I came across MobDB the other day thanks to one of those beta lists that I completely forget the name of. When I remember, I’ll update the post. Anyway this one really caught my eye as I think I could seriously use it for a number of applications.

Let’s take a step back. What’s the one problem every single interactive mobile application has? At some point you’re going to want it to hook into a back-end database, right? To store everything. And that’s where it gets annoying. You work really hard on the app, then you have to build a flipping API for it. And unless you’re doing something with a pre-existing database, the chances are you need to construct a whole MySQL (or similar) back-end infrastructure to link to that API.

It’s a bit of an arse.

Doable, yes, but a bit of an arse. It’s just yet one more thing you have to remember. And often it means almost double the work for an application developer — because he’s got to figure out both the app front-end then develop this back-end bit.

That’s where mobDB comes in. They’ve done it all for you. They’re using Amazon in the background and they’ve simply designed a lovely front-end API for your app to talk to the database. You do this via HTTP-POST. It couldn’t be any simpler. Within that HTTP-POST, you include some uber-easy XML that executes your query and you get the results back in XML.

For instance, if this table existed on mobDB…

Then all you’d need to do to access it is send this XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <request>  
  <key>CIWWP3-1Ss-Vy7mOvi36kGTtDU-G0210JFRsWoBSoScBJpadeatrtTYy5Qqa</key> 
    <sql> 
     </query>SELECT * FROM employees</query> 
    </sql>   
 </request>

Easy.

Making a query is simple too:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <request>  
  <key>CIWWP3-1Ss-Vy7mOvi36kGTtDU-G0210JFRsWoBSoScBJpadeatrtTYy5Qqa</key> 
   <sql> 
      <query >SELECT name, address, photo FROM employees</query> 
   </sql>   
 </request>

The service is in beta right now and therefore it’s totally free to use.

Why not check it out at mobDB.net?

Update: The website I mentioned at the start but couldn’t remember the name of? http://www.betabait.com/

Here is the video:

What is it

eBuddy lets you log into your IM networks like AIM, Googletalk, MSN Messenger and ICQ as well as the Facebook and Myspace social network chat systems from a single account.  The service also integrates with mobile photo-sharing.

Initially the service was based on a PC web messenger but was extended to mobile with the launch of the Mobile Messenger Java app and a mobile web site Lite Messenger which is optimized for XHTML mobile browsers as well as the iphone, ipod Touch and Sony PSP.

eBuddy is truly international with support for 37 languages and offices in Amsterdam, London and San Fransisco.  The company has raised two rounds of funding, Series A (5m euro) from Lowland Capital Partners, and Series B (6.5m euro) from Prime Technology Ventures.

The mobile IM space is really hotting up and eBuddy faces a range of international competitors which we have previously covered here at Mobile Industry Review like Nimbuzz, Mig33 and Heysan as well as some strong local players such as Mxit in South Africa.  However, as the CEO Jan-Joost points out, ebuddy is the one to beat in this space with really massive traction – here are the latest numbers:

- 11m downloads of the ebuddy mobile application, growing at the rate of 1m downloads per month
- average user logs in 30 times per month
- 3m monthly uniques on mobile, growing at CAGR 195% (2004 to 2008)
- processed 45bn messages in 2008

eBuddy was founded in 2003, in the depths of the dot com nuclear winter, at a time when people were writing off mobile internet as a failure – so its a great success story for these difficult times!

Why is it interesting?

As a converged service working across online and mobile eBuddy offers an interesting case study of the relationship between the two platforms as mobile gets stronger and stronger.

In some markets, such as Indonesia, eBuddy’s mobile traffic is 2-3 times its web traffic, providing more evidence to support the view that mobile is going to be the primary online access channel on a global basis. eBuddy is also finding that they are able to build a web brand and web traffic as a result of their presence in mobile – this is the inverse of the way things normally work e.g. facebook mobile building off the strength of the PC site.

Whilst eBuddy haven’t started monetising their mobile traffic yet there is clearly a massive opportunity both from mobile advertising and from user-payments – Jan-Joost mentioned a Chinese IM player called QQ which is already generating $700m p.a. in mobile payments revenue in addition to $300m in advertising.  There are other examples such as Mobile Gametown in Japan which have also successfully proved this model.  With many online web 2.0 sites struggling to build revenue streams it could be services with a big presence in mobile like ebuddy that prove to be more commercially attractive.

The other thing to note about eBuddy is that they are one of the first mobile services to really get viral effects working on a massive scale in mobile.  Historically, mobile services have had to invest in high cost customer acquisition through carriage on operator portal decks or off-net advertising.  With eBuddy, every time someone logs into an IM network using the system their status is changed to show that they are using the service – which has amplified the word of mouth effects of a great service.  As a result, the huge traction that ebuddy enjoys has been achieved with fairly limited marketing spend.

What this all adds up to is a European start-up in the mobile space that could well achieve a major exit in the near future.  ebuddy would be a great fit for an international telecoms company, handset vendor or one of the major online players so watch this space…

You can download ebuddy and ebuddy Lite on mjelly, which is a directory of mobile applications and other stuff.

