MomoLondon: Demo Night 2014

Amazingly enough this demo night finished on time and even a little bit early. Thanks to Julia Shalet for keeping things running smoothly on the night and Jo Rabin too for the varied selection of demos — lots of great ideas.

Pictures and more commentary on the Mobile Monday Blog.

5 Tiles

Android keyboard app

Previous demo night success

• Christian Lindholm now an advisor & investor
• available on Android Wear (Samsung Gear)
• soon available on iOS

Grabyo

Benjamin Bourdin, http://grabyo.com

• realtime video sharing
• get any IP feed, apply title, edit
• save & share using twitter, facebook, ooyala, brightcove etc
• monetize through in-stream ads
• initial customers are broadcasters
• done deals with ITV & Sky Sports
• also did wimbledon & big brother
• also have a consumer platform: if a broadcaster wants to get people involved in sharing content

Good Food Talks

Matt Wadsworth, http://goodfoodtalks.com

• web app to let visually impaired people read restaurant menus
• a very few menus offer braille but only 1% of visually impaired people can read braille
• surveyed 5000 people — main complaint was difficult navigation
• web app has simple navigation
  • search/near me > restaurant name > menu
• free for users
• various ways of getting data in
  • restaurants pay for input
  • API ingest, full service, etc
• commercial for just over a year
• 400 venues
• biggest so far is Carluccio’s, then Pret

Swytch

Chris Michael, CEO, http://www.swytch.com/

• additional mobile numbers on your phone
• just closing alpha tester list
• free credits to alpha testers
• only service that allows you to have multiple UK mobile numbers on your phone
• aiming for worldwide too

QuizTix

Ian Masters & Albert Marshall, http://quiztix.co/

• mobile quiz games
• opt-in adverts for rewards
• all four versions are available on iOS, Google & Amazon
  • movies, pop, world football, video games
• targeting around existing passions
• also want to target venues with seats

Mylo

Martin Sandstrom & Mark Lee, http://mylo-app.com/

• split your bill when you live in a house share
• direct connection to various providers
  • energy, TV, phone, etc
• push notifications to other housemates
• settle bill with paypal (peer to peer is free)
• no business model at moment
  • aiming for future paid features
• aiming to attract lots of users first…
• app available for iOS and Android

Viewmaker

Douglas Robb, http://www.scramboo.com/

• location-enabled augmented reality
• Android & iOS apps, CMS for template-based content
• content discovery & engagement
• can control timing of content as well
• also support image-recognition-based AR
• first commercial partner is Jockey Club
• prototype app for Sandown Race Course
• involving novice race-goers in the racing
• planning to roll out to other Jockey Club venues

Pronto

James Roy Poulter, https://www.prontoapp.it/

• food to wherever you are
• don’t need an address
• only get a choice of four options (different each day)
• authenticate through nexmo API by voice call
• credit card payments only
• launched 100 days ago in Trento, Italy
• initially iOS only, then Android, + Windows coming next week
• launching next week in London (now available in the City)
• won an accelerator in Italy
• worked with restaurants in Italy, but difficult for food in 10 minutes
• aiming to get own centralized kitchen as margins are incredible
• also get drivers — performance based pay
• but made easier with centralized kitchen with limited delivery range

Adsy

Frederick Tubiermont, http://www.adsy.me/

• create mobile web apps on mobile for mobile
• can now create apps on desktop too
• web apps are square shaped
• magic touch swipe to choose link destination
  • includes email, telephone
• can embed videos, twitter feeds, etc
• can embed adsy apps in web pages or just view on mobile
• use case:
  • kids & teens making a web app about a concert during a concert
  • then sharing the evolving content
• meant to create snackable content
• will announce a product based on the platform in 2-3 weeks

IFS

Matthew Bridge, http://www.ifsworld.com/en/

• business critical messages to smart watches
• useful feature: view on device — opens up more detail on the phone through quick selection on watch
• driven from enterprise resource planning
• staff can subscribe to specific notifications

OpenTRV

Mark Hill and Damon Hart-Davis, http://opentrv.org.uk/

• 60% of your energy and 20% of UK emissions flow through TRVs
• 50% of that energy is wasted
• one thermostat usually controls whole house
• target price £10 per radiator: save £300 in the first year
• production samples coming mid-November
• hotels losing £50 per room per year on heating bills

MomoLondon: Cloud Computing & Mobile

A new venue tonight — up on the 9th floor of Google’s Central St Giles office. They even provided good food for the hungry mobile mondayers…

The evening’s focus was on Cloud Computing and Mobile, and the questions seemed to focus mainly on the cloud with not much discussion about how it related to mobile. The chair, Camille, kept the discussion moving along briskly, but we didn’t really get into any depth on any of the subjects. Maybe the audience could smell the food!

