www.dpingram.com

Via Mashable, here

Photobucket is going mobile. The photo-sharing network that was shafted then acquired by MySpace is launching its mobile service, granting users access to Photobucket features on their handheld devices. Get it here. Like most web-based applications that go mobile, you’ll be able to browse, upload, share, search and view photos with Photobucket’s mobile offering.

That means you can access your personal Photobucket account, as well as public content, you can upload photos and videos directly from your mobile, and you can search Photobucket’s images and graphics from your cell phone. Sharing options enable you to send images to your friends using the email tool on your mobile device.

In Japan, half of the top ten selling works of fiction in the first six months of 2007 were composed on mobile phones.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, mobile phone novels (keitai shousetsu) have become a publishing phenomenon in Japan, “turning middle-of-the-road publishing houses into major concerns and making their authors a small fortune in the process.”

One book, Koizora (Love Sky) about high-school girl who is bullied, gang-raped, becomes pregnant has sold more than 1.2 million copies since being released.

The mobile internet has a role in this growing phenomen in Japan, with another book Moshimo Kimiga (420,000 copies) starting with installments uploaded to an internet site and sent our to “thousands of young subscribers.”

I can’t see anyone in Western nations waking up tomorrow and seeing mobile phone composed novels on the top seller lists, but usually Japan is years ahead on many tech fronts; mobile phone data services were available and popular in Japan years ago as the rest of us are only now catching up. Perhaps the NY Times best seller list in 2012 might consist of keitai shousetsu, stranger things have happened.

This article from Techcrunch here

“All it takes to make social networking a big hit on cell phones is the right kind of wireless network”

So says Dick Lynch, chief technology officer of Verizon (NYSE:VZ) Wireless, the US’s second-biggest mobile phone company.

Verizon just happens to be laying the ground work to launch a next-generation wireless broadband service in about 2010. That fourth-generation, or 4G, broadband network will be geared to social networkers, among others.

“What we see is the typical person today at Facebook or YouTube, or any social networking site, being the major wireless user of the future,” Lynch said.

Social networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook have quickly gaining in popularity by letting users create online profiles, contact people and share video clips, music and photos.

Many analysts expect Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon Communications VZ and U.K. based Vodafone, to bid for a substantial amount of radio spectrum in January’s government auction of airwaves. With the spectrum it gets then and other airwaves it has stockpiled, Verizon Wireless plans to roll out a 4G broadband network.

The 4G network will have much improved two-way data speeds, with plenty of bandwidth for video services, interactive gaming and other applications. The social networking generation will help drive already booming wireless data revenue even higher.

4G isn’t going to be about more voice services or more text messaging, it’s going to be about interactive applications and about customers that are far more comfortable with and demanding of interactive applications - people who believe interactivity is a right.

Verizon Wireless saw revenue from wireless data services jump 63% to $2 billion last quarter.

Just like other wireless firms, Verizon still garners most data revenue from text messaging and ring tones. Music and video downloads, photo messaging and Web-based information services has started to grow at a faster rate, though.

Market research firm Ipsos says that young social network users are much more likely than older wireless subscribers to download music or video to mobile phones.

Verizon isn’t the first wireless firm to eye social networkers. In fact, it might be late to the game, despite its ambitious 4G plans.

In 2006, No. 1 social networking site MySpace struck deals with the nation’s No. 1 wireless service provider AT&T /Cingular and with Helio. AT&T has deals with Facebook and a few other social networks as well. And AT&T is in the early stages of rolling out a mobile video-sharing service over its 3G network, so its users can share video with other AT&T wireless users. Helio offers phones preloaded with MySpace features that make it easy for subscribers to view profiles or post comments and photos, and Helio also offers a one-click video-posting service to YouTube.

In September, T-Mobile USA introduced new MySpace features for its popular Sidekick phone.

T-Mobile has yet to build a 3G network like Verizon or AT&T, but it has said it plans to target social networks and user-generated content when it rolls out 3G services over the next year or two.

Rather than develop their own social networking products, market research firm Ovum says most wireless firms have decided that it is best to work with popular sites like Facebook and MySpace.

John Fletcher, analyst at market research firm SNL Kagan, says social networking will give wireless service providers a data revenue a boost.

“Today data is hovering at about 20% of total service revenue,” he said. “But a big chunk of that is from business users on BlackBerry devices and laptop computers. Consumer data revenue is much lower.”

