I’m blogging live from DEMOfall 09 in San Diego California… I’ll also be live tweeting.  The show is about to start shortly.  Please refresh your browser regularly.

The show is starting now… First up an introduction video.

Now the intro to the conference – Chris Shipley and Matt Marshall are thanking partners and talking about the format for DEMOfall 09.  VentureBeat has launched DEMOBeat.  VentureBeat also talking about VentureBeat Profiles, which is the integration of their Profiles acquisition.

Chris Shipley says now is the best time to be starting a company and innovating.  Hewlett-Packard Co is first up to bat… They’re a DEMO veteran. (more…)

I’m hitting the road on Monday for the DEMOfall 09 conference in San Diego, CA.

This will be the 25th DEMO conference that Chris Shipley, has produced in 13 years, but it’ll be the first one I’m attending.  I’ve heard great things about previous DEMO conferences, and because this one is the 25th, and Shipley’s last before she passes the torch to Matt Marshall, it will include a “Lifetime Achievement Awards” ceremony honoring the following 15 well known DEMO alumni: (more…)

When I watched Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of Motorola Mobile Devices, announce the MOTO CLIQ™ (which will be called MOTO DEXT™ when it launches in the rest of the world) with MOTOBLUR at Mobilize 09 on Thursday, something interesting happened… something that I haven’t seen in a long time. The audience got visibly excited about Motorola.  Did they seem as excited as they seemed about Apple when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 3G? Maybe not, but they were genuinely interested, and at least among the people around me, there was a palpable sense of relief that Motorola announced an innovative device and software. (more…)

I’m live blogging from Mobilize ’09 in San Francisco, California for as long as my laptop battery lasts. I’ll also be live tweeting.

After a quick, “mininote” introduction by Om Malik, Founder of the GigaOM Network and James Kendrick, Editor, jkOnTheRun (GigaOM Network), Pankaj Kedia, Director, Global Ecosystem Programs, Mobile Internet Devices at Intel has taken the stage… (more…)

This week, I started a business development consulting project with a San Francisco start-up called Offbeat Guides. This is a long post, but there’s some great information at the end about Offbeat Guide’s plans for the future and partnership opportunities for transaction-based travel websites, mobile apps, and more…So, it’s well worth reading the whole thing.

What are Offbeat Guides?

Offbeat Guides are the first travel guides that users custom-create online, using the latest travel information available on the Internet. The guides are available for over 30,000 travel destinations worldwide and include the same traditional travel guide information and more. For the first time, users can personalize their own guide based on their travel dates, destination, itinerary, and personal travel interests.

What I’m doing at Offbeat Guides – Looking for Partners for the new Reseller Program:

I was brought on as a consultant to help Offbeat Guides find partners for their forthcoming Reseller Program, which will allow online travel sites and ticket brokers to leverage their new API 2.0 (Application Programming Interface). Offbeat Guides Resellers will be able to sell customized travel guides with their logo and relevant product information directly from within the existing purchase flow on your website, simply by adding a check box special offer to their site (not unlike they would for travel insurance or other special offers). (more…)

I’ll warn you in advance, if you don’t watch Mad Men on AMC, this post probably isn’t going to mean much to you…

In “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women” (the Saturday Night Live video below), Mad Men protagonist, Don Draper, explains how he seduces women in four easy steps.  As I watched this video on Facebook yesterday, I couldn’t help but laugh at how similar Don’s tips for picking up women are to the “business development” instructions Partners at large management consulting firms give to the more junior members of their teams prior to client meetings:

• “Step 1: When in doubt, remain absolutely silent…
  
• Step 2: When asked about your past, give vague, open-ended answers…
  
• Step 3: Have a great name… (LW Note: It helps if you have a good name in business development, but your company’s name is more important.)
  
• and Finally, Step 4: Look great in a suit. Look great in casual wear. Look fantastic in anything…”

I’ve just updated my public calendar with the following upcoming events. If you’re going to any of the following, drop me a line to introduce yourself:

• Mobilize 09: September 10, 2009 San Francisco, CA
• DEMOfall 09: Sept 21-23, 2009 San Diego, CA
• Motorola Developer Summit: Oct 6, 2009 San Diego, CA
• CTIA IT & Entertainment: Oct 7-9, 2009 San Diego, CA
• WIP Jam: Oct 8, 2009, San Diego, CA

Check out my calendar for more details.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook acquired Friendfeed today for for nearly $50 Million US.  Friendfeed is a useful real-time social media aggregation and commenting service, and it’s easy to see why it caught Facebook’s attention.  Over the past several hours there’s been plenty of speculation by tech bloggers about why the acquisition took place and what this means for Friendfeed and Facebook users… (more…)

I recently received an email from a start-up called USCORE who wanted to learn more about my consulting services.  USCORE aims to give high school sports teams who are filming games the ability to easily tag each play within the video with the name of each player involved.  Parents that can’t make their child’s game can sign up to receive MMS messages on their mobile phone that show any play their child was involved in real time.

As part of my due diligence, I agreed to see a demo of USCORE’s product.  After multiple assurances that my mobile number would be removed from their system after the demo and I would never be spammed, I provided USCORE with my mobile number so that they could show me their ‘powerful’ MMS feature.  Unfortunately, the MMS demo didn’t work.  And, yesterday, almost four weeks after I saw the initial demo, I learned how ‘powerful’ USCORE’s MMS feature was when I received at least 139 unsolicited MMS messages. (more…)

Last night, I attended the Mobile Monday Silicon Valley event at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. There was a panel discussion on “Mobile Monetization,” which drew a large crowd, which seemed in direct proportion to the level of excitement around the topic of monetization.  The panel was moderated by Julie Ask, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, an the panelists were: (more…)