Mobile & Wireless Roundup - Innovation & Industry News

Nokia has announced beta release of its new mobile content sharing community called MOSH.

MOSH is a content sharing site where community members upload, distribute and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices. With MOSH, anything from applications like mobile games, to videos, blogs, songs or photos are now accessible and distributable on your mobile device.

The idea is simple, and combines the concepts of YouTube, Flickr, and File Sharing into a single mobile site. All the content is currently free, and anyone can upload any content items they wish, and share with the rest of the community.

As its made by Nokia, there is a Nokia Application that can be downloaded to Nokia devices to ease the process of uploading content items from a phone, though ive not been able to test this yet. There is also a PC based website that can be found at mosh.nokia.com which allows the users to download the content item throug, then transfer to their mobile device if they do not have a data plan, or to reduce their data tariff. The mobile site, mosh.nokia.mobi, is just a simplified version of the PC site, but still allows users to upload content items through the mobile browser (if supported).

There are thousands of great content items that can be already downloaded free of charge, but there is currently only 4500 users on the service. But as this is powered and promoted by Nokia, expect the community to rapidly grow in size. This will especially be the case if Nokia preload the software onto their devices before sale, which is highly likely. The downside to this product is that it is not device aware, it serves all content items to all phones, regardless if the device can support it or not. This will cause the user much frustration, as they may be spending a while searching for the “ideal” content item, only to be told it will not work on their device.

From http://mosh.nokia.com/help

DEVICE COMPATIBILITY

Does MOSH only work with Nokia devices?

While the service is optimized for use on Nokia devices, the service is compatible with all mobile handsets, provided they support the kind of content you are downloading and that you are able to access the Internet. Please note that Nokia does not test any compatibility issues.

Will all content work on all phones?

Most content will work on a large number of devices. However, there are always older devices and different capabilities, so MOSH leaves it to users to judge which content will work best on their device. Since there is such a wide variation of device capabilities for applications and games, however, we allow users to search MOSH for application or game content that is compatible for their specific mobile device to ensure that they are accessing content that will work. For more information, consult our special FAQ section devoted to applications and games.

This said, it is beta, so expect many more features, users, and resolution of compatibility issues. We may also see charges being brought into the site, allowing content producers to earn a revenue share from their content. The terms and conditions also state that there is no moderation of content, unless a content item has been reported as abuse or inappropriate.

Yesterday Access made the announcement that they have partnered with Bytemobile to provide a optimised web browsing experience.
Combing the use of Bytemobiles optimisation technologies on server side, the pages can now be delivered up to 4x faster.
So they have joined with Opera and Microsoft in providing such solutions that transcode or optimise using server based technologies.
I see this as being a major issue for the mobile industry. Developers will become reliant on these technologies and create 1 site for all.
Not the best approach since they are then not making full use of the 3rd screen. Mobile web should be treated as a totally seperate entity, and not even be considered on the same level as PC based sites.
As seen with Vodafone and Noverra, it has devastating consequences for existing made for mobile sites, as the transcoder tries to be “clever”, and the user then suffers poor user experience, and the site owner faces poor brand recognition (due to the optimisation algorithms) and perhaps not the same navigation as they had intended for the mobile version.

As seen with Vodafone, it can be switched off, but it relies on the user ignoring their instincts as the message states that the transcoded solution is best, so why would they want to change?
Would a similar solution be available for these browsers? Or is this the end for mobile innovation on the web? And moving back to a 1 for all solution. I hope not!

I’d like to hear your comments..

http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-mobile/articles/8853-access-bytemobile-partner-mobile-solutions.htm

It seems that it is now possible for “Made for mobile” sites to be whitelisted by Vodafones transcoding proxy to ensure that your content stays un-altered when delivering to Vodafone users. As the Novarra solution that they have implemented changes the User-Agent to a PC based one, and then performs the transcode.

Previous article: Vodafone Internet Is Now Mobile

To request a whitelist entry send an email to mobileinternet.whitelist@vodafone.com with the subject “Mobile Internet Whitelist” and contain details of the WAP site you wish to be whitelisted.

Reading a report in the Mobile Business Magazine, it seems that Vodafone are to offer Banking through their “Vodafone Internet On Your Mobile” as discussed in a previous blog .

 Al Russell, Head of Vodafone Internet On Your Mobile said: “With the launch of the Vodafone Internet On Your Mobile we want to give customers access to all the services they see as essential, in the palm of their hand.  Banking is one of the most important services that our customers use and by partnering with the Monilink network we can ensure that all of our customers are able to access their bank accounts on the move, whenever they wish.”

If Vodafone ate to be using their new transcoding solution to transcode the banking service, this will open a serious security flaw. Transcoding solutions need to be able to read the request, responses and content in order to perform the transcode. Stripping out the tags and unnesesary content items. As a result, the secure connection between the bank and the device is terminated at the transcoding proxy. This means, if the transcoder is compromised, all bank details can be obtained.
This will be a serious flaw in Vodafones strategy if true, and consequences will be following suit

I came across WidSets today and I immediately thought yet another mobile widget workspace allowing RSS feeds to be delivered to the mobile. However, I thought i’d give it a shot, and experiment with the new service.

