Juha Christensen's Mobile Experiences

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Celebrity-Driven Mobile Blogging

I have been facinated with mobile blogging and moblogs since first playing around with them at Microsoft (see cool website) in 2001 where a bright young MBA graduate we brought into the Windows Mobile team educated us all on this new wave. Well, guess what, five years later a somewhat random survey of mobile experts I know clearly shows that it hasn't taken off yet. When I asked people to mention their "favorite moblog" only one came through with one, the rest had over the last couple of years lost interest in the concept. Only one person I can think of does really effective personal moblogging; Christian Lindholm.

I went to a party at Tangerine in Las Vegas sponsored by Blogstar, a company that has the opportuniy to help put moblogging on the map an popularize it widely. Blogstar delivers regular blogs from a wide range of Hollywood talent (and the occational socialite), starts like Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey, Wesley Snipes, Nicole Hilton, Alicia Silverstone, Juliette Lewis, Tom Green, Ashlee Simpson andof course  the uber-blogger Bam Margera. Many of those, including Juliette Lewis, were at the party. Juliette Lewis entertained on-stage with her band, The Licks.

Events like this can help galvanize the industry to start innovating with new, more user friendly moblogging solutions and applications.

For moblogging to take off we need to make the mobile device and the web editing client work together in harmony. The mobile client needs to be an effective tool to capture images and text and place them into a blog that is available to both web and mobile readers in a pre-determined format. Some solutions exist today, but they are hard to use and the result of using them is often unpredictable.

Q: Windows Mobile CDMA Device from Motorola

Motorola announced what the press has dubbed its RIM-killer. The Q is a thin, sleek, candy bar shaped phone running Windows Mobile. it features a small QWERTY keyboard, a 320x240 display and weighs 115 grams.

The device is optimized for email use, but Motorola is hoping to position Q as a lifestyle device and take it beyond the traditional RIM audience. One of the vehicles Motorola is using to drive this home is their 'Project Q'. They have given a Q to a Graphic Designer, a Film Director, a Multimedia Producer and a Hip-Hop Artist. On June 8 those users will report back on their experiences with the device here.

As usual the best source for device reviews is InfoSync.

Trolltech has filed an application for listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Today Trolltech (I am a board member) filed for an application for listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

XBOX 360 Live

In Sonopia we've set up multiple communications links between Menlo Park, California and Kyiv, Ukraine, to ensure constant communication and interaction.

Besides an Adobe Breeze based video conferencing system we have recently set up XBOX 360 Live systems in both ends, enabling team members to battle each other across the Atlantic.

Today the Kyiv team had set up a "Beat the CEO" event in the evening, where team members could play against me playing Project Gotham Racing 3. I am happy to say I was only beat once :-)

The Three Screens and Time Shifting

At ComVentures' Connections Summit in Half Moon Bay one of the panel discussions yesterday were centered around digital content, and whether or not content should be produced especially for each form factor and usage paradigm. Much to my surprise the panelists agreed that the concept of time shifting would mean that people want identical content on their TV, PC and mobile phone.

The reason I am surprised is that I believe consumers' interaction with each screen is very different. TV is mainly a lean back, uncommitted and low-interaction affair, while the PC is typically a lean-forward, committed experience driven by curiosity, full attention and (sometimes) clear purpose. Mobile use is very different.

While you will find aspects of TV and PC usage in mobile usage patterns (occationally lean-back, occationally surfing) mostly a consumer's mobile phone content interaction is filled into small slivers of time during the day; five minutes here, three minutes there. These tiny time slivers need to filled in with captivating, interesting and fit-for-purpose content.

Simply shoveling content between the three media is in my mind simplistic. While content assets can transcend the three screens in terms of themes, each media needs the content produced, formatted and optimized for each viewing/interaction paradigm.

After all, I believe Marshall McLuhan was right when he wrote: The Media is the Message.

It's Official: Teleca Sells Benima

As reported we decided in the Teleca Board to sell Benima, as part of a process to focus the business in on the handset business (a little over half of Teleca AB's 4,000 employees). We just accepted an offer for SEK 525 million ($72 million) which gives us a capital gain of SEK 285 million ($39 million).

Teleca Acquires Second Largest Russian Software Company

Telma, based in Nizhniy Novgorod, south-east of Moscow, was acquired by Teleca. We did this to drive an increase in headcount focused on the mobile terminal business and to provide us with a substantial low-cost production capability. We also believe the acquisition will make a significant contribution to profitability.

Telma's main customers are Motorola, Freescale, Esmertec, McAfee, Microcell and Metrowerks. Telma was actually involved in the joint Psion-Motorola project to develop a Smartphone a few years ago.

Segmentation of Furniture Customers

I fell over an interesting example of Internet-Aided Segmentation today. While the concept falls a bit short of being Micro Segmentation, IKEA has built a feature called "What's your style" to help customers find products that fit their preferences.

I hope IKEA is storing this information so they can make customers' future visits to ikea.com more fulfilling. As a consumer there are clearly styles you like and don't like, and with an online catalog with as many options and permutations as IKEA, psychographic profiling is a good way of serving the customer better, of getting closer to giving the shoppers what they want.

IKEA is a reasonably good example of a savvy Internet Marketeer with a clear Bricks & Mortar focus. They are good at appealing to the critical mass of consumers. They seem to understand their segmentation map well, across age groups, wallet sizes, style preferences and even across different cultures.

Kyiv Room - in Menlo Park

One of the five meeting rooms at Sonopia's building in Menlo Park is a dedicated video conferencing room, decked out with a Plasma Screen, high quality camera, microphones and a dedicated computer for running Adobe Breeze, which is used heavily at Sonopia.

Breeze is fantastic for multi-party meetings. Sonopians use it from their notebooks when they are remote and from meeting rooms when people are together. A couple of company-wide all hands meetings have even been conducted using Breeze.