6 posts tagged “mobile”

Some people drink in excess, some people binge Twitter. This past weekend I embarked on a spontaneous, unplanned, excessive use of a little mobile messaging service called Twitter, that asks people the simple question of what are you doing -- right now!

By the way, I don't work for Twitter, I just use it. What started this weekend's mobile madness?

Maybe it was a combination of meeting up with friends in a pub on Friday evening, where I was trying to explain what Twitter was. This then kicked off what became my Extreme Twitter Weekend, in which I updated a small number of about 30 'followers' who have signed up to receive my random text message updates. I sent in a total of 117 twitters by the weekend's close, a personal record in being the most times I've ever twittered.

As the weekend got underway, my Twitter followers got to hear all about my attendance at the Hammersmith & Fulham Crime Summit on Saturday, they also got breaking news updates announcing that I was drinking a cup of chai tea, feeling jealous of those lucky enough to attend the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, saying hello to my kitty cat, going to a movie, writing a blog post, visiting the gym and countless other updates about my non-exceptional and fairly mundane weekend. My own little experiment with the service seems to have coincided with a milestone in Twitter's brief history, as it was first used widely, and introduced by its founder Jack Dorsey, at the SXSW music conference last year.

It was my own little experiment with Twitter, which I've been using sporadically for about a year now. It is free to sign up to the service and set it up on your mobile, but you need to check your data rates to understand what you'll pay for each twitter message you send, and receive. On the plus side of this mobile communication service, I've gotten friends around the world to join and 'follow' me via text messages. Now my friends in New York City, Switzerland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Hong Kong can receive mini text message updates about what I'm doing at any given time. It costs less for me to send out a Twitter to my local O2 mobile phone provider in London, than it does to call or text my overseas friends. It also lets me mass update a collection of people who I might want to share some news with. Don't worry, if you don't want to be bothered by the chirp of a mobile phone, all you have to do is turn it off, by sending OFF to Twitter.

During the weekend other followers decided to sign on and track what I was up to, and I even got an invite to test out a service called Xoost.com, which appears to be a new way to search the internet. I've been looking over the trail of Twitters from the weekend, and there are a few that have made me laugh, in reading the running stream of consciousness:

Lisadevaney! is 40~30~30 percent rock+electronica+all else in music!!! What are you???
Lisadevaney! The zombies are playing. Ggggrrrrrroooan (zombie noise)
Lisadevaney! Went to the men's loo by accident! Made new men friends.
Lisadevaney! Sitting near boris johnson. Must not heckle.
Lisadevaney! Announcement: Council member's car is blocking town hall entrance. Maybe boris can't get out.
Lisadevaney! @hillaryclinton- ok i'll call a cowboy in wyoming for you.
Lisadevaney! @barackobama- i want both!!!
Lisadevaney! I hate this nail polish color. White-ish, pink-ish hue. Off now!
Lisadevaney! my local post office among 200k closing. Rubbish! My future: plan a day to mail letters, to allow for time in long lines.
Lisadevaney! Can't move. Cat on my leg.
Lisadevaney! Hate toothpaste spots on clothes
Lisadevaney! Will dream of electric twitters.
Lisadevaney! Sent 117 twitters during her extreme twitter weekend & does not plan to break her own record next weekend.

Ask Yourself: In the world of Twitter are you a : or a !

Twitter Tip: Don't Scare Your Friends With Twitter
In learning how to twitter, I made some mistakes along the way. Including accidentally sending a text intended for my husband, to Twitter, by selecting the wrong contact entry on my phone. It was nothing serious, just a senseless text to anyone following me. I also got a concerned phone call from a friend in New York City, who had received about 30 consecutive text messages from me and, not having had a chance to read all of them, thought there was an emergency going on. No panic to friends intended -- sorry about that one!  Of the people I follow, I've seen plenty of Twitter accidents. My favourite Twitter text messages of hilarity have been the ones where people are clearly a bit off guard, likely drinking, and send out amusing updates with lots of misplaced letters, from a bit of loose fingers in texting on the mobile. I also get a lot of people who are trying to find other people in their immediate geographic area, and have been tempted to phone up the lost person, to inform them where the other person is. "Hey James! Prash is looking for your booth at the trade show and is in Aisle 208. Go find him!"

I personally had a blast with my weekend twitter binge, which amused me greatly, and, other than confusion and befuddlement, it doesn't seem to have caused any damage to anyone I know, but I won't be planning another text message adventure like that. I'm sure someone will break my personal best of a twitter record. I have met a fellow twitterer who has sent 3,000 updates. I think he is aiming to break some sort of world record for twittering. 

