#good day at vcf today!

[naomithegiraffe]

well, the new monitor doesn't seem to want to display any picture, i can hear it degaussing when i power it up, but then nothing. it's a multisync with a few different inputs so i might have something set up wrong there or it might just be my cable or something, but im not super sure yet. on the upside, it looks good on my desk and serves as a great place to stick all my tiny robots, so like, def not a complete loss there at least!!

[os2warp]

vcf southeast thoughts:

wish someone would have told me there was a sportsball game today right across i285. traffic and parking were horrible.

i haven't been since 2018. in 2018 vcfse was a thing all on it's own. now it's been combined with a much larger gaming convention thing. i get how this makes sense, but now it costs 50 dollars. for one day.

vcfse was tucked away in a small room shared with the indie games people.

i didn't get many pictures, i'm not much of a picture taker. lots of interesting stuff tho. the 1960s non electronic tic tac toe machine was neat. and the early weather channel stuff.

they had all the commodores! and the commander x16 lol.

the history of the gui exibit had microsoft bob running under windows 10.

lgr is shorter in person than i expected. adrian black is taller.

there were only two commodore amigas as far as i could tell. would have love to have seen more of those.

if i had 500 dollars to spare i'd have probably come home with a data general. idk what i'd do with it, but it sure did look cool.

it was a lot of fun and i had a good time, but honestly unless there's something a lot more interesting, i may skip next year. there wasn't much different from when i saw it in 2018.

[mysynthfetish]

COVIDIOTS!

Yeah they're everywhere. Seriously though, I never thought when I was making jokes about it a few months back that it would end up as much a clusterfuck as it has. Over a million cases in the US? Over 50,000 dead there too? The school were I "work" is still closed, leaving us scrambling to come up with online stuff for the kids (hey, Japan may be really good at MAKING high-tech shit, but holy fuck on a stick are they not good at USING it). Anyway. On with the shit-show!

The latest addition to the ever-growing MFB family here. Strange little beast. Pretty big sounding for as little as it is. Mod1 in the filter section can give you FM via VCO or the typical filter sweeps via LFO. Setting the Sub OSC to Mix also spices things up considerably. I have yet to run the LFO out to the VCF In or Gate In, and I'm sure either of those will be fun things to try. How many monosynths does a person need though? Um, about that.

Yeah. First Doepfer I've owned. Dark Energy, first model. Mint condition with the box and manual. Not the cheapest thing, but I decided to put the Lyra-8 I built up on the auction so if it sells it'll make up for it and then some. If it sells... Cross your fingers. Talk about counting chickens before the eggs hatch. Anyway the Dark Energy is Very Fucking Cool. Standout features? Well first of all there are two LFOs, which is fantastic. And there are two FM sources in the filter section: Linear FM and XFM (exponential FM). FM in the VCO section as well. Also, it looks like it has only one oscillator, but there is a second one that can do triangle, sawtooth, and pulse with variable pulse width and PWM. It's got a shitload of flexibility, like selectable LFO ranges, and high/medium/low ADSR range too. And then there are the patch points... It almost gives the Kraftzwerg a run for the money. ALMOST. 3 VCOs and patch points ain't no joke. Even so, this little thing is very, very cool. Sounds YUUUUUUUGE too. I am finding myself eyeballing the Polivoks more and more these days, wondering if I will find it a new home...

Broke out this old ghost today for some fun and games. Using a 3-minute TDK endless cassette with a 3-minute long slice of audio from Michael Moore talking about feedback from his latest one, Planet of the Humans (I think it's more Jeff Gibbs than Moore but still). Interesting film, that. I wonder how much of it can be believed. Some poignant points raised, no doubt about it, but I wonder how much of it is being presented through the lens of a certain agenda. Anyway, I used the audio in this:

So today would've been the 10th Anniversary Showa Techno event, but current social situations what with the pandemic going on and all that (even though it isn't really being taken seriously by the majority of people, if the sheer number of motherfuckers I saw out and about while on my mid-morning run is an indication—I wore a mask, aaight?). But yeah no event, so I fooled around with some of the segments I had in mind to use at the show, and recorded a 25-minute live session. Seems the audio hiccups twice, once when I guess the screen saver came on, and again when I noticed and touched the magic pad to disable that shit. Next time I'll turn it bloody off. You can get more info in the video description. Fun stuff.

This is the current incarnation of the Lair of Nefarious Machinery. Things are getting a little bit out of hand. I discovered that the Aux 2 send on the mixer at top right is sending a bit of audio to the connected effects processor even when all channel sends are at zero, so that's super annoying. I thought about emailing Soundcraft and asking for repair advice as I quite like these mixers (I do have two of them after all) and losing an effects send is a big deal. No idea where to look to start troubleshooting. Don't have a schematic first of all. Any ideas? I'm all ears.

