Another week another Carnival of the Mobilists which is ably hosted this week by the one like the Xellular Identity. Carnival of the mobilists is a weekly round up of the best writing on mobile and a great way to keep up with the latest trends and stuff. So head on over to Xellular Identity for the Carnival which features posts on mobile messaging, content, payments and advertising.
Developing, promoting and running sites for mobile devices is still a bit of an emerging art form and one of the best ways of getting to know it is using forums to ask questions, make contacts and share your knowledge. In the PC web world, forums like Sitepoint and Digitalpoint play a really important role at the grass roots level, so great to see the same thing developing in mobile internet. Here's a quick review of what's out there. If you know of any others or use some of the one's we've listed, give us a shout in the comments and we'll update the post.
.Mobi forums
This is a really interesting place - the types of people that hang out in this forum are "domainers" (people buying up dot mobi domains e.g. real-estate.mobi etc), affiliate marketers and webmasters from the PC world moving onto mobile. There's also a great group of people who have just got into building mobile sites for the first time, because it's so quick and easy to learn vs developing for the PC web. There are some good sub-forums - best are mobile web design (everything from SEO, navigation etc), mobile advertising and the boards for posting your new .mobi sites and getting feedback on them. Mobility.mobi also runs does a prize for ".mobi of the month". There's also a fairly busy marketplace there for sites and domain names. All in all a great place to hang out.
Dev.mobi is a mobile web resources site run by the dot mobi domain operator. They have done a good job putting this site together to help people develop mobile sites and put a lot of effort into it. As well as blogs, resources and an emulator there's also a forum. The general forum is probably the busiest here - overall the place is quite quiet at the moment. However, again, there are editors from dev.mobi who will answer questions so its still a good place to go to ask things and read the posts that are already there. Overall the forum suffers a bit from having a few too many subforums and the wrong order for them. Maybe they should buy mobility.mobi?!
Product and company forums
Admob forums are a place you can ask questions about admob and its services (either as an advertiser or publisher), there is also some general discussion e.g. how to advertise and promote your mobile site. This is a good place to pick up info on the sort of click thrus and cost per click people are doing in mobile at the moment. The forum is pretty quiet considering how much business admob is now doing but it's still a place you can post up problems/ questions etc and someone will generally reply. Worth checking in now and again to see if there is anything new.
Bango are absolute old school pioneers in the world of mobile with their payment system starting up around 2000/ 2001. They are now doing other stuff like mobile analytics and web to mobile trigger services. Their forum is not exactly buzzing BUT there is some high quality stuff on there, a lot of it posted by the bango employees. A good place to ask technical questions and get a decent response. Let's hope Bango can make it a bit busier.
Betavine was setup by Vodafone to create a forum for engaging with independent mobile developers. The are collecting a fair bit of decent info and resources over there and providing a platform for distributing apps. The forum there has waaay too many categories for the amount of traffic/ usage it has. The most popular forum seems to be the one full of people complaining about Vodafone's approach to mobile internet content adaption. However, fair play to Vodafone for hosting the discussion and engaging with it. Basically, this is a great place to check stuff with Vodafone e.g. blocked ports etc.
Forum nokia is an amazing resource for mobile developers. At one stage in the early 2000's Nokia Toolkit (mobile development kit) was an absolute lifesaver. Anyway forum nokia has ... a "forum" or "discussion board" which is an absolutely brilliant place covering the ins and outs of Symbian, messaging platforms, browsers and so on. It's probably best as a way of learning about all the very latest technologies like Flash Lite, Location and widgets.
mailing lists
Momolondon goes through periods of being quiet but you can guarantee that a large proportion of all the mobile people in the UK and Europe are plugged into it. Great places to ask questions, really high quality audience and you get to find out about the mobile monday events. Super helpful community if you have a technical question.
This mailing list is focused on technical aspects of mobile web development, for "mobile programmers to discuss, share information and help one another". This isn't the place for clueless newbies though:
"Don't post if you don't know what you are doing.
*YOU MAY BE BANNED INSTANTLY!!!!!*
If yor question reveals that you lack basic
web programming skills, you will be banned instantly.
