The MoPR Blog

Poof. There’s goes Matlock. It actually wasn’t the end times in Wilmington, N.C., this week as local broadcasters made the switch from analog to all digital, reports the Wall Street Journal. Wilmington isn’t waiting until February 2009 to make the switch and is being used as a test area to gauge the transition. Phones rang at local stations but most of the calls were from local residents not prepared for the signals being shut down or folks not getting their new set-top boxes to work.

News junkies and history nerds, rejoice! Google announced this week a major initiative to make old newspapers accessible and searchable online through a partnership with newspaper publishers. Millions of pages of news archives made available online will let users search for articles. Here’s how from the Google blog:

Let’s say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for [Americans walk on moon] on Google News Archive Search, and you’ll be able to find and read an original article from a 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Not only will users be able to search these newspapers, they can also browse through them exactly as they were printed, with photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements.

Wow.

Are newspapers going to be smart and start selling ad space NOW for the archived files? Think of the possibilities: ad runs for 50 years! Forget the 3x rate, what’s the special lifetime rate?

In 2006, Google started working with publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post to index existing digital archives and make them searchable via the Google News Archive.

No word yet on when additional newspapers will become available, so for now, check out the existing archives on Google of the New York Times and smaller, community papers. Here’s a search we did for “mobile phone.”

USA! USA! USA! 3G usage now even with Western Europe. After a slower start than Western Europe, the United States has caught up in the adoption of 3G mobile, with 28.4% of American mobile subscribers having 3G devices vs. the average of 28.3% among the five largest Western Europe states, according to comScore.

“For years, the American mobile industry has aspired to the level of sophistication of the European market. Today, Americans have finally caught up with Europeans in adoption of 3G,” says comScore.

Are mobile phones replacing toys? The Nielsen Company today released findings from the newly launched Mobile Kids Insights that profiled the mobile activities and preferences of U.S. “tweens” (ages 8–12) and the numbers are impressive.

The report estimates that:

• 46% of tweens use cell phones
• On average, kids get their own cell phone between the ages of 10 and 11
• 55% of tweens who own a cell phone send text messages and 21% download ringtones
• The top reason parents want tweens to have a cell phone is in case there is an emergency or problem

“Tweens have grown up with mobile phones and expect them to do much more than make a call,” says Nielsen Mobile.

Text messaging use explodes. According to The CTIA Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey, text messaging set new records, with 75 billion messages reported in the month of June 2008 alone – about 2.5 billion messages a day.  This represents an increase of 160% over the 28.8 billion messages reported in June 2007.  Additionally, wireless subscribers continue to capture and send more pictures and other multi-media messages,, more than 5.6 billion MMS messages in the first half of 2008, which is almost as many as were sent in all of 2007.

The survey also revealed that wireless customers used more than 1.12 trillion minutes in the first half of 2008, up 10.9% over the first half of 2007, and generated more than $72 billion in total wireless revenues in six months.

And, speaking of CTIA, we just got back from their latest show in San Francisco which is wrapping up today. Look for posts next week on some of the cool mobile technologies we saw at the show.