One of the largest web events of the year starts tomorrow in Austin, Texas.  SXSW is drawing more and more mobile developers and attention to the mobile web, apps and services with each passing year.  If you can't travel to Austin this year, we've got it covered with our Events Aggregator.  So follow the pictures, videos, tweets, blogs and slide decks from everyone in Austin this week.

http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/events/

Today I had the pleasure of chatting with Paul Golding, who is on contract with O2 to inspire and execute a number of initiatives in open innovation.  We talk first about the O2 Incubator Program which will announce it's winners next week.  And try as I might to pry just one winner name from Paul, he felt notifying the winning companies before telling us was kind of important.

We'll have the full transcript posted on the blog tomorrow.  Until then visit the podcast site and give a listen as Paul teases his new project #blue.

Vision Mobile is conducting the largest mobile developer survey ever produced.  All survey participants will be entered into a drawing for:

A Google Nexus One

An HTC Touch 2

A 500 euro Amazon voucher

A  250 euro Amazon voucher

The survey is sponsored by O2Litmus and all participants will receive a summary of the report.  To qualify for these most excellent prizes and have your say:

Yesterday we launched our 1st in a series of weekly podcasts with various guests of interest to our developer and mobile obsessed audience.  You can follow the show at:

Telefonica Developer Communities

Yesterday's conversation with Chris Shipley, co-founder, Guidewire Group covers Innovate!2010 and the competition part of the program called Innovate!100.  Audio will be archived at Blog Talk Radio and here we will provide full transcripts of the program.

Join us on Feb. 24th at 5PM GMT, 6PM CET, Noon EST and 9AM PST for a live discussion and Q&A with Chris Shipley, co-founder of the international analyst firm, Guidewire Group.  We will cover the evolution of Guidewire's Innovate! program and open the lines to your questions about Innovate!100.  If you're a startup any where in the world, don't miss this opportunity to pose your questions directly to Chris.

Mobile World Congress has once again concluded, but not without providing some clues into what's ahead for the industry.  This year's event included the obligatory shiny new handsets, keynotes by leading mobile operator executives and new deal announcements by everyone.  Yet, there were a number of indicators that a shift has occurred for the mobile industry. From here, into this year's theme, "Experience the Mobile Future", nothing will be the same.

The GSMA is providing a live stream of Eric Schmidt's Keynote.  The talk is scheduled for 4:45 - 5:30 GMT.  Registration is required, so go early to:

Mobile World Live

The biggest buzz at Mobile World Congress?  Like last year that distinction goes to the company not even present - Apple.  Some large announcements from a global mobile operator alliance, a united effort to bring back developers, to Microsoft's demo of their popular new Windows Phone 7 Series and even Nokia's JV with Intel called MeeGO all were measured against Apple's iPhone, and iTunes App Store.

Wholesale Applications Community

It's a huge challenge to follow the news coming out of Mobile World Congress from all the various sites where that news is being posted and shared.  There are hundreds and thousands of tweets, photos, videos and blog post going out today and everyday of the conference.  We found a way to simplify watching all that media for you.  Check out the O2 Litmus Mobile World Congress site where you can watch the buzz from Barcelona in real-time.

http://ow.ly/17tcP

In a highly anticipated announcement, Microsoft's CEO, Steve Balmer, is expected to show off Windows Phone 7 at Mobile World Congress - today/tomorrow depending on your time zone.  Park your browser at the link below.

Microsoft Live Press Conference from Barcleona

It would seem that Sony Ericsson had the same idea as Samsung.  Have your press conference before MWC starts and get a jump on announcements of other handset makers and OSes like Microsoft's expected WM7 due tomorrow.  Their live stream can be seen at the link below.

make.believe 

Samsung are live webcasting their press conference from Mobile World Congress and the announcer has stated that it will begin shortly.  If you get there and only hear waves crashing - it's not an attempt to ease you into sleep.  It's a teaser.  Click on the link below.

