– Encyclopedia Brittanica: The quintessential Encyclopedia Brittanica has signed up Mobifusion for the Britannica Concise 2008. Motricity is offering the service, promoting it on Palmgear, Pocketgear and Smartphones extensively through their site banners and newsletters. (release)
— MLS In Japan: Major League Soccer has made its first digital foray outside of the US by launching a mobile site in Japan. I’m not sure why it chose Japan, unless it figured that not many people anywhere would be interested so it may as well start in a country with less competition (than, say, the leagues in Europe or LatAm) and stronger use of mobile content…and where it won’t get derided for calling it “soccer”. The content will be offered on DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM), KDDI and Softbank and will include “information about the league draft and all-star game, player biographies and interviews, game highlights and a photo gallery” reports Adweek.
— Autographs: Mobile Fun has started selling autographs of famous people for download to mobile phones. They’re currently only of dead people, but with a bit of “copyright protection” the company hopes to sell autographs of live people, reports El Reg.
Weekend Reading
— Mobile Phones Morphs Shopping: Reuters has a good piece on the way mobile phones and virtual worlds are changing shopping habits, and by that marketing habits. For a mobile example: “prom dress shoppers who take pictures of themselves with their cell phone cameras, then post the photos online so friends can help pick which outfit to buy”.
— Australian Age Restriction: The Australian government has copped a lot of flak for its proposal to force ISPs and telcos to filter the internet to keep “adult content” away from children. But that criticism hasn’t slowed them down, nor has the change of government… ZDNet Australia notes the concerns of the industry that the proposals cannot be effectively implemented, and quoted Internet Industry Association CEO Peter Coroneos as saying the catalyst for the action could be traced back to a lewd tea-bagging incident on Big Brother, which was broadcast live on the website. “It was a cynical move,” he said. “Prime Minister Howard intervened just as the moral outrage had reached a crescendo and wanted to appear to be doing something about it.”
— State Of Play Of Mobile Games: The SMH has an article on mobile games — why they haven’t done as well as expected and why people still expect them to do well. There’s nothing new, but it’s a pretty decent article on the current state-of-play of the mobile games industry.
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