Mobalis & Estrella Power Reventour With qode®

NeoMedia's patented qode® technology, which links users via cell phones to the Mobile Internet, will be used by Mobalis and Estrella to power Reventour 2007.

Reventour is a vibrant music festival, which brings together Latin American stars Moenia, Nikki Klan, Kumbia All Stars, and Maria Jose. The 20 city tour kicked off June 16th in Cancun and will be incorporating 2-dimensional barcodes to provide visitors with a truly unique interactive experience.

The promotion runs from June 18th to December 1st, 2007 and entices visitors to download qode onto their mobile phone and earn points by clicking on 2D codes placed throughout the venue. Points can then be redeemed for prizes such as CDs, video games, and Xbox video game consoles.

Mobalis, a multimedia mobile marketing agency and one of NeoMedia's partners in Latin America, offering a "one-stop shop" complete mobile solution for the Mexican market, is responsible for the interactive implementation at Reventour 2007.

For more information, please visit the Reventour Blog and the official Reventour Myspace.

NeoMedia Names William Hoffman As CEO

NeoMedia Technologies announced today that it has appointed William Hoffman, 45, a senior technology executive with extensive global technology and telecommunications industry experience, as its chief executive officer, effective June 18.

Mr. Hoffman replaces Charles W. Fritz, NeoMedia's chairman and founder, who has served as the company's interim CEO since December.

"NeoMedia gains a dynamic leader with hands-on tech industry experience and a track record of driving market adaptation and revenue growth," said Mr. Fritz. "After a search of nearly six months, our Board is confident that he is the right man at the right time to guide NeoMedia, and that he is ideally suited to help leverage our strong portfolio of patented technologies, products and services.

"It is also important to note," said Mr. Fritz, "that Mr. Hoffman brings a unique combination of talents and background to NeoMedia. He is a former military officer who became a corporate leader, and who has known nothing but success in his career."

Prior to joining NeoMedia, Mr. Hoffman served as CEO of Uniqua Technologies, Inc. in Atlanta, a company he co-founded in 2003 with the acquisition of the assets of TIC Enterprises, LLC, and the merger of Vectorlink Communications Corporation. TIC was a $100 million subsidiary of NUI Corporation, and TIC (now Technology Solutions Corp) is a national leader in sales and marketing of wireless telecom products and services. There, he was responsible for driving revenue growth of 1,140% in 18 months.

Previously, as the CEO and a director of mBlox, Inc, the world's largest mobile transaction network, Mr. Hoffman served in London, Atlanta and Sunnyvale, CA. There he focused on reorganizing, restructuring, and then rapidly growing the business to over 180 countries. His responsibilities included capital structure, Board, organization, strategy, and execution of the firm's business plan. He was instrumental in developing partnerships with more than 500 wireless operators around the globe including Vodafone®, T- Mobile®, Verizon® and Cingular®, and achieving a $75 million annual run- rate in 18 months time for the world's largest provider of messaging infrastructure.

Mr. Hoffman, who has served as president, CEO and COO for several other telecommunications companies, also spent 8 years with Sprint managing Sprint's business services throughout the state of Florida. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Auburn University, which he attended on a special U.S. Army scholarship. Mr. Hoffman served in the U.S. Army from 1983-87, attaining the rank of Captain.

Nokia, KPN, & O2 Join Mobile Codes Consortium

Pressure Mounts for Industry Standards as Telecom Giants Join the Mobile Codes Consortium.

Telecom industry leaders Nokia, KPN and Telefónica O2 Europe have joined the Mobile Codes Consortium (MC2) – a cross-company group setup to promote unified standards in camera cell-phone barcode reading technology. They join the original founding members Gavitec, Hewlett-Packard, NeoMedia Technologies and Publicis Groupe, to form MC2’s steering group, which will be responsible for guiding the new organization.

MC2’s aim is to accelerate the adoption of code-reading technologies that will enable users of mobile camera-phones pointed at a printed or displayed 2D barcode, to activate the phone to connect to a particular web-page, download coupons or other digital files, make a phone call or send a text message at the click of a button. Based on the widespread adoption of this technology in Japan and the growing popularity of camera-phones, the MC2 believes that this will have many important applications for both the marketing and public communications industries.

"KPN is constantly exploring new innovative services for its customers and considers 2D barcodes to be an important breakthrough development, offering consumers considerable advantages while also generating interesting business opportunities for participating companies", said Marcel Annaka, Business Incubator of KPN.

“This technology could make traditional advertising as interactive as the internet, both in terms of helping customers go straight to offers, and in terms of helping marketing agencies measure which ads are generating what levels of response,” said Thomas Curwen, Planning Director at Publicis.

“The standards for wireless technology in Asia far exceed those in Europe and America. A unified consortium is the first step to worldwide advancement and NeoMedia is committed to such a partnership,” said Chas Fritz, CEO of NeoMedia Technologies.

And Tim Kindberg, a senior researcher from HP Labs, who has been working with mobile code technologies, said: “MC2 believes that standards or recommendations are necessary to make the technology as popular and useful in the Europe and the US as it already is in Japan and South Korea, where market dominant companies set the
standards.”

Kindberg added: “If, on the other hand, the new technology is allowed to develop without standards, it will result in gradual fragmentation, with readers and barcodes not working consistently together. This could prevent the widespread adoption of the technology by both the public and the marketing industry and may confuse customers.”

The newly created steering group will now focus on the best approach to enable MC2 to press for widely accepted industry standards. In the first instance, this will mean guiding it until it can join an existing mobile industry body, where the group will be better able to meet its objectives of recommending business models, technology standards, and methods of making mobile code technology useful to the public and to the marketing industry.

Source: Mobile Codes Consortium