Socialight!!! Using location-based messages known as Sticky Shadows™, the Socialight platform enables new kinds of communication, taking into account the current and past locations of friends. Location is especially important in Socialight since the oldest (and, we think, most natural) time to really connect is when we 're out and about, and moving from place to place. What are Sticky Shadows™? Sticky Shadows are virtual multimedia sticky notes that you "leave" for your friends in specific places using your mobile phone. Your Sticky Shadows can include various media types such as text, audio, photos, video or any combination thereof.

Study: Gens X, Y Want Music Via Cell Phone. It appears that almost one in four respondents indicated they would change service providers to get these services if they had to. Also, it appears that people are eager to receive advertisments on their mobiles. “What’s more, consumers favor free, ad-supported content over subscription-supported, ad-free content. Roughly two out of five consumers would be interested in receiving ad-supported multimedia, compared to one out of five who would be willing to pay subscription fees for ad-free content.” The Management Network Group has released a study on what 13-34 year-olds want from their mobile phone. 34% were interested in mobile music downloads; 21% were interested in a video clips service; and 21% were interested in multiplayer 3D gaming. Read it also on PrNewsWire.com.

ConQwest "big game". ConQwest is a promotional event in 10 cities for Qwest Wireless. It is a high-stakes treasure hunt in the urban jungle. Five teams of high-school students, armed with Qwest Wireless phonecams, race through the city searching for treasure in the form of images called semacodes. Semacodes are the 2-D barcodes that can be captured by phonecam and decoded into digital information (as already mentioned at Mobility@lse last year). The technology, pioneered by Semacode, Inc, was further refined by Dennis Crowley (of Dodgeball.com), and Kamida. Take a look the Area/Code web page, the ConQwest 2005 web page, and also some event photos.

Podcasters Tune into Apple. Podcasting is a relatively new phenomenon, where people create short audio programs and make them available for downloading on an iPod or other digital music device. Podcast programs are usually topic based, say, about cooking or sports. Others are downloadable versions of traditional ("terrestrial") radio programs. A growing community of podcast directories has emerged, giving people an easy way to find various programs. Read it on TechnologyReview.com (an MIT enterprise).

The Battle for Content. A nice essay on how to break out of the mobile content silos and expand the pie…”It is time to step out of our silo mentality and think about the future of wireless content within the broader content universe.” Among other things, “we should not assume that content and applications that have been successful elsewhere will map similarly here.” Also, “we have to put much greater thought into context and personalization for wireless to capture its fair share of content viewers and dollars.” Read the article on Wireless Week .

77% of UK Mobile Users Don't Use Data. The vast majority of mobile phone users that buy sophisticated handsets are not using mobile data services, reveals an independent NOP survey, commissioned by Olista amongst 800 users aged 15 - 65+. The findings show that 77% of phone users have never used any new data services such as picture and video messaging or gaming and ring tone downloads and a mere 12% of actual mobile data users profess to be completely satisfied with the service. Reat it on 3GNewsRoom.com .

Back to Basics.BBC News reports that Vodafone has launched two "back to basics" mobile phones that provide the basic functionality of voice calls and text messages. This is in a response to demand from a segment of potential customers who only wish to use these two basic features. It is hinted that subsequent models may include a button for emergency services aimed at older people. Read the article on BBC News

Cellphedia, a SMS Social Network Service. Based on ideas taken from Wikipedia and dodgeball, Cellphedia allows its members to broadcast questions to its community and receive answers, using SMS text messaging on cell phones. Here is how it works, according to "Cellphedia Melds Facts with Mobile Smart Mobs" from E-Commerce Times.

PhD Scholarships:The Department of Informatics at Copenhagen Business School invites applications for PhD scholarships in mobile and ubiquitous business computing. They are aiming to hire up to three candidates in the areas of: Private Public Partnerships for the provision of advanced mobile services; Multi-modal user interfaces - focus on analysis, design, test and evaluation of interaction; and Diffusion and adoption of advanced standard based mobile services. For further detail, please see http://frontpage.cbs.dk/jobs/stil.pl?func=details&id=212 and www.mobiconomy.dk. The application deadline is17 June 2005, at 12:00 noon.

Social Tapestries. Proboscis has just launched the...

Social Tapestries. Proboscis has just launched their new website for the Social Tapestries research programme on http://socialtapestries.net/index.html.

W3C Launches Mobile Web Initiative. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) during the WWW2005 Conference, an endeavor to make Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy, and convenient as Web access from a desktop device. "Mobile access to the Web has been a second class experience for far too long," explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "MWI recognizes the mobile device as a first class participant, and will produce materials to help developers make the mobile Web experience worthwhile." Find it on GeekZone.

