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Spore Origins Available on N-Gage

Simon Sage — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:51:50 +0000

We had heard the N-Gage would be getting Spore Origins sooner or later, but EA was obviously more interested in getting it onto Windows Mobile and the iPhone first. Still, Will Wright’s latest brainchild is a welcome addition to the N-Gage library; Spore Origins is the first stage of the desktop game, where you play a microorganism trying valiantly to survive in a viciously competitive primordial soup which is populated by lifeforms created by other users and shared automatically online. As you evolve, you add more bits to your creature to customize its defensive and offensive capabilities, often resulting in a unique and bizarre specimen. If you dig it, be sure to check out the full Spore game, it’s a ton of fun. Hit up N-Gage to grab your copy.

[via NokNok]

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Sprint’s head of CDMA operations resigns

Will Park — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:25:58 +0000

Sprint is losing more than just customers and profits this year. The struggling US wireless carrier has just lost its CDMA network chief with the resignation of John Garcia.

Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel’s CDMA network accounts for the bulk of the company’s bottom line, and it goes without saying that the Sprint side of Sprint Nextel’s operations needs some tender loving care to get out of the red. Garcia’s sudden resignation on Friday leaves Sprint Nextel without captain to guide the wayward ship through rough waters. Sprint says that Keith Cowan, President of strategy and corporate development, will take the helm until a permanent replacement for Garcia can be found.

The resignation of John Garcia might be seen as a positive sign for the ailing Sprint network. The carrier’s current strategy obviously isn’t working, and a new CDMA chief might be just the solution to lead the good-ship Sprint back to profitable waters. Sprint Nextel has undergone some significant leadership changes since CEO Dan Hesse took over control of the company and Garcia’s resignation is just another step in Sprint’s apparent restructuring effort.

No reason was given for Garcia’s Friday resignation.

[Via: CellularNews]

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T-Mobile G1 tear-down - Android smartphone’s guts exposed in dissection

Will Park — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:07:43 +0000

It was only a matter of time before the recently launched T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1 got the dissection-treatment from someone with the gall to tear-apart their brand new Android smartphone. This time around, it was Tech-On that managed to muster courage to dissect their T-Mobile G1 for the good of geeks everywhere.

Tech-On ran into a bit of trouble during their tear-down, requiring them to literally rip the T-Mobile G1’s chassis apart, despite the best efforts of two screws to hold the handset together. We’d never be able to do such harm to any of our handsets, but the dissection yielded some interesting results - all in the name of science… sorta.

The T-Mobile G1, manufactured by HTC, bears HTC logos within the device, as expected. Interestingly, the G1’s radio antenna was comprised of a spiral-cut ribbon that was hidden within the chassis itself. The trackball was found to be the same as those used on BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) handsets - a bit of a surprise, but it makes sense given the trackball’s similar feel.

Head on over to Tech-On to see their full T-Mobile G1 tear-down coverage.

[Via: Tech-On]

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Maemo Summit 2008: The good, the bad and the ugly

Stefan Constantinescu — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:22:51 +0000

I’ve been with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) for close to half a year now and in that time span I’ve had dinner with my international team twice. It’s always nice to break bread with the people you’ve been working with over email, instant messenger and on the phone.

The first dinner was just that, dinner. We found a restaurant, we ordered a meal and some beer, talked about work, life, the industry and then went our separate ways.

The second dinner however was a team building event. Nokia booked a chef who then split us up into groups that had everyone take part in creating a portion of the meal we would be collectively enjoying. To say I enjoyed that evening more would be an understatement; it was fantastic.

Why do I bring this up?

I’ve been to the S60 Summit before, the operating system that powers devices like the Nokia N95, and now that I’ve come home from Berlin where the first Maemo Summit was held I feel that the different experiences between the two Summits reflect the dinner served versus dinner created analogy.

Maemo is Nokia’s attempt at creating an open source Linux based operating system for a category of devices known as Internet Tablets. They’re not mobile phones; they’re more like one of those new smaller than a laptop larger than smart phone type devices that have been flooding the market recently. Some may even classify Maemo devices as a MID (Mobile Internet Device) while others would call them a UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer). Semantics aside, the Maemo Summit was all about the open source community. Developers, developers, developers, to quote Steve Ballmer, was the main emphasis of this event.

