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Happy New Year to all my readers! 2007 starts with a link to another post I wrote for Read/WriteWeb. After the incredible repsonse and feedback on the “Understanding Mobile 2.0” post I wrote early in December, here’s another one in the series of mobile disruptive technologies.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my first Gizmo VoIP call I made from my computer to a mobile phone but now you can read about my latest experiences making international internet calls with a Nokia N80i to another one, perfect quality, for a couple of callout cents only. Can you dig?

Head over to read the complete story at Read/WriteWeb.

Wednesday Nokia anounced it’s Gizmo collaboration for the N80 Internet Edition, Thursday I made my first SIP call with Andy straight from my laptop to his wi-fi connected n80 somewhere out there in the hills of California. The quality and easyness of use of Gizmo connecting to a mobile phone was excellent; on the other side of the (un)wire, Andy states:

My experience with it has been nothing less than spectacular. Fully integrated VoIP on a very high quality mobile phone is a dream come true.

I beam the experience!

The plugin is not yet available for other phones but the news is a blessing coming to aid soon now for my recent phonebills. SIP is the most popular Voice over IP (VoIP) standard. SIP enables two or more people to make phone calls to each other using the Internet to carry the call. SIP calls are part of the Internet you get great features like free voicemail to email and phone numbers from many places in the world no matter where you live.

From the Nokia pressrelease:

Nokia N80 Internet Edition users download the free Gizmo VoIP settings from the Download! folder in their device, automatically beginning the installation process. During installation, users go through a simple two-step process for creating a free account that they’ll use to make Internet calls. Other capabilities, such as customizing voicemail greetings, purchasing Gizmo Call Out credit for dialing landlines and mobile devices and managing Gizmo account settings are available by using the Nokia N80 Internet Edition to browse the www.gizmovoip.com web site.

Kudos to Nokia and Gizmo for creating such an easy to read and understand miniwebsite. All details on the collaboration can be found for web- and mobile users, every single step to start using Gizmo on the N80 is documented with screenshots and easy to read explanations. I can’t wait to try this on my phone myself. For the lucky ones who own a N80, you can download the Gizmo N80 client here.

Computerworld reports on some analysis from Darren Siddall, an analyst at Gartner:

“The seemingly opposing offerings from Nokia indicate a general hedging of bets in the mobile world, on one hand, operators don’t want their networks to be used mainly by services they aren’t making money on. But they also want to discover which applications are popular with users and figure out how to earn revenue from such services. There’s a lot of uncertainty about which applications users will find valuable.”

Technology changes the way we communicate, business models change accordingly in a natural way, this process is happening for a while now and it certainly won’t stop anytime soon…

Yesterday I saw an ad on Spanish TV of Telefonica’s MNO Movistar, promoting flat-rate Mobile Internet acces for their 3G brand e-mocion, co-branded with Google and MSN Hotmail… I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mobile Internet advertising on TV? Of course we have seen some allusion to it on Vodafone Live ads, but as explicit like this? No we haven’t seen it like this here before.

So today I had to know everything about this e-mocion offer. First I tried to find the ad at YouTube but this one seems too fresh yet to be posted there already. Instead I found this really funny one… go and check it out anyway if you’re in for a laugh (no need to understand spanish

People who read this blog often know about my griefs against the high cost to acces the Mobile Internet. You can read the threads here and here if you haven’t done that yet.

At e-mocion website, you can find the announcement to access the mobile internet for 0,30 cent/session… Well, that’s better than my 0,50 cent I currently pay at Vodafone but when reading the small letters, it’s a promotion until September. So let’s find out more about this promotion and the marketing behind this new kind of partnership, at least in the mobile space.

I read the Google and MSN Hotmail Lead the New Portal Services; Movistar Turns ‘e-mocion’ into the New Flat-Rate Gateway to Cell Phone Content press release from May 3, being really surprised I haven’t read anything before on this news. Read also this article at Forbes.com:

” With the new flat rate per session, users will have unlimited access to content and services from both ‘e-mocion’ and the Internet, at only 0.30 euros per session, which, until the month of September, will have no time expiration. This initiative helps users, who will know at all times how much they will pay for browsing and accessing content.”

Good point! Until September all my sessions can be unlimited … not bad after all, maybe I should give it a try and calculate the difference on my mobile browsing consumption, for the price I pay at Vodafone I might have one of those fancy phones included

But let’s drop the pricing issue right now, what actually surprised me the most was the synchronised announcement of the Movistar partnership with Google and MSN Hotmail (get it?) For amateurs, some brain exercise can be done on this one…

Once I can acces the mobile internet I can also access Yahoo! Mobile services or whatever mobile web enabled service, I don’t need a partnership for this, so there is more going on, especially on the Google side. I tried to see the win-win of the partners involved but I don’t really see MSN services competing immediately with what Google wins in this deal…

From the same Forbes article mentioned above:

“With the inclusion of Google as e-mocion’s main search engine, users will be able to search for content based on keywords, facilitating the exploration and discovery of services. Initially, the search results will include links to external Internet content. In a subsequent phase, results will incorporate content from e-mocion. Google will use its technology and its indexing and content updating expertise to turn e-mocion into the starting point to access the Internet from a mobile phone.”

Google offers his Google Search Engine to access Movistar services and content - users can search music and video’s for example, while building its’ own user-base of course. Google gets useful stats and information on users and their search behaviour, soon they’re be able to deliver content through the Google Reader, offer Google Talk (VoIP), and so on… Google can start proposing its Google Music Search, Google Video, why not geo-locate straight to their Google Maps?

Has Telefonica Movistar accepted the role of mobile data pipeline provider yet?

Meanwhile, Google Talk is already offered on the Nokia 770 portable Internet Tablet, don’t have to draw that one out again, no?

Too much of a Google in one article? I just wonder how the small mobile services companies are going to find their way to the mobile consumer? You have to be able to deal straight with the operator or the manufacturer if you want to reach some critical mass, for sure… or going viral?

Maybe I can found out a bit more going to listen to Isabel Aguilera (CEO Google Spain and Portugal) next week at the Internet Global Conference.