John Whelan is Off Portal and Off Net!

Eircom's NGX and IGoPeople

2008-10-28T09:36:00.010Z

I had a visit last week to Eircom's bright and shiny new HQ near Heuston Station in Dublin. Of particular interest is their new demo centre dubbed NGX. I attach some pictures taken with my iphone.

Related to this: I understand from that Campbell Scott (former head of Products and Services at O2) has left his role as Head of Consumer Products in Eircom to set up an interesting start up IGoPeople. This is a social networking site that enables consumers and brands to interact. I believe it is very close to launch and you can sign up for the beta.

What's the connection? Campbell contributed to the design of NGX during his time at Eircom.

Trinity Research and Innovation ICT OpenDemo

2008-09-29T10:55:00.003+01:00

I have been busy organising, with Tara Tracey (Industrial Liaison Manager at TCD), a Open Demonstration of ICT technologies available for Commercialisation.
We will be showcasing the latest exciting technologies developed by TCD researchers in Information Technology. The format will be open demos, so no more Death by powerpoint but rather hands on demos located in the rather cool and funky Science Gallery with refreshments served to fuel the interaction. I took the picture above with my iphone.

Examples of the types of technologies to be shown include:

* web 2.0 animation tool
* automatic image annotation through cross modal learning
* software defined radio toolkit for next generation cognitive radio networks
* hand wash monitoring device for hospitals and food industry
* p2p video streaming on t'interweb
* video based adaptive e-learning
* token based payments system for VOIP on WiFi
* building a wholesale hosting exchange
* spam prevention through email microcharging
* game authoring tool for mental health therapies
* sentiment index for financial markets
* p2p web search
* immersive experiential selling tool

and lots more.....

To register to attend please go to the registration page on the site.

Searchme

2008-09-04T14:11:00.008+01:00

Checkout www.searchme.com. Nice interactive visual search. wher you can scroll through thumbnails (well let's call then "hands" as bigger than "thumbnails") of the sites like the pages of a book.

On subject of search we all saw in ireland much hype about the "Irish" challenger to google cuil.com. Not so cuil I am afraid as the search results are dismally poor when compared to Google. Try seraching fro soemthing obscurish or google-whackish and compare. I tried searching for "xeritel" par example.

Another thing: why is black the new white when it comes to search backgrounds?

Stephen Barrett's teanm here in Trinity College have devloped some very interesting next generation P2P search technology. Watch this space

Nokia Mosh - worth a try

2007-11-07T21:32:00.000Z

Nokia's Mosh multimedia community hasn't been a huge success. How do I know this ? well for one the site boldly displays number of registered users - I believe I was member number 62,250. Also the fact they don't use www.mosh.com but the rather more cumbersome http://mosh.nokia.com doesn't help either.

Anyway the idea is great - a community driven mobile and fixed portal for mobile content and applications. I downloaded the (free!) client and after playing around with it for a while it is the applications section that really seem interesting. Mosh is a great source of of freeware for your mobile. My one grip with the UI is that you can't search by device so it is a bit hit and miss.

Mobile firefox on the way

2007-10-10T21:41:00.000+01:00

As expected for a while: Mozilla have finally announced that a mobile version of Firefox is on the way.

I have been onsite at Vodafone Ireland for last 6 months

2007-07-19T20:27:00.001+01:00

It's been quite a while since my last post. Reason being I am working onsite at Vodafone Ireland for last 6 months as independent IT consultant. Very interesting seeing things from the buy side after several years designing and building mobile applications that you think a MNO *should* need.

I can't say too much about what I am doing working in Vodafone. Basically working on the Technology Operations side in the areas of channel management including: web, retail stores and call centre.

Anyway I have been busy but I hope to make a few more posts in the near future.

