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Gregory just pinged me that the Mobile 2.0 Event, scheduled for October 15 in San Francisco is nearly sold.out - only a few seats left. Don’t be left out and register now. Full program details and speakers list on the event website. There are still sponsor opportunities open. If you’re interested, you can contact me directly.

On October 15th, in San Francisco, Mobile Monday’s Barcelona, London, and Silicon Valley together with the Open Group and SomeBazaar will present the 2nd Mobile 2.0 conference. This will be a one-day event, held at the Grand Hyatt in Union Square, covering the latest in mobile innovation and disruption.

Next to Tomi Ahonen’s keynote on Social Networking and Communities, there are four panels with topics on User Experience, Usability, and Design, Disruptive or New Business Models, Emerging Technologies and a look on Mobile 2.0 from the VC Perspective. Two series of great new Mobile 2.0 startups will be presented in the Mobile Launch Pad.

The conference is bringing together some real mobile industry thought leaders from around the world, such as:

• Tomi Ahonen, 3G Author & Mobile Blogger
• Brian Fling, Blue Flavor
• Kelly Goto, gotomedia
• Risto Lahdesmaki, Idean Enterprises
• Carlos Domingo, Telefonica
• Christian Lindholm
• Tony Fish, AMF Ventures
• Ozzie Diaz, HP
• Jean Marc Frangos, BT Group
• Patrick McVeigh, Warburg Pincus & SoonR
• Stephan Noll, T-Venture
• Voytek Siewierski, Mitsui & Co, Venture Partners
• Olaf Groth, Qualcomm
• Rich Wong, Accel Partners
• Russell Beattie, Mowser
• Marc Davis, Yahoo!
• Ron Mandel, Adobe
• C. Enrique Ortiz, eZee inc.
• Kaj “HeGe” Haggman, Nokia
• James Pearce, dotMobi
• Peter Stark, Sony Ericsson
• Daniel Graf, Kyte.TV

Daniel, Gregory, Mike and Peter asked me after the Global Peer Awards to join the organizing committee, something I didn’t had to think twice on. I like the spirit of the team and the global reach of this event. There has been a lot of reflexion and discussion on what to cover and who to invite, to me it’s a rather unusual but original event that tries to capture what’s going on in mobile and focuses on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation… I can’t wait until October 15

Check out the agenda on full details of speakers, timings, topics, etc. Last years’ (first ever!) Mobile 2.0 conference was sold out in 1 week, so don’t wait too long to register, seats are limited. Registrations are now open at the Mobile 2.0 Conference website. Early Bird Special $145 if you registered before October 1, 2007. Regular Price $185.

Stay tuned for more news on the conference here at mTrends!

Is the Mobile Web slowly leaving its’ infancy? Or is this really a start of something big coming our way? Googling the “mobile web” gives us 1.920.000 results, that’s pretty convincing something is happening. Using terms such as ‘mobile web‘ to ‘Mobile Web 2.0‘ and ‘Mobile 2.0‘ has raised many discussions amongst colleague bloggers; with the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs introduced the ‘real internet’ on a portable device, so it’s really still an ongoing discussion… One thing we all do agree on is that’s it’s all about the world wide web becoming accessible on mobile devices, initiating a new wave of ‘next generation mobile services’.

Informa Telecoms and Media had the bright idea to gather some of the best thinkers and doers in this field and organize a real summit called the Mobile Web 2.0 Conference on 18-19 September 2007 in London.

Do check the agenda of the 2-day conference, the speakers line-up is really impressive: participations include web companies such as Yahoo, Skype, Amazon (Jeff Barr!); speakers from MNO’s including 3, O2, T-Mobile International, BT Global Services, Telia Sonera, Orange, Vodafone; by now well-known startups such as Shozu, AdMob, MyStrands, Eyeka, Widsets, Tariq Krim of Netvibes, in a unique mix including a lot of blog pals who explored the Mobile Web possibilities since it’s inception, like Daniel Appelquist, Ajit Jaokar, Tomi T Ahonen, Tom Hume and Russell Buckley, definately a unseen line-up so far of industry experts dedicated exclusively around the Mobile Web 2.0 topic in Europe.

