A newly launched social network came to my attention today. The service, Pixophone, allows people to share the photos they took with their mobile phone camera. This isn’t a new idea, but Pixophone is trying to differentiate itself by claiming a more artistic content. Pixophone promises that in the near future it will provide prizes for the best photos it posts. This started me thinking about art and whether mobile phone pictures can be art or not.

Defining art may be a fool’s errand, but I need some kind of starting point. Art can’t be for a purely commercial purpose. Soup can labels aren’t art but a painting of a soup can label may be. An art piece requires some sort of craft. A random pile of beer cans isn’t art, although an artist who intentionally piles the same cans with intent can be art. And finally, art should evoke some sort of insight or emotion. It needs to tell a story. Sometimes the story stimulates the intellect and sometimes it touches the emotions. A piece of art that can juggle all these things well is good art.

Pictures taken with a mobile phone camera can be art, given the parameters I set above. But can a Site like Pixophone gather enough artistic photos for a gallery? None of the pictures I saw posted showed much craft or stimulated me in anyway. To be fair, it just launched, so in the future some great photos may be posted. But I’m not convinced the general public has enough artistic education to create pictures worthy of being called art. I may sound snobbish and so be it. That’s what I think. There are some online galleries that require the artists to pay a fee to post their work. Pixophone is going in the opposite direction and I predict that almost all of photos sent to them will only be interesting to the people who took them.

If you think you are an artist with a mobile phone camera, post some stuff on Pixophone. Prove me wrong. You may win a prize, get discovered, and end up in a New York or Paris museum of art. Remember, as technology marches along, it pushes the edges of artistic expression into unforeseen territory.

Pixophone

Each week MobileCrunchArcade compiles the biggest news from the world of mobile gaming.

This Week’s Headlines: GOSUB Goes for the Bullseye; I-play Rolls Out Q4 Line Up; Eidos Lights the Way; Castlevania: Order of Shadows Now Available; D3Publisher Developing Connected Games With SNAP Mobile Platform; Artificial Life(like) Top Model; Alltel Customers Can Now Axcess Games

(more…)

Apple announced today that iPhone customers who use programs to unlock their handsets may cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software when Apple supplied software is updated, and an upgrade is coming this week. Users who make unauthorized changes to the iPhone software violate their software license agreement and void the warranty. Those people who gleefully unlocked their iPhones over the last couple of months may feel like they have been keel-hauled in a few days.

MobileCrunch reported last month that, Pirates take iPhone as a Prize. Summer news stories reported about teens and others who had created innovative ways to unlock the iPhone so users wouldn’t be bound to an exclusive contract with AT&T. I predicted that Apple would find ways to fight back and today’s warning may be a shot across the bow.

Apple is saying that this latest development has nothing to do with proactively disabling pirated phones, but that it is an unfortunate consequence connected to updating software. A skeptical public may find this hard to believe. There is no evidence to show that Apple is actively trying to shutdown modified iPhones, but I’m sure many people don’t believe Apple.

A warning may be all Apple needs to prevent people from modifying the iPhone. Proactively disabling pirated phones would be like sweeping the deck with grapeshot. You hit the pirates but leave a terrible mess for someone to cleanup. Apple wants to create good-will with the public and a shot across the bow may be all the powder the company needs.

Apple

Emdigo announced that NFL Team Tailgate 3D is now available to Verizon Wireless and Alltel Communications customers. If you are a true football fanatic, Tailgate 3D is the application for you. Users can show the world that they aren’t just fair weather fans.

All 32 professional teams and their players are featured on Team Tailgate. Users can get their favorite players to perform videogame quality animations such as taunts, big hits and end zone celebrations whenever the phone is opened. Players will throw, catch and kick in a variety of 3D animations. New content and animations are downloaded automatically twice a month so the animation doesn’t become too repetitive.

Player cards with statistics and biography are accessible for every player. The entire NFL schedule is posted, with your team’s next game highlighted with 3D crashing helmets animation. Animated wallpapers and dialing skin can be setup that go beyond the initial screen and into the actual dialing interface.

“Football fans are truly passionate about their teams and favorite players,
so we’re delivering high-quality content that they can be proud to host on
their handsets,” said Emdigo President Steve Gleitsmann. “We’re honored that
both Verizon Wireless and Alltel Communications are recognizing the
uniqueness of Emdigo’s 3D phone screensavers by awarding NFL Team Tailgate a
coveted top deck position on their networks.”

If you are someone who likes to talk smack while wearing you team’s logo, NFL Team Tailgate 3D is the service for you. I don’t know why it took three weeks into the season for Verizon and Alltel to offer Tailgate 3D, but there is still time for 13 games and the playoffs for you to show the team colors. Although, if you are a Lions fan like me, a playoff spot feels hopeless after last Sunday’s crushing defeat to the Eagles. I wonder if Tailgate 3D has animations that include foreseeable interceptions, flaccid tackling and a secondary that camps out in lawn chairs? I can see it now, NFL Team Tailgate 3D Lions Addition, for teams that don’t talk trash, just get trashed.

