Technology such as that available from www.huetouch.com is being used by the Met police to warn people of the danges of Sex Clubs in Soho. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-478920/Bluetooth-text-warning-walk-n
ear-Soho-sex-club.html
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Friday, 27 November 2009
Bluetooth Marketing for Stadiums and sports
Cell phones are no longer simply a way of talking when on the move. They are now email clients, media players, cameras, social networking tools, GPS systems and more. Mobile phones truly are the most important means of personal communications to any individual, which is why stadiums being able to interact with spectators on their handsets is so valuable in developing a productive dialogue.
Bluetooth proximity broadcasting enables venues to create Zones, in which the venue 'owns' the airwaves reaching cell phones at their location. This is ideal for sending information services, interactive games, website links or adverts to spectators for free.
The number of mobile handsets in circulation world wide is staggering (over 261 million subscribers in the USA and 74 million in the UK). 70 per cent of the 900 million phones sold each year are Bluetooth-enabled, creating a huge market for this form of mobile marketing.
With such a large market, many brands and sponsors are moving their marketing budgets towards mobile technologies as traditional methods of advertising such as television, cinema and even the web prove to be less relevant to an increasingly mobile consumer lifestyle. This gives venues a fantastic opportunity to offer brands a culturally relevant way of reaching specific target groups as they visit their locations, opening additional marketing budgets from brands and sponsors to forward thinking venues.
Benefits of Proximity Marketing
Bluetooth broadcasting is hugely beneficial as it is highly targeted being location and time specific. It also has the benefit of being free for consumers to receive messages, this removes any privacy or subscriptions concerns which are often encountered in other types of mobile marketing.
Large venues such as stadiums can even segment their 'Zones' to reach different types of spectator at the same time; for example, home fans can receive team sheets and discount offers for season tickets whereas away fans at the same game could be receiving food and beverage offers.
Bluetooth broadcasting offers venues many benefits including:
* It is free for handset owners to receive downloads, increasing uptake.
* It is completely measurable with every download being logged.
* It is standards based and legal (it operates in the unlicensed, 2.4 GHz ISM band).
* It can be targeted to a specific location, group or event at any time.
* It offers opt-in and opt-out of messages allowing verification of sender.
Integrated Approach
Some of the latest Bluetooth stadium solutions now integrate with giant screens allowing messages sent to phones to be relevant to what is being displayed on screen. This could increase the longevity of existing investments in video technologies by bringing content from the giant screen to the mobile screen simultaneously.
Bluetooth technology therefore offers a solution to stadiums and venues which leverages their real estate assets to target phones with timely and relevant content such as team sheets to sports fans, music download discounts at gigs, conferencing facility details to businesses and betting applications to race goers and fans.
In our transient and self-sufficient society when it comes to consumers receiving information and advertising on their mobile phones the more location based Bluetooth will deliver a strategic platform for reaching target groups when gathered together.
http://www.sportspromedia.com/notes_and_insights/_a/bluetooth_opens_up_new_revenue_streams_for_stadiums/
Bluetooth proximity broadcasting enables venues to create Zones, in which the venue 'owns' the airwaves reaching cell phones at their location. This is ideal for sending information services, interactive games, website links or adverts to spectators for free.
The number of mobile handsets in circulation world wide is staggering (over 261 million subscribers in the USA and 74 million in the UK). 70 per cent of the 900 million phones sold each year are Bluetooth-enabled, creating a huge market for this form of mobile marketing.
With such a large market, many brands and sponsors are moving their marketing budgets towards mobile technologies as traditional methods of advertising such as television, cinema and even the web prove to be less relevant to an increasingly mobile consumer lifestyle. This gives venues a fantastic opportunity to offer brands a culturally relevant way of reaching specific target groups as they visit their locations, opening additional marketing budgets from brands and sponsors to forward thinking venues.
Benefits of Proximity Marketing
Bluetooth broadcasting is hugely beneficial as it is highly targeted being location and time specific. It also has the benefit of being free for consumers to receive messages, this removes any privacy or subscriptions concerns which are often encountered in other types of mobile marketing.
Large venues such as stadiums can even segment their 'Zones' to reach different types of spectator at the same time; for example, home fans can receive team sheets and discount offers for season tickets whereas away fans at the same game could be receiving food and beverage offers.
Bluetooth broadcasting offers venues many benefits including:
* It is free for handset owners to receive downloads, increasing uptake.
* It is completely measurable with every download being logged.
* It is standards based and legal (it operates in the unlicensed, 2.4 GHz ISM band).
* It can be targeted to a specific location, group or event at any time.
* It offers opt-in and opt-out of messages allowing verification of sender.
Integrated Approach
Some of the latest Bluetooth stadium solutions now integrate with giant screens allowing messages sent to phones to be relevant to what is being displayed on screen. This could increase the longevity of existing investments in video technologies by bringing content from the giant screen to the mobile screen simultaneously.
Bluetooth technology therefore offers a solution to stadiums and venues which leverages their real estate assets to target phones with timely and relevant content such as team sheets to sports fans, music download discounts at gigs, conferencing facility details to businesses and betting applications to race goers and fans.
In our transient and self-sufficient society when it comes to consumers receiving information and advertising on their mobile phones the more location based Bluetooth will deliver a strategic platform for reaching target groups when gathered together.
http://www.sportspromedia.com/notes_and_insights/_a/bluetooth_opens_up_new_revenue_streams_for_stadiums/
Monday, 5 October 2009
Dont buy long range bluetooth transmitters
Many Bluetooth manufacturers will talk about how their devices can reach distances of 250m, 1km, and up to 16 kilometre, don’t be fooled! To understand why, you firstly need to know some basics...
Three Types of Bluetooth
The Bluetooth standard has three classes of radio: Class one, two and three. Class three is rarely used and only travels a short distance, Class two communicated up to 10m (most phones are class two) and Class one can transmit up to 100m (Huetouch Max, Xtra and Lite are all Class one).
Importantly a single Class one transmitter can only server up to 7 simultaneous connections i.e. talk to 7 phones, therefore a Huetouch Lite with one class one transmitter can communicate or download to 7 phones at once where as the Max can communicate to 21 phones as it has three transmitters, this capacity issue is key to understanding effective Bluetooth Marketing.
How do you get more than 10m?
However if you couple a class one device with a class two device, you can effectively increase the range of the class two device from 10m to up to a maximum of 30 meters for most phones. You can NOT reach any further than this as the RF power output from a phone is simply too low to be able to communicate back. Bluetooth Marketing is a two way conversation as the sending device needs acknowledgment from the users phone for: permission to send or ignore; the phone type and for file transfer checking to ensure the actual message has been delivered correctly. 30m is the maximum effective communications range.
Only with directional high gain antenna could any further distance be reached but the “beam” of Bluetooth would be focused into a tiny directional beam, that a phone would have to be in the exact location the antenna was pointing to communicate with it, most Bluetooth Marketing relies on reaching phones anywhere in the Zones proximity.
Don't break the Law!
In addition in the EU there are strict wireless laws governed by the “Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment Directive” many high power transmitters from the US and other countries are simply illegal to use in Europe.
Despite the fact that simple physics makes Bluetooth Marketing to phones over distance impossible there still remains many fundamental flaws with the idea of boosting range. Imagine you could build a magic Bluetooth box that could communicate for 1000m or even 1800m to phones and imagine the phones had huge antennas and power supplies strong enough to talk back; the system would still not work. This goes back to the capacity issue highlighted earlier; if you could reach every phone in a 1000m radius your Bluetooth device simply would not have enough capacity to serve them all. Its like having a super-long network cable and running it to every home with a PC within a kilometre. The communications traffic would stop! the network would grind to a halt because there would simply be to many devices to serve. Ultimately you can only serve 21 phones at once from a Bluetooth Zone, no matter how big the Zone is.
