Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Under the Radar: Mobility 2008

Published on July 31, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: Announcements, Applications, Awards, cariers, dealmaker-media, entrepreneurs, Events, Innovation, iPhone, mobile, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, mobility, Operators, silicon-valley, startup, Startups, telecom, Trends, Under The Radar, undertheradar, utr, vc, venture.

Are you one of those startups that make a difference and you would like to showcase your technology to the ones like Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Sprint, iFund, Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola, and more? Then you need to apply to present at Under The Radar: Mobility event on November 12 in Mountain View, CA. Submissions are still being accepted, so apply today!

Under the Radar: Mobility is a one-day conference uncovering 32 vetted, test-driven startups that have launched within the year in categories such as iPhone apps, location-based services, gaming, social networking, enabling technologies, and marketing/advertising.

Under the Radar: Mobility is one of my favorite startup events to track innovation in mobile, read my reviews of previous editions here.

I will be there again this year as a judge amongst other mobile industry players, including:

Jesse Money, Executive Director of Product Convergence and Innovation, Verizon Wireless
Stephan Noll, Managing Director, T-Mobile Venture Fund
Chi-Hua Chien, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (iFund)
Scott Ford, General Manager, Sprint Business Development & Sprint Nextel Ventures
Harshul Sanghi, Managing Director, Motorola Ventures
Dan Schiappa, GM – Mobile & Gaming Advertising Experiences Platform, Microsoft
Dave Williams, Senior Vice President of Wireless and Technology, Comcast
Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Ventures
Jonathan Ebinger, General Partner, BlueRun Ventures
Ken Gullicksen, General Partner, Morgenthaler
Eric Ver Ploeg, Managing Director, VantagePoint Venture Partners

The event will be moderated by:

Rafe Needleman, Editor, CNET/Webware
Ellen McGirt, Senior Writer, Fast Company
Natali Del Conte, Host, CNET TV & Technology Correspondent, CBS Early Show
Jeremy Toeman, Marketing Consultant, Stage Two Consulting

I’ll be in San Francisco and the valley the first half of November, please do get in touch if you’d like to catch up with me.

LIFT Asia 08

Published on July 31, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: 2008, Announcements, asia, Conference, Events, Innovation, jeju, korea, lift, liftasia08, Near Field Communication (NFC).

At the end of a decade during which the internet revolutionized our lives and organizations, the network is now moving beyond the browser, invading objects, cities, toys, cars or medical devices. Where will the next big changes happen? What are the world’s most innovative people working on right now?

LIFT Asia is a three-day event taking place in Korea on September 4, 5 and 6 to answer these questions with a global community of doers and thinkers, featuring an innovative format made of scheduled talks, open sessions, and artists creating a special atmosphere to facilitate inspiration and networking.

LIFT Asia will take place at the international Convention Center ICC on the beautiful Jeju Island in Korea (located in the center of Northeast Asia and lies equidistant between South Korea, China and Japan).

The event will feature:

• Talks covering topics like urban technologies, online worlds, virtual money, new lifestyles and robots, featuring speakers like Joonmo Kwon (CEO of Nexon, the world’s largest online games company), networked cities visionaries Jeffrey Huang (EPFL), Yang Soo Yin (The Living) and Adam Greenfield (Nokia design), I-mode inventor Takeshi Nastuno, Takeshi Natsuno who works on the robots of the future, Gadget loving and Emmy award winning American guru Dan Dubno, and legendary LIFT speakers like Bruce Sterling, Bruno Bonnell, Frédéric Kaplan or Jan Chipchase.

• Community speeches where participants can freely present their works and ideas inside one of the open rooms.

• Interactive art installations curated by the Nabi Art Center, creating a unique experience based on inspiring and engaging activities to explore the new reality of social interactions in the digital world.

The full program is available here:
http://www.liftconference.com/lift-asia-08/program

Kudos to the organizers for putting such a neat line-up and program together.

Mobile Jam Session at CTIA Wireless & IT San Francisco

Published on July 30, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: Announcements, browsers, certification, channels, CTIA, ctia-wireless-&-it, Developers, device-attributes, distribution, Entertainment, Events, Innovation, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, Mobile Jam Session, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, Mobile Web, mobile-banking, mobilejam, mobilejamsession, payments, porting, San Francisco, security, Startups, testing, Widgets.

After successful Mobile Jam Sessions at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and CTIA in Las Vegas, Caroline Lewko of the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) is organising the 3rd Mobile Jam Session for CTIA’s Wireless and IT Show on Friday, September 12, 2008 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

Mobile Jam Session is a day to connect developers to industry leaders with an open agenda that inspires new ideas and innovates solutions within the mobile ecosystem. Check the pictures from the previous sessions in Barcelona and Las Vegas.

