Customer journeys, such as finding new music or communicating with friends, no longer take place within the confines of a single device or service. Users may combine several devices or applications to achieve their objectives, creating a new set of challenges when designing user experiences which excel in this multi-platform environment. This essay brings together 5 of the leading thinkers in digital industry to explore the concept of multi-platform mobile user experience ahead of a major new MEX conference (2nd/3rd December 2009, London) on this same theme.

By Marek Pawlowski (PMN), Thibaut Rouffineau (Wireless Industry Partnership), Lisa Whelan (SocializeMobilize.com), Andreas Constantinou (VisionMobile) and Matt Lewis (ARCChart). (more…)

This week, I started a business development consulting project with a San Francisco start-up called Offbeat Guides. This is a long post, but there’s some great information at the end about Offbeat Guide’s plans for the future and partnership opportunities for transaction-based travel websites, mobile apps, and more…So, it’s well worth reading the whole thing.

What are Offbeat Guides?

Offbeat Guides are the first travel guides that users custom-create online, using the latest travel information available on the Internet. The guides are available for over 30,000 travel destinations worldwide and include the same traditional travel guide information and more. For the first time, users can personalize their own guide based on their travel dates, destination, itinerary, and personal travel interests.

What I’m doing at Offbeat Guides – Looking for Partners for the new Reseller Program:

I was brought on as a consultant to help Offbeat Guides find partners for their forthcoming Reseller Program, which will allow online travel sites and ticket brokers to leverage their new API 2.0 (Application Programming Interface). Offbeat Guides Resellers will be able to sell customized travel guides with their logo and relevant product information directly from within the existing purchase flow on your website, simply by adding a check box special offer to their site (not unlike they would for travel insurance or other special offers). (more…)

Today, I was doing a little research on the new Samsung JACK (sequel to Samsung’s Blackjack series) when I noticed that Samsung is using the Sun Micrososytems logo as the favicon on its JACK web pages (circled in red, below)… Oops:

Your Tango gets the award for “most viral video of the day”… 200,000 hits on YouTube and counting:

Ahhh… It’s a new day, and there’s yet another 3rd party developer jumping on the Twitter train…

TwitPub is a 3rd party developer that is leveraging Twitter’s infrastructure to monetize tweets through subscriptions. TwitPub is run by AdExcel Online Networks Sdn. Bhd., which is based out of Malaysia. TwitPub operates a bit like a premium SMS subscription (though not on your mobile) – users pay to subscribe to the private tweets of content owners/ publishers.  The idea is that content publishers sell access to their private tweets, which can contain information about any number of topics (daily horoscope, finance alerts, music news, etc… anything – you get the idea).  (more…)

With so many people now talking about Twitter, it’s about time someone came up with a great parody.  Enter Flutter – a 26 character “nano blogging service”.  This viral video is too good to pass up – especially on a slow news morning on the first Monday after CTIA. (more…)

In January, at CES, Palm said it would launch its new phone, the Palm Pre, on Sprint in the first half of 2009.  The press was a twitter with praise for what looked to be an amazing device, though no one from the public or press (that I’m aware of) was allowed to touch the device.  Palm rightfully explained that the device wasn’t quite ready for primetime, and the press seemed content in assuming that good things are worth the wait.   Today, at CTIA, several months after Palm’s presentation at CES, the natives are growing increasingly restless.  While Palm is allowing demo staff to show the device in action, they’re not letting the press play with it. (more…)

I spotted the following interesting mobile accessories/gadgets on the CTIA show floor today as I wandered between meetings… (more…)