The MoPR Blog

Brace yourselves; the television world is about to change forever.  But the truth?  You probably won’t even notice, mainly because nearly 85 percent of Americans have nothing to do but sit back and be blissfully ignorant when the change happens.  Still, that means roughly 20 million American homes will have to prepare for the Digital TV transition. You haven’t heard about the DTV revolution? Let us give you a brief run down.

Coming in February 2009, analog television signals will be shut off and all over-the-air broadcasters will deliver their broadcasts digitally.  Small, local stations, as well as the local affiliate stations of popular networks like ABC, NBC, and PBS will no longer be available through the rabbit ears on your TV or the antenna on your roof.

So why the switch?  Well, digital TV is a significantly more efficient way to broadcast.  The transition to an all-digital signal will free up the spectrum currently used for analog TV. Yahoo! produced a guide to the transition explaining why it’s a necessary change stating that:

“The same amount of bandwidth holds a lot more information digitally than in an analog system. Stations can decide to use the bandwidth to broadcast in HDTV or to broadcast using enhanced services like interactive TV, or they can transmit multiple programs over the same signal (called multicasting).”

So who needs to prepare for the switch?  If you get your TV from a cable, phone or satellite company you don’t need to worry! This won’t affect you.  But if you still rely on rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna you will have to either purchase a new digital television or a converter box that will take the new digital TV signals and convert them to the analog format your trusty old analog TV set understands.  Pretty expensive, right?  Well, only if you opt for the new TV route.  If you do choose to purchase a converter box, which is estimated to cost about $50-70, the government is offering coupons in order to defer the cost.  (Coupons will run at about $40 each).

The US is certainly not the first to make this dramatic switch . The Netherlands was the first to convert back in December 2006 to an all digital broadcast.  Following are Australia, Sweden and the European Union which plans for all member states to switch off their analog signals by 2012.

The biggest problem being predicted right now is the lack of knowledge about the change.  With over 60% of US households clueless about the transition, commercials and public announcements have been in over drive, attempting to inform the mystified public.  So be prepared to see lots of hype until the final change coming in February. And take one more look at your television.  Do you have cable and/or a digital television?  Or are you still getting free channels through rabbit ears on an antenna?  Double check. Because you don’t want to miss out on any must see TV!

If you are wondering where our iPhone post is, we didn’t write one – there are plenty of posts to read on the subject already.

We DID take a snap of the line of the Apple store at a shopping mall here in Portland on Friday though:

Now, on to the weekly reading list…

On the endangered list: Postcards. A new survey from M:Metrics says that photo messaging from mobile phones has grown 60 percent in the U.S. and 16 percent in Europe over the past year. As the mercury climbs in the summer months, so does the usage of photo messaging in the United States, where for the past three years, photo messaging rates have been far higher than average in July and August.

Surprisingly, the usage comes from all age demographics, not just the vaunted 18-24 group. The fastest growth is coming from teens [no surprise here] and those older than 35.  In the more developed European market, the strongest growth is coming from those ages 55 years and older.

Mobile Internet Usage Explodes. Forty million US mobile subscribers (15.6 percent) actively use the mobile Internet, making the US a leader in mobile Internet adoption, according to a report released by The Nielsen Company. In 16 countries tracked, the US leads, followed by the UK (12.9 percent) and Italy (11.9 percent).

Among other key takeaways from the report is the finding that advertising is becoming a key part of the mobile Internet experience with 26 percent of mobile Internet users viewing ads while using the mobile Internet. Those surfing the mobile Internet were found to be more receptive to mobile advertising than the average data user.

The report also believes that the U.S. mobile Internet market, with 40 million active users, has reached “a critical mass for mobile Internet marketing.”

Banner ads get new life. Are you a fan of banner ads? Yeah, neither are we. But they must work – for someone – because they are a part of the Web’s landscape as much as anything else. If they haven’t been blocked by pop-up blockers, static ads for reconnecting to old classmates or getting mortgage loans are omnipresent.

However, banner ads might be getting more interesting and interactive soon. Spongecell [LINK] has been developing new interactive banner ads that let advertisers “produce engaging and relevant information” on banner ads.

The Spongecell technology lets advertisers push out their messaging to calendars, social profiles, mobile devices and home pages. For instance if it’s a banner ad announcing an event, an end-users can send the times and dates to their Facebook page, add it to their calendar and even invite friends – right from the ad itself.

