Did you know that you have a library full of exciting material on your phone? With Worldreader Books in a few easy clicks you could be reading our free articles on health, falling in love with a contemporary short story or browsing classic fiction from some of the best writers of our time.

We’re always adding new books and looking for great new stories so we wanted to keep you in the loop. In March we had almost 310,000 readers, mainly from Nigeria, India and Ethiopia. Using biNu’s clever cloud based technology, we brought you local and international stories; classics and brand new tales, along with useful non-fictional content on Health and Sexual Education.

The most popular book was Nigerian author Myne Whitman’s A Heart to Mend. This steamy page-clicker is set in Lagos, where reality is getting in the way of romance. Next up, people are reading African stories, such as easy reader Bee Ninja by Ghanaian writer Diana Mcbagonluri. Romantics and adventure addicts are clicking through Louise McCann’s Someone like me and Fiona Snyckers’ teen series, Sisterz. Stats show that popular classics include The Count of Monte Cristo.
How do we do get such great books onto our App? We have great partners, such as biNu, many international publishers and authors and… You! We need help from our readers, to find out what books you’re reading and what you want to read.
Tell us on twitter @worldreaders #booksforall or by taking part in a quiz.

Curious about Worldreader? We’re a non-profit dedicated to transforming how the world reads by using new digital mediums. We work with schools and organizations to bring e-readers, like the Kindle, to children who have traditionally had poor access to paper books. Devices like the Kindle help reduce transportation costs and enable one child to carry around an entire library. We’re also on cell phones, just like the one you are using, so that anyone with a cell phone can also have access to a world of great books and valuable information.

See more at www.worldreader.org

The biNu team were very excited to see recent coverage of biNu by the BBC. In his article, BBC reporter Clark Boyd reminds us that despite all the glitz and glamour of smartphones, feature phones remain the workhorse for the majority of mobile users and that a very healthy after-market exists for companies that improve the performance and usability of feature phones and low-end smartphones. In their recent study VisionMobile quantified this market stating that there is “over 50% smartphone penetration in developed markets, but less than 20% in emerging markets.”

biNu started out life as an app to improve the performance and usability of web-browsing on mobile phones, but driven by the needs of our users, biNu has morphed into an entire suite of cloud-based apps that include reference, search, translation, ebooks and email. No wonder our users say we make their dumbphones, smart! Just as it is in developed economies, social networking has also become a big deal in emerging economies and our Facebook and Twitter connectivity apps are very popular. However, biNu is taking another big step here by also providing fully integrated and seamless social networking capabilities within biNu itself. So if you want to tell your friends about a good book you read on Worldreader Books, get into a conversation on a sporting event or just express an opinion on anything via biNu beats, you can do so on the go, wherever you are, whenever you like and all without the need for an expensive smartphone or laptop computer.

Original BBC article:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120405-turning-dumbphones-to-smartphones

Link to VisionMobile study:
It’s still a feature phone world

Here is a short video and demonstration of the application. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7iM5Yke7VY

Worldreader now delivers books on any regular mobile phone that have a data service. Last month biNu and Worldreader had over 100,00 readers of books. Most of which were using feature phones not high end smart phones with big screens. By leveraging biNu, Worldreader’s increases its reach and delivers locally authored content to users who that may never get see a local author’s work in a printed medium.

With increased network coverage and high levels of mobile phone ownership, the mobile phone itself is an excellent mechanism for getting books into peoples hands and allow them to read books. In the emerging markets of Africa and Asia if you only have a phone that is data enabled this is your primary access to the internet. Lets not forget the luxury of e-readers, home PCs and tablets are out of the reach of many.

In the Worldreader app, if a reader does not understand a word they can translate it using Google, or look it up in the online dictionary provided by Wordnik, or further investigate terms in Wikipedia and or do a Google search. biNu also provides social connectivity tools which allows readers to share comments and discussion on the books they’ve read.

For a demonstration of the Worldreader app on biNu  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9hH5Pw7YQE&feature=related

For more information about Worldreader please visit http://www.worldreader.org

Finally! Google just added more languages to their translate API. For a few months, some languages were supported via the web interface but not via the API. We are sure that this will please so many of our users who have been eagerly awaiting their languages to be supported, especially Bengali and Urdu. The new languages are: Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Georgian, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu. Enjoy!

Worldreader makes digital books available to all in the developing world. The organization identifies schools, trains teachers, works with communities and local officials, partners with local and international publishers and other top-tier companies to bring e-books to under-served families in the developing world. By providing access to digital books, Worldreader empowers children and families to rise out of poverty.

“Long-term, technology will help create a real culture of reading in parts of the world where that’s not been possible before,” said Worldreader co-founder Colin McElwee. “Mobile phones are central to technological and educational development in countries in Sub Saharan Africa– especially in rural areas, where there is little to no infrastructure.”

biNu’s patented technology utilizes cloud computing to create a virtual smartphone experience that provides instant discovery, switching and sharing of apps, within a social network and messaging platform. biNu is 10x faster and 10x more efficient on data usage than standard mobile browsers and is an obvious choice for anyone looking to fully utilize their mobile phone – particularly in emerging economies where mobile phones are the primary Internet access device. The beta version of the Worldreader App for biNu is available immediately and gives biNu users instant access to a cloud-based library of digital books from local and international authors.

“Worldreader improves the lives of millions of people in the developing world,” said Gour Lentell, CEO for biNu. “I am pleased we are able to extend their coverage and I hope biNu will play a part in their overall success.”

With this announcement, biNu joins other Worldreader’s other forward-thinking partners like Amazon.com, Penguin Young Readers Group, and USAID.  Said Worldreader CEO David Risher, “Together with the some of world’s best-known organizations, Worldreader and our partners are bringing books to all.”

Worldreader (www.worldreader.org) is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is to put a library of books within reach of every family on the planet, using electronic book technology. Worldreader has established e-reader programs in schools in Ghana and Kenya, and Uganda with plans to expand throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

For a Worldreader press kit, please see http://bit.ly/oBVyZm.

 biNu nominated for 2012 GSMA Global Mobile Awards Most Innovative App

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations. The Global Mobile Awards are part of the annual GSMA Mobile World Congress.

“Reflecting the intensity of competition and innovation across the mobile ecosystem, we saw a record 600 entries and an exceptionally high quality field of contenders vying for this year’s Global Mobile Awards,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. “It is a significant achievement to have made the shortlist, and our warmest congratulations go to all the nominees announced today. We look forward to the unveiling of the winners at the Mobile World Congress next month.”

With the biNu virtual smartphone app, feature phones take on the characteristics of a smartphone, while smartphones run faster on congested networks. By executing in the cloud, biNu is not constrained by the processing capability of a handset and allows feature phones and low end smartphones to run apps normally associated with high-end smartphones – such as social networking, social media and news services. Optimization and compression techniques are deployed giving both feature phone and smartphone users blisteringly fast access to the Internet.

