"Proximity" Grows as a Way for Online to Enhance "Real Life"

LoKast is a "proximity-based" social networking app that allows real-time messaging between users within 1,000 feet of each other. It's another way online tools are starting to be applied to real life in bars, living rooms, classrooms, conferences, cafes, retailers or maybe even conferences and trade shows.

New Apps Aim for Social Serendipity In Real Life

We're So Addicted To Our Phones That We Can't Even Watch TV Without Staring At Them Anymore

The mobile phone is the most common distraction while watching anything, according to a new study by Youme. Some 60 percent of the study sample distracted themselves with mobile phones while watching TV, and 46% percent did while watching online video.

This makes a strong case for mobile marketing, or for media companies and brands to do more to reach people on their phones while they're watching TV, using apps or interacting with online content.

We're So Addicted To Our Phones That We Can't Even Watch TV Without Staring At Them Anymore

Cox backpedals on 3G network, will remain Sprint MVNO - FierceWireless

Cox Communications will decommission its own 3G network infrastructure and buy wholesale capacity from Sprint Nextel service to support its wireless service. Cox owns 700 MHz spectrum of its own, so the question is what the company might do with it.

It's tough to be a regional infrastructure-based provider of mobile service these days, given the speed with which the technology is moving, and the scale needed to make decent financial returns. In wireless, as in video, volume makes a difference.

Cable companies have had quite a long history of dabbling in spectrum and working with Sprint for wireless services, and nothing too significant ever has developed from those efforts. For whatever reason, cable operators have been most successful offering new services over their existing broadband networks.

One might speculate on the cultural reasons for that state of affairs, but among the possible explanations is that cable executives never had felt comfortable relying on other networks to deliver their services. Whether that has created some managerial impediment is a question.

Cox backpedals on 3G network, will remain Sprint MVNO - FierceWireless

Mobile Ecosystem Shifts to Apps

Whatever different participants might think about the change, the mobile ecosystem, traditionally quite closed, is becoming not only more "open," but also more complex. As that happens, value is shifting as well, towards the application layer and end user experiences, and with a greater role for the devices that enable those experiences.

“It is the ecosystem not the operating system that is important,” said Enrico Salvatori, Qualcomm’s European vice president. That's the reason one hears so much, so often, about the business problem of "dumb pipes."

But some of the change is inevitable. Apps always have been the reason people have bought network-based services. Consumers never directly buy the access itself. But the decoupling of app creation and network access means apps can be created at Internet speed, all the time, while networks have to be built physically.

“The cycles of innovation in applications are orders of magnitude less than those for service providers,” said Houston Spencer, marketing vice president at Alcatel Lucent.

Social Media Will Beat Mobile Phone Operators | Page 2 | eWEEK Europe UK

"Net Neutrality" in the Netherlands

Network neutrality is a complicated issue, despite occasional efforts to paint it as a simple matter of content freedom. The Netherlands, for example, recently has decided to ensure that over the top applications such as Skype are usable on fixed and wireless networks.

That is heralded as a network neutrality move. In the U.S. market, such rules already are part of the Federal Communications Commission "Internet Freedoms" principles, which state, among other things, that users should be able to use all lawful applications."

The Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation decision seems aimed at services such as Skype, which the rules specify are allowed to work without interference from access providers.

Of course, that is not the heart of debates over network neutrality, which really becomes an issue because network management practices and application management sometimes overlap. Strong versions of network neutrality, which would prohibit any traffic shaping at all, even at the request of the end user, would complicate delivery of quality of service for any real-time service.

Users might not care so much about quality issues with "free" video clips, but they might not be happy paying for a video service that freezes frequently because there is congestion on the network. Nor are users likely to be any happier paying for video conference or calling services that suffer from impairments.

Some argue that bandwidth fixes all these problems, but that isn't true. Given enough bandwidth and a reasonable buffer, any pre-recorded form of video will work fine, almost always.

Real-time services, on the other hand, suffer from latency impairments because there is no way to buffer the bits. In such cases, quality of experience measures, such as delaying other types of less-important traffic, will improve end user experience. But strict forms of network neutrality might forbid even that practice.

The Netherlands To Enact Law That Ensures Net Neutrality

"Mobile First" Content Implications: Be Visual

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking for some time about a “mobile first” strategy. Schmidt underscores his point by noting that all today’s top software engineers are applying their craft to mobile
platforms "only."

The key implication for content marketers is to master the ability to “tell your story” visually. Hemmed in by 12-sound bytes and 140-character tweets, your brand’s messaging needs to be visual to break through. The mobile dominant realm requires that marketers create new context for the diverse forms of messaging that are so crucial to maintaining customer attention and brand impact today.

Here are two powerful ways you can begin creating visual stories that reduce complexity and drive memorability. Also included are two key points for making your visual storytelling more compelling. One way of describing the advantage is to note that visual processing 10 million bits per second.

Auditory processing rates are 125,000 bits per second while verbal processing occurs at 300 words per minute.

Winning In a Mobile First Environment: Create Visual Stories | MENG Blend:

Google’s Mobile Payments Strategy Ready?

Google apparently is ready to articulate its mobile-payments strategy, and is reportedly going to unveil a service with Sprint and several major retailers, including Macy’s and Subway, on May 26, 2011.

The service will let consumers with Google’s Android operating system and near field communications (the Nexus S) pay for goods and redeem coupons with their handsets.

Sprint has said it was working with a variety of handset makers and technology companies on NFC payment systems. Google has said it plans to introduce the service in five cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Google does not appear to be banking on transaction fees as part of its revenue model. Instead, Google is looking at ways the service could boost its digital advertising business. The planned payment system would allow Google to offer retailers more data about their customers and help the retailers target ads and discount offers to mobile-device users near their stores.

Significantly, that makes Google a partner to the card issuers, Visa and MasterCard, not a competitor.


Google earlier had been said to be using hardware and software from companies including VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech as part of the service.

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