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One of my favorite startups Kyte just announced it has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. The round was led by Telefónica, the world’s fourth largest global telecommunications firm, with Nokia Growth Partners, the global private equity and venture capital management arm of Nokia, and DoCoMo Capital, Inc., a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT DoCoMo, Inc., the leading mobile communication company based in Japan, also participating. Other investors in this round include Swisscom, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurveston.

Kyte presented an impressive live demo at the Mobile Launchpad at the Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco in October recently.

The interesting news for me is not the $15M, which seems rather small for a Series B in this area but the distribution channel opportunities Kyte.tv opens through this deal, as Robert Scoble mentioned earlier:

“Telefónica has 230 million users. DoCoMo has 52 million. Nokia has 39% of the cell phone market share. If the Kyte player is embedded on these three it brings a HUGE audience to Kyte.”

As a true promotor of his own technology, CEO Daniel Graf announced the news on a live video conference on Kyte.

If you haven’t tried Kyte Mobile, it’s definately worthwhile you start doing so. It’s one of the only apps I know with such a cool user experience, integrating live audio and video chat interaction with other social media. Congrats to Daniel and the Kyte team!

Really looking forward how Kyte will develop the coming months and launch new features.

Announcements, docomo, innovation, iphone, iptv, kyte, kyte mobile, kyte.tv, Mashup, mobile, mobile tv, mobile video, nokia, Operators, seriesb, social media, startups, swisscom, telefonica, Trends, tv, usability, user experience, video, web 2.0

The future of online TV, music and video content is going to be personalized and recommended, Mystrands just released a personalized online video service called MyStrands.TV. Nothing really mobile just yet but sooOOO cool I had to blog it here.

My teenage daughters and their friends TV viewing patterns changed completely the last year: they just don’t sit and watch TV anymore, they sit in front of the PC with their friends, deciding themselves what to watch, receiving links and recommendations from their IM peers - now I just need to get another free wi-fi connected pc or laptop connected to the plasma screen and they’re all set for the perfect interactive viewing experience

I had the pleasure to discover the new MyStrands service a couple of days ago and it’s really adding value to just watching YouTube video’s - MyStrands.TV is powered by MyStrands APIs and the music videos come from YouTube. Logging to MyStrands.tv proposes you an endless playlist of music videos that are personalized specifically for you…. based on your music listening history and recommendations. The first time you might find that the recommendations are based on existing channels, genres and a-like artists but actually this new recommendation tool is proposing music and concert video’s of my favorite artists based on my existing MyStrands profile, now isn’t that cool?

Richard MacManus researched the Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time a couple of weeks ago at Read/Write Web. He mentioned that “7 of the top 10 are music videos. So music videos are something that people want to watch online and there is a need for an easy way to organize or personalize this.”

Typing some of my favorite artists like Roxy Music, Miles Davis and Serge Gainsbourg for example brings up an excellent choice of all-time music video’s and concerts, a real delight to see some stuff again I hadn’t seen in years and discover some new video’s I didn’t know about.

Watch the recommended video’s on the right, the recommendations are really excellent, you can view more vid’s of the same artist or a similar one - or jump to another artist, view the community people who listen to this artist as well; you can favorite video’s and send them to friends. To me, this has been a great experience with many pleasant surprises and my kids LOVE it!

FYI: If you don’t have a MyStrands account, and you just want to try out MyStrands.TV before deciding whether to sign up, just type in the name of an artist and MyStrands builds a custom music video channel for you.

I believe MyStrands is taking a major step towards how online media is going to be consumed in the future, it’s community-based, personalized and with recommendations from peers and friends.

More links on MyStrands.TV personalized online video service here:

Mashable - MyStrands Launches YouTube-Powered Custom TV
TechCrunch - MyStrands Launches Music Video Discovery Service, MyStrands.tv
Read/Write Web - MyStrands.TV Launched - It’s last.fm For Video

And oh, for mTrends readers and mobile enthusiasts, if you haven’t MyStrands Social Player installed on your mobile yet, click here to download MyStrands for Symbian; you may also want to visit MyStrands labs page to check out their latest beta.

(disclosure note on my MyStrands involvement here)

Analysis, Announcements, concert video, Consumer Generated Media, Fun, innovation, internet, mobile music, Music, music video, mystrands, mystrands.tv, personalised, recommendation, social media, social player, spanish startups, startups, Trends, tv, video, web 2.0

I have been playing lately with the Nokia N800 and I found it a great device, initiating quite often the WOW effect around me. At first I was sceptical (ah well, another device to carry that just doesn’t do everything yet!) but since I have start using the device - had it with me the last 10 days and used it in many different places in different contexts, my opinion changed from sceptical to enthusiast, well done Nokia!

