The world is getting mapped - for your mobile - and a great Vancouver company called cellmap is helping to lead the charge.

http://www.cellmap.ca/

They map out areas with details of pretty much everything from restaurants, nightclubs, and hotspots to the best views, special event times and bus schedules.
They've mapped out Vancouver's Stanley Park, Granville Island, and even Whistler Village. They basically turn your cell phone into a custom interactive map.
Once somebody downloads a particular CellMap to their phone - it can be used without a signal, and they can use it without worrying about data charges.
They recently won a PopVox Award for best Mobile Application.

Tagga is another neat Vancouver company. Tagga lets anyone create a text message campaign for, basically, anything. You could be on a website and want to send recipe information - using Tagga - you can send it from you website to you mobile with one click. If you're selling a house - you could set it up with a tag and a number - and when people tag the word "house" to 42233 - they'd get all the relevant information. There are lots of things you can use it for. check out tagga.com

Mobile muse is one of the sponsors of Open Mobile at this year's New Forms Festival. The mobile technology leaders come together with artists to show their latest and greatest creations. If you want tosee what's coming down the mobile pipe - this is the place to be - it's Sunday, September 21 at Emily Carr on Granville Island. Check out the new forms festival website - as always - they've got some amazing shows all month. http://2008.newformsfestival.com

If you're interesting in meeting up with other New Media folk - there's a Vancouver group called Third Tuesday of the Month that has great guest speakers and really keeps up with what's happening in social media, the blog world and in the digital landscape.

Creating your own ringtone for the iPhone
- For those who thought they had to purchase their ringtune using iTunes Store, here's another solution
1) Choose a song that you want to use for your ringtone
2) Now using audio editing software such as Quicktime or Audacity, edit the sound clip down to 40 seconds or less (preferably less than 40 sec). Anything more than 40 seconds will be undetected as a ringtone on your iPhone.
3) Once you've got the section of song edited down to 40 sec or less, save it as a mp3 or m4v (ipod) file. For Quicktime users, choose File>Export and pick the Movie to iPod export option.
4) Locate the saved file and rename the extension of the file from .m4v or .mp3 to .m4r and save
5) Now drag and drop the newly renamed file into iTunes to import it into your music library. The file should show up under the ringtone tab in iTunes. If it doesn't, go back and check that the music is less than 40 seconds and that you've renamed the extention to .m4r
6) Connect your iPhone to your iTunes, then drag and drop the ringtone file from your iTunes into the iPhone. At this point all you need to do is go to Settings>Sounds>Ringtone on your iPhone to set the ringtone you just created and do a little dance everytime someone calls you.