Speedlink and TTFN...

I'm sorry to report that it's time to retire this blog, at least for now. Sorry, because it's a really exciting time for mobile content and the tramplers of hype.

Back in this post, I reported that I'd become a part-time professional blogger, and announced Mobile Discontent as a rough "practice" version of the blog to come. It's been a month and I think I'm practiced enough, but my employer is taking longer than anticipated to set up its official blog page. And since our deal was that I would get paid by the posting day, well...

Meanwhile, I've gotten a small flotilla of paying freelance work, and that has to take priority for now.

Sorry, Internet! I hope to be back on this soon. But what the Hell, let's give you a little going-away present: speedlink sexytime!

Don't count him out yet. Bill Gates is feeling the old competitive fires with Steve Jobs.

Oh, and there's another player in this space whose name rhymes with "frugal" but means the opposite.

Both of the above could be good news for mobile content developers, who are going to have to adjust to Jobs' software environment, which is even more closed than the infamous Windows 95. Quoth Jobs: "We define everything that is on the phone."

I'm not sure I could have called that: the big loser in the ApplePhone story appears to be the Blackberry. Other big losers: Pear Networks and Kumquantico! HA HA HA HA HA! See, I'm trying to make you not miss me.

Observing the iPhone, Voeveo boldly predicts that DUHHHHHHHHHH.

This is very interesting. I had no idea that songwriting royalties for CDs were only 9.1 cents per sale, and now the same can be said of the ringtone market. Wired bloggers mull some of the ramifications, but I think they're overreacting when it comes to personal use. The recording industry doesn't really care about individuals, it cares about aggregate action, and until there's a ringtone-sharing Morpheus, personal ringtone use is probably going to fly under the radar. Of course, a ringtone-sharing Morpheus is so Web 3.0, so we're probably only safe for another couple weeks, actually.

Hey, teenagers! Want a better world? What's your vision? "My own army of Lindsay Lohan clones" may not be what this charity is going for.

Hot, up and coming wrestling federation signs exclusive deal with mobile-content distributor you've never even freakin' heard of. But we know how this works: now New Motion can call itself "TNA's distributor" and parlay that into the next deal. If TNA starts calling itself "as seen on New Motion," we'll know the deal's in trouble.

Finally, in the name of "fun over news value," let's give the last word to my current addiction, those time-travelin' Time Friends: Click for popup image.

And that's it. Thanks for watchin'. Hope to see you again soon!

iPhone and Moco: Further Thoughts

Let's be serious and thoughtful today.

The most important move I see here is that Steve Jobs is trying to make phones COOL. When most executives try making anything cool, we shake our heads and cluck our tongues and relish a sense of superiority: they may make more money than us, but they Just Don't Get It. Well, Steve Gets It. Steve Jobs knows cool.

The last few years, the Internet has been cool, but your phone merely a tool. This is the challenge moco developers have kept trying to push past: how to sell entertainment through a medium that most people continue to view as strictly functional. Apple may have removed this hurdle.

Or they may have just triggered an entertainment singularity of sorts, effectively merging mobile content with all other content. There are things that can only be done in mobile, of course, but the overwhelming majority of our entertainment seems to be medium-agnostic. Just give The Matrix a screen-- two square inches or IMAX-wide, it doesn't care. Apple's technological openness could break down an even bigger hurdle to moco's development: its thousand different phone formats.

But I hope that zirconia is really, really scratch-resistant. My last iPod had problems on that front, and since the new iPhone is pretty much all screen, there is no way to do incidental damage to it.

Well, the summer release gives moco developers lots of time to come up with apps for it. I imagine we'll be hearing from them soon. Let's see what they have to say Monday, when we bring back the speedlinkery!

Apartment-Hunting With Mobile...

Like a lot of other people, I'm sure, I snap pictures when I'm looking at new apartments. They're handy for later comparison. When I'm discussing places with friends, it's a lot easier to show them pictures or even a floor plan than to say "oh, it's 803 square feet."

So, I asked, why don't realtors cut out the middleman and send pictures of the place directly to my phone? Better yet: why isn't there a channel for such pictures?

As it turns out, they do, and there is... for house-buying, but so far as I can tell, not yet for apartments. Hmmmm-mm? Surely there's enough money in leasing to justify such a venture...

iPhone Reaction Roundup

Well, that was easy. The iPhone is now a reality, meaning one of my predictions for 2007 has come true within a few days of my making it. I even said "Apple needs another home run," and TIME Magazine, describing it in detail, is calling it "a home run."

Engadget can't stop drooling: " Yeah, we said it: 'iPhone,' the name the entire free world had all but unanimously christened it from the time it'd been nothing more than a twinkle in Stevie J's eye (comments, Cisco?). Sweet, glorious..."