“Being nominated for this prestigious award is a real achievement for biNu,” said Gour Lentell, co-founder and CEO at biNu. “Whilst there has been a lot of innovation in high-end smartphone technology, the market for low-cost smartphones and feature phones is huge and continues to grow significantly. Bringing innovation to these users – as biNu does – presents the company with an exciting opportunity.”

Today there are 5 billion mobile phone users, most of whom do not have high-end smartphones and who use their mobile as their primary internet access device. biNu connects them all to a super-fast, low cost, mobile, optimized social network of communication tools and instant application services.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/2/prweb9164961.htm

January 2012 – a new year bringing millions of new biNu users and very strong growth in sessions and page views! Monthly page views saw an 11-fold increase over the year, from 29m to 341m. Monthly user sessions grew from 1.3m a year ago to 15.7m, and unique monthly users rocketed from 370k last year to 3.1m in January. As we add new products and improve existing ones we expect growth in all metrics to continue apace. Check out our usage stats page for more details.

With the popularity of instant messaging exploding across the mobile world, especially in emerging markets, we are pleased to be able to offer unlimited access to Facebook Messenger on our platform. The Messaging interface can be accessed via the main Facebook app or directly from the biNu home screen. We intend to add other messaging networks such as Google Talk and a new biNu Messaging service as soon as possible.

Visit m.binu.com on your mobile now to download biNu and try our Facebook Messenger, Twitter and many other apps for yourself.

Image courtesy of Vision Mobile

The article prompted many comments questioning this fact.  And to counter these comments it is clear we view the world differently. In the developed world we need to increase our field of understanding and put ourselves in a different place. A place that is not surrounded by computers and high tech gadgets but a place where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs plays a greater influence, a place that just doesn’t care about Android, Apple, RIM or Symbian. It is about communicating. It is arguable that Maslow’s hierarchy can be adapted to include this overall human need to communicate. It is the same in the emerging markets as it has been in the developed market – a phone has become an essential item for talking, sending SMS and browsing the internet.

People in the emerging markets want to communicate with family and friends, they want to access the Internet and they do – in the millions. Many access it everyday, but not like developed economies on a computer but using their phone. Perhaps on a “crappy old” Nokia or a no-name brand in Africa.  In India a person has a choice of one of 150 phone manufacturers.

Price is a major factor in the lack of smartphones for sure. But there are also other critical requirements.

• The standby life of a phone is a very important consideration. The “crappy old phone” can run for days between charges. When was the last time your Smartphone was attached to a power socket?
• The phones need to be robust to cope with the environment where humidity and dust can spell the end for an electrical device.
• Lastly, a major factor outside of major economic centres (and in some cases inside them too) the network infrastructure is just not there.

Here are some other statistics from other leading analyst companies:

• Ovum say Feature phones will still have 63% of mobile market share by 2016.
• In recent Gartner report – India accounts for 12% of device sales globally with smartphone sales making up only 6% in the first 3 quarters of 2011. This is expected to increase to 8% by the end of 2012.
• According to the GSMA – Africa has overtaken Latin America to become the second largest mobile market after Asia. By 2015, the total number of connections is estimated to reach 84% of the total African population.
• According to CISCO – GSM mobile data traffic is set to grow at 26 fold between 2010 and 2015 with the mobile-only Internet growing to 788 million by end of 2015.

To address the emerging markets, phones need to address the above considerations.  Nokia is being bashed in the press for its smartphone initiatives however when it comes to mass-market feature phones they have invested significant resources in the design and manufacture of their devices to ensure they meet the toughest conditions. There is a reason why Nokia is still the number one choice in emerging markets. They make bloody good phones that last.

The bottom line is mass market feature phones are here to stay for the significant future, they will be re-cycled, reused and refurbished just like those Toyotas that run for ever across the Sahara.

From zero to 15 million downloads in less than a year on GetJar, biNu exceeds all growth expectations. biNu, suppliers of software that dramatically improves the usability, performance and social connectivity of mass-market feature phones, today announced they had surpassed two million downloads per month on GetJar the world’s largest free App Store. biNu is a 100% cloud-based platform that delivers a lightning-fast smartphone experience to mass-market feature mobile phones. It is 10 times faster and uses 10% less bandwidth of a mobile browser even on congested networks.

biNu, suppliers of software that dramatically improves the usability, performance and social connectivity of mass-market feature phones, today announced they had surpassed two million downloads per month on GetJar, the world’s largest free App Store.

“Getjar has a prominent position in the mobile app space and have allowed us to rapidly grow our install base,” says Gour Lentell, CEO for biNu. “Achieving two million downloads per month in less than a year is a milestone for the company and exceeds our growth expectations.”

biNu provides a smart phone like experience on mass-market feature phones delivering ultra-fast internet services and social applications. It is a first choice application for anyone looking to fully utilize their mobile phone in emerging economies, where mobile phones are the primary Internet access device, and therefore the opportunity for biNu is vast.

“We’re thrilled to be part of biNu’s success in reaching 15 million downloads on GetJar so far” said GetJar COO, Chris Dury. “For our feature phone customers, biNu has been able to bring the smart phone experience to them too through their browser, SMS, and search applications.”

About biNu
biNu is a privately held company that develops the biNu mobile suite of apps that dramatically improves Internet access speed, usability and social connectivity of mobile phones. With biNu, even basic mobile phones exhibit smartphone-like capabilities. biNu supports millions of users globally with rapid adoption rates in emerging economies where mobile phones are the primary Internet access device. Today, over 100 apps are available for biNu including social media, search, reference, books, SMS, news, weather and entertainment.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebbinu/GetJar/prweb8997811.htm

The Middle East and Africa are forecast to have the strongest mobile data growth of any region at 129% CAGR.  Tthe mobile only internet population will grow 56 fold from 14 million at the end of 2010 to 788 million by the end of 2015[1].

During our our time at the conference Gour Lentell, biNu CEO was interviewed by Russell Southwood an industry analyst and researcher from Balancing Act Africa. In the interview Russell probes Gour on the challenges of providing a fast cloud based mobile internet experience on mass market feature phones.

Here is the link to the video interview: Gour Lentell – Your Smartphone in the Cloud

Russell Southwood can be reached here or via twitter @BalancingActAfr

http://www.balancingact-africa.com

Sources:

[1] Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast

Warning: This post contains a lot of number 1s. Today, on 1/11/11, biNu released a new app for Twitter users on feature phones and smartphone Twitter users seeking a faster experience. This announcement comes close on the heels of the super-fast Facebook app released by biNu a few weeks ago.

With Snaptu officially ending its support for Twitter on 11/11/11, biNu is ready and willing to welcome any Twitter users affected by the Snaptu end-of-life announcement.

Visit m.binu.com on your mobile now to download biNu and try our Facebook and Twitter apps out for yourself.

