Mobile Buzz

Lately

2009-10-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

...I spend most of my time on Twitter.

Won't you follow me there?

@lilmar

iPhone Apps - Free more lucrative than Premium?

2009-05-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure whether to believe some of the figures (60% fillrates, 2.6% click through-rates, and eCPMs as high as $4.00), but I thought this report by Adwhirl could be informative to developers trying to decide on free vs. premium.

It is obvious that low fill rates equal low revenues, but I have yet to see a single ad network or optimizer that yields 100%. Oh, well, you be the judge.

Other ad networks specializing on iPhone are Admob, Medialets, PinchMedia, and even Google is planning to do so.
Adwhirl iPhone Advertising Snapshot

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business & Economics advertising iphone

Even the rumor of a Verizon iPhone could be a really good thing

2009-04-26T23:54:00.001-07:00

Rumors are circulating that with the upcoming expiration of Apple's exclusivity with AT&T, Apple could very well be in talks with Verizon.

Apple could not possibly go wrong in developing a CDMA version of the iPhone for distribution on Verizon's network. Apple would not only gain access to an additional 80 million subscribers, but also to a significantly more robust 3G network. It is also very likely that Verizon has been looking to deploy the next generation of mobile broadband, Long Term Evolution. This would provide a much improved platform for the iPhone to really demonstrate its potential. In addition Apple would also gain expertise that could be used to access other networks. While only a minority compared to GSM operators, many operators worldwide still have CDMA networks deployed.

I, for one thing, will not be holding my breath, however. Verizon has a history of completely controlling the specifications of any device that touches its network. Branding will also probably be a point of contention during negotiations between the two power houses. Not to mention the app store, which is the ultimate antithesis to Verizon's tightly controlled walled garden. Another factor will be the technology itself. CDMA is a technology that was developed by Qualcomm, to whom Apple would have to pay royalties.

Regardless of the outcome, I am very much looking forward to the pressure that this threat will place on AT&T to improve its service.

Other related links: TechCrunch, Macrumors, Engadget

Why Gmail for mobile is so bad

2009-04-22T23:10:00.001-07:00

Because access to your product is just as, if not more important than the product itself.

To get to Gmail on my LG phone I first I discovered via my computer browser (here) that I must go to m.google.com. So far this was alright, except that this is an entirely new concept to Google. Until recently their mobile URL was http://www.google.com/xhtml.

After navigating to m.google.com I select Gmail from the menu and boom! I am supposed to be there, right? Well, no, actually. Instead I get to a page with some confusing messaging:

The 1st message is a link that reads "Visit Now". And if I click on that link I get to the Gmail login page.

So my question is WHY not just take me there in the first place?!

The 2nd message is "The Gmail application does not work on your phone, however you can access Gmail on the go by using the web version." Hmm...

a) Then why show me the "visit now" link?
b) Then how come the "visit now" link does work for me?
c) If the mobile version does not work, then why would the web version work on my phone?
e) Why not just take me to whatever version works in the first place?!

In short I should be able to access Gmail in two simple ways:

1. By going to m.google.com and selecting Gmail. That is all. Redirection works well on mobile browsers too.

2. By navigating directly to m.gmail.com. The Web site should not give out the URL m.google.com/mail like it does now. It is simply too long to type into a small mobile device.

It's all quite simple, isn't it?

Looking to advertise on your mobile site?

2009-04-22T17:40:00.001-07:00

Here is the rundown on how different mobile advertising networks can help you monetize your mobile site.

The space is divided into the following categories:

Global ad networks with a broad footprint: with these networks one can get the widest reach possible - i.e. ads will be served for almost every market in the world but CPMs will be suboptimal. Examples are Admob, Admoda, and Mobile Google Ad Sense.

Regional networks with coverage of several countries: these networks are focused around certain geographies. Through this approach they promise access to local advertisers, and therefore to deliver higher CPM and fill-rates. Some examples are: Mkhoj (India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia) and Quattro Wireless (US, Canada, UK).

Local networks: these providers would undoubtedly deliver the highest CPM's and very decent fill rates. Unfortunately these could have dry spells, especially during this economy, during which they may not have any campaigns whatsoever. If your property has a global footprint and you have business development resources it is definitely worth it to go after these partners. Make sure your site's ad serving platform is able to quickly shift traffic in a moment's notice if fill rates for one network fall below acceptable levels.

Network Optimizers: their value proposition is that they aggregate many of the ad networks described above and for a decent, but higher, share of the CPM they will serve ads from the providers that are likely to deliver the highest CPMs and fill rates possible. Another advantage of using these optimization networks could be a one-time versus multiple integrations. This point should be taken with caution because you do not want put all of your eggs in one basket. Examples are Nexage and AdMarvel.

Other big names mobile advertising networks are (most are limited to a few geographic markets):

Ad Infuse

Ring Ring Media (UK)
BuzzCity (US, part of Africa, part of South East Asia, and India)
Mobile-Worx (Zest Ads) - mostly India
Third Screen Media
Smaato
Amobee
MADS
Third Screen Media
Jumptap
Milennial Media
Mojiva

Dealing and integrating with one or, ideally, multiple of these companies can be complicated as there are very few or no standards in mobile advertising. If your inventory justifies it having a dedicated resource to manage advertising on your mobile site can really help optimize revenues.

It's not about Location... duh!

2009-03-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

If I had a dollar for every time someone mentioned foursquare during a panel or keynote at SXSWi last week I would be super... Ok, maybe I'd have about 60 dollars. Which is a lot considering I only attended about 6 sessions in all (bah... and missed out on the "panel nerd" badge as a result... whaa!).

The point is that Foursquare's debut at SXSWi was simply put, a success. We all loved it and continue to love it!

The irony is that it is about the millionth LBS application to see the light of day. Worse yet, many of the check-ins were likely done over SMS given AT&T's stellar performance during the conference. Worse yet... it is a resurrection of Dodgeball.

The reality is that the majority of Foursquare's new fan base has tried many of its precursors (from the mobile operators' friend finders, to Loopt, to Dodgeball, to Brightkite). This explains how easily we adopted it - Yes, we got it. But the thing is that not only did we start using it right away without the need for a step by step explanation of why and how to use it, but we also could not stop ourselves. This never happened with any of Foursquare's predecesors.

So at last someone seems to have finally gotten it right.

First it's fun -

Foursquare is unique in that it turns the potentially cumbersome task of providing your location into something you actually want to, cannot wait to do. Why? Because it is a game! And as with games you earn points, you compete, you win prizes (badges), you get to PWN your friends by becoming "the mayor" of a bar. Next thing you know you can't stop yourself. Next thing you know you catch yourself having horrible dark thoughts about checking into a place you're not even at!

Second, it's useful -

Much like what Yelp, Rateitall, or Google Maps could do, foursquare gives you location based recommendations. The beauty of these recommendations from a contextual and cost perspectives is that they have been provided by the user community. What is even more beautiful is that from a monetization perspective this could be a very valuable capability. For years companies like Cellfire have been toiling with this concept. But again, what was missing was the fun part.

Back in September I summarized this teen survey which concluded with the very astonishing revelation that (gasp! OMG) generation-m did not care for friend-finder applications. I guess we'll just have to see if they change their mind once they PLAY foursquare.

63MM Mobile Web users in the U.S.

2009-03-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

This comscore summary just came out this week. Here's a short recap:

* Number of Mobile Web users in the US is now 63MM (up from 40MM in mid last year)
* Fastest growing segment is still Social Networking (bundled w/ blogging)
* The majority of phones surfing the mobile web are still Feature (low end) phones (70%)

Other January stats:

* 22.3 MM users accessed info via a downloaded application
* 32.4 MM users accessed info via SMS

Is SMS dead?

2009-03-20T01:04:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago Google shut off its free SMS platform to 3rd parties (the one that powered Infinite SMS on the iphone). Days earlier Google had also shut down Dodgeball, the SMS powered location based social app. One might conclude from this that the services were unpopular. Instead, the real problem was just the opposite; and the fact that Google was paying for each tiny message.

Unfortunately, unlike with most technologies, when it comes to SMS the marginal costs do not necessarily shrink with higher usage. This economic problem is caused by the operators (outside of the US) and SMS aggregators (in the US) who can afford to demand applications to pay a price for reaching their subscribers.

With the rise of new open platforms the current SMS model will begin to deteriorate. Platforms such as the iPhone are paving the way for other means to reach users without having to pay a toll to the operator or aggregators. Another important trend is the growing popularity of flat data plans. These are gradually being adopted and marketed by operators to expand their more advanced premium services and content (ah, the irony).

But getting real... there is still a long way to go.

Today SMS is still the optimal way to reach a really wide mobile audience. In the US for example, mobile users with data plans who are able to reach their favorite applications via mobile web are just about 60 million. In contrast, almost all mobile users (over 200 million of them) can be reached via SMS. This gap is even greater in emerging markets, where Mobile Web penetration can be as low as 3%, while SMS is over 90%.

So to answer the question... it's getting closer and closer, but it has a long while to go.

Spoofing the iPhone using Firefox

2009-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

For any of you kids out there wishing to hit a server with Firefox as if using an iPhone here's something that might come in handy.

Install this Firefox add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

After you install the add-on:

Go to Tools in your browser
Select User Agent Switcher
Select Options
Select Options again
Select User Agents
Click on the Add button

Enter the following information in the box:

Description: iPhone
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
App Version: Version/3.0
Platform: Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3

Once you store the information you will be able to select iPhone from the User Agent Switcher under tools.

No abusing though...

SxSWi: major FAIL for AT&T

2009-03-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

With hundreds of influential members of the tech and first adopter communities congregated at SXSWi, one would have expected the operator to step it up at least just enough to provide the same level of service its subscribers are accustomed to. During the past few days making a call using an iPhone has been pretty much impossible. The odds of getting a data connection on an iPhone have been lower than 30%. Even texting has become a challenge for the frustrated iPhone enthusiasts.

Operators can provide extra capacity to a network in an hour's notice. Forget doing any out of the ordinary network performance optimization or installation of additional hardware. There do exist so called mobile cell sites. These consist of scaled down versions of network centers antennas and all, hosted in fully conditioned trailers that can be easily mobilized and sent to areas where an operator may not necessarily want to add permanent capacity.

But one day away from the end of Interactive and here at the Austin Convention Center it feels as if AT&T couldn't care less about the loyal iPhone lovers. Only time will tell if this will in any way affect the nework or the phone's sales.

