Mobile High-tech along the ski tracks of Vasaloppet 2010

Mobile high-tech along the ski tracks of Vasaloppet. I wonder if the old king of Sweden, Gustav Vasa could have imagined that 490 years later, you can as a skier following live streaming on your mobile what is happening up front in the 90 km ski race on your mobile while you are skiing. But thanks to http://svtplay.se/t/107631/vasaloppet services you can in the year 2010, RFID and GPS services combined with video streaming makes this the high-tech race for sure. It was funny to see and hear a guy with starting number 8600 something to talk about the front skiers with Tynell in the lead becasue he watched it on his mobile phone.

I think this is just the beginning of what is to come, just wait until 4G LTE services are widely available.

Google Sweden is also celebrating the 86th Vasaloppet race by a special logo today.

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The MJ Launcher part2 - Transforming Your Mobile Experience see updated info in previous post

I just updated the MJ Launcher posting, see previous post http://tlidforss.blogspot.com/2009/10/mjetzappgif.html or go and check out, http://mjetz.com from your mobile phone browser.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select representation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

The MJ Launcher - Transforming your mobile experience (updated)

Here's a quick review of Mjetz or the MJ Launcher application.

The MJ Launcher is using patented active widget technology to smoothly blend browsing, RSS feeds and IM/email services in your mobile phone. MJ Launcher is presently only available as a J2ME app on your phone (works on 1B+ phones in the world though). But I think you have to imagine what can be done on new touch screen iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Symbian devices.

The major advantage of using the MJ Launcher is that you can get your own "UI" the way you want to have it based on your internet needs regardless of what the phone was delivered with.

The best way to test mjetz (today) is to use a J2ME enabled phone and download from the phone browser using http://mjetz.com

The site recognizes IP addresses and should propose a local version automatically. If not you can select by using e.g. http://mjetz.com/cn

Please also note that mjetz today is not what mjetz will and can become tomorrow. New local versions are being developed all the time regarding language and content.

If you register as a user and logon to mjetz from your computer, you can customize your phone from the computer in addition to the phone.

There is also an admin tool that can be provided for operators and content aggregators/distributors so you can customize content and configurations for your customers.

New versions in particular for touch screen phones are under development by mJetz such as an active widget Google Android version including plans for iPhone and Windows Phones. There are for this company and products investment opportunities for companies who are interested in this.

Please feel free to test and try services.


Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select representation and management of business partner and outsourcing services!

Make it Mobile with MMA guidelines - Mobile Marketing Association

Here's a little tidbit of information about where to find useful guidelines if you are getting into mobile services and do not know enough. MMA, the Mobile Markering Association has a number of useful guideline documents available for download as pdfs even if you are not a member of the MMA. See a select list below;

MMA Code of Conduct
http://www.mmaglobal.com/codeofconduct.pdf
MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines
http://www.mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdf
Mobile Advertising Overview
http://www.mmaglobal.com/mobileadoverview.pdf
Understanding Mobile Marketing:Technology & Reach
http://www.mmaglobal.com/MMAMobileMarketing102.pdf
Off Portal - An Introduction to the Market Opportunity
http://www.mmaglobal.com/offportal.pdf
Mobile Marketing Sweepstakes & Promotions Guide
http://www.mmaglobal.com/mobilepromotions.pdf
Mobile Search Use Cases
http://www.mmaglobal.com/mobilesearchintro.pdf
Introduction to Mobile Coupons
http://www.mmaglobal.com/mobilecoupons.pdf
Short Code Primer
http://www.mmaglobal.com/shortcodeprimer.pdf
W3C Mobile Web Best Practices
http://www.w3.org/TR/Mobile-bp/
W3C mobileOK Basic 1.0 Guidelines
http://www.w3c.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/
W3C mobileOK Checker
http://www.w3c.org/mobile

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of
outsourcing services!

Excitera Mobile Cup 2009 with Interesting Speakers & Award Ceremony #1

The first Excitera Mobile Cup 2009 event with award ceremony took place at Telenor HQ in Stockholm on Mar. 11. Hannes Dernehl and The Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship arranged the event. Five startups were also awarded for best new business concepts. Unfortunately, mutual NDA i signed by the companies and the organizer so I could not get that much out of the award ceremony.

