Web 2.0 & Social Media

There’s been a lot of talk about mobile phone applications that read barcodes using built in cameras to deliver instant offers, product information and many other interactions.

Skuair, a new cell phone application developed by Daem Interactive works with any mobile phone camera reads not only barcode lines and numbers but can read product logos or images. Take a picture of an ad or logo and their robust image recognition server returns associated content. They are currently working on a user generated content feature.

Check out the demo.

Hey, this is amazing new service called Jott […] you basically call from your cell phone and send e-mails and reminders, instant messages, post to your Twitter account, post to your blog in fact, I am actually creating this post directly from my cell phone. listen

Powered by Jott

If anyone is paying attention to what’s going on in mobile its obvious that we are headed toward some serious transformation and the media and communications industries are in chaos. Traditional operators are fighting disintermediation with convergence, while traditional media companies search for profitable and relevant business models in this new, mobile medium. Meanwhile a completely new generation of services and end-user applications are emerging.

Network operators and service providers of all kinds are competing to serve the next major frontier in computing — the Mobile Internet user. The Mobile Internet user will have ubiquitous access to computing and the Internet. Wireless technologies such as 3G, WiMAX and LTE have emerged as alternatives to support the Mobile Internet with ubiquitous connectivity. In addition, IP architectures are becoming critical elements in the delivery of ubiquitous mobile broadband services. As these technologies migrate toward the 4G vision, mobile Internet services will be delivered with increased performance capabilities, improved economics, high levels of security and accurate way of measuring end-user activity. Continue reading »

One of the cool things about Twitter is the ability to keep in touch when away from the computer. You can set up your phone or IM to follow your friends and family, post tweats and keep everyone updated on what everyone is doing.

You can follow friends on your phone through Twitter, but what about concepts? What if you wanted an update anytime anyone mentioned a specific name, band, city or concept like “global warming,” or “apple sauce?” In real-time? What if you were attending an event and wanted to know who else was there?

Twitter recently released a new feature called “Track.” With Track you can send a command from your found such as “track Chevy”. When any tweats mention “Chevy,” you’ll get it on your phone. From there you can send “whois username” to get the users information, or “follow username” to follow updates. Don’t want to follow the term “Chevy” anymore? Toggle it off with “untrack Chevy.”

There’s no limit to how many topics you can track. Type “track” alone (or “stats”) and get a list of everything you are tracking. Turn them all off by sending “track off”.

What will you track?

Twitter is a micro blogging site where generating huge amounts of buzz among the web’s early adopters thanks to a simple concept. All twitter.com does is ask: “What are you doing?”

The idea is that it offers a way for individuals to provide more detailed status updates to their friends, family and contacts. And, crucially, it delivers those updates across a variety of different media - either through its website, over instant messaging or by SMS to your mobile phone.

I’ve been talking about Twitter for some time now. I wasn’t sure why - but it seemed pretty clear by its popularity that it could be useful. I’ve had different ideas for campaigns but its becoming clear that Twitter provides a valuable service in the most distributed Web 2.0 fashion. Twitter allows people to follow information how they want and when they want. A certain population has embraced it. Now we can see how marketers and media is embracing Twitter.

In April 2007 ZDNet created a ZDNetBlogs Twitter page and ‘walla’, instant cool Web 2.0 functionality. Viral, distributed, accessible by mobile, email, widgets, IM etc. You can follow ZDNet blog post via your Twitter account.

Bravo to ZDNet for this experiment. So far there’s only 340 followers but Twitter growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down soon so I think there’s plenty of time for the subscribers to pick-up.

MTV is also using Twitter to promote the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA). A prominent link on the main navigation reads ‘Twitter’, I’d say that is in indication that Twitter is engrained in pop culture. This MTV Twitter account is written as updates from  Moonman, MTV’s iconic and mischievous mascot and the name sake of the VMA award, MTV’s equivalent to the Oscar. The site uses the Twitter API to display the tweats (a single Twitter post) also on the site.

Chillin’ with Baby from Cash Money in the MTV photo studio. Guy’s got so much bling I feel like I’m looking at the sun. -mtvmoonman 01:57 PM August 22, 2007 from web.

You can also simply text “Text FOLLOW VMA to 40404” and receive updates via SMS. MTV started this experiment in July and has 570 followers and has made 23 posts so far.

There’s many ways to use Twitter to engage people. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

WidSets is a free phone manufacturer-independent Internet service that multicasts preferred feeds and user-generated content to mobile devices. With it you can get mobile widgets, which are much like web widgets, or gadgets, with traffic alerts, news, blogs, gossip, restaurant reviews, weather reports and loads of other stuff that you would normally get through a web service.

WidSets was born out of Nokia Emerging Business Unit and represents a first step in Nokia’s vision of mobilizing the Internet. The WidSets service currently has several hundred thousand registered users and a comprehensive library of over 1200 widgets. WidSets works on a wide variety of mobile phone brands and is compatible on over 200 mobile devices.

If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for they have templates for creating your own widgets. In the Beta stage, you can tweak the look of your widgets, name them, and set their RSS feed address.