Disqus - Latest Comments for South77

Re: More On Open Spectrum

South77 — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:43:30 -0000

Also posted on the other blog. FCC is so bad that the U.S. is the only major nation to have allocated 700 MHz spectrum for commerical use. How terrible!

@Saunvit -- spectrum re-use has several guises, but cell splitting has the biggest impact by far. This is sometimes known as "Cooper's Law" after Marty Cooper at Motorola.

Re: Open Spectrum is Good Policy

South77 — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:35:07 -0000

"I know this analogy is an oversimplification" -- that's probably where you should start over.

Spectrum can be used more efficiently (what can't?), but this article mixes up lots of issues that aren't especially related.

Telecom industry has spent th last x years (re-)consolidating. There must be a reason for that, no?

Re: Why Mobileways were right to price Gravity at $10

South77 — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:21:24 -0000

+1 for Gravity.... same price as a bottle of wine or a few beers. Like Tim says, good software is worth something.

I do like dabr though: simple, functional, and free.

Re: Las Vegas: Land of the shitty mobile handset

South77 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:12:54 -0000

Ha. People have been saying that for years. A hard life developing for mobile. And ultra competitve now the bandwagon is rolling.

The BlackBerry app store tells the story -- a bunch of routine apps we've had for years.

Re: Las Vegas: Land of the shitty mobile handset

South77 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:50:56 -0000

Yes, if you're selling apps. But if you're selling data plans and handsets the market is wide open. That'll fuel services/apps down the road.

In five years you'll probably go back to Vegas and that same guy will have a knackered old 100-buck iPhone Nano he uses to keep track of his kids on TwitterBook.

And we'll be saying -- like, where's your Nokia implant geezer?

Re: Las Vegas: Land of the shitty mobile handset

South77 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:36:54 -0000

Don't you look at this situation and say 'wow, there's amazing opportunity in the mobile data market'?

Re: Spotify vs iTunes vs Omnifone

South77 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:12:23 -0000

Spotify works with Last.fm as well

Re: I’m going to make a conferencing app for the Ovi Store. Want to help?

South77 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:42:48 -0000

We'd fire people who acted like that and kept runing up late. Not much you can do about people outside the company, especially if they're paying. Apart from having 'em shot, I suppose <joke>.

Re: I’m going to make a conferencing app for the Ovi Store. Want to help?

South77 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:50:28 -0000

Laughed at this. Would be funny if it weren't so true:

"I have had enough of turning up to a group conference call at 2.30pm and spending the next 15 minutes dicking about waiting for Bob, or Bill, or Jim, or Linda to actually join.

10 minutes after that — so at 2:55pm, we actually get started. One guy’s had to pull over because he was driving and thought we’d be calling him. Another can only stay for two minutes because he’s ‘got a 3 o’clock’."

Re: Mobile Industry Review goes subscription-only from 30th March

South77 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:39:05 -0000

Agree mostly. Doesn't leave us in a great place, however. The sponsorship model isn't so corrupt in news publishing because it would be obvious to readers if advertisers were influencing editorial, and they would stop reading, then it wouldn't be a good place to advertise.

I read The Guardian because even though it's got advertisments for financial services, it at least is still prepared to call out Barclays Bank on an alleged tax dodge scam.

Readers gravitate to good editorial and appreciate that advertisers support that.

There's also a difference between consumer tech news (gadgets & apps) and industry tech news. MIR coverage stradles both areas, which I like as a general interest reader, but is possibly harder to commercialize.

When SMS Text news became MIR Ewan should probably (possibly?) have got a direct sales person on the case right away. Even a few grand here and there at regular intervals makes a difference and you can start building commercial product around independent, quality, content. It is not easy.

Re: Mobile Industry Review goes subscription-only from 30th March

South77 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:58:07 -0000

Great post. And kudos all round to MIR team, contributors, and message boarders.

Trade publishing (call it blogging, if you like) is a difficult business. If companies want coverage (obviously they do to judge from the amount of PRs in the world) there should be some way of supporting the media that provides it. Basically, you have to have a pay to play element.

It gets difficult because media should be independent, otherwise people won't read it, and then more difficult because advertisers are not comfortable with too much straight talk, which is what makes MIR interesting and readable.

Paid research is a better model, because people actually want to pay to be told stuff straight. The catch here is you have to be good.

I am astounded (still) that comanies pay way more for PR to "place" them in media than they do to actually support media directly.

