I’m actually quite intrigued by this simply because it could be a great way to put out “breaking news” at shows or events. This is nothing new: you take some video or an image and it pops up in a Cellblock window almost immediately after sending, without transcoding or other nastiness.
The service uses a standard email address – presumably you could just email content from your desktop, but that wouldn’t be any fun – and posts content immediately on receipt into an embeddable player.
The upload was, in fact, instantaneous with nothing to do on my part. The real value could in in live-blogging events for immediate broadcast, but that’s a limited application.
For a bit of fun, however, give it ago. You don’t have to add your own cellphone number unless you want the enhanced version, so it’s relatively safe.
UPDATE – Not sure why there’s no audio.
UPDATE 2 – Just realized that you, too, can livebloggogogo! Email funtimes@cellblock.com and rock out!
Concierge Mobile is now online, giving the popular website branch of Conde Nast’s Traveler magazine added Mobile 2.0 functionality. The service itself is ingenious in its simplicity; if you find a listing you’re interested in, and feel like taking it to go for later, you click the small cellphone icon above the title. A txt message is sent to your phone containing the URL to a mobile-friendly description, with the address and phone number.
You can send several of these notes to your mobile and cycle through them, much like old Hypercard stacks. The service correctly recommended Salumi’s here in Seattle, and displayed the correct information, allowing me to sample again the best pork sandwich in the city.
The best part is that the service is free, and compatible with almost any mobile phone with Web access. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re a frequent traveler looking for the best most cities have to offer, it should be in your bookmarks today.
Hello MobileCrunch readers. The guys at CrunchGear have been tasked to update and moderate MobileCrunch and we will soon be ramping up with a new lead reporter focusing on Mobile 2.0. Before we begin, however, I’d like to get your input on what you’d like to see here. We will definitely be running M2.0 profiles, just as the Oliver did, but we’d also like to bring some of our gadget-happy content to this site, with your kind indulgence.
CTIA is coming up, and we will focus on the hardware, services, and software that will make the next generation of mobile phones — read: post iPhone — revolutionary in both form and function. I’ve also decided against adding much of CG’s snark and snarkability to this site, allowing you a brief respite from the usual panapoly of genitalia jokes so prevalent in today’s tech press.
I will be “heading” this site and can be contacted at john at crunchgear dot com. I hope to have MobileCrunch addresses available soon, but you know where to find us. Thank you and we look forward to your readership.
A report from Portio Research is forecasting SMS revenues to reach $67 billion. The increase is mostly attributed to an expected increase in mobile subscriber base from 2.61 to 4.81 billion, sending 3.7 trillion messages. The Asian markets are expected to grow the fastest, comprising 50% of the subscriber base by 2008.
SMS accounts for approximately 75-80% of carrier’s non-voice plan revenue, with voice plans comprising 80% of worldwide mobile revenue. Competition amongst carriers has been eroding voice margins and mobile content providers for ring tones and wallpapers are on their last legs, with users more easily accessing content over the internet. One of the largest content companies, Moderati, was recently purchased by Bellrock Media, and will be transitioning into mobile applications. Consequently, carriers should be turning their attention to data services.
SMS has been the fastest growing messaging service, but the pricer MMS, e-mail, and mobile IM are expected to grow healthily as well. The report suggests operators must carefully manage rates for these alternatives in order to avoid cannibalizing the SMS market.
The guys over at Synapse Life (a productivity suite) released today a new mobile nightlife service called Down2Night. Down2Night lets you use your cell phone to post and receive notices of events that are going on at your favorite local venues. Seattle is the first city covered by the service.
We covered Movoxx earlier, but their SMS service is for nightlife deals instead of coupons. Down2Night adds a web interface that lets you add events and chose the venues you want to receive updates from. Each night of the week you choose, Down2Night will send updates of the top voted event for each venue you’re subscribed to. The top event can be something listed by the venue’s owner, or even a big birthday bash being held that night. As the service grows, the most likely business model is the local advertising market. Everyone, though, is eager to get a hold of the elusive 18-35 crowd that makes up Down2Night’s target market.
So far the mobile components for services like Upcoming.org or Yelp haven’t begun to offer voting or subscriptions, but I suspect it won’t be long.
Yahoo! made three announcements today at 3GSM in Barcelona: the release of Yahoo! Go mobile 2.0 (Gamma), pre-loading on LG handsets, and the launch of its mobile ad network. Yahoo! Go is the mobile part of Yahoo!’s three screen initiative to optimize their services for PC, TV, and mobile.
Yahoo! Go is a downloadable application that gives users access to search, maps, mail, sports, Flickr, news, finance, entertainment, and weather. The application is accessible on over 100 mobile phones, but the new LG deal means it will also come preloaded on many of their new phones.
Yahoo!’s launch of their mobile advertising platform for m.yahoo.com will take place in over 19 countries covering Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The ads will run close to the top of the browser page, allowing users to click through for more information.
Benchmark Capital and Accel have invested $12 million in Israeli mobile startup Zlango. Zlango is an icon-based mobile messaging service. Users send short texts typed in representational images instead of typing out the messages (see below). It’s like a modern hieroglyphics. Users can also add images to the basic icons of the language, as Zlango has in their press release.
Zlango is a phone based application that has grown through close relationships with carriers, who see Zlango as a way to drive higher SMS usage or by a flat fee. Zlango is currently partnered with Pelephone in Israel, Orange & Cellcom in ESC, P4 in Poland, and bMobile in the Caribbean.
The funding comes close the Accel’s recent hiring of mobile expert Richard Wong, of early mobile browser company OpenWave. The relationship between the two firms seems to have recovered since Accel loosing a partner, Peter Fenton, to Benchmark Capital last April.
Last month MobileCrunch and TechCrunch reported on Steve Jobs very public release of the iPhone. Steve Balmer scoffed at the new phone calling it overpriced, but Microsoft may be offering its own mobile version.
CrunchGear has been following the leads closely and it has turned into a fairly solid story. Crunchgear reports that on Monday, Microsoft filed an application with the FCC for a wireless device that could be used to talk over the Internet. They go on to say the device is described as being used for “consumer broadband access and networking”. The device would use OFDM as its communications protocol, not WiFi or Bluetooth.
The standard OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) is a modulation scheme that is used widely in upcoming 4G standards of the future. In short, OFDM will enable more simultaneous data transfers across mobile towers. 4G itself is not a specific technology itself, but rather a collection of technologies and protocols that will provide even greater mobile bandwidth (100 Mbps (in cell-phone networks) to 1 Gbps (in local Wi-Fi networks). CrunchGear then connected the dots, noting that Sprint/Nextel announced its plans to build out a 4G network based on the IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMax standard, the same modulation protocol as the Microsoft device in the FCC filing. The Zune phone is suspected to run on the Sprint/Nextel network and could come out as soon as May, beating the iPhone’s release date.
Concierge Mobile is now online, giving the popular website branch of Conde Nast’s Traveler magazine added Mobile 2.0 functionality. The service itself is ingenious in its simplicity; if you find a listing you’re interested in, and feel like taking it to go for later, you click the small cellphone icon above the title. A txt message is sent to your phone containing the URL to a mobile-friendly description, with the address and phone number.
Last month 