Well, that's all this time. Watch out for the Covidiots...

[lifewithanonymous]

Life‼️💯:June 30,2018🐚

Hi guys 👋‼️ How are y’all doing today? I am not doing so good. I was invited to do something on Wednesday aka July 4th. I can’t go but everybody else that was invited can 🙄🤨. It was the same thing last time also . Today I went somewhere again. Yesterday I went to the beach it was very pretty and peaceful 😊‼️ Today wasn’t so peaceful though. I was and still am very upset that I can’t go to the place I was going to go on Wednesday 🤬. This is prolly not going to be that long because I had a very irritating day. I saw fireworks 🎇 today they were very loud and pretty. But some of them scared me 😱 and they were sounding like gun shots 🔫!!! Are y’all scared of fireworks?? I’m not scared of all fireworks just the loud ones that sound like gun shots 🔫. I listened to music most of the day music calms me 😌. I love NBA Youngboy I listen to him all the time. I have certain things I listen to when I am in certain moods🤪. I love music so much I don’t know how I would live my life without music. I am still upset I can’t go where I wanted to go with my vcf’s. But bye guys ✌️ enjoy yourself always be positive, don’t let anybody stop your dreams.

[kansascityhappenings]

9/11 first responder and advocate Luis Alvarez dies at 53

https://embed-prod.vemba.io/vemba-embed.js

Luis Alvarez, a retired NYPD bomb squad detective who described for Congress his medical issues during an impassioned appeal for an extension of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, died Saturday in a hospice in New York. He was 53.

His death from complications of cancer linked to the time he spent with other first responders in the rubble at ground zero was announced in a Facebook statement from his family.

“We told him at the end that he had won this battle by the many lives he had touched by sharing his three year battle,” the statement said.

“He was at peace with that, surrounded by family. Thank you for giving us this time we have had with him, it was a blessing.”

Alvarez entered end-of-life hospice care last week.

Alvarez vowed to fight for benefits until the end

On June 11, a frail Alvarez made his way to Washington with other first responders to testify in a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing for an extension of the fund for police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers who became ill after laboring at the site of the 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attacks. He received a standing ovation that day.

“I’m now in hospice, because (there) is nothing else the doctors can do to fight the cancer,” Alvarez wrote in a Facebook post the following week.

“I’m resting and I’m at peace,” he added. “I will continue to fight until the Good Lord decides it’s time… Please take care of yourselves and each other.”

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill tweeted a photo of Alvarez Saturday with the message: “Our NYPD family & all 1st responders mourn as we remember retired NYPD Bomb Squad Det. Luis Alvarez, who passed this morning.

His strength — physical, mental & emotional — led us all, & we vow to #NeverForget him or his legacy — which was, simply, to have others do what’s right.”

Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said of Alvarez: “He exemplified the NYPD motto, “Fidelis Ad Mortem” or “Faithful Unto Death.” Detective Lou Alvarez has lost his battle with 9/11-related cancer. An inspiration, a warrior, a friend—we will carry his sword.”

‘I did not want to be anywhere else but Ground Zero’

Alvarez wrote last week that the decline in his health had nothing to do with the trip to Washington. But organizers said the trip is a struggle for ailing first responders like the former detective.

Some lawmakers on the panel did not show up for the hearing this month, leading to a fiery speech from comedian and fund proponent Jon Stewart.

“As I sit here today, I can’t help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to,” Stewart said.

Alvarez, speaking slowly, told lawmakers in the room that he planned to get his 69th round of chemotherapy the next day.

“You made me come down here the day before my 69th round of chemo, and I’m going to make sure that you never forget to take care of the 9/11 responders,” he said.

“We were there with one mission, and we left after completing that mission,” he said. “I have been to many places in this world and done many things, but I can tell you that I did not want to be anywhere else but Ground Zero when I was there.”

He added, “Now that the 9/11 illnesses have taken many of us, we are all worried about our children and spouses and our families if we are not here.”

Last week, Alvarez posted on Facebook that a nurse noticed he was disoriented when he went for chemo treatment. Tests then revealed that his liver had completely shut down because of his tumors, he said.

“So now I’m resting and I’m at peace. I will continue to fight until the Good Lord decides it’s time,” he wrote. “I will try to do a few more interviews to keep a light on our fight for the VCF benefits we all justly deserve. Please take care of yourselves and each other.”

More than 12,500 cases of cancer diagnosed

The fund Alvarez and others fought for was created in the months following the 2001 attacks and was initially active for two years, paying more than $7 billion relating to injuries and deaths caused by the 9/11 attacks.

