Blond Mobile

last week we  had the 4th MoMo TLV event. it was in Tel Aviv, at the Mandy’s.

The event included special guest from abroad and was full. this was the first time that we actually had a waiting list. Orange handed out some very cool beer glasses and books (beer and books go great together). There where allot of women. This time I counted 14 women, which 4 of them, not including me were blond.  I was very happy to know, that the blond women where not only smart but in a high managing position. for example  Nurit Roth, Co-Founder and Director at 3DVU and Tami Bronner, CEO of Cellerium . girl power! or even better, blond girl power!

Michal Carmi, Tripletec CEO - another smart blond

In addition to the speakers, Eero Bragge, Senior technical consultant, from forum Nokia attended and was nice enough to let me ask him allot of technical Symbian related question, even though a day after the MoMo TLV event he was the key lecturer of the IMA technical session. as always we had refreshments and a fun atmosphere..

for more pictures please visit our picture album

Next week, there are three mobile events. the first is the September Mobile Monday Tel Aviv (MoMo Tlv) event, and the theme is "Global mobile Partnership". for this event we have some special guest from abroad; Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer, GSM Association, Stephane Gantchev, Head of Orange Trial Factory, Orange-France and Gian-Luca Cioletti, Head of BizDev EMEA,  Forum Nokia. the event will be on September 15th in Tel Aviv and as always will include free drinks and refreshments. for more info and registration visit http://momotlv.eventsbot.com/

The second event, is a technical workshop that IMA are organizing with Forum Nokia. it’s on September 16th morning. it will include Nokia’s tools and SDK’s, development platforms such as J2me, Symbian, flash, widgest etc. The latest on S60 Platform, location API’s and much more. all sessions will be presented by Eero Bragge, from Forum Nokia. for more info please visit: http://www.imaworld.org/?CategoryID=459

The third mobile event for next week is the GSMA Global Competition, where the winner of the competition will be announced. this event is with Carmel Ventures and is on September 16th, after the forum Nokia session, so if your quick you can make them both…. for more info please visit http://www.carmelventures.com/Event.asp?Pid=0.51.543&id=539

Yesterday we held the 3rd MoMo TLV event. It was at Mandy’s, on the Yarkon and the topic was mobile content. 130 guest came and orange handed out gifts. I spotted 3 blond women other than me, next event I promise to take a photo of blonds…,

We had a speed lecture session; each person talked 15 min. we had a special guest from China - Ori Elraviv, Dragon ports Co-Founder, that talked about the mobile scene in china, and mostly answered question. Aviv Revach, Mominis Co-Founder, gave a short intro about mobile gaming. Guy Ami-Ad from Mobi, talked about mobile advertising and was charming as always, Aviad Rabinovich, Oranges Music Manager talked in addition to the regular "listening to music on your handset" about using your mobile for getting to know more music, music campaigns and song recognition, which I liked the most. It works by sending a part of a song recording to some server, and receiving the name of the band, song name and the album in a few seconds from the server. I was impressed, even more than seeing 3 other blonds in a mobile event.  I already know some sites that do something similar, such as WatZatSong, but in those sites you need to wait for users to recognize the song and say what it is. I don’t know what was the application that Aviad was using, but I liked it very much and Ill will find out…

As always we had an open bar, thanks to our sponsors Orange, BlueRun Amdocs and Eurocom.

More pictures from the event can be found here.

As most of you know, JAJAH released a pre-installed Windows Mobile VoIP client for the Japanese EMobile operator.

While working on it, I checked for performance issues and memory leaks. This was critical since in addition to outgoing VoIP calls the application runs in the background and listens to incoming VoIP calls. In order to monitor the performance I used the .Net compact framework remote performance Monitor (RPM). this tool is easy to use, once you understand how to install and use it, and this is the reason for this post.

