Mobile Is Dead, Long Live Mobile!

I've been involved with the Mobile Industry for a long time, and for more than 10 years there has been a "buzz" about the so-called "year of mobile."  Has it already passed?  Is it finally going to arrive? What do you think?

Last week I gave this presentation to the South Florida chapter of WITI (Women In Technology International).  I've given many presentations over the years, and I enjoyed giving this one.  Since I am working with cartoonist Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid) at Social Object Factory, I used a number of Hugh's insightful cartoons to illustrate my talk, which is called "Mobile Is Dead, Long Live Mobile."

There is no question that the smartphone has changed the face of mobile, but there are other forces at play as well.  As addicted as we may be to our smartphones, we are also now creatures of multiple devices - "Digital Omnivores" as comScore calls it.  Thanks to the prevalence of apps and the ubiquity of "the cloud" the idea of mobility goes way beyond our phones.  So, while an older vision of what mobile is may well be dead, our multi-device, cross-platform mobility is most certainly here to stay.  Long live mobile!

I'd love your feedback on this presentation.

Can't see the video? Click Here.

For more information about Jeff and to book him as a speaker, please visit http://about.me/sass or http://www.jeffreysass.com/speaking. Cartoons courtesy of @gapingvoid.

A Smart Use Of Smartphones: Emergency Weather Alerts

The old adage "fish where the fish are" can also apply to the latest application of the Emergency Broadcast System.  When I was young, the television was the uncontested center of our media universe.  If you wanted to reach the masses, all you had to do was get your message on TV.  Thus, my childhood was filled with the high pitched warning signal followed by an odd image on the screen and the announcement, "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system..."  But putting such a message on TV today is no longer a sure way to alert the citizenry...

We Live In A Mobile World - So Fish Where The Mobile Fish Are

Tonight, as Tropical Storm Isaac passed into the Gulf of Mexico, safely to the west of my South Florida home, after a dreary, rainy day, I was sitting at the kitchen table watching HBO GO (catching up on The Newsroom) on my Android phone when suddenly I heard that familiar "warning" tone.  But my TV was not on.  Then the message above, popped up on my phone's screen, pausing Aaron Sorkin's pithy banter midstream.  Within minutes, I could hear the wind outside winding up... things outside rustling and shaking and moving.   The dogs, inside for the day, huddled together, happily not out in the yard, where surely their dog house would soon be airborne a la The Wizard of Oz if indeed the tornado threat proved to be real.

Safe and Sound

I was not aware that the Emergency Alert System had gone mobile, but I am glad it did.  Like many of you, my smartphone is practically a physical extension of myself, a near permanent appendage, by my side more than my most loyal of pets.  I am naked if not accompanied by my handy Android, and based on countless studies and statistics I am not alone.  So it makes perfect sense for emergency warnings to move from our kitchens and living rooms to our pockets and purses.  It makes perfect sense to take advantage of the fact my phone is far more location aware than my TV...  To make sure warnings can be targeted and accurate, to be delivered into the hands of those who most need the information.  Sure enough, as the warning predicted, right around 10:15 the winds calmed down.  If there was a tornado in my area, thankfully it did not make its way into my yard.

I guess I will turn on the TV to find out...

Have you ever received an Emergency Alert on your phone?

It's Valentine's Day! Here are 5 Ways Your Mobile Phone Can Make You A Better Lover!

5 Ways Your Mobile Phone Can Make You A Better Lover

February 12, 2011 Posted By: Jeffrey Sass

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, surely love is in the air and we are all getting in touch with our inner cupid.  While we may not be wandering around equipped with a sling full of heart tipped arrows, we do have another tool in hand that can be used to spread the love – our mobile phones! You may already think your smartphone is smart, but did you know it can work wonders on your relationship with that significant other?

Here are 5 Ways Your Mobile Phone Can Make You A Better Lover:

5. Text Sweet Nothings in His/Her Ear – Text messages are a great way to let your love know you are thinking of them, anytime, and by definition, an SMS message has to be short and sweet.  There are few easier ways to bring a smile to that someone special’s face than to send them an unexpected “I <3 U!” or “U R Beautiful” or a simple “Thinking of you… right now…”

4. Send A  Wallpaper or Ringtone – We love to personalize our phones with images and sounds that mean something special to us, so why not share the love by sending your sweetheart a Romantic Ringtone or Whimsical Wallpaper that will make them think of you every time they look at their phone or get a call or message.  Myxer makes it easy to find just the right mobile content and use “Send to Friend” to share it with the one(s) you love.

