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Next Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be at the Mobile Web 2.0 Summit 2008, organised by Osney Media in London. If you haven’t seen the program yet, it’s a real impressive line-up of speakers, topics and panel sessions includin participations from AdMob Inc, AMF Ventures, Arena Mobile, Bango, Bouygues Telecom, BuddyPing, Dopplr, Fjord, Flirtomatic, Futuretext, GoMo News, Google, GyPSii, Hutchison Whampoa Europe, mBlox, Mocospace, MEF, Mozilla, M:Metrics, Nokia, Orange, Ovum, Swisscom, Sponge, Telefonica O2 Europe, Vodafone Group, Xtract, Yell and Yahoo. Check the full agenda here.

I’m doing a panel with Tom Hume from Future Platforms and Monty Munford from Monty’s Gaming and Wireless Outlook on this year’s hits and misses in mobile technology. That should be fun!

Lots of known industry folks, I hope I can spend some time with the people I didn’t had a chance to meet yet. So, ping me if you’d like to catch up with me.

The next Mobile Monday Barcelona on May 5, 2008 in collaboration with Forum Nokia covers Mobile Development and will explore the mobile developer’s ecosystem. The session will include speakers from Forum Nokia, the Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform, and will include presentations from Mobile Distillery (France) and IDEAN from Finland. If you’re interested in the next tips & tricks in mobile development, don’t miss this one!

Nokia’s global developer program, Forum Nokia connects developers to tools, technical information, support, and distribution channels they can use to build and market applications around the globe. From offices in the U.S., Europe, Japan, China, and Singapore, Forum Nokia provides technical and business development support to developers and operators to assist them in achieving their goal of successfully launching applications and services to consumers and enterprises. More information is available at www.forum.nokia.com.

Speakers:

Jarkko Tolvi, Business Development Manager, Forum Nokia EMEA (Finland)

Ricardo Varela, Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform (UK)

Vincent Berge, Co-Founder and General Manager, Mobile Distillery (France)
A specialist in mobile technologies, especially Java™ Micro Edition and BREW, Mobile Distillery was founded in 2005 to solve the platform and handset fragmentation issue that developers face when developing Mobile content & services. Its software solutions reduce porting cycles by up to 80%, generate cost savings, and accelerate time-to-market of Java mobile applications while ensuring their easy updates to new devices in European, North-American and Asian markets.

Mikko-Pekka Hanski, Director, Business Development, IDEAN (Finland)
Mikko-Pekka will talk about Mobile Platforms and User Interfaces. Each platform from S60 to Android has its own philosophy regarding user experience and how user interface is built. Mikko-Pekka Hanski from Idean will present how platforms help developers to create beautiful and ease-to-use user interfaces.

(NOTE: Faraz Syed from Device Anywhere had to cancel his participation this time)

Networking:
As usual, a networking party will follow the conference where participants will enjoy a glass of cava while sharing experiences about life and work. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe/ to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

All details at Mobile Monday Barcelona website.

Image © SENSEable city lab MIT - wikicity rome

After some hectic weeks, trying to get blogging back to normal…

The next MobileMonday Barcelona event on December 3 covers Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function shows we’re heading to really interesting services build on the location of the user. Next Monday event has a really c00l line-up:

speakers include Fabien Girardin - who will present WikiCity a MIT affiliated project that features innovative ways to understand and communicate the dynamics of the city; Börkur Sigurbjörnsson - who will talk about two research prototypes from Yahoo! Research Berkeley: ZoneTag and TagMaps; Andres Ribera of Spanish startup Hipoqih, a Google Maps mashup that aims to create a mobile social network with GPS geolocation and Ilja Goossens, of yoMedia (Netherlands), who will talk about their video content delivery platform linked to outdoor advertising. Don’t hesitate to register and/or confirm your presence for this event, only 150 seats available.

Since Google anounced it’s partnership with LG Electronics it becomes more and more obvious that Google will launch it’s own branded handset in the very near future. The news today on TechCrunch that Google is in acquisition discussions with telephone management startup GrandCentral is just another logical step by Google to enter the ‘mobile connected services’ space the company is already quite present. I mentioned about GrandCentral and The Mobile VoIP-wave coming to us in this article I wrote a couple of months ago for Read/WriteWeb.

The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for life.” As we change jobs, homes and cell phones, there are a lot of phone numbers to keep track of, and keeping everyone up to date with your most recent phone numbers is a real cost. If you use GrandCentral you can give out a single phone number. What happens when that person calls that number depends on his/her relationship to you, and what you are doing at the time.

While many are focused on the iPhone launch later this week, some other rumours are popping up about Google involved in Apple buyout rumours circulate as iPhone launch nears. In any case, the mobile space becomes more and more strategic and competitive, just look at the brands - we couldn’t even think of being mobile this year - only a few years ago… MySpace, YouTube, eBay, Yahoo!, Google, Apple, Prada, just to name a few… Oh God I love my job

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.

MobileMonday Barcelona next event on May 7 presents and discusses the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead in Mobile Search.

Since Google introduced it’s easy to use Search Engine in 1998, a lot of things have changed in internet business, very few people could imagine the impact of simple search as we know it know. With even more mobile devices connected to the internet then computers globally, Mobile Search is one of the key area’s in mobile development to satisfy the demands of the consumer…

A mobile search request has to be easy and relevant and needs to be available in the right context. Organising all existing online data to be displayed correctly on a small screen is one of the biggest challenges laying ahead for the industry the coming years. Search news, locations, people, products, tourist and travel information, music and video files, all that data is already accessible on the last generation of mobile phone, a lot of companies are positioning in this interesting and lucrative market space.

