Yilkal, one of our most active members, has taken it upon himself to organize a VC4Africa Meetup in London on December 4th. I think this is a great idea we already have between 30 and 40 participants registered.

As with all VC4Africa Meetups, the event will simply be a place for members to meet one another and share thoughts and ideas. No speeches, no agenda, nothing planned. The loose structure allows for lots of networking. Just remember, everyone is expected to pay for their own drinks : )

Let us know if you will attend and If you want to help out please add your name to the list and help spread the word!

Register to attend this free event?

Happy Networking!
Ben and Yilkal

Barnes and Noble released its second quarter earnings report on November 24th. However, at this point the earlier October 27 investor presentation contains some intriguing information about B&N’s digital strategy that deserves another look in order to help predict what the future holds for digital content product development.

According to the investor presentation, B&N is looking to build a nook “eco-system” with accessories, warranties and additional content. Accessories and warranties are easy enough to imagine, as this is a standard production cost subsidization strategy for many electronics retailers. However, the focus on “additional content” suggests that long term product developments will focus more on enhancing what content is delivered as opposed to how it is read.

The B&N investor presentation calls digital content a multi-billion dollar market, and makes some tantalizing allusions to potential developments in e-book features. Among the suggestions for future innovations are: supplementary content, alternate endings and collaborative writing. These suggestions move digital content strategies beyond simply reproducing existing book content in electronic form towards a form that leverages the fact that it is being delivered on a wireless device that can be tied in to subscription style services.

Here are some ideas for what exactly the products could entail:

-Supplementary content post-publication: an add-on subscription service could automatically load new prologues, notes, corrections and other updates to electronic content. In the long run, this could make for a much more interactive book- subscribers can sign on for automatic updates in new book series, and running author commentary can provide a long-term value add for non-fiction titles. Another option would be to develop a feature that allows users to choose what upgraded content they want to purchase as an add-on to the original book.

For example, the popular title Freakonomics was re-released with added content including Q&A with authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman is on version 3.0 that includes two new chapters and the author’s response to reader FAQs. It seems far more likely that readers would pursue a sort of a la carte option that would allow them to pick and chose what new features interest them as opposed to simply buying an entire new version of a book that is still comprised mostly of “1.0” content. User feedback can also allow authors and publishers to determine what sort of add-ons are most valuable to readers, and what add-ons are regarded as unnecessary fluff.

-Alternate endings: for fiction titles, this can hold a big appeal for a loyal fan base. Imagine books such as the Twilight series being able to offer a variety “choose your own endings”. Fan fiction enthusiasts would have a field day with this sort of content, and most likely would be inclined to pay extra for access to premium content on top of the title’s base price. The model would be all the better if booksellers can finagle a way to sign on authors to provide them with exclusive content.

-Collaborative writing: this is perhaps the most open-ended suggestion, but while ambiguous still provides for some intriguing ideas. A blurring of the lines between periodical and book can produce content that is regularly updated and commented on by a group of contributing authors. Books can also incorporate user feedback as well as editorial input. This sort of content delivery and enhancement is perhaps most useful for authors who may be using self-publication platforms such as Smashwords (an indie ebook distribution platform that revealed recently that it partnered with Amazon to supply content to the retailer’s Kindle Store, following in the footsteps of other distribution deals made between Smashwords and Barnes and Noble, Sony, and Shortcovers) to bring their books to the electronic content market.

We recently wrote about Sidebar, an app that wants to help smartphone users with the process of finding the perfect apps for their phones. Sidebar is debuting its first app and guess what? It’s not an iPhone app-it’s an Android app! While Sidebar’s Android app is built for all Google-powered Android phones, the app has been configured specially for the newly released Verizon Droid. Android users can download the app here.

Sidebar will ask you a series of demographic questions (gender, age, location) and a series of questions to determine your interests and content preferences (i.e. what type of news do you prefer, do you play online games, what types of outdoor activities are you interested in). Once Sidebar figures out a rough sketch of who you are, the app will begin to recommend mobile content to you. Content consists of videos, games, music, apps, ringtones, podcasts, promotions, news articles. The app will load no more than 12 content recommendations per day, which will last for 24 hours until the next batch of recs are sent to you. Recommendations include a short synopsis of the app or content and a screenshot or image. If you like the rec, you can save it and and download or access it later.

