Bluetooth SIG teams up with the leading sporting goods trade show, ispo, and the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) to establish a competition to foster the development of Bluetooth low energy technology in new sport, fitness, and healthcare products.

ispo and the WFSGI believe their industry offers enormous potential for the use of Bluetooth low energy technology, a new Bluetooth standard. This technology and its extremely low energy consumption make a wide array of innovative applications possible. Today, a sports industry without electronic components is virtually inconceivable – particularly with regard to the integration of different devices and how they provide data and performance profiles. “Things like wireless pulse oximeters, glucose meters, and a range of sensors and monitors are already an exciting reality. Bluetooth low energy technology will set the stage for a healthy and fit future,” says Mike Foley, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Bluetooth SIG.

This competition will call upon innovators, athletes, and other technology fans worldwide to submit their new ideas for using Bluetooth low energy technology in the world of sport, fitness, and healthcare. “The first Bluetooth Innovation World Cup offers a tremendous chance for its participants to enter the global sporting goods market,” predicts Robbert de Kock, Secretary General of WFSGI.

• there's all sorts of sensors and monitors already to measure an athlete's health. This is a tremendous improvement after a raising number of professional athletes' deaths due to medical reasons, (I can only hope these come in asap!)
  
• errors in technique (mainly) for individual sports such as track sports, tennis, etc,
• wireless technologies (such as bluetooth) will enable the data from all these sensors to be transmitted real time into analysis systems,
• statistics about performance for team sports, such as distance covered, etc. ; these can obviously be used during live televised matches,
• sensors can also help in anti-doping checks.
  

• all this new in-flow of data is bound (if not certain) to bring more pressure on athletes, as if they didn't have enough already, driving competition into even higher levels, and leading athletes into using more illegal substances in order to boost their performance,
• sports will lose even more of their 'human nature', sort of like what is going on with formula 1 -- I still enjoy it either way, but is it, or not, a sport? I'm afraid we will start concentrating more on the technological aids, and less on the athletes themselves.
  
• in part, nowadays, but more so in the future, winners will not be only decided by their athletic skills, but also by budget, because whoever has the biggest budget will gets the better equipment.

The plan is to turn Fishing.Mobi into a social network for fisherfolk who happen to be mobile savvy. It will offer users resources for researching fishing trips, techniques and providing them access to other members for advice and fishing reports while they are fishing. Fishing.Mobi will be suited to the “dotMobi” standard requirements enabling it to be available on all enabled handsets.

According to information from the newest National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, during 2006, 30.0 million people fished, 12.5 million hunted, and 71.1 million participated in at least one type of wildlife-watching activity such as observing, feeding, or photographing fish and other wildlife in the United States. Nielsen Mobile stats say that 95 million Americans subscribe to mobile Internet access and 40 million of them regularly go online with their phones. If the fishing stats are right, this is a tempting target market for any of you promoting outdoors related products and services.

“The mobile phone internet is really one of the most amazing resources in the history of “fishing”. Historically anglers were limited to resources like, print periodicals that provided dated fishing reports… now anglers will have access to hundreds of hours of fishing videos, fishing reports, tips, a fishing resources directory, fishing forum and wealth of tools like tide information, weather reports, but most importantly they will have literally at their finger tips, a network of tens of thousands of anglers to answer questions and provide potentially live reports on the body of water they are fishing, while they are actually fishing.”

Pioco’s BlueAiring network, which transmits digital content directly to users’ mobile phones, has more than 1,800 nodes in restaurants, cafés and other leisure venues in and around Beijing and Shanghai. In Beijing alone, the network covers the International Trade Center, the Financial District, the Zhongguancun commercial district, the Wangfujing and Xidan shopping districts, the Dongzhimen transportation node, the Xizhimen subway area and other transportation hubs.

The network has broadcast campaigns for Coca-Cola since Pioco was founded in 2006. Other clients include BMW, Absolut Vodka, Ford, Chevrolet, Nokia, Nike and JCDecaux, as well as the 2008 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, held in Shanghai in October. On average, there has been a 35 percent opt-in rate among users who decide to download information on their cell phones.

