I did a little talk reminiscing on what was hot at this year’s Mobile World Congress, the mobile extravaganza in Barcelona. One of the show’s highlights was BlackBerry’s hyper-connected Porsche (See here for disclaimers) of which you’ll find a video here. Now, that car makes the most of the combination of powerful mobile-connected devices, protocols like NFC or Near-Field Communication and next-generation mobile networks (such as LTE), which deliver data bandwidth by far surpassing our relatively shoddy 3G data through-puts of today.
I also had a meeting with the good folks from Adidas who used their miCoach in-shoe chip to do some nifty stuff with the data so produced (video here). Adidas takes this one step further in that the performance of your chosen player in an accompanying mobile game. For the time being, this has to make do with a clunky accessory to your otherwise oh so smart phone. But, alas, these days are numbered thanks to the next generation of connectivity coming up right now. Apple’s latest (both phone and tablet) support the next Bluetooth standard, which would be version 4.0 (as opposed to “new”), and that is actually a huge step forward (considering how ickle it all is) and has understandably got its fair share of press recently. Here’s why:
Bluetooth 4.0 (full specs here), which comes as a “system in a package” has no noticeable impact on battery life of peripherals, which means you could effectively run your external keyboard or, perhaps more importantly to some, heart-rate monitor, on the same battery charge for the lifetime of the device. Oh, and it always handles NFC on top. The new standard handles up to 26 Mbps data throughput (compared to 2 Mbps for the older standards) although this is lower in the above-hailed low-energy mode.
All this put together creates potential for solutions that may not make for head-turning cool gadgets at tech conferences but they are things my mom might use: Just pair your phone with WiFi by touching in using an NFC chip (she could not find the settings for this if her life depended on it), use it for any type of fitness-related stuff, hook up any type of wireless device with the settings of, say, your car (probably with seamless handover of content, preferences, playlists, etc, too). Last but not least, the full range of healthcare all of sudden becomes a whole lot less geeky and a whole lot more accessible to normal people (which often was the problem with “modern” stuff: they worked well if you had an engineering degree or an unhealthy appetite for anything that smelled remotely geeky but was utterly unusable for anyone else). And for the geeks of you, there will always be the under-counter coffee-making faucet that you could then arguably also power using the hyper-connectedness of the brave new world.
So, interconnectedness is just about to enter the mainstream and that, dear friends, was the news of the week for me in Barcelona.
The ever industrious Rudy de Waele and his team are staging the next version of Mobile 2.0 Europe in beautiful Barclona on 16/17 June 2011. Last year’s version was awesome but this year they seem to have upped the ante significantly again. Staged in Telefonica’s mindblowing R&D centre Diagonal 00 (just look at the picture, for heaven’s sake!) and boasting a speaker line-up that should everybody get going!
It’s a developer conference, so none (or little) of the usual preaching but you will get more hands-on workshops on everything from app store marketing to HTML5 development. And all this in summery Barcelona! Go on, sign up here!
And if all that is not enough, here’s a selection of the people that will speak with you, work with you, talk to you (a full speaker list is here):
- Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio (yes, he, the Mighty Eagle of the “Angry Birds” guys)
- Daniel Gurrola, Orange
- Sanyu Kirulata, Blackberry
- Reimund Schmaid, Nuance
- Carlos Domingo, Telefonica I+D
- Jose Valles, BlueVia (Telefonica)
- Lucas Allen Buick, Synthetic (they of “Hipstamatic” fame)
- Matthias Sala, Gbanga
- Andy Goodman, Fjord
- Caroline Drucker, Soundcloud
- Vincent Hoogsteder, Distimo
- Andreas Constantinou, Vision Mobile
- Tom Hume, Future Platforms
- John Roberts, Quostodian
- Yes, and yours truly will also be there
See you in the sun very soon!
First of all, a wonderful, inspiring, innovative, exciting and successful 2011 to you all!
With lots of conferences (and corresponding travel) coming up, I thought I’d let you know where you will find me in the next few weeks:
- 5-7 January: CES, Las Vegas. Meetings, the AT&T Developer Summit, etc.
- 25 January: Mobile Gaming Conference @ ICE, London. I will speak there.
- 27 January: Mobile Games Forum, London. I will be participating on a panel on social gaming.
- 14-17 February: Mobile World Congress, Barcelona
- 9-15 March: SXSW Interactive, Austin. I will speak on mobile social gaming (and, yes, I am quite excited about this!).
- 22-24 March: CTIA Wireless, Orlando
The list will certainly fill up some more really soon but, so far, that is some of the confirmed bits. Oh, and I plan a week of skiing in Andorra… 
So if you want to catch up, learn more about Scoreloop or just connect, give me a shout.
And, apparently if you are so inclined, this year you shouldn’t forget to follow the (white) rabbit!
On 17 June, a wonderful conference opens its doors: organized by the formidable Rudy de Waele and his team, the beautiful city of Barcelona (but without the usual Mobile World Congress stress and with better weather than in February!) is host to Mobile 2.0 Europe.