Lynch says Verizon’s 4G network will bring about big changes in portable consumer devices. He says consumer devices such as cameras will now come with built-in wireless chips, the same as laptop PCs.

Mobile is def the way to go, who can ignore it…

Video sharing service veeker Raised $2.5 Million in an initial round last week. San Francisco-based Veeker, a service for sharing videos over mobile phones, received $2.5 million in an initial round from Labrador Ventures, reports NewTeeVee. The company, which launched in beta a year ago, has expanded beyond its original person-to-person mobile video messaging focus. Following a trend, the service is now also being pitched as a citizen journalism tool; on example: a recent deal with NBC to get users to submit their own videos to local NBC affiliates.

Google’s apps are smartphone ready, it’s partnering with cellular carriers, and the company may bid on wireless spectrum. Connect the dots.

Google looks set to be developing its own smartphone, it has been involved in auctions for the next band of cellphone networks, and it has already developed a dozen smartphone applications, including mobile versions of its search, maps, Gmail, calendar, and RSS reader tools.

The company is searching for an executive to head its mobile business development in North America. The candidate, according to the job description, should have “a thorough understanding of the mobile vertical, both from a carrier and a handset OEM perspective.”

Handset OEM perspective? That could be a reference to the rumored Google phone, reportedly to be designed in collaboration with Taiwanese handset maker HTC. Speculation has it that the phone would carry the Google brand and come with Google services and applications, perhaps running on a Google-developed mobile operating system.

Google has been expanding its mobile software portfolio since 2005, when it acquired Android, a developer of mobile phone operating systems. Google’s evasive about its plans for that technology, but the acquisition fueled predictions that Google will develop its own mobile OS, either for a Google phone or to run on handsets from other vendors. Any Google OS would be tightly integrated with the company’s search, maps, Gmail, voice over IP, and other apps.

Google mobile ads–text-based, targeted ads that appear with search results on cell phones–debuted last year in Japan and quickly spread worldwide. In general, users have been receptive to display ads on mobile screens, defying analysts’ predictions to the contrary. In September, Google extended its advertising platform to various forms of mobile content with AdSense for Mobile, software that aims ads at users based on the mobile content they’re downloading.

Google this year waded into the FCC’s planned auction of the last prime frequencies for advanced wireless services. CEO Eric Schmidt pledged $4.6 billion in bids.

Google-To-Go???
- SEARCH Google search for the small screen
- MAPS Gets mobile workers from point A to point B
- DOCS & SPREADSHEETS Downsized documents
- GMAIL A second in-box for businesspeople
- CALENDAR Track appointments by cell phone
- READER News in the palm of your hand
- SIMS Includes set-and-save location feature
- BLOGGER Post from the road

Overseas carriers such as Vodafone in Europe, KDDI in Japan, and China Mobile have agreed to display Google applications and services on their handsets, while in the United States, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are listed as Google partners, though few details have been forthcoming.

Who stands to lose if Google succeeds? Microsoft, for one. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 operating system is expected to ship on 20 million devices this year. The last thing Microsoft wants to see is an exploding population of smartphone users abandon Office, which also runs on smartphones, for Google’s free, untethered applications.

That’s a real risk. Sea Change Management, a small financial services company, switched last year from Microsoft Office to Google Apps (though it still uses Excel where necessary). The company accesses Docs & Spreadsheets from PCs and smartphones “anywhere in the world,” says managing principal Jason Winship. Employees collaborate using Gmail chat and shared documents.

summarised from Richard Martin’s excellent article in Information Week, here

I’ve been speaking for a while now about the soon to be expected surge in mobile content sharing, and here is a press release that caught my eye…

To me its an obvious progression. Today, we create more and more (and better quality) content on mobile devices (phones, and cameras), and we have some amazing web services for photo and video sharing, but we still have that obstacle of getting that great content from our mobile devices to our computers to be able to share it. This will change as more photo and video sharing services add better mobile sharing options, and new devices that have wi-fi connectivity built in will speed up the transfer process which today can be quite slow over cell networks.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 24, 2007 — Atheros Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHR), a leading developer of advanced wireless solutions, today announced that its single-chip AR6001GL ROCm™ (Radio-on-a-Chip) mobile WLAN solution was chosen to provide 802.11g connectivity in the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras designed by Eye-Fi, a company dedicated to helping people navigate, nurture and share their digital memories. The highly anticipated Eye-Fi Card is expected to debut this fall – in time for the holiday season. The wireless memory card for digital cameras will capitalize on Wi-Fi, making it effortless for users to upload, save, share and print photos, thereby removing virtually all obstacles to instant photo sharing. This game-changing device will revolutionize the way Wi-Fi is enabled in digital cameras.

