Personalized Graphics for Your Social Networks Profile
0 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele August 31st, 2007 in Social Media, web 2.0, we media, Friends, Art, Fun, Trends
One of the those things you have to live with when you grow a little older in today’s digital era is that one looses the snappy looks one used to have - this happens for everyone in any era obviously, but it gets tougher confronting yourself everyday in that upper left screen corner of the social networks you visit 
Luckily there’s Nathan Muntner from Phophoto.com who does magic with his digital pencils vectorizing your pictures whether those are recent or not. Nathan officially launched his site Phophoto.com in May 2007, providing vector-based graphic renderings of photos. Phophoto offers a unique service by transforming photos into digital art and creating a very personalized avatar.
Phophoto distinguishes themselves from the numerous photo manipulation sites that rely on Photoshop, by instead digitally hand drawing and inking the portraits using vector based software resulting in sharp, detailed graphics that are incredibly scalable and perfect for integration with logos, banners, and animations.
Phophoto creates a new captivating image, so the user can stand out from the crowd in the social and business networks, but an image that is still very much them.
Apparently it works since I got several people asking me who did my new buddypic when I uploaded it to Facebook yesterday. If you like what Nathan did to me, try Phophoto.com, currently only $30 for your Manga Caricature or Vector Portrait!
art, blogs, communities, facebook, Friends, Fun, graphic renderings, manga, messenger, myspace, Personalized Graphics, photos, social media, Trends, twitter, vector based, vectorized, we media, web 2.0
Women in Mobile 20 - Katie Lips
8 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele June 30th, 2007 in Women in Mobile, Social Media, we media, Conversations
I never met Social Media Strategist Katie Lips in person but I often have been bumping into her online and have been following her projects in mobile and social media ever since I started my blog: a real mobile geek for a change; from Treasuremytext with Kisky Netmedia to her previous blog or bumping into her at Plazes or Jaiku, Katie is always on the ball and has always good ideas at hand, so I asked her to be the next woman to be interviewed in the Women in Mobile series and asked her a bit more about her work and her passion for mobile, an interesting interview with a lot of insight and fresh links, female mobile geek noblesse 
YOUR BACKGROUND - YOUR WORK
- Can you explain more about your work, your background?
I’m a Social Media Strategist; that means I help people devise and implement social media strategies using web and mobile technologies. Most of my work in this area focusses on helping my clients use technology in a effective way dramatically improving a specific aspect of their business. I work a lot with Open Source Software, helping my clients to develop projects quickly, innovating in content or in better business processes, rather than on reinventing web or mobile infrastructure.
In addition to my consultancy, I am the Co-Founder of Treasuremytext.com a mobile & web application which stores thousands of text messages (SMS) for people worldwide. I’ve been working with technology since the around 1998 when I made my first ‘website’ and with mobile since around 2001 which was the first time I integrated SMS with a web application.
As well as Treasuremytext, I have also worked on other (mainly arts based) mobile projects including a “Attention Please! an Experiment” (using RFID in the gallery) and C21tones.com an experimental ‘user generated’ ringtone website. Recently I have also helped a new pan-european publisher integrate mobile services into their web offering (clubcollective.com)
- Are you more social, business or technical oriented? How does this reflect in your work?
With an educational background in the Arts, a professional background in Technology and now working to build up my own business and mobile service, I would say I have to be all three. Most of what I do is about ideas - in any arena. Having a technical understanding of how things are built, means you know what’s possible. Having creativity and ambition means you aren’t afraid to ignore what is and isn’t possible and to build what you want how you want. And if you’re launching anything online or offline, in today’s world, you of course need to be very social. Having diverse perspectives on life means I am interested in lots of things, and specifically in new approaches to mobile and mobile services.
- What brought/brings you into the mobile/mobility area?
I set up Kisky Netmedia with my partner Paul Stringer in 2002 to develop mobile applications. We had already worked on many amazing web projects and saw mobile as a huge opportunity, full of potential and excitement. With our web background we approached mobile services with the view that we would use web functionality to improve mobile services, rather than seeing the two worlds separately.