It was absolutely brilliant seeing Nokia employees talk about the operating system in such depths that even I had to whip out a laptop during the presentations to quickly figure out was was being discussed. The amount of technical information being distributed was unprecedented. The attendees were eating it up since they are the people who build applications and try to improve the platform in their spare time. I was in awe witnessing all of this, but to be honest I felt as if I didn’t belong.

The S60 Summit is all about celebrating the platform, talking about the future of the platform and showing off the applications developers have built. Sounds just like the Maemo Summit right?

It’s technical to a certain extent, but the event is more about the consumer and OEMs rather than the developers and platform hackers. The S60 Summit was filled with marketing people; the Maemo Summit was filled with developers. The S60 Summit had a party that many people showed up to wearing suits and business casual outfits, the Maemo Summit had a party that was a bunch of guys in tshirts eating pizza and drinking beer.

How open is Maemo? The logo was created by someone from the community where as the S60 brand is something that was conjured up by Nokia people internally who had to make sure the color scheme would be well accepted internationally.

The Maemo Summit is all about raw enthusiasm from the open source community coming together and telling Nokia what they want to see happen and for Nokia to tell the people what their roadmap will contain going forward.

Things started getting uncomfortable when someone mentioned that not being able to code is a disability. There are plenty of people who love Nokia products, but they’ll never touch a line of code in their lives. There are different levels of passion: people who enjoy using the products Nokia creates and then people who want to go above and beyond and write applications and hack the platform as they see fit. Where as most events have an 80/20 split of the first category mixed with the later, this event was more like 10/90 and being in that 10% minority made me feel like an outsider.

It came to a point that during the Q&A sessions I wouldn’t want to ask a question for fear of being labeled an idiot. Granted, I’m not familiar with the Internet Tablet line since I do not own one, I still shouldn’t have had that feeling.

Someone had an iPhone with them and when he took it out the crowd of people next to him began rolling their eyes and even booing. For what it’s worth, the iPhone is reponsible for the change (kick in the nuts) this industry needs. When I told people I use Windows they looked at me like I was a pink unicorn. Then I told them I was using Vista and not XP and I became a leper to be avoided.

I’m the sort of person that uses the best tool for the job, whether it is open source or not is irrelevant to me. This crowd was all about open. It isn’t a bad thing, not at all, but the enthusiasm I wanted to show for the platform was jaded a bit after being shunned by the very community who are attempting to leverage the Maemo platform and make it better.

One of my favorite open source projects is Firefox, created by the Mozilla Foundation. Recently they came out with something called Mozilla Labs. The goal:

“Today we’re calling on industry, higher education and people from around the world to get involved and share their ideas and expertise as we collectively explore and design future directions for the Web.

You don’t have to be a software engineer to get involved, and you don’t have to program. Everyone is welcome to participate. We’re particularly interested in engaging with designers who have not typically been involved with open source projects. And we’re biasing towards broad participation, not finished implementations.

We’re hoping to lower the barrier to participation by providing a forum for surfacing, sharing, and collaborating on new ideas and concepts. Our goal is to bring even more people to the table and provoke thought, facilitate discussion, and inspire future design directions for Firefox, the Mozilla project, and the Web as a whole.”

The company is trying to push the advancement of the application, and the internet, from everyone who wants to help. The Maemo community didn’t feel like that and I’m hoping it’s something that Nokia doesn’t have to push from the top down, I would rather see the community change their attitude from the bottom up.

All of that aside, Berlin was amazing. The night life is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The venue where the Maemo Summit took place, called C-Base, is a sight to behold and some where I will visit again. The food during our lunch breaks could have been better; then again I’m spoiled by the events certain groups in Nokia host with much higher budgets. I usually don’t bother leaving an exhibition to find food at a local restaurant, but I did during the Summit

Would I go again? Yes. I learned a lot about Maemo, I learned a lot about why people like the Internet Tablet versus S60 versus other mobile platforms, I met a handful of individuals who I will keep in contact with for quite a while.

Would I recommend this event to a friend of mine? If they were a developer then yes, if not then no.

If it’s going to take place in Berlin next year then go.

