MobiTV presentation at Mobile Monday

MobiTV guy

Alan Moskowitz of MobiTV was the third presenter at this month’s Mobile Monday meeting. MobiTV delivers 24 channels of live television to your mobile phone for $10 a month on top of your carrier’s data plan. They are powered by Java and claim to be one of the first recurring revenue applications using Java. You can channel surf on your phone with little effort. Alan shared some interesting statistics on MobiTV.

  • Mobile television use is 5.65 minutes per session with approximately 2.34 sessions per day.
  • Live television is used more often than their clips product due to its more intuitive interface and simplified choices.
  • Viewing hours are surprisingly evenly distributed with some rush-hour peaks.
  • The most popular moments were the Scott Peterson trial and Game 7 of the Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees for the 2004 American League Championship.
  • Comedy skits are watched to completion.

The sweet spot for the service is transition content somewhere in between fun and learning. The Daily Show and late night talk show monologues provide viewers with a quick synopsis of the day’s news in a fun atmosphere. MobiTV is currently expanding to the UK and Japan.

I recorded the entire MobiTV presentation as well as the question and answer session. The MP3 recording is 19 minutes and 20 seconds in length and a 8.8 megabyte download.

Caterpillar Mobile presentation at Mobile Monday

The second presentation from Mobile Monday was Anita Wilhelm of Caterpillar Mobile. Anita was a student of Marc Davis at Berkeley.

Caterpillar Mobile’s current product is a cameraphone game called Zooke. Zooke allows its members to create challenges for all members or only members of an immediate social circle. You might be on a mission to find the best George Bush bumper sticker in Berkeley and have other game players rate your findings. It is a community-driven reality play experience that makes everyone’s day a little more exciting with minimal effort.

I recorded Anita’s entire presentation as well as the question and answer session. The MP3 recording is 20 minutes and 26 seconds in length and a 9.3 megabyte download.

Garage Cinema Research presentation at Mobile Monday

On Monday I attended the Mobile Monday meeting at Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View. There was an impressive set of presenters all focused on mobile media. The first presenter was Marc Davis of UC Berkeley and the director of Garage Cinema Research.

Garage Cinema Research is interested in adding metadata through context-aware applications. You can infer data about the general location of a cameraphone user from their cell tower triangulation, the time of day, and popular photography subjects in the area. If a user adds a category to their photograph, a server can return a best guess of the object in the photograph.

In the first stage of their system two years ago his group focused on identifying the subject of a photograph. Garage Cinema Research is now focused on helping you figure out with who you would like to share your photographs. Your social network allows you to infer content and use that content to determine the interested parties. Initial research has shown a 200% increase in photography with the sharing sensor enabled.

I recorded Marc’s entire presentation as well as the question and answer session. The MP3 recording is 19 minutes and 43 seconds in length and a 9 megabyte download.

NewsGator platform roadmap

Greg Reinacker just announced some big new products from NewsGator.

NewsGator will now make a play behind the firewall with a product loosely named NewsGator Enterprise Server. NewsGator Enterprise Software will integrate with Exchange and Active Directory and interact with Outlook Web Access, Blackberry, and Exchange ActiveSync without needing to install NewsGator Outlook Edition on desktop computers across the organization.

Greg also announced a white label version of NewsGator Online and there will be many APIs on the way for NewsGator Online.

The feedback loop taking place on Greg’s blog is very interesting. Greg is actively engaging his community and it seems to be paying off. These same users will evangelize his product within the enterprise.

Ask Jeeves purchases Bloglines

Ask JeevesI heart Bloglines

Ask Jeeves officially purchased Bloglines. Mark Fletcher and his team will move to the Ask Jeeves remote office in Los Gatos where Mark will be GM of Bloglines. Teoma will power Bloglines search. Bloglines will gather and monetize users’ attention data for contextual advertising. Bloglines launched 18 months ago in June 2003

Official Announcements

  • Ask Jeeves. “Ask Jeeves plans to leverage these technologies across its search and portal brands, and as of today, Bloglines’ Web search capability will be powered by Ask Jeeves’ search technology.”
  • Ask Jeeves Weblog. “There will be no short-term changes to Bloglines that weren’t already on their roadmap”
  • Bloglines acquisition FAQ. “Terms of Service and Privacy Policies remain unchanged.”
  • Mark Fletcher’s Weblog. “We don’t think that world-class blog search exists yet; with Teoma and Bloglines that will happen.”

Commentary from journalists granted interviews

  • CNET News.com. “The average user of Bloglines visits the site four times a day.”
  • John Battelle. “I’d be surprised if the deal was less than $25 million.”
  • Marc Hedlund. “Bloglines builds the profile, Teoma runs the ads, and both sides win.”

Others of note

  • Susan Mernit. [D]oesn’t the valuations of the other aggregators suddenly seem higher?

Ongoing resources

Ask Jeeves buying Bloglines?

Mary Hodder reports Ask Jeeves is buying Bloglines and Mark Fletcher will be a Jeeves employee on Monday. Is this true?

Mark Fletcher is presenting a 20-minute case study this Tuesday on RSS syndication, ad splicing, and blogging at the Media Center event. Perhaps the announcement is meant to coincide with the conference and Mark will use this time to talk about the new Bloglines.

Update: Bloglines acquisition is official. Supposedly announced on Friday with an embargo of midnight tonight.