6 examples of mobile applications to enhance reality

One of the exciting things about mobile is its ability to enhance our understanding of the physical world by drawing in information from the online space. We are now just beginning to explore the possibilities but the early signs are already encouraging. Here are some of these interesting applications:

Sky Map	Ekin	WikiTude
Oedo Yokdi	Total Immersion	Invizimals

Sky MapA new program called Sky Map uses not only GPS signals to tell users what stars and planets are visible in the sky at their location, but actually shows what celestial objects the phone is pointed at. Because it doesn't need to see anything, the program works if you point your phone through the Earth, so you can see what people on the opposite hemisphere might be looking at. You can also search for objects of interest, like Mars, and Sky Map will show you where to look for them.

Enkin
"Enkin" introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services, and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices.

WikiTude
Wikitude is a mobile travel guide for the Android platform based on location-based Wikipedia and Qype content. It is a handy application for planning a trip or to find out about landmarks in your surroundings

Oedo Yokdi
"Oedo Yokai" is a book on the Japanese "Yokai" (Sprites and Spirits). It is a collection of "Yokai" stories associated with the areas near the subway stations of the Oedo Line in Tokyo, Japan. You can also summon Netsuke sculptures of each "Yokai" in the book and collect them at your leisure.

Total Immersion
Allows users to take images of cars and then manipulate the digital version of the cars including the ability to change colours and rotate the view.

Invizimals
This kid-targeted title uses the PSP Camera/Go!Cam (still unavailable in the U.S.) to find hidden monsters around their homes, which they can capture with real-life trap pieces, then trade or battle them against each other locally or online. The ability to cast spells like earthquakes by shaking the system, or lightning strikes from shadows players cast is particularly cool. It even has a very DS-like feature in which players blow into the system mic to create a snowstorm.

Read more »

Super distribution may be upon us

The concept of distribution has been around. Umair Haque termed it as viral revenue chains in 2005 and deem it as one of the important models for content distribution:

viral revenue streams are almost a foregone conclusion, because they are a dominant solution for the public goods problems the radically decentralized and open economics of the www creates. They're, pretty simply, the most rational and efficient solution to what people think is a messy problem - dealing with digital property rights.

This was echoed by Fred Wilson in 2007 when he wrote about how superdistribution will become a new model for content and revenue distribution:

Superdistribution means turning every consumer into a distribution partner. Every person who buys a record, a movie, reads a newspaper, a book, every person who buys a Sonos or a Vespa becomes a retailer of that item. It's word of mouth marketing, referral marketing, but with one important difference. The consumer is the retailer.

Superdistribution hence seem be an important mechanism/model for next generation marketing. At stake is a new ideology of how distribution in a networked economy will look like. But before we go deeper into the subject, let's get back to basic: what is superdistribution?

Clay Shirley has defined it well and also added in its importance to our connected culture:

This is superdistribution — content moving from friend to friend through the social network, far from the original source of the story. Superdistribution, despite its unweildy name, matters to users. It matters a lot. It matters so much, in fact, that we will routinely prefer a shareable amateur source to a professional source that requires us to keep the content a secret on pain of lawsuit. (Wikipedia’s historical advantage over Britannica in one sentence.)

Given how important superdistribution is, why are there so few real life examples? The answer is that it is tricky to operationlise these revenue chains. To make superdistribution a reality, we need (i) analytic services that can track beyond first level referrals and (ii) a payment infrastructure that is well embedded into our interactions such that we don't notice it at all. Both are difficult to achieve in critical mass on the Web.

Now however, there is an interesting device that has both of these characteristics: it is called the mobile. Mobile is our most personalised device and it knows information about us right down to the indiviudal. That can produce insightful analytics about who we share our content with and to what extend does that content gets filter through the social network. Mobile also comes with payment embedded, which is necessary to enable revenue sharing.

Hence, I was pretty excited when I read this article about Google and Apple enabling superdistribution-like features for their mobile stores:

Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone 3.0 software includes features that, if activated by Apple, may let users share software with one another, according to a person familiar with the technology. Eventually, iPhone users may even get a commission when they've induced someone else to make a purchase

If they get this right, we are going to see new models of distribution being created right before our eyes. The value this is going to release will be tremendous. I can't wait to see how this unfolds.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Are we done with tagging? (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)
• Social Influence & The Future Of Marketing (leighhimel.blogspot.com)
• How Small Change Became Big Money (collaboratemarketing.com)

Read more »

Connecting Offline with Online using Mobile

One of the great lessons I have learned about Mobile is that it is not Web. Behind that simple learning is an appreciation for the unique capabilities of the phone and what kind of Mobile naive services it can enable.