So how can you reach more phones over larger distances?
Only through networking Zones together, with the Huetouch product range “30 Meter Zones” can be connected together giving a blanket coverage of Bluetooth Zones over any distance which importantly will have enough capacity to server the majority of phones in the area without becoming oversubscribed. Just like in computing, in the early days people believed one super computer would calculate everything just as they now believe one Bluetooth box might reach all phones, in actuality computing power increase by adding many millions of individual PC’s together on the internet, the same is true with Bluetooth networking. Many single “Zones” can be linked together to provide maximum capacity to communicate with phones over large distances. Size isn’t everything, capacity coverage is, this is the secret so successful large range Bluetooth Networking.
Three Types of Bluetooth
The Bluetooth standard has three classes of radio: Class one, two and three. Class three is rarely used and only travels a short distance, Class two communicated up to 10m (most phones are class two) and Class one can transmit up to 100m (Huetouch Max, Xtra and Lite are all Class one).
Importantly a single Class one transmitter can only server up to 7 simultaneous connections i.e. talk to 7 phones, therefore a Huetouch Lite with one class one transmitter can communicate or download to 7 phones at once where as the Max can communicate to 21 phones as it has three transmitters, this capacity issue is key to understanding effective Bluetooth Marketing.
How do you get more than 10m?
However if you couple a class one device with a class two device, you can effectively increase the range of the class two device from 10m to up to a maximum of 30 meters for most phones. You can NOT reach any further than this as the RF power output from a phone is simply too low to be able to communicate back. Bluetooth Marketing is a two way conversation as the sending device needs acknowledgment from the users phone for: permission to send or ignore; the phone type and for file transfer checking to ensure the actual message has been delivered correctly. 30m is the maximum effective communications range.
Only with directional high gain antenna could any further distance be reached but the “beam” of Bluetooth would be focused into a tiny directional beam, that a phone would have to be in the exact location the antenna was pointing to communicate with it, most Bluetooth Marketing relies on reaching phones anywhere in the Zones proximity.
Don't break the Law!
In addition in the EU there are strict wireless laws governed by the “Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment Directive” many high power transmitters from the US and other countries are simply illegal to use in Europe.
Despite the fact that simple physics makes Bluetooth Marketing to phones over distance impossible there still remains many fundamental flaws with the idea of boosting range. Imagine you could build a magic Bluetooth box that could communicate for 1000m or even 1800m to phones and imagine the phones had huge antennas and power supplies strong enough to talk back; the system would still not work. This goes back to the capacity issue highlighted earlier; if you could reach every phone in a 1000m radius your Bluetooth device simply would not have enough capacity to serve them all. Its like having a super-long network cable and running it to every home with a PC within a kilometre. The communications traffic would stop! the network would grind to a halt because there would simply be to many devices to serve. Ultimately you can only serve 21 phones at once from a Bluetooth Zone, no matter how big the Zone is.
So how can you reach more phones over larger distances?
Only through networking Zones together, with the Huetouch product range “30 Meter Zones” can be connected together giving a blanket coverage of Bluetooth Zones over any distance which importantly will have enough capacity to server the majority of phones in the area without becoming oversubscribed. Just like in computing, in the early days people believed one super computer would calculate everything just as they now believe one Bluetooth box might reach all phones, in actuality computing power increase by adding many millions of individual PC’s together on the internet, the same is true with Bluetooth networking. Many single “Zones” can be linked together to provide maximum capacity to communicate with phones over large distances. Size isn’t everything, capacity coverage is, this is the secret so successful large range Bluetooth Networking.
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Sun article on Bluetooth Marketing in Nightclubs
REVELLERS are being sent videos on their mobiles by cops reminding them to behave - or risk being fined for boozy bad behaviour.
The Bluetooth messages are flashed to phones between 8pm and 3am telling partygoers aged 18 to 30 to “respect others and go home quietly”.
They go on to say: “What’s the night cost you so far? Being drunk and disorderly could add £80 to your bill.”
The messages, which attract phone users’ attention with a sexy image of a woman, are being tried out in Bath in a joint police and council experiment.
The council’s Tim Harris said: “Young people contact each other using mobile phones, so this way we can make sure they digest the information.”
Credit: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2631744/Clubbers-sent-video-phone-warnings-by-cops.html
The Bluetooth messages are flashed to phones between 8pm and 3am telling partygoers aged 18 to 30 to “respect others and go home quietly”.
They go on to say: “What’s the night cost you so far? Being drunk and disorderly could add £80 to your bill.”
The messages, which attract phone users’ attention with a sexy image of a woman, are being tried out in Bath in a joint police and council experiment.
The council’s Tim Harris said: “Young people contact each other using mobile phones, so this way we can make sure they digest the information.”
Credit: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2631744/Clubbers-sent-video-phone-warnings-by-cops.html
Monday, 24 August 2009
Hue-Start Proximity Software for Bluegiga
Recently Huetouch launched the Hue-Start software specifically to enable Bluegiga Access Servers (2293) and the Bluegiga Access Points (3201) to work as proximity marketing solutions with a simple user interface. see www.bluegiga.com or www.huetouch.com for more information, or watch the video people to see how to use the bluetooth marketing software:
Monday, 17 August 2009
What is Bluetooth Marketing or Bluetooth Proximity Marketing?
Listen to this short video clip of Nik Maguire from Huetouch talking about the basics of what Bluetooth Proximity Marketing is.
Friday, 14 August 2009
Laegers European Bluetooth Role our has Blue IP's
Huetouch the leader in white label management software for proximity marketing, have successfully deployed a large scale multi-site deployment for a Times top 100 company, through a Huetouch reseller.
The deployment of over 250 zones was only possible due to the sophisticated IP networking capabilities of the Hue-Live system, the deployment which was achieved using 3G mobile networking as internet access was not always available, ensured that each Bluetooth Zone could be updated and monitored remotely. Bluegiga was selected as the hardware platform, with Hue-Live software from Huetouch and the Hue-Care support and maintenance package from Huetouch, providing 24*7 monitoring and network management.
The roll out which is though to be the largest of its kind in Europe is being kept under some degree of secrecy due to the competitive nature of the messaging.
Nik Maguire from Huetouch said, "We believe that the networking skills from our company which included Cisco qualified design engineers contributed to the successful deployment of this network, the whole project was delivered in a three week period, and the reseller and customer were delighted with the install."
For more details on IP enabled Bluetooth Proximity Marketing contact www.huetouch.com or listen to this video recording:
Thursday, 13 August 2009
White Label solutions from Huetouch Explained
Listen to Huetouch founder Nik Maguire describe how Huetouch provides white label Bluetooth Proximity Marketing solutions to resellers and channels. From remote managed Bluetooth deployments to simple white label Microsoft windows applications.
contact www.huetouch.com for more details.
contact www.huetouch.com for more details.
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Bloo-bag bluetooth marketing promotion
Watch this video on bluetooth marketing its an impressive case study from Birmingham England.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Product Announcement for Bluetooth Marketing
(04 Aug 2009) Huetouch today release its new affordable stand alone software for the Bluegiga Access server family.
Huetouch the company behind many Bluetooth Marketing Companies have released Huetouch Start for the Bluegiga Access Server family of products, this software provides a solution for small or first time deployments of Bluetooth Proximity Marketing.
