says market watcher, World
Forum Research.
By 2009, 70 per cent of consumers in the US and
Europe will regularly use 2D barcodes on their mobiles,
the company's latest report, 'How to boost mobile
content access' predicts. Lead author, Jan Kuczynski, a research manager with
World Forum Research, says, "Mobile hyperlinks using 2D
barcodes, RFID and image recognition have revolutionised
how consumers access mobile content in advanced mobile
markets such as Japan and Korea." Jan reckons it took four years for mobile hyperlinks
to become truly mainstream in the Far East but Europe
and North America will swiftly follow suit. "They [barcodes] increase traffic for content
providers, they help marketers find out more about their
audience, and, most importantly, they provide a great
consumer experience," Kuczynsk added. Other keys to boosting mobile content access covered
in the report include RFID and using audio links which
the handset will be able to correctly interpret. One of the lesser known companies covered in the
report is MobileAMA with a technology it calls V-Code.
It remains to be seen whether US based MobileAMA will be
able to effectively challenge established players like
Abaxia and Neomedia.
The full Inquirer story ... Mobile barcodes get big boost
www.w2forum.com
Mobile quiz show industry proposes kitemark
Reacting to
a major scandal in which
text-to-win TV shows in the UK,
were found to be ripping off
viewers, the 'Participation TV'
industry has given unanimous
backing to a proposal to
introduce a
kitemark scheme.
The intention is to restore
public confidence in TV shows
where contestants aim to win
prizes by texting a message to
the show's shortcode or
telephone number. The kitemark scheme is the
brainchild of specialist content
producer, Play to Win TV. The
company will introduce its own
'Fair Play Guarantee' when it
introduces an on-screen kitemark
on Wednesday 14 March. Unfortunately Fairplay is the
official name Apple has given to
the DRM software it uses to
protect iTunes. A certain degree
of confusion is therefore bound
to result. The Play To Win
scheme does at least utilise the
services of quiz promotional
verification specialist,
PromoVeritas. ICSTIS, the industry
regulator, has also said it will
investigate whether the
introduction of a kitemark
scheme will restore public
confidence. Additionally, ICSTIS has
stated that it has given the
industry until March 24th 2007
to review how it is providing
participation TV programming. Roy Ellyatt, chairman with
the NOC (Network for Online
Commerce), the trade body
representing the premium call
industry, claims it "fully
supports the introduction of a
Fair Play Kitemark to provide
consumers with transparency and
access to Quiz TV operators
codes of practice." The NOC has also announced
the formation of an Industry
task force to address the
current problems. The subject
will certainly dominate the
forthcoming World Telemedia
conference in Amsterdam where
all sides involved in the
scandal the broadcasters and
the premium rate service
suppliers actually meet for a
change.
The full Inquirer story ... Rip-off TV industry proposes kitemark protection
www.noconline.org
Radioscape now supports Analog chips
Having previously
supplied its products to the
market based on TI's DSPs,
mobile TV and digital radio
specialist, Radioscape has
announced support for the
Blackfin BF52x series of
processors from Analog Devices. This approach will enable
RadioScape to integrate a DAB
(Digital Audio Broadcast)
baseband decoder and a audio
video decoder onto a single
device instead of on two
separate chips. The company's Software
Defined Radio (SDR) approach
helps speed up product design
since a number of multimedia
features (like pause, rewind,
record and cache service) can be
swiftly added. Plus the Blackfin
has the ability to be either the
system master or a slave
coprocessor. According to Andrew Dewhurst,
product manager for receivers
with Radioscape, "The radio of
the future will increasingly be
part of a multi-standard,
multi-media device. The
challenges of supporting such
broad functionality is
significantly reduced through
the SDR approach."
He added, "We now have a highly
portable code base and this
gives us the opportunity to
engage with other semiconductor
partners as we develop our
roadmap." The company's Mobile TV (MTV)
receiver solutions are based on
the Eureka 147 DAB standard,
including the T-DMB and DAB-IP
standards which are increasingly
being utilised in mobile phones.
DAB-based standards have been
adopted for mobile TV in many
parts of the world as they use
spectrum that is already
available in contrast to DVB-H
which has issues in many
countries including the UK. Radioscape's approach means
that apps such as music
downloads, Electronic Programme
Guides (EPGs), picture
downloads, interactive voting
and games, plus user specified
feeds such as sport, news,
traffic, and weather can be
readily added. Such facilities apply equally
to Personal Multimedia Players
as well as mobile handsets, Les
Sabel, RadioScape's vp of
Technology claimed.
