All you need to do is Tweet your idea for a really cool mobile application for the event, to Conor from Orange — and if he likes your idea, you win. Simple as that.

Here is Conor’s announcement tweet:

Ok people, suggest ideas for a music festival mobile app, my favourite idea gets the tickets, go wild use #OrangeFestivalApp

Just make sure you put the hashtag, #OrangeFestivalApp, in your entry, so that Conor can track your entry.

I’m seeing some good ideas — the latest being some kind of FourSquare-style artist rating app. I also liked this one:

An app to submit peoples’ Glasto photo’s to the large screens between bands for a slideshow of the best.

Me? I’d like to see a cross between FourSquare, Now Playing (the brilliant movie times app) and iPadio.

Get stuck in if you’d like to win…

…oh and one other thing too… what was that now…?

Listen now using the player below or see the links below for other options:

 

 

Episode link and feeds:

[Link] Direct link to this episode’s MP3 to download
[iTunes] Subscribe or listen in iTunes
[RSS] Subscribe via your feed reader or another podcatcher

—-

The contributors:

Ewan MacLeod is turning off Motorola RAZRs and burning phone holsters he is SMS Text News.
James Whatley’s blog is here. He works for SpinVox doing clever social media stuff and their blog.
Dan Lane’s blog is at http://invalid.name. He’s CTO at Howler Tech.
Ben Smith is a management consultant. He has a blog, but anything worth reading is contributed here.

Sites mentioned in the podcast:

People we met at Unlimited Drinks Dublin:

Paschal from Mobile Travel Technologies
Connor from Connector.ie
Dave from Just Routes
Russel from Vodafone – watch this space for news of his project.

Flirtomatic

James’s Mobile Geek at Glastonbury post

Ewan’s Mobile Hell Hole post

Things of the week:

Orange’s N82
The new QIK client
The Loc8tor ‘stuff finder’
JoikuSpot Premium

We’re really keen to get your feedback on the podcast – please let us know in the comments or tell Ewan – ewan@smstextnews.com.

So off I went to Glastonbury; all my gadgets in tow.

With all the kit I was packing, I had a confident glow.

And yet something seemed to be nagging, this voice inside my head.

It wouldn’t stop, nor would it cease… and this is what is said:

“Your gadgets will be no good to you, your phones will not stay dry.

Your software will all be useless when your batteries up and die.

Solar chargers cannot work in rain and your wind-up is a joke;

Your DC-8 will desert you mate, trust me it will choke.”

And so with these words I did depart, my head hung up in woe

Would my gadgets last me? I really did not know.

So dear readers the time has come, which ones were the best?

Which one passed and which ones failed.. this glastonbury test…

Write up coming soon…

As you know from my last post, the multitude of tools available to the modern day, festival going mobile geek really is quite something… So here, for your pleasure, is a quick rundown of what I am taking with me, starting with the hardware…

Handsets:

I’ve packed my N95, my N95 8GB and my E61i. The E61i is perfect as an ‘emergency’ as the battery on that baby is HUGE and it lasts FOREVER, (well – about 5 days). So if it all goes pear-shaped I can resort to using that. ?The N95s I’m going to tag-team throughout the day/festival. One to carry with me and one to charge. ?Speaking of chargers…

Power:

When it comes to keeping the batteries fully topped up, I’ve covered all bases with this one. I’ve got a Nokia DC-8 battery charger, bought this today, £25. Steep, but I’m a sucker for the branded stuff. It’s worked ok so far.

I’ve also got a Free Loader Solar Charger – this thing gets kudos just for the fact that out of all of the chargers, this was the only one that came with a Nintendo DS adaptor. Which made my girlfriend very happy indeed; Mario Kart for her while I type this passing Stonehenge, (fact).

Finally I have a ‘GoHello’ wind-up charger and, as Ben Smith so rightly said in the last podcast, they ain’t called ‘wind-ups for nothing’. …seriously, I’ve got nothing out of this thing yet. Nothing. Boo.

On top of all that lot, I’ve got four N95 batteries. All (currently) fully charged. So we shall see how long they last!

