Lovely post about future plans for NTT DoCoMo:

"Emerging initiatives will be launched very soon to connect pets in both location, in video and in 'language' translation services."

I definitely look forward to getting texted by the cats...

Now you can "interact with the music charts" via Orange.

I was chatting to a record company guy the other day about how mobile as gone, and he offered the opinion that the success of the ringtones and logos market has led to an over-commercialisation of mobile: that every mobile campaign feels the need to try and sell people stuff, just because there's a good precedent for it and it can. And this might be a rather greedy, short-term approach that does damage to the long-term value of mobile. And there are lots of ways that you can get value from mobile without selling directly to people: promotions or supporting other aspects of a campaign, for instance.

Certainly my first impression of Vodafone Live! was that it felt too expensive: there was a lot of stuff there and it seemed to work well, but the moment I tried to do anything of value I was being charged for it. Either I'm a fixed-lined internet fuddy-duddy, used to getting all my stuff for free, or operators need to tease their customers into making purchases in a more subtle manner.