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February 28, 2007
Mobile as the seventh mass media ..
In his usual style, Tomi Ahonen does an insightful piece on Mobile as the seventh mass media. Well worth a read!
Posted by ajit at 3:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
I am speaking at MIT/Sloan on March 15 and Ajaxwold NY(March 19)
Hello all
I am speaking at MIT/Sloan on March 15 and Ajaxwold NY(March 19) and also in the US again to speak at the Web 2.0 expo in April. Happy to meet up in Boston, New York or San Francisco. Please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com
Posted by ajit at 2:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2007
I am on the BBC Digital Planet program ..
I am on the BBC Digital planet program along with Christian Schimmel of Adlittle and Marc Aasjes of Vodafone. See the BBC Digital planet where you can download the podcast
According to the BBC:
Christian Schimmel , Marc Aasjes and Ajit Jaokar joined the programme to share their views on the next generation of mobile phone applications and the trend towards web 2.0 mobiles.
This program has a wide following here in the UK and also globally since it is a part of the BBC world service. The BBC also has been at the cutting edge with podcasting(the program also exists in a podcast form). The presenter Gareth Mitchell and his team are themselves a source of knowledge on how to set up a worldwide podcast system. So, in a switching of roles, I will be interviewing them on Horizon Channel soon!
Posted by ajit at 8:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
flirtomatic web and wap stats ..
Over Christmas, flirtomatic in the UK reported some interesting figures. I follow flirtomatic because they have managed to get some traction over Web and Mobile i.e. the service spans the Web and Mobile domains from the start. Also, Mark Curtis, founder of flirtomatic is one of my authors (Distraction)
Flirtomatic is a cross platform (web and wap) flirting service, now with 225,000 registered users (they came out of beta and launched properly in late May 2006). Acquiring web users has always been easier for them than wap users (the web is more viral, more promotional opportunities and provisioning by sms has high wastage rates) but they have begun to really improve recently on the WAP front - and are seeing amazing usage levels as a result.
In December wap usage was 4.3m page impressions - and it was especially high over Christmas and the New Year. Interestingly they are seeing higher page impressions per user on wap than on the web.
Over the last week they have seen 46% of users at any given moment have been mobile, and they are now seeing evidence of users understanding that cross platform means they can use the most appropriate medium for where they are.
This varies by user need of course: some users use the mobile in the office because they want to keep their flirting discrete - but then switch to PCs at night. Others, predictably, use a PC at work but check messages on their mobile going home (we see a mobile spike at 6pm).
while creating this post: I thought - 'Why are people using WAP to flirt? i.e. its normal to swap mobile numbers after an initial introduction(assuming interest) and then use text messaging to flirt (discreetly).'. So, why WAP? Shall ask Mark ..
Posted by ajit at 12:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2007
BBC calls Mobile Web 2.0 'Web 2.0 on the go'
Interesting article from the BBC about Web 2.0 on the go. Much of what we said in Mobile Web 2.0 is becoming mainstream now and its nice to see that!
Posted by ajit at 2:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 22, 2007
Mobile Youth is a fundamentally flawed strategy!
A recent article in the Times said
The growth of mobile internet use, by comparison, remains sluggish. More than half of respondents said that they never browsed the internet, and only 8 per cent said that they used it once a week or more. When it came to daily use, the figure dropped to 1 per cent. (Of the more than 7,000 12 to 24-year-olds surveyed by Forrester Research,)
I believe that : Focussing on Mobile Youth is a fundamentally flawed strategy!
Before you start to throw reports and stats at me pointing otherwise, think of this - why don't we have IPTV Youth or (horror) Fixed line youth?
Sounds stupid does it not?
Youth will always use technology to communicate! (Operative word is to communicate)
I have always believed that ‘mobile’ is an incredibly arrogant industry – we think we are somehow unique and in some way carve an ecosystem radically different from the Web. (Again – show me a report on the potential of Fixed Line Youth if you think that the Mobile industry is not arrogant!)
We got into this mindset because we saw consumers in Japan accessing the Mobile Web and then kids in Scandinavia adopting text messaging
But, as I said in my 3GSM presentation on Mobile Web 2.0, there is a battle for eyeballs. MySpace is a competitor to the ‘Ringtones’ – and at the moment, the Youth are going MySpace. MySpace and their ilk of course are not technologies but mechanisms for communication – same as Text messaging.
Which brings me to my point that ‘Mobile’ Youth is not a relevant concept
Now coming to the Forrester report.
That report is confusing terminology
a) Mobile Internet is not the same as 'Mobile Web' - I think from the references they are talking of the 'Mobile Web' when they are saying
More than half of respondents said that they never browsed the internet, and only 8 per cent said that they used it once a week or more. When it came to daily use, the figure dropped to 1 per cent.
The Operative word is 'browsing' i.e. Mobile Internet would be any IP based Mobile device (not just Mobile browsing)
b) The critical assumption in this report is: 'The Youth are not adopting the Mobile Web' - but That does NOT mean the Mobile Web is itself not taking off i.e. others (non youth) are driving the adoption of the Mobile Web
The Mobile Web (using my terminology as above) is alive and well and growing very fast. Increasingly, with browsers supporting Web standards like JavaScript and fixed rate pricing, the Mobile Web will grow.
Both Admob and screentonic have announced a billion ad impressions on the Mobile Web. So, the evidence of the growth of Mobile Web is there.
There is no evidence of Youth adopting the Mobile Web in the West .. but like I said .. that does not matter either way .. Because the Mobile Web is aligning to the Web and the Web is for everybody!! (In that sense, I agree with the Forrester report i.e. Youth are not adopting the Mobile Web)
So, like the Youth, let us grow up as an industry and not be defined by the past
At 3GSM, I spoke to a major Operator who said that their plans are now for 'everyone' i.e. services which can be used across the board. That’s right! That’s more money for the Operator. Youth have little or no money! So, expect to see Operators take up more holistic services.
Speaking of Operators - Operators have a great role to play here - as the Web and the Mobile Web become convergent, Operators can play a big role through technologies like IMS (that’s a major area of my thinking at the moment i.e. the synergies between Mobile Web 2.0 and technologies like IMS). If you have synergies between Mobile Web 2.0(User generated content, Mobile Web and network technologies like IMS), please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com
Mobile Youth, like I said, is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things and focussing on Mobile Youth means foregoing the larger revenue streams from the entire population
Posted by ajit at 8:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
I am speaking at the O Reilly Web 2.0 expo in April.
I am speaking at the O Reilly Web 2.0 expo in April.
If you are attending/speaking and want to catch up, please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com
Tony Fish will also be speaking (i.e. its a joint presentation).
More details of our session coming soon
Posted by ajit at 6:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 21, 2007
The biggest announcement at 3GSM – was the one that never was!
I always suspected that Mobile giants plot secret rival to Google .. Is it speculation?
was a rumour..
3GSM has come and gone .. But no such announcement in sight. For those not in the UK, the Telegraph (which was the only source for that story) has a much more conservative/older audience and is not known for leading edge insights/stories in new media unlike The Guardian or the BBC.
So, I was never very comfortable with this story – coming as it is – in the Telegraph. May still be announced post 3GSM - but I doubt it. More likely an attempt by the Telegraph to get noticed in new media circles :)
Posted by ajit at 3:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 20, 2007
O2 in Germany also has a fixed price plan ..
At 3GSM, I swapped notes with Dr Florian Steiner of O2 (who is also doing a book on Web 2.0 in German). Florian mentioned that O2 has also announced a fixed rate priceplan
The official press release in German is at http://www.o2.com/de/presse
It says that o2 is launching 3 packs
tariffs for internet usage on the mobile:
S time based billing
M volume pack
L fair flat (almost unlimited)
always good to see Operators announing flat rate priceplans! Thanks Florian
Posted by ajit at 11:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2007
The Long tail and Mobile Web 2.0 applications
Background
This is an ambitious post and I seek your feedback to improve its insights.
One of my personal highlights at 3GSM was an informal meeting organised by Daniel Appelquist from Vodafone. Apart from futuretext(me), other attendees included Vodafone, Swisscom,Ikivo ,IBM, T-mobile, Gregory Gorman(The Open Group) , Access , Soonr and Teleca.
Opera Software , Sony-Ericsson and Openwave expressed support for the meeting , but were unable attend due to the pressures of 3GSM week.
