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Image © SENSEable city lab MIT - wikicity rome

After some hectic weeks, trying to get blogging back to normal…

The next MobileMonday Barcelona event on December 3 covers Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function shows we’re heading to really interesting services build on the location of the user. Next Monday event has a really c00l line-up:

speakers include Fabien Girardin - who will present WikiCity a MIT affiliated project that features innovative ways to understand and communicate the dynamics of the city; Börkur Sigurbjörnsson - who will talk about two research prototypes from Yahoo! Research Berkeley: ZoneTag and TagMaps; Andres Ribera of Spanish startup Hipoqih, a Google Maps mashup that aims to create a mobile social network with GPS geolocation and Ilja Goossens, of yoMedia (Netherlands), who will talk about their video content delivery platform linked to outdoor advertising. Don’t hesitate to register and/or confirm your presence for this event, only 150 seats available.

What I like most in Nokia’s strategy is its constant ability to look forward and move ahead with the changes. Nokia Flagship Store announcements already positioned Nokia with an independant retail strategy, it’s obvious that once there, there’s a different world on top of selling devices…

There has been a lot of fingertip heating since Nokia launched its Ovi Internet Services, a predictable, but smart move by Nokia for regular mTrends readers The idea is to pull the Nokia Music Store, N-Gage, Nokia Maps, and all future Nokia services into a single gateway of integrated service offerings. You can view yesterdays’ webcast anouncements here.

Nokia has been very active in the convergent area’s of internet and mobility services. With a solid 38% marketshare (some 900 million active customers!), the company has always played a leading role in the mobile value chain and knows a lot about its consumer habits. Nokia also has been releasing some really great N-Series devices since last year, the experiences gathered from those popular high-end devices are now finetuned and sharpened resulting in 4 new mobile devices (to be released before year-end).

I have been lucky to be able to experiment with Nokia Maps and I like the service a lot, it’s actually an awesome experience available on a mobile phone. The N95 with its build-in GPS makes geographical search really context relevant and opens the path for a lot of new kinds of services linked to locations. Personally I believe more in a user-driven community services and tools build model for the future such as Plazes and Dopplr build on Google Maps api’s but time will tell which services consumers will finally choose for and use.

The N-Gage portal is all about Nokia’s next-gen games (reserve your player name now!) where game fans will have more and more options to play multiplayer games in a constantly connected world - Instant Media Now! Web 2.0 has had a huge influence on the game development with regards to user-generated content, social networking and general connectivity. Watch Digital Chocolate in this next-gen game content space, not to underestimate the - also yesterday anounced - Sony-Ericsson Playstation Phone, yes… real device convergence is happening!

Another great move into internet service offerings is that Nokia and Microsoft have joined forces to provide customers with a new suite of Windows Live services specifically designed for Nokia devices. Starting today Nokia customers in eleven countries with compatible S60 devices can download the new suite enabling access to Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces. Smart move knowing there’s some 465 million Microsoft Messenger clients today!

The downside of that deal (and biggest surprise to me yesterday) was not the anouncement of the Nokia Music Store itself but the decision that Nokia will use Microsoft PlayReady technology for “flexible access to digital entertainment“. Flexible? How flexible is the next question to me then, while Apple unveiled a higher quality DRM-Free Music with EMI on iTunes in April, Nokia goes the opposite direction with Microsoft?

I tried to find more detailed information on how restrictive the DRM will be but couldn’t find anything relevant but this Microsoft PlayReady White Paper, despite the many anouncements yesterday. BoingBoing reported the new music store will allow for over-the-air downloads,

“currently priced at 1 Euro a song and 10 Euro-a-month all-you-can-eat subscriptions that will work on your PC. (It’s not entirely clear if you’ll be able to download songs to your PC on the all-you-can-eat and also sync them to your Ovi-compatible phone. The verbiage I’m seeing is “streaming,” so it seems unlikely.)”

