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First, I thought Google. Now, I think Microsoft.

I was reading recently about Skype functionality being built into the forthcoming Mango release on Windows Phone (WP) and I started thinking: who is now moving forwards fastest in this whole ecosystem race?

At the turn of the year, I was part of a research panel discussion around the near future of mobile. The NDA I signed on the evening prevents me from disclosing what treats we were party to, however, what I can share is some of the thoughts we went in with.

Each of us was asked to present our ideas around future mobile technologies. My pitch was around, funnily enough, ecosystems:

“We’re already seeing mobile operating systems appearing in car dashboards. Soon they’ll be in our fridges, on our televisions, built into our coffee tables.. and, when that happens, purchasing decisions will also be made based upon these ecosystems. If your main technology at home is Android-based and you’re coming to buy something new for your household, you’re more likely to keep within the ecosystem that you’re used to. Both from a UI perspective and also from a service interaction ideal.”

This was at the end of last year. Rewind a few years, back when I was working at a certain voice to text company, and Google was talking about launching their own voice-to-text product through Google Voice – “They’ve parked their tanks on our lawn, we must be doing something right”.

At that time I was thinking about the different pieces being put in place by the big G:

GMail, GTalk, Google Maps and now, Google Voice.

Communications + presences + location? I remember saying to a French Googler whom I knew at the time “Man! I can totally see where you guys are going! Amazing. Android will be the glue to pull it together aaaand.. when you align the stars, it’ll be perfect!” – he smiled and bowed his head, knowingly.

The communication ideal behind these nodes, if you will, for me seemed like a major background strategy that was slowing falling into place. Alas, here we are several years later and – even with the likes of [the yet to be proven] Google Plus – all of these services are still yet to fully link up properly. But these things take time.

Fast forward back today and this piece on Engadget highlighting Skype integration in Mango hits. My brain clicks into gear.

Xbox, Windows, Windows Phone, Hotmail [yeah, I said it] and now Maps – the pieces are all there. But the key part here for me is Xbox. The one thing everyone seems to be overlooking: Xbox. There are 53.6million of these machines worldwide – already sat under televisions. Of those, 66% are connected [or at least registered] online via Xbox Live. Include in that another 10million Kinects [the fastest selling peripheral of all time] and you have one hell of a home entertainment system / internet ecosystem.

The Kinect already had video calling before Skype was announced for Windows Phone. Skype is also rumoured to be bundled in the next Xbox update. I’m not saying video calling is the future, not by any stretch. But a true and proper unified communications plan for consumers is the next big step. [Facebook is nearly there, but isn't interested in home or mobile hardware].

Windows 7(.5/Mango/Tango/Rango/Bingo/Bango – delete where appropriate) also promises gaming integration, amazing applications [like the mind-blowingly awesome British Airways app we saw demo'd earlier this year] and well, I can’t help thinking that a sleeping giant has been stirred.

I used to think that Google would be the one pulling this stuff together – the faster, more agile of the huge players in the world. They still could be. They still might be.

All I’m saying is, don’t forget about Microsoft and above all, don’t ignore the Xbox. I genuinely think it’s a trump card that Microsoft is yet to play.

Whatley out.

Help me, help me.

My USB headset is rubbish. Absolutely dire. It’s made by Gigaware and, if memory serves, I bought it for an outrageous price from one of those airport shops when I was on my way to America. You know when you pay something like £50 for bits of plastic that you know must have been manufactured for pennies? That’s how I felt. But I needed to have a headset as I had several important Skype conferences planned. Plus I didn’t want to rely on the MacBook’s own internal microphone as that can be a bit echoy.

The Gigaware headset, complete with rough plastic ear-muff things and boom mic has been with me for about 2 years now.

I need to do something about it.

When I use it, my Skype calls are fine for about 40-50 minutes before the headset just screws up. Literally it goes haywire and people can’t hear me. It’s like a build-up of static or something. So routinely, when I’ve been talking on Skype for more than 35 minutes I have to apologise to all concerned and briefly take the headset’s USB plug out… wait 5 seconds… plug it back in again and proceed as normal. To avoid this build up of… something.

I don’t know WHY I haven’t done something about this.

So.

Please help me out.

What’s the best USB headset you can buy?

