Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 winners are announced

Here at Mobile Monday London, we have been waiting with baited breath to find out how the finalists got on at Picnic 2010 today, and in particular, our UK finalist, Roulette Cricket. We are delighted to announce the winner of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010, the biggest competition of its kind, aimed at identifying and developing the best, most innovative mobile internet start-ups. Cardmobili, which describes itself as 'consumer loyalty going mobile and social' was awarded the title today at PICNIC festival in Amsterdam and will receive the €100,000 1st place prize fund.

Fending off competition from 159 other entrants, Cardmobili won the top prize for its intuitive application that allows consumers and retailers to share the latest coupons and reward vouchers entirely via mobile handsets. Users can also pass on special offers directly to friends from their social networks. Once the app is downloaded, consumers can register all the loyalty cards they carry around in their wallet to receive vouchers and redeem rewards without waiting for a statement or update at the checkout.

The 12-strong team, made up of some of the brightest young software developers in Portugal, is one of enthusiasm and persistence. Having launched Cardmobili in beta last year, the team has worked hard to take the number of retail partners from 200 to 1,500. Already successful in Portugal, North America and elsewhere in Europe, Cardmobili will invest the prize money in marketing to further awareness about the company, and encourage sign ups amongst consumers and retail partners.

Helena Leite, CEO, Cardmobili said, "It has been such a rewarding experience to be part of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition. We've met so many like-minded developers with interesting innovations to share. Being declared the overall winner is an absolute honour. We've worked hard throughout the past two years and will only continue to do so, reinvesting our prize money to make Cardmobili an even better offering for retailers and consumers."

 

 

Second place in the competition was awarded to Roulette Cricket, who received the runner-up prize fund of €50,000.

Roulette Cricket is an intuitive application that brings cricket to users from around the world. The first app in the market of its kind, the games can be played individually or as a group. There is at least one interactive game every day. A perfect form of entertainment during or outside of the cricket season, the game offers play throughout the year covering tournaments that include Champions League, Test Matches and The Ashes. The 5-strong Roulette Cricket team is made up of some of the strongest talent in gaming, having worked for companies including Virgin Atlantic on in-flight entertainment. Since launch, the team has secured a successful partnership with the Daily Telegraph, with usage numbers currently standing at 140,000 unique users.

David Tharp, managing director, Roulette Cricket said, "It has been a fantastic and exciting competition to be part of for the whole team. Winning this prize not only means great things for Roulette Cricket but will drive further development of the app. The prize fund will significantly help us to grow our offering and introduce other sports to the app which include football, golf, baseball and sailing."

The final judging panel was represented by Sanjeet Matharu - Vodafone Group representative, Om Malik - GigaOm blog founder, Russell Buckley - Vice President Global Alliances Admob (and a regular visitor and speaker at Mobile Monday London), Rudy de Waele - Mobile 2.0 Europe founder, Robin Wauters - Plugg organiser and TechCrunch blogger, Paul Jozefak - Vice Chairman Neuhaus Partners, and David Leftley - Head of Venture Capital at Vodafone Ventures.

Congratulations to the winners and all the entrants. If you are interested in finding out more about the competition then please click here.

Event: DCKTN final to win places at MWC11 – Monday 18 October

For the third year in a row, we are delighted to be hosting the final of the Digital Communications Knowledge Transfer Network (http://www.dcktn.org.uk/) competition for places on the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) stand at Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, February 2011.

The judges have selected 10 SMEs which entered the competition to go forward to the next stage at this event. These companies will be given three minutes to make a 'pitch' to a panel of judges. Each pitch will be given without the use of PowerPoint charts, but otherwise in whatever form the presenter thinks appropriate. At the end of each pitch there will be up to seven minutes for the judges to question the presenter.

After the pitches, a buffet supper will be provided with drinks to provide an opportunity for networking and, in particular, for the ten companies to say more about their products and solutions using A1 posters that they will be invited to produce and bring with them. These presentations will not form part of the judging process, but are to enable the ten companies to let a wider audience know more about their product or solution (and to give them some practice – whoever gets a place to exhibit will need to hone their elevator pitch). Once the judges have reached their decision, the winners will be announced. The evening will then continue to provide a further opportunity for networking.

