Latitude, if you’re not familiar with it, is an add-on to Google Maps that (amongst other features) overlays an avatar of your friends on Google Maps. So if you’re out-and-about you can see their location. Or if you’re on your desktop you can see a large Google Map of your friends.

Typically innovative, Google decided to take things to the next level. Wouldn’t it be neat that, if you had sufficient friends each with a T-Mobile G1 (for example), you could position them on the map to spell out a message.

Granted, you’d need to have quite a bit of spare time. But it’s doable, right?

Right.

The Google Latitude team stuck their money where their mouth is and had a bit of fun, thus:

That there is a screenshot of a Google Maps screen spelling out ‘Hi Mom’ across central San Francisco. Each little square you see is an avatar representing a physical Google team member with a phone standing in the corresponding physical location in San Francisco.

The enterprising chaps also made a video documenting the process of setting this up:

There is, I suspect, limited value in spelling out messages using your friends on Google Maps / Latitude. But it’s a super proof-of-concept for the technology.

And a reminder to get on Latitude.

Latitude, of course, isn’t yet available for the iPhone so that’s most of San Francisco ruled out. But for everyone back in Europe sporting your common-or-garden N-Series Nokia device, perhaps it’s time you and your friends spent this Saturday spelling out ‘Hello Your Majesty’ across a map of London.

(You’ll need about 10-12 friends per character.)

Skydeck, the fantabulous ‘your mobile IS your social network’ service that integrates with your mobile operator to get hold of a copy of your calling records, is coming to Europe. Forget the fact that you might find British Gas as your number one rated friend (after the amount of times you’ve had to call them).

Skydeck is smart, very smart indeed. But it’s been one of those services that we, here in Europe, smile quietly about. We know that it will take flippin’ years for any flippin’ mobile operator in Europe — well, in the United Kingdom at least — to ‘get’ Skydeck. Or to offer connectivity for anything less than a billion quid a month license fee.

I’ve heard European rumblings for a while — and this morning, Russ MacDonald tweeted me with news via Marcus Malek who mentioned the news. I’m not sure on his source though.

I think I’ll stick to my ‘Skydeck at some point in the next eon’ viewpoint. I could certainly see some of the European operators being open to the concept of helping deploy it.

But can you imagine a UK operator helping out?

* Czech Republic
* Austria
* Netherlands
* Germany
* Poland

Have we got any readers from those countries who’re going to go and pick one up?

(via Reuters)

If all goes to plan, the network will be up and running from next year, with all member countries guaranteeing the winning bidder will be able to run a service in their country using reserved spectrum.

I suspect the opportunity to run mobile TV services won’t be the carrot for would-be providers here: opening up mobile access and telemedicine in some of Europe’s most remote regions could be both worthy and profitable for network operators.

I nodded sagely when I got the news. Germany’s a good choice for Flirtomatic. An mobile-mad country with good penetration of a wide range of quality handsets. A mature market. Obviously the service has been available worldwide for a long time — indeed, 20% of Flirtomatic’s userbase are international. But Germany’s the first country outside the UK to get it’s own entirely localised service with German customer service. And, I imagine, a heck of a lot of marketing.

They’re nearing a million users in total — in fact, with the launch in Germany today, I doubt it will be very long before I get a note from CEO, Mark Curtis, confirming that.

Mark’s got together with SevenOne Intermedia (the multimedia arm of German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1) to launch the service. Makes sense. They’re Germany’s largest family of TV channels with a heck of a lot of other mediums — not least, web and mobile. So the cross promotion will be rather exciting.

If they get it right — and I’ve no reason to doubt the Flirto team, they’ve done a tip top job in the UK — then I reckon they’re poised to go nuts in Germany too.

The other dating services out there should do well to note Flirtomatic’s strategy. They’ve already kicked the UK arms of the other major dating services into touch. Buy them quickly or they’ll eat your lunch.

If you haven’t checked out Flirtomatic recently, by the way, do so. Try signing up via your mobile and see how they’ve made the process as simple and as frictionless as possible.

The exact details haven’t been announced and the company says that it will make more country-specific announcements in the “near future.”

Avid readers of SMS Text News will have been well-prepared for this news however, as when Ewan bumped into Leif Fagelstedt, Blyk Chief Operating Officer at the Blyk one-year party, he hinted at European expansion. This is what he told Ewan:

“We’ve got a very clear vision,” he shoots, “We’re the fastest growing youth media in the UK at the moment. By the end of the year, we want to be the biggest. Then we want to do it in Europe.”