Have you experimented with Bluetooth or infrared/wireless ones?

What do you recommend?

[Update: I found the exact headset model I've got. Must have bought it from Radioshack. $29 it says on their site. I'm sure it was more. Either way, I'm not a big fan.]

The long story short – don’t try to find it, it doesn’t exist! First I was unable to download Skype direct from the phone, then I tried on the PC and still no luck. I did a quck search only to find that many websites have been dwelling on the issue, repeating the same useless information. I find it unnecessary to articulate the problem in-depth as it has been already covered on the web.

Instead, Mobile Industry Review will offer Windows Phone 7 users a very simple, free and useable solution. While the new mobile operating system is nowhere near perfect, it does have good web browsing capabilities. If you are a heavy Skype user who can’t live without chatting every now and then, there is a way to use the strong side of the mobile device to your advantage.

Working in an office environment where skype is banned can be a bit boring, also it’s never been fun always thinking INSIDE the box. I wasn’t breaking any rules, just finding my ways around them; when I came across a web-based chat client that supports skype and many other chat/voip clients (amongst which Yahoo, MSN, AIM and ICQ). I tried it on the Omnia 7 in desperation, after exhausting every other method available.

Fortunately for all parties interested in running Skype on Windows Phone 7, imo.im is the only thing you have to type in your web browser for the magic to start. While it does have dedicated Iphone and Android service, the website also works on Windows Phone 7 with some limitations. The text chat performs pretty well and there is no registration or fee. However the voice chat and video chat are Flash based, not yet operational on Windows Phone 7, and even when working the quality is not impressive.

In the final analysis the imo.im web based chat is a quick solution if you’re starving for some Skype on your new Windows Phone 7 device. The concept is very simple – use a web based Skype which eliminates the operating system barrier. It’s not perfect, but it works. Let’s hope that there will be adequate action on Behalf of Skype towards developing support for Windows Phone 7 – Microsoft is big after all, you can’t just ignore it; or can you?

James from mjelly here at Mobile Industry Review.

Sadly, this is the last chance for me to do a Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week post on this blog. Good luck to Ewan with the new business model and a massive thanks to him for letting me write this every week – max respects.  Thanks also to Krystal for uploading my early posts.   All is not lost – we’ll be continuing the series over at http://blog.mjelly.com

It was tough trying to decide which mobile site or app to cover for the last mobile 2.0 service of the week – Opera Mini has the most ratings on mjelly of all the downloadable apps, and mjoy is top on the mobile sites front.  So, rather than try and pick one I’m going to list all of the services we have covered over the last few months in case you missed any – listed by category – here it goes:

Communities

Mobamingle – the international version of Mobile Game Town – a Japanese mobile services with $200m in annual revenues

Peperonity – the original mobile 2.0 service and one of the biggest drivers of inventory on admob

Heysan – cool Silicon Valley mobile startup building a nice line in mobile virtual goods

Mocospace – US mobile social network with massive traction and generating big ad revenues

Flirtomatic – the world’s leading mobile dating site and top UK mobile startups

Mxit – South Africa’s massive mobile social networking platform

Media and content

Mippin – the world’s leading mobile news and web service – based in London UK

Cellufun – mobile games community

Search

Taptu – Cambridge-based mobile-focused search engine taking on Google

abphone – the French mobile vertical search engine

Browsers

UCWEB – the Chinese mobile browser that’s been downloaded 60m times

Communications and messaging

Dabr – the no.1 mobile twitter interface

ebuddy - mobile IM service downloaded 11m times

Nimbuzz – unified communication across Skype and IM

Mig33 – mobile voip and messaging app

Trutap – fantastic IM and content app that was unlucky with their investors

Fring – momo award winning VoiP and communications app

Not a bad list really – who would have imagined all of these new services even a few years ago when all mobile had going on was ringtone scams and a load of hype about “mobile TV”?

