Mint Digital has recently completed the development work on Thumbplay OPEN, a self-serve way for independent content owners to upload, manage and sell mobile content to over 230 million mobile customers. It’s cool from the consumers' perspective, but it’s also cool under the hood. We thought it might be worth sharing a little bit of how it works.

Thumbplay OPEN serves two communities. Independent music and visual artists can make money by packaging and selling their work to millions of mobile customers. Site owners can sell mobile downloads from any Web site, application or widget.

From Mint's perspective Ruby on Rails, and RESTful design have proved to be a great combination when integrating with existing systems.

When Ned Canty from NYTVF approached Mint about hosting an event, he was keen to avoid the typical panel format. He wanted something that focused on the creative challenges of producing cross-platform entertainment.

Inspired by Wikinomics, I thought I'd try an open source approach to the ideas development process.

Creativity Live was a mass-participation brainstorm between three sharp digital minds (Ian Schafer from Deep Focus, Paul Kontonis from For Your Imagination and Tom Ajello from Poke NY) and 150 audience members.

Mint Digital is delighted to be a new media sponsor at this year's New York Television Festival. As part of their Digital Day, we will be hosting a panel called Creativity Live on Tues 16th September at 2:30pm.

Creativity Live is a mass-participation brainstorm that brings together the sharpest and most creative minds in digital media. Three panellists, one moderator and a 150-strong audience will be given just one hour to develop three cross-platform entertainment ideas. After the event people will be able to go to the NYTVF website, where they can vote on the ideas they would like to see taken forward.

If you fancy joining us, RSVP to toby@mintdigital.com. Alternatively, quote "telly2008" to receive a 20% discount to the full festival.

We've just started a semi-regular round table for New York people interested in social media. Hosted at the Grand Sichuan, we can guarantee the food will be hot.

Thank you to everyone who made it such an interesting night: Paul Kontonis (For Your Imagination), Caroline Waxler (The Glasshouse), Tania Yuki (KIT digital), Adrienne Steinberg (biga Consulting), Juliette Powell(Gathering), Shay David (Kaltura), Max Haot (Mogulus), Adam Devine (GreenSQFT) and Caroline McCarthy (CNET).

Looking forward to the next one!

I just spent 4 days in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. It was a spectacular event.

With over 140,000 attendees, CES is the largest trade show in America.

In addition to the latest gadgetry, including the biggest and thinnest plasma screens and the smallest HD cameras, CES also hosted Digital Hollywood, a conference program dedicated to content, entertainment and technology.

Despite some interesting topics, the sessions consisted of the usual industry rhetoric and hyperbole. Cutting through this, one panel made some predictions for how digital media will evolve in the coming year:

Eyal Hertzog, Founder, Metacafe: “More content owners are going to realize the value of the long-tail and make their material available online. There are still millions of hours of content out there and there’s no reason not to make it available.”

On November 8th and 9th, the TV, digital media and advertising industries will converge on the Future of Television forum. Speakers include executives from Fox Interactive, NBC, ABC and Endemol USA.

Mint is one of the main media sponsors. The Future of Television builds on the success of UGTV and NYTVF’s Digital Frontiers panel to promote discussion about the creative possibilities of cross-platform TV.

The 2007 New York Television Festival (September 5th - 9th) presents independent TV pilots and network screenings for both industry professionals and TV fans.

As well as the parties and the premieres there is the NYTVF Panel Discussion Series. This begins on Thursday, September 6th with a talk sponsored by Mint Digital: Digital Frontiers in the Advertising Marketplace (scroll down page for details).

To obtain a pass, visit www.nytvf.com and click on Box Office. Thursday Day Passes, All Access Passes and Industry Packages grant admission to the Mint Digital panel and the A&E Cocktail reception that follow the panel, as well as the FOX red-carpet première of "New Amsterdam" on Thursday night.

Thanks to everyone who came to UGTV New York. Despite the storms the turnout was fantastic and the panel debate rocked.

If you missed it, here's a webcast and additional audio.

Some choice quotations from the event:

1. On quality "Just because it's user generated, it's kind of 'who gives a crap?'. But using it to make better television, that's interesting." – Joey Jodar of Heavy Worldwide

2. On barriers to entry “Time, these days, is the only real barrier to entry for content creators. To edit together a daily podcast takes time, and creating a five-minute video that looks good takes skill.” – Shelly Palmer

3. On editorializing user-generated content “I’m excited about Shelly Palmer’s view regarding taking a programmatic view of user generated content, as this is central to the way we work at The-N.” – Amanda Peters of The N.com

4. On monetisation “There’s now a chance for advertisers to really interact with users and create a relationship as opposed to just talking at them.” – Jake Brenner, Marathon Ventures

For more coverage see Ben Homer, Dorian Benkoil and John C Havens.

Thanks to Kevin Shively of TV Worldwide for the webcast and John C Havens of Blog Talk Radio for the additional audio.