Having often claimed that (mobile) telephone networks are already the ultimate social network, I’m trying a little experiment.
Having a personal page tied to my mobile number seems like a good way of eternally tagging myself.
So this page sort of acts as a mobile business-card / vCard / shared-items / presence / personal dashboard.
(I currently pull in RSS feeds and my Jaiku presence to give you the idea)
But imagine if… browsers had access to contact lists, and contact applications could launch browsers… now that’s interesting. I could even see operators providing such sites to discourage churn.
Ha ha! Maybe just a bit of fun. But if not, you saw it here first 
- or -
“Don’t vote for Hillary; it might break FreeBase!”
If you are lucky enough to run Windows, open Notepad, type “Bush hid the facts” (without the quotes), and save the file.
Open it back up again …indeed, the facts are hidden.
(NB: I find this completely amazing. Why the hell would it do this?)
Results in from the latest domain auction at Sedo:
1. music.mobi – $616,000
2. games.mobi – $401,500
3. sports.mobi – $101,000
Very exciting. This proves that there’s significant economic heat building up in the mobile web. A medium starting grow up.
It’s a shame that some people will undoubtedly whinge about the fact that this is pretty amazing income for something as simple as a domain name.
But most importantly to me, and, I hope, to the entire mobile community, is the fact that this is helping fund all the other stuff we do. It certainly doesn’t feel like money for nothing.
Ever wondered who pays for the essential dev.mobi, ready.mobi and …Device Atlas? Answer: the bidders in these auctions. And we’ll continue to do our best to make the community benefit from it.
(and PS: yes, we will be making sure these winning sites are .mobi compliant)
Inspiring stuff (in a way)
And thanks to Ajit for the link.
We have search specialists Taptu coming to Dublin to present and sponsor our December meeting. Thanks guys.
And for anyone else in the Dublin or London area who would like food, drink, mobile conversation and Christmas cheer (as well as this year’s hottest news in mobile search), please see more details here, sign up here, or simply mail me.
See you there!
Following our little competition last week, we’re amazed to learn that 6 of our sites have been selected for the “Best of the Internet” section of one of our national operators’ portal.
Well, that was just in our spare time. I wonder what we could do if we really tried.
(Although I do wonder what that says about today’s mobile web… )
I did my part and updated MetaJam.mobi. It now includes musical artists and albums along with movie and actor pages. And I’ve earned a healthy 68 cents on AdMob already. Bling!
The folks at dotMobi are a fairly creative bunch, so we thought it would be fun to run a site building competition amonst the staff.
Competing in two categories – my engineering team vs everyone else – the staff were all in the running for two shiny iPhones. Plus, of course, the opportunity to try and avoid bricking them on Irish networks.
The competition has just finished. All in all, not bad work for a few weeks of our (little) spare time.
A quick fanfare for Ronan Cremin (of http://find.mobi fame), who built quite simply one of the coolest – or should I say most useful - mobile apps I’ve seen in a long time. SVG maps! PNG trains! MP3 dictation! It’s all in there
You can get to the full list of sites directly on your mobile at http://metajam.mobi/m/ …here are some of the best of the bunch:
The non-technical category (i.e. marketing, finance and the executive team)
Bear in mind (and I am sure no-one in this category minds me telling you) that none of them know how to write HTML or perhaps even recognise it
Amy Mischler; mobile yoga
http://mobiyogi.mobi
Caroline Greer; ICANN travel log
http://icanntravel.mobi
Gesu Sood (category winner); fun on the run
http://gesusood.mobi
Norbert Grey; “Gone to the dogs”
http://mtld.mobi/team/ngrey/
Zico Moro; Dublin city guide
http://mtld.mobi/team/zmoro
The technical category (i.e. the engineering team)
These guys know a little magic – or so they assure me, at least
Cyril Couffignal; Send picture-messages via email to a web gallery
http://uspot.mobi
James Pearce; a movie database for your pocket (disqualified for being the judge)
http://metajam.mobi
Jo Rabin; A W3C test tool for mobile
http://rabin.mobi/dmplbit
Ronan Cremin (category winner); how to commute in Dublin City
http://tjamm.mobi
Ruadhan O’Donoghue; directions and traffic information
http://Go4th.mobi
Stephen Stewart; The dotMobi Advent Calendar
http://1.61803.mobi/advent/
What creativity and invention! Yes, it turns out that there are lots of uncharted opportunities for the mobile medium.
When motivation and decent tools are put into the hands of people who have interesting ideas, you never know what will happen.
(I was just typing in <style> and <select> as the time ran out)
Cool fun. And hard. Anyone for a mobile version? WML, say.
It’s here. Number 100. I’m linked. Thanks
