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.

Here’s what some attendees said:

Susanna Janonkova (via Twitter): “Went to #unwired2010 Singapore today : good investment of time, nice to meeting you all and thanks for the organisers!”

Paula Turco (over e-mail): “Thanks again for orgainizing the Unwired 2010 conference. I especially liked the presentations by the 2 Ians, Ian Koh and Ian McKee. Both brought up interesting concepts spurring further thought and lively discussion.”

Also, here’s a story on The Business Times, mostly on Dr Tan Geok Leng, IDAs CTO’s speech on wireless ecosystems in Singapore.

In any case, as the organiser for this independent wireless event, I offer my sincere apologies for the late post on UNWIRED 2010 (been away to recharge my batteries after running non-stop for a month for UNWIRED 2010). It’s a good thing Chi-loong has done a write-up on his panel last week.

Once again, thanks to all who made it a great success. To start with, the sponsors Samsung, Microsoft and Nokia Siemens Networks.

I also owe a great amount of thanks to the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), Singapore Management University and industry associations which have helped promote as well as offer all manner of help: Singapore infocomm Technology Federation, Singapore Computer Society, Mobile Monday, Mobile Alliance and Mobile Entertainment Forum.

And most importantly,  thanks to everyone who turned up – helpers and friends offering valuable advice (you know who you are!), speakers and old friends from the industry and also a great audience which had more questions than the time we had for discussion and folks who Tweeted about the event as it was ongoing.

Nothing’s perfect, of course. But I’m glad things turned out better than expected. I promise to take your feedback seriously regarding Wi-Fi access next year, and to offer more time for networking!

See you all again for UNWIRED 2011!

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.

Large icons of contacts and  their social media postings dominate the main screen, which seems a smart thing to get the non-techy crowd onboard. After all, they must first be able to see what the fuss is about Twitter or Facebook to be convinced, right?

Both phones sport handy slide-out keyboards – a pre-requisite, I believe, for winning over a group of users who are probably still toting candy-bar phones with traditional dialpads and are not familiar with a touch-screen (even though the Kins do support a touch-screen as well).

What I don’t like, going by what is known about the phones now, is a lack of a native instant messaging client. It also doesn’t sync with Outlook and doesn’t have an app store to hook up to.

Another piece of bad news for those of you reading this in Asia: I’ve just been told the Kins will not make it to the region. They will only hit the shelves in the United States and Europe next month.

For example, IBM has LotusLive, Microsoft has their Azure platform, and Google has Google Apps.

And at a media event today, Salesforce.com folks talked about their upcoming launch of Chatter, yet another Facebook-like social networking collaboration platform, this time for their Salesforce.com customer base.

According to Jeremy Cooper, Asia Pacific’s regional VP for marketing at Salesforce.com, Chatter will be live by the middle of this year. It was announced last year in November 2009, and is currently already available for developers in a private beta. I’ll let their Chatter YouTube video explain what it is all about:

Social networking, all grown up
We are moving towards a world where social networks is seen as a legitimate enterprise productivity tool, and not just a fun consumer fad.

Companies like Salesforce.com realize that social networking is not just about Facebook games and inane celebrity “Oh My Gawd!” twitter posts — there’s real money to be made, and real value to be derived from social networks.

I don’t know if there is a charging model for Chatter — we’ll probably get details of this only when it launches — but Salesforce.com believes that Chatter brings value to their existing customer base. For example, rather than having long email chains, you can use a Facebook-like interface to communicate project updates to various groups. It’s sorta like Lotus Connections or Microsoft’s Sharepoint, but run on a cloud-based model.

With Salesforce.com’s roots as a SaaS (software as a Service) business software vendor, where software is purchased via subscription and hosted offsite, adding a social networking component to their cloud-based platform is, in many ways, a logical step for them to take.

Battle lines drawn
Of course, adding social networking tools is a very different thing from having a sizeable community using that platform. Facebook has about 400 million users, and IBM’s LotusLive has about 18 million users. Contrast that to Salesforce.com’s two million users.