You can find all these mobile 2.0 services on mjelly which is a directory of mobile sites and free mobile software

Thanks again to Ewan and all at MIR

Facebook
Let’s be honest, this is probably the reason why you bought this phone. When you first start the phone you are asked to pop in your Facebook log in details, it then asks you if you want to sync your contacts with Facebook. It then pretty quickly pulled my 500+ friends from Facebook, including their last status update and Facebook profile picture. What it does not do sadly, (which I think is restricted to the Facebook API) is pull down mobile numbers from their profile. I will be talking about the Social Phonebook in more detail later. Like Jonathan I found it was behind my browser version, and I found the application was constantly updating. This I found to be a constant pain, I really hope they implement options so the user can choose options ie update every 30 minutes. I really did not understand the need for the constant updating and I am sure this had an effect on battery life as well. Will this bring Facebook do your normobs? Yes it will in a big way, no pointing to the mobile Facebook URL etc just there one simply quick from your dock or the menu. The integration for new messages again I found this good something another manufacturer has never done before, any new messages, pokes or requests appear as a new alert in the messaging tab. I again found this to be slow, and behind the web version, which meant on occasions it said I had a new Facebook message when I had already read it. I think the issue is that none of the pokes, messages are stored on the device so if you cannot get online you cannot read your inbox. I think this is again possibly due to Facebook API restrictions.

Windows Live Messenger
Quite possibly the best application on the phone, it allows you to minimise and you can receive IM alerts in the back ground. Three have always had a good relationship in WLM and in the INQ 1 this really shows. Top Marks to the INQ 1 this application brings WLM to your mobile, anyone who has used messenger on their computer will be able to use this application.

Email on 3
Three have done it again with this application, 4 clicks and you have email set up. This has got all the standard email services set up Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and a whole range of ISP emails. If you have one of the pre defined email services as your provider you are laughing.

Skype
Please read my opinion on Skype here. I do not use Skype; I don’t see the point in it. I never used the application so I could not tell you my thoughts on it.

Last FM
This is a very small add on however it integrates with the music player, on a Nokia you would need to download an add on such as Mobbler to allow your track to be scrobbled, however the INQ chaps have got this in built all you need to do is put your username and password in.

Camera
The phone has a 3.2 mega pixel camera which is acceptable there is no flash, which is a real shame however you can shoot video as well. There are also options to send your pictures by MMS, Bluetooth, email and Facebook. It was a little bit sad to see that Flickr was not an option; however it was nice to see some ShoZu-like elements had been integrated into the handset.

Internet Modem Capability
This was a feature that we saw on the Skype Phone 2, where all you need to is plug in your INQ and it has all the drivers on bored to install a modem. This allows you to browse the web on your laptop in a matter of two minutes; the process is very quick and simple.

The Social Phonebook
If there is one feature in my opinion that the INQ1 will be remembered by it is this feature. All of the social networks allow you to download your contacts to your handset. The handset then allows you to merge all the contacts together, and then when scrolling the phonebook you can see in real time if that person is available on Skype, WLM or Facebook. An example is if Ewan is one of my contacts I have him on my WLM and Facebook. If I went down to his entry, I can choose to send him an Instant Message, Call, SMS, MMS, Email, Facebook Message or Facebook Poke. The other really clever feature is that for example if I did not have his number I can click straight through to his Facebook Profile and call him straight from there (providing he has his number made visible). When Ewan calls me, his current Facebook Profile Picture does pops up; some of you may say well you can do that on any handset which is true. However it is not as simple as putting your Facebook details in when you get the phone.

Summary
So what are my final thoughts on this handset? I feel that INQ have rushed this device, and there are some issues that I have highlighted over the past two weeks that have annoyed me. The main one being the constant refreshing of the Facebook Application, this is extremely frustrating and a battery killer. I am really looking forward to INQ bringing out some new handsets this year, there are rumours of a keyboard (a possible G1 or N97 rival) variant and hopefully a touch screen version as well. If INQ make social networking this easy, I believe we will see a massive increase in the amount of social networking done from a mobile in the future especially as some of the networks (here in the UK at least) have some good value data packages!

INQ is definitely a manufacturer we will be watching here at Mobile Industry Review I have a feeling they have some impressive handsets ahead.

I am currently reviwing the INQ 1,  and it has a inbuilt Skype client which is heavily promoted in its advertising and some would even say the INQ 1 is simply the Skype Phone version 3.

I have 2 Skype contacts, that’s it! Who actually uses Skype?? This really hit home when reading a post by Jonthan Jensen.

Teenagers don’t seem to be big Skype users so this application didn’t engender as much interest, although adults did show some interest in it.