In the mean time, if you too are a frustrated iPhone owner you can voice your frustrations at http://pleasefixtheiphone.com.

Going Mobile the Easy Way

2009-03-14T12:54:00.001-07:00

You can build your mobile web site, iphone application, and what not... But at the end of the day in order to reach the masses you will still need SMS.

The bad news is that it is a royal pain in the a##. In the US you are looking to pay a monthly fee for your shortcode (~1K), plus an aggregator set up fee (~2K+), and if you want your users not to pay a premium fee to stay connected, you have to pay for the messages yourself (anywhere from 2 - 5 cents per message). You can also expect anywhere from 2 to 3 months before the operators approve your campaing.

There are a few answers to this problem:

One way is to charge your users. Don't expect the majority to sign up for your service, though.

You can also subsidize via text based advertising. The problem is that there aren't enough advertisers who are pumping cash into this form of advertising yet. Companies that you can connect to are 4INFO or Textmarks.

The solution: outsource your integration and DON'T try to build it yourself! A few companies have already have gone through the troubles described above and expose API's that should make it easy for you to integrate. One such company is Unwired Nation. Some of Unwired Nation's customers boast a 3-4 week time period to get up and running. Other successful companies such as 3jam have gone through this trouble at a global scale. They might just be willing to allow your company to integrate into their network and leverage their relationships with aggregators and operators all over the globe.

Android Apps Lack Innovation

2008-09-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

I agree with Andrew Seybold’s statement about Android developer challenge applications lacking innovation. It is true that even for mobile standards most of these applications are remakes of past attempts.

I believe, however, that the problem is not a lack of creativity. Many of the participants were not even aware of those past applications that never took off. And given what the developers do know (or don’t) their applications are creative and well designed. More importantly, their timing is more on target than any old-school mobile developers could have ever wished for.

To close this note, I extend my criticism to those “more experienced” in the mobile field, myself included. Given this much awaited opportunity to have direct access to a superior platform, it is really a shame we are much too jaded to participate. And instead, would rather sit back, observe, and criticize.

Oh, Verizon Stealing the Thunder from the G1... or Trying to

2008-09-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

So much for the anticipation for the G1, which is due to be released tomorrow by T-Mobile. Today's big news, at least on my radar, is that Verizon is removing the long term contract requirement. Verizon now lets new subscribers sing up with just a month-to-month commitment. Even more surprising is that the operator will now accept any un-locked device.

There are obviously conditions for this to take effect. Customers must pay the actual cost of the device, which can amount to more than twice what customers are used to paying. Customers must also sign up for a Nationwide plan.

As expected, there is much speculation as to why Verizon would make this move. I do not buy the possibility that it was to prepare for 4G and the promise to attract AT&T subscribers then. It may be to deflect potential scrutiny from the FCC. One thing is for sure: given the high cost of devices and the fact that the only other CDMA network in the US is Sprint's month-to-month subscribers will have to think twice, and very hard, about bailing on Verizon.

Perhaps Android phones will be the reason. The iPhone on AT&T's slow and unreliable network is far from being it for me.

I want "Allstreaming" for my mobile

2008-09-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

I just returned from VLAB's "Lifestreaming: The Real-time Web" event at Stanford. As usual, I have tried to conceptualize how such a significant Web 2.0 trend can transpire into mobile.

In mobile, where time and space are hot commodities, the ability to give users access to as much relevant content as possible, and as efficiently as possible poses a significant challenge.

However, the assumption that life-streams as we know them today are the key to this problem is as far stretched as the notion that that is the only way in which users want to consume content even on the Web. According to Bret Taylor the "your friends are your filter" concept is one of the foundations for FriendFeed. And that might work fine for an application whose sole purpose is to aggregate feeds from what one's friends are saying. In fact, this applies to all companies represented at the VLAB event tonight (Pownce and Seesmic were there too). But while one's friends' life activity may be entertaining for bits at a time, the majority of the media we consume still falls outside of this realm.

So what ever happened to the not so old, but almost unheard of today trend: the RSS feed? - (Mobile Bloglines being my personal fave). Could this trends possibly coexist with "lifestreaming", thus bringing users a more complete experience? This could be particularly interesting in mobile for all the reasons I keep mentioning. So I hope someone is looking into it.

The Long Tail: A Glimmer of Hope for Premium SMS

2008-09-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

In a matter of just a few years premium content over SMS grew from nothing to a multi-billion dollar industry. In the

this growth has been losing momentum in the past year and a half. This would not come as a big surprise if it weren’t for the fact that in the rest of the world PSMS continues to grow.

The problem in the US could perhaps be attributed to the shortsightedness of some content providers who, so intent on making easy money, consistently delivered a poor and, in some cases, even deceptive user experience. Or perhaps the mobile operators are to blame for discouraging investment by content providers as a result of imposing controls that not only are demanding on content providers, but that also stifle user adoption.

From where I see it, however, where there is easy money there is little innovation. Many mobile content providers have settled for delivering the same user experience over and over again. The common recipe is a combination of uninspiring Web sites, cheap late night TV ads, and itty bitty print terms of service. So I’d be willing to bet that consumers also got bored, and smarter.

This is why it is so refreshing to see content providers delivering innovative ways to spread the adoption of mobile premium content. And more importantly, for delegating the discovery to parties better positioned to deliver a relevant and compelling user experience.

ThumbPlay’s Open Marketplace provides all the tools any independent Web publisher would need to distribute ThumbPlay’s vast library of digital content. By doing so distributors can partake in the revenue. Integration of the set of APIs and feeds promises to be not only easy, but also to provide a set of rich tracking and optimization tools.

Open Marketplace also allows independent artists and content creators to submit their content for distribution

Following this trend, FunMobility also announced MoMoney. MoMoney is a widget that allows any Web site or independent publisher to provide a storefront for mobile content by embedding simple code on their Web property.

I expect this is just the beginning of a trend that may result in users becoming more receptive to this type of product. When offered within the context of something else, these products should be less perceived as a hard sale. Another benefit could be that the cost of user acquisition will be reduced as these Web publishers already have a captive audience.

However, in order for this model to work well these content providers must ensure that the end user experience is preserved. Systems and processes for completing the transaction, splitting the revenue, reconciling, and reporting must be well implemented and supported.

If this model works it could mean a turn of tides for the troubled Premium SMS space.

Snippets from CTIA's "A Generation Unplugged" keynote

2008-09-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Harris Interactive presented the “A Generation Unplugged” study results at a keynote session at CTIA yesterday. For the survey Harris Interactive surveyed 2,089 teens ages 13-19 about their motivations, usage and behaviors towards mobile phones.

Harris hinted at making the presentation available for a price, so I thought I would post the following highlights:

About half of teens interviewed say they would die without their mobile phone and ability to make calls. Texting was not far behind.

The two biggest motivators of mobile usage for teens are: 1) staying in touch, and 2) (surprise) feeling safe

Mobile gaming is not so important to teenagers. Self expression is much more important

Status is first established by the clothes teens wear, and secondly by the phones they own

What the phone does is more important than the way it looks

Teens love ring tones, but they like texting and picture messaging, and more than surfing the web

Teens like small phones but with a lot of features

Teens text more than they talk on the phone

Teens like text because they like that it allows them to multitask, that it's fast, easy, and cheap

Loyalty for teens is driven by relevance of features, phone diversity, customization - in order of importance.

Teens want to own multiple devices

Most teens purchase at carrier brick and mortar

Teens are most influenced by parents, then their friends, then their boyfriend or girlfriend, and last by celebrity endorsements

When it comes to Games, teens want better selection, experience, and controls. However, overall teens care less about gaming than communication when it comes to mobile

One in three teens browse the mobile web. Top apps are email and social networking. However, most social networking is taking place on the PC

The biggest barrier to adoption of mobile video is cost

Teens don't mind ads on mobile device

The dream phone: water proof, endless power, scratch proof...

Teens want from phones: emergency transmitter, translations, 3D, remote control, TV (in order of preference)

"The phone of the future" according to teens: flexible material, just software, paper thin, appended to your eyes, wearable, projector screen

Teens want a single device for all or their consumer electronics needs

Teens dislike location applications, but they want GPS

Shameless Plug: hi5 mobile

2008-09-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Back in April while reading Danah Boyd’s blog I stumbled upon a r esearch paper about mobile usage by Palestinian teenage girls. Given to these girls by their boyfriends, the mobile phone had become a symbol of relationship status, and no longer just a communication tool.

The authors’ quote “…the nature or the effect of technology is not inherent in the medium and cannot be presupposed.” captures the essence of that phenomenon. And it also sums up the key challenge of designing services for mobile.

Especially with mobile it is difficult to predict how users will welcome the application and interact with it, and what the social implications might be. In mobile the most seemingly cumbersome of activities turn out to be extremely popular, such as entering SMS messages. In contrast, the most obvious of use cases, such as mobile video or LBS, often times fail to capture the audience. In my experience, this challenge is exacerbated when trying to port an existing Web product to the mobile realm.

Little did I know at the time that soon I would face this challenge yet again, but on mass scale. I spent the past two months working on the mobile version of hi5, which is the 3rd largest social network in the world with 56 million active subscribers.

Context

During the process of coming up with hi5 mobile, at hi5 we avoided at all costs the temptation of simply trying to cram hi5 into the mobile device. The process involved really understanding the medium itself and the context in which this medium is used. As a result, hi5 mobile does not emulate the Web experience like other SN mobile services do. hi5 mobile really brings out what matters most when both the medium (screen, keypad) and time are limited.

Not a Utility

The mobile phone is the ultimate and most widely used communication tool in the world. In youth, in particular, mobiles are a tool for establishing and nurturing relationships. Much like hi5 itself, for youth the mobile is all but a utility. As a result hi5 mobile is a fun place for nurturing friendships through messaging, commenting, and updating status. It is very much about contributing and reciprocating. It is not a phonebook.

About status

Traditionally, the mobile phone has been a powerful tool for building status. Possession of a mobile phone signals to the world that one belongs to a social circle, has relationships; it also signals independence. According to Danah Boyd many of the activities that promote peer status in the real world also take place in social networks. With hi5 mobile we want to contribute to users’ ability to build status within hi5. Initially, this could be as simple as showing when someone is utilizing a mobile phone to access hi5. But over time this theme could expand to other users’ interactions within hi5.

