Monty's Mobile Gaming Outlook

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 216

2009-11-05T09:45:00.000Z

Earlier this week Amnesty International announced a campaign to highlight the number of people who have been jailed for the opinions they expressed in their blogs or web pages.

No prizes for guessing which particular countries took exception to free speech and naturally this newsletter endorses such a campaign, so three cheers for Amnesty, a UK organisation that should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize every year.

Blogs, of course, are a form of user-generated content, a phrase that is becoming increasingly annoying in the way it is banded around as the next big thing. User-generated this, user-generated that, whoopee whoopee woo, aren't we in the know? We're all going to be independent TV channels, our own media machine, the individual triumphs and so on.

But user-generated content is shit. In fact, most of mobile user-generated content is shit porn. And look at YouTube - user-generated content that has no (present) respect for copyright and other people's IP - and occasionally has no respect for people's common rights either.

And some people bang on about user-generated content (I'm even beginning to despise typing the bloody phrase) as if it's new. It's not. I spent my youth at the breakfast table being brainwashed by the back of cereal packets telling me I might win a prize if I sent in 20 words why cornflakes were the nuts (so to speak).

Great idea by the way. Get all the kids and parents to come up with a 20-word strapline that would cost thousands if an agency was hired to do it. That's it! Unrecognised-user-generated content, that's the new black! Drop the phrase into a conversation next time you have a meeting. You'll be adored.

Finally, this week's prize for most useful mobile application comes from DoCoMo in Japan who have produced a mobile phone that comes with a breathalyser. Maybe not as noble as Amnesty's current campaign, but an innovation that may save many lives. Cheers, DoCoMo!

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 215

2009-10-29T09:24:00.000Z

A report this week from the venerable London School of Economics has told us what a lot of us have known for years - that the human species is likely to 'split in two' over the coming millennia.

According to the report by evolutionist theorist Oliver Curry (change your name, mate, you sound like a posh Indian porn star) a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass will naturally emerge from our selection processes.

Furthermore, our reliance on gadgets means we will begin to resemble the pets that we currently domesticate. Well, well, well, tell us something we don't already know - the mobile phone already has made us the laziest b*stards to ever walk the planet... And some are lazier than others.

ALLEGEDLY, earlier this year Paris Hilton was due to release a text service where she would send two texts a weeks to (the tens of fans) likely to subscribe to the service. Unfortunately, this noble enterprise was nipped firmly in the handset when her people ALLEGEDLY said 'texting was a bit too much for her'. Say. No. More.

Others, however, are much more dynamic and the odd hat off to operator O2 who did something good this week. Instead of offering more content and whizz-bang-whatever, they announced they were cutting down on the extortionate prices charged for incoming calls when their customers are in different European countries.

And about time, too. Charging for such calls is scandalous and pisses me off more than wheelie-bags and cyclists riding on the pavement. Hopefully, other operators will do the same and extend the service to the US.

My bill last month after spending a week in California was £400 and made me feel like a dim-witted underclass sub-species for putting up with it. So, over to the operators. Act like the genetic upper class you profess to be and evolve your businesses decently. Your future depends on it.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 214

2009-10-22T12:08:00.000Z

Some people have the weirdest obsessions and a 26-year-old German student only identified as 'Pablo' wanted so much to be one of the clay Chinese terracotta statues that last week he made his own dusty brown suit and stood among the warriors at the famous site in Xian. What an utter-nutter.

Apparently he blended in so well that it took security guards several hours to locate him. I'd love to report that he gave himself away when his mobile went off with a Buffalo Soldier ringtone, but that wouldn't be true.... or maybe it would be a Chinese whisper - ha-ha. Sorry. I'll. Get. My. Coat.

What is true, however, are the slightly baffling messages that emanated from Carphone Warehouse this week. Hot on the heels of its pugnacious move into the US by partnering with BestBuy, came the news it was buying AOL UK for £370 million, quickly followed by Vodafone's announcement that it was dumping Carphone for Phones 4u.

Who'd be a shareholder with that lot? Sell, no, buy, hang on, buy, no, stop, sell, buy, no, sell, sell sell! As it is, the retailer's share price has fallen by about £620 million this week and there may be more bad news to come - Orange is also 'reviewing' its relationship with Carphone.

While the AOL UK purchase makes good business sense, does Vodafone's decision mean the beginning of the end of High Street retailers reselling operator contracts? Mmm, tough one and it depends on the Phones 4u deal, but the landscape is changing drastically for operators and cost-cutting is always the first step for businesses that are retrenching.

I know this well from my motorbike despatch-riding days in London. You could always tell a recession was coming when there were fewer jobs to deliver. Companies that have money to burn are lazy and the I-can't-be-bothered-to-go-over-there-put-it-on-a-bike-brigade are the first to go when the money dries up.

Similarly, it may be the same way with operators - the we-can't-be-bothered-to-sell-direct-let's-use-that-outsourcer days may indeed be over and, like our friend Pablo, it doesn't matter how you dress it up, you'll get found out in the end.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 213

2009-10-15T08:17:00.000Z

One of the great unsung heroes of the 1960s has died, 38 years after his silent protest sent a message like a clap of thunder across the world.

Not many people know the name Peter Norman, but he was the Australian 200 metres silver medallist who stood in the middle of the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics and showed his solidarity with fellow medallists Tommie Smith and John Carlos by wearing a human rights badge.

So in a world where an Australian TV presenter, who dangled his child over a crocodile to show how clever he was with animals, is offered a state funeral after he was bitten by a fish, it is time to doff our caps and pay homage to Peter Norman, a real Australian hero.

This brings us nicely to the unsung heroes of Vodafone Global who have moved off into the sunset to ‘different challenges’ and uncertain futures after being fundamental to the growth of mobile gaming in the UK.

While operator representatives sometimes deserve the opprobrium heaped upon them and the rounds of drinks they NEVER bought, Lee Fenton, Graeme Ferguson and Tim Harrison weren't that bad and left behind significant legacies. Not as important as Peter Norman's legacy maybe, but important nonetheless.

Finally this week in an abridged newsletter due to my incipient influenza, a big shout goes out to Telcogames' Australian Mark Ollila who may have saved my life, and several others, this week.

Long story, but think Marseille, the International Mobile Games Awards, an ex-operator banging on about mobile chipsets, a taxi driver who fell asleep while listening, a steering wheel being grabbed and you have the story. Blimey, talk about living by mobile and dying by it.

Again, the good Doctor Ollila may not as big an Australian hero as Peter Norman, but imagine if I'd died? No more Friday newsletters, no more ironic editorial, it would have been awful, wouldn't it?... Wouldn't it?...

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 212

2006-10-02T08:59:00.000Z

"When I heard of Franco's death, I went home, watched the funeral on TV, listened to Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia, smoked a huge joint and had weird sex with a close friend." - Spanish journalist Francisco Umbral

Now that's the way to say goodbye to an unpopular leader of a country! But this week's valedictory speech by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was largely ignored by the British public who couldn't even be bothered to have sex with themselves when the news finally came through.

The problem for Blair is that about halfway through his tenure as leader he began to metamorphise into the actor Tim Curry when he played Frank N. Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show... and once that image is in your head, there's no shaking it... the image that is, not the head.

The other small snag for Blair was his insincerity while he put on his Tim Curry look-and-feel. Lots of us have heard that voice on TV and the radio but not so many know what his phone manner is like on a mobile. That's where the Truthful Calls service from South Korea's KTF would have proved to be invaluable if any us managed to get through to Blair.

This service uses a voice analysis system to test the honesty of the person being called. During the call, different sounds are played that identify emotional states. At the end of the call the caller then gets a message with a bar graph depicting truthfulness, along with stress levels, the number of inaccurate answers and attempts to change the subject. Sound familiar?

Spooky, but not bad. Furthermore, KTF also offers a Love Detector service that automatically tells the caller the 'love level' of the other person every 10 seconds or so. A handy service no doubt, but one to be avoided if Tony Blair was calling - unless you like that sort of thing.

There again, we all celebrate in our own way and maybe Blair toasted his own departure by taking a few calls while listening to his favourite band rockers Free, not inhaling on a spliff as he had cross-dressing Rocky Horror sex with his fragrant wife. And we wouldn't need the Love Detector service to believe that one.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 211

2006-09-25T08:22:00.000Z

"The smaller aperture of the lid has been designed to prevent hedgehogs from entering the McFlurry container in the unfortunate incidence that the lid is littered."

Well, thank God for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society who have forced fat food 'restaurant' McDonalds to redesign its cups after several instances of hedgehogs getting stuck and starving to death while trying to eat leftover ice cream. Blimey, isn't that just like how Elvis Presley died?

McDonalds' ridiculous statement is yet another example of corporate statements that purport to put that company in a positive light, but render it somewhat risible. This seemed to be reiterated earlier this week when New Media Age's Justin Pearse reported that Vodafone believed mobile TV was already more successful than ringtones.

What, are you insane? But hang on, maybe it's not so mental after all. Apparently, more than half of all new 3G customers sign up to Vodafone's mobile TV service and usage levels are exceeding the one million streams a month it saw during its initial free trial. Mmm, nice.

If Vodafone say they're making more money out of mobile TV than ringtones, then we have to believe them, and it is heartening news for those of us who have been banging on about how quickly mobile TV is likely to be adopted. I signed up about six months ago for £5 per month so I could ruin my eyesight looking at the latest football results on Sky Sports. And it's very unlikely I will ever unsubscribe.

But is it just going to be traditional TV channels that will be successful on mobile? Earlier this week I went through more than 250 entries for the mobile TV and video awards at next month's MIPCOM event in Cannes. While the made-for-mobile and repurposed mobile categories were much the same as last year, the mobile channels entries were formidable.

Some were better than others and I'm bound by secrecy not to mention names until the nominees are announced, but it takes something special to jolt you when you've looked at so many entries. Suffice to say, one of the short films channels was utterly brilliant, moving, beautiful and uplifting.

Short films on mobile work perfectly and hopefully an arthouse mobile TV genre will emerge in much the same way as independent cinema. That is a very good thing because you can bang on about hedgehogs, McDonalds and Sky Sports, but there's nothing like being reminded there's more to life than just football results.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 210

2006-09-20T21:29:00.000Z

It’s true! Hollywood starlet Drew Barrymore is a Brentford FC fan, she told me so herself earlier this week.

It’s a long story, but involves a cool restaurant in West Hollywood, an ex-Brentford chairman who owns the restaurant, Dan Tana’s, and an article in the Observer Sunday newspaper that said the Hollywood A list all supported Brentford because of their affection for the owner.

So I introduced myself to Drew and we had a little chat. She eventually told me she was crazy and hysterical about Brentford (after confusing the Super Bees with ‘Brentwood’) and saved herself for that shocking faux pas by complimenting me on my sweater. And all this independently verified by members of reputable companies Microsoft, Player X, Freeze Tag and Top Image.

Naturally this was my high point of this week’s CTIA in Los Angeles and made up for not seeing Bob Dylan anywhere, although almost-fellow-icon the Doors’ Ray Mazarek gave an interesting presentation on the mobile Doors brand.

Not sure what he meant about that because I was recounting my LA WOMAN story to a colleague and it didn’t really LIGHT MY FIRE, but perhaps that brand will BREAK ON THROUGH… Sorry, it’s been a long week.

While the Autumn show is smaller than the Spring equivalent, CTIA is still a must-attend event and there was a sense that things are hotting up for both music and video. Like many a couple before them, operators and handset manufacturers seem to have finally copped off with each other after secretly fancying each other for years... and that’s only good news for the consumer.

They’ve finally realised the way to the hearts and minds of that customer is to embed content on handsets. It’s obvious. That content serves as an educative, free and content-rich preview experience that allows the customer to be gently patted on the arse as they’re shown how to download quality content. Why don’t I say content one more time? Here we go - content. Time to get a flight back to the UK mayhaps.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that all the figures that suggest people will continue using their iPods and not listening to music on their phones and only 1% of people will pay for video content should be ignored.

The love-in between the operators and handsetters will ensure the mobile entertainment market tips as extensively as I did at the restaurant where I met Drew Barrymore. Did I mention that Drew Barrymore liked my jumper and supports Brentford? I did?... oh...

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 209

2006-09-11T14:47:00.000Z

"Dylan was a bas-tard in the second half."

No, not the musings of a Welsh football team's manager, but the comments of a so-called fan at a 1965 Bob Dylan concert in Sheffield chronicled by Martin Scorsese's seminal documentary No Direction Home.

The reason for his outburst: Dylan had gone all electric and had apparently sold out his more tradtional roots. But Dylan has always ploughed his own field and this week Dylan reaped that harvest by celebrating his first No 1 US album for more than 30 years.

As a man who buys every bootleg, knows the words of most the songs and duly slaughters those songs whenever I play them on the guitar, I am absolutely delighted that Modern Times has proved to be so successful and Dylan is cool again.

Dylan is the greatest living American and done more for black people and teaching the diversity of ancient American music and culture than anybody before him. As the latest album proves, the protest singer that the fan in the Sheffield audience wanted him to remain has never disappeared, he's just evolved.

As I prepare to fly to Los Angeles for next week's CTIA trade show, I'm still hoping I get to meet Dylan over there. About 15 years ago, I drove to his house in Malibu and almost convinced the security guard that I was the lead singer of the Waterboys and 'Bob had asked me to drop by if I was ever in LA'. Well, it was worth a try.

So 15 years on, in a bid to gain entry to his house, I might try and convince the same security guard that I'm a serious player in the mobile entertainment industry and 'Bob asked me to drop off a new handset the next time I was in LA'. Mmm, maybe that's not even worth a try.

Still there's always a good Dylan lyric to fall back on and th is one from Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues describes the CTIA party-whirl in quite the perfect way.

"I got shoved down 'n' pushed around, All I could hear there was a screamin' sound, Don't remember one thing more, Just remember walkin' up on a little shore, Head busted, stomach cracked, Feet splintered, I was bald, naked...Quite lucky to be alive though."

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issu 208

2006-09-04T10:54:00.000Z

One of the great flying mysteries is the one where a dead man in a diving suit is found in the aftermath-ashes of an Australian forest fire. Who did he get there? Who was he?

As any aficionado of rural myth knows, the man was diving in a lake when a helicopter scooped up water to put out the fire and promptly dumped him in the middle of it... and no, his name wasn't Lucky.

While this poor chap must have been surprised by the fatal interruption to his swim, it wasn't as surprising as this week's news that Ryanair is installing a system to allow passengers to use their mobile phones. Er, do they know something we don't? Apparently, it's quite difficult nowadays to take anything onto a flight, least of all an electronic device.

The weirdness of this was compounded recently when so-called security checks failed to pick up a mobile phone that a passenger had smuggled onboard a UK-US flight. When the ringtone went off halfway across Ireland, there were probably several sphincters that tightened faster than a Chelsea footballer's hamstring.

Thankfully there was no big bang and naturally nobody owned up that it was their phone, but it did cost the airliner £100,000 to turn the plane around. Now that's what I call a roaming charge... and the caller didn't even get through!

Ryanair presumably have other plans and knowing the slimness of their profit margins, passengers will probably be charged if their phone DOESN'T go off during the flight. And what's more, I'm absolutely delighted that I wrote those three paragraphs without mentioning any 'I'm on the plane' gags.

While we're on the subject of flying and mobile phones, it is my great pleasure to announce that this year's winner of the mobile phone throwing World Championships is Lassi Etelätalo. This Finnish hero lobbed his handset 89 metres - a distance that many Ryanair customers would like to throw their fellow passengers when they have to hear yet another phone conversation.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 207

2006-08-28T13:34:00.000Z

What a week it's been for mobile games! Not only did a delegate at the Leipzig festival tell the audience that mobile games would outsell console games in 2006, but another senior executive in Denmark compared them with crack cocaine - give them away, get people addicted and so on.

While the latter statement was said for effect and succeeded to a limited degree in getting the attention of the media, the brave comments of I-play's Stephane Labrunie were more inflammatory. It certainly put the wind up the traditional gaming industry with their denials of such a scenario, even if Stephane is a historically deluded man with his opinion of French rugby.

And about time too. After attending the EIEF show in Edinburgh earlier this week and witnessing the smug guffaws whenever mobile games were mentioned, it's about time somebody fought back... and guess what? They don't like it up 'em.

Apart from one or two exceptions (who would probably nick my pewter and sell it on eBay) I'd invite anybody in the mobile games industry for a dinner party at my house, but a lot of traditional gamers I wouldn't even invite around to fix my computer. And they get to laugh at us? Mark my words, he who laughs last wears a well-cut jacket, not a ponytail.

Moving on, those crack cocaine comments weren't entirely out of place, but maybe an alcohol business model would work better. Think about it. Your first drink (game) was probably obtained illegally, then you went to a pub (handset) where you paid a high price for your first drink (branded game).

Once you got the taste for it you started drinking with friends (multiplayer), tried other types of drinks (unbranded games), were happy to pay more for quality alcohol (3D games), sometimes were allowed to drink as much as you liked (subscription) and sometimes spent the rest of the night over the toilet (off-portal).

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 206

2006-08-21T13:38:00.000Z

In one of the most pointless statements since Marie Antionette urged her fellow citizens to eat cake, jowly movie star Adam Sandler has announced he is giving 400 PlayStation consoles to Israel.

He will apparently be delivering the consoles to those families 'whose houses have been damaged in the recent mini-war between Israel and Lebanon'. Well, well, well. Happy days are here again.

No doubt the recipients of this gift will be absolutely delighted as they look out from what used to be their homes... "Darling, the electricity's back on." "Oh, great, plug in the PlayStation, I'll put the kids in a bath later, another day won't hurt them". Maybe next year the kind Mr Sandler could send over 400 Segway Human Transporters so people can get around more easily.

But perhaps Sandler is not alone in making ridiculous announcements. This week's news that populist TV shows Lost and Desperate Housewives will shortly be turned into mobile games seems to be yet another asinine attempt to kick mobile games into the public consciousness.

Last month it was Paris Hilton and this week a Bob Marley game was released where users can play football games and 'transport themsleves to the islands with Jamaican themes and tropical vibes throughout the game". Talk about flogging a dead horse.

I'm sure the Lost and Desperate Housewives games will be great, but the point is being missed. Brands and celebrities are all very well, but why not just hire an innovative agency and run simple, ironic TV ads that actually show people how to download a game. More than 95% of people still don't know how to do it... or are too scared to do it.

Even better, get a celebrity to deliver the message in the ad. That'll make people sit up and notice. But whatever happens, don't use Adam Sandler. If he can't understand philanthropy, he'll never understand mobile.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 205

2006-08-14T11:00:00.000Z

Was President John F Kennedy off his head on cocaine and meta-amphetamine when he faced down Russian President Kruschev during the 1961 Cuban missile crisis?

Apparently and allegedly so. According to <The Complete Social History of LSD by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlaim, a certain Dr Jake was the drug dealer for the Andy Warhol set at the infamous Factory in New York. This Dr Jake turned out to be Dr Max 'Feelgood' Jackson whose next job was to be JFK's personal physician where he often administered vitamin injections (aka coke/speed cocktails) that left JFK 'flushed and excited'.

