ITU's Digital Life just came out.


Image: ITU

Via Herald Sun's Mobile mania reigns from which I quote:

"As our identity becomes a commodity so does our privacy. And that's where we are entering a dangerous area, making privacy only available at a cost," she said.

Additional links, not tightly related:
Update: Understanding Mobile 2.0
Time For Wireless Carriers to 'Unlock' Customer Handsets
Russell about the same the unlocking of the mobile internet
Global Tech Insight 2006

Guess who said that:

We want to enter Africa, not through fixed-line Internet access but through mobile access. We think it would be easier if we worked with countries that work directly with these nations.

Here is the solution*:


Via Planet Mobile

* A simple text is encoded in this QR Code, so the whole resolution is done on the phone without any server connection.

PS: I will not comment the "how this is said".

The same blog rendered differently. Left: Original from Semapedia; right: Semapedia blog mobilized by Kaywa

From Semapedia blog: The Signs of our time

Or in clear words: We have changed our 2D code base to QR codes instead of Datamatrix codes so far. Of course, all Semapedia tags generated and distributed up to now STILL WORK and will always work. We consider experimenting with QR codes an interesting new approach because they offer several extended features than Datamatrix codes. Also, the adoption of QR codes with cellphone manufacturers and scanning software providers has increased dramatically in the past 6 months. Our goal is to connect the real and the virtual in a meaningful and beautiful way. Going with QR codes from here inherits the promise to have more people being able to use Semapedia Tags much faster than if they were based on the Datamatrix standard.

Directories Blog

Swisscom Directories Blog (Web Version)





Directories Mobile





PS: These Mobile Tags can be read with any phone with a preinstalled barcode reader like the Nokia N93 or the Motorola ROKR E6 as well as with most japanese phones. For phones which do not have a preinstalled reader you can download the Kaywa Reader here. See supported phones.

Russell Buckley writes in Mobile Myth Busting

The myth in this case is that it’s hard to input text into a mobile phone. It may well be for you (and it certainly is for me, though my fingers nearly fly over the qwerty keyboard on my Nokia E61). But to anyone who has actually grown up with a phone, that’s simply not the case.

I fully agree here with Russell, the digital natives or should we say the mobile natives are definitely much quicker typing than we are. However, Russell's conclusion:

So if you’re thinking about launching a mobile website, as an example, and you’re agonizing over a URL that’s “easy” to input on the mobile - really, don’t worry. It’s about as important as whether Santa gets gored to death by Rudolf this Christmas.

is quite a different cup of tea. Already in the comments, Riaz pointed out that it's a completely different thing to type an SMS (intrinsic motivation and you decide how long the message will be) then to type in an URL to get to a mobile site (the fact of typing in is a hurdle and out of your control).
On mobile you are also expecting to hopefully find something interesting as changing for something else is not desired.

So I cannot agree with Russell here, typing in URL's and being sure that they are mobile-compatible (for money but also for time reasons) is still one of the biggest hindrances regarding the take off of the mobile web.
There is a solution and it goes like this:

• QR Codes for easy retrieval of sites
• Mobilized sites, pages under 30-40KB (i-modes 10KB is a bit strict today) with the exception of 3gp videos.
• A label or .mobi or anything else that communicates clearly that a site is optimized for mobile devices.
• Portals or directories of mobile sites

Someone said recently (was it Jan?) that on the web we are looking for the gems in a vast amount of material, whereas on the mobile we are looking for the diamants in the gems. I think that pretty much sums up the difference.

I wrote about Food Traceability earlier in this german post. But the link and the excerpts below adds some additional information:

Food Safety and Traceability: Knowing what is on your Plate!

The Japanese government had to act to reassure Japanese consumers after BSE infected cattle was detected in Japan in 2001. The government set up the Food Safety Commission in April 2003 under direct supervision of the Prime Minister's cabinet. This Commission, together with the Ministries, is responsible for safeguarding Japan's food supply through a new system based on the principles of risk analysis, "Traceability".



