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].

Network TV may be coming to an end.  Well, so says Tivo CEO Tom Rogers.  In a letter addressed to shareholders on July 30, Rogers mapped out the issues, and potential failure, of network television.  The main concern being advertising, and how products like Tivo have nearly dissolved the delicate balance between advertisers and networks.

“We are very worried for the industry… Because we do not believe as a whole that it is responding urgently enough to the massive dislocations these new dynamics will create . . .  Easy commercial avoidance in the next two to three years will create such an overwhelming challenge to the economics of television that it will rock the very foundation of the industry…” said Rogers.

So what’s the solution?  Rogers says it’s creating ad solutions.  And I agree.

As television audiences are whizzing past commercials, thanks to Tivo and other DVRs, advertisers are beginning to wonder what they are spending their money on.  It feels very similar to what is going on right now in the newspaper industry.  Why would advertisers spend precious budgets on a print edition, when the online source is viewed more widely?

But with television, there is still a way to draw in advertisers.  Creative ideas like product placement and digital ad overlays are becoming the industry’s new alternative to commercial advertising.

Product placement is nothing new to the television industry and is an advertising method that has been used for years.  However, with the “fast forward” button glued to the fingers of audiences, product placement is now being recognized as a necessity to the advertising world.

Next time you’re watching an episode of “Flavor of Love”, check and see what flavor has been paid for.  Are they sipping on Pepsi or Coke?  And on “Desperate Housewives”, what cool car can they be seen driving around Wisteria Lane?  My suspicion is that these products will increase almost exponentially as the television revolution continues to leave advertisers in the dust.

But the other alternative that is making waves within the industry is digital ad overlays.  RGB Networks’ Jeff Tyre recently published an article highlighting the importance of digital ad overlays stating that the “value of overlaying text, graphics and images and full-motion video has been proven by broadcasters, who for years have used overlays for various applications, such as branding content with their logos, providing real-time supplemental information such as stock market tickers and local weather updates, as well as schedule-based supplemental advertising information.”

So as ad sales continue to decrease, pay close attention to the changes that will be taking place on your big screen.  Are more actors typing on Macs?  Are you seeing more of an increase in car ads popping up in the right hand corner of your TV?  Viewers be prepared; there is a definite change in the advertising industry taking place…and it’s up to YOU to determine if it will prove successful!

The renewable energy junkies and Orange will be providing the new technology for this year’s Glastonbury music festival in Somerset, England.

Last year, the company provided a rechargepod the world’s first mobile charging station powered solely by wind and solar energy, according to the folks at GotWind.

The pod, a seven meter high tent placed at music fest and mounted with a wind charger, gave the nearly 175,000 attendees at the three-day celebration the chance to recharge their phones outdoors and away from traditional sources of power.

“With a peak power of 1Kw, the pod can recharge 100 mobile phones per hour, and stores any unused energy in its battery bank,” GotWind explains on their site. “A fully functional weather station and power generated and consumed readout is also viewable for all to see on an information panel within the pod.”

This year, GotWind and Orange are adding a new extra to the festival in addition to the rechargepod, a phone charger that users can wear on their arm, the Orange Dance Charge, powering their batteries through dance energy. Check out the press release.

MSNBC explained that the prototype chargers weigh the same as a phone and are about the size of a pack of cards, packed with weights and magnets storing the current in a battery that can later be used to charge your mobile.

So dance the night away and get something out of it other than an endorphin rush. You’re going to do it anyway, so you might as well harness your own energy to power your mobile, right?

You might not see the need for recharging your cell phone at a music festival meant to put people outdoors rocking out. Not the most opportune time to talk to your buddies. Shouldn’t you be taking a break from your hectic schedule and email?  But if you think about the thousands of people, young and old, in attendance, moseying across nearly 900 acres of farm land, the need for communication between groups within the festival atmosphere is essential.

I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve lost my friends in the crowd a concert. How will we know where we’re going to meet up afterwards if my battery dies? And what if I want to take a picture of Radiohead with my phone to send to my boyfriend who missed the concert?

