mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends - m-trends.org

This morning I received a box from a friend with some new released cd’s of my favourite artists. Pretty old skool this may seem, and it definately is to us people used to watch trends daily surrounded by the latest mobile tech. But this present brought me a particular pleasure I haven’t felt for a while - think music discovery coming from a friend who knows your personal taste better than yourself

I don’t know about your climate but here in Barcelona summer has started since a while and the package happened to contain my coming summertune that made my day: “Throw It All Away” from Zero 7. The tune has everything a summertune should have: instantly regognisable, infectuous fresh up-beat tempo bringing you in an immediate summer feeling mood. This tune has the voice of Sia Furler’s (picture) to make it perfect.

I beamed it immediately to my mobile memory stick to hit the streets with it and go and enjoy the newly discovered tune and share this nice music with some friends - good music just initiates to be shared, isn’t it?

While on my way, I started thinking of it as my mobile summertune, since I’m going to carry the song with me and listen to it while on the move and share it with my friends in different places on different devices. This reminded me I needed to check how we can enjoy this kind of pleasures in a mobile music distribution environment.

I checked the Mobile Jukebox from T-Mobile this time (see image above) and ra-ra-ra (Flemish expression to express surprise). Just watch the little icons… unlimited play (got it?), 10 x burn and 8 x copy to mobile… Now that’s nicely packaged but frankly is this a solution to put numbers on the copies and put the accent to “unlimited play”?

I think I’m going to buy the vinyl of “The Garden” (whole album), share the price with my friends if needed and make as many copies as we like to copy to our devices, and I think this is what smart youngsters are doing these days and use their mobile to sms eachother the place of the party!

BTW: the whole story above of beaming to my mobile was just imagined… In real I got restricted by DRM!

But for the fans, do check the video, it’s great!

* Picture of Zero 7’s Sia Furler © Bilboard

Having teenagers at home is an enriching experience, everyday. Some conversations/questions I want to share with you from this weekend…

- “Dad, how much does it cost to use Google on my mobile?”

My daughter listening to a tune that is definately not bought on iTunes or on CD -yes I still check this kind of details… I asked her where did it came from?

- “Well, I got it as a present.” I asked: “A present? How did you get it?”
- “My friend send it through IM!”

Another daughter showed me her new Sims2 car she just downloaded from a fansite…

Damn, I hadn’t realized, this is a new type of smart product sponsoring and we (parents) don’t even know about (!) I wonder if this is done on purpose or not. Anybody knows?

Every now and then I ask an update for their plans for the future:

- “I would like to become a SIMS engineer, is that cool dad?”

Just turned 13!

As a starter for 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Stuart came up with the idea to get together with some other mobile bloggers. We haven’t decided on the place to meet yet since anybody may come up with a good place he knows, we’ll decide later where to meet. He set up a wikipage “where anyone who’s keen on getting together for this unofficial MobileSunday in Barcelona can express their interest in joining our gathering. You don’t need to be a blogger to take part, of course, but it might help if you were in some way interested in mobility.”

Looking forward to this one!

Last year during christmas period I discovered Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) / Communications for Life, a humanitarian NGO specialising in emergency telecommunications.

They were among the first organising help for the surivors of the terrible tsunami which devastated the coasts of 10 countries bordering the Indian Ocean last year. In just a few seconds, nearly 300,000 people perished.

Numerous areas affected by the tsunami were without means of communication for the population and the rescuers who were trying to reach them. Mobilised during the hours following news of the disaster, teams from TSF arrived in Thailand the same day, in collaboration with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) based in Bangkok, then in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. You can read a report of all the litlle miracles these people did here.

But that’s not all… Other than in emergencies, telecommunications can be useful for development projects, so there are a lot of solidarity actions out there where TSF helps connecting the unconnected to communicate with others.

You can donate here to support their actions, what are you waiting for?

Télécoms sans Frontières is member of the United Nations Working Group of Nations Unies on Emergency Telecommunications (WGET), partner of the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) and member of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA).

There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the web 2.0; it has taken a while also to find some good descriptions about what web 2.0 is all about. Now Wikipedia has (finally) a fair description.

It includes one of my favourite web 2.0 mindcloud diagrams from Kosmar.

Tags: web 2.0 web2.0 social software wikipedia convergence

Yesterday it was in my mailbox again: “Always a treat: every two months, Mercedes presents an exclusive selection of musical talents from around the world – right now Mixed Tape 09 with a range of urban sounds between London and Berlin!”

Since its inception, receiving this message takes me immediately to the page to download the latest Mixed Tape release. This year I enjoyed a lot of the music on my iPod of artists such as Sébastian Tellier, Izmar, Four Chords, Audiotreats feat. Bruda & Psycho, DJane EmBee feat. Aleksz, Sadder Star, Ken.Ji, Lemon Curry…

Not that the Mixed Tapes are gonna make me buy a Mercedes but I think it’s one of the best online branding campaigns making use of music as a connector. Good for the brand and the band!

