Students at Leeds Metropolitan University created this outstanding augmented reality app for Android and Apple devices.

The Future of Meetings app allows a user to view a venue/meeting space in 3-D, under their control.

Not only is this a great effort to merge apps with the meeting industry, but this project also got IT students involved in thinking about the future of our industry.

Check this out!

Born out of the desire to share multiple photos from a smartphone at once--especially for use while at conferences and special events--Clark Wimberly, from the Android and Me tech site, developed the light-weight Photobooth app.

Photobooth allows users to easily (and without the addition of goofy, unnecessary special effects found on other apps) combine photos into a single file, just like a strip of pictures from those old school, real-life photo booths (anyone remember those?).

And better yet, Photobooth is free (right now, at least). Maybe future releases will somehow include a video component?

Anyhow, check out the awesome Photobooth app video below if you're confused or simply need some amusement.

At 2 p.m. Central today, the MPI HQ staff will be celebrating two huge events: 1) One+ won 20 major awards this year for design and editorial excellence and 2) the launch (at WEC 2011) of the industry's first fully-interactive, universal tablet app for One+. 

These are both industry firsts—no meetings and events industry magazine has even won 20 awards in one year, and this year's bounty brings the total in the magazine's three-year history to an amazing 34 awards.

The One+ tablet app is also groundbreaking for the meetings industry offering the award-winning One+ content each month on any tablet on the market. Currently the app is available on iPad and all Android-based tablets and will be available on the BlackBerry PlayBook later this fall. Readers can enjoy each issue of One+ in amazingly clear quality and once an issue is downloaded off the bookshelf there is no need for an Internet connection—allowing members to read their copy of One+ anywhere at anytime—including while on an airplane! 

You can download the completely interactive tablet app by visiting www.mpiweb.org/apps.

Happy reading!

Location-based apps are the bee's knees these days. If you're not checking in via Foursquare, maybe you're using Facebook or Google+. 

With Banjo, though, you can find people and view updates without having to check in or belong to a social network. 

“Every day, people use mobile phones to access social networks to connect with the world around them. With so much activity, it’s hard to connect the dots between all the information being shared. Banjo was created with this in mind.” said Damien Patton, CEO of Banjo. “Banjo provides a layer of intelligence on top of existing networks so people can easily discover friends and new people or places around them, regardless of what social network they are on.”

Here's an example from the press release of one way Banjo works. Imagine you're at an airport but didn’t check in, tweet or make a social post. However, your friend tweets about his flight being delayed. With Banjo, you can discover that your friend is only a few gates away. 

Or maybe a video is better at explaining it.

Banjo is available for iPhone and Android. 

It's hip to be open--and increasingly recognized as business smart. Relevant examples? See Google's open-source Android mobile operating system--now the world leader due largely to the lack of cost for phone manufacturers to use and customize it to their liking. Android has also enabled phone manufacturers to reduce the cost of the devices and thus bring smartphone technology to those consumers previously ignored, the billions of people priced out of using advanced tech.

Creative Commons, publisher of the outstanding new (and free!) book, The Power of Open, is another success story. Leveraging innovative new approaches to the stringent copyright world, Creative Commons has revolutionized intellectual property ownership and usage for the digital age. The Power of Open (currently available in English, Japanese and Portuguese) shares best practices through real-life examples in the implementation of open-source ethos and provides some invaluable Creative Commons 101. This is a great place for meeting professionals to get started in Creative Commons education and a resourceful read for those already working with the new standard in copyright.

You may recall back in July 2009, when Joi Ito was CEO of Creative Commons (he's now chair of CC and director of the MIT Media Lab), we published what would become an award-winning profile about him and his group's works: "Ambassador of the New Breed".

Combine the One+ Ito profile and The Power of Open and you've got a strong pair of works from which to embrace Creative Commons and real openness.

When Google announced its first smartphone enabled with near-field communication (NFC), late last year, it felt to me like they were jumping the gun a bit. NFC was in its infancy in the U.S., after all. But a lot of activity (and funding) has since been thrust into developing the market, infrastructure and possibilities of using your smartphone like a credit or debit card--a convenient mobile payment system.