Software:

Well, stuff like Qik, Google Maps, VOX, SpinVox, Moblog etc… I kinda covered this last time round. I want to talk about the new stuff. Since writing that original piece I’ve acquired two pieces of software; both of which have – so far – impressed me much.

First up is ‘ViewRanger’. I downloaded this in the week and first take I thought ‘What a load of rubbish’. However… THEN I downloaded the Glastonbury specific maps – aka ‘Worthy Farm’ – and WOW, was I impressed! Check out this screenshot:

You can see that they’ve pre-loaded the app with the relative ‘points of interest’ – heh – and if I hit ‘GPS’ it’ll tell me where I am. Rock on. Can’t wait to use this properly.

The other piece of software is from Orange. It’s called ‘GlastoNav’ and at first I really couldn’t get this to work..

..however, once they ironed out the gremlins etc this little app has turned out to be very handy indeed. Not only can I look at the (much richer interpretation) of the map, but also I can plan my schedule for the event… and THEN I can share that schedule with my fellow festival-goers!

That – so far – has again, really impressed me. 

For actual ‘mobile’ stuff, that’s all. But, I have also been given some other cool pieces of gadgetry to use/play with. One is the Flip, which I think Ewan has spoken about a fair amount – my only problem with this is that once my hour of recording is up, I can’t upload it until I get to a USB connection. Bah! We’ll see how I get on with that one… The other piece of REALLY COOL stuff I’ve been given is the Loc8tor which, hand on heart, is the best thing yet (in theory anyway).

I attach the small part to something I might lose (i.e. the other half) and then, if I do lose her, I switch the big part on and it beeps to tell me how close I am etc… I had a play before I left the house and it rocked my socks. So… again, we’ll see how we get on.

That’s it from me, I’m nearly at Glastonbury and my laptop is about to die. Thanks to Ben Smith for editing this for me and putting the media in etc… You can keep up with my exploits at http://www.glastonblog.co.uk.

See you soon!

J.

The cleverness about this campaign is the way they’re using mobile technology:

“Bloggers from the three organisations will be roaming the festival, taking pictures and video clips and posting them to  http://leavenotrace.org.uk, which is also available as a mobile website, http://m.leavenotrace.org.uk for easy access on-site. Because these posts will also be marked on a Google map, we’ll be showing where the best examples of green living are – whether it’s solar-powered showers, sculpture made from recycled materials or water-saving systems – as well as highlighting the nooks and crannies of the festival which might otherwise be missed. Plus everyone on the farm can contribute images and video can be posted to the site by sending an SMS or MMS with the keyword TIDY at the start to 07786 201 241″

The bloggers will also be using another of our favourite mobile technologies Spinvox to post to the site during the festival meaning they’ll be producing the entire site’s content from an entirely mobile platform.

Excellent stuff, but also both technologies available to everyone to use right now… It’s incredible to see how quickly mobile blogging technology is maturing.

Apologies for the occasionally-poor sound quality this week – the SMS Text News outside broadcast unit suffered a technical fault and I’ve done what I can to clean it up… we’ll replace the battery next week. In the meantime, enjoy its ‘authentic’ charm.

Listen now using the player below or see the links below for other options:

Episode link and feeds:

[Link] Direct link to this episode’s MP3 to download
[iTunes] Subscribe or listen in iTunes
[RSS] Subscribe via your feed reader or another podcatcher

Episode ‘warm-up video’:

Podcast images:

Ewan – hard at work

Dan – Not enjoying himself quite as much

—-

The contributors:

Dan Lane’s blog is at http://invalid.name. He’s CTO at Howler Tech.
James Whatley’s blog is here. He works for SpinVox doing clever social media stuff and also writes their blog. Sometimes he writes for SMS Text News and you can read all of that stuff right here.
Ben Smith is a management consultant. He has a blog, but anything worth reading is contributed here.

Sites mentioned in the podcast:

Nokia’s E71 is here and E66 is here.
Dan’s self-build phone is here.
Krystal’s Canadian mobile data article is here.
Unlimited Drinks Dublin is here.
Nokia’s SportsTracker is here.
E71blog.com is a blog. About the E71.
Salling Clicker is genius.

We’re really keen to get your feedback on the podcast – please let us know in the comments or tell Ewan – ewan@smstextnews.com.

