A couple of days before the event, some 150 companies registered to attend MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE event, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, mobile application and service providers, bloggers, press and web technologists. If you want to attend the event to connect to industry leadership and broaden your C-level relationships, you can still buy tickets here.

NOTE there’s also a Mobile 2.0 Europe TechCrunch Party at the Shôko Lounge Club in front of the beach, all details about this after event meetup here.

Here’s the list of the companies attending the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference in alphabetical order:

24 Access Solutions
7 Syntax
Acquamedia Technologies
AdMob
Ajuntament de Barcelona
aka-aki networks GmbH
Alcatel-Lucent
AlpinaSearch
Altaide Valley
Alumnus Software
AMF ventures
antrak capital
Atlas Venture
Atos Origin
Avui
AZ Interactive
Balderton Capital
Bango
Barcelona Digital
Barcelona Media
Beabloo
BeepMarketing
Between Brackets
bluenove
Blyk
Bullnet Gestion
CanalPDA
cellity AG
Centro Español de Servicios Telematicos
Channer Medianet
cirici new media
Clicmobile
CommonSensus
Comunicano
Coreobjects Ltd
DD&H
Debaeque Venture Capital
Dial2Do
dotopen
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
eBuddy
Economic Promotion - Barcelona City Council
Eden Ventures
El Paìs
Ericsson
Esade
European Commission - Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)
Facoria de Canales
Five minutes
Fjord
France Telecom
Futurlink
GeoMe Communications
Getjar
GoodmintonPartners
Google
GSM Association
Halmstad University
Hewlett-Packard
Hiwave GmbH
Ideal Interfaces
Interactive McCann
IT University of Copenhagen
Itinerarium
itsmy.com (Gofresh)
Jaeson Associates
Jupidi GmbH
Kalerion Computing
Kimia
kooaba AG
La Vanguardia
Longreach Mobile
Lorem Ipsum
M:Metrics
Materna GmbH
mikamai
Mobiclip SL
Mobifriends
Mobile Distillery
Mobile Economy GmbH
MobileContact Software
MobileMonday PL
MobileMonday Ltd.
MobiLuck
Motorola
Motricity
mSearchGroove
my247.mobi
MyFrame Inc.
MyVocal
Nauta Tech Invest II SCR
NextWell
Nimbuzz
Nokia
Nova Ventus Consulting
Onetomarket
Orange
Oxynade
Ozmota
Palringo
PBS MediaShift
Peperoni Software GmbH
Plugg
Qelp
Qualcomm
Quodis
Refresh Mobile
Route Forward Ltd
Rummble
Safiratec
Samtel Consultores
Service Innovation and Interaction Design
SFR
Simba Technologies
SMS Text News
Some Bazaar
Spinverse Ltd
SPRXmobile
Stanford HCI Group
Stradbroke Advisors
Sun Microsystems
Sydes nv / Arkafund nv
Ta with you
Taptu
TAT AB
TechCrunch
Telecom Italia
Telefonica I+D
Telefonica Moviles
Telgraph Hill Group
Tertius Advisory Services
T-Mobile International AG
Tooio Mobile
Treasuremytext
Trutap
Trutap Ltd
Uniteddogs and Cats OY
Universal McCann
University of Salzburg
University of VIC
Unkasoft
Valoris
ViaMobility
ViiF Mobile Video GmbH
Vodafone
Webwag
Worldwide Rights Management Ltd
Yahoo!
Yiibu
YouLynx
Zipipop
ZYB

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Mobile 2.0 EuropeThe Mobile 2.0 Organizing Committee announced the selection of the presenting start-ups at Mobile 2.0 Europe on July 4 in Barcelona. Some 70 mobile start-up companies applied to present at Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. The committee was delightfully surprised with the quality of the ideas and technology of the start-ups coming from many different corners of Europe and the world.

Here are the selected start-up companies.

