Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Coming Soon: Multimadia Ringback Tones

Real announced at the CTIA conference it will supply wireless operators with multimedia ringback tones. The Multimedia ringback tone takes the very popular musical ringback tone service to a whole different dimension, from the audio space to the visual video clip arena. It allows you to set a video clip to entertain your callers while waiting you answer their call.

"Building upon Real’s pioneering success in Ringback Tones (RBTs), Real is making Multimedia Ringback (MRB) Services available to mobile operators around the world.  This new 3G mobile service—first launched with Korea’s SK Telecom earlier this year—ushers in a new level of personalization in RBTs, allowing subscribers to incorporate audio, images and video to deliver a unique, customized experience to callers before they are connected."

[via press release]

Related stories: A Jump Into the Future - Multimedia Ringback Tones

A Jump Into the Future - Multimedia Ringback Tones

Hi everyone,

Today I wanted to share with you a new and sexy service that according to one of the Product Managers at Comverse will be the natural evolution of the ringback tones. To do things right, I'll begin at the top :)

Once, there was no choice but to hear a dull ‘ring ring’ when you waited for your friend to answer the phone. Now, follow this carefully: Tomorrow, you place a video call to your friend. Suddenly the amazing top hit by the new hip-hop group The Beatz will fill your mobile screen. You are enjoying a great top 10 video clip until your friend answers the phone. Wouldn't that be a better way to wait?

The Multimedia ringback tone takes the very popular musical ringback tone service to a whole different dimension, from the audio space to the visual video clip arena. It allows you to enjoy watching a video clip while placing calls, as well as to entertain your callers with video clips to watch while calling you.

Sounds great? I haven't said the final word yet, which is content. There are 3 types of optional content:

• Users' content - music clips, Klonies customizable avatars, self generated content, corporate content... All depending on the segment.
• Operator content - branding (logo), promotion info, operator prompts.
• Advertisement - advertisers fund phone bills in return to placing ads at the multimedia ringback tones space. Less desirable for the callers, but it's an option.

We all know that personalization is a key growth engine to mobile services and applications and it will probably keep being a key factor in the future. Having said that, the multimedia ringback tone leverages the ringback tones' success and promotes the video arena\ tusage of 3G. It harnesses the human need to self express and provides a new and creative outlet for that. Smart!

What are your reactions?

Ringback Tones TV Commercials

Hi everyone,

Today I decided to address another aspect of marketing, a mass communication marketing activity, i.e.TV commercials. To me, it is very interesting to see commercials from different mobile operators from around the world and look which aspects of the ringback tones service each one chooses to present.

For your convenience and fun, I'm adding here each commercial as I cover it, so you're welcome to read, watch and enjoy :)

The first commercial comes from Orange Israel:

What I liked here is that Orange presents how an ordinary and dull 'ring ring' sound can be replaced with a much more fun tone (which is actually Orange Israel's name for the service). The commercial doesn't take us to the mobile arena literally, rather displays a metaphoric example of anther dull 'ring ring' situation of a young guy pressing the door's buzzer and waiting to be answered.

The second commercial comes from T-Mobile Czech Republic:

Here, T-Mobile empowers the ringback tones subscriber - he can change the caller's mood by playing a fun dial tone...

The third commercial comes from Hutch, India.

Here, Hutch emphasized personalization. As a ringback tones subscriber (or Caller Tunes) I can set different tunes for each of my friends, so they all enjoy while waiting for me to answer. Like the first example of Orange, Hutch doesn't place the commercial at the mobile arena and we get to link the metaphoric example to the Caller Tunes service later on.

The fourth commercial comes from Cosmote Greece:

[For some odd reason, at YouTube there's no sound, so you can download the video from here as well]. What I liked here is the suspense the commercial puts you in. Everyone calls Yargo - but why? This commercial also empowers the ringback tones subscriber, he\she becomes popular since everyone wants to dial his\her number...

Well, I hope you enjoyed it. If you come across other commercials, feel free to send over the links or post them here as a comment :)

U-DOO - New Avatar Ringtones

I was tipped about the launch of the talking avatar ringtone application called U-DOO. U-DOO is a ringtone application for mobile phones that allows users to create talking animated avatars with their own voices and use the characters as ringtones on their mobile phones and send them to friends. In addition, U-DOO lets users publish the talking avatar to their MySpace web pages. The company behind the taking avatars is no other than web avatars provider Oddcast, which is looking for new partnerships to expand to the mobile arena.

