The key to a good mobile campaign is to offer the user something that they can only get through mobile. Whether that be a coupon or an exclusive alert, the user should feel like they gained something of value.

The reason I bring this up is because I received another text message from the Barack Obama campaign yesterday evening (in fact, it was 6:53pm ET, which is a little late in my mind, but I’ll save that discussion for another day).

Here’s the value that the message offered:

Barack will announce his
VP candidate choice
through txt msg between
now & the Conv. Tell
everyone to text VP to
62262 to be the first to
know! Please forward.

That seemed pretty cool and valuable to me. The Obama campaign is giving its opted-in users something that no one else will get, or at least it’s giving them something before everyone else will get it: information. (more…)

There are a number of iPhone reviews on the Web; a good overview of the pros and cons of the device can be found here and here, and a very detailed breakdown of device features is available here. Rather than add to what’s widely available, this review of Apple’s 2nd generation iPhone caters to those considering switching from a RIM Blackberry. In my case, a Blackberry 8820.

I’ve been a heavy Blackberry user for about 5 years, long enough to grow forgiving of its shortfalls and fond of its quirks, like an old pair of tennis shoes you have every reason to throw away, but just can’t. I played around quite a bit with the first gen iPhone, but without 3G support and a bona-fide email client, it was easy to resist. The 2nd gen iPhone fixed these problems, and further resistance was futile. (more…)