What would I change for next year? Split the event into 3 days, not 2. Have one day be a Maemo Barcamp and let people talk about what they want to talk about. Have one day that is strictly geared toward developers. The last day should be about consumers with a seperate track for the developers. Three days for devs is fantastic and one day for the consumers with the option of sitting in on the technical chats should provide enough variety for everyone. More descriptions about the talks would be great, whenever an event happens and attendees are given two to three tracks to choose from it is critical that descriptions of the talks within those track be given so people know which events are relevant to them and which are not. Oh and more demos too. “Demo or die” as they say, power points only go so far.

Thank you Quim Gil for inviting me, Peter Schneider for setting everything up, the C-Base crew for some life changing conversations about the universe and most of all thank you Berlin for being one of the most kick ass cities I’ve ever been to.

As for what was announced at the Maemo Summit, check out these two articles on Ars.Technica: 1 and 2.

Cliffs: The next version of Maemo supports the OMAP 3 chip, 3,5 G (HSPA) and the graphics will be hardware accelerated.

One more thing …

Do not take this article as an insult to the open source community, Maemo and the Internet Tablet product line. I believe in their potential, but right now, for me, the N810 is still immature for my needs. I now know the community has passion, more than anything I’ve seen at a conference, I just hope it stays once the source code for Android comes out.

A lot of people complain that Android isn’t open, why hasn’t Google (NSDQ: GOOG) published the source yet, etc.? Nokia didn’t publish the source code of Maemo until the 770 shipped.

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Motorola appoints Director of Marketing Strategy for Europe

Ben Robinson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:32:52 +0000

Given all the recent departures of Senior Motorola (NYSE: MOT) staff (here and here, for example), it’s nice to see Moto hiring new bods to (hopefully) bring them back to the dominant force that they were.

In this case, Marketing Week is reporting that Moto has hired former BT Vision Sales Director Simon Collinson, as “Director of Marketing Strategy” for EMEA. This apparently comes amidst the recruitment of up to 15 new roles in to the Marketing function.

There is some suggestion that these new hires are part of a restructure being put in place, in advance of the supposed spin-off of the handset division next year.

Rock on Moto, keep coming back with full force I say!

[Via: Marketing Week]

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Nokia announces N-Gage support for Nokia XpressMusic 5320, N78, N96

Will Park — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:54:02 +0000

Good news for all you Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N-Gage fans looking to get your Nokia N96 hooked up with all the mobile gaming resources of Nokia’s N-Gage platform. First, you’re apparently well ahead of the curve with that Nokia N96 in your hand. Second, Nokia has made good on their promise to offer multiple handsets with N-Gage compatibility in announcing that N-Gage is now available for the Nokia XpressMusic 5320, Nokis N78, and Nokia N96.

We’re sure there aren’t too many of you running around with Nokia N96’s in your pockets, but for those of you rocking the frequently updated Nokia N78, just know that N-Gage is now a go.

No word on the Nokia N73, N93, and N93i getting N-Gage support as of yet. But, here’s to hoping Nokia expands their N-Gage lineup to include older handsets.

Nokia N-Gage

[Via: AllAboutSymbian]

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F706i does Mobile TV underwater?

Ben Robinson — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:05:16 +0000

Now and again at IntoMobile Towers, we do get the odd random story in - the one below is right up there with them, and is about underwater Mobile TV viewing - yes, you heard it right….

Apparently Japanese manufacturer Fujitsu (OTCPK: FJTSY) has created the Fujitsu F706i, which is a waterproof mobile that can receive digital TV signals (whilst underwater!). Now quite why you would want to watch Mobile TV underwater is beyond me, but then again it could just be that these are unrelated featues on the phone…..

Some brief specs are:

* HSDPA support
* 1-Seg mobile TV
* Waterproof up to 3m
* 2.7″ display
* 2 megapixel camera
* microSD/SDHC memory card slot

All very nice, but I am waiting for the first review where the reviewer watches TV whilst in the bath, and then decides to re-charge the device at the same time - I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that water and electricity don’t mix well n’est pas?

[Via: cell phones etc]

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Nokia will allow N-Gage games to be used on multiple devices

Will Park — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:27:04 +0000

Well, talk about nipping controversy in the bud. Just a couple days after Nokia enthusiasts started to get all riled up over having their Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N-Gage games locked to a single handset, Nokia has up and announced that they’ll make sure that N-Gage games can be transferred between multiple handsets.