If you want to read more about the uniqueness of Mobile, I refer you to the following articles by Tomi Ahnon. They are quite worth your time:

• Deeper insights into the 7th Mass Media channel, mobile is to the internet, what TV is to radio

• 7th Mass Medium in context of 6 legacy mass media - about time to set facts straight about mobile

• The internet, the mobile internet, and nothing but the internet? No. Actually..

One of the unique capabilities of the phone is that it can act as a connector between your offline and online activities. This is something that the Web has difficulties with because it is not as portable, as personalised, as contextually aware as the phone. This great deck of slides shows powerful examples of how this is done in the context of enhancing your offline shopping experiences:

An Internet Watered Down

View more Microsoft Word documents from John Pettengill.

For those who don't have the time to click through the slides, the main thesis of the deck is that we are now using the phone for playing sudoku and reading NYtimes. That is what we called filling in 'dead times'. This is the lowest denominator for the phone and is not unexpected as we always export current content and services to new media and platforms. The bigger opportunity however is to find pain points outside of these 'dead times' and create truly mobile naive service/products that solve these pain points.

The phone can be a powerful hyperlink to connect the physical and online world. As stated in the slides, it is a tool that can reveal hidden information, context and relationships in the physical world and connect them to the online environment. Such connections can potentially create real value that improves our lives physically.

So, if you need inspirations on how Mobile can connect offline and online, check out these mobile pearls that are featured in the slides :

• Mobile Pearl #1: Paying for your groceries through the phone instead of waiting in long queues. Through the same application, you can now help the users to take care of their grocery budgeting and maybe even include digital coupons as well as other reward programmes.

• Mobile Pearl #2: Searching for a book through your phone while you are physically in the store. The location aware phone will then guide you to the right shelf where your desired book is located.

• Mobile Pearl #3: Using your phone to sample music, be it in Starbucks or Barnes and Noble, and have the ability to instantly purchase and listen to it. If we push this further, we can use the music as a form of social objects to connect real people or friends around us physically.

• Mobile Pearl #4: Paying for your 2nd cup of starbucks coffee through your phone so that you don't have to get out of your seat.

Even all these pearls are just early attempts at connecting the physical and online spaces. As we learn how to better leverage on the phone, I am sure we will see much more innovative and useful applications and services.

Read more »

Admin note: carnival of mobilists #175

Carnival of mobilists #175 is up.

One of the interesting post to me is about the use of mobile technology in education. Of course, there are other topics that might arouse your interest if you are into mobile.

Go take a look. You never know where serendipity might lead you to.

http://blog.mobify.me/2009/05/25/carnival-of-the-mobilists-175/

Read more »

Mobile Pearls Vol V

Continuing from my mobile pearls vol 4, I will be highlighting innovative or interesting mobile serivces/applications that I have come across.

GlucoboyWhat is it: The Glucoboy is the first blood glucose meter that has been designed specially for kids, adolescents and the young at heart. When used with the Nintendo Game Boy® Advance System or the GRiP incentive-based web community, Glucoboy becomes part of an entire network that rewards testing compliance and good health management.

Why it is cool: Combining gaming, mobile and health into a complete package is not only smart, but has real tangible benefits to the users.


New health monitoring phones
What is it: With the F884iES, users can place their fingers over the camera lens, which can determine their heart rate simply by scanning minute movements. This information, along with that from the built-in pedometer, can be input into a personal “health diary”.


PePiCo - instant personalized mobile content creation
What is it: a platform developed by Cybermedia Japan that allows users to take photos and create personalized content. Visitors to PePiCo can make e-cards, wallpapers, and games that feature the subject of the uploaded photo in a funny story/scene that can then be passed along to friends.

Why is it cool: Taking full advantage that phones are very personalized devices, this service enables users to fully express themselves and have fun at the same time. What a clever and simple service.


12Pixels - Mobile Social Drawing
What is it: 12Pixels, an application created by Karl D.D. Willis and Dr. Ivan Poupyrev of the Sony Computer Science Lab, is a mobile drawing application entering the emerging market of “social drawing”. Instead of relying on touch screens which are still rare for most mobile users, the application utilizes the standard keypad to draw.


Nokia's Shoot to Translate Service
What is it: After you have the photo of the text you want to translate, your mobile identifies the text in the photo and translates it for you.

Why is it cool: Nice example of a different paradigm for information retrival on the mobile. For more examples, check out my previous post.


Shufoo! Digital Coupons for Housewives
Members (registration free) can sign up to receive such notices from their favorite stores or brands delivered directly to their inboxes. Alternatively, one can browse by neighborhood or by category to check for (and compare) special promotional campaigns.

Why is it cool: Mobile advertising at its very best. Relevant and personalised. A very cool example of advertisements as content.


