3Ci Co-founder and COO, Mark Smith was a featured panel speaker at the latest South Florida Technology Alliance (SFTA) event that tackled the imminent nightmare scenario of: The Internet is Running Out of Addresses- What Does that Mean to Your Business.

The panel addressed the issues facing the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 and answered the following questions:

• What are the business opportunities and challenges?

• What is the cost of not doing anything?

• What do we do next?

Ronnie Frames, director of net engineering at Peak 10, and Mark joined the discussion after an eye-opening keynote by John Curran, president and CEO of American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

As of February 2011 the last allotment of IPv4 addresses were allocated.  What’s an IP address? They’re numbers computers use to contact each other over the Internet. A solution was needed to ensure that every computer, mobile phone, car, gaming console, refrigerator, and any other Internet-connected device can talk to each other.

That solution is IPv6, which creates new addresses and greatly increase the number of available addresses, ensuring this communication nightmare never happens again.

IPv6 must be adopted for the continued growth of the Internet but with the transition comes growing pains, as IPv6 is not backwards compatible with IPv4. Everyone from the individual to enterprise companies, Internet service providers, equipment vendors and content and hosting firms will be affected. Planning for the transition and the wrath of complications that will surely follow is vital.

In just three short years, more people are expected to browse the Internet on their mobile device than on their desktop. Mark spoke about how the rapid adoption of smartphones helped hasten the end of IPv4 and how the mobile industry is dealing with the transition to IPv6.

Mark also noted how, as an entrepreneur, he recognizes “where there is pain, there is opportunity”. As the transition begins there will be many occasions for people with IPv6 knowledge to create businesses around professional services and transition assistance.

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About the SFTA

The SFTA promotes the growth, success and awareness of the regional technology community. Through events, networking, programs and education, SFTA provides South Florida’s technology-related companies, academic institutions, entrepreneurs, governments and related organizations with an active forum to grow the business of technology in our region.

In January, 3Cinteractive joined President Donna Shalala and her team at the University of Miami for the Global Business Forum. The 2011 Global Business Forum focused on the business of health care and served as a call to action for thought leaders and change agents from public and private sectors of healthcare.

The following white paper, Seniors, Mobile Technology, and Health Care:  Is grandma “hip” yet?, provides a review of 3Ci’s presentation at the Global Business Forum. The presentation was developed and delivered by Barry Hix, 3Ci’s Executive Director of Healthcare Solutions, who served as a speaker at the forum’s panel session on “Elderly Adopters: Older Adults and the Promise of Health Care Technologies”.

The paper examines the potential for mobile communication to serve as a relevant and powerful bridge to connectivity, to education, and to behavioral change across senior populations.

The primary questions addressed in the paper include:

• Are seniors utilizing mobile communication technology today?  Tomorrow?
• What are the clinical and economic implications of increased adoption of mobile technology?
• What are the forces driving the adoption of mobile communication across seniors?
• What does this mean for marketers of healthcare services to seniors?
• Should marketers of services to seniors begin thinking about their mobile strategy today?

To download the white paper click: http://3c.vg/senior

International CTIA Wireless 2011 takes place March 21-24, 2011 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida and 3Ci will be in attendance.

International CTIA WIRELESS is where the wireless world meets each year for three days of intense business, learning and networking. The show is the premier wireless event representing a $1 trillion global marketplace that brings together wireless and converged communications, wireless broadband, and mobile web.

If you would like to learn more about 3Ci, or schedule a meeting with 3Ci at CTIA Wireless 2011, please email us at sales@3Cinteractive.com.

Congratulations to our own John Styers! The company’s vice president of corporate strategy and industry relations was elected to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) North American Board of Directors.

Styers, a career mobile evangelist both domestically and abroad, was a founding member of the MMA. He was also a co-author of the original Consumer Best Practices guidelines. His core responsibilities at 3Cinteractive include managing various carrier and industry relationships as well as helping spearhead the company’s mobile health (mHealth) initiatives. Styers’ carrier background, experience and industry relationships in the mobile ecosystem should make him an invaluable member of the MMA board.

“I am honored to serve on the MMA North America Board of Directors with this great group of mobile industry leaders,” said Styers. “I am looking forward to again helping define the future of the MMA and shaping the direction this organization will take to better our industry.”

The MMA North American Board of Directors is comprised of individuals representing some of the world’s most prominent brands, agencies, advertisers, wireless operators, retailers, and software and service providers. The MMA global and regional board members work together to oversee and guide the Mobile Marketing Association and its industry initiatives across Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

3Cinteractive is pleased to announce immediate availability of Multimedia Message Service (MMS) on the AT&T network. With our partners at OpenMarket, you can now provide richer, more personalized mobile content such as images, audio, short video, and rich text to AT&T subscribers and accept photos and other content from subscribers to your application.