The Digital Communications Knowledge Transfer Network organises these events to facilitate collaboration and the exchange of knowledge in the Digital Communications community. Keep up to date with the work of the Digital Communications KTN by becoming a member. Membership of the Digital Communications KTN is free, and attendees are very much encouraged to register as members at http://www.dcktn.org.uk/. It’s worth it – there’s all kinds of access to resources and information that SMEs will find useful.

Date: Monday, 18 October 2010

What: DCKTN final to win places at MWC2011 – 10 mobile SMEs pitch to win a place

Time: Doors open at 6pm for a prompt 6.30pm start. We will close at around 9.30pm.

Where: CBI at Centrepoint. Please use the entrance at street level. Nearest tube is Tottenham Court Road on the Central and Northern Lines.

RSVP: Please register and RSVP at http://momolo.org/. Registration is now open at http://momolo.org/ and will close at midday on Friday 15 October 2010. Please note, as this is a DCKTN event, registration and contact details will be passed on to DCKTN for their records and to enable DCKTN to contact attendees after the event.

The eleven companies presenting are:

Addpiks http://www.addpiks.com

Commagility http://www.commagility.com

Deltenna http://www.deltenna.com

HipSnip http://www.hipsnip.com

Input Dynamics http://www.inputdynamics.com

Masabi http://www.masabi.com

Name Your Number http://www.nameyournumber.com

OverlayMEDIA http://www.overlaymedia.com

PassivSystems http://www.passivsystems.com

Private Planet http://www.privateplanet.co.uk

Telnic http://www.telnic.org

This is a DCKTN event supported by MobileMonday London

Discounted tickets for OSIM World 2010 – 19/20 October

OSIM is 5 this year and Mobile Monday London is pleased to be able to support this year’s conference on 19 and 20 October at Olympia Conference Centre in London. OSIM claims to be the largest event solely focussed on the evolving open mobile ecosystem.

After extensive market consultation, the OSIM team are delighted to bring you a renewed programme, with keynote visionaries speaking on:

• Points of differentiation in the new open mobile market
• New form factors - tablets, e-readers, netbooks, 'open source hardware'
• Open source's effects on vertical markets: media, health, automotive
• Impact of web services innovation on mobile
• New role of design at source, cloud and SaaS

OSIM also welcomes a brand new advisory board, featuring leading figures from the mobile operator, software developer, multiple device and form factor, OS, web service, design, and media and content industries. OSIM 2010 will showcase over 80 expert speakers in the open source community, with confirmed speakers including Peter Semmelhack, Founder and CEO, Buglabs, Robin Spinks, Principal Manager, Digital Accessibility, RNIB (Royal National Institute of the Blind), Angel Gambino from Sonico, Orange France, Virgin Mobile USA, Turkcell, Google, Yahoo and many more from young innovative companies to the big guns.

This year, OSIM brings you more keynote 1:1 interviews, rapid fire rounds, mobile as the inspiration keynote roundtables and networking formats than ever before. The infamous OSIM pub quiz marks a return and WipJAM– the largest mobile developer event in open source - is back and again FREE to all independent developers, along with the two days conference. OSIM 2010 will bring together 400 attendees working in open software, mobile cloud and partnering strategy development from across product architect to CxO level executives.

There are FREE tickets available for developers and mobile network operators. Please contact Fiona Higgins directly if you wish to apply for one of those free tickets. And for the rest of the MoMoLo community, we have negotiated a 15% discount. Again, please contact Fiona Higgins directly to claim the discount.

5th Annual OSiM World 2010
Open Software in Mobile World
19-20 October 2010
Olympia Conference Centre, London

http://www.osimworld.com/

Roulette Cricket is going through to the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 final!

Vodafone today announces the four finalists of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010, our competition to identify and develop the best, most innovative mobile internet start-ups. The four finalists represent companies working on field-worker remote reporting; mobile loyalty cards; mobile application lifecycle management and ‘2^nd screen’ gaming. They are: Akvo Phone (Netherlands); Cardmobili, (Portugal); MALCOM, (Spain) and Roulette Cricket (UK).