New mobile blogging platform that reads users' emotions
What is it: NEC is working on a new “smart” blogging system called the “Listen, Look, Fun Blog” that will be able to “read” the mood of writers. Based on the words entered onto the screen, the system is able to judge the writer’s feelings and then insert appropriate text decorations or voice expressions into the post. Text decorations include font styles/size,color, and inserting icons such as emoticons.

Why is it cool: One of the mobile's unique benefit is its availability at the point of creative impulse. This service makes it more fun for the user to create stuff when he is in a creative mood. Imagine Zemanta being applied to mobile and in a fun way.


FrenClub: Mobile social network success in Malaysia
What is it: A mobile social network here in Asia (that) work on.... basic SMS. They have over 2 million subscribers and they are earning over 8 milllion Malaysian Ringgit in revenues this year (about 2.3 million USD).

Why is it cool: More examples that mobile social networks have valid business models. Not only that, FrenClub is one of the rare data points for SouthEast Asia that show mobile social networks do work here!


Tourism and mobile services fuse in Vietnam, with SIM card aimed at visitors
What is it: Vietnamese mobile operator Viettel Telecom announced a SIM card that is targeted directly at tourists. The pre-paid Tourist Sim service combines decent prices with a heavy focus on information search services. The aim of this service is to provide tourists with all the information they need via SMS.

Why is it cool: A very simple and clever idea that recognises that information retrieval works very differently on mobile than on the Web. Bonus points for creating a valid business model around this idea. Anybody in the mobile travel space should just copy it in your city and/or country.


Selling music with 2D Barcodes, old school - yes as in rap music
What is it: Rhymelibrary which is an old school rap service, has now introduced Hip Hop QR Codes to help promote old school rap songs that are sold via iTunes. You don't have to do any typing of a web address, you just point your cameraphone at the 2D barcode, and within a second, the long web address appears on your phone screen, as if by magic.

Why is it cool: Using 2D barcode as an information retrial and commerce mechanism. Very unique to mobile and why it is likely to succeed.

Related
You can read more Mobile Pearls here

Read more »

How startups can help the comic industry

I have been a big comic fan for the longest time. In my room sits boxes of comics, including classics from the Silver age era. Needless to say, I am a big comic geek.

Like all media, the comic industry is undergoing drastic changes. The traditional comic books, for example, are now experiencing problems. In January, the Diamond Book Distributors raised its minimum advance orders from comic stores to $2,500 (from $1,500) before willing to distribute a title. This means independent artists will find it harder to break into traditional channels, which are gearing towards block busters. Sounds like a familiar problem?

Comic strip artists don't have it any better. Traditionally, they depend on syndication models from newspapers as their sole revenue sources. However, with newspapers in trouble, many artists are finding their only income becoming less and less dependable.

Fortunately, the comic industry has seen more business model innovations than the other media sectors. Online syndication models like comics.com are becoming a network play, where content is aggregated and reverse syndicate to other places. The only weakness is that they have not found a revenue model to reward the artists.

We are also starting to see different examples of artists diversifying their income streams, like what we are seeing in music. This NYtimes article hints at these diverse examples. The common element is that the content is given away for free but earning back through the following:

- Fans can purchase books, calendars and other items featuring characters from the comics

-Garfield.com allows fans of Jim Davis’s strip to send cards via e-mail, play online games and download screen savers

-Visitors to Dilbert.com can download widgets for their Web pages or replace the punch lines of the strip’s creator, Scott Adams, with their own

-The creators of the comic strip “Zits,” which is syndicated by King Features, are working with Jantze Studios in San Anselmo, Calif. , to develop “audio comics,” in which a camera pans over a strip while actors read the text

All these are examples of how artists are creating new revenue streams. However, they are mostly unique instances rather than common practices. As startups, how can we help?

- Create services to help bring these new revenue streams to all artists. Each of the above examples can be made into a real businesses. We need startups to bring about all these new ways of earning money.

- Create mobile services that can monetise user generated comics. Let the artists' works be the base and allow users to remix and resell them on the phone. As I mentioned before, mobile has a proven model in generating revenue for user generated content. We should leverage on that to create new income for artists.

- Enabled comic artists to build their fans base easily. This means they need tools like those from TopSpinMedia, BandMetrics etc but for comics. As Taylor Davidson said: the vast, untouched opportunity for professionals (is) to use data to create new business and economic models for the music (comics) industry.

- Finally, look at the process for a self publishing comic artist. How can startups value add to this process? It is beyond efficiency. How do we create different forms of organisational structures like markets, networks or communities to power the next generation of comic creation, distribution and consumption?

I really do love comics and I hope that startups can help to revitalize this industry that means so much to me (and I am sure many others). If you know of any startups creating new innovative services, do cite them in the comments section.


