Work

Wed - June 21, 2006

Consumer 2.0 Breakfast

The marvellous Rach ran a Consumer 2.0 breakfast yesterday in the Sydney CBD that had a great turn out of interesting people (both new to me and old friends). The format was three pitches of three minutes each with three questions. It worked really well.

Go read Mick and Alan's posts for further info on the presenters and their talks (and some photos on Alan's).

Posted at 10:25 AM

Mon - May 15, 2006

I'm launching the AIMIA MCIDG AMPLI on the 1st of June (Sydney)

"The AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group (MCIDG) is delighted to results of their Mobile Content Consumer Web Survey at a special breakfast briefing.

The Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index tracks the behaviour and interests of Australian mobile phone users including details on demographics, consumption of types of mobile content, handset penetration, attitudes to migrating to 3G, future mobile content preferences and much more.

This is the only independent and open study of consumer consumption of mobile content in Australia and was conducted by Oliver Weidlich of Ideal Interfaces and m.Net Corporation, with the involvement of a large number of AIMIA MCIDG members.

The first report in August 2005 elicited lots of interest from all over Australia and internationally, so be amongst the first to get the results."

It sold out last year, so get in quick!
:-)

Posted at 09:52 AM

Sun - May 14, 2006

I hate Word

The more I use MS Word, the more I love Apple's Pages...

Posted at 08:50 PM

Fri - May 5, 2006

"Optus' is the most non-nonsense"

In the latest (May) edition of the Australian Personal Computer (APC) magazine Dan Warne lab tests 3G services from the major mobile players here in Australia. The article (for those with access to a paper copy) is titled 'Put the Net in your pocket'.

And while I don't agree with all points of his review, as someone who has spent a while working on the Optus Mobile portal and app, it's nice to hear "Out of all the services, Optus' was the most no-nonsense". Here's to making it even better still!

Posted at 01:56 PM

Sat - April 1, 2006

Mobile TV/Video Usage in US = spend more

Telephia (via Slashphone) report:

"Younger mobile subscribers, age 18-24 have the highest penetration for mobile TV and video usage, securing a 3.3 percent rate, doubling since the beginning of 2005. Overall, men are more likely to stream TV and play video content on their wireless devices than women, showing a penetration rate of 1.8 percent or more than 3.5 million wireless subscribers during Q4 2005."

and

"V CAST and MobiTV subscribers spend roughly $40 more per month as compared to non-TV subscribers."
This seems to be just for mobile phone, I wonder if there would be a significant difference with iPod video downloads. Also I'd be interested in finding out the type of content available and it's usage (i.e. is it male skewed anyway?).

It'll be interesting to compare to the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index findings for 2006, due out next month. Although we don't look at mobile TV/video specifically, it is an area of content that will we will get some insight into.

Posted at 11:38 AM

Thu - February 9, 2006

Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index

The 2006 version of the survey I am helping to project manage has just gone live. It's a survey on mobile phone usage, go and fill it out if your'e an Australian mobile phone user:
http://www.aimia.com.au/mcidg/survey/index.php?sid=6

Posted at 11:57 AM

Wed - January 18, 2006

Full Steam Ahead

A lot of things have been starting to happen in the mobile world, it's exciting to see:
- Motorola are working on a new UI (unfortunately it looks like they still don't get it...)
- Optus launched My Zoo Now , a Symbian client for Series 60 phones that change the interaction model for telco's here in Australia (Disclaimer: I worked on it)
- Yahoo! announced Go, their Symbian client for Series 60 at CES
- Google have launched both mobile GMail and a personalised Google mobile interface

Exciting times!
I might have the chance over the coming weeks to give my views on each, but work is all consuming...

Posted at 09:59 PM

AIMIA Awards Finalists

The Finalists for the AIMIA Awards have been announced. I judged the mobile/wireless category again this year along with my esteemed colleagues.

Posted at 10:17 AM

Tue - January 10, 2006

The plan was...

Well it took all of one day back from holidays to get slammed with more work, so much for having a relaxing start to the year. Can't complain I suppose, but I also have to promise myself that I will take more holidays this year.

Adelaide, the snow, Whitsundays and Europe are on the cards I think. We'll see how it pans out.

Posted at 05:42 PM

Wed - January 4, 2006

Business 2.0 available online

You can now read Business 2.0 articles online for free and they even put the whole story on one page (from my quick look), so you can read it when your offline (travelling etc).

Two good ones to get started are:
The Flickrization of Yahoo!
How the founders of a hot young photo-sharing site are helping to change the focus of the search engine giant--and turning its fight with Google into a battle of man vs. machine.

The 70 Percent Solution
Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives us his golden rules for managing innovation.

via Om Malik

Posted at 04:52 PM

Fri - September 16, 2005

Big Day

Yesterday was a long day, but fun.

Up at 6:30am and went for a walk for an hour.

Off to the Rewind Fast Forward conference at the Sofitel Wentworth to reflect on/celebrate 10 years of the internet. I spoke on a panel about Communicating Tomorrow with Simon from Hothouse, Michael from Zingee, Jane from Match.com and Dominic from Destra. It was fun and we talked about a range of things including IM/email/RSS/VoIP/Blogs etc.

The conference finished and then there were drinks. I left at about 7pm and headed over to Doltone House on Jones Wharf for the Mobile Marketing Awards. It was good to catch up with people and have a couple of drinks, then more drinks, then the after party at Tonic and by 2am I was home in bed...

Posted at 10:00 PM

Thu - September 1, 2005

The Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index

So, on Wednesday i presented the findings of the inaugural Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, an AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group report that I co-authored with Dr Marisa Maio Mackay of m.Net Corporation

The report has gained some publicity with two stories in the SMH:
Mobile phones: half want the extras, half don't
Mobile habits: men play games while women call the tune

I was quoted a couple of times in the first article, but they were hardly an exciting quote and I was too busy doing usability today to do the radio interview.

Anyway, I am very happy with our first report. It took way longer than it should have due to a range of circumstances and we are aiming to make big efficiencies next time round. It is intended to be a 6 monthly report to assess the Australian Mobile Consumer in an ongoing manner.

The key thing is that we got a great response, with 2,400 participants and the data is the first of its kind to be widely available to the industry.

Posted at 08:40 PM

Tue - August 30, 2005

Tomorrow's should be fun

My first 'Sold Out' event :-)
AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group launches results of consumer web survey of the Australian mobile content market

Posted at 08:39 PM

Fri - July 22, 2005

Great Interview

Another great interview by DrunkenBatman, this time with Wil Shipley of ex-OmniGroup and now Delicious Monster. Talks about life as a mac software developer from an award wining company/bloke.

Posted at 10:47 AM