My team and I (well mostly them really, huge props to Tom, Marc and Yoeau) have been slaving under a hot stove to bring you a new delicious treat. It’s called the Thumb Report and it’s a site I’ve been planning in my head for a while and now I’m happy to finally see it go live.
Here at IntoMobile Will, Dusan, Ben and I cover the news in as much depth as possible giving you plenty of background information around a piece of content in an attempt to help you digest it better. The Thumb Report is not about that. The Thumb Report is about fitting as much information as possible into 160 characters of text, the size of a standard text message.
I’m doing this because I’m tired of looking at a piece of news and wondering to myself “Gee Wiz, should I blog this or is it too insignificant?” and lately my news consumption and sharing habits have moved on to microblogging services such as Jaiku and Twitter and even social networks like Facebook.
The Thumb Report isn’t for everyone. The language is going to be very laconic and sometimes if I need to pull some characters out of a hat I’ll start using sms-language. You know what I’m talking about, “b there @ 8″ comes to mind. I’m also going to be covering things that may seem insignficant to you, but like I said earlier, I found them interesting but couldn’t bring myself to writing 100 words about it.
Welcome to a new weekly piece at IntoMobile – Freebie Fridays!
Who doesn’t like free stuff? We thought so. Every week we’ll bring you free offers on magazines, white papers, software, podcasts, and more. The new stuff will be posted next Friday (hence the clever title), so keep an eye out for more freebies from IntoMobile!
Here’s a taste of the free stuff in store for our readers:
If you haven’t yet spotted it, allow me to direct your attention to the left-most portion of your browser window. You should see a floating “Feedback” button next to the main column.
IntoMobile is always looking for new ways to give our community of mobile enthusiasts the most extensive and relevant resource on the web. As such, we try hard to give you, the reader, what you want to see on IntoMobile.
So, hit up the “Feedback” button and tell us what you’d most like to see next. Your vote counts, so make yourself heard!
Today is the first day in what will hopefully be a long and prosperous career at Nokia (NYSE: NOK).
My job title will be “Communications Specialist” and I’ll be working with Daniel Shugrue in the “Tech Leader Engagement Team.” The job description is here.
One of the unexpected side effects that blogging has pleasantly surprised me with was the creation of new friendships. The S60 and Nokia blogging community are all a fantastic bunch of people and with this new position I’m going to be in touch with even more fans of devices running S60, the ones who call themselves S60 Ambassadors.
Now that I work for Nokia there are a few rules I must adhere too, first and most obvious: I can’t comment or post pictures of unreleased S60 products. I can’t talk about pictures or information that was asked to be taken down by S60 licensees, especially the big one, Nokia. I can’t speculate on rumors.
Last rule: I have to tell you guys that I work for Nokia and I’ll be updating my bio within the hour to reflect that.
I could not have done this without you guys, you’re the reason I blog in the first place. Thanks for reading!
One more thing … of course I’ll still be blogging here! I’m not leaving Finland either, for now at least, that might change in the long term depending on which direction Dan wants to do with the team.
If this post seems sparse it’s because I’m still letting it soak in. It feels just like yesterday that I got on a plane and landed at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. That was on July 6, 2007. Time flies when you’re having fun.
You may remember that yesterday I made a couple of posts regarding Mobile Advertising – one of these was about Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Italy and Amobee doing a deal – Amobee’s part of which is powered by QuickPlay Media.
Well, a nice lady from QuickPlay’s PR agency emailed me to let me know about a couple of other announcements that Quickplay have made recently – which I thought I would share with you all:
The company recently announced FREE streaming video for Blackberry (NSDQ: RIMM) subscribers, lowering the price barrier for consumers looking to sample mobile content. It’s initially available for the 8130 handset, on EVDO networks in the USA. Eligible customers can visit www.videostreamsmobile.com to download the app and start streaming straight away
The company recently introduced what will likely be a very provocative feature – the ability to pause, start and stop long form video, and also parse the video into smaller segments for easier “internet” like viewing. The service allows for subscribers to pick up where they left off in the viewing experience whether the battery died, the service went out, or they simply had to stop watching
If you want to check out the full press releases for each of these announcements, you can look here and here.
Hello one and all, and Thanks Will for such a great introduction!
It’s truly a privilege to be joining the IntoMobile team, and I am very much looking forward to contributing over the coming year. The sorts of areas you will find me covering are those such as Mobile TV, Convergence, Content/Applications, and finally (last but not least), the UK Market.
