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People get ready, the mobile 2.0 train is definately on the rails now…

Mike Rowehl and Vodafone’s Daniel Appelquist (both involved in their local MobileMonday chapters) are organising a Mobile 2.0 event (just before the web 2.0 event) in San Francisco on November 6.

Though I am using heavily (and have been writing on) mobile (web) 2.0- associated apps and mobile podcasting, I haven’t used the term ‘mobile2.0′ a lot since I believe accessing the web from a mobile is part of web2.0 core = platform connected to any device, anytime, anywhere - however the real power of the mobile phone lies in the fact that the mobile has an incredible high penetration rate nearly everywhere - and is growing tremendously in area’s where it hasn’t reach it’s full penetration yet - and yet it’s going to be THE primary device that people will use to connect to web 2.0 services (or whatever we’re going to name it in a couple of years).

Many are probably seeing the potential but few (Ajit, Carlo, Charlie, Kelly, Oliver, Russell, and a few others…) have been writing insightfull ‘food for thought’ on this subject. So, I’m am glad the subject is finally hitting the event floors for real discussion with mobile value chain companies and players.

A great list of speakers will attend the mobile2.0 event, great job and initiative Mike and Dan! Personally, I would add some operators in the mix, that’s the real discussion I’m waiting for… Meanwhile walking the mobile walk - apart from using your 3G data card flat rate for mobile browsing, is still costing pocket loads of money for the enthusiast end-users.

For mobile2.0 to become a mobile user-driven media, and for mobile users to start accessing these web 2.0 services from their cell phones, they’re going to need flat rates from their operator or carrier. Here’s a taste of what it’s like accessing web 2.0 services on a mobile now… too bad my operator makes or breaks the connection (and charges per connection made) every time I…

• Check or send email from my mobile
• Check a (mobile) web page(s)
• Subscribe or update feed(s)
• Download or update a client application
• Upload a picture to Shozu, Flickr, YouTube or other services
• Subscribe, update or download a podcast
• Connect to consult my interactive Visual Radio service
• Trying out new mobile services

please fill-in accordingly if you use more services yourself…

… With the current operator offerings being unserved for mobile2.0 users like me (at least in Europe), I started to bypass the operator network wherever I can, what about you?

Richard MacManus, one of my favourite daily reads on Next Generation Web Technology on his popular blog Read/Write Web wrote a post today on a corporate blogging project he’s co-running with The Rights Marketing Company. Called Micro Media Corp, it’s a corporate blogging and podcasting program that aims to give business people insights into the Web 2.0 and New Media worlds.

If your organization is looking for regular thought leadership in the Web 2.0 and New Media world, check it out… there are really excellent insights inside this bulletin. I am sporadically contributing to this bulleting together with top quality bloggers - Scott Karp, Taewoo Danny Kim, David Stoughton (a UK consultant), Steve O’Hear, Stephen Danelutti, Cale Hollingsworth.

Micro Media Corp first major customer is British Telecom. The team produces 3 blog bulletins every week.

Nokia to unveil the Nserie Music Collection. From Darla’s blog:

As you can see, the N73 and N70’s have been made over in a new color… black is back! The N91 gets an external and internal make-over. Also dressed in black, the new N91 has upgraded its HD from 4gb to 8gb, hence the device name… Nokia N91 8GB. Just when you thought you couldn’t have any more music. That should keep someone musically entertained for a long time!

Nokia is definately serious in challenging the ipod right in it’s heart, the music (& video) player, while offering all those extra and excellent mobile phone features.

I have been writing on the Nokia N91 is (busy) killing the ipod before here. The story got picked up at geek.com - Is the N91 really an iPod killer? where an interesting debate is brewing amongst readers.

Related to Nokia’s music phones and one of my favourite apps I use, the Nokia podcasting application: Apple is now trying to claim the term podcast. Read more about it on Robert Scoble’s blog, Wired News, and The Guardian. I think Apple is not applying a good strategy here, maybe because competitors, such as Nokia, are using podcasting-named applications on their phones or devices? And now with Microsofts’ Zune coming in, it won’t get better, more and more podcasts will be created and listened to… for sure!

