Software Helps Parents Monitor/Control SMS Usage

I saw two companies at the Showstoppers event in Las Vegas tonight that are trying to make sending SMSes on mobile phones safer. TextArrest prevents teens from sending text messages while driving, and Smobile helps parents monitors the child's text messages for inappropriate content.

Texting is big in the US. Nearly 161 million Americans have sent text messages on their mobile phone, and among young people 82% under the age of 25 use text to communicate. Inevitably problems can and do arise.

There have been many instances in which drivers -- not just teens -- have been distracted while driving causing horrific accidents. Additionally the phenomena of sexting -- the sending of sexually suggestive pictures and messages has received national attention. Cyberbullying can also be a problem.

TextArrest is a downloadable application that uses the GPS in a smartphone to detect when a person is travelling more than 5 miles per hour. It then locks down the screen of the phone preventing messages from being seen or from being written. Passengers can override the system, but all such attempts are logged. Using web based software a parent can detect when their child turned the system off.

Smobile tackles the other part of the problem by providing for the parent a copy of every SMS or picture that was sent on the phone its installed in. The web based software also detects when inappropriate words are used like beer or naked and alerts parents. The software also scans pictures.

TextArrest costs $4.99 per month for up to 5 family members. Smobile costs 29.99 for a single installation

Mobile Bar Codes are Here

This morning while on Metro North I found my self staring at a big poster of semi-naked Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker. Since I’m an unemasculated male the first thing I noticed of course was Decker’s curvaceous body, but then the geek side of me kicked in and I noticed the 2D barcode next to her.

Of course I knew what to do. I took a picture of the barcode with my cell phone’s camera and sent the picture via MMS to a short code printed on the poster (of course I could have also sent the barcode pic by e-mail). Moments later I received a message back from Sports Illustrated with pics of 6 other clothing challenged models who appear in this month’s Swimsuit Edition.

I’m not sure how many commuters knew what to do or how many actually participated in SI’s campaign, but the high profile presence of this ad and the fact that literally everyone has a cell phone capable of taking pictures and receiving web-based information means a a lot more tags will start appearing on advertising and other everyday objects.

SI’s campaign was powered by JagTag, a New Jersey, based consumer marketing company. JagTag has a unique technological offering which allows users to read barcodes without having to download a special reader. It was really easy to take the picture and get the content returned. (Of course convenience comes at a cost because both the user and advertiser pay the cost of an MMS message. More ARPU for carriers!).

On the downside it seems that JagTag doesn’t have a self-service option. If I wanted to create and distribute a tag I’d have to have a relationship with JagTag

Microsoft on the other hand, which also has a tagging project, does allow anyone to come in and create a tag. It also has some rudimentary business intelligence tools that allow tag creators to see how frequently their tags were scanned. On the downside, Microsoft’s offering requires the download of a proprietary barcode reader. They have one for the iPhone.

What’s neat about both the JagTag and Microsoft tags is that instead of an undecipherable Rorchach-test pattern, the barcodes can be fashioned to look like images users are familiar with. A bikini clad woman in SI’s case or a graphical overlay in Microsoft.

But I suppose in the future we can expect to see information embedded directly in an advertising image. Taking a picture of it will automatically redirect users to a site with additional information, or maybe it will send a user a mobile coupon to try that product.

That’s certainly something that Target Store’s is banking on. According to a story in Gomo News It’s recently launched an effort to install mobile barcode readers in all of its stores. Now instead of bringing their target customer loyalty card with them every them they come to shop, Target customers can present their phone and have their loyalty card scanned-in in the form of a 2D barcode.

The iPad Unveiled -- My Thoughts

For those of you who are into mobile and technology, today was the momentous day when Apple unveiled its iPad tablet device। A group of us at AOL's NYC office gathered in a conference room to watch the event live and experience the moment together on Justin।tv (There were 114K concurrent viewers which is about as much as MSNBC on a good day).

I am not going to go over the iPad feature by feature, I’m sure sites like Engadget and TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) will cover in great detail। Instead I want to focus on the implications of this new device.

The iPad is basically a giant iPod Touch, but it's a device gets the computer out of the way for the ordinary American consumer. It’s a nice size and weights about a pound. The price starting at $499 is aimed solidly at the middle class and will surely come down in its 2nd and 3rd iterations. I travel daily on Metro North and see hundreds of iPhone users amongst millions worldwide. These users will naturally gravitate to the iPad as a complementary device that they will use for infotainment at home. Apple is establishing a lifelong relationship with them and they will spend million and millions buying content.

The Kindle is dead. Early reports indicate that the iPad has a much nicer more readable screen. Besides the fact that it is in color and that it does more than read books. Add to that that Apple has launched the iBook bookstore it is now directly challenging Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the selling of electronic media. Apple has basically chased Amazon and certainly B&N out of the hardware market.

Apple is releasing the WiFi version first followed a month later by the 3G version. I see no reason why users would wait and pay more for 3G (plus the monthly fee).

From an applications development perspective it seems that the iPad is running the standard iPhone OS (There may be some iPad specific API calls in the SDK). It runs all iPhone applications out of the box, but customized applications (like the NY Times which was shown) would look better. As a result of larger screen however newer interactions between people sharing the device will result in new forms of applications. The form factor of the small screen mobile device has been broken so it is possible to create a app that could use a bigger screen. How about watching live streaming TV and AIM at the same time.

