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The next Mobile Monday Madrid on April 21, 2008 will dive into the wonders of Mobile Messaging 2.0. This time invited speakers are Jan-Joost Kraal, VP of Mobile of eBuddy (12 million unique users! see recent TechCrunch coverage), Tim von Toerne, founder and VP Product of Hamburg-based Cellity and Enrico Noseda, Skype’s Director of Business Development Telecoms.

“The mobile messaging market, like many others, is in a perpetual state of change, with phenomenal growth that has taken directions few could have predicted. What started a few years ago as the emergence of groundbreaking market shifts is now coalescing into a new vision for using and enabling mobile messaging technology –– Mobile Messaging 2.0. (…) It also incorporates an emerging set of principles that will guide operators in the development of next generation mobile messaging networks. At its heart, it is a fundamental shift away from ‘network defined messaging’ to ‘user defined messaging’ that has the potential to benefit everyone.” (from the Mobile Messaging 2.0 White Paper from Airwide Solutions)

About:

eBuddy is a free web based messenger that enables you to chat with your MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, MySpace and AIM buddies. When you’re on the road, outdoors or traveling you can use the mobile version of eBuddy to chat with your buddies. Every mobile device that supports xHTML or WAP can be used; this includes Cell Phones, PDA’s, Sony PSP and Nintendo DS! Check out the Mobile page for more info.

In order to enable mobile phone users to connect to the world, Cellity introduces its new mobile email feature. At Mobile Monday Madrid, Cellity will showcase the latest addition to cellity Communicator, a mobile application for powerful mobile communication. The feature-rich Java software bundles very useful functions like free text messaging with up to 2048 characters, traditional SMS for just 9 ct., international calls at up to a 90% savings, easy conference calls and a free backup service over the air. The software is completely free of charge.

Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Skype created a little piece of software that makes communicating with people around the world easy and fun. With Skype you can say hello or share a laugh with anyone, anywhere. And if both of you are on Skype, it’s free.

A networking party will follow the conference. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaymadrid.com/subscribe/ and reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

All details at Mobile Monday Madrid website.

2.0, Announcements, cellity, ebuddy, events, innovation, madrid, messaging, messenger, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, mobile messaging 2.0, Mobile Monday, mobile social media, mobile web, mobilemessaging, mobilemonday, mobilemondaymadrid, skype, social media, startups, Trends, usability, user experience

iNNOVATE!europe is one of these rare conferences bringing together talented European tech startups, analysts, business angels and VC’s. It’s the first time I attented this conference and I’m definately going to put it on my agenda for next year, not only because the conference was impeccablement organised by Chris and Cathy from the Guidewire Group but most of all, it’s an event to catch up with some of the most relevant startups active in the next generation internet and mobile technology/services and to meet lots of professionals working in the ecosystems surrounding these startup innovations.

iNNOVATE!europe’07 presentations and demo’s are presented in the charming Theatro Principal in the city of Zaragoza, who is hosting also the EXPO 2008 World’s Fair. The iNNOVATE!europe’07 Innovators can demo in the halls and mezzanine surrounding the theatre in a very relaxed and intimate athmosphere, ideally for entrepreneurs to catch up with the angels and VC’s and press to demo and explain their products/services more in detail; the food served between the breaks was excellent, so kudos to the whole organzation who did a great job creating comfort in a nice environment, ideally to stimulate business relations and conversations.

Some in-depth interviews done by Chris Shipley with Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO of FON; Tariq Krim, Founder & CEO of Netvibes and some interesting panel discussions on topics ranging from Open Source to Open Innovation, the importance of R&D, A New Breed of Investors, Mobile Technology at an Economic Crossroad and Building Business Playing Games.

Below a wrapup of my impressions on the presentations and demo’s given by Fring, Mobiluck, Yoono, Plum, Wisher, Smaato, sMeet, G.ho.st, CoolIris, hiClip, IMinent, Trampoline Systems, Webwag, and many others, all mainly focused on next generation web and mobile services. No worries if you haven’t heard from these companies yet, their names are going to resonant a lot the coming months in the blogosphere. I’m not only focusing on the mobile companies who presented in Zaragosa but also on the next generation Web services since I believe the next wave of mobile ‘connected’ services will mainly come from existing web services going mobile, and the existing and new ones coming on mobile only will need to integrate and synchronize easily with web services… think one ID, one login to access all your communities and services from your mobile, I won’t be able to manage my multiple logins/passwords and services from my mobile phone as long as this process isn’t made easy.