While the Android Market no doubt needs an improvement, its promising that nifty apps like Sidebar are coming to the Android before hopping on the iPhone train. We’ve seen Sobees and Seesmic take a similar approach. Because the iPhone market is so saturated, it could make sense for developers to perhaps gain a following from other smartphone users, and perfect their iPhone offerings in the meantime.

Sidebar seems like a compelling app for an Android user. Although the number of apps on the Android Market doesn’t yet reach the magnitude of content on Apple’s App Store, there still is a value in receiving customized recommendations for mobile content. Android’s app store features top paid and free apps, but doesn’t have an in-depth personalized recommendation feature that competes with Sidebar. And the app suggests other types of mobile content, like ringtones, videos, news and more.

By Leena Rao

http://www.techcrunch.com

What’s the latest attraction at the Olympics?

iPhone apps, apparently.

We’re proud to announce that Omnitoons, a Potato Mobile company, recently designed the official iPhone/Ipod Touch Application for the World Pyro Olympics 2009.

The World Pyro Olympics is an international pyromusical competition, that draws top teams from around the globe.

Do check out Omnitoon’s explosive product video here, and click on the App Store button below, to download it.

Thinking of creating and marketing your own iPhone event app? Omnitoons will be delighted to assist. Contact them here.

Here’s a taste of how literary publishing is evolving, in the iPhone era.

“Bard’s Dream” is a new digital comic app which delivers Shakespeare’s classic play “The Midsummer Night’s Dream” in full iPhone glory.

Besides being gorgeously illustrated, this app offers an option to experience the story either in modern English, or the original Shakespearean language.

Read a nice user review here, and purchase the full version by clicking on the App Store link below.

Brought to you by Omnitoons, a Potato Mobile company.

Mobile network operators can boost data revenues by providing personalized apps and content experiences for their subscribers, according to a report released today by Qualcomm (s qcom). But the carriers will have to walk a fine line between being helpful and being invasive as they try to take their customers by the hand.

According to the San Diego-based chip maker — which is touting Xiam, its mobile content discovery technology — 63 percent of users polled in the UK and U.S. said they’d spend more time accessing or purchasing content if the stuff they were looking for was easier to find. Four out of five respondents said difficulty obtaining content is “a major problem,” and users estimated they would spend an average of an hour more per week and $8 more per month on mobile data if their content was personalized.

Such difficulty is especially easy to appreciate given the ways most users search for content on their phones. The two most common ways to look for mobile content are using search engines or typing in URLs on the device, Qualcomm said — methods that can deliver headaches more quickly than they produce accurate search results.

There’s no question that discoverability is a huge problem on the mobile web, and carriers — with their established billing mechanisms and strong content partners — are indeed well positioned to help their users spend money. But they’re also likely to be seen as intrusive by some, and as flat-out invading users’ privacy if they try to target content by tracking user behavior and purchases. And they’re sure to be resented by some users who figure their mobile company already takes a big enough chunk of change every month. There are opportunities to subtly suggest content their users might actually pay for, but carriers will have to tread very gingerly as they approach those subscribers.

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Pretty big news as Google announced this morning that it has struck a deal to buy mobile ad network, AdMob, for $750 million in stock.

From the Associated Press:

Google already has a mobile ad delivery system, DoubleClick Mobile, which it got with its $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. in 2008. Google said buying AdMob will give it more expertise in a market that is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years.

Omar Hamoui founded AdMob in 2006. The company, which is based in San Mateo, Calif., provides a market for advertisers to buy space on Web sites geared for mobile devices.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management, said in a statement.

From TechCrunch:

Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile ad platform that has been especially popular on the iPhone, for $750 million. This is a big win for the company’s early investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners (this is a huge day for Accel — they were also investors in Playfish, which was just acquired by EA). More recent investors include DFJ and Northgate Capital.

