Everyone has to blog

Blogs are memories, blogs are opinions, blogs are the way to keep your mind working rather than gawking at your TV all the time.

Everyone can use blogs differently...

It could be an autobiography which could be a digital impression of urself.Capture your memories, all those fun days at school or family parties everything can be captured, commented by the ones that matter and stays with you for your lifetime and even beyond. These memories could be accessed anytime, everywhere.

Now what's the point of snapping those dumb pictures (I call them dumb cos the only thing you can do is shoot pictures, no comments could be captured) which stays in your cupboard after the first 15 days of you attempting to show everyone around. More than that if you wanna see them sometime later, u gotta be at the cupboard. For instance, there are hundreds of my pictures lying back in India and I just cant reach them if I wanted to see them. Not just pictures there are dozens of such things that could be a part of ur blog. For instance,
- Students can use to keep their notes/assignments which could be accessed everywhere they want them.
- People can share stuff with a selected few, thus businesses can keep their market research on the blog.
- I read a good post about how elderly are starting to blog and realizing that this is the way to feel still motivated. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051110/ap_on_hi_te/geezers_who_blog
- Schools could use them to deliver everyday newspapers on blogs such that everyone can participate in discussions.
- Newspapers are old media, I wanna comment on everything I read.

..there could be dozens of more ways, its just a matter of creativity.

The sorry state of mobile phones: An analogy

Mobile phones, as they exist today, are like a "Personal Computer" before the internet was invented (it has one extra feature that I'll talk about). It reminds me of my first PC - a 386 on which drawing something in paint to playing with Lotus, WS, Dbase, Solitaire, Mario... was as much fun as I could get out of my computer . And then came the internet which made it way way usable and a part of my life. Now, when I get up in the morning I open my laptop to check new mails and news before I barely open up my eyes. Would I have done that on my 386. Never !

Now what's the extra feature on mobiles that makes it better than my analogy of personal computer is that it has lets call it "Google Talk" - i.e. an ability for me to send/recieve voice calls or text messages to people (90% of which are in my buddy list). If "Google Talk" was the only flavour of connectivity and communication I could taste on my PC and you expect me to be satisfied with that, hell you are way wrong. Where's the thing that would motivate me to check my mobile every 5 minutes to see if there's something new?? Where's the thing that I need to see before I could open my eyes in the morning. If my PC can produce such an effect, I can guarantee that if such a thing existed on mobile it could have atleast a 5X effect than my PC, just because that's the only thing I carry with me all the time.

No matter how good the "Google Talk" is, I want to expand the sphere of my mobile communication from just that.

Mobile-blogging poised to explode, Stats

via:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/nov/04spec.htm


Mobile-blogging poised to explode

Priyanka Joshi | November 04, 2005


When Merriam-Webster compiled a list of the most searched words of 2004, the word 'blog' (short for weblog) topped the charts.

However, blogging's younger sibling, the mobile-blog, is rapidly becoming one of the most popular online phenomenon worldwide. Mobile-blogging, or moblogging - basically, using camera phones to post pictures and text on a weblog - is captivating thousands of new converts every week from Atlanta to Zagreb.

A few numbers tell you why. More camera phones are sold than digital cameras, with one American research firm predicting global sales to rise from 150 million in 2003 to 650 million by 2008.

Little wonder the user base of popular moblog sites such as Text America (latest available figure: 500,000), Flickr (250,000), Yafro (100,000), Buzznet (20,000) and Mobog (16,000) is growing exponentially. The big daddy of them all, MSN Spaces, has more than 1.5 million users, but not all of them are mobloggers.

So what's the buzz all about? Well, moblogging provides a whole new dimension to the concept of a personal diary by providing the immediacy and intimacy of pictures taken anywhere, at any time. So, if you are inspired at your favourite local watering hole or on a road trip, you won't have to wait until you get back to your desktop to share your visuals with the world.

Not surprisingly, company after company has been coming out with applications and services to tap into what they think is a big blogosphere (and, perhaps, with the aim to also push other services such as MMS). But moblogging services from telcos lack the insight into blogging to actually make them useful tools.