As soon as I started thinking about it, it totally made sense, besides being environmentally friendly and a model for alternative energy in the grander scheme of things.

“The rechargepod will act as a trial in using renewable energy sources on a larger scale, with a view to ultimately powering elements of the Chill n’ Charge tent at future Glastonbury Festivals,” Orange and GotWind explained in their press release. “It is more important than ever that we continue to innovate and demonstrate how mobile technology can help bring people together and make festival life a little bit easier, whilst in-keeping with the traditions of the Glastonbury Festival,” an Orange rep explained.

The pod will be located within one of the campgrounds at Glastonbury and is totally free for all to use. A few prototypes of the armband will be tested at the festival as well.

ITWire reports that Orange will promote the armband charger with an interactive “Dance Charging Man” (I can see it now) who will help recharge phones by dancing with the people who need their phones re-charged.

As a backpacker, the idea of harnessing kinetic energy is super-compelling.

I could charge my GPS if I get lost in the snow. Emergency personnel or forest firefighters could have a backup plan if radios or equipment died (don’t scoff at this—those fire people do a lot of digging and chopping in teams that would create a ton of power). Of course the ability to charge my iPod might be nice, but it’s not that big of a concern when I’m hiking 25 miles into the woods. I don’t really want electricity to enter into that equation; however, it could provide some useful developments, like an electric stove to cut down on propane costs.

Keep the great ideas coming GotWind. We’re listening.

Google looks over shoulder after Nokia Symbian buyout. Big news this week with Nokia taking control of Symbian. Nokia is riding on the hopes of increasing the sales of mobile phones while boosting revenues from its wireless web services.  According to InfoWorld Daily’s Tom Sullivan, the move could damper Google’s Android. Still wondering what this means to the industry? Read “Seven things you need to know about Nokia-Symbian deal.”

If you think your broadband is slow, you’re probably right. Enter InternetforEveryone.org led by the FCC [?!] that wants universal access to high-speed, broadband Internet throughout the US. Thirty-five percent of homes with less than $50,000 in annual income have a high-speed Internet connection in the U.S. Moreover, nearly 20 million Americans live in areas that are not served by a single broadband provider; tens of millions more live in places where there is just a single choice for high-speed Internet service.

We’re in Awe: 15-Year-Old Girl Sends 15,000 Text Messages A Month. According to WEWS in Cleveland, a 15-year-old Ohio girl discovered her true talent recently - the ability to crank out 15,000 text messages in a month and keep an 3.0 GPA- all under a 9:00 p.m. curfew. According to WEWS, she didn’t realize how many text messages she sent every month until she went to the cell phone store to get her phone fixed.

“I just don’t look. I guess I had the phone a long time and I just know where the buttons are and I just hit them,” said the speed texter.

Mobile coupons finally a reality? According to MediaPost, Yahoo! is teaming with Coupons Inc. to offer mobile coupons through its Yahoo! Mobile service. The initiative would “create a national platform for large brand advertisers to distribute mobile coupons, which so far have mostly been tested only in local markets or niche categories.”

Mobile coupons, says the article, will rely on solely electronic means, such as a secure bar code system allowing shoppers to swipe mobile devices at the point of sale to get discounts or special offers.
Distribution of the coupons would involve different methods, such as e-mail, banner ads, SMS text-messaging and apps on Yahoo!’s mobile portal.

McMobile McMarketing. The Mobile Marketing Association newsletter landed in our mailbox this week. A mix of industry news, trends and upcoming events, the newsletter is always an informative read. Our favorite section is successful case studies of mobile marketing in action, such as a recent story on McDonalds and its use of SMS in Germany.

Via the SMS Lounge, McDonald’s invited customers to text their information which then registered them at their local McDonald’s. In the following months, users received a mobile voucher directly from the restaurant onto their phone every two weeks. The coupons – embedded in code - could be redeemed by scanning them at the restaurant.

