Technology Shmechnology

Well here is our first newsletter, aiming to provide some insight and analysis on mobile here and overseas. What is working, what isn't; what you can do, and what you can't. Please feel free to forward it to anyone who has an interest in mobile.

Realising that we are not all geeks, Making Your Mobile Mark looks at mobile as it relates to agencies and brands while Tech Twist and Dean on Design de-mystify where the technology is going and what that actually means for everyone.

This month is about the progression to 3G's increased download speeds and improved content quality bringing new and exciting opportunities to mobile, while not forgetting that unique concepts and good content are still exciting (and technically possible) on 2.5G. Also worth remembering is that there are over ten times as many people on 2.5G than 3G technology at the moment, and this imbalance is likely to continue for at least the next 6 to 18 months, so this needs to be taken into account when planning anything mass market on mobile.

Luke Janssen - luke@tigerspike.com

Branded mobile content = legitimate advertising

The mobile is almost indispensable to Joe Public nowadays. The personalisation of this appendage is therefore as critical as whether the bag matches the shoes, or indeed the collars and the cuff. 2.5 & 3G services allow consumers to do just that, through ringtones, videos, games & pictures. As such, the opportunities are growing for brands to steal further priceless seconds in front of the mobile goggling masses by propelling desirable content on the back of assorted promotional vehicles.

All content can be tailor made, has a high perceived market value, and can put logos and specific messages in front of the consumer for longer periods of time than even TV or Radio. Relative to both of these, it’s cheap enough to trial without breaking into a sweat!

Alex Hall - alex@tigerspike.com

How big is your packet??

Third Generation mobile networks, or 3G services, are now being offered by all the major carriers in Australia, but what does this actually mean from a technology perspective? Basically 3G networks allow data to be transferred to a mobile device at a much faster rate. This means that video clips, image rich mobile data pages and full length audio interviews are now accessible to mobile users allowing brands to extend their marketing to the mobile device in conjunction with the content being delivered.

Generally the maximum video clip length for 2.5G services was around 20 – 30 secs (<150k in size), reducing the opportunities for advertising, (unless the clip is the TVC itself). With 3G, video-streaming and clips of 3 or 4 mins are feasible and these can include preceding adverts tied to the content being delivered.

Oliver Palmer - oliver@tigerspike.com

Sniff this...

Creating a user interface for a mobile WAP site poses some design hurdles.  New 3G handsets typically have large screens, can browse XHTML wap sites, and can receive rich content such as truetones and video.  Although we want to cater for this exciting market, we cannot neglect older handsets that have smaller screens, limited WML browsers and can only receive wallpapers and polyphonic ringtones.  So how do we design a wap site that caters for all types of handsets? The solution is to build:

1. a wap sniffer
2. a handset/capability matrix
3. a markup rendering engine 

The server-side wap sniffer determines what the consumers handset is when they commence their wap browsing experience. We then lookup the properties of this handset in our handset/capability matrix. With this information, the markup rendering engine is invoked to serve WML or XHTML code with relevant content.

This flexible framework is designed to cater for 2.5G, 3G and beyond.

Dean Jezard - dean@tigerspike.com