Fish in a QR Code

dwango in Japan has released a fishing game that allows players to catch fish using a camera phone and QR codes. There are over 100 kinds of fish as well as unknown creatures and driftwood, which are encoded in different QR codes. While fighting a fish, players must push phone keypads according to an on-screen instruction. Phones vibrate during fish fighting.

Reblogged from RFID in Japan.

"Happy slappers" attack women with baseball bats

A mother and her daughter were taken to hospital with head injuries after being attacked by a gang with baseball bats, reports BBC News.

The 48-year-old mother and her two daughters, aged 23 and 17, were walking home by the canal in Reading in England on Tuesday night when they were set upon.

Four teenage boys, two of them carrying baseball bats, came up to them and started beating the mother and the eldest daughter while one of them filmed the attack on his mobile phone.

The 17-year-old daughter called for help and the victims were taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital where they were treated for head and facial injuries.

Links to reported Happy Slapping incidents.

New era heralded for mobile TV

The next 12 months looks set to be the year mobile TV takes off, reports BBC news. Technology consultancy Strategy Analytics predicts that mobile firms will have about 50 million users of mobile TV by 2009, generating an estimated £3.5bn in revenue.

TV, unlike mobile web browsing, is an easy concept to sell to consumers, says Mark Selby at Nokia.

Content that feeds off existing shows or offer extra behind-the-scene video is likely to be widely available initially but eventually there will be bespoke made-for-mobile shows. "I can imagine an interactive quiz show just for mobile phones," said Peter Cowley, at Endemol. Sport is also going to be a huge area for mobile technology.

Operator 3 has begun experimenting with user-generated content, offering subscribers of its 3G TV service the chance to upload their own shows, with each download of a show earning the maker one pence.

TV "snacking" seems to be most popular at the moment. 36% are watching Orange 3G mobile TV service during lunch and other breaks; 18% while travelling to and from work, 12% while queuing or waiting for friends and 10% watched it at home.

Following a trial in Helsinki, 41% said they would be willing to purchase mobile TV services. Half thought that a monthly payment of around £7 was a reasonable pricing model.

Questions about money are not limited to consumers and rows over media rights have dominated discussions about how to roll out mobile TV services. Broadcasters such as Channel 4 have argued that they should have the right to show programmes for free, regardless of whether it is available via traditional TV sets, the internet or mobile. The BBC plans to make TV programmes available for free on the internet for up to seven days after they are broadcast

The other issue dominating the future of mobile TV is which technology will dominate. DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) technology looks like being the favourite, set to overshadow current TV services rolling out on 3G networks.

Picturephoning on xmas break

Ringtonia is making a pause until December 30. Emily is having a well-deserved holiday in Gstaad and i'll be in Berlin until Friday. I'll be online though, so if you have any irresistible story for textually, ringtonia or picturephoning, don't hesitate to write me: reg at we-make-money-not-art dot com. Merry Christmas everyone!

Camera phone helps label snaps

A new project will allow the growing number of Bluetooth-enabled camera phone users to organise their digital photo albums by automatically identifying and labelling the people and places within each snap, as they are taken, writes New Scientist.

The concept, being developed by Marc Davis of Yahoo's Berkeley research lab, is based on a central server that registers details sent by the phone when the photo is taken. These include the nearest cellphone mast, the strength of the call signal and the time the photo was taken.

The system also identifies the other Bluetooth-enabled cellphones within range of the photographer and combines this with the time and place information to create a shortlist of people who might be in the picture. This can then be combined with facial-recognition algorithms to identify the subjects from the shortlist.

In tests Davis and his team found that by combining facial recognition software with context information the system could correctly identify people 60 per cent of the time. The context information can also be combined with image-recognition software to identify places within photos.

Times Square New Year's Eve Feeds Availabe to Cell Phones

New York City will offer a free, live satellite feed of New Year's Eve in Times Square to video providers, plus a package of B-roll footage available Dec. 29, with behind-the-scenes and making-of footage, writes Broadcasting Cable.

Eight cameras will capture all the live action, including revelers, fireworks and the famous ball drop. For the first time, feeds will be available to mobile phone companies and IPTV carriers.

Thanks Craig.

Korean mobile carrier aims to be 'center of life'

SK Telecom Co. embraces the mottos "center of life" and "heart of pleasure", offering services ranging from mobile banking and mobile shopping to sophisticated music services, mobile bookstore, mobile coupon and telematics, writes Korea Herald.

