Speaking of mistaken ways in which media companies think when designing sites, how many of their executives have ever tried accesing one of their entertainment or lifestyle guide sites -- sites that list events -- from a mobile phone?

Almost all of those sites are designed to be read only on 800x600 or 1024x768 pixel personal computer screens. And many can't be accessed without Adobe Macromedia Flash or other applicaitons incompatible with mobile phones. Dumb!

Think of your own life. When you've tried to decide what restaurant to visit, pub in which to drink, club to hear a band, or cinema to watch a movie, have you always been sitting in front of your personal computer? Or have you instead felt that need while driving, commuting, walking around town, or elsewhere away from your PC? Did you have your mobile phone with you?

FACT: More people today have mobile phones that can access the Internet than have personal computers that can. And most spend more of their lives away from personal computers than with.

If you are somebody whose company publishes an entertainment or lifestyle guide, try accessing it from your phone and see what happens.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in Paris where later this week I'll be representing my friend Gordon Borrell's firm at the World Association of Newspapers' Advertising Conference and be one of the conference's speakers about online revenues.

That's one reason why I'll be missing the Newspaper Association of America's Connections conference about online newspapers, which is underway in Orlando (where a section of of a theme park resembles a dwarf Paris but the food isn't anywhere as good). I haven't heard any news arise from the Connections conference — except that the NAA itself has launched a $50 million advertising campaign to "'surprise advertisers with the truth' about how engaged consumers are with newspaper advertising and to remind them of the reach of newspaper media in all its forms – print, online, niche publications, wireless, kiosks and even podcasts." I bet that really will surprise advertisers who are armed with tons of research showing that consumer actually are becoming less and less engaged with newspapers in print and only modestly more so online.

Meanwhile, 5,000 kilometers northeast of Orlando, the departing editor in chief of The Economist weekly news magazine in London, which has doubled its circulation worldwide, said that newspapers had played their part in his magazine's success by preferring 'entertainment' journalism to serious analysis. "I think we have been left a bit of space," Bill Emmott told the Guardian. "They [newspapers] have had a hard task of how to deal with and preserve a mass market in an age when their market has been eroded by television on the one hand and the internet on the other.... But I think they have left us some space by continuing to play in the mass, almost entertainment market. Very few have come in our direction of analysis. There's a choice - more entertainment or more information, and the numbers that have taken the more information route are very few."

Perhaps unrelated to that dichotomy, Associates New Media, the digital publishers of the Daily Mail's website, is launching an ad-funded video news service online. Every London weekday lunchtime, ANM will broadcast celebrity, music and film-related news clips online. ANM COO Mark Milner told Netimperative that “Integrating advertising with our video broadcast provides an excellent opportunity to reach and communicate with the Mail’s unique audience in a content rich environment whilst ensuring stand-out."

A thousand kilometers south of ANM, the chief creative officer of British TV show (Big Brother) producer Endemol told the 3GSM conference in Barcelona that the mobile network operators have failed to discover a 'killer application' for mobile phone (presumably besides voice calls and SMS?). Peter Bazalgette said a 'killer app' for mobile content would need to harness viceo, consumer participation, and the mentality of the 'user generation,' the Guardian reported.

Speaking of the 3GSM conference and the Guardian, that newspaper let Magic Lantern Production's Anthony Lilley boldface all the buzzwords he heard there, although you've probably heard most before.

I'm pleased to read that Times Newspapers of London has hired former FT.com COO Zack Leonard as its new digital media publisher. Savvy move. Leonard, like former Wall Street Journal Online Edition publisher Neil Budde, who's now general manager of Yahoo's news operations, is a pioneer in online publishing.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

According to the rankings posted on Apple's iTunes Music Store, ABC's daily webcast of World News Now, which was launched only three weeks ago, has become the most downloaded news podcast. It leads CNN News Update, Meet the Press, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Wall Street Journal Report.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People e-mailed the BBC with more than 6,500 photos or mobile phone video clips of the inferno at the Buncefield oil depot explosion yesterday.

According to MediaGuardian, this set a new record for emails sent to the BBC in the aftermath of an event. After the July 7th London Underground bombings, the BBC's yourpics@bbc.co.uk site received around 1,000 images and mobile clips from the public.

MediaGuardian quoted Pete Clifton, the head of BBC News Interactive:

"The range of material we received from our readers was absolutely extraordinary. Video, still pictures and emails poured in from the moment the blast happened, and it played a central part in the way we reported the unfolding events."

Half a million unique users viewed clips and footage yesterday on the BBC's online news video service, an audience second only to number of requests for clips on 7 July.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to Adrian Holovaty, editor of editorial innovations at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, and Matt Thompson, deputy editor of interactive media at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, for being named by the Boston Phoenix among the 'Future 10' list of journalists who could make a difference in the news industry. Each is only 24 years old.