Scale really does mean something in this game. The bigger you are, the more people you can reach, obviously.

Adding social network tools to keep existing customers entrenched on your platform is a smart move to make, but even better would be to work with other social networks and share information to grow your own platform and user base.

At least in an ideal world, from an end-user perspective, vendors will all happily federate their networks. But it ain’t going to happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, vendors in this social networking market — especially the smaller ones –are banding together to carve out their own territory. For example, Salesforce.com is also working with IBM on their LotusLive platform, and LinkedIn is working with both Microsoft (Outlook Social Connector) and IBM (LotusLive).

But what of the original innovators in this space, like Facebook and Twitter?

I had a chat with Michael Barns, vice president of software and Asia Pacific research at Springboard Research, today at the event, and his comments on Facebook and Twitter were insightful.

He’s surprised that Facebook and Twitter haven’t moved into the enterprise space yet. “Social networks let us not only interact with family and friends, but with colleagues as well,” he said.

And with companies like IBM (e.g. LotusLive and IBM’s project Vulcan) and Google (e.g. Google Buzz and Google Wave) throwing lots of money into this area, it’s definitely a threat to the original innovators and incumbents in this space.

Perhaps Facebook should take a leaf from Google. We all know Google makes a fortune on advertising. But there’s money to be made in enterprise versions of free consumer stuff as well like Google Apps for businesses.

Take a look at the following YouTube video, which was just put up yesterday by Microsoft on YouTube, on why their solutions are better than Google’s cloud ones. Basically it charges that Google only has cloud-based solutions, whilst Microsoft has a mix of on-prem and cloud solutions that fit its customers better.

My comment is that the world is migrating towards cloud-based solutions (with some caveats as kinks are being worked out), so vendors either evolve or be rendered obsolete. And with Google in the driver’s seat on this, it can’t be fun for others having to play catch up.

As an aside, from the browser (Chrome vs IE), to Office productivity tools (Google docs vs MS Office), to email (cloud-based Gmail vs Exchange), to mobile OSes (open-sourced Android vs Windows Mobile), just to name a few, Microsoft must really be smarting at the in-roads that Google is making.

Even in the microsm that is the Singapore environment, the tonality between Google (we give stuff for free for advertising) and Microsoft (we build great software products and deserve to be paid for them) couldn’t be more different.

Contrast two recent events: Google’s free streetviews and tie-up with LTA to Microsoft’s Business Software Alliance (BSA) complaining and warning about piracy at Sim Lim Square, a popular local electronic hangout place.

A must-read for everyone.

Written by an ex-MS employee, this guy shares why Microsoft has become what he calls a “clumsy innovator” and why non of the “wow” gadgets coming out these last few years – Kindle, iPhone, Android, Facebook – is from the computing giant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?pagewanted=1

Not long after Sony Ericsson put an easy-access Facebook app on its phones, Microsoft is getting into the social media act as well by coming up with a Facebook app for Windows Mobile users.

You can already get a nice mobile version of Facebook through your phone’s Web browser, but this new app from Microsoft, available for download today, promises a richer experience.

The app, claims Microsoft, is the first to let users upload videos. That’s important, the software giant says, because Facebook users post 415,000 video uploads each day.

At the same time, while the Web version is a lot more text-based, the Facebook for Windows Mobile app gives you more images on-screen, as well as contextual menus to do more things, such as to add a photo or change your oh-so-vain status update.

Going by the look of things, this app doesn’t seem as cool as Sony Ericsson’s, which gives a live update of your friends’ status on the home screen of the phone. SE’s offering also lets you scroll quickly through your friends list to see what they’ve been up to.

Still, being a Facebook geek, I’ll be downloading this for my Windows Mobile 6-based HTC Touch Diamond. And if you, like I, want the world to see what you’re doing all the time, then this is one download you’ll likely enjoy. Upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 phones will also be able to access this app when the devices start appearing later this year.