Category — WMC

The annual world mobile congress (wmc) starts today in Barcelona, Spain.  

The WMC will bring a lot of news and announcements. As the largest mobile phone show in the world, GSMA not only attracts people from around the world, but also sets the stage for what will happen in wireless for the next 12 months.

Although this will be the first year in a few that I haven’t had the opportunity to participate directly, I’m looking forward to following some of my favorite mobile blogs and news sites this week to stay at least partially connected to what is happening.  Look for mini-updates in my twitter feed and some summary stories on this blog. 

Look for some big announcements this week including a new smartphone from Toshiba and Acer, an upgraded mobile platform / os from Microsoft, hopefully news of a 3G GSM version of the Palm Pre, more Google Android devices, news on rival app stores to compete with Apple, details into how Nokia is going to focus more on services than hardware and probably nothing from Apple who were noticeably absent last year as well.  

What are you hoping will be announced this week?

Check out this demo of live blogging software. You can live blog using your digital camera, video camera, or your mobile device. There are many other potential applications to using something like this – like video conferencing.

Check out this service – upload your own mobile content to this service and then get paid when other users download them! The service has integrated some social networking tools to allow users to engage with each other. 

With over 300 RSS feeds to manage, I’ve really valued Netvibes as my primary news and feed aggregator.

That was at least until I discovered Protopage – an evolutionary news and feed aggregator that not only has a superior desktop web experience, but a mobile interface not matched by anything i’ve seen. Check out the two vids below – the first one is a demo of the desktop web version while the second demos the mobile version.

Part two – check out the 1 minute overview of the Taptu service. It’s really well done!

Check out this live demo of Taptu – mobile search with a social angle. It’s like delicious – except instead of sharing bookmarks, you can share mobile searches. It’s a neat idea – and the search results skew towards mobile friendly results – something Google has yet to do.

Have you ever been late for an appointment because you couldn’t shake a friend or colleague from an MSN or other instant message conversation? Check out ebuddy which will aggregate all your IM accounts (AOL, Gmail, MSN etc…) into one interface for both web and mobile.

You can start a conversation on the web and continue on your mobile as you see fit. Check out the demo below.

The last two days have gone by like a blur.

I managed to explore all the halls – although I spent most of my time in Hall 7 where I spent a lot of time talking to content providers and managers and those who propagate or aggregate mobile data through tools, widgets, applications, SMS, IM, and the mobile web.

I’ve got about 12 more video clips from the conference that i’m in the process of optimizing & uploading to YouTube. Look for at least one a day until I get them all out.  

Things that stuck out include:

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Here’s a simple concept – create a scratch & win game for mobile and reward users with free content such as ringtones or wallpaper.  You could also send them tickets to an event, a coupon for product, or whatever else you want to give away.

Why do this? It’s an interactive & fun way to get user demographic information that you can use to build profiles, to deliver relevant messaging, or simply as market research for your product or service.

The product is available to be customized for the brand you are promoting. This would work well at events and even on campus. Watch the video to see the demo

Itsmy.mobi is a mobile social networking site that has some unique features including its own mobile TV show featuring the best of the user generated content on its site. I’m still not convinced that a mobile-only social networking site can succeed until you have 100% adoption of Mobile in your major markets, but this is definitely one to keep an eye on!