Blogs

Some interesting news from Seattle last week. T-Mobile is ditching their traditional closed software platform for a more open platform that is open to all (or almost all) developers. That's sounds great!......or is it?

Strategy Analytics, a international consulting firm, has already released a reporton what to expect in the 2009 mobile market space.

Last I checked it’s still August, but I guess it’s never too early to get a jump on the competition!

Their conclusions for mobile in 2009? Essentially more of the same.

Just saw an interesting thread on the evolution / creation of Web 3.0 Welcome to Web 3.0: Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center. I think he hits on some interesting enabling technologies, but I don’t draw the same conclusions he does about the significance and nature of what those technologies will enable.

A recent report finds that less than 24% of mobile internet users visit social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. By contrast, the Internet application that most users found most interesting was… email. The original PDF report can be found here.

WirelessWeek is reporting today that a judge is allowing the lawsuit against T-Mobile by disgruntled subscribers to proceed. The subscribers are fighting charges against unsolicited text messages because they have no viable way of avoiding the charges.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/T-Mobile-Subscribers-Sue-Text-Messages.aspx

I have been thinking about mobile advertising quite a bit of late. In my last blog I shared news of the mobile Internet reaching critical mass.

Within that report was a graphic showing the Motorola RAZR as the most popular device for mobile Internet browsing. This news got me to thinking about how the mobile internet is funded, then to thinking about mobile advertising in general, and before long I was thinking about the basic problems with mobile banner ads. Anyhow, follow with me on this one:

Nielson Mobile released a report last week entitled “"Critical Mass: The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web".

http://www.nielsenmobile.com/documents/CriticalMass.pdf

Among their key findings:

I've always been interested in the complex relationship between humans and machines. When I was a kid I used to watch science fiction movies to see the writers' visions of technology. It always fascinated me how story writers envisioned a future where technology was so naturally a part of human life. And it always disappointed me to see how little technology was integrated into real life today.

Google announced last week that that their mobile ads are now MMA compliant. At GoLife we, too, have been working carefully to ensure that our advertisements are all compliant with the MMA standards. I see an issue, though, with mobile advertising, which can’t really be addressed by any standards body, no matter how carefully and thoroughly specified.

Microsoft announced today that it is acquiring Mobicomp, a company with some interesting backup and restore technology as well as an active “ticker” feature. The timing is curious given Nokia’s recent Symbian announcement. Maybe Microsoft is feeling a little pressure?