Extremelly poor knowledge of the english language
is also likely to put you on the fast track out
of the list."
However, for those for whom its intended, the wmlprogramming group is a fantastic community and resource. The wmlprogramming group has been instrumental in co-ordinating the independent developer community's response to operator attempts to block and reformat mobile sites using transcoders.
General mobile sites
In addition to the specialist mobile developer forums a number of the more general mobile phone discussion boards have sections for developers. For example, the insanely busy Howard Forums or Esato.
Anyway, that's it for now, let us know if we've missed any good ones.
Following hot on the heels of our post on mobile web analytics admob are set to launch an expanded analytics service. From the looks of it, this will be a fully featured analytics program that can track things like referrers, which is still a massive problem for mobile analytics. The best thing is admob are offering this 100% free - you don't even need to sign up to the ad platform. Hats off to admob for this - they have been really good about extending their services down to the smallest developers and sites. Really hope they don't get bought out by some faceless corporation.
Gomonews reckons admob has gone "pear shaped" but this seems like a natural extension of Admob in the same way as Google Analytics complements adsense/ adwords. It will be good to have another system in the market to provide some more functionality and competition. The only question is, will this destroy some of the new startups in this space like Mobilytics. ? Admob must have a massive advantage in this space given the volume of data they can collect across their network - no-one else (google?) has such a good view of mobile web traffic trends at the moment.
Anyway here is a quick video intro to admob analytics - gives a decent overview of the service:
For a roundup of the best blogging on mobile over the last week head on over to 3 Lib for the Carnival of the Mobilists number 122. 3 Lib have picked a nice mix of stuff with a lot of good info on mobile promotional channels, QR codes and mobilising your blog. Plus, they included our post on mobile web analytics tools (cheers). Well worth a visit.
One area that's pretty under-developed on in mobile internet right now is mobile analytics - being able to track and analyse traffic data on mobile sites, from mobile devices. You can always check the server logs but there's not really anything like Google Analytics available for the mass market of sites. It is difficult to track visitor numbers or referrals from other sites let alone do conversion tracking (because you can't serve up javascript on mobile web or something). However, there's a few different solutions out there and here is a quick run-down of them. I'll update this list if we hear of any more - let us know if we've missed anything and your experience of trying to track traffic on mobile web.
Bango was one of the pioneers in the mobile web with its micro-payments system and they are now moving into lots of new areas including analytics. At the moment, Bango analytics is focused around tracking traffic through a specific hyperlink - you set up the link and then track the links through it. This is great for:
The system isn't so good for tracking total visits or page views - Bango are apparently working on a system to do this. You can use the Bango system for free up to a certain traffic level and it has a nice admin console. Great to see Bango offering this up in a way that lets the smallest mobile site owners and developers to use it. Well worth signing up to, even if you use another analytics service already as the Bango system is great for tracking external links.
Wapalizer isn't that well known for some reason which is surprising as it does a great job of tracking internal site analytics. It is focused around giving you page views over time and gives you loads of breakdowns e.g. Manufacturers, Operators / ISP, Geographic, Device models, Device resolutions and Platforms. Great statistics/ management console. It works with the use of a small tracking image on the page (see below).
In theory the image can slow the page load down but wapalizer seems very reliable and it doesn't seem to cause any big problems.
A few people say that it doesn't track page views that accurately but it's "good enough" and 100% free. A great combination with the bango service.
This service promises to nail the mobile analytics problem with a system that will give you a proper visitor count and track referers (woo!). Nice looking screenshot below:
They seem to be investing a lot of money and time in developing a reliable, scaleable service with other advance features like goal tracking and ad campaign management. The only problem is that they are currently in beta and we can't get on the program - probably a big waiting list to be fair. Definitely worth signing up to the beta.
If you sign up to serve admob ads you get access to the stats in their console/ dashboard. This can tell you quite a bit about internal traffic based on the tracking of the ads served. You can get a breakdown by geography etc.
Admob have also been good about publishing stats about the market based on the aggregate data - you can get a pdf on their site.
