GSMA veteran takes Visa Mobile; NewsWireless amused!

We quote from a story we found at NewsWireless today. It asks: “Did you know that Visa had a mobile business?” Now read on…

 Probably not; but you do now, because it has appointed industry veteran Bill Gajda to run it.

From Finextra, we have this summary of the news:

Card giant Visa has hired Bill Gajda, chief commercial officer at global wireless trade group GSMA, to head up its mobile operations.

In his new role, Gajda is charged with running Visa’s mobile strategy, working with the wireless and financial services industries to bring mobile payments and related services to people around the globe.

He joins the firm after seven years at the GSMA, which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, spanning 219 countries and uniting nearly 800 of the world’s operators.

As chief commercial officer, Gajda was responsible for strategic initiatives including mobile money, mobile money transfer, advertising, strategic partnerships, innovation and business development. He also serves as president of the GSM Foundation, a position he will continue to maintain as head of mobile at Visa.

Before joining the GSMA, Gajda was head of marketing at Ericsson, and also held key positions at Bell Canada International and Telus.

Elizabeth Buse, global head, product, Visa, says: “Bill’s experience in working with mobile network operators, handset manufacturers and other leaders in wireless, combined with his track record in helping to developing successful business models, will be a significant asset as Visa’s aims to commercialize mobile financial services around the globe.”

Visa has stepped up its assault on the mobile payments and banking sectors in the last couple of years, launching several commercial trials around the world. Last year it also took a 14.4% stake in Monitise after signing a $13 million partnership deal with the UK mobile banking outfit.

Entertainingly, a very similar-reading press release can be found to reveal many of those details. The release adds the information that:

GSMA’s Bill Gajda to Head up Visa’s Mobile Initiative While Maintaining Role as President of the GSM Foundation

Here’s the full text of the official release, just for fun!

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 22, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Visa Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!v/quotes/nls/v (V 87.32, +0.51, +0.59%) , the world’s largest retail electronic payments network(1), announced today that Bill Gajda, currently Chief Commercial Officer at the GSMA, will join Visa as head of mobile. Gajda’s position at Visa is designed to further advance Visa’s mobile strategy, working in collaboration with the wireless and financial services industries to bring mobile payments and related services to consumers around the globe.

Gajda comes to Visa with nearly 15 years experience in the wireless industry, including seven years with the GSMA, the organization which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem.

During his tenure at the GSMA, Gajda held senior level positions including chief marketing officer, and most recently, chief commercial officer, where he was responsible for strategic initiatives including Mobile Money, Mobile Money Transfer, Mobile Advertising, Strategic Partnerships, Mobile Innovation and Business Development. Gajda also currently serves as president of the GSM Foundation, a position he will continue to maintain as head of mobile at Visa Inc.

“Visa has made great strides in forming strategic alliances and working in collaboration with the wireless industry to bring mobile financial services to consumers in both mature and emerging markets,” said Elizabeth Buse, global head of product at Visa Inc. “Bill’s experience in working with mobile network operators, handset manufacturers and other leaders in wireless, combined with his track record in helping to developing successful business models, will be a significant asset as Visa’s aims to commercialize mobile financial services around the globe.”

Previous to his role at the GSMA, Gajda was head of marketing at Ericsson, and also held key positions at Bell Canada International and TELUS.

Robot

This is me trying to embed YouTube video…

Here is the video:

except, of course, there it isn’t. YouTube embedments are thrown away?

Where to find big-keypad phones without too many features

I see NewswWireless.Net (Yes, grownups don’t want toy phones) … has picked up on Silverphone.  Question: What do grownups want to do with mobiles? Answer:

They want to make calls!

In what they say is the first of a series of pointers for “I don’t want a smart phone!” users, Buy simple mobile phones for OAP Elderly and visually impaired – Silverphone is featured on NewsWireless. Silverphone specialists in phones for Silver Surfers:

We are the UK’s most popular place to find easy to use mobile phones. We have recently been featured on BBC 1, ITV’s This Morning show and a host of other publications.
Most of our products have large buttons and single button call functions. Our big button phones are perfect for OAPs, people with special needs and lone workers as they very often require a phone that is simple to understand and easy to use.

Look forward to seeing more pointers!

Where to find a big-keyboard phone without too many features…?

I see NewswWireless.Net (Yes, grownups don’t want toy phones) … has picked up on Silverphone. What do grownups want to do with mobiles? Answer:

They want to make calls!

