Open Gardens

The old system of the telephone directory sort of works, search engines can search many directories to find my many numbers and IP addresses - if they are available.

But why bother with numbers in the first place? Why relinquish control to them? Why should we not break free?

For instance - why is it so hard to keep your number when changing houses or mobile service providers?(at a cost I might add!) You have ‘become’ the number. And nowadays, that’s increasingly ‘numbers’(i.e. not just one number)!. People are forced to remember your various numbers – some do – but most will find it increasingly difficult.

But then came tags .. and I believe that tags will erode 100 years of telecoms regulations on numbering and also the one control point that operators still believe is untouchable. i.e. the number itself

Imagine a world where you do not care what your number is or how many you have. A world where tags replace numbers. Others (friends, work mates, people who you see and meet) tag your data so that they can find you again.

Where I tag Tony Fish with my 50 words, others will tag ‘Tony fish’ with their views and that’s how they will remember me. Collectively, my tags will uniquely identify me as ‘Tony Fish’ and not the other 462 Tony Fishes that are about!

A new type of search engine will emerge. The new search engine will not deliver my identity (and breach data protection regulations). Instead, they (the provider of the search service) will offer a service to enable ‘connection’. ‘Find Tony Fish’ will produce the result:- Tony is currently in Starbucks on Oxford Street do you want to ….. meet, IM, Mail, chat to him.

You see ..
I am no longer a number, I am a Tag.

How will this start?

I would not expect that an operator can be the first to implement such a system - due to the legacy of existing systems and their requirement for seeing a business model first. Rather, I expect it will be organic. I will start tagging, you will start tagging and thus a network will emerge. I will add my contacts and notes from outlook, from thunderbird, from Plaxo, from linkedin and then the tags will grow!

A federated service provider will become the ‘search engine by tags’ – searching my professional information. I will have added personal contacts for family so they are in by default(i.e. linked through me). The value proposition for the user appears when someone in your network modifies or updates the data with new details and that data automatically updates your data set, saving time and maintaining contact.

The bigger the network you have, the more frequently your information is refreshed and the more fresh and valuable it is.

As a commercial extension, it would be possible for a service provider to combine tags from several people within a program that would provide to each ‘paying premium member’ an improved data set. The commercial models will grow based on the knowledge and context within the search and tags.

Therefore I can see a federated, consensus driven business model allowing both restricted and free communication services from a search engine. Eventually, everyone tags, search engines get access to my desktop and I permit my presence to be made known.

Thus, I become a ‘tag’ an individual – and not a number!

What do you think?
A fascinating idea and very much mobile web 2.0!

I believe there is a commercial (and a user) need for such as service.
The ‘tag mapping service’ is the key element of this service(and one which could completely transform the telecoms industry) because the end users need such a service, it is cheaper, it is easier to use.

What do you think?

Image source: www.irtc.org/stills/ 1997-06-30/view.html
Technorati tags
mobile
wireless
web 2.0
mobile web 2.0
mobile web 20

Posted by ajit at 8:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 24, 2006

Plazes - more comments ..

I am getting more comments about this article from forumoxford

Ben Gibbs says
It's an interesting site to study like you say, but I'm not so sure the whole idea is that attractive (which is not your point I know, but I just wanted to rant a bit!). I saw the site mentioned on this board before and had a look. It's very reminiscent of a lot of so-called Web 2.0 sites (including the obligatory aggravating name), but I couldn't see the point. Why bother? Unless you are particularly altruistic, narcissistic or masochistic why would you bother to plot or keep your own location up to date for others to see, especially strangers? Just seems like a lot of effort for not much reward and a bit creepy too. For me, the promise of LBS is to provide something as basic as a "You Are Here!" map, with enough detail and scrollability to be useful. Yesterday, I got lost driving in the mountains. I wasn't amazingly lost because I could always follow the road back, but I didn't have a map and I kept on wondering where I was and if I'd come out somewhere useful if I just kept driving. I had excellent mobile signal strength but no LBS, so in the end I turned back. I could go out and buy a TomTom I suppose, but that's hundreds of $'s for a rare occurrence and in this case a dollar for a map would have been worth it. Maybe once "You Are Here!" exists, Plazes could be an overlay for those who really want it.

and my old friend Colin Campbell adds
This subject is right on the button in terms of my current activities. I think there is quite a lot to say here. Firstly Plazes reminds me of my early experience with mobile presence servers. The lessons i learned there was that if its not automatic but requires end user setup and maintenance it tends to die pretty quickly! The idea of annotating and maintaining location logs doesnt seem feasible to me. too much bother.

And I also think mobile traffic reporting one to watch. Have you seen the latest TomTom aquisition ...

Technorati tags
mobile
wireless
web 2.0
mobile web 2.0
mobile web 20
location based services
LBS

Posted by ajit at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 22, 2006

Learning from Plazes – location based services

Recently, I started a presentation about location based services by the phrase ‘Location location location ?’

The question mark was not typo!

Where are the mass market location based services?

Inspite of its promise, location based services have yet to fully reveal their true potential.