Toplist counters!
This final one is a bit crude but can be effective - lots of mobile sites out there run on very lightweight technology and counters can work ok. Basically, you sign up to a mobile toplist site and get a counter off them linking back to their site. Here's a couple of examples below:
These little mobile widgets can give you visitor numbers, page impressions and device, geographic breakdowns. Not bad!
Don't forget to let us know any others we've missed.
There's been lots of chatter this week in the world of mobile about the future of mobile internet and that kind of thing. It's all summed up nicely in this week's Carnival of the Mobilists, which is hosted over at the Skydeck blog. Skydeck is a really interesting service that tracks your mobile phone usage and bill and they've done a great job of the roundup.
The top post is from all About Symbian which looks at Nokia’s “Comes with Music” service. There's loads of other great stuff including a good post on mobile widgets. They've also been decent enough to include the post here on 10 statistics that show the mobile web is alive.
So some people are saying that the mobile web is dead. Of course, lots of people say it's not, but they rarely give any data or statistics. Here are 10 reasons the mobile web is alive - if you have any of your own then leave a comment, blog them or email us.
update #2:
The mobile social network Mocospace left a note in the comments saying they have reached 1bn (!) mobile internet page impressions per month.
ESPN is now getting more traffic from its mobile internet site than its mobile site (thanks Technokitten)
update: here's another one:
* Since June 2007 Tapatap has built up a user base of 400k of which 75% of which use the mobile internet to access the service.
Mobile internet success stats
1. According to the MDA, 17 million people in the UK accessed the Internet on their phone in December 2007, that's 23% of mobile users.
2. Flirtomatic has over 500k members and 100k unique visitors a month, mainly driven off mobile internet generating 101m wap page views per month, compared to 28m page views per month via the PC web
3. Mippin is doing 5m page views a month, purely from mobile
4. itsmy.com - has 2.5 million users and generates 300m mobile page views per month
5. 500k mobile sites have been built on Peperonity.com
6. admob has served 20 billion mobile ads and is now serving up a massive 2.5 billion ads per month.
7. Getjar has delivered 100m downloads of mobile software over the last two years
8. According to M:Metrics, 12.3 million people in the US and Western Europe accessed a social networking site with their mobile in June 2007
9. Mig 33 - has more than 10m members, sending 45m messages a day
10. Mxit - totally dominates the South African social networking market with a mobile client that generates 9m logins per day with 200 Million messages sent per day.
11. (an extra one) Hacks like phonefight are being built - great use of accelerometer extensions (er what?)
Lastminute.com labs showcase phone fight at MoMoLondon from ribot on Vimeo.
Locomatrix is a really exciting and original mobile location game. You use a GPS-enabled mobile phone to play games in the real world like treasure hunt. You can get Locomatrix by texting "Loco" to 07781 486965.
Here is a great video explaining the idea behind it:
Locomatrix is built by the guys at Future Platforms who are coming out with a lot of cool mobile stuff right now.
The Carnival of the Mobilists is a network of blogs covering mobile stuff. This week its hosted by mobilejones.com who has done a great job of collecting and compiling and commenting on it all. There's a load of great mobile blogs out there so follow the link to check them out http://mobilejones.com/2008/04
The carnival includes the recent post here on the Mobile Monday London Mobile User Experience thing.
Here's a demo of the PhoneFight hack the lastminute.com labs guys did at Over the Air. Pretty amazing bit of sofware that lets you use two phones in a sword fight complete with amusingly over the top sound effects of the swords clashing and cries of pain.
Lastminute.com labs showcase phone fight at MoMoLondon from ribot on Vimeo.
Really cool mobile hack by the guys at Future Platforms
Went along to Mobile Monday last night (April 2008) in London on Mobile User Experience. Probably one of the best Mobile Monday's I've been to - great speakers and interesting topic. Here are a few notes of the key points for anyone interested:
Steve Ives - CEO Taptu
Taptu is a Cambridge UK based mobile search startup where you can search myspace, wikis and other stuff. Steve previously started Trigenix and Taptu has raised £5m of VC money. Steve gave a great presentation with interesting slides and lots of good tips.
