Dipchand Nishar, Google: "We've made a significant investment in mobile search technology"

Until very recently, mobile browsers did not support Ajax, but we have started seeing some new Ajax browsers coming out. I think some of the high-end phones will start supporting Ajax in the next six months and then, anywhere between the next six to twenty-four months, a lot of phones will start having it. We are very excited by that opportunity because now, all of a sudden, you can provide many more value-added services for the users and the experience becomes a lot richer.

Nokia's N93 PR team and the Zurich Film Festival join for the Mobile Movie Award.

If you want to upload your mobile-made 24 seconds movie, you have to hurry up. The gates close on September 22.

Mobile Podcasting. Obvious that this would arrive one day. I only ask myself, if I would want to transmit such large files over GPRS. Without a flat rate, this can mean quite a big sum of money.

Wouldn't a simple mobile blog with short audio intros (100KB), without downloading 30 to 40 minute podcasts right away, be more useful? And why not use QR Codes, like in QR Clip?

Anyways, I am interested to know more about the adoption of the project.

See also:
Podcasting, Mobcasting, PSPcasting, Streamcasting... and no convincing definitions yet
The BBC is bypassing the telcos. Next step: mobcasting...

You can also type it;)
http://mobile.bahn.de

Deutsche Bahn, similarly to SBB in Switzerland, offers you the possibility to immediately buy a mobile ticket. The ticket is then sent via MMS to your phone. I read they use QR Codes, but it looks more like an Aztec Code. See a description of the service in german in the PDF.

That we have SMS and Email and the Japanese have Sky and Long Mail is probably more than a coincidence. But then we have the Blackberry phenomena and now Nokia's push email solution? But maybe the latter two only work because they are used for business related stuff.

The Light-touch Japanese Experience

Japan has never had SMS, as DoCoMo was intelligent enough to see the similarity between email and shorter text messages early on. However, it does have a seperate type of e-mail it seems, which blurs the line a bit. Most Japanese will have two email addresses. One for their computer (i.e. gmail or hotmail) and one for their phone, and frequently they don't check the computer one often. My pre-paid phone has two options when you send a mail "sky mail" and "long mail". The first is similar to SMS. It has a 128 character limit and can include smileys. I think it is cheap or free to send these short messages to other japan mobile addresses. This is what most friends use to chat, gossip and meet up. This only works for other japanese mobile phones I think. There is also the option of long mail, where you plug in a normal e-mail address and have the full length options. This is more expensive, but not prohibitvely so.

Telephia 3G UK Report, Q2 2006 (PDF)

Twenty-seven percent of U.K. 3G mobile subscribers download full track music on their mobile phones. The latest research from Telephia’s Q2 2006 3G U.K. Report shows that full track music download penetration is more than 11 percentage points higher among 3G subscribers, as compared to non-3G subscribers at 16 percent. On average, 3G subscribers in the U.K. download 4.1 music tracks per month and spend an average of 8.3 hours per month listening to full track music on their mobile phones. The study shows many 3G subscribers prefer to use their PC for storage and transfer of music to their mobile phone, revealing that the PC remains an essential part of the music experience.

Method for Downloading Full Track Music to Mobile Phones (U.K.)

Download Method	3G Subscribers	Non-3G Subscribers
From a computer, ripped from home music collection	44%	49%
From a computer, downloaded from a peer-to- peer site	19%	12%
From a computer, downloaded from a paid website	14%	14%
Over the air from an operator's site	10%	5%
Over the air from a non-operator's site	4%	11%

Source: Telephia 3G U.K. Report, Q2 2006

See Ajit's thoughts.

Via 3G Subscribers Download Average of 4 Music Tracks Per Month

I wrote about mobile manga earlier, now the article MANGA ON THE MOVE, Cellphone Comics Are Latest Commuter Pastime (May 30, 2006), offers some of the secrets of success:

Apart from the ever-increasing range of titles, two main factors appear to be behind the comics' success. One is their low prices of around ¥40 to ¥60 (40¢ to 60¢) per story, which makes them quite a bargain. The other is convenience. Readers can download only those comics that they want to read, as opposed to paying for a whole magazine with numerous comic strips in it. Not only that, but readers of electronic comics need not deal with the burden of carrying around bulky magazines.

When the comics were first offered, most were aimed at men, particularly office workers who commute on public transportation. But the number of female readers has since grown rapidly, now that reading from mobile phones is considered cool. In response, publishers are working on providing female-oriented comics for mobile-phone subscribers. This development may provide an additional boost to the market - from men who are fans of girls' comics but would be embarrassed to be seen buying such magazines in stores.

See also:
Quicktime Movie from 2005 about Mobile Manga
Quicktime Movie from 2004 about Mobile Manga

As we want to show several possibilities with the Kaywa Reader (in early softlaunch), we also point to a commercial SMS example (not related to Kaywa) in the Tryout Zone.

Now I downloaded it and it comes down to this:
CHF 3.- for the Real Tune
CHF 2.- for the download of 200 KB (as long as you don't have a flatrate)
CHF 5.- in total for a very short listining pleasure of 29 seconds.


You can find the QR Code for this Realtune (Crazy, Gnarls Barkley) below:

Dear Mobitype,

I am flattered to find my blog at http://mobile.mobitype.com/, but on the other hand, I would like to let you know that there is already a mobile version of this blog.

You can find it at: http://mobile.kaywa.com/mobile.

This mobile version has much more to offer than what you can find in the Atom feed. For example:

• a proper navigation
• categories
• an archive
• search over the whole mobile blog
• mobile comment possibility
• link to latest comments
• images rendered for every device, output only of the first image (the other images are links) for download speed
• blogroll
• proper link handling (external and internal)
• and so on...

And it's available in XHTML, WML and i-mode, scaled for every device.

So why not simply link to the real thing. Thanks.

See also: mobitype - what is going on ?


Btw: If you want to try it out now! There are free blogs (the internet version has google ads though) available at http://www.moblog.ch. Right now the registration is in german, but once you are through, you can go to Einstellungen > Blog and change it to english or french.
If you need any help, drop me an email [roger at kaywa dot com] or leave a comment.

Spinvox seems to offers what I am looking for since eternity. Already in 2003 I was talking to the guys of HP in Boston about that, but - at that time - they couldn't deliver what I was looking for: speech to text in natural environments.

If Spinvox can with the quality of a simple phone call, well that's really great. Congrats! Is this also possible with other languages than english?

By the way, Spinvox sounds quite familiar. Did they know about Svox (text-to-speech) or vice versa?

See also:
Russell about Spinvox
Mobile Crunch about Spinvox

PS: Sofar we at Kaywa with our partner can give you Phonecasting or Phoneblogging with a swiss phone number. You call a number and as you finish your voicemessage, it's blogged as an MP3 file and a Podcast. See an example here.
If needed we with our partner (not Svox) can also give you text to speech. So you can listen to your blog;)