I’ve used a lot of international calling services, particularly from my mobile phone. For a long time I made use of an array of services that enabled me to call locally and then use an existing balance to call internationally. When I was having to phone venture capitalists and board members in the States regularly, the costs used to mount up at 24p a minute from British Telecom. Calling internationally from a mobile was simply ridiculous. It still is, even with the ‘international’ option on the account, you’re still billed silly rates. I can call America from my mobile at 5p per minute, because I pay Vodafone a few quid a month extra.

I remember thinking ‘ahh, that’s better’. Because instead of £1.50 (or something crazy), 5p sounds good.

Until you realise that it’s costing Vodafone almost nothing. Yes they need to maintain the mobile cell, but if I can call any landline in the UK for ‘free’ (unlimited, fair use), why can’t I call America for a few pence a minute? You know? 2p, something like that?

Well, the answer is that it’s still a good way to garner cash from us all — and we can’t believe it’s not costing £1.50 a minute, so we pay.

And besides that, it’s convenient, right? Pick up your mobile and dial…

No.

It’s almost a fifth cheaper if you use FooCall. It’s even cheaper if you pay a few pounds a month.

Quite apart from the fact that anyone who’s named their company in that manner deserves my business, I’m delighted that they’ve made an iPhone application to make the experience super simple. I’d like to see them deploy on other platforms too.

Let’s have a look at the application:

This is the main screen. It’s really easy to use. Once you’ve created a free account — that process takes 20 seconds — you can start calling. Literally dial the number you want.

FooCall then calculates a local access point — i.e. an 020 number that counts toward your inclusive minutes. It places the call to the local access number and automatically dials your destination for you.

This all happens in about a second. Within moments you’re connected. Done.

Now let’s talk about rates. By default, it’s 1.2p/minute to the United States from the UK. That’s a pretty good rate in itself. But if you’re calling regularly, you might like to take note of the FooCall FooPlan. It’s £2.75/month and reduces that rate down to 0.8p/minute.

Of course, that’s a popular route. Let’s pick out some random ones from their list:

UK to New Zealand? 1.4p/min

UK to Bahamas? 3p/min

If you’d like to confirm your reservation at The Sanctuary at Parrot Cay on the Turks & Caicos Islands? 13.7p/min.

You can even call Antarctica. That’s 100.7p per minute — but drops to 67.2p if you’re on the FooPlan.

FooCall isn’t just about the iPhone though — you can use their web-based service very easily. Just login, click ‘call’, select or type in your desired number and boom… this screen appears:

Pretty nifty, eh? That’s a unique number for you that puts you straight through to your destination without any messing around.

I particularly like that if I add a contact on the iPhone app, it’s synchronised straight through to the web version of FooCall too.

This is one of those services that, even if you don’t call abroad regularly, you should definitely have sitting on your iPhone — so that when you *do*, it’s easily accessible. Download the FooCall iPhone app from this link — and when you setup your account, you’ll be credited with 50p’s worth of credit to get you started (enough for a 41 minute call to the States!)

Nice work, FooCall!

And it was properly booked.

No arsing around with fax machines at their end. No missed bookings. My booking was *IN* the restaurant’s system and when I arrived, sure enough, the chap at the desk will see my details right there. I love it.

Millions love it.

And millions have been waiting for the OpenTable app. You can get OpenTable on BlackBerry, Palm and now Android. As a result, OpenTable has now processed 2 million bookings via their mobile application platform!

That’s not downloads. That’s bookings! Just for fun, assume that each meal booked results in a $70 spend at the restaurant including wine and tip. That’s some OpenTable mobile app economy! That’s $140m worth of restaurant spend… being booked through just the *mobile app*. This isn’t counting the OpenTable website.

Very, very impressive.

You can see why so many people are using it. I located the “Big 4″ restaurant at The Huntingdon Hotel in San Francisco in about 3 taps. Another tap and I had this page up:

Another tap and I can have the 7:00pm slot booked.

Done. So fast, so useful.

Good work, OpenTable!

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I can’t stand the fact that most ‘popular’ publications don’t cover mobile applications at all. ESPECIALLY the female publications. Times have changed. Mobile is very fashionable. Just, a lot of the journalists in the market don’t know much about it at all. So it routinely gets ignored. I’d like to change that.

I put the above pitch to a world leading PR firm a little while ago. They loved it. My key problem: I don’t know anyone at Vogue. Or FHM. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

“We do,” they said, “Let us make some calls and see what they say.”

Turns out the publications liked it. So I’m doing it. Next month. There are — predictably — some costs. I don’t know where I’m going so the PR firm in question is providing me with some support. They’re doing all the legwork. It’s going to take a few days to deliver — although I estimated an hour per publication, it looks like I’ll need to spend almost an afternoon briefing at each. So there’s some costs to cover. But we’re sharing them across 6 mobile companies.

We’ve got 4 in the bag already and I’m looking for a few more. If your mobile application is likely to appeal to the American normob (“normal mobile phone user”) — and I do mean NORMOB — then drop me an email and let’s see if we can get you involved. There are no platform restrictions — indeed while the iPhone inevitably attracts attention, we need to consider the handset population of the readers of these publications. I’m thinking BlackBerries, Sony Ericssons, Java feature phones. Not just iPhone. There is, of course, no guarantee that the publications in question will cover the applications I pitch them but — you know — I’m going to try my best.

Mail me for a chat about this: ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Touchnote needs some testing help from Nokia S60 users, specifically Nokia S60 3rd Edition users. They’ll pay you a bottle of Champagne (and, knowing Ed, it’ll be the good stuff) to anyone who can help them out with 20 minutes worth of testing. They just want to check the application downloads correctly and works fine on an array of handsets. Specifically, Ed would like you to critique the userflow by buying a 2 card Touchnote pack for 50 pence and sending both postcards.

If you’ve got one of these handsets, you qualify:

E71, 5730 XpressMusic, N76, 6790 Slide, E90 Communicator, 6760 Slide, N79, E55, 6650d, 6210 Navigator, N95, 6121 classic, N86 8MP, N85, 6120 classic, 5700 XpressMusic, E52, 6220 classic, E63, 6110 Navigator, N96, 6710 Navigator , E66, E72, N78, 6720 classic, 6650 fold, 6124 classic, E75, N82, 6290, 6730 classic, N81 8GB, N81, E51, N95 8GB, 6790 Surge, 5630 XpressMusic, and 5320 XpressMusic.

If you’d like to help out, just get in touch with Ed via @eddhodges on Twitter or drop him a note via ed at touchnote.com.