No kidding, happy birthday to you every day, Mr President, and thanks for saving the world from nuclear disaster. It could have been so different if Dr Feelgood had diagnosed cannabis. We might all be speaking Russian and genuflecting to Lenin. Thank God for cocaine!

While that particular revolution didn't happen, another one has just hit North America... and you heard it here second. While US carrier Sprint's decision to invest in a US-wide WiMAX network isn't going to sell many Che Guevara-type T-shirts, this is news of the highest magnitude.

A very well-written article on The Register sums up this news perfectly, but in a shell of a nut, it means that Motorola will probably take over from Nokia as the best-selling handset in the US, mobile TV in the US will become the same as cable TV, it will mean the end of Wi-Fi and it will dramatically reduce the prices of fixed and mobile telephony.

Then, once the model has proved itself, the rest of the world will watch and adopt similar systems. Rather like Western capitalism in fact. Which reminds me. JFK stared down Kruschev via a special telephone hotline. Do these still exist or do national leaders now have special mobile hotlines?

And what handsets are they? Does Bush have a Motorola, does Putin refuse to use a Nokia because of Russian/Finnish history and why does that pesky Bin Laden always forget to turn GPS on his handset? Maybe, much like JFK's alleged chemical proclivities, we'll find out in 35 years' time

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 204

2006-08-07T11:03:00.000Z

Wouldn't we all look weird if we walked around with toilet seats glued to our ears? Not as stupid as it sounds because according to a report this week, our mobile phones are crawling with more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

Apparently the constant handling and heat of the phone are the perfect breeding ground for bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus, which can cause boils as well as potentially lethal pneumonia and meningitis, and is a relative to the superbug MRSA.

So now you know, if you talk too much on your mobile your ear may literally fall off. Or conversely, invest in some anti-bacterial wipes and remember a phone is for life and it should be looked after.

Enough of such whimsy. I'm delighted to announce that the world's first museum dedicated to mobile games innovation is open for business - www.momgi.org.

Concocted by the genial Matt Bellows of Wireless Gaming Review renown, the online museum 'is a place to immortalise the games, services, phones and projects that form the foundation on which our industry stands'.

While such noble sentiment may sound slightly too worthy, there is a serious point here if only to remind ourselves how appalling mobile games were until relatively recently. And what's more, I wouldn't mistrust Matt's judgement. He sold his newsletter for millions and I'm still scrambling around for pennies.

Anybody who registers on the site can add their own content, so this innovation is probably the world's first user content-generated museum. Hopefully it won't be hijacked by PRs attempting to plug their companies into history. Honestly, I wouldn't wipe my arse with that type of behaviour.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 203

2006-07-31T11:43:00.000Z

While the media has recently been afire with post-World Cup stories of mobile TV's performance and whether all the hype was worth it, the best post-World Cup story has to be that of the three Argentinian fans who were ejected from a ground for pretending to be disabled.

The fans had bought wheelchairs and then bought special discounted tickets for disabled fans to gain admission. Anyway, guess what? They got rumbled. How? Yep, for jumping up and down when their team scored...maybe not the Hand of God, more like the Foot of God?

Or to quote one of these three stooges: "Our friend couldn't stop jumping and a person near us thought there was a miracle happening." Funny that, I had the same feeling when I finally managed to make mobile TV work on my handset.

And it would appear my experience is far from unusual. A recent survey on mobile TV in the UK from Strategy Analytics has found that mobile TV isn't doing its thing. In its round-up, the report begrudingly gives Vodafone top spot but there isn't much opposition. Orange even returned null points because of 'technical difficulties'.

The problem here is, as ever, expectation. WAP suffered for years because it was billed as a functioning mobile internet when it was rubbish and it's only now delivering on its promises. I watch mobile TV but it's not easy. No handset seems to come with a stand so I constantly have my head down and not looking up. It's like having sex with somebody who has bad breath.... or listening to panels at trade shows.

Watching mobile TV is never going to be the same as watching the bigger screen, but it has a definite future and it would be a mistake to write it off because operators aren't delivering as the marketing promises. It's not as if people are likely to be more still in the future, we will be forever more mobile.

So, emerging mobile TV channels that don't just replicate Sky News or ITN will move things forward and everybody will live happily ever after. So watch out for World Cup 2010 when mobile TV will REALLY break through... unlike those three Argentinians who are probably already cobbling together another daft plan to watch their skilful, yet churlish, little team.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 202

2006-07-24T10:43:00.000Z

It's unlikely that mobile phone users will get a signal in Beirut this weekend. Not only is the sky alive with the sound of Israeli jets, it is also alive with the buzz of jamming... and we're not talking Robert Nesta Marley.

I went to Beirut once for a job. I saw an advert in the Guardian asking for sub-editors to work for the Daily Star - the only English language newspaper in Beirut. So I went there... for a job... to catch up with my peers. What a twit.

I did learn much in those four days before I scurried back to unemployment. I learnt not to hurry through customs because whatever questions they ask you, there's always a Syrian at the end of the line and he's as scary as any Touton Macoute... somebody who looks as if torture is a mere sorbet between real violence. "No, mate, I've never been to Israel. Please don't kill me. Cheers. Taxi!"

I heard the Waterboys on the radio in Beirut and I spent 25 very happy drunken minutes as the only night visitor at the Beirut Lunar Park on the big wheel intoning to myself: "I'm on the biggest big wheel in the Middle East", but I said it so often as I reached the apogee of each curve that I even bored myself.

I learnt there were no drink-driving laws in Beirut and all the seafood along the coast was poisoned.I also learnt in Beirut that nobody had landlines because the exchanges had been bombed beyond repair and everybody used mobiles. This felt weird at the time because I still didn't own a mobile phone... I thought they were the devil's work.

The point being is that if you can't use a mobile in Beirut, then nothing works. But, as usual, traditional Arabic hospitality has come to the rescue of the beleageured Beirutans. Jordanian operator Fastlink is now providing free network coverage to citizens of the city while the 'current crisis continues'.

Unfortunately for all involved, Fastlink may be providing free coverage for much longer than the foreseeable future... I learnt that much about the Middle East a long time ago.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 201

2006-07-17T10:38:00.000Z

It would appear the flash mob phenomenon of a couple of years ago has crossed into the mainstream. Vodafone and Channel 4 have been running several 'secret' gigs in the UK by sending text messages to random users.

This week it was Brighton's turn and the assembled games executives for the Develop conference were treated to post-punk band Razorlight rocking out on the beach opposite the conference hotel. For some of us, though, the Razorlight experience was more intimate.

To cut a long story short, me and a mate from EA were at the bar in the Grand hotel about 1am. Razorlight were at the bar. We were vivacious, they were friendly. We remembered the Vodafone connection, wow, the gig must be on Vodafone Live!, let's download it.

By now the band and their tour manager were all huddled around the handset awed by modern technology, putty in our hands. So, enjoying the rare moment of power over rockstars, we went further and showed them the embedded Live 8 music that comes with the N91 phone.

"I didn't know you could do that with a phone, but we were at Live 8 weren't we? Where's our stuff on there?", said the skinniest one from the band to the tour manager. Good question, mate, but one for Nokia, and it was all getting a bit confusing.

Anyway, what better way to finish the conversation than by retiring to the bar piano and listen to an impromptu Razorlight version of Imagine by John Lennon. And do you think either of us had the intelligence to capture such a moment on our videophones? No, of course not, because we were very, very drunk.

Naturally if we had caught such a moment on film, this would have been yet another example of user-generated content, a ridiculous phrase that should forthwith be described as DIY content. Such content is all the rage and was demonstrated further at the Develop awards where each table was given a phone to take pictures. Best one wins an I-pod blah-blah.

While this was a bit like being dupes of a Big Brother task, the results were surprisingly interesting. Well done to the winners whoever they were but I think the winner should have been the (unnamed) table guest who insisted on repeatedly slapping the bottom of one of the Nokia demo-girls who was surprisingly user-friendly as the content was being generated.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 200

2006-07-10T11:28:00.000Z

The story of the week has to be that of 60-year-old Linda Walker who woke up after a stroke and began talking in a Jamaican accent, not the Geordie accent she had practised for the previous six decades.

Linda is a victim of 'Foreign Accent Syndrome' which (rather unimaginatively) sums the condition up. Poor woman. One minute she's in the fish-and-chip shop asking for a chocolate bar covered in batter, the next she's asking in pure-patois for rice 'n peas, some ackee and ting and ting. I-ree!

Imagine if it happened to your mobile. You're in a meeting in a bar with a client. You've got your best bespoke jacket on, brushed Churchill shoes, wearing a Gresham Blake shirt and sporting a Mont Blanc pen as if it's a weapon. Everything is going swimmingly and then...

...You think your ringtone is a personally chosen piece of cool, but then it rings in the meeting and it's that horrible 1G Nokia whine from 1997. The shame, the shame. It's almost as embarrassing as trying to get your mobile out of your pocket and.... arrrggghhhh... a handheld gaming device falling out.

But it could be worse. You might have gone into that meeting as a mobile publisher and then started speaking... like an operator. But probably best not to go there, we'll be here all day and likely to get charged premium data rates for it as well.

On a serious note, it's time to get rid of those jolly World Cup ringtones. Erase The Great Escape, Vindaloo and It's Coming Home. It's not coming home, it's going to Italy or France and is unlikely to ever come home again. Furthermore, it's best not to be reminded of the pain every time some half-wit's mobile goes off.

Finally, if you're bored and fancy a couple of days in Brighton, the Develop game conference is taking place next week. As a denizen of the city, this is a good trend. More conferences in Brighton please. It's more of a laugh and everybody speaks in the same accent. And apparently I'm chairing a session on mobile games. Off-portal or something. I don't know the first thing about it. Is it Jamaican?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 199

2006-07-03T13:10:00.000Z

Imagine this time next week.

Imagine a morning without any mobile video, mobile texting, mobile games, mobile talking, mobile gambling and mobile newsletters.

Imagine a morning where the birds sing and the girls smile and the neighbours introduce themselves and the radio plays the right records and the sun is very lovely on the skin.

Imagine the England football team preparing to take part in the World Cup Final against host nation Germany in Berlin.

Imagine the drive to a transportation terminal and poring over eight newspapers on the ferry to the continent.

Imagine the experience of crossing Europe knowing that whether it costs you ten grand or whether you have to scale four stories you WILL be in the stadium to watch that game.

And imagine IF, IF, the England football team won and you had to be back in Brighton next Tuesday to moderate a session on off-portal games. Is there a chance on earth that you would be back in time?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 198

2006-06-26T14:00:00.000Z

While it's sometimes a good thing to be told a spade is a spade, being whacked over the head by a shovel is not so good.

This week it was the turn of the LA Police Department to tell us how it is after the launch of its prototype SkySeer drone that looks like a remote-controlled plane and fits into a laptop bag. Think War Of The Worlds and Tom Cruise crouching in a basement... actually don't, that sounds too much like a Scientology initiation rite.

Anyway, when California's Privacy Rights Clearinghouse raised concerns about this egregious violation of our liberties, Commander Heal of the LAPD responded by saying: 'All concerns are unwarranted because everybody is already under surveillance. You shouldn't be worried being spied on by your government. These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you.'

Nice to know that's sorted out then, just a shame that the LAPD wasn't under as much surveillance when they beat the crap out of Rodney King and other undoubted-alleged-similar instances. But maybe all is not yet lost and technology also offers a chance for us to watch them as much as they watch us.

While I hate to use the word 'cameraphone' because it's sooo 2004 and only describes one function of a sophisticated mobile device, such features can be a useful witness to abuses perpetrated by the powers-that-ought-not-to-be as cocky with their mandate.

As the People become more aware of how their cameraphones can take video, it is more likely that British Police raids on innocent Muslims or paranoid shootings of Brazilians are more likely to be captured on film by bystanders... and it will be a lot more difficult for this footage to be seized at the scene.

So, do not be too dismayed when a SkySeer pops over your garden fence in the years to come. Just have your phone to hand, put it into video mode and smile sweetly. You haven't done anything wrong and you can prove it. Well, it's either that or hit the ****ing thing with that previously mentioned shovel.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 197

2006-06-19T13:02:00.000Z

It was 1958 when the 17-year-old Pele came to Sweden and led the Brazilians to their first World Cup victory.

But it could have all been so different and Eduard Streltsov may have usurped Pele as the most famous footballer on the planet. Unfortunately for Streltsov, he was Russian and had a bit of attitude as well as the rebel's greatest weapon - a different haircut.

Ordered by the authorities to either sign for the Soviet Army's team CSKA Moscow or KGB's Dynamo Moscow, Streltsov refused and consequently became an irritant to the authorities as his teddy boy haircut was copied by the yoof of the day... and a cult beckoned.

The rest is painfully predictable. Just before the World Cup, he was accused of insulting a Politburo member's daughter at a party and was stitched up on a charge of rape. Seven years in the gulag followed and the virtual end of his career. Not something you'd wish on your worst enemy, but an exception could be made for that **** of an England football manager.

Unfortunately for Streltsov, he paid for his rebellion unlike decision-makers in the mobile content industry who never seem to pay for anything. Drinks are free, parties are free, World Cup tickets are free, the latest handsets are free and most importantly mobile phone bills are free.

Which is perhaps where the whole industry is going wrong. We don't know what it is like to get 'billshock' because somebody is always paying for it. If we were forced to pay our own bills we'd soon wise up to what content we'd be prepared to pay for... and what we wouldn't pay for.

So we should stop whining about mobile games not doing as well as expected and moaning about the lack of take-up of mobile TV during the World Cup. What we should be forced to do is break out of our comfort-gulags and live in the real world of paying our own way. Because, just like Eduard Streltsov, most people aren't so lucky.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 196

2006-06-12T15:48:00.000Z

The surprise victory by Finnish death metal band Lordi at this year's Eurovision Song Contest has been noticed by American TV executives who want to launch a Stateside version that would pit all 50 states against each other.

Wonderfully described by one executive as 'The Super Bowl of Singing', Eurovision is watched by more than 100 million people and would be a handy format for US TV companies desperate to challenge the ubiquity of American Idol, the talent show that was instrumental in bringing text messaging to the US public.

Expect this to happen next year, but don't expect the Dixie Chicks to be invited to the show just yet. The best-selling country band was blacklisted by the country music audience when lead singer Natalie Maines took George Bush to task for starting the war in Iraq.

The response was suitably moronic. A radio boycott of their music, death threats and accusations of treachery as backwoods America showed what it thought about free speech. So let's rejoice at the news that their new album has just gone to number one in the US, even if I'd rather eat the feet fungi from my flipflops than listen to country music. Respect to courage in the face of hysteria and People Power 1 Redneck Power 0.

A result that brings us inevitably round to today's kick-off of the 2006 World Cup. While the future may bring USvision as well as Eurovision, shortly to be followed by a global singing contest called Worldvision, football is still the daddy and more than 1.5 billion people will watch today's opening match.

The tournament is also expected to be a litmus test for the launch of mobile TV around the world. While projected revenues of £160 million for World Cup downloads of video clips seem over-optimistic, this World Cup could be as important for mobile TV as American Idol was for text messaging in the States.

According to a recent report, more than 200 million people will be watching mobile TV in 2011 and there seems no doubt this technology will reach critical mass much quicker than expected.

All of which is unimportant when compared to watching the World Cup and England's chances. There are three certainties. The BBC website will fall over because of the amount of office-workers watching its live streaming, about 1% of America will bother to watch it and Brazil will go out before the quarter-finals.

Stuart Dredge's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 195

2006-06-05T15:46:00.000Z

* This week's newsletter was guest-edited by Stuart Dredge, Informa Analyst

What do Paris Hilton, Tommy Lee and Nicole Ritchie have in common? No, not a sleazy motel-threesome scoop in the National Enquirer. At least, not yet. Instead, all three were in evidence at last month's E3 trade show in Los Angeles.

Paris' appearance on Gameloft's stand gained the publisher more column inches than all its Splinter Cell mobile games combined, even if she did get the name of the game wrong.

Meanwhile, Nicole appeared at a Sprint Nextel press launch the day before to promote Namco's new Super Pac-Man mobile game - which at least gave us journos a good chance to polish our 'One's a pill-popping character with weight issues, the other one's Pac-Man...' intros.

Finally, Hands On Mobile was talking behind closed doors about its new Tommy Lee mobile service, as well as its deal with wrinkly crooner Pat Boone to deliver 'Daily Devotions' prayers to as many of the 40 million evangelical Christians in the US it can, er, lay its hands on?

The thing is, there's several problems with signing up celebs to front mobile games or entertainment. First, the celebrity cycle is increasingly rapid - today's celeb-mag cover is tomorrow's penniless nonentity, which is a risk for mobile publishers.

The second problem with celebs is that they're local. In the UK, we now manufacture most of ours from reality TV shows, and they don't travel well (unless Jade Goody is Big In Germany without us realising).

As a publisher, do you sign up local celebs for individual markets? For example, Player One just signed horse-racing pundit John McCririck, best known for his comedy facial hair, right-wing views and for showing off his man-boobs on last year´s Celebrity Big Brother.

Or do you take one product and sign different celebs for different markets? Maybe Hands On should launch Daily Devotions Europe with Sir Cliff Richard in the UK.

But the third, and most important, problem is that celebrities make for boring mobile games. I blame the lawyers. Gameloft wouldn't be allowed to make a game where Paris stamps on her discarded chihuahuas, for example.

You'll never see a Naomi Campbell game that involves flinging mobile phones at flunkies, or a Sims rip-off where Sir Paul McCartney has to run around his mansion hiding sacks of cash before The Wife's lawyers turn up. Which is a shame.

Quick plug: Informa Telecoms & Media's upcoming Mobile Games report predicts that mobile games will generate $2.4 billion this year,rising to $7.2 billion in 2011. How much of that do you reckon is going to come from Bono's Charity Bowling or Jodie Marsh's Poker Challenge?

Of course, if someone releases a game tomorrow starring Eurovision monster-metallers Lordi, Tom Cruise's cuban heels, and Imogen out of Big Brother, I'd be first in the queue. But until that happens, my fear is that most celeb-based games will be, in the words of last week's guest editor, crap.

Graeme Ferguson's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 194

2006-05-29T15:44:00.000Z

* This newsletter was guest-edited by Graeme Ferguson, Head of Content at Vodafone

It was almost 12 months ago when I managed to piss off publishers at the ELSPA International Games Summit by saying the quality of mobile games were crap and needed to improve because customers 'weren't mugs.'

A year on and a report on the industry seems to back this up. According to industry analysts M:Metrics, the market for mobile games has peaked at around 5% of mobile users and only 20-30% of first-time mobile gamers go back again.

Frankly I’m not surprised. I'd been banging on about this long before the ELSPA event. As Vodafone's Head of Content, I've seen some dire games (surprisingly most with good, great or at least recognisable licences) that really insult the customer... our customer. But whose fault is it that mobile games could go the way of WAP games, where delivery has not matched expectation?

Again no surprise, I could point the finger at myself. The operator is blamed for not marketing enough, not sourcing the correct content, taking too much of the revenue, putting the costs of porting and testing on the publisher/developer, blah-blah-blah. I've sat on many panels at trade shows and had to put up with the familiar operator-bashing questions from some half-wit looking for somebody to blame.

