Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

“How mobile phones have ruined dating and why everyone should want the ability to be completely blown off.”

A little caveat first. I am the co-founder of a technology start-up. Now I know technology has the ability to make our lives better, more efficient, and if entrepreneurs like me do our jobs correctly, eventually more fulfilled. Which is why any of us who are still dating should throw away our mobile phones right now. Mobile phones have ruined dating for good. I know this may be a controversial argument, but hear me out.

For those of us over the age of twenty (my sister is in college so I'm using her as my watermark), we may remember a time not too long ago when everyone had a home phone. Tethered to a long curly cord, you would talk into the receiver with words both gentle and harsh for long hours into the night. If you were talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend you would sometimes just sit on the phone not saying anything while you independently went about your own tasks. This was the golden age of dating - the golden age of being stood up.

Just like the 1950s and handwriting, there once was a time when it was possible to arrange a date with someone to meet at a place and time and for that person to just never show up, never to be heard from again. A blow-off. A waiter asking if he should remove the extra table setting. A bottle of wine for two already poured now a bottle for one. A sad song playing in the background as the camera pans out in the crowded restaurant on the one lonely soul sitting by himself. But was it so sad?

Just think of the information you have because of this stand up! You know categorically that this person is out. You know instantly and without a doubt that you can move on to greener pastures. No time wasted, no second guessing. You may be mad that they decided that sharing an experience with you was less important than whatever they were doing at the same moment, but hey, you had a nice bottle of wine, you ate food (which you would have done regardless), so net net, with all this extra information you now have about this person I'd say you're up on the night. Now fast forward to today.

I'm assuming you have made it past the first step of actually getting someone's phone number. What happens next? In today's world you have to then navigate through an intense and carefully structured set of Byzantine digital dating rules. I’m going to list a few of them:

1. You absolutely cannot call the person. It's almost the equivalent of stalking or heavy breathing on a late night phone call.
2. No Gchat before maybe the third or fourth date, if not longer. Gchats are the death knell of a blossoming romance.
3. You have to send a clever, funny, and bold text message. Maximum 160 characters. Anything longer smacks of desperation. Too bold is too Wall Street.
4. Do not reply to a response quickly. In the age of instant digital gratification, making them wait for responses is good.
5. I’m not even sure what to do about Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or BBM. My gut says don’t touch them – they’re like Gchat.

Those are just a few of the rules and to be honest, I’m constantly seeking the advice of wiser digital dating gurus (aka my sister).

So now you've sent your witty 160-character text message. What ensues is a masterful game of cat and mouse, of push and pull. Clever digital notes passed back and forth across the mobile airwaves with the intention of laying groundwork so you can entice them into seeing you in the physical world. At least I think that's what most people want. This entire stage in the dating process is only made possible by the mobile phone. And because people use their mobile phones for everything nowadays, there are an infinite number of legitimate excuses for why messages were not received or responses delayed. You think maybe their battery did die which means that they still want to see me…

In the event that you do make plans to meet non-virtually, there are always only two options for what happens next. A) They will actually meet you as planned or B) they will not meet you as planned but will inform you and cancel/change the plans prior to the date taking place. What I mean to say is that there will ALWAYS be information about the situation in real time exchanged through mobile devices. Actually showing up to a pre-arranged date and the other person pulling a no-show and not communicating anything just doesn't happen anymore.

You no longer have the gift of categorically verified information about a person's uselessness in one night.  Today if someone changes plans you now have the possibility of having a "text" relationship with someone for weeks and months without ever seeing them. I propose that this is not too dissimilar from prison pen-pals. One day you will be granted parole.

Solution? If ladies just answered their phones when a guy they liked called, then that seems to solve the whole problem. But that’s what, too easy? Maybe we need an iPhone app that prioritizes your contacts based on potential chemistry so low priority matches go straight to voicemail, middle priorities get sent an automatic pre-written text and higher priorities get coveted access to your real live text message. I’m sure I’ve just made a developer a million dollars with this idea.

Or you could just answer your phone.

(Author's note: as I write this a girl that is to be unnamed (Jenna) has blamed her blackberry service for not sending me the email that was supposed to tell me our plans had changed. A digital stand up. But it wasn’t her fault; it was her corporate email account… Maybe she'll read this, feel guilty and actually call me.)

Jesse Solomon is the Co-founder of RightsCube – the online source for all of the world's film and television rights information.  RightsCube enables media buyers more purchasing power and enable content owners access to a larger pool of potential buyers than their traditional sales channels would allow. He can be contacted at jesse [at] rightscube.com

In order to further our understanding of the behaviors developing around mobile technology, we have been reaching out to experts across the globe for their unique insights. By doing this, we are able to escape ourselves and become exposed to new perspectives.

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist and tech consultant based out of Portland, Oregon. Previously, she was involved with PR and digital strategy at Wieden + Kennedy and has blogged for the Discovery Channel. She founded CyborgCamp, a conference on the future of humans and computers.