Also in the news is the introduction of Neal Goldman and David Oddi's Inform Technologies, a startup venture attempt to offer consumers news customized from all online sources. The New York Times and ClickZ each have articles about it. The two Penn Statue alumni have very successful backgrounds: Neal launched Capital IQ in 2000, brought it up to 1,000 clients and 900 employees, and sold it to Standard & Poor's last year for a handsome sum. David spent a decade as a partner in the mid-stage venture capital firm Saunders Karp & Megrue. Congratulations to them on the launch of Inform! [Disclosure: I consulted to them last year during the early stages on the project.]

Boos to the U.S. newspaper industry for blaming staff reductions on, among other things, newsprint price increases. "Newsprint costs are up significantly. Wages and health benefits are up. So you have the cost pressure on the one hand and the lack of revenue growth on the other. That's really the problem, and everyone is having essentially the same problem,'' Knight Ridder Chairman and Chief Executive P. Anthony Ridder told The New York Times.

Media General Corporation President and CEO Marshall N. Morton announced,"Publishing's profit decline principally reflects higher expenses for newsprint, employee benefits and energy."

The Wall Street Journal plans to shrink it's size this year to, "achieve significant cost savings, mainly in reduced usage of newsprint, that will further improve Journal profitability," Publisher Karen Elliott House told Reuters.

Yet Jack Shafer at Slate points out that newsprint prices, when adjusted for inflations, costs the same as it did in 1997 and that's only 68 percent of its 20-year high, which came in early 1988. "Far from being victims of high newsprint costs, newspapers have been coasting on cheap newsprint for much of the past two decades."

And boos to FIFA, the sport of soccer's world governing body. It's banning digital images of its next World Cup from appearing on newspaper websites and other electronic media until one hour after the matches finish.

"This is a severe curb on the freedom of editors to inform their readers," said Timothy Balding, head of the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers (WAN), which represents 18,000 newspapers.

FIFA hasn't given a reason for the ban, but many analysts are speculating that FIFA worries that digital images (which can include video) sent to video-equipped mobile phones or streamed from websites, might interfer with FIFA's lucrative sale of traditional broadcast rights to its matches. The ban doesn't effect mobile networks or online operations that have bought broadcast rights from FIFA. Soccer is the world's most popular sport and more people on the planet now have mobile phones than have television sets.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nokia Network's Director of Communications Thomas Jonsson last week told told The Washington Post that this will be the year of music (read iPod) on the mobile phone; 2006 will be the year of television on it; and 2008 will be the year of "my connected life," when the years-old dream of cell phones that are Internet terminals will finally become a widespread reality.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thus, Americans who design Internet services can learn a great deal from Asia Unplugged, the new book edited by Madanmohan Rao and Lunita Mendoza.

Rao, research director at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Bangalore (and who some Americans know as a contributor to the Poynter Institutes E-Media Tidbits) and Mendoza, editor of Wireless World magazine in Singapore, gathered 19 experts to report on the opportunities, complexities, of wireless Internet endeavors and businesses in Asia.

I recommend this very comprehensive book to anyone who wants to learn the state-of-the art in wireless Internet access and business. Asia accounted for 36 percent of the world’s telecom market in 2002 and is expected to account for 50 percent by 2007. The continent currently has one third of the world’s Internet users, 47 percent of the world’s broadband users, 95 percent of the world’s 3G mobile users, and seven of the ten most profitable telecom operators.

The book is divided into three sections. The first looks at overall themes such as mobilizing the Internet, location-based services, mobile commerce, government and educational usages. Another section features chapters each examining Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, India, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, and Bangladesh. And the third is a review and guide to ten other books about worldwide and Asian wireless issues.

Published by Sage Publications in New Delhi, Asia Unplugged is available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com. In the U.S., it cost about $75. That’s about what a Wi-Fi card would cost you, but Asia Unplugged will connect you more quickly and richly with all you need to know about the epicenter of Wireless Internet access.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hitachi plans to begin selling a color-capable electronic paper in 2006.

Rather than use organic light-emitting (OLED) diodes, the way that Philips' e-paper does, Hitachi's device will use a liquid crystal displays (LCD) 3-centimeters thick and equipped with a special panel that has doubles the noral light reflectivity of LCDs. Hitachi showed a 7-inch prototype, said the device is capable of showing an image bright enough for easy viewing without using a backlight, and can display a high-resolution image for several months on commercially available lithium ion battery cells. Unlike Philips e-paper, the Hitachi device can't display video.

