Dog, snow, trees
Originally uploaded by schickr.
08:58 Tuesday, 07 November, 2006 Image 196 I love to walk in these woods.
Dog, snow, trees
Dog, snow, trees
Originally uploaded by schickr.
08:58 Tuesday, 07 November, 2006 Image 195 I love to walk in these woods.
Icing on the lake
Icing on the lake
Originally uploaded by schickr.
15:41 Monday, 06 November, 2006 Image 194 Actually, it’s a bay off of the Baltic Sea – Keilaniemi, looking out of our Nokia House stairwell. But, the Baltic is almost like fresh water, that it freezes. We had a few days below zero, and the smaller bays were already getting a sheet of ice. The poor doofus who still had his boat in the water was apparently working on getting that boat to somewhere safer – after I took this pic, I saw that the motor was running.
Pan-European MVNO from l’il ol’ Finland – Blyk
So, here we have it – an MVNO centered around advertising (link below). We knew these free MVNO’s would pop up (it’s late and the name of that con-job free MVNO in the US that disintigrated like a two speeding ferraris in a head-on escapes me at the moment).
To me, what’s scary, is that I know a lot of these folks – at least from work. Yes, it’s practically a who’s who of media and mobile types from Finland (mostly ex-Nokia and ex-contrators of Nokia – it’s a small country, so that’s usually the case).
The CEO, Pekka Ala-Peitilä, ex-president of Nokia, and whom we used to call P.A.P., is an amazing guy and many of us were quite upset when he left Nokia. I bumped into him over the summer in a Helsinki airport lounge and, in a very un-Finnish way*, went up to him, said ‘hello’, made some chit-chat, and then, point-blank, asked him what he was up to.
He politely smiled, in his characteristic way, and said he had some things brewing.
Now I know.
But, what’s with the name?
Link: Blyk.
Time and time again it amazes me how fast people – be they young users, advertisers, partners, investors or new members of our team – understand the profound innovation of Blyk.
*yeah, so that was foollish. so what? but why should I treat him differently just
because he was so smart, rich, and was instrumental in transforming some boot and eletronics firm into a multi-billion euro
world-leader? heck, we’re practically peers.
yeah, right.
americans….
The Kaywa Reader – more barcodes to mobile sites connections
I don’t know how long they have been offering this, but the nice guys at Kaywa, providers of personal mobile sites, provide some nice pages to help folks download the 3G Vision 2D barcode reader.
Check it out here.
Alas, my phone is not supported, but I heard the reader is quick.
In any case, Kaywa is promoting the same thing that Winksite (and Microsoft) is pushing, making it easier for their mobile site users to use, offer, and create 2D barcodes. Indeed, I hope that the uptake of 2D barcodes speeds us as folks start promoting the reader and the content together.
So this is good.
CNN Money on: Mobile ESPN falls and a Helio rises
While we are on the subject of MVNOs, here’s a really good article on the ESPN failure and the strength of Helio (link below).
I think MVNOs are great, mostly for their ability to hit niches. I’ve even seen a premium MVNO (thanks, Mojo).
My dream is that setting up an MVNO would be as simple as setting up a Website. Go online, fill in a form, and, BANG, you are a service provider.
My thought is that school groups, university teams, churches, and such could promote their community, provide an affordable service to folks they know, and even get a cut of the profit.
The article below suggests that an MVNO can be profitable with few hundred thousand subscribers. Heck, I want it profitable with a few tens so that MVNO’s can sprout up as fast as blogs or weeds can.
What do you think?
Link: Mobile ESPN falls and a Helio rises – Oct. 18, 2006.
But ESPN’s foray into wireless services stumbled badly. Last month – just eight months after its launch – Disney pulled the plug. Countless post mortems in the weeks since have pronounced the nascent MVNO market dead.
A global MVNO?
Ever get fed up with high roaming costs? I don’t know about you, but I pay something like a euro to receive or make calls when roaming.
