Viacom - vae victis, YouTube

Viacom had better prove the importance of copyrighted content for YouTube users : the traditional media giant had its nextgen rival (now a Google brand) ordered by a NY judge to release user data, but at the bulk level. So no User-Generated Discontent ahead : John and Jane Doe shall remain anonymous criminals. And the blame (if any) on YouTube's broader shoulders. Or the shame on Viacom's, should the figures turn out to be disapointing.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, another safe was apparently cracked as the European Commission allowed NRAs to open for WiMAX part of the 2.6GHz spectrum devoted to FDD / TDD. Not the kind of news John and Jane Does love to download, but who knows, some may find some value in it.

Google Jaiku kentai ?

I don't care about the Gphone anymore than I did about the iPhone, but I do care about Google's vision about mobility and to me, dealing with Multiverse or purchasing Jaiku makes more sense than manufacturing devices.

Devices are about status, but you want to care about actual status : how are your friends doing, where on earth are they, what are they plotting, with whom...? Your personal network is much more important than your carrier's network, and portability will come some day for anything from a technical point of view, so value is to be made beyond the tools.

Besides, there are too many tools out there. Including in Google's portfolio. I hope they will take less time to boost Orkut and Google Maps / Google Earth with Jaiku than they did to implement basic Google tools in Blogger.

Yet, I'll stick to Big G for the blogging platforms. And I'll keep building Chinese walls with other e-mail services providers and interpersonal spaces like LinkedIn or Facebook.

Geotagging and slipping like a log

Context, context, context, location, location, location...
You already can sort your travel pictures on a map with Google-Picasa or Yahoo!-Flickr, and videos should follow soon. But you still depend on a mapping service provider for the location match.
Storing is one thing, organizing another. And it's scary how much digital content you can produce and forget.. ' better let the techno do the job and slip a few logs while you sleep like a log !
Some high end Nikon cameras already geotag directly photo-files through GPS plug-ins, and tomorrow's mobile picturephones / videophones should be able to do this seamlessly. Actually, your cellco should encourage you to upload any info you can add on any given location (photo, video, memo, the vcard of a store...), and share if possible.
Eventually, I guess we'll virtually carve on every tree we pass by : here I took a picture of a monument, there some crook stole my handset, there again he used it to purchase a watch... and I guess here is the public phone from which I called my lawyer.

MySpace France : dial fr for Murdoch

MySpace France opened their beta version on the web*. Un-translated US banners feebly try to animate an almost empty shell but you can count on Fox Interactive Media for tying a few knots with local media partners.
In France, Murdoch's blog machine cannot leverage on a strong News Corp presence and worse, it will face a strong leader with a rather newscorpish look and feel : Skyblog sounds like a Sky branch and succesfully targets the illiterate. Yes, the global deal with Google can bring audience, but not substance... and especially not MySpace's trademark podcastable broadband-broadchested-six-pack-daily-mirrorish substance.
MySpace France must be finalizing some partnerships with a cellco / M-VNO, and certainly with TV / radio channels. I don't expect Arte / France Culture executives to be shortening their holidays.


* dial http://fr.myspace.com/ for Murdoch ; myspace.fr seems to be auctioned by its opportunist owner.

Cyworld vs MySpace... SKT has it both ways

Is it the sky falling over MySpace and Ruppert Chicken Little Murdoch or just acorns from his new Korean partner in the mobile arena* ? A few weeks after Helio, SK Telecom are about to launch Cyworld in the US.
Right now, the beta version** only hosts 364 clubs but totoris are already up for grabs and unlike in Korea, there is a clear focus on the younger generations. Besides, there is more (Mini)room for actual pictures and actual goods for your totoris vs the usual virtual Minimes and virtual goods... which should mean a more direct broadband war to News Corp's podcasting giant. The question is : how long before cyworld gets mobile in the US too ?
Next stops for the cyworld train : Europe, South America and India.



* about the Helio-MySpace deal, see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220)
** http://us.cyworld.com/

Another good fairy over Helio's cradle

After the 65+ million MySpace members*, Helio LLC adds the half billion Yahoo! users to his wishlist.
Among the key features included in the partnership : Yahoo! Search (dedicated button), Yahoo! Shortcuts, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messengers and all Yahoo! content channels, plus cross-marketing operations.
More partnerships should follow, but the not-yet-born M-VNO already presents a healthy face. Technical witchcraft plus marketing know-how... SK Telecom's DNA starts showing.



