.oO Tailwind

Nearly 2 years ago here at LBi, we started working with Multimap to redesign their public .com web property.

It was time for their loved, but ageing raster-map offering to be dragged inline with, then new and innovative, Google’s ’slippy’ Maps.

With a raft of new features including drag, zoom, pan, hybrid view,all stuff we take for granted now, we set about defining a sharpened mapping proposition that worked for both Multimap users and advertisers.

It was a brilliant project, great fun, hard work and really quite challenging. The guys at Multimap (which sold to Microsoft in December last year) were all smart cookies and pleasure to work with. Personally I see it as one of the triumphs of the team I work in here at LBi. Not only was it great solution, it was a great learning experience and those two things make for great projects. Certainly satisfactory ones.

Stephen Barber was, and still is, ace on this project. Will Bloor was his usual unremitting creative self, Peter Jupp smashed the design and Mike McIntyre and Gavin Edwards aced some complex interaction and James Norton provided some wonderful interface development. It was also a pleasure to see Lorenzo in action, which doesn’t happen nearly enough for some of us here at LBi.

Well, enough spouting from me. Multimap.com has just been named as an Honoree in the Service category at this years Webby awards.

This is no mean feat as only the best 15% of submissions attain the accolade and this from a pot of nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries.

Multimap is now owned by Microsoft, so expect to start using it a lot more as it integrates into all their properties. Exciting stuff indeed.

The guys I worked with on this project were:

• Stephen Barber
• Will Bloor
• Peter Jupp
• Mike Mcintyre
• Dave Dunlop
• Lorenzo Wood
• Darren Gerry
• Gavin Edwards
• Phil WHitehouse
• James Norton
• Marcus Alexander
• Suzanne Chapman
• Claire Freund

Launched on Monday this week, Blyk is a new mobile MNVO (mobile network virtual operator) to hit the UK where everything is ‘free’. Users of the service will get 217 free texts and 42 free minutes when the insert the Blyk SIM into their handset.

It’s paid for by advertising where users of the service will receive up to 6 MMS advertising messeages per day. You have to be 16-24 years old to play and the segmentation model and value exchange between Blyk and user is such that the free service is given in exchange fo personal information. So, potentially a very tightly targetted advertising indeed.

Blyk CEO sas:

“We have spent the last year developing a unique, robust advertising content engine, and whilst the technology we are using is incredibly advanced, the main premise of Blyk is driven by three basic principles–ease of use, interaction, and relevance of communication.”

And the killer?

It’s invite only.

Watch the kids go mad for something you can’t see.

Apparently they are distributing invite codes at Freshers fairs at the moment.

It asumes that the individual has a mobile already so that they can insert their Blyk SIM. When their ‘free’ time runs out they can either ‘top-up’ or throw in their regular PAYG SIM from ‘monolithic operator X’ into their handset.

Users of the service need to provide quite detailed information to make the advertising engine worth it’s salt. Apparently the segmentation already narrowed to 16-24 year olds can be further focused into product specific categories i.e. 17 year old boys who love Halo 3.

At the time of writing the Blyk site is down (demand? ) so I can’t comment on the proposed service design, but I’d be let down if there wasn’t something to manage, share use and distribute content online. Then again, maybe it’s all about keeping it imple.

I know from my own experience working with large Telcos (BT, Orange, Vodafone) that their segmentation is vague to say the least but Blyk has the potential to go super-focused and generate some super-revenue.

What a fantastic idea. I want one. I’m too old.

Disruption alert.

Disruption for the telcos and for advertising.

Links: Blyk

UPDATE: Blyk has come under fire for failing to deliver MMS users to the Orange, T-Mobile and Vidafone networks because the connections are ’still under construction’. Very embarrassing indeed given that it delivers its 6 ads a day using MMS.

Watch this one roll.

Yay! It’s new phone time again. I’m out of contract on my current Orange mobile which means in new phone terms, the world is my oyster. Ahem.

I’ll probably stay with Orange as I generally have no issues with them apart from apalling service around Richmond in London. However, I find it very strange that I can’t get the best deal from Orange for an Orange contract. It’s far better to go down to a ‘Carphone Warehouse’ and get a free PSP or PS3 thrown into the deal.

Decisions decisions.

Is it worth holdiong out for an iPhone on O2 seeing as my 3rd Gen iPod now only lasts 35 minutes? Or should I get the GPS enabled, 5 mega pixel N95 beast from Nokia. It’s ugly, but does cool stuff.

It seems someone else had the same dilema.

I’m currently working on some music industry related projects and strayed across this mobile product called MusicStation. For a small fee you can get access to ‘the worlds music’ on pretty much any handset. Unlimited for £1.99 a week billed to you mobile bill.

You can listen to music from charts or user generated playlists and MusicStation will build an understanding of your preferences and listening habits a la Pandora et al. Better still, it notifies you when your favourite artists release a new album, plan a gig etc.

There’s even the ability to climb to the top of the playmaker charts and get yourself some kudos. Which is always nice. People like kudos.

