On the second weekend in May, Google announced the winners of the first round of the Android Developer Challenge. Among approximately 1800 projects 50 were chosen. They awarded mobile applications that were convincing in terms of innovation, originality and usefulness. Among the semifinalists was Zelfi with the interactive gaming platform JOYity.

At the end of Juli, after the second round, 20 finalists will be awarded for the enhancement of their application. They will receive a prize of in total 3.75 million dollars. Thus, a very good reason for putting much effort in the applications to optimize them.

These are the semifinalists and their applications:

AndroidScan - Jeffrey Sharkey

Beetaun - Sergey Gritsyuk and Dmitri Shipilov

BioWallet - Jose Luis Huertas Fernandez

BreadCrumbz - Amos Yoffe

CallACab - Konrad Huebner and Henning Boeger

City Slikkers - PoroCity Media and Virtual Logic Systems

Commandro - Alex Pisarev, Andrey Tapekha

Cooking Capsules - Mary Ann Cotter and Muthuselvam Ramadoss

Diggin - Daniel Johansson, Aramis Waernbaum, Andreas Hedin

Dyno - Virachat Boondharigaputra

e-ventr - Michael Zitzelsberger

Eco2go - Taneem Talukdar, Gary Pong, Jeff Kao and Robert Lam

Em-Radar - Jack Kwok

fingerprint - Robert Mickle

FreeFamilyWatch - Navee Technologies LLC

goCart - Rylan Barnes

GolfPlay - Inizziativa Networks

gWalk - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus ten Hagen, Christian Klinger, Marko Modsching, Rene Scholze

HandWx - Weathertop Consulting LLC

IMEasy - Yan Shi

Jigsaw - Mikhail Ksenzov

JOYity - Zelfi AG

LifeAware - Gregory Moore, Aaron L. Obrien, Jawad Akhtar

Locale - Clare Bayley, Christina Wright, Jasper Lin, Carter Jernigan

LReady Emergency Manager - Chris Hulls, Dilpreet Singh, Luis Carvalho, Phuong Nguyen

Marvin - Pontier Laurent

Mobeedo - Sengaro GmbH

Multiple Facets Instant Messenger - Virgil Dobjanschi

MyCloset - Mamoru Tokashiki

PedNav - RouteMe2 Technologies Inc.

Phonebook 2.0 - Voxmobili

PicSay - Eric Wijngaard

PiggyBack - Christophe Petit and Sebastien Petit

Pocket Journey - Anthony Stevens and Rosie Pongracz

Rayfarla - Stephen Oldmeadow

Safety Net - Michael DeJadon

SocialMonster - Ben Siu-Lung Hui and Tommy Ng

SplashPlay

Sustain- Keeping Your Social Network Alive - Niraj Swami

SynchroSpot - Shaun Terry

Talkplay - Sung Suh Park

Teradesk - José Augusto Athayde Ferrarini

The Weather Channel for Android - The Weather Channel Interactive Inc.

TuneWiki - TuneWiki Inc.

Wikitude-the Mobile Travel Guide - Philipp Breuss

Writing Pad - ShapeWriter Inc.

First and foremost, there are games that take advantage of cell phone tracking via GPS. Especially interesting in this context is the combination of different features from the fields gaming and social networking. Some of the game titels do not offer any information on the applications themselves. Thus, let’s look forward to finding out what applications belong to the cryptic names.

It is remarkable that relatively few companies qualified for the second round. In addition, just 46 names of the 50 winners of the first round have been announced. The names of 4 misterious participants are still unknown to the public. Obviously, these 4 want to work on their applications without anybody knowing about it. This makes the second part of the challenge even more thrilling.

A short presentation of the individual applications is available on http://code.google.com/android/images/adc1r1_deck.pdf.

Do you know that? The ride to the house of your best friends takes longer than expected because of the traffic, and you just want to let her know… or your mobile phone is ringing, while you are driving and it could be something important… You do not get along with the directions, so you call someone to guide you via mobile phone… In these moments your handsfree device is often either at home or still in the shop, since you did not buy one as you normally do not talk on the phone in the car anyway.

