MomoLondon: MWC2014 Stand Competition Live Final

10 companies competing to win a place on the UKTI stand at Mobile World Congress 2014 and press & media activity to go with it. ICT KTN, Mobile Monday London, UKTI and Cambridge Wireless all work together to whittle down the competitors to a shortlist of 10, all competing for five places on the stand.

All the companies this year were remarkably different — in their approach, their development stage and their presentation styles.

In the audience vote, I went for Changify, but the five who were selected were PeachInc, 5 Tiles, 23 Snaps, Capito and Viewranger.

There’s also an official blog post with pictures on the Mobile Monday London blog.

Red Glasses

Adam Martin, Founder

http://MyEarthApp.com @RedGlassesApps

• embedding rich content into 3D objects
• have built a native 3D engine for iPad that deals with data
• also built two sample apps:
  1. visualization of magnified Earth heights
  2. showing videos on a 3D globe
• aim to partner with media & content organisations
• have built bespoke apps for clients for last 15 years
• want to expand to a white-label product
• other demos:
  • showing travel time from a point across the globe
  • luxury retail, where purchasing from

Changify: Design for Social Change

Priya Prakash, Founder

http://www.changify.org @Changify

• basic idea:
  1. spot & share ideas for problems
  2. get support from friends & neighbours
  3. ideas get backed by brands & biz
  4. earn credits for making the change
• partnering with Clear Channel to make a digital bus stop
  • crowdsourcing local opinion by voting on screen
  • touch & NFC
• council get realtime data of reports
• running a 3 month trial with Guardian Data at Elephand & Castle
• working with councils & local businesses
• http://changify.org has been available for 6 months
• also accessible via SMS

Coveritas

Sean Redmond, CEO

http://www.coveritas.com @Coveritas

• based in Bletchley Park
• founding team did functional verification of hardware verification
• have applied same system to software functional testing
• specialise in machine to machine interoperability
• uses randomisation & rules (constraints) to generate end to end use case tests
  • 3GP took 9,000 hours of test engineering
• looking to partner with domain experts in M2M standards testing
• customers are those companies with massive test labs for M2M interoperability
• have an annual time-based license model

SpatialBuzz

Leon Hardwick, Director Global Sales & Marketing; Andrew Blake, CTO

http://www.spatialbuzz.com @SpatialBuzz

• cloud-based customer experience management for mobile operators
• delivering info on status and capability of network
• give the operator an idea of how customers are reacting
• can also provide an early warning to operator of issues
• mix together operator outage & planned works with crowd-sourced input
• can cater for any service delivered geographically
• deployed with Telefonica UK & Germany, also Tesco Mobile
• benefits seen:
  • reduction in calls
  • reduction in response times
  • improving customer satisfaction

PeachInc

Dr Daniel Morris

http://www.peachinc.com @PeachInc

• mobile ticketing using the “MorrisCode” — 2D barcode
  • patented format
• optimised to be read from electronic displays
• at the moment PeachInc are the only people who can read them
• displays well on small screens
• stores a 16 digit number
• have built a suite of apps
  • can receive tickets via SMS (even on iPhone)
• also make hardware
• will be integrated into a
• biggest customer so far Saudi Professional football league
• versus QR codes:
  • reads faster and more successfully
  • reads at 20 frames a second with most mobile cameras
  • 5,000 people at an event with 100% success rate
  • 60,000 football matches in Saudi Arabia with no problems

5-Tiles

Michal Kubacki, Inventor & CEO; Piotr Pieczynski, CFO

http://www.5-tiles.com @fivetiles

• keyboard for Android
• business model based on app sales & licensing deals
• works well for smartwatches (with a touch screen)
  • takes a small amount of screen space
  • have a demo on i’m watch Android smartwatch
• looking to port to Windows & iOS
• also getting keyboard tested by RNIB
• currently have 100s of users on Android
  • and 4,000 downloads of the training app
• takes about 30-45 minutes to learn the combinations
• working to make the learning curve lower all the time

23snaps

Meaghan Fitzgerald, CMO; Ivailo Jordanoc, Co-Founder

http://www.23snaps.com @23Snaps

• mobile-first private social network for families
• spans across different generations
• also organise photos by date & location
• 500K registered users
• posting one photo every second
• make money by selling photo print products
• have users in 179 countries
• going to be launching in Brazilian Portuguese
• content owned by creators
• also provide a one-click export of all content
• wanting to meet consumer electronics, mobile networks, etc
• don’t want advertising next to family photos
• may go for other monetization such as premium features

Available for iPhone, Android, Windows 8, email, web and printed books!

