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

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.

While the Mobile Sunday gathering passed the +250 registrants, and the Mobile Jam Session - a developers focused event, announcing its final program, speakers and topics (check also list of companies attending), the Mobile Monday Peer Awards Barcelona event is heading for another exceptional roll.

+700 attendants signed up already to attend the event. There are some 100 entries left. Don’t wait any longer to register and to be part of this unique networking event. The awards will be issued at 6:30pm (18H30) following our - not to be missed - MobileMonday networking cocktail including walking buffet - between 5pm and 6:30pm (17H-18H30)
The finalists presenting in the 2 categories (early stage and emerging start-ups) have been selected now, as well as the jury panel members for each category. Each finalist has 3 slides and 3 minutes to convince the jury of its great idea and business model. You can download the agenda in PDF here. Also a PDF-file with directions how to get to Espacio Movistar (only 10 minutes with metro line 3 from The Mobile World Congress at Plaça Espanya).

Also on the agenda two great keynotes: Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefónica España, and Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO and Co-Founder, Blyk.

There will also be a premier view on barcelona.mobi mobile website.

Below the finalists presenting:

3:00-4:00pm - Category 1: Early-Stage Start-Ups

Amsterdam - Movels
Bangalore - Mobisy
Barcelona - skuair
Berlin - ViiF
Boston - SnapMyLife
Brussels - Mobixx
London - The 3G Dating Agency
New York - BuzzD
Paris - WebWag
Rome - Nanology
Shanghai - DuoGuo
Singapore - mBit.tv
St. Petersburg - 4Mobi.TV
Taipei - Toro

4:15-5:15pm - Category 2: Emerging Start-Ups

Chennai - Mobile-worx
Dublin - Sentry Wireless
Dusseldorf - Cellity
Helsinki - Fromdistance
Istanbul - Mobinex
London - Taptu
Madrid - Kimia
Milan - Waymedia
Mumbai - Ziva
Munich - Qiro
Oslo - Adactus
Silicon Valley - Funambol
Stockholm - Momail

See you on Monday!

MobileMonday has announced its Peer Award nominees. 25 chapters from around the world have chosen companies that have demonstrated exceptionally innovative mobile technologies, products, services and concepts.

This year’s nominees are:

Amsterdam - Movels
Bangalore - Mobisy
Barcelona - skuair
Berlin - ViiF
Boston - SnapMyLife
Brussels - Mobixx
Chennai - Mobile-worx
Dusseldorf - Cellity
Helsinki - Fromdistance
Istanbul - Mobinex
London - The 3G Dating Agency / Taptu
Madrid - Kimia
Milan - Waymedia
Mumbai - Ziva Technologies
Munich - hiClip
New York - BuzzD
Oslo - Adactus
Paris - WebWag
Rome - Nanology
Shanghai - DuoGuo
Silicon Valley - Funambol
Singapore - mBit.tv
St. Petersburg - 4Mobi.TV
Stockholm - Momail
Taipei - Toro

Additional information is available at
http://www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/peerawards/

Register here if you’d like to attend, don’t wait too long. Over 500 people registered already to attend the event!

Coming to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress? Don’t miss the MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona 2008! Sticking with MobileMonday’s recipe for success, the event will cook up a bunch of fresh innovations mixed with honest feedback and a dash of fun. Served with plenty of juicy networking at the NEW Espacio Movistar in Barcelona on Monday February 11 starting at 2:30PM.

The MobileMonday Peer Awards are recognised by the industry as one of THE interesting events in the mobile industry. Last year’s Barcelona Peer Awards event attracted 23 competitors, the MoMo community award went to Mobile Complete, the audience award to Plazes, and the expert jury award to Realeyes 3D. Check the Peer Awards 2007 Flickr Group pictures and winners’ announcement here.

Mr. Pekka Ala-Pietila, former president at Nokia Corporation and currently chief executive officer of Blyk Corporation, a virtual mobile operator in the UK, will be the keynote speaker.

The event concept is pretty similar as last year: every MobileMonday chapter is invited to nominate one startup to the Peer Awards Barcelona 2008. This year, we’ll divide the start-up finalist presentations in two categories: early-stage start-ups (founded in 2007, early-stage financing) and emerging start-ups (founded in 2005 and after, inbetween Series A & B funding). The organizing committee and jury selects the finalists to present at the awards event. Entrance into the running is free! Check the Peer Awards website for details.