Location is the chief differentiator for mobility based applications. In user terms, a location based application would deliver any content ‘filtered by location’ – for example, a dynamic map that mirrors a user’s location or a ‘find my nearest’ application where every fast food outlet in a one kilometer radius can be listed.

By definition, a Mobile service accessed from a device such as a mobile phone, is ‘location based’ because the location of a mobile device is always known to the subscriber’s mobile operator. However, merely the fact that your mobile operator knows the location of your device is not enough.

To truly enable mass market location based applications we need

a) The location to be available to trusted third parties

b) The cost of the location ‘ping’(i.e. request) to be feasible

c) Points of interest to be ‘mapped’

d) Privacy issues to be resolved

The conventional ‘top down’ approach does not seem to be working. In other words – the current situation, where the mobile operator knows the location and is the gate keeper to that information has not worked(and in my view will never work). That’s because – there are too many legal, privacy, cost issues involved.

It also needs the major parties (with conflicting interests) to work closely together else the market fragments. By this, I mean to be truly viable, we need an ‘umbrella entity’ which takes feeds from multiple location sources(operators) and then has the capacity to manage that feed.

An alternative is an organic approach

In my previous blog, Mobile web 2.0 – A service blueprint - I mentioned that locations could be ‘tagged’. Exploring this further, I found a site called Plazes – which seems to be doing this. Plazes also has addressed some key issues which would be used in future mobile web 2.0 services(and for location in general)

Firstly, what is it?
Plazes is ‘Location + context’. From their site
Plazes is a grassroots approach to location-aware interaction, using the local network you are connected to as location reference. Plazes allows you to share you location with the people you know and to discover people and plazes around you. It's the navigation system for your social life and it's absolutely free.

How it works
It seems to map a unique key created from the user’s network (based on the user’s router information) to a ‘Plaze’ that the user annotates. (I managed to annotate the futuretext office . I also saw Joi Ito online twice – which is an endorsement for the site in my book! )

The user names the Plaze, they can add pictures and comments. Others who are physically present at the Plaze can add information subsequently. On every Plaze, there is a box called ‘Discoverer’. The person who ‘discovers’ the Plaze manages this box and it can be linked to their web site or blog. Other information on that page can be edited by others

By the way, Plazes mixed with Google maps makes a neat mashup – check it out!

All this is fine .. But I was more interested in the social, web 2.0, mobility aspects. This is a pioneering service and the lessons learnt here could well be the norm (Italics are from the Plazes web site)

So,
a) Privacy – You can use a pseudonym

b) Tracking - You can optionally allow plazes to ‘track’ you using ‘Trazes’. This is set off by default. By default we don't record your traces. The moment you leave a plaze that information is gone. You past whereabouts cannot be compromised, since we don't have them. Nevertheless we do provide a function called Trazes, where you can record your past wherebouts and publishing them to other users, if you explicitely wish to do so.

c) Visibility: You can choose to remain invisible from your friends(so no one knows your current location). You can use Plazes without the launcher, meaning you are visible, but your location is unknown. All features, obviously except the location aware searches, will still be available to you.

d) Centralised editorial staff: There is no centralised editorial staff

e) Mandatory information about the Plaze is kept to a minimum

f) Not spyware – Plazes makes great efforts to tell us that.

g) Data quality and control: Anyone physically present at a location can incrementally complement or alter the information for this plaze. Therefore the quality of data will increase with the number of users and frequency of usage. The most frequented Plazes will therefore have the best quality of information, because it is being reviewed most often.

h) Censorship: We do not censor pictures and comments. The description page for a plaze is basically a wiki. We believe in free speech and we strongly believe in you, the user. If someone is altering the information in a stupid or malicious way, we are sure someone else will correct it.

i) Compliance with geographic legal issues: There is one exception to that rule: The laws of some countries require us to delete unlawful pictures or writing, if explicitely pointed out to us. We will obey these laws, because we don't like being in jail.

j) Obsolete and historic Plazes: The following passage is well worth a read because it encounters a problem not yet endemic .. but critical in future as we all map virtual elements to a physical world – the whole question of ‘virtual archeology’

Another issue in matters of data quality is obsolete Plazes. The unique identifier for a Plaze is the network, or to be more precise the router's mac address. In other words, if you buy a new router for your Plaze or move the same router to a different Plaze, the information is either lost or incorrect. Let's say you move into a new apartment and take your router with you. Easy you say, next time you log onto Plazes you just change you address information. Right, but what about those pictures of your old house, the comments for that party you threw last year, etc? Even worse, stay in your apartment and buy a new router. All your precious information will be gone, the history of your Plaze will be unwritten, forever lost.
This whole subject is a tough one. At first we thought the solution was going to be that you can just assign a plaze a new router. But this would either open all doors for a new sport called "Plaze-jacking" or an actual human would have to decide for every Plaze if the transition is legit. Not an option. So we came up with something called a "Historic Plaze". A historic Plaze is an inactive Plaze at the same location. There is two ways for a Plaze to become historic: The discoverer can mark it historic, for instance if he moves out of his flat. This way, if the router pops up the next time it is being assigned a new Plaze.
If a Plaze is inactive for more than half a year and there is another Plaze with a similar description at the same location.
Historic Plazes are linked to the active Plaze's description page so you can dig down into the Plaze's history. It's virtual archeology.

k) Taking social networking to the next level – in their words The Plazes you are frequenting are actually a much better filtering system and common denominator than explicit connections like "he is my friend".

