Entries from March 1, 2007 - April 1, 2007

Staying Fit

Cool. Nokia's new Sports Tracker R&D effort helps Nokia users stay fit and track sporting activities! Would you use a bluetooth tethered GPS though? I’m an avid fan and user of BiM Active, and tried to make good use of it this winter despite some miserably cold and snowy days.

Posted on Thu, March 22, 2007 at 02:44PM by Registered CommenterJonathan Spinney in , | CommentsPost a Comment

Cisco's Webex, with Location?

One day after Tellme announced their sale to Microsoft, Cisco announced their own intention to acquire WebEx for 3.2 billion. Are the moves relevant to each other? You betcha. As networks evolve to support all-IP transport, voice, video, and Web applications will increasingly start to converge with each other as features of larger Internet-connected collaboration and communications applications. We already see this today with things like VoIP click-to-call from Web browsers, voice support from IM and email clients, etc. Will location be an added ingredient that provides geographic dimension and contextual computing processes to these blended communications applications? With their WLAN Location Appliance, Cisco could certainly start to bring that together.

Posted on Thu, March 15, 2007 at 12:48PM by Registered CommenterJonathan Spinney in | CommentsPost a Comment

Your Voice is Worth 800 Million

GigaOM has an interesting take on why TellMe may be worth 800 million - voice input additions to Local Mobile Search. Surely that's not the only use for this technology as Om points out, but...

The real reason will be Microsoft Mobile and non-PC devices where Tellme’s voice interface and back-end server technologies can come in quite handy.

“The leading edge battleground between us and Google in local search really will come on the phone,” Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told the WSJ back in May 2006.

That is the money quote.
I use TellMe regularly and while the deCarta maps and routes are fun to look at, I rarely use them and instead often choose the call option to get connected to nearby retailers.
Posted on Wed, March 14, 2007 at 11:06AM by Registered CommenterJonathan Spinney in , | CommentsPost a Comment

Handsets or Networks

Mobile Entertainment reports on some uneasiness rippling through the mobile community with regard to Nokia’s incursion into the mobile advertising space, citing carriers and their networks have a valuable ad-insertion role to play.

Operators are starting to play an essential role in being able to serve impressions to all customers and all handsets with the benefit of information such as the users’ location. Ultimately it is the age old question about who owns the customer and the inventory. Mobile advertising inventory will exist on both the handset (through the injection of ads within the device) and within the network (WAP gateway, SMSC, and Video and Music server advertising insertions) and both will need to be addressed.
I’m not so sure. With networks evolving to support all-IP transport, any content cross the non-wire and bypass a carrier’s infrastructure these days over IP. And with GPS in phones, location too can cross that same channel leading ultimately to a balance of power and control over it. The question with regards to ad content on mobile devices is who is in the position of power to scale to support new sources of content? Carriers, OEM's, other content aggregators? I don't think it's the former, but certainly could be a combination of the later two. Stay tuned...
Posted on Thu, March 8, 2007 at 12:24PM by Registered CommenterJonathan Spinney in , , | CommentsPost a Comment