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Are you one of those startups that make a difference and you would like to showcase your technology to the ones like Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Sprint, iFund, Nokia, Microsoft, Motorola, and more? Then you need to apply to present at Under The Radar: Mobility event on November 12 in Mountain View, CA. Submissions are still being accepted, so apply today!

Under the Radar: Mobility is a one-day conference uncovering 32 vetted, test-driven startups that have launched within the year in categories such as iPhone apps, location-based services, gaming, social networking, enabling technologies, and marketing/advertising.

Under the Radar: Mobility is one of my favorite startup events to track innovation in mobile, read my reviews of previous editions here.

I will be there again this year as a judge amongst other mobile industry players, including:

Jesse Money, Executive Director of Product Convergence and Innovation, Verizon Wireless
Stephan Noll, Managing Director, T-Mobile Venture Fund
Chi-Hua Chien, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (iFund)
Scott Ford, General Manager, Sprint Business Development & Sprint Nextel Ventures
Harshul Sanghi, Managing Director, Motorola Ventures
Dan Schiappa, GM - Mobile & Gaming Advertising Experiences Platform, Microsoft
Dave Williams, Senior Vice President of Wireless and Technology, Comcast
Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Ventures
Jonathan Ebinger, General Partner, BlueRun Ventures
Ken Gullicksen, General Partner, Morgenthaler
Eric Ver Ploeg, Managing Director, VantagePoint Venture Partners

The event will be moderated by:

Rafe Needleman, Editor, CNET/Webware
Ellen McGirt, Senior Writer, Fast Company
Natali Del Conte, Host, CNET TV & Technology Correspondent, CBS Early Show
Jeremy Toeman, Marketing Consultant, Stage Two Consulting

I’ll be in San Francisco and the valley the first half of November, please do get in touch if you’d like to catch up with me.

I wanted to thank my readers, collegues, online buddies and friends for sharing some great moments with me this year. Some of you I just met but already left an impression, and others I enjoyed working together on innovative projects and events, or just exchanged opinion on the mobile phone and its interaction between people and objects.

One of the main drivers in my work is to innovate through collaboration, meet wonderful and diverse people that keep things interesting, dashed with spirit and surprise and truly unique… it really enriches my life.

From the Peer Awards in Barcelona, ¡nnovate!Europe in Zaragoza, TechTalk in Menorca, the Global Summit in Helsinki & St. Petersburg, Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco, Under The Radar in Mountain View and LeWeb3 in Paris, there were man great moments and events, not to forget the many MobileMonday events we organised this year in Barcelona and launched in Madrid … I enjoyed every bit of 2007.

I’m already looking forward to some new projects starting in 2008 and events like DLD Munich, Lift 08 in Geneva and another Peer Awards in Barcelona, stay tuned on mTrends!

Special kudos to Kelly and Lisa at gotomedia, Russell and Carlo at MobHappy, Caroline, Carles, Francesco and Gabriel, Jari and all MobileMonday chapter organizers, Carlos and his team, Debbie and her team, Peter and his team, Markus, Barcelona Media, IE Business School, Gregory, Mike, Peter and Daniel from Mobile 2.0 Conference, Steve and his team at Taptu, Prash, Raimo and last but not least my collegue bloggers and anyone working on innovative mobile technology.

I wish you all a very happy new year and a prosperous and successful 2008.

Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!

After december’s MobileMonday Barcelona event on Location-Based Services, the next MobileMonday Madrid event of December 17 covers Mobile Social Media.

Social Media has gone mainstream this year with popular sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr to only name the most popular. Social Media is the catalyst to the democratization of content publishing, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. Many of this social neworking & tools and sites can already be accessed from the mobile phone but the real challenges are lying into making all this user-generated content easily accesible on the phone in the right context while staying connected with your social network of friends wherever you are.

Another interesting line-up to cover and discuss this topic:

Jonathan Wood from SoonR, will explain how they deliver access to computer files and applications across converged networks by linking mobile devices to remote computers;

David Whitewood from trutap - who recently showcased at Under The Radar - Mobility event, will present their easy-to-use and free mobile service that combines all the elements of a young person’s social life into one application;

Christian Wiklund from Wichro will be presenting the 1st Wichro product, called ZKOUT. ZKOUT will be beta launched during Le Web 3 conference in Paris and launched to the public in Q1 2008. The service creates a bridge that connects your online and real world social networks;

Andy Abramson, author of VoIPWatch will talk about Mobile VoIP and Social Communications, as the blend between Social Networks and Social Media;

and Jaime González Rodríguez from Telefonica I+D will talk on Mobile Data and crossplatform (Mobile / Web / TV) services and the impact for Telco’s on their own service portfolio in order to harness the true potential of Mobile Social Media.

