Molecularist

Eh, bien, oui, oui, na, j’adore les pommes de terre au lard. (an obscure line from an Ionesco play)

Link: Silicon Valley goes mobile / Up to 100 startups get into the game with wireless applications for cell phones.

[quote 1] For Sievers, establishing the startup in the Bay Area was a must. "It’s less about where the (cell phone) carrier is. It’s about where are the best people and capital and open ideas to drive fresh mobile ideas," co-founder and CEO Sievers said.

[quote 2] "We’ve basically created the technology structure for the Internet here. Now as fixed line and mobile Internet converge, you’re seeing the expertise in this region come to bear that you don’t see in other places like San Diego, Atlanta or Boston," said Stephen Burke, chief managing officer of mBuzzy, a ring tone and game provider in San Mateo.

Basically: OK, OK, I get the picture!

A great series of articles from the International Development Magazine on tech and developing nations.

For the last few months, I have been thinking a lot on how mobile phones could help developing nations. The article below was given to me by a friend, Pam, who works for a development agency. I also had a great chat with Ethan Zuckerman on some cool stuff he knows is going on in Africa (and I hope to pick up the conversation in the near future).

I grew up in Brasil, my school just across one of the largest shantytowns in Rio (Rocinha). I’ve seen this stuff up front and understand the business savvy that the mobile fits into so well. Yes, my mind is spinning with thoughts on all this.

Link: Developments – The International Development Magazine – Loose talk saves lives.

When you get a mobile phone it is almost like having a card to get out of poverty in a couple of years.” So says Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the micro-credit provider, Grameen Bank, and its hugely popular mobile phone offshoot in Bangladesh, Grameen Phone.

Other articles in the same issue:

• Only Connect – intro to issue 31
• Money talks – using mobiles for money transactions for those without banks
• Blogging Ethiopia Style

Yes, I just have to make a mobile-oriented comment here.

There are 2 billion GSM subscribers. The next billion will be added in the next few years. In a year or two the industry will start selling more than a billion phones a year. Oh, and most of these mobile billions won’t have a PC.

Don’t bother trying to impress me with the number of Internet users now. I’m too busy trying to help the next billion who will come via the phone. 🙂

Link: One Billion Internet Users (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) (tip from Johnston who got it via Coates).

Summary:
The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs.

Jakob (who of course only cares about usability) links to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends presentation, which also points out that mobile outstrips Internet – she gets it.

Wha? Must be my ‘US operators amuse me’ day. 😀

Link: Irony and Mobile Service Requirements | 12/25/2005 | mobile jones.

In the process of ordering an N90 with T-mobile service, I ran into a big problem.  I made the switch to mobile only telephony in 2002.  T-mobile won’t process my order for new service if I don’t have a landline?  The mobile industry provides tons of services to make it easy for me to cut the cord, and so, I do.  Now, I can’t get mobile service because I’m mobile only.  Doh!

Richard McManus (link below) has continued an earlier discussion on his blog as well. Some good links in the discussion.

Really, despite my original comment (that there should be a mobile-focused contributor), we shouldn’t separate mobile from the rest of the Web. I would very much prefer that mobile was part of the whole conversation, and not really separate.

Indeed, I was stirring the nest a bit, and know that the Web 2.0 Workgroup has occasionally written about mobile stuff. I just wanted to bring it up more, since I think the fusion of Web and mobile is where the greatest growth will be in the next few years.

Thanks, Richard.

Link: Read/WriteWeb: Intersection of Mobile and Web 2.0.

What other mobile blogs do people recommend? As I wrote recently on ZDNet, I think mobile is the next ‘revolution’ cab off the ranks in the Web industry. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be talking more now about how 2.0 technologies and mobile are intersecting – for example location and presence services that utilize things like RSS and social networking. What’s being built now in mobile that we in Web 2.0-land should be talking about more? Who’s blogging about it? Who’s building it?

Imagine how many billion more messages a day would be sent if Cingular (and Verizon and T-Mobile)* caught up with the rest of the world and stopped charging for incoming SMSs. This also, one would think, make it harder for alert or info services to really take off. And why charge different for international messages?

Link: Cingular text messaging for your cell phone- FAQs.

What is the pricing for Text Messaging?
All Cingular customers with Text Messaging-capable phones are pre-activated to send and receive messages at $0.10 per message with no monthly charge. Or, you can sign up for a more economical Text Messaging package.

What is the pricing for international text messaging?
It’s just $0.20 to send an international message. Sent messages are not pulled from your bucket of messages. International text messages received will either pull from your message bucket or be charged a normal per-message charge.

On the flip side, email to phone via the phone’s email address (based on the number) is pretty nifty. Now that’s something I can understand charging receipt for (an option?). But, really, it’s unfair to make users pay for something that they cannot control. At least they can choose to not answer a voice call. But an SMS? Imagine spamming someone in spite, racking up their SMS bills.

OK, so I’m not saying anything new here, but had to vent. Been doing some service analysis here today and it just bugs me when I have to figure in reluctant users. :-/

*When I was looking at Sprint, I couldn’t even tell if text massaging was included in basic plans, not how much it cost. Wow, I guess billions of messages a day still doesn’t trump voice calling. Bad, Sprint. No cookie.

With T-Mobile, it’s also not in the basic plan, but at least they make it easy to add and it’s prominently marketed in the service (T-zones) section. Eh, half-credit there.