Itsmy.com, a product
of GoFresh, popped into the mobile space mid 2006. They boasted early 2007 of 100 million page impressions per month ! They also claim to have passed 500 000 registered users.

GoFresh has spent heavily advertising on the mobile web and on the web to drive traffic to their social networking site that it is in turned financed by mobile ads.

So what is this social network really about. What are the processes and how does it differentiate from other mobile social networks ? Well your Eva has done a thorough testing of the service with screenshots and all..

This is the home page.. the entry to itsmy.com.



Then it is time to sign-up if it is your first time.

Then it is time to create your Avatar.. yes just like Ixenland, on itsmy it is necessary to have a representative of your self.. an avatar. What would really be cool would be a dose of SecondLife so that you could navigate around itsmy with your avatar.

And then voila ! you have Eva’s avatar !

To create your profile and avatar this lasts about 10 minutes on your mobile if you have a fast GPRS connection.. if not count about 15 minutes. Once that is done now you can start having fun.. firstly you have your own homepage that you can communicate to all your friends.

Now you can start looking for friends.. Well lets say you can start looking for flirts. This is really the crux of what itsmpy is about.. you can create a profile, add pictures, add videos.. yes but in the end the idea is focussed on dating and flirting. Here is how you start searching.

And here is the search results.

You can then select a profile that is according to your taste or fancy.. just like I did.

You can then talk to the profile that interests you and send him or her a message, rate the profile, send some “love” something like a kiss. You can also see the profiles flirt page which says what is the most important for that person. The person can then see who has rated him or her and then you can start chatting and get to know each other.

After that you can also enter directly into the chat service and the forum which is arrange around a classic topic system.

You can also send your pictures and videos to itsmy.com and it will be listed. They also have a cool thing that is called itsmy TV which is basically a slide show of images.. which gives all users their 5 seconds of glory.

Here is an example done by itsmy TV’s presenter Toni Montana.

And so that is basically itsmy. My verdict ?

Well it is truly the best mobile network, it has also lots of users and from all over the world which in my opinion makes it truly sticky. The TV idea is funky and fairly new. So those are the things I like. But in my opinion it lacks that extra thing that would exploit the full scope of the mobile internet.. like geo-localization tools to find friends nearby or to visualize people all over the world. Also I would say that if it has avatars then it should push that a bit further so that avatars could inter-react.

All in all though bravo guys at GoFresh.. and please keep adding stuff to itsmy.. ok I gotta go I just got a message from that handsome Italian guy. Ciao !

Join MobilOpen – the off deck mobile internet group : News, networking, cooperation…

In a great news for the off deck space, MySpace decides to go off deck and fund their service from mobile ads.

The mastodon of the web social networking services has finally decided to bring MySpace mobile to all users and to fund this they will place mobile advertisements. The ads will be served by Millennial Media.

This definitely calls in question the numerous premium deals that MySpace has signed with Helio, AT&T or T-Mobile in the USA and Vodafone in the UK.

According to MobiAD Network, the new service enables users to send and receive messages and friend requests, comment on photos, post bulletins, update blogs and search for friends–while advertising will at first remain limited to sponsorships and banner ads, parent Fox Interactive Media said it will eventually introduce more targeted campaigns based on user registration data as well as local ads based on GPS data.

“Accessing the Internet from your mobile phone will soon be as common as text messaging and voice calling,” said Fox Interactive’s senior vice president of mobile John Smelzer.

This will go a long way to move the mobile internet towards an off deck and free web like model.

Join MobilOpen – the off deck mobile internet group : News, networking, cooperation…

TexoMobile an AdMob join their strengths to reach out wapmasters the world over.

Download the press release here :

AdMob has brought out their second Mobile Metrics report that has meet with such great success last month. They have served up some great information for example about the Apple iPhone which has doubled share in the US from 0.4% to 0.9%. The iPhone continues to show heavy mobile internetusage.

They have some really interesting information concerning handset usage.

To get the full report just click here :

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France Telecom’s Orange subsidiary plans to sell a little less than 100,000 iPhones in 2007 and also plans to offer an unlocked version of the handset for a price that is well below T-Mobile Germany’s $1500, according to Orange CEO Didier Lombard. Analysts estimate that Orange has to move about 3,000 iPhones a day to make the goal of nearly 100,000 iPhones by year-end.

Verizon the lar
gest US mobile operator promises to open the gates of it’s walled garden in 2008.

Verizon says that they will give customers the option to use wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company. This will be implemented country wide by end 2008.

Verizon Wireless operates the nation’s most reliable wireless voice and data network, serving 63.7 million customers. The largest U.S. wireless company and largest wireless data provider, based on revenues, Verizon Wireless is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with 68,000 employees nationwide. The company is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD).

In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices.

This new option goes beyond just a change in the design, delivery, purchase, and provisioning of wireless devices and applications.

“This is a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices – one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth,” said Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless president and chief executive officer. “Verizon Wireless is not changing our successful retail model, but rather adding an additional retail option for customers looking for a different wireless experience.”

Verizon Wireless will continue to provide a full-service offering, from retail stores where customers can shop, to 24/7 customer service and technical support, to an easy-to-use handset interface and optimized software applications.

While most Verizon Wireless customers prefer the convenience of full service, the company is listening through today’s announcement to a small but growing number of customers who want another choice without full service.

Both full-service and “bring-your-own” customers will have the advantage of using America’s most reliable network.

