I was a little jet-lagged and failed to pick a winner for our caption contest. To that end, we encourage you, the readers, to pick the best caption and that caption writer will receive an Aliph Jawbone. Voting closes tomorrow, Tuesday, at noon.

UPDATE – Looks like BinaryBiker (“seamen” line) takes it. Thanks for playing!

There’s no telling if this product will ever ship, but PacketVideo was showing off a little “transmitter” for WiFi-enabled — and, presumably, non-WiFi — phones that allows you to serve content to almost any handset. They showed it at MWC last week and the little puck-sized server was sending video to a stock iPhone. It’s all very pie-in-the-sky, letting users view mobile content even when they’re not getting a mobile signal.

PacketVideo Mobile Broadcast Receiver Delivers TV Services to Existing Handsets [Slashphone]

It has been said that there is no party like a CrunchGear party because a CrunchGear party never comes to an end. This, friends, was true about our strange little meet-up in a weird paella place near the Fira last Wednesday where I got to meet some cool entrepreneurs with actually interesting products and the venture capitalists who love them.

The event started inauspiciously. The original location I had found fell through at the absolute last minute and I sent everyone down the street to an odd place that I had lunch at the previous day. We trekked up to what was apparently once an attic and was now a hot, kind of tight upstairs dining room. We started the night off with beers and a local then ordered tapas for all. I wandered from attendee to attendee — more on them in future posts — and put some faces to the shining lights of Barcelona’s tech scene which is quite vibrant. No where have I seen anything quite like the products and projects some of the attendees are working on, which made me glad I got to meet some of these guys away from the show floor.

Thanks to everyone who showed up and please drop me a line with more information on your start up for inclusion into MC, TC, or CG in the next week or so.
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Just converted Neo’s promo video for your wee-phone-loving edification. Don’t say I never gave you nuthin’.

Well this is interesting. As manufacturers make bigger and bigger handsets, Dubai-based Neo is making one of the tweeist handsets known the man. The 808i has a 4-megapixel camera, WiFi, and plays MP3s and MPEG4s. It’s also small enough to be ingested by a Shi Tzu.

They should be available in the US shortly, with no carrier mentioned. I suspect this will be an online sales play although the ladies of Neo didn’t offer much info. Time will tell.

Neo is now looking to launch globally targeting, Europe, USA and Asian markets. On receiving its FCC, CE and GCF certifications, Neo phones are now fully certified and tested. Neo will also be launching 3 more handsets by the end of the year.

Product Page

I lost quite a bit of this video but here’s a look at GestureTek’s EyeMobile system that uses a phone’s camera to create a gesture-based experience for maps and games. It worked really well and could be a way to add interesting interactivity features without adding an accelerometer to the package.

Product Page

He was talking about the future of mobile and his point was fairly simple: have faith. Things can and will get better with better and easier access to high-speed data over the air and a potential 10-fold decrease in prices. As he pointed out, the only way to make networked mobile gaming as popular as something like World of Warcraft is to offer gamers 1 gigabyte of data transfer a month for something like $10 — something you’d be hard-pressed to offer right now. With the introduction of open platforms and the eventually movement away from handset and to “networked tool,” he sees true non-voice-centric mobile networking as a true and potent force for change.

And just to remind you: he liked the iPhone. Take that, haters!

A lot of us forget that IP-based media, in the aggregate, is unfairly distributed. Overlay a heat map on the globe and you’d see white hot action in most of Asia, warmish action in Europe, and a tepid glow in the US. Then head over to developing nations and it would probably be almost dark. That’s why Spice is trying to sell videos on mini-optical disks that pop into your cellphone. Some parts of India have 1% DVD penetration, so there’s still a chance for something like this to take hold. Is it a great solution? Probably not. Is it acceptable? Sure.

These guys are actually more of a media company than a handset manufacturer, it looks like, but these prototypes are actually fairly compelling.

Yesterday I asked you all to name this block guy. He’s still nameless but he got drunk last night and his head fell off.

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Saw a very cool demo of an upcoming technology by Blom. It’s basically oblique, rendered navigation in three dimensions. The company takes aerial pictures of an area and extrapolates the angles and shadows to make 3D buildings with all the features of the real buildings. It only works on PCs now, but their oblique photography is in some navigation systems including some of Nokia’s offerings.

Product Page

For some insane reason, SpinVox made hundreds of these little guys and you can go to the website and sent a message and some interns will change the position of the guys. I don’t know what they’re smoking, but I asked for some and they gave me a doll. Click to see them all.

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Need a phone for your next manure-picking-up job? Have we got one for you. It’s the JCB Toughphone. They’re selling it in the UK right now and there’s a 3 year warranty and IP54 rating for splash, shock, drop, and dust resistance. It has up to 4 hours of talk time and 200 hours of standby.

Fun Fact #1: I just realized what a JCB was as described in Nizlopi’s JCB Song. I figured it was a tractor but who knew?

Fun Fact #2: The guy who showed me this winged it down the floor and when he brought it back the whole phone was in Russian but didn’t break.

Product Page

We see Golla at almost every show and they keep showing off nicely designed cases and bags for laptops and mobile gear. Now they have a new line of backpacks and some sleeves for different sized laptops — up to 17 inches. They don’t quite fit in with the little booths selling “unified mobile development platforms” but it’s nice to see a bit of color.

Product Page

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Friends, welcome to the MWC 2008 caption contest featuring the SeaBees of the conference floor. The picture is sadly a bit dark but I’m sure you can make out their jaunty uniforms and sassy smiles. What, then, should we caption this image. The best entry, left in comments and judged by the CG staff, gets an Jawbone Bluetooth headset. Start captioning! The contest closes tomorrow at noon EST.

It’s not quite vaporware, it’s not quite ready to ship, and it’s not quite first to market anymore. But don’t we all love the Readius, Polymer Vision’s foldable e-book? I saw the old girl again awaiting shipment “later this year.” She was even next to a bunch of shipping boxes, as if the Polymer Vision elves were eagerly awaiting the first batch of devices fresh from the oven.

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