Born to be Wireless

It's really easy to travel between countries in Europe, and of course everybody uses their mobiles during the trips. For some time now, there have been complaining about the large coasts for roaming - voice, sms or data. Even European Commission has suggest to the carriers to cut their prices for roaming, something that, of course, didn't happen.
Now, the European Commission has released a plan to end "rip-offs for text messages abroad". Couple of days later, regulator agency in France has invited the carriers to cut SMS costs! I hope this reach Brazil as soon as possible ! :-)

PS: Nice site with SMS prices in Europe:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/index_en.htm

Labels: europe, france, sms

United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has just approved a plan for creating a nationwide emergency alert system that would send out text messages in a crisis, such as severe weather, a terrorist threat or child abduction.
The Government will send the alert to the carriers, but they will not be forced to send the message to the users. The top four carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile — are interested in participating.

Source: MocoNews

Labels: sms, US

I always knew that Russians love Vodka, and today I learn two shocking facts related to Russia and Vodka:

- A state-owned company, Rosspirtprom, holds the monopoly of 60% of strong alcohol in Russia
- There are 40,000 deaths each year caused by counterfeit drinks (filled with cologne water, antifreeze liquids or just pure alcohol) on Russia !!

The second fact shows that sale of counterfeit vodka is not only a problem for the major brands, but also to the population in general.
Thinking on this, Rosspirtprom created a service where the consumers will be able to send bottle's serial number to a given short code and receive a SMS that authenticates or not the bottle.

Another great SMS service!! And good way to avoid next day's hangovers ;-)

Source: MOBIZ

Labels: russia, sms, vodka

Check out Obama Mobile! He's got text alerts - text GO to OBAMA 62262 - and wallpapers and even ringtones. Sweet!

Labels: marketing, sms

Labels: free, sms

E-mail on the go is no longer limited to those who shell out for a Blackberry, Treo, or Windows Mobile device. Canadian company OnceanLake Commerce, just debuted memo, a mobile e-mail service compatible with any Web-enabled handset that can receive text messages.

Set up the service to watch your e-mail, and it will send a text message to your phone with a link to a an inbox Web page. Meemo costs $6.99 per month, and works with Alltel, AT&T (formerly Cingular), Sprint/Nextel, Verizon Wireless, though some other wireless networks will also work. While memo hypes the service as being a cost-effective solution compared to e-mail capable devices like the Blackberry, you are best to add in the cost of a data and text plan or you’ll be spending 10 cents for each spam message that reaches your inbox.

source: MobileCrunch

Labels: e-mail, meemo, sms

Jumbuck Entertainment Ltd. has launched its 'Chat do Mundo' service with Vivo, the largest mobile phone service provider in Brazil and the Southern Hemisphere. As a result, Vivo subscribers can now interact using a Portuguese-language version of Jumbuck's popular mobile chat service. Initially, Chat do Mundo will use the WAP protocol, with an SMS version following soon to offer compatibility with a wider range of handsets.

The agreement represents a significant expansion for Jumbuck into a new geographic area that offers attractive subscriber and revenue growth opportunities. This new Portuguese-language service adds to Jumbuck's already extensive language capabilities offered to subscribers that speak English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian and Spanish.

Furthering its reach, Jumbuck will shortly deploy 'Chat do Mundo' with leading carriers in Portugal, including Optimus, TMN and Vodafone. The Brazilian mobile phone market has shown substantial growth in recent years and has recently surpassed 100 million users.

Labels: Brazil, chat, jumbuck, sms, wap

The volume of short message service (SMS) traffic in Brazil surged 20% to 8.4bn messages in 2006 compared to 7.0bn in 2005, newspaper Gazeta Mercantil reported, citing estimates from mobile messaging solution supplier Okto.

Around 90% of this volume is person-to-person, while the application-to-person market, which integrators such as Okto can bill for, accounts for the remainder, Okto CEO Ann Williams told BNamericas.

Despite the small market, Okto expects growth in SMS to continue in 2007, although Williams declined to give a figure.

