Now, it’s possible for them to upgrade to a different CMS — but that’s going to be serious, serious effort.

Are there any other solutions that you can ‘bolt on’ to mobilise their site? That was the question.

My immediate response was ‘yeah, I’m sure something like Mippin would do this from your RSS feeds’.

Having had a quick look again at the Mippin site, it looks precisely like the sort of thing they’d be able to help with. I especially like the fact they’ll give you a native app on each platform for £500 each too.

However I wondered what else is out there. Have you come across anything I should recommend to this chap?

Here is the video:

More from Claire:

Here is the video:

Picture the scene across Europe come 30th of November 2010. Rain will be coming down intermittently in sheets. It’ll be dark until 9am for a few hours before the pitch black descends once more. You won’t be able to go anywhere without an umbrella and a decent coat. Most of the UK goes into seasonal-depressed-mode by mid-October.

But I’ve got a cure for you in the form of the Mobile Entertainment Forum’s Mobile Content & Commerce event. It’s being held in Miami (at the Fontainbleau Miami Beach Hotel) and it takes place from November 30th until December 1st.

It is the definitive event for the mobile media industries across North and Latin America. However if you’re from Europe, I reckon you might get a lot of value out of it too (and not just in terms of more Vitamin D). You can always count on MEF events to offer phenomenally good networking opportunities. This upcoming event is sponsored by Dada, Dolb, Impact Mobile, mBlox, Mobile, Neomboile, OpenMarket (we love you OpenMarket) and WAU Movil.

The subject of the event — as you might have guessed — is mobile content crossed with mobile commerce. The event will address the industry’s key business opportunities and concerns, enabling content owners, developers, brands, retailers, commerce providers and related stakeholders to better leverage the native functionality of the mobile device to drive customer acquisition, retention and conversion.

All things being equal, I will be there with the camera too.

All the details you need are at http://www.mefamericas2010.com/. Get in quick and it’s only $299 for a ticket (provided you’re a MEF member — $399 if you’re not).

And if you’ve got something to say on the topic, get in quick and see if you can present or be on one of the panels — full details here.

I got some news in from Jens Lauritzon, MD of Accumulate UK (that’s him above). I’m really, really liking the Accumulate concept. First, though, let’s have a bit of background…

Imagine the scene – you’re a 15 year old in Thailand on a PAYG deal and you’ve just got a new phone. You’ve been playing a game that you found on the device (i.e. it was pre-loaded) and you really like it so you want to buy it.

But first you need to find it, so off you go onto the portal or deck or club or whatever (remember, this isn’t an iPhone, so no App Store) and there are 10 games with a similar name. You might stop there, but you persevere. Then once you’ve found it you click to buy it and you don’t have enough credit.

By the time you’ve topped up you can’t be bothered with all the hassle and so you just play the free demo until you get bored of it.

That’s the scenario that happens all the time and the one that Accumulate is trying to change. And by changing create more revenues for everyone involved – operator, publisher, developer etc.

Accumulate’s Flexion wrapper provides consumers like our 15 year old a proper retail experience for mobile games and apps. In so doing it gives operators, device manufacturers, retailers and publishers the ability to maximise distribution, penetration and ARPU. Rather than having to create multiple demos or variant price versions of the same content, Flexion allows the full version to be pre-loaded or downloaded and then a range of purchasing options can be presented. All Flexion enabled games or applications also include a fully dynamic shop front allowing for further up-selling of content.

Now they’ve signed a deal with TCT Mobile so that the pre-loaded content on ALCATEL handsets will be wrapped. The first handset it will launch on is the Android powered OT-980. They’ve also got existing deals with people like Sony Ericsson, Orange and 3UK.

As Jens points out: “More and more people are looking to wrap content, giving customers a better experience and making more money for the industry.”

Yup. Love it.

I’m looking forward to hearing more about this. I think it’s a brilliant way ahead and I hope it’ll help all parties concerned.

Flickr has some good facilities for managing friends & family access, but rather limited video support (i.e. 90 seconds maximum). That’s simply not enough when we’re talking about videos of our little darling.

Do you have any suggestions of a service I should be looking at? Ideally something that’s got iPhone app support so the wife and parental units can easily publish… AND access.

Is it too much to hope that some smart cookie has realised that parents and grand-parents, siblings and friends need a cool way to share this kind of only-relevant-to-family content? And is it too much to hope that updates can be pushed to parents’ iPhones so there’s *nothing* for them to do other than dote over the new arrival’s every burp, chirrup and grin?

Requirements: Photos. Video. Mobile upload support. Looks beautiful (web 2.0ish), smart management of friends/family access.

Any suggestions?

Part of the new roll-out — including this whizzy new client I saw — includes offering Trutap users the ability to subscribe to and receive content.

Carl’s got some news about this:

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Hi Ewan,

How’s things?