Nicholas Maguire, Huetouch MD, said:
“Although Huetouch has a reputation for larger remote managed solutions in Bluetooth Marketing, we quickly realised that much of the market place wanted to dip its toe in the water before committing to large scale deployments.
With Hue-Start we have developed a software product which removed the need for technical expertise or ongoing costs, addressing the needs of many in this growing market.”
Hue-start can be programmed directly from a Bluegiga box and contains all the tools needed to run a simple Proximity Marketing campaign from, changing Bluetooth names, adding files, graphical reports and even a mobile phone advert creator option available.
The product is available through Huetouch reseller channels and more details can be found by contacting Huetouch directly at www.huetouch.com.
Huetouch the company behind many Bluetooth Marketing Companies have released Huetouch Start for the Bluegiga Access Server family of products, this software provides a solution for small or first time deployments of Bluetooth Proximity Marketing.
Nicholas Maguire, Huetouch MD, said:
“Although Huetouch has a reputation for larger remote managed solutions in Bluetooth Marketing, we quickly realised that much of the market place wanted to dip its toe in the water before committing to large scale deployments.
With Hue-Start we have developed a software product which removed the need for technical expertise or ongoing costs, addressing the needs of many in this growing market.”
Hue-start can be programmed directly from a Bluegiga box and contains all the tools needed to run a simple Proximity Marketing campaign from, changing Bluetooth names, adding files, graphical reports and even a mobile phone advert creator option available.
The product is available through Huetouch reseller channels and more details can be found by contacting Huetouch directly at www.huetouch.com.
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
What is the 'real' reach of a Bluetooth zone?
If you couple a Class 1 device with a Class 2 device, you can effectively increase the range of the Class 2 device from 10m to up to a maximum of 30 metres for most phones. You CANNOT reach any further than this as the Radio Frequency power output from a phone is simply too low to be able to communicate back to a Bluetooth Marketing device. Bluetooth Marketing is a two-way conversation as the sending device needs acknowledgment from the users phone for permission to send or decline.
Monday, 22 June 2009
How your life will be run by the network
From The Sunday Times
June 20, 2009
Focus: How your life will be run by the network
The way we shop, travel and talk to our family and friends will be transformed by the new generation of mobile phones
A girl with an Apple iPhone
John Arlidge
It is called the Spark Room and it takes pride of place in the shiny new offices of Logica, the technology firm in King’s Cross, north London. A sign above the door reads “This is where you come in”. It is an invitation to the firm’s geeks to peer into the future, laptops in one hand, lattes in the other.
On computer screens, what looks to the untrained eye like a series of dots and squiggles, graphs and web pages are downloading at great speed.
Each one represents people: you and me. They move, like us. They talk, like us. They are us.
The images are the building blocks of the biggest revolution in IT since the advent of the internet — and one that will eventually have a direct impact on the lives of almost everyone.
“We’re not talking about something that we’ve always known would be good but could not work out how to make happen,” explained Elaine Doherty, Logica’s head of media innovation. “What we’re doing is something that was unimaginable even five years ago.”
Doherty is talking about “collective intelligence”, or “the network”. It is the latest buzzword to leak out of California’s Silicon Valley.
For a big idea it is remarkably simple. It means a world in which people are permanently connected to anything and everything: to our friends and families, to our employer, to our home, doctor, bank, even to our past, present and future.
The squiggles and dots on Doherty’s screens represent those links, produced by a complex — and secret — algorithm that runs using Logica’s new Interaction software.
How does it work? It is all down to the mobile phone. Thanks to hardware advances and super-fast 3G network connections, phones have become handheld mini-computers capable of running just about any program you can think of — e-mail, online maps, YouTube, news, the weather, share prices.
If you don’t have one yet, the likelihood is that you will soon. The new-generation phones are spreading rapidly through the population. Apple launched its latest version of the iPhone last week and has already sold more than 40m examples of the previous models in just two years. Worldwide there is one mobile phone for every adult.
As we use them, our phones record the details of our lives. Global positioning technology, wi-fi and Bluetooth in our handsets reveal where we are down to the nearest few feet, when we go to work, when we get home and where we like to go at weekends. For the fully plugged-in, an online calendar shows where we have just been and where we will be next. Social networking sites reveal who our friends are. Location services reveal where they are.
Thanks to our online search history, phones know our interests: what food, music, sports, authors, fashion designers and holiday destinations we like. When we start using our handsets as “swipe-and-pay” wallets, in a similar style to London’s transport Oyster cards, they will record our purchases as well.
Generating a “digital profile” online is not new. We leave digital fingerprints every time we surf the web on our computers. But that information is static: we do not carry our computers around everywhere we go. We do take our phones everywhere, though, and that changes everything. It creates a crucial “bridge” between the virtual world and the real world.
“We’re generating an entirely new ecosystem of data, far richer than anything before,” said Chris Lane, head of strategy at Vodafone, the mobile phone company. “It shows where people are, what they do and when they do it and can even ‘learn’ and ‘predict’ likely future behaviour.”
High-tech companies are excited about the network because by studying our real-time behaviour — “reality mining” as techie-types call it — they can create products tailored for each of us and offered to us precisely when and where they hope we will want them.
In the Spark Room, Doherty calls up a screen that will be available from next month. A mobile phone user, who has given permission for service providers to track her mobile use, walks into a shopping mall at 10am. Her calendar shows she is meeting a friend to buy shoes, then have lunch. As she enters, she receives an electronic message with a voucher offering 20% off the shoes she likes — wedges — at her favourite store and a map to the shop.
Her search history reveals that she likes sushi, so just before 12.30pm, after buying the shoes, she receives another message with a voucher for a two-for-one sushi lunch offer.
While the two women are eating their California rolls, they check their phones and find that two of their Facebook friends have just entered the mall. They instant-message them and invite them for lunch. “The girls get the shoes they want for less money, they get a cheap lunch and they get to meet their friends. Everybody wins,” claimed Doherty.
The network can create and improve almost any kind of product or service, its supporters say. Take in-car satellite navigation. TomTom, the Dutch sat nav firm, has abandoned static cameras and roadside sensors to monitor traffic movements and instead now tracks the speed at which mobile phones in cars travel — via GPS and wi-fi. This not only allows the firm to spot traffic jams when they happen, it can also predict them before they happen by calculating how many cars are likely to arrive at a pinch-point at the same time.
Microsoft is working on a similar traffic management scheme in Birmingham which also tells drivers where to find a parking space.
The network promises to transform advertising, too, producing the kind of targeted adverts seen in the futuristic Tom Cruise film Minority Report. Marketeers use signals from web-enabled devices to identify different types of consumer. By tracking where they live, where they go to work and where they go to relax, they know their patterns of behaviour and get an idea of what they earn. That makes it easier to target adverts at the people most likely to respond to them.
“We can place ads for beer on electronic billboards near bars, where we know people who drink beer go, at the time they go there and do the same with wine near wine bars at the time that wine drinkers like to go,” said Steve Ridley of Kinetic, an advertising firm.
The network is not all about business, though. Our digital footprints have social and civic uses, too. By analysing how we travel on foot, by road or on the train, town planners and transport bodies are changing the fabric of our cities.
Path Intelligence, based in Hampshire, uses phone data to help planners smooth the flow of pedestrians through railway stations, airports and shopping centres. Rather than relying on snapshot surveys, it can analyse the real-time flows of real people. The network also helps doctors and health professionals: search engines, notably Google, are already using web searches to help health authorities predict the spread of viruses such as swine flu. People are more likely to search for the symptoms of the illness on the internet before they visit their doctor, goes the logic. A sudden spike in searches for swine flu symptoms in a particular location might indicate an imminent outbreak.