About the four finalists:

UK (Roulette Cricket): Part of a new wave of mobile entertainment, so-called ‘2nd screen gaming’ gives fans a new way to engage with their favourite sport. Roulette Cricket is designed to be played whilst watching live sport, either at the ground, on TV or online.

Portugal (Cardmobili): A comprehensive collection of membership and loyalty cards is gathered through crowd-sourcing as well as comprehensive searches of loyalty programs and then sent to the customer’s mobile phone. The digitalisation of opt-in loyalty cards, coupons and vouchers gives customers convenient and easy access to relevant purchase offers.

Netherlands (Akvo Phone): A mobile application that allows live field-reporting for development aid project workers. Akvo Phone allows reports including pictures, text, phone identity, geographic location (GPS) and time stamp to be remotely submitted, freeing up time for field workers to get on with their jobs.

Spain (MALCOM): A mobile application lifecycle management system which is a revolution both for publishers and developers. The service – accessed through a simple web interface – takes the complexity, time and cost out of managing, updating and rolling out mobile applications, making it much more straightforward for application developers to manage their work.

Each of the finalists beat off serious competition to reach the final, displaying key attributes in the following judging criteria:

· Originality, creativity and innovation

· Technical and operational feasibility

· Economic and financial viability

· Value to end-users

· Management team quality

The four finalists will now be invited to represent their country in a live final at the PICNIC* Festival in Holland on 24 September 2010, where the overall winners of the €150,000 total prize fund will be chosen by a panel of mobile industry experts.

Please vote for your favourite!

Ahead of the PICNIC presentations, members of the public are invited to cast their vote for the winner of Mobile Clicks 2010. At the live final, the overall result of the public vote will be counted alongside the votes of panel members to decide the winners. At the live final, the ranking from the public vote will carry equal weighting to the vote of one official panel member. Vote now by visiting http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.com/vote and help your favourite entry win Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010.

For further information about the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 competition, visit http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.com

The panel members for the final in Amsterdam are: Om Malik – Founder, GigaOm, Russell Buckley - Vice President, Global Alliances Admob, Rudy de Waele – Founder, Mobile 2.0 Europe, Robin Wauters – Organizer, Plugg & TechCrunch blogger, Paul Jozefak – Managing Partner, Neuhaus Partners and David Leftley - Head of Venture Capital, Vodafone Ventures.

We wish all the finalists the best of luck and we’re especially flying the flag for our UK finalist, Roulette Cricket. Don’t forget to vote for your favourite – your votes really do count. http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.com/vote

mobileSQUARED Roadshow hits London on 29 September

The mobileSQUARED Roadshow: Europe is a 1-day event on 29 September in London covering the essential aspects of connecting with mobile consumers, relevant for brands, agencies, content providers, and mobile companies alike. The idea behind the event is to bring these key players together to collaborate outside of their usual silos, and facilitate fresh thinking on how to shape the market for best results. It’s about how to harness the one media device that connects to millions, and is always on and always in view.

The mobileSQUARED team take the results of exclusive in-depth market and consumer research, combined with a range of speakers who lead in their fields from media owners, agencies, brands and mobile companies and bring them together for the day to thrash out the key issues. Expect lively panel debates, breakout groups, keynotes, case studies, how to guides and more.

Mobile Monday London members can get a 25% discount on the full price of tickets. That brings the price down from £280 + VAT to £210 + VAT which is a good saving. To claim your discount, please contact jo@mobilesquared.co.uk who will be able to help you.

You can see more about the event at www.mobilesquared.co.uk/roadshow/roadshow-europe

Final countdown on Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010: Finalists share their thoughts

 

So the UK nominees going through to the 2nd round for Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 have been announced, with 20 mobile start-up companies selected from the UK, Spain, The Netherlands and Portugal vying for final prize money, a total of 150K Euros. We caught up with a few of the UK companies who have made the cut, to share in their excitement about being nominated.

