Garmin’s Tele Atlas bid following Nokia’s Navteq offer has implications for IP mapping in these emerging mobile applications: 1)Personalization and customization, 2)Social networking, 3)Interactive sharing.
Douglas Adams famously envisaged a fish that you stuck in your ear, which then miraculously allowed you to understand all languages simultaneously, including truly awful Vogon poetry. Cool Gorilla’s new mobile app doesn’t go quite so far, but it is a sign of things to come.
Talking Phrase Books are a downloadable application for mobiles and provide spoken French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Greek - and I’m sure a Vogon version is in the planning stage. Once you’ve downloaded, installed and opened the app, you simply click on the phrase you want to say and the phone says it out loud. In my case (Nokia E61) it uses the loudspeaker setting, so you don’t even have to try to repeat it yourself.
A deal with LastMinute.com means that it’s offered as a free download, so visit www.coolgorilla.com from your PC or Mac (for sideloading) or www.mobilephrasebooks.com directly from your mobile.
One day, I’m sure that the phone will be able to provide the full Babel Fish service, so give this a try and let your imagination do the rest.
Local.com, the Irvine, CA-based local search firm, has got a patent approval for a “method of responding to enhanced directory assistance inquiries using various protocols including voice-enabled and SMS systems. The patent also covers an associated referral advertising model, which is designed to monetize those local searches.” This follows another related patent the company announced last week, for location-based search.
The new patent seems to be in direct conflict with an existing patent, one from Jingle Networks, says ClickZ. This means litigation and consolidation in the industry.
Greg Sterling: There’s the looming Geomas local patent that has both online and mobile implications. There’s also a lesser-known local search patent that Microsoft owns through its acquisition of Vicinity Corp. in 2002.
I found a very thrilling map application for Nokia devices: smart2go. smart2go is a compact programme for your mobile that allows you to load maps from around the world. Discover interesting places with ease, highlight them and get the route. It is a service combining GPRS+ bearers for content download and GPS for localisation. A hybrid between navigation and a travel guide with local based information.
3Jam and Pinger both launched multiperson SMS services at DEMO . Probably first popularized by Dodgeball, multiperson SMS is a feature that quite a few people are coming out with all at once lately. The following are some short descriptions of eight companies offering multiperson SMS and a table displaying which services offer particular features.
The List
Jyngle is a web based service that has voice support, just launched and got a review over on CrunchGear today.
3Jam is funded, relatively straight forward and launched here at DEMO.
Pinger lets users quickly respond to messages by voice and received $3 million from Kleiner Perkins in 2005.
Swarmteams does a whole lot of things, though we weren’t able to get it to work well in testing for our original review. You might have better luck, and if so then this Irish service could well be worth using.
Loopt is a location aware service funded by YCombinator and Sequoia.
DodgeBall is old school and was acquired by Google in 2005.
Twitter is for groups of friends who want varying levels of instant, automatic updates on each others’ activities.
Moblabber is a mobile social network that users can receive topical messages from automatically.
There are undoubtedly more companies that offer multi-person SMS, or at least there will be by the time I click publish on this post - but I hope that comparing these seven company’s by feature set will help flesh out a vision of the landscape and where we stand today.
The social networking site MySpace, hugely successful among teenagers and twenty-somethings, is about to become more ubiquitous with the launch of a cellular service that will let users read and post to the site for free.
The service and two accompanying phones will be launched in a few months by Helio LLC, a joint venture of Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. and South Korean carrier SK Telecom Co.
On MySpace, users keep personal pages with journals, communicate with friends and play games. It's a formula that has attracted more than 54 million users and the attention of media conglomerate News Corp., which bought the site last year for $580 million.
Continue reading "MySpace users to get their own cell phones" »
DodgeBall - a True Underdog Story is a fast-paced game of skill. Based on the movie of the same name, players need to dodge, duck, dip and dive to avoid the oncoming balls, whilst sending balls hurtling back to their opponents. There are three different play modes (practice, challenge and tournament), and five levels of increasing difficulty.
Commenting, Kevin Roberts, CEO, Superscape Group plc said: "I am delighted that this game has now been selected by Cingular. It joins a number of our other 2D and 3D titles, which are already available for download from the Cingular network, including Ducati 3D Extreme, Adventures of Zaak 2D and Australian Safari (licensed by Global Wireless Entertainment, Inc)."