As an Apple fan at heart, I think they don’t have a right to claim the term “podcast”, the term submerged on the internet - inspired on the ipod - and was used before Apple introduced it into iTunes, trying to claim it will not help their excellent credibility market status they have amongs consumers nowadays. Some common sense cannot hurt these days in business… On this regard, I would like to point you to the famous Marx Brothers and Warner Brothers quarrel:

Note: The following is an excerpt from pages 159-165 of the PDF version (pages 147-153 of the print version) of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, published under a Creative Commons License. A free, legal copy of the entire PDF of this book can be found here. The content of the original Groucho Marx letter can be found here.

“There’s a famous story about a battle between the Marx Brothers and Warner Brothers. The Marxes intended to make a parody of Casablanca. Warner Brothers objected. They wrote a nasty letter to the Marxes, warning them that there would be serious legal consequences if they went forward with their plan.This led the Marx Brothers to respond in kind. They warned Warner Brothers that the Marx Brothers “were brothers long before you were.”The Marx Brothers therefore owned the word brothers, and if Warner Brothers insisted on trying to control Casablanca, then the Marx Brothers would insist on control over brothers.An absurd and hollow threat, of course, because Warner Brothers, like the Marx Brothers, knew that no court would ever enforce such a silly claim. This extremism was irrelevant to the real freedoms anyone (including Warner Brothers) enjoyed. ”

However, Nokia might be better introducing “Ncasting” for their Nseries podcasting

I have mentioned it before here, here, here, and here (sorry, can’t help it!) so faithfull m-trends readers shoud know by now that podcasts are one of my favourite mobile applications.

I could easily imagine it would be like that before I ever heard one for real on a mobile phone. Now that I have the phone to consume daily podcasting media, I just can’t get enough of it: it’s easy, it’s very straightforward and usually fast to download over a wi-fi connection (I do not recommend to download podcasts over 3G networks however - check your pricings with your operator first!), Needless to say I can listen to them whenever, wherever… the ultimate mobile cliché - as to say for once come true - right here, right now

Last weekend Martin Sauter interviewed me over Skype on the wireless operator landscape in Spain and how things are changing over here - the good news is… they finally do! I might be ranting a bit more in the podcast on another topic that has been popular on m-trends.org before, but I hope operators see it as constructive criticism.

Topics we discussed during the interview:

• Wireless Internet prices in Spain and recent changes
• Usage scenarios
• On portal / off portal strategies
• Block mobile Internet access for your kids?
• Nokia’s new web browser in N-series phones
• Topics for the next Mobile Mondays in Barcelona

You can listen to or download the podcast here (33 mins.)

Do check out Martin’s blog if you don’t know it, it’s one of my favourite reads. He just launched a book also: “Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society” and it’s available on Amazon and Wiley.

(*) sub-title: “Connected Holidays (with the N91)”

Back from a 2-week holiday… time flies… just realizing it’s the end of the week… and I haven’t blogged yet (!) … while there are so many interesting things happening to write about…

Before I left with my family and some friends to enjoy The Emporada Triangle I managed to buy the Nokia N91, the phone David Williams from Nokia demonstrated to me in November last year in London and which has been described in the blogosphere as the iPod killer.

Regulars of m-trends know about my passion for music-on-the-move and I had the pleasure to experience the Apple iPod 40Gb for over a year until it crashed unluckily and unreparable, too bad for such a solid music device. I decided to wait for the first real music-phone, it came later then expected but it has been worth the wait.

Apart from some adress book sync problems I managed to counter quickly thanks to Justin’s post and some Mac hacks here, my whole experience with the N91 has been just brilliant!

The first thing that impressed me was the quality of the sound watching a Real Player video… impressive. I added some 500 of my favourite tunes to the 4Gb harddrive, synchronised from my iTunes library and created new playlists on the fly while I connected the device to a hi-fi stereo… this is the first phone I know of with whom you can create instant parties everywhere, anytime I have been writing before on my doubts how to scroll big music libraries without a scroll wheel (as the ipod) but this doubt vanished completely after the first use.

The rest of the HD space I used mainly to download some podcasts with the Nokia Podcasting Application, I also installed Shozu (probably one of the best mobile apps around!) to upload some holiday pics with a click to Flickr.