To start the year with a bang this week’s featured mobile 2.0 service is dabr.co.uk.

What is it?

Dabr is a mobile web interface to
twitter – the micro-blogging and social networking service of the moment, and is built on the twitter API.  It provides a range of features that the standard
m.twitter.com mobile site does not for example:

- the ability to “retweet” (i.e. quote other people’s twitter messages)
- support for in-line twitpics
- profile pictures
- search
- follow and unfollow (believe it or not m.twitter.com doesn’t let you do this!)
- view followers

Unlike other similar services like m.slandr.net the dabr is completely free of advertising.  Dabr is based on open source code developed as a personal project by David Carrington, a Maidenhead-based web developer.  David built the first version of the site in just over a week and has been continuing to develop it since then.

Why is it interesting?

Dabr has built up a large and passionate following with people like Mobile Industry Review’s own Whatleydude
championing it and bigging it up on twitter.  As a result, the traffic is growing at a pretty hefty rate with a 150% increase in page views between October and December 2008.

Dabr is also an example of the power that APIs can bring to the world of mobile.  To date, APIs and developer networks have mainly been largely confined to the world of PC’s and web 2.0.  Until now, mobile hasn’t really begun to exploit the advantages of this kind of open approach to data and services.

One of the issues for web players moving onto mobile is that mobile extensions require extra resource, particularly if multiple versions are need e.g. a mobile web site and Symbian/ Android/ iphone/applications to cover all the different device types.

What dabr shows it that by offering an API, web players can push the development effort required to build mobile versions to external developers and third parties.  Twitter has really benefited in this area with developers creating a whole raft of different mobile twitter services including 
iphone twitter apps, Blackberry twitter apps and more.

This is also happening in the case of Friendfeed (the creator of gmail’s latest startup) where an external developer used their API to build FFtogo.com, a 
href=”http://mjelly.com/site/3454-Friendfeed”>Friendfeed mobile site – before even Friendfeed had managed to build their own in-house mobile version!

Another point worth making is that the mobile network operators have been very slow to develop API’s that could allow services to be built more easily, for example, to pass information on subscribers to allow more targeted advertising, or providing easy access to location feeds.  What dabr shows is that APIs can really bring a lot to the table in terms of developing the mobile web ecosystem and need to be rolled out much more rapidly and widely.

You can find dabr on mjelly, which is a directory of the
best mobile sites and other stuff

Hi its James from mjelly.com here at Mobile Industry Review with another “Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week”. This week we’re going to take a look at Cellufun – one of the emerging mobile games 2.0 superstars. As usual we’ve managed to get hold of some exclusive stats direct from the management especially for Mobile Industry Review readers.

What is it?

Cellufun is a mobile games company that provides free downloadable and mobile web-based games over a mobile internet portal. The typical games they provide are either mobile versions of popular classics (with no licensing fees!) like Chess or Blackgammon, or their own multi-player original games like “Call of the Pharaoh” which won Best Game in the 2008 Global Mobile Awards. All of the games are funded with advertising/ are free to the end user. They also have a big focus on community at Cellufun, a lot of the games are multi-player and they also make a big deal of high score tables, forums, player profiles and so on.

Most of the action on Cellufun has been carried out off-portal on their own mobile site, but they are now beginning to get some big distribution deals. For example they recently got carriage on the Metro PCS portal, and are also providing AOL with a white label mobile games site.

The company is based in New York, they were founded in 2005 and raised a $3m series A round from Longworth Venture partners in mid 2007.

Why is it interesting?

Cellufun are really kicking up a storm in terms of traffic and usage – here are the latest stats for November – hot off the press:

- 5 million uniques a month
- one million registered users
- 160 million pageviews per month, up from 100 million the previous quarter

Pretty amazing reach for a mobile web service and clearly its a really sticky service with users, judging by the volume of page views.

Cellufun are similar to Myxer, which we profiled a couple of weeks ago here on mobile industry review, in that they are taking a mobile 1.0 service (games) and completely re-engineering the consumer proposition and business model. The 1.0 mobile games value chain is based on premium games, usually created using high cost franchises from console platforms or movies, which are sold via operator content stores. Cellufun is completely different; it typically creates its own game brands which it offers for free and funds with advertising and focuses on building a strong community around the games. This enables them to push mobile games into completely new segments – its very similar to what casual games companies like Miniclip have done on the PC web.

Despite the recession, Cellufun is the type of startup that you could really see being acquired in the next year or two for big $$. They could be a target for a big games company like Electronic Arts, a large mobile games publisher, an aggregator and service provider like Jamba or Buongiorno or even one of the major online companies. Watch this space.

We are taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Year but see you in 2009 – we already have some really exciting mobile 2.0 services lined up to tell you about. Meeeaaary Christmas!

You can find Cellufun and other mobile games sites at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

What is it

Trutap is a mobile application that does four main things. Firstly, it aggregates all the major IM networks, similar to other services like Nimbuzz, ebuddy, heysan, mig33 and so on. However, that’s only 25% of what Trutap does. Trutap also provides a mobile gateway into all the major social networking, blogging and photo services, a community platform with profiles and other social features as well as a content platform which pushes out news and links on a daily basis.

