Naviblog Now!

Shifting to my other blog & twitter

2010-03-31T13:38:00.003+01:00

Hi all, long time no see! There is a lot of information in this blog of mine that goes back to 2005 and that I haven't yet got round to porting over to my newer blogs, but it makes sense to point them out here for those that are still subscribing to this blog and its feeds (you know who you are)!

- Most active with a few posts a day: My Latest Tweets! account at http://twitter.com/mandalikhalesi

- My up-to-date & public LinkedIn profile at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mandalikhalesi

- My new blog now turned videofave blog on blogspot.com at http://anewmaninlondon.blogspot.com

- Friendfeed account that merges all my various feeds together at http://friendfeed.com/mandalikhalesi

- Google profile at mandalikhalesi.mk

Hope to catch up with you soon!
MK

New developments in space comms

2009-02-11T14:01:00.006Z

A fascinating interview of Vint Cerf a few months old already, but interesting in that people over at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the States are developing a new telecommunications standard for probe-to-probe and space probe internet communications. This new protocol called "DTN" is specifically designed for situations where there is no telco infrastructure and bad latency issues, such as outer space, underwater etc. Some tests have been carried out over the last few years, naturally in a military contingency context by people like Internet grandpa DARPA, but also with applications to the international space station in 2009 although the article doesn't mention when.

According to NASA's website, the goal is to get these up and running and tested by 2011. According to the multi-governmental Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems December newsletter, the first tests with the International Space Station using this protocol were successful last November, although from one well-defined, well-equipped station to another, this hardly proves much. The ground-based testing by DARPA looks good for now in controlled earth-based environments. The next two years promise much in terms of real-world applicability.

60% of world spend a mobile xmas

2008-12-24T08:28:00.007Z

As announced on this mobile blog almost 3 months ago to the day, the UN's head of telecommunications' statement that 60% of the world will be connected to a mobile phone by the end of the year has come true.

According to 3G Americas and reported by Fierce Wireless today, the historic milestone of 4 billion mobile phone users worldwide was passed this December 2008. While Africa was the continent of the mobile in 2008, it looks like South America and the Caribbean will be the most vibrant areas in terms of market growth in 2009... wow! I actually said "market growth" and "vibrant": never thought I'd be saying that among the doom and gloom of 2008!

But I guess that's what it's all about: there are nuggets out there, it is up to us to dig them up and enjoy the opportunities! And with that, I would like to wish all my readers a very happy xmas... looking forward to 2009!

A word from the man

2008-12-03T12:44:00.001Z

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better." - Jeff Bezos

All this time

2008-11-02T13:24:00.003Z

Food for thought...
(click to view video)

JUMA to connect Japan and UK mobile worlds

2008-10-20T09:48:00.006+01:00

Naviblog announced today the creation of the Japan UK Mobiletech Association, or JUMA for short. The association was created to respond to a need for a bridge for technology transfer and collaboration, as both a business necessity and a byproduct of the current credit crunch and recessionary pressures.

"Shuttling between London and Tokyo on a regular basis, entrepreneurs and mobile developers always ask me how things are being done better on the other side," says Naviblog Chairman Mandali Khalesi, "I feel that the mobile development community both from the heartland of advanced mobile services in Japan and from the UK's Europe-leading mobile success stories have much to learn from each other as industry business models converge for mobile applications, content and services. Currently there is just not enough information out there. When the developed world moves into a recession, be it light or sustained, small innovative mobile companies will be looking to collaborate or partner with other companies, transfer or license out technology, share ideas, or start working on joint products."

In the coming weeks, JUMA Chair Mandali Khalesi will approach a select group of UK-based and Japan-based companies and government entities to define the terms of a valuable charter, and already has the informal support of a number of industry organisations in both London and Tokyo. This round of discussions may lead to a "Mobile Mission" to Japan early next year, offering UK companies high visibility at industry events, face-to-face business meetings, and venture capital connections into the lucrative $100bn Japanese mobile market. Further updates will be made on this website. For further information, contact Naviblog at pr[at]naviblog.co.uk.

Naviblog unveils new logo

2008-10-13T21:14:00.003+01:00

The new Naviblog logo for 2009 with its three triangles - connecting business, mobile networks and search engines - was unveiled on the Naviblog UK website ahead of its generalised release on company letterhead and other promotional material. The previous logo was found to be too complex and difficult to remember.

Since the company's establishment in 2005, Naviblog's product had evolved from an easy-to-use location-based social networking software, to "a universal software platform for businesses to publish and promote location-based mobile services worldwide", and a new logo was needed to convey that vision.

A vision statement, to be announced later this November, will outline Naviblog's strategy for 2009 in both Asia and Europe... stay tuned!

Naviblog is Prime Mover at CEATEC 2008

2008-09-30T22:25:00.008+01:00

Naviblog will launch ExpoNavi with the mobile service development company to address the prestigious CEATEC Japan 2008 Conference – the largest technology exhibition in Asia.

Naviblog, which develops technology for mobile marketing and mobile navigation, will launch ExpoNavi, a mobile solution for anyone armed with a mobile phone and searching around an exhibition hall for the exhibitors they want to see and to browse others they may not know about. The technology allows users to bookmark the locations on the optional PC site and send to the mobile to browse when on the spot. See the product factsheet here.

An early version of ExpoNavi has been very popular with CEATEC attendees in the past and Naviblog is again managing the conference exhibitor search service, allowing users to find any of the 800+ companies exhibiting, by name, hall or keyword. ExpoNavi is now being launched as a stand-alone solution at the conference where it has had such success.

Speaking of the conference, Mandali Khalesi said today,

“We are closely involved with CEATEC 2008, both as technology providers and as part of the tradeshow community. I am very much looking forward to meeting with colleagues and partners and hearing about the latest developments within the tech world, as well as showing off ExpoNavi.”

Naviblog’s technology is applied in providing mobile marketing and mobile navigation services to the Japanese and UK business-to-business markets, especially in the tourism, food & drink, and tradeshow verticals. Naviblog specialises in mobile 2.0 related technology development and services, and other offerings include Naviblog Basic, Naviblog Enterprise, and Naviblog Voice, which uses speech recognition technology to eliminate the need for physical text input when creating location-based blogs.

CEATEC Japan 2008 takes place from 30th September until 4th October. The conference will focus on the many new capabilities and services made possible by digital convergence and their impact on businesses seeking new markets created by the convergence of devices, hardware, software, services and content.

Naviblog is supported by Gateway2Investment (g2i). Programme Manager Ian Shields said,

“I am delighted to hear that Naviblog will have such a leading role at CEATEC 2008. Speaking at, launching a product and providing technical support for a major conference such as this gives the Naviblog team many opportunities to develop new relationships and demonstrate their products.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

About Naviblog

Naviblog (Chairman: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo/London-based mobile technology firm providing mobile services to the Japanese and UK business-to-business markets, especially in the tourism, food & drink, and tradeshow verticals, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile services platform.
Within 18 months of startup, the company had developed 6 industry-first mobile services including its location-based mobile search product "Naviblog 2.0", for which Naviblog received the Red Herring Top 100 award in 2006. Featured in dozens of publications, and receiving industry awards in both Japan and Europe in 2007 and 2008, Naviblog is tipped to become the first universal software for publishing mobile services worldwide, regardless of handset, geography or mobile phone carrier.

Contact: Mandali Khalesi Naviblog UK info[at]naviblog.co.uk

About CEATEC Japan 2008
Since the inaugural event in 2000, CEATEC JAPAN has matured as a show conveying information about the most advanced IT and electronics technologies from Japan to the world. Our mission is to remain a high-value-added, flexible and efficient show, to keep our eye on the rapidly changing digital industry and markets, and to become a vital element of the global IT and electronics industries. To provide visible results that contribute to the businesses of exhibitors, CEATEC JAPAN is working from its firm foundations to make the most of its unique qualities and strengthen business support.

Contact: www.ceatec.com/2008/en/conference

About g2i
gateway2investment (g2i) is the highly successful investment readiness programme, backed by the London Development Agency, delivering early-stage private investments to exciting young London-based businesses. The programme is delivered by a consortium led by the financial and business advisory firm Grant Thornton UK LLP and comprises E-Synergy, Pembridge Partners, Quotec, The Innovatory and Library House. g2i has worked with over 600 start-up and early-stage London businesses, helping them secure more than £26m in equity funding, a figure that is continuing to grow. g2i supports businesses across the design and creative, life sciences, emerging technologies, energy and environment, ICT, food and drink, value added manufacturing and retail sectors, providing the equity investment community, Venture Capital and Business Angels, with high-calibre investment opportunities. www.g2i.org

Contact: Ian Shields Grant Thornton/g2i

Naviblog's Mandali featured in prestigious IOD magazine

2008-09-27T20:35:00.005+01:00

The world's oldest professional director's association, the Institute of Directors, magazine featured Naviblog Chairman Mandali Khalesi in its recent Autumn/Winter London branch issue. The article was referring to the new IOD member reception earlier this year which allowed Naviblog to mingle with other new members of the 100+ year organisation, from all walks of life, ethnic backgrounds and convictions.

"It was a surprise, to say the least", said Chairman Mandali Khalesi, "to see Naviblog featured in such a prestigious publication. The IoD really is about sharing experiences with fellow directors, regardless of whether it is a FTSE company or a startup, and trying to better yourself everyday as a director and as a corporate leader."

About the Institute of Directors (see website)

The IoD is a non party-political business organisation founded by Royal Charter in 1903, currently with around 55,000 members. The IoD has always championed the entrepreneur and seeks to provide an environment conducive to business success. For any company to prosper, directors will be continually engaged in making decisions involving innovation, risk and investment. Entrepreneurial activity needs to take place within a solid, strategic framework.

Over the last 5 years, membership has grown by over 11,000 members and includes directors from many sectors of the economy - from media to manufacturing, e-business to public sector. Members include CEOs of large corporations as well as entrepreneurial directors of start-up companies. They are represented in 92% of FTSE 100 companies, whilst 70% of our members are directors of small and mid-sized enterprises.

About Naviblog Corporation (see website)

Naviblog (Chairman: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo/London-based mobile technology firm providing mobile services to the Japanese and UK business-to-business markets, especially in the tourism, food & drink, and tradeshow verticals, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile services platform.

Within 18 months of startup, the company had developed 6 industry-first mobile services including its location-based mobile search product "Naviblog 2.0", for which Naviblog received the Red Herring Top 100 award in 2006. Featured in dozens of publications, and receiving industry awards in both Japan and Europe in 2007 and 2008, Naviblog is tipped to become the first universal software for publishing mobile services worldwide, regardless of handset, geography or mobile phone carrier.

2 in 3 humans own a mobile by early 09

2008-09-26T10:43:00.007+01:00

According to the UN's head of telecoms, Hamadoun Toure, about 60% of humans will own and use a mobile phone by end 2008. With 600m new mobile users joining every year, 2 out of 3 humans on the face of the planet will own a mobile within 6-9 months of this article.

It is amazing to see that although within a year or so most people will own a mobile, a scaleable mobile services platform that can be used to build solid and reliable mobile services worldwide remains elusive. Discussions in the mobile development world focus more on the differences of approach between technology factions, such as Java, Brew, Symbian, etc., with little talk about a platform that anyone can use to build out their mobile services globally, on all phones, and regardless of where you are.

It required the likes of Apple with its new mobile user interface, Google with its eponymous internet-based map services and Android wannabe-OS, and Nokia with its purchase of the powerful Symbian mobile operating system to nudge the world into thinking maybe we need to worry that when we build a service, it should be accessible from anywhere, on any phone, and not only on 15 handsets in one geography.

There are a lot of people outside the comfort zones of the maturing European and Japanese mobile markets (and upcoming US market) that need the mobile as a part of their day-to-day survival. When 2 in 3 humans own a mobile and want to use services anywhere they are, the mobile technology world needs a system that can live up to that challenge, and do it cheaply and efficiently.

More on the details of this statement over at the UK's The Guardian website.

Naviblog clinches world no.3 tech exhibition contract

2008-09-08T17:48:00.008+01:00

For the second year running, Naviblog has clinched the contract to develop and manage Asia's largest tech exhibition CEATEC 2008's exhibitor search service. The service, developed by Naviblog and named ExpoNavi, is a hybrid contextual map search solution which combines Google Maps' familiar map manipulation functionality and combines it with CEATEC's original hall maps and a custom-built exhibitor information search engine.

This allows users to search through the 800-odd exhibitors on their PC, by exhibitor category, keyword or hall, search the map visually, and bookmark all their favorites online for later reference. The site is available in English and Japanese. The service also has an optional "send to mobile" feature where users can send the saved bookmarks to their mobile phone, and login and search exhibitor information optimised for their mobiles, just as they would on the PC.

You can access the site here. CEATEC 2008 lasts from September 30th to October 4th in Tokyo, and is the world's largest tech exhibition behind the Computer Electronics Show in the US, and the IFA in Berlin.

Naviblog featured in Tokyo IT News

2008-09-04T04:37:00.004+01:00

"The leading GPS navigation marketing company" is how the Tokyo IT Newspaper presented us in a feature on emerging technologies in last week's edition. With a cute picture of a girl holding a mobile phone, the article detailed how Naviblog's location-based mobile marketing solution was being introduced by an increasing number of business clients from social networking portal heavyweight Lococom to beer brand marketing for Guinness Beer. Not sure if you can find it online, but you can look around at the Tokyo IT Newspaper's site at http://itnp.net.

Tokyo report: 1 in 2 Japanese use mobile web daily

2008-08-28T19:40:00.006+01:00

A recent report by the folks at the CIAJ, one of Japan's most respected telco industry associations and who I'll be seeing next week in Tokyo, picked up the latest trends in Japan mobile use. Notable trends showed 1 in 2 Japanese using the mobile web daily, mobile TV usage booming to more than 1 in 4, and daily usage of GPS/map-based services nearly doubling over the last 12 months to nearly 1 in 5 users.