From April 2004 on, Germans talking on the phone in the car without handsfree device will not only be sanctioned with a fine of 30 Euros; the fine has been increased by 10 Euros, and in addition, you get one point in the Central Register of Traffic Offenders. The fact that talking on the phone in the car can distract is clear to everyone of us and has even been researched: A driver talking on the phone manages a car worse than a driver with 0.8 per mill blood alcohol level.

However, you are not only sanctioned when talking on the phone: You just have to hold the mobile phone in your hands, e.g. in order to find out what time it is, or to read a text message. The driver of an articulated lorry was sentenced to pay a fine of 100 Euros, because he was looking up a telephone number in his private mobile phone. He wanted to call the number with his business mobile that possessed a handsfree device. The judges, nevertheless, were of the opinion that even just holding a mobile phone in your hand is clearly a traffic hazard. One can argue if law is not too strict at this point: Is it more dangerous to have a glance at your mobile or to hold it in your hand for a short period of time than eating, drinking or changing a CD in the car? Perhaps it should also be forbidden to take children along in the car. After all, they could distract the driver.

The final judgement ist not very just in this concern: If the driver had had a look at a note in order to read the number, he probably would not have been sanctioned. My personal opinion is that distraction cannot be avoided completely. Often the mobile phone is not the source of distraction, even though you are only sanctioned if that is the case. Why am I sanctioned if I am completely lost and need someone to guide me via mobile phone, while others host picnics in the car, and raid unabashedly the picnic basket while driving without having to pay a fine…?

Undisputed, however, is that whatever activity one performs while driving, it will always distract. What is left to say is that with regard to your own security and the security of others, one should minimize the use of the mobile phone in the car. This applies to all other possible activities in the car apart from driving, e.g. rummaging around in the glove compartment. Who is not convinced by the security argument in connection with mobile phones and driving should just think of the fines and the points in the Central Register of Traffic Offenders. This does not only apply to Germany, but to nearly all European countries. In Greece, for example, you are sanctioned with a fine of up to 150 Euros for a short conversation on the mobile phone.

Cyclists as well are not spared in Germany: They risk a fine of 25 Euros, when caught. However, they are not sanctioned with points for phone conversations on the bike. Some people, however, wonder how keeping the balance and talking on the phone at the same time works. Statistics show that in Austria one out of three talk on the phone while riding, and every other cyclist reads text messages right away on the phone. Thus, the stunt is obviously possible.

Much I’ve written about it, but never been confronted with it in reality. Last Monday was my first time. I became an eye-witness of a mobile marketing campaign. To be exact, I myself was the recipient of a mobile coupon.

I’m sitting guilelessly, alternately listening and snoozing, in a lecture at university. Suddenly my mobile phone is vibrating. I expect a friend and open the received message. But the sender is neither friend, nor sister, nor mum. It’s a well-known pizza fast food restaurant chain. “Sweet fun at ****. With every purchase and this SMS you’ll get Mini Donuts for free as dessert (…).”

Aha. If I wanted to eat pizza today, this locality maybe would have developed into my pizzeria of choice. But unfortunately I’m not walking through the city center right now, but sitting in an auditorium on the campus and I don’t have in mind to go to the center. Even there’s a free dessert waiting for me there. My next thought is: from where do they have my mobile phone number after all? I can’t remember having filled in a form for this restaurant.

So the message is promptly landing on the digital heap of rubbish. Lost effort and dough for the company that is popular for caloric cheese crust. In which way I’d have behaved when I had really been to the city center? For sure I’d have been upset and looked around and asked myself why this message just now had arrived on my mobile phone. An ordinary standard message without any nick-nack, no Bluetooth transfer. I’d have felt watched and strange. And given the pizza baker a wide berth. Maybe, maybe not, but I definitely wouldn’t have redeemed the coupon as a spontaneous act of defiance. Because the pizza chain shouldn’t have my mobile phone number.

