Dan’s Blog (2.0)

Open Business Model Panel at Mobile 2.0 Europe moderated by Mike Butcher

It’s the final panel at Mobile 2.0 Europe, featuring panelists from Blyk (Leif Fågelstedt), Admob (Laurence Aderemi), GetJar (Ilja Laurs), Bango (Ray Anderson) and Fjord (Chris Liu) and moderated by an ebullient Mike Butcher. The theme of openness has been a central one here in Barcelona. Everyone seems to agree that openness is good, but nobody can agree quite what openness means or what should be open and what can remain closed. The iPhone, for example, has been held up as a beacon of innovation, but the iPhone is also closed in a number of respects, especially around native application development.

Interesting comment from Chris of Fjord - do we need a “Microsoft” for Mobile (i.e. a single vendor who can dominate the operating system space)? Ray Anderson’s response (which I agree with) is that that common platform could be the Web (and I would add, mobile Widgets which run on top of a runtime environment). Coming back to the iPhone, the thousand+ mobile Web applications in Apple’s directory should be a indication of this trend. The only problem with Web apps is - no access to device capabilities (camera, location, PIM etc…). But this is coming. Both Ilja and Laurence have spoken up on the power of mobile advertising to help bootstrap mobile innovation. We haven’t heard too much from Leif about open business models — they are pretty focused on their basic “voice and text” proposition. My question was: will mobile (Web) advertising morph from simple banners into “branded experiences” such as mobile widgets where the widget itself is the advertisement? No clear answer from the panel but I’m convinced this is the way forward.

Phew! What a day! Lots of contraversy, lots of industry expertise, lots of startups. In short - a fantastic debut for Mobile 2.0 Europe! I need a drink!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 16:55 under London, mobile 2.0
Tags: m20eu, mikebutcher, mobile2.0

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Pekka Pohjakallio of Nokia Keynoting Mobile 2.0 Europe

In late 2006, I helped to run an event called Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco. Run up against Web 2.0 Summit, the event was first conceived as a kind of mobile “meet up” for people attending Web 2.0 - people who were interested in mobile innovation, and especially the growing convergence between Web and Mobile (which in 2006 was still quite contraversial). We ended up drawing a crowd of 300 industry professionals. In 2007 we re-ran the event and established Mobile 2.0 as a conference series. Today in Barcelona, Mobile 2.0 Europe is kicking off due to the not inconsiderable talents of Rudy De Wale. In the mean time, the topics we’ve been covering in Mobile 2.0 have gone main stream. Mobile Web, mobile social networking, social media, and other innovations that were seen as fringe in 2006 are now coming into the mainstream of industry thinking. Pekka Pohjakallio from Nokia spoke this morning on how his company is becoming an Internet services company. Alistair Hill from M:Metrics has presented dramatic growth in mobile Web usage in western markets. Now we have on stage a panel on Mobile Social Networking including Zyb (now part of Vodafone) founder Tommy Ahlers and Antonio Vince Staybl, CEO of Itsmy.com (a mobile-only social network that is taking off like wildfire). The rest of today’s program is packed with real industry experts and startups across the spectrum of mobile innovation.

Exciting times? Yes.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 9:04 under mobile 2.0
Tags: Barcelona, m20eu, mobile2.0

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Once upon a time, a company called Apple came out with a great concept: a breakthrough consumer device with a new user interface that left the competitors in the dust. It brought UI to a whole new level by introducing a new visual and gestural language which greatly increased ease of use. In doing so, it lowered the barrier to entry for the general public, created new markets for its products and a revolution occured. Sound familiar? It should. I’m talking about the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. The new visual language of pointing, clicking, dragging and using overlaping windows gradually became the dominant UI paradigm. But here’s the problem: other companies stole Apple’s great ideas (which Apple had actually stolen from Xerox but never mind). What could have rocketed Apple to market dominance instead became a commodity that anyone could implement.

