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The Mobile 2.0 Conference’s Business and Builder Track agenda’s are now completed. The conference brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists - you can read my wrapup from last years’ event here.

The Business Track opens with a keynote of David Wood, Executive VP, Symbian on the topic of “Open Source: Catalyst for Mobile Innovation 2.0″ and follows with 3 panels on the following topics:

“Mobile Browsers: How Is Web Different On Mobile Devices?”

• Taksuki Tomita, SVP, Opera Software
• Larry Berkin, VP, Ecosystem & Business Development, Access Systems
• Raj Singh, VP, Business Development, Skyfire
• Jay Sullivan, VP Mobile, Mozilla

“Platforms, Monetization & Third Party Applications” - Moderator, Jason Devitt, Skydeck

• John Faith, GM & VP, Mobile, MySpace
• Henri Moissinac, Director, Facebook Mobile
• Sumit Agarwal, Mobile Product Management Lead, North America, Google
• Ilja Laurs, Founder, GetJar
• Michael Bayle, Senior Director, Global Mobile Advertising, Yahoo!

“Carrier Initiatives: For Developers & Third Party Applications”

• Michael Palermo, VP, Service Innovation & Integration, Telecom Italia
• Maurice Thompson, Director, Open Development, Verizon Wireless
• Venetia Espinoza, Director, Mobile Apps & Partner Programs, T-Mobile USA
• Laura Fay, Director of Strategy, Sprint

In the afternoon, there are demo’s of promising & innovative startups in two Mobile 2.0 Launch Pad sessions . Any start-up with a mobile service or application can apply to present, all you need to do is fill-in the startup registration form to apply for consideration. Registration deadline for submission is October 17, 2008 at midnight PST.

More sessions in the business track starting with a fireside chat on “Mobility: How Can We Capitalize On It” - Moderator, Tony Fish, AMF Ventures

• Ozzie Diaz, CTO, Wireless, HP
• Tom Libretto, Vice President, Forum Nokia
• Pankaj Kedia, Director, Ultra Mobility Group, Intel

And panels on “Consumer vs. Business: The Market Opportunities” - Moderator, Michel Wendell, Nexit Ventures

• Martin Frid-Nielsen, Founder, Chief Product Officer, Soonr
• Judy Gibbons, CEO, Mippin
• Tom Lee, Director, SMB Solutions, Research In Motion
• Omar Green, Director, Strategic Mobile Initiatives, Intuit

“Where Are VC Investing & Why?” - Moderator, Rich Wong, Accel Partners

• Rick Segal, Partner, JLA Ventures & Blackberry Partners Fund
• Peter Barry, Head of Venture Capital & Startups, Vodafone Group
• Tim Chang, Partner, NorWest Venture Partners
• Greg Franklin, Principal, IntellectPartners

“Mobile Advertising vs Online Advertising Models” - Moderator, Whitey Bluestein, Bluestein & Associates

• Brian Cowley,  President & CEO, AdInfuse
• Colm Grealy, Managing Director, SalesOnline
• Blair Swedeen, VP, Market Development, PlaceCast
• Jason Spero, Vice President, Marketing, AdMob
• Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Founder , Smaato

If you want to learn more about developing mobile applications and services, you can go to the afternoon Builder Track starting with a keynote by Caroline Lewko (WIP) followed by panels and tutorial sessions on

Mobile Web vs. Applications vs. Widgets with C. Enrique Ortiz (tentative) - Chair: Nick Allot (OMTP); Phong Vu (Nokia); Charles Wiles (Google); Fabrizio Capobianco (Funambol); Jeff Sonstein (RIT)

(Mobile Web) User Experience and Design Case Studies with Kelly Goto - Chair: Barbara Balard (Little Spring Design), Brian Fling (Fling Media), Christian Lindholm (Fjord), Thomas Fellger (Iconmobile)

and tutorials on Building, dynamic, compelling, ad-funded, off-deck mobile web content by Stefan Butlin (Taptu)

iPhone WebApps by Brian Fling (Fling Media)

Mobile Design Case Study by Kelly Goto (Gotomedia)

Yahoo! Blueprint by Markus Spiering (Yahoo!)

Nokia Web Runtime by Phong Vu (Nokia)

Gears Mobile by Charles Wiles (Google)

A program to be dizzy by the end of the day, followed by the usual networking cocktail of course. All this for $249 only! You can browse the Mobile 2.0 event website to know everything about this years’ event on November 3rd, 2008 in San Francisco. I recommend not to wait last minute to book your seat, the conference has been selling out quickly the previous 2 editions.

I’m going to be in San Francisco from November 1 till 14, anyone who’d like to catch up, feel free to contact me (email in sidebar).