But first responders who spent weeks at the site breathing in noxious air clouded with debris from the collapsed buildings — after New York and federal officials told them it was safe — have since been diagnosed with a variety of debilitating illnesses and cancers.

Congress and President Barack Obama agreed in 2010 to pay their medical costs, reopened the fund and set aside $2.7 billion to pay victims just learning about chronic health problems resulting from their work in 2001. In 2012, the government determined that cancers can be compensated as part of the fund.

It wasn’t nearly enough money, however, and in 2015 Congress added $4.6 billion in funding, along with new controls and limits on some payments. The special master who administers the fund anticipates that total payouts for claims filed before the measure expires in 2020 could be far higher: $11.6 billion, if a current uptick in claims — largely caused by an increase in serious illnesses and deaths — continues.

The current proposal to permanently extend the fund would authorize it through 2089. It has plenty of support in the House, where it passed the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Mitch McConnell indicated that Congress would address the fund.

As of May, more than 12,500 cases of cancer had also been diagnosed, according to The World Trade Center Health Program, a separate health care program related to the victim fund run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most diagnosed ailments are upper and lower respiratory issues like asthma, gastrointestinal problems like reflux, musculoskeletal disorders and mental health conditions.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/06/29/911-first-responder-and-advocate-luis-alvarez-dies-at-53/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/9-11-first-responder-and-advocate-luis-alvarez-dies-at-53/

[manishdwibedy]

9 paid iPhone apps on sale for free right now • Apple fans, we’ve got good news and bad news for you today. The bad news is that you only have two more roundups of paid iPhone and iPad apps on sale for free to enjoy this year. • But the good news is there will be plenty more to enjoy beginning as soon as 2018 arrives on Monday. In the meantime, check out today’s nine best premium apps on sale for free. • Drinking Calculator Drinking calculator is designed to calculate the amount of alcohol you can take today to be under the limit the next day by a given time. • Gif Me! Camera Gif Me! is the best way to create and share short video in animated GIF or MP4. • WorkBreaker WorkBreaker is a simple, but beautiful work timer, that will make you more productive and stay healthy with its highly customizable options! • Transcends Transcends is a success and motivation tool that helps all of us stay focused on our goals. With occasional reminders, it keeps us motivated to work towards accomplishing the goals. • FrameLapse Pro Make every moment of your life an instant moving picture. Create stunning time-lapses and stop motion videos, and share them with your friends. • MCBackup – My Contact Backup MCXontact – My Contacts Backup is the easiest way to backup your contacts all from your phone without needing a computer or synchronization. You can backup all your contacts with a two touch and send them to yourself as a .vcf and .csv and share easily. • Yomiwa Japanese Dictionary Yomiwa is a fast and complete offline Japanese dictionary, including all modern features. Yomiwa also comes with powerful Character Recognition technology (OCR) which lets you translate Japanese into many target languages with your camera. • • • Check out our partner @technologyofhumanity for more tech updates (at University of Southern California)

[myupdatesystems-blog]

Practical Mobile Marketing

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/practical-mobile-marketing/

Practical Mobile Marketing

In this article, we are going to describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing in the near future.

The hands-on experience is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU (www.infonu.com). InfoNU is a free web-based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:

Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons

Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games

Push links to mobile websites

Create and schedule mobile campaigns

Sign up and manage consumers

Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost

View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users

As in all sectors in explosive growth, bright people gravitate towards mobile marketing, create start-up companies, offer solutions and unfortunately also create a big creative mess full of definitions, standards, ideas, and solutions. This article series is the authors attempt to untangle the web of technologies into easy-to-use patterns you can use in your everyday marketing of your brand, company, products and services.

The second part of this article is planned. In Part 2 we will take a closer look at advanced concepts in mobile marketing like tailor-made mobile applications and mobile community services.

Permission Marketing and What Mobile Marketing is NOT

A mobile phone is a highly personal communication device. Mobile marketing is not about spamming uninterested people with irrelevant SMS messages at 2:00 am. Marketers have to respect this. Never send messages to someone without having their permission. Sending unsolicited SMS messages to people is not good marketing. Aside from the ethical aspect of spam, it does not work and costs you a lot of money. Do not do it.

Marketing activities that depend on the permission of the consumer are referred to as permission marketing and are central to mobile marketing. Embrace permission marketing and protect your list of consumers, it is the people who have given you permission to speak.

The Mobile Marketing Dance

Instead of sending unsolicited SMS messages, the trick in mobile marketing is to persuade people to sign up for your service and then to find a balance between providing sales driving information and offering value so that your customers are both informed and happy.