Google has set up a website to explain the benefits of the AdMob acquisition, detailing the rapidly growing (and still very nascent) mobile advertising space. Google also created the graphic below to highlight the differences between its own mobile search ads, and the display ads AdMob shows in applications on the iPhone and other platforms.

From Reuters:

The all-stock deal gives Google, whose Android software is increasingly used to power smartphones such as the Motorola Inc Droid, an important element to monetize mobile Internet traffic.

Privately held AdMob makes technology for serving display ads on mobile phones and to track the performance of the ads.

Google, the world’s No.1 Internet search engine, does not disclose how much of its revenue, which totaled nearly $22 billion in 2008, comes from mobile ads.

I’ve found this funky site to download cool things for my mobile phone.  Please support my cause at http://phunkyphones.mobilenobo.com

Mobile can be used to keep content with consumers at all times: ad:tech

via: Mobile Marketer

NEW YORK – New technology, such as mobile, is changing the way brands are rolling out product integration.

A panel at ad:tech, New York titled The Branded Entertainment in the Digital Age explored how marketers are adapting to the changing media landscape to reach consumers with branded entertainment. However, some panelists disagreed on the power of the mobile platform.

“Mobile is awesome,” said Jared Hoffman, partner at Generate, Los Angeles. “Mobile allows you to take stories with you to more and more places.

“I think the interesting thing that presents itself now is a storytelling challenge,” he said. “Consumers can interact 24 hours a day.

“They can never step away from content.”

Mike Trigg, vice president of marketing and business development at hi5, San Francisco, said that mobile integration has always felt like it has been two years away for the last 10 years.

Mr. Trigg said that stores sending offers to a consumer’s mobile device as they walk down the street could be a great feature great feature, but it is not quite at the level yet.

With mobile, Mr. Trigg also said that consumers will be guarded.

read full story here.

A new gadget designed specifically for people who want to tweet on the go was launched today by a company known as Peek.

Just tweeting? That’s it?

You’ll have to read Sascha Segan’s review on PC Magazine for more information. Here’s a hint of what he thought…he gave it 1.5 out of 5 stars!

From PC Magazine:

A neat idea executed poorly, the cute li’l TwitterPeek will probably sell well this holiday season, aided by credulous blog posts and fawning fashion magazines. That’s because its concept is pretty buzzy: a bargain-basement Twitter-only handheld with a hip design. Just don’t expect it to work well or in many ways at all.

Let’s get the buzz out of the way. TwitterPeek is frickin’ adorable. It looks like a high-end, shrunken-down Scandinavian Speak n’ Spell. It’s a powder-blue or charcoal-gray, 4 by 2.7 by 0.4 inch slab, and it feels surprisingly solid thanks to its soft-touch front and metal back. The 2.5-inch, 320-by-240 screen shows eight lines of text plus status information. The QWERTY keyboard has nicely spaced keys, though you navigate mostly with a clumsy, stiff trackwheel attached to the side. Peek says the TwitterPeek has about three days of battery life, and my model lived up to that claim.

From CNET:

TwitterPeek, which looks like a smartphone, features a QWERTY keyboard and comes in black or aqua blue.

The idea behind TwitterPeek is simple. After buying the device, users need only to input their Twitter credentials to get going. The gadget lets them tweet, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and download followers. It supports one account at a time. Users can also view TwitPics by clicking the “view content” option from the TwitterPeek menu. The company claims its battery lasts three to four days with average usage.

Included in the price of TwitterPeek is a service plan. According to the company, users can access Twitter nationwide through Peek’s own “mobile network,” which accesses mobile-phone networks. If users choose to pay $99 at the time of purchase, they will get the TwitterPeek device and six months of Peek service. After that, they need to pay $7.95 per month for network access. If customers plunk down $199, they’ll get the device and service for the life of the product. In either case, TwitterPeek allows for unlimited tweeting.

Over the last three years, the mobile application development has shifted from being network operator controlled to controlled by the handset vendors. The iPhone and Apple’s Application Store have fundamentally changed the mobile industry.

By providing simple and easy to use development environment and encouraging the development of useful applications, Apple created a market for mobile data services that is now the benchmark for the mobile industry. Since Apple launched the App Store in July 2008, iPhone applications have been downloaded more than 800 million times and there are now more than 65,000 iPhone apps available in the iPhone store.