The full Inquirer story ... Radioscape breaks out of TI gaol
www.radioscape.com
Rumours emerge of Google phone
A VC
has caused a major stir by claiming in his blog that
Google is very actively developing its own mobile phone
which he has named the Real Google Phone. The king pin to Simeon Simeonov's speculation is that
Andy Rubin is working for the firm and has assembled a
team of at least 100 spods to develop the phone. It's a good guess because Rubin was formerly
president and CEO of Danger the makers of the Hiptop.
You can check him out on his own site
android.com, where he conveniently doesn't say what
his current job is. To make the plot even more plausible, Simeonov also
claims that Google has acquired
Reqwireless . The company formerly sold a suite of
mobile applications which ran on J2ME enabled phones.
Where Simeonov's guesswork seems to fall over is how
Google will sell the handset. He seems to think existing
carriers will roll over on their tummies and fulfil
sales from the Google site. It's far more likely that Google can set itself up as
an MVNO and sell the phones itself. There also seems to be a hint that the Real Google
Phone is tilting at Apple's iPhone. If you look at what
Reqwireless' software used to do (when it was still on
sale), it's far more likely that Google is developing a
Blackberry killer.
The full Inquirer story ... Google seen beavering away on Googlephone designs
http://simeons.wordpress.com/
More news on Googlephone
In a country where you need to patent the wheel otherwise somebody else will, if you want to find out if Google's really working on a mobile phone, then look at its patent filings.
Mad4mobilephones searched and guess what? It found one. The accompanying drawing puts paid to any doubt that the device is a mobile phone. It's a classic flip-phone design.
Some doubters are still trying to maintain that it might just be a VoIP/WiFi phone. Possibly. But then, why would you post an advert for an analogue designer/engineer?
If there's only going to be one radio WiFi - then using the associated chip maker's reference design would be good enough. You
wouldn't need to build a "small team of top-notch Logic Designers and Analog Designers aimed at nothing less than making the entire world's information accessible from anywhere for free," just for WiFi.
That sounds like a team building a cellular phone probably a dual mode (WiFi/cellular) phone - or a team building two models: - a cdmaOne and a GSM compatible mobile phone.
The motivation for all this phone building is obvious location based services. Hence the line in the patent "a computer-implemented method of providing text entry assistance data is disclosed."
This phone wants to second-guess what you're searching for. The company that should be worried about all this is actually Tegic (maker of T9). Goggle may be designing a much better method of predictive data input based on behaviour not dictionaries.
Several Mobile Insight readers have pointed to possible tie-ups with Vodafone and Apple as a reason for all this activity. It's possible the patent relates to technology built into the iPhone.
But it's way too late to need analogue designers for Apple's offering. Nope.
Google must be preparing a cellular phone of some kind. See also
Snippets
The full Inquirer story ... Patent spills beans of Googlephone
PT and Telefonica eye up Brazil's Vivo
The fallout from a failed attempt by upstart, Sonaecom, to acquire Portugal Telecom (PT) will be a battle over who controls Vivo, Brazil's largest mobile operator.
In order to gain control of PT, Sonaecom effectively had to remove the Portuguese government's golden share in the company. But plans to do so were rejected by the majority of PT's shareholders.
Sonaecom's bid was backed by Telefonica which has managed to massively cheese off PT's existing management. They suspect Telefonica's support for Sonaecom was a bid to get its hands on Vivo.
PT and Telefonica have an equal share in around 63 per cent of Vivo. However, PT's CEO, Henrique Granadeiro, has let it be known that his company's plans for expansion target Africa, and Brazil.
So PT will be seeking to oust Telefonica from Vivo whilst potentially taking control itself. It has one big advantage in that Brazilians speak Portuguese not Spanish or Catalan.
Interestingly, the other mobile operator with a mobile network in Portugal is Vodafone. It seems unlikely Vodafone would want to upset is South
American partner, Amιrica Mσvil, by showing an interest in Vivo, though.
The full Inquirer story ...
Portuguese and Spanish telcos join battle for Brazil
www.vivo.com.br/portal/home_english.php
Localisation is key says Tegic
Everybody knows the next two billion mobile phones will come from emerging markets. The trick will be to use predictive text to raise typical users revenues, according to predictive text specialist, Tegic.
The company points to research that has shown that in India, those using Tegic's T9 predictive text input sent 29.5 messages per week whilst those who didn't sent a mere 18.1 messages.