All in all, just like the iPhone I think the iPad will gain an audience among a large section of American consumers. My search colleague Oscar Kafati pointed out that there are over 15 million college students in the US. Imagine everyone toting an iPad instead of a laptop and having their college texts available on them. It will happen.

Twitter Makes Me Smarter

Even though I've been aware of Twitter for the past 2 years, I've been using it in earnest only in the past couple of weeks. As I've tweeted and followed people something amazing has happened -- I've become smarter.

One way really smart people succeed (I'm conceited enough to consider myself somewhat smart) is that they surround themselves with smarter people. The smart person, even one who is an expert in his own domain, realizes that there are people out their who know more. The smart person is open to new ideas and he tries to leverage the experience of others.

One distinct downside to the "smart people" strategy is that you have to be in a place where you can encounter the smart types. Further you have to work at cultivating personal and professional relationships over time so that you can build a useful network of smart people. Such things require careful planning, social skills, and a bit of luck of being at the right place and the right time. I tend to fall short in all three areas.

Twitter however has captured the imagination of some of the Internet's leading thinkers and entrepreneurs. They're all seemingly happy to share in realtime their thoughts, ideas, interests, what they're reading, and where they are.

My new "friend" Steve Case, the founder of AOL and former Chairman of AOL Time Warner, has ordered the new version of Amazon.com Kindle book reader; Kevin Rose, the co-founder of Digg is fascinated by speech-to-text software created by AT&T Labs that produces natural sounding voices; and Joe Trippi (Howard Dean's campaign chief) is passionate about democracy in Zimbabwe.

Through Twitter I'm learning about venture capitalism from Fred Wilson; the inner workings of Google from Matt Cutts, and Kara Swisher is keeping me up-to-date on what she's finding out interviewing Silicon Valley executives.

Many of these people on Twitter are letting their guard down and being themselves. Since most people let anyone follow them there is a social contract of sorts that exists in Twitterverse that people will treat each other with mutual respect and not misuse people's tweets. Will this last or will one Twitter scandal cause people to retreat back into their offices? I hope not, but in the meanwhile I feel privileged to be sharing the thoughts of some of the Net's brightest minds.

The Big Whopper Flameout

It started with so much promise and ended with a flame-out.

Burger King had a cool idea in its new Whopper Sacrifice campaign: a) install an application on your Facebook page b) sacrifice/remove 10 of your friends from your social graph c) get a coupon for a free whopper.

The strategy shows that Burger King (or at least its ad agency) totally gets Web 2.0. In fact I would even call the execution brilliant. The notion of deciding which “friends” to eliminate turns the whole social networking idea on its head. Even better as you sacrifice “friends” Facebook’s newsfeed lets the world know which victims don’t make the cut.

And then the big let down. First to claim the coupon Burger King makes you fill out a form that asks for everything but your first born’s left foot. Name, Cell Number, E-mail address, Postal Address, Gender. Come on guys isn’t the fact that you have access to my Facebook profile enough?

But here’s the real kicker. After all that work BK tells me that my coupon will be delivered in two to four weeks. WTF?!

How could people who came up with this great idea be such morons?

Users of online media want immediate gratification ie. a coupon on the web screen, via e-mail or on SMS. Telling me that a coupon will come in a month is outrageous and ridiculous.

The Whopper may be flame broiled but someone’s brain at BK is fried.

No More Talking/Texting While Driving

Agence France Press reports that a Canadian company, Aegis Mobility, has created new technology called DriveAssist that intercepts phone calls and text messages while a person is driving.

DriveAssist uses GPS and other technologies to detect if the person is moving at a speed which indicates he is in a car.

Many jurisdictions like New York and Connecticut forbid talking on a cell phone while driving without a hands-free device like a speaker phone or bluetooth headset because of distractions associated with such activity. Even this restriction however isn't foolproof because one still has to look at the screen to dial.

Smart phones such as the iPhone complicate matters because I often look at Google Maps and directions while I'm driving.

I think DriveAssist is a good feature. Unfortunately it is being offered on a carrier-by-carrier basis for a monthly fee.

I think that this creates a potential legal problem for carriers and handset manufacturers. If blocking calls from those that are driving is considered a safety feature then not including it in a phone or service plan for free may be considered a product defect.

As such carriers/manufactures may become liable to those who are injured by customers who used phones that lacked such blocking features.

Obama Advertises in a Video Game

Campaign ads for presidential candidate Sen. Barak Obama are appearing in the the video game Burnout Paradise.

Roadside billboard advertising in the real world is nothing new. Images stay with us as we cruise down the ashphalt highway. I think the impact is even greater in a video game because players are more engaged with what they are seeing on screen.

Obviously there are people at the Obama campaign are really thinking about how to engage with younger voters.

In game ad revenue also is a smart move by game publishers. GigaOm confirmed with Electronic Arts that the Obama campaign purchased the spots through them.

As a parent who recently purchased a Wii for my son, I wonder though how I would feel about ads for McDonalds or other companies appearing while my son is playing Wii Tennis? Kids are marketed to too much already, and there need to be some areas that are just ad free.

Perhaps in the future we'll be seeing games being sold in ad-supported and ad-free versions. The latter costing a little bit more of course.