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I spend some time in Amsterdam for the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition for Dutch mobile startups, combined with a presentation I gave at MobileMonday Amsterdam. I have been nicely surprised by the quality of the local startups  presenting in the competition, I can’t say much about them yet… the winners will be announced shortly and will present at the coming MOMO event at the PICNIC conference.

MobileMonday Amsterdam #7 on Value was a GREAT event. The MOMO team has been building reputation since their kickoff event in June 2007 with Jyri Engestrom, putting together quality events ever since. I have been around seeing many MobileMondays a bit everywhere but MoMo Amsterdam is definately one of the best events in Europe focusing on mobile specific topics. What makes this a good event is the original venue and the TEAM working in perfect symbiosis with clear objectives to produce exciting events and not afraid to take risks trying out new concepts.

This time Raimo, Yuri, Claire, Maarten, Marc and Sam created a circle in the theatre for the first part of the event to stimulate audience participation. The discussions were in Dutch, the statements challenging and a bit controversial (user value vs. shareholder value) - why not? I particulary liked the discussion on the bankrupcy of a promising Dutch mobile startup, called Skoeps, as a learning experience towards the community. Wrong timing (flat fees not yet in place), contrary shareholder interest and not enough user base to create a user-driven news content site I believe were amongst the reasons the company didn’t make it.

The 2nd part included keynote presenations by myself, buddie Ajit Jaokar and Yme Bosma from the biggest social network in The Netherlands Hyves (5 million active users!). Ajit gave another interesting talk on what he expects to become a new boom on - non-voice - devices.

Yme presented (in Dutch) the coming rollout of the Hyves mobile platform, including rich adressbook (presence, status, profile, content, etc), communication options such as voice, sms, notes, www, blog, chat, video, photo, email, money, etc), location-based (cellid & GPS), bluetooth for physical identification in public area’s and multiplatform (J2ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile & iPhone). Yme and his team are very ambitious about the mobile platform, expecting mobile interfaces to be the dominant acces method on their platform in a couple of years. Note that Hyves was originally intented as a mobile social media platform years ago before its actual internet succes.

You can view the presentations of Ajit and Yme on Slideshare. The complete Flickr set of the event can be seen here. I’ll post my presentation in another following post.

3G, Ajit Jaokar, amsterdam, applications, convergence, Cool Devices, Developers, events, hyves, innovation, iphone, lbs, location based, mobile, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, Mobile OS, mobile web, mobilemonday, nokia, Operators, platform, rudy de waele, social media, socialmedia, startups, Trends, usability, user experience, value creation, yme bosma

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.

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

The Mobile 2.0 Conference is spreading its wings to Europe and will land on July 4 in Barcelona, Spain. This one-day event focusing on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation, is brought to you by dotopen and the Mobile 2.0 Organizing Committee: Daniel Appelquist, Gregory Gorman, Mike Rowehl, Peter Vesterbacka and myself in partnership with ESADE.

The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists.

The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference is an opportunity for companies to connect to industry leadership and startup innovation and broaden your C-level relationships.

The event will be held at the Espacio ESADE FORUM, Barcelona and will run from 9:00am to 6:00pm with a reception at the Espacio ESADE FORUM afterward.

So, what can you expect? Two industry keynotes, four panels and three series of innovative startups presenting live-demos.

Panel speakers as of today include:

• Tony Fish, AMF Ventures
• Dr. Maximilian Niederhofer, Associate, Atlas Venture
• Inma Martinez, Director and Principal Advisor, Stradbroke Advisor
• Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development - EMEA, Google Inc.
• Mike Butcher, editor TechCrunch UK & Ireland
• Chris Liu, Managing Director, Fjord
• Leif Fågelstedt, COO, Blyk
• Ilja Laurs, Founder & CEO of GetJar
• Antonio Vince Staybl, CEO GoFresh
• Raimo van der Klein, Co-founder SPRXmobile
• Martin Duval, CEO bluenove / Director of the Orange Start-Up Program
• Carlos Domingo, General Director of Telefonica R+D labs
• Unai Iturburu, Head of Vodafone Spain R&D

Check the full speaker list here.

The Mobile 2.0 Europe presenting start-ups will be selected in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A). Any start-up company with a mobile application can participate. To apply and present your company and your application, you need to fill in the online application form. Deadline for submission is June 6, 2008 at midnight CET.

Seed Capital Stage and Pre Series A Start-ups will be selected by dotopen and the Mobile 2.0 organizing committee. Post Series A Start-ups will be selected in collaboration with the VC Panel. During the event, all panel participants and organizers will vote their best Start-up in each category; the winner in each category receives an invitation to present at the Mobile 2.0 Event in San Francisco on November 3, 2008.

