The Simplest Location Based Advertising

Since a couple of days back, Airtel - the top cellular service provider in India - has latched on to something very simple yet ingenious. They have started, or at least tried out, location based advertising in the simplest, crudest form.

The concept is very simple, you are in a certain area, you receive advertisements from businesses in that area, thereby increasing the possibility of you seeking them out - simply because they're nearby. For example, if you're in a new town & it's lunchtime, if you get an advertisement for a restaurant in the next block, it's almost a given that you'll try the food at the place.

Well, the guys at Airtel figured that they already had a space to their use & what's more, it the contents of that space were dependent on (in fact they were) the location of the nearest cell. Nobody really cares about the cell information these days, because most people would prefer to use some sort of GPS capability in stead.

Somebody scratches their head and lo & behold, Airtel puts its own advertisement in the space in stead of the name of the nearest cell. Potentially, this could be an advertisement for the biggest shopping centre or bank or hospital near that particular cell and what you get is location based advertising.

Simplistically marvelous, I would say. Wouldn't you?

And Herrrre's GMail for Mobile!!

Google has, at long last, launched a Java application, which is basically a client for GMail. Unfortunately, there's no name. Let's call it the Client.

The Client can be downloaded by going to http://gmail.com/app. The server automatically detects your phone model & the resulting page has a link to the version right for your phone. You just click on this link and the installation begins soon. It is light (112 kB) & installs pretty quickly. Then you just go to the menu and start the Client.

True to Google's reputation in User Interfaces, the Client has a beautifully slick UI, with pleasant colours and smoothed-out widgets. Further, it mimics the GMail UI closely. You can see all the conversations as conversations, which can be expanded (wow!). Mail search is just a click away. Hotkeys all along. You can even tweak your GMail settings from here, which is a big boon (remember, the mobile site for GMail won't let you do it). They say you can also see attachments such as pictures, documents & PDFs, but I haven't tried that out.

The best feature of the Client is the speed. The Client is fast. Period. Complete and real relief from having to go through a good number of web pages just to see a few mails. People used to going to the GMail website from the phone (like me) will clearly notice the difference.

A small problem though - it doesn't let you save the username & password settings. So, you have to type it everytime. This is pretty painful on a cellphone. But I guess that's just it.

So, I would recommend everyone to just go ahead & enjoy.

Two Useful Tools for Series 60

Here are two very useful tools when it comes to Symbian Series 60 smartphones, both by the same author Petteri Muilu:

1. AutoLock is an automatic keypad locking application, a feature conspicuously lacking from Series 60 phones. Works nicely with Nokia 6630. You can set the delay for which it should wait from a small front-end. Delay can be set in minutes:seconds. Although, I have wondered many times who would want that sort of granularity. A very handy tool, nevertheless.
• One drawback, though. Because keypad lock is a feature intended to be used in very simple phones, which are not multi-tasking, the keypad gets locked on any screen in any application. Sometimes annoying if you expect the screen not to change for about 15 seconds (like when browsing the web over GPRS).
  
2. S60Zip is a Zip archive manager. It can open/uncompress archives, compress files into PKZip compatible archives. It can also manage archives from messages & send archives via Bluetooth/e-mail. A very cool tool if you're using your smartphone at even half its power. Has a very familiar Archive manager UI, which adds to the usability. Oh, and yes, it's available in five languages (English, Finnish, French, Russian & Italian).

Personally, I feel tools like this score much more over elaborate software products which do little more than give you a kick of using something hi-tech. These two, along with previous tools listed on this blog such as MGTalk and Raccoon are standing testimony.

Google Talk for Java Phones

A few days back, I came across MGTalk, which is a Jabber client supporting some of the features in Google Talk. After trying it out, I found it a very convenient tool when being away from a connected computer. Of course, you need GPRS - or some other data connectivity - on your phone.

It's a great product, even in early stages of the cycle (current version 0.2.2). It supports SSL connections, autoconnect & re-connect functionality, friend-list (roster) management, status management. Even smileys; that was quite a nice add-on. It's written for Java MIDP 2.0.


The installation is a breeze. You just get the application jar & JAD files on your phone and open them using your application installer. In case of Symbian Series 60 phones such as Nokia 6600, 6630, all of this amounts to simply selecting & clicking the jar file. All you do after the installation is just add your Google Talk username & password when adding an account & connect. You're on Google Talk!!

The project page at SourceForge gives some nice screenshots. The smileys are beautiful, the application stores chat history while it runs, & what's more, you get GMail notifications. All alerts are accompanied by a classic telephone ring, which won't let you miss anything.


A couple of downsides: it's not very stable when sharing the GPRS connection with others, such as the web browser. And when I tried to install it on multiple locations (memory cards), that didn't work very well. It survived on only one of the locations. Oh, and there's one more - it's not a signed application, causing some annoying pop-ups on Symbian phones.

All in all, a cool product which comes in very handy many times. Just can't wait to see how it turns up in the 1.0 release.

A website in my pocket

Thanks, The Yearling for covering my antics with mobsites first.

A few months back, Nokia Research Center achieved something that was a near-dream-come-true experience for enthusiasts like me. They actually managed to port the apache web server to Symbian Series 60!! Not only did they not stop here, but they packaged it with a "connector" of their own making which makes it possible to host a website (a mobsite) on a cellphone like the Nokia 6630. This is what they call Raccoon.

The possibilities they suggest are numerous:

• You could simply browse a friend's mobsite & click a link to ask him - no, let's be politically correct - ask "her" to take a photo of her surroundings. Supposing that she is open to the idea of you prying into her whereabouts, you could actually get a picture of her at the city market, say. Not cool for privacy freaks, but then your friend can deny the request anyway.
• You could simply browse the friend's mobsite & click on another link to get her location. Now this is a bit more dangerous, this doesn't ask for confirmation from your sensitive friend. Turn it the other way round, a great tool for parents to track their teenagers.
  
• You could send the friend a message directly in her SMS inbox via the mobsite, which looks & feels just like an SMS. Gives her the SMS alert, too.
• You could send the friend a message on her phone screen directly.
• You could browse your friend's phone for phone numbers, messages among other things from the comfort of your web browser window.

With the advent of better phones & faster connectivity (and based on what we already have here), here are some future applications that come to mind:

• Streaming: You could let people stream songs & videos on your phone from your mobsite. Digital Rights will play a part here, but there's no harm in assuming that you are a good, law-abiding citizen of the world, is there?
  
• Locating: You could host a mobsite which gives a continuous update on the traffic situation/parking lots in the area you're in. Somebody who wishes to reach you, just opens your website & plans her route accordingly.
• Tracking: If you own a courier business, your express delivery personnel could be equipped with small mobsites of their own, which could work as package tracking websites for the customers. Although I'm not sure if anyone would be that eager to track a package.
• The customers could also get photos of where the delivery guy is right now. A picture is better than a thousand words.
• Advertising: You could have a mobsite that has a blog, or a personal page, that will have advertisements from businesses near you, wherever you are. The more popular your mobsite, the more you get paid for the advertisement space. This may not be content based; any business in your vicinity could put an ad on your mobsite. Ads will change as you move around.
  

Of course, we're some way from bringing some of these applications into reality. The clear challenges are network bandwidths & processing power. But Raccoon is most certainly a great start of an entirely new aspect of the web.