I’m at the second day of GigaOm’s Mobilize 2011, listening to the “Will Enterprise be the Game Changer for HTML5 and Tablet Apps” Panel with moderator Nathan Clevinger, Chief Software Architect, ITR Mobility. The panelists are:

• Santiago Becerra – Co-Founder and CEO, MeLLmo
• Adam Blum – CEO, Rhomobile
• Chris Kemmerer – Director, Mobility SOlutions, Verizon
• Sean Whiteley – SVP, Salesforce.com

Here are my live notes… The conversation kicked off with a discussion on the consumerization of IT… (more…)

Today GigaOM launched a report entitled, “The future of mobile: a segment analysis.”  Among many other things, the report summarizes 11 critical lessons learned by the mobile industry, many of which I discussed in my recent post: “Waging the Mobile Patent War and the Future of Mobile Innovation…”

1. “Avoid channel conflict” There have been several examples over the years of mobile companies struggling to make/maintain meaningful partnerships because they’re playing both sides of mobile – hardware and software. As GigaOM points out, Nokia had difficulty getting other OEMs to adopt Symbian because it had a head start on developing hardware for it. Google may have the same issue now that it’s acquired Motorola Mobility.  I talked about this one a lot in the above mentioned post. (more…)

Open Mobile Solutions (one of the companies I advise) is looking for mobile app developers and panelists for its Developer Pitch Sessions at CTIA in March.  The last Developer Pitch Sessions at CTIA was really good.  This year is sure to be even better.  The sessions are as follows: (more…)

When I’m not in client meetings or on the road, I am usually working from my home office.  Friends and colleagues regularly ask whether I get lonely or distracted working from home, and my answer is always  “no.“   They often say things like, “I don’t think I could work from home…” “I’d get lonely…” “There are too many distractions at home…” etc.  Feeling lonely is a rarity since I’m in meetings and/or phone calls every day.  As for distractions go, in my experience there are way more distractions in an traditional workplace environment then a home office… (more…)

There’s an interesting debate afoot… Could News Corporation (Newscorp) trump Google by preventing them from indexing their various sites including Wall Street Journal, or would this bring down Newscorp by making its content less discoverable?  What would happen if the world’s biggest publishers joined forces together against Google and sold the ability to index their content to the highest bidder?  What would this mean for the Internet and profitability of the web’s biggest publishers? (more…)

Having trouble convincing your organization to invest in social media?  You’re not the only one.  Many of my prospective clients are in the same boat.  They understand that social media can be used to help their organization grow and manage customer perception, but unable to estimate a realistic return on investment grounded in a real-life case study, they have trouble rationalizing a significant investment in social media.  Unfortunately, there aren’t enough companies that measure AND talk openly about the dollar-value ROI of their social media investment.

One company that is talking openly about their social media ROI is Dell, who today announced that since June of 2007, they’ve earned more than $3 Million in revenue via Twitter alone.  (more…)

I’m a big fan of the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe.  If you’re unfamiliar with this work of genius, it’s a computer in a pen.  It allows you to record what’s being said as you take notes and links the two together, which makes it much easier to listen to everything someone is saying rather than struggling to write it down in your notes as they’re saying it. (more…)

In a deflated economy, the number of people calling themselves “consultants” is on the rise.  Plenty of job seekers are “consulting” while trying to find a full-time, “permanent” role.  Taking on an interim consulting project is a good option if you’re trying to pay the bills while looking for full-time jobs, but consulting isn’t for everyone.  If you’re looking for a consultant to complete a project, in times like this, it’s buyer beware. The kind of people that make great employees don’t always make great consultants.  Doing your due diligence before hiring a consultant is critical. (more…)

Ahhh… It’s a new day, and there’s yet another 3rd party developer jumping on the Twitter train…

TwitPub is a 3rd party developer that is leveraging Twitter’s infrastructure to monetize tweets through subscriptions. TwitPub is run by AdExcel Online Networks Sdn. Bhd., which is based out of Malaysia. TwitPub operates a bit like a premium SMS subscription (though not on your mobile) – users pay to subscribe to the private tweets of content owners/ publishers.  The idea is that content publishers sell access to their private tweets, which can contain information about any number of topics (daily horoscope, finance alerts, music news, etc… anything – you get the idea).  (more…)

Today, I’m excited to launch SocializeMobilize.com.  On it, I’ll be publishing articles about social media, web 2.0, mobile, and mobile and web convergence.  You’ll also find all of the legacy content from my former blog, socialmedia.vox.com, which I started in 2006.  Under “services” tab, you’ll find more information about me and the consulting practice I’ve been running since 2003.

Why did I start a new blog when I already had one?

In 2006, I started a blog about social media and mobile on Vox, a community powered, free blogging platform run by SixApart.  I originally started blogging as an online experiment, prompted by conversations I had with colleagues at SplashData, who I met while consulting at Palm, Inc.  SplashData made a mobile blogging platform that was acquired by SixApart, and they encouraged me to try Vox, which had just launched.  Interested in the socialization of the web, and curious about blogging, I used Vox as a way to express my thoughts and start conversations about web 2.0 and, occasionally, mobile convergence. (more…)