My thoughts on the Iphone 3g

Byrichard

Today I played with the Iphone 3g and was left indifferent. That’s because aside from having the same design as both the ipod touch and the 1st generation iphones it doesn’t offer anything innovative. What really interests me is the idea of more data.

Last month i did quite a bit of data streaming. 100 megabytes inclusive of my current setup. I also used quite a bit of extra data. With the Iphone 3g Plan I’d get 1 gigabyte of data per month, ten times more at relatively little extra.

When I can get the Natel Liberty Grande paired with the Nokia N95 then I’ll be happy. Until then I’ll feel that they could do better.

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Euro 2008, the victorious nation of Spain Celebrate

Byrichard

It’s a sunday night in Switzerland and I’m with some friends. Spain were playing Germany and won 1-0, a respectable score. I was there with the phone streaming the celebrations at the Geneva Fanzone in Plainpalais.

Here are the clips

Ten seconds from the end.

Spanish Fans celebrate.

Drumming atmosphere.

Happy girls dancing and the crowd.

Dancing Spanish Flag wearing people.

Because Women aren’t forgotten after all.

Girls dancing, boy texting, more dancing

More dancing

Still celebrating

Leaving the Fanzone

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Mobile spending

Byrichard

Important for global marketers, mobile handsets are the dominant way people access the Web in many emerging markets, as it is far cheaper, says John Gauntt, senior analyst at digital ad tracker eMarketer. With a computer, “The cost of entry to get Internet access is about $1,200 for the PC and broadband; a mobile is less than half the cost.”

…

Source

As updated handsets spread and ad effectiveness measures are perfected, worldwide advertisers’ spending on mobile will pass $19 billion in 2012, eMarketer predicts, up from about $3 billion this year. Overall Web ad spending, which includes mobile, is estimated at $45 billion this year. (continued…)

“The paradox right now is that if you’re a hotshot creative (ad worker) and want to push mobile to the limit, you have to go to Europe and Asia.”

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Some “livestreams”

Byrichard

It’s a shame I was running low on battery last night because I was at the Fanzone in Geneva for the Italy Vs. France match. I managed to stream a few moments of the game. Since the Italians have won this game we can look forward to a lot of noise on Sunday if and when they win. 

Perfect for me and live streaming.

 
The Penalty.

Post match euphoria for the Italians, by then the French were already heading home.

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Mobile video streaming and the future of video sharing

Byrichard

Two years ago we had the World cup and with that came hundreds of videos shot in cities around the world of people celebrating soccer (or football as a sport). At the time everyone would go out with their video camera, record the footage, wait till they got home, capture it and share via a number of sharing sites.
The problem with this is that it’s both slow and tedious. It takes too much time and organisation to do. That’s where a new generation of mobile video streaming devices come in. Some applications like Qik and Bambuser are limited to people with cheap data rates via their mobile operators. As a result their services are not so interesting.
What was missing from the market place were mobile video streaming services that would allow the content creator to backup the video to their mobile device before sharing it either over the air via 3g networks or wifi. Three services allow for this Kyte, which Scoble has talked about recenty, Flixwagon which I have talked about recently and then Livecast.
Each of these video services allows you to save the video as you’re streaming.
Kyte is interesting because it allows for you to share pictures, video, polls and audio from one application.
Flixwagon is interesting because it allows you to compile all the metadata you want to have included with the video before you stream. It allows you to categorise it within set niches, then add keywords to make finding the video easier.
Livecast is the most recent one I’ve tested (just a few minutes ago) and this one allows you to choose how much bandwidth you want to use, from just 24kb to 160kb. It gives you a stream limit of 2 gigabytes and storage of 100 megabytes… (if I remember right.) It differentiates itself with the stream from file option. You can record a number of videos on your phone and choose to send them at another time. It works well enough

Video streaming is an easy way of sharing video with your friends without the need for a computer. As a result we should expect quite a bit more coverage of live events from the audience’s point of view, not just big budget broadcasters.

This is a little rambling but it’s fun to see what’s available.

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Finally re-united with my Macbook pro

Byrichard

After over a month without the macbook pro it finally appears to be working again. Both the motherboard and the superdrive have been replaced. i’ve upgraded to the procare package and I’ve decided to have a secondary machine running linux as a backup. 

It’s a shame that apple authorised resellers would take over a month to put my machine right bt now it’s done and I’m not going to think about upgrading mac machines for the next two years… unless I come to a large amount of cash in which case I’d rethink that. 

What I am more interested in now though is what can be done with mobile phones and mobile devices. In particular I was really happy to have the N95 8gig because it allowed me to cut out the laptop all together. 

The point is that now all devices should be self contained, able to do everything without the need for a laptop. For weeks I couldn’t get the latest podcasts or keep up with feedreading. Even checking e-mail was less practical. Now is the time to see how far we can go in doing everything from a portable device.Â