by Chilldor
Everybody expects nowadays that information is available everywhere, be it office, car, beach or anywhere.
Mobile internet (WAP) in mobile phones has been there for years, but recently there has been noticeable trend of using it more and more. Suddenly we can find lot of webpages which contain really interesting content and are also possible to open in few seconds.
There is a interesting article about it in TechCrunch : Follow the mobile user by Vic Gundotra (Google).
Enjoy!

by Chilldor

Recently we had an article about QR codes in the blog.
In case you want to try some out by yourself go first and download QR reader for your mobile phone.
Try those two links below:

BeeTagg

Kaywa

Now that reader is working try to read this QR code:

by Chilldor

If you have recently travelled or looked at magazines you have probably seen a strange black and with square shape barcode boxes. Actually you don’t have to go far – recent Mobile Monday in Toronto issued tickets that contained QR code – also known as “Quick Response” code. It is used to code and decode different information: business card, message, URL. Up to 7089 numbers or 4296 alphanumeric characters can be contained in one QR code.

Created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994 QR codes have become recently very popular in Japan and in the rest of the World.

All one has to do to read the code is to have special program to decode 2D barcode and you will instantly have in your fingertips information hidden in its pattern. Next time you see it – check again it might be provided by Chilldor!

by Marino Bresciani

This post is just to point up a unusual trend that is becoming more and more popular in the states, especially those area that are mostly hit by the winter season. In this period of the year, many local radios’ websites provide updates on school closings via SMS. The phenomenum can be even more clear by having a look at this week’s top 50 in Google Trends. For example, in the picture below, eleven out of the top 37, are radio call numbers and most of them are in areas with snowfall.

The top radio affiliate, WHUD, is 100.7 F.M. in Westchester New York, and offers text message alerts about school and government center closings after heavy snowfall. Although similar services are already up since years, snow alerts appeal to one of the most highly sought markets-the coveted age demographic of pre-teens and teens. Interesting

by Marino Bresciani

For those of you who are interested in running SMS services in China, then you will be quite interested in getting to know that telephone users in China are approaching the 1 billion mark and Internet users are nearing 300 million, as reported by the People’s Daily Online.

By the end of October, total number of telephone users in China reached 979 million, including 627 million mobile telephone subscribers and 352 million fixed-line users. The mobile phone business is continuing to replace the fixed-line business.
At present, data services including text messaging and broadband Internet access account for 33.4% of total revenue in the telecommunications industry.

by Marino Bresciani

p>Sometimes simple ideas can lead to rather interesting business. And this presentation below describes the possibility of developing location based games which can be played through SMS.

Enjoy!

by Branimir Parashkevov

Hi everyone. As today is the 24th of December it’s a perfect time for some Christmas stories from the business world. I will begin with many people’s favourite McDonald’s. I have already told you a story about McDonald’s SoCal and you can read it again if you want in order to compare the strategies.

The name of the campaign that I am telling you about is “Merry Xmas in The Restaurant”. It was created by the well known 12Snap company and with the idea to create a new mass market sweepstake mechanism for McDonald’s Italy, where the clients can win while they are still in the restaurant.

The Motto of the campaign was “McDonald’s makes everyone a winner – Just send a SMS to Santa & get your gift within seconds.” On the cups in the restaurant there were printed numbers. Each customer that have sent SMS with those numbers receives a prize that can vary from mobile content as a phone call with Santa, a picture with him, a post card, to physical prizes as prepaid credit cards with 20 000 Euro, 13 000 free airtime prizes and 150 mobile phones.

According to MMAGlobal the campaign has reached the stunning 25% response rate and more than 1.5m customers in 5 weeks. With this numbers, it is considered to be the best mobile campaign of McDonald’s ever.

by Branimir Parashkevov

Hi everyone! Excuse me for being two days late with this post. Here I am with another case study on Mobile Marketing. Today I am going to introduce you the case of SoCal (South California) McDonald’s that were reaching their customers through text messages.

In the second quarter of 2005 SoCal McDonald’s launched a new one-month-long promotion targeted mainly in young adults. They allowed their customers to send a text message “McFlurry” to 73260 and automatically receive a redeemable coupon for a free “McFlurry” dessert. Also, the user was able to get the coupon from http://www.mobilestr33t.com/ and present it again in one of the participating stores from the chain.

The idea was invented by the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (more than 600 franchised and company-owned stores in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties) and Gamut Industries LLC (a San Francisco mobile marketing company).