Capito Systems

Tony Ballardie, CEO

http://www.capitosystems.com @CapitoSystems

• speech assistant technology specifically for mobile commerce
• about to sign first customer
• language variations, background noise?
  • have focussed on language understanding rather than speech recognition
• aiming to license to mobile commerce companies
• have built support tools to enable customers to build up a speech corpus of domain language

Viewranger

Ben Howard, Marketing & Sales Exec; Craig Wareham, CEO & Co-Founder

http://www.viewranger.com @viewranger

• digital mobile platform for outdoor activities
• interest-based social network
• publishing platform
• trail guide marketplace
• over 2 million app downloads
• used by over 100 search & rescue teams in UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Germany, Ukraine
• work with 22 mapping agencies & trail guides from 400 brands
  • including CAMRA :-)
• wanting to engage with handset OEMs & wearable manufacturers
• earn revenue through:
  • premium in-app data & services (maps & guides)
  • premium services & analytics for brands
  • syndication of content
  • could go for advertising in the future (have steered away so far to keep UX well)
• main competitors are still dedicated devices
• there are sport-based apps that seem to be fragmenting the need

Available for iPhone & iPad, Android and Nokia

UBIAPPS (Nquiring Minds)

Nick Allot, CEO

http://www.ubiapps.com @nallott

• secure end to end framework for managing apps both online & offline
• server management + enterprise-grade security is proprietary
• protocol is open-source (JSON-RPC over HTTP)
• all nodes are two-way — can manage apps and IoT devices using the same system
• easy & quick to integrate on any device
• looking to work with system integrators
• seen most interest so far from asset tracking systems

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Announcements

• Vision Mobile Developer Economics Survey
  • http://visionmobile.com/DE1Q14MoMoLon
• IDEALondon offering desks, mentoring & support for start-ups and SMEs working on new products & services
  • apply at http://idea-london.com

Droidcon 2013

I went to Droidcon UK last week and my brain is still catching up… So many new ideas (and good ones too!).

I’ve put together several posts from Droidcon 2013 — this one gathers all the short notes that I took that didn’t deserve a full post of their own. They’re still worth checking out though!

A big thank you to the organisers and the contributors who made it all possible, especially Thibaut Rouffineau for whom this is his last Droidcon as organiser.

Cupboard SQLite access

https://bitbucket.org/qbusict/cupboard/wiki/GettingStarted

• easier design than ORMlite
• works better with Android framework
• doesn’t require a custom activity

testfairy

http://www.testfairy.com/

• send your APK to them, they instrument it and return it to you
• or you can ask them to sign it themselves and manage the testers for you
• results include one frame per second video of app UI, synced to logs and any exceptions

would you code blindfolded?

Gonçalo Silva, Novoda @gnorsilva

• Pretotype — most cost effective prototype
  • e.g. using wooden blocks wrapped with paper to test mobile device ideas — use in real world situations — as used by Jeff Hawkins to test the PalmPilot
• Light Table IDE — animate your code with live test results
• estimations have a very limited lifetime
  • valid up to a month, maybe two
  • more of a gut feeling rather than a specific time
  • just to help you and guide you, doesn’t tell you when you’ll be complete
  • don’t adjust your estimates — look at the performance in retrospectives
  • make estimates based on difficulty, not time
  • anything bigger than a 4 should be broken down into smaller pieces

android script

http://androidscript.org/

• Free app on google play
• or £0.65 version available with SmartWatch, IOIO and LEGO Mindstorms integration

productising a modern Android Device

Craig Arnush, Vertu

Vertu sell hand-made Android phones for £7,000+…

• made a changes to Android to allow secret alert + new vertu key
  • secret alert makes the phone pretend to be dead (including the home button)
  • modified phone window manager
• added own analytics (couldn’t rely on Google etc, as wanted security)
• have an internal Vertu API
  • if interested, get in touch
• tools: use OpenGrok

Tesco hudl

Novoda were showing off the hudl — a cheap Android tablet sold by Tesco.

Apparently Novoda were involved at a fairly deep level in the project, which explains why it’s actually pretty good!

demo camp

Each presenter had a couple of minutes to show off their app or service — the entries were judges by a panel of venture capitalists offering investment.

amateur football management

• http://football-tracker.com
• manage leagues & players

5-tiles keyboard

http://etaoisystems.com/

Download on Google Play

• normal users reaching 40wpm — almost twice as a normal keyboard
• speed freaks reaching 100wpm
• works on small devices — ported to I’m Watch smartwatch: immediately useable

apiomat

http://www.apiomat.com/

• easy to create APIs
• graphical UI to create basic database w/relations
• also does push notifications
• auto-generates code for iOS, Android, PHP, Python, etc

scoopt

http://scoopt.com/

• fashion facebook
• retailer with fashion leads

indoo.rs

http://indoo.rs/

• got 2-5m just using wi-fi in business design centre (on Android)
• iOS can’t use wi-fi positioning as Apple don’t provide wi-fi signal strength
• 6 patents
• support crowd-sourced mapping
• €100/mth for access to SDK

