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The Grid wins New Telecommunications Service of the Year award in Dubai

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Congratulations to my team, we were very excited to find out that Vodacom and The Grid won the New Telecommunications Service of the Year award at the 3rd Annual Comms MEA Awards this week. In the photo below, Shameel Joosub, Managing Director of Vodacom South Africa, collects the award at the Hyatt in Dubai.

This is the official press release for the award:

Vodacom’s ‘the Grid’ wins award in Dubai

The 3rd Annual Comms MEA Awards 2008 were presented at a lavish ceremony at Grand Hyatt Dubai on Monday 15th December.

Dubai – UAE, Wednesday 17th December – Vodacom was presented with the New Telecommunications Service of the Year award this week at the 3rd Annual Comms MEA Awards in Dubai, the most prestigious event dedicated to the region’s communications sector.

The winning company has launched one of the region’s first mobile-based social networking platforms, described by the judges as a “perfect combination of Web 2.0 applications and mobility”. Vodacom’s the Grid is also the first of its kind in Africa.

The Comms MEA Awards set out to celebrate and pay tribute to the telecoms industry professionals and operators that have shown outstanding performance and results in key market segments.

Organised by ITP Technology Publishing, the awards ceremony took place at Grand Hyatt Dubai, and gathered more than 250 senior executives and personalities from the Middle East and Africa telecommunications industry.

Twelve awards were presented at the ceremony in categories that encompassed a different facet of the telecoms industry from individual excellence, to corporate success, to outstanding service and expertise in implementation. In addition to these categories, there was also the hotly contested category of lifetime achievement award, awarded to an individual who has helped shape and inspire the Middle East and Africa telecoms market.

The winners were judged by a prestigious panel of industry experts, selected from within the regional communications sector. The awards acknowledged those operators and individuals who have taken a leadership role in the growth of the regional industry. The winners were chosen for consistently investing in technology, implementing winning strategies and developing services that capture the hearts and minds of end users.

Accepting the award, Shameel Joosub, Managing Director of Vodacom South Africa, says: “The Grid is South Africa’s first location-based social networking service available on cellphones and can be used at no extra cost by anyone with a South African cellphone number. The impact of this innovative technology reaches far beyond traditional social networking borders as anyone with the Grid loaded on their cellphones can find friends in their area on the Grid, locate them on a map, chat to them and share experiences and much more.”

“The recognition of the Grid as New Telecommunications Service of the Year by the Comms MEA Awards is a great honour for Vodacom and testifies to the endless possibilities for growth in the mobile social networking environment across the world,” Joosub says.

For more information on the Comms MEA Awards and for details of all the winners please visit http://www.itp.net/events/commsmeaawards/

Ends

Issued on behalf of: Vodacom Group
Dot Field
Chief Communications Officer
Tel: +27 11 653 5440

NOTE TO EDITORS:

the Grid is South Africa’s first location-based social networking service available for free to all cellphone users. The service allows anyone with a cellphone and the Grid loaded on their cellphone to find friends in their area; locate them on a map, chat to them and share experiences by leaving blips with text, videos or photos on the Grid. Accessing the Grid is as simple as sending an SMS with the word ‘grid’ to 33313 (SMS is charged at R0.50) or by registering from a PC on the website at www.thegrid.co.za or from a cellphone at wap.thegrid.co.za.

Posted in awards, the grid.

By Vincent Maher
December 17, 2008

2 comments

Google turns the whole Web into a social network with FriendConnect

It was just a matter of time before Google started to leverage the massive base of Google accounts to connect everyone together. As usual, this new Google project is ambitious - instead of creating a new social network as a destination site, the new FriendConnect service takes the network to where the people already are - on blogs and web sites.

FriendConnect comes in the form of a sidebar for sites and blogs that has a powerful viral invitation tool for getting people to join. You can select from a list of your Gmail contacts or share your site inside other social networks like Facebook, MySpace etc.

There are several gadgets that can be used to enhance the community aspect once people have joined your network - A wall gadget so people can post videos, comments and other bits of social lint onto your site; a review gadget so people can discuss how cool or lame you are depending on their mood and, most importantly, an OpenSocial gadget that allows you to embed OpenSocial applications inside your site.

I can’t say this without sufficient melodrama: FriendConnect turns the whole Web into a social network. Forget the social network as a walled garden, forget social networks as destination sites - yes they will still exist but this is going to be bigger. The scale of it is grand, like the Israelites toppling the walls of Jericho with their trumpets, or the rumble of elephants and infantry descending upon the Rhône.

