I’ll let Charlie Mydlarz, the man behind the project explain how it works in the video below.

Introduction to Sound Around You from Martin Bryant on Vimeo.

Things haven’t turned out quite so bad as the might have though. Mobile Industry Review founder Ewan MacCleod is still writing his occasional scathing rants over at ewan.net and now the rest of the core team have launched their own new site, The Really Mobile Project.

Like MIR before it, The Really Mobile Project offers a combination of news, reviews and analysis in both written and video format. The team, James Whatley, Dan Lane, Ben Smith and newcomer Vikki Chowney, have put together a great looking site packed with content at launch. Highlights on day one include Vikki’s review of the Nokia E75 and Dan’s review of the excellent iPhone game Flight Control. Former MIR contributor Jonathan Jensen offers a written defence of the iPhone against claims from tech geeks that it just doesn’t live up to its hype.

‘Proper shows’, instead of the current video diary clips, are promised in the future. It’s definitely a site to keep your eye on if you’re into all things mobile. Their brilliant Wordpress theme also reminds me that I need to get a facelift sorted out for 14sandwiches in time for its first birthday next month. More on that soon!

UPDATED: See below.

Vodafone, the biggest mobile network in the UK, yesterday launched what appears to be a ginormous hint that they’ll be carrying the new version of the iPhone this summer. http://portal.beta.vodafone.com/ points to a Vodafone-branded RSS reader service perfectly formatted for the iPhone.

At first I was skeptical. Looking at the portal on the iPhone (screenshot below) there’s no specific mention of the iPhone at all, but view it on a computer and there’s no doubt this is aimed specifically at iPhone users. There’s even a flash-based demo that explicitly mentions the iPhone.

One of two things is happening here. Either:-

- O2’s exclusivity agreement for the iPhone in the UK is about to expire and Vodafone are gearing up to be either the new exclusive carrier, or one of a number of non-exclusive carriers. It’s possible, but with Apple’s love of secrecy would Vodafone let such a huge hint leak out and risk the rage of the boys in Cupertino?

Or:-

- Vodafone are actually launching a portal aimed at touchscreen devices in general. They already have a number of touchscreen phones on sale and the HTC Magic and Nokia N97 are both set to be big summer releases for the network. What’s the best way to get people excited about something as dull as an RSS reader? Launching a beta version geared towards iPhone users (and excitable bloggers who’ll talk about it) could be just the ticket.

So, it’s probably a little soon to get excited but there’s no denying that the iPhone on Vodafone would be a wonderful thing. Their network coverage is far superior to O2’s meaning more people would be able to enjoy the phone’s HSDPA goodness. At present my iPhone is often stuck on a weak GPRS signal – shocking when you consider I live in a huge conurbation.

UPDATE: Terence Eden from Vodafone has clarified the whole matter on Twitter. It turns out this is a portal aimed at all Vodafone territories, including those such as Portugal and Greece where they are the exclusive iPhone carrier. The portal automatically shows localised content (so the BBC, Top Gear and The Register are among the UK defaults). It works on a number of phones currently supported by Vodafone, including Nokia’s N95 8GB.

So this is a portal aimed at a wide range of phones and it doesn’t necessarily mean Vodafone will be getting the next iPhone. My hunch is that it will remain an O2 exclusive for at least one more year. Still, congratulations on a nifty RSS utility, Vodafone!

UPDATE 2: Terence has commented on this post below with more details.

(Thanks to Ricky Chotai).

Could AudioBoo soon be available on other mobile platforms, like S60 used on the evergreen Nokia 95?

AudioBoo has caught the imagination of a lot of people in the month since its launch. The ability to upload audio in podcast form straight from your phone to the internet is very powerful and I wrote a couple of excited pieces about it when I first signed up (here and here).

The Guardian has legitimised AudioBoo’s use in a professional journalistic context through the interviews they uploaded using the service from the G20 protests in London a couple of weeks ago and at today’s Hillsborough Disaster memorial service in Liverpool (see here). Rory Cellan-Jones at the BBC has been using it too, even going so far as to upload reports to AudioBoo before they’re transmitted by BBC News.

So, if it’s so useful why are more news outlets not utilising it? Part of the reason could be that it’s only currently available on the Apple iPhone. Most journalists I’ve met are equipped with a Nokia N95, a handset that has firmly established itself as “the ultimate journo-phone” over the past couple of years thanks to its good quality camera and solid video capability.