Now, Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, have been named as the first testing grounds for Isis, a joint NFC project from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in partnership with local businesses. Isis will take flight early next year and, as long as the hardware is widespread (there are already several NFC-enabled Android smartphones and depending on the news story, the iPhone 5 may or may not have NFC--this seems to change ever week), NFC will be an outstanding technology for meetings and events.

The following video shows the variety of current possibilities for NFC...at a special event, no less.

Honeycomb--the name for the forthcoming Android 3.0 mobile operating system, created specifically for tablet computers--has been the subject of a great deal of tech rumor and anticipation ever since it was first announced last year. Well, the wait is over--the following teaser video was released at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

Not only is the user interface mouth watering, but the functionality of an operating system designed 100% with tablet computing in mind, is precisely what the mobile tech world has been waiting for!

New Android-based tablets will debut with Honeycomb this season...and keep in mind there won't be just one piece of hardware running this, Honeycomb will be the standard in tablet computer operating systems by the end of 2011.

This important evolution of the Android and tablet landscape will force Apple to up their game or the iPad will fade swiftly. Android tablets already come in all sizes...from slightly larger than smart phones to full iPad size. Also at CES, Motorola teased their XOOM tablet, running Honeycomb it has twice the computing power of the iPad.

The concept of considering, much less actually voting upon a "person of the year" for a mobile phone operating system sounds absurd. Not the case with Android--the community-empowered upstart that has, in two years of existence, become the dominant mobile operating system in North America and is on track to take the world very soon.

It is the community behind Android which legitimizes the discussion of a person of the year. Androinica has a poll set to identify the 2010 Android Person of the Year--quite different than the Android of the Year--but the choice is clear for me.

I met Androinica's Andrew Kameka at the Big Android BBQ in October--the greatest gathering of the community to date--which is also where I met Steve Kondik. Kondik (aka Cyanogen) has been perhaps the most influential unpaid OS developer for the Android community. He's got an immensely strong team of developers, too, but as an individual Android POTY, he clearly takes the cake.

Check out our profile of Kondik in the Nov/Dec issue of One+!

This week I spotted two new Androids at MPI's international headquarters. EVO 4G Androids, to be precise.

I'm overjoyed to see greater adoption here of smart phones running the open source Android operating system. Both associate editors at One+ (Jason Hensel and I) have been rocking Android phones since the system's early days, standing up for the newcomer as it battled Apple's iOS (used on the iPhone and iPad) for market share.

But now, two years after it was first released, Android is on track to be the No. 1 mobile operating system in North America by year's end! On a related note, the Wall Street Journal has a poll asking readers' opinions on the best mobile operating system--with a total of almost 10,000 respondents right now, the clear leader is Android which currently has more than 60% of the vote!

There's clearly a place for iOS and Android, but I'm overjoyed to see this growth.

Should you be seeking a little more Android geekery, you'll want to check out the November issue of One+--complete with a short profile on Steve Kondik, creator of the custom Android OS CyanogenMod. Really now, how many people have we profiled that have received a cease-and-desist order from Google?

Oh yeah, and now a German company will build your own custom Android phone!

Enjoy!

We've all heard about how relatively archaic the computing technology used to send a man to the moon was: "less computing power than a washing machine. Now we're really seeing how new, widely distributed tech is being manipulated and pushed to the limit, this time not by the government but by do-it-yourself geek collectives.

Take a look at your smart phone. Hopefully after WEC and through One+ tech coverage, you've developed a new appreciation for the computing power in your hand. It was groovy fun and games earlier this year when some tinkerers used an Android G1 smart phone as the brain for a robot, but the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation has taken the open-source Android OS to new heights.

Attaching the awesome, yet sadly out of production, Android-based Nexus One smart phone to a rocket, the group launched the device to 28,000 feet...with the phone's video recorder running.

“The purpose of flying the Nexus One is to find a low-cost satellite solution,” said Thomas Atchison, chairman of the Mavericks Foundation. “The radio, processing power, sensors and cameras in smart phones potentially have the same capability as those in satellites.”

We're now turning smart phones into robots and investigating their use as low-cost satellites. 

I almost feel embarrassed that I merely use my smart phone as a social networking device, for listening to podcasts and Internet radio, checking e-mail and, well, as a phone.

(*Outstanding graphic from g1wallz)