IPromote, Comcast, Roam Simple, IPhone Caddie, Mobile Media, Vonage

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

IPromote, Comcast, Roam Simple, IPhone Caddie, Mobile Media, Vonage

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aimee Mann's Christmas album, Another Drifter In The Snow, right now First Coffee's favorite Christmas album:

IPromote has announced what company officials are calling a "breakthrough" for small businesses, with the addition of mobile advertising to its local platform.
 
Company officials are billing it as a way of "providing businesses with the opportunity to unlock the ROI potential of display advertising on mobile devices." In short, iPromote is a way to get exposure in the mobile market at a local level with ads shown on thousands of popular apps and mobile-specific Web sites.

At a minimum of five dollars per day, small businesses will now receive instant mobile and Web-based ads and the ability to target locally all in one campaign. iPromote's local ad server, AdXpert, uses both distribution channels to deliver lead generation for the advertiser.

"Local businesses can now access mobile advertising to directly reach new customers in their local area," says Michael Barr, CEO of iPromote, adding that "mobile advertising is expected to experience phenomenal growth in the next few years."

IPromote is a division of 2KDirect, and operates offices in San Luis Obispo, California and New York City. 2KDirect also operates the iPromote Ad Network and AdXpert local ad serving technology.
...

Another worthy cause First Coffee's glad to help publicize: For the sixth consecutive year, Comcast is offering Troop Greetings On Demand at no additional cost to its digital cable customers through the end of January 2010.
 
The service delivers Christmas greetings from military personnel stationed overseas to their loved ones back home to watch whenever and as often as they wish. The video greetings are accessible under the "Get Local" section of Comcast's signature On Demand menu, and run anywhere from five to twenty-five seconds.

To compile Troop Greetings On Demand, Comcast secured hundreds of videotapes from Army/Air Force Hometown News Service and edited them into short video greetings for viewers. This week Comcast green-lighted families in Michigan who have messages waiting for them to tell them how to view their holiday salutes.

"This special time of year is about family, friends and good will in the community, and we are proud to use our On Demand technology to bring holiday greetings from our troops overseas to their loved ones back home as part of our commitment to powering dreams in the communities where we live and work," says Tom Coughlin, Senior Vice President of Comcast's Michigan Region.
 
We've said it before and we'll say it again: Do something charitable and First Coffee's glad to let you get away with writing your own quotes.

The greetings are part of Comcast's growing On Demand lineup, which now offers more than 17,000 programs a month that can be viewed on customers' own schedules with the ability to pause, fast-forward and rewind.

In some areas, Comcast will provide complimentary digital service upgrades for families of service personnel seen in this year's greetings who are Comcast Standard Cable customers. The upgrades will be offered for the duration of the Troop Greetings On Demand program.
...

Roam Simple, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, has launched its international BlackBerry SIM Card Service.

Company officials say the offering "supports the entire line of BlackBerry devices" and is targeted specifically towards global business travelers. The service is being promoted with claims from company officials as delivering savings of up to 90 percent on international roaming data fees.
 
Users place Roam Simple's international BlackBerry SIM card into their unlocked BlackBerry handset. The traveler's e-mail address and all vital information is automatically updated within seconds. Prior to departure the service is automatically set up with two telephone numbers -- an international number and a North American number with an area code of the subscriber's choosing.
 
The service supports BlackBerry Internet Service as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Server platforms. Voice roaming rates, "compared to those offered by international phone companies as well as North American operators are substantially lower using Roam Simple's service," company officials claim.

Roam Simple official Amin Jadavji said his company's "almost ten years of expertise in the space and relationships with global carriers such as o2 Telefonica" contribute to the company's client service.

Cost-reduction benefits include billing for data services by the kilobyte, and "unlike other companies, it does not round up usage," company officials say. The company customizes its many rate plans around each of their corporate customers' roaming trends, and since each subscriber can select a North American area code of their choosing prior to departure through the Roam Simple Direct Connect service, which allows contacts in their home area code to call them without charge, local calls in North America are free.
...

[Note: Since 'tis the season, First Coffee pledges to observe the spirit of Christmas and not make any cheap shot Tiger Woods jokes in this piece about a golf application for the iPhone. So Merry Christmas, Tiger, ho ho ho.]
 
