There’s been plenty of talk recently about the rules concerning mobile use on airplanes being relaxed. Spying an opportunity for some cheeky brand promotion, Yahoo has commissioned a topical survey to find out what us Brits make of the news. And it seems 87% of us would like voice calls to stay banned on flights. It’s understandable, given the prospects of some annoying businessman quacking away next to you for an entire long-haul flight. However, Yahoo claims that UK consumers “strongly” support the idea of accessing mobile data features while flying, with 49% saying email would be the most useful feature, and 14% saying they’d like to check the weather. It has to be said though that some stats are lacking from the announcement of the survey results. For example, how many people said they WOULDN’T want mobile internet usage allowed on planes? It could be as high as 51%, in theory…
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Mobile search is a big battleground at the moment, mainly because Google isn’t anywhere near as dominant as it is on the Web, which is encouraging its rivals to pile in with their own technologies. Yahoo is keen to talk up its oneSearch service, which has just been given a revamp. One of the most high-profile new features is voice search.
What’s that then? As you might guess, you speak a search query into your handset, and Yahoo brings back some results. Suggested queries include flight numbers, places, website names, and even restaurants. The technology comes from a separate company, Vlingo. It even adapts to your voice, apparently - good news for anyone with a lisp, stutter, or tendency to shout ‘BOLLOCKS!’ when they mean to say ‘train times’.
(It might not adapt that much, if I’m honest. But perhaps in the next version…)
Continue reading ‘Yahoo’s oneSearch 2.0 offers mobile voice search’
The two companies have signed a strategic partnership to, as they say, “seize the mobile advertising opportunity”.
To us that means T-Mobile Web’n’walk users will be getting graphic adverts when using its mobile internet service. It will carry adverts exclusively sold and served by Yahoo!
The first adverts, which will be targeted to specific users based on already gathered information about them, will arrive in a matter of months.
Of course, both companies have been singing from the rooftops about what a great opportunity this is. It will be interesting to see consumers’ reactions when they’re suddenly bombarded with adverts when using Web’n’walk this summer. They’ll either silently accept it or maybe they’ll stop using it in droves.
We’ll be watching this with interest…
There’s already evidence in the UK that iPhone owners are using their devices to surf the web more than those with rival smartphones. Now the New York Times is reporting similar evidence from the US, claiming that over Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones was greater than any other mobile device - despite iPhone only accounting for 2% of global smartphones.
The newspaper’s piece also quotes other firms, including Yahoo and AdMob, reporting a surge in iPhone traffic over Christmas, which indicates that many of the people unwrapping iPhones on Christmas Day quickly fired up Safari to see how the web looked.
However, the really interesting thing about the NY Times piece is what it says about Google, which has created a prototype site codenamed ‘Grand Prix’, which provides iPhone-friendly access to Gmail, Google Reader and Picasa among other Google services. A new version is due to be introduced today, although I suspect it’ll be US-only. Thumbs-crossed it’ll roll out in Europe soon though.
(via New York Times)
Hold the front page! Yahoo! has released a new version of its Go! on-device portal for apps and services on your handset.
Seriously though, the already quite handy and easy to use downloadable portal has been given a re-fresh to make it even easier to use.
The last version offered map and routing services linked into a handset’s built-on GPS (if the handset is GPS-enabled anyway).
The new version (3.0) has apparently got improved email handling, more news services, satellite-generated maps and live traffic updates. All in one simple Java download. Bonus.
You can get it by going to get.go.yahoo.com on your smartphone’s browser and downloading it. Go on, you know you want to…
Motorola has followed Sony Ericsson’s lead in going handset crazy at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
There are the mid-range W230 (candybar) and W270 (slider), but the headlines will surely be grabbed by the new touch-screen E8 and the long-delayed Z10.
The ROKR E8 (right) might only have GPRS/EDGE, but its selling point has got to be the ability to switch between camera, music player (including Windows Media Player 11 compatibility), contacts and phone calls at the touch of your fingertip, using a haptic vibrating touchpad.