apponsor

http://apponsor.com/

• in-app sponsorship by signing up to newsletter
• automatically fetches user name and (verified) email address from device
• requires read context, read local account + internet permissions

pogo from Activ8rlives

http://www.activ8rlives.com/

• import healthcare data from devices that require USB
• patients no longer have PCs to upload their data and don’t have the latest Android or iPhone devices to pick up Bluetooth LE or
• instead have created a hardware box that converts USB into audio jack so can be picked up by an app on even legacy devices
• indiegogo campaign

genymotion

http://www.genymotion.com/

• native Android emulation for app testing & presentation
• integrates with laptop camera & fake location services
• introducing pro version next month

CapturaTalk

http://www.capturatalk.com/

• assistive services for students, esp. disabled & dyslexic
  • also useful for those with English as a second language
• OCR text into an editable format
• can get word definitions, including easily confusable words
• being sold to schools

NOBU BYOD

• remote android workspace for any device
• provides easily securable data for enterprise
• uses multi-user android servers
• have iOS client + HTML5 client
• can be run inside a data centre

NOBU won the demo camp top prize.

MomoLondon: Tablets Come of Age

The B&N NOOK Developer Workshop was followed by a panel session. I found the discussion interesting in confirming my experience of tablets being used in a completely different way to laptops or smart phones. The hardware format is ideal for families and children to share the device, and apps and services that make use of this multi-user perspective are faring well. The conversation was peppered with stats from both Marek and Hesham (of MEX and comScore)

• Chair: Marek Pawlowski @marekpawlowski — Founder & Organiser, MEX
• Stuart Dredge @stuartdredge — Freelance Journalist
  • writes various apps columns, including apps playground kids apps review site and the Guardian apps blog
• Hesham Al-Jehani — Product Manager, Mobile, comScore
• Ben Scott Robinson @bcsr — Creative Director, We Love Mobile
• Claudia Romanini — Director, Developer Relations, Barnes & Noble

Why tablets? User stories

• BSR: Ben’s mum (70+) was not comfortable with touch-screen phones — the interface was too small for her. An iPad was much more comfortable — she was much happier to play with it
• CR: is a mum of a 7yo. This year she asked for a tablet for Xmas… As a parent CR was nervous, but has been happy since Nook is focussed on reading. Nook feels safe.
  • most time is shared with parent, but as getting older and able to read by herself, more time by herself
• SD: collaborative shopping for presents — on the tablet on the sofa
  • every night we have half an hour of iPad time
  • Peppa Me Books: peppa pig but you can re-record all the voices
  • kids insist that someone joins in with them
• HAJ: has an 18 mth old daughter - she finds it and sits on dad’s lap and says “entertain me!”
  • watches “In the night garden” videos
  • mother also engages much more with tablet
• MP: 21% of US tablet use is lying horizontally in bed (considerably higher than smartphones)
  • more acceptable in a family context…

Is the original Kindle a tablet? e-Ink versus colour display?

• Audience member reading more due to Kindle
• CR: Nook Colour positioned as a reader’s tablet
  • Android transformed into a reading experience
  • consumers want an undisturbed, dedicated reading experience
  • reading long-form novels (don’t want to be bothered charging)
  • colour device allows people to read magazines
• HAJ: 92% of tablet usage is over wifi
  • indicated sedentary (stationary) usage
  • 75% of Android access over 3G compared to 70% of iOS access on WiFi
  • perhaps indicates iOS users are data-hungry
  • peak around 12pm where PC traffic eclipses everything else
  • around the evening (9-11pm) tablet traffic takes over
  • weight of the iPad is an issue when lying down
  • people are complaining about neck & shoulder injuries from iPad use…
• BSR: still stuck with finger on glass; thinner and lighter screens will be welcome
  • Morris Lessmore won an Oscar — being taken seriously but a long way to go

Content types: what’s working well?

• CR: B&N customers are predominantly “moms” aged 25-45
  • B&N stores have Nook tables
  • in the US target audience doesn’t really buy apps
  • approaches device from a content perspective
  • children & education are key categories (and under-developed in Android world)
  • 1/3rd apps in B&N catalogue are children’s apps (other 2/3rds split between games and lifestyle)

Where’s the web on tablets?

Dan Appelquist @torgo

• BSR: for news, no reason why you can’t create these experiences through HTML
• MP: disney started to take their apps in a different direction from content — see AppMAtes
• SD: HTML5 being used for content, possibly wrapped in native container for discovery & sales
• CR: magazines

Why limit tablet to magazines? Extend to movies? Compete or complement current entertainment?

