In this session and some further sessions, I am trying to evaluate some of the content companies already making their mark in the Wireless Sector. The idea is to look into both successfull and unsuccessful wireless content companies - which can act as case study for evaluating the wireless content services sector.
In case any one of you know of any innovative companies, you can post them in the comments section. I will follow through them in my next sections.
One of the first companies, that I came to know about very recently is Nooper.com. Japanese because of their love of technology are far ahead in the wireless market. This company has made a successful business out of SMS Alerts or "Noopies".
So you want to remain updated about Weather, News, Rumors, Hot Topics, want to set up a mailing list, Earthquakes, Pill Reminder - daily, monthly - just any kind of reminder - you can just set and get Noopies.
English Readers can get information on http://www.nooper.com/index?l=EN
One of the biggest strengths of SMS is, its simple and intutive from a 10 year old to a 50 year old person. You just type and its done. SMS started as a personal medium of communication but now has been leveraged for providing any kind of content.
The second strength that I find in the SMS medium is its "strong contact" with both the online and the offline world. One can find keywords for downloading ringtones in newspapers, magazine, sending comments to news channels, participating in TV shows - all just via keying in a short message to a specific number displayed there and then.
This is the power which mobility gives which I think WAP or XHTML haven't been able to leverage.
The SMS medium has clearly shown that given a simple and effective medium despite its disadvantages (typing in keys), can still have a powerful impact. People want to participate and by providing services from PC via internet to directly on their mobile phones can have a significant impact.
Friday 28 January 2005
Tuesday 25 January 2005
Scalability of Feeds & Aggregators
Via Emergic.com
The Shifted Librarian (Jenny) points to a post by Werner Vogel: "The increase in the number of feeds will leave many users frustrated, as there is a limit to the number feeds one can scan and read. Current numbers suggest that readers can handle 150-200 feeds without too much stress. But users will want to read more and more as new interesting feeds become available and they run into the limitations of the metaphor of current aggregator applications. The current central abstract of aggregators is that of a feed, and there is a limit to how many individual feeds one can actually handle. Aggregators will need to find ways in which the users can be subscribed to a select set of feeds because they want to read everything that comes from these feeds, but also subscribe to a much larger set of publishers for which the feed abstraction may not be the right metaphor. Aggregation, fusion and selection at the information item level instead of at the feed level seems to be a first abstractions to investigation."
My Feedlist shows me, I am at 105. Even I have started feeling the pinch. I think some innovation needs to occur at this level. Today's Feed Aggregators are aimed at entering and subscribing particular URL's of information.
I am just thinking, there may be a day when I have 1000 or may be 10,000 sources. Today's aggregators cannot definitely manage that information with a two or three pan interface. What is needed is a more intutive way to handle such information.
Even a user himself/herself cannot read 10,000 feeds of information. So what's the solution?
This idea just tinkered down my brain, while just writing this blog entry. So enjoy it :-)
Personalized Newspaper Interface
Rather than reading a daily e-newspaper from Times of India, what is needed is a newspaper made up from my daily sources. It automatically categorizes information in different sections, puts messages (even advertisements) just like a normal newspaper.
It can mark certain sections as BOLD, or put more important sections in front and others in back. The UI needs to get more intelligent, it can definitely keep track of my reading habits, do an analysis and present me things more like a true personalized newspaper. I as a user can read more important sections and skip others at will.
I think this might work till 10,000, I hope there's isn't a news addict hoping to digest 1 million feeds daily.:-)
The Shifted Librarian (Jenny) points to a post by Werner Vogel: "The increase in the number of feeds will leave many users frustrated, as there is a limit to the number feeds one can scan and read. Current numbers suggest that readers can handle 150-200 feeds without too much stress. But users will want to read more and more as new interesting feeds become available and they run into the limitations of the metaphor of current aggregator applications. The current central abstract of aggregators is that of a feed, and there is a limit to how many individual feeds one can actually handle. Aggregators will need to find ways in which the users can be subscribed to a select set of feeds because they want to read everything that comes from these feeds, but also subscribe to a much larger set of publishers for which the feed abstraction may not be the right metaphor. Aggregation, fusion and selection at the information item level instead of at the feed level seems to be a first abstractions to investigation."
My Feedlist shows me, I am at 105. Even I have started feeling the pinch. I think some innovation needs to occur at this level. Today's Feed Aggregators are aimed at entering and subscribing particular URL's of information.
I am just thinking, there may be a day when I have 1000 or may be 10,000 sources. Today's aggregators cannot definitely manage that information with a two or three pan interface. What is needed is a more intutive way to handle such information.
