Mobile Talk

People from all over the world in the Information Technology and related industries convened in Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre from 19 May - 22 May and also various locations around Kuala Lumpur with high anticipation and excitement to see what will be produced from the 16^th World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2008). Themed ‘Enable, Empower and Enrich’, this year’s WCIT tickets had all been sold out more than 2 weeks into the event. With China hosting the Beijing Olympics this year, Malaysia is honoured to be given the privilege to host the Olympics of IT, welcoming more than 4000 delegates and 44,000 visitors from all over the world.

Officiated by Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia, this event is also graced by big named speakers like Bill Gates who made a special appearance through a holographic projection which is done for the first time in the world and President of Dell Global, Steve Felice who both spoke about how IT can be used to innovate businesses.

Various new technologies were launched and publicised throughout the 3 days from Grid Computing by MIMOS to higher levels of Internet Security by IMPACT and MyNIC. Various MOUs were signed from the establishment of a knowledge city in Cyberjaya called iTopia, the alliance between Microsoft and QubeConnect to link Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) to a choice of proprietary and open source computing and communications platform as well as the establishment of CSR initiatives by PIKOM to help the nation move towards a much more savvy and knowledge society. MIMOS meanwhile will help indigenous industries to move forward to address the digital divide by providing tools that will simplify technology take-up to the young and old. It was encouraging to see how organisations all over the world from United Nations who started Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID) to aid the developing nation in the world to use ICT for growth to the launch of Cybersecurity, a non-profit organization set up by the Malaysian Government to address technical ICT security issues in the country. Malaysia used this event as a great opportunity to tie up collaborations and joint venture with various IT organisations from large corporations like Microsoft to small medium industries like Asocio, an India IT company who will invest $576 million to buy softwares for companies in Malaysia. After the 3 days event, nearly USD3 billion worth of investments have been planted into the ICT industry in Malaysia.

Luncheons were punctuated with talks about how IT can be used to innovate businesses to how mixed reality like SecondLife and Warcraft is changing the face of the Internet through the collective power of the community. Press events include the launch of a massive IT initiative in Sarawak, talk by Google, the launch of locally grown IT company called ezypzy.com and alliance bewteen Microsoft and QubeConnect. There were also special meeting rooms for MSC companies where further collaborations and joint ventures can be discussed and signed on the spot. There were so many announcements to the press that I was breathless just running from one room to another, taking note of what were important.

As I was in the mobile industry, it made sense to attend the launch of the Global Summit for Mobile Monday which was held for the first time out of its original country, Helsinki, Finland, officiated by the ambassador of Finland, Mr Lauri Korpinen. This launch was also attended by the founder of Mobile Monday, Dr. Arun Kumar, CEO of MDEC, Mr Badlisham Ghazali and Y Bhg Dato’ Veerasingham, Chairman of MITIB. This is followed by a talk by one of the chairman in India about the importance of mobile in cases of emergencies like during the earthquake in China, mobile phone was used to inform their loved ones on their conditions and to express their love in times of emergencies.

Mobile Monday’s conference had an interesting amalgation of talks from Mobile Finance/Payments, Mobile Education, Mobile TV, Mobile Music, Mobile Advertising. The prospect of funding your latest mobile application is addressed through the talk about VC’s perspective on Mobile Application and the best practices for mobile development with key revenue generator coming from mobile commerce (couponing, ticketing), mobile advertising, search, voice based mobile marketing campaigns, location based services and target profiling. There was also a Mobile Monday award for the top 3 mobile applications in Malaysia which one position was won by a locally grown company called JustMobile that created an award winning mobile game application.

The ICT expo occupied all five halls of the KL Convention Centre glamorised by companies like PIKOM that attracted a crowd through their invitation to try out their PS3 games for the chance to win prizes, MIMOS that explained the establishment of Microsoft Innovation Centre companies and companies from other countries like Netherlands and Korea that are allocated booths in the same expo.