Since its launch in July 2007, more than 10,000 participants have used SMS service. This first of its kind mobile couponing pilot achieved response rates up to 29% throughout Germany according to the MMA. Using SMS and mobile technologies to extend and build your brand is something we can get behind!

Wind Charged Cell Phones. Folks toting mobile phones to this year’s Glastonbury Festival 2008 in the UK later this week will have a free and green way to recharge their phones thanks to a charging station being set up at the festival by Orange. Measuring more than 7 meters tall, the free-standing recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour. It’s actually the next iteration of a portable wind charger Orange tested out at last year’s festival through a partnership with Gotwind and will serve as a trial for using renewable energy sources on a larger scale at future festivals. Orange expects the recharge pod will charge thousands of mobile phones over the course of the three-day festival. [See Grace's post for more on Gotwind.]

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable Tec Expo is the industry’s biggest engineering show boasting more than 10,000 attendees with over 20 workshops and 400+ exhibits.   All levels of cable technology are represented at the show and this year will be no exception.

Hot trends to watch for at this year’s expo:

1. DOCSIS- Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is the wildly successful cable modem standard that has enabled cable operators to sign on more broadband subs than telcos with DSL.  DOCSIS 3.0 is the latest iteration of the standard and promises to dramatically increase the data rates cable operators can offer subs, enabling a whole new generation of broadband services. At Cable-Tec, DOCIS topics range from troubleshooting, 3.0 deployment strategies and proactive network maintenance.
2. Bandwidth, bandwidth and more bandwidth- It’s all about delivering the most content WITHOUT increasing bandwidth.  This year’s expo will hold sessions discussing the issues associated with troubleshooting today’s “optically rich and expanding bandwidth.”And if you want to see a live demo of a product aimed specifically at maximizing bandwidth, stop by RGB Networks booth #2327.  RGB will be demonstrating their Dynamic Bandwidth Manager (DBM) which enables the delivery of 50 percent more Video-On-Demand (VOD) programs per 6 MHz channel without requiring additional bandwidth.
3. Switched Digital Video- Also known as SDV, Switched Digital Video will be another hot topic at this year’s expo. Topics include SDV gearing up for migration to unicast as well as SDV quality monitoring.Want to see a live demo of SDV monitoring? Check out Mixed Signals booth #623.  On display will be Sentry Edge, the latest product from Mixed Signals that enables operators to ensure they provide subscribers with a high-quality and continuous viewing experience as they rollout SDV and expand their VOD deployments.

Visit our virtual mobility museum. Do you dig mobile and wireless technology like we do? Do you enjoy history? If you do then you’ll get a kick out of our Museum of Mobility History (MuMoH) we launched a couple of weeks ago.

The museum is both a physical collection of mobility firsts — first-ever portable computer, first-ever PDA, first-ever handheld electronic game — as well as a virtual collection.

Check out our blog and feel free to join our wiki community.

Mobile users want smart and sexy. A recent survey by J.D. Power and Associates reveals that the average price paid for a handset has increased by $9 over the past six months. It also says the number of consumers who reported receiving their phones for free dropped to 33%, up from 36% a year ago. The increase, says J.D. Power, is attributed to more users buying more expensive smartphones.

In the same study, consumers were also asked for the reason behind their choice of handset model. Of the top three reasons given, ‘style’ was the criteria cited by 41% of respondents, coming ahead of ‘received for free’ (25%) and ‘ease of use’ (23%). This also happens to be one of Melissa’s personal mantras – “fashion before function”!

Google and Yahoo! still top mobile searchers. According to Nielsen Mobile Google and Yahoo! are the overall leaders in mobile searching. Google leads in mobile Internet search provider share followed by Yahoo!, together accounting for 79% of the mobile Internet search market.

At 9.0 searches per month, Google users search more frequently than users of any other mobile Internet search provider.  Yahoo! is the third most frequently-used provider, with Yahoo! users searching 6.7 times per month on average.

44% of Google users rated their satisfaction with mobile Internet search between 8 to 10 on a 10-point scale, compared to 40% of Yahoo! searchers.

