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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.

AWARDS

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

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

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

You can view all GSM Award winners here.

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

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

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

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

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

NETWORKING PARTIES

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday closing night we met up with some friends and collegues for dinner, drinks and dancing afterwards… Now this one was really private All in all, it’s great to have 3GSM in Barcelona; I’m looking forward to the one next year again!

You can view my 3GSM Flickr Photoset here.

Many of you have been sending mails with questions related to 3GSM World Congress info, events and parties, MobileMonday and mobilists gatherings happening around. I tried to answer to everyone but sorry if you’d have been looked over, my mailbox looks pretty bold these these. If you want to know where the action is going to be, here’s where I will hang out during 3GSM, good chance you’ll find some other mobile bloggers or mobilists around

You can drop me an email of course if you want to get together at the conference or if you want to catch up with me somewhere around. Here is where you can find me during that busy week. I’m really looking forward to meet the real people behind the screens, meet friends and buddies and make new and interesting business contacts!

Sunday, February 11, at 6pm

MobileSunday Barcelona, an informal meet-up in Barcelona of mobile bloggers and anyone with an interest in mobility. If you like football (soccer!), Barcelona Football Club is playing that evening at 7pm and there will be screens for you to watch the game. Before and after the match, partyStrands will be running.

Where? Belchica; Sign up here!

Monday, February 12th, at 3pm

Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards 2007 . The event I have been organizing with
Carles Ferreiro and Barcelona Media for MoMo Barcelona. MoMo Italy, MoMo Helsinki, MoMo London and MoMo New York have also taken active roles setting up this project.

Check here for the finalists (list has grown to 23 now!), all of them exceptionally innovative companies in mobile from all over the globe who will present in front of a world-class jury including:

• Carlos Domingo, General Director, Telefonica R&D
• Carlo Longino, analyst, Techdirt Corporate Intelligence
• Daniel Appelquist, Senior Technology Strategist and Program Manager, Vodafone Group Research & Development
• Kelly Goto, principal at gotomedia, LLC
• Michel Wendell, General Partner, Nexit Ventures
• Oliver Starr, serial entrepreneur, editor MobileCrunch
• Peter Vesterbacka, founder of Some Bazaar
• Russell Buckley, Managing Director, AdMob Europe

and moderated by Caroline Lewko from Wireles Industry Partnership, all this for FREE, can you digg?

Where: Espacio Movistar

Don’t wait any longer to register, seats are getting scarse and we’re closing subscription by Wednesday.

Tuesday, February 13th, from 6,30pm to 8,30pm

Swedish Beers. Swedish Beers is an ad-hoc London based mobile networking event run by Steve Flaherty of Keitai Culture and Helen Keegan of BeepMarketing. During 3GSM, the bar Belchica (just a stone’s throw from the Congress) will be the place to meet. partyStrands will be running here too!

More info: Swedish Beers

Tuesday, February 13th, from 8pm to 2am

Ericsson social event. Awaken your senses. Based around senses, guests will experience an exciting and stimulating multi-sensual evening with good food, drinks and entertainment. partyStrands here again with food for your eyes and music for your ears! This is a VIP party so don’t send mails for tickets, I cannot get any!

Wednesday, February 14th, evening

I will normally attend the Wireless World Forum / iHollywood networking party at Camp Nou but haven’t received latest details yet, I’ll update here asap I’ll receive them.

Last year, as a starter for 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Stuart Mudie came up with the idea to get together with some other mobile bloggers. We hadn’t decided on a place to meet until one week before the event, since we wanted to consider any good suggestion for a cool bar…

Stuart just anounced he activated another wikipage to prepare for another informal MobileSunday Barcelona getting together in Barcelona. Expect some mobile passionates, mobilists and founders of MobileMonday chapters mixed with some healthy dose of ususal suspect bar-hangers. As for any good gathering, women (working) in mobile are highly appreciated to join us for a drink to keep some healthy gender equilibre in our sector.

If you want to kick off your week at 3GSM by attending “an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums”, simply add your name to the MobileSunday Barcelona wiki and turn up on the night, place to be anounced later.

If you like football (soccer!), FC Barcelona is playing that night and there will be screens for you to watch the game, in a true Barcelona tradition. Before and after the match, we will have partyStrands running.

FYI: Stuart will not be present this time but since we like some magic once in while, we’ll intend to connect with him in a non-presential, 21st-century mobile kind of way. Stay tuned for more details.

Year end goes together with the usual Top 100 of the year (or all times). You can check my most played music of 2006 and a lot more here at MyStrands.com. You can do all this also on your cell going to m.mystrands.com. And check what’s happening around on New Years’ Eve on your mobile phone at m-partystrands.com, including live partyStrands parties going on at the partyStrands blog.

Now isn’t this cool to start a New Year?

Just recovered from MobileMonday Barcelona event on Mobile Social Networks and I’m already off to Paris  for the 1 year anniversary party of MobileMonday France. MMF have invited partyStrands to the party to introduce their interactive music and entertainment service. Utilizing screens, mobile phones and digital music, partyStrands will offer the Paris MoMo crowd a new, colorful and fresh way to enjoy the music experience and have fun interacting with eachother during the closing cocktail of the Mobile Office conference and exhibition.

