It seems like a match made in mobile heaven.

Monitise has announced a “global strategic alliance agreement” with Visa International Service Association, a subsidiary of Visa Inc.

The reported five-year agreement combines “Visa’s unmatched reach, payments expertise and trusted brand with the Monitise Mobile Money platform and toolkit.”

Basically, Monitise will be an enormously helpful vehicle for Visa’s already teeming offering of mobile services (including payments, transaction alerts and special offers) by providing support and even greater reach to the millions of Visa customers with mobile phones.

Although not many details have yet emerged, the news of the partnership is considered significant and an incredibly beneficial arrangement for Visa, which in recent months, has found increased competition in the mobile marketing realm from both Mastercard and American Express.

According to the announcement by Monitise, the five year contract value amounts to $13 million dollars.

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Just in time for the benchmark holiday of summer, Independence Day, Verizon Wireless is getting patriotic.

And we can join in the fun thanks to their patriotic ringtone and ringback jukebox. Verizon Wireless unveiled the two new ringback jukebox bundles this week, which will be available through the operator’s VZW Tones Deluxe service.

Customers can now choose from hundreds of patriotic, customizable tracks to prepare for whomever may ring for the Fourth of July:

· “American Pie,” by Don McLean
· “R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.,” by John Mellencamp
· “Born In The U.S.A.,” by Bruce Springsteen
· “American Girl,” by Taylor Swift
· “Summertime,” by Herbie Hancock
· “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” by U.S. Military Academy Band
· “American Soldier,” by Toby Keith
· “Only In America,” by Brooks & Dunn
· “Good Vibrations,” by The Beach Boys
· “God Bless The U.S.A.,” by Neal E. Boyd
· “Star Spangled Banner,” by Jimi Hendrix
· “1812 Overture,” by U.S. Air Force Band
· “The Star Spangled Banner,” by Beyonce

Ringtones are available for $2.99 per ringtone, while individual ringback tones are available for an annual fee of $1.99.

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The Mobile Marketing Association has released the latest version of its “U.S Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services.  More simply, its the latest iteration of guidelines in terms of cross-carrier mobile content services such as SMS, MMS, shortcode services, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and the mobile Web.

Dubbed version 4.0, the new guidelines represent the first time the individual mobile marketing guidelines and codes of conduct, known as “carrier playbooks,” of the four largest U.S. wireless service providers: Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA have been consolidated into one integrated “rule book” so to speak.

The new version is significant in the world of mobile marketing because it eliminates the need to refer to four different “carrier playbooks,” and instead brings them all together in one 100+ page manual.  Like previous versions, the guidelines provide measures of acceptable and unacceptable practices for all players in the U.S. ecosystem.

Among many enhancements, the new guidelines also feature a new reference ID system designed to make it fast and easy to navigate the document and find information.  The guidelines help standardize practices across the industry which provides a better experience for customers by ensuring the consistency of mobile marketing campaigns across the four major U.S. carriers.  Other major revisions and key additions include:

In an ecosystem where best practices and industry guidelines can be easily overlooked, the new version of the MMA’s “carrier playbook” can finally provide a central reference point for anyone looking to play by the rules in terms of mobile marketing and interaction with any of the major US carriers.  The new manual can be downloaded here.

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A mobile services company dubbed Grapevine Interactive has developed what they’re calling MMS Lite, a hybrid SMS/MMS solution that aims to fill the niche between simple text-based SMS and more complex and expensive MMS.

Created for mobile marketers, Grapevine Interactive CTO Cliff Court states: “Mobile marketers, in particular, have been asking for a product offering more than text-only SMS but with less of the complexity and high cost of MMS.”  To answer that need, Grapvine’s “MMS Lite” solution combines a notification message with a larger rich message.  This rich message includes a heading of up to 500 characters of text plus two images with optional captions.  In addition, recipients can send a 250-character reply at almost zero cost.

An example of when MMS Lite could be used instead of SMS or MMS is when a company or brand would like to attach a simple logo or graphical brand name to a marketing message.  This obviously isn’t allowable with SMS, and would normally render poorly on most handsets with MMS.  Think of it as an SMS with very limited graphical capabilities.

Details are still somewhat limited on how exactly it works, but my first impression is that it’s simply not needed.  If the solution would bring limited MMS-like functionality to handsets that can only facilitate SMS, than it could be very useful, but I doubt that’s the case.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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mobileStorm Inc., the company that provides email, SMS, and other messaging solutions, has put out a new white paper that explains all the ins and outs of short codes. You know, those numbers to which you text a keyword if you want information about a brand, or to vote for your favorite TV show contestant.

Called “The Ultimate Guide To Common Short Codes,” the mobileStorm white paper explains why this type of marketing is so important, countering skepticism against mobile marketing that still persists. Basically, if you want to stay relevant, you need to implement text message campaigns–and short codes are an indispensable part of text message marketing.

The paper gives an in-depth heads-up as to the process of obtaining a short code, and also offers the pros and cons of shared and dedicated codes. (The latter is akin to a vanity license plate, often spelling out a word and used only by one company.)