In what they say is the first of a series of pointers for “I don’t want a smart phone!” users, Buy simple mobile phones for OAP Elderly and visually impaired – Silverphone is featured. It specialists in phones for Silver Surfers:

We are the UK’s most popular place to find easy to use mobile phones. We have recently been featured on BBC 1, ITV’s This Morning show and a host of other publications.

Most of our products have large buttons and single button call functions. Our big button phones are perfect for OAPs, people with special needs and lone workers as they very often require a phone that is simple to understand and easy to use.

Look forward to seeing more pointers!

The ghosts of pens…

A friend remarked:

If a ghost needs to remember something
– like a telephone number – then she needs to write it on a ghostly sheet
of paper with the ghost of a pen.

Yes, that sounds reasonable.

I think we can all agree that pens don’t have ghosts.

Therefore ghosts can’t remember things.

I disagreed:

The ghosts of many, many pens (and spectacles, and bus passes, and cups,
and paper clips) haunt me daily, as I search for them – and I seem to hear
their silent voices bewailing their disappearance. And socks…

And then someone posted this:

Postcards and letters
T-shirts and sweaters
Passports and Parkas
Mobiles and chargers
Two tennis rackets
Blue Rizla packets
A new sheep-skin jacket
I lost it all

All through my life there have been
Many rare and precious things
I have tried to call mine
But I just cannot seem
To keep hold of anything
For more than a short time
Possessions of a sentimental kind
They were mine, now they’re not

Gym-kits and trainers
Asthma inhalers
Silk-cuts and Bennies
Ten-packs and twenties
C-class narcotics
Antibiotics
The holes in my pockets
I lost it all

All that I’d like is to know
Just where do those lost things go?
When they slip from my hands
Then one night in a dream
I passed through a sheepskin screen
To a green, pleasant land
I found them all piled up into the sky
And I cried tears of joy

Apparently it’s from:

Lost Property – the Divine Comedy.

father, daughter… anybody know this one?

Amazon.co.uk: father daughter

The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-daughter Relationship by Linda Schierse Leonard (Paperback – 3 Nov 1998)
21 Used & new from £3.99
4.0 out of 5 stars (4)

Books: See all 3,989 items

Technorati Tags: father, daughter, father-daughter bonding

Father and Daughter…?

I want to find some activities for a new father and his daughter, and ideas that weren’t corny “she’s a gurly” stuff. You know, instead of games like “fasten Daddy’s tie” or Valentine party games for your little girl” (which is what Google throws up) (which made me throw up) bat-and-ball tomboy stuff, or gender neutral science experiments. So I went to Amazon, hoping to find some party game books, and found:

7.

Jason Varitek Boston Red Sox MLB 8″ On The Field Bobber

Buy new: $21.99 $20.95

6 Used & new from $20.95

In Stock

› Show only Forever Collectibles items

8.

Dallas Cowboys Tony Romo Forever Collectibles Photo Base Bobble Head

Buy new: $50.00 $19.66

4 Used & new from $19.66

In Stock

› Show only Casey’s items

9.

Indianapolis Colts Peyton Manning Forever Collectibles Knucklehead

Buy new: $40.00 $18.36

4 Used & new from $18.36

In Stock

› Show only Casey’s items

Not offensive, not tasteless? Hmmm

Just passing on a gem discovered by BoredStop.com last February. Not so sure that they got this entirely right. But worth passing on to your friends who like tasteless humour!

Subtle Sex Ad

“Thought you might appreciate the subtlety of this ad, done by a Brazilian ad agency, for a lubricating gel (K-Y equivalent) targeting the French market. They were trying to come up with an ad that is not offensive or tasteless. The picture looks completely innocent until you notice the details… Oh, my God. Look carefully at the details. Apparently, it has created quite a buzz in Europe.”

Wll, the buzz has reached the Munchyrat. No risk of “good taste” here…!

ID cards: “we’re not collecting data..” – UK MInister

The UK Government – ignoring almost universal objections – is taking its first step in launching national ID cards by making a voluntary system operational – in Manchester. The BBC, in a report — Manchester ‘launch’ for ID cards got an amazing quote from them:

“I think it is important to recognise that we’re not collecting some massive accumulation of information about citizens,” said James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service.