Engadget is referring to the fact that Cisco owns the "iPhone" trademark, which could be an, ahem, complication in the marketing of this device-- but let's keep the focus where it belongs right now. The technology is amazing (check the TIME piece for details), and the implications for mobile content are what we'll all scramble to discover this year. I'll have some more thoughts about that tomorrow.

You know a tech story is big when even webcomics pull their heads out of the latest video game and movie releases to pick up on it. Their reactions range from catatonia to proud hypocrisy, with Jerry Holkins, as usual, the most eloquent. Take it away, Tycho:

Despite the savageries I have borne for purchasing a Zune, I did buy it for a reason, and I held this reason tight in my palm like a mystic amulet...

But I didn't just purchase the wrong [MP3 player], at the wrong time: I purchased it virtually on the brink of its dissolution. I can hardly look at it now, it's like holding a dead squirrel. On its 4:3 screen - the exact ratio of obsolescence - I can see destroyed futures. I don't have to tell you that the iPhone is the future of that platform, as opposed to an aberration. iPods just have touch interfaces now, multipoint touch interfaces with clever gesture controls that you use to manipulate a rich video environment on a screen that is best in show.

I wonder what the mood is at the Microsoft booth over at CES - I would imagine that it is apocalyptic.

Indeed. Back in my predictions list, I also said people wouldn't be laughing at the Zune for much longer, using Holkins' own strip as an example.

I am less sanguine about that prediction than I was.

Where Are The Creative Jobs In Mobile Content?

Here and here and here and here and here and here. All posted this week. I'll be really interested to see what The New York Times' hire gets up to.

(Yep, short post today. Apartment hunting! About which, more tomorrow!)

Interesting Results For The Search "Mobile Sex"

Sometimes jutaposing your particular topic with a cultural obsession will yield some interesting insights into both. And here I thought ALL it would turn up was porn!

Granted, if that's your thing, it's hard to do better than the Mobile Sex Channel. Three screens in, this link definitely becomes NSFW. All the others are work-safe unless otherwise noted.

Bollywood actors are discovering a revolution in techno-paparazzi.

Actual quote: "Unlock the hidden pleasures in your mobile phone with the Purring Kitty! Instantly turn your cell phone into a discreet vibrating personal 'masseur' - turn your phone's vibrations on at will!" The app displays a picture of a cat while doing its thing. Similar but not work-safe: Vibrafoon.

Social-network king MySpace is taking its reputation as a haven for sexual predators just as seriously as it should. Problem: MySpace is mobile now. Mobile phones can be stolen more easily than identities or IP addresses. Related: every mobile-buying parent's nightmare.

"Yes, all this new technology is very exciting, but what does it mean for PHONE SEX?" Regina Lynn speculates in the last couple of grafs.

You know you've been covering mobile for a while when you can ask about the sex appeal of PHONES THEMSELVES without giggling.

Here's a good idea: mobile sex ed.

Here's a bad idea: banning cell phones for prostitutes in a country where prostitution is legal. Let me restate: making it illegal for you to possess a phone based on your legal occupation. The article is a couple of years old and this seems not to have gone anywhere, thank goodness.

And here's a REALLY bad idea. (This one is kind of on the edge between work-safe and not work-safe.) I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to go there.

Test.

Test post.

Games People Play

Just one link today, to this lengthy but readable piece on VR gaming, one of mobile content's most promising potential growth areas. Currently the big hits are headquartered online, but there's no reason that has to stay true.

I'll Bet You A Shiny Nickel: Predictions for 2007

By now you're probably all tired of hearing about my inferiority complex, so I'll stick to the point: others who have been watching the field longer are much much MUCH more qualified to predict the future of specific devices than I am. You can find their musings here.

In more general terms, though, I am willing to gamble that I might actually know what I'm talking about.

1) The iPhone will happen this year. Steve Jobs has done a nice little Dance of the Seven Veils in 2006, but Apple needs another home run to maintain its share price. People probably won't be laughing at the Zune for much longer.

2) Mobile DRM will weaken in a major way. Too many commercial forces are bearing down on companies that need short-term gains to justify their share prices. Right now, the biggest problem mobile faces is the lack of a universal format, and DRM is the biggest single obstacle to that. It won't collapse-- still too much influence from the Big Six for that-- but it will weaken.

3) There will be no breakaway hit in mobile entertainment that forces its way into mainstream culture the way that the iPod has forced mainstream culture to start caring about music players. This is a gut feeling. I just don't think we're ready. But hey, hits matter less than they used to.

4) There will be a breakaway hit in user-generated mobile content, a sort of mini-YouTube. If social networking continues to go mobile, this seems like the logical next step... there never would have been a YouTube without the MySpaces of the world to nurture it.

