We decided to make a MobilOpen a LinkedIn Group. This allows users to network with other MobilOpen members simply via LinkedIn. You can then see others professional profiles and their professional network.

LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for business networking and creating a group will further the reach of all our members.

If you don’t already have a profile on LinkedIn just click on this link and create your own profile.

Shaun Zelber

TalkStreamLive brings you streaming radio shows straight to your mobile device. What is cool is these talk shows are often not syndicated so if you are on the East coast in the US or in Australia or wherever you wouldn’t be able to hear them. But now you can by going straight to TalkStreamLive… and how much does this all cost ? Well it is a free service. Now that is cool.

Here is the screen shot of the site’s home and list of talk shows :

On your Nokia N70 it will look like this :

Then you just click on the stream and it will launch. On a Moto Q it will show something like this :

Ok… not trying to show off.. with a Merc.

The only draw back is that this works only on Windows media player. But they have promised to make it available on other players too soon.

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

Forums and companies have been a buzz for the past few weeks about the fact that Vodafone UK has blocked the user agent from being transmitted to mobile internet sites.

As one former Vodafone employee puts it : “ Vodafone claim they take this action because their newer devices’ browsers can handle a full web site (with a little help from their transcoder).The stated aim is to allow folks to browse the web from their mobile phone without being restricted to the “mobile” versions, or little/nothing where no mobile version exists.”

User agents are used by mobile content providers and mobile sites to optimize the content or the sites and services to the particular mobile of the user.

David Harper founder of MobileMonday New York and Founder, Winksite had this to say, “Vodafone’s actions thwart the efforts of companies in the mobile
ecosystem who set out to provide a customized mobile presentation of their services, hurt these companies financially, and is counter to the advancements facilitated by groups such as the W3C and dotMobi.

Wurfl which is an open database of user-agents and is led by Luca Passini has been venting justified rage on this blog. He had this to say quite justly : ” If we don’t make some noise now and let the industry understand that developers won’t give up without a fight, I fear that the battle will get much harder to fight down the road.”

It is quite obvious that mobile devices are not ready yet for the full web experience. It is also true that mobile content providers (including the MNOs) have got fat on selling content at highly inflated prices. The web is coming to the mobile that is inevitable and in my opinion is a good thing. The question is whether the user MNOs control the traffic or the user who controls which sites are visited.

At the beginning of the web there was a concerted effort to restrict users from going where they wanted. This effort ultimately failed. I would place a safe bet that though the mobile web is still controlled via the pipe that the MNOs hold restricting access to mobile content and services will ultimately fail.

A very interesting model, and I believe a model to be emulated by MNOs elsewhere, has evolved at Bouygues Telecom in France. Bouygues allowed and even encouraged users to get out of their walled garden, the French imode portal. Users did explore and today Bouygues’ share of off deck traffic represents close to 60% of all off deck traffic in France (the other MNOs are Orange and SFR, subsidiary of Vodafone). Yet their portal is still doing very well ! Using the portal is easier to use, the sites are classified and limited. This appeals to a certain public. But the off deck appeals too for stuff that they can’t get on deck. The two co-exist. And what ever the case the MNO wins as they raise data ARPU.

Others who have commented on this issue are Mike Butcher from Techcrunch UK.

Nokia has jumped the gun and bought Enpocket. See the press release by clicking here.

Nokia launched a few months ago Nokia Ad Services, their mobile ad serving foray. They entered such markets as France, UK, Germany with quite a noise by offering higher CPM than their competitors (as far as competitors I am writing an overview of the mobile ad server networks which will come out next week).

Now that Nokia will have Enpocket their reach in the USA market will all of a sudden become substantial. Also it would seem that the lead that Enpocket has in terms of technology, I mean ad server technology, will be a significant plus.

After Screentonic being acquired by Microsoft it is open bets on what will happen next.. maybe Admob ?

ixenland is a part of CA Mobile and was founded fairly recently in December 2006. What they have created is pretty cool! They haven’t really invented anything.. you have a community with friends, blogs, avatars, virtual money and messages between members. There are ways for you to earn credits like playing games and then you can spend that money on dressing your avatar for example. But they have done it well.. and simple.

They have taken web 2.0 communities and across the board rendered them mobile. This is clever and has the potential of being extremely viral. It is going to be interesting to see some numbers by year end.

Below is their home for those not yet signed in :

Then wherever you click you are teased and invited to sign up :

Sign up is simple, you give your age, phone number and sex.. and there you are an avatar. Ok my fantasy today was to be a guy.. if you wonder why that is a guy there :

After you can do some cool things like undress your avatar :

Then you can blog or see other people’s profile, like this Kitten:

And then of course you can invite friends or make friends :

You can also play games :

So as you can see a very complete and rounded out mobile commuity site. A big bravo to ixen mobile.

Ok well until the next time.. don’t forget to send your comments and suggestions. See ya…

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

Now that we have a few months of iPhone mania behind us it is worthwhile to consider what Apple’s foray into the mobile space means for Handset manufactures, MNOs and mobile content service and sites.

Manufacturers

In terms of Handset manufactures Apple’s iPhone has stomped them all and made them green with jealousy. In July according to a report from iSuppli, Apple’s iPhone outsold other smartphones during that month and equaled sales of the most popular feature phone, LG’s Chocolate. According to the report, the iPhone outsold every BlackBerry handset, the entire Palm portfolio and any individual Motorola, Nokia, Samsung or other carrier-branded models. This can but leave the manufacturers from Nokia, Motorola and the Koreans to the Windows mobile bunch pensive… Ok take away the famed Apple hype machine.. this is a machine that blows the competition away in terms of features. And most of them could have done the same. So the question is why didn’t they ?

The doubt remains that Apple will be able to maintain such high levels of interest and following. But if they do, well there is going to be a shift to more feature reach machines and machines that surf effortlessly via WiFi for example.

MNOs

It remains to be seen exactly how the relationship between Apple and the MNOs will pan out. Apple seems bent on circum-navigating the MNOs walled garden with the recent announcements that they will sell content via a WiFi version of their iTunes store.

Will the let the MNOs in on the action ? or not ? that is really the question. If Apple breaks that bottle neck what will stop others from offering similar solutions ? This is really a very interesting sector to watch.

Mobile Content and Services

As far as content it looks that for the immediate future Apple has this totally blocked off from the flock of content suppliers. It seems pretty clear that they want to control this aspect very firmly. Maybe over time this will loosen up a bit.

When we talk of the mobile internet though things look good. Basically iPhone ready sites are already starting to pop up here and there. The browsing experience on an iPhone is much better than on most mobile devices except for maybe the large screen Windows mobile ones. This bodes well for sites that offer services, social networking or mcommerce because hopefully the iPhone will bring onto the mobile internet a whole new group of users. What we can hope for is that this too will encourage mobile internet sites to upgrade their sites from simpler WML to more sexy stuff.. and even better to be truly multi-device.

Apple has announced that they will start selling full tracks via their new store : iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store.

This store enables consumers to browse, search, preview, purchase and download music from the iTunes digital storefront directly to their iPod Touch or iPhone devices via a Wi-Fi connection. Apple also introduced a ring tone customization service–users may select 30-second segments from over a million participating tracks, setting personalized fade in and fade out points and syncing the resulting ringer with the iPhone.

They therefore completely bypass the MNOs by using WiFi to sell content on their iPhone. It will be interesting to see 1) how the MNOs react and 2) whether other content providers will as well take the WiFi route… which in the end is nothing more the independant, off deck mobile internet.