In her recent blog, CNN reporter Amy Gahran highlights a digital divide between those with easy access to the Internet and those without. Since the Internet is key in our socio-economic fabric, this digital divide is a big deal affecting jobs, services, education, public safety, health care and so on. Amy also cites research from IDC that going forward “more U.S. Internet users will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices.” For those on the rich side of the digital divide, this is all about accessing the Internet on-the-go with iPads, Androids and iPhones (how did we ever manage without them?). For those on the poor side of the tracks, the good old feature phone reigns supreme.  While a divide between haves and have nots is the norm in a free market economy, we can take some comfort in the fact that in a free market, products emerge to opportunistically fill gaps.  And this is no more so than in hi-tec.

biNu is a good example. biNu closes this digital divide by giving feature phone users a smartphone like experience. biNu apps run in the cloud and don’t need an expensive smartphone processor. Data optimization reduces bandwidth and low-cost speedy Internet access results. As you would expect, biNu is seeing double-digit growth where feature phones are de rigueur and the #1 device for accessing the Internet: India, China, Brazil and other emerging economies. But based on IDC’s findings, it looks like biNu will play a prominent role in the developing mobile economies of the developed world.

“Hie i just want to thank with everywork u are doing as a Zimbabwean i truly proud and inspired to have someone like u who binu co founder u are indeed our own Steve Jobs, keep own improving and implementing new applications and may the lord and the Zimbabwean Spirit guide u,good day.”

biNu now gives mobile phone users access to an entire library of books without the need to download the individual books to their device.  biNu books does not use any space on the phone because biNu reads them directly from the biNu cloud. As books are added to the library they are instantly available to all users without the need to download new versions. biNu compression and caching technology means that data transfer is fast and efficient–all through an intuitive interface.

With biNu books, users browse and search books by title, author, language, view popular or recent books. When reading books, users share, translate and lookup words via the online dictionary all without having to leave the application. Many biNu users are from emerging markets in Africa and in Asia where access to hard copy versions of these books are not always available.  Furthermore, frequently feature phones are the primary Internet access device ruling out PC or tablet based readers.

Here is a sample list of some of the books available within biNu:

• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
• Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Here are some user comments:

• “Wow! i like it so much”, from Nepal, Nokia 7210 – Supernova
• ‘This is wonderful”, from Zimbabwe, Nokia 511
• “Dracula on biNu O o o o Horror!”, Bangladesh, Samsung

Download biNu from http://m.binu.com for your Java feature phone, Android or Blackberry.

For more information on Project Gutenburg visit: http://www.gutenbergnews.org

“Analysts at Gartner predict that by 2015, more people will access the Internet via feature phones rather than from their personal computers. So why are internet users still relying on the slow, clumsy and expensive browser-based connection of their feature phone to access all their favorite content?

Seeing this as both a problem and an opportunity, two serial internet entrepreneurs based in Australia decided to create a solution. In 2008, Gour Lentell and Dave Turner developed biNu, a software platform that enables mobile phones to access Internet applications and services with near instant response times—even on slow or congested networks. For developers, the biNu platform enables mobile Internet applications to be developed quickly and easily using existing development tools and methods. For consumers, the free mobile biNu platform provides quick and easy access to a world of biNu performance-optimized apps.

If they are using biNu’s mobile platform, any of the five billion individuals across the globe with access to a mobile phone can now get immediate access to the economic, educational and social benefit of the Internet without owning a computer….”

Want to win 1000 biNu Credits? Just by sharing content in biNu beats? Then read on!

All you need to do is be the user with the most unique shared beats from any News application, biNu Books, Football, The Quran, The Bible or Wordnik. Go to ‘More Apps’ in the Menu to find these apps. Browse or search for content and share it using the ‘Menu’ -> ‘Share This’ option.

The competition runs for a week, starting Monday 10th Oct at 6am GMT and ending on Monday 17th Oct at 6am GMT. You are of course welcome to practise sharing content before then as well. :)

Rule 1: We will only count *unique* content shared by each person, so please do not repeat the same content many times.

Rule 2: We will only count shared content via biNu beats.

Good luck!

You can now share some of your favourite biNu content with your friends or the wider biNu community using biNu beats or biNu Messenger. So far we have enabled sharing in these apps:

• Quran
• Bible
• Wordnik English Dictionary
• Football
• biNu Books
• All News applications!

This is how you share: First find one of these mentioned apps in the catalog by clicking ‘More Apps’. Once inside the app, browse or search for the content you are interested in. Then use the Menu again and use the ‘Share This’ option. Then select how you would like to share – either in biNu beats, or using Chat, Email or SMS in Messenger.

It’s that easy!

biNu has always had a large catalog of apps that are accessible from every installed app – but for some of our users it hasn’t been obvious how to find them.

biNu v3.2.1 changes all that with a new icon-based home screen that will be familiar to smart phone users. Not only does this provide instant access to our most popular apps, it also allows users to
(i) easily search through our entire app catalog
(ii) customize their home screen by adding, deleting or removing app icons

To enjoy this genuine smart phone experience on your feature phone (or to speed up your smart phone!) get biNu v3.2.1 now! Download from m.binu.com

Whilst Opera Mini and other “proxy browsers” have been using a split browser design for years now, Amazon Silk goes farther. Amongst other things it uses “pre-rendering” to predict which pages a user might want next and delivers them in advance and it employs extensive caching of common files to improve delivery response times.

However the Amazon Silk browser is designed to run on tablet computers that still offer significantly more horsepower than mass-market mobile phones. As much as we might want it to, the internet “browser” model that works so well on powerful computers running large browser software applications requesting uncompressed HTML data over wired, broadband network connections will never work well on mobile devices with limited processing power requesting page-at-a-time data over wireless mobile networks.

biNu’s technology design employs very similar concepts to the new Amazon Silk browser but takes things even a step further by performing 100% application processing on our cloud servers, which just happen to also run on Amazon Web Services.

biNu delivers internet based content with lightning-fast response times, even to low-end mobile feature phones on slow “2G” mobile networks, by:

• performing all application processing in the cloud, even down to graphics rendering, thereby minimising processing demands on a mobile device
• using a highly efficient, proprietary data protocol to deliver content to the mobile device (an average screen of text display is delivered in 1 or 2 packets of network data)
• employing extensive caching on our cloud servers as well as the mobile device to prevent anything being requested or sent more than once, even down to individual letters/characters displayed on the mobile screen
• “predictive caching” whereby screen pages are sent in advance of a user request, thereby providing instantaneous response times in many cases.

As this BI Research article points out, faster browsing leads to more engagement (more shopping in the case of Amazon), which offers even greater value in the the mobile internet world where the experience for most mobile users in the world is still woeful. There’s also amazing value in the market intelligence collected when all user activity is being channelled through a single cloud based service.

Last month we had 1.6 million unique users accessing biNu from pretty much every country in the world.

The biNu journey is just beginning…

biNu already offers access to some of the most popular services on the Internet today, including Google search, translate, Wikipedia, Wordnik and many more. But none comes bigger today than the social networking giant that is Facebook.

Today biNu released its first version of the Facebook app, opening up the hugely popular service to users on simple feature phones and accelerating the experience for existing smartphone users. We like to think that our Facebook experience compares favourably with the likes of Snaptu (now the official Facebook mobile app) in terms of speed and data efficiency.