Go here and play with a sample ad.

Symbian adds allies to Foundation. According to Network World , The Symbian Foundation has gained more companies joining the organization, including mobile operators 3, América Móvil and TIM as well as semiconductor manufacturer Marvell services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator. About 150 organizations have registered their interest in joining, says Network World.

The foundation is developing a new operating system for mobile devices with the first release available next year.

The Symbian Foundation was announced last month, when Nokia acquired the Symbian operating system. Nokia has plans to turn over the mobile operating system to the foundation for development.

It’s a short, weird week here at MoPR what with the July 4 long weekend and Canada Day on July 1, so we’re bringing you the usual Friday blog post on Thursday.

So not J/K: Mobile phone users want text messaging. A new report by ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. and conducted by independent research firm Amplitude Research says a whopping 73 percent of new cell phones buyers are demanding text messaging as a main feature. Texting capability demands were followed by Internet (61%) and email capabilities (63%). Also scoring big was music (34%) and video capability (33%). Users are increasingly using phones to check email: 41% of the survey respondents who use a cell phone with emailing capabilities said they send or check for emails one to five times a day.

Mobile advertising slowly climbing. According to a new study by BIGresearch , advertising account planners aren’t exactly piling on mobile advertising to their ad plans although phone users [90%] are increasing in numbers- meaning there’s a growing audience ready and waiting. The proverbial silver lining? The important and elusive 18-24 year old segment is increasingly being influenced by non-traditional forms of advertising.

According to the analysis, cell phones are much more likely to trigger an online search for young consumers than all adults (21.8% v. 8.3%), as is text messaging (15.3% v. 4.8%).

The 18-24 year old set is also more likely to download to a cell phone than the general market (31.6% v. 15.9%).

Interestingly, more than half (50.5%) of 18-24 year olds communicate with others about a service, product or brand via cell phone (compared to 29.6% of all adults), second only to face-to-face communication (66.9%). They are also almost three times as likely to communicate through text messaging than all adults (30.7% v. 10.8%).

The Twouble with Twitter. Our love/hate relationship with Twitter is not news. It seems the service is down more than up, while posts seem to magically disappear in front of our eyes. But now comes a potential competitor from Canada: Identi.ca.

Identi.ca, launched by Control Yourself, Inc.,  lets users post short messages which are then broadcast to friends in their social network using instant messages (IM), RSS feeds, and the Web.

According to the press release, “Identi.ca is similar to existing microblogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce. Unlike those services, Identi.ca’s underlying software is available under an Open Source license.”

But like Twitter, it seems to be very slow - and down - frequently. Might not be the great Twitter killer everyone has been chatting about, but at this point it does have potential to be more open than Twitter.

Client news: Cascada announces Cascada Mobile Breeze. Our Toronto-based client, Cascada Mobile, officially announced its Breeze development platform on Monday. Breeze lets users create and distribute mobile applications using basic HTML and JavaScript. It’s really that simple. CEO Alan Lysnee shows some example apps here.

Client news: Talkster adds Skype and Google Talk compatibility. Long time MoPR client, Talkster announced its integration with Skype last week and kicked off this week with the announcement that its’ Free World Dialing Service can now be used from Google Talk for free calling in countries not yet supported by Talkster’s ad-supported calling service.  With the Skype integration, Talkster callers with Skype subscription plans can use their Skype account (and free local calling minutes) to make free international and group calls to cell phones and landlines in 34 countries.

Google Talk for the iPhone. Google has announced a new US version of Google Talk designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch. From Google’s press page:  “In addition to sending your friends Gmail messages from your iPhone, you can now chat with them while you’re on the move, too! Google Talk runs entirely in the browser so there’s no need to download or install anything.”

Mashable’s take? “It’s kinda useless.”

Take the Smartphone Challenge. The PhoneStore is hosting something they call The SmartPhone Challenge. Companies that take the challenge [though we’re unclear what the actual challenge is] can test five BlackBerry devices programmed with their phone number, email and contacts with full managed Microsoft Exchange hosting and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Hosting from Rackspace, for 10 days at no charge. According to the website users can select a date, provide the information then launch the 10-day challenge. Hats off to the PhoneStore for a great promo campaign [and a hat tip to Blackberry Cool].