The day includes:

An unpanel discussion
Improv sessions led by developers and industry leaders alike, where everyone gets a chance to be heard and have their questions answered
Developers pitching their applications
And a Wrap party!

Topics we will likely cover includes:

Specific topics such as mobile payments and messaging
Developer resources such as certification, porting and developer programs
Tips on penetrating the big guys and getting to market.

Attendees must be registered for CTIA, with a minimum of an Exhibitors Pass. You can register on the CTIA site and get one, you can get an exhibitor to offer you one, or you can contact WIP for a special exhibitor rate for developers and emerging companies. For $1600 you receive a 5X10 square foot booth that is complete for you to move in. Find out details of this offering here: http://www.wipconnector.com/pavillion.php

More details and updated info can be found at the event website, be sure to ‘Request an Invitiation‘ to be able to attend, it’s free!

Jam on!

Telefonica Reveals iPhone 3G Pricing Plans

Published on July 10, 2008 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: 3G, 3g-iphone, Announcements, apple, apple-apps, Cool-Devices, Experience Design, flatrate, Innovation, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iphone3g, M:Metrics, Mobile Apps, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile-2.0-iphone-2.0, Mobile-Culture, mobileweb, Operators, pricing-plan, spain, tarification, Telefonica, Trends, Usability, User-Experience.

Today Telefónica revealed its pricing plans for the iPhone 3G, tomorrow available in Spain in over 1.500 Telefónica stores and in 15 other countries. Telefónica is distributing the Apple iPhone in 12 Latin American countries and the Czech Republic. This builds on earlier exclusive, multi-year agreements signed between the two companies in the UK and Ireland, bringing the total number of territories in which Telefónica will sell the iconic device to 16, a combined addressable market of more than 500 million people – making Telefónica one of the leading global distributors of this revolutionary device.

Since the iPhone was launched by O2 in the UK, sales have exceeded all expectations and have greatly fuelled net customer additions, particularly high-end contract customers. Furthermore, the average monthly revenue of an iPhone customer is reported 30% higher than that of a regular contract customer, while the iPhone has generated the highest level of customer satisfaction of any terminal on the market.

Check these latest figures on iPhone consumption in US below by m:metrics (recently acquired by comScore)

Data from comScore M:Metrics confirms that the iPhone (and its associated mandatory data plan) is compelling consumers to consume mobile content by a considerable factor. The table below shows Benchmark Indices between 203 (two times more likely to send photos or videos than the market average) and 1208 (twelve times more likely to listen to music on their device than the market average) for the iPhone versus the market average. Even against smartphones, the rates of mobile content consumption are considerably higher. (please check m:metrics for full details on this survey)

Telefónica is aiming at its more than 23 million mobile customers in Spain, as well as customers of other Spanish mobile operators who switch to Movistar. Basically anyone can get an iPhone (even for FREE in some cases), as long as you are an existing customer or want to become a customer of Telefónica, there are price plans for existing and new customers, individuals and companies. You can consult all current priceplans and offers at iPhone 3G Telefónica Movistar website (http://www.iphone.movistar.es/).

Combined with a voiceplan, the most significant data traffic packages are Tarifa Plana iPhone at 15 euro for 200Mb/month and Tarifa Plana iPhone Plus at 25 euro for 1Gb/month. When a customer exceeds this limit, Telefónica will slow down the user’s connecting speed, which I think is a smarter solution then starting to charge higher without the user’s knowledge. I’m not sure yet about the other options for heavy data consumers like me exceeding this limit, I suppose I’ll have to find it out when my consumption gets there…

But that’s it, I’m sold! I would have bought an iPhone 3G today but I will need to wait untill I’m back in the country next week. With my average monthly bills of around 400 euros (and many times higher) I’m the perfect new client for Telefónica I need to make sure though I get a good data roaming plan with all the travelling ahead the coming months.

What I’m looking forward is to start using the many available iPhone applications, now available through the iPhone App Store; in mobile it’s all about the channeling and the distribution of course!

I can only hope that in the end I will pay less for more data consumption on a better device then Telefónica’s competitors I will keep you posted how that goes!

Mobile 2.0 Tagcloud

Published on July 9, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: 2.0, cloud, heike-scholz, kosmar, mobile 2.0, mobile-2.0-tagcloud, mobile-zeitgeist, mobile2, tag, tag-cloud, tagcloud, ui, web 2.0.

Many people have asked me about the Mobile 2.0 tagcloud image I used as the introduction for the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. The Mobile 2.0 Tagcloud has been created by Heike Scholz and was inspired by – the now famous – Web 2.0 Tagcloud by Berliner friend Kosmar (an image I first used in a presentation the day after he published it online in November 2005 and which I used many times since then in other presentations)

Heike has done a GREAT job capturing what is out there right now in the Mobile 2.0 space. You can send your input and suggestions directly to her on her btw excellent blog called Mobile Zeitgeist.