More details at MobileMondayMadrid.com. 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, this event is going to be a blast!

On November 15, I’ll attend - as a judge this time - the Under the Radar | Mobility conference, organised by Dealmaker Media in the Microsoft Conference Center Building in Mountain View, CA. It is a unique chance to see, hear, and meet key players in the mobile universe, from the elusive carriers to the content developers, stealth startups and the industry leaders… 42 Startups will present their company/product/service in 1 Day! The event is also a forum for partnerships, dealmaking, business development, and growth opportunities.

To me, it’s one of THE important events on a global level if you’re in for new innovative ideas and companies in the mobile value chain space. If you don’t know the event, feel free to check my Under The Radar - Mobility 2006 conference review.

You’ll see a collection of companies in areas such as mobile content/video; social networking; voice services; marketing and advertising services; and a host of enabling technologies. From the industry experts and pundits to the company presentations and demos, you will learn about the future of mobility - its challenges and opportunities from consumer adoption to monetization of services.

Check this years’ detailed schedule here.

PRESENTING COMPANIES:
Boopsie | Buzzwire | Dial Directions | eZee, inc. | FoneMine | Frengo | Heysan! | Hovr | IceBreaker, Inc. | Imthere | Kadoink | Lypp | Mobile Distillery | mobio | Mocapay | mPortico | QuickMobile | RemoTV, Inc. | Utterz | TagText | Talkster | Tilefile Limited | Transpera | Tricast Media, Inc | Trutap Limited | Vlingo | Vollee | Xosphere | Yap | YoMedia | ZenZui

GRADUATE CIRCLE:
Cellufun | Concilio Networks | Iamota Corporation | Jangl | Juice Wireless | Mocospace | Quattro Wireless | UnWired Nation | Vringo | Waterfall Mobile

mTrends readers get a $100 off the price of the Under the Radar | Mobility conference. You can get your mTrends VIP Rate here, just mark mTrends in the “How did you hear about this event?” field. mTrends readers get a Special VIP Price at $595.00. Normal price for Non-Members is $695.00 in advance and $795 at the door.

I’ll be in the valley from November 13 till 18, let me know if you would like to catch up.

Today is International’s Women’s Day, a perfect occassion to refresh the Women in Mobile interview series I started in October 2005. Many people during 3GSM asked me why I stopped doing the interviews… I have to admit I never really stopped doing them, but time just lacked since my last interview with Yasmine Abbas last September. But I’ll do my best, so expect some more interesting interviews here soon again

So with all those enthusiasts asking for more, here I’m back with a second series of Women in Mobile, taking off again with the superb and unique Caroline Lewko. I met Caroline the first time at the first Gathering of the Mobilists last year, a mobilistnetworking cocktail event she basically organised on the other side of the ocean during CTIA Wireless (some pictures of these events here).

I admire Caroline for ther entrepreneurial spirit, her business common-sense, her analytical and networking skills, all flavored with the experience she build through the years in the mobile and wireless sector. She demonstrated also her exquisite Master of Ceremony (MC) and moderating skills during the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards in Barcelona, but let’s hear it now from Caroline herself.

- Can you explain a bit about your background and your work?

I’m a consummate connector. If I can make an introduction for someone that helps accelerate their business – that’s what makes me smile. I’ve been in the industry for over a decade and have both technical and business knowledge. For those reasons I started WIP, the Wireless Industry Partnership, so I could be more helpful and efficient in helping making connections. I created the WIPConnector, a business and partnership directory specifically to find connections in our industry.

I’m also really keen on industry associations having started or been involved in many. WIP is also works with these groups to give them better profile and enhance the services they can provide to their members.

- Are you more social, business or technical oriented?

More Social, with a lot of business and with a technical twist (I have coded in the past, but the thought of doing it again makes my eyes cross)

- What brought you into mobile?

I’m really a wireless purist who accidentally fell into the Communications sector when I was recruited by Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) 12 years ago. I say wireless purists because I deal with all wireless related technologies and all parts of the value chain from satellite systems to base stations to provisioning systems to mobile applications. Not all wireless is mobile nor visa versa.

