Nielsen Mobile detailed the new report, which sees purchasing of goods and services via mobile phones on the rise. And guess which gender likes spending more via their mobiles. Wrong - it’s men. 4.9 million men vs 4.3 million woman indicated they have made a purchase via their phone.

In the US, of the 40 million active users of the mobile web, 5 million of them visited shopping and auction websites (e.g eBay) during April 2008 - That’s up 73 per cent from April 2007.

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Ever wish you could talk back to the speaker at a conference? To offer approval or register dismay?

Use RedGreen feedback cards.

Red:Green Cards
Originally uploaded by christophercarfi.

I found the concept to be absolutely fantastic. It was a clear, yet unobtrusive, way to bring the audience into a conversation, without having to disrupt the flow of a thought and without having to deal with those little voting clicker boxes or microphones. It was possible to achieve this goal without any kind of intrusive hardware at all, actually.

Red:Green cards are a wonderfully elegant way for an audience to give respectful feedback in real time.

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The former Yahoo! Mobile evangelist announced today that he’s calling it quits for his company Mowser because the market for mobile browsing is taking a fast turn for the worse.

“I don’t actually believe in the ‘Mobile Web’ anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence. Two years ago I was convinced that the mobile web would continue to evolve in the West to mimic what was happening in countries like Japan and Korea, but it hasn’t happened, and now I’m sure it isn’t going to.

In other words, I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP mark-up, no JavaScript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I’m tired of wasting my time.”

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One of the first options is SMS text messaging triggered by proximity. GPS functionality offers even greater power to target messages. Another option includes Web-enabled desktop to mobile interaction. Examples include cars.com, flight updates, etc. The next level is social networking (desktop to mobile) like SociaLight, WHML and Dodgeball. Challenges with mobile include: confined real estate on phones (simple, minimal, etc).

The next speaker, Ryan Sarver with Skyhook Wireless, outlined their latest technology that utilizes wi-fi (instead of GPS) for targeting. Manhattan has 2M wi-fi hot spots/access points. Compared to GPS and cellular, wi-fi targeting is accurate within 20 meters (vs. 1 meter and 5,000 meters respectively). Skyhook powers the iPhone “locate me” technology to help place the 4M subscribers on a map for location based services.

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I wish I were there!

New mobile devices abound, either launching very soon or in the works for later in the year, such as one that interests me a lot - the Nokia N96, successor to the N95 models (I have an N95 8GB).

Devices like this are squarely positioned as audio-visual entertainment devices, from a content creation as much as a content consumption point of view.

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Shades of the nearly-forgotten barcode scanning CueCat, and Japanese business cards, add up to a old yet new strategy for Google. This latest AdWords initiative has to be a 20 percent project at Google.

We picture some techie cleaning out a closet at home, finding a card from a hostess bar in Osaka stuck under a CueCat in a box, and being suddenly struck by a bowling ball falling from an unbalanced shelf.

Tra-la-la! Wait, that’s Captain Underpants. Eureka! That’s more appropriate for California.

We’ll give credit to Joel On Software for making the CueCat connection too. Yes, play spot the oldies, kids, it’s easy and fun!

Google intends to drop square barcodes onto print ads.

With a camera phone and the right software, a person can scan the ad, and the phone’s onboard web browser will bring up additional information related to it.

“2D barcodes have been common in Japan for a number of years,” Google said in its barcode help page. “In fact, Japanese business cards often feature barcodes containing contact information.”

The first ads containing these barcodes appeared in newspapers, and connected to jewelry retailer Blue Nile.

Google promoted these, and other barcode ads, as a way to quickly deliver more information about an advertiser to a consumer.

It’s far too soon to guess at how successful barcoding may be, for Google or anyone else opting to use the technology.

We will make one guess: Google’s Android mobile software will include a barcode reader when it launches.

Moreover, the FBI and other government agencies are demanding greater legal authority to be able to force companies–especially cell phone companies–to turn over customer information. “They have pushed for an aggressive interpretation of the statute that would allow it to monitor certain Internet content without a warrant and to collect tracking information about the physical locations of cell phone users,” the ACLU reports, “turning cell phones into what, for all practical purposes, are location tracking bugs.”

Now the Bush Administration is prodding Congress to grant retroactive legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that have allowed government agents access to their customers’ private phone call data. If Congress passes such a law, it would put an end to the dozens of lawsuits that have already been filed against phone companies alleged to have violated federal privacy laws by handing over customer data to the government. It would also put an end to any pretense that our government has our best interests at heart.

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The telecom companies have not helped mobile Web growth by often charging excessive broadband transmission costs. In addition the cell phone has limitations with a small display screen and tiny keys for input. Although the slow rate of growth might appear unsurprising, there is a better way. (more…)