Emdigo
Verizon Wireless
Alltel Communications

Look out Third Screen Media and AdMob. There is a new player on deck, and things are about to get interesting. This week digital advertising agency mobile made it official and announced the launch of DoubleClick Mobile, which will extend its digital advertising business to the mobile masses. And the ad giant didn’t miss a step in making this sound like a revolutionary move forward.

“Publishers are starting to see mobile as an exciting revenue growth area as budgets move from experimental to mainstream. Our clients want to take on this opportunity and sell mobile display advertising directly,” said Ari Paparo, DoubleClick’s vice president of rich media and emerging technologies. “As media companies begin to offer integrated digital ad packages to advertisers that include online display, rich media, video and mobile, everyone wins. The launch of DoubleClick Mobile marks an important step in bringing mobile into the mainstream digital advertising ecosystem.”

Interesting this comes just a week after Google opened up publisher enrollment for its AdSense for Mobile Program. Of course Google purchased DoubleClick earlier this year, so there is the possibility of integration between the two systems, but for now DoubleClick has said very little about Google’s AdSense for Mobile program. In fact, at this point the biggest competitor in the WAP space for DoubleClick could likely be aQuative’s Atlas division, which is currently owned by Microsoft.

DoubleClick Mobile could also change the way ads are viewed. But not by those who see them as potential buyers, but rather by those who produce them. As part of DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers (DFP) platform, DoubleClick Mobile will allow everyone involved in managing digital ad camps a way of tracking the results. This includes those from the ad staff to traffickers and even metrics analysts. Soon we’ll see how “targeted” a targeted ad campaign really is, and whether the results paid off.

DoubleClick

A wide range of companies send information to the MobileCrunch offices, and one came today that made me stop and think, “I wish I would have thought of that.” The idea has been around for a few years but hasn’t made much of a splash in the United States. MobileCrunch first mentioned the idea in October 2006, with the last update coming in May of this year, Pilot Program Launched for French Transit System. The idea is scanning barcodes with your mobile phone camera and the company is Scanbuy.

Barcodes aren’t a new technology. The first barcode patent was granted in 1952. But it took a couple of decades before they became commercially affordable. By the 1980’s barcodes and the scanning equipment that reads them began to take the world by storm. Shipping and retail companies still utilize those ponderous symbols and numbers. With the advent of inexpensive mobile computing and picture taking, the barcode may show up in places that you wouldn’t expect.

The U.S. Air Force is making a 60 city promotional tour this year that uses Scanbuy technology. Barcodes are placed throughout the showcase that visitors can scan. The Air Force then sends text messages, sound, video or games to the scanner’s handset. The marketing potential and cost savings are easy to see.

The military often experiments with cutting-edge technology and new innovations. That whole Internet thing was set up by the Department of Defense in the 1960s. As the costs of technology lower and become available to the public, it is inevitable that the private sector will follow where the government has gone before.

The marketing and information potential of barcodes is only now being tapped into. Unless something else comes along, the future may find us scanning all types of things to get product information, promotional deals, or simple price checks. The way the mobile industry uses the old barcode is only limited by the human imagination.

Scanbuy isn’t the only company that offers this service. It just happened to come to my attention today. But I see the potential that this can bring to consumers, marketers and sellers. This is a service that may become so commonplace; my father will ask me to show him how to use the camera on his mobile phone.

Scanbuy

VeriSign, a company which operates digital infrastructure services across voice and data networks, announced today that it will tap into ClairMail’s 2-way mobile customer interaction platform for VeriSign Mobile Banking Solution. This agreement is only one part of a global technology alliance between the two companies.

VeriSign sees that the world’s financial institutions are looking for mobile messaging and content delivery for money matters. ClairMail’s platform and applications allows VeriSign Mobile Banking to support messaging (SMS and email), mobile web and native client applications. Financial institutions will be able to provide safe and easy 2-way services that include account management, fraud mitigation, actionable alerts, mobile payments, marketing campaigns, and other customer services.

“VeriSign is the leader in trusted managed services for ecommerce, security and financial services customers. We are confident that their world class messaging and operations infrastructure will enable banks, credit card issuers and brokerage customers to accelerate the use of the mobile device as a channel for 2-way customer interaction,” said Joseph Salesky, CEO of ClairMail. “This partnership enables a broad feature set for mobile banking to be delivered to a wide set of financial institutions in an on-demand, trusted managed service.”

