Social Hallucinations

When I Look at You I See...

We look at mobile phone 150 times per day! The most time goes to ordinary things like messaging, voice calls and clock!

Here is more detailed break down:

Messaging related 23 times per day
Voice call related 22 times per day
Clock 18 times per day
Music Player 13 times per day
Gaming 12 times per day
Social Media 9 times per day
Alarm 8 times per day
Camera 8 times per day
News and alerts 6 times per day
Calendar 5 times per day
Search 3 times per day
Other random web browsing 3 times per day
Charging phone 3 times per day
Voice mail 1 times per day
Other miscellaneous uses 10 times per day

Source: The Annual Mobile Industry Numbers and Stats Blog by Tomi Ahonen 

 

Nomophobia

In a few days I am taking away on the vacation into the wild. I have been feeling kind of anxious the past few days and today I've just realized that it is simply because I will be visiting places where there is no mobile coverage. What scared me is not the fact that I will be disconnected, but the fact that I will not be able to Google things up when I need a help or guidance. It is rather scary how dependent I've become on the instant access to the information. I apparently suffer from nomophobia - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Photo by Foomandoonian

 

For nomophobics access is everything. There are many companies who utilize this and provides the solutions like: iPavement - the first intelligent pavement with its own operating system and suite of apps that embeds WiFi hotspots in the street, or a "soda" machine that dispenses internet access to mobile phone in the public space by Coca Cola - Coke Happiness Refill. The name says it all.

Well, it all looks amazing but I guess it will be healthy for me to try to face my nomophobia and enjoy my time off without instant sharing with the world.

The Evolution of TV Screen

The second screen experience is increasingly taking over the living rooms with more and more people expanding their passive TV viewing patters with tablets or phones. Microsoft is trying to fill the gap with Xbox SmarGlass. The whole idea is about enhancing the viewing experience, make it more interactive and interesting. Multiscreen experience represents a great opportunity for advertisers and it's going to be exciting to see how brands embrace this new behavior and deliver on it.

 

QR codes Can Be Great When Done Right

QR codes are the new IT thing to have. Wherever you look there are posters, products, ads with QR code on. Looks nice and so tempting. You wonder what hides behind, you scan....and there is the disappointmend. Because what you discover are bad mobile sites, where apprently on one bother to think about what experience to offer once you bothered to scan. QR codes are cheap way to pretend the business is going digital, mobile, whatever.

But there are more and more exciting campaigns seeing the light showing how the simple technolgy can extend brand experience, enhance the campaign and make people have fun.

There are particularly two I like a lot:

Guiness and their QR cup. QR cup gets visible and readable only when filled with the right beer - Guiness. Once you scan, you can tweet, you get coupons and special promotions and Guiness content. Sounds like fun. After a few hours in the pub, any kind of enterteinment is needed ;)

 

This QR code campaign comes from South Korea and it is genius. QR codes get activiated by sun, from 12 to 1 p.m. and its goal is to drive sales in a E-mart store while there is normally a significant drop in sales. Scanning QR code within this period of time gives people access to Sunny Promotions and make them shop, smile and delivers results! This case shows that relevant, easy accessible solution that creates value for people always works!

 

 

 

Improving the Shopping Experience

What do people want from brands? Utility and good experience. There is plenty of different services trying to deliver on it. Here is one fantastic example that integrates mobile device, check-in mechanics, coupons with the shopping experience - Shopkick. Shopkick is a hardware and application system to be installed in stores. It rewards people for just coming into the store, adds social sharing and customized offers overview to you while you are in the store. Judging from the video showing how the product works, Shopkick makes the whole coupon and check-in idea more social and more fun in relation to retail experience.

It opens the new opportunities for building loyalty and closer relationship between customer and retailers, where the latter one is not just products provider but improves the whole shopping experience.

Read the whole article and see the video on Techcrunch

 

Augmented Reality

Technology is a glittering lure that means nothing without contributing significantly to our life, either making it easier or more exciting. The more technological development progress, the more exciting opportunities appear. As mentioned before it is all about the idea and the right context to use it and make it useful. This is one impressive example, called object-based media from Touch - a research group exploring the way mobile phones communicate with the physical world. One of their latest experiments involves attaching an RFID reader to an iPhone. When the phone is close enough to an RFID tag attached to certain objects, different actions or windows are triggered on the phone.

iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.

Via PSFK

Good Ideas 2009 - Mobile

Instead of preaching about 2009 being mobile year, PSFK talk about ideas on how you can use mobile as communication medium. The key take out is "be usefull".

Social Hallucinations Goes Mobile

Thanks to Neil I've found a smart service that allows you to create mobile site for your blog for free. It is called MoFuse.

I like applications that a so easy to set up.

Here is link to Social Hallucinations mobile site: http://socialhallucinations.mofuse.mobi/ . There is also a MoFuse badge in the sidebar.

mobile internet, MoFuse

3G Telephony and User Experience

Sometime ago, I have read an article in the IHT an article about 3G telephony. There were billions dollars spent on "third - generation" licenses, in the pursuit of the "technology oriented" consumer, who was suppose to use without limits many features 3G telephony has to offer: email, Internet, video calls, music, videos, just name it. 3G were suppose to become our mobile window to the world. But the truth is that most people use their cell phones just as they did in 2000 - to make calls and send text messages. They use their phones to communicate with their peers.