The first presentation was done by seasoned entrepreneur Zyn Schreiber who founded G.ho.st (Global Hosted Operated SysTem), a completely new, Web-based operating system which interoperates with the Web’s leading software applications to deliver fully functional Virtual Computer with which you can make your personal computing environment accessible from any browser - single desktop, single sign-in and single file system, in one word, the desktop replacement system we all are waiting for. To me projects like G.ho.st. make a lot of sense, I’m managing I don’t know how many accounts, community services and hosted services, it’s getting harder and harder to keep track of all the elements one need to manage online. Some of the benefits of G.ho.st. are upload everything that is on your desktop to the g.ho.st virtual desktop and organise everything through a virtual file system, change languages in seconds - ever tried that in Windows, huh? Technology is still in alpha, public beta release soon.

VoxIQ presented a new speech recognition technology using artificial intelligence to overcome current limitations in this domain, sounds great but I think we’re pretty far away still from using efficient speech solutions in especially mobile technology - I can’t help it but I always get a vision of a civilization of people talking to their devices while the real people are walking next to them, imagine a meeting room where everyone starts to talk to his device to activate silent mode for example, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me as of now…

Berlin-Based startup sMeet had a great presentation introducing a new communications paradigm called ’social reality communications’: live communications in a kind of Second Life kind of environment, imagine real video chat and phone conversations within Second Life, connect though mobile, instant messaging, VoIP in virtual tv shows , virtual trade fairs, etc. TV 2.0 here I come! Screenagers - as Douglas Rushkoff calls them - will love this, living in virtual worlds, connecting to real people! Developed over a period of 4 years by a small team in stealth mode, several patents have been filed. I LOVE this one, sMeet guys R.O.C.K.!

“Investor of the Year” Dr. Hermann Hauser, Cofounder of Amadeus Capital, interviewed by Chris Shipley made some good points on many companies do mainly software: what about hardware innovation and investment? He believes in the future of machine-to-machine interactions and flexible displays as one of the major innovations in ICT the coming years. BTW: did you know that 60% of internet traffic coming from P2P video?

Some interesting views were explored during the panel discussion with Martin Duval from Orange, Maria Marced (!) former senior executive at Intel and Hans Van Grieken, VP at Capgemini on the role of R&D in the innovation process. Maria Marced expressed that innovation is all about excitement in the first place but also about lowering the entry part, enabling the ecosystems around your product/service, cost-efficiency, developing the right partnerships. Above all, brands need a focus, she demonstrated with the vision from ‘intel inside’ to a ‘leap ahead’: Intel thinks it really can improve people’s life through technology, a brand like Philips focused on Sense & Simplicity. Interesting view expressed by Martin Duval from Orange Next on Orange going convergent as a thread on their core business but at the same time a challenge as to improve their core business and discover new area’s; he explained what media and network convergence for a Telco is about: some partners becoming competitors, the need to build new and different partnerships, creation of new groups of innovation (satellites) in different area’s but he mentioned also that the stronger the brand is, the more difficult it gets for them to get into the participative media business culture (!)

More presentations on Rich Media getting Richer with BT’s spin-off Real Time Content explaining their patented technology called Adaptive Media, real time content intelligently customised to different profiles to fit the needs of the audience, publisher or contetn owner. Have a look at their demo at realtimecontent.com.

I twitterred the term ‘cinematic browsing‘ when CoolIris introduced their ‘Think Outside of the Browser’ mantra. Soujanya Bhumkar and his team of talented Indian developers presented PicLens, a widget/plugin/extension for the ones like Google/Firefox/Flickr to enable full screen advertising and image viewing, cinematic media discovery for the Web, quite impressive!

hiClip presented a solution to enhanced video integration for social networks of all sizes, check it out at gethiclip.com

After lunch break more demo’s focused on personalising the web, starting with IMinent, a French startup launching EMOVIDS, lets users choose their own videos as a source of self-expression, replacing smileys and winks. It’s basically a set of tools and a community of Instant Messaging users willing to expand the IM experience.

I believe this is a really interesting take, considering there are 750 million instant messaging users on the Web - Microsoft & Yahoo together take 80% of that market share, that’s twice as much as MySpace users (!)

