Month: November 2006

17 stories have been included in this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists, this time hosted by C. Enrique Ortiz at his Mobility Weblog. So for the best people around the world have written about the mobile ecosystem in the past week head over and enjoy!

This month’s Mobile Monday in Paris was quite a fruitful evening again. Ignacio Mondine of Daem Interactive gave an impressive presentation of a new technology they have developed which uses image recognition for mobile advertising and mobile commerce.

Instead of scanning a 2D bar code with a specialized application which leads to a web page via the phone’s browser, their technology is based on image recognition. Getting to the content behind an image is simple: The user takes a picture and sends it via MMS to the an image recognition server. The server then returns an SMS with a URL which can be accessed from the phone’s browser.

The main advantage of this approach compared to 2D bar codes is that no special software has to be installed on the phone. In addition, it looks like there are a number of different companies out there working on 2D bar code solutions and their bar codes are not compatible with each other. If several of them get themselves established, several bar code readers on the phone might be required. I can hardly imagine that this will be accepted by users. So from this point of view, image recognition might even be the natural next step after 2D bar code solutions and the market (except for Japan I guess) might even jump completely over 2D bar codes right into image recognition solutions which do not require extra software on the handset.

A disadvantage of the image recognition approach might be that images can not be recognized because of the image quality. Especially in low light situations, pictures tend to be grainy and blurry. When taking pictures from magazine ads, users also tend to position the phone too close to the image and the picture will not be sharp. A possible solution to this is also already in sight. Instead of taking a picture which is then sent via MMS, Deam Interactive is already taking the next step and are developing a system which uses 3G video calls connected to an image recognition server in the network. Lots of possibilities here, including augmented reality applications about which I have written before.

While still being a small startup company, they’ve already managed to get a couple of operators behind them for some trials. This is crucial for any kind of mobile marketing as the user can only receive content free of charge if the operator bills the advertiser and also for mobile commerce as micro payment is also very difficult to do without the mobile operator in the middle.

A very early morning post today but this one is close to my heart. While sitting in the metro on the way to the airport I read an interview on my Nokia N70 with Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media on her quest to lower wireless carrier roaming charges in the EU. In the interview, the reporter of "Der Spiegel" asked her if the EU is also looking on roaming charges for data as the current tariffs are in no relation to the prices asked for mobile Internet access in the national markets. To my delight, Mrs. Reding said that she is quite aware of this and said that also more and more voices are heard from members of the European parliament who demand that this is looked into as well. At the moment, she said, the matter is with the EU council of ministers and the EU parliament who have to decide if the current investigation on voice roaming is extended to mobile Internet access while roaming as well. A good step in the right direction for international travelers like me who see their prices for wireless Internet access skyrocket as soon as they leave their home country.

Phil over at S60 has written a post on recent software updates of some S60 3rd edition mobiles which reduces the volume of the device and how this affects the listening experience in noisy environments. I don’t have one of those devices but have had the same problems, especially in the metro or the airplane, where even a volume level that splits my ears when I am at home is not enough to overcome the noise level. However, there’s a solution:

Frustrated with the situation, I bought a set of noise cancellation headsets from Philips. Here’s a link to a similar pair. Mine cost about 40 euros. I was skeptical at first but after trying them out in the airplane and out on the street I am absolutely fascinated. When the noise cancellation is switched on, I can listen to podcasts on the airplane and on the street with the same volume level as at home. Incredible! In addition, the overall volume level required now is much lower which means it’s better for my ears anyway.

The headset has a standard 3.5" jack so I had to buy an adapter to make it compatible with my Nokia N70 phone. The adapter was 2 euros on eBay so it’s not really an investment.

When returning to Paris on Sunday I immediately noticed the new Nokia advertisements plastered all over the city for the Nokia 6280 (3G, Series 40 phone). At the bottom of the ads, a 2D barcode is shown (see picture) and instructions on what to do with it.

What to do with it:

The order of the instructions on the ad are a somewhat confusing but I figured out that the first step is to download the 2D bar code reader application by sending the word "tag" via SMS to a French number. A couple of seconds later, an SMS is returned which contains a link to a WAP page.When the link is selected my N70 automatically opens up the browser and accesses the page. There, the phone manufacturer and phone model can be selected from a list. This step is somewhat unnecessary as it is possible to automatically detect the phone model detection via the HTTP user agent string. Anyway, the list is impressive and quite a number of manufacturers and models are supported. The 2D bar code reader application is a Java applet called "MobileTag" by Abaxia. Not sure if it’s a coincidence, but the company seems to be headquartered in Paris as well. After downloading the bar code reader application while walking in the streets I stopped at the next add and scanned the 2D bar code with the phone’s camera. Scanning the bar code is very quick, just one or two seconds and the bar code is recognized. The bar code on the add then leads to a web page which automatically pushes a video file to the phone which triggered my N70 to automatically launch the built in video application. The application also allows to save the received file in the gallery so you can watch it again later and push it to other people’s phones via Bluetooth.

No Operators Involved

I wonder how many people are going to download the application (120kb) and the video file (about 500k) as this campaign is done by Nokia on its own and is not supported by French network operators. This means that most people have no idea how much their curiosity will cost them, especially if they don’t have a reasonable GPRS subscription. After all, what the user gets in the end is a 20 second video file which continues the advertisement story of the ad banner. Why should anyone want to pay for this?

Mobile 2D Bar Code Advertising needs the Operator

In the end I think this campaign is nice as a technology demonstration but will not reach a mass audience this way. For such a form of advertising to be interesting for the end user, it must be free to them. The advertiser needs to agree with the local wireless operators on a fee they pay for each download of the content behind a bar code. The operator in turn then allows the content (music file, video, java game, etc.) to be downloaded for free. After all, the advertiser also pays money for the banners to be distributed all over the city so it should be normal for them to do this step as well.

2D bar codes could as well be used to sell music, games and other things to users. Again, this requires operators in the boat as the price must be per download and not depend on the data volume. So for this application, there is no way around them.

After having been on Djerba for a couple of days, I couldn’t help myself but notice how locals use the countries two GSM networks. Yesterday evening, I strolled down a busy road and noted once more the influence France had and has on the country. One sign of this is not only the use of French as academic language but also the fact that about eight out of ten cars are French made. Many people working in one of the many hotels here seem to have their own cars to come and go to work. Others are taking the bus and one can observe that writing SMS messages is just about as common place here as in any European country. Many locals also use their phone to make and receive phone calls. So it seems that the price per minute for a phone call and the price for an SMS is in a reasonable balance with their income. Working in the tourist industry, however, probably means making more money than with a traditional job. Therefore its likely that these observations can not be applied to the country as a whole.

Mobile phones strangely enough are mostly from Nokia and not from French companies. In general, people use simple and somewhat older models without built in camera.

For once I didn’t have my camera phone ready when I saw a man riding on a camel and using his mobile phone. It would have made a good picture for this blog entry.