Even a user himself/herself cannot read 10,000 feeds of information. So what's the solution?
This idea just tinkered down my brain, while just writing this blog entry. So enjoy it :-)
Personalized Newspaper Interface
Rather than reading a daily e-newspaper from Times of India, what is needed is a newspaper made up from my daily sources. It automatically categorizes information in different sections, puts messages (even advertisements) just like a normal newspaper.
It can mark certain sections as BOLD, or put more important sections in front and others in back. The UI needs to get more intelligent, it can definitely keep track of my reading habits, do an analysis and present me things more like a true personalized newspaper. I as a user can read more important sections and skip others at will.
I think this might work till 10,000, I hope there's isn't a news addict hoping to digest 1 million feeds daily.:-)
Friday 21 January 2005
Google - Ad Giant
Content on internet has been mostly free for consumer, with content publishers making money via advertising. The advertising model on internet has been changed from banner clicks to a strong contextual advertising model pioneered by companies like Google and Overture. Google is adding another feature which I guess will increase its stronghold by a mammoth in the online advertising world. Google is releasing an API for advertisers to configure their advertising on various content publishers channels.
The complete story is available at this link.
For the first time, the search giant will provide its advertisers with an application programming interface (API), which will enable them to link their computer systems with Google and control parts of the mammoth Google ad delivery system. The API will allow advertisers to self-administer the delivery, the timing and the price they will pay for their text ads.
This raises the bar in the online advertising market as Google turns to technology to try and outwit and pull ahead of media savvy competitors such as Kanoodle and others. Kanoodle says its average click-through revenue is twice as much as that of Google's because it gives online publishers greater control over what types of advertising is displayed, at which times, and is better matched to page content or search terms.
The complete story is available at this link.
Tuesday 11 January 2005
Wireless Data Services - Part 1
Internet gave birth to content in new and innovative ways. One can today find any kind of information weather its news (international or local), weather information, bank account or travel information etc. There was a growing trend in late 90's to put everything online including humans (soft identity).
Wireless brought with it the trend to have access to communication anytime anywhere. The WAP sites, the sms based content, the mobile carrier portals all tried to follow the same principle and make available content in wireless world, but in their own individual fashion. Each of these created their own individual different small worlds where the homogeneity of internet just died away. Though these small worlds have led to small and big successes of their own, but accessing content on mobiles is still a lot harder for an individual. Not many even want to try it. The problems can be grouped as:
- Look & Feel Factor (Graphics, Visualization)
- Accessibility (Bandwidth, time, hard to surf)
- Not enough Good Content (Not much content available)
- Not relevant to me (Content not specific to an individual's interest)
- Ignorance (User doesn't know how to access and get content specific to his interest)
People might know of google's, yahoo's or msn's web portal but majority of the people just even don't know the WAP URL of these content providers. Business power houses are trying to create a separate domain .MOBI to solve that problem. But in my view it will create a far complex fragmentation. Industry has the money to spend to create the same content multiple times and duplicate it. But individuals who write blogs, make personal websites even want their content to be made available on the mobile.
My personal view is that the .MOBI may solve the brand problem of the big businesses but it will still not bring the benefits of internet onto the mobile world.
There exist a large number of WAP sites, but not many people know about it. A lot of companies did sprung up who provided personalized menus, favourites of WAP URL's which tried to reduce the number of clicks and improve accessibility to the wireless content. The WAP pages even suffered from the Look and Feel factor. With XHTML, the visualization has improved a lot and one can view web like pages on the mobile, but accessibility is still poor. Finding content relevant to an individual is still a lot harder.
SMS based content has been a lot popular even with a bad look and feel factor but a very good accessibility factor. Both the online world and offline world together have played a significant factor in popularising SMS based content and removing even the Ignorance factor to some extent. Everything has been SMS enabled from emails to bank accounts. But SMS has its own problems, the biggest being spam.
Mobile Portals deployed at the wireless carrier solve the accessibility problem by making available specifically targetted content to the general user. One can find richer content varying from news, live sports updates, weather etc. But still the homogenity and wide variety of content that's available on the internet is missing in the mobile world. If one is reading a CNN breaking story update and is interested to know more, he is just helpless. The full story is not just available or he needs to search for that full story. There exists this fragmentation where the mobile world is not homogeneously integrated with the wired internet.
One can argue that with advanced networks like 3G and advanced smart phones - look and feel and accessibility factor will just fade away. And the same content as available on the web will be browsable with desktop experience directly on the phone. But does this guarantee that users will still browse content on mobile phones? Companies in the past have made available internet on Television and other such devices. Media gateways already have access to internet. But all such devices are not used for browsing content. Each of these devices serve a well defined purpose.
