Samsung goes BIG with BlueZone at the Sydney Festival

Samsung has created what they call the biggest hotspot in the World inside and around the Samsung Mobile Festival Garden in Sydney’s Hyde Park. The hotspot is being billed as the Samsung BlueZone. Some 20 Bluetooth access points have been networked across the area so that any patron entering the zone is invited to download videos and animations of the artists plus MP3 ringtones.

A few comments and observations from CTIA Wireless

CTIA Wireless 2007 – there’s no doubt about it, content is still king… however, simplicity and ease of use are indeed “the killer app”. That was the message presented in sessions, demonstrations, panel discussions, and meetings at North America’s recent wireless industry convention. Some of the key impressions I took away from the event include the following:

- mobile content is king and the industry (and users) are craving more mobile content – in particular entertainment.

- Application developers have plenty of opportunities, although the competition is brisk. Simple to use, intuitive applications are what people want. Make it functional, entertaining, useful, and simple.

- Location-based services and applications are hot and in demand. Think about it, there were more than 340 entries in this year’s North American LBS Challenge. Looking to get your LBS app on a device? Think social networking, community building, entertainment, and gaming… these appear to be the LBS services that are of greatest interest (to carriers and end users)

- GPS-enabled devices are coming on strong.

- Developing applications for a variety of handsets, operating systems, and languages is still a challenge. It’s still quite amazing to see many applications that have been created to run solely on one application or even one device.

These are but a few of the topics that stuck out in my mind after taking in 3 days at CTIA. Here’s more samplings of items that got my attention and may get you thinking about the direction you want to take as you develop apps and services for the mobile space heading into 2008.

China – explosive usage – 25 new customers every second

US usage at about 75%

93% of mobile users surveyed by mywireless.org are satisfied with current service provider

68% believe government regulation on wireless will make services more costly

The new killer app… ease of use. Bringing together the 3 screens.

Demand for speed and data. Usage of data apps for business has soared $7.2 B usage in 2006… data usage is exploding. Today 1 in 5 users uses data. 45% of youth are mobile data users.

Mobile banking is also coming on and is in high demand.

48,000 hotspots in 79countries around the Globe.

40% of population frequently look for directions on web

Note: local search is expected to grow 282% in next 5 years. Great as only 15% of cell phone users use data services.

A tip to Developers, avoid navigation services (saturated) maybe look at social networking or location-based games as an option.

Location isn’t a service, it’s a service enabler!

Favorite tagline from the event... without the L it's just BS! (Source: Tele Atlas)

Need Wi-Fi? Try this new database with more than 180,000 hotspots

Ever been on the road and in need of Wi-Fi? No doubt you have so this database will likely be useful to many of you. Given the proliferation of WiFi enabled cell phones and the increasing reliance on mobility by most of us this is a handy utility. Spotigo boasts some 180,000+ hotspots in their database and in a test run it appears to be so. Simply select a country, then a town and wait for the database to load. You can then pull hotspot information by carrier (e.g.. perhaps you have a Sprint account etc...) The database is a bit of a pig due to its size but the results are definitely adequate and useful. Remember, WiFi doesn't mean access is free so beware of fees that may be involved. Most major carriers offer monthly plans and are a great alternative for those of you that constantly pay for web access from your hotel room. See http://hotspots.spotigo.net

Current task at hand and wireless networking fun

So what did I do for my birthday yesterday??? Well, much of it was spent waiting for the cable (comcasat) guy to come and get me connected. The rest of it (and this AM) has been spent trying to get my wireless network configured and secured... loads of fun! i just returned from trip 1 to Circuit City... hopefully no more trips will be needed. If your interested, Comcast does a great job of selling you the bundled solutions, however, the setup and hand holding for your Internet is non-existant! I'm documenting my experience in detail and it should make a great read... stay tuned for more on that one. Ok, I'm now off to install a new D-Link wireless adapter to my PC. Got any tips or advice??