(c)Joia Shillingford

Making the news, not filtering it

SocialMedian, the news filtering and recommendation website founded by New York-based internet entrepreneur Jason Goldberg, has been acquired by German business networking site Xing.

Goldberg, founder of US jobs website Jobster, will move to Xing’s headquarters in Hamburg as a vice president of the business.

XING, which claims 6.5 million business users, plans to offer its members filtered news on topics that tie in with their interests or business needs.

“We want to offer our members the greatest value in their networks, and this includes having the relevant news at their fingertips,” said Lars Hinrichs, chief executive and founder of XING. “Now we have the technology necessary to do so.

“We're also excited to have someone like Jason working with us to develop the XING ecosystem of partnerships with leading companies around the world.”

SocialMedian sends out emails of the top stories on topics subscribers select. Recent topics have included the credit crunch and the US elections.

The emails can be received on mobile devices, such as the BlackBerry, or on PCs. Or users can interact directly with the site at www.socialmedian.com.

XING also has offices in Barcelona, Istanbul and Beijing. The deal was announced on December 19.

More on: http://blog.xing.com/category/english

(c)Joia Shillingford 2008


Driving without due care and attention

A clever piece of concept art at the Frieze Art Fair in London this month showed a wall of text messages.

In front of them, stood a Witness Appeal board for a fatal traffic accident between a lorry and a cyclist. A reminder not to text while driving.

Battery-free BlackBerry

A guest on CBS News on August 7 came up with the alarming (if true) suggestion that China’s intelligence service has the technology to switch on a BlackBerry when it is switched off, and to turn the microphone on. He advised visitors to remove the battery from their BlackBerry when it is not in use.

Voicemail-to-SMS company broadens focus

Spinvox, the UK business best known for converting mobile voicemail to texts, has hired speech expert Tony Robinson to head up its Advanced Speech Group.
Robinson and Phil Woodland, a consultant to Spinvox, worked together at Cambridge University on the Hidden Markov Model Toolkit (HTK), a way of solving two fundamental problems with speech recognition systems:
1/That they find it hard to recognise continuous speech
2/That they are speaker dependent, working best when trained to recognise the speech characteristics of a particular user.

Daniel Doulton, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Spinvox, says having Tony Robinson working for the business full time will mean it can further speed up its voice to text/email product. “He brings with him further breakthroughs,” said Doulton. “We will improve the system’s ability to self-learn and to ‘ask’ for help with converting certain words to text.”

The company is positioning itself as a wider speech recognition business and is thought to be a possible acquisition target for a larger player. Doulton expects the company to move into new areas of speech recognition, such as replacing some of those automated phone systems by late 2009. You know the ones that tell you to “press 1, if you want to buy a ticket…press 17 (or that's how it feels) if you have lost your baggage”. He says “the technology could be available sooner; it’s a question of getting the distribution arrangements in place.”

The company has recently broadened out from its main product by developing related products, including, most recently, two systems for Vodafone Spain launched in February.

These allow callers to Vodafone customers to press 1 to dictate a text message verbally if the person they are calling is not available and they don’t want to leave a voicemail. Another product allows Vodafone Spain customers to press 115 to dictate a text message verbally – from choice, rather than because the recipient isn’t answering.

The products are not exclusive to Vodafone Spain and Doulton expects Spinvox to sign up several more customers for them later this year.

Spinvox has also added a product that enables people to blog using voice-to-text conversion from a mobile or fixed line, or to update social networking sites like facebook or text-message based Twitter.

What´s new in mobiles?

Want a "life partner to hold"? To play the music you like and give you a "rousing climax"? To touch? This is what Samsung promised for its mobiles at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

But before you start wondering why your current mobile is underperforming in this area, the "life partner" is a phone that will help you blog or record the important aspects of your life in photos, thoughts, schedules and texts.

And that "rousing climax", that´s how music sounds when you listen to the Bang & Olufson improved sound quality on some of its mobiles, claims Samsung, the Taiwanese company.

"With 11 new phones, Samsung is also aiming to attack some of the lower tier markets, but the focus at the moment remains mid to high tier," says Richard Windsor, communications hardware analyst at brokers Nomura. "This makes sense as Motorola continues to languish, making it much easier for Samsung to reach its goal of 16% market share."

Samsung´s stainless steel flagship phone called Soul, has a 5 megapixel camera with stabiliser, fast data speeds, amplifier by B&O and is 12.9mm thin.
"It´s not only beautiful, it has the full range of functions," says Samsung´s Yong Ho Shin, who is clearly in love.

Judging by the amount of footfall on its stand, Nokia, the Finnish handset giant, also has a major hit on its hands with the N96, essentially a tiny computer that is the next step on from its existing N95. Its stand was the busiest of the handset makers on the first day of the show.

All four of Nokia´s new phones running the Symbian operating system "incorporate assisted-GPS powered navigation, imaging and music functions but only the N96 is optimised to do them all at an optimum level of performance," says Windsor.

