The Long Tail or Not?

Great read on why one size never fits all - the one nugget of wisdom I got out of this is - make sure you have a "tail" in your strategy & execution!

GyPSii Supports Multiple Mobile Platforms

GyPSii now supports Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, Blackberry (new native version soon), iPhone and more mobile devices in Q3. Click to mobile install page for full list above.

GyPSii going multi-screen

GyPSii announces deal with Garmin - bringing mobile location based social networking to more users on navigation based solutions.

Marketing 2.0

View my page on Marketing 2.0

See how GyPSii is being used

Thanks to the students at URI for creating some great YouTube videos on GyPSii and how it is used.

GyPSii Kicks it off with a Bang

It has been a while since I posted - we have been a little busy here at GyPSii over the last 6 months as you can see below:

• CNN's Adrian Finighan:
  

  “So, what did I enjoy most? Well, meeting and interviewing Robert Redford, urbane and articulate as always, was a high point. And chatting with industry big-wigs and CEOs like Sunil Mittal of Bharti, Jim Balsillie of RIM, Samsung’s Geesung Choi. And with Dan Harple of GyPSii, a mobile social networking platform which, I’m willing to bet, will soon be as big a phenomenon as Facebook. Bigger, perhaps.”
  

  Watch CNN’s coverage of GyPSii, “Social Networking Goes Mobile,” by clicking here

GyPSii in China & at the Olympics

• GyPSii partners Shanghai Rannuo and China Unicom - for new mobile-location services at Olympics
• GyPSii goes live on Dopod Club

News & Blogs

• International Herald Tribune - "Hitting a wall in Berlin over GPS"
• Wall Street Journal - GyPSii
• Can you find me
• Phones will soon tell where you are
• SMP/Social Media Portal
• SmallBizPod #66 - Dan Harple, entrepreneurship and the mobile web

GyPSii wins prize at Navteq LBS Challenge

• Upcoming: Navigation and Location Europe 2008 Amsterdam, June 4-5
  
• Upcoming: Mobile Web 2.0 Summit 2008, London, June 11-12
• CNN - NAVTEQ Announces European Winners of Global LBS Challenge

GyPSii Place News

• "We Are Ready" - the official Beijing Olympics song on GyPSii. Think "We Are the World" populated by a panoply of Chinese stars

GyPSii goes into Public Beta

The team at GyPSii invites you to participate in the public beta access of GyPSii, a geo-location social networking, search & location based services application, one seamless experience across mobile & the web, all information in one place.

The first public open beta of GyPSii runs on Windows Mobile for Pocket Net Phones. Simply go to http://gypsii.com/m/ and download it directly to your phone.

Or alternatively go to the web at www.gypsii.com and sign in to our Webtop and download to your Windows Mobile device from there. To get a feel for GyPSii without mobile access please feel free to sign up at www.gypsii.com

GyPSii extends the social networking experience onto the mobile phone and combines it with next-generation GPS enabled location services for an entirely new mobile experience. Using GyPSii on your mobile device and PC, you and other users can share content with a geo-location, with capabilities such as:

User Generated Content

• Capture, create & geo-tag your photos, video, audio & text to create Places with location context, recorded for future easy access & sharing with you, your family and your friends
• A Personal e Diary - stored centrally for easy access with both mobile phones & on the web. Use the web & mobile device to further enhance, edit, rate and comment on yours & others' Places
• Social Networking - configure GyPSii to automatically communicate with web sites like FaceBook, Digg, Del.icio.us etc; send & share Places from your mobile device & the web to your social network groups

Real Time Friend Finder

• Find your family, friends, social networks & business associates
• View them on a map, immediately contact them via email, SMS, IM or phone

Mobile Search

• Proximity based area search, similar to a local directory search
• Find user generated content, Places and other points of interest
• Ideal for the leisurely or business user, simple & easy to use, find a point of interest or Place, and get a map to it, all within one user experience
• Share with your group or friends by simply sending the destination details

Following the Windows for Mobile roll out, we shall shortly be releasing beta access to GyPSii running on Java, Blackberry and Symbian enabled phones in the next quarter. For the best results, use a phone with built in GPS, or a GPS Receiver and a built in camera. Lot's of new features added automatically to GyPSii all the time.

We look forward to you becoming part of the GyPSii community and thank you for signing up.

The year rich mobile apps go mass market

2007 is looking like the year for rich mobile apps to go mass market - especially the US which lags Europe & Asia 3 to 5 years when it comes to wireless access, data usage, mobile marketing & useful applications, beyond basic text message (still far behind in usage if you are over 25). A convergence of some new enablers on a content, services, client access & platform level, along with better devices, & while Apple's iPhone may or may not be a mass seller it is going to raise the bar several levels on what users will expect on a mobile device, and the availability on a mass market of some key technologies that will drive location based applications and user communities. More to be revealed in the coming months - what's the bet the next MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Tabblo, 2nd Life etc ,,, will be born from the mobile sector? Not necessarily with it's core user base in the US ...

Davos Panel web 2.0 - Gates, Hurley, Fake etc ...

Google Video of the panel at Davos with Bill Gates (MS & Gates Foundation), Chad Hurley (youtube), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mike Parker (nike), Vivane Reding (eu commissioner), Dennis Kneale (forbes) and moderated by Peter Schwartz and the discussion of the future, Web 2.0 and how there are big changes in how the internet is going to be used - when you get passed some of the blatant self massaging of egos and commericals, Bill! A must see for marketing folk and anyone who plans to do business in the next few years - how the power is more and more in the customer's hand - creating a challenge for effective marketing to customers to purchase your product or service. For those who disagree, well it might be time to plan that retirement condo in Florida or Arizona!

Emerging Archiving vendor Archivas to be Acquired by Hitachi

After my recent posting on the emergence of a new set of archiving products - one Archivas is to be acquired by Hitachi Data Systems, congrats to Andres and his team over at Archivas - what is the likelhood that other pure plays like Kazeon, Permabit etc will be pursued by other storage, ILM and tier 1 players?

This is going to be the future trend in technology markets - the lessons learned by many of the larger vendors on the mid/late 90s of buy over build, is that time to market requires you to buy strategic or disruptive emerging technologies, nobody wants another BEA to happen, billion dollar player, IBM, MS, Oracle & Sun spend millions trying to catch up and get back market share at strategic parts in the techbology stack - from now on within 18 or 36 months of an emerging strategic piece of functionality the pure plays will be acquired by the larger vendors or those looking to take ownership in certain parts of the solution stack.

On another topic, watch for some disruptive vertical and point applications who have adopted the SaaS approach with more innovative pricing models, and the acceptance of the outsourced ASP model led by salesforce.com with several more to step up to the plate, this is really the hosted version of SaaS model.

Got to run - looks like my 4 year old IBM laptop is going to give up, the screen is fuzzy - excuse any typos - time to migrate to a MAC!