Most probably Nokia will decide on a country-per-country basis, depending on the distributor. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound as a pirate protecter but I’m just worried as a consumer. mTrends readers know about my rants and experiences with this topic (for an overview check my DRM Free At Last! post).

I’m completely in favour of the OPEN DRM model (buy once, use everywhere!): I buy the digital content once but I am able to carry and transfer the song/video/movie everywhere on my different devices and pc’s and share it with my family and friends. Companies really need to learn to TRUST the consumers, illegal downloading always existed and will always exist in a minor form but as a consumer I can only urge to give us a fair DRM, especially for those consumers who want to buy digital content.

One more example here below of how DRM-restrictive content works for the consumer - and then I really hope I don’t have to write on this anymore

On my summer holidays, besides my fully stored N95, I took a 2GB USB-stick with me with full of music (legally bought CD’s imported as mp3’s) to be played wherever the occasion appeared. Now when compiling my summer music collection, I mixed up with some songs I bought on iTunes… At a certain moment, at a party, someone was asking for some kind of artist I had on my music-stick, we copied it to the iBook available connected to the speakers, when everybody around the pool was excited to hear that song, the machine responded “need permission to play this song, please fill-in your password” - hell, we weren’t even connected to the internet. Now, you think this is fair? Flexible? Helping the artists? Create more business? Come on (big) guys, please get real!

NOTE: it would be great if any Nokia or Microsoft rep could provide some details on the DRM restrictions that will be used (or not) using PlayReady

While I’m most of the time always ‘connected’ with my laptop and/or my mobile phone, for this years’ summer holidays I decided to opt for a completely disconnected vacation. I felt a healthy need to get away for a couple weeks from a social media overload - and guess what? I didn’t miss my email or chat conversations, neither Twitter or Facebook, or other social media apps I regularely use…

It was more then 5 years I took such a long break and it was GREAT! Apart from some teenage “Can we go to check our email, dad?” hiccups, I managed pretty well to stay away from checking mails on my mobile phone or a computer… The last week I was actually completely disconnected in Formentera without GSM connectivity at all.

Last year, it was the first time I didn’t take an extra mp3 player with me for holidays, the Nokia N91 did just fine as a multifunctional device. This year, it was the first time I didn’t take an extra digital camera, since the Nokia N95 with its 5 megapixel camera has now reached a basic quality need for my holiday snapshots - the 2 megapixel iPhone doesn’t fill that need yet for me, sorry. You can check my Ibiza and Formentera pictures here.

The best part for me was our stay at Belgian friend Gilbert’s house in Formentera. On top of the cliffs of La Mola with a magnificent view on the Mediterranean Sea, completely disconnected with only a couple of boats passing by daily. The house, his painters atelier, and the garden house are all powered by solar panels only and provide enough electricity to comfortly host 10 to 12 people, electricity use is cut to a minimum whenever possible. Water is usually rare on Formentera so people use it with care: after every shower, the recycled sea water you used is captured and re-used for the plants, same with the water used for cleaning dishes, actually an ideal place for everyone who needs a personal global warming reducement training

No GSM coverage at the house - we needed to go to the village to pick up a signal, so you had that purely disconnected feeling you hardly encounter these days in the western world… alone with nature, daydreaming in the hammock, swimming in a Caribbean blue sea, lizzards eating rests of watermelon, the sweet sound of crickets, seeing the Milky Way again at night, the taste of local countryside chicken, well no more words to say I had a GREAT time! Anyone interested in a perfect place to rest, think, write or brainstorm give me a wink.

I had a strange feeling getting back the first day reconnecting, trying to find my ‘connected’ rhythm again, meanwhile I’m back on track, it’s going to be an exciting autumn with lots of new projects and events, more on this later here… stay tuned!

Only minutes after my previous post, while checking Facebook, I see that friend Tariq Krim (CEO of Netvibes) activated Facebook Mobile (see image). Point your mobile browser to m.facebook.com and you’ll get most of what you get on Facebook now, easily accesible on your mobile device. Most features seem to be active (haven’t tested them all yet), but while browsing the mobile version during a couple of minutes, it was really easy and fast accessing this popular online community.

