Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 201

It would appear the flash mob phenomenon of a couple of years ago has crossed into the mainstream. Vodafone and Channel 4 have been running several 'secret' gigs in the UK by sending text messages to random users.

This week it was Brighton's turn and the assembled games executives for the Develop conference were treated to post-punk band Razorlight rocking out on the beach opposite the conference hotel. For some of us, though, the Razorlight experience was more intimate.

To cut a long story short, me and a mate from EA were at the bar in the Grand hotel about 1am. Razorlight were at the bar. We were vivacious, they were friendly. We remembered the Vodafone connection, wow, the gig must be on Vodafone Live!, let's download it.

By now the band and their tour manager were all huddled around the handset awed by modern technology, putty in our hands. So, enjoying the rare moment of power over rockstars, we went further and showed them the embedded Live 8 music that comes with the N91 phone.

"I didn't know you could do that with a phone, but we were at Live 8 weren't we? Where's our stuff on there?", said the skinniest one from the band to the tour manager. Good question, mate, but one for Nokia, and it was all getting a bit confusing.

Anyway, what better way to finish the conversation than by retiring to the bar piano and listen to an impromptu Razorlight version of Imagine by John Lennon. And do you think either of us had the intelligence to capture such a moment on our videophones? No, of course not, because we were very, very drunk.

Naturally if we had caught such a moment on film, this would have been yet another example of user-generated content, a ridiculous phrase that should forthwith be described as DIY content. Such content is all the rage and was demonstrated further at the Develop awards where each table was given a phone to take pictures. Best one wins an I-pod blah-blah.

While this was a bit like being dupes of a Big Brother task, the results were surprisingly interesting. Well done to the winners whoever they were but I think the winner should have been the (unnamed) table guest who insisted on repeatedly slapping the bottom of one of the Nokia demo-girls who was surprisingly user-friendly as the content was being generated.