Weird, Odd and Strange Mobility Series: Lonely Clusters, Bumping Dinner, Fountains and Penguins

iFLY Home Mobile App

You are lucky enough to have stumbled upon the first article in, I am sure, a long running series on strange and weird mobility news, information and other oddities.  Sorry.

Now for the weird, odd and strange:

1. Scientists on Possession Island (1,000 KM off the coast of the Antarctic) have found that Penguins monitored with embedded RFID chips live longer than Penguins with leg bands.  Banded Penguins have a 16 percent lower survival rate, travel slower, have less babies, take longer to feed.
2. Early tanks in WWI used pigeons to communicate their locations, logistics, inventories, status and pizza orders. 
3. Just heard on a ScienceNow podcast - Meet and greet social gatherings don't work for lonely people. Lonely people tend to cluster together, and lonely people that cluster together just make each other lonelier.   Try Facebooking.
4. Heard this quote from a person not licensed to practice medicine this morning, "IT is impotent in the face of mobility." 
5. Read about a new mobile application that let's people share the cost of a restaurant dinner by "Bumping" money from one mobile device to another.
6. SAP co-CEOs advice to politicians, "Business and political leaders should champion and enable further growth of mobile technology...there are 4.6 billion mobile telephones on the planet, and even the poor buy them."
7. Have you read about the bathroom scales that will wirelessly tweet your weight.
8. Forrester Research prediction - 2011 is the Year of the "Dumb" Smartphone User
9. More Forrester Research predictions - Technologies like QR codes and augmented reality will prompt users to hold up their phones to interact with the world around them.
10. Never walk while texting.  Woman falls into Mall fountain while texting.
11. A 68 year old man punched a 15 year old boy on a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Boise, Idaho, in December because the teen wouldn't turn off his cell phone

If you come across weird, odd or strange articles on mobility and mobile applications please submit them to me for inclusion.  My apologies again.

Whitepapers of Note:

• The Business Benefits of Mobile Adoption with SAP Systems
• ClickSoftware Mobility Suite and Sybase Mobility Solution
• Networked Field Services
• Mobile, The Next Big Thing for Business

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 24, 2011

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Kevin's Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

Forty-four percent of 250 IT managers surveyed plan to roll out five to 19 mobile apps for enterprise users this year. One in five have their sights on 20 or more. The main driver behind the mobile expansion is cost savings: 63 percent of the sample picked cost savings as one of the influences in choosing new apps.

http://www.cio.com/article/654467/Survey_Finds_Big_2011_Surge_in_Enterprise_Mobile_Apps?source=CIONLE_nlt_enterprise_2011-01-19

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A study found that in November 2010, the number of visitors to web-based email sites declined six percent compared to the previous year, while email engagement declined at an even greater rate. During the same time period, the number of users accessing email via their mobile devices grew by 36 percent.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/1/Web-based_Email_Shows_Signs_of_Decline_in_the_U.S._While_Mobile_Email_Usage_on_the_Rise

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China's wireless subscriber base swelled to 841.94 million in December, the country's top three operators reported.

http://wirelessweek.com/News/2011/01/Carriers-Subs-Reach-842M-China-Mobile/

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In 2009 the market for mobile medical apps was worth about $41 million, or about 1.5 percent of the total mobile app market. Research firm Kalorama estimates that sales from mobile medical apps in 2010 total about $84.1 million.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Webalo's Peter Price

Webalo Co-Founder Peter Price

I had the privelege this week to interview mobility expert and co-Founder/CEO of Webalo, Peter Price.  You know it is going to be an interesting conversation when four of the six people on the management team have PhDs or are working on PhDs.  Webalo formed in 2000 and has since written over 600,000 lines of code to power their solutions. 

Note:  These are not Peter's exact words, rather my notes from the interview.

Kevin:  What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Peter:  BlackBerry Bold, iPad and MacBook.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications?
Peter: I must say our own Webalo application.  I practically run the business from my BlackBerry.  Any kind of travel related applications.  My family really likes the HeyTell mobile application.  It turns your smartphone into a walkie talkie, push to talk kind of device.

Kevin:  Do you use mobile devices to purchase things?
Peter:  Absolutely.  My iPad is my ordering device.  I buy all kinds of things online using mobile devices - tickets, books, reservations of all kinds.  I think the iPad will really drive online purchases because it is so convenient.

Special Report: Advice from Mobile Experts

Mobility Experts

This report consists of the answers that seven enterprise mobility experts recently provided me in response to the question, "What advice do you have for companies considering implementing enterprise mobility solutions?"

• Make sure the users get to provide feedback and direction.  Make sure the mobile users will use it.  Make sure the mobile application actually supports the work and the way the work is done in the field.

• Think bigger.  Mobility is not a nice to have or a fad.  It is here to stay.  It will be here for the rest of your career.  It is now a core component of your IT environment.

• Plan on supporting your employees' personal devices.  Have a strategy for supporting personal mobile devices, and develop policies for managing and supporting them.

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 24, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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IMPORTANT!  In the January 27 webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies.  If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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More PayPal customers are using its payment service from their mobile phones. eBay’s payments unit in 2010 nearly tripled its eBay Mobile gross merchandise volume to $2 billion from the previous year, driven by strong holiday shopping.

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_14/paypal-mobile-payments-1031590-1.html

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AT&T aims to drive awareness of mobile bar codes and the services it provides to companies that want to use them within marketing collateral via a business to business campaign that combines sight, sound and motion on Apple's iAd platform.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/8879.html

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Apple plans to introduce services that would let customers use its iPhone and iPad computer to make purchases using NFC, said Richard Doherty, director of consulting firm Envisioneering Group.