I feel by myself, about what I had always only written: permission is the be-all and end-all in Mobile Marketing. If I had a “coupon newsletter” of all restaurants in Mainz, I’d have felt this message as something positive. But in this way I’m angry and indignant at the pizza chain. Hence, as an advertising effort this unwanted coupon was a lead balloon. One thing all companies should realize: who doesn’t want to ruin the own image, should offer something to the customer that he can fetch actively. In no case force something on somebody, but rely on the known pull procedure. Mobile phone spam is death branding.

Have you ever received a message from the cheese crust baker? What was it like? In which way did you react to it? Were you happy, annoyed or even indignant? I’d really like to know!

Or: Money Makes the World Go Round

The rich are preferredly served. A bitter truth, becoming clearer and more apparent also in Germany. Private patients get faster doctor’s appointments, children from financially weak families can’t afford academic studies, even the main burden of taxes is on the shoulders of middle class that is already threatened by social decline, and not on those called “super-rich”.

A trend running through the whole society, and soon through mobile phone industry, too. Actually, the technology bringing this about sounds harmless: SNAPin. But it prevents mobile phone users from getting the help they usually would have expected.

Dialing the service hotline of your provider, on your display appears a self-help menu instead of a dial-up to a call center. So, still more questions instead of an answer. The first mobile phone provider to use the new technology will be Vodafone. But other providers certainly also won’t be hesitant to squander less money because of customers from which they can’t get much cash anyway.

In the end the situation will be like that: A financially strong customer gets the direct connection to a competent customer consultant, the less money bringing customers get only help to help themselves. If that will really help them, is more than questionable.

Another quite different proposal for a more differentiated customer treatment suggests consultancy Arthur D. Little: the one with a cheap rate could have the worse connection quality and be the first thrown out off the net in case of a net capacity overload. Or doesn’t even get into, while solvent exclusive users always get the best piece of the net cake. Until now that’s only a suggestion, but for one or the other Austrian mobile phone service provider “imaginable”.

In this case, the now rarely seen call boxes would surely experience a comeback because the present advance of mobile phones, being available anytime and anywhere, would end in smoke. But that doesn’t matter to the providers. The oligarches will surely bring cash and the lower classes get inferior goods for some cents.

Brave New Mobile Phone World!

The technology wave is increasing, more and more mounting up, racing across the digital oceans and is never standing still. Devices and possibilities said to be science fiction just five years ago, are already real. They ease people’s lives, but at the same time they create new compulsions and demands. Demands, which many people feel as sheer excessive demands. Development is proceeding faster and faster because the conditions and accesses for creative heads, also in the field of mobile, have become easier, while the required know-how is becoming more and more complex.

Megan Fox reports of this year’s Computers in Libraries conference (CIL) about current trends in the mobile field, which are not only relevant to programmers, but the whole mobile phone industry. Here are some key points of this appraisal:

Not only the big, high resolution displays and memory capabilities of current smartphones provide a huge area for development. Open Source operating systems like Android, OpenMoko or Ubuntu allow developers today to turn their ideas into applications, detached from technical bottlenecks.

The connection between the physical and virtual world is becoming closer and more fluent: the mobile phone camera makes it possible to bring pictures from reality to the digital world wide data highway and to discover additional information about these pictures. 2D-Barcodes on billboards take the consumers into a virtual area in which they can learn more about a product.

The interaction between human and device, or human and human via a device is becoming more and more sophisticated. Programs such as Jott turn spoken notes into text, which also can be sent, by a few words, to any person via e-mail, because „Life is busy“. Just a few days ago Yahoo improved its search and added voice command.
Room for improvement other ways of interaction have: touch and gestical control lower the difficulty of using tiny displays and keys.

Mobile is different. By now, everybody has understood this and that’s why content is more and more conformed to the demands of mobile phones. Because of these demands, reams of companies have emerged which are specialized in making content appropriate to mobile by order of companies. Two of them are, for example, roundpoint or Mobi site galore.