Nokia previously said that N-Gage titles are tied to the handset through which they were purchased:

“N-Gage activation codes only work on the device where they were first activated. As with any digital media there is a potential risk of piracy and this policy is one of the ways Nokia is dealing with piracy and ensuring partners receive their rightful revenues from its platform. If users need to repair their device, the activation codes will be reissued. Also, if you purchase a new N-Gage compatible device, you will need to purchase your games again.”

But, with Nokia fans up in arms over being forced to re-buy games for new handsets, Nokia has flipped an about face and backpedaled on their previous statement. The games can be transferred through customer service in the near-term, but rest assured that Nokia is working on a long-term solution to make sure that N-Gage customers can play their purchased game titles on multiple mobile phones.

Here’s what Nokia has to say about transferring N-Gage games:

“We have noticed a number of media stories about N-Gage game transfers and wanted to clarify the issue. Due to copy protection, N-Gage games, like most mobile games, are linked to one device. As the value of content increases, a robust copy protection mechanism is essential as it makes it possible for the games industry to invest in N-Gage content.

We acknowledge our customers’ concerns and have been working on a solution that would allow people to transfer purchased N-Gage games to a new Nokia device. We are working with our Nokia Care Centers with an intermediate solution to enable the licensed transfers of games until a final solution is ready to be deployed.

We apologise for the confusion around this issue and look forward to delivering an appropriate solution to transfer purchased N-Gage games to new Nokia devices.”

It’s not clear when, exactly, Nokia will be allowing users to transfer their games, but it shouldn’t take too long.

It’s good to see a huge company like Nokia actually listening to customer complaints and criticism throughout the blogosphere and doing something that helps the consumer. At the end of the day, the customer that purchased the game title deserves to do whatever they wish with the software.

[Via: N-Gage Blog]

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dotMobi buys up Mowser

Ben Robinson — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:24:20 +0000

dotMobi, the mobile domain name consortium, has hoovered up the IP and site, of Mowser, a service that has been publicly EOL’d (End-of-lifed) only recently. General opinion is that the buy-out is a good thing, with both parties (here and here) blogging that they are very happy with the end result.

For those of you that don’t know, Mowser is short for “Mobile Browser”, and the website (here) offers you the ability to use it as a kind of “proxy portal”, which reformats web content to work on a mobile browser. There are lots of these kinds of services about, but this one seems to work pretty well.

dotMobi will integrate Mowser in to it’s newly-announced find.Mobi service - which is a mobile search engine that you can reach by typing http://find.mobi/ (surprisingly enough!)

[Via: TechCrunch]

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Vodafone Chief: VF not a dumb pipe

Ben Robinson — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:29:05 +0000

Arun Sarin (Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) CEO ) has said any content providers wishing to launch D2C (direct to consumer) services will always have to work with Vodafone.

Apparently, speaking to the Financial Times, Sarin stated that the ‘unique gift’ of billing secures it and other operators against becoming “dumb pipe” for data - for examples from those such as Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL).

He said: “The simple fact that we have the customer and billing relationship is a hugely powerful thing that nobody can take away from us. Whoever comes into the marketplace is going to have to work through us.”

The original FT article also noted that Vodafone holds valuable CRM data about their customers, plus info for location-based services - which is a fair comment.

What do IntoMobile readers make of this? It’s easy to see both sides of the argument for Content/Service providers working with, or “ignoring” the Operators - but which will win out? Will it be context-dependent? Your thoughts are most welcome in our comments section!

[Via: Mobile-Ent.biz]

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Interview: Dolby explain about “Dolby Mobile”

Ben Robinson — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:34:02 +0000

This week, I was lucky enough to spend some time in the company of Max Taylor (International Marketing Director, Mobile), and Mark Price (Public Relations Manager, EMEA), from Dolby Mobile. Many of you may remember that we covered Dolby’s move in to Mobile as part of Will’s CTIA coverage - out of that has spun a great opportunity to get some more info on a solution that is going to create a paradigm shift in the way audio is consumed on Mobile devices - I kid you not! Click the link to read the full interview…

The following Q&A is tagged up with IntoMobile’s (Ben’s) questions prefixed by [INTM], followed by Dolby’s (Max and Mark’s) replies prefixed by [DLBY].