The open source handset is here ... almost

2007-01-17T18:02:00.000Z

Thanks to Jan-san from Mobiliser for telling me about the forthcoming open source handset from the Openmoko project. The device as shown below is being manufactured in Taiwan and will cost around USD350. To quote from Jan-san's blog The "OpenMoko really is about Free Software from the bottom to the top of the software stack (no binary-only kernel modules, no binary-only GSM communication libraries, no proprietary libraries, no pre-installed proprietary userspace applications)".

So essentially it is a linux based 2.5G phone where developers can start to develop innovative apps that can utilise freely at will any of the phone's functionality. Contrast this to the closed approach from Herr Jobs and his nouvelle iPhone.

A question will this handset have a valid IMEI that will allow it to register on a GSM network?

Innovative Mobile Ordering and Payment System

2007-01-17T09:29:00.000Z

I have being working on a project to provide the IT systems to an innovative startup here in Dublin called NextDayNow.

So what's so unique about this venture? You order via text (actually a free text number 50015) from a catalogue based in your local convenience store (see images below from the "Londis" store in Fairview, Dublin). You then pay at the convenience store counter and receive a conventional mobile phone top up voucher. Once you text the voucher code back to NextDayNow the the goods then arrive in the store the nextday. Simple!

Advantages:
- No Credit card required (Credit Card penetration in Ireland is remarkably low especially amongst younger people 18-25)
- Convenience Store can provide a wide range of goods that it would normally not make sense to keep in stock such as MP3 players, game consoles/software , inkjet cartridges etc.
- Perhaps most important of all - Trust. Punters tend to trust their local convenience store more than a website, as it is a concrete building with real people they can talk to at anytime.

The systems has been live now for several weeks and the take up has been great with many people buying purchasing high ticket items such as Sony PSPs etc.

If you live in Dublin check it out in the following locations:
XL Stop & Shop - Clontarf
Spar - Tonlegee Road
The Emerald - Donabate
Londis - Fairview
Village Shop - Malahide
Spar - Hilltop SC, Raheny
Rickard's - Rush
Londis - Rush
Spar - Swords Manor

many new locations coming on stream including stores in counties Louth and Meath.

iPhone Overload or is it a Wii Killer in disquise

2007-01-11T10:54:00.000Z

Ok, Ok The iPhone is really cool, the GUI could turn out be the most important development in mobile terminals since the invention of the 20ft phone cord.

However it's not all rosy in the apple (walled) garden there are a few points that I see as kinda big negatives:
- It does not support 3G/UMTS
- There is no real keyboard (just a "soft" keyboard)
- No public SDK will be available.

The fact that it has an accelerometer is worthy of more thought. The blurb says the accelerometer is used just to detect automatically whether terminal is in landscape or potrait orientation. However I wonder what is the quality of the accelerometer data and if the data available to applications built on the OS-X. Just think if the resolution and sensitivity are good enough Wii type applications could be developed.

Anyone know any details about the iphone accelerometer? Who made it? What are the outputs?

2 million MMS a day sent a day in Britain

2007-01-08T10:21:00.000Z

According to the Mobile Data Association in the UK, MMS has finally come of age with over two million MMS a day MMS sent last October (06). This figure is interesting in that it begs the obvious question WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO GET HERE? Other data from the same report show that now more than 50% of all handsets in UK are "picture capable".

Anyway it is still very good news and if you extrapolate the figures to Ireland it would suggest a healthy 200,000 MMS a day. In fact there is an argument to say the Irish figure is probably higher due to younger demographic and (allegedly) more messaging friendly users.

As always MMS is the laggard to SMS but it will always be this way as they are two very different media. The SMS figures from the UK over the New Year and Christmas show that 7 million SMS were sent an hour over the holiday period (see Figure below).

This is the first MMS data that the MDA have published as they have concentrated up to now on SMS and mobile internet usage analaysis. I look forward to more regular and informative data from them in this important area.

Now why would I ever need this...

2006-12-20T17:40:00.001Z

Understanding Mobile 2.0 is an excellent review of startups involved in Mobile Web 2.0 apps.