At that time in the UK at least, the mobile marketplace seemed rather depressing, and void of anything I personally wanted to try. I found so many things about mobile so wrong and felt compelled to attempt to fix some of them. It seemed as if everything was ‘designed’ to extract money from ‘consumers’, rather than to solve a real problem or need. In our own small way I think we at least created projects which made other people think about some of the issues. I never intended to be a mobile activist; just to make things in the area of mobile that real people found really useful.
In 2003 I had a phone which could only save 15 SMS messages. I was forever deleting some to make room for more, and over time I was having to delete messages that were important to me. Treasuremytext was born. The idea that we could make people’s experience of ‘mobile’ better with a ‘website’ was pretty radical then.
We set up Kisky to deliver Treasuremytext and mobile services design. Some things we did right, some things we did wrong. We were very young. I learnt a lot and quickly and I have been working with mobile in one way or another ever since.
My current workload includes new work on Treasuremytext. We are about to launch Treasuremytext ‘2.0′ a fully ’social’ mobile application; a new version for a new era of the web (and of mobile) services. We have a lot of (geeky and non-geeky) users who are very loyal and keep lots and lots of messages.
A couple of years ago most of my current clients believed mobile was irrelevant to them. Now, all sorts of organisations are starting to think how they can use mobile practically; how can they use mobile to stay in touch, or to work smarter. My current projects in mobile are diverse. I’m working with a UK Fire Service to integrate mobile technologies into their business; improving internal communication and improving relationships with the community they serve. I’m also working with several organisations to increase their reach and reputation online; and now this includes using mobile channels. A lot of what I do is in the Web2.0 or ‘Social Media’ space, and I try to apply these principles to mobile as far as possible.
MOBILE LIFESTYLE
- What is your personal ‘big issue’ in life? Can the mobile phone or technology in general help improving situations?
Mobile for me is about giving you power via your handset; wherever and whenever. Power to find things out (search), power to communicate (IM, SMS, Email, Blog), power to create (Blog, Photoblog, VideoBlog). However my mobile ‘killer apps’ are still voice and SMS.
I see ‘online’ as a key enabler; and I see ‘mobile’ as an extension of those capabilities. So not being under 20, I did not grow up with a mobile device, and perhaps my mobile use is somewhat conservative. I use my phone where I don’t have my laptop+wifi; and that’s it basically until some amazing services come along and I get a brilliant data plan on my phone. I will keep an eye on the iPhone of course!
I am truly looking forward to the iPhone and fully expecting it will revolutionize how I use a mobile ‘phone’, sorry ‘device’; when they are available in Europe that is. I am hoping that the iPhone will do all those things that so far mobile has for one reason or another not quite been able to deliver. I can’t wait!
- How does mobility technological progress influences your daily routine in your work?
As mobile technologies progress and lead to the availability of new mobile services, I’m of course compelled to try them out. And the always on access to communications and creativity is a good thing for anyone in any situation. I must admit that no mobile service has changed the way I work or influenced my routine, whereas plenty of web services have. And I’m not intending to be a skeptic, rather I feel the web offers more functionality than mobile can currently offer (due to handset OS and data lock down), and as such, the tiny array of services I can access are just not going to start influencing my life. That said, there are some really nice ideas out there that would improve it. I like Socialight.
- How does ubiquitous computing affect your mobile lifestyle? How do you see ubicomp evolving the next 5 to 10 years?
Yeah so, for us geeks we’ll have better wireless networks, better access to services, in more places in the world. For everyone else, apart from mobile data costs coming down making people use their phones even more to do even more things, other things will start to happen. We’ll start to see better joined up services from Governments; (which you may or may not see as a good thing). We’ll see companies being able to reach much more target groups of consumers. We’d like to think we can find, pay for and take delivery of our own specialist products, whatever we want in the longtail of entertainment, literature, and arts.