Nor can it be rolled up or bent. So, Hitachi believes its market for this e-paper will be used in shopping malls and trains for posters and ads, as well as at public facilities, offices and homes for information and message boards. Those are also the markets that currently use E -Ink's black & white, lower resultion electronic paper.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Speaking of 3G (below), BBC technology analyst Bill Thompson, at first skeptical of 3G, compares it against iPods and changes his mind. Among his comments:

But just as the World Wide Web was the "killer application" that drove internet adoption, music videos are going to drive 3G adoption.

With Vodafone now pushing its own 3G service, and 3 already established in the UK, video on the phone is clearly going to become a must-have for kids sitting on the school bus, adults waiting outside clubs and anyone who has time to kill and a group of friends to impress.

3G phones and iPods can co-exist, at least for a while, but if I had to bet on the long term I would go for content on demand over carrying gigabytes in my pocket.

This will please the network operators, who are looking for some revenue from their expensively acquired 3G licences.

But it goes deeper than that: playing music videos on a phone marks the beginning of a move away from the 'download and play' model we have all accepted for our iPods and MP3 players.

After all, why should I want to carry 60GB of music and pictures around with me in my pocket when I can simply listen to anything I want, whenever I want, streamed to my phone?

Oh - and of course you can always use the phone to make voice calls and send texts, something which ensures that it is always in someone's pocket or handbag, available for other uses too.

On a somewhat related note earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription access) compared U.S. satellite radio services (such as Sirius and SM) against an often overlooked but bigger distribution means for radio — webcasting.

While just 3.4 million Americans subscribe to satellite radio, about 19 million listen to Internet radio each week, according to research firms Arbitron Inc. and Edison Media Research. That's still tiny compared with the 277 million who listen to regular radio each week, but the number of Internet listeners has grown fast. Just three years ago, only 11 million listened to Internet radio each week.

"There seems to be a sense that technology will replace what's existing," says John Hogan, head of the radio division at San Antonio-based Clear Channel, in reference to the threat the Internet poses to traditional broadcast radio. Instead, he believes, "technology will challenge what's existing," but broadcasters will meet that challenge.

Mr. Hogan's confidence stems in part from the toehold broadcasters already have on the Internet. The online simulcasts provided by hundreds of broadcast stations in the U.S., including 200 Clear Channel stations, make those programs available to listeners anywhere in the world, as well as to people who might not have a radio at work but do have a computer.

"People use [Internet simulcasts] to sample stations they can't get," says Tom Webster, an analyst at Edison Media Research, of Somerville, N.J. That broadening of their potential audiences may help traditional radio stations offset any loss of listeners to Internet-only stations.

The Journal article mentions only webcasts from licensed broadcasters. There are also thousands of live webcasts available from unlicensed broadcasters, including individuals. Every chill out listening to Cryosleep ('Zero beat guaranteed')? As I write this, 179 people are, including me.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vodafone Ireland has released its pricing list for 3G broadband mobile phone customers:

Unlimited access to Barclays Premiership goals, match previews and post-match interviews for ?9.99 per month. On a promotional basis, that service will be free to customers until February 2005.

Full-length movies for ?4.99 and movie clips for ?2. There will also be a Movie of the Month service (this month's movie is Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) for ?4.99, a service which is free until February 2005. Individual clips can also be downloaded through this service for between ?0.50c and ?2, depending on the content.

Vodaphone Ireland and Viacom will offer a MTV Music video subscription service that cost ?7.99 per month and will offer access to MTV Live Lounge and Making the Video.

Online games will be playable for up to ?7 per month.

Video calling will allow customers to see each other while on a video call, and Vodafone Ireland will be charging video calls at the same price as voice calls on a promotional basis. Prices for interpersonal MMS or interpersonal pre-recorded video messages will be ?0.19c to ?0.69c according to message size.

Vodafone Ireland has signed 3G roaming agreements with networks in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

So far that I've seen, no major publishers or broadcasters from Ireland or other countries will offering news through these 3G services.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A month ago, I'd mentioned Nigel Pocklington's appointment to the newly created role of director of online publishing for the Financial Times. From London, Kieren McCarthy points me to an article he wrote today in The Independent about Pocklington's role at FT.com and thoughts about paid content and also publishing to handheld mobile devices. This good article also quotes the thoughts of Simon Waldman of The Guardian and Annelies van den Belt of the Times, and Alex White of the UK Association of Online Publishers about some of those same subjects.

Publishing to handheld devices is already beginning to transform the news business in South Korea and Japan. I believe that the first English-speaking market that it will transform is the United Kingdom, due to already widespread consumer adoption of fairly advanced mobile phone handsets and texting, fierce competition among the national dailies, and the follout of 3G (UMTS) services.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I emphasize how important mobile devices will soon become to online publishers , I speak from the experience of a user. I'm on the road about 14 days each month, and I can now leave my laptop at home.