Posted in google. Tagged with , .

By Vincent Maher
December 7, 2008

5 comments

World’s first locative documentary for mobile looks at youth culture in Soweto

Today is a big day on the Grid - we’ve just launched a 25-episode documentary about youth culture in Soweto, the famous South African township. The documentary, called Mobikasi, is the first to be delivered exclusively by a locative mobile social network like the Grid.

Users can explore Sowetan youth culture on their cellphones from anywhere in South Africa through The Grid’s map interface, or by physically touring the famous township and watching documentary clips on their phones at the locations where they were shot.

The location-based documentary looks at people, music, fashion, social issues and places of interest. Instead of showing the twenty-five minute documentary in a linear fashion from start to finish, Mobikasi splits the content up into twenty-five inserts of one minute each. Each one-minute clip covers a different topic that is relevant to the youth in Soweto and is geo-tagged to the location where it was shot. This means that viewers can now explore Soweto’s vibrant youth culture by virtually “travelling” through a mobile streetmap of the township and stopping off at various locations to enjoy the one-minute video clips.

The first Mobikasi episode features, among others, a street fashion crew called the Smarteez, music producers Hempza and Vikinduku, a popular hair braider named Anna and the reigning Miss Soweto, Rochelle Mothapo. Also featured are Soweto’s premier hangouts Sedibeng, Back Room and the popular
Sunday buy-and-braai spot Panyaza.

To access Mobikasi, sms mobikasi to 33313 (50c).

Check out the photo gallery on the 5FM blog.

What is the Grid?
The Grid is a social network that uses your mobile phone to connect you with people, places and events around you. From your phone you can see which friends are in your area, chat to people across South Africa and share photos and videos ­ wherever you are.

The Grid is overlayed on street maps, meaning you¹re able to tag content to specific addresses, recommend venues (e.g. restaurants) and even find directions to venues recommended by others.

For your phone, The Grid is available as a downloadable Java application or, to those without Java capabilities, a WAP site. There is also a full-feature website as well as a handy Facebook Grid application for when you’re stuck behind your computer.

To get the Grid on your phone sms grid to 33313 (50c)

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , , .

By Vincent Maher
November 4, 2008

9 comments

New version of Grid IM and mapping app out tomorrow

Tomorrow the Grid will be releasing a new version of its IM and mapping client that has been performance tuned and had several functional and cosmetic changes incorporated based on user feedback.  Those of you who have worked with me before, or been part of the Amatomu process, will know that I like short release cycles with lots of changes based on what people actually want.  Here is what we have done:

  1. The alert system has been overhauled completely so you will now get alerts when users send you messages, come online, send you blips, join your groups and all the other critical events.
  2. Alerts have been reskinned so a popup rather than a full screen
  3. Alerts have settings for text message, sound and vibration
  4. The alert list now only shows the alert types that have alerts in them
  5. The left and right joystick/arrow buttons now take you back a screen so you don;t have to use the menus for that
  6. In chat, if the focus is on the tab then the left and right joystick will take you left and right between the chat sessions you have open
  7. In chat, if the focus is on the text entry box then the right joystick will take you into the text entry mode
  8. In chat when entering text the send message button is now in that box so you have to hit one less button to send
  9. In chat, the colours now alternate depending on who said what
  10. On any map view, you can now manually set your location to the centre point for fine adjustments to your location.
  11. On any map view, you can now drop a text blip on the centre point of the map and bypass the SMS system
  12. In My Profile -> Preferences you can now set different notification styles
  13. In My Profile -> Preferences, you can now see session and total data consumption
  14. The entire UI has been changed to support skinning.  In In My Profile -> Preferences you can chose from multiple themes with different colours.  In the November release we will include a more comprehensive list of themes with cool and mysterious names
  15. A few items have moved around in the menu, specifically we added a Help item with our call centre number in case you get a case of helplessness
  16. On all pages except the contact list, pressing * takes you home
  17. On the contact list, pressing * brings up a search box that you can use to filter your list

Aside from these changes there have been several things that went on under the hood that you can’t really see.

We are continuing to use the two bots:

  • The Dude (near Bela-bela) can be used to send 5 free SMSs a day by chatting to him.
  • Free Candy (near Camps Bay) will tell you what compeitions we’re running if you speak to her

The roadmap for the next month or so includes making the sign-in process easier and quicker and revamping the way blips are presented.

