Shane's Place

Renai LeMay over at Zdnet Australia has this post that Avaya has finally announced their one-X Mobile platform integration with the Apple iPhone and it will be available in November this year.

Avaya’s one-X Mobile client enables the corporate iPhone user to do the following….

• Have calls to the deskphone simultaneously ring the iPhone or up to four other devices of the user's choice, reducing the chance of missing important calls.
• Transfer calls seamlessly between the iPhone and your deskphone.
• Have calls made from a mobile device show the desk phone caller ID, for true one-number portability.
• Manage only one business number and voice mailbox.
• Access a full suite of business telephony features.
• Use an easy graphical user interface.
• Turn on/off business profile as needed.
• Use VIP Lists to allow only key callers to get through, ensuring minimal interruptions during off hours or during critical meetings.

Canned Flash demo here…..

Posted By Shane Williamson

I cannot believe the underhanded tricks that companies such as Sybase 365 and Mbill will go to make a fast buck.

I received my mobile bill last month to find over AUS$20 worth of “received” Premium SMS charges on it. I have 3 Australia (www.three.com.au)mobile account and it has Premium Numbers disabled. The Premium SMS charges were billed as “Sybase365”. I had no recollection as to what these charges were so I contacted 3.

I was initially told by 3 that they could do nothing about the charges. They then gave me a 1300 number for Sybase 365 which was only an automated IVR system and could get through to any support people.

I eventually discovered the company’s head office number 02-9258-9600 and after another IVR finally got through to a person. The Sybase 365 individual took no responsibility for the issues as he claimed that “the charges are not ours but from a partner of theirs called Mbill”. I was told by the Sybase 365 individual that they had already had complaints about them and that they probably wouldn’t call me back, so the person said he’d call them on my behalf. I heard nothing back.

After 1 week of not receiving any return calls from Sybase 365 or Mbill to my requests, I escalated the issue to Hutchison 3G Australia (“3”) who were very responsive to the issue.

I then received a call on my mobile earlier this week from an Mbill support person. This individual was very difficult to understand, but he claimed that I had entered a competition on a web site for an iPhone. I recalled the incident and remembered getting the SMSs, but I had replied STOP to all of them.

In order to prove his point the Mbill support rep sent me via email some Excel spreadsheet logs to prove it was my device and that I had subscribed. Unbelievably their logs show clearly that they sent me a discontinued notice to a STOP response from me (see line 4) and they still sent chargeable emails to my device.

It gets better. Notice how they send 3 Premium SMSs to my devices in a very short interval (lines 8,9,10), which is AUS$15 in 1 minute! So, even before I can reply STOP to the first one I’m already charged for the luxury of receiving their spam.

It gets even better. Notice how they use 2 different premium SMS numbers, so even if you respond with STOP on one, they still SMS on the other number.

Even with this evidence the Mbill support person argued through email that it was still my fault and not Mbills.

Here is an example of some of the difficult to understand emails I received from this support individual….

I don’t even think Google Translator would be able to interpret this……

Eventually with the evidence of Mbill’s log files, 3 Australia agreed to refund me the full amount.

So, I strongly urge everyone not to enter into any mobile or web based competitions by Mbill (mbill.net) as they will Premium SMS you to an early death.

The Australian mobile industry needs to deploy rules and regulations to prevent irresponsible companies such as Sybase 365 and Mbill from getting away with these scams.

Posted By Shane Williamson

Digg This!

Looks like Apple has forced the hand of RIM to rethink its mobile platform strategy. RIM has announced the details of its first ever Blackberry Developer Conference to be held in Santa Clara, California in the USA in October this year. Whist it is great to see the mobile device manufacturer take their developer program to the next level, one has to wonder if they are trying to fight a battle that they could already be losing.

Blackberry devices have been in the market for over 10 years so it is surprising that this is its first ever developer conference. Whilst many argue that they have single handedly taken mobile email technologies backwards due to the simplistic service they deliver, the 12 million plus users worldwide with Blackberry devices are a strong driver for many mobile developers to build for their devices.

