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I am currently working on a new presentation on the state of Mobile 2.0 for my coming speaker sessions the coming months, starting at Plugg in Brussels next week. If you think you should be in there, send me a note and I’ll consider to include anything interesting and relevant related to the topic.

My previous presentation on the Mobile 2.0 Start-Up Ecosystem I uploaded 5 months ago on Slideshare has been viewed nearly + 14.000 times by now.

cell phone, convergence, events, innovation, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile OS, Mobile Search, mobile2, plugg, presentations, social media, startups, Trends, web 2.0

The LIFT Conference is a 3-day gathering in Swiss Geneva with a clear focus on the impact of technology on society (and vice versa), and much like last year, the 700-headed audience witnessed an impressive set of speakers on this third editon of LIFT, all with the ambition of leaving an inspired impression on everyone present.

Breaking through boundaries

Kevin Warwick opened the second day of the LIFT Conference with a spectacular keynote and video. Warwick is the British professor in Cybernetics who dared become the first ‘human cyborg‘ by implanting a computer chip directly into his nervous system. This procedure not only allowed him to link his brain directly to a computer, but he was also able to do certain activities over the internet or through other human beings. Warwick’s research, in time, is expected to lead to ground-breaking developments in the fields of robotics, medicine and biology.

Holm Friebe from the German Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur, together with a co-worker gave an expose on their visions of future work environments. The self-proclaimed ’socialist-capitalist’ agency introduced 7 rules who are supposed to make work not only more fun but also more productive, by discovering new ways of collaboration without the need for offices, fixed costs, hierarchic employer-employee relationships, delay in payments, etc.

Games

The session about video games was opened byElectronic Arts’ Robin Hunicke, academic and developer of a number of popular games for the Nintendo Wii. She talked about the increasing influence of social software on video games and vice versa, as well as upcoming trends in game design.

Guy Vardi from Oberon Media (also related to the legendary Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi) made quite an impression with his forecasts for the ‘casual gaming’ industry, which is much larger and growing more rapidly than the traditional console video gaming industry.

Paul Barnett, Creative Director at EA Mythics, spoke enthusiastically about the evolution of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games or shortly MMORPG’s (see video below), followed by Bruno Bonnell who ended the gaming session with a keynote about robotics in the gaming and leisure industry, in which he pioneered himself during the eighties.

Working the web

After the lunch it was time for some more internet entrepreneurs and their stories, opened by David Sadigh from IC Agency who delivered a keynote on retention in e-commerce applications, followed by David Marcus from Zong who talked about the possibilities of getting revenue out of mobile applications.

Kevin Marks gave a keynote on Google’s OpenSocial initiative and the SocialGraph API, followed by François Grey from CERN, the Swiss research center where the World Wide Web was invented. He talked about ‘volunteer computing‘, citing examples such as SETI@Home, Folding@Home, etc.

Looking forward

The final session of the LIFT Conference was a discussion on how companies can detect and adapt to upcoming trends and changes. The session was divided into 3 parts: futurists Scott Smith (Changeist), Bill Cockayne (Change Research, Inc.) and Francesco Cara (Design Strategist for Nokia) talked about past and future trends.

More videos of LIFT 08 can be found at Nouvo.ch.

Robin Wauters for mTrends.

2008, Conversations, events, geneva, innovation, lift, lift conference, lift08, liftconference, social media, startups, Trends, web 2.0

The LIFT Conference is a 3-day gathering in Swiss Geneva with a clear focus on the impact of technology on society (and vice versa), and much like last year, the 700-headed audience witnessed an impressive set of speakers on this third editon of LIFT, all with the ambition of leaving an inspired impression on everyone present.

Internet & Society

The first day of the actual conference - after the Workshops and Venture Night the day before - was kicked off by Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk and science fiction author, who tried to convince everyone within 30 minutes that the most spectacular event of 2008 had already happened: the marriage of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with singer / model Carla Bruni.

Pierre Bellanger, founding CEO of the popular French social media platform Skyrock, shared his vision on trends in social networking, followed by academic Jonathan Cabiria, who explained how virtual worlds like Second Life can help marginalized people to regain self-esteem and hope.

