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There’s only one week left until the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 , so we invite you to register now . Be a part of high-value, intimate conversations with people working throughout the world of mobile, from garage developers to industry luminaries. The summit will take place May 7, 2010 , in Mountain View, California and will be an exploration of the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. We are looking forward to some amazing discussion and debate about mobile with participants like : Sponsor Deb Schultz of Altimeter group Patrick Chanezon, Don Dodge & Bob Meese of Google Ted Morgan of Skyhook Wireless Scott Raney and Tom Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures Adam Blum of Rhomobile Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Brent Simmons of Newsgator Technologies Patrick Burns of DASH7 Alliance As with our first event, the Real-Time Web Summit last October, the Mobile Summit will be in the “unconference” format. Laura Fittion, founder of oneforty.com , had these thoughts about ReadWriteWeb’s last summit: “There were a lot of investors there and it was a great dialogue between startups and investors. The unconference format was great because it got away from the bogus who-is in the real-time Web, and made it who-wants-to-be. You didn’t have to be big and influential to get your ideas across – if it was a good idea then it got heard. It wasn’t just Twitter, it was many things real time, defined pretty expansively.” How Unconferences Work What’s an unconference all about? Here’s the idea: Convene an incredible group of people, frame the discussion, ask important questions, then guide participants in building an agenda for the day to maximize the value of the event and minimize hot air. Martin Källström, CEO of the real-time blog and feed tracking service Twingly brought his team over from Sweden for our last event. ” Last year we happened across one of Kaliya Hamlin’s unconference events,” he told us. “We spent a couple of hours there and it was an amazing experience. The unconference format is an amazing way for things to happen; it gets everyone to lower their defenses. By opening peoples’ minds to ‘this is about whatever we want it to be about”, they look at how they can create value. ” Or, as Google’s Brett Slatkin said when using the elite FooCamp events as a way to explain the unconference format: “Foo-style [unconferencing is] always way better than talks.” As with our previous event, the Mobile Summit will be facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin , who in our opinion is the best in the business at this style of event. We’re using the same venue too, the beautiful Computer History Museum. Mobile was one of our top five trends last year and continues to undergo explosive growth , so our aim with this event is to help you navigate the opportunities. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of mobile! Because it will be you – the attendees – who ultimately set the agenda. You can begin adding your suggestions now. We will have two main tracks at this Summit, Development and Business . Here’s a sample of some of the topics we’ll explore in both of these tracks: Geo-location services – what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing – as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations – the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking – how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things – the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality – the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based – Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. If you’re a company in the mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire , WorldMate , Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo . The ReadWriteWeb team is excited about our second event and we can’t wait to discuss the opportunities in Mobile with you on May 7. You can find banners and logos to link to our event here , if you’re so inclined. We hope to see you on May 7! Discuss

So you want to be the next big shot entrepreneur to come up with an idea that will change the world, but can’t seem to come up with that golden ticket of an idea? Well perhaps you need to look no further than the world of art for inspiration. While looking through Hacker News posts, I stumbled across an illustrated SlideShare presentation from San Francisco-based cartoonist Betsy Streeter that suggests ways artists can unleash their “creative beasts” hiding within – an interesting approach to creativity that aspiring entrepreneurs can also take advantage of. Sponsor According to Streeter, the best way to get started is to first “give it permission to come out and play” by throwing away rules and judgements. For artists this means just free drawing at letting whatever comes to mind make its way onto the paper; for entrepreneurs, this means when you are brainstorming, don’t throw any ideas away – everything and anything is free game, including the “impossible”. Let Out the Creative Beast View more presentations from betsystreeter . The second step, Streeter says, is to encourage the beast “by appreciating exactly what happens,” no matter what form it takes. “When you look at a drawing, see it as it is, not what you thing it is ’supposed’ to be,” says Streeter. This is really just an extension of the first rule; by encouraging whatever random results come of your brainstorming, you are telling your brain that its okay to think outside of the box, which allows for the further flowing of the creative juices. This practice actually reminds me of a method for ideation I learned during graduate school. The process was a bit different but the theory was the same; truly creative ideas are generated through a process of throwing out the rule book and encouraging a free-for-all of ideas, no matter how silly. In the method I learned, a group sits around a whiteboard with markers and a pad of sticky notes and slaps any idea for the given question or problem onto the board. We started with very broad questions, like “How could life be made perfect?” and would encourage the posting of even the most absurd of ideas. The things you think of when you are actually trying to be obnoxious are often the ones that can be molded into a fresh idea. For instance, someone said life would be perfect if they could instantly know what anyone was thinking, which over time actually morphed into an idea for a mobile translation application. The lesson to learn here is that truly innovative ideas don’t appear in your brain, and you can’t simply sit down, think real hard and squeeze them out. By brainstorming and teaching your brain accept the previously unacceptable, you have a higher probability of producing a new and creative idea. This process, of course, works even better in groups. Discuss