One of the important dinners of the event come in the form of the ICT Awards night held in PWTC on 20 May 2008 to honour companies that have contributed a lot to the IT industry. Malaysia’s MyGovernment portal (www.gov.my) must have done Malaysia proud by beating 70 others around the world to clinch the top prize. Many of the award winners consist of companies that provide IT technologies to help the society like systems to mobilise the disabled and many others. With performances like Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan, Iban, Bidayuh cultural dances during all 3 nights of the dinners, WCIT presented a myraid of colors and characters of Malaysia to these delegates. One would be tempted to stay or to make another trip to Malaysia just to experience these colors and eccentricities of Malaysia.

After the glamour and glitz of the ceremony, the last day of the event sees the delegates being escorted to Cyberjaya for the time capsule planting ceremony as well as to bring them around the offices of MSC and MDEC so that they can see the vibrant technology community of Cyberjaya and the government offices in Putrajaya. It was clear from the start how much the government is promoting Cyberjaya as a place for the companies to invest and start companies in and to grow the IT community together.

With so many people sharing and exchanging best practises in the IT industry, it is inevitable to have the attendants going home with valuable contacts and great innovative business. Kudos should go to the organisers of the event, Millenium Associates for great co-ordination and good planning to ensure a smooth sailing event. Little details from the printing of tags, the allocation of press rooms and always available broadband, the constant availability of food and drinks and the transportation of the delegates from hotels to the places for dinner were well taken care of. Even the spouses of the delegates were not forgotten by providing them with the option to go for daily ancillary activities from city tour to visits to the visits to Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), homestay in fruit farms and watching cultural performances. Just like what the Chairman of WITSA, George Newstrom mentioned during his speech, this event has far surpassed his expectations and has elevated the standard of WCIT to the highest level possible. Everyone was wistful to head home after such a memorable event but there is a next one to look forward to in Netherlands in 2010.

It’s the time of the year where giving is celebrated. Where do you go when you want to shop for Christmas presents? Bandar Utama? Sunway Pyramid? What would you buy? Shower Gels from Body Shop? Chocolate cookies from Marks & Spencer?

While it is already difficult to decide on what to buy for your real friends with the limited budget everyone has, a New York-based mobile gaming company called Cellufun has created a virtual environment to do just that. Themed The World’s Mobile Playground, it annouced it’s Merry Mobile: a community game where consumers celebrate the holidays in a virtual world. Users can buy gifts for their friends and shop for items to decorate their rooms that come in the form of homepages. There is a Virtual Mall where users can shop for virtual gifts such as fruitcake from Herr Strudel’s Bakery and SpaceWars ship models from Miss Dolly’s Toy Shoppe, making purchases with Cellupoints. Users can update their profiles and choose an avatar that represents themselves while delighting in the joy of giving and receiving during this festive cheers.

This concept will sell better during Valentines season where boyfriends and husbands can buy virtual gifts to send to their loved ones and vice versa. This eliminates the need of going to the shop and jostling with crowds to get one gift which she might not necessarily like. With virtual mall, you can choose a nice virtual card in which you can attach the nice photo of you and your partner which you took using your camera phone and send it as MMS or wallpaper. Simple, meaningful and saves the environment.

So, what are you waiting for. Go grab yourself a virtual Christmas fruitcake or pudding now. Too bad you can’t taste it.

- From http://www.openhandsetalliance.com entitled ‘If I Had a Magic Phone’

I am proud to say at least Google adhered to the concept of ‘Never Reinvent the Wheel’. And with so many big names to collaborate and back them up in this effort, they might stand a better chance in beating veterans like Nokia and SonyEricsson with their long running Symbian OS and some Windows Mobile OS.

Finally, an effort that takes consumers’ and retailers’ welfare into mind by creating less platforms and OS for us to worry about so that applications can be shared and significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services. What consumers will get will potentially be seamless access to search engines and Internet on mobile phones, more applications to be downloaded and easier to use interfaces. Application developers will be freed from the walled garden concept in which only operators control what the users sees and uses thus lowering the cost of data charges (fingers crossed!).