Lots of essential topics will be covered, such as:

• Examine the impact of Mobile Web 2.0 on traditional mobile and web business models: Interaction of web, mobile, media, broadcast and telecom spheres
• Discover what services will bring Mobile Web 2.0 to life for the mass market
• Discuss how user interface strategies and widgets facilitate discoverability
• Determine market demand for mobile communities across global markets and demographic segments and understand how to capture target audiences
• Pool experiences of existing challenges to user experience and drive browser and device solutions
• Mobilise the Long-Tail to enable the move of Web 2.0 applications to mobile
• Determine who will own the user’s digital footprint

I have been invited to do a talk on the Mobile Web 2.0 Start-up Ecosystem, one of the topics I have been researching on an ongoing basis since I started this blog. Here’s what I will focus on for my talk at the conference:

• Integrating mobility: what mobility features are start-ups concentrating on?
• Where do we see new start-ups : Who is investing in what?
• How do Mobile Web 2.0 propositions differentiate?
• Evaluating new propositions: showcase of launches in recent months

So, to any start-up who recently launched and who is active in the Mobile Web 2.0 space, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me (click my name in top of my sidebar) to share your experiences, who knows you might become a showcase in my presentation

Note there’s also a pre-conference workshop on ‘Understanding Mobile Web 2.0′ the day before the event. To create discussion and to give delegates an idea of what to expect at the event, the organizers also launched a conference blog. Ajit Jaokar - who recently came to explain his views on the topic at MobileMonday Barcelona will be interviewing conference speakers and will post more thoughts on this blog.

I’m really looking forward to this one!

I know how mTrends looks great on a PSP and on a Nokia N800; I haven’t seen my blog however on the iPhone, but I suppose it looks ok - the iPhone features Safari, the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device.

UPDATE => Kelly sended me some shots of mTrends on the iPhone, looks pretty cool, I cannot see from the screenshots if all my sidebar widgets work and if the feed subscription functionality works automatically in the mobile Safari browser… Anyway thanks, Kelly!

Since it’s going to take a while before everyone is able to buy an iPhone, and before device manufacture competitors catch up with Apple, browsing the Mobile Web stays somehow a non-standardised fragmented experience for most people. I have been writing about this confusion before, now it was kind of weird reading this ’strikethrough’ story from Scobleizer on how the iPhone gets confused with the mobile version of the Google Reader. Note that the Safari browser shows the desktop web pages - the ‘real’ internet, as most people know it; Robert just got confused with the different - mobile web - URL’s to browse to.

Now both ways to acces the internet will most probably have to live next to eachother on mobile devices since no real solution is in sight to converge the mobile web as ‘one real web’. There’s the ‘full’ browsing experience possible on the high-end devices like the iPhone, PSP’s and for example the Nokia N800 and then there are the ‘adaptive’ browsers that will adapt at it’s best the existing web page to your phone, like Nokia S60, Openwave and Opera browsers and others like Google Mobile transcoding normal web pages so they fit the mobile screen.

But what about the Mobile Web users?

To my view there are 4 different types of mobile web users to distinguish (some with a combined use), people who:

1. want to read their favourite feeds (through mobile browser or standalone applications)
2. browse websites and pages (using Nokia, Opera Mini or Safari browser on the mobile)
3. search from within a browser using Google Mobile, Yahoo! oneSearch, …
4. use standalone apps/tools to connect to people or communities like Jaiku, Twitter, Fring, Google Mobile Maps, etc…

Currently I use 1 and 4 the most, since browsing the web on the mobile is simply still too annoying and slow and searching on my phone not context relevant for me as it is now; I read feeds and use standalone apps to connect to people and find locations, that’s it. With the coming of more and more webapps, RSS tools and communities going mobile the coming months - YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Netvibes, and alikes - some of them already there - the ways to get to those apps will become even more diverse, not to mention about how to handle correctly Mobile SEO.