It’s likely that many of these journalists would jump at the chance to incorporate AudioBoo into their work. The problem is that newspapers aren’t really having the best time financially at the moment and are unlikely to want to buy their staff iPhones. There is a phone number anyone can call to record an AudioBoo. Call the UK number 0203 3936430 and instant AudioBoo goodness is yours. Unfortunately anything recorded this way is attributed to a generic user account so it can’t be easily found by potential listeners and advanced features like iTunes subscriptions to your recordings aren’t possible.

Meanwhile, the team at AudioBoo are too busy to port their app to the S60 operating system used by Nokia’s smartphones. In an exchange over Twitter this afternoon I asked AudioBoo team member Matt Waring if an S60 version was on the cards and he replied that they were busy concentrating on the service’s infrastructure and user interface at the moment. He did throw a very interesting bone though – “we could release the API if someone is willing to develop”. In other words, it seems the AudioBoo API is available to anyone with the skills to develop an app for other mobile platforms.

Since mentioning this on Twitter earlier, a Blackberry developer has asked me for more details so there’s obviously interest out there. If you’re interested in bringing the brilliance of AudioBoo to other mobile platforms like S60 or Blackberry get in touch with Matt Waring. You can find him on Twitter where his username is @mattwaring.

Let’s hope some developers take up the challenge as it would be great to see a wider group of people able to harness AudioBoo’s power.

[Image Credit: KhE on Flickr]

The Holy Grail? Good quality audio recording on a smartphone.

Mobile phones have come a long way in the past five years. From the basic communications devices of yore, they have evolved into what Nokia calls “Multimedia Computers” capable of web access, good quality photos, live video broadcasting and much, much, more. There is, however, a chink in the smartphone’s armour. Something that seems to be overlooked but is really holding some users back – sound recording quality.

You don’t need a great quality microphone if you’re making a phone call. Once your voice has been digitally compressed and shoved across a mobile network or two all that really matters is that the person on the other end can understand it. However, when you’re recording a video or using your phone as an audio recorder (both things many phones can do with ease these days) that cheap mic starts to look like a false economy.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of the problem.

• This weekend All About Symbian published their thoughts about their first look at one of the the biggest mobile phone launches of the year, the Samsung Omnia HD. The short version? It’s an impressive handset which can record HD-quality video, let down by… poor quality audio recording.

• Last night on Twitter, Julian Tait mentioned that a group conversation he had recorded in his Nokia N95 was let down by… poor quality audio recording. The sound dropped out when people far from the mic talked thanks to the way the Automatic Gain Control works.

• Blogger James Whatley recorded a solo podcast last week using nothing but his N95. I downloaded it as Whatley always has something interesting to say. It was certainly a worthwhile listen but it was difficult to listen to because it was let down by… poor quality audio recording.

The problem is that manufacturers aren’t putting enough emphasis on microphone quality. Why should they? Not a lot of people prioritise audio recording. The thing is, as the video quality increases (how long before the first full-HD 1080p phone comes along?) the shoddy sound is going to become even more apparent.

That said, there’s only so much that can be done with the internal mic on a phone. It has to be small so the quality’s not going to amazing. Why not allow external mics then? There’s nothing to stop an external mic being developed for more phones. In fact, Nokia created one for Reuters journalists to use with their standard-issue N95s. Although this isn’t commercially available you can build a mic kit for the N95 following this guide from Shelbinator.com.

It shouldn’t be that hard though. If a smartphone really is a ‘Multimedia Computer’ surely it shouldn’t be difficult to connect a mic and get to grips with some serious recording? Come on manufacturers, step up your game!

[Image credit: Steve Garfield on Flickr]

After that it was on to the ‘Unconference’ sessions. I did a presentation about ‘Creating and Sharing with a Mobile Phone’. I was a little worried that it would be a bit too much like preaching to the converted but the people there, including journalists and academics, seemed to enjoy my introduction to services like Shozu, Qik and Google Latitude. We also got on to talking about the ethics of mobile video broadcasting – something I’ve discussed here before.

I created my presentation with Google Docs and you can view the whole thing here. Feel free to post comments and questions below.

Also, Sarah Hartley from the Manchester Evening News streamed bits of my presentation using Qik, including this bit – about Qik, funnily enough.

Is a Nokia netbook like this Asus Eee PC on the cards?

