Catching up

Some odds and ends as I surf the Web and jam to Prince’s “Kiss” on Pandora ….

• Here is a cool site that really lays out the issues and the players in wireless advertising. There are more than the players listed here, but they really get to the heart of the issue - getting people to accept ads on their phones. Interesting take on which industries would be good for it: “Dining and Restaurant Reservations, Theatre Ticket Reservations, Hotels and Motels in connection with Telematics.” I would add retail, and especially grocery stores (see my previous post). But overall, MobileInfo.com gets it right.
• Here is a report of yet another prediction of more ad spend on “non-traditional” media, including mobile. This one suggests that even with the current threat of economic downturn, we’re looking at a 20.2 percent jump to $88.2 billion this year. This includes segments such as casual gaming, etc., but mobile certainly will take a share of that.
• Why has no one really followed up on/copied the coolest of all the iPhone applications? Sure, wanna-be devices are coming out in droves, but for me, the visual voice mail was the true new killer app on that phone (the rest was all superior UI as well as the ability to have your iPod and phone in one device). I know that Alcatel-Lucent did the back-end stuff for AT&T to make it happen, but why is it not been launched on other devices/networks since? (For those of you without an iPhone, the service allows you to see who called, and just touch the entry to hear the message, just like an e-mail inbox. No dialing in for voice mail - it is shipped to the phone within minutes of the message being left).
• That being said - here is a quick endorsement for another service that comes close - CallWave. If you can get your phone configured (or if your provider lets you), it comes really close to the “virtual voicemail” that is advertised. And they are playing around with voice to text conversion that allows you to get a sense of the message. Not quite as good as SpinVox, which uses real people to get the accuracy rate up, but not as expensive either. CallWave has a nifty widget for a PC, and even allows you to screen the call after a few rings either on your PC or on your cell.  You also get transcribed text messages, and e-mails (with a full voice message attached). You can also transfer back and forth between different lines. HawaiiTel (the major telecom in Hawaii) offered this, calling it Call Choice.
• And off topic - got another  comic series worth delving into. It’s called Y: The Last Man and it chronicles Yorick Brown, the lone remaining male of any species on the planet after a mysterious plague kills all the Y chromosomes but leaves all the females. And no, it’s not a dream world for poor Mr. Brown.