A new partnership between Ingenio and AOL marks the launch of Click to Call in mobile search Today AOL unveils the new beta version of AOL Mobile Search.
The new interface makes use of tabs that enable users to easily toggle between search verticals within the site like Finance, News and Local Content. The partnership with Ingenio enables click to call for all search results that include a phone number. As with the wireline portal, Google still powers the search results with the exception of local listings, which come courtesy of AOL CityGuide and financial info from AOL News.
Rachel Pasqua is Director of Mobile Marketing for iCrossing gives a nuanced view on these developements in the SE mobile market:

“Now granted the name AOL is by no means synonymous with search, but as Om Malik pointed out in his own insightful column on the subject, the jury is still out on who will own search on mobile devices. Google has the lead at this point, which is pretty much what you’d expect. But there’s certainly room for other contenders. Especially a contender that can wrap up an easy search experience and premium results with great content. The icing on the cake would be location awareness – you still need to proactively tell AOL where you are. But true LBS is on its way, if not right around the corner. A partnership with ThirdScreen is in place for advertising and if they continue to hone this refined user experience, I believe that AOL could give Yahoo!, if not also Google, a run for its money when it comes to mobile users and ad dollars.”
Ingenio commentary on mobile market opportunities

You know when you ask someone to comment on something you think is important and they just end up starting a whole new conversation. This is what happend when I asked my friend Amit from Israel for his two cents on the SIPphone launching a Gizmo Call which since yesterday evening is just completely not important anymore.

This is because I just fell in love with this service called fringe. Uncomplicated, unattached and a little uh mysterious… I hope this isnt just a crush.
So what, who and where is Fringe?

What: fring™ uses your mobile internet connection to make peer-to-peer VoIP calls, send instant messages and talk with VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk, at no extra cost.

Who: Great question in fact, I know he lives in Fringland. There my be a wierd correlation between this and the incredible killer bees story from last week. It’s awfully exciting and mysterious in any case.
Where is Fring now : Fringe is here: http://www.fring.com

There is some important reading on this subject here: http://www.henshall.com/cgi-bin/mt-henshall-tb.cgi/977

Its not often that a European start up (UK) starts making some noise in the USA espcially considering this is primarily based on using SMS. Spinvox is a realtively unique service (at least by US standards) which translates voicemail to text and then sends a message thru by SMS and email to your computer.
Lets face it when you are in a meeting no matter how boring it is there are few of us who would find it acceptable to take a call. However the send/receive button is allluringly present on a laptop usually faced towards us as we are obviously need it to make important notes on our collegues presentation.
Nice idea, but oddly I had never heard of Spinvox before and immediately decided i should take it out for a test spin only to find out it wasnt even available on the European continent. Apparantly I may have missed something here but I did not think that the Americans had really caught on to text messaging….

Since we have seen the first TTS integrated into various online campaigns last year it may not be bad to further explore creativity with speech synthesis for interactive campaigns.

Xbox users are growing fast and they are growing up which in this context may be more important to advertisers.

Late 2007 the Extended Media Centre which hooks up to your Xbox 360 console will begin delivering iPTV through tradition telecom providers such as AT&T in the USA. Deutsche Telecom, Swisscom and Britsh Telecom are also said to have jumped on the Microsoft bandwagon. Valley View reporter Chris Nuttall reports in the Financial Times that “Microsoft’s announcement at the CES that by enabling a new medium for new players, this offering was of potentially more consequence than all the other announcements at the show this year.

He also states that ” While it makes perfect sense for companies from different sectors to converge on these new opportunities, it spells confusion for the consumer faced with so much more choice, differing technologies and connection methods for Ip TV and Video on Demand”.

In my opinion offering IP tv through the Xbox 360 makes perfect commercial sense. There are already more than 10 million Xbox 360 users in more than 37 countries. It will make it easier for you to enjoy games as well as your favourites TV channels from the same set up box. Over 5 million Xbox live community members will be connected allowing them to invite friends to play games, share content and talk over IP.

The Xbox 360 console enables telephone companies to use the set up box to rival those of existing cable and satellite TV companies which will sting current players in this market especially on a localized level such as Europe.

What does this mean for advertisers? Nothing much yet and it will depend what content is on offer. I do not believe this will be important for European advertisers until way into 2008 but it doesn’t hurt to keep in touch with the number of Xbox consoles being sold worldwide. In the meantime we will be keeping our eye out for competitors which I guess will be easy.

When I saw this it was as if a few really big things came together for me. Here we have an example of a few things I know agencies have been trying to pull off for the past year. The combination text to speech, streaming flash video, avatars all put togetherat Northwestern University’s InfoLab. I am not going to dwell on the basic elemen,ts because if you have been reading my blog regularly you know where to get those parts and if I may add of significant better quality.

The real innovation here is the ability to dynamically generate a virtual newscast on a specific topic using a podcast broadcasting, transferring text data to speech.

Trendhunter adds an example for use: “Imagine the immediate potential of virtually collected, produced & packaged content for Second Life and other virtual social networks. Additionally, consumer use could lead to a complete redefinition of what it means to have a personal RSS Reader.”

Although I do not think we are waiting around for a new personal RSS reader I do think that the novelty effect would work well within an integrated media strategy.