Overall Trutap currently supports at least 8 IM networks, 10 blogging and photo sites, 8 social and digital lifestyle services and 8+ content channels which means it provides a gateway to well over 30 different digital communications, social and content platforms.

So – Trutap is a lot more than the simple IM aggregator that some people think it is.

Trutap have also shared a few facts about the service so far:

- 250K users with a good industry activity rate
- 80% of users are in Indian, Asian and African continents
- 70% of new users have updated their status, location and even home town within Trutap
- Facebook messenger is growing at a huge rate, now bigger than Google Talk on their network

Why is it interesting?

Trutap has been in the news recently because all staff have been put on notice. They were unfortunate that their current investor got hit hard in the Credit Crunch and is no longer investing anywhere… so the company has been effectively orphaned. Not a good time as we all know, and therefore raising more cash at short notice has been a difficult task with VCs focusing on trying to support their existing portfolio.

Trutap has taken a fair bit of stick from some quarters, but it’s got to be said that the new version of the service, which they built with the mobile development agency Future Platforms is really rather good. There are some fantastic user interface elements such as the scrolling navigation bar at the bottom of the screen which allows you to easily cycle through the different functions. A lot of people have critised Trutap for not going for a mobile web model from the start but if you look at the software they’ve built it really would be very difficult to deliver the same features and user experience over that platform.

Trutap spent the last year rolling out the first version of the product (aggregator of IM and Blogs) and building the second version (social network) which launched a few weeks ago. The first version launched in November 2007 so they’ve actually built a fair bit in a short space of time and comparing their take-up to competitors like ebuddy (10m downloads) is a bit unfair as Trutap have been going a much shorter time. The app has also been ported for a massive amount of handsets to provide a really wide potential user-base. Basically Trutap are positioned really well to begin really ramping up users and usage with the v2 app – its just unfortunate that the cut-off in funding has happened at this point.

Trutap has also begun to develop a couple of very interesting new ideas – the community system is planned to evolve into a virtual gifting and currency system, similar to the very successful model developed by the Japanese site Mobile Game Town. Secondly, Trutap has begun to create a platform for content brands with a number of partnerships underway including with a large mobile media business. These sorts of developments could seriously boost Trutap’s revenues and user-base if they get the chance to fully develop them!

Trutap is also one of the most popular apps in the mjelly directory so it seems there are quite a few fans of the service out there. Let’s hope Trutap manage to keep going and finish the job – all the best of luck to them.

You can find Trutap and other mobile software on the mjelly at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

What is it?

Myxer is a community for sharing ringtones and other content.  Bands and individuals can upload music which myxer converts into the right formats for downloading to mobile – think youtube for ringtones and you’ve got the idea.  The service is mainly driven by a PC website but it is also available over the mobile web at m.myxer.com.

Whilst there are quite a few similar sites Myxer has really taken things to the next level in terms of its technology platform.  It’s created myxer tags and myxer codes to let users embed their content on social networks like myspace and on blogs and so on using HTML and flash-based widgets and badges.  They have also managed to get SMS triggers working across all the major US networks to let you push content to your phone from the web.   In fact, Myxer is now the fourth largest source of SMS in the US after American Idol, Google and American Greetings.

The company is based in Florida and they’ve raised a serious amount of money – $6.5 million in September 07, following an earlier $3m round.

Why is it interesting

Whilst there are lots of mobile content sharing communities out there, myxer is the one that has the largest usage and traffic.  They have – 15m users, 1.7m content items on the site, 100,000 content providers and a massive 32 million mobile downloads a month.  One million downloads a day is pretty impressive in a content area (ringtones) that a lot of people consider to be “dead”.

What myxer demonstrates is that there is still plenty of life left in the ringtones market – it is just the business model and user experience that is changing.  Whereas the likes of Jamba developed a ringtone value chain based on subscriptions, promoted by heavy marketing investment, myxer is using a different approach based on user-generated content and viral distribution via widgets and social networks.

There may be other areas of the mobile market that could do with a similar change of approach, for example, java games have never managed to really hit the mainstream user and broadcast Mobile TV appears to be almost completely still-born.  It may be that new startups like Myxer appear with a different way of engineering the value chain and start to take these services into new areas.

You can find myxer at mjelly which is a directory of mobile sites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

This week it’s the turn of what might well be the UK’s no1 mobile 2.0 startup –

What is it?
Mippin is a mobile aggregator for blogs, news feeds, video and other content from the web, which it “mobilizes” by optimizing for mobile and putting it in a single portal for users.  The portal has around 42,000 sites indexed across over 80 different content channels such as “mobile news”, “celebrities”, “sports” and so on.  There are also mini widgets you can insert onto your mippin home-page to customise it such as weather, flickr and twitter feeds, horoscopes etc.

Publishers and bloggers can use mippin to create a mobile feed of their site, for example, at mjelly we use mippin to mobilize our http://mippin.com/mjelly.

Mippin make it really easy to do this – you can effectively create a mobile site out of your RSS feed in a few minutes.