[INTM]: So can you tell me a little about the Dolby’s recent past, with respect to Mobile?

[DLBY]: Sure. We are relatively new in to Mobile, and November 2007 was our first real customer handset win, with Sharp Japan, and NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM). Dolby Mobile was deployed on the Sharp 905i, followed by the 905iTV in January 2008. We also have another product coming imminently!

Additionally, in November 2007 we acquired Coding Technologies - the owners of the patents to both the aacPlus audio codec (Most of you will have this on your new Mobile devices - Ben), and also MPEG-Surround, which is currently in the process of being ratified.

In February 2008, we attended the Mobile World Congress (a.k.a. 3GSM! - Ben), with a number of outcomes - apart from showing off our technology on Mobiles and PMPs (Portable Media Players - Ben), we also announced partnerships with RMI and Symbian.

[INTM]: That’s great, thanks. Can you tell us a little more about your product, “Dolby Mobile”, please?

[DLBY]: Of course - Dolby Mobile sits at the chipset level, below the applications running on a device, and can act on all audio content to enhance the experience for the end-user. Dolby Mobile has a number of features:

Mobile Surround - this is the “Up-mix” of flat stereo in to a virtual surround, giving a kind of “out of head” experience. Interestingly, we have found that it reduces fatigue that can sometimes occur through listening to music and other audio content, because the up-mix is done in a very natural way - think about how you hear sound(s) normally - they can be placed anywhere around you, and Mobile Surround intelligently emulates this.
Sound Space Expander - this is for when a Mobile device is being used in a docking station. The docking stations typically have two speakers in close physical proximity to each other, and so we are able to enhance the sounds so that a more spatial effect is given
Bass/EQ - these are the more common settings that you might expect find on a Mobile device, except they are delivered using Dolby’s expertise in audio - in which we have a considerable heritage!

[INTM]: I should say! The Dolby “stamp” (techical term for logo - Ben) I would suggest, has got to be one of the most well-recognised in home AV, and the Dolby name is synonomous with class-leading audio quality! So tell me a little more about the Sharp/DoCoMo product - how is that working?

[DLBY]: We are really pleased with the way that deployment has turned out. Our engineers work closely with DoCoMo content team to recommend to them the best ways to “tune” the sound for the device, based on metadata that is added to the content. For example, on the Sharp 905iTV, the TV content contains (meta)data that allows the handset to know what profile to implement for the end-user to give optimal audio experience.

[INTM]: It sounds like that should give an awesome listening experience! Do you have something I can hear, like a demo?

[DLBY]: Absolutely!

(INTM checks out the N95-8GB device with a special “bonded” application, that gives the Dolby Mobile experience - and comes away very very impressed!)

[INTM]: That really is quite amazing - I was particularly impressed with both the enhancement to the movie clips, and also the music - it really does make the music come alive, but in a very natural way. I can also see what you mean about less “fatigue” using this enhancement, because the sound quality is much more “comfortable”, it that’s the correct description - it just sounds right!

[DLBY]: So right now we are working on the entire ecosytem - “from Hollywood to Handset“, as we call it! Dolby is already experienced in dealing with the Movie Studios and Content Providers, and our technology, as you noted, is in a wide variety of consumer electronics - from Home AV, to PCs, to Consoles, and so on. What we are aiming to do is to reproduce the best possible experience for the consumer, no matter which device(s) they are using - and obviously a key part of that is now Mobile.

[INTM]: That makes perfect sense - with the “Convergence” of the in-house/out-and-about experience, end-users are looking to be able to consume content across a number of disparate platforms, whilst both time-shifting and place-shifting - maintaining audio and visual quality whilst this is going on is quite tricky, but I see Dolby as being exceedingly well-placed to do this! So, how do you feel about your competition?

[DLBY]: We feel we are well-positioned against our competition. We have been working with key Content Providers for a very long time , and our brand is synonomous with quality. Additionally, unlike some of our competition, our technology is not tied to a particular application, and/or content type.

[INTM]: So, a few final thoughts from you both - your feelings on (a) the B&O/Samsung Serenata, and (b) the iPhone!