Also mobile web content differs from “ordinary” web content. Laborious and for most people unthinkable, is to read a whole book at their home pc. Mobile e-books are arriving: still they’re more regarded as a major trend of crazy Japan, but worldwide and in Europe as well, the number of providers is growing. A real book doesn’t fit in every handbag, but a mobile phone does - it is always handy.

Mobile Search in turn is not equal to Online Search. Mobile search needs as results not more links but information bits. Again Yahoo has spotted this need and offers, partly, in the first step of search direct results. Besides searching via voice command is another possibility to attain information text messaging: diet.com for example offers a nutrition service, through which the mobile phone owner sends an SMS with the name of a product of a big restaurant chain to a number and then gets an answer SMS with the nutritive value of this food.

Developments being reality already, at least partly, and those still remaining dreams of the future, according to Megan Fox are:
E-ink paper, an alternative to power-guzzling LCD displays: once a document is loaded, it needs no further electricity to keep on being displayed. Already coveted among managers is the beamer integrated in the mobile phone. It is able to use virtually every wall as a projection screen for presentations or any imaginable rubbish. Many a person is by now afraid of “visual spam”. Already available are 3D wraparound glasses that are e.g. connected to a DVD player and project the movie onto the retina, while contact lenses wirelessly connected to mobile devices which receive texts and information à la Terminator are still an idea of scientists.

A pen remembering everything you scribble on a piece of paper can already be bought. Every written thing is saved and can be transferred to the pc, either in hand writing or block letters (Fly Fusion Pentop, Digiscribble).

Sheer science-fiction and at the same time a horrible vision provides the “tattoo mobile phone” – a mobile phone implemented in the arm, obtaining its energy from the own bloodstream. The own mobile phone is already, at least psychologically, a part of most of people. But turning it into a physical part? An emetic vision. Some time, it will be possible – hopefully not too soon.

Once again somebody discovered that the Mobile Games market isn’t growing as exponentially as the Gaming industry might wish. This somebody this time was Matt Gillis, Senior Vice President Publishing at Capcom Games, who moderated the discussion forum „What’s moving in Mobile Games?“ at ICE Conference 08. Of this Ryan Coleman reported last week. A scapegoat had to be found – was the poor merchandising to blame? No, the panel agreed, this was not the reason. Who or what is then bearing the brunt of guilt that Mobile Gaming is growing like a water lily in the steppe? It’s the “viral aspects of the industry - or rather, the total lack thereof”, stated the panel at the ICE.

What’s the situation, apart from Merchandising Games, considering the marketing of mobile games? Here, it wasn’t true either to call the marketing poor. The one abandoning oneself to the lunacy of still tuning in a TV music channel can, by no means, escape from the omnipresence of advertised mobile games, ringtones and wallpapers. If this sort of advertising can be called “top quality” remains to be seen, but it seems to be profitable.
Numerous magazines are teeming with full-page advertisements, packed full of small pictures, all promising huge mobile entertainment. Candy packages are yelling at you: “send mobile game XY to 123456 and get yourself the free game XY for your mobile phone”. Those On-Pack Promotions have been the scoop in the physical marketing world for a considerable time.
In the internet, the consumer might have the biggest trouble to overlook websites offering mobile games. Search engines, banners, Google Adwords – not to find a gaming portal would be the bigger challenge. There’s no deficit in marketing campaigns, at least no numerical.

Still standards are missing, a well-known and much bewailed issue. But viral marketing needs more than only the perfect technical conditions. It needs the novelty, the product per se, which is so unique, ingenious and fascinating that everybody wants to show it to their friends, no matter if they’re 14, 40 or 74 years old. Great graphics don’t help a campaign when the principle of play behind it is just the 10.000^th sudoku variant. It needs a killer application.

Viral marketing of free mobile phone games is already today not that difficult. The channel is there, the mobile phone is at its core communication. A conspicuous “tell a friend” button in the game menu from which the player can access the phone book, followed by a funny text with a link to the game – if then there would NOT appear a site with a thousand-columned drop-down menu to chose mobile phone producer and model first, but a direct download link instead, the chance for a new player was nearly 100 percent. Provided that the game is amazing. But this was the subject of the game designers and the most difficult part of the campaign.