With new contenders like the Apple iPhone rocking the mobile developer landscape, it's getting very crowded and difficult for mobile developers to focus on only one or two mobile development platforms. Hopefully at this conference RIM will be changing their development model for their devices and start to show mobile developers a reason to hang around and not get swept away by the new entrants into the game.

Device manufacturers like RIM need to start thinking outside the box in how 3rd party companies develop for their devices. They need to start looking at creating hybrid development platforms that integrate both the device operating system and the network together to create a seamless service for customers. This gives telcos a huge opportunity here to develop a Telco-As-A-Service model to leverage their massive investments in carrier technologies so that mobile developers can take advantage of them to enhance their products and services.

Blackberry developer conference (20-22 October 2008) - http://www.blackberrydeveloperconference.com/

Posted By Shane Williamson

Nice to see the Nokia N95 is still being remembered by its N-Series creators by receiving a new firmware update!

Included in this update.....

• Nokia Maps 2.0 built-in
• Full N-Gage client
• Nokia Search 4.0 with Google plug-in
• Share online 3.0
• Enablers for Comes With Music
• Download! application updated (v 3.1.50)
• Upgrade to Music Player
• Update for Flash Lite 3
• New baseline for VoIP (with error corrections)
• Autorotate
• Added 5th theme

I've been running the new firmware for 2 days now without any problems and it does seem to be a bit faster, but that could be due to the fact that I haven't reinstalled everything yet.

Great to finally see the display auto-rotate feature finally going native in the operating system too.

For more details click on "Update Phone Software" - Don't for get to backup first! :-)

Posted By Shane Williamson

The cameraphone today is more prolific than both standard and digital cameras added together. The cameraphone is changing the way people produce and interact with media on a global scale. Even with lower megapixel versions of these devices people are happy to use their cameraphone in place of a higher resolution stand alone camera to snap up pictures and videos of friends and family.

Adding complexity to this growing phenomenon is the way people are now sharing their personal experiences in picture and film to anyone via the plethora of web 2.0 platforms that make it easy to publish them. Even the concept of "life streaming" whereby people can Twitter, Blog, Podcast or Vodcast their daily perambulations into other people's lives is more prevalent now, all due to the pervasive cameraphone.

Telecom TV have this interesting video on how much the humble cameraphone is changing the way we use and produce digital media on a daily basis.

Posted By Shane Williamson

Just when you thought you’d missed out on getting your very own censored mobile application store because you were one of those that choose not to purchase a new shiny (ok so the new ones aren’t that shiny) iPhone, both Microsoft and Google are flocking to your proprietary mobile operating system to give you lovely gooey mobile apps.

Microsoft accidentally announced their new Windows mobile application store called “Skymarket” by advertising for someone to sell it recently. Google is also building their own mobile app store for their upcoming mobile operating system Android called “Android market”

Both of these are “finger in the dyke” plays to try and prevent the flooding departure of mobile developers that are leaping head long to the Apple iPhone like a school of krill being enveloped within a whale’s circling bubble net from the depths.

Hopefully the business models for the new application stores are more favourable for mobile developers than the Apple iPhone apps store in providing fairer revenue returns.

Posted By Shane Williamson

News is spreading around the web that later today Google will be releasing a new Internet browser called “Chrome” to battle it out against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Google’s Blog announced yesterday that they had “hit send a little bit early” in distributing a comic book depicting information about Google Chrome and why they are releasing a new open source browser. 

The comic book is now publicly available here and talks about how the web has evolved dramatically since the first web browsers appeared and that they think it is time to create a new Internet browser from scratch. Whilst the comic goes into a lot of technical detail as to why build a new Internet browser, it does reveal some of the powerful testing capabilities they have at their disposal such as utilising “chrome bots” to test millions of Internet web pages to gather information that would otherwise require a large beta group with a long period of time to complete.

Google is releasing the Windows version later today but promises that a Linux and Mac version to follow soon after.

This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

Watch this space….. http://www.google.com/chrome

Posted By Shane Williamson

Mobile News has a post that The GSM Association has commented that mobile broadband could hit 100Mbps before fixed fibre lines.

For a lot of people in Australia this is definitely no surprise due to our poor fixed broadband coverage. Today there are people who can utilise faster mobile broadband data speeds than what access they can get around fixed data.