There will be three awards in each category: jury, audience, and community (MoMo chapters). This year’s winners at the MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona will also be invited to participate in the Innovation Pad activities at the MobileMonday Global Summit in conjunction with the World Congress on IT in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18-22, 2008.

Master of Ceremony is once again Mrs. Caroline Lewko, from the Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP).

The jury consists of some of the most recognized mobile industry experts and thinkers, currently confirmed:

• Carlos Domingo, General Director, Telefonica R&D;
• Ann Mei Chang, Mobile Engineering Director Google;
• Bena Roberts, Founder and Chief Analyst at BKI Media / GoMo News;
• Russell Buckley, Managing Director, AdMob Europe / Vice-Chairman of MMA’s EMEA;
• Carlo Longino, Mobhappy;
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone Group;
• Madamohan Rao, Editor, The Asia-Pacific Internet Handbook;
• Jed Rice,VP, Market Development, Skyhook Wireless;
• Peter Vesterbacka, Founder, Some Bazaar;
• Jouko Ahvenainen, Chief Operating Officer, Xtract;
• Michael Wendell, General partner, Nexit Ventures;
• Sirous Kavehercy, Strategist and Consultant, Market Development Director at Acision;

The MobileMonday Peer Awards Barcelona 2008 are being organized collaboratively by the MobileMonday community and hosted by MobileMonday Barcelona. The event is free but you must register in advance since the 800 places will go quickly.

The Mobile World Congress is coming near, so I’m starting to announce some side events I’m involved in.

The third annual MobileSunday - an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums - will be taking place in Barcelona on the eve of this year’s Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).

Last year’s event, which was also organized by myself with the much appreciated help from blog pal Stuart Mudie, and was attended by over seventy people (check who attended last year here). This time round, there’s going to be some more free Belgian beer, generously provided again by the good people at MyStrands.

I you would like to catch up with some mobile passionates, Mobilists and MobileMonday founders, mixed with some healthy dose of ususal suspect bar-hangers, this is your spot to be. What possible reason can you have not to join us? To confirm your attendance, simply add your name and URL to the Mobile Sunday Barcelona wiki.

This gathering will be held at the BelChica bar (10 minutes walk from the Congress).

More cool event announcements coming here any day soon now, so stay tuned!

Next week I’m heading north to participate and enjoy the 3rd annual MobileMonday Global Summit! The event will take place on September 10th in Helsinki, Finland.

The 3rd annual MobileMonday Global Summit brings together leaders from mobile business. Around fifteen hundred participants from around the globe are expected to attend the conference held at the Wanha Satama Fair Center. In the same spirit as the monthly MobileMonday meetings held in over 50 hotspots around the world, the MobileMonday Global Summit brings together mobile industry influencers from down the street and around the world.

On Sunday - the day before the summit, we gather with most of the global MobileMonday chapter organizers and on Monday the Global Summit program opens with the Executive Morning with keynotes from some of the best thinkers in the business. In the afternoon there are various sessions covering three main themes: Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Marketing and Social Media.

I’m invited to participate in the Mobile Social Media Panel, including Kathie Legg, now at Yahoo, Gregory Norman from The Open Group and Bruno Bensaid from MobileMonday Shanghai, China. The panel promises an interesting discussion on this topic with views from Europe, US and Asia.

There is also additional excursion to Saint Petersburg, Russia. The local MobileModay Chapter will organize an event for decision makers, who are interested to meet local business leaders.

I’m really looking forward next week to meet the chapter organizers again. Since I decided to start MobileMonday Barcelona this has been a great ride organizing great events on a monthly basis, some with international reach such as the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards earlier this year druing 3GSM. I have met lots of interesting people from around the globe and the network keeps growing every month. Stay tuned for more news coming soon on new events here.

After the Saint Petersburg trip, I’m staying another day in Helsinki to meet with local start-ups. Anyone who would like to catch up with me, please get in touch by email (click my name in the sidebar on the right).