Plazes takes it to the next level regarding location-awareness and implicitness. The Plazes you are frequenting are actually a much better filtering system and common denominator than explicit connections like "he is my friend". By being virtually present at certain Plazes like a record label or a certain restaurant and having conversations via comments at that Plaze, the system is much closer to how we actually interact in the real world. By being able to annotate real world locations virtually, Plazes augments, enhances and encourages real-world communication rather than simulating it.

In a nutshell, well worth visiting and trying – for no other reason than – it’s the way to go as I have been saying with mobile web 2.0. Plazes seems to have thought about many of the issues that I have been talking about. Besides, its fun!(By the way, I have no commercial affiliation with Plazes or the company creating it). I just think that an organic approach may be feasible – and the alternative (top down/operator led approach) will not see light of day!

Technorati tags
mobile
wireless
web 2.0
mobile web 2.0
mobile web 20
location based services
LBS

Posted by ajit at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 21, 2006

the carnival is back after a break ..

See it at Judy Breck's blog HERE

I would also recommend Judy's book which I am currently reading

Posted by ajit at 9:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2006

taggardens - google is to links as yahoo is to tags ..

One of the advantages of blogging is – you get to interact with interesting people and ideas from all over the world. James Governor emailed me this interesting idea of tag gardening.

Tag gardening is the concept of nurturing ‘tags’. James makes the point that Yahoo seems to be following a strategy of being a tag gardener. Google succeeded based on ‘links’ – could Yahoo succeed with ‘tags’?

As I pointed out in the mobile 2.0 service blueprint before, tagging could be an effective way to search content from a mobile device - especially considering implicit tags.

James takes the idea of tagging further through the concept of nurturing tags and says ..

Like plants or animals, tags evolve in an emergent fashion, open to hybridisation. Stewardship can help grow and put roots down. Helping the darwinian process is tag gardening. Tag gardening is about taking tags in the wild and tending to them, or identifying a wild tag that will do well in your south facing IT garden. I am talking about domestication here.
And also ..
Are industry analysts tag gardeners? Tag gardening is certainly a role Gartner plays. Enterprise IT vendors pay Gartner to use its tags, and to show how well they fit the way Gartner uses these tags.
A key platform for tag gardening is Yahoo, which has recently acquired pretty many of the key players in declarative living - delicious, flickr, WebJay. Yahoo is buying communities of taggers, some of whom are tag gardeners. A great example are communities on flickr, which coalesce around tags and create communities in the process. Yahoo now offers a number of platforms for tagging, and therefore tag management, or tag gardening.

You can read more from his blog entry HERE

Image source: http://www.hatleygardens.com/images/hatley_gardens.jpg

Technorati tags
mobile
wireless
web 2.0
mobile web 2.0
tag gardening

Posted by ajit at 9:08 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

Happy to be part of the web20 workgroup ..

I am happy to announce that I have been invited to the web20workgroup. It’s an honour I am proud to accept

It’s indeed a privilege to be here .. The group includes some of the world’s leading thinkers on web 2.0 covering all aspects of web2.0 from trends, analysis, VC and technology.

I am thankful to the three founders of the group Michael Arrington, Richard MacManus, and Frederico Oliveira for accepting me and especially Richard Mc Manus for proposing my name. I also appreciate the support of Dion Hinchcliffe in clarifying my thinking about web 2.0

The group consists of a variety of experts. Happy to see an old friend Oliver ‘Stitch’ Starr - prolific blogger and venture capitalist from mobilecrunch. And also Dave Winer – industry guru whose blog is read – among others by Bill Gates and Jacob Nielsen

I find web 2.0 fascinating.. and my own admission – I am not an expert on web 2.0. However, much of what I have been saying in OpenGardens is conceptually the same as web 2.0

On boxing day last year, building on the ideas of people like Richard Mc Manus and Dion Hinchcliffe, I set out to expand the concept of web 2.0 in the areas of mobility and digital convergence.

In a series of blogs – I outlined my views about how web 2.0 could play out across a range of devices – especially the mobile phone. These resonated with many people worldwide – including the web20workgroup founders. Hence, happy to be here.

I look forward to contributing more to the development of mobile web 2.0 through this group.

Also happy to discuss any questions re web 2.0 especially mobile web 2.0.

Visit Web 2.0 Workgroup to browse. I encourage you to subscribe to all of these blogs by downloading and importing the OPML file into your RSS reader.

Related links from my blogs:
Mobile web 2.0: Web 2.0 and its impact on the mobility and digital convergence (Part one of three)

web 2.0 – A service blueprint

Mobile web 2.0: AJAX for mobile devices – why mobile AJAX will replace both J2ME and XHTML as the preferred platform for mobile applications development

Technorati tags
mobile
wireless
web 2.0
mobile web 2.0
web20workgroup

Posted by ajit at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2006

Mobile web 2.0: A service blueprint ..