Related articles
Selling Grows Rougher for Small Comics Publishers
Comic Titans Are in the Grips of the Dreaded Inflationist
The Comics Are Feeling the Pain of Print
A Self-Publishing Comics Primer

Read more »

Different examples of Shazam for image

Via the 7th Mass Media Blog, I came across this impressive set of revenue numbers for the service Shazam:
Shazam now has 35 million users in 60 countries and they get 1 million "tags" (music identifiation requests) per day. ..... Even if we say their global average cost is 30 US cents per tag, that works out to a very impressive 109 million dollars in annual revenues.

Shazam represents a different paradigm for mobile search. It is what I called 'point, snap and retrieve'. On the mobile, a user doesn't want to see a list of results, they want answers to what they are looking for. They also doesn't want to enter long search terms, they want to click a button (like snapping a picture) and get the results.

As I wrote about it here, the concept of Shazam is applicable many niche areas. If we look at how search in Internet has splintered into many forms of specialized search like vertical search, real time search, people search etc, I believe the same trend will happen to mobile information retrieval.

Here are the some of the examples currently in the market. They are the forerunners of what I believe to be a very big opportunity in the future.

Product Search for CDs, Books and Games
When you see a book, CD, DVD, or game at a friend's house you want to look up and bookmark instantly, fire up SnapTell Explorer on your iPhone and take a photo of it..... SnapTell automatically looks up your item and gives you links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wikipedia, and straight-up search engines so you can compare prices and find out more about it.

Logo search
When a brand-specific SnapTag with a call to action is placed on an advertisement, consumers can use their mobile camera phones to access branded content, timely information, promotional opportunities, discounts, retail location finders, sales opportunities and other branded interactions.

Font Search
Ever seen a great font in a magazine ad, poster, or on the web and wondered what font it is? Whip out your iPhone and snap a photo, and WhatTheFont for iPhone will identify that font in seconds!

Bird/Tree/Nature Search (idea)
That’s what I want to be able to do. Identify a tree or a flower simply by pointing a phone at it and tapping “tag”. Identify a bird simply by letting the phone hear its call and tapping “tag”.


What other services or ideas have you come across that users the concept of Shazam for image?

Read more »

Mobile Pearls Vol IV: Mobile healthcare edition

This particular mobile pearl will be a bit different as I focus on mobile healthcare. I think mobile has the potential to advance healthcare, more so than the Web. Specifically, in the area of alerts, monitoring and doctor-patient communications, mobile healthcare can made a real difference.

First off, some interesting numbers. The following chart from O'Reilly has been passed around the Web. What is neglected is that medicine applications is the third highest growth category, behind books and travel. This of course may stem from the low base of medical applications but it is an encouraging sign nevertheless of growing demand.

Mobile monitoring
Our phones is a sensor to the world. It is also a device that we carry around everywhere, making it a perfect solution for health monitoring. Some interesting applications are emerging in this area.

-Radiation PassportThe purpose of Radiation Passport is to educate about the radiation and cancer risks associated with medical imaging exams and procedures that physicians (and dentists) want you to undergo, to keep track of radiology and imaging-related exams and procedures, and to provide an estimate of risk of developing cancer because of this radiation.


-Ultrasound imaging with mobileComputer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are bringing the minimalist approach to medical care and computing by coupling USB-based ultrasound probe technology with a smartphone, enabling a compact, mobile computational platform and a medical imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand.


-Phone-based diabetes monitoring system
(There is) 21 million Americans currently living with diabetes, the 54 million “pre-diabetic” Americans and the estimate that one out of every three people born in the U.S. after 2000 will develop diabetes. With a mere 2,500 practicing diabetologists in the U.S... traditional care will fail to support all of these patients and a disruptive, paradigm-shifting mobile solution will be more effective.


Mobile alerts
Being a medium that is always on 24/7, mobile can help patients and doctors to be informed and connected on a real time basis. Doctors could receive alerts about drug recalls, studies, disease outbreaks and changes in the status of patients. More patients could receive digital reminders to make appointments, do routine self-exams, refill medications.

Improving doctor-patient communications
Mobile in a communication device. Leveraging on that to create better interfaces between doctors and patients is a natural next step to improving doctor-patient relationship. The key to next generation health is prevention, not better medicine. This can only come when there is regular and relevant communication between doctors and patients.

-Medzio It's a fast and easy way to bring together consumers, world-class health content, medical resources and expert advice for an improved healthcare experience.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mobile Pearls II (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)
• Mobile Clinical Imaging On a Smart Phone (medgadget.com)

Read more »

10 random mobile startup ideas

Having strong interest in mobile, it is little wonder that I have a sudden surge of mobile startup ideas after reading Tomi Ahonen's mobile pearls volume 2 and rereading volume 1 as well.
By the way, if you are interested in turning these ideas into real companies but lack funds, why not consider start up loans?