Edinburgh’s most excitable blogger, Ewan Spence, posted an enthusiastic piece on All About Symbian this morning suggesting that it really would be a good idea if Nokia released a netbook. His argument is that a Nokia netbook would give the company’s range of Ovi-branded web services the boost they need to achieve mainstream adoption.

There’s no doubt that Nokia could produce a netbook if they chose to. They certainly know how to design good quality hardware and a customised Linux install featuring deep integration to Ovi’s contacts, media-sharing, email and other services would be great way of encouraging people to get their computer and phone working together to enhance their online experience.

The problem is that Ovi is, in the main, a closed-off system for Nokia users only. If I use Google or Yahoo online services I know there’s a good chance my friends use them too. It doesn’t matter what phone they’re using, I know my friends will (eventually) be able to become Google Latitude members, for example. If I’m using Nokia’s Ovi Contacts service, which does a similar thing, I know I’ll only ever get my Nokia-owning friends on board.

A Nokia netbook OS would encourage market segmentation at a time when most people are pushing in a more open direction. Imagine buying a Nokia netbook, discovering you need a Nokia phone to complement it and then discovering that your friends will need a Nokia phone to make the most of the services as well. It just won’t work.

So, a Nokia netbook OS would be a great fit for a Nokia fan but it would just frustrate many newcomers. It could have been a mass-market contender at one point but now its clear that the most successful online services will be those that allow anyone, regardless of the brand of computer or phone they’re using, to join in.

Web services that allow us to share information whether we’re using a computer or a phone are undoubtedly the future but Nokia’s ‘Our Customers Only’ approach is not the best way to do it.

[Image credit: Jean-no]

Bliin in action

This week much has been made of Google’s new Latitude service that allows you to share your current location with your Gmail contacts using the latest version of Google Maps For Mobile. While there has been a lot of hype (such as ReadWriteWeb’s piece here) it’s a simple but useful service that probably won’t gain great traction for a while as many people are concerned about  the privacy implications of sharing their location online. I’ve looked at location-based services from Nokia here recently but did you know that there’s something way ahead of Google and Nokia’s efforts? You can sign up and use it today and yet very few people ever mention it.

Bliin is a Dutch service that combines the location sharing of Latitude with the journey recording and media sharing of Nokia viNe. It’s available across a wide range  of mobile platforms including S60 and the iPhone. Where Bliin really shines is the way you can explore the world map, zooming in and out, looking at geotagged photographs, last recorded locations of registered users and… get this… the live movements of anyone currently sharing their journeys! You can actually watch people move around on the map!

While Google Latitude and Nokia Sports Tracker/ viNe offer live sharing of journeys, that’s on a user-by-user basis. With Bliin you get to see a living world of people sharing their journeys in real time on the same map. At the moment, aside from snooping on other users and recording your journeys on the map that’s all that there is to Bliin but the potential of the service is immense. Location-based gaming on Bliin would be amazing, for example.

Despite this potential, Bliin has currently quite a small community of users. This morning I appeared to be the only person using the service in the whole UK. So, why is no-one talking about Bliin? Well, they’re a small European company for a start. If they were based in Silicon Valley they’d  get a lot more attention simply thanks to the community they’d be part of. Then there’s money; while they do have funding, it’s nothing compared to the financial might of Google or their fellow Europeans at Nokia.

It’s clear that Bliin have some work to do. Even if they grabbed the attention of Techcrunch and other important tech blogs the service lacks the integration with your address book that Google and Nokia have at the core of their offerings. It may be cool to watch people moving around on a map in real time but unless you know them where’s the context? It’s much more useful and fun looking at people’s locations on Google Latitude because they’re people in my address book. Why do I care that some unknown person is walking round some foreign city?

The true potential in Bliin, then, may not be in social networking. The big boys already know who your friends are and sticking them on a map is child’s play.  No, Bliin with its multiuser ‘birdseye view’ on the lives of its users could have a future in corporate applications. It could offer itself as a white label solution for a wide range of solutions from real-time gaming to scientific studies of peoples’ movements.

Alternatively, Google could buy Bliin and integrate the service into Google Maps. That would be a brilliant solution, although based on Google’s track record with services like Jaiku and Feedburner they would probably just let the service rot away, unloved, if they did buy it.

If you’re interested in location services you really should give Bliin a try, if only for the perverse pleasure  of tracking strangers in the street. Now, if only this thing had a live camera!

