TXT Jono

The Herald are promoting their new m.nzherald.co.nz site for iPhones today (click the banner to go there). The site even comes with distracting flash banners, neat. One cool feature seems to be that you can indicate how many stories you’d like to see for each category that is displayed. Being NZ’s premier destination for online news I wonder how much of a threat this will be to Vlive advertising. The target markets are totally different and the Herald would have their own pool of clients lining up to be promoted in this space.

Less than a week after the 3G iPhone went on sale around the globe we have NZ iPhone specific sites appearing. Xero announced theirs 2 months ago and now Kiwibank have launched one. I can’t imagine they will have any significant volume quite yet but it’s a great story and positioning tool for them. If I was a Kiwibank customer and I had a 3G iPhone i’d use it!

I found this cool site today. It’s a viral video for Telstra in Australia. They are promoting QR code readers on their 3G handset range.

If you have the means, then scan the code they create in the video. Otherwise head to www.qrious.com.au where they explain very simply what a QR code is and why you should use them. The video content on their mobile site appears to be locked down and exclusive to Telstra customers only. They are doing this by limiting the IP range and the error page looks a bit rough. They could have done a better job of explaining that and or promoting that it’s Telstra only and where I could go to check out their handset range. Perhaps an opportunity lost or maybe i’m just splitting hairs.

They also appear to have partnered with Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as two of their demo’s link through to their mobile internet sites. Curiously the URL was m.mobilecodes.smh.com.au (which seemed unnecessarily long) so after a quick search it would seem they are being given a hand by Nokia who have the site http://mobilecodes.nokia.com which is also a great site to learn about 2d codes/mobile readers and how to generate your own codes right there and then. It won’t be long before you start seeing these pop up around town, in print or even on the odd business card.

The answer: when you’re looking through tinted glasses. I’m not going to bite the hand that feeds me (being an official Vf third party supplier) but my gut reaction when I heard Vodafone were implementing adaption technology to resize full sized web pages for my small screen was not one of delight. There has been no official negative backlash here but it seems the South Africans have realised what affect this has. Read about it here “Vodacom - broke the internet”

Google also have a similar tool but theirs can be turned on and off in user settings.

On the plus side using adaption technology does make highly graphic sites a lot quicker to load and much less data intensive.

See for yourself using the example www.asb.co.nz which is not designed for small screens.

ASB using Wifi (left) and using Vodafone gateway (right) and using Google with filter on (below)

The next example is the TVNZ portable site which is specifically designed for PDA’s and mobiles but doesn’t start with m.url.co.nz or end with url.mobi which means it gets adapted.

Left is original, right is Vodafone adapted.

What does this mean for brands? It means you have to be careful when developing your mobile internet sites so that they conform to the right guidelines and don’t get served lighter/different than you intended.

LG ran a National Texting Championship in the states. Follow this link to the site and watch the video on their website of the finals.

Promomagazine give a great outline of the whole campaign here detailing how it all worked.

Are you always connected? Probably not as much as this guy.

It’s part of a Google promotion called Mobile Tricks.

This next clip is just plain crazy. I bet you’ve never seen an Iphone do this before…

“watch this… I think I’m gonna push the smoothie button”

I like this concept a great deal. Imagine you leave your phone behind at a bar/cafe/taxi only to return and find it gone for good. Some lucky punk gets a free phone by dropping their SIM card into it.

Well if you’d installed this great piece of software then your phone would SMS you or your other nominated contact and you could track down the thief. It’s called Gadget Trak in the states but Bak2U in Singapore where I believe it was developed. Apparently it works on phones, ipods and even laptops have their own version. Very handy if your the type of person who easily misplaces things or has an expensive device they don’t want to lose.

m.trademe.co.nz

The wait is finally over. NZ’s largest internet destination has created a mobile site! I have yet to look around it thoroughly although it seems to cover the basics and is very easy to use at first glance.

It will be interesting to see how much hype this creates in the mass media and how soon Trademe can start putting web banners on there.

I do like that they’ve chosen m.trademe.co.nz instead of trademe.mobi as more people would recognise it.

There is a very low key announcement on their main site here

The cunning amongst you will notice the login page isn’t secure https or doesn’t appear to be on the surface. I’ve asked on their forum so will see if anyone responds.

This BBC story combines two of my favourite things. Cars and gadgets.

linky linky

The BBC has a story about a company aiming to pit gamers against the professionals. iOpener Media has a patented system that sucks in real-time GPS data from racing events and pumps it out to compatible games consoles and PCs. This means you can race in real-time against the like of Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi. Sweet!