Mikael Lindström from Mobilstart did a live demo and presentation of how to create a mobile application using Mobilstart's services. A simple shortcode SMS application and a shortcode application using POS command for positioning prompting. If you can live with the features supported, you can quickly develop a mobile application and get it working on all 4 Swedish mobile networks, Telenor, Telia, 3 and Tele2.

Joel Brosjö, Dubtools presented experiences from their MyQuran project. Dubtools is focusing on mobile publishing tools and he explained how they by pure coincidence came up with the idea of publishing citations from the holy book of quran and services for muslims and Jonas Vig, Bambuser presented his highly popular mobile video broadcasting service.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for select reprensentation and management of outsourcing services!

Green hat people - A Killer event maker to get people participation

I recently attended as a part of the ongoing Excitera Mobile Cup series in Sweden an event hosted by the Green hat People company. Green hat People does event sevices for mobile phones. Niklas Tyllström, the founder presented the company and organized us into competing groups of users for the event game. You can custom make your own trivia game related to whatever event you are doing or sponsoring as a part of, e.g. a tradeshow. Since we were all in the same office building, there were no location based trivia questions. The game console application monitors all the participants, time, answers and can award users.

I like this service, I think this can be perfectly used for all kinds of events, promotions, games, awards, award points, polls and so on. Head over to the website http://www.greenhatpeople.com/ to read more about them.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

MoYuMe - More of you and Me, mobile picture lifestream service

MoYuMe (More of You and Me) is a mobile picture lifestream style sharing service. A good friend of mine, Peter Sandberg launched this business. I ran into Peter at the SIME event in Stockholm earlier this week. I like the MoYuMe services, to see a live example, check out Peter's own photo lifestream on the Disruptive blog.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services' needs.

MobileFocus2008 - Get Flashy with Flash and new channels for rich mobile multi-media

”Flash in your mobile - channel for a rich multi-media massmarket” by Michael Berman Telenor/Mobilstart and Patrik Nilsson, Adobe

They presented launch of new Rich Internet Applications (RIA) applications and quick snapshot of the history, how we got here;

PS -> PDF -> Flash -> Air (flash/XML/HTML)

Adobe has created an Open Screen Project to promote Adobe Air among other tools (the Creative Suite, CS4 Master Collection is the "Gold" standard to go for). The open Screen Project includes most chip vendors, Verizon Wireless and SonyEricsson among other companies.

Mobilstart is heavily using Adobe applications and together Michael and Patrik showed a really good live demo of verious news (http://www.svd.se http://www.dn.se), weather and sports sites displayed on a mobile phone. Adobe is pushing hard to get away from todays environment where you have to develop mobile phone applications (very time consuming and expensive in the mobile phone developer environment today, with too many phones and too many OS environments). You should also not having to think like a computer user navigating between applications all the time.

Mobilstart by Telenor is offering gateway services for content providers that work with all mobile operators in Sweden, free to sign up and test drive.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 - Future of Mobile Applications according to Nokia

“The future of mobile applications” by Eric Hugo Ovi by Nokia

Eric gave a brief introduction of Ovi by Nokia, the software approach to the Nokia. He showed a professional video presentation that did not actually say very much about Ovi, more giving a quick history lesson (I do remember when Nokia used to sell winter tires for cars that all taxi liked during the winter season) and emotional connection to the future. It was very much like Obama - "Nokia, Yes We Can"

Eric used himself, a south african living in Sweden with family relatives in Italy and South Africa as an example of how international a mobile world has become. A funny little thing, while Eric let the video present itself, I clicked on the Nokia Ovi website and got error on home page, don't know if you so far only can access service in UK where it is being introduced.

Ovi by Nokia is the brand

Context is the differentiator for Ovi

• Maps on Ovi
• With social networking
• Open for all developers
• Files on Ovi for your web information
• Comes with music
• Share on Ovi

Ovi by Nokia is being introduced by Orange in UK.

