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There were also some mobile customer relationship management (CRM) applications that looked of interest. One such application was from a company called eAgency Systems. This company and application started out by providing mobile CRM solutions for insurance agents and now they are expanding horizontally into other industries. They would be interested in partnering with telcos to include their package as part of a telco's small business offering.

There were several companies that were showing applications that used the camera feature of a cell phone to snap pictures of advertisements or bar codes that can then be sent to manufacturers or marketers. Applications for this technology include transmission of on-demand product information to prospects, improved customer service (imagine taking a photo of a serial number and being able to provide that information without having to complete a form) and promotional activities. One company, Nevinvision, allows people to snap photographs of television screens and then send the photos to a Nevenvision's photo recognition software - this could offer some interesting potential interactive television shopping opportunities.

Then, there are the applications that sound ridiculous to this middle-aged dinosaur, but will probably be popular among the youth and may even find some interesting business and social applications. One of these applications was ring-back karaoke tones. With this product, one gets to warble their favorite songs for their favorite people (or enemies, if one's singing is like mine). Apparently, it could be set up such that different phone numbers hear different songs. I could see an application of this where a business might have different ring backs for customers than they would for prospects.

Mophone represents the convergence of the Internet and wireless world. It is very similar to a social networking site, like a MySpace, but it is designed for mobile applications. It allows one to use the service from the web or the cell phone and crossing between these two media seemed pretty easy.

Finally, I met with Mike Pinto, President and Founder of MobZilla. MobZilla is fundamentally a radio service, in some ways like an XM or Sirius, but which uses the data portion of the cell phone network for signal transport. For $5.99 a month, a user can access millions of songs, thanks to their deals with BMI, ASCAP and SoundExchange, via either their PC or data-enabled cell phones. MobZilla views itself as a service provider, which uses its own technology as differentiation.

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