Liveblogging Futures of Entertainment 2 - Mobile Panel

This was an absolutely fantastic panel - best I’ve seen in the last year certainly on mobile, probably overall. This might mean my notes are a bit more scattered - but there are lots of interesting points and questions in what follows. I will try to clean up a bit later.

Panelists:

• Marc Davis, Yahoo!
• Bob Schukai, Turner Broadcasting
• Alice Kim, MTV Networks
• Anmol Madan, MIT Media Lab

Description from program:

Beyond the launch of shiny new devices, the mobile market has been dominated by data services and re-formatted content. Wifi connections and the expansion of 3G phone networks enable pushing more data to wireless devices faster, yet we still seem to be waiting for the arrival of mobile’s “killer app”. This panel muses on the future of mobile services as devices for convergence culture. What role can mobile services play in remix culture? What makes successful mobile gaming work? What are the stumbling blocks to making the technological promise of convergence devices match the realities of the market? Is podcasting the first and last genre of content? What is the significance of geotagging and place-awareness?

Notes:
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Tripit To Me

Via the TripIt Blog comes the announcement of their mobile (email, really) offering called Tripit To Me.

(Not that I’m old enough to have watched Laugh In, but I keep seeing (in my head) the video of Richard Nixon’s deadpan “sock it to me” in the name of this feature)

This is genius - simple, clean access to the info I need without having to launch a web browser, navigate, etc:

TripIt To Me is an email interface to the trip information in TripIt. (This is better known in the tech world as a “command line interface.”) When you email simple commands like “get flight tomorrow” or “get trip 10/15/07” to plans [at] tripit.com, TripIt will email you the information you need whenever you need it. For the absent minded like me, TripIt To Me will be a lifesaver as I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve dashed off to the airport without my itinerary and had to call someone to remember the airline I’m flying on, or the hotel I’m staying at. Also, it will be great when picking someone up at the airport to be able to email “get flight” and see which flight they’re on.

They also took the time to create a “Tripit to me Wallet card” (PDF) so that you don’t have to remember all the potential commands.

If you don’t travel a lot for business, it might seem strange that you could arrive at the airport and not know which airline you’re on, but the reality is I’ve had that experience myself.

Tripit just keeps getting better.