From mobile broadband to the next big app on the small screen to augmented reality, the inaugural UNWIRED 2010 conference held on May 27, 2010 at the Singapore Management University discussed these topics and got a truly participatory attendance asking for more time for questions.

About 160 attendees, speakers and media thronged the halls on the eve of a long weekend, all eager to debate the latest issues as well as get in touch with peers from the industry.

Google has done it, so why not Microsoft? Just hours ago, the software giant unveiled two self-branded phones aimed at getting the non-techy crowd on social networking services on the go.

Called Kin One and Kin Two, they look a little like a miniaturised Nokia N97 mini and a Blackberry with a slide-out keyboard. But hey, why change a proven design if rivals have made it work?

Both phones feature a Windows Phone OS that reminds one of the Zune HD interface, and will hook up to the music service seamlessly. But the OS – not Windows Phone 7 – looks like a hugely simplified affair, going by images and reports out so far.

The Internet has been abuzz with Google’s announcement of Buzz, their new social networking platform that they just announced about a day ago.

Of course, Facebook is the king of the hill in the social networking space that Google is going after.

Reams of commentaries and news analysis has been written about this — here are some excellent ones by PC Mag and TechCrunch — so I’m not going to delve into the history and just go straight to the point with my comments.

With Buzz bundled in Gmail natively, my gut feel is that it has a good chance of taking off, especially with the huge Gmail install base. Went to the Buzz website to find out more, but apparently it’s not available for Singapore yet.

Here’s their statement on the site:

We’re still rolling out Buzz to everyone, so if you don’t see it in your Gmail account yet, check back soon.

*Update*: It’s now up for me. That was fast!

That’s about it for the newspoint. The story I really want to write, however, is how Google has been taking over all the tools I’ve been using.

We have Social Media Breakfast (SMB), Mobile Mondays and Web Wednesdays.

We have groups like The Digital Movement (TDM) and e27 running all kinds of events from Barcamps to Blogouts to Unconferences, with much of the content revolving around social media and start-ups.

Do we really need another social media get-together platform in Singapore?

The folks behind 24seven — bloggers Claudia Lim and Kelvin Lim — think so. And thus Tweet Tuesdays was born.

Went to the first ever WordCamp Hong Kong today and the highlight for me was certainly hearing from the founding developer of the WordPress platform Matt Mullenweg, which this site – and millions of others – run on.

Affable Matt took the WordCampers, which I’m guessing numbered around maybe 50, on a journey back through time – from how he started working on it and ending off a little into the future – with features request for the next version of WordPress. But there was much more.

“Social media is like teen sex.
Everybody wants to do it.
Nobody knows how.
When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s not better”
– Avinash Kaushik, analytics evangelist, Google

An amusing anecdote that social media consultant Yongfook brought up during last week’s Blogout ’09, but nonetheless very true.

Run on 6th and 7th March (Friday and Saturday) last week, Blogout ’09 was an event organized by Singapore’s TDM (The Digital Movement) to help attendees “make sense of the social media space in Singapore”.

They brought together a bunch of digital media consultants like Yongfook, Joel Postman and Tania from Ogilvy to present to the largely government audience (at least on the 6th when I was there) on social media. Topics touched on include how to measure ROI, how to do outreach in this space and where social media is going in the future.

It was well-run and well-coordinated, so kudos to the TDM folks (e.g. Claudia) for organizing a great event from a bottom-up grassroots effort.

Just adding my two cents to various topics that caught my interest throughout Friday 6th when I was there:

A student from the Queen’s University Belfast in the UK has come up with a radio that “tunes in” to Twitter feeds and broadcasts them in audio in real time. A microcontroller and custom software (presumably text-to-speech) was used in what could possibly be one of the most creative hacks of the good old radio!

Check out the video of the TwitterRadio here.