I favour the direct approach when you’re changing things around. I always like to have a poke about newly built stuff, whilst it’s being built, so we’re adopting that viewpoint with SMS Text News.

In the next few days — in fact, today, if you’re especially careful to look — you’ll see our new look. It’s a ‘big’ new look.

All will be revealed in our weekly newsletter that’s due to hit the virtual streets today at 3pm London time.

After that, you’ll start to see goodness knows how many changes and updates. We’re going to do it piecemeal. An update here, a change there — so if you’re sat watching, you’ll be able to see us building the new SMS Text News real time. Or if you check in at the end of the week, you’ll see an entirely different look.

This is, by the way, a really good time to have your SMS Text News niggles resolved. If something has been winding you up, now’s the time to tell us, so we can fix it.

Our news flow will be a little bit dry today as we hold back the good stuff for the rest of the week.

If you’d like to get the exclusive stuff, get on the weekly newsletter list here:

Otherwise, we’ll see you on the other side.

I hope all those who received the newsletter this week found it useful. I’m really pleased with it. We’ve got a lot more exclusive content arriving for it next week.

You can sign-up here:

He’s spending 10 days with the GB Paralympic team. And when he’s not looking after our genius basketballers (amongst others), he is hunting for things to review and test — think: navigation, city guides, language tools, social networking tools and related hardware.

Have you got any ideas for kit you’d like him to field test? Drop me a note.

We take a look at Sagem, we discuss 3, we cast a glance toward the inevitable iPhone availability discussion, we discuss the Nokia Tube — and Dan and Ben get overrun by some testosterone-fueled normob hoodies (who aren’t, actually, wearing hoodies).

Do not miss the hoodie bit. The video is 23:30 long.

SMS Text News trial videocast from Ewan MacLeod on Vimeo.

Featured SMS Text News people:
- Dan Lane
- Ben Smith
- James Whatley
(and me, Ewan, briefly — for my Sony Ericsson News)

Topics discussed:
-A look at Sagem’s new device (01:48)
-iPhone Availability (03:07)
-A note on Carphone Warehouse (04:38)
-MyAlerts.com (06:01)
-Normob Alert! (08:42)
-We’re missing James Whatley, Podcast contributor (09:00)
-Nokia’s S60 Touch UI, Leaked this week (09:26)
-3′s Christmas in July (14:09)
-An interruption from the Normobs of London (16:54)
-Things of the Week (19:00)

Do let us know what you think! We’ll be aiming to do something similar for this week’s podcast (at the AQA party) and, depending on feedback, we’ll be back with a real audio podcast the following week.

You can feedback to me — ewan@smstextnews.com or to Ben, the Podcast Master — ben.smith@smstextnews.com.

Contributors Dan Lane, Ben Smith and I headed off to the Centre of Her Majesty’s Empire (that is, Buckingham Palace) and talked-to-camera.

I’m going to see if we can rip the audio and serve it as a podcast as normal. We’ll publish the video tomorrow morning. It is most certainly a trial. A beta. A work in progress. There’s a squirrel and copious normobs. When a group of normobs came over for a chat, Ben was off his seat like an Olympic pro in case they were carrying knifes. Dan bravely demanded to see their mobile phones and, confronted with me pointing a camera in their faces, they were more than happy to oblige. It’s worth watching just to see the mild panic on Dan’s face as the hoodies (without hoodies) approached. They were, actually, very polite.

We wanted to have a practice in advance of this Friday’s AQA (63336) party that we’re filming — the SMS Text News team will be there in force featuring interviews, commentary and all sorts of devices.

There’s quite a lot of sensible conversation about the Sagem, iPhone availability, the Nokia Tube, 3′s Christmas in July event… and a blooper real at the end featuring occasional naughty language.

Standby for the video. It’ll be up shortly!

In a little under four hours the email address will be switched off and a small handful of dedicated people will examine each of the hundreds of entries to determine who has it and who, (in the case of one award) doesn’t.

Once again, the categories are:

1. Best handset
2. Best application in mobile
3. Best marketing campaign
4. Best public social use of mobile
5. Best business person in the mobile industry
6. Best user
7. Best mobile marketing manager
8. Best CSR story
9. Best instant messaging tool
10. Most innovative operator
11. Best blogger
12. Industry hero
13. Industry villain
14. Best service
15. Best gadget
16. Best reader
17. Best use of SMS text message
18. Best value product
19. Best business use of mobile
20. Best PR campaign

‘Tis I. Ewan. Your friendly mobile blogger from SMS Text News.

Ah hah!

You’ll have noticed that we’ve posted quite regularly about the upcoming SMS Text News Awards.

We’ve had hundreds of entries so far so thank you very much indeed to all who have taken the time to do so.