The panel

• Chair: Camille Mendler @cmendler
  • Principal Analyst at Informa
• Rob Easton @Cloud_Easton
  • Head of Google Cloud Platform UK & Ireland
  • Eurovision app used App Engine for back-end
• Dr Janko Mrsic-Flogel
  • CEO of Private Planet — personal cloud
  • 7 out of 10 carriers are providing a personal cloud solution
• Caroline Van Den Bergh @GoldenGekko
  • Golden Gekko mobile agency
  • 85% of apps we build are based on Google App Engine
• Jonathan Raper @MadProf
  • CEO at Placr/transportapi & Visiting Professor at City University
  • purchasers of cloud services
  • mostly built on memset

outages & availability

• JR: best service providers are those that communicate well when things go wrong
  • one provider went down and didn’t tell us anything for an hour

looking forward

• RE: google datacentres include a new one in Taiwan at 15 hectares
  • green computing
  • Google can provide very low latency
  • enables reaching out to new business areas such as the film industry
• JR: still talking quite aggregated performance measures
  • can’t ask for X many transactions for Y pounds
  • not that detailed
  • next step may be platform products
• CVDB: mobile enterprise software saving two days a week
  • managing remote teams
• JR: sometimes blame is shifted between telcos & cloud
  • would like to have better tracing
• JMF: Private Planet have a totally green datacentre in Telecity in Holland for T-Mobile

internet of things

• JR: the problem is trading information
  • automatically discovering different feeds & blending them
  • spend 3 weeks integrating code and 3 months arguing over terms & conditions
• CVDB: best successes have been smaller ones
• CM: find my yak in nepal
  • the yak’s don’t talk back — so there’s no privacy issues!
• RE: getting electricity usage feeds every 10 minutes
• CVDB: there has been scaremongering around Google capturing data
• JR: all our data is royalty-free downstream
  • makes it much easier to deal with
• CM: Copenhagen have bike devices to share traffic information
  • provide individual exercise info
  • but also shared with municipality
• JR: Waze has lots of complicated terms & conditions
  • data is available but locked up

the next generation

• CM: has been proved conclusively that 3D gaming improves your cognitive ability
• JR: …minecraft
• JR: it’s still a bit like early 2000 — mobile operator walled gardens
  • want to take down the barriers and bring the data silos together
• CVDB: working with Saga
  • older people have more time, want to delve deeper
  • tablets more popular than mobile phones

data scientists

• CM: shouldn’t we moving towards everyone manipulating their own data
• JR: digital literacy is very shallow, especially in highest decision-making tiers

security issue — data protection

• safe harbour in tatters
• can’t use the cloud at all if we have any secure data
• JMF: Private Planet always has data centre in the specific country
  • but are governments the biggest problem? what about the corporates?
• JR: if you need to do it, in-country encrypted solutions are available
• RE: sure, there are some workloads that Google can’t take on
  • e.g. we won’t let you audit our data centre
  • so can’t work under FCA regulations
  • over time, some of these regulations are going to change
• JR: all have to do as much as we can to help the government make the right decisions
• JR: sometimes the safest place to do something is in the cloud — e.g. running Windows
  • we don’t allow it on any of our machines
  • but it’s great in the cloud!

what if cloud provider company goes bankrupt?

• JR: escrow
• JMF: most agreements done via a channel partner — so that partner will continue the service
  • single party relationship is much more complicated
• RE: cloud business could be bigger than ads for Google
  • SLA penalties are often a percentage of what you pay
  • but if you pay less and less, the SLA means less and less…

is it becoming like supermarket wars?