Self-proclaimed “the quick and simple way to capture and document your tax deductible mileage”, this site does exactly that: it lets you turn you mileage into fiscal savings at the end of the year. How does that work? Well, what you must understand in order to grasp the basic concept of tax deductible mileage is that whenever you use your car for business or medical purposes, you are actually accumulating deductions that could help you lower the amount of tax money that has to be paid as the year comes to an end. This app lets you keep track of that tax-saving mileage. Read more Learn more about Automilez.com in Dataopedia.com Find out how much Automilez.com is worth with Stimator.com

Microsoft Outlook has historically been at the heart of document-based environments that for many years have ruled the enterprise. But the walls that have guarded this document-based world are crumbling fast. Outlook is now more than a message center. It is becoming a collaborative space where the lines between Google Docs and other social applications start to blur. Sponsor Three extensions exemplify this trend. These services are quite similar. Xobni has the longest track record. it started as a consumer-based service, gaining a following for its search capabilities in Outlook. Search is Outlook’s inherent weakness. Neither DocVerse nor Harmony have deep search capabilities like Xobni. That may only be a temporary issue for DocVerse. Last week, Google announced that it had acquired DocVerse. We expect that will in some way translate into better search in the weeks and months ahead for the DoVerse service. Harmony Harmony is the newest of the group. The Mainsoft service is a mash up between Google Docs and Outlook. It also puts SharePoint directly into Outlook. Like most Outlook extensions, Harmony pulls Google Docs or Sharepoint into an Outlook sidebar. The service is intended to ease attachment overload by creating a central place where people can access Google Docs. It’s a drag and drop environment that allows people to drag email attachments into the Harmony sidebar. A document may also be dragged into an email where it appears as a link for the recipient. The recipient may access the document by signing into their Google Docs or Google Apps account. The service is now available as a free download. It is compatible with Sharepoint 2007 and Sharepoint 2010. It will be available later this year as an extension for Microsoft Office. DocVerse DocVerse plays a similar role to Harmony. The service synchronizes in the Outlook Sidebar. The widget associates a link to the document that is getting the edit. Every modification is synced. When multiple people work on a document, the updates are made through the plug-in and versions are stored online. Xobni Xobni provides what Outlook really needs. Great search. It will search Outlook and external social networks and third party applications to get a fuller profile of the contact. In November, the company released Xobni Enterprise . The service gives I.T. administrators the ability to deploy and manage the plugin across the enterprise. it also offers integration across services such as Salesforce CRM and Sharepoint. Outlook Has Come A Long Way The old days are over for Outlook. It’s now entering an era where the degree of collaboration will center around a hyperlinked environment more so than document-based systems. The enterprise is becoming more web-oriented and Outlook is no exception to the change. Discuss

One of our favorite geeks has just released an e-book on best practices for Twitter use. Chris Pirillo ’s 140 Twitter Tips, a 14-page PDF, is a concise compendium of useful guidelines and helpful hints for every kind of Twitter user, from doing-it-wrong noobs to social media addicts. From the best time of day to get retweets to how to process public criticism, the e-book also covers a broad range of common issues users experience. Sponsor Some of the tips might seem like common sense – until you realize you might not be adhering very well to them, yourself. Most of us are occasionally guilty of using too much jargon and oversharing (or undersharing, in the case of some more professionally oriented accounts). The e-book costs only $1.40, or you can hold out for the $14 deluxe version, which will contain more than 140 adorable illustrations from Kristin Marshall . Click here to purchase 140 Twitter Tips from GnomeTomes, the new publishing arm of Pirillo’s social media empire/blog network Lockergnome . Other GnomeTomes include guides for YouTube and Windows 7. Discuss