But the overriding trend in new handsets was touch, touch and more touch. Or in mobile jargon: touchscreens. This trend shows just how much Apple´s touch-operated iPhone has influenced mobile phone design.

LG really emphasised ease of use at its press conference and in its products. Its top-of-the-range LG-KF700 has a choice of three different types of control: pictures you press or browse through with a finger; a dial at the side of the phone you can scroll with a thumb; or a keypad.

This gives the user real choice about how to operate the phone and in its shiny chrome-look casing, is right on trend. LG also demonstrated a prototype of a watch phone but was reluctant to give details on a release date.

And of course, its marketing features the word ´touch´ again as in "Smartly touchable, more usable." But despite the hype, life partners in the traditional sense do not yet come packaged into a phone.

Juan Manuel Soriano of OpenBox New Media (c)Joia Shillingford


Quotes of the Mobile World Congress

We see touchscreens as a growing trend in the mobile industry..”
Dr Skott Ahn, president and chief executive, Mobile Communications, LG Electronics, 1:30pm Monday 11 February, first day of the show.

“One of the next big things is the move to mobile broadband”
Pat Russo, chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, 12 noon, Tuesday 12 February, announcing an R&D joint venture with NEC of Japan on Long Term Evolution/4G technology.

“When it comes to market competition, we will cut each others’ throats nicely”
Hamid Akhavan, chief executive of T-Mobile, 6:30pm on Wednesday 13 February, stating that the the Next Generation Mobile Networks alliance on LTE standards won't remove competition.

“How was last night’s party?”
Unknown MWC visitor on his mobile, 11:25am, Thursday 14 February.

“I’m too tired for sex”
Juan Manuel Soriano, product manager of mobile games company OpenBox New Media, 6:30pm on Thursday 14 February, the last day of the show.

Mobile fest sees touch screens, faster broadband dominate

More than 55,000 visitors (including delegates and exhibitors) attended the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, according to its organisers the GSM Association. The three-day conference featured more than 230 chief executives and other high-level speakers.

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, filmmaker Robert Redford, Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, Black-Eyed-Peas´ singer will.i.am and actress Isabella Rossellini were among the speakers at the Congress.

Surprisingly, since it was three years since the Congress was last in Cannes, many visitors were still wistful about attending the show there, where it was on a smaller scale, with more ad hoc networking.

Sadly the Catalonian crime wave continued unabated, with many reports of thefts in downtown Barcelona. This was despite the police asking visitors to take off their show passes as they got on to the metro.

One O2 employee described the police as very well organised with an English to Spanish translator on hand to help victims of crime – he had his wallet stolen – to report the thefts. And a consultant trying to get on to the metro found that as he tried to board the train two girls already on it, blocked his path.

Meanwhile a thief on the platform reached for his wallet. He managed to fend him off but another delegate reported a colleague´s wallet being stolen on the metro from his front trouser pocket while he was with two co-workers. Not one of the three saw it happen.

Observing, analysing and reporting on the Congress were 2,700 international print, Web and broadcast media. This year the press office was sponsored by Huawei and it was well equipped for about the first time ever.

The Congress also hosted 1,300 exhibitors across 1,500 stands with approximately 29,000 square metres of exhibition space and 30,000 of square metres of hospitality space, reflecting the fact that people come to the show to schmooze as well as do deals and announce them.

This year, the mobile entertainment hall (Hall 7) was busy and buzzy, unlike last year when it was a lot quieter reflecting the fact that as more of the world´s mobile users get 3G (or 3G plus HSPA) for higher data speeds, content is really starting to take off.

Next Generation Mobile Networks
Key themes of the Congress were that touch screens have gained real momentum as established handset makers seek to keep up with Apple´s iPhone and that lots of companies are investing in LTE (Long Term Evolution) based technologies to provide the high-speed mobile broadband successor to 3G, though some will introduce Mobile Wi-Max (like faster Wi-Fi for cities) beforehand.

Alcatel-Lucent boss Patricia Russo co-announced an agreement to combine its LTE R&D efforts with those of NEC of Japan to come up with a common platform. The motive: to increase speed to market by pooling resources.

Further evidence that the pace of change is speeding up in the industry was evident at a meeting of industry alliance Next Generation Mobile Networks. Its members are major industry players determined to get LTE - essentially really fast mobile broadband of up to 100 megabits a second off the ground faster than the usual standards body process could.

T-Mobile´s pavilion at the show saw a top table including: Dr Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm; Hamid Akhavan, chief executive of T-Mobile and chair of the NGMN; Dr Horst Lennertz of E-Plus´ supervisory board; and the CTOs of Telstra and Ericsson among others all in one room for an hour.

“The record attendance figures at this year’s Congress reflect both the extraordinary and compelling conference programme, which covered a broad range of topics from Long-Term Evolution to made-for-mobile short films to the environment, and the high quality of the exhibition,” said John Hoffman, CEO of the GSMA’s conference division.

“We are also delighted by the seniority of the people that have traveled from all over the world to Barcelona for the Congress - more than 43% of conference attendees hold C-level (Chief Executive Office, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operations Officer or Chief Financial Officer) positions within their organisations.”