Installation:

copy netcfrtl.dll and netcflaunch.exe  from C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft.NET\SDK\ CompactFramework\ v2.0\ WindowsCE\wce500\armv4i to the Windows directory on your device. (to copy from your desktop to your windows mobile device use ActiveSync)

Running the PRM:

Connect your device to the desktop using ActiveSync

Open NetCFRPM.exe from C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework\v2.0\bin

Select "File" and then "Live Counters"

In the device box select "ActiveSync"  and in the "application" box enter your application you wish to test. Press "connect". the application will start and you will see the changing counters.

for more details about the counters check out David Kline’s post

Using this view you can see the counters change and see what’s going on. to make things easier to monitor, you can have a view of the heap at real time and compare the GC heap at different intervals.

GC Heap View:

Click "View GC Heap" to view the heap status. In this view you can see the number of instances  each object has and the memory it consommes. you may also see the root object that is keeping the object alive, i.e. what is the object that holds a reference to the object and hence its not garbage collected.

Comparing heap states

Its very helpfully comparing different heap states over time. This can help you see the difference in object over time and help you find leaks in various states of your application. When interested to know the heap state click "View GC Heap". when you want to compare the heaps memory states go to "View" and then select "Compare Heap". this view allows you to view the difference in object during the run time.

In order to take a screen shot of your handset or of the emulator you should do the following:

1- Open the “Remote Zoom In” application from the “Visual studio Remote Tools”

2- Select to what device or emulator you want to connect. In case your connecting to a device make sure its connected to the PC with the USB cable.

3- the application will connect to the device/emulator  and you will see the screenshot. if you would like to take another screenshot, just click the “Refresh” button

4 - To save the screenshot, select “Save as”.

Last Monday was the second event of Mobile Monday Tel Aviv. The theme was mobile VoIp, a theme close to me. Although sceduled to start the lectures at 19:30, we started at 20:00, half an hour late, due to guests that were still arriving. I think that for the next MoMo event we should allow more time till the lectures start….:) on the bar were cool blue shot glasses courtesy of Sun.

We started with a lecture of Yossi Cohen from DSP-IP, that talked about Mobile VoIP technology and Mobile VoIP business models (lecture can be found here). After the lecture we had a panel with Tzahi Efrat from Jajah, Roy Timor-Rousso from Fring and Oded Goldenberg from Skuku that presented the VoIP companies and Yossi Hasson from BlueRun that presented a venture capital company. Having Jajah and Fring at the same table, makes you feel that Truphone are missing. although Truphone wanted to be at this Mobile Monday VoIP event, they could not make it. lucky us, James Tagg and James Body from Truphone were in Israel prior to the Mobile VoIP MoMo Event, and James Tagg answered the same questions on video. The video was filmed by James Body with my home camera at Jajah’s offices and I was asking the questions. I apologize for the bad quality

James Tagg,Truphone

We had an interesting discussion on how mobile VoIP companies make their revenue, relations with operators and the future of mobile VoIP. It was intersting to know, that JAJAH, Skuku and Truphone make money, but Fring do not make money AND do not intended of making money. they have money from their VC. We had Yossi from BlueRun answer what is the reason for investing in a company that does not have any revenue. Does this mean that Fring will keep on receiving more and more founding from investors or at some point they will finish all their money and will have to close?

We had fun, interest, new acquaintances, drinks and blue shot glasses!

We are planing the next MoMo TLV event and looking for the next air conditioned location…if you have any suggestions, please email me!

See you in the next MoMo TLV event!

At the beginning of the week I attended the IMA’s Mobile Advertising event that took place in Tel Aviv. the event was very well planed, and on schedule, every lecture started and ended on time! that was so surprising. I think that was the first event I have been to in Israel that corresponded to the time table! the place was full, it looked that there where allot of women, compared to other mobile events I have been to. I was proud…

The lectures where interesting. Most of them demonstrated the extra creativity needed for mobile advertisement. TurkCell showed some very interesting ways to advertise, which involves users consent to get advertisements. They talked about coupons that users receive from their favorite brands which are discounts only available for mobile users, and that way making users want to receive the advertisement. The most interesting thing they talked about was commercial ring tones, the user sends a SMS with a short code and then he "subscribes" to a ringtone of some brand. Every time the rington is played (i.e  the user has an incoming call), the user gets credit-his phone bill is reduced. the number of times the ringtone is played is monitored. The technology used is called RBT (Ring Back Tone).  This is the song we hear when calling a friend. Turkcell uses a company called TonlaKazan (meaning Tone&Win) to achieve this.

