Mobile video hits Edinburgh Festival

With thousands of shows to choose from, it is not easy picking something to watch during the Edinburgh Festival.

But a new wireless video service is offering visitors a new way to use their mobile phones to sift through what is on offer. Video clips from performers at the festival are available, together with reviews from critics, and festival goers do not need a third-generation mobile phone to watch them.

The service, which is available for free, provides an indicator of how people could interact with large events like this in the future. Mobile networks have been offering reviews and information via text message for some time now, but this service takes that idea one step further.

More –> BBC Online

U.S. late to join text-messaging party – Americans, however, are ready for next high-tech wave to hit.

For a nation that prides itself on technological leadership, the U.S. was surprisingly late to the text messaging game. But it is making up for lost time.

The number of texts sent in the U.S. is expected to increase dramatically from 8.1 billion messages in 2002, according to technology research group Ovum. Such figures are often disputed and hard to collate, but experts say about one billion texts are sent in the U.S. per month.

The watershed came when AT&T Wireless, the nation’s second-largest mobile phone group by revenues, sponsored text voting for the reality TV series American Idol. More than 7.5 million American Idol-related texts were sent during the contest, and a third of the senders had never texted before. The final was the largest single text-messaging event handled by a mobile phone carrier in the world.

Half of European Marketers Using SMS

A Forrester survey has found that half of all European direct marketers now use SMS. Incredible as that rate of adoption is, however, the research firm predicted the medium will remain in growth mode for two more years, as usage increases by 50 percent and campaign spending doubles.

Conducted jointly with the Federation of European Direct Marketing, the online survey of direct marketers is the second of its kind — the first having been taken 18 months ago. Comparing results of the two polls, the market researcher found that in addition to its dramatic rate of adoption, SMS has been picked up by new sectors. Whereas 94 percent of SMS marketers polled in the first study hailed from the telecom or media sectors, today their slice of the pie is only 39 percent.

Additionally, the size of firms deploying the technology is shrinking: Adopters employ 1,500 people on average, and Forrester predicts that future users of SMS will employ 1,100.