Via Atheros Communications

A report from M:Metrics indicates that mobile social networks are growing worldwide, with MySpace taking the biggest chunk of mobile users in the US and the UK.

This makes perfect sense to me. There are a lot of websites that let you share content from your computer with other people, but how much of that content is actually CREATED on the computer? Well, if its photos, music, or video I’m betting less than a fraction of 1%. The content is created elsewhere, and you, the user, have to first get it from your ‘content creation device’ (whatever that may be) to the computer.

Here’s are a few facts: mobile phones cameras and video cameras are getting better and better. Fact. More and more people are using them to create photos and videos. Fact. VERY few people actually synchronize their photos with their computers. Fact. So, in order to share the content we create on our phones we first have to overcome the obstacle of getting the content from phone to computer.

YouTube and others already have a way for you to do this, so its not new, but think about this. It doesn’t matter how easy you make it to share content from your computer to the web, if you still have this big hurdle of getting the content from the ‘creation device’ to the computer.

The next generation of content sharing is about closing the gap between content creation and content sharing/delivery. And that means embracing mobile. No-one takes a photo or video on their phone because they want to lock it away and not show anyone, they take them because they want to SHARE. So, you can email or MMS content point to point easily, but thats really not the same as putting it up on my online web profile one time for consumption infinite number of times by anyone. We all know that most people engage in SN and UGC websites to get satisfy their need for recognition and peer acceptance (Maslow), and point to point sending of content just doesn’t achieve that.

So, in my humble opinion new website Mofoyo is exactly the way to go. Its a new video and image sharing site headed for launch, having just gone live this month - it works across all video-enabled phones and all major carriers. All the standard features are there: upload images and videos from your phone, create a profile, connect with others and share media on the go.

Videos and images are shared via text message, and while Mofoyo is free, they recommend upgrading to an unlimited data plan to avoid high fees. You can browse on the web, browse on your phone, or send media links to your phone from your user profile. The site is powered by the open source content management system Drupal, so they havnt even had to write tons of bespoke code to do this. Neat in many ways.

MySpace will partner with Vodafone to bring social networking to mobiles in Western Europe - the popular social-networking site’s second big mobile deal after its agreement with Cingular in December - reports TechNewsWorld.

The deal is expected to help Vodafone, Europe’s biggest mobile operator, boost mobile usage and data revenues, at the same time launching MySpace into the European mobile market for the first time - with the U.K. the first to get the service, in the first half of 2007.

Vodafone customers will be able to access MySpace mobile, allowing them to edit their MySpace profiles, find and add friends, post photos and blogs, and send and receive MySpace messages, the companies said.

OA is here

Vodafone also announced, just a day or so beforehand, its launch of YouTube mobile, allowing users to get a YouTube experience on their Mobiles. So Vodafone is deply embracing UGC and SN

Another mobile social network that’s currently in preview mode: ImThere was created by University of Missouri-Rolla student Benjamin Roodman and attempts to connect members around events like concerts, film festivals and parties.

Users start by completing a profile page, and ImThere helps you meet new friends by showing you local users with similar interests. You can then build a network of friends, list events, post reviews on venues, artists and events and - of course - post pictures and comments to the site via your mobile phone. Like most of these services, you can send a text to request information from the site: text “NowThere” to see a list of local events, for instance. ImThere is focused on music, providing an artists section that lists upcoming shows. Look out too for “There Codes” - an easy way to keep track of information on ImThere via your phone. You can, for instance, text “INFO” to an email address containing the There Code to get that event information on your cellphone.

Sites like Groovr and ImThere are so impressive that easy to imagine them attracting a decent number of dedicated users.

Other mobile social sites include JuiceCaster, Wadja, Zemble and Socialight and all the nominees in the Mobile Social Networks category of the 2006 Socnet Awards.

OA from Pete Cashmore at Mashable is here