In August 2002, I began replacing my Sony Viao laptop with a Pocket PC Phone manufactured by HTC of Taiwan and sold by T-Mobile. This dual-band GSM phone featured a 110MHZ Intel processor, 32-megabytes of RAM, and a 4,096 color, 240 x 320 pixel touchscreen. It was pre-installed with the Pocket PC versions of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, Reader, and Internet Explorer. I inserted a 128-megabyte SD memory card into it and installed Adobe Acrobat, a half dozen cities' restaurant guides from Zagat, and had about a dozen e-book in it at any time, almost all in Reader format (yes, e-books are harder to read than paperback books, but it's hard to carry a dozen paperbacks in your carry-on luggage). I've kept it automatically syncronized with my desktop PC's e-mail and other daily files, via the handheld device's cradle.

People say that using broadband changes how you use online. Well, I can report that true mobility also changes how you use online. The ability to surf the Web wherever I could get a phone GPRS signal (which was everywhere I went in North America and Europe) was a revelation (even if the connection is only dialup or DSL speeds). I can Websurf from the beach, a boat, a train, a moving automobile, and having ready online access is a hell of a way to resolve bar bets.

Nevertheless, I still often had to tote my laptop with me because the Pocket PC didn't have Microsoft PowerPoint or any other easily usable presentation software.

Last month, I upgraded to a HP iPAQ 6315 Pocket PC Phone and no longer need the laptop at all. The newer device is a quad-band GSM phone running a 200Mhz processor, with 64-megabytes of RAM, and a 64,000 color touchscreen. (Other PDAs feature much faster processors, but HP keep this device at 200Mhz to extend its battery life. Besides, remember that 200Mhz was the speed of the first Pentium processors, not bad for this handheld device). It also features a digital camera, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

When online, it automatically bridges among WiFi, GPRS, and Bluetooth, switching to whichever can offer the highest speed connection. The Bluetooth lets me keep it wirelessly syncronized with my desktop.

Besides transfering my old device's extra application onto it, I've installed Conduits Pocket Slides presentation software and all of Zagat's restaurant, hotel, and entertainment guides worldwide. I'm experimenting with MMS. I've also added a 512-megabyte memory card because I've discovered how to convert movies into Pocket PC format via TMPGenc.

I never trained any of these devices for recognizing my handwriting, and I'd gotten used to typing characters on the old device's touchscreen keypad. The newer device has the same touchscreen keypad, but also features a snap-on thumbpad keyboard, for when I want to have something in common with my SMS-addicted Europeans and Asians.

On either device, the phone talk-time is about four hours, the standby-time one week. Each device recharges in about 90 minutes.

So, go mobile online. Fully mobile. Not just tethered to WiFi at offices, coffee shops, and airport lounges. #&151; Vin Crosbie

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The annual IFRA/WAN/FIPP Beyond the Printed Word online publishing conference was held in Prague yesterday and today. A summary of the presentations is available from WAN and there is an interesting conference moblog.

Here from the conference (my thanks to the IFRA and WAN summaries) are some interesting ideas about mobile and digital editions:

Continue reading "Mobile and Digital Edition Ideas from 'Beyond the Printed Word'" »

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

US Magazine later this month will launch a subscription SMS service for celebrity junkies, reports Technology Marketing magazine. US is targeting this service at educated, relatively affluent, North American women with an average age of 32 who live in metropolitan areas.

Called 'US to the Minute', the text messaging service will send breaking entertainment news headlines free of charge to subscribers mobile phones. Subscribers can then pay either 50 cents to see a full story behind a headline or else $3.99 monthly for all stories. Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless, AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, Nextel, Boost, and others wireless carriers have signed up to deliver this service

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A Mobinet report says that 49% petrcent of mobile phone users worldwide have Internet access (eMarketer has a story about it). Mobile Internet access is 80 percent in Japan, 47 percent in Europe, and 37 percent in North America. Mobinet is a project between A.T. Kearney and Cambridge University's Business School and the survey is basd upon 4,500 mobile phone users from 13 countries. The study determined that 75% of mobile phone users use mobile data services. However, only 1% are rated 'heavy users.' The cost of mobile data was the primary reason (35 percent) that respondents gave for not heavily using it.