The Twitter culture is breeding its own expression, style and fun, like any underground movement that has yet to reach its absolute tipping point in the mainstream.  Thayer Driver, who twitter's here recently  took a serious look at the habits of those who twitter, by running a survey where she found out that:

• People mainly use Twitter mostly to see what their contacts are up to (50.6%).
• Most respondents to this survey are followed by twice the amount of people (101-200 followers) than they follow themselves (51-100 followers).
• You’re most likely to become un-followed if your Tweets aren’t deemed relevant to your followers
• Half the respondents (48.5%) had Twittered drunk…
• … Yet thankfully most people (65.7%) have never regretted a Twitter post

She's kindly offering her survey free to all, which you can download from her blog here.

If you end up loving Twitter, you can even let the whole wide world know to follow along with everything you are doing, by getting a t-shirt inviting random people in the street to follow you, on offer from iGadget Life .

Today I've officially hung up an OPEN for business sign in my virtual shop window.

I've started telling the whole wide world about the Hai Media Group, my London-based agency offering traditional public relations and multimedia communications services to a variety of clients. Find out all about HMG here:

View HMG's launch press release here.

Why hai?

Hai is Japanese for yes. Yes, to me, in any language, is an extremely positive affirmational statement and a simple word I apply to much of my life and the attitude I take to working with clients. Yes opens doors. No shuts doors. The power of the word yes first became pivotal in my life, when I studied improvisational comedy with the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City. My teacher Ari Voukydis explained that whenever you enter an improv situation on stage with a comedy partner, your response to whatever they do should always be yes!

Yes! keeps the show going. Yes! lets the amusing script emerge and yes is a word that overcomes stage fright, welcomes others into your show, and is the absolute key to opening your mind to creative possibilities. For me, I began using the word yes much more often, beyond the stage. The impact was transformational. It was the word YES that got me here to London, when I said yes to my husband Dr. John Fraser Laird Devaney's proposal of marriage. Oh, by the way, the .com URL for calling my company the Yes Media Group was taken. I like hai better anyways. :-)

So, woo hoo! Hip, hip, hurray! And a big fat American-style cheer for the launch today of the Hai Media Group

I'm sipping a bit of champagne right now and giving myself a hard earned huge pat on the back for this committment. I've been working really hard since late August 2007, to get everything I need in place for this moment. I'm now at a point in time where I feel confident enough with HMG to let everyone, even my Mom, know about this entrepreneurial venture. I've been operating as an independent PR consultant since 2002, but my business has grown to include collaborating with other professionals in a variety of exicting fields, and I felt strongly that it was time to hang a brand on what I've been doing. Setting up this business has meant that I've had to spend a lot of quality time with my computer, often on weekends and late into the night over the last six months. In addition to creating the HMG brand and business plan of action, I've been keeping up existing work and personal life responsibilities - and blogging here on Vox.com! I've heard it a million times from independent business people about how working for yourself is a 24-hour job, and I certainly now know exactly what they are talking about. It's like I'm pretty much working all the time! The good part is that pushing yourself to be entrepreneurial and self-sufficient can also be extremely self-motivating.

HMG is allowing me to do a lot of very positive things and has opened up really exciting potential opportunities. While I am the founder and director of this young company, I do not work alone! I've teamed up with some really great media partners, all who I've worked with in some capacity during my career both in the USA and here in the UK. So, here is my big thanks to the following very supportive people who have been encouraging in helping me with the steps I've needed to take with this business:

• Sarah Platt and Ben Styles with Kinura.com
• Barbara Anglisz and Nick Cordua, who run Adept Technologies. Barb, who is among my BFF crew, has been a long term pal who I met waaaay back in my Silicon Alley days, a client, and a very skilled business person I emulate and respect.
• Dr. Richard Barbrook, political science lecturer at the University of Westminster, and author of Imaginary Futures, who early in our friendship and professional association working with Cybersalon and its festival Cybersonica, spotted that I had a blazing creative and entrepreneurial spirit and helped me culture this to better fit the London community. He also figured out that I'm an artist and performer, in addition to my PR profession, and has enjoyed, and encouraged, my occassional impromtu showcases of odd spoken word poetry, improv ballad singing and comedy performance art.
  
