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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.

MobileMonday created a Global Peer Award miniwebsite where you can find all the related info to participate to the Global Peer Awards 2007 in Barcelona on February 12. Information on the program, the awards, how to subscribe, how to mominate a company, how to become a sponsor, venue, etc. This is your chance to witness some of the world’s best mobile innovations. Selected by industry peers, peer award finalists will compete live before the community and a world class jury.

The offical nomination registration is now open for companies to become a nominee and make it to the final. Each MobileMonday chapter will choose their favourite mobile startup company on January 31st to present it’s project to the jury of experts at the event in Barcelona.

Also on the menu: The Carnival of Mobilists will select their ‘Host of the Year’ and win a complimentary trip to Helsinki for the MobileMonday Global Summit in May.

Note that some chapters have chosen already their winner, and some MobileMonday’s are still helding pre-selections to name their winner. Some interesting events happening still this month:

MobileMonday Ukraine is holding it’s pre-selection on January 22 to announce the company-finalist of the Ukrainian selection for the Global Peer Awards 2007.

MoMo London has published a short-list that comprises UK based start-ups that have demoed to London MoMo since the last MoMo Global Peer Awards in May 06 in Helsinki. Voting on the short list will take place after the event on Monday 15th Jan and will remain open till Friday 19th Jan.

Check also the MobileMonday New York on Monday January 29th at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. In collaboration with Antoine Quint of SVG.org, Dan Appelquist of Vodafone and MobileMonday-London, and Scott Weiss of Usable Products cordially invite you to join for this month’s event titled “Rich Mobile Experiences with SVG”. This half-day event will run from 3:00pm to 8:00pm followed by a networking reception.

Do not hesitate to register your attendance for the Global Peer Awards 2007 in Barcelona, the event is heading rapidly for a +500 event so seats might become limited after next week.

MobileMonday will start releasing some participating finalist companies next week!

The MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2007 during the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona is being organized collaboratively by the MobileMonday community. Hosted by MoMo Barcelona, MoMo Italy, MoMo Helsinki, MoMo London and MoMo New York have also taken active roles.

Check MobileMonday webiste for a full list of chapters and new chapters to be opening soon. You may want to consult the Mobile Events calendar at upcoming.org for more MobileMondays around and other interesting events in mobility.

Yesterday I saw an ad on Spanish TV of Telefonica’s MNO Movistar, promoting flat-rate Mobile Internet acces for their 3G brand e-mocion, co-branded with Google and MSN Hotmail… I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mobile Internet advertising on TV? Of course we have seen some allusion to it on Vodafone Live ads, but as explicit like this? No we haven’t seen it like this here before.

So today I had to know everything about this e-mocion offer. First I tried to find the ad at YouTube but this one seems too fresh yet to be posted there already. Instead I found this really funny one… go and check it out anyway if you’re in for a laugh (no need to understand spanish

People who read this blog often know about my griefs against the high cost to acces the Mobile Internet. You can read the threads here and here if you haven’t done that yet.

At e-mocion website, you can find the announcement to access the mobile internet for 0,30 cent/session… Well, that’s better than my 0,50 cent I currently pay at Vodafone but when reading the small letters, it’s a promotion until September. So let’s find out more about this promotion and the marketing behind this new kind of partnership, at least in the mobile space.

I read the Google and MSN Hotmail Lead the New Portal Services; Movistar Turns ‘e-mocion’ into the New Flat-Rate Gateway to Cell Phone Content press release from May 3, being really surprised I haven’t read anything before on this news. Read also this article at Forbes.com:

” With the new flat rate per session, users will have unlimited access to content and services from both ‘e-mocion’ and the Internet, at only 0.30 euros per session, which, until the month of September, will have no time expiration. This initiative helps users, who will know at all times how much they will pay for browsing and accessing content.”

Good point! Until September all my sessions can be unlimited … not bad after all, maybe I should give it a try and calculate the difference on my mobile browsing consumption, for the price I pay at Vodafone I might have one of those fancy phones included

But let’s drop the pricing issue right now, what actually surprised me the most was the synchronised announcement of the Movistar partnership with Google and MSN Hotmail (get it?) For amateurs, some brain exercise can be done on this one…

Once I can acces the mobile internet I can also access Yahoo! Mobile services or whatever mobile web enabled service, I don’t need a partnership for this, so there is more going on, especially on the Google side. I tried to see the win-win of the partners involved but I don’t really see MSN services competing immediately with what Google wins in this deal…

From the same Forbes article mentioned above:

“With the inclusion of Google as e-mocion’s main search engine, users will be able to search for content based on keywords, facilitating the exploration and discovery of services. Initially, the search results will include links to external Internet content. In a subsequent phase, results will incorporate content from e-mocion. Google will use its technology and its indexing and content updating expertise to turn e-mocion into the starting point to access the Internet from a mobile phone.”

Google offers his Google Search Engine to access Movistar services and content - users can search music and video’s for example, while building its’ own user-base of course. Google gets useful stats and information on users and their search behaviour, soon they’re be able to deliver content through the Google Reader, offer Google Talk (VoIP), and so on… Google can start proposing its Google Music Search, Google Video, why not geo-locate straight to their Google Maps?

Has Telefonica Movistar accepted the role of mobile data pipeline provider yet?

Meanwhile, Google Talk is already offered on the Nokia 770 portable Internet Tablet, don’t have to draw that one out again, no?

Too much of a Google in one article? I just wonder how the small mobile services companies are going to find their way to the mobile consumer? You have to be able to deal straight with the operator or the manufacturer if you want to reach some critical mass, for sure… or going viral?

Maybe I can found out a bit more going to listen to Isabel Aguilera (CEO Google Spain and Portugal) next week at the Internet Global Conference.