Mobile 2.0 Conference - We're getting there...

I have attended the Mobile 2.0 conference in San Francisco in Oct. 15. It was great to see so many people from the mobile space in one place. In fact, the event was like a Mobile Monday gathering on steroids...

The conference started with a great keynote by Tomi Ahonen, author of several books in the area and also a fellow blogger. One of the main points Tomi made was that mobile is as different from the Internet as TV is different from the radio - so solution providers shouldn't just copy apps from the Internet and "squeeze" them (couldn't agree more..)

Another issue in Tomi's keynote that relates to my previous post on Virtual Worlds, was the rise of these worlds. One world he mentioned in particular was Cyworld, the Korean virtual world. 43% of the Internet users in South Korea have an account there (!). This compares to 21% of the USA Internet users on MySpace and 17% of the UK Internet users. Cyworld also features 30,000 business that opened a virtual presence, as well as over 500,000 branded items. And as for mobile it already has a mobile service in Korea, and soon will have that in the US as well (Ahead of most of the virtual worlds).

The keynote was followed by some very interesting panels (great panelists). I won't go to details about each and everyone, but here are a few observations about things I saw and heard across the panels, and in the networking breaks:

Mobile social networking / content sharing is big. Nearly everyone I spoke with is doing something in that space. It's not very surprising due to the success of that segment on the web, but it seems that adapting that to mobile is not so easy, and the barriers are not just the form factor and all the usual technical issues, but also the high data rates which came up several times. When these are made more reasonable we should see the market evolving much more rapidly.

In any case, I guess Google's acquisition of Jaiku, a mobile twitter, will just make this space more crowded, so for those of you who want to be there - hop along now before it's too late...

Another hot area is mobile advertising, companies such as Smaato, Amobee, Greystripe and others are trying to start a revolution we are all waiting for... Advertising as a business model is probably a good fit for the mobile world. The prices for content are way too high, and the players in the mobile content field are struggling on a daily basis, since the download rates of content are flatlining in recent years.

Other issues that keep coming up are the keypad as a barrier, and what is its future - whether a touch screen like the iPhone, voice activation solutions (For example one such solution was integrated in tellme which was acquired by Microsoft recently) or other creative solutions.

Also, not surprisingly, the handset fragmentation issue came up... Devices are still very different from each other making life difficult for application developers, but at least one of the positive changes is that device information which was once difficult to obtain is available through multiple suppliers, some are even open sources (My favorites are WURFL and TastePhone, which is Java specific, but based on real values sent from phones).

The need for open standards also came up and is definitely another key driver to the industry, panelists kept reminding us that in fact we are in the early days of the industry, and despite all problems, we're advancing pretty well compared to what happened back in the days of the internet, PC and so on... So once standards kick in, we'll have much more viable and effective opportunities in our (currently) humble mobile space...

On the traditional launchpad several start-ups presented their "goods". Among those were Heysan (free mobile IM), Taptu (mobile search engine), Mippin (content optimization), Kyle.tv (video blogging) and more.

All in all, it was a great event with a great turnout, so thanks to the guys from Mobile Monday and the Open Group for making it happen. See you there next year...

Virtual Worlds 2007 - The birth of an Industry

Finally I am getting around to blog about all the great events I have attended in my recent business trip to the west coast. And first in line is Virtual Worlds 2007 conference which took place in Oct. 10-11 in San Jose.

In general, it can be definitely said that all the major players in the industry were there. CEOs and other senior executives of the major virtual worlds, content players, technology players and more. And most of them participated in the panels that as a result were very interesting.

Now, let's go ahead and walk through the interesting things I heard and saw:

TV and Virtual Worlds: CSI and The Office

The conference started with a keynote by Anthony Zuiker, the creator of CSI. What he announced is that CBS's CSI:NY is going to have an episode about Second Life (which was aired yesterday)... In addition I learned that NBC's The Office is going to have today an episode on Second Life as well... When two major networks have shows on that topic - it seems that the virtual worlds trend is getting to the eye of the public... BTW - CSI not only has an episode about SL, but also have a whole array of in-world activities that viewers can play with. This is a nice try to make a crossover between TV and a virtual world, so it would be interesting to see what was the users uptake.