So well done to Blyk, they’ve done as they promised. If they can take the advertisers over to these markets with them then they are onto a winner. I presume that’s what the choice of territories is partly based on: advertisers who are getting an average of a 29% response rate in the UK have looked at other markets and asked Blyk to get out there. Apparently all three countries have big advertising markets, so it looks like there is room for Blyk to be successful out there.

Blyk’s CEO and Co-founder, Pekka Ala-Pietilä said of the move:

“There is a great opportunity for Blyk in these markets. Our research shows that young people in Germany, Spain and Belgium are interested in the Blyk proposition because they want to interact with brands they like in exchange for free communication.”

If you’re between 16-24 and you live in Germany, Spain or Belgium then look out for more and let us know if you sign up and what your experiences are like.

Obviously Ricky will still be updating us with his BlykWatch articles on a regular basis about what Blyk is up to in the UK. In the announcement Blyk says that it still expanding in the UK and expects to have upto 200 brands on board by the end of the year.

They’ve got a pretty packed conference with some great speakers and some interesting panels. You can see the full finalised agenda here, but it includes all the names you’d expect and some that might be new to you.

As part of the finalised agenda a new Mobile Social Media Panel has been added which will be moderated by Peggy Anne Salz of MSearchGroove and will include panelists from M:Metrics, Zyb, Nokia Conversations, Itsmy.com, Yahoo! and Doug Richards from Trutap who used to be in Dragon’s Den.

He’s second from the left and to be fair probably hates it still being brought up. Oh well.

If all of that has whet your appetite, then as a Media Partner we here at SMS Text News Towers can offer you free tickets. The first two people to email me at patrick@smstextnews.com will get the tickets, so get emailing.

If you miss out, you can also buy tickets here.

*UPDATE: My bad, I should have mentioned that the conference is in Barcelona. We’re offering free tickets to get you through the door, but not to fly you to Barcelona!

According to Reuters, Reding has given operators two weeks to clean up their act and cut costs. She’ll also start publishing the cost of roaming data services on an EU website from the start of next month. “On the basis of those prices I will then decide if it’s necessary or not to have a regulation proposed,” Reuters quotes Reding as saying.

If history is any guide, expect the European operators to make a lot of noise about how data costs have already come down loads in the last year or two, then cut the cost of data some more when they realise Reding isn’t joking, and then the EC to decide it’s still not enough and bring in the regulation anyway. Good news for anyone texting from aboard, bad news for anyone having to listen to operators whinging for the next few weeks.

According to the New Zealand Herald, the Kiwi’s national carrier is planning to introduce an in-flight texting service.

Meanwhile, several reports have highlighted that despite European and antipodean enthusiasm for in-flight SMS, Asia and the US aren’t planning to introduce any mile-high connectivity any time soon. I can’t help but think it’s a bit of a miss opportunity – surely long haul flights are where the boredom sets in and the texting fingers start getting itchy?

The era of pan-European in-flight mobility will be ushered in by two measures announced by the EC this week: a “Commission Recommendation for a harmonised approach on licensing which will promote mutual recognition between national authorisations for mobile communications services on aircraft” and “a Commission Decision which sets out harmonised technical parameters of onboard equipment for in-flight mobile phone use throughout the EU that will allow member states to recognise each other’s licences for mobile communications on board aircraft without risk to mobile networks on the ground”. The EC will also make sure safety concerns are dealt with by the appropriate bodies.

Interestingly, after the EC has pushed so hard on cutting roaming charges within Europe, it’s remaining mum on how to regulate the cost of connectivity on planes, saying the market is too young for it to interfere and it will be up to the service provider to set pricing. It sounds like we could be in for some expensive calls and texts up there.

The Commission has also hinted that it won’t accept proprietary behavious from those involved in DVB-H, saying it wants to see ‘”transparent intellectual property rights regime, based on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and allowing low price of devices” and a transparent patent pool.

It always looked like the Commission was going to give DVB-H the nod, so this week’s announcement isn’t exactly a surprise, but I suspect will still be provoking some glass-raising at Nokia HQ. However, there are still the questions around spectrum, devices and consumer take-up for that matter to be solved before DVB-H actually gets into people’s pockets so don’t hold your breath for broadcast mobile TV any time soon.