A few days ago I found a small box in my office. Inside a mobile phone packed in sand and nails. A what? A mobile phone inside a plastic bag full of sand and nails. There was a hand written letter: “Dear Andreas, attached is a very tough phone. I’m curious if you can break it”. The writer is somebody called Sven from the brand agency Kamps Markenberatung in Berlin.

I do not know Sven, but after checking back via Xing my suspicions are affirmed: I’m the “victim” of a viral marketing kampaign. I should be so much interested in the sandy mobile phone to blog about it. As you can read this, it worked…

The mobile phone is a Sonim XP1. Quite big, chunky, and ugly. But that’s part of the specs, because it is the toughest outdoor cell phone. At least that’s what the producer claims. I have cleaned it with floating water and thrown it on concrete several times. Did not seem to hurt the phone.

But hey: you send a mobile phone to a supplier of mobile games, and the phone is not cappable of executing Java?!?!?! Ok, maybe it’s good for doing something else? Maybe for phone calls? Checking the specs: yes, it can do that. So all I have to do is sync my contacts. Oh, there is no Outlook sync? Any other software? How do I get my contacts into the phone? Typeing in? What?

Ok, that was a neat marketing campaign, that would succeed if the product is a good one. As there is a tendancy to have two or three mobile phones, I would have taken it with me sometimes. But I will never ever type in all my contacts! I do not have time for that and I would rather take a cheap phone with Outlook sync and I would replace it, after it has fallen into a puddle.

There are other victims of the campaign in Germany:  Florian and Nico received such a box as well.

So what should I do now with the phone? My girl friend said she has managed to break every electronic device yet, should I give it to her for testing? If we do not break it the agency want’s to get the phone back. That’s not cool - if you want bloggers to write about it, they should at least have some benefit.

In the last eight years, different banks again and again tried to establish banking via mobile phone. Indeed, the only ones interested in it seemed to be the banks themselves. Even in October 2007, the thought of mobile banking made the US-Americans still yawn.

With the beginning of the new year, or maybe even a little earlier, the relation seems to have changed. While last fall mobile phone users still reacted in a bored way to mobile banking, currently 16 percent are busy with not only checking their account status on the go, but also conducting transactions. And of those not being busy right now, more than 30 percent are interested in getting it started. This claims a late-breaking study of the market research institution Harris Interactive.

In October 2007 only nine percent used their mobile phone for banking. This means an increase of seven percent within a few months, so nearly a doubling of the number of users. Is this realistic? Has, after several failures, finally the time for mobile banking come?

Other results of the study make your ears prick up as well: 20 percent of the respondents would like to use their mobile phone as “mobile wallet” in future. Also this is surprising, given that mobile payment mainly in the developing world has rapidly gained popularity until now.

In Germany, the status quo is still obscure. While in April Key Pousttchi, business data processing specialist at the University of Augsburg, held that mobile banking rather has to be understood as “information” than as “transaction”, in October a research team of the TU Hamburg-Harburg proclaimed much more with the title of their study: “Mobile Banking evolves into a standard application in Germany”.

The online magazine “Computerwoche” wrote “Mobile Banking takes a new run” at the beginning of February. The German providers O₂ and Vodafone announced a mobile payment system at the end of January. In the US already 25 percent of the asked users who have a mobile internet access use their mobile phone to buy goods and services. Will this number be transferred to Germany soon?

The biggest barrier is, according to Harris Interactive, the fear of sensitive financial data’s security. 63 percent of the respondents are afraid of becoming victims of scam and fraud through the transmission of data, 61 percent fear losing the mobile phone and with it losing their personal financial information.

Mobile technology of course is being improved, but with the professionalization of the mobile software, mainly with smartphones, the probability for malware is increasing, too. On the other hand, smartphone owners are much more enthusiastic mobile bankers. And most of the surfers also don’t stop banking via PC just because of possible fraud.

