SO YOU WANT TO START LOCALIZING your email to SMS marketing campaign? Have you considered China? If not, you should. China has over 3 Million new cellular phone subscribers per month! With over 370 million mobile users in the country at the end of August 2005, the Chinese are apparently talking up a storm!
For more: CMO Magazine
YESTERDAY, the White House Press Office sent an e-mail to journalists at 8:11 a.m. notifying them about a press conference with President Bush. Journalists had until 8:45 a.m. to register attendance for the conference, which was scheduled for 10:30 that same morning.
Some journalists argue that the White House is inconsiderate with its short-notice email announcements. Others feel that the White House is using technology effectively to announce such matters. Change occurs so quickly these days, that it would be unreasonable to think that the White House could confirm press meetings too far in advance.
Full Article: US News and World Reports
What do you think?
NOW THAT’S A BIG CLAIM TO FAME, or is it? Projecting 100 Million users in the next five years, Flock is a Palo Alto-based company that has developed a social browser that will make interactive web use easier. Flock developers call it “The world’s most innovative social browsing experience.â€? They also call it “the two way web.â€? A beta version of the Flock browser will be available to the public in two weeks.
One feature that will distinguish Flock from Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox is its blog-friendly dashboard and “right-click� blog wizard that will allow users to post, add photos, create links and insert quotes without any complicated coding. Photo images from Flikr, for example, can be easily dragged into a blog page for use without time-consuming uploads.
Full Article: Business Week
ACCORDING TO A REPORT authored by two Penn State University professors, Patrick McDaniel and Thomas F. La Porta, malicious SMS text message campaigns could congest cellular message and voice networks across entire cities.
Because SMS text can be generated from email and the Internet, cellular networks are vulnerable to heavy spam-like traffic that could compromise voice communications across entire networks.
“By pushing 165 messages a second into the network,â€? said Patrick D. McDaniel, a professor of computer science and engineering at Pennsylvania State University and the lead researcher on the paper, “you can congest all of Manhattan.” From: NY Times (you may need to register to access the full article)
The findings of the report are expected to be released today at Penn State, and as a formal research paper at a computer security conference next month. The paper will be posted online at: An Analysis of Vulnerabilities in SMS-Capable Cellular Networks
IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME, I suppose. Restrictions barring cellular phones and Internet access on board airplanes are currently being reviewed, with two European Airlines, TAP Air Portugal and BMI, positioning themselves to be the first to provide mobile phone coverage in Europe next year.
Some International carriers are already allowing Internet access. Scandinavian Airlines are one of several non-American carriers using an in-flight, high-speed Internet service called Connexion, developed by Boeing for its own commercial jetliners. The high use on the trans-Atlantic Scandinavian flights is somewhat unusual because they tend to be filled with tech-savvy Microsoft employees, who are even carting special noise-canceling headsets onto the planes to use Boeing’s satellite-based system to make free voice-over-Internet phone calls. Read To Surf Web While Aloft, Fly Foreign
The potential changes are stirring a debate amongst business travelers worldwide. James E. Katz, director of the Mobile Communication Studies Center at Rutgers University, suggested that the debate involves a deeper social context. “Airplanes,� he said, “have become the last place where people in business do not feel obliged to be constantly and immediately available.�
Mr. Katz said airplane travel is associated with productive time for many business travelers, either because it offers a place to work without being interrupted, or a sense of peace that has been lost in a culture of 24-hour connectivity. “We’ve created a world where if you don’t get back to somebody immediately, you’re suggesting they’re not important,” he said. “People love having the enforced tranquility.”
Many travelers, however, welcome the movement toward digital accessibility at 25,000 feet. Charles M. Lax, 46, a venture capitalist from New Center, Massachusetts gets nervous thinking about his messages piling up while he is in the air. “The voice mails stack up, the e-mails stack up, and it becomes a nightmare to respond,” said Mr. Lax, “Nine out of 10 times I fly I’m doing so for business, and I want to be productive in between.” Still, Mr. Lax said he could do without phone access on planes, but would like e-mail, which he said was a more efficient way to get business done anyway.
Full Story: Silence Aloft is Under Threat
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