The common interest unifying this group was a commitment to the Mobile Web, Open Standards and Mobile Ajax.
This post is my personal viewpoint as to how we, as an industry, can leverage the power of the Mobile Web. The ideas outlined here were broadly discussed in the meeting – however the analysis, approach and emphasis are mine. In other words, the conclusions reached here were not reached by the group; but rather by me based on the insights gained from the group.
As I get more feedback from you, I hope to refine the views here.
Also, while the original remit of the meeting was to discuss Mobile Ajax, I have included two other related Web based technologies in this discussion – namely Mobile Widgets and WICD. Thus, in this article, when I am referring to Mobile browsing technologies, I am referring to all three technologies unless otherwise specified.
By extension, the document refers only to applications developed on Web standards and does not include any other non-web technologies.
The problem
The current Mobile Web ecosystem presents a complex and an evolving framework. Within this framework, the questions we address here are:
a) How to ‘sell’ the vision to the all players in the industry; especially to Mobile Operators
b) How to empower grassroots developers by creating a vibrant ecosystem – a problem which I have historically been discussing in my blog and books
c) Operators face the problem of how to work with incremental/grassroots innovation. In contrast to existing top down services which are complex for an Operator to deploy(and approve within their own organization), they need a simpler, more granular framework to handle the many ‘Long tail’ applications
d) How to harness innovation arising from the many grassroots / Long Tail applications – many of which will never ‘take off’. A few will be super hits. However, an ecosystem is needed to allow them all to flourish
e) How can Operators gain financially from new innovation without taking on the complex task of working with thousands of developers
f) How can developers(especially Web developers) work with the industry and make money from their innovations with low risk deployments
g) Can Operators take on the role of the Amazon marketplace – leveraging their existing infrastructure to gain new revenue sources which span the Web and the Mobile domains? These services could be implemented similar to Amazon Web Services APIs.
The options
Within the framework of Mobile browsing technologies, we could potentially create five classes of applications(note that this categorization is not technology based – but rather, it is based on function) within the context of the above Web technologies
These application classes include :
1) ‘Convergence’ applications: In this class of applications, the browser is the lowest common denominator across a range of devices – thereby enabling these devices to communicate via Web based technologies
2) Content access applications: Accessing any content from a mobile device through browser based technologies
3) Enterprise access applications: A special case of class 2 for enterprise data
4) Device API applications: Mobile applications that need access to the device APIs(such as the messaging API, phone API etc)
5) Long tail applications: Discussed in detail below
The current industry focus leans towards ‘Device API applications’ i.e. applications that need access to Phone APIs. While access to device APIs is ideal, it may not be always necessary. For instance, the Soonr applications run Mobile Ajax without needing to access device APIs.
Ultimately, the industry will evolve to overcome the device API access issues for browsers. However, this document outlines a class of applications which do not necessarily need access to device APIs – i.e. what is referred to here as the ‘Long tail’ applications.
The philosophical foundations behind Long tail Mobile Web applications are based on three ideas
a) Tim Berners Lee’s keynote address at 3GSM which talked about a unified, holistic vision for the Mobile Web
b) The principles of the Long Tail
c) And finally, my own document – which first touched on the Long Tail applications driven by the power of Mobile Ajax.
Description
What type of application are we outling here?
The answer is: We don’t know. Because it is not a specific application – but rather an ecosystem.
Thus, we cannot predict the actual applications that will be winners.
This ecosystem has the following characteristics:
a) It is based on Web standards and specifically on the three Web technologies which are relevant to Mobile applications: Mobile Ajax, Mobile Widgets and WICD
b) By extension of the above, we are working with applications that span the Web and the Mobile Web
c) The applications are typically small, single function applications(at least initially). Typically, they could be accessing any content from the Web – including content from Enterprises.
d) The operator has a critical role to play - more akin to Amazon marketplace
e) By the nature of Mobile Web, the strategy depends on next generation mobile web technologies. Most new devices from all device vendors are supporting the full Web browser(by ‘full web browsers’, we mean browsers supporting technologies like Javascript i.e. not WAP/XHTML etc)
f) Developers have the ability to create and deploy applications very fast. These applications make money from day one for the developer! Not a lot of money - but a billing model should exist. The operator could mange the billing and distribution model
An example of such a service could be almost any 'Widget' (running on both Web and mobile devices) – for instance a Widget that gives local bus timings. Such a Widget would run on the Web and also the Mobile Web.
Advantages
This approach has a number of advantages:
a) Operator gain a new source of revenue from Long tail applications
b) They become a ‘bazaar’ – similar to Amazon marketplace
c) Developers are empowered and can make money from applications that span the Web and the Mobile Web
d) The approach is based on Web/Open standards. Because Web standards are not burdened by Intellectual property, they are cheaper to deploy
e) We are addressing problems which we can solve rather than getting bogged down with problems that are too difficult at the moment(for instance device API
applications). This starts the ecosystem development now and in future, more complex problems like Device APIs can be addressed.
Conclusions
• I see this appoach to be a pragmatic way to move things forward rather than waiting for more complex problems (like device access APIs) to be resolved.
• We are takes the view that : Let us start somewhere and then grow a viable ecosystem where all participants can make money.
• It is based on Web standards, which are cheaper and more inclusive in comparison to propriotery standards
• It fosters the notion of the ‘One Web’ and introduces developers to the Mobile Web through standards that they are familiar with
Next Steps
I view this as a living document and a manifestation of my book Mobile Web 2.0 i.e. ‘how Mobile Web 2.0 may manifest itself’ . I look forward to your feedback which I shall incorporate in this document.
I will also create other documents specific to the technologies and to convergence in general for instance Mobile Widgets, Mobile Ajax, Browsers/IMS as convergence mechanisms etc
Please email me your thoughts/feedback and future contributions to this document at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com
Acknowledgements
All the participants of the above meeting and especially Dan Appelquiest from Vodafone for his initial feedback.
About the author
Ajit Jaokar is based in London and is the co-author of the book Mobile Web 2.0 . He is the CEO of a publishing company futuretext. He chairs Oxford University’s next generation mobile applications panel
Recent media / talks have included 3GSM Barcelona-2007, CNN Money, The Scoble show, O Reilly Web 2.0 expo, Stanford university and MIT Sloan(April 2007)
Posted by ajit at 5:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Ideal Mobile Software Stack by Simeon Simeonov
Note from Ajit:
This post comes from Simieon. The views expressed here are not 100% consistent with mine, however - this is the OpenGardens blog :) i.e. differing views are welcome - and in some ways - encouraged!. Sim of course, knows a bit about Adobe/Flash and Macromedia since he was vice president of emerging technologies and chief architect at Macromedia before joining Polaris ventures.(Polaris is a Tier One VC based out of Boston). Sim is also a good friend and is a contributing blogger to the OpenGardens
It was great to meet Simeon personally at 3GSM and we had a great time discussing technology, industry vision, technology trends etc etc. Sim attended my session at 3GSM on Mobile Web 2.0 and we discussed this post extensively before my talk. On the way back to my hotel and the location of the Ogilvy Telecoms conference (more on that later), we discussed more things tech related - it was surreal discussing 'Sim' cards with Simeion Simeonov Simeonov :). So expect more such posts from Sim
Sim’s post follows …
I've written previously on the need for a better mobile software stack.
My ideal phone stack consists of Linux as the HW abstraction layer, real-time Java as the phone middleware and Flash Lite as the presentation tier.
I've gotten quite a few questions about this so let's look at the problem more broadly (with the addition of AJAX as a possible presentation tier) and then layer-by-layer. I should start by saying that I have very little specific experience in phone HW/SW design. My comments are based on my experience with platform runtimes, N-tier architectures and developer ecosystems--most of which are gaping holes in the mobile space.
Some general observations, i.e., the set of my high-level biases about mobile:
• The mobile space is likely to continue its rapid evolution. Video is the new big thing. Location-based services (LBS), 3G/WiFi/WiMAX, advanced voice apps, security, advertising and others are on the horizon.
• Phone HW evolves quickly and there is increased pressure for it to evolve even faster to meet market timing needs. Being at 3GSM this week confirms this.
• Device capabilities are getting better. For higher-end devices, memory and CPU are rarely the constraints these days. It's most likely I/O (screen + text input) and battery life.
