We're very grateful to all the demoers who presented their interesting ideas, and we're only sorry that we had to turn down so many others. Thanks also to the many attendees who gave feedback on the event, by all accounts it was enjoyable! And now on to our Valentina Ciolino (
Did you miss April’s Mobile
Monday London demo night? Too bad - more than a show and tell, more than a
pitching event, it’s where the audience discovers what’s cool in the mobile industry. The format is simple: entrepreneurs
and others show their work or pitch their idea in three minutes, get asked questions by their peers, find partners and most importantly, realize what to
change, tune or improve in their project!
In fact choosing between tons of
submissions is very difficult, so there’s a good chance of a “second round”
later this year … not to mention that things will have moved on by then, there
will be more new ideas and you still have a chance to be on stage with your
demo.
In the meanwhile, I can safely
say that the trend this time was “social and local on mobile”.
For example, if you are 60+ years old, you
may want to login on to
Go-myLife. Launched out of a
European action research project, it is an online social networking platform, with
a focus on privacy and usability, tailor-made for older people. It will work on
computers, but it will be particularly easy to use on smartphones. People can
sign up and try the prototype service on
gomylife.eu
or check the official
Facebook page;
the testing just started in UK and Poland.
Sooqini is a
reverse mobile marketplace - the buyer (not the seller, hence
"reverse") posts a request for goods, services or information, on
their phone or the web, and multiple sellers bid for it. A map displays
requests in your area, or one can search per category or price. PayPal or bank
payments are supported and there’s a small fee on each transaction. 2500+
people are already using it.
Or, if you are into writing (and reading),
you can visit
Movellas, a new, social, community platform for creating,
discovering and developing stories whilst identifying talented authors. Young
adult authors can share their work, get feedback and become read by thousands
of readers from all over the world. It’s free right now (in the future, they
will ask for a 70-30 split on incomes), and it has already reached 200k+
comments from the launch.
KO-SU is an innovative mobile
learning platform open to everyone who wants to teach and learn via mobile
devices. It allows subscribers to create interactive activities optimised for the mobile
screen. Activities are created from templates that support text, images, audio,
videos, multiple choice, free text questions and even drawing tasks. The only
thing user won’t ever be able to do is to print on paper, as KO-SU was also
created with the intent to avoid waste and save trees.
In the same way that Social speaks
to e-commerce, Mobile
speaks to location-based services, and the companies at the Demo Night had some
good ideas about that.
LocalSocial,
by Rococo Software, is a retail engagement platform that makes it easy for
merchants to create offers, loyalty points and more that only unlock in-store.
The service uses NFC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as "beacons" to support and
trigger retail interactions. You could watch their
demo video
or try it yourself: a trial was just launched in Dublin
- and the UK
will be next. The team is currently actively looking for partners and
investors. One can reach them on
twitter
or at their
blog.
For travelers,
Pearson presented
LangAR, a location-based, Augmented Reality talking phrasebook for
English speakers that suggests nearby points of interest and provides
contextual phrases (written & audio) in Spanish that a tourist will need to
know to get by when travelling abroad. The prototype currently runs on Android
and iOS and combines language learning, location-based services and Augmented
Reality into one useful and fun application which is a first to my knowledge.
But it’s not all about social and local. We
were introduced to many different ideas based on new technologies.
Tone Push is the prototype for an
app that allows you to set your ringtone on someone else's phone. There's a one off download and once the app
is installed onto your device, then you can upload MP3’s directly from any
browser (no Wi-Fi or USB cable required) … or, for a bit of fun, you can upload
to your friends phone as your ringtone. While
copyrights issues will be avoided by “passing” them to users, money will be
made by licensing and/or selling original ringtones or with a subscription
system. A public alpha is available, and if you’re interested enough in the
project, you shall contact Richard he needs a co-founder to join in!
And if are not into ringtones, but like
videos,
Six3 Video Messenger lets people send
each other short, private video messages using smartphones, PCs, tablets and
other connected devices. The video streaming is especially speed-optimized, but
video messages can also be sent via e-mail. You can watch
a video (of course!) of the product.
D-touch markers are visual markers
which are easy to design and user friendly. While it was already an open-source
project for PC,
Intellidzine has
developed the D-touch mobile library for Android. Simple images can trigger
links, videos, software and pictures, just like the one of Jo Rabin at the
side. Better than QR codes! This library is useful to create mixed reality applications;
it is free and available on
github. Volunteers
needed for porting to iOS.
Or if you need secrecy for your personal
messages, why don’t you encrypt them?
Enigma simulator is a simulator of
the WWII Enigma machine for Android, intended to raise funds for the Bletchley
Park Trust. Private messages can be sent via the app, and 1200+ people are
already using it.
Last
but by no means least, Dan Lane has come up with
Impossible
Telecom, a new MVNO based on the values of innovation, customer service
and transparency. Dan’s taking the extraordinary step of offering things that
customers might want, for example the possibility of sharing the same number on
different devices, using two different numbers on the same SIM card, and
sharing the same bundles (for text, voice, data), between different numbers. The
network won’t be the cheapest one, but wants to be the most innovative. You can
sign up to be an alpha tester.
Many companies who have demoed in
the past at MoMoLondon have gone on to widespread
recognition and increasing success, so good luck to all these people for their
projects, I hope that being at Mobile Monday will be the first step on a
successful journey for them too!
