More Swedish Beers Love to go around from acrossair

I do like it when a plan comes together. There is more beer to go around thanks to the lovely folk at acrossair. Yes, that’s right folks, we have another sponsor to join our merry throng for Swedish Beers goes to Barcelona at Dostrece on Wednesday 17th February! Chetan and his team from acrossair will be on hand with a bunch of beer tokens for you all and some chat and banter about things mobile.

acrossair are creators of the Augmented Reality Browser on iPhone. The browser uses amazing 3D navigation which you can see as you spin round. There is local data from property companies and big name brands which is represented in an augmented reality view. If you hold it flat, it jumps to a Google maps view and when you spin around, so does the browser to make sure you know where everything is. Cool, huh?

It’s free to download from iTunes and works on iPhone 3GS. And, if you have an iPhone 3GS, rather usefully, one of their services is to find your nearest Metro station in Barcelona. That could come in handy. Hint, the nearest one to Swedish Beers is Liceu. Make sure you have that one saved ;)

Oh, and if Augmented Reality is your thing, then you might want to check out the AR showcase that acrossair is participating in that my pals Dan and Christine are organising on Wednesday afternoon at Mobile World Congress in the Courtyard at 5pm, just before Swedish Beers.

Technorati Tags: swedish beers,mwc10,barcelona,party,mobile networking,acrossair,augmented reality,iphone

Women in Mobile Data Association informal lunch in Barcelona

Update: Venue is confirmed!

It's that time of year again and Barcelona and a bit of sunshine beckons us to the spectacle that is Mobile World Congress. And I know there'll be quite a few of ladies there. So I’m organising an informal lunch on Tuesday 16th February for the Women in Mobile Data Association. The restaurant, Aranega, is a short walk from Congress (less than 10 minutes) on Avenida Paral-lel and thanks to our fantastic sponsor, HipLogic, there'll be tapas and refreshments for everyone. So that's your lunch break sorted then!

The Lowdown:

Date: Tuesday 16th February at 12.30 until 14.30

Venue: We have the upstairs room booked at the lovely Aranega - just like last year - http://www.aranega.es which is on Avenida Paral-lel 188. Come out of La Fira, walk down Avenida Paral-lel, and it's on the * left* hand side at number 188 -just over the road from Congress and less than 10 minutes walk.

Agenda and timings:

12.30 Doors will open at for drinks and mingling.
12.50, HipLogic's CEO, Mark Anderson, will give us a short talk on his vision for HipLogic followed by a few questions and some discussion. He wants to know what women like us think of the service and how we might use it.
13.10 - Tapas and more drinks will be served. Lots of chat and networking.
14.45 - Doors close and it's back to Congress we go.

It’s free to attend, but space is limited and because of this, priority will be given to the ladies in our group. If any gentlemen would like to join us, please contact me and I'll be able to confirm any remaining places at the weekend.

Please RSVP to me by email or on Facebook http://bit.ly/dr3eH2. Spaces are limited.

About our sponsor HipLogic

HipLogic Live delivers content from real-time sources like Facebook, Twitter, Sky, Disney, Sports, Weather, newsfeeds and more, through a smartphone-like interface that works is delivers push content notifications to the phonetop without using SMS. This means that they bring the world of applications, widgets, live search and real-time notifications to the mass market without the need to invest in a new smartphone. You just need one, simple, free download. The technology relies on a JavaScript virtual machine running on the device that is connected to the cloud that aggregates information and feeds from network operators and the Web to create mash-ups for use on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android mobile devices. The aim is to provide always-on, fast access and logical presentation of content and applications that can be cumbersome to access through current mobile phone browsers - especially on multimedia-phones.

CEO Mark Anderson describes HipLogic as being an “extreme makeover” for your phone that will deliver an iPhone-like experience to the mass market. And he wants our feedback - that's why he's sponsoring our WiMD lunch. He wants to know what women think about this since we're the ones who are predominantly sold feature-phones and have less time and inclination to explore the world of applications and content - or so we're led to believe. Is this true? Let's find out on Tuesday 16th February.

HipLogic Live is available as a free download from http://www.hiplogic.com

Technorati Tags: wimd,mwc10,mobile world congress,barcelona,lunch,hiplogic,mobile content

Some tips and links for 9 February 2007

I'm so busy at the moment with work stuff (good), stuff I want to read and do, events I'm organising (both of which I'm really looking forward to), and stuff I want to blog about but there are only so many hours in the day. So I'm going to compromise and just give you some snippets today.

I think "marketing to women" is a really interesting topic generally, especially as women make something like 80% of all buying decisions for *anything*. So it's interesting to get more of an insight into this area from Holly Buchanan. She talks about women and mobile gaming, as well as more general articles about marketing to women and Marketing Momentum shows how a magazine us using mobile marketing to women.

