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."

I'm in New York City

I arrived safely last night and now happily settled in at my pals' apartment in West Village. I'm here until Sunday, mostly for pleasure, but with a bit of business thrown in for good measure. However, if there are any local New York mobilists who fancy meeting up over a coffee or a cocktail sometime to chew the fat about mobile marketing and media, or whatever, then get in touch and let's see what we can organise.

I plan to go to the Likemind event on Thursday Friday morning from 8am at sNice (not least because it's just a few minutes walk from where I'm staying) so you could always come and say hello to me there too. And I've been tipped off by Sam at Chinwag that this place has the best doughnuts in the world so if anyone fancies treating me to a doughnut whilst I'm here...

Right, off to have breakfast in the City :)

Service is not yet back to normal

There's a lot going on right now in my life and finding time and mindspace to blog is low-ish on the list of priorities I'm afraid. Yes, I'm still here and I will get back to blogging more regularly at some point in the future but not right now. You might find the odd post here and there when the mood takes me but for now, I'm still on a break.

So to keep you going for now, here are some links:

Print Media needs a proper mobile strategy (or so say the panel, me included) at World Telemedia in Prague.

Moblogtech launches CityClickers, a standalone moblogging site.

Shop Scan Save launches mobile couponing to the masses in the UK. This is one that I'm watching. In a world that is going down the road of uber targeting (e.g. Blyk), SSS takes the opposite approach and does no targeting at all. Thoughts?

Women love their phones and can't live without them but only use them for talking and texting. Research at Blyk would concur that 16 to 24s use their phones for talking, texting and the alarm clock, in that order.

Mobile technology organisation kiwanja.net has launched nGOmobile, a free to enter competition to help grassroots NGOs take advantage of text messaging.

UK Media consumption report is worth a read and is reviewed over at NMK.

And finally, the lovely folks over at SMStextnews interviewed me and you can find it here.

ttfn

It's been a while

I've been gallavanting in Ireland at the rather marvellous Electric Picnic, and then had a bout of laryngitis and now I'm kinda back with a few links for you on a Monday. Of course, there's a ton of stuff I still need to catch up on but there's the day job to think about too. So you'll have to do with a few links until I magically find some time to blog more.

Stephanie from Atlantic Records dropped me a line to tell me about the mobile marketing she's doing for Yung Joc, a top-selling US hip-hop artist (no, I hadn't heard of him either, but then I guess I'm the wrong side of 22, much to my chagrin). Stephanie tells me, "to be a hustler, you gotta know how to trade like one. With the rise of the digital age, trading cards are shedding their physical skin and moving to the mobile world, Yung Joc style. Collect, trade, and redeem Yung Joc wallpaper for your cell phone and you could win a grand, or a call from Joc himself. Sign up for Yung Joc trading cards at cards.yungjoc.com or Text JOC to 87233 (TRADE). Get 3 cards straight to your cell for only a $1 a week. Collect all 42 and you just earned yourself street cred and an A in Hustlenomics. Competition is for US residents only.

And while we're talking about gaming and gambling, did you know there's new legislation covering this area in the UK. And as legislation is such a minefield, the nice folks at Million 2-1 (the lottery and games company), have created a lovely free guide to the new regulatory framework covered under the directives and legislation laid out in the new Gambling Act (effective September 1, 2007). Well worth a read if you're looking to do anything using premium rate SMS and telephony.

Got a Nokia N-Series phone? Like Audi? Then you might like this. Nokia users will be able to download one-minute clips from longer Audi Channel programmes such as Anatomy of Fear , which provides a scientific look at the emotion as we take celebrities Lady Isabella Hervey and Oliver Skeete to Dubai for a series of psychological tests to push their limits, and R10 v Harrier, which features the Le Mans winning Audi R10 going headto-head in a sprint race with an RAF harrier jet at RAF Wittering. The service is fully on-demand, so users can download the clips whenever they want using the N-series Plus service (which I've never heard of until now, and I've had a N-Series phone for over 18 months). The Audi Channel - a 24-hour non-subscription service on Sky Digital channel 884 and at www.audi.co.uk - will now also be available free to users of peer-to-peer network Joost, and Nokia N-series mobile phones.

Normal service will resume shortly

Yes, I know I haven't blogged very much over the last couple of weeks, but life is just a bit hectic at the moment with a big project to finish off and about to take on a big project too (all being well). And trying to do all the other stuff that one has to do day to day.

Anyway, please bear with me a little longer. I'm off gallavanting in Ireland this weekend at the Electric Picnic music festival where I shall be getting lots of fresh air and exercise and will come back knackered refreshed and ready for work next week. Should be a good 'un, especially if the last two I went to in 2005 and 2006 are anything to go by. The forecast is for drizzle and sunshine so pretty much like London right now then. Still debating as to whether or not wellies will be required (I have a fetching pair of pink croc wellies so maybe I *will* need them...)

So I'm off to pack my rucksack now and then it's an early night as it's a hideously early start in the morning. And then the fun begins at around tea-time once the tent is up and the main festival site opens for business. Yes, it's a schlep of a journey to get there with camping equipment in tow, but it will be worth it I'm sure.

See ya'll when I get back from the land of my forefathers.

Swedish Beers Mobile Networking, Weds 12 Sept 07

We're back to the Nordic Bar, our usual haunt, on Wednesday 12th September for Swedish Beers. We'll be in the back bar from 6ish for all the usual chat, mingling and talk of mobiles, marketing, media and life in general. And if the last few events are anything to go by, we'll probably overtake the whole bar pretty quickly. You'll find the Nordic Bar on Newman Street which is the North side of Oxford Street, nearest tube Tottenham Court Road or Oxford Circus.

Unfortunately, the bad news is that our sponsor has had to postpone their sponsorship of Swedish Beers as they're not quite ready to shout out about the wonderful things they're up to. So it would be *really* marvellous if another generous sponsor could help us out with the bar. And I'm working on that right now. Otherwise, it's buy your own drinks night. And if it's the latter, it will be your challenge to find someone who has a works expense account to buy drinks for you all evening ;)

But seriously folks, the Swedish Beers night goes on and do get in touch with me if you're up for sponsoring the bar. Probably best to call my mobile, +44 794 053 8802, if you're interested as I'm away from the internet until Tuesday afternoon and time is quite short as Swedish Beers night is only two weeks away.

So, the night is definitely on, we're just waiting to see if someone will generously sponsor the bar to help the evening go with a swing and at the same time meet loads of folks who will think lovely things about them *and* benefit from lots of lovely publicity and immense good mobile karma for their efforts.

So see y'all there on the 12th September, from 6pm in the Back Bar at The Nordic Bar.

Skål

p.s. If you plan to use Oxford Circus on the night, please note that the Victoria Line is undergoing maintenance right now and is closed from about 10pm every night. Don't worry, all the other lines are fine and the buses still work, it just might take you a little longer than usual to get home that's all, as you find an alternative route. More info on the TFL website.