He is exactly right but its more then teenagers I would say anyone under the age of 25  is probably not a Skype user.  Is it because that Skype is mainly used to contact people abroad?  The only time I haves used Skype, was when one of my friends took a semester in the Czech Republic, this was the easiest way for us all to stay in contact with her for free!

Now I move on to Skype on your Mobile, who uses it?? Hold your hands up now! I am completely at a loss why you would need Skype on your phone??

Am I missing something?

I understand about VOIP, and I think services such as Sipgate are fantastic when on your Home PC, but on your mobile I think they are a complete waste of time. For example if I really wanted to I could use a service like Fring and be able to receive calls on my Sipgate local number on my mobile.  The only I think this would actually be *useful* is when abroad on my holiday and in Wi-Fi coverage!

Maybe I am wrong and Skype is a fantastic resource, for me I think it a waste of time.

I do look forward to reading your comments about Skype!

Ricky

ricky@mobileindustryreview.com

Michael took issue with the manner in which we’ve covered the INQ1 launch. So much so he knocked me over a text about it this morning. I responded asking him to expand on his viewpoint so we could publish his opinion here. Over to Michael!

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Hi Ewan,

I sent you an SMS about the INQ1 coverage on MIR earlier today.

To expand on it:

It seems the whole MIR redaction has fallen in love with the new INQ1 phone. A more balanced view of the device could be useful to the MIR readers.

The INQ1 is the third attempt from manufacturer Amoi to create a Skype-friendly handset.

It is also the first one that is remotely usable by third-party application developers.

It still has teething problems like the complexity of customizing a shortcut icon.

It is still based on a cheap Qualcomm chipset with limited audio capabilities.

It is still using a security model that is actually laughable.

However, Amoi is a good manufacturer when it comes to responding to developer feedback and producing improved firmwares. Hopefully, all the alpha and beta testing developers have gone through with this phone over the last few months will make for a good user experience now that the INQ1 is available in the shops.

The INQ software layer in itself, including the Skype VoIP and Facebook social networking clients, certainly looks exiting.

One last comment about the UK marketing campaign: Over-exposition reeks of desperation.

Regards,

Michael Aubert
http://developer.symbian.com/quick

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Michael, thanks very much for taking the time to write and to rebalance the sometimes rather keen coverage we’ve been delivering here on Mobile Industry Review. You’ve made some fair points there — I’m looking forward to getting the perspective of the wider audience on the INQ1 too.

(And I’m just away to go and buy one!)

In wrapping up the coverage from the launch event, we thought we‘d bring you some of the thinking and reasoning passed along to us as to why the development of the phone’s series by Hutchinson began. These were outlaid to us on the day by 3′s CEO Kevin Russell and the INQ’s CEO Frank Meehan.

These facts came along to us in the form of stats around the rise of data services over the 3 network, charted as an example from Nov 2007 until last month.

To be honest, we were a tad surprised over the figures knowing their frontend portal presented to their customers. Also we recalled some distant knowledge of 3 services being heavily firewalled to a severe degree, where not a great deal of access to outside websites was allowed.

So when we saw the number of users mentioned which started at 250,000 from last year and hitting the high of 950,000 of late, it took us back a bit. After digesting all and sundry plus getting hold of a three SIM card, all of these are actually supported and all works rather well too. It looks like their portal doesn’t scream and shout about it too much.

Just to back up their slide and doubly endorsing how 3 is used in today’s world of social networking, they went on to throw some more numbers at us.

On 3 handsets just over the October period, 2 million searches were performed, 3.5million emails were received by users on the network, 20 million minutes of Skype calls were made, 36 million chats were made on Skype, 200 million instant messages took place, 44 million pages on Facebook were viewed where there were only half that number six months ago. And a partridge in a pear tree.

Whilst you’re digesting all of that, it makes sense that a phone like the INQ should have come along right now. Even more so when you take into account news has reached us this week that mobile Facebook users have tripled this year, to the mighty sum of 15 million and counting.

Launched at a design studio in Shoreditch East London, 3′s social networking mobile phone arrives on the scene. It’s packed to rafters with instant access to the likes of Facebook, Skype, instant messaging and all for a remarkably low, low cost.

