Universal Convergence

Testing Net Speeds

August 19, 2006

One of the things that is frustrating about trying to find a good site for testing Broadband speeds is that they are mostly US centric.

I’ve just stumbled onto Speedtest.net that has links to international servers including one in Sydney. This helps greatly in tracking down if there are issues with international pipes.

speedtest.net

Well my Blog is going through yet another change with MSN Spaces being renamed to Live Spaces. Great to see the guys do some other enhancements too as the upgrade has some new features (oh look weather in Sydney today is…), including a new look, so drop out of your black and white feed world and come take a quick peek.

With the change comes another URL for Shane’s Place, which is now here,

http://shanewilliamson.spaces.live.com

and news RSS feed is here,

http://shanewilliamson.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Mobile TV in Italy

July 25, 2006

3 Italia is definitely a thought leader in the mobile media space, just check out their front page http://www.tre.it/ and you would be mistaken for thinking they were a media company…..oh they are calling themselves that!

MocoNews has a piece on how well they are doing with their DVB-H Mobile TV deployment. In the first few weeks of their offering they have attracted over 110k users! Using the right technologies and content to deploy Mobile TV services is paramount.

Technorati Tags – mobile tv – dvb-h – mobile media

Global mobile sales and market share statistics

July 24, 2006

Mobile Analyst Watch has some data & commentary on the Strategy Analytics recent press release regarding global sales and market share of mobile devices.

I’ve charted some of the data so you can see it clearer, but overall sales from device manufacturers relative to each other have remained the same over the 1 year period even though the volume has increased 20%.

The interesting numbers are the global market share and how it fluctuated over the same period for everyone other than Motorola which looks like if it continues this growth will overtake Nokia as the leading manufacturer in early 2007.

It is my belief though that Nokia will still retain their lead, albeit with a greatly reduced margin, due to their vastly improved 3G converged devices. This heightened innovation battle between Motorola and Nokia will just benefit consumers further over the next couple of years.

Technorati Tags – mobile marketshare – motorola – nokia – mobile devices – mobile

Birthday present suggestion #2

July 21, 2006

GeekStuff4U has the ultimate USB thingamajig for bored Dr Evil wannabes. The Self Destruct Button! (explosive CPUs sold separately)

Technorati Tags – big boys toys – geek gifts

Buzzword for the day is “mobileputing”

July 21, 2006

Saw this buzzword for the first time today. Cool!

Unfortunately the rest of the article abuses the English language even further.

From News Tiva

Technorati Tags – 3g – mobile computing

Carriers thinking the wrong way with Instant Messaging on mobiles

July 20, 2006

Carriers need to learn that Instant Messaging on mobiles is not the killer app they are blindly searching for.

The key aspect of Instant Messaging that they should be focusing on is presence. Presence servers can be utilised to engage in many different user interactions. Some examples are where users can see if their friends are ready to play games, or begin a chat, co-workers can see if you are in a meeting or at a client’s site.

The ability for the network to accurately give presence information enables a completely new aspect to mobile communications. Further more, if this system is developed with a programming interface that enables other carrier services & 3rd party companies to utilise it, the Presence user experience will be seamless

Moconews has this link to an article on the International Herald Tribune site that talks about IM on mobiles and has comments from Gartner and Frost & Sullivan. Gartner gets it right that carriers need to work with existing IM communities and not try and build their own, but both companies loose the key focus that should be on deployment of Presence capability.

So, hopefully we shall all hear the end of "Hi are you busy right now?"

Technorati Tags – 3g – instant messaging – presence server – mobile applications – mobile im

Nokia WiMAx whitepaper

July 20, 2006

Nokia has released a white-paper on "Making the case for WiMAX". They state that this is a great alternative to those unable to acquire a 3G license, but then later explain that rolling out WiMAX licenced spectrum is crucial to remove issues around interference.

There is further discussion regarding the two WiMAX standards and that collaboration is the only way forward for WiMAX. This very issue could destroy the ground made with this technology if competing factions don’t agree on where the technology is heading.

WiMAX has an important part to play in future convergence wireless plays. Customers should benefit from the strengths of both 3G and WiMAX within the same device.

The white-paper is available here (you must register your details to get access)

Technorati Tags – 3g – mobile broadband – wireless – wimax – nokia – convergence

Birthday present suggestion #1

July 19, 2006

I4U has found one of the perfect gifts for my birthday…..

The Advanced Acrobatic Robot from the innovative guys at Hammacher Schlemmer.

Watch the amazing video demonstrating how smoothly this amazing gadget can move.

What a shame my wife doesn’t read my blog 😦

Technorati Tags – big boys toys – robots – geek gifts

Mobile Entertainment Growth Alliance of South Australia

July 18, 2006

I was invited to present at the first stage of the South Australian Mobile Entertainment Growth Alliance (mEga|SA) incubator workshop last Friday & Saturday. mEga|SA is a group of private sector, education and government organisations with aims to:

increase the size and capability of the mobile applications and content industry in SA
increase exports of mobile entertainment and application products from SA

The 2 day workshop was a precursor to a series of events leading up to participants pitching their ideas to a panel of industry experts. I was very impressed with the calibre of people that attended the workshop and some of the embryonic ideas being sounded out were very interesting. Of course, they made me sign a legal document that was comparable in weight and length to the Old Testament, so I am unable to disclose anything discussed or what we had for lunch.

Che Metcalfe of Kukan Studios was also presenting at the event, including doing a demo of their amazing miniNAV location based service portal. Kukan has developed into a major mobile content player both here in Australia and overseas and for this Che is to be highly commended.

The format of the workshop worked very well with a mixture of presentations and group activities around the current state of play of the Australian & international mobile content markets. The eclectic mixture of those that attended added to the rich interactions on both days.

I am very eager to see how these projects move into the final stages and hope to be able to see their completed products move forward to successful deployments.

The South Australian government and other members of the mEga|SA consortium are to be highly commended in their continued support of the mobile content industry and it is a shame that programmes such as this are not regularly performed on a national level.

Technorati Tags – 3g – mobile development – mobile content – australia