The Global Strategic Management Institute (GSMI) is hosting three mobile + social media events in the coming months, and Socialize Mobilize is a media sponsor.  As a reader of SocializeMobilize.com, you’ll get 10% off the registration cost for each of these conferences by using the promo code “MikeSM” during registration (more information below).

Here are the details of each summit:

(more…)

I recently stumbled across a visual map of the web 2.0 landscape, created by John Battelle and team, called Points of Control.  (Note: If you’re interested in social media and you’re not familiar with John Battelle, check him out… He’s the Program Chair of the Web 2.0 Summit, and his nearly 40,000 followers on Twitter -including me- are a good indication that he regularly has interesting things to say.) (more…)

This year, there’s a new event taking center stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on September 13-14: APPNATION: Show me the money conference.

As you might guess, this show is all about apps and monetization – mobile apps, social apps, TV apps – you name it.  The speaker list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of mobile, web, media and agencies – well worth checking out.  SocializeMobilize.com readers will get 25% off the full conference pass by using the code MHFC25 during registration.

There’s also great opportunity for developers to show off their skills, gain some cross-industry exposure, and potentially win cash through the “Pimp My App Contest”.  Here’s the scoop:

One Great Contest — Two Cool Partners. We are calling on all developers to show off your skills by Pimping The App for Fox’s television show “Fringe”, The City of San Francisco’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau or both. Enter as many individual apps as you like for either or both of our partners. There are separate grand prizes so, who knows, maybe you’ll hack your way to victory for both contests. Sort of like winning both showcases on the Price is Right!. So, start hacking as you have until September 3rd to submit your entries.

Today, my newest client, Face.com launched an new, open and free API and developer community for facial recognition and detection.  This is exciting news for developers that want to incorporate facial detection and recognition capabilities into their applications.  If you’re a developer, you can get started with the API and get involved with the community here. (more…)

Yesterday, veteran Internet industry analyst, Mary Meeker (who has been covering the Internet since Netscape days), and the team from Morgan Stanley published a new Internet Trends report.  The full report is well worth a read, and you can download all 87 pages here in .pdf.  In this post, I’ll review the highlights from this report and discuss what I think is missing – namely coverage of one of the key issues for the future of mobile Internet – native and web app discoverability.

(more…)

Today, I started a new consulting project with a mobile app discovery start-up called, Chomp, Inc.  I’m excited to be working with a team of smart, motivated, and fun people.  I’ll be leading mobile business development for Chomp – evaluating opportunities for growth.  I’d love to tell you about but can’t.  Here’s what I can tell you… (more…)

I just downloaded Sandvine’s 2010 Mobile Internet Phenomena(1) study, a whopping 35-page report that details data trends from more than 40 of the world’s leading mobile operators, who serve more than 200 million subscribers worldwide.  Sandvine is a bit of a ‘traffic cop’ on the figurative ‘mobile highway.’  It provides network policy control solutions to mobile operators around the globe.  Sandvine’s Mobile Internet Phenomena study is jam packed with good information about what consumers are doing online from their mobile devices around the world and plenty of reasons why mobile operators need help managing mobile traffic.  Intrigued by the findings in Sandvine’s report, I couldn’t help but think about what traffic on the mobile highway looks like today and wonder what the future holds for the mobile ecosystem amidst growing  congestion… (more…)

Here are the highlights of my tweets at CTIA last week. To see all of my tweets, please visit me on Twitter. (more…)

Today the World Economic Forum announced its 2010 list of the top 200-300 Young Global Leaders (YGL) Honourees.  You can download the full list here.  Among those on the list that mobile and web enthusiasts might know are:

• Ev Williams, Co-founder and CEO of Twitter
• Marissa Mayer, Vice-President, Search Product and User Experience at Google
• Anand Chandrasekaran, Director, Products at Openwave Systems Inc.
• George Hu, Executive Vice-President, Marketing and Alliances, Salesforce.com (more…)

As day 2 of Mobile World Congress rounds to a close, and day 3 begins (ahem – it’s nearly 3am), I thought I’d point out a few highlights from Mobile World Congress so far:

Pre-MWC: I started the pre-MWC whirlwind with The NAVTEQ awards party, in which the EMEA winners of the Global LBS Challenge were announced.  It was a good event.  A handful of promising companies showcased their LBS-enhanced mobile products.  From there, I went to MobileSunday, which was, as usual packed with a great crowd of mobile enthusiasts bracing for the week ahead.  After that, I hit the town with the team from Skyhook Wireless (whose wi-fi location-based technology is embedded in the iPhone and millions of others worldwide) and a few of their 3rd party developer partners – all of whom are working on things that would set any mobile enthusiast’s heart racing… I’d tell you more, but that’d be like ruining a good surprise, and that’s no fun.

Day 1: I kicked off Monday by moderating a couple of panels in the “Mobile Applications – Innovation Vs Fragmentation” stream.  The first was “Attracting investment to the apps market – Identifying the key success factors,” and the panelists were fantastic: (more…)