At our Good Ideas in 2009: Digital salon yesterday, much of the conversation surrounded how our online identities are created, both actively – through our own decisions of what we share about ourselves – and passively – through the actions and perceptions of others. Given that we only have control over half of that equation, how do we ensure that the best and brightest portrait of ourselves is seen by the wider community?
Piers posited his “Red Coat, Black Coat” theory back in 2006, which proved to be a harbinger of conversations to come about approaches to online privacy [...]

Allison Mooney, friend and Contributing Editor to PSFK, will be moderating our first Good Ideas in 2009 Salon on Tuesday, November 18th. The discussion will surround ideas and innovations in the Mobile space as we look ahead to next year.
Allison Mooney has been working in media and marketing for six years and was part of the launch team for Mobile Behavior, a new Omnicom Group company. As the Director of Trends & Insights, Allison manages the group’s R&D lab, NGT, leads behavioral research efforts, and guides thinking on youth trends, mobile innovations, and consumer behavior. She also started and [...]

LiveRail recently revealed their advertising platform for the iPhone, giving developers the option of adding short commercials to their applications, which would play whenever their app is launched.

The allure of the iPhone has unsurprisingly garnered the rapt attention of the advertising industry.  With 100 million App Store downloads since it launched and 90% of those downloads being free applications, ad support is a clear way for developers to balance profitability and popularity.  Currently, one of the iPhone’s most popular applications is Loopt, a location-based social networking program, but on different platforms and in early development it was sold to consumers for a few bucks.  Now, thanks to venture capital backing and further ad-revenue support, Loopt is hoping to be completely free.  A similar story can be told [...]

Want to be Kanye West (and who doesn’t, really)? Dial 1-877-BeKanye and choose from the following options:

Press 1 to begin the registration process to become a groupie
Press 2 to join Kanye’s absolutely fabulous entourage
Press 3 for the absolute summertime cocktail
Press 4 for the BeKanye tablet, which “unleashes the superstar within” and “turns you into Kanye West for a few hours or the rest of your life” (more at www.bekanyenow.com)
Press 5 to be directly connected to Kanye West’s cell phone

This is a pretty smart mobile database campaign, as each option prompts you to enter your cell phone number (and [...]

START SOMA is an art gallery in San Francisco on a mission to connect emerging artists with new collectors and dissolve the inaccessibility of typical ‘wine and cheese’ art shows. In December of 2005, founder John Doffing launched START MOBILE, the world’s first retail art gallery for mobile devices. For only two bucks, users can download an array of art from literally hundreds of progressive artists spanning the globe inspired by a variety of styles and display it on their mobile device.
According to Doffing:
“Cell phone wallpaper has long been limited to banal graphics, contrived iconography, and blurry clip-art [...]

A new free service called xipto is paying taste-makers and influencers to endorse specific products and services to their circle of friends by leaving a pre-recorded message on their mobile phone. Each time someone calls, the caller hears “this clip was endorsed by the person you are calling,” the message plays, and the endorsers receives payment. The cool thing here is that each user gets to select exactly what they want to endorse by managing their own playlist of brands/campaigns they support. Users have the option of running a single message or having a rotating list.

mocoNews writes:

Most [...]

There’s something pretty wonderful about the little puberty characters that MTV have made over at immaturity.tv. Each character has its own film, sometimes an intro para – brings it all back to you with a bump. We think there’s some way of putting all this on your mobile phone but we’re probably too old to work that out.
http://www.immaturity.tv/

There’s an interesting interview with Trip Hawkins of Digital Chocolate who co-founded Electronic Arts. The learnings here could be applied to how a brand uses gaming on phones: Here’s a snippet:
Is the wild success of the Nintendo DS (and failure of all hybrid phone-game devices) an indication that perhaps gaming is best suited for dedicated gaming devices?
There are important differences between a good phone and a good game console, even a handheld one. The phone needs to fit in your pocket, be comfortable to hold up to your ear, and cost less than $100. What it can do as a [...]

Somewhere between a Jerry Bruckheimer film and the Grand Theft Auto series, Nokia have produced this interactive online game to promote their new multimedia car kit, the CK-20W. Using real video images, the objective of the game is to maneuver through the dark streets of Paris (obviously relying on the voice instructions and visual cues provided by Nokia’s in-car system).
Upon logging on to the site, users are given the instructions that “A mysterious woman is in need of your services. She needs to reach three addresses in Paris in short amount of time.”
The game play is exceedingly [...]

There’s a pretty lengthy article in the NY Times about mobile marketing – the opportunities and the challenges. Much of this has been said before but there was one idea that stood out where brands supported mobile users who consumers mobile content: Mobile content can be pretty expensive and brands could offer some sort of branded utility to users to offset costs.
Madison Avenue Calling – New York Times

Already a standard in Japan and South Korea, RFID technology is about to revolutionize the way American consumers shop.
Last week, the U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to Scanbuy for a “System and method for decoding and analyzing barcodes using a mobile device”. The software works on any handheld device with a camera and internet connection and uses the camera to read the barcode, then connects the device’s web browser to the corresponding web site. What this enables, which we think is very significant – is the connection of physical objects to the internet – a Physical World Hyperlink.
It works [...]

In an effort to target teens for the upcoming release of “The Messengers,” Sony has created a downloadable ringtone that only teens can hear.
The high pitched tone is inaudible for adults over 25 and is meant to tie-in thematic references from the movie. Created specifically for the film, the teen-only ringtone is composed of a combination of several ultrasonic frequencies tied together to mimic a musical sound recognizable from the film that resembles a high pitched chord.
“The fact that only kids can hear it winds up being a thematic fit with the notion in the film that her parents [...]

It may just be me, but I’m yet to be convinced by mobile marketing. There are several issues for me:
1. A tiny screen. Mobiles are inherently poor devices for recieving visual messages on. Compared to the 20inch LCD panels we are becoming used to at work and at home a mobile screen may as well be monochrome
2. Poor online environment. To go online using a mobile is a traumatic and dissapointing experience compared with the superfast connections and rich graphics we’re used to.
3. It’s an effort. I can’t consume marketing messages whilst I’m walking or talking to someone or on [...]

The Mobile Weblog reports that CTIA has announced the availability of registrations for 6-digit shortcodes for use in the US. Interested parties can register for the new shortcodes via the http://www.usshortcodes.com/ website.
“The expansion of our CSC program is just another example of how wireless is revolutionizing the way we communicate and connect with the world around us,” said CTIA – The Wireless Association® President and CEO Steve Largent. “Only wireless can offer businesses the ability to meet their customers on the move and with this announcement even more enterprises can enter the game.”
The Mobile Technology Weblog: 6 Digit Shortcodes for [...]