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Coca-Cola ads and other content were downloaded 880,000 times throughout the month-long campaign. “The high opt-in rate is not very surprising because there are a lot of people living in Beijing and Shanghai, where both cities have a population of around 17 million,” says Chao. “We’ve been able to take advantage of this [by placing] the Bluetooth hotspots in very high-traffic areas. Proximity marketing works because the out-of-home media [industry] in China is booming, and Bluetooth adds to the value of a new OOH media campaign.”

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The success of campaigns by Pioco’s clients demonstrates the appeal of mobile phone technology, especially among China’s younger generation. “The mobile phone population is growing like crazy here, reaching almost 600 million this year,” says Chao. “Young people between the ages of 13 and 28 love Bluetooth downloads because they’re free, fast and fun.”

Stroll around Bangalore’s swanky The Forum Mall with your Bluetooth enabled phone in discoverable mode, and you’ll soon begin receiving promotional messages from the stores in the mall, one of 12 across India that have deployed Bluetooth enabled servers to reach out to customers in a personalized way.

If multinational brands such as Levi’s, adidas and Pepsi, among others, are experimenting with Bluetooth technology to get closer to their customers, so too is the Bangalore Traffic Police. Officers now carry handsets that communicate with a central information server to instantly recall a traffic offender’s past record; a Bluetooth enabled printer can issue tickets on the spot.

Other applications are quickly catching on. For instance, Bangalore-based Motvik Technologies launched wwigo (Webcam Wherever I Go) in June 2008. The solution, pronounced “vigo,” turns a Bluetooth enabled camera phone into a mobile, wireless webcam. And Phoneytunes, a mobile services company, has deployed Bluetooth enabled kiosks at 38 Sony Ericsson retail outlets across the country to allow users to download ringtones, wallpapers and songs.

Among Indian consumers, Bluetooth enabled wireless headsets are becoming increasingly popular, thanks to lower prices and surging sales of mobile handsets. An estimated 7 million to 8 million mobile phones – 70 percent of which are Bluetooth enabled – are sold each month in India, which has a subscriber base of 250 million.

The Indian automotive market represents an exciting growth area, with more middle-class Indians buying cars today – even more than one per household – to accommodate the needs of working couples. While Bluetooth technology’s main automotive applications are hands-free calling and “infotainment” devices, it won’t be long before we see vehicle safety, navigation, tracking, telematics and control, according to Anant Koppar, chairman and CEO of KTwo Technology Solutions.

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In another market segment, the scarcity of medical facilities and doctors in densely-populated India is expected to encourage the use of Bluetooth enabled medical, health and fitness devices. For instance, a wearable Bluetooth enabled heart monitor that can send text messages to local hospitals has been successfully tested at the Sathyabama University in Tamil Nadu.

Three separate mobile ads are currently running on the idle screens of consumers’ handsets within select U.S. markets. To power the campaign, Jack in the Box Inc. tapped idle-screen advertising services firm Mobile Posse Inc., which is guaranteeing advertisers a minimum click-through-rate of 10 percent.

The Jack in the Box mobile coupon offers include a buy-one, get-one-free promotion for Jack’s Classic sandwiches, a free combination upgrade with purchase of any burger or sandwich and a free pita with purchase of any Coke beverage.

Delivered at noon, mid-afternoon or early evening, the mobile ads containing the coupons are designed to drive traffic to select Jack in the Box locations for lunch, an afternoon snack or dinner.

Sounds pretty much like SPAM to me, whether the message was free or not. (In fact, it would be even worse if they had charged their users, but I presume they knew this, which is why the SMS were free). Otherwise, if they had obtained the permission of the participants, and this was thus a legitimate form of marketing why not send these as regular SMS messages?

I'm sure most of you our side of the Atlantic will agree it is SPAM. But it shouldn't even come down to personal judgement. If you don't have permission from the participant (via an opt-in mechanism, which it sounds like they didn't), then you're SPAMMING! It's as simple as that!