With all the hype surrounding augmented reality, we asked Amber to clear things up and help us put the technology into perspective.

Amber: In a way, augmented reality has been hyped for years. It's been used for military and corporate purposes, and it's been quite expensive. But augmented reality really started as virtual reality. It was a little too early for its time. For one thing, the idea of the interface was not stable yet. The idea of wearing a heavy helmet on one's head is not socially, economically, or physically feasible.

Now that mobile devices and webcams are available to enough people to make augmented reality a more common occurrence, AR speculation has blossomed once again. iPhones and other mobile platforms now contain locative technologies, accelerometers and ongoing connectivity. They've become a common and affordable interface, allowing augmented reality to finally have more than a few common platforms to stand on.

Virtual Reality is often defined as an opaque experience that is separate from the real world. But mobile devices are melting into our reality instead of taking us away from it. We are using information to connect us to people and to plan the experiences of our future self and those around us. We are using personal mobile devices as video game controllers for the world around us. Virtual Reality has dissolved into actual reality.

We are gaming animals. All throughout history, games were substitutes and simulations of war. Now our wars are fun. They're soft wars. The race to get the most followers and most views on a website. The race to share. They're still very evolutionary, we're just playing the game on a different platform that doesn't involve us physically as much as mentally and strategically. We've become emperors of our own empires, sending out robotic troops to scrape websites, gather RSS feeds and plot trajectories on digital maps. We have robots that grab and tell us our stats. We count our troops. We have Facebook walls that, when printed out, would span the length of Egyptian temples. They'd also contain as just as much history.

The first augmented reality was spice, and that was a heavy market for the Europeans, who had a quite a lot of bland food. Augmented reality is hyped a little like that. Marketers find it tasty, and business writers like to sprinkle it onto a lot of the passages they write. It makes the tech go down faster, so to speak. For more on that, I'd watch Bruce Sterling's keynote at Layar.

Stay tuned for more of Amber's thoughts on the topics of location based services, the internet of things, slow data, and more.

In Korea, the snack sausage is sometimes used as an iPhone stylus. Now, thanks to Casecrown, those of us in the United States can order one for ourselves.

Live in a cold area where you have to use gloves to avoid frostbite? Or maybe you just want to keep your fingers warm. Then you know how much of a hassle it is to take off your gloves to use your apps. Or just to have an alternative for your fingers because you can't use pens or clothed hands.

A single sausage costs just $0.99, but keep in mind, these ones are not edible.

[via intomobile]

During London's six-day East Festival, agency Chance Collective has fixed up a bike, connecting it to the grid for a more interactive social media experience.

The Twike for the East Festival has been fitted with a cell phone programmed to tweet out messages when it comes within range of key areas of the festival.

Along with messages tagged #eastfest and @eastfestival, users can follow along via Flickr and an eventual Google Maps mash-up.

[via mashable]

For those with departed loved ones, visiting a cemetery can become a way to remember them. Traditional grave markers display information like name, birthday, and the date a person died, but so much more about the individual is lost. RosettaStone decided to fix this, bringing mobile activated multimedia content to a connected graveyard.

The company offers small data tags that can be attached to any gravestone.

The device uses NFC-RFID tech to allow mobile phones that are capable of reading NFC data to get images and text that they can enjoy as the visit the graveside. The device is a palm-size stone tablet or a coin-size stick-on polymer tag called a Data Tag. The Data Tag sticks directly to the headstone and text and photos associated with the tag can be uploaded and managed by the buyer directly to an archive site included with the purchase.

This is very similar to Kuyou no Mado (Memorial Service Window), where a Japanese company was embedding QR codes into memorial stones for mobile interaction.

While today's mobile phone technology limits the use of RosettaStone's product (there is a URL for devices that cannot read RFID), it does demonstrate an interesting concept. They have taken a strategy that is familiar to mobile marketers (path/presence) and applied it to the gravestone.

[via slashgear]

The Pew Research Center is polling users to answer the question How Millennial Are You? After taking the quiz, users are ranked on a scale placing them within a certain generational group.

A couple mobile related questions that affect "Millennial score" include:

Thinking about your telephone use, do you have...

Only a landline phone in your home

Only a cell phone

Both a landline and cell phone

In the past 24 hours, about how many text messages, if any, did you send or receive on your cell phone?

No text messages on your cell phone in the past 24 hours

1 to 9 text messages

10 to 49 text messages

50 or more text messages

Mobile connected culture is taking off with today's youth. Take the quiz here to find out your place in all of it. Then compare the results with others' here.

One could argue that time-tracking was one of the first digital utilities to go mobile, just look at the wrist watch. Now with smart devices and app stores, designers have gone all in and developed a variety of creative clocks.

Creative Applications explains why:

Time is a concept easily understood and eagerly visualised amongst artists. The collection of apps below show not only how time can be visualized but also the sheer imagination that exists out there.

From U-LOCK to 365 Alarm Clock, check out CAN's collection of  creative clock apps here.