Quite a few losers since last year's report including mobile ringtone use (54% to 46%), wallpapers (35% to 30%), digital music (20% to 19%), infrared (18% to 14%), videophone (9% to 3%), and push-to-talk (5% to 3%).

Bluetooth usage bucked the trend with an amazing jump from 2% to 10%, so the manufacturers must have finally got their act together and be offering something substantial across the handset spectrum. The reason they haven't so far must be having people in EU/US shrugging their collective shoulders, but it's one of those things like why 2D barcodes are not widely available on phones over in Europe... maybe they never got round to it.

Daily usage of mobile digital cash services (ie. Oyster card-like services using a built-in chip on your phone instead of a card) also increased 33% to 1 in 5 users, as people use their phones to pay for goods in corner stores and Japan Rail-affiliated commercial centers, where you can buy your wares before heading home by touching your phone in and out at the checkout.

Mobile opportunity in Dubai?

2008-08-27T12:35:00.004+01:00

After a short trip to the UAE and the Middle East over the summer break, I have come to believe there are many opportunities in the booming state of Dubai for mobile service developers and Naviblog is currently looking at opportunities with a number of local partners. The tourism, construction, property and banking sectors, as well as high mobile phone penetration and increasing usage, are laying down the groundwork for strong everyman demand for mobile services of all stripes.

Tourist maps and guides? Property price comparison sites? Mobile banking portals? Employment sites? I think there is a lot of opportunity here for mobility as the Emirates move from a predominantly heavy industry and construction economy to a services- and information-centric society. It's an exciting place and time to be there.

60% of enterprises say Web 2.0 enhances competitivity

2008-07-30T16:53:00.005+01:00

In a groundbreaking new report of 2,000 executives worldwide out today on the Member's Edition of the McKinsey Quarterly, the Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results shows that "60 percent of the respondents satisfied with Web 2.0 initiatives [...] see them as a driver of competitive advantage". Crucially, the report found that "satisfied or not, all companies plan to spend more on Web 2.0 tools", an opportunity for web 2.0 tool makers that offer a clear enterprise-oriented USP.

The main uses of enterprise 2.0 were managing knowledge (83%), fostering collaboration across the company (78%), improving customer service (73%), acquiring new customers in existing markets (71%) and achieving better integration with suppliers (62%). Unsurprisingly, to the question "technologies most important to [your] company" 50-60% of respondents in all geographies replied "web services", underlying the importance for businesses to be able to leverage key web services through easy-to-use, relevant web tools.

The report also reported that the two largest barriers to adoption were "My company doesn't understand the potential financial return" (28%) and "Nothing is holding back Web 2.0 initiatives" (25%), so although there are still cultural issues, the cultural difficulties of adoption now comprise less than half of barriers to full-on adoption. The main problems should now be taken care of with less evangelism and more hard-headed business/financial assessments of ROI and customer acquisition through tool implementation... Wow, what a report!

eBay CEO anecdote offers guidance

2008-07-28T14:42:00.002+01:00

Just reading an anecdote on Pierre Omidyar when eBay had system trouble that brought his whole site to a standstill... "during a time of service interruption [...] Pierre directed company managers to personally call the top 10,000 users apologizing for the inconvenience".

Now that's what I call putting customers first. Something to think about before complaining about tech trouble: while the tech guys sort out the disaster back-end, focus yourself on smoothing the wrinkles and frowns on the front-end. Run of the mill, yes, but still very cool. More here.

Irish entrepreneur's $2bn tropical mobiles

2008-07-26T14:03:00.003+01:00

From Haiti and Jamaica, to Tonga and Papua New Guinea, Irish mobile entrepreneur has built a $2.2bn mobile phone business Digicel where others will not go. War, famine, poverty, entrenched elites, these are the keys to his success in trumping local carriers and expanding market size with cheap prices and an independent network of cellphone masts.

Having set up a mobile phone network in Ireland in 1995 - selling out to BT for $3bn to BT Group 6 years later pocketing $300m himself - he snaps up Jamaican mobile phone license for $50m around 2002. Before Digicel arrived in Jamaica, 10% of Jamaicans used mobile phones. 6 years later in 2008, 90% do. Same story setting up in Haiti in 2006 quickly building 120,000 users, two years later he had 2 million. This just shows the explosive nature of the mobile when you open up the market with cheap, affordable technology for the masses.

Find out more in August's edition of Forbes, just out on their website today.

Voice actors energize mobile books in Tokyo

2008-07-20T15:42:00.007+01:00

According to their press release last Friday, two Japan-based startups have launched a site that matches user-generated mobile books with voice actors to provide professional-sounding audio books for the mobile. Mobile books are booming in Japan, rising quickly to become a $283m industry in 2008, up from $46m in 2005, and representing 70% of all digital book consumption. The industry is widely expected to expand to $1.4bn by 2010.

The service called "MazeNama Gakuen" invites users to create mobile novels based on a set of 22 pre-defined characters. The panel selects 8 quality novels among the entries, then lets the community pit the novels against each other. The final selected novels will then be enacted by Japan-famous voice actors and released as podcasts.

The two startups effectively joined forces on their separate mobile offerings, the free user-generated mobile voice-post site "Mazeteyo Mobilevoice" by Tokyo-based Visual Works and the user-generated mobile book-post site "Forest Novel" by Hokkaido-based Crypton Future Media. The service launched last Friday is currently only available on Japanese mobiles on the three main carriers in Japan.

Naviblog Paris closes for the summer

2008-07-17T14:11:00.008+01:00

Just a notice to our French business customers that our Paris business locale over near Franklin D. Roosevelt station has closed for summer refurbishment work. All France-specific operations will continue running out of the London office. We will post here with more information as and when the refurbishment work is complete and things are back to normal. Naviblog apologises for any inconvenience caused.

"Gates, Jobs, Dell Unworthy" says UK immigration rule...?!

2008-07-16T11:37:00.008+01:00

New uk immigration rules don't allow immigrants without degrees to the shores of the UK, even though many college dropouts do go on to create great companies. The billion-dollar (company) question of course is: what are we doing here in the UK to foster entrepreneurship for both college dropouts, corporate dropouts, social dropouts, immigrants or natural-born entrepreneurs who need a nudge in the right direction?

More at today's Bloomberg article here.

83% of US teens use mobile to band together

2008-07-15T16:24:00.009+01:00

Interesting piece here where 83% of US teens own a mobile phone and are found to be looking predominantly for social networking and video on their mobiles. At the same time they use texting to create a barrier between themselves and their parents. It really looks like a reactive-defensive mechanism looking to group together with similar-minded teens and distance themselves from their mobile-illiterate parents.

Japan was like that in the early years too, but with the advent of cheap mobile web and the explosion of bargain-hunting on mobile commerce sites, parents (especially moms who surf the mobile commerce sites in search of cosmetics or clothes) eventually caught up with the basics of texting and browsing by about 2007, three years after the introduction of flat data rates in Japan.

There is always a gap there, with younger kids literally typing texts with their thumbs at such a speed they don't need to look at what they're typing, but the female working population has caught up to some extent. Working men are more navigation/search-oriented, but social networking completely passes them by: they have their drinking dens and the drinking habits of the companies they work in, so little reason to race to the mobile for that.

Read more on US teen activity on the mobile phone from the Walt Disney Internet Group survey reported on CNET.

Naviblog accepted as UK govt supplier

2008-07-08T12:11:00.005+01:00

Naviblog has just been accepted as a registered supplier for both CompeteFor, the tendering marketplace for the London 2012 Olympics contracts, and supply2.gov.uk, the UK's portal for SMEs working with the UK government. Anchoring ourselves even more closely to London, we look to leverage this registration to win over the confidence of London and UK-wide government bodies for mobile and more general IT work, leading up to and beyond the London Olympics in 2012.

Naviblog connects Japan and UK

2008-07-07T11:15:00.003+01:00

As Naviblog scales out internationally, our two websites have come together and should be converging towards a common offering within the next few months. It is important to show both our European and Asian customers that we are part of a whole, and that we are not separate companies, but rather an extended framework, preparing us for explosive growth. Googles and Yahoos beware, here we come.

Japanese treasure old phones as keepsakes

2008-06-25T07:51:00.009+01:00

In a new survey out yesterday in Tokyo, mobile phones are quickly becoming a keepsake representing a small section of your life, and users keep using them even after the phone has outlived its "communicative" capability.

As our phones get older (and we get older with them), throwing away your mobile phone is beginning to show all the emotional drawbacks of losing something or someone dear. The Telecommunications Carriers Association's mobile phone recycling survey found Japanese keeping the phones as part of a mobile phone "collection", for "data saving purposes", and finally "worries about data privacy".

There must be other ways of combining this information as you pass from one handset to another, free photo album services offered by the mobile phone carrier partners via the loyalty point system (keeping them on the network with their new phones too)... but it is plainly clear that the proximity with the mobile phone is set to become more and more part of our social and emotional fabric than we can even imagine today.

Navibloggin' twitter offline!

2008-06-24T17:46:00.003+01:00

... again. As you can see from the picture, Naviblog's twitter setup is offline with a nice picture of an airborne whale being flown around by orange birds (?!) Smoking ban for the smoked-up guys that made this one up and help keep the service stay online!

Mobile girls cluster says m-fashion report

2008-06-16T14:16:00.010+01:00

[click for larger image]

One of Japan's most successful mobile fashion and shopping sites online has released analytical data of the female audience that surfs and shops on the well-known "Girls Walker" site. According to this report published last Friday by parent company Xavel Inc., girls tend to cluster together while organising the information they get and disseminating it through the group.

On this trial that incorporated 3,000+ girls into the data streams, researchers found that 11% of girls were the "Leading Edge" girls picking up information before the others, trawling through juicy data on cosmetics to clothes that they are already very familiar with, then going down to the stores to check them out themselves. This info was put out to the knowledgeable but lacking-status "Wannabe" girls (26%) ready to hear the latest, and happy to mimick the trendiness of the Leading Edges. The Wannabes pass on the info to the "Talkabout" girls (36%) who then generate the buzz and discussions. One last group is the "Listener" girls (31%) who pretty much soak up all the info from the Talkabouts, but also act as a reality check for the Wannabes when seeing what's hot and what's not, in order to adapt the content that they are filtering down from the Leading Edges.

Really fascinating stuff for anyone remotely related to mobile social networking and m-commerce. Naviblog says... for all you emerging m-commerce/social networking industries, this is the future.

Cool application of Microsoft Surface

2008-06-13T13:42:00.004+01:00

Just checking out this appealing video of Microsoft Surface, as applied to a gaming/casino/dating use-case. For those of you who don't know, Microsoft Surface...

... turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. It's the first commercially-available surface computing platform from Microsoft. The product provides effortless access to digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Today, it's a 30-inch diagonal display in a table-like form factor that's easy for individuals or multiple people to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it's a surface come to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more.

See the embed here of their upcoming partnership with Harrah's Entertainment in the US:

Video: Microsoft Surface at the Rio in Las Vegas

Naviblog presents at Library House

2008-06-10T02:02:00.002+01:00

Naviblog Corporation are proud to announce that they will be presenting at the Library House event "Meet the companies" sponsored by g2i, and held at NESTA in Central London. Naviblog will make their company pitch in demo.com-like style, surrounded by plasma screens and with only 6 minutes to catch the eye of the investor crowd. See more at the event website here...more later on how well (or not) the event went.

Date: 11th June 2008, 8:30am - 12:30pm
Location: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE
Companies: 7

More about g2i
Gateway2investment (g2i) is a programme supported by the London Development Agency (LDA) and designed to increase the number and quality of London based technology companies receiving investment. g2i actively supports early stage companies to develop their propositions, teams and pitches, and offers VCs and Business Angels early engagement with exciting new investment propositions.
www.g2i.org/

More about Library House
Library House is the essential source of comprehensive information on the fastest growing, most innovative ventures. Library House discovers, researches and profiles fast-growth, innovation-led private companies, their people and investors. This provides a unique insight into the leading enterprises of the future that are the investment and business partnership opportunities of today.
http://www.libraryhouse.net/

Naviblog named Orange premium partner

2008-05-21T15:52:00.005+01:00

This is to announce that we have just received notification that Naviblog has been accepted as premium development partner for the Orange mobile network!

The reach of Orange can hardly be understated in Europe and we look forward to be able to provide Orange-approved mobile solutions throughout Europe. The next natural step in this close collaboration will be to work towards an orange certification as a company, in order to build greater trust with our clients and partners, as well as accelerate the adoption of our sites generated using our Naviblog mobile technology platform.

Mobile microfinance for India

2008-05-18T17:52:00.005+01:00

Another article about mobile finance... just one month after Orascom announced they'd be pushing mobile banking in the MENA region, this interview of Vikram Akula on Wharton's weekly newsletter, talks about the potential of mobiles in bringing microfinance (as illustrated by the Grameen Bank) to the masses.

The mobile phone is a central piece of the delivery of his value to his user base, and cutting the costs of a real-world presence, although I imagine these costs will appear in the mid-term. Quote the article:

Clearly, we think, mobile banking is the future; it doesn't make sense to try and build a retail brick-and-mortar infrastructure in rural India. From a cost perspective, it makes no sense at all. Mobile technology today is robust enough that you can actually very easily do banking[...] Mobile banking could be the future of microfinance.

Backed by Sequoia Capital, the head of SKS Microfinance is - according to Wharton - India's fastest growing and largest microfinancier with 2m borrowers offering an apparently reasonable rate of 24% p.a., and is looking to overtake the Grameen Bank on a for-profit angle, as opposed to Muhammed Yunus whose Grameen Bank is non-profit.

If you ask me, the jury is out on which one of the two approaches bear fruit both in terms of positive impact on the borrower's livelihood, broader local economic development, and sustainable business profits for SKS. Point-source functions are unlikely to provide the data necessary to give us a clear answer, but if a blanket, viral or community approach is used, there will be enough data in a few years for a few case studies that will give us a foretaste of the business model to come.