How to Persuade People to Sign Up for Your Service

What can you offer that makes your consumers accept the commercial side of your company? Here are a few suggestions:

Promote the following message by printing it on your packaged goods: Text COCACOLA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). The first 100 people to text us will win a free subscription to Coca-Cola magazine. After you received 100 replies, call up the winners and get their address.

Promote the following message on billboards, posters, banners or signs around your town: Text WHEATIES to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new ringtone.

Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ABBA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song.

Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ROXETTE to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new video.

Promote the following text on your website: Do you want information about us in your mobile? Click on this link and enter your contact details.

Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text ARMANI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and win a trip for two to Paris. The winner will be notified the 16’th of August.

Promote the following text in your radio commercials: Text ATARI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and get Pac-Man to your phone.

Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text MCDONALDS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to claim your 10% discount coupon.

In other words: Send something back as a Thank you for signing up. Give your new user something for free. Give your new user a possibility to win something nice. At least a thank you SMS.

To configure InfoNU so that you automatically send something back when new consumers sign up to your service, log on to your InfoNU account, select Settings in the Intranet Home menu followed by SMS Signup settings, click on Details for your code word and enable Respond automatically with an SMS message. You can send back an SMS message, mobile content like images, video, and music, a link to your mobile website or a Java application.

To integrate your own website with InfoNU as in the fifth example above, select Help in the Intranet Home menu followed by Integrate InfoNU and click on Generate Link.

File Formats to Use when Distributing Mobile Content

Since virtually all mobile phones support SMS messaging, sending SMS messages is the simplest and most reliable way to come across to mobiles. SMS messages are as we all know limited to 160 characters but can contain links to mobile content.

All mobile phones do not support the same media formats. If you have no prior knowledge about your consumer’s phones but still want to reach the biggest possible audience, use to the following file formats:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Images, Portable network graphics, .png

Sound, MP3 songs, .mp3

Video, 3GPP video 3gp

Ringtones Midi music .mid

This list of file formats comes from analyzing mobile phones produced by the biggest manufacturers and ranking the phones after how common each phone is in practice.

Three other interesting file formats can be used for more specialized tasks:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Visiting cards and address book entries, vCard, .vcf

Calendar entries, vCard, .vcs

Java games, Java application descriptor files, .jad

Distributing links to mobile content with InfoNU is performed in the exact same way regardless of file format: You log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload the content from your PC to your InfoNU account. To distribute the content to a single person, click that person’s Communicate link. Make sure that Upload is selected as Type of Content.

If you want to send an SMS message to many people, create a campaign by clicking on Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu followed by a New campaign. With InfoNU, you can also schedule campaigns to be run at a specific date and time. Go to Campaigns and click on Schedule campaign to define the start date of your campaign.

A Catalogue of Mobile Marketing Patterns

After your user signed up for your service, his/hers mobile phone transforms into an excellent communication channel. This section lists proven marketing methods for you to reuse:

Task: Inform customers about new products and updates, new offers and relevant company news.

Solution: Send an SMS message at an appropriate time with the information.

Note: To know when to send your message, ask yourself the following two questions: When is this information relevant to my mobile user? When will the message have the biggest impact? If you are selling umbrellas, sending your message when your customer is outside your store on his way home and it is raining outside might be a good idea. When is it not a good idea to send a message? At night? In the morning?

InfoNU supports sending personalized SMS messages. By using the tags FirstName, LastName, and Mobile in your SMS text, you can personalize the message with the recipient’s name and mobile phone number.

Task: Promote your rock groups new album.

Solution: Promote the following message: Text THECHAINSAWS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song. Follow up by sending an SMS message to everyone who signed up when your new album is released.

Note: Distributing video to mobile phones is possible today but do not expect top quality and do not expect to send out more than 10 seconds. Advances in mobile streaming technologies will make longer video transmissions possible in a few years.

To distribute a song to mobile phones convert it to a .mp3-file, log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload your song from your PC to your InfoNU account. You can distribute the song either to an individual person or create a campaign to send content to large groups of fans.

Task: You have a nice jingle that you would like to be recognized in the metro.

Solution: Produce a ringtone and send it to your consumers for free.

Task: Increase sales by distributing a mobile coupon to your customers.

Solution: Send out the following SMS message to your consumers: Here is your coupon for the movie. Show this message and get two tickets for the price of one. A43-K32-F83.

To create SMS coupons with InfoNU, use the Coupon tag in your SMS text. InfoNU will automatically create the coupon text for you. To view coupons and its owners, select Mobile Users and click on Mobile coupons.

Task: Get new customers by using viral marketing.

Solution: Create an SMS campaign with the following text: Welcome to Marty’s Bar. This is your VIP pass. Show this message and get a free beer. Feel free to send this message to your friends.

Task: You want to create an SMS newsletter that is delivered once a day.