However lurking within the article is an ad for a product from a company where I think the technology geeks have more authority than the marketing people. Now why o why would I ever, ever want to watch TV on my mobilephone when I am in the house already!

Elsewhere in the article there is quote of a quote (which now becomes a quote of a quote of a quote or quote^3) from a certain Eric Schmidt from Google which is worth repeating:

"Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have Internet access. What is more, the World Bank estimates that more than two-thirds of the world's population lives within range of a mobile phone network. Mobile is going to be the next big Internet phenomenon. It holds the key to greater access for everyone - with all the benefits that entails."

Korean search engine more succesful than Google

2006-12-05T10:02:00.000Z

... but only in Korea.

An interesting article from Business Week and blogged by Ajit Jaokar describes an innovatiove Google Answers type search engine called Naver that is more popular than Google or Yahoo on Korea.

What he's talking about is a three-year-old initiative called
"Knowledge-In." The program lets users ask and answer questions on
anything from recipes for kimchi to the composition of rocket fuel.
Readers judge the responses, and the millions of folks who have
answered questions are ranked as "ordinary," "knowledgeable," "highly
knowledgeable," "supernatural," or -- for 22 truly prolific answerers
-- "gods." "Naver is great because you get all sorts of detailed
information in very specific questions and answers," says Song Han
Sil, a 25-year-old pianist in Seoul. "Many of my friends don't even
know that Google offers Korean-language service." The database now has
some 37 million questions and answers that can get returned with
search results.

However according to the Korea Times yesterday Yahoo are poised to take over the NHN company that owns the search service.

Unique new approach to mobile TV interaction

2006-11-29T14:45:00.000Z

Occasionally you come across something that is truly innovative. A company
called In Time Media
are working with the producers of a popular reality TV show in the UK called Strictly Come Dancing.

The concept is a Symbian voting app that you run on your phone while watching the programme, it seems to listen for trigger audio from the TV and keeps in synch with what's happening on the screen. Unfortunately for me you need to be on a UK network to download the app. I will try contacting them directly in order that I can try it out.

The company claims to be based in Castlebar in Ireland but the website provides a UK mobile number and they us a .co.uk domain.

Advertising will be the ONLY revenue stream for mobile content

2006-11-29T09:46:00.000Z

As the mobile content market matures (aka saturates) it is very apparent that advertising is going to be the key revenue opportunity for mobile content and app providers. The US mobile market has already realised that users won't pay for mobile browsing but are happy to watch some targeted ads in return for free browsing. See for example Zoovision which provides free mobile video content and is funded solely by advertising.

On this side of the (currently very stormy) pond Blyk is an MVNO due to launch in the UK which will provide FREE Voice and text service in return for advertising. Another example I came across today is pitch.tv. This is an interesting startup where users join a mobile community where they can exchange lots of free games , wallpapers and ringtones in return for receiving three SMS ads per month. Makes sense. Unfortunately I can't try the service for real as you must send a text to a UK shortcode to join.

Youtube (again) on the Verizon

2006-11-07T11:39:00.000Z

An obvious development really but good to see it becoming a reality:

TECHNOLOGY ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal.

Nov. 7, 2006

Verizon is in advanced talks with YouTube to bring the popular Web site's
videos to cellphones and television sets, in what would be a landmark
link-up between telecom and Internet video.

For more information, see WSJ
(logon required)

An important question is whether or not this is an exclusive deal. If so the other major US MNO's (T-mobile, Sprint and Cingular) will need to talk to Revver or equivalent quite soon. Also what about the rest of the world? A Vodafone Live! with youtube content would make a lot of sense.

Another important issue of course is the filtering of the content. MNO's as we know are paranoid about the "sanctity" of mobile content on their portals so I am sure every video put up will be double-filtered manually.

Management of Multimedia and Mobile Networks and Services

2006-10-25T12:00:00.000+01:00

An interesting conference on the Management of Multimedia and Mobile Networks and Services is being held in Ireland thsi week. This is part of the IEEE 2nd International Week on Management of Networks and Services Autonomic Component and System Management or Manweek for short (thanks organisers for that abbreviation!), October 23-27, Dublin, Ireland.