To me, this is better news for the mobile market compared to the launch of another funky, sophisticated Nokia N95 with many megapixels camera (I lost count!) with embedded GPS software or another sleek phone built for the fashion-minded phone like LG Shine or Prada (aren’t handphones meant to be carried to talk?!). This will just create a better ecosystem for the whole mobile community from carriers to retailers to consumers. Except maybe for Nokia, SE, LG and Samsung but who cares about them if all they care about is squeezing more money from the consumers while tempting them to think about how beautiful their non-functional phone is.

Google has yet again done a good job. Now, I hope this is more than a big fat hype. So, if you have a say, what would be your magic phone?

Ok, I have been guilty of not posting for some time now, so I am just going to do the lazy thing most people do, post up videos to alleviate the guilt. I really like this new ad from M1 on their low IDD rates, so low one of their subscribers called in to an Indian restaurant, located in India to order a very delicious meal to be delivered to Singapore. Look at the shock on the restaurant owners face when he announced that his restaurant is in India!

A new phenomenon is hitting the world. It’s a phenomenon so engulfing you can’t avoid. Unless you have been hiding under a coconut shell with no friends to talk to, you would have gotten at least 1 invite to join Facebook. I was thinking of avoiding it in the likes of assuming that this is just another social networking site like Ringo that I can live without for at least this period of harried time. Not that i dont want to socialise, I just dont have the time to play with these things anymore. However, I just can’t not join after getting an avalanche of requests. At leat 10 invites from former colleagues and 5 from current ones. I just thought, heck, let’s give it a try. And after trying it, I now understand what this phenomenon is all about.

Besides the normal fanfare like photo album and blogs like Multiply and Friendster, Facebook hosts many other applications that can be used to tag, poke, kick, give and play your friend. Plus, I am now members of a few groups within the Facebook communities. So, what is the big deal? Almost everything there is a big deal, a social networking site so addictive and interactive that one could not help but check it everyday.

So what does this mean in the world of mobile…that Facebook is another application that can easily be migrated to handphones as something you can play with when you are mobile and to fill in the blank spaces. However, talk remains easy social networks remain to be something one would do on a big computer screen with unlimited bandwidth space. Despite this challenge, a few companies have went their own way in creating their own mobile social networks.

Some being Mocospace from US, ZYB from Europe and Migg33 from US that are trying to create proprietary social networks on mobile only. Personally, would you sign up for Facebook on Internet, update all your photos albums, install game and drawing applications, upload videos on facebook and use Mocospace on mobile and repeat the process all over again?

I feel that these mobile social networks will fail or at least will be merged/eaten up by bigger online players like Facebook and MySpace that are already in the mobile space, slowly but surely. Well, unless integration can be done and we are talking about major work due to the different features of each social networks be it online or on mobile. Plus, it will be harder to get customers to adopt Internet technologies on mobile without garnering the numbers from the web first. Earlier this year, Vodafone Group struck a series of global relationships with key internet brands like Yahoo, MSN, YouTube and MySpace to take them mobile and thus promoting use of their networks only if one was to have a Facebook/MySpace account. In the US, Cingular, Sprint Nextel and Verizon formed a partnership with Facebook to let their users post on their facebook pages via sms. This would not close the use of such s huge social networks to only one operator per country while promoting the use of data for all operators. When is this coming to Asia?

However, the concept of bringing social networks to the mobile space is still required as mobile allows your presence to be detected and allows instant message exchange based on who is nearest to you who is also logged into the same social network. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting or Facebook dating status for a bar. The good news is that so far, the numbers are going up with nearly 50 million members of mobile social networks worldwide of which 30 Million are in Asia Pacific according to ABI Research. That is predicted to grow to 174 million and 99 million, respectively by the end of 2010. The penetration rate in Asia is higher as there are far more mobiles than PCs in developing countries like India with consirably good bandwidth. Thus, the potential of mobile social networks remain, if only low flat data rate is introduced with less walled-garden concept among the operators all over the world. So, with emerging use of social networks on mobile, don’t be suprised I might just be using my mobile for poking you on Facebook soon. So if you have a Facebook, add me at princessemilyng or Emily Ng.

iPhone is the epitome of cool but with Nokia coming up with a viral marketing website in the form of an online music store, promoted using it’s launch date 070829.com Nokia does not trail too far behind too. iPhone did not want to lose a piece of the music pie by having a voice recorder.