Estonia has become the world’s first nation to recognize mobile suffrage after passing legislation to allow its citizens the ability to cast their votes in the 2011 parliamentary elections with their cell phones.

This is the second time Estonia has adopted such an innovative, pro-tech law, having given Estonians the ability to vote in the parliamentary elections over the Internet for the first time last year.

Britain’s Bristol International Airport ran a mobile coupon campaign to drive travelers into its recently refurbished Tax and Duty Free store.

“Mobile has proved to be an excellent way of reaching passengers on their departure day,” said Simon Preece, head of retail and concessions at Bristol Airport. “Passengers who redeemed the easyJetText offer spent on average over 50 percent more than a typical Tax and Duty Free store customer.”

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EasyJetText lets advertisers target their offers to ensure their messages reach the right audience at the right time with minimal waste. This means that passengers only receive relevant offers that they like to respond to.

To entice people into the store and raise the amount spent, Bristol Airport gave opted-in passengers five Euros off of any purchase of at least 35 Euros.

The airport targeted its offer at international passengers travelling on certain routes.

The 160-character text message was sent to selected passengers about two hours before their scheduled departure time. This allowed Bristol Airport to capture people right when their interest in airport retail peaks.

Passengers were able to redeem the offer by showing their mobile phone to the cashier.

The cashier scanned the bar code to record that the passenger redeemed the coupon in-store and also recorded the flight number.

This information was then used to answer questions such as which route performs best, what the best time of day to make the offer is and which days perform the best.

“Analyzing this information on a weekly basis, we optimized the campaign by testing different calls to action and fine-tuning the targeting criteria to maximize the campaign’s return on investment,” Mantic said in a statement.

This launch includes Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles, The Oaks in
Thousand Oaks, Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, Lakewood Center in
Lakewood, and Stonewood Center in Downey. Bluetooth zones are located in
or near food courts, cinema box offices, lobbies and other strategic
locations throughout the more than six million square feet of retail
space.

• in Canada, (where hotspots are available at a number of newstand locations)
  
• and in India (where bluetooth hotspots are being used to augment a media sharing website).

BlueZones are now installed at 30 CCDs in Mumbai, 24 in Delhi, 4 in Gurgaon & 2 in Kanpur.

Users can connect using bluetooth and uplaod their pictures and other media files on mobshare servers for free. These files are then made available on mobshare.in, WAP portals, mobile screens and are displayed at CCD outlets on DSN screens. Mobshare is all the more interesting because they are available across the country. Sitting in Mumbai, I can see what youth at, say, Kanpur is doing at a CCD.

Its amazing the range of images that users share. An account planner can easily spot certain trends. Apart from sharing pics of themselves (aspiring models? lure of a big screen? gratification?), there are pictures of groups of people (my friends are more important than anything else), bikes (bikes are still the “cool tool”), gods (how? why?), pets (understandable), movie stars (fandom still sells more cola in India than any other gimmick) etc.

I always pass by the Ayala-Paseo underpass in Makati. A few weeks ago, I noticed the advertisement of Blue Zone. It says that you just have to turn on your bluetooth and you’ll receive a surprise. And for their first surprise, you’ll receive a free Krispy Kreme coupon.

So just last Friday, i turned on my phone’s bluetooth and after a few seconds a got a message informing me i’m receiving a file. After making sure its really from Blue Zone I accepted and got two image files - the coupon and logo of Krispy Kreme.

• provides some value to the end user, by offering a freebie,
• notifies participants as to the existence of the service, encouraging passers-by to turn on their bluetooth to receive a surprise.

In the first half of 2008, 17.5 percent of households were wireless only, up from 13.6 percent a full year earlier, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The statistics have a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage point, according to the agency, which collected the data as part of project to determine if national health polls were being skewed by the trend.

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The figures come from national in-person interviews of approximately 30,000 households per year with at least one adult or child.

The agency concluded that polls were indeed being skewed because they have in the past only called those with traditional landlines. They and other organizations are moving toward incorporating wireless customers into their surveys.