Take the example of “La Ritournelle” from Sébastian Tellier, one of last years most remarkeable songs.

The first signing to Air’s Record Makers label, Sebastien Tellier’s “La Ritournelle” was originally released in France way back at the end of 2003 on the “Beyond All Strategies” EP.

The song was picked up again by the end of 2004 and released on the Mixed Tape 04. The song made it’s way virally on the internet until it got released as a 12″ by Pure Groove Records. The 12″ sold some 4,000 import copies in the UK only and has been championed by everybody from Giles Peterson, Una Bombers, Pete Tong…

Now the CD Single of La Ritournelle with new remixes has been released, you can also find it on the excellent “Politics” Album. Still not convinced? Then you can also download the original video directed by Quentin Dupieux here and a new version directed by Ace Norton here.

An excellent example of how online viral marketing can be effective, for independent artists and record companies, using alternative ways of digital distribution.

I’m gonna by the remixes and the album…

Yesterday I was at the birthday party of one of my Catalan friends, Josep Ganyet. A warm and wonderfull person. Check his blog, he’s always in for something original, whether it’s about his work - he’s a new media professor at Pompeu Fabra or his hobbies, such as collecting Spage Age Pop Music records. And before I forget, if you’re heading for Barcelona, check his MarBarcelona.com website for flat and studio renting: best quality/pricing offer in Barcelona!

And if you might wander how he looks like, well it’s the guy on the red badge

Some of the finest jazz records ever made have been released on Impulse! - The New Wave Of Jazz Is On Impulse! Remember?

Impulse! released some of the best records from legendary jazz artists such as Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, and many others…

I just previewed a new remix album called Impulsive! including a remix of one of my favourite contemporary artists DJ Dolores. His Aparelhagem was one of my most played albums this summer.

Impulsive! is gonna be released by the end of October. I can’t wait to order it:

“Mining a generation of experimental, visionary DJs/producers, Impulsive! re-imagines legendary jazz tracks from composers like Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef and more. The music of Impulse! was a crucial component to the development of jazz music in the ’60s and ’70s, allowing its artists a home to work out their most creative ideas, and that spirit continues today with Impulsive!”

tags: Impulse Impulse! Impulsive! Jazz DJ Dolores Crammed Discs Crammedblog remix

This weekend I went biking to the Forum 2004, the impressive site of the international event that was held last year in Barcelona dedicated to the principles of Cultural Diversity, World Peace and Sustainable Economic Development.

Reading and viewing the nice presentations on the archived website, you get an idea of what I’m talking here:

“The Forum site occupies an area of 320,000 square meters and has a capacity of 79,200 persons distributed as follows: 50,000 in the port esplanade and auditoriums, 26,000 in the Barcelona International Convention Center, and 3,200 in the Forum Building, which is being constructed by the Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron.

With 68,000 square meters of surface area, the Barcelona International Convention Center (CCIB), will be the largest convention center in the south of Europe.

The main Forum space, known as “the Plaza,” will cover an area of 150,000 square meters. Once complete, it will be the second largest square in the world after Tiananmen Square in Beijing.”

It is really strange to have all this space for you alone, the square is empty, the buildings are empty, I look tiny inbetween this enormous spaces, I always think about how many trucks were needed to construct this all… I like the architecture a lot, still it feels very empty without people doing things around.

I took some pictures with my v800 mobile to give you an idea.

It reminds me of the construction of Brasilia, the futuristic city build between 1956 and 1960, designed by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.

“The city of Brasilia illustrates both the great expectations that its creators had for it, and the shortcomings that were unforeseen. Its existence is exciting and the lessons to be learned from it numerous.”

Tomorrow I’m gonna get a look to the live Fabchannel.Comwebcast of the Simple Minds playing in Paradiso, Amsterdam.

Fabchannel.com is great! It’s one of the best broadband streaming video concert services that I know of. Good quality live concert webcasts of great bands and artists from the Paradiso and the Melkweg in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

It reminded me of the pioneering webcasting days in the Cybertheatre in Brussels at the end of the 90s (offline now). In 1998 we organised the first live online concert of the Simple Minds to promote their album Neapolis and due to the succes a 2nd gig to launch their World Tour some months later.

For some pictures of that concert I will have to take the time and find them in my archived boxes of that period but meanwhile I could find back some traces still of those gigs.

Some pictures and apparently there is a bootleg of that night!

A pressrelease mentioning: “On the 25th February this year Simple Minds launched their website with a live gig broadcast live over the internet from the CyberTheatre in Brussels. With only a limited number of streams available 10,000 people watched live, while 500,000 queued around the virtual block waiting for an available stream. For the Q & A session that followed the band were swamped by over 4000 emailed questions, and 1.5 million people visited the site directly after the webcast.”

If any of the team CBT members reading this and still has pics from that period, please contact me. I’m still looking for my picture with Dennis Hopper =:-)