Mobile-blogging tools enable one to post images, videos or text to a web location, but do little to engender the conversations that characterise blogs.

Rashmi Bansal, editor of JAM magazine, is an avid blogger herself and finds mobile-blogging a pretty "hassly job". "I cannot really express my thoughts in a three-line moblog. Additionally, there is no operator or service provider to direct me how to do it quickly," she says.

Bansal has had a tough time posting mobile blogs and has just given up. "I will wait until there comes a service provider who can simplify the process and also will be easy on my pocket."

Most 20-40 year-olds who remain hooked to their camera phones or communicators use their GPRS for a quick look at their inboxes or maybe send a quick message or two. The reason why they have steered clear of moblogging: service providers and telco operators do not provide ease of use.

Estimated figures predict that India will have 55 million online users and another 110 million mobile users by 2007 making it an interactive demographic for the mobile applications market. Taking the cue, a few companies like Coruscant Tec have stepped up to the plate.

Though not ready to take a big leap, Coruscant (a mobile content provider) is ready to release a new application named Moblogs.

The application promises to post blogs, edit posts, view and make comments, host your location to others, share posts with grouped communities, send out trackbacks, and much more. Initially, the application would be offered free of cost to all registered users.

Ajay Adiseshann, managing director of Coruscant, feels that mobile blogging is an emerging market but no one is clear as to how can this market can be tapped. "This is virgin territory. It is up to us to judge how to carve out a revenue model for this side."

The main revenue generator for mobile operators and service providers seems to be online advertisements. "The way blogs have become the new age signposts in marketing, mobile blogs can go the same way. Since mobile penetration is much higher, revenues can only be better," adds Adiseshann.

He earnestly believes that mobile blogging is the way to go but adds that the market in India is very small at the moment. With continuing growth of camera phones and interest in picture mail, moblogs are great places to document and store images. Most major blog sites offer some way to post to your blog with your phone, either via MMS or e-mail.

The only hassle is finding a telecom provider that supports this facility. And that, for Indian mobloggers, is not a pretty picture.

Mobile Data Too Hard, Too Expensive

http://www.moconews.net/?p=4108

Mobile Data Too Hard, Too Expensive
Related Topics: Research — Permalink - [by james]

A couple of surveys have come out saying pretty much the same thing: People will be more encouraged to use mobile content if it costs less.
A study by A.T. Kearney of 4,000 mobile phone users in 21 countries was mostly positive, finding that more than half of mobile handsets are less then a year old and have “robust multimedia capabilities that are increasingly understood by their users”. 54% of multimedia phone users said they use their phones to access the internet or check e-mail at least once a month, up from 36% in 2004 — Nearly two-thirds of users said new services and functions were easy to understand and enjoyable to use.

* One third of users with these phones download music monthly, up from 21 % in 2004.
* Globally, 16 % of users with multimedia phones reported downloading mobile games at least monthly.
* 17 % of users (and 27 % of those under age 24) said they were willing to pay for mobile TV,
the most recently touted mobile entertainment service. However, two-thirds of users expressed a desire for time-sensitive TV content such as news and sports rather than entertainment shows.

However, a third of mobile users are worried about the cost of mobile data and about half say they are not willing to pay mroe than $5 per month for it…”Thirty-five percent of consumers cited poor content as the reason they don’t access multimedia services, a considerable increase from just 8 percent in 2004.”

Meanwhile, a new NOP survey commissioned by Olista (a service experience assurance company — take note) has revealed that users who encounter problems in using new mobile data services will simply give up rather than seek assistance. According to the survey of 1000 adults carried out in September 2005, 64% of those who had actually tried to use a mobile data service such as picture messaging, ring tones and gaming downloads confessed that they would give up trying after one or two attempts. A mere 2% claimed that they would actually seek assistance from their operator or content provider and 25% said they would carry on trying until it worked…When quizzed on what would encourage them to use more mobile data services, lower prices and easier to use services were top of the list with 53% and 43% of respondents, whilst 32% also felt that better help and advice at point of sale would influence them positively.