But where as the web is a level playing field, an open platform, mobile is not. And we must be careful about upselling the vision of a world where there is no place for independent developers; no place for the free press, a place where a few organisations control what content people have access to, the brands they can buy and where they can buy them. As the web has become a platform for independent retailers, publishers, and artists all able to find their niche marketplace; this utopia is not present on ‘mobile’. Not until mobile just becomes a simple extension of ‘online’.
- Which tools you use to publish, blog or moblog your work?
Well I have a ‘regular’ wordpress blog where I talk about my work.(http://www.katielips.com) I also use podcasting in some projects for example I have recently produced a podcast for an Arts project I’m working on. The podcast is a behind the scenes glimpse into the making of the exhibition. I love both video and audio podcasts.
- Which applications and services do you use most often on your mobile phone?
I do a lot of texting. Also recently I have started to use Shozu to upload images to Flickr; the immediacy is really compelling; you just take a picture, press a button and it’s live on the Internet for all your Flickr contacts to see. I am also working with Flickr and Shozu to deliver a moblog project for a client; the availability of more and more mobile-to-web tools is starting to mean it’s possible to do build mobile projects and functionality using these free apps. You can then of course pull data out of Flickr using their API. So just that small ‘mobile connect’ bit provided by Shozu essentially lets you build your own flexible moblog application.
- Do you use your device to interact with other machines?
I haven’t really done a lot of this but I am keen to. I’m thinking coin free vending machines (soda drinks, train tickets and so on) for a start.
MOBILE GEEK?
- What do you think about the next wave of Mobile Augmented Reality tools coming?
I haven’t seen much of this; maybe I’m not paying attention to the right billboards or reading the right magazines. I would of course use QRcodes when they’re applied to something I’m interested in buying. I have used RFID too; to receive context based promotional content and also in an arts context.
- Do you download audio/video files on your phone? Any thoughts on Digital Right Management (DRM)? Future Business Models?
No I don’t download video or audio via my phone; nor do I put content from my computer on my phone. I am still amazed at what people pay for mobile content. Really they’re paying because they think that is the only way they can get the content (often which they have already paid for once) on their phones, and often it is the only way.
The future business model that has to win through is the “buy once / manage online / consume on mobile” model; as in iTunes and the iPhone.
- Do you think web 2.0 technology influences mobile services and tools? How? Mobile 2.0? What does it mean to you? Do you use it? Are these evolutions influencing mobile technology?
Yes I do, already and more and more in the future. Not from the networks though; as the open platform of web2.0 and the idea that it’s possible for anyone to launch a new service is something that is totally at odds with their business.
A lot of web 2.0 applications have mobile components; interact with Jaiku or Plazes or Flickr via your mobile for example. I like this approach to ‘mash-up’ web and mobile applications.
- What are your favourite mobile ‘we media’ (user-generated content) projects?
YouTube in terms of both creating and enjoying content online and on the move. And of course Apple know this as they’ve integrated it right into the iPhone.
- What about Mobile Social Networks? Do you use one yourself? Do you know about a good service?
I use Plazes and also Jaiku, although I’m not a heavy user; I’m not as social as some people in my social network.
FUTURE OF MOBILE
- What is going to be the next *big thing* in mobile?
Well the network operators and handset manufactures loosing a little control of course. Allowing independent developers create new applications can only be a good thing. Whilst services like Widsets are great, I believe Apple is going to fast forward this with iPhone. Talk about reinventing the phone; they also took a pretty good look at the mobile industry and seem set to reinvent some of that too. By making it possible for any developer to create applications (because they are web baed), they are offering a level playing field. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
The previous model was that you had to create an app which would work on a handful of phones, then work really hard to broaden your appeal. Then your market was narrowed anyway by the fact that even if people had compatible handsets you were asking them to download, install and run software, often not knowing their (data transfer) cost implications. It severely crippled the market reach of mobile services. No longer, if you can just make a web app!
