Meffy awards

From the dawn of labor and industry, unions and asso-ciations have sprouted as organizations that were meant to conduct a specific activity. Whether it is to further a particular profession or protect the public, the binding force of its members is in the common interest they all share. These days most segments of business have their own bodies where members get to congregate for social, business and networking purposes. In our mobile entertainment realm, we, too, have such an organization called the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF). This association is composed of all players in the mobile entertainment space who seek to professionalize the industry. The MEF aims to reduce barriers to entry for its members, promote innovations, uphold quality of content standards, and set guidelines for consumer and intellectual property protection. Yearly, the MEF conducts the Mobile Entertainment Awards or the Meffy’s, which awards the most trailblazing of its members who have set new levels of excellence in various mobile entertainment categories. The winners were announced last May 24 in London during the MEF’s yearly gathering. It’s quite an interesting list that I have decided to share the shortlist with you along with a brief description of the winning products.

• Mobile Games Award winner: Digital Chocolate Co. – Tower Bloxx: This mobile game, in a nutshell, is a mixture of timing-based action and puzzle, combining a Tetris-meets-Sim City concept.

• Mobile Music Award winner: Warner Music – WAMO Packs: It’s the world’s first mobile music bundle which packages audio, video, graphic and textual products in a single downloadable file which can be saved on a mobile device.

• Mobile Content Award winner: Chooz Active Content – Foreplay: This is a made-for-mobile animated dating series.

• Mobile Services Award winner: Bango – The Bango Service: This is a mobile barring service which aims to protect kids under 18 from accessing adult content.

• Mobile Innovation Award winner: 3 UK and Yospace – SeeMeTV: This is a mobile TV channel which shows and pays for customer-created content. The product enables users to distribute self-created video clips to three subscribers and get paid for it.

• Mobile Entertainment Handset Award winner: Nokia – N70: This is the world’s top-selling 3G device. It’s a powerful handset which incorporates smartphone features like Web browsing and e-mail. It’s also a pocketable entertainment device capable of high-quality photos with its two-megapixel camera, music on the go with its integrated digital music player and video stream over 3G.

• Mobile Entertainment Operator Award winner: 3 UK – This is UK’s leading mobile media company which offers a convergence of communications, entertainment and information. The 3 network is available across eight countries and has over 10 million customers.

• Mobile Entertainment Marketing Campaign winner: France Telecom/Orange and Warner Music – Madonna: Confessions on a Dance Floor: An innovative first multi-platform campaign which launched Madonna’s hit album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, offering the ringtone, ringback tone, digital single available on mobile and online download a month before the song was even played on radio.

* * *

Patrick R. Garcia is the managing director of Bidshot Wireless Services. For comments or suggestions, e-mail txtcity@yahoo.com