Podcasted on MIS Financial Review site
July 30, 2007
I joined a distinguished group on a Podcast discussing the ins and outs of surfing the mobile web. Mark Jones of the Financial Review was our host and the discussion around social networks, mobile web sites, smart phones (and yeah the bloody iPhone got a mention too 🙂 ) was a lot of fun.
Joining me on the Podcast was…
- Bluepulse.com founder Ben Keighran
- Capgemini CTO Peter Evans-Greenwood,
- BRW technology editor Foad Fadaghi,
- Dow Jones Asia Pacific director of sales Mark Hollands
- and of course Mark Jones
Head over here to listen to the Podcast… http://www.misaustralia.com/multimedia/scoop.aspx
Posted by Shane Williamson
Joost exceeds 1 million viewers
July 28, 2007
Joost, a provider of peer-to-peer based streaming TV programming, announced recently that it has surpassed one million users. The free service is still in a public beta test, from which it is expected to emerge and launch officially later this year.
If you haven’t tried Joost, it’s highly worthwhile to do so and see how they have created a very informative user experience. It is an impressive start for advertising funded IPTV.
Posted by Shane Williamson
and you thought your mobile was for voice calls….
July 28, 2007
Mike Elgan over at Datamation has created an interesting list of 10 ways he uses his camera enabled mobile.
like…
- a handheld scanner
- screen capture utility
- photographic memory
- contact database enhancer
- automatic personal "city guide" creator
- string around your finger
- driving directions maker
- personal security device
- liability reducer
- morale booster
Now whilst I think Mike is stretching it a bit to get his list to 10, some of the ways other people are using their camera’s on their mobiles is a great example of how the device is being used in ways the manufacturer never orignally built the device for.
Posted by Shane Williamson
AIMIA launches new Mobile Industry Internships
July 19, 2007
AIMIA has just launched a new internship programme for the mobile industry in Australia. Currently aimed at Sydney based companies, the internship is the brainchild of Ms Dominique Lee at nineMSN.
The internship will provide fantastic experience in some of Australia’s greatest mobile content companies such as Hyro (www.hyro.com.au) , HWW (www.hww.com.au), Amethon (www.amethon.com) & Tigerspike (www.tigerspike.com.au).
I’m proud to see programmes such as this being launched as an initiative of the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group of which I’m a member.
If you are interested in participating get over to the AIMIA Mobile Internship site now and register!
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Mobile access to Google Calendar!
June 10, 2007
No idea on how long this little beauty has been out, but Google Calendar can now be accessed on your mobile! 
Thanks to Downloadsquad for the link.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Surface Computing – Time to throw away that mouse…
May 31, 2007
You wouldn’t want to be in the computer mouse production business right now with all the exciting new PC interfaces that are just around the corner.
Microsoft & Perceptivepixel are 2 companies that are leading the way in multi-touch surface computing and by the sound of things will be in some retail environs this year!
Thanks to Antony @ QMCodes for the link!
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Microsoft Xbox 360 support in Australia – WOW!
May 30, 2007
Looks like Microsoft has done some research on their console support service in Australia and implemented a very savvy support service for the Xbox 360 compared to the XBOX support of old.
Last week I started to get weird errors when trying to play my XBOX360 games and movie DVDs ("to play this disk put it in an xbox 360 console"). After doing a quick Google on the error messages I became aware it was a very well known issue with failing XBOX360 DVD drives. Luckily for me, my console was still under warranty, so I emailed support with a description of my problems with the troublesome 360 unit.
I received a standard issue response within a couple of hours that gave some general support checking of which I’d already done, and then stated if the problem was still apparent to call the hot-line to get the unit repaired. Calling the support line I quoted the issue number from the e-mail and straight away without any repetitious fanfare, they stated they would email me instructions on how to send the unit to the repair centre.
The email included a Postage Paid address (wow free postage!) so all I had to do was pack the unit up according to their instructions, take it to the post office. The email did state that I should expect the it to be returned within 10 days.
After only 3 days I received an email that my unit had been received, repaired and sent on it’s merry way back to me. I then received the unit the next day!
Not only did the warranty support exceed my expectations on all counts, they threw in a free month worth of Xbox Live to add to my existing subscription making me one very happy Microsoft customer.
Why isn’t all warranty support like this!
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Technorati Tags – 
xbox 360 – microsoft support
xbox 360 – microsoft supportManaging the Mobile Enterprise whitepaper
May 21, 2007
Motorola in conjunction with Palm have released a whitepaper titled "Managing the Mobile Enterprise – A guide for creating effective enterprise Wireless Strategies". Whilst this is a bit short in page length for a whitepaper (only 12 pages) it does give some basic guidelines that are necessary for IT management to write recommendations for building an efficient mobile workforce and managing it cost effectively.
An interesting statistic from Gartner in the Whitepaper claims that only 8% of the 30.3 million mobile professionals in the world today are e-mail enabled. Supposedly this will grow to 21% in this year. I find this percentage to be ridiculously low, but how Gartner measured this is unknown. The fact remains that mobile workers are in the Enterprise today and their numbers will only grow moving forward. IT infrastructures must be designed to accommodate and manage these new additions now versus later.
Whilst the whitepaper does go further to describe the other uses of mobile other than email and its related services, it is crucial that IT managers who are planning these systems understand the implementation of technologies such as 3G now herald in a two way communication regime with mobiles that make them information receptors just as much as information retrievers.
Therefore management must incorporate both the back-end services as well as the mobile device platform in their planning and infrastructure development.
Of the many projects I’ve worked on with mobile work force & sales force roll outs, the most successful have been those that have had a strong communication with the end users, including incorporating their feedback early in the development cycle. As the case with PC desktop deployments, without end user buy-in to the mobile systems being deployed, they will not be utilised to their full potential.
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Joost has just raised US$45m for their free Internet based streaming TV service. If you haven’t had the opportunity to try Joost yet then I highly recommend it as their user experience & content is exceptional.
Joost TV is about free IPTV with ads. Check out the short creative video in their "About Us" section that explains how they want to change the world.
Whilst Joost is not about you throwing away that clunky cable TV box just yet, they are creating a stir in the media industry where the old media companies are being forced to recognise Joost by denouncing their early initiative into their space. The fact that these corporations are commenting publicly, shows the disruptive aspect of Joost is working very nicely thank you very much. Though it won’t be too long before we see Joost is either sucked up by one of these corporations or becomes surrounded by a cluster of mini-me Joost wannabes backed by said companies.
I am very curious to see what Joost will do with mobile devices moving forward. Whilst their product is currently high bandwidth and needs a pretty modern PC to run the interface in all it’s full screen goodness, the product has an impressive amount of content and the community around it is growing very strongly. A mobile version of the Joost interface could happen sooner than later and if it did, would change the landscape of Mobile TV quite considerably. As Joost is an IPTV platform, their service is perfect for a land grab into the mobile realm.
Joost has just recently released their "Just for friends" edition of their product, so if you know someone who has access to it, then buddy up and get some Joost lovin!
Posted by Shane Williamson.
Universal Convergence 