Whilst many taut mobile broadband to be the holy grail of new generation network connectivity, the reality will see us using a hybrid of services.

Whilst mobile broadband's strengths are expansive coverage and of course mobility, the traditional telco model it enjoys today will be threatened by next generation hybrid mesh networks of the future.

Posted By Shane Williamson

Great article in The AustralianIT about how the Australian Victorian government is considering allowing citizens to submit photographic evidence of street crimes from mobile devices. Specifically they are interested in people using mobile devices to record the stupid antics of car “hoons” that use public streets as personal drag strips or performing dangerous stunts that endanger the lives of other people.

Great idea, but why isn’t this for all driving related incidents like those annoying people that change lanes with indicating or those that throw lit cigarettes from their cars or those people with hats driving slow in the fast lane!?!?!  :-)

Posted By Shane Williamson

Who says the iPhone isn’t enterprise ready!?!?! :-)

ZDNET: HSBC could order 200,000 iPhones

 Posted By Shane Williamson

26-AUG-08 UPDATE: An HSBC spokesperson has now denounced this.....

From Vimeo -http://vimeo.com/?pg=embed&sec=1166968 

Posted By Shane Williamson

AdMob’s recently released numbers on iPhone usage for mobile sites has supported the company’s drive to develop an Apple iPhone specific mobile advertising system. The great user interface on the Apple iPhone empowers the mobile advertiser to deliver a richer customer experience.

AdMob has created various ways for customers to interact with advertising on the Apple iPhone including,

• Maps - Users launch Google Maps and display store locations, services, or other business listings near that user's location.
• Video - Users view a video and share that video with friends.
• iTunes - Users open the iTunes Store and purchase music or video content from iTunes.
• Call - Users initiate a voice call, delivering targeted phone leads to your business.
• Web - Users visit your iPhone Website.
• Audio - Users listen to recorded or streaming audio content, including music, podcasts, and news.
• Canvas - Users interact with your custom content from within a screen-sized canvas on any iPhone Website or Application.

AdMob’s iPhone advertising - http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/iphone

Posted By Shane Williamson

AdMob has released their June 2008 statistics that put the Apple iPhone as the world’s 4th largest Smartphone viewing mobile sites with their ads. AdMob serves Graphical Banner and Text Link ads on mobile web pages for more than 5,000 publishers.

These AdMob statistics are impressive considering the iPhone is the only mobile from Apple versus the multiple mobiles from each of the other manufacturers. it will be interesting to see how the new iPhone changes these statistics as this report’s data is prior to the release of the new 3G iPhone.

If you are designing mobile websites, this is more ammunition for tailoring to the ever growing iPhone base.

AdMob Mobile Metrics Report - http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/metrics

Posted By Shane Williamson

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) have released a set of guidelines that "address the effective and responsible use of the mobile channel world wide." The MMA represents around 650 member companies worldwide in around forty countries and was established to grow mobile marketing and its associated technologies.

The updated Global Code of Conduct includes five categories:

• Notice – The fundamental principle of the MMA Privacy Code of Conduct, informing users of the marketers’ identity or products and services offered and the key terms and conditions that govern an interaction between the marketer and the user’s mobile device.
• Choice & Consent - Respecting the right of the user to control which mobile messages they receive by obtaining consent (opt-in) and implementing a simple termination (opt-out) process.
• Customisation & Constraint – Ensuring that collected user information is used to tailor communication to the interests of the recipient and is handled responsibly, sensitively and in compliance with applicable law. Mobile messages should be limited to those requested by the user and provide value such as product and service enhancements, contests, requested information, entertainment or discounts.
• Security – The implementation of reasonable technical, administrative and physical procedures to protect user information from unauthorized use, alteration, disclosure, distribution, or access.
• Enforcement & Accountability - The MMA expects its members to comply with the MMA Privacy Code of Conduct and has incorporated the Code into applicable MMA Guidelines, including the U.S. Consumer Best Practice (“CBP”) Guidelines. Until the Code can be enforced effectively by a third party enforcement organization, Mobile Marketers are expected to use evaluations of their practices to certify compliance with the Code.

The 4 page PDF can be downloaded from their site here

MMA's press release

Posted By Shane Williamson