The event was sponsored by a number of companies, including LG and Telefonica. The EC´s Viviane Reding also caused a bit of a stir as she highlighted the need for lower data roaming charges, with a number of operators, including O2 and 3, announcing lower roaming charges ahead of any EC decision: 3 UK in the week before the show and 02 in January.

©Joia Shillingford 2007


Mobile speakers

A bluetooth speaker from Sony Ericsson's press launch at Scala in London's Kings Cross earlier this month. The speaker can play music stored on a Sony Ericsson phone without wires having to be attached.

It can't be that far away, though. Bluetooth devices linked to mobile phones usually need to be within a range of 10 metres. The Portable Bluetooth Speaker MBS-100 can play for five hours on a rechargeable battery and is available this quarter (Q4 2007).

©Joia Shillingford 2007


Bluetooth watch tells more than the time

Want to avoid playing with your mobile in meetings? Or feel it is too far down your bag to fish it out. Sony Ericsson customers can discreetly look at a Bluetooth watch to see who has called or if they have a new text message.

The watches look cool and slightly retro and cost around £500. But they don't deal with the fact that looking at your watch in company can also seem a bit rude. Executives will be perfecting those surreptitious glances.

Another feature it would be good to see in the future would be the caller ID of the text message sender as opposed to just notification of the fact that a new message has arrived.

Always-on mobiles

Motorola has filed a US patent for a solar-powered mobile that will be charged by light filtering through its display screen, according to the CIO website.

The sun will keep the mobile constantly powered up, without the need for a charger.

The same article mentions that Nokia has applied for a US patent to cover technology “to warn cell phone users of impending lightning strikes”.

More on:
http://www.cio.com/article/119108/Solar_Power_to_Fuel
_Cell_Phones

Sharing ideas on mobile use

Nokia, the mobile handset maker, and Vodafone, the mobile operator, have set up a website to help people and organisations share ideas on using mobile communications for social and environmental benefit.

The site is in the Wiki format so anyone can add information, such as advice, comment and case studies.

The site, www.shareideas.org, was created in response to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) calls for better tools and information to help them use mobile services more effectively in their work.

Intimacy of strangers takes off

A delightful 20-minute film showing real people on their mobiles
is getting an airing as one of Virgin Atlantic's June in-flight
entertainment choices.

If you like it, you can vote for it while airborne as it forms part
of the Virgin/NFTS short-film scheme.

Google eyes mobile YouTube

A very interesting post on the blog of Jason Goldberg (of online career networking site Jobster) shows where Google's video sharing site YouTube may be going next. See June 7 story headed You are who you hire.

More on: http://jobster.blogs.com/

Language learning on the go

Nokia has launched a service in China that delivers English lessons to mobile phone users.

Called Mobiledu, the service could be launched in other countries.

Downloads consist of text and audio and cost 26 cents. They are aimed at people who are working.

More on: www.wsj.com (subscription needed)

Call global, pay local says eqo

Eqo, a cheap way of making international calls from mobile phones, launched on Wednesday.

It works a bit like Skype, the system for making voice calls over the internet. But it is, if anything, easier and voice quality in the demonstration was good.

To get the eqo service, the user needs to log on to www.eqo.com, and enter their mobile number. They will receive a link. Clicking on the link automatically downloads the eqo software.

Once downloaded, the mobile phone user can call anyone else with the eqo service for cost of a local mobile call. If the recipient does not have eqo or is on a landline, the caller pays the cost of a local mobile call plus 1p or 2p a minute for calls to the US or Western Europe.

The local call charge goes to their existing mobile operator and the 1p or 2p goes to eqo and its service providers. Other call destinations, such as to India, are likely to cost a bit more (see eqo website).

The mobile user will need to be on a data tariff. Calls are cheap because they are transmitted over a nearby node on the internet and travel over the Net for most of their journey.

Motorola’s green base station ©Joia Shillingford 2007

Motorola goes off grid

Motorola said yesterday it has installed a wind and solar-energy base station in Namibia. The base station is located at African mobile operator MTC’s site at Dordabis village in the Khomas region.

“With the implementation of cell sites into more remote areas this Motorola solution provides us with an efficient and reliable alternative to the often costly roll-out of mains grid electricity,” said Albertus Aochamub, corporate services general manager, MTC Namibia.

"The wind and solar cell site trial is proof of our commitment to our customers to provide the essential communication services needed in the region."

In some parts of Africa, there can be long delays in getting connected to the electricity grid. However, as the Dordabis site is a trial, there is a possibility of re-connecting it to the mains if there are problems.

According to Motorola: "The main grid physical line has been left in place however on the 30th April the power source for driving the cellsite was switched over to the Motorola wind and solar solution. The wind and solar solution is the primary power source for the site for the period of the trial."

Motorola's wind and solar base station was displayed at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February (see picture above) and has the support of the GSM Association’s Development Fund. The stand next door at 3GSM was an Ericsson demo of how biofuels could be used to power base stations.

www.motorola.com/reach/windandsolartrial