Today is International’s Women’s Day, a perfect occassion to refresh the Women in Mobile interview series I started in October 2005. Many people during 3GSM asked me why I stopped doing the interviews… I have to admit I never really stopped doing them, but time just lacked since my last interview with Yasmine Abbas last September. But I’ll do my best, so expect some more interesting interviews here soon again

So with all those enthusiasts asking for more, here I’m back with a second series of Women in Mobile, taking off again with the superb and unique Caroline Lewko. I met Caroline the first time at the first Gathering of the Mobilists last year, a mobilistnetworking cocktail event she basically organised on the other side of the ocean during CTIA Wireless (some pictures of these events here).

I admire Caroline for ther entrepreneurial spirit, her business common-sense, her analytical and networking skills, all flavored with the experience she build through the years in the mobile and wireless sector. She demonstrated also her exquisite Master of Ceremony (MC) and moderating skills during the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards in Barcelona, but let’s hear it now from Caroline herself.

- Can you explain a bit about your background and your work?

I’m a consummate connector. If I can make an introduction for someone that helps accelerate their business – that’s what makes me smile. I’ve been in the industry for over a decade and have both technical and business knowledge. For those reasons I started WIP, the Wireless Industry Partnership, so I could be more helpful and efficient in helping making connections. I created the WIPConnector, a business and partnership directory specifically to find connections in our industry.

I’m also really keen on industry associations having started or been involved in many. WIP is also works with these groups to give them better profile and enhance the services they can provide to their members.

- Are you more social, business or technical oriented?

More Social, with a lot of business and with a technical twist (I have coded in the past, but the thought of doing it again makes my eyes cross)

- What brought you into mobile?

I’m really a wireless purist who accidentally fell into the Communications sector when I was recruited by Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) 12 years ago. I say wireless purists because I deal with all wireless related technologies and all parts of the value chain from satellite systems to base stations to provisioning systems to mobile applications. Not all wireless is mobile nor visa versa.

- How does mobile technological progress influences your daily routine in your work?

Advantagees and loves – great to be connected on the go, will never travel in a strange place without GPS ever again - although no more excuses for being late either

Problems – its hard to turn it off. I’ve been known to check and send email with my blackberry at all hours.

- Which tools you use to publish, blog or moblog your work?

Currently on blogspot and evaluating various mobile blogging tools.

- Which applications and services do you use regulary on your phone?

Email, address book, calendar, sms, alarm/clock – even though I understand the technology I’m not what you’d call an early adopter

- Would you use your device to interact with other machines?

Absolutely. City parking is the best feature right now

- Which machinery can you think of would be handy to interact with?

My home/office alarm system, bank machine, gas fireplace, car, gas pump, atm/pos systems. I can’t wait until we can use it at the airport. It’s fine to print off a board pass when you are at your office, but not so easy when your at a hotel. My patience gets tested in airport lineups.

- Do you download mp3 tunes on your phone?

I’m not much of a music junkie, still buying CDs.

- What about Mobile TV?

No desire for this right now. I can’t think of anything I need to ’see’ on demand.

- How do you experience the Mobile Internet? Which mobile browsers do you use?

I use the browser on my blackberry, and use if several times a month to search for things, look at websites while I’m on the road. It’s not a great experience yet, but certainly getting better all the time.

- Web 2.0? Do you use it? What does it mean to you?

I really like some of the social networking tools that are out there and the community generated content. I’ve actually licensed a social networking tool (introNetworks) for my website but use it as a business directory because it’s such a powerful and cool visual way to profile and list.

- What are your favourite mobile user-generated content projects?

I like some of the tourism/spots of interest sites available in some cities, and others to help find local restaurants etc.

- Do you develop technology yourself?

I’m better at helping others develop technology. The development is only 10% of the battle, 90% is getting the right product, having the right partnerships and commercializing it.

- How do you see the future of mobile?

Wireless is in Progress, so stay tuned for more ways it changes the way we work and play – a bit of a cliché, but it really is the most pervasive technology. Consumers are getting it now via the cell phone, but wait until industry catches on to all the ways to make business faster and smarter.

- What do you think about the Fixed-Mobile-Internet convergence?

The service providers need to be much more agile to deal with this move from being fast followers to early adopters. A friend of mine recently got involved in a company called JaJah – this will turn a few more business models on its head as it eliminates the need for extra equipment – something my parents could figure out!

- 3G vs. Wi-Fi?