Juniper says the future is mobile 2.0

2008-05-15T21:37:00.008+01:00

An interesting whitepaper released over at Juniper Research concludes that mobile web 2.0 is one of the most promising growth industries worldwide with a quadrupling of revenues over the next 5 years from 5.5bn USD (2.75bn GBP) this year to 22.4bn USD (11.2bn GBP) in 2013. The Far-East and Western Europe were predicted to grab 50% of market revenue (at about 25% each), with North America taking 20% of the market.

A telling quote from their report:

Made-for-mobile platforms, better mobile phone screens and faster network speeds are supporting a richer Web-like experience that is preferred by businesses[...] off-portal mobile Internet sites that combine social networking, user-generated content and messaging applications are establishing large user bases across a number of regions and monetising services via a combination of advertising, revenue-share and subscription models.

Completely in line with Naviblog's experiences in Japan, the key drivers for the mobile web 2.0 were stated to be:
- advertising
- easy accessiblity
- location-based services
- social networking and user-generated content
- the PC web moving over to the mobile web
- flat-rate data plans
- made-for-mobile websites
- increasing mobile web service adoption
- new revenue opportunities
- value-chain disruption

Downloading the actual report will set you back 2,400USD a pop, but you can download a free synopsis of the article at Juniper (need to register though).

Naviblog Europe to become Orange certified partner soon

2008-05-13T17:03:00.003+01:00

Our long-term relationship with European operators is slowly coming together: Naviblog Europe should be a certified mobile partner with the Orange network very soon... more soon on http://naviblog.co.uk. Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration on building cool services on this very wide ranging network.

Japanese teens spend 25% of waking life on mobile

2008-05-06T22:09:00.011+01:00

In a revealing survey of Japanese teen mobile users (10-19 yr olds) vs older young mobile users (20s-40s) by Japanese advertising researchers Standard, junior high school were found to spend about 3.3 hours a day on their mobile phones mailing and surfing the web, translating to about 1/4 of their waking hours.

Beyond the time spent in constant contact with the phone, the level of email/SMS traffic with "friends" contacted on the phone via mail or other means decreased as the surveyed sample grew in age. Respondents in their 20s had an average message traffic of 116 messages a day (received or sent), while respondents in their 40s had daily traffic of under 10 messages. Timing also seemed to be a crucial factor, with 1/3 of teen respondents responding to messages within 3 minutes.

The channel zapping TV culture of the 90s and split-second attention spans seems to have filtered down into a twitterized social cocoon of messages and mobile web use. Complaints this generation cannot get their act together is altogether misplaced: I would daresay they are more politically active, socially pro-active, communicative and responsive than their older siblings and fathers. Multitasking and split-attentions give glimpses of a more fuzzy and ubiquitous online identity... to when the totems and taboos that anthropologists use to codify this new communication space? Will these be the consumer brands? or emoticons fusing with notoriety/popularity = social emoticons?

No-one knows, but what is certain is that the phone is instrumental in the creation of this new vox populi. And more and more teens will spend their time in conditions of mobility living two separate lives superimposed one on the other: their mobile life and their physical one. To when 50% of waking life on the phone?

Naviblog Europe site opens

2008-04-27T11:21:00.004+01:00

The Naviblog website is now open! The new naviblog.co.uk site will be the center for the international expansion of Naviblog, and will fuse its roots - deep in the tradition of Tokyo-based companies for innovation in new technologies - with new visions of mobile development in the booming European market and worldwide.

Naviblog strongly believes in sticking to the areas where it has worked to the greatest effect, that is, working with advertisers and advertising agencies to provide complete, multi-channel and multimedia experiences to brands and their users. From Guinness beer to our upcoming advertising partnerships, Naviblog believes that it can help bridge the gap between brands and the online consumers of cool services. We believe that the mobile phone is central, and will become more and more central to this experience.

In a departure from the past, Naviblog will also look to empower associations related to social development, ie. working to strengthen social and economic development in developing/emerging nations worldwide. We believe that Naviblog has a role to play in enabling communities in unfavored economic situations to leverage the mobile phone and the mobile web to help themselves and build an ecosystem of systems that can help their basic life and sustenance.

We are also working on a number of other projects at Naviblog, all of them mobile technologies that will make people's life easier and drive adoption of cool services on the mobile phone.

Go to the new site here: http://naviblog.co.uk

Japan mobile "Oyster" subscribers hit 1m mark

2008-04-15T13:52:00.003+01:00

According to an article on one of Japan's leading tech newssites, PlusD ITMedia, Japan's "Suica" mobile phone payment system subscribers hit the 1m mark as of April 9th.

Mobile Suica is Japan Railways' license of Sony's touch-card Felica system embedded into your mobile phone. Many of you may be using this everyday unawares (in its non-mobile format) when you go to work everyday in the UK and Hong Kong using your "Oyster" card, and similarly when you use your "Navigo" pass on French public transport.

1m users two years after its start date on Jan 1st, 2008, means that discussions with manufacturers had been going on at least a few years previous to this, making the reality of seeing it on European mobiles still about 5 years away.

I can see mobiles being used more and more in the underground in Tokyo, although the use of the good-old card version, tucked into the folds of a wallet or pocket that you swipe over the reception area, is as popular in Tokyo as it is here in London or Paris...

Berg says 100m EuroLBS users by 2012

2008-04-15T10:16:00.006+01:00

Berg Insight's latest report on LBS, released last week, notes that as "all the pieces needed for successful LBS are more or less in place", they forsee the explosion of LBS related services on the mobile phone in Europe in the next few years.

Of course, these reports have been rushed out at every possible occasion over the last 10-15 years because LBS technology is not new and its applications and wider benefits are fairly easily understandable. However, I think the difference is (1) the ubiquity of PC map-based technologies such as Google/Yahoo/MSN Maps, (2) the attention given to interesting mashups of different data layers using maps, (3) the increasing ubiquity of mobile web browsers, (4) increasingly cheap mobile web data plans... the elements have definitely come together to make it more plausible.

But the article tempers the projection adding:

First there must be a critical mass of active users to work with, then someone must create a successful model for reaching out to these individuals via their handsets and after that the mobile media must be embraced by the top spenders in the advertising industry

Sounds like Naviblog hunting grounds to me...

Google's latest mobile thing... is offline

2008-04-14T16:56:00.004+01:00

As per this article in Techcrunch, it seems that Google is having some teething problems with its new mobile service that allows users to have "one phone number for all your phones, for life" which is a great idea... when it is online.

The Techcrunch article pretty much tears through the ability of a phone service to be "offline", and when I read the official comment being "unfortunately I’ve been up in the mountains with the family this weekend and had no cell/internet coverage so couldn’t respond earlier", I don't think this sounds very reliable. I mean, I know it's Beta, but you can't expect a $50m phone company not to have 24/7 tech support and redundant power sources. The founder shouldn't have to head down from the mountains to fix a power cut!

Is this another example of tech giant Google beta-izing its offerings, while we wait til they catch up with our expectations of what the service should be? This sounds more like what people complain about Microsoft products than Google products... but never mind.

It also reminds me of JPhone->Vodafone->Softbank/Yahoo! (mobile) in Japan, always falling foul of some reason or other and not being able to provide a consistent 24/7 mobile service. No wonder it's not going anywhere, and most telco professionals complain about it.

A mobile phone company is a utility company: either it's working, or we cannot live a normal social life.

Some moblog photos in Paris...

2008-04-13T14:37:00.003+01:00

Orascom proposes mobile banking for MENA

2008-04-12T11:19:00.004+01:00

From a recent article on Bloomberg, the largest telco in the Middle East and North African region (often shortened to MENA) is planning on launching mobile banking services to reach most of its subscribers that according to the article "is likely to become a key revenue source for telecommunications companies in developing countries, where bank charges can be high and retail bank branches few and far between, whereas billions of people own mobiles".

It remains to be seen whether the banking system is developed enough in all of these regions or countries to drive adoption and ROI, but in major emerging markets with a burgeoning middle class, this is definitely a good idea. I could see this probably coupled with mid- to high-end tier handset subscribers, so at least they have some basic ARPU to siphon off in the medium term.

But how relevant is it to the more basic current needs, such as with food price problems, unemployment/industrial dynamism, and education? The jury is still out on how the mobile can help really make people's lives easier...

Even US goes off-deck

2008-03-24T15:31:00.003Z

With Japan moving more and more into the mobile web and Asia and Europe following in its wake, the US is finally developing its own taste for the unknown waters of the "off-deck".

"Off-deck" means outside the mobile phone carrier's officially vetted mobile websites. In the traditional business model for mobile phone carriers or operators, when you click on the Internet button on your mobile phone, carefully vetted specific service providers are showed to you on an official "menu" or "deck". However with the increasingly atomised interests of mobile web users, the slow speed to which operators react to changes in their user's interest centers, and the slow mobil-isation of web content and web services means people are more and more willing to find the services they want and don't need to be spoonfed in that process. This seems to have started happening in the US as well as people get more and more used to the idea of internet on their small mobile phone, and more and more phones are internet-enabled with bigger screens.

When speaking at the mobile roundtable at the Dreamgate Japan CEO conference in early 2007, K-Laboratories CEO Tetsuya Sanada waxed sentimental about how the walled garden allowed the Japanese mobile industry to develop around Docomo, and that's where he cut his teeth so I could see where he was coming from. But the go-go early 2000s are radically different to the end of the 00s where fixed mobile convergence will make sure that competition will be coming from one media or the other or diagonally out of the woodwork where you least expect it. It struck me at the time more as an argument that ailing agricultural producers would lobby for in the face of the globalisation of trade, but it is the opposite of competition.

Walled gardens work to develop an industry and should be retained to help seed emerging markets and industries, that's why East Asian economies have done the same and have been rewarded with long growth periods of growth, but once out of the posts they fail to serve their purpose when they fossilize current players with little novelty to bring to the dynamism of an industry. When I said that the walled garden is falling apart and on-deck is dead, I was slapped down by both walled garden participants at the conference. One year on however, and the walled gardens keep crashing down all across the globe.

More in the original article here.

Blueberries and ice-cream

2008-03-22T16:18:00.005Z

Was at the frontline today for the Tokyo premiere of the latest blueberries from Wong KarWai in "My Blueberry Nights": with altogether 3 Wong KarWai aficionados including myself. Verdict -- the film was nice but not as good as perhaps hoped. There was a generalised happy-smiley feel at the exit, but we all felt that the scenes were too close to In The Mood for Love, and his other well-known pieces.

The shot with Jude Law staring blankly as time flew by or the shots through the shop window glass as lovers slowly got to know each other under overexposed neon lights were plucked straight out of Chungking Express. What was spot-on in 1994 with the nihilistic urban environments of pre-millenial Hong Kong's stories of fast-paced life and people passing by each other, rings slightly hollow in 2008. A mediocre treacly performance by Jude Law was compensated by a breathtakingly depressive/end-of-the-road David Strathairn. Norah Jones was the innocent young woman in search of herself and love; played admirably, but we got no character depth.

Altogether recommended viewing, but this is not the cutting edge, more an artistic rehash of past influences.

Research on microblogging and communities

2008-03-17T04:27:00.003Z

It seems microblogging is all the rage these days, but is it more than a webified instant-messaging widget? It seems to be the logical progression from function-restricted and price-constricted "mainstream" mobile phone users being forced to use texting to get their message across for so long now that one-to-many texting has taken this route. Naviblog's even got its own Twitter widget now (see top of the blog page), just to play around and see what it does and how it enhances the site.

Will the flat-rate data packages now being deployed in many carriers Europe-wide change this to a longing for standard email as we've known it in Japan? When you think about it, people still short-message here, but the price differential is so tiny that no-one really cares.

Will the newfangled functions to be found in mid- and even low-end handsets spur increased usage, for example for GPS or mobile commerce? I think the rule is if it's simple and the hurdle of adoption is low enough in usability and price terms, then it's very likely there'll be strong adoption, at least in the first instances.

Anyway, this piece of research (about 3MB) from the University of Maryland and NEC Labs America details the architecture and dynamics of microblogging: quite interesting as a primer to the area, and generally interesting when thinking about social communities on the mobile.

The end for native mobile apps?

2008-03-14T17:26:00.005Z

This is no piece of news to our ears, indeed Naviblog has been touting itself as one of the leaders on pushing the boundaries of the mobile services and applications since the start, in the same way as others think of twitter, yahoo mail and google calendar for the PC. But the fact is that many bloggers, and increasingly web service platform developers including latest wake-up call from Google's Android, are realising that the introduction of cheap and ubiquitous internet mobile phones is driving the economic case for mobile services.

The bottom line is: it is cheaper to build mobile services based on common web standards that will work on many mobile phones with the same user experience, than developing a number of optimized native applications that you have to download, install and double-click on your phone before using.

But it seems the industry I work in, the mobile app developer industry, is still wedded to the idea. Granted, you can't throw away a body of knowledge of more than a decade of mobile app development overnight, but this shortsightedness is now costing our users and our industry in dollar/yen/euro terms and in terms of growth for content and commerce on the mobile.

A nice piece I found recently from insightful trendwatcher and industry buff Michael Mace, where he states:

"...If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about the Web. I think Web applications are going to destroy most native app development for mobiles. Not because the Web is a better technology for mobile, but because it has a better business model."

The date says Feb 24, 2008, and the title of the piece is "Mobile [native] applications, RIP"... more here.

Mobile creates new jobs and dynamism in Nigeria

2008-03-13T15:14:00.006Z

Apparently, the rapid growth of the mobile industry in a number of emerging economies in the Global South - in this case in Nigeria - is creating jobs, shaking up social mobility, and empowering new communities. According to this great article on mobileactive.org, 10% of the Nigerian population now own mobile phones, and in the past five years a space of 1% of the active population's worth of new jobs have been created directly or indirectly related to the dynamism of mobile services.