• There is significant device fragmentation, which is likely to get worse because HW is becoming more and more tuned to the target market segment. Saw several companies at 3GSM offering mass-customization of phones for narrow demographics or affiliate groups.
• ODMs know HW. They don't know SW. The big ones are learning slowly. The Tier 2/3 cannot invest enough to learn quickly.
• Most on-device software is pretty terrible. (Some favorite examples… Until the very latest Blackberry models came out you couldn't forward emails as texts and vice versa, even though they are in the same inbox. A MOTO friend told me that RAZRs used to, perhaps still do, have separate inboxes for SMS vs. WAP Push messages. The WAP push inbox didn't have notification so consumers wouldn't know that they've received a link.) Take a poll. Who of your friends loves their phone software experience? More than 10+yrs after the arrival of the Mobile Web, the phone experience is predominantly still voice and text.
• Phones are increasingly adding 3rd party software, e.g., instant messaging clients, Flash Lite, on-device portals (ODPs), etc. It's a struggle to integrate this software with the device given the tight market cycles. Very few companies, e.g., SavaJe and Open Plug, offer solutions in the space and none that I know have any significant traction.
• The closed garden walls are starting to come down, no question about it. Phones that support WiFi will serve to accelerate this trend. There are some very cool startups, such as Fonav, started by my friend Ram Fish, working hard to make this happen.
• Eventually, mobile advertising will work. I'm not sure exactly how it'll happen and it certainly won't happen as fast as some of the mobile advertising startups are hoping for but advertising will ultimately be figured out because content and not pipes is what attracts end-users, which would lead to an eventual opening of carrier networks, which leaves tapping the advertising/direct marketing value chain as the most obvious revenue model. Subscriptions won’t go away but there will be more all you can eat subscription plans, again, a trend confirmed by announcements at 3GSM.
• Mobile content is developed by a relatively narrow + fragmented ecosystem of about 1M developers. (It's a very rough guess. I've asked everyone from MS to MOTO to Nokia to carriers about numbers and nobody knows for sure but they all agree that around a million is probably a good bet). There are probably 10+M non-mobile developers.
The biggest problem in the space from my naïve perspective is that there is too much friction in the mobile value chain. Friction increases the cost of experimentation and hence market entry. The result is a slower pace of innovation in the mobile space. Much of the friction is due to cultural issues and business models, a topic too big to tackle here. The rest is due to technology.
The first tech problem to tackle is the introduction of new phone hardware.
Once you have the HW you have to bolt on the SW. Traditionally, this has been done through hardcore hacking/porting of an embedded OS (for the cheapest phones), some modified version of Linux or one of the smartphone OSs, e.g., Windows Mobile or Symbian. Windows will do great in the enterprise because of the ability to integrate with the installed base of Office, SharePoint and Exchange users. Symbian is neat but I expect it to have difficulty becoming a dominant platform because, like Windows Mobile, it is proprietary yet it doesn’t have the demand pull that Microsoft can generate through its installed base. The rest of the world will want something cheaper, more flexible and less controlled by big vendors. This set of requirements will sound familiar to people who built appliances in the enterprise space. Their choice was Linux. The same set of forces will make Linux the choice in the mobile space. The current approach of hacking Linux to force fit it to devices will give way to a more architected approach with a meaningful hardware abstraction layer (HAL) supporting binary compatibility with the higher OS layers, akin to some of the work that startups such as A La Mobile are doing. The task of high- and low-level driver development will spread to the various component manufacturers, making the load bearable. This is the only sane approach to lowering costs and time-to-market on the HW/SW interface side, especially when one takes into account the ODM's lack of SW skills. That's an opportunity for third parties.
The mobile version of Linux should stop far short of the set of capabilities one would find in a desktop OS. There should be no focus on UI or even basic user services. Linux as an environment and C/C++ as the programming language are not the best-suited for this. I'll grant that this is an arguable point. Most of the very cool mobile/embedded UIs (from the iPod to the early Blackberries) are done in C/C++. However, I see that primarily as an artifact of history. By the same argument, one can say that the best user experiences on the Web are done using plain HTML as opposed to Flash/AJAX but that would be ignoring the trends. C/C++ fail what I call the ecosystem test.
The second tech problem to tackle is the integration of various phone services into a flexible, manageable, extensible on-device service delivery platform.
Think of it as the API into the phone but not in a fixed (these are objects/methods) way. Instead, think of it as something akin to a mini-SOA architecture for the phone without all the runtime overhead because the environment is constrained. Does something like this exist right now? Not that I know of but it should. (Open Plug and similar companies offer dynamic binding upon application/service installation but do not go all the way to dynamic service discovery and invocation.) Without this type of abstraction layer, building applications that leverage phone services and integrate them together becomes much harder. Upgrading services may or may not break applications.
Conversely, upgrading applications to take advantage of new services would also become harder. It is important for applications to plug into this layer and expose their own set of services to the phone and other applications.
Let's look at some examples:
• You install a new IM client. It registers as a texting and messaging service with the phone, allowing you to forward texts, emails and pictures to your IM buddies, even though the texting and emailing apps never considered the existence of IM as a way to exchange messages.
• You download a Skype client to your phone. It should be able to integrate with phone features controlling microphone, speakers, and call services. If allowed (by the user, operator, ...), Skype could become a callout service + integrate with your address book + more. If so configured, Skype voicemail should be able to trigger the phone voicemail indicator yet not interrupt how phone voicemail is processed.
It's not easy to build this layer in the phone since it has to encompass telephony services (both on the cell network and VoIP), broadcast services (mobile TV/video), data services (real and non-real-time over the cell network, WiFi, WiMAX, etc.), etc. It has to have real-time dispatch and event processing capabilities. It has to have a strong security model. It has to have easy to document/use APIs and fit SOA concepts well. It has to target a large, existing, globally distributed developer ecosystem armed with good tools. Some standard set of frameworks/services built on Java seems to be the only viable answer for the time being. And it has to be small and simple enough to run on common phone platforms.
MIDP2/3 are not relevant here in the sense that there is no UI involved. This is truly a multi-threaded middleware layer, making the phone HW and installed applications work well with one another. My guess is that J2ME CDC should be sufficient.
The final layer in the proposed three tier mobile stack is the presentation tier.
The requirements for a good presentation tier are that
(a) it can generate engaging user experiences on target devices and
(b) there is a ready ecosystem that can deliver content and applications to that presentation tier. The latter point is, in fact, the most important one, getting back to the ecosystem test and the claim that content, broadly speaking, rules in the end. Ecosystems take years to build out and nobody has time for that.
Java goes out the window when evaluated against these requirements. There are very few examples of truly engaging user experiences developed with Java. There are not many developers who know how to develop these. Most of the people doing UI work with Java have been in the enterprise domain. This issue isn't that you can't build cool mobile apps on J2ME, it's that there aren't enough people who know how to build lots and lots of them.
Realistically, there is only one broad community of developers to tap into to grow the supply of content and application in mobile in a big way and that's the Web developer + designer community. The designer/developer role split is very complementary for consumer experiences. A mini-app (widget) or a container for some interactive content, e.g., a video with some interactivity, can probably be handled by a designer type with some development ability. More sophisticated apps (say an IM client for the phone) will be developed the same way they are done on the Web--interactive designers architect the core of the user experience and graphic designers + developers fill out the pieces on top of the middleware architecture/services provided by the phone.
The Web 1.0 experience, with its constant page refresh cycles, is poorly suited to the low bandwidth, unreliable wireless networks. That's why most WAP/WML mobile sites suck. Even Google has switched to downloadable clients for its mobile apps.
The solution is to go the way of Rich Internet/Mobile Applications using either DHTML + AJAX or Flash (Lite).
Neither is a perfect choice in the short run. As a side note, it is important to notice that this presentation tier runs on the phone, not in the browser. It is the phone UI, while the browser is just one of the applications. Ideally, it will include the phone top. MSX is a good example of a company developing flexible phone tops using a high level of abstraction.
Whether Flash Lite or AJAX ends up with a dominant market share in the future is a topic worthy of another post. Both have strengths and weaknesses. My personal bias puts me closer to Flash, yet Ajit makes a very compelling argument as to why AJAX is the better chance in the long run in his post Flash Lite is not WICD but it should be . The biggest problem on the AJAX side is fragmentation—there are too many browser limitations and incompatibilities right now even when one considers the high-end offerings such as Openwave's MIDAS or the Opera Platform. I don't expect these to get resolved for years--just look at the problems that PC browsers have had over the years.