* see "MySpace Mobile On Helio with Hero and Kickflip" (20060220)

Excuse my French

Announcement :
If you're sick and tired of my twopenny puns written in a more than poor English, learn that from now on, you can also enjoy my twoeurocent puns written in an utterly broken French on CNET France*.
That blog is also about mobility and innovation, only in the langue de Moliere - some of us froggies are still moving and considering disruptions beyond the classique strike / demonstration acception.
For the bulk of mot-bile's visitors who don't know a word of French, stay tuned.
For the others, stay tuned too. I've got 5 blogs to feed** now, and you don't know where the next blogule will land.
And please keep feeding me back with your comments and remarks, which are always more than welcomed. Provided you don't write in Korean, that is.
Best regards,
Stephane


* http://blogs.cnetfrance.fr
** besides mobility, some blogules in French and in English, plus a soccer playground in French (footlog).

TiVocasting on iPod and PSP - from TVNO to M-TVNO

Apple are eyeing Nokia' Series 60 platforms, but I've been also interested by TiVo's extension from TV-VNO to Mobile TV-VNO : DirecTV Group Inc.'s jewel decided to format directly for iPod and PSP.

Radios and TVs have been pushing podcasting, taking liberties with their own schedules and programmings. TiVo had to jump in the broadbandwagon and this defensive move could position them better than ever : instead of a remote TV, they could become a central hub for all devices.

Problem : everything has to pass through the DVR and paradoxically, the remote operator happens to be the most dependent on home networking... Sorry, but this is not "TV your way" all the way yet.

NRJ mobile and bank robberies

From radio to TV to mobile, NRJ Group are heading for a multimedia grand slam. Of course, NRJ owner Jean-Paul Baudecroux cannot leverage on as massive a blog pool as his rival and potential target Skyrock (Skyblog drafted millions and NRJblog followed with a me-too product - still considered as such by the public)... but he's the early bird and remains the helluva dealmaker. Plus he certainly took this media a better way than other players. To the point this French operator could export the concept to Scandinavia, where M-VNOhood started : NRJ/ENERGY operates in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, but also in Germany, Switzerland or Austria. Besides, they know about network operating since the NRJ Group owns the French towerco towerCast, also a SFR partner in their DVB-H trials (see "Satellite of love"*).
Far from your usual reseller, NRJ mobile can be considered a genuine M-VNO. They're not killing voice (35 to 55 cents per mn), they're not killing SMS (6 to 12 cents apiece), they're certainly not killing radio (15 cents per mn), and they're not even killing music : 2 euros per song, that will disturb neither their carrier (SFR), nor their carrier's owner (Universal), nor even NRJ's annoucers (SFR and Universal among others). The core target is young but not so cheap, and their vanity is rewarded : customers can pick their numbers in the 06.06 series (no doubt M6 Mobile is loving it).
NRJ's partners should know about overcharging services : CIC (10% of NRJ mobile) happens to be my bank...


* by the way, TF1 & co have just started their T-DMB trials in Paris on October the 15th (one month after DVB-H), I'm sure with the blessing of LG (see "Mobile Real TV - LG and the H-free handset").

Smells like tin can spirit

Bell Labs' prez, Jeong Kim, announced in Seoul that thanks to nanotechnologies, mobile devices will sense changes in facial expressions and even smell people or things. You'd better not eat garlic before videophoning your girlfriend. And watch out next time your company offers you a Blackberry : it might beep your boss each time you lie or recover from booze or pot smoking or all of the above. What a Xmas gift !
"Merry Christmas" is the name of the software developped by Sookmyung Women's University for a PR firm : it crawls across the cyberspace and displays a rather graphical way both the positive and negative opinions on people or issues. US firms are already using such tools to roam the blogosphere, when their employees don't do it directly. And when I say "do it", I mean either roaming (funny how people keep visiting from Redmond, WA or Cupertino, CA) or building the blogosphere (e-pinion minions). Not always in the open.
Speaking of which... Korea's MIC seems to confirm the implementation of its "real-name system" plan by the end of this year. Before posting any comment on the web, Koreans will have to enter their personal ID. Not that of their service provider but the official one they use in their everyday life. The public seems to want that reform, and not only for the big internet players (who often have already implemented it) but for the whole web. Yet, major portals like Daum or Naver fear users will switch to foreign based providers.
So now both your mobile and your cyberalter egos will expose your true self. Not much will change for me : I decided to use my real name on my personal spaces as well as on public fora as a challenge. Every lapse, every mistake, every stupid joke will remain somewhere : I'm sick of the forgiveness of word processors and other polishing softwares, allzusoftwares.