Due to Apple’s success, handset manufacturers and mobile operators are now following suit in an attempt to replicate Apple’s success and capitalize on the growing consumer demand for mobile data services.

Mind Commerce has evaluated the trends in the mobile application development sector, comparing and contrasting application development/stores from a feature perspective and forecasts what platforms will be successful in the marketplace and why. To find out more, go to thse links:

http://www.mindcommerce.com/Publications/MobileApplStores_Asia_MktBus.php

http://www.mindcommerce.com/Publications/MobileApplStores_Europe_MktBus.php

http://www.mindcommerce.com/Publications/MobileApplStores_NA_MktBus.php

Fred Taylor

Mind Commerce

Ringtones.com is the biggest and best ringtones website in the world with polys, truetones, games, videos and screensavers and more. http://www.ringtones.com

South Africa rated among the top 10 countries using the Opera Mini browser to surf contents on mobile phones. In its latest State of the Mobile Web report on Tuesday, Opera said 35.6 million people used the application in September, an 11.5% increase from August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008.
The Norway software developer stated that Nigeria was axed from the top 10 countries’ list while Vietnam made a debut. It said more than 2 petabytes of data is now processed by its servers on a monthly basis amounting to 2,000 terabytes .

Nokia and Samsung were the most used mobile phone brands in browsing, according to the report.

Opera highlighted that users in the top 10 countries – Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam – saved up to $672 million USD per month, or over $8.1 billion USD per year due to the compression rate of 90% and the subsequent savings in mobile data charges from users’ operators.

Data traffic through Opera’s mobile browser — which compresses up to 90% of the data to save network bandwidth – rose 8.7% in September compared to August, the company said.  About four million new Opera Mini users were gained in that same period of time, the report added.

The report revealed that Opera Mini users viewed nearly 15 billion pages in September 2009. Since August, page-views have gone up 7.2%. Since September 2008, page-views have increased 230%.  Click for full report

Augmented Reality wird die Medienwelt nachhaltig verändern. Augmented Reality eröffnet zahlreiche Paid Content Geschäftsmodelle, an die vor einigen Jahren noch niemand gedacht hat. Gerade durch die Verbindung mit dem Mobiltelefon, bei dem die Nutzer erfahrungsgemäß ohnehin eine deutlich höhere Zahlungsbereitschaft für konkrete Mehrwerte aufweisen als bei ”herkömmlichen” Internetapplikationen, eröffnen sich dadurch in meinen Augen gerade  für viele Medienunternehmen in den B2C-Märkten grandiose Möglichkeiten zur Schaffung neuer Geschäftsmodelle und zur Umsatzgenerierung.

Ich habe ganz konkrete Ideen (die ich hier nicht öffentlich im Detail verbreiten werde) wie insbesondere Consumer Medien neue, skalierbare Geschäftsmodelle auf Basis von Augmented Reality aufsetzen könnten. Natürlich gibt es auch im B2B-Bereich mögliche Ansätze. Für die meisten Medieninhalte besteht seitens der Nutzer keine oder nur eine geringe Zahlungsbereitschaft. Denn durch das Internet sind die meisten Inhalte ubiquitär und oft durch kostenfreie Inhalte substituierbar.

Durch die konkrete “just in time” Anwendung in Verbindung mit Augmented Reality können bestimmte Medieninhalte aber einen erheblichen Mehrwert für den einzelnen Anwender darstellen. Denn jeder weiß, dass in einem anderen Umfeld ein und die gleiche Ware plötzlich deutlich mehr Wert sein kann.  Beispiel: Für ein Bier im Restaurant ist man bereit ein Vielfaches des eigentliches Wertes zu bezahlen. Im Supermarkt wäre die Zahlungsbereitschaft für das gleiche Bier deutlich geringer. Menschen zahlen für ein und das gleiche Produkt in unterschiedlichen Situationen sehr unterschiedliche Preise – das ist jedem BWLer bekannt. Diesen Umstand können sich Medienunternehmen mit Hilfe von Augmented Reality Applications nutzbar machen, um bestehende und künftige Inhalte besser zu monetarisieren.