Design & User Experience

Anthropologists Younghee Jung and Genevieve Bell, respectively from Nokia and Intel, explained how the internet can influence mocking up desin & user experience concepts for the future. Jung talked about Nokia Open Studio, a product launch event that incorporates stimulating people from developing countries to contribute their ideas and vision on the mobile phone for the next generation. Bell, from chip maker Intel, gave a compelling speech about secrets and lies on the internet. A must-see:

Entrepreneur stories

After lunch, the audience listened to some inspiring stories from the following entrepreneurs:

Rafi Haladjian - the French internet pioneer who wants to change the world with a connected rabbit, the Nabaztag, one of the creations from his last company Violet.

Eric Favre - the Swiss visionary who brought espresso to the masses as inventor of Nespresso and its patented coffee caps, gave a very inspirational talk about innovation and ‘intrapreneurship’.

Jasmina Tesanovic - the Serbian political activist, feminist, author, translator and film producer shared her visions on blogging in times of war.

The Far East

EPFL-researcher Marc Laperrouza guided us into Asia with an expose on the recent trends in the Asian telecommunication landscape, followed by academic Heewon Kim delivering more insight into every day life in the Far East thanks to her research on the use of social software in South-Korea.

Gen Kanai, top executive with Mozilla Japan, discussed open source in Asia, and why the general perception of Asians not contributing much to the open source community is false. Here’s the video of Kanai’s keynote:

Technology for the good and the bad of our climate

After the coffee break, there was one more special session about global warming and the innovative technologies countering the phenomenon. Tom Taylor from the British agency Headshift explained how social networks and ‘peer pressure’ can raise the general awareness about global warming as well as actual deeds for the benefit of our environment. One example he gave was DoTheGreenThing.com.

The online community focused on raising awareness on efficient usage of energy resources WattWatt was introduced by its makers, followed by Nobel prize winner Andy Reisinger, who gave a fascinating expose about the worldwide social challenges global warming entails.

Last but not least, watch this video from Guy Pignolet (Sunsat Energy Council), who invented in innovative way of amassing more solar energy from outer space and beam it back to earth for our benefit:

More videos are available at Nouvo.ch, pictures here.

Robin Wauters for mTrends.

2008, Announcements, Conversations, events, Experience Design, geneva, innovation, lift, lift conference, lift08, liftconference, social media, startups, Trends, web 2.0

Last week marked the third edition of the LIFT Conference in Geneva, a 3-day ‘festival of ideas’ attracting visitors from all around the world. A particularly diverse audience too with people from the internet, academic, fashion, artistics, media and design industry. mTrends was there and saw that it was good; Robin Wauters (from Plugg) wrote a wrap-up for you!

Day 1: Workshops + Venture Night

Workshops

The LIFT organization team made good use of the facilitites of Uni Mail, a complex of the University of Geneva, for a day filled with workshops about a variety of topics. We heard, for the first time, about the Fearless City project, an ambitious initiative from a couple of young Canadians who are trying to aid the marginalized downtown center of Vancouver by supplying its inhabitants with an arsenal of technological ‘weaponry’. Through a combination of (subsidized) wireless and mobile connection infrastructure with devices, open source applications, a social medai platform and the construction of a physical cultural center where all operations will be centralized, the filantrophic initiators want to better the future of Vancouver’s homeless, drug and alcohol addicated and poor. A sort of online/offline self-help group, who wants to leverage the upcoming attention around the 2010 Olympics to raise awareness for the project and set an example for other world cities.

The afternoon was reserved for an enjoyable session about today’s teenagers and how they fit the internet / mobile into their daily life, and how important (or not) it is for them. The interesting part about the session was having 4 actual teenagers, student from Geneva’s international school, join the discussion. This was a way for the attendees to get live feedback about the opinion and facts of the teenager’s internet usage, social network habits, online video, privacy, downloading music, etc.

Venture Night

In the evening, all attendees gathered for the Venture Night, and listened to 8 ‘elevator pitches’ from start-ups, who got live feedback from a series of professional judges.