Entirely clearly there must be distinguished between mobile banking and mobile payment. While mobile payment for sure is going to establish itself and particularly will replace small coins, mobile banking, despite of growing popularity, in the long term probably has to find itself a place in the shadows and stay a phenomenon limited to a small, very busy part of society. Financial affairs so urgent that they have to be done while away from home, are simply very seldom.

German Ministry of Transport Allows Mobile Phone Usage in Planes

One relaxing advantage the plane has had up to now, compared to other means of transport: you couldn’t be unnerved neither by too loud headphones nor by music-like noises from mobile phone speakers of minors. Any gadget just had to stay turned off.

This in the true sense of the word heavenly especialness is now coming to an end, at least as regards the legal basis: The Ministry of Transport recently allowed the usage of mobile phones, notebooks equipped with W-LAN, etc. above the clouds. Mobile telephony becomes harmless for the pilot’s radio communication through a specific station installed in the plane, connecting mobile phones to their nets with the lowest possible transmission power.

Flight safety is to remain first priority, and so every airline may decide on their own if their passengers are allowed to use their mobiles. For the time being, the German airlines only want to allow sending messages and surfing via W-LAN, but no telephony. Not due to technical dangers, but because “the majority of guests feels disturbed by the release of mobile phones”. This says Lufthansa spokesman Michael Lamberty. Of course the Ministry didn’t think of annoying adolescents while planning the new law – primarily business people should benefit from the stratospheric communication.

Would it really get around to a “chattering release”, the pharmaceutical companies would also benefit – when stewardesses ask their passengers for ‘coffee, tea, valerian or valium?’. As if flying wasn’t already nerve-racking enough, we’d probably have to stand the annoying business jabbering of the seatmate, the latest blasphemies of the chick at the back seats and the booming techno beats from the headphones of the man in front of us who is going to suffer an irreparable tinnitus in not more than three years later. Unfortunately way too many people are lacking the sensitiveness for a social mobile phone use. Luckily, these horror scenarios will stay unreal for the time being.

So - enjoy your flight!

Australian study reveals astounding findings

Trouble maker. Gadfly. Money pit. Disturber. Bugger. There are many terms for mobile phones and just as many reproaches behind them. Up to now also academic research has acted on the assumption that the mobile not only creates blessing and security but makes e.g. work intrude into leisure time and family and by doing this, severely disturbs the balance between work and private life.

Connection to home

The exact opposite seems to be the case if a recent Australian study is to be believed. It points out that mobile phones are predominantly used to stay in touch with the immediate family, not to deal with business after quitting time.

Men talk more „officially“

Nearly half (48%) of the 1.358 respondents use their mobile phones predominantly to contact family, 26 per cent to contact friends. Job-related calls are far less important (16%). There turns out a striking difference between women and men: More than one third of all interviewed men (38%) use their mobile to do job- or study-related calls, but only 11% of all interviewed women. Furthermore, women are more hesitant in taking their mobiles on vacation to talk to co-workers. Among the different occupation groups, predominantly managers tend to keep themselves up-to-date about current business at home via mobile phone.

Creating Balance

Only three per cent of all respondents advance the opinion that the mobile phone influences the balance between work and private life in a negative way. 43 per cent don’t feel any influence at all, neither a positive nor a negative one. More than half of the respondents even believe that the mobile phone helps them to find a balance between family and work life.

Just an unconscious adaption?

The ability to be reached at any place and any time – this pressure doesn’t seem to impress the Australians any more. Or have they meanwhile unconsciously adapted to the changes and regard the blurring of private life and profession more as balance than as intrusion? Can the study’s results be also applied to Germany? Does the habituation to the permanent availability, slowly creeping in, change our perception? Two years ago in Great Britain still 41 per cent of the employees felt pressured by their company mobile phone.

Probably it depends on the job and most of all, on every single person. I, personally, feel more reassured than supervised with my mobile in the bag. The option of turning it off to have some piece and quiet is always given, no matter if a caller later on nags about it.