Because a major problem with North American mobile content use is the incompatibilities among some of the mobile phone networks on that content. Publishers should keep an eye on the merger this week of the InphoMatch and Mobileway. InphoMatch is an American company that provides North American networks with mobile data compatiblity software. Mobileway is a French company that provide content to mobile devices such as phones and personal assistants. The combined company have annual revenues of about USD100 million. It is positioning itself to become a gatekeeper for mobile content in North America.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I keep telling publishers that electronic paper isn't science fiction but science fact, technologiy that will go into commercial production this decade. I'm particular a fan of the rollable versions. For example, the picture above is of Polymer Vision B&W prototype demonstrated on May 27th at the International Society for Information Display's trade show in Seattle. (High resolution photos of this prototype are here.) the February edition of Nature, detailed how these flexible displays use active-matrix organic transistors, have video capabilities, and can be rolled to a radius of one centimeter (4/10ths of an inch) without significant loss in performance. In September, I'd published an illustration of Cambridge Technologies' e-paper 6-by-4 inch color prototype that rolls up into a pen and other technologies demonstrated at the Seybold Future of Print conference in San Francisco.

What is driving manufacturers' adoption of these technologies isn't any desires to serve markets of people who want to read electronic newspaper or magazines, but the technological fact that e-paper displays consume 1/50th to 1/100th. That means a PDA, or mobile phone, tablet device, or rollable screen that utilized e-paper display technologies will much, much more battery life that an equivalent device equipped with current LCD displays.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Many Many North American media companies plans to deliver news via mobile phones, yet none are exhibiting or on the presentations program at CTIA Wireless 2004> in Atlanta, which with more than 70,000 attendees claims to be 'the world's largest conference of the wireless industry' (despite being only one-third the size of a similar conference held earlier this year in Cannes). Hollywood entertainment companies are well represented, both as presenters and exhibitors, here at the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's annual conference. They know better than to wait for the wireless industry to court them. Yet only Stats, Inc., a sports scores company that's exhibiting, might be considered a 'news' company. These are some of the reasons why 'content' means entertainment, not news, to North American wireless companies and their subscribers.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Camera phonesare revolutionizing is public adoption of Multimedia Message Systems (MMS) in the U.K. The Enpocket Mobile Media Monitor found that during the the past 3 months the number of consumers using MMS surged by 40%. That surge was driven by 18 to 24 year olds of whom 37 percent are now using MMS. Moreover, 18 percent of all mobile phone owners in the UK now have a camera phone, including 47 percent of those aged 18 to 24.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Outing has a good story today about most online newspapers' woefully rigid and cluttered graphical user interfaces, the design equivalent of shovelware. He quotes Howard Finberg of the Poynter Institute (as is Outing) and the Digital Futurist consultancy and Nik Wilets of Morris Digital Works; but mainly quotes graphical designer Alan Jacobson of Brass Tacks Design.

I agree with almost all of the story. My sole concern is its recommendation to use dynamic HTML (DHTML) to make navigation links visible only when the user's mouse rolls over them. That solution will work only when people are browsing from desktop or laptop PCs. But a minority of users nowadays browse from mobile handheld devices (such as mobile phones or Mobile Digital Assistants), whose browsers can't handle DHTML. The DHTML navigational links won't work for them, leaving them stranded.

Fortunately, that minority is perhaps less than 1 percent of most U.S. online newspaper sites' users, but it is growing. Elsewhere in the world, it's already a larger percentage or even the majority (for example, in China, where only 45 million people have Internet access through PCs but 200 million do through mobile phones, it's the clear majority of users). DHTML is a workable solution for maybe three or four years with curent technology, but maybe not once a significant minority or majority of access is mobile.

I hope that browser software in those devices by then will also use DHTML. Meanwhile, I don't think that adding more coding (DHTML) to create rollover elements is the best solution to complicated graphical navigation.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time Warner's Sports Illustrated Magazine will offer American and Canadian mobile phone users their choices of phone 'wallpaper' from the magazines annual Swimsuit edition. SI signed the deal with Summus of Raleigh, North Carolina, a mobile phone technologies applications service provider.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The San Diego band XFYA has produced what apparently is the world's first music video shot entirely on a camera phone (right). Entitled Haber Get Down from the band's upcoming album Late Night at Denny's, the video is of the greatest quality, but it that shows just how quickly new technologies are causing production costs to drop.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Mobile Marketing Association has released its 'Code of Conduct for Wireless Campaigns'. We think that online publishers should fit within this code, if not do even better.

The MMA Code's pertinent points:

Choice
Consumers must "opt-in" to all mobile messaging programs. Consumers may Opt-in to a program by sending a text message, calling a voice response unit, registering on a website, or through some other legitimate paper-based method; they opt-in for a specific program only. Control Consumers must also be allowed to easily terminate -- opt-out -- their participation in an ongoing mobile messaging program through channels identical to those through which they can opt-in to a given program. Programs with multiple message strings must provide an opt-out option for each message.

