A Halt On The Early Spring?

Although we are not quite experiencing deep winter temperatures in London, it does seem as though the early Spring growth has slowed down. London was so warm through December that I am sure the garden thought it had gotten away with missing winter ;-)! The photos shown in this blog entry are all from January 8th, which just seems to early to be seeing the garden waking up and growing. Of course the bulbs might be making an appearance but all in all it seemed to early.

It seems though with the colder temperatures, that we have had these past 2 weeks, that the early growth has had the breaks put on! I was out in the garden, this morning clearing out some of last years perennials, and apart from the bulbs didn't see much of note.



Looking forward to winter being officially over though. Although not particularly cold I am still well over it!

Cheers

m

Misguided Hollyhocks Now Suffering

December 2011, in London, was one of the warmest on record. Temperatures during the day were regularly in the low teens and I don't think there was a single winter frost. This Spring like weather has fooled many plants in the garden that it is a great time to have a growth spurt! Unfortunately for the hollyhocks in our garden, that have sprung up and were growing like crazy, a recent spate of heavy frosts in early January has dealt rather harshly with their early Spring enthusiasm! As can be seen above almost all of the hollyhocks in our garden are now wilting under the now normal winter conditions.

I wonder if this will impact all of the hollyhocks this year and we will miss out on our summer flowering. Time will tell.

Cheers

M

Twilio Launches SMS in the UK

A week ago I mentioned that a mobile network should partner with Twilio. Well today they launched their SMS API's in the UK. Voice was launched last October, and today SMS. From today you can send and receive SMS to UK Twilio phone numbers at $0.04 per message, or £0.026 at current exchange rates. If you are sending in bulk that is going to add up. Still if mobile networks are unable to provide group messaging numbers, then perhaps they should partner with Twilio so they can! ;-)

Broken record time again - SMS is not dead! It is time for Mobile Networks to think creatively about how they may develop a service that they have controlled for so long, since they accidently discovered it on December 3 1992! Since then the only product innovation carriers have really provided is selling bundles of SMS! Come on. Think a little harder to allow your Customers to engage with your service again ;-). Either that or provide creative API's to allow developers to do so for you! It can only be a win win situation!

Cheers

m

Does Voice Search Work?

According to a search on Google of 'Does voice search work', Bing voice search does not work! Well Google would say that right? ;-)

A Mobile Network Should Partner With Twilio In Europe

With Twilio gradually moving into Europe with it's SMS and Voice API's (also available in the UK with SMS launching soon) I wonder who their SMS aggregator is? A forward thinking mobile network could get in on some of the developer fueled SMS innovation by partnering with Twilio. As I have regularly pointed out the mobile networks are having one of their last bastions of hope continually eroded by application developers. Application developers who use Twilio API's as well.  I have often cried out that SMS is not dead, however it will be an ever decreasing revenue source to mobile networks if they don't do something to invigorate it! Hey how about group messaging ;-)

I will be interested to see the SMS pricing offered by Twilio in Europe to see if it is competitive. Keep an eye out here.

I will also be intrigued to see who might acquire Twilio. SMS and voice are the only common features across all mobiles. As far as some of the larger scale Internet companies who might want to engage users in the mobile space, Twilio might be a competitive advantage.

Cheers

m

SMS Is Not Dead! Unless You Want It To Be...

Over the new year break Mashable asked the question "Are Text Messages Declining Worldwide". They only cited figures from three locations - Finland, Australia and Hong Kong - so hardly a conclusive set of data. That being said, it is clear that to converse with friends is now far simpler to do via social networks, or one of the many group messaging applications that are now available. In fact there are so many group messaging applications available that the only true winners in the space will be those applications that can communicate across their application boundary. That is the applications that can still allow group participation with group members who don't actually use the application. GroupMe is a classic case for this as it allows people to communicate within the group not only via use of their application but also by use of SMS. Perfect as the lowest common denominator for communication across all  mobile phones (apart from voice) is still SMS.

So although the Mashable figures don't actually present a global view they don't surprise me at all. I fully expect the figures to be representative across all markets where smartphone usage is exploding. SMS doesn't provide a mechanism for social group communication. It is a person to person communication mechanism. It is only the creativity of application developers who have provided the additional level of social to SMS. Carriers should have done this ages ago. They have had exclusive access to this distribution mechanism for 20 odd years. For whatever reason they have missed the boat when it comes to social interaction using SMS.

In all the time SMS has been a massive cash cow for carriers they have done nothing to add to the service. Maybe now that it is clear that SMS revenues are decreasing it might be worth them thinking that the concept of group might be an interesting 'new' feature to add to SMS? either that or simply see revenue continue to fall. That of course is also still an option.

As I have said often before, SMS is not dead. That is unless you want it to be ;-)!

Cheers

m