Friday, October 20, 2006
De-portalization and Ecosystem, Orange
I was just pointed at the following to jobs at Orange group:
Director of De-portalization and Ecosystem, Orange / France Telecom Group
Orange Director of De-portalization and Ecosystem, Orange / France Telecom Group
Sounds like Orange is putting some serious energy into driving off-portal activity.
Good to see.
Director of De-portalization and Ecosystem, Orange / France Telecom Group
Orange Director of De-portalization and Ecosystem, Orange / France Telecom Group
Sounds like Orange is putting some serious energy into driving off-portal activity.
Good to see.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Mobi Advisory Group
I had a real laugh when I tried the ".Mobi advisory group" web site last night during mobile monday on my phone. (Its mag.mtld.mobi )
You can try it yourself at http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php?webaddress=mag.mtld.mobi&emulator=nokiaN70&Submit=Submit
It looks really bad on a mobile phone.
However .... a colleague pointed out that mag.mtld.mobi has a "get out". The .mobi rules say:
"Only hostnames http://www.domain.mobi/ and domain.mobi will be tested – other third level domains are considered out of scope and will not be tested".
As somebody pointed out at Mobile Monday, every industry needs something to laugh at as a sort of "common gripe". Looks like we have it!
Thursday, March 23, 2006
PayPal promoting Mobile with Users
Not many people remember that X.com turned into PayPal. Until recently you could actually log in to x.com on your mobile and log in to paypal.
Back last year, Bango started working with PayPal to enable mobile internet sites to use PayPal for micropayments. The collaboration is working very well. See http://www.bango.com/investor/paypal_120905.pdf for more info. Users can navigate round WAP sites and make one click payments, because Bango is tightly integrated with Paypal's systems. Nevertheless, connecting a PayPal account with a mobile phone to enable this process requires (at least once) a user to go to a PC.
From this week, PayPal have started educating users about mobile from the PC end. Paypal mobile! uses a mobile phone as an extension of the PC to instruct payments to be sent to paypal merchants or other users. Once a phone is connected to a paypal account, the authentication of the payment is done by IVR (basically Paypal initiates a voice call to the user).
This is great news. Using a text message or a voice call to transfer money to people or merchants is a huge step forward from requiring a "logged in PC" and will open up PayPal to a much wider audience.
While the new system is more complex for mobile internet sites, where the existing PayPal/Bango system works very well, the new system has application where the user is not on the mobile internet when they make a buying decision. Bango will be able to leverage both the text driven and the voice driven stuff to enable users to pay or pre-pay money to mobile content providers before the user visits their site to collect the content.
With thousands of content providers using Bango to get to market, Bango is obviously very keen to exploit - on their behalf - any new payment methods that achieve mass market traction. Lets hope Paypal by text and voice is one such method.
Back last year, Bango started working with PayPal to enable mobile internet sites to use PayPal for micropayments. The collaboration is working very well. See http://www.bango.com/investor/paypal_120905.pdf for more info. Users can navigate round WAP sites and make one click payments, because Bango is tightly integrated with Paypal's systems. Nevertheless, connecting a PayPal account with a mobile phone to enable this process requires (at least once) a user to go to a PC.
From this week, PayPal have started educating users about mobile from the PC end. Paypal mobile! uses a mobile phone as an extension of the PC to instruct payments to be sent to paypal merchants or other users. Once a phone is connected to a paypal account, the authentication of the payment is done by IVR (basically Paypal initiates a voice call to the user).
This is great news. Using a text message or a voice call to transfer money to people or merchants is a huge step forward from requiring a "logged in PC" and will open up PayPal to a much wider audience.
While the new system is more complex for mobile internet sites, where the existing PayPal/Bango system works very well, the new system has application where the user is not on the mobile internet when they make a buying decision. Bango will be able to leverage both the text driven and the voice driven stuff to enable users to pay or pre-pay money to mobile content providers before the user visits their site to collect the content.
With thousands of content providers using Bango to get to market, Bango is obviously very keen to exploit - on their behalf - any new payment methods that achieve mass market traction. Lets hope Paypal by text and voice is one such method.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Microsoft buys Motionbridge
Back in November 05 I posted about the rumour that Motionbridge had been sold to Google or Yahoo. Now it transpires I was premature. Turns out Microsoft won the prize: http://www.motionbridge.com/COMPANY/index.html
Motionbridge has been in the tag / keyword based mobile search business for five years and powers the "find" for Sprint, O2 and Orange portals. While they don't have a high profile - evident from the fact that nobody i spoke with yesterday had heard the news - they play an important role. Its interesting that this is the first time MS seems to have bought a mobile service - not related to the handset client. Perhaps this indicates a change of strategy to leverage Microsoft's obvious desire on the Internet without getting hung up on their poor showing in the phone client.
All in all, sounds like good news for the industry and for Microsoft. It will be interesting to learn what the price paid was.
Motionbridge has been in the tag / keyword based mobile search business for five years and powers the "find" for Sprint, O2 and Orange portals. While they don't have a high profile - evident from the fact that nobody i spoke with yesterday had heard the news - they play an important role. Its interesting that this is the first time MS seems to have bought a mobile service - not related to the handset client. Perhaps this indicates a change of strategy to leverage Microsoft's obvious desire on the Internet without getting hung up on their poor showing in the phone client.