Announcements, Developers, events, Experience Design, innovation, iphone, lbs, location based, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, Mobile OS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile web, mobilemonday, Operators, social media, startups, Trends, ubiquitous marketing, usability, user experience

A couple of days before the event, some 150 companies registered to attend MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE event, including startups, investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, mobile application and service providers, bloggers, press and web technologists. If you want to attend the event to connect to industry leadership and broaden your C-level relationships, you can still buy tickets here.

NOTE there’s also a Mobile 2.0 Europe TechCrunch Party at the Shôko Lounge Club in front of the beach, all details about this after event meetup here.

Here’s the list of the companies attending the MOBILE 2.0 EUROPE conference in alphabetical order:

24 Access Solutions
7 Syntax
Acquamedia Technologies
AdMob
Ajuntament de Barcelona
aka-aki networks GmbH
Alcatel-Lucent
AlpinaSearch
Altaide Valley
Alumnus Software
AMF ventures
antrak capital
Atlas Venture
Atos Origin
Avui
AZ Interactive
Balderton Capital
Bango
Barcelona Digital
Barcelona Media
Beabloo
BeepMarketing
Between Brackets
bluenove
Blyk
Bullnet Gestion
CanalPDA
cellity AG
Centro Español de Servicios Telematicos
Channer Medianet
cirici new media
Clicmobile
CommonSensus
Comunicano
Coreobjects Ltd
DD&H
Debaeque Venture Capital
Dial2Do
dotopen
Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
eBuddy
Economic Promotion - Barcelona City Council
Eden Ventures
El Paìs
Ericsson
Esade
European Commission - Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)
Facoria de Canales
Five minutes
Fjord
France Telecom
Futurlink
GeoMe Communications
Getjar
GoodmintonPartners
Google
GSM Association
Halmstad University
Hewlett-Packard
Hiwave GmbH
Ideal Interfaces
Interactive McCann
IT University of Copenhagen
Itinerarium
itsmy.com (Gofresh)
Jaeson Associates
Jupidi GmbH
Kalerion Computing
Kimia
kooaba AG
La Vanguardia
Longreach Mobile
Lorem Ipsum
M:Metrics
Materna GmbH
mikamai
Mobiclip SL
Mobifriends
Mobile Distillery
Mobile Economy GmbH
MobileContact Software
MobileMonday PL
MobileMonday Ltd.
MobiLuck
Motorola
Motricity
mSearchGroove
my247.mobi
MyFrame Inc.
MyVocal
Nauta Tech Invest II SCR
NextWell
Nimbuzz
Nokia
Nova Ventus Consulting
Onetomarket
Orange
Oxynade
Ozmota
Palringo
PBS MediaShift
Peperoni Software GmbH
Plugg
Qelp
Qualcomm
Quodis
Refresh Mobile
Route Forward Ltd
Rummble
Safiratec
Samtel Consultores
Service Innovation and Interaction Design
SFR
Simba Technologies
SMS Text News
Some Bazaar
Spinverse Ltd
SPRXmobile
Stanford HCI Group
Stradbroke Advisors
Sun Microsystems
Sydes nv / Arkafund nv
Ta with you
Taptu
TAT AB
TechCrunch
Telecom Italia
Telefonica I+D
Telefonica Moviles
Telgraph Hill Group
Tertius Advisory Services
T-Mobile International AG
Tooio Mobile
Treasuremytext
Trutap
Trutap Ltd
Uniteddogs and Cats OY
Universal McCann
University of Salzburg
University of VIC
Unkasoft
Valoris
ViaMobility
ViiF Mobile Video GmbH
Vodafone
Webwag
Worldwide Rights Management Ltd
Yahoo!
Yiibu
YouLynx
Zipipop
ZYB

2.0, Announcements, attendants, Barcelona, companies, convergence, Conversations, dotopen, europe, events, Experience Design, innovation, lbs, location based, mobile, mobile 2.0, mobile 2.0 europe, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile tv, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mtrends, nokia, Operators, participants, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, social media, spanish startups, startups, techcrunch, Trends, ubiquitous marketing, Urban, usability, user experience

Since Google anounced it’s partnership with LG Electronics it becomes more and more obvious that Google will launch it’s own branded handset in the very near future. The news today on TechCrunch that Google is in acquisition discussions with telephone management startup GrandCentral is just another logical step by Google to enter the ‘mobile connected services’ space the company is already quite present. I mentioned about GrandCentral and The Mobile VoIP-wave coming to us in this article I wrote a couple of months ago for Read/WriteWeb.

The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.” As we change jobs, homes and cell phones, there are a lot of phone numbers to keep track of, and keeping everyone up to date with your most recent phone numbers is a real cost. If you use GrandCentral you can give out a single phone number. What happens when that person calls that number depends on his/her relationship to you, and what you are doing at the time.