PRE SERIES A companies

kooaba (Switzerland) - Mobile Image Search
Mobiluck (France) - Mobile Location-based IM, Chat and Social Networking
Secufone (Netherlands) - Mobility and Safety
Unkasoft (Spain) - Mobile Advergaming
ViiF (Germany) - Mobile Entertainment Community

POST SERIES A companies

Futurlink (Spain) - Proximity Marketing
Nimbuzz (Netherlands) - Mobile IM and Text Message Service
Mippin (UK) - Mobilizing the Web
Palringo (UK) - Vocal Instant Messaging
Taptu (UK) - Mobile Social Search

Early-Stage companies

The presenters in this category will be announced the day of the event as to maintain the suspense.

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.

Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Suites Management and Marketing, Services and Software at Nokia will introduce the conference with a keynote.

Participants will enjoy C-Level speaker and panelist participations from other mobile industry players, such as AdMob, AMF Ventures, Atlas Venture, Bango, Blyk, Debaeque Capital, Fjord, Getjar, Google, itsmy.com (Gofresh), Nokia, M:Metrics, Orange, Stradbroke Advisors, T-Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Trutap, Vodafone, Yahoo!, and ZYB. The sessions will be moderated by some of Europe’s finest bloggers including Mike Butcher (TechCrunch UK), Peggy Anne Saltz (MSearchGroove) and Raimo van der Klein (SPRX Mobile).

Check the full speaker list and program agenda here.

There is a lot of interest from the industry to attend this event. Early-Bird tickets at €99 and Standard tickets at €149 are already sold out. Currently, there are some 20 tickets left at €199 (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included), after which tickets will be on sale at €299 (prices all excl. VAT). Attendants can purchase their ticket online at Amiando Mobile 2.0 Europe.

We are also organising a meetup with our media partner TechCrunch, the evening after the event; please contact Mike Butcher or info@dotopen.eu for more information on this event.

Our Partners
Our thanks to our partners Nokia, Palringo, Taptu, Telefónica Movistar, Vodafone, Yahoo!, Bango, eBuddy and Mippin for their invaluable support.

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Bango AnalyticsThe next Mobile Monday Madrid on June 16, 2008 in collaboration with Bango will dive into statistical data and analyse mobile usage, under the topic Mobile Analytics with some experienced players from the industry, including Patrick Dost, Director General, Nedstat España; Sixto Arias, managing director of Mobext (Havas Digital Mobile Marketing Division), Sarah Keefe, VP Marketing, of Bango and Andres Lozano Sanudo, Head of Spain, Portugal and LATAM of Nokia Interactive Advertising.

As usual, a networking party will follow the conference. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaymadrid.com/subscribe/ and reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

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beingdigital.jpg

This week I’m going to spend most of my time in London starting with an event I’m really looking forward to, the Being Digital Mashup Conference on 10th June and organised by Simon Grice and Tony Fish.

The purpose of the event is to debate the commercial, investment and tactical issues that matter when delivering and designing digital services that rely on variety (mashup) of information, data & services. The event has seven themed debates on advertising, identity, content, location, social, retail and search across the important platforms of web, mobile and TV. In each theme there will be leading demo companies showing why it is real and how advanced some actually are. You can check the full speakers list here.

I am not sure if there are still tickets available (I believe the event is - or nearly - sold out). Registration is here.

NOTE: “Being Digital” is also the title of a great book, written by Nicholas Negroponte; it was the book I read in 1995 that spearheaded me inside the digital age!

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Mobile 2.0 EuropeFour weeks to go for the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference and the program gets more and more exciting. Last week, Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Suites Management and Marketing, Services and Software at Nokia was added as a keynote and Charlie Schick, Editor-in-Chief for Nokia Conversations will talk about Social Media as the fusion of mobile and internet, exploring the ties into the Mobile Semantic Web.

More than 70 startups registered to participate to the event. The Mobile 2.0 Europe selected start-ups in 3 Categories (Seed Capital Stage, Pre Series A and Post Series A) will be announced next week.

The Open Platforms and New Application Areas Panel is also confirmed and will be moderated by Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and founder of MSearchGroove

Panelists include:

You can view complete speaker profiles here.

The Early-Bird tickets at € 99 and Standard tickets at € 149 are already Sold out. The next 50 tickets (Standard 2) are available at € 199 (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included). Late tickets will go at € 299 (prices all excl. VAT). So, don’t wait any longer to reserve your ticket if you’d like to attend. You can purchase tickets online here at Amiando Mobile 2.0 Europe.