Well they’ve been publishing a metrics report every month for quite a while and it makes absolutely fascinating reading.

It is my no means illustrative of the market as a whole — they can obviously only track the users who’re visiting mobile sites featuring their ads — but nevertheless it’s a brilliant indication of what a section of the mobile population is doing with their devices.

You can get the metrics reports free here: http://metrics.admob.com/.

Here’s some interesting points from the latest report:

AdMob’s most recent mobile metrics report revealed that:
- The Android OS now has seven per cent market share globally
- 10 per cent of smartphones in the UK now run the Android OS
- HTC Dream, which uses the Android OS, is the second most popular mobile phone for surfing the mobile web in the UK, after the Apple iPhone
- Android is growing rapidly in North America and Western Europe. The HTC Magic is a Top 10 smartphone in both North America and Western Europe
- The HTC Dream handset is ranked fourth globally

And..

An AdMob study of 1000 mobile phone users revealed that:
- Android users download 9.1 apps a month on average
- iPhone users download 10.2 apps a month on average
- iPod Touch users download 18.4 apps a month on average

It’s a fascinating time for the industry.

Eventually I found the Natwest and managed to obtain some cash and as I departed the bank, a chap stopped me on the street. He was wearing a Tesco supermarket jacket.

“Excuse me, mate,” he said. I turned round.

“Do you know where Cromwell Street is?” he asked, brandishing an envelope with a series of directions scribbled on the back.

“Errrrr,” I said. That’s the standard first-response from most people in the UK. I didn’t want to disappoint.

I thought hard.

Cromwell Street.

No.

“No, sorry…” I said. The chap made to turn. “But wait!” I exclaimed, “Let me just check for you.”

I whipped out my Blackberry.

“Google Maps,” I said, nodding at the chap.

He looked vaguely impressed.

My Bold fired up Google Maps and I looked on with delighted expectation as the handset found my location and began to swiftly display Chiswick High Road on the map, complete with a flashing blue dot.

Brilliance.

“So, Cromwell Road is it?” I say to the chap.

He nods.

I hit search and I type in Cromwell Road…

“Just a moment,” I say, watching the data-cursor thing at the top right of the Blackberry shoot back and forward, indicating something was happening.

I smiled as I saw one of the Google Map squares appear on screen.

“Just a momennnnnnnnnnttttttt,” I say, stretching the words as long as is possible, whilst I wait for the sodding 3G data connection to perform.

The chap and I stand there.

People go about their business.

I start to think, “This is bollocks.”

20 seconds went by.

“It’s… er….” I say, feeling like a total cock.

Goodness knows what this guy is thinking. All he wanted was a simple binary answer. If my answer was ‘yes’, then he’d also have hoped to get some kind of directions. He’d have been content with a ‘no’. Because he could have asked somebody else.

Unfortunately he selected me.

45 seconds later, after quietly swearing profusely at my Blackberry and my BOLLOCKS Vodafone connection, I apologised to the chap and said, “I think it might be up that way.”

He thanked me — I’m not sure what for — and walked off.

Gahhhh. How annoying!

Hey Will,

My app, 0870, was accepted into the app store a week and a half ago after 429 days in review. I’m planning to release all of the stats on my blog, but here’s a sneak preview for you, and the rest of MoMoLondon:

Day 1: 3,130 (#79)
Day 2: 6,786 (#29)
Day 3: 15,265 (#7)
Day 4: 10,619 (#5)
Day 5: 9,407 (#4)

The app is free, and contains an Admob advert at the bottom of the screen.

In the next few days, I’m going to be releasing full statistics on my blog (simonmaddox.com), including:
number of downloads
chart positions
admob revenue
impact on other (paid) apps sold by me
Hope you find it useful!

Cheers,

Simon

Looking forward to the update, Simon!

But the Ovi Store?

Oh dear.

Here’s just one indication why it’s struggling.

I clicked the Ovi Store icon on my N86 earlier today. It’s just a link. The Ovi Store App wasn’t pre-installed on my device — instead, click the icon and woosh, it loads the web browser and then navigates to the web-based Ovi Store.

This is ok.

I’m not entirely impressed at the fact it couldn’t be factory installed — but at least there’s an icon.

Instead of being transported to the Ovi Store website, I got this screen:

“Did you know there’s a faster way to browse the Ovi Store?” asks the text prompt.

I sure did.

I was delighted. Brilliant. I was being offered the Ovi Store app for download.

Good thinking Nokia.

I clicked the ‘YES!’ link.

Here’s the next screen:

Yes… that item is unavailable.

Total bollocks.

It’s not a massive problem for me, personally. I’m the geek — I can put up with navigating around the Ovi website. I can press ‘back’ and carry on. I understand errors happen and am reasonably tolerant provided I can find a work-around.

But for the normob who’s already frightened to hell by the Nokia experience, this kind of service level is dire.

We know that Nokia is trying to evolve itself into a services company — indeed, I sat in front of Mr Savander himself who explained the capacity issues that played havoc with the launch day — but this user experience is simply unacceptable.

If I was from Apple, I’d be looking at this and … you know what, I wouldn’t be laughing. This is beyond funny.

It’s beyond, ‘ha ha, aren’t they shit’.

Nokia has a 52.5 billion dollar market cap (just slightly smaller than the combined market caps of both Motorola and RIM).

It’s no joke.

What is it going to take for Nokia to deliver a reliable and exciting Ovi Store experience?

Can’t somebody at Ovi hire a few more testers or something and get the basics right?

Knocking over a Tweet to say ‘thanks for the lunch at Claridges’ might be acceptable in a fast-paced-busy-blogger-about-town lifestyle, but at some point, when the message (or the intent) has a degree of importance that we wish to mark, we resort to the old ways.

The old ways are always the best.

Flowers.

A letter.

A card.

£100,000 in non-sequential £10 notes.

Today’s communications technology is just too easy for it to really mean anything.

Sending an ‘e-card’ for someone’s birthday is a complete no-no. They’re often quite entertaining but the shine wore off them long, long ago. All they do now is serve to remind the recipient that you couldn’t be bothered to buy a card.

And, just while we’re on the subject, buying a card is such a total arse nowadays. I was in WH Smiths, the popular stationers and newsagents here in the UK, recently. It was the Reading branch. It was my friend’s birthday. I needed to get a card. A physical one. Because, you do. Much to my annoyance. And, you know what, probably much to his annoyance too. I selected the least offensive £3 piece of shit I could find (and I mean SHIT — just total bollocky cards that remind me of being age 9 and going to the part of some-kid-in-my-class). I wrote out my best attempt at a witty message, sealed the envelope. Done.