[DLBY]: As regards the Serenata, it’s great! This sort of specialist device, along with the high-end devices and PMPs, is exactly where we think Dolby Mobile can bring something to the table right now. As for the iPhone, it is a great device that sets a new benchmark in many ways.

[INTM]: Well thanks very much Max and Mark for your time - I am looking forward to seeing your technology inside my next handset!

(Footnote: this technology is the real deal - the demo I heard was truly excellent, with great pick-up on both the EQ-ing of the audio, and also the spatialisation. The overall volume was also “louder”, but not in terms of pure noise - rather a much “fuller” sound. As I said at the start of this article - these guys are serious, and are bringing an incredible pedigree to bear on Mobile - I for one am willing Dolby to suceed, because their technology genuinely drives the progress of Mobile devices!)

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SpinVox: What is the future of voice?

Ben Robinson — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:01:49 +0000

(BTW, the chap in the cup is a SpinVox “Mobster”….)

My favourite VTT (Voice-to-text) company, SpinVox, have raised an interesting thread for conversation in their blog (read it here). More accurately, James Whatley, their “chief of interweb wizardry and bloggery“, has written an inciteful and thought provoking piece on where “voice” (as in one of the ways we communicate) is headed - it had my two brain cells buzzing away for hours thinking about it - some thoughts below…

They say that people are predominantly either visual, aural, or kinaesthetic learners - that means, the way you best take in information is either by seeing, by hearing, or by feeling - so what happens when you can “see” your voice? As James neatly puts it, “I’m not talking about sound waves or pretty patterns on an oscilloscope, but your actual VOICE. The words you use to articulate your thoughts are similar and yet also completely different to those of the person sitting beside you.” Does someone who is an aural learner start to change the ways in which they represent their world? Could intelligent conversion of some of the many “data feeds” which we experience cause a paradigm shift in our learning/understanding?

Another thought: the ways in which we are “authenticated” or “identified” in many areas of our lives is often visual (e.g. Photo). Occasionally, other techniques are used such as textual (e.g. signature). Where more security is required, some kind of psychometric information is sometimes used (e.g. a “fact” that only you might know). But with VTT, another form of authentication becomes possible - granted, these sorts of advanced ID schemes are available, and have been for some time, to the likes of government agencies, but they have not been “mass-market” - with a good (or better still, excellent) voice conversion algorithm and pattern-matcher, you can search for phrases, quirks, or “tells”, that can ID someone - yes, that next-gen voice analyser in 24 could become real!

Searching your voice - no, this isn’t you best deciding how you might hit that high “A” that Mariah can do in all her records, but you can’t quite get to, it’s about a new kind of search, using you voice pattern as metadata. Just like the recent advances in image searching (you don’t type a text string, you supply image data), searching voice has the potential to be huge - it unlocks another kind of content that is plentiful, constantly being updated, and probably very valuable - essentially most of the things that make the interweb go round!

Wow, some deeper thoughts there on VTT - but, as James points out in his blog, “We’ve enabled the notion of ‘voice to content’ – now what does that empower you to do?“

Thoughts are most welcome!

(Note: on a less high-brow note, there are 10 IntoMobile points up for grabs for the best caption to the picture above - I am going for “When Mobster was told for 100th time he was a really sweet guy, he decided to find out how sweet….”)

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Spike Lee and Nokia take film Mobile

Ben Robinson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:51:01 +0000

Director Spike Lee has hooked up with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to direct a movie made with Mobile phone video footage from “everyday people”, in what he is apparently calling the “democratization of film”. The film will be by Nokia Productions and will be over 3 acts - an “assignment” will be announced online for each act, adn then people will have 4 weeks to create their submission.

The central thread (theme) will apparently be based around the way music tells the story of humanity, and different media can be submitted - text, music, video, or images - which you can check out at http://www.nokiaproductions.com.

Nokia will choose 25 submissions, and people will then vote online for the Top 10, of which Spike himself will choose the winners.The final, complete, film will premiere later in the year in LA.