MMS represents an additional method for delivering downloadable content on the AT&T network of 82 million subscribers. AT&T accepts premium and standard rate programs for MMS traffic, such as ringtone, wallpaper and other content downloads. Both MT and MO based programs are accepted. With MMS, the 160 character restriction of SMS does not apply.

With 3Cinteractive and OpenMarket MMS you can:

 ·   Deliver binary content to over 210 million AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, Sprint (CDMA) and Cricket subscribers
 ·   Deliver longer text messages
 ·   Launch innovative programs like social networking applications and games
 ·   Increase success rates with handset discovery capability
 ·   Sell secure DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected content that prevents piracy of your offerings
 ·   Provide enhanced consumer experience via automatic content downloads
 ·   Get transaction level reporting of messages via the OpenMarket Message Activity Report (MAR)

To launch your MMS campaign, please contact your Account Manager or 3Ci Support to get started today.

Today the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is scheduled to announce new rules that will prohibit interstate commercial truckers and bus drivers from sending text messages (or SMS) while they are operating moving vehicles.

At an October summit on the subject of distracted driving, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pledged to crack down on distracted driving by truckers and bus drivers. He also indicated that the DOT would establish rules governing not just the use of phones and other devices by truckers and bus drivers to text and talk, but also the use of computers mounted on dashboards that are used to communicate with dispatchers.

The Department of Transportation said that it is still working on additional regulations that would govern the use of such computers by truckers, as well as when truckers are allowed to use cellphones for conversation. Truckers and bus drivers who violate the new rules on SMS, which are effective immediately, face civil or criminal fines of up to $2,750.

While the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute research study found that those truckers who used on-board computers faced a ten times greater risk of crashing, nearly crashing or wandering from their lane than truckers who did not use those devices, that figure is lower than the 23 times greater risk when truckers texted.

This is could be a lead reason why the DOT began issuing regulations banning texting. “We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the road with them to be safe,” Secretary LaHood said in a news release. “This is an important safety step and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving.”

States in dark blue ban texting for all drivers. Light blue indicates states weighing legislation to ban texting for all drivers. Gray indicates states with no active legislation. White indicates states with no legislative session scheduled for 2010. Click to enlarge.

Leading the charge for “taking more” steps to eliminate distracted driving may be the states. Twenty-three states are debating legislation to ban texting while driving, a practice that 19 states currently prohibit. One hundred ninety-four bills concerning various forms of distracted driving, including texting, are being debated in 34 states.

According to the Department of Transportation, 5,870 people — 16% of all highway fatalities — died in distracted-driving crashes and 515,000 were injured in 2008.

Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has introduced federal legislation to ban texting or emailing while driving. States that don’t go along with the proposed ban would risk losing 25% of their federal highway funds.

The Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) Mobile Marketing Forum (MMF) — Los Angeles brought together agencies, brands, carriers, and other members of the global mobile marketing ecosystem. Jeremy Martin, 3Cinteractive’s Vice President of Business Development, was able to see how brands are beginning to leverage mobile in a very sophisticated way.

What was evident during the MMF is that mobile is being valued as more than just a point advertising / marketing solution. The case studies presented by some of the largest brands in the world shows that mobile has become an integral component to an enterprise or brand’s marketing, sales, service, and customer relationship management (CRM) programs. There were working examples of multi-platform strategies employed with solutions spanning messaging, mobile web, and applications commonly deployed, with each platform type being used to drive traffic across the other.

At the MMF, 3Cinteractive sponsored the Targeting, Creative and Measurement discussion, which was chaired by Jeremy. The panel spoke about the long-term aspects of mobile marketing and the related on-going customer engagement. The view held by the panelists — among them Maria Mandel, Senior Partner, Executive Director - Digital Innovation, Ogilvy; Richard Ting, Vice President, Executive Creative Director, Mobile & Emerging Platforms, R/GA; and John Hadl, CEO, Brand In Hand — is that mobile marketing and mobile technology is extremely valuable when fully integrated across a brand’s and an enterprise’s marketing, sales, service, and CRM programs. The long-term on-going customer communication aspects are shown to be the most effective when defined during the discovery / development phase of mobile marketing. Mobile is becoming a core component of effective CRM communication channels and it’s clear that brands / enterprises and technology providers are working very closely together to integrate mobile marketing solutions.

Two of the main highlights of the show were comments from AT&T® Interactive and Microsoft®. Matt Crowley, COO of AT&T Interactive, stated that across AT&T’s interactive advertising, mobile click through rates (CTR) are two to three times higher and call through is more than three times higher than the online equivalents. Charles Johnson, General Manager of Mobile Advertising at Microsoft, shared they are focusing campaign success measurement on the actual brand revenue results generated, not just click / call through or impressions.