It looks to be especially useful for mobile marketing newcomers, but veterans might also learn something new.

Download “The Ultimate Guide To Common Short Codes” here.

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It didn’t last long.

After much controversy, the iPhone app store has dropped “Hottest Girls,” the first Apple-approved iPhone and iPod touch application to offer adult content.

The application, which serves up a host of topless models and other mature content, caused an uproar when news broke that Apple was breaking its somewhat squeaky clean reputation by including the application in its offerings.

The negative press, however, must have been too much to handle.

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography,” said Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr. “The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”

Despite claims from TechCrunch, the developers of “Hottest Girls,” that they were the ones to pull the app from the store, it is becoming evident that Apple was the deciding force that ultimately pulled the plug.

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Microsoft is gearing up for the launch of its Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store later this year, and some new details have emerged as to how it will all play out.

Coinciding with the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, the new Marketplace for Mobile will debut with over 600 apps available from day one.  Although there are thousands of Windows Mobile-based applications already available, Microsoft says only a small percentage have made it through the selection process to be available via the Marketplace at launch.

Like other app stores, the Windows Marketplace will feature both paid and free apps, but in addition to offering credit card payments for premium apps, operator-based billing will also be offered- meaning users can purchase apps and pay for them on their cell phone bill.  Users will also have the option of returning the app within 24 hours of purchase if they’re not satisfied, a feature that will likely find its way into other app stores in the future.

According to Microsoft, Windows Marketplace for Mobile will debut in 29 countries at first.  The storefront promises developers 70 percent of all revenues as well as transparency throughout the certification process.  Developers will also have the option to set their own prices in each market, enabling them to maximize their revenues based on targeted pricing strategies.  Microsoft is slated to begin accepting Windows Marketplace for Mobile application submissions later this summer, with the initial launch of the marketplace slated for this Fall.

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Barnes & Noble has unveiled a new B&N Bookstore application for the Apple iPhone.

Providing access to millions of books now at the touch of your finger, Barnes & Noble worked with software partners Evryx Technologies and Spotlight Mobile to design, customize, and launch the new app, which is a red-hot download so far this week.

The app lets users take a photo of a book cover and, seconds later, the user gets all the information his or her heart could possibly desire about the title, author, publisher, etc.

More importantly from a business standpoint, however, consumers can use the app to purchase or reserve a copy of their desired title directly from the application.

The decision to plunge into the mobile realm isn’t new for the book giant. B&N recently bought digital book retailer Fictionwise for close to sixteen million dollars.

Given that Barnes & Noble operates nearly eight hundred bookstores in all 50 states, there is huge potential for this seemingly long-overdue app.

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Visual search is a new concept aimed at making the overall search experience more user-friendly, interactive and quicker for the end-user.  While there are visual search engines on the traditional Web, the concept has been better received on the mobile Web- where quicker and more visual search results are more welcomed given the nature of the devices used.

To heed this trend, Searchme has been busy introducing mobile applications that bring mobile visual search to the various mobile platforms.  While an iPhone, Android and even Nokia Ovi Store version already exist, the Windows Mobile platform has lacked an app.  That’s now changed with Searchme’s debut of a beta version of its mobile app for Windows Mobile users.

Instead of a list of blue links, Searchme delivers images of web pages, videos, music and products that play right on the search result page making it easy to find and consume information on a cell phone.  Searchme offers significantly improved performance for searching on a phone because it runs as a native Windows Mobile application, rather than in a slow-rendering web browser.  Unlike other search applications, Searchme supports a full touch screen interface.

In the beginning, I have to say I wasn’t impressed with the idea of visual search.  It’s a slower process and I found it harder to find exactly what I was looking for given the plethora of media that’s presented with each search.  Text-based search results just feels more natural.  With the advent of bringing visual search into a separate mobile application, the idea seems much more viable.

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A new forecast by Juniper Research suggests that ad-funded MMS revenues will reach $87 million over the next five years, with annual growth rates reaching 94%.

In addition, the forecast also states that SMS and mobile email will continue to dominate the person-to-person (p2p) mobile messaging market during the same time period.  The basis for the forecast being that the number of brands using MMS as an advertising medium is still growing rapidly, with push MMS and SMS in particular being employed very effectively in both mature and emerging markets.  This alone has enabled network operators to support ad-funded voice and SMS tariffs and combat falling ARPU, while providing brands with new advertising channels along the way.

The findings indicate that the Far East and China will lead the global ad-funded MMS market by a considerable margin, followed by North America and Western Europe respectively.  It’s nice to see the North American market leading a segment of mobile technology, which doesn’t seem tot happen very often.

Other interesting tidbits from the forecast titled “Mobile Messaging & IP Evolution” is that the number of mobile email users will climb by 21% to reach 1.1 billion in 2014, and that SMS’ share of total global P2P mobile messaging revenues will decline by 18% over the same five-year forecast period.  With the evolution of MMS-capable devices and the services that utilize them, SMS is slowly being taken over by its multimedia counterpart- a shift that’s been coming for a while now.

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