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Yahoo gives e-mail texting capability (USATODAY.com)
Published in August 27th, 2007
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Yahoo Mail thinks there's more to life than just sending e-mail.
On Monday, Yahoo (YHOO) expands the Web mail service into a "social communication" tool - adding the ability to send text messages to cellphones directly from e-mail.
It has also tweaked the interface to make it easier for people to go back and forth between e-mail, instant messaging and text messaging.
"We're responding to our customers," says John Kremer, vice president/Yahoo Mail. "They don't want to bounce around to many different areas."
Yahoo dominates the domestic Web mail market, with 83 million U.S. users in July, according to researcher ComScore Media Metrix. (Worldwide, it's in a tight race with MSN Hotmail.)
The Yahoo Mail update also adds more sophisticated capabilities to check maps, directions, hotel and travel information directly from the e-mail itself.
Say someone writes an e-mail suggesting a trip to San Francisco and dinner at a specific restaurant. Put your mouse over the address, and a pop-up window emerges with tabs for maps, calendar and travel information.
That kind of information also is found elsewhere on the Yahoo network, "but this way, users don't have to leave mail to perform the tasks," says Kremer.
Yahoo says it is the first Web mail service to offer e-mail to text messages for free. It's performed by adding phone number information for the people in your list of contacts. Click on a name, type, and it goes directly to their cellphone. When they respond, the message shows up in your mailbox as an instant message.
Mike McGuire, an analyst for research firm Gartner, says the upgrade keeps Yahoo "on par or just a little bit ahead" of competitors.
"This is a realization that we don't just use e-mail to communicate anymore," he says. "We all now have cellphones and instant messaging, and both can do text messages. This is a valuable feature that enhances the platform."
The changes take the updated Yahoo Mail out of beta, or test, mode.
The text messaging will be rolled out in the next few weeks, and is available in the USA, Canada, India and the Philippines.
Facebook plans to offer targeted ads (USATODAY.com)
Published in August 27th, 2007
Social-networking site Facebook is ramping up efforts on a major new advertising plan that would let marketers tailor ads for the millions of Facebook customers who provide a mountain of information about themselves on the site, according to major advertisers and analysts briefed on the system.
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But the potential volume of ads, and their proximity to the personal content of customers, could stir privacy concerns, say tech and advertising analysts.
Facebook's new format may display more prominent ads on the news feed - a list of updates on the activities of a user's Facebook friends, according to those briefed on the new system. Facebook ads also currently appear as banners on the left-hand and bottom borders of Facebook pages.
Eventually, Facebook hopes to refine the system to deliver ads based on users' interests, says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at market researcher eMarketer.
Facebook acknowledged that it is working on its advertising strategy but declined specific comment.
"Facebook wants to combine information points about you as a person, and your network of friends, to create a more complete profile of you as a consumer," says Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers: Marketer's Guide to New Social Media.
"If you join a photography group, for instance, they can then target camera ads to you," he says. "This drives even more value out of its database."
Facebook has grown at such a furious clip - it's up to 37 million active members after it was made available to everyone last September - it's considered prime online real estate for targeted ads.
The company is on track for $125 million in U.S. ad revenue this year but could add millions in additional sales through its new ad plan, Williamson says.
"Facebook sees as much potential in sales via social networking as Google has through Web searches," Gillin says.
MySpace (NWS), the largest social-network, with 115 million users, is implementing a new targeted-ad system this year, company spokeswoman Ann Burkart says.
"The same ultimate goal applies to social networks," says Williamson at eMarketer. "It's about mining the information people post about themselves and using it for targeted advertising."
General Motors (GM) and Pepsi (PEP) are among companies that have been briefed.
"The opportunity to target: That's what we're here for," says John Vail, director of interactive-marketing at Pepsi, a Facebook advertiser since last fall.
But the lure of a financial haul from advertisers must be weighed against privacy concerns of Facebook members, who use it as a personalized scrap book to socialize with friends and colleagues.
Facebook must be sensitive to the "creepiness factor" of potentially intrusive ads, Gillin and others say. Google (GOOG), for instance, experienced customer backlash when targeted ads first appeared on Gmail, its free e-mail service.
Google's customers eventually got used to the ads as online users have in general become more at ease with privacy issues.
Facebook users grumbled about privacy when the news feed was introduced in September 2006, "but they quickly got over it," Williamson says.