Some free tickets will still be distributed on the Mobile 2.0 on Twitter channel, also handy to stay updated on latest news and updates on the event :)

Together with media partner TechCrunch, we’re organising a meetup the evening after the event; if your company would like to sponsor this meetup, please contact Mike Butcher or myself for more details. I can’t tell much more as of now, I’ll leave that for Mike to announce, but it’s going to be outside and near the beach :)

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Mobile 2.0 Europe The MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference is heating up! More than 50 startups have already registered to participate to the event. 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 with a mobile application can apply. If you haven’t done so yet, you can still apply by filling in the online application form, deadline for submission is June 6, 2008 at midnight CET.

Taptu, Telefónica Movistar, Vodafone, Yahoo!, Bango, and Mippin joined us as sponsors to support the event and we’re going to announce some more high-level speakers the coming days.

Please take note that the Early Bird registration closes on May 31 (tickets at € 99,- only!), after that date tickets will cost €149,- (breakfast, lunch, coffee and networking cocktail included).

If you’re a blogger or press and you’d like to attend, please contact me directly.

Follow Mobile 2.0 on Twitter for news and updates on the event.

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This weekend and early next week I’m off to Sevilla for an exploratory workshop on Mobile 2.0, organised by the European Commission Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), for its project on mobile content evolution and its socio-economic impact.

The project is looking at user adoption and acceptance issues, the promotion of innovation in this domain, the new emerging mobile 2.0 applications, and the possible existence of bottlenecks with the aims to explore techno-economic models and their viability, to assess the position of Europe in this field and to identify EU possible policy options. The workshop will also serve to identify key areas for future EU research and innovation policies. Most European operators and handset manufacturers will participate, together with some application providers and experts. Looking forward to catch up again with Ajit Jaokar.

If you have any question or input related to the topic I can bring to the attention, leave me a comment or contact me on Twitter.

Mobile Monday Andalucía

Monday April 28th is also the launch of the first Mobile Monday Andalucía and will take place in Sevilla and covers Mobile Innovative Services. The event will focus on new technologies such as digital signature or Near Field Communication (NFC). Mobile Monday Andalucia is organised by the Andalusian Regional Ministry of Innovation, Science and Enterprise.

I will moderate a panel including Alejandro Romero from Yahoo, Antonio Navas from Kimia, Angel Romero from AT4 wireless and Rafael Selma from TB-Solutions. I’m really excited to discover some more about the field work on new technologies trialed here in Spain recently on digital identity and Near Field Communication (NFC). Note the recent trial launch of Orange Spain to bring NFC mobile ticketing to public buses in Málaga.

Anyone who’ll be in the neighborhood and who’d like to get in touch with me, don’t hesitate to ping me.

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Here are my Mobile 2.0 slides of the keynote I did last Friday in London at the Over The Air event, a great initiative by Daniel Appelquist and Ian Forrester. Over the Air was organised by Mobile Monday London, hosted by Imperial College and supported by the BBC.

Kudos to the whole team who made this happen, this was more than just a developers’ conference, more than just a workshop or a barcamp… It was a 48 hours of mobile and wireless development experiment bringing together some +400 developers and mobile industry experts with great sessions on various industry related topics… Lots of great people and ideas gathered during these 2 days. Check the Over The Air website to view the presentations from other keynotes and sessions.

The were 21 competition entries for the mobile application prototype competition. The winners were:

* Overall Best Prototype - Mr. Tomm (Future Platforms)
* Best Mobile Widget - Auto Widget Configurator (Owen)
* Best Hardware hack - Phone Fight (lastminute.com labs)
* Best Use of Multimedia - 21st Century Fridge Door (Orange Pirate)
* Best Use of Wireless, Bluetooth or RFID - Bluetooth FOAF (Owend)
* Most elegant solution - Twitter Client for Windows (Dale Lane)
* Most over engineered - Clever Social Tool (Alex squared)
* Most practical / ready for market - Social Network Open Butler (SNOB)
* Best mobile web application - Browser Sync
* Best design / user experience prototype - Phone Fight (lastminute.com labs)
* Best Location Aware Award - Capture the Flag (Location based games)

* Audience Favorite - Capture the Flag by the Pink Pirates
And the winners in the unofficial categories were:

* Fun Award - Phone Fight (lastminute.com labs)
* Most likely the succeed with the CIA - (Social Tracker)

More info on the winners, pictures, and other follow-ups will be posted on the Over The Air website later on.

