SINGAPORE: Mobile phones are a potential gold mine for advertisers, the most personal and intimate way to communicate and engage with subscribers — more than 2 billion of them and counting worldwide. Yet the advertisers’ two-liner text pitches have largely fueled a growing hate club, with recipients quickly equating the messages with spam they abhor on desktops.

Now, thanks to improved technologies, advertisers believe they have struck upon the formula for getting their messages across without irking consumers. The development is important given the mobile handset’s promise to be a “third screen” — after the television and the desktop computer. Several blue-chip brands like Nokia Corp. and McDonald’s Corp. have been experimenting with interactive ads on cell phones, taking advantage of the device’s ability to know where you are.

Customers have the option of finding the nearest retail or restaurant outlet with the press of a key.

Others partner with search engines and e-mail services to slip in an ad or two, similar to how Google has mastered the use of e-mail and search keywords on the desktop to help determine which topics users find interesting and, in turn, what ads appear.

Better handsets and faster networks mean “more brands utilizing mobile devices for more advanced marketing and advertising initiatives,” said Laura Marriott, executive director of the Denver-based industry trade group Mobile Marketing Association.

The search-based advertising model seems to be working in Japan — a mature mobile phone market where the bulk of the 98 million mobile phone users have phones with Internet capabilities.

Japan’s mobile advertising expenditures is expected to reach $1 billion by 2011 — more than three times the $328 million last year, according to an April report from media and communication think tank Dentsu Communication Institute Inc.

Although subscribers had felt they were wasting their time and money going through ads while conducting searches on their phones, those concerns have diminished with faster speeds and flat-rate pricing for Web access, said Akira Miwa, the report’s author.

Yahoo Inc. took the plunge in June with a mapping service that combines search and location-based mobile technology. All one has to do is to enter a keyword to search, and advertisers registered on Yahoo’s database pop up on a digital map.

The advertising industry is mindful of earlier mistakes, including inundating consumers with pop-up ads on the desktop and text messages on the phone.

Many agree that preserving a good customer experience is critical.

“Push marketing and spam have a very short shelf life,” said Frank Brown, director of the mobile marketing and technology firm Sydus.

People need to feel, Brown said, that they had specifically invited the pitch or are engaging with the brand in a relevant and entertaining way.

Rebecca Ye, a 22-year-old Singaporean, said she wouldn’t mind having ads sent to her phone as long as she had subscribed for them, like “a notification on upcoming sales.”

“Let’s say you’re on the train and you get a message telling you something’s going on somewhere you can just drop by,” she said. “So it’s very targeted and purposeful.”

MobileOne, Singapore’s second largest mobile communications provider, promises to cater only to the “willing customer.”

Subscribers can choose to receive offers, free news headlines and advanced functions with an interactive ad-based text messaging service, but if a customer declines, “he continues to send and receive (text messages) the way he does today,” Chief Executive Neil Montefiore said. “It is completely under the control of the customer.”

Wireless carriers, meanwhile, are starting to loosen restrictions on third-party ads, which they had resisted for fear annoyed customers might defect to competitors. Until now, most mobile ads are found on content producers’ own Web sites, which are accessed through a mobile browser rather than through the carrier’s cell phone menu.

Yum Brands Inc.’s Pizza Hut and KFC are among the first to advertise through a free, ad-based e-mail service from Southeast Asia’s largest operator, SingTel.

“Our customers are fully aware that they will be receiving the ads, and from our initial findings, they aren’t disturbed by them at all,” SingTel spokeswoman Tricia Lee said. “We also found that a relatively large segment of customers are willing to try mobile advertising provided they receive something in return.”

Analysts say slowing revenue growth and saturation in developed markets have forced wireless carriers to reconsider — good news for advertisers that want to target specific groups. After all, the carriers have the key to a treasure cove of customer demographics — where they live, their age and what games they play on their phone.

“Carriers today are now focusing on targeted advertising and personalization capabilities,” said King Yew Foong, research director of Gartner Singapore. “The crucial point is whether carriers understand their customers well enough to execute this flawlessly. They will have to develop better customer intimacy.”

The risks are high if they don’t do it right.