In Portland, Oregon, doctors monitor elderly people who live alone via mobile phone. The patients carry their phone and the handset “learns” their daily routine. If there is a sudden marked divergence from their normal pattern, the phone alerts healthcare services that something might be wrong.
For all its apparent advantages there are several practical problems — and one serious ethical one — that might hamper the development of the network.
It depends on web-enabled mobiles with broadband services, which are expensive. Many people already complain that we are drowning in data — e-mail, text messages, social networking sites — and they will probably regard joining the network as becoming a slave to the machine and will instead choose to “go dark”.
Then there is the big issue: privacy. Many consumers will be reluctant to hand over their digital fingerprint to third parties for fear their data might be misused. Some American firms are already tracking employees’ movements and e- mail use to find out who are the most — and least — productive.
Steve Steinberg, a US technology analyst, described the network as “one of the most significant technology trends I have seen — and maybe one of the most pernicious. The social paranoia it heralds could be worse than any authoritarian bureaucracy”.
Operators say safeguards exist to protect users. The new services are “opt-in”, which means we have to agree to allow operators to monitor our web use and our location. All data is anonymised. Users are identified by a string of numbers, not by name.
Will the network take off? The evidence suggests that consumers may overcome their fears about privacy. Indeed, most of us accept some form of monitoring already. We accept that Google monitors our search history because it gives us better search results. We allow Amazon to record our buying history to recommend products we might want.
James Braden, a technology analyst, said the network has all the right qualities to spread rapidly. “History shows that market-changing technologies are ones that enable a broad class of people to do what, previously, only an elite class could do,” he said.
“That’s exactly what the network does. It gives individuals and companies access to the kind of information only previously available to the likes of governments and vast corporations.”
If the analysts are right, we might soon start thinking very differently about the hyper-connected world we live in. In particular, we might rethink our view of personal data, coming to regard it more as something to be traded, like money, rather than hoarded and protected. We might even be willing to give some of it away, provided we get something in return.
As Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, put it: “Using mobile services involves a cost/benefit decision, but we think people will see that the benefits are greater than the potential cost.”
While the new laboratory of human behaviour and relations grows, the supremacy of the individual’s privacy, which has dominated the debate over technology, may give way to something new. Just as the introduction of the PC desktop with its click-and-drag files and folders transformed the way we think of organising basic information, so the network is creating a new metaphor for organising our lives.
We are never going to embrace Big Brother, but could we learn to love the little brother in our pocket? Maybe.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article6544646.ece
June 20, 2009
Focus: How your life will be run by the network
The way we shop, travel and talk to our family and friends will be transformed by the new generation of mobile phones
A girl with an Apple iPhone
John Arlidge
It is called the Spark Room and it takes pride of place in the shiny new offices of Logica, the technology firm in King’s Cross, north London. A sign above the door reads “This is where you come in”. It is an invitation to the firm’s geeks to peer into the future, laptops in one hand, lattes in the other.
On computer screens, what looks to the untrained eye like a series of dots and squiggles, graphs and web pages are downloading at great speed.
Each one represents people: you and me. They move, like us. They talk, like us. They are us.
The images are the building blocks of the biggest revolution in IT since the advent of the internet — and one that will eventually have a direct impact on the lives of almost everyone.
“We’re not talking about something that we’ve always known would be good but could not work out how to make happen,” explained Elaine Doherty, Logica’s head of media innovation. “What we’re doing is something that was unimaginable even five years ago.”
Doherty is talking about “collective intelligence”, or “the network”. It is the latest buzzword to leak out of California’s Silicon Valley.
For a big idea it is remarkably simple. It means a world in which people are permanently connected to anything and everything: to our friends and families, to our employer, to our home, doctor, bank, even to our past, present and future.
The squiggles and dots on Doherty’s screens represent those links, produced by a complex — and secret — algorithm that runs using Logica’s new Interaction software.
How does it work? It is all down to the mobile phone. Thanks to hardware advances and super-fast 3G network connections, phones have become handheld mini-computers capable of running just about any program you can think of — e-mail, online maps, YouTube, news, the weather, share prices.
If you don’t have one yet, the likelihood is that you will soon. The new-generation phones are spreading rapidly through the population. Apple launched its latest version of the iPhone last week and has already sold more than 40m examples of the previous models in just two years. Worldwide there is one mobile phone for every adult.
As we use them, our phones record the details of our lives. Global positioning technology, wi-fi and Bluetooth in our handsets reveal where we are down to the nearest few feet, when we go to work, when we get home and where we like to go at weekends. For the fully plugged-in, an online calendar shows where we have just been and where we will be next. Social networking sites reveal who our friends are. Location services reveal where they are.
Thanks to our online search history, phones know our interests: what food, music, sports, authors, fashion designers and holiday destinations we like. When we start using our handsets as “swipe-and-pay” wallets, in a similar style to London’s transport Oyster cards, they will record our purchases as well.
Generating a “digital profile” online is not new. We leave digital fingerprints every time we surf the web on our computers. But that information is static: we do not carry our computers around everywhere we go. We do take our phones everywhere, though, and that changes everything. It creates a crucial “bridge” between the virtual world and the real world.
“We’re generating an entirely new ecosystem of data, far richer than anything before,” said Chris Lane, head of strategy at Vodafone, the mobile phone company. “It shows where people are, what they do and when they do it and can even ‘learn’ and ‘predict’ likely future behaviour.”
High-tech companies are excited about the network because by studying our real-time behaviour — “reality mining” as techie-types call it — they can create products tailored for each of us and offered to us precisely when and where they hope we will want them.
In the Spark Room, Doherty calls up a screen that will be available from next month. A mobile phone user, who has given permission for service providers to track her mobile use, walks into a shopping mall at 10am. Her calendar shows she is meeting a friend to buy shoes, then have lunch. As she enters, she receives an electronic message with a voucher offering 20% off the shoes she likes — wedges — at her favourite store and a map to the shop.
Her search history reveals that she likes sushi, so just before 12.30pm, after buying the shoes, she receives another message with a voucher for a two-for-one sushi lunch offer.
While the two women are eating their California rolls, they check their phones and find that two of their Facebook friends have just entered the mall. They instant-message them and invite them for lunch. “The girls get the shoes they want for less money, they get a cheap lunch and they get to meet their friends. Everybody wins,” claimed Doherty.
The network can create and improve almost any kind of product or service, its supporters say. Take in-car satellite navigation. TomTom, the Dutch sat nav firm, has abandoned static cameras and roadside sensors to monitor traffic movements and instead now tracks the speed at which mobile phones in cars travel — via GPS and wi-fi. This not only allows the firm to spot traffic jams when they happen, it can also predict them before they happen by calculating how many cars are likely to arrive at a pinch-point at the same time.
Microsoft is working on a similar traffic management scheme in Birmingham which also tells drivers where to find a parking space.
The network promises to transform advertising, too, producing the kind of targeted adverts seen in the futuristic Tom Cruise film Minority Report. Marketeers use signals from web-enabled devices to identify different types of consumer. By tracking where they live, where they go to work and where they go to relax, they know their patterns of behaviour and get an idea of what they earn. That makes it easier to target adverts at the people most likely to respond to them.
“We can place ads for beer on electronic billboards near bars, where we know people who drink beer go, at the time they go there and do the same with wine near wine bars at the time that wine drinkers like to go,” said Steve Ridley of Kinetic, an advertising firm.