But we’re all missing the fundamental point. The market will not grow and customers will not repeat-buy if the basic quality of mobile-games does not improve. Quicker access to a crap game or greater revenue share for a crap game, or fewer handsets and lower QA costs on a crap game and guess what? It’s still a crap game.

There are too many mobile games full stop. Because of this the development investment per game is often too low so the quality often never improves. Don’t agree? Here’s an indication. I met four large publishers and a studio a few months back, they all had slates for the year of between 40-60 games, about 250 games in total.

At Voda Group we launch between 6-10 games per month, about 100 across the year. Add in a few more launched locally and there is still a huge imbalance. No operator portal has room for all these games let alone the hundreds of others from the rest of the industry.

Operators such as Vodafone do not take publishers for granted. We love publishers that deliver great licences, quality games, share the costs of marketing and get them to us on time across our handset base, as they always promise they will! These are the standards we demand. Unfortunately, less competent publishers are the ones who complain the loudest - they're the ones who don't come up to this mark - and I (and they) know exactly who they are.

Here´s my advice for those who don´t agree with this... Don’t pay a fortune for irrelevant licences. Don’t re-skin old engines with even older movie brands or socially irrelevant brands and expect operators to get behind them. What next? Monkey Tennis? Inner-city Sumo? Cooking in Prison?

Rant over. Of course we are doing our bit to get the best games to as many new customers as possible, but we need our partners to come up with the goods too. New billing options such as rental and subscription as well as ‘try before you buy’ will help bring new users in, but only if the games they play are attractive, addictive and innovative.

It’s no coincidence that the mobile games top 10 looks very much the same week in, week out – customers know what they like and like what they know. Perennials such as Pac-Man, Tetris and Millionaire are well-known concepts that are ideally suited to mobile and the numbers speak for themselves.

Taito and Namco have barely released a new game since I signed our first deal four years ago but their revenues continue to grow because they focus on handset-porting and refreshing their successful brands. Plus newcomers such as Sonic, The Sims and V-Rally prove that there is also room for console brands on mobile.

We all have a vested interest in giving the customer a great gaming experience and as I said at the ELSPA nobody likes being taken for a mug, but that applies to operators as well as customers. Or as the late great Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said: 'Less is more'. In mobile games, as in life, never a truer word spoken.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 193

2006-05-22T15:42:00.000Z

He's here, he's there, he's everywhere! Bono! Whether it's saving the world from burning to a cinder or signing an exclusive deal with Motorola to promote his RED initiative, he's almost omnipresent. But where was he on Wednesday for the Champions' League Final between Arsenal (shirts sponsored by U2, er I mean O2) and Barcelona?

As I stood proudly in the Stade de France as a die-hard Brentford supporter and only having visited Highbury once in my life (makes you sick doesn't it?) , I expected Barcelona striker, er I mean Arsenal striker, Thierry Henry to have been replaced by the Great Man. And let's be honest, he might have done a better job. Henry, obviously, still hasn't found that goal he's looking for. Perhaps they're one, but they're not the same?

Sorry, cheap shot, or crap shot, depending on how you look at it. Arsenal should have won the game, but shirt sponsors O2 can be proud its team went so close. Siemens-Chelsea and Vodafone-Manchester United were nowhere to be seen. The only question that remains to be answered is whether O2 is still at Arsenal next season. Odds are they probably will be.

But fair play to Bono. Who else could have unite the operators with the release of a handset? The RED Motorola costs £149 and The Global Fund For Aids earns £10 for every handset sold and 5% of future revenues. Buyers of the phone can use it with any operator by merely replacing the SIM card. It's just fortunate that Bono's initiative is called RED and not ORANGE. That would have mashed up that deal.

Finally this week, I'm off on holiday and just like The Independent allowing Bono to edit the newspaper this week, I'm doing the same and inviting two guest editors to do so with this newsletter. I tried to get Bono, but he was busy, but I'll be announcing the two names early next week. About time there was a decent writer doing this newsletter.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 192

2006-05-15T15:40:00.000Z

Great news - the chattering classes may have been finally silenced! According to a three-year study conducted by Manchester University, the middle-class dinner party is in serious decline.

Apparently couples now prefer to eat down the local gastro-gastro rather than invite friends over to see how beautiful their new house is, er I mean, for a lovely meal.
As somebody who has always thought a kitchen should serve as an extra bedroom rather than waste all that space with cupboards of food, this news is welcomed. Breakfast in a cafe, lunch in a pub and dinner in a restaurant, that's how life should be. In fact, that's the most important reason for attending a trade show.

And a trade show is probably where a lot of this newsletter’s readership is at the moment. This year's E3 games show has seen the usual exodus to Los Angeles and mobile has been bigger than ever before, blah-blah-blah.

But instead of banging on about E3 like every other media, I thought I'd bang on about the addictive qualities of mobile phones. According to an Australian report this week, some people's reliance on their mobiles can be worse than smoking and even resembles substance abuse.

While it's difficult to imagine such dependency being as serious as heroin, it does beg questions. Are mobile addicts weaned off their habit by being given pagers in the same way heroin addicts are given methadone? Or they only allowed to use rotary-dial landlines? Or even worse, can they only use handsets that are more than two years old? The shame, the shame…

This is where the dinner party could help them. While it is just about OK to take your mobile to a restaurant, it's very bad form to keep your mobile turned on at a dinner party. The answer is plain... dinner party therapy for mobile addicts.

Not only will they be kept away from their handsets, they will be able to relearn the art of conversation by talking absolute b*llocks over a lamb shank, shitake mushrooms and celeriac mash all washed down by a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. What more could an addict ask for?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 191

2006-05-08T15:31:00.000Z

What a wacky world we live in. Not content with marketing the hell out of Lost, the hopelessly overrated TV show of abandoned pretty people in rags, Disney has now taken publishing past post-modern and back again.

The company has just released Bad Timing by 'Guy Troop', a book that only existed as a manuscript-prop in the aforesaid Lost. Cue marketing machine, cue concocted three-pardigm story, cue publication, cue no royalties to writer who doesn't exist, cue egregious product that provides swill to the masses.

Bitter? You betya. I spent 12 years preparing to write a book, 12 months writing it on a voyage from Australia to Sri Lanka to India to Pakistan to Nepal to Canada to California and another 12 years trying to get it published. Still no joy and stuck here writing another pathetic newsletter to make myself feel better. Pass me the absinthe.

Bad news, bad news, bad news in much the same way as this week has been for the mobile industry. Orange is laying off 2,000 people in the UK, Vodafone Global is in the process of being decimated and a report from M:Metrics this week announced that the mobile games market was stagnating and in danger of stalling completely.

Even last week's industry drinks in London wasn't its usual buoyant self. People's jobs seem as safe as a footballer's metatarsal and everybody's either moving on or being pushed out or thinking of moving on before they're pushed out (or have been pushed out before they've moved on, but you get my drift).

But it's not really that bad, it's just a classic case of readjustment as capitalism tugs, teases and yanks its elements into submission. The operator-centric nature of mobile entertainment is changing as other channels become more important to those who are creating it. That's all that's happening. It. Will. All. Come. Out. In. The. Wash.

What's more, mobile game company Gameloft last week announced mobile game downloads were 116% up on last year, and EA's acquistion of Jamdat saw mobile game revenues soar by 233%. If that's stagnant, then lead me to the local village pond.

All mobile games need is a huge dose of marketing from everybody in the ecosystem so mobile users are informed about all the content they're missing out on. Perhaps we could all learn from Disney about how to do this, but mobile games are real, not invented, so maybe they wouldn't be much use at all.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 190

2006-05-01T15:30:00.000Z

Everybody knows the best ideas are the simple ones and this week it was the turn of www.helpwinthisbet.com to be such an example.

For those of you who can't be bothered to click through, a guy told his girlfriend that anybody could set up a website that received two million hits. She called him an idiot, he said he wasn't, and bet her he could do it. If not, he WAS an idiot, if so she would take part in a threesome with a girl of his choice.

Naturally, this sped across the web faster than Vodafone pulling its business out of Japan. By the time I'd gone to the site yesterday to help out this poor chap (as every male I know did), it had received 172,000 hits. About ten minutes ago it was up to 3,709,681 and rising.

Hurray! If this chap has any sense (which he plainly has) he'll immediately bring in somebody to sponsor the site and make some money. So not only does he get his dream, he gets somebody to pay for it as well! Somebody should make a movie about this guy.

This type of viral content, however, has yet to spread to the mobile arena and certainly hasn't been monetised. When was the last time you forwarded a SMS to somebody that wasn't a joke? And as for video, forget it, it's hard enough to set up a handset that can send and receive pictures.

What's more, the kids are spreading mobile content virally in the best of old-fashioned ways. The school playground (otherwise known as the most competitive bazaar on earth) now sees kids trading mobile videos instead of football cards. Apparently the going price is about 50 pence for a video that is then sent by Bluetooth.

And that's where it's going to be at for a while unless our bet-winning friend decides to take his online operation mobile and stream the threesome experience he is about to enjoy. But there again, there's riding your luck and pushing your luck, so maybe he'd better quit while he's ahead.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 189

2006-04-24T15:29:00.000Z

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win. - Ho Chi Minh

Oh dear, Ho Chi Minh, your bookmaking skills may have worked when you booted the French, the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese out of your country but not any longer.

Unfortunately for the Vietnamese, the gambling habit of today's Politburo is less interested in overcoming the odds in battle and more enamoured of winning money on UK Premiership football matches.

Or more to the point, losing money. Bui Tien Dung, the recently sacked Minister of Transport gambled away more than 70% of the country's transport budget by betting huge amounts on Arsenal to win Premiership games. How mad is that? That's like betting a fortune on the Vodafone share price going up.

Apparently, sports betting in Vietnam is the national sport and underlines how the world has gone gambling bonkers. Think Wayne Rooney and his alleged £700,000 debts, even this country's Queen is probably more interested in the 3.15 at Newbury than spending time on her 80th birthday over tea with cucumber sandwich-mincing petitioners.

Naturally, the mobile revolution has helped this trend by allowing punters to bet through their phones when they're miles away from a betting shop, a computer or an opium den. While regulatory issues mean it's not easy for these gamblers to bet anywhere they like, they are ways and means of subverting national legislation.

But should mobile gambling be encouraged? Mmm, tough one. I've been to a few trade events lately and there are some characters there who would not be out of place in a 1920s speakeasy during Probhibtion.

And that is probably the reason it should be encouraged. Prohibition was a prime reason for the rise and rise of gangsters in the US and there is certainly a vacuum in mobile gambling for this type of activity. Better to open it up and let the nice people run the show.

Link all transactions to the electoral roll so children can't play, restrict all bets to a daily limit in the same way banks restrict ATM withdrawals, offer high-quality mobile applications that are fun and market gambling as a service, not a lifestyle.

As a reformed gambler, I speak from experience. One of the many attractions was the secrecy and the seediness of it all and unlike Ho Chi Minh I could never play the odds that well. Saying that, I do have a sneaky feeling Arsenal are going to beat Barcelona in the Champions' League Final. It's just a shame Tien Dung's in jail and he can't win his money back.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 188

2006-04-17T15:29:00.000Z

It must be the most amazing PR coup of all time! Only a couple of weeks after the release of Electronic Arts' The Godfather and the real-life Godfather is arrested after 40 years on the run! Is there no end to the budgets publicity people will stretch to?

The rule of omerta precludes me from naming any names about who was responsible for this piece of genius, but if any EA PRs are found dangling from a London bridge or caught wearing concrete boots in built-up watery areas then you'll know the reason why.

Seriously, the arrest of ALLEGED Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano this week will have a positive effect on sales of the game. It's all down to the subconscious and how the mind reacts to extraneous information. Read about The Godfather, more likely to buy The Godfather.

I once entered a Marlboro telephone competition to win a Ferrari and had to say the word 'Marlboro' every time I answered a question. Lo and behold, I found myself buying a pack of Marlboro that night instead of the usual B&H. Freaky, man.

And so it goes with the mobile video business because if users make videos they're more likely to buy them. Such is the case with the 3 network's See Me TV service. As usual, the best ideas are simple. Users make a 30-second video, send it to by MMS to See Me TV and earn 1p every time somebody downloads it.

Those who download it pay 10p for the privilege - thus earning a whooping margin for the operator. According to 3, users can earn thousands of pounds by submitting videos, but there are 100 pence in every pound, so that sounds a bit rich as opposed to making anybody rich.

Even so, even if this did start as a MMS marketing exercise and 3 have stumbled into gold dust, this initiative is a purely mobile service that may become the eBay of its day. What's more, its success has been purely viral and there has been very little PR.

Which only goes to show that word of mouth works better than people doing your talking for you - although this is a statement that might be lost on the leading member of a particular Sicilian organisation.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 187

2006-04-10T15:24:00.000Z

The backlash against Pop Idol-style TV shows has begun. Last season, Supergirl Voice was watched by 400 million (!) people, a third of the population, and the authorities are not happy because the winner is chosen by popular vote - text messaging.

The Chinese government have now ordered TV producers to 'avoid creating stars' and help construct 'a harmonious socialist society'. Mmm, sensible. Other regimes may have had the sense to run a series of feel-good political broadcasts during the show knowing most of the country would be watching, but that's what happens when you're going to take over the world and can do what you like.

Meanwhile, over in North America, American Idol continues to knock 'em dead. A couple of years ago, this show singlehandedly took SMS to the masses and taught Americans how to send messages. Furthermore, it probably started the big Catch-Up when Europe lost its lead in mobile data and entertainment and the US took over.

This point was reiterated earlier this week at CTIA when Cingular's Jim Ryan stood up and told his audience exactly that. He also said the word 'stuff' about a million times - I bet he drives his missus mad. But can anybody hear the gentle sound of a baton being dropped and one hand clapping?

Maybe. Cingular's offering of mobile video content seemed a little samey. A bit cable, a bit Freeview if you know what I mean. Elsewhere, fascinating companies such as Helio and Amp'd Mobile are grabbing market share by giving their customers original 'stuff' (are you listening, Jim?) and not just repackaging branded content.

Helio's deal with online site MySpace takes mobile social networking to a new level and represents the future. Amp'd Mobile are even cooler - their offices were the location of CTU in the first series of 24 and there's going to be more than one executive who's going to be impressed by that.

Consequently, carriers such as Cingular look like paunchy middle-aged men driving sportscars casting envious eyes at young men who don't have a car but get all the attention. And unlike China, the carriers can't tell these upstarts how to behave. Interesting times lie ahead.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 186

2006-04-03T15:15:00.000Z

It would appear the adage of signing up a customer for life has extended to the afterlife and mobile operators now have customers for death.

According to a BBC report this week, more and more people are asking to be buried with their mobiles. Apparently the trend began during cremations when people's requests to be burnt with their mobiles led to several loud explosions when bodies were despatched to the incinerator. Well, that's what happens to batteries when they're heated up.

As somebody whose mobile went off just as my father was about to be cremated, I know how shocking these moments can be, but this is a serious trend. Like wannabe Pharonic-celebrities, people are filling their coffins with material possessions to ease their passing into the void. Maybe you can take it with you after all.

On the subject of death, next week sees trade show hell for mobile executives who may be working their way to an early grave as the relentless chase for deals continues. CTIA is taking place in Vegas, MIPTV is in Cannes and Mobile Content World Asia is in Singapore.

This year MIPTV may be the most interesting one of the three to attend. In the 12 months since the TV crew were last in Cannes, traditional TV companies have finally realised advertising money is drying up and new channels such as mobile TV are vital to their futures.

So expect the show in Cannes next week to be the time when the mobile TV bandwagon came to town and accelerated into hyperdrive. But the mobile operators, publishers and distributors should realise that it is they, and not the TV companies, who may have the ascendancy in any deals that are made.

Rather like riflemen seizing control over archers, mobile publishers are the ones with the magic bullets. The new TV world is is more fragmented than the time when 24 million people used to watch Only Fools and Horses at Christmas. The water cooler moments when last night's TV was discussed are over for good.

It is a world where mobile distributors can reach a billion people and the mobile operators can pick and choose video content from every country in the world. Not a bad hand to be holding when commmercial terms are ready to be struck.

For me, however, I will be several thousand miles away in the Vegas miasma for CTIA and like most other people in the industry hoping that I won't be buried under the amount of work to do. That's something I don't want to take with me when I go.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 185

2006-03-27T17:35:00.000Z

It was my great delight this week to accept an invitation to attend the MTV Awards next month. Unfortunately, after closer inspection, I realised it was an invite to the MCV Awards, a ceremony arranged by the UK's major games trade magazine.

No disrespect to the lovable people at MCV, but I'd so much rather be talking to Beyonce than the representative of a 3D rendering software company. Maybe one day I will be glamorous enough to rub noses with the music industry, but it did remind me of a story.

When MCV (shite, done it again)... sorry, when MTV was first launched it was allegedly branded with a 'I want my MTV' logo based on a best-selling US cereal from the 1960s. The idea was to remind the babyboomers of their childhood - it would make them happy etc.

Fresh from their success, the people behind the MTV brand were asked by the Turkish government to rebrand the country as a popular tourist destination. The recent Greek Cypriot-funded release of the Midnight Express movie had shown the country to be a frightening place and consequently it looked much more fun to party in the Greek islands than a Turkish prison.

So off went the branders around the country and three months later sat in front of the Turkish junta with their findings. After espousing the attractions of places such as Ephesus, Bodrum, Kas and other such unspoilt joys, their advice was... to rename the country, Turkey as a word didn't work.

No doubt the Turkish generals were delighted to be told that, but sadly decided to stick with the name. Sound ridiculous? Mmm, not really. Have a look at our old friend 3G and how it was supposed to change the way the world used their mobile phones.

A report this week seems to reiterate that very promise. 3G phone owners are making short movies, blogging, taking great photos and generally unlocking latent creativity. What's more, for single men, it appears that owning such a device impresses the laydeez.

But maybe the problem is with '3G'. People are still a bit frightened by the term and the populace are still holding back from accessing the benefits it offers. So, like the branders that went to Turkey, it's time to rebrand 3G.

So my suggestion is to call it 'BetterFone'. That says it all. A 3G phone is better than all models before it. Simple as that. But, with ideas like that I'm not holding my breath for any glamorous awards invites. Still, what the heck, the MCV Awards will be a laugh.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 184

2006-03-20T14:18:00.000Z

In Greek, Medieval and Renaissance thought, one of the theories of medicine was based on four elements known as the four humours. According to the medical giants of the day, people were grouped under four headings. They were either happy, aggressive, sad or indifferent.

This theory was extended to states of drunkeness. If you were a happy drunk, you were monkey-drunk, if you were aggressive you were lion-drunk, if you were sad you were mutton-drunk and if you were indifferent you were sloth-drunk.

Personally, I'm a monkey-drunk with a tad of lion-drunk sometimes disposed to being mutton-drunk. But according to mobile operator Orange I am none of these things when I am sober. More to the point, I am allegedly a 'Panther'.

That is how they like to describe their customers who expect extra features from their mobile. Conversely, customers who are 'sociable types' and want bundles of voice-minutes and texts are known as Dolphins. Those who use their mobiles to mainly talk are Canaries and watch out for those Raccoons - they view their phone as a tool, whatever that is. A weapon, possibly?