How does it work? U-DOO users can create personalized ringtones and avatars with their own voice or from pre-recorded messages, and email them to friends, who can then download the ringtones to their phones. The phones can be set to sound the ringtone whenever the friend associated with the avatar calls. This means I create my avatar ringtone and I send it to you and hope you'd associate it with my profile, so whenever I call you, you'll see and hear my avatar. So I need my friends' cooperation in order to decide how do I look when I call them. Other thing is if I'd have several different ringtones, each associated with a friend, how would I know my own mobile is ringing? Each time I choose to change my ringtone it takes me a few seconds to realize that the mobile ring actually belongs to me... I guess more people will use U-DOO to make their own personalized avatar ringtone and leave the Caller ID function aside.

The email and MySpace options are free to end users, but the wireless download option is offered by subscription through wireless carriers under a 60-day free trial, with a $5 monthly charge after. Enjoy!

Thanks Katie! :)

 

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part I

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ll be posting it in a few parts every Thursday.

***
Email, IM, VoIP, P2P file sharing, online social networks etc’... we all use these to communicate with other people. It makes our lives easier, it extends our availability (and our working hours) and it makes us manage more "mediated" relationships than we used to have in the past; meaning we communicate more through emails\mobiles\IM and less in person, face to face. Having said that, we should examine the influence of these medias on our lives and what we gain from them.

One of the key attributes of the internet is that users are liberated from their body, age, sex and occupation. For many, this is a major attraction while others loathe the lack of boundaries. Either way, users need to supplement information that otherwise can be gathered easily, like age, sex, personal traits etc’. To do so, users adopt a personal referent that stands for them over the web. It can be a screen name, a user ID number, an email address… Yet many users find that a graphical representation provides a better service for this purpose.

That graphical representation is what we call an avatar. An avatar can be based on the user’s physical appearance as close as possible, if not identical, to how he\she is seen in real life or, in contrast, present a desired but imaginary appearance; a manga fairy, a medieval warrior, cute Hello Kitty... Anything or anyone. Thus, avatars empower users. Avatars are users’ alter ego.

Also, users can change their avatars frequently to better fit their mood and the actual settings.

Scholars have found major interest in the self-representation over the web mechanism, and dealt a lot with the following questions:

• Does web self-representation resemble to the real-life self-representation?
• How users manage consciously and unconsciously their self-representation over the web?
• What message users want to promote about themselves?
• How users read and decode this visual information?

Moving to South Korea...

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation and very rapidly it has turned to be a very prosperous market for avatars providers. To understand this phenomenon we should look into the South Korean connectivity culture. So don’t forget to tune in next Thursday for the second part.

Introducing Comic-Blogging: Interview with George Sfarnas of Being Five

As a visual communication fan, I really like how blogging has been taking some interesting directions into different means of communication, like posting pictures, videos, ads..., other than plain writing. About a month ago, NRG, one of the Israeli web portals, brought a coverage of geek\techie comic strips (*note: the post is in Hebrew yet you can still follow the links for the comics). I followed the links and found out that almost all of them use blogging platforms as their publishing tool. Apparently blogging has turned to be a great vehicle to convey comic strips as well.

A little more investigation around the web brought up Being Five, a cool blog strip about a five years old boy who blogs using voice recognition software, by the cartoonist George Sfarnas. What I really liked about this strip (besides sweet Georgie) is the artistic decision of having two visual medias, blogging and drawing\illustrating, interlaced one inside the other. Sfarnas created something way more ingenious than two medias one inside the other: he writes a blog (1) where he posts comic strips (2) about a boy who blogs (3) using a visual face recognition (since a 5-yrs boy can't write). In other words, it’s visual blogging (through the innocent eyes of a child) inside a comic strip inside a blog. We get meta-blogging, a blog about blogging!

So, I decided to ask George a few questions about comic-blogging and other things. Here is our email interview:

Getting To Know George

Who inspires you artistically?
Honestly, I'm inspired every day by cartoon art I see. Maybe on a cereal box at the store, or on a billboard, or the net, wherever I see cartooning that catches my eye, it inspires me.            

How do you define your art?
Simple drawings that tell a story.

What brought you into the world of comics?
I enjoy the freedom of doing a comic strip. It's like shooting a little movie without having to raise a budget or hire a crew. It's all at the end of my pencil.

Other hobbies, fields of interest?
I just like to draw comics all the time, I'm pretty boring that way.

