Video: What’s Next For Mobile, A Discussion on Augmented Reality, Custom Content, and Video Games

One of the best ways to conduct research isn’t just to go to the field, but centralized the field. Last week, mobile analyst Michael Gartenberg was in town for Apple’s new video iPod announcement and there were dozens of others in town for GigaOm’s Mobilize conference, so we organized a Tweetup on Union Square in SF. The topic? The future of mobile. 30-40 folks showed up from startups, PR firms, folks from the mobile team at Microsoft and even the Financial Times.

What will you learn by watching the video? See how GeoVector is piloting new applications for Augmented Reality. You’ll hear some exploratory discussions on how augmented reality (see other YouTube videos) can appear in a variety of combinations with the physical and virtual –beyond geo caching games. You’ll hear about how custom content from Off Beat Guide is now on mobile devices like the Amazon Kindle, and some demos of the latest augmented reality applications are quickly appearing on the scene. We also got a tour of Palm Pre’s Synergize product which syncs and aggregates social graphs into one location. We also took a close look at the new video iPod which could give Cisco’s Flip Camera (which I used to create this video –which Cisco gave to me to demo)

What’s the trend? Convergence. Mobile devices are giving birth to applications that triangulate geo data, compasses, and social data and serve up unique experiences. Facebook just released a lite version of it’s site –in order to meet the needs of the mobile experience around the globe.

Last night, I played the new Beatles Rock Band edition, it’s important to note how video game entertainment has both social components and a revival of music made popular decades ago –although some musicians worry this detracts from people playing real musical instruments. Expect other genres to appear as this expands to Hip Hop with Snoop Dogg. We’ve already seen mobile versions of these games appear, so it’ll be interesting to see how mobile device that conncect to each other make these games portable, social, and who knows what.

Stay tuned, next month I’ll have a tweetup around the topic of just mobile social networks like FourSquare, Twitter, BrightKyte, and whatever comes next.