• 130 pounds with pay as you go
• 40 pounds per month

I think this the correct approach but as they say "the devil is in the details". I think Nokia's positioning of Ovi and attempts to "open source" the Symbian environment will determine if this is going to be a success. Now when more and more mobile phone companies seem to give up on using Symbian, I have some doubts about Nokia's attempt to become the number one against Microsoft, Apple and Google. I think Nokia feels the "heat" though from the Apple iPhone success and recent Google G1 phones with Open Handset Alliance and Android not to ever forget Microsoft with big muscles. Nokia does really understand the consumer mobile phone and lifestyle market, so from that point of view, the odds look good.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Social networking goes mobile, here's comes the ink, INQ Mobile

“Social networking goes mobile” by Ashley Benigno, INQ Mobile and Hutchison, Mobile Futures Strategist

Ashley presented the new company INQ Mobile http://www.inqmobile.com/ sponsored by 3, http://www.three.co.uk/

They have a "INQ OS" kind of platform which is Qualcomm Brew based with a simple but efficient UI for the new INQ phones. Speed and simplicity of pre-integrated apps into the new device makes the use almost instant. They have followed the concept, press a button or one click and the service in question should work right away without delay.

The INQ phone is based on the previously developed SkypePhone S2. The phone has one click access to Facebook, MySpace, Skype and 3's portal.

"Internet communicators that anyone can use" is their slogan. I like this concept with a model for a "cheap" phone, easy one touch access to the most commonly used services. INQ mobile's approach is not to compete with smartphones which they consider too expensive for a big mass market but still provide "cheap" easy access to internet services.

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileFocus2008 event - Your daily newspaper goes mobile

”The Daily Newspaper goes mobile" - presented by Jan Helin, Aftonbladet, chief editor and publisher, http://www.aftonbladet.se

Jan started by presenting his views on use of mobile phones in Japan. Another interesting comment about the philosophy at Aftonbladet internet, use your gut feeling and decide to do something even if you are not quite sure it will be a big hit. This was the case for introducing scannable tags in the printed newspaper, the "beetagg" project.

Reflections from Japan;

• Simple media business model in Japan
• Too complex and expensive business model for content providers here in Sweden
• UI simplicity, press a button and the service works
• Low flat fee broadband

The "Beetagg project";

Introduce the use of tags for printed media used to get a direct connection with your readers. Importance of taking a strategic decision to go even if you don't know where you will end up

Results;

1. Worlds first paper with a moving image - use tag click on phone ad in paper and get a video on phone
2. Makes an paper article longer - see pictures from an event
3. Have a dialog with the readers - vote on a question
4. Service personalized to your needs - get the updated news for an item
5. Customer clubs and ad solutions - just started this part of the project

What is a "Beetagg"?

Beetagg from Connvision is used for coding, QR and Datamatrix not good enough quality (to use on daily newspaper paper quality), the reader can also as an open solution reader, read these other two open standards. Support is there for secure solutions also where you can verify that use user e.g. only can click once and participate in a survey or buy something.

Some user statistics after the introduction day:

• 45k clients downloaded of which 8k iPhone
• 100 - 1k clicks per tag

Sony, ICA, PhoneHouse leading commercial partners. All Swedes and Swedish companies on the directory website http://www.hitta.se have a tag

Connvision Sweden has a site for design of your own tags for web/blog, see http://www.beetagg.se/

UPDATE: Aftonbladet awarded "the Gold Mobile 2008 (Guldmobilen)" for this project.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/tagga/article3715093.ab

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International

MobileSorcery - Meet the sorcerers of mobile development tools

Mobile Sorcery is a Swedish startup company focusing on easily enabling making mobile phone applications for J2ME and Symbian environments even if you start out using your standard C/C++ library of software. Mobile Sorcery and the MoSync development tools have been used 100+ mobile devices. I have met with several of the guys behind Mobile Sorcery and I have seen that they live up to their promises. Mobile Sorcery as a company has roots from the mophun mobile game development areas.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startup business services needs.

TerraNet - Wireless P2P using your mobile phones

TerraNet is an interesting wireless P2P communications company developing solutions for e.g. mobile phone to mobile phone communications using ordinary phones without the need to use radio basestations. This is a concept that has been explored and developed for quite some time in the WiFi area. TerraNet is a Swedish startup in Lund in Southern Sweden. I like this area, I think there is a lot of potential here, Red Herring has recently listed TerraNet as a company on their watchlist. I do think Anders Carlius, the CEO should have a chat with (if he has not so far) Francis DaCosta, founder of Santa Clara based Mesh Dynamics, a pioneer in mesh networking for voice and video using multi-radio wifi hardware. I met Francis at an early stage of development but I have seen what you can do with smart radio software when it comes to QoS and throughput. TerraNet is I think working on something similar using regular cellular/mobile phone radio technology. Keep an eye on the this company.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your startups business services needs.