Mippin also recently launched some nice social features including user profiles and social filters such as recommendations.  You can follow specific users and see what they are reading and enjoying.  Right from the start mippin has built in sharing functionality to let you email or SMS stories to your friends or blast
them over twitter.

Mippin is doing something pretty unique in the world of mobile – whilst there are loads of messaging apps for example, there are very few mobile sites that are really trying to aggregate and mobilize content in this way.  

Mippin is also interesting as a case study of how moving from a downloadable application to a mobile-web based platform can pay dividends.  Mippin started life as “Refresh Mobile” or “Mobizines” which was an early attempt to help brands put their content onto mobile through developing mobile magazines which could be downloaded as a java app. Since moving to a mobile web platform the site has really taken off and is now getting some serious traffic, which we can’t disclose, but suffice to say they are one of the biggest mobile news and information sites in the world.

The stats we can let you know about are pretty impressive – Mippin has active users in over 200 countries worldwide, on over 2,000 different types of device and the average UK user visits the site once a week with a growing number of users visiting once or more a day.  The record was 750 page views in one single
session on a Motorola V3!!

Another interesting point, Mippin find that iPhone users are “prolific” in their consumption on the site, another bit of evidence that shows that just because you have a mobile browser that can handle full webpages, it doesnt mean there’s no need for mobile optimized sites.

Mippin is a fantastic service that really stands out from the crowd – defo one to watch – it will be an ideal acquisition target in a year or so’s time for a newspaper or web portal looking to build scale on the mobile web.
See you next
week!

You can find mippin on mjelly, which is directory of the best mobile websites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

Unfortunately we’re the bringer of bad tidings, no new intel or info was really obtained on the night. Apart from besides Nokia being a former wood pulp miller, they also used to make Wellington boots.

Despite our feverish attempts at cajoling information out of various astute well training and affluent members of the Nokia team, we came away with nothing new I’m afraid to say .

We did try our very best attempts at Jedi mind control tricks, with conversations going along the lines of:

“How’s things?”
“How have you been?”
“Nice venue for an event”
“How close in the leaked product line we saw of late to the actual product line up?”
“Have you been to this venue before; did I mention it’s a nice place”

To …

“Thanks for inviting me, it’s greatly appreciated”
“Hope the evening was a success”
“Was the leaked images of the E75 today, the handset that’s a successor to the E90 close to the final model”
“It’s a really great venue, have I mentioned it’s a nice place?”

We tried to be as subtle as would could, basing our tactical approach of questioning along the lines of the following. “The best way to open a letter is to throw a brick at it, from a very large height.”

Next week is their Nokia World event, in which we are of attendance and hope to bring you better news.

What is it?

Heysan is a mobile web interface to all the major instant messaging services including MSN, AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, Myspace IM and soon the new facebook messaging system.  Heysan means “Hello” in Swedish and funnily enough it was founded by some Swedes, plus one Brit.  Heysan was originally seed funded by Paul Graham‘s YCombinator which provides small amounts of investment (around $20k) to help a group of founders build a product.  HeySan is one of the few mobile companies funded by YCombinator (the other big one being the LBS service Loopt) and they’ve been going since 2007.

Why is it interesting?

Heysan is probably the first mobile web service to develop a really effective viral distribution mechanism.  When you first sign in to your IM account they give the option to ping your friends/ contacts to let them know you are using heysan and in return you get credits for their virtual store.  The virtual store lets you buy stuff like special emoticons and the like – a bit like the one run by Flirtomatic.  It is really worth spending a lot of time digging behind Heysan as it has a lot more features than meets the eye such as SMS notifications and community/ profile elements.  Every single mobile web service should be looking at these guys to see how they are doing things. The site is also beautifully designed with a really clean UI.

The proof that Heysan is onto something interesting is in the stats which are absolutely jaw dropping – and remind me of the kind of figures facebook used to pump out after they started which made everyone sit up and take notice.  The average user spends over 5 hours a month on heysan, they are doing 100 million page views a month and have 600,000 users.  What is also amazing is that the largest markets for Heysan are not Indonesia or India like a lot of other mobile IM aggregators, but the UK and the US.

We are really seeing the beginnings of something big happening in mobile and this is the kind of case study that proves it.  Shouts to Krystal and Ewan at Mobile Industry Review for giving us the chance to tell you about all these great mobile services!

You can find Heysan on mjelly, which is a directory of the best mobile web sites and other stuff

But it turns out my aimless journeys around my over-crowded school can come in handy… And I came across a poster of major intrigue!

I love mobile services which are useful. Finding services, and then realising whether or not they are useful or not is what I like doing; mainly because it is rare that I will find something that has use far beyond making a company or un-named person a lot of money.

So when I found this poster, I was intrigued.

I doubt I’ll need to remind or inform anyone of the current issues with “Knife Crime” especially in London and Schools. And as a teenager myself I monitor the news locally and nationally to see what is happening. I often find that the government and their pleas to stop knife crime are only just pleas. Having Gordon Brown or any MP for that matter, talking about a subject to do with young people, doesn’t reach many people.

I hear you ask, what about this intriguing poster?

It’s advertising an “anonymous” texting service which can be used to inform the Police about people or persons with Knives.

