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There are still a lot phones that lack support for Internet browsing or Facebook applications and for mobile users of these devices, messaging is the easiest way to get access to the social-networking site, according to Vesa Lindqvist, development manager for Mobility Services at TeliaSonera Finland, Sonera's parent company.

Using SMS (Short Message Service), users will both be able to update their status and get messages from friends. The "Text Me" service lets users receive messages from friends. The first 20 messages per month are free, and users can buy an additional 50 messages for €1.90 (US$2.40), TeliaSonera said in a statement.

Using SMS and the "Text Your Status" service users can update their status by sending a message to a special number. In this case they are charged €0.79 per SMS, according to TeliaSonera.

Now that I have been a Kindle owner two weeks, I am sold. I believe the device and seamless user experience is a winner - particularly as it synchronizes across phones. However, more importantly, the Kindle 2.0's debut is a watershed moment for print media. You have one last solid shot to monetize your digital content - if you move quickly.

The iPod was the last digital great white hope. And thankfully, the music and movie companies (reluctantly) jumped on board.

The Kindle, like the iPod, is an emerging critical mass device that actually encourages people to pay for content rather than get it for free. When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, people were skeptical that people would shell out cash for music they could snag for free from file sharing networks. They did. The same was true when Apple, and later others, rolled out movies. However, today millions rent or buy movies online.

The Kindle offers a similar experience in a much larger market - text. This one is tougher to monetize. In the digital age books have managed to remain premium content. However, beyond books, magazine and newspaper content is available in abundance online for free. Yet, I still believe that people will pay to receive some of their favorites on their Kindles or their Kindle-enabled phones. Meet them there now while you can.

The Nielsen survey of users' habits found that 67% of all those going online were spending time at social network and blogging sites.

Interest in the category is growing four times faster than the other top four sectors, said the report.

In the UK one in every six minutes of the average web user is spent at a social site, it found. ...

HOW MANY USE THE TOP SITES?
1) Search - 85.9%
2) Portals/communities - 85.2%
3) PC software - 73.4%
4) Member Communities - 66.8%
5) E-mail - 65.1%

The music industry has a new Internet problem. A decade ago, the major record labels began to worry about online piracy, in which people illegally swapped music over peer-to-peer networks like Napster (BBY) and later LimeWire. Partly in response to the piracy threat and partly due to sliding CD sales, music companies began to experiment with licensing their records to new online services.

The idea was that services like Imeem, Last.fm, and Pandora would let people listen to music on PCs, mobile devices, and home stereos, while collecting small fees and advertising revenue that the services would share with labels and artists. Music fans would be discouraged from stealing tunes, and the major labels—Warner Music Group (WMG), Sony Music, Universal Music, and EMI—might even get a sales boost as listeners discovered new kinds ofmusic.

But it hasn't worked out that way. Researchers and industry consultants say online music sites are being used by a growing number of listeners as a substitute for purchasing music, rather than serving as a catalyst for more purchases. ... "Most of this is substitutional. People go to [the Web] instead of buying records," says Jay Rosenthal, senior vice-president and general counsel for the National Music Publishers' Assn., a Washington (D.C.)-based trade group that represents publishers of songwriters and composers.

Alla svenska ungdomar 16-24 år är online. Och nu säger mer än hälften av alla svenskar att de inte klarar sig utan internet.

Behovet av internet bland svenskarna har mer än fördubblats mellan 2007 och 2008. I den senaste studien från EIAA, det europeiska internetförbundet, visade det sig att svenskarna har ett större behov av nätet än en genomsnittlig europé. I Sverige säger 57 procent av den vuxna befolkningen att de inte klarar sig utan internet jämfört med 35 procent i hela Europa.

Enbart internet är så betydelsefullt.

På andra plats kommer tv, men det mediet är inte ens hälften så viktigt som internet. Dagstidningar är det medium som har sjunkit mest i betydelse. Andelen som inte klarar sig utan en tidning har sjunkit med nästan två tredjedelar under samma period.