While many are focused on the iPhone launch later this week, some other rumours are popping up about Google involved in Apple buyout rumours circulate as iPhone launch nears. In any case, the mobile space becomes more and more strategic and competitive, just look at the brands - we couldn’t even think of being mobile this year - only a few years ago… MySpace, YouTube, eBay, Yahoo!, Google, Apple, Prada, just to name a few… Oh God I love my job

Announcements, apple, convergence, ebay, google, google acquisitions, googlephone, grandcentral, innovation, iphone, lg, mobile, myspace, prada, Read/WriteWeb, startups, Trends, ubiquitous marketing, voice 2.0, voip, yahoo, youtube

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

This is Sophia Berglund. Right now she is 25months old and growing so fast in her capabilities in communication - already she can muster small sentences in English, Korean, Japanese and some German! She can even translate! Sophia can create lines, shapes and forms by way of painting her communication…

But what makes me the most excited is seeing her grab technology with an incredible desire to learn and experience - she explores, she examines, pushes, prods, de-constructs the technology in some cases (i.e. she breaks my expensive “toys”)

Part of her 1st and 2nd years were spent in S.Korea where she was born into one of the most advanced mobile “handphone” cultures in the world - literally 5minutes after birth her first ever picture (and video) taken by a mobile/handphone and sent to our friends and relatives, she made her first mobile location based phone call at 5months and at 6months she was surfing mobile internet and watching mobileTV! She had her first “co-location” experience in 2006 when friends “broadcast” the 비 / Bi (Rain)**concert live over their handphone to my handphone - Seoul - to - Jeju…

Sophia is growing up into a digital world. Already she has a real-demo phone given to her by a friend at LGe - which she mimmicks her immediate social circle in making calls and surfing data.

Wow! Yes but today we question what is next - we talk of ubiquotous computing, mobile internet, mobile2.0, mobileTV, mobileGaming, mobileAdvertising, mobileMarketing, Location Based Services, Bluetooth, Proximity Marketing, smartphones, convergence, m-YouTube, moblogs, iMode, 3G, 3.5G, CDMA, FOMA, RFID, Flash-Lite, SVGt, mobile-Image recognition, mobileCameras, mobileVideo, Vlogs, iPhone (iPhone aka LG Prada), mobile UI, touch-screens, thumb-tribes, handy, handphone, keitai - blah blah blah and all of this jargon and often mind boggling marketing “psycho-babble” has made me think - where is it all going - how much “smarter” will the next generation of “phones” like my SonyEricsson P990i become - how much more can we cram into one single device!?

How many more times can my P990i crash - a victim of its own “smartness” - Yet I put up with it as when my P990 is alert and working it blows my mind with all of its functions and how they are symbiotic* to my daily needs - I can Wi-Fi (well not in Germany they lock their Wi-Fi connections), Google movie reviews before entering the cinema, take videos and pictures and Flickr them, I can use Googlemaps when lost or curious, watch movies, RSS Feed news and blogs, email, VoIP, Messenger, listen to music, video call whilst on business trips, bemuse my wife, and entertain my colleagues like I am a mobile guru! Seriously though what is next?

So - I think “convergence” will continue as a trend for maybe the next 2-3 years - not only in hardware but in software and services that we can ever expand the phones capabilities - with it computing power, battery power and size! Multi-media will play a big role - motion graphics - advanced touch-screens (iPhone aka LG Prada)
smart phones that know what you use and like and build a UI around your user preferences - broader personalisation with iTunes music and video, enhanced imaging and editing functions, more Bluetooth functions in urban locations, free ubiquitous Wi-Fi - oh I could go on with a list of endless options I could do with…

Sophia in 28years time will be 30 and the date will be 2035 - what do you the mocom (mobile community) think will be next and what will “mobile” have become - we all see attempts at mobile technology in clothing, e-paper (with Wi-Fi connectivity), cyborg like integration of receivers/chips into our bodies, organic and nano-technology - but really I would love to hear your thoughts!

* BTW thanks to Bear in the Big Blue House
on Disney Playhouse for re-introducing me to this brilliant word “symbiotic” Children’s TV is great!

