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Got invited last week by Nokia for their new mobile sharing community platform called MOSH. I must admit it’s great to be invited to all exciting Alpha and Beta mobile testing, still it’s quite difficult to test them all in-depth with a lot of workload on the shelves these days. However, as with anything good in life… quality, curiosity and surprise always make a good cocktail and make you want to try out things immediately before others.

MobSharing, a term originally coined by Mike Evans in September 2005, didn’t figure in my 2007 predictions but was already mentioned as a future trend in my 2006 predictions and now it’s finally here from Nokia Still in closed Alpha, but with the advantage we won’t have to wait another couple of years for it to get a critical mass…

“Create, Upload and Share all of your mobile content”:

MOSH is a content sharing site where community members upload, distribute and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices. With MOSH, anything from applications like mobile games, to videos, blogs, songs or photos are now accessible and distributable on your mobile device.

How does it work?

There are three key elements to MOSH:

1. A website
2. A mobile website
3. An application for mobile devices (available for download on Nokia devices only)

The website is your main source for accessing the wide range of content available through MOSH. It is here where you can create your profile, upload content, manage your collections and specify which selects to send to your mobile device as mobile feeds.

The mobile website is where users with both Nokia and non-Nokia devices can access mobile feeds and view the MOSH service.

I played with it for the first time today and the interface looks simple & smart, ideally for the creation of mobile social media: users can create ‘collections’ around topics, tags or keywords to organize content which can be ranked, ‘raved’, filtered and shared.

While the service is optimized for use on Nokia devices, the service is compatible with all mobile handsets, provided they support the kind of content you are downloading and that you are able to access the Internet.

One quick remark: how do I know the content or apps I’m uploading is compatible with what kind of devices? Creating some groups of phone categories might be handy for the users here.

I’ll keep you posted with more feedback and mosh moves of course.

The title was originally a tweet of which I decided to write a short blogpost about. I don’t know why it took so long for Nokia to figure out that their Nseries users are most probably in majority Mac users, at least from my own experience - hint: it would be great to have this statistic somewhere.

With the PR heath of the iPhone in its neck, Nokia (finally!) released yesterday another part of its Mac OS connectivity strategy, with the release of Nokia Media Transfer 1.0 beta:

The Nokia Media Transfer application enables you to transfer pictures, videos, podcasts, music, and files between your Nokia mobile device and your Mac.

The application makes it easier to transfer and synchronise music from iTunes to your phone. It also works with the iPhoto app for image and video transfers. I played with it and this is finally an application where the word seamless is not overkill to describe the experience to synchronise files between your Mac and Nokia Nseries device.

Old iTunes DRM protected files will not work on the Nokia of course but with the new EMI DRM files (buy once, play everywhere) it works! This is the way to go, both for Nokia and Apple, leave the freedom for the user to beam his legally bought tunes to his possible many different devices, this openess might in the end create more revenue and more happy consumers.

BTW Steve, really looking forward for the iTunes one-click option to easily upgrade my entire library of all previously purchased iTunes Store content to the higher quality DRM-free format

Now still, as Charlie suggests, some smooth synching needed for to-do’s, notes and iCal!

My apologies for the use of another “2.0 meme” but after my participation in a debate on the Future of Mobile Music at the Digital Music 2.0 Conference in Barcelona this week I felt I needed to update you briefly on some new thoughts on the subject. Since my writings during the MuLiMob project, my piece on “Connecting Cultures through Music“, and “DRM, free at last!” I haven’t been writing on the issue anymore.

Last Tuesday, in a Lab on Media and Human Experience, a filosophical flow excercise in between media, technology and philospophy, we discussed about ‘connected and un-connected spaces’ … media convergence is happening but the media industry is still pretty much off-line as of now, so the question is: where’s the bridge? And where is it happening?

I must admit I was pretty amazed that during the Digital Music 2.0 Conference comments and questions coming from the audience were still of the type such as “CD’s are still the major part of the business, digital music distribution only 9% of the market”, and - a couple of times - “How can you become so big without spending budget on marketing, I mean really “0″ on marketing?” and my favourite “Will mobile phones replace MP3 players one day?”… Us speakers had a though job to bridge our message of the indepth changes that are currently happening the way we consume music and the business surrounding it.

Trying to stay humble, I realized one more time there is still a lot to do to bridge the digital connected (internet connected tools, things, people and services) with the more unconnected world of tradional TV, CD’s, DVD’s formats.