3. Use “Vibrate” For A Neck Massage – We all enjoy a good neck massage from our partner.  Next time you are offering up a bit of manual stress relief, surprise them with some added good vibrations from your phone.

2. Send A Video Or Image Of Yourself – Sometimes we forget that we are almost always walking around with a camera and camcorder in our pockets.  It takes just a moment to snap a picture or record a video message and send it to the object of your affection.  Be creative.  Hold up a piece of paper with a handwritten sign saying “I Love You.”  Sing a few bars of his/her favorite song in a video.  Send a picture of flowers, or a place you pass that means something special to you both.  (FRIENDLY WARNING: Don’t abuse the ease of sending images and video by sharing something inappropriate or that you will likely one day regret…)

1. And, of course, the number one way your mobile phone can make you a better lover…. TURN IT OFF when you are with your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse and make them, not your phone, the object of both your attention and your affection!

Do you have more tips on how you use your phone for romance?  Please share them in the comments!  And with or without your phone, have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

And you can start using your phone to be a better lover by sending this to someone special:

Myxer: Privacy Policy | Terms – More from Party 365

via blog.myxer.com

I wrote this for The Official Myxer Blog, but given today is Valentine's Day, I thought I would re-post it here... Has your phone made you a better lover?

Posted via email from Kiss My SASS!

Women, Curves and Pearls: Myxer's Latest BoomBox Report Picks Blackberries

Women, curves and pearls?  Despite the teasing headline, this post is not about female shapes and jewelry preferences.  It is, however, about female smartphone preferences when it comes to the Blackberry phones they use.  The latest BoomBox Report issued by my employer, Myxer, takes note that despite the hype and attention surrounding the Android and iPhone platform, Blackberry handsets are still the dominant smartphones among Myxer's users. According to the report:

RIM continues to far outpace Windows, Palm, webOS, Android, iPhone and Symbian based on mobile visits, growing from a 58% market share in March2009 to a 63% share in March 2010. Of the other operating systems, Android comes in second, more than doubling over the same time period from 7% to 17%, while iPhone makes a modest jump to 4%, up from 2% from the previous year. Symbian and webOS occupy the smallest percentage of market share with less than 2% combined, while Windows Mobile was the biggest loser moving from 21% in 2009 down to 10% in 2010.Interestingly, the same holds true when comparing total downloads for the month of March 2010, where BlackBerry accounted for a whopping 72% of the 22 million smartphone content downloads, followed by Android at 14% and Windows Mobile at 7%. The others did not fare as well, with iPhone only grabbing a 2% share, Symbian a 3% share and webOS and Palm only representing 1% of smartphone downloads.

Women Like Their Curves and Pearls

While it is clear that RIM dominates the smartphone visitors and downloads at Myxer, it is also interesting to note that the majority of our Blackberry users are women.  While they are Bold enough to Storm the Tour, as the chart above shows, they much prefer the Curve and Pearl.  According to BoomBox:

As broken down by gender, women were surprisingly dominant across all BlackBerry devices, with the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 having the largest concentration of female users at 70%, and the BlackBerry Storm 9530 having the highest concentration of male users at 46%.

What do you think?  Do any of these findings surprise you?  You can download the PDF of the full Myxer BoomBox Report here.

Disclosure:
cmp.ly/4/s52k6q

Posted via email from Kiss My SASS!

A Brief History of Smartphones (And the battle that ensued)

I was dumbfounded by the great turnout for "The Battle of the Smartphones" panel at the August meeting of MoMo Miami (Mobile Monday Miami). More than 60 Mobile minded Miami-ans (and folks from other South Florida locales) gathered at the DoubleTree Coconut Grove hotel for a healthy discussion of the merits (and demerits) of mobile app development for the dominant Smartphone platforms (Symbian/S60, Blackberry, Windows Mobile (now Windows Phone), iPhone, Android and WebOS). Moderated by Miami Herald Tech Reporter Bridget Carey our panel consisted of some impressive and experienced mobile developers representing most of the primary platforms. Michael Tangeman has a good overview of the panel at the MoMo Miami blog.