Flash forward to 2007. Apple again comes out with a new UI paradigm, together with a visual and gestural language, and they release it as part of a breakthrough consumer device; the first of a series of devices in different form factors which they think will undo the last 20 years and rocket them to dominance of all things digital. But this time, they’ve got an ace up their sleeve: a string of patents. As Wired reported in February, Apple is trying to patent the gestures that make up the iPhone UI - the iPhone’s equivalent of “point and click.” In fact, if Apple’s efforts succeed, I think they will be shooting themselves in the foot. Why? Because if we are, en masse, to move to a new user interface paradigm, beyond point and click, we are going to have to have some consistency. If “pinching” means “shrink” on one device and “close” on another device, this would be a disaster from a user experience standpoint, and could turn potential users off in a big way.

In fact, we don’t have to imagine for too long because some of new breed of “iPhone killer” devices now hitting the streets exhibit this very problem. I was just looking at a touch UI device manufactured by an un-named Korean company (that also coincidentally manufactured my fridge which now is on the blink after only 3 years of ownership - not that I hold a grudge). The problem with this device was that it was replicating a non-touch UI (a UI controlled by a four-way rocker switch) with a touch-screen overlaid on top. It wasn’t quite as bad as the Prada phone that I wrote up last year, but it was close. For example, instead of scrolling by simply flicking your finger up and down, it required you to (repeatedly) press soft buttons at the bottom of the screen labeled with up and down arrows. I haven’t actually had the chance to test out the Nokia “touch” Series-60 device, but when I read this article in News.com with accompanying spy shot, my blood chilled. A scroll bar? Menu buttons on the bottom? Could it be that Nokia is falling into the same trap - trying to replicate a button-based UI with a touch screen overlaid on top? I sincerely hope not — indeed, I think Nokia has enough UI expertise to understand that touch needs a new visual gestural language.

But this brings us back to Apple and their patents. I am not a lawyer, but I don’t believe patenting gestures is a good idea. It seems like there’s plenty of prior art - take a look at Jeff Hann’s talk at TED on gesture-based UI as an example - but the main thing is: in order for us to move into this brave new world of touch, I would argue that gestures need to be royalty free, and companies need to know that if they implement commonly used gestures they will not be sued. If anything, we need standardization of gestures so that users can have some kind of consistency between touch-based platforms. The people behind Interactivegestures.com are moving in this direction, but it’s unclear to me what the intellectual property around these gestures (if any) is. What is the way forward to ensure that gestural and touch-based UI can flourish and isn’t hobbled by intellectual property disputes before it’s even properly off the ground? We briefly “touched” on this issue during a discussion on the future of mobile user experience at Over the Air led by UIQ’s David Mery and Idean’s Mikko-Pekka Hanski, but this topic alone needs more discussion. At risk may be the very future of human computer interaction.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 15:11 under mobile 2.0
Tags: Apple, gestures, iPhone, ipr, patents, touch, userexperience

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I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Peter Price from BBC’s Digital Planet. Some of what we talked about got onto the Digital Planet Podcast (dated 7 April). Peter also captured Over the Air speaker/participant Brian Fling and spoke about the coming revolution of “Mobile 2.0″.

It’s a great piece, which really captures some of the flavor of the event, interviewing one of the competition entrants (Simon Maddox) who was busy learning J2ME in order to build a location-based game. Contrary to what Peter says on the podcast, Simon and his team-mate Kevin were actually one of the winners, for best location-aware app. Because of the hybrid nature of the event, Simon and Kevin had access to some top-level experts in Java J2ME from Sun, Aplix and Vodafone who had presented in earlier masterclass sessions.

I think it’s also notable what BBC’s Matthew Postgate and Bill Thompson had to say about why BBC is getting involved with events like Over the Air. It’s all because BBC’s public remit means they have a mandate to encourage and facilitate creative expression and ”programming is just as valid a form of creative expression as writing books, making videos, or drawing pictures.” I think they’re absolutely right. Certainly, a lot of “creativity” was evident in the contribution entries.

