This news story from Reuters is no surprise. Japanese credit card companies are forming an alliance which will allow consumers to use their phones in lieu of their credit cards. This alliance will be defining the standard first, after which “QUICPay” scanners will be installed at retail locations. In light of the WSJ report in August (here), I agree with the Reuters article that this is a response to the DoCoMo and Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co. alliance — as it says, they are notably absent from this new alliance.

How central is the mobile phone poised to become in consumer’s lives? Very. There will come a day when we leave our wallet at home and don’t bother to go back to get it because we have our phone — or maybe we won’t have leather wallets anymore, just leather carrying cases for our phones.

As Rich highlighted Blister Entertainment earlier this week regarding their agreement with Sprint for LBS game distribution on Sprint’s Nextel network, some of you may have noticed this release from Moco News:

The Eurotechnology newsletter has reported that Japan’s Internal and Communications Ministry is planning to change regulations to require GPS in all mobile phones from April 2007 in Japan. Apparently the plans have been known for a while and the accuracy will be in the order of 15 meters. The newsletter doesn’t give a reason for the requirement but does talk about the fact that half of Japan’s 9 million emergency calls come from mobile phones – draw your own conclusions.

The interesting part (from a content perspective) is the knowledge developers have that all phones sold from a particular point will include GPS technology, which can be said of almost nothing else.

Here in the US market, despite the E911 mandate, and the developing Java JSR-179 spec, when will we have the knowledge that phones/carriers will support and make available GPS? Everyone agrees that making mobile apps more “context” aware is important for creating a valuable app, so how long will we have to wait?

Can you hear me now?

Almost Half of American Teens and Tweens Use Cell Phones, with Verizon Their Leading Provider, According to New Research from GfK NOP Technology.

NEW YORK, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Almost half of 10 – 18 year olds in the US use cell phones, representing a total market value of $10.7 billion, according to GfK NOP Technology’s new mKids Study, released today. Among the growing teen and tween market, Verizon Wireless is the leading provider in terms of both awareness (46%) and share (30%). Sprint PCS/Nextel also achieved a high awareness level (42%), but its share remained steady at 10%. Cingular/AT&T Wireless maintained a significant 40% awareness level but saw its share drop 5% over the least year, from 32% to 27%.

Good!

Wow, this is big if it actually performs well on all the BREW phones out there:

ANAHEIM, Calif. & SAN DIEGO — Macromedia (Nasdaq:MACR) and QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq:QCOM) today announced an agreement under which Macromedia(R) will create a version of Macromedia Flash Lite(TM) as an extension for BREW. As a result of this agreement, the large BREW developer community and more than two million Flash(R) developers will be able to create rich, engaging mobile content on the Flash Platform for the BREW solution, QUALCOMM’s established content delivery and monetization system.

Since BREW software is compiled and not running in a JVM, this is doable. It would be a nightmare for them to write Flash Lite over MIDP!

Anyway, this brings rapid development to BREW phones. Banging out an app in Flash Lite is much easier than a full-blown BREW app. Take this and combine it with Verizon’s fastest (in the US) EV-DO network and you have a great platform for deploying and testing a new networked-application idea really quickly.

So Opera has a way to use MMS to post to a blog. From PC Magazine Online:

Opera Software ASA has created a new community-centered site that allows users to blog and upload photos directly from their mobile phones. ; 200

Opera Software ASA has created a new community-centered site that allows users to blog and upload photos directly from their mobile phones.
Quietly launched in September to Opera browser users, the My Opera Community site is attracting an average of 1,000 new members per day, the browser developer has said.

…

Users can publish from their mobile phones by sending an MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service message), which instantly posts to a blog or adds an image to an online album.

“Blogging through a mobile is the next wave,” said Tor Odland, Opera communications director. “It’s quite powerful, to be able to update a personal page from anywhere.”

I’ve said this before, but is MMS really going to take off? Is it really important to have an MMS->blog gateway when email can be used to send pictures and text just as easily – and in the US with better pricing?

Wordpress lets you post through email. Are there any plugins that extract any images from emails and post them as well? It would be cool if that were the case – I’d totally use that. Anyone know of something that does it?

Blister has been turning out these LBS games in Canada for a while now, and I think some of their stuff was on Boost Mobile. But Sprint/Nextel just picked them up now.

