Of the companies I saw yesterday at the Under the Radar: Mobility conference (more stories), the most audacious, and therefore my favorite, was Zoove. This company makes a service and a technology that allows mobile phone users to dial a short code (preceded by **) and then receive information via SMS or e-mail.
Sounds like SMS short codes, right? But there's a big difference: to get data from the Zoove service, you dial your phone. That is you press a code, like "**coke," then the Talk key. It's just like making a call. Except that instead of talking to a person, you get sent the information you're requesting.
Sending a short code is a lot more involved: you have to go to your messaging window, address the message (the short code), and then, most likely, enter a message keyword. Only then can you send off your message. Zoove "StarStar" codes take no training and are faster to use. They'll work better on billboards.
Zoove has data showing how much more likely users are to complete the task of sending a StartStar code than competing a short code SMS message, and how much more satisfying the experience is. It is, undoubtedly, a better way to request information by mobile phone. But the beauty of the business is Zoove's lock on the technology. Getting Zoove implemented requires making deals with carriers, and according to CEO Tim Jemison, implementation by a carrier is not trivial. This is a good thing, since it's a barrier to competitors. Also, for patent and for technological reasons having to do with the way big phone switches work, Jemison says that once Zoove is installed by a carrier, it is even more difficult for it to adopt a competing short-dial-code provider in parallel.
So the first audacious part of this business is that it only really works when all (or nearly all) of the carriers in a market support the technology. Zoove doesn't have that part of its message locked up just yet. Currently, Zoove is running on Sprint, and talks are underway with AT&T and Verizon Communications, Jemison said. Without these (and other) carriers, selling StarStar codes will be tough. And ultimately, that's the business.
The other big part of the Zoove vision is that Zoove controls the StarStar "namespace." If GM wants to license **Vette, for example, only Zoove can enable it. That puts a lot of power in Zoove's hands, and it takes guts to sell a product through carriers that represents a revenue stream that they don't necessarily benefit from and could turn off in a heartbeat, leaving Zoove with no air to breathe.
Zoove is a big vision, and that's why I like it. Delivering on the vision will be very difficult, though, and that just makes it more interesting.
Wrapping up today's pitch sessions at the Under the Radar Mobility conference are four companies focusing on the platform, also known as "how to get things on your phone." It's one of the deepest levels of the mobile space, and also one of the most nebulous and hard to explain.
mPortico (whose name is not to be confused with a pizza place near CNET's San Francisco headquarters) creates the technology for branded memory cards people can stick in their mobile phones that has embedded games, applications, and video content. These cards end up on retail store shelves that anyone can buy and plug in without having to deal with navigating to Web sites or download huge files while on the go. To help save the content from being shared openly, the company has employed a proprietary DRM system.
To get cards to the shelves, mPortico has partnered with Kingston, Universal, and I-Play mobile gaming. Kingston actually makes the memory cards, while mPortico takes care of the rest.
The judges questioned mPortico's move toward solid state storage as a medium instead of going for Web downloads, which mPortico's CEO Shimon Constante noted as offering higher capacities for slower mobile networks while offering consumers a useful piece of storage they can use when they're done with it.
What sets Remotv apart from its competitors is its centralized server system that will take media from your home machine and serve it up to others without sucking up your bandwidth. One of the weaknesses about most other services that offer media sharing is if the machine with your content goes down or has too many people leeching, the system falls apart.
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New social networks are born each day, and at the Under the Radar conference (see all posts) a new batch is on display. Most are in early funding stages, and one is so new it's still in closed beta. The other three are ready for a try-out.
I'll give Frengo this--it's certainly different than most mobile chatting services. Case in point: Neither of Frengo's main competitors, Twitter and Jaiku, asks users to vote, compete in contests, or earn points. In that sense, a bit of the social-discovery element of social networks creeps in. Except, of course, the goal isn't necessarily to become friends with other users. Frengo is more interested in social collision--sort of a tamer, more innocent Hot or Not. Example? The Flirtable Facebook application launched last Thursday.... Read more
Voice services are the next generation of technology evolving from person-to-person phone calls. Voice services can solve some of the big problems like having to press buttons or pay attention to what you're doing. That's good for people with vision problems and for road warriors. In the past, people associated automated voice services with the fictional computer of the Starship Enterprise, but these days we're able to use it for mobile Web services like GOOG-411 and 1-800-DIRECTIONS, which showed off their stuff in the last session.
First up was Lypp, which offers a mobile conference-calling platform. Lypp mixes SMS and instant messaging for Blackberry and phones running Windows Mobile. The service has an API, which lets you build in Lypp functionality to other Web applications or services. Their consumer front-end works with an IM bot you can message with the names of the people you want to talk to, and the service will pull them into a conference call by using your phone book. It's also got a scheduling utility that lets you set up a call for a later date.
The company makes its cash on a per-minute model by charging users for the call, although it intends to move to an all-you-can-eat flat rate in the future. Unlike a FreeConferenceCall.com there's no free version. The creators of Lypp don't think that model is stable or sustainable due to its foundation of shaky local law that works by jumping the call through various states with loopholes.
Talkster is a voice-and-text platform. In sum, it lets you call your international buddies by using local numbers to avoid some of those heavy per-minute charges. The service supplements itself with short advertisements. We took a look at the service a few weeks back and came away impressed with their savings over a standard international call, but a little turned off by the amount of advertising that's been integrated to make it so cheap.