3 birthday wishes?
1) Another birthday next year.
2) Hope someone remembers my Birthday
3) World peace, of course :)

Comic-Blogging

When did you start blogging?
When I debuted Being Five in April of this year. I find the blogging community is pretty cool as a whole. There are a lot of well written, interesting blogs out there...like yours :)

Why did you choose a blog to be the stage for your art?
The main character in Being Five, Georgie, has a lot to say, like most five year olds, so I thought it would be funny if he could share his thoughts with the world. Blogging was his vehicle.

What apps\ software do you use to draw your comic strips?
I first draw on paper with pencil, then I scan the drawings onto the computer and do my inking and coloring with a software program called Xara. I used to ink by hand but now I enjoy doing it on the computer. A lot of clicking but no messy spills. 

How long does it take to draw a strip?
About 4 hours, more or less.

How\Where do you get ideas for your posts\strips?
Sometime it's topical, what would Georgie say about this or that. And sometime I just doodle and draw funny facial expressions, or poses, and then something comes to mind. 

What can you say about the balance between text and illustrations?
I like them to compliment each other.  In some strips the picture says enough and sometime it's the dialogue. It's just something I try to do by feel.   

Why does the story line always contain 3 frames?
3 frames seem to work well for Being Five. Georgie sets it up in the first frame, then he thinks it over in the second, then he delivers in the third. I drew a comic strip, called Prune Juice, for several years and 4 frames worked well for that strip because there were usually two or more people interacting, as apposed to Georgie working as a solo act. 

What is the hardest part in the process of making a comic strip?
Well, like Charlie Chaplin once said, thinking is the hardest part. But I can honestly tell you that I enjoy each stage of the process.

Why did you choose blogging as the media that Georgie uses to share his thoughts with the world?
Georgie thinks of "the blog" as his friend. He's not thinking about the prospect of people reading it from around the world. It's just his friend that he hangs out with. Kind of like talking to a stuffed animal. 

Getting to Know Sweet Georgie

I read that your 5 year old boy is the inspiration for the character of Georgie. Do you feel that Georgie will grow up as your 5 year old does? Will his front tooth eventually grow? ;-)
It is true that my son was the inspiration for Being Five.  The stories and explanations he tells me are so full of energy and life that I wanted to capture it in this comic strip.  The character, Georgie, will remain in a magical time warp of being five for as long as I continue the strip. I think the last Being Five strip will be Georgie's sixth birthday, whenever that will be.

Is Georgie a hidden side in you?
I can remember my childhood really well, so I like to go there in my mind and remember the fun stuff. In that respect Georgie is a reflection of me.

What did Georgie get for Christmas?
His cell phone, so he can blog on location.

3 birthday wishes?
1) That he can marry his neighbor, Becky.
2) That his dog Charlie learns to catch a frisbee
3) That his Grandmother stops leaving comments on his blog.

Thank you George for having this interview :) If you have more questions for George, you can leave a comment. And, for more of 5 years old Georgie, head up to Being Five. Enjoy!! :)

Itzle - Nice but Lacking (a lot of) Sex Appeal

Tom pointed me to this social tool I wasn’t aware of. Itzle is a new tool that gives you a visual presence while visiting at a webpage “as if it were an actual, physical place”. The aim is to meet other people in the same virtual location and communicate. Tom also points out that He sees it

“as the reincarnation of Odigo's base idea: while being able to IM with your friends, how do you make new friends?

the idea was that you would see on the Odigo 'radar' people being on the same web page as you (you could further drill down to sex, age, spoken language, etc), as well as leave notes for other to see on the web page.”

My criticism is about the visual appearance: the Itzle avatar is nice yet very schematic. The personalization options are very basic and only allow you to change the colors of the hair, shirt, pants and text. The user can't even change the most basic option of all customizable web identities - determining his/her gender. Today, with a huge market of web avatars, this is just not enough. If this seems redundant, just think how would someone attract others into initiating communication while visiting the same webpage when they all look the same??! Would you just try avatars randomly? I don’t think so.

It’s nice, yet this browser add-in will have a tough time gaining popularity with the proliferation of social apps in the online neighborhood and with its avatars' low sex appeal…

SMS's New Visual Language - "Zlango"

ESC, the Israeli youth MVNO, launched a new mobile app which enables users insert graphic icons to replace words in SMSs. The new graphic ‘language’ is called Zlango and now contains 220 graphic symbols which, according to official PR, aims to add personal expression and some fun spirit to the dull SMS. All ESC users will be able to watch messages containing the Zlango icons using a link (provided in the Zlango SMS) to the company’s web portal and view the message as a pic file.