1. Alternative payment platform for mobile applications
With the coming of in game currencies on iPhone applications, players are going to want alternate ways to get those currencies beyond paying their money for it. That is where alternate payment platforms likeOfferpay Media comes in. They offer a service for people to conduct actions (such as sign up other services) and earn currencies for their actions. I think there is an opportunity to build a similar platform for the Asian, mobile market. Think about Asian companies who want to test their mobile applications, companies who want to survey their target groups, companies who want to advertise, companies who want valuable customer leads etc. All these are potential companies who are willing to pay. Any platform that facilitates this exchange is going to have a windfall.

2. More open version of Blyk
Blyk has shown us that co-created advertisements is the right model for mobile advertising. By allowing users to tell advertisers what products, colour, model etc they prefer, Blyk has achieved a high conversation rate for their mobile advertisements. Can we build a more open version of this co-creation advertisement platform for all mobile content, applications and services? An OpenX version of Blyk?

3. Mobile user generated content
One of the main advantage of mobile is its ability to handle micro-payment efficiently. This has turned user generated content into real businesses. Witness the success of SeeMeTV, a youtube clone on mobile but with the ability for content creators to charge. There are opportunities to create similar ventures across the rest of the user generated landscape, from comics to photos.4. Viral marketing through alpha usersAlpha users are the people that have extraordinary social connections. If we know who these people are, why not give them better deals so that they might spread the word for your business? A startup who can figure out a way to enable this is going to change how word of mouth is done.

5. Mobile as your design tool
Mobile is available at your creative impulse. See a nice graffiti? Snap it. Like the logo on a shop front? Take a picture of it. We can build services around these creative impulses. One area is in user generated designs. Imagine a mobile threadless where tshirt design submissions are as easy as snapping images with your photo and submitting them as MMS. What's more, because it is on mobile, premium sms voting for the best design can become another viable revenue model.

6. Ebay for companies and companies in mobile advergaming
Mobile advergaming will be an explosive growth area as more companies commission mini-games or applications for the iPhone and other mobile platforms. The current marketplace for advergaming however is very inefficient. Negotiations are long and filled with all sorts of contractual discussions. Any elegant solution for developers and advertisers to find each other will surely find the market responding to it.

7. Mood music for status updating (Hat Tip to Tomi Ahonen)
Social networking may be all about status, but why is status restricted to text? Our experiences are much richer than what words can sometimes convey. Music is one powerful way to express how you feel. Why not create a mobile service that lets users 'listen' to moods of their friends through the songs they embed in their status updates? Pictures and videos are other media that this idea can apply to.

8. Shazam for images
There is very little tolerance for browsing on the mobile as both the keypad( or touch screen) and the screen are ill suited to such tasks. Mobile search may be all about point, snap and retrieve. There are potentially dozens of opportunities for startups to provide Shazam-for-pictures in different vertical sectors. For example, a Shazam for cars will enable a user to take a picture of a car model and retrieve the lowest car prices in his surrounding neighborhood for that model. Other verticals include movies, animals, buildings, product reviews etc.

9. Image recognition applications for the blind
Related to (9) is the idea of building image recognition services for the blind. The mobile can become their eyes, helping them to identify objects and reading out their description. One niche application is in money recognition, where the mobile can assist the blind to know how much money they are holding in their hands.

 10. Make it easy to embed QR codes into videos
QR codes are url shorteners for mobile (see mobiletinyurl). Currently, they are mostly used in paper based medium like magazines and posters. As video becomes more ubiquitous as a communication medium, embedding QR codes into them is the next logical step. Making this easy for users seems like a great opportunity especially as we are seeing more QR codes in videos (See pet shop boys example).

Related articles by Zemanta

Mobile Pearls II (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)

Mobile Pearls Vol III (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)

Read more »

5 ideas for the new ebook landscape

Steven Johnson wrote one of the most relevant article about the future of ebooks. If you have not read it, I would advice you to do so if you are interested this market.
(Side note: I am advising a startup in the ebook market and they are working on one of the key value propositions highlighted in the article: the ability to make passages and sentences the key unit of consumption rather than the whole book. Such a change is non-trival. Just ask Twitter.)

If you read the trends correctly, there are actually a number of opportunities a startup can pursue. Here is my list of 5 ideas:

1) Helping content to move across different readers and applications
I believe that ebook readers will proliferate. There will be many devices and applications that enable ebooks to be read. While this creates complications, it also opens up an opportunity for someone to create a service for authors to 'upload once' and distribute across difference services. Think of Tubemogul for ebooks.

2) People powered distribution
Once ebooks allow users to annoate and share passages/sentences that inspires or infuriate them, these passages become a form of distribution that is community powered. We need a bit.ly + tipjar service that enables these linked passages to be tracked in real time as well as to provide direct purchases (through a simply hashtag for example).