One of my favorite presentations came from Paris-based Webwag with their WOD (Widget On Demand). Led by Franck Poisson (ex-Google France MD), he presented how easily you can cut, drag & drop articles & sections from your webpage to your personalised web page. My notes from the demo tell = impressive! Franck and his team understood a lot about next generation web & mobile: “it’s not about browsing, it’s all about synchronisation”. Webwag was one of the only companies presenting a live demo on the mobile phone showing their Mobidget solution - still in alpha, it looked really cool and easy; choosing a wallpaper from flickr on your phone, switching between feeds, etc. this is quite a powerfull widget environment.

Criteo provides predictive tools based on users’ tastes and behaviours, also called collaborative filtering (pushing the right product to the right person), an interesting technology indeed, but to me Criteo lacked some maturity in technology, I have seen more impressive real-time personalised recommendation solutions by the team from MyStrands for example. Interesting to note here is that recommendation is all about discovery, two different types of behavioural desision are differentiated here: search using keywords (rational decision) and the discovery process through recommendations (impulsive decision).

Mixed feelings of positivism and negativism in the Power Angels panel, composed of:

* Klaus Hommels, Venture Partner, Benchmark Capital
* Oliver Jung, Investment Manager, Adinvest
* Saul Klein, Venture Partner, Index Ventures
* Simon Levene, Partner, Accel
* Mark Tluszcz, Managing Partner, Mangrove Capital Partners

Here my rough notes from that session:

- 20 relevant vc’s and 20 angels in europe
- 30 investments last year, diversification (oliver)
- a lot less opportunities in EU then elsewhere
- just less deals in EU
- too much advertising as biz model for tech startups, Oliver likes to see more real pure business models build on revenues
- 50% funded seed companies will not survive
- too many companies on to few opportunities
- more people starting companies then people joining companies
- great talent pool in europe
- great examples serve as role model
- first 50 people building a team are fundamental!
- need more people joining teams than starting companies

Conclusion: it’s all about smart entrepreneurs and passionate people

Another of my favorite demo’s came from UK-based Trampoline Systems, led by reformed anthropologist Charles Armstrong. Charles showed us some of the most impressive to come in business applications using social networks, a lot of relevance and impressive visualisation technologies. Get a peek at trampolinesystems.com

Telepark showed us their personal web application solution telepark.wiki, using ajax-based wiki’s to improve collaboration. I see a lot of this kind of collaborative knowledge stores coming to market for the entreprise and small business.

Final presentation of Day 1 came from Andrew Grill of Seeker Wireless introducing their Seeker Zone, a Fixed Mobile Substitution Solution utilising available measurements on existing, unmodified mobile handsets, coupled with a understanding of the radio environment to provide low-cost, high accurancy, mass market mobile location without GPS. One application of their technology can support location-based billing, also called HomeZone as well as location search and mobile advertising. Andrew claimed their solution to be 50 times more accurate than cell-ID location solutions (in some cases). A paragraph to read twice to understand but do ask a demo when you meet Andrew, this is definately interesting and very different of what I have seen in this area before. If you haven’t noticed: location is a complex thing and remember GPS doesn’t work inside buildings

The evening all participants were invited to a nice cocktail and dinner in the Gran Hotel, ideal for all to improve their PRM - Personal Relationship Management, always handy in the days of Open Innovation business culture.

Eduardo Sciammarella from ProtoMobl kicked off day two with Fidg’t, unifying your online identities across multiple social networks. Fidg’t then provides updates from your network of friends… a kind of social networking adress book accessible across the Web, on the desktop, and from your mobile. Eduardo’s team brings more than 15 years of combined consumer product and software experience from Sony. Another company that understood it’s not about browsing, it’s about synchronisation! The demo was very simple & stupid straightforward integrating flickr & last.fm to see friends, pictures and know what they’re listening to. A web 2.0 unified platform, integrator of mutliple web 2.0 tools like blog/calendar/flickr/myspace/amazon/music/maps/etc, everything looked very easy on the phone demo (still in beta).

