Ronan Higgins is founder and CEO of Locle.com, a company specialising in location-based social networking. In addition to this he manages and runs Appsie.  Appsie is  a Dublin-based mobile software development team of 4 highly qualified full-time developers who create tailor made mobile applications.

Recently Ronan set up a Bluetooth messaging welcome for the guests at Connector #Appy Hour is also the owner of a great party house in Rathmines where I also reside.  An expert in all things mobile and a nice guy too!  Thanks Ronan and here he is with his business partner Pieter Oonk in April 2009 @ Connector No.9.

Connector is organising another great networking event at the Nokia Pop-Up Shop in Grafton St. on Thursday, July 1st at 6.30pm.  We’re calling it ‘Connector #Appy Hour’ as our 23rd monthly event will have guest speakers, including Anthony Lawless from Nokia, and Edward Conmy from the Appy Awards.  These new awards are for the best mobile apps in Ireland & the judges will be announced at the event.

We will have a raffle to give away some great prizes amongst the attendees. There will be also some fun networking games, music entertainment, food and drink throughout the evening.

To come to this event you will need to sign up to our Facebook Event and we look forward to seeing you at Connector #Appy Hour!

This is an interesting  article from the Burson Marsteller Blog….

‘Following in the footsteps of consumers, large international companies are now becoming active participants in social media. A recent Burson-Marsteller study found that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.’

Read more about Innovation_and_insights on Burson-Marsteller’s Blog:

A few months ago I was at the launch of the Vodafone 360 with guest star Dita Von Teese and given a Vodafone 360 phone to test.  I would like to express my thanks to Vodafone for the opportunity to test drive the phone which was supported by TV advertising in late 2009.

As I am lucky enough to have used all the top smart phones in recent months, I thought this phone was ‘ok’.  This Samsung phone which has a completely different operating system which takes a while to get used to I could not give it the time it needed to be mastered.  Furthermore the selection & presentation of Apps definitely will have to improve. 

I think with Vodafone starting to sell the iPhone which has 140,000 Apps, I wonder will the Vodafone 360 will be relegated to a mid-range phone?  What did you thinkofthe Vodafone 360?

It’s only hours for the Connector Christmas Party, one of the greatest events in the whole year and a must-be if you want to be connected.
As all you know Connector runs monthly meetings where people can make professional and personal connections offline. But we want people to keep their connections online as well and to encourage that, we will raffle two wonderful social mobile phones, and all the benefits will go to the Temple Street Children’s Hospital.

The winners will get an INQ Mini 3G, courtesy of the mobile network 3. This little treat that we are offering has an authentic Twitter application, which will let you be always on’ and send tweets and retweets via the internet rather than using SMS.
It weights only 90 gr., has a 2 megapixels camera, usb and bluetooth and it also includes a ‘plug and play’ HSDPA modem enabling high-speed wireless broadband on PCs and Macs. And all this things in a tiny candy bar shaped phone with the coolest design!

Last week, we were proud to announce that one of our own, Izabela Zelazna, was chosen to compete in the Meteor Apprentice competition. Izabela has written a diary entry about her first task in the competition:

My first task in the Meteor Apprentice competition was all about social media. We were given a week to get as many fans as we could for Facebook fan page.

‘Use all possible social media and scream about your case’, my friend told me. Scream is good, I thought, however I didn’t want to create too much noise. I think that people are usually reluctant and slow to join Facebook Fan Pages these days, not wanting their News feed to be spammed.

First of all, I decided to record nice and friendly videos and post them on my Facebook page and YouTube channel. I wanted to spread the word through the networks and personal contacts that I have made so far. Knowing that Meteor is about entertainment, engagement and humour, I wanted to incorporate it all, and make people interact and smile.

The number of people signing in was not impressive though. Facebook may have had spectacular results in reaching 100mln users in 9 months but it was essential for me to understand that my audience is dispersed and the key is to have an interesting twist and share worthwhile content.

With that in mind, half way through the task, I decided to use another angle –to position myself as a foreigner, who aspires to succeeed and boldly goes for a high profile job. I sent this positive release to the press and it worked perfectly. My press release got coverage in two Polish newspapers in Ireland (Gazeta.ie, Polski Express) as well as Polish newspaper in Poland – Gazeta Krakowska. I also asked my international friends from Amsterdam for support.

