My new credit card, my mobile.
October 17, 2006
NTT DoCoMo in Japan has over 860,000 mobile phones that have an IC chip embedded within them to allow their users to make credit card purchases in stores. Whilst the service has been running since April this year, the volume of users attracted to the service is quite impressive.
Using the Sony FeliCA system, new users are credited with around ten thousand yen (approx US$83) to use in over 60.000 payment terminals around the country. Users can extend their credit up to two hundred thousand Yen if they link to an existing credit card.
The interesting aspect of this service is the clever way NTT DoCoMo is diversifying into non-voice revenue streams.
The IC chip has many other uses as well as credit card payments such as,
- electronic money for shopping
- A transport e-ticket (eg trains & airlines)
- ID system for access into buildings
- ToruCa service for getting information or coupons sent to your phone (eg restaurant discounts or menus sent directly to phone).
- membership card for clubs, gyms or hotels
Japan has always been a leader in deploying these types of services, but then the Japanese have a unique mobile topology and society.
Technorati Tags – 3g – mobile – convergence – mobile credit card – DoCoMo
Why filming with mobiles is feeding the YouTube monster
October 13, 2006
8 million Americans may be filming with their mobiles, but Spaniards & Italians are outpacing them by a margin of 5 to 1. Research company Telephia has released statistics (PDF) that show video capturing with mobiles is becoming big business and gives even more ammunition to why Google purchased the online video community YouTube.
Spanish and Italian mobile video users are 15% & 14% of their overall populations respectively (US is only 3%). As the Europeans have had 3G networks longer than the Americans, their adoption of the richer media technologies around these networks is greater. We should see these statistics increase dramatically as 3G and faster networks expand worldwide.
Whilst the battle is on for online communities, in the end it is about richer media that members of these communities need to share with other members.
The future is looking very positive for sites like YouTube, as higher resolution capturing, online/on-device editing tools, faster mobile upload speeds, geo-tagging and on device media tagging become easier and more prevalent for users.
Pink For October – Breast cancer awareness month
October 12, 2006
Justifying monster monitors for business
October 12, 2006
For those of you that are desperate to get more screen real estate for your business computer system, you may want to accidentally leave a print out of this article on your manager’s desk.
The article details how a French consultant has the facts that prove that the larger the monitor the larger the productivity by the user. Of course the article states that there are people who actually disbelieve this!?!?!? The gret news uis that they argue 2 monitors are even better for productivity. So you can’t loose! 🙂
Now, how to sneak these important new facts under my wife’s nose……
UPDATE: Fixed link to article.
Youth driving non-voice mobile usage
October 11, 2006
YouGov has recently completed a survey called "The Mobile Life Youth Report" for The CarPhone Warehouse in the UK around youth (11-17 year olds) and mobiles. The report is designed as an education service for parents.
The report is quite comprehensive and outlines some interesting trends about the younger generations use of mobiles. Whilst the report is UK specific it has very relevant data for Australian and other markets.
For the generation of 11-17 year olds today, they have never known life without a mobile phone. Whilst the Internet is the most important technology in their lives, the mobile is nearly of equal importance coming in second place. This generation of mobile phone users spend more time using their mobile device for texting and other non-voice activities than any other generation.
"Young people today live in a world where almost three quarters of them own their own mobile phone by the age of 11. Many of them would not think of answering the land line at home, as “it might not be for me.”
Some other interesting statistics from the report…
- 51% of 10 year olds and 70% of 11 year olds own a mobile phone
- When choosing a mobile phone, the most important factor for teenage boys is functionality and for girls it is style
- Nokia (1), Motorola (2) and Samsung (3) are the most popular mobile phone brands amongst 11-17 year olds
- Owning a mobile phone makes 80% of young people feel safer when out and about, shopping, socialising or travelling to and from their school or college
Click here for a downloadable copy of the report
YouGov site
Carphone Warehouse site
Technorati Tags – mobile
Telstra’s network launch on fire!
October 6, 2006
This is just to funny to be true, during Telstra’s launch of their new HSDPA network today in Sydney, a sprinkler system activated drenching everyone.
Australian IT reports that stage lights were placed too close to a sprinkler sensor and the heat from the lights activated the system stopping the days presentations by senior Telstra staff.
Other news on the event…
Telstra launches Australia’s first HSDPA network today.
October 6, 2006
Telstra has launched Australia’s first HSDPA 3.5G network today with all the fanfare and hype we expected with their previous foray into the 3G race a couple of years ago when they partnered with rival "3".
