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…
394204209_d4568654e0_m.jpgMy 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.

394207970_1b7bcde552_m.jpgNokia 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?

alcatel_3D.jpg

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!

futurlink1.jpg 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.

394204717_91e0a40f90_m.jpgI 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

394207785_eb7c1e1e3c_m1.jpgTHE 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.

yahoobooth.jpgThe 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.

2ndlife_mobile.jpgTo 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)

3gsmWC2007s.jpgAWARDS

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.

polymervision.jpgMost 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!

alcatel_IPTV.jpgSome 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!

swedishbeers.jpgInteracting 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.

PS_ercisson.jpgAfterwards 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.

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3gsmWC2007s.jpgAWARDS

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.

polymervision.jpgMost 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!

alcatel_IPTV.jpgSome 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!

swedishbeers.jpgInteracting 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.

PS_ercisson.jpgAfterwards 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.

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“Cucumber time” is the Flemish expression for this time of the year where everybody seems to be on holiday. My holidays come a bit later this year so I thought it was time for a check on most read articles of the last year here at my m-trends.org blog. I normally don’t check my blog statistics very often since I haven’t considered any advertising yet and I know approximately my average audience traffic. When I did an overview of the last year however, I was delightfully surprised, seeing I passed half a million unique users and a 6 zero figure on pageviews (since August 1 of last year). Maybe I should start considering advertising at last?

I made a short overview of the TOP 20 of the most read articles at m-trends.org during this period. It gives a good indication on what’s popular - watch the Carnival of the Mobilists! - and it gives some insight on what topics my readers like me to write on. Page views run at a couple of thousand each (at least for the TOP 10).

1. Carnival of the Mobilists 03
2. Women in Mobile
3. 3GSM Gathering of the Mobilists
4. Open Letter To Vodafone
5. MoSoSo + Wi-Fi
6. Carnival of the Mobilists 33
7. 3GSM Gathering Of The Mobilists - Line-Up
8. mUXP - Mobile User Experience
9. 3GSM Afterwrap
10. Advertising 2.0
11. Mobcast Advertising (= Mobile Podcasts Ads)
12. Mobilicio.us
13. The Mobile Internet (as seen on TV)
14. MusicStrands Mobile
15. Google Music all about Mobile!
16. European answer to Google Wi-Fi?
17. 3G in Spain
18. Mobile Music For Families. No thanks!
19. Independents and Mobile Music Distribution (2)
20. Wapedia Works!

NOTE: five women featured in the “Women in Mobile” interview series are represented in the (then included) TOP 25 but I voluntary left them out here since I do not want to make this a womens’ contest, I’m sure they’ll forgive me :-)

It would be great hearing your opinion on what topics and issues you would like me to write and rant in the future, so don’t hesitate to send me your input and suggestions. And oh, if any sponsor is interested to advertise on my blog, I’ll consider any offer :-)

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Creative Commons weblog anounced the Crammed Discs Remix Contest, a project idea I helped incepting for Crammed Discs early last year during our MuLiMob project collaboration.

The Creative Commons remix contest is organised in conjunction with Crammed Discs over at the Creative Commons community remix site, ccMixter. Crammed artists Cibelle, DJ Dolores, and Apollo Nove — some of Brazil’s most innovative contemporary musicians — are offering new sounds online under a Creative Commons BY-NC license, so people throughout the world can legally use them in remixes, mash-ups, and new compositions. Nine winning remixes will appear on a Crammed/ccMixter EP project to be sold online through digital music stores.

Participating is easy: read the official rules of the contest. (Also available for download as a PDF), download the audio sources, make your remix and upload your mix to ccMixter under a CC BY-NC license between April 26, 2006 and May 24, 2006.

Go to the Crammed Discs Remix Contest pages for all details and separated audio elements downloads of Cibelle’s “Noite de Carnaval,” DJ Dolores’s “Sanidade,” and Apollo Nove’s “Yage Cameras”.

I was particulary interested in the artists view on remixing content. Check this out from the Crammed Discs Remix Contest pages:

“The whole process of making music has changed. The very concept of composition now extends to the creation of sounds and textures. I’m very curious to see how other people will use and manipulate my sounds and how they will use them as tools to create new music.” — Cibelle

“I like the idea of giving people the opportunity to hear what I hear when I’m producing — a separate candomblé percussion track or some painstakingly constructed soundscape. If mixing is part of the compositional process, it’s only natural that I try sharing the compositional responsibilities with anyone interested in taking them on.” — Apollo Nove

“This is what every intelligent musician should do. The idea is to share and allow one’s work to be cut up, reinvented and — who knows — transformed into something even better than the original. This isn’t about generosity; it’s about inventing new ways of creating musical products that go well beyond the world of physical carriers like vinyl and CDs.” — DJ Dolores

The nine winning remixes will appear on a Crammed/ccMixter remix compilation, to be sold online through digital music stores. What are your waiting for? Your chance to engage in a creative dialogue with Crammed Discs artists Cibelle, DJ Dolores, and Apollo Nove and get your mix of their work on theCrammed/ccMixter remix EP!