A total flipping arse, that. I know females like it, but I do not. It’s a wholly, wholly inefficient process.

Sending a text message is, of course, very personal. But fleeting. And far too easy. It doesn’t even ‘cost’ 10p any more since there are so many unlimited deals around.

Sending an email… goodness me. It’ll do. But it’s not ‘meaningful’.

Likewise a Facebook/Social networking message.

Case in point. My wife was recently unwell. My friend Tom sent a Facebook message immedately. And a flippin’ huge bunch of flowers the next day (very good of you Tom). The Facebook message was very welcome — the flowers demonstrated care, attention, thought, effort.

So in this age of easy communications, how do you actually raise a smile, show you care or ‘touch’ a friend or relative from afar?

Touchnote.

Touchnote take your (digital) photos and send them, physically, as a beautiful looking postcard through the post. They’ve had a website up since late last year and they’ve been doing a roaring trade through it with countless mums, students and semi-geeky folk flocking to use the facility.

All well and good.

But it wasn’t mobile. And that’s what I really wanted to see.

So when the founders of Touchnote demonstrated their intent to own the mobile marketplace (by hiring my friend Ed Hodges away from Howler Tech), I thought ‘good news’.

So much so I went along to meet one of the founders, Raam — and I was so enthused, I spent a good amount of time with them. Before long I even ended up doing a little consultancy for them. I was delighted to help.

I say that. It’s been a painful experience. Every time I look at my iPhone I think Touchnote.

Just after Ed joined, Touchnote was invited by Nokia to become one of the launch partners on the Ovi Platform. Inevitably they had to focus on creating a Symbian version of their software first — and though I agreed that this was necessary, I simply couldn’t wait for the iPhone app. Especially since I’d been seeing the odd tantalising early version or screenshot now and again.

The Touchnote S60 app launched with the Ovi Store and they’ve seen some encouraging initial results. They’ve been sending postcards to something like 130+ countries as a result. The S60 implementation, guided by Ed, is nothing short of a master-class in UI design. If you get the opportunity, download and check it out. They’ve done it beautifully — as best they could with the standard S60 constraints.

(Note: Check out this Mobile Developer TV video of the S60 Touchnote app walk-through)

The iPhone platform was, for me, the way ahead. The user culture of applications, together with their clear willingness to spend money looks to me to be a brilliant opportunity.

The use case is simply wonderful. Take a photo on your iPhone 3GS. Load Touchnote. Type in a message. Select the recipient’s physical address from your address book. Press Send. Done.

The next business day, the recipient gets *that* photo in the mail (if you’re UK based — Touchnote post every card first class so it might take a few days for, say, the USA).

The presentation of the resulting postcard is superb.

My only concern? It’s £1.49 per postcard, plus postage — making the total cost per card of £1.99. Buy 25+ and that reduces to a much more reasonable £0.99 per card, plus £0.45 UK postage. I’d love for them to find a way to deliver the service free. Or for a nominal £0.25 per delivery.

But given that the sodding Post Office here in the UK charge £0.45 per item minimum for first class, that might be a challenge. I’m sure there’s an ad-funded model in there somewhere.

The resulting postcards are specially designed so that they stand. This is critically important. Sending a flat-file postcard is a little bit.. boring. The fact that Touchnotes stand is absolutely excellent for displaying them.

Here’s a few examples:

Cost is an issue. If they could somehow work out a comprehensive sponsorship arrangement with the likes of Dominos or something (by, say, putting a voucher on every card), they could potentially tap into the youth market who, I reckon, would lap it up.

But price — as Touchnote have already demonstrated via S60 and online is not a barrier.

There are a ton of people out there who adore this facility.

For me, I’m going to be using it almost daily to send postcards to my mother and, in particularly, my grandmother. For me the cost/value is a no-brainer.

For the chap who’s constantly flying in and out of different countries whilst his young family are at home, it’ll be a boon.

For keeping in touch with granny, it’s going to be hugely useful.

And… I’m pleased I haven’t experienced this yet — but the applications of Touchnote for iPhone when drunk are considerable.

The basic memories are what count though. There’s not much you can do to ‘realise’ the value of a photo beyond sticking it on Facebook. So next time you’re out with your friends and you come across Stephen Fry and he’s good enough to pose with you… nice. You can send the photo to mum within a few taps. It’ll be on her doorstep in no time. That is just brilliant.

So, Touchnote for iPhone.

Time for some screenshots of the iPhone App (iTunes link).

This is the home screen:

Here’s where you choose the photo (either take a photo or get it from the gallery):

This is where you preview and, if you wish, add a caption to the photo:

Then you need to tap in your message. This goes on the back of the card.

Here’s where you select the address. In this case it’s already selected from the address book and filled in the details. Or you can manually enter/correct.

Now you get a little preview of everything:

Once you’re happy, hit send… and it’ll transmit:

Paying for the service is handled as seamlessly as possible within the app:

Here’s the confirmation screen:

And what does an actual Touchnote postcard look like?

Here we go. This is the front.

This is the back. Note the address is top left. Also note that the top and bottom are angled so that the card stands up.

Inside left, you’ve got a small copy of the original photo and, underneath, it tells you the name of the camera that took the photo. (This is orgasm point 1 for all geeks reading. Point 2 is coming).

Here’s the centre back — showing the main message:

And point 2 for geeky orgasm. Yes. On the back right-hand-side there is a Google Map mashup showing where you took the photo. LOOOOOVE it.

If you’ve got an iPhone (or an S60 handset) I strongly encourage you to check out Touchnote and send one or two cards with it at a minimum. I’m expecting big things of Touchnote.

Get Touchnote for iPhone here (it’ll pop-up iTunes):

Update: Check out Dan Lane’s video overview of Touchnote for iPhone.

It’s arrived!

More on this in a moment.

I just had a note in from the chaps at Tiverias Apps to tell me about their latest addition to the iPhone App Store — ‘GPush’.

It does what it says on the tin. Making use of the relatively new Apple push-update function, GPush prompts you with the subject and sender of mail sent to your Gmail account.

You’ll therefore get notification of new emails immediately, instead of having to wait for the rather unpredictable iPhone email client to prompt you.

The GPush icon helpfully shows the number of unread messages outstanding, (which in the case of my account, would number in the thousands).

The app also offers notification controls including having the iPhone vibrate/ring.

GPush is an absolute genius concept for anyone with a Gmail account. Indeed for your average iPhone/Gmail user, I think GPush will quickly ascend to the top five most-used applications on their device. I really like the fact you only have to open the app once, set it — and then forget it — it’ll sit in the background working away.

