Meeting Notes From April 21st Meeting

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to followup with meeting notes from our last meeting on
April 21st. What an amazing turnout! It's very exciting to see such
high interest and excitement around mobile technology here in the Twin
Cities. Here's a quick rundown of some of the discussion and decisions
that were made at the last meeting.

** NEXT MEETING IS MAY 19th. PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDARS! **

1. Location & Date - Everyone seemed to agree that Refactr ( A BIG
THANK YOU to Refactr - http://refactr.com for allowing us to use your
office to host our meetings ), was a good location and the third
Tuesday of the month is a good evening. We will continue to use this
night and location going forward.

2. Mobile Mondays and starting a local chapter - No one had any
thoughts or heard of the organization, so for now we won't pursue
becoming a local chapter.

3. Justin Grammens brought to attention a job post posted by MobileTC
member Damon Allison about a position for a smartphone developer at
UHG. Good to see companies looking to specifically hire smartphone
developer talent locally. Details on the position at: http://is.gd/u4zH

4. Video. Mark Jenkins used his phone to record the meeting. Thank you
Mark! Video can be found here: http://www.livecast.com/mjenkins I am
interested in keeping the record of meetings going and am open to any
suggestions that might allow for good quality audio and video. I'm
open to purchasing some good mics or camera if needed. Please contact
me if you have suggestions.

Announcements

1. PAGES - As people may or not know, there is a "pages" feature on
google group that allows people to create pages for the group. General
pages can be found here - http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web
This is where we keep the meeting agenda and presentation ideas.
ANYONE IN THE GROUP CAN ADD PAGES.

2. USEFUL LINKS - Fellow MobileTC member Breon Nagy has posted a page
with useful links. I welcome anyone to PLEASE CONTRIBUTE to this page
and add links that might be of use to others in the group. Feel free
to put your own business/personal website.
http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web/useful-links. I
have put a link to this from our main website.

3. I have added both the Mobile Portland and Mobile Mondays links to
the bottom right side of our homepage at http://mobiletwincities.com.
Please let me know of others that makes sense to be added OR even
better, add them yourself to the "USEFUL LINKS" page above.

4. Archives - There is an archive link on the website if you wish to
see notes from the meeting. The archive can be found at
http://mobiletwincities.com/archive.html

Presentations

1. Nick Bauman - Nick did an excellent presentation on the Semantic
Web and the effects on us as a society. I have asked Nick to post his
slides on the google group and will put a link to them from the
archive.

2. Justin Grammens - Lead a discussion on iphone v3.0 and Android v1.5
features set to come out later this summer. Links to my meager 3
slides are on the archive and added to useful links.

3. Mobile Application suggestion - Discussed the merits of a t.v.
schedule / imdb type movie application. I would love to see this be a
recurring topic. Each month members talk about any mobile specific
application you would like to to see developed or one that you
downloaded and found useful. I have added this to the next month's
agenda.

3. Frank Powell and others had a discussion on cross platform
development tools. I would really like to see more detailed discussion
and possibly a presentation/debate on the merit of one over the other
at a future meeting. People seemed interested in learning more about
options.

Action Items:

1. I'll be in California the week before and attending Google/IO in
May, so I will nNOT be able to attend the next meeting. Nick and Damon
have both offered to MC the meeting and lead a discussion on web v.s.
native applications. I'll be posting more about this in the near
future, but I do think it would be good to have a presentation lined
up as well. With that being said..

2. Presentation - We are looking for a presenter in May. Please
contact me or put your name on the presentation page. Here is an
agenda for the May 19th meeting.
http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web/may-19th---meeting-agenda

FINALLY, a BIG thank you to everyone for taking the time to come out
and discuss mobile technology. I am very excited about the direction
and cohesion formed in the group and looking forward to us all
networking and building connections around mobile technology here in
the Twin Cities. Maybe someday we'll have local mobile technology (un)
conference or something... hmmm... that might be something to think
about later this year... =)
Talk with you soon and hope you can attend on May 19th!
Thanks,
Justin

Nick's slides are now up in the files section of the Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/files

Direct link should work at:
http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web/MTC0409-mobile_drives_semantic_web.pdf

Also, for those keeping score, we have an archive section of the meeting on the website at:
http://mobiletwincities.com/archive.html

Thanks,
Justin

I apologize that I had to leave early. That morning I won tickets to
a concert for that evening.

Early in the meeting we had some conversations about new app ideas. I
recall: TV Guide, IMDb, and Baby Monitor.

If you're looking for an app that could be used to replace a website
or search a database, don't forget to check the original website for a
mobile version. there are some mobile sites that are done very well.
For instance, Facebook's mobile site is better than most of the FB
apps for Android. I would have to say that the new mobile Gmail could
almost rival the native Gmail app on my G1 (only almost). The
drawback of mobile sites is there aren't any options for notifications
and such. However, if you're clever with your email preferences and
RSS feeds, you can do some amazing things.

I did mention there was an app for Android that will dial a phone
number if a certain noise level is reached. You can adjust the
sensitivity as well. This COULD be used as a baby monitor. You would
need to have another phone nearby...hopefully a T-Mobile phone, with
UNLIMITED Tmo to Tmo calling ;) You home phone (what's that?) would
work too.
http://www.cyrket.com/package/com.google.android.noisealert

I found this app for TV Guide. It says it's available for BB, WinMo
and PocketPC (is that still around?). I tried downloading it to my G1
with no luck. I searched their support page for Android and iPhone
with 0 results. Someone give it a try and let us know how it works.
http://tvguide.handmark.com/

The only thing I could find for IMDB searching was a bunch of
webapps. Some iPhone only. Some viewable on other browsers.
http://www.mdog.com/bookmarks/imdb/htmlsite/
http://www.apple.com/webapps/entertainment/imdbmobile.html
http://www.iphonemdb.com/
http://imdb.zeddy.org/ (search box is next to the word "Keyword"

I also mentioned that there are people doing some slick things with
Twitter. And there are plenty of Twitter clients for computers and
phones alike that could receive the output you're hoping to
broadcast. The thing about twitter is you can only get 100 requests
per hour. So if something is super time sensitive (baby monitor)
maybe this isn't the way to go.
Plant water monitor: http://www.botanicalls.com/kits/
Bakery Tweets: http://www.bakertweet.com/

That's all for now. See you next month!
breon
> THANK YOU to Refactr -http://refactr.comfor allowing us to use your
> Mark! Video can be found here:http://www.livecast.com/mjenkinsI am
> pages can be found here -http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web
> to put your own business/personal website.http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web/useful-links. I
> the bottom right side of our homepage athttp://mobiletwincities.com.
> see notes from the meeting. The archive can be found athttp://mobiletwincities.com/archive.html
> agenda for the May 19th meeting.http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-twin-cities/web/may-19th---meet...