Customization
As mobile messaging campaigns are most effective when appropriately targeted, consumers could be asked to provide demographic, preferences and other information. Consideration The consumer must receive and/or be offered something of value to them in return for receiving the communication. Value may be delivered in the form of product and service enhancements, reminders, sweepstakes, contests, information, entertainment, discounts or location based services.

Constraint
The marketer, content provider, or aggregator must provide a global "throttling mechanism" capable managing and limiting mobile messaging programs to a reasonable number of programs. Consumers should be able to override the throttle.

Confidentiality
The Mobile Marketing Association will align with TRUSTe with specific provisions on not renting, selling or sharing personal information about consumers participating in programs delivered through its platform with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide the products and services requested.

Good to see that the MAA has chosen explicit opt-in.

The MMA's press release about the Code says, "The Mobile Marketing Code of Conduct is broken into six categories: Choice, Control, Customization, Consideration and Confidentiality." You'll note that is only five categories. Maybe another category will be forthcoming?

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 06:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Financial Times will offer free and paid content to Vodaphone network mobile phone users in the UK. The format will be WAP. However, users will have free access to FT.com’s top business stories, and world and industry news. If a user wants to pay £5 per month — charged directly to the user’s Vodaphone bill — he can also get the FT's Lex column, market quotes, more news and ancillary business information services. Smart move by the FT: More business people have immediate access to mobile phones throughout the day than to personal computers.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:42 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A fellow member of the Online News Association mentions that the phrases online news and online publishing won't make much sense in an increasingly wireless world.

Speaking of which, Anil de Melo charts how mobile phones are evolving into 'advanced human communication subsystems.' The latest models are now capable of voice telephony, SMS/MMS, e-mail, Web browsing, AM or FM or TV, digital photography, online games playing, and navigation.

There of course are more mobile phones in use worldwide than wired phones and more mobile phones in use worldwide than desktop and laptop PCs. Online is becoming a thing of the past. A phrase of the past.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Walt Disney Internet Group has contracted with Summus, Inc., a North Carolina developer of wireless multimedia applications, to provide Disney's ABC News and ESPN subsidiaries' content to users of some the non-GSM wireless networks in the US. Summus' press release says that the ABC and ESPN applications will be immediately visible whenever those users turn on their phones. the ABC app will let users to read news stories and view images from various categories. The ESPN app will let them view of the best tricks and stunts from the ESPN X Games and other action sports events.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

FastCompany.com features a transcript of the mobile marketing panel yesterday at the Ad:Tech conference in NYC. Did you know that approximately 30 million Americans are using text messaging? That 150 million US mobile phones can receive text messages? Or that 80% of the SMS traffic comes from users who are 12 to 30 year old? If you're over 30, you probably just don't get it.

(Affirmation: Marketers must never send ads to mobile phone users without those users direct and explicit prior consent.)

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CyberAtlas today provides us with the following update on mobile content access:

• Instat/MDR expects the number of worldwide wireless Internet subscribers will have risen from 74 million at the end of 2001 to more than 320 million by the end of 2006.
• The Radicati Group expects the number of solely wireless e-mail users to grow from 1.99 million worldwide in 2003 to 8.76 million in 2007. Instat/MDR meanwhile predicts that there will be more than 1 billion SMS and MMS subscribers by the end of 2006, up from 305 million at the end of 2001.
• Solomon-Wolff Associates noted in a July 2002 survey of 6,800 participants that 119 million people in the U.S. owned devices capable of wireless Internet services, and another 33 million showed interest, resulting in a revenue opportunity of more than $4 billion per year. "Naturally, those who already use devices such as wireless phones, laptop computers, and PDAs are more interested in wireless Internet than people who just use desktop PCs," said Joey Wolff of Solomon Wolff Associates.
• Yankee Group predicts the U.S. wireless phone market will reach 50 percent penetration by the end of this year. Currently, 12 percent of 18-to-24 year olds in the U.S. use telephone via nothing but mobile phones, with another 28 percent planning to cut the cord over the next 5 years.

We're watching our former client, Ireland.com (The Irish Times of Dublin), which we believe will earn more this year from its wireless phone content services than from its Web site banner advertising plus its paid online subscriptions. Wireless content services should be 'no-brainers' for most non-American periodical publishers and require just a little forethought by American ones, but most prefer to launch new wired services that are less used, more obtuse, and less profitable. That's too bad.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US company known as Mazingo (Please note: not the UK company by the same name, so below), which offered magazine and broadcasters multimedia content to owners of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) has closed. The one year-old, San Francisco company's Web site simply states that "Regrettably, the service can no longer be offered due to the cost of content versus the revenue derived." Mazingo had been trying to market to its users video content from Fox and NBC, radio reports from The Wall Street Journal radio reports, and text reports from the Weather Channel and USA Today. Prices for that content varied from free to US$14 a month. Mazingo had 50,000 free users, but converted only some 500 users into paying subscribers. Again, The One Percent Rule.