Kevin Russell, the chief executive of 3 UK led the presentation and introduced more of a business focus and background surrounding 3. Which we’ll come back to in a later post as it’s still of interest we believe.

What you’ve all tuned in for is the low down on the INQ 1, and we’re not one to disappoint.

Frank Meehan, the CEO of the INQ division of Hutchinson handled the main crux of the phones presentation and it’s him to we really have to thank for the low down, the full enchilada – everything you needed to know but were too afraid to ask about the INQ 1.

Just for some background on the mobile, it’s been in development for the past two years. More or less since the first iteration of their Skypephone came out, this prompted the development of the phone.

For the canny of you out there, you’ll realise the INQ 1 does have a similar feature set to the Skypephone itself. It’s just doesn’t have the seamless integration of the applications that we’ll discuss later.

Where this phone stands out from the crowd is that everything you wish you could have on a cooked ROM from xda-developers, is all there from the start. It’s like a wish list of social networking applications, but all on one device and meshed together well.

They set out to design a handset that has all of the regular tools used on the desktop during the working day, but is easy to use as SMS is on mobile phone.

3 have worked out from an analysis of traffic on their network that 82% of their phones usage is from data services, such as email, Facebook, IM, VoIP or video sharing. So why not design phone to cater for those needs – hence the INQ 1.

From the get go, everything on the handsets user interface is laid out for that single need and requirement.

At the heart of the phone is the Qualcomm 6260, where they’ve built the user interface around Brew the operating system accompanying the chipset. They’ve gone with this choice of OS for many reasons, none more so importantly than it is truly multitasking as compared to others around.

Now this is complete, we were told INQ could now upscale the platform to higher Qualcomm chips in the series or even lower ones. All of which hinted at the next phones in the series, which could range from budget model to higher end smartphones.

Porting other OSs wouldn’t have been as easy, but now it’s signed sealed and delivered.

If you’re familiar with the TouchFlo 3D UI from the HTC Touch Diamond and Pro, then you’ll instantly recognise similarities on how all the applications are laid out. The best way to describe it, is that all the apps used are listed in serial at the base of the screen. These you scroll through by sliding your thumb from left to right or right to left, as many so are still off-screen.

It’s this UI with all the social networking apps that will be the winner we believe, beside their thorough integration with each other.

One of the main beefs customers of 3 had was with their existing UI’s on the current phones is that they’re not really designed for social networking. Also, if they have downloaded the application relating to something akin to Facebook, it’s very hard to find later on. This time around, they got their act together in this OS and straight from the box too.

As you can already see the main UI interface is a mixture of Facebook, IM, email, RSS feeds and Skype to name but a few.

One of the key things about that handset and it’s UI, if not the key thing about this handset besides all the social networking applications all on offer, is that anything that can be done live can also be done off line.

This is from email, to instant messaging, along with everything on Facebook, in fact anything you can imagine can all be done this way.

As soon as there’s connectivity again, all the tasks performed whilst no net access was available then takes place – just as if it was actually done at that time.

Think of these benefits on areas of low reception; on flights, trains, tubes, any place you have down time really you can still use all of the functions of Facebook, email, instant messaging. All taken from the last time the INQ 1 saw a live connection.

It’s as if there’s an ‘Work offline’ ability to the phone. Don’t think for one second that this could be used to save your data allowance for the month. As on a prepay contract it’s already unlimited, and all just for £15.

This also includes, as you’re no doubt aware by now – unlimited access to Facebook, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Email, Internet Browsing, SMSs, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and calls to other 3 customers.

If that doesn’t hail a darn good deal, then we have no idea what does.

The only issue we might have with the Off Line functionality is that it might throw off people’s time line for events, unless that’s taken into consideration with a time stamp and acted upon accordingly.

Where the integration of all the phones onboard social networking software is shown off is in its contact book, for our dollars worth. Here, additional properties are shown of the persons Facebook status (along with other facets of Facebook), RSS feeds to that user, IM status and messages, plus many other items.

We only hope this integration for contacts could be brought across to the likes of Outlook. In suggesting that, why not have a similar INQ 1 UI as a theme for Firefox. So instead of having many tabs and windows open then several IM applications all running at once – just have one single tabular view.