[via Ynet in Hebrew]

A few notes:

• SMS is turning to be more than 160 characters using visual signs to express more in each character (out of 160).
• Visual symbols are the shortest way to convey meaning: think about ads, banners and promotions - a pic is worth a thousand words, right? Why not leverage this characteristic in other fields where space is limited/ expensive?
• This is another step towards a “visual” mobile which doesn’t rely only on voice (bigger screens for visual caller ID, SMS, IPTV, wap portals, emails, etc…).
• Written language is being reduced into visual icons. Some are universal (like ESC's symbol for “and”) but many others are being made up by the mvno itself (like ESC's symbols for “big”, “now”, “new”). Who will be the authority to invent missing symbols and to decide on their common meaning?

Are 1000 Words Worth A Trailer?

Off topic yet it was very interesting to read how the publishing market harnesses the visual media and the video sharing web communities like YouTube et al to promote new books with trailers.

And there's a very smart business model since:

"The Web sites run the videos as content, not advertising, so the publishers do not have to pay for every click. And, unlike ads, the videos often have an afterlife in searchable archives, long after they have left the main home page."

[via IHT]

With low production costs (according to the article), the only remaining question is would people buy a book by its trailer? Would you?

[thanks Dan for the link!]

Girls, Throw Away Your Diamonds (and Get A Plasma)

Girls, if you haven't already done so, throw away your designers shoes, diamonds and romantic vacations in favor of plasma TVs, digital cameras and personal gadgets...! Cuz these days, tech replaces diamonds as girl's best friend. Also, according to a new U.S. study, commissioned by cable television's Oxygen Network,

"the next five years women see themselves increasing their activities in six tech areas: digital cameras, cell phones, e-mail, camera phones, text messaging and instant messaging."

[via Reuters, InformationWeek]

I say this tech mania is a replacement, to a certain extension, of the fashion mania. Both are a personal statement of skills, knowledge and status; And both function as a language of signs, symbols and iconography that visually communicate meanings about their users/ owners. However, since at the internet era our communications is more mediated and less direct/ F2F, we need new  and reliable signs which would indicate (to others) our skills, knowledge and status, as fashion always has been doing.

Reality? Check

"Klonies Blogging Idol" is still running... Causing the participants to nervously bite their nails not knowing who’s winning since many friends want to get the chance to try the blogging thing. For those of you who haven't heard about it, I'm looking for blogging talents among the Avatars Group, to get them blogging in our upcoming Klonies Blog. So let me introduce you to my fourth guest, Tom Sella, a dear friend of the group, a Klonies addict, a regular reader (I didn’t pay him to do so I swear) and a great blogger. Well, enough talkin’... Tom, knock ‘em down!

                                   *******

Several years ago I had a couple of paperback Asimov’s Journal (after looking it up, I think it is Asimov’s Science Fiction zine) editions, or something to that effect. These were collections of short science fiction stories by (I think) both known and lesser-known authors.

One story that I particularly liked was one which, among other things, described a message answering holographic video phone, where your (today more commonly known as “avatar”) attendant would answer, and filter messages. Both the complexity of the system, and unsolicited messages (today more commonly known as “SPAM”), were described, where one would try to fool the other to reveal its true identity – the avatar as message filtering service instead of the targeted “live person”, and the message as SPAM, instead of something of importance to the “live person”.

This would seem to be more science than fiction these days, in so many aspects. To forego the subject of SPAM and SPAM filters, we are now making daily progress in manifesting and/or changing our personal representation. We do this in our instant messengers, e-mail, blogs, and when Klonies and SeeStorm have it their way, on our mobile phone.

How long would it take to bring us, our personal computers, and mobile phones, technology just as recently described as being used in movies, where one can come into the studio, and with no makeup and no special effects, appear 25 years his younger, or in fact, anything else? To judge from technologies brought forth by Logitech [videos here and here], combined with avatar technologies like Klonies, possibly not long at all.

As one Israeli child song goes, with a little twist “whomever stands behind in front of me, does not know who I am”.

P.s. if anyone can remind me of the author of the story, and where it may be found, I would be grateful.

Technorati Tags: tom sella, sciense fiction, avatars, mobile avatars, asimov, seestorm, klonies, logitech,

Human Visual Stories

As you probably got to know me by now, I’m really fascinated by the online culture that is growing and developing, and especially fascinated by one of its biggest phenomena, the Avatars.

Once in a while I look for new content on avatars, posts, discussions, apps… whatever my hand reaches – or better said - whatever my RSS aggregator reaches… :) This time, I came across a conversation over WrongPlanet.com forums, asking the community whether “avatars strongly affect how you read a person's posts?”