“Consumer aversion to such advertisements in the past is due to the fact that they were irrelevant to the recipients,” King said.

To mitigate the risks, Korean and Japanese companies that have allowed advertising have also put in place spam filters.

The Mobile Marketing Association has set up guidelines that include letting consumers decline to receive ads and ensuring that information advertisers obtain from customers be kept confidential.

“So because of that, spam will be less of an issue,” MMA’s Marriott said.

Brands themselves are also learning to be more subtle with its mobile campaigns, tapping on to a trend where youths in Asia are increasingly turning to their phones rather than an iPod for on-the-go entertainment.

Bacardi Ltd., the company best known for its top-selling rum, recently extended its yearlong partnership with Sydus to stream music to cell phones through a virtual radio “brand-channel.” The company hopes to connect with a younger audience that way — without overt advertising.

It may take time, though, for mobile ads to gain better esteem among consumers. Some parts of Asia have yet to embrace the third-generation, or 3G, phones that can carry multimedia ads. Handset technology and network signals differ among mobile carriers and countries, forcing advertisers to cater only to the tech-savvy group.

But it’s only a matter of time before mobile networks improve — and the mobile ads follow. The key is to avoid simply importing techniques from television and the desktop.

“We should all by now (know) that doing boring TV ads aren’t much appreciated,” Craig Davis, worldwide chief creative officer of New York-based advertising agency JWT, said during a recent visit to Singapore. “Doing annoying things is no way to seduce people that your brand is for them.”

Washington: It may not seem possible, but the fact is that the type of friends and family that you surround yourself with not only effects your behaviour, but also your weight.

The finding is based on a study by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego, who found that obesity spreads through social ties.

They also found that when a person piles on the pounds, the chance that people around them – friends, siblings and spouses – will also gain weight dramatically increases. The researchers also noted that the closer two people are in a social network, the more likely it is that they will put on weight – and that’s something that doesn’t change even if they happen to live miles apart.

“What we see here is that one person’s obesity can influence numerous others to whom he or she is connected both directly and indirectly. In other words, it’s not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with. Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship,” said. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, a professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy.

As a part of the study Dr Christakis and U.C. San Diego researcher James Fowler, PhD, analysed data from the Framingham Heart Study (an ongoing cardiovascular study begun in 1948) to see if any social patterns affected the growing obesity rates.

They derived information from archived, handwritten administrative tracking sheets dating back to 1971. All family changes for each study participant, such as birth, marriage, death, and divorce, were recorded. In addition, participants had also listed contact information for their closest friends. Coincidentally, many of these friends were also study participants.

The researchers then aimed their focus on 12,067 individuals, who had a total of 38,611 social and family ties. Other factors that figured in were gender, smoking, socioeconomic status, and geographic distance.

The study found that when an individual becomes obese, the chance that a pal will become obese increases by 57 percent, siblings by 40 percent, and a spouse by 37 percent.

A factor that was found to play an important role obesity was gender, with the Christakis and Fowler finding that the risk of obesity increases by a whopping 71 percent in same-sex friendships. This pattern was also observed in siblings – among brothers the risk increases by 44 percent and among sisters it increases by 67 percent.

Friends and siblings of opposite genders showed no increased risk and neither did neighbours who were not in the social group. “The fact that neighbors don’t affect each other and that geographic separation doesn’t influence the risk among siblings or friends tells us that environmental factors are not essential here,” says Christakis.

“Most likely, the interpersonal, social network effects we observe arise not because friends and siblings adopt each other’s lifestyles. It’s more subtle that that. What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads,” he added.

Obesity, the authors conclude, needs to be seen not simply as a clinical issue but as a public health problem.

“We need to understand that a significant part of an individual’s health is embedded in their network. In fact, we really need to revisit our whole notion of cost-effectiveness. The fact that certain healthcare approaches won’t just affect the individual but will also cascade through their social ties means that healthcare interventions are far more cost-effective than previously thought,” says Fowler.

Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the study appears in the July 26 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

CINCINNATI: Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt set up another chapter in their high-profile rivalry as the pair moved into a semi-final showdown at the Cincinnati Masters.