- How does mobile technological progress influences your daily routine in your work?

Advantagees and loves – great to be connected on the go, will never travel in a strange place without GPS ever again - although no more excuses for being late either

Problems – its hard to turn it off. I’ve been known to check and send email with my blackberry at all hours.

- Which tools you use to publish, blog or moblog your work?

Currently on blogspot and evaluating various mobile blogging tools.

- Which applications and services do you use regulary on your phone?

Email, address book, calendar, sms, alarm/clock – even though I understand the technology I’m not what you’d call an early adopter

- Would you use your device to interact with other machines?

Absolutely. City parking is the best feature right now

- Which machinery can you think of would be handy to interact with?

My home/office alarm system, bank machine, gas fireplace, car, gas pump, atm/pos systems. I can’t wait until we can use it at the airport. It’s fine to print off a board pass when you are at your office, but not so easy when your at a hotel. My patience gets tested in airport lineups.

- Do you download mp3 tunes on your phone?

I’m not much of a music junkie, still buying CDs.

- What about Mobile TV?

No desire for this right now. I can’t think of anything I need to ’see’ on demand.

- How do you experience the Mobile Internet? Which mobile browsers do you use?

I use the browser on my blackberry, and use if several times a month to search for things, look at websites while I’m on the road. It’s not a great experience yet, but certainly getting better all the time.

- Web 2.0? Do you use it? What does it mean to you?

I really like some of the social networking tools that are out there and the community generated content. I’ve actually licensed a social networking tool (introNetworks) for my website but use it as a business directory because it’s such a powerful and cool visual way to profile and list.

- What are your favourite mobile user-generated content projects?

I like some of the tourism/spots of interest sites available in some cities, and others to help find local restaurants etc.

- Do you develop technology yourself?

I’m better at helping others develop technology. The development is only 10% of the battle, 90% is getting the right product, having the right partnerships and commercializing it.

- How do you see the future of mobile?

Wireless is in Progress, so stay tuned for more ways it changes the way we work and play – a bit of a cliché, but it really is the most pervasive technology. Consumers are getting it now via the cell phone, but wait until industry catches on to all the ways to make business faster and smarter.

- What do you think about the Fixed-Mobile-Internet convergence?

The service providers need to be much more agile to deal with this move from being fast followers to early adopters. A friend of mine recently got involved in a company called JaJah – this will turn a few more business models on its head as it eliminates the need for extra equipment – something my parents could figure out!

- 3G vs. Wi-Fi?

Software-defined Radio isn’t too far behind, then it will know what we want, when and where we want to be connected. Will make Muni wifi much easier to setup.

- What is gonna be the next *big thing* in mobile?

I’ve totally in love with sensors.

- The mobile trend for this year?

I’ve got my hopes for A-GPS / location based services.

- Who inspires you professionally?

Technical entrepreneurs – those who are willing to go out on a limb, create a business, see the future of technology whilst keeping their fingers crossed.

- Your favorite mobile technology blog?

There are more and more great mobilists out there. As a networker, I’d have to go with who I know – m-trends.org (you are here!), Mobhappy and Mobilecrunch (with Oliver Starr!).

- Your favorite mobile device?

Tough choice between the Blackberry and Garmin Streetpilot

- Favorite mobile application/service?

It’s got to be the Mobile GPS apps for roadmaps – it’s profoundly affected the way I do business travel – relaxed!! I can easily figure out where I am going and get their on time. Can’t wait for bigger deployment of A-GPS – as securing the GPS coordinates in a downtown core can be a bit tricky.

- Your ultimate dream scenario including mobile?

I’m keen on contextually aware applications integrating with the mobile advice – knowing my interests, who I want to/not want to talk to, helping me to figure out activities, places to go/stay when I get to a new place.

- Which links would you like to be included?

The Wireless Innovation Network Britich Columbia (WINBC)

- Anything else you would like to add?Something the big players are missing?

There is some great technology and applications coming from emerging companies. They may not promote it as hard/sophisticated as some of the bigger companies, but the are worth spending time to evaluate.

- Who else could you recommend to be interviewed next?

I recently met Elizabeth Riegel of the Gold Standard Group, and thought she was a really cool business women, not sure she is a blogger, but I’m certain she’d have interesting content.

