Yesterday, a group of researchers from the University of Ottawa School of Business asked us what the new game-breaking social applications will be. No one knows what the next Twitter will be, but it’s fairly certain it will come from the mobile world.

Last night’s “Mobile Trends in a Changing World” event, hosted by L’Atelier and Stephane Delbecque, brought representatives of four of the most innovative mobile application companies together to explore the evolving world of mobile social networking and organizing.

The four companies represent the major trends in mobile: payments, media sharing, location-based social networking and mobile health care.

Continue Reading »

Here we were Sunday afternoon, the last day of the BNP Paribas Open, where Bill Gates and his wife Melinda were attending the men and women’s finals and took the time to come over to our suite to say hello in person.

In the picture above, Mr. Gates is demoing the Concierge mapping application powered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth technology. Although very easy to use, I was surprised by his agility in interacting with Surface and asked him if he had one at home. He answered that he has one in his office.

Considering his busy agenda, Mr. Gates spent a fairly large amount of time with all of us. He went through several Surface applications including the Newsreader that aggregates the news of the week from MSNBC, and the paint program. Gates actually autographed his name using Paint (picture below).

Mr. Gates appreciated the fact that L’Atelier, once again, partnered with Microsoft - this time to introduce two Microsoft Surface tables to the VIP guests of BNP Paribas and Bank of the West.