Jiipe

This would have to be the worst match up since the The Flintsons and The Jetsons. HTC have announced that they will be offering their new Touch HD exclusively through Telstra.

One serious question comes to mind: why give a mobile phone that has one of the nicest video setups around to a telco that has the poorest mobile internet plans in Australia?

As HTC states on their site: “Be amazed as online movies and web videos come alive in full digital clarity, taking mobile internet to new and unexplored vistas. Make your communications real and exhilarating. Be entertained, more than ever before.” For about 30 minutes until your mobile internet plan runs out.

Telstra’s current plans include three choices: 5MB for occasional users, 10MB for frequent users, and 300MB for what they class as “heavy users”. To give you an idea of how ridiculous these are, a 1-minute YouTube clip is approximately 2-3MB. So even on the “heavy user” plan, you can watch a max of 30 1-minute clips on YouTube. Or one per day over the month.

This leaves you watching only what Telstra decides is good enough: BigPond TV and Mobile FOXTEL. The latter has the following two conditions: usage limits of 15 mins per session and 200 mins per month may apply. While BigPond TV is over priced.

So, let’s recap. HTC bring out their best video mobile ever, promoting its fantastic online video experience, and then gives exclusive rights to a telco that allows a maximum of 30 one-minute long videos per month maximum and two crappy and over-priced ways of viewing television. FAIL.

Back in December last year I wrote a post entitled So What Ever Happened To Mobile TV In Australia, and at that time there was a new trial planned for early 2009. Well that trial is under way and will run until Feburary 28.

Two-hundred Optus customers with Nokia’s N96 will get to watch nine different digital stations streamed to their mobile phones using the DVB-H technology, which can deliver up to 30 video channels over a single UHF channel.

The channels are: Seven Digital, ABC1, SBS Digital, Fox Sports News. Sky News Business, CNN International and Cartoon Network, MTV and MySpace Road Tour.

The trial is being co-ordinated by The Australian Industry Group’s (AIG) Australian Digital Suppliers Industry Forum (ADSIF), Optus, Nokia, LG Electronics, Broadcast Australia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Australian Digital Testing.

This trial is being run not to promote one technology over another (there are several competing technologies) but to promote a service that customers want and companies are ready to deliver.

I contacted Stephen Conroy’s Office in late December about the state of Mobile TV in Australia and what the Australian Government was intending to do about it, but I did not receive a reply at that time.

And it seems I am not the only one left in the dark either. ADSIF coordinator, Tim O’Keefe, stated “The current minister put everything on hold and was going to make an announcement in December but we have heard nothing yet.” He went on to say, “we are trying to ensure that mobile TV remains on his agenda.”

Let’s hope that it does, so we can all enjoy mobile TV on our phones in the near future.

Image credit: masochismtango

Not a lot of companies, small businesses, clubs or even individuals have really started thinking about creating a mobile website. But over the coming months and years it will be more important than ever.

Here is one way to make a nice looking website specifically designed for mobile phones, which is easy, quick and painless.

The award-nominated Ubik is a site that lets you create a mobile website in under 30 minutes. And it is completely free.

Like all quick things however, there are some negatives (which I list below), but for a small home business, club or individual, it’s a very nice option that will take very little effort, very little time and absolutely no coding skills.

Creating A Site
Ubik makes creating a mobile website as easy as following as possible, with just a few simple steps. The first thing you need to do is choose a base template from a range of 32 Ubik has to offer. Once you have choosen the basic template it’s time to decide how many, and what sort, of pages you will have on the site.

Each template gives you the option of 20 various pages that you may need, from an About Us page to a Photo Gallery page, it even supplies an empty page in case you want to customize it yourself from the ground up.

Once you have choosen your pages, the site takes you to the customize page. Here you can customize anything from changing headers, images, text, and contact details, and you can add further information if you wish.

The information you place on the site is controlled using defined boxes, which you can edit and move around to individualize your mobile site.

The Good
One feature I found particularly useful was being able to add any RSS or Atom feed you like. So you could easily feed posts from your website. (I have done this on the front page of thmobile site I designed for Jiipe - see below).

Another great feature is the ability to see how the site looks, in real time, in a number of varying mobile phones. There are five different mobile standards that you can view your mobile website through: Basic, Low, High, Best and iPhone - each one covers a variety of different mobile phone models.

Once you have created you site and are happy with its content you need to register with Ubik and then publish it. It’s all very quick and painless but, as mentioned previously, there are some downsides to this.

The Bad
These are the major negatives with pubishing a site with Ubik:

• You cannot edit the code if you want to. Everything is controlled by the drag-and-drop controls.
• You have to use a domain name with the Ubik name in it, for example your-site.ubik.com. While this is not an issue for a club or hobby site, it may prove a poor choice for businesses as it does show a lack of professionalism.
• You have no choice over hosting. All sites are hosted at Ubik.
• Any ads you place on your Ubik site, you have to share the revenue 50/50 with Ubik.