Top seed Federer held off tenacious Spaniard Nicolas Almagro 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, going through in less than 90 minutes on an ace, the world number one polishing his form prior to the start of the US Open a week from Monday. Quickfire Hewitt broke in the first game on his way to a 6-2, 6-4 thrashing of Carlos Moya in their quarter-final.

Federer beat Hewitt just a week ago in the Montreal quarters on the way to a final which he lost to Serb Novak Djokovic.

The Swiss stands 12-7 in the series against Hewitt, notably winning the last 10 meetings. Hewitt last tasted success in Melbourne Davis Cup play nearly four years ago.

KABUL: Negotiations to secure the release of 19 Korean church volunteers being held in Afghanistan by the Taliban have failed and the insurgents’ leadership council is now considering their fate, a Taliban spokesman said on Saturday.

“The talks ended without any result and have failed as our main demand was not accepted,” Qari Mohammad Yousuf told foreign news agency by telephone from an undisclosed location. Meanwhile, A suicide attack against a US convoy Saturday killed seven civilians and four Afghan security contractors in southern Afghanistan, police said.

“Seven civilians and four security guards were martyred in the suicide blast,” police officer Jan Mohammad told French news agency.

The attack happened in a crowded area west of Kandahar city, capital of Kandahar province, on the main highway to restive Helmand, he said.

Nearly a dozen insurgents were killed after an ambush on a joint patrol of Afghan police and coalition troops in Afghanistan’s restive southern Helmand province, the NATO-led force said.

There were no losses among the police or coalition soldiers, it added in a statement late Friday.

US military spokeswoman Captain Vanessa Bowman said it was the third such failed attack in that area in recent days.

The statement said around 20 insurgents attacked the patrol with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near a village.

Police and troops responded with small arms and artillery fire.

“As insurgents attempted to flee, the combined force successfully cut off their escape route. Nearly a dozen insurgents were killed during the battle,” the statement added.

Victoria Beckham has been given a $5 million credit limit at top Beverly Hills fashion store Neiman Marcus.

The Spice Girl - who moved to the US with husband David and their three sons last month after he joined the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team - has been spending thousands of dollars on clothes ever since she arrived. A source revealed to In Touch Weekly magazine: “Victoria has been doing all she can to boost the US economy!

“She went to Barney’s in Los Angeles last week. She spent $3,670 on a Goyard cosmetics case, $5,745 on an Azzedine Alaia mini-dress and $4,995 on a purple Dolce and Gabbana dress.

“She has now been offered a $5 million credit limit at Neiman Marcus.”

Earlier this week, Victoria said: “I have been busy having a good look around Los Angeles, checking out the restaurants and the beauty parlors - you never know when you might need a facial!”

She also revealed sons Brooklyn, eight, Romeo, four, and Cruz, two, have been doing plenty of shopping of their own.

She said: “The boys are really looking forward to starting at their new school so we’ve got to make sure they are all kitted out with new schoolbags and pencil cases - you remember what it’s like going back to school, you’ve got to have new everything!”

Known for his bindas quotes and spicy remarks, Rakhi Sawant sets the mood for her latest release Buddha Mar Gaya. Princy Jain chats up the item girl.

How was it working with several senior actors in Buddha Mar Gaya?

Oh god, I had a tough time handling these buddhas. Rahulji (Rawail) gave me such bold outfits. And the oldies would stare at my cleavage more than my face.

What about doing films with big stars?

Rakhi Sawant can do anything. I can do romantic scenes with Shah Rukh wearing a chiffon sari on the hills of Switzerland. But nobody dares to give me a role like that. Film industry mein sab darpok hain. “I’m no Mallika Sherawat to make a career out of lip service.”

Will you do a kissing scene as well?

Listen, I’m no Mallika Sherawat to make a career out of lip service.

If you were marooned on an island, who would you want to take along?

Ram Gopal Varma. He seems to know only two women Urmila Matondkar and Nisha Kothari. It’s time he found a new girl. Who else can be better than Rakhi Sawant?

What about marriage?

After marriage, a boyfriend becomes a husband and life becomes hell. Before marriage, men want the girlfriend to wear short clothes, after marriage they want the wife fully covered. I hate this mentality. Abhi meri shaadi ki umar bhi nahin hai, main bahut chhoti hoon. I have a lot to do still.