When taking it out of the box, the first thing that surprised me was the impressive quality of the high-resolution touch screen (800 x 480 pixels) with up to 65,536 colors widescreen display, checked the demo video in full screen mode and yes, haven’t seen such a great quality on a ’small’ screen yet.

Start using the device is a piece of cake, the interface is really simple and easy to understand, everything shows or explains itself, the N800 discovered my WLAN immediately to start surfing the mobile web - nuance here (!) with this device you can surf ‘normal’ web pages, no need for mobile adapted .mobi style adapted web pages, this is the real stuff - check for yourself some shots I took from my blog, going to my Flickr pages, MyBlogLog and Twitter. Watching YouTube video’s (see corner right picture - video choice by one of my daughters!) on a portable device is a reality now, you can even view the vids full screen, great quality!

The N800 OS and applications are all build with Maemo, an open source - Linux based - development platform from Nokia. Kudos to the developer teams at Maemo, the N800 OS and applications I used are very stable, I didn’t had to reboot the device yet!

The RSS Reader (image below) is again very easy to use and consult your feeds, I could even view my vpod.tv video feed. This is a real need for me when travelling to stay updated, I can use both GPRS and WiFi connections.

Then I tried to setup a VoIP/IM service to be able to chat on the road. The N800 people have thought a lot about ‘easy of use’ to setup thing, it took me 2 minutes to setup the IM client using my Google talk or Jabber accounts, then I setup my Twitter account to be used from the device with Instant Messaging, besides web and mobile (see below). Note the virtual keyboard can also be displayed full screen and you can input text using handwriting recognition.

I also downloaded & installed the Gizmo VoIP & IM client for the N800, I’m looking forward to my first internet video chat, volunteers: please get in touch. I wrote on the Internet Calling service Gizmo and how it works on the N80 at Read/WriteWeb. I also wanted to play a bit more with Google Maps but for one reason or another the maps didn’t come out as I wanted - full screen map search would be great on this device! Maemo is working on a mapper client, I’m looking forward to start using that - you can check a video demo of how it’s going to look on the device.

Another practical use, specially for business people is the PDF Viewer with presentation possibilities, ideally for any powerpoint or keynote presentation to pdf and be viewed on the device (picture right), it’s great in person to person meetings, the screen quality is just so great. Adding some more functionality here would be realy usefull for people like me. If you own or buy a N800 now there’s a 1 month free subscription offer to use the Rhapsody audio/video streaming subscription service. Nokia and Real have teamed up to release a firmware update that adds Rhapsody support to the N800. I tried it out and I must say it works fine as on online subscription service: great artists and songs collection to choose from and very easy use to create your own playlists. I created a playlist with some of my favorite Motown music in a minute (see below), the sound quality of the device is quite impressvie too. The only thing here is that using Rhapsody is a great service to use as long as you have an good connection, meanwhile I prefer the MyStrands Social Player that works with the music I have on my device, hopefully soon available for the N800 too (disclosure here)

So, the verdict? I haven’t explored all the possibilities yet but I think I will carry this device with me for a while next to my mobile phone and laptop, I hate to carry too many devices all the time but I do see a lot of advantages to use the Nokia N800 especially while travelling, as long as I can find a WiFi around this is a gO!

NOTE: Tips & Tricks on the Nokia N800 at the N800 Blog, complete techspecs can be found here, view my N800 m-trends.org Flickr set here.

Analysis, Bluetooth, chat, Cool Devices, gtalk, im, internet calling, internet tablet, iphone, maemo, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile RSS, mobile video, mybloglog, n800, nokia, rhapsody, social media, twitter, Ubiquitous Devices, usability, video, wi fi

Following the response and feedback I got on the “Understanding Mobile 2.0” article I wrote at Read/WriteWeb a couple of weeks ago, I created a wiki space to start categorizing the so-called Mobile 2.0 companies.

You can acces the directory at mobile2companies.com.

I decided to use a wiki tool, called Wepaint, so companies can add their own information and keep it updated. You just need to sign-up to add your Mobile 2.0 company info page, you can add images, slideshows, video’s, and RSS feeds as well, and tag your page(s).

Companies can use the tool to keep the web community updated with latest news, elevator pitches, presentations of new products/services, etc. You can browse the wiki by category, by keywords, subscribe to the wiki feeds on new pages added or updated, comments and news, a lot of other stuff out there yet to discover.

The directory is far from complete, I just gave it an initial injection and added some companies I know to start with, so the best thing to do is add your page if you don’t find your company in there and update your page if you don’t like what I added, it’s a wiki, you know

Kudos to Carlo for helping me with the introduction texts.

Contact me if you would like to contribute to this project, to become a writer/moderator, to help develop the wiki, and for any suggestion and comments. I hope these pages will be usefull for the entire mobile value chain, spread the word!

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

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

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

Companies currently confirmed are:

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

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

Now here come the goodies for my blog readers:

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

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

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

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

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