• RE: Google reduced prices — and if you use an instance more than 25% per month then get a discount
  • terabyte of storage is $26/month
• CM: just like a loyalty card…
  • who will be Lidl and who will be Waitrose?

will we still be waiting in several years?

• JR: overestimate change in the short term and underestimate in the long term — change is stepped
  • sometimes have to wait for the step change in technology or regulation
• CVDB: business are going to grow up quickly
  • first digital generation CEOs will be around in the next few years

third party dependencies

• JR: Apple reviews can be capricious
  • if Apple fall out of love with Dropbox, then that could cause a problem for lots of apps
• JMF: was a huge debate on mobile medical health a while ago
  • then suddenly there was an app that just works
  • and the issues can just disappear
  • gadget-led terms and conditions…?

speed & access?

• RE: check out server density review
  • blog by someone who reviewed lots of providers and switched to Google
• CVDB: Golden Gekko mandate that all backends must be on Google App Engine
  • mainly so that clients can scale

new innovations in infrastructure?

• RE: Google build our own servers
  • apparently they would be the 3rd biggest manufacturers in the world
  • they value new innovation

where is the next growth to make it easier?

• RE: focused on the developer
  • acquired StackDriver to manage cloud capabilities
• JMF: If This Then That
  • making cloud development open to the consumer
  • certain mobile operators are understanding this and joining up devices in the home
• CVDB: finding that parse.com doesn’t suit
  • one size doesn’t quite fit all
  • prefer google’s flexibility

inviting consumers to get more involved

• CVDB: user testing
  • avoiding ivory tower
  • developed O2 Priority Moments
  • built packaged solutions based on it
  • incentivized behaviour also used in enterprise apps
• JR: designed a first location bank
  • your own location storage — that you can choose to share
  • (Ed. see also fireeagle)
  • next generation have a different approach to privacy
• RE: snapchat is a massive google customer
• audience: teenagers using technology completely differently
  • using snapchat to have a whole conversation
• RE: snapchat consumes more IT than any banking industry
  • JDI has 10 petabytes on Google cloud
  • consumers of IT will be well away from the enterprise
  • can have failure at a much cheaper cost — can learn more

what financial services are possible in the cloud?

• RE: restricted by FCA regulations, but other options possible
  • e.g. datasift to search across twitter
  • big challenge to attract IT talent in financial services as there are so many restrictions

skills

• JR: right now it’s hard to hire — ruby on rails developers are hard to find
  • constraint on development right now
• CVDB: couldn’t agree more — mobile skills are in short supply

tools for analytics & loyalty/crm

• looking at how data can be analysed
• wanting to drive revenue per user
• wanting to get the right tools in place to complete the feedback loop
• CVDB: iris solutions company
  • built the backend themselves
  • ?? http://www.iris.co.uk/
• JR: “build it in the cloud, but just don’t tell IT”
• RE: tableau, BIME, etc. working on top of Google Big Query
  • now a lot cheaper

After the panel discussion

As often happens with Mobile Monday, the discussion after the panel was richer than the panel itself. Some discussion points that came up when I was talking to people afterwards included:

• How do you balance keeping data on the device and in the cloud, to deal with intermittent network availability?
• Will the banks get clobbered by more agile personal finance companies that don’t have to worry about so many regulations?
• Why has it taken Google since 2008 to move from basic App Engine web apps to a full cloud platform?
• How will Google make more money from Cloud Computing than from Ads? There’s a big market, but the price is dropping…
• …and on a completely different note, several people were interested in setting up Code Clubs in their local primary schools, but were stretched for time — perhaps they could work together and contribute part-time?