[Via: Reuters UK]

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SpinVox Stat attack: uplifting messages

Ben Robinson — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:20:25 +0000

SpinVox, the rather excellent voice-to-text company have mailshotted me to let me know about some of their latest stats - I thought I would share these for your edutainment:

Our Carriers are reporting a 33% uplift in Voicemail deposits, as the calling party knows their message will be seen in minutes.
87% of people return a SpinVox message, which is driving a 10% uplift in voice and 15% in text.
This is all equating to a 110% uplift in the voice message revenue line.
40% of SpinVox subscribers say they prefer unlimited ‘all-you-can-eat’
conversion plans to the pay-per-conversion approach.
The active SpinVox user base has now passed half a million and is on target to hit six million by mid 2008.
In Q1 volumes doubled month-on-month in line with our expectations and we are due to continue at this rate throughout the year.

Comment: this really does just confirm the strength of the voice-to-text business model, and moreover, how SpinVox are operating extremely well in this area. V-T-T is a genuinely useful service (I “use” it all the time with people dropping voicemails to me), and SpinVox should be congratulated on their success to date - well done guys (and girls)!

Check out more (including a free trial) at SpinVox’s website: http://www.spinvox.com

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UK: Virgin Trains boosts Mobile coverage

Ben Robinson — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:33:28 +0000

Virgin Trains is working with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) to add retransmitters for 2G/3G to 52 of the trains on their fleet - boosting signal strengths for customers. The project, which is due to finish in November, has apparently seen a 60% increase in successfully completed calls.

At the same time the carrier is also urging business users to be careful in using the train as a simple extension of their office and discussing confidential matters - apparently 70% of those in 2000 person survey said they had discussed business in public carriages, 20% said they had talked about business-critical subjects, and 15% said they had mentioned confidential information.

However the most worrying stat of all was that 26% of people admitted to following up on business leads overheard in other people’s conversations!!

[Via: SlashPhone]

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M:Metrics : Mobile Games Data

Ben Robinson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:09:20 +0000

When the VP of Corporate Communications from a company like M:Metrics contacts you, you know you should take a look at what they have to say - that is exactly what has happened in this case!

M: Metrics have some interesting data on Mobile Gaming as a whole, contextualised by the recent “launch” of N-Gage (as Stefan reported on). Stats-a-plenty below:

According to M:Metrics, in February:

48.4 million people played a mobile game
20.2 million played a game they previously downloaded
7.6 million downloaded a new game

These numbers are all up from the same period last year (February 2007),
when:

45.2 million played a mobile game
18.5 million played a game they had previously downloaded
6.8 million downloaded a new game

Among Nokia (NYSE: NOK) owners,in February, 20.1 percent (5.9 million people) played a
mobile game, against a market average of 21.4 percent. Other Nokia stats:

6.2 percent of Nokia owners played a game they had previously downloaded (versus 8.9 percent market average)
2.7 percent downloaded a new game (versus 3.4 percent market average)

“Nokia is currently underperforming in the games market today primarily due
to the fact that the US market is flooded with low-end, free Nokia phones
that came with carrier contracts,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst,
M:Metrics. “Today, N-Series devices are still quite expensive and are not
widely distributed in carrier channels, resulting in low market adoption.
However, among those toting high-end Nokia devices on the Symbian operating system, 30.8 percent played a mobile game, indicating that mobile gaming is a popular activity on these phones.”

It will be interesting to see in a year’s time, how N-Gage (which is currently limited to very recent Nokia NSeries devices) has affected the stats - will it be measurable, one wonders - probably, if Nokia have anything to do with it!

If you want to check out M:Metrics’ site, you can go here.

[Via: M:Metrics]

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“Skype is now mobile” apparently!

Ben Robinson — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:06:36 +0000

Skype sent me a nice email today to tell me that “Skype is now mobile“. Apparently, “More and more people are using Skype on the move – on mobile phones and in WiFi hotspots on the latest portable devices“…. conveniently they listed out a number of ways for me to make use of their mobility options:

Personally I don’t use Skype heavily, but I’d be really interested to hear if any of the IntoMobile readership use one of the above “mobile” options from Skype, or if you have another solution - answers in the comment box please……!

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SpinVox: thoughts after 2 weeks of use…

Ben Robinson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:33:12 +0000

You might remember I mentioned a short while back, that I was going to be writing a post on SpinVox - now, this isn’t the first post IntoMobile has dedicated to them (see here and here for example), but, it is the first usage review from a UK perspective!