Consequently, Orange now offers four different tarrifs to suit this menagerie of customers and will back it up with a £10 million marketing campaign that will run until the end of 2006.

It's enough to turn a person to drink and being St Patrick's Day, that's not a bad idea. So, as a Panther-drunk, I will mostly be playing mobile games and watching mobile videos this afternoon.

In the public house, I will be surrounded by Canary-drunks who will be shrilling and twittering on their mobiles and Dolphin-drunks manically texting inappropriate people.

But you won't be able to miss the Raccoon-drunks who will be laughing to themselves and pointing their phones at people and telling them to put their hands up because they're surrounded. Now, that's humour for you.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 183

2006-03-13T14:36:00.000Z

"I was told I had set broadcast journalism back 20 years. Naturally, I was both proud and elated although too modest to say so, but broadcast journalism recovered with alacrity, my contract wasn't renewed, and the incident was forgotten." - Nicholas Van Hoffman

As somebody who was once told that I had put mobile gaming back 10 years after chairing a particularly chaotic session on the subject, I can only empathise with the above quote. Happily, I am still in full-time employment, although others would say it's only a matter of time.

Others, however, have set broadcast journalism forward 10 years, so a big shout to Gorgeous George (Clooney's) movie Good Night, and Good Luck. For those too busy to have seen it, the film eulogises the CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and his fellow journalists for the courage to stand up to the McCarthy Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Great film, shame about the comma in the title.

The film, of course, is also a metaphor for today's dangerous days when nobody seems to mind the Thought Police bending the Orwellian Universe to their advantage. So perhaps it's timely to salute Al-Jazeera and that network's contemporary contribution to broadcast journalism.

Never has such a media outlet been so vilified by so many. The demonisation of this channel boggles the minds of anybody who can still think for themselves. Which other TV channel would turn down the chance to exclusively broadcast Osama Bin Laden pictures and words? They'd queue up to do so. But if Al-Jazeera gets the scoop, the channel is suddenly a danger to world peace. Load of old b*ll*cks.

The main objection to its objectivity is that it is funded by the Qatar government and will never turn a profit. Mmm, let me think, what does that remind me of? Oh yes, three letters. B.B.C.

Other smears by a terrified US government, whose own media outlets resemble heavily censored Public Information networks, has failed to stop the channel's growth and it's only a matter of time before Al-Jazeera moves into mobile. But which Western (or Arabian of that matter) operator will have the guts to add it to their mobile TV rosters?

This is important. As 'Traditional TV' becomes a discredited news medium that is defined by entertainment, mobile TV has a real opportunity to fill in the intellectual gaps vacated by the broadcast-poltroons who think intelligent TV is a Big Brother contestant fronting a weekend political show.

Or is mobile TV going to run away from controversial content because operators are too scared to publish. Let's hope not, because otherwise we won't go back 20 years, we'll have gone back 50 years and the likes of McCarthy will have won.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 182

2006-03-06T17:16:00.000Z

It is said that in his later years Pablo Picasso was encouraged to stay away from art galleries because he had previously been caught in the act of trying to improve on one of his old masterpieces.

The image is a delightful one. An old man, with passion and talent undiminished by the years, pounding the loggias of the world with a palette and paintbrush, determined to rewrite his youth and sticking up two fingers at Father Time.

But even Picasso would have had trouble retouching his pictures if London's Soho House private members' club possessed any of his work. Last week, it appointed a vetting committee to 'actively discourage' people over the age of 27 from joining and to ensure the scene remains 'happening and fresh'.

'Happening and fresh'? Isn't that a phrase from the Swinging Sixties? It sounds as if the vetting committee needs to be purged of its gerontocracy and replaced by some teenagers.

But do I look bovvered? Soho House has been crap for years and supplanted by cooler clubs such as The Century, Home, Adam Street and The Hospital, where you can actually walk around without bumping your head or into Category A w**kers.

Soho House's strategy is as ridiculous as an operator actively discouraging their 27+ customers from playing mobile games. Everybody knows that older people like a private club as much as their younger counterparts and it's just as true mobile gamers are played by middle-aged people who remember best-selling brands such as Tetris and Pac-Man the first time around.

And expect this trend to continue as the technology improves and mobile games become more sophisticated. Expect Tetris and Pac-Man to be replaced by 1990s classics Mario and Sonic and these in turn to be superceded by this century's Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft.

But what the heck, I'm off to the Century Club for lunch and that's one London club that even Picasso couldn't improve on. Soho House, please take note.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 181

2006-02-27T17:13:00.000Z

It has been a most excellent week for car chases and car smashes. First it was banned Austrian skiing coach Walter Mayer who did a runner after a raid on the Austrian Olympic team. After a chase and slalom through the mountains outside Turin, he was arrested and put into a psychiatric hospital after trying to ram a roadblock and assaulting a police officer.

Secondly, and even more gloriously, Stefan Eriksson, the drunken boss of failed handheld gaming company Gizmondo, wiped out his Enzo Ferrari at 120mph on the Pacific Coast highway. Although he was spotted crawling out of the wreckage and jumping into a canyon, Eriksson blamed his imaginary friend 'Dietrich' for causing the crash. Bad, Dietrich, bad, bad, bad.

Naturally, the fact there was blood on his lip and the driver's airbag and none on the passenger's side had anything to do with it. But maybe it was Dietrich and Dietrich is very sorry for wiping out one of the most beautiful cars ever made.

You couldn't make it up. But the evanescent Dietrich is no more of an illusion than the idea that Gizmondo would ever be a success. Touted as the mobile Xbox, the device was originally called Gametrac until the company was caught in a legal dispute with Formula 1 team Jordan and forced to change its name.

So... they decided to call it Gizmondo. Are you having a laugh? Gizmondo? The name sounded more like a randy dinosaur than a gaming device and now it has gone the same way as the dinosaurs after burning through £180 million in less than a year.

Consequently, Eriksson's crash just outside Malibu is a fitting end to a fabulous farce. The Ferrari was about to be repossessed by The Bank of Scotland and there's nothing like going out in a blaze of glory. Let's hope they don't put do a Herman Mayer and put Eriksson in a psychiatric hospital. We need people like him among us.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 180

2006-02-20T13:20:00.000Z

It's nice to see a decent TV show catch the imagination of the British public and such is the case with the excellent Life On Mars currently showing on the BBC.

For those unfamiliar with the format, a modern-day detective is shot and, while seemingly in a coma, is transported back to the good old 1970s when policing methods were somewhat different. Matched with an old-school detective who is so unfit he'd wheeze if he jumped to conclusions, the two of them eventually bond as they use their different methods to bring felons to justice.

It's all great stuff and brought back memories of a story an ex-copper once told about using photocopier machines as lie-detectors. If somebody refused to confess, the criminal was brought in front of a photocopier and told to put his hand on the machine. He was told that if the light turned green he was guilty. Apparently this method had a near-100% record of bringing about a confession.

Another gag in the show is when the transported detective bemoans his lack of a mobile phone, a situation this newsletterist had to endure at 3GSM World in Barcelona this week. How long is it since you last lost your phone? Believe me, it gets worse every year. Like a child who's mislaid his comforter, I was useless, bereft of confidence and utterly miserable for three days... and, surprise-surprise, my operator refused to send me a new SIM card by courier.

The show itself was chaotic or Barcelunacy as a wag dubbed it. Terrible traffic, networking parties spread out across the city, difficult to get taxis and lots of people having their bags stolen, but a big shout to the MEF/Vodafone party and the reliable Infospace shindig for bringing the usual suspects together, including good ole boys such as Paul Palmieiri, Brian Greasley and Juan Montes.

However, like the detective in Life On Mars, it would have been good to go back in time when the show was held in Cannes. Those were the days when everything was easy to get to, there were no Spanish practices and taxi-drivers used to return mobile phones when they were left on the seat. Not that I'm bitter.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 179

2006-02-13T13:16:00.000Z

If I trip over another wheelie suitcase I will not be accountable for my actions. Is it just me or are there others out there who are itching to murder those who drag along their annoying little cases on their way to transportation termini? Would it really be wrong to punch the owner and jump up and down on the case for 20 beautiful seconds?

And they're getting smaller by the day, it won't be long before people are pulling along their iPods and their mobiles. But, hang on a minute, maybe violence isn't the way. Much better is to stand by a flight of stairs and watch the wheelie-owners come to a halt, push the button's handle and then struggle to drag the case down the steps. Ha-ha-ha, that'll teach them.

I even saw a 'traveller' wheeling their rucksack the other day. Man, you have to carry your own luggage in life, especially in your 'Gap Year'. Some of us had Gap Decades and the only things we wheeled were our arms as we went insane in the Sinai Desert, but that's another story. Ah-hum, calm, calm - easy now. Right.

So, next week will see an invasion of wheelie bags as Barcelona opens itself to the hordes of mobile people converging on this year's 3GSM World. And nobody knows what to expect. For years, the show has taken place in Cannes where one would go off-Croisette, pitch up in the Majestic or Martinez hotel, run a tab and meet everybody one needed to meet.

But where to go in Barcelona? Where is networking heaven? Is it the Hotel Des Artistes? Is it at the harbour or Las Ramblas? Is it at the Nokia, MEF, Infospace or Sony Ericsson parties? Either way, it looks as if mobile entertainment will move from the marginalia of the Conference Centre to somewhere nearer centre stage. Finally.

There are those who don't read enough books who will suggest this year's show will be the Tipping Point for such content, but the real Tipping Point will be when I fall over another effing wheelie bag and that bag finds itself rammed inside the nearest wheelie-bin.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 178

2006-02-06T13:06:00.000Z

"Girl, you really got me goin, You got me so I don't know what I'm doin', Yeah, you really got me now, You got me so I can't sleep at night." - You Really Got Me - The Kinks

Most people would consider the above Kinks classic a pretty sexy song, but it wasn't always that way. When a member of the band's girlfriend first heard the squeaky-clean original she complained it didn't make 'me want to drop my knickers'. Which isn't something you hear every day. Maybe she was a bit kinky. Ha-ha. I'll get my coat.

On the subject of the Kinks and coats, it was a wise decision by some Kinks fans to get their coats when they were invited to the house of a man who was the promoter a 1966 Kinks gig in Illinois. They did exactly that after some of them complained about the smell in the house. It turned out the host was one John Gacy Jnr, the serial killer who liked to dress up as a clown when he disposed of his 27 young vicitms.

On the subject of John Gacy Jr and the state of Illinois, the killer was recently the subject of a quite beautiful song by Sufjan Stevens on his recent Bring on the Illinoize album. Did mass murder and harmony ever come so good? Stevens is presently making 50 albums based on every US state where he draws his inspirations from important places, events, buildings, old telegrams and local newspaper archives. It is the best music in the world at the moment.

On the subject of telegrams and important events, this week saw Western Union finally call time on delivering telegrams. In the Age-of-The-Mobile, there is no longer any need for a service that will forever be remembered as the media of delivery when military personnel were killed in wars. Perhaps the future will see videoclips sent to the mobiles of parents and spouses explaining how their loved ones died defending the Government, er I mean, the country.

On the subject of Governments and mobiles, this week saw the launch of a new UK service. Merely go to the World-Tracker website, type in any mobile number and a text is sent asking for permission for that number to be tracked from a PC. Naturally, this SMS is couched in vague terms so unwitting types may be duped into replying. Parents, bosses and The Police may be delighted at such a service, but it's also good news for people clowning around and serial killers such as John Gacy Jnr.

Finally this week, on the subject of John Gacy Jnr and clowns, we go back to the Kinks' frontman Ray Davies who once wrote a song called Death A Clown and later checked himself into a hospital dressed as a clown when he was depressed. Which only goes to show that everything that goes around comes around, and maybe nowadays Dave Davies' ex-girlfriend really does drop her knickers when she hears You really got me.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 177

2006-01-30T11:06:00.000Z

Junk food giant McDonalds has come up with another way to ensure its McWorkers never take a day off sick. Members of the same family who work in the same outlet are now able to swap shifts without prior notice or asking their McManagers for permission.

Wow, what a precedent. If George Bush is feeling a bit peaky, he could get his dad to sit in instead, but maybe that's a bad example, that's already happened. A better example might be replacing England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson with his grandmother, who could do a better job than that rapacious football-whore who could then retrain as a lookalike for Monty Burns (from The Simpsons).

McDonalds, of course, don't really care much about hamburgers at all. Their business is essentially a real estate business. They open an outlet in a crap part of a town, see prices rise as other emporia flock to open their businesses nearby, and then move to another crap part of town once prices are at their height.

Not many people know that, but a lot of people do know the music business is changing on a daily basis. At this week's Midem event in Cannes, the buzz wasn't just about online delivery models and iPods, it was about mobile and how music companies are readjusting to the New World.

Warner is one company that has sprung into mobile after the global success of Madonna's Hung Up single. The song was launched as a ringtone a month before it was released to radio stations and consequently went to Number One in 29 countries.

I'd prefer to put the success down to a very sexy Madonna in a very sexy video, but it has prompted Warner to put together the SMS tone, an innovation that comprises music and video on receipt of a text message. Not a bad idea, but I wonder how much it will cost.

Extending the airplay of music is something the traditional games industry understands very well. If a song is picked as part of the soundtrack of a decent-selling games title, that song is heard by countless more people than the radio. Bands are broken in the US by such exposure.

And on that note, a sad farewell to Chris Penn, the voice of Grand Theft Auto and a vastly under-rated actor. Unfortunately, even in death he was cheated. Vast swathes of the US media showed their sensitivity by reporting his demise as 'Brother of Sean Penn found dead'.

Unlike McWorkers, Sean Penn could never stand in for Chris Penn who was brilliant in countless movies. Even so, Chris, like most of us, wouldn't have minded standing in for Sean when he was going out with Madonna. Ah, families, don't you just love 'em?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 176

2006-01-24T17:17:00.000Z

It's what the world has been waiting for! No, not wireless electricity or iPod headphones that unravel immediately, not even a pint glass that never empties, but a mobile phone battery powered by urine.

No, I'm not taking the p*ss, it's true. Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have developed a paper battery that uses urine as its power charge source. Excellent news, perhaps they could continue their research, I really can't wait to charge up my laptop with excrement. As for topping up my phone, probably best not to go there.

With pompous projects like this going on, sometimes I think this whole industry is going down the toilet, but maybe not. At this week's Mobile TV and Video Forum in Piccadilly's La Meridien hotel, there was a refreshing lack of pretension and some interesting ideas about this new revolution.

While some speeches followed the usual model of I-kind-of-know-what-I'm-talking-about-but-when-it-gets-tough-I'll-bore-you-into-believing-it presentations, others were much more revealing about the type of content that will soon be available on our phones.

In the games industry, it's called Casual Gaming, so let's call it Casual TV. What do you want to watch when you're in a queue or on the train home? If you're too skint to afford Sky +, do you really want to be tied to the 7.30pm soap on a Monday or do you want to do other things? That's where Casual TV will work and bearing in mind how many decision-makers in this industry commute, that's what you're going to get - stuff they like.

Other issues came up at the conference, such as the constant referral to 'Made-For-Mobile'. I've said this before, but judging the mobile TV entries at MIPCOM last year, I couldn't believe the lack of respect content providers had for their audience. But maybe things have moved on for 2006. It should be 'Made-ONLY-For-Mobile' content that people should be working on.

Casual TV isn't just compendia of existing brands, it's about content that can't be seen anywhere else that also has a beginning, a middle and an end with characterisation and innovation. But what do I know? We're all p*ssing in the wind and my phone battery's gone flat so I'm off to charge it up again.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 175

2006-01-17T17:11:00.000Z

For those who follow football and let's be honest you have to be completely bonkers not to, the manager-furore about the amount of games played and lack of preparation over the holiday period seems feed-of-chicken compared to the feats of ex-basketball genius Dennis Rodman.

Rodman, currently appearing in the panto otherwise known as Celebrity Big Brother, prepared for the 1998 NBA finals by missing training to take part in a wrestling match with Hulk Hogan in Detroit where, inter alia, somebody broke a chair over his head in the ring. You know the rest. Rodman returned and ensured victory for his Chicago Bulls team by sinking two free throws in the last minute of the game.

Some people can do things like that for a while, but it always ends in tears. Disgraced Liberal Democrats leader Charles Kennedy managed to be the head of a major political party while boozing like George Best, and shock horror, it is even alleged that some executives in the mobile industry win deals while under the influence of more than a gin and tonic.

But such behaviour always comes to an ignimonious end. Rodman has transmuted into Widow Twankee, Kennedy faces a future without any lucrative non-exec sinecures and the mobile executives are living on borrowed time. So, in the Month-Of-Detox, it's perhaps time to doff one's hat a company that doesn't do things to excess, but leads the way by sober and rational decision-making.

NTT DoCoMo sounds like a text message gone wrong, but this Japanese company's success in bringing the i-mode mobile internet serivce to its customers proved to European and US markets there was a market beyond SMS and voice. Subscriber figures are now more than 45 million and its recent expansion into Europe means future growth is guaranteed.

While some have been surprised at i-mode's belated emergence in Europe, DoCoMo's softly-softly strategy may prove to be correct. Recent launches on O2 in the UK and Ireland are bridgeheads that presage further assaults and it will be interesting to see how Vodafone reacts bearing in mind the success of its Vodafone Live! service. Will they drop their prices to nip this new bud?

Mmm, probably not. The problem with i-mode in Europe is the handsets that come with it. Europeans are happy with their Nokias and Sharps and Sony Ericssons, and who really wants a NEC handset? But, loookkk beehhhinnnd yyyoooouu, European operators. There was once a time in the US when LG handsets were dismissed as niche handsets, but LG is now the second best-selling handset in the US.

All of which won't bother Dennis Rodman in the slightest. For a man who once told the press he was about to marry a beautiful, intelligent woman and who turned up the next day in a horse-drawn carriage wearing a wedding dress and a wig and claiming he was marrying himself, such opinions are worthless.

Genius. Maybe we need the nutters more than we admit.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 174

2006-01-09T14:46:00.000Z

Paint the town white! That’s the message from environmentalists who are trying to convince Los Angeles residents to change their white roofs to darker shades of pale.

The reason for this is that Western architects tend to shy away from painting houses white because it shows dirt. Unfortunately, for a city in a climate such as LA, dark-coloured houses become much hotter than white ones. So, extra heat seeps into the house and the air conditioning has to work harder.

What’s worse is that when a large number of dark-roofed buildings are in close proximity and dark asphalt roads are thrown into the mix, a ‘heat island’ is created that raises the outside air temperature by several degrees. Consequently, the city unnecessarily uses power that equates to about three percent of California’s total summertime energy bill. It never (pays to use the) mains in California?

The etymology of the phrase ‘painting the town red’ is an interesting one. Apparently it came about because the jolly old Romans enjoyed washing the walls of a conquered town with the blood of their victims. Maybe some things never change, that sounds like any UK city centre on a Saturday night.

Fortunately, there are more salubrious things happening to city centres in the UK. Earlier this week, wireless provider The Cloud announced plans for blanket Wi-Fi coverage in cities that include Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. The Wi-Fi equipment will be attached to lampposts and street signs, and ensuing revenues will be split between The Cloud, ISPs and the local council.