It is quite possible that even in spite of the highly contextual design of hi5 mobile the net impact it could have on hi5’s users may surprise us. But in the mean time, all usage and feedback points to a good reception by our users.

To try out hi5 mobile, visit us at www.hi5.com.

> liliamcoburn.hi5.com

The Web on the palm of your hands… really

2008-06-05T22:09:00.000-07:00

I asked Nitin Bhandari, CEO of Skyfire, how he had come up with “the idea”. His candid response was first that he and his co-founder had no previous experience in mobile. The he added that they had simply refused to conform to the way the traditional players in mobile have dictated how the end user experience should be for browsing the Web on a phone.

This is the kind of attitude that is often times most lacking in the mobile industry, unfortunately; the kind of attitude that results in approaching problems from a completely different angle.

The result is an amazing Internet browsing experience from your mobile. The kind of experience you could only expect on your PC until now.

Why? Most traditional mobile browsers are limited to HTML or xHTML. Skyfire, on the other hand, supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Ajax, and Java.

How? Skyfire is more than just a browser. Unlike traditional browsers, Skyfire is a client/server solution. This allows for optimization of the content before it reaches the device.

I was lucky enough to get a live demo (I am also on the Beta 2 waiting list apparently). If some of you folks haven’t yet had the experience, check this demo out:

It is no surprise to me then that Sky Fire announced closing their series B round of funding last week.

Oh, and did I mention this A team is looking for A team players? If interested please visit their website or shoot me a note.

What people do with cellphones these days

2008-06-02T00:45:00.000-07:00

I have been quite busy making some fun discoveries I cannot wait to share. I have not had much time, however. So for the time being I leave you with this list of "Uses for Cell Phones" I created on RateItAll:

Check out RateItAll

First day @ I/O comes to an end

2008-05-28T22:53:00.001-07:00

Here's to the Google folks for throwing a top notch event!!

The 1st day of Google I/O comes to a happy end with no other than... "Flight of the Conchords".

Thank's Google I/O team!

The Android Value Prop – live from Google I/O

2008-05-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is a short excerpt of the value proposition of Android, as presented by Jason Chen at the "Introduction to Android" break-out session at Google I/O.

For the User:

The user “controls” the experience. Users will chose what applications to use, versus what is shoved down their throats by OEM’s and operators

For Developers:

1) Developers will be able to ship applications at will

2) All API’s are exposed

3) Integration/extension and even replacement into and of existing components:
- Integration across various applications
- Extending = customization of default applications
- Replacement = end-users could wind up replacing default applications for new cool apps developed by the community

My personal dilemmas with Android:

1) According to the presenter, discovery and distribution is left up to the community. This is nothing new to the mobile space. The problem is that operators not only want to, but NEED to control the distribution of applications. After all, it is they who issue the phone bill at the end of the month; it is they who have to answer customer calls and issue refunds to disgruntled end-users.

2) There doesn't seem to be much of a strategy around discovery of applications that are downloaded to device. After downloading an application it will reside in a subfolder that is accessible through the home UI. This is not different from today's semi-open platforms. Perhaps the Android marketing team has something in the works.

3) Hardware won’t be available to developers until 1st devices are shipped (1st handsets will ship during the 2nd half of 2008) – It seems that unless an application wins the Developer Challenge, there's little likelihood it would ship at the same time the device does. After all, applications should really be tested and re-tested on the physical device before being shipped.

4) Security questions were not thoroughly addressed during the session. I have confidence that Android is really paying attention to this, however.

Another question that did not come up but that keeps bugging me:

5) Who will address customer care once the applications ship? Operators? If so, does Google really expect operators to allow exposure of all APIs and for applications to simply ship without going through thorough certification operator-controlled processes?

Conclusion

Android will be a very sexy platform with great toolkits for developers. Graphics will be superior, guaranteeing applications to be equally sexy. Enticing API’s will be exposed (keep in mind that other mobile platforms already expose many of these API's). However, Android needs a solution to what I see as the key problem with existing platforms: discovery before and after download of applications. Also, at least in the short term, Android does aggravate the problem of fragmentation that developers face in mobile today.

I am hopeful that as these discussions with the community continue to take place Android will uncover more execution issues and work to resolve them.

More Movement towards Openness: Facebook & Open Social

2008-05-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

Two days until Google’s I/O. While my primary reason for attending is to geek out on Android up close and personal, I may decide to spend some time attending OpenSocial discussions.

As it turns out Facebook just announced that it is making the Facebook platform open source. I have been reading up on OpenSocial only to come to the conclusion that it doesn’t have a mobile API. Now I’m wondering if Google may perhaps unveil some fancy mobile API’s for mobile.

Maximizing User Adoption during Phone Validation Process

2008-05-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the most effective end-user experience can be counterintuitive.

Here is one example of how this can be true for even the simplest of processes. With the Internet crossing over into mobile more and more sites will require to authenticate the mobile number to ensure it truly belongs to the end-user providing it.

The right way:

A number of mobile content sites that have been in the space for years have perfected device authentication:

When adding the mobile device through the Web, the most effective way to validate the handset is to send the PIN to the phone and have the end users enter it on the PC.

Also, keep the PIN simple. This example "SHKCQWENLS" won’t do. Four digits is the ideal way to go, as long as security measures for generating the PIN are kept in mind. Avoid letters and numbers that resemble eachother, such as '1' and 'l', and '0' and 'o'.

The wrong way:

Getting this process wrong could mean up to a higher than 50% opportunity cost in terms of end-user adoption. Examples of this are:

1) Some sites send a text to the mobile phone and then require the end user to reply with a key word. While this seems might seem quite intuitive, studies have revealed that this will deter adoption by up to 80%

2) Others display a PIN on the PC and require end user to send the pin from their phone to a short code.

The worst way:

Some sites do not validate the device in the first place. This is not kosher at so many levels. A user could easily enter the wrong number accidentaly. This could result in spamming other end-users with text messages they will be charged for. Even worse, this could result in sensitive information being sent to the wrong person!

Can Drive for Twitter

2008-05-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about organizing a Twitter boycott boycott. But at the advice of a certain blog whose name will go unmentioned, I decided we all need to get together and help Twitter out.

I give all you Twitter true loyals who think twit-out is simply not going to cut it the opportunity to do your part. So get in there!

On a serious note to all folks out there crazy enough to suggest Twitter needs our money (or our tough love) remember who they're backed by and who its founders are.

As for me, tomorrow I will be twittering like it is going out of style.

Free Long Distance Calls from your Phone

2008-05-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

While I’ve got you folks on the voice bandwagon I just have to rave about yet another up-and-comer in the VoIP space: iSkoot.

I had a most pleasant conversation with Mark Jacobstein, CEO of iSkoot, a little while ago (you may recall Mark in relationship to Digital Chocolate. Yes?).

iSkoot’s value prop for the moment is Skype for the mobile phone. Through a downloadable client you can access all of your Skype contacts on your phone, and call or IM with other Skype users whether they’re on a PC or another mobile Skype phone. This is particularly enticing when it comes to making long distance calls.

iSkoot is not really worried about operator hostility out of concern for cannibalization of their Long Distance business. According to Mark the value prop for the operators is that, unlike some of its popular competitors such as JAJAH, iSkoot uses the circuit-switched data network. From the operator’s perspective it also eliminates long distance termination fees due to other operators. At the same time it is a very good way to drive data minutes of use; the argument being that people would rather wait to get home and make a free call on their PC using Skype than pay for a call right when they want to make one.

But the real problem is not with how sensible the arguments are, but with how rational the operators will be about this. For example, I’m currently lobbying operators to open their WAP environment to off-portal content and services. The reality, and operators know this well, is that the same off-portal content and services are already available through SMS. Yet they still refuse to open WAP out of fear of cannibalization. Hmm...

Execution: Despite of any potential roadblocks, iSkoot is already doing extremely well. It has successfully launched its client on a number of devices. Most include Blackberries and other smartphones; some feature phones, such as the extremely popular RAZR, are also supported.

Also iSkoot is has already received tons of good press and awards. Plus one thing I am certain of is that iSkoot has many other things cooking. An open platform to allow anyone to integrate iSkoot into various use of mobile VoIP would definitely get our attention :-).

Short follow up on Ribbit

2008-05-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

I just thought I would do a quick post on what "Randy" from Ribbit shared in his comment to my post: to get more info on Ribbit, check out their blog or their RSS feed.

Good nite!

Android ditched for LiMo by Verizon… for Now

2008-05-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

The Google versus evil carrier saga continues. Verizon Wireless announced today that it has joined the LiMo Foundation.

LiMo is an alliance that aims to create an open handset operating system based on Linux for Mobile. To date they not only have attracted 40 big industry names, but they have also launched a number of handsets:

• MOTO U9, MOTO Z6w, MOTOROKR Z6, RAZR2 V8, RAZR2 V8 Luxury Edition and MOTOROKR E8 from Motorola;

• NTT DoCoMo FOMA N905i, FOMA N905iμ, FOMA N705i and FOMA N705iμ from NEC;

• NTT DoCoMo FOMA P905i, FOMA P905iTV, FOMA P705i and FOMA P705iμ from Panasonic Mobile Communications, and

• SGH-i800 from Samsung.

(Source: http://www.limofoundation.org/)

While Verizon may not necessarily limit its support to LiMo, today’s move represents a blow for Android. It will be much more difficult to secure a significant footprint on mobile devices.

One thing that Google still has going for itself is the traction it has gained among developers (almost 1,800 Android Developer Challenge submissions). The only problem with this is that in the short term developers will gravitate to the fad of the moment. In the long term, however, it is those platforms that make the most economic sense that will result the winners.

All in all the jury is still out. The truth is there is plenty of room for all players. But as an important reminder… with fragmentation (and this seems to be getting worse instead of better), it is the developers who suffer in the process… and the ultimately loser is the consumer…

Voice is still the killer app – only this time it has gone beyond the phone

2008-05-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

I bailed on SF New Tech last night, and this was very much to my own dismay. I really wanted to check out the demo by hot-shot start-up Ribbit . Why? They are pretty cool… Why?

Everyone wants to go with the new cool technologies. Especially in mobile…

But sometimes it takes extraordinary vision to make the seemingly oldest of technologies into something extremely innovative and compelling.

Ribbit offers an open platform that allows anyone to integrate voice into any service or applications. Any use case that requires making or receiving calls through Web or other applications such as desktop widgets (or mobile applications). I found many an example of applications of Ribbit on Ribbit’s “Idea Wall”. Here are some of my favorites:

Voice powered singing audition for music website

Online Dating Web site. What else can you (or your suitors) display besides your interests and a photo-shopped picture of yourself? Your voice, of course!