Nachfolgend drei examplarische Videos, die das gewaltige Potential von Augmented Reality verdeutlichen und die mich unglaublich beeindruckt haben, als ich sie das erste mal angesehen habe.

Video über eine Application auf Basis von Augmented Reality und wie der Alltag dadurch beinflusst werden könnte:

Video von Layar das ein mögliches Anwendungsbeispiel für den Immobilienmarkt zeigt:

Video von TAT zum Social & Business Networking:

Feeback zum Artikel gerne über die Kommentarfunktion oder direkt an “mail [ AT ] markus – caspari. de”.

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MOBILE MOVIES ON THE GO: MSPOT

Just launched about a month ago now, mSpot allows consumers the opportunity to watch movies on 30 phones domestically. Interested in taking in Zach and Miri Make a Porno? Now, you can introduce your fellow train mates to comedy nudity as well. Incidentally speaking, this was the movie playing when mSpot was demoed to me. Currently, over 350 movies are available on the service and a few TV shows as well.

The business model:

I had the opportunity to sit down with Darren Tsui , CEO of mSpot, today at Digital Hollywood LA. The service in available both in a rental and monthly subscription model ($4.99/movie and $9.99/month for 4 movies). When asked why the service wasn’t available in an unlimited monthly Netflix type of model, Tsui responded that this model wasn’t compatible with the way studios make money on their content.

I questioned viewers’ desire to watch full length movies on a cell phone. Tsui responded that this was more of a challenge two years ago but not at this point. Of the audience using the service, consumers tend to rent rather than subscribing via the monthly model.

The competion:

The other players in this space include iTunes, and possibly if rumors are true and you know they are, the Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix apps to come. mSpot attempts to differentiate itself from iTunes with a streaming content model. “People don’t plan when they want to watch something,” Tsui tells me. In essence, iTunes requires some forethought to download the content in advance whereas mSpot is available on the go. That said, clearly iTunes has its advantages in its ability to allow viewers to watch on planes, subways, and anywhere else where cell service isn’t available…like the panel rooms at Digital Hollywood.

To come:

Currently the service is only available as a mobile website but applications are sure to come.

Marauder Weigh-In:

I continue to wonder how many people will truly watch full length movies on any type of mobile service…only because I would never do such a thing if offered the option between my laptop and my phone. That said, I’m not a parent and I clearly see the advantages that this platform offers the parental units.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Review: mSpot Mobile Movie Streaming (geardiary.com)
• mSpot Launches Web-Based Mobile Movie Streaming Service (techcrunch.com)

Hello.

We would like to give our warmest welcome to you all, to the blog page of the Green Mobile Film Festival, the first made for mobile film festival of the world.

This new festival,a joint initiative from Iberminuto Made for Mobile (www.iberminuto.com) & WCW (Wild Creative Wizards Inc.) is  completely dedicated to promote the creation of environmental related  made for mobile film and cross media content, in the traditional movie genres, i.e, action, comedy, romance, horror, drama and humor.

Documentaries are also accepted in a separate category.

All films should be up to 3 minutes long, and specially made for mobile screening. Silent, english or english subtitled.

The festival has a special children´s section. We´ll post regular updates about this section, soon.

Call for submissions will take place from November 17th until may 17th, 2010.

Should you have any enquiries, please feel free to send an e-mail requesting more information to info@iberminuto.com

GMFF

With mobile phones emerging as a key gaming access route, brand- owners are recognising the potential for the text-to-win mechanic to evolve into something far more dynamic. David Reed reports.
Interactive content is one of the fastest growing areas of mobile technology. From ringtones to multi-player games, new services are critical for network operators that are desperate to recoup their investment in 3G licenses. And with the launch of the UK download chart, it is becoming evident that mobile content is here to stay.

Brands have long since recognised this and latched onto mobile content for promotional purposes. Ringtones or games can ensure users become involved with the brand. Text-to-win promotions in particular have been able to leverage the perceived high value of this content, for which mobile users may pay between