Mobifun’s Weblog

Google Calendar is adding event-tracking capability that allows Calendar users to add public events to your calendar. Add the NBA Playoff schedule to the calendar or pick events from the Eventful database. Google’s new calendar gallery has listings from sources like Disney, Eventful, JamBase, Orbitz, the NBA, and Zvents. You can add either individual events or complete schedules to your Google Calendar in one click. I have added the New York Yankees to my calendar so that I can keep a close watch on who we are losing to on any given day. These public calendars have been available to Mac users for quite sometime now. Also see, Lifehacker

Coca-Cola has used the Mobile Marketing Forum to announce its latest marketing venture—Sprite Yard. This will be a mobile social network which will let users create profiles and exchange photos and messages, which will be available as an application that can be downloaded for free via a shortcode reports RCR News. The service launched in China last week and will launch in the US on June 22nd.

Reuters has more information on the aims of Coca-Cola (”to recruit future generations of consumers”) and its assertion that mobile marketing is the way to reach young people. Coca-Cola will offer free music and video clips through the service to people who type in a pin number found under bottle lids. The company said it “worked with the top U.S. wireless providers on the service” which should make the delivery of the service easier, and also that it is talking with other social networks such as Facebook about “expanding its experience”, whatever that means. But this last little sentence could be important, because using a social network to promote a product is different to running a series of TV ads—if the promotion is successful Coke will have to continue running it indefinitely or risk annoying its customers by suddenly removing a service they’ve come to rely on, or at least use regularly. When online music store Coketunes NZ closed there were lots of questions about whether the music bought from the store would still work, and what functionality would continue to work and what wouldn’t. With Sprite Yard, Coke may be trying to set up an exit strategy whereby it can stop running the social network without annoying its users by palming it off onto a stand-alone network.

The New York Times has a piece on this—if you skip to the bottom you can see cautions from analysts. These include the required permanency of the site as well as the difficulty in becoming a media site, which advertisers have usually left to content producers. Bud.tv is brought out as an example. My favorite quote: ”Nobody wants to go hang out with Sprite,” said Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms for Organic, a digital advertising agency in the Omnicom Group. “It takes a lot for a brand to ask that of a customer. You really have to be getting something compelling in return.”

The Chinese mobile content market has been predicted to grow from $15 billion in 2008 to $21 billion in 2012, boosted by 3G services that will see new revenue from music, games and streamed video adding the current focus on SMS and ringback tones, according to Juniper Research. 3G services will account for 19 percent of the mobile value added services market.

Most GPS are painfully huge in size. But not so for the Freedom Mini GPS. As big as your car keys, this little GPS is perfect for those of us that have a non-GPS smartphone.

“The Freedom Mini GPS currently the world’s most compact and neatest GPS receiver is aimed directly at the ever increasing number of users of SmartPhones and BlackBerrys (150 million will be sold in 2007.) Only about 10-15% of the new devices will have GPS built in, e.g. the 8800 BlackBerry, but all the Pearl and older models have no GPS.”
- Freedom Mini GPS

The downside of the Mini GPS is the lack of a map software, which you have to purchase separately. The good news is that it is compatible with a wide range of software: The AA, Active Pilot, BlackBerry Maps, CoPilot Live 6, Destinator 6, Gate 5,Google Maps, Mapquest, Memory Map, Navigation Mobile, Navman, Nokia/Smart2Go, Navicor, Route 66, Spot, Telenav, and Wayfinder.

Technical Specifications:

• Chipset: SiRF Star III.
• 20 Channels “All-In-View” tracking.
• Protocol: NMEA 0183/GGA, GSA, GSV, RMC, VTG, GLL.
• Baud Rate: 57,600 bps.
• Frequency L1, 1,575.42 Mhz.
• Tracking Sensitivity: 159 dBm.
• Position deviation*: 10 meters 90%. 2D RMS 1-5 meters.
• Velocity: 0.1 m/sec.
• Effective temperatures: Storage: -40°C +70°C.
• Working: -20°C +60°C.
• Air humidity: 5 – 90%
• Internal Ceramic Patch antenna.
• MMXC connection for external antenna.

Price: US$99.99 / £69.99 (inc tax) / €99.99 (inc tax)
Availability: Freedom Input Ltd

Most GPS are painfully huge in size. But not so for the Freedom Mini GPS. As big as your car keys, this little GPS is perfect for those of us that have a non-GPS smartphone.