For a simplified any (txt) feed ‘works on any device’ solution there’s still the real pre-cursor of the Mobile Web, Winksite. David Harper writes in this Love the Mobile Web post, how Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile Internet sites and build simple mobile connections via mobile phones:

“Winksite is the first standards compliant mobile Website builder that also includes RSS-driven content deployment and mobile-tuned community features such as forum, chat, and polls. This approach delivers fresh content, fast-loading screens, and universally accessible community features to you and your audience. The Winksite service is a free and fully hosted solution. No software install on your phone is necessary to view a Winksite powered mobile site. Learn more about how it works.”

I’ve had mTrends on Winksite since a while now just because my blog was always accesible on most phones, now for anyone who wants his internet blog or pages to be displayed correctly and available on ANY phone, I think Winksite is still the best option. Check below how MobileOK my Winksite blog is using the dotMobi’s MobiReady Report generator.

BTW: great tool! I like the way it displays information on pricing and speed of different networks to acces your mobile web pages.

To close this post, I would like to add this paragraph from Dave’s post on The mobile Web is not just for phones anymore:

“Gamers and their WiFi connected version of the Internet have been largely ignored by Mobile & Web 2.0 publishing and community platforms. We’re changing that. Whatever you choose to build at Winksite will now be served up optimized and fully functioning to the Sony PSP browser and Nintendo DS Lite Opera browser over WiFi connections. With the DS-Lite in mind we provide a fast loading and readable version while in overview mode. The PSP is delivered a version that eliminates the horizontal scrolling (and reduces the vertical scrolling) required to read posts and chat with your friends.”

Right attitude, Dave. Keep going!

What about you? I’m interested in your experiences and opinions

I’m delighted to announce our next MobileMonday Barcelona event, on July 2: we are celebrating our first MoMoBCN anniversary at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). For this occasion we chose one of my favorite topics at the moment: Mobile Web 2.0.

I’m looking forward to finally meet Ajit Jaokar, co-author of the Mobile Web 2.0 book in a session together with Lucia Garate from Vodafone Group Research and Development - to talk about the recently launched Betavine platform; Patrick Lord from Mobiluck, and Carlos Domingo, General Director of Telefonica I+D to present and discuss their ideas on this topic. I will moderate a short panel discussion afterwards.

This next event will be held at the CCCB Auditorium and there’s a celebration drink at the wonderful “Pati de les Dones” inside the CCCB complex.

Check the MobileMonday Barcelona website for all details on place, timings and bio’s of the speakers. NOTE the new event place and timings!

One of the most interesting workshops I followed in 2004 was the W3C “Mobile Web Initiative” Workshop in Barcelona. I learned about managing the complexity in technology innovation between different mobile value chain players and collaboration processes in order to define standards that suits all. But also I heard many good new ideas for the first time there (RSS feed use on the mobile for example), and of which some are currently completely integrated, you can still read the Position Papers presented at that workshop.

Some outcome of these excellent W3C initiatives is the Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group. The recently chartered Working Group is seeking public feedback on one of its proposed deliverables : an open testing framework for the Mobile Web, testing mobile web user agents for the benefits of mobile web developers.
The overall goal of such a framework would be to allow the community to understand better how mobile web user agents available today react to various authoring practices (CSS tricks, javascript compatibility, advanced markup techniques, etc).

To that end, the Test Suites Working Group is looking at setting up a framework that would allow:

• anybody to submit test cases that they think would help assess support of a specific technical point in user agents; a few groups and individuals have already started to collect some of these tests cases, and the Working Group would like to serve as a point of collection and development for these

• anybody to submit test results based on the above mentioned test cases

• anybody to consult the statistical results posted by the community; these could hopefully lead at the creation of compatibility tables as some have been developed in the “desktop browser” world

The Working Group would review, select and possibly amend the test cases submissions to produce a blessed test suite that would get most of th focus, but may still hosts the other test cases in case they would help a more restricted community.

