mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends - m-trends.org

Last Friday I was in Amsterdam for the final part of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks awards - a 100.000 euro competition initiated by Vodafone Netherlands, SPRX Mobile and MobileMonday Amsterdam. Six finalists were selected out of +50 entries after four busy months and 3 jury intensive jury rounds.

Finalists were: TipSpot, Nulaz, MapTheGap, MobyPicture, Exphera and Mi-i.

Nulaz (www.nulaz.com) was the big winner with 60.000 euros, followed by TipSpot (www.tipspot.com) with 30.000 euros and MapTheGap (www.mapthegap.nl) with 10.000 euros. Nulaz is an advanced LBS social networking application with reviews and ratings. TipSpot is a mobile social city guide for events in your neighbourhood. MapTheGap is a highly innovative mobile application for location-based idea management and sharing.

It was a very interesting couple of days in Amsterdam during summer to go through the evaluation of the startups, lots of great quality presentations, freshness of ideas and professionality of the work in general. Though this was a ‘national’ competition, I believe some of the startups have a true chance to develop to an international market. Be bold and go for it, I would say… Congratulations to all winners! A job well done also to all other participants. We’ll hear more of these startups in the near future, for sure.

It was also a chance to meet some great people, the very professional Vodafone Internet team led by Patrick Leenheers, the whole SPRX Mobile team, and last but not least Vincent Everts (Trendwatcher and Gadget expert). Vodafone announced already the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2009. Hope to see you all there again!

Here’s my Flickr set of the jury sessions and the event last Friday at PICNIC.

Below also my keynote slides on Mobile Startup Case Studies I did for the opening of the event.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to discuss some of the topics in detail or leave a comment.

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.

Tomorrow I’m participating as part of the technical committee at the startup 2.0 event during the bdigital Global Congress in Barcelona. Startup 2.0 is a non-profit event to promote the entrepeneurial spirit in Europe, organised by José A. del Moral, Miguel Cuesta, Jesús Monléon and Carlos Trenchs.

The jury composed of Loic Le Meur, Martin Varsavsky, Yaron Orenstein, Tom Raftery, Daniel Waterhouse of 3i, Bernardo Hernández, Mike Butcher, Luca Conti, Nicole Simon and Ouriel Ohayon selected 10 finalists out of more than 300 projects competing for the final prize. Entries have come from all around Europe: Spain, France, Italy, UK, Israel, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Portugal, Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Ucraine, Switzerland, Slovenia, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Finland and Estonia.

These are the finalists:

- iFoods
- UnLtdWorld
- Bubok
- Geospace
- AllRise
- Planetaki
- Talicious
- Learnit
- Zilok
- Wolpy

Some really good projects have been selected, I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of the projects. I’m looking forward to the event and to catch up with some of my conference buddies.

After lengthy review by the panel of independent judges (including myself - see below), Marek just announced the short-lists for 2008 MEX Mobile User Experience Awards. The winners will be officially announced at a special evening reception in London on 27th May, the opening night of the 4th annual MEX conference.

Commercial category

- Taptu

- Zeemote

- Mobyko

- Vuzix

Freelance category

- Flat Music Player

- Cloudaware

- BSR Blind Phone

Professional category

- My Link Wireless Accessory

- Couple IT

- MoDist

Student category

- Context aware

- Pixie TV

- MyView

MEX Mobile User Experience Innovator of the Year

- Taptu

- BSR Blind Phone

- MyView

The judges:

Ken Blakeslee, Chairman, WebMobility Ventures

Steven Dotsch, Managing Director, WirelessMatch

Mike Grenville, Director, 160characters.org

Stuart O’Brien, Editor, Mobile Entertainment

Marek Pawlowski , Editorial Director, PMN

and myself.

One of my favorite conferences last year, the MEX Mobile User Experience Conference, has published its agenda for this years’ conference on May 27-28 in London. Check the agenda and speaker list for full details.

A special discount is offered to mTrends readers (check details at the bottom of this post).

The conference helps executives to gain a deeper understand of customer behaviour and translate that knowledge into better mobile products. The key objective is raising awareness of user experience issues as a strategic priority for everyone in the value chain, encouraging the mobile business to put consumer needs at the heart of the industry.

It is a very different style of conference. Each event is researched and developed by a team with a passion for mobile and unique insight drawn from years of industry experience. Corporate pitches are outlawed, everyone plays a role in setting the agenda and we go to extraordinary lengths to provide the highest standards of service.

This years’ conference programme is based around a 10 point Manifesto (download pdf here) for enhancing the mobile user experience. Each of the 10 Manifesto statements is addressed through a diverse range of presentations, panel discussions and collaborative breakout groups.

Topics include…

1. Content itself will be the interface of the future
2. Handsets are no longer just for the hand
3. Fragmentation is the enemy of innovation
4. Fashion is a stronger motivator than functionality
5. The developing world is the new frontier for mobile user experience
6. Search requires a radically different approach in the mobile environment
7. Intelligent contact lists are the future centres of the user interface
8. Mobile payments herald the next generational shift
9. Users as individuals: uniquely complex and contradictory
10. The potential of smart voice

Some of the speakers include:

On the opening night there is also a reception to announce the Winners of the 2008 MEX Design Competition. Check it out, some really great stuff out there! If you design interfaces and have a compelling idea or product to delight customers and enhance the mobile user experience, you can still participate, the deadline for entries is 23:00 GMT, Friday, 2nd May 2008.

MEX is now less than 5 weeks away and, as with all previous MEX events, the organizers target to sell out well in advance on the conference date. If you’ve not yet reserved your place at the event, now is the time to do so - passes are selling out fast.

mTrends readers can get a 10% discount on a conference attendance pass (priced at GBP 1499). Go to the registration form and enter ‘MM24′ in the ‘partner code’ box on the registration form.