3) Infrastructure that enables innovations in search and discovery of ebooks
With users sharing their annotated passages, they represent an alternate way that books can be searched and discovered. The first order opportunity is to build a Digg or Del.licio.us equivalent that surfaces the most interesting annotated passages. What is more interesting is to create a Twitter-like 'dumb' pipe that focuses on moving the data around. The aim is to allow third party enables developers to create different interface clients and innovate around how books can be searched and discovered.

4) Community building tools
Each ebook is a platform for authors to build their communities. We can learn from companies such as Mybloglog and develop simple applications that organises communities around ebooks. Alternatively, there might also be a need for a third party commenting system that aggregates comments left by readers on the same ebook across different readers.

5) Wiki for annoated passages
Ebooks can be the starting point for our information discovery. Use that to build powerful tools for user generated context. Consider the following scenario:

- as you are reading an ebook, you come across a concept, a person, a piece of art, a travel destination, a statistic etc that you want more information on.
- you search for it via the ebook search function, which relies on Google to retrieve the relevant information for you.
- you read these information and saves the relevant ones through a link of your selected passage in the ebook.
- that passage effectively becomes a window to a wiki page that hosts all your related articles and blog posts.
- if you choose to share it, other readers reading the same ebook can see the link and the additional articles that you have saved
- if thousands of peope do that, the ebook becomes the context which information is organised around.

Read more »

While Youtube is making losses, mobile Youtube clone is making money

Technovia has an interesting article talking about whether Youtube is the largest loss-making venture in history:


it’s still losing money hand over fist. As I mentioned earlier, a recent Credit Suisse report estimates it will lose a whopping $470 million this year.

The reason for that is simple: while its revenues should grow at a more-than-respectable 20% in 2009, the number of streams it serves will grow at a rate almost double that (38%).

Contrast this with SeeMeTv, a youtube clone on mobile that is making money. It has one big difference relative to Youtube: user has to pay for each view and the revenue was co-shared with the person who uploaded the video. On SeeMeTv, each user on average earns 12 pounds per video!

Why is this so? Why can SeeMeTv charge for its service and be profitable while Youtube, the third largest site in the world, is making losses?

One of the reason is that micro payment is handled very efficiently on the mobile platform. Because of this, each click can be billed. This alone opens up different revenue models.

Another reason is the different usage context. Mobile is often used in situations where the user has no other options for entertainment. He may be on public transport. He may be stuck in a queue. Why not just pay a bit of money to download a funny video and entertain himself while having nothing to do? This context is vastly different when one is sitting in front of a screen and having all the time in the world to find free content.

Ultimately, this boils down to the fact that the Web and the mobile are vastly different media. On mobile, it is possible to make money on social media. Video is just one example. The same can be said for social networks. Facebook and MySpace are struggling for revenue while CyWorld and Flirtomatic are bringing in the profits.

This is why I love mobile : )

Read more »

The endless possibilities offered by iPhone's accessories API

The most exciting opportunity for the iPhone OS3 is the opening up of the accessories API. This means hardware developers now have the potential to open up new markets:

Developers will now be able to create apps that work directly with their proprietary accessories, which is something that was previously not supported. Examples given: an FM transmitter extension with an app for changing stations; a blood pressure gauge with app for tracking, organizing, charting blood pressure data.

The possibilities are truly endless as smart hardware developers now have the chance to disrupt many expensive hardware-based markets like medical devices, toys, home monitoring, car entertainment etc with some cheap hardware and smart software. Across the Web, articles have spring up that imagine what kind of new hardware and applications are now possible. If you are looking for cool ideas, the list below is a good place to start:

Ivor Kovic: Details how iPhone can become powerful devices for doctors with additional accessories and applications

Kontra: Talks about how the accessories API is a powerful advantage for the iPhone platform and lists the potential areas where innovations in hardware accessories can take place

Mark Johnson: Thinking about iPhone as an accessory to other devices, rather than the other way around. He then goes on to list the areas where such innovations are feasible

The biggest opportunity however is in forming an innovation network like Li & Fung with the community organisation mechanisms of Threadless. Imagine groups of users designing and voting for their hardware in vertical markets. The most voted will then be made using the supplier network similar to that of Li & Fung. Whoever can pull this off can remake the value chain of how hardware is produced and consumed.

What other potential do you see in the new accessories API offered by the iPhone OS3?

Read more »

Why I like Nokia's Ovi Store

I attend Nokia Code Camp 2009 today. This event is to prepare developers for the upcoming launch of Nokia's Ovi Store in May. I was quite privileged to be invited as one of the speakers.