Before investing the time and effort required to make such a system possible, the Working Group would like to get feedback on this project, in particular to see how many of Web developers would be interested in contributing to that project, as well as using its results.

To that end, they have set up a fairly short survey that shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to answer. The survey is open until March 16 (until further notice), so Mobile Web developers, head over to participate to the survey and add your grain to the evolution of the Mobile Web.

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!

I have been writing and reporting for quite some time now on the convergence of networks, the introduction of hybrid devices and media becoming accessible on mobile devices, lately all connecting easily to the web. With game devices such as the PSP accessing the Internet over wifi and the introduction of the iPhone, we now embrace the era of ubiquitous mobility and nomadic computing. This will have a far-reaching impact on the way we access products/services, and the way we communicate with humans and machines. It will change our mobile lifestyle and the way we consume media and advertising.

m-trends.org started as a personal opinion blog on mobile media lifestyle trends and continues doing this with a framed focus, critical opinions and analytical thinking going beyond the hype. To create a broader view and opinion, I invited Yasmine Abbas and Martin Sauter, two personalities I highly respect for their opinion and work, to join me and write regularly at m-trends.org on subjects that are in the air, things we have in common or like to discuss and write about, to start conversations on topics, each from his own perspective and experience.

Yasmine Abbas, is a French DPLG architect, holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS 2001) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Doctor of Design (DDes 2006) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. At Harvard she focused on how neo-nomads, digitally geared people on the move, reclaim a sense of belonging to places in the age of multiple mobilities and digital technologies. She does that too: research and problem solving to design environments, products and services that work for people and drive business results! Yasmine will bring her design/cultural/social context and sensibility to m-trends.org. I interviewed her earlier this year in the Women in Mobile series. Do checkout Yasmine’s personal blog neo-nomad.

Martin Sauter has a special twist on Web 2.0. His professional focus is on mobile network technology and services and he consults mobile network operators for Nortel, one of the major network infrastructure vendors for 2G and 3G networks. His quality time activities include his mobile network blog and book writing. His latest book, “Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society“, discusses the how’s and why’s of GSM, GPRS, UMTS, Wifi, WiMAX and Bluetooth. On the academic side, Martin holds a Dipl. Ing. (FH) degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Ravensburg, Germany and when not busy travelling enjoys lecturing and discussing today’s and tomorrows mobile networks. This is also the area that Martin is going to cover at m-trends.org. Check Martin’s Mobile Technology Page, his personal blog about his thoughts on the evolution of GSM, UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and WiMAX.

A French girl living in the Boston, US, a German living in Paris, France and a Belgian living in Barcelona, Spain, this looks like other kinds of hybrids: different opinions on various topics in a ubiquitous mobility era with views from different angles, written from different locations, by people who are always on the move… This will definately create more value to m-trends.org; if there are any subjects you would like to have covered here, please suggest or contact me by email.

Expect some diverse and interesting subjects covered soon here, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do, initiating this kind of projects together.

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.

The W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative just anounced the new service “Planet Mobile Web”, which goal is to reinforce the community building around the Mobile Web usage, create discussions across blogs, generate new ideas, etc. The Planet provides both an aggregated HTML view and aggregated RSS/Atom feeds.

Planet Mobile Web aggregates posts from various blogs that concern the Mobile Web. While it is hosted by the Mobile Web Initiative, the content of the individual entries represent only the opinion of their respective authors of course.

I think this is a great initiative to stimulate the discussion between the various mobile global value chain players in the field. I am happy I am included in the lists of blogs, I will definately keep contributing and writing on this topic in the future. Check it out!