Before posting here a few answers which I liked, I’ll give you my answer. Of course avatars affect the way you read a person’s post! Over the web, this is the first visual impression we have on a certain community member\ blogger. As a first impression, it plays a major role in managing our impression in the eyes of the other. In everyday life, we need just one look on a person on the street or in the subway to hold an opinion regarding who is he\she, what is his\her lifestyle, economic status and even some notion regarding some personal traits (we can observe aggression, tenderness, exhaustion, suspicion, shyness…).

I’ll confide here and tell you about a little game I’ve had since I was a little girl with big eyes and shy character hiding behind pink plastic glasses… One of my favorite things, especially when I’m on train or waiting to a doctor’s appointment is the people around me. I’ve always liked to examine people and guess who they are, where are they rushing to, gather as much as possible info to learn their story…  (everyone has an interesting story to tell, you just need to look\ listen close enough). I know it isn’t polite to stare, so I try to keep my inquisitive looks invisible… Sometimes I play the little game with a variation: I try to guess who lives in a certain building or house, especially those very very very old ruined buildings with high and narrow windows and rusted blinds. To me the most interesting is the tension between things that are emphasized and things that leak from the side, exposing deeper layers… like a very tidy man, looking like he’s on his way to a job interview, straightening his tie, combing his hair. Everything about him says tension and order but his shoes are powdered with dust… that say it all – he’s trying to make an impression of a tidy man but he doesn’t really have a pedant soul :)

Well, enough with those nonsense and back to the Avatars… :) So, as I said, the visual appearance of things helps us gather so much information on the object of reference (no matter if it’s a human being or an artifact). It has a crucial part in determining our approach and opinion on a given object (is it safe? Can I trust? Am I in danger? Do I believe? Am I repulsed by something?). Especially when it comes to the web and we need to establish our approach and are given so little solid info we can rely on.

NeantHumain: “have noticed someone using a different avatar now (don't remember the old one, just know it's different), and it changes how I read the tone of their messages and how I perceive them as people, too. I often don't even remember someone if they change their avatar or think they're a whole new person. I was just wondering the perennial question: Is anyone else like this?”

Baby: “my avatar is a picture of one of my tattoos, so it’s me whether it reflects badly on me or not.”

aspiesmom1: “Many people's nicknames are confusing to me, or maybe mean something to the person but not to the community as a whole, and so I associate people with their avatars. When they change them it throws me off completely. The avatar itself however, doesn't affect how I view the person.”

Theman: “Well, the answer is yes. That's why we pick them, they say something about who we are, and consciously or unconsciously everyone is influenced, to what degree is debatable but it is impossible not to be.”

As an ending note, I’ll ask for forgiveness if someone got offended by what was supposed to be an invisible harmless investigating look… it’s just for the sake of the human story lying there that fascinates me. A great human story which sometimes I get carried away with… hey, life is the best show you can get around town! :)

Your Xellular Xen

MobFashion

Well guys, you probably remember the last post on men and their mobiles... I know that some of you were a bit mad (and even pinged me about it).So to be fair, I'm gonna write about women's mobile fashion from as well… :)

What you can see here is C'Élégance (pronounced cell-egance), a jewelry for your cell phone. With  this cute thing we can all personalize our mobile to better express who we are... (and you now the rest...) :)

[via the Mobile Diva - Darla Mack]

***

People gather information when deciding with whom to pair up to prevent investing time and genes with a bad-genes partner; or in Darwin's words - sexual selection. I know I know… people don't present to the public our health charts and medical prescriptions, so how do we do that? Health condition and fitness are demonstrated by visual cues and behavior (remember the men and their luxury gadgets?).

I'll get to the mobiles in a sec, don't worry, but before that let me say another word... To complicate things a bit, there are fake signals which we all use, like make up, push-up bras, wigs... I'm sure you can come up with dozens of exapmles. So the natural tendency, when selecting, would be to rely on hard to fake signals. Genuine signals are signals which ONLY fittest women could communicate. And here's where FASHION comes in the picture.

How a woman dresses and what mobile she owns are more than a successful self representation. Fashion forces a woman to look good while sending signals of her knowledge of the rules of fashion. That is a real signal because being always in fashion requires qualifications that are much harder to fake: being alert to social conventions and being well equipped with financial resourced to achieve it. [If she makes money or comes from a rich family means she is has good genes for survival in the modern era.]

Fashion is changing rapidly while introducing so many new accessories in so many fields. We don't only have cosmetics, hair style, clothes and shoes, we also have jewelary, bags and all kind of mobiles and personal gadgets as well. This makes it even harder to be always up-to-date. Harder means a sincere cue for sexual selection, and it causes a wide scale of accomplishments: from a fashion pro with the latest mobile to the fashion beginner without it.