Brazils telecoms operators have continuously upped their revenues from data services, now at 7-8% of the total, Williams said.

Media groups are also increasingly finding new ways to use SMS to interact with the public such as to vote on TV programs like Idols, she said.

Companies that are coming to Brazil from outside see the billed message market as just starting out in the country, according to Williams.

Indeed, Brazil has lagged behind countries such as Argentina, Mexico and Chile in the interactive content market.

On the other hand, Brazil has been more advanced in the corporate services market, with internet banking messages or text messages from call centers, Williams said.

"This gap is set to decrease in 2007," she predicted.

Okto, which provides SMS, MMS, SIM Browsing and WAP services, expects to boost its volume of billed messages to 500mn in 2007 from 250mn in 2006, while rival company Yavox hopes to grow by 60% to 160mn messages from 100mn last year.

Okto, which has a staff of 65, has media clients such Band, Editora Abril, MTV and SBT, as well as local retailers Extra and Submarino.

Yavox, which received capital from Intel Capital (Nasdaq: INTC) in 2004, has 60 clients including local media giant Globo, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Pepsi, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Citibank (NYSE: C.

Labels: Brazil, marketing, messaging, okto, sms, yavox

Labels: mobile, sms, social, twitter

Want maps and driving directions on your cell phone? Your options have just expanded--again. Web mapping pioneer Mapquest today announced improved cell phone support--including a new Send to Cell service--that will make its maps and driving directions easily available to just about anyone with a browser-equipped handset and a data plan.

Mapquest has offered mobile services in the past, but only via its Mapquest Mobile application, a paid download for Java or BREW phones, or--for certain carriers and phones with built-in GPS support--its Mapquest Navigator service. But the upgrades announced on the eve of the giant CTIA Wireless show here make Mapquest maps and driving directions available for free via any WAP-compatible mobile browser.

Mapquest Director of Wireless Alan Beiagi says the new services make Mapquest available to much wider universe of handsets--roughly 179 million of them, compared to roughly 80 million that support the older fee-based applications.

Getting Mapquest on a Handheld

You can get Mapquest directions and maps on your handset either by going to Mapquest's site, which can detect requests from mobile browsers and respond with content optimized for small screens, or--if you're the type of traveler that plans ahead--by generating maps on your desktop and clicking on a "Send to Cell" link that appears in between the "E-mail" and "Link to these directions" links on top of the directions.

This brings up a small window where you enter your handset number, e-mail address, and a name for your map. Once you submit this info, the service will send you an SMS text message with a link; click on it, and you get your route information--again, optimized for a small screen.

Send to Cell is a beta service, and Mapquest notes that some carriers block SMS messages that contain URLs. (I tried to use it with my Cingular Treo 650 and never got text messages for either of the maps I sent.) Also, while Mapquest does not charge for the service, your carrier may (and probably will) impose text message and/or data charges, depending on your plan.

Location-based, Location-based, Location-based

Mapping, navigation, and location based-services (with or without GPS) are one of the hottest trends in the cell phone business. Mapquest's new services will compete with a growing number of options for navigation and mapping on handsets. Players include such giants as Google, with its Google Mobile Maps applications; Microsoft, with its Windows Live Search for mobile devices; and Yahoo Local Maps, which also has a service that uses SMS text messaging to send your handset a link to a desktop-generated map.

Source: Yahoo! News

Labels: cell, gps, mapquest, services, sms

Its Orkut’s third birthday and to celebrate this occasion, Google has rolled out a new feature, Orkut on SMS - which lets you send scrap and receive scrap notification using mobile phone. With this new feature, Orkut plans to invade your offline social life. It doesn’t really matter if you’re in a bus, office, school or college; Orkut fits smoothly into your pocket.

As of now, they’ve rolled out Orkut SMS only for Brazilian users who use Claro Mobile Service. In the near future they’ll expand it to other provider and countries around the globe. You’ll notice a message while you sign into your account when this feature becomes available to you.

Labels: orkut, sms