However, what iPhone did that overtook Nokia is their open source approach that opens up their phone OS to allow development of games for the phone by any mobile developers who can get access to their API. Nokia meanwhile focuses on creating their own premium games and contents which can only be downloaded using their own phones to win customers over. Well, at least we get a variety of products to keep us entertained regardless what phone models we use.

I guess this is a technology that will never arrive or be successful in Malaysia. Iris Next Bus in collaboration with Singtel has provided the ability to check your next bus arrival time via sms. So simple, all you need to do is sms the bus stop number followed by the service number and send it to a short code and walla! you know how long more you need to wait before you make a split second decision to continue waiting for the bus, grab a cab or go to the neareat MRT station. With the efficient transportation system in Singapore, how long can one possibly wait, compared to Malaysia’s efficiently inefficient public transports. This is a convenience to the public given the fact that public transport is the most common means of transport in Singapore and better yet only cost them SGD0.05 per query. Unfortunately, it is only available to Singtel’s post-paid subscribers. Why is their competitors not coming up with the same facility, well, let’s just say it is an investment that only Singtel have the deep pockets to subsidize so much so the service can be given at such low rates.

Besides mobile, the bus arrival time can be queried from the SBS transit (Singapore’s bus company) website or wapsite at www.sbstransit.com.sg/mobileiris/. How the bus location is identified is the location of the bus is feedback to the HQ via GPS. Taxis have this location feedback facility too using technologies like Grid which allows HQ to get accurate information on the location of certain taxis so that they can query for the nearest taxi to their passengers.

Well, perhaps in Malaysia, the better sms technology will be querying for information on traffic conditions so that you know which roads to avoid at which times. This technology is also available in Singapore in which a Singtel subscriber (again!) can call a certain number to find out the traffic conditions in causeway prior to travelling out of Singapore. By calling a pre-defined number, an IVR will inform you the traffic condition in Causeway Link at the point of calling. Thus, subscribers are empowered to know if their trip North is worth taking and if they should use an alternative route like Tuas instead. The power of mobile services!

I now know what the buzz was all about when I attended CommunicAsia 2007 in Singapore Expo and saw the booth with the most number of people and suprisingly, this booth belongs to none other than a Malaysian company called Mor(f) Dynamics. The buzz was due to the cuteness of the character being promoted called Mojikan, a 3D Virtual Pet Instant Messenger software. I was unable to see the booth as there were too many people packing the 3X4m mini-booth but with a peek at their soft toys being given out free to the first few who signed up, even I find the character actually cute and likable.

Mojikan is a new virtual world that allows you to interact using a 3D Virtual Pet (the main attraction of the booth) using Moji Instant Messenger Client. However, the IM client allows you to log into your existing MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Jabber accounts so you don’t have to use other messengers. You can also install these pets as widgets on your blogs who will trawl your blogs and potray the emotions of the contents on your blog, just like in my personal blog. Just like Second Life, this virtual world has created its own virtual currency called ’sparx’ that allows users to buy clothes and toys for their Moji pets.

To add to that, with their Artificial Intelligence technology, this virtual pet would be able to understand your needs and likings and will be able to recommend relevant products. Hear a future in advertising here?

Yet, what pulls the crowd to this booth is the cuteness factor of the pet and not the high technology of AI and Natural Language Processing that allows the pet to be controlled by you so that it can understand you. Nonetheless, without its extensive features, it will not be able to have a sustaining croed. Thus, it has won its audiences both in first impression as well as long-lasting impact. All that is left now is to find out how much more this company can live up to its customers expectations who have registered excitedly to have this cute virtual pet running, crying and begging on their IM.