I think this goes above and beyond what Gordon Brown, the Police Chiefs and the number of other people or institutions have said or done recently. It’s all too easy to say, “We need to get knives off of the street” and that we as citizens – of whatever age – should be doing our best to prevent deaths on the street.

I’ll admit, when I was in lower school I knew of someone who carried a knife, or at least a blade of some nature. There was nothing I could do about it, because I knew the consequence of phoning up the police – getting the boy, and specifically his group of cronies onto me – so I didn’t do it. And I know also many other people were highly aware of the issue too, and as far as I know, no one ever phoned up the police.

And why was that?
The Police come into school, sit you down, talk to you, make an issue of it, and highlight that you’ve highlighted an issue, and therefore it all backfires on you!

The beauty of this service is the anonymity that comes along with it. On the poster we’re told that the number is scrambled, and therefore can’t be traced so no one can reply, and whatever happens as a consequence, the texter cannot be held accountable for it.

That’s what I call brilliant.

What I like more about this service is that it’s gone a bit beyond a poster campaign, and little business-type cards are being handed out to all the lower years. Admittedly, I stole borrowed one of these cards (for research purposes, naturally).

This is what our Government should be doing, what they should be talking about and implementing. And if such a service had been in place say three or four years ago when I was a little Year Eight or Year Nine, when I was thinking “Oh bugger, that boy has a knife”, I certainly would have sent a text.

So I have to applaud the common-sense which has finally kicked in, and I hope that someone uses it.

Any questions, comments, suggestions or anything as usual send them to Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com.

What is it?

Nimbuzz is a messaging, community, VoIP service and social network aggregator that uses both a downloadable mobile app and mobile web interface as well as a PC web service and client app. They were founded in 2006 and launched earlier this year in May 2008.  Nimbuzz integrates IM (MSN, ICQ etc), VoIP (Skype) as well as social services like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. They are also rolling out widgets and apps which you can paste into your online profiles to let people contact you via the service, bridging the world of social networks and the mobile.

Nimbuzz are going for an ad-funded business model rather than looking for a share of calling revenue like some of its competitors so everything on the service is free for the end-user.   The aim seems to be to offer a free communications service across voice, messaging and social services.

Why is it interesting?

There are a lot of competitors offering similar services, like Mig33 for example, which we previously covered here at Mobile Industry Review.  What makes Nimbuzz different is that it is offering a multi-platform service (PC + mobile) but FOCUSING on mobile as the core platform.  This is different from the way that things usually work e.g. a PC-focused player might offer a mobile app or site as an additional platform but not as the core, OR a mobile player just focuses on that platform with no PC presence.

The other thing worth noting about Nimbuzz is the way in which they are
going about promoting the service and building their user base by partnering with major social networks.  They are due to announce a lot of new partnerships over the next few months which will provide them with distribution for Nimbuzz to the millions of users on the various Soc Nets.  No other mobile services provider has done anything like this so far and it will be interesting to see how successful it is as a way of marketing mobile applications.

Nimbuzz is yet another mobile 2.0 service that is getting real traction – it has built up a user base of 2 million users and is currently getting 10k sign-ups every day.  The service has users in 190 countries, which is driven by support for 11 languages (I remember Saul Klein (former Skype director) mentioning in 2005 that a big part of Skype’s success was early support for multiple language so Nimbuzz looks like it’s doing the right things).

In an environment where a lot of web 2.0 startups are making cut backs and struggling to raise new rounds of funding Nimbuzz has a massive war chest as a result of two major funding rounds of $10m (2007) and $15m (2008).  They also have some interesting investors – Mangrove Capital Partners for example were the original investors in Skype whilst Naspers is the South African media company that also funded the mobile service Mxit.

Nimbuzz is definitely one to watch in the world of Mobile 2.0 and it’s great to see something so ambitious in the market.

Right that’s it for this week – see you again next Friday

You can download Nimbuzz and find the Nimbuzz mobile site at mjelly, which is a directory of free mobile software and other stuff

What is it?

Mocospace is a mobile social network with all the usual features – profile pages, forums, chat, buddylists, photosharing, blogging and so on – everything runs off a mobile-optimized website and they also have a basic PC front-end.   Like the name, Mocospace is quite similar to myspace in a lot of ways, including the fact that they have a lot of features around music, for example, users can download new tracks which are now being released on the site.  The seminal hip-hop label Def Jam has a partnership agreement with Mocospace for its artists including LL Cool J, Nas and Ne Yo.  The site has built up a really nice community – users refer to it as “moco” and I’m constantly hearing about how “friendly” a place it is.

Why is it interesting?

The site was founded in the USA in 2005, before mobile was “trendy” in Silicon Valley and over the last three years they have managed to build something really exciting.  Mocospace is another mobile 2.0 startup that has been able to raise a lot of funding ($7m in total), and it has a heavy weight team including Jim Scheinman who was one of the core people behind the social network Bebo’s success.  What really sets Mocospace apart is that is really has managed to gain a lot of usage and is also making real money.