More impressive magic occurs when Ribbit is combined with really sophisticated technologies such as voice-to-text. This is what Salesforce.com has done by integrating Ribbit into an application that transcribes test to email, SMS, or simply displays it on the SAAS Web site.

So I conclude with a big thumbs up for Ribbit!

The iPhone in Context

2008-05-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

To us Silicon Valley geeks who worship Apple (along with other few Silicon Valley icons) it might seem as if the iPhone has taken over the world. After all, in the Bay Area this superlative gadget of all time has indeed taken over.

So as a reminder to myself that sometimes I need to take off my Silicon Valley goggles, I looked up some interesting facts:

Number of phones shipped in Q1 2008

Apple iPhone: 1.7 Million

Motorola: 27.4 Million (a 40% marketshare loss)

Nokia: 22 Million

Sony/Ericsson: 22.3 million

So for a developer, does it still make sense to target the iPhone?

One mobile enthusiast I know well and respect insists that it’s not the current footprint of the iPhone that matters as much. It is a good investment because the footprint will increase eventually (some experts speculate the iPhone will reach 100M shipped units by the end of 2008 – I’m not sure if they live in the Silicon Valley or not, but my guess would be yes ;-)).

And its footprint has certainly already passed the footprint of any other device+OS+application platform combination out there. Not sure, however, how the late news of the iPhone being out of stock will affect this in the few months to come. Nevertheless, this is if anything an indicator that the demand for it is evergrowing.

So from a developer’s perspective the porting issues are null as long Apple continues to be consistent in its implementation of future versions.

In the end, howver, only time will tell if the iPhone will catch up with the incumbents in terms of market share in this hyper saturated space; or if the incumbents will catch up with the iPhone it terms of understanding of good user interface and real consumer needs.

Post Blogger’s Block

2008-05-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

I’m recovering from serious blogger’s block. After being stuck in the rut for about one month the ideas are suddenly flowing.

I blame it on a vacation I recently took to visit my family in Mexico City, after which I was incredibly homesick for a while. I’ll post some pictures so that you can see for yourselves how this is fully justified.

Anyway, back in the groove…

It is not just about the outcome of the 700 MHz auction

2008-03-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

The incumbents triumphed. The FCC collected $19.59, almost twice what they had projected. And nothing has really changed. Well, almost nothing...

Some deem Google's congratulatory message to the auction's winners as somewhat of a concession speech. I, however, am inclined to believe that the under performance of Google during the 700 MHz spectrum auction could not be accidental.

For one thing all of the upfront posturing and lobbying did help put conditions for an "open network" on the much coveted C block.

The Google threat probably also caused the large incumbents to dish out more cash than they would have had to otherwise. Google did bid $4.6 Billion early during the auction. At the end Verizon wound up dishing out a whopping $9.63 Billion, while AT&T dished out $6.64 Billion.

There could also exist the realization on the part of Google that the best way forward for Android is not through a mobile network of its own (i.e., limited devices), but rather through collaboration with the incumbents. This would potentially, and depending on how smart it continues to play the game, give it a much wider footprint.

So rather than being disappointed I'd much rather focus on the promising changes this whole melodrama has brought about:

1. Various operators, including Verizon, have expressed the acceptance of Android
2. AT&T and Verizon announced a move towards open access
3. This week Verizon hosted its first and historical open development conference
3. Verizon released its first open access device specifications today

Let's keep in mind that just one year ago these events were simply unimaginable.

Verizon does deliver after all

2008-03-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

Verizon's Open Development Conference did get off to a start after all... (Web site and all)

By now, the 2nd day of the conference, the much anticipated device specs must have been unveiled. At the same time Verizon has promised that the requirements "will not be burdensome".

More to come later...

Incumbent Beware

2008-03-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

One might expect that especially given the recent announcement of Google's I/O Web Forward open source conference during which Android will likely take the front stage, Verizon Wireless would be building some serious buzz around its own Open Development conference.

Rule number one: make sure that the main link on your press release works!! Yup, you know that link that points to all of the details about the thing you are announcing? Make sure the page is up especially if the conference is only but two days away (and the hot shot new entrant is stealing your thunder)!!!

So much for the anticipation... Hmm... although perhaps someone got an early start on that maintenance window...

On the other hand, here are the deets on Google I/O:

When: May 28-29 2008
Where: San Francisco @ West Moscone
Early Bird registration is $300
Attendee Registration is $400
And they even have the very generous gesture to offer student passes for just $50 each.

Why? (as if a reason was needed) An opportunity to see all of the best of Google's developers talk about all of Google's development platforms. Need I say more?

Regarding Verizon's open development conference, which is supposed to start this week on the 19th, I've been combing the Web for details today without much success. As soon as I find more information I'll be sure to post it.

Spectrum Auction: The Cash Cow is Slowing Down

2008-02-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

17 days and 81 rounds into the 700 Mhz spectrum auction and the total bid amount is up to a whopping $19.5 Billion!

The question keeps popping up: who are the top contenders? The auction is silent so we really will not know until the auction ends. There are 214 approved bidders. Most industry experts speculate that Verizon and AT&T have been the most aggressive of the bidders. Some have even speculated that Google dropped out. Although, frankly, these allegations seems a little unfounded.

Block C is the most sought after chunk of spectrum because it is national. While some speculate Verizon has been aggressively pursuing this block, others expect a more tricky move to bid on the cheaper regional blocks.

The winner of the other national block, Block D, would have to build out a network that would have to be shared with the government to offer public safety services. Not surprisingly, the bidding for Block D has not gone as wished for by the FCC – still about $800 Million from the $1.3 Billion reserve price – and the Block will likely be put for bid at a later date.

More Strides towards Openness: Funambol

2008-02-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

Funambol offers open source email, contacts and calendars. It provides connectors between Microsoft Exchange and IBM Domino email servers, and a range of mobile devices. It also provides an open community for other open source and standard solutions that service providers and mobile device manufacturers can benefit from.

So one might ask what the value prop of Funambol is when Android promises to be the answer to mobile open source. The answer is that Android is a software stack, while Funambol is a platform. Therefore, they are very complementary to eachother.

Take the following example:

As a potential consumer of Funambol I have already found a problem using its consumer service. As usual, the problem is porting. My phone, being one of the most popular phones, the LG chocolate, is not supported by Funambol. Also, in my case, Funambol assumes Verizon’s phones are open. When I tried to set up my account Funambol gave me clear instructions on how to tweak my phone settings to synchronize with Funambol’s server. The problem is Verizon does not allow for that because they either want me to pay for the sync application on a smartphone, or to download and pay for a Brew email client on my feature device.

The bottom line is that this problem makes for a stronger case for Android and the power it has to forge relationships with operators and OEM’s, and lowering the porting barriers.

If unlike me, you do have access to an open device and furthermore, to an outlook server here are some quick easy resources to help you through the steps: setting up Outlook and Blackberry.

Auction: Today Ends at $11.6 B

2008-01-30T21:39:00.000-08:00

Auction Day 4 Summary

2008-01-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

This is what the little cash cow looked like at the end of yesterday's rounds.

This morning, after round 14 the tally was up to $10.2 Billion (ch-ching!).

The other news is that at last one bid has been made for block D. The bid came in just under $0.5 Billion. This block is the one the FCC has mandated it must be shared with a national public safety communications network.

Auction - Day 3 Results

2008-01-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

Less than $4 Billion away from the government's initial goal.

When the auction will be over is hard to tell. And there are two certain parties that will go head-to-head until the very end. The government's original goal of $10 Billion might turn out to be a very conservative target after all.

I am just hoping the European 3G licenses saga isn't about to happen again.

Mig33

2008-01-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

A new hot company has just arrived in the Valley and promises to be all the craze: Mig33.

Mig33 is a do-it-all-in-one downloadable "light" client packaged as a mobile social networking service. So what deems Mig33 hot? Its reach already covers 9 million subs accross 200 countries, and enjoys at least five fan sites.

The features Mig33 offers are VOIP, IM, and chat. But the most interesting aspect of Mig33, at least to me, is its Merchants program, which consists of peer to peer re-selling of credits. Mig33 users get a 25% discount when they buy $100 or more worth of credits and they can turn around and re-sell these to other users at a discount for a profit.

On the other hand, I am a little less optimistic about the traction mig33 is likely to get in the US with its downloadable client. The larger carriers block downloading to many of their devices. So unless mig33 gets on a couple of carrier decks (and pays for the right to do so), US penetration will be challenging. The one consolation is its WAP site, which although bare, it provides subscribers with an easy way to access mig33 on the go.

700 MHz Spectrum Auction Bid Tracker

2008-01-28T21:10:00.000-08:00

It's day three of the auction. I've started tracking the amoung of $ the federal government will raise in the auction. Selling air sure is a nice business to be in!

Bidders will not be disclosed until the end of the auction, but Google, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T are reportedly in the race, having qualified for it prior to the start of the auction.

What Mobile Openness Might Look Like

2008-01-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

Just some speculation about what all the industry changes i.e. the 700 mhz spectrum, Verizon's seemingly move towards an “open" platform… Android recently announced deal with NTT DoCoMo, might bring forth...

For the carriers having an open platform and environment may imply not getting a slice of the pie each time content is delivered over their networks. For Brands with direct relationships with end consumers will not have to rely on the carriers to collect $ from those customers. Having bought many CD's from Amazon from my phone (that was back in the day before itunes), I can tell you the carrier didn't see a dime of those transations. That is the direction of things. Also, take iTunes as another example. If I could download an iTunes song to my phone, I would buy it directly from iTunes. And if the device platform and access to the device is open enough where a) I can navigate to iTunes directly, b) iTunes knows my identity or can easily verify it, c) and the song can get directly to the phone, my carrier bill becomes obsolete.

700 MHz Auction Countdown is On

2008-01-23T22:10:00.000-08:00

We're just but a few hours away...

One Small Step for Verizon, One Big Step for Mankind

2008-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Mark your calendars! March 19-20 is Verizon’s Open Development conference.

But what does this mean exactly? If you are an application developer, don’t book your flight to NYC just yet. For starters, the conference is not for all developers.

The first step towards enabling an open platform environment is getting device manufacturers on board and in sync with each other. This explains why the first conference targets device developers. During the conference Verizon will review its technical device standards. The question is are these “standards” standard with respect to the rest of the devices in the world?

