Qwikker and Virgin Bites are up for a 3GSM Award

Qwikker, the mobile content distribution company, is up for an award for its work with Virgin Mobile (who incidentally 'don't believe in mobile marketing' or so it was claimed at a Virgin meeting I attended a few months ago!). The award they're up for is 'Best Mobile Advertising' category.

To keep Virgin Mobile customers amused, Qwikker created 'boredom busters' for Virgin BITES service. Also part of the promotion, Virgin Mobile wanted to reach beyond their own subscriber base and also promote acts at the V-Festivals by distributing mobile content via bluetooth.

Qwikker’s service enabled consumers to download the non-intrusive [sic], branded Virgin Bites mobile channel, via Bluetooth, and browse and select music-related mobile content, which was relevant to them. Critically the Virgin content channel remained on the consumers’ handset, which is updateable over-the-air (OTA) – further extending the brand relationship.

As the service is for Virgin customers only, I can't try it out to tell you exactly how it works. Nor was I at V-Festival to try it. And I'm wondering how many people actually played around with the system when they could be seeing live bands or drinking instead? Now *that* would be interesting to know more about rather than the concept per se.

If the O2 wireless festival is anything to go by, or FourDocs bluetooth poster campaign or the Casino Royale bluetooth cinema campaigns are anything to go by, there could be a high failure rate - none of the afore-mentioned campaigns worked on my phone :( - none of them were run by Qwikker AFAIK.

Having looked at the Qwikker website, I'm guessing it's a java based download which updates over the air in a similar way to mobizines.If you're in a Qwikker location (pub or London Underground station) then you may get a bluetooth message asking you if you want to receive the content and at that point you 'opt-in'. The trouble is, in sending the message to your phone at all, you haven't opted-in. Having spoken to some people in this area, because that initial message *isn't* stored on the phone, it's ok to send it and isn't covered by the European Data Privacy rules. I have *no* idea why that is acceptable rather than a text message per se. It's just as intrusive, it's just as time-consuming to deal with (or not) as a text message and it's still an electronic message. And I am yet to see a reliable bluetooth delivery system. Hmm, I'm not convinced. Come on Qwikker - convince me that bluetooth is ready for the masses and that my personal experiences are not the norm. I want to be convinced...

I wish Qwikker the best of luck with the award and with their service, but I don't see why it should be one rule for bluespam and another for text spam (equally odious IMHO). The direct mail analogy is that Junk Mail is equivalent to a text message but a Bluetooth notification is the equivalent of a door-drop - the difference being that you don't have the address (mobile number) of the recipient. You still end up with junk on your doormat (phone). Hmm, the vagaries of European law!

The GSM Association’s Global Mobile awards will be presented at 3GSM 2007, Barcelona on the 13^th February. More information is available at GSM Awards.

Infospace being sued by EMI for $100m

The music division of EMI is suing Infospace for unpaid royalties on ringtones and selling ringtones on properties they don't have the rights for such as John Lennon's Imagine. EMI claims that Infospace has been obstructive when they asked to audit the books. In return, Infospace claims that EMI's allegations have no substance. This could well be a lawsuit to watch.
via MobileIndustry.biz

some links to keep you going 22 Jan 07

The Carnival of the Mobilists No 58 is up at TomSoft this week and includes the great review and discussion about the iphone from Michael Mace. Well worth a read.

A mock up of what a Tag Heuer phone might look like.

T-Mobile responds to my criticisms of Club Zone at Christmas over at SMS Text News. Good to see that the powers that be really do read blogs.

I'm speaking at the Changing Media Summit held by the Guardian on 22nd March 2007 - get your tickets now! I'm on the panel in the afternoon talking about "From mashups to money: leveraging location based technologies for brand advantage". More on this later.

On this day in history...

Well, it's my birthday today so after this post, there will be no more blogging today! However, you might be interested to know that today is also Winnie the Pooh Day (to commemorate AA Milne's birthday), that it's Cary Grant's, Danny Kaye's, Philp Starck's and Jane Horrocks' birthday too, so it seems I'm in good company. Also on this day, The Boston Strangler was jailed and the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal broke (via wikipedia and the bbc).

