The Mobile Peer Awards in Barcelona – running alongside Mobile World Congress – are wrapping up here and they’ve announced the winners. Why the hell does this matter? Well, about 163 mobile startups entered from all over the world, 42 got selected and only 20 got to present. That’s been whittled down to just five winners. Which are…
Babajob – From Bangalore, India, this 12-person startup connects informal sector workers – cooks, maids, drivers, guards, etc.- and employers in India. That’s one big market, right?
Orbster – Orbster is a developer of location-based entertainment like games, and has a publishing platform for third party location-based services. Their main product is GPS Mission, a platform for user-generated GPS games like scavenger hunts, historical timetravels, crime and mystery stories and guides. Users have already created GPS games in about 60 countries since launch in May 2008. GPS Mission was – apparently – the first worldwide playable GPS game for the iPhone.
Unkasoft Advergaming – Unkasoft, Spanish company, is an in-games advertising company aiming at Mobile.
Fring – We know all about them.
The final award went to a rather astounding idea.
PopCatcher Is a Stockholm, Sweden startup with a slightly mad piece of software. Their software records FM radio from the cell’s internal radio, separates the commercials and chat out from the songs and saves the songs on the handset as an MP3. They license the tech to handset makers and operators. It’s patented. Good luck with that guys…
The rest of the 42 and the final 20 are listed here and here.
For anyone wanting to build a mobile, location-based application, in a similar vein to the Orbster apps, please check out jmpta.com, our open, free, GPS-powered client for java enabled cellphones.
Simply put, it allows your users phone to determine its GPS location and send SMS messages containing that info, or launch the phones browser, sending the GPS details to your webserver.
All you have to do now is devise an application!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
A Video from BabaJob can be found here:
http://www.tweetube.com/s5
I saw the video. What they has to do with the mobile world congress. Oh yes, their contact number has mobile in it.
Laughable!
Here is another video from the company profile in this article PopCatcher:
http://www.tweetube.com/s6
“running alongside Mobile Word Congress”
World*
Would hate to see the other 159 if that’s the best 4 services they can dredge up..
Mobile applications is a wasteland.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the prevailing wisdom of the handset as the “next frontier” has been hamstrung by carriers.
what interesting are the copyright implications of the application that won. seriously, recording music – illegally – off a radio station and then saving the song.
I mean its not different than audio ripping off a youtube video. Of course it is a “swedish” startup and no doubt they have teamed up with ThePirateBay to see how they handle the copyright implications.
This is just a application that will never scale – as the law wont allow it.
Prepare for the onslaught of the labels …..
what is illegal in recording music for personal use?
Mobile Monday Mobile Peer Awards
Love Babajob – im sure we’ll see a lot more stuff like this
Any say about quality of startup awarded except Fring. A Job website and a pirate getting into last five.
+1
+1
@Karlos, you are right about a job website getting into MWC but if you refer PopCatcher as pirate, you should get your definitions right.
yuck! job site in top 5 . Either Mobile world congress has the brain-death criteria or a pure conspiracy to bring an indian startup in top 5.
Video from Unkasoft presentation can be found here:
http://kasiunbl...steve-jobs.html
love gpsmission! many of its gps games are wonderful!