Voicemap

Like MySay, ReQall, Spinvox etc... it's good to see voice being integrated to both mobile and web services.

It's still a hugely under developed area in my view, but perhaps this is slowly changing. There's some fairly new mashups listed here on the myVox site. They've been created by developers using the MyVox API.

I tried one below.

Google map with voice-notes (voicemap).
Click on the next marker button and then the pink marker to listen to a voice note I've left by dialling a US number to leave a voicesnippet for a location, where I'm planning to be next week. You can "privatise" the map as well with a password.



View Larger Map

I placed the marker on the map through the desktop browser. To make this more mobile-centric an improvement would be to automatically geotag your voicesnippet from the mobile, so the marker was placed for you. (On a sidenote: I wonder if we'll see MMS get integrated with Location for GPS-enabled phones soon, as audio snippets can already be sent via MMS, or perhaps even GeoVoicemail - here's where the person was when they left you a voicemail.)

I could see this type of feature in services like WAYN or Dopplr , Gypsii etc.. It's an additional, personalised option to say leaving a voicemail (no map) or sending emails with embedded maps attached (less personalised).

Flickr adds video

Flickr **finally** added video uploading and sharing abilities for pro members. Formats supported are (avi, wmv, mov, 3gp, mpeg1,2 and 4).

I tend to keep private/personal photos in Flickr so have been waiting for this feature for a while. I can now keep my personal videos in the same service (rather than on YouTube, Blip, Vimeo etc).

Anyone can view your Flickr videos if they have permission, so the usual public/private settings apply. A big downside for me however is that video clips are currently limited to 90 seconds - I hope this changes.

Now back to the options of getting video taken on your mobile into Flickr ...

Nokia's Shareonline app and Shozu are'nt supporting the option of uploading video directly right now from the mobile to Flickr.

At least, I could'nt get either working and the file types of ShareOnline flickr configuration file don't support video formats yet (ovi does) and Shozu sent me an automated email saying can't upload video to flickr (file type not supported). No doubt they'll be a new version of both apps with this feature supported soon enough.

In the meantime you can email your videoclips to flickr as per images from your mobile (a bit fiddly), but the mobile flickr login page has been down all day(!) so I can't check whether uploading of video is supported via the mobile website yet.

Say it loud - QR codes get a voice

** Update ** it would seem at least one high profile retail outlet - Harrods is going to trial QR codes.

QR codes will soon be embedding audio directly (images supported too).

When you use your cameraphone/barcode scanner app to view the QR code, it will playback the audio snippet directly (in addition to supporting URL/text as per today). It's not clear how long the audio-snippet can be...

More mobile noise pollution (yikes)?

QR codes don't seem to be that popular here in Europe (yet) as the article states and this recent report suggests .

Related but slightly different concept here on audio barcodes as NTT docomo have called them.

Opera mini 4.1 beta video view

Looks like Opera have taken a leaf out of Apple's book in presenting new features of their Opera Mini 4.1 browser, heh ...

Having said that, the Opera mini solution solution did work for uploading the image and is another option for uploading/downloading content between the mobile and web, directly from within the end destination website.

Opera mini 4.1 download is here (PC) or visit mini.opera.com/beta from your current mobile browser.

MySpace mobile

Myspace mobile joins the growing list of companies adding mobile access.

There were workarounds in the past to get MySpace on your mobile (unless you were on Vodafone in the UK) such as vcellspace - now there's no need to.

The mobile web version has been in beta a while and now has been opened up to the public.

Many of the functionalities of the fixed web/desktop version are possible through this mobile web browser version.

Point your mobile browser towards: http://m.myspace.com (another one that's not using the .mobi domain suffix).

As some of the largest social networking sites Facebook, Bebo and MySpace all have dedicated mobile web versions ... as do the microblogging and feature based social networks; twitter, jaiku, pownce, radar, flickr, youtube etcetera.