This is what we thought were the most interesting:

The Italian iO Agency creates interactive objects for use in retail, hospitals, public facilities, events, etc. Quite impressive to see, but difficult to explain without actually seeing what it’s all about. Check their website SensitiveFloor.com for a showcase of one of their product lines, an interactive floor with motion sensors triggering spectacular special effects.

Viewdle is an American start-up who developed an innovative technology to make online videos searchable based on facial recognition. The service isn’t yet publicly available, but you can see how it works on Reuters Labs.

Mixin is sort of a microblogging application + social network + calendar with a clear focus on activities. It feels like Twitter but with the question ‘What are you doing tonight?’ instead of ‘What are you doing right now?’.

PixeLux Entertainment is a Swiss company specialized in digital effects for games, who has developed a technology to significantly decrease the production costs of video games. Thanks to DMM (Digital Molecular Matter), there’s now an automated process simulating hyper realistic effects when bending, breaking or fracturing digital objects.

The rest of the pitches came from coComment, Clipperz, Holistis and Wua.la.

For LIFT video material, check Nouvo.ch.

conference, events, fearless city, innovation, io agency, lift, lift 2008, lift conference, lift08, mixin, pixelux, pixelux entertainment, social media, startups, Trends, venture night, viewdle, web 2.0, workshops

2007 was a very prosperous and exciting year for mobile technology in general, still we’re just at the beginning of a new era of more magic to come in the mobile and web convergent area’s. So, traditionally I’m writing down 10 Mobile Trends for the coming year, always a good personal excercise how close one is predicting mobile market trends and an indicator of what I think will matter in 2008.

Read my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2007 and check for yourself my gut feeling on what happened yet and what is still to come. It seems very obvious and easy but predicting trends can be tricky, just try it for yourself! Check also my del.icio.us for some interesting predictions from other technology blogs I bookmarked during holidays. One of my favorite readings during holidays is still Carlo Longino’s and Russell Buckley’s yearly predictions at Mobhappy. Do check them out!

So here are my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008:

1. Google’s Android and the Open Handset Alliance will definately take off in 2008. While the iPhone is doing probably the best job embracing mobile and web convergence, the Apple OS is still a closed system and used by a rather small market segment of users. Nokia’s Nseries - though all remarkeable devices - didn’t produce any breakthrough Symbian OS changes last year and is still too buggy to go mass-market - I don’t see my sister or father perform a device software update; which leaves the opportunity for Google and the Open Handset Alliance to get the new Linux-based operating system Android on several cutting-edge smartphones before year-end. Mobile OS, a truely competitive space in 2008!
   
2. The Rise of the Mobile Social Networks. M:Metrics released some promising data mid-2007 on the rise of the Mobile Social Networks. With the big social media networks all going mobile in 2007 (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Bebo, …), this trend will continue to rise in 2008, sustained by more flat rate introductions on different markets.
   