On my way, thanks Caroline!

The 3GSM World Congress gives you a good overview of where the actual market is today - still a lot like last year - it looked at first sight… Some interesting movement could definately be ’seen’ in the mobile image recognition space.

Image recognition should not be confused with barcode scanning and QR-code technology though they are somewhere historically related of course, I wrote some of my views on this before here. Image recognition technology goes one step further in the sense that it doesn’t need a seperate application to be downloaded, or a decoder to decode, or a seperate ‘recognizable’ product code to be printed, and works - at its best - on most camera phones.

Some examples I saw during 3GSM were Global Peer Award jury winner Realeyes 3D (France) and finalists UpCode (Finland) and Tagit (Singapore), showing at the same time that real innovation can come from any corner of the world.

Since Google bought Neven Vision last summer and the attention visual search provider Riya got last year, the time seems right to bring image recognition commercially to mobile phones. One of the most interesting demo’s I saw during the exhibition was at the stand of Alcatel-Lucent: opening a video call, pointing your camera to a magazine ad connected your phone to your TV set over a 3G connection to be able to discover or store additional services to be viewed at home, dig?

Image recognition technology has some obvious advantages additionally to 2D-Barcodes like QR Codes or Datamatrix:

• They are graphically richer and more appealing, they can contain any logo or personalised image. Adding one to your blog, publication or advertisement might be less esthetically obtrusive than chaotic black and white codes, makes them ideally for next-generation mobile marketing campaigns.
• Unlike 2Dcodes, individual tags are easy to remember because they are images, not secretive machine only readable bar-codes.
• The Augmented Reality interaction paradigm makes it easier and more appealing for the user, your phone becomes like a sort of “magic lens”.
• Contextual menus can pop out of the tags: look up in wikipedia, listen to contents recoded, add contents to that tag…..it´s object hyperlinking or the mobile read-write web!

Daem Interactive had another interesting demo running with some logo’s and my face (!), pointing a cameraphone to it over a 3G connection connected the user immediately to m-trends.org mobile, very cool!

Ignacio from DAEM showed me this demo the first time in July last year, some might have seen the demo before at Under The Radar or MobileMonday Paris, now Ignacio gave me finally a go to blog this ‘atom3g’ demo of their patented application. Check it out, some of the coolest stuff around!

More insights on 3GSM later here.

Kudos to Richard MacManus who offered me his space today in an idea to write some articles around the Mobile 2.0 subject to intend bridge the web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 communities. I’m kicking-off a mini-series of posts on the topic of Mobile 2.0, which will be explored more in detail on Read/WriteWeb this week.

“On the eve of Le Web 3 in Paris - and one month after the Web 2.0 Summit concluded - it seems like an appropriate time to explore the world of the mobile Web, a.k.a. mobile 2.0. There has been a lot of discussion lately on this topic, a good deal of it inspired by the mobile 2.0 event - a one-day event held on 6 November 2006, organized by Daniel Appelquist and Mike Rowehl….”

Continue reading “Understanding Mobile 2.0“, in which I tried to give an overview of what I currently understand as Mobile 2.0 and I included some links to essential writing done on the topic by fellow mobilist bloggers.

Here some impressions from the excellent Under The Radar: Mobility Conference from November 16 in Mountain View, CA. Debbie Landa and her team are doing an incredible good job creating this type of events bringing together various types of quality (!) value chain players in mobility. Just seeing the number of VC’s around per square meter shows that mobility is definately on the radar in Silicon Valley. You can view some of my UTR pictures here as a Flickr set.

The number of company pitches one could view in a day was pretty impressive: 32 companies, divided in 8 tracks in 2 rooms; The 2-track system however made me skip some presentations I would have loved to see too. Anyway, on the overal side, this was a very smoothly organised event and a chance to meet loads of new people in the industry, mainly focused Silicon Valley. It was very interesting for me to get a better notice of the US mobile market and understand better between the differences US and European markets.

The overal tone of the conference was all about web 2.0 going mobile, there has been numerous blogposts and discussions lately on the topic… Daniel Appelquist has one of my preferred mobile 2.0 definitions so far:

Mobile 2.0 is not “the Future.” it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry.

