The MoPR Blog

Over the weekend we’re headed to Las Vegas for CTIA Wireless 2008. If you are going to be there too and would like to meet up, drop us a line at ctia@mobilitypr.com.

Our whole crew will be blogging about the new cool mobile tech companies that we see at the show and will have lots of info to share from Monday nights’ Showstoppers Press Event at the Wynn hotel where Melissa and Grace will be our on-the-ground reporters.

More than 40 companies will be showcasing their technology from Showstoppers and we look forward to reviewing our favorites and filling you in on all we see there.

Here are a just a few of the most interesting companies we expect to learn more about from Showstoppers Monday night:

Bamboo MediaCasting
Mobile media without the wait; automatically delivered, subscription-based, crystal-clear, rich-media programming that is stored in a mobile phone’s memory so it plays immediately — no downloading, no streaming, no buffering.

Caringo
Reimagines content storage. Not a 30-year-old file system. Simple. Hardware agnostic. Massively scalable. Information integrity.

Digby
Named a Top App of 2007 by FierceMobileContent, the Digby mobile commerce platform is the easiest and fastest way to let people buy from popular retailers like Barnes and Noble, Godiva, Best Buy and many more, right from their phones.

Gemalto
What happens in your SIM stays in your SIM, from mobile payment to the mobile Web; ask Gemalto how to stack the security deck in your favor.

iSkin
Innovative protective solutions for the iPod, PowerBook and other Apple products.

Kentrox Inc.
Eliminates the #1 reason people switch mobile providers.

Kingston Technology
Kingston’s family of mobile products grows by one member — Latin music sensation Ricky Martin.

Kwingo
Kwingo (rhymes with Bingo!) puts a smile on the face of folks who work in multi-language enterprises by providing them with fast, free, frequently-needed workplace phrases in any second language on any web-enabled handheld.

LiveWire Mobile
Fresh out of the gate comes LiveWire Mobile after its recent acquisition of Groove Mobile.

magicJack
$40 USB device that provides unlimited, land-line quality phone service from any destination in the world to the US and Canada for a year.

mSpot Inc.
mSpot applications help wireless carriers deliver innovative music services
- be it streaming radio, or Make-UR-Tones, a customizable ringtone service or Remix, turning your phone into an MP3-like player.

Plantronics
Offers the first look at the new Discovery(tm) 925 Bluetooth earpiece collection, a new signature line of designer headsets for men and women.

Sharpcast Inc.
Sync Different! Throw out your sync cables, feel free to turn your computer off when you leave the home or office and never again think about emailing a file to yourself so you can work on it later. Sharpcast does for your digital media what Blackberry did for corporate email - always with you, always backed up and always available on your phone, your PC and the web.

Utterz
The mobile multi-media social connection to any site, for anyone with a mobile phone or computer, announces the mobile site for utterz — M.utterz.com

Zeemote Inc.
Let the mobile games begin! For the first time, reporters can go head-to-head with multiplayer games on their mobile phones using the newly launched Zeemote JS1 controllers. Playing these games, they can experience a near-console experience, enhancing the interaction between gamers by providing a more realistic and engaging experience.

Stay tuned for reviews, observations, and updates from the show floor!

I was reading the CTIA SmartBrief today when I came across this article (full text pasted below) about CTIA going green.

Obviously this idea makes me (the ex U.S. Forest Service volunteer) extremely happy, but it’s no longer just tree huggers and environmentalists that are jumping on the green bandwagon.

Sustainability is finally hitting the mainstream, promoted on television through shows like Living with Ed, internet sites like Facebook and major coverage in virtually every news outlet.

The technology sector is one of the latest additions to the environmental movement and has the greatest potential to do copious amounts of good for the planet.

Technological developments can make greener ideas possible: techy gurus are innovative, intelligent and solution-oriented by nature, making green and technology a perfect pair.

Hopefully, this won’t be the last we hear of techies joining together for the cause!

CTIA Goes Green

Like many conventions this spring, CTIA Wireless 2008 has caught the green bug. The convention will be promoting environmental-friendly causes such as recycling cell phones and badges.

Specifically, CTIA will have phone recycling stations throughout the Las Vegas Convention Center where attendees can drop of old phones and accessories. Proceeds will go to the Call To Protect Program, which benefits domestic violence organizations.

Likewise, there will be bins for attendees to recycle badges at the end of the conference. The association has reduced its three-part badge to just a single badge.

Finally, CTIA is working with the Las Vegas Convention Center to make sure that all paper, plastic, cardboard, glass, wood and aluminum products from the show will be sorted and recycled at the end of the convention.

Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for more MobilityPR CTIA updates as they come!

~Grace~

Imagine if you were a filmmaker who painstakingly raised funds, shot footage, edited it, and basically gave up a year of your life in making your film. Imagine that you are now making a living selling your work on DVD format from your website.

Now picture this: You get an email one day from a potential customer wanting to buy a DVD of your film – mentioning that they just finished watching your movie, in low-res, for free on Google video.

That’s what happened to filmmaker Gary Hustwit.

Hustwit has a solid record in making quirky and entertaining films. He has produced documentaries, including I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, the award-winning film about the band Wilco; Moog, the documentary about electronic music pioneer Robert Moog; and Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, a tour film about the band Death Cab for Cutie.

His latest film, the award-winning Helvetica, is a fantastic look at the world’s favorite font. If anyone could make a font fascinating and make the subject matter interesting it’s Hustwit.

It’s interesting how Hustwit responded on his blog about having his movie being shown for free. The argument from many posters was that more people will see the film in low-res then would want to actually purchase the film later.

In a post titled, On Google Video and the New Paradigm, Gary’s response was this:

Tens of thousands of people watched the film free on Google in the past two days (it was the #1 most watched video today). Do you know how many people have emailed asking how they can support the film? Two people. There’s been no increase in traffic to this site, and no change in our normal daily mail order sales.

Gary makes a great point. He makes no money when someone illegally uploads his work and the chances aren’t very good that people who watched it for free will suddenly get the urge to buy it. Sure, he uses YouTube to show clips from the movie. It’s a great promotional tool. But hosting the whole film in low-res for free? No way.

If you’re at all interested in the trials that independent filmmakers must go through to get their films shown, read his post and the comments. Though Hustwit is sticking with the traditional means for distribution for now, he ponders on new ways to distribute films and is looking for a better solution.

There’s definitely something brewing in how smaller – and by smaller I mean non-blockbuster Hollywood fodder – filmmakers can actually make their work and profit from it.

It’s an exciting time to be in the middle of it.