that was the week that was

Well I arrived safely back from New York last weekend having met up with the wonderful Sophie Stuart from Hearst Magazines (who, incidentally, is doing a terrific job of their mobile strategy and implementation) and done a shedload of Christmas shopping.

Happy Birthday SMS
I'm just about getting back into GMT and the swing of all things British again, kicking off with a very busy day on Tuesday. It was the 15th birthday of SMS and I was invited to Airwide's sumptuous birthday bash at the ICA with birthday cake 'n all. I was ably accompanied by good pal Gillian and we had a good natter with the mobile great and the good...Paul Skeldon, Jonathan and Robert from Incentivated, Jay and team from Airwide, Mike Grenville from 160 Characters, Mike Short from O2 and the MDA (Mobile Data Association), Bea from Spinvox, Anuj Khanna from Tanla Mobile and a fair few others. The event was captured by Lloyd Davis who was doing his social media thang and any links will be added shortly as and when I get them. The highlight of the event was learning about the very first SMS - the story is retold here.


Juno Screening
Straight after the birthday party, it was a mad dash for Lloyd, Gillian and I to get to Soho Square for a preview screening of Juno, the new film by Jason Reitman (Thank you for smoking) and co-produced by John Malkovich, which I have to say was rather good and will be well worth seeing when it hits our screens in early February.

Other news this week

* Trutap hits the headlines at Sky News with a nice bit of coverage in words and video.

A new social networking service, trutap, has been launched. In this exclusive video, Carl Uminski of trutap explains why the service is so new, while top band The Enemy, who have already been using it, give us the lowdown on why they like it.

* Good pal and fellow mobilist, Russell Buckley, MD, Europe, Admob and blogger at Mobhappy, has been unanimously appointed Vice Chairman of the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) for EMEA. Congratulations Russell.

Buckley will be taking an active role in fulfilling the MMA EMEA’s charter to build a sustainable ecosystem for the mobile marketing industry in the EMEA region, while protecting the consumer experience.

* A podcast I did about mobile marketing a few weeks ago for Airwide is now up and available from the Mobile Messaging 2 blog. It has been edited down so you won't be subjected to the hour and a half's conversation on the topic!

* Busting for a pee in Central London? Then the SatLav service is for you!

In a bold move to stop anybody ever being caught short again, Wesminster council, with Incentivated's help, is harnessing the power of mobile phone technology similar to GPS systems to locate the nearest toilets to wherever they text from. If nature calls just text “toilet” to 80097 and you will be texted back the details of your nearest loo within a matter of seconds.

Student Gail Knight came up with the idea for an innovation competition run by Westminster City Council while she was writing her Masters dissertation called 'Public Toilets: a Woman’s Place'. Gail, 26, who lives in Clapham Junction, said, "In London people spend so much time away from their home working, commuting or shopping. When I am out with friends we are always ducking in McDonalds or department stores to use their loos but we feel a bit bad about it. I started remembering where Westminster’s services were and always found them perfectly adequate but lots of people were wary of them or didn’t know about them. I thought a text service would be really useful for people on the move."