Samsung Wave

What excellent synergy that my first post at the O2 Litmus blog would be the day before the biggest mobile show on earth, Mobile World Congress 2010.  Some readers here will likely recognize me from my long running blog mobilejones.com and the writings I've done at other online publications focused on mobile tech and the industry.  Others will learn about me over time and our interactions here.  Want the cliff notes?  Check out these other sites where we can also connect.

The biggest event in the mobile industry, Mobile World Congress, is on again next week in Barcelona. The O2 Litmus team are involved in a bunch of events and shall be running around all over the place.

As you know, we were looking for the people who could tell us, in the most imaginative way, what they'd do to get their hands on one of the three Palm Pres up for grabs. Juicy consolations of 50 hour free testing packs from DeviceAnywhere were on offer for our next two favourite answers.

We were overwhelmed with submissions and a hearty pat on the back for all the colourful ideas that came through. With much deliberation, but without further ado, our three favourite answers were:

Last night, the O2 Litmus team held their second event in partnership with the Palm to bring together some of the brightest folk in the web and mobile space.

Elayne Checketts, O2 Litmus' Marketing Manager, kicked off proceedings by letting the attendees know that Telefonica is sponsoring a new, ambitious research project by VisionMobile that will benchmark the developer experience across all 8 major platforms (iPhone, Android, Symbian, Java ME, RIM, Windows Mobile, Flash Lite or mobile web).

How far would you go?

To be in with a chance of winning one of the Palm Pre devices or the 50 hours of testing, we’re looking for tweets that prove what lengths you’ll go to win one of them.

Name: Quix Demo for Symbian

Developer: Mobiaccess

Synopsis: Quix is a Mobile Questionnaire Management System that enables fast and efficient market research, easy analysis and evaluation. This is a 7 day demo.

Platform/Price: Symbian/Free

Get the app: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/applications/quix-demo_symbian

Telefonica is sponsoring a new, ambitious research project by VisionMobile

The O2 Litmus team are once again bringing together some of the brightest folk in the web and mobile space to let you know about their global plans in 2010.

The O2 Litmus team were down at the Emirates Stadium yesterday, home of Arsenal Football Club, for our first event of 2010 - M-Football.

Name: Snaptu Twitter

Developer: snaptu

Synopsis: Stay in the loop with Snaptu's Twitter application. It's a fully featured, free and intuitive Twitter client that works on any Java phone. 

Platform/Price: Java/Free

Get the app: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/applications/snaptu-twitter

We've had a few questions coming in over the last week or so r.e. developing on the Joggler. To make life easier for everyone, here are some of the most common questions, answered:

1. How are the apps deployed to the Joggler?

Kicking off today, and running for a month up to MWC, is a widget competition run by our friends at BONDI. There's $5,000 up for grabs and plenty of kudos as they'll be heavily promoting the winning widgets at MWC. Here are the details, straight from the horse's mouth:

“If you are interested in widgets and have any expertise in using HTML and JavaScript, you may be interested in a competition being run by OMTP in the run up to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 

Name: FlipFont

Developer: Monotype500

Synopsis: FlipFont allows you to change your phone's interface font. FlipFont comes with three trial fonts that can be used for 2 days

Platform/Price: Symbian/Free-£2 per font

Get the app: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/applications/flipfont

Name: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: e-book

Developer: GoSpoken

Synopsis: Follow the pipe-smoking Victorian sleuth on his quest for the truth, whether on the bus, the tube, or in bed.

Platform/Price: Java/Free

Get the app: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/applications/adventures-of-sherlock-holmes 

We’re delighted to hear that O2 Litmus has been included in the InfoWorld 100 awards, which celebrate IT projects that use technology in smart, innovative, creative ways to meet business and technical objectives.

Name: Berry Locator

Developer: astraware

Synopsis: Whether your BlackBerry is lost under the couch cushions or left in a coffee shop, Berry Locator helps you locate and recover your lost BlackBerry.

Platform/Price: Blackberry/£3

Someone once told me a contemporary adage; “success is getting all the basics right”. I really like this phrase, as it is so fundamentally correct; a consumer will tend to love a product that does everything it sets out to do to a good level. A single major fault is enough to cause dissatisfaction, as are several minor flaws.

