MoMoLondon site goes Alpha

December is here, the frost is starting to bite and MoMoLondon is back on the scene with our event on 'Mobile Social Networking - Platforms and People'. We are going to investigate the ins and outs of running mobile social platforms and take an alternative slant by talking with and about people that use it. All this and ... finally we have hit alpha with our new web site. Right now it is where the registration for the event is taking place, so create a profile play around on the site and register for the upcoming event ... alpha.mobilemonday.org.uk ... remember it is an alpha of the site so not everything works yet and there will be the odd issue or two ... but hopefully in the main it will help us get to where we have been wanting to be for well over a year now.

Amplified08 event

Lots happening on the London scene right now ... to demonstrate this on November 27th at NESTA there is going to be a new event called Amplified08 that aims to bring together people from many of the different industry specific networking clubs, such as Mobile Monday London. The plan is to get 200 people together and get them chatting. The art of networking is all about getting into conversations with people you wouldnt normally meet and naturally you end up learning new things, get ideas, build your network of contacts and in some cases create an opportunity. It is of course a big social experiment, but if you are active on the networking scene in London you will know that there is potential to fill this type of event out 10 times over. This will be a great excuse to get out of your industry silo and meet people from other trades and cultures. See you on the 27th November.

MoMoLondon - Nov 10th - We are 3 years old :)

Yes its that time of month again! However this event is rather special as it marks the 3rd Birthday of Mobile Monday London. Its been an emotional 3 years so far and we are working hard to make sure the so called 'credit crunch' doesnt affect us. Registration is now open and the main MoMoLondon event is immediately followed by a Swedish Beers gathering at Bar 101 (downstairs from the CBI at Centrepoint). So come along and celebrate all things mobile!

Battle of the brands

With the impending launch of the new Android phone with T-Mobile, most information I have read mentions little of T-Mobile ... sounds familiar? Well I wonder if we are starting to see the start of the end of the mobile networks branding up devices in the way they have. If you buy an iPhone, apart from a SIM from your network, there isnt much on there that makes you think anything other than its an Apple product. I wonder if the mobile market is about to go this way. The Google mobile platform is going to be about Google search, maps, mail, calendar and so on ... doubt there will be space for the operators services on there. If Nokia can get over the fact it has allowed operators to butcher their devices in the past, they may be able to control their own future a little more. So, should this be a reason why Microsoft and Yahoo! should combine to hold their own in this market? I think this is inevitable that consumers will go and buy the product rather than the network. It's a little like going out and buying a PC then deciding which ISP you want to use to connect to the internet. The only real restriction is that the operators are holding exclussive rights to the devices in certain markets, so choice is a little restricted ... well right now it is.

MoMoLondon back for Autumn

Monday saw another great MoMoLondon, back for the autumn and this time we put together a panel to discuss all things regarding mobile platforms. The theme was subtitled 'Too much choice or Hobson's choice' ... which is a good summary of how it feels right now in the top end phone market. Choice is always an interesting concept to dig into. In most things in life, where there is great choice, you find people tend to pick the most convenient and easy option. However this doesnt mean the best choice was made. This could be the case for mobile platforms. Companies like Apple own most of the loop from hardware, software, delivery and product shop. Therefore they pretty much own the experience. So to compete do you need to cover this whole experience. Only time will tell, but Nokia have tried in the past with their music store but with network operators having a big say over what gets delivered on the handsets is this really going to work. It seems the only way is for a big brand to force through change (for the better or worse) rather than wait for people to make the choice.

On Monday I didnt really get much chance to absorb everything that was said (as an organiser you have to make sure things run smoothly ... well smoothish). But a big take aways were the big difference in opinion when it came to which platform was preffered between mobile web and native applications, but also the opinions about why and how standards are going to help or hinder future innovation. Some of the audience remarked that, like the web brought about standards through the stuborness of some browsers to just conform to standards and not get swayed by others. It will be interesting to see if this works in the mobile world, change is slow and compatibility with legacy is going to be harder to cope with than in the desktop world.

Nuance acquire SNAPin Software

If you arent following me on Twitter the news is that Nuance have just acquired SNAPin software where I have been working now for only 2 months. Nuance are the big player in customer service and SNAPin until recently were competing head to head for what used to be a niche industry of mobile self service. However this is about to hit the big time with roll outs of the SNAPin platform with Vodafone. How this affects my good self, well of course only time will tell. But as always it is business as usual in the morning and lots of deadlines to hit :)

And so I am starting to get back into developing the final areas of the Mobile Monday London website and I thought I should see how it looks on an iPhone. Looks mostly ok, just a few minor rendering issues but other than that it works very well on the device. We are looking for a company to host our website setup (Tomcat + MySQL most likely), if you would like to host our site and get a logo on it with links back into your own site let me know and we can start going through how we intend to launch the new site.

MoMoLondon packs em in for July

Hi folks, I would have posted this earlier in the week, however it has taken me a while to get some time to really reflect on Monday's MoMoLondon event. We themed around 'Enabling location in applications' to cover areas such as actually what is around for you to build location into, how to share it and how to access some of those capabilities from your handset. A really great thing about the event was it was packed, not a spare seat and the whole thing ran along smoothly and on time ... gosh! We also had some of our global MoMo colleagues in from Spain, Germany, Italy, Finland, USA, Estonia and more, great to see everyone over a glass of wine afterwards. We also welcome Helen Keegan (aka technokitten) officially to our organisers, who no doubt most mobile folks will know already, and she has helped us out on numerous meetings in the past.

Huge thanks must go out to Ted and Kate from Skyhook Wireless for hosting the event and putting on the party at Bar 100 afterwards, much appreciated by all the MoMo community. Also thanks to our other speakers and demoers Ben Ward (Yahoo! Fire Eagle), Charles Wiles (Google Gears), Andrew Scott (Rummble), Justin Davis (Buddy Ping), Mark White (Locatrix) and Matt Womer (W3C). Not only did they keep the momentum going but made a really good Q&A panel at the end of the event ... cheers folks!

Taking a bit of a look around the web, we have found quite a few blogs post Monday's event, so here is a quick round up from other people that attended ...

• David Wood
• Ben Matthews
• MJelly
• Inma Martinez
• Simon Judge

And so MoMoLondon takes a breather for the summer. We are still interested if anyone would like to sponsor drinks at a bar for a networking event ... email me alex@mobilemonday.org.uk if you are interested. We will be back in September where we hope to have some interesting announcements regarding our website, and hopefully a full autumn and winter events diary. Keep your eyes on our Yahoo! Group for more information.

(Pictures taken from Dan Appelquist and Mike Butchers from Flickr ... nice shoots guys!)