So fashionable girls, this is the new mobile fashion... go and grab some! Present it to the guys... hopefully it'll make wonders! :)

Theatre, Peacocks and Mobiles

Yesterday the spring semester has started and I spent the entire day at university. It was so great! The huge library (always gives me perspective…), the classes, the cafeteria and the so WEIRD people of the faculty of arts (especially the eccentric acting students)…

While changing classes and buying coffee I was talking with a new class mate. Naturally, conversations always reach topics like fields of interest and career. And you probably guessed right - I found myself talking about (mobiles and) the need for self-expression, which btw I thought is a basic term in the field of arts…

My classmate argued that the need to externalize one’s identity is only a male need. The purpose is to get mating partners. And it can be examined in theatrical terms. The spectacle is the display of male strength and quality, i.e. his manhood, i.e. his financial power and status. The audience is mixed and contains both genders - potential female mates and rival males. The stage is the stage of his life. The actor is a male playing himself on the role of his life. Instead of walking around with his bank account balance, the male has the best props to convey the same message: he carries (and displays to the audience) as often as possible (without loosing credibility and looking ridiculous) his electronic consumer goods (you name them…), expensive watches, tie pins, lucrative fountain pens or mobile phones. All of these are elements in a coherent message about himself, about who he is and about his male qualities. But this act isn’t put up together for the sake of art. There is no fashion statement either. It is merely a good ol’ animal like behavior, like the peacock displays his feathers to communicate, to declare his male quality.

A little note before continuing - even though the mobile is a mean of audio communication, its visual appearance is what communicates in the example here. Carrying a Nokia N-90, a Mobile ESPN or a Nokia 3100 says different things about the character on stage.

Nice observations, yet I argued… we all use different props to say something about our nature, taste, character, life-style and economic status. Yet we don’t need to treat this visual communication as “primitive”. That is the essence of visual communication, and it can be used to gather information and\ or to convey a message to a potential mate but not only; Think of all those circumstances in life where we gather visual information regarding the counterpart (selling\buying, job interviews…). And these “props” aren’t any different than other means of visual communication, like body language, or fashion statements etc. So, next time you're shopping for a mobile - think what it says about you! :)

"Try to Look Natural... and Action!"

Video calling on the mobile phone, what anticipation!! “Wow video calling, how exciting!” “Which HS it’ll work on?”, “Which operators?”, “What capabilities…?”  Lately, everyone is buzzing on Video calling...

It’s great to be able to see people that you talk to. Thinking of all the possibilities, it really sounds great. Waking up to the sound of the phone ringing, answering with puffed eyes and saliva on the corner of your mouth… Beautiful sight! Or calling late to work, saying you’re just around the corner of the office when you’re really 20 miles away… Great surveillance system and the deployment is paid on behalf of the excited workers… 

We will need to direct ourselves before participating in a video call and check if our hair is combed (spikes are standing up, in my case :-)), if lipstick is well put and dark circles around the eyes are well covered – hey, this is a close up shot!

And if you’ll decide to keep your face off the video call (a new zit in the center of the forehead, or a swimming pool in the back instead of an office scenery), people would probably ask – what do they have to hide? If they didn’t have something to hide they would have showed themselves… not only we’re connected 24-7, we will be under the spotlight, standing on the big stage with even less privacy left…

What would be best is another visual means of communicating… Much more fun and much easier!

Express Yourself or Get Screened!

I don’t know if you remember, but long time ago, when the mobile was merely an infant, it just rang when someone called and we had to pick up in order to know who’s calling. Most of us probably had calling card or lots of change and didn’t own a mobile… what a days… Later on, the mobile evolved a bit and we could get a display of an entering call or a “missed call”.

Then, with more developed caller IDs we had an informative display of the caller’s identity. By signing up for the service, we could get this information, which was merely a phone number. Yet, we could customize it to better fit our needs as the receiver of calls.

Imagine yourself this (not PC) situation: an ex-boy\girlfriend (or other nagger) who keeps calling again and again… not nice but it happens. Besides asking him\her to stop calling and hope for the best, we could simply tag him\her with “don’t answer” or “I’m a jerk don’t answer” (I’m sure you can come up with more amusing tags to better rephrase that) so each time the nagger calls we won’t answer… For the same purpose, we could also choose a certain ringtone to all the naggers as a group.