Blister Entertainment Inc., a division of KnowledgeWhere Corp., announced today an agreement with Sprint (NYSE:S) whereby customers using the Nextel Nationwide Network will be among the first mobile phone users in the United States to be able to download and play location-based GPS (Global Positioning System) games on their wireless phones. . Sprint customers on the Nextel Nationwide Network can now play Swordfish(TM) and Torpedo Bay(TM) games by downloading the applications directly from their Java(TM) -enabled Nextel phone. Each game costs $4.99 per month. .

LBS games have been big in Japan for a while now, but the infrastructure hasn’t been in place in the US to get things going here. It’s good that things are finally coming around. There are so many cool applications for an always-with-you GPS-enabled device – both for games and other apps. But it’s only recently that developers could consider deploying it, since phones have gradually begun implementing APIs like JSR-179. Even though the first version of that JSR was out in 2003!

It’s nice when I come across patents that spark ideas. This is one of them.

Method and apparatus for adaptive personalization of navigation

APPLICANT- Yahooa Inc. Sunnyvale, CA US
PATENT APPLICATION NUMBER- 000431/11
DATE FILED- 2004-11-30

A system for dynamically adaptively personalizing at least one navigation control for a web site. Based on collected behaviors for a user, at least one navigation control is dynamically updated to link to a portion of the web site that may be of most interest to the user. Personalized navigation controls for accessing portions of the web site can be dynamically arranged on the web page displayed to the user. Additionally, the personalized navigation may be employed to drives screens of a mobile or living room device.

Of course, I’m thinking about this in the context of a mobile browser. Navigation is so clumsy on mobile devices, that even well designed WAP pages probably cause you to scroll a little or hunt for a feature. Even a little scrolling is bad when you’re zipping through the airport or ahem driving.

Lets take yahoo’s mobile weather site that I use once in a while. I always go to the 5-day forecast right after I type in the zip. It’s an extra click, and it’s annoying – especially with the huge request lag time on GPRS networks. If the site stored a cookie on my phone to associate me with some collected use info, it could know to just put the 5-day link first under the zip entry and I’d be a happy man.

Interestingly enough, www.yahooa.com goes to a Yahoo error page. Plus they’re in Sunnyvale. So I’m guessing this is Yahoo’s patent. I just hope they apply it to mobile.

Ok, lets say you have a Verizon EV-DO connection and a phone with an actual operating system on it (Symbian, PPC, PalmOS, whatever). Why EV-DO? Because you’re nuts trying to share anything but maybe a picture or some business cards over GPRS/EDGE.

Now lets say you’re a decent coder, can grab the source to Bittorrent or another P2P codebase of your choosing, and don’t have a girlfriend or life in general.

Do you now go write a mobile P2P app?

If you do, do you write it to interoperate with the desktop versions or do you make it an exclusive mobile to mobile deal? (Not that someone can’t write a desktop version to connect to your network anyway.)

What do you share with it? That killer 512Meg mini-sd card you have in that thing fits that *sweet* Evanescence album you love so much at 256Kbps on it, but that’s about it. But yeah, you really want to go evangelizing the brilliance that is Evanescence to the world, so you share it.

People start downloading your app like crazy. All these teens convince their parents to get them unlimited EV-DO plans and start sharing their stuff. Why? I have no idea – they do the same thing at their desktops and they can fit more stuff there. But lets say it takes off as a fad and people want to show others what they listen to. Music = identity when you’re a teen after all.

Search kinda stinks because there’s not that much content out there. But you were smart and put in peer browsing so you can just go check people’s stuff out. Too bad everyone has Black Eyed Peas – you hate Black Eyed Peas. Shallow lyrics, simple melodies. Nothing like Evanescence. Finally you find someone with Nickelback. Ok that’ll do. Set to download.

Rinse, repeat whenever you’re on the schoolbus.

One morning your parents come in with a notice they got from Verizon. You’ve apparently been served. Verizon knows what’s going on with every packet on its network, and it was subpoenaed by the RIAA. Time to settle.