The nature of Mobile Industry Review means that I receive hundreds of emails in a given day so in some cases, I wouldn’t want to get a notification every-single-time. But today I went for a long walk — and I took my iPhone with me, leaving my Blackberry at home. Thus I would really have appreciated being updated when new mail arrives instead of having to continually click the ‘mail’ icon and wait for the device to do it’s thing.

Indeed, using email in this poke-the-icon-and-wait manner is positively neolithic.

If you’re even half interested in getting swift Gmail notifications on your iPhone, definitely take a look at GPush.

You’ll find it for $0.99 in the App Store — that should probably be £0.59 pounds.

Good work chaps!

Here’s what an GPush alert looks like:

GPush iTunes store link: GPush

Last night at the MIR Mobile Mixer event in London, somebody mentioned them in conversation and I thought I should take a closer look.

Mobango, in case you need a refresher, is all about mobile content. They’ve done a ton of work to make it as easy as possible to get mobile content on your phone, share it and also store it online (with 1GB of free storage for every member).

The counter on their frontpage is pretty impressive:

I remember back in the day when Mobango launched and the average mobile user was plodding about the place with a rubbish, rubbish ‘feature phone’ Nokia that could do next to nothing. Playing with mobile content was a bit of a challenge then.

So half a billion downloads so far. Impressive. They’ve also got over 700,000 imags, 60,000 videos, 115,000 tunes, 3,500 games and 8,000 themes for people to sample. A big database.

What really caught my attention was their all new section. At least, new to me.

Applications.

They’ve got a directory of 8,334 mobile applications ready to download. Clearly this is going to be a rather big area for the company. On the frontpage they’re featuring Nokia’s Ovi Store, Pocket Express EU and Vopium for Symbian.

They’ve also launched a developers area offering application developers the opportunity to publish and promote their wares. I’m going to see if I can find out more about this. Perhaps I can get someone from Mobango on camera for Mobile Developer TV to talk on this.

Over to you, Malcolm:

- – - – -

How do you access data/content on the go?  Is it through the browser on your phone?  Or through separate applications?  Recently, I’ve noticed that I don’t do “mobile browsing” any more; 90% or more of the data I consume is via other applications, e.g. the Gmail mobile app.  A quick straw poll of a few friends suggested that it’s not just me, and it reminded me of something from a few years ago.  I was on a panel at a mobile messaging conference, and a question came in from the audience: since applications can easily be delivered via the browser on the desktop, surely the same will happen in mobile, so all we need on the mobile device is a browser?

My answer was no – there is such a big gap between the capabilities of desktop browsers and mobile browsers that it’s not feasible.  And browser apps are resource hungry; just look at the load on a PC when you fire up Gmail if you don’t believe me.

Of course, there are a couple of vested interests to declare.  Firstly, I was working for a company that was promoting mobile messaging apps, so I was hardly going to say anything else, was I?  Secondly, the questioner worked for a mobile operator, and mobile operators are desperate to hear the answer that the browser can do everything, because it simplifies their lives enormously.

The question is still relevant today, and not only do I still stand by my original answer, I don’t even think mobile browsing is an enjoyable pastime!  To paraphrase Blur, Mobile Web is Rubbish.

By rubbish, I mean it’s frustratingly slow, although that’s not the real problem.  The real problem is that even when web pages do load, it’s such a hit and miss affair whether they will render correctly on my mobile screen that I frequently wish I hadn’t bothered.  And if the site in question is using Flash or funky Javascript or whatever, then you can forget it.

The industry knows this, of course.  That’s why Vodafone have deployed technology from Novarra, it’s why T-Mobile’s web and walk includes the Opera browser, and it’s why the chaps at Skyfire have managed to raise nearly $18m to build a better browser.

Even with a well designed website, there are generally better options.  Here’s a simple example: train times.  Now, I love wap.kizoom.co.uk, and have done since it was launched.  But, if I want train information, I have three choices: call National Rail Enquiries, text National Rail Enquiries, or try the mobile web.  Texting is both quickest and most convenient.  Try it for yourself, if you don’t believe me.  It’s also the most expensive so I do still use the website.  But if you took cost out of the equation, the web wouldn’t come close.

Most websites aren’t designed with mobile in mind, and when they are I can’t be arsed to remember if I a particular site has a mobile version, or if it does whether I need to visit “m.website.com” or “website.mobi” or “www.website.com/mobile” to get the right version.  Or to remember that website ‘A’ renders fine in the standard browser, but website ‘B’ works much better in Skyfire.  So if you are one of the people doing the content on the operator portals, I salute you, because apart from the fruits of your labour, there isn’t much out there.

So I’m reduced to using applications to get my content.  My IM, facebook, football and cricket scores, twitter and RSS needs are all served by non-browser applications on my phone.  I don’t browse the web on my phone, because it’s not worth the effort.

Aha, you say, but what about the iPhone?  That’s the future, that’s where the mobile web is at.

Sorry, no.

First off, the iPhone is a niche device.  And even if it were mainstream, web browsing isn’t the method of choice on the iPhone.  Look at the twitter updates from your iPhone enabled followees.  They’re all using one of a bazillion twitter apps for iPhone.  Same for LinkedIn.  And Facebook.  Facebook have an iPhone specific site, yet they still developed an iPhone app. Why?  Because it gives a better result.

Browsers on handsets will get better.  That’s what the iPhone shows us.  But PCs will always have larger screens and be more powerful than phones, so the mobile web will always lag behind.  It may improve, but for now, it’s rubbish.

I popped by the Flirtomatic London offices today to meet with founder Mark Curtis and the team. I’ve long been a follower (and fan) of Flirtomatic (check out the MIR archive coverage) and particularly fascinated with how they’ve managed to build such a massive base of users via the mobile web.

Flirtomatic is, as you might have guessed, all about flirting — not necessarily dating in the traditional sense. Mark and his team are uber-smart. They’ve got the sign-up time down to approximately 45 seconds via mobile. So if you click on an advert or if you visit via an operator portal link, you’ll be able to become a member extremely quickly. This fastidious and razor-sharp focus on the sign-up process has helped them garner a massive, massive user-base.

Mark was telling me that when they started, they used to convert just over a third of sign-ups into active users (and by active, they mean ’sends a flirt message’, not just logging in). They’ve now got that ratio up to 70% – a simply phenomenal figure.

I spent a few hours with Mark discussing his take on mobile development. The resulting interview is fantastic food for thought. Firtomatic have built a solid foundation of decent, healthy and increasing revenue through mobile web. Why? Well, he explains in some detail on camera and makes some super observations.