The nagger, on his\her behalf, could only determine whether we can see his\her phone number or block the number (displayed as “private caller”) on our mobile screen. His\her ability to self express on our mobile is very limited and is very much depending on our mobile settings.

But what if the nagger isn’t really a nagger? If I’m feeling bad and I know that my mom\dad\both are in a meeting and can’t answer? With the next generation of caller ID’s, we can take advantage of the visual display to express more complex messages. With the multimedia user defined caller ID, I can have the ultimate ability to self express my personality and state of mind and reach far over the receiver’s mobile screen.

So if I’m feeling bad, my mom\dad\both could know it before taking that call, that otherwise wouldn’t have been answered. Instead of customizing my mobile phone, I’m self expressing on other’s mobile! I’m actually sending a visual message (or better said - communicating!) before even beginning the call. Think of all the possibilities... Next time you need to get answered - express yourself visually!

Mobile Live Crowd

Think about this: from just about anywhere in the world you can watch the hoop at the moment a slam dunk has been made over your mobile screen! You can almost hoop yourself!

People are very fascinated by live broadcasts, live music concerts, and live sports games. The authenticity is what we find so appealing – knowing that what we’re watching is for real, it’s not an act of pretending and it’s happening right now as we speak!

Imagine yourselves the following situation: I bought sits for the latest most popular sports game - Super Bowl, NBA… you name it. Drove all the way to the stadium, wore my team’s shirt, bought soft drinks and hot dogs, and went to my seats. I actually did everything the way fans do. Eventually, I found myself staring on the huge screen to see only part of what’s going on in the court\ field (I’m 1.52m so believe me, it is hard even to see just the screen without people blocking my view...). Unfortunately, the same happens the at music concerts.

I feel like I paid a lot of money to be in the crowd, to be able to scream my lungs out (and to choose not to - ladies shouldn’t curse, right?) and see only a small fraction from the whole happening\ event. If you look deep enough, you could say that I didn’t really get the action in LIVE. Besides all the excitement of being part of the huge crowd and actually being there in *real flesh & blood*, it isn’t any different from watching a game at home. Both ways I end up watching at the screen. I know what you’ll say - that at the stadium we can feel as part of the big crowd… my answer to you is - that even at home, a homemade cheering crowd can be easily arranged. All you need is to gather a few friends, buy some drinks and a few bags of family size of Frito-Lays and send the girls to a night out. (Between us, sports aren’t my biggest interest, so I’ll go out with the girls… :-))

I’m having a thought here of a nice feature with some added value for the "homemade cheering crowd", so tell me what you think of it. How about recording the "homemade cheering crowd" through the mobile, and sending the audio\ visual\ both recording as an MMS message to the stadium's speakers\ big screens\ both and have the "homemade cheering crowd" be heard\ seen\ both over there, while they’re actually sitting on the couches in front of the TV, at home.

Well, either way, most of us end up watching the game through the screen. Either way the real action is mediated. So, my questions to you are: what’s the real difference between a live game and a taped game if both are seen through the glass? If we always get the action through the screen, would people care to watch TV on the mobile (in that case, the liveness would be to watch the action on the fly, rather than in real dimensions)?

U look gr8 can i txt u?

It seems that men and women tend to use texting in romantic relationships. However, there’s a slight difference between them. Men use texting to be less committed - and therefore safer from being rejected by a potential date. How? Texting provides a protective shield, because the “texter” is less involved in the situation unlike participating in a F2F conversation or on a phone conversation. Unlike men, women use text messaging as another mean to nurture their emotional interactions.

So, men prefer to pursue a potential date using texting to avoid the upfront rejection (can’t blame them, really :-)). Women, on other hand, want to see men make an effort to get a date. That effort would elevate the lucky woman’s social esteem and tag her as “hard to get woman” (can’t blame women either ;-)). So apparently there is a conflict between emotional needs of men and women regarding “phase 1” in relationships and regarding the reasons for texting. Women claim that texting caused a reduction in seriousness on behalf of courting men. Either way, life is the evidence that texting relationships do happen, and even flourish. 

But way more interesting is what new technologies would do to human relationships. We all agree that texting reduced the amount of participation\ involvement in the process of communication. Who doesn’t prefer saying hard things through SMS?

SMS’s younger brother, the MMS, is a more complementary way of communicating. MMS is a wider visual means of communication that provides the user a lot more than 160 characters. Via MMS we can send pics with voice, or even short films. So girls could get invitations to a picnic date through an MMS with a pic like the one put here. Yet, we see that most people stick to the good ol’ SMS and use MMS less frequently. I can only assume that when it comes to flirting and dating, even lesser people use MMS. If you have any knowledge about the subject, feel free to comment!