“This promotion is yet another example of how McDonald’s is reaching out to the youth market in a way that is meaningful to them,” said Clayton Paschen, III, president of the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (MOASC), in a statement.

As the promotion targeted people in the age-range of 14 to 26, David Moranville, managing director, Gamut Industries, said that the goal was to “create a compelling way to connect with the younger demographic and make McDonald’s a relevant brand in [consumers] lives”. “McDonald’s recognizes that this is a unique target audience. The old tried and true method to communicate with them just doesn’t work anymore.”

The promotion phase of the service was connected with wild posting (sticking posters on different places) in high school, skate parks, and retail areas as well as billboards and buses presenting the text part of the campaign.

“The mobile coupon, as well as the free wallpaper and ringtones, pose great incentives for consumers”, Moranville said. “You get immediate gratification,” he said. “There’s no mail. You just click.”

One more goody from this promotion was that if you download your coupon from http://www.mobilestr33t.com/ you’re allowed to download free wallpapers of famous singers and bands as DJ Nelson, Green Day, Linkin Park and many others.

This case seems similar to the one of Dunkin Donuts, but you can see here one difference – it’s the targeting options and practices. This shows us that mobile services in combination with web-content are a sure way for winning customer’s interest in our services, as soon as we prepare well and have the ideas. Still, every target group is possible and the promotion practices are unlimited!

by Chilldor
2 open-source mobile-phone platforms, which may have a great future are OpenMoko and Symbian foundation. Both of those are currently not as famous as Android but this will probably change in near future.

Symbian foundation is lately announce mobile phone platform. It is based on Nokia S60, and targeted to give user or developer more options and control over the system. This platform is planned to be released with new devices in 2010. It is a general platform, all major mobile phone companies ( Nokia, SE, Motorola ) can use it in their mobile phones. For developers it means more easier work, since there is no need for separate API-s anymore, and for end user it means no more compatibility issues any more. When all devices are based on same platform, you can run same programs on them, and you don´t have to worry about if this program is going to work on your mobile device or not. When released, SymbianFoundation OS is “closed” but it becomes Open-source after 2 years from release date. But it is a still innovative idea in that field.

Second platform – OpenMoko, is a bit older and with longer history.

OpenMoko is a open-source platform with its own hardware. First device was released in 2007 and it was “developer only” device, So you had to have some programming skills to play with it. Next hardware platform ( GTA2 ) was released in 2008 summer, and it is available to general public, end users. Programming skills are not needed anymore to use that phone, but general knowledge of Linux might come handy if you want to “hack” or customize that device as you like. So what makes that device so special ? It is not just an hardware platform made from scratch, but it is almost entirely open-source and Linux compatible. OpenMoko operating system is based on real Linux, not stripped down kernel, you can easily port any Linux application for it, as long as it can run on low hardware specs. Also you can install your own favorite Linux distribution for it, or make one yourself, if you have enough experience with Linux. OpenMoko has a wide community, people all over the world share what they know about it, how to get the most out of your device, how to install some new programs and so on..

You can get more information about that project from OpenMoko Wiki page

Although OpenMoko has still some HW issues since it is quite new hardware platform, and Symbian Foundation is not public until 2010, these 2 things should definitely something worth being watched for.

Neo Freerunner booting linux

by Marino Bresciani

Deploy localized SMS services is a challenge that hasn’t found a clear winner. Anyhow, from the States there is a SMS that aims to consider the location of the final users. This means that your text message will only be received once the recipient reaches a certain location such as school or restaurant.

It’s simple yet amazing service which you can use to remind of yourself or others once they are in certain locations. First you need to sign up at JotYou.

The follow these simple steps:
Send messages from your computer or mobile phone. Send to one friend, many friends, or just yourself. Specify a location so your friends get a message when they arrive at school or the mall. When your friends arrive at the location you specify, JotYou alerts them by sending your text message to their cell phone, and delivering the message.

How does it work?
Actually you need a mobile phone that supports J2ME, Symbian or Windows Mobile. In this way, you need to keep the JotYou application switched on all the time, and this will permit you to track your position in the JoyYou server. Ah, you also need a GPS integrated, unless you use the Windows Mobile application; in this case, you can also use wireless positioning (similar to Google Mobile Maps’ “My Location”)

Despite the limitations of needing a continuos gprs connection, the applications deriving from localization services look promising.