Mobile World Congress 2008 -10 Days to Go

BARCELONA -Slowly but surely, Barcelona is coming alive with the buzz of mobilists from across the globe as anticipation for the Mobile World Congress heightens.

This year promises to be bigger and better than prior events, with around 70,000 participants expected to crowd the local scene and several billion of dollars worth of deals to be sealed during intense activity from the 11-14th February.

Plenty of great companies, personalities and seminars are expected, and I'll be casting my eye over the packed agenda to highlight some key events.

A couple of seminars have so far grabbed my attention :

On Tuesday 12th Feb, 16.15-17.45 in Hall 5 there is the Moving from Search to Discovery Seminar, with Dan Olschwang from JumpTap and Steve Boom from Yahoo, looking at " What's the Business Case for Mobile Search?" and "Taking Internet Search Mobile".

On Wednesday 13th Feb, 16.30-18.00 in Hall 5 there is the Social Networking Seminar, with Jed Stremel from Facebook, where they will be addressing juicy questions like:"What Will Be the Killer Mobile Social Networking Application" and "How Mobile Can Change the Social Networking Phenomena".

Next, I'll be taking a look at some of the innovative companies that will be at MWC so that you can add them to your watchlist...watch this space...

m.dot vs dot.mobi

The battle between m.dot and dot.mobi is heating up. I have had close contact with the dot.mobi consortium recently and witnessed their efforts to push their domain as the 'gold standard'.

I am noticing 2 things: there seems to be a decoupling of usage between Europe and the US, with the big guns (Yahoo, Facebook etc.) adopting the m. domain and the European operators (Orange etc.) opting instead for dot.mobi.

Also, dot.mobi is struggling to communicate its added value, namely that it has defined (and offers as a framework) a set of development standards to improve the user experience of web on mobile.

At the same time as a gold rush is taking place to acquire the popular dot.mobi sites (witness the many online auctions), the key issue of enhancing the user experience of web on mobile is taking a back seat. Pity, as dot.mobi would have gone a long way in widening the appeal and useability of mobile web.