Great work from Mia Garlick from Creative Commons and Marc Hollander over at Crammed Discs and their respective teams!

I do hope by the time the Crammed/ccMixter remix EP comes out I can download the tracks entirely to my mobile, makes me think on Creative Commons licenses for mobile and the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Initiative, I wonder what happened to that initiative?

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I haven’t been able to write something on the MuLiMob Event last week in London yet so here below some personal impressions. There should be a media page available soon with files from the event at the MuLiMob website but I included already some data here you might be interested in. I have been written more thoughts and reflections on the topic before here and here and here

Looking at the objectives set, the event was a succes since the primary intention was to bring together the independent record labels and the mobile industry players and to gather some more information on the mobile music market, its players and evolutions.

The event started with a short presentation of Douglas Rushkoff on the threats and opportunities of multilingualism and multiculturalism for independents in a fast progressing and ever-changing digital and mobile world. Douglas made a short videocast at his home because he couldn’t fly to the event. You can view Doug’s thoughts on the gathering here below (click the image).

The panel presentation introduced the situation of independents within the mobile value chain and from each panel members’ experience: the independents, the operator, the manufacturer, the artist.

MuLiMob Event Panel (from left to right): Hélène Abrand, Cibelle, David Williams - Nokia, Ed Kershaw - Vodafone, Simon Wheeler - Beggars, Michel Lambot - PIAS

The overall tone from the independents, represented by Michel Lambot (PIAS) and Simon Wheeler (Beggars) was not really promising:

- “we are not in control of our own music…”
- “too many 3rd parties inbetween to deal with and share rather small commissions”
- “not being visible inbetween the mobile TOP50 offering…”, etc.

And probably they are right but then again one might look at the current situation and look at the new opportunities out there; independents will need to adapt and probably will need to change their current strategies drastically.

I presented a short overview of the mobile music market and its future (2nd part of the presentation). You can download the pdf here. After having brought convergence and the influence of web 2.0 towards the future of mobile into the discussion, David Williams from Nokia explained the manufacturers position: the customer is asking to be able to play any kind of music on his mobile device from any source or any network and that’s what they do and they do it very well I think.

Vodafone, represented by Ed Kershaw has a luxury position delivering music to the customer: traditional ringtones are still doing very well, 3G is still in its early stage and if phones becomes wi-fi enabled, the operators will be able to bill the data traffic… Needless to say everyone is welcome to connect to their global Vodafone Live music offer.

Immediate solutions towards the independents were not presented at this event. A lot of questions did not make it to the panel due to the pretty short timing of the discussion but the event opened the doors for more, it is clear that there is a need for independents to find solutions and keep this discussion ongoing.

Just think about the following issue… Labels make their licensing deals still on a territorial basis (country per country), how to protect existing deals and work out new deals in a digital global space? Even iTunes has created its local shops to work around this issue, I’m living in Spain and cannot buy from the UK shop while I should be able to do that wherever I am…

Convergence might bring in new opportunities for some players but one thing needs to keep the attention though to keep the music market diverse and interesting: power concentration is not a good thing, whether this comes from device manufacturers, operators or portal services…
Maybe the inedependents just need to partner and get organised?

I’m sure the players and the game are gonna look quite different a couple of years from here. If you’re interested in the topic and the discussion, you can subscribe at www.mulimob.org website to stay updated on the project or get directly in touch with me (rudy AT m-trends DOT org).

Personally I would like to thank the panel participants, everyone who attended the event and of course the MuLiMob team who made this all happen. Special thanks also to Graham Brown from DhaliwalBrown for the use of the mobile music market slides and Kosmar for the use of his web 2.0 mindcloud.

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Off to MuLiMob Event

This week I’m off to London for the MuLiMob Event, so no entry from me for this weeks’ Carnival of the Mobilists.

I wrote this article on this interesting event here before and I’m gonna write more about it later on. Tomorrow I will be presenting some future of Mobile Music issues.

NOTE there are some last minute changes in the program: Ed Kershaw, Head of Music, Vodafone will be replacing Brian Pemberton from Orange, and that’s not bad news if you ask me ;-)

The FREE event takes place in London, UK on Wednesday November 30. You can download the program pdf.