This heralds things to come. Apple’s approach fosters innovation; more developers with more ideas will make more great products for their handset, meaning they will sell even more phones. It makes perfect business sense.
As making apps for phones becomes easier so too will making apps for a whole host of mobile connectivity. I was loosely involved in the early days of the Roomware project. Roomware is about a bunch of developers getting together to build an open source server that enables other independent developers to quickly build mobile apps. “Software running in a defined physical space” - using SMS, and also RFID, and potentially using other connectivity. Sadly I haven’t been to the last couple of Roomware meetups but I know things are coming a long well. This is about applying the open source model to mobile development.
- The mobile trend(s) for this and next year?
iPhone, followed by a release of a lot of phones which attempt to compete as media players, which in turn, will force some operators and content owners to rethink some of the DRM issues. I also think more people will start to use more ‘web and mobile’ apps.
PERSONAL FAVORITES
- Who inspires you professionally?
Lots of people; (and too many to name) but I am inspired by creative people; people who believe in their cause, people who just make stuff happen.
- Your favorite mobile technology blog?
I dip into a lot of tech blogs; more web ones than mobile. I tried writing my own, but I didn’t really have enough time to dedicate to making it very good so I totally respect people that do write great tech blogs.I enjoy a mix of interview and analysis so I’d have to say m-trends of course Rudy!
- Your favorite moblog?
Jaiku presence stream from my friends on my mobile when I’m away from my computer.
- Your favorite podcast?
Tateshots: small, digestible, insightful, unique, varied podcasts with brilliant artists. Come on; Gilbert and George on your iPod, what more do you want?
- Your favorite videoblog?
I’m working on a very wonderful project this month; and the video blog we made (also as a podcast) is something I love watching over and over. I’d have to say that really.
- Your favorite mobile 2.0 service?
Plazes, as much for its potential and vision as for my actual use of it. When I’m at a geeky event, it certainly comes in handy to see who’s nearby. I can see it really taking off if it can hook me up with other useful stuff nearby.
- Your favorite mobile device?
My future iPhone.
- Favorite mobile application/service?
Treasuremytext, or some amazing application developed for my future iPhone! And right now it’s GMail.
- Favorite mobile website?
Any website I’ll be able to read on my iPhone?
- Favorite mobile search tool?
Google.
- Who else could you recommend to be interviewed next?
Well I know of a couple of women making art with mobile and I think that might be a nice perspective. I’d say a lot more people now work ‘with mobile’ than’ ‘in mobile’; i.e. that you work with it from outside the ‘mobile industry’. Check out Lisa Roberts‘ creative mobile projects at Blink Media and Jen Southern’s GPS driven artworks.
On my way Katie, thanks!
amsterdam, katie lips, mobile, social media, social media strategist, strategy, we media, Women in Mobile, womeninmobile
Jyri Engeström on the Future of Participatory Media
2 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele June 23rd, 2007 in Social Media, Mobile Apps, Mobile Lifestyle, web 2.0, we media, Mashup, Viral, Moblog, Mobile RSS, mobile 2.0, Mobile Blog, Trends, Mobile Culture, Mobile Monday, Innovation, Startups, Ubiquitous Devices, Location-Based, ConvergenceIf you have a moment, I highly recommend to view this presentation Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström gave at Reboot 9.0 and at Mobile Monday Amsterdam recently on the future of participatory media.
Probably one of the most comprehensive views on social media titled Microblogging: Tiny social objects.
