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I am very grateful to the United States Department of Defense for that ARPANET project they had. By keeping most ot corporate America out of the development process ARPA created something that revolutionized the way we communicate without trying to make the big bucks. Imagine a world where one would have to pay for every website viewed and every email received... Not a pleasant prospect, but one that every telco would definitely adore (just look at the recent Network Neutrality debate). Teluses and Bells of the world missed their chance to control the Internet.

You might remember our discussions about the user experience research we conducted through mobilemuse, Nokia, and the metrocode application. The research centered around users' responses to sharing information about the sculptures using a mobile device and the cell phone tour.  I posted some discussion at Constructing Amusement about common questions to do with qualitative research in this case as well.

Invented only a decade ago, text messaging quickly evolved into a major source of income for telecommunication companies. It is said that it has the best dollar-per-megabyte ratio of all existing forms of data transmission. Several factors contributed to its success - low consumer cost (combined with high telco profits), its asynchronous and non-intrusive nature as well as the sheer efficiency of "impulse-driven" knowledge exchange. While it's far from perfect, SMS continues its triumph worldwide.

Simultaneously with text messaging, another form of communication was stirring a revolution. E-mail maintains double-digit growth rates years after it was introduced (admittedly, spam is responsible for a big part of it). Nowadays, e-mail provides a reliable way to exchange all kinds of media (and text of course) with peers all over the world. Best of all, it's free (not including the cost of internet access).

World wide text messaging revenues for 2005 are estimated to be a cool 75 billion USD. To put that in perspective, if text messaging was a country, it would have the 65th highest GDP in the world (sorry Syria). And while we are still waiting for the 2006 numbers to roll in, I'm going to use my amazing powers of deductive reasoning to predict they will be similarly outrageous. Even mobile challenged Canadians are catching on, sending over one million text messages a day. With so much money trading hands over SMS in Canada, is it possible to construct a self-sustaining business model based purely on providing SMS based services?

Think about how often you read text (hint: you're doing it right now).  Consider often you write text, and yes, email counts.  Text is the de rigeur agent of interaction on the Internet.  Even with the rise of digital multimedia, text is still the regent of digital communication.

Now think about how often you view video (including television).  Again, it's probably quite frequently.  But consider how often you create video.  Even among those that work in the digital multimedia domain, the number of people that create video is minute.

Yet, both capturing and sharing video has never been easier.  Video capture cameras are becoming increasingly common in cell phones.  Nokia is the world's largest digital camera manufacturer, eclipsing even single-purpose digital cameras.  Additionally, Internet content-distribution systems like YouTube and GoogleVideo make sharing media with others simple and virtually cost-free.  Despite all of this, the gulf between content consumers and content authors is as expansive as ever.  Why are so few of us inclined to create media, especially video?

In our little ethnography-damaged corner of Mobile Muse, we have been busy interpreting field trials that took place in November 2006. We conducted a study (sponsored by Nokia) consisting of 3 groups of 8-10 participants followed through their acquisition, exploration, and use of an advanced mobile multimedia device (in this case, the Nokia N80) for discovery, sharing, and consumption of rich media as part of a group tour of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale (using the Metrocode application). An additional 2 groups of participants followed the same procedure using their own mobile phones. Techno-Experiential Design Assessment [TEDA] (see this link for a thorough exegesis) was used in the design and analysis stages of the project. Based on the data collected, we conceptualize the most important mobile web opportunities (also obstacles) as related to three anxieties North American mobile phone users have about the mobile web (excerpted directly from our report):

Participants associated their mobile phone use with anxiety over security issues. Being alone in unfamiliar surroundings, being on the road alone, stalking, and other situations concerning security were brought up by (mainly) females in the focus groups. Related concerns about conducting financial transactions, and the security and privacy of user data were also invoked. This dual anxiety - phone as lifeline versus phone as personal data leak - needs to be resolved and balanced in the design of any mobile application or device involving the transmission of personal information, or that utilizes social media.

In this tutorial we take things a step further, using a vector program (in this case Illustrator) to create a character face, then importing it as a Smart Object in Photoshop. The advantage of Smart Objects is that the character face remains resolution independent, and you can go back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop. You can re-size the Photoshop file larger or smaller and retain crisp edges. You can size up the character for a poster, or size him down for a mobile video. You can distribute the character in videos made for a variety of different devices, from HD television to iPod videos. On top of that you can easily combine the character with bitmap graphics, using Photoshop's extensive manipulation and processing capabilities. We begin by reviewing how Photoshop layers are used in animation.

Being wired into the Internet and mobile technology here at UBC, I wonder how my life would be different if I grew up with mobile phones, digital cameras, and the Internet. Would I be able to multi-task better, would I be a more critical thinker, and would I view my mobile phone more as a fashion accessory rather than a practical device?

Last weekend I came across articles and studies that discuss how mobile phones companies are beginning to focus on the 'tweens market (those between 8 - 12 or 9-13 years) as the current market penetration for this segment of society is quite small. Mobile telecommunication companies may see this as an opportunity to instill brand loyalty at an early age.