En vanlig vecka använder 100 procent av 16-24-åringarna i Sverige internet. Inget annat medium har en så hög andel användare i undersökningen. I hela befolkningen är andelen internetanvändare 79 procent.

De internetaktiviteter som ökat mest i Sverige är instant messaging, vilket understryker att det är de sociala och aktiva medierna som ökar.

# Silicon Valley startup Roku announced it is teaming up with e-commerce giant Amazon.com to allow owners of its digital video player to rent or buy movies and TV shows from Amazon. The 40,000 on-demand videos from Amazon are in addition to the 12,000 videos from Netflix that Roku video player owners could already choose from.

# Valley startup ZillionTV unveiled a service and device that it will introduce later this year. The company, which is backed by five of the six biggest Hollywood studios, plans to offer a free set-top box, to be distributed by Internet service providers, through which consumers will be able to watch about 15,000 videos on-demand.

# Time Warner revealed a plan dubbed "TV Anywhere" that would allow cable and satellite TV subscribers to watch on computers or other Internet-connected devices all of the programming they get on their televisions.

With all the recent changes, "it's just become amazing to watch this space," said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, a research and consulting firm. ...

Baker thinks the true digital living room may still be five years or so from reality.

But electronics and content companies seem to be learning from past mistakes, and in doing so, helping to bring that day closer. Meanwhile, their efforts are pressuring traditional pay TV service providers — from whom the large majority of Americans receive their video content — to respond with more on-demand services and digital living-room type services.

The first iterations of digital living room products were often tied to consumers' computers. Either consumers had to connect a device to their computers over a local network to access movies or photographs that were stored on the PC, or they had to plug their PCs directly into their TVs. Both methods proved a hard sell.

More recently, electronic

If they haven't already, your CEO will join Facebook this year. That's according to a new digital outlook report to be released today by the marketing specialists at Razorfish.

"Executives are responding to social media and the real impact it's having on their brands," said Terri Walter, vice president of emerging media at Razorfish.

While older generations are experimenting more online, younger early-adopters are maturing with regard to online usage. Unfortunately for marketers, that means an increasingly sophisticated, selective, and even-harder-to-reach 18- to-25-year-old consumer.

What happened was something entirely different. When Asustek launched the Eee PC in fall 2007, it sold out the entire 350,000-unit inventory in a few months. Eee PCs weren't bought by people in poor countries but by middle-class consumers in western Europe and the US, people who wanted a second laptop to carry in a handbag for peeking at YouTube or Facebook wherever they were. Soon the major PC brands—Dell, HP, Lenovo—were scrambling to catch up; by fall 2008, nearly every US computermaker had rushed a teensy $400 netbook to market.

All of which is, when you think about it, incredibly weird. Netbooks violate all the laws of the computer hardware business. Traditionally, development trickles down from the high end to the mass market. PC makers target early adopters with new, ultrapowerful features. Years later, those innovations spread to lower-end models.

But Jepsen's design trickled up. In the process of creating a laptop to satisfy the needs of poor people, she revealed something about traditional PC users. They didn't want more out of a laptop—they wanted less. ...

By the end of 2008, Asustek had sold 5 million netbooks, and other brands together had sold 10 million. (Europe in particular has gone mad for netbooks; sales there are eight times higher than in the US.) In a single year, netbooks had become 7 percent of the world's entire laptop market. Next year it will be 12 percent.

"We started inventing technology for the bottom of the pyramid," Jepsen says, "but the top of the pyramid wants it too." This bit of trickle-up innovation, this netbook, might well reshape the computer industry—if it doesn't kill it first.

I wrote this story on a netbook, and if you had peeked over my shoulder, you would have seen precisely two icons on my desktop: the Firefox browser and a trash can. Nothing else.

It turns out that about 95 percent of what I do on a computer can now be accomplished through a browser. I use it for updating Twit

Xbox was so successful that Microsoft tried a similar approach when Apple's iPod became the best-selling portable music player since the Sony Walkman. Microsoft even brought over some of the same leaders and developers, hoping they could do to Apple what they had done to Sony. On an incredibly tight deadline, the team threw its collective might behind an iPod-killer. What emerged in late 2006, however, barely dented Apple's armor. The Zune was a boxy gadget that looked like a thicker iPod, albeit in a not-so-stylish brown case. As one acid-tongued reviewer described it, the overall experience of using a Zune was about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face. Not surprisingly, the Zune managed to sell about 2 million units in its first 18 months on the market. Apple sold more than 84 million iPods during that same period.