Why people like microblogging? Because most people can’t write several blogposts per day/week but like to keep conversations alive around topics and they like to stay connected with eachother in a simple and easy way (accesible through different interfaces and/or devices), including the mobile phone obviously
I also started an mTrends channel for stuff you’d like to bring to my attention - and to mTrends readers of course: from any Jaiku interface you can post to mTrends channel by prefixing your message with the #mTrends channelname.
amsterdam, blog, blogging, comunidades, content, convergence, cool, design, engeström, engestrom, innovation, internet, jaiku, jyri, location based, marketing, Mashup, media, micrblogging, micro, microblogging, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Blog, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile Monday, Mobile RSS, mobilemonday, Moblog, momo, mososo, participatory, reboot, reboot9, simplyawesome, social, social media, social network, social networking, social objects, socialnetworks, software, startups, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, user generated, Viral, we media, web, web 2.0, web2, web2.0, web20
MoMoBCN Anniversary on Mobile Web 2.0
0 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele June 21st, 2007 in Social Media, Operators, Mobile Apps, Mobile Web, 3G, web 2.0, Mobile Events, Books, Mobile Content, we media, Announcements, MobileMonday, User-Experience, Usability, Wi-Fi, LBS, Mobile RSS, mobile 2.0, Trends, Mobile Monday, Innovation, W3C, Startups, Ubiquitous Devices, Conversations, Location-Based, Convergence, Events
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!
3G, Ajit Jaokar, Announcements, betavine, Books, carlos domingo, convergence, events, futuretext, i+d, innovation, lbs, location based, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, Mobile Monday, Mobile RSS, mobile web, mobile web 2.0, mobilemonday, mobilemonday spain, Mobiluck, mtrends, opengardens, Operators, social media, startups, telefonica, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, usability, user experience, vodafone, w3c, we media, web 2.0, wi fi
Mobilize and Share with Mosh by Nokia
7 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele June 13th, 2007 in Social Media, Mobile Apps, web 2.0, Mobile Content, we media, Predictions, Announcements, mobile 2.0, Trends, Mobile Video, Nokia, Ubiquitous Devices, Convergence
Got invited last week by Nokia for their new mobile sharing community platform called MOSH. I must admit it’s great to be invited to all exciting Alpha and Beta mobile testing, still it’s quite difficult to test them all in-depth with a lot of workload on the shelves these days. However, as with anything good in life… quality, curiosity and surprise always make a good cocktail and make you want to try out things immediately before others.
MobSharing, a term originally coined by Mike Evans in September 2005, didn’t figure in my 2007 predictions but was already mentioned as a future trend in my 2006 predictions and now it’s finally here from Nokia Still in closed Alpha, but with the advantage we won’t have to wait another couple of years for it to get a critical mass…
“Create, Upload and Share all of your mobile content”:
MOSH is a content sharing site where community members upload, distribute and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices. With MOSH, anything from applications like mobile games, to videos, blogs, songs or photos are now accessible and distributable on your mobile device.
How does it work?
There are three key elements to MOSH:
1. A website
2. A mobile website
3. An application for mobile devices (available for download on Nokia devices only)
The website is your main source for accessing the wide range of content available through MOSH. It is here where you can create your profile, upload content, manage your collections and specify which selects to send to your mobile device as mobile feeds.
The mobile website is where users with both Nokia and non-Nokia devices can access mobile feeds and view the MOSH service.
I played with it for the first time today and the interface looks simple & smart, ideally for the creation of mobile social media: users can create ‘collections’ around topics, tags or keywords to organize content which can be ranked, ‘raved’, filtered and shared.
While the service is optimized for use on Nokia devices, the service is compatible with all mobile handsets, provided they support the kind of content you are downloading and that you are able to access the Internet.
One quick remark: how do I know the content or apps I’m uploading is compatible with what kind of devices? Creating some groups of phone categories might be handy for the users here.
I’ll keep you posted with more feedback and mosh moves of course.
Announcements, convergence, Cool Devices, Friends, Fun, Games, innovation, mobile 2.0, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile music, Mobile RSS, mobile video, mobile web, mobsharing, mosh, nokia, Predictions, social media, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, we media, web 2.0
Webware 100: Finalists Announced!