The network is not all about business, though. Our digital footprints have social and civic uses, too. By analysing how we travel on foot, by road or on the train, town planners and transport bodies are changing the fabric of our cities.
Path Intelligence, based in Hampshire, uses phone data to help planners smooth the flow of pedestrians through railway stations, airports and shopping centres. Rather than relying on snapshot surveys, it can analyse the real-time flows of real people. The network also helps doctors and health professionals: search engines, notably Google, are already using web searches to help health authorities predict the spread of viruses such as swine flu. People are more likely to search for the symptoms of the illness on the internet before they visit their doctor, goes the logic. A sudden spike in searches for swine flu symptoms in a particular location might indicate an imminent outbreak.
In Portland, Oregon, doctors monitor elderly people who live alone via mobile phone. The patients carry their phone and the handset “learns” their daily routine. If there is a sudden marked divergence from their normal pattern, the phone alerts healthcare services that something might be wrong.
For all its apparent advantages there are several practical problems — and one serious ethical one — that might hamper the development of the network.
It depends on web-enabled mobiles with broadband services, which are expensive. Many people already complain that we are drowning in data — e-mail, text messages, social networking sites — and they will probably regard joining the network as becoming a slave to the machine and will instead choose to “go dark”.
Then there is the big issue: privacy. Many consumers will be reluctant to hand over their digital fingerprint to third parties for fear their data might be misused. Some American firms are already tracking employees’ movements and e- mail use to find out who are the most — and least — productive.
Steve Steinberg, a US technology analyst, described the network as “one of the most significant technology trends I have seen — and maybe one of the most pernicious. The social paranoia it heralds could be worse than any authoritarian bureaucracy”.
Operators say safeguards exist to protect users. The new services are “opt-in”, which means we have to agree to allow operators to monitor our web use and our location. All data is anonymised. Users are identified by a string of numbers, not by name.
Will the network take off? The evidence suggests that consumers may overcome their fears about privacy. Indeed, most of us accept some form of monitoring already. We accept that Google monitors our search history because it gives us better search results. We allow Amazon to record our buying history to recommend products we might want.
James Braden, a technology analyst, said the network has all the right qualities to spread rapidly. “History shows that market-changing technologies are ones that enable a broad class of people to do what, previously, only an elite class could do,” he said.
“That’s exactly what the network does. It gives individuals and companies access to the kind of information only previously available to the likes of governments and vast corporations.”
If the analysts are right, we might soon start thinking very differently about the hyper-connected world we live in. In particular, we might rethink our view of personal data, coming to regard it more as something to be traded, like money, rather than hoarded and protected. We might even be willing to give some of it away, provided we get something in return.
As Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, put it: “Using mobile services involves a cost/benefit decision, but we think people will see that the benefits are greater than the potential cost.”
While the new laboratory of human behaviour and relations grows, the supremacy of the individual’s privacy, which has dominated the debate over technology, may give way to something new. Just as the introduction of the PC desktop with its click-and-drag files and folders transformed the way we think of organising basic information, so the network is creating a new metaphor for organising our lives.
We are never going to embrace Big Brother, but could we learn to love the little brother in our pocket? Maybe.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article6544646.ece
Thursday, 18 June 2009
Create mobile phone ads for free
Found this great free website where you can create mobile phone adverts for bluetooth marketing or mms marketing absoluty free with no adware or malware.
well worth a look:
simple-bluetooth-marketing.com
well worth a look:
simple-bluetooth-marketing.com
Monday, 15 June 2009
Capacity planning with Bluetooth Marketing
Getting the most from any Proximity Marketing campaign will depend a great deal on having a goal in mind of the number of successful downloads that you wish to achieve in any given campaign activity. In order to achieve higher rates of download, there are a number of critical success factors that should be considered:
* How well is the area branded and promoted.
* Is the content relevant and timely for the people in the Zone?
* Are the Bluetooth Transmitters placed at appropriate height, free from interference?
* Do you have enough "bandwidth" and processor capacity to cope with demand?
Build for the location.
The key benefit of Proximity Marketing over other mobile technologies is that it is time, location and content specific. Therefore well branded Zones with relevant content will always yield higher acceptance rates than long distance campaigns or purely speculative campaigning. However, even if your content and branding is in place, your campaign would still be ineffective if you do not plan for the volume of footfall in the Zone..
In the graph example, the blue pointers indicate the relative time taken for a request to appear on a users phone. Naturally a user in a heavy footfall area will have to wait longer to receive a message if there is less "bandwidth" available to serve all the phones which means it will take longer for the Zone to contact each and every phone.
By increasing the number of transmitters (spread out appropriately) in the Zone, the time taken to receive the message is reduced, thus increasing successful downloads.
In summary, many campaigns could be more successful if the zone had enough capacity to communicate with the mobile phones in it. Before you set a budget for your campaign, work out how many downloads you want to achieve considering expected footfall, required bandwidth and the environment and then how to visually promote the zone. See companies like huetouch who have networking capabilities to get more information.
Why quality and not quantity works in Bluetooth Marketing
Refine your pallet by understanding Bluetooth.
Just like fine dining an appreciation of the process, cooking and flavours behind the dish will help to identify good food from poor food. The same applies to Bluetooth technology; before investing in a product, an understanding of the science will allow you to make an informed and effective choice.
Bluetooth is designed to operate in noisy radio frequency environments, the Bluetooth radio uses a " frequency-hopping" scheme to make it robust. Bluetooth radio modules operate in an unlicensed radio band and so avoid interference from other signals by hopping to a new frequency after transmitting or receiving a packet. However, the more Bluetooth transmitters that are introduced to a physical location, the fewer available free slots there are which means that each transmitter takes longer to send and receiving data.
Similar to a highway, the more cars on the road, the fewer gaps there are to overtake and move forward. Thus THE MORE TRANSMITTERS YOU INTRODUCE, THE SLOWER THE DOWNLOAD AND DISCOVERY TIMES to phones in the Zone.
Careful design using appropriate distances and intelligent hardware can reduce the interference levels and improve performance. Huetouch working with leading hardware chip designers will use NO MORE than three Bluetooth transmitters in any one of its devices thus optimising the throughput of data and to reduce Bluetooth transmitters fighting with each other for the free "air space”.
Be very careful not to select simple USB hub devices which purport to give more than 21 simultaneous connections; packing Bluetooth transmitters together will not only reduce free slots, it will simply reduce the performance of EVERY transmitter making the unit highly ineffective.
Just like fine dining an appreciation of the process, cooking and flavours behind the dish will help to identify good food from poor food. The same applies to Bluetooth technology; before investing in a product, an understanding of the science will allow you to make an informed and effective choice.
Bluetooth is designed to operate in noisy radio frequency environments, the Bluetooth radio uses a " frequency-hopping" scheme to make it robust. Bluetooth radio modules operate in an unlicensed radio band and so avoid interference from other signals by hopping to a new frequency after transmitting or receiving a packet. However, the more Bluetooth transmitters that are introduced to a physical location, the fewer available free slots there are which means that each transmitter takes longer to send and receiving data.
Similar to a highway, the more cars on the road, the fewer gaps there are to overtake and move forward. Thus THE MORE TRANSMITTERS YOU INTRODUCE, THE SLOWER THE DOWNLOAD AND DISCOVERY TIMES to phones in the Zone.
Careful design using appropriate distances and intelligent hardware can reduce the interference levels and improve performance. Huetouch working with leading hardware chip designers will use NO MORE than three Bluetooth transmitters in any one of its devices thus optimising the throughput of data and to reduce Bluetooth transmitters fighting with each other for the free "air space”.