Mobile phones are personal communication devices, and just mimicking and making available internet content on such devices will not solve the purpose. What is needed is a way where specific content which interests a user can be delivered to the user with the best experience without breaking the homogenity of the internet.
Wireless brought with it the trend to have access to communication anytime anywhere. The WAP sites, the sms based content, the mobile carrier portals all tried to follow the same principle and make available content in wireless world, but in their own individual fashion. Each of these created their own individual different small worlds where the homogeneity of internet just died away. Though these small worlds have led to small and big successes of their own, but accessing content on mobiles is still a lot harder for an individual. Not many even want to try it. The problems can be grouped as:
- Look & Feel Factor (Graphics, Visualization)
- Accessibility (Bandwidth, time, hard to surf)
- Not enough Good Content (Not much content available)
- Not relevant to me (Content not specific to an individual's interest)
- Ignorance (User doesn't know how to access and get content specific to his interest)
People might know of google's, yahoo's or msn's web portal but majority of the people just even don't know the WAP URL of these content providers. Business power houses are trying to create a separate domain .MOBI to solve that problem. But in my view it will create a far complex fragmentation. Industry has the money to spend to create the same content multiple times and duplicate it. But individuals who write blogs, make personal websites even want their content to be made available on the mobile.
My personal view is that the .MOBI may solve the brand problem of the big businesses but it will still not bring the benefits of internet onto the mobile world.
There exist a large number of WAP sites, but not many people know about it. A lot of companies did sprung up who provided personalized menus, favourites of WAP URL's which tried to reduce the number of clicks and improve accessibility to the wireless content. The WAP pages even suffered from the Look and Feel factor. With XHTML, the visualization has improved a lot and one can view web like pages on the mobile, but accessibility is still poor. Finding content relevant to an individual is still a lot harder.
SMS based content has been a lot popular even with a bad look and feel factor but a very good accessibility factor. Both the online world and offline world together have played a significant factor in popularising SMS based content and removing even the Ignorance factor to some extent. Everything has been SMS enabled from emails to bank accounts. But SMS has its own problems, the biggest being spam.
Mobile Portals deployed at the wireless carrier solve the accessibility problem by making available specifically targetted content to the general user. One can find richer content varying from news, live sports updates, weather etc. But still the homogenity and wide variety of content that's available on the internet is missing in the mobile world. If one is reading a CNN breaking story update and is interested to know more, he is just helpless. The full story is not just available or he needs to search for that full story. There exists this fragmentation where the mobile world is not homogeneously integrated with the wired internet.
One can argue that with advanced networks like 3G and advanced smart phones - look and feel and accessibility factor will just fade away. And the same content as available on the web will be browsable with desktop experience directly on the phone. But does this guarantee that users will still browse content on mobile phones? Companies in the past have made available internet on Television and other such devices. Media gateways already have access to internet. But all such devices are not used for browsing content. Each of these devices serve a well defined purpose.
Mobile phones are personal communication devices, and just mimicking and making available internet content on such devices will not solve the purpose. What is needed is a way where specific content which interests a user can be delivered to the user with the best experience without breaking the homogenity of the internet.
Monday 10 January 2005
Podcasting & Personalized Radio/Cable Channels
Podcasting on WIKI
The link provides information of a number of websites providing podcast feeds.
Number of commerical providers as well as independent bloggers are using the enclosure tag of the RSS to provide audio feeds. The trend is expected to grow phenominally. So soon everyone will have a personalized Radio Station and a Cable channel too.
One just needs a server side infrastructure for streaming the feeds and an interface at the mobile to personalize the audio/video channels. And soon we will have a personalized audio/video channel which we can listen/watch at any time.
The term podcasting plays upon the terms broadcasting and webcasting and is derived from the name of the iPod portable music player, the playback device of choice of many early podcast listeners. Podcasting is not directly associated with Apple's iPod device or iTunes jukebox software. Podcasting is similar to time-shifted video software and devices like TiVo, which let you watch what you want when you want by recording and storing video, except that podcasting is used for audio and is currently free of charge. Note, however, that this technology can be used to pull any kind of file, including software updates, pictures, and videos.
The link provides information of a number of websites providing podcast feeds.
Number of commerical providers as well as independent bloggers are using the enclosure tag of the RSS to provide audio feeds. The trend is expected to grow phenominally. So soon everyone will have a personalized Radio Station and a Cable channel too.
One just needs a server side infrastructure for streaming the feeds and an interface at the mobile to personalize the audio/video channels. And soon we will have a personalized audio/video channel which we can listen/watch at any time.
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