Many of these papers are little low down in the stack to be of interest to wireless application developers. Nevertheless the session of Short Technical Papers is of particular interest as it deals with topics such as:
VidShare: A Management platform for Peer-to-Peer Multimedia Asset Distribution across Heterogeneous Access Networks with Intellectual Property Management from the TSSG grup at wWaterford Institute of Technology.

Youtube as a method to demo mobile apps and content

2006-10-16T10:22:00.000+01:00

A start up (sic) called Youtube in the press lately for obvious reason that have been well covered in other blogs. One thing I find particularly interesting about youtube is that mobile application developers and content providers are beginning to use UGC sites such as youtube and flickr as an effective marketing tool. Consider the following two examples.

The first example youtube videois a sample mobile application created using Tricastmedia's TWUIK (codenamed OMEGA), a rich J2ME GUI framework for creating midlets with FLASH-LIKE animation and user interface effects. J2ME has certainly come of age! However claims that it is device independent would need to be investigated thoroughly.

The second video is an example of pure video content and is not so much concerned about the technology, but more an illustration of the fact as to how mainstream cameraphone video content is becoming. The videos are cool cameraphone video magic tricks by an allegedly famous magician in the US. Cool thing is that in later videos he shows viewers how to do the tricks:-)

Wireless Location Data from Horse racing

2006-10-10T09:37:00.000+01:00

I have been watching with interest developments at SportingLOT over the last year or so. Their innovative GUI for exchange based sports trading deploying their Liberated Object Technology added real value to the basic interface as available from sports exchanges such as Betdaq and of course Betfair.

However it is only in the last few weeks that they have embraced wireless technology and the results are major leap forward. SportingLOT are now taking real time location based data from certain racetracks in the UK and displaying the data on screen. This itself is not a new concept and they are utilising data from Turftrax. The system is called IRIS: In-running Racing Information Service.

Sports trading will never be the same again!

The system uses patented technology whereby sensors on the racetrack relay 2D location information from a device located on the saddle of the horse. This all sounded very familiar to me as I remember around 2001 meeting a UK company called Racetrace out of Cambridge in the UK who had a very similar system. It seems Racetrace was liquidated in 2004. However further investigation seems to indicate that Turftrax are indeed deploying the same technology and may be licensing it from Racetrace original owners Generics Group.

The real added value here is combining the location data with SportingLOT's unique superfast realtime sports trading system. As the figure below shows this enables the user to go long or short on the horse by just clicking the actual icon in the race animation.

Carphone Warehouse ignores mobile internet

2006-09-21T10:36:00.000+01:00

The Carphone Warehouse in conjunction with the LSE has published a free survey of 16,000 people in the UK on mobile usage. I think while there are some useful data therein, I think it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this survey is more to generate tabloid headlines like "Half of young adult phone users have sent or received a sexually explicit text" and associated PR, rather than scientific research.

In some ways surveys like this are more interesting in what they leave out and how they phrase the questions rather than the results themselves. For example there is not a single mention of the words "browsing" or "WAP" in the report. The fact that the "internet" as used in the survey , refers to desktop browsing should give our industry cause for concern. The Carphone Warehouse who sell thousands of handsets a day doesn't even consider mobile internet as a topic in a survey subtitled "How mobile phones change the way we live".

First UGC Mobile portal

2006-09-15T12:10:00.000+01:00

Check out MyNumo , as far as I know the first mobile content site populated only with user generated content.

Anyone can use the onsite tools to create their own ringtones and wallpapers. The content can then be uploaded and sold. Appears only possible to sell in the US and Canada at present. Ringtones/Wallpapers sell for $2.00 and Videos $2.99 but I can't see what portion is distributed to the owner in the Help/Faq section.

I don't believe UGC will generate more revenues than commercial content , but where do you draw the line between the two? Crazy Frog started as a [nasty] little UGC project in many ways.