Now I'm sure we're not talking about Oyster-/Suica-like e-wallets, GPS location services and other mobile YouTubes. But when there are figures dating back to 2006 (!) that a full 80% of international WAP access to the BBC's WAP site were exclusively from Nigeria and South Africa, we start to see that there is a fairly large gap between perception of mobile as one of many media we use everyday for collecting information from our surroundings and that compete with each other, and other countries where they are the fastest-growing, easiest-accessible, lowest-cost and only means of access to information and close friends and family.

Throw social networking in the mix and heaven forbid what might happen... if it hasn't happened already. Fascinating stuff happening under the noses of the more "developed" West. We may soon be the ones looking at the new "developed" First World of mobile services.

Child abuse rampant in South Africa

2008-03-13T05:15:00.002Z

Pretty powerful stuff: see here.

Chicago riots 40 yrs ago

2008-03-01T06:31:00.005Z

Pretty cool trailer by Sundance-premiered director Brett Morgen's new film, Chicago 10:

An excerpt from the movie:

A note to the editors: Japan mobile is not about teens anymore

2008-03-01T03:27:00.005Z

After having gone through the mammoth new digital outlook for 2008 from digital gurus Avenue A | Razorfish, I was not only surprised at the amount of insight that I found tucked away among their various analyses, but equally surprised at the lightweight content in the section "Mobile Web" that focused on the mobile web in Japan. A note to the editors: Japan's mobile web is not about teens anymore.

Although generic numbers such as the "mobile commerce market exceeded $10bn in 2007" and "the mobile advertising market [...] amounted to over $500m" give a good idea of the scale of the commercial mobile industry, focusing on companies such as Mixi and Mobagetown gives a simplistic view with companies that have been in the public eye for several years now.

As opposed to a thumb-click-based analysis of mobile usage, what should be posted are demographics for dispensable mobile income based on age range. Naviblog studies clearly show that while younger consumers' dispensable mobile income is low and sporadic (even if usage volumes are high), middle-aged female consumers dominate the growth of the mobile industry market by both being big spenders on mobile purchases, becoming repeat consumers of mobile properties they value, and being highly sensitive of cross-media marketing incentives from the TV and PCweb channels.

Examples raised such as Mobagetown, one of the hot traffic media properties, is widely recognised on both the user and the advertiser side to generate traffic for the site, but not generate enough relevant brand loyalty to the advertiser, nor enough relevant content to the user. It is a traffic machine, but does that provide a more reliable and addictive source of information?

One of the big issues now is that younger people, myself included, are shunning traditional media like TV, read free magazines only to catch up on the latest or to collect "good deals" such as free coupons, and check social networks on new channels such as the mobile and realtime web to catch up with their friends. Older consumers are much more TV- and paper-centric, but are also fired up by influences from other newer channels. This means a wealth of possibilities for middle-aged users with the means to buy, and a dearth of relevant channels for younger users with less means and confidence to buy due to an ever-increasing part-timer labor force.

How many young people, teens even less so, are clicking on banner ads and google adwords and the like? Why should they? What is the universal media that they can trust and get information from? Is there one? Will there ever be one? Are young people going to continue splitting their 10-second mindspans while scavenging for reliable, relevant and valuable information among the many channels and portals available?

The mobile web is still growing up in Japan, but it has been nearly 10 years since the mobile started up in Japan, and the youth of the day have become salarymen and housewives and contributors to the economy. They are the bellwether of the mobile services industry as an economic market.

As a social marketplace of habits, trends and preferences, the current youth generation are definitely a good raincheck for what the mobile services industry market will look like in 5 years time... and their divergence from other less industry-matured mobile youths worldwide is steadily decreasing.

Howard Rheingold on cooperation

2008-02-26T08:06:00.004Z

Had been a while since I heard news on this guy since his seminal SmartMobs book back in 2002: a Mike Harris favorite if there ever was one.

Caught this new seminar of his, quite broadbrush, but a nice 20mins' worth of insights on wealth, cooperation, social structures and communication: check it here...

Egypt and Gaza Palestine... a necessary rapprochement?

2008-01-26T15:38:00.000Z

The asphyxiation of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip continues from both the Israeli government and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-controlled West Bank. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has asked the Fatah and Hamas to sit around a table in Egypt, Fatah refused while Hamas agreed... I wonder whether that's because the West Bank has been drip-fed by the big-power US-leaning European governments, and maybe because you can't get proper salaries or fresh food and drink in Gaza. But you can be gunned down, your house bulldozed with your family inside, or just your city block taken out by a missile or two.

Egypt has reached out to an unlikely operation by Hamas, partly planned and partly out of desperation it seems, with Hamas militants bulldozing parts of the wall separating Gaza Palestine from Egypt. The checkpoint has been shut down until further notice: see this as another screw tightened on the poverty in Gaza by Israel-leaning elements. Interesting that Egypt is allowing the palestinians to jump over the fence, and announce specifically that Egypt is going to help Palestinians to come over to Egypt and get the necessary basics for their sustenance.

Maybe are assisting to the beginning of a Cold War-like West Germany / East Germany demarcation of Palestine with "West" controlled West Bank and "East" controlled Gaza. Unfortunately, there is no industrial base to look forward to, even if you have a Marshall Plan lying around, which looks all the more uncertain in an election year and when US military and support operations worldwide are stretched extremely thin in all directions with few funds flowing through.

Could Egypt keep Gaza's formal boundaries, and walk in to restore law and order in Gaza under a "war against terror"-type operation (or anything else they can make up), effectively annexing the territory? It is a real option, and considering the plight of the Palestinians there after months and nearly years of depravation, may not be that bad. Egypt could just as easily have "police" training programs to beef up their military there, although Israel would probably make a similar move to control the West Bank more effectively. Abbas would be more the governor of the West Bank, than its leader. The end result though would be is a stabilisation of the area, and a return to a poor but basic lifestyle for people there.

A possible backlash can be expected with the increase of political islamic parties inside Egypt, trying to stir up arab / islamic nationalism in the right proportions to get the Egyptian electorate around the Palestinian issue. Of course, Egypt's own islamic parties would probably love to see the back of Mubarak, but if he plays it carefully, he could neuter their pulpits to his own advantage and start getting the same islamic hero coverage as Ahmadjinebad, without the UNSC connotations. If he manoeuvres himself into the role of a Jimmy Carter of the Near East, he may even be able to land himself a political future as an Arab peacemaker/superstar/lectureCircuiter a-la-Blair, and groom the best of the islamic parties with the Palestine issue to push on his legacy once he's moved on.

A bit farfetched, maybe. But not a bad idea when you think about it, this rapprochement.

New mix upcoming

2008-01-20T06:06:00.001Z

By popular demand with at least 3 requests in this last week alone, I'll be uploading my latest web radiomix to the website later this week. These tracks have been somewhat languishing in my iTunes folder... now it can find itself a small audience! Look out for "DawnOfEight", coming up in a few days time.

Mobile social phreaking, the next big thing?

2008-01-17T17:16:00.001Z

This article I dug up at the Guardian newspaper talks about being able to simulate the voice of any person saying anything and being completely believable and scientifically indistinguishable from the real thing.

The author suggests:

"This gives rise to a notion of what I call vocal terrorism as a possible scenario in the future and we should be thinking about that now[...] it could be that I've taken over a communications network for a country and I broadcast the sound of a leader to the people"

The more you go forward in time, the more you trip up over the same old stories it seems. For example, did you know that hacking the phone system had something of a cachet in the geek circles of the middle of last century, with telephone hackers - or phreakers - mimicking the dialtones to get free calls off the network of the time, the phone? This apparently included Steve Jobs and pal Wozniak selling homemade devices in their dorm that would allow free calls off the phone network, and used the cash to build the first Apple computer. Definitely not advisable stuff for schoolkids... ahem.

So now we are looking at social engineering plus phreaking, basically. "Social phreaking", anybody? I'm sure that soon mobile social phreaking, or mosophre, will be the next buzzword in marketing circles of the end of the 00s. And could, by accident of course, breed some of the entrepreneurs of the 2020s.

More here.

Naviblogger says... Virgin Mobile goes MySQL

2008-01-12T04:35:00.000Z

Little blog snippet from the ZDNET site: MySQL credibility on highly-transactional DB systems just went up a bit. There's a lot of talk around me of the benefits of Postgre vs MySQL, but this implementation in one of the leaders of the MVNO deployment space is definitely food for thought. More below:

"Virgin makes mySQL look bigger by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn -- By using mySQL to do it, and buying mySQL support contracts, Virgin Mobile is calling mySQL enterprise-ready."

Middle Eastern globalization

2008-01-11T07:50:00.000Z

A pretty broadbrush piece on the Middle East and business there in general, with Iran coming in as wildcard numero uno. A lot of interest in North Africa, and countries around Israel. Good to see a piece like this on the Wharton site: keep up that knowledge factory!!

More here. Also available there in downloadable or streaming podcast format.

NAVIBLOGの新しいCEOマイケル・ハリスが誕生、マンダリ・カレシーは会長へ

2008-01-08T08:01:00.000Z

拝啓

時下ますますご清栄のことと慶び申し上げます。平素は格別のご高配を賜り誠に有難く厚くお礼申し上げます。

さて私儀、このたび株式会社NAVIBLOGの代表取締役社長を拝命し就任致しました。微力非才の身ではございますが、誠心誠意、社業発展のため職務に尽力いたす覚悟でございます。何卒ご指導ご鞭撻を賜りますようお願い申し上げます。

まずは略儀ながら書中をもってご挨拶申し上げます。

平成二十年一月

株式会社NAVIBLOG
代表取締役社長　マイケル・ハリス

---

拝啓

時下ますますご清栄のことと慶び申し上げます。平素は格別のご高配を賜り誠に有難く厚くお礼申し上げます。

さて私儀、このたび株式会社NAVIBLOGの取締役会長を拝命し就任致しました。浅学微力の身ではございますが、社業発展に全力を傾注し皆様のご支援ご期待に添いますよう、専心努力いたす決意でございます。つきましては格別のご指導ご鞭撻を賜りますよう伏してお願い申し上げます。

まずは略儀ながら書中をもってご挨拶申し上げます。

平成二十年一月

株式会社NAVIBLOG
取締役会長　マンダリ・カレシー

Mike Harris is new CEO of Naviblog, Mandali Khalesi now Chairman

2008-01-08T07:49:00.000Z

Naviblog Corporation (KK) announced today the promotion of Michael Harris to the position of Chief Executive Officer. Michael Harris served as the Company's Chief Operating Officer prior to today's announcement.

Mandali Khalesi now assumes the new role of Chairman where he will provide leadership to accelerating internal business, HR and technology processes, planning international development and evangelizing for the Naviblog cause.

As the Company's new CEO, Michael Harris will have overall responsibility for setting the Company's strategic direction and for making the day-to-day decisions related to running Naviblog Corporation (KK).

"We are fortunate that we have an individual on board who can assume the role and responsibilities of CEO," continued Mandali Khalesi. "I have worked very closely with Mike for many years, even before setting up Naviblog, and his broad inclusive view of customer satisfaction, as well as his expertise relating to Naviblog products and our future vision make him the ideal choice to take on this new role."

"I am honored by this promotion, and I will continue doing what I know best - working hard to make Naviblog the most innovative mobile marketing solutions company in the world," said Michael Harris. "I am pleased that Mandali and the company have demonstrated their confidence as I take on the challenge of CEO, while Mandali directs his focus as Chairman on a range of important initiatives, that will accelerate us towards our goals and vision," continued Michael Harris.

Video typography

2008-01-06T07:38:00.000Z

Very cool piece by a guy called Jarratt Moody... with classic sound from Pulp Fiction: don't you just love that scene.

See more below:

(Audio from Pulp Fiction)

Get down and scrum

2008-01-05T11:39:00.000Z

A really cool and easy-to-understand piece on Scrum development, something that I have been thinking about for a while but never implemented.

I had heard about Agile development (even bought a book about it in '06), but there is a fine line between cutting-edge and bleeding-edge, typically one can at least build quickly on the shaky foundations of one, whereas one has to bleed cash to stand up straight for the other, with a very low return in the short term.

...now I believe in it: see more on this Swedish dev site here.

My first webwidget

2008-01-05T11:22:00.000Z

Hope it looks ok... had to use the Flash widget code as it wouldn't work with either the JS or Blogger-specific code!

Announcement of winter holidays

2007-12-29T06:04:00.000Z

Naviblog would like to announce that we will be closing down for the festive winter season of 2007 over the following period:
Saturday Dec 29, 2007 - Sunday Jan 6, 2008
The Naviblog team looks forward to seeing you again in the new year!

- Japanese -

冬季休業のお知らせ

株式会社NAVIBLOGでは、誠に勝手ながら下記日程を冬季休業とさせていただきます。
休業期間：2007年12月29日(土)〜2008年1月6日(日)
大変ご不便をお掛け致しますが、ご理解とご協力のほど宜しくお願い申し上げます。

DJ of the week

2007-12-20T15:38:00.000Z

This girl. Russian micro-house out of Toronto? Rocks. More here.

Naviblog latest

2007-12-20T15:07:00.000Z

Hey there, been a while, innit? For all of those that thought we were down and out... we're back in it and heading up.

I'm currently in Paris for some interesting stuff that will be coming up early next year, but more on that in 2008. A lot of things happening behind the scenes at Naviblog, a lot of projects that are using our platform but not in the typical mobile LBS mentality, nor in the this-is-my-blog-alaMySpace.

There is a lot of talk around me recently on micro-personalisation, auto-generated ad-hoc communities of interest, new forms of search, emotive web manipulation, novel man-machine interface design.

There is definitely a move away from all the web 2.0. web 3.0, mobile 2.0 and all that. I feel we are entering a phase of experimentation with more intelligent forms of online manipulation and community.

