Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

For those of you who don’t know, Wubud is my latest startup - which has attracted attention recently from some early adopters and bloggers. I was going to provide an update anyway, so this post isn’t in response to TechCrunch or any other blog. It’s a result of people asking for an update on Twitter.

It’s late. No. It’s very late. But all with good reason - I’m happy with our decision to hold off on ‘going ugly early’ for the sake of getting something out there.

Why we haven’t launched yet

We decided to outsource the entire development of our mobile application (not the design) to a company based in Hong Kong. For numerous reasons, it didn’t work out. In mid 2009 we had an application that worked well on a Nokia N95, but when we had the code reviewed by independent experts we realized it wasn’t easily portable to all other devices. It’s important to have our application work on more than 80% of all devices to help with mass adoption, so this reason alone was good enough to scrap everything and start from scratch. Some of our competitors have compelling iPhone applications, but that’s a small segment of the overall potential market.

We now have a team working hard on building a scalable product that is easily ported to all devices and it’s easily internationalized/localized to help with mass adoption globally. Localising a product is more than changing the language – it’s about providing local benefits and content.

As more location based social networks came to the market over the past 12 months, we continued to learn from what they do well, what they don’t do well and what they don’t do at all. Thanks to new companies coming to market, our knowledge about the benefits people look for has improved and as a result, we recently modified some of the product design and integrated more benefits.

Am I happy that we’re late to the game? Absolutely YES! We’re better placed than ever before as it’s still very early to market with location based services and the market continues to be educated by our competitors and other providers in this space. We’d rather be good second-movers than a failed pioneer.

When can you get your hands on Wubud?

I say this with bated breath, but we hope to have an alpha version by the end of January 2010. We’ll invite a small number of users to help us identify improvements so we can improve it further for our beta release (hopefully in February 2010).

What is go ugly early?

Go ugly early is a term used to describe an early product launch, even though it’s not designed exactly how you would like. The idea is to get ‘something’ out to the market in order to solicit early feedback, following up with small iterations to further improve the product based on customer feedback.

We’ve decided to go fashionably late - so fingers crossed…

I sent a tweet this morning to say I was going to do a ‘#followfriday’ for the very first time. A number of people asked me what that meant, so I’ve decided to write a short post to explain.

#followfriday is a way of recommending people you follow, to other users on Twitter. The idea is that those being recommended will gain new followers.

I feel so strongly about my recommendations that I’ve decided to write why I’m recommending them as potential people for you to follow.

People I recommend and why

@Sheetalmmehta (London)

Helping companies to go global, Innovation, Social entrepreneurship, Technology, Investment…

Sheetal is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. Sheetal is the UK Dealmaker for the UK Trade & Investment. She sits on several advisory panels including Shelter, UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), Digital Diaspora Network for Africa, and the LSE Alumni Mentoring Committee. Her volunteer work is extensive and she is currently writing a book on Social Venture Capital. One of her most notable accomplishments is her new foundation that enables developing communities to access cutting-edge technology based on a social enterprise model.

@Mikeyfletch (London)

Technology journalist, Events, Networking

Mike is an established business & lifestyle journalist. He’s launched three magazines on behalf of UK publishing house Haymarket Media Group & specialises in marketing, media & live events. He is Contributing Editor for Visit London and also owns a part-share in digital networking company Net.works. Mike is also one of the best connected, if not the best connected person in the entire UK events industry.

@PatPhelan (Cork)

Technology with a bias towards mobile, Connector, Innovation

Pat is the founder and President of Cubic Telecom, a well known disruptor in telephony circles and one of the leading voices of Voice 2.0. Pat has developed a number of unique products for the USA, UK and Irish markets including MAXroam, and is a board member of Global Roaming, a NASDAQ listed company (OTCBB:GRDB). Pat has a genuine passion for connecting people and has been responsible for connecting me with some truely amazing people.

@JackieDanicki (San Francisco)

Marketing (true expert in the use of new tools, techniques and trends such as social and Web 2.0), Connector, Writer

Jackie is an extremely direct person who always speaks her mind. She’s an incredibly insightful marketer which is difficult to come by. Almost every marketer and PR expert think they know how to make best use of Web 2.0 tools and techniques. Jackie does - which is why she’s the Director of Marketing at Qik; one of the most innovative mobile products companies in the world. Like Pat, Jackie has a genuine passion for connecting people and has been responsible for connecting me with some truely amazing people.

@Jobsworth (London)

Technology, Social Enterprise, Innovation, Writer, OpenSource,

JP has  spent most of his life working in the space where finance meets technology, for a number of very large firms. Since 2006 he has worked for BT, as part of BT Design, where he is Head of Innovation and Strategy. He has a passion for how work is changing: the paradigms created by globalisation, disintermediation and the web; the implications of virtualisation, service orientation and commoditisation.  JP is an inspiring speaker and writer, who I admire most for his passion for how technology can be put to good use for the benefit of society.

