Swedish Beers - advance warning - 29 November 2005

For all of you who have a passing interest in things mobile, enjoy a drink or two at a central London hostelry and enjoy good company, then Swedish Beers is back after a few months absence.

Our next event is on 29 November 2005 at The Nordic Bar, Newman Street, London W1. We'll be there from about 6pm and usually inhabit the area at the back of the bar.

If you haven't been before, it's usually a really good laugh and you get to meet all kinds of people from network operators to developers, marketers and consultants to mobile content producers, PR folks, brands and publishers and everything in between. We usually get a few drinks in courtesy of our sponsor (November's sponsor tbc) too which helps get the evening off to a good start. If you can't make it straight after work, don't worry, there are usually some of us hanging around well into the evening and then some! And if you've been before, you know all this already.

Hopefully see some of you there.

skål

Perfect Path up for top business blogging award

Wow! The lovely Lloyd Davis is the man behind the Perfect Path blog and is up for the "Best Implementation of a Business Blog" award at this year's International Information Industry Awards The shortlist is:

Ask Jack/The Guardian
English Cut
Panlibus (the Talis blog for librarians)
Perfect Path
UK FOIA blog

The III 2005 Ceremony will be held on 30 November 2005 at The Royal Lancaster Hotel in London. I have everything crossed for you Lloyd! Good luck.

Alternative guide to the Electric Picnic 2005

Just stumbled on this alternative guide to the wonderful Electric Picnic 2005 on t'internet from the folks at Eyebrowy. Very funny. Well, I thought so but I guess that has something to do with the fact that I was there. There are 4 clips. Enjoy!

Motofrwd college competition - US only

Shame this competition from Motorola is only open to US residents. They're challenging students to come up with concepts around "seamless mobility" and you can win some nice prizes too. So if you're a US student with a great idea for a mobile application and/or device then this competition might be for you. You don't have to come up with the mobile application or mobile device itself but you can story board it or write about it. Closing date is 15th November 2005 so best be quick.

Riot.tones

Not sure how interesting this actually is but thought it worth posting about. It seems that protest ringtones are beginning to happen - first in the Philippines and now in the US too. These ringtones seem to be DIY jobs and there are a several bits of software and sites out there that can help you create, store and distribute your own tones including xingtone and ringranger as well as software you can pick up in the supermarket for a tenner. A new open source system similar to Xingtone, called Riot Tones, is in the works though; created by programmer and activist Evan Henshaw Plath, Riot Tones will help users create their own ringtones and share them via the web. As the technology to create and share these protest ring tones becomes more widely available, he expects them to become a popular choice for spreading messages among politically aware young people.

As you'll see from the various wiki pages, the site's not live yet. But as far as I can tell, the clever thing about this is that you create one ringtone file and the system sorts out the right format for all the different phones out there.

I wonder if it will achieve Evan's vision of ringtones as protest songs or if it will just help proliferate annoying tones like the Crazy Frog?

I want one of these please

Anyone care to sponsor me by sending me one of these lovely beauties? A Video Seven LTV20E 20" LCD TV in silver. It would go down a treat in my currently being sorted out bedroom. I've just put together my new big white bed (it's lovely and is very clever because you don't need to turn the mattress) and there's a space on top of the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed that will accommodate a dvd player + flatscreen LCD TV. If you'd like to buy me one of these, you can pick one up at Amazon for a bargain £249.99 including delivery.