Mobile Web News, Week of August 27, 2007

Please note that we were unable to post a newsletter the week of 20 August, 2007 since the newsmaster was traveling. Any inconvenience is regretted

Click on the player at left to view the week’s major news about the Mobile Web.

A Mobile Version of Digg: ‘Mobilised’
No, Mobilised has nothing to do with Digg, but performs the same function with a web site tailored for mobile screens. Users are expected to bury any URL which does not serve a mobile screen compatible web site. It has 180 links so far… will it catch on?

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Googlephone in Two Weeks?
If this is true, then Google should get the Nobel Prize for the shortest product development cycle.The first Gphones are likely to surface in India.

According to Moneytimes, big G has also developed a G-friendly operating system for mobile phones.

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Nokia Launches Three New Phones, N95-8GB, N81 and N82
Nokia’s high-end phone, the N95 “multimedia computer”, now has a rival. It’s called the iPhone, and it is apparently scaring the crap out of Nokia.

There’s also the spanking new N81 and N82, the first a slider and the second a candy-bar. The N81 looks like a redesigned N91, which looked rather clunky. Th N82 is a candy bar with a 5Meg camera et al.
Source: GigaOm

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Iphone Pirates!
Chinese and American pirates have modified the iPhone so that it can be used with any mobile carrier (not only AT&T Cingular). AT&T was going to pay Apple 10% of all revenues arising from iPhone usage, and that arrangement might be strained by this piracy…
Source: MobileCrunch

Technorati Tags: mobile web design, the magnum group, Mobilised, Googlephone, Gphone, Nokia N95, iPhone pirates

Mobile Web News, Week of August 13, 2007

Click on the player at left to view the week’s major news about the Mobile Web.

Facebook on Your Mobile!
The cloning between desktop web and mobile web continues. Now Facebook has a special version for the iPhone. It’s slimmed down (no apps, no groups, no privacy settings), but at least it’s a beginning…
Source: Informationweek

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Skype on Your Mobile!
According to GigaOm, you can cut down your phone bill just like you do from your desktop. Using IM+ for Skype by Shapeservices.com, you log onto Skype from your mobile and call landlines and other mobiles using the SkypeOut service (which you should have an account for). You have to download IM+for Skype from Shapeservices and install it in your mobile first. There’s a one-week trial after which you have to pay $15 for the program.

I downloaded the trial, installed it in my Nokia N95, logged onto Skype and dialled a landline in the US. I couldn’t connect. I’m having this kind of bad experience with every app I download…

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12.3 Million Users in the US and W. Europe Accessed a Social Site in June
Out of that number, says mobile media intelligence firm MMetrics, 7.5 million accessed from the US, with MySpace getting the most hits. MSN Live Spaces was the site of choice in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. All this just proves the item below (so read on!).
Oh and yeah, this was reported by MarketWire.

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Social Networking Will Be the Biggest Mobile Web Earner by 2012
The revenues from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will rise from $572m in 2007 to more than $5.7bn in 2012. Social networking will be pulling in 50% of that lucrative pie.

This was forecast by Juniper Research, the famed high-technology intelligence firm. Juniper also predicted that the social networks will be free and ad supported. 600 million people will be using social networking sites by 2012. That’s one helluva happy hour!

Mobile Web News: Week of August 6, 2007

Click on the player at left to view the week’s major news about the Mobile Web.

GigaOm: Watch Your TV Cable On Your Handheld
It works like this: You make your TV cable look like one of the computers connected to your home computer network. Then, just like a computer on your home network can share files on another computer that’s on the network, a computer on your home network can share the TV cable’s programs.

Not only that, just like you can access a file on one of your home computers from anywhere on the Internet (with some special software, like “GoTomyPC”), you can view your TV cable’s programs from anywhere on the Internet, even on your handheld device using some special software.

You connect your cable to your home network using Sling Media’s “Slingbox” and their “Sling Viewer” software. This is all just arriving in the US, and likely to be possible with AT&T’s  3G network first.

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TMobile UK Will Pay You for Your Unused Cell Phone
If you’re in the UK, TMobile, in a move combining marketing sense and concern for the environment (probably in that order) will give you or the charity of your choice upto $160 for any discarded cell phones you may have lying around. This is according to UPI.

We presume that they will recycle these phones in an environmentally-friendly way…
 
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More than 1.2 Billion Broadband Mobile Connections by 2011?
According to Juniper Research, the reputed intelligence firm centered around high-technology, that is what the future portends. Demand will be in the order North America, Western Europe, the Far East and China. Juniper also predicts that by 2012, mobile broadband service companies will earn… no, this is not a mistake.. more than $400 billion annually in service charges. Sounds like a good business to be in, ya?!
 
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VisiStat Serves Web Analytics to Your Handheld Device
VisiStat, a reputed web analytics company, has reformatted its web site visitor statistics to fit on the screen of your Treo,  iPhone, BlackBerry, PDA or other palmtop. Consequently you can be walking on the Great Wall of China while simultaneously checking to see how many visitors your web site had last Christmas!

Check out the neat demos on VisiStat’s web site.
 
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Nokia Agrees With Microsoft to Use Microsoft’s DRM Technology
Nokia decided in June that it wouyld redesign itself to make mobile software and services a major revenue center. According to Reuters, to enable lucrative multimedia (i.e., music, games) downloads into cell phones, Nokia has contracted with Microsoft to use Microsoft’s software for access-control of downloaded media files (the technology is known as “Digital Rights Management”, abbreviated “DRM” ).

Generally speaking, we’re seeing everything in the desktop web world being implemented in the mobile web world…

Technorati Tags: sling viewer, slingmedia, t-mobile uk, juniper research, visistat, the magnum group, http://mobiwebber.com, mobile web

Mobile Web News: Week of July 30, 2007

Today’s High-End Phones Are Tomorrow’s Basic Phones
GigaOm recently had a conversation with Nokia’s chief strategist and chief technology officer Tero Ojanperä, who said that the advanced features of Nokia’s “N Series” uberphones will be on most low-end phones in three years. The N Series phones are loaded with capability for web access and multimedia playback. Understandably, Tero’s prediction implies a massive increase in mobile web usage in the same period. Which is just what all the other signs are pointing to…

Google Will Soon Reside in Your Cell Phone
The Wall Street Journal says that Google has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get into mobile phones. It’s trying to convince carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon to preload Google applications like Gmail into the phones they give plan subscribers.

Google is seeping into the cell phone world, but you can bet that soon the seepage will turn into a flood!

Feature: The GO2 Network Mobile Web Site Network
Want fast and free information on many useful things viewable on your cell phone? Try the GO2 network of mobile web sites. This is a collection of more than 130 topic-specific sites on the weather, colleges, restaurants, movies, travel, driving directions, phone numbers and more. Examples of specific sites are go2 Movies®, go2 Dining™, go2 Golf™, go2 Travel™.

Don’t wait for the mobile web to leave you behind: get on the bus NOW!

Technorati Tags: mobile web news, mobile web, nokia, google, web design, the magnum group, lucky balaraman