So here’s the final program again:

Introduction: Douglas Rushkoff (Conference Call) – author and winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book

Keynote: Michel Lambot - President of Impala - Co-Chairman of Play it Again Sam

Panel:
- David Williams, Nokia - Music & Audio Industry Director
- Ed Kershaw, Vodafone - Head of Music
- Simon Wheeler, Beggars - Head of new Media
- Michel Lambot, PIAS - President
- Cibelle - Music Artist

Chairperson: Hélène Abrand – MuLiMob Team Leader

Discussion followed by a networking and DJ Set from Brazilian artist Cibelle.

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Cibelle has come a long way since the release of her 2003 debut album, which had established her as one of the most imaginative and original young artists to come out of Brazil. Deeply involved in sound research, and true to the motto of the Anthropophagists (the 1920s arts movement which inspired several generations of artists in her native country - Tropicalia to name but one), she’s been absorbing sounds and ideas from all over to create her own, even more personal brew. Cibelle likes to use her life as a lab, and claims to be the hamster and the scientist all at once…

cibelle_low.jpg

Now based in London, Cibelle is currently producing her new album (due out in April 2006), along with a couple of co-producers including Mike Lindsay (from UK folktronica act Tunng), Apollo Nove, and guests such as Seu Jorge (of ‘City Of God’ and ‘The Life Aquatic’ fame) and CocoRosie collaborator Spleen. The album features acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing, noise guitars and children’s toys, textural soundscapes and pure melodies carried by her unmistakable voice.

This Wednesday at the MuLiMob Event in London, Cibelle will be showing us yet another aspect of her multi-faceted personality, as she’ll be playing an eclectic DJ set of exotica, swing, cabaret & assorted oddities.

I’m looking forward to it, she’s loaded with talent, watch her steps!

Watch also this video extracted from Cibelle‘s “About A Girl EP” Dualdisc, which includes 4 new songs on the audio side and 4 videos on the DVD side.

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I checked Wapedia with some keywords related to the MuLiMob Event this week in London… it’s simple and it works!

Wapedia - the mobile encyclopedia is a service from Florian Amrhein and exists since august 2004. Wapedia brings the content of Wikipedia to mobile devices like mobile phones or PDAs, so the articles are licensed under the GNU FDL license.

For example I searched on the word “Crammed”, for Crammed Discs - 5,210,000 entries in Google, but luckily tagged correctly in Wikipedia. Below the results on screen.

Wikipedia internal links work perfectly, the trouble starts when you get out of course. Nearly NO websites are adapted for mobile web browsing yet, there’s still a lot of work ahead! It also convinced me again that web 2.0 is definately going to be important for mobile web browsing development.

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Ever wandered how to propose the wide variety of quality music offered by independent music labels on a mobile screen? Well at MuLiMob we do.

(*)

The MuLiMob Networking Event tries to stimulate discussion between Independent Music Labels and the Mobile Industry in order to support the music and artists you cannot find on commercial radio stations, thereby enhancing multilingual and multicultural diversity.

The whole sentence may sound a bit complicated but to us - with RandomOne we are partner in this project - it is of a vital need to start discussing the subject. All major record labels, such as Universal Records, EMI and SONY BMG, have vast resources to deploy and capitalise on the Mobile Music opportunity. Independent Labels and their artists are not represented and current consumer offerings are now biased towards ‘Top 50’ commercial hits.

Music diversity and multicultural representation is being compromised. MuLiMob, supported by the European Commission, have collaborated with the Association of Independent Music (AIM) to host this event with the view to aid discussion between the industry sectors in a fun and relaxed environment.

The FREE event takes place in London, UK on Wednesday November 30. Check here for details, you can also download the program pdf.

Here below a preview of the program:

Introduction: Douglas Rushkoff (Conference Call) – author and winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book

Keynote: Michel Lambot - President of Impala - Co-Chairman of Play it Again Sam

Panel:
- David Williams, Nokia - Music & Audio Industry Director
- Brian Pemberton, Orange - Music Product Manager
- Simon Wheeler, Beggars - Head of new Media
- Michel Lambot, PIAS - President
- Cibelle - Music Artist

Chairperson: Hélène Abrand – MuLiMob Team Leader

Discussion followed by a networking and DJ Set from Brazilian artist Cibelle.

(*) Image sampled from a MuLiMob mobile interface demo.

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Openwave today announced its acquisition of Musiwave, our French partner in the MuLiMob project.

“Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Openwave will acquire all outstanding shares of Musiwave for a total purchase price of approximately €99.5 million and a contingent earnout of up to an additional €15 million. This equates to approximately $121 million, and an additional $18 million respectively, based on the Euro-US Dollar exchange rate of September 23, 2005.”

Well done Gilles, congratulations!

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