And in addition, biNu allows users to keep abreast of the latest news, search, translate, communicate to their friends using biNu Messenger, and many other useful social features all on the same platform.

If you don’t already have biNu, visit m.binu.com on your mobile and download the app today.

We’ve been thinking about Project Gutenberg for some time at biNu but never had the time to really get into it. But we’re going to now. The entire texts of the Quran and the Bible have both been available on biNu for a while, in multiple languages and versions, and have proved to be popular with biNu users all over the world, from the U.S.A to Zimbabwe.

The time has come and now we’re going to use the same underlying technology to make every book on Project Gutenberg available and easily read on biNu, for free. Watch this space…

Requiescat in pace, Michael Hart.

In recent years there have been sudden surges in sales of of Blackberry phones in traditionally lower-key markets for RIM such as South Africa, Indonesia and Venezuela driven largely by the youth market, not RIM’s traditionally strong business market.

And the reason? BBM – the Blackberry Messenger service.

I was at the CommnicAsia conference in Singapore recently where I learned from fellow mobile app developer companies in Indonesia that most people, well at least amongst youthful middle class educated professionals, have two mobile devices – with the second one being a Blackberry to send messages on BBM. It costs around $100 to buy a lower-end BB phone and on a $10 a month data plan they have unlimited messaging via BBM. No need for SMS on their “normal” mobile.

One problem of course for the broader population is that you need a BB phone to join the BBM conversations. Bummer if you can’t afford one or don’t like BB phones.

And the problem for RIM as Tomi points out is the sudden growth doesn’t repeat across the whole population and they don’t seem to upgrade their handsets at nearly the same rate as traditional BB users.

And of course, the more general global problem is there are billions of other mobile subscribers in the world today who can’t afford a second handset, let alone a BB one, and they have just the same desire to communicate.

As Tomi succinctly points out, the epiphany is that “the addiction is not to the handset, it is to the service.”

Which is why we are very optimistic about the huge potential we are beginning to see realised for the messaging services offered on biNu.

Last week we launched the biNu email service giving every biNu registered user an easy to use, fast, simple unlimited email service on top of the SMS and text messaging service we already offer.

Tomorrow we will be re-branding our integrated, unified messaging service as biNu beaTs giving biNu users on any type of phone (including BB) a single unified service to communicate in the form of SMS or chat or email as well as sharing Twitter like “beaTs”.

Watch this space!

• Total downloads – 13.2 million
• GetJar downloads – 10.1 million
• OviStore downloads – 2.1 million

Thanks to all our happy users out there for your support!   Looking forward to welcoming the next millions to biNu.

As a technology that gives performance and usability uplift to mobile Internet access, biNu clearly has a role to play here. Vendors who are not hampered by page load speeds and an ugly interface are more likely to engage their customers than those who are not. We recently launched a free developers toolkit exactly for this purpose: by optimizing their website for biNu performance, vendors get a jump start over their competition. It’s a straightforward proposition.

biNu started out life as a product to improve the performance of feature phones, but it has grown into something of  far greater significance. Every day we receive feedback from our customers who tell us how biNu takes the drudgery out of Internet communication, but when you consider in developing countries the correlation between economic growth and the efficiency of mobile Internet access, one can argue that biNu’s role is pivotal.

Clearly 3G data offers some hope, but the services are being rolled out slowly and users are experiencing teething trouble, but a marketing strategy that relies on the evolution of technology puts you at the mercy of fate. And your competitors.

Dave and I co-founded biNu in September 2008 excited about the idea of bringing ultra-fast delivery of web services to ALL mobile phones, not just expensive smart phones.

I grew up in Zimbabwe and and have lived in the UK and now Sydney for 20 years. I am so happy and privileged to have experienced the birth of the internet age. And the African in me gets really excited by the idea of helping all people, in all countries access the incredible benefits, and fun, of this wonderful medium.

It’s so great to see that biNu is becoming a hit in Zimbabwe, amongst many other countries. You guys ROCK!

We’ve got so many ideas and see so many opportunities to do great things with biNu. Watch this space :-)

Check out the “Lentell Soup” blog in the Zimbabwe News section of biNu to find out a little bit more about my heritage…

In my spare time I enjoy outdoor activities like mountain biking and paddling. I originate from the UK, grew up in Zimbabwe and South Africa and now live in Sydney, Australia.

biNu users can now access the well respected Yahoo! search service which adds to the existing search providers, Google and Bing.

The Yahoo! search service on biNu offers lightning fast results for web and image searches and can be accessed via the Search menu in my biNu.

“…the reality is that 90% of the world does not have or cannot afford a smartphone or a high-end device,” Mr. Elop said.

He went on to say that of the 3.7 billion people who don’t have a smart phone, 1.2 billion have only sms and no data plan and 1.7 billion don’t use the web.

Mary McDowell, Nokia’s Executive Vice President – Mobile Phones, noted that “75% of the next billion embracing mobile technology are in fast growing countries such as India, Indonesia, China and Vietnam not to mention Nigeria, South Africa and Brazil” and highlighted the opportunity for mobile technology to entertain, educate and better people’s lives by enabling them to acquire new skills and improve their prospects for earning a living.

biNu’s is equally passionate about helping bring the “worldwide web to the world” and delivering affordable, easy to use and most importantly, fast content services.

Thanks Saroj :-)

If you already have biNu on your handset, use the ‘More apps’ link in the menu to navigate to the mybiNu home page. Then look in the ‘Search’ folder for ‘Bing Search’.

If you don’t yet have biNu, Get It Now!

We will shortly also have a Bing Search app in GetJar.

When you open biNu SMS the first thing you will notice is that it’s now called biNuTXT. You can still send free SMS to any phone, the name change is a step towards our upcoming offering of free unlimited txt messages between biNu users.

On the biNUTXT home screen there’s new links to your message inbox and outbox. Every message you send or receive through biNu is now stored, even if you send by regular phone SMS. The message will be delivered as usual to the phone but will also appear inside your biNu inbox or outbox. Now you can read, reply, forward and manage all your messages, without having to leave biNu.

Do you every wonder if your message has been received correctly? Each message in the inbox and outbox has an icon showing it’s delivery status. There’s a green tick for successful delivery, blue clock for delivery in progress, and a red cross for failed delivery. This is something that many people have been asking for, we’re happy to make it available.

We hope you like the new features, there are still many more changes to come. And Keep sending feedback, it’s been very useful to us, especially when we release new changes like this.

“Without science,we can’t think our life,like that without binu i can’t think.i love it..”

We were with many other companies in the same position and Amazon provided some communication on their problems but we were more more concerned about our users as their loyalty would be tested. Our servers ran on the Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing or EC2 service  on the east coast of the USA.  When our engineers discovered the problem they worked through the night to deploy biNu on new infrastructure at another data centre.  After 14 hours initial service was restored but it was a further 18 hours before full service was restored. We did receive a few complaints but the following graph shows the resiliance of our users.

As the chart shows within 2 days of the outage we had our users back. Thank you to all those that stuck with us.