I started with the first session on VIDEO with ComVu, Juice Wireless presenting JuiceCaster, Nexage and Veeker; a very potential set of companies. My favourites are ComVu because I can stream (imagine a good flat rate deal somewhere of course) and geotag automatically, and JuiceCaster has it’s community building stuff together. I can’t really remember about Nexage, neither can I found notes back and the Veek Video Peek from Veeker just doesn’t sound right.

Then I went off to the other room to see Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob (excerpt here below); everytime I hit their homepage, I’m always impressed by the number of incoming live ad requests coming in, and they are not fake - as some suggested inside the Microsoft building… Correct me if I’m wrong.

In this ADVERTISING/MARKETING track Greystripe won the audience award for it’s great presentation and idea - inserting ads into mobile game downloads, ok but that’s too American for me, I just don’t believe a cell phone is not a TV and in the long run kids will just skip the ad whenever avaiable or possible.

Meanwhile I missed the session on MEDIA SHARING and SharpCast who won the audience award here. SharpCast is doing what everybody else forgot to do well between the desktop and the mobile: it’s all about syncing your life! I also missed the transactions track but you can view winner Mobo’s pitch here below by CEO Noah Glass himself:

During lunch I catched up with Scott Rafer from MyBlogLog and Dave Harper. Dave (here below) presented in the next MOBILIZE session his WinkSite project. Moderator Rafe Needleman from CNET made a very true review of that session. You can read Dave’s presentation here, don’t forget to check their pitch!

Meanwhile in the other track Loopt was winning the overall audience choice. Loopt is doing what Plazes (and some others) are doing for a while now yet, somehow Loopt chooses resolutely mobile and seems to have spend a lot of time on usability and user experience, stuff not the least to be underestimated on the mobile phone. I’ll check the new stuff Felix will show us next monday for an definitive update on MoSoSo.

In the IMAGING track Daem Interactive was to me way ahead of the others but I may sound too subjective here The key in the image recognition technology sector will be how fast the companies presented can go to market with the right solution. Japan is leading innovation and ideas in this area but the companies in this track at UTR showed some very mature technology and solid business ideas behind.

In the Galileo room, TalkPlus was showing what voice 2.0 is all about and convinced judges and audience with it. Get a grimp of it yourself here in demo and interview I did the day after with TalkPlus CEO Jeffrey D. Black.

Jeffrey explains the voice 2.0 concept (left) and demonstrates a SIP Call

Jeffrey D. Black, CEO TalkPlus explains TalkPlus

My list of companies to watch has been growing quite fast now, here below the ones I recently added - check back in a year or so and let me know what happened with these companies

ComVu
JuiceCaster
Loopt
Plusmo
WinkSite
Mobo
Sharpcast
TalkPlus

You can view all the Under The Radar: Mobility judges and audience winners here.

Note: all video shooting done with a Nokia N93, thanks to vpod.tv for hosting - actually you should check their portal, Rodrigo is currently live reporting from Nokia World in Amsterdam.

And as an extra for the incrowd fans: hear Peter Vesterbacka (Some Bazaar) explain his “to found 100 companies in a year” pitch. Way to go, Peter!

I haven’t been able to see all the presentations and companies due to the 2 track running simultanuously but definately some very promising startups selected. Here are the winners from Under the Radar | Mobility! Congratulations to all the companies for a great show. I will write more on my impressions and personal favourites during next week.

Best in Show Winner - Overall:
Greystripe

Category Winners:

MEDIA SHARING
Judges:Sharpcast
Audience:Pixsense

VIDEO
Judges:ComVu
Audience:Juice Wireless with JuiceCaster

MARKETING/ADVERTISING
Judges:Greystripe

TRANSACTIONS
Judges:Mobo
Audience:Mobo

SOCIAL MESSAGING
Judges:Loopt
Audience:Loopt

MOBILIZE
Judges:Plusmo
Audience:Plusmo

VOICE MESSAGING
Judges:TalkPlus
Audience:TalkPlus

IMAGING
Judges:MotionDSP
Audience:ScanR

Overall Audience Choice Winner: Loopt

Some of my pictures of the conference can be viewed here at Flickr.

I’m off in a couple of hours for San Francisco and Bay Area for a week. Highlight should be on November 16, where IBDNetwork hosts its sixth one-day Under the Radar: Mobility event, which will feature 32 emerging startups in the mobile sector. Under the Radar will take place on at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, CA.

I’m looking forward to learn more about all these exciting startups and to meet some friends working in mobility. Will report here on all this of course. Be back soon!