White space equals more ad dollars? digital SIDEBAR is launching a mobile ad platform that delivers interactive ads through the white space in mobile phones. The service will be piloted before going public according to MarketingVOX.

“White space” represents the space not used to make a call: the screen that appears when a user is dialing, the hang-up screen, or the time between sending and receiving a text message.

Ads are targeted by age, gender, interests, use pattern, day and time and can include links to games or other media. Content may be forwarded to other customers, says MarketingVOX.

Cool site of the week. Meeting a buddy for a beer across town? Want to pick someplace in between? Fire up your browser or in our case, an iPhone, and check this out.  Mezzoman – Meet in the Middle is a simple but elegant solution for selecting a middle ground for meeting-up. Enter your address and your friend’s address – and even choose the type of place [Italian? Indian? A movie? A pub?] and you’ll get an address and location of someplace “in the middle.” They have a Facebook app as well.

Hope you got to check out my last post on consumer confusion and gadget returns. For this post, I want to expound upon a point I made about the evils of tech jargon and ways PR pros can improve relations with consumer media.

Jargon is a definite hangup for PR professionals in all spaces, from tech to travel. We must come to realize that not everyone knows our areas of expertise inside and out, and eliminating technical terms from our pitching and consumer-facing press efforts will not only make them more effective, but reach many more readers in a more approachable way.

In addition to jargon being annoying and confusing, it is alienating. To use jargon in a blog or release for consumer publics is like saying, “We don’t really care if you understand this. If you’re not in the loop, that’s too bad.”

It is also a disaster waiting to happen. If you expect your audience to do extra research on words in your press release, you are sadly mistaken—because they just won’t. The most basic idea of a news article is to communicate the best and most pertinent information in the quickest and easiest way for the reader to get it. Americans want it simple and fast. Check the McDonald’s and Starbucks on every corner, or the “ready-to-eat” packaged meals and “salad in a bag” (dressing and croutons included) items at the grocery store if you don’t believe me. People will not go to the dictionary to find out what “value-add” means, and chances are, most of your jargon wouldn’t be there in the first place.

If you don’t believe that consumers are sick of tech jargon, here’s a link for proof. There’s an entire campaign to ban internet language, and similar stories and efforts are popping up worldwide.

How can we stop this?

Here are some quick ideas on how to eliminate problems with jargon in your press outreach efforts:

1. Have a normal person read your release. Notice I didn’t say, ‘someone on your team,’ or ‘a friend in a different area in your space.’ I mean a REAL LIVE NORMAL person. Your mom is always a good one, because chances are, she’s probably more behind than anyone, at least when it comes to technology.
   
2. Have a journalist read your release. Make friends with a journalist not in your space. We’re in tech, so I’d shoot for home and garden. Have them review your press materials before you send them to consumer publications. They’ll catch your B.S. and call you on it.
3. Cut and paste your release into the “bull meter” also linked at the bottom of this post. This is a great tool. It really lets you see what sorts of mistakes you’re making when it comes to PR ‘puffery’ and confusing language.
4. Look up your jargon online or in the dictionary. If the words you’re using can’t be found in Webster’s, you should probably cut them from your release. If you do a search and your definition isn’t in the top three results, find another word that means the same thing.
5. Read your release out loud in front of the mirror. If you slip into a professor voice and start making “smart” faces, you’ve probably gone too far.
6. If you must use jargon, explain it. How about hosting a “jargonary” on your Web site or defining words within your consumer-facing press efforts. Listing out words that are commonly used in your field along with their definitions is a great way to educate the public on important terms. It also makes you look like the expert.

Here are some of the more popular offending words we encounter on a daily basis:

Bandwidth (i.e. “Do you have enough bandwidth to take this project on today?”). Bandwidth should only be used when discussing measurement of range of frequencies, data transfer or “the distribution of nonzero terms around the diagonal of a matrix.” Thanks Wikipedia.