On a side note: another, perhaps even bigger announcement is the “company’s desire to encourage innovation, give customers wireless choices, and quickly address opportunities to expand the wireless market”. I just love the sound of that!

Related posts: GigaOm, mobilebuzz

Simple Wins, Especially in Mobile

2008-01-22T19:25:00.000-08:00

In past posts I have ranted about the challenges of developing applications in the mobile space: the closeness of various platorms, the fragmentation of devices (ranging from hardware to operating systems to development platforms, and even to applications, such as browsers).

Today, even as I anticipate the blossoming of open platforms, I still strongly recommend SMS as the simplest and fastest way to reach mobile users. This is why I was ever so delighted to see that TechCrunch's first "Best Mobile Start Up" Crunchies award went to Twitter. I am a huge proponent of Web meets Mobile services; in a not so far future all applications will fall under this category.

It is true that Twitter is more than a mobile application; it integrates many communication mediums. But when it comes to taking the best it has to offer, its simplicity, and taking it to the next level by integrating mobility, Twitter is still one of the best examples I can think of.

Guitar Hero Any Time, Any Where!

2008-01-20T19:11:00.000-08:00

Since this has become my latest addiction I thought I would post a quick review:

It is a really good app based on an outstanding video game. Hands On Mobile has done a superb job transposing the guitar-based UI to a handset.

It works just like Guitar Hero, except there are only three keys (instead of five)
The graphics are also pretty good and true to the game
The AV synchronization is almost perfect (every once in a while a note will be slightly off, but this is barely noticeable to someone who has worked on mobile video applications before)
The sound on the Verizon Chocolate is pretty good, especially with stereo head phones

What I didn't find optimal:

No free-demo available?! That’s kind of sketchy! So in order to try the game I had to pay for the 1st month’s subscription. Talk about a deterrent for some folks out there
Interesting pricing strategy going on here: only four songs available with the 1st month’s subscription. One can work his way up to fifteen songs total (three at a time). But given how addictive the game is, unless more songs are available soon, there will be little incentive for folks to renew their subscription beyond five months. This makes it better to simply pay the indefinite package upfront
The biggest drawback is that one can only have two songs residing in the phone at the same time. To switch from resident songs to the other two songs, the full songs must be downloaded. Translation: almost a minute to download each song (too bad one can’t take a Guitar Hero break during)
And the ever present problem with mobile anything: when I play to “Suck my Kiss” (by the Red Hot Chili Peppers) it feels more like “Suck My Battery” just after a few plays

The game is currently sold exclusively on Verizon phones. One can download it through Fun & Games on GetItNow (or the Brew deck for mobile geeks out there familiar with the term). One can pay $4.49 for a month to month subscription, or $11.99 to have indefinitely.

The WAP Fenced Garden

2008-01-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

In the U.S. the concept of off-portal premium content and applications provided over WAP is almost nonexistent as most carriers maintain a fairly closed WAP walled garden.

But do off-portal content and application providers sit idle while waiting for the walled garden to come down? No.

When there is a will, and a loophole, there is a way.

Most carriers do allow end users to navigate to sites outside of the carrier-branded portal. The problem is that as end users navigate outside of the walled garden, off- portal sites will not benefit from automatically knowing their identities (i.e. the phone number). In a way this is similar to a Web experience – the only difference is the limited UI of the device. Many content providers thus take advantage of this by continuing to sell their content in a variety of different and creative ways.

One way is through the use of a third party payment method, such as Paypal or credit cards. On Verizon Wireless I can easily navigate to a content provider’s WAP page (the name of the content provider will go unmentioned), select a ring-tone, enter my credit card number, confirm my purchase. The two problems with this are 1) the cumbersome user-experience, and 2) most phones do not allow content downloading over HTTP (in my case, I got charged for the purchase but never received my content).

There are also other ways to marginally improve the end user experience:

Enter Off-Portal SMS. Through Premium Short Messaging Services (PSMS), off-portal content providers have been able to circumvent the WAP walled gardens. PSMS provides a way for content providers to bill consumers via the operator’s phone bill, either directly or through an operator-trusted aggregator.

The user experience might look something like this:

User navigates to the content provider’s WAP site and selects the service

User needs to provide the content provider with his/her phone number (manual input)

To ensure the end user is truly the owner of the phone number an SMS containing an SMS message is sent to the phone number. Since the end user may have to exit the WAP session to receive the text message, the content provider sends a URL in the device (WAP Push). By selecting the URL the end user is taken back to the WAP page where he/she can continue with the transaction (and which serves as a means to authenticate the user)

The content provider may deliver the content through a WAP download or through SMS, depending on the operator/device limitations

A less desirable user experience is one which is the last alternative for operators/devices that do not support WAP Push:

User navigates to the content provider’s WAP site and selects the service

User needs to provide the content provider with his/her phone number

To ensure the end user is truly the owner of the phone number an SMS containing a PIN is sent to the device

After the end user receives the PIN he/she may return to the WAP page, assuming the device’s browser is able to cache the page

The end user enters the PIN

The purchase is completed

The content provider may deliver the content through a WAP download or through SMS, depending on the operator/device limitations

The big disadvantage is that the end user experience still leaves much to be desired.

The other disadvantage of PSMS is that the operators takes a cut of each purchase. The cut can range anywhere between 25% to 40%. The irony is that by trying to protect their walled gardens carriers are also keeping dollars outside of their precious garden, and out of content providers’ wallets.

In the Spirit of the New Year: Mobile Awareness

2008-01-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

My first post of 2008 goes out to RareEarthTones. Unlike the vast majority of mobile content providers, RareEarthTones is leveraging the most ubiquitous access technology to promote awareness about endangered species. It does so by offering FREE ringtones featuring the sounds of animals at the brink of extintion.

I tried it on my Verizon phone and it worked like a charm.

This is truly liberating. The economics of SMS are very unlike the Internet. There is a considerable cost that the Center for Biological Diversity (or some very generous donor) must be incurring. I cannot think of a better purpose!

My Location: Google is Not Always Watching Me over the Airwaves

2007-12-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Google surprised us again this week with yet another bold announcement. With My Location Mobile Maps will be able to tell you where you are. But fear not, big-brother or stalker phoebes. In contrast to Google’s free WiFi service, Mobile Maps has made the very intelligent decision to not bother to know where you are. All My Location knows is an arbitrary identification number (not your MDN, which is your seven digit phone number) that is associated with your mobile device.

The challenge for operators is that whether their LBS platforms provide anonymity or not, it will be difficult for them to shake off the perception that they do not. The network knows the MDN associated with the device; the MDN is associated with the account. The account not only holds information about the identity of the subscriber, but even other facts such as mailing address and credit card number.

Google’s announcement also sparked new discussions about how the carriers ought to release LBS APIs that application developers can take advantage of. This only speaks for the U.S. operators’ inability to effectively educate the media. After all, as I have posted before, some operators do have open (or semi-open, depending on whether economics are part of the definition) APIs. So here is a quick snapshot of carrier supported LBS APIs for developers:

Verizon Wireless
Sprint
ATT

Right now Mobile Maps is limited to smart devices such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. However, in America it is feature phones that occupy the largest footprint today. So why doesn’t Google take advantage of the semi-open API’s provided by operators? Hmm… perhaps they will soon… Or perhaps the economics get a little murky since operators impose revenue share models on subscriptions to on-deck applications. To make things even more complicated, with Brew operators a third party is also involved: Qualcomm. In contrast, Google’s model is based on advertising, which means giving the service away for free. So perhaps with a little creativity, and suppression of egos, all players could come to friendly terms that would ultimately benefit us, the end users.

Regardless of how this will pan out, the truth is Google’s is definitely a good long term strategy; eventually most, if not all, devices will be open smart devices.

I end this post with the real question that I have: will Google make Mobile Maps open like its online counterpart some day?

(Here is a good interview with the Google Maps product manager, Steve Lee).

Oh, It’s a Wonderful and Predictable World

2007-11-27T11:28:00.000-08:00

Why is Om wasting his analytical mind and his words on his post today? The reasons behind the news from Verizon Wireless today can be simply narrowed to the first once he mentions: It’s all about the upcoming spectrum auction. And it is also about Android… Oh, which by the way is also all about the upcoming spectrum auction…

So it is only a matter of time before the rest of the herd follows. The big question for me is which carrier will embrace Android? Just for fun, my money goes to T-Mobile.

Finally, as soon as I figure out how exactly Verizon’s open platform will work and how it will benefit (or hurt – always a possibility) the industry, I will post some more….

Android… New Player, Same Old Song

2007-11-16T11:15:00.000-08:00

Attention mobile application developers: the news is that you will now have yet another development platform to deal with. But why should this be a real issue to you anyway? Your present strategy is, and will probably continue to be to maximize your porting investments by focusing on the largest footprint available anyway. If you're looking for VC investment, however, it might wow some of your prospective investors to showcase your app on a a) an iphone and b) android.

It is not like I want to discount the effort undertaken by Google. It will certainly shake things up. And I still believe that few players have the vision and ability to transform the mobile industry, and Google is certainly at the top of my list. I have no doubt about the superiority of the technology either – I’d be scared if I were Windows Mobile, for example. Most importantly, I don’t think there is any other brand in the industry that could have the power to make their platform the de facto standard someday in the future as much as Google. Five years out, I expect Android to comprise a large share of handsets. But until then it is business as usual for application developers.

Seriously, can anybody out there seriously and sincerely focus on application developers’ needs today for once?

Why is it that everyone promising an open mobile platform these days seems to have a hidden – or not so hidden, such as the intent to bid for some coveted spectrum – agenda?

>play's "Beyond Mobile 2.0"

2007-10-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

I attended the UC Berkeley Digital Media and Entertainment >play Conference this past Saturday. The mobile panel focused around a somewhat vague, yet interesting topic: “Beyond Mobile 2.0”. The panel consisted of Steve Lee, Product Manager at Google Mobile, Tico Ballagas from Nokia, Jeff Sellinger, VP of Mobile at CBS, Rick Robinson, VP Products and Services at XOHM/Sprint, Evan Tana, Director of Product Marketing at Loopt, and moderated by Mike Rowehl of Sillicon Valley’s Mobile Monday, and AdMob’s tech dude. Some of the predominant themes were:

Location:

The most heard theme was: LBS is the key to providing targeted content.