As always, there is the problem of navel-gazing 2.0 versus irrelevant commercial editorial content, but this problem is there regardless of the publisher ecosystem. Very interesting movements generally.

I am astonished how quickly things are moving mobile-wise in Europe (finally!): there's going to be some serious work to do in Japan if the Europeans catch up with Japan in terms of agency creative work. They have the economies of scale, the price differentials for near-shoring dev work quickly that Japan doesn't, and the tech ecosystem is coming up to scratch fairly fast.

I think that Japanese do not realise how quickly things are heating up, but then again, what would they do about it even if they did know? Market-wise things are pretty locked down in Japan, but can Japan afford to lock down innovation? With more stability comes less innovation. Is it possible that as the mobile world over-matures in Japan, that other markets will both copy Japanese market models and innovate beyond it?

Laurels should not be sat on. They don't like being sat on. Japan beware.

MK

Naviblog named official provider for CEATEC JAPAN

2007-09-23T20:00:00.000+01:00

Naviblog has been selected as an official provider for CEATEC JAPAN, the largest technology fair in Asia, and one of the top 3 largest technology fairs in the world. Naviblog was named as the official provider for exhibition map search services, as well as the official provider for mobile site development.

The system allows users to search for exhibitors, search for exhibitor categories, or zoom in and out of the floor map, as you would do with Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps, and find relevant exhibitor information quickly.

The new handy bookmark functionality, available from October 1st onwards, will let visitors to the official website (www.ceatec.com) make advance searches for and bookmark the booths they want to visit. Bookmarks can be transferred to a mobile phone for easy navigation on-site. Visitors can also access the CEATEC JAPAN mobile website to navigate at CEATEC JAPAN and view exhibitor data. These services will be usable on all of Japan's mobile carriers (available on more than 250 models as of August 2007) without any special software utility.

Naviblog will also be exhibiting at CEATEC JAPAN, so come and see us at booth 1A01. We look forward to showing you the latest in mobile services technology.

About CEATEC JAPAN
Organized by the Japan Electronics Show Association, CEATEC JAPAN is the largest international exhibition in Asia for the technology and electronics sectors, including the fields of imaging, information, and communications. See www.ceatec.com for more.

About Naviblog Corporation
Naviblog (CEO: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo-based mobile marketing firm that provides branded marketing solutions to consumer brands, digital advertising agencies, and mobile operators worldwide. It is a Red Herring 100 company, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile search platform. See www.naviblog.jp for more.

Naviblogger says: a solution to the subprime loan fiasco

2007-09-04T13:56:00.000+01:00

Heard about the subprime loan fiasco that is threatening to blow up the US economy and all the other economies that depend on it? Or at least dent the stock exchange, interest rates, and industrial production rates due to reduced consumer spending?

Well mull no more: there is an immediate solution, and it involves passing ONE reasonable law to fix it: see this link for more.

By the way, the guy who suggested this is "former chief economist on the staff of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers"... so there is some sanity left in this bunch of wacko foreign policy losers. Hmm, we need more of the same.

Now stop moaning, Bloomberg TV, and get on it!

-- Mandali, the Naviblogger

Big Ass Photosites = Big Ass Quality

2007-09-03T10:51:00.000+01:00

Nikon appears to have struck back with force with the new D3 D-SLR. Nikon engineers have been reading the web forums and complaints about high-ISO performance on Nikon's DX format sensors and obviously took the challenge very seriously and kept the project very secret. When the D3 was unveiled on August 23rd people were pleasantly surprised to see Nikon with a 35mm sensor, even more happy to see the 920,000 dot high resolution VGA display, and the DX crop mode at 11 frames per second. Nikon really went to work on their sensor, microlens and signal processing technology to come out with a monster of a professional D-SLR that competes square in the space of the Canon 1Ds MKII and 1D MKIII. The new lens line-up is also fantastic and come November I expect to see even more good news and good vibes from the Canon and Nikon camps as we see capabilities of the D3 in raw NEF format. Look for more and more leaked images of high ISO (12,800 and 25,600) for the pixel peepers and let's all enjoy the new level playing field between Nikon and Canon. Don't discount the new Nikon D300 announced on August 23rd as well or the $3000 lower price tag of the D3 compared to the 1Ds MK III. Its going to be a fun year for professional photographers when these three new cameras hit the streets in November.

Nikon D2H = 9.62 Microns
Nikon D3 = 8.46 Microns
Canon 1DMkII - 8.19 Microns
Canon 5D = 8.18 Microns
Canon 1Ds = 8.81 Microns
1D MKIII = 7.4 Microns
1DsMkII = 7.2 Microns
1DsMkIII = 6.4 Microns
Nikon D200 = 6.1 Microns

Happy Shooting. See you at Shinjuku Loft on September 9th.

-DJ Stickyhead

Naviblog Widget ranked Top 10 best-ever Yahoo! Widget

2007-08-28T19:46:00.000+01:00

Naviblog's Guinness Clock widget has been ranked in the Top 10 best-ever Yahoo! Japan Widgets, as seen on the Yahoo! Japan Widgets site yesterday. The site opened about a year ago. The ranking is an overall ranking across all widget categories (about 180 widgets registered in total), and is based on open user rankings (with a simple 0-4 stars system), putting Naviblog in the top 5% percentile.

See the ranking at Yahoo! Japan Widgets, and enjoy more widgets at the following url:
http://widgets.yahoo.co.jp/gallery/gallery.html?st=r&pf=A

---

YAHOO!ジャパンウイジェットサイトがオープンして以来、ナビブログのギネス時計「GUINNESS CLOCK」ウイジェットが昨日現在、トップ１０ウイジェットとして選ばれました。YAHOO!ジャパンウイジェットサイトは２００６年夏の約１年前に立ち上げられ、幅広く各種のウイジェットを募集し、募集したウイジェットをユーザによる０～４つ星の評価基準をもとにウイジェットの評価ランキングを作成していました。今回のトップ１０ランクインは、ウイジェット機能別を問わない、１８０以上のウイジェットを総合的に評価された結果です。

ランキングやその他ウイジェットの詳細情報は、下記のURLからヤフーウイジェットサイトにアクセスしてください：

http://widgets.yahoo.co.jp/gallery/gallery.html?st=r&pf=A

UK Punk in Shibuya Sept 8

2007-08-25T05:00:00.000+01:00

Recently found a flyer for Sundance-celebrated "London Calling - The Life of Joe Strummer" that will be playing at Shibuya's MuseCon on September 8th. The Japanese website was shite with their puny official teaser: The Clash is mad, cool and I was born the year when they released their first album - '77. Nuff said. Check this live snippet one year later.

Or try "I fought the law" on for size:

-- Mandali

Airport grilling, Adams and me

2007-08-24T05:28:00.000+01:00

Classic article [here] where Gerry Adams goes to the US and gets picked on by anti-terrorism squads of airport security there... but for some, you don't need to go all the way to the land of the free to enjoy airport security culture. You can get it for free where you live now.

Picture the set:

On a recent trip to HK on business a few weeks ago, I didn't have time to choose which airplane company to fly, but flew on UA. United Airlines, US airline company, they told me. Couldn't care less, I thought, I've flown on Aeroflots, Canadian Internationals and Singapore Airlines, what's wrong with flying Uncle Sam for once? Mistake.

Not only was my bag searched and passed through the x-ray machine about 3 times, especially regarding "liquids" in a plastic bag that they couldn't decide on whether I could take a sore throat spray on board or not. Searched up and down with metal detector: bleep on my belt.

Take belt off. No bleep. Move. Next, check shoes. Nice shoes, but shoe bomber me? Move on please. "Laptop? Can I see your laptop?" Maybe because Apple is cool, they didn't fuss too much about it. Anyway, go through immigration. Japanese lady, 20 seconds. Korean lady, 25 seconds. Me, 120 seconds. Blip, look at my face, look again, look again, thank you. By this time it was a few minutes before my flight and I dashed over towards the gate. A UA ground assistant stopped me on the way:
"UA?" she said.
"Yes"
"Well hurry up, go now!" and she brushed past me.
She was Japanese. Hmm.

I get to waiting lounge. No-one there, they're shutting the gate down, plane to leave in 5 minutes. Zip through the check-in machine. Two UA-labelled officers jump out of the woodwork, a guy with a big machine and a lady with a metal detector.

"Tickets please"
"Why are you going to Hong Kong?"
"Just for a short trip, see some friends"

She eyes my passport and ticket. Metal detector check, beep, take off belt, bag check, "what is this?" remark, laptop check, laptop looked over fairly quickly, "Apple is cool" thought to self. Check my shoes. Nice shoes.

"Do you have a mobile phone?"
As the CEO of a mobile phone services company, I could not resist the obvious reply.
"Yes"
Wrong answer.

Mobile phone is taken from me, opened and button pad swiped carefully with some cloth/plastic, then fed into big machine of chunky guy.

"What's that for?" I ask gingerly, hoping they aren't magneto-deleting my address book.
"To check for explosives and other substances. It's quite sensitive." he says quietly.
(For a split second I get a flashback to the scene in Fight Club when Edward Norton gets off the plane, finds his bag is not on the luggage belt and the guard tells him quietly "sometimes it's an alarm clock in the bag, not sure. But every so often... it's a dildo")

...WTF?? Sure, I'm going to rub my mobile phone in TNT, then put it in my pocket? I mean, come on!

Get on plane. Positioned in the middle of a row of 4 seats. Fidgety lady to my left. She looks at me from the side of her eye. Murmur and mumble. "Whatever", I think. The plane door closes and she eyes me saying something about placing people in the middle row and coming in at the last minute as if I was wearing a JihadBoyz bandana with ShoeBomber T-shirt. She moves all her stuff to another vacant seat. Then moves her shoes with a suspicious look.

I guess with a first name that is short for Mohammed Ali, the two most important figures in the Islamic religion, and a middle name Wieslaw, which means "great glory", and last and not least a middle-eastern-sounding family name "Khalesi", meaning "of the pure", I shouldn't be surprised all the keyword-matching bells go off every time I board a plane, but this is ridiculous. I repeat, RI-di-CU-lous.

I hear airport security sometimes look at people's blogs when interrogating them in random airport rooms. Read this blog, don't piss me off. That said, I have got somewhat used to getting checked and re-checked, no-one believing me when I reply "I am British, look at my passport". I was incensed when my dad got the usual treatment in supposedly Middle East-friendly France's Charles de Gaulle airport. He still is, everytime. I couldn't give a toss now. If I wanted to falsify my documents, I wouldn't use Mohammed or Ahmad, I'd use George, or W., or Bill, or Tony, you know? Give me a break.

I'm not flying UA again, but I get the feeling the problem won't go away.

- Mandali

Naviblog moves to Yebisu Garden Place offices

2007-08-22T04:39:00.001+01:00

Naviblog has moved! As of August 20, 2007, the offices of Naviblog Corporation have moved to more spacious offices on Yebisu Garden Place's 18th Floor. Please update your address books with our latest contact information, as below. We look forward to welcoming you to our new offices in the near future.

Naviblog Corporation
Level 18, Yebisu Garden Place Tower,
4-20-3 Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-6018
See our website's top page for our new telephone and fax information.
www.naviblog.jp

Access to our office:
The closest stations are the JR Ebisu and Metro Hibiya Line Ebisu stations.
5 minute walk from Ebisu Station*, JR line, East exit.
8 minute walk from Ebisu Station*, Metro Hibiya line, Exit 1.
* A covered moving sidewalk conveys passengers quickly to Yebisu Garden Place.

---

事務所移転のお知らせ！2007年8月20日付で、株式会社NAVIBLOGが恵比寿ガーデンプレイス18階の広いオフィスに移転しました。移転に伴い住所及び電話番号が変わります。お手数をお掛けいたしますが、下記内容にてご登録変更くださいますようお願いいたします。

〒150-6018
東京都渋谷区恵比寿4-20-3
恵比寿ガーデンプレイスタワー18階
株式会社NAVIBLOG
TEL/FAXに関しては、弊社HPトップページをご覧ください。
www.naviblog.jp

アクセス方法：
JR線恵比寿駅* 東口より徒歩5分
地下鉄日比谷線恵比寿駅*出口より徒歩8 分
*動く通路「恵比寿スカイウォーク」で約5分。雨の日でも傘なしで濡れずにアクセスできます。

Save Hanezawa Garden

2007-08-18T14:00:00.001+01:00

In the rush to go about our everyday chores, we often forget those things that are closest to us and that make up the fabric of our everyday lives.

My extended learning curve with entrepreneurship for over 3 years has been in this area of Hiroo in downtown Tokyo which I love and cherish. In the many ups and downs of that period, there has been one place that I can just head over to for a breather, just to soak in the magic of the forest air, look at the tall trees overhead, even just to get a drink at the oversubscribed bar. Yes, I'm talking about Hanezawa Garden, that oasis of tranquility and traditional Japanese majesty about 5 minutes away from the Naviblog office.

To my dismay, I found out a couple of months ago that although the place had shut down over a year ago, the place was going to be demolished and the virgin forest there razed to the ground. At a local town meeting, I was horrified to see that developers were planning to pour concrete over the whole thing and build random apartments over it. So I joined the protest movement to Save Hanezawa Garden and opened a website alongside another existing one, to get the word out.

They say that doing great things start with deeds close to home. This has got to be the best example of that. See http://savehanezawagarden.blogspot.com for more details on the place and what you can do about it. There will be a petition soon too.

-- Mandali

RATM at 5am

2007-08-10T20:45:00.000+01:00

Respect to the Rage crew: an amazing video of the Rage Against The Machine song Killing in the Name spliced with footage of police repression of US protesters in LA on the other side of the street, at the DNC back in 2000. The spirit of Seattle will not be forgotten.