Following my previous blog about mobile web 2.0 , I wanted to find a blueprint/case study of a mobile web 2.0 service.

This blog is a bit of a gedankenexperiment – but I have drawn on the excellent work being done by Dr Marc Davis and his team at the Garage cinema research at the University of California (Berkeley).

The service I am considering here is a ‘mobile’ version of a combination of del.icio.us and flickr

As you probably know, both del.icio.us and flickr are based on tags. However, note that in a mobile context, a ‘tag’ would have a different meaning to the term on the web. People do not like to enter a lot of information on a mobile device. Thus, a tag in a mobile sense, would be explicit information entered by the user(i.e. a ‘web’ tag) but more importantly information captured implicitly when the image was captured(for example the user’s location).

The service would enable you to
a) Search related images and get more information about a ‘camera phone image’ using historical analysis of metadata (including tags) from other users. This bit works like del.icio.us i.e. searching via tags BUT with a mobile element because the ‘tag’ could include many data elements that are unique to mobility(such as location)
b) ‘Share’ your images with others (either nominated friends or the general public similar to flickr but as a mobile service)

From a user perspective, the user would be able to
a) Capture an image using a camera phone alongwith metadata related to that image
b) Gain more information about that image from an analysis of historical data (either a missing element in the image or identifying the image itself)
c) Search related images based on tags
d) Share her image with others – either nominated friends or the general public

Let’s break down the components further. We need -
a) A mobile ‘tagging’ system at the point of image capture
b) A server side processing component which receives data elements from each user. It then adds insights based on historical analysis from data gleaned from other users.
c) An ability to deliver the results to the user(these could be a list of related images based on the tag or ‘missing’ information about the image)
d) A means to capture the user’s feedback to the results
e) A means to share images with others.

Tagging an image
It’s not easy to ‘tag’ a mobile image at the point of capturing it. In fact, in a mobile context, implicit tagging is more important than explicit tagging(An explicit tag being a tag which the user enters themselves).

At the point the image is taken from a camera phone, there are three classes of data elements we could potentially capture

a) Temporal for example the time that the image was captured
b) Spatial – The GPS location or cell id
c) Personal/Social - Username (and other personal profile information which the user chooses to share), presence, any tags that the user has entered, other people in the vicinity(perhaps identified by Bluetooth), other places of interest recently visited etc

The client component captures all the data elements and sends them to the server. It also displays the results from the server. (The garage cinema research uses a system called Mobile Media Metadata (MMM)which performs this function).

Server side processing
The server aggregates metadata from all users and applies some algorithms to the data. The data could also be ‘enriched’ by data sources such as land registry data, mapping data etc.
It then sends the results back to the user who can browse the results.

Finding ‘missing elements’ of your image
In many cases, it’s not easy to identify elements of the image(or in some cases, the image itself).

Consider the three images of Big Ben shown below
The third image is not very clear. It also includes two neighbouring ‘points of interest’ i.e. the river Thames and the house of parliament .

Based on Meta data from other users, the ‘river Thames’ and ‘House of parliament’ could be identified to the person capturing the third image. This is because - potentially other users would have captured separate images of the three points of interest and tagged them.

Thus, if the third user wanted to know ‘the river in the image’ or the ‘building in the image’ - they would be presented with a likely set of related points of interest which could include the river Thames and the house of commons. (Laughably trivial – I know – but it illustrates the point!)

Sharing your images
This is the ‘flickr’ component. However, ‘sharing’ in a mobile context, also includes location. This is very similar to the ‘air graffiti’ system I described in my previous article.
To recap, from my previous blog, the air graffiti system is - the ability to ‘pin’ digital ‘post it notes’ at any physical point. Suppose you were at a holiday destination and you took a picture or a video of that location. You then ‘posted’ that note digitally with your comments and made it accessible to your ‘friends’. Many years later, one of your friends happened to come to that same place and as she walked to the venue, a message would pop up on her device with your notes, picture and comments.
Like flickr, ‘friends’ may be members of the general public with similar interests (i.e. like flickr ) or a closed group.

So, is this a mobile web 2.0 service?
Let’s consider some of the principles here(for a detailed explanation, please read my article Mobile web 2.0: Web 2.0 and its impact on the mobility and digital convergence (Part one of three) )

• It’s a service and not packaged software.
• It’s scaleable.
• It utilises the ‘long tail’ i.e. input from many users as opposed to a core few.
• The service is managing a data source(it’s not just software).
• The data source gets richer as more people use the service.
• Users are trusted as ‘co-developers’ i.e. users contribute significantly.
• The service clearly harnesses ‘collective intelligence’ and by definition is ‘above the level of a single device’.
• Implicit user defaults are captured.
• Data is ‘some rights reserved’ – people are sharing their images with others.

The two aspects not covered above are
• A rich user experience and
• A lightweight programming model

These are implementation issues and could easily be included. So, IMHO - indeed this is an example of a mobile web 2.0 service!