According to Rick Robinson, the biggest problem with adoption today is the lack of privacy. However, I would agree with Evan’s response that the privacy control tools are in place today, so the biggest challenge is education (of consumers about these controls).

On Future of paid on deck applications:

According to Steve and Evan, both Google and Loopt get the whole ‘playing with carriers’ deal today, but believe the market is slowly moving to a more open environment. Nokia truly believes this, which was clear by Tico’s constant reminder that Nokia is evolving into a services company. Proof of this is the company’s launch of Ovi and late acquisitions (Navteq, Enpocket, Twango, and Loudeye). Rick Robinson from Xohm went as far as saying that "Xohm will tear down this wall..." (BIG statement!), but will still provide an on-deck expericence that is customized for the device.

Interoperability of different technologies:

The best description of what a rich end user experience might be was Jeff Sellinger’s. This would call for an interactive behavior between the different applications that exist on the mobile device. Jeff said it would be great to be able to tie SMS/MMS with WAP and Location. I would add streaming video and interactive gaming to this fabulous equation.

Limitations in the U.S.:

* Limited MMS support by U.S. carriers was the top item

* Absence of unlimited data plans, as in Europe, was mentioned repeatedly as a roadblock for user adoption

* Pervasive broadband (both availability and adoption) was mentioned a few times as an issue
Device fragmentation, specifically with browsers, was also mentioned as "old" but never ending "news"

Consumers should not have to pay

2007-10-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to my previous post, here is a good example of how working with U.S. carriers to develop new economic models can create opportunities for growth in the mobile econsystem.

mBlox, Inc. is making inroads with U.S. carriers to make SMS free for end consumers. Why would carriers care to lend an ear to this seemingly ludicrous proposal? And who will pay for these messages?

Today when you receive an alert from your favorite Web application, such as Twitter, your carrier collects money from you for the delivery of the message. On the other hand, your carrier does NOT charge a fee to the aggregator who delivered the message to it, nor to Twitter for delivering you your message.

mBlox’ proposition is that by removing the charge to the end user will drive more user adoption of messaging applications. In other parts of the world the model has been proven to work better for the players in the ecosystem, beginning with end consumers. In Europe the amount of traffic for simple mobile terminated messages by far exceeds that of premium content (e.g., ringtones, wall papers).

The most interesting part of the proposition is that the carriers would receive a bigger payout for each individual message. This is due to the higher willingness to pay that exists in specialized services and applications, where the ability to send a message to an end user signifies a cost saving. Examples are financial institutions and brands, which otherwise have to invest significantly to reach consumers through other means; and which, presumably, should be willing to pay for the ability to make messages received by end users feel less intrusive.

Quit Complaining

2007-10-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

I get sick and tired of Web developers complaining about how closed they are finding the mobile space. I find the complaints ignorant and whiny. The arguments for the need for an open mobile ecosystem are not only shallow, but also obviously selfish and poorly disguised as idealism and altruism.

It is not that I do not believe in openness and opportunity for all. It is not like I do not realize that the consumer is who will benefit the most from access to a broader, more compelling, more discoverable, and price competitive range of services and applications. It is not like I do not perceive the potential that mobile has of surpassing the Internet in terms of availability and profitability of services and applications (in terms of reach, mobile has long gone surpassed the Web).

My dilemma is that as a capitalist I strongly believe that the parties who have invested heftily in laying down and maintaining infrastructure to connect the world are entitled to protect their investment to capture as much of the returns as possible. Carriers are also entitled to protect their physical assets from abuse, malice, and tear and wear. It is, however, also investors’ entitlement, if not their duty, to also maximize their ROI.

The problem I see in the carrier ecosystem is that by being so over protective and paranoid of opening the flood gates carriers may be selling themselves short. One major downfall of the walled garden is the stifled user adoption.

My call to action then to the Web developer community is to stop complaining. Instead, get your creativity juices flowing and think of ways to turn the situation around. It is time to develop innovative ways to show carriers ways to maximize their returns by opening up their platforms, and forcing OEM’s towards a less fragmented device platform environment. Successful models will be those in which all carriers, OEMs, developers, and end-consumers alike will reap benefits.

Google is Watching Me Over the Airwaves

2007-10-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

I am logged onto Google WiFi in Mountain View right now. First time I have ever used Google's free WiFi. I did not realize that I would have to log in with my Google username. It is pretty scary to realize that Google knows where I happen to be at this very moment... Or is it?

Google Navigator

2007-10-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

I pay $4.99 per month for Verizon Wireless's VZNavigator. VZNavigator is a Brew based LBS applications that gives turn by turn directions, local directories, maps. VZNavigator has gotten me out of many a hairy situation. The past few times I have used the application, however, I get a sporadic error telling me it is unnable to retrieve the directions I have requested.

When this happened to me today, I decided to try Google's SMS directions. I sent "directions from (my work address) to (graphing social paterns conference address)" to the short code 46645 (GOOGL). Within 30 seconds I received three messages including the turn by turn directions. So while I didn't have a friendly voice dictating to me where to turn, nor access to a map, I was able to get to my destination just fine. I must admit it is pretty tempting to want to save myself $5/month going forward... Especially when it takes almost the same amount of time and effort to type the directions request onto the SMS message, than to navigate through the device's convoluted menus to get to VZNavigator.

One More Sequel to My Mobile Widget Ranting

2007-10-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to my previous post about taking Web applications Mobile...

Yes, there's a lot of appeal to the word 'widgets' these days. And widgets are fantastic for the Web. But when it comes to mobile, whether the widgets are client-based or Web-based, they can become rather difficult to implement, and impossible to port or support across many types of devices.

Few words to the wise: stay away from mobile widgets!

From Web to Mobile, One Step at a Time

2007-10-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

My advice to Web developers wanting to penetrate the world of Mobility is to take it in strides. Forget about dealing with the plethora of on-device platforms (from 5+ different Operating Systems, to the 3 or so middleware platforms, to the 1000's of resolution and other iterations). WAP and Mobile Web have their problems. The learning curve is steep and quite costly.

The simplest and quickest way to get your feet wet in mobile is through SMS. Through services like TextMarks or Mozes you will be up and running in no time without the need to integrate with any carrier or aggregator. But SMS will not allow you to automatically port your application to a mobile dimension. Although SMS will only allow your application to extend some functionality to the mobile device it will achieve two things:

1) It will help you learn more about your users' interactions with their mobile devices with respect to your app. This is valuable information to have before taking the full plunge and investing significantly in other mobile platforms.

2) In many cases and depending on your application it will help drive stickiness by allowing you to ping users when they are away from their PC

The best example I can think of is Facebook. They started off by supporting a few alerts to users' mobile phones. Today they host a plethora of alerts and functionality around these alerts. Facebook even allows (much like blogger) to post pictures from a mobile device. Other excellent examples are Twitter and Truemors.

Redefining the “Cloud” (i.e., add wireless)? Too early to tell

2007-07-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

So what of the news that the FCC will auction new spectrum under the condition that those who venture into the challenging space of building, maintaining and operating a network keep the last mile open to any device?

Well, for starters, if it comes to fruition this ruling could have a major impact on the wireless industry: more consumer power, less restrictions on proliferation of applications, less device fragmentation with better devices… and on and on. At last, a stride towards an open environment has been taken. Great.

However, while this ruling could result in something bigger than the Telecom Act of ’96, today it is still too early to tell what the real outcome will be. Fully aware of the threat that this poses to the them, the incumbent operators have already been busy at work in Washington for some time, and will continue to be until the fat lady sings. The lobbying (they have been at it since before Sergei and Larry were born) and staying power of the operators is not something to be underestimated.

Finally, even if this ruling were to be successfully implemented by the FCC, the incumbents not only have the deep pockets to compete in the bidding war with Google and co., or whomever. They will fight to the nail and teeth for they have much more to lose. They might even give Google a little bit of its own medicine: pay ludicrous amounts of money for the spectrum and do nothing with it simply to keep the competion out.

Access is the problem, but Yahoo Go may be on to something

2007-07-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

The most important determinant of user adoption of applications is access. It is a noble (and potentially very profitable) effort for companies to add more applications platforms to increase the number of applications to the mobile device. Yet, the pending need is not the number of applications. There are thousands of BREW and J2MEE aggregate applications. Handango currently sells over 7000 applications for the Symbian platform alone.

Yet the issue of access to those applications that remains unsolved for the most part. Access today remains a major roadblock for consumer adoption and stickiness. I synthesize access into three areas:

Discovery. Given the abundance of mobile applications out there users find themselves overwhelmed. Even when a user has an idea of an application he/she is interested in using, finding it in the operators’ or storefront catalogs can be quite the ordeal. Not to mention when it is done from the device itself.

Adoption. Most existing platforms have actually made the process of trying out and signing up for applications significantly simple. An application download will typically involve a series of authentication and provisioning processes. Most of these processes combined take place in a matter of seconds and are usually invisible to users.

Stickiness is another problem area. Mobile phones have a very limited user interface that has resulted in cumbersome navigation and layers and sub-layers of menus. Frankly, it is easy for consumers to forget about an application they downloaded in the past along with many others. It is easier to stick to the basic applications, like WAP or SMS, which are closely integrated with the physical user interface.

On this front, Yahoo is on to something with Yahoo! Go. It brings potentially thousands of applications to the consumer in a self-contained, seamless and user-friendly experience. The Yahoo Go experience is client based, so reaching a wide device footprint will be a never-ending challenge for Yahoo. However, since the downloading can be initiated from the Web, and through a SMS containing a URL, getting the client to supported devices will be easy for the consumer. The discovery of new applications that are part of the Yahoo! Go experience has been made so simple, thanks to the Yahoo Go user interface that allows for extremely simple navigation. As the number of applications, or widgets as Yahoo calls them increases, however, discovery will become increasingly more challenging. Hopefully Yahoo will add an effective Search and/or Recommendations engine to future versions of Yahoo Go. Yahoo will still have to address the problem of stickiness. Depending on the device, the Yahoo! Go client may be added to the device’s layers and layers of applications. Alerts (opted-in by the user, of course) may be a simple way, for example, for Yahoo to remind users to shift the Mobile Web paradigm to Yahoo Go on an on going fashion. The other, even better and very possible alternative, is the Yahoo Phone through direct relationships with OEM's for device-embedded Yahoo Go.