If you’re after some highlights, try these snippets for size:

* They users bought 14,000 virtual engagement rings in 72 hours to celebrate the leap year back in 2008.
* Don’t write off credit cards as a method of payment. 10% of Flirtomatic’s revenue is derived from credit cards — details of which are input via the mobile browser!
* Vodafone UK’s ‘free data’ day on May 1st for PAYG users boosted sign-ups 13 times.
* iPhone users are by far the longest to validate (i.e. confirm) their accounts — in some cases it takes four days for a user to login to their email to validate their account.
* The N95 remains one of their most popular handsets by traffic.
* On average within 2 hours of signing up, males get roughly 4 flirtomatic messages from other users. Females get about 20!
* They money is in visibility (i.e. users paying to improve their rankings/ratings). That point is probably one of the most incisive takeaways.
* It’s not necessarily about apps. I think a lot of developers will be very interested to understand why Mark and his team simply haven’t bothered with mobile applications as yet.

We also did a walk-about of Flirtomatic’s Towers, indeed they’re now a proper tower since new additions have led them to expand on to a second floor. Mark did a quick introduction to the staff before we sat down and got talking.

Mark’s video(s) should be up shortly. If you’d like a reminder, we’ve got a nifty function that will update you by email every time we post. Subscribe here.

(That screencap above of Mark is from the video import.)

My name is Ewan and I’m founder and Editor.  You can find out more about me here.

After Mobile Industry Review turned subscription-only back at the end of March, I’ve been looking around for other projects to commence.  Mobile Developer TV started off as a concept in the back of my mind about 6 months ago.

Here’s the Background

I’m founder and editor of Mobile Industry Review (”MIR”), one of the world’s most influential commentators on the mobile industry.  The site published daily news and opinion for almost 3 years, reaching a core audience of 250,000 industry executives and fanatics.  MIR’s feed is integrated directly into the intranets of many mobile operators, handset manufacturers and mobile service companies.  Super reach, super influence.  Witness, for example, our ground-breaking video of the never-before-seen Nokia Test Labs in Farnborough (Over 175,000 people viewed it within days of publishing). Or take a look at the recent post I published about iPhone centric developer mindset in Silicon Valley, picked up by MocoNews, VentureBeat and the Washington Post.

I thoroughly enjoyed producing the site with a team of brilliant contributors.  In March 2009, I turned MIR subscription-only, providing the site’s on-going feed to one company.  The nature of the company’s requirement developed to the point that I was able to engage a small team of writers to deliver the on-going service.  I still retain all MIR rights and content — including the domain names and the site’s extensive reach — so I’ve been looking for another project to put these resources to good use.

Why Mobile Developer TV?

I really, really enjoy producing online video features. There’s something about ‘TV’ that you just can’t match with the written word.  It’s about seeing the person (or people), visualising their excitement and seeing just how passionate they are about their products and services. I did a lot of experimenting with the Mobile Industry Review Show — the MIR Show — and after a good few hundred hours of stress and learning, I think I’ve more or less perfected the art of brilliant online video production: Top quality HD cameras, excellent HD video hosting, super-expensive microphones — in fact, the best equipment you can buy, a bit of creativity in the editing studio (Final Cut is excellent, but iMovie, although frowned upon from the professional sector, is extremely quick).

Marry this passion for online television with my fascination with the mobile industry — and more specifically, with mobile development — and it didn’t take me long to hatch the concept.  And here it is!

The Aim

I’m going to meet the best and the brightest in mobile development — and I’m going to put them on camera.  I’m aiming to publish one TV show per week to start with.  Each show will centre on one or two people in the mobile development space.  iPhone App developers, certainly.  But I’m interested in the whole spectrum — from Blackberry’s App World, to Nokia’s Ovi, to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace and beyond.

If you’ve ever seen any of the interviews I’ve produced in the past, you’ll know I like to keep myself out of the picture. It’s not about me, it’s about the interviewee.  In some cases I’m aiming to do a straight interview — me to the right of the camera pointing the microphone and asking questions.  In other cases, I’ll do a walk-about or a show-and-tell with the developer.

I’m interested in talking to and profiling:

• Mobile application developers
  (Platform agnostic: iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia/J2ME/Samsung/Microsoft/Android)
• Companies whose primary business is NOT in the mobile space — but who have developed or are developing mobile applications.
  (For instance: A travel company launching an iPhone app, dotcoms launching their own apps — eg. Lastminute’s FoneFood app)
• Companies who supply services to/work with mobile developers
  (Example: Providers of mobile advertising, debug/testing)

Video will comprise most of the content here on Mobile Developer TV — however in my research over the past months, it’s clear that, whilst there are a lot of developers in Silicon Valley and London (my two primary locations), there’s a considerable geographic spread of developers.  Only today I was talking to developers from Ohio, Johannesburg, New Zealand, Ukraine, Paris and Scotland.  I’d like to be able to fly into meet each — that might be a bit of a challenge in the short term though.  So to supplement, I’ll aim to publish text interviews and profiles regularly.

One developer I spoke to suggested recording his own interview on video, answering my questions to camera with his own facilities — and sending it over to me to publish.  I think it’s a super suggestion and I think we’ll do that.

Can I profile you?  Contact Me!

I’m based in London and San Francisco so I’ll be producing the majority of in-person videos from those locations.  If you’d like to feature, drop me a note.  I’m ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv — this is the best way of contacting me.  But you can also phone/text me.  My mobile numbers are:

+44 7769 658104 (UK)

+1 415 200 9515 (US)

… (I’m happy to hear from PRs too.)

Don’t Be British

Please don’t be British — that is, sit at the back and hope I’ll come across you.  I really will do my best to find mobile developers and companies to profile — I’ve already got a big list from working with MIR — but I am most certainly no genius.  So I need your help in order to profile you — I need to know you exist. So please do drop me a note if you’re keen to be profiled.  At the very least I’ll aim to send you out a list of questions to answer by email that I can turn into a profile piece here on the site. (Who are you, what are you creating/have you created, what platform, why, what challenges have you had, and so on).  Ideally I’ll arrange to meet physically to interview you on-camera and perhaps produce an application walk-through.

Got News?

If you’ve got a particular topic of announcement that you think mobile developers and those working in related fields should know about, knock me over an email right-away.

Design

I’m doing a Robert Scoble at the moment — that is publishing with a default WordPress Theme.  I’ll update it as we progress.  The content is way more important than the theme and that’s where my focus is at the moment.