Play it again, Nokia. For the 3rd time.
Published in August 27th, 2007
Apple had the Newton. Sony struck out with the Betamax. IBM blew it with the PCJr.
Every technology giant has one or two failed products it would rather the world forget. But Nokia, the world's largest cellphone manufacturer, wants everyone to remember its most famous misfire, the 2003 taco-shaped video game-cellphone hybrid, the N-Gage.
This week, Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, will revive N-Gage as a multiplayer gaming service that will work on its popular line of smartphones. The service will offer games from major publishers like Electronic Arts, as well as smaller developers like Digital Chocolate that focus on the mobile gaming market.
Owners of phones that run N-Gage software will be able to play games against friends, sample, buy and recommend new games from their phones, and compete in large tournaments.
Tomi Huttula, a Nokia product manager, said the old 2003 N-Gage and its successor, 2004's N-Gage QD, were good ideas that were ahead of their time. “Today's phones are so capable. The graphics problem has been removed. And phones today are always connected and you always carry them with you. Phones are now the perfect device for gaming.”
The original N-Gage and its successor were anything but perfect. The phones were primarily intended to compete with portable gaming consoles like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable. Convenience was apparently an afterthought. Owners had to remove the battery to insert gaming cartridges and had to hoist the bulky device to their heads and hold it sideways to make an actual call. Gadget hounds dubbed it the Frankenphone.
“It was a mediocre game console and not a very good mobile phone,” said Brian O'Rourke, an analyst at In-Stat, a research firm.
Nokia eventually sold more than two million N-Gages around the world and released 50 games for the service. But those sales were below expectations, and it stopped making N-Gage phones in 2005.
Since then, mobile gaming has become a hot market. A quarter of the mobile phone users in the United States and Western Europe play at least one game a month on their phones, according to M-Metrics, a market research firm. The worldwide market for cellphone games will be $4 billion this year and will more than double by 2010, according to the consulting firm Ovum.
Nokia, which has 37 percent of the world's cellphone market, plotted its return to mobile gaming quickly after canceling the N-Gage line. In its effort to revive the service, it sought help from the Silicon Valley design firm Ideo, whose hits include the original Apple computer mouse, the Palm V organizer and Steelcase's Leap office chair.
In 2005 and 2006, members of Nokia's N-Gage team spent time with Ideo designers in San Francisco. The groups took research trips to six cities around the world, including Barcelona, Tokyo and Shanghai, to study how people played games and what they wanted from games on their phones.
In Shanghai, they met one avid female gamer who said she had become discouraged when she logged onto a popular Chinese gaming service and was frequently crushed by superior players.
The Ideo and Nokia executives concluded that users mainly want to play against their friends and, at the very least, they want to know the skill level of their opponents. As a result, the new N-Gage permits users to see what games their friends have on their phones and whether they are online. They can also see how many points a person has earned in the game, as well as how much time they devote to solitary play versus group play.
The researchers also asked players what their greatest frustrations were. High on the list was buying a game that turned out to be disappointing.
In the new N-Gage service, customers will be able to sample games free before buying them. The selection will lean toward the casual side of gaming, with soccer and fishing titles and the popular puzzle game Bejeweled, among others. Nokia has not yet discussed prices.
Ideo also noted that many users had never discovered most of the features of the original N-Gage. So the designers helped Nokia put shortcuts on the main N-Gage screen to display information without forcing users to dig through menus. They also urged Nokia to streamline the service by giving up some features, like “positive distraction,” the diversions users see while they are downloading a game.
Nokia will formally reintroduce N-Gage this week with new game developers and new phones for mobile gaming. The company says it has sold more than 125 million of its Series 60 smartphones worldwide. The N-Gage games will make their debut this fall on only a few of those models, but the company will extend the service to the rest of the Series 60 line over the next year.
Lady Di’s popularity and profitability live on
Published in August 27th, 2007
NEW YORK: A decade ago, Diana, Princess of Wales, became a powerful princess of sales as her death created a cottage industry of marketers cashing in with books, magazines, television shows and merchandise like figurines and coins.
Ten years later, the coming milestone anniversary is bringing a reprise as dozens of companies seek to capitalize on a renewed interest among consumers in Diana's life and legacy. And so far at least, the commemorative products have proved popular among consumers and advertisers alike.