MMS is an app that allows UK-based iPhone users on the O2 network to receive and send photographs using MMS as they could on any other phone. Until now O2 has sent a text alert to users when they’re sent an MMS. Users then had to visit a website and enter a PIN code in order to view the picture they’d been sent. A load of hassle, I’m sure you’ll agree. This new app, available now from the iPhone app store, makes thing a whole lot easier. By entering your phone number and PIN number into the app you’ll always be able to access your received messages as soon as you get the text alert from O2.

It gets better though. MMS, developed by Ed Lea and Ross McKillop, actually allows users to send MMS messages from their phones. It works seamlessly, with full integration with the iPhone’s camera and gallery. There is, however a slight problem here. In order to send messages, the app uses the developer’s own MMS gateway and charges for sending. Messages can be bought via Paypal from within the app at a rate equivalent to 39p per message – a lot more expensive than MMS messages through mobile phone networks, which usually cost around the 25p mark. Still, if you’re desperate to send MMS messages from you iPhone it’s a price worth paying.

One of the reviews of the app on the iTunes Store suggest that because the developer needs users’ phone numbers and O2 PIN codes that they may be harvesting them for nefarious reasons. The PIN codes are actually useless unless they want to look at your MMS messages (why would they?) as MMS retrieval is all the PIN is used for. The only way this app could be being used to harvest data is for the combination of your phone number and other contact data (such as home address) which they’ll get when you buy an MMS bundle from them via Paypal. You could say that about any other online service that asks for payment by Paypal though so there’s no real reason to be particularly concerned here.

The app still lacks the less used aspects of MMS, namely video and audio attachments, but for most people MMS will be all they’ll need. Unfortunately, because the app uses O2’s MMS PIN system to work iPhone users on other networks will have to wait for local developers to work out a fix for them. It’s pretty clear that since Apple has approved this app they’ve no plans to bring MMS to the iPhone firmware any time soon.

It’s a similar situation with Amazon’s iPhone app (currently only available in the USA). You can take a photo of an item and Amazon will tell you they sell the item for less. A couple of taps on the screen later and you’ve ordered it. This solution has the advantage of not even requiring a barcode to be on display in-store.

It’s easy to see why commentators are declaring this the death of the humble shopkeeper. As if an economic downturn and overheads not faced by online competitors weren’t enough, bricks-and-mortar shops now face the real possibility of being reduced to being showrooms for their internet-based rivals. Once this technology gets into the hands of mainstream phone users it could usher in a bargain-hunting free-for-all that will last until the last shop has turned out its lights for the final time.

Does it really have to be this way? While some shops may well disappear there’s a real opportunity for enterprising retailers to alter the way they operate and capitalise on their newly empowered customers. Let’s take a look at one retailer that may be in threatened and how they could turn the tide in their favour.

Game is the UK’s biggest chain of videogame stores. The risk to Game is that armed with apps like Amazon and ShopSavvy customers could browse the racks, maybe try a game on the demo machines in-store and then order the game cheaper online.  Game could tackle this head on by launching new low-overheads ‘express’ stores with small staff requirements and lots of copies of a small range of only the most popular games on each platform.

With lower operating costs they could offer their stock at internet prices. Sure, they wouldn’t offer a great deal of customer choice but look at the games charts; unlike music charts which change frequently, games charts tend to move more slowly. As most gamers buy only a handful of games per year, stocking only the top ten games on each platform won’t necessarily be a big problem.

By cutting costs and prices and only selling the most popular items these stores would suddenly have the upper hand on their online rivals. Why buy online and wait at least 24 hours to play the game when you can pick it up for roughly the same price and play it today?

This model could be applied to lots of other retail areas from electronics to furniture. If you want wide choice, look online to the giants with their enormous warehouses, if you want something popular quickly your local shop has it covered. It’ll be a reduced level of importance for shops in people’s lives but it’ll mean shops survive and our High Streets remain busy.

So, barcode scanners and their like might not mean the death of bricks-and-mortar shops after all. That doesn’t mean that all will be fine for traditional retailers though. Game, for example, have more to fear from digital distribution than barcode readers. Let’s face it, you can downsize and specialise all you like but when people don’t need a physical product in order to enjoy their entertainment they suddenly don’t need that Saturday trip to the shopping centre. That’s a whole different problem…