InView - Ippi an ancient greek mobile messenger

InView is a Swedish startup addressing the need for a convenient way to watch multi-media from mobile phones on a standard TV. This is made possible through the patented consumer interactive device called ippi(tm). Ippi works as a pre-paid mobile phone hooked up to your TV set with a remote control device. The stationary device has the SIM card, USB port, memory and microphone and docks with the remote control. This setup makes it possible for anybody to send an MMS message to you and just like you check for messages on a home voicemail, you check for message on your TV.

I like this concept, the only drawback is a lot of vacationer notice when they get back home after having sent MMS messages from their cameraphones and get the telephone bill, not good with todays pricing from mobile operators, that is something that has got to change. Within the European Union countries it is really crazy. Many countries in Europe are quite small so in many places you go through three or four countries in notime, thus making international MMS mobile phone messages.

As a fallback though, you can use the ippi box as a viewing connector to your mobile phone once you are home and view everything using the remote sitting back in your sofa.

InView as a company is a spinoff of Ericsson Business innovation. Contact Thomas Lidforss International for you business services needs.

Locify part 2 - Twitter from mobile phone with geo tagging

Here are some Locify twitter application pictures.

Start up Twitter on mobile phone






Update your status "I'm here"













Check Twitter update for yourself

Get Twitter update for friends




Check friends.

Locify - Great example of how location is adding value to applications

If you have not heard of Locify and you have a Java capable mobile phone you are missing something. Locify is a service that has location enabled services such as twitter, wikipedia, geo-caching, fireeagle. You can design a new service or "locify" an existing one. The service works with most ordinary Java capable browser equipped mobile phones. Is of course to you advantage to have the mobile phone with built-in GPS but it works without. Locify applications also synch with the web.

What all of this means is that you can walk around in a city and get to look up and explore interesting places on Wikipedia, save interesting places, track and map your way and twitter about all of it to your friends.

Locify works with external through Bluetooth connection GPS devices, server side GPS, the built in GPS and without GPS. See the mobile waypoint example allowing you to save your way.

Contact Thomas Lidforss International for your business services needs.

Ribbit - Mobile VoIP finally here?

There has been a lot of talk about Ribbit, "embed voice" in your web application company today with the announcement of an acquisition by BT. Ribbit is a startup company in Mountain View that has focused on building or enabling voice applications from any computing device using VoIP and Adobe Flash/Flex technologies. From a technology point of view, a key new trend with VoIP and Adobe is that allmost all devices have (or can have) the technology embedded thereby avoiding the giant hurdle of designing and getting new VoIP applications into a mobile phone. From a businss point of view, there are questions around the business model. Paying Ribbit to "go through" their softswitch gateways is together with the fact that paying in most countries for mobile data access using a mobile operators radio network is way too expensive.

It will be interesting to see though what BT will make out of this acquisition having bailed in and out of having their own mobile phone network. More to follow about this and future outlook for mobile phone operators.

TableFinder - A different twist to mobile location use and restaurants

Tablefinder provides a community approach to user for finding relevant restaurant information and a software solution for restaurants to participate allowing you as a consumer to book a table in a restaurant from your mobile phone. This service is gradually being rolled out now and is available for a number of restaurants in different places in Europe as well as in New York. Try it out, the service is in beta right now.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Do you want to zoom and pan your position on your mobile phone?

Idevio is a Gothenburg based startup company providing a presentaton and mapping engine, RaveGeo with very efficient compression routines. This makes it possible to provide smooth pan and zoom in real time to your mobile phone. Idevio client software is available for J2ME, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. Server side products and SDKs are also available.

Contact me at http://www.lidforss.com/contactus.aspx for help in analyzing your business needs.

Voolife - Multimedia Twitter in Swedish

This is my Voolife page. Voolife is like a Swedish Twitter. Voolife has a pretty clean interface and does access to Twitter and Jaiku. Voolife does have interesting features for mobile users such as support for pictures and videoclips as well as geo-tagging of your info. This is another service that specifically is thinking about and using location based info to provide something different than Twitter.