Be very careful not to select simple USB hub devices which purport to give more than 21 simultaneous connections; packing Bluetooth transmitters together will not only reduce free slots, it will simply reduce the performance of EVERY transmitter making the unit highly ineffective.
Friday, 29 May 2009
The biggest secret in Bluetooth Marketing is...
The biggest secret in Bluetooth Marketing is...
...reviewing the progress of your campaigns! Having the correct reporting module for Bluetooth Marketing is the difference between achieving good results and achieving great results. It is simply not enough to know how many downloads, rejections or failures you have within your campaign, its is also critical to measure how effective the Zone is performing. Only through detailed analysis of a campaign and its Zone can the full potential of Bluetooth Marketing be realized.
What to look for in reporting modules?
Many Bluetooth Marketing companies will provide log files and basic reporting, but that will not enable changes to be made to improve the Zone. With Hue-Live from Huetouch, not only are users able to see details of success, retry and failures but also: Phone Make and Model; Zone Exposure and Zone Strength all though interactive Flash graphs or downloadable exports into Microsoft Excel.
This combination of reporting enables campaign controllers to see exactly how long users were in a Zone, how strong their cell pone signal was when they interacted with the Zone, which in turn provides the details needed to adjust transmitter positions, increase throughput capacity and improve the overall effectiveness.
As Hue-live is real time and enables direct control of Zones anywhere in the world, Huetouch customers are able to constantly monitor and improve how their campaigns are running making continuing improvements to each location without waiting until the end of a campaign to see how it went, this is the secret which enables Huetouch to constantly out perform all other Bluetooth Marketing Solutions.
...reviewing the progress of your campaigns! Having the correct reporting module for Bluetooth Marketing is the difference between achieving good results and achieving great results. It is simply not enough to know how many downloads, rejections or failures you have within your campaign, its is also critical to measure how effective the Zone is performing. Only through detailed analysis of a campaign and its Zone can the full potential of Bluetooth Marketing be realized.
What to look for in reporting modules?
Many Bluetooth Marketing companies will provide log files and basic reporting, but that will not enable changes to be made to improve the Zone. With Hue-Live from Huetouch, not only are users able to see details of success, retry and failures but also: Phone Make and Model; Zone Exposure and Zone Strength all though interactive Flash graphs or downloadable exports into Microsoft Excel.
This combination of reporting enables campaign controllers to see exactly how long users were in a Zone, how strong their cell pone signal was when they interacted with the Zone, which in turn provides the details needed to adjust transmitter positions, increase throughput capacity and improve the overall effectiveness.
As Hue-live is real time and enables direct control of Zones anywhere in the world, Huetouch customers are able to constantly monitor and improve how their campaigns are running making continuing improvements to each location without waiting until the end of a campaign to see how it went, this is the secret which enables Huetouch to constantly out perform all other Bluetooth Marketing Solutions.
Blackberry and Iphone with Bluetooth Marketing
Compatibility Vs Capacity.
BlackBerries & iPhones implement their own security standards which makes it difficult to send files using Bluetooth Marketing technology. However Huetouch have developed a way of sending business cards to some Blackberries. Currently Apple and BlackBerry have chosen not to implement the OBEX profile which enables Bluetooth Marketing to work.
Another important fact is that the majority of Bluetooth Marketing campaigns are aimed predominately and the consumer market where as both BlackBerry and iPhones tend to be used by business users.
However the main issue with Bluetooth Marketing comes down to capacity not compatibility: Figures range from 40% to 60% of users having their Bluetooth enabled; this figure continues to grow as the use of Bluetooth accessories especially in cars continues to increase. The main issue with Bluetooth Marketing is not how many people have Bluetooth enabled, but how many phones a Bluetooth Zone can simultaneously service. In practice Bluetooth Zones show that if footfall is high, then the limiting factor is the available Bluetooth bandwidth for downloads rather than the capacity to reach all the available phones. In other words you may have a Zone but if there are many phones in it, not all may be serviced with a message due to lack of available bandwidth from the Bluetooth hardware. With Blackberries accounting for <3% of phones worldwide – the pertinent question is, how do you interact effectively with remaining phones which could receive Bluetooth?
Huetouch has specialized in scalable Bluetooth networks that can reach as many phones as possible in a Zone whilst having the processor capacity to effectively serve them. If only 10% of users accept a message from a campaign, Bluetooth Marketing will still stand as one of the most effective mediums for delivering mass messages due to the shear number of handsets in circulation, the loss of 3-4% due to compatibility issues makes little difference to results.
BlackBerries & iPhones implement their own security standards which makes it difficult to send files using Bluetooth Marketing technology. However Huetouch have developed a way of sending business cards to some Blackberries. Currently Apple and BlackBerry have chosen not to implement the OBEX profile which enables Bluetooth Marketing to work.
Another important fact is that the majority of Bluetooth Marketing campaigns are aimed predominately and the consumer market where as both BlackBerry and iPhones tend to be used by business users.
However the main issue with Bluetooth Marketing comes down to capacity not compatibility: Figures range from 40% to 60% of users having their Bluetooth enabled; this figure continues to grow as the use of Bluetooth accessories especially in cars continues to increase. The main issue with Bluetooth Marketing is not how many people have Bluetooth enabled, but how many phones a Bluetooth Zone can simultaneously service. In practice Bluetooth Zones show that if footfall is high, then the limiting factor is the available Bluetooth bandwidth for downloads rather than the capacity to reach all the available phones. In other words you may have a Zone but if there are many phones in it, not all may be serviced with a message due to lack of available bandwidth from the Bluetooth hardware. With Blackberries accounting for <3% of phones worldwide – the pertinent question is, how do you interact effectively with remaining phones which could receive Bluetooth?
Huetouch has specialized in scalable Bluetooth networks that can reach as many phones as possible in a Zone whilst having the processor capacity to effectively serve them. If only 10% of users accept a message from a campaign, Bluetooth Marketing will still stand as one of the most effective mediums for delivering mass messages due to the shear number of handsets in circulation, the loss of 3-4% due to compatibility issues makes little difference to results.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Size isnt everything with Bluetooth Marketing
Many Bluetooth manufacturers will talk about how their devices can reach distances of up to one kilometre, don’t be fooled! To understand why, you firstly need to know some basics...
Three Types of Bluetooth
The Bluetooth standard has three classes of radio: Class one, two and three. Class three is rarely used and only travels a short distance, Class two communicated up to 10m (most phones are class two) and Class one can transmit up to 100m (Huetouch Max, Xtra and Lite are all Class one).
Importantly a single Class one transmitter can only server up to 7 simultaneous connections i.e. talk to 7 phones, therefore a Huetouch Lite with one class one transmitter can communicate or download to 7 phones at once where as the Max can communicate to 21 phones as it has three transmitters, this capacity issue is key to understanding effective Bluetooth Marketing.
How do you get more than 10m?
However if you couple a class one device with a class two device, you can effectively increase the range of the class two device from 10m to up to a maximum of 30 meters for most phones. You can NOT reach any further than this as the RF power output from a phone is simply too low to be able to communicate back. Bluetooth Marketing is a two way conversation as the sending device needs acknowledgment from the users phone for: permission to send or ignore; the phone type and for file transfer checking to ensure the actual message has been delivered correctly. 30m is the maximum effective communications range.