As Will notes in his introduction, I split my time between all things Mobile, and being a (new) Father – so expect a different perspective from me on devices and services, as I look for those that deliver expediency and genuine usefulness to our lives.
Once again, it’s great to be on the team – and roll on 2008!
Alrighty then. It’s a new year and the IntoMobile Team thought we could all
use a little change. We got together, thinking-caps in tow, to figure out
what we could do to bring our dear readers even more value for their
readership-buck.
What better way to kick off the New Year than to bring on
another IntoMobile team member?
The IntoMobile Team would like to give a warm and excited welcome to Ben Robinson! Ben will be holding down the UK side of IntoMobile’s operations, and with his 10 years of industry experience, we’re sure he’ll have a valuable take on the mobile space. From services to devices, his industry familiarity should prove invaluable.
Ben works full-time in the mobile industry, and has also just become a
father (kudos, Ben!). As such, his mobile needs have changed – he now looks
for efficiency and reliability from his mobile devices – anything that will
help make his already incredibly busy life simpler, and even more
productive. We can’t wait to hear his side of things.
We’re excited to have Ben on board, and we can’t wait to see what this New
Year has in store for us and our readers!
We know, it’s getting to be that time of year and, if you’re anything like us, you’re running around frantically trying to get your affairs in order before that dreaded wonderful deadline. All the hustle and bustle of the holiday season leaves us with less and less time to get our fill of tech-news – and we figure our readers are starting to feel the holiday-crunch as well. So, why not take all your tech-news with you?
The IntoMobile Team has joined forces with mobile-web pioneer Viigo to launch our Viigo-powered Mobile Web Portal – “IntoMobile To Go.” All your favorite websites (ok, they don’t have to be tech-sites), sports updates, finance news, weather, traffic – everything is mobilized through our Viigo-powered IntoMobile To Go Mobile Web Portal. This isnt your run-of-the-mill mobile-RSS-reader – IntoMobile To Go is a fully-functional and powerful application that puts the real web on your mobile phone. Why wait for full webpages to load? Our Web Portal mobilizes the content and displays the newest articles as easily-digestible posts. You don’t even need to hunt down specific RSS feeds for your favorite sites. The geniuses over at Viigo realized that it can be a hassle to find a particular website’s RSS feed – simply enter a website’s URL address and Viigo’s servers will mobilize the webpage’s content on-the-fly.
The IntoMobile Mobilized Web Portal is available for free for all Windows Mobile and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) users. We’re working to bring the Viigo-powered IntoMobile Mobilized Web Portal to Symbian and Palm (NSDQ: PALM) users, so sit tight, we’ll get it to you guys in due time. Meanwhile, WinMo and BlackBerry users can download our IntoMobile To Go through this link – or hit up our new Viigo button near the upper-right corner of our homepage (at the top of the sidebar). If you prefer to install the IntoMobile To Go client OTA (over-the-air) onto your mobile phone, simply point your mobile browser to this download link.
It’s been bugging me for a pretty good while. Why do I love the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone so damn much? Coming from the Windows Mobile camp (I used to be a hardcore WinMo fan – still am, just not as hardcore), and even having dabbled in the world of Nokia (NYSE: NOK), I’ve been used to having the latest and greatest when it comes to hardware features – 3G, autofocusing cameras with incredible optics, WiFi, GPS, slide-out QWERTY keyboards, expandable memory, more third-party applications than I knew what to do with…the list goes on and on. So, why the hell do I love this iPhone that doesn’t even have MMS capability (not to mention the lack of video recording, expandable memory, or, most importantly, 3G)? I’m constantly defending this damn phone from the likes of, well, everyone. They flout their phone’s features as being superior to the iPhone. It’s always badass camera this, 3G data that.
Anyway, I digress.
I recently attended an interesting panel discussion regarding monetization strategies for anyone in the mobile industry, and Doppelganger CEO Tim Stevens, mentioned that the user interface is key to attracting users and helps drive online revenue in the mobile space. So, that got me thinking – does the mobile phone UI play a key role in attracting consumers? The answer I arrived at was, yes – at least in the coming years. Currently, attention is focused on hardware, but the future of the mobile industry is the UI. Let me explain.
Welcome to a new weekly piece at IntoMobile – Freebie Fridays!
We know, it’s getting to be that time of year and, if you’re anything like us, you’re running around frantically trying to get your affairs in order before that 
It’s been bugging me for a pretty good while. Why do I love the Apple (