Following publication of technical standards, Verizon Wireless will host a conference to explain the standards and get input from the development community on how to achieve the company’s goals for network performance while making it easy for them to deliver devices.

If other mobile operators pick up on this the ball could finally start to roll on making the mobile internet truly open.

King says “shut up”.

The king of Spain’s recent undiplomatic outburst at the Venezuelan president has become a ringtone hit across Spain. An estimated 500,000 people have downloaded the insult featuring the words “Why don’t you shut up?”, generating a reported 1.5m euros ($2m).

King Juan Carlos asked Hugo Chavez to “shut up” at a summit in Chile last week after the president said Spain’s ex-PM Jose Maria Aznar was a “fascist”.

In Venezuela, a group of students who oppose Mr Chavez’s government have also been downloading the ringtone, a US newspaper reported. “It’s a form of protest,” a 21-year-old student in Caracas told the Miami Herald. “It’s something that a lot of people would like to tell the president.”

Here for you all is the outburst :

Join MobilOpen – the off deck mobile internet group : News, networking, cooperation…

A Microsoft spin-off formally know as ZenZui plans to release an open beta of a new mobile browsing user interface in mid-December.

Zumobi is offering a piece of software that works in connection with a back-end server and is designed to make mobile Internet use easier. The user interface is made up of 16 tiles on which users can easily zoom in and out. Each tile represents a Web page.

To see a very well done demo click here.

Zumobi’s back-end servers are constantly updating the Web sites on the phone, so a user doesn’t have to wait for the site to load after they click the tile. Users determine what site appears in each tile, and they can send tiles to each other.

The service will be free for end users and ad revenue supported. Advertisers can sponsor specific tiles that might offer information users might want, such as traffic updates. Un-like other entrants in this market like Google’s Android and Opera, Zumobi gives a cut to mobile operators if they pre-install the software onto phones.

Zumobi hopes to make the client available to many other types of phones (currently it is only compatible with Windows Mobile phones), with the Research in MotionBlackBerry next in line and expected in the second quarter of 2008. They realize that for the technology to really take off they will need to be present on a wide range of handsets and therefore platforms. Zumobi is thus designed to be able to work on a wide variety of hardware, including phones that have touch screens, numeric keypads and full keyboards and that operate in landscape or portrait modes.

The iPhone is also quite high on Zumobi’s list, but the company doesn’t want to officially say it will build a client for the phone until it sees the iPhone developer kit, which comes out next year. “This is about how you snack on content,” says John SanGiovanni, co-founder of Zumobi, “So in that sense we think iPhone users will love Zumobi.”

What is interesting is the name … as Microsoft is rumoured to be launching the Zune phone.. and Zumobi.

Legends id software, creators of Doom and Quake and Hexen are taking their games mobile officially.

To that end Id Software announced a new division, id Mobile, and plans to develop mobile versions of its classic games Quake and Wolfenstein, as well as a sequel to the cellphone game hit, Doom RPG.

“We are operating on the assumption that mobile gaming has a potential for huge growth,” says id co-founder John Carmack. “It’s at a tipping point. Everybody has a phone, and almost every phone is powerful enough to do good games on it.”

The Mesquite, Texas, game maker is no mobile-game newcomer. Released two years ago, Doom RPG for cellphones has sold more than 1 million copies. Sales of last year’s Orcs & Elves have topped 400,000. Both of those action games (typical cost $7-$10) were co-developed by id with Fountainhead Entertainment, a company founded by Carmack’s wife, Katherine Anna Kang. A former director of business development at id, she will now serve also as id Mobile’s president.

They expect the id name to help draw the attention of potential creative talent to a sector of the industry that’s often considered “the ghetto of game development,” Carmack says. “It’s going to be easier to attract more people to work for a project when they are actually working for id.”
New mobile games from id include a Nintendo DS version of Orcs & Elves ($30, out this week) and Orcs & Elves II, which is expected to be available from major MNOs by December.

The rise in casual gaming internationally is expected to help drive mobile-gaming revenues from less than $5 billion this year to nearly $10 billion worldwide by 2009, suggests a recent forecast from U.K.-based Juniper Research.
“The whole reason we are in the mobile arena now is I was just really appalled at how bad (cellphone games) were,” Carmack says. “We’re already making profit on 2 million units of games (sold), but we are kind of holding out this hope there might be a breakout moment when the industry gets five to 10 times larger.”

Much noise has been circulating about Google jumping into the mobile business… well now things are getting more precise. Here is their scoop from their blogs and from their video cast that you can find below. Briefly Google purchased a company called Android in mid 2005. Android’s idea was to make a open software platform based on Linux that would compete with Windows Mobile, RIM’s Blackberry and Symbian and that would be easy to use and free to use. The idea is to set a universal norm so that when developers make applications for mobiles they don’t have to port to each and every mobile device.

Of course that is the stated reason.. or lets say the nice reason, the Google reason is to power the search and the ad revenue that the wireless market has the potential of generating.

To make all of this palatable for handset manufacturers Google has founded the Open Handset Alliance and brought on board key players in the industry with people like Samsung, Motorola but also key telcos like Telefonica, Sprint and NTT DoCoMo.

So if all goes according to plan, there will be lots of phones based on the Open Handset Alliance, running Google-based services. Handset maker HTC, previously wedded to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, has promised to deliver Android phones.

Here is what the Android/Google team has to say about their endeavor. Whatever said and done they look like they’re having fun :