Avatar Island by CyberExtruder and Cranial Tap

Isn't that the coolest thing? CyberExtruder, a 3D solutions company has a technology that allows transforming a 2D image into a 3D character. The system can recognize the face parts and based on that extrapolate on how the person looks like in 3D. Together with Cranial Tap they built Avatar Island (SLUrl), that makes use of this technology in Second Life by allowing users to upload a picture and get a face skin for their avatars.... Then you could roam inside the Metaverse wearing your real life face... In the picture you can see yours truly transforming from a real life person to a bold avatar... and there's a video too...

Motion Analysis Studios / Icarus Studios

This is an immersive technology by Motion Analysis Studios, Basically they have an optical-based motion capture system that allows them to translate the movements of a real person in real time to Second Life (And other apps as well of course). In this picture you can see the demonstrator on the right, and the Second Life avatar is doing what she does on the screen to the left. This was all a part of the Icarus Studios booth.


HiPiHi

HiPiHi, the "Chinese Second Life" as some call it was certainly one of the talks of the day. Everybody wants to know what the recently launched HiPiHi is planning. From the demos given at the conference it looks pretty much like Second Life, but in Mandarin Chinese... Also the look of the default avatar is somewhat different... Anyway it's one of very few worlds in which you can actually build freely and upload objects, and not limited to just simple customizations. Also, they have now an English translation of the interface (downloadable from the link above).

Planet 9 Studios

"Building Virtual Earth.. polygon by polygon" - this is Planet 9 Studios slogan, and indeed that's exactly what they do... They have a database of 3D cities data (of about 40 cities) which they update annually and can be licensed and used with several viewers (including Google Earth). This database can be used for Augmented Reality applications such as adding layers of data over the real buildings etc.

3Di - Movable Life

Movable Life from 3Di is a web-based thin client that allows users to connect to Second Life without launching the regular client, the idea being that you can chat and IM with other avatars, see 2D maps and more, but not see the fully rendered 3D world. This can be useful both when you can't launch the real client for some reason (Playing at work again?...) or if you don't want to launch it since you just want to chat with your friends and you are tired of the client crashing every 5 minutes... Of course I should also mentioned AjaxLife that works on the same principle and was online even before and also SLeek which is another thin Second Life client in the form of a windows application.

inDuality by Pelican Crossing & IBM

And another client solution is the still unreleased inDuality from Pelican Crossing, which was shown at the IBM booth. Unlike MovableLife, this is an in-browser full featured client for Second Life (and other virtual worlds). As far as I understand it downloads in the background a plug-in for each virtual world you want to connect to, which I guess weighs as the regular client (since it is fully functional), so while it's better in some ways than thin clients, the edge of doing things fast and from "dumber" devices is lost. Anyway, it's good to have variety...

Miuchiz by MGE Entertainment and Active Worlds

Miuchiz is basically a handheld virtual world... It is based on the Active Worlds technology and the MGE Entertainment brands and targets mostly kids. The device comes in several "flavours": Bratz (for girls), Monsterz (for boys) and Pawz (for both genders). The kids can play on the device and then synchronize their actions to the main grid using the USB connector that is built-in the device. Neat...

Active Worlds Facebook Application

Social Networks and Virtual Worlds are supposedly coming all together with this Active Worlds Facebook application. Once installed in your Facebook profile, you can enter the world from your profile page. However, the real value here is not very clear, since there is no real integration with Facebook. You might as well open the regular Active World app, and when you want switch application to your browser.


MoiPal by Ironstar Helsinki

MoiPal from Ironstar Helsinki is a mobile virtual world. It is still very small in terms of users, but it would be very interesting to see how this world evolves. This is one of very few mobile virtual worlds currently available, and it looks quite good and well adapted to the mobile form factor. The founder of the company is well aware that people will only use mobile in their idle time - and that's a good starting point. The question is whether users will engage in virtual worlds from their handset which they currently use in their idle time mostly for casual gaming.

Mobile and Virtual Worlds

On the mobile side, I asked virtual worlds operators' executives and it appears that everybody has mobile in mind. They all know that allowing mobile access to their worlds is one of the next steps, but as one of them told me not necessarily one of their top-5 priorities... There are others however that feel more strongly about it and are currently developing a mobile solution in-house, but are not willing to say much more about how or what it is going to be... In that aspect, virtual worlds are somewhat behind social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook that have a decent mobile interface. But I guess the challenge with a virtual world is bigger. The only world that I see as having a solid mobile solution in the short-term is Habbo Hotel. I spoke with Sulake's CEO, Timo Soininen, and he told me that as a result of Mini Friday's success, they are going to launch a mobile version that is both connected to the main grid and also supports a multitude of phones (Currently Mini Friday supports mostly Series 60 phones).

