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Myself/WirelessNorth.ca be running a workshop at LIFT this year on “Open and the Future of Wireless”. And you are invited! With spectrum auctions upcoming in Canada (and elsewhere) opportunities are emerging to reboot the way we think about mobile connectivity and computing. So we’ll be gathering a brace of smart people at LIFT to envision/design/prognosticate the future of wireless.

As more applications move to the web, software and media are moving to a model of cloud computing. At the same time, better devices and faster, more affordable wireless networks, are making it possible to stay connected almost anywhere.

Together these trends should ultimately, and fundamentally change the tools we use to live, work, play, govern and more. However, how will this future play out?

In particular, what role might “open” models play into our expected -or- ideal vision of the future?

If you registered for Lift head on over to this page to register for the workshop. Looks like we’ll have a good crowd there already. Should be fun!

^{Photo: leaping over a “Lift+” installation in the networking/art area outside Lift07}

UPDATE: Michael Arrington has some good coverage of business and FCC leaders at Davos on much the same topic. Looking forward to continuing this conversation in Switzerland in just several days.

Macworld has just wrapped up. Sadly for Canadian wireless enthusiasts there’s little report. No iPhones for Canada. The “Macbook Air” was announced but what’s so “air” about it is a mystery. Unlike ultraportables from competitors, the slender device features no mobile broadband connectivity. So no EVDO, no HSDPA. It’s got 802.11n but you’re tethered to within 100ft of an access point.

And with no card slot and only 1 (one) USB port, one hopes that you wouldn’t want to try and use an external WLAN dongle and, for example, a memory key at the same time.

Ah well, there’s always next year.

At CES yesterday, famous hardware-maker MSI announced a new mobile devices built on Vancouver’s own Intrinsyc Softare. As far as I understand it’s workings, Intrinsyc’s Soleus platform is an OS and toolset for mobiles built in turn on top of Microsoft CE platform and development suites. In cooperation with Microsoft, this would look like a strong northern competitor of sorts to Google’s upcoming Android platform for mobiles.

The device itself features “includes EDGE/HSDPA WAN capabilities as well as WiFi WLAN functionality. It may also be offered with WiMAX, although no further details of this were provided. Using a 667MHz Samsung SC36400 processor, the 5608 also boasts a two megapixel camera, GPS, and digital TV reception in T-DMB, DVB-H, and ISDVT formats, MSI says.” Neat. At least, sounds great on paper, but will Intrinsyc’s Windows/CE-based UI really rival Apple’s OS-X equivalent on a multimedia handheld?

No word yet on how/when/if the device will be distributed in Canada. However, we here at WirelessNorth.ca are ready to give one a test drive, as soon as Intrinsyc or MSI wants to send one our way…

More details here.

NAPTE is the National Association of Television Program Executives and, as you may have guessed, mobile is the next big frontier for tv and interactive content. And this year, they’ve selected GestureTek Mobile as one of their “hottest properties in mobile content”.

Toronto’s own GestureTek does cool stuff with  motion/gesture sensitive application tools for mobiles. It’s good to see a Canadian company getting recognized internationally for mobile innovation.

Click here for a demo of the motion-sensing Gesturetek mobile technology.
It’s neat. Some of the initial applications for gesture recognition are still a little simplistic, but on the whole, motion/gesture based interactions offer a lot of potential for getting around the limitations of small keypads and fiddly styluses etc. and providing a more naturalistic way of interacting with a handheld device.

more info at http://www.natpemobile.com/

While our StartupCamp friends will be at DemoCamp16 tonight, WirelessNorth will be heading out to Mobile Monday happening just down the street. Hope to see you there! But if you are of outside Toronto, or at that ‘other’ event, check back here tomorrow for full blog coverage

The MoMo agenda looks pretty good:

The event will be styled after the famous movie Fight Club with 5 selected companies each given 5 minutes to talk about their company and demonstrate their software, applications or services. At the end of the demonstration period, attendees will vote for the winner of
MoMoCamp:

Location Change: Dunedain Multimedia, located at 110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 700, starting at 6:30pm (Google Map)

About the MoMoCamp Competitors

Demonstration by Kevin Keiller — UrbanScavengerHunt.com is a web-based service that allows people to create and participate in “real world” scavenger hunts using their mobile phones and text messaging. Urban Scavenger Hunts can be used for experiential and event marketing (B2B and B2C), team building, social and charity events. Urban Scavenger Hunt allows anyone to build a mobile “Amazing Race” style event.

Demonstration by Chris Boddy — Intergig is a start-up company with a focus to bring all interested parties online as far as the mobile internet is concerned. There are a number of approaches to this end; dotMobi of course; but also WAP porting software and the use of traditional top-level domains optimized for mobile. The founders of the company have had success positioning their companies on the internet to achieve profits. SEO, branding, general consulting and design efforts are components of their staging strategy. Intergig manages and/or owns over 7000 early registered dotMobi domains.

Demonstration by Simon Law — Xtreme Mobility Inc. designs and delivers secure wireless transaction software solutions for the consumer finance and payment processing industry sectors. Xtreme Mobility provides solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information and data on multiple network standards.

Demonstration by Nussar Ahmad — Addictive Mobility, a subsidiary of addictiveTECH Corp, is an interactive mobile technology company specializing in social media utilities powered through the AU Platform. This platform enables communication between mobile phones and the next generation of open platforms such as Facebook, Myspace, and Orkut.

Demonstration by Derek Colfer — Jambo Mobile is a mobile media company with extensive experience in the development, management and execution of mobile-based initiatives for the healthcare, marketing, media and enterprise verticals. Jambo Mobile’s products include text and rich/binary content delivery, java applications development, carrier connectivity and mobile games development.

Announcing the launch of a new blog covering the wireless industry in Canada. Our goal is to celebrate and promote everything awesome in Canada’s mobile industry from mobile startups to the latest innovations coming from Canada’s big telcos and device maker(s) . Of course, we’ll be touching on hot topics like net neutrality and the wireless competitive landscape in Canada. And whatever else inspires us along the way.

Enjoy!

Got a story you’d like to tell or would like covered on Wireless North? email us at editor@wirelessnorth.ca