Software-defined Radio isn’t too far behind, then it will know what we want, when and where we want to be connected. Will make Muni wifi much easier to setup.

- What is gonna be the next *big thing* in mobile?

I’ve totally in love with sensors.

- The mobile trend for this year?

I’ve got my hopes for A-GPS / location based services.

- Who inspires you professionally?

Technical entrepreneurs – those who are willing to go out on a limb, create a business, see the future of technology whilst keeping their fingers crossed.

- Your favorite mobile technology blog?

There are more and more great mobilists out there. As a networker, I’d have to go with who I know – m-trends.org (you are here!), Mobhappy and Mobilecrunch (with Oliver Starr!).

- Your favorite mobile device?

Tough choice between the Blackberry and Garmin Streetpilot

- Favorite mobile application/service?

It’s got to be the Mobile GPS apps for roadmaps – it’s profoundly affected the way I do business travel – relaxed!! I can easily figure out where I am going and get their on time. Can’t wait for bigger deployment of A-GPS – as securing the GPS coordinates in a downtown core can be a bit tricky.

- Your ultimate dream scenario including mobile?

I’m keen on contextually aware applications integrating with the mobile advice – knowing my interests, who I want to/not want to talk to, helping me to figure out activities, places to go/stay when I get to a new place.

- Which links would you like to be included?

The Wireless Innovation Network Britich Columbia (WINBC)

- Anything else you would like to add?Something the big players are missing?

There is some great technology and applications coming from emerging companies. They may not promote it as hard/sophisticated as some of the bigger companies, but the are worth spending time to evaluate.

- Who else could you recommend to be interviewed next?

I recently met Elizabeth Riegel of the Gold Standard Group, and thought she was a really cool business women, not sure she is a blogger, but I’m certain she’d have interesting content.

On my way, thanks Caroline!

The 3GSM World Congress gives you a good overview of where the actual market is today - still a lot like last year - it looked at first sight…
My first thought to start this years’ 3GSM wrapup was to check what I wrote last year: “It took me a couple of days to be able to digest the whole event with it’s many cocktails and parties surrounding. The best part for me were the many wonderfull people I met behind the companies, projects and blogs.” I couldn’t find any better paragraph to resume’s this year event. Check the image (left) I took from the same spot as last year and notice that the telecom world is still a Man’s Man’s Man’s World. I invite you to find the women on the image… This incited me to continue my “Women in Mobile” interviews

Does this mean it was boring? Not really…too many interesting people around to talk to and change opinion with… No big news coming from the exhibition either: no real differences with last years’ show apart from more people, 60.000 (!) and an extra Mobile Content pavillon, but one could tell from small things that changes are (finally?) to come. Let’s have a closer look at all things mobile.

DEVICES
On the handset side, no real innovations as last years’ Nokia Nseries, but a lot of improvements by many manufacturers and cool handsets I got the chance to play with.

Nokia N95 and the new Nokia Communicator E90 lanched at 3GSM, N95 is a real cool phone, I’m looking forward to the mobile apps that are going to play with the GPS functionality, the E90 Communicator is a really cool phone with many apps but honestly a bit too heavy for me. The LG Shine phone (check also the LG Prada phone) was surprisingly solid and extremely good in usability design, and the touchscreen… a big improvement with the Chocolate. I played around with the MOTORIZR Z8, it’s the first time since longtime I got a good feeling about a Motorola I would like to mention also the coming Samsung’s F700 Ultra Smart Phone, with touchscreen, slide-out qwerty keyboard and 5-megapixel camera(!) My favorite design phone goes to Sony-Ericcson with the W880i Walkman Phone (metallic edition), real cool as you can see on the picture here, cool design and easy usability.

Note that Blackberry is still very popular amongst business people in the telecom industry, not one conversation without having someone look at his BB or do something urgent with it. What about the real BB, guys?

Some interesting movement could definately be ’seen’ in the mobile image recognition space.

MOBILE IMAGE RECOGNITION

Image recognition should not be confused with barcode scanning and QR-code technology though they are somewhere historically related of course, I wrote some of my views on this before here. Image recognition technology goes one step further in the sense that it doesn’t need a seperate application to be downloaded, or a decoder to decode, or a seperate ‘recognizable’ product code to be printed, and works - at its best - on most camera phones.