“Since launching the VeriSign Mobile Banking Solution in March, we’ve sought differentiated offerings that dovetail with our solution strategy by creating a true competitive advantage for financial institutions,” said Brian Matthews, vice president, enterprise solutions, VeriSign. “We chose to work with ClairMail because their approach met VeriSign’s stringent requirements for scalability, reliability and security. Together, we can enable financial institutions to develop cost-saving efficiencies, while helping them build loyal, lasting relationships with their customers.”

Security concerns are going to prove to be an obstacle for VeriSign and its financial institution clients to overcome, at least in the United States. MobileCrunch reported earlier this month that Americans (are) Wary of Mobile Banking. Most Americans believe that banking over a mobile device is less secure than banking over the Internet. The public is going to have to be convinced that mobile financial services are at least as safe over a mobile phone as they are over a PC. Once people think mobile banking is safe, banking and other mobile financial services are sure to takeoff.

VeriSign
ClairMail

Need to check your MySpace page while on the go? Need to check someone else’s MySpace page while on the go? Doing a big of MySpace surfing has gotten a tad bit easier. Fox Interactive Media has announced that MySpace Mobile is now in beta and will be available to consumers this week with a wider FIM rollout planned in the coming months. And it will be free to use.

Of course you’ll have to put up with ads, but seems to be the trend with the mobile Web, and isn’t MySpace filled with ads anyway? (That of course begs the question how it can be “your space” if it is filled with stuff that isn’t exactly yours.) FIM has partnered with the Millennial Media advertising network to both sell and serve the mobile-based ads. This will include custom sponsorships and traditional display-based ads from other FIM properties including IGN, FOXSports.com and RottenTomatoes.com.

“Accessing the Internet from a mobile phone will soon be as common as text messaging and voice calling, and it’s FIM’s goal to deliver these new free, ad-supported experiences as additional options for our users on top of our incredibly popular premium mobile services,” said John Smelzer, Senior Vice President and GM of Mobile for Fox Interactive Media. “With our well-established carrier partnerships and our more than 80 million U.S. visitors per month, Fox Interactive Media is uniquely positioned to bring both free and premium Internet experiences to users on mobile phones.”

With the inclusion of the ads FIM will offer users more free content, tools and services that were previously available only to paid subscribers. Whether a paid mode, which is free of ads, will remain in place isn’t yet clear. The MySpace Mobile Web will allow free functionality to send and receive messages, comment on pictures and profiles, update blogs and view and change mood status. The service will be optimized and integrated on devices offered in North America by AT&T, T-Mobile and Helio.

In our busy lives it is hard to get any personal time, and personal space is almost unheard of in the office or at school. So maybe FIM is on to something. You’ll finally get your own space via MySpace anywhere you go.

MySpace Mobile

When recently asked, “have you ever tired to enter a long Web address without using a standard QWERTY keyboard” I was reminded of my visit this summer to the City of Light. Paris is many things, but a high-tech metropolis it is not. The cybercafés were crowded and very few had “western” QWERTY keyboards. So I was reduced to trying to use my Blackberry and international mobile phone to check e-mail, and more importantly check the status of my eBay auctions! Well, my holiday to Europe was almost ruined when I lost one of the auctions because I couldn’t easily check my e-mail. Logging into eBay’s short Web site URL was easy enough, but other sites are a pain to type on mobile devices.

So over here at MobileCrunch we were was pleased to hear about Paged Mobile, or pa.gd as the company is also calling itself. Basically pa.gd is providing a solution to create shorter Web addresses, which are essentially similar to nicknames for Web sties. This service provides a short way to enter thousands of Web addresses much like online shortcuts. More than 11,000 sites to date are available and this works with YubNub commands. The site is currently in beta, so it will be one to watch and see how this evolves.

While it could mean further degradation of the English language, and reduce the common lexicon to more anagrams, anything that makes mobile Web surfer is worth it!

Paged Mobile

Did you see something really funny on the street? Like a jogging Elvis or roller blading nun? Those are the sort of things we see all the time in New York (and things I like to talk about seeing). And do you want to share what you see? Well, you could send it to America’s Funniest Home Videos – I can’t believe that show is still on the air, nor can I believe anyone watches it – or to CNN. But the chances of getting airtime on TV are slim. This sounds like a perfect job for the Web instead.

Plus, we recently heard about Thumbplay.com, a Web 2.0 community that enables users to upload/download photos and videos from their mobile devices and host it on the site. Here users can share what they see, plus post comments and interact with users.

At this point the user-generated contact is about what you’d expect, in other words lots of stuff that people probably think is funny or interesting, but only to them. Thumbplay.com won’t be giving YouTube any competition in terms of high-quality user or flashy video. But that’s not the point. This is for those who want to record those special moments on their phone and share them for the world (even if the world doesn’t really care). So this will be a great place to post images of the rolling blading nun.

Thumbplay