• Hey binu is Great great great. Because in my hole life i can’t see very good than binu. I want to binu will live infinity time in world. Thank you (Nokia 5130c)
• Binu is a faster of websites i belive the binu is faster of google record
• I like you biNu so much because you’ve that unique virtue;we can find free sms,weather report,updating news,many more applications from getjar,image+web+video search by google,google translation,healthcaring tips and many more! It’s cheaper than other apps (Nokia 5130c)
• I’m very happy thank u very much. It is very good especialy 3rd world country. (Nokia 6300)
• Very nice application, i have deleted all application because binu contains all in one. Thanx to producers 4 making so useful application
• WOW!I have never seen a helpfull app. Like this. THANX
• biNu is amazing software. I really enjoying it. Thank you developer and provider. Please keep it my whole life. Ha ha ha (Nokia 5310 XpressMusic)
• biNu is amazing application. I really enjoying it. Thank you so much to developer and provider. I would like it in my whole life.
• Hy,”thanks to binu team,for bring binu” it is the best social site.it has all which i need.if the binu team offer ourself to send more sms ing a day,it would be bettr. Thanks. (Nokia 2700c)
• Dear Friends! Thanks for allowing us to use Binu free of charge. It is so effective and fast software. I have shared about it with many of my friends in sudan and Ethiopia. Regards, shifty1000 (Nokia 2700c)
• LovelY style of app. I luv d design. Thank u! (Nokia6230i)
• Thx for giving quran in various languages thx u so much (Nokia C3)
• I installed The Holy Bible from biNu on my phone. It’s awesome and takes up very little space. It searches, goes right to chapter and verse, fast. It’ll be great for church, I won’t miss half of the sermon flipping through pages! Now I have the Word, whever I am!
• I love this application put together with so many capabilities. Thank you! (Nokia 6230i)
• I love BINU software, this software is great! (Nokia 2690)
• This is d bst app i hav ever seen (Nokia N73)
• Its really good software. I like this (Nokia 7210)
• I really appreciate the developers . Tnx and keep it up (Nokia5310XpressMusic)
• This is a usefull application (Nokia C2)
• It very good for student.i pray for binu (Nokia 5130c)
• It is exelent app to use in 3110 (Nokia 3110c)
• I lyk dis application very much this reduce sms cost n very handy for students lyk me who have no enough money (Nokia 6303c)
• Binu is really great application where we can get All in One service. Keep it up. (Nokia 2700c)
• Binu is a very faster browser. N sms servise is the grear service. (Nokia 2626)
• This application BINU is very good as it contains multi applications like weather, sports, news, religion books, google translation, and best application is free sms and more. So i realise i need not to download any application because it contains all. (Nokia 3110c)
• Binu !!!!!!! U are very good and nice am feel free with u always.”
• Sir, I am a student. I am very happy to use ur application. (Nokia6300)
• Thanks for the greatest improvement of the latest version. I’m now able to browse,read and edit of phone book in the phone with BiNu newest version. (Nokia 3110c)
• It is my best application. Thank you binu (SAMSUNG-SGH-L700)
• No 1 softwere of the world. I like it. (Nokia 2700c)
• It’s very nice software for knowing cricket score. (SAMSUNG-GT-B3410)
• Binu is a very very good for everything. I really like it and i use every time. (Nokia 6500c)
• Thanks up you i like ur service i am so many happy (Nokia 3110c)
• Its a best application that comprise every utility which in a perfect application should be . Thanks for developing this application (Nokia 2700c)
• Hiren roy:i just love binu’s apps i have no words! (Nokia 2690)
• Infact, BINU is the most widely internet i have ever seen in this world. This site is reliable,affordable and in all the cheapest and the fastest ever. THANK U! (Nokia 6270)

Keep up to date with all the pomp and ceremony of Will and Kate’s Royal Wedding.

Includes popular news feeds from all over the world, official Royal Family updates, photos and Twitter feeds.

Get biNu now.

Amazon updates:
http://status.aws.amazon.com/

In March we had just over 1m unique users accessing biNu on their mobiles in over 180 countries, generating 3.5m login sessions and 58m page views.

We are stoked! Thank you :-)

biNu usage stats Dec to Mar

“This application BINU is very good as it contains multi applications like weather, sports, news, religion books, google translation, and best application is free sms and more. So i realise i need not to download any application because it contains all.”

This week we launched our IPL Cricket App.

Featuring all the IPL matches with live ball-by-ball match commentary, full scorecards, viewer comments and more. Of course, scores for all the other cricket matches are still available, e.g. tests and ODI series. Download the app for your phone from GetJar here:

http://www.getjar.com/IPL-Live-Cricket-Scores-on-biNu.

Cell Phone Inventor Martin Cooper

38 Years of Mobile Phones! Back in 1973 would the inventor Martin Cooper at Motorola have dreamed of the many uses of phones today? There are now more than 3.5 billion mobile phones. Mobiles today are used by nearly half of the world’s population and many phones (not just Smartphones) allow access to the Internet. In the mid 1990′s the Internet was made available for commercial use and within 5 years it started to be available on mobile phones albeit in a limited fashion.

The world has changed dramatically since the first mobile phone call. Mobile phones now are not just used for voice calls.  They allow people to share news, pictures of natural disasters, wars and protests, through to more personal content with friends, families and even strangers across the world instantaneously via the Internet.  The mobile Internet has had a dramatic effect on the world giving mobile users sources of information previously accessible only to those with computers. Nice work Martin!

Here is the the full article from CNN.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/01/greene.first.cellphone.call/index.html?hpt=C1

SYDNEY, Australia – March 25, 2011 – Less than 6 months after launching its service, feature phone mobile app company biNu has reached 1 million unique users per month, with a current growth rate of over 40% month on month.

biNu provides simple, ultra-fast access to popular Internet services such as Google Search, Google Translate, Wordnik Dictionary, Wikipedia, News, Weather, Cricket & Soccer scores, exchange rates, mobile app stores as well as SMS services.

biNu’s 1 million unique monthly users come from over 150 countries with top markets including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, USA and Nigeria. This diverse popularity stems from biNu’s ability to display content in any language on any handset with many popular services in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Chinese and other Asian languages.

New research from Asymco shows there are 3.5 billion mobile subscribers in emerging and developing nations without smart phones or mobile broadband. While the feature phones they use are data capable, it is not easy, fast or cheap to access Internet services. Even in the U.S., 72% of mobiles are feature phones.

Snaptu – acquired earlier this week by Facebook – shares biNu’s focus of providing Internet services to the 95% of mobile users that don’t use smart phones. In addition biNu offers an open developer platform (http://www.developer.binu.com) which means any organisation or developer can utilize the biNu platform to dramatically improve access to Internet based services for feature phone users.

“Facebook’s acquisition of Snaptu highlights the strategic value of providing a much better way to deliver Internet services to 3.5 billion feature phone users. But you don’t have to buy a company like Snaptu to do it.” said Gour Lentell, CEO for biNu. “Our strategy is to provide an open development platform that companies and developers can use to deliver a more effective mobile Internet experience.”