Webjam presented another solution of how to remix the web, the way you want, but more interesting was the interview with one of the key figures of the remixable web culture: Tariq Krim, Founder & CEO of Netvibes. I do not need to introduce you to Netvibes - if you don’t know about them, check it out yourself; below some scratches of my notes of the interview:

- needed better tool for himself - too many feeds, something to tie all gadgets together
- inspired by Rafat Ali in Wired on paidcontent.org (!)
- most popular link on del.icio.us on Day 1 of release (15.000 users)
- some days later 50.000 users, now reaching 10 million users
- netvibes created wiki through wikia to refine the product
- live translation tool, translations through communities
- work with 126 brands worldwide in 1,5 month
- everybody will need a syndication strategy for RSS feeds
- netvibes upto 10% of feedburner traffic (!)
- it’s all about personalisation
- interesting to see that google & others copy netvibes widgets, it grows the pie
- 400 million user potential, need quick and neat execution, available on every browser, keep the interface simple
- need a standard, open-source the technology
- it’s the widget economy, everybody ads value to everybody, give more sources out to the community
- spending zero on marketing 1st year, work through bloggers
- next generation of early adopters want simplicity

Tariq and Netvibes came right on time, it’s what users were waiting for, he and his team provided a simple and neat solution for a real need, a bright future ahead - chapeau!

More demo’s:

Yoono is an innovative Firefox add-on that instantly suggests similar sites, related blogs and people sharing the same interests while you are surfing - a bit similar to Stumble Upon. Facts: 700.000 people using Yoono in very short time!

Ekaabo develops social communities for special interest groups, one login to “jump” from one social community to the next with one content input module… With web 2.0 creating more then 10 “catch all” communities per day, no sincecure at all I would say. It’s called Communipedia, check it out here.

Another of my favorite presentatons and demo’s was done by Hans Peter Brondmo from Plum. Plum plans to become the way you collect and share all of the cool, interesting, and important stuff in your digital life, in a compliment of all the services you already use like Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Flickr, iTunes, etc. Very impressive marked in my notes: one click to collect and share in your plum collection, goal oriented collaboration, all about fun and self expression, exactly what I need! Still in private beta but opening soon to public, stay tuned here.

Moderated by the illuminated Thomas Crampton, another interesting panel on Mobile technology followed after the break with Scott Cooper, VP Mobility Solutions at Nokia; Augustín Núñez Castaín, Handsets & Services Innovation Director at Telefónica Móvilés España and Avi Shechter, CEO of Fring. Some notes on that panel:

- big intersection between web 2.0 conversations and being present in a network/community, this model comes now to mobility
- next generation mobile services will be monetised in different ways
- roaming call from Helsinki to NYC and back: roaming cost 2, 45 $ while through wi-fi 0,04$ (!)
- UGC (User Generated Content) is really changing the face of society
- it’s all about the value created around the ecosystem
- remember Google & Yahoo are not FREE, it’s a different way of paying, of collecting money from users
- new ways to collect money will arise, like targeted advertising, personal profiling, added-value services
- rich presence services - it’s the blend of technology and individual content creation
- right time to open up and have the right tarification plans for early adopters
- people want to pay for a good mobile service
- upload of personal content will become the next wave (personalisation, tuning of music, uploading your life with pictures, video…
- as for the operator: it’s a matter of where to put and manage the bandwith and how to garantuee a seamless integration for our users…
- sharing personal content, user-generated content
- adapted TV programs, still a need to find the right broadcast solution
- explosion of new buisness models will come, the opportunity for the operator is that it has the user’s trust
- there will be low-cost carrier and low quality but also room for high quality servcies, connectivvity, device managemenent, storage for contents, handset replacement, entreprise applications, etc…
- related to mobile 2.0 startups in need to connect to operators: operators have the experience, the support and the billing experience

And more startups in mobile!

Spanish startup Whisher provides a software application that you install on your computer and helps you get free WiFi access all around the world. Additionally it offers a range of tools and services that will take your wireless experience to a new level. AS FON, the Whisher network is powered by users sharing their WiFi. I’m a firm believer in urban wi-fi solutions just because I use my mobile phone about 80 % of my time near a wi-fi network (at home, office, friends’ places) - what needs to be done here is unifying wifi networks and create a seamless switching inbetween different networks such as 3G. I couldn’t really make out of the presentation how fast their netwok is deployed but Wisher is definately on my radar.