That’s nice, but how much will it cost? Knowing local councils and their love of giving parking tickets to anybody who dares to stop a car anywhere within their aegis, it won’t be cheap. Maybe better to come to Brighton, where local likely lads Loose Connection have set up FREE Wi-Fi access on Brighton beach and the better pubs of the city.

Finally this week, congratulations to Ian Livingstone on receving an OBE in the New Year's Honours List for services to games. In effect, this newsletter's recognition of Ian's achievements is a personal apology for continually calling him Ian Baverstock (of Kuju) at last year's Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival.

Still that type of faux pas happens when one decides to go out for the night in Edinburgh and attempt to paint that particular city every colour in Noah's great rainbow.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 173

2006-01-04T11:46:00.000Z

“Aelred is training to be a magistrate. Ailish, still part-time at the special-needs school, is dearly loved by the teenagers. Crispin does extramural police work in London; Cordelia (Hons degree, Warwick) has also switched tracks and is training to teach ballet, Araminta continues with top grades in classics at London Uni. Millie continues to hold down demanding jobs in the office and with the family. Tom is following music interests - greatly enjoying his drum kit. Hope the neighbours appreciate his style!” - Anonymous

Ah, the round-robin Christmas letter, that appalling media of mummies and daddies as they chuck another boast over the leylandii. As the above example shows (forwarded by a friend of a friend of a friend), it is nice to know some people can still afford to raise seven children, but poor old Millie, how does she cope with all those high-achieving siblings?

In that vein, it was also refreshing to know that another friend’s daughter, according to her West London nursery, ‘is well respected and where others follow, she leads'. SHE'S. ONLY. FIVE. YEARS. OLD. What next? A sinecure in Parliament as Leader of the Opposition while studying part-time as an Oppidan at Eton?

Maybe, instead trying to beat these worthy people, it’s better to join them and add the mobile entertainment world to the increasing roster of round-robins. So here’s my take for 2005:

“Our oldest child, mobile music, made great strides last year. Ah, ‘twas a Polyphonic Spree. Beginning as a veteran who was taken for granted, she crossed over to new platforms and took all her talent to unknown frontiers. In tune with the age, she went from MP3 to iPod to Razr to Sat-Nav and Bluetoothed her way to the top. We have the highest of hopes for 2006 when her happy-go-lucky attitude should be rewarded when every piece of new music is pre-released on memory card.

“Mobile games, our errant child, became less fragmented and better-behaved in 2005, and was adopted by traditional games companies who spent millions on acquisitions, staffing levels and market share. These companies, finally realising that mobile games were the perfect marketing tools for their infinitely more expensive console products, are likely to invest more fortunes and make the market a lovely place for those who’ve been in it for a while (here’s hoping).

“Finally, the runt of our family, mobile TV, stepped out of his siblings’ shadows and had a wonderful year. Unknown to the masses in January, he was cuddled by all the operators and made them realise that handsets were there for a reason. Yes, easy navigation via numbers, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, just like the earliest TV days when there were only terrestrial channels and the remote control was in single figures. We predict he will change the world as we know it.”

Yes, an interesting year when the mobile phone became everybody’s dearest friend and a time to realise this newsletter reports on the mobile industry and is only occasionally read on a mobile device. Doh! So, like drummer Tom, mentioned at the beginning of this editorial, we do hope the neighbours appreciate his style when he gets all wireless in 2006.

But not before a well-deserved break next week when it forgets mobile b*ll*cks and welcomes a Christmas that belongs to family, Boxing Day football and my 2.5-year-old boy to whom I dedicate this newsletter because he ain't nuffink other than a little boy who melts my heart. How's that for a proper round-robin?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 172

2005-12-20T16:48:00.000Z

Ah, the end is near and this newsletter approaches the final curtain of Babel Media sponsorship. Cheers, Babel, hope it put you on the map. Best of luck in the future.

As of next year, this newsletter grows up and has a new, major, fantastic and sexy sponsor (once they send back the bloody contract - nudge-nudge) and a more comprehensive online presence.

So in the festive manner of the times, I thought I'd sign off with some of the comments the newsletter has had since Babel supported it and in this first year of independence.

* This is the best content I receive in my box on a Friday - Graeme Ferguson, Vodafone

* I laughed so much I dropped my coffee on my trousers - Steve Kingswell, Babel Media

* Can I have your mailing list? - Stuart Dinsey, Intent Media

* Son, can you stop sending me this, my boss might not like it - Valerie Munford, my mum

* For the final time, this is not a blog, this is a newsletter - Me

* UNSUBSCRIBE! - 183 people in four years

No, you can't write that about our clients and there's a typo in the sixth paragraph - Algy Williams, Babel

* Cut it down and stop banging on about yourself - my wife

* I'd sponsor it - Tony Pearce, Player X CEO

* I read it out to our team of developers to get them thinking differently - Mark Jacobstein, Digital Chocolate

* This is the only spam I've ever received that I've liked - Nic Garner, ex-mforma

* If there was a top 50 for the gobbiest bloke in mobile, you'd be top - Tim Green, Mobile Entertainment

* Spam, spam, spam, spam - Lisa Bisset, Babel Media

* I quite like your newsletter - Matt Spall, Morpheme

* Your write s**t and love Palestinians and hate Jews - anonymous

* Good to see Billy Childish get a mention - Greg Ingham, Future

* Could we point out that the guy's name is STEVE Schnur, not the SIMON Schnur you referred to in your newsletter - EA's PR department

* Everybody's taken the p**s out of me since you mentioned me saying that if content was king, then distribution was King Kong - Kamar Shah, Nokia

* We love you, Monty - CTIA marketing executive

* Monty, you sent this out too late today. You've ruined my Friday coffee break - John Denehey, Upstart Games

* Good old Monty, any excuse to mention The Clash - Andrew Widger, BBC

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 171

2005-12-13T21:45:00.000Z

There’s nothing like being stitched up by your boss, and if that happens with the connivance of the British establishment, then expect the worst of all possible worlds.

This week saw a guilty verdict passed on James Hipwell, one of the two City Slickers columnists from English newspaper the Daily Mirror who allegedly used his stock market column to create misleading impressions about the value of company stock market prices.

Naturally, Piers Morgan, the editor of the newspaper at the time and who bought shares tipped by Hipwell was nowhere to be seen. Consequently, James has taken the rap and faces a prison sentence when he is sentenced next month.

I should point out that James is a mate of mine and helped me out when I was skint by commissioning me to write several well-paid gambling articles when he was editor of Inside Edge magazine. I also know the DTI has conducted a six-year witch hunt against James that caused him to suffer kidney failure and whose life was only saved when his brother donated a kidney.

In short, he’s a decent bloke who has been made a scapegoat by a PR-hungry government that is very good at this sort of thing. Or as Bob Dylan once said: “Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.”

So, according to James’s text message yesterday, I won’t be seeing him for 18 months, in which time it is only to be hoped the DTi looks at the transcripts of the trial and bangs up Piers Morgan for misleading them in the same way Martha Stewart did to regulators in the US… and let’s hope it’s not an open prison and his cellmate likes his own space.

On a somewhat happier note, yesterday’s announcement that Electronic Arts, the biggest videogames company in the world was buying mobile games publisher Jamdat for $680 million underlines what some of us have known for years – mobile games are the business.

Even so, 680 mill is a lot of money and follows Jamdat’s recent acquisition of the Tetris 15-year mobile game licence for a whip-wap-whopping $137 million. But, maybe both deals aren’t as daft as they seem. It was Tetris that made Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance the success it became and Nintendo has to move into mobile at some stage. What better way for Jamdat to position itself than by having on its board the man that did the original Tetris/Nintendo deal all those years ago?

Mmmm, interesting. EA/Nintendo merger? Oh shit, is that inside knowledge? I never bought those EA shares, guv. Actually, strike out those comments, probably best to keep schtum, probably best not to have an opinion nowadays, probably best to crawl into a hole in case the thought police come around. But, one last thing before I go. Free James Hipwell!

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 170

2005-12-06T20:43:00.000Z

There´s nothing like a bit of anti-technology to show what how stupid capitalism really is. The QWERTY keyboard layout (named after the left-most letters in its upper row) was designed in 1873 to make typing as DIFFICULT as possible.

The reason for this was that early typists worked too fast and 1873 typewriters jammed if adjacent keys were struck too quickly. Ergo, the commonest letters are spread across the keyboard and concentrated on the left-hand side to make it difficult for right-handed people to construct a sentence.

More than 50 years later, trials showed an efficiently laid-out keyboard could double typing speeds by even the most cack-handed Luddite. By then, however, it was too late and the vested interests of the QWERTY production juggernaut had staved off all competiton and even convinced computer designers to adopt the system several decades later.

That´s not to say the system hasn´t been tested. In 1888, Frank McGurrin was the star typing pupil of the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute and he thrashed a non-QWERTY rival Frank McGurrin in a widely pulicised contest that received as much publicity as an Ali/Frasier fight did in the 1970s.

But I wonder how McGurrin would have fared with Finger Frenzy - the best game in the world. It couldn´t be easier. How fast can you type the alphabet on a QWERTY keyboard? My first attempt was 13 seconds, my second attempt eight seconds and now I´m hovering around the five second mark.

If some people find taking heroin somewhat morish, the same goes for this game. I´m going to be doing it all over the Christmas holiday. Finger Frenzy that is, not heroin.

Apparently the record is 1.5 seconds, so maybe QWERTY (and I still can´t ****ing type that word quickly) isn´t so dirty after all. Being a sad bloke with no mates, I tried to do the same thing with SMS on my mobile phone and it took me more than a minute.

Surely somebody out there can redesign this game for mobile? This is a mobile game that has the potential to make Tetris look like a passing trend. But hang on a moment, it appears Finger Frenzy is owned by Morpheme, one of the UK´s top mobile developers. Why isn´t this a mobile game already? Answers please, Matt Spall, the CEO of Morpheme.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 169

2005-11-30T16:41:00.000Z

“The mother of the nation has gone; she has hobbled off to her uncertain fate, having only a tycoon's salary given to her to fund the purchase of that monkey-shit-brown hair rinse we know so well.” – Mario Vargas Yoni by The Fatima Mansions

Yep, forget love songs, sometimes there’s nothing better than a hate song and the Fatima Mansions’ above description of Margaret Thatcher when she was forced to leave politics is a masterpiece of the genre.

For those of us of a certain persuasion, the Thatcher years were not the best time the UK ever had, so this week’s events on UK reality TV show I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here! were very satisfying indeed.

For those non-UK readers unfamiliar with the show, 10 Don’t-Know-Their-Names-But-Seen-Them-In-Something celebrities are dumped on a film set in the Australian jungle for two weeks and do disgusting tasks, bicker, get hungry, lose it, and consequently get roles in parochial pantomimes in off-season seaside resorts.

This year, one of these celebrities is one Carol Thatcher, daughter of Margaret, who this week twice rolled out of her hammock, dropped her drawers and ‘did her bits’ by the side of her bed in view of almost ten million viewers. Not a good look and to be honest, not the best arse either.

So now we know. Her mother invaded the Falkland Islands, waged war on the unions and sold off the nation’s assets because she was freaked out by potty-training and didn’t complete the job! Not much of an Iron Lady there, more like a Weak Mother.

Which just shows how the mighty can fall and similarly the world’s biggest sporting brand, aka Manchester United, may be on the verge of joining Margaret Thatcher as a bit of a joke. This week, Vodafone announced they were pulling out of a four-year deal as sponsors of the club’s shirt.

Previously, Vodafone has been very proactive in protecting its sport sponsorships. England’s cricketers were warned by Vodafone they would pull out of their shirt deal if results didn’t improve (Thank God they did) and the company also intervened in a jockey’s strike when it looked as if the Vodafone Derby would be affected.

But this time there was no warning and Vodafone's decision may mark the beginning of decline for the club. But who’s to say they won’t buy a reasonably good Chinese player and do a mega deal with a Chinese telco shortly afterwards? Or maybe Man United really have taken their eye off the ball (sorry) just as the Thatcher family have.

It was 1991 when Carol failed to pay the poll tax that was introduced to massive protest by her mother. At the time she told journalists: "Mum won't give a shit." That might have been true then, but I bet she gives a big shit now. Poll tax is one thing, but peeing live on TV? What next? Manchester United being knocked out of the (shortly to be sponsored by Vodafone) Champions League group stages?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 168

2005-11-23T16:29:00.000Z

Enough already, Bob Geldof. This week the grumpy old cuckold told delegates at a London conference that they should not ‘do email’. Warming to his theme, Geldof then went on to blame emails for keeping people so busy they stopped genuine action.

Well, excuse me, Saint Bob, but Europe must have had its head in a billion emails when you set up Sail 8. This ridiculous scheme promised to recreate Dunkirk and urged people to sail across the channel to be part of the Live 8 events. Naturally, only about eight people turned up and like a boxer who misses the limelight, Geldof just couldn't help himself. This latest outburst is no better.

Email is brilliant. It has brought back the art and craft of letter-writing and enabled the global village to communicate quicker and more effectively than ever before. It is more beautiful and in-depth than sending text messages or postcards and has a style of its own (who hasn't ended an email with a smiley sign to curtail any further communication?). What, you mean you don't do that? Whoops, I'm sad. ;0).

I bet Geldof doesn't like text messages either, but it's a form of abridged communication that can't be ignored. This week's news that some of the greatest works of English literature are to compressed into SMS for a college scheme will doubtlessly have Geldof pulling out his grey tresses.

While changing Hamlet's famous phrase from 'To be or not to be?' to '2b? Ntb? = ???' isn't exactly what the Bard had in mind, who's to say this language isn't another form of writing that should be vilified? In fact, it could have some positive benefits when it comes to the syntax of public figures such as Geldof.

Changing Saint Bob's words when he spoke of Sail 8 from: 'It will take many hours and we will be picking up some people who we may not even be able to communicate with, but the symbolism of that around the world will be one of great effort, great friendship and great solidarity' to 'Shtupu Sail8 tw*t' would do us all a favour.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 167

2005-11-16T13:01:00.000Z

The US musician Gil Scott-Heron is best known for his classic song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. What is less generally well known is that in 1951 his dad was the first black person to play professional football for Celtic… which must have been some experience considering the not particulary enlightened religious and racial attitudes of 1950s Glasgow.

While Scott-Heron’s song is a piece of genius created before he succumbed to the crack pipe, it appears the revolution is most certainly being televised. The rule seems to be the flatter the TV, the more there are. It’s now almost impossible to go into a pub, shop or train station without a winking high definition screen begging for attention.

What’s more, it’s us who are being televised and monitored constantly as modern cities become more Blade Runner than Blade Runner. The UK has the most video surveillance in the world with more than 4.2 million CCTV cameras on this particular island. And you think email is personal? Ha.

Try sending two emails one minute apart to the same address with ‘Bomb’ in the subject line of the first mail and ‘Hello’ in the subject line of the second one. Yep, the one with ‘Bomb’ will always arrive later than the ‘Hello’ one. You ARE being watched and it’s going to get worse, man.

This week’s news from the US that Google has finally moved into the mobile space with a Java-based application based on its mapping technology may make many US subscribers happy, but what are the real implications?

The Google service is free and is very good indeed, but this may be the straw that breaks the desert ruminant's back when it comes to mobile phone advertising. According to researcher Kelsey Group, mobile local applications such as Google's services will bring in $386 million of advertising by 2009 and that means we're f**ked.

Forget the film Minority Report and ads following you as you walk pass a shop window... it will be ads on mobiles that will MAKE you walk past certain shop windows. And don't imagine for one second that these personalised ads will escape the notice of the authorities. Consumerism will have finally got its man, captured and cornered, unbothered and unbewildered.

Or, as Gil Scott-Heron says in another classic song, B-Movie,... "And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune, the consumer has got to dance." Mark my words, we're going be dancing like bears in a Russian circus. Happy days.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 166

2005-11-16T12:58:00.000Z

“Connected to a mobile phone with Bluetooth it becomes an intimate, silent connection between two lovers, regardless of distance. Custom designed for your pleasure, it is intelligent, sophisticated and invented for bliss. The Toy is worn internally, linked to a mobile phone and controlled by SMS text messages sent to the phone. Once read, the message is transported automatically to The Toy, which turns it into vibrations - with a huge range of movements, depending on what you have written. Just say what you feel, The Toy will do the rest.”

Unfortunately the above blurb does not describe this newsletter, which while undeniably sexy, has its limitations. Instead, it is the Cool & Groovy Toy Company that promises unbridled joy for its customers with a ‘hi-tech vibrating bullet’ that is activated by text messages that contain a secret six-digit tag.

This coveted product is being marketed as a way of gentlemen staying in touch with their partners by sending suggestive messages. Call me a cynic, but I have a feeling that lots more women will enjoy sending messages to themselves – an action that will further reinforce the argument that women don’t actually need men at all.

But sometimes telecom operators DO need each other and this week saw Spanish giant Telefónica make a £18 billion cash bid to buy UK operator O2. Not only that, but the company also announced plans to float Big Brother creators Endemol for £1.4 billion as one way of helping to finance the deal. Mmmm, interesting, but haven't Telefónica been here before?

It was more than five years ago that Big Brother first came to our TV and computer screens - a show that I worked on for six months as Internet PR Director. Between me and you, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, off-the-record the £2 million cost of the first series was reputed to be bankrolled by Terra, at that time a Spanish ISP that was owned by Telefónica.

The cunning plan was to use the show as a Trojan horse for the Terra brand and make it a household name that was as well known as other ISPS such as Freeserve. Unfortunately, the ruse didn't quite come off and Terra went on to merge with Lycos, while the UK public remained ignorant of its existence.

Not that Telefónica were bothered. The company has since stamped a huge footprint in South America and its acquisition of O2 is a logical step (sorry) in its evolution. For the other big four operators, however, there are likely to be lots of heads looking over shoulders. Telefónica's entry into the UK market is a ‘hi-tech vibrating bullet’ they didn't expect, and, unlike The Toy, will not be giving them any pleasure at all.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 165

2005-11-01T10:15:00.000Z

One of the most unlikely viral marketing coups of the last 15 years was behind the 1992 movie The Crying Game.

Audiences, prompted by distributor Miramax, were urged not to reveal THAT one-second scene when the lay-dee showed herself to be so much more. Incredibly, a whole world of filmgoers kept quiet and the film consequently made a fortune at the Box Office.

Nowadays, such secrecy in the internet age is impossible. The secret would be out before filming was over and the movie would flop (an inappropriate verb in the circumstances). Still, those who enjoy that type of film will be pleased to know there are rumours that several remakes are in production. Prepare for Queen Kong, Womb With A View, Tranny McPhee and that old classic, The Ladyboy Vanishes.

Viral marketing has naturally moved on since Neil Jordan’s ground-breaking movie and the mobile phone is a perfect instrument for such campaigns. While such activity can be intrusive, Asian operators have no qualms in spamming their subscribers. China Mobile and China Unicom now employ SMS-poets to create saccharine messages that these operators then send anonymously to their customers.

While popular phrases such as ‘A kettle of wine is soft, fragrant and rich’ and ‘A harvest moon is long in the sky and broad on the ground’ would probably send most Western users into apoplexy-churn, Chinese users apparently love them.