• Kate Risker, who, in my opinion, and experience of working nearly 15 years in promotions, is London's absolute most amazing event organizer. She's a delight to be associated with here in London, and in a lot of ways reminds me of myself -- about, well, a long time ago. Her enthusiasm and passion for the event's industry is infectious. She keeps a blog on Vox at www.missrisk.vox.com
• Vijay Chattha who heads the high-tech public relations firm VSC Consulting in San Francisco, and who I've worked with as a virtual 'ambassador' for his company here in London for a few years now. What I most like about Vijay is that he is not at all just a PR guy, he has fantastic intelligence, a big multicultural heart, and entrepreneurial skills and experience that very few PRs possess. Vijay also DJs, and sings, with a fantastic Punjabi-hip hop jazz funk band called Black Mahal, who bring bhangra beats to the masses, and he supports the beautiful charity Project Ahimsa. Did I mention he is a really nice guy as well?
  
• Gerry Griffin, the founder and CEO of Skill-Pill, who truly delivers a very important leadership characteristic of being a person who 'shows' rather than 'tells' as he is freely sharing knowledge with people, and in this way is someone I am learning a great deal from about the business world.
  
• Helen Keegan, who is a mobile marketing expert and writes the popular mobile industry blog Technokitten.com and who I give a heck of a lot of credit to for how I developed the name and branding of the Hai Media Group, as, tough critic though she can be in business, totally steered me in the absolute right direction with what I've been up to in my professional life over the last few years, and continues to be a navigator through what is inevitably the rough, rough, seas in the oceans of start-up business and self-employment
  
• Dan Boultwood, a rising comic book star in Britain, who helped me develop a logo and branding for HMG. I've been his fan since meeting him in my early days of living in London. And got very enthusiastic about his work, as I am a lifelong fan of comic book-style art in all its forms. Look for his comic series Hope Falls, which he produces with the writer Tony Lee, and view his mind-blowing portfolio at: www.shedmanor.co.uk
  
• Steve Double who is a total A-lister portrait photographer. Wow! - check out his photographs at www.double-whammy.com
• Heather Luttrell who is the founder and president of IndieClick.com, based in LA, an amazing digital visionary, who also happens to be a long term BFF (yes, you can have lots of BFFs and I have a few) from back in my Alley days, and a business mentor who has helped me learn a lot about the digital world in the last decade +
  
• My adored friends in New York City: DJ Mark Flynn and my beloved BFF soul sister Karin Louise Mahoney who I am now allowed to tell the whole wide world this news --- Mark and Karin are GETTING MARRIED!
  
• My husband Dr. John Fraser Laird Devaney (a PhD in physics that is!) who is my absolute secret weapon especially in swat team problem-solving IT needs and emotional support for this scary adventure
  
• & many, many, many more people on earth!

I also want to offer a huge thanks to Vox.com for developing a fantastic user-friendly blogging platform that has helped me so much over the last couple years that I've been blogging here. Hip, hip, hurray for Vox.com!

I may try to list all the other people I value (who don't mind being exposed online) in a separate big praising, big love post - all who have offered both really good business counsel and ongoing friendly, trustworthy support. Some of these people even go back to my childhood days growing up in the New York City metro area! HMG is a testament to the kinds of service and creative work I have delivered over the years, but more importantly - it is a beginning for what I aim to bring to the world moving forward.

My simple mission with HMG is to offer sensible service to my clients that makes full use of my two decades of communications experience in traditional PR, while keeping a very alive eye toward the future of how best to reach out to target audiences in ways that hopefully do not feel intrusive, or piss them off. With HMG I'll be folding in new technology marketing approaches where possible with client campaigns, which is why I'm defining my service offerings as being multimedia communications. In my opinion, the best approach to delivering messages is through multimedia that mixes up a variety of tools and tactics. I'll write more about what multimedia communications means to me professionally, but it is basically what ever single one of us live with, use and for the most part enjoy, every single day. Multimedia might mean being struck by an awe-inspiring still photograph, a hilarious YouTube video or an SMS text message that you get on your mobile phone. Multimedia is everywhere and everything around us and is changing every single day.

I'm a participant and creator in the emerging multimedia media landscape -- and so are you.

Welcome to my multimedia garden and I'm looking forward to adventures with my Hai Media Group.