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.

iOSDev UK: Mobile Apps: Bringing Together Real and Online Worlds

Graeme Gibson, AppSherpas

• iOS device as controller
  • an interface to home automation using DMX
• existing products:
  • POSCard: point of sale mobile commerce at low cost
  • Print&Post: Royal Mail from an iPhone
• use eye movements to control a device
• mobile image discovery
  • scan an image instead of a QR code
  • extracts “DNA” of image
  • matches against database of monochrome images
  • 3-5s response on 3G (< 1s on Wi-Fi)
  • 100% accuracy for flat objects with a reasonable amount of light, that are large enough in the phot
  • 70-80% accuracy with less light and > 15% perspective
  • unlike QR codes, works for distant media (e.g. poster on the other side of the road)
  • also works for a trailer on the TV
• indoor wifi location is already available with Cisco kit
  • no extra client kit
  • extra stuff needed in the AP

Droidcon London 2010 - Day Two

Whew! When I sat down and looked at the programme for the second day of Droidcon, I wasn’t sure I’d make it until the end — after I’d finished planning out my time, I saw I’d set myself up over 10 sessions I just couldn’t miss.

I’ve now had a day or so to recover so now I’m posting my notes. I hope they’re useful. Please @ me on twitter or leave a comment here if there’s something you’d like to add or correct.

Thanks once again to the organisers of this great event — Dominic Travers, and Kevin McDonagh and Carl-Gustaf Harroch of Novoda. You did a great job and I’m really impressed.

Android: User views

Ilicco Elia @ilicco — Reuters Mobile

Ilicco gave the first keynote speech, with some Reuters promotional video to wake us all up.

• Getting journalists to use mobile as well as working out how consumers use it
• Ilicco spends his time working out how people will use devices before they do
• The App Store was not about the apps…
  • it’s about people
  • it’s about the edge that people believe they will get from the app
• Great apps: * Google Talk — simply excellent * The browser: double clicking a column reflows the text as well as zooming in * Google Music — looking forward to what Google will do here * Vignette Photo app — just so many more styles that the equivalent iPhone apps * New keyboards — swype & swiftkey (great to be able to install device-wide improvements)
• In-app purchasing is seriously lacking
• “I want to buy an iPhone because it’s beautiful”
  • but… “I don’t want a phone that needs a new Mac to activate” !!
  • so… “I just want a normal phone” (HTC Desire)
  • Android can be just a phone — can have multiple personas
  • Great advantage, but also a flaw (not easily pigeonholed)

Growing the value of the application network

Christophe François — Vice President, Mobile Multimedia Products & Services, Orange

Christophe’s follow-up keynote just didn’t have the pizazz of Illico’s — though it was great to see Orange, Vodafone and Sony Ericsson committing so many people and so much time to Android.

• Orange San Francisco Android phone selling for just £99 on PAYG
• Customer survey over 5500 people in four countries (plus 300m customer interactions over 2 years):
  • relevant to their lives
  • security: privacy protected
  • straightforward pricing with no surprises
  • simple services to buidl their own experience
  • their content, when and where they want it
  • easy way to discover and pay for content
• Orange promoting a few focussed apps:
  • Orange TV with premium events
  • Connectivity & customer care
  • News, radio, Orange Map
• Have launched own distribution channel
  • Orange App Store
  • Don’t have to register — purchases go directly on to bill
  • Live in France, UK; out soon in Romania, Poland, Slovakia
• Orange has a strong presence in Africa
  • will be deploying Orange App Store and Widget platform
• Orange Partner Connect
  • register, submit, test & validate apps
  • central app inventory
  • reporting, sales administration & settlement services
  • private beta in Nov 2010 for Android developers

Create Killer Location apps

Alex Housley @ahousley — Rummble

Droidcon London 2010 - Create Killer Location Apps

View more presentations from ahousley.