Solution: Create several days of SMS campaigns with your content. Schedule the campaigns so that one is run every week.

To schedule a campaign to be run at a specific day, log on to your InfoNU account, select Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu and click on Campaign schedule.

Task: You are having an event together with all your employees and customers.

Solution: Send out an invitation as an SMS message one week before the event. Send an SMS message the day before to remind everybody. Schedule SMS messages to be sent during the event to synchronize people. Send out an event the day after the event to say thank you and to follow up.

But…Have we Invested in a WAP Site?

If your company has a mobile website or a WAP site, use SMS messaging to simplify access to your site. Send an SMS message with a link to your site. To visit your site, your consumer simply opens the SMS message and does not have to enter your URL address on the mobile phone:

Task: Promote your mobile website and make it easier to access.

Solution: Add the following text to your website: Mobile Access At All Times. Get our news on your mobile. Text REUTERS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). Send back an SMS message that contains a link to your mobile website. Your consumers can access your site by opening your SMS message instead of entering the URL address on the handset.

To distribute a link to your mobile web or WAP page, create a text file that contains the URL to your site, save the file with a .lnk file extension and upload the .lnk-file to your InfoNU account. To automatically send back the link, select Configure Settings, SMS Signup settings so that people receive your .lnk file as a response when they sign up to your service.

The Future of Mobile Marketing

Handset manufacturers are now working hard to unify the user experience on mobile phones. This will make Java applications and mobile web pages look and feel the same way regardless of handset manufacturer.

Manufacturers are also implementing a video compression standard called h.264. This compression technique is twice as efficient as the one used today. If you ever have tried video calls and been disappointed, expect to experience higher image quality within a year or two. The h.264 compression technique will be used for video calls, mobile-TV (in the standard called DVB-H) and for video streaming. The telecommunication industry believes that h.264 will make video calls and mobile video streaming useful in practice.

[baburaja97-blog]

New Post has been published on Vin Zite

New Post has been published on https://vinzite.com/practical-mobile-marketing/

Practical Mobile Marketing

In this article, we are going to describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing in the near future.

The hands-on experience is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU (www.infonu.com). InfoNU is a free web-based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:

Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons

Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games

Push links to mobile websites

Create and schedule mobile campaigns

Sign up and manage consumers

Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost

View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users

As in all sectors in explosive growth, bright people gravitate towards mobile marketing, create start-up companies, offer solutions and unfortunately also create a big creative mess full of definitions, standards, ideas, and solutions. This article series is the authors attempt to untangle the web of technologies into easy-to-use patterns you can use in your everyday marketing of your brand, company, products and services.

The second part of this article is planned. In Part 2 we will take a closer look at advanced concepts in mobile marketing like tailor-made mobile applications and mobile community services.

Permission Marketing and What Mobile Marketing is NOT

A mobile phone is a highly personal communication device. Mobile marketing is not about spamming uninterested people with irrelevant SMS messages at 2:00 am. Marketers have to respect this. Never send messages to someone without having their permission. Sending unsolicited SMS messages to people is not good marketing. Aside from the ethical aspect of spam, it does not work and costs you a lot of money. Do not do it.

Marketing activities that depend on the permission of the consumer are referred to as permission marketing and are central to mobile marketing. Embrace permission marketing and protect your list of consumers, it is the people who have given you permission to speak.

The Mobile Marketing Dance

Instead of sending unsolicited SMS messages, the trick in mobile marketing is to persuade people to sign up for your service and then to find a balance between providing sales driving information and offering value so that your customers are both informed and happy.

How to Persuade People to Sign Up for Your Service

What can you offer that makes your consumers accept the commercial side of your company? Here are a few suggestions:

Promote the following message by printing it on your packaged goods: Text COCACOLA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). The first 100 people to text us will win a free subscription to Coca-Cola magazine. After you received 100 replies, call up the winners and get their address.

Promote the following message on billboards, posters, banners or signs around your town: Text WHEATIES to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new ringtone.

Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ABBA to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song.

Promote the following message with an ad in your favorite newspaper: Text ROXETTE to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new video.

Promote the following text on your website: Do you want information about us in your mobile? Click on this link and enter your contact details.

Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text ARMANI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and win a trip for two to Paris. The winner will be notified the 16’th of August.

Promote the following text in your radio commercials: Text ATARI to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) and get Pac-Man to your phone.

Promote the following text in your TV commercials: Text MCDONALDS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to claim your 10% discount coupon.

In other words: Send something back as a Thank you for signing up. Give your new user something for free. Give your new user a possibility to win something nice. At least a thank you SMS.