The business social networks haven't missed out either linkedin, plaxo and xing also have mobile web versions ... next on the list to get mobile optimised versions I reckon will be the lifestreaming aggregator services such as friendfeed, profilactic, socialthing, readr, mugshot. and so on..mybloglog already has a mobile version.

As a final comment for this post I was looking back at previous blog posts on Yahoo potentially buying Bebo.

How the winds change with Yahoo and Microsoft currently battling it out (Microsoft also investing in Facebook), Yahoo acquiring MyBlogLog and AOL being Bebo's buyer.

iPhone SDK

Update ... the BBC iPhone iPlayer may have to take a backseat with a Lego app coming soon, can't wait ...


I don't think the Device OEM's are quite dead yet but amusing all the same ...

LinkedIn goes mobile

LinkedIn finally gets a mobile web version (including iPhone version).

I've been accessing the (fixed)website in the past through the mobile browser and as you would expect it was slow, clunky and pretty unuseable even on a 3.5G connection, zoomed out...but now there's a mobile optimised version - much better.

Point your mobile web browser to: http://m.linkedin.com/

More details from the official LinkedIn blog here.

Mobile Podcasting made easier

I've advocated over the last two years that one of the most simple to understand concepts of mobile phones is dialling a number and speaking.

There's no going online via a mobile web browser and fiddly URL's, no client to find and run (however good it is), just dial a number and speak.

Everyone gets this and the mobile phone user interface is highly optimised for this usecase - so why not use it more for creating and accessing mobile content ?

My few regular readers :) will know I think that voice is a ** vastly ** underutilised channel for mobile application and content mashups as alluded to in previous posts here, here and here.

So I liked this Voice to RSS service provided by BlogTalkRadio.
The output is an RSS feed of an mp3 enclosure of the podcast. The RSS feed is a uniqe URL based on your mobile number suffixed (thus I prefer not to link to the RSS feed here)...but you can see an example from Robert Scoble's blog post.

It's simple and quick - and there's no sign in (although I believe it's a feature for those that want it, that's coming soon). Similar to some of the services integrating mobile voice as notes, memos, blogs and tweets with companies like MySay/ReQall/Twitter/Utterz and SpinVox, this new service allows a very quick way of podcasting from the mobile.

Beware if you try it as the number to call is in the US, so might be a little pricey.

There are other ways to achieve podcasting from mobile, but as a quick and dirty comparison I uploaded a voice note from within the voice recorder app on my mobile to my public channel on Ovi for sharing.

It's not as simple as dialling a number and speaking your podcast. It's uploaded and stored as .wav file rather than mp3, also you have to have an Ovi account of course - whereas with BlogTalkRadio no account is needed. You can then listen to the uploaded voiceclip via RSS if you are subscribed to that channel in your RSS reader.

Will any of these types of mobile services including podcasting make it to the mass market? (although if you can download a podcast of the daily BBC news to your iPod - one might argue its already mainstream).
I listen to podcasts regualrly on the daily commute and this service makes it a lot easier to actually create a podcast from your mobile and then broadcast it on the web via RSS.

Running to stand still

Battery life in mobile 'smart' phones has not kept up with the functional technology advancements such as embedding more radios, GPS chips and larger screens within the device.

As a real life example using my phone at the weekend on a 2 hour long car journey using GPS and GMaps (Nokia maps currently charges a small fee for directions - which is fine but I thought I'd try the free alternative), downloading a 2 minute video from YouTube into the device, then playing it and listening to a couple of music tracks - took the battery from full to 2 bars remaining within this short period of time.

Fair enough, as it was pretty intensive and not a typical usecase, but arriving at my destination and locking the car, I overhead two teenagers nearby in an exchange.
"No you can't borrow my phone - I've only got 1 bar left, I'm almost outta juice - I need it". I wonder how that teenager had been using his mobile and when he had last charged it, (note: separate insight of how teenagers share their mobile phones).