To be honest, I haven’t been very active myself yet on Facebook, I’m just accepting friend requests from people I really know and have to find out yet why everyone finds Facebook so cool and not ‘just another social network’ (how much more can you really take these days?)

Anyway Facebook craze is happening and see who’s active in one of my first groups? Yes, good guess, it’s Helen!

While we Europeans might seem envious not being able to get hold of an iPhone immediately, there’s really no reason to be; having a little bit of patience might be beneficial for Apple to learn how people will use the iPhone and for the users to get hold of an improved version in a couple of months.

Don’t get me wrong: while I’m pretty convinced that the web browsing experience on the iPhone is probably the best ever created on a mobile device, there’s also something as being able to acces the content from wherever you are, and this seems to be a minor point of the iPhone - currently only available through AT&T EDGE network, don’t miss Carlo ’s interesting take on this aspect.

FYI: above screenshot taken on a Nokia N95 when browsing the www.apple.com/iphone website, no photoshopping involved

… are popping up. David Pogue of The New York Times made this entertaining video review on YouTube, embedded for you here below.

Another interesting video review can be viewed here done by Walt Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal. This might help making up your mind if you hadn’t yet; us here in Europe have some more time before to check the iPhone EU (improved?) version.

Walt has also this interesting - but very American - take on the convergence of mobile phones and smartphones including the Nokia N95, which seems still an outsider - even for analysts like him in the US… Anyway the iPhone is going to increase tremendously the speed of change of perception about traditional mobile phone use - voice and text - towards truly mobile internet connected multimedia devices.

Spotted on Mashable Twitter channel, checked it and works fine! The m.youtube.com site has now gone live, providing easy browsing access to YouTube from mobile devices. The mobile homepage carries a warning message: “YouTube Mobile is a data intensive application. We highly recommend that you upgrade to an unlimited data plan with your mobile service provider to avoid additional charges.”

I haven’t tried the upload clips from my mobile phone option to YouTube by following these instructions for this simple reason: users need to upload videos from their mobile phones (or cellphones) to YouTube by sending an MMS message to an email address. Depending on your connection, this can take some time, even to upload short video clips, so be sure to check your dataplan first and/or your MMS pricings before to try this out to avoid surprises. BTW: to all PARENTS: whatch your teenage kids dataplans

Below a short ‘collage’ I made of the browsing experience with example of Paris Hilton Diaries, videos in Real Player. Sorry for the bad picture quality, for one reason or another my mobile screenshot shortcuts don’t seem to work in my Nokia browser

Tomorrow I’ll be attending TechTalk Menorca at the Martin Varsavsky’s ranch in Menorca, an event gathering some of the hottest tech entrepreneurs in a informal atmosphere.

From Martin’s blog:

At the farm we will have Hans Peter Brondmo of Plum, David Sifry of Technorati, Tariq Krim of Netvibes, Loic Le Meur France´s top blogger, Thomas Crampton of the IHT, Ola of Result, Marko of Blyk and Dopplr, Anil de Mello of Mobuzz, Ivan and Rodrigo of Vpod, Ricardo Galli of Meneame, Alex Straub of Truphone, Lukasz Weijchert de Onet (in Polish but the 49th most popular web site in the world), Marc Samwer German serial tech entrepreneur, Janus Friis of Skype, Joost, Felix Petersen of Plazes, Yossi Vardi, Jonas Birgersson of Labs2.

I share Martin’s view on European entrepreneurship culture and I admire the way he builds his business through symbiotic circles of trust with people and ideas he believes in. Watch a snip of the interview with Chris Shipley from Guidewire Group yesterday at iNNOVATE!europe’07 here below.

A complete wrapup of that conference to be published soon here.

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.

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…

More M-Trends thoughts on 3GSM here soon including mobile trend stuff such as IMS, IPTV, the mobilisation of Web 2.0, mobile search, the awards and the networking parties of course!

You can view my 3GSM Flickr Photoset here.