Silo (as in a place to house ideas). I totally get the connection here, but when I think silo, this is what I see.. How about saying, “Put these docs on our intranet,” or “I’ll save your information on our network.”

Robust (i.e. “The robust technology of the . . . “). NO! No, no, NO! Robust best describes flavors, aromas and burly mountain men. I’d prefer to keep it that way, and I’m sure consumers reading Oprah Magazine would as well. Unless your technology is going to help you pick up a load of logs, use another adjective, please.

Ping (as in ‘contact’). An onomatopoeia gone horribly wrong, this is a word is a piece of out slang tech vocabulary we use ALL the time in our office: “I’ll ping Melissa real quick and find out what she thinks about this presentation.”“Let me ping John about the conference bridge.”

I find myself using this word at home a lot as well (“I’ll just ping the lady over at the theatre to find out how to audition.”). I know a friend who has had the same problem. I think his wife said something to the effect of, “Don’t ever use that word again!” the last time he said it.

If not immediately followed by the word “pong” don’t say this in a consumer publication pitch or article.

Enterprise (i.e. “We deliver applications across the enterprise.”). Doesn’t this word make you think of Star Trek a little bit? Come on, you know you’ve all thought it at one point or another. While it makes perfect sense when you are talking to industry folks, consumer probably aren’t sure what you are talking about when you say, “We sell to the enterprise,” so stick to, “We sell to other businesses.”

Monetize (to pay for or to make money from). Guilty. That’s all I’ll say. I’ll also justify my use of this word, “But it sounds so smart.” Takes me back to the days of term papers and thesaurus skimming. My supervisor recently caught me using this in a consumer-facing release. Thank goodness for proofreading!

Turnkey solutions (as in all-in-one product or service). Let’s just say “everything you need.” Before learning about the tech space if you’d have asked me what this meant a blank stare would’ve been your only reply. “All-in-one,” however, is something I definitely understand, and I’m sure consumers would feel the same. It can also mean an item is ready to use when you purchase it (say software or an electronic device), with no set up, configuring or complex integration required. All you have to do is “turn the key” and it works—like a car. So how about “ready to use,” when speaking with consumers.

Native applications (i.e. the alarm clock on your phone or the word processor on your PC). I realize this one sort of shortens “the functions and processes your device comes with,” but less is not always more. Consumers don’t get this. At all.

I would go on, but I could write an entire blog of terms and acronyms and the mass confusion they cause. Another day.

And please don’t ping me if you see some of my posts littered with this language. This blog is a silo for discussions on robust applications in real-time across the enterprise. And I just don’t have the bandwidth to go back and edit.

Additional resources

For fun times in the office.

Quick reference.

Are you a BSer?

Joshua Fruhlinger from Engadget highlighted an Accenture study [opens as PDF] that I found interesting. The study claimed that 95 percent of all gadgets returned to their manufacturers actually work.

Most returns (68 percent) came from buyers that weren’t satisfied by their purchases (no trouble found at all) and 27 percent of returns came from customers that simply changed their mind about the product they bought.

These figures were very surprising to me. While I often suffer from cases of buyer’s remorse, I’ve only returned a few items (I can remember a few outfits and one pair of shoes, in particular) and have never made a rash decision about an expensive electronic item.

Maybe it was growing up with a financially sensible father, who gasped (more like flew into a Lebanese temper tantrum) at any purchase exceeding $100, but I’ve always found that research and personal education is the key to making informed decisions that you won’t regret afterward. Do 95 percent of Americans really skip the homework?

Another finding from the study was that these returns cost carriers and retailers $13.8 billion in 2007. Most of the costs were scrap and liquidation expenses (33 percent). Warranty and repair made up 29 percent of this spending, with processing of perfectly usable items accounting for 20 percent. The other 18 percent of these costs were created by re-boxing and repackaging unbroken items and processing the returns themselves.

So the burning question is how can carriers and retailers reduce these costs?

Accenture suggests that companies focus on returns prevention by improving design, packaging and documentation. Other suggestions are to properly educate the consumers on how to operate their device and to place emphasis on after-purchase support and accessory items.