Our host had a wi-fi connection in the house so I could browse the mobile web the first time for free (!) The latest Nokia Web Browser for S60 is probably the best I have experienced on a phone, with it’s zooming capabilities you can ‘browse’ a webpage the way you want it. The same browser lets you subscribe and store your favourite feeds; I can tell you I haven’t missed a thing on the news side though I had planned to disconnect completely for at least a couple of days

I could perfectly browse my MyStrands Mobile account, I had some problems though listening to the Real Player audio previews due to some tough operator proxy settings. I read Justin Oberman selected my Connecting Cultures through Music article as Post of the Week of his Carnival of the Mobilists #41 hosting. I’ll accept the invitation for the brownies, Paula! I also installed the Free Mobilists’ Mobile RSS Reader package so I stayed tuned on my mobilists friends’ feeds, nicely bundled.

I wouldn’t type loads of email with that phone - there are other models for that, like the BlackBerry killer, but I could easily configure my regular email account and check my mails once in a while. I read Caroline launched the Wireless Industry Partnership and she informed me the 2nd CTIA Gathering of the Mobilists was fully booked for the 2nd time, great!

Well, this is basically a sum-up of the apps I used the most upto now, there’s still lots to discover - oh that SIP Client - and Visual Radio, no stations avilable yet in Catalonia… but too much to mention in one post, so I will have to update you on more experiences I guess…

So, what has this article to do with my title? Simply, it looks much more obvious that Nokia can add now easily more music features and storage to it’s phones than seeing Apple creating all those phone features to the iPod…

And oh btw: one of the features I appreciate the most is the ‘one touch button’ to switch from music listening to an incoming call and the ability to create a ringtone from any song in my library. You won’t get bored with this phone, Nokia is listening to it’s users… Mobile 2.0 is definately here… Driewerf hoera!

… Then he came home and did a Phone Software Update… better get used to it!

Charlie has an interesting post bringing sideloading to our attention. I didn’t knew the term as such but, when reading his post, I realised I was a severe ’sideloader’. From Wikipedia:

“Sideload is a term used in internet culture, similar to “upload” and “download”. It is the process of moving data between two web servers. Sideload is now becoming the popular term for getting music files from the internet to peripheral devices such as cell phones and PDAs. It can also mean getting music from a PC to a cell phone.”

Charlie made a good point that sideloading should be made easier on mobile phones. Not everybody finds his needs in the operators or 3rd parties music collections, or doesn’t want to pay another time for songs he has already on his pc - and cannot transfer them to the phone due to DRM restrictions, or just doesn’t want to go another time through the sometimes painfull process of OTA downloads - due to breaking connections or having paid for a corrupted file (which still happens too often with unreliable 3rd party downloads).

Personally, sideloading podcasts to my phone has been one of my favourite pc to mobile related tasks this year and since I got a N91, it seems I’m going to keep doing this for a while. I’m really amazed with the phone’s capabilities, but more on this in another post.

I am particulary happy with the “set as ringtone” feature I can use for whatever song I have in my music player collection - graciously linked to my iTunes on my laptop. I think Nokia made a very good move here by providing elements for users that never download music Over-The-Air. I’m sure I’m not the only one who could never find a decent ringtone ‘expressing my personality’ on an operators’ portal. Just trying to find a tune was not always a model for a good user experience. Making this function available for people like me creates an extra fun layer… I can set a ringtone from whatever record in my collection, way to go!

Downloading podcasts OTA is not really recommendable yet - especially without flat-rate fees as here in Spain, so I’m just sideloading them to my phone. I will try to download them however over any public wi-fi I encounter while being on the road.

Besides, I don’t really understand the discussion on wi-fi use vs. 3G OTA downloads. I have been testing my own habits for a while now, figuring out when I would use a wi-fi connection instead of a 3G connection to connect to the internet. To stay connected to the operators network is crucial when you’re ‘moving’, but have you ever wondered how much time people actually use their mobile phones when they’re NOT on the move? At work, or spending time at home or at a friends’ place, surfing from a public wi-fi hotspot, waiting at the airport, etc.

Probably more then 80 % of the time we use our mobile phone, we’re not on the move! Think about it! Which means people are just going to use more sideloading and will connect to wi-fi or other networks and hotspots whenever they’re available. Never read this in a report!