It looks like John Abraham and Aishwarya Rai will finally come together as a screen pair in a film for Rohan Sippy, which will start early next year.

What’s more, John and Ash have taken with them director Sriram Raghavan, who was supposed to direct them in producer Gaurang Doshi’s Happy Birthday. Confirming these developments, Raghavan said, “We’re no longer working for Gaurang. That project, Happy Birthday, didn’t work out. John, Aishwarya and I are doing a completely different project for Rohan Sippy.”

Incidentally, Aishwarya’s husband Abhishek Bachchan and Rohan are the best of buddies and are all set to do another film together after Bluffmaster.

“Yes,” conceded Raghavan. “But that’s a separate project from mine. John and Ash are working in my project. But Abhishek isn’t in my film.”

Raghavan’s film for Sippy would be the first project to bring together the John-Ash combo. Soon after that, Suniel Shetty brings them and Abhishek together in Raaste.

“The project got delayed because of Abhishek’s dates, the wedding, the honeymoon etc. So we lost the opportunity to shoot a particular race in Mexico. It happens just once a year. So we now have to wait till next year to shoot the race. But the project is very much on,” said Suniel.

London: Sienna Miller has reportedly fallen for yet another co-star, actor Matthew Rhys.

The two are currently working in ‘The Edge Of Love’, and the 25-year-old, who split from actor Jude Law last December, has been smitten by Rhys.

The two met after mutual pal actress Keira Knightely encouraged their romance after the three went out for a dinner in May.

Earlier, Miller has been linked to rapper P Diddy and had a fling with rock star/model Jamie Burke after her split from Law, but according to a pal, this time the actress is ‘serious’. “This is the first bloke Sienna has been serious with since she finally split with Jude,” the Sun quoted the pal, as saying.

The source insisted that Miller and P Diddy were just ‘party pals’ and the two might have had some wild nights but that didn’t make him the guy in her life. The insider also insisted that Burke was just a ‘distraction’.

“They love to go out and have a good time but that’s where it ends, they have had some wild nights in Los Angeles, London and St Tropez but he isn’t someone she is going to take home to her mum,” the pal said.

“Jamie Burke was just a distraction for Sienna. She was on the rebound and wanted some fun — and that’s what she and Jamie had,” the pal added.

New York: Jessica Biel will be giving fans an eyeful of what she looks without a stitch of clothing when she bares all in her new movie ‘Powder Blue’.

The actress, according to Us Weekly, has agreed to show off her assets in the movie, in which she stars alongside Forest Whitaker and Ray Liotta.

She will be playing a “stripper trying to earn money to raise her terminally ill son.”

And, she’s even signed a contract that states the bare minimum that she will be showing off. “(She) signed a contract that explicitly details the bare minimum fans will see - including shots of her breasts and butt,” New York Post quoted a source, as telling the mag.

Biel in the meantime, has also admitted that she is dreading posing in the buff.

She revealed that what made the prospect all the more daunting was the possibility that the footage could end up on the internet, and be available for the whole world to see unedited.

“It definitely feels vulnerable to be naked in front of anybody let alone a film crew. And it’s scary because of the internet - you don’t know where it’s going to end up. It’s a moment that could be exploited,” she added.

Producers of Bond films, who are in the process of firming up the cast for Bond 23, are keen that Bollywood beauty Shipa Shetty plays the next Bond girl because she is ‘beautiful, fiesty and a great actress’ besides being popular in Asia and UK.India is becoming an increasingly important market for Hollywood films and filmmakers are becoming creative in snaring audiences in Indian multiplexes.

A movie source told the Daily Mail:

“Shilpa is having secret talks with the top brass who are working on the next movie. As far as they are concerned, she has it all - she is beautiful, fiesty and a great actress.

“But they also want someone who is a big star prior to the film, which Shilpa is.

“She has a huge following in Bollywood as well as a number of fans in the Western world - especially in Britain - so she will be great for the box office sales.”

Bond 23 is expected to hit the floor sometime next year immediately after production of Bond 22, Daniel Craig’s second Bond film, is completed.