To configure InfoNU so that you automatically send something back when new consumers sign up to your service, log on to your InfoNU account, select Settings in the Intranet Home menu followed by SMS Signup settings, click on Details for your code word and enable Respond automatically with an SMS message. You can send back an SMS message, mobile content like images, video, and music, a link to your mobile website or a Java application.

To integrate your own website with InfoNU as in the fifth example above, select Help in the Intranet Home menu followed by Integrate InfoNU and click on Generate Link.

File Formats to Use when Distributing Mobile Content

Since virtually all mobile phones support SMS messaging, sending SMS messages is the simplest and most reliable way to come across to mobiles. SMS messages are as we all know limited to 160 characters but can contain links to mobile content.

All mobile phones do not support the same media formats. If you have no apriori knowledge about your consumer’s phones but still want to reach the biggest possible audience, use to the following file formats:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Images, Portable network graphics, .png

Sound, MP3 songs, .mp3

Video, 3GPP video 3gp

Ringtones Midi music .mid

This list of file formats comes from analyzing mobile phones produced by the biggest manufacturers and ranking the phones after how common each phone is in practice.

Three other interesting file formats can be used for more specialized tasks:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Visiting cards and address book entries, vCard, .vcf

Calendar entries, vCard, .vcs

Java games, Java application descriptor files, .jad

Distributing links to mobile content with InfoNU is performed in the exact same way regardless of file format: You log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload the content from your PC to your InfoNU account. To distribute the content to a single person, click that person’s Communicate link. Make sure that Upload is selected as Type of Content.

If you want to send an SMS message to many people, create a campaign by clicking on Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu followed by a New campaign. With InfoNU, you can also schedule campaigns to be run at a specific date and time. Go to Campaigns and click on Schedule campaign to define the start date of your campaign.

A Catalogue of Mobile Marketing Patterns

After your user signed up for your service, his/hers mobile phone transforms into an excellent communication channel. This section lists proven marketing methods for you to reuse:

Task: Inform customers about new products and updates, new offers and relevant company news.

Solution: Send an SMS message at an appropriate time with the information.

Note: To know when to send your message, ask yourself the following two questions: When is this information relevant to my mobile user? When will the message have the biggest impact? If you are selling umbrellas, sending your message when your customer is outside your store on his way home and it is raining outside might be a good idea. When is it not a good idea to send a message? At night? In the morning?

InfoNU supports sending personalized SMS messages. By using the tags FirstName, LastName, and Mobile in your SMS text, you can personalize the message with the recipient’s name and mobile phone number.

Task: Promote your rock groups new album.

Solution: Promote the following message: Text THECHAINSAWS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song. Follow up by sending an SMS message to everyone who signed up when your new album is released.

Note: Distributing video to mobile phones is possible today but do not expect top quality and do not expect to send out more than 10 seconds. Advances in mobile streaming technologies will make longer video transmissions possible in a few years.

To distribute a song to mobile phones convert it to a .mp3-file, log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload your song from your PC to your InfoNU account. You can distribute the song either to an individual person or create a campaign to send content to large groups of fans.

Task: You have a nice jingle that you would like to be recognized in the metro.

Solution: Produce a ringtone and send it to your consumers for free.

Task: Increase sales by distributing a mobile coupon to your customers.

Solution: Send out the following SMS message to your consumers: Here is your coupon for the movie. Show this message and get two tickets for the price of one. A43-K32-F83.

To create SMS coupons with InfoNU, use the Coupon tag in your SMS text. InfoNU will automatically create the coupon text for you. To view coupons and its owners, select Mobile Users and click on Mobile coupons.

Task: Get new customers by using viral marketing.

Solution: Create an SMS campaign with the following text: Welcome to Marty’s Bar. This is your VIP pass. Show this message and get a free beer. Feel free to send this message to your friends.

Task: You want to create an SMS newsletter that is delivered once a day.

Solution: Create several days of SMS campaigns with your content. Schedule the campaigns so that one is run every week.

To schedule a campaign to be run at a specific day, log on to your InfoNU account, select Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu and click on Campaign schedule.

Task: You are having an event together with all your employees and customers.

Solution: Send out an invitation as an SMS message one week before the event. Send an SMS message the day before to remind everybody. Schedule SMS messages to be sent during the event to synchronize people. Send out an event the day after the event to say thank you and to follow up.

But…Have we Invested in a WAP Site?

If your company has a mobile website or a WAP site, use SMS messaging to simplify access to your site. Send an SMS message with a link to your site. To visit your site, your consumer simply opens the SMS message and does not have to enter your URL address on the mobile phone:

Task: Promote your mobile website and make it easier to access.

Solution: Add the following text to your website: Mobile Access At All Times. Get our news on your mobile. Text REUTERS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). Send back an SMS message that contains a link to your mobile website. Your consumers can access your site by opening your SMS message instead of entering the URL address on the handset.