Ray Tsuchiyama, vp for emerging markets with Tegic, reckons the key to his company's success has been supporting local languages. Out of nine major languages spoken on the Indian sub-continent, Tegic now supports seven of them.
As Tsuchiyama put it so succinctly, "There are no malls in India." So, outside the major conurbations, Tegic in conjunction with partners such as Nokia and Airtel have been employing a variety of tricks to attract potential users' attention.
These ploys include Bollywood attractions and magic shows to tempt ordinary folk to its travelling floats. Handset users are then shown how to use predictive text to send SMS messages much faster.
Tsuchiyama reckons that developed countries can learn lessons from emerging markets where operators make
strenuous efforts to educate subscribers into using available apps. By contrast, in developed markets 'app discovery' is a major problem and strain on resources.
Mobile Insight was amused to learn that the Philippines government is encouraging the use of T9 predictive texting because it improves the sender's use of English - a key point in attracting employment to the region.
Europe hasn't been left out by Tegic, either. New 'local' languages to be supported shortly include Welsh and Basque. Icelandic is already there.
The full Inquirer story ...
Localisation seen as key to emerging mobile markets
www.tegic.com
Plutolife to push Mobimodels in USA
Norwegian mobile
phone specialist, Plutolife, is claiming massive success for its cameraphone application Mobimodels.
It's currently available to 74 per cent of Scandinavian mobile phone users just eight months after launching.
Naturally the company is aiming to replicate this success by offering the application to operators in both North and South America.
The product is simplicity itself. Participants use either picture messaging (MMS) or WAP to upload their own photos, rate other people's photos and attempt to win prizes. They can also forward their favourite photos to friends and relatives.
Plutolife promotes the service with the simple slogan Hot or Not? The target audience is both males and females in the 16 to 25 age range, and the whole service aims to tap into natural viral marketing.
The company has put together compelling statistics which show, for example, that by 2009 89 per cent of shipped mobile phones will have a built-in camera.
Which means that in 2009 alone there will be over 860 million potential users of applications like Mobimodels. Plutolife is claiming that its applications are compatible with 99.9 per cent of WAP and Java-enabled mobile phones and have been tested on over 300 phones in the USA.
Curious Plutolife says that consumers in North America and China are taking about 20 pictures per month with their cameraphones, compared to only 5 per month in Japan. It'll be big bucks if mobile operators can persuade consumers to send those photos across their networks.
The full Inquirer story ... Norwegians empower the cameraphone
www.plutolife.com
a la Mobile offers dual-mode stack
Given the
current fad for handsets which can support both cellular and Wi-Fi, mobile Linux OS vendor,
a la Mobile, has picked a dual-mode stack as its first ready-made offering for mobile phones.
The product features a software stack that supports both WiFi and GSM along with an integrated SIP-based VoIP client. Other elements include a browser, Java, Adobe Flash and a suite of applications that covers messaging, email and phone UI.
The company claims it offers the first mobile OS thing that allows a single software stack to be migrated across different handsets - even those based on processors from different manufacturers.
The intention is to help handset vendors swiftly produce dual-mode phones with the knowledge that the stack is completely integrated, tested, supported and maintained by a la Mobile.
The company also hinted that other 'Made-Ready Linux' products will follow. They'll probably be aimed at facilitating other forms of dual-function mobile phones such as MP3 player phones
The full Inquirer story ... Linux OS supplier picks dual-mode phone stacks
www.a-la-mobile.com
Review: Nokia E65 smartphone
Rather than being some kind of overgrown calculator, the E65 is a true mobile handset fashioned in the old mould. Yet it's absolutely packed with features.
There's absolutely no doubt that this particular mobile phone is aimed fairly and squarely at the business user but that just makes it very difficult to select which features need highlighting.
Take the E65's WiFi capability, for example. It's easy to find VoIP software to turn this into an Internet handset. Mobile Insight installed Truphone's app and it worked a treat. Yet unlike the E61 Mobile Insight tried, the E65 boasted a 'wireless LAN' Active standby plug-in.
That means you can see installing from the Active standby screen if you're currently connected to a WiFi access point. Which is great for browsing too particularly if you want to view a WAP site.
The E65 actually boasts two browsers the S60 series Nokia Browser and a standard WAP browser now called 'Services'.
But the E65 is also a 3G handset. Which enabled Mobile Insight to go onto Truphone's standard HTML site while travelling home on a train and sign up for the service. It even made use of the browser's 'minimap' facility.
This enables you to see a condensed view of an entire HTML page and navigate to the actual bit you wan to view on the E65's screen. Once you get used to it it works well.