Early Bird registration for this event is only € 99,- till May 31, after that date, tickets will cost €199,-Stay tuned! More goodies to be announced soon.

2.0, Announcements, applications, apps, conference, danielappelquist, dotopen, entrepreneurs, ESADE, europe, event, events, gregorygorman, innovation, investment, location based, m20eu, mikerowehl, mobile, mobile 2.0 barcelona, mobile 2.0 europe, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mobile2.0, mobile20, mobile2eu, mobilemonday, mobileweb, Moble 2.0 Europe, nokia, Operators, petervesterbacka, rudydewaele, social media, startups, Trends, usability, user experience, web 2.0

Maybe a bit unnoticed in blogland during the Eastern Holidays but for the ones who missed it: MyStrands Social Player (download here) has won the Mobile Rules! Award 2008 as the Best Multimedia Application!! Mobile Rules! competition is the world’s leading awards for innovative mobile business plans and cuttin-edge applications services and technologies from developers and entrepreneurs from around the globe. Check all the winners here.

MyStrands Social Player is a music player for mobile devices (Symbian Series 60, 3rd edition. Also available for Java) with two main characteristics: it lets you discover new music and has a built-in social network. You can meet people who like the same songs you play, send messages, see others’ listening histories, and much more… It has received great reviews so far and the best is yet to come. See my previous coverage and demo here.

I just got the news that MyStrands is going to release an new version of the player at CTIA in Las Vegas with some pretty exciting features. If you are there, make sure to go and check out a demo and learn about about what MyStrands Recommender Technology and the Social Player can do for your business. Booth #4855 in Hall N4, within the Enterprise Mobility Pavilion, Las Vegas Convention Center.

For more information: contact them directly here.

(Full Disclosure: I’m doing some work for MyStrands)

2008, Announcements, applications, apps, Awards, discovery, Mobile Apps, mobilerules, multimedia, Music, music distribution, mystrands, nokia, recommendation

Webware, one of the interesting resources on web apps, edited by Rafe Needleman, announced their finalists this week of the Webware 100, a new awards program they recently launched. Over 5.000 nominations were received, whittled down to 2,000 de-duplicated and qualifying entries, from there, 250 products were finally selected as finalists, 25 each in these ten categories:

• Browsing: Web browsers, extensions, widgets, and security
• Communications: e-mail, chat, VOIP
• Community: social networks, groups
• Data: search, storage, backup, sharing, and sync
• Entertainment: Games and contests
• Media: audio, video, photo
• Mobile: portable utilities and apps
• Productivity: apps, business tools, commerce
• Publishing: blogging, web content, design tools
• Reference: Mapping, reference works, and education

Check it out, some really good stuff in there! In the Mobile category, some of my favorite applications were selected such as ShoZu, SoonR, Winksite, Yahoo OneSearch and MyStrands with Social Player. Thumbs up for all finalists, my TOP 25 would have looked quite differently but I’ll post that some other time here.

You can only vote once per category, so choose wisely. Voting closes at 9:00 AM Pacific time on June 11, the winners will be announced on June 18.

You can vote here.

Announcements, applications, apps, Awards, cnet, innovation, Mobile Apps, mystrands, onesearch, shozu, social media, social player, soonr, startups, Trends, we media, web, web 2.0, webware, winksite, yahoo

Kudos to Richard MacManus who offered me his space today in an idea to write some articles around the Mobile 2.0 subject to intend bridge the web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 communities. I’m kicking-off a mini-series of posts on the topic of Mobile 2.0, which will be explored more in detail on Read/WriteWeb this week.

“On the eve of Le Web 3 in Paris - and one month after the Web 2.0 Summit concluded - it seems like an appropriate time to explore the world of the mobile Web, a.k.a. mobile 2.0. There has been a lot of discussion lately on this topic, a good deal of it inspired by the mobile 2.0 event - a one-day event held on 6 November 2006, organized by Daniel Appelquist and Mike Rowehl….”

Continue reading “Understanding Mobile 2.0“, in which I tried to give an overview of what I currently understand as Mobile 2.0 and I included some links to essential writing done on the topic by fellow mobilist bloggers.

accessibility, Analysis, Announcements, applications, augmented reality, Bluetooth, carriers, cell, content, device, disruption, Experience Design, france telecom, image recognition, innovation, leweb3, Mashup, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile web, Mobile Web Server, mobile2.0, mobile2.0event, mobileweb, networks, Operators, opportunity, orange, platform, podcasts, QR codes, readwriteweb, richardmacmanus, rudydewaele, search, services, social media, start ups, startups, Trends, ubiquitous marketing, Under The Radar, usability, user experience, verizon, verizon wireless, Viral, w3c, web, web 2.0, Wimax