Abhishek Tiwari

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Over the past month I have closely covered the story around Google’s efforts with the FCC. Google had ponied up a sum of $4.6 Billion for the auction if its conditions were met. Again the conditions were (from Google’s press release):

Open applications

Open devices

Open services

Open networks

This had surely irked most of the big boys. FCC eventually agreed to including 2 out of 4 requests and factored in “Open Applications and Open Devices”. Google was definitely not disappointed with this reaction and they welcomed the change and positive thinking at the FCC. However it was unknown that if Google will still continue to participate in the auction scheduled for early 2008.

Yesterday Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at a conference said that Google will “probably” participate in the auction next year for the wireless spectrum, which becomes available in 2009. This is great as Google is doing a much better job in representing user’s interests and championing free speech.

Here is the video of Eric Schmidt’s presentation:

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As you know, mobile advertisement is somewhat of a hot topic on this blog. I have covered the the topic on several articles. Read them here:

• Free Ad based Mobile Service — Now that’s more like it
• First Free Mobile Service, Now Free Phones?
• Do You Really Want Ads on Your Phones?

To continue on this theme I have decided to launch a new Blog Carnival (what’s this?). The intent behind this carnival is to feature the best posts around this topic. The idea is to feature thoughts on both positive and negative side of this topic. The first edition will be published on September 1st 2007.

Do you have a post, which you think represents your opinion on the subject? Go ahead and submit it to be featured on this carnival. You can also send in your post via email to mobadscarnival@gmail.com . Here is a link to the carnival page. Don’t forget the deadline is August 29th 2007.

Looking forward to receiving some great posts.

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These days advertisements are all around us. Highways, magazines, TV, Internet and now mobile phones. Now, I don’t really mind advertisements in general. I have covered their value in past posts and do utilize them extensively on this blog. They do help subsidize overall cost of goods in general.

However the focus here is on cell phones. Mobile phones are considered as the holy grail of advertising. They are personal, they are highly customized and highly specific interfaces for users. Potentially they could allow advertisers to target their ads with relatively high specificity. Some of the areas advertisers could target for ad placements are:

Would you want ads on your cell phone? Yeah, bring it on Only if I get something in return (subsidized service etc.) Maybe I will give it a try Absolutely not View Results  Subscribe Feed  Loading …

• Direct ad placements in the phone navigation.
• Placements in search results
• Within games or other applications
• Messaging via SMS or MMS or IM

The excitement around this space is very high in the advertisement community. There are multiple start-ups trying to get a piece of the pie. Even Google has got in the action. Wireless Week’s Brad Smith reports that advertisers will spend close to $ 1.5 Billion this year alone on mobile ads. This number is expected to reach $ 14 Billion by 2011.

Now the intent of this post is not to drown you in numbers. However this time around I want to switch positions and understand if the users really want this. Is the mobile too personal for ads? Do we care enough to let carriers and advertisers violate the space and impact the already cumbersome experience. Or are we okay as far as we get something back in return?

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Sprint for past year or so has been chasing the WiMax carrot. The carrier has been facing huge subscriber churn issues since its merger with Nextel. Many think that WiMax would be its savior. WiMax is a key wireless technology, which will allow true broadband speeds (in multiple mbps) to be delivered over the air. The technology is critical as it will enable further reach than typical cable or DSL infrastructures.

Sprint who is spending billions in the WiMax network officially announced its brand name yesterday. They will launch this service as “XOHM” (pronounced as zoam). The website went online late last night with basic service information.

So why should you as a consumer care? How does this impact you? Let’s look at some of the elements of this service, which will potentially have some social impacts.

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Yahoo has had its share of issues in the past year. They had to let go their CEO and the co-founder of the company Jerry Yang was installed at the helm. They have been gradually loosing to Google over past few years. Recently with the management changes there is a new focus at Yahoo. They are getting rid of units which aren’t (Yahoo Photos) brining in much value and energizing the ones having potential.

Yahoo has been a long time leader in Local search. However the other big boys were gaining quickly with their own version of local services. So today as part of their new strategy Yahoo announced a newer and better Local service. This announcement brings much needed refresh to the service.

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