Archive for the 'Mobile Communication' Category

Couple tips for Twitter newbs

Published
by
John Erik
on June 25, 2008
in Friends and Mobile Communication
. Comments

My friend and former Creativity professor (yes, that was a class for my advertising degree) Assaf Avni just joined Twitter [@assafavni]. I’m excited to be able to keep up with what he’s up to. So he will get the best out of Twitter, I wrote a him a list of things to do/watchout for. … here’s the list perhaps it will be helpful to yall too.

  • twit messes up quite a bit. doesnt post, late post, no sms, no tracking, etc
  • when you setup your mobile device, whether you follow anyone to your phone or not, you want to send “track assafavni” to twitter (40404). doing this will send you SMS notifications anytime someone says your name who you are not following, very handy, must do this (but beware sometimes when twitter is overloard it doesnt work and you will still miss messages)
  • Summize is a great twitter search tool and you can use it to search for your username to see if anyone was talking to you that you missed
  • setup Twitterfeed to autopost to twitter anytime you post to your blog
  • install the facebook twitter app and allow it to sync your status
  • search for people you think are cool and follow them :) then talk to them, really
  • import your gmail contact list (click Find and Follow)
  • get an unlimited text messaging plan
  • update frequently, people really do care, even about minutia
  • download Twhirl for desktop Twitter client
  • if you post often to flicker from your mobile, setup Snaptweet
  • now, go read Melissa Sconyers’ post on twitter to get the real details

Am I forgetting anything???

Smart Mobs and Smart Business

Published
by
John Erik
on July 11, 2006
in Books, Ideas, Mobile Communication, School, Social Networks and Words
. Comments

Smart Mobs is an amazing book. Though I read pieces of it two seasons ago, the words and metaphors hold new meaning in light of my recent research. It is incredible to me that in 2002 Howard Rheingold could predict the future so accurately.

In the first section Howard talks about privacy and virtual identities. This got me thinking about a new technology we are using here at the University of Texas and some other recently widespread services.

The deal is, Mobile Campus finds businesses local to UT who want to advertise to students via their mobile phone. To facilitate their growth, they pay our Student Government one dollar per signup and give them other perks, such as paying for the redesign of the SG website (these details are accurate to the best of my knowledge). SG then push MC on the student body (especially freshman) as the official student discount program, replacing those little coupon books.

Yeah, it’s cool that SG gets some extra money, etcetera, but is the trade off really worth it? It’s a game of ratios and reach. The database Mobile Campus is creating is worth far more than anything they are giving SG. If MC could they wouldn’t give SG a cent (a better business model), but without them a corporation would never have the kind of reach that SG can provide.

These kinds of tradeoffs seem to be the trend amongst today’s successful marketing and advertising corporations. Take Google’s GMail for example, great service, I use it. But now because Google’s bots can search the contents of my inbox (one where I never delete anything) they can more accurately classify me. True, if I have to see ads it’s nice that they are relevant and I do trust Google, but isn’t our identity our own? Shouldn’t we receive most if not all of the revenue generated by its use? We are so used to our identities being sold and traded and getting nothing in return that we love GMail because it gives us something in return. However, that something is given in exchange for a type and scale of profiling that was never before possible.

Will we ever have a say in who sees the information that makes up our identity or see any of the revenue generated by their commodification? Reheingold’s second chapter, Technologies of Cooperation, made me envision a way it could be possible (I’ll elaborate more on this idea in another post).

You’re going to create breadcrumbs, if you don’t pick them up someone else will.

Escalating connectivity, commentary, and consciousness

Published
by
John Erik
on July 3, 2006
in Books, Ideas, Insight, Links, Mobile Communication, Social Networks and Words
. Comments

There are and have been many predictions on the path Wi-Fi will take and the role it will assume. The concluding chapter of Going Wi-Fi, published in 2003, gives 20 predictions – 10 of which I believe have come true. Some predictions are far fetched. A faculty member at the University of Texas at Dallas predicted that by 2007 mobile communications devices will “be voice-controlled and use heads-up holographic display[s].” Unfortunately for many, it doesn’t look like 2007 will embrace this kind of future.

Nevertheless, these predictions were very insightful, covering the topics of business (maybe a wireless PBX), medical care (24hour vital monitoring and reporting), etcetera, but something was missing. And that was any allusion to the growth of social networks, virtual identities, or the like. Social networking, used in a broad sense, is big now, but the spread of wireless, I believe, will transform the revolution; connecting people, groups, and intelligence in ways never before possible.

We, the participants in the MySpace generation, the blogging generation, and others are connected to an identity, and/or identities, in cyberspace. The strengthening of that bond is parallel to the spread of Wi-Fi (most importantly, free Wi-Fi) and the doggedness of cellular; simply, more convenient, efficient, and economical access to the World Wide Web.

The blogosphere and projects such as WeFeelFine.org have been invaluable to sequentially interpreting the status of society as a whole. However, the nature of blogging is not conducive to real-time feedback. Wi-Fi, the great Last Mile, offers this.

Moblogging, radar.net, mobile video sharing, elements of Web 2.0, to name a few are the current tools moving a nearly synchronous Info Strada. What does the future hold? I believe the exponential growth of social networks and their assimilation of mobile communication devices is foreshadowing a trend towards increased Interconnectedness.

As it becomes easier to mirror ourselves and our lives virtually, it becomes more significant to mirror the state of cyberspace as a whole, and relay it back to its elements. Components seeing themselves as an integral part of a whole, then acting and reacting based on the state of the collective, the world – this is the model for self-consciousness; and a step for progress.

The Future of Cellular

Published
by
John Erik
on June 23, 2006
in Mobile Communication and Words
. Comments

We are in the generation of personalization and communication. Everything is about when and how we want it; personalized to our taste. After reading about cellular technology, I was reminded how much buzz MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) such as Helio and Amp’d Mobile are getting by providing this on the mobile communications front. You can customize your phone; now customize your cellular company.

Helio’s push is providing a high-speed mobile connection to your MySpace account. I think this is a good business model. Is social networking from your phone the really the next “killer app” for mobiles?

As more and more of the MySpace generation gets their first cell phone, mobile companies are spending billions to increase network speed. T-Mobile USA, for instance, plans on spending an estimated 10 billion to bid on spectrum rights this August and build out a new HSDPA infrastructure to provide higher network data capacity (up to 14.4 Mbit/s).

GSM networks gave us low bandwidth data transfers, adding an asynchronous element to mobile communications. Text messaging (SMS) has given us an efficient way to communicate in less time. GPRS, and the like, give us the so far less used ability to communicate via pictures and video. How will recent increases and future significant increases in data transfer speeds, such as CDWMA and HSDPA, again change the way we use our phones?

Companies like radar.net, whose service for cameraphones provides instant sharing of photos with invited friends on PC or WAP, are betting that pictures, worth a thousand words, will be the next revolution. And so is Nokia; who recently announced a line of new phones equipped with single click posting to a flickr account. I believe radar and Nokia are correct. I would also speculate that an using an MVNO for marketing to target potential heavy users, as Helio did with MySpace, would be a good strategy.

Industry experts once said it was impractical to cover a city in Wi-Fi; but Wi-Fi continues to covers more and more of the earth and every few weeks I see a new Skype enabled phone. How will these technologies converge? Will they have too? Will cellular die out? The future will be interesting.