The article lists the impressive arrays of services offered by the Korean carrier: from customized apartment and real-estate information via location-based services to a mobile shopping service that gives users access to shopping information by downloading a "virtual machine," a kind of virtual shopping assistant program. But also the mobile bookstore service: to find books by ISBN, a recognition code attached to a bookcover; real-time traffic information in major cities and on highways; digital home service which will feature innovative services such as pet care and digital picture frame, etc.

Watch a movie on your phone 10 days after its release. The plot thickens!

Emily annouced a few days ago that Italian cell phone company 3G had won the right to distribute feature films on cellphones just 10 days after they premiere in theaters. They are planning to offer their customers the ability to download Memoirs of a Geisha directly to their phones as early as December 27. But La Repubblica explains that film theatre associations won't have it that way. They threaten to remove the movies from their screens, just like they did with The Interpreter. But the President of the ANEM (the National Association of Multiplex Film Theatres), Carlo Bernaschi explains: "We have just received a message by the Eagle. They guarantee that all their movies will be available to 3 only four months after the theatrical release."

Right after that, distributor Eagle Pictures declared that it doesn't have the right for the "wireless" distribution of Memoirs of a Geisha nor of The new world, by Terrence Malick, another film that the distribution company had already "sold" to 3 for a cell phone release.

Samsung produces a series of PR movie, “Anyfilm”

Samsung Electronics is to unveil the first handset PR movie in the world, Anyfilm, on the Christmas Eve, announces Telecoms Korea.

Anyfilm consists of three 8-minute movies and one interactive film whose story can be changed according to each viewer’s choices.

In the film, Samsung handsets like D600 and i300 are at the center of the plot, making the audience naturally get interested in the phones. Jon Kilik, producer of “Broken Flowers”, which won the Grand Prize at Cannes Film Festival, produced them and Hollywood’s up-and-coming filmmakers, Alex Merkin and Mark A.Z Dippe directed the short films.

UPDATE: Josh Spear has a few more details about the project.

Camera phone helps label snaps

Marc Davis at Yahoo's Berkeley research lab is working on a a camera phone concept that uses cell tower proximity to figure out where a picture is being taken, and takes names based on nearby Bluetooth mobile devices, then annotates the picture with that information.

[via The Raw Feed ]

Cameraphone Picture makes Times Best Photos of the Year 2005

Time Magazine have chosen Adam Stacey's cameraphone picture as one of the Best Photos of the Year 2005 - of his experience on the london underground during the attack in London on the 7th of July 2005.

Alfie Dennen published the image for Adam on his blog for the first time, and through Creative Commons licensing, the image went around the world in minutes, becoming an iconic image relating to the event.

[via Alfie's Blog]

Shinjuku Plans to Tag 10,000 Street Lamps

In Shinjuku, Tokyo, some street lamps were RFID tagged for the purpose of deliverying information to citizens - information about nearby stores, public facilities, etc. Attached to each street lamp was a so-called "information panel" that has an RFID tag embedded in it. The local goverment plans to tag more street lamps next year aiming at tagging all 10,000 street lamps in the region.

Citizens may use a PDA-like device called Ubiquitous Communicator (UC). A UC device reads RFID tags on street lamps and first fetches the information about the user's current location. Then, using GUI, one can find out about nearby stores, entrances to train stations, public restrooms, event information, etc.

In addition, QR codes are printed on "information panels" so that people who don't have UC devices can also access the information by using their camera phones.

reBlogged from wonderful RFID in Japan

Watch a movie on your phone 10 days after its release

This is wild. According to Cinematical, an Italian cell phone company has won the right to distribute feature films on cellphones just 10 days after they premiere in theaters.

"Distributor Eagle Pictures previously tried to back out of their deal to provide content for Hutchinson H3G (who provide Italian cell phone services from a base in Hong Kong) once they learned of the cellular company's plan to distribute The Interpreter to Italian cell phones uncomfortably close to the picture's theatrical release. In retaliation, H3G went to court to win the right to break the window – and won.

Their next move will be to offer their customers the ability to download Memoirs of a Geisha directly to their phones as early as December 27.

See also Variety's full reporting on this story in a free access article.

... "The distribution dispute is turning Italy into a laboratory for thrashing out global guidelines for rights deals for cell phones and other wireless devices, a hot topic at last month's American Film Market, where IFTA said it was drafting a model licensing agreement.

3 Launches PC-to-Mobile MMS service

PC users in Scandinavia with 3 can send MMS, using text, voice, images and video to mobile phone users.

In cooperation with General Wireless, the mobile operator 3 has launched the 3PC Message service, enabling mobile multimedia messaging through the Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express e-mail clients.