One of the most promising VoIP and Messaging applications for the mobile is definately Fring. The ease of use - try it here - and how they integrate Skype, Google Talk, IM, Twitter and SIP other clients in one application is really cool. Since Avi sended me an invitation from his phone to download Fring straight from the wap url , I have been using it regularly and it works really well. The only problem today with VoIP apps on the phone is that you never know who’s calling you, real time presence, ok I’m all for it but I would like to know who’s calling me, I just get too many unknown calls now, if you can’t judge their origin, urgency or importancy right away, it’s still a bit of a downer… that’s where the operators will come in soon I guess. I will be writing more on Fring here, all in all, it’s without a doubt one of THE next generation services that matters on mobile today.

Another real cool service comes from Paris-based Mobiluck, seeded by Flemish Big Bang Ventures, Olivier Chouraki showed me one of the sweetest mobile web apps I have seen lately. He send me an invitation by Bluetooth to connect to their community (asking gently my permission before , I created my profile in 2 minutes and could immediately see the other 64 people in my neighborhood - which showed how easy a good application can go viral It’s a mobile messaging and social networking service that just works and will be available on mobile and PC. I’m really interested how they will develop.

Last demo I saw was from Harald Neidhardt from Smaato, presenting a mobile advertising platform for the delivery of targeted in-application mobile advertising to Smartphones, an interesting niche in the lately crowded mobile advertising space. Harald had a real good presentation and showed that a good idea just works when it’s well executed, he anounced current 1 to 10M page impressions per month. Check it out!

The last interview was with “Entrepreneur of the Year” Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO of FON, I covered more on this interview already here and more on his projects here… I had to travel back early and missed the last panel. Sorry if I left anyone out, must be I really didn’t notice or that I will write about more in detail soon This was a really interesting event for me, I hope my notes are usefull for my readers too. Thanks to Chris and Cathy from Guidewire and Lucie-Anne from Ballou PR for inviting me!

Here’s my complete Flickr set of the event. Gosh, I realise this is a really long post, kudos to you if you got until here, you must be an analyst

07, adaptive media, affinitiz, Analysis, angels, Announcements, Awards, business angels, cinematic browsing, cocomment, convergence, CoolIris, criteo, ekaabo, eqo, europe, events, fidgt, Fring, G.ho.st, guidewire group, hiClip, im, IMinent, innovate, innovate!europe07, innovate europe 07, innovateeurope, innovation, instant messaging, lbs, location based, messaging, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Events, mobile marketing, Mobile RSS, mobile web, Mobiluck, Operators, pageflakes, perpetual innovation, personalisation, plum, protomobl, real time content, seeker wireless, skype, Smaato, sMeet, social media, spanish startups, startups, teleparkm todeka project, Trampoline Systems, Trends, Ubiquitous Acces, ubiquitous marketing, vc, venture capital, voxiq, wavestorm, we media, web 2.0, webjam, Webwag, wi fi, Wisher, Yoono, zaragoza

It was one of those inspiring days yesterday at Martin Varsavsky’s ranch in Menorca, an event gathering originally intended for the Menorcan tech scene ending up with so much interest outside of the island and Spain, the event TechTalk Menorca ended up with some 100 enthusiast entrepreneurs, developers and pure geeks mostly working in the next generation web ‘connected’ services.

Marko Ahtisaari introduced Blyk and Dopplr, Anil de Mello gave us a preview on Mobuzz going completely user-driven soon, Ivan and Rodrigo anounced a complete update of vpod.tv for their 1st anniversary on May 15 - check out their updates during next week! Tariq Krim explained how Netvibes got from 15.000 users on day 1 to 10 million users without a logo and spending 0 on marketing (!) Ola Ahlvarsson from Result explained how to create an ‘ecosystom for growth’ and Michael Jackson (no joke!) how Skype will continue ‘enabling the worlds conversations’.

Hans Peter Brondmo impressed already at iNNOVATE!europe’07 with Plum, still in private beta, to be launched on May 24. Plum is a free service that lets you save anything you care about – web pages, videos, photos, documents, emails, feeds, and more – and organize everything into collections. Something I have been looking for since longtime, I’m sure we’ll hear a lot from this new service the coming months.

Then Thomas Crampton and Loïc Le Meur did a dynamic and funny presentation on their next project, still in beta obviously, but already with a great vision of things to come, instant media now! Jonas Birgersson explained us about the infrastructure 2.0 plans of Labs2, something I can just dream about now but they’re making this already a reality in homeland Sweden. Ricardo Galli of Meneame explained how, without having a clue or a plan, his site became one of the most used website in Spain.

