News from Mobile World Congress

I haven’t had many chances to walk around the congress and… well, it’s almost over. So here are a few press releases that I thought were interesting:

DeviceAtlas is LIVE!

I joined dotMobi in June 2007. It’s been a big step for me, leaving M:Metrics has been a tough decision, but I felt like it was the right thing to do for me for a number of reasons.
The last 6 months have been incredibly busy and I can assure you I spent more nights up writing software than going out and have fun with friends.
Anyway I think it’s been worth, because today we are unvealing a new product called DeviceAtlas. It’s a version 1 software, but this is the result of re-starting from scratch with an idea in our minds, developed after the past experiences. We think it’s a leap forward and we are very excited about the companies and industry leaders that have decided to join us from day 1.

Take a look at it, play with it, and let us know what you think about it. dotMobi also set up a forum for this on dev.mobi.

M:Metrics adds China

I just read the news item that M:Metrics is now covering China too.

This sounds to me like a big announcement. China is always a difficult market to get in and everyone wants to know what’s going on over there.

Well done!

Spot the iPhone’s competition

How many iPhones will be present at Mobile World Congress this week?

Count with me or make your guesses. I think there will be PLENTY. Everyone wants to show off.

DeviceAtlas

Every year there 1 single event that every company in the mobile space wait for. New services are announced, hardware vendors easily announce 5 to 10 new devices each and journalists eagerly look for some groundbreaking news. It’s the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).

Well, we want to do the same and I think we are going to make it big. It’s going to be that kind of service that if you’re a developer and you’ve been pulling your hair because you can’t get something going for a mobile device, you will be very happy to get.
dotMobi has been keen on providing great tools for developers to make sure they would make their life easier. Well DeviceAtlas is no less!

Stay tuned because it’s coming and it’s running fast!

Can you guess the URL?

Picture taken by Greta is now published on Shmap

I think most people already know Shmap.

About a month ago Greta was contacted asked for permission to use one of images on their site. They found the image via Flickr.

Well, now it’s online, it’s a picture of a mosaic by the Twinings shop in London.

You can see the original picture on flickr.

Fantasy Internet economy

If you read the blog post on the official Google Blog entitled Yahoo! and the future of the Internet you might think Google is not so happy that Microsoft might buy Yahoo!.

Now I wonder… Should Google buy shares in Yahoo! to make sure nobody else takes it over? 😉

Yahoo! Mobile also local BETA

I took a look at the Beta version of the new mobile version of Yahoo!. I tested on an iPhone and I have to say that I really like the design and functionality. When you’re logged in with your account you get e-mails, your selected news and so on. Pretty good.

I searched for information about Dublin where I was at the moment of the test:

What i liked is that as soon as I specified my location (the default location was set to San Francisco, USA) it provided a number of links for local services. That was really good. I love movies, so I checked for the local cinemas to see if I should go watch any newly released movie:

Too bad that when checking for cinemas it “moved” my location to Dublin, Ohio!! I’ve never been to Ohio, but I’m sure Dublin must be a nice town, just not where I was.
It’s OK, it’s a Beta, you don’t expect everything to be perfect. I was positively surprised it recognized Dublin in Ireland in the first place, so I expected it to support any location.

I really look forward for the worldwide release of the new mobile site, looks very promising. The interface was clearly very optimized for the iPhone, using the style to show buttons on top of the page and so on. I’ll need to test on some other mobile device, maybe lower end.

Viral Marketing in mobile

Last week I received an e-mail from Michael of Mocondi that forwarded me an update about the status of their service. I can’t say I have known Michael for a long time, in fact I have never met him, but since the news is about mobile, it got me thinking.

The information is about their product called MeYou that, from what I understood, is a program in which you can buy mobile content and services and you can suggest the same contents to your friends in your network. When you suggest something or perform other actions you earn points. This is nothing new, of course. According to their numbers, their service is very successful especially in Italy (not a surprise, again, as Italians buy a lot of ringtones and contents in general).

What really got me thinking, was actually how they created the service. Reading from the website the service is available in Italy only to customers of 3 and Vodafone (I’m a TIM customer), users should download a Java application to get started. Users can browse a selection of contents available for their device and then can purchase. Billing happens via the operator.

The numbers that Mocondi reports are good, such as 1.6M recommendations sent and 24% subsequent purchases. What I just don’t understand is why you need the hassle of a Java application. It’s hard to download and sometimes will fail to install. You use it to browse and send messages to your network of friends. I suppose you will also be able to manage your network.
When I think about this application, I think the browser would be the perfect fit. Browsing is just what it’s made for, for a start! Managing your network is something you could do via specific pages. Messaging… Well, you have SMS and MMS and if Mocondi already has agreements with mobile operators I do not see problems delivering messages and tracking users. Settings should already be in place so no problems installing the application or downloading the catalogs. Also, I suppose that users will not get notifications if they do not start the application while with SMS and MMS you get them in any case and the browser can be started automatically (read wappush).

I really think that mobile devices are the perfect target for viral marketing and I like the idea. I just think that the browser would have been a better choice. Do you read me Mocondi? Check out Refresh Mobile or Flirtomatic and how they left the Java platform for the browser. There are things that are better in Java (games, etc) and other things that are better in a browser.