The numbers are pretty impressive – Mocospace just passed 4m members and is getting 2 bn page views a month with 70% of its traffic coming from the mobile web.  According to Hitwise, Mocospace is the most popular mobile entertainment site in the US and its also the third highest used site by Opera Mini browser users in the United States.  Mocospace is also reporting that it is making “millions” in annual revenues from mobile advertising.

Mocospace has done all this at the same time as the big online social networks (myspace, facebook et al) have rolled out their own mobile sites so there’s pretty clear evidence that mobile-focused services can beat the PC websites at their own game on mobile. The question is, if it can work for social networks what other categories of online services could have their own mobile-focused success stories?

See you next week

You can find mocospace on mjelly, which is a directory of the best mobile sites and other stuff at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

What is it?

Mig33 is like a mobile hybrid of the messaging platform Meebo and the VoIP service Skype, provided as a downloadable Java application for your phone.  The service lets you sign into the various IM services (AIM, MSN, Gtalk, ICQ etc) from your phone.  You can also chat and message in a range of internal chat rooms and use social networking features and photo sharing. Mig33 also enables users to make VoIP calls and send cheap SMS using an internal prepaid credit system.  The company was founded in December 2005 in Australia is now based in the US.

Why is it interesting?

Mig33 have raised a massive amount of funding for a mobile startup – $23.5m over two rounds from some big hitters including Accel. When you think about it this is a massive vote of confidence in the future of downloadable mobile applications – an investment of this size suggests they are gunning for a huge exit of hundreds of millions of dollars – all from a mobile java app!

The service already has massive traction with over 9m members generating 2m sessions, 45 million messages and 1m pictures shared per day.  Again, the sort of usage mig33 is generating suggests that there really is a big potential market out there for mobile software and apps if you have the right proposition.

Currently most of the mig33 user base is in Asia and developing markets like South Africa and the funding appears to be designed to grow the user-base in the US and Europe and create a service with global scale.  If mig33 can successfully execute it on this plan it will be great news for the mobile apps industry and mobile 2.0 in general.

See you next week

You can download mig33 from mjelly, which is a directory of mobile software and other stuff

But they’re back.

Some enterprising arse with a JCB Digger cut through some major fibre optics in London yesterday afternoon, killing most (if not all) of their UK/European SpinVox inbound telecommunications facilities.

Bit of an arse, eh?

Especially if you’re a billion dollar communications company. I’m not sure who their telecoms supplier is — but if it’s Global Crossing, then this Register story has more info.

At least SpinVox didn’t do the Skype-thing and blog about how much pizza they’re eating to try and fix it.

If you were wondering what was up with your SpinVox service last night, there you go.

All fine now.

You see, the other day I was sitting in the School Library working hard on a piece of History work, when a class came in and began working on the available computers. The class was a mixture of boys and girls who were thirteen/fourteen years young.
A group of these boys, who were sitting in front of me, immediately used the internet to find pictures of action-hero/game characters to photograph on their phones to use as wall-papers.

And you know what?
It made me realise… What is the point in having premium products when pretty much anything you could ask for is readily available on the internet for free?

Personally, I’ve NEVER bought a ringtone, wall-paper, game, application or anything of the sort. I know for one fact, it’s a con. I’ll end up being tied to an endless subscription of other crap I don’t want, and costing me the earth to fund too! But also I know I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it, completely free.

I’ve never completely understood why at least presently, why companies such as Jamster, or the dozens of others who offer such a costly services still manage to get customers. Then again, people will never cease to amaze me!

However, say my Mum for instance, a perfect example of someone who doesn’t quite comprehend how much of a rip-off the Ringtone/wallpaper business is.
About a year or so ago she went through this phase of buying ringtones from T-Mobile. Now a ringtone according to T-Mobile was a thirty second, low quality clip from a song. Now my Mum over a period of say half a year bought only around two or three, but it actually set her back £2.50 per tone.

That’s £2.50 for a poor sounding, thirty second sample of a song. iTunes (as much as I dislike the service) offers a full track for 79p. How on earth does this make any sense?

Of course, me being the money-tight, and scared of spending person that I am, told my Mum off several times for such lavish expenditure on such a poor quality product. However, it was a case of, “I want, I get”.

I think the same can be said to the other more “adult” services which are available to mobile users. Dare I reiterate the countless adverts that appear on several channels after ten o’clock – but the point is people pay (quite a lot) for something which they can get for free. I don’t understand it, but I’m not going to try and understand it.

Although saying that, I wonder how much of a future these companies have. I can only imagine (and hope really), that as we get more technologically in gear, and as new generations become more equipped to the world of mobiles and computers that maybe in the near future such rip-off schemes may not exist.
I can’t blame T-Mobile, Jamster, or any of the other companies mainly for this; as actually I think its part stupidity on our behalf too. It’s just amazing how thirteen year olds are already grasping the concept of getting what they want for no cost. As Bluetooth, and probably, better technologies come into existence, I can only imagine that sharing, and moving our media around devices will only get easier, and quicker.

I can also only hope for the sanity of myself, and quite possibly many others, as dodgy ringtone manufacturers will cease to exist. Stick a nice classical piece as your ringtone – it’s what I’ve done!