Just as a reminder, this was 1999:

Weekend trailers

2007-08-10T18:56:00.000+01:00

Very cool... http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/intothewild/large.html

Gotta see this... http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/thisisengland/trailer/

Hmm... http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/large.html

Global Whining

2007-08-09T13:04:00.000+01:00

Look at the conspiracy the US Government is trying to perpetrate on us. Its impossible to imagine that all these natural disasters did not occur during the Presidency of George W Bush. How stupid do they think we are? Let's mobilize and deal with his destructive endeavors before he floods the Yellow River again to distract the Public from what's really important to us, like battery powered cars -http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/studies/elv/heavy_metals.pdf.

I have it from a source close to the investigation that the 2004 Indonesia Tsunami and hurricane Katrina were both steered into land by the same machine Dick Cheney used to blow up flight 800 over New York and brainwash the 9/11 terrorists to hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center towers.

Excuse me while turn up the AC for my cows and have another pint of Foie Gras.

1. 1931 Yellow River flood Yellow River, China Summer 1931 1,000,000-4,000,000
2. 1887 Yellow River flood Yellow River, China September-October 1887 900,000-2,000,000
3. 1970 Bhola cyclone Ganges Delta, East Pakistan Nov 13, 1970 500,000-1,000,000
4. 1938 Yellow River flood Yellow River, China 1938 500,000-900,000
5. 1556 Shaanxi earthquake Shaanxi Province, China January 23, 1556 830,000
6. 1839 India Cyclone Coringa, India November 25 1839 300,000+
7. 1642 Kaifeng Flood Kaifeng, Henan Province, China 1642 300,000
8. 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami Indian Ocean Dec 26 2004 280,000
9. 1976 Tangshan earthquake Tangshan, China July 28, 1976 242,000*
10. 1138 Aleppo earthquake Syria 1138 230,000

Naviblog exhibits at MCPC mobile solutions fair

2007-08-09T05:40:00.000+01:00

Naviblog Corporation will be exhibiting their latest products and services on September 9th, 2007, alongside medium to large system integrator and mobile solutions companies in Aoyama's Tepia Hall in downtown Tokyo. This yearly one-day-only fair will include the participation of all carriers, from market leader NTT Docomo to new MNOs such as Willcom, to mobile system integrators such as NEC, Toshiba Solutions, Hitachi Business Solutions, Ricoh, Microsoft and many more.

Visit us at the fair! Print out your free invitation from the URL below:
http://www.ric.co.jp/expo/fair2007/download/fair_ticket.pdf

Exhibition details
Date : Friday September 7th, 2007, from 10.00am to 5.30pm
Location : Aoyama TEPIA, Kita-aoyama 2-8-44, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
(closest station: Tokyo Metro Gaienmae Station)
Access map : For more information on the conference, and to sign up for the seminars on the day, see here.

For more information on the conference, and to sign up for the seminars on the day, see here.

-----

ナビブログはＭＣＰＣソリューションフェアに出展

来る9月7日（金）に、中堅・大手のＳＩer企業やモバイルソリューション開発会社が出展する東京都港区の青山ＴＥＰＩＡで、株式会社ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧは最新の製品とサービスを展示します。１年に1日しか開催しないこのフェアには、携帯電話キャリアのＮＴＴドコモからＷＩＬＬＣＯＭまで、そしてＮＥＣ、東芝ソリューションズ、日立ビジネスソリューションズ、リコー、マイクロソフトなど多くのシステムインテグレーターが出展します。

弊社ブースを見に来てください！無料招待券を下記のＵＲＬから印刷して、記入の上、当日にご持参ください。
http://www.ric.co.jp/expo/fair2007/download/fair_ticket.pdf

出展詳細事項
日時 : 2007年9月7日(金)、午前10時〜午後5時
会場 : 東京都港区北青山2-8-44（最寄駅：地下鉄外苑前駅）
アクセス図 : 青山ＴＥＰＩＡのＨＰをご確認ください。

カンファレンスの詳細情報、またはセミナーの事前登録については、こちらをご覧ください。

Bipalium Nobile　オオミスジコウガイビル

2007-08-01T02:51:00.000+01:00

I've always been attracted to weird things. For example, simply looking at myself in the mirror...

Seriously, with my love for punk, death metal, blues, jazz and classical music, photography and design I find myself often in the company of strangers. I have been to bars and clubs where women have said, to my surprise, "....oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were gay...". Perhaps I'm weirder than I thought, or maybe its just the haircut. Fortunately, I always get that situation sorted out and make proper progress.

So, that is one example of weirdness around me, another is my love for bugs, creepy-crawlies things, astronomy, and my recent fascination with Bipalium Nobile, a fantasticly disgusting creature that I found in Japan almost one year ago while hiking in the low hills of Tokyo during the rainy season.

The Japanese name for this monster is Oomisujikougaibiru, meaning "large three-lined anchor-shaped leech", (or "[ornamental Japanese] hairpin shaped). It is occasionally mentioned in comic books or on television house-wife anecdotal gossip shows by illustrating it with a drunken salary man trying to walk home and thinking he has found the pull-cord for a light, only to get shocked into panic when he realizes it is really a sticky, squishy, three-foot-long land planarian hanging from a tree looking for an earthworm as a midnight snack.

It is just getting to the end of a late rainy season in Tokyo now, so the ground is damp and the air is hot, sticky and humid - the perfect weather for the Bipaliidae and their family that enjoy this weather. Last year, about the same time, while in the rain-forresty hills near my house I discovered about 50 of them crawling on the ground around the area where I was watching stag beetles, grasshoppers, ladybugs, and taking pictures of the same. At first I thought they were just roots of the trees until I saw them MOVE. I was shocked and disgusted, but soon became fascinated by these creatures. I took several pictures, which you can see in the attached link.

Since then I have been doing a bit of research on these creatures and plan on capturing a few, cutting them up into pieces and watching them regenerate. My latest experiments on them were how they reacted to Vodka, which resulted in a very angry worm; and how DJ the.ex.hipster reacted to them when I tried to put one in his hand, which almost got me fired.

Regards,
Naviblog bloggster DJ Stickyhead aka John Kessler

Diversity, bees and a broken rudder

2007-07-31T16:11:00.000+01:00

Having seen An Inconvenient Truth over the weekend, and with the torrential floods over in the UK this last week, coming across this article entitled "Resilience" rang a bell. It talks about the importance of diversity/redundancy (whether you look at it from an assets standpoint or an efficiency standpoint) in an ecological system. Taking the example of the collapse of bee colonies, he points to the decreasing gene pool available in our mass-market food production agromodels, the decreasing gene pool in the fauna and flora that makes up the energy pyramid of raw to processed food, and our decreasing ability to limit antigens/pathogens making their way from monoculture production to our dinner plate.

Talking to Eriko over the weekend about the application of this to business, I remembered reading about the pros and cons of Six Sigma efficiency versus creative innovation in a McKinsey Quarterly article, or maybe on this old BusinessWeek article on GE CEO Immelt and his new creativity thing... I can't remember which for sure.

Six Sigma weeds out the causes of failure, while innovation embraces failure as a rule. When you're looking for something out of the box, don't look at Six Sigma. When you're looking at operational efficiency, don't reach for brainstorming and venture businesses.

At the time, I suggested a new company model that has a marketing and strategy process that is creativity-centric and an execution half that is process efficiency-centric. Because efficiency isn't going anywhere any time soon, just efficiency doesn't get you anywhere if you don't think laterally when competition heats up.

A good example that is one of Mike's favorites he always bugs me with: I was showing off my yachting prowess to GF down South of Tokyo in Zushi, out in the bay. Balmy sunshine, calm seas, nice breeze, so far so good. Then suddenly it gets cloudy, wind picks up and changes direction every few minutes, the sea gets choppy and then the rudder handle breaks. You're just outside the bay area, not enough to paddle back, but if you don't move you'll be carried out further into the bay by the slow currents tugging at the vessel. Solution? Lashed the two components of the rudder handle together with spare elastic band to simulate the handle, then steadied the handle with right hand and coerced the ship's sails slowly back to the harbour with the left. Get too much wind, the vessel speeds up, do one zigzag in the wrong direction and the elastic goes then you're in trouble. Catch too much slack and you may enter the "dead zone", where each time you try to push your boat left or right to get some wind, the wind pushes you back to the area where you can't catch any.

Eventually, I got back to the harbour, and only told GF that we were heading back early, she told me later that nothing seemed out of place, but I was scared out of my wits that any one thing could kick this plan out and we'd be left waving around for help. Out-of-the box and in-the-box definitely go hand in hand.

Maybe we need to build an industrial system that allows for more of the former while holding on to the knowledge of the latter. One never goes without the other.

--Mandali

Naviblog system featured in the Financial Times

2007-07-31T03:44:00.000+01:00

The success of the Tokyo-based Guinness pub mobile search service "Guinness Navi", recently upgraded in July, has been featured in the leading British business paper, the Financial Times. Profero Group chief Daryl Arnold, a Naviblog client, noted in the article "We're going to see much more of that sort of development: technology that works". See the article for more information.

Guinness Navi now contains more than 300 participating Guinness-serving outlets throughout the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, and can be accessed through the mobile and the PC. See www.guinness.jp for more!

Naviblog to speak at Red Herring Japan in Kyoto

2007-07-05T07:56:00.000+01:00

Mobile marketing firm Naviblog will be speaking at the first-ever Red Herring Japan / Technology Summit event, on Monday July 23rd, hosted by Red Herring, CNET Japan, CMO Council, and Mobikyo among others.

A star-studded lineup to include such luminaries as (Japan's largest shopping site) Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman of Sony's Advisory Board Nobuyuki Idei, Adobe's Akio Tanaka, Salesforce.com's President Jim Steele, and many others, will be speaking alongside Naviblog's CEO Mandali Khalesi on topics from entrepreneurship to tech business in Japan, to technological trends and internationalisation of the digital contents business.

According to the event website, the invitation-only, CXO-level event will "connect speakers, analysts, entrepreneurs, investors, journalists and observers from across the country for meaningful, technology-specific comparisons and insights. Half of the speakers and attendees will be from Japan, and the other half will be from international locations. If you can only attend one event in Japan this year, this is it"... We look forward to seeing you there!

Presentation details
Date : Monday July 23rd, 2007, from 11.45am to 12.45pm
Registration : Register on the website at www.herringevents.com
Location : Hotel Okura, Kyoto, Japan
Access map : See the Hotel Okura's website here.

For more information on the conference, see here.
Any press inquiries, or requests for interviews, should be directed to info@naviblog.jp.

Naviblog featured in UK marketing magazine

2007-06-29T13:59:00.000+01:00

Web-based UK marketing magazine mad.co.uk has featured Naviblog and its Guinness Navi product as part of its latest article on mobile marketing services.

In a phone interview with co-founder Michael Harris, the article bills Naviblog's Guinness Navi service as a "next-generation service [...where] in all cases the search process is reduced to one click". The report goes on to point out that "Japan passed the 100m mobile subscriber" level a few months ago, so "innovation is now about business models and marketing tactics, as opposed to technical features and functions"... We couldn't agree more.

See the article for more: click here or Google cache here.

Naviblog featured in key Frost & Sullivan report

2007-06-26T01:31:00.000+01:00

Frost & Sullivan, the well-known market research firm, has featured Naviblog in its latest report on the LBS market. Released two weeks ago, the report entitled "Asia Pacific Location-based Services Markets" focuses on the tremendous growth seen by the LBS market, first in the advanced LBS markets of Japan and South Korea, but also in other up-and-coming LBS markets such as China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India among others.

According to the report, Japan and South Korea have seen a CAGR of 15 and 25% during 2006 alone, but are lagging behind smaller but more high-growth markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore which saw a staggering CAGR of nearly 30% over the same period. This confirms our belief that the potential for branded LBS services is about to break within Asia-Pacific markets and beyond to Europe and the US. For more details, and a breakdown of the report, see here.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, founded in 1961, has 26 global offices with more than 1500 industry consultants, market research analysts, technology analysts and economists. It is the world leader in growth consulting and the integrated areas of technology research, market research, economic research, corporate best practices, training, customer research, competitive intelligence and corporate strategy.
www.frost.com

About Naviblog Corporation
Naviblog (CEO: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo-based mobile marketing firm that provides branded marketing solutions to consumer brands, digital advertising agencies, and mobile operators worldwide. It is a Red Herring 100 company, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile search platform.
www.naviblog.jp

DJ Tornado Kicks - “Organic Trips”

2007-06-03T08:00:00.000+01:00

Hello! back again this time with trippy sounds, pure jam rock psychedelic acid Woodstock rave like sounds, but don't worry there's nothing chemical digital here.

These are all organic band grooves based on my best trippy memories, what were they? You'll might experience flashbacks from some of my crazy party life if you're in the best mood to open your musical chakra.
So now take off!

DJ Tornado Kicks

Naviblog checks: from Znet on Latin America to Asia Times on the Middle East

2007-05-15T16:01:00.000+01:00

* Back after a fairly long absence, so much going on right now... but it's time to rectify a few things. No.1: ZNet is cool. No.2: Asia Times is cooler than I thought.

The ever-cool ZNet site, self-titled "A community of people committed to social change", highlights two very different accounts of the indigenous people's revolutions taking place across Northern Latin America. The first one looks at the emancipation of the indigenous people of Bolivia, comprising 70% of the population but not feeling at home in their own country. The article looks at their voting-in of their first indigenous president, Evo Morales, and the difficult path towards a new state organization untainted by 500 years of colonialism and various flavours of imperialism. Another looks at the internal racism within a US-leaning state such as Columbia, which discriminates against its own AfroColumbian people for the colour of their skin and the need for a social scapegoat. Eye-opening stuff.