Cyworld and Nespot, WMD and WWF

The day SKT announced mobile Cyworld's millionth subscriber, KT celebrated Nespot's 500,000th client.
Cyworld mobile was doomed to succeed : it took almost one year to reach the 500,000 mark (last Feb), but about half this time to double the score. SKT target 1,5M users end 2005, of which 800,000 "active" (vs 600,000 now, an active user being defined as having used the service in the past 30 days). They could do even better considering this crowd would be equivalent to less than 10% of all Cyworld users - plus mobile videoblogs have not been launched yet. Anyway, "Dotori"s keep flying over the air : Cyworld's virtual currency was already stronger than your classic loyalty program's miles, it is now becoming a perfect and not-so-informal complement to SKT's WMDs (Weapons of M-banking Domination : Moneta & co).
KT are also strenghtening their positions in the mobile arena through key "fixed" assets but significantly, while SKT's entry points usually depend on customer centric services, KT's more often rely on offer-creates-demand-hardware-and-network-based solutions. Nespot took about 3.5 years to hit the half-a-million spot (a World record for 802.11b access services) : launched in feb 2002, it claimed 502,031 subscribers on August the 16th, 2005 thanks to an impressive army of 13,222 hotspots. But the fixed incumbent plans to reach 170,000 areas by the end of the year, put Blackberry in its Swing phones and launch new W-LAN-based home networking applications*. I wonder whether KT expect to multiply by 12 their Nespot customer base or consider locking key locations for other technologies as well (Wibro ? HSDPA ? HSUPA ? all of the above 2Mbps ?).

* Like KTF a few weeks ago, KT picked a pet-centric app to make it sweeter to the eyes of the public - as far as acronyms are concerned, their PR teams must be more familiar with WWF than MBA.

London Videophones vs CCTV : 1 - 0

Unlike 9/11 and 3/11, 7/7 is the first massive terror attack in a significantly 3G-enabled-videophone-equipped country. Each Londoner being caught by CCTV an average 9 times a day, the police must be crunching much more images than Mr & Mrs Smith from their sofa, so most of the public footage comes from videophones.
Tony Blair seems to seek as little publicity as possible for the terrorists as well as for his own agenda. He can control mainstream medias but not the personal ones.
Blogs have long taken a comfortable position as news / propaganda providers. Podcasting / videocasting is following as expected.
This defining moment exposes the positive side of the medal - expect massive controversies next, especially considering today's legal attacks by the Bush Administration on non-friendly journalists and bloggers.

Neck plus ultra

Step by step, TU media is making DMB history :

• SK Telecom launched their satellite last march but it took them almost a year to launch a preservice for early adopters - but don't blame this master of TTM for the delay : regulatory hurdles were tough (actually, SKT literally had to build their own arena to make sure the race would start before competitors were born).
• for a week now, TU media preservice has been freely providing 3 video channels already familiar to June customers (Music with m-net, News with YTN and Drama with SBS Drama and MBC Drama) plus 6 audio channels. Ads have been running featuring a man pushing a shopping cart while his son's enjoying a show on the horizontally turned 5.5 cm screen of the Samsung SCH-B100 hanging from his father's neck. With mini mobile theaters, it's not about the audience doing some necking when the lights are out - it's about the theater itself ruining the owner's neck.
• That's a 622 euro (850,000 W) theater and batteries are supposed to run for 150 mn of intensive usage : forget a LOTR marathon or handset subsidies (the latter forbidden by the government). And Koreans also have to invest in digital TV : already 15% own it today for a projected 48% end 2007 according to the Electronic Industries Association of Korea...* More devices (including in-car sets) will be available by may, when overall 14 video and 24 audio channels are broadcasted (the first 3 data channels are scheduled for 2005).
• The access fees will then cost about 14.6 euros per month (20,000 wons) and SKT expects a 9.5 euro (13,000 wons) ARPU. Not too aggressive a business plan considering today's wireless internet ARPU for SKT's WI enabled handset owners (about 6 euros according to their monthly stats). SKT's partner in Japan MBCo launched their DMB service last october and claims a lousy 10,000 subscribers but they solely provided in-car devices and don't have the marketing power of Korea's leader. SKT expects 600,000 subscribers end 2005 and 5.6M end 2010. Not aggressive either : that's the equivalent of 3 and 30% of their customer base and it took much less time for them to equip 6M people with EVDO handsets.

How about cannibalization, then ? That's the big issue... but that's also the way this first mover is keeping its edge. Stephane MOT

* while we're at it : Korea remains at the top for broadband access among OECD members (24.08% equipment rate - to be compared to 15% for Canada, the distant runner-up). If you are to believe last NIDA poll, 69.3% of all Koreans already used the internet at home back in june 2003 (55% through xDSL and 9.5% through CATV), 46.3% managed more than one e-mail address (and 12.6% their own homepage - thank you Cyworld). Wireless internet usage reached 36.1% (over 83% for the 12-19 year olds), and among users 53.4% paid for premium sites and 21.2% did some m-shopping (74.5% for downloading stuff but already 14.3% for clothes, groceries or food).

Welcome

A new spin off from my blogules, devoted to the strange world of mobility.