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This year’s edition of the International Mobile Gaming Awards is preparing for the festivities of granting the winning title to the most creative game concept that will subscribe.

This is one of the most important competitions in the domain and has also considerable importance in the evolution of the winner’s career. The prize is also worthy of mention, as a total of USD 40,000 will be granted in five categories.
Contestants can win the following titles:
o Excellence in Connectivity (multi platform, social networking)
o Excellence in 3D
o Excellence in Game Play
o Best licensed IP-based game
o Best Casual Game (Typically developed in Flash or Java).

Winners of this competition get a real good start in their mobile game developing career. They receive a lot of attention from the press, players and, most important, from companies that now take their ideas more seriously. This means more potential projects for development and a great deal of more self confidence.

Maarten Noyons, founder and Managing Director commented that every year brings pleasant surprises for the jury. For them, it looks like the registered applications develop at the same time with technology.

He said that “In 2006 many exciting new connected games and multiplatform games entered the competition, we saw games that were using all the features of mobile phones including microphone, camera, motion sensors and connectivity. We reviewed location based games and 3D games with stunning high quality graphics, and simple, addictive 2D games developed with Flash. This year we are expecting to see innovations and improvements in all these areas”.

Entries are accepted on a tight time limit, before 6PM on 24 September 2007. Some of the concepts will be selected and announced by the end of October. From that point on, they will have until the 28th of January 2008 to develop their ides into a demo version. The final winners will be announced on the 13th of February 2008, in a ceremony at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

 

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Huawei Technologies has announced that it has been awarded a High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network expansion contract by Vodafone that will serve the seven major cities in Spain, including Barcelona and Madrid. The 3.5G expansion contract follows the successful deployment of Huawei’s first contract with Vodafone Spain, signed in August 2006, under which it supplied the cellco with distributed node Bs. The node Bs’ Remote Radio Unit (RRU), with an output power of 40W, can be installed directly on masts, decreasing power loss and increasing network coverage and performance.

 

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About-Electronics writes…Mobile TV and GPS are expected to dominate water-cooler conversations at this year’s 3GSM Congress, the mobile trade fest running in Barcelona February 12-15. The event, which has seen attendance explode from just over 20,000 five years ago to an anticipated 60,000 this week, is the number one event in the mobile phone calendar.

Vodafone and T-Mobile are both expected to push the latest variants of Mobile TV technology hard; consumer reluctance to spend on extra small screen entertainment is likely to be countered with a new breed of free-to-view advertising supported programming. But while Mobile TV is a big topic, not everyone is convinced that it’s going to be big business.

GPS-enabled phones are being touted as a safer bet.

Nokia’s announcement that it will offer navigational Smart2Go software and services free of charge, will set the tone. The mobile giant expects to make revenue not from subscribers, but from advertisers eager to be promoted by map users. Ralph Eric Kunz, VP of Nokia Multimedia says: “smart2go gives consumers a free way to explore the world around them. In addition, the navigable map data used in the smart2go solution makes it easy to convert a broad range of connected mobile devices into full personal navigation devices.�
The current version of the smart2go platform is available on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. A rebranded ‘Nokia Maps’ version will become available on other Nokia N-series phones.
In related news, Vodafone has inked a deal with MySpace which allows users to access and edit their profiles on the networking site, directly from their phones. Mobiles will also be released with pre-loaded MySpace Mobile software which will allow users to listen to music or watch video streamed from the site.

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LEGITreviews writes…Samsung Electronics Co. has unveiled a new mobile phone that features some of the sleek design and functions of Apple Inc.’s much-hyped iPhone. Samsung’s Ultra Smart F700 will be exhibited at next week’s 3GSM World Congress, a telecommunications exhibition in Barcelona.

The ultra-thin iPhone is controlled by a large touch screen. It plays music, surfs the Internet, and runs a version of the Mac OS X operating system, among other functions. Samsung said the Ultra Smart F700 also has a full touch screen as well as a traditional QWERTY key pad that slides out “for users who are not yet familiar with a touch-screen-only user interface.”

