The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged MMS
I iz talkin’ bout LOL!Twitter
May 29th
Just had this in from Alfie at Moblog.
LOL!Twitter is a global community of friends and strangers taking the piss out of one simple question:
What are you doing?
Take one Lolcats, mix with Twitter and pictures, send to www.LOLtwitter.com
Send your LOL!Twitter pics in to the site by emailing or MMS’ing to: LOL@moblg.net
Interesting. I’d never heard of Lolcats before to be honest, so had to do a bit of research. The pic on the right is one I found that’s mobile related - there’s plenty more hilarious examples out there if you have a quick flick through Google.
Japanese diet with their mobiles
May 25th
Link: Japan tries ‘cell phone diet’
With cell phones ubiquitous in Japan and rising concern over expanding waistlines, health care providers have put two-and-two together to help the weight-conscious send photos of their meals to nutritionists for analysis.
The concept is only on a test run for now, and one little drawback is that dieters have to wait three days to find out how much damage they did by eating the meal they just photographed.
Iranian MP says MMS snooping is illegal
May 22nd
Link: TaliyaNews :. MMS controlling equals eavesdropping – MP
This relates to a story from a few weeks ago about Iran’s plans to censor MMS traffic.
Ramezan-Ali Sadeqzadeh arguing that MMS and SMS messages are private interactions between two parties, added in an interview with IRNA, ‘There is no legal justification for such practices.”
The first deputy of Parliament’s Mines & Industries Commission added, ‘Just as it is illegal to eavesdrop the conversation of two people in accordance with the IRI Constitution in any way, save for doing so based on the verdict of a court of justice in order to prove a crime, or to prevent a threat against national security, and similar cases, controlling the MMS and SMS contents, too, need to be based on such a verdict, or after the filing of a complaint by the receiver of the unwanted texts, or pictures, or films.”
ITV premium revenue drops 20%
May 17th
Link: BBC NEWS | Business | Phone-in confidence fall hits ITV
ITV has warned a string of high-profile scandals surrounding premium rate phone lines has hit the number of people using the services, knocking revenues. A lack of consumer confidence had led to a 20% fall in income from the phone lines in March and April, it said.
According to ITV’s Chief Exec Michael Grade: “The poor execution of these services across the sector has reduced consumer confidence and is having a material impact on premium rate telephone services revenue”. The company also said that “concerns remain about when consumer confidence in this area will be restored.”
Portio publish report on mobile pricing trends
May 17th
Link: Portio Research
Here’s something you might want to get your hands on if you want some in depth information on pricing trends in the mobile arena. Portio’s report ‘Understanding the Evolution of Pricing Trends in Mobile Services’ covers pricing trends in both voice and data services, and looking at the summary there’s some really good information to be had from getting a copy.
This market analysis should help you to:
Understand the position of price in the product lifecycle
Analyse pricing trends in voice, SMS, MMS, games, ringtones and more
Explore differences between fully-developed, mature markets and developing or emerging markets
Know what to expect in terms of pricing trends and adoption for future new service launches
Understand pricing for early adopters compared to the mass market
Discover which mobile data services have gained value over the years, and which have lost value
Mobile Visions help ‘cell a house’
May 17th
Link: real estate marketing | sms text message
Just had a quick note in from Greg at Mobile Visions in New Jersey, to say they’ve just launched their brand new service ‘Cell A House’. Once you’ve finished reading this and checking out the Cell A House site, have a look at this blog entry for a rant and ensuing discussions back in December about the subject of estate agents and mobile technology.
Home buyers who stop to look at a house for sale can send a text message to a 5 digit short code, and receive detailed information and pictures instantly to their mobile phone. Simultaneously, the selling agent is sent and email or text message with the phone number of the potential buyer.
Real estate agents simply log in at the Cell a House website to enter information about their homes for sale, and upload pictures. The service is based on a monthly subscription fee depending on the number of homes to be listed. Cell a House also includes free eye-catching lawn signs containing the home code to send the text message to.
Great stuff!
84% expect SMS response within five minutes
May 17th
Link: 160Characters Association
Some interesting statistics here from industry group 160Characters. In a recent survey, they found that 84% of people questioned expect an SMS response within five minutes. However when it came to business texts, only 56% said they’d expect the same five minute response.
Some other interesting statistics that came out were:
- 26% would take between two and five hours to answer a personal email; 31% would wait until the next day.
- 12% don’t use MMS at work, and 60% said they’d never use MMS for business as it’s too slow.
MMS pics of your dirty bins to Channel 4
May 13th
Link: Channel 4 Dispatches’ Binwatch: Send pictures of your bins
Just got a tip from Alfie at Moblog about his new project with Channel 4′s popular current affairs programme Dispatches. They’re looking after a special moblog for a forthcoming documentary called ‘Bin Wars’, which is due to air on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday May 24th.
Binwatch wants to see your bins! Are they overflowing with rubbish? Attracting local vermin? Or perhaps the new system is resulting in a greener approach to your rubbish disposal.
Posting to this moblog is simple, simply send an MMS containing an image or video to 07725202020 with your message and the word bin at the start of the message, then more info about your bin such as where it is located in the UK, how smelly is it, etc.
Complaints about bin collections? Well I never. My local refuse operatives (as they’re apparently called nowadays) didn’t turn up on Friday because there was a bank holiday last week, and then didn’t appear on Saturday either because of the wrong kind of rain.. or something like that.
Come on, what are you waiting for? Get snapping, texting and MMSing pictures of your bins 
Now then now then..
May 9th
(note: if you’re younger than about 21, were deprived of UK telly from 1975 til 1994, or have a phobia of elderly men in gold shell suits laden with more bling than Mr T, ignore the next paragraph!)
Jingle jangle, jewellery jewellery.. Welcome boys and girls to SMSTextNews will fix it. Here we go with a letter from Erin at nowthen:
I’d like to invite you to try nowthen (www.nowthen.com ) – a simple, free and addictive social networking service that lets users communicate and express themselves via camera phone snapshots.
nowthen originated as an internal SMS/MMS communication tool used by my coworkers because our team is spread throughout the US and UK. Eventually, we all had such a good time with the photo messaging feature that we decided to make the service available to the public – and here we are!
Fantastic.. it sounds good so far – the words ‘MMS’, ‘free’ and ‘social networking’ always make me curious. So how does it work? Over to Erin..
As a nowthen member, simply add friends, MMS your pictures to 07983 111 222 and we’ll instantly forward them to the phones of your nowthen network of friends. Likewise, you can receive your friends’ updates to your phone too. We also provide our users with free web space where they can easily store, share and access their photos. There are no applications to download – just a simple registration process via phone or the Web and users can immediately begin nowthening!
Brilliant! Sounds like it’s got potential to turn into a real killer app for the world of MMS. I haven’t had a chance to give it a proper go yet, but as soon as I find some time I’ll post an update.
Orange launches mobile ‘Play-Off’ competition
May 1st
Link: News | Orange launches mobile ‘Play-Off’ competition – NMA
Just caught this on New Media Age:
Visitors to Orange World are invited to upload their own 10-15 second videos via MMS or the Orange website. They are then entered into one-on-one competition with a rival in several categories including face-off, dance-off and weird-off. The entrant with the highest number of votes progresses to the next round with several competitions running concurrently.
Interesting concept. If you’re an Orange 3G customer, you can give it a whirl at http://orange.play-off.com/
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