It seems January is also a popular month for mobilistic birthdays - Russell's was a week or so ago, Rudy's was yesterday and it's Admob's 1st birthday today and they're about to publish their billionth ad as well as being featured on the front page (pdf) of the Wall Street Journal. Way to go!

Right, I'm off to go and have some fun!

Five things tag..

Thank you to Tomi and Tom and Sheila for tagging me. I've already posted this on the Oxford Forum but am reposting here.

1. I have two nicknames - the first is technokitten, given to me by a friend who thought I was the least unlikely of our gang to get their heads round using computers back in 1994 - he thought I'd become a right technokitten - it stuck, and I now use it as a moniker for this blog and my digital life generally; the second is raindrop which is my brownie name as I run a brownie pack in Tooting on Wednesday nights;

2. I made a record in 1982 (as part of my school choir) to celebrate Pope John Paul II's visit to the UK. We got to sing it on telly and also, more importantly, on the podium, with the Pope when he said Mass at Coventry Airport.

3. I have something in common with Madonna - we were both directed by Laurence Boswell - me back in the 80s at the Swan Theatre in Worcester where I played The Queen of Spain in Fuenteovejuna (which also starred Rufus Norris who's now a hotshot West End Director most recently directing Cabaret), and Madonna in Up for Grabs at the Albemarle.

4. I enjoy needlework and dressmaking when I'm not painting the town red, listening to music, going to the Electric Picnic in Ireland, mooching on the internet (also known as shopping on ebay), buying shoes or watching TV!

5. Some of you may already know that I run Swedish Beers with Steve Flaherty but you may not know that I'm also a founder member of the Women in Mobile Data Association (if you're interested in knowing more about that, contact me as the site's very out of date). And I've been messing around with mobile marketing and media since 2000 when I worked with Russell Buckley at ZagMe, but that's a whole other story.

6. In case you already knew number 5, here's an extra one.. I already have my ticket booked for the Electric Picnic in September :) Thank you Sarah!

As for tagging other people

Rudy de Waele, Ewan MacLeod, Russell Buckley, Jan Kuczynski and Deirdre Molloy

Honey I'm home

Apologies for the blogging silence, technology woes have got the better of me pre and post the holiday period and I'm only just recovering with the arrival of my shiny new laptop. Of course I'm now going through the hell of setting everything up again and transferring data to the new system. But I'm nearly there now so I'll be blogging again now.

So what's been happening in my mobile world...

I celebrated Christmas with Women in Mobile Data (feels like a lifetime ago) at our annual Christmas Lunch at the Sloane Club.

I'm currently planning my trip to Barcelona (what a wonderful city) to 3GSM for next month and wondering if it's worth investing in a roam4free sim card but it's not clear what the data charges may or may not be or whether it supports data. Also has anyone got any cheap/reduced expo passes by any chance for 3GSM? I'm in need of a couple. And anyone want to meet up whilst we're out there - it would be great to meet some fellow mobilists who I wouldn't normally get chance to meet in Blighty? We'll be running a Swedish Beers event on Tuesday 13th February too - watch out for more details coming soon but do put the date in your diary.

I have done and am about to do quite a few training sessions for the IDM, e-consultancy and the University of Westminster.

I've been on the receiving end of more sms marketing efforts from Lakeside - seems they haven't learnt any lessons and are still doing the same old same old.

I've signed up to the Club t-zones from T-mobile as run by Buongiorno and it's a bit rubbish. A joined up out of curiosity (it's free) in January and they were still touting Christmas ringtones. Either they're very early for Christmas 2007 or no-one updated the club for new content after Christmas. A missed opportunity surely to reach those new handset owners and those trying wap and downloading content for the first time.

I've worked out how to use MSN on my phone. It's clunky, it's slow, but good for emergencies! Ditto gmail. Although gmail is quite a bit faster than MSN. It's very dull typing using the phone's keypad though after a few minutes.

I have yet to work out how the 'top scorer's' system works on Mobizines fab free daily Sudoku. I haven't been appearing as often as I think I should have...

Someone has a crush on me it seems. Feeling very flattered!

And I'm underwhelmed (as others are too) by the hype around Apple's iphone.