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Reuters writes…Software firm Comverse Technology has created an application that runs Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, along with other software that allows integrated SMS and instant messaging and the streaming of mobile video directly in-world.
“People are spending more and more time in virtual worlds,� Daphna Steinmetz, head of Comverse Innovation Labs, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “We want to bring closer the first life and the Second Life.�

The software was developed over the last six months, well before the open-sourcing of the Second Life client, and relies on using a separate PC or server as an intermediary. Comverse, which plans to demonstrate the products at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona next week, has also created an application that allows Second Life to run on IPTV platforms.

“On IPTV you can actually do most of the things you can do on the PC because the screen is very large, and the remote has lots of keys, so you can jump, fly, write a message,� Steinmetz said. “On the handset it’s a little more limited — it’s hard writing long sentences. It’s more just popping in, seeing who’s visiting your area.�

During a demonstration for Reuters, an avatar named Claude Minnelli (below) was logged in via mobile phone, walked around and chatted with others in the room. However, at one point the connection was lost, the avatar slumped over and his status shown as “Away.�

The company is in discussions with mobile phone carriers about rolling out the Second Life software.

Porting Second Life to other platforms is likely to accelerate following the open-sourcing of the client, but Comverse emphasized that its product is ready to go now.

“We are of course going to benefit from the opening of the client and possibilities it will give us,� said Comverse Innovation Labs’ Idan Cohen. “But the service we will offer now is ready for deployment.�

Comverse said on last month that it will be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange, joining a handful of companies that were kicked off the exchange as a result of irregularities in the way they accounted for stock options.

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Mobile-Ent writes…Roamware and Hungama Mobile have teamed with the GSM Association to launch the ‘Mobile Bollywood Film Initiative’.
The three partners have joined with filmmaker Sanjay Gupta to premiere three Bollywood short ‘mobile’ movies at the GSMA’s 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona next month.

The Mobile Bollywood Film Initiative builds on the announcement earlier this month of the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project, a joint initiative of the GSMA and the Sundance Institute. 

Sanjay Gupta’s initial three films will be joined by seven more from other directors in the coming months as part of a series on ten films known collectively as Dus Kahaniyah. As with the Sundance Short Film Project, operator distribution for the films will be announced in the coming weeks.

Craig Ehrlich, chairman of the GSMA, said: “The Sundance and Bollywood communities represent some of the most creative, vibrant and diverse talent in the movie world. We hope to catalyse a truly compelling mobile entertainment experience for mobile users globally.�

Bollywood is one of the fastest growing entertainment industry segments and has an appeal not only for the 140 million mobile phone users in India but for markets across all continents. Indian cinema is now dubbed in over 35 languages and accounts for as much as 18 per cent of theatrical business in markets such as UK.

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Electronicstalk writes…The Fractus TVNow range of antennas for mobile TV handsets has been shortlisted for the GSM Association (GSMA) 2007 Award for Best Radio Access Product or Service. TVNow products are the first internal TV antennas available for all three of the DVB-H/ISDB-H frequency bands being considered by operators around the world. The antennas are so discrete that they can fit into most existing handset designs, achieving significant production and design efficiencies.

‘Mobile TV represents one of the greatest challenges for handset design today’, said Alfonso Sanz, Fractus Lead Engineer, Products and Services Division.

‘Fractus provides the technical performance and the sise reduction necessary to enable mobile TV in both existing form factors and completely new DVB-H/ISDB-H handset platforms’.

The GSM Association’s Global Mobile Awards are an established centrepiece of the world’s largest and most successful mobile industry event, the 3GSM World Congress, and are specially designed to recognise the wealth of talent, ingenuity and creativity from all corners of the mobile industry’s global ecosystem.

The awards’ winners will be announced on Tuesday 13th February during the 3GSM 2007 Awards dinner in Barcelona.

Nominees for the Best Radio Access Product or Service will be judged on the following criteria: evidence of efficiency gains or capacity enhancements, how easily the product/service can be integrated into existing network infrastructure and systems, and potential revenue opportunities for operators.

Additionally, judges will take into consideration how innovative the shortlisted products and services are as well as the range of benefits they offer to operators.

Fractus Chief Technology Officer, Dr Carles Puente, will be speaking at the GSM World Congress’ Technology Symposium on Mobile TV on Thursday afternoon, 15th February 2007.

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