The figures bear this out. On the eve of the last Chinese New Year, more than 11 BILLION messages were sent to bring in the Year of the Rooster, of which a high percentage were written by the SMS-poets. Personally, I prefer more personalised messages on New Year’s Eve such as ‘I ****ing love you, mate’ or ‘Hope you’re as wasted as me’, but that’s the decadent West for you.

Finally this week, a warm welcome back to the mobile gaming world to Alan Welsman, the man who would receive so many more emails if people realised he wasn’t from Wales. Alan has re-emerged at Infospace Mobile, a move that could be the first of many across a rapidly converging sector. Who's next? Some of us know, but some of us can still keep a secret.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 164

2005-10-26T10:14:00.000Z

Cannes really is an annoying sh*thole. Taxis from to and from the airport can cost 100 Euros a time, the hotels (if you can find one that’s not miles out of town) are pokey and the sidewalks are too small to accommodate any half-decent trade show audience.

At the Mipcom audiovisual show this week, it was even worse. It rained all the time, the extortionate price of umbrellas being sold outside the Palais went up by the hour and it was that time of year when every delegate has Too-Many-Trade-Shows-Not-Enough-New-Comment-Same-Old-Same-Old-Syndrome.

But it wasn’t quite like that at the inaugural mobile TV awards. The scrum outside the screenings auditorium proved that mobile TV had grabbed the attention of these cynical attendees. There wasn’t a seat to be had as four very handsome, intelligent and gifted judges (did I mention I was one of them? No? Oh, well I was) explained why they had chosen 23 nominees out of more than 230 entries.

The reasons? Just the obvious. Simplicity, understanding of mobile users, knowledge of technology, credits that lasted seconds, and content that had been made for mobile. It was unbelievable how many entries came from TV companies that thought they would waltz the awards because of the strength of the brand (so I didn’t vote for them and that felt very, very good… hahahhahahhahahhaha!!!).

Winning genres ranged from music to science to skateboarding to TV show highlights and it showed what great stuff is out there. Expect next year’s awards to be even more interesting, now that the bandwagon has left the station.

For this jaded newsletterist, the Mobile Games show in Madrid the following day was a step too far. But, as always, always something about making the effort that makes it worthwhile. I met a company that was only specialised in producing mobile TV extreme sports; part of their presentation was DOING extreme sports.

So, last night one of their people base-jumped 300 metres from the building opposite and his mate filmed it. Now, that’s quality and not only did it make the trade event sexy, it was something I'd vote for, and I might even shell out a quid to watch it on a mobile phone.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 163

2005-10-21T10:06:00.000Z

“Openly seeking sexual pleasure with one or more partners other than one's primary partner during Mardi Gras.” – Sacanagem, a Brazilian Portuguese word.

Sometimes there just isn’t a word for it in English. A new book, The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod, is set to be the best-selling book of the autumn by listing all the world’s weird words that don’t have an English equivalent.

In the book, the wonderful sacanagem is replicated by other gems such as the Japanese Bakku-shan - A girl who looks as though she might be pretty when seen from behind, but isn't when seen from the front… Or the Persian Warnam NihadanK - To murder somebody, bury their body, and then grow some flowers over the grave in order to conceal it.

Yes, it’s hard to believe these are real words, almost as hard as it is to believe that UK tea company PG Tips and Orange have brewed up (sorry, couldn’t resist it) the ReadyWhenUR kettle that can be switched on remotely by text message. Personally, I’d rather have a text message turned on by a kettle, but things have never been the same since that funny cup of tea I drank in India back in 1987.

While it’s unlikely anybody will strain (sorry) themselves to splash out £100 on such a device, the PR value, as usual, outweighs the product. The kettle is a promotion for the new Wallace & Gromit film and while the device doesn’t put the tea bag in nor pour the water in, it certainly keeps the attention of the public.

As if the public need to be reminded. The film is No 1 in the US box office and will go straight to the top of the UK charts when it is released later today. While two bits of clay talking don’t light everybody’s fire, it certainly beats watching Willy bloody Wonka or whatever superhero comic strip that has been reskinned for film.

Finally this week, the news that I have just turned on my non-SMS kettle manually and I await Ghiqq - the Persian word for the sound made by a boiling kettle.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 162

2005-10-14T11:51:00.000Z

There’s nothing that gladdens the heart more than a bit of chutzpah. Earlier this month two telemarketers made more than $650,000 by cold-calling people and charging them between $30 and $100 to join the national ‘Do-Not-Call’ service… which is naturally a free service.

You. Have. To. Admire. Their. Cheek. In the same way, hats off to Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. In his younger days, the good Colonel used to tour fairgrounds with ‘the world’s smallest horse’ that turned out to be a pony buried in sand. No suspicious minds in that audience then.

But sometimes what looks to be a blag is nothing of the kind and what you see is what you bloody well get. New Microsoft on the block, Google is doing exactly that in the gorgeous city of San Francisco by offering to provide blanket wireless internet coverage for free.

There is no small print in this offer, it will only cost Google around $20 million to cover all 49 square miles of the city, small feed to a company that has NASA as a partner, both strategically and geographically… and the PR value will be immeasurable.

If all goes to plan, San Francisco will become the world’s first wireless city, a prize that Taipei, San Jose, Amsterdam and New York are all trying to win. In the UK, we have the prospect of London becoming the world’s LAST wireless city. Finding free Wi-Fi in the heart of London isn’t easy and sometimes there's no other choice than to pay for it.

Which, just like the telemarketers I mentioned earlier, is where you have to raise your cappuccinos to Starbucks. Not only have they convinced a world to spend a fortune on posh coffee, they’ve also charged people like me to use Wi-Fi on its premises, a service that costs next to nothing to provide.

Yep, it's people like me who would have believed Colonel Tom and his little horse, but sometimes it's not the pony that's buried in the sand, it's one's own head. So from now on, no more paying for Wi-Fi, it's just not worth it.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 161

2005-10-09T11:47:00.000Z

When the journeyman boxer Chuck Wepner finally got his big shot at fighting Muhammed Ali for the World title, his enthusiasm got the better of him when he promised his wife the World Heavyweight champion would be sleeping in her bed that night.

After Ali had beaten Wepner to an inch of his life and the battered warrior had gone back to his hotel, he found his wife laying on the bed in a provocative pose who then asked her husband what time Muhammed was coming to her room.

Other athletes have had it easier with their spouses. Jim Hines prepared for his 1968 Olympic gold medal-winning run by sneaking into his wife’s hotel bedroom on the eve of the race with a bottle of champagne in each hand. Unlike Wepner, Hines had decided to have his fun while he could still get it… Which is uncannily similar to the way the mobile entertainment industry is behaving.

At this week’s CTIA trade show in San Francisco the parties came thick and fast and the champagne truly flowed. At Infospace’s gig on Tuesday, Billboard-topping artist Rhianna was paid 25K to gyrate her way through a few numbers in front of a goggle-eyed (98% male) audience. Across town, the Nokia, Fierce Wireless and MEF parties were all packed out and last night saw the surviving party animals descend on the Clift boutique hotel to swill up their remaining flutes of Veuve Clicquot.

This party shows no sign of stopping as CTIA gets bigger each year in the same way that 3GSM World has outgrown Cannes and is being held in a (grateful) Barcelona next year. For (grateful) Europeans, the rotation policy of CTIA works very well. Recent venues such as San Francisco, Las Vegas, Atlanta and New Orleans are great places to visit and are a must-attend for anybody serious about becoming a global mobile business.

Away from the bars and parties, the words on the trade floor were mobile TV, mobile TV, mobile TV, but recent research shows that the average punter doesn’t want to pay for such services and who can blame them? One minute the mobile phone was a voice-device that enabled people to be perpetually late for appointments, the next it’s an expensive communications hub for games and music that also takes pictures and videos and brings a bigger bill each month.

While the Holy Grail of converting the world's biggest installed base that is TV watchers to the mobile phone is naturally attractive, caution should be taken with the customer. Confident predictions that don't turn out as planned have bedevilled technology and capitalism for decades, and Mr Chuck Wepner will not need to be reminded about its equivalent in the sporting world.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 160

2005-10-03T11:44:00.000Z

Weird, but true. The British nation owes a huge debt to the Masai Marai people for selling blood and milk to provide four Spitfire aircraft for the Battle of Britain.

The African tribe have lived for centuries on nothing else but a diet of their cattle’s blood and milk (think Kate Moss without the drugs) and went hungry for a couple of years to help prop up Britain’s war effort. Their contribution may even have swung the balance so the RAF could finally defeat the Luftwaffe.

This poorer-than-you-but-much-cooler-than-you spirit was matched earlier this month when Bangladesh gave the US $20,000 to help with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Not a great deal admittedly and a drop in the ocean (maybe not the best metaphor in the current climate, whoops, there I go again) compared to the US’s resources, but a welcome slice of humanity.

Perhaps all the visitors to next week’s CTIA trade show in San Francisco should match this charity. It was only six months ago that the same crowd were attending the Spring CTIA in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, a venue that was decimated by Hurricane Katrina.

As the new Masters of the Universe, attendees certainly have dollars to spare and maybe the organisers of next week’s event should have some people collecting money for a city that is still a third under water. Just an idea, but maybe it’s easier to get blood from a Masai Marai tribesman’s cow than it is from a travelling businessman.

Finally, a quick reminder to European delegates attending the show. Don’t buy Zippo lighters for presents and get rid of any matchboxes you may have used to light your Havana cigars. It’s illegal to board a flight from the US with any of these objects in your pockets/baggage, which is also weird, but also true.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 159

2005-09-20T11:27:00.000Z

I once spent 24 months of my life planning to assassinate Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.

It’s a long story naturally, but I had watched a 1982 film, the extraordinary Missing by Costa-Gavras, about the Chilean military coup on 9/11(!), 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown and killed by the Pinochet-led military, who went on to murder more than 3,000 of their citizens.

Like any impressionable, overly stimulated idiot, I then went around the world for 18 months meeting expat Chileans and telling them of my plan (how smart was that). But after living rough in the US for a month or so, my mission ended ignimoniously in a Mexican village called Ensenada when my ‘borrowed’ car nearly took me over a cliff.

Where I failed, it appears the Chilean government will finally get their man. After years of escaping human rights trials because of his ‘mental condition’, the Guardian newspaper has uncovered alleged payments to the 89-year-old Pinochet from UK arms company BAE Systems, and the tax authorities have subsequently pounced.

Remember Al Capone, General? You can kill thousands but you’ll never beat the taxman, a global judiciary we should be thankful for, but a collection agency we could do without.

This overdue clampdown was replicated in the mobile industry this week when MTV Central announced a ban on ringtone advertisements during prime time viewing hours. Viewers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland will no longer be blanket-bombed by ads that are misleading at best and are the decibel-equivalent of going into a Weatherspoons pub at 10.45pm on a Friday night.

Naming no names (Crazy Frog), MTV’s decision to do so was a reaction to the furore over a certain well-known ringtone (Crazy Frog) that was being advertised constantly on the channel. While not wanting to name the brand (Crazy Frog), MTV’s move is welcome and one that will ultimately protect all forms of mobile entertainment from over-exposure.

Finally this week, it appears that in the cricket world, the Ashes were won by an Australian after all. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV channel now owns the rights and terrestrial viewers will have to stump up (sorry) if they want to continue watching the game. Ah, Rupert Murdoch, another dictator I once thought about knocking off, but what the hell, we won, so I'll leave that one.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 158

2005-09-09T15:29:00.000Z

Thou shalt commit adultery. That was the message erroneously sent out in the 15th Century by the publishers of the King James Bible. While many would appreciate such a rewriting of the Seventh Commandment, the mistake was noticed and the Bibles were quickly returned before too many couples enjoyed swinging parties in their semi-detached tied cottages.

When printing first came to the UK around the same time, it was natural that the first book published was the Bible. Consequently, all printing equipment was kept in churches. The only place big enough to do this was the church’s font and hence that’s why typefaces are called fonts. Interesting, no?

Mistakes made by such as the King James translators can have very serious consequences. There are some who believe that when good Muslims die, they won’t find bewitching houris (sexy virgins) in Paradise, but raisins. Again, possibly all down to a printer’s mistake, but they could always settle on sultanas - a different kind of fruit. Ha-ha, sorry, couldn’t resist it. Please. No. Fatwa.

But sometimes people get it absolutely right when taking one format and delivering it onto another platform. A recent case in point is mobile video and the next stage of the revolution. While mobile games have suffered from onerous costs of porting each game across sometimes hundreds of handsets, it looks as if mobile video evangelists have learnt from these mistakes.

Everybody in the food chain is talking to each other before the event and not after it. Technical specifications are being ironed out and it looks as if mobile video will happen much faster than anybody expected. Hurrah for 3G and the chance to watch global sports and comedy on our phones and hurrah for the decision-makers who look like getting it right.

On the subject of future-gazing, fill up your petrol tanks at the weekend. There is talk of all full-grown oil crisis on Monday and being forewarned is forearmed… and mark my words, there’s nothing lost in translation in that particular warning.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 157

2005-09-05T15:27:00.000Z

"When he serves, he farts, and that made me lose my concentration, for which I am famous throughout Zambia."

These were the words of tennis player Lighton Ndefwayl who blamed his defeat in a 1992 tournament on a tight jockstrap and the aforesaid flatulence. Game, set and crutch perhaps after winning on a wind-break?

Everybody loses a good excuse and Ndefwayl's is legendary, but gentlemen, please, there was absolutely no excuse for the scruffy appearance of the crowd at Wednesday's Develop Awards. It's bad enough being forced to see ponytails in public, but the invite said Developer Chic, not Developer Cheap. How many pairs of jeans and I-wore-this-crumpled-shirt-to-work-today outfits can you get in one hotel? Organisers, please note. Black Tie next year, please.

Fortunately, the immaculately tailored Develop editor Owain Bennalack was on hand to raise the standard and hand out the prizes, which rounded off a jolly roger (and there was one certain Roger who was very jolly) evening. Intent Media has done a good job here and The Develop Awards are now the culmination of what was once imaginatively branded London Games Week. The announcement of next year's Develop conference in Brighton looks like another step in the right direction.

Still, it was good to see everybody in town again, back from their holidays and raring to go to Stringfellows, er I mean, GDC Mobile, TIGA Content World and Games Market Europe.

The mobile games community is a tight-knit, leftfield crowd and London needs to be at the centre of this revolution, but at one stage of Wednesday evening I thought I was in Vietnam with Colonel Kurtz, such was the decadence of this crowd. You know who you are and even Lighton Ndefwayl would be hard pushed to think up an excuse for such behaviour. Very amusing to watch, though.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 156

2005-08-29T15:25:00.000Z

Oh. My. Goodness. On the train back from London last night, I didn’t have a newspaper on me, Alexis De Tocqueville’s 932-page Democracy in America didn’t fit with my mood, so what did I do? Yes, I played a mobile game on my 3G handset.

After years of talking and speaking and writing about mobile games, I finally played one. Alien Hominid was its name and it wasn’t bad. Naturally, a monkey with a gizmo would have scored more points than me, but it filled in a few minutes as the Sussex countryside kind-of-whizzed by and it only cost a couple of quid to download.

Now I am officially a mobile gamer, it’s interesting to know what type of people my fellow gamers are. Are they witty, handsome, young-at-heart and seriously intellectual like me or aren’t they? According to a recent report, 2005 Digital Gaming in America, the average mobile gamer spends 19 minutes per session and is just as likely to be female as male and ‘young-at-heart’ rather than a spotty virgin.

One of the reasons for this older demographic is that the most popular titles are retro games such as Tetris and Space Invaders – games I remember from the days when I actually played arcade machines. But this is changing and with some 3D games now costing half a million dollars to develop, it’s likely the yoof will drive the sector forward by playing modern-mobile games.

To this end, next week’s Mobile GDC at London’s Le Meridien hotel is likely to blow away some more of the myths about mobile gaming. Chaired by the impressive Rob Tercek, it brings together mobile games tsars from all over the world to explain what is next for mobile gaming.

Naturally, the egos will be clashing and some of those attending will be more interested in networking at the bar (mentioning no names), but this is a good people-watching event and well worth the entrance fee to see the occasional sartorial gaffe (mentioning no names).

But before that event, there is another important mobile gaming happening and that is yours truly waxing lyrical on BBC Radio 5 at 4.30 this Saturday morning.

Challenging, controversial, informative, my 15-minute rant in the graveyard slot will probably be heard by absolutely nobody except me, manically playing mobile games to keep my eyes open as 4.am approaches. Oh well, it beats reading De Tocqueville.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 155

2005-08-22T15:23:00.000Z

It was interesting to note Adam Singer refer to 1915 silent film ‘classic’ Birth of a Nation in his keynote speech to the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival last week. Whatever Singer’s intentions were, and they were surely well meaning, D. W. Griffith’s film deserves no such credit and should be locked away with the trash of Albert Speer and other racist propagandists.

Last month, at the NFT IMAX cinema in London, DJ Spooky, an African-American artist, highlighted the shortcomings of that film when he showcased his live soundtrack of mangled Robert Johnson samples over a screening of the film.

The film depicts the American Civil War through the eyes of a family and for the first hour or so it’s quite interesting. Then it goes mental. The blacks get the vote in the South, they take over Parliament, they get drunk and eat chicken while in Parliament, the whities get lynched, a white woman is raped, but the American nation is saved when the scion of the family decides to set up the Klu Klux Klan. Hurrah, hurrah, the world’s first hoodies are invented.

What a load of old sh*t and yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a different generation, but it’s always hugely refreshing when an artist does his or her job properly and opens less gifted people’s eyes to a truth they may have missed. But change your name, mate. DJ Spooky sounds like a dodgy chatroom alias.

Seeing old technology such as analogue film diverge into a live, digital music experience underlines how technology can go off in weird, but positive, directions. One of the niche areas in mobile phone usage is its popularity among deaf people.

While this seems a contradiction, text messaging and the vibrating element of a mobile phone mean this is a perfect medium for the hard of hearing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but according to Mike Short of the Mobile Data Association, some visionaries at Nokia and the like did think that far in advance. Deaf people are now provided with tailored tarrifs where they don’t pay for voice and are only charged for the features they use.

Nice one, but every action has an opposite reaction and some mobile phones can interfere with nearby hearing aids within a one-metre radius, so it seems technology will forever be an ongoing battle between positive and negative. It’s just a shame there were (probably) no deaf people at the NFT IMAX last month. That's one particular production that words or vibration couldn't describe.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 154

2005-08-12T15:22:00.000Z

One of the most satisfying elements of an Alpha Male’s life is to sit in front of Sky TV on a Saturday afternoon and watch the football results come in. Naturally, this involves going to the pub at the same time and talking absolute b*ll*cks with lower omega males, who might know who won the FA Cup in 1958, but would never,ever be invited around for dinner.

This Saturday sees the start of the Premiership season and a steady stream of men making their way to the aforesaid hostelries. But wait, what’s this? Damn, it’s Vodafone’s mobile 3G service where subscribers can watch Sky’s Gillette Soccer Saturday between 3pm and 5.30pm and then watch video highlights of every goal.

