Associated Press Planning to “Revive The News” Through a Mobile News Network

Physical world hyperlinking

We need to think about how a user interacts with a mobile phone, their expectations when they take a photograph, what it means to be “in the world” physically while interacting in virtual space. People multitask when they use mobile phones, their attention spans are short and usually data rates are an issue. How do these affect all affect the experience of the user?

Going back to the physical word hyperlinking, if we stop for a moment and question the semiotics of such an act there is so much in this it could be a book in itself. In the 3rd year of my undergrad degree I did performance studies, and the most informative aspect of the whole year was a research project I did on the Semiotics of the Theatre Experience. I never thought such a project would be useful now, but it is – semiotics of space, breaking down of actor vs audience space could be related to breaking down of virtual vs physical space where the audience belongs to the physical world and the actors to the virtual….

※ DokoDare

Payment habits and trends in the changing e-landscape 2010+ via Bank of Finland

This publication seeks to summarise current development trends, user demands, cost and pricing issues, technology and business trends as well as official views on payment developments. It endeavours to identify the most important factors affecting future payment habits for the period post-2010.

Based on the analysis, technological developments will support completely integrated electronic payments processed in real time. The mobile phone seems likely to become an important device for initiation and acceptance of payments. The information conveyed as
part of a payment transaction will be extended to encompass all information necessary for further and later use (for example, ordering and invoicing data). However, the prevailing practice of widespread (cross-)subsidisation makes it hard for end-users to perceive the actual cost differences between alternative means of payment, thus delaying the adoption of more efficient payment habits. The current market structures also contain strong barriers to competition in the form of monopoly, oligopoly or service provider cooperation. Official measures by authorities to increase competition along the lines of modern policies for other network industries would speed up developments in payment services as well.

Related: Half way in;)
ZKB's mTAN: Mobile Transaction Number
SMS as security channel for banking
Two Factor Authentication with QR Codes

Recently Google announced their mobile internet ad formats for image banners. They differ slightly in comparison to the ones from the Mobile Advertising Guidelines (April 2008)

Image Banner Sizes Google versus MMA

	Google	MMA
X-Large	305x64	300x50
Large	215x34	216x36
Medium GOOG	192x53	---
Medium	167x30	168x28
Small MMA	---	120x20

What is the reason behind this? Are the MMA Guidelines not good enough? Powerplay?

Via Aecomo

Jason just sent me this: QR Code Engraving on an iPhone. I am curious what the QR Code encodes.

iPhone and QR Codes is a recurring meme on the web. There were some other posts where iPhone users asked for a preinstalled QR Code Reader and I think this would be a very smart move. iPhone and N95 users are early adopters, tech savvy, communicators and use the mobile web overproportionally. And Steve Jobs needs to reboost iPhone sales.

The Directories Telephone Books with QR Code



The 2008 edition of the Swiss Telephone Book comes with a QR Code pointing to the mobile version of the book. (I didn't yet make a scan, but this will follow). Here is the QR Code:



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EURO 2008 : ZVV is going QR Code



This June there will be a lot of football in Austria and Switzerland. In Zurich, ZVV, Zurich's integrated public-transport system, opted to use the QR Code:



We hopefully see a lot of international guests scanning it;)



See more at Adtagg.

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Printad LaLaOla in .ch

And last but not least, there is currently a print ad from Lalaola running in the newspaper punkt.ch, always with a QR Code too:

Just a link for me (have not read it yet). Jan's news however should be interesting enough, especially given the current context.

NYT: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

Nice news from the UK: Harrods embraces mobile barcodes

The Knightsbridge store is understood to be the first British retailer to run print ads featuring 'mobile barcodes', tiny squares showing black and white shapes which, when a mobile phone takes a picture of them, provide information to the phone via the web.

[...] The codes will feature in a series of ads in London and national media to publicise a new exhibition put on by Harrods called Design Icons, which features Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer, and the architect of the new St Pancras International station.

[...] At present only the most advanced phones, such as Nokia's 95, have pre-installed software which enables them to read the codes, but several providers offer 'code reading' software which can be downloaded onto other phones, and in the future more phones will have the capability 'out of the box', Nokia said.

[...] One group, which is backed by Nokia, the handset manufacturer, favours a particular type of format known as a 'QR code'. Another wants a rival standard, known as 'dot matrix', to be used.

I guess they meant Datamatrix instead of dot matrix;)

The Web Standards Project writes:

The W3C’s Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group have just announced a new suite of tests for mobile devices. In the spirit of the Acid tests, the test results are returned in an easily grokable visual manner—the green squares are desirable, the red squares mean a feature isn’t yet supported.

If your phone can read QR codes, give your fingers a rest and point your phonecam at this image:

See also:
Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers

Location-Based Mobile Social Networking: Hype or Reality? by ABI research

Up to now, the whole industry has been puzzled about why LBS services have seen very little success. People-tracking and friend-finder services have been met with high skepticism. Others have been desperately looking for other LBS killer applications – without success. But they do not need to search any longer: location-based mobile social networking will be the main consumer driver for LBS.

Enkin

"Enkin" introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices.

Update:
Local news is going the wrong way

Yet information aggregation still only dances around the real issue. People want to know what and who are around them right now.

The first service that really nails how we identify and surface the things that matter to us when and where we want to know about them is going to break ground in a way we’ve never seen before on the Internet.

We’re getting closer and closer to being able to connect the 4 W’s: Who, What, Where and When. But those things aren’t yet connecting to expose value to people.

I think a lot of people are still too focused on how to aggregate and present data to people. They expect people to do the work of knowing what they’re looking for, diving into a web page to find it and then consuming what they’ve worked to find.

There’s a better way. When services start mixing and syndicating useful data from the 4 W vectors then we’ll start seeing information come to people instead.

And there’s no doubt that big money will flow with it.

Dave Winer intuitively noted, “Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that’s good!”

I like that vision, but there’s more to it.

When someone connects the way information surfaces for people and the transactions that become possible as a result, a big new world is going to emerge.

※ DokoDare

Special report on mobility from the Economist:

Location, location, location

This is a huge advance, says Stephen Johnson, one of Nokia's strategists, because it adds the third element (“where”) required to understand a person's context, the other two being who and when. Most obviously, this means that “the idea of being lost will be unheard of”, he says. More interestingly, it allows people to become “more immersed in the real world around them”.

A world of witnesses

The second area where mobile technology is beginning to have a big impact is health care, especially in poor countries. In South Africa people can text their location to a number and get an instant reply with the nearest clinic testing for HIV.

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Younghee Jung: location based information kit

many location-based mobile services are subjected to play around the similar threshold of adoption, from service discovery to engagement to actual usage. often it is also about how to transform the linearity to an encompassing, opportunistic space: the physical sign board which broadcasts information at a set node vs. an information broadcast available in a larger area such as a park.

※ DokoDare