“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

Listen to the podcast of ‘design ethnographer’ Kelly Goto of Gotomedia at Webvisions 2006.

“In this enlightening session, design ethnographer and web veteran Kelly Goto discusses the evolution of Web, handheld, and product interfaces and their cultural impact. Learn how companies are utilizing ethnographic-based research to conduct rapid, immersive studies of people and their lifestyles to inform the usefulness and viability of interfaces both online and offline.”

Kelly takes designing for ubiquitous computing one step further, she calls it Designing for Lifestyle.

“Interaction design is no longer limited to the web. The concept of user experience is being redefined as multiple delivery methods of social and business interaction merge into our lifestyles. As design migrates from the web to mobile devices we carry and interact with on a daily basis, our approach must also shift into cycles of design and research centered around the way people actually live.”

Podcast link - About Interface: Designing for Lifestyle. More podcasts of the event are available here.

Are we living throught the birth of a new industry? I believe recommendation and discovery technologies are critical for the development of the digital revolution. If the search technologies became a need when information went digital and people started to need tools to find relevant info, the recommendation technologies are needed in a society that consumes digital content.

The trend is clear: more and more digital content out there, more high quality Internet access, more devices with connectivity, all will allow people to easily access and enjoy content. But we will need help to find the relevant content for us, for each specific moment.

MusicStrands are organising a Summer School next September 12, 13 in Bilbao, Spain: Recommenders06.com - The Present and Future of Recommender Systems. They are putting together the brightest minds in the field of recommender technologies, and some of the companies defining its use.

Check the amazing list of speakers and the agenda here. Lecturers include some of the brightest minds of Yahoo, Inc., Netflix, Inc., Sun Microsystems Labs, ChangingWorlds Ltd., IBM Research, Wired Magazine and some representants of Universities specializing in this field.

The Summer School will bring together the concepts and practices of Recommender Systems and is intended for both researchers (including Ph.D. students) and for professionals and managers who want to benefit from the best information on Recommender Systems and personalization advances.

Enrollment is free but will be limited to 60 attendees. The class will fill quickly, so don’t wait to apply! As the number of participants is limited, an application should be sent as early as possible, but definitely before July 1st.

Ten scholarships for up to 1,200 euros in transportation and housing fees are available for promising students. Candidates should be pursuing or intending to pursue a Ph.D. in the area of Recommender Systems and/or Social Networking.

I can only hope you read this in time!

It’s another honour for me to welcome you to number 33 of the Carnival of The Mobilists. At 33, “L’âge du Christ”, as we say in Belgium, it doesn’t hurt to spend a bit of time on reflexion, so I hope you don’t mind taking the next two paragraphs for this cause.

The thing I like about the Carnival when looking back at the previous issues is the learning curve we all seem to go through with our personal opinion on mobile related stuff but more important is that thanks to this open-source community and collaborative writing, we all learn from each other from wherever we are and in whatever mobile connected environment we might be, since technology and the networks don’t evolve at the same speed in different places.

Different business models are applied in different countries but whether we communicate over voice, by sms, mms, moblog our camera pictures, read our feeds on the mobile, or listen to podcasts on our cell, it’s all about communication and at the Carnival of the Mobilists we find all sorts of people writing their thoughts, experiences and ideas on mobile and wireless: techies, designers, developers, philosophers, journalists, marketers, there’s always something interesting to read (or now also to listen to), that’s the great thing about the Carnival of the Mobilists: it’s all about collective and intuitive intelligence, experiences, sharing ideas, discussion, the joy of writing and reading, the passion for anything mobile and last but not least the fun to enjoy it when bringing all this elements together.

This weeks’ Carnival of the Mobilists has all of this again with a solid dose of quality! Thanks to our sponsor Khosla Ventures for supporting us. And now enough reflexion, let’s get back to action!