Some examples I saw during 3GSM were Global Peer Award jury winner Realeyes 3D (France) and finalists UpCode (Finland) and Tagit (Singapore), showing at the same time that real innovation can come from any corner of the world.

Since Google bought Neven Vision last summer and the attention visual search provider Riya got last year, the time seems right to bring image recognition commercially to mobile phones. One of the most interesting demo’s I saw during the exhibition was at the stand of Alcatel-Lucent: opening a video call, pointing your camera to a magazine ad connected your phone to your TV set over a 3G connection to be able to discover or store additional services to be viewed at home, dig?

Image recognition technology has some obvious advantages additionally to 2D-Barcodes like QR Codes or Datamatrix:

• They are graphically richer and more appealing, they can contain any logo or personalised image. Adding one to your blog, publication or advertisement might be less esthetically obtrusive than chaotic black and white codes, makes them ideally for next-generation mobile marketing campaigns.
• Unlike 2Dcodes, individual tags are easy to remember because they are images, not secretive machine only readable bar-codes.
• The Augmented Reality interaction paradigm makes it easier and more appealing for the user, your phone becomes like a sort of “magic lens”.
• Contextual menus can pop out of the tags: look up in wikipedia, listen to contents recoded, add contents to that tag…..it´s object hyperlinking or the mobile read-write web!

Daem Interactive had another interesting demo running with some logo’s and my face (!), pointing a cameraphone to it over a 3G connection connected the user immediately to m-trends.org mobile, very cool!

Ignacio from DAEM showed me this demo the first time in July last year, some might have seen the demo before at Under The Radar or MobileMonday Paris, now Ignacio gave me finally a go to blog this ‘atom3g’ demo of their patented application. Check it out, some of the coolest stuff around!

MOBILE MUSIC

On the Mobile Music front 3GSM started already one week before the actual event with Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music meaning Digital Rights Management (DRM); DRM is a trigger for the Record Labels to control the sales of digital music. A great and surprising Open Letter by Steve, certainly with a strategy behind, I was thinking a week before the event, too busy preparing the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards (I want to come back on the Steve Jobs letter later here).

Surprise, surprise, on Day one of the event, Microsoft anounced the launch of its own Mobile DRM system ‘PlayReady‘ (!) that will allow the use of commercial content on multiple different devices for a single fee. Is this what the consumer is waiting for?

Two days later, at the opening session on Wednesday, the chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group Corp, Edgar Bronfman Jr. said “that buying digital music from a mobile phone is too difficult and the music and mobile phone industries need to improve the process to meet demand (…)”

A study last year found that only 8.5 percent of people who own a phone that can be used to download and purchase music actually did so. “Why? It’s expensive, it’s complicated and it’s slow,” he said. “It’s amazing that we’ve generated as much revenue as we have given how cumbersome the experience can be.”

For your info, personally I haven’t bought one single tune on my mobile phone(s), though I consider myself one of the 3% online (legal) PC music buyers Steve is mentioning in his open letter:

“Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats.”

The 3% I bought on iTunes of course, so where do the other songs come from? Older Cd’s (of LP’s I bought already once before…) copied to my iTunes and to my phone.

I wonder if the US companies heard about OMA DRM from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)? Its mission is to provide interoperable service enablers working across countries, operators and mobile terminals. Since its inception in June 2002, the Open Mobile Alliance has grown to more than 300 companies representing mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies, and content providers Members include traditional wireless industry players such as equipment and mobile systems manufacturers (Ericsson, Siemens, Nokia, Openwave, Sony Ericsson, Philips, Motorola,Samsung…) and mobile operators (Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile…), but also software vendors (Microsoft - hello?, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle Corporation, Symbian, Celltick…)

I don’t get it everyone was thinking Apple would show it’s iPhone at 3GSM. Why smart Steve would do such thing now when he announced previously the iPhone launch for Europe around Christmas 2007? Who else can say he has a product with 50,400,000 Google entries before it’s actual launch I haven’t seen any other phone brand model beat that! Oviously no big players are scared about the iPhone…

One thing gets clearer everyday, the iPhone has one big advantage: it’s Mac OS X and iTunes seamless integration; why would the iPhone need 3G? Everyone will buy its tunes on iTunes and beam or synchronize them to his iPhone, easily, with one-click buy activated… I dig.