The biNu mobile app delivers ultra-fast, easy-to-use, multi-lingual Internet services to virtually any mobile phone, from mass-market feature phones through to Android smart phones, with Blackberry support coming soon.

The end-user biNu experience is 5-10 times faster – using much less bandwidth – compared with the standard browsing experience on 2G feature phones. There is minimal processing performed on the user’s mobile device with 100% application processing performed on biNu’s cloud-based servers.

To demonstrate the speed and ease of use of biNu, the company has created a video demonstration at www.binu.com/demo comparing the performance of a Google Search on biNu compared to Google Search in a standard mobile web browser.

Editorial Contact
David Sanday
Bowes Communications
+61 (0)2 9387 2333
david.sanday@bowespr.com
####

Like biNu, Snaptu’s focus since it’s founding in 2007 was to provide useful and innovative services to the 95 percent of mobile users that don’t have access to advanced smart phones.

And their success in developing great technology and an excellent user experience on so-called ‘dumb-phones’ is a primary reason behind the announcement today that Facebook was acquiring Snaptu.

SmartCompany reported the news adding the comment the “acquisition not only highlights how importantly Facebook values its mobile solutions, but also how handsets apart from smartphones still control a significant portion of the telecommunications market.”

http://m.binu.com/a

We look forward to welcoming all our new Android users!

Cute little guy. Sometimes we see the big ones lounging on the warm asphalt in the carpark.

If the word you’re searching for can’t be found then a spelling suggestion is offered.

Some of the spelling suggestions made in the past day include:

acadamy –> academy
pogressive –> progressive
astrringent –> astringent
diffent –> different
preemt –> preempt
magnonimus –> magnanimous
chemicle –> chemical
sucess –> success

Previously searches like this were showing up with a “no results found” message, with spelling suggestions on you get a more useful result. Another reason to use Worknik on biNu!

Spelling suggestions are courtesy of Yahoo! via the Spelling Suggestion YQL table

http://www.mybusiness.com.au/articles/Export/Phoning-up-growth

Another feature that has come from user suggestions is the ability to select or use the translation result. We’ve achieved this by adding a “Send as text” option in the menu.

Finally the positions of the original and translated text blocks on the results screen have been switched. The translated text is now at the top of the screen. We think this makes more sense as the translated text is what people are most interested in, it’s an especially noticeable improvement for large translations.

More updates on the way!

The downside to this flexibility is we have to do the hard work! Our proxy team spends a lot of time making sure that our pages are looking great. You wouldn’t normally give it much thought but there is a lot of complexity that goes into just displaying text. You have to make sure letter spacing is correct, word breaking and wrapping works correctly, line spacings, text alignments have to match with mixed fonts. And then when you start getting into right to left languages like Urdu and Arabic it’s a whole new set of conditions to consider.

At the end of last week our proxy team released a change that significantly improved how text within biNu is displayed on the phone. Apart from looking great it’s rendering the text about 4 times faster than it was. So to those who left feedback asking us make text more readable, I hope this helps. More updates on the way.

Engineer RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone.

“When you wish to achieve results that have not been achieved before, it is an unwise fancy to think that they can be achieved by using methods that have not been used before.”

“Value for money AND value for many.”

• Links menu option to allow navigation between articles
• New look headers and footers with home button display
• Improved article formatting and error handling
• multi-language image support

Download biNu on your phone and try it out.

We didn’t loose any data but it did take a good hour or more to rebuild and reconfigure the effected server.

Apologies to our users, it pains us to see all those unfulfilled requests come in! The one good thing to come out of these situations is to get us to hone our architecture and procedures so service is not interrupted when hardware fails.

Our top five download countries in this period are:

And our top five biNu content applications in this period are:

We are continuously adding more content applications to biNu and at current download rates are doing over one million a month.

Rollin’, Rollin’ Rollin’
Keep movin’, movin’, movin’….

In keeping with this tradition we have just released a brand new version of our number 1 downloaded app: Wordnik Dictionary. Wordnik is far more than just a dictionary, the folks at Wordnik are passionate about words, they have made it their stated goal to “show as much information as possible, as fast as they can find it, for every word in English”. As well as traditional definitions Wordnik contains examples of usage, phrases and related words. Visit Wordnik and have a look yourself

In bringing Wordnik to biNu we believe we might just have the fastest, most comprehensive English dictionary available on a feature phone!

Today’s Wordnik Dictionary update brings better support for different screen sizes, improved interface and a random word feature. Have fun with it.

Hope you enjoy.

Translations by biNu is designed to be fast and simple to use, have fun with it.

More updates on the way! keep the feedback coming.

Our most popular content is the Wordnik Dictionary. Check out Wordnik, it’s a fantastic 21st century web based English dictionary.

One million, here we come…

6th Sep, South Africa, Kama Sutra – 5/5
3rd Sep, Pakistan, Google Search – 5/5
3rd Sep, Philippines, Wordnik – 5/5
31st Aug, Kenya, Google Search – 5/5
30th Aug, Ethiopia, Google Search – 5/5
30th Aug, Sri Lanka, Google Search – 5/5
30th Aug, India, Dainik Bhaskar – 5/5
29th Aug, Pakistan, biNu Cricket – 4/5
28th Aug, India, Wordnik – 5/5
28th Aug, India, Wordnik – 5/5
26th Aug, Canada, Kompas – 5/5
25th Aug, Lebanon, Google Search – 5/5
24th Aug, Indonesia, Bola News – 4/5
23rd Aug, Indonesia, Media Indonesia – 5/5
22nd Aug, South Africa, Peoples Daily English – 5/5
21st Aug, Ghana, Wordnik – 5/5
20th Aug, Cambodia, Google Search – 5/5
21st Aug, India, Holy Bible – 5/5 (“Praise the lord, this is an awesome application which costs a very less space & now i can read bible anywhere. May god bless the team with wisdom & fullness of spirit.”)

Read full article…

We are one of the Tech23!
19.AUG.10 | Sydney
www.tech23.com.au

————————————————————————

We are delighted to announce that our company has been chosen to present at Tech23 2010!

So what is Tech23? Tech23 is a celebration of innovation, where 23 innovative Australian ICT companies – including us – will present before panels of esteemed industry leaders, experienced entrepreneurs, experts and investors including Roger Allen; Fiona Balfour; Chris Beare; Scott Farquhar, co-founder & CEO, Atlassian; Martin Hosking; Ryan Junee; Deepak Natarajan, MD, Intel Capital; Anthony Pascoe, CEO, Lend Lease Ventures and Emmanuel Rodriguez, Government CIO, NSW Department of Services, Technology and Administration.

An audience of over 400 will be in attendance, including government, researchers, customers, industry members, and media. Our company is also eligible for a range of exciting prizes including $150,000 in Innovation Pathways prizes, sponsored by Industry & Investment NSW, which will be presented at Tech23’s after party.

As one of the 23, we are excited to be part of Tech23 and would like to invite you to celebrate innovation with us by joining us there on Thursday 19 August 2010 at The Auditorium, 37 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills!

