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Twitteriffic went crazy on this one…With a simple blogpost on jaiku.com, Jyri Engeström announced Jaiku got acquired by Google. Jaiku has been HOT since its beta launch in July 2006. Jaiku is an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones. Jaiku, Ltd. (Helsinki based) was founded in February, 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland.

Jaiku’s blog mentions “new user sign-ups have been limited for the time being. The idea here is to enable our team to get right to work with Google’s engineers on delivering a new, better service to you as quickly as we can instead of spending our efforts on optimizing the current back-end. Existing users will still be able to invite their friends, and those who are not yet on Jaiku can send us a request for an invitation to join.”

As GrandCentral (another smart ‘mobile next generation service’ acquired by Google in July), Jaiku will continue its service with its current closed beta user base for a while. GPhone or not, Google is once more taking mobile serious, at least the company is preparing a solid mobile OS.

On November 16, 2006, IBDNetwork will host its sixth one-day Under the Radar event, which will feature 32 emerging startups in the mobile sector. Under the Radar will take place at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, CA.

You’ll see a collection of companies in areas such as mobile content/video; sms and messaging; location/presence; voice services; marketing and advertising services; and a host of enabling technologies. It’s always a steller line-up of stealth companies and certainly a gathering of leading industry insiders and top-tier press/bloggers, a great chance to learn about the future of mobility- it’s challenges and opportunities from consumer adoption to monetization of services. Other participants include CNET-Fox Interactive-Google-Microsoft-Motorola-MTV-Qualcomm-Orange-Yahoo! and more.

I’m going to the conference, together with Ignacio Mondine, who will present his company Daem Interactive at the conference. It’s going to be very interesting to see and meet all those startups innovating wthin the mobility area; I’m especially interested in the real innovative companies and how they deploy their market strategy in function from different markets such as US and Europe.

Companies currently confirmed are:

4info | Admob | BubbleMotion | CascadaMobile | ComVu | Daem Interactive | EQO | Flurry | GreyStripe | Juice Wireless | Loopt | MobiFusion | Mobileplay | Mobo | MotionDSP | Nexage | Ontela | PayWi | Pinger | Pixpulse | Pixsense | Plusmo | Rocketalk | Renzoo | ScanR | Sharpcast | TinyPictures | Veeker | Voxlib | Winksite

I haven’t seen such a bunch of startups working in mobile together for a while… How about you?

Now here come the goodies for my blog readers:

m-trends.org readers can submit the best “under the radar” mobility company not already on the currently confirmed company list (see above); in other words you can digg one of your favourite mobile startups into the conference! – the winner will get a ticket to the conference ($495 value) and will get mentioned on the “under the radar” blog, as well as a “profile” post on the winning company as well.

Debbie Landa, CEO and Founder of IBDNetwork (the organizers of the conference) will judge herself the best submission done here at m-trends.org. All you need to do is send me an email (click my name in the sidebar) with subject “Under The Radar” and mention the startup you think should be present at the conference. Deadline for contest entries is Wednesday November 8 at midnight (CET) - which will give the winner a week of lead time to make travel arrangements.

And for those who don’t win or participate to the contest, m-trends.org readers receive the discounted price of $425 (save $70) by registering here (just mention m-trends.org).

Oh btw: anyone who would like to meet me while in SF or Bay Area between November 15-21, drop me a line too