When Edgar, the organizer, asked me in November to participate to this conference, I was quite sceptical since I had my made my conclusions on music 2.0 a couple of years ago while finalizing the MuLiMob project, it would only need some time for the industry to realize the curve of the long tail and that something profoundly was changing the music industry due to the innovations happening in web technologies and the way communities were influencing the way we consume music. Communities like last.fm were adding new ways to discover and listen to music opening opportunities for people to meet others with similar music tastes. This community has now grown to 15 million users and Claire Levy had the pleasure to anounce CBS bought last.fm for $280 million, real good news for recommendation technologies and online communities involving music in general

Mobile Web 2.0 or Mobile 2.0, Music 2.0 or Mobile Music 2.0, people say these are all hype terms, in a way they are but there are some real changes and differences to be finetuned, so why this title?

In my panel with operators Telefonica and Orange, it seemed as I was coming from another planet with my presentation on the current state of Mobile 2.0 and the the next generation data services for connected devices. Understandable knowing it took them (the operators) a couple of years to outcompete the SMS Service Providers (selling ringtones and wallpapers), and the same operators have been positioning (= investing) the last couple of years as music retailers to start selling realtunes… meanwhile another range of competitors are coming in their field.

While the new generation of phones and devices - Nokia Nseries up front - a new set of opportunities to consume music is arising, with the possibility to sideload or download music directly to your phone, whatever connection is it that you use (3G, wifi, bluetooth, usb, etc). At the conference, the operators were still defending the classic model - a song downloaded on the mobile has much more value and has thus a defendable value of 3€ including restricted DRM (!), adding the argument that NSeries and iPhones as the high-end range phones that are too expensive for the masses anyway.

My argument was that those phones might be more expensive but a simple calculation of my personal consumption learns that I buy average some 3 albums online/month (approx. 30 songs). So, on iTunes at 0,99€/song makes 356,4 € a year spend on digital music… while downloading over an operators retailer shop at a 3€/song rate, the same amount of content would costs me 1.080€ + additional download costs… the difference in 1 year would pay me a new phone, think about!

Also I would like to emphasize one more time that DRM has to be free - buy once, use everywhere - as it used to be with LP’s and CD’s. Amazon.com announcing it’s latest deal with EMI and 12.000 labels to sell DRM-free that plays on any device is another major step into Digital Consumer Enablement

I think that’s another reason why Apple is going to surprise a lot of people soon again… If I can connect my iPhone over a WLAN or to my computer to buy my music, it’s another great advantage for the iPhone users, from there I can carry it with me everywhere…

On May 31st I will be participating in a debate on the Future of Mobile Music at the Digital Music 2.0 Conference in Barcelona, organised by the Catalan Institute for Cultural Industries during the Primavera Sound Festival. I’m looking forward to this debate, specifically to better understand how the music industry and the mobile operators are dealing with the dramatic changes the industry is going through to adapt towards a Long Tail economy.

I have been presenting my ideas on this topic during the MuLiMob project in 2005, it’s always interesting to doublecheck vision and reality regularely, things are really changing at an incredible fast pace in our industry.

The panel will be moderated by Ramón Castán, CEO of Creative Associates and is composed of speakers from Movistar, Orange, Carles Campdelacreu, CEO of Acquamedia, Mario Fernández of IMI Mobile and myself.

Here’s the thematic and some questions set forth for the panel:

Can Mobile Save the Industry? Focus on the Growing Importance of Mobile Phones for Buying, Storing and Listening to Music. Is the mobile phone only a passing hype when it comes to music services? Are the telecom’s walled gardens working? Is the mobile just another data pipeline at the end of the day? Why is a song so expensive when purchased on a mobile? Is mobile technology vulnerable to piracy? Is the personalization to music fans the main reason for mobile products success?

The conference hosts many other sessions and speakers like Isaac Monclús, Director of cultural programmes, FNAC Barcelona; Richard Gottehrer, founder and chairman, The Orchard; Shira Perlmutter, executive VP, Global Legal Policy, IFPI-International Federation of the Phonographic Industry; Shelley Taylor, CEO, All Dig Down; Horst Weidenmüller, Impala’s and VUT’s VP, member of Merlin interims board, and CEO of !K7 Records; Clair Levy, head of business development, Last.fm. Javier Lorente, Portal and Applications Development Manager, General Manager of Technology and Services, Telefónica España; Alex Murray-Leslie, musician, Chicks On Speed; Kevin Arnold, founder and CEO, IODA – Independent Online Distribution Alliance; and many others, really interesting program, check it out!

