Round-Up: Sprint’s Fantasy Date; Flavorpill; Cellware
By James Quintana Pearce - Wed 12 Dec 2007 05:15 AM PST
-- Sprint (NYSE: S) has launched a new game from MoConDi, the selling point being that it incorporates the mobile web, video and gaming into one experience. Fantasy Date offers a sequence of videos, and after each one you choose what response you want to give from a list, and the correct one leads on to the following video. There’s a range of males or females to seduce, which change monthly. It costs $2.99 (I assume per month) and Sprint has put it on the Chat & Dating category of its homepage, rather than the games section. There’s a demo here.
-- Flavorpill, a publisher of cultural newsletters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami, has launched a mobile service with BuzzD. The sites will give editorially driven event and venue information, along with up-to-the-minute reviews and ratings from friends and other members. Yes, there’s a social aspect to the sites, which allow their users to instantly find, connect with, and message friends with easy to use SMS and messaging features about the cultural events that Flavorpill promotes. People can also browse and search continuously updated event feeds, with pricing, location, and event details along with firsthand ratings and reviews posted from the event by other members.
-- A new ringtone site, Cellware, lets people upload MP3 tracks, edit and mash them, and then send them to a mobile phone as a ringtone or offer them for sharing with other people on the site. Ringtones made from copyrighted material can’t be shared (if I read the NYT right) but can be downloaded to the users handset as part of the fair use doctrine. Copyright infringing material is blocked by the simple (but expensive) process of having a person listen to every ringtone. The business model is advertising based and people sharing ringtones will be offered a cut of the revenue generated, but I’m concerned about the ads raising enough revenue to pay for people to listen to the ringtones.
-- Gaga Communications will Phantom of the Cinema as its first weekly film program on its Music & Video Channel on the DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) 905i mobile TV phone. It will show about 20 trailers of upcoming movies, as well as reviews and movie-related news and info that people can access from a menu reports Variety.
-- Mobio has launched a recipes application letting people search for recipes by keyword, occasion or course, save them to their handset for quick access and create detailed grocery lists.
Posted in: Entertainment, Mobile Gaming, Mobile Music, Media & Publishing, Social Media