- search needs to be different for mobile (constraints of screens, inputs, latency)
- Google mobile, Yahoo onesearch are trying to take web search to mobile, Taptu is trying to start with a "blank slate"
- Taptu has done loads of User experience testing (14 user studies in a year, 133 tests of 1 hour per user)
- Taptu aimed at four types of people
- Taptu built for three main types of devices with customized UI for each
- Taptu go through "paper prototyping" (drawing the mobile screens on paper) and "device prototyping" stages and usability testing before they start actually building anything
- A portable usability lab is used for testing out Taptu with people using the service, they have a nifty setup with two cameras (one on the phone and one on the user) which they splice together.
Scott Weiss - Executive Director, EMEA, Human Factors International www.humanfactors.com
Basically Taptu follow a user-experience design process similar to that recommended by Human Factors which is a UE consulting firm. This was another presentation which went over the methods and processes in a bit more detail. Key points:
- people can react to things very differently depending on which country they are in
- you need to understand the audience and their goals and iterate based on their feedback
- aim is "persuasive design" get people to love the service, come back and enjoy using it (like Apple stuff)
Key stages of user-centered design
- Design Strategy - goals, scope of project, tech constraints, marketing goals, key success factors
- Personas and Profiles - basic characteristics of users as used by Taptu
- Scenarios - how are people going to use the mobile service, what's it for?
- Task flows - map out steps and decisions in a flow diagram, try and think of the key "nouns" that describe the main functions of the app e.g. for email "account, messages, contact"
- Prototyping - use paper, mockups
- Usability testing - get users to perform tasks using the demo, see where they "struggle" and try and improve it
Bryan Rieger - Future Platforms Creative director www.futureplatforms.com
Future Platforms are a mobile design company behind cool stuff like Locomatrix. Great presentation that went into a lot of detail on mobile design tips and really challenged the audience a bit.
- implementing designs on mobile can be hard due to memory issues etc
- try and simplify and hone design as much as possible (system fonts, flat colour) - break it down to the bare bones!
- composite images are a good way of keeping down the size of the app
- developers and designers need to work more closely together
Marek Pawlowski - MEX www.pmn.co.uk/mex/
- there's a user experience conference going on looks pretty good
- also a competition for cool mobile designs http://www.mobileuserexperience.com
Alex Craxton - Mobile Monday - Over the Air Mobile Developer Event
Alex did a rundown on the Over the Air mobile event that happened at the weekend. Sounded pretty good. Great video of one of the hacks built during the weekend by Future Platforms.
Panel Session
Panel Panel was also pretty good with some interesting points cropping up:- UI often involves a lot of management stuff (e.g. trying to convince your boss its important) - sometimes top management need to go "back to the floor" to get how important it is
- Cost of user-experience testing etc justified by looking at the cost of additional engineering time to re-do the site if there's problems - simple ROI!
- one of the most successful mobile services Pepperonity has a basic UI but between 2 and 8m users ... (good to hear people checking the mobile underground!)
- user experience goes beyond the app itself, retail experience, the tariffs people are on etc
- at Apple the chief designer reports into Steve Jobs
- Motorola RAZR is an example of what can go really wrong if you cock-up user-experience design (Moto sold loads of RAZR phones which looked great but were terrible to use, putting off everyone from ever getting another Motorola phone)
Final Demo - Phone Fight!
A great demo of a mobile sword game built by the lastminute.com team, using bluetooth built at the OTA event. This won awards for Best Hardware hack, Best design / user experience prototype and (best of all) the Fun Award. Look out on their blog for photos and pictures.
So all in all a great Mobile Monday - many thanks to the organizers. If anyone has any video or pictures of the event send us an email or leave a comment and we'll incorporate them into the post.
yes yes about time for another run down of the new free mp3 ringtones we're pumping out there for you on mjelly - here's a couple we recommend:
dont forget if you rate them.
