The Web Week in Review
It was a big news week this week with major technology and internet players vying to share the spotlight - some in more positive ways than others.
Mobile takes the web back to the 90s
With mobile phone penetration significantly higher than PC ownership, why has mobile internet yet still to take off?
While many predict that mobile internet is set to explode, could its simplicity also be its biggest failing?
Bank tests mobile Visa payments
US bank Wells Fargo is to begin testing Visa's mobile payments system with 50 of its own employees.
Introduced earlier this year, the system allows customers to buy goods using mobiles equipped with special chips that can be swiped over retail scanners.
Square Mile blanketed in WiFi
The City of London will from next week become the UK's largest WiFi zone.
The financial district will be blanketed by a giant wireless internet cloud by commercial WiFi enabler The Cloud.
Visa invests in dotMobi
Visa has invested an undisclosed amount in Dublin-based mobile domain name registry dotMobi.
10 reasons why mobile advertising is doomed
Isn’t it funny how we’ve been hearing that ‘This Is The Year For Mobile’ every year since, oh, about 1863?
This seems to have been driven by hugely bullish forecasts from various analysts over the past decade, and the desire among investors to get this message out to market in order to Make Things Happen. Yet mobile marketing has never been the big story, for any number of reasons.
Nokia launches mobile ad network
Nokia has
announced
the launch of a new advertising platform that allows marketers to plan and manage ad campaigns across a wide number of mobile phone configurations.
The Nokia Ad Service aggregates several mobile web publishers, including nokia.mobi, that can be sold to advertisers as ad space in a single package.
Inventor challenges Slingbox on patent claim
A Texan inventor has launched an audacious court case against TV-shifting hardware maker Sling Media, claiming a patent infringement.
Stuart Mershon claims the Slingbox, which uses the internet to rebroadcast TV content from a user's lounge to a PC or mobile phone anywhere in the world, infringes on a system he invented to transmit home audio signals to a remote speaker over wireless telephone networks.
Truphone aims to up VoIP ante
Kent-based mobile VoIP provider Truphone hopes to make its software compatible with 25 mobile handsets this year.James Tagg, CEO of the company which routes calls from regular mobiles over WiFi internet, told GigaOm Truphone will shortly work on Symbian S60 and UIQ (largely Nokia and Sony Ericsson) as well as Windows Mobile.
SMS use up, marketing adoption gains
Americans are finally beginning to use SMS mobile text messaging, according to new research.The Mobile Marketing Association's (MMA) latest annual survey found the proportion of customers who engage in texting daily rose from 41% in 2005 to 44% last year; 69% use the feature generally.
It is thought the American Idol pop talent show was a major driving force behind the upward trend - 64.5m SMS votes to the programme set a new texting record in the country last year.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
