New Blog Design

November 14th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | 2 Comments »

Last night we have changed the design of the blog. We hope you will enjoy it as it has been several weeks of pondering what needed changing for optimal usage of the blog. We kicked off with the backend which is a bit smarter these days.

Sim Tactics

November 9th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Some news on the sim card front entered our mailbox today as Samsung announced the birth of a sim card with one GB of storage. Since most phones can only store contact data, this is a feature for the true power user. On the other hand, the operators can install a host of services on there. I guess for real good use we just have to wait for one of the vendors to bring us a phone that can utilize the sim memory better.

On the other hand, French operator Bouygues might be an interesting partner. They have just teamed up with Sandisk to tie content DRM’s to a sim card level where consumers can’t use the content without the correct sim inserted to the device. To bad Sandisk doesn’t do the 1GB trick yet

Cameron Diaz & Softbank

October 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | 1 Comment »

Say you want to connect a Hollywood babe and an operator, what would be the best message to the consumer? Indeed, to have her calling in front of a camera for 30 seconds.

$25.000 reasons to play

October 27th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Another effort to activate non-downloading mobile gamers is made by HandsOn as they have launched probably the biggest mobile sweepstakes to date. HandsOn has announced that every downloader of mobile games in the U.S. (except New York & Florida) will automatically enter in order to win the grand price of $ 25.000. There are also two first prices of $ 5.000 and a bunch of mobile phones that will be handed out to the winners. The sweepstakes are promoted on several locations like Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com.

I-Play signed as exclusive gaming partner MGC

October 19th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

I-Play has been announced as official and exclusive gaming partner to the Midnight Gaming Championships held in the US. I-Play will take care of the mobile marketing (shortcodes / games etc). The Midnight Gaming Championships are set to hit off November 18th in Dallas and other sponsors are McDonalds, Time Warner, Best Buy, GameZnFlix, Punchbutton and Coca Cola.

“I-play is extremely proud to have been chosen as the exclusive mobile gaming partner for the ‘Midnight Gaming Championship’,” said David Gosen, CEO of I-play. “Having worked in the mobile games business since 1998, I-play truly understands mobile gamers and can add considerable value in attracting mobile-savvy gamers to the event.”

“I-play is a company with a reputation for publishing the best mobile games and executing cutting-edge mobile marketing campaigns,” said Jerome Elenez, McDonald’s marketing director, Greater Southwest Region “Their leadership in this industry makes them a key alliance for launching the ‘Midnight Gaming Championship’ tournaments.”

Vodafone Live! Launched in Bulgaria

October 12th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Bulgarian operator Mobitel has launched the Vodafone Live! service for it’s  3G subscriber base. With this launch, Mobitel is following a number of operators which are launching the Live! services on their decks under the Vodafone name whilst remaining to operate themselves under their own name. All this comes at a time of global reorganization at Vodafone all over the world.

Widsets officially launched BETA

October 4th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Nokia yesterday officially launched the Widsets.com website. Widsets are widgets for your mobile. Nokia didn’t really put their name on the service and that appears to be a wise move as they are targeting more then just Nokia handsets as they also target handsets from device manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

Since widget services are known for often supporting simple games, my fear directly was this service could seriously target that five minutes of fun we are all aiming at. Installing the service was easy. I filled in my mobile number and received a download link via sms push. After downloading it allowed me to easily select widgets on both PC and mobile. The PC selection was much better though as it allowed me to fine-tune much more about the widgets.

Widsets indeed supports small mobile games, but at this moment development is not open to the public which means there is only Sudoku for now. The public at this moment is only allowed to build widgets based on RSS readers. Also, there are plans to make available commercial widgets in the near future.

Of course, we couldn’t finish this article without at least releasing a widget ourselves. It’s still a bit simple and not at all where we want it to be on a design level, but here you can get our RSS reader. Along the week we will dive into the XML of the application and release a definitive version just before the weekend.

Nokia has released a lot of products in the last year to broaden the consumer’s use of the mobile phone and its many capabilities. However, initiatives like Nokia Sensor and Nokia Flier never really took off. Even at Nokia events, until now I discovered only one person using such a service. Nevertheless, the fact that this service is not Nokia branded and aimed at multiple devices might make it really interesting for consumers.

.mobi launchday

September 26th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | No Comments »

Today is celebration time at .mobi where their service just went live. Check out the action at .mobi.

Blog frontpage problems

September 22nd, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Other news | 2 Comments »

Since yesterday the blog faced some problems with the frontpage not showing up. It’s fixed now, so we are happy to see you all back at the blog and the open discussion.