Vlingo is a speech-recognition service that lets users talk into a mobile-phone application that turns speech into written words. It offers a free speech-to-text search application on its Web site, running on just a few phones for Sprint and AT&T. The real hope, however, is to make money from the technology platform, which adapts and learns from its users speech. To see if your phone is supported, go here.
Wrapping up the session was Yap which has a handy application that turns your voice into text for IM and SMS conversations and a slew of other mobile applications. The service showed its goods a few months ago at the TechCrunch40 Conference. One of Yap's creators, Igor Jablokov, talked about his company's advertising platform and the potential to pull in contextual ads based on what people are talking about. While the service isn't available yet (they're trying to get a good deal with a carrier), Jablokov did a cool live demo on stage showing the application being able to discern spelling between "serial" and "cereal" based on usage in two different sentences. Creepy.
Still to come: advertising, social networking, and more.
In the Messaging and Sharing track at Under the Radar 2007, four evolving players hawk their wares. I recently covered two of them, Trutap and Utterz in the mobile social networking space.
Heysan (CNET review) is a free mobile instant-messaging service that connects to major IM networks, including Windows Live Messenger (previously MSN), Yahoo Messenger, AIM, ICQ, and Google Talk. The wholly Web-based service is roughly modeled on Meebo, with its single buddy list and tabbed conversations. Heysan is ad-supported.
Trutap is a downloadable app that aggregates instant messaging, picture messaging, photo uploading, social network access, e-mail, and SMS in a single communications hub. The biggest announcement is that Trutap is now out of closed beta and available in public beta. In the U.S., AT&T users can try out Trutap, with Sprint coming soon.
Utterz, like Trutap, takes on multiple modes of communication and media sharing. It assumes that its users have multiple social network and media accounts, and provides a service to push your voice, text, or photo "utters" to multiple locations on the Web: a blog service, Twitter, or friend network, such as Facebook. Utterz is now out of beta.
yoMedia sees itself primarily as a video delivery company. Registered users can upload videos, which yoMedia will convert for the Internet, 3GP cell phones, or even TV. In addition to pushing your own content to the PC or phone, users can discover others' video contributions on yoMedia's site.
Under the Radar's Mobility is all about accessing Web services while away from the comforts of your home computer. While a great deal of that has to do with phones, many of the sites and services can be useful even when you're back at the homestead. The first four companies showing their stuff are Boopsie, Buzzwire, Dial Directions, and ImThere. While all four have mobile components, Boopsie and Dial Directions are phone-centric.
Boopsie showed off its mobile search application, which has both a standalone application for phones with open platforms like Windows Mobile and Palm, along with a BREW and J2ME application, and an ajaxy Web interface the company touts as iPhone-friendly. The search tool is focused around categories, which the user has to choose before seeing a search box. Boopsie's CEO Greg Carpenter did a live demo of the service on a Palm Treo for finding a Wikipedia entry. The results come up live and very quickly. It's also got prefix search, meaning you need to type in only the first few letters of a word in multi-word searches.
The company makes its money from theme-skinned clients and an enterprise version that can be tweaked for businesses wanting to use it as an internal tool. Eventually Boopsie hopes to integrate keyword placement with wallpapers, ringtones, and all the other things that are making buckets of cash for mobile-phone companies.
The panel of judges chided Boopsie for putting too much pressure on the consumer who needs to pre-think searches by picking a category--something that goes against the current trend of letting users be "lazy" and simply type into a blank search box. Carpenter says consumers who use the application tend to use it extensively enough after doing a single search that they identify channels they go back to.
Buzzwire focuses on streaming media, which is made from audio, video, and written content like blog posts and news articles. The service is launching "early" next year, as soon as it can line up carrier support, although the company has had a 3000-user beta trial going since July. The application lets people find stuff to read, listen to, or watch online, and make customized lists of favorites that can be accessed on both the phone and from a desktop browser. There's also a social-networking component with a sharing service that lets users swap bookmarks with one another.
The big question from the moderators is how the company would maintain whatever deal it have with the carriers without being pushed out over time. Buzzwire's answer was that the content it serves up is king, and that it always tries to maintain compatibility on as many platforms as possible.
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Here at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, Calif., three companies pitched interesting concepts for reshaping the way users will interact with mobile applications and content.
Microsoft-backed Zumobi (previously ZenZui,) will be a free downloadable application featuring 16 tiles (application widgets) that zoom in with touch, tap, or button clicks. Users can customize tiles by picking from the device or Zumobi's online gallery. Zooming into a tile takes you into the always-on application, which contains multiple search functions and a banner ad. Developers, keep an eye out for the software developer's kit announcement. Users, keep an eye out for the upcoming beta.
Mobio lets users create a portal of Web applications on their mobile phones. Since the applications, currently totaling 40, are all provided by Mobio, they share a similar look and feel across all handsets and carriers. Mobio, as a platform, renders images and sizes so users will share an identical experience, regardless of handset and carrier differences. Here's the latest coverage from Webware.com.
FoneMine is one Web 2.0 company that's working to make the Internet more mobile-friendly by offering business partners an XMS-powered scalable platform to build mobile applications for consumer use. Businesses using FoneMine's integrated mobile services can quickly create Java applications using widgets, voice, data messaging, and social networking.
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