As I saw the unveiling of the Ovi Store, there are a couple of things that I thought was a marked improvement over Apple's App Store:

Tapping into device APIs: this turns out to have many useful implications such as saving your the information from your air ticket directly to your calender

Social recommendation: recommending what your friends have bought or downloaded

Country specific recommendation: recommending applications that are relevant to where you are

(and I foresee)

Device specific recommendation: recommending applications that suits a device's main demographic user.

All these boils down to the fact that Nokia is giving applications context, which is something the App Store sorely needs. Applications are like content. They need context to make them more relevant and useful to the users.

What I hope Nokia can do is to push that thinking further and allow for user generated context.

-How can I create and share my 'playlist' of applications with my friends?
-How can I know when and why my friends download certain applications?
- What other meta data can I add onto the applications beyond reviews and ratings?
- How can Nokia aggregate all these context and develop new ways of recommendations and search?
- What kind of applications can startups built to take advantage of context to help users navigate the huge number of potential applications coming up?

Read more »

A different paradigm for assessing contextual information on mobile

It is funny but when a couple of your trusted filters talk about the same thing in different context and time, you tend to sit up and pay attention. This is what has happened.

JP Rangaswami blogged about a Shazam for image in the context of a bird recognizing application. This was echoed by Fred Wilson a couple of months back when he suggested a similar application for tourists. Finally, Tomi Ahonen also talks about a interesting mobile service in Japan that 'uses the camera on the phone.... to read words (and) ..does a dictionary look-up and displays the word in Japanese on the screen.

All these suggested a big opportunity: creating a different paradigm for assessing contextual information:

-What happens when you can now assess the contextual information embedded in things around you?
-Can we see who else has retrieved the same information?
-How can we add more information to the image, wikipedia style?
-Will we see a big debate over privacy if I can now assess your information by snapping a picture of you?
-Can we now tell better stories or leave deeper memories if our images comes with the relevant information?

Read more »

Mobile Pearls Vol III

I have fallen behind in my mobile pearls series as very few innovative mobile services/products have come across my way. After weeks of collecting, here is the latest on mobile pearls:

iPhone apps for connecting musicians and fans
The free apps include video content from the artists’ Kyte channels, as well as branding and advertising, click-through links to buy music and merchandise, a built-in RSS reader to pull in news updates, and community features like chat, comments and sharing.
(Very similar to the previous mobile pearl on adva mobile)

Pet Shop Boys introduce fans to QR code in their new music video
The new video for their recent single, Integral, has QR codes interspersed within urban settings and pixelated images. The website also encourages fans to remix their own versions of the video, and embed their own QR codes into them.

(There are 2 cool things going on in this mobile pearl. First it is a great use of QR codes in music, and is something that the mobile uniquely has. Second, it encourages fans to use QR codes in their remix of the video as well, a great example of community branding.)

QR code as accessories
Kanno has created a line-up of accessories branded with a unique QR code that can link to an original, user-created photograph or video.
(Not only is this a cool innovation of using QR code, it is also a fantastic to bring physical and virtual.)

Street lighting by phone
The town of Germany’s Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz has recently reduced its streetlighting energy costs by a quarter, simply by switching all lighting off by default and allowing citizens of the town to light individual units with a phone call.
(Leveraging on mobile's attribute of machine-to-machine communication, this is a wonderful service that caters to mobile's benefit of being a personal device. Doesn't hurt that this also contributes to energy efficiency for the city.)

Mobile apps as next generation billboards
And the best way to get that promotion on people’s phones? Make them want to install it themselves.
(A wonderful example of how advertisements can be content. Who is going to make it easy for independent film makers to DIY such applications themselves?)

Engagement campaign with frozen food brand Birds Eye
They printed a unique code to each package of the foods and gave a chance to win cash prizes every day via SMS participation.
(Mobile advertising will be more effective than what we have seen on the Web. Because it is personalised, there is potential for advertisers to provide targeted useful advertisements on the individual level.)

Note: see rest of the series here.

Read more »

The ebook market is picking up pace

Ebooks have been picking up pace in recent months and I want to take this post to summarise what has been happening so far.

The most easy way to start is to see some numbers. O'reiliy's blog mentions that the fastest growing category in itune is book. The interesting thing, beyond the growth, is the fact that iphone is becoming the next ebook reader, something that a lot of people didn't expect to happen. With Google and Amazon now making their ebooks available in Apple's platform, it is emerging as one of the leading ebook device.

Despite the growth, I feel that the potential of the ebook is far from realised ( have blogged about such potential before). This has been echoed by debates on whether are we having the wrong conversations about ebook pricing, instead of focusing them on new creative forms that ebooks can bring. We have seen how tv has created its own genres of content such as reality shows and music videos that are not possible other mediums like radio, cinema etc. The ebook format can potentially bring such creative innovation as well.