Interesting Statistics

According to Parks Associates 6% of all Internet users use some virtual world at least once a week, while 18% visited at least one at some point in a virtual world. These numbers are rising of course, but they still are quite low compared to the usage of social networking sites: For example in ages 18-24, 10% use virtual worlds, while 71% use social networking sites (!)... That's not very surprising since virtual worlds are new in town, but still this shows how much more it can grow (or not...).

Growth

As for the expected growth of users in virtual worlds, KZero forecasts that Second Life and the kids world Club Penguin will multiply their user base, There will grow from 1M users to 7M (!), Whyville from 3M to 10M, the relatively new player Kaneva from 0.6M to 3M and the upcoming Chinese HiPiHi from 0 to 10M.



Well, That's all for now, soon to come are the reviews of the Mobile 2.0 Conference and the E for All expo. Stay Tuned!

Virtual Worlds 2007, Mobile 2.0 Event and E for All reviews coming soon...

I haven't posted for a while since I have a very busy schedule. I am currently in San Francisco heading today to Los Angeles after I have been in the Virutal Worlds 2007 conference and the Mobile 2.0 conference both here in the Bay Area.

There's a lot happening in both spaces, and I am preparing a thorough post on each of those. In addition I am attending the E for All expo (formerly E3) tomorrow, and naturally I am going to write about that as well.

Probably will get around to writing next week when I am back in Israel. In the meantime, watch out for the upcoming CSI:NY and The Office episodes: Both will be about Second Life, so the are bound to be interesting/entertaining...

The CSI episode was announced by CSI creator Anthony Zuiker in the Virtual Worlds conference (See Reuters), and I heard about The Office episode in one of my meetings here, with the creators of the Second Life content featured there (See Virtual World News for more on that).

The episodes are going to be aired Oct. 24 (CSI) and Oct. 25 (The Office), so be prepared for the Second Life grid to get overloaded...


BTW - No picture this time since Blogger has some sort of a bug...

Virutal Worlds 2007

If you happen to be in the virtual worlds business, you shouldn't miss next week's Virtual Worlds conference which is taking place in San Jose.

As you probably know the virtual worlds arena is "exploding" these days and alongside the growth and acceptance of online worlds such as Second Life, Habbo Hotel and more, there is room for mobile solutions - whether in the form of simple SMS services for virtual worlds (And there are a lot of those already in Second Life) or in the form of a complete virtual mobile world, and everything in between.

So if you're interested about the fusion of Mobile and Virtual worlds, the conference is certainly going to be a good place to explore it, as it features speakers from key players in the industry, some already doing several things in the area.

For example, Sulake's Mini Friday is an interesting mobile virtual world. It started as an experiment, as Sulake defined it, but crossed the 100,000 registered users last month, after less than a year of activity (And a rather narrow support base for various handsets).

There are several senior speakers from Sulake as well as from other mobile companies such as MoiPal, and it's also interesting to hear what do the companies that still don't have any mobile solution plan in the near future.

You can find the full list of speakers and sessions in the conference site. See you there!

Mobile 2.0 - The conference

In about two weeks, Mobile Monday together with the Open Group is organizing in San Francisco a One-Day Event Focusing on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation.

The event brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, including investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile application developers and web technologists.

Among the topics to be covered are: User Experience, Usability, and Design, Emerging Technologies, Enabling Infrastructure and Convergence, Disruptive Business Models and more.

This is the second year this event is being held, and the previous one was highly recommended by the people who participated.

As you probably know, Mobile Monday is a global community of mobile industry professionals with chapters across the world, that typically have meetings once a month (on Mondays...). Since I am going on business to the bay area in October I was searching for a Mobile Monday meeting of the silicon valley chapter, and was (positively) surprised to find out that this month's meeting is actually the Mobile 2.0 conference (which is organized together with other chapters such as the London chapter).

This is truly a once in a year opportunity to meet with all the right people from the industry in a more intimate atmosphere (as compared to the crowded 3GSM or CTIA, which is also around the corner).

So, if you happen to be in the bay area, you should certainly drop by (and even if you're not scheduled to be there - you just found an good reason...). So go to the event site and register (If you're super fast you may still get the early bird discount...)

See you there!