Well, here’s a really interesting MVNO that makes receiving call free (like normal, for us here in Europe) and making calls, for the most part, inexpensive. And the text message costs are not so bad either. No data though.
Now, all we need is a few more of these to drive the prices down more. I think this is a good start.
Go read about it. And let me know if you give it a try.
Link [thanks Peter]: Welcome To WorldSIM™ The Global Roaming SIM card.
WorldSIM is a Pay As You Go service that allows you to use your mobile phone when you are travelling abroad without incurring expensive roaming, calling, or texting charges.
Mobile Opportunity on: What if Palm made a smartphone and nobody cared?
A really good article on why Palm’s deal with Vodafone was a non-deal. And it’s not just a Europe vs. US thing. It’s really partly based on market competition. Read it for yourself.
It also has a nice aside on European mobile phone table etiquette. Very funny – check out the graphic. He has more funny comparisons in a follow-on article.
Link [thanks Franklin!]: Mobile Opportunity: What if Palm made a smartphone and nobody cared?.
These must be frustrating times for the people at Palm.
The company recently pre-announced that it’s creating a 3G Treo for sale through Vodafone later this year. This was a very important breakthrough for Palm. It has been trying for years to get broader distribution for its smartphones in Europe, without great success. Now the world’s largest mobile operator is embracing the company, and saying specifically that it’ll offer the new Treo in at least the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. That’s a huge increase in reach for Palm, and it should help to produce incremental sales for the company.
What was Wall Street reaction to the announcement? Nothing. No change at all in the company’s stock price.
Playing with the Gmail Java app
I was checking out the Gmail Java app on my N73 today. I use the WAP version of Gmail quite a bit and really like it.
The UI is pretty slick (reminiscent of the Gmaps Java app – did you make this one, too, Gummi?). One thing that bugs me with the WAP version is that it’s hard to traverse a single conversation. It’s doable, but multi-step. In the Java app, messages are organized, similar to the way it is done in the desktop browser. Really nice.
The app also uses nifty long key presses as quick commands. But, it doesn’t look like they are using the same key presses as in the WAP version. Hey, Google, harmonize the menu key presses as much as you can.
One interaction I kinda expected was a left-right navigation through messages. Eh, they didn’t implement it. It is something that the Java app could do that the WAP version can’t. So, like the WAP version, you need to dip into individual messages and then pop back up to the main menu to go to the next message (there isn’t even a menu item to do it from within the menu).
Another thing I noticed is that by default, the app downloads unread messages. It really speeds up interaction, but, of course, can potentially waste data (i.e. money, for some). You can turn it off, though. And it really doesn’t look like the app uses more data than the WAP version when you take this into account.
Hmm, might this be also helpful as an offline mode? But, it’s not far off from the Google Maps Java app I used which used gobs of data. I think Google is ignoring data price at the moment. And why not?
One more thing I want to bring up is that when you open a link in the email, it still seems to go through the Google transcoder. Geez.
The last thing I want to comment on is: why a Java app for a smartphone?
Carlo at MobHappy doesn’t see much use on a smartphone with a fuller-featured client (see link below). Yeah, you miss some of the integration into contacts and sending. But, based on my experience setting Gmail up on my phone, it was way easier to use the Java app (I had no luck with POP and Gmail and gave up a long time ago).
Gmail is just catering to the whole range of users – those with browsers, those with Java, and those with fuller-featured POP clients. But, also, it’s a continuum of experience, simpler in the browser and more integrated on the smartphone POP client. The Java app fits in that continuum and fits well, providing a richer, if still not integrated, mobile email experience.
Well done, Google.
Link: Google Drops Gmail Mobile App at MobHappy
But it’s doubtful this is intended to replace the relatively full-featured email clients on smartphones, or push email apps, or be the best solution for heavy mobile email users. However, for featurephones, this looks pretty slick.