Posted in Uncategorized.

By Vincent Maher
October 23, 2008

4 comments

Tyler Reed is a genius

When I first met Tyler Reed he was just a widget but now he’s an application!  His company Younique have just release a WordPress plugin called MobilePress that converts your blog to a great looking mobile site.  Installation tool a few minutes and it works like a dream.  Really, it beats the other mobile plugins for WP hands down.  Try my blog out on your mobile and you’ll see.

Well done to the Younique team! This is the kind of innovation I love to see coming from South Africa.

Disclaimer: Tyler consults to Vodacom.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , .

By Vincent Maher
October 22, 2008

5 comments

Locative content filtering

While I was doing a presentation at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology it dawned on me, right in the middle of a discussion about meta-data, that the best way to understand the significance of locative media, be it via social networks, journalism or commercial directories, can be summed up in the following manner: before, we would use maps filled with meta-data to navigate the physical world; in the future, we will use the physical world filled with locative markers to navigate maps and content.

Since ancient times cartographers have used maps to tell stories – where the Leviathan was situated roughly; where dragons should be avoided and so on. The primary purpose of a map, however was to make the physical world navigable and maps still play that role today. There is also something we can learn from the history of cartography and navigation – something still eludes us and probably will for a while. Historically latitude was always easy to calculate, but longitude took a few centuries longer to measure accurately, and was eventually achieved by keeping two clocks, the one set to the timezone of the departure and one set to the local time. By comparing the difference the longitude could be calculated. Of course preceding this was the discovery that the world was not flat etc.

We’re in a similar situation now when it comes to locative journalism, social media and content. The easy part is getting maps and finding out where you are. The hard part is figuring out what to do with that information and what its real significance in society is going to be. Clearly in the analogue world proximity is a major factor in determining relevance. A barber near my house is more relevant than one in Seville, sort of.

Before I started working on the Grid I had given location very little thought, except perhaps what could be done by mashing Google maps with news stories. The fact that everyone will be able to request content that is filtered by their immediate location was not something that was top of mind and I’m sure this is the case for most people building publishing systems. Now I have no doubt that this technology is going to have a major impact on publishing because it offers a way to filter through all the noise out there.

Two weeks ago I listened to Stafford Masie talk about the work Google is doing on their maps and I think they are onto something that will eclipse the paradigm-shifting work they did when they launched AdSense. Keep in mind that a map is not the only way to access locative content, it will be incorporated into search, into directories, into personalised news services, into social networks and almost any system where it makes sense for the first view of content to be that which immediately surrounds you.

This creates all sorts of other questions like: what is the most appropriate personal radius for locative relevance? When do you show a wider radius rather than a narrow one? What does it mean when these personal areas intersect?

Over the next year we’re going to be doing some innovative work on the Grid that might offer an example of how these questions can be answered, as will Google and many other social media projects that are brewing internationally.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , , .

By Vincent Maher
October 19, 2008

2 comments

CPUT Annual media conference tomorrow

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology is hosting its annual media conference from 8:30 tomorrow morning.  I will be speaking about citizen journalism and locative media, using the Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader and The Grid as examples of how, on the one hand, mainstream media can incororate the productivity of its audience into its offering and, on the other, how location detection and social networking compliment user-generated content.  Charl Norman will be speaking about social networking, Melissa Attree will be talking about social media and branding, the uber-cool Jayne Morgan will be talking about podcasting and more.

Here is a map to the venue, the event is in room 2.58.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , , .

By Vincent Maher
October 17, 2008

1 comment

SACOMM follow-up: Irritation has a long tail too

More pettiness: remember that conference I mentioned a few weeks ago?  Now they have added me to a mailing list and after 3 requests to be removed I am still getting their messages.  I didn’t opt in and I can’t opt out.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , .

By Vincent Maher
October 17, 2008

5 comments

How newspapers and mobile media can work together but probably won’t

With MTN bringing up its location lookup service, and Vodacom’s already in place, it now means that media companies can deliver news targeted at a Personal Content Area based on the user’s actual location. Where personalisation has mostly gone un-used on the desktop web, I think people will be more likely to use a service that filters news based on their location.

For starters it will be more contextually relevant for classified ads like auto sales, personals and other information that is local in nature. If users can set the radius of their area even better.