We are also delighted to offer you a special rate – as a valued member of our network – of $150 (+gst). Register now at https://www.slatteryit.com.au/RegoPages/Tech232010Mates.aspx using promotional code ‘TECH23MATES’.

And why should you attend? Tech23 is a great opportunity to get a glimpse of Australia’s emerging ICT innovations, network with key industry members in attendance, and enjoy a great day celebrating Australian innovation. And, of course, we’d love to have you there to support us on the day!

Thank you for your continued support and we hope to see you at Tech23!

————————————————————————
Tech23 2010 Details
————————————————————————

when
Thursday, 19th August 2010

time
(main event) 8.30am – 5.30pm
(awards presentation event) from 5.45pm

where
(main event) The Auditorium, 37 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills
(awards presentation event) Equilibrium Hotel, World Square, Cnr Goulburn and George Streets, Sydney

register here

————————————————————————

www.tech23.com.au

————————————————————————

Sponsored by
Industry & Investment NSW | Australian Technology Showcase | AusIndustry

————————————————————————

Supported by
AIMIA | ANZA Technology Network | AVCAL

————————————————————————

Tech23 is a SlatteryIT event

————————————————————————

biNu would like to help make that happen…

Here are some of the feedback comments we received from mobile users of biNu Football:

• This is the best application ever in my handphone.
• Thanx
• It is nice software..
• you wellcome
• Thanks for binu for latest football updates
• i m very happy when spain won the world cu because this is the first time to win.
• GRACIAS
• thanx
• yesterdays messages from our fans.Lets do other leagues now!
• binu i love you so much you did a great role
• during fifa month thank you
• shafiq
• Thank you
• KG
• It is nice software..
• Thanky for ur futbl updates.wat worries me irp that live matches were not being updated every minute.
• well done
• Je felicite tous les membres de binu. C etait un exellent travail translation: I congratulate all members of binu.
• C was an exellent work)
• i am Nepalese user of binu football from Asian country-NEPAL.I am very happy for using binu fot bal & hope in Then it’ll be great..
• YES SPAIN YES.GRACIAS POR TODO SPAIN
• really good application for my mobile. THANK YOU binu Team..!!
• Binu is the best in the world of sport. Keep be the BEST!!! .
• Slt moi c7 saoud du burkina faso! Je crois q Dieu a b1 faid,la france car elle
• Votre service est tr\xc3\xa9s int\xc3\xa8ressant
• pens\xc3\xa8 au football africain (translation: Your service was very firm believed to African football)
• thanj u too
• thanks for this software
• SOUTH AFRICA
• It is very good.
• Thank u very much u 2 for planing such an idea which we always wish. Thank u very much once again/ Maradona
• Thank u
• gracias a ustedes por mantenernos al dia con el f\xef\xbf\xbdtbol ;-)
• great work, wish all the best
• THANKS
• Thanks for that
• its great application i enjoy a lot n i respect such a creative mind.keep it up-Bhola from nepal
• Thanks for your service!
• SUPER
• um in lv of binu
• thanks for the wonderful program
• thanyou
• give more information about indian foot ball and about all world rankings
• Harus Lebih menarik
• sajad panahi
• BINU OK
• L espagne va remporter la coupe
• thanks so much
• its very nice. Is it will be update after worldcup?
• I appreciate heart binu
• thankx
• well done sa
• ok
• i hope this will continue.Ambrose,Nigeria
• thanks a lot
• I always liked this application and it helped me find d score whenever I cudnt do anything thank you
• very good programm,i like it but germany losed against spain:(
• good work. Keep up da good work. And try 2 cover epl scores. Thank u
• Thank u so much
• wat a lovely program guys. Keep it up. Job well done.
• some photo or small clipings should be there
• i love this apps
• thank u
• i should say thank you so much i enjoyed this app to the fullest.it kept me so update of all matches thank you
• keep it up.from fred.
• Thank you For help us.
• Nasir
• its gud binu
• GO GO GO
• THANK YOU BINU.\nYOU ARE A GOOD APPLICATIONS FOR ALL PEOPLE HOW LIKE’S FOOTBALL.\nTHANKS TO YOU BEST.
• your software simply rocks.Try to improve the user interface.
• love u
• fast and good information. Keep it up.
• i really love the program.. And i wish you to cover the other leagues
• bagus
• Welldone\nDo it
• thank you
• hai
• very nice
• Best and Fentastic
• thanks
• lanjutkan binu,thanks for all information
• thanks very much i am very happy with binu
• u rock man! u will alwayz remain in ma heart.
• Keep it up

1. Enormous market (either existing, or new)

2. A fundamental technological or economic change (the product must be “10 times” better/faster/cheaper than what’s on the market now)

3. A kick-ass founding team (tech and sales “superstars” are most important)

Well, the mobile market is gigantic, the biNu mobile internet platform is 3-5 times faster than the typical browsing experience on low-end feature phones and we have a kick-ass tech team!

An article in TechCrunch noted “This mobile site could play a big role in Facebook’s growth going forward, especially given the predictions that browser-equipped mobile phones will be more abundant than PCs in the not-too-distant future. For some people, 0.facebook.com will probably be their only Facebook experience — it may even be the only mobile site they’re accessing from their cell phones.”

Recent media reports speculated that Facebook recently reached 500 million registered users and I’m sure 1 billion uses is within their planning horizon. Most of FB’s new users are going to be mobile subscribers and this move highlights the importance of mobile to their future growth.

we soon hope to release a FB application on the biNu platform that will be 2-3x faster than the current Facebook mobile or 0.facebook browser websites.

Watch this space!

“Because mobiles do not require literacy they have become a powerful tool for poor, self-employed people such as small traders, farmers, fishermen and rickshaw drivers to get information that helps save time and boost earnings.”

“They describe the mobile as the ”most disruptive device to come to India in modern times” and argue consumer and communication capitalism is posing new challenges for established structures of authority and power.”!

Nearly half of all Australian mobile phone users now own an internet-capable phone, but only a third accesses the web regularly on them, according to new research by The Nielsen Company.

Australians’ ownership of internet phones now sits at 43 per cent, with 29 per cent regularly using it to search, email, find maps and to share their lives on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Even though people have an internet-enabled handset, some people aren’t necessarily using it. According to Nielsen’s online business managing director Matt Bruce some still own older 2G smartphone models, while others are afraid of bill shock.

“The older models are not as easy to use. You have to find your way through the phone to find the browser, then go from there. The iPhone makes it easier,” he said.

Internet searches are the most popular online activity on the phones. Some 73 per cent of users conduct online searches by mobile now, compared with 30 per cent a year ago.

Other common uses include checking news and weather (59 per cent, up 18 points), email (58 per cent, up 20 points), maps and directions (56 per cent, up 24 points) and social networking (39 per cent, up 25 points).

The adoption of internet phones has been growing steadily since the introduction of mobile data cap plans in Australia, which go some way to reducing the risk of bill shock for users. People’s infatuation with the iPhone has also driven mobile internet adoption worldwide.