Sony Corp. on Tuesday introduced the first mass-market laptop with built-in cellular technology for accessing the Internet over a wireless connection. Read it on TechnologyReview.com (from MIT).

A Web of Sensors, Taking Earth's Pulse. In the wilds of the San Jacinto Mountains, along a steep canyon, scientists are turning 30 acres of pines and hardwoods in California into a futuristic vision of environmental study. They are linking up more than 100 tiny sensors, robots, cameras and computers, which are beginning to paint an unusually detailed portrait of this lush world, home to more than 30 rare and endangered species. Much of the instrumentation is wireless. Read it on New York Times.

Most SMS in the World: Deepak Sharma from India is on his way to the Guinness Book of World Records for having sent 1,82,689 SMS within one month. He is now aiming to send 3,00,000 during June. If you get one of them, let us know ;-) Read the story on news.webindia123.com.

m>business2006 in Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School is hosting the m>business2006 conference June 26-27 2006 and have just circulated the call for papers. Visit the conference website on www.cbs.dk/icmb2006 to see all the details.

Instant Networks. For cops and firefighters, being wireless isn't just about walkie-talkies anymore. An increasing number of emergency workers rely on high-speed wireless data networks while on the job. But many of these networks are set up in a hub-and-spoke configuration: if a hub, such as a wireless base station, goes down, the network fails. This summer CA's PacketHop will release software designed to prevent that type of failure. The software enables standard Wi-Fi-equipped laptops, PDAs, and other devices to form their own "mesh" networks. With the technology, emergency workers at a disaster site can "set up a network on the fly without the need for infrastructure." Read it on TechnologyReview.com (an MIT Enterprise).

New Weblog: Our friend Nikolaos Mylonopoulos from ALBA in Athens has started a new interesting weblog on life with mobile technologies. Although we of course would not recommend you to abandon mobility@lse altogether ;-) we strongly recommend that you visit Nico's blog mobsoc.blogspot.com.

Using Mobile Phones for Secure, Distributed Document Processing in the Developing World. An interesting story on a framework developed by a PhD candidate for use of Smart Phones in developing countries: the information services architecture in the story uses a smart phone equipped with a built-in digital camera to process “augmented paper documents”. “CAM, so called because the phone's camera plays a key role in the user interface, is a three-tiered, document-based architecture for providing remote rural information services. The user tier comprises a set of paper forms and artifacts that people use to record information, perform queries, and conduct transactions. The server tier is a standard Web application server, which can reside locally, in a nearby town, or virtually in the Internet ether. The mobile phone acts as a roving middleware, playing the role of scanner, user interface, network, cache, and preprocessor. Read the article on IEEE Computer Society.

The Need To Simplify Intellectual Property Rights Management And The U.S. Mobile Video Industry. A report from Frost & Sullivan focussed on the US mobile video industry cites the management of intellectual property rights as a main concern for the industry. “Though content providers may have already assigned rights to established distributors in specific countries and regions, obtaining amendments to existing licensing agreements remains a much complicated process for content aggregators. In some cases, content providers assign exclusive distribution rights to established distributors in these regions, which further complicates the process of introducing video services over mobile networks.” Another interesting part of the release is the suggestion that carriers should have a data strategy that encouraged an increase in average revenue per megabyte (ARMB). Read it on Yahoo Finance.

Lightningcast has announced the launch of its Mobile Video Advertising Solution, which allows mobile video providers to “seamlessly and dynamically insert targeted, audited video ads into real-time (”mobile TV”) and/or on-demand mobile video streams”. The key thing about this is that the inserted ads can be targeted to specific demographics, the details of which could be obtained when a user registers for a video service. Alternatively, the ads can be targeted based on location, so people in different cities receive ads localized to them. This technology utilizes the strength of mobile video and is quite clearly a boon for everyone concerned — consumers get ads that are more relevant to them, advertisers get a more targeted audience so the ads are more effective, and content providers can charge more for the space (because the ads are more effective). Read the PDF article here.

Don't ground the teen, confiscate the mobile phone. Parents looking to grab a teenager's attention with a stiff punishment should confiscate their mobile phone. A study by a top South Korean advertising firm shows that a mobile is one of a Korean teenager's most prized possessions. "Cell phones are the key to a teenager's social network," said Andy Joohyun Lee, senior researcher at Cheil Communications' Brand Marketing Institute. Reat the article on Yahoo News.

IEEE Workshop. The Third IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (WMTE 2005) is held November 28-30, 2005, in Tokushima, Japan. Submissions are due by June 1st. For more information check the conference website on http://lttf.ieee.org/wmte2005/