Of course, that is exactly what they are doing. The ID cards are, effectively, a universal indexing system for all other related data held by Government

Pilots say they are effectively being forced into signing up for the cards, the report adds, with a transcript from the Radio “Today” programme:

“Our members believed the government promise that the ID card would be voluntary,” said Jim McAuslan, general secretary of the pilots’ union Balpa.

“But they now know it is anything but. Our members must have an airside pass to operate aircraft and now discover that to get that pass they must have a national ID card.

“This is coercion and a case of Big Brother knows best.”

Everybody wants the idea dropped. The Government itself is split.

But the Home Office just does what it finds convenient, right? According to FT.com
even in the Cabinet,

Objections have been raised within the cabinet about cost, particularly in light of the need to slash public spending made clear by last month’s Budget.

The Home Office calculates that to introduce the scheme over the next 10 years would cost about £5bn ($8bn) for UK citizens and £379m for foreign nationals. But it argues 70 per cent of these costs would be needed anyway to introduce the next generation of biometric passports. By the plan, people would be given a choice of having an ID card and a passport or only a passport carrying biometric data.

This is a democracy. Presumably, the idea is to find out which way users will vote, rather than pressure groups. So rather than a referendum, we roll it out in a small niche market (airline pilots, foreigners) with hidden compulsion, or in a local area where propaganda will be cheaper?

Rotten time for 3 to cancel mobile broadband bargain…

BT’s “surprise” cheap mobile broadband package should be a surprise only to those who didn’t know who has been sponsoring Vodafone’s rapid 3G network expansion in the UK. But the long-term effects on mobile data will only become clear in late 2010, when rival networks run out of bandwidth, say insiders.

At 16 pounds per month, the BT deal answers all consumer questions, except the unknowable one: “Will they really let us download as much data this time next year?” And the smart money says BT probably will, but rivals may not.

It’s too late to pick up the previous favourite half-price mobile broadband “Max” deal from 3 UK and Top 10 broadband ; the joint deal expires end April. But that makes BT’s launch of a re-badged Vodafone bundle well timed.
Stacey Higginbotham (amongst many) told her readers that the deal is based on Vodafone 3G cells.

What Higgenbotham didn’t tell her readers, is that this is a quid pro quo; for the last year, BT has been expanding Vodafone’s broadband network as part of its 21st century networking (21CN) project. She reported:

BT Group introduced packages earlier this week that add mobile broadband to home services such as voice, web and video that it provides to customers. By coming out with a combined mobile and fixed broadband package, it’s mirroring a trial plan offered by AT&T and recognizing that mobile broadband can be a good complement to wired broadband, especially as consumers start adding netbooks and other mobile devices to their lives. 

Her comment was:

“If such offerings take off, AT&T and Verizon have an obvious advantage, but smaller carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint could stand to benefit if other ISPs want to resell time on their networks. For example, BT is reselling mobile access from Vodafone to create its package.” 

Similarly, Reuters quoted Ovum consultant analyst Steve Hartley in its analysis. Hartley worried:

“BT is able to leverage its strength in fixed broadband, which makes this stand out from the `me too’ mobile broadband offers that have flooded the UK market over the past eighteen months. Our main concerns for this offer hinge on the amount BT is paying to use Vodafone’s network,” 

  – making it appear that Reuters and Ovum are unaware of the full scope of the back-room deal between Voda and BT.

The deal could be crucial. All the big mobile operators originally budgeted huge income from mobile data. When phone users simply didn’t use the technology, and when the first model iPhone used 2.5G data (GPRS) they all dived into the market with super-cheap data deals based on (primarily) Huawei modems for notebook and netbook users.

Within a year, the lavishly generous offerings were turning out to be over-subscribed.

Deals, previously sold as “unlimited” have been transformed into “acceptable use limited” small-print quibbles by those operators who can actually monitor how much data individual users consume. One or two cannot.

One consultant, having worked with Vodafone/BT on the 21CN project, told Unthinkable that “within a year, the only UK network to be able to keep increasing its mobile data bandwidth, will be Vodafone. All the rest will have severe contention problems, with too many users clustering round too little backhaul.”

And a technical contractor for one large European-wide operator confided, off the record: “We keep telling the marketing people that we simply can’t carry on growing this market. They aren’t interested, because they know we can grow at the current rate for another three months. We say ‘But in a year, we’ll be swamped!’ but marketing doesn’t have to deal with that yet, so they ignore us.”