After selecting my initial widgets I wanted on my mobile, I signed up and a link was sent to my device to download the Java Client pre-setup with my user details and widgets selected.

After allowing the client access to the internet, I was presented with all the widgets i had selected, and the option to download more from the client itself.

The navigation is intuitive, and works using a smooth horizontal scroll which can be accellerated through progressing to new content items. Its all very AJAX style. Opening up the widgets to view the content, is an impressive popup style interface, with all content pre-loaded so no waiting.

The accompanying website allows the user to create their own widgets using an online interface, and make them public to the rest of the community. Heres mine:

The website also shows you how much data you have used on your mobile phone using the service.

I feel that this service should be watched, as it provides a very attractive user interface for devices that do not support AJAX through their browser.

An interesting article was published by the Korea Herald discussing the reasons behind the poor take up of mobile internet browisng in Korea.

The main points raised are:

1. Manufacturers developing Internet phones for export market
2. Usability - 5 Clicks to reach search engine
3. Free web browsing using other devices (Wi-Fi, PC, laptop, etc.)

The author (Kim Yoon-mi) predicts that the usage of mobile internet will grow in conjunciton with the growth of 3G and HSDPA.

Via: Korea Herald

In my opinion, the reason that Google and mobile Internet has been “semi” successful in Europe is down to the transcoding abilities of the search engines of Yahoo and Google. Trimming down websites and images to fit to the users mobile device. I’m unaware of Naver’s ability to do this, and I would be interested to learn what mobile solution they do offer.
I do feel however, that the attitude to the mobile Internet is currently flawed. Mobile devices are currently seen as an extension to a PC, with fewer capabilities and so the content must be scaled and represented differently. This is W3C’s view. My view is that services for mobile devices should be designed away from the current PC concept, and a radical approach should be taken. Looking at what a mobile phone is used for, where it is used, and its limitations and enhancements over the PC environment.
Some examples include location aware, premium content, ability to integrate phone features (calls, SMS), and the main feature of portability.
In Japan, the success of QR codes has realized the importance of portability, and so allow users to access content and information regardless of their current location. A typical case study that I’ve seen the usage for QR is throughout museums or zoo’s where next to the exhibit, a QR code is placed to allow the customer to view interactive content through the mobile web, such as related videos or wallpaper download of the artists work.

Services such as videos do require a reasonable amount of bandwidth, and yes, with the onset of HSDPA, the usage of data is set to increase. However, many services now can be created using widget based technologies, supplying simple XML feeds to generate rich applications for mobile using the web. Bandwidth should then not be a cause for concern, as its a matter of kilobytes instead of megabytes.

So to conclude, full Internet browsing should not been approached as the way forward, indeed to some extent it will be needed to convert existing sites, but companied should be prepared to invest in targeting mobile if they wish to be successful on the 3rd screen, and in billions of peoples pockets wherever they are, whatever they happen to be engaged in.

I have just read a newly released document by Nokia and found that their Opensource browser found on their Series 60 DP 3 range has an interesting Javascript call.

The function getScreenSize allows the developer to check the display size on the mobile device

Example:

if(getScreenSize(240,320)){

//do mobile rendering

}

Should provide an excellent way of determining the device features when a unique user-agent is not available in the header

YouTube mobile has now become live it seems.

I have found the web address to be http://m.youtube.com

Initial impressions are poor. It seems that there is no device intelligence used, and it always delivers the same content to all devices (3GP). The web site is also not adaptive to optimise to the users screen dimensions, and so will cause issues for smalled screens, and become unreadable for larger screens.

Maybe this is just beta? I will watch this site with anticipation, as there is a huge potential here for the “Bored Now” mobile web users.

An article recently published by iSuppli has identified the growing need for content platform solutions.

A new report by research firm iSuppli said that as mobile phones
migrate from being simple communications devices to becoming computing
and music-playback platforms, consumer demand for content such as
music, video and applications is booming as well

Now this has always been the major focus in my industry, but many businesses have failed to realise the diversity of devices, and assumed that one content item will play on all, or one WAP site suits all.

The publicity of this report should highlight these issues to various companies looking to expand into the wireless industry, supplying a service to its customers that will always be available in their pocket.

The value of this industry is estimated to be at $4.2 billion in 2006 and is expected to rise to $7.1 billion by 2010.

Full article and review can be found here

http://www.telecomseurope.net/article.php?id_article=4044

Vodafone is now pushing their new mobile Internet service to the public in a radical way.

TV commercials are now being broadcast in the UK showing users that the Internet can be used wherever they are. Previously, the Internet on mobile has not gained many users. There are many reasons for this:

• Setup of WAP Gateways
• Limited Screen Size
• High Data Costs

Vodafone has realised that ARPU can seriously be increased through widespread adoption, and has attempted to resolve these issues with their new approach.

Previously, services such as WAP on mobiles were not pushed to the users, and many were unaware of the benefits of the service. But with the new TV ad, awareness should become more widespread.

Vodafone