Among those taking part in the return of what the British call “Dianabilia” are blue-chip names that include Bertelsmann, Cablevision, Comcast, Discovery, Disney, General Electric, Hearst and Time Warner.
Back, too, are the purveyors of trinkets like the Danbury Mint, with “an exquisite porcelain collector plate”; the Mystic Coin Company, with a “Princess Diana colorized British penny”; and the Hamilton Collection unit of the Bradford Group, with a “limited-edition” figurine devoted to “Diana, princess of our hearts.”
It no longer raises eyebrows when celebrities are commercialized after their deaths.
But just how quickly Diana became a potent global marketing phenomenon after she died on Aug. 31, 1997, took experts in building and licensing brands by surprise. The strength of her appeal then is a major reason, they say, that the merchandising of her memory has resumed now.
“If you think of her as a product, she was able to accomplish a lot,” said Burt Alper, principal at Catchword Branding, a consulting company in Oakland, California.
“She was brilliant in reaching out and connecting to her audience in a way every brand would want to do,” he added. And Diana is “remembered as this young, captivating person, a beautiful princess who passed before her time,” Alper said. “She did not go through a waning of her popularity and she did not go through the aging process.”
Alper likened Diana to celebrities including Marilyn Monroe, who have become marketing stalwarts in death because their images are “frozen in time” at what is perceived in retrospect as high points in life.
That aspect of Diana's persona was cited as a reason for the lasting strength of her brand by Cyndi McClellan, senior vice president for research and programming strategies at the Comcast Entertainment Group, part of Comcast. The group's E! cable network in the United States presented Sunday night an hour-long special, “Diana's Last Day,” that will be repeated several times in the coming week.
“Marilyn Monroe became more iconic 20 years after her death than 10 years after,” McClellan said, “and similarly Diana's memory may grow to become even more iconic, especially to a younger generation that just knows the memories.”
The E! special is among many to be scheduled by cable and broadcast networks in the United States in a spate of Diana-mania that began on June 18 with an episode of “Dateline NBC” devoted to an interview with Diana's sons, William and Harry. The show drew high ratings for NBC, part of the NBC Universal unit of General Electric, and sponsors like Apple, Honda, Procter & Gamble, Target and Toyota.
“All the ingredients are present for a very long-lasting fascination with the woman and what happened to her,” said Tim Brooks, executive vice president for research at the Lifetime cable network, citing the results of a survey the company conducted last month. For instance, almost twice as many respondents said that Diana would be remembered for her charity work than for her death or her marriage to Prince Charles.
“She's considered on some very favorable terms, not like the Hollywood flameout of the moment,” Brooks said. “We're not talking Anna Nicole Smith here.”
Among deceased celebrities with high profiles, he added, “Diana is knocking on the door of the club” that includes Monroe, Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy, he added.
Indeed, Diana's presence on the cover of the August issue of Reader's Digest magazine adds her to a short list of famous faces that includes President Kennedy, said Jacqueline Leo, editor in chief.
“We test every cover as a concept before we go ahead with it, and we had very, very high scores on this across the board,” said Leo, whose magazine is owned by investors led by Ripplewood Holdings.
“And I'm happy to report the early indications for sales on the newsstand are really good,” she added.
The appearance of Diana on the August cover promotes an excerpt inside the issue from the book “The Diana Chronicles,” which has 300,000 copies in print after nine printings, according to the publisher, the Doubleday division of Bertelsmann.
Remember Squirtle and Jigglypuff? Suddenly, they’re back and in high demand
Published in August 27th, 2007
Playground fads come and go, as those who have found themselves with neglected collections of Beanie Babies can attest.
But the Pokémon franchise, which enjoyed a long run of popularity in the late 1990s, is a rare example of a craze that has come back, for reasons that have as much to do with corporate maneuvers as they do with the tastes of the average 7-year-old.
Pokémon, which stands for “pocket monsters,” consists of a set of whimsical characters with supernatural powers who appear on trading cards, in video games and in television cartoons. And while most parents thought they had seen the last of Pikachu, Squirtle and Jigglypuff years ago, these days children are trading the cards on the playground again, playing Pokémon on their Game Boys and tuning in to a new animated series.