You will find a great line-up of speakers from across the mobile ecosystem, which should allow for a wonderfully balanced overview of what’s going on. The organizers have lined up senior guys from the giants of the industry, such as:
- Nokia
- RIM
- Vodafone
- Opera
- Telefonica
- Orange
- PayPal Mobile
- Microsoft
But they then coupled them with the nimble and agile guys like us, so you will also find:
- Distimo (analytics)
- Scoreloop (yes, I will be speaking)
- The Astonishing Tribe (UI experts)
- W3C
- Future Platforms
- and more…
As if this wasn’t enough, the AppCircus will also stop at the event with an on-stage show of the best and brightest apps around.
Join us, it should be tremendous fun! The registration page is here.
On 15 February, one of the most exciting showcases of mobile innovation of the year will be on display in Barcelona: the Mobile Premier Awards in Innovation. The awards are the largest start-up competition in the mobile sector and they are a unique grass-roots discovery tool: each chapter of the global community of Mobile Monday chooses one candidate. 49 candidates have been chosen (have a look further down). An international jury (I am flattered and proud to be a member) selects 20 finalists who will pitch in Barcelona at the Palau de la Musica on the afternoon of the first day of the Mobile World Congress.
It is a wonderful display of the innovation and creative power the mobile industry has to offer and I invite you to have a good look at the candidates.
If you are in Barcelona that week (and who isn’t?), you should make sure to book your ticket for the event here.
I hope to see you in Barcelona to celebrate innovation in mobile!
To stay in touch with everything around the awards, follow them on Twitter (@mobilepremier), become a fan on Facbook,
And, once your in Barcelona, you should not miss Mobile Sunday Barcelona 2010, which has fast become an unofficial kick-off event to MWC for mobile bloggers. It is on on Sunday, 14 Feb, from 7pm CET onwards.
Here’s a list of the 49 candidates (with links here):
- MobileMonday Austria – Mobilizy
- MobileMonday Barcelona – fonYou
- MobileMonday Belfast – SpeechStorm
- MobileMonday Bergen – ComCom
- MobileMonday Berlin – spendino
- MobileMonday Bogota – RedSalvavidas
- MobileMonday Brussels – Getyoo
- MobileMonday Buenos Aires – Beepoint
- MobileMonday Caracas – Consorcio Si-SMS
- MobileMonday Chennai – mobiSiteGalore
- MobileMonday Copenhagen – Cepa Mobility
- MobileMonday Dallas – Wave Integrated Marketing Solutions
- MobileMonday Dublin – Locle
- MobileMonday Dusseldorf – Yoose
- MobileMonday Edinburgh – Mobile Acuity
- MobileMonday Estonia – TaxiPal
- MobileMonday Frankfurt – match2blue
- MobileMonday Hamburg – apprupt
- MobileMonday Hungary – InfomatiX
- MobileMonday Jakarta – dotus indonesia
- MobileMonday Kuala Lumpur – CWorks Mobile
- MobileMonday Lithuania – SendFlow
- MobileMonday London – Audioboo
- MobileMonday Madrid – Tooio
- MobileMonday Malmö – Color Monkey
- MobileMonday Medellin – Wanbee
- MobileMonday Melbourne – Callernizer
- MobileMonday Mexico – Binbit
- MobileMonday Mid-Atlantic – Amphetamobile
- MobileMonday Milan – Soundtrckr
- MobileMonday Mumbai – Umundo
- MobileMonday Munich – Aloqa
- MobileMonday New Delhi – Voicetap Technologies
- MobileMonday New York – PercentMobile
- MobileMonday Oslo – Bipper Communication
- MobileMonday Paris – Presselite
- MobileMonday Rest of EMEA – Layar
- MobileMonday Rio de Janeiro – iMusica
- MobileMonday Rome – Mobnotes
- MobileMonday Sao Paulo – Atope
- MobileMonday Shanghai – mInfo
- MobileMonday Silicon Valley – CloudMade
- MobileMonday Singapore – Just Mobile
- MobileMonday Slovenia – Visionect
- MobileMonday Sofia – Bianor
- MobileMonday Stockholm – MoSync
- MobileMonday Tel Aviv – waze
- MobileMonday Toronto – Fonolo
- MobileMonday Vancouver – Sort Shots
Judging by the many Twitter updates today, I seem to be the last one to arrive at Mobile World Congress tomorrow: everyone appears to being already in the midst of networking, hunting for new revelations and, well, parties and tapas.
I, as pretty much everyone else involved in mobile telecommunications in the wider sense, will be trotting to Barcelona this coming weekend and mingle with the crowds there, looking for further enlightenment at the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).
My agenda is filling up pretty quickly but if you would like to get in touch, get me acquainted to the next big thing, or divulge other exciting progress, drop me a note at volker (dot) hirsch (at) gmail (dot) com…
I will be in town from Sunday afternoon (yes, also attending the Mobile Sunday event) all the way through Friday morning.