[via 160characters.org]

Sports Fans Use RFID to Pay and Play

A group of season ticket holders at Atlanta's Philips Arena can use RFID-enabled cell phones to download video clips and pictures of players—and, eventually, to make purchases. [via RFID Journal]

"A select group of sports fans at Atlanta's Philips Arena can now use cell phones to do more than call friends to give them play-by-plays. They can also use them to download video clips and pictures of their favorite players—and, starting next month, even buy hot dogs and peanuts. Approximately 250 season ticket holders of the Atlanta Thrashers hockey team and the Atlanta Hawks basketball team have joined a trial of near field communication (NFC) technology."

Sunrise to launch mobile TV in Switzerland

Swedish telecoms supplier Ericsson and Swiss operator Sunrise have announced a managed services contract to launch mobile TV services with video on demand in Switzerland. [via DMEurope]

"By partnering with Ericsson, Sunrise will be able to offer TV services featuring sports, entertainment and news video clips on demand, as well as 24 live local and international channels. "

Con Visual, Forecast to distribute Hollywood movie clips in Japan

German company Con Visual and Forecast Communications, a Japanese mobile content provider, have concluded an agreement to distribute video clips of Hollywood movie content, licensed by Con Visual, to the Japanese mobile phone market. [via Digital Media Asia]

"Users will now be able to download key scenes from the most successful movies of the last few decades to their mobile phones. The list of movies includes titles such as 'The Mummy Returns', 'American Pie', 'Apollo 13','Jurassic Park','Blues Brothers' and 'E. T.', among others.

According to the latest figures, Japan has over 38 million UMTS user, and the agreement targets these users."

Nano TV on Swisscom Mobile

NanoTV, produced by AnyScreen.com, launches today with a trial phase of its news and information service conceived and developed for mobile phones. This trial will be available in Switzerland on Swisscom’s Mobile Replay TV platform and run until March 31, 2006.

The NanoTV news bulletins provide concise local, national and international news updates on politics, business, society and sport. They also feature lifestyle and entertainment modules with a strong regional focus. During the trial phase, NanoTV will produce 4-minute bulletins in French twice a day, morning and afternoon, from Monday through Friday.

Young, urban fast-paced and colourful, the NanoTV news bulletins have been created for a new type of nomadic, on-the-go consumption. [e-mail press release].

On a personal note, I've seen a demo, content is compelling, snappy and fast. AnyScreen has hit the perfect note for broadcasting on mobile phones.

In October 2005, NanoTV received a special mention from the jury of the Mipcom Mobile Awards in Cannes, France.

SpottingSanta.com

Ever wonder what Santa does before and after Xmas? You can find out on Nokia's new video blog, Santa.Spotting.com, which publishes Santa-off-duty-clips sent in from around the world.

[via About Nokia]

Happy Slapping youths convicted of manslaughter

A gang of youths who kicked a bar manager to death during one of their regular rampages of happy slapping violence were convicted of manslaughter yesterday, reports The Times.

Mr Morley, a survivor of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, was one of eight people savagely assaulted by the group in an hour-long rampage of indiscriminate “happy slapping” attacks last October.

"... The teenage girl had approached Mr Morley, 37, who was sitting with a friend Alastair Whiteside on London’s South Bank, pointed her mobile phone camera at him and said: “We’re doing a documentary on happy slapping. Pose for the camera.” After her friends had beaten him to the ground, she then kicked Mr Morley in the head two or three times, according to Mr Whiteside. A post-mortem examination likened his injuries to those suffered by a car crash victim or someone who had fallen from a great height."

Links to reported Happy Slapping incidents.

MTV to invest in Amp'd Mobile, deliver video clips

MTV Networks has agreed to become an investor in privately held Amp'd Mobile and will provide video clips and other content for a wireless service that Amp'd plans to kick off this week, the companies said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.

"MTV, which is also putting an executive on Amp'd's board, is investing $50 million in the mobile venture, people familiar with the matter said. The companies did not announce the terms of the investment in their statement.

Amp'd is renting space on the Verizon Wireless network to sell a mobile phone service aimed at young adults.

Nude teacher mobile snap wows Cyprus

Cypriot police are probing the case of a female Limassol schoolteacher who rather inadvisedly left her mobile phone - complete with snap of her in a "state of undress" - unattended by her desk. [via The Register]

"Within a few hours every kid at the school was leering over miss's assets on their handsets, much to the chagrin of parents and staff. The cops too, are treating the outrage very seriously indeed. The head of the parents' association declared to Reuters: "The police have been summoned, there is a patrol car at the school and the crime department are here to take fingerprints off the mobile phone."