“We're on fire,” said Holly Rawlinson, vice president of licensing and entertainment for Pokémon USA, a subsidiary of the Pokémon Company joint venture created by Nintendo and two other companies. Pokémon USA is responsible for managing the Pokémon name everywhere but in Asia.
Pokémon began in Japan in 1996 and reached the United States two years later. By 1999, it had become such a cornerstone of pop culture that the characters were featured on the covers of Time, The New Yorker and TV Guide; in 2001 the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade added a Pikachu balloon.
But the attention led to overexposure. “One of the things about brands that enjoy enormous popularity is that they tend to also crash,” Rawlinson said.
Although the games and cards have always sold consistently to their core audience of boys, starting in about 2003 sales of licensed merchandise came to a standstill. “There was very little, if any, product on the shelves,” Rawlinson said. “It was a very tired time for us.”
So at the beginning of 2006, Pokémon USA set out to revive the brand. The coordinated effort was timed to culminate with big product introductions that began this spring.
First, Pokémon USA took control over important components of the franchise that had been managed elsewhere, including the trading cards that had been distributed by a division of Nintendo, and the cartoons, which had been handled by 4Kids Entertainment.
In April, Nintendo of America released two games for the hand-held Nintendo DS game system, Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl. In June, the Cartoon Network began the 10th season of the franchise's cartoon series, this one called “Pokémon Diamond and Pearl.”
Also in June, Pokémon USA's trading card unit began shipping a new series of cards featuring the 104 characters created for the Diamond and Pearl introduction (like Piplup, Chimchar and Turtwig) as well as many of the old characters.
It was the first time that new games, a new television season, and a fresh batch of cards were introduced in this country at roughly the same time, Rawlinson said. “All the elements support each other,” she said. “The kids play the Diamond and Pearl games and watch the new shows, and they immediately want to get the new cards.”
Another element of the revival has been a change in toy vendors, from Hasbro to Jakks Pacific, which introduced a new product line. Jeremy Padawer, Jakks's vice president for brand marketing, said Hasbro had focused on a few main Pokémon characters, but his company is shipping toys that use more than 100 of the 500 characters.
The new merchandise was showcased this summer at the Toys “R” Us store in Times Square, which opened a temporary Pokémon boutique. Next month, Toys “R” Us plans to open Pokémon boutiques in its 585 other domestic stores, said Ronald Boire, the president of Toys “R” Us.
Sales of the trading cards this year have already exceeded sales for all of 2006, and by the end of the year are expected to triple last year's total, according to Pokémon USA. The June 4 debut episode of “Pokémon Diamond and Pearl” on the Cartoon Network was the top-rated show that day for boys ages 6 to 11.
Total merchandise sales this year are expected to exceed $50 million, compared with less than $4 million last year, Rawlinson said.
After the overexposure issues of recent years, the company has learned to be more selective about licensing its name. “We get requests for all kinds of products, but now we turn a lot down,” Rawlinson said. Would-be Pokémon products that ended up on the reject list include diapers and gerbil cages.
Nigeria aims to let mobile phone users keep numbers (Reuters)
Published in August 27th, 2007
ABUJA (Reuters) - The Nigerian telecoms regulator is working on plans to allow mobile phone subscribers to keep the same number when they change networks in a bid to force providers to improve services, its top executive said on Monday. ADVERTISEMENT
As things stand, Nigerians have to give up their numbers if they want to move to a new network, which discourages many subscribers from trying a different provider even when they face constant problems making or receiving calls.
"We are planning for the future to allow number portability. The aims are to improve quality and competition," Ernest Ndukwe, executive vice-chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, told Reuters by telephone.
"It is still some months away. We are going to conduct consultations with the industry and announce a starting date in the near future," he said.
Nigeria's booming mobile phone market has grown from scratch to over 30 million subscribers in six years, making it one of the fastest-growing in the world.
It is seen as having potential for many more years of rapid growth as Nigeria is Africa's most populous country with 140 million people, the majority of whom do not have phones.
However, the quality of service from mobile phone providers has always been patchy and it has deteriorated over time.
Subscribers often have to dial several times before a call goes through. Sometimes no calls go through for hours. When they do connect, the lines are often so bad that callers cannot hear each other. Calls frequently cut off after a few seconds and text messages can be delayed by hours.
Mobile operators argue that services are impaired by frequent blackouts, forcing companies to provide their own power with costly diesel generators, and constant vandalism and armed attacks on facilities and staff.