1. Entry. You need to be quick. We need a description and a note on the category(s) that you are entering for. The deadline is tomorrow. Quick! Email us a holding email if you like as we won’t begin the judging. The email is awards@smstextnews.com.

Don’t be shy. A few enterprising companies have entered for almost every category.

2. Prizes. We were looking at a 6ft bronze statue of SMS Text News contributor, James Whatley, posing with an N95 and an N82 in his hands, for all winners. Whilst we liked this concept and it could look rather fetching in the reception areas of the winners, we eventually decided on some kind of plaque/shield.

3. Award ceremony. Yeah, none of that. We won’t be doing sit-down dinners or black tie arrangements. Not yet. The overhead for this is a bit high. We’ll be announcing the winners on the site during a live chat event.

4. Profiles. We’ll be doing a piece on each winner and we’ll also be doing smaller pieces on the runner-ups. Everyone’s a winner!

5. Judging panel. The panel is being composed as we speak. Image rights are being negotiated. I’m on it, but other participants will be announced momentarily.

Any questions? Mail!

If you’d like to meet, drop a mail over to me — ewan@smstextnews.com.

Somehow I have a foreboding feeling a handful of us will be going blind with reading over the next couple of weeks.

So just as a reminder, we are giving out 19 awards for mobile industry excellence and one award for being dreadful.

The categories are:

1. Best handset
2. Best application in mobile
3. Best marketing campaign
4. Best public social use of mobile
5. Best business person in the mobile industry
6. Best user
7. Best mobile marketing manager
8. Best CSR story
9. Best instant messaging tool
10. Most innovative operator
11. Best blogger
12. Industry hero
13. Industry villain
14. Best service
15. Best gadget
16. Best reader
17. Best use of SMS text message
18. Best value product
19. Best business use of mobile
20. Best PR campaign

Express thanks must go to o2 who have sent me over an iPhone 3G to review. I have it in my hand and it is more solid, more desirable, … just better than the 2G iPhone.

Here then is a quick and dirty picture of it (taken, with a bit of personal ceremony, with a 2G iPhone camera):

Expect a fuller perspective shortly.

Suffice to say that when you take a look at the Apple iTunes Application Store, it’s all… slowly, ever so slowly, happening, this mobile thing.

I spotted the Truphone app, the ShoZu app, the Wine Lover application, the Horroscope app…

There’s a degree of fake smilery to be had when it comes to o2 (and Carphone Warehouse) beset with technical problems on today, iPhone day. It’s not good. But, it is unprecedented. It’ll maybe even make the evening news here in the UK. If it does then I think it’s all-news-is-good-news. The iPhone and Apple cachet cancels out disappointment pretty quickly. Whatever the launch day spluttering, there’s clearly a lot of demand:

What’s very exciting is the feedback that I’m getting from people, not traditionally iPhone users. The experience that an iPhone can offer your average normob (and not your highly attuned SMS Text News reading mobile geek) is so powerful, so compelling, that I reckoned the market would be overflowing with iPhone demand after the 2G launch last year. But the pricing was all wrong. It’s much better now… so I just can’t wait to see if, very quickly, the market in the UK will segment, between the haves and the have-nots.

That is, those who have a decent, exciting, easy, seamless mobile (and internet) experience and the have nots — the Sony Ericsson-wielding Great Unwashed who can phone and text and occasionally use the shitty shitty mobile internet.

So I’ll have my experience of the new iPhone up shortly. If you’ve just got yourself one, mail me over your thoughts and we’ll publish.

I just got a news release in from Nokia telling me that endorsement for the foundation grows, thus:

The initial board members of the Symbian Foundation have welcomed continuing support from mobile industry leaders for their plans for the Symbian Foundation and the evolution of Symbian OS(TM) as the leading, open platform for mobile innovation.

Here’s a bit of background:

Plans for the Symbian Foundation were announced on June 24, 2008 by the initial board members; AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, together with Symbian Limited. An additional 11 organizations supported the announcement on that day; today 9 further companies are confirming their endorsement of plans for the Symbian Foundation, including mobile operators 3, America Movil and TIM, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell plus services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator.

My problem is that all those companies listed above (a few exceptions) have continually proved themselves unable to manage innovation properly.

“Coming together” to form a foundation isn’t going to fix things. Developers need Windows. They need the equivalent of Windows or Apple. It needs to be piece-of-piss simple to get your applications out to the normobs, because they’ve got the cash. It’s a total unmitigated nightmare. Shit UIs. Shit industry price plans and business models that work for nobody except the companies above. Stifled innovation.