Nokia still maintains a solid lead on internet phones in Australia with a 35 per cent market share, however, the iPhone has made significant gains in the past year, more than doubling from just 13 per cent to 28 per cent market share. Intention to purchase an iPhone also remains high, with Apple set to triple its share this year, Bruce said.

With an overwhelming majority of the share of mobile social networking, Facebook is by far the most common social networking site accessed via mobile (98 per cent), followed by Twitter (20 per cent) and MySpace (17 per cent), the report said.

According to Nielsen, Telstra has seen mobile data traffic on its Next G™ network double every eight months for the past two years.

We’ve been learning that managing network capacity for mobile operators in ALL markets is a major issue and key driver behind looking for more bandwidth efficient ways to deliver data services. This applies just as readily in emerging markets as developed markets.

A primary dynamic in emerging markets is increasing network capacity just to keep pace with subscriber growth, often made more complex by the lack of infrastructure and services in emerging economies. Developed markets might not be growing subscriber numbers significantly these days but the explosion in use of smart phone driven data services, still in its relative infancy, is turning into a major network capacity management headache.

There are immutable ‘laws of physics’ that govern why mobile wireless networking can never deliver the same speeds and capacities as wired networking. And a technical architecture to support mobile web browsing that relies on the wireless delivery of uncompressed HTML mark-up data to chunky browser software on limited hardware capacity mobile devices, and with full page refreshes every time you move forwards or backwards or even stand still whilst checking for small data updates, is inherently less than smart.

It’s not surprising that mobile operators are increasingly looking for ‘smart’ technology solutions that utilize existing network infrastructure much more efficiently AND deliver a superior end-user experience, which to the average mobile user first and foremostly translates to speed, speed, speed…

The article notes that “Nokia presumably believes that, as mobile web activity moves away from downloadable apps into the browser (in theory at least), it should control this strategic piece of software. This makes absolute sense at the high end, where HTML5 and other innovations will start to make the app store less relevant. We cannot see this happening so quickly on slow networks and resource constrained phones – what OEMs and operators need on these platforms is a super-efficient browser and a lot of low end widgets.”.

It’s worth noting that technology platforms such as Opera and Novarra do not offer nearly the same benefits when delivering mobile formatted content, e.g. WAP sites. They are good when browsing ‘normal’ websites designed for PC consumption as they strip out and optimise data being delivered over the wireless network to mobiles, but that’s much less relevant when a website has been designed for mobile consumption. With the unstoppable rise of mobile use, it’s likely that one day there will be more mobile formatted content out there than ‘computer browser’ formatted content.

An underlying point to this being that trying to consume computer browser oriented web content on mobiles is kind of a silly idea as the viewing dimensions and content richness just does not tend to work well on small screens, even on the iPhone. How many iPhone users regularly browse ‘normal’ websites? Not many I suggest. I don’t.

The objectives and the desired experience of mobile content consumption are very different from PC browsing.

Skyfire (www.skyfire) is another start-up in the Opera / Novarra space that is aimed at trying to bring the web as we know it to mobiles. I question the basic objective of trying to stuff computer browser oriented content into a mobile.

We think that what mobile internet users generally want and will use regularly is super fast (on any phone or network), simple to use access to succinct timely information and content designed for the mobile screen and navigation capabilities.

And it must work efficiently on mobile networks, not compelling operators to invest yet more hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in upgrading capacity.

In the meantime, whilst the “painful transition from shitphones (“feature phones”) to smartphone continues”, how can we make internet stuff fast, easy and cheap for a few billion people?

Shout out LOUD……..”2..4..6..8….biNu!”

Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country. Even in slums where people live on less than $2 a day, everyone has a phone.

Keep in mind that India is yet to roll out 3G, and most of the phones are simple cheap handsets. It’s a very different market to what we have in the west.

Tatyana Yumasheva, the daughter of Boris Yeltsin, has spoken for the first time of his drinking problem, saying it was brought on by the pressures he endured as the leader of a country undergoing momentous change.

Tatyana’s blog is now available on biNu, in Russian, and can be read more easily and quickly than on any other mobile platform!

Another highlight of just how large the mobile internet market opportunity is and the difference it’s going to make to the lives of many people.

And biNu can handle practically any language script, without worrying about the language capability installed on a mobile device.

We’ve done the hard work of building the software platform to solve the problem of excruciating response times when it comes to the internet experience on most of the three billion phones in the global market today. Now it’s about connecting those three billion people with as many useful, interesting, valuable and entertaining applications and services as possible.

Next quarter we plan to open up the biNu platform to enable any application developer, content or service provider to reach their mobile audience at lightening speeds, without having to worry about what phone, operating system and network a mobile user is using. Imagine an Internet website being restricted to specific computers, particular operating systems and only available on certain network connections – crazy!! Shouldn’t be like that on the mobile Internet either.

Developing a biNu app is simplicity itself. You can use any preferred technology and tools and host anywhere on the internet, just provide an application URL to the biNu proxy server. Application output is delivered to the biNu proxy in “PADL”, a simple XML schema for describing biNu applications.

Developers will be able to register online with biNu, access technical information describing PADL, access a development platform to test their apps and then register them when complete. Developers will also be able to prioritize their apps on the biNu client home-screen for mobile users they introduce to the biNu mobile client.

And best of all, the biNu platform will be free to use – for developers, content providers, and mobile users. biNu also uses relatively little network bandwidth resulting in significantly lower data costs for users and/or network operators).

Whilst Facebook has a great mobile WAP browser interface, the reality is that WAP browsing on low-end mobiles is still a very ordinary experience – just way to too slow basically.

Imagine the possibilities if most of the 3 billion+ mobile users in the world today could access popular web services like Facebook really-really fast. Facebook’s user base of 400 million today could become 2 billion…

Realizing that most mobile phones have numeric keypads and that numbers are a universal language, we figured looking at an easy to remember numeric sequence to derive a word might be an interesting approach.

We couldn’t use the number “1″ key as usually it does not have any letters associated with it.

Besides “1-2-3-4″, the next most obvious and easy to remember numeric sequence is “2-4-6-8″. Looking at the letters typically associated with these keys on a standard phone keypad, we came up with “b-i-n-u”!

biNu is less about sexy, all singing, all dancing user interfaces and much more about getting stuff off the internet to your mobile really, really fast, even if you have an “ordinary” low-end mobile on a slow network. And making it easy and simple to use.

Try it an see.

Our goal is to provide instant, and yes we mean INSTANT, response times wherever possible.

One way, amongst others, that we do that is by getting what you want to the phone before you ask for it. And if we can’t do that, biNu is so efficient that it typically takes between 1-3 seconds to get what you want on to your mobile screen.

Try it and see.

We’ve started out with a number of basic applications available on biNu and we’ll be adding more over time. Another cool feature of biNu is that it’s really easy to develop end-user applications and we hope in due course that others will join us in bringing more fun and useful applications to the biNu platform.

Type “binu.mobi” into your mobile phone browser to download biNu to your phone.

2-4-6-8, Baby I Need U!!