Over at the Asia Times Online, that I read very rarely, I was pleasantly surprised by an article showing the veritable diplomatc minefield that the Europe-Middle East area represents for turn-of-the-(21st-)Century Great Powers US and Russia. The article entitled "Iran courts US at Russia's expense" shows the recent warming between the two regional rivals in the context of energy, Islamic political horse trading, Great Power realpolitik and local international territorial issues. Read the two pages of the article and before you know it, you're all smug and feel you've studied geopolitics in school or something. Easy-to-read, straight-up, academic without being stuffy, highly commendable with easily chewable information. For anyone who wants a heads-up on the political situation without demonisation or BS rhetoric from either side.

Naviblog to present at Tokyo Mobile Innovation conference

2007-05-15T08:45:00.000+01:00

Mobile marketing firm Naviblog will present their latest product, NaviblogX, at the 5th Innovation Challenge on June 21st, hosted by the Mobile Computing Promotion Consortium of Japan. NaviblogX is a groundbreaking web-based application that allows brands, SMEs and individuals to set up their own mobile website, complete with maps and blogs, within 60 seconds.

As opposed to most web-based APIs, NaviblogX wraps the functionality of the Naviblog API in an easy-to-use tool, requiring no prior programming or technical knowledge from the user. The finished site is immediately viewable on more than 170 handsets from all 4 Japanese mobile carriers. NaviblogX, currently only available as a restricted developer release, is being implemented by over 30 companies and developers.

Presentation details
Date: June 21st, 2007, from 2pm to 3pm
Registration: Doors open at 12:30pm; keynote seminar "Latest on Bluetooth technologies" from 1pm to 2pm.
Place: Toranomon Pastoral Hotel, New Bldg., 4F, "Mint" room
Cocktail reception: After corporate presentations, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm.
Access map: See here.

About the MCPC
The Mobile Computing Promotion Consortium of Japan facilitates research and implements measures for technical and operational issues, promotes joint research and development, establishes de-facto standards, and promotes dissemination to implement and evolve a more advanced, efficient and economic mobile computing system. The consortium cooperates internationally with interested organizations, contributes to the evolution and expansion of the information society, and plays a leading role in mobile computing system efforts worldwide, especially in Asia. MCPC has excellent relations with the US-based PCCA.
http://www.mcpc-jp.org/english/

About Naviblog
Within 18 months of startup, the company develops 6 industry-first mobile services including its location-based mobile search product "Naviblog 2.0", for which Naviblog receives the Red Herring Top 100 award in Summer 2006, and is on the cover of the Red Herring magazine. Featured in dozens of publications, and receiving industry awards in both Japan and Europe in 2007, Naviblog is hailed worldwide as the next-generation in digital marketing for mobile services.
http://www.naviblog.jp/index_e.html

**Japanese**

NAVIBLOGは東京モバイルイノベーション会合に出席

モバイルマーケティングの株式会社ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧは、6月21日にモバイルコンピューティング推進コンソーシャム主催の「第5回イノベーションチャレンジ」カンファレンスに、新製品のＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸを紹介いたします。ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸは60秒以内に、ブランド、中小企業や個人のモバイルサイトを、地図とブログの機能付きで構築する、斬新なウェブアプリケーションです。

多くのウェブＡＰＩと違って、ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸはユーザにプログラミングや技術的な知識を求めることなく、ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧのＡＰＩを使いやすいツールに埋め込んであります。完成したサイトは瞬時に日本４キャリアの170機種以上の端末で確認できます。ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸは現在限定したデベロッパーリリース中であり、すでに30以上の企業と開発者に導入されています。

プレゼンテーション詳細事項
日時： 2007年6月21日、午後2時00分〜3時00分
受付：当日12時30分〜；基調演説「Bluetooth最新技術情報」は、午後1時00分〜2時00分
場所：虎ノ門パストラルホテル　新館４階「ミント」
レセプション：全出席社プレゼンテーション後、午後5時30分〜7時30分
アクセス図：こちらをご確認ください。

ＭＣＰＣについて
モバイルコンピューティングシステムの本格的かつ健全な市場の形成・拡大のために、通信キャリア（ネットワーク）、コンピュータハードメーカ・ソフトメーカ、システムインテグレータ（含むサービスプロバイダー）、報道関係者等が連携し、より高度、効果的かつ経済的なモバイルコンピューティングシステム実現、発展のための技術上の課題、運用上の課題調査、課題への対応、共同研究、開発の推進、標準（デファクトスタンダード）化および普及啓発活動等を行い、もって情報化社会の発展拡大に貢献する（加えて世界—特にアジアにおけるモバイルコンピューティングシステムの先導的役割を果たす）ことを目的としています。
http://www.mcpc-jp.org/

NAVIBLOGについて
日本で初めて、携帯電話でアクセスする位置情報連動型ブログサービスを提供した会社です。設立してわずか18ヶ月で６つの業界初サービスを実現。国内外数十のメディアに注目され、06年夏に米有力紙「Red Herring」TOP100賞を受賞し、表紙に掲載。その後、日本やヨーロッパの業界賞を受賞し、次世代の携帯電話アプリケーション開発会社として国内外に注目。
http://www.naviblog.jp/

DJ Mandali - “Black Diamond Mix”

2007-05-12T10:25:00.000+01:00

There has been a lot of activity States-side that I have been meaning to bring together for a while, a lot of creative music styles coming out of California, out of Miami, of course out of London. I have brought these influences together in a hot new mix, the Black Diamond mix.

Bringing together some usual suspects such as Coldcut and Fred Everything (do these guys ever take a breather?), followed by some personal revelations, such as DJ Diz. I mean, where has this guy been all my life?

Checking his bio, he entered the world of music under the wing of luminaries such as house demigod Derrick Carter, Mark Farina of Mushroom Jazz fame, and deep house supremos Chez Damier and Ron Trent. I mean, how much patronage do you need? Apparently sharing a residency at Chicago's Shelter with coolster Johnny Fiasco did the trick.

Another revelation is the resurgence (at least in my eyes) of Om Records. A very cool compilation of Miami club sounds in their latest Om:Miami compilation fits perfectly into this edgy and stylish mix. Jazzy, deep house overtones, hip-hop influenced, clublike. As DJ Mike used to say, "if these tracks don't have you twitching about looking for some space to move, then hey, you can't be moved". Enjoy!

DJ Mandali

Child abuse or not? Bill O’Reilly seems to think so...

2007-04-23T07:10:00.000+01:00

Recently I’ve started spending more time around the web-based video sharing sites like YouTube, and a few others. I blame Mandali and Michael for stoking my interest. I think that most of the video’s being uploaded are just plain useless and irrelevant, but... some of it is quite interesting and thought provoking.

Recently while searching around for something interesting, something other than Imus, Iraq, Bush, Virginia Tech, more Imus, more Iraq, more Bush or more Virginia Tech, I ended up on the YouTube site. One of Mandali’s blog posts a while back brought the guy Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report) to my attention, so now if I head over to the YouTube site, I always search for his stuff first (Dave Chapelle second).

On this day, while searching for Colbert, I noticed that the commentator Bill O’Reilly also had quite a few of his videos uploaded by viewers. So, since I’ve heard his name a few times, I decided to watch some of his shows... After 10 episodes or so, I am totally convinced that this guy has a serious problem.

My impression of Mr. O’Reilly is that he is the typical Republican. Actually, he is the perfect Republican even though he doesn’t claim affiliation with any party. I think that most of his arguments were based solely on what he’s read in The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal. Its the same lines Republicans repeat over and over again on things like the so-called war on terror, the need to stay in Iraq, liberals being unpatriotic, Cindy Sheehan being a radical, and illegal immigrants not deserving rights, etc. (And my family wonders why I am in no hurry to get back to the U.S...)

Anyway, on to why I am writing this blog... the title, “Child abuse or not? Bill O’Reilly seems to think so...” is about a video out there having a go at Mr. O (and believe me, there are numerous out there. He doesn’t seem to be too popular with the liberals.). This particular video, “The Coolest 8 Year Old In The World Talks About O’Reilly” is just what the title says, an 8 yr old kid really giving Mr. O a hard time.

Apparently as a comeback to the kid’s video, “Bill O’Reilly takes on YouTube”, Mr. O shows a clip of the video on his show and asks a child advocate (probably another Republican) about what she thought of the kid “being used” in the video clip. When watching Mr. O’s show, please note that he doesn’t show the first few seconds of the kids video to the advocate... meaning, the advocate probably doesn’t know the kid is ripping Mr. O during the clip she is asked to view.

What does it all mean? It means some people will probably see it as using the child to get a message across in a creative manner. Some will see it as child abuse and totally unexcuseable behavior on the part of a few adults (but keep in mind, the people who will see it as abuse are the same people who think its okay to buy their kids shotguns at the age of 8 and 9 years old).

Me, I just see it as creative way of giving Mr. O a swift kick in the teeth, something he so desperately needs.

- Mike

Peace out...

Guatemalan beheadings to Somalian resistance... Naviblog checks the state of the world on a Saturday morning

2007-04-21T04:42:00.000+01:00

Saturday morning is hardly the time for a wake-up call to a new development in the industry or in the state of affairs worldwide. Just sitting in my chair, lazily surfing a multitude of news sources, with the Virginia, Nagasaki and other NASA shootings vaguely there at the back of my mind. Within minutes I found a world in a sorry state of affairs that really got me thinking, "what the hell is going on?".

Example. Starting off in the UK, the Guardian headlines "Women laughed as they forced toddlers to take part in 'dog fight'", where a family pitted their 3 yr old against their 2 yr old sibling with various weapons, as light afternoon entertainment. Hmm. Or maybe a piece on Guatemala which details a harrowing account of gangland rape and other commonplace violence:

...On New Year's Day his seven-year-old daughter was killed. She had been sent out to buy a nappy for her baby brother but never arrived home - hours later her decapitated body was found in one of the deep gullies that run through the capital's slums.

Alright, shift off to some other sources I thought: The Independent's main headline drags me back into drama: "Gaza: a disturbing dispatch from a no-go area". Maybe Al-Jazeera? "Street battles rage on in Mogadishu", where UN status-quo-in-chief Ban Ki Moon muses why the Ethiopian invasion and US bombings haven't got Somalia back in its place at the bottom of the pyramid. This comes just weeks after he was nearly hit in a rocket attack by insurgents in Iraq while preaching to the press choir in Baghdad.

Unsure whether to give up at this point, I went to look for a quick update on the upcoming French presidential elections, where I found but lackluster comments about a woman being fit for President (the UK and Germany have done it, why the discussion?). But I quickly homed in on a more ominous development closer to my heart: the Le Monde website asks "Does the state want to kill the Internet in France?". This article notes an upcoming bill that requires all internet service providers and hosting companies to keep all records of all transactions made by their users, whether phone numbers, credit card information, login dates and times, IP addresses, blog entries, profiles, including any changes and edits made at any time. Moreover this data is to be submitted immediately to the relevant French authority at simple request. Just as the French web/mobile worlds are awakening, the State wants to burden the burgeoning industry with millions of Euros of Big Brother surveillance processes. For the country of liberty, equality and fraternity, this bill promises to eclipse even the Patriot Act in its sweeping scope.

Wow... So much for quiet Saturday mornings.

Asahi Shimbun presents Naviblog CEO

2007-04-19T12:58:00.000+01:00

One of Japan's oldest newspapers, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, has presented the Naviblog CEO in a special feature on the exclusive Tokyo Entrepreneur's Summit that took place on Sunday March 11, 2007 at the Akasaka Prince Hotel in downtown Tokyo.

At a Summit entitled "entrepreneurs changing the world", Naviblog CEO Mandali Khalesi participated in the mobile industry roundtable, exhorting entrepreneurs-to-be to create their own mobile startup. "Official carrier service listings are finished, let the truth be told," he said. "The time is for consumer brands and SMEs to market directly to their target users using the mobile phone".

Among the 60 selected CEO speakers were prominent entrepreneurs such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Budget travel agency HIS chairman Hideo Sawada, and Chinese search engine leader Baidu's CEO Robin Li. The event had an attendance of 4,500, including 1,500 online visitors to live video streams of the event.

Naviblog featured in The Asia Media Journal

2007-04-17T02:49:00.000+01:00

“Mobile Branding in Japan — AMJ talks to Naviblog founder and technology visionary Mandali Khalesi about what the mobile blogging revolution means for advertisers and mobile users...”

The Asia Media Journal (Media Partners Asia, Ltd.), a leading media-focused magazine which provides exclusive analysis of companies and individuals shaping media development across Asia, has featured Naviblog Corporation in its quarterly print edition (Q1 2007), Brands on Digital.

The 2-page spread takes a look at the future of mobile marketing and branding in Asia and includes excerpts of an interview with Naviblog CEO and “technology visionary” Mandali Khalesi. “Needless to say, we’re delighted to be featured in such a respected Asian publication”, says Mandali Khalesi. “And having our photos in the article is also pretty cool.”

At Naviblog, we have been discussing and implementing projects with consumer brands and advertising agencies in order to best leverage mobile user interactions. We have found that the role our platform can play in mobile marketing and branding, is increasingly affecting not only the Asia region but also brands on a global scale. Brands and advertising agencies are beginning to see the real business potential in the mobile phone, and are discovering entirely new ways of getting a marketing message out to specific user groups.

You can purchase this special edition of The Asia Media Journal in all good bookstores across the Asia-Pacific region, and find out a bit more about how we plan to make the Naviblog platform the global standard for marketing on the mobile.

For more information on Media Partners Asia, Ltd. and The Asia Media Journal, please visit their website.

Japanese teens snub mobile carrier listings

2007-04-15T10:35:00.000+01:00

* In a revealing market research report out last Friday on Japan's CNET news website, Japanese teens are leaving the official carrier listings in favour of mobile search when trying to find a mobile service or online resource.