Here’s a chap from Nokia who’s quite happy:

“We were delighted with the broad support for plans for the Symbian Foundation,” said Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President, Devices at Nokia, on behalf of the initial board members. “We believe that this is a significant move for our industry and are pleased that these additional market leaders agree and are giving their support to the initiative.”

Yada yada yada. This should have been done years ago. YEARS ago.

Can we get a decent standard that makes it simple for entrepreneurs to innovate, be successful and get rewards?

Maybe. Here’s hoping.

In the end you have you stick up your hands and say,… ‘Er, I reckon this is probably about right.’

So thank you everyone who’s been following our trials and tribulations with the podcast over the last 12 weeks. We record the 13th one tomorrow. In some cases we’ve done over a hour of nattering. I think the right length is about 30 minutes and the chaps have been working hard to keep it to that.

The next step is to introduce some guests. If you’ve got an opinion about mobile, then we’d like to hear from you.

Ideally we’d like to get you into the studio (the office in London). So if you’re available on Fridays (and sometimes Saturdays) and you can get to London, drop me a note and we’ll try and schedule things.

I’m mulling the idea of a Skype conference call too, to help connect people who can’t easily get to London. We’ll work it out.

It’s a fantastic response and I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the entries by any means.

So just as a reminder, we are giving out 19 awards for mobile industry excellence and one award for being dreadful.

The categories are:

1. Best handset
2. Best application in mobile
3. Best marketing campaign
4. Best public social use of mobile
5. Best business person in the mobile industry
6. Best user
7. Best mobile marketing manager
8. Best CSR story
9. Best instant messaging tool
10. Most innovative operator
11. Best blogger
12. Industry hero
13. Industry villain
14. Best service
15. Best gadget
16. Best reader
17. Best use of SMS text message
18. Best value product
19. Best business use of mobile
20. Best PR campaign

Dan Ilett here – I’m the publisher for SMS Text News.

SMS Text News is giving out 19 awards for mobile industry excellence and one award for being dreadful.

The categories are:

1. Best handset
2. Best application in mobile
3. Best marketing campaign
4. Best public social use of mobile
5. Best business person in the mobile industry
6. Best user
7. Best mobile marketing manager
8. Best CSR story
9. Best instant messaging tool
10. Most innovative operator
11. Best blogger
12. Industry hero
13. Industry villain
14. Best service
15. Best gadget
16. Best reader
17. Best use of SMS text message
18. Best value product
19. Best business use of mobile
20. Best PR campaign

We excitedly await your entry

If you’ve come across DeviceAnywhere before, then, you know what I’m talking about and can nod sagely with me.

If you haven’t, then just wait ’til you see it. It’s pure genius.

When I arrived at the briefing, I saw, on the table, a pizza-box-sized server — one of those that you’re used to seeing in a rack, in a data centre. Although this wasn’t just any 1U server. No, sir. There was a Blackberry inside it. Literally. I could see the Blackberry’s screen flashing away — the phone had been disassembled a little and plugged into the circuitry of the server. As though The Borg had interfaced with it.

I nodded to the DeviceAnywhere chaps, “So, you can actually control that?” I said, pointing to the Blackberry screen, “From here?” I said, pointing to the laptop they’d setup next to it.

“Yup!”

Wow. The implications of such a facility hit home immediately. If you’re a developer and you’d like immediate access to a Blackberry, a Nokia, an iPhone… I am not talking simulation or emulation — in fact, a whole range of mobile handsets (500+), working on veritable array of international networks, you can have it remotely over the internet. One or two clicks with the Mobile Complete client software and within seconds, you’re using a real device on, a live network of choice.

Want to upload an application? Go ahead. Want to send a text message? Sure. Go for it. Each phone has it’s own account on a mobile network (you pick what you want, e.g. Blackberry on Vodafone) and you can rent the phone exclusively or for a few hours to test with. You can do absolutely anything you want to the device — when your testing/tinkering session is finished, it’ll be reset to factory default. What’s more, the pricing is eminently affordable, whether you’re developing in your bedroom or a multi-national.

They don’t just offer easy access to a whole range of mobile devices — they also offer automation, scripting and monitoring: Absolutely invaluable for most developers. Just as an example, if you’re working away testing an application on a device and it freezes, well… not only is it a bit of an arse, you also want to know *what happened* to cause the freeze, e.g. a memory overload or the like. That’s where DeviceAnywhere really comes into its own. Plus, the automation tools can save you hours and hours of time — think, for example, trying to test out performance at peak network congestion times in different time zones (when you actually want to be asleep).

It’s a really, really useful offering, DeviceAnywhere. It’s exactly what developers need when they’re developing for international markets (and, let’s face it, if you’re not, there’s a problem). It’s all very well having a Sony handset on each domestic mobile network. That’s useful. But when you get an enquiry from someone using a Nokia N95 8GB wondering why your service isn’t working, device-specific bugs can be a real annoyance.