Site was down for a couple of days - back online now. Sorry for the outage, normal service now resumed.
hey we're working on a few changes to mjelly to make it easier to use - watch this space for an update coming soon
in the meantime check out our free mp3 ringtones and sms alerts
We got hold of mp3s that sound like the iphone ringtones - as usual they are free
check them out here http://mjelly.com/tags/iphone
Ok bit of news - we set up a help forum on Satisfaction so you can ask questions - lets see how it goes.
You can see it by clicking on forum at the bottom of the mjelly main home page or by surfing here to http://www.getsatisfaction.com/mjelly
mjelly got a mention on the mobile blog network Carnival of the Mobilists which is hosted this week by the one like the Paul Ruppert at the Mobile Point View blog. As well as our post on the Top 10 Ringtones of all Time there's loads of other great posts there about mobile stuff so check it out.
Here's an attempt at a list of the top 10 ringtones of all time with links to the free versions where possible. In no particular order...
The Nokia Tune, based on a 13 note rendering of “Gran Vals” by Francisco Tarrega, a 19th-century Spanish musician, is typically included within all Nokia handsets as the default ringtone and has therefore become famous or infamous due to its popularity. It is the typical ringtone of the middle-aged business man who hasn’t got the time or inclination to work out how to change it.
The mosquito tone or “Teen Buzz” is based on adaption of a high-frequency sound designed to repel teenagers from hanging around outside shops, without bothering older people, who could not hear the sound due its pitch. It began being used and sold as a “silent ringtone” for teenagers to use, for example in class, without the teacher being able to hear it.
The “Crazy Frog” ringtone was based on an animation called “The Annoying Thing” by Erik Wernquist, and made famous by the mobile content company Jamba who heavily promoted “The Crazy Frog” on TV and the internet. The ringtone spawned a chart hit based on a remix of “Alex F” which went to No.1 in the Uk, Japan, Australia and a load of European countries as well.
Similar to the Nokia Tune, the Nokia SMS alert is probably the most famous “SMS tone” designed to be used for text message notifications. The tone spells out “S-M-S” in Morse Code.
With the rise of personalised tones a lot of people have decided to avoid them in favour of the classic “bell ringing” sound of a normal telephone. A number of surveys over the years have shown this to be one of the most popular tones.
Sir Mixalot
In 1992, Sir Mixalot, a rapper had a huge hit with “Baby Got Back” which was re-recorded as a ringtone with the lyrics "Pick up the phone! Pick up the phone! 'Cause you don't wanna miss this call and I cannot lie!." This was one of the first “ringtone remixes” of popular songs to achieve success after being marketed by Jamba, the same company that produced the Crazy Frog ringtone.
Ringtones based on the sounds “R2D2” from the film Star Wars makes in the film are emerging as a popular choice for ringtones. R2D2 sounds make a great choice for a ringtone as they are loud, easily heard and distinctive but just about manage to avoid a tack, novelty feel like some ringtones.
Based on the classic Nokia Tune, the Nokia “Dying” or “Flat Battery” remix is a humorous version of the classic Nokia Tune where the sound eventually goes flat or explodes, giving a nod to the annoyance that it can cause when heard repeatedly.
The popular TV show “24” features a highly recognisable ringtone on the phones in the CTU office complex. The same sound is now being marketed as a ringtone for mobile phones and is rapidly becoming a big hit.
When Steve Jobs announced the launch of the iphone in early 2007, his demonstration included a ringtone, which was quickly made available as a recording by a number of websites. The ringtone has been described as like “holy angels tinkling” and was eventually included within the standard ringtone set on the iphone.
So that's the first attempt at a top 10 all time greatest ringtone list! What do reckon we are missing ?!?!
Hey Christmas is finally upon us so we've uploaded some Christmas ringtones - free mp3s as always!
Happy Christmas ! Fa la la la la etc
The billing company Bango, who are old skool mobile internet dons have developed a thing called ilovemobileweb to promote mobile internet and so on. We're happy to be one of the charter members alongside people like Mocospace and Peperonity.
You can check out the site here at http://ilovemobileweb.com
This one is great - it's the sound like the ringing from the film The Matrix - nice twist on the classic telephone ring sound here it is!