The Executive Caddie has released its iPhone application for golfers called "The Caddie: Pro" for golf score tracking and statistics.

"The Caddie: Pro has been in development for most of 2009, with thousands of hours invested in development and design," according to company officials, who evidently are not quite in the swing of the Christmas spirit, as they note "this is in complete contrast to the majority of iPhone apps, which are completed within a few days or a couple of weeks." God rest ye merry, gentlemen, peace on earth now. 

Golfers can use the app for such golfing, ah, uses as acquiring an official handicap, posting and reviewing detailed rounds, tracking detailed statistics about their play, tracking clubs used and penalty stroke, managing their favorite courses and viewing their play statistics.
 
The Caddie also lets users access a Web site where they can perform "all of the same functions as the iPhone app, but also integrates strong social networking features that allows every user to participate in a comprehensive golf community," where no doubt one can keep up on all the latest Tiger Woods jokes.

The Executive Caddie has a golf course database, including almost 29,000 golf courses worldwide: "The Executive Caddie has entered each course by hand and has verified the accuracy of thousands of courses," company officials say, noting that "without that attention to detail, all of the statistics calculated for rounds posted by users would be useless."

Again showing distinct Grinchy traces, company officials note acidly that The Caddie's competitors "base their statistics upon non-verified golf course information, which completely invalidates the accuracy of all golf statistics calculated."

The Executive Caddie was founded in 1988 by James Browning, who describes himself as "a third-generation professional golfer." Browning created the Executive Caddie's first commercial release in 1989, and the original software application was written in C language for MS-DOS. It's been revised three times over the past 20 years, and "the most significant revision is the upcoming 2010 release," Browning says.
...

The mobile industry "has weathered the storm remarkably well," according to MEF's quarterly Business Confidence Index, which shows the global mobile media industry has predicted growth of 33 percent in the next year.
 
But wait, it gets better: "MEF believes that the industry has the potential to beat this projection," company officials say.
The Mobile Entertainment Forum was formed in 2000 to represent companies throughout the entire mobile entertainment value chain as a global trade association.

"This time last year," MEF officials claim, they "predicted that mobile applications would emerge as a content category in their own right and with more than 24 application stores now launched and several billion apps downloaded this has clearly been realized."
 
Company officials say they also predicted the proliferation of touch screen devices would drive discoverability and content usage, remarking that this "is self-evident with seemingly every OEM producing a touch-screen device and strong consumer demand for the interactive functionality this interface provides."

MEF's forecast of top trends in mobile media for 2010 include:

Fragmentation and variance amongst handsets and now application stores will continue to plague the industry, however the growth of applications on the Android platform will close the gap on Apple's App Store.

Operator enabling services will start to be widely deployed, facilitating the growth of rich media content that is simpler, faster and offers a better user experience.

Media publishers will start to experiment with micro-payments, subscription service models and alternative payment methods which challenge the operators' dominance, with Rupert Murdoch's decision to charge for online media content highlighting an already fierce debate.
 
Books will emerge as a new and popular content category for smartphones.
 
Complexity, confusion and ambiguity in the application of rights to the mobile platform will be addressed seriously in 2010.

On 17 November, MEF launched the Mobile Entertainment Forum - Latin America, based in Brazil.
...

Another heartwarming Christmas offer: Vonage has announced an enhancement to the Vonage Mobile application to include the Vonage World calling plan.
 
The Vonage World Mobile app provides customers with what company officials say are "unlimited mobile international calls to over 60 countries for one flat monthly rate when calling from their mobile device."

This means users of the iPhone, BlackBerry and iPod Touch can subscribe to Vonage World Mobile and get access to the unlimited international calling offer. The service works on cellular or Wi-Fi using the customer's existing contacts and cellular phone number.
 
"Subscribers also get free unlimited domestic calling over Wi-Fi on their iPhone and iPod Touch," Vonage officials say, adding that current Vonage World residential customers will receive a 40 percent per month discount on their home service when they buy Vonage World Mobile.

 
Vonage CEO Marc Lefar notes that as mobile devices such as phones, PCs and netbooks become more powerful, broadband networks become more available and 3G/4G data networks become more open, "we envision a future where Vonage delivers calls, readable voicemail, texts, MMS and video calls from any device, using any broadband connection."


Featured Events