Efforts such as mojax, may play an increasing role in this space, especially since mojax, through its J2ME implementation, is exposing lower-level phone capabilities to the presentation tier.
mojax is one of the worlds first Mobile AJAX Application Frameworks. Unlike traditional AJAX Web Frameworks, mojax Moblets do not run within a browser and are not subject to the availability and quality of a network connection. Also, unlike a web application running on a mobile device, a mojax moblet has access to lower level device features such as Camera API, Push Messaging, Bluetooth, Location Services, Contacts and more.
Flash Lite offers great tooling and consistent runtime capabilities/experience but that comes at the cost of slower market penetration and a higher minimum bar for device capabilities.
Flash has several things going for it:
• There is a thriving ecosystem of 1.5+M Flash designers + millions of developers who know how to use what the designers give them. There are dozens of ISVs in the third party ecosystem.
• There is extensive tooling for both designers and developers, including runtime platforms for general applications (Flex) and specific content delivery platforms for carriers (FlashCast).
• Adobe takes a broad approach towards user experiences, including, for example, audio and video as part of the experience. This is why they bought ActImagine in 2006.
• Widgets and smaller apps can offer the same user experience online and on mobile. For example, Mobitween's games run off of the same codebase on phones and in PC browsers.
Japan is the showcase market for Flash. I've heard of staggering differences between the monetization of rich (Flash-based) vs. static content there. Outside of Japan, Verizon Wireless is the showcase operator pushing Flash Lite. Adobe must be very close to ironing out additional deals or there would not have been the contingent of CxO and SVP execs I saw at 3GSM.
The two main things going against Flash are the minimum device capabilities and the price. Moore's Law helps with the former but not fast-enough. For years Macromedia under-invested in figuring out how to get Flash to feature phones. Now it is an important target for Adobe. Some have raised concerns about Flash Lite being proprietary, closed-source and expensive. All valid points to the extent that it would be more desirable for there to exist a free, standards-based, open-source, ubiquitous, rich mobile device presentation layer. I'll take that and world peace anytime :). Delivering and maintaining software across hundreds of mobile devices requires significant investment. I don't expect to see Flash Lite or the good AJAX-enabled mobile frameworks becoming free anytime soon.
It's interesting to wait and see where open-source efforts such as mojax end up. My expectation is that they'll do great on features and will suffer where performance and quality are concerned--those have typically not been the strengths of the open-source community. Unless ODMs and operators contribute significant resources to these projects, it'll take a long time before they are ready for prime time.
So there it is--the mobile stack of the future: Linux as the OS, Java as the middleware on the phone and Flash/AJAX as the presentation tier.
There are a number of startups working on the Linux front. The Java piece is probably the most scarce in the industry. Apart from SavaJe, no one has done serious Java work on the phone. The presentation tier will be the playground of large vendors (Adobe, Openwave, Microsoft) on one hand and also developer-focussed companies like Opera and Trolltech on the other hand (because they have been historically close to the developer community thereby mitigating to an extent the high costs of ecosystem development and developer marketing).
Finally, it makes sense to ask the question why would operators, especially the large ones, who ultimately control the mobile stack want to move in this direction. Some answers are:
• Lower costs, both for getting new devices operational and for evolving on-device and network services. Also, application certification costs go down significantly.
• Faster time to market, again for both devices and services that integrate with the handset.
• Greater monetization potential of subscribers due to the availability of more content and applications, especially niche content and apps, which are of relevance to niche audiences.
These become particularly important in a world where mobile search and advertising are starting to take a foothold.
Posted by ajit at 4:33 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 18, 2007
Experience migrating to wordpress from movable type?
Does anyone have any experience (or can recommend someone) who has migrated
to wordpress from movable type?
I think movable type is really not listening to its customers.
Simple things like comment management lead to a lot of work for example:
wordpress has features like entering a keyword v.s. movable type which forces you
to use a typekey service - not in my interest or the interest of my
readers!
A new version of Movable type is out but don’t see anything great in it - so now I am
seriously considering migrating to wordpress!
Please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com
kind rgds
Ajit
Posted by ajit at 5:42 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Happy Chinese New Year to our readers ..
Happy Chinese New Year to our readers !!
Image source: BBC
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February 17, 2007
Should we have a .wii domain? A case for One Web
At the session I chaired at 3GSM, Jon von Tetzchner Chief Executive Officer Opera Software, had an insightful question to the audience:
Should we have a .wii domain for the Nintendo Wii
The answer ofcourse is no!
But it does illustruate the point very well that there can be only one Web
And a caveat: The Nintendo Wii runs the Opera browser
Posted by ajit at 7:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2007
Tim Berners Lee keynote at 3GSM
For many attendees of 3GSM, Tim Berners Lee's keynote was an important hightlight of the conference. The full text of the speech is as per the link HERE. I have reproduced the text below and highlighted the bits which I have found insightful.
The Mobile Web
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be here today. I must say I cannot claim to be an expert in the mobile phone technology, so I speak as a guest in this conference. My career for the last 20 years has unrolled in the context of the Internet. What I find exciting about being here now is that we are at an epic point in telecommunications history, when the mobile platforms discussed here, and the Internet platforms which have enabled such a spectacular growth and innovation, are poised, if we manage this well, to merge.
In the few minutes we have together, I would like to explain to you the essence of an open Web platform — the things without which it would not deserve the name. I would like you to understand that there are plenty of ways in which we could fail to pull this off, and leave ourselves incapacitated, with innovation stifled. By 'we' here I mean the whole community of manufacturers, service providers, content providers, consumers, and to a limited extent, legislators. I'd like you also to feel with me the excitement about some of the incredible things we can aim for if we succeed.
Let me tell you where I am coming from, to help you understand my point of view. Twenty years ago, or 52 Web years as we used to say, I was a software engineer at CERN, the particle physics lab in Geneva. CERN is a great place, full of people from across the world tackling the greatest current challenges in physics. It is a great place to work, with lots of very creative people who chat over coffee with views of the vineyards and the Alps.
Now, this diversity of talent had brought with it a diversity of technology. This is pre-Web. Take your minds back — perhaps, younger ones, ask your parents. There are documents stored on computers — papers, manuals, help systems, letters, but each system works on one particular computer — minicomputer, mainframe or PC or Mac in those days — and runs on one particular operating system, VMS, VM-CMS, DOS, Mac OS, and many flavors of Unix. So finding a document involved finding out which computer it was on, knowing which program to run, and learning how to use that program. This was driving me crazy, and by 1989 I'd figured out that a networked hypertext system, a kind of Web, could be used to wrap up each system and make its screens, menus and documents be part of a globally interconnected space which could be viewed from any computer.
Also, just at that point, a critical transition was occurring. Each computer had been connected to a different form of network: Decnet, Cernnet, Bitnet, Appletalk, and so on. The attempts to rationalize these using ISO standards was not doing well. However, the Internet was already connecting universities all over the US. Depending on who you talked to, it was just becoming respectable; it was also becoming possible to connect computers to it at CERN.
I wanted to design the World Wide Web, as I decided to call it, to be usable for any data on any system. I had watched the failure of so many sophisticated documentation access systems which constrained their users to use one type of computer, or operating system. If really anything could be on the Web, then the Web technology should demand almost nothing of its users.
The reason that I could just design the Web by myself and set it running on a couple of computers without asking anyone, was that the Internet in turn had been designed to be used for anything, constraining its users as little as possible. So this is one of the qualities of an open platform: it is built to enable, not to control, and it does not try to second guess the things which will be built using it.
The Web is designed, in turn, to be universal: to include anything and anyone. This universality includes an independence of hardware device and operating system, as I mentioned, and clearly this includes the mobile platform. It also has to allow links between data from any form of life, academic, commercial, private or government. It can't censor: it must allow scribbled ideas and learned journals, and leave it to others to distinguish these. It has to be independent of language and of culture. It has to provide as good an access as it can for people with disabilities.
The Web worked because of a number of technical and social reasons. It worked because there was no central bottleneck for traffic, no central link database to be kept consistent, no central place to go and register a new page or a new Web site.
It worked because it was valuable, in a novel way. The value added by the Web is the unexpected re-use of information. People learned that if they went to the trouble of putting something on the Web for some reason, that others would benefit later in ways they never anticipated. The experience of surfing the Web, which blew some of the early users away for days and nights, was of discovering things you never knew existed.
So the Web worked. How many projects do we start which have a bright start and fizzle out over time? So many that it is worth celebrating that the Web worked. It is worth noting why. A lot of that has to do with the open Internet platform.
Let me mention one important aspect of the platform. The serendipitous re-use of information happens because when I buy an Internet connection, I don't specify the Web sites I am going to connect to. If you buy an Internet connection, and you run a Web server, then I can connect to your site. I don't find my ISP saying that it wants to be my supplier of music, and so it will block access to any site I try to load music from.
This is of course different from the model which the cable companies have had. The relatively recent ability of the Internet to carry video promises to really open up the movie delivery options, and provide an exciting new world of anything on demand any time, and not just anything we currently get from a few large companies, but the long tail, the seething mass of individual and independent films which are waiting to entertain someone out there. When a US cable company threatens to attempt to stifle this aspect of the open Internet platform, we have defended it as Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality was so much of an obvious technical and social prerequisite of the Internet world, that it never needed a name until now. It is a tension of convergence, where different business models and cultures may clash. I am confident that Net Neutrality will be preserved, for the good of us all. But I would urge you to support it whenever you get the chance.
So what else does it take to make an open Internet platform?
What does it take?
It takes, mainly, common standards. The innovation of the WWW was possible because the standards for TCP/IP were already implemented in an interoperable way all over the planet, in advance of the innovation. TCP/IP wasn't designed with networked hypertext in mind. But it wasn't designed to prohibit it either — it was and is an open platform.
Web 2.0 community Web sites, eBay, and Flickr are possible because the Web standards, in turn, were widely implemented in an interoperable way, before those innovations. The same for the wikis, like Wikipedia, and blogs, and so on. The Web is a huge platform for innovation because of those standards. Any new genre of communication, any new social networking idea, immediately can gain the value of unexpected re-use by people across the world.
There is a very important difference in attitude between a foundation technology and — well — let's call it a ceiling technology. A foundation technology is designed to enable innovation, to be the base which will support other even more powerful things to come. A ceiling technology is not. It is designed to provide a value, and for its provider to cash in and cash out. Proprietary music download systems are ceiling technologies to the extent that the technologists design to be also being the only store in town, rather than creating an open market. Though putting a lid on further innovation, they are still providing a service, and making sure they profit from it.
Ceiling technologies are the end of the road for innovation.
When you want to make a foundation technology, you need to look ahead. You need to put aside the short term return on investment questions and look at the long term.
A great example of this is the patent question. In 1989 my colleagues in the Internet community would not have dreamed of patenting the ideas in the Internet protocols. We worked together to figure out new ideas, and implement them as common standards. As the Web grew, we realised we needed to establish a structure for developing common Web technical standards. In 1994 we formed the W3C as a meeting place for this process.
In 1998, we had launched a project to help with the issue of user privacy on the Web. It was a protocol (P3P) to allow a Web browser to automatically read and check a machine-readable version of a Web site's privacy policy. It was not a very exciting new technology, but it was an important innovation as electronic commerce was being held back in some cases by user fears in this area. At the time when we should have been engaged in deployment and testing, a small company announced that everyone who wished to make a P3P implementation would have to pay royalties. They claimed to have a patent on something to do with information being communicated and stored and affecting future communication.
This has a devastating effect. Anyone working for a large company was told by lawyers never to read anything to do with the work. Anyone working as a volunteer in their garage dropped their work on these tools as they didn't want to work for free for this company. The mid-sized companies who were running a business specifically around the technology ran into serious trouble. It took us 18 months and $150k to get a legal opinion that royalties were not in fact payable, but that was 4 Web years, during the boom, and that was too long. P3P lost its momentum. The world lost an enabling technology.
How does a company think about standards then if following them may involve losing that short-term ceiling technology return?
It is a game. In the mathematical sense. Here is the payoff matrix: You commit to working on a standard, or not. The standard may take off or it may not.
If you don't commit to the standard, and it doesn't work, (which of course it won't if no one else does) then life, and your proprietary ceiling technology, continues. No innovation.
If you do commit to it and it it does work, then a whole new market is enabled: This is the disruptive case. There is some effort involved moving the company to the standard, and often to help build the standard. You might join W3C to help make it happen. A certain amount of effort. There is a major long term return.
One of the most difficult things for some companies to learn is that this is not a zero-sum game. We are so used to battling over a fixed market, or battling over fixed resources, that we tend to assume everything is such that we can only win what our competitors lose. But when we make a whole new market space, like the Web, or like GSM actually, then we are in fact together battling the human condition such as inefficiency, poverty and ignorance.
Now, what about the corner cases? The fear seems to be of going for the standard and it not taking off. Well, the loss in this case is the engineering time to tool up for the standard, which could have been saved. But it is a very finite loss.
On the other hand, what if you decide not to go for the standard and it does take off? Everything happens, the new market appears, and you are not there. The pace of everything ramps up dramatically, and you are left standing still. The costs of retooling to a standard get much bigger as time passes. In this conference we all can see the stresses on phone companies, and we know the dis-empowerment of all travelers from the fact that the GSM standards and frequencies are not quite global — and we know the benefits from the fact that are becoming so. Other cases spring to mind. On the Internet, for example, streaming media are available in many incompatible formats.
Often this is due to companies wanting to profit from ceiling technologies. This involves making a high income from the technology itself rather than letting it take off. This in turn requires patents, and of course that the owned technology dominates. Hence the battles over VHS and Betamax, HD DVD and Blu-Ray, and so on.
So as the Web platform and the mobile phone converge — what do we want the result to be? A foundation or a ceiling technology? Clearly, a foundation. A mobile phone — or whatever device we carry around which uses GSM technology and its successors — is going to be everywhere, and everyone will have one. It has do be designed to be universal. So that everyone can use it. So that you can do anything with it.
The choice is the new platform being a privately owned walled garden, or a competitive open platform. Both models can work in the medium term. But the open model opens up new things which we can only try to imagine.
What are the standards? Basically, the same standards as the current Web uses. That is the most important point. It is one Web. The Web works on phones. There are effective browsers which can give you access to the same information which you could see from any laptop or desktop. Of course, looking ahead, small devices will get smarter and displays will get more and more pixels, so mobile devices are taking the same track which larger computers did a few years before.
That said, there are ways of making a Web site work much better with a mobile device. The W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) is a group of mobile technology companies within the World Wide Web Consortium which realize the importance of this convergence and are working hard to make the Mobile Web a reality.
MWI defines best practices for authoring content. It defines what sort of facilities that you should expect to find on a mobile device. It gives best practices for serving data in the most device-independent way. It recommends finding out what device you are talking to if you can, and sending appropriately formatted content. Some phone browsers set out to be able to provide access to virtually any Web page, but technical limitation on other phones make this impossible. To encourage Web sites to become easily browsable by mobile devices, there is a "mobileOK" mark which may be used by content providers adhering to guidelines.
Designing for the "mobileOK" mark, designing Web sites which are browsable by many different sorts of devices also has important spin-offs. Many of the MWI best practices are in fact good Web design principles, so the whole site will be easier to use for anyone. There is a also a lot of overlap with accessibility. Making a "mobileOK" site and making one which is easily used by people with disabilities involves the same sort of work.
From the beginning, The W3C has fought the "best viewed with 800x600 screen" buttons, and any design patterns which disenfranchise different devices. This was difficult when everyone seemed to have the same sort of laptop, but easier as it became obvious that screens vary a lot. The Mobile Web Initiative is the work we have to do now. It is timely, it is part of a historic convergence of technologies. But it is part of a general strategic principle of keeping the information which is such a huge form of capital in the world in as powerful, and reusable from as we can, for the future generations and people who don't currently have access.
It isn't just about making the Web you know today work on mobile phones. We are talking about innovation. The innovations which will really count are the things which I can't imagine now. They may include new applications built using the familiar AJAX technologies used cross-platform now, well known by developers, and increasingly available on mobile devices. These new applications may also operate across multiple devices. This is where we talk of the Ubiquitous Web. Have you noticed the price of LEDs is coming down, and more and more surfaces are covered with them? Not just at rock concerts and Times Square, but coming soon to all kinds of surfaces near you. Your phone could use these displays, and the abstract task you are doing can really rise above individual devices. Imagine that my phone or my wristwatch has details of a flight I am booking, and I walk into a room where it negotiates to project a map on the wall. And so on. Imagine yourself. Innovate on the mobile Web platform.
Among other things, many of us are hoping that a low-cost open platform will have a much greater penetration in what we currently call the developing world. I personally believe that it is important to humanity to connect peoples across the world as widely as possible. I think we must preserve the diversity of cultures and ideas. But also I think we must connect people to give more global harmony. We should not add connectivity to the long list that the richer countries have and the poorer ones do not, a list which of course has clean water, health care and peace pretty near the top.
As part of the Mobile Web Initiative, W3C held a workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries. One of the concerns is that some of the new phones aimed at the lower cost bracket don't all have Web browsers. The area is very exciting, and the figures for coverage — 80% of the world's population I have heard (World Bank, according to Wikipedia), and for market growth in developing countries seem very positive.
So when we look at the choices for the mobile devices, it is clear that they must continue on the path to an open Web platform. That is what the Mobile Web Initiative is about. Huge new markets, and huge opportunities for humanity, depend on this. We know in general how to do it. But there is a lot to do. It has been my pleasure to take a tour of these issues with you, you who are the companies and individuals who are making it happen.
Posted by ajit at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Feedback on my talk at 3GSM ..
Hello all,
It was great to meet so many of you at my 3GSM session - many meeting me for the first time.
From the feedback I have been getting, it went great! This was my first attempt at chairing a session and also speaking at it, and it was certainly well attended and with good Q and A.
Ofcourse, I was fortunate in having a great panel in Jon von Tetzchner Chief Executive Officer Opera Software, Alex Kummerman Chief Executive Officer Clicmobile and David Wood Executive Vice President, Symbian Research. Thanks Jon, David and Alex and also Byrne Harris and his team at 3GSM
If you attended it and want to leave us some feedback, please contact me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com and I shall post your comments here(both positive and negative!). I am also happy to link back to you. (I have had some problems posting comments on this blog which I am trying to fix, so to be safe please email me)
Besides readers of my books and this blog, many forumoxford members attended it and below is some feedback from forumoxford member David doherty of 3gdoctor
Thanks for the feedback David and its nice to be compared to Tomi :). I shall try and get the presentations and post them.
For the people who couldn't attend i wanted to let the forum know that today i was in the audience at the Technology Breakout Session moderated by Ajit Jaokar that was contributed to with presentations from the likes of Operas Jon Bon Tetzchner & Symbians David Woods.
I wonder if Ajit could possibly provide the forum with his and the presenters slides so they too can benefit from these excellent insights?
The Symbian presentation was best in show and Ajit really set the tempo to leave more than enough time for participation (which has sadly been absent from most of the other sessions). Last time i had so much fun at a 3gsm was when i first discovered Tomi Ahonen - pacing up and down in his keynote address at Cannes re: churn management of hidden alpha users.
Well done Ajit...
Posted by ajit at 5:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mobizines
We are trying a new service called mobizines. The service is operator agnostic and free (aside from data usage). You can get the Mobizine by texting “mobi opengardens” to 63333 (+44 7624 806310 from outside the UK).
If you have any problems with the installation, check out the faqs and then try dropping an email to help@mobizines.com. They are quick to respond to queries. We will be doing this on a trial basis for 6 months and it will be interesting to see if this is the way to mobilise a blog. We will also be exploring other ways. Please let me know what you think of this experience if you try it out.
According to Mobizines, the data usage is as follow
Data Usage: The Mobizines service is free to the end user aside from normal operator data costs. The Java and Symbian versions of the service use different amounts of data which are outlined below.
Java Version (most phones)
Initial Download – 150KB one time
Mobizine Edition updates (3 per week) – about 35KB each update
Symbian Version (Nokia smartphones)
Initial Download - 900KB one time
Mobizine Edition updates (3 per week) – about 35KB each update
For more information on Mobizines, see the mobizines site. For more informaton on Refresh Mobile, who produce the Mobizines service visit Refresh Mobile. Check out some of the other mobizines include the BBC, Maxim, GQ etc.
Posted by ajit at 5:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 13, 2007
Discounted book offer from futuretext for 3GSM ..
I used to carry books to conferences - and that was a pain! So, now we have simply decided to give discounts when major events are on and our authors are speaking. So, see the main futuretext site for a deal where you can get 50% off Mobile strategies if you buy Mobile Web 2.0
Posted by ajit at 5:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
.mobi : Darwin Rules on the Mobile Web
Editor's note from Ajit: In November last year, I was invited to attend a W3C meeting in Paris relating to the Mobile Web. In that session, I heard a presentation by Ronan Cremin of mtld (the company behind the .mobi initiative). .mobi has had a lot of bad press. So, my view of .mobi then was 'neutral' i.e. buy a dot mobi domain for defensive reasons.
However, Ronan's presentation made me realise that .mobi is more than the domain name. In other words, a 'money grabbing' way to do this would be to sell the domains only and nothing else. However, even if you don’t agree with the business model, I think we have to agree that .mobi has made some efforts to provide an ecosystem - especially in view of some of their documents like the Switch on guides
So, my take on .mobi is
a) They follow w3c standards
b) They are doing more than merely selling domain names
c) Some form of consistency is good for the industry
d) I have a lot of respect for some of the technical people involved with it : for instance Jo Rabin
e) It helps the Mobile Web(which is a good thing in my view)
f) I am neutral to the business model. I.e. taking a pragmatic approach, if mTld makes money from selling domain name - but also helps the industry - that’s OK by me.
My criticism, if any is: its focussed on the lowest common denominator(and that is to be expected of any standard). My real interest lies in the other end of the spectrum(for instance browsers running full Web standards).
In Paris, I told Ronan that I would blog about .mobi from a neutral perspective i.e. discussing .mobi from a holistic perspective and not just the domains.
A few weeks ago, when I asked for guest bloggers, James Pearce, CTO of mtld, offered to write something about .mobi. So, considering I was going to blog about it anyway, here is an article from James.
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James Pearce
CTO .mobi
I was recently asked what I thought were going to be the major mobile web applications of the future. I could have been brave. I could have been visionary. I could have rattled off some old cliches.
But instead I said "I don't know".
And I'm proud that I don't know.
Here's why.
It must be almost 10 years since people started talking about 'killer applications' (and about 9 years since they stopped again). Then for a while it was 'killer baskets' - with the realisation that, in a sort of early form of 'long tail' thinking, people might actually want to do more than one thing. Then the web and mobile web markets went into free-fall for a while. And presumably people were busy looking for 'killer job security'.
But me? I believe in 'killer ecologies'. It is more important that we get the environment right for the healthy, stimulated development of the mobile web, than that we naively try to predict who the winners of the future will be, and give them some sort of false, pre-emptive credence.
The best successes are often the things you didn't predict or that didn't fit the obvious predictions.
"Anything But Stocks News Or Weather" as I used to say.
(I can also imagine, in the mid-90s, the strategy teams within hallowed 'walled garden' internet service providers trying to guess and promote what the next big thing on the web was supposed to be. Think they guessed auctions? Bookstores? Blogging? Social networking? Video sharing? I doubt it.)
So where does Darwin come into this?
Well, I'm no biology graduate. But no-one can doubt that the principles of evolution and the survival-of-the-fittest have served the animal and plant kingdoms extremely well. Add water, oxygen and food. Wait a million years. Bio-diversity flourishes. Different species compete.
Those which are best suited to their environment succeed. Those which are not do not. There's (probably!) no intelligent design.
And nor should there be on the mobile web. Why can't similar principles shape the way that content providers (as potential 'killer species') evolve? Of course, I'd rather not wait a million years ;-). But I firmly believe that the most important thing right now is the metaphorical
water, oxygen and food to catalyse our ecology into life.
What might this mean practically?
Well, many miles of blogs have been written about the emergence of flat rate data tariffs, and the crumbling of operator's walled gardens. Perhaps that's the oxygen we require. Nothing but highly specialised lifeforms can survive in sulphur dioxide!
Water? Perhaps that's a constant stream of tools, technologies, platforms, assistance, and community support that the developers of content and services require to be able to compete effectively. On the web, the technical barriers to entry were, and are, low. We need to
ensure it is just as easy for folks to get to compete on the mobile web too - even if that comes at the expense of 'mobile specialists' who benefit from sustaining the mystique.
(This is where we, the dotmobi company are putting a lot of effort. As well as providing mobile-centric domains, we are trying to democratise the process of building applications for the mobile web, making it easy for developers to find training, advice, and tools - such as
http://dev.mobi and http://ready.mobi - to do so).
And food? Well, I strongly believe in the two important economic lubricants for the mobile web: advertising and payment. Just as food does in a Darwinian ecology, these both motivate content providers to get involved in the race for life, and then sustain them once they have
become a successful part of the (ahem) circle of life.
Most of all I believe that no-one can play god on the mobile web. Not operators, not content aggregators, not device manufacturers. Especially not the dotMobi company :-)
But I truly hope that, if we all realise that we have responsibilities to provide water, oxygen and food, we will be able to stimulate a 'killer ecology' that accelerates towards becoming self-sustaining and rich in bio-diversity.
That's important. Because the more developers and content providers we can introduce into the complex biological equation, the more that the natural selection of market forces takes effect, and the better the best-evolved of the species will become.
And that's only going to result in more and more innovative, exciting - and unpredictable (think duck-billed platypus!) applications that genuinely drive interest and usage of the medium.
After all, that's what users want. That's what all of us in the industry want. And of course, that's what Darwin would have wanted.
Posted by ajit at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 12, 2007
User generated content seems to be the focus of 3GSM ..
Early days .. but User Generated content seems to be a big focus of 3GSM. This makes me happy ofcourse since UGC is the core theme of Mobile Web 2.0 and also my talk at 3GSM
As pe the BBC
User-generated content, mobile TV and location-based services are all likely to cause a buzz among the 60,000 visitors. With one billion handsets sold last year, it is certainly in a healthy state but the majority of customers are still stuck in a talk and text world. For Ben Wood, director at research firm CCS Insight, this year's conference will be the start of the journey to really bring the web to the mobile phone.
and also .. consistent with my own views ..
Flat-rate charging for data downloads is already happening - with 3's bundled X-series service for example - and there will be a glut of handsets with better colour screens and more memory to persuade users to make the transition from voice to data.
I am also watching the announcement fom Nokia: Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map
The Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map enables mobile discovery of videos in websites such as the YouTube Mobile site in a similar way as with PC web browsers. With YouTube Mobile now also compatible with the AVC video format which is the most common format supported in mobile devices, the single-click playback of videos is also possible in the same intuitive way as with PC web browsers. The Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map and AVC video playback are standard features in all the latest Nokia Nseries multimedia computers.
Posted by ajit at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
3GSM
I spent the day at 3GSM. I find the whole event quite intimidating. I think it’s really much easier to work with smaller groups. Interesting enough, this is the first time I found that I was being recognised for my blog by total strangers. A scary feeling. (I take heart from knowing that the picture does bear resemblance to a well known personality :) )
But for me, the best welcome was from Picochip VP Marketing Rupert Baines (who I have known for few years now - but only online). When Rupert met me he exclaimed .. 'Oh you really exist!! - I thought you were only an online avataar' :)
I should get out more often I think
Tomorrow, I meet Daniel Appelquist and others to discuss leading developments in Mobile Ajax.
Posted by ajit at 5:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 11, 2007
Blog tag: About me ..
C Enrique Oritz (CEO) tagged me a while ago and apologies that it has taken a long time to come back. BTW, it’s great being tagged by CEO. CEO is one of the most referred (linked) bloggers from my blog - which means I am a great fan of his work. We started off by disagreeing a bit with regards to my Ajax/Java posts - but over time have become great online friends! - So much so that - I scanned the weather in Austin to see if the recent storms had caused damage there knowing that Enrique was based there.
But back to me .. So, here goes!
You may already know a lot about me from my blog profile : such as I am a ZZ Top fan, an animations fan(Tom and Jerry) and I have three nationalities(British, Indian and New Zealander) - plus my interests in Mobility, Open ecosystems, Mobile Web 2.0 etc
So, here are five more things, you may not know about me
a) I am allergic to many things - especially sesame seeds!. Considering my trips to Korea(where you have sesame seeds in everything) and many Korean friends this is truly difficult!.
b) I come from the west coast of India and was born in Mumbai (formerly called Bombay). I speak an Indo Aryan language called Marathi. This is relatively uncommon outside India in comparison to other Indian Diaspora. In India, people with a name suffixed by 'kar' are generally speakers of Marathi. If you follow cricket, Sachin Tendulkar is the best known speaker of Marathi(named among 2006 60 Asian heroes by Time)
c) I am avid reader and follower of Ayn Rand's philosophy - which I first read when I was sixteen
d) I have tried white water rafting in the Kaituna river in New Zealand. Unknown to me then, this is the world’s highest commercially rafted waterfall (7 metres, 21ft). Our boat toppled over this waterfall and I was lucky not to have got hurt more than I did(but overall I believe that this is a safe river to navigate if you want to try it!)
e) I am a fan of the Godfather, Sopranos, David Attenborough and most Blues music
I need to think about who else to 'tag' considering so many people I know have already been tagged. So, shall post my list of five members later ..(esp. this being 3GSM time - and very busy anyway)
Posted by ajit at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2007
Pls vote for me :) I am a finalist in the Carnival of the mobilists - post of the year!
I am a finalist in the Carnival of the mobilists - Khosla post of the year!
How nice!
Please vote for me :) or one of the other excellent posts.
Many of the people in this list are good friends and so I guess we (as an industry) are all winners here.
Thanks to Russell and Carlo for organising this. Please see the finalists and the posts HERE
Posted by ajit at 5:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 9, 2007
3GSM attendance tips for those that haven't been before
This excellent set of recommendations/advice comes from Jag Minhas posted on forumoxford.
I have reproduced it with Jag's permission. Hope you find it useful!
From Jag ..
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Although I am not going to 3GSM this year, a few of my colleagues in my part of the office are, and have been asking for travel and attendance tips/advice etc. Last year there were a reported 50,000 attendees and I am hearing anecdotally that this year there will be over 70,000! So that's a lot of new people. And given I am holed up in bed today off sick I thought I'd spend a little dead time compiling a list of tips/advice for those who haven't attended before:
1. Plan your diaries NOW if you haven't done so already. (This one is obvious)
2. Although Dean Bubley says in is latest blog entry on "3GSM fatigue" that he allows 5 mins buffer time between scheduled meetings in order to get from one place to another in the FIRA, my experience was to allow a lot more time - I would recommend 15 mins. If only to keep yourself sane. 45 minute meeting time is sufficient in my view.
3. One reason for advice above is that the time to take getting from one place to another in the massive FIRA complex can be quite long unless you have really planned your navigation route from place to place with military-precision beforehand. And even if you have be prepared for disorientation. Hall/booth maps and reality are not always interpreted the same way.
4. Because of the risk above, apply a bit of "backpressure" in your diary organisation beforehand; organise your meetings so that you are "contiguous" in the various halls - e.g. Monday morning you could cover Hall 4 appointments, Monday afternoon cover Hall 6 appointments etc. It is a real pain in the butt going from hall to hall.
5. FIRA is extremely crowded, especially when people are transiting between apoointments "on the hour". Try organising your diary so that your meetings are at a less popular point on the clock - e.g. 10 minutes past the hour.
6. Wear shoes you can walk comfortably in all day - because there is a LOT of walking and especially because some of the transit ways between halls are carpet-covered cobble-stone, which, trust me, gives you a false impression that the floor is easy to walk on, and as a result your feet will take a real pounding and you may end up getting foot injury (I did.) Try to walk off the carpeted sections as your mind will be more mentally prepared for the phsyical unneveness in the stones and will adjust your walking style optimally.
7. Eating at lunchtime in the FIRA is chaotic due to sheer volumes of people, despite the fact that there are a lot of eateries. Most of it is too crowded to have 1:1 with buddies over a cup of coffee and lunchtime arrangements can be quite akward, especially if you are having just two of you are dining. (Tables-for-two are in high demand!) I would suggest that unless you are already being catered for in a private lunchtime appointment, you should eat a big breakfast and just snack on something to keep you going til evening, or bring something with you for lunch, or join the queue for the sandwiches. Allow at least half an hour if you do the latter. Or else eat you lunch at a non-rush hour time.
