Gmail for your mobile

Google has created a special version of its Gmail e-mail service that provides mobile phone users with quick access to their e-mail. Check it out at http://m.gmail.com.

The service allows you to view attached files such as images or download documents if supported by your handset.

What's the problem with depth of catalogue?

It's like trying to sell ice creams to eskimos - do you go for depth and variety of your content catalogue or stick to the sickly seasonal or monthly favourites ... you can be damned either way.

What I'm thinking is that most mobile content sales via WAP are dominated by the operator portals, but you invariably find that top downloads page will have the Star Wars March, Axel F and something from Guns n Roses (AC/DC). It's a nightmare ... we focus on getting customers access to the best stuff, we focus on improving search and still all they want is Wham - Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart.

I think there is a way around this, the back catalogue is needed to give depth and presence (oh and to make us feel proud that we can select from a possible catalogue of 500,000+ FTMD or Realtones, Videotones, etc), but do we need the Top Download chart to be only 1 click away? Keep the top charts list (like all good record stores), keep the new entries list, but please kill the downloads chart.

But if you want to keep that top download page then you don’t need a deep catalogue, stop and focus on What’s Hot and What’s New. Let other content providers bring their catalogue to market (via your portal or offnet) … what’s it going to be ???

All Operators are looking at their off portal strategy - H3GUK tries to bring focus on one with their Mobile Sites and other operators are looking at how to enable micro payments (other than reverse / premium SMS).

Think about it … kill the download chart or keep the content?

RSS to SMS for your mobile

Think about this carefully - any RSS stream sent free to your mobile by SMS ... you've got your blackberry, you've got your live news alerts and weekly MMS updates - but who tells you about that other stuff you're really really interested in? Talk about giving away the baby and the bath water - but maybe this is just a crazy idea with some sense behind it.

As part of an update to its alerts feature, Yahoo added a feature that allows users to get RSS results via SMS. The free service will send a message to your phone with every new item posted to an RSS feed.

The feature works with any RSS feed, but is likely most useful for feeds used to connect small groups of people (group projects, clubs, etc) where volume will be lower than on a news site. Since normal text messaging fees apply (though there is no fee from Yahoo) make sure to use this feature wisely.

Source Russell Beattie

Mobile Blogging Reduces Churn

MocoNews.net: mobile content news: "Mobile Blogging generates an immediate reduction of up to 70% in the propensity of a user to churn."

Results of a 12-month survey of two million subscribers on four operators which were using NewBay's Software FoneBlog mobile blogging and multimedia album solution have been released.

According to NewBay the result comes from increased loyalty - based on personal content on the moblog. What is obvious here is if you have personal content and you can't move/download it simply, then there is a barrier to change.

Services such as flickr and myspaces will in the long term prove more popular due to the many and varied options (not just mobloging) for managing personal content.

US findings from Content Survey

interesting global research on mobile phones from a US university.

57% of all users say they're willing to spend no more than $5 per month on mobile data services -- including text messages, and the most important factor in choosing a mobile service is cheap voice calls. That's backed up by another piece of research this week that says it's cheap voice plans, not fast data driving 3G.

More than a third of users worldwide have cameraphones, up from 21% last year, and 59% have color screens, up from 44%. The cameraphone figures aren't surprising -- there was a research report out last Friday that said two-thirds of all phones sold this year would have cameras.