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Marek Pawlowski, PMNThis is one of a series of guest articles by Marek Pawlowski, Editorial Director at PMN and founder of the MEX conference, examining the key mobile user experience issues facing the telecoms industry in 2008. These themes are highlighted in PMN’s 2008 MEX Manifesto and will be at the heart of the agenda for the 4th annual MEX conference in London on 27th - 28th May 2008.

Mobile phones were traditionally designed with the comfort of the ear in mind. The original Motorola flips, the Nokia ‘banana phone’ and the numerous chunky ‘bricks’ of the 1990s were all built primarily around the need for a device which could be held to the face for extended periods of time. If we look at how the market has evolved today, the design requirements are very different because phones are as much about visual activites like texting, email, photos and web pages as they are about the traditional function of voice.

Consider the ratio of screen size verus the overall ‘face’ area of the device. Over time, displays have come to dominate the main interaction surface of the mobile phone. If you could track this ratio over the lifetime of the mobile industry, it would show a steadily increasing trend, starting with the single line ‘dot matrix’ displays of the 1980s and rising through to the massive screens of the iPhone, Prada phone, Viewty and HTC Touch.

Increasing ratio of screen size to overall interaction area in mobile phones since 1980

The iPhone and its touchscreen have ushered in a boom for the UI design industry. Faced with Apple as a new competitor, rival handset manufacturers are recruiting UI experts as never before. Spurred in to action by the fear of being left behind, management teams throughout the device business are now mandating a selection of touchscreen products in their portfolio. iPhone sales volumes may still be less than a single digit percentage of the market, but there is no doubting the device has established a new design benchmark.

This sudden willingness to embrace the touchscreen is providing UI designers with more scope than ever before to create flexible interaction layers which adapt to provide the best interface method for individual applications.

What we are seeing is the digitisation of the man machine interaction (MMI) layer and the consequences will be profound.

The iPhone was the first device brave enough to implement the MMI entirely in software. In doing so, Apple prompted the industry to consider what could be achieved once it was freed from having to interact with every application through the same three or four hardware buttons.

The manufacturers with an established and consistent DNA for hardware-based MMI are now pondering how they can maintain the value of their existing investment in MMI consistency and still introduce new innovations with the same ‘wow’ factor as the Apple UI. It’s a very tough question and one that is currently keeping a huge number of UI designers and consultants in well paid work!

However, while UI teams around the world are getting to grips with this major strategic issue, I would like to sound two notes of warning.

Firstly, a funky new UI is never the answer to all your user experience problems - there’s no silver bullet. Any new UI or MMI innovations must be part of an overall commitment to user experience. This is the most fundamental principle of everything we do with our MEX research and consultancy work - it is also the main theme of our 2008 MEX conference and the MEX Design Competition.

User experience is not a set of technologies or a layer within the product design process: it is about having a customer-centred approach at the heart of everything you do, from marketing strategy to after-sales support.

You need only spend a couple of hours with the a device like the HTC Touch to recognise that, however attractive the top layer of the UI, the overall user experience will be fatally flawed if you don’t invest in the deep level of integration required to make a new interaction methodology really work.

Secondly, the priorities of interaction design are about to change again. Handsets will no longer just be for the hand (this is one of 10 key Manifesto statements for the 2008 MEX conference).

The mobile phone started as a device for the ear and has since become a device that is also for the eye. In both of these scenarios, the consistent factor is that the phone remains cradled in the palm of the hand - in 30 years of mobile handset design, this has been one of the few constants.

Finally, that is starting to change. Driven by applications like mapping, music, video and tele-conferencing, the handset is increasingly migrating from our palms and finding a new place in the environment around us.

We are starting to see phones attached to the car dashboard or pumping out music from the bookshelf of a teenager’s bedroom. They are being propped up on tables so kids can watch videos on holiday and plugged in to TVs to drive photo slideshows.

