Author: Ken McGuire

Keith is putting some big wheels in motion in terms of Bar Camp Ireland South East and has launched a WordPress blog for the event. There’s no set date yet but its likely it will be held in Carriganore (WIT’s new campus, Waterford) and it should be early next year. Keep your eyes posted to the blog.

Nice and convenient that John lives in Waterford (helping to put the ‘bar’ into Bar Camp), might just have to put my name down for this given the feedback from Cork. Not necessarily as a speaker, but I certainly wouldn’t mind getting in to a few talks.

Saturday sounds good to me as well…. Nice and relaxed.

Symbian are celebrating – they’ve just revealed that there has been 100 million smartphones shipped worldwide and to mark the occasion, Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford appears on an official webcast (available in Real and WM formats). Check it out here.

Each of the smartphones in question are powered by the Symbian OS.

The Nokia N97 – a fantasy or actually a reality? Rumour has it that this is the N97, packing a serious punch with a 5mp camera and 20GB internal memory! 20gb!

More here via MobileWhack.

Mobile search startup, Medio Systems, has just announced it is to benefit from US$30m in investment funding according to SeattlePI.com. Mobile search development has been a massive part of mobile news of late, Google launching their own mobile service while in the US mobile operator Sprint have announced a partnership with Microsoft to launch a new mobile search facility.

On Medio itself –

Created specifically for mobile, the Medio Search System combines an intuitive, effortless user interface with powerful recommendation and personalization technologies, for a search experience that keeps subscribers coming back.

On the web, a search normally results in pages of links, leaving users to browse for information. On a mobile device, the time and effort required for a traditional search prevents subscribers from finding and purchasing the mobile content they want. Medio’s technologies provide a click-saving experience, returning answers instead of links. And Medio’s proprietary ranking algorithms balance the subscriber’s preferences, device, location and other information to present personalized, relevant results.

• Where to Submit Your Podcasts
  Best Podcast Search Engines and Directories
  (tags: podcast podcasting directories)

Came across the above link yesterday, pretty good going. Was looking for directories to submit the Sound System Podcast too – iTunes was having none of it trying to submit the Apple way. If you’re podcasting, its worth a look.

Thats how it looks for 2010/2011, according to DNA Evolutions. How true the statement is remains to be seen. I can still point you in the direction of people holding on to their Nokia 3210s and 3310s because they’re solid phone and do whats needed of them (the odd call and SMS).

But does it mean that mobile production as we know it now will cease? More and more we’re seeing smartphones come in to the market, bluetooth and camera (still or video) options are now a standard, with WiFi likely the next minimum standard in mobiles. We’re already in a 3G age of streaming media content, video conference calls via mobile and highspeed internet access. So whats next?

Mobile computers – according to University of Salford Professor Nigel Linge.

Instead of mobile phones, in five years we will all carry mobile computers on us. So, for example, the communicator on our collar might send signals to the keyboard on our sleeve. Already we are seeing simple everyday objects with communications systems called ‘tags’ built into them.

Of course it comes as no surprise. When I was finishing my college degree a few years ago we were already looking into options for wearable computing – from RFID chips embedded in clothes to electronic tags embedded in the skin. However, I can’t say that they’ll be completely extinct. Every generation there is a technology that gets left behind – those who refuse to install cable TV as they’re happy with terrestrial, those who refuse to rent DVDs because they’ve already got a video player. Extinct in its current form – maybe, but extinct as a whole I seriously doubt.

Meteor, now owned by Eircom, have announced that from March of next year they’ll be joining Vodafone in a roaming deal to provide extended mobile coverage for those in the west of Ireland, the move mainly of benefit to customers in parts of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal, according to RTE.

Meteor’s existing mobile network now covers about 93% of the population – still lagging behind O2 and Vodafone and have been using O2’s network to provide extended coverage to date.

Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, has spoken out aobut internet advertising and how its potential growth has been vastly underestimated – given that people never factored in video, social websites and mobile internet content.

Speaking at the Internet Advertising Bureau Engage conference, Semel said

Video as you all know will become a major factor on the Internet. It will be everpresent throughout the Internet and it will find its proper way to advertise. So whether it’s mobile or whether it’s video or whether it’s more and more community (social networking sites), these factors have not gone into those numbers, so we think the actual growth potential of advertising online is really being understated.

This is an interesting point as I feel, and YouTube feel, that mobile advertising from online media sources is seriously underdeveloped. Full integration and operation of the likes of Bebo, YouTube and MySpace into the mobile web, particularly in handset form, offer huge gateways for advertisers, particular amongst younger age groups.

God knows theres enough people sending around funny videos by mobile phone – why not a funny advert?

Looks like a good year for Meteor and it looks like their massive advertising campaign of the last few months including a huge spate of radio and TV spots has paid off as they’ve managed to increase their customer numbers by 50% jumping from around 500,000 in November 2005 to around 750,000 in November 2006.

Number porting (bringing your mobile number to a different network) has been the key to their success they reckon – particularly with contract customers (who now make up 10% of their customer base) and “high use pre-pay customers” (via RTE).

Not that you’ve had your second-hand mobile handset stolen, but now if you go to buy a previously owned handset you’ll be able to check whether it has been stolen or not – at least in India.

The Delhi Police are making public the information that usually mobile phone operators only have and are to publish an online database of IMEI/ISMI numbers which you can search directly from their site to check whether the handset has been stolen.

In a lot of cases, mobile theft goes unreported to police, even at an Irish level. Since mobiles are reasonably affordable with some handsets falling under E70, people often opt to simply buy a new mobile, particularly pre-paid customers. But if you were to report the theft, the mobile operator could flag the phone as stolen and bar it from being used on its network by knowing the phone’s IMEI number (try pressing *#06# on your phone’s keypad to see yours).

This kind of setup I would certainly like to see in Ireland as I myself have been victim of mobile theft.

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