I think there's a consumer perception that a mobile phone should last days with a single charge (including me) - this is a problem for smartphones that come under any kind of heavy use, especially when using streaming video, mp3 download, gaming, broadcast mobile TV and other device and network resource intensive features.

So a couple of announcements caught my eye recently:
Kinetic-based mobile phone movement:

... and movement based charging (this time from a knee brace).



PS.Currently I'm skeptical on the Nokia N96 and its' 950mAh battery announced at MWC last week ... until I can play with it in real life scenarios. The N95 battery issue was a big issue until a firmware update and the N958gb version (just about acceptable for me even with WiFi scanning and bluetooth off). The iPhone despite its media-centric stance/optimisation (eg.music/video) also suffers a little with quick draining battery under heavy usage in similar circumstances - I wonder how it will cope with a 3G radio as well.

Shozu gets an update

... to version 4.0 (I only checked the Symbian version) - out are the contacts back up and zucasts, in is a simpler interface with end-destinations configuration ... point your mobile browser to m.shozu.com

Second pillar of Ovi revealed - Share

**Update** - share online fixed to add Ovi as a service provider and according to the Ovi product manager at MWC - monthly upload limits may be relaxed in the near future.













The door to Nokia's Internet services opened a bit further this week with Share online (Nokia's twango acquisition) hitting the web, following on from the UK music store.

Ovi share is based around media sharing (privately or publicly) similar to Flickr for Photos and YouTube for video.

All the usual elements are there: private / public group sharing / widgets for republishing media / email and MMS upload / RSS feeds and social networking elements / media editing functions / developer api (although I didn't delve into this to see how advanced it is). There's a 100 different media file types for upload, covering all the main formats.

Strangely Nokia's share online app is **still** being updated to include Ovi Share (but the link on the homepage to install the new version, whilst working, did not add anything new (Flickr and Vox are still the only service providers)).

I got round this by adding an end destination Ovi channel as an email destination in Shozu so can post pics/vids directly to Ovi without Share online, but it's a bit annoying I have to use a 3rd party app to do this when Nokias own media uploading app doesn't!

...The web based editing (eg. rotate, size, brightness) and vizualisation (eg. slideshow) tools for images are very basic unlike Piknik integrated within Flickr Pro, but Flickr has been going a couple of years - so I'm sure we'll see an evolution with these embedded functions.

The monthly upload limit is disappointing as well, but presumably we'll see a pay-for-extra-upload-storage-and-features business model coming. Another slight peeve is when viewing slideshows or listening to audio clips uploaded into your channels, clicking on the media forces a new browser window open to view it /listent to it - in line listening or viewing is much better user experience.

Trawling through the forums about feature requests from users it looks like Nokia are aware of the need for deeper level integrations (Ovi Facebook apps are mentioned for example)to play nicely with other web platforms and media web sites, so the Ovi share team are going to be very busy over the next 12 months.

From the mobile standpoint it would have been nice to have deeper level integration there too, eg. being able to dial a number and leave audio snippets directly a-la-spinvox or utterz rather than attach an mp3 voiceclip to an email for upload, being able to send a text directly to Ovi.

Mobile access is straightforward enough through the mobile browser as you'd imagine via the mobile.twango.com URL with access to most of the functions within the main website. No dedicated client as yet.

... Ovi looks to be shaping into something pretty important for Nokia ... there is the danger of course that Ovi tries to do too much and become one all-encompassing black hole doing nothing particularly well, when compared to specialist sites (eg. flickr for photos, youTube for video, and the different Social networking sites) so we'll have to wait and see...

I'll continue to play with Ovi Share and will be looking out to see if Nokia manage to get cross-integration of the other pillars of Ovi (n-gage / music / maps ) or whether these will remain as silos as they launch. Where will MOSH sit I wonder?

Also I hope Nokia will adopt the partnering model with specific 3rd parties(such as Moo with Flickr). Right now though, from a photo standpoint, I won't be giving up the Flickr pro account just yet...

