ESPOO, Finland – Finally getting back into the swing of things after my trip to Barcelona for the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. All was fine until I saw a comment and a few internal emails asking me about a cryptic site that is a tease at the monent (more below). Questions continue to fly as I round off the update today with a take on users and personalization.
Read on!
Adjust your clocks!
Leader for the day is for sure a cryptic site folks were told to keep an eye on. The site, www.openatownrisk.com, was supposed to be a teaser for something, except that when the count-down reached ‘zero’ the site was a dud. Seems like nothing happened and folks are not just wondering, but a bit upset at being led on.
We’re digging into it to find out what this was all about. I did hear it was indeed a Nokia site, but for what, I am not sure. What I am guessing is that there are a few embarrassed folks who were supposed to reveal something cool but then had something, definitely unexpected, happen. D’oh!
Let’s hope it gets sorted out and all the expectation and Flash are worth the wait.
Mobile 2.0 Europe follow-up
The organizers for the Mobile 2.0 conference I attended last week have been tracking stories across the web. They are the best place for you to get alternate views of what the event was about. Go check it out.
There’s also a Flickr photoset.
Real people with real needs?
One thing that was not brought up enough at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference was the user, the person who in the end will fork over the money to use the product or service. We sometimes get so wrapped up in the tech and development of things that we forget the basics. For example, there have been great analyses of the Symbian deal, such as this one, at The S60 Blog. But I haven’t seen any that ask what it means to the user? We keep talking about developers, single platforms, a growth in the number of apps.
Dean Bubley has been paying attention to what the non-techies (also known as the rest of the world) have been doing to their phones, particularly with respect to adding applications. He points out that folks really don’t do more than add a ring-tone or wallpaper. Indeed, we’ve seen the same, where folks don’t really change the phone beyond what they buy. How many Nokia ringtones have you heard – do you believe that folks actually WANT to use it? Are we offering more than what folks really want? Do folks really care what operating system is on their phone?
What do you think?
In the mean time, consider the real cost of personalization – a diamond encrusted N95.
Image by wrhowell