MoMo London Demo Night Event Round Up

Did you miss April’s MobileMonday London demo night? Too bad – more than a show and tell, more than apitching event, it’s where the audience discovers what’s cool in the mobile industry. The format is simple: entrepreneursand others show their work or pitch their idea in three minutes, get asked questions by their peers, find partners and most importantly, realize what tochange, tune or improve in their project!

In fact choosing between tons ofsubmissions 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, therewill be more new ideas and you still have a chance to be on stage with yourdemo.

In the meanwhile, I can safelysay that the trend this time was “social and local on mobile”.

For example, if you are 60+ years old, youmay want to login on to Go-myLife. Launched out of aEuropean action research project, it is an online social networking platform, witha focus on privacy and usability, tailor-made for older people. It will work oncomputers, but it will be particularly easy to use on smartphones. People cansign up and try the prototype service on gomylife.euor check the official Facebook page;the testing just started in UK and Poland.

Sooqini is areverse mobile marketplace – the buyer (not the seller, hence”reverse”) posts a request for goods, services or information, ontheir phone or the web, and multiple sellers bid for it. A map displaysrequests in your area, or one can search per category or price. PayPal or bankpayments 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. Youngadult authors can share their work, get feedback and become read by thousandsof readers from all over the world. It’s free right now (in the future, theywill ask for a 70-30 split on incomes), and it has already reached 200k+comments from the launch.

KO-SU is an innovative mobilelearning platform open to everyone who wants to teach and learn via mobiledevices. It allows subscribers to create interactive activities optimised for the mobilescreen. Activities are created from templates that support text, images, audio,videos, multiple choice, free text questions and even drawing tasks. The onlything user won’t ever be able to do is to print on paper, as KO-SU was alsocreated with the intent to avoid waste and save trees.

In the same way that Social speaksto e-commerce, Mobilespeaks to location-based services, and the companies at the Demo Night had somegood ideas about that.

LocalSocial,by Rococo Software, is a retail engagement platform that makes it easy formerchants to create offers, loyalty points and more that only unlock in-store.The service uses NFC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as “beacons” to support andtrigger retail interactions. You could watch their demo videoor try it yourself: a trial was just launched in Dublin- and the UKwill be next. The team is currently actively looking for partners andinvestors. One can reach them on twitteror at their blog.

For travelers, Pearson presented LangAR, a location-based, Augmented Reality talking phrasebook forEnglish speakers that suggests nearby points of interest and providescontextual phrases (written & audio) in Spanish that a tourist will need toknow to get by when travelling abroad. The prototype currently runs on Androidand iOS and combines language learning, location-based services and AugmentedReality into one useful and fun application which is a first to my knowledge.

But it’s not all about social and local. Wewere introduced to many different ideas based on new technologies.

Tone Push is the prototype for anapp that allows you to set your ringtone on someone else’s phone.  There’s a one off download and once the appis installed onto your device, then you can upload MP3’s directly from anybrowser (no Wi-Fi or USB cable required) … or, for a bit of fun, you can uploadto your friends phone as your ringtone. Whilecopyrights issues will be avoided by “passing” them to users, money will bemade by licensing and/or selling original ringtones or with a subscriptionsystem. A public alpha is available, and if you’re interested enough in theproject, you shall contact Richard he needs a co-founder to join in!

And if are not into ringtones, but likevideos, Six3 Video Messenger lets people sendeach other short, private video messages using smartphones, PCs, tablets andother connected devices. The video streaming is especially speed-optimized, butvideo messages can also be sent via e-mail. You can watch a video (of course!) of the product.

D-touch markers are visual markerswhich are easy to design and user friendly. While it was already an open-sourceproject for PC, Intellidzine hasdeveloped the D-touch mobile library for Android. Simple images can triggerlinks, videos, software and pictures, just like the one of Jo Rabin at theside. Better than QR codes! This library is useful to create mixed reality applications;it is free and available on github. Volunteersneeded for porting to iOS.

Or if you need secrecy for your personalmessages, why don’t you encrypt them? Enigma simulator is a simulator ofthe WWII Enigma machine for Android, intended to raise funds for the BletchleyPark Trust. Private messages can be sent via the app, and 1200+ people arealready using it.

Lastbut by no means least, Dan Lane has come up with ImpossibleTelecom, a new MVNO based on the values of innovation, customer serviceand transparency. Dan’s taking the extraordinary step of offering things thatcustomers might want, for example the possibility of sharing the same number ondifferent devices, using two different numbers on the same SIM card, andsharing the same bundles (for text, voice, data), between different numbers. Thenetwork 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 inthe past at MoMoLondon have gone on to widespreadrecognition and increasing success, so good luck to all these people for theirprojects, I hope that being at Mobile Monday will be the first step on asuccessful journey for them too!