For people like me swamped everyday in convergence (if you might wonder, it’s still happening), I suggest to read Convergence Culture (where old and new media collide) by Henry Jenkins. You might start twinkling hearing the word ‘convergence’ over and over again but this book describes, in a very clear way, the complexity of the process of convergence in media, technology and culture surrounding us. If you might doubt, here’s what Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution writes on this book:

“Henry Jenkins is the 21st century McLuhan I’ve been waiting for. With all the fuzzy generalities, moral panics, and gloomy pronouncements from industry spokesmen and social critics, Jenkins’ clearly communicated and nuanced analysis is sorely needed. The world McLuhan foretold back in the age of ‘electric media’ has become immensely more complicated in today’s many-to-many, converged, remixed and mashed-up, digital, mobile, always-on media environment. If you are a parent, a student, an educator, a creator or consumer of popular culture, an entrepreneur, or a media industry executive, you need to understand convergence culture. And you will only after reading Henry Jenkins.”

Probably the best book I read on media, culture and technology changes since Smart Mobs.

For the ones like me who appreciate the sound difference between a flat 128kbps music file (AAC, mp3, mp4, wmv or other formats) and a 320kbps quality of a normal CD, the news this week that EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire is great news, not only because major record companies will (finally!) be offering downloadable music files without DRM encoding - the stuff which makes it nearly impossible to move purchased songs from one computer or music player or mobile phone to another. It’s extra nice because major players in the music industry will start to offer songs that will sound a lot better.

As a passionate music lover, the listening experience of for example Petroushka by Igor Stravinsky on a good quality sound system is not comparable with the same music crapped into a 128kbps mp3 or mp4 file, whatever the soundsystem may be you’re going to play that file on. I remember lively the first time I heard Petroushka on vinyl performed by the legendary Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra on a good sound system blew me completely away. With digital music surrounding us everyday, you’d almost forget about the quality of a listening experience - just try to mix some mp3 songs with a vinyl recording and you’ll see what I hear
But any good music deserves a great quality listening experience whether it’s Philip Glass, Devotchka or the Cold War Kids, I’m listening to while writing this. So what does this weeks’ anouncement means for consumers and the business?

EMI Group’s announcement of February 14 - revenues for the financial year ending 31 March 2007 expected to decline by around 15% and Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music might have accelerated the need for change but Eric Nicoli, CEO of the EMI Group is now taking the lead in what we digital music consumers have been waiting for for quite a while now. In only a couple of weeks time, EMI Music announced a multi-product content partnership with last.fm, the deal with Apple’s iTunes this week, and also announced “The Good, The Bad & The Queen” to become the first EMI album to be made available for download in a new DRM-free, high quality MP3 format. The first major record label listening to its’ consumers?

At CTIA, Nicoli listed a 3-step test that all consumer products should be able to pass, and that he thought was lacking in the wireless world (source GigaOM):

1. Give them something that is good value for money
2. Make something that is functional and works on practical level
3. Make something that is simple to use and easy to understand

Something the operators should have figured out by now but it’s where Apple is seeing the opportunity with the iPhone (to be released in June in US). Now is the Apple’s anouncement of Higher Quality DRM-Free Music from EMI Available on iTunes another leap ahead for Silicon Valley’s “rebel with a cause” Steve Jobs? The recent anouncement of Microsoft’s Mobile DRM system ‘PlayReady‘ - that will allow the use of commercial content on multiple different devices for a single fee comes basically way too late. Steve sets the tone, once again since he entered the music business.

Regular M-Trends readers know my early rants on this subject, for newbies read About digital music distribution to family targets and Mobile Music For Families. No thanks! both written in 2005. Knowing this, one can imagine I was really excited to try out my first DRM FREE download. Also I have been stopping to buy songs on iTunes lately since I just could not play them on my Nokia Nseries phones and wanted to make sure the DRM free and higher quality downloads were not only working as a multi-service or platform but also multi-device, you know the real thing we have been looking for. I downloaded a 320kbps mp3 file straight from The Good, The Bad & The Queen website, beamed from my laptop to our home PC and to my Nokia N80i and it works, hurray!

And where do we leave the independent record labels? EMI and Apple knew that progressive independant labels were already offering DRM free higher quality songs on their portal and that’s exactly where new opportunities lie for the smaller labels such as Sonar Kollektiv. I’m buying regularely music from their online shop since I cannot find it elsewhere and it has a lot of music of my taste. Smaller labels can build around their brand image and create a different added value to their audience.