The question on everyone’s lips at Over the Air was “when are you going to run another one?” I think the answer is “not for a while” but in the meantime, BBC Backstage is gearing up for their own, more PC-Web-oriented, event, Mashed happening June 21st and 22nd at Alexandra Palace. I’m definitely looking forward to that one.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 9:57 under mobile 2.0
Tags: BBC, BBCBackstage, brianfling, digitalplanet, overtheair, overtheair08, podcast

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Over the Air kicks off tomorrow at Imperial College London. But we’re already getting some great press from the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss. And they even spelled my name right!

The innovation that’s going to drive this converged Mobile/Web industry forward is going to come from the kind of people who are coming to this event. Jemima called it a “festival” in her article. That’s right, I think. Over the Air will be more than a development conference and more than a code camp. It must be a rallying cry for the mobile developer community.

I’m off to Imperial College London to start stuffing bags for tomorrow’s attendees. If you’re coming to Over the Air, I’ll see you tomorrow, and if not you’ll have to read about it in the papers.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 16:26 under mobile 2.0
Tags: mobilemonday, MoMoLondon, overtheair

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I’ve been working for a while now with the folks at BBC Backstage, Imperial College London and Betavine to put an event that has had many incarnations, but has now coalesced into its final form: Over the Air. With an expected attendance of over 450 and multiple conference tracks including talks on a range of Mobile technologies and disciplines, it’s safe to say that this is the most logistically complex event I’ve ever worked on. The result, I’m hoping, will be something entirely new: a new kind of mobile developer event that brings together the best aspects of a “code camp” with some great talks and hands-on “master class” session from thought leaders in mobile development. We’ve got Microsoft, Adobe, Nokia, Google, Sun, Thoughtworks, W3C and that’s just for starters. We’ve also got a strong element of user experience and design with speakers from Idean, Fling Media and more. Speaker list is on the site and program details will be posted to the Web site soon.

If you want to get a glimpse of the future of mobile platform innovation, register for this event and come join us at Imperial College London campus in South Kensington on the 4th and 5th of April. Did I mention that registration is free?

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 16:39 under Mobile Web, mobile 2.0
Tags: mobilemonday, MoMoLondon, overtheair

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This year I’m more excited than ever about Mobile World Congress (née 3GSM). But the excitement at this year’s event won’t be at the event. It will be at two amazing side-events: the Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards happening on Monday the 11th and the Mobile Jam Session on the 12th.

At last year’s Global Peer Awards, we had 23 mobile start-ups from 23 Mobile Monday cities around the World presenting on stage. We had companies like Skyhook Wireless (which has recently achieved some fame as the technology behind the location awareness function in iPhone), RealEyes3D (which went on to be selected as a Red Herring top 100 companies in Europe as well as other accolades), and MobileComplete (which was also selected by Red Herring and took the world by storm with their DeviceAnywhere product). A full list of 2007 participants is available here. This year, it’s your chance to see more early-stage companies and innovative mobile services - before they become famous and stop returning your calls.

The Mobile Jam Session will be a unique industry event, bringing together a spectrum mobile developers for a kind of un-conference that will combine a “code camp” style with a creatively driven workshop structure. After hearing who has so far signed up, I’m more fired up than ever about this event.

W3C will also be out in force at the conference itself, promoting the release of MobileOK as a “Candidate Recommendation” and the release of an open source code library that allows content developers to more easily test their content for mobile friendliness. If you’re at the conference, go visit them in Hall 7, stand 7D56 and get the real deal on MobileOK and the future of the Mobile Web. We’ll also hopefully see W3C folks at the Mobile Jam Session.

See you in Barcelona!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 11:20 under Mobile Web, mobile 2.0
Tags: 3gsm, globalpeerawards, mobile2.0, mobilejamsession, mobilemonday, mobileOK, MobileWeb, mwc2008

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Yes. Believe it or not, there is something that has overshadowed the launch of the iPhone around the world. It is the story of the developer community that has come together around the iPhone to create a whole ecosystem of applications and clandestine methods for loading these applications onto this platform. In a matter of months, loosely organized individuals and companies with names like Nullriver, Conceited software, drudge and “Erica,” have managed to unravel the turtleneck of iPhone security and in the process they have created something entirely new in the industry: a mass-market mobile phone platform that is completely open to the application developer community. They have also created application loading tools for over-the-air installation which have no rival in terms of their sophistication and ease of use. Indeed, there’s no tip-off, except for the author names, that the software you’re using wasn’t developed and pre-installed by Apple - they’re that good.