Place and time are two of the most important pieces of meta-data associated with content because they directly relate to relevance, before personal interest and taste. As an example, someone may not be generally interested in crime news, except when it happens next door to them. They may not be interested in restaurant reviews, unless the restaurant is nearby.

The down-side is the cost of the location-lookup but generally speaking this cost can be offset against the increase in value of locative advertising. Not only does locative advertising offer the potential of much more relevant information, it expands the sellable inventory exponentially. Before, ads would be delivered ina single rotation queue, now a queue can exist for every suburb in the country and the inventory can be sold in smaller volumes to smaller businesses who would previously have used the Yellow Pages or small but very local newspapers.

The question then is: what type of company is best suited to leverage this potential successfully. The answer is a conglomeration of smaller news providers who already provide local news and have the sales infrastructure to deal with smaller advertisers who need to reach an areas with a radius of 20km or less. The national newspapers are at an immediate disadvantage because their sales teams aren’t scalable enough or geared for many smaller incentives to sell. And, of course, they don’t produce enough local content to service the entire country.

A solution to the content problem could be localised citizen journalism but, again, this will require a massively scalable editorial team to gatekeep. It’s not impossible though, it just requires some money and faith in the model, or a proper business plan. In my experience a business plan like that is unlikely to emanate from a newspaper, and even less likely to get board approval because there are too many risks and it detracts from the core business which is still, sadly for many, selling paper.

Anyone have a strong opinion on this? I’d love to know what you think.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , , .

By Vincent Maher
October 14, 2008

3 comments

Locative lifestreaming and the Grid

One of the reasons I am loving working with the social media portfolio at the moment is that I get to work on really cutting edge projects that blend some of the newer services that a mobile network operator can offer with the social media experience I have.  The project I am focussed on most of the time right now is a locative social network called The Grid.

Since I joined we have released the firt two versions of a Java application for mobile handsets that offers the following services:

  1. You can connect to people and chat with them
  2. You can see where your friends are on a map
  3. You can leave content on places, via MMS, SMS, wap and web
  4. You can find content left by other people nearby to your location

Below are some screenshots:


The images above illustrate the buddy list, the mapping, the ability to get driving directions between yourself and blips or friends and the view of images uploaded via wap or MMS.

During the 3 month period I’ve been working with the Grid team we have rebranded the service, launched the Java application and taken it through two version releases, made several over-arching strategic technology decisions that will change the way we do things in the future, planned and launched several marketing campaigns and achieved countless smaller victories required to gather the kind of momentum we have now.

Given that locative services are quite broadly applicable, there are several different ways to understand what this platform does. It provides location services using cellular mast triangulation, not GPS, to determine where you are, it is also a platform for user-generated content that gets enhanced by locatiion data, it is a social platform for communication and sharing, and it is a multimedia hosting environment that can deliver location-specific media. What makes it an exciting project to work on is that we are really leveraging the best tech the network has to offer and turning it into a comprehensive and, more importantly, comprehensible consumer product that fits neatly between the traditional Web 2.0/Social Media type of offering and a mobile offering.

The personal irony, I suppose, is that I find myself increasingly less confident in the usefulness of the desktop internet. As mobile browsers get stronger and mobile broadband becomes more accessible the one thing that sticks out is how expensive it is to market a web site aimed at the desktop market compared to mobile. When you look at the numbers it becomes aparent that for the cost of every one desktop web user you can probably get 5 mobile users and its much easier for them to transact in the mobile space, especially for micro-payments.

Of course there are the down-sides like the complexity of rich application development, the lack of consistency between HTML rendering engines on the various phone platforms and the relative richness of the desktop web with technologies like AJAX and other 2.0 goodness.

A few weeks ago I did a journalism project with 3rd year students at the University of Pretoria, which resulted in them doing locative journalism in their city using photos, video and text and using a map to tell the story. The results, as far as I can tell, have been good and we start the formal asessment process tomorrow. I’ll post some samples here when I have them.

The experience, however, seemed to represent a significant paradigm shift for most of the students as far as both the technology and the implications for story-telling are concerned, and I come across this quite often when I try explaining what I do. Often the best way is to show people because it sounds too weird when explained in the abstract. I find myself saying things like “the physical world is now a navigation system for data”, or “maps are no longer the meta-data, the physical world is the meta-data” and so on.

But, existential questions aside, if you want to try it, SMS ‘download’ to 33313. My username is vincentmaher, add me as a friend and look at my blips.

Posted in Uncategorized.

By Vincent Maher
October 9, 2008

13 comments