The whole point about the E65 is that it lacks a Qwerty keyboard but it compensates by offering a whole gamut of voice applications. These are obviously intended to make the e65 useful even though it's sitting in a cradle on the dashboard. Mobile Insight likes message reader facility which enables the handset to read back received text messages. Going further you could navigate the E65's entire menu structure via voice commands should you so wish.
Dig deep and you'll find loads of stuff that a business user might need on the road. Like a Zip file utility to compress files and an Adobe Acrobat file reader.
There's a multitude of options for downloading emails, too The handset can even be connected to a VPN if you should so choose.
Nokia has even chosen to revive the good old infra-red port so you can use this handset as a wireless modem to connect to a laptop PC when stuck without a WiFi signal.
Nokia lauds the E65's merits in other directions. It highlights the ability to customise the keys to you can launch your favourite apps with just one or two key presses. Plus it's got a 2 megapixel camera but no Flash.
The truth is that the E65 is a neat slider phone which looks very innocent when produced from a pocket or handbag. But its small size disguises a feature packed powerhouse.
The full Inquirer review ... Here's a solid 3G phone for two-fingered typists
Product: Nokia E65
Web: www.nokia.com
Price: Free on contract. £400 SIM-free
Tech Specs:
http://www.nokia.com/NOKIA_COM_1/Microsites/3GSM/pdf/Nokia_E65_Datasheet.pdf
Talktime: 3-6 hours (GSM)*
Standby time: 7 - 11 days (GSM)*
*Note: Using 3G/WiFi will reduce times
Type: Quad-Band(850/900/1800/1900MHz) plus 3G/EDGE/GPRS
Vodafone allies with Essar over Hutch
Vodafone has clinched a deal with India's Essar Group over its controlling interest in Hutch India's fourth largest cellular operator. The company will rename as Vodafone Essar.
Part of the deal sees Essar's Ravi Ruia becoming chairman of company while Vodafone's Arun Sarin, will act as vice chairman. Sarin has said that he wants Vodafone Essar to become the leading player in India by 2010.
The way in which the agreement has been reached could prove controversial. Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd (HTIL) whose stake Vodafone is acquiring has apparently agreed a payment to Essar of around $415 million.
In return Essar will drop any attempts it might have made to claim first rights to buy the HTIL stake of 67 per cent instead of Vodafone. The agreement shows that Essar fully intends to co-operate with Vodafone in the new company.
There may be a snag, however. Indian law prevents a foreign company from owning more than 74 per cent of a native telecommunications company. Vodafone has off-loaded part of its share onto two Indian nationals - Analjit Singh and Hutchison Essar's managing director, Asim Ghosh.
The catch is that part of Essar's stake is held overseas. So in total, more than 74 per cent could be regarded as being in 'foreign' hands.
Sarin does appear to have achieved his objective of breaking into what is the world's fastest expanding cellular market. The question is where does Vodafone look next?
One obvious answer would be the former Soviet Republics. But Telenor of Norway's experience in a previous part of Russia the Ukraine doesn't bode well.
Presently Telenor is locked in a protracted legal battle with Russia's Altimo over Ukraine's largest mobile operator, Kyivstar. A serious slanging match between the two is currently underway.
So where could Vodafone exploit its forthcoming expertise in providing cellular services to remote rural communities whose residents have low incomes but poor existing telecoms infrastructure?
Sounds like America to Mobile Insight. And not just South America but North America. Pity Vodafone is locked into cdmaOne operator, Verizon, then.
What's the point of being able to source ultra low-cost GSM handsets when you ain't tied up with a GSM operator in the USA?
The full Inquirer story ... Vodafone finishes of deal for Hutch in India
www.hutch.in
Russian theatres install phone jammers
Two theatres in Russia's St Petersburg became so fed up with ringing mobile phones ruining performances that they've installed mobile phone jammers.
One actor at the Alexandrinsky theatre had been forced to tell a member of the audience, "Turn off that stupid phone and let me finish my soliloquy!"
Although the jamming equipment was expensive, it's effectiveness caused another St Petersburg theatre - the Maly Drama theatre to follow suite.
Sergei Dmitryiv, the Alexandrinsky theatre's technical director, told The Guardian, "I've had colleagues in Moscow asking how we did it. It's easy. You can buy the equipment on the internet."
And there's the rub. A typical Brit web site, Globalgadgetuk.com, sells a complete range of mobile phone jammers from handheld devices right up to multi-signal jammers which block 3G phones as well as regular GSM handsets.