So much money has been invested in promotion of the 3G services but it didn't get the people to run to stores and book plane tickets and have a video chat with mother over phone. Why? I guess it can be a good example of lack of consumers insights and understanding the relation between humans and technology.  Apparently the world isn't ready to put the everyday matters and connections into a small phone. The companies missed the important part of "user experience" .

   

‘When we talk about the “user experience” the main emphasis is often on an individual’s experience with a particular technology. Even with a purported social technology, for example a social networking site, we still tend to create for the individual’s interaction with the site (how does someone find their friend, how do they access this site easily from a mobile device).

   

However, designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.

   

Of course designing for an experience between people doesn’t mean ignoring the interaction with the device, but it calls for taking something else into account. That “something else” is often another person or people. How do we, as developers of communication technologies, make the communications more interesting, more exciting and more stimulating for the receiver? How do we help our users meet the needs of the other people in their social network? How do we create a shared experience that is equally compelling for all participating parties? When we begin to think like this, we truly start to think of designing social software, social applications, social media.’ 

   

                Crysta Metcalf of Motorola (Found at experientia)

Tags: 3G, Mobile Phones, Consumers

Intel about Future Communication

Wireless future according to Intel ...it lets you be. Funny enough, all phone devices look like iPhone :-)

Tags: wireless, intel, future, communicaiton

Demand for MobileTV is growing

eMarketer forecasts that the total number of mobile TV and video subscribers globally will rise from 40 million in 2006 to over 750 million in 2011...

A

..and worldwide paying subscribership will go up to nearly 200 million, and revenue will reach nearly $13 billion.

There is optimistic forecast I'd say and there are some money to earn.

But what interested me most in the eMarketer article was a 2006 Nokia survey that showed pretty significant differences in phone usage preferences amongst 18.35 years old. Not only the enormous gap between 46% Saudi Arabians and 3% Japanese in  interest to watch Mobile TV.  What caught my attention is generally very low percentage of Japanese who would like to use mobile phone to anything else but sending and receiving emails (76%).

I must admit I had a picture in my head of Japanese youth using mobile phone to everything, music, photography, TV, Internet...but to my surprise those features seams to be the way more interesting for Chinese people or Europeans.

The table below shows how important is finding the right business model for mobile services and platforms within every country / culture. Despite globalization and uniting power of Internet, the differences grow as fast as similarities.

Tags: mobile, wireless, TV, Nokia, research

iPhone - It's Official

Finally, iPhone has arrived! After many rumors, Apple has announced its new so long awaited product today - iPhone mobile phone.

The iPhone is a gorgeous little device. It is very sexy and it includes a 3.5 inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard, a 2 megapixel camera, runs EDGE + WIFI (connects automatically), runs OSX and has plenty of killer features, like for example motion sensor that rotates photos when you turn the phone, and voice mails displayed visually that you can click on and listen to.

iPhone ships Europe in fourth quarter of 2007, it will be available in 4 GB ($499) and 8 GB ($599).

I like the way it looks and what it can. I was wondering for a while why actually iPhone doesn't support 3G, but it may be Apple has skipped the middle phase between traditional 2G access to Internet via mobile phones and WIFI. And has chosen to use so called 2.5G EDGE and WIFI. Clever? Looking at the problems 3G telephony is coping with across the Europe, it is a clever solution.

I can imagine iPhone will appear on my and my  X-mass wishes list this year.

It seems like Steve Jobs has caught a good wave once more and iPhone will prove to be very successful -Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas focused on mobile phones as the biggest development area in the coming year.

Approximately 3 billion people will have a mobile phone by the end of 2007, what will make mobile phones the most widespread electronic device. Mobile phones can integrate many features and services: traditional telephony, music, film, TV, Internet and allows us to reduce the number of devices. Mobile phone can be your communication device, both voice and data, your digital camera, your MP3 player, and finally your cyber window to the world. High mobile penetration and advanced mobile technology allow also to open the new communication window for marketers, that can be very successful when used wisely.

eMarketer predicts that the global market for mobile marketing and advertising will grow from about $1.5 billion in 2006 to $13.9 billion in 2011. Mobile phones are the new lifestyle technology and the part of our social life. We need to understand their role in peoples life before we begin to use them as advertising channels. As well as to understand the need for developing the content, that is relevant and satisfy people's needs and expectations. We can easily cross the thin line and become intruders on the private territory. Mobile marketing must be about involvement and respect to people's privacy.

"A survey of 50 leading brands in Europe by Vanson Bourne found that the top three categories for tactical responses that brands look to drive through mobile marketing included requests for more information, making a purchase or booking, and discovering new attributes about a brand."

Via Engaget

Read more on iPhone website

Tags: iPhone, Apple, Mobile phone, Wireless