With trepidation, I stepped into the halls of Singapore Expo hoping to be enthralled despite what was said about the event this year. Less fanfare, less energy maybe except for the LG booth. How true was that. Nonetheless, I was still impressed with one thing: the number of countries that were exhibiting there: from Vietnam to Thailand to Australia to China. Even Israel was not one to miss exhibiting at this event. China’s booths were decorated in their standard red colors from top to bottom reminiscense of their national flag.

I was one who likes looking at the latest technology from NTT Docomo and thankfully I did not go away disappointed. An array of new technologies were displayed from a phone called ‘Sound Leaf’ that allows you to listen to your phone from any bones of your face, hence the name (this tech is exceptionally useful for those with hearing disorders) to child phone called Soma phone that allows kids to pull a trigger on the phone whenever there is an emergency so that their parents can locate the kids via GPS connected to the phone. NTT Docomo also took the contrarian approach in phone development. While all phone manufacturers from LG to Samsung to SonyEricsson were busy displaying their latest high-tech phones with shiny sliding covers of Shine by LG and phones supporting the latest broadcasting technology from HSPA (bye, bye HSDPA and HSUPA, huh?) to TDM, NTT Docomo conveniently displayed their simple, easy to use phones called the Simplure phone that is shaped in a way that is easy to hold and their fast to call phone that has so little functions and only buttons to make speed dials preconfigured for u. How cool is that! Like what everyone says, be different! And that was exactly what NTT Docomo did.

Next are mobile technologies from start ups like a company doing Digital Concierge with services like search facility for locations ard Singapore and mps pushed to u on a needed basis featured by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. Another start-up that got some following is a company that masks phone numbers so that u can call and sms anyone without displaying ur number on your friend’s or a stranger’s phone screen.

And how can I miss out technologies from Malaysia with an up and coming company called Green Packet promoting their peer to peer info exchange through PC called SonBuddy. I was not able to see more of Malaysian companies except Telekom that has a few operators under their umbrella including MobileOne of Singapore, XLcommindo of Indonesia and many others.
Walking past the ailes of Australian booths, I was impressed to see various mobile technologies related to weaponry and artillery on display.

So, what was the theme of the whole exhibition? Hmm…with the mix of technologies, everyone would be confused even though I do see lots of hardware and software, applications and services. Some say mobile advertising and some say mobile security but all in all there are just to much to pick one. Walking past the four halls in 3 hours added with some networking in between, I was panting by the time I got from one end of the halls to the other. I was glad I made the time to go, to be enthralled with all the techs on show.

I have gone through multiple conversations with people saying that the reason they do not browse the Internet on their mobile phones is not necessarily because of the lack of fast GPRS or EDGE network but due to the small handset screen sizes that makes viewing sites on mobile phones a horrible, eye-squinting experience. Well, how long can you stay on the mobile handset and see the small screens as opposed to seeing your 1024 X 768 screen on your PC or laptop? I have previously written about how one should design websites by taking note of this constraint but what if there really is too much to display on the wapsite or if the wapsites should simulate the web experience?

I was also fortunate to speak to someone who gave me a futuristic solution to solve this problem by creating googles like those you use when you play Virtual 3D Games to view the mobile screen on a virtual big screen. Well, makes sense as how much bigger can a mobile screen go as people do not like carrying big phones in their handbags or on their hands anyway. It is with this vision that a company called Myvu has came up with video eyewear (googles) to see videos on iPod and wapsites on mobile on a virtual large screen. Their product is now available for sale for viewing videos on iPod up to 80GB of memory space.They even have a version of the eyewear for short-sighted users by providing the appropriate corection based on user’s experience. With this video google that costs USD300, people will not complain about viewing mobile wapsites anymore. It will be even cooler to browse wapsites on mobile now compared to surfing on your laptop.