A major leap forward in HCI

2006-09-11T10:15:00.000+01:00

If you ever doubted how useful and relevant academic research can be for GUI and usability development have a look at this research from NYU HCI group:

Worth watching all the way through. If you are stuck for time look from from around 2 minutes and 30 seconds for one minute.

Now let's work to develop a mobile equivalent. The desktop world has been trapped in the box of windows/Mac type HCI for well over twenty years. It is perhaps time to move on. In the same way mobile handsets have been trapped within rocker type controls and predictive text. There is always a better way and we should never stop (I know it's a cliche but it's through) thinking outside the proverbial b.

At last - Google MOBILE adwords

2006-09-06T10:09:00.000+01:00

Having tested the water in Japan since April Google has finally made mobile Adwords available to all. It will be very interesting to see if Google can build if the critical mass and dominate the mobile advertising space. I don't believe this expansion of market dominance into mobile is necessarily as inevitable as one might think.

See an extract from the Google adwords help section below:

How do I create a mobile ad?
To create a new mobile ad in one of your existing Ad Groups, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your AdWords account.
2. Click the campaign that contains the Ad Group in which you will create a mobile text ad.
3. Click the appropriate Ad Group.
4. Click the Create New Mobile Text Ad link at the top of your keyword table. Enter your new ad title, description line, Display URL, and Destination URL as needed.
5. Click Save Changes.

Was this information helpful?

eBay outsources its mobile site

2006-08-23T14:29:00.000+01:00

Today while working with admobs (the mobile advertising exchange), I noticed that the link for ebay mobile ads wasn't direct to an ebay URL but to a third party site. I checked it out and it appears that ebay has outsourced a lot of its mobile sites to a Valley based company known as Bonfire Media.

Would have thought that company like ebay would have the ability to build their own mobile sites but perhaps it shows how different the tiny screen is in practice.

Aside: Our general (non MNO portal) tribes site is now generating 250,000 page views a day. This is why we are working with mobile adverting links such as ebay to monetise these eyeballs.

Mobile Search Survey Results

2006-08-09T11:35:00.000+01:00

The Global Mobile Marketing Association (for "Global" read "US") has published the results of a survey of US consumers on mobile search. The results are very interesting albeit with a US bias. In particular the preference for voice search seems to be a uniquely North American feature. Although it certainly needs to be thought about in a European context.

I quote from the press release below:

"Mobile search is in its early stages of adoption, but there is significant upside potential. Thirty-one percent of respondents used mobile search for the first time in the past month. Current users conducted an average of nine searches in the past month.

Â Cell phone owners who arenÂt aware of mobile search recognize its benefits after theyÂre introduced to the technology. Half of non-users were interested in trying mobile search over the next few months. Forty-eight percent of non-users expect to start using mobile search at least once per week.

Â Approximately 41% of all respondents indicate that sponsored links would not have an impact on their use of mobile search.

Â Current mobile search users represent several attractive market segments for advertisers. Respondents with an annual household income of $50,000-$75,000 conduct an average of almost 16 searches per month, the most of any demographic segment. Consumers age 45-54, college grads and people with children at home all reported using search more than 11 times per month.

Â Sixty-nine percent of respondents prefer advertisements that are related to local products and services.

Â The ability to search by voice was the top-rated feature. Thirty-seven percent of current mobile search users would be Âa lot more likelyÂ to use mobile search if voice control were added."

Snap - the other way to search

2006-08-01T09:50:00.000+01:00

Check out Snap an interesting approach to web search which is kinda akin to our Tribes intelligent search in that you can preview the results in a window pane before deciding to go to the actual page. Glad to see that someone else also believes that the current approach to search and discovery is "broken" as the site includes a nice critique of Google at al. I don't think the fundamental concept here of previewing within a separate frame could be ported to the tiny screen on a mobile device. Hence our approach of enabling the user to step through the results with the Tribes toolbar seems the better approach for a cellphone.