Notes:
a) The example may sound trivial since Big Ben is a well known location – but the same principle could apply to images of other lesser known sites.
b) Of course, other types of data could be captured from the mobile phone for example video and sound.
c) There are no major technical bottlenecks as far as I can see(there are some commercial/privacy issues though).
d) From the above, you can see that Moblogging , in itself, is not an example of a web 2.0 service
e) There are a whole raft of problems when it comes to the network effect and mobility. I have not discussed these here.

As usual, seek comments. You can email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

References:
Garage cinema research

Mobile Media Metadata for Mobile Imaging : Marc Davis University of California at Berkeley and Risto Sarvas Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

From Context to Content: Leveraging Context to Infer Media Metadata
Marc Davis, Simon King, Nathan Good, and Risto Sarvas
University of California at Berkeley

Image One
Image Two
Image three

USS Voyager Blueprint image : and http://www.startrek.com

Technorati tags
mobile
wireless
web 2.0
mobile web 2.0
moblogging
flickr
del.icio.us

Permanent link: http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/01/mobile_web_20_a_1.html

Posted by ajit at 12:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 13, 2006

85,000 new blogs a day!

85,000 new blogs are started each day in the UK. The number of active blogs is around 300,000 in the UK and 20 million worldwide. Still a small percentage of the very large number of existing and new blogs.

so, many thanks for reading this blog!

Source: metro jan 11 London

Posted by ajit at 6:04 AM

sky launches integrated mobile services ..

Sky has launches an integrated mobile service. According to the digital tv group BSkyB has unveiled latest details of its mobile distribution strategy, launching a service that allows mobile phone users to keep up with latest multimedia news, sport and weather information around the clock.

This is another
OpenGardens strategy because it's a downloadable symbian application. Sky is already delivering content through operators like vodafone and Orange. Once again it shows that the direct to consumer approach is gaining steam

Posted by ajit at 5:41 AM

the google ecosystem - what does it mean for you?

Bear Stearns analyst Robert S. Peck upgraded Google's stock to "Outperform" from "Peer Perform," and sharply raised his price target to $550 from $360. Peck cited a long-term belief in Google's fundamentals and the "burgeoning Google ecosystem."

He says ..
"While most people associate the ecosystem with nature, we think it also applies to business sectors and believe Google is in the midst of nurturing its own ecosystem, much like Microsoft and IBM did in the past," Peck said in a client note. Peck said Google's effect on the markets so far are "merely pressure waves before the real tsunami." He expects Google's continued growth to grow more industries that sustain it and help build barriers for competitors.
"Google's users and advertisers will become a market for products and services that are 'about Google,"' Peck said. In addition, the company's growing influence is among the reasons why rivals such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are putting more time and resources into their search and Internet strategies, Peck said.

In the mobile context, I have been saying this for some time now .. with the whales and plankton concept for mobile developers

Yet, not many operators have taken the efforts to nurture developers.
Is it now too late as the web moves in?

Posted by ajit at 5:16 AM

January 11, 2006

Reqwireless rationale ..

Further to my previous entry about reqwireless, my good friend Dr John Whelan from Dublin offers some more insights in his blog entry about the reqwireless acquisition

John says ..
Has the potential acquisition of Opera floundered I wonder? The timing would indicate that this deal occurred before negotiations with Opera. However reqwireless could essentially be a much cheaper (and perhaps even technically) superior version of opera?

There is some merit in this thinking. This appears to be plan (b) perhaps? Agreed Opera does have a large user base - but any browser can be downloaded. Thus, the existing user base may be less significant if Google can offer a better product?

Having said that, like many people I am a great fan of Opera(and also google). So, a synergy there would have been great for the industry. Lets wait and see how things unfold!

Posted by ajit at 10:12 PM

January 10, 2006

Google's acquisition of reqwireless - whats the rationale?

Google’s acquisition of reqwireless – can you understand the rationale?

It seems like a J2ME browser – technically very good from the reviews but nothing special. Maybe it’s really for the engineers! No wonder the Canadians are happy!

Acccording to palowireless

Reqwireless WebViewer is a Web browser for J2ME MIDP devices.
WebViewer supports HTML along with GIF and JPEG images, providing users of mobile Java devices with access to the real Web. WebViewer is not a WAP browser. WebViewer is just 48K as a JAR file and is built upon ReqwirelessWeb, our class library for fetching and rendering HTML. WebViewer supports the following features:
* HTML, including forms and image maps
* GIF, JPEG, PNG, and BMP images
* HTTP, FTP, and gopher resources
* HTTP cookies
* HTTP Basic authentication
* HTTPS (if supported by the device)
* Bookmarks

seems pretty much standard to me. what am I missing?

Posted by ajit at 11:22 PM

supervillanos - the first mobile only soap opera ..

In the previous blog entry, I mentioned the FT article on mobile video. There is an interesting side article by Leslie Crawford .. about a spanish soap opera called 'Supervillanos' which may well be the first soap to come to the small screen.

