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

Just recovering from 3GSM this weekend and slowly starting to sort my emails, impressions and ideas (I voluntarily did not connect to the internet this week), will write a wrap-up soon here. Many people asked if I’d won the Carnival of the Mobilists “Host of the Year” award… Yes, I did! (Russell announced it here). Thanks to all the ones who voted for me, this really means a lot to me!

There is still another Khosla contest running for best “Post of the Year” (best on blogging on mobility related stuff). You can still vote here (password mobilists) for my best post selected for 2006.

Following the response and feedback I got on the “Understanding Mobile 2.0” article I wrote at Read/WriteWeb a couple of weeks ago, I created a wiki space to start categorizing the so-called Mobile 2.0 companies.

You can acces the directory at mobile2companies.com.

I decided to use a wiki tool, called Wepaint, so companies can add their own information and keep it updated. You just need to sign-up to add your Mobile 2.0 company info page, you can add images, slideshows, video’s, and RSS feeds as well, and tag your page(s).

Companies can use the tool to keep the web community updated with latest news, elevator pitches, presentations of new products/services, etc. You can browse the wiki by category, by keywords, subscribe to the wiki feeds on new pages added or updated, comments and news, a lot of other stuff out there yet to discover.

The directory is far from complete, I just gave it an initial injection and added some companies I know to start with, so the best thing to do is add your page if you don’t find your company in there and update your page if you don’t like what I added, it’s a wiki, you know

Kudos to Carlo for helping me with the introduction texts.

Contact me if you would like to contribute to this project, to become a writer/moderator, to help develop the wiki, and for any suggestion and comments. I hope these pages will be usefull for the entire mobile value chain, spread the word!

The Women in Mobile interview series seem to be really popular among m-trends.org readers so I thought it might be good to bundle some of the latest interviews not published yet for your summer reading.

What I like about the series, apart from getting to know all these wonderfull women of course is the diversity of characters interviewed but especially how passionate they all are about the potential of Mobile. Whether they work as software engineer, as executive or entrepreneur, as artist or designer or as activist, they are all very open-minded and forward-thinking, how diverse their job functions may be.

This post to bundle the following 4 Women in Mobile interviews:

- Sarah Blow, behind the London Girl Geek Dinners

- Julia Dimambro, CEO of Cherrysauce, a mobile adult entertainment company

- Stephanie Rieger, inventing and designing mobile lifestyle at Yiibu.com

- Katrin Verclas, Executive Director at N-TEN (The Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network)

If you are a woman working in Mobile or if you know a woman that you think should be part of this interview series, please drop me a note (email at the right in sidebar). Enjoy the reading!

Image © phonemag.com

This weeks’ Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted at the Wireless World Forum and edited by Jan Kuczynski. Jan did an excellent job compiling the best blog articles on mobile the carnival offers each week.

So head over to number 34 of the Carnival of the Mobilists and make sure you check the new Mobilistas category

Also don’t forget to put your vote for the Best Post For June at the mobili.st website.

As part of its sponsorship of the Carnival of the Mobilists, Khosla Ventures is awarding $250 to the author of the best post each month. Every week, the host picks their favorite submission, and at the end of the month, they’ll go up for public vote.

My post of the week in last weeks’ Carnival went to Stephanie Rieger’s post on “Casual mobile snacks for everyone”.

If you hadn’t noticed yet, I moved this blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Thanks to Jose and Peter from Nacencia, who helped me moving smoothly all my files and archives. I hope you like the new design, the new header image has been kindly designed by Berliner mate Markus Angermeier. I threw out a lot of web 2.0 widgets and preferred going back to simplicity and structure.

I catgeorized most of my archives, you can browse those through category or tag in the archives section.

If you are subscribed to my previous Blogger atom-xml feed, I’d recommend to update this feed to the new m-trends.org feed created in my sidebar at feedburner or bloglines. I’m still trying to find a solution for the subscribed readers to my previous atom.xml feed, so you won’t have to update. I’ll keep you informed.

Lats week, Keren Flavell interviewed me for The Mobile Media Show.

The Mobile Media Show is an interview series discussing the latest trends in the emerging industry of content on mobile and wireless devices. The host, Keren Flavell, speaks with a range of guests from around the world who are pioneers, experts and observers of the new portable platforms.

You can listen to the podcast of the interview but you might as well subscribe straight to the audiofeeds, lots of interesting interviews there!

Tags: podcast podcasting Mobile Media Show Keren Flavell

Last week I have been working on a project with Kelly Goto from gotomedia. Kelly has been at the forefront of web and online usability for 16 years. Kelly and I both share the same vision:

While the wireless market has largely been dependent on the experimentation of the youth culture (especially in Asia) and the early adopter, the next wave of mobile success is dependent on creating sustainable brands, products and services that offer real value in the migration process to mobile.

Mobile usability design and user experience research and testing will be an essential key in helping defining successful mobile business applications and services for companies. The next coming years, any serious business needs to be easy accessible globally through diverse mobile devices and different network technologies.

The success of mobile products lies in the fact they need to be simple to use, they need to work and they need to have a clearly identified added value for the end user. This looks simple ‘on screen’ to write down but mobile professionals know how difficult this is; just look how many mobile products & services fail due to not respecting one of the above reasons…

Until now the mobile usability design space has been merely used by mobile value chain players but the convergence of 3G/UMTS/WiFi networks in combination with the availability of hybrid phones will open a different kind of mobile market space to content providers. The arrival of MVNO’s introduces a new era in mobile. More initiatives are to be expected coming from existing and/or new internet services moving in the mobile market space.

The mobile industry gathered around theW3C’s Mobile Web Initiative is busy working to develop a set of technical best practices and associated materials in support of development of Web sites that provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices and that is needed.

In order to start a new dialog around web usability and discussions towards mobile, Kelly has launched the gotomobile blog, that will focus on mobile usability, mobile user experience (mUXP) and convergence.

In a recent article on mUXP - mobile user experience, she writes:

“Wireless companies and developers are typically put in the position of either chasing developing trends or taking the costly risk of launching new products and services that may never catch on. How can mobile designers, developers and content providers create effective mobile user experiences with the speed and accuracy required to succeed in the market?”"The answer lies in adopting mUXP, a user-centered approach to mobile authoring that focuses as much on the needs of specific consumer lifestyles as on technical considerations. The purpose of this blog is to provide an overview of both the cultural and technological trends shaping the wireless market from a usability and user centered point-of-view, and to outline best practices for incorporating these factors into the development and deployment of mobile products and services.”

I am encouraging this initiative - and will help guest-writing the blog, because we are talking for more then 5 years about the mobile internet but, personally, still I haven’s seen too many webs, applications or services correctly working on a mobile phone. A lot of work needs to be done still so I think more focused information and disseminating knowledge in this area is valuable for the mobile industry, no doubt about that. What about you?

TAGS: gotomobile gotomedia muxp mobile user experience mobile usability mobile usability design participitary design user-centered design interaction design ethnographics design research mobile web mobile internet contextual research mobile trends mobile life m-trends.org mtrends