Only with directional high gain antenna could any further distance be reached but the “beam” of Bluetooth would be focused into a tiny directional beam, that a phone would have to be in the exact location the antenna was pointing to communicate with it, most Bluetooth Marketing relies on reaching phones anywhere in the Zones proximity. .
Don't break the Law!
In addition in the EU there are strict wireless laws governed by the “Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment Directive” many high power transmitters from the US and other countries are simply illegal to use in Europe.
Despite the fact that simple physics makes Bluetooth Marketing to phones over distance impossible there still remains many fundamental flaws with the idea of boosting range. Imagine you could build a magic Bluetooth box that could communicate for 1000m or even 1800m to phones and imagine the phones had huge antennas and power supplies strong enough to talk back; the system would still not work. This goes back to the capacity issue highlighted earlier; if you could reach every phone in a 1000m radius your Bluetooth device simply would not have enough capacity to serve them all. Its like having a super-long network cable and running it to every home with a PC within a kilometre. The communications traffic would stop! the network would grind to a halt because there would simply be to many devices to serve. Ultimately you can only serve 21 phone at once from a Bluetooth Zone, no matter how big the Zone is.
So how can you reach more phones over larger distances?
Only through networking Zones together, with the Huetouch product range “30 Meter Zones” can be connected together giving a blanket coverage of Bluetooth Zones over any distance which importantly will have enough capacity to server the majority of phones in the area without becoming oversubscribed. Just like in computing, in the early days people believed one super computer would calculate everything just as they now believe one Bluetooth box might reach all phones, in actuality computing power increase by adding many millions of individual PC’s together on the internet, the same is true with Bluetooth networking many single “Zones” can be linked together to provide maximum capacity to communicate with many phones over large distances. Size isn’t everything capacity coverage is, this is the secret so successful large range Bluetooth Networking.
Three Types of Bluetooth
The Bluetooth standard has three classes of radio: Class one, two and three. Class three is rarely used and only travels a short distance, Class two communicated up to 10m (most phones are class two) and Class one can transmit up to 100m (Huetouch Max, Xtra and Lite are all Class one).
Importantly a single Class one transmitter can only server up to 7 simultaneous connections i.e. talk to 7 phones, therefore a Huetouch Lite with one class one transmitter can communicate or download to 7 phones at once where as the Max can communicate to 21 phones as it has three transmitters, this capacity issue is key to understanding effective Bluetooth Marketing.
How do you get more than 10m?
However if you couple a class one device with a class two device, you can effectively increase the range of the class two device from 10m to up to a maximum of 30 meters for most phones. You can NOT reach any further than this as the RF power output from a phone is simply too low to be able to communicate back. Bluetooth Marketing is a two way conversation as the sending device needs acknowledgment from the users phone for: permission to send or ignore; the phone type and for file transfer checking to ensure the actual message has been delivered correctly. 30m is the maximum effective communications range.
Only with directional high gain antenna could any further distance be reached but the “beam” of Bluetooth would be focused into a tiny directional beam, that a phone would have to be in the exact location the antenna was pointing to communicate with it, most Bluetooth Marketing relies on reaching phones anywhere in the Zones proximity. .
Don't break the Law!
In addition in the EU there are strict wireless laws governed by the “Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment Directive” many high power transmitters from the US and other countries are simply illegal to use in Europe.
Despite the fact that simple physics makes Bluetooth Marketing to phones over distance impossible there still remains many fundamental flaws with the idea of boosting range. Imagine you could build a magic Bluetooth box that could communicate for 1000m or even 1800m to phones and imagine the phones had huge antennas and power supplies strong enough to talk back; the system would still not work. This goes back to the capacity issue highlighted earlier; if you could reach every phone in a 1000m radius your Bluetooth device simply would not have enough capacity to serve them all. Its like having a super-long network cable and running it to every home with a PC within a kilometre. The communications traffic would stop! the network would grind to a halt because there would simply be to many devices to serve. Ultimately you can only serve 21 phone at once from a Bluetooth Zone, no matter how big the Zone is.
So how can you reach more phones over larger distances?
Only through networking Zones together, with the Huetouch product range “30 Meter Zones” can be connected together giving a blanket coverage of Bluetooth Zones over any distance which importantly will have enough capacity to server the majority of phones in the area without becoming oversubscribed. Just like in computing, in the early days people believed one super computer would calculate everything just as they now believe one Bluetooth box might reach all phones, in actuality computing power increase by adding many millions of individual PC’s together on the internet, the same is true with Bluetooth networking many single “Zones” can be linked together to provide maximum capacity to communicate with many phones over large distances. Size isn’t everything capacity coverage is, this is the secret so successful large range Bluetooth Networking.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Schools across the Midlands could be avoiding disruption from the snow by using SMS technology.
Solihull based texting company txttouch is offering a free service to schools to inform parents of school closures in winter months. Their Managing Director, Nick Maguire has offered this services after learning from the media about the chaos caused by bad weather conditions for schools in the area.
The service will enable parents to know immediately that for whatever reason the school has to close for the day, it will save a lot of time and stress.
Txttouch MD Nick Maguire said “I have a foolproof system for schools to use the parents mobiles as a way of informing them immediately, that the school is closed for the day”
Txttouch works by inviting parents to join their schools texting databases - so in the event of a school closing, the school can send out one text message and it will reach each parent instantly, informing them of the decision.
Txttouch Chairman Mike Harris said "We believe that we can assist the local economy through this difficult time, by offering our services for free, enabling parents to be better informed on their children schooling, which in turn will impact on child care, reducing disruption to both schools and the workplace, which could save vital time and money during this credit crunch."
Friday, 23 January 2009
How many people have their Bluetooth switched on?
Figures range from 40% to 60% of users having their Bluetooth enabled; this figure continues to grow as the use of Bluetooth accessories especially in cars continues to increase. The main issue with Bluetooth Marketing is NOT how many people have Bluetooth enabled, but how many phones a Zone can simultaneously service. In practice Bluetooth Zones show that if footfall is high, then the limiting factor is the Bluetooth bandwidth available for downloads rather than enabling more phones.
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Bluetooth takes a bite back at the Credit Crunch?
Marketing agencies more than most companies tremble when the word “recession” hits the headlines, as businesses seek to reduce costs often starting with their marketing budgets. For example Law firms spend an average of 1.7% of their revenue on marketing many with external Agencies, however most are expected to cut their marketing budgets in 2009 by an average 11%.
According to IDC’s Rich Vancil events and traditional-media advertising will be hit the hardest in the Technology sector because of the global downturn. The same is true of the Automotive industry with Nissan withdrawing from the Detroit Auto Show in 2009 and General Motors slashing its marketing budget as it seeks government financing.
How can marketing agencies do “more with less” and continue to justify the value they bring to their clients, at this time? As always it comes through creative thinking and offering a fresh perspective to the client in order to help achieve their goals, which is why many Agencies are considering advertising on mobile phones as their response to the crisis.
With more mobile telephone contracts existing in the UK than actual citizens and over 261m subscribers in the US, mobile phones continue to be part of everybody’s day to day life, and large brands will follow the masses ‘Strategy analytics’ predicts mobile advertising spend to rise to $14.4bn in 2011. However the newest trend in this area is to use the often overlooked wireless technology, Bluetooth, which comes on every new phone as a way of promoting a campaign for free.
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing as it is called, does not require telephone numbers or use cellular networks for sending messages, removing the cost and complexity traditionally incurred with mobile marketing. With “Plug and Play” products now specifically designed for Agencies, traditional campaigns can easily incorporate Bluetooth Marketing without the need for technical know-how.