To distribute a link to your mobile web or WAP page, create a text file that contains the URL to your site (i.e the text, save the file with a .lnk file extension and upload the .lnk-file to your InfoNU account. To automatically send back the link, select Configure Settings, SMS Signup settings so that people receive your .lnk file as a response when they sign up to your service.

The Future of Mobile Marketing

Handset manufacturers are now working hard to unify the user experience on mobile phones. This will make Java applications and mobile web pages look and feel the same way regardless of handset manufacturer.

Manufacturers are also implementing a video compression standard called h.264. This compression technique is twice as efficient as the one used today. If you ever have tried video calls and been disappointed, expect to experience higher image quality within a year or two. The h.264 compression technique will be used for video calls, mobile-TV (in the standard called DVB-H) and for video streaming. The telecommunication industry believes that h.264 will make video calls and mobile video streaming useful in practice.

[netmaddy-blog]

Practical Mobile Marketing

New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/practical-mobile-marketing/

Practical Mobile Marketing

Now, we are going to describe powerful mobile marketing methods you can implement in just a few minutes. We will investigate what the industry and the technology allow us to do today, how to persuade people to sign up for your service and which file formats to use when you deliver your content. We will also take a sneak peek on what will happen with mobile marketing in the near future.

The hands-on experience is based on solving marketing problems with the help of InfoNU (www.infonu.com). InfoNU is a free web-based mobile mass communication platform that supports the latest trends in mobile marketing. With InfoNU you can:

Send SMS messages such as personalized alerts and mobile coupons

Push mobile content like banners, mp3-songs, ringtones, video clips, visiting cards and java games

Push links to mobile websites

Create and schedule mobile campaigns

Sign up and manage consumers

Get your own icon next to the address book and calendar to publish mobile content without cost

View statistics on how mobile marketing efforts are received by users

As in all sectors in explosive growth, bright people gravitate towards mobile marketing, create start-up companies, offer solutions and unfortunately also create a big creative mess full of definitions, standards, ideas and solutions. This article series is the authors attempt to untangle the web of technologies into easy-to-use patters you can use in your everyday marketing of your brand, company, products and services.

A second part of this article is planned. In Part 2 we will take a closer look at advanced concepts in mobile marketing like tailor-made mobile applications and mobile community services Try Know.

Permission Marketing and What Mobile Marketing is NOT

A mobile phone is a highly personal communication device. Mobile marketing is not about spamming uninterested people with irrelevant SMS messages at 2:00 am. Marketers have to respect this. Never send messages to someone without having their permission. Sending unsolicited SMS messages to people is not good marketing. Aside from the ethical aspect of spam, it does not work and costs you a lot of money. Do not do it.

Marketing activities that depends on the permission of the consumer is referred to as permission marketing and is central to mobile marketing. Embrace permission marketing and protect your list of consumers, it is the people who have given you permission to speak.

The Mobile Marketing Dance

Instead of sending unsolicited SMS messages, the trick in mobile marketing is to persuade people to sign up for your service and then to find a balance between providing sales driving information and offering value so that your customers are both informed and happy.

How to Persuade People to Sign Up for Your Service

What can you offer that makes your consumers accept the commercial side of your company? Here are a few suggestions:

In other words: Send something back as a Thank you for signing up. Give your new user something for free. Give your new user a possibility to win something nice. At least a thank you SMS.

To configure InfoNU so that you automatically send something back when new consumers sign up to your service, log on to your InfoNU account, select Settings in the Intranet Home menu followed by SMS Signup settings, click on Details for your code word and enable Respond automatically with an SMS message. You can send back an SMS message, mobile content like images, video and music, a link to your mobile web site or a Java application.

To integrate your own web site with InfoNU as in the fifth example above, select Help in the Intranet Home menu followed by Integrate InfoNU and click on Generate Link.

File Formats to Use when Distributing Mobile Content

Since virtually all mobile phones support SMS messaging, sending SMS messages is the simplest and most reliable way to come across to mobiles. SMS messages are as we all know limited to 160 characters but can contain links to mobile content.

All mobile phones does not support the same media formats. If you have no a-priori knowledge about your consumers phones but still want to reach the biggest possible audience, use to the following file formats:

Media, File Format,File Extension

Images, Portable network graphics, .png

Sound, MP3 songs, .mp3

Video, 3GPP video 3gp

Ringtones Midi music .mid

This list of file formats comes from analyzing mobile phones produced by the biggest manufacturers and ranking the phones after how common each phone is in practice.