Beyond the creative potential, ebooks also unlocks new opportunities for the book publishing industry. Specifically, ebooks can become marketing tools for authors. If employed correctly, more conversations and connections can happen between authors and readers.

I really think this is an exciting time for the book publishing industry. I think we are about to witness another great shift as what we have seen for iTunes.

Read more »

Simple idea: creating financial app on iPhone for this part of the world

I came across this interesting post about Google engineers making a finance app for android.


we added more features with the aim of allowing users to get stock quotes, market data, and news as fast as possible. If you are following the markets throughout the day, check out the real-time streaming quotes in your portfolio, fast stock look-ups with search auto-suggestion, and 'recent quotes' to make it even easier receive quotes on-the-go. For each stock, you can see detailed quotes, charts and news, and any change you make to your portfolio automatically syncs up with the Google Finance website.

It was something I think will be useful and went about looking for a iPhone version. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one that covers this part of the world. I think this is something that people will find value in.

What is interesting is the things you can build upon this financial app. Since you can track your portfolio, why not allow users to share their trading results and build a Covestor equivalent for the mobile to disrupt the asset management industry?

Alternatively, why not combine the financial app with the StockTwits idea and let the community talk about news related to companies. I think this is something very useful, especially in this part of the world where financial coverage is poor.

Any developers want to build this with me? : )

Read more »

5 ways to make a better mobile ebook reader

Inspired by Seth Godin's post on reinventing the Kindle, here are my ramblings on how to make a better mobile ebook reader:

Focus on sharing for non friction books
Travel guides, receipt books, open source textbooks, self-help references, business books etc can be more enjoyable when you can share notes and highlights. Think that a business idea is great? Highlight it for your friends to read. Have questions on a particular topic? Share your queries with those who bought the same book. Want to suggest improvements on a particular receipt? Annotate your improvements for your fellow readers to see.

Imagine a feature where you can use a digital marker to highlight paragraphs of ebooks and that portion becomes a social object. This can be then be posted to your blogging platforms or be rated/voted to create attention markets for ebooks. Beyond this, I am sure there are more ways for sharing. Make use of that to create a more social ebook reader.

Enabling scalable intimacy between authors and readers
Ebooks are just the start of a relationship between an author and a reader. Why not create a feature that automatically presents a news feed based on the blogs and tweets of all the authors that the reader has favourited? Why not also allow readers to directly comment via their mobile and enable them to start a real conversation with the authors. Creating this easy way to achieve scalable intimacy is a next generation media play.

Allowing authors to become trusted filters
With so mcuh choices in ebook selections, helping readers to surface relevant and interesting reads is a great value proposition. Authors are in a great position to be that trustworth filter. A reader has already spent sufficient time in reading a book, understanding the author's perspective and establishing whether that perspective is a relevant filter for him. Next step is simply giving permissions for authors to become a trusted filter by recommending the relevant stuff including articles, books, conferences etc.

Use multimedia
Why must ebooks be just text? While words are great at flashing out details of ideas and concepts, embedding other forms of media will add richness and a more immersive experience.

Link to the rest of the Web
The ebooks are the beginning of knowledge acqusition. Use that as a starting point to link to other sources of knowledge. Read about a new term that interests you? Highlight it to search in Wikipedia and find the relevant articles for your reading at a later time. Want to know the more about the author? Highlight it to bring up other books by the same author in Amazon. Don't leave your ebook reader in isolation. Instead, use that as a starting point to better filter and explore the Web.

I think the ebooks market is finally breaking out. It is a good place to be in.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 ideas for mobile ebook applications (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)
• Best reads for the weekend of 28th Feb 2009 (ac-idealog.blogspot.com)

Read more »

Using mobile to create connections

I have blogged before about the potential of mobile to create closer connections between artists and their fans. Mobile is our most personal communication device and exploiting that to bring about real conversations is a powerful lever in exploring connections.

Recently, I have seen magazine publishers tapping on the power of mobile. Variety, for example, just launched an iPhone app powered by Newsgator. People magazine is also launching an iPhone application. While useful, I feel that these efforts are missing the bigger opportunity. The mobile is not just another distribution platform. It represents a whole new way to create value for both artists and fans.

This mobile pearl talks about how Interscope Geffen A&M is launching iPhone applications for five of its key artists. It is a more powerful example of how mobile can be used:

"Kyte allows us to easily deliver iPhone and iPod touch apps that connect our artists with their fans in a fully immersive, interactive experience,”

Going forward, there is plenty of room to create mobiles/services that enable meaningful connections between artists and fans, between fans and fans, between metadata and fans. If you are into media startups, think connections, not transactions.

Read more »

Admin note: carnival of mobilists #162

The latest edition of the carnival is up, with my post on the shortcomings of mobile ebook applications being one of the selected links.

http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/carnival-of-the-mobilists-162/

Read more »