The other handset, the slider Z10 (below), is being pitched as a “mobile filmstudio[sic]”. Aside from the dodgy spelling, it does at least have HSDPA connectivity and 3.2-megapixel camera. Oh, and it runs on Symbian, which is a good alternative to Motorola’s infamously Marmite-like OS.
However, the ‘mobile filmstudio’ aspect comes from the phone having the ability to let you instantly upload photos and videos to YouTube, Google, Yahoo and Shozu. So it’s not quite a proper ‘film studio’ but its still an appealing new handset.
Pocket Picks was lucky enough to be invited to a special round-table hosted by Motorola this week, featuring some of its senior execs and key content partners.
The purpose was to talk about ‘The Future of Mobile Entertainment’ and how mobile technologies are creating new opportunities for the industry. Among those present were representatives from Motorola itself, EA Games, Universal, Wecomm and Shozu.
The key issue was the current exponential growth in consumers using mobile services and content like picture sharing, downloading games and accessing multimedia content, all because operators and manufacturers started offering one-click access to services.
Think Shozu embedded on a new Motorola handset or Sony Ericsson’s Cybershot, or even operators’ one-click access to their portals. As Andrew Till, Motorola’s Senior Director for Applications and E2E solutions said: ‘Single click access to features makes all the difference.’
But you’re reading this wondering so what? What does it tell me about what to look forward to? Well, according to the panel, the big thing for 2008 is going to be… [drum roll]… ‘User discovered content.’ And what’s this?
Continue reading ‘Motorola discusses vision for mobile entertainment in 2008′
Google and Yahoo! quite clearly dominate Internet search engines but on mobile there’s more scope for a mobile-specific engine to stake a claim for itself.
We recently tried what we thought could be one of the easiest mobile search engines around Taptu, but now there’s another pretender to the crown – Boopsie.
Ignore the odd name, because Boopsie is something different. It uses Smart Prefix to search via short codes. Instead of having to type the whole search term on your phone’s fiddly keypad, Boopsie requires only the first few letters of each search. For instance, “Arctic Monkeys” would simply be “ar mo”.
The potential for incorrect searches is naturally high, but Boopsie reckons its users can reach over 90% of Wikipedia entries in only seven button presses.
To help, Boopsie has organised searches into specific categories like Wikipedia, sports scores, weather, local listings etc, to help make it easier.
Boopsie works on almost any Java handset and pretty much every mobile OS, and the free app can be downloaded from Boopsie.
When will the mobile internet overtake normal internet? Next week? Never? Nope, it’s neither according to Yahoo!’s Geraldine Wilson who has predicted that 2017 is the year mobile internet use will surpass internet use via a computer or laptop.
Speaking to Total Telecom, Wilson, who is Vice President of connected life at Yahoo! Europe, commented:
Within 10 years more people will be accessing the Internet from their mobile than in the home from a PC.
The argument is that in developing markets where PC use is very low, many people’s first experience of the internet will be via a mobile phone thus encouraging them to stick with that point of access as their familiarity with the web develops. Ten years seems like a fairly safe bet to us, but will mobiles be distinguishable from today’s laptops in terms of features by then? The semantics of what constitutes a *gestures inverted quotation marks* computer may end up getting a little blurry by the time 2017 rolls around.
(Via MocoNews)
Yeigo has updated its mobile VoIP service for UK-based users with several neat new features for free instant messaging to mates.
The Yeigo 2.1 Edition includes full-screen IM chats, Tab Chat letting users IM multiple people, Holler (in which offline users get a prompt that a friend is available), Port ‘n’ Sort (importing contacts from other IM providers such as MSN and Yahoo) and It’s A Status Thing (showing which contacts are online).
Yeigo launched in the UK in October after already being available in South Africa. It claims to offer free calls and IM from Windows Mobile and Symbian mobile phones, which it does, kind of, with no charge to download and use the application. Naturally where it isn’t free is in the user having to pay 3G or wi-fi connection costs while chatting.
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