Anyway, this decision is going to dramatically change the digital music landscape and may hopefully encourage other major labels to abandon DRM. This is not killing business, it is changing the way we do business. Consumers will be the winners. Free at last!

Love it or hate it - do or don’t - but many of us Personalise and Customise our phones - whether it be internalised modification - wallpapers, ringtones, screensavers, or through external modification - stickers, express-clip on covers, mutilation (yes in Tokyo I met a guy who melted his phone “making it individual” and it still works), graffiti tags, mutation (by gluing or sticking extras on to the gadget), to one of the most prevalent forms of individualisation - the strap attached to the phone, “keitai
strapu” - (branded by Chupa Chups!)

…or even leaving the mobile in a “pure state” as it was when the mobile was box fresh - we all express ourselves - the mobile is an expression of our innate need for tribalism or individualism - the mobile is an extension of ourselves - a reflection of our persona…

In today’s global village whether you are on the fashionable streets of Cheongdam-dong/Apgujeong - Seoul, Sibuya/Aoyama - Tokyo, Fashion Street - Mumbai, or Sloane Street - London the mobile phone has become the most personalised gadget ever and has become the defacto device we use to show off our style and cultural identity.

So what’s out there?

What are you all doing with your mobiles to personalise and customise it into something intimate, individual or tribal?

Here are a few examples of what is going on out there on the streets of the global mobile village…whether you call it a mobi., handy, cell phone, handphone, or keitai we are expressing ourselves through this digital
“remote control of life”

EXAMPLES
Sticker-Flashers

Custom covers

Asia Bling Bling

In some circles such as with P.Diddy it’s all about the Bling Bling

Mobile design is advancing further into style and trends - and many of the mobile phone brands have spotted the trend of consumers personalising and customising - the “Fashionista” designs - with an array of styles from urban street to the luxury sector - we have the fashion phones from Vertu, BenQ Siemens (ooops!), Apple, Nokia, LG and Samsung - and at the top end of the mass market we have the Samsung/Bang&Olufsen phone - followed by LGs Chocolate range and their ultimate trend setting latest creation to hit the urban catwalks with the LG Prada - mobile has become style ubiquitous and with it comes the desire to use it as a social device not only in communication but as a symbol - a symbol of who I am - a signal to the culture around…

“I like modern design aesthetics” - the Samsung/Bang&Olufsen Serene

“I am a Fashion whore” - The Devil carries an LG Prada

“I am a Design guru” - Apple iPhone

“I am affluent and super rich” - Vertu’s “signature Cobra”

“I am all bling bling” - Motorola D&G V3i - also now with Fashion icon - Kate Moss as their new “role model” for the Razr range. Hellooooooo Moto

“I am off-the wall and unconventional” - Hulger (formerly Pokia)accessorise the Mobile

The trend-setters and the fashionistas out there are setting the pace in mobile Fashion - mobile has become the “Fashion accessory” with personalisation and customisation at the forefront of the trend. The fashion houses are now carving out a position in the markets as with sunglasses, parfums, the “you name it stick my name on it” approach - now mobiles are becoming the desirable accessory fashion brands want to own - the ultimate brand icon - that the consumer wants to worship!

Personalising the mobile with a “fashionable and trendy” ringtone is a social bonding mechanism (even those more obscure ringtones) - are a mating call - to bond with those around us - this is my ringtone - you like it - we are part of the same tribe! “Social audio branding”

Whether you get “crazy frog” on Jamba - the hottest ringtone in S.Korea/Japan Rain - or seek something more exclusive or obscure by Brian Eno or Ryuichi Sakamoto - ringtones are a social tagging system - like or not you are carrying the modern equivalent of a “brixton briefcase” - you are an urban “ghetto blaster” you are making a statement

just it’s miniaturised…

We make the mobile become an extension of ourselves - the “Brand You”

Whether you hang them round your neck - make it bling bling - strap it to your belt geek stylee (a fashion no-no!) - or simply “slap-out” your mobile on the table at meetings - you are using your mobile to make a “fashion” and “social” statement…

So I am curious: What have you done to your phones out there?

save your comments with examples if you think you are making a statement!

UPDATE 1: the next speculation hype will be whether those smart guys over at BMW Design Works will design a “fashion” mobile/gadget to compliment the luxury lifestyle of the post-modernist mainstream 30something!?