I introduced the panel with a short presentation on "A Brief History of Smartphones (As Told From The Recollections of a Self-Proclaimed Gadget Geek)" Irina Patterson caught most of it in the video below. As I mentioned at the beginning (not on the video) my "Brief History" presentation is not necessarily historically or chronologically accurate, but rather it is how I remember things, based on my own experiences with the MANY devices I have owned and used over the years. In addition to the video below, you can see the actual flash presentation here.




See the "slides" here.

I Do Like Mondays! (Mobile Monday)

I used to agree with the Boomtown Rats and didn't like Mondays. In truth, I don't really particularly care for Mondays now, although on some level I do think I like them better than Wednesdays. Is there a song for that? But I digress...

I do like Mobile Mondays, and and have been working with Alex DeCarvalho to try and grow an active Mobile Monday chapter in Miami and South Florida. Our first meeting had 4 people in attendance... the second meeting, hosted at the offices of my employer, Myxer, had 15, so we are excited to see the organization growing. The next meeting is being hosted by Nokia at their Miami offices on Monday, June 9th. If you are in South Florida and work in the Mobile industry, or have an interest in Mobile, or just want to hang out with a bunch of cool folks who like to geek out about their mobile phones, feel free to join us.

With more than 250 million mobile phones in the US alone, and the rapidly expanding capabilities of handsets and data networks, there are few, if any, devices that have had such an impact on our daily lives, and there are few markets as vibrant and exciting as Mobile. Share some of this excitement by getting involved in Mobile Monday Miami, or in a chapter near you.

Here is taste of our last meeting: Myk Willis, founder and CEO of Myxer, shared some of his vision and views on Myxer.



If you have any suggestions as to how we can grow Mobile Monday in Miami and South Florida, please share them in the comments.

Mobile Marketing Has Nothing To Do With Alabama

Just before the holidays I was invited to be a guest on Paul Dunay's Buzz Marketing For Technology podcast to talk about Mobile Marketing. At first I was confused because I have never been to the State of Alabama and I have no clue as to what they may do special to market things in the fine city of Mobile. Then I realized that Paul wanted to talk about Mobile Marketing as in Mobile phone! What a relief... I have a mobile phone! In truth, I have been involved in the mobile commerce and content arena for almost 10 years and I currently work for Myxer, a leader in ad-supported mobile content, so it was my pleasure to participate in a conversation with Paul, and marketing strategist Greg Verdino. Here is the podcast as it appeared in Paul's blog and on the Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog. Enjoy...and I welcome any comments you may have.

Twitter + MyxerTones = TwitTones!

I recently joined a new company, mVisible Technologies. We have built a very cool and powerful mobile content delivery platform called Myxer. The Myxer Platform can ingest any digital file, and spit it out in the proper format for any mobile phone, regardless of carrier. Through our MyxerTones website we are empowering thousands of content creators and independent artists to play in the mobile sandbox, enabling them to create, share and sell their own ringtones and other mobile content without having to worry about all the heavy lifting. We have radically simplified the process to the point where anyone can create mobile content and send it to any phone, right from their own website, blog, MySpace page, etc. But I digress... The real point of this post is to introduce my entry into our corporate mashup competition. Everyone in the company was challenged to dive head first into "Web 2.0" and "Social Networking" and create a mashup of Myxer and another platform or online community.

As you may know if you have stumbled upon this little blog before, I am a fan of Twitter, and Twitter even made a monkey of me... I also believe Twitter is a wonderful discovery channel - a great way to be exposed to new and cool products, services, and websites you might otherwise never have encountered. With that in mind, my entry into the Myxer Mashup Competition was a no-brainer: Twitter + MyxerTones = TwitTones. TwitTones uses Twitter to deliver FREE Indy Music Ringtones. Many people are already receiving their Twitter updates on their phones...so it is a perfect platform to use to deliver mobile content. I am not a developer (and I don't even play one on TV,) but I leveraged the ease of use of GoDaddy, Blogger, Twitter, and of course MyxerTones to set up TwitTones. If you are on Twitter and you like Indy Music and personalizing your phone with Ringtones, then TwitTones is for you. Follow or Friend MyxerTones and start getting your daily TwitTone today!