Along the way, we now have a few new words in our mobile lexicon. Of course, there’s “brick” as a verb, as in “to brick your phone.” Of course, most iPhone users who found their phones bricked after the first software update have since “de-bricked” their phones through various widely available methods. There’s also “jailbreak,” which has come to mean to enable third party software to be loaded onto an otherwise closed platform. A platform so prepared can be called “jailbroken.” The rest of the lexicon is still being worked out. The popular press can’t seem to figure out the difference between SIM-unlocked and “contractless” for example. One can Jailbreak and SIM-unlock their iPhone but still be locked into a 2 year contract.

When the first iPhone “jailbreak” method came out, people were a bit tentative. Surely Apple would “fix” this in a subsequent update. Indeed they did, resulting in the “great bricking.” But when the new firmware was broken as well, the developer community began to smell blood. We’re on our third firmware revision (which has also been broken) and I do not believe at this point that the community can be stopped.

Unfortunately this has all somewhat overshadowed what possibly should have been the biggest story of 2007 - the rise of sophisticated mobile browsers such as Safari for iPhone. I still believe the roll-out of these browsers will have a huge impact in the mobile Web space. But the overall impact on the industry of the iPhone jailbreakers, I believe, will be more important in pushing the industry towards openness, user choice and the wide deployment of connected mobile applications - in a word, Mobile 2.0.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 14:43 under mobile 2.0
Tags: iPhone, Jailbreak

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So I attended this Future of Mobile conference on Wednesday. In general it was a great event. The one criticism that was thrown around at the event after-party which I kind of agree with is that it may have been a little heavy on Web topics. That might sound surprising, coming from someone such as myself who spends his days (and increasingly his nights) working on Mobile Web stuff, but I actually think there should have been some more material outside the Web topic. I did really enjoy a number of the presentations, including Brian Fling’s fantastic presentation on how the iPhone is changing the mobile space and great presentation from David Burke from Google which included live Java coding on stage (which in any other circumstance is sure to put people to sleep).

Apart from all that, Carsonified just runs really great events. In particular, they seem to have an intuitive grasp of the user experience of the events. Everything down to the badges is meticulously designed with a professional sheen that nobody else seems to be able to manage. In the case of the badges, they are printed on both sides (how often are you at a conference and you realize the person you’re talking to has no idea who you are because your badge has turned itself around), they are clearly printed and color coded based on whether you’re a developer, designer, speaker, etc… It’s just one of the many Carsonified touches that makes their events so pleasant. Great work!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 18:16 under mobile 2.0
Tags: FOM

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Thanks to all those who told me I needed to read Walt Mossberg’s article on the state of the mobile industry v. the Internet. It is a really great piece and sums many of the problems facing the mobile industry. As I said last year, I do believe that openness is an inevitable trend. I also realize that there are significant stumbling blocks to openness in mobile data. Some of these problems are “imaginary” (such as the customer service issue, which was also highlighted as a problem by the closed portals of the last century as a reason why they had to keep the Internet at arms length and “protect” their customers from it). Some of the problems are very real and have to do with the physical limitations of the bearer. You can’t treat a wide-area “mobile broadband” (e.g. HSDPA) connection in the same way that you can an ADSL or local-area WiFi connection, especially when it comes to applications like P2P or VoIP. However, both the service model and the technology are evolving. We have already made great strides forward in the last year. I see the pace of change accelerating in the coming year, especially if the (U.S.) regulatory issues that Walt highlights in his article are addressed.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 23:18 under mobile 2.0
Tags: mobile2.0, mossberg

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