Over time, the average interaction distance between the users and their phones will increase significantly from the few centimetres we see today. Interaction designers can no longer take it for granted that the user will be holding the device in the their hand, with their face close to the screen.

This has big implications for the design of software, the choice of input method, the use of haptics and the role of accessories to extend the experience.

As an example, I have my Nokia N95 mounted on the dashboard of the car. It can provide GPS-enabled mapping, speakerphone and even play my music tracks through the car audio system. However, many of these features are simply too difficult to use unless I’m actually holding the device in my hand.

The keys are too small to press accurately while driving, so searching for an address in the mapping application is impossible unless you are parked. Similarly, I am unable to find the song I want in my music library or build a new playlist. The font size on-screen is also difficult to read at that distance. At night, when the dashboard of the car dims to make it easier to see the road, the handset continues to blaze at full brightness.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the N95 in particular, but rather an illustration of how the new capabilities of mobile phones are enabling out-of-hand applications while the user interaction model is still centred on in-hand scenarios.

There are all sorts of technologies emerging which could improve this experience. Voice recognition is getting better all the time (e.g. Nuance’s ’speak-to-search’ application). Nokia is implementing touchscreen support in Series 60, allowing for more flexible, adaptive UI design. Start-ups like Zeemote have even developed Bluetooth remote controls, allowing you to interact with your mobile phone at a distance (its initial focus is on handheld gaming).

Microvision, with a long-history in new display technologies, is one of several companies which has created a ‘pico’ projector using laser technology to beam videos and photos on to remote surfaces. Along with others, Microvision has also developed wearable glasses which display the screen as a tiny image in front of the eye which, because of its proximity, appears equivalent to a large home cinema screen.

Bowers & Wilkins iPod and iPhone dock by Native

For music, more and more handset manufacturers and third parties are offering speaker systems which turn mobile phones into compelling audio systems. One of the most attractive I’ve seen is the Bowers and Wilkins iPhone speaker dock designed by Native (Thomas Kleist, Director of UI Design at Native, is one of our speakers at the 2008 MEX Conference on 27th - 28th May in London). It transforms the iPhone from a personal media player into a room-filling audio experience that puts the mobile phone at the heart of the environment.

The industry faces a real and complex challenge over the next few years. On the one hand, device manufacturers must grapple with the immediate competitive implications of the iPhone and the growth in touchscreen devices. On the other, companies throughout the industry are seeking to expand the role of the phone into every area of our daily lives, including many scenarios where the handset will actually no longer be held in our hands.

We’ll be tackling these issues from several angles at MEX, the 4th annual PMN Mobile User Experience conference, in London on 27th - 28th May 2008. ‘Handsets are no longer just for the hand‘ is one of the 10 key statements on our MEX Manifesto and will be addressed by Steve Chambers, President of Mobile and Consumer Services at Nuance. He will give a presentation to provoke and inspire a series of breakout discussions, where 100 leading thinkers from across the mobile business will work together to explore a number of questions relating to this topic.

Thomas Kleist, Director of UI Design at Native, will speak on ‘Content itself is the new interface‘. Also addressing this topic will be Ocean Observations, before we open the session to a conference-wide debate.

Join the debate on our blog before the MEX conference opens

Can we further refine the standard twelve key monobloc design to give us greater flexibility to support these functions? How much flexibility do we have in software platforms to support these different usage methods? At what stage in the design process do we focus on particular user requirements and build them in to the hardware specification? Post your comments using the link below…

http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/ 

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Here’s my updated overview presentation on Mobile 2.0 I did last week in Brussels at the Plugg Conference, a great initiative by Robin Wauters. The conference included a Start-Ups Rally won by Viewdle.

I saw many people taking pictures during the presentation :D I you’re one of them, and if you want to share them just ping me if you have some good ones, I’ll be happy to link them and/or share them with my readers.

NOTE: As for the startups represented here, they are only some of the ones I am following. This is not intented as a complete overview but a representation and moment in time. If you’re not included in this presentation you might be in my next one :) Just ping me if I missed you somehow.

Some bloggers reported already (in Dutch) on my presentation:

Tom Wesseling @ Marketingfacts

Lia Vieveen @ Frankwatching

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