Drawing from this article and my own insights, this blog gives an outline of the lessons we can learn from the first soap opera

Here is what I could discern
a) Supervillanos is created exclusively for mobile. Its not an adaptation of an existing screen serial

b) In its first two weeks, the series had 350,000 downloads surpassing all expectations!

c) The series is about a family of aliens who take on a human form and it includes such characters like a sex hungry grand mother .. and I thought that the sopranos were dysfunctional!

d) Episodes are only 3 mins long. There are 40 episodes. They cost euro 60 each.

e) They also sell video games, logos, ringtones, music.

f) The article also says that at present, data accounts for 12-20 percent of most mobile operator's revenue but is expected to be 20-30 percent of their revenue

from the site globomedia
Transmission date: 2005

Numerous interactive possibilities: downloads, on-line chats, videogames, web pages, etc. This next generation format is ideal for an organization who is looking to expand their original content reach, especially with the use of the 3G cell phone.

Posted by ajit at 10:14 PM

January 8, 2006

Interesting mobile video stats from the financial times .

Hello
Since my trip to South Korea, I have been following mobile video. Here are some interesting facts .. as per the financial times print edition(Dec 30) in an article by Andrew edgecliffe johnson and mark odell(Small screen dreams: mobile operators set their sights on the moving image)

I liked the starting comment in the article – ‘Mobile TV is like sex in the open air – jolly exciting idea – but not always practical’ says Dick Emery – chief executive of UKTV

Everyone is into mobile TV nowadays. One minute ‘mobisodes’ for ‘snacking content’ is the motivation behind deals between broadcasters like HBO and mobile operators like Vodafone

Having spent £40 billion 3G licenses – the operators are keen to recover their investment. But the market landscape has changed – with video broadcasting – now seen as the big driver for video.

But do people want to watch video/TV on their mobile devices?

In a survey of 1500 people aged 13-55 for olswang only 17% wanted to watch television content on the mobile phone but 44% said they would watch programs on their PC. 70% did not want to watch TV on their mobile phones at all!

Similar results were reported by strategy analytics where fewer than 20% of the people polled(in UK, Germany., Italy and France) expressed an interest in watching mobile video.

Inspite of this, the Global market for mobile video(including streaming and broadcast video) is estimated to be £1.56 bn pounds by next year and $12.2 billion by 2010

The revenue models also differ. UK operators like Orange charge a flat fee for video (£5). The operator ‘3’ charges a fee of £35 including all data services – not just video
Several continental operators like TIM in Italy and SFR in France charge a metered rates of euro 0.25 to euro 0.50 per minute

Rates of revenue share vary depending on the parties involved. In a SKY – Vodafone partnership, the broadcaster(SKY) would get 50% the operator would share the balance with the aggregator. Adult video services typically get a quarter of the revenue with the operator keeping half and the rest being shared with other parties like the aggregator

What I find most interesting is the possibility of ‘user generated’ video content. 3UK is launching a mobile community called SeeMeTV . People are charged 10p to see the clip of which the authors receive 1p if enough people(in this case 1000) download it

I believe that user generated content is the one to watch.

Image source: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/images/articles/video/FEscr(4).jpg

Posted by ajit at 7:14 PM

January 3, 2006

wikipedia is holding a fundraising drive .. closes Jan 6 ..

A worthy cause that deserves our support IMHO

Please donate if you can HERE

Regards,
Ajit Jaokar

Posted by ajit at 9:46 PM

January 1, 2006

Mobile web 2.0: AJAX for mobile devices – why mobile AJAX will replace both J2ME and XHTML as the preferred platform for mobile applications development

Recently, Opera announced the availability of AJAX on mobile devices through their browser. Considering the popularity of Opera in the browser market(especially in the mobile browser market), this announcement is indeed very significant and has been picked up by many A-list bloggers such as Russell Beattie and Om Malik

However, I believe there is more at stake here ..

Having been involved in creating mobile services for a few years now, I believe AJAX will replace both J2ME and XHTML as the platform of choice for developing mobile applications.
In this article, I will outline my reasoning.

Before I do so, a caveat – I believe that mobile web 2.0 is far more than ‘AJAX on mobile’. Essentially mobile web 2.0 involves applying all seven of the web 2.0 principles to mobility. I will be discussing mobile web 2.0 in subsequent blogs. For a more complete discussion see my article on mobile web 2.0.

Here, I am discussing AJAX only i.e. only one facet of web 2.0.

Overview
In this article, we will discuss
1) What is AJAX (an overview)
2) Current Mobile applications development models
3) Problems the industry faces (in other words shortcomings of the current mobile applications models) and finally..
4) Why AJAX will replace J2ME and XHTML as the preferred development platform

What is AJAX
AJAX is an optional addition to web 2.0. It is not a single technology. Rather, it’s a combination of a number of existing technologies acting together namely

• XHTML and CSS for standards based presentation
• Document Object Model for dynamic display and interaction
• XML and XSLT for data interchange and manipulation
• XMLHttpRequest for asynchronous data retrieval and
• Javascript to tie everything together

Until AJAX came along, it was not easy to replicate the rich and responsive interaction design of native applications. AJAX is different from other previous attempts in addressing this problem since it is based on existing, non-proprietary standards which are already familiar to developers.