The UK finalists include Little World Gifts, Milestone Planner, Movirtu, Roulette Cricket and Touchnote Postcards, who will learn on Monday 13 September which one of them has made it to the final round of the competition, and will attend PICNIC, where they’ll have their chance to pitch to win the cash prizes. We wanted to know a little more about the UK finalists, and to hear why they want to win and what they would do with the money, here’s what some of them had to say:

Little World Gifts

Katie Lips from Little World Gifts explained that they are delivering the world's most amazing 3D interactive virtual gifts on Facebook, iPhone & iPad. Little World Gifts is a dynamic UK based start-up that is recognised as having a game changing approach to virtual goods - namely that it harnesses mobile and web platforms together to deliver an engaging user experience that brands want to be part of.

“Our big idea is to transform virtual goods - to make them really exciting for users and for brands by harnessing the best mobile platforms. Winning would mean recognition that we're already doing cool stuff in this area; and it would help us to improve our platform and deliver mobile virtual goods for more partners,” she said.

And what about the money the winner gets? She said:

“We're serious about growing our business and we have the vision, the plan and the team to do just that. But we do need capital to help us grow to the next stage. We've already had seed investment from Vision and Media which has enabled us to build a first prototype, attract our first clients and prove the model. We made a small amount of seed funding go a long long way. We're very excited about our future plans and winning a prize in Vodafone Mobile Clicks would help us realise those goals sooner. “

Milestone Planner

Benjamin Ellis of Social Optic, the company behind Milestone Planner, describes the product as being an on-line collaborative planning application that acts as the project manager for mobile, distributed teams. It allows highly collaborative, real-time planning via a mobile or desktop web interface, so that project team members can check and update project milestones and tasks on the go. Stuck waiting for a plane? 5 minutes in between meetings? Team members can update the plans they are involved with, catch up with the latest changes in real-time, all from their mobile. Milestone Planner can also synchronise project dates to team members' calendars, track project changes, and automatically generate progress reports. It keeps everything on track and everyone up to date, and making life more pleasant and productive for mobile workers, wherever they are.

“Our idea is a simple one: Every business needs to work to a plan, even if that plan changes every day - and it often does in today's dynamic markets. Everyone one in the business needs to be working to the same version of the plan, with the ability to communicate changes and progress in real time. That's the problem we solve today with Milestone Planner,” he said. For the prize money? “We'd use it to accelerate our development, expand our charities support program, and speed the growth of Milestone Planner into the rest of Europe and beyond. Even more than that, the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition is the largest and most significant of it's kind and would bring Milestone Planner to the global stage and validate our success to date. We'd love to get through to the next round, to be inspired by the speakers and attendees at PICNIC, and compete alongside Europe's best mobile start ups.”

Touchnote Postcards

Raam Thakrar says that Touchnote Postcards is a startup that helps turn people's photos into real physical picture postcards. It's all about helping people share special moments – it's about sharing photos in a permanent and tangible way. They've got apps on most of the major platforms (Android, Symbian 3rd and 5th, iPhone and soon Windows Phone 7) and have a deal with Sony Ericsson that will see Touchnote on multiple handsets before the end of the year.

The company is excited to be getting recognition from Vodafone that they are actually onto something really interesting, and if they get the money?

“We're looking to extend and polish our offering - we have a lot of interesting ideas on how we can wow the customers and really show off the power of the handsets that we really want to implement!,” Raam said.

RouletteCricket

Dave Tharp said that RouletteCricket was born from a simple game of guessing where the next boundary will be scored in a game of cricket. And after playing the game for years they thought...there must be an app for that - right? Well when there wasn't they thought they’d build our own, with a generous helping of knowledge, passion and humour from our partners (and Mobile Monday London regulars) Future Platforms down in Brighton.

“Cricket is the first of a number of games the company has on our road-map build to serve up fun and engaging 2nd screen game-play to passionate fans, and while we think we've won already by being shortlisted, if we were lucky enough to win the big prize we would reinvest the money to launch more games into F1, Golf, Baseball & Football.” he said.

So that’s that then. Watch this space to see who gets through to the final.