Who cares as long as it's sexy

2007-07-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have been interviewing as many fortunate owners of the iPhone as I could come in contact with. What I have observed is either a severe case of herd-mentality denial or simply a slap in the face for the wireless industry that has been decades in the making.

Among many surprises about the iPhone, one that stood out to me the most is that the iPhone does not support picture messaging. The alternative functionality of sending pictures, or anything else for that matter, as email attachments is not supported either. The average iPhone user's response to this was that he/she had no need for pictures on a phone.

A certain iPhone user also described the Internet browsing experience over the EDGE network as “painful”. Another user commented that he would not even attempt to watch a streaming video outside of WiFi, but then added that he “hates YouTube anyway” (he and the rest of the world, right?). An eager user insisted, instead, that streaming video over EDGE was even faster than doing it from his computer over high speed Internet – obviously in denial!!

Furthermore, while the phone allows music side-loading only (no different than the iPod and not to mention a waste of the benefits of wireless connectivity and money left on the table from consumers' higher willingness to pay to purchase songs while on the go), the iPhone has been praised in the bloggsphere for having the potential to revolutionize the music industry. More denial.

Openness? Don’t even get me started. Besides Safari, nothing else in the device is open to developers: no keypad, no LBS, no codecs, no SMS, no J2MEE/BREW equivalent...

While the phone’s revolutionary touch-screen keypad provides for more and much needed screen real estate, it made it very difficult for me to enter text (my fingers are pretty small, mind you). That was acceptable to the owner of this particular iPhone because I am a newbie, after all, and I need to practice. This same user had been practicing for one week and yet kept fat fingering every other letter.

In terms of memory space, no one has denied that it is definitely a downgrade from the Video iPod. iPhone owners’ response?... They do not need the memory space for video because they can stream video (when sitting in front of their computer at an Internet café, of course).

One area where eager iPhone adopters and I can certainly meet is the device’s extremely slick design. It is thin, light, has a relatively large screen, and aesthetically pleasing rounded corners. The UI is a beauty with its large bright colored icons on a dark background. Unlike the iPod, the phone will actually resist the physical abuse of the average mobile user.

So what could this mean to the rest of the mobile industry? For years thousands of competent minds have been trying to second guess what customers really wanted out of their phones. After voice and SMS, we brought users access to information over data networks. It turned out that what we provided (WAP 1.X) was not the Web, so we gave them WAP 2.0 with images, colors, fonts, tables. It was still not enough. With more powerful devices, we were able to provide Internet browsers, but since the limited machines cannot bear to process much of the content that is out there today, this is still not good enough. So we added more bells and whistles (cameras, MMS, LBS. Video, Music)… Not enough because the networks were too slow? Answer: 3G networks. But no. Not enough.

So, could it be that over the course of 20+ years working to improve the mobile device the so-called experts were simply heading in the absolute wrong direction? Could it be that at the end of the day, despite of anything they said, consumers did not really want feature-rich empowering mobility tools after all? Could it be that after all, all the consumer really wants is an overpriced sexy-looking gadget that shouts social status to the world? Hopefully not (and I doubt it), but only time will tell…

For the time being I am holding on to my $600… and holding out for the iPhone 2.0... perhaps.

Off-Carrier LBS platform

2007-07-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

Hats off to the folks over at Yahoo! Research Berkeley for developing something truly disruptive!

The Yahoo! Research Berkeley team has come up with an open LBS platform that allows the community to generate and openly obtain the location information. This is in contrast to other LBS platforms, most of which are owned by carriers.

“Fire Eagle”, code name for YRB’s open LBS platform, allows location-based applications to connect to it and 1) post end-users’ location information, and/or 2) get end-users’ location information. Here is an example of how it works: Suppose you, as a developer, come up with the “Totally Rad” Social Networking location-based application and connect to “Fire Eagle” using its soon to be made public API. Now, let’s say one of your users also uses Zone Tag. While out and about, this user takes a picture, tags it, and uploads it to Zone Tag. Zone Tag will determine the user’s location by means of its Cell Site ID database. Zone Tag will then post the user’s location information to the “Fire Eagle” platform. Next, the end-user will log in to the Totally Rad Social Networking application. The Totally Rad application will get the user’s location information from Fire Eagle. With this information Totally Rad will be able to serve your end-users with location information about their friends or love interests, or even highly targeted ads.

So what about the security of users’ privacy?

Privacy has always been the number one concern with location-based services and continues to be. YRB promises the platform will be armed with privacy features. First, the location history of users will not be maintained. Fire Eagle will only cache each user’s latest posted location information. Second, users will be able to manage through a Web UI which applications should or should not have access to their location information. I would add to that the ability to specify windows of time, ability to turn off the disclosure on information from the device, etc.

How good will the information be?

Unlike a carrier supported LBS application, a user’s Latitude and Longitude may not always be available.

What might the carriers say/do?

They may not do anything until a user’s location information is compromised and used in a bad way… or until they see that this significantly eats into their revenues. For now, though, this is probably will be just noise to them.

What’s Fire Eagle’s status?

Currently “Fire Eagle” is about to go through alpha testing. Enter your email address on the Fire Eagle Website to be notified when it becomes open to the public.

Text May Become the New Voicemail... Someday

2007-06-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

I am currently test driving some of the new messaging applications that are out there. CallWave Mobile turns your voice messages into text and delives them to your phone in the form of an SMS message, and to your email. It also lets you check your voicemail from your desktop via the Web. I have found the value proposition of the application to be very enticing: it keeps me from having to dial my voicemail, entering my passoword and listening to voicemails one by one. Two minor flaws I found though: 1) Voice to Text conversion is far from perfect (surprise, surprise), so many times the text SMS or emails are unintelligible so I have to check the voicemail anyway, and 2) the voice messages do not get stored in my carrier provided voice mail, which I am very used to checking. Instead, in order to check my voice messages from my phone, I have to call CallWave's voice message number - only a matter of adding the number to my speed dial, yes, but still not quite perfect.

Keeping the Google Bus Mobile

2007-06-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

I heard a rumor that Google’s approach for providing Internet access to its employees while they ride the commuter shuttle using WiFi was turning many of the indulgence accustomed and productive workers into disgruntled commuters. Instead of using WiFi, Google is rumored to want to supply its soon to be no-longer-disgruntled commuters with 1xEvDO cards. If the rumor is true, will this be the real outcome???

EvDO is absolutely fabulous because it relieves you from the infamous ‘hot spot’ dependency and very effectively delivers on the promise of “Internet Everywhere”. As with all wireless access technologies, however, user satisfaction highly depends on coverage. EvDO, whether it is provided by the more experienced provider Verizon Wireless or the newbie Sprint, is likely to have its “gray spots”. These are spots where EvDO may not be present and one may be temporarily switched to 1xRTT. This is the CDMA technology that preceded EvDO and which only transmits at about 128Kbps instead of over 1Mbps.

The other catch is capacity. When 20+ concurrent users get on EvDO cards all using the same bearer (part of the cell site that provides the connectivity to the rest of the network) they will probably find the bandwidth to be much less than the expected 1.4Mbps.

Throw economics into the mix and the whole thing just falls apart. For the average consumer the price of EvDO is on average $80+ for the card plus $50 to $60 per month for the service (granted, Google can probably pull off a mega-deal with a carrier). Multiply this by the 150 or more Google commuters, and compare the numbers to using instead just a few EvDO lines connected to WiFi routers that can service the 20+ employees at a time.

At the end of the day, however, EvDO is a great investment for improving employee productivity. For example, another rumor has it that at Google “Sunday is the new Monday”. Therefore, for Google the return on investment on EvDO cards for its employees may certainly go a lot further than the Google Bus.

A Few Thoughts on Mobile Widgets

2007-06-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

I have heard of widgets within the context of mobile when referring to various types of applications. Because access (i.e., discovery, availability, ongoing ease of use on the device) is so much more critical in the mobile device the various types of Mobile Widgets should be properly defined and separated:

1) Mobile Web Widgets. These are widgets that are accessed through a Web browser on a phone. The challenges when developing these widgets are similar to those of developing Web widgets – i.e., multi-browser support. Add to that, however, multi-device browser implementation support. There is also the walled-garden that is still part of the browsing experience in most of the feature phones. Not to mention that outside of 1xEvDO the browsing experience is still very slow. Despite of these challenges, this is low hanging fruit with potential to shift part of the carriers’ WAP paradigm. Unfortunately, I have yet to find any companies focusing on this space. If you know of any, please send them my way…

2) PC-like widgets that can be downloaded to mobile devices and that can either run in stand-alone mode or require connectivity to operate, I call Downloadable Mobile Applications. This is simply what they are. These are not any different than a J2ME or Brew game, with the exception that these are being developed by new comers trying to bypass the carriers. While buzz marketing is certainly appreciated, it is important to take into consideration the implications associated with these downloadable applications. One problem with downloadable applications is discovery. How are users going to find these applications? Buried in a Web site? Or even worse, buried in a Mobile Web site? What about devices that prevent downloads to occur from a Web session? Or in a carrier supported application catalog (still buried) where the carrier demands to get paid for it? Another problem is downloading; even with optimal bandwidth, installation could be a confusing to a user and will likely vary per device. Also, a few platforms accommodate applications that reside outside of the walled garden. Take for instance Plusmo, which claims to send a text to your phone after you select your widget of choice. Once you receive the SMS, bam! you’ll be all set! – Sure thing, IF, and perhaps, you have a non-carrier-blocked Smartphone.

The bottom line is to use caution when thinking about designing applications that will require users to a) find them, b) figure out a way to download them c) deal with latency associated with GPRS and 1xRTT, and d) deal with the possibility the mobile platform may not accept the application or may require multiple attempts to download/install (well, other than perhaps… the iphone…). Remember: the mobile world is not like the computer world – it is by far more fragmented in terms of operating systems, different devices with the same OS can behave very differently, the systems are often closely guarded by operators, etc. Do not get caught off guard and make sure to develop with a clear strategy in mind.

For a vast set of examples of these visit Widsets, and Webwag.

3) Web Mobility Widgets (if anyone has a catchier term, please comment) allow Web applications to extend their functionality to mobile devices. Many of these, especially SMS messaging widgets, are showing great promise. Take 3Jam, oTxt by Owdigets, or Textdrop’s widget for MySpace, to name a few. These enjoy the viral, ease of use, and simplicity characteristics of widgets, while tapping into the mobile space in a way that even carriers can welcome their expansion through the Web.