8. Carry as little as possible with you, and definitely don't bring your luggage with you to FIRA unless you can store it somewhere. Many hotels will hold your luggage for you on checkout day, so you don't have to wheel your bag around an already crowded venue. (It is worse than Oxford Street in some halls and at some times.)
9. The demand for taxis is very high outside FIRA. Take the metro instead.
10. Because Barca is a major tourist destination, there may be a lot of tourist-relates crime, e.g. pickpocketing etc. Try not to carry laptops/etc in public and be careful at the airport on arrival. There were loads of 3GSM people who had their bags stolen from the taxi-rank or taxi-boot (trunk) outside the airport and hotels. Split your wallets and keep yoour moby safe. Take more than one phone/SIM with you can. The thieves will be rubbing their hands at 70,000 wealthy, gadgeted-up, people descending into their city for a week. Check out some of the reports of tourist scams at this page. (Warning - it will make you paranoid if you read it too hard, just use it to get a flavour, but bear in mind that the police put on extra security for the event - like more dogs patrolling the Metro.)
11. For those arriving on Sunday, be aware that most supermarket type shops are closed on Sundays in Spain. Thus, not easy to get supplies if you are staying in an apartment. So, if you insist on drinking bottled water etc. and you are arriving Sunday, bring it with you if you can, or else buy it at the airport shops on arrival unless you want to traipse up and down La Rambla and not get ripped off. If you are brave and suitably roughly dressed, the some of the few places in the Cuitat Vella where you can get "supplies" e.g. milk, bread etc. on a Sunday are the East-Indian/Pakistani convenience stores in the El Raval and west-of-la Rambla district. Be warned. Hopefully your hotel will tell you where the nearest shop is.
12. Get your tickets/invites for parties organised before you go. Door policies and security are usually strictly enforced, don't consider trying to "blag" your way into a party venue.
13. The Nokia party is the most popular! Last year they had it on the waterfront at the port end of the old town. Massive tent. Very impressive. Live bands etc. But get there early if you want the food before it get's eaten up!
Enjoy, and those of you taking cameraphones with Shozu etc. you should consider configuring your Shozu to tag Flickr pictures with a unique
code for ForumOxford members to keep track of each other's pictures. I propose "oxfordforum" ?
Can't think of anything more for now.
Best regards - Jag
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Thanks Jag! Awesome stuff!
Posted by ajit at 9:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Details of my presentation at 3GSM
Due to a glitch in the 3GSM site, our session was not visible. Its been fixed now. So you can see the session I am speaking/moderating HERE(Wed 14 Feb - technology breakout session)
Other speakers for the session I am moderating are : Jon von Tetzchner, Chief Executive Officer, Opera Software, Alex Kummerman, Chief Executive Officer, Clicmobile and David Wood, Executive Vice President, Research, Symbian
Should be interesting! Look forward to seeing you there
Posted by ajit at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MobileMonday London does mobile search
By Dr Paddy Byers
Last night’s Mobile Monday event addressed the topic of mobile search and was definitely one of the better events I’ve been to. We heard from the BBC, Yell, taptu, Mobile People and MCN. A few themes came out of the presentations and subsequent discussion and I’ve put down my thoughts on them below. Note also Paul Segala’s comments on the evening.
Discussion points
Disputed demand for mobile search. This is the issue as to the latent demand or opportunity for mobile search as compared with conventional web search, and is really just a specific instance of the general “demand for mobile web” question. Diametrically opposing views were expressed. We heard that currently mobile web searches are running at about 1% of web searches, and that possibly more than half of these searches are miscounted. Some cited this as evidence that mobile search is “broken”. For me, I thought it was a surprisingly high figure, given the state of the art – I use my mobile browser more than most, but I know I do at least 100 web searches for each mobile search. It reminded me of Michael Mace’s recent post where he urged us to set real-world expectations for takeup of mobile services.
My take-away was that the motivations for mobile searches are usually different – more often driven by an immediate need, less often idle curiosity, and almost never just recreational browsing – but the type of information being sought is just as varied.
The mobile user has an attention deficit problem. Maybe “persistence deficit” would be a better description. If a search takes too long (ie measured in terms of time or the number of clicks and scrolls) then the average user decides it’s not worth the effort. A threshold of 12 clicks+scrolls was cited; in an independent study more than 90% users are prepared to put in this amount of effort, but fewer than 30% are prepared to continue for more than 20.
My take on this is that it depends on the information being sought and the motivation. My guess is that the data reported came from much more casual situations – eg finding a new wallpaper to download – than finding the number of a taxi when stranded in Brixton at 1am. But generally I agree that if a search doesn’t get you what you want (or come very close) first time around, most will decide that they really can’t be bothered.
Some companies are motivated by this to build search services that are quite different from the traditional web search model, discussed below.
The small screen size obviously also prevents the web search experience transferring directly to mobile, with one describing the screen as a “pinhole” to the world.
Browser-based interface vs resident client. There was some discussion on this, just as there is for every other connected service. You do have to wonder what could be more naturally browser-oriented than search.
The proponents of the resident client argued that this gave a much more usable service (better interactivity and lower latency); in principle it could also get access to location information and use it to improve search context. However, my main take on this was the that resident client approaches arose not because their usability is so good, but because the browser experience is so bad. There seemed to be a consensus that there was a case for resident apps now but browser-based experiences will dominate eventually.
Location-based search is nothing like as good as you might think. The idea that you can use location to inform and prioritise searches is oversold. First, there are technical weaknesses – position acquisition takes too long, and is often inaccurate – and for many use cases the whole concept is flawed. Often I’ll want my searches to target the place I’m going to be next, not where I am now.
Business model. There were several issues discussed here. Independent vs content-owner search services (BBC as an example); subscription or pay-per-use services vs free-to-air advertising-funded services; plus the ever-thorny issue or operator-provided search services (with walled and unwalled search scope).
On the first issue, I think these both have a role. In particular, I expect a content owner’s own search facility to do a far better job of indexing and searching their site than I could do myself using an independent search engine. Furthermore, if I’ve gone to the effort of navigating to a specific site’s search feature, I’ll want it to get me valid results pretty much straight away. However, even on the conventional web, few sites’ own search facilities outperform Google so these need to improve to deliver any value.
On the second issue, there seemed a pretty strong consensus that the advertising model will dominate mobile search, as it does on the web today. There are some arguments for advertising being even more powerful on mobile – a mobile user performing a search will arguably have a greater buying intent because there are fewer casual window-shoppers. The point was made that a mobile search will often be made very close to a buying decision, so there is huge value for an advertiser being able to inject a specific message at that point.
Operator-controlled search services seemed to be the elephant in the room; these were hardly discussed. However, they clearly have significant power and arguably the operators have the most to lose but also the most to gain from effective unwalled mobile search.
User interface. This is another area where there were directly conflicting views expressed by different speakers. Some advocated the simplest possible interface with a text box for search terms; others looked to diverse interfaces (eg voice, sms) and forward to more interactive interfaces (eg the possibilities offered by an iPhone touchscreen).
Semantic search
Underlying what was presented there is a clear divergence in philosophy between the various search approaches. Nobody disagrees that the constraints of the mobile environment (limited tolerance of navigation, false results, limited content compatibility, etc) mean that services need to be improved relative to, say, the existing Google mobile web search offering. One obvious approach is to start from the full generality of a text search engine, but do a better job of pruning and sorting results.
The other approach regards any result that takes more than 12 clicks to reach as unreachable and therefore makes no attempt to reach those results. Instead, these approaches are based on the idea that the majority of mobile-accessible information on the web is already in structured repositories. Therefore, they create semantically-aware search services, allowing service providers and merchants to hook their sites up to the search service explicitly and programmatically. Based an understanding of the data, the service can reduce the experience to a 3-stage process: search-select-consume. I first mentioned this approach when MCN announced their solution at Mobile 2.0; yesterday MCN demonstrated their first commercial incarnation of the service. Taptu were unable to elaborate much on their solution but I’m speculating that it’s essentially the same approach.
So, how do these approaches compare? The semantic approach sounds a little like a walled garden – in that the service provider enables access to a specific whitelisted set of sites (ie those whose data is understood by the engine). In this context, is this closed system just a practical necessity given the constraints of the mobile, or could it become a commercial barrier like the pr