TamsIJungle

I have never been to happy with the way traditional print magazines cover mobile and IT-related topics: the Austrian daily magazine Kurier just shot the ball right out of their court with a three-page story looking at the “various dangers of computer gaming”. As usual, all of it was bullsh*t – read on for the best parts:

Safer texts – or – on copy and paste
In Austria, journalists usually receive training which allows them to disguise PR gags from real events. However, the padded lamp post story (which has been forgotten for a few months) has just received a revival from the boys in red:

I have no idea why they didn’t stumble across messages like these:

Charity organisation Living Streets said that, if the trial is successful, streets including Charing Cross Road, Old Bond Street and Oxford Street will be fitted with the lampposts.
Advertisement

The padding is sponsored by directory enquiries service 118118, which commissioned a study into injuries suffered while texting.

Demanding them to ask themselves why the original Yahoo story was pulled is – um – superfluous…

Wii: movement causes pain
After having proven their intellectual prowess with the story above, idiocies continue on the next page:

The picture shows a gamer playing Wii Fit, while the tag line claims that “all kinds of bodily injuries are caused by the Wii, as it demands bodily activity”. I ask myself what they would write about sports like Tennis or Jogging…but am pretty sure that it would be a lot less aggressive.

In the end, I personally feel offended by their sloppy and misleading editorial work. If this wouldn’t be my wife’s subscription, I would cancel it immediately…and urge any Austrian computer gamers to give them the same treatment. Not getting enough ad purchases from game manufacturers can be painful – but IMHO does not allow for insane moves like the one above…

A sucker is literally born every minute – the latest a$$hole to waddle past me takes the form of a spammer offering an advance fee/directory scam. The whole story starts out with them sending an email similar to the one below:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

In order to have your company inserted in the registry of World Businesses
for 2009/2010 edition, please print, complete and submit the enclosed form (PDF file)
to the following address:

WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands

email: register@worldbusinessguidenow.biz
FAX: +31 20 524 8107

Updating is free of charge!

If you are not the intended recipient, please submit an email to
unsubscribe@worldbusinessguidenow.biz
Your request shall be dealt with accordingly.

The attached form points out its “freeness” multiple times, but contradicts itself in the fine print at the very bottom. While this alone IMHO disqualifies them under Austrian law (misleading contracts are prohibited), the legalities of spamming potential customers IMHO doesn’t need to be discussed under the latest Austrian ECG act.

Their actual web site is pictured below: please do note that the date there is still displayed as the 24th of November:

P.S. I have googled the web looking for other “victims” of the World Business Guide scam, and found none who were actually prosecuted: it looks like the best thing is to formally dispute their charges and ignore both them and their (nonexistent) debt collection agency…

P.S.2. Thanks to Peter Burgstaller’s Lawfirm Linz and the FH Hagenberg, I am well aware that their action is not legal (thanks, Peter, for the great course). I have thus decided to go Ed Fagan on them – here is my response:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
thank you so much for your letter, which constitutes punishable spam under Austrian legal code (§107 TKG)! I have passed this on to my attorney and will seek legal action against your company.

However, I am willing to settle with your company for the payment of the costs I incurred in processing your email, which make up for a total of 35 Euros, which constitutes half an hour of work! I am more than willing to provide you with an invoice and a contract freeing you of all further claims from me if you so desire!

All the best from Vienna
Mos. Tam Hanna

P.S. I have taken the liberty to publish this to my well-read web site network:
….

ID Software should be well-known to most of you – they have created a variety of highly controversial games like Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom and/or the Quake series of 3D egoshooters.

As they tend to release the source code to their products eventually, various ID games have been ported by enthusiasts – if your iPhone is jailbroken, you’ve probably been playing Quake for quite some time…

According to PocketGamer, ID plans to port existing products and will furthermore launch something new soon:

Apparently idd is also currently working with a software partner in Texas on a brand new iPhone property – designed from the ground up for the Apple system.

Further news can be had above…

I have no idea why all kinds of companies have recently started to copy AdMob’s model of sharing data – the latest bit of info hits us via pinchmedia.com.

Their presentation is hosted on slideshare, and looks at a few very interesting things related to application usage and monetization:

The folks at Engadget’s recently had the opportunity to talk with AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega. As usual, he was very talkative – their interview is multiple pages long.

Even though much of it is not related to the iPhone, he nevertheless talked about iPhone 3G reception issues and – to a lesser extent – the future of the Apple/AT&T cooperation.

Further information can be had at the URL above – hit it if you feel like it…

Now that T-Mobile Austria has started the iPhone blow-out for good (picture on the left), T-Mobile Germany follows suite according to the fscklog.

The new plans are still outrageous (starting at 30 Euros/month with no free minutes), but are a bit cheaper than what the carrier tried to peddle originally.

IMHO, the signs are clear: German markets are starting to reach saturation…

The boys at the FH Hagenberg’s have started their NFC Congress, which is more than well-visited…in fact, it is so well-visited that the event site’s capacities are pushed to the very limit:

Nevertheless, all works lovely so far – the program of the IEEE workshop which lies ahead of us is below:

With that, I sign off for now – all further coverage is at our sister site TamsS60…

A recent issue of the Financial times contained an article on the partnership between Microsoft and LG. This is nothing new (Microsoft has an excellent PR department and buys many ads) – but the image assignment is funny as hell:

In case you don’t follow TamsS60: the picture shows Samsung’s Omnia HD fractal:

And to make things worse: the Omnia HD runs S60. Yikes!

The picture on the left hits us via the Austrian Kurier magazine – it states that T-Mobile Austria’s original, time-limited free iPhone 3G deal was prolonged for an unspecified amount of time.

In case anyone of you is new to the topic: T-Mobile Austria originally offered the iPhone 3G for free with a contract as a “valentine’s day promotion”, which was scheduled to end on the 14th of February. As we are looking at the 22nd today, the promotion has obviously entered injury time.

Even though T-Mobile itself would never admit it, I personally predict that the boys are having more and more problems selling iPhones to the public. Their issues will probably get even worse as the BlackBerry Storm and other highly anticipated and more powerful devices hit the road…which means that the iPhone growth is starting to hit a “soft cap” in Austria.

Obviously, other markets could still experience explosive growth for some time – what do you think?

Determining handset market share has always been an issue which involved loads of squabbling and squeaking…as the one who pays the piper gets to set the tune, industry analysts are not always 100 reliable. A good assessment is possible by analyzing data from multiple sources…which is why I am more than happy to present the data from AdMob below.

In case anyone of you is new to the topic: AdMob is an operator of an advertising network which can be used to monetize mobile web sites and iPhone programs. They collect data on all requests, ans create a monthly report which can be downloaded here…

Global handset usage
As usual, lets start out with the global OS market share for January:

One extremely interesting thing stands out: even though WM has a decent market share, it does not have a single device in the top 25:

US handset usage
The USA traditionally is very important for providers of mobile software – many consider it the largest market for third-party apps. Nokia’s push to the US has not shown any effect so far:

Windows Mobile is much stronger here than it is globally, but still doesn’t manage to propel a single device into the top-25.

European handset usage
In Western Europe, Windows Mobile is particularly weak:

However, the Samsung Omnia makes it into the top-list: