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Tag: mobile

Social media and moblogging??

Originally uploaded by Emma and Lorenzo Wood

Hot on the heels of MySociety’s iPhone app for their wonderful FixMyStreet service, Lorenzo spotted this in the wilds of Shoreditch…

Numbered CCTV is one thing (a la Westminster’s unique parking location references (UPLs?)) but texting incidents is a step further.

The cynic in me wonders if this means that the cameras are not monitored until they get a text?

Thinking further forward, why even bother having a camera: just get people to send in photos by MMS with the reference number of the nearest lampost…

Stand by for a new wave of crime – stealing mobiles of people reporting incidents…

Carling’s digital “iPint” – sensible, inventive mobile advertising.

Thanks to an article in Indy (Clare Beale’s “On Advertising”) I’ve seen and now downloaded the most excellent iPhone guerilla/game/viral advert. It’s the first ad I’ve seen that “works” on mobile: the Carling iPint.

The app appears on the iPhone desktop and upon launch you are given the task of sliding a ping of – er – Carling from one end of the bar to the other.

This uses the iPhone’s motion sensors to good effect, and so is a great example of device-specific planning.

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Tipping too far and the pint falls and smashes…

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Once delivered to your iMate’s hands you’re “rewarded” with a virtual pint of Carling.

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There’s a neat animation as the whole screen ‘fills’ with Carling, and…

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… the liquid ‘tips’ as you move the iphone as if to drink it.

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Once you’ve drained your pint you can then play again or mail the app to a friend.

So, this combines device-specific savvy, humour appropriate to the laddish demographic (toys + kit + beer + joke + game = bingo) and a viral aspect.

All we need now for ad-based perfection is:

  • location-awareness – “you’re next to a pub that’s pouring Carling now!”
  • integration with ecommerce (send receive vouchers, iBeerPoints [tm] and such like.

I’ve not seen such a well formed ad approach since the Lynx/Axe “feather” campaign.

It’s good to see this level of innovation and fun in mobile marketing – augurs so much better than blatting gifs to passers-by via bluetooth!

Ribbit – Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company


Ribbit – Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company

When I said that 2008 would be the year in which the promises of ‘mobile’ and telephony started to be delivered I didn’t envisage so much excitement so soon.

Hot on the heels of Rebtel we have Ribbit.

Ribbit is Rebtel meets Skype meets Adobe Air/Flex, meeting Visual Voicemail meets Unified Messaging meets iPhone meets CTI meets social networking meets Salesforce.

This gives me a tingle!

Rebtel: sub-Skype prices for international calls – on mobiles!!


Cheap international mobile calls at Rebtel

I was facing an hour-long conference call yesterday, dialling in to a US access point. I didn’t feel like stiffing my client with a humungous phone bill and as usual I’d left the various headset/handset options for Skype somewhere in a dusty cupboard. Ordinarily, I just shout at the laptop from the privacy of my home office, but this wasn’t an option in an open plan office…

Enter Michael Ross and a text message to check out Rebtel. Wonderful!

I signed up for a $10 credit, getting another $10 free on top and then the magic kicks in.

Via the website one can “convert” an international number to a UK geographic number (ie “free” in effect since my airtime bundle on the iPhone is massive). This must then trunk the call to the US over VOIP network bandwidth to a US POP near the destination phone number. The call from the virtual POP to the ‘real’ number is then a (free) local call. So – a bit like Skype except:

  • it works on my mobile.

There are some cunning touches: enter a phone number via the website and it’ll send the access number by SMS. Neat. One click to call.

Clearly, there’s an overhead in terms of storing a “Rebtel equivalent number” for each international contact, but this is a small price to pay for the absolute joy of chatting virtually free. The other downside is that the service is less attractive while roaming (since the value of ‘local’ number reduces significantly when it’s not part of one’s free airtime). Furthermore there’s not a ‘static’ incoming number (cf the SkypeIn number), but I’m not being fair here since Rebtel is a service for mobiles, and as such it’s wonderful.

Oh, did I mention it was cheap? Yesterday’s call was 25 minutes and the cost was 16cents . Yes indeed – 8p.