This enables consumers to track the origin of the ingredients of and production all the way from the harvest (farm), manufacturer to the retailer of food and beverage products. The goal is to make food traceability for about 70 kinds of fresh and processed food by 2007 using RFID (radio frequency identification) tags or QR Codes attached to food packages to deliver information such as farmers names, dates of production, names of pesticides used, etc. to in store consumers.

If you want to sell your food products in Japan, you better start using QR Codes;)

• Print the QR Code on your product labels to provide more information in Japanese about your product. You can redirect consumers to your website, and give them more information about where and how your products were produced, recipes, food safety information, etc.
• Print the QR Code on your brochures, posters and even name card to direct consumers on where they can buy your products
• Print the QR Code on your advertisements.

Bruce sent me an email on Friday, pointing me to Jan Chipcase's wonderful post: QR Bar Code Meta Data.

As you can see on the photos, the pictures on the posters are composed of colored QR Codes. The only thing I can read on one of this posters is Manga to Keitai, meaning Comics and Mobile Phones. I could decipher the URL part of the QR Code as well; the text being in Japanese which is my phone can't read yet.
http://csb.shogakukan.co.jp/cp/csbc/?f=urusei

As the above URL seems only to work with japanese mobile phones, I recommend to visit the english site of Shogakukan as well as the german Wikipedia entry concerning the Shogakukan Manga Award.

Search for
Mobile Manga on this blog.

This week's Economist writes: Phones are the new cars in it's Leaders section, meaning that we should look what happened to cars to make a few predictions about the phones of the future.

Phones, like cars, are fashion items: people generally replace them long before they actually wear out.

I would add, phones like cars, are status symbols. In populations and areas where people can't afford cars, they will replace them with phones.

Phones are unquestionably the most personal, the most social and the most rapidly evolving technological devices on earth, and are likely to change as dramatically in the next decade, as they have in the previous one.

That's why Mobile 2.0 makes so much sense.

Swiss Army Knife or optimised device for a particular task

The phone of the future

In short, Bruce Sterling believes that the phone will be “the remote-control for life”.

as opposed to:

Already, the clear trend in phone design is towards ever greater diversity. The debate over whether the phone would emerge as the digital “Swiss Army Knife” and cram in as many features and functions as possible is over, says Bruno Giussani, the author of “Roam”, a book about the mobile industry. Instead, handset-makers now make different devices optimised for particular tasks such as music, photography or e-mail, and combinations thereof.

Personally I see the phone clearly as a Swiss Army Knife or as a remote-control for life than as a optimised device for a particular task. That's why the iPod, albeit one of the most interesting mobile devices today due to it's convergence model (bringing together a mobile device with the broadband pc) simplicity and design, will come under a lot of pressure, if it remains what it is.

That the Swiss Army Knife approach was too early in 2001 has a lot to do with the business smartphone angle here in Europe. Japan's mobile success showed that design, simplicity and usability are key elements in an early market. Once people understand the paradigm, you can start to add more sophistication.
Also instead of targeting sophisticated business users, you should add immediate value for everyone.

So I think we are right now at the antithesis point of the story being examplified by iPods, RAZR's and Chocolate's. But I am confident that the synthesis will come, as I don't see people carry around multiple devices on a daily basis. (Already now I see less iPod's in the streets than six months ago, but I still see mobile phones all over the place.)

Phones will remain different on the surface, something they already are as much as cars. But as with cars, the most widely used phones start resembling each other more and more - on a technical as well as on design level.

As the mobile now also enters an era where more and more people will start producing content and for the mobile web and for the classic web, the pressure to use standards and to be more standard-compliant will accrue.

It is significant in this regard that three major handset manufacturers - Nokia, Motorola, MS with Windows Mobile opted all for QR Codes instead of inventing their own proprietory format.