Demo Night – Autumn Edition

Yes Demo Night is back at MoMoLondon! We'll update the agenda once we know who's going to demo their wares on the night but expect an eclectic mix of mobile applications, products and services. Each presenter will get 3 minutes to demo and then there'll be time for questions and feedback from the audience.

We hope to feature demos from some of the entrants of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition as well as some of the hacks from this year's Over The Air http://overtheair.org/ . We have space for a few more as well. Just fill in this form http://bit.ly/demorequest if you'd like to be considered for one of the slots.

This event is kindly sponsored by LUMU Invest.

The goal of LUMU Invest team is to help startups in pursuing their plans. Our focus is seed and early stage financing and advisory for startups that have global ambitions. http://www.lumuinvest.com/

We are also still on the lookout for another sponsor to support the event so that we don't go short of beers for the networking afterwards. If you're interested, then please get in touch with Alex or Helen - alex@ or helen@ mobilemonday.org.uk

Doors open at 6pm for a prompt 6.30pm start. The demos should be finished by about 8.15pm and then we'll have drinks and networking until 9.30pm.

And you'll find us at the CBI at Centrepoint. Nearest tube is Tottenham Court Road. Please use the entrance at street level.

Please RSVP at http://momolo.org/ if you'd like to attend this event. An RSVP on our Facebook event is not enough as we can't export the data to tally up numbers and create a registration list.

Look forward to seeing you!

Demo Night is back at MoMoLondon - September 13th

Yes Demo Night is back at MoMoLondon, kindly sponsored by our friends at LUMU Invest! We return to showing the best and whats hot in mobile in London right now. Expect an eclectic mix of mobile applications, products and services. We will use our old trusted formula where each presenter will get 3 minutes to demo and then there'll be time for questions and feedback from the audience. We are back to the usual venue of the CBI Conference Centre by Tottenham Court road tube station.

We will include some demos from the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition and the weekends Over The Air competitors! If you would also like to demo your product/service, then drop me an email at alex@mobilemonday.org.uk ... we will confirm the final list as soon as we can later this week.

Click here to register


The goal of LUMU Invest team is to help startups in pursuing their plans. Our focus is seed and early stage financing and advisory for startups that have global ambitions. www.lumuinvest.com

Vodafone Mobile Clicks – 2nd round nominees announced

Well, it has been exciting this year. With over 50 entries for the UK this year, and the standard even better than last year (and last year was good), it was a tough gig to get to the final five from the UK. But somehow we did it.

The UK judges for this round included myself, Rafe Blandford from All About Symbian and a group of representatives from Vodafone’s developer marketing team. A special thank you goes to Mike Butcher and Elizabeth Varley from Techhub who looked after us so well this week for the final judging session. May I recommend the pizzas they order in for things like this. Ab-so-lute-ly delicious!

Anyway, I digress.

The jury selected the very best entries based on the 5 criteria mentioned below:

- Originality, creativity and innovation
- Technical and operational ability
- Economic and financial viability (i.e. the business case)
- Use case and end-user value
- The quality of the members of the (management) team (e.g. their experience, knowledge, skills, relationships)

And the UK nominees are (in alphabetical order)

• Little World Gifts Visit Website
• Milestone Planner Visit Website
• Movirtu Visit Website
• RouletteCricket Visit Website
• Touchnote Postcards Visit Website

Hurrah! Well done to everyone and we really do wish all our UK nominees the best of luck. I’m glad I don’t have to choose who goes through to the final at Picnic – it’s a really tough choice.

And for the other countries…. there’s some stiff competition here by the way, they are:

Spain:

• MALCOLM Visit Website
• No Excuse Accounting Visit Website
• Oonair Visit Website
• vFacer Visit Website
• Wannataxi No Website Available

The Netherlands:

• AED4 Visit Website
• Akvo Phone Visit Website
• Smart HomeCare Visit Website
• Snapje Visit Website
• Track and Protect Visit Website

Portugal:

• Cardmobili Visit Website
• Cube Visit Website
• Eunoia Visit Website
• Live City Visit Website
• MobilePLUX Visit Website

Many thanks to all participating startups for their time and effort to enter. It’s really exciting to see these companies and ideas unfold.

