HOT APPS ON 3GSM

Mobile operators are under pressure, tasked with gaining revenue in an increasingly saturated market. As a remedy to that problem, this year’s 3GSM World Congress saw an outbreak of sticky applications designed to turn operators and network providers from bit pipes into service providers of the future, at little cost. Heather Maclean reviews her pickoff the bunch.

One of these sticky applications is the dubiously named Bupuppies from Kitmaker. No, no adult content, but virtual pets for your mobile. And these virtual pets, unlike the well known Tamagotchi’s from Bandai, do not die and cause five year olds across the globe to collapse in grief. Bupuppies merely sulk when not fed, watered and taken to the bathroom by their owners, and sometimes leave your phone in a huff. Bupuppies are educational too; to feed them a banana, you have to take a picture on your camera phone of something yellow. Buppupies will retail in the UK at around ₤5 and Version 2 will be based on Bluetooth, so your puppy can get a girlfriend from a neighbouring phone.

Real eyes came out with a couple of hot applications. Real Eyes has taken the camera phone and used it to create Digitizer. Users can snap a picture of their own handwriting on a notepad, which is then digitised to create a clear image of the writing on the screen. This can then be sent over MMS (Multimedia Message Service). This is complemented by the real eyes wireless postcard. Wireless postcard allows the user to take a picture from a file or use a new picture, overlay a handwritten message using the Digitizer and then change the colour, size and position of the message. The digital postcard can be sent as an MMS, a mobile blog, or used as wallpaper.