Chameleon PR

It’s the taking part that counts according to the world’s largest survey of online gamblers involving 11,000 players from 96 countries. The research commissioned by industry self-regulatory body, eCOGRA, and undertaken by the Betting and International Gaming Research Units at Nottingham Trent University, found online gamblers like to play ‘to relax’ or ‘for the excitment’ more than to win money.

Other findings include that on average, more refined women (aged 46-55 and 55% of the sample) prefer the glamour of the online casino to the typical ‘young buck’ male poker player (aged 26-35 and 74% of sample).

Ever made a business decision on the roll of a dice?

Web use on mobile phones is growing according to the Mobile Data Association that has said we accessed the internet 15.9 million times in December 2006 using our mobiles.

Analysts quoted on BBC Online said Web use on mobiles is far from mainstream but continued advancement requires user education. They also said location-based services will be the next big thing:

“All the major players are starting to build services around navigation and maps, but they’re still new,” said Thomas Husson, mobile analyst, Jupiter Research.

With MySpace map mashups already available to show where your contacts are around the world and the company moving into mobile, the possibilities are becoming interesting. Alerts to your mobile when you are in a bar near one of your contacts is one application being touted around.

Will this mean Geographic Information Systems (GIS) providers like ESRI (UK) become the next hot technology companies?