Send any e-mails, questions or anything else to samantha@mobileindustryreview.com

- – - —

I am the web designer for www.readytosms.com.au. We have launched our website recently, and thought you may be interested in writing an article and/or review of it on your news site.

Ready to SMS is an online SMS-sending application aimed primarily at business and organisations, from small privately-owned businesses to large corporations. We offer competitive rates and a very reliable service based on high quality infrastructure, with a range of features such as Excel spreadsheet upload and integrated error-checking.

Ready to SMS is the latest offering from Informatel (www.informatel.com). Informatel was founded in Australia in 1987, and since then we have been consistently delivering innovative interactive communication services to businesses in Australia and around the world. As an inaugural Premium Rate service provider, we have helped to bring to our clients new and effective ways of communicating with their customers across many communication mediums; SMS, MMS, telephony, mobile, e-mail and the web.

Thank you for your time,

David Bleja

- – - – -

Every success to you and the Ready To SMS team, David.

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

The just released it today so if you’re a LloydsTSB customer, you’ll be able to keep track of your bank account and transfer money between accounts using their dedicated mobile application.

I’ll have more details and some screenshots shortly. In fact I think we’ll put it into the MIR Show for Monday.

I was wrong.

MusicStation is quite simply, pretty amazing. What I thought really couldn’t work, or ever be good (especially on a mobile device for so cheap), actually is.

The library available is massive; and originally I was expecting to find that some of the more obscure music I like to listen to wouldn’t actually be available; but it all is.  I searched for a bunch of oldies I love, and even the newer music which isn’t widely known. All there isn’t a genre which isn’t covered, which meant I was happily able to enjoy some Mozart, Candi Staton and even a little Slipknot for when the desire arose.

The one big flaw I was expecting was poor sound quality. There is nothing worse than listening to music being streamed at a mere 96kps, and I have made it a rule that all such music must never reach my ears. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the quality of the tracks.

Definitely not 96kps.

When played through speakers, admittedly there is a slight lossiness to the quality, and there isn’t as much actually punch in the tracks than say if you had them in a hard copy. But for general listening, and with a good pair of headphones, it shouldn’t be that much of a concern.

The application as a whole is fast, and simple to use. It has simple menus to navigate, and you can even use the rest of your mobile with MusicStation still running.

Quite possibly one of the best things about MusicStation, is the download speeds. I’ve been using a non-3G connection (due to the lack of 3G coverage), and each song on average has taken around 90 seconds. This does depend entirely on the length of the song, but even so it’s still fairly quick.

Some of the downsides to MusicStation have to be the fact you don’t actually have the songs stored on your phone; which means you can’t move them around. This though, is a copyright protective aid more than anything else I think.

Then there is the battery life!
You have to expect that being connected to the internet full time, you will be drowning a few of the mobile’s resources, but in general it’s not practical. I was using it during a certain meeting I had last Wednesday, and after two hours there was barely any life left at all. You certainly cannot expect more than a couple of hours out of a fully charged mobile with MusicStation – but at least you’ll be enjoying some brilliant music though!

The music library isn’t yet fully equipped to my standards, and there are certainly more tracks, albums and artists that should be listed too. For example, Frankie Knuckle’s brilliant song “Your Love”, not there! I admit I was a little disappointed. There were a few others too which I was sad to see, were not available; hopefully more will be added though.

In all though, I’m immensely surprised, MusicStation is nothing other than brilliant. It has a few flaws, which everything has, but I’m sure eventually battery issues will be a thing for the past.

There is though, one final issue with this…
It’s only available for Vodafone customers.

Vodafone, from what I’ve seen of it, is mainly an operator who attracts business customers or adults in general. I don’t know of a single friend who is on Vodafone; and of all the friends that I have told about MusicStation, not a single one has said “oh, that sounds crap” or “I wouldn’t pay that much”. So why then, is a music service, which would have huge custom with the teenagers of today, not, broadening itself to other operators?

I hope that this is changed soon, because I would probably pay for it.

It’s only two weeks to go until I disappear off to France for a few days. As the closing weekend of the Olympics hit I’ll be staring at the TV screen in a villa near Nantes, often shouting and pleading with the British athletes to win. I’ll probably also get dumped for ignoring my fiancee.

Having been dumped I’ll probably also find myself in a French bar practicing my exceptionally poor language skills and wishing I had an iPhone to help me chat up the ladies.

I possibly should have mentioned that the iPhone now has a new phrasebook app. According to its creator writing Google’s mobile blog:

A few months ago I was planning a vacation to Austria and Italy. I knew a few words and phrases in German and Italian, but that was about it. So I looked around for some portable language dictionaries. I thought Google Translate was great, but the web page didn’t work that well on the iPhone. So I teamed up with David Singleton, a fellow engineer in our London office, to build an iPhone interface for Google Translate.

If you’re one of the few people I truly envy, that both own an iPhone and have flown to Beijing for the Olympics then you’ll be pleased to know the app supports Chinese. This will help you get by until you realise that everyone else you know hates you.

It also seems it works off line too, cacheing all past translations so they’re available to browse and thereby reducing the amount of data downloaded each time.

But, if you’re already out of your own country, or don’t get free data on your package, do check the cost of roaming data.