I signed up for the service about 2 weeks ago now, and since then have been watching with glee as my voicemails turn up as texts. Oddly, for the first few days I didn’t get a single voicemail (very unusual for me), so I thought the service was broken, but sure enough it was working, and on day 4, in came the first texts!

There are a lot of good things about the service, and a couple of things that are not quite so great - first the good:

I love not having to dial up my voicemail - yes it’s useful to get messages when you miss calls, no it’s not useful to have to waste time getting them played back to youThe speech-to-text system works pretty well - not perfect, but pretty darn good!
Your voicemails are still stored as traditional messages to be accessed by a call, so if you want to dial up too, you can
The service cost is quite reasonable
It’s genuinely useful - you wonder why this isn’t a standard feature offered by all operators

So there are a couple of less great points, and in fairness I feel I should list them:

Sometimes there can be a bit of delay getting your converted message - when I just missed grabbing my handset in time for a call, I was expecting the converted text shortly afterwards - but occasionally more than a few minutes elapsed before I got the message
The initial setup is a bit fiddly - that’s not a criticism of SpinVox per se (since part of it is changing your voicemail quick dial key, typically the “1″ key, to a new number), but still I would suggest it’s more manual than say getting new WAP/MMS settings sent to your phone

Overall though, I’m happy, impressed, and liking the service - and heartily recommend to UK readers, and those other readers who have a supported country - speaking of which, you can check that out here.

Ben

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Nokia promotes end of N-Gage beta with free game offering

Will Park — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:04:56 +0000

Mobile gaming is about to get a little more exciting. At least if you own one of Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s N-series devices (N81, N82, N95) that will play nice with Nokia’s N-Gage gaming platform.

Until now, Espoo has limited the fun of N-Gage gaming to beta testers with Nokia N81 handsets. In return for making the N-Gage plunge early, Nokia soft-launched the N-Gage platform on the Nokia N81 only. But, Nokia announced today that they’re bringing the Nokia N-Gage “First Access” beta trial to an end on March 27. And, to commemorate the long-awaited end of the N-Gage beta, Nokia is offering a free download of the Mile High Pinball game, along with 1000 community points, to anyone that takes the time to fill out a survey.

Now, all you N-Gagers out there take note. The ending of the N-Gage beta means that the final version of the Nokia gaming platform is due out shortly. Unfortunately, that means all your high-scores and gaming data will be reset, putting early beta tester on a level playing field of sort with the rest of the N-Gage community. Any games purchased during the “First Access” beta will be valid, but may need to be reinstalled when the final version goes live.

A final release date wasn’t mentioned, but we should see Nokia N-Gage going live in the coming weeks. We know, the wait is almost unbearable at this point, but it’s almost over. In the meantime, head over to Nokia’s N-Gage website and sign up for SMS notification of the final N-Gage launch.

[Via: AllAboutSymbian]

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ICG implements wireless digital signage

Ben Robinson — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:32:23 +0000

I.C.G., a leader in wireless digital signage solutions, have announced the industry’s first end-to-end wireless digital signage solution. Sidelining the high cost of hard wires and cumbersome implementation of traditional digital signage, I.C.G. combines their innovative wireless MobileMedia SystemTM and ViFi AdapterTM (video over WiFi) to bring a new standard to the industry.

According to industry research, by the year 2009 there will be over one million digital signs in North America (who’d have thought, eh?). Wired connections are needed for the various parts of the signage solution, such as network connectivity, media player and memory storage device, to function correctly. With the North American market on goal to install about 135 million locations over the next 10 years, I.C.G.’s wireless solution redefines the industry standard by eliminating the costs associated with hard-lines.

I.C.G.’s self-contained turnkey MobileMedia System eliminates the need for two, three or more unique and disparate components by bundling a 3G/4G wireless network module, a WiFi router, an integrated media player and hard drive. The MobileMedia System also enables cached content to be streamed over wireless links. The second element in the solution is the ViFi Adapter which receives the audio and video content over WiFi from the MobileMedia System and connects via a variety of video outputs to virtually any type of display. Supporting all media and content formats, as well as any Windows or Linux-based content management software, I.C.G.’s solution allows digital information to be multicast to numerous displays simultaneously.

Sounds impressive doesn’t it? One of those M2M applications that you don’t so often hear about, but kind of an obvious one when you think about it. If you want to read more, you can click here.

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