alatto selected to present at the first International Wireless Conference
On the topic of events today we are one of only three native Irish comapnies invited to present at the
International Wireless Conference in Dublin on October 30th.
This event is set to become an annual event and looks like a good opportunity to hear Ajit Joakar in particular - author of the excellent "Open Gardens" book.
Alatto to speak and exhibit at Mobile Content World
We have decided to take the opportunity to present
Tribes at
Mobile Content World in London from September 13th to 15th.
Looks like a good show with fellow exhibitors including BBC, bango , napster and portal - the who's who of mobile content. Of course we are not a content provider
per se but rather a provider of tools (i.e. Tribes) to enable personalised WAP content discovery.
So come and see our exhibit (exhibition hall access is free) and see Tribes on your own handset live!
Mobile Citizens make "The News"
On the web there are interesting things happening where specialist sites are combining the democracy of blogging with the established virtues - accountability, factual accuracy - of traditional news reports.
What happens is users create blogs in usual way  upload text and images from PC. However all articles are reviewed by trained editors to either:
o remove the detritus
o improve the original if required
For proof see how recent bombings in London were covered by cameraphonese videos in conventional media. Not necessarily news content but niche specialist hobbies , local news all covered by a citizen army of journalists.
Examples on web include now internationally famous
OhmyNews in South Korea. (Why is Korea first with so many new media innovations?) That platform for citizen journalists was established in 2000 by the frustrated journalist Oh Yeon Ho, and now makes use of more than 39,000 ordinary South Korean contributors. It claims to have influenced the 2002 general election infavourr of the outsider Roh Moo-hyun, who gave his first interview as president to the site.
Example Web links:
iTalknews OhmyNews Korea (in English)
Wikinews The really exciting things is that most of these are only in Beta stage! Exciting times lie ahead. There are no mobile deployments that I know of but watch this space! Tribes will be used to trawl through the content to find the good stuff.
Closest to a mobile angle are agencies that buy your images and sell to the press such as the Scottish site
Scoopt
Vanilla journalists are
worried - always a good sign as they feel threatened by this democratisation of the news!
FILM at 11!
1 in 3 mobiles faulty for some networks in UK
A
survey by the consumer magazine Which? in the UK found that quality is proving a big issue for mobile handset users. On average one in seven mobiles develop a fault within the first year but for 3G operator Three the figure is 33%. This is probably due to relatively immature UMTS technology.
The which site also includes
sample letters to complain to the shop where the consumer purchased the phone if (or more likely when) it develops a fault. I urge everyone to use these if they develop a problem with their handset.
On a personal level I finally got fed up with my Nokia 7610 last week when it wiped all my data (hundreds of personal photos and videos) from the SD card. Nice one Nokia! Have tried several recovery software systems and it just appears there is no data in any sector. I saw some postings on newsgroups that is a known fault. Now if only I could get the time to send those letters as provided so kindly by Which?
On a brighter note I replaced the 7610 (no more Nokia for me thanks) with a Sharp 902.
Now this is a cool phone which hopefully has Japanese quality and reliability. Includes a 2 Megapixel camera with 2X optical zoom. You can hear the motor running to move the lens. Also in funky iPod type styling and the "piece of resistance" - flip the screen and it morphs into a real digital camera. i.e. buttons on the top and screen facing you.
Nokia is to Fiat as Sharp is to Lexus!
