Send a Cone or Tune by Cellphone

We met the bespectacled Andreas in Goteborg, and enjoyed dinner with him and his wife Elin. He develops internet ad campaigns and one of them was fascinating, it was for an ice cream company.

He showed us how a Swedish cellphone customer can send a tiny bar code to a friend's phone...the friend then goes into one of the chain's ice cream shops and the cashier waves the cellphone handset over a bar code reader. The friend gets a free ice cream!

The generous friend pays for the treat on his cellphone bill. Other applications allow people to pay for parking meters, cokes and sundries from 7-11 using the phone.

This sort of pass along is also now available on Microsoft's new Zune music player. You can send a friend a tune, but there are more catches on this (typically Microsoft, eh?). The songs are only good for three plays and disappear from your Zune after a week.

The more I spend time in Europe the more I realize that any device that is in the pockets of everybody in a crowd has more potential than the computer can ever have. Phones are the way, they will eventually replace many other devices and reign supreme.