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The Netsize Guide 2010 is also creating a stir at CTIA, where several fans have asked me for a copy. But at 200+ pages it really wasn't the ideal hand luggage to bring on the trip. Instead, MSG and Netsize move on to Part 2 in the ongoing series to showcase a “best of” selection of executive interviews and hot topics that have everyone talking. On the heels of the fantastically successful SXSW conference, there's a sharp focus on figuring out how companies can move from meeting place to market place – and make money in the process.

Flirtomatic is certainly a company that provides a blueprint.

"It’s all about apps!" That is the message that has come through in dozens of recent briefings and interviews (many of which will be include in the chapter I am writing about app store business models for the

TWO-THIRDS OF MOBILE AD IMPRESSIONS ARE DELIVERED TO FEATUREPHONES, according to the latest Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART) from ad network Millenial Media. While the iPhone OS was the leading smartphone platform on

In brief: Regular columnist and contributor Jim Levey looks at the battle brewing in the living room. Cable companies, telcos or Internet giants – who will control (and monetize) our content experiences? Look for companies that successfully wield personalization and recommendation technologies to deliver content we appreciate and advertising we accept to be in the winner's circle. Imagine a living room where a large flat screen wirelessly attached to a set top box hangs from the wall. You enter a personal code into the set top box that recognizes your profile; the screen welcomes you to a portal where there are no channels only menus with links to personalized content and apps that range from social networking to commerce to premium content and entertainment. A blinking icon reminds to you to record Wimbledon while an ad from Wilson invites you to view their latest rackets. As you click the record button, you slide out the keypad on your remote and navigate to the Wilson site where you purchase a new tennis racket. Payment for the racket is included in your monthly cable invoice. Sounds like science fiction? Hardly. We are on the cusp of next generation iTV (interactive television), services that will elevate our viewing experience. Advertising will also be transformed, paving the way for two-way communications that enable brands to target households according to key demographics and other information collected by the set top box (STBs). Mobile devices, widely regarded to be the remote control of our digital lives, will surely play an important role in this scenario. (Mobile already has a central spot if we consider how people reach to their phones to cast their vote for talent shows, follow sports and read the gossip during soap operas.) The promise of being able to access the wide open Internet and everything in between on your TV may be a while away, but the battle for the living room, the one that will decide who monetizes our content consumption and who cashes in on the commercial messages we consume, is being fought now. Best positioned in my view are the cable companies, who have the trump because they own the signal into the home and have a trusted relationship with subscribers. They also benefit from established business partnerships with broadcast and cable network programmers, that receive billion-dollar fees for entertainment content. But there are other players lining up to stake their turf.

Continuing with Part 2 of my audio interview with Dan Harple, CEO of GeoSentric, the company behind GyPSii, a digital mobile lifestyle application. But look beneath the hood (and listen in to Part 1 of the series) and GyPSii isn't just another company jockeying for position in the location-aware mobile social networking space. It's got its eye on the prize: Using our location, our social graph (because we are members of the GyPSii community), and our judgment to index the world around us. Google may be about organizing the world's information; GyPSii is about organizing the real world. What to do with a people-powered, user-generated index of the world out there? Follow in Google's footsteps and sell advertising on top of it. As I wrote in my last post, GyPSii has cleverly harnessed PlaceMe, a primary function of GyPSii that allows you to create a point of interest (POI), add your content (image, video, audio, text), add your current or last geo-location, categorize/tag/describe the POI, and submit to the server in real time to a personal or publicly designated folder in your MyPlaces (your record of points of interest). To get this to Google scale, GyPSii needs a lot of people out there indexing the world with their mobile phones. It's an ambitious strategy, but not far-fetched. Dan's forecast models tell him that a company with 7 million users, each doing 2 PlaceMes a month would produce an index in the first year that would be "significantly larger than the Google file system in its first year." (Dan expects GyPSii to be on "between 80 and 100 million devices in the coming 12 months.") There are no stats on active users as a percentage of that total. But GyPSii members tend to be hyperactive when it comes to PlaceMe, creating and tagging "15-20 PlaceMes per month." Every time GyPSii members do that, they are adding a new indexed item to what the company calls the Osmotic File System (OFS). Where does mobile advertising come in? It's already work in progress in China. In fact, GyPSii has a lot of progress to report in China - period. As Dan sees it: "To have an ad-based model, you have to have an audience." To reach more members (and encourage them to index the world around them) GyPSii's has this week launched the Java version of its application, with both Chinese and English language support. The expectation, according to the press release, is that the new app will "appeal to the 70 percent of the 650 million phone owners in China who own Java-based phones." By way of background, GyPSii is already locally available in China for the major operators China Mobile and China Unicom, for download on compatible Java phones. GyPSii is also available globally across a wide range of devices, including Samsung, Nokia, LG, Apple iPhone, and BlackBerry smartphones. How does GyPSii plan to make the jump from critical mass to relevant advertising? What is the rev share model for partners (handset makers and carriers) who get on board? And what is the experience for members that use the ExploreMe function to search the world around them (and so trigger the delivery of an ad on their mobile device)? These are just a few of the questions I explored with Dan in this final segment of our podcast interview. (It's a little longer than my usual interviews, but I felt detail was necessary to fully understand the interplay between search and advertising GyPSii-style.

Back as promised with an exclusive podcast to connect the dots in the recent raft of announcements and get the inside track on Scanbuy strategy. Indeed, there are a lot of open questions since Scanbuy, a leader in mobile marketing solutions based on barcodes, surprised the industry in early April with the decision to make the specs for the company's proprietary EZcode 2D barcode symbology "globally available." What does this really mean and what structures will Scanbuy put in place to see this through? These are just a few of the questions I explore with Jonathan Bulkeley, Scanbuy CEO. (Personal thanks to David Javitch, Scanbuy VP of Marketing, for streamlining my request and arranging the podcast, the first such in-depth interview since the announcement.) To fully understand the significance of Scanbuy's decision, it's important to review the events and announcements that have effectively dealt companies up and down the mobile barcode business ecosystem (Scanbuy included) a new hand of cards. First came the decision in February by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the patent claims filed by NeoMedia Technologies, a provider of barcode scanning solutions. The move prompted NeoMedia to push forward in March on a patent licensing program and tie up with other vendors (3GVision, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Tag, and NeuStar) in a pilot program based on open standards in a bid to show interoperability between the technologies out there and - more importantly - position NeuStar, a short code registry, as a central clearinghouse in the middle. More about this model and Jonathan's own take in the podcast.