The Mobile Entertainment Forum has presented one of it’s annual industry awards - a ‘Meffy’ - to the founders of mobile social networking pioneer UPOC.
The Meffys Special Recognition award was given to Greg Clayman, Gordon Gould and Alex LeVine, the founders of ‘Upoc’ for their part in creating the first mobile social community. Founded in 1999, Upoc was the first corss-carrier SMS community that enabled both two-way chat and ‘broadcast’ information messages that let users receive updates on music and movies.
Global MEF Chair Andrew Bud stressed the importance of social networking apps in today’s mobile world.
“MEF believes that the biggest development in mobile entertainment this year – perhaps the biggest since the ringtone – has been the meteoric rise of mobile social networking,” said Bud, “MEF is proud to present its influential Meffys Special Recognition Award for 2008 to the UPOC Founders for the invention of mobile social networking.”
Actually, I’ve just noticed something about the Upoc logo. Is it really still in beta, or is that just a blatant attempt to get some Web 2.0 cred for this well established service? Hmm.
And no, that doesn’t mean your phone will join in with verbal abuse when you stick two fingers up at people. Although it’s certainly a thought, if anyone from Nokia’s R&D team is reading… No, HandTalk is far more serious than that. It’s a technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University, which was demonstrated in public for the first time this week. It’s aimed at helping deaf people to communicate with anyone who doesn’t know American Sign Language. The idea: someone wears the glove, and then makes hand gestures, which are converted into speech via their mobile phone, which then ’speaks’ them. So, clenching your fist makes the phone say “Good morning”, while extending your index finger, second finger and thumb makes it say “I’m having a good time”. Cool, and useful to boot. (via 
It’s hard for mobile handset makers to keep anything secret nowadays, thanks to the profusion of websites and blogs eagerly reporting on spy shots and tech specs for upcoming handsets. Meanwhile, there are other, unwitting ways news of a brand new handset can leak out into the public domain.For example, the 
It’s still early days for GPS mobiles, in terms of figuring out exactly how mapping applications can make use of GPS combined with a mobile phone’s data connection. However, Nokia is certainly bullish about the prospects for the area, judging by comments from CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo at the company’s annual shareholder meeting: ”We expect to ship about 35 million GPS-enabled Nokia devices in 2008, which is equal to the entire GPS device market in 2007,” he said, expressing similar confidence about the company’s decision to buy navigation firm Navteq. “When we look at it with the eyes we have now, when regarding pedestrian navigation, map services, digital maps, we are even more excited about the opportunities than when making the decision.” It’s good news, since 35 million phones is a decent base for GPS-related services to target, meaning that if you own one of these handsets, chances are more developers are working on innovative applications making use of the technology. GPS and social networking is one of the areas I’m most interested in going forward, along with geotagging photos. Of course, just because you own a Nokia handset doesn’t mean you’ll want to use its GPS for Nokia’s own mapping and sharing services, so we’ll have to see how they tie in with other companies’ services (for example Google Maps and Flickr). (via 
Crumbs, who knew the Pope was into his mobile messaging? I wonder what phone he has, and what ringtone it’s got. Probably not Cradle Of Filth, it’s fair to say. Okay, so the news that the Pope will send “daily inspirational text messages” to his Australian followers during a visit later this year probably doesn’t mean he’ll be tapping them into a Nokia N73 himself and pressing ‘Send’.However, His Holiness isn’t stopping there - he’ll also be social networking, using digital prayer walls and webcasting using local operator Telstra’s 3G network. And while it’s tempting to write this kind of thing of as a niche, think about the huge audience of Catholics there are worldwide who’d be interested in daily mobile services…(via S
Although by ‘frustrated army men’, I mean ‘blokes who still live with their mums on account of being rejected for the army for being borderline psychos, and so are doomed to forever wander the streets wearing camouflage gear pretending there might be an Al Quaeda cell around the next corner’. You know the type. Anyway, they’ll love Mobiado’s new Camo handset. Only 200 are being made, and each has an individually hand-painted exterior in full camouflage regalia. Perfect for when you’re stalking through the jungle undergrowth (or just stalking that woman in Clinton’s Cards who served you once and made the mistake of smiling). The phone’s a tri-band model with Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and an MMC memory card slot. The company hasn’t announced when it’ll be on sale, or for how much. (via 
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