However, the site is forced to admit that the UK wireless regulator, Ofcom, bans the use of cellular jammers.
So it can't actually sell to Brits. Plus the site can't officially send the
devices to Europe since they don't have official approval a CE mark. So UK
theatres are just going to have to rely on asking people to turn their phones
off.
The full Inquirer
story ... Two Russian
theatres jam mobiles
www.globalgadgetuk.com
Mobile saves snowboarder's life
It just goes to show that carrying a mobile phone isn't always a health hazard. It can save your life too as Brit snowboarder, Thomas Murphy, found out. He was located after waving his glowing handset to attract attention.
Murphy had been buried by an avalanche in the French in the resort of Les Deux Alpes. However, he called a friend in Britain on his mobile phone who alerted French rescue services.
When Murphy spotted the rescue helicopter, he lit up his phone and waved it around. The glimmer was sufficient for the crew to located him.
Unfortunately Italian paraglider, Antonio Montagno, wasn't so lucky. He had no mobile phone and thus spent three days dangling upside-down from a tree.
Rescuers had almost given up because of bad weather before they finally found him. His wife was reported as saying," 'That's it. From now on he's staying at home and taking up a quiet hobby like stamp collecting."
Although he didn't have a phone to call for help, Montagno did, however, have a colourful red and white canopy.
The full Inquirer story ...
Snowboarder saved by mobile phone
Telesoft offers VoIP for Windows 6.0
With the current craze to offer VoIP on dual mode (cellular/WiFi) phones, Texas based Telesoft has launched software to run on any Windows Mobile 5.0 device.
Although it maintains this product is aimed at other wireless devices and fixed line phones, the reality is that the major market for this product will be Beast based smartphones and wireless PDAs.
The company claims its "SDK features a ready-to-run stack of source code software running as a Pocket PC ARM emulator that ports directly to 32-bit ARM processors."
Applications that can be built with the CompactSIP SDK include: - email, instant messaging, e-commerce, video, multimedia, navigation, click-to-call, and soft-phones.
Taking up a mere 63KB, Telesoft's argues CompactSIP is the industry's leanest SIP stack. Which is probably correct.
But don't despair. Telesoft isn't in bed solely with Microsoft. Its products also run on Nucleus, Linux, VxWorks, MQX, Micrium, and uCLinux. Oh, yeah and Windows CE, too.
The full Inquirer story ... Texans offer instant VoIP
www.telesoft-intl.com
Awayphone offers special roaming SIM
Various schemes
for reducing charges while using a GSM phone abroad (roaming) exist. AwayPhone is the first to actually supply you with an entirely separate SIM card, as far as we know.
On the face of it, AwayPhone sounds great. It promises to cut the cost of mobile phone usage abroad by as much as 90 per cent. Plus the cost savings sound realistic since the company is routing the calls using VoIP technology.
However, there are a number of snags. Firstly, subscribers need to pay for the SIM card itself. It costs £25 and there's no mention of a refund for heavy users on the site.
Next users need to sign up for the service. The choice is between paying £6 per month for frequent travellers or £10 for a one-off 30 days.
So you've got to spend over £35 on overseas calls before you even save a penny. However, AwayPhone's system means you only pay local call charges in the country of your choice.
Plus those charges for receiving calls while roaming won't apply. Having attended 3GSM Barcelona recently it was receiving calls from UK phones which doubled the
Mobile Insight's usual phone bill.
The full Inquirer story ...
New approach to low-cost roaming arrives
www.awayphone.com
Nokia invests in nanotech R&D
Nokia's announcement of a $60 million tie-up with Britain's University of Cambridge for joint R&D into nanotechnology belies a much deeper interest in the subject than might first appear.
It is generally known, for example, that Nokia's arch rival, Motorola, has already created a nano-emissive flat-panel display. Plus Motorola has other nanotech-related initiatives including one in electronics.
Nokia has been rather coy about what benefits it might derive from R&D into nanotechnology. Dr Tapani Ryhanen, who heads Nokia's global research into nanotechnology, commented, "Nanotechnology long ago left science fiction movies for the laboratory and, more recently, we saw the first commercial applications.
The techniques we are developing really bring us a toolkit for working with the processes of nature at a very basic level - the level of molecules - in a safe and controlled way."
So that's smaller handsets is it, then?
Anyway, Finland's leading company is sponsoring an event called
Nanotech Northern Europe 2007
from March 27th-29th 2007 in Helsinki. The significant part about this conference is that there is at least one thread on the subject of nanotechnology commercialisation included a talk given by Malcolm Wilkinson, from the UK's Technology For Industry.