Two interesting announcements

** Update ** - of the reasons regarding why Nokia would buy Trolltech, VisionMobile has a detailed case saying why it's all linked to Ovi

Nokia to buy Trolltech QT...
QT is Trolltech's GUI libraries / framework.

How will Nokia incorporate this purchase, I wonder ? Here's hoping for a complete overhaul of the S60 menu-based ui(!)

Heavyweight Amazon to release DRM-free music mp3 downloads Internationally (after success in the US) with its music store.

From a mobile perspective this will be another option for consumers, alongside the existing ones from Operators (eg. OmniFone), Device OEMs (eg.Nokia's "Comes with music"/Music Store, Sony Ericsson's "Play Now" etc..), Apple iTunes and 3rd party (eg Last.FM,) subscription based services that can be accessed from the mobile for purchasing and playing music (streamed or downloaded).

I wonder if Amazon will produce a dedicted optimised mobile web front end or client to the music store ?

Moto-roll-over

As Motorola announces big losses, Nokia announce 40% Market share, despite lower US sales for the quarter.

Whilst I've never been a great fan of Moto's recent handsets (the keypads or the awful user interfaces in the past), I hope they can turn it round - competition is good between the big device OEMs.(And the North American market, where Nokia continues to struggle is perhaps a chance for them to capitalise upon).

Having played briefly with their new top end handsets the RokrE8 (interesting...) and Z10 (which I liked) - it seems at least, the message of needing to create some competitive high-end handsets got through...

Mobile Trends for 2008 by Vision Mobile

Interesting analysis from Andreas, particularly points 2,3 and 14.

| View | Upload your own

Welcome 2008

There was a flurry of mobile realted content and application news during December - much of which I did not get to post about, but already as CES kicks off in Jan 2008 with lots of mobile related news - it looks to be another hot year ahead for the mobile industry ... maybe this will be the year mobile data (web, widgets, video etc..) goes mainstream ...

I posted last year about Psiloc's GSync which works really well at backing up your SMS's from your mobile direct as emails to your GMail account. I use it regularly, to store messages I want to keep and refer to.

Treasure my Text is relaunching their service to include SMS backup/archiving and management online and a twitter-like broadcasting of texts to be shared with different groups (controlled by you), as well as your SMS's as an RSS feed and the ability to send texts from your PC based browser (similarly to Dashwire and Nokia's PC beta phone browser plugin).

I predicted last year we will increasingly see "LifeStreaming" services for mobile and for the twitter / jaiku afficianados, you can already receive and send tweets/jaikus via text/SMS. Similarly with Treasure my Text you can start a "text stream".
I need to review the beta a bit longer before highlighting the differences as well as the usecase of why you might want to expose public texts (certainly private text archiving is useful), so stay tuned, but so far I like it. (I'd like the option to be able to forward my texts from TreasureMyText dashboard to a 3rd party email site in addition as well such as GMail though).

Thanks to the excellent SMS Text for the link.

Yahoo Go are announcing the 3rd beta of their mobile app based around widgets.
I'm not a big fan of the Yahoo Go 2.0 J2ME client as an on-device-portal - it was painfully slow and closed to Yahoo's home-grown services - flickr and Yahoo mail fine but weather and stock information was easier for me to consume in other ways when mobile than wait for the client to initiate in phone memory and connect to download the latest info, that's not to mention the myriad of dedicated on-device client apps that do the same thing.

Perhaps I'll try it on other non-symbian devices as lots of people do seem to like it. It will be interesting to see how the new Yahoo solution now potentially including 3rd party widgets has evolved, purporting to be open and with a WDK/SDK for developers to create/port widgets quickly.

To round out this blog post, FlipSilent (turn your phone on its face to put in silent profile) - for S60 platform is here, (the first version is a little buggy so it might be worth waiting a day or two for the next release).