Naturally, this is a great content idea and Soccer Saturday Mobile does a nice job of backing up its goals package with a cultural phenomenon, but now means a lot of men will be forced to go shopping with their wives on a Saturday afternoon. Expect changing rooms to be filled with men with their heads down over their handsets trying to convince their partners that Cowdenbeath’s three-goal comeback at East Stirling is really quite extraordinary.

What is also quite extraordinary is the current Ashes cricket season where two evenly matched teams are serving up a classic sporting contest. If only one of the operators could offer an Ashes video service where that offered ball-by-ball service. Instead, delegates to this week’s Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, were forced to wait for host Clive Tyldesey’s updates between sessions.

Ah, the sessions. I was part of a mobile games panel that included Tim Harrison of Vodafone, Kamar Shah of Nokia, Tony Pearce of Player X and Barry O’Neill of Upstart Games.

Let’s just say later that night many, many people described the panel as one of the weirdest sessions they’d every witnessed, but kept shaking our hands and laughing. Which was nice, but let's just say the session wasn't half as weird as the night before when the five of us went out together. Now that's what I call Alpha Males.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 153

2005-08-05T15:20:00.000Z

What's in a name? The upper class are called Toffs because of their inbred up-ended noses and the so-called lower classes are called Chavs because of a website, so it's about time the pretentious middle classes were labelled collectively.

I suggest they/we should all be called 'Meringues'. The word itself is an onomatopoeia and not only does this flaky dessert crumble at the slightest touch, it's also generally less tasty than it thinks it is and seldom rises to the occasion... I rest my case.

Over in the art world where the most awful Meringues exist, there is a new movement going on called Stuckism. Formed in 1999, the name was coined when Billy Childish (Now how Meringue is that name?) was told by ex-girlfriend Tracey Emin that his art was 'Stuck, stuck, stuck!'.

Cue a movement that espouses 'pro-contemporary figurative painting with ideas and anti-conceptual art, mainly because of its lack of concepts'. Some of these crazee rebels have even demonstrated as clowns against the Turner Prize! Now how Meringue is that?

Ah, Tracey Emin, the one-woman reality TV show whose lips look as if they've been stuck, stuck, stuck together whenever she opens her mouth.

She shall be Queen Meringue and she will fall in love with King Meringue, who else but the wannabe Poet Laureate Russell Crowe. They will be a credit to their class and will make movies in tents and beds about throwing telephones at non-Meringues.

What does this have to do with wireless and games? Not much, but at a conference last week I did overhear one senior mobile executive say to a potential content provider: "Someone once said to me 'content is king' and I said 'distribution is King Kong'." Mmmm, now how Meringue is that?

Not everybody is perfect, though. I once told a work colleague I was going to St Petersberg for the weekend 'to sit by the banks of the River Neva drinking vodka and reading Doestoevsky'. "Oh, shut up Monty, you f**king tosser," she replied. Now how right was that?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 152

2005-07-29T15:18:00.000Z

“Few of us can surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be eternally denied.”

These words from the great playwright Arthur Miller must surely ring true to the unfortunate family of Jean Charles de Menezes who was murdered by the British Police last week.

The 27-year-old Brazilian made the fatal mistake of wearing a heavy coat as he left a building the Police were (supposed to be) watching. Amazingly, this would-be suicide bomber was allowed to board a No 2 bus for the short journey to Stockwell station. He was then shot dead for running away from a search. Good work, lads. But next time, surround a suspect BEFORE he gets on the bus. You know it makes sense.

This, of course, is not the first time this has happened. Twenty-two years ago, a young man called Stephen Waldorf was driving his Mini in Kensington High Street when his car was peppered by Police gunfire. Unfortunately for the Police, and especially for Waldorf, it was a case of mistaken identity and he wasn’t the escaped convict they were after.

Waldorf was shot five times, but managed to survive the attack and successfully sued for £150,000, but the Police marksmen escaped conviction on the grounds of self-defence. Consequently, processes were put in place to ensure that an innocent person would never suffer the same fate. Mmm, that worked, didn’t it?

Now we go seamlessly from bombs to Becks. Sometimes there’s just no justice in the courts and no justice in the commercial world. David Beckham must be feeling aggrieved at Vodafone’s decision to dump him from his £1.2 million a year deal. No reasons were given for not renewing his contract, but maybe it’s because Vodafone no longer need the world’s most famous person to be depicted playing mobile games at a supermarket check-out.

According to this week’s report from Informa Telecoms and Media, the mobile games market will be worth £6.4 billion, with 15 per cent of people downloading and playing a game on their handset by 2010. There is currently a debate between operators and publishers over the quality of the games on offer, but there appears little doubt that customers will eventually use their phones to download games.

But what of the price point? Will these customers be happy to pay 5 quid/5 bucks/5 Euros per game forever? I think not and this week’s announcement by MonsterMob that they’ve launched the UK’s first mobile games subscription channel is a taste of things to come. As much as you can play for a monthly fee? Now that should take your mind off the horror.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 151

2005-07-22T15:15:00.000Z

There’s nothing like a spot of casual sex to lead to injury. Last week in Carioca, Romania, a man almost lost his most valuable appendage while making pancakes for his genuflecting inamorata.

In the heat of passion, he lost grip of the pan and spilt pouring oil down her back. Naturally, the poor woman clenched her teeth, and in agony he hit her head on the pan. That’s the last time they’ll be watching Laurel and Hardy then… or maybe they should just give it up for Lent.

Stories such as these are legion among nursing staff and my friend’s favourite is about a couple that had been ‘experimenting’ with the inside of a thermos flask. Naturally, such an object is fragile and doctors didn’t know how to remove it without causing injury.

It was only when my mate suggested pouring quick-drying cement into the flask that it could be removed. Probably not what the couple had in mind when they had previously discussed throwing something else into the mix.

On the subject of all things casual, this week saw the first Casual Gamers conference in Seattle. The links between casual gaming and mobile gaming are growing by the hour. Whether it’s sitting on a train, queuing for a bus (or waiting in a surgery waiting for a flask to be removed?), simple games on a mobile phone are the perfect antidote to boredom. What’s more, unlike the traditional games industry, women ARE playing mobile games and the publishing industry is going ga-ga to accommodate everybody.

Concepts that will push mobile gaming to the next level are thick on the ground, but one of the successful ideas that did come up at the conference was Infospace’s For Prizes games. Already successful in the US, players can compete in tournaments for simple games such as Tetris and Solitaire with a chance to win daily prizes.

The links between gambling and gaming are tenuous, but everybody likes a competition and a bit of casual fun. Infospace are onto a winner here, but don’t try it in the kitchen while fixing up a bit of batter. You never know what will happen.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 150

2005-07-20T12:17:00.000Z

It is a timely reminder in the week that the film Wedding Crashers is released, how absolutley insane women are as they prepare for their special day. Earlier this week, police were called to a wedding dress shop in Gillingham, Kent as brides-to-be stormed the shop after misplaced rumours the store was to close down. These nuptial banshees staged a sit-down protest and others grabbed the nearest dress before legging it up the aisle, er I mean, road.

The image of frenzied future brides usually summons up tawdry images of hen parties at a seaside town, but this particular fury was whipped up by the message board of Confetti.co.uk where panicking brides realised their big day might be ruined and mobilised themselves accordingly. Now that’s what I call a flash mob - and not a mobile phone in sight.

As somebody who was married on the day England beat Germany 5-1 in a World Cup Qualifier (consequently it was a day I’ll never forget!), I know how important it is to get the big day right, but looting? I thought that only happened when developing countries were forced to go to the International Monetary Fund.

Finally this week in what has been a unsurprisingly quiet seven days, the backlash against Jamba’s Crazy Frog continues. Not only are regulators cracking down on Jamba’s alleged business practices, but somebody has finally come up with a web-based game where visitors can wield a baseball bat to bash seven shades of sh*t out of the little b**tard.

Which is probably what will happen to me once my wife reads the previous gag about our wedding day.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 149

2005-07-11T10:02:00.000Z

"What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa? ... I'm sort of scared about going there ... I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me."

These were the racist words uttered by the Toronto mayor Mel Lastman before a visit to Kenya as he tried to drum up support for Toronto’s bid for the 2008 Olympics. Mmm, I wonder if the African IOC members voted for Beijing after hearing that little remark.

Lastman’s words were fatal to Toronto’s Olympic chances in the same way as Paris’s triumphalism ruined its opportunity for 2012. Note to prospective cities… Don’t close roads and turn the city into an Olympic pageant costing three million Euros BEFORE being awarded the Games, those type of displays are always going to bite. You. In. the. Arse.

As London mourns its dead, nobody will care about the Olympics for a while and the country’s mobile operators matched an incredibly efficient performance from the emergency services.

Understandably, extra capacity was given to the Police and other services, but calls got through reasonably quickly. While some mistakenly thought the networks had been shut down in case a mobile phone detonated another bomb, the best advice in times like this is to text, not call. It's quicker and it doesn't clog up the networks.

While London was burning, the English cricket team was slaughtering those game Australians again. It seems regular defeat is making these Aussies lose their sense of humour. This week its telecom watchdog banned the use of mobile porn on handsets. While this is upsetting news to operators who need to recoup 3G costs, the porn industry will be in turmoil. Time to throw another pimp onto the barbie, mate?

Dead Gambling Legends - Fyodor Dostoevsky

2005-07-05T13:40:00.000Z

First published Inside Edge magazine, July 2005 issue

“Yesterday was cold and even rainy: I felt weak all day, and my nerves were so bad I could barely stand up. It’s a good thing I was somehow able to sleep for two hours on the train. I wanted to sleep all day yesterday. But the game is here, and I couldn’t tear myself away; you can imagine how excited I was. Imagine it: I began playing in the morning and by lunchtime I had lost 16 imperials. I had 12 left and some thalers. I came back after lunch intent on being as reasonable as humanly possible and, thank God, I won back the 16 I lost and won another 100 guilders on top of that. I could have won 300, because I had them in my hands, but I risked them and lost.”

A sentiment all of us can understand after a particularly bad day at the roulette table, but these words were written almost 140 years ago by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky to his wife Anna Grigorievna.

Dostoevsky wasn’t the first person to suffer heavy losses in a casino, but he was certainly one of the first people to go on record as a problem gambler. His addiction to the roulette wheel defined him as a writer and completely dominated his life. It also introduced him to his wife and enabled him to write The Gambler, a book that is described by some US academics as the best case history of disordered gambling in literature.

Things started off well enough. He was born in 1821 in Moscow into an affluent family and with his parents’ support graduated with a military engineering degree. Then it all started going downhill.

His mother died when he was 17 sending young Fyodor into a whirl of depression. But worse was to come. Two years later, his father became involved in a quarrel with his serfs that ended in his death. The manner of his death was unusual. The serfs poured vodka down his father’s throat until he was strangled. Not a real surprise that gambling became Dostoevsky’s vice and not alcoholism. That experience would put anybody off drinking for life.

According to Raif Geha, Chief of Immunology at Children's Hospital in Boston, in his study of Dostoevsky and The Gambler, the early death of his parents motivated Dostoevsky to gamble and to win not only money, but also win back his late mother, brought on by the guilt of losing his father. This opinon was based on a earlier premise put forward by Sigmund Freud who had studied Dostoevsky’s gambling at length.

"I suspect that self-punishment and defeat for the gambler are probably paradoxical but unintended," says Gehoa pompously as he dismisses the idea that Dostoevsky deliberately gambled to lose. Or maybe he just liked a bet on anything that moved.

With the help of a small income from his father’s estate, in 1844 Dostoevsky resigned his military commission to devote himself to writing. It would be a fair bet that he didn’t keep on the serfs who had dosed his father with vodka, but maybe that’s a book in itself.

Critical success quickly followed after the publication of his first books, Poor Folk and The Double, but any Russian writer worth his proverbial salt had to do a bit of time inside and so it was.

In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested on April 23 in 1849 during a meeting with his fellow ‘utopian socialists’ and sentenced to death. After a particularly cruel mock execution the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in Siberia and he spent four years in hard labour wearing chains.

On his release in 1854 he was assigned as a common soldier and lost the estate left to him by his father. Eventually he became an ensign until 1857 when he married Maria Isayeva, and his estate was restored to him.

Then Dostoevsky decided to take a Gap Year and travel around Western Europe. Unfortunately for him, this was when the gambling really took root and it was almost two years before he could get the money together for the expensive fare home.

But as soon as he was back home again, his penchant for the roulette wheel and the resulting losses were compounded by the death of his wife and his brother. Saddled with debts and dependents and with creditors at his heels and debts of around 43,000 roubles, Dostoevsky skipped the country and continued his unsuccessful tour of Europe’s casinos.

By the time he returned to Russia in 1866, Dostoevsky was hopelessly skint and struggling to finish Crime and Punishment, the book that would finally make his name. Desperate for money, he then made the bet of his life.

He gambled with an unscrupulous publisher, FT Stellovsky, that he would deliver a new novel within a month if he would advance him some money. In return, Dostoevsky would forfeit all rights to his works for the next nine years. Stellovsky believed he had backed a stone-cold certainty, but, like some many punters before and after, he was proved wrong.

Dostoevsky went through his familiar angst of the soul for a few days until his friends suggest he use a young stenographer, Anna Grigorievna Snitkin, the star pupil of Russia’s first shorthand school. In keeping with the spirit of the bet, Dostoevsky spent the next 25 days dictating to her a novel based on his gambling experiences – The Gambler. He delivered the completed novel to Stellovsky on the very day their arrangement was supposed to expire.

Naturally, as is the wont of Russian romantics, he duly married Anna Grigorievna who struggled for the rest of their marriage to rein in Dostoevsky’s compulsion. As any gambler knows, Dostoevsky wasn’t the only person to perceive gambling as high spiritual drama. In it he found expression of the soul's despair and its twin hope for redemption. But such highfaluting sensibilities can have a more prosaic effect and destroy a marriage.

While Anna to a certain extent probably enjoyed the roller coaster ride of a gambler’s life, Dostoevsky lost huge sums and it was a regular feature of his life to pawn his wife’s jewellery, including her wedding ring. But as binge followed spree and spree followed binge, the success of Dostoevsky’s novels managed to keep his head above water and enable his wife to get her ring back.

But maybe his gambling problem wasn’t the great spiritual dilemma that academics profess. One of his famous (paraphrased) quotes gives us a clue: “I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”

While to some readers that quote may underscore Dostoevsky’s radical philosophical beliefs, that statement sounds more of an admission that he couldn’t add up properly. Maybe he was just bad at maths and didn’t know the difference between losing 30 and 300 Imperials, however ‘charming’ he made this out to be.

Whatever his lack of skill with numbers, Dostoevsky was a genius with words and when he died on 9 February, 1881 he left behind some of the world’s greatest novels. Unfortunately he also left behind some considerable gambling debts. As usual, it was down to his wife Anna Grigoryevna to sort them out and she then devoted the rest of her life to cherish the literary heritage of her husband, a task she undertook with considerable skill.

The final word has to go to Dostoevsky whose whole literary and gambling career that can probably be summed up in these few lines. There are also words of good advice for anybody who sometimes takes gambling a little too far. While the triumphs may taste sweet, the downside can be very sour indeed.

“Meanwhile, earning money like this, paying nothing, has something aggravating and stupefying about it, and then if you think what this money is for, if you think of the debts and about the people who need it aside from myself, then you feel that you can’t leave. But I also imagine my suffering if I lose everything and accomplish nothing: to take on all this and leave here poorer even than I came.”

Synopsis of The Gambler

Written by Dostoevsky in less than 25 days in a bet struck with a mercenary publisher, The Gambler is a psychologically probing novel that describes the life of a young Russian, Alexey Ivanovitch.

Based on Dostoevsky’s addiction to gambling, the action takes place in the unoriginally named German town of Roulettenburg. Alexey’s gambling problem is compounded by his complicated love affair with Polina Alexandrovna who finds it increasingly difficult to handle Alexey’s addiction.

The Gambler is essentially a story of passion and despair that ends in tragedy as it becomes clear that Alexey’s attempts to break even at the roulette tables will never happen. While Dostoevsky’s famous novels Crime And Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov are weighty tomes that require serious concentration, The Gambler is a novella that is Dostoevsky’s most approachable novel.

Like other characters in Dostoevsky’s works, Alexey’s initial grappling with gambling is an attempt to break through the established order of things as he embraces the outsider aspect of the human condition. Unfortunately for Alexey and other problem gamblers, the roulette wheel is a more powerful machine than angst.

Although written in the first person and events being perhaps too associated with the author, the depth of other characters such as Alexey’s grandmother depict a life among German’s gambling classes as wonderfully authentic. The grandmother arrives from Moscow, borne on a throne-like chair, and determined to stop Alexey from further squandering the family fortune. But in demanding to see the casino herself she soon succumbs to the thrill of the roulette wheel. Anybody who ever does the lottery week after week will empathise with Alexey’s grandmother when her numbers come up the day after she’s frittered away all of her fortune.

As well as being the inspiration for an opera and a play, there have been several films based on Dostoevsky’s The Gambler. These include Michael Gambon in 1997’s The Gambler that closely resembles the romance between Alexey and Polina (Dostoevsky and Anna Maria) and features lusciously shot scenes in St Peterburg.

Other versions such as Rob Reiner’s 2003 saccharine Alex and Emma take the plot to the US where Cuban loan sharks replace Russian publishers. But the best version of all is probably 1974’s The Gambler that stars James Caan as a literary professor who rips off his girlfriend and proves that a Russian story can work just as well in New York. Look out for a terrific cameo role by James Woods.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 148

2005-07-01T11:14:00.000Z

Phew! There's nothing like a mosh-pit to blow away the nihilist cobwebs and get some groove back in the soul. Last night's Kings of Leon gig took this writer back 20 years to a land of pogoing, sweat and sodden hair - and fine fun it was, too.

Fast and furious music by the likes of Kings of Leon, The Killers and The White Stripes prove that the blues are still with us, albeit in an updated style. Termed 'Punk Rock Blues', British groups inspired by these bands are packing clubs such as London's Not the Same Old Blues Crap nightclub. A recent gig saw 85-year-old T-Model Ford bring the house down with kids of 16 and 17 going mad for it.

For old punks such as myself, this is great news and could be just the thing London needs as the decision for the 2012 Olympics looms. Forget showing IOC members plans for a cantilevered railway in Stratford or pointing out Admiralty Arch, they should have just taken them to a punk rock blues gig and that would have swung the vote in our favour. In Paris, they're still trying to convince everybody that Air are a decent band and they didn't fix the 1998 World Cup.

With live music seemingly back on the agenda, the bootleggers will be rubbing their digital recording devices with glee. There is still a huge demand for bootlegs and it's time for the ringtone market to catch up. I would download track after track if it meant I could relive last night's experience. There must be somebody out there who can supply this service... or maybe somebody's doing it already?

Unfortunately, the modern distribution of bootlegging does have other evil denouements. Earlier this week, it was revealed that Bob Dylan's famous 1962 Gaslight Tapes that were only previously available on low-quality bootlegs are to released exclusively at Starbucks. Cue lots of times are a-changing gags in the world's press, but for those of us who dig Dylan there is only one gag - One more cup of Latte, Bob, or should that be one more pile of cash?