The sessions closed with a session on online games with Alexis Bonte from yesnomayB and Mathieu Nouzareth from cafe.com, anyway both worth following.

Martin Varsavsky invited us for a cocktail at his precious Torrenova finca not without giving us an update of just released stuff from FON, Gmail Uploader and Fon.gs, 2 simple features no one seemed to have thought of before. Check the What’s New section on their website, always worth checking!

All in all, it was a great day with great people in Menorca and a superb initiative from Martin to bring all these interesting people together to learn, share and connect. Entrepreneurship is all about a good idea and execution, and we have seen a lot of those yesterday. Stay tuned for a lot more exciting stuff to come from the next generation web connected services on this side of the ocean

My Flickr pictures here, Loïc’s video feed from yesterday here, you have to get through the morning boat excursion first however

UPDATE May 14: Loïc just posted seperate video’s of the TechTalk presentations on his blog here.

More pictures of the event here and here.

Anil de Mello, blyk, convergence, dopplr, Entrepreneurship, events, fon, Friends, Fun, Hans Peter Brondmo, innovation, International Herald Tribune, Ivan Communod, Jonas Birgersson, labs2, Loic Le Meur, Marko Ahtisaari, martin varsavsky, Mashup, meneame, menorca, Michael Jackson, mobuzz, netvibes, Ola Ahlvarsson, plum, Result, Ricardo Galli, Rodrigo Sepulveda, skype, social media, spanish startups, startups, Tariq Krim, techtalk, Thomas Crampton, Torrenova2007, vpod.tv, we media, web 2.0, wi fi

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.

Announcements, Awards, blyk, dopplr, fon, innovate!europe07, innovate europe, innovation, joost, labs2, loiclemeur, martin varsavsky, meneame, menorca, mobuzz, n95, netvibes, nokia, plazes, plum, skype, spanish startups, startups, technorati, techtalk, techtalkmenorca, truphonem onet, vpod

Wednesday Nokia anounced it’s Gizmo collaboration for the N80 Internet Edition, Thursday I made my first SIP call with Andy straight from my laptop to his wi-fi connected n80 somewhere out there in the hills of California. The quality and easyness of use of Gizmo connecting to a mobile phone was excellent; on the other side of the (un)wire, Andy states:

My experience with it has been nothing less than spectacular. Fully integrated VoIP on a very high quality mobile phone is a dream come true.

I beam the experience!

The plugin is not yet available for other phones but the news is a blessing coming to aid soon now for my recent phonebills. SIP is the most popular Voice over IP (VoIP) standard. SIP enables two or more people to make phone calls to each other using the Internet to carry the call. SIP calls are part of the Internet you get great features like free voicemail to email and phone numbers from many places in the world no matter where you live.

From the Nokia pressrelease:

Nokia N80 Internet Edition users download the free Gizmo VoIP settings from the Download! folder in their device, automatically beginning the installation process. During installation, users go through a simple two-step process for creating a free account that they’ll use to make Internet calls. Other capabilities, such as customizing voicemail greetings, purchasing Gizmo Call Out credit for dialing landlines and mobile devices and managing Gizmo account settings are available by using the Nokia N80 Internet Edition to browse the www.gizmovoip.com web site.

Kudos to Nokia and Gizmo for creating such an easy to read and understand miniwebsite. All details on the collaboration can be found for web- and mobile users, every single step to start using Gizmo on the N80 is documented with screenshots and easy to read explanations. I can’t wait to try this on my phone myself. For the lucky ones who own a N80, you can download the Gizmo N80 client here.

Computerworld reports on some analysis from Darren Siddall, an analyst at Gartner:

“The seemingly opposing offerings from Nokia indicate a general hedging of bets in the mobile world, on one hand, operators don’t want their networks to be used mainly by services they aren’t making money on. But they also want to discover which applications are popular with users and figure out how to earn revenue from such services. There’s a lot of uncertainty about which applications users will find valuable.”

Technology changes the way we communicate, business models change accordingly in a natural way, this process is happening for a while now and it certainly won’t stop anytime soon…

Cool Devices, gartner, gizmo, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, n80, nokia, Operators, sip, skype, Trends, user experience, voip, wi fi