More details about this announcement can be seen here.

Oh, and if you’re interested to know who’s been judging all the entries, then here’s a list of the judges for you:

For Spain:

- Belen Aparicio - Marketing Specialist (Vodafone ES)
- Carles Ferreiro - Co-founder MoMo Barcelona & Madrid
- Albert Cuesta - Technology Columnist at CanalPDA

For the Netherlands:

- Jochem Heerkens - Head of Postpaid Terminals Marketing (Vodafone NL)
- Marc Fonteijn - Chairman MoMo Amsterdam
- Peter Robinett - Owner of Mobile DevCamp website/database

For Portugal:

- Nuno Inácio - Product Manager (Vodafone PT)
- Vitor Domingos - Founder Mobile Monday Portugal
- Luís Silva - CEO Wit Software

For the United Kingdom:

- Mike Eaton - Head of Content (Vodafone UK)
- Helen Keegan - Co-organizer Mobile Monday London
- Rafe Blandford - Blogger allaboutsymbian.com

Global jury members:

- Rudy de Waele - Founder Mobile 2.0 Europe
- Yuri van Geest - Co-organizer Vodafone Mobile Clicks

UKTI West Coast Interactive Mission – call for companies

Our friends at the UKTI have let me know that there is a trade mission coming up in November to Los Angeles and San Francisco that may be of interest to MoMoLo’ers.

Some of you may not be familiar with the trade mission concept but I think they’re one of our best kept secrets in the industry. The UKTI puts these trips together to help SMEs do real business abroad in a particular sector. In this case, the location is the West Coast of the USA and the sector is interactive media (which of course, includes mobile media). If you’re accepted on to the mission, you’ll get to meet key decision makers from leading entertainment and media companies at their US offices. Last year, this included visits to Facebook, Apple, Warner Bros Technical Operations, Sony Pictures Digital Networks, Lionsgate Digital, Evite.com, Smule, Current Media, as well as agencies like IDEO, Astor Studios and the Ant Farm. In addition to that, there were two networking receptions and a round table on doing business in Silicon Valley. And this year’s will be developed along similar lines.

I’m told that in attending a trade mission like this, you’ll have a chance to build your international profile and gain an understanding of the interactive media market in the US. And let’s face it, like it or loathe it, Silicon Valley is pretty important to us mobilists. And not only that, you’ll meet interesting people both in the US and also fellow UK companies travelling with you from complementary sectors. I’ve heard very good things about the recent trade missions to Boston, China and SXSWi in Austin and I’m reliably informed that they do represent value for money and the UKTI work very hard on your behalf to organise relevant meetings and introductions for those on the trip.

Major opportunities exist for UK companies who provide innovative digital media products, services or applications within the following sectors and disciplines: 

• Design
• Publishing
• Gaming
• Music
• Video
• Film
• Social/mobile interactions
• Digital Display
• Advertising

The mission will run from 8 – 12 November 2010 in Los Angeles and San Francisco but you can stay longer if you wish. The companies don’t have to travel together.

This doesn’t come free, but it does come very reasonably priced. And depending on where you’re based in the UK, there may be additional help to co-fund your trip so it’s worth asking. The basic cost is £600 plus the cost of your flights and accommodation. BA currently has a deal offering 15% discount to Mission participants via the UKTI, but you may find better deals using Kayak or Skyscanner and I think there may be some deals going with Virgin at the moment. And if you have friends to stay with in LA and SFO, even better as that brings the price down even further for you. AirBnB might also be worth a look for the bootstrappers amongst you. It’ll be worth shopping around I expect.

To find out more about this opportunity, it’s worth taking a look at http://www.ukti.gov.uk/uktihome/event/116453.html where you can download an application form and also the flyer outlining what kind of companies are welcome to apply. And if you have more questions, then please contact Andrew Wilson on 0191 281 5777 or email him and he’ll be happy to help – he’s in charge of organising this particular mission.

Closing date to apply is 17 September so best get those application forms in. It doesn’t cost to apply in the first instance. The cost is only if you’re accepted on the programme.

Sounds great – wish I was going!