The multiple-choice survey taken over a representative sample of Japanese teens in the 13-19yr age segment, showed that users prefer searching using mobile search in 70.1% of cases, as opposed to official mobile carrier listings in 47.1%. Digging a little further within the categories of services searched for using either official listings or mobile search, users favoured official listings only for news/weather and train schedules, with 71.7% and 65.6% respectively. All other categories favoured mobile search, ranging from traditional content downloads (wallpapers 78.4%, ringtones 60.5%, multimedia content 77.8%), to word-of-mouth information or specialist information (such as blogs 76%, fashion/cosmetics 58.7%, food/drink/shopping 55.4%).

At the Tokyo Entrepreneur's Summit a few weeks ago in central Tokyo, I summed up the situation in 4 words: "official listings are finished". This caused a generalized uproar among other panel members that made their money during the closed-door clique of the early i-Mode days, but let the truth be told: your days are numbered.

With the arrival of the QR mobile barcode and flat-rate mobile data plans, small-to-medium firms to boutique interest sites are moving to set up their own mobile sites and market direct to their customers. If NaviblogX can help them in their endeavour, then so be it. Even a few years ago, official sites were the only way forward to get your site out with enough critical mass to generate revenue. Now it's merely a survival-of-the-deepest-pockets exercise, where established companies throw money at established carriers to get higher up on the list. This doesn't help the industry, nor does it boost its base. While the barons play, the poor scavenge. It doesn't need to be like that anymore, and users are voting with their feet.

DJ Mandali - “Soundtrax Rock”

2007-04-04T09:36:00.000+01:00

It all started with a fateful meeting online with an article on Iggy and the Stooges, followed by another fateful trip down to Shinjuku's southside Tower Records store on an otherwise nondescript Sunday afternoon. Idling through the aisles, before I knew it I was faced with what is probably the best UK garage/punk band ever, the Bang! Bang! The rest is a vague recollection of stomping around Shinjuku with random people on the kerb...

This mix is fully soundtrack-based, from the Brothers of the Head's Bang! Bang! musico-mentary soundtrack, to Samuel Jackson's latest Wutang-drenched anime flick Afrosamurai, or offbeat movie Babel's strings-and-piano masterpiece. You'd think a soundtrack would be purely an atmospheric, dramatic tension-led, orchestral affair... well, those gilded days are officially over. GZA. Big Daddy Kane. Stone Mecca. The Bang! Bang! Ryuichi Sakamoto. Susumu Yokota. Welcome to Soundtrax Rock. Time to mosh.

DJ Mandali

Wireless Watch, Research & Markets feature Naviblog services

2007-03-28T08:15:00.000+01:00

Wireless Watch Japan, a leading provider of wireless news in Japan and organizer of the popular Mobile Monday Tokyo conferences, has featured the release of Naviblog's Guinness Navi in its recent "New Tech & Services" section. Although the Guinness mobile search service is currently restricted to Irish pubs within Tokyo, there are plans to increase the scope of the service in the near future.

See more here.

In other developments, Dublin-based Research and Markets have released a Market Research report, entitled "Mobile Advertising: Opportunities and Illusions", where they look at the opportunities in mobile advertising and mobile marketing. Naviblog was among the companies referenced for the study, alongside industry heavyweights MediaFLO, T-Mobile, Vindigo, eBay and others.

See here for the press release on Yahoo! Finance.

NaviblogX and Guinness Navi featured on CNET Asia

2007-03-27T03:46:00.000+01:00

One of the leading tech news sites for the Asia-Pacific region, CNET Asia, has featured Naviblog's latest services on the pages of its "CNET Asia Blogs" section. The article notes the launch of the Guinness Navi service in Japan, an easy-to-use one-click mobile search, focused on Irish pubs in Tokyo. This service is powered by Naviblog technology.

It also mentions the developer release of Naviblog X, Naviblog's flagship mobile maps-and-blogs tool, that allows non-technical users to create a mobile website in 60 seconds complete with maps and blogs. In the author's words:

If I'm riding on a train in Japan and I'm heading to a tourist destination, I point my camera-phone at a barcode inside a travel brochure or location in some literature on the train. That barcode takes my Internet mobile to a branded blogging space. There, I can search for things I deem important on my holiday and I am instantly given feedback from users who have traveled the same way and experienced specific locations.

Find out more, click here.

Naviblog FM hits no.2 on the Electro charts!

2007-03-26T04:09:00.000+01:00

Listening to our very own Naviblog FM yesterday, with the ever-faithful Naviblog FM player widget sitting on my desktop. Checking out our guest DJ this week - DJ Tornado Kicks - with his new "British Punch" mix, listeners have been piling in over the last few days, making our FM radio station hit the no.2 spot worldwide for electronica and related music genres.

I mean, up against the likes of Soma FM? You gotta be kidding! It seems Naviblog FM is reaching to new heights, and nothing's getting in our way. Respect to DJ TKs. Keep them grooving!

Naviblog and Diageo release Guinness Navi

2007-03-23T05:33:00.000Z

TOKYO, March 22, 2007: Diageo Japan K.K. (1) announced today the launch of its one-click mobile pub search service “Guinness Navi” on March 17, 2007. The new service was developed by Naviblog Corporation (2), based on their award-winning Naviblog platform.

Guinness Navi allows users to search nearby Guinness outlets easily with their mobile phone, based on the user's location. Guinness Navi is the first service to offer a branded mobile search for food and beverages. Although the service is currently restricted to Irish pub search within Tokyo's 23 wards, it plans to increase its scope to other areas, and to dining bars, local bars and other outlets.

Guinness Navi is extremely easy to use: the user reads in the specified QR barcode on their mobile phone to reach the service's top page, then clicks on the link there. The service then reads the user's location and plots the closest Guinness participating outlets on a mobile map. The service requires no downloads, installs or updates.

Current map search services require the user to click through a number of screens to reach the desired local search result, resulting in long search times. As the new Guinness Navi system is compatible with all locational technologies (from antenna triangulation/cell ID, to GPS, WiFi and direct address input), the search process is reduced to one click. The service can be used by users on Japan's 3 largest mobile phone operators (NTT Docomo, KDDI, Softbank), reaching a majority of users in the Tokyo metropolis.

Opening its website at www.guinness.jp in fall 2006, Guinness is actively pursuing digital marketing activities, including the launch of this new Guinness Navi service.

(1) About Diageo Japan K.K.
Diageo Japan (CEO: Paul Gulliver) is the 100%-owned Japanese subsidiary of London-based Diageo Plc. Diageo is the world's leading premium drinks business, and owner of numerous premium beer, spirits and wine brands. See www.diageo.com for more.

(2) About Naviblog Corporation
Naviblog (CEO: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo-based mobile marketing firm that provides branded marketing solutions to consumer brands, digital advertising agencies, and mobile operators worldwide. It is a Red Herring 100 company, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile search platform. See www.naviblog.jp for more.

NaviblogFM: DJ Tornado Kicks - “British Punch”

2007-03-21T06:10:00.000Z

Just click and listen, there's no better explanation because it's 1000% pure English.

I was pretty amazed though, that there is still so much more to learn from their leading style and fashion by time and generation...

DJ Tornado Kicks

Well, he's back...

After a short absence from the Naviblog FM studios, our favorite guest DJ, DJ TKs, is back on the scene. This time he is weighing in with his super-cool, 1000% pure British playlist. We'll start out with Side A, then head over to the B side in a few days...

Honestly speaking, DJ TKs isn't some hulking body-building type so it amazes me how he was able to carry all this fucking music over to the studios (okay, I admit, he used one of those large capacity USB HD's). I seriously doubt if you'll hear the same song twice... yes, that many songs. This is one playlist not to be taken lightly... totally smoking.

Hey, he wouldn't be DJ TKs if we expected anything less... so, like DJ TKs said, "just click and listen!"

DJ Mike (the.ex.hipster)

Robert Mugabe: When will you get yours?

2007-03-20T00:59:00.000Z

The news coming out of Zimbabwe for the past few years has gone from absurd to downright appalling...

I wonder if this is what Bob Marley had envisioned for once a great country when he sang more than twenty-five years ago at Rufaro Stadium celebrating Zimbabwe's independence.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny,
And in this judgement there is no partiality.
So arm in arms, with arms, well fight this little struggle,
cause thats the only way we can overcome our little trouble.
-- Bob Marley, Zimbabwe

Yet another beating of the same opposition members in the span of a week, in the airport no less... read here.

As an African-American, my first thoughts are, "what the hell is wrong with those people?". Those people referring to African leaders like Mugabe who continue holding Africans back and downtrodden, and for what? Is it control? Is it money and the good life for themselves? Is it just plain ignorance? Me, I kinda think its the latter and it really pisses me off.

I think its definitely time for the "old man" to go... he's caused enough pain and suffering with his king of jungle antics. If I were to hold an audience with Mugabe, I'd probably put it to him like this:

Mugabe, for the sake of your people, please just find a hole to crawl into until you take your last breath. Instead of moving your people forward by 25 years, you have moved them back by 50 years. You tend to lay blame at the feet of the white man for your short-comings as a president and as a man entrusted to help the weak of your country. Your "land grab" policies were doomed from the onset and only used a polictical tool, and for what? With the way you steal elections, why would you need to use the land grab as a political tool? It just doesn't make sense to me...

Haven't you heard that beating of opponents with metal bars is barbaric and not acceptable in this day and age? Haven't you heard that Africans are sick and tired of guys like you who only serve to prolong their suffering? Do you have any idea what kind of image you portray to the rest of the civilized world? Its certainly not an image of being civil... and that reflects on all Blacks.

Where are groups and people who make up the African Union? Where are these people who are suppose to stand for positive change on the African continent? Thabo Mbeki, where are you? Why are you not being more vocal towards the Zimbabwe mad-man Mugabe? All you guys in my book are worthless if you are not willing to stand up to this guy...

It will be a joyous day when this tyrant no longer exists either in Zimbabwe's politics or on this earth...

- Mike

Peace out...

Naviblog checks: PSB on micro-targeting or the brand "soft-sell"

2007-03-16T05:06:00.000Z

Reading a very interesting piece by PSB on the WPP's website on what they call micro-targeting. Interestingly, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) are originally pollsters that are now turning from the political targeting and polling analytics scene, to the branding and new media marketing industry.

The article reads quite well, with a number of insights, such as an 11-step checklist for micro-targeting efforts, as well as a case study on increasing user retention for a telecom company. This kind of reminds me of what I was talking about at the Tokyo Entrepreneur's Summit last week when a member of the press asked me, what comes next for mobile advertising? Is it banners? Is it coupons? I said that it was the end of the brand "hard-sell", the beginning of an experiential "soft-sell".

The real answer is targeted promotion based on psychometric behaviour analytics sourced from search and blog statistics. I also suggested mobile product placement within an ad or a service, I suggested auto-affiliation on info displayed within a page. These are all things that can be done to drive marketing activities on the mobile and the web.

The authors note however that no matter how well you try to setup these micro-targeting campaigns, "[...]many highly experienced, prominent and successful PR and marketing people both on the client side and in agencies lack the analytical skills and understanding to properly design and lead a micro-targeting project."

I would go even further and say that you not only need the right people, but more importantly you need to have a platform that collects and analyses this kind of data and then bases incrementally better conclusions based on a recurring analysis loop. Naviblog's location-based blogging platform could play this role, and allow even agencies and professionals that lack the ability to design such a project, to gather relevant data and act on it accordingly.

Naviblog says: Tune out, go see Gregory Colbert

2007-03-13T00:28:00.000Z

It's on the pages of Vogue Japan's website and in the magazine StudioVoice, so not really underground, but one look at this site makes you want to check out this Canadian photographer-virtuoso now exhibiting in Tokyo.

Sepia tones, man/animal/nature, trance-like, slightly The Fountain-like style, philosophical pictures of harmony, maybe even fragility. As the chaotic world whirls around us like an angry maelstrom, enchantment is a necessity, a primeval need. Til end June, showing at Odaiba's Nomadic Museum... gotta check it out.

Naviblog no.1 on Google, no.5 on PageRank

2007-03-08T01:28:00.000Z

* I was surprised to see that Naviblog was coming up No.1 when searching for "mobile marketing, china" on Google search. I thought it was a quirk and tried again this morning on both google.com and google.co.jp... still there. Pretty impressive.

Maybe the fact I had overlooked is that that the Naviblog website at www.naviblog.jp was registering 5 on the PageRank richter scale of Google-connectivity. I mean, all these super-connected sites taking notice and linking into our site. Astounding.

Naviblog CEO to speak at Entrepreneurs Summit

2007-03-02T12:39:00.000Z

The Dreamgate Tokyo Entrepreneur Summit event, to take place on Sunday March 11, is designed to get more young men and women to shed their ties to the 9-5 job and become entrepreneurs in their own right. Naviblog CEO Mandali Khalesi will be speaking at the “Future of mobile business” roundtable.

Date: Sunday March 11, 2007; doors open at 3.30pm, starts at 4pm
Entry: Free
Location: Akasaka Prince Hotel, Goshikinoma Bldg.
Address: Kioi-cho 1-2, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Access: Akasaka-Mitsuke station (Corridor D, Kioi-cho direction) and Nagata-cho stations (Exit 9a) are the closest. For other forms of transport, see here.
Map: Click here.

The event will connect current and aspiring entrepreneurs with 50 of Japan's leading venture entrepreneurs. From Macromill's Sugimoto to Baidu's Li, from Tully's Coffee chain's Matsuda to KLab's Sanada, you'll be in good company. For more information on the event, see the event website. For press enquiries and interview bookings, please contact info@naviblog.jp.

Naviblog featured in French IT news site

2007-03-02T12:31:00.000Z

In well-known French news site, Journal du Net, that is geared to IT professionals and developers, Naviblog was featured in an article entitled “Mashups: what you need to know”. The article focuses less on web 2.0-like mashup products, but rather on the new business models and ecosystems that they foster.

In a response to “who are the most popular mashups?”, the article mentions Google and Amazon and how their API fostered the adoption of their technologies worldwide, followed by Naviblog in the mobile space, for leveraging the power of consumer-generated media with maps. See the rest of the article here.