Name: PocketBeatz

Developer: Ben Cusack

Synopsis: Pocket Beatz is a virtual Music Studio. Play beats, synths and loops and record your tune to play back to your mates.

Name: Advanced Call Manager

Developer: Melon Mobile

Synopsis: Advanced Call Manager will handle all incoming calls for you and personalise your approach to the callers – play an instant busy tone/drop the call, send a kind SMS, divert calls, mute the ringer or play a personal greeting. Allow your phone to respond on your behalf.

Platform/Price: Symbian/Blackberry/FREE

Hi there! My name is Nick Chenery and I'm a new member of the Litmus community, who joined after being invited in one of O2's most recent waves of e-mails. I've been invited to post to the blog, and I shall be sharing what Litmus means to me as a consumer.

Name: Phrasebook

Developer: HeroCraft

Platform/Price: Java/£3.00

Hear what testing wizard Josh Galde from DeviceAnywhere had to say when we spoke:

That's right, 1 million O2 customers are being invited to Litmus, as we speak. Eager app fans should be steadily streaming in over the next couple of weeks, so developers: there's never been a better time to make sure all your latest apps are uploaded and you're keeping an eye on the forum.

This has long been in the pipeline, and it's great news that we're now welcoming so many new people to Litmus. 

Play nice

Name: Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile

Developer: Greg Robinson

Platform/Price: Java/£3.00

Synopsis: Guitar Hero® World Tour is ready to rock your phone! The sequel to the award-winning and best-selling Guitar Hero® III Mobile is a whole new game with tracks playable on both the drums and guitar!

…Is Paul Poutanen, VP and founder of Mob4Hire, who provide Litmus’ Premium Testing service. Premium testing provides a great opportunity for customers to get more involved in app testing, and be paid for their time. Here's what Paul had to say:

http://bit.ly/2fAx5Z

This is a great (you'll need 20 minutes!) piece on the emerging role of mobile communications in the developing world, and what handset manufacturers are doing to explore it. It's amazing how the motivations and priorities of users change as the demographic does. 

Highlights include:

- Female mobile entrepreneurs running village phones in Uganda

- Mobile phones as banks

- A $5 phone

- Mobile prevalence boosting GDP

- Manual-labour phone chargers

Name: GoMobiPrint

Developer: Mike Phillips

Platform/Price: Symbian/£3.00

Synopsis: GoMobiPrint enables you to print directly from your phone, by connecting to any Bluetooth printers in the vicinity. All your photos are just 3 clicks away from escaping cyberspace! 

Get the app: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/applications/gomobiprint

We're always looking for ways to help promote the work of the Litmus developer community, and the latest fruit of our labour is to promote an App of the Week, guess what, every week! 

We'll be picking apps that we think are useful, innovative or just fresh, in no particular order, and will be promoting them across the range of social media available to us. 

Watch this space. Feedback welcome as always. 

At Over the Air a couple of weeks ago, got chatting to Ronan Higgins, co-founder of Locle, one of the first apps set to graduate from the Litmus academy and reach 8 million O2 Active customers. I was trying to better understand the app life-cycle; how compatibility testing and end-user feedback play a part in it, and where Litmus fits in. Here's how the conversation went:

The winner of the O2 Litmus App Showdown has been decided, and we're proud to present O2 Tips and Tricks! Congratulations to Jon Bonnick of Intelligenti Publishing, who takes home the £10k prize.

A special mention also goes out to the other two apps shortlisted by our judging panel of O2 customers; Percula Software's Event Horizon taking second spot and a Playstation 3 to go with it, and Live Talkback, who pocket a neat Sony Ericsson C905 for their efforts!

More to follow during the next week...

Over the coming months we’re talking to different stakeholders in Litmus to pick their brains and
listen. First up is Noel (aka Kontraband on the litmus forum). Noel’s an app
fanatic and early adopter who’s been working in technology for over 10 years.
Alongside the day-job he’s been a major contributor to allaboutsymbian.com, the
world’s biggest portal for Symbian smartphones. Here's what he's got to say:

Hi all,