1 Comment Published by Rudy De Waele May 27th, 2007 in Social Media, Mobile Apps, web 2.0, we media, Announcements, Trends, Innovation, Awards, Startups
Webware, one of the interesting resources on web apps, edited by Rafe Needleman, announced their finalists this week of the Webware 100, a new awards program they recently launched. Over 5.000 nominations were received, whittled down to 2,000 de-duplicated and qualifying entries, from there, 250 products were finally selected as finalists, 25 each in these ten categories:
- Browsing: Web browsers, extensions, widgets, and security
- Communications: e-mail, chat, VOIP
- Community: social networks, groups
- Data: search, storage, backup, sharing, and sync
- Entertainment: Games and contests
- Media: audio, video, photo
- Mobile: portable utilities and apps
- Productivity: apps, business tools, commerce
- Publishing: blogging, web content, design tools
- Reference: Mapping, reference works, and education
Check it out, some really good stuff in there! In the Mobile category, some of my favorite applications were selected such as ShoZu, SoonR, Winksite, Yahoo OneSearch and MyStrands with Social Player. Thumbs up for all finalists, my TOP 25 would have looked quite differently but I’ll post that some other time here.
You can only vote once per category, so choose wisely. Voting closes at 9:00 AM Pacific time on June 11, the winners will be announced on June 18.
You can vote here.
Announcements, applications, apps, Awards, cnet, innovation, Mobile Apps, mystrands, onesearch, shozu, social media, social player, soonr, startups, Trends, we media, web, web 2.0, webware, winksite, yahoo
LAB on MEDIA and Human Experience
0 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele May 21st, 2007 in Social Media, Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile Content, we media, Announcements, mlearning, Mashup, Ethnographics, mobile 2.0, Trends, Augmented Reality, Mobile Culture, Innovation, Ubiquitous Devices, Conversations, Convergence, Events
On May 29-30 you can join me in Girona for a LAB on MEDIA and Human Experience, organised by the Club of Amsterdam. I will join this “immersed experience of a Do-Tank” together with Laurence Desarzens, urban communicator at beatmap.com, Paul F.M.J. Verschure, ICREA research professor at the Technology Department of the University Pompeu Fabra and Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Director, Yahoo! Research and moderated by Humberto Schwab, Director, Club of Amsterdam, Innovation Philosopher.
All related info to participate to this LAB can be found here at the website of Club of Amsterdam. On their blog, you can read a short interview with me related to the LAB event in Girona.
There are only a few places left to attend this LAB on MEDIA and Human Experience. mTrends readers who would like to attend can get a discount discount [Euro 980 - instead of Euro 1.300]. You can download the mTrends registration form here or you can use your mTrends discount code 02CT92 using the Online Media LAB Registration Form.
Announcements, augmented reality, clubofamsterdam, convergence, ethnographics, events, girona, human experience, innovation, lab, Mashup, media, mlearning, mobile 2.0, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Lifestyle, social media, spain, Trends, Ubiquitous Devices, we media
Flickrvision Mobile
11 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele May 19th, 2007 in Social Media, web 2.0, we media, Announcements, Mashup, Fun, mobile 2.0, Trends, beta
Dave Troy just released Flickrvision Mobile beta. Dave recently amazed the online world with twittervision, now he did it again with flickrvision. Twitter went already mobile earlier, now Dave is looking for feedback on what platforms it works on. Confirmed already on Nokia N80 & N95, if you want to give this a try, this is fun!
FYI: twittervision.com 3D & flickrvision 3D views are now also officially available!
(thanks to Hector for the tweet tip
NOTE: better not try this over 3G without a flat rate plan
3D, Announcements, beta, davetroy, flickr, flickrvision, Fun, Mashup, mobile, mobile 2.0, social media, Trends, twitter, twittervision, user generated, we media, web 2.0
Innovate Europe 07 Wrap-Up
5 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele May 19th, 2007 in Social Media, Operators, Mobile Apps, Mobile Web, web 2.0, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Events, we media, Analysis, Mobile Advertising, Wi-Fi, LBS, Mobile RSS, mobile 2.0, Ubiquitous Marketing, Innovation, Spanish Startups, Awards, Location-Based, Convergence, Events, iNNOVATE!europe07
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
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