Guy Ami-Ad,from Mobi, gave a rememberable lecture with allot of examples of innovated advertisements. a basic idea is that with a mobile, you can get to the user any time and any place, in the bed before he sleeps, or even in the bathroom…. he talked about having loyal users, and doing it by billing them only "after a few clicks".. and how important is it to make the users involved in the brands advertisements.  there were many more interesting lectures and talks.

I think there are many advantages for mobile advertising. from the advertiser side, the user is available at any time and any place, tracking and monitoring the result are very easy and there is no better way of knowing your target client by his  profile and interests whereas just having an advertisement on TV.

From the developer and business side, I think there is a barrier of where the technology in the mobile industry can develop and this is just because every thing in mobile cost money. Having advertisement to cover various charges on the mobile will increase demand in mobile technology.

Disadvantages? none, or am I  grafted? the only issue I see is spamming users with advertisements, but in the case of mobile advertisement the user needs to consent getting advertisement or coupons…

Our next event is taking place on the first Monday of July - July 7th. there are 2 exciting things about this event - well actually 3: the first is that its in Tel Aviv (yes! we are called MoMo TLV but the first event was in Herzeliya) the second is that the theme is VoIP, which is a theme close to me - after all I work at JAJAH, and the third- well that’s a secret - you will have to come and see, its a very nice surprise…

Joining us for this event are Fring and JAJAH that represent Mobile VoIP companies, Orange that represents the Mobile Operators and Blue run the represent the Venture capital side. It should be interesting…

In addition to the above goodies, Yossi Cohen from DSP-IP will give an intro lecture about trends in Mobile VoIP and Modules. We will be serving drinks snacks, appetizers and more drinks to make things happy and fun.

I will be moderating the panel - very exciting!

Wish me luck!

More info about the event can be found on the Facebook event http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=17350773251 (we love the Facebook event application!)  the event is free, and there is free parking but you need to register on Facebook. if you do not have a Facebook account email me to jasmine_aha[at]hotmail[dot]com

See you there!!   .

The F5 - Refreshing women venture’s First meeting was on Thursday. it was organized by Liat Vardi and sponsored by Sun.

I arrived late, due to a major traffic jam  (2 hours from Raanna to Tel Aviv), but just in time to hear Miriam’s Schwab’s lecture on - "Using Blogs and SEO to Promote your Business". the lecture was general. The interesting part was samples of different blogs on the net and what to do to improve them.

After the lecture dessert was served and us girls had a chance to chat some more. other than business, technology and sharing goals we could say things like " bad hair day" and understand each other perfectly! The atmosphere was nice and relaxing.  I got to meet some very interesting women,  and learned allot. I’m waiting for the next events….

Today I had a very fun phone call, with James Body from Truphone. We had a JAJAH - Truphone call.

James used the JAJAH Buttons feature, just by clicking a link from my email. he asked to get the call to his Truphone number, and I received the call on my mobile device. By using the JAJAH Button feature, although he was the one to initiate the call, he did not need to pay for the call, and on my side it was a very cheap call. Since the call was not only a VOIP call but more of a PSTN- VOIP call, the call was very cheap and not a free call.

The sound quality  was excellent! there were no delays nor echoes during the entire call (which was somewhat long…). When James told me he is using his Truphone number, i.e. the Internet, I was very much surprised!

We did good!, hopefully in the upcoming years most communication will be VOIP which will eventually save us the cost of roaming (mostly for incoming calls).