If you decide to follow any of these great people, or you do already, please feel free to retweet my message - they all deserve to be heard by as many people as possible.

You can also leave a comment with the people you recommend on Twitter.

Vodafone Mobile Clicks is an international, high profile contest for the best mobile internet startup. The best mobile internet startup is selected by a professional jury in three different jury rounds.

Who can participate:

Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2009 is open to any individual residing in the Netherlands or the UK from the age of 18 years and to Dutch and UK-based start-up companies, businesses, institutions and all other organisations.

More at http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.eu/about/

The competition is open to UK and Netherlands based StartUps only. Great idea. Well, kind of. I know the StartUps must be UK-based, but can someone please tell me why you need to have been personally resident in the UK from the age of 18? What has that to do with anything?

Seems a little dumb, unless I’m missing somthing.

I’m not sure I agree with the IAB setting up an award for the mobile industry. It’s not as if it’s one of many online advertising categories - it’s aimed specifically at the mobile industry and from what I can see, will end up covering just about every type of mobile application.

This type of award in my opinion, is best left to the mobile related associations such as the MMA (who I don’t think do much, but hey…) or better still, Mobile Monday - who I respect and admire.

Am I a little harsh?

Spinvox launched a new Web site today. It’s 100% made of flash. Surely a company which sells only mobile products, would ensure their site is accessible on mobile phones? No?

So, before you judge the site, remember, it’s not a movie or a cartoon you’re about to watch. It’s a Web site where you want to find the products and services that are on offer.

As for skip intro? Don’t get me started - any site with a ’skip intro’ should recognise that they’ve implemented it to help users skip the content that least interests them and most interests the designers/developers of the site.

http://www.spinvox.com/

Is this a company with too much money to spend on Web design for the sake of it? Google, Apple and Skype are amongst my personal favourite sites, as I can find the information I’m looking for immediately and with ease.

What do you think? Leave a comment if you like or dislike Spinvox.com - provide reasons if you can, so we can provide feedback to the guys at Spinvox.

Patients can now use mobile phones in hospital wards after government guidelines were relaxed yesterday.

The move could spell the end of existing bedside phone services which are way too expensive. Hospedia, which operates 80,000 bedside phone, TV and internet stations in wards said

We will watch developments closely

I bet it will – rip-off merchants – they charge patients 10p a minute to make a call and incoming calls cost up to 49p per minute! It’s about time, huh?!

O2 Litmus, a new developers’ portal to help mobile application developers and content providers sell direct to consumer, whilst getting the attention of O2’s new business development team, held a Hack Day at The O2 today. This is an iniative I’m behind 100%, as it helps everyone to generate more revenue whilst providing customers with more choice. It’s yet another distribution channel which I think developers should get behind.

5 companies pitched their ideas to a panel of 5 judges, of which, I was one, with the infamous Ewan Spence being the magical compere. Below are the three winners.

1st

Mark Kirby and Antony Ribot from ribot. Their Twitter details are @markirby and @ribot.

Pitch

Call and text your jet-setting dopplr friends from your mobile.

2nd

Adam Cohen-Rose from KiTZOOM. His Twitter screen name is @adamcohenrose.

Pitch

Share your train journeys on twitter with myRail Lite on iPhone. Click the Tweet button on your departure, select your destination and carriage and it will send a tweet for you. Also see which train your friends are on and track them as they go.

3rd

Tim Langley from magami. His Twitter screen name is @TimLangley.

Idea in less than 240 characters
Environmental parking monitor
Uses LBS and match supply and demand
$500 mod for hire

Oh, by the way, I won 2 tickets with VIP passes to the Cold Play concert at The O2 for this Sunday

I consult brands in how to be more innovative in marketing and product development (yes, I know they’re entirely different). Mobile Operator O2, is one of the companies embracing an approach I like to call permanent beta with a new project called Litmus. In summary, it’s a new developer community portal which will enable them to accelerate new content and applications direct to the consumer.

Check out my post on the BIMA blog if you’d like to read more.

I’m delighted to announce that Paul Birch has just invested £150k (approx. $280k) in Wubud.

Paul is Co-founder, Bebo - sold to AOL for $850M. Founder, Cominded and Co-founder, Birthday Alarms; a social network with 50 million subscribers. So, he knows a thing or two about social networks.

Read more on the Wubud blog.

TechCrunch covered the story here.

I heard news of this from one of my Google contacts this morning - Google has just released an API to enable geolocation for mobile and desktop web sites. Lastminute (http://m.lastminute.com) is amongst the first to launch a useful location-aware site - it locates you without the need for GPS and then displays restaurants in your local area

What’s surprising is that the API is only useful if you have a Windows mobile or desktop browser. Watch this space for more device support soon though.

This will be extremely useful for social networks.

Check out the official Google blog for more information.