On the subject of mobile marketing, Christine.net tells us about her top 10 mobile marketing campaigns from last year, has some tips for would-be mobile marketers, and shares some mobile advertising results from 3 Italia.

Which leads me to the next iteration of mobile... mobile 2.0. If you want to know about mobile 2.0, then you could do worse than have a look at bluflavor's post on the topic having visited the mobile 2.0 event last year or Paul Golding's thoughts on the subject (his blog is a must-read anyway if you're into this mobile stuff). And if you're interested in the future of the internet more generally, then take a look at Jemima Kiss's round-up of Robert Loch's last 'Internet People Dinner' back in January (somehow that already feels like a long time ago!).

Meanwhile, in the offline world, I went along to Chinwag's Wobble 2.0 event which was great. I particularly enjoyed listening and later chatting to Andrew Orlowski from The Register. It still amazes me at the lack of recognition in web 2.0 world that mobile even exists. It's still barely on the radar. This has been my experience at pretty much any digital event that isn't focussed on mobile. I just don't get it. Are web 2.0 folks so in love with their monitors and laptops that they never go out so just don't see the need for a mobile phone? Anyway, Ian Delaney has done a really good write-up of the event as has Alan Patrick and Seamus McCauley and Steve Clayton. I also hear that a podcast of the event will be published any day soon. Photos of the event are up on flickr. Extra points if you happen to spot me in any of them ;)

And finally, it appears that 3GSM registrations are all out of kilter. I tried to log on to the site today and couldn't get on and couldn't get a password sent out to me as everything I tried defaulted to a poor looking page saying registration was now closed. Then I find out that two of my colleagues still haven't had their visitor pass emails and then I get an email to tell me I've been magically unsubscribed from the 3GSM mailing list except I didn't ask to be unsubscribed. And then I hear that a company who isn't exhibiting has received 120 emails confirming registrations for 120 people they didn't invite. What *is* going on? Hmm - registering is going to be fun next week. I'm glad I'm not going to be there on Monday morning trying to register the best part of 57,000 people!!

Right back to the day job then!

Global Peers Awards 2007 finalists announced

Rudy, over at MoMoBarcelona, is doing a great job of organising the 1st Global Peer Awards which is happening on Monday 11th February in Barcelona alongside 3GSM. Unfortunately, my flight gets in too late to join the event but I'm sure it will be just as good without me there!

The British finalist is Reporo, which is great news as I think they have a good chance of winning with a proven customer base of 100,00 or so already and a mobile business model in action. Check out the other finalists on the MoMoBarcelona blog and check out the different companies involved. And if you*are* going to be in Barcelona on the Monday, then it's worth checking out the Awards event and take some notes for me!

What’s the buzz at 3GSM? A Women in Mobile Data Association Meet-Up

The Women in Mobile Data Association is having an informal meet-up to chat about the buzz at this year's 3GSM in Barcelona. It’s an informal event where you can have a coffee or a glass of wine and a chat with other women in the industry about what you’ve seen and experienced at 3GSM. It'll also be a chance to escape the testosterone fuelled exhibition and conference and chillout for an hour or two. We don’t have a sponsor this year (unless you’re offering) so it’s a case of buy your own drinks and food.

What: Women in Mobile Data meet-up

Where: Café Viennese, Casa Fuster . The nearest Metro station is Diagonal and it’s just a few stops from Congress, or a short taxi ride.

When: Wednesday 14^th February 2007, 3.30pm to 5.30pm

If you would like to come, please RSVP to Helen Keegan, putting WiMD in the subject field. This is so we can let the venue know roughly how many of us to expect on the day.

Please feel free to forward this invitation on to your female colleagues and friends who work in mobile data and content and associated sectors – we’d love to meet them too.

About the Women in Mobile Data Association

WiMD is a global association which started 3 years ago following a contentious speech by an un-named male executive at 3GSM when it was in Cannes, who claimed there wasn’t a market for mobile content for women. After that, a few of us got together and formed WiMD, led by Lisa Modisette, to champion mobile content, data and services for underserved markets, and to support and engage women working in the mobile data and related industries. The Association is a work in progress. We meet bi-monthly in London and on an ad-hoc basis in Europe and the US and our meetings vary from the simply social to networking lunches, seminar evenings and power breakfasts. It’s currently free to join. Members are from all areas of the industry – network operators, content creators, developers, aggregators, consultants, marketers, media owners, analysts, journalists, entrepreneurs and plenty more besides. And we're very friendly.

The Women in Mobile Data website will be re-launched in the next month or so as there isn’t much on there currently.

For more information, please contact me via email.

It’s Barcelona, it’s 3GSM, and the Swedish Beers Posse are in town 13th February 2007

Yes, it’s that time of year again when the world’s mobile executives land in Barcelona and take over the city for a few days of obsessing about all things mobile (well the bit by Congress anyway). So, of course, the Swedish Beers Crew will be there too and we'd love you to join us at our little Swedish/Belgian/Norwegian/Spanish Beers Mobile Networking do.