The regulator's move will put pressure on Nigeria's biggest operator, South Africa's MTN (MTNJ.J), to improve its service and defend its 45 percent market share.
The plan comes at a time when Kuwaiti-owned Celtel () has taken over the third-biggest mobile phone network in Nigeria and announced a $1.4 billion investment drive to challenge MTN's dominance.
MTN had 13.38 million subscribers in Nigeria at the end of March this year, representing just under a third of the company's total customer base and making Nigeria the main market for MTN.
Celtel paid $1 billion in 2006 to gain control of Nigeria's third-largest operator, Vmobile. The second-biggest mobile phone operator in Nigeria is Globacom, a firm owned by Nigerian business tycoon Mike Adenuga.
Sprint, Samsung bet on WiMax high-speed technology (Reuters)
Published in August 27th, 2007
SEOUL (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N), which recently said it would spend up to $5 billion on a mobile high-speed wireless standard by 2010, said it had awarded the New York WiMax market to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS). ADVERTISEMENT
Samsung had previously been awarded the Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Providence, R.I. and Boston markets as part of Sprint's push to use the mobile WiMax wireless standard.
"Those are very good markets that we've given to Samsung," Barry West, president of Sprint's high speed wireless unit, told Reuters on Monday after Samsung made the official announcement on the sidelines of the Samsung 4G Forum.
Samsung officials also sounded an upbeat note, with Choi Gee-sung, president of its telecommunications unit, saying the mobile WiMax business could turn profitable within the next 3 to 5 years.
Samsung in a news release separately predicted its handset sales would top 40 million units in the third quarter, after selling a record 37.4 million handsets in the second quarter.
Neither company disclosed financial information regarding the contract. Samsung was awarded lead vendor status, which includes the manufacture and installation of radio access equipment and the supply of chipsets and mobile devices.
Earlier this month, Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. carrier, made its biggest push yet to convince investors of its bet on mobile WiMax technology, saying it would spend heavily on the high-speed wireless network by 2010 and predicting up to $5 billion in revenue a year later.
It is working with top telecommunications players Nokia (NOK1V.HE), Motorola (MOT.N), Samsung and chip maker Intel Corp. (INTC.O) to develop chips, devices and network gear for such services.
It has also reached a deal to feature Google's (GOOG.O) Web search services via a portal for its WiMax devices.
Some analysts and investors remain skeptical of the companies' hopes for a largely unproven technology. Sprint has said it aimed to use mobile WiMax to blanket entire cities with wireless Web access for not just phones, but also laptops, video game players and cameras.
"There are just too many uncertainties regarding mobile WiMax to come up with accurate valuations," said James Kim, an analyst with Lehman Brothers.
"The network equipment business is an extremely difficult one, with specific geographic constraints in every market. There are just too many undecided factors."
Bigger rivals AT&T (T.N) and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L), have not said if they would use WiMax.
Mobile WiMax is expected to support Internet access at speeds as much as five times faster than typical wireless networks, though it will be slower than the fastest wired services.
Sprint's West sounded upbeat on WiMax's potential to draw in a growing number of Internet users.
"Once you get 50 million devices into the marketplace, mobile devices will gather momentum and manufacturers will embed mobile WiMax into a whole array of products," West said.
He was referring to Sprint's earlier announcement that manufacturers had committed to making 50 million WiMax devices for the U.S. market in the next three years.
Sprint has said it expects the network to generate positive operating income before depreciation and amortization in 2010.
The company expects to reach a potential 100 million customers through 2008, with Sprint providing coverage to 70 million people and smaller partner Clearwire Corp (CLWR.O) covering 30 million.
Israeli troops kill Palestinian on Gaza border
Published in August 27th, 2007
Israeli troops kill Palestinian on Gaza border
Reuters - 2 hours 13 minutes ago
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops on Monday shot and killed a Palestinian near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel, the army and Gaza medical staff said.
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A Palestinian ambulance took his body to a hospital in Gaza. He was not immediately identified.
An Israeli army spokesman in Tel Aviv said troops had opened fire at a man whom they suspected was trying to plant a bomb on the Gaza side of the border fence.
Earlier, a missile fired by an Israeli aircraft destroyed a rocket launcher in the northern Gaza Strip which had earlier been used in an attack on southern Israel, the army said.