Editorial Policy

As for editorial policy, I’m aiming for a macro view of mobile development.  I don’t plan on publishing code level discussions, or discussing the finer points of the Symbian operating system.  Instead, I’ll be looking at the commercial aspects of the mobile applications development sector along with the trends I’m witnessing.  The overriding focus is, of course, on profiling developers.  I’m particularly interested in talking with one-man-bands:  The chaps (and ladies) who’re single-handedly driving the massive change sweeping the industry.  That said, I’m also keen to talk to the business people — the product managers, the executive teams — about the challenges and successes in the field of mobile applications development.

This is a work in progress so I’d welcome your feedback, either below or by email.

I’ll be syndicating the output through the public feed on Mobile Industry Review so if you’re already a MIR RSS subscriber, you’ll start to get updates shortly.  You can also catch blog updates via the new Mobile Developer TV Twitter account @mobdevtv.

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Who made money in the gold rush? The hundreds of thousands of folk who went to find gold? Or the people who sold’em spades?

Enter my new business.

I will sell you 1,000 followers for $99 on-off fee. Payable by PayPal.

You won’t get 1,000 added to your list in 20 seconds. Oh no. That would look suspect.

Instead we’re going to automate the following process over 2 weeks. You’ll get 15 joins in the space of two minutes.

And then you’ll see join notifications come in every 20-45 minutes until you’ve got a glorious 1,000 new followers.

But don’t worry, each of the accounts that will follow you has it’s own picture, biography and publishes one or two updates per week. They’re all given genuine names so that if I look down your follow list, I’d never know you’d bought 1,000 of them.

If you’d like to upgrade your account to ‘GOLD’ status — that’s $100 a month — every follower will click on any links you provide in your Tweets. For a one-time $500 fee, we will also provide you with 250 extra Facebook friends and 200 LinkedIn contacts.

Further, on a random basis, a random number of your 1,000 followers (between 56 and 367) will retweet your Tweets to their followers. Helping boost you up the charts and make anyone following you think you’ve got a massive, massive cock.

We’ll be launching soon.

Not quite.

I’m just working on the messaging now:

Are you rubbish? Do you have only 200 followers or less?
Do your friends look at you in the gym and think, ‘what a shit number of followers he’s got?’

Well, no longer. Not with our new patented TwitFollowGrow service. YOURS for just $99.

But order now.

Supplies are limited!

You and I both know that if I actually did this, I’d make a ton of money. How many PR firms, social media experts and bloggers would take one look at this offer and get their PayPal details out?

Tons. Tons. Tons.

My most recent experience was watching the chap from Orange France at Mobile Monday Paris this evening. He did a credible and professional pitch. It all looked very good. If this was 2003, I’d have been dead impressed.

The trouble is, telling the planet you’ve got 50 million customers across Europe is a little bit disingenuous.

The Orange chap wasn’t helped by the DeviceAnywhere guy — Christian — who stood up first and declared that almost five million applications are downloaded from the iTunes App Store every day.

The crowd visibly shook at that point. FIVE MILLION? A Day. They knew it was high. But nearly 5 million?

Christian did the one-two-punch by then telling us roughly 70% of those downloads are paid.

Now I was familiar with these stats roughly. But having them laid out ‘on paper’ there on the screen is rather impressive. The sheer possibilities for mobile developers are hugely, hugely significant. Yes there’s concern about the possibility of overcrowding on the App Store. Yes there’s issues with Apple’s censoring of some applications and ideas. But oh boy. What a potential marketplace.

Back to Orange. I should be clear, I’m not picking on the in this situation — just, this was the last operator I witnessed in person.

The poor chap.

There he was, 50 million customers, apparently. France, Spain, Belgium…

The vast majority of them completely untouchable, as far as developer is concerned.

I wasn’t blessed with the ability to understand the questions for the Orange guy at the end. Initially there were zero questions. The crowd just stayed silent. Most of us trying to compute the ’50 million customers’ statement and try and establish how many of them were ‘reachable’. How many of them could *actually* discover, pay-for and download an application via Orange’s services? And further, how many of them could re-discover the app, or *actually* discover the app on their RUBBISH handset once it’s been downloaded?

There’s only so much you can do with the Emperor’s New Clothes before the reality hits home.

50 million customers. 49 million of which couldn’t give a flying flip about downloading applications. Not through lack of demand, but through lack of discoverability.

How, precisely, are you supposed to find and engage with applications that, to be frank, your Motorola RAZR shouldn’t even be thinking about? You might want to download a wicked new Watchmen movie video game for your bollocks 2005 Samsung… but if you DO get it on to your handset (and pay a stupid amount for the privilege), it’ll be 100×100 pixels of pure rubbish. You know it. I know it. So does the consumer whenever they’ve tried it.

And for those who really, really stick at it — and manage to get the game downloaded to their handset, all they have to do is put it next to their friend (who’s using their iPhone as a steering wheel in one of the latest and beautiful looking racing games – for example) and you look like a total numpty.

It’s the equivalent of driving your girlfriend to the prom in a wheelbarrow kitted out with pedals whilst everyone else arrives in something with a roof, at least.

I’ve yet to see a service offering from a mobile operator in this arena that looks any good. Any good at all.

There are fundamental flaws with everything I’ve seen. Everything.

If it’s not the way the operator’s tried to piece the store together, it’s their idiotic testing and contracting rubbish that’s a huge barrier.

And even if it’s looking half decent. Even if you suspend your disbelief and think, ‘Yeah, I’ll stick 50k of MY money into developing for [operatorname]‘, you have that nagging doubt. The real, nagging doubt — the 60ft elephant in the corner of the room making lots of high pitched mooing noises whilst everyone does their best to ignore it. And the smell.

Yeah that’s the smell of rotting handset populations.

When you sit back and ask the operator questions like ‘Ok, so just how many people can access your store front?’ they’ll give you super sounding answers.

5 million.

10 million.

80% at launch.

Ok, sorry – did you say HAVE access? CAN access? Or… do you have any up to date stats on just how many of your customers are using Nokia 3000 series devices or similar? 5%? Right. Wipe them out for a start. How many of them are on PAYG and haven’t been tracked with a new IMEI for 3 years plus? 28%? Right. Let’s move them from the mess. How many of them are using Sony Ericsson? Shit. 35%? Really? 35%? Geez. Wipe them from the slate. Right… so…

Ok how many of your customers are using functional but functionally useless handsets for us? You know, good looking Samsungs, LGs, the kind of handsets that simply cannot be upgraded and are glorified alarm clocks? ANOTHER 20%?

So just how many customers can you point in my direction from next month?

Riiiight.

Wait… Wait? Did… did someone say iPhone App Store?

