Was, is, and probably will continue to be Zite, even though they were bought by my former employer! I never get tired of Zite and use it pretty much every single day.

For pure aesthetics, I love the Gagosian art gallery app; the experience is just beautiful – much like the Post Gravity/Post Matter apps that my friends at Great Fridays in London (shout out to Rob Noble!) have developed.

TuneIn Radio Pro is the last one – I love music, and as Ili Elia (@ilicco) said in his interview, I have a personal affection for the 80s – big hair, big guitars, big music. I’m always discovering new radio stations around the world, and TuneIn Radio Pro lets you record what you’re listening to, which is quite cool.

The last time I had a “primary” phone was in 1996, when I had this product built by Qualcomm. It ran on a very new CDMA network which ran primarily in the southeast part of the USA. Fortunately, I moved to the UK in 1997, became the ultimate GSM convert, and started carrying multiple phones ever since.

Today, I use a Blackberry Torch, the new Motorola Bionic (nice piece of kit), a Samsung Windows Mango phone, the iPad, an iPhone, a Nokia N97 mini, and of course, my trusty Sony Ericsson W880i which I’ll never give up. In fact, when my old one died earlier this year, I bought a new one off of a supplier in Hong Kong.

There is a brilliant company in the UK that got some eyes at London Fashion Week called SnapFashion. It comes across as the Shazam of fashion – take a picture of a celebrity look and have the app come back and tell you where you can buy it. I’m looking forward to meeting them soon!

Another company I like is Boston-based HeyWire; they have taken the WhatsApp messenger concept one step further. Instead of just being able to message people within your group as WhatsApp or Blackberry Messenger does, HeyWire issues you with a virtual phone number so that you can send regular SMS messages from the client. And at least for now, the text message you send is free. In general, I think the whole space around operator SMS revenues is about to change drastically for the better as a consumer – maybe not so much if you’re an operator.

I’ve got a great job – I have the challenge of providing the strategic direction in the mobile space to 57,000 Thomson Reuters employees around the world. It is truly different than my previous gigs which were more consumer focused at both Turner Broadcasting System and Motorola. Serving professional customers comes with a completely unique set of issues, especially around data privacy and security.

I also have a deep passion for data mining and analytics; consumers and customers can tell you a lot, but you learn so much more when you actually look at what they do, what their usage patterns are, etc. We’ve got some tremendous products in the pipeline, and I’m learning a ton about customer segments in legal and markets where I had no clue 16 months ago.

I’m also working on getting Foursquare to acknowledge the fact that I’ve been on airplanes for 33 straight weeks (same with hotels) – did you know that there isn’t a badge for something like that yet? Maybe it could be the George Clooney badge?

I think that 2012 is going to bring new and innovative ways of monetizing this space. To some extent, I think we’ve all gotten a bit lazy in our thinking: we think about advertising and sponsorships; we think about freemium, one-time download fee, in-app purchase, or some sort of recurring subscription. We haven’t though really broken from the same mold of thought. I think that next year, some really smart people are going to experiment with very nontraditional ways of monetizing the space beyond the basic stuff I’ve described before – and not just in developed markets – but in revolutionary ways in emerging economies such as those in Africa.

If you want another area that will be just as important, I think that we’re going to see something really nasty happen on the security front in mobile next year. I wish I could remember who coined the phrase that the Android market was a “malware cesspool.” It may not be quite that bad, but we’ve seen enough little things happening around the edges to suggest to me that something big, bad, and ugly will occur related to mobile security next year. And then, people will finally get that we have to take security seriously and start putting some brainpower and money behind solutions.

[MUTUAL APPRECIATION ALERT] I’m of course part of the Ilicco Elia fan club, but it is probably a bit sad if I mention him, even though he knows he’ll always be a rock star to me.

Ben Wood – @benwood is a star if ever there was one. I’ve known him forever, and he’s now the lead analyst over at CCS Insight – @CCSInsight. He probably also has the greatest museum of mobile devices of anyone I know.

Mitch Lazar – @mitchlazar is another rock star; he’s the CEO of Taptu and was the guy who originally got CNN off the ground from a mobile perspective. He brought me into Turner – then promptly left six months later!

Lastly, I absolutely am blown away by Iris Lipinski – @irislapinski, the CEO of Apps For Good – @AppsforGoodCDI. This is a project which focuses on teaching kids in school how to come up with their own idea for an application, how to market and develop the idea, and then, how to actually build it and get it distributed. Iris and Apps For Good are going to make a world of difference to kids in the UK, and I’m tremendously proud that Thomson Reuters is sponsoring three schools this term. Imagine what might result if we can inspire kids in some of Britain’s toughest neighborhoods to embrace technology and look to places like Tech City in Shoreditch and Silicon Valley for role models.

Wow – ten years ago, I was working for Motorola in the UK. I led the global 3G strategy and business development team for Motorola’s handsets which ultimately led to the huge, $700M contract for phones for 3’s launch in March 2003. No one will want to remember those devices, the A830 or A920 from Motorola, because in those days, battery life was atrocious, coverage was terrible, and the phones were huge. Still, the devices and services gave us a glimpse of the future we now live today – to this day, I still remember getting Arsenal goal alerts, complete with a mobile compatible video minutes after a goal was scored (back then, Arsenal actually had a team that liked to score rather than just pass the ball around). Hutchison Whampoa thought about 3G like no other operator had at the time; I’m still impressed with the A920 phone that Motorola launched: Symbian touchscreen OS, 3G/GPRS/GSM support, Bluetooth, Assisted GPS, SD memory slot, video calling (yes, way before Facetime)…a lot of things that we just assume would be in a product today.

I think you learn something from every boss you have in life, even if it is how not to do something in the future with your own people. Fortunately, I’ve generally only had great bosses. Today, I work for James Powell who is our Corporate CTO, and since he probably won’t see this, I can say that he’s the sharpest CTO I’ve ever come across. We have brilliant technical discussions together, but he’s just a smart guy on so many fronts and a good guy to have a beer with. I’ve learned a ton from him already.

I had another boss that I worked for twice at Motorola, Lee Simmons, who is now with RIM in China. Lee probably taught me more than anyone about the need to believe in my ability to do things that are completely alien to my comfort zone. I’m a classic engineer by trade with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in electrical engineering, but Motorola gave me the chance to work as a product marketer, a brand director, a product line director, a business development director, and the head of 3G strategy. Lee was a big part of all of that.

I’d love for you to speak with Iris regarding Apps For Good [absolutely, she will be my first port of call after publishing this]. When I think about how we are going to make a big project like the Tech City initiative successful, it comes down to three things: getting government to take care of the logistics around things like infrastructure, visas, immigration, tax relief, etc.

The cluster will continue to grow organically as long as Shoreditch and East London stay true to their roots and cool. Iris’ work helps complete the last piece – inspiring the entrepreneurs and visionaries of tomorrow from amongst the kids in our schools. The importance of education and creating that mindset early is what will help inspire the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Marissa Mayer, and I think that Apps For Good is going to help make that happen. I’d also invite you to interview some of the kids at the end of the school term – they are so much fun to be around!