Yeah we added some dancehall / reggae style mp3 ringtones for all the mjelly crew - check them out here
At the moment the Apple ipod is synonymous with portable music players and listening. However, the next few years are likely to see the ipod being wiped out as mobile phone handsets replace standalone mp3 players, for the vast majority of users. This change is going to come about through a wide range of reasons.
Firstly, digital storage is becoming increasingly cheap, which allows mobile phone handsets to incorporate space for 1000s of mp3s at limited cost. Already, the latest mobile music phone’s frequently include 10 GB of removable memory.
Second, a wide range of mobile handsets are now being specifically marketed as “music phones”. For example, Sony-Ericsson has the Walkman series , Nokia has the N Series.
In terms of sheer volume, mobile phone handsets sell several orders of magnitude more devices each year than standalone mp3 players. Since launch Apple has sold over 100m ipods (as of April 2007), however, each year, nearly 1 billion mobile phone handsets are sold. In terms of scale, Apple just can’t compete.
For users, carrying more than one device is always going to be less convenient than an “all-in-one” solution. When mobile mp3 players become “good enough” it is likely that more and more people will forgo a separate mp3 player unless they demand very high end or specific functionality.
The ability of mobile phone handsets to take on functions from a range of other technologies can be seen in the example of time-display. A common site these days when people ask for the time is someone reaching into their pocket for their mobile phone. The built-in clock has effectively removed the need to buy or carry a separate watch.
Finally, the main reason why mobile phones will beat the ipod is that the ipod itself is becoming a phone. With the launch of the iphone and the itouch Apple has announced its intention to integrate some form of telephony/ internet capability into its products. Ultimately, the standalone mp3 player may become only a niche part of its overall range of converged mp3 player/ mobile phone devices.
So, for all these reasons, mobile phones are going to beat the ipod.
Ringtones are now part of the mainstream media market, and have been around in some form for nearly a decade. For many people, ringtones are a fad, and a nuisance, but they remain a significant part of modern life, that continues to have cultural and social relevance. So, what are the key trends shaping the future of ringtones and how can we expect them to evolve going forward?
The first key trend is towards do-it-yourself or D-I-Y. The ringtone market has a history of high prices being charged both for single items (a ringtone can cost $7 compared to $0.99 for a full track music download) and, more recently, and notoriously, subscription ringtone services frequently charge a weekly or monthly fee in return access to a certain number of downloads or “club”. However, with the advent of mp3 support in most mobile phone handsets, it is now possible for consumers to easily create their own ringtones, either by loading a full track onto their handset or creating a ringtone by editing an mp3 file using cheap and readily available software. Therefore, the high prices sustained in the past are unlikely to be tenable in the future and the price of ringtones is slowly falling towards zero.
However, music on mobile is moving beyond ringtones, as
mobile becomes the default device for listening to music on the move. On any form of public transport you can now
see people listening to their music collection on their mobile phone, in a
similar way to using an ipod. Already,
in Japan
Finally, as the traditional ringtone industry declines, a range of new innovations are emerging. For example, ringback tones are ringtones carried over the mobile phone network, which are heard by the caller instead of a normal dial tone. A company called Vringo is marketing a similar service which provides an application that allows users to send each other ringtones when they call, so a user calling another can decide what ringtone is heard at the other end. At the moment, it is uncertain whether these innovations will be successful or not.
So, at present, the future of ringtones is uncertain, they could continue to exist in the future, but sold and produced for virtually nothing, with the focus on creating and sharing. Or, alternatively, new innovations may continue to keep the market alive, just in another form such as full track music downloads or music clips to be played on the move.
This one is another classic - the sound the Transformers make when they change. Makes a really good SMS alert - you can find it on mjelly as usual as a free mp3 download
A quick change from the normal short posts about the new ringtones we've put up on the site. We've written a few articles about the history and future of ringtones which we'll be blogging over the next week or so. The first one is all about the history of ringtone file format technology. Here it is :-)
A history of ringtone file format technology
Over the last 10 years ringtones have evolved from tinny,
barely recognisable, quasi-musical renditions to full stereo tracks, exactly
the same as heard on the radio or a CD. This transformation has been under-pinned by a shift in ringtone format
technology in four key phases of development. This rapid evolution of these formats has been enabled by the fact that
the typical person changes their phone every two years.