So far these majors are lined up: Universal Music Group, Sony BMG , EMI Music and Warner Music International so the catalogue should be decent enough unless you’re an indiekid.

I haven’t played with it yet, but will do soon and I’ll let you know what I think. Watch this for more info.

I’m starting to spend money on music again.

We’ve known about Shozu for a while now and have been using it to publish photos directly onto Flickr albeit not knowing how much it costs each time due to lack of transparency on the part of the networks. either way, we still keep playing because we love it.

I think that I was so enthralled that I could just get photos from my phone directly to Flickr (or whatever) that I didn’t really dive in to the other things that it can do. This post is a reminder, Shozu rocks on many fronts.

Shozu can upload images or video from your phone to any appropriate web service via API. It collects and remembers all your relevant user IDs for you and will act as a conduit between your phone and whatever service you like including Flickr, WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Vox, LiveJournal, You Tube and a whole bunch more besides. Best if all it is free.

Apparently you can also hook it up to the BBC or CNN if you happen to be (un)fortunate enough to find yourself in a spot for some citizen journalism. Of course this requires foresight on the part of the user, but still very cool all the same.

Shozu Using Captcha

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

The only downside is that while networks continue to avoid allowing customers a flat fee per month, data charges lack transparency and are expensive and sending your 3 minute video clip to You Tube might cost you a few quid. Also, I’m not sure how you apply Creative Commons to these artifacts as you pass them to the likes of the BBC or CNN…?

Getting Shozu onto your phone is a little bit of a bind as I need the website to do so. It’s a shame that they didn’t make it easy to download via wap in my opinion but hey ho.

I’m currently sporting a Sony Ericsson w810i which is connected to the Orange network here in the UK so I have to go to Shozu’s website tell them my details and have the application delivered to my handset via wap-push. Of course, there is once again a leap of faith on your part, not knowing how much the download is going too cost. But in the interests of science, you’ll just plough on wondering what 267kb actually costs.

Still, all this is very nice but from a UX point of view it’s all a bit clunky. Any pictures I upload still require tagging, sorting, possibly even geotagging if I’m so inclined and the best place to do that is on the web.

Well, the new GPS enabled Nokias, see the N95, allow you to deal with one of those things as it’s now possible to autotag assets with geodata accurate to within 10m.

Yay, that’s meaningful to my Gran.

Apparently you have to run an app to unlock the functionality but the new version of Shozu will have a set-up function to do this for you. Aren’t they nice?

Anyway. This was just a reminder, I’m now off to start blindly sending images and video via Shozu to WordPress, Vox and You Tube.

I wonder how much it will all cost?

Vodafone has struck a deal with My Space in a bid to put mobile blogging into the pockets of Europe’s Generation ‘C’. The deal will place important connectivity features directly in the pocket of 24/7 connected types such as post/edit videos/text/photos, manage network, view/manage profiles, mail and so on, all ready to go, out of the box.

This is a smart move I think as it’ll certainly help to make Vodafone more attractive o the teen audience and maybe claw back some declining market share. However, as teenager’s rarely pay their bill, who makes a decision about which network to join will find the idea of ‘Communitied-up’teens burning data fees like wild fire particularly attractive.

Of course this isn’t jut for the teen market, but its a point.

Which leads me to my key issue with telcos and their ‘connected’ services. I’ve been working on a number of ‘community’ tools for mobile companies over the last 2 years and there is always one thing that I think would greatly boost adoption.

It should be free to use.

They sell you camera phones, with email, wap, IM etc, then preclude usage by having non-transparent data charges.

At the moment I use (play) with a lot of mobile community services such as Shozu, but it always occurs to me that there is a black art in understanding how much it costs to use. Handset UI design is particularly useless as are the pricing models from the telcos.

On upload of a picture, or after a wap session users are often greeted with an unhelpful ‘435222 bytes transferred’ message or something similar, or maybe nothing at all.

This doesn’t help.

It certainly won’t help my mum understand what she’s paying for if her tech savvy son can’t.

Also, it’s always a real bind having to pay for services which are essentially free from your desktop. It seems silly to use services such as Shozu unless you really need to post that image to Flickr immediately, which of course none of us do.

This lack of transparency on costs is clearly a barrier to adoption for telcos and the one who’s brave to offer data/communication/entertainment services for a fixed fee will be a winner, surely.

Telcos are growing into converged service companies offering round-trip digital connectivity, yet they still act and sell as if they are a mobile phone company.

Broadband offers seem like they are bolted onto mobile phone propositions, services aren’t integrated, phones are feature rich yet the pricing remains a barrier. However, what is interesting is that Vodafone haven’t tried to replicate a blogging/network service offering in a walled garden. I only hope that these ‘My Space Inside’ handsets allow users to set-up any blog service the user requires.

My second point to make about the My Space / Vodafone deal is that I’m not so sure the brands are compatible. When big brands get involved with established social networks the relationship is often viewed with cynicism, My Space has been declining in popularity since it’s formal relationship with Murdoch and Flickr didn’t get off too easily when Yahoo! took over the reins.

Anyway, interesting. Let’s see how others respond and what happens.