**비 / BMW Meets Truth**
and www.bmwmeetstruth.com

3G, Analysis, Andrew Berglund, Announcements, art, augmented reality, Bluetooth, Cool Devices, creative, ethnographics, executive creative director, Experience Design, fashion, Framfab, Friends, futorology Analysis, Games, image recognition, innovation, Interone, iphone, iptv, lbs, Mashup, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, mobile music, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, mobile tv, mobile web, Moblog, Multi Touch Screen, Music, Operators, Predictions, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, rfid, rudy de waele, social media, startups, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, ubiquitous marketing, Urban, usability, user experience, Viral, voip, we media, web 2.0, wi fi

I would like to introduce you to Andrew Berglund, another regular guest blogger next to Yasmine Abbas and Martin Sauter who joined me here a couple of weeks ago. More great contributors will be joining M-Trends soon, if you would like to become one of them, drop me a line. If you have any ideas, comments and feedback on the contributions made or presented here, let me know; we’re covering different opinions on various topics in a ubiquitous mobility era, written from different locations, by people who are always on the move… If there are any subjects you would like to have covered here, feel free to suggest.

Andrew will cover the “creative” side of mobile society and the culture that surrounds it. In his contributions he will report on new trends that IHO push boundaries within the digital realm. Check his profile at his very - as he calls it - “un-web2.0 and un-mobile friendly” website. Just recently he left Interone as the Executive Creative Director - Worldwide working mainly on BMW (Global - EU, Asia, North America markets) and Unilever (Europe) digital media communications. As of April 1st he will have moved to Framfab and LBi as Head of Strategy & Innovation - an exciting remit to push boundaries of newer / emerging interactive medias such as mobile and social networks. Andrew has extensive experience in mobile development, concept, and creative communication strategies within the European and Asia markets - with the majority of his mobile work in S.Korea and Japan for clients such as NTT DoCoMo, MTV, Samsung, and LG (Cyon)

I know Andrew for a couple of years now and admire his work, his original views and valuable opinion, needless to say I am looking forward to his contributions!

Analysis, Andrew Berglund, Announcements, art, augmented reality, Bluetooth, creative, ethnographics, executive creative director, Experience Design, Framfab, Friends, Games, image recognition, innovation, Interone, iphone, iptv, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, Multi Touch Screen, Operators, Predictions, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, rfid, rudy de waele, social media, startups, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, ubiquitous marketing, Urban, usability, user experience, Viral, we media, web 2.0, wi fi

Spanish national newspaper El Periódico reports it’s starting a new campaign using Mobile Image Recognition technology developed by Catalan startup Daem Interactive.

A picture taken with a camera phone of a photo appearing in the newspaper will allow the user to access exclusive mobile contents including advertising using MMS. The new system, called “Cázalo” will be launched in tomorrow’s newspaper, promoted by Telefónica and McCann interactive agency.

The inaugural advertising campaign has an announcement related to FC Barcelona - Real Madrid match of tomorrow from the Professional Liga of Futbol (LFP), the user will, besides entering in a contest, receive a promotional video from the Spanish Footbal League. The cost of the MMS message will be 0.60 euros message.

Relative: read Kelly Goto’s excellent interview with Ignacio Mondine on gotomobile.com and watch the latest demo of Daem’s atomtag 3G software that recognizes my picture and leads you to m-trends.org mobile, now how cool is that!

3G, Announcements, atomtag, augmented reality, catalonia, daem interactive, el periodico, España, gotomobile, image recognition, innovation, interactive advertising, kelly goto, Liga Profesional de Fútbol (LFP), mccann, mms, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, mobile marketing, Operators, Proximity Marketing, spain, spanish startups, telefonica, Trends, ubiquitous marketing, usability, user experience

Without a doubt a cool and original marketing campaign from denim-code in France. From their pressrelease:

“Levi’s invented jeans and Diesel turned them into a fashion item. Now DENIM CODE is taking jeans into the interactive digital communication era. DENIM CODE, the new French brand of jeans, has come up with a revolutionary concept consisting of making it possible to access an audio/video recording free of charge from a pair of DENIM CODE jeans.”

Simple and glamorous:

- The consumer can choose not only their jeans but their “universe”: by snapshotting* the tag** with their mobile phone, they can watch video clips, listen to music, see films, watch programmes, listen to the news…..
- A collection of over 200 different models for men and women enabling you to access the worlds of music, sport, films, video games or people…
- Jeans are evolving in line with the times, thanks to the content of the denim code tag, which will be regularly updated.

DENIM CODE collections will be placed on sale via a multi-brand distribution network.
In April DENIM CODE STORE, a 180 sq.m. boutique and showroom, will be opening in Paris in the fashionable Etienne Marcel district.

All very cool and another sign that Proximity Marketing is getting real (!) and a nice variation on Yasmine’s my body is a hypertext project.

One note on the visual campaign though: why in the world would I want to tag the jeans from the girl above to download all that entertainment for my mobile phone, while all the fun is in front of me?

Via Heike Scholz

Announcements, denim code, Experience Design, fashion, image recognition, innovation, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, Proximity Marketing, QR codes, tag my jeans, Trends, ubiquitous marketing