by Chilldor

Computerworld recently wrote here that Vatican has launched a Facebook and iPhone applications for better communication with the tech savvy. Release also includes website Pope2you with links to these and other services.
The Pope2You portal is run by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications and is available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. It was launched ahead of the church’s World Communications Day on Sunday.
These services are part of web based offerings that included recently Vatican Youtube website complementing Vatican main website and Vatican Museum Online.
Read more about potential of new technologies here.

by Marino Bresciani

I got quite impressive reviews from AQA, a SMS service that aims to answer any possible question and that is available right now in UK and Ireland.

And as I have a UK simcard in my card collection, then I decided to give it a try It wasn’t so difficult to choose my question.

“What is the cheapest way to travel quickly from the centre of Belfast to Piccadilly Circus in London?”

And I sent it exactly at 17.30.

Eight minutes later I get this reply.

“AQA: Catch a train to Antrim and then a taxi to Belfast Airport, from where you can fly with a range of budget airlines including Flybe: 00441392268500.”

Quite impressed for how fast and detailed the answer came to my mobile phone. A bit less impressed as they ask me to take a taxi which i believe is not the cheaper way to go there. Still.. it is definitely a service that can be really exported in other countries, as long as you have the opportune wide knowledge and a good sense for replying.

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 Branimir Parashkevov

More than an year has passed since the publishing of the first SMS-novel. It was created in Finland and it was called The Last Messages.

The entire narrative consists of mobile phone text messages, describing the life of a fictitious IT-executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages. The author, Hannu Luntiala, has created around 1000 messages and replies of the main character . The author has left errors in the SMS messages, too so they look even more authentic.

“I believe that, at the end of the day, a text message may reveal much more about a person than you would initially think,” said Luntiala, who also is head of a company that keeps databases on people living in Finland.

Today we can see businesses using SMS for different purposes – marketing, notification, news, text to win campaigns and so on. In those cases usually SMS is a small part of a big project. However, there are plenty of businesses where SMS is in the middle of the business case and sometimes gives the competitive advantage. I will introduce four innovative SMS-based business cases that have been extremely successful in Nordics during the past years.

1. SMS-auction

An SMS-auction is where user’s text in a bid for an advertised item. The system can be set for “highest bid wins” or “lowest unique bid wins” mode. Either way, the user receives a reply message acknowledging the bid and advising them of its position. There are different variations on that business model, which all have their own advantages. Get a general idea of SMS-auctions.

* Bimbaso is a good sample of lowest unique bid auction

* sms2bid is an Australian version of highest bid auction

* Sendioksjon is an Estonian neat version of SMS-auction, where every SMS increases the price per 0,006 EUR and extends the auction by 2,5 minutes. Last person who sends the message gets the product.

2. SMS-loan

It is probably the most profitable SMS-based business, which has also raised some ethical issues. Many countries have already regulated their market for SMS-loans and some countries are doing it right now. Business case is simple – give out loans for small sums with big interests in a really quick and easy to use way. Before creating your own SMS-loan office, read those two stories as well: SMS-loan sharking and loanshark 2.0.

3. Browser based games

Browser based games are quite popular among youth. Believe me, there are plenty of people who want to do something besides shooting someone or playing flash games. Business case here is this – if you want to get advantage over other players, use paid services. Get cool widgets, more money, fame, train yourself etc. Many Fortumo clients have said that for micro-payments SMS is the best one. Every player has a mobile phone these days and they are using it impulsively.

4. Social Networks

Who isn’t a member of some social network nowadays. Some of them have a strong business case behind the solution; some of them don’t have a business case at all. Smaller local social networks have solved it really easily. There are 5 simple steps:

1. you have a social network where people love to spend their time

2. think what could be the extra feature for what users are willing to pay small sums

3. monetize these features with SMS

4. let people know about new opportunities

5. start earning revenue even while you are sleeping

Some things that have been monetized: sending presents, changing the background theme of your profile, getting fame, giving higher points to users, highlight your account/ad/picture etc.

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.

by Chilldor

E-Government Bulletin says in their new issue that according to the law court of Great Britain a reminder about the failure to pay the fine sent per text message works better than per letter. Usually 40 per cent of those who got a letter, paid the fine; yet 75 per cent is the result of a recent pilot of a text message reminder. It connects well with the ideas we tried to relate when talking about using text messages in different organizations.

by Marino Bresciani

Especially in this period, when in UK the youth knife crime is on the spotlight, there is a SMS service being trialled in schools in East London to prevent it. This service enables youngsters to anonymously report classmates or other youths they suspect of carrying knives to anti-crime charity Crimestoppers UK.

Posters urge youths to text details of potential offenders, such as their name, nickname, school and year.

The charity said the pilot is small-scale as it wants to determine whether misuse of the system is likely to be a problem – for instance, by kids attempting to get innocent classmates into trouble – although it stressed that to-date there have been no problems reported. It will also conduct a review of the scheme once the pilot concludes.

Text messages sent to the Crimestoppers UK number are encrypted and routed through a secure server so informants’ details remain anonymous, according to the companies.

by Martin Koppel

Today, when credit card frauds have increased significantly and even moved to social networks like Orkut, it is wise to consider extra payment forms. It all depends on the service you are running, but the overall trend shows that people are thinking seriously before they are providing credit card data. Obviously it is difficult to substitute credit cards, but it is possible to give people alternative payment forms. People who tend to be suspicious or recently read about credit card frauds would like to use something more secure or at least something that seems more secure to them.

For smaller payments I would suggest SMS-billing as an alternative. It has its own disadvantages, but studies have shown that people sense it as secure, anonymous and easy to use payment method.

Here are some points why web based company should consider SMS-billing:

• almost everybody can use it – over 95% of people in most of the developing and developed countries carry a mobile phone,
• people can use it despite the location or time,
• you are able to target young people and reach those who don’t have a credit card,
• people are using it impulsively – SMS-payment is simple and doesn’t take time,
• smaller prices drive people to consume more,
• no chargebacks – people don’t have to worry that something extra is taken from them,
• it supplements the existing revenue stream – our experience with web based companies have shown that while integrating SMS-billing as an extra option, revenues have increased,
• people sense it as more secure measure, because they don’t have to share their personal data.

by Martin Koppel

When MMS came, many people predicted that soon SMS will die out like dinosaurs. Well it is good to make conclusion after some time. At least to me it seems we can’t compare SMS and MMS like cassettes and CD’s. MMS is not going to conquer the market. Despite the fact, still a lot of people are saying that SMS is a yesterday’s technology and it doesn’t have any future. Well what could replace SMS then? I can’t see anything at the moment, but maybe in the future …

I stumbled upon an interesting survey today. Synovate has conducted a study, consisted of 1,405 online interviews using a nationally representative consumer online panel of over 1.5 million households to find out peoples’ mobile habits. The identical study was conducted also in 2005 and 2006.

It appears that teens and young adults use text messaging more than any other demographic. People ages 13-24 send and receive the most messages, even more than 50 per week. As you can see from the graph, total usage of text messages has grown significantly and it seems it still has a potential. More important is that people are using SMS more frequently than past years. It shows that behind these numbers are habits and usage intensity, not only the growth of mobile devices.

Here are also some interesting facts from the study:
* 54% of 13-34 year olds use SMS for social networking
* 44% of 13-34 year olds say they use text-messaging for flirting or dating
* 10% of 13-34 year olds said they have broken up with a boy or girl friend using text-messaging

It seems to me that at the moment there isn’t any substitution to SMS. People, especially youngsters, are using this communication channel intensively for different reasons. Maybe in the next decade we will see something that will completely substitute SMS.