In traditional web applications, most user action triggers an HTTP request. The server does some processing and returns the result back to the user. While the server is processing, the user waits! The ‘start-stop-start’ nature of web applications is good from a technical standpoint but not from a user interaction standpoint (since almost all user interaction is resulting in trips to the server and the user is waiting while the server is doing the work).

AJAX solves this problem by using the AJAX engine. At the start of the session, the AJAX application loads the AJAX engine. The AJAX engine is written in Javascript as a Javascript library and sits in a hidden frame. The user interacts with the AJAX engine instead of the webserver. If the user interaction does not require a trip to the server, the AJAX engine handles the interaction on it’s own. When the user interaction needs some data from the server, the AJAX engine makes a call asynchronously (via XML/XMLHttpRequest API ) without interrupting the user’s flow.

In this sense, AJAX is ‘asynchronous’ because the AJAX engine is communicating with the server asynchronously to the user interaction. Thus, the user gets a seamless experience(i.e. the user is not waiting)

There is a momentum behind AJAX at the moment. Developers are already familiar with the technologies underlying AJAX. All the technologies making up AJAX are mature and stable. AJAX is the foundation for many new applications on the web like Google suggest , Google Maps , some features of Flickr and Amazon’s A9.com

Mobile applications development models and their shortcomings
From the above discussion and from the articles referenced , we can see that - AJAX clearly solves two problems - namely a superior UI and a standardised form of data retrieval.

These two problems also apply to mobile devices and by extension, AJAX addresses them as well.

However, I believe that it does far more!

Specifically, it solves the following problems in the mobile context.

a) The problem of market fragmentation
b) Porting woes (specific to downloading applications like those built on J2ME)
c) Application distribution without ‘walls’

Besides, it has the developer community behind it – which is a significant plus!

Lets consider existing mobile applications development. There are two principal ways to categorise mobile applications – Browsing applications and Downloading applications. There are others(like Messaging applications, SIM applications and embedded applications) - but a vast majority of the applications we see today fall under downloading or browsing applications.

Browsing applications: Browsing applications are conceptually the same as browsing the web but take into account limitations which are unique to mobility (for example - small device sizes). Similar to the web, the service is accessed through a microbrowser which uses a URL to locate a service on a wireless web server. The client is capable of little or no processing.

Downloading applications (Smart client applications) : In contrast to browsing applications, downloading applications are applications that are first downloaded and installed on the client device. The application then runs locally on the device. Unlike the browsing application, a downloaded(or smart client) application does not need to be connected to the network when it runs. Downloading applications are also called ‘smart client’ applications because the client(i.e. the mobile device) is capable of some processing and / or some persistent storage(caching). Currently, most Java based games are downloaded applications i.e. they are downloaded to the client, require some processing to be performed on the client and need not be always connected to the network. Enterprise mobile applications such as sales force automation are often also examples of smart client applications.

J2ME is the most common mode of developing downloading applications and XHTML is most common way of developing browsing applications.

Let us elaborate on the problems I have outlined before and then discuss how AJAX will solve them – potentially making XHTML and J2ME less relevant.

Problem One - Market fragmentation
Mobile applications are primarily consumer applications. The mobile data industry is an emerging industry. As with many industries in this phase of evolution, it is fragmented.
To be commercially viable (especially considering the need for the network effect ), consumer applications need a large target audience.

This can come about either by a single proprietary standard such as BREW from Qualcomm (which obviously has it’s disadvantages) or through open standards not controlled by any one entity with few industry barriers.

To illustrate how market fragmentation affects commercial viability of a new service, I often recommend the following approach (Most of the figures can be easily obtained from the web).

The idea is to think in terms of ‘concentric circles’ in trying to find out the target audience for your application. A sample set of steps I use is as below

a) What is the population of the country where you are launching your application?
b) What is the percentage of handset penetration amongst this population?
c) Which operators are you targeting within this population? (Most countries have more than one mobile operator)
d) Which handsets are you targeting within this population (not all operators support all handsets)?
e) What is the technology of deployment for example Java, SMS, WAP etc?
f) Does the application have any special technology needs such as location-based services? How many people have handsets equipped with this technology?
g) What does a segmentation analysis of the subset reveal? (Simplest segmentation is male/female. Prepay/postpay etc)
h) What are the channels to market for the segments we are targeting?
i) What proportion of this subset do we expect to hit and convert to customers based on our marketing budget?(i.e. the conversion rate which can be typically 2% )

This will give you your target audience.

Thus, this target audience times number of potential downloads per month should give you an idea of your monthly revenue. This could then be tied against your cost base including your development costs, porting costs etc to arrive at a more tangible picture of success/failure of the new service.

The above methodology illustrates the problem of fragmentation and it implies that very few mobile services are profitable today. Thus, we have a proliferation of ‘broadcast content applications’ – ex ringtones, pictures but very few utility applications at a mass-market level.

Problem two - Porting woes
This problem is specific to downloaded applications (and more commonly J2ME). Write once run anywhere is a joke in the mobile context! – and through no fault of Sun ..