The new 3.5G or "NextG" network as Telstra calls it will greatly improve download speeds from the average 200kb/s on standard 3G networks to over 1mb/s. From the Bigpond Wireless site (Telstra’s broadband ISP),
Enjoy even faster speeds
With Next G, now you can download files and entertainment even faster with average speeds of 550Kbps to 1.5Mbps and a peak network speed of 3.6 Mbps.
Telstra’s main site is now updated with information about the new NextG network and they have even setup an independant site called NextG with a very cool Flash user interface for educating customers to the benefits of the new network.
They are launching with an impressive array of devices (see attached picture):
* MOTOROLA RAZR MAXX V6
* SAMSUNG A501
* SAMSUNG A701
* LG TU500
* IMATE JASJAM
* TELSTRA F850
* BigPond Wireless Broadband Mobile Card
* SAMSUNG A501
* SAMSUNG A701
* LG TU500
* IMATE JASJAM
* TELSTRA F850
* BigPond Wireless Broadband Mobile Card
Local comparison of Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth
October 6, 2006
I noticed that Virtual Earth’s aerial photography has been recently updated for my local area, but unfortunately it is still out by at least 4 years. Comparing Google Earth’s view with Virtual Earth’s you can see in the included picture a local area I know very well that has added new developments in the last 4 years. Whilst Google Earth has better aerials, Virtual Earth has superior local data such as roads.
Live Local that is powered by Virtual Earth has some very accurate and relevant local data such as restaurants, which is very impressive. It is a shame that Google doesn’t know my local area as well as how it does the US.
Machines that watch and filter information for you.
October 5, 2006
Engadget has unearthed an interesting piece of research from Fimoculous.com that evolves a prototype of a service that creates a personalised virtual news service. The research is being done by the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University of Illinois and they have pieced together an encompassing service, currently called News @ 7, that plays into something I’m a strong advocate of, machines that watch for you.
What’s impressive is about News @ 7 is that they use the Half Life 2 engine to create a virtual news presenter and news rooms, which is a little like creating auto Machinima in a way. Unlike services such as the virtual reader that used to be on Ananova.com, this automated system gathers information from various sources on the web and puts it together for the user instead of by humans. They also get information from the Blogosphere and virtualise the feed from the blog to be read by a virtual representation of that Blogger (currently demoed by Half Life 2 characters).
There are 2 videos on the University site, one of a demonstration of what News @ 7 looks like and another of a report by ABC News.
Whilst the ABC news commentator Dan Harris, may mock the service in his closing remarks, the web has demonstrated a huge impact on existing media services as people are hungry to get information from multiple sources on a topic and the Blogosphere acts as natural aggregator and filter of this information. Media companies know this and are desperate to retain their old media ways by latching onto any new Internet technology that becomes a trend. A classic example of this is how some radio stations podcast existing radio content instead of supplementing their broadcasts with complimentary content.
The power of services like News @ 7 from a mobile perspective is that you will have systems that aggregate and filter to your personal choices, then deliver that information to you on whatever device you want to retrieve it from. This information will be in rich media versus just the text feeds we read now on mobiles.
Professor Chris Hammond states at the end of the ABC News interview that ""Information is supposed to be something that can be linked to your life".
I look forward to the not so distant future where as I drive home from work, my mobile reads and visually shows me my Blog feeds in a personalised form and then when I get home the service parades the new TV/web video content it has discovered and recorded for me so I watch what I want, when I want, where ever I want.
Double HSDPA dueling in Australia by Christmas
October 4, 2006
Vodafone has fired a shot across Telstra’s bow today with the announcement that they too are releasing their HSDPA network to the public this year, on October 20th. Speculation still abounds that Telstra will still beat them to the mark by launching their 3.5G 850Mhz network within the next 2 weeks, some even stating this Friday. The great news for users is that there will be two HSDPA networks to choose from for the stocking this Christmas.
Competition is a wonderful thing, but even with these two telcos thrashing their new mobile broadband networks in Australia, we will still be charged an arm and a leg for access as they price high to grab the early adopters and keep the networks from being overloaded too quickly with heavy data users.
Vodafone is only launching with one data card, but hinting at some Lenovo notebooks that may be in play too.
Debates over the actual data speeds other than those being marketed by the companies are heating up, but both networks will easily be able to achieve mobile data speeds of over 1mb/s and in my books that’s juicy mobile broadband goodness!
Universal Convergence 