Re: Mobile Industry Review goes subscription-only from 30th March

South77 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:47:46 -0000

To clarify, a readership of a free service that is unlilkey to ever buy anything from the sources funding the service (sponsors, advertisers, founders, etc) isn't directly all that valuable.

The trick is to figure away to make other lines of *paid* business viable. Conferences are the favorite option, but that's a munchy line of work for the most part.

Will be interested to see how MIR comes out of it. I admire a lot about the site and the commentators.

Re: Mobile Industry Review goes subscription-only from 30th March

South77 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:33:31 -0000

The value of an audience is as important as the size of an audience when it comes to monetization.

Most PRs don't really have a clue about any of that.

What's weird is there are way more PRs covering the industry than reporters. How backwards is that? Unbelievable, but true.

Re: MIR TV goes to Rome, Italy - Part One

South77 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:12:23 -0000

Have you guys got girl friends? [no need to answer that]

I can see it now: Venice, valentine's day, restuarant, flowers, "ooh, look there's someone with a N56 Series iPhone Tilt, how continental... you were saying darling?"

Just kidding. Good vid.

Re: Thank you for the music

South77 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:48:20 -0000

Thank you for the information & entertainment !

Kudos for backing the project this far.

Re: Mobile Industry Review goes subscription-only from 30th March

South77 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:09:05 -0000

Are you the guy who created dabr? I learnt of that through this site and use it routinely.

Re: The crux of the mobile developer conundrum: Forget the 99% without iPhone

South77 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:07:10 -0000

I realize I'm late here and not qualified to comment, but apps and app stores are maybe a little too narrow view of the the issue. I'd bet the UK operators make reasonable revenues from selling "content" to, say, Nokia 6300 users from their portals. 2 quid ringtones and J2ME games, that sort of thing.

I personally *like* the current Symbian model where you just get apps from where ever you find them on the Internet, although I concede it would be good for mass-market uptake if they were organized into an Ovi portal.

Re: Watch the layabout UK Mobile Industry recline at Mo Mo London

South77 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:58:41 -0000

To be fair, the panel wasn't set up as though they'd be on video and then stuck up on the web. Although you could argue you should expect that kind of thing now. Not too sure that's ideal, but there you go.

I would've liked the panel and presenters to be a bit more interesting and opinionated -- agree with you on that.

There are good and bad points to the MoMo format (I don't go often, though).

Re: “MIR should go camping” - what do you think?

South77 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:16:29 -0000

Top Gear has been camping. MIR is the Top Gear of tech news. What you waiting for?

Re: Suggestion: Talk To The Source

South77 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:10:04 -0000

"Google should consider it news and people should believe it." Seems like a low hurdle for what's news and what to believe.

Re: RCR Wireless — intelligence on all things wireless — closed today

South77 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:03:41 -0000

To add, just looking at my reader over lunch time sandwich (too much info?), there's another post on the topic here: http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/?source=mob...

What I like about MIR is that generally it doesn't publish made-up stuff or complete b*llocks, and the writers take time to use the device, or service, or whatever, before opining.

Re: RCR Wireless — intelligence on all things wireless — closed today

South77 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:33:07 -0000

Possibly more accurate to say media is changing.

Is MIR not media? Is it not, basically, a trade publication? Will at some point Ewan figure out a way to make money from this site? Proper money that is.

Love MIR btw (and SMS News before that), before you get all annoyed about being described as a trade publication. Hope you carry on being succesful.

Re: Nokia’s ‘actively looking’ at entering the laptop business

South77 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:43:25 -0000

A netbook running Symbian or Android would be very nice. No more waiting for Windows to wake up and start working. Snapdragon is going to trash Atom in this market.

Re: MIR Show - John Strand of Strand Consult

South77 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:27:34 -0000

Agree with @whatleyguy

Handango was awful. Big lolz.

I heart appl (not really).

Re: MIR Show - Top Nokia chap, Niklas Savander, interviewed

South77 — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:37:08 -0000

Kudos MIR for the interview -- we learn that a former HP sales rep is in charge of Nokia's service strategy. Take that GOOG & AAPL.

P.S. I realize I sound like an *arse* (Trade Mark MIR) in the above comments. Must be Monday. Savander did O.K. at Nokia World if you can excuse the black turtle neck. I'm still a Nokia fanboi. Ovi oughta work out eventually.