Still, when I wanted to make a personalized mix for the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards networking party (no selling or re-distributing of the music I bought!) iTunes told me “You cannot copy 16 of the choosen songs to your CD”… come one guys, GET REAL! Next time I think I’m going to invite a band and offer their songs directly through a Futurlink-a-like interface…

THE MOBILISATION OF THE WEB

One of the things I realized during the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards is the increasing globalization of innovation. Innovation is happening everywhere and a lot of start-up companies are working in the mobile web area; while still in its very early stage, the mobilisation of the web is happening and it’s happening everywhere!

Google vice-president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf - also one of the founding fathers of the Internet, predicted Tuesday that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide Web, as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly.

There is definitely something to say about the title here and it was an important part of the discussions during 3GSM. Mike and Carlo mentioned something on this already, read also Michael’s interesting take on this subject.

The content hall (Hall 7) of the exhibition was filled with a lot of mobile adult (Sign ‘O’ the Times?) and web companies resolutely going mobile including Yahoo! Shozu won the 2nd time in a row the prize for Most Innovative Mobile Application or Content Award with its Mobile MultiMedia Delivery Platform. To me Shozu is one of the truly real great mobile integrated applications, but isn’t this a sign that no other great innovative applications are around, or haven’t been noticed by the organizers, or maybe have not been found worthy or mature to market yet?

This 3GSM is definately too early for the many mobile 2.0 (web) companies, many of them need to work harder on their business models; one may try to go around the operators but I think the next couple of years start-ups need to combine their innovative ideas and technology to work with the network operators to deploy compelling new services, supposing these become available for the masses with affordable fees of course. In any case, this show didn’t had any grouped sign of mobile 2.0 companies yet, hopefully we can expect some changes next year.

The above gets an intriguing touch however knowing that operators seem to realise that the top down content models are not working - people need content to consume and to play with. Vodafone seems to have understood this - ahead of its competitors, and announced some remarkable breakthrough deals. With European markets fully saturated with mobile telephones, Vodafone sees India as a key area for potential growth - see Vodafone’s $11.1 billion acquisition of controlling interest in India’s Hutchinson Essar, on the services side Vodafone concluded deals with YouTube and MySpace. Nokia, on the other hand will offer YouTube content through a web browser and its new Nokia Video Centre, over mobile video RSS feeds. You can check all 20 Nokia press releases released during 3GSM thanks to Stefan at RingNokia.

3UK announced Windows Live Messenger is now provided as a rich instant messenger mobile software client, allows 3 customers to see the “presence” of their Messenger contacts and exchange messages when these contacts that are on their PC or on the move with 3 mobile.

On the Mobile Search field I missed a panel with Daniel Appelquist - one of the real mobile illuminates I met during 3GSM but you can read a good review here at MoCoNews. Another session I had to miss due to the many meetings was the Technology Breakout session on Mobile Web 2.0 moderated by Ajit Jaokar with Jon von Tetzchner - CEO Opera Software, Alex Kummerman - CEO Clicmobile and David Wood - VP Research at Symbian. Alex sended me a link where you can view the session presentations, thanks! Interesting notice is also the transcription of Tim Berners Lee keynote at 3GSM by Ajit.

To close this part, a note that Second Life gets soon accessible from your mobile phone. According to MarketingVox and Reuters’ Second Life bureau Software from Comverse Technology will enable Second Life residents to visit the virtual world from their Java-enabled mobile devices.The software was developed over the last six months, well before the open-sourcing of the Second Life client, and relies on using a separate PC or server as an intermediary. Comverse has also created an application that allows Second Life to run on IPTV platforms. (picture © Reuters)

AWARDS

The GSM Association Announced on Tuesday its 2007 Global Mobile Awards Winners, an Oscar-a-like ceremony to celebrate the best in telecom industry. I was not there so I cannot really say anything about this show, apart from Shozu - which I mentioned yesterday, there are 2 winners I think deserve some more attention.

Most Innovative Technology Award went to Polymer Vision for its Rollable Displays. Polymer Vision has developed the world’s first rollable electronic display. For the first time in history a display can be rolled out to a greater size than the actual mobile device itself. It is easy to view, even in bright sunlight, and has significantly lower power requirements than an LCD display with backlight. Once the user has finished, the display can simply be rolled back into the device. This makes the rollable display the ideal solution for large displays in all types of mobile devices, without sacrificing device size or convenience.

