Sharing mobile video content by uploading it to the web is a burgeoning user-gen media craze, perpetrated by services like Kyte which allow users to create their own personal TV channels. There have been some interesting manouveres in the secor recently. First up, you may have seen that Mywaves Inc has officially launched its mywaves SND2MBL video player, “the industry’s first free Web-to-mobile and mobile-to-Web video playerâ€. From the press release:
With mywaves’ SND2MBL capability, people can now send videos from a Web site or blog to a mobile phone anywhere in the world. The mywaves video player can also be instantaneously updated on any Web site or blog with video captured and sent from a mobile phone.
Users can download the mywaves software to their video phone (it’ll apparently run with 3G, EDGE and EV-DO carriers) and then embed the media player in their social networking site of choice, be it MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, Passado or Tag World. Now they can send video to their channel whenever they like from wherever they are in the world, or alternatively send video to someone else’s mobile.
Continue reading ‘mywaves adds to mobile video tsunami’
Just in case you haven’t seen this, a Channel 4 sponsored initiative named Big Art Mob is inviting prospective mobloggers to take photos of ‘Public Art’ on their mobiles then post them to the dedicated website where they form part of an online art gallery. The site, “aims to record for posterity the wealth of artworks in public places right across the country and serve as the focus of a dynamic national conversation.”
What is public art? Well, judging by what’s already on the site it can be anything from murals, sculpture and statues to road signs and graffiti. So if there’s a particularly amusing insult scrawled on the cubicle door in your local pub’s toilet, take a photo (best make sure there’s no one in there at the time - it could get nasty), and send it off to Big Art Mob as an MMS. You never know, it might be art.
You can post anonymously, set up your own moblog, or perhaps even start a group with other like-minded public art fans. Next month, the site is set to display entries on an interactive map so visitors can check up on art in their local area.
Online music provider Mercora has launched a new ’social music player and mobile radio service’ for 3G handsets. Succinctly named M v2, the subscription based system, designed for 3G-enabled smart phones to give users easy access to 100,000 digital radio channels, as well as allowing them to stream music from their PCs or a Mercora server with none of that pesky side-loading or synchronisation business.
The social part? M allows you to browse the music, playlists and listening history of up to five audio buddies, which could be very revealing. That mate who insists he’s always listening to Explosions in the Sky, is probably secretly gorging on Christina Aguilera (not literally). And now you’ll know. Of course, PC services like Yahoo Music Jukebox have offered this sort of thing for a while, but it’s much more convenient to snoop on other people’s music from your phone.
And of course, this wouldn’t be a streamable mobile media story without podcasts. “One-click access to constantly updated and popular podcasts from CNN, MLB, NCAA, NPR and other established news outlets provides M v2 users with continuous access to breaking news and information,” enthuses the press release.
You can download it from here. Just be careful what you listen to.
Published by Keith Stuart on April 17, 2007
in Uncategorized.
Want to know what James Blunt gets up to in his tour bus? Thought not, but soon those with a grimly voyeuristic bent will be able to check up on the singer songwriter as well as other artists via a new moblogging scheme being tested by record labels EMI and Warner. According to New Media Age and other other sources, bands are being given mobile phones loaded up with the ShoZu application which seeks to make sharing videos and photos from mobile devices much easier.
The likes of Funeral For a Friend (pictured) and The Aliens are onboard and will soon be able to hit Flickr, YouTube and no doubt other Web 2.0 favourites with their visual diaries. The idea perhaps is to find a more legitimate, personal way for bands to communicate with their fans - MySpace Music pages have become increasingly corporatised over the last year, with few artists taking any control over their pages. Moblogging is a way of mainlining artist activities to the faithful.
Now, finally, we’ll no longer have to read gruesomely self-indulgent tour anecdotes in NME - we’ll be able to see rockstars vomiting into their drumkits with our own lucky eyes.
No, it’s not a more racy version of seventies sitcom Citizen Smith. It is, in fact, the inevitable new phenomenon of monitised user-generated mobile porn. Rather like 3’s SeeMeTV and Hands-On’s PhameTV, but with bosoms (and lord help me, so much more), PixMeTV allows users to upload videos and then receive a percentage of the income when the clip is downloaded.
“We’re planning to turn the PixMeTV platform into the first place that ordinary members of the public go to buy and sell their home-made adult mobile movies” Ed Baker, Director of PixMeTV, told Mobile Business, carefully hinting that this is not some grubby bolthole for sexual deviants. Baker also promised to turn, “Generation X into Generation XXX,” which is about as good a soundbite on encouraging respectable adults to become part-time porn moguls as you’re going to get.