Taking it another step further in the evolution of visual technology - pointing on video chats or F2F communication - asking out on a date using video chat isn’t much different from asking out on the street, in a bar or anywhere else… so would you do it that way?

Who Wants A Pimpled Avatar?

Lately, I see everywhere I look around, a new avatar service emerges to the world. This week I came across the Imstar Instant messenger’s 3D avatars. I’ve looked around their demo site and even downloaded the messenger (I really love playing with new apps).

With Imstar’s 3D avatars you can personalize the shape of the body and face to really look like yours. Then, you can try out different clothes, make up and accessories of different brands, buy them if you like the way you look or sell items if you’re tired of that ol’ dress. The other day, I saw great pics published by Heather Meadows, who tried to build her Imstar avatar to look just like her – as much as possible with Imstar’s 3D graphics.

Imstar’s avatars are really great, but the question is who would want to have his exact body shape and look to be his\her web representation?

Imagine yourself this situation: I’m a very cool teenager but my face is all covered with pimples (it happens to the best, right?). Would I want my avatar to be polka dotted as well?

–of course not!

Would I want to have a button that adds zits to my avatar’s face?

–no!!

Why?

-Cause nobody thinks zits are a good way to promote yourself. We all prefer to show an improved image of ourselves. If an “add a zit" option exists in the avatars building studio, and I’d deny its existence because I want my avatar to look cool and hip (who wouldn’t?!), my friends would say I’m lying about the way I look. The bottom line is that no button that adds flaws is welcome in avatars world.

So, have Imstar guys lost their minds adding the option to make fat 3D avatars? Not really… There are segments that will welcome a very realistic avatar to represent them on the web. These people don’t want to upload their real picture and get the inevitable exposure. Think about the dating scene, for example. When flirting on the IM with a potential date we’ve just met, we want to show our best and to protect our real identity at the same time. After gaining trust, we’re ready to provide more details about ourselves and we’re more confident to send a real pic of ourselves. So in our online lifestyle, even not-so-perfectly-looking-avatars have a role. But cool-looking-avatars have a so much bigger role…!

Let Your Avatar Call in Sick for You

I was reading Stowe Boyd's post about face-to-face technology (a.k.a. F2F). He thinks that real time F2F technology will be the next hit, using video chat through PCs and mobile phones. According to Stowe Boyd, the only hurdle is the lack of interoperability which is needed to be cleared out of the way. Looking at Google’s last moves, it’ll happen sooner than we think. Stowe also brings great examples of situations when you would prefer to use F2F communication.

I’m sure F2F will become more popular over time, but what about all those instances that you don’t want to be totally exposed? Like when...

• You’re calling sick from an exotic island or you're really sick in bed with high fever.
• The phone has woken you up and you don't want your partner to see your puffed eyes, your messed hair and your polka dotted pajamas.
• You’re answering the phone in the toilet (I know, nobody does this kind of disgusting things… absolutely n-o-b-o-d-y…).

I believe there’s another channel of communication that we should consider here, and that is communication through Avatars.

Avatars are our web representation. We can personalize them to better fit our look & feel; we can choose their clothing, hair styles, accessories and scenery… absolutely everything! The ease in changing appearance allows us to use this sphere to explore ourselves. In every social encounter we can change our appearance\ characteristics: a hippy, a gallant cavalier or a rapper, and define who we are and who we aren't.

But actually, we can use these avatars for communication everywhere: on the web (IM, blogs, forums, greeting cards, signatures), on the mobile (wallpapers and screensavers), on daily interactions (business cards, ads, bumper stickers… you name it). Think of the day that your Avatar could stand in for you absolutely everywhere…!

What would that give us? Avatars can stand in for us when we don't want to disclose ourselves. They can easily represent us when we want to separate our real life from the social impression we want to make. So next time the phone wakes you up, friends would see your neat and tidy Avatar. I guess when you’re reading these lines now you come up with a lot of more good examples too.

We can communicate using Avatars on the web and in real life when communicating visually. The mobile phone links between these worlds. And this is where the Mobile Avatar is utilized to bridge these spheres. A Mobile Avatar can be your caller ID, so when you call a friend, he will see your personalized Avatar on his screen, just like on the web. This way, your web representation could serve you over the real world as well. Needless to say, that you can use this avatar wherever else you want (like on your business card, etc…).

So… back to F2F communication. Avatars aren't F2F communication by all means; they are just part of widening visual communication. Yet, Mobile Avatars will integrate the web and the real world.