Grow With HMG

You may also notice the plant theme going on here with the Hai Media Group. Nature and plants and the symbol for growth that they represent are central to what I am all about. Green also happens to be my favourite colour. I may live in the big bad city, but in an urban environment it is the green growing plants that mean so much to me -- even if it is just one struggling weed growing up between the cracks in the pavement. That struggling weed is representative of who I am, and what this business is all about. Plants also symbolize so much of my own artistic endeavours over the years, as well as the works of so many of my artistic friends. HMG is here to support the struggling weeds that show amazing potential. We will never STOMP on the growing creative energy that struggles to force its way up through the cracks in the pavement, because to do so is to kill spirit and energy that might emerge to fantastic potential and benefit everyone. HMG is a a watering can, a stake to hold up your business, nutrients for growth and supportive wall you can lean on when the fruits of your labor get a little to heavy to bear.

 

Just like this:

"MacBook Air is ultrathin, ultraportable, and ultra unlike anything else. But you don’t lose inches and pounds overnight. It’s the result of rethinking conventions. Of multiple wireless innovations. And of breakthrough design. With MacBook Air, mobile computing suddenly has a new standard."

Ad copy to dream about.

Sarah Meyers is sooooooo lucky:

This week a new service called Mippin launches.

What's a Mippin? It is simply something that will make it much easier for all of us to surf the mobile internet with our mobile phones. (cellphones for you Americans!) 

I'm giving all my blog readers a head's up about this sneak preview, a: 

24 HOUR NOTICE 
- to  let you  know that:

I'll be Mippin it:

Mippin offers news, entertainment, sports, gossip and a whole lot more. Most interesting, I find, is that Mippin has looped in many niche blogs (more than 1,000 to to start), and other publishing partners including the BBC, that will now be easily accessible and viewable on the small mobile handset screen. In being part of the lucky early beta testers of Mippin, I've been catching BBC News headlines, reading the latest dish from Perez Hilton and enjoying amusing tidbits from Boing Boing - among others, and even friend's blogs such as Helen Keegan's Technokitten.

I believe Mippin will help speed things forward for everyday people like you - and me - who want to use our mobile phones to get information. It is pesky to try and get onto the internet on your mobile, and if you have tried to do it, you may have gotten frustrated with how many of the websites you try to visit appear poorly in your handset's screen. This is where Mippin steps in to rescue us from small screen annoyance. Mippin transforms content sites from the Web into attractive, easy-to-read, pages, leaving you to enjoy what is there to read rather than fool around with settings.

Prior to Mippin’s official global launch date this Thursday, 11th October, they want you to have a chance to check out the service before the rest of the world discover:

• How Mippin can offer surfers of the mobile internet an easier way to find and view content from favourite news sources, blogs and others

• How Mippin allows personalization of what content you receive via your mobile phone with ‘Mipplets’ and ‘MyMippin'

• How Mippin keeps you updated on the day’s most read headlines and content, through what is most popular in the Mippin community
• 

  Mippin On Mobiles

Who's Mippin?

The folks behind Mippin are Refresh Mobile, who brought us Mobizines, and they are backed by Accel, the people who also bring us Facebook. The Mippin team's main players include Scott Beaumont and Robin Jewsbury, Prashant Agarwal, and Accel's Judy Gibbons. I've posted more about them below, and if you are in the mood for a more technical review of what Mippin is all about, I point you over to David Cushman's Faster Future blog here. David, with Emap, got one of the very first peeks at the service, and had a few things to say about it, including:

Here is what other early fans of Mippin have to say about the new service:

“I love the way I can use Mippin on a Blackberry to keep me up-to-date with my favourite blogs and sites when I’m on the move.”  -Judy Gibbons, Accel, who is Mippin it!

“I love Mippin because it introduces me to lots of quality content that I never knew existed!” -Scott Beaumont, Co-Founder and VP  Commercial, Refresh Mobile, who is Mippin it!

Scott has over 15 years’ experience in the mobile space. He began as an Equity Analyst looking at European telecoms during an intense period for industry – the liberalisation of the fixed telecoms markets, launch of mobile telephony and the early evolution of the Internet. In 2000, Scott moved to T-Mobile to take on the extremely varied and rewarding role of EVP for Business Development and was a contributor to the group’s Leadership Team. In March 2005, Scott led the management buy-out of a trial piece of software called NewsExpress and was part of the team that subsequently founded Refresh Mobile. Scott is a graduate of the University of Sheffield and currently lives in London. He enjoys trekking and playing sport, but is currently coming to terms with having young children!