Adult movies cost 69p (geddit?) to download and the stars will receive 10p for each transaction.
I had a quick look at the site for research purposes and now feel ashamed and dirty on your behalf. I hope you’re satisfied. Although, if you’re not satisfied you can download my latest video at www…. I’m just kidding.
(Via Mobile Business)
Mobile entertainment providers are always looking for new ways to relieve bored phone users of their cash. Wap services, mobile games and mobile TV have all had their moments of intense industry interest and excitement, but the big thing at the moment is certainly mobile social networking. With MySpace Mobile still being tweaked and tested in the States there’s no dominating presence to put off potential newcomers, so fresh social networking platforms are popping up all over the place.
One newcomer to the scene is mobile games publisher, Hands-On, which has recently signed up to bring the MeeGos range of instant messaging characters to mobile, as well as announcing video-sharing service PhameTV and revealing plans to expand mobile flirting site FunkySexyCool across Europe.
So how do social network providers plan to seduce you this year? Eric Hobson, President and General Manager of Hands-On EMEA and SE Asia, provides some pointers…
Continue reading ‘The Hands-On guide to social networking’
Market analyst NPD Group has released one of its sage-like bulletins on the mobile phone industry. It turns out that price is not a major factor when people are looking to buy a new handset. Instead, consumers look for the same things in a phone as they do in a partner: ‘desired capabilities’ and a flip top form-factor. Erm, let me read that again.
Third on the list is a good brand, while price doesn’t pop up until 12, ‘according to recent NPD data’. Breaking things down into demographics, you might be shocked to discover that youngsters like cool-looking phones, men like cutting-edge features and women tend to like ease-of-use. Older users just want to be able to make a call without being intimidated into impotent tears.
“Understanding what really motivates mobile phone buyers is crucial to a manufacturer’s or a carrier’s success in the handset market,” concludes the report brilliantly.
Fed up of not being able to answer your front door when you’re on the other side of the world? Those miserable days are over. After a successful domestic launch, Dutch company Waleli is now looking to secure international distribution for the GSM Doorbell, which will send a message to your phone wherever you are in the world, telling you that someone has just pushed your doorbell button. You can then use an intercom to speak to your caller and even input a code to let them in. It’s also possible to use the code to let yourself in when you’ve forgotten your keys.
Add this to one of several mobile-phone linked security camera packages (like this one) and you are effectively at home all the time without the inconvenience of having to actually be there, watching Ricky Lake and consuming your own body weight in chocolate digestives.
(Via InfoWorld)
According to New Media Age, ITV is planning to launch a social networking service which will combine Internet and mobile platforms, allowing viewers to chat, blog and share video and images - all based around their favourite ITV programmes. The idea, of course, is to build communities around key series’ thereby ‘enhancing’ the experience. I’m not sure exactly how much your experience of Emmerdale is going to be enhanced by reading someone’s blog about which is the most annoying Dingle but each to his own.
Clearly, building communities around TV programming is the way ahead. Getting people to subscribe is a great way of monitoring their viewing habits, plus there’s bound to be a way of monitizing this, probably by setting up premium rate romantic chat services attached to specfic programmes: ‘Dancing on Ice - You Date While They Skate’…
(Via Moconews)
And Nokia isn’t kidding when it says ‘Special’. This quite spectacular handset is being launched to coincide with Paris Fashion Week and combines the sartorial influences of Nokia’s own L’Amour Collection with designer, Giambattista Valli, who has inputted his own creative ideas.
“I was intrigued by the inspiration to define the mobile phone as a fashion accessory,” explains Valli, no doubt while flicking greedily though an immense wad of Nokia cash. “Like a dress, shoes and jewelry, the Nokia 7373 Special Edition phones follow the theme of my collection and I immediately imagined them as silhouettes dressed in my work. Depending on your mood, you swap bags and transfer the contents.”
The combination of pink chasis, pearl strap and little skull motive represents “Valli’s interpretation of the contradictory elements of an intensive romance.” Nice one. I’ve always wanted my phone to do that.
There’s a black version as well, and both come loaded with a behind-the-scenes video of Giambattista Valli, presumably barking orders behind a catwalk or something. It’ll set you back 280 Euros.
The Nokia 7373 Special Edition joins the recent Prada and D&G handsets and suggests fashion branded form factors are the way ahead in 2007, rather than dull old functionality.
(Via Nokia)
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