Clearly, anyone who’s doing any sort of mobile development or marketing needs access to DeviceAnywhere.

Which is why, when I talked to DeviceAnywhere again recently, I suggested they support a Mobile Complete roadshow here at SMS Text News. I was delighted when they readily agreed.

So where’s what we’re going to do. I’d like to spread the word about the service. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to four different mobile developers in the UK — large and small. We’re going to their offices (or, in some cases, they’ll be coming to SMS Text News towers) and we’re going to give them a demo DeviceAnywhere account and see what they make of the service. We’ll write each company up and do some videos too.

Standby! The first roadshow entry will be online shortly!

I tuned into the SMS Text News podcast (number 9) this morning from the Desert Island. Instead of using the Dell Ultralight M1330′s (rather nifty) speakers, I plugged in the Polycom Communicator C100 (it’s USB). It’s a bit of genius. Of course it does voice really well.. I’ve got a post on that coming, but I wanted to check out it’s speaker capabilities.

You’ll be familiar with Polycom from the conference room and the Communicator C100 is a chip off the same block. It’s got HD voice technology — whatever that is, it makes any audio and particularly voice sound full, whole and brilliant. I’m going to do another post on the Communicator — but that’ll be in a few days — so I want to point out that it’s just magic, absolutely magic, for Skype. I used it to speak with Mr Operator yesterday and the Communicator’s full duplex technology handled everything beautifully.

Here’s a vid of the Polycom unit in use with Ben-from-the-podcast’s dulcet tones mixed into a bit of jazz drifting across the waves…

(Filmed, of course, on a Flip!)

We’ve got a lot of (contrasting) opinion and perspective coming in from readers and contributors so standby for a bit of an Apple-fest, although it’ll often be far from fanboy levels.

SMS Text News launches consultancy practice
Blog moves into analyst territory

June 10, London. SMS Text News, the world’s most influential blog on the mobile industry, is proud to announce it has launched a consultancy and research arm of its business in a bid to help more companies succeed.

The new section of the site, “Push 1 for Help”, launches today with the support of the Tolléjo Media Group – the company behind big-hitting blogs SMS Text News, Greenbang.com and BladeWatch.

Ewan MacLeod, chief blogger and serial entrepreneur, is to lead the venture. He made the decision to introduce the service after more than 20 large companies approached him for advice on mobile subjects, business and blogging.

Ewan said: “We’re launching this service in reaction to the demand from the industry for qualified, non-nonsense perspective and opinion — the sort of thing you don’t necessarily get from analysts. We’re highly connected to the marketplace and we’re in a unique position at SMS Text News to deliver brilliant insightful perspective.”

The move comes as the traditional technology analyst market struggles to find new ways to make revenue and differentiate their offerings. Ewan continued: “We’re taking a new approach to helping companies. Everyone in this office lives mobile and knows it inside out. We started blogging about mobile because we love it. Not many analysts can equal that passion and therefore will only deliver information and help to a certain level.”

Push 1 for Help debuts at the SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks night on June 10th.

- – -

If you’d like a bit of help — if you’d like a report, some perspective or a confidential viewpoint, talk to me. The Push 1 for Help overview page is here.

It is for this reason that I bring the following news to your attention: LG is hunting for a style icon — that is, a person — to front their upcoming advertising campaign. One imagines they’re hunting for someone to stand and pose with the latest LG.

If you can spare the time and your image rights are not already locked up with a reputable talent agency, the details are here.

Next month, starting June 16th, we’ll be bringing you SMS Text News live from a desert island in the middle of nowhere.

I’m going to be exploring the possibility of working remotely. I’ve emailed Iridium to see if they can lend us a satellite data system to enable us to produce the site. The hotel we’re using will have internet but I’d like to prove a point and detail just how easy it is to get connected literally anywhere.

If you’ve got any ideas for products and services we should look at for this feature, mail me!

The only memorable thing I can tell you about is RIM. And Rogers executives who knew nothing about mobile (this was, admittedly, a few years ago, I trust the situation has changed). And the enterprising chaps at Bell who introduced unlimited data recently (see our HTC Touch/Bell Unlimited Data experience).

Not good enough, eh? No! I know there’s a lot of good stuff happening in the country. We’ve had a lot of email in from readers suggesting companies to shine the SMS Text News light upon. Very encouraging.

As a result, our very own Krystal (an Ontario native) has started work on Focus on Canada. I want to start by looking at the country’s mobile aggregators. First up you can look forward to an array of profiles and then some interviews with leading executives making things happen in the industry. We’ll begin next week. Standby!

If you have some recommendations for who we should speak to, do let me know (ewan@smstextnews.com).