Mobile Stew

I guess it had to happen sometime - I'm kind of surprised it's taken so long, given that it is estimated that up to 40% of premium mobile content is for adult services 'to go'.

3OOOH in Spain have just launched the first adult video chat service where customers can dial a premium number for a chat with 'Sexy Susie'.  Within the call both participants can see each other, although I'm sure there an option will soon be added for the caller to withhold their image.

More:  Moobile





The 3G Portal - 3G News, 3G Opinion and 3G Analysis

I passed by a Vodafone store today which had a poster advertising Sky TV packages for mobile phones from £5pm, which struck me as a very good deal if you wanted to watch Sky on the cheap.

Well, this may prove to a be a false economy as apparently you will need a TV licence to watch TV on your mobile in the UK or risk getting a £1000 fine and potentially imprisonment.

Most people already have a TV licence in the UK so this isn't a problem, but every year apparently 200,000 people are caught watching TV without a licence.

The much awaited and biggest of its kind,  3GSM World Congress 2006 has kicked off today. 3GSM 2006 is being held in Barcelona this year and is being attended by every major wireless, mobile, telecom related companies.

So, what to expect from this big event? There are plenty of new and interesting technologies, exciting services and hottest gadgets to make their debut.
Some of the themes talked about last year will surface as products this year, including HSDPA  mobile phones, dual-mode handsets supporting both GSM and Wi-Fi technologies, handsets capable of receiving broadcast TV signals. Mobile TV, MVNOs, mobile search and discovery and the road map to 4G will be some of the hottest themes at this event in Spanish metropolis, according to many industry experts.

READ MORE HERE

AdMob have launched a new Pay-Per-Click advertising service for mobile phones that hopes to replicate the success of internet services like Yahoo YPN, Google Adsense etc.

AdMob are partnering with mobile internet sites to create ads, that will be displayed via a number of unique technologies that they say will 'change the way you think about mobile advertising'

Lets hope so.

More:  Messaging Blues

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recently announced 'Mobile WebBest Practices'  through Mobile Web Initiative. This documentspecifies best practices for Web content when accessed from mobiledevices, with a primary goal is to improve the user experience of theWeb when accessed from mobile devices.

According to W3C, "Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0" condenses theexperience of many mobile Web stakeholders into practical advice oncreating content that will work well on mobile devices. Authors andother content producers will value the shared experience of how tocreate content that makes browsing convenient on mobile devices and toavoid known pitfalls on those devices (such as pop-ups andpage-scrolling).

This work is part of the W3C MobileWeb Initiative, which is supported by nineteen MWI Sponsors, including...

I decided to get some new ringtones to freshen up my phone and I was amazed by how much mobile companies charge for what are essentially 15-30 second clips, so I decided to make my own.  I've posted below how I did this if you want to make your own mp3 ringtones.

First off download and install Audacity and also download and extract Lame_enc.

Once you've done this open up Audacity.


Step 1: Go to 'File' then 'Open' and find and select your source mp3

Step 2:  Once the file is open listen to the mp3 and note on the waveform where the section is that you want to make into a ringtone

Step 3: Select the section you want to use by dragging your mouse over the section ...

Opera updated their mobile browser this week, and gave it a new brandname - Opera Mini.  I'm a big fan of the old Opera Mobile browser, that came bundled with my phone, but after reading Russell Beattie's write-up I can't wait to try out the new browser.

Browsing the web on mobile devices seems to have been neglected over the last couple of years, with networks developing walled garden services like Vodafone Live!, which in my view is stifling what people do with their phones.

I received an email earlier today from Text4Price asking me to check out their new SMS Price Comparison Service, which sends  price comparison results to mobile phones by SMS.  To use the service shoppers simply send an SMS with the word “find” plus the product name to 84070 e.g. "find WPN824". If the service can find a match an SMS is sent back with the lowest price found  If no match is found there is no charge, if a match is found the SMS costs 25p.

I received an email earlier today from Text4Price asking me to check out their new SMS Price Comparison Service, which sends  price comparison results to mobile phones by SMS.  To use the service shoppers simply send an SMS with the word “find” plus the product name to 84070 e.g. "find WPN824". If the service can find a match an SMS is sent back with the lowest price found  If no match is found there is no charge, if a match is found the SMS costs 25p.

The Guardian Technology Blog poses an interesting question today:  'Is Mobile TV the new MMS?'

Do you remember how exactly a year ago the mobile networks were touting Video Calling as the killer app for 3G, and exactly a year before that they were singing the praises of MMS?  It's amazing how these new killer apps that require handset upgrades seem to occur at the end of the year when the majority of handsets get sold....

I've never been a big user of MMS as I find the interface too fiddly, although I'm a big texter - I probably send around 400 a month.  As for vid