“The Freedom Mini GPS currently the world’s most compact and neatest GPS receiver is aimed directly at the ever increasing number of users of SmartPhones and BlackBerrys (150 million will be sold in 2007.) Only about 10-15% of the new devices will have GPS built in, e.g. the 8800 BlackBerry, but all the Pearl and older models have no GPS.”
- Freedom Mini GPS

The downside of the Mini GPS is the lack of a map software, which you have to purchase separately. The good news is that it is compatible with a wide range of software: The AA, Active Pilot, BlackBerry Maps, CoPilot Live 6, Destinator 6, Gate 5,Google Maps, Mapquest, Memory Map, Navigation Mobile, Navman, Nokia/Smart2Go, Navicor, Route 66, Spot, Telenav, and Wayfinder.

Technical Specifications:

• Chipset: SiRF Star III.
• 20 Channels “All-In-View” tracking.
• Protocol: NMEA 0183/GGA, GSA, GSV, RMC, VTG, GLL.
• Baud Rate: 57,600 bps.
• Frequency L1, 1,575.42 Mhz.
• Tracking Sensitivity: 159 dBm.
• Position deviation*: 10 meters 90%. 2D RMS 1-5 meters.
• Velocity: 0.1 m/sec.
• Effective temperatures: Storage: -40°C +70°C.
• Working: -20°C +60°C.
• Air humidity: 5 – 90%
• Internal Ceramic Patch antenna.
• MMXC connection for external antenna.

Price: US$99.99 / £69.99 (inc tax) / €99.99 (inc tax)
Availability: Freedom Input Ltd

Sumaya Kazi, 24, was recently recognized by BusinessWeek Magazine as one of America’s Top 10 Entrepreneurs Under 25 and the only solo woman featured in its Global Top 75 Entrepreneurs list. She currently serves as the Executive Director and Co-Founder of TheCulturalConnect.com, a burgeoning media publishing company that publishes five weekly e-magazines dedicated to young, driven and forward-thinking adults around the world. She also serves as the Executive Director of a new non-profit organization that was started to create a young adult and professional movement towards awareness, giving and change. Additionally, she works full-time as a Marketing Manager for the Global Communications group at Fortune 500 Company Sun Microsystems, the youngest in her division. In her spare time she serves a Business mentor for Businesses United in Investing, Lending and Development (BUILD), a non-profit social venture that empowers underprivileged high schools with an education in entrepreneurship .

Few of Sumaya’s Tips

1. Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself. It can only breed success.
2. While having a start-up you and everyone else on your core team must have a PhD mentality. That is, of course, to be poor, hungry and driven.
3. More often than not, people sit on great ideas. Don’t be one of them.
4. If you think you can’t do something - you probably can’t. It’s those that reach for the impossible that make many more things possible happen along the way.
5. Network like hell. When you’re young and have a start-up, it’s important to leverage the connections you’ve made. You’d be surprised to see how far you can go when others are just excited about your start-up and about your ideas.
6. Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. You might have a great idea today, but will it be the same tomorrow?
7. Try to maintain enough ambition and energy to achieve your goals, but also enough humility to accept the challenges and rejection that comes with being an entrepreneur.

via Centernetworks

Hoping to steal some iPhone thunder from Apple, HTC has launched a half-an-inch thick touchscreen phone that also responds to the sweep of a finger and crams in a two-megapixel camera. Like the iPhone, the Touch has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and is saddled with the same sluggish EDGE data connection when you’re out of hotspot range. But the similarities pretty much stop there. Or do they? One big difference is that this handset is powered by Windows Mobile 6 Professional, as opposed to Mac OS X. Business users may prefer WM6 because of its tight integration with Outlook. At first glance, the TouchFLO technology for the 2.8-inch display seems like a me-too gimmick, but it should come in handy for rotating the onscreen menus to the left or right for fast, intuitive navigation. HTC’s new homescreen was designed to provide one-touch access to e-mail, text messages, calendar entries, contacts, and weather conditions. You can use your finger to scroll through e-mail, documents, contact lists, and songs, and eliminate the cramped view normally associated with Web pages on a phone’s display by panning the screen in any direction. And, unlike the iPhone, the Touch can distinguish between a finger and a stylus input and then respond accordingly. The 3.9-ounce Touch, a triband GSM phone, is rated for up to five hours of talk time. A 1GB microSD Card is included for loading the phone with content. Although pricing and carrier availability are still up in the air, HTC plans to launch the Touch in two color schemes (Soft Black and Wasabi Green) during the second half of 2007. Stay tuned for our hands-on impressions of the device.