Three other interesting file formats can be used for more specialized tasks:

Media, File Format, File Extension

Visiting cards and address book entries, vCard, .vcf

Calendar entries, vCard, .vcs

Java games, Java application descriptor files, .jad

Distributing links to mobile content with InfoNU is performed in the exact same way regardless of file format: You log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload the content from your PC to your InfoNU account. To distribute the content to a single person, click that person’s Communicate link. Make sure that Upload is selected as Type of Content.

If you want to send an SMS message to many people, create a campaign by clicking on Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu followed by New campaign. With InfoNU, you can also schedule campaigns to be run at a specific date and time. Go to Campaigns and click on Schedule campaign to define the start date of your campaign.

A Catalogue of Mobile Marketing Patterns

After your user signed up for your service, his/hers mobile phone transforms into an excellent communication channel. This section lists proven marketing methods for you to reuse:

Task: Inform customers about new products and updates, new offers and relevant company news.

Solution: Send an SMS message at an appropriate time with the information.

Note: To know when to send your message, ask yourself the following two questions: When is this information relevant to my mobile user? When will the message have the biggest impact? If you are selling umbrellas, sending your message when your customer is outside your store on his way home and it is raining outside might be a good idea. When is it not a good idea to send a message? At night? In the morning?

InfoNU supports sending personalized SMS messages. By using the tags FirstName, LastName, and Mobile in your SMS text, you can personalize the message with the recipients name and mobile phone number.

Task: Promote your rock groups new album.

Solution: Promote the following message: Text THECHAINSAWS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost) to get our new song. Follow up by sending an SMS message to everyone who signed up when your new album is released.

Note: Distributing video to mobile phones is possible today but do not expect top quality and do not expect to send out more than 10 seconds. Advances in mobile streaming technologies will make longer video transmissions possible in a few years.

To distribute a song to mobile phones convert it to an .mp3-file, log on to your InfoNU account, select Uploads and upload your song from your PC to your InfoNU account. You can distribute the song either to an individual person or create a campaign to send content to large groups of fans.

Task: You have a nice jingle that you would like to be recognized in the metro.

Solution: Produce a ringtone and send it to your consumers for free.

Task: Increase sales by distributing a mobile coupon to your customers.

Solution: Send out the following SMS message to your consumers: Here is your coupon for the movie. Show this message and get two tickets for the price of one. A43-K32-F83.

To create SMS coupons with InfoNU, use the Coupon tag in your SMS text. InfoNU will automatically create the coupon text for you. To view coupons and its owners, select Mobile Users and click on Mobile coupons.

Task: Get new customers by using viral marketing.

Solution: Create an SMS campaign with the following text: Welcome to Marty’s Bar. This is your VIP pass. Show this message and get a free beer. Feel free to send this message to your friends.

Task: You want to create an SMS newsletter that is delivered once a day.

Solution: Create several days of SMS campaigns with your content. Schedule the campaigns so that one is run every week.

To schedule a campaign to be run at a specific day, log on to your InfoNU account, select Campaigns in the Intranet Home menu and click on Campaign schedule.

——————————————————————-

Task: You are having an event together with all your employees and customers.

Solution: Send out an invitation as an SMS message one week before the event. Send an SMS message the day before to remind everybody. Schedule SMS messages to be sent during the event to sychronize people. Send out an event the day after the event to say thank you and to follow up.

But…We have Invested in a WAP Site?

If your company has a mobile web site or a WAP site, use SMS messaging to simplify access to your site. Send an SMS message with a link to your site. To visit your site, your consumer simply opens the SMS message and does not have to enter your URL address on the mobile phone:

Task: Promote your mobile web site and make it easier to access.

Solution: Add the following text to your web site: Mobile Access At All Times. Get our news on your mobile. Text REUTERS to +44 77 86 202 988 (normal SMS cost). Send back an SMS message that contains a link to your mobile web site. Your consumers can access your site by opening your SMS message instead of entering the URL address on the handset.

To distribute a link to your mobile web or WAP page, create a text file that contains the URL to your site (i.e the text http://wap.sl.se), save the file with a .lnk file extension and upload the .lnk-file to your InfoNU account. To automatically send back the link, select Configure Settings, SMS Signup settings so that people receive your .lnk file as a response when they sign up to your service.

The Future of Mobile Marketing

Handset manufacturers are now working hard to unify the user experience on mobile phones. This will make Java applications and mobile web pages look and feel the same way regardless of handset manufacturer.

Manufacturers are also implementing a video compression standard called h.264. This compression technique is twice as efficient as the one used today. If you ever have tried video calls and been disappointed, expect to experience higher image quality within a year or two. The h.264 compression technique will be used for video calls, mobile-TV (in the standard called DVB-H) and for video streaming. The telecommunication industry believes that h.264 will make video calls and mobile video streaming useful in practice.