Consider the case of mobile games(a downloaded application) typically developed using J2ME.

First the good news ..
• Carriers such as Sprint and Vodafone report that mobile games and other data services now account for roughly 10 percent of their annual revenues;
• Industry consulting firm Ovum notes that there are now more than 450 million Java-enabled handsets globally, in addition to the 38 million and 15 million BREW- and Symbian-enabled handsets;
• Mobile-game publishers racked up $1.2 billion in global sales in 2004 and expect an even stronger year in 2005 as more and more consumers discover the tiny gaming consoles already in their pockets.

BUT then the pitfalls ..
Game porting generally requires developers to adapt to differences in screen resolution, processor speed, memory thresholds, and sound capabilities, all of which can vary wildly from device to device. For publishers, this can not only exponentially increase game development and asset creation time, but can also cause them to miss critical time-to-market windows in a hyper-competitive industry. As an example, imagine that you are a mid-sized game publisher with 30 games in your portfolio. To make your games available worldwide in five languages and on only 50 devices, you would need to create 7,500 different builds. At $2,500 per build, you would require a budget of nearly $19 million simply to handle porting.

This limits the business model severely and very few mobile games are profitable.
(original source for this section as per my blog Porting – the big barrier to entry with acknowledgements to Sameer Bhatia as per the blog)

Problem three - Application distribution without walls
The predicament of using J2ME as per the preceding example shows that it’s not enough to merely set up a community process as Sun has done (which works fine as far as the technology is concerned). The technology and the applications built upon it must remain homogeneous and interoperable to enable the network effect and gain critical mass. The fewer the ‘choke points’ for a platform – the better it is for the industry as a whole.

We will discuss this more in the next section(where we talk of how AJAX could address this problem).

Why will AJAX replace J2ME and XHTML as the preferred development platform? Can AJAX solve the preceding problems?

In my view .. YES

AJAX is accessed through the browser. There are two ways a customer can get the browser – either the browser can be pre-installed on the phone by the manufacturer or it can be installed as a separate application

Anyone can download a browser for a smartphone as this Opera link shows for series 60 phones

This means, all customers can potentially install their own browser and if enough people do – we have critical mass with few ‘choke points’ – such as specific restrictions created by mobile operators. In other words, a means to bypass the walled garden.

Further, AJAX offers a superior user experience and already has the developer community supporting it. The possibility of attaining critical mass (due to fewer choke points) means more chance of monetising the application – leading to a virtuous circle of better applications.

J2ME as it stands today, is seriously flawed(not the technology but the business model). XHTML will be an ‘also ran’ because AJAX will offer a superior user experience.

Hence, my belief that AJAX will be the preferred platform of choice for mobile applications at the expense of J2ME and XHTL.

Supporting notes
a) I have said ‘preferred’ and not ‘replace’ i.e. I don’t expect AJAX to replace any technology

b) AJAX won’t solve all problems. You still need to create a service which is useful for mobile customers

c) AJAX is not the only attempt to create a better interface. There have been others with limited success but they are not across the industry(or are proprietary). For example mobile SVG from bitflash , superscape’s swerve technology for 3D gaming (which is the implementation of JSR 184 - Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2ME™ ) and macromedia mobile

d) Not a lot of people are actually browsing the mobile internet. Although WAP usage shows phenomenal growth, these figures include the use of WAP as a transport mechanism – typically for downloading content. In other words, every time you download a ringtone, you implicitly create a WAP page impression. I suspect the real figures used by consumers to actually browse the mobile internet are very low

e) Very few mobile operators have tried to engage with the developer community as such. Practically the only example I can think of is source o2

f) The plight of small developers can be illustrated from my discussions with a Korean vendor when I spoke at imobicon in Seoul. The vendor had finally managed to get his game listed on a UK portal. However, that was because – a Korean aggregator managed to get a deal with a UK aggregator. Thus, he now had two aggregators and one operator taking a slice of revenue! Leaving him with very little. A sad state of affairs. Surely, there must be a way to create and distribute applications globally i.e. you write for the browser and anyone who uses that browser can download and run your application

g) Mobile operators often argue that they handle billing and location services etc. That’s fine – but let’s first worry about getting the numbers. Also, billing comes at a cost and there may be better billing mechanisms on the web.

Conclusions
To recap, Mobile applications are primarily consumer focussed. They need critical mass. Currently, the market is fragmented and the current commercial model is broken.

AJAX offers a potentially better solution in comparison to the incumbents (J2ME and XHTML) due to a combination of fewer potential choke points because of its distribution mechanism. The economic models do not favour J2ME and AJAX offers a superior user experience to XHTML. It has the support of the developer community.

Finally, note that I say AJAX will be ‘preferred’ model and not the ‘only’ model. I don’t expect AJAX to replace either J2ME or XHTML.

Comments welcome: Ajit.Jaokar at futuretext.com

Useful links: Opera AJAX announcement
Dion Hinchcliffe's The Incredible Ongoing Story of Ajax

Image source: www.opera.com
Permanent Link: http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/01/mobile_web_20_a.html

For part two see HERE

Posted by ajit at 11:04 PM