“Mippin gives me built-in content variety through my list of Mippsites.”  -Robin Jewsbury, Co-Founder and VP Development, Refresh Mobile, who is Mippin it!

Robin is co-founder of Refresh Mobile and the inventor of Mobizines – an application written specifically for mobile phones in Flash and Java.  He previously worked for T-Mobile International, where he ran the T-Zones Innovation Group that launched revolutionary products such as the first multi-country, pay-per-event download platform – the “International Download Centre”. Other career highlights include roles at Reuters, where he created the initial prototypes for Reuters Messaging (based on MSN Messenger), and Logica, where he consulted for several industries including defence, telecommunications and finance.

 “Mippin quickly displays the freshest content from my favourite sites rather than trying to load the whole web page on my mobile.”  -Prashant Agarwal, VP of Product Management, Refresh Mobile who is Mippin it!

Prashant has over 10 years’ experience in web and mobile products. Prior to joining Refresh Mobile, he held a number of senior positions with Yahoo! including European Product Manager for Mail and Messenger. He also launched Yahoo!’s first official Series 60 IM application and its official FIFA World Cup 2006 mobile application. Previous experience also includes roles with Dow Jones, CNET and Beyond.com as well as launching Techdirt Wireless – a popular daily  blog.

If you get a chance to get Mippin it - wherever you are in the world! -  please let me know what you think of the service. Leave me a comment, send me a note via my blog here on Vox.com.

 

 

 

WARNING: The latest headbanging, hard rocking ringtones are coming to a mobile phone near you this summer!

No longer able to endure the fact that most ringtones blast the latest pop and hip hop tracks, hard rockers now have access to a special collection of punk, metal and indie tunes for their mobiles that is guaranteed to battle the prevailing chimes of  Britney Spears, P Diddy and Gwen Stefani. Today Cellfish Media debuts Mobile Threat, a mobile punk, metal and hardcore rock community that lets fans of this music genre download mobile content from top hardcore bands. On offer, through a partnership with Sounds of the Underground Music Tour, this summer's hardest US rock tour, fans can find mobile entertainment content for bands like GWAR, Shadows Fall, Everytime I Die, Chimaira, The Devil Wears Prada and Guns 'N Roses.

The recently launched Cellfish.com is a mobile and web entertainment portal where users can share and store their mobile content, making use of online "lockers" that let members keep contacts, video, ringtones, wallpapers and games. What's great is that if you upgrade a handset, lose or have your phone stolen, your Cellfish.com locker serves as a content backup for everything you collected for your phone. In this day and age when our mobile phones are as important to carry around as our house keys, bank and credit cards, Cellfish.com gives us a real peace-of-mind service that makes sure you won't lose that A-Listers phone number that you scored backstage last night - or Aunt Mary's land line. Beyond storage and downloads, the site is a kind of MySpace/Facebook-style social networking mobile community, based on the ability to share mobile content with other community members.

If hardcore isn't your flavor - explore Cellfish.com's variety, as there's something for everyone's tastes to be found, including plenty of pop and hip hop content that is part of the site's very popular Blingtones and Wicked Betty collections.

But when you get irritated  by the screaming new rock ringtones that are about to startle public transport riders everywhere - the ONLY solution is that, as the classic cliche goes, if you can't beat 'em JOIN 'em and go get your own ringtone to personify your music tastes and personality! 

There are two events I've been invovled with promoting for this Saturday, Nov. 18th. If any VOX reader is in New York City or Wasthington DC, why not check out:

1) DJ Ravidrums rocks Times Square from 8pm-2am as part of the festivities of the launch of the Nintendo Wii. A hot ticket drummer and favorite son of celebrities, Ravi is known for his percussion style that mixes rock, with Indian influences, making for a sexy tribal beat! Find out more about Ravi at at http://www.myspace.com/djravidrums, or click here:

2) An exclusive screening of Yellow Arrow :: Capitol of Punk will be held at the Warehouse Theater in Washington DC this Saturday at 10 pm. This project traces the hisotry of DC punk rock and features members of punk band Fugazi and other iconic music legends of the city. In the 10 short films, Councilman Marion Barry also gives his eye view of the 70's and 80's punk rock era and what it meant for the city. The films are part of Yellow Arrow's wireless walking tour of DC, and can be accessed via mobile phone, find out more about how Yellow Arrow, a global wireless community project, at: www.yellowarrow.net

And since VOX makes it so fantastically easy to post YouTube videos, watch a teaser about Yellow Arrow :: Capitol of Punk, here: