I was out and about this morning, fighting with the horrific greek beaurocracy, waiting at endless queues (which I absoutely hate), and while waiting I was reading the latest news on my mobile through my RSS reader. This was helping me ease the pain, as I was at least being entertained, even though my mobile(k810i) is not what you would call built for mobile surfing (a la iPhone).

I've downloaded the latest Opera Mini 4.1 (there's also a 4.2 beta now, but I'll get to that in a bit), which does a very decent job with most websites, so the whole thing is pretty smooth, and at least it gives me access to some interesting content in places where there is absolutely none (such as this morning's environment, where there's nothing but people shouting at one another in an attempt to get their job done).

Anyway, I'll not bore you with greek beaurocracy any further. Reading through my RSS feeds, I came across this. Greenpeace are running a campaign to prevent the building of new coal-fired power supply plants around the world (you can read more here about why this is a problem). The Greenpeace mobile website for this campaign (this is the full version), which I visited claims (and so does the news article on the Mobile Marketing Magazine) that I should be able to watch the cool cartoon flash video on my mobile. Cool! I was pretty eager to see this, so I visited the website, decided to devote some of my precious limited data bandwidth just for this.

Though the website renders well on my mobile though, attempting to view the video was a disaster! I tried a couple of times on my mobile, but no luck. The error message was something like "we are sorry, the video could not be provided in a suitable format for your mobile phone". I then thought to try my Motorola A1200, which is a business phone I was carrying with me at the time. Again, same message, and no video. At that point I had to abandon my effort to view it, only to watch it later on, when I went to my office, where I did view it in the end, and I must say I enjoyed it too! ('carbon footprint' -- genius! :) ).

The problem here some would claim is that my mobile devices were not supported. However, I was not notified of this anywhere. I was promised a video upon my visit to the website on my mobile, not on my iPhone for example, so that I would expect it wouldn't work. I was told about a mobile marketing campaign, and even though I know that most mobile marketing campaigns don't work on all devices, I was expecting this one to work. I'm quoting the whole MobileMarketingMagazine article to show you what I mean:

Mobile solutions company Roundpoint (Mob: http://roundpoint.mobi) has brought Greenpeace's 'Coalfinger' campaign to mobile, enabling mobile users to view the Coalfinger video, sign up to the campaign and to pass it on to a friend.
Roundpoint’s service automatically detects the type of mobile device and provides the appropriate format of video for the particular device. The video is available to download in sections or in its entirety at http://greenpeaceuk.mobi.
The Coalfinger video is an animated spoof of the James Bond classic Goldfinger. It features Graverson Green and his assistant Katrina Hurkane who battle against Coalfinger in an attempt to stop him destroying the planet with his coal-fired power stations. The aim of the campaign is to show that coal-powered energy is having a detrimental effect on the environment.

Well, I regret to inform the Mobile Marketing Magazine folks that their article is slightly inaccurate, and that it doesn't deliver what was promised, and this is a shame.. The video is really good, I really like the slightly lighter point of view, and the campaign could really expand to a far greater range of users, if it really was available for download and could thus turn viral.

I still recommend you watch the video though!