Send me a video message

Here is a free, easy and open-to-anyone video messaging service called replybutton.com which I use all the time to stay in touch with my folks back home while I am out here in Japan. I love getting goofy videos from my bro who is totally comfortable with the whole online-lifestyle, I also get the occasional message from my mum which is really special.

cellsuite has moved to cellsuite.jp

Yes its true we have a new home now at http://cellsuite.jp

e-learning on your mobile phone

I have always been intrigued by the potential for e-learning on the mobile phone, it just seems to be a perfect medium for taking bite-sized lessons when you have nothing better to do, and I can easily see the day when salary men are swatting up for their MBA whilst taking the train to work or students are cramming for their physics finals on the bus to school.

Well that day is getting closer now, for the Japanese anyhow, as AU have launched a new service on their ezweb portal for delivering lessons directly to the mobile phone.

The service is called 'manabi' and so far has four lesson packs available which mainly focus on learning English which is a national passtime of the Japanese at the moment.

The packs contain short lessons and quizes to test your knowledge and feature a fair splattering of colorful characters and cuteness.

With a monthly revenue stream for subscriptions this may prove to be a lucrative gap in the market. Watch this space for more details.

Japan vodafone concept mobile phones

If you want to see some very nice concept phones that are on the cards from Vodafone then you need to see this nice flash driven site.

http://www.vodafone.jp/designfile/

It is a classy site and the phones look great, my personal favorite is the 'wallet', which I think blends the normally hard, high-tech mobile phone into an elegant style accessory.

The flash is a bit hard to navigate but is definitely worth a look.

Hint: If the music annoys you then do switch it off on the first screen before launching the flash.

Easy to use mobile phone RSS reader - FREE and SIMPLE

Today I am launching the first draft of my mobile RSS reader service: pixs.jp, and I would be grateful for any feedback you might have if you try using it.

I have been interested in a simple way of implementing a mobile internet site with contemporary content and have found that the easiest way to do this is by formatting the vast amount of RSS feeds availably into a format readable by mobile phones. It is a simple idea but so far I haven't found a site doing it in quite the same way as me.

This project started out as a way for me to get the western content that I like reading onto my mobile phone here in Japan. There are plenty of mobile sites here but few that cater for the English reading market so I decided to make my own. Since I made the service, me and my friends have found it extremely useful so I have decided to publicise it with a mind to making it into a bigger system.

The service is free and will remain free. If one day I can find a way to spin money off the top of it then I might do that, however, the content will never be affected as a result so I hope people will find it a useful day to day tool.

If you have any feeds you would like to see on the directory then please submit them, I will vet them of course as I don't want anything unsavoury appearing on my site, not that I am suggesting that you, my dear readers, would do something like that, but hey, there are plenty of weirdos out there.

And if you have any suggestions or find any bugs, or if the system doesn't work on your handset then please leave me a comment on this site. I will find it which ever post you choose to make the comment on so please don't be shy, it will help to grow this into a useful service for everyone.

So what are you waiting for? Point your phone to this address : http://www.pixs.jp

If the beta is successful I will put up a .com and .co.uk mirror to speed up the accesses for you guys outside of Japan.

Thanks for your support.

Marcus.

HDML is dead long live HDML

I have decided that HDML is more trouble than it is worth, so I will not bother with supporting it with the newest system I am working on.

I'm basing this wide-sweeping judgment on the fact that HDML was introduced to solve the problem of low-bandwidth broadcasting of web content by pushing a few worth of text in one request. Now that the networks are progressing and the bandwidth is increasing I think the problem will disappear and people are not going to bother writing pages in this archaic format.

The problem with it, to be frank, is that it is a complete pig and complains too much when you get the syntax wrong. Other than that I really do not want to keep remembering how to create an anchor tag needing 'labels' and 'targets' so I have decided to dis-own the language.

General Mobile phone news

OK I am feeling a bit lazy today so I am going to just point you in the direction of a really interesting article on Wired.com that talks about the future of mobile phone usage in the west.

I am not sure I agree with the comments about the expansion of the 'video on phone' market just yet, the feeling I have been getting is that the quality and content of most pilot schemes have failed to attract any serious usage.

Give it a few more years and I am sure the mini-break video clip will become popular.

Then again, that's just my opinion.