So if you fancy a beer (it’ll be Belgian beer on the night as we're in a Belgian bar just to confuse matters) and a chat and a mingle with the nice Swedish Beers folks, then come along and join in. You don’t have to talk about mobile and you don’t even have to drink beer if you don’t want to, but it would be nice if you were friendly and enjoyed mingling with other friendly folk who have a passing interest in things mobile.

And not only that, there’ll be a few FREE beers as well courtesy of our lovely sponsors Colibria and MyStrands. Alex from Colibria will be around to chat to you about any interesting applications you may have to include in his fabulous IM platform and there will be several MyStranders and we will have partyStrands running during the evening.

Where: Belchica, Villarroel 60, 08011 Barcelona. Entrance on Gran Via de Deputacion. Metro L1 Urguell (so very near Congress) for more info on the bar, and here's a map. We'll be in the back bar.

When: Tuesday 13^th February 2007 6.30pm to 8.30pm

What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking drinks

skål

Helen, Steve, Alex and Rudy



About our lovely sponsors

Colibria, from Norway, provides next-generation messaging and instant messaging platforms, clients and apps for mobile operators worldwide. Specifically, their UK-based apps team works with mobile developers to integrate existing SMS/MMS/WAP products into next-gen IM/IMS systems. They would like to hear from companies or individuals who have innovative services and want to investigate partnering to produce demos/prototypes to present to their existing operator customers. Yes, that means you! For more info, talk to Alex Linde on +44 7966 204 616 or meet him on the night.

MyStrands develops behaviour-based recommendation technologies to help people organise and discover digital media. It works using internet connected devices (PC, mobile etc) to discover both content and people with similar tastes both on and off-line. MyStrands mobile solutions include MyStrands for Symbian, MyStrands for Windows Mobile and of course partyStrands which we'll be sampling on the night. Find out more from Gabriel Aldamiz-Echevarria on +34 665 5524 18 or meet him on the night.

Qwikker and Virgin Bites are up for a 3GSM Award

Qwikker, the mobile content distribution company, is up for an award for its work with Virgin Mobile (who incidentally 'don't believe in mobile marketing' or so it was claimed at a Virgin meeting I attended a few months ago!). The award they're up for is 'Best Mobile Advertising' category.

To keep Virgin Mobile customers amused, Qwikker created 'boredom busters' for Virgin BITES service. Also part of the promotion, Virgin Mobile wanted to reach beyond their own subscriber base and also promote acts at the V-Festivals by distributing mobile content via bluetooth.

Qwikker’s service enabled consumers to download the non-intrusive [sic], branded Virgin Bites mobile channel, via Bluetooth, and browse and select music-related mobile content, which was relevant to them. Critically the Virgin content channel remained on the consumers’ handset, which is updateable over-the-air (OTA) – further extending the brand relationship.

As the service is for Virgin customers only, I can't try it out to tell you exactly how it works. Nor was I at V-Festival to try it. And I'm wondering how many people actually played around with the system when they could be seeing live bands or drinking instead? Now *that* would be interesting to know more about rather than the concept per se.

If the O2 wireless festival is anything to go by, or FourDocs bluetooth poster campaign or the Casino Royale bluetooth cinema campaigns are anything to go by, there could be a high failure rate - none of the afore-mentioned campaigns worked on my phone :( - none of them were run by Qwikker AFAIK.

Having looked at the Qwikker website, I'm guessing it's a java based download which updates over the air in a similar way to mobizines.If you're in a Qwikker location (pub or London Underground station) then you may get a bluetooth message asking you if you want to receive the content and at that point you 'opt-in'. The trouble is, in sending the message to your phone at all, you haven't opted-in. Having spoken to some people in this area, because that initial message *isn't* stored on the phone, it's ok to send it and isn't covered by the European Data Privacy rules. I have *no* idea why that is acceptable rather than a text message per se. It's just as intrusive, it's just as time-consuming to deal with (or not) as a text message and it's still an electronic message. And I am yet to see a reliable bluetooth delivery system. Hmm, I'm not convinced. Come on Qwikker - convince me that bluetooth is ready for the masses and that my personal experiences are not the norm. I want to be convinced...

I wish Qwikker the best of luck with the award and with their service, but I don't see why it should be one rule for bluespam and another for text spam (equally odious IMHO). The direct mail analogy is that Junk Mail is equivalent to a text message but a Bluetooth notification is the equivalent of a door-drop - the difference being that you don't have the address (mobile number) of the recipient. You still end up with junk on your doormat (phone). Hmm, the vagaries of European law!

The GSM Association’s Global Mobile awards will be presented at 3GSM 2007, Barcelona on the 13^th February. More information is available at GSM Awards.