Neil told me about a little trial you were doing regarding PR and press releases, so i thought i’d drop you a quick email to tell you about our new content subscription system, HORNET!

Firstly, what do you think of the name?

We built Hornet because it was a great way for us to supply our users across the world with the kind of content they’ve been asking us for. We’ve been working away behind the scenes to sign deals with a load of major content publishers around the globe. Hornet will let those partners plug in text, images and advertising into their content for free and off-deck – cool eh!

The first publisher we’re rolling out on Hornet is Goal.com. Users who subscribe to the Goal.com free alerts will get breaking news stories and scores from the English Premiership at least three times a day. Goal.com is live across the service right now and it won’t cost the user a penny to subscribe – remember the world loves the english footie!

I don’t want to give too much away but along with rolling out additional content providers, we’re going to be announcing some more fantastic stuff in the near future, I will be sure to let you know when we’re ready… also, when you get time, we should catch up on our new version, the UI has come a long way since we met in SF, not long till launch.

Stay tuned

Carl.

- – - – -

Carl, thanks for writing — and thank you to Neil and yourself for giving this new format a try. I think it’s a lot more useful and relevant for our readers.

To answer your point, Carl, I reckon HORNET is a wicked name. Good choice. I like the energetic connotations!

If you’ve got content (RSSable) that you think might be relevant to the Trutap audience, I definitely recommend you talk to Carl. Mail me and I can connect you.

As a part of the agreement, Sharpcards will provide its content to over 900,000 of Flirtomatic users, while still holding the mobile licensing rights of its content. An initial trial of the same was undertaken by both the companies since February and has been highly successful. The agreement will work on a revenue sharing basis and gives Flirtomatic users access to over 15,000 items from brands such as Purple Ronnie, Cartoon Network and Forever Friends, all under Sharpcards’ roof.

Presently, the deal is said to cover Flirtomatic’s userbase in the UK and Germany. A speciality shop, knows as the ‘FlirtShop’ will be set up for the users, where they can go ahead and buy content from Sharcards such as creative messages, virtual gifts and mobile greetings. Users can make use of, what has been named as ‘Flirt Points’ to buy these contents.

CEO of Flirtomatic, Mark Curtis, whom we’ve spoken to in the past, said:

Teaming up with Sharpcards means that our users now have access to even more high quality content which we can refresh on a much more frequent basis. With an amazing portfolio of content from some of the most exciting brands at our fingertips, we know we have found the right partner for our needs. Sharpcards is the pioneer in mobile messaging and with its truly global reach, they will be a key partner as we expand our presence and offerings.

After setting up a base in Germany as a part of its European expansion strategy, Flirtomatic is now looking to expand in the other international markets too.

Ofcom did say:

“The current arrangements block access to 18-rated material to non-age-verified customers. With increasing numbers of younger children having access to mobiles capable of accessing AV content, mobile operators may need to consider if a binary system at 18 provides sufficient protection from inappropriate content for younger users, or whether a more granular system should be considered.”

The Guardian reckons that’s a sign that we’re going to get cinema style age ratings on mobile content. Not a bad idea, I reckon, assuming operators can put up with the hassle of verifying young customers’ ages – and if there’s a profit in it, I expect they can – I can really see it working.

The service sounds technologically pretty nifty. It works like this, according to the company: “Moblyng technology automatically converts Flash-based content to images or video for mobile distribution, bridging the gap between online Flash objects and mobile devices, which do not widely support Flash-based content.”

With social networking now one of the most popular activities on the mobile web, it’s no wonder so many companies and VCs are gunning for it.

Of mobile users who watched video on their mobile, the split was fairly even between using websites like YouTube, their own carrier’s video offering and sideloading the content themselves. With music sideloading was the most popular option, with 48 percent of mobile-music listening respondents ripping content from a CD or other music source, while over one third of music-listening respondents purchased music through their operator. Pre-loaded content meanwhile, put in a strong showing, with around 60 percent of mobile gamers only playing the games that came with the phone.

So it’s not all bad news for operators – sure, they’ve missed the boat on some areas, but others are still firmly in their grip. Add to that there’s still a lot of money to be made off data delivery, not to mention ad-supported content, and it’s not such a grey picture after all.

The data consumption spike also carried across to other services, with 30.9 percent of iPhone owners watching mobile TV or video, compared to 4.6 percent of the market average or 14.2 percent of smartphones; while 49.7 percent of iPhone owners accessed a social networking site in January, compared to 19.4 precent of smartphone owners and 4.2 percent of average mobile users.

So what’s driving the trend: it’s not the speedy network access, after all, so it’s either the huge screen or the slick interface. Either way, I suspect once carriers and content providers get wind of this, they’ll be pressurising other handset manufacturers to start moving in the same direction while keeping their fingers crossed for a spike in data consumption as a result.