After several years in online at Tempest Media, Adam joined AURA as a director where his role has been to drive the company from early stage R&D to a point where they now have commercialised a suite of mobile technologies. As a technology evangelist, he has spent several years on the bleeding edge of mobile technology, and has the paper cuts to prove it.

mo:life
Can you tell us a little about AURA? How did you take it from concept to implementation? Was it an intuitive thing, or did you see strong evidence of success elsewhere?

Adam Dunne
AURA Digital was established in 2002 with the vision of the ‘mobile revolution’ in mind. In the past 3 years, AURA has positioned itself as Australia’s leading technology service provider specialising in interactive wireless marketing and m-commerce. AURA is now globally recognised as one of the pioneers of mobile ticketing having won ‘Best Enterprise Application’ at the 2004 Global Mobile Messaging Awards and shortlisted for ‘Best M-commerce

Application’ at the 2005 GMMAwards. More recently AURA also enjoyed some local recognition at the Australian Mobile Marketing and Advertising Awards taking out ‘Best Promotional & Marketing Campaign’, ‘Best Emerging Technology’ and ‘Best of Show’ plus was a finalist in ‘Best Mobile Payment Solution’.

During the past 3 years we have invested heavily in educating the market and consumers about the virtues of mobile ticketing and mobile coupons. More recently we have also been involved in the launch of a couple of other interactive wireless technologies namely, Hypertags and bluepulse. In the past year we have also launched some of our technology solutions into Malaysia and New Zealand.

The demand for our solutions both locally and internationally in definitely growing, we know we are on the right track, its just a matter of time before they become more widely accepted.

mo:life
Can you walk us through a typical transaction?

Adam Dunne
With mobile ticketing a consumer visits a website to buy their ticket online and then has the option to receive it directly to their phone, as well as receiving an email confirmation.
On the night of the event, the consumer presents their phone to be scanned by a box office attendant at the point of entry. The barcode, and unique ticket number, is validated against the secure Access Control system and entry is granted. About 85% of Australian handsets will receive the barcode and the remaining 15% receive a numeric code. In the case of the numeric code, the number is keystroked in the same way you would type in an unreadable barcode at a point of sale.

It’s as simple as that!

mo:life
How is mobile ticketing faring in other countries?

Adam Dunne
Mobile ticketing is still a very new concept for most countries of the world. Our company launched our mobile barcode solutions in Australia in 2003 and in many ways leads the western world in our use of the technology. Recently at CeBIT 2005 we delivered 13,000 mobile tickets which set a world record for the largest mobile ticketed event. Japan and Korea are several years ahead but interestingly have now begun to move away from barcodes and started to embrace contact less readers. Where RFID tags are built into the handsets. Generally speaking though, across the world there are several companies now offering various different mobile ticketing and mobile coupon solutions.

mo:life
Can you tell us about some interesting mobile billing methods you are seeing emerging? Is there any research on whether or not, and how, customers are using these kinds interactions (eg: paying for parking tickets and buying goods from vending machines, and of course, mobile ticketing).

Adam Dunne
M-commerce is still in its infancy and I don’t think we will see a huge uptake for several years. To date consumers mostly rely on pr-sms to pay for digital content rather than physical products. The main limitation in pr-sms is the large percentage that the carriers take before the service provider sees a cent. It will not be until we get passed this situation that the purchase of physical products will become more viable. The future will see the adoption of various ‘mobile wallet’ solutions. Basically where the user exchanges cash (usually via credit card online or perhaps even via a pre-paid card purchased through a retail store) for credit that can be used to purchase products via a mobile device. Japan is by far the furthest ahead in the area of m-commerce, with several different ‘m-wallet’ solutions available to consumers.

mo:life
Do you think QR codes will take off in Australia as a means of interaction and billing?

Adam Dunne
QR codes, are 2D barcodes that were specifically designed to be read from a mobile device. They were actually developed by the sister company to Toyota called DENSO. Essentially it is a square code made up of many pixels and arranged with 3 anchor points placed in the 3 of the corners. This enables the scanner to work out the correct orientation of the code when it is held over the scanner.

QR codes are used heavily in Japan and Korea. Firstly to be displayed on the phone screen and to be scanned at a retail PoS, but also for the camera phones to link QRcodes printed on physical objects (such as magazines, catalogues, and food products) to web-based content with one simple click. The QR code scanners however are quite expensive (approx A$2000/unit) and I believe that this will be one of the biggest hurdles to the adoption of QR codes in Australia.

At the end of the day, a barcode (what ever symbology) is just a graphical representation of a series of number/letters. The benefit of a QRcode over a more simple and common linear barcode (eg EAN8) is that it can represent up to 30 alphanumeric characters rather than on 8 numerals. The benefits are mostly based around security and the amount of content/information that can be transferred in the code.

mo:life
Have you come across any cross-handset compatibility issues?

Adam Dunne
We currently deliver all of our barcodes, whether EAN8, QRcode, Datamatrix or PDF417, as a binary SMS. This allows us to reach approx 85% of Aust handsets. We focus on delivering barcodes to Nokia, Sony Ericcson or Motorola handsets, and the others just receive the numeric code. There is a compatibility issue when you try to forward codes from one handset to another though. Binary picture messages are delivered as either NSM (Nokia Smart Messages) or EMS (Enhanced Message Service). If you were to try and forward an EMS format code to and NSM handset then it will not be able to receive it, and vice versa.

mo:life
Generally can you talk about mobile cost issues in Australia? Are the high costs here hamstringing innovation?

Adam Dunne
Australia is a country full of innovators. I think as a society we are always looking for a quicker, easier and cheaper way of doing things, and we are in many cases happy to embrace change if it means that it makes out lives a little bit easier. The issue around new technology is usually that it must be embraced at scale in order to see any significant monetary return. This is one of the reasons why it is easier for smaller software/technology companies like AURA, with lower overheads, to achieve results ahead of the bigger companies like telcos. The big payoff comes when the technology is adopted by the mainstream.

mo:life
Will you be moving beyond a visual interface and toward a more automated system where as you pass a checkpoint with your mobile you are automatically identified - like an e-tag system?

Adam Dunne
Ultimately this will happen, just like we are witnessing in Japan with the Felica card. The principles behind RFID tags and Smart Cards will eventually transfer onto mobile devices. Only time will tell how quickly this happens. Again it comes down to the cost of the infrastructure required to manage these solutions.

mo:life
Have you come across any initiatives that use barcodes to access video content?

Adam Dunne
At this point in time I have only seen one commercial application that links barcodes to video. Using a technology called PaperClick, a consumer can photograph a barcode from the back of a DVD which then launches them to a video preview from the DVD title. AURA will be launching this technology solution in Australia in 2006, when 1 mega pixel cameras become more prevalent.

mo:life
Can you outline your vision of the next five years in the mobile billing business?

Adam Dunne
This is an essay question on its own.

Lets look at the facts:

i) More Australian have a mobile phone than access to the internet.
ii) There are more mobile phones globally, than computers and TVs put together.
iii) The mobile phone is the most direct means to reach a consumer at almost anytime, anyway.
iv) As consumers we are looking for greater mobility in our everyday lives and our expectation and appetite for information on demand is rapidly growing.

Therefore we believe that is only a matter of time before we will see a generation of consumers grow up to accept that their mobile phone is more than just a communications device. The mobile phone will become an extension of their PC, with the added convenience of it fitting in a pocket and/or the palm of their hand.