The very first generation of ringtones are known as
“monophonic” ringtones as they could only support playback of one note as a
time. The sounds these types of
ringtones could make were also very limited, typically only allowing a single
tone to be played at varying pitches. The typical format for monophonic ringtones was RTTTL, which was compatible
with Nokia handsets, and could code the information to create the ringtone in a
text file. This text file could be sent
over-the-air (OTA) to a mobile handset, using the Nokia Smart Messaging
standard, embedding the ringtone in a single SMS. Alternatively, users could create their own
ringtones using a “keypress editor” which could create the ringtone file on the
device itself. Other manufacturers
developed their own formats as this stage including eMelody and imelody for by
Ericsson, and MOT, a ringtone format used by some of the early Motorola phones.
Polyphonic ringtones, first emerged in Japan around 2001
and allowed several types of notes and instruments to be played at one
time. The first polyphonic ringtones
used sequenced recording methods such as MIDI. Such recordings specify what instrument should play a note at a given
time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent upon the playback
device. SP-Midi, a specific format for
ringtones, eventually emerged as a standard, with different levels of polyphony
– for example, 4-note, 16-note and 32-note. Again, there were some other formats that emerged alongside SP-Midi,
including SMAF (also known as .mmf) – a Yamaha-supported music format that combines
MIDI with instrument sound data. Polyphonic
ringtones lead for a boom in the industry as the sound became much richer and
more attractive to customers, but only required publishing royalties to be paid
as the original track recording was not used.
The third generation of ringtone formats first appeared
fairly quickly after polyphonic ringtones had become established in Western
markets. These types of ringtones have
been variously referred to as truetones, mastertones or realtones. In contrast
to monophonic and polyphonic tones, truetones allow a full, high-fidelity
recording, including vocals, to be used as a ringtone. The first format to provide this kind of
experience was AMR-WB, which began being incorporated into Nokia phones in
around 2004. The new format allowed an
excerpt from the original recording or master track to be used as a ringtone,
although a number of ringtone businesses opted to use cover versions of the
track in order to reduce the licensing cost paid to the record labels.
At the present time, we are seeing the emergence of the
fourth and final phase in the evolution of ringtone formats. AMR has already
been largely super-ceded by ringtones that use the same format as full track
downloads such as MP3, AAC, or WMA. For
example, the new Apple iphone uses the same format for ringtones (AAC) as it
uses for full tracks sold over itunes. One side-effect of this shift towards formats such as mp3 is the ability
of users to create their own ringtones, either by uploading a full track to
their phone or creating a ringtone by clipping the track in an audio editing
programme.
With the convergence of ringtones with standard digital music formats such as mp3, the history of ringtone format technology appears to be at an end. It seems that mobile is now a part of the mainstream music market, rather than operating in its own separate world.
So a while ago we mentioned the Nokia Md-4 speakers and the music-free buses campaign where Nokia have released external speakers to let you play music louder from your mobile which is no doubt going to annoy people. Anyway, the latest news is that all new Sony Ericsson walkman phones are going to come equipped with an extra-loud built-in speaker in addition to a special external speaker.
For example, the Sony Ericsson K630i specifications state that the phone will "make your eardrums tingle" and the internal speaker has been described in some reviews as "very loud".
In addition, it appears the the K630i is going to be accompanied by the "a large external speaker" called the MBS100 (see below) which is a stereo, bluetooth mobile phone speaker which can play stereo sound for up to 5 hours. These are going to be standard issue on all new Sony Ericsson phones from Q1 2008.
It seems things are going to get louder on the buses...
Yes Yes - we added some free mp3 SMS ringtones a.k.a Message Tones which you can use for your SMS bizniz. They are all kind of electronic sounds. Dont forget to let us know if you have any requests.
So if you're like me you probably struggle to wake-up in the morning so weve added a load of mobile alarm tones which you can download as a free mp3 to help you get up.
