Leading the voyage is video blogger, Bill Bowles, who’s taking the entire summer to float the length of the Mississippi. He’ll be welcoming viewers to participate in a typical river workday at Evangeline Inc. (the name of his homemade pontoon boat). Water cooler gossip, conference calls, and encounters with the rogue Evangeline IT specialist are all on tap for a day at this floating workplace. And vigilant viewers might even win a lovely, and phonetically challenging, t-shirt from the crazed designers at cordarounds.com.

Watch it all here:

Previous 9-5 adventures have goaded San Franciscans into ditching work to join the Pied Piper of Booze on a day-long bender. Another interactively tracked down a Valentine’s day date for a single woman. And we’ll just have to see what happens at this floating office drifting in the middle of America’s iconic waterway. We sincerely hope no one gets fired…

Needless to say, we’re thrilled to have Alloy joining the Zannel team. The new investment is going to enable us to accelerate our forward momentum and expansion in the mobile space, and keep those new features and platform improvements coming at a furious pace. Or, in the much more eloquent words of Zannel’s CTO Braxton Woodham, “We’ve just begun to scratch the surface of mobile’s potential, and will continue to pioneer new ways for our users to stay connected via their mobile devices.”

Sometimes it just takes a quote from your CTO to make it all sound nice, but, suffice it to say, we are genuinely thrilled to be moving forward with such a great new investing partner as the mobile space gears up for massive growth in the coming years.

“We spent over two years evaluating the mobile space and related communication technologies and talked with numerous companies,” said David Ezequelle, Partner, Alloy Ventures. “When we met with Zannel, they stood out immediately. We found a seasoned and successful mobile team with a strong vision, and a solid business model.”

“We’re excited to have David join our team, especially with his extensive experience in special interest publishing and digital media,” said Adam Zbar, CEO of Zannel. “The mobile phone is rapidly becoming the dominant platform for social communication, and Zannel is fortunate to have the strong financial backing and major partnerships to bring Instant Media Messaging™ to the mass market in the US and abroad.”

The funding will accelerate Zannel’s leadership position in expanding the first large-scale, global mobile media communications platform. Zannel attracts millions of visitors per month and has developed over 50 partnerships with leading media and consumer brands including Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, New Line Cinema, Capitol Records, Activision, Konami, Ubisoft, Capcom, RipeTV, Versaly, Mini Cooper, Toyota, Limelife and more. The service is available on all mobile Internet and WAP-enabled handsets and online at zannel.com and is distributed directly on select Verizon and Helio handsets. Recent accolades include a 2008 Webby Award for Best Mobile Social Network and being named by AlwaysOn to OnHollywood’s 100 Top Private Companies and as a NAPTE Top 3 Mobile Social Network.

“The roll-out of next generation mobile phones, which combine powerful imaging and messaging capabilities with high speed internet access, has allowed Zannel to develop a new form of communication that is instant, highly visual, and soon location-based,” said Braxton Woodham, CTO of Zannel. “We’ve just begun to scratch the surface of mobile’s potential, and will continue to pioneer new ways for our users to stay connected via their mobile devices.”

About Zannel
Zannel launched the mobile industry’s first Instant Media Messaging™ service, which allows users to instantly and visually communicate with their friends across mobile and the web, including all major social networks. Founded by the team that built the first large-scale mobile media storefronts in the US, Zannel combines the best of mobile messaging, media sharing, and social networking into an intuitive, compelling user experience. Zannel is located in San Francisco, California and is backed by U.S. Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures and Alloy Ventures.

About Alloy Ventures
Alloy Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management. They have helped start and cultivate more than 200 successful companies in the fields of information technology and life sciences including such leading companies as Amgen, AMCC, Applied Biosystems, Aspect Communications, CV Therapeutics, Favrille, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Nuance, Octel, PMC-Sierra, Red Brick Systems, Remedy and Verity to name a few. For more information, visit www.alloyventures.com.

Gadzoiks! Zannel just won the Webby Award for “Best Mobile Social Network.” It’s kind of like winning an Oscar (aka – Academy Award), except when we actually go and put on our gowns and tuxes to pick up the statue, our acceptance speech will be limited to five words, or less. If only Michael Moore’s Oscar speeches were limited to five words or less.

In any case, it is a huge honor to have been nominated and then to have actually won the Webby Award. It is a testament to the tireless efforts of our hardworking team here at the Zannel headquarters, as well as to all the great Zannel users who have been contributing and providing invaluable feedback over the last year.

And as fun as it is to get a nice statue that looks like a giant bronzed bed-spring, we are really looking to keep Zannel moving furiously forward and blazing the trail in the world of mobile media and communication. But first, we’re going to have to put some thought into that five word acceptance speech.

In addition to the Webby nomination, we’ve also received recognition from NATPE - Top 3 Mobile Social Network 2007, Dow Jones Tech Summit - Top 5 Mobile Sites To Watch, and Mashable - Top 20 Mobile Apps for 2008. Big kudos and thanks to our product team, partners, friends, and family for making Zannel a success!

More good stuff to come.

It’s fun to see what an unshaven developer, an open API, a little code, and a healthy dose of caffeine can do.

If you’re a developer, and want to learn more about the open API, go to: www.zannel.com/developers.
If you’d like to use Bain’s nifty ZannelBuddy, head here: ZannelBuddy