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 105

2004-07-23T14:59:00.000Z

It was a case of "No thanks for the mammaries" for Hollywood starlet Kirsten Dunst this week after she demanded the size of her breasts be reduced for the Spider-Man 2 videogame.

The flat-chested Dunst is right to object to the sexualisation of her character even if the Spider-Man videogame character does seem to have an extra glint in his eye during foreplay, er I mean, gameplay. One gets the impression that if there were more female games developers they would make male sexual characteristics in videogames smaller rather than larger.

Perhaps it's summer and those dreamy days of rain continually pissing down, but sex is all around us. TV reality show Big Brother has seen its first 'bonk' (the tabloids' favourite onomatopoeia for casual sex) and a report found this week that the over-50s enjoy a shag (a much cooler onomatopoeia) just as much as their younger counterparts.

But not everybody is a sexual Olympian... As MP Nicholas Soames was reminded this week. The rotund Tory was accused of anti-Semitism by a table of diners at the Dorchester Hotel. Cue fevered journalists gleefully raking up a comment made by an ex-girlfriend: "Making love with Nick was like have a double wardrobe fall on top of you with the key still in the lock".

On the subject of small things in big packages, the final word this week goes to the stock market debut of Virgin Mobile. While there is scepticism that the company is worth £500 million, it seems balloonist Richard Branson's decision to reduce the company's listing price by 20% was a good one. Kirsten Dunst would be proud of him.

July column for Develop magazine

2004-07-12T15:20:00.000Z

It was Woody Allen who gave us the movie Zelig. The eponymous Zelig has the ability to turn in to other people when surrounded by them. If he meets a fat person, he becomes fat, if he meets a doctor; he becomes a doctor and so on.

And so it goes with attending industry events. It's a terrible thing to listen to a set of speakers and then turn into them the next time you speak to somebody, but that's why companies pay thousands of pounds to attend - we all like to be interesting by association and we're all plagiarists by nature.

Such was the case last month after the ELSPA Games Summit in London. Tim Harrison, Simon Dean and Alan Welsman of Vodafone, O2 and Orange respectively all spoke intelligently in front of a packed house and gave this writer much content when he spoke the next day at the World Handset Forum in Amsterdam.

And what was this turbulent content? Yes, the need for the mobile games industry to concentrate on the here and now, not the there and whatever. Multiplayer, 3D and 3G are all great watersheds to wet ourselves over, but let's concentrate on today's post-tipping point.

The mobile games sector has evolved rapidly and there is much for people in the industry to be proud of. The runaway success of mobile games such as JAMDAT Mobile's Bowling are being matched by Iomo's Pub Pool and news of Mforma's recent $44 million round of funding all augur well. Care, however, should be taken with brands. JAMDAT's Lord of the Rings Bowling is probably taking things a little too far... nobody wants a brand to be skittled by over-zealous hobbits.

Even so, and completely against the point of this article, there is a 3G game that really is worth looking forward to. Wonderphone has recently been signed up by Vodafone live! to distribute its Java games catalogue that is co-published with Vivendi Universal Games International. Vodafone aren't silly to do this deal.

Wonderphone is producing Fahrenheit 3G, a video-based interactive game that will, indeed, be a 'super production' because it has a €10 million budget. €10 million! Now, for that amount, every mobile games content provider would gladly become Zelig for the length of that particular development process.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 103

2004-07-12T15:15:00.000Z

There's nothing like a lollipop in the eye to bring on a bit of heart trouble. Last month, veteran changeling David Bowie copped the aforesaid confectionery while on stage in Oslo and today he is lying in a German hospital recovering from emergency heart surgery.

Poor old boy lollipop Bowie. The icon who once went through too many changes now resembles a supine cross-breed of Andy Warhol and Nadia from Big Brother. Scurrilous rumours that he is re-releasing 'Rebel, rebel, my heart is a mess' with The Strokes are tasteless and should be ignored.

While Bowie recovers from heart congestion, the heart of London is still recovering from the traffic congestion charge of the Formula 1 roadshow earlier this week. While taxi drivers, shoppers and Soho trade journalists fumed at the inconvenience, car-hating London mayor Ken Livingstone waxed typical about a future London Grand Prix.

This would be a good thing, but it raises the question of whether the Formula 1 teams would have to cough up the large amounts of fivers needed to pay for the congestion charge. The image of Michael Schumacher on the M25 coming into London using his Voda-phone to text 81099 to pay the charge is an interesting one.

This form of micropayment by SMS for the congestion charge has undoubtedly been successful and a blueprint for further revenues for London. If the Grand Prix does come to the best city in the world, watch out for Red Ken (more Ferrari than socialist if you know what I mean) setting up a mobile games company.

He could offer a free downloadable game that replicated the London Grand Prix circuit as a sop to paying the fiver for the congestion charge and everybody would be happy. But don't expect a Bowie track to augment the game.... Fleetwood Mac still rule that particular neck of the pits.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 102

2004-07-12T15:13:00.000Z

The word 'bankrupt' derives from the Italian banca rotta, the phrase for a businessman's bench, which was symbolically broken in two if that particular businessman failed to meet his or her financial obligations.

On this particular Friday, there are several million Englishman who would be very happy to break the bench of one Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Swedish manager of the English football team. Last night, his 'battling' team lost 'valiantly' on penalties to Portugal in EURO 2004 after they were 'robbed' by a 'diabolical' referring decision.

Naturally, it had nothing to do with Eriksson's bizarre managerial decision to defend for 80 minutes. The conspiracy theories are everywhere, but might it have had something to do with who England would have played in the semi-final? Yes, it would have been Sweden, and we know how they like a nice 2-2 draw. Still, it serves us right. What were we doing employing a man is a ringer for Monty Burns (no relative) of The Simpsons?

Away from the hysteria of sporting combat, it was refreshing to see Trip Hawkins jump back into the acquisitive fray. The one-time founder of Electronic Arts has nailed his colours firmly to the mobile games revolution by buying up profitable mobile games developer Sumea with his new company Digital Chocolate. Hawkins' company will retain the Sumea brand for existing Sumea titles and expand the distribution of those titles in the US, and will operate in 53 countries on five continents.

It looks as if the mobile games industry is growing up fast, something the England manager should try to replicate next time he decides to bring Phil Neville off the bench when there's a game of football to be won.

Nokia head beats Eminem as teenage role model

2004-06-22T09:39:00.000Z

A survey by the Design Council has revealed that teenagers rate Jorma Ollila, Chief Executive and Chairman of Nokia, as the most creative thinker of modern times.

The poll, published ahead of the council's third annual Designers Into Schools Week, asked teenagers to give creativity ratings to an assortment of influential figures. Ollila came in ahead of Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Tony Blair and Sir Richard Branson.

Ollila won him 36% of the vote, while second-placed Sir Richard Branson gained 19% and Mr Blair 8%. The people whom teenagers voted as needing the least inspiration in their careers were Timberlake and Victoria Beckham, who each won 1.5%.

Nokia bids to make Mozilla the mobile Google

2004-06-21T13:25:00.000Z

Nokia is putting its resources behind mobile phone browser project at the Mozilla Foundation in a bid to create a mobile Google.

Nokia's interest and cash are helping spur a general renaissance for the Mozilla effort. Although Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is used by about nine in 10 people who access the web over a PC, no one player yet dominates the browser market when it comes to mobile phones. Competitors include Access, InterNiche Technologies, Fusion, NexGen Software, NetClue, Openwave Systems and QNX.

Global mobile phone shipments hit around 500 million in 2003, dwarfing PC sales, which topped out at 155 million, according to research firm IDC.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 101

2004-06-18T16:06:00.000Z

The English disease has reared its ugly, little head again with punch-ups, death threats, Police involvement and chairs being hurled violently at innocent bystanders. This brings shame on all decent English people and is blight on our national character. When will it all end and normality be resumed? Will somebody have to die for us to stamp out this thuggery?

Yes, Big Brother is back... And what's more, the fifth series of the show is very, very good. Who needs Lord Of The Flies or Battle Royale when there's this lot of monsters to gawp over? Of course, it's a freak show and it's indecent and it's crass and the inmates are the worst-of-breed. But, it's absolutely hilarious and this degenerated series has completely regenerated what seemed to be a dying format.

And what a fine punch-up it was this week... except nobody saw it because Channel 4 pulled the plug for an hour. Times don't change; they did the same thing to the web feed in the first series when it looked as if Nasty Nick was going to get a hiding from whateverhisnamewas.

In the intervening four years, however, it is interesting to see how the mobile aspect of the show has evolved. In the first series the offering was distinctly lo-fi, but now viewers can vote by SMS and watch a live feed on their mobiles (fights permitting). But where's the decent mobile game?

This year's paltry offering is a puzzle game and follows other lame efforts such as Virtual Housemate where 'fans can feel the pressure akin to that of being inside the Big Brother house'. Granted that after this week's events the mobile game should be a beat-'em-up or suchlike, such a brand demands good mobile gameplay.

Maybe Endemol is missing a trick. The company could bring out a quality mobile game with animated (and familiar) housemates from the previous year's show in the run-up to the new show. This would reacquaint Big Brother fans with the format... then these fans could download a new quality mobile game on the day the show starts.

Maybe mobile gamers could even vote on which game they should download, but maybe I'm watching the show too much and it's time to put this England-victory-hangover to bed.

ELSPA Mobile Games Charts - April 2004

2004-06-18T15:28:00.000Z

1. Pac-Man - Namco

2. Tetris - iFone

3. Call of Duty - Mforma

4. FIFA 2004 - Digital Bridges

5. Tiger Woods 2004 - Digital Bridges

6. Pub Pool - IOMO

7. Worms - THQ Wireless

8. Moto GP2 - THQ Wireless

9. Solitaire - Gameloft

10. Space Invaders - Digital Bridges

* This chart is compiled using information from the UK's top four mobile operators - O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Samsung ups the ante with 20 new mobile phones

2004-06-17T10:13:00.000Z

Samsung is building on its current popularity by launching more than 20 new handsets before the end of 2004. The company is concentrating on territories such as Russia, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Samsung expects its full-year global mobile phone sales to reach more than 65 million units in 2004, an impressive increase from 55.6 million units in 2003. Like every handset manufacturer, the new model offensive will focus on clamshell phones with colour displays and integrated cameras.

Samsung boosted its share of the global mobile handset market to 12.5% in Q1 2004, up from 10.8% a year earlier, as it seeks market share from Nokia and Motorola.

Chinese mobile users close to 500 million by 2008

2004-06-16T16:18:00.000Z

The number of mobile subscribers in China will grow from 268.69 million in 2003 to 497.86 million by 2008, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 11.7%, reaching a penetration rate of 37.6%. Commercial 3G deployments will begin in 2005, and 3G subscribers will grow to 118.13 million by 2008.

China Mobile will still hold the leading position in the mobile market in terms of its large subscriber base and operation experience. China Unicom will maintain its position as the second largest carrier during this time, and 2003 and 2004 will see it improve its market share in line with the expansion of its CDMA network.

However, with the entrance of new carriers in 2004/2005, both China Mobile and China Unicom will see an erosion of their market share due to increased competition.

Source: In-Stat/MDR

The world's first mobile music service launched

2004-06-16T08:39:00.000Z

Sony Network Services Europe and PacketVideo Network Solutions (pvNS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel, have teamed up to provide the server and media player technology for Sony’s StreamMan, the world's first personal mobile music service.

Offering a wide range of music from major and independent record labels, StreamMan is a service that provides music to mobile devices over a GPRS or 3G/UMTS mobile network. StreamMan allows consumers to listen to their favorite music, discover new artists and bands tailored to their individual tastes, and also share tracks, playlists or collections with friends.

Starting today, TeliaSonera Finland is the first operator to offer StreamMan. Other European operators are expected to follow.

Mobile phone virus rears its ugly worm-head

2004-06-15T10:47:00.000Z

It's been a long time coming, but according to Russian antivirus company Kaspersky, the first smartphone worm, Cabir, is with us.

While this version of the virus poses little threat to mobile phone users, operators would be advised to take note. Cabir uses Bluetooth on Symbian phones to detect other Symbian phones and then transfers itself to the new host as a package file.

Hackers and researchers have repeatedly warned about problems with the security of the Bluetooth wireless standard. This worm, however, mostly takes advantage of the amount of trust the Symbian operating system invests in other Symbian-based smart phones.

Nokia, which took the wraps off five new phones on Monday, is in the process of buying a controlling share of Symbian, the company that licenses the operating system of the same name. Only one of the new phones runs the Symbian operating system.

Nokia cuts back on N-Gage titles

2004-06-15T10:33:00.000Z

Mobile handset manufacturer Nokia has announced will only be launching 40 new games for its N-Gage gaming platform this year.

Earlier this year, the company had announced it would have around 100 new games for the mobile gaming device.

The firm’s chief strategic officer, Matti Alahuhta, made the announcement yesterday at the annual Nokia Connection conference in Helsinki.

Vodafone and Wonderphone team up on games

2004-06-15T10:11:00.000Z

Leading European mobile entertainment publisher Wonderphone has signed a deal with Vodafone for the international distribution of its java games catalogue, which is co-published with Vivendi Universal Games International.

The global agreement will provide java games to Vodafone and its partners’ customers in 35 countries. Crash Nitro Kart™ will be the first title to benefit from this agreement and will be available exclusively through Vodafone live! in 10 countries.

Co-published in Europe by Wonderphone and Vivendi Universal Games, Crash Nitro Kart is an arcade action game that features one of video gaming’s most popular characters: Crash Bandicoot. With more than 30 million video games sold based on the licence, Crash Bandicoot will be welcomed by the mobile games communtiy.

June column for Develop magazine

2004-06-14T14:09:00.000Z

Wannabe Ferris Buellers will not be taking another day off if they go to school in South Australia. For those who are old enough to remember the 1986 film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the story of a cheeky chappy who bunks off school to enjoy a day of freedom that ends in benign chaos.

In the intervening 18 years, technology has moved on and so has the surveillance of young people. More than 20 South Australian schools now use an SMS system that automatically sends a text message to parents if their little diddums is playing truant; which serves them right for bringing guns into the classroom.

Kids, however, are better at understanding technology than anybody. In well-publicised cases in Japan and Maryland, students have recently been nabbed using SMS to 'gain an advantage' in their somewhat under-invigilated exams. And as every kid knows, for every one that's caught, they are more beating the system.

And so it goes with generating money with mobile games. For every innovative idea that drops by the wayside, there are others that are truly challenging the industry's current state of play.

One of these is obtaining mobile rights to upcoming films and bringing out 'brand-equalling' games that are synchronised with each territory's cinema and DVD release. At the moment, the idea of such synchronicity is a Nirvana that seems years away, but some mobile content providers are going ahead with the quest for the holy sale anyway.

Companies such as Mobile Scope, who recently signed a multi-title deal with Twentieth Century Fox, and Thumbworks, who own the rights to the wonder that is School of Rock, have realised this is a way forward to bring critical mass to mobile gaming.

In the console world, there have been precedents. Last year's release of Enter The Matrix saw the film and videogame released on the same day and it's not difficult to realise the sense of this. Unless the filmgoer is a complete loser and watches the film several times, the money-making potential from the film audience is finished as soon as the film is over - and the DVD release is only bought by a fraction of those who see the film.

But throw the videogame into the commercial mix while the film is still fresh in the filmgoer's mind and there's another forty quid to be made. The potential for the mobile game is even larger if it can be harnessed with a feature such as opt-in SMS to let film-goers know the game can be downloaded.

That's not to say that people will be playing the games on their mobiles as they go home from the cinema, but there's a fair chance they might take the next day off. Just like Ferris Bueller.

US woman eBays stroppy son's PlayStation

2004-06-14T13:41:00.000Z

A US woman has inflicted the ultimate punishment on her errant 13-year-old son and sold his PlayStation2 on eBay. The teen ne'er-do-well apparently ran amok in the Arkansas household after drinking his dad's booze stash.

The device in question was secured for $122.50 when the auction ended on 31 May. The cash will certainly go some way towards the parents recouping the $177 mum reckons the boy's drunken shennanigans have cost.

Source: The Register

Wet Mobs come to London

2004-06-14T12:35:00.000Z

Some Londoners are setting up a street game in London called
Damp Assassins. Participants turn up at a specified place and time with a water pistol and camera phone, and are sent 'targets' via MMS.

The game keeps going until only two are left; they duel it out, then
everyone goes to the pub. Afterwards, all the photos of people
getting dampened are posted on the website.

Full rules/locations/more details at www.dampassassins.net

Mforma pulls in $44 million funding

2004-06-14T12:12:00.000Z

MFORMA Group, a leading global provider of wireless entertainment, has raised $44 million in its first institutional round of financing co-led by General Catalyst Partners, eFund LLC, and Bessemer Venture Partners. MFORMA will use the new capital to extend its global distribution network. The company provides distribution technology, managed services, and a comprehensive catalogue of entertainment content to more than 60 of the world’s leading wireless operators.

MFORMA was founded in 2001 and established itself first in the US, then Europe, and more recently, Asia through a process of mergers and acquisitions.

According to a report by mobile industry analyst ARC Group, the global market for mobile entertainment services will reach $27 billion and have 2.5 billion users by 2008, while sales of Java-enabled handsets tripled in 2003 to reach 95.5 million units, up from 32 million in 2002. Shipments of devices embedded with Qualcomm’s BREW platform reached 11.6 million in 2003, up from 3.5 million in 2002.

Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 100

2004-06-14T11:41:00.000Z

Not everybody likes a laugh. It was Charlie Chaplin's movie portrayal of The Little Tramp that enraged transvestite/paranoid/red-baiter/FBI Chief J Edgar Hoover so much that he embarked on a 25-year smear campaign that finally ended when Chaplin was exiled to Switzerland in 1953.

Apparently, lady-boy Hoover objected to happy-go-lucky Chaplin because his films were comedies that alluded to the desperation and triumph of America's poor - an obvious breeding ground for Communism and all of those evils right-wingers attribute to it. Think Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone and you'll get the picture.

Consequently, the image of Chaplin has been jealously protected by his family and has only appeared on a limited amount of salubrious merchandise. This week, however, in one of the year's more bizarre licensing deals, the silent movie star's image is to star in a mobile game. Chaplin's company, Bubble Inc is working with Indian developers Dhruva Interactive to bring The Little Tramp to a generation who probably think Charlie Chaplin is the name of the vicar in Eastenders.

It will be interesting to see if there will be any sound in the game it being a silent movie an' all, but this deal shows how the mobile gaming genre is beginning to mature and evolve. At this week's ELSPA Games Summit, the Three Wise Mavens of Simon Dean, Tim Harrison and Alan Welsman from O2, Vodafone and Orange all enthused about mobile games, but warned people not to get too over-excited.

And they're right to do so. Multiplayer, 3D and 3G are all exciting prospects the industry has bandied about as future money spinners, but not every customer's initials are ARPU and the customer still needs to smile. Content such as Charlie Chaplin on mobile is a step in the right direction and offers mobile gamers something fresh and unique even if it is more than 70 years old.

Maybe some day soon somebody will come up with an idea for humorous mobile content that doesn't come from the movies, traditional games or TV. Then the industry really will have grown up and, unlike J Edgar Hoover, everybody will have a laugh.