UPDATE 2: the New Zealand Herald has an interesting report: ‘What does your mobile say about you?’

This is Sophia Berglund. Right now she is 25months old and growing so fast in her capabilities in communication - already she can muster small sentences in English, Korean, Japanese and some German! She can even translate! Sophia can create lines, shapes and forms by way of painting her communication…

But what makes me the most excited is seeing her grab technology with an incredible desire to learn and experience - she explores, she examines, pushes, prods, de-constructs the technology in some cases (i.e. she breaks my expensive “toys”)

Part of her 1st and 2nd years were spent in S.Korea where she was born into one of the most advanced mobile “handphone” cultures in the world - literally 5minutes after birth her first ever picture (and video) taken by a mobile/handphone and sent to our friends and relatives, she made her first mobile location based phone call at 5months and at 6months she was surfing mobile internet and watching mobileTV! She had her first “co-location” experience in 2006 when friends “broadcast” the 비 / Bi (Rain)**concert live over their handphone to my handphone - Seoul - to - Jeju…

Sophia is growing up into a digital world. Already she has a real-demo phone given to her by a friend at LGe - which she mimmicks her immediate social circle in making calls and surfing data.

Wow! Yes but today we question what is next - we talk of ubiquotous computing, mobile internet, mobile2.0, mobileTV, mobileGaming, mobileAdvertising, mobileMarketing, Location Based Services, Bluetooth, Proximity Marketing, smartphones, convergence, m-YouTube, moblogs, iMode, 3G, 3.5G, CDMA, FOMA, RFID, Flash-Lite, SVGt, mobile-Image recognition, mobileCameras, mobileVideo, Vlogs, iPhone (iPhone aka LG Prada), mobile UI, touch-screens, thumb-tribes, handy, handphone, keitai - blah blah blah and all of this jargon and often mind boggling marketing “psycho-babble” has made me think - where is it all going - how much “smarter” will the next generation of “phones” like my SonyEricsson P990i become - how much more can we cram into one single device!?

How many more times can my P990i crash - a victim of its own “smartness” - Yet I put up with it as when my P990 is alert and working it blows my mind with all of its functions and how they are symbiotic* to my daily needs - I can Wi-Fi (well not in Germany they lock their Wi-Fi connections), Google movie reviews before entering the cinema, take videos and pictures and Flickr them, I can use Googlemaps when lost or curious, watch movies, RSS Feed news and blogs, email, VoIP, Messenger, listen to music, video call whilst on business trips, bemuse my wife, and entertain my colleagues like I am a mobile guru! Seriously though what is next?

So - I think “convergence” will continue as a trend for maybe the next 2-3 years - not only in hardware but in software and services that we can ever expand the phones capabilities - with it computing power, battery power and size! Multi-media will play a big role - motion graphics - advanced touch-screens (iPhone aka LG Prada)
smart phones that know what you use and like and build a UI around your user preferences - broader personalisation with iTunes music and video, enhanced imaging and editing functions, more Bluetooth functions in urban locations, free ubiquitous Wi-Fi - oh I could go on with a list of endless options I could do with…

Sophia in 28years time will be 30 and the date will be 2035 - what do you the mocom (mobile community) think will be next and what will “mobile” have become - we all see attempts at mobile technology in clothing, e-paper (with Wi-Fi connectivity), cyborg like integration of receivers/chips into our bodies, organic and nano-technology - but really I would love to hear your thoughts!

* BTW thanks to Bear in the Big Blue House
on Disney Playhouse for re-introducing me to this brilliant word “symbiotic” Children’s TV is great!

**비 / BMW Meets Truth**
and www.bmwmeetstruth.com

MyStrands just got its Social Player signed by Symbian yesterday for general release. It is a music player for mobile devices (Symbian Series 60, 3rd edition) with two main characteristics: it is a music discovery tool and a strong community builder. Watch the video demo here below and try it yourself, it’s great!

The player works over a 3G connection (if you can afford it!) and Wireless LAN, it gives you real-time recommendations of songs, you can stream clips of the recommended songs to your device, and learn more about them on MyStrands mobile website. The MyStrands Social Player helps you discover new people by telling you who else in the community is currently listening to the same song and view that person’s profile (unless it has been set as private). Check what I’m listening to here.

It is probably the most advanced music and community mobile app around - I haven’t seen anything like it, a real social community and music discovery tool, you can even build playlists on the go and tag your music, dig?

Check out all details at MyStrands blog.

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