A leading light in providing agencies with Bluetooth Zones is market leader Huetouch, Nicholas Maguire their VP for Business Development said “As companies demand more out of diminishing marketing budgets, Bluetooth Advertising is giving extraordinary results as it continues to replace traditional leafleting, poster and billboard advertising.” He continues, “Everybody has a mobile phone, the ability to target a specific demographic at an appropriate time in an exact location, makes Bluetooth Marketing a powerful consumer targeting mechanism.”
It is not only the Bluetooth industry making these claims, the Public sector are rolling our Bluetooth Zones as a way of contacting citizens. From Drink Driving campaigns by Police forces to raising awareness of sexually transmitted diseases amongst clubbers, by the NHS.
Even the most effected sector in the credit crunch is finding hope in Bluetooth Marketing. Alexanders an independent Estate Agents in Wales, ran a Bluetooth Marketing Campaign for the launch of a new seaside apartment development, The Bluetooth Zone was in place for just three days and during this time 1,739 mobile phones were sent a free message, resulting in 50 enquiries, 20 viewings and 2 apartment sales!
Yes the Credit crunch is taking a large bite out of marketing budgets, but savvy agencies will use this time to expand their client base by moving from traditional areas such as print, exhibitions and events, and migrating their skills to the one area that is seeing an increased share of all our personal expenditure despite the downturn, the omnipresent cell phone.
According to IDC’s Rich Vancil events and traditional-media advertising will be hit the hardest in the Technology sector because of the global downturn. The same is true of the Automotive industry with Nissan withdrawing from the Detroit Auto Show in 2009 and General Motors slashing its marketing budget as it seeks government financing.
How can marketing agencies do “more with less” and continue to justify the value they bring to their clients, at this time? As always it comes through creative thinking and offering a fresh perspective to the client in order to help achieve their goals, which is why many Agencies are considering advertising on mobile phones as their response to the crisis.
With more mobile telephone contracts existing in the UK than actual citizens and over 261m subscribers in the US, mobile phones continue to be part of everybody’s day to day life, and large brands will follow the masses ‘Strategy analytics’ predicts mobile advertising spend to rise to $14.4bn in 2011. However the newest trend in this area is to use the often overlooked wireless technology, Bluetooth, which comes on every new phone as a way of promoting a campaign for free.
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing as it is called, does not require telephone numbers or use cellular networks for sending messages, removing the cost and complexity traditionally incurred with mobile marketing. With “Plug and Play” products now specifically designed for Agencies, traditional campaigns can easily incorporate Bluetooth Marketing without the need for technical know-how.
A leading light in providing agencies with Bluetooth Zones is market leader Huetouch, Nicholas Maguire their VP for Business Development said “As companies demand more out of diminishing marketing budgets, Bluetooth Advertising is giving extraordinary results as it continues to replace traditional leafleting, poster and billboard advertising.” He continues, “Everybody has a mobile phone, the ability to target a specific demographic at an appropriate time in an exact location, makes Bluetooth Marketing a powerful consumer targeting mechanism.”
It is not only the Bluetooth industry making these claims, the Public sector are rolling our Bluetooth Zones as a way of contacting citizens. From Drink Driving campaigns by Police forces to raising awareness of sexually transmitted diseases amongst clubbers, by the NHS.
Even the most effected sector in the credit crunch is finding hope in Bluetooth Marketing. Alexanders an independent Estate Agents in Wales, ran a Bluetooth Marketing Campaign for the launch of a new seaside apartment development, The Bluetooth Zone was in place for just three days and during this time 1,739 mobile phones were sent a free message, resulting in 50 enquiries, 20 viewings and 2 apartment sales!
Yes the Credit crunch is taking a large bite out of marketing budgets, but savvy agencies will use this time to expand their client base by moving from traditional areas such as print, exhibitions and events, and migrating their skills to the one area that is seeing an increased share of all our personal expenditure despite the downturn, the omnipresent cell phone.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Bluetooth Proximity is ideal for game players
Mobile is the future, for telecomunications, social networking and remote workers, but lets remember its not all about work, Mobile gaming is also BIG business
In-Stat says the US mobile games market is currently worth $ 1 billion and will grow to a massive $ 6.8 billion by 2013!
“The mobile gaming development industry is highly fragmented due to the wide variety of mobile operating systems, available handsets, and lack of industry standardization,” says Jill Meyers, In-Stat analyst. “This fragmentation has resulted in mobile developers and publishers making the difficult decision of spending finite resources developing games on the platforms they believe will have the best chance of success.”
From the 2000 correspondents, 29.5% is playing mobile games. 20% got their games from a different channel than their operator.
Bluetooth Marketing is the perfect distribution model for mobile content distribution especially as it can target the appropriate demographic of gamers from within a specific location. Companies can download freeware of demo versions of their games via Bluetooth with subscription and payment for full versions paid for via sms, paypal or other mobile means.
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
In-Stadium Bluetooth Proximity Marketing
What is Bluetooth Proximity Marketing?
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing is the means of pushing free content to phones or Bluetooth devices within a defined geographical location, called a “Zone.” 70% of the 900 million phones sold each year are Bluetooth enabled creating a huge market for this form of mobile marketing.
Zones cover a 100 meter radius per device, any phone or Bluetooth device (which is discoverable) entering the Zone will receive a request to download media (pictures, adverts, video, music etc) if the request is declined or ignored the Zone will not re-contact that phone, if the request is accepted the content is downloaded for free. A log of each transaction is reported from the Huetouch product in each Zone
Unlike cellular marketing such as SMS, MMS or WAP, Bluetooth is free to deliver and does not require personal information such as a mobile telephone number for the technology to work.
The Bluetooth Handset Market
The number of mobile handsets in circulation world wide is staggering (over 261m subscribers in the US and 74m in the UK alone). Though many emerging countries demand low cost, limited functionality handsets the developed world is purchasing new handsets with rich functionality at an incredible rate.
The annual number of new mobile phones shipped, which were Bluetooth-enabled surpassed the 500 million unit mark for the first time in 2007 and According to the IMS Research report, “The Worldwide Market for Bluetooth”, global Bluetooth attachment rates for mobile phones are at 46.7% in 2007, up from 40% in 2006. This figure includes regional attach rates for the Americas, EMEA and Asia at 46.4%, 51.2% and 42.7%, respectively. Notably high, the percentage of mobile phones with Bluetooth technology in North America and Western Europe has reached over 60% and 70% respectively for the first time ever.
Benefits of Proximity Marketing
Given the rapid growth in Mobile Marketing and Bluetooth adoption, Bluetooth Proximity
Marketing has many benefits:
• It is free for handset owners to receive downloads.
• It is quicker to download than MMS and other cellular solutions.
• It does not require the use of Cell / Mobile networks - thus incurs no transactional costs.
• It is standards based and legal (it operates in the unlicensed, 2.4 GHz ISM band).
• It is measurable and can show clear Return on Investment (RoI) for Mobile campaigns.
• It can be targeted to a specific location, group or event at any time.
• It is low cost, requiring only capital outlay from transmitters and software.
• It does not capture mobile numbers or access data on handsets thus is secure.
• It offers opt-in and opt-out of messages as part of the standard.
Bluetooth Stadium Applications
In Stadium Bluetooth Marketing can be used to provide spectators with team multimedia content. Team sheets, ticket offers, videos and announcements. Sport clubs can also capatilize on unutilized sponsor potential in including new media providing advertisements such as cinema releases, music offerings and local events.
For more details on Stadiums and Bluetooth Marketing visit www.stadiummanager.com
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