Check out the major conclusions from the study:

Five Initial Steps to Revitalize Return and Repair Strategies

• Focus on creating favorable customer expectations that forestall returns in order to avoid NTFs (No Trouble Found) completely.
• Support the product before and after sales with effective, attractive alternatives to returns.
• Implement strategies for immediately identifying NTF merchandise and return it to inventory as soon as possible.
• Elicit customer feedback to determine causes for returns.
• Look for opportunities to share responsibilities for preventing returns and streamlining return and repair networks.

Accenture claims that if carriers and retailers follow these efforts to reduce NTF’s and cut costs, savings will be significant.

The suggestions for improvement were perhaps the most interesting portions of the study, I found. The idea that better customer education would eliminate a large amount of returns is an interesting one. Fuhrlinger’s has a great take on this:

“Accenture executive Terry Steger believes that the complexity of gadgets is to blame here, and not the fickle nature of American consumers who tend to give up on product setup within a few minutes. We believe this is all actually due to the implicit nature of — ooh, look at that shiny thing over there!”

I have to agree with Fuhrlinger. While it is important to educate consumers on how to properly use their devices, let’s take a little time to think about this one. How many times have you actually read the manual for your recent purchase cover to cover? I can think of quite a few items that I’ve purchased (cell phone, microwave and food processor, for example) for which I have thrown the manual away without even so much as a glance.

And suppose an average consumer (not an early tech adopter) does by chance thumb through the manual, would they even be able to decipher the sometimes ridiculously technical language that they find therein? Maybe Accenture should have added the word “effectively” to their customer education suggestion. If communication is written in a language your consumer can’t understand it’s moot from the get go. If it takes too long to read or doesn’t keep them engaged, you might as well give it up.

Don’t believe me? T-Mobile gets it.

T-Mobile has found that 57 percent of us are confused, frustrated and bored with technology jargon. Features are usually abbreviated. 6 percent of people forget sales advice by the time they get home after purchasing their new mobile phone, and over 1/3 of people find instruction manuals too long and confusing.

The research carried out by T-Mobile and YouGov has found that a staggering 1/3 of us have no idea how our new mobile phone gadgets work after we have purchased them, despite instruction manuals and sales advice from staff.

This is a problem I’ve encountered countless times since my transfer into the technology space. I completely understand technical writing for technical publications, but consumer facing press needs to be brought to readers concisely and be easy to digest.

In my next post I’ll drill down on tech jargon and how it may be overused across the enterprise [or in plain English, I’ll list common tech buzzwords and what they really mean].

Graphic courtesy of Vintage Hi-Fi.

Weekend Reading is posted every Friday and represents some of the cooler and interesting mobility, wireless and collaboration news Mobility PR has read throughout the week.

It’s been an iWeek. We’d be remiss in a weekly wrap-up if we didn’t mention the unveiling of the next version of the iPhone. There are plenty of opinions from the web so you don’t need another one. Along with the rest of the world, we listened live to Steve Jobs’ keynote and got virtual updates via Twitter [props for not crashing during the thousands of Tweets] and MacRumors.com.

Sure, there are some exciting new features, but alas, still no cut and paste functionality. Bummer.

Mobile phones becoming the “fourth channel.” Mobile phones are becoming a major purchasing channel for consumers and represent a huge opportunity for e-tailers to capture new revenue, according to research from Cisco Systems.

Cisco found 42% respondents already provide the ability to view products on mobile devices. But only 15% offer the ability to conduct transactions, while 10% use SMS text messaging to provide customers with information and six per cent have Web pages and a URL specifically designed for mobile use.

Amazon recently launched TextBuyIt in the U.S., which enables customers to use text messaging to find products and make purchases using their mobile phones. To find a product, U.S. customers send a text message to the retailer citing the name of the item or a UPC or ISBN code. Amazon then replies within seconds with details and prices of products matching the search query.

Smartphone users doing more browsing. Social networking and Internet commerce are increasingly luring smartphone users to spend an average of four hours and thirty-eight minutes per month browsing the mobile Web in the United States, according to a new report from M:Metrics.

