Mobile explosion projects the future where you want.

Byline: David Tebbutt

Mobile explosion projects the future where you want

David Tebbutt

While not the only game in town, mobile phones and other handheld gizmos grabbed plenty of attention at Innovate Europe in mid-May. The event, held in the Spanish hi-tech city of Zaragoza, brings together inventors, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and early adopters, plus a sprinkling of media types and facilitators to help things go with a swing.

This year, for one penny plus extras, Ryanair flew us to the event, which brings a whiff of Silicon Valley to Europe. After last year's rather hand-wringing examination of the European innovation scene, this year witnessed a complete transformation. The place was bursting at the seams with new ideas.

Here, I'll concentrate on the Zed projector. Take the case off and it's even smaller, and can be embedded inside a phone, a PDA or a laptop. It is from Digislide, although quite how an Australian outfit got into a European event is a bit of a mystery. Whether it's a clip-on accessory or a component, the Zed projector pushes out a VGA or SVGA colour image with a maximum diagonal of 1.5 metres. Suddenly, personal interaction can become social -- just point your mobile at the nearest wall. PowerPoint anyone?

Of course, you need stuff to project but there's plenty of that around. For instance, just the week before Zaragoza, Ross Mayfield at Socialtext showed me his Miki -- a wiki for a mobile phone.