There’s also a good array of Widgets onboard right now, with the likes of Weather and RSS feeds, with much more planned. More will be added in time and straight over the air, unbeknownst to the user as they’ll just appear and without any bother at all.

The on board internet browsing software is quite stunning, almost comparable to Opera in its usability with zoom in and zoom out functions, coupled with full integration of the onboard accelerometer.

Its media player is very versatile and easy to use, also Last.fm has been built in to it. This just shows off what they’ve taken from what customers already use elsewhere.

They’re calling this handset a social mobile and you can definitely see why. The only minor gripe we have at this stage is the handsets screen is a tad too small for comfort level on its 2.2-inch screen, for showing off all that its worth. There’s also no GPS onboard with this handset, but we were reassured of next INQ version will have it instead.

In terms of hardware, there’s nothing exemplary in this model. It comes with a 3.2MP camera, 50MB memory with a 1GB card supplied, 329hrs standby and 324mins talktime. In balance to the applications all onboard and how well they fit together, it’s a darn great little phone and all of course on their HSDPA network.

We can’t stress enough that this does appear to be a bit of a revolution in the way a phone has been delivered. It’s great to use very well laid out and simple to understand. We look forward to more INQs on the horizon. Hurrah!

This week we’re bringing you an absolute WHOPPER of a show. A veritable whopper.

1. We’re committed to bringing you our show from different, unusual and picturesque locations around London. I think we’ve beaten everything so far by filming from the Tower of London. Special thanks to Tim at the Historic Royal Palaces publicity department. As you might imagine, with almost 1,000 years of history to play with, Ben had a field day with his facts segment. ( 00:47 )

2. We take a look at the 3 Skypephone S2. ( 02:19 )

3. We’ve got lots of news and commentary on last week’s happenings. ( 05:15 )

Lastminute Labs, Google Gears ( 05:16 ), Orange hiring iPhone-fans ( 08:40 ), Nokia Maps

( 09:16 )/Lonely Planet ( 09:37 ), Blackberry Bold’s browser issues ( 10:26 ), IKEA MVNO ( 11:51 ).

4. James Body of Truphone makes an appearance. ( 07:03 )

5. Review of Etymotics Headphones. ( 13:47 )

6. Mobile Industry Review website news… including quick overviews of our upcoming jobs section. Plus: We’ll be at the Future of Mobile conference coming up soon. ( 17:20 )

7. Future of Mobile Conference.  ( 18:58 )

8. Special Sony Ericsson News.  Very special stuff. ( 19:18 )

9. The first EVER Whatley Goes Wild segment.  Including a special N95 8GB-protective-strap.           ( 19:40 )

10. We announce the winners of our competitions.  ( 22:48 )

11. Dan get’s his present. There’s almost a tear shed…( 24:37 )

12. James talks about the Nokia N78.  ( 25:36 )

Video Feeds:

- 3GP mobile video feed
- Downloadable video feed (roughly 190mb)

The S2 looks like a series step up from its predecessor, with a 3.2 megapixel camera, and a new carousel interface that sounds like it’s taken more than a passing inspiration from the iPhone’s touch UI. The device has also got better memory – up to 4GB expandable – and a 2.2 inch QVGA screen, as well as all the usual apps like Facebook integrated onto the front of the device.

It’s also retained the best features of the first Skypephone – that’s the free Skype calls and IMs, then. I was rather fond of the first device, despite a few reports that its durability wasn’t up to much, so I’ll be interested to see how its successor shapes up.

We’re always trying to come up with ways we can improve Skype, and to help us do this we are inviting Skype users to talk to us about how they use Skype in Central London. This time we will be focusing on people who have Skype for Windows Mobile. The sessions will be held on Wednesday 13th August.

Nice! Be sure to check it out if you’re a Skype fan.

All the usual features are enabled – chat, presence, getting calls from Skype users or through SkypeIn – for everyone, but for those in seven lucky markets (Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) there’s also outbound Skype-toSkype calls and SkypeOut functionality enabled.

The software is just a test release at the moment and its trial phase is expected to last several months. Working out whether a regular mobile or a Skype call is cheaper can still be a bit of a fiddly business and the limited functionality is a bit of a blow for those outside the seven countries Skype has given the nod, but still good to see Skype gearing up for a full-on mobile attack.