3. Apple will be seriously attacked by the music industry on its own, once disruptive, iTunes business model. 2008 will be the year of further downfall of DRM and the raise of watermarked audio-files. With Sony BMG planning to drop DRM - the last of the Big Four record labels with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music, to throw in the towel on digital rights management. The end of DRM might embolden a host of new, online download venues initiated by the Big Four in its searches for a successful digital strategy. Note also the rise of new business models (!) giving away DRM-free, ad-supported music downloads, like the recently founded Rcrd Lbl by Peter Rojas. Read my DRM Free at Last! for a recent overview and links to previous posts on this topic.
4. Telefonica will introduce the 3G iPhone. To be announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February?
5. The return of the Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. A new wave of mobile services and applications build on the location of the user (cell-ID and/or GPS) will see the light this year, driven by the open Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function. Read also my early 2005 coverage on the formerly known MoSoSos.
6. First iPhone competitors coming to market. Nokia will introduce a serious competitor for the iPhone. It has the hardware manufacturing intelligence and knowledge to come up with its own multi-touch screen interface. Biggest challenge for Nokia (and other manufacturers) will be to keep the OS user-experience as simple as the iPhone. Expect some great innovating devices from HTC too in 2008! (checkout the HTC Touch Dual).
7. Mobile Video Blogging starting to taking off. Though still to be used by early adopters, mobile video blogging tools such as Kyte.tv mobile are already doing a great job with Floobs and KaZiVu also looking very promising (both still in beta), not to forget about YouTube Mobile. All eyes will be on Seesmic however that has the right start-up vibe - instigated daily by its impressive experienced shareholders (and web 2.0 icons) and its very active beta-testers community. Imagining Seesmic to be used on your mobile phone is an easy one, the challenges for Seesmic are to bypass the complex technical issues and delivery of its great idea.
8. Mobile search, as already predicted last year will continue to be one of the most important and most used mobile applications. I keep this one in my list adding that some new players might disrupt the big Search market players, not having figured out the real mobile search issues such as accuracy, context, relevance, latency and the correct display of local and niche results.
9. PRM (Personal Rights Management) and Privacy policies and procedures will be high on the agenda for every entreprise and conscious connected individuals. Already talk of the connected crowds at LeWeb3, opening the Social Graphs might appear cool in your social media community but has to be done right! As a starter, check out Dataportability.org and watch Robert Scoble explaining his recent portability issues with Facebook.
10. Twitter and the breakthrough of the ultimate Mobile Presence Tool. Yes, Twitter is the utlimate mobile presence tool, since it’s the easiest to use (through SMS and mobile web access), and most accurate to stay connected at any time from anywhere… Jaiku has a definately a richer client but Twitter is the most easily integrated into most of your social networks, checkout MoodBlast that can simultaneously update multiple chat clients and web services presence tools. 2008 will also see the rise of lifestreaming apps like Tumblr, surprisingly simple on the web and looks great on your mobile phone.

Some of the downers of 2007:

- the sudden death of great blogger Marc Orchant - my deepest sympathies to Marc’s family.

- the whole blognation’s saga - one nation, many bugs…
- and just recently Om Malik’s heart attack - wish him strength, get well soon, Om!

Definately an urge for all bloggers not to forget about their daily excercise, no less!

I wish all my readers a great and magic 2008!

2008, 3G, 3g iphone, Analysis, Android, apple, bebo, convergence, Cool Devices, drm, emi, facebook, floobs, google, htc, innovation, iphone, itunes, kazivu, kyte, kyte.tv, leweb3, location based, Mashup, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Blog, Mobile Content, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, mobile music, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile video blogging, mobile web, mobile world congress, mobileweb, mowser, Multi Touch Screen, myspace, NFC, nokia, Open Handset Alliance, Operators, os, personal rights management, Predictions, prm, rcrdlbl, seesmic, social media, sony bmg, startups, taptu, telefonica, touch dial, Trends, universal, user experience, warner, watermark, web 2.0, wireless, youtube

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

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!

Andy Abramson, carriers, cell phone, Christian Wiklund, David Whitewood, events, i+d, innovation, Jaime González Rodríguez, Jonathan Wood, leweb3, madrid, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Events, Mobile Monday, Mobile RSS, mobile social media, mobilemonday, mobility, Operators, r&d, social media, soonr, startups, telefonica, trutap, Under The Radar, voip, VoIPWatch, web 2.0, Wichro, zkout

MyStrands has secured $24 million in its Series B2 round of funding. Spanish bank BBVA led the funding along with existing investor Debaeque. The last round of funding closed in June at $25 million, bringing the total capital raised to date to $55 million. You can read the full details of the anouncement at MyStrands blog.

In the past four years, MyStrands has developed a scalable Personalized Discovery Platform and a Social Recommender Engine. The Social Recommender Engine provides real-time personalized recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones, and other Internet-connected devices; and takes into account that taste is context-sensitive and evolves over time. These developments have already resulted in sales of $12 million during 2007. The company will use the new funds to go to the next level of product development. MyStrands recently launched MyStrands.tv, a personalised music tv channel and MyStrands Social Player was featured in the recent Nokia marketing campaign.

MyStrands recently hired some great new people and is busy building a great global team of developers. The company is headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon, and opened offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Washington DC in the US; Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza in Spain; Helsinki in Finland or Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Announcements, b2, bbva, convergence, funding, innovation, Mobile Apps, mystrands, partyStrands, seriesb, social player, spanish startups, startups, web 2.0