Since 2005, a lot of new companies have been starting to position their service, projects like Wapedia, Mobilicio.us, 4INFO, Technorati Mobile, mInfo in China, and more recently mowser are some of the interesting projects around. This year seems to be a breakthrough year in Mobile Search now that the more established internet brands are starting to position in mobile and more and more deals are signed with operators.

I am happy to announce one of our most interesting speakers’ line-ups so far:

Jeff Pedigo, Director, Business Development at Yahoo! Inc. (UK)
Steve Ives, Founder & CEO Taptu.com (UK)
Philip Gontier, Sales Director EMEA, JumpTap, Inc. (USA)
Anat S. Amir, Senior Mobile Marketing Manager, EMEA, Google (UK)

I am looking forward to this event, check the MobileMonday Barcelona website for more details. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe/ to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!

At Macworld San Francisco 2007, a couple of hours ago, Steve Jobs unveiled (finally!) the iPhone. You can watch the full keynote here and how the phone works here.

After more than 2 years of speculations everywhere, the iPhone became probably the most ever hyped device before it’s launch. Note that exactly one year ago was the last time I wrote about the iPhone in my mobile & wireless predictions for 2006: “My guess is that if Apple makes a move into mobile, they will come up with something more then just a mobile phone.”

Damn was I right! Apple - btw dropped offically ‘Computer’ from their company name today, comes up with an awesome hybrid device that stays true to Apple’s core: to design high-class technology products… And it’s no less with the iPhone, bypassing all it’s competitors with a full surface touchscreen device for better UI, and reconfigurable/adaptable UI’s:

iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

I will leave you the pleasure to discover the new device, some first thoughts on the features I read about as of now:

• Visual Voicemail = great!
• 3G Radio = ??? Cost? Can you imagine this while roaming
• Exlusive carrier deal = all Apple fans will need to switch to Cingular in US
• 1 more year for iPhone launch in Europe = Apple has time to deal with EU operators
• iPhone runs Mac OS X = developers: start developing those widgets!
• Touchscreen display = seems fragile to carry in your pocket
• Multi-touch support = that’s really complex in tech dev -> chapeau!
• Proximity sensor = turns off the touch sensitivity when close to your face, can you dig?
• WiFi automatically engages when in range = Apple has AirPort experience here

All the rest, no real surprises, except that everything looks SO much better on an Apple device!

FYI: next hype to come: the merging of the iPhone and the iPod = the ideal device

Note to Steve: do something about the iTunes way too closed DRM, buying CD’s might become another next trend to be able to digitalize and listen to the music I bought on ALL the devices in my family…

My favourite rss calendar application upcoming.org went mobile a couple of days ago. In their usual humble style upcoming team anounced: “Just open up m.upcoming.org on your mobile phone’s web browser and log in. We’ll give you your Upcoming events for the day, plus links to your watchlist, your friend’s events for the day, and an event search form, just in case you’re looking for more stuff to do.”

I tried it out immediately but was a bit dissapointed with the given functionality, just browsing my or my friends’ events on my mobile is not really something I currently need when I’m on the move.

I liked the 2nd paragraph of the anouncement though: “We tried to focus tightly on showing 90% of what you’d need while you’re out of the house, but if there’s anything essential missing, let us know and we’ll do our best to add it in. This is an exercise in minimalism, so please think about space and download time when offering your suggestions.”

Well, here’s some I’m looking for when on the move inbetween conferences:

Actually it’s a good excercise to start with for anyone attending regularely events and who needs to travel a lot… What excactly one needs from a mobile accessible, live updateable calendar application? The events you’re attending or watching, you’ll have probably listed already on your laptop, location map functionality is obvious to have when looking for the event location while on the road. What about friends to connect to, attending the same conference? All this makes sence to me.

I created the Mobile Events group a couple of months ago for the Carnival of the Mobilists website (Events section) which you may also view here on my blog. I think it’s a great way to stay updated on events in the mobile & wireless sector and watch which friends are attending events around, have a look which events are currently anounced.

Upcoming Mobile isn’t yet offering the functionalities I would like I described above, however I’m confident upcoming is busy thinking about and/or developing the stuff. They just added some RSVPs and Guestlists for Event Organizers too…

Meanwhile I love the possibility to integrate my upcoming ‘Mobile Events’ group events feed into iCal or MyYahoo! Maps or Calendar

The best part is synchronising my iCal to my N91 beaming all those events with a single click into my calendar on my mobile, that’s neat! Now just keep building the other functionalities around. How about you, how do you manage (or would like to manage) your events and functioalities while on the move?

Mobile Monday Barcelona has created a speaker presentation download section. Sharing information is key to share experiences on a global level, it brings different players in the mobile value chain closer to each other and it stimulates more mobile business all together. If you don’t agree with this, please hit the back button in your browser or jump to the next post

For the ones sharing these thoughts, you can currently download the speaker presentations from the Mobile Monday July 3 opening event in Barcelona on Mobile Marketing and Advertising and from the recent Future of Mobile Music event of October 2, it’s really a must-read source of information, check it out!

Current presentations are available from:

• Ian Musselwhite, Bango
• Scott Cohen, The Orchard
• Bill Houghton, MyStrands
• Russell Buckley, AdMob
• Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo! Research
• José Luis Jorge Marrasé, Alcatel

All presentations are in english, you only need to register to download the presentations. All future presentations will be put online in a reasonable delay after each future event.

… One man with an idea, a camera phone and a tag.

Check Google where the 3GSM 2007 search leads you

Graham Brown from Wireless World Forum pointed me out on it again, I’ve nearly forgotten all about it.

Walking out of 3GSM 2006 I just blogged the exit and goodbye message and moblogged that with the 3GSM 2007 tag for gotomobile.com.

Thanks to a combined effort and the magic of Jeffrey at gotomedia. Let me know if ever you get all swamped in your search engine rankings