London Calling about all things social & mobile

I have the pleasure of rounding out 2009 with the final Carnival of the Mobilists for the year – and for the decade!

When I think back to where I was and what I was doing 10 years ago in 1999, and where I am in the world now – it has been an amazing journey.

10 years ago I was single and living in Sydney – working for Telstra Corporation in the Telstra.com area.  New Years Eve 1999 I will remember forever – we were at the Overseas Passenger Terminal on Sydney Harbour – directly opposite the Opera House and alongside the Harbour Bridge ready to witness the most amazing fireworks ever to welcome in the year 2000.

In 1999, Telstra had just launched a WAP service (no GPRS yet), and a while ago I pulled out a short video I made of the very primitive wap.telstra.com site.  Looking at it years later reminds me how far we as an industry have come in terms of mobile.

Facebook and twitter had not even been thought of in 1999, and “social networking” back then meant a night out at the pub.

Fast forward 10 years, on dawn of the next decade, and we have fast mobile internet in most markets with handsets to match, with a wide range of social networks that can be easily accessed on your mobile.  Also, now I’m happily married, and settled in London with a beautiful 3 year old  daughter.

Mobile internet adoption is still not mainstream yet (the reasons behind this would be the source of a whole blog post), but with Vodafone announcing Vodafone 360, and Orange with On you are seeing mobile operators taking mobile social networking seriously.

So…on with the carnival for the final time this decade.

The first entry comes from Ajit Jaokar who weighs in with his views on BADA and why he believes that BADA will impact Nokia

Peggy Anne Salz from MSearchGroove outlines the MDA initiative held on December 11th to send free MMS messages.

Volker Hirsch has an interesting post on “The Power of Open: Why Android is Big”

Dr Jim Taylor looks at the Psychology of Technology: On-line Communities: The Kindness of Strangers
 

Tomi Ahonen posts a thoughtful article about how the US midterm elections in 2010 can best utilize mobile phones and SMS

Raj Singh talks about the interesting issue of  “Geo-monopolies” and how the logos of Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are being used to sell mobile phones now (not the phone specifications any more).  In particular, Rak points out that these 3 social networking companies are all based in the one geography (the US).

Thibaut Rouffineau provides us a comprehensive comparison of all the app stores around – hey there’s an app for that!

Rudy De Waele is organising the Mobile Premier Awards,the largest open and global startup competition in the mobile industry. The awards are the point of reference in startup premiers during the Mobile World Congress on February 15, 2010 in Barcelona and are organized in collaboration with some of the main networks in the industry.

There have already been more than 200 submissions for the Mobile Premier Awards. Participation is free and open to any startup with a mobile angle. To sign up entrants simply need to create their own company profile on dotopen.com and select the awards they want to compete in. Visit how to sign up for the mobile premier awards and how to create a good company profile. The deadline for entry is December 31^st 2009.

To make the finalist selection as transparent and open to the industry as possible, the Mobile Premier Awards organizers are accepting applications to the finalist-selecting jury (individuals who will select the finalists among all the MobileMonday chapter nominees by online vote during early to mid January – and will not need to be in Barcelona). If you’re interested to become part of that jury or know someone who should be part of it, send an email to jury AT mobilepremierawards DOT com with a short bio, your LinkedIn profile, and personal blog and twitter name if you have it.

Join Russell Buckley, Tomi Ahonen, Ajit Jaokar, Andrew Grill, Raimo van der Klein, James Whatley, Pat Phelan, Chetan Sharma, and other mobile illuminates. Previous juries have included, amongst others, representatives from Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, Google, Yahoo!, HP, VentureBeat, GoMoNews, Shozu, Plazes, dotMobi, Nexit Ventures, Balderton Capital, Xtract…

That’s it for the Carnival in 2009, and the decade!

Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year and I wish you every success in mobile in 2010.

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