ilovemobileweb awards should be renamed

the 'I love mobile web awards but only if you're *not* a woman and only if your site is on a dotmobi URL'.

Informa Telecoms has organised the Mobile Web Europe conference and in its usual inimitable style has failed to recognise the other half of the sky (to quote John and Yoko). It's a 3-day conference covering all aspects of mobile web (and apparently the *only* mobile web event you'll ever need), sponsored by dotMobi and at the time of writing have only THREE women speaking during the whole event so that works out at one woman per day. That really is unacceptable in this day and age. There are plenty women out there worthy of participating at this conference. Informa really must try harder to find them and engage them. I'm not expecting half the panellists or speakers to be women, but I would expect more than a token one a day. Of course the male speakers are interesting and relevant, but to only have one woman per day is ridiculous.

And then there's the ilovemobileweb awards sponsored by dotmobi. In fact, dotmobi is sponsoring the whole thing. There are no female judges listed. (Haven't Informa and dotmobi seen this list of the Top 50 Women in Mobile Content from Mobile Entertainment Magazine? And that's just for starters).

Then this is compounded by only allowing entries if your site is a dotmobi site. So this rules out everything else that is mobile web. It doesn't seem right to me. The mobile web *isn't* all about dotmobi. And no matter how much money you throw at a conference or awards ceremony, being exclusive in an inclusive, connected world is just barmy. A different thing if it was billed as 'the dotMobi awards for dotMobi customers'.

dotMobi or Informa - care to comment?

dotmobi database to make mobile developers' lives easier

Andrea Trasatti dropped me a line the other day to let me know about his new appointment as Director, Device Iniatives for dotmobi. As part of this, he'll be overseeing the new device database that dotmobi is putting together. It's early days yet, but Andrea's in charge of designing, building and launching this new service.

"The database will provide structured data, accurate to a degree not found in existing public resources. Information will be obtained from – as well as shared with – the global development community and published online. This will simplify the development process and enable developers to create the very best experience for users, based on comprehensive and reliable intelligence."

Sounds like a great resource. Good luck with it Andrea!

Monday meanderings continued

Dotmobi is giving city domain names away including Birmingham.mobi, London.mobi and Manchester.mobi. All you have to do is apply for the domain you want with a proposal of how you're going to offer a comprehensive city guide on the mobile phone.

Virgin bags online and mobile rights for The Football League to allow Coca-Cola Football League matches to be shown on its broadband and mobile channels. Highlights of Football League matches will be available to watch on-demand for up to one week after transmission.

Streamthru offers free flight information via your mobile phone. Really useful if you do much travelling. You get updates 4 hours before departure time, shortly before boarding and immediately if your flight is delayed by 15 minutes or more. I could have done with knowing about this when I was travelling earlier in the year.

And if you're travelling to exotic climes, the new malaria information service by text message might be for you.

But whilst you're travelling, don't buy cheap mobile phone batteries from China or Hong Kong for your Motorola or Nokia mobile phone... because it might explode. Nokia and Motorola, however, say they are very concerned about the substandard goods, particularly because their reputations are at stake in China, which has the world's largest number of mobile phone subscribers at over 400 million. Best to stick to the branded batteries for now.