This week there’s more then just tech and testosterone, we have no less then 5 female contributions - regulars Darla, Emily, Keren, Judy and Xen were not even in this week - a missed opportunity to take over, girls but I’m really happy to see that this group seems to be setting the tone for more balance of the sexes in our sector. Bringing in more female experience, intuition, diversity and fun can never harm, so ‘noblesse oblige’ for a gentlemen like me, let’s start with the women

Newcomer and psychologist Dr. Deborah Serani has an entry on Ringxiety: The Next New Disorder. “Do you have the sensation that your cell phone is ringing or vibrating when it’s not?” Check out yourself I would say…

Kelly Goto writes about the introduction of LBS into personal and family life and put some interesting thoughts forward whether this is an interesting move forward: “… are families ready for the shift? Is this considered a luxury to be able to track, or is it an invasion of privacy? Is the tracking accurate enough in urban areas and are their kids going to be OK with the lack of privacy in return for the liberty of having a mobile device of their own?” Kelly talked to actual parents and reveals some interesting insights in this post.

Other newcomer BiBi Cambridge comes in with a surprising sociological input on how the London’s’ underground gay scene is using Bluetooth to get together: “Yes, these days if you make sure you’re on the last carriage of any tube train in London and you whack on your Bluetooth (it works underground you see) you may be surprised to find that the paired devices to be found all around you have names like …” I won’t tell you where she got off the next stop but it’s definitely not a usual spot here at the CotM. Satisfaction guaranteed?

Stefanie Rieger gives us her insights on mobile games in Casual Mobile Snacks For Everyone: “Do current mobile games allow for quiet time, playful time, competitive time, learning time, contemplative time, silly time? We have a unique opportunity with mobile devices in that they can be insanely personal and private while being incredibly social and contextual (presence, location etc.) They can offer small moments of quiet play or learning—no peers, no pressure—or small moments of highly networked interaction and competition. Not to mention hybrids of the two.” Refreshing blog, and my favourite post of this week! Do check also her selection of June’s Best Industry Podcasts. Excellent choice if you ask me.

Which brings me to another podcast this week: Debi Jones did a really interesting interview with other mobilist Martin Sauter available as podcast on Media Slaves. They discuss mobile network capacity as it relates to mobile social media. Must hear!

Back to the boys brings us as usual some very excellent tech related reflexion from regulars such as Daniel Taylor on “Multiple Architectures for Mobility“, Tom Soft on “Another Flash from J2ME Developer Perspective“, Anders Borg on “Java ME, still not Write One, Run Anywhere“, Tam Hanna on “Investition security in the 3G content business“, David Beers on “How wireless becomes free“. Dennis Bournique - finally got his family name, from Wap Review does a review of the mobile edition of Yes.com, a site that tells you what song’s playing on the radio. Hello?

Jim Downing over at Smart Mobs reports on the mobile Linux-based platform independent foundation of some big mobile handset manufacturers (Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics), along with mobile operators NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone.

Justin Oberman at MOpocket stumbled upon - not the web 2.0 social bookmarks site - a giant interactive digital billboard on the corner of 50th and Broadway. Kind of a surprise for a New Yorker it seems, especially when the campaign is to celebrate BBC World’s entry to the USA.

Italian newcomer Fabrizio Errante asks “What do we do with our old phones?” and urges organizations to start thinking about the number of soaring devices, month by month.

C. Enrique Ortiz gives his opinions and analysis on the Future of Messaging: “The next level of messaging is about enhanced messaging that is always on, messaging that can be active or passive based on user preferences, messaging that leverages many media channels, where presence, personal data, and social aspects are all integrated. The next level of messaging is about understanding and maximizing the mobile context and thus the messaging experience.” How about that?

And last but not least I recommend you read the latest ponderings of Scott Shaffer on the relation between mobile search and the physical hyper linking of things: “There will come a point when there is more Internet traffic from mobile devices than PCs. What happens to search engines then?” And “What happens when every can of Coke can be hyper-linked to the net? Or every Elton John CD, or every menu, concert ticket, street sign, business card, bag of Pringles.” This is definitely one of THE hot topics for the coming months. Be sure you’re going to read about it somewhere at the Carnival of the Mobilists!

So, that’s it for this week! Thanks for reading, if you got until here, and thanks to all the participants this week for their great contributions. Again, another goldmine of valuable information on anything mobile; please head over and read their posts!

Next week the Carnival is hosted by the Wireless World Forum. If you’re not a member yet, why not become a Carnival of the Mobilists host and get your free subscription (worth GBP 200 to join). For details check the mobili.st website.

* image by Andrew Berglund