According to March data from the measurement firm’s metered smartphone panel, active mobile Web users in the United States spent an average of one hour and thirty-nine minutes in the month browsing Craigslist on their smartphone, the longest duration of any site among the top twenty domains visited.

On the days users visited a site, they spent an average of 22 minutes on Craigslist, 29 minutes on eBay, 16 minutes on MySpace, 14 minutes on Facebook and 18 minutes on Go.com. According to the report, mobile browsing has increased 89 percent year over year while page views increased 127 percent.

Are you paying attention mobile advertisers?

Firefox Mobile: Not if, but when. Hat tip to Boy Genius Report who reported and linked to Aza Raskinm’s website. Raskinm is Mozilla’s head of user experience. Not only is the concept video/demo on his blog compelling, his thoughts on usability, experience and design are fascinating.

Cool site of the week. The world just shrank a little more. News junkies like us have been reading and enjoying MetaCarta. Combining breaking news from Reuters and AP and a Google map mashup, users can search for news by a visual map of the world. The split screen also lists news stories on one side then a map on the other. Users can then click on a story and read it while looking at a map –and can even zoom in right down to the street name - of where the news broke. Powerful stuff. It personalizes news and makes it more than something happening “somewhere else.”

We live in a “right here, right now” society. We want connectivity at our fingertips, access to the latest news feeds any time of the day, and up-to-the-minute email. But during our busy days we often miss our favorite television shows. We want our favorite shows and movies right here, right now. No commercials, either. Those waste our time.

Quite simply: We are demanding Video on Demand.

Video on Demand (VOD) allows us to select and watch content on demand, during whatever time fits our schedule. The majority of cable- and telco- and even satellite-based television providers offer both VOD streaming, such as Pay-Per-View (PPV) whereby a user buys or selects a movie or television program and it begins to play on the television set immediately, or downloading to a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) rented from the provider for viewing in the future.

This isn’t news of course – but as the saying goes, the numbers don’t lie.

ABI Research issued a recent study claiming that “the number of people who watch online video will top 1 billion in the next five years.” The study gives credit to the increase of broadband globally along with Internet video power houses like YouTube.

There are some great websites emerging on the market that have encouraged our ‘immediate’ lifestyle, too.

Take for example popular sites like Hulu and Joost. They are user friendly and provide the latest and greatest of prime time TV. Did you miss last week’s House because you were in the office until 8? Or, did you miss your beloved season finale of 30 Rock because traffic on the freeway was horrendous? Don’t worry about it! Just hop online when you get home and catch up!

Though the Internet is handy when you’re in front of your computer, you also want to sit back and relax on the sofa and actually enjoy that new flat screen you spent last month’s paycheck on. You had better have VOD at home.

What most don’t know is the behind the scenes work that goes into successfully deploying VOD to the “gimme gimme right now” crowd (That’s me!) at home. The struggle for carriers is to deliver the maximum amount of VOD without eating up bandwidth or impacting picture quality. Nothing is more infuriating, say, than when sound goes out during a pivotal scene.

And with the arms race growing between cable, telecom and satellite service providers to offer more of these personalized services while competing with the Internet, the demand (pun intended) is on for creative solutions aimed specifically for VOD.

Companies such as RGB Networks are continually developing these exact solutions. Take for example the Dynamic Bandwidth Manager (DBM) which combines unprecedented stream processing density (1,200 streams) with real-time operation and low-latency, enabling service providers to deliver 50% more programming on their existing network – without costly network re-architecture or upgrades, and without affecting picture quality or VOD’s ‘trick play’ functions (pause, fast forward, rewind). Yahtzee!

I’d just like to take this time to thank the good folks who continually invent and engineer products that, even though I never see, definitely make my home viewing experience more enjoyable. Because as much as I love to watch a quick episode of Friends on my laptop, nothing beats lounging in front of the big screen and relishing in the latest Pay-Per-View movie.