• CR: entry point is digital books, but certainly buying other entertainment products
  • especially for Nook Tablet
  • think it complements & extends entertainment experience
  • entertainment content is huge for our customers
• BSR: tablets are the saviour of TV ads — intent to purchase, etc
  • tablets used in conjunction with TV (see zeebox et al)
  • radio is still a growing medium, despite the introduction of the TV and the internet
• MP: 30% of tablet usage in US is in front of TV (cf. 20% of smartphone usage)
  • people watch longer form videos on tablets than on their computers

When are we going to see some genuine competition for the iPad?

• HAJ: market segment dominated by Apple
  • 40m iPads sold in 2011, 15m in last quarter
  • 40m installed based in US
  • took 7 years for smartphones to reach 40m in US market; iPads took 2 years…
  • if there was no iPad we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about tablets
  • iPad dominates revenue, number of units (over 70%), usage (90%)
  • Kindle Fire has already sold 10m units in US
  • Apple’s share of market will shrink in 2013/14
  • tablets will eclipse PCs in the next few years
  • areas where Apple is weak: more PC-style — USB, filesystem
• CR: have sold millions of Nooks
  • many customers can’t afford an iPad
  • Nook Colour is $169 and prices go up, but still less than an iPad
• Audience: Dell have abandoned Android but have said they can see a place for themselves with a Windows 8 tablet

What about pens instead of fingers?

David Wood @dw2

• HAJ: welcome development that pens are making a comeback
  • writing your signature
• SD: crayola did an app and sold a big fat crayon with it
  • felt like it was getting the wrong end of the stick…
  • other than signing things, what’s the killer app for a stylus
• HAJ: scribbling notes?
• SD: but I much prefer to type!
• BSR: David Hockney using an iPad to paint (often using Brushes for iPad)
  • using styli (bits of wood at different sizes)
• MP: actually capacitative touch screens are worse at figuring out handwriting than resistive screens
  • seeing new stylus development to fix this

post-PC?

• SD: for some older people who never got used to PCs, tablets are a way in
• CR: not there yet, but using tablet more and more for non-PC things
  • still using laptop for email (prefer keyboard)
• MP: more comfortable taking a tablet into the kitchen
  • what kinds of things make things move from one device to another?
  • tends to be security and reliability concerns that shift people up in size & established reputation

keyboard + tablet form factor?

• CR: on-screen keyboards not good enough
• BSR: problem is carrying keyboard around
  • fold it up — back to a laptop!
• HAJ: ASUS Tranformer is a great idea
• SD: iMac is already a giant tablet with a wireless keyboard…
  • voice is coming soon…
• MP: keyboard starts becoming important when people spend more time creating rather than consuming
  • tends to be a 90/10 split at the moment…

tablets tend to get shared a lot more than phones…

• board games — multiple users at once
• BSR: looking at things then passing it over and sharing it
• SD: split screen iPad app — Pinterest for her, reddit for him!
• CR: see a lot of Nooks shared in the family
  • reading can be a personal experience
  • sharing a reading tablet could be odd
  • but in a family it’s a common thing
• SD: would be good to have a locked down mode
  • no in-app purchases,
• HAJ: screen lock — avoiding kids pressing home button to exit the app
• SD: Famigo Sandbox: android app that sets permitted app list & behaviour

what tablet would you be using in 3 years?

• CR: focus on content rather than the device
  • would love to see content become transparent — shouldn’t matter if it’s a book or a magazine or an app
• BSR: would like a piece of paper!
  • get away from the “finger on glass”
  • need 3D & haptics for a more tactile experience
• HAJ: windows 8 tablet — dragging & dropping content to and from PC
  • Nokia tablet?
• SD: don’t want skeuomorphs of what went before
  • no d-pads on the screen, or page turning

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Upcoming Events

• next Mobile Monday London: Demo Night! — 2nd April
• MEX 2012 — 9th & 10th May
• Over The Air — 1st & 2nd June at Bletchley Park

BarCampLondon7: Alternative Input - Striking a Chord

Stephen Nicholas

3rd year project

• Stephen works with Dale Lane @ IBM on microbroker & GUI testing
• multitap & mini-qwerty not really suited for mobile input…
  • qwerty not really suited for desktop input either :-)
  • multitap gets up to 20 WPM
• braille keyboard has one key for each dot
• can get faster than qwerty keyboard input
  • qwerty 80 wpm
  • stenographers much faster: 200-300 WPM
• can possibly reduce RSI since not moving your arm quite so much
• drawbacks:
  • have to use non-obvious input schemes (no hunt and peck)
• microwriter, introduced in 1978
  • got speeds up to 40 WPM after 7 months practice
  • had great mnemonic method for encoding
  • recently been redeveloped as the CyKey
• twiddler
  • has 3 x 4 keys, might work well on mobile keyboard
• ChordTap for phones:
  • has three additional buttons on back of phone to distinguish between multitap letters