MobileMonday France will have its 1st anniversary celebration within the venerable Mobile Office Tradeshow at the Hotel Lafayette Concorde in Paris on December 6th, at 6:30pm.

Be sure to join us for MobileMonday France’s first birthday celebration, the live partyStrands page is already up. Jane (Jae Jong) Kwak, marketing manager at Mystrands will introduce some new features for partyStrands interactive use.

The evening promises loads of fun with about 500 people using partyStrands live, a Brazilian band and dancers and a dj, all set within the heart of this grand city. If anyone wants to catch up with me, you know where to find me this evening

And don’t forget the read the next CotM issue, Justin Oberman managed to host the 56th Carnival of the Mobilists LIVE from Bangalore, India. Must read!

Mobile Monday Barcelona has created a speaker presentation download section. Sharing information is key to share experiences on a global level, it brings different players in the mobile value chain closer to each other and it stimulates more mobile business all together. If you don’t agree with this, please hit the back button in your browser or jump to the next post

For the ones sharing these thoughts, you can currently download the speaker presentations from the Mobile Monday July 3 opening event in Barcelona on Mobile Marketing and Advertising and from the recent Future of Mobile Music event of October 2, it’s really a must-read source of information, check it out!

Current presentations are available from:

• Ian Musselwhite, Bango
• Scott Cohen, The Orchard
• Bill Houghton, MyStrands
• Russell Buckley, AdMob
• Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo! Research
• José Luis Jorge Marrasé, Alcatel

All presentations are in english, you only need to register to download the presentations. All future presentations will be put online in a reasonable delay after each future event.

Here below an interactive screen demo of partyStrands application taken at La Botellita - Serrano in Madrid last Thursday.

1. see who/what is playing
2. incoming user request (through SMS) influencing music with artist (x)
3. recommendations of similar style music
4. users in the waiting queue
5. another incoming influencing music request
6. user chat screen (cut)

Below a screenshot of the BAR page at the partyStrands web-app. NOTE that everything is completely LIVE (at partystrands.com)

An easy URL is created for every BAR member within the partyStrands network.

The BAR page includes:

• bar logo
• contact details
• location info
• news from the bar/club
• a partygoers FORUM
• pictures from the club and its’ parties
• a list of users currently present in the club (and online)
• recently played songs
• most played artists

To me it looks like an excellent blog-page for bars with an interactive jukebox included

BAR owners and affiliates can now easily subscribe, create their partyStrands page and signup to tryout the partyStrands application in their bar. Currently only available in Spain, partyStrands will become available in other countries soon.

As you might know, I’m organising and programming the Mobile Monday Barcelona events together with Cristina Meló, and Carles Fereiro from Barcelona Media. Martin Tantow, who initiated the event with me, left to Madrid for a new job so we’ll be missing him as of now.

After a summer break it’s time to announce the next Mobile Monday Barcelona event. The next topic is set to “The Future of Mobile Music“, the event will take place on Monday, October 2, 2006 at the Auditorium of the University of Pompeu Fabra in the Estació de França.

For this event, we invited some of the most experienced people in the Mobile Music area to bring together an interesting mix of experienced people with future visions on this topic.

Scott Cohen - co-founder and VicePresident, The Orchard (UK) leading distributor of independent music in the world, representing over 3.500 labels from 73 countries and more than 1 million songs in catalogue. Artist manager and a recognized expert in new media, Scott has done consulting for different governments, mobile phone operators, and record companies on such topics as developing new business models using the Internet and the creation of new platforms for delivering content.

Bill Houghton - MyStrands (Spain/USA), a leader and innovator in new consumer products and consumer-based business strategies for the Internet. MyStrands develops social recommendation and discovery technologies to help people discover and organize digital content, and share tastes with others, through Internet connected devices. MyStrands is providing the mobile industry with new ways to build mobile communities around music, and develops the technology to offer personalized mobile radios (and video content) to mobile users.

Nandi Gurprasad - VP Global Alliances, Bango Ltd. (UK) Bango operates in the mobile internet where internet connectivity converges with mobile phones. The mobile internet is opening up a huge potential market for content providers and using our open, global platform, you can take advantage of this opportunity immediately. A seasoned executive and entrepreneur in high-technology, Nandi has been in mobile Mobile and Internet industries from the early days. Prior to joining Bango, Nandi was Sales Director for PocketThis, a Silicon Valley provider of mobile contextualization technology, where he managed tier one operator and partner relationships across the EU.

Timing:

19h30 Registration and Pre-Networking
20h00 The Future of Mobile Music - speaker sessions
21h00 Cocktail and Networking Party
22h00 End

This event is sponsored by Bango Ltd. and Barcelona Media.

To attend the event “The Future of Mobile Music” on October 2, 2006, you need to register and confirm your presence here. The event is free of charge.

Note also that MobileMonday Ukraine is opening next week in Kiev, this chapter has been initiated by the remarkable Julia Palatovska together with Qarea. Kudos to friend Julia who has done a great job setting up an opening event with an interesting program from scratch. Nice!