5) The mobile content industry will go through a serious recession sometime this year... This prediction is tied firmly to a non-mobile prediction: this will be the year that Americans stop kidding ourselves that anyone, Republican or Democrat, has any easy answers for the mess we're in. Consumer interest in luxury items (including almost all mobile content-- sorry) will fall accordingly and the repercussions will be felt throughout the global marketplace. Corrollary: China, Japan and Korea will gain share faster than generally expected.

6) ...But moco will be back on the upswing by the end of the year. Spasms of consumer doubt are useful periods of natural selection. There's a lot of empty hype in moco, but it really can compete with other forms of entertainment. I believe this, but I can't prove it. Only a period of economic scarcity can do that.

You knew they had to be good for something.

The Obligatory Retrospective.

I mean, it's sort of a requirement, right? A year goes by, you do a retrospective. Thing is, I haven't been at this covering-the-mobile-content-game game nearly long enough to look back on a year's worth of posts, so any retrospective I could do would only make this li'l project look like a third-grade book report next to the almighty Moconews. More than usual, I mean.

If you're looking for a more general look back at mobile in '06, Jo Best has ya covered. If you want a more personal retrospective, read on.

This time last year, I was more involved in mobile content, and a lot less cynical about it. Having studied digital comics obsessively for years, I was convinced that I knew the future of comics, and it was handheld. I wrote that comics on the iPod were not just a cool idea, but a necessity, at least for those who cared about the comics business and wanted it to survive.

I said "iPod" when I really meant "mobile device," because it seemed obvious that the iPod was shaping up to handle all forms of mobile entertainment (that iPhone was going to come along before '06 was out). At Clickwheel, the digital-comics company that had inspired my zeal, we were clear that the iPod was merely a first point of entry-- easier than mobile phones with their vast array of incompatible formats, and possibly a "back door" into the mobile market if the iPhone came along at the right time, but ultimately a way station in our journey toward ubiquity. Toward all handhelds.

Yes, I was... a... a... (sob) MOBILE HYPESTER.

Clickwheel was, and still is, a good idea, but ideas are measured by the enthusiasm they attract, and while I was at Clickwheel, our audience was far more interested in the individual strips we featured-- most of which had already made their names on the Internet-- than in the idea of comics on an iPod.

In aggregate, this still gave us a healthy download growth curve. But it was hard on our egos. It was like being the costume designer at a high school play-- of course the actors are going to get most of the praise, but you know, it would be nice if one or two parents mentioned the outfits...

I think that this is a problem not just for Clickwheel, but for the entire mobile industry. Mobile developers are focused on the box, mobile users are focused on the contents. And developers keep wondering and wondering why mobile users don't get excited about the box. It's not the user's job to get excited about the box. They don't merely think outside the box, they don't think of the box.

To them, THERE IS NO BOX.

But, of course, if you're reading this, there's a good chance you DO care about the box. Which is fine. Care. Take pride. Celebrate the box. As long as you always always always remember that your customers don't. And it is your job to help them get the things they DO care about-- then recede into invisibility.

I have another version of this essay for comics letterers. You can probably guess how it goes.

Speedlink 2007!

Back and overwhelmed! The end of the year saw the usual "year in review" meme, plus some violently clashing forecasts for the year ahead. I'll get to those in the next couple days, but let's take a quick look around at the now...

Among Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick's predictions for the new year in the worlds of "convergence and VoIP:" "Cable companies in the United States will use their partnership with Sprint to offer 'mobile entertainment,' but the cable companies will see little traction as just another third party mobile voice supplier." Yeah, that sounds about right.

An ideal event for anyone open to the vast networking possibilities available in the Ukraine. Seriously. The Ukraine. Apparently it's quite a market.

You like mobile TV, hence, you are a geek. Hence, the mobile-only Geek TV. Consume, you nerrrrrrrrds.

Hey, that Spider-Man franchise sure did great international business, didn't it? You can be pretty sure of that when its Malaysian ripoff gets its own mobile game.

Motricity and Cingular, those crazy kids, just might make it stick. I'm not ready to do in-depth analysis of the deal yet, but in general, this kind of stability is a sign of corporate confidence, which brings consumer confidence. Plus they're headquartered in my grandma's hometown, so I may get out to visit them, although I don't think Nana will be applying for a job.

Hey, kids! Mobile porn!

This intriguing Reuters piece argues that a bad year is coming for digital music, and furthermore, that it needs at least one bad year to become truly healthy. Better a small avalanche today than a giant one next year.

Who can resist an Iron Maiden poly ringtone? NOBODY, that's who! (Warning: link plays sound.)

Last and definitely not least, Mark Rutledge has some great thoughts on what he wants out of a ringtone. Sweet and charming and more valuable than half-a-dozen "industry projections." I wonder if he'd be interested in this ringtone-it-yourselfer?

Mobile And On Its Way...

Speedlinks return tomorrow!