There’s no wonder. NO WONDER the vast majority of the mobile developing planet is sticking with and heading on to iPhone. It’s not brilliant. It’s not definitive, in any way. But it works. The dream is at least half real. The dream of selling 1,000 apps per hour at a tenner each for 3 weeks… that’s REAL. It’s achievable. There’s a lot you’d need to do. But you CAN achieve it.

With most operators you’re looking at an embedded population who — fraknly — wouldn’t be able to find an application from the start menu if you automatically provisioned it over-the-air.

If you’ve got 50,000 pounds to spend on developing applications, you’ll most certainly listen to the operators. It sounds good. It’s nice to actually *meet* people from operators. Most of the mobile operator teams have spent the last five years hiding away from developers. From industry. They’ve had token ‘outreach’ attempts. But now they’re out there, shaking hands, swapping cards.

It’s alluring, it really is. I can see it in the eyes of the people I meet — and I meet a lot of mobile developers all the time. It’s hugely alluring to be able to chat to someone from an operator, finally. To be able to dream of marketing your brilliant app to the operator’s customers.

But that’s a pipe dream. You have to face reality. That 50k you’re investing needs to be risked in a market where there’s a high possibility of success.

That isn’t on an operator portal, despite the gorgeous facts they roll out. X million customers. X million in marketing support. Blah blah blah.

Here’s a case in point. A chap came up to me tonight. He’s an iPhone developer. He told me the name of the app and said it was available in the UK store as of today. I flipped up my iPhone, typed the app’s name in — and within seconds I was downloading it.

That is the only way this can work.

If there are any more hops, any more steps — you’re screwed.

So, operators. Show me the hops. Show me the money. Show me the developers selling thousands of application downloads per hour. And I’ll smile. I’ll truly smile.

Until that time, I’m not at all surprised at the amount of resources being directed into iPhone and Android development. If you’re app developing at the moment, and hoping to make cash, it’s iPhone, it’s Ovi, it’s Android. In that order.

Someday soon the operators just might have a proposition that doesn’t include an elephant in the room. I can’t wait until that day.

what is it?

UCweb is a bit of mobile software that you download to replace your native browser.  similar to opera mini.   However, it has a lot less visibility than opera mini as it has been developed by a Chinese company primarily for the home market and then translated into an english version.  UCweb Technology is based in Guangzhou City in Guangdong and has 210 employees of which 140 are developers – pretty big firepower!

UCweb has some great features including

-a server-side proxy that does a lot of the hard work so that a website can load on your phone

- tabbed pages to allow loading of multiple screens at once

- a download manager for helping to access larger files

- copy and paste functionality

- bookmark management with support for folders and so on – way better than the rubbish bookmarking features of standard browsers

UCweb is available on Symbian, Windows Mobile, Brew, Linux, iphone and Java so works on just about any phone.

WapReview has some fantastic background info and detailed reviews here http://wapreview.com/blog/?tag=ucweb

Why is it interesting?

UCweb has apparently been downloaded 64 million times (!), and usage has grown by 400% every year for three years. That puts it up there with some of the biggest mobile apps out there including ebuddy and Mig33 for example.  However, the company behind the service claim that they only offer the English version to “study user-habits” and are really focused on what they see as the major opportunity – the Chinese market.

China is the largest mobile market in the world and is also home to a massive proportion of handset manufacturing and network engineering and this capacity is now beginning to result in some great mobile software development.  UCweb is one of the first of many innovations we can expect to see coming out of there.

The UCweb browser has loads of passionate fans outside of China.  There is a lively community of developers who build english versions of the latest updates to the Chinese service before they are released by UCweb and build patches and so on to add additional functionality.

Finally, UCweb is part of a much bigger battle going on at the moment in the mobile browser space. Opera Mini, Skyfire and new players like Bolt as well as Firefox mobile are all fighting for market share.  It may well be that UCweb will come from nowhere to grab a big place in the mobile internet and prove that the major web players and Silicon Valley aren’t necessarily going to dominate on the mobile platform.

You can download UCweb at mjelly which is a directory of free mobile downloads and other stuff at mjelly.com and m.mjelly.com

In advance of our trip to Prague tomorrow I met up with James Whatley and we talked Nokia Maps and whether Rafe Blandford’s comments about side-loading map data and pre-planning points of interest could be right.  We also waved a pre-release Nokia N86 about a bit for good measure.

Watch the site and our Twitter streams (Site feed: @MIReview, Ewan: @ew4n, Dan: @danlane
and Ben: @bensmithuk) for updates throughout the trip.

I’m two hours into loading Nokia Maps 3, the PC suite applications and some map data onto my N82 right now… Guess how it’s going so far…

So – what better time to take a look at what they are building…

What is it?

Fring is a mobile VoIP and communications client available on iphone, Symbian, Java and Windows Mobile.  Fring users can make free calls to each other over the system.  The app also integrates with a range of third party VoIP and communications services including Skype, GoogleTalk, MSN Messenger and Twitter.   Recently they have also begun to add other services such as Last.fm to the mix.  Fring also lets you access all your contacts/ buddies from a single list. 

Fring is doing pretty nicely in terms of traction with 400,000 new downloads and activations per month. 

The company is based in Israel and has raised $13m + in funding over three rounds from Pitango Venture Capital, Veritas Venture Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, VenFin

Why is it interesting?

Fring is trying to do something really big i.e. become the “Skype of Mobile”.   This is a tough thing to do as they are running up against the operators on one side and the competition on the other.  For example, Nimbuzz and Mig33 both combine VoIP, messaging and mobile. 

One thing I like about Fring is that it has been clever about developing mobile viral marketing approaches to help spread the word about its service.  For example, when a user logs in to an instant messaging service like gtalk using Fring their status is changed to include the Fring URL – clever…

Another interesting thing about Fring is how passionate its users are which Fring has done a lot to promote and capture – for example they have a very lively discussion forum on their site and a nice blog which keeps people up to date on the service.   Fring is really a very good example of best practice in this area.

So – well done Fring for winning the award – looking forward to seeing what they come up with next…

That’s it from me – see you next week for another Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week.

You can download Fring on mjelly, which is a directory of free mobile applications and other stuff for your phone at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

What is it?

abphone is a mobile search engine that focuses on multimedia content that you might want for your phone e.g. images, video and games.  They have created a really simple mobile search interface to a range of different content databases.  You can check it out at m.abphone.com.

Abphone plugs into a range of image and video sources (e.g. youtube) and for games has aggregated content from a range of premium and free suppliers including Glu, Twistbox, Hovr and Greystripe.

In some ways abphone are similar to – Taptu (previously covered here at MIR) – for example, both Taptu and abphone focus on entertainment content rather than internet/ site search.