Clarification:

To the Editor-In-Chief

With best regards
Ray Winter

CEO - Mazingo Limited www.fonecube.com
Chairman - Infocube.net www.infocube.net/screenshots
Chairman - SUMMIT^ www.ulucube.com
Mazingo is also Associated with : www.ulushop.com and www.underu.com

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times is now offering almost every of daily news stories and some daily photos to users of Verizon's mobile phones. Mobile subscribers can also use their handsets to e-mail NYT articles to friends and save NYT photos for use as screen wallpaper on their handset (hey, you Howard Dean fans!). The service costs US$3.75 per month and currently works only with Verizon's LG and Audiovox handsets (Verizon plans to offer it soon on Samsung and Motorola handsets).

Though advanced by American standards, the technology behind this service isn't the state-of-the-art elsewhere in the world. Verizon is using Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) data transmission protocol, which is basically a multimedia version of WAP 2.0-compliant and that supports specifications from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). There are some 80 million BREW devices (including mobile handsets, PDA's and automobile telematics) in use worldwide. New York Times Digital already offers many text-only WAP services on the Verizon, Spring, Cingular, and Nextel mobile networks, including news, sports, and book reviews. The NYTimes.com Web site itself is already accessible to users of Mobile Digital Assistants (MDAs) on the T-Mobile and AT&T mobile networks, just as it is to anyone on the Web.

We think this new service is a good move for NYTD, considering America's woeful state of mobile phone network incompatabilities. The service isn't MMS and (like MMS) it requires the user to remember to retreive the content; but it's nonetheless a step in the right direction — automatic delivery of each day's entire edition wirelessly into consumers' mobile devices. We'll see that before this decade is over.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A study by the Radicati Group consultants believes that wireless e-mail will increase US corporate employees’ productivity, giving them 55 minutes extra working time per day this year and up to 80 minutes per day by 2007. eMarketer provides a briefing about this study. More and more US corporations are equipping their employees to receive work e-mails via mobile phones and many of those new phones also have Web access, however few newspaper or magazine websites — most of which emphasis that their users visit during work hours — are e-mail publishing to this mobile market. A few are, ranging from The New York Times to the

Also on the subject of US mobile phone usage, Scarborough Research reports that 75 percent of household in Atlanta subscribe to mobile phone services, the highest penetration in the US. Closely behind are Detroit (74 percent) and Austin, Washington (D.C.), and Miami, with 72 percent each. The cities with the lowest penetration of mobile phones per household were Charleston (West Virginia (47 percent); Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (52 percent); Buffalo (53 percent; Syracuse (54 percent); and Lexington, Kentucky (55 percent). The average penetration nationwide was 66 percent and the average household spent US$60 per month on mobile phone services.

All these data are important for publishers because (1) there are more mobile phones [1.3 billion] in use nowadays worldwide than wired phones [1.1 billion]; (2) there are more mobile phones in use nowadays worldwide than personal computers [estimated at certainly less than 1 billion]; and (3) all new mobile phones have some form of Internet access [at least SMS or MMS, if not also e-mail and Web access]. Internet-equipped mobile phones are becoming much more ubiquitous than Internet-equipped personal computers — even now in the US, where penetration of these mobile phone now exceeds that of personal computers.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maxim, Blender, and Stuff magazines have launched mobile phone portals to distribute their branded ringtones, sound effects, images, games, and applications. The mobile wireless portals (for example, Maxim's) feature content such as Beyonce's Crazy in Love and Justin Timberlake's Senorita set as ringtones and Maxim's Hometown Hotties pinups as handset screen backgrounds, all US$2.00 each. All three magazines are owned by Dennis Publishing.

Many traditional magazine publishers would be surprised to learn that selling mobile phone ringtones is a big business. It earned an estimated US$1.3 billion in Europe and Asia last year. By comparison, the world's entire music recording industry earned US$33 billion, so major music companies have taken note of ringtone sales as a way to introduce new music. More than 260,000 new CDs hit the market in 2001, he said, yet less than 1000 of each sold. Jay Samit, senior vice president of EMI Recorded Music told Telephony Online that offering music on mobile phones would lead to fierce customer loyalty for wireless carriers. He believes that mobile phones can provide EMI with niche marketing opportunities that are too expensive to conduct in the retail world. “People pay their phone bills,” he said. “The majority of music is stolen on the Internet.

We expect music magazine publishers to take note of Dennis Publishing's use of these sites. However, we expect general periodical publishers (notably newspapers), although they do publish music reviews, just as the music magazines do, to be slow launching such applications and thus earning some of these revenues.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, we reported a case of a sports league disintermediating news companies from the process of delivering sports news to online consumers. Here's another example, this one involving wireless phone users.