4) PC Mobility Widgets are just like Web Mobility Widgets in that they interact with mobile devices. For the time being, the ones I’ve seen are limited to SMS Messaging whether it is a stand-alone applications or extensions to other applications such as an Instant Messenger or Email client. Great examples are: CallWave’s widget that allows users to listen to their voice mail from their desktop, or Clickatell’s Messenger Pro, which allows users to send/receive text messages directly from their desktop. These are likely to be less popular outside of the Enterprise due to the need to download and install the widget on one’s your computer. An interesting spin off these is SMSalias’ computer browser extension, which also requires downloading/installation.

The Defective Phone

2007-05-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Scene 1: I wake up to my Motorola Q displaying nothing but a blank screen. The phone cannot turn on or off.

Scene 2: I spend 1/2 hour with my carrier's technical support. We manage to get the phone on Flash Mode. The agent instructs me to install Wireless Sync on my PC, and then download the SW Upgrade application from Motorola and also install it on my PC. I hang up... so far so good

Scene 3: I spend 1 hour trying to get my PC to recognize my Phone through the USB cable. I unistall/reinstall Wireless Sync twice. I give up and call tech support again.

Scene 4: Tech support can't help. They say the phone has to be completely on for Wireless Sync to detect it (duh)... They transfer me to Motorola tech support.

Scene 5: Agent asks me to replace the battery - the PC all of a sudden recognizes the phone! Begin flashing process... It stalls once... twice... three times... I finally ask the agent, what is the contingency plan here? He responds: "Uninstall Wireless Syn and SW Upgrade application; download them again and reinstall them... and IF that doesn't work... then it means YOUR PHONE IS DEFECTIVE"... hmm...

I'd like to add that I absolutely love the Q and that my overall experience with tech support wasn't all that bad. They were very nice, patient, and genuinely tried to help me. At the end of the day, I did as they agent said and for some miraculous act of who knows what, I was able to reflash my phone.

By the way, what do you think about the Motorola Q ?:

Technology Blogs on RateItAll

Welcome back Russ! (and mobilebuzz)

2007-05-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

This being my first post in a while, I thought I would commemorate the occasion with a welcome to a fellow mobilite, Russell Beattie, who is back on the scene again too.

I attended last month’s Silicon Valley's MobileMonday at UC Berkeley. The most pleasant surprise was to see Russell Beattie present. I will post about what he talked about, which was mainly a plug (a very informative and well done one, by the way) for his latest venture Mowser.

Russ broke the ice with his BS-meter about mobile Web – which I found so true, so I thought I would post it here:

- “Users only care about x and y”
- “Users don’t need a, b, or c”
- “Networks are too slow” (my personal favorite)
- “Mobile Web is too expensive”

Russell synthesized the approaches to Mobile Web to the following three. The first is the “Dedicated” (all xHTML) approach, which is ubiquitous today. It has its limitations because it is not what we would expect as an Internet-like experience, but it is very good for mobile-specific functionality to complement other services (banks, weather, maps, etc.). Lastly, it is very easy to create applications using this approach. The problem: low-end mobile browsers. Not that I would call this a “problem” personally, but a way around the many limitations of feature phones, which is what the majority of consumers can afford today.

The second approach Russ named the “Internet of Phones” (smartphones, that is). This approach is possible thanks to next generation browsers, such as DeepFish (MSFT), the Nokia Mini Map, and the Access Netfront 3.5. There was mention of the iPhone browser, but by the way, most of us have yet to see and for all we know is nothing but vaporware – and as Russ cleverly mentioned, it will only operate in GPRS, at least at launch. The problem with this approach is that the PC experience is still too difficult to mimic.

The third approach is Widgets. Russ’ perspective: mobile widgets are difficult to find, they need to be downloaded and installed, there are steep learning curve for users, and take time to develop.

I will continue to comment on Russ’s extremely insightful presentation later (he spoke about Transcoding and obviously, Mowser.com). For now, I close with the hopeful thought Russ will continue to honor us with more posts of his own, as he promised at MobileMonday.

LBS Is for Everyone

2006-12-05T23:51:00.000-08:00

Contrary to popular belief, carriers (Sprint and Verizon Wireless in the U.S.) have opened up their LBS platforms to the developer community. In this post I focus on Verizon Wireless’ LBS platform and publicly available Brew API. For more detailed information you may look at this presentation that was given at the Brew 2006 Developers Conference.

The Brew API is also publicly available. Through use of this API information that is available to applications through the ILpsPosDet extension for GPS is latitude, longitude, and altitude, among other information; through the same extension, one can also get the system ID, Network ID, Base Station ID and other information.

So why do some developers find themselves unable to tap into these platforms? The costs to do it could be significant and are often times unplanned for. Developers must first pay a fee to join the Brew developer community and gain access to all the proper development tools, such as the Brew SDK. Besides development expenses developers will also incur the costs to certify their application. This certification must take place for each device platform (add this to the porting expenses). Finally, carriers take a share of their revenues once the application is commercialized.

In summary, it is not that operators keep their platforms closed. But given the economics, many developers feel as if that were the case.

What do you like to use your cell phone for?

2006-02-28T14:22:00.000-08:00

I have created a ratings Weblist on RateItAll to find out what people like to use their cell phones for. When you get a chance, you too can let the world know what you think are useful applications of cell phones. Here's a link to my Weblist.

Check out RateItAll

Location, Location, Location

2006-01-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

My last posting on Meetro brought up some interesting discussions with Mobilites out there. Some see Meetro as having the disadvantage of lacking users' precise location and feel mobile operators' Location Based Services will overtake players like Meetro. My response is simple. Applications like Meetro fulfill a different need entirely: "I want to know who's close to me. I want to know if this attractive person lives close to me or far away. And if they live close, I might just throw out there the idea of meeting up". It is true Meetro cannot offer precise location information to within feet, but in some sense, why would they want to? Enter the BIG issue when it comes to LBS: Privacy. Privacy is a huge deal for mobile operators as well as for consumers. Mobile operators will probably never allow users to see where everybody else in the network is physically located. Talk about the potential for disaster... Customers would never allow other untrusted users in the network to know their precise location either. Even for trusted users, an LBS user will want the capability of turning on and off that visibility. The services we are going to see from operators will be security intensive. An example would be a friend (or employee, or child) finder app, that lets users set security rules for other users – i.e., only my friend should be able to see my location, but only when I want them to).

This brings me to the big news of the month: Verizon Wireless launched their first LBS application, VZNavigator . VZNavigator finds your precise location and that of such destinations as restaurants, airports, specific addresses etc. and provides you with turn-by-turn directions. To use VZNavigator you will need a Motorola V325. Once you buy the phone you can use the service for $9.99/month or $2.99/day.

This is a pretty big deal for Mobilites. While mobile operators are likely to launch with a few more branded applications I would be willing to bet they are probably not going to get into the Web 2.0 groove. Let's just face it, while NTTDoCoMo fully exploited data to provide an Internet like experience on mobile devices, U.S. carriers completely missed the boat. Chances are they will miss this one as well. This leaves open a great opportunity (and in my opinion, obligation) for developers to leverage LBS and take Mobile 2.0 to the next level. The two big LBS platform providers Wave Market and Auto Desk claim to have developer programs. This playing field should get very exciting, very soon. So to get a closer look at Auto Desk don't miss the Bay Area's up coming , Mobile Monday.

Meet Meetro

2006-01-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

In Silicon Valley it’s really not that often that one runs into a start up with a truly disruptive idea. If you live here and are like me, you have fallen into the horrible habit when listening to people’s new idea for a business of instinctually tearing to pieces. Chances are you’ve already heard it before or know someone who already failed miserably while trying to do the same.

I spent my Saturday afternoon at a BBQ hosted by what seemed at first your typical Silicon Valley start-up. If you have lived here for more than five years and were participant to many of these events during the boom, or to put it easier, if you’ve read Coupland’s Microserfs, you get the picture: a house in close proximity to Sand Hill Rd., its living room the office of all the employees, most of whom are under 30, equipment, cables, paper everywhere – not to mention the bedrooms turned into dorm rooms and a communal bathroom.

When Paul Bragiel, one of the Meetro founders, invited my husband over to Meetro HQ I quickly jumped on the opportunity. I am a wireless applications addict and had not had the chance to try out Meetro b/c they have not launched a Mac OS client, yet. But my true curiosity stemmed more from my skepticism about the media created buzz around Meetro’s ability to offer Location Based Services. Come on! Anyone knows only mobile operators can offer LBS today, right?! Ok, so I am being facetious; most people don’t even understand what LBS is - which is why Google can coin the term and and get away with it! But that’s a topic for another occasion. I also wanted to find out if they weren’t just another (uhm, boring…) Dodgeball. The point is I wanted to check out Meetro so that I could understand how they are doing what they claim to do: “radius and proximity based software.”

Here’s what I was able to dig up (no worries Meetro, there’s a lot more to your secret sauce): Meetro today works by downloading an application to your PC (think of Instant Messenger) that finds a unique identifier that is inside your pc or Wi-Fi router or card, pairs it with your physical address (you have to enter it manually if you are the first user to ever use Meetro through that PC or Hot Spot), and sends it to a Meetro server to be added to a database with other users’ similar information. That way Meetro can tell which users are in the proximity of which users, and thus let them know. Ok, so this is not Location Based Services: 1) it’s not for cell phones (yet) and 2) it does not use all of the complex triangulation algorithms cellular networks and GPS use. But it pretty much does the job! If you are often on the go and use your PC in different locations Meetro will automatically find you and let the Meetro network of users know of your proximity to them. Automatically is the key word here - who wants to be reporting to a system every time he/she arrives at a location via text messaging?

I used the word ‘today’ earlier because Meetro does have the potential to do a LOT more in the future. I really mean a LOT. Of all the applications out there that claim to merge mobility and social networking, Meetro has a leg up. They have a very unique offering that is very easy and fun to use. It is viral and addictive, which can be seen by the big traction they gathered soon after launching in Chicago. And while there are some considerations like barriers to entry, the size of the mobile PC market and oh, yes… revenue models, what Meetro is in the process of building could go into so many directions in terms of building a business and growing the technology.

And so I walked away from my encounter with Meetro with not just an alpha client for Mac OS (which has already become a serious distraction for me), but also with more ideas as to how Meetro can succeed in this new Wireless meets Internet space, instead of a million reasons why they won’t.

Hello World

2005-10-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I am just experimenting posting via my cell phone. This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless.