• Whose Town Is This, Anyway?
    "Mobile community" is another one of wireless wonderland's deliberately amorphous terms. Nascent industries usually embrace hazy language because there is just too much damned VC money floating around. It is amazing how insubstantial ideas seem concrete after seeing them a few hundred times in Powerpoint presentations. Digital veterans will recall the "content, commerce, and community" trinity to which everyone bowed--but few executed very well--back in 1999.
  • Mobile Music: Color Me Unconvinced
    I have been playing with a range of wireless mobile music devices this week, from a WiFi-enabled MP3 player to both Sprint and Verizon's music services. I even tried to figure out Microsoft's press releases surrounding the upcoming Zune media player. After all of that, and even with having free reviewers' access to the complete libraries on all of these systems, my 30GB 5G iPod is the one I snatch from the table on my way out the door. My personal habits suggest that while music yearns to be portable, it doesn't necessarily need to be wireless.
  • Following The Mob Into The Shadows
    Most tech demos leave me pretty cold (that's because I am a jaded bastard), but last week Omar Hamoui, founder and CEO of AdMob, helped me launch my own mobile ad campaign on his network--and it definitely got my attention.
  • CTIA: But Where's My Thomas Pynchon Ringback?
    Expectations are always a bit low for the "smaller" CTIA conference held in the fall, and last week's gathering in Los Angeles did not disappoint. Few new and interesting products emerged from vendors, and if anything I detected a dialing back on the hype surrounding some of last year's "next big things."
  • The Big Mo
    As the CTIA wireless convention assembles here in Los Angeles this week, expect a number of significant announcements regarding ad-supported mobile content and services.
  • Vodcastic
    For all of the pomp, press, and PR that accompanies new distribution models for mobile video, I think the media critics are missing the real story--video podcasting. The creative action in mobile video is not taking place in the iTunes TV store but in the podcast area, where big and small media are experimenting nobly with the nano-movie format.
  • Let's Go Shopping
    Mobile phones almost certainly will serve as the bridge between Internet marketing and in-store experiences. Getting a brand's message into the store aisles is, of course, the dream of marketers everywhere, and retailers know how to charge a pretty penny for it. Imagine if the consumer could elect to bring her own choice messages, specials, and product information into the store? Screw those end-cap fees!
  • Time To Get In The Game?
    In-game advertising has been one of the most obvious entry points for the ad-supported game model, but until now I have seen more trials and promises than actual deployments. All according to who you ask, mobile gaming seems ripe for sponsor underwriting.
  • Just Browsing...
    After a long stretch of deserved ignominy, the mobile Web re-loaded this year in a genuinely viable form. I have been doing some handset browsing of my own in recent months to see if I can finally cozy up to the WAP experience.
  • Banners, You Bore Me
    A few weeks ago I praised the creativity of some of the early mobile marketing campaigns I was seeing, especially in the SMS realm. I spoke too soon, and I think I have to take it all back. I started browsing the new, sponsored world of WAP more intently last week, specifically seeking out mobile display ads to see what the state of the state is. Welcome back to 1997.
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