Finally this application is in the wild, after this simple-but-great idea was thought of years ago.

Random bits for last week

Dopplr have launched a very clean and functional mobile web version of the service aimed at travellers heading in the same direction.

You can share your travel plans privately or with a group and since travelling means being mobile, a mobile version was a practical necessity.

Point your mobile web browser to m.dopplr.com



Goojet another startup in the mobile widgets category launched last week at Le Web3 conference, along the lines of widsets and webwag. More details via BlogNation.

Friendster the social networking site goes mobile. What surprises me is that it has taken so long for them to go mobile - especially as Asia is one of the biggest user-bases of Friendster and users over there are more familiar with mobile access.
Point your mobile browser to http://www.friendstertogo.com and make sure you've enabled the Go Mobile widget in your account.

Nokia beta labs announced their channels application (for branded worldwide news feeds) and PC-to-phone (web interface for making calls, sending texts and managing contacts). The big N are launching the anticipated n-gage platform tomorrow in the UK for N81 users and 3rd party developer Samir has proto'd the flip-to-silent profile on the N95 using the accelerometer. I wondered when we'd see a version for the device.

..and last but not least Social.fm mobile and desktop music client review. I haven't had time to try it yet so was interested in reading this.
Get access to your music library on your PC (like Orb),access your friend's music collections, over 100,00 channels of digital radio and one click access to popular podcasts.

Note to Self: Remember Voice ?

Update: I see another startup Kwiry launched this week with text based reminders instead of voice.
_______________________________________________________

Ah, the killer apps of mobiles. As readers know I'm a fan of voice and text based mashup services on mobiles such as SpinVox's Spin-my-memo service.

There's a new entrant ReQall by QTech with its voice-to-text based tasks / notes and meetings reminders.

I think it's a slightly different proposition to Spinvox coming more from a "capture your thoughts/tasks on your mobile + reminder" angle rather than Spinvox's traditional voicemail-to-text offering (which they've expanded on, into memo/notes and Social Networking/Blogging).

After registering for the service, you call a number (UK:0800 692 8780) then either press 1 or say "add" to leave a voice memo, or "3" or say "recall" to recall a previoulsy left voice memo. So far, not a lot different from leaving yourself a voicemail on your operators network...however there's a few features that make the service a little more accessible.

Text and email notifications can be configured with reminder options. The SMS option sends you a text of the transcoded content of what you've said. Screenshots of email and texts are below.

There's RSS feeds for push updates you can consume in your blog reader and the obligatory iPhone version for access to the service on the web.

Calendar and search functions within the fixed web based interface are a useful addition so you can see when you've added notes and quickly find them.

Plus there's the visual-voicemail type web interface for accessing the list of tasks/memos and you can listen to the audio or read the text - you choose. Overall I liked the interface and it was all very easy to set up but there's no mobile web interface as yet.

Spinvox has more voice-to-end-destination options especially with blast and the social networking sites (jaiku, twitter, FB etc..I followed Symbian-Guru via Jaiku at the recent Nokia World event and noted he was using SpinVox to post his updates - I'm sure this was much easier than trying to Twit or Jaiku individual blog posts). Spinvox are also getting traction in the market having recently signed up with some of the major UK mobile operators.

Jott in the US also added the ability to voice record a events straight into Google Calendar (as well Amazon wishlist) from your mobile / landline.

Looks like voice on the mobile is not quite dead yet and as more of us outsource our memory to the cloud :) these types of service may become increasingly handy.

Nokia claim to get it - keynote 2007

"Experience can be improved". Photo credit.

Nokia acknowledge their user-interface / user-experience needs overhauling as they realise that whilst functionality is all well and good, usability / user experience are equally if not more important to attract more than the power user geeks.

Especially if they want consumers to start using services beyond voice and text.

Nokia seemed to have listened directly to this issue, acknowledged it and will attempt to address it through their strategy of becoming a services / internet company (and the accompanying integrated devices).

