I have just arrived in sunny, but unusually windy, Orlando and am happily installed in the hotel in Cape Canaveral for the Orange bash (or is that mashup)? The hotel, in typical Florida style, is a sprawling complex of rooms surrounding a pool, with its obligatory Amazonian rock feature. More hotel pics here.
Apparently two days ago it was crawling with eager cruisers - kids and their parents eagerly awaiting their cruise boats to take 
them on a gentle meander down to the Bahamas/Cayman/insert island of your choice. But for the next three days the hotel will be crawling with 200 or so Orange types and its diaspora of developers and wanna-be developers. As is the way with these things everyone is very chatty, and I met a cross-section in the transit bus already.
Ian Hollingworth, of Manchester-based Host Telecom is here to tout an interesting service offering video ringtones. He is also a former airline pilot, so his views on the airline industry were an eye-opener too. No sooner had I learnt a few things about Host than we met New Yorker Robert Levin, founder of Transclick, who I had spotted at the airport making a series of conference calls as if he were brokering the next big mobile content deal. It turns out he was a hedge fund manager in a previous life, but is here touting a real-time mobile translation system that converts text/email/IM from one language to another.
Transclick sounds hot to me, and Robert is the kinda guy that can talk the hind legs off a donkey and still come back at your with more amazing tales. The world of mobile translation is an intriguing one that seems to marry the secretive world of US security (with its need for Arabic translation), and the weird and wonderful world of teen social networking and instant messaging.
If Robert has his way, a billion Chinese teenagers will soon be instant messaging with Western kids in a new kind of online glasnost. Not sure the Chinese authorities see it the same way. (Note: Since writing this Robert has pointed out that only ten million teenagers currently have mobile phones...I fell into hyperbole it seems).
Finally at the obligatory (but in this case very pleasant) reception last night in the Hotel I met Steve Townsend of www.greatape.com a developer of mobile games. He showed me a car racing game that was the most realistic thing I have seen on a mobile. Being a one man band he says that bigger players are not interested because they prefer to go with known brands, rather than invest in newcomers. I suggested he do a pitch at Mobile Monday, but maybe he will sign a deal here. Anything is possible in America eh?
Footnote: The entertaining Bena Roberts from Gomo News is here blogging the event too. She mentioned that she spent $700 shopping yesterday when she could have been reviewing a few more phones - what is the analyst community coming to? I better get down the shopping mall - every day is Primark day in America, apparently. Rafe Blandford of AllaboutSymbian, and Nick Lane from Informa's Mobile Media, are here too.
Weathernote: The Upper Easter coastline is being battered with winds and rains, and according to the TV just now snow is coming next. I am starting to feel we are all living in a movie called The day the Earth Melted. Today's news that mobile networks are possibly killing off honey bees doesn't make me feel much better either.
Yeah, Bees... what's that all about?
Nice pad... must have been a good mate who put you up in that pad eh...
;)
Posted by: Rich | April 16, 2007 at 12:10 PM