The full Inquirer story ... Nokia noses around nanotech
www.nanotech.net
UK hospitals permit handset usage
One of the greatest myths about mobile phones has been swept aside in Britain. Namely that mobile phones can adversely affect the operation of sensitive medical equipment in hospitals.
The motivation for this change of heart is economics. For example, Labour MP for Gateshead East and Washington West, Sharon Hodgson, led a campaign against the ban on the use of mobile phones in hospitals because in-house hospital systems cost "an arm and a leg".
That's saying something since mobile phone calls aren't exactly cheap. Even the industry watchdog, Ofcom, had been forced to conduct an investigation into the cost of making calls via the two leading service providers - Patientline and Premier Managed Payphones.
Commonsense has finally prevailed. For example, the British Medical Journal found that regular mobile phones affected only four per cent of medical devices at a distance of one metre.
That compared to 41 per cent for emergency services' handsets (presumably using Tetra) and 35 per cent for porters' handsets (presumably using PMR).
So guidance from the Department of Health now says that mobile phones can be used - except near some specialist equipment.
No-one seems to have commented on the fact that mobile phones have been allowed into Irish hospitals for years with no obvious ill effects.
What this has done, of course, is to stick another nail in the coffin of airlines who bizarrely insist that mobile phones and games consoles adversely affect the performance of navigation equipment in aircraft.
This is absolute tosh and Mobile Insight suspects was originally the invention of pilots searching desperately for an excuse as to why they'd stuffed their craft into the tarmac when all their electrical equipment appeared to be working normally afterwards on investigation.
The full Inquirer story ... Hospitals cured of mobile phone phobia
E-TEN launches Glofiish X800 at CeBit
Taiwan's E-TEN has picked CeBIT 2007 to show off its latest mobile offering the Glofiish X800. This particular model features a large screen plus support for 3.5G (HSDPA).
E-TEN's products are normally re-branded but in the case of the X800 (which was previously named the X600), the company has decided to make a push with its own brand name - Glofiish - being emblazoned on this Windows Mobile 6 wireless PDA.
In addition to supporting 3G/GSM, this device also offers Wi-Fi, GPS and
Bluetooth all in one unit. The new VGA (640x480) display offers up to four
times the resolution of previous E-TEN handsets. 
Thanks to support for both HSDPA and WiFi, this Pocket PC phone is ideal for VoIP (Internet telephony), video streaming video and video calling. It has a standard front mounted VGA camera as well as an auto-focus two megapixel camera at the rear.
Being Windows Mobile 6 based, the phone will come with the Microsoft's 'Windows Live for Windows Mobile' suite which incorporates web search, email, instant messaging and blogging.
According to E-TEN chairman, Hwang Shan-rong, the market for this kind of PDA should reach between 100 million and 200 million in 2007. The X800 is due out in Q2 2007.
Despite strenuous efforts to
pretend that the technology is dead, 4th Screen Advertising has given
the game away by launching a mobile banner ad serving engine called
MPression. The company will now offer a turn key service to mobile
publishers which includes: - sales, billing, adserving, and ad creation.
4th Screen will offer advertisers access to its UK WAP network which
includes leading WAP sites such as ITV Mobile, Repro and The Ministry of
Sound. O2, Samsung and Probability Group are already clients. "We
believe by offering the industry a full service, we will make it easier
to grow this market and deliver value to our WAP publishers and
advertisers," said Mark Slade, md with 4th Screen Advertising.
www.migcan.comSnippets
Google's Isabel Aguilera told news site Noticias that some of the web search firm's engineers have
indeed been spending time working on designs for a mobile phones. She also suggested that the phone designs weren't
such a big deal. www.noticias.com
In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)
This week
Moistmob
The big news behind the launch of this
new WAP site, Moistmob, is that it will be 'hosted' by Tera Patrick. She's
described as the "first erotic supermodel to host a mobile portal." It's not
very clear exactly what tasks Tera has to carry out in order to 'host' the site
but at least her picture is up the top of the site. What's on offer via Moistmob
is very light blue and aimed at heterosexuals. Mobile Insight suspects
that another sister site called Knobmob will cater for homosexuals when it's
launched.
The site is run by Burst Mobile which is based in Leeds and uses Bango to handle
payments. When Mobile Insight accessed the site via 3, it was properly
protected from minors and required proof of age via a credit card or a phone
call.
http://wap.moistmob.tv