HBO Will Offer Some TV Shows To Cingular Users

Time Warner Inc.'s HBO unit is set to jump on the wireless-content bandwagon today by announcing a deal with Cingular Wireless to offer some of its TV shows on Cingular phones, reports the WSJ.

HBO will provide two channels of content for the service -- HBO Mobile and HBO Family Mobile, people familiar with the matter say. HBO also will develop some exclusive content for Cingular, including clips from shows such as "The Sopranos" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

In addition, clips from HBO cartoon and sports programs, along with ring tones and wallpaper from HBO programs will be available for download. The service will run on Cingular's new broadband network."

Related: - HBO in Exclusive Mobile Content Deal Talks With Cingular.

Researchers Develop Tech To Create 3-D Moving Image From Photo

A team of researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, led by Professor Katsuhiro Kitajima, has developed technology to create a three-dimensional moving image from one photo, sources close to the team said, according to Nikkei.net

"The technology has shortened the calculation time needed to make moving images by removing trivial items such as the window frames of a building.

Nokia 3220 NFC RFID Phone

Nokia is rolling out a new phone with RFID technology. The prototype phone used for this project is a Nokia 3220 phone. With the RFID technology this phone is capable of reading any RFID tags and writing to an RFID information tag. [via About Nokia]

"This is the second "RFID Nokia phone" announced this year. A Nokia 5140 with a RFID reader was introduced in September at the CTIA Wireless Show in San Francsico. Now Nokia announces a NFC (Near Field Communications) add-on for the Nokia 3220."

Related:

-- Annotating things with the Nokia 3220

-- RFID cell phones take shape at Nokia

The phone that recognizes objects

Sega and NTT developed a system that allows Foma phones to recognize an object and give you information about it. the objects are of course Sega products and more specifically small statues.

So how does it work? Well, it's a bit like QR Code: you snap a pic of the statue, and the telephone will recognize it and download the latest info from the Sega website. this system will probably be implemented by NTT on their Japanese phones around April 2006.

[via akihabaranews]

Rocketboom vs mobuzzTV

The New York Times has a story on video blog Rocketboom - as good as it is - and it is good, its' no match to mobuzzTV, produced in Spain in both English and Spanish versions. Give me Karina (left) over Amanda Congdon (right) anyday!

Cast your vote for the "Best Video blog" of the 2005 Weblogs Awards! Polls open through December 15th.

Cellphone technology rings in pornography in USA

According to USA Today, cellphone pornography is a step closer to taking off in the USA, with the launch of Cingular's quiet launch of filtering devices and password-enabled blockers. The Field is now wide open for the the nation's largest cellphone service provider to launch a huge new porn platform.

"Scores of marketers are lining up to tap the U.S. market. XXobile, a content provider for Web-capable wireless devices, will offer 50,000 video clips, says operations chief Harvey Kaplan. Porn star Ron Jeremy licensed his name toRon Jeremy, which offers adult content in Britain and Holland. He's not sure of the U.S. appetite for mobile porn, though. "Who wants to watch this stuff on a tiny screen?" he says.

Steve Hirsch, co-CEO of adult film giant Vivid Entertainment, expects mobile porn to eventually account for 30% of sales. "This is going to explode. People will want porn in their pocket," he says.

TIME Magazine Person of the Year: Send in your pic

Each December TIME Magazine features a Person of the Year on it's cover. This year, TIME is giving you the choice to show the word your choice of Person of the Year. On this site, you can submit a photo of the person you believe deserves the title the most. Hint, submitting your own picture (with a cameraphone) is perfectly acceptable, it's even encouraged!

[via adfreak]

Jeep launches own mobile phone TV channel

In an effort to harness mobile phone TV as a major branded entertainment medium, Jeep is launching its own mobile phone channel with MobiTV, reports AdAge.

"The content is available to about 500,000 subscribers using Cingular, Sprint, Alltel and other mobile networks.

The automotive marketer is running ads once an hour per channel on 18 of the 24 available MobiTV cellphone channels, but will also have its own Jeep-branded channel. The channel, starting today, will continuously loop the existing four episodes of “The Mudds ,” short films now running online that show an adventurous, outdoor-loving—and mud-splattered—family that drives a Jeep Commander.

Dave Whetstone, chief marketing officer, MobiTV, said Unilever’s Axe deodorant is in negotiations for a similar advertising arrangement. A spokeswoman for Unilever declined to comment, other than to say “Axe is always looking for new ways to interact with our consumers.”