The announcement of Universal joining with Nokia for free annual music subscription, Avvenu buyout and Internet Radio apps were not as interesting to me in the keynote as the Ovi detail.

Besides the TIM announcement which makes the third operator alongside Telefonica and Vodafone to integrate Ovi the actual service itself seems more integrated than I first thought.

Like a cross between Dashwire (see here) + Widgets/RSS web feeds (a la Netvibes) + Social Networking (Contacts / Relationships) + 3rd party web services (not just Nokia's n-Gage and music offerings) with full mobile seamlessness based around context and wrapped up in a dashboard user experience.

Or as Nokias CEO puts it, a dashboard for your digital life that's personalised / localised and socialised.

Single sign on, one-synch backup, a fixed browser toolbar and desktop versions (all with the same ui) as well of course, the central mobile element rolled in (lets hope, unlike the UK Nokia music store that it works in Firefox and is more compelling than the PC desktop clients they've built to date).

Will Nokia get this right or will it take an Apple, a Google (via Android and/or their own ODP), a Yahoo or even one of the existing mobile On Device Portal vendors to show them how ?

We'll see.

I'm still waiting for my Ovi beta invite so cannot judge yet and as ever it will all be down to the execution.

Interesting announcements though all the same as the big N move to tie the web and mobile together, something I've been advocating for a while and is inevitable, isn't it - what do you think ?

Mobile Mapping updates

There's been various announcements this week on mobile mapping. Google have released another update to their mobile google maps client to version 2.03.

If your phone doesn't have GPS in it, you can still locate yourself roughly using cell-tower triangulation using the new "Locate Me" option in the menu.

The blue dot on the picture is using GPS... I haven't tried it without yet, but you should see a light blue circle round the blue dot when not using GPS to indicate a wider area of your approximate location ... you can see a demo here.

Gypsii and Nokia have teamed up for social-based mobile mapping with user-generated content / media upload (video , photos and audio) that is geotagged and all the other usual social networking options. You can save your favourite places, view others stored places etc... and there is a geoblogging option too.

I think we'll see more of this type of geolocation stuff move into the mainstream next year.

The download mobile client is currently only available for Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 is allegedly coming soon.

...and finally you can text your location and a message to geosms to see what the worlds texting about.


It's similar concept to twitter vision (which I note has now integrated with Facebook too).

There are various other ways of getting tweets or jaikus with geo-location up to your favourite SN / microblogging site - from your mobile - eg. twibble which has improved loads through the various updates and has the ability to put the geo-coordinates into a text message using the phone's GPS so you can send location specific updates.

I wonder who will be first to integrate alerting into mobile location via presence ? Similar to IM/Email you can see who is online, same with mobile geolocation - alert me when one of my chosen contacts is within 5 mile radius. It's all a bit scary.

Google's ZXing

Another small mobile announcement by Google.

"ZXing (pronounced "zebra crossing") is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode reader library implemented in Java. Our goal is to support decoding of QR Codes, Data Matrix, and the UPC family of 1D barcodes. It will provide clients for J2ME, J2SE, and Android."

As Andreas Constantinou points out in his blog post this is hardly surprising - connecting the physical world via QR codes to mobiles is another mobile channel Google wants to fully exploit.

Driving more people to access the internet and ultimately ad-supported search and web content I would imagine, aligns to their mobile strategy.

Nokia have been pushing QR and barcodes for a long time and most of the nseries and eseries now include a native scanner/reader application.
I've been using them for a while (kaywa being the first on I tried that was 3rd party), way more convenient than typing in URL's on a phone keypad.

I suspect we will start seeing them much more frequently over the next 2-3 years in Europe as cosumers realise what they are - they seem to be commonplace in Asia.
Interestingly I've started seeing them on snail-mail post and on medicine bottles too, so some companies are beginning to adopt them for tracking /promotion etc...