John Lamb's Week: Let the mobile ring tones drive you mad

Or skip the earache and see what else is on offer this week...

Wednesday
If you are dying for the day when everyone has vibrating mobiles and the silly ring is a thing of the past then avoid London's Leicester Square this evening. Virgin Mobile will be "celebrating ring tone culture" with an attempt to establish a Guinness world record for the number of phones ringing in unison. Using a special version of the Pearl & Dean cinema advertising jingle they have previously downloaded, participants will be asked to initiate the ring simultaneously. After three attempts a Guinness judge will decide whether a record has been established. Virgin expects over 300 people to take part. More information, if you must get involved, at www.virgin.com/ringtones/thebigring. Thursday
Despite the global nature of ebusiness, consumers still have a lot of problems actually paying for products online in local currencies via the payment method they would like to use. Indeed, less than a quarter of transactions begun online are successfully concluded, mostly due to payment difficulties of one kind or another, according to research firm Datamonitor. Today sees the launch of a piece of software called WebCollect that claims to cope with more currencies, languages and payment methods than you can shake a stick at. Developed by GlobalCollect, WebCollect works in the currencies of 236 countries and territories, using 36 payment methods and catering for 11 languages. Jan Manten, CEO, of GlobalCollect will be explaining how the product works at a series of briefings. Customers include big hitting media companies such as the BBC, Reed Elsevier and the Financial Times. Online seminars are being increasingly used to spread the word about technology developments. Typical of the genre is one planned for today by fault management software company Micromuse on the vexed question of how to turn a profit in the broadband industry. The so-called webinar will explore how broadband service providers can more effectively roll-out and maintain new services, increase profitability and manage next-generation broadband networks using service management, assurance and provisioning technologies. The show will consist of pre-recorded presentations played online. Members of the audience will be able to put questions to speakers via email and get an immediate response. Further information can be found at: http://www.micromuse.com/events/seminars/bb_summit/. A more conventional debate on new interactive services delivered over third generation networks will be taking place in central London this evening courtesy of public relations company Firefly. Speakers from communications consultancy Schema, BT Genie and KPMG Consulting, among others, will attempt to thrash out the applications and new business models that will enable firms to grab the biggest slice of the predicted $38 billion European market, in third generation services that will grow up over the next four years. The audience will be told that operators and content providers will have to stop competing and start co-operating through revenue sharing deals. They will also have to find new business models for the mainly entertainment driven business. For further information contact forums@firefly.co.uk. Finally, SilverStream Software CEO David Litwack and Gartner Group senior research analyst Nikos Drakos will be talking at Simpson's restaurant London about how web services can provide useful user data standards. To back up their case, the speakers will be detailing the experiences of a financial organisation that went through a merger and was able to provide users with access to account information held by either company. The seminar will also cover web Services standards (SOAP, UDDI and WSDL), the process of integrating web services and access services from different client types. Contact krayner@silverstream.com for more details.