A year ago, we reported that Nokia had chosen not a news company but the IMG/TWI sports talent agency to provide sports news, updates, audio commentaries, and sports images to users of Nokia's new Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) mobile phones. Nokia today announced that has finished field testing these services.

"This project has clearly demonstrated the value of MMS for sports content services" says Mark Selby, Head of Mobile Division, IMG/TWI. "When linked with SMS and WAP, MMS enables comprehensive, timely and exciting content to be consumed by sports fans. Mobile data services can now genuinely deliver the emotion of sport and generate new income for mobile operators."

"For Nokia this trial has been immensely valuable as it confirms our belief that sports, as a prime example of branded content, will be one of the big drivers in mobile multimedia. Already today, mobile data services is around EUR 40 billion annual business globally, and we expect this to grow to over EUR 180 billion by 2007," says Esa Harju, Director, Marketing, Nokia Networks.

Nokia announced that, "more than 90 percent of the users in the trial expressed satisfaction with the services they had received during the trial. Content was structured for each geographic territory on the basis of local sports interest. Sports covered included football, golf, tennis, athletics, cricket, motor sports, badminton and horse racing."

The mobile phone networks on which Nokia and IMG/TWI tested the sport MMS content were CSL in Hong Kong, DTAC in Thailand, M1 and StarHub in Singapore, and O2 in the UK.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Yankee Groups predicts that US wireless penetration will reach nearly 50 percent by the end of this year. "North Americans now treat wireless like a utility rather than a novelty," and that "With the current state of wireless competition, it is only a matter of time before unlimited calling plans are available nationwide," the company said. Although that would seem to be a boon for US consumers, Yankee Group Wireless/Mobile Services Program Manager Roger Entner believes it might not. "The U.S. wireless industry is facing the threat of becoming like the airline industry with high fixed costs, low variable costs, a perishable product and cutthroat competition," he said. "These conditions make it easy for industry participants to behave in a way that has potentially disastrous consequences in the long run. Airline travel is cheaper than ever before, but few customers are happy with the experience."

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MTV has begun to stream music videos and other programming, such as Jackass and Dirty Sanchez, to users of Hutchison's third-generation mobile phones in the UK, Netimperative reports. Premiership football game clips are already available on those 3G phones. However, Hutchinson has signup only 155,000 users overall. The company blames the lack of retail availability of its handsets and says it's shipping many more into stores for the Christmas season. T-Mobile also plans to have 3G phones available in stores then

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The growth of i-mode, increased services utilizing general packet radio service (GPRS) networks and the introduction of 3G are changing the user experience for Western European mobile phone users, according to a report available to eMarketer subscribers:

"The migration from 2G mobile services to 3G in Europe has been somewhat slower than many anticipated after the exuberance displayed by wireless operators in 1999 and 2000, but mobile handsets with digital cameras, multimedia messaging (MMS) and premium content portals offering the latest games and polyphonic ring tones, are beginning to drive Europeans to more advanced mobile services."

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most Danish newspaper boys want to have a mobile phone, so why give them those phones to help them better deliver newspapers? That's a concept Sonofon and Dansk Avis Distribution (DAD), which distributes a variety of daily newspaper in Denmark, are implementing with 2,500 of DAD's paper boys in the Danish counties of Southern Jutland, Ribe, Vejle and Århus.

DAD "gives the paper boys mobile phones that contain a ´Paper boy menu´. When the boy starts off on his round in the morning, he dials up the menu and presses Start. DAD can then see that the round has started. While he is on his round, DAD can send messages to the paper boy, or before if papers are late, for example. When the round is over, the paper boy sends a message that he is finished."

The report in Cellular News doesn't explain if this is a WAP or Web service. Our guess is WAP because its only menu-based.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nokia claims that use of e-mail on mobile phones will grow by 35 percent during the next 18 months. The Register thinks Nokia's prediction might be somewhat high and quotes an analyst who believe that 10 percent growth would be more realistic.

Posted by Vin Crosbie at 09:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Textually.org tells us that the North American wireless phone network Nextel will be offering live SMS alerts from National Hockey League games. A subscribers have a choice of receiving alerts when his favorite NHL team's scores, or end-of period results, or end-of-game results, or end-of-game statistics summary.

Airborne Entertainment, Inc., a Montreal-based wireless services company that also works with A&E, HBO, The History Channel, and MAXIM and ym magazines, setup this SMS service for Nextel. However, any publisher or broadcaster could themselves setup a similar service. For an example how, see KUSports.com from the Lawrence Journal-World in Kanasas.