All in all, sounds like good news for the industry and for Microsoft. It will be interesting to learn what the price paid was.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
More from .mobi - a bad idea rolls onwards
As its coming round to the annual 3GSM congress in Barcelona, when the mobile industry talks to itself, it seemed a good time to see if .mobi was preparing to launch something. Sure enough, a new web site has appeared at http://mtld.mobi/ The good news is that it works on several WAP and xHTML phones - but seemingly not on WINWAP at the moment.
On the site is the process for sale of .mobi domain names, and more interestingly the "style guide" thats sites need to comply with if their domain names are to remain in the DNS zone file (i.e be accessible through a .mobi name).
There is also a list of demo sites - some of which do not yet seem to work, but I'm sure they will by next week (3GSM).
.mobi is a very bad idea, but I'm sure there are some good people working at implementing it. Hopefully the initiative will shine a spotlight in the need to produce mobile sites to reach the global audience of nearly 1 billion mobile users. Also, hopefully, the site owners will follow the W3C recommendations and use a single URL for promotion of sites to all users.
I can't see .com dying out so I expect that most CP's will use .com whether or not they comply with the W3C rules. Another benefit of using .com is that there is no danger that a site will be withdrawn from DNS (for good reasons or through error) by the .mobi business.
On the site is the process for sale of .mobi domain names, and more interestingly the "style guide" thats sites need to comply with if their domain names are to remain in the DNS zone file (i.e be accessible through a .mobi name).
There is also a list of demo sites - some of which do not yet seem to work, but I'm sure they will by next week (3GSM).
.mobi is a very bad idea, but I'm sure there are some good people working at implementing it. Hopefully the initiative will shine a spotlight in the need to produce mobile sites to reach the global audience of nearly 1 billion mobile users. Also, hopefully, the site owners will follow the W3C recommendations and use a single URL for promotion of sites to all users.
I can't see .com dying out so I expect that most CP's will use .com whether or not they comply with the W3C rules. Another benefit of using .com is that there is no danger that a site will be withdrawn from DNS (for good reasons or through error) by the .mobi business.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Trends seen during 2005
2005 has seen a migration from content through SMS to WAP portals (just like 1995 saw an evolution from email services to web services)
Mainstream brands have entered to market directly, rather than solely through operator portals. Examples include SKY TV, THE SUN, Bands like OASIS, WESTLIFE, EMINEM Music Labels like EMI (The Raft)
Moble Network Operators (Carriers) are moving to support the D2C content channel. They see D2C on the mobile internet as the technical solution to SMS billing headaches, providing better consumer transparency and a better audit trail.
Bango's slashing of the costs of going "off-portal" provides lower costs of entry, meaning more content players can get into the market. We are seeing independent music labels getting into mobile, smaller content providers etc.
In the US, the content market is gradually opening-up giving consumers greater choice and driving better quality through competition. While Carriers like Verizon are still opposed to giving their customers choice of content supplier, the leading network - Cingular - is on a clear path to supporting its users in getting what they want.
In the PC-centricUSA, linking mobile services off web sites is a key traffic generating tool. Sun Microsystems uses its Java.com web site to promote the benefits of the Java user environment and allows the user to experience Java content by literally ordering the download off the web page.
Mainstream brands have entered to market directly, rather than solely through operator portals. Examples include SKY TV, THE SUN, Bands like OASIS, WESTLIFE, EMINEM Music Labels like EMI (The Raft)
Moble Network Operators (Carriers) are moving to support the D2C content channel. They see D2C on the mobile internet as the technical solution to SMS billing headaches, providing better consumer transparency and a better audit trail.
Bango's slashing of the costs of going "off-portal" provides lower costs of entry, meaning more content players can get into the market. We are seeing independent music labels getting into mobile, smaller content providers etc.
In the US, the content market is gradually opening-up giving consumers greater choice and driving better quality through competition. While Carriers like Verizon are still opposed to giving their customers choice of content supplier, the leading network - Cingular - is on a clear path to supporting its users in getting what they want.
In the PC-centricUSA, linking mobile services off web sites is a key traffic generating tool. Sun Microsystems uses its Java.com web site to promote the benefits of the Java user environment and allows the user to experience Java content by literally ordering the download off the web page.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Lovely Translation
Received an email from Italian company ETNOTEAM today which made me smile:
Etnoteam joins the RAI DTT The Etnoteam Group, is attested as the preferred interlocutor about the DTT for RAI.
Winning the bit for the Digital Terrestrial Technology of RAI infrastructural platform, Etnoteam will carry out not only the "return channel" software, used for receiving and managing the messages that the users want to send to the transmitter during the service fruition distributed on the digital terrestrial technology, but also for the "one way channel", with the goal of conforming the interaction of both applications.
This platform certificates the spread of MHP applications and multimedia content on the digital terrestrial technology channel. In the production platform framework for the one way channel, Etnoteam places at RAI disposal technologies and competences suggesting a managing contents and applications system based on technology and products Vignette7.
Press Release
Etnoteam joins the RAI DTT The Etnoteam Group, is attested as the preferred interlocutor about the DTT for RAI.
Winning the bit for the Digital Terrestrial Technology of RAI infrastructural platform, Etnoteam will carry out not only the "return channel" software, used for receiving and managing the messages that the users want to send to the transmitter during the service fruition distributed on the digital terrestrial technology, but also for the "one way channel", with the goal of conforming the interaction of both applications.
This platform certificates the spread of MHP applications and multimedia content on the digital terrestrial technology channel. In the production platform framework for the one way channel, Etnoteam places at RAI disposal technologies and competences suggesting a managing contents and applications system based on technology and products Vignette7.
Press Release