I created a mobile version of Jiipe to give Ubik a spin, and it turned out pretty well for something that took me about 20 minutes. You can see it here: jiipe.ubik.net.

If you do make up a site, post the address in the comments section below, I would love to see what you have created.

You may have noticed a slight major change with the site design here on Jiipe. There were several reasons for this - none of which are very interesting, so I won’t bore you with them - but I hope you like the new design. I am not sure if it will be permanent, but for now at least, it seems much cleaner and easier to navigate.

Feedback is welcome.

It seems the issues I raised last week have finally become a reality to Kogan, which today announced that it would not release it’s much anticipated Android-based phone at the end of the this month. And has shelved its release indefinitely at this time.

Kogan cited compatibility issues with future Android apps. Meaning that the screen resolution and perhaps other technical issues (perhaps due to low quality hardware) will stop some apps from performing at their best or not allowing them to be used at all.

This was the major issued raised by some developers, who are looking at the HTC G1 as the standard for Android phones.

This is a major blow, not only for Kogan, but for Australians who have been waiting patiently for the first Australian Android phone.

What do you think, are you disappointed?

With the Agora Android phone only 2 weeks away, there have been a few (including us here at Jiipe) who have raised concerns about its quality. I thought I would show videos of both together and let you can decide if the quality of the Agora is as good as the G1.

What do you think?

Just as porn made the internet popular, it looks like it is going to do the same for the mobile web.

Adult entertainment powerhouse Pink Visual has announced that it saw its mobile video service saw after Christmas.

It seems like people who received an iPhone for Christmas were looking for mobile porn.

“We saw a peak after Christmas when everybody got new video phones,” Kysar, from Pink Visual, said. “One of the first things people do after activating their iPhones is Google ‘iPhone porn’ and here they are.”

Over the last six months, visitors to Pink Visual’s website has skyrocketed and over 40% of those visitors have become paying members.

And I am sure this market will only get larger as more and more people discover the mobile web and mobile porn.

What do you say? Is this good for the mobile industry?

In an effort to re-gain market share, Palm has shown off the Palm Pre: their latest smart phone; created a new Linux-based Web OS, for which they will be releasing a SDK for developers; and now they have announced their own version of the iPhone App Store, called the App Catalog.

While there is nothing new in any of this it will be necessary for Palm to try and re-built its shattered empire and compete with the likes of Apple, Android and Nokia.

What do you think, can Palm come back? And is there room for another player?

There is a lot of talk in the media lately about the mobile web and about how consumers are slowly adopting its use. Major companies are listening and creating sites to cater. There is also talk about how this drive towards the mobile internet is being driven primarily by iPhone users.

And there are statistical numbers to back this up.

But why? Why iPhone users over say, Windows Mobile users or Blackberry users? I put it down to one major feature: a large quality screen.

There is one major draw-back for the mobile web and that is the small screen space. Sure you could argue that the networks are slow, that the mobile web is not ubiquitous or even that the mobile web is only new but, while all these are issues, the major one is screen real estate.

And this is where the iPhone wins hands-down over any of its rivals: a nice big colourful screen.

It’s the same reason I bought a PSP over an iPod Video to watch movies a couple of years ago: screen space and screen quality. And it is the same reason people who are buying iPhones and using them to surf the web now. Try using any other phone to surf the web and then try using an iPhone - you will see why the iPhone is leading the way in mobile web usage.

It’s also why other companies such as Nokia and HTC are bringing out phones with larger screen sizes.

Until technology comes up with more innovative ways of increasing screen space while keeping our phones small, the iPhone’s screen is about as big as we are going to get, but it seems that that is bigger enough for a large portion of mobile web users.

What do you think?

Didiom has just announced that their media service is now available to Windows Mobile and the Blackberry Pearl 8100 series phones.

Didiom allows users to access their home computer’s iTunes library remotely, listening to their favourite tunes while on the go.

Users in the USA can also purchase MP3s from Didiom, but this service is not available in Australia at this time. Although, Michael from Didiom did let Jiipe know that anyone setting up a new account with Didiom will receive 4 free dance tracks.

Didiom users can also discover new music, share previews with friends, download free tracks to their phone and PC, and get artist alerts — all free of charge.

This move into new handsets (and their licencing deal with EPM - a digital aggregator representing hundreds of record labels), is giving Didiom a renewed push in the ever-growing placeshifting market.

“Our goal is to meet the growing demand for placeshifting, and push interactive experiences beyond the handset itself with a minimal burden on the user,” said Ran Assaf, Didiom’s founder and CEO. “Now that smartphones represent almost twenty percent of all handsets… we have a great opportunity to move beyond early adopters and reach new audiences.”

You can sign up for an account and download Didiom’s mobile app for free at their website.

Image credit: shankar, shiv