The service abphone offers has been delivering some pretty good traction:

– 400k unique monthly visitors

– 100+ million page views per month

– 500+ million searches since launch

- 15 sessions per active user per month

Why is it interesting?

Mobile is an area where Google has not yet really achieved dominance, even in its core areas of strength.  For example, Admob is widely accepted to have beaten them in the mobile advertising space so far.   In the area of mobile search, Google continues to have a pretty weak offering, and mainly focuses on providing transcoded versions of PC-focused sites – it’s page rank algorithm really struggles to rank mobile-only sites.

The success of abphone shows that there may be room for a lot of specialist mobile search providers in specific verticals as the market develops.  Mobile search requires very precise results, so what we might see is a range of specialist players emerging for specific functions.

Ab phone also has some lessons for mobile startups looking to get traction.  Initially abphone focused on generating word of mouth – it got a lot of take-up from being covered in French blogs in the early days, amplified by word of mouth.  Once it had some traction, abphone was able to gain carriage deals with all major operators in France including Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom.

Finally, abphone is also an example of how new forms of mobile search and discovery are going to impact established areas of the mobile industry.  Historically, things like images/ wallpapers have been delivered by aggregators as a premium service, abphone allows users to access this type of content for free.  At the same time, it is creating a new channel for premium content such as games.

abphone are planning to extend their service into new verticals in 2009 (e.g. music) so watch this space.   Could abphone be an acquisition target for one of the big mobile content aggregators like Zed or Buongiorno?

You can find abphone on mjelly which is a directory of mobile web sites and other stuff at mjelly.com and m.mjelly.com

Today Sony Ericsson is announcing a deal to pre-load the Fun Text application onto one of its new handsets –  the new C905 Plus on 3 UK, which is to launch in Q2 this year. Fun Text will enable easy access from the handset to online galleries of animation and video content designed for messaging. The application also integrates with the address book on the handset.

 

“With 8.1 megapixels, the C905 already enables the best in user generated content and we are delighted to complement this with the best in professionally generated content”, said James Pycock, business development director at Fun Text.

I followed up with Patrick Mork, VP Marketing of GetJar (got a video of him coming from the MIR Developer Networking event). I wanted to know more about how operators are reacting to GetJar nowadays. For a long time, mobile operators were seeing services such as GetJar (effectively a huge, free app store for mobile applications) as a massive, massive threat. Many wanted nothing to do with GetJar — indeed some even blacklisted the service just in case it canibalised their on-portal application downloads.

Crazy. But true.

However more recently, the operators have been entirely changing their tune — indicative of an increasing trend toward cooperation, perhaps?

Here’s Patrick’s explanation.

- – - – -

Ewan,

You asked recently about how and why GetJar, a company previously blacklisted by networks and operators alike is now welcomed and even partnering with them to provide mobile content. I think the answer to that is that the perception of the content we host and of the type of company we are has now changed for three main reasons:

1) Stricter policing and protection of the content on our network – we have put policies in place to protect Intellectual Property (IP) and to avoid piracy. For instance we recently had a Gameloft game posted by a user, our response was to immediately remove this from the site and to freeze that users account

2) We have looked into the positioning of content on our site – GetJar is an open sourced community which by its very nature means we have adult content available. We have worked hard to ensure this content only reaches the users who specifically look for it and are careful of how it is marketed, ensuring it will not appear in an inappropriate place or next to any large, established brands.

3) Traffic – With over 20 million downloads a month of free content, GetJar is fast becoming both an interesting source of content and traffic for mobile operators the world over. Operators are constantly looking for new ways to excite their customers through innovative mobile content offerings. In addition, they are also seeking to maximize their investments by generating as much data traffic as possible. The industry needs consumers to embrace content and the success of app stores like GetJar and of course Apple, coupled with the economic climate help encourage user adoption of mobile content and drive traffic.

Mobile Operators’ and GetJar’s success are not mutually exclusive, our partnerships to provide app stores for the likes of 3UK and Vodafone Ireland show that the combination of traffic and content works. GetJar as a company is growing up, monetising data traffic and hosting new and interesting content which for the networks is now a compelling offer.

Talk to you soon,

Patrick

- – - – -

Excellent stuff Patrick — thanks very much for taking the time.

If you, dear reader, are looking to get your mobile applications out to a larger audience, do think about GetJar. Let me know if you need an intro. As ever I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com .

Have a read of this:

1 in 3 Australians will snoop in the phones of their partners (according to a Virgin Mobile survey).

60% of them do it when their partner is in the shower. 41% do it with their partner in view.

(quote from Tomi Ahonen’s presentation at Future of Mobile 2008.)

Principally I suspect the ‘snooping’ is looking at text messages and recent call lists.

Now if it’s that bad without sticking ‘location’ into the mix, how is it going to be when the masses take a look at Google Latitude?

How many relationships — business and personal — are about to get absolutely nailed by the fact that your friends and partners can *SEE* where you are. Or where you were?

Witness the following frequently used explanations that I often overhear:

Chap: I’m still in the office
Google Latitude: He’s over the other side of London. With friends Graham, Paul. And, er — if you check out that Kate girl’s blog, you’ll see her Latitude puts her within 100m of him.

Chap: I’m just at the shops buying you something in that underwear shop!
Google Latitude: He’s at PC World, about a mile away from any shops that might sell underwear.

Chap: (Text message) I’m just getting on the train.
Google Latitude: He hasn’t left the office.

Chap: NO? I’m not out with the guys. I’m just getting a sandwich then I’m on my way home.
Google Latitude: Before he switched me off, he was sitting next to ‘the guys’. And that bitch girl Kate was heading this year. That was an hour ago. That’s all I know, right?

Chap: Sorry boss, I’m stuck in the snow and I won’t be able to get into work.
Google Latitude: Rubbish! He’s at the leisure park near work — next to the cinema!

Teenager: I’m, er, just going to the shops to get a can of Coke. Back in 20.
Google Latitude: He’s round that Vicky-girl’s house again.

Teenager: Yeah I’m at school. So what, mum?
Google Latitude: He’s not in school. He’s not in the same town actually. Ask him how he got to the next town?

And so on.

Despite the fact that Latitude has bucketloads of privacy goodness, the use of this technology is going to take quite a while to get a hang of…

At the event, the team also announced the INQ1 had been short-listed as one of five devices in the GSMA Global Mobile Awards ‘Best Handset / Device‘ category to be announced at Mobile World Congress in a fortnight and the launch of a media and blogger-relations programme ‘INQ+’ intended to provide a forum for feedback and beta testing of forthcoming software / devices.