Sunday, November 27, 2005

Mobile Horoscope

Trying to research the Mobile Horoscope phenomena on Google I got 2,080,000 results for the words Mobile Horoscope. No sane researcher will read them all. So how should one collect the data he needs for his research if nobody wrote an extensive Wikipedia article about his subject?

First I phrased my research questions:
What is Mobile Horoscope?
How does Mobile Horoscope work?
Who are the main Mobile Horoscope suppliers?
Who started Mobile Horoscope?
What's the value of the Mobile Horoscope market?
What are the trends of the Mobile Horoscope market?


This research mission seems to be hard since most of the links on the first Google results pages are in fact ads that try to sell you a service and not to describe it.
Then there is the problem of synonyms:
Mobile, cellphone, cell phone, Mobile Web, Wireless, handheld Mobile, mobile Internet, Horoscope, Horoscopes.


Synonyms are fine candidates for pileup queries. I took the original search terms "Mobile Horoscope" and added to them each query another synonym and here's what I got:

http://www.mymbn.com/mbnhoroscopes.jsp
Access "Web Sites" from the cellphone deck Choose "Entertainment" from the list Select "MBN Horoscopes" Choose your Sign Follow subscription instructions using your Nextel Wallet
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/classifieds/Content?oid=oid:58076
Your Future Is in your hands! Have your horoscope sent direct to your cell phone - every day! To subscribe send text message with the word HOROSCOPE and your astrological sign (example: HOROSCOPE GEMINI) from your cell to the five digit number 25378.
You will be charged 50 cents for each horoscope message.

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2005/Mar/1124895.htm
Makes Horoscopes Mobile VIENNA, Va., March 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mobile Media Company (http://www.mobilemedia.com/), a leading provider of global wireless games, interactive entertainment services, and marketing applications, today announced an agreement with CosmoGIRL! publisher Hearst Magazines, to launch the CosmoGIRL! TXT Horoscope Service, a cross-carrier, daily mobile horoscope service with CosmoGIRL! magazine.
Mobile Media will work with Hearst's Brand Development Group to bring the TXT Horoscope Service to millions of CosmoGIRL! readers. Subscribers of the service will receive one alert per day via text message at a cost of $1.99 per month.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/mobilewebf/faq_msn/faq.html
What kind of Alerts can I receive from Mobile Web? MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, Calendar, Money, News/Headlines, Lottery, Sports, Weather, Horoscope, Music and Carpoint Traffic.
http://help.yahoo.com/help/uk/mobile/mobile-68.html
Mobile Horoscopes provided by Zed works as a subscription service that sends you your horoscope daily. Each morning you will receive a text message of your horoscope for that day.
http://www.katazo.com/
Get a Free Ringtone, Poly Ringtones, Mono Ringtones, Backgrounds, Games, Horoscopes, Jokes and more for your mobile cell phone! We support LG, Motorola, Sanyo, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, NEC, Samsung, Siemens, Sharp and Ericsson cell phones on AT&T, Cingular, Verizon and Sprint.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/719431
In its latest push to drive wireless platforms beyond horoscopes and news, Ericsson has launched a Mobile Commerce Platform to provide a secure solution for operators to deliver their own m-commerce services.
http://fury.com/article/911.php
Undoubtedly the worst part is the horoscopes. Call me spoiled from having read some truly great astrologers, but Cingular's daily cellphone horoscopes plainly suck.
Heck, that's what computers are for! So, to share my wry amusement with these horoscopes, I've taken several dozen of these cellphone horoscopes and broken them apart and last week on the train (where, incidentally, I'm writing this post, while slogging through the south bay salt beds (yeah, really funky timeshifting in the editing process here... Deal with it. :-) ) ) I wrote the Cellphone Horoscope Generator.
If you haven't noticed it yet, it's be there in the navbar on the left, under 'Cell-o-scope.' Every reload will give you a new cellphone horoscope!
http://www.t-mobile.com/services/tzones/overview.asp?nav=hm
Get unlimited access to the mobile Web for one low monthly fee. t-zones turns your phone into a mobile entertainment and information source. Customize the information you receive--get news, weather, sports, your horoscope, whatever you want.
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:132316086&refid=ip_encyclopedia_hf
PR Newswire: Summus Chooses Astrology.com for Wireless Horoscope Content.@ HighBeam Research --
Help us improve HighBeam Research. Click here to take a survey. -- Advanced Search ALL NEW!-- Summus Chooses Astrology.com for Wireless Horoscope Content.
(USA) (BULLETIN BOARD: SUMU) , a leading provider of solutions that change the way information is communicated and processed through mobile devices and networks, today announced it has signed a licensing agreement with Astrology.com, the world's largest syndicator of astrology content and services, to provide daily horoscope content to wireless consumers. The daily horoscope content includes 19 types of horoscopes based on consumer interests such
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/superpat/Weblog/is_liberty_panoptical?catname=
As an aside, one interesting feature of Liberty and similar protocols that we are starting to see in the real-world is that users can access services at SPs without actually identifying themselves to the SP. For example, I could access a wireless horoscope service. The horoscope provider doesn't care who I am, just that I am a paying subscriber of my wireless operator (the IdP) and my birthday is July 7th, which information I have explicitly directed the IdP to share with the SP.
Is my privacy enhanced or reduced here? Sure, the wireless operator knows that I visit the horoscope service every day, but it knows that anyway, since it is in a position to monitor all my wireless internet traffic. But in this instance, the horoscope provider has no idea who I am.
http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_03_02.shtml
Wireless Horoscopes Provider's IPO Debuts Wednesday [by rafat] : Repeat this after me: a wireless horoscopes provider is doing an IPO now...yes, and this is 2004. Shanghai-based Linktone, a Chinese provider of horoscopes on cellular phones, expects to price an IPO in New York on Wednesday, with its stock debuting on Nasdaq the next day under the symbol "LTON".
http://rdrw1.yahoo.com/click?u=http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl%3Fpdlanding%3D1%26referid%3D2750%26item_id%3D0199-2050039%26words%3DEyematic_Launches_Mygenie&y=02D6428FECC23B1F&i=482&c=24388&q=02%5ESSHPM%5BL7hvmzszll%3Fwpmpl%7Cpozl%3F6&e=utf-8&r=5&d=wow~YHOO-en-us&n=D5L45H3HU6447P66&s=10&t=&m=43893B1E&x=014958C9D956B5CE
Eyematic Launches ``MyGenie'''' Animated Horoscopes for Verizon Wireless'' Get It Now; New Graphical Mobile Application Built on Eyematic Multimedia Software. from Goliath Industry and Business News
http://www.cincinnatibell.com/residential/wireless?id=infoondemand&t=6
Cincinnati Bell - Wireless - Info on Demand Horoscopes
http://www.freebeeps.com/News_Pages/MSNMobile/article.htm
MSN was the first of the major Internet portal sites to provide wireless information services, starting in June 1999, and continues to show leadership with further advances. MSN Mobile one-way notifications provide news, sports, weather, stock quotes, horoscopes, personal alerts and lottery information as selected by the user. MSN Mobile 2.0, scheduled to be available on devices in April, will provide not only notifications but also interactive access to MSN services, such as the Hotmail® Web-based e-mail service and the MoneyCentral™ online personal finance service, for Web-enabled mobile phones and handheld devices.

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