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Mobile Messaging
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Wednesday, February 09, 2005
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Saturday, July 31, 2004
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@ Location privacy...
When teaching or discussing the principles and uses of location-based services, I am often asked about privacy and legal implications. I usually give anecdotal answers based on what I perceive to be operator approaches, which I assume to be best practise and legally valid. However, I did manage to track down the actual legal position in terms of rights to privacy enshrined within European Law.
Article 9 of the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive requires that location data may only be used with the consent of the subscriber. Moreover, it should remain possible for subscribers and users even if they have subscribed to a location based service, to temporarily block the tracing facility.
12:33:09 PM 
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Friday, July 23, 2004
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@ Mobile Location Spam...
There is a lot of excitement about the potential of location-based services. All kinds of applications are being dreamt up, but what they have in common is interrupting the user with a message when they enter into a zone of interest. The problem is how to set up rules sufficiently intelligent that the messages received are actually wanted, or useful. Clearly, careful opt-in schemes are one solution, but rather crude. This option denies the genuine possibility of receiving useful information without expressly signing up for it.
Opt-in is really a defence mechanism, not an information filter. In a "whole product" seamless information experience, one might argue that "the system" ought to know what I'm interested in and send me useful stuff without me asking for it. In other words, opt-in is clumsy.
Intelligent push of location-sensitive information requires an agent that understands our interests and habits. This requires a wider scope than just retailing. Someone interested in archaeology might be willing to receive information about important sites as they drive past. If this sounds mundane (“I don’t want that...”), the trick is to ponder on which convergence of information and spatial contexts would interest you. Experience of giving many courses in this area has taught me that everyone eventually comes up with not just one, but many such contexts that suit them.
Nonetheless, spam is still a real problem. In the email world, it is potentially a killer for wireless email without effective defences. Any wireless email solution has to include spam-defence as a must-have, in addition to a variety of other context sensitive filters, adjusting content by the moment, movement, and for “me” (as discussed in my book).
In Europe, the law is clear that mobile push advertisement services must be explicit opt-in. In the US, similar legal trends are emerging, following on the heels of the CAN-SPAM edict against email spamming. Brian McWilliams describes a lawsuit filed last month by Verizon against 50 unidentified “John Does” who are spamming mobiles.
Clearly, a strong legal deterrent is useful, but we need to tread carefully. How do we cater for intelligent location-based advertising? For example, would it be legally justifiable to say, “I knew that Joe Soap was interested in buying a new Mazda (from his web surfing 3rd party cookies - see previous post), which is why I sent the message”? Is it a variation on the “open gate” invitation to the front door in UK case law?
10:38:50 AM
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Sunday, July 11, 2004
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:: Is this the future ? ::
http://www.tapwave.com/zodiac.html
It's a mobile games device. It's got Bluetooth, which makes it interesting. It's also built on a Palm OS platform, which means any Palm app will run on it too. It would make an interesting platform for Visual Radio, although it lacks built-in cellular. Alternatively, what about a portable video player - http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/pmp-120.aspx.
I think these devices are not quite getting it right. Any portable device must be worth carrying. What compels someone to carry something around with them? In my opinion, it’s interruption that matters. The device must interrupt the user to grab his/her attention, preferably by receiving messages. What they say, and who sends them, is another matter – but messaging is a paradigm essential to portable devices.
1:05:59 AM
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Wednesday, May 19, 2004
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:: Yet more keyboard layouts ::
I thought i'd found every alternative keypad layout going, like the FITALY mentioned on this site last year. Scanning IBM's research, I found that they too have a project ("Atomik") to come up with non-QWERTY keypads optimised for stylus input.
11:25:08 PM
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Monday, January 12, 2004
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:: Text messaging for safety ::
I recently suffered the inconvenience of breaking down: the throttle cable on my people carrier had snapped. Calling Direct Line breakdown cover, arranged through Green Flag, was a very efficient process, aided by the effective use of text messaging. Within a few minutes of completing my call to the breakdown emergency number, I received a text message announcing which garage was going to recover my car and the estimated time of arrival, which turned out to be accurate.
I was quite delighted to experience a practical and extremely useful application of text messaging. Well done Green Flag!
1:29:40 AM
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Monday, August 18, 2003
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:: Q12 - Another exciting keypad design ::
 It seems my previous comment to open up a channel just to discuss keypads was justified. No sooner had I said it than these guys at Softava emailed me about this exciting new design called Q12 (right). It uses the same principle I have already reported here that Unitap and Fastap use, namely deliberately positioning keys (“hills”) close enough together that pressing what appears to be the gaps (“valleys”) between them causes several keys to be pressed at once. This combination is used to generate the desired character, so in effect each valley is like a virtual key. Fastap and Unitap both use enough keys to represent directly the letters and virtually the digits. However, the Q12 takes this to another level and uses cleverly shaped keys to represent the digits directly and the letters virtually via all the various valleys sculptured in the keys (see the schematics on their website). It sure seems clever and I would love to try it out for real.
10:46:59 PM
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© Copyright
2005
Paul Golding.
Last update:
3/26/2005; 8:58:27 PM.
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