Hope to see you there!

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)

If you hadn’t heard or read about it yet, the 2008 MobileMondy Peer Awards recognized 27 companies from 18 countries at its annual awards event held at Espacio Movistar facility during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Buzzd from New York, a provider of local real-time search information for bars, clubs and restaurants on the mobile device, cleaned the table by winning jury, audience and community awards under the early stage category.

In the Emerging Community category, Taptu a search and sharing engine from London won the award with jury award Funambol, an open source email and messaging company, while local favorite Kimia, a rich media content provider, clinched the audience choice.

The event had 2 great keynotes, one from Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO of Blyk Corporation, and another from Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefónica España. More than 700 participants attended the event during the afternoon and reception.

Kudos to all start-ups who participated in the very challenging competition in front of a great jury compiled of mobile industry savants.

You can download ALL Early-Stage and Emerging Start-Ups presentation slides at the MobileMonday Barcelona website here. If you are not registered, just enter your details to access the documents.

(NOTE: some of the embedded animation’s or video’s have been lost or could not been transferred for PDF document creation).

Some personal thoughts and possible improvements:

The overall quality of innovation and disruption this year was not as great and surprising as we have seen during last years’ event, though I believe that the winners and some other finalists have some promising technology indeed. We’ll definately here more about these companies in the near future.

The event this year was too long, 27 start-ups to present in one afternoon is way too much. In respect of the MobileMonday diversity and leaving an opportunity for start-ups coming from another corner of the world to present is great but managing that many needs pre-selections in order to preserve quality of the start-ups presenting and to be able to focus more on the quality of the presenters and presentations. Have you noticed that the best presenters with the best presentations won the awards?

I would love to hear some of your feedback and suggestions for improvements, leave a comment here.

I created a MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona Flickr Group with event pictures, anyone who has pictures of the event, feel free to join and post your pictures in the group to share with the community.

Belgian compatriot Robin Wauters is setting up the Plugg conference on March 19 in Brussels, an excellent opportunity for you to get up to speed on the state of the European Web 2.0 industry.

Robin asked me as a speaker to give an overview and current state of Mobile 2.0. Some interesting speakers are attending as well, such as Lisa Sounio (Dopplr), Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Reshma Sohoni (SeedCamp), Tom Raftery, Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital) and Rodrigo Sepúlveda (Vpod.tv), amongst others…

Next to the panels and speakers’ line-up, the conference hosts a European Start-Ups Rally. No less than 65 valid submissions from 18 European countries were received by the organizers and jury, resulting in a selection of 20 start-ups who will get to present their wares at Plugg. In alphabetical order, here below:

1. 123people
2. Alenty
3. Assetbar
4. Business IT Online
5. Caleido / Wuala
6. Cellity
7. Floobs
8. HumanGrid
9. Mobiya
10. MyOwnDB
11. Nugg.ad
12. Radionomy
13. Refresh Mobile - Mippin
14. Sportme
15. Trampoline Systems
16. Trutap
17. TVtrip
18. Viewdle
19. Workhound
20. Zilok

Good to see some mobile companies in there, such as Cellity, Mippin, Mobiya, Trutap, amongst a truly interesting selection. Looking forward to this one!

The selected companies will have the opportunity to pitch the jury and audience at Plugg in a morning session, 2 minutes each. A vote will then decide which 3 finalists get to present for 10 minutes each in the afternoon, after which a winner will be chosen and awarded.

If you haven’t yet registered for Plugg yourself, now’s the time! As of next Saturday, the early-bird rate expires and the entrance fee will go from 400 to 500 euro.

Somehow unnoticed was the anouncement yesterday of the strategic partnership between MobileMonday, the global community of over 70,000 mobile industry visionaries and developers, and the GSM Association, the global trade association for mobile phone operators.

The two organizations have entered into a strategic partnership to stimulate, accelerate and showcase innovation in the mobile sector, more specifically related to the Mobile Innovation Programme, created to help the thousands of small and medium-sized companies developing innovative mobile products and services to rapidly reach mobile operators and bring their innovations to end-users.

“I can truly say that this partnership is what the MobileMonday community members have been looking for – how to streamline the process from innovation into beneficial products and services. These innovations occur all over the world today, and MobileMonday’s and GSMA’s partnership will now showcase them to GSMA members in a new way” said Jari Tammisto, CEO, Mobile Monday Ltd.

“This partnership brings together the thousands of innovative small companies that belong to MobileMonday community, and the 700 mobile operator members of the GSMA, enabling these two key constituencies to better work together to create exciting new mobile products and services that will appeal to consumers and business users,” said Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer of the GSMA. “The Mobile Innovation Programme is a completely new approach that enables promising ideas to be identified and commercialized across the globe much faster than has been possible in the past.”

September 27th is the extended deadline for award submissions from companies aiming to be recognized at the first Mobile Innovation Summit in Macau at the Mobile Asia Congress in November 2007.

The categories are:

• Most Innovative Consumer Application or Service
• Most Innovative Wireless Device-Centric Technology
• Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform
• Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market

From the four category winners above, one overall Mobile Innovation Award winner will be selected.

Check the Innovator Showcase page, some start-ups you might know are already listed like muvee Technologies, PixSense, Shozu, AdMob, Refresh Mobile, Mozes and MobileMonday 2007 Global Peer Award winner Realeyes3d and a lot of others.

I’m happy to see such partnerships, I think this is a great opportunity to bring both member communities closer together for the benefit of the start-ups and the whole mobile value chain in general.

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.