A particular highlight came a few years ago in an O2 shop. I went in with a very specific requirement: mobile email. My question was essentially whether a Blackberry or an XDA was the better solution – QWERTY keyboard was a must. What did the assistant suggest? An i-mode handset. I eventually got a Blackberry… from T-Mobile.

But I digress. My requirements are pretty simple, at least I think so. I travel between 6 and 10 days a month in Europe, and I call internationally a lot from the UK. I’m also a frequent data user. After more to-ing and fro-ing than I would have liked, I settled on what I thought was the best provider for me – Three.

There are some nice things about Three. Data is 5 pounds a month. I get a lot of minutes for 20 quid a month. Go to a country where they have a network (Italy, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland – all countries I am likely to go to) and your inclusive minutes are valid, as well as the data bundle. But the kicker was their roaming rates: 10p a minute to receive, 25p a minute to call the EU from the EU. The European Commission has set limits of 19p and 38p for receiving and sending; guess what T-Mobile’s rates are? EVEN WHEN I’M ROAMING ON ANOTHER T-MOBILE NETWORK!!! That’s just silly. And while Vodafone passport sounds good – most calls are actually quite short, so the 75p per call charge can look quite expensive. The less said about O2 and Orange the better.

It’s not all sweetness and light; coverage isn’t perfect, though not as bad as I had feared. And I knew that the retail shops and internet sales weren’t integrated, but I wasn’t expecting to need much contact with them. I was wrong.

It started when I hit my credit limit. No worries, I thought, I’ll give them a call and get it increased. Not that simple. The conversation went along the lines of:

M: “Hi – I was just on a call and I got cut off – you sent me a text saying I had reached my credit limit”
3: “Yes. We have a credit limit in place to protect you.”
M: “Wonderful. I don’t need protecting, so can you increase my limit?”
3: “No.”
M: “Eh?”
3: “You haven’t been with us long enough, so we can’t increase your credit limit.”

So it turns out that the credit limit is actually in place to protect them, not me. The only way to resolve things is to make a credit card payment. I’m not happy – if I wanted to mess about making card payments I’d have got a pre-pay phone. Still, nothing like making it hard for a customer to spend more money with you. It seems appropriate to mention at this point that my monthly bill is usually a couple of hundred quid, with the occasional 500 quid+ bill shock moment.

In my mind then, I’m quite an attractive customer – I know what I want, I’m prepared to pay for it, and I don’t plan on calling for help that often.

Turns out I’m wrong.

A couple of weeks ago I return to the UK on an early flight. I have a long day on the phone ahead of me. During the flight the MP3 player on the phone is playing up, so I do various resets, battery removal and so on. Nothing works. When I get back on terra firma, I find I can’t make calls either. Damn!

OK, so plan is to swing by a Three store on my way home, get this sorted. Very helpful chappie cheerfully tells me he can’t help, I have to call 333 from my phone. But my phone doesn’t work, so he lets me call from their phone. My request is simple – the phone is three months old, it’s gone wrong, send me a new one. “We don’t do that sir, we will collect it, repair it and send it back to you.” This will take five days. How do I make calls in the meantime? “You still have your SIM” Yes but I don’t have a phone – can you lend me one? “No”. How do I make calls in the meantime? “That’s not our problem”

The store manager was willing to lend me a phone if the call centre approved it. But they wouldn’t. By “they” I mean the four different people, including the disconnections department and a manager. I actually had to check they were taping the call at one point, when the guy at the other end of the phone suggested I buy a pay-as-you-go phone from them and then sell it on eBay! I tried to appeal to them on the grounds of how much I spend with them, with no joy.

This note goes out to all service providers, not just Three. What makes you think the Sale of Goods Act doesn’t apply to you? Under what circumstance is a three month old phone refusing to make calls fit for purpose? And if your customer is willing to accept a repair, what makes you think that depriving him of service for five days is a good move? How hard is it to provide a loan handset? What other piece of consumer electronics would I not get a replacement for if it failed after three months?

So, no joy at all. I leave the Three shop a very unhappy camper. At this point, I’m seething, and prepared to cancel my contract and go with someone else. I walk past CPW and into the Vodafone store. Astonishingly, they don’t seem to want my business. Some free advice for Vodafone retail employee trainers: smugness is not an attractive quality in in-store staff.

I get home and my blood pressure is still through the roof. First job, line up a replacement handset. That done, I think about how to respond to the quality of service I’ve just experienced.

Plan A – cancel contract and go with someone else didn’t work so well. I thought about trying a different Voda shop, but couldn’t work up the enthusiasm for another retail experience. Plus, when I thought about it some more, I didn’t like the idea of cancelling the contract and paying for something I wasn’t going to use. Plus, the Three deal is still good – 1100 minutes for 20 quid a month. So – more free advice for Voda: your time to capture my four grand spend over the next 18 months was that one time I walked into the shop. You screwed it up.

So, plan B. Find ways to reduce the other 180 quid a month I’m spending with them and/or spend it with someone else.

In the next article, I’ll let you know whether I was able to succeed with Plan B, or had to go back to Plan A.

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Catch the second half of Malcolm’s article next week, stay tuned!