While some of us are off gallivanting around the Maldives… sorry, ahem… A DESERT ISLAND …other bloggers, like myself, have to make do with the festival season to amuse themselves here back in the UK.

And what better festival other than the Mother of all festivals: Glastonbury!

Yes, it really IS that muddy. I took that photo myself.

Last year, I think I’m pretty safe in saying;

I was the ONLY person to live blog Glastonbury from a mobile phone.

Yes. That’s right, I blogged the whole darn thing (well as much as my battery would allow) from my Nokia N95-1 (the original silver one, the one with the REALLY poor battery, y’know?).

In fact the only reason my current blog exists is because of my then(?) obsession with Mobile Blogging.

You can go back and read some of my exploits here, here and here if you’d like.
But really, all you need to know is, at the time, the only way I could do this (AFAIK) was through VOX.

VOX has a neat little application that sits on some/most Nseries phones that you can download and is also available as one of the upload options in the Share Online app, also found on most Nseries phones.

Power wise, again only for last year, I had three N95 batteries (BL-5Fs for the true geeks among you) and these two things below:

That on the left is an independent battery charge-base and that on the right, a portable double AA battery powered phone charger.

The former proved itself to be extremely useful, then and indeed over the past year of ownership too. With that handy little device I can always have one battery in my phone, while another charges. This, of course, is all well and good until you go and lose the damn thing… which is what I did a matter of days ago.

I digress.

The thing on the right, I bought that from Amazon, thing is mind…

It . Was. Rubbish.

In fact I think it actually USED more battery power than it actually gave back. I ended up passing it onto some fellow festival-ite in our circle of tents…it conveniently came with a bunch of other adaptors – not just Nokia; covered SE, Motorola, Blackberry… the lot. You name it. So at least that much was handy about it…
However, for me – it was no good…

And don’t even start me on the quite frankly RIDICULOUS “Orange Charge Tent“.
I mean, who wants to QUEUE for an hour to charge their handset, only to discover that when they get to the front, they then have to wait around for a further two hours to watch their phone charge at an unsecured bar.
Joined up thinking really not their speciality it would seem…

So… How did I stay charged?

Well, while the Orange monkeys were missing out on potentially 3hrs of great music, I managed to find a little store amongst the clothes stalls and falafel vendors, which specialised in phone charging.
You paid a fiver a go and it was kept under lock and key and all was fine. The system the guy had running behind him reminded me a little of chargebox and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were one and the same… I’ll ask them this year and see. Anyway, this little store became a daily haunt for my good self.

In the morning I’d get up, review any content from the night before, write a quick post or two and then upload as much as I could before my battery died. After that I’d mosey on down to aforementioned phone charging establishment, pay my fiver, and then go off and meet friends who I’d arranged to meet at a later time (do you remember when we did that?!).

Later that afternoon I would pick up my phone, liaise with all the folk that had been trying to reach me for God knows how long, and then get off to another stage where upon I’d take more photos/videos that I would later, no doubt upload.

Lovely stuff.
So aside from the not-so-brilliant portable phone charger, last year was a reasonable success.

But what about this year?

Well, my VOX blog is still up and running.
So I’ve got that working just fine, but now – look at all the other things I can do!

I can upload via SMS, MMS or Email via Moblog.
I can simply make a phone call and speak a blog post through SpinVox.
I can boot up Qik and stream LIVE content direct to the internet. Not only direct to my QIK page, but if I hit ‘55’ while I’m streaming, my 500-odd followers on Twitter will get told about it too!

The plethora of Social Tools now available to the modern, festival-going geek, really… truly… is a spectacle to behold.

I shall be using ALL of those services/apps/tools I’ve listed above… and probably more.

The question is Dear Readers, which ones do YOU think I should be using?

What should your Mobile Geek of Glastonbury be packing in his rucksack to ensure a complete all round mobile performance?

Leave your suggestions below or, if you have anything you want showcased/tested over the coming festival season, email ewan@smstextnews.com

Yes – I know he’s on a ‘desert island’, but he’s already emailed me twice today with two new products that he’s been sent to give to me try out in the mud of Pilton…