Short stories are fun. Now here’s a little thing from Computer Shopper magazine about how carriers want to use the P2P term but really do more of a legal viral marketing thing with it:

WHILE THE technology has been vilified for making it easy to swap illegally copied music over the Internet, peer-to-peer (P2P) software is increasingly being embraced by cellular-phone manufacturers and service providers to help their nascent music businesses. ; 245

WHILE THE technology has been vilified for making it easy to swap illegally copied music over the Internet, peer-to-peer (P2P) software is increasingly being embraced by cellular-phone manufacturers and service providers to help their nascent music businesses.
Handset maker Nokia has reportedly developed P2P software that would allow the sharing of text documents, photos, and, eventually, music between its 6600 model phones. In addition, electronics maker Mitsubishi says it has developed a prototype P2P phone.

Canadian cell-phone operator Rogers Wireless recently started using P2P software as a marketing tool for its music-download service. Rogers lets users send the first 30 seconds of a song to a friend’s cell phone. If the friend likes it, he or she can buy the rest of the song.

Cell phones could become a haven for file sharing because the tight control cellular providers have over their

networks makes them an ideal host. On these privately owned networks, operators can track every piece of data sent. Phones also have tough software for managing digital rights and typically have tracking technology built in to meet federal 911 laws, enabling operators to locate anyone they believe is illegally swapping files.

Such tight controls are just what the recording industry is looking for. Recently, the recording studio EMI licensed access to its song catalog to Seattle-based cell-phone P2P-software maker Melodeo. Melodeo is now in talks with U.S. cell-phone operators and is providing the software behind Rogers’ new service.

I’m a bit late in noticing this, but I think it is awesome. NTT Docomo released Docomo Coin, which allows you to effect your mobile phone bill (reduce it) by collecting “coins” at i-mode sites. It brings a whole new, and very economically real, dimension to i-mode, and gives content providers a pretty powerful way to motivate and reward their customers. So how about playing poker for your mobile bill? I guess there’s some issues there, but….

I like this idea. Giving mobile software and content a store presence is a little difficult. There’s been some attempts with shortcodes sold at stores, but it really doesn’t give you that whole impulse buy effect. Imagine standing at the checkout line and seeing gum – snickers – cool ringtone – java game. And all you had to do was pay and aim your phone (or not if you have Bluetooth). I think that’s as close as you’re going to get to impulse right now.

Well, apparently that may start appearing in a store near you.

Trans World Entertainment Corp. (TWEC), the nation’s largest specialty music retailer, and WideRay Corp., maker of the leading end-to-end retail and on-location solution for wireless distribution of digital media and promotional content to mobile devices, announced that TWEC has partnered with WideRay to launch new “Download & Go” mobile entertainment stations at nine f.y.e. — For Your Entertainment retail locations in New York, Los Angeles and Boston.; The mobile entertainment content available during the initial launch period includes music, video, games , ringtones and wallpapers from EMI Music, Twentieth Century Fox, Digital Chocolate and others, and will be offered as free downloads or try-and-buy applications. Selected full-length games will be offered for purchase and can be paid for in-store through f.y.e.’s existing point-of-sale system. To receive the mobile content from the “Download & Go” stations, customers simply need a Bluetooth- or infrared-enabled mobile device. Once inside the store, customers with Bluetooth-connected mobile phones will be automatically sent a wireless message from f.y.e. with the content offer. The download is quick: It takes less than a minute to wirelessly download rich content to a mobile device.

“Trans World Entertainment is proud to launch this exciting mobile content delivery service, which will benefit customers who come to our stores when they want to discover the latest in entertainment — now delivered directly to their mobile phones,” said Fred Fox, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Merchandising, TWEC. “As a leader in providing leading-edge, in- store technology, we’re always looking for new and innovative opportunities to proactively deliver rich entertainment. Our partnership with WideRay will enable f.y.e. to reach customers with relevant and exciting entertainment choices directly on their mobile without any carrier data fees for our customers.” . WideRay will supply the in-store hardware and the content for the initial store implementation. The hardware, called a Jack Service Point, allows end users with Bluetooth- or infrared-enabled mobile devices to access digital content and mobile applications at retail and other locations. The Jacks have built-in connectivity to leverage WideRay’s global wireless network for remote management, and support a wide range of mobile devices across major mobile operating systems, including Windows Mobile , Palm , Symbian, UIQ, Java and many gaming devices…