So after all the effort and campaigning, I ended up with nearly 780 of the most diverse and multinational fans in the whole competition.

This has great potential. What should the next step be?

I was at a great lunch reception in Bentleys on St. Stephens Green on Thursday at the launch of Vodafone 360.  Why was it so good ?  Well the amazingly stunnalicious Dita Von Teese was there along with loads of people I know including my ex-colleagues at Vodafone and bunch of fellow bloggers & tech journalists too.  Plus the food was great, location perfect and it was a sunny day in Dublin so thanks to Niall Harbison for the invite & Fred for the great video below.

Pictured is the internationally renowned burlesque star and style icon, Dita von Teese who is surrounded by a 360 degree wall of mirrors. Unfortunately she only seemed to be in the room for a couple of minutes and no attempt seemed to be made to accomodate photo bloggers to get photos of her or with her.

As for the service, it looked great on the touch screen devices it was demonstrated on and it defintely something I’d like to try as my operator O2 don’t have anthing quite like it.  In essence, Vodafone 360 is a brand new set of internet services for your mobile and PC which gathers all your friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites in one place.  At its heart Vodafone 360 has the most personal address book available, bringing together all of your contacts from your mobile phone, social networks and other internet accounts.

Nokia – ‘Connecting People’ has been slightly amended in the blog post today as we have some good news for all Nokia mobile phone users @ Electric Picnic this weekend.  Nokia are providing a great green solution for the dreaded problem of a dying or dead mobile phone battery at a music festival !  Now you can potentially save your festival, save on electricity & also get the latest information about the festival @ the Nokia Recharge Pod !

And don’t forget to go to Nokia’s ovi.com where you can register for ‘Ovi Synch’ & back up all your phone numbers & more for free – this is a smart move in case of a festival mishap where you lose your phone & all your numbers !

Here is the message from Nokia about the Recharge Pods -

“Nokia are delighted to announce that they are contributing to the Carbon Responsibility Policy of the Electric Picnic by bringing for the 2nd year, the “Recharge Pod”. This is an eco-friendly, freestanding wind and solar power mobile phone charging station, capable of charging up to 120 Nokia handsets an hour for free!

The Nokia Recharge and Information area will keep you constantly updated with up to the minute festival news, updates, and information on all the services on offer at the Electric Picnic, and all while charging your Nokia handset in the Recharge Pod.

The Recharge Pod has been specifically designed for use at outdoor events and festivals, as it doesn’t require a power supply; the entire system is self sufficient and runs from its own renewable solar and wind power sources.  The Recharge Pod also powers its own lighting; utilizing low power LED’s to illuminate the inside, the turbine and the branding.”

Sian Gray, Head of Marketing for Nokia Ireland comments, “We are committed to doing things differently and reducing our own energy consumption.  We are delighted to be bringing back the “Recharge Pod” to Electric Picnic 2009.

On the way in to Croke Park, we came across one of the contestants for Total Xposure, a competition to become the next presenter of TV3’s flagship entertainment show Xposé.

The show is down to 3 finalists, Ruth, Sean, and Simon. Simon Atkins was at Croke Park telling people to vote for him for tomorrow’s final voting as he is from Mayo. He was joined by two former contestants, Michael Coghlan and Daniella Moyles.

To vote for Simon for the Total Xposure competition, text SIMON to the 53307 or ring 1513 712 303.

Check out the the site for more information >here>>

Best of luck guys!

“I’m an ideas man.”

 This is perhaps the most unmistakable quality about Don Mullan. Ideas. He is full of them. Social entrepreneur, humanitarian, author, world traveler, top mobile phone photographer, and ideas man.

The Connector Team had the pleasure of spending a couple hours with Don a couple of weeks ago. We chatted about his recent and highly successful exhibition of photos from his Nokia phones. The exhibition, called “A Thousand Reasons for Living” was the world’s first amateur photography exhibition based solely on mobile phone cameras.

The exhibition, put on by Nokia Ireland, was a huge hit. Look at Don’s photographs, and it’s easy to see why!

It was a great pleasure to meet Don and we hope to hear more of great work from the ideas man himself!