Best Use of Mobile for Social & Economic Development Award went to GrameenPhone Ltd with its Healthline project. The “HealthLine” project is providing an opportunity for an interactive teleconference between any Grameenphone subscriber and a licensed physician, who is available round the clock and seven days of the week. Though emergency hotlines in many countries do exist, such a medical hotline (as HealthLine789), to a registered physician for advice for emergency, non-emergency or regular medical needs of a caller, is unique. Our record short shows that people have called from all parts of Bangladesh. So far the doctors received and answered a total of about 120,000 calls on as many as 79 many different medical complaints. Callers range from the common citizens, professionals, men from all walks of life and village doctors, etc.

You can view all GSM Award winners here.

MobileMonday, during 3GSM organised its Global Mobile Start-Up Peer Awards in Espacio Movistar, you can view the finalists and winners here.

A personal award I would like to give to the SUNDANCE Shorts as Most Efficient Service of the 3GSM Exhibition. The Sundance Film Festival unveiled five short films shot especially for mobile, which were immediately made available for download to mobile users, I just had to give my ScanDisk Memory Stick to the booth, and a couple of seconds later I had the shorts on my mobile phone, cool!

Some of the best demo’s I have seen came from unexpected corners, like the Alcatel-Lucent stand where - thanks to José Luis, I could view some of the best demo’s I have seen. Very promising stuff coming up the next years with IPTV, managed from your phone and/or PC to your TV-set. IN 2004 I heard the first time about IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) when researching for the MuLiMob project:

“The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a standardised Next Generation Networking (NGN) architecture for telecommunication operators that want to provide mobile and fixed multimedia services. It uses a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) implementation based on a 3GPP standardised implementation of SIP, and runs over the standard Internet Protocol (IP). Existing phone systems (both packet-switched and circuit-switched) are supported.”

Think about a lot of new services that are build around your SIP-client, when talking on the phone, you will be able to be in another IM chat, show a video, transfer files and discuss them while in your call or conference, etc. For me, one of the best advantages is to be able to have ONE ID based on your phone number or SIP-client to access all the services you need to access through applications or mobile web. OpenID is also working on this. A lot of new mobile services are to come in this area, I’ll be writing on this here later more in detail.

NETWORKING PARTIES

The best part of 3GSM for many people as it is a chance to meet new people and discuss off-topic on anything mobile MobileSunday Barcelona was relaxed and perfect to meet old and new pals to learn about insiders’ news before the event started. Thanks to Stuart for his participation to the wiki and for influencing partyStrands music live from Paris (!)

Best networking party was undoubtedly for many people at the Global Peer Awards since it was at the same time a gathering of many MobileMonday chapter organizers and Mobilists present, combined with a lot of fresh mobile start-ups, VC’s and other people form the industry. The dinner that followed was a great way to learn about anything mobile from a global MobileMonday point of view, lots of great people with great ideas!

Interacting with screens from your mobile phone might seem still seem a futuristic thought for many of you, yet during 3GSM this was already happening at many cool networking spots this year thanks to partyStrands. Another excellent networking party was the Swedish Beers UK, organised by blogging colleague Helen Keegan at bar BelChica. partyStrands was running in the background and ZDF TV thought this was all very cool to be broadcasted in homeland Germany. You can view the reportage they made here.

Afterwards partyStrands run at the Ericsson VIP party, a super cool DJ but she seemed to be the only lively female around amongst the senior Ericsson audience

On Wednesday I was at the 3GSM Mobile Mixer Party at Camp Nou (Barcelona Football Stadium), hosted by Wireless World Forum Group and IHollywoodForum… It was a real a bummer, not enough people showed up for the conference thus few people stayed for the networking cocktail, too bad… Luckily there was the MTV Party at Bar13 which was loaded with people (what can you expect?) but it was real good fun, far away from the more boring conference stuff. MyStrands blog has some pictures of that evening.

Thursday closing night we met up with some friends and collegues for dinner, drinks and dancing afterwards… Now this one was really private

All in all, it’s great to have 3GSM in Barcelona; I’m looking forward to the one next year again!

You can view my 3GSM Flickr Photoset here.