Why was Microsoft able to create such a compelling video game system only to churn out a mediocre portable music player? The competitive context was the same. The research was similar. The design and engineering resources brought to the challenge were significant in both cases. What makes a company deliver a bravura performance one day and fall flat the next? Empathy. As one member of the team confided: "The biggest challenge with Zune was trying to figure out who we were building it for. With Xbox, we knew those guys. Hell, we were those guys."

Unfortunately, that empathy wasn't transferable. A brilliant connection with hard-core gamers didn't prepare Microsoft for the challenges of understanding Zune's market space. Being a reflection of one type of customer is certainly a quick and easy way to connect with a particular group of people. But to thrive over the long term, organizations need to move beyond their own views and discover what's happening in the rest of the world. They don't need to just hire their customers. They need to develop a genuine interest in people outside their walls.

Especially in a recession, empathy is

After some very successful tests through 2008 the Norwegian state broadcaster has decided to set up their own BitTorrent tracker and start offering content through this form of distribution on a more regular basis.

The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. But it will only be used to distribute content from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).

-Den yngre generationen använder nätet på helt annat sätt. De är uppkopplade hela tiden mot kompisar och kan hålla i gång flera chatter, lyssna på musik och göra läxorna samtidigt. Det är ett beteende som de sedan tar med sig till arbetsplatserna, säger Håkan Selg.

Äldre anställda kanske förfasar sig över att yngre medarbetare är uppkopplade mot Facebook på arbetstid och tycker att de borde kanske skilja på jobb och privatliv. Men i själva verket handlar det om ett nytt sätt att bygga relationer som kan ge resultat på jobbet på sikt.
- De ungas kommunikation kanske till en början handlar om att utbyta åsikter om exempelvis populärkultur, men några år senare kan de fråga sina kontakter om någon känner till någon bra designer för ett jobbprojekt, säger Håkan Selg.
En annan slutsats som dras av undersökningen är att tidningar och tv inte används på samma sätt av den yngre generationen. Följaktligen får annonsörer allt svårare att nå fram till dem via dessa media.

It's in difficult economic times that customer experience matters most -- you don't want to make it even easier for your customers to walk away because they've been so frustrated working with you.

The key to delivering a great experience for is to have empathy for your customers. And the best way to develop that empathy is obvious, yet it requires constant repeating: Go to them. It's shocking how many methods companies have for learning about customers (surveys, focus groups, phone questionnaires), and how hesitant they are to engage in the simplest approach. I suspect its because they're afraid of what they'll find when engaging customers directly, and prefer to hide behind the reports and charts those other techniques produce, and which provide endless opportunities for interpretation.

When you go to your customers and encourage them to talk to you, you should speak only to break the ice and get them comfortable, and then to ask questions. The rest of the time, stay quiet and listen. Ideally, you will spend a lot of time just watching -- if they're at home, how do they go about their domestic rituals? If at an office or out in the world, how do they get things done? Pay attention to their context, their environments. What tools and artifacts do they use? What does their language reveal about their state of mind?

Record everything you can.

Statliga Teracom är i dag ensam aktör på marknaden för tv-sändningar i marknätet. Enligt rådande bestämmelser har bolaget därmed ensamrätt på det åtråvärda frekvensutrymmet 470 till 790 Mhz, som öronmärkts för tv-sändningar i marknätet.

Utöver en årlig avgift till Post- och telestyrelsen, PTS, på ett par miljoner kronor betalar Teracom ingenting för frekvenserna. Det trots att de sannolikt skulle inbringa hundratals miljoner kronor i licensavgifter i en öppen auktion.

Nu vill PTS avskaffa öronmärkningen. I samband med att Teracoms nuvarande licens löper ut i mars 2014 bör hela tv-mediets frekvensutrymme bli teknikneutralt och auktioneras ut till högstbjudande, föreslår myndigheten.

“The report shows that overall the magnitude of the global digital divide remains unchanged between 2002 and 2007. Despite significant improvements in the developing world, the gap between the ICT haves and have-nots remains,” the agency said in a news release.

The research found that the most advanced countries in ICT are from northern Europe, with the exception of the Republic of Korea, which ranks second, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway.

These countries are followed by other, mainly high-income countries from Europe, Asia and North America. Western and northern Europe and North America are the regions with the highest IDI scores, and most countries from these regions are among the top 20 ICT economies, according to the ITU.

The agency added that poor countries, in particular the least developed countries (LDCs), remain at the lower end of the index with limited access to ICT infrastructure, including fixed and mobile telephony, Internet and broadband.

Customer-centric design and service increase the value consumers derive from their products and services, and help deliver a high-quality customer experience.

Usability, service and support, therefore, have now assumed critical roles. Our research finds that consumers have very high expectations: networked devices must work together, simply and easily, and there must be comprehensive, one-stop shopping for service and support needs. It's a tall order. But companies must meet that challenge if they expect to compete and achieve high performance in the years ahead.

The number of Livebox sets was up 28 percent, with 7.8 million units sold in Europe as of 31 December 2008. The number of Voice over IP customers grew
36 percent to 6.5 million as of 31 December 2008. Digital and satellite TV subscribers rose to 2.1 million in Europe as of 31 December 2008, with the majority in France), compared with 1.2 million a year earlier, an increase of 66 percent.

The number of Livebox sets was up 28 percent, with 7.8 million units sold in Europe as of 31 December 2008. The number of Voice over IP customers grew
36 percent to 6.5 million as of 31 December 2008. Digital and satellite TV subscribers rose to 2.1 million in Europe as of 31 December 2008, with the majority in France), compared with 1.2 million a year earlier, an increase of 66 percent.

Preliminära leveransdatum, kollinummer och e-post är verktyg för att hålla kunden informerad. Allt för att väntan inte ska bli frustrerande. Och ändå ser vi beställaren fråga sig Var är mitt paket? För den iPhonesuktande bloggyanvändaren hände något ovanligt: Inom loppet av några minuter hade en bloggyintresserad Teliamedarbetare engagerat sig i iPhonen och kunde berätta när paketet skulle komma fram. Samma medarbetare gick till och med så långt att hon fick paketet skickat något snabbare än planerat!

För en genomsnittlig internetanvändare är deltagandet i sociala nätverk något som tillhör vardagen. I studien ”Are friends eletric? Social network sites and the development of intimacy” har en genomsnittlig användare 129,2 vänner i sina olika sociala nätverk. ...

Engagemanget hos Teliamedarbetaren innebar just därför en riktig liten mikrosuccé – Kunden blev mycket nöjd men framförallt – hela skeendet spelades upp för öppen ridå på Bloggy med kanske uppemot tusentalet åskådare. På några minuter hade Telia för åskådarna gått från ett grått och stelbent Televerket till ett kundvänligt, modernt och trevligt företag.

Preliminära leveransdatum, kollinummer och e-post är verktyg för att hålla kunden informerad. Allt för att väntan inte ska bli frustrerande. Och ändå ser vi beställaren fråga sig Var är mitt paket? För den iPhonesuktande bloggyanvändaren hände något ovanligt: Inom loppet av några minuter hade en bloggyintresserad Teliamedarbetare engagerat sig i iPhonen och kunde berätta när paketet skulle komma fram. Samma medarbetare gick till och med så långt att hon fick paketet skickat något snabbare än planerat!

För en genomsnittlig internetanvändare är deltagandet i sociala nätverk något som tillhör vardagen. I studien ”Are friends eletric? Social network sites and the development of intimacy” har en genomsnittlig användare 129,2 vänner i sina olika sociala nätverk. ...

Engagemanget hos Teliamedarbetaren innebar just därför en riktig liten mikrosuccé – Kunden blev mycket nöjd men framförallt – hela skeendet spelades upp för öppen ridå på Bloggy med kanske uppemot tusentalet åskådare. På några minuter hade Telia för åskådarna gått från ett grått och stelbent Televerket till ett kundvänligt, modernt och trevligt företag.

• Ungdommene ser mye på bilder, snakker med folk og er med i forskjellige grupper.
• Hvor utrolig fort det har gått med Facebook i Norge - fra under 3 000 i januar 2007 til over 1,5 millioner i februar 2009.
• Blant de mellom 13-30 er det over 90% som har en profil på Facebook. Alle bruker Facebook, akkurat som med mobil.
• Hva skjer etter Facebook? Jeg tror det skjer like mye de neste 5-6 årene som de foregående.
• Facebook som politisk arena - enklere å organisere andre mennesker ved hjelp av Facebook.
• Høy sosial aktivitet på nettet brukes til å organisere høy sosial aktivitet lokalt.
• Hvordan gruppe nummer tre er på vei inn på Facebook, det jeg kaller “tantene”.
• Online hele tiden på Facebook - enten fra PCen eller mobilen.

• Ungdommene ser mye på bilder, snakker med folk og er med i forskjellige grupper.
• Hvor utrolig fort det har gått med Facebook i Norge - fra under 3 000 i januar 2007 til over 1,5 millioner i februar 2009.
• Blant de mellom 13-30 er det over 90% som har en profil på Facebook. Alle bruker Facebook, akkurat som med mobil.
• Hva skjer etter Facebook? Jeg tror det skjer like mye de neste 5-6 årene som de foregående.
• Facebook som politisk arena - enklere å organisere andre mennesker ved hjelp av Facebook.
• Høy sosial aktivitet på nettet brukes til å organisere høy sosial aktivitet lokalt.
• Hvordan gruppe nummer tre er på vei inn på Facebook, det jeg kaller “tantene”.
• Online hele tiden på Facebook - enten fra PCen eller mobilen.

The cold hard facts: the three-headed multichannel beast otherwise known as cable operators, satellite providers and telcos collectively added 441,000 multichannel video customers in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Those statistics fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that in a recession consumers would cut back on cable services to save money and they also go against the broader newteevee belief that TV fans can survive on Hulu, YouTube and iTunes alone. Because evidently we’re quite content with our oldteevee, thank you very much. ...

But what are teenagers doing?

The industry needs to peel back the layers in the research to understand what teens and young adults are doing now to be better prepared for business in five to ten years. Consider this: Leichtman Research Group reported that while only 8% of Web video watching adults say they watch less TV because of their Web viewing habits, 18% of Web video watching teens say they’re turning away from the tube thanks to the internet.

“Yes there are some teens who are watching TV less often, while the majority are still watching just as much TV,” Bruce Leichtman told us via email, adding that they’re mostly watching YouTube and music videos online rather than TV shows.

Any cord-cutting effect, if there is to be one, won’t manifest for almost a decade, Leichtman said. “It will be six to twelve years before this group is actually making decisions for themselves on whether or not they subscribe to a TV service – that they never paid for before, so it’s not really a cord cutting – so the impact of this group, accounting for about 9% of all in the US, could possibly be felt several years from now.”

The cold hard facts: the three-headed multichannel beast otherwise known as cable operators, satellite providers and telcos collectively added 441,000 multichannel video customers in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Those statistics fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that in a recession consumers would cut back on cable services to save money and they also go against the broader newteevee belief that TV fans can survive on Hulu, YouTube and iTunes alone. Because evidently we’re quite content with our oldteevee, thank you very much. ...

But what are teenagers doing?

The industry needs to peel back the layers in the research to understand what teens and young adults are doing now to be better prepared for business in five to ten years. Consider this: Leichtman Research Group reported that while only 8% of Web video watching adults say they watch less TV because of their Web viewing habits, 18% of Web video watching teens say they’re turning away from the tube thanks to the internet.

“Yes there are some teens who are watching TV less often, while the majority are still watching just as much TV,” Bruce Leichtman told us via email, adding that they’re mostly watching YouTube and music videos online rather than TV shows.

Any cord-cutting effect, if there is to be one, won’t manifest for almost a decade, Leichtman said. “It will be six to twelve years before this group is actually making decisions for themselves on whether or not they subscribe to a TV service – that they never paid for before, so it’s not really a cord cutting – so the impact of this group, accounting for about 9% of all in the US, could possibly be felt several years from now.”

Teknikföräldrar

* Tar till sig kommunikationsteknik främst för att kunna kontakta nya och gamla vänner.
* Gillar nya interaktiva medier som bloggar och onlinespel.
* Uppskattar nya sätt att titta på tv

iToddlers

* Ligger inte i framkant när det gäller teknik, men uppvisar stor nyfikenhet.
* Består av många äldre personer och är den mest mansdominerade profilen.
* Använder mobilen allt mer och hittar också successivt andra tjänster än vanliga samtal.

IT Societeten

* Består mest av yngre kvinnor, framför allt i de nordiska länderna.
* Konsumerar mest nya medier av alla profiler.
* Ser nästan kommunikationstekniken som en förlängning av den egna personen.
* Är den mest informella profilen i umgänget med andra.

Infomaniacs

* Använder moderna kommunikations verktyg (alt. IT) främst för att skaffa nyheter och informera sig om omvärlden.
* ”Andramobil” vanlig bland alla profiler, men särskilt bland Infomanerna.
* Gillar mobiler med många gadgets.

Settler Corporations

* Återfinns ofta inom detaljhandel, hotell/restaurang, administration och andra arbetsplatser med höga krav på god service.
* Ser kommunikationsteknik som en viktig del i att effektivisera och förbättra servicen.
* Ser att modern kommunikationsteknik kan spara mycket pengar, tid och resor.
* Tämligen optimistiska inför konjunkturen i framtiden.

Nomad Corporations

* Återfinns ofta inom medieföretag, industri, vård och andra arbetsplatser med höga krav på mobilitet och flexibilitet.
* Ser det mobila arbetssättet som en central del i hur företaget sköts.
* Har ofta ett informellt tilltal och platt intern struktur.
* Har hög tolerans för att medarbetarna är på andra ställen än kontoret.

Teknikföräldrar

* Tar till sig kommunikationsteknik främst för att kunna kontakta nya och gamla vänner.
* Gillar nya interaktiva medier som bloggar och onlinespel.
* Uppskattar nya sätt att titta på tv

iToddlers

* Ligger inte i framkant när det gäller teknik, men uppvisar stor nyfikenhet.
* Består av många äldre personer och är den mest mansdominerade profilen.
* Använder mobilen allt mer och hittar också successivt andra tjänster än vanliga samtal.

IT Societeten

* Består mest av yngre kvinnor, framför allt i de nordiska länderna.
* Konsumerar mest nya medier av alla profiler.
* Ser nästan kommunikationstekniken som en förlängning av den egna personen.
* Är den mest informella profilen i umgänget med andra.

Infomaniacs

* Använder moderna kommunikations verktyg (alt. IT) främst för att skaffa nyheter och informera sig om omvärlden.
* ”Andramobil” vanlig bland alla profiler, men särskilt bland Infomanerna.
* Gillar mobiler med många gadgets.

Settler Corporations

* Återfinns ofta inom detaljhandel, hotell/restaurang, administration och andra arbetsplatser med höga krav på god service.
* Ser kommunikationsteknik som en viktig del i att effektivisera och förbättra servicen.
* Ser att modern kommunikationsteknik kan spara mycket pengar, tid och resor.
* Tämligen optimistiska inför konjunkturen i framtiden.

Nomad Corporations

* Återfinns ofta inom medieföretag, industri, vård och andra arbetsplatser med höga krav på mobilitet och flexibilitet.
* Ser det mobila arbetssättet som en central del i hur företaget sköts.
* Har ofta ett informellt tilltal och platt intern struktur.
* Har hög tolerans för att medarbetarna är på andra ställen än kontoret.