• Looking about the same as internet was in 1995, but going faster
• 1.97 Billion on internet now (28.8% of world population)
• Location is not mature — it’s still early days but will accelerate quickly
• Location is not a feature: it’s one element of context
• Friend finders have been done to death
• Zinga have good huge business on top of facebook platform
  • similarly, there will be opportunities working with existing big players in location
• If adding game mechanics into a utility app, make sure you reward important behaviour
• “Where there’s a number there’s a game…”
• Android SDK:
  • android.location
  • can get last known location
  • set a LocationListener (can optionally control location providers)
    • can trigger per time or per distance (better for distance)
  • there’s also proximity alerts
• Alternatives:
  • Skyhook — commercial SDK, but open to revenue share
    • quite smart balanced A-GPS
    • have SpotRank
  • W3C Geolocation API via the browser
    • option: enableHighAccuracy: true
• Testing:
  • Create a mock location provider with a text file containing locations
  • Check out /data/app/misc/location/agps/nmea via DDMS-View
• Local data available:
  • crowd source
  • commercial license
  • open source
  • scrape it…
  • APIS
  • Future: open read/write service
• Rummble use:
  • Geonames — to create boundaries for “Local Heroes”
  • GeoPlanet
  • OpenStreetMap
  • Flickr
  • Google Places — some commercial Ts&Cs
  • Facebook Places — not yet a geo API
    • ask for an additional permission
  • SimpleGeo — cloud infrastructure for location data
    • SpotRank — can see heatmaps of crowd density
• Geocoder class in Android has minimal limits
  • need permission.INTERNET
• Use OpenStreetMap for mapping — better than tiles
• Notifications:
  • Android NotificationManager available since Froyo
  • Xtify
    • commercial, 3rd party API
    • have geo-fencing
    • compatible with 1.x upwards
• Measurement
  • assign key local metrics and goals
  • Flurry, Distimo, Google Analytics
• Rummble is based on subjective logic + other trust metrics
• Rummble API
  • people, places, reviews, check-ins
  • tremors — tweets in locations
  • offers
  • available at http://dev.rummble.com

Excellence in the Android User Experience

Roman Nurik @romannurik — Android Developer Advocate, Google

Roman extended his Android Design Tips (slides below) with some additional info on giving great first impressions, and some new prototyping and asset generation tools that have become available.

Android UI Design Tips

View more presentations from Android Developers.

First impressions

• User experience starts somewhere in the Android Market or even in a blog
• UX extends to reviews in market, recommendations, forums, support…
• set great expectations:
  • icon, title (unique & appropriate), description (honest & useful)
  • description:
    • give the user enough info to quickly glance over it
    • don’t need to include all features
    • leave room for screenshots!
• other first impressions:
  • provide screenshots, youtube video
• get the user up and running as soon as possible
  • don’t require a lengthy registration process
  • sync user data and context immediately
• home activity should be simple & straightforward
  • needs user testing on real users
  • highly aesthetic & consistent first impression of brand
• if the UI is more complex, consider a tutorial screen
  • e.g. WinAmp first screen
  • on first open, hide main activity with an overlay PNG
• tutorial screen also useful for introducing widgets & live wallpapers
• if you do have an intro screen, make sure it’s also available in app settings so user can go back

Design tips

• design process:
  • lay out information hierarchy & data model
  • primary UI navigation pattern
  • prototype UI (see later for tools)
• good nav methods:
  • dashboard + action bar
    • big icons + recently updated
  • 3-4 top tabs
  • horizontally sliding top tabs or homogenous content
    • but not for different content — user must know what they’ll get when they swipe
• bad nav:
  • 5+ bottom tabs
  • don’t use options menu for navigation
  • on-screen back button (all Android devices have a hardware back button)
  • tabs that alter the back stack
• prototyping tools
  • paper + pen
  • pencil for firefox — have some Android stencils available
  • adobe fireworks
• design & dev tips
  • full slides available at http://j.mp/androiddesigntips
  • don’t have modal dialogs (make sure back button works)
  • use dp (or sp for fonts), not px for units
  • don’t port UI from other platforms
  • support D-pad & trackball nav (focusable = true)
  • manage activity stack by using right intent flags
  • handle orientation changes
  • localize
• resources can be set up on a resolution specific mechanism
  • drawable, drawable-hdpi, drawable-mdpi, layout-port, layout-land etc
  • Kevin McDonagh had a good session yesterday on creating a great styles file
• make sure your UI elements are selectable
  • use the selector XML properly — with different drawables for different states
  • see frameworks/base projects in Android git for core system assets examples
• icon guidelines: http://j.mp/androidiconguidelines
  • Roman may be working on an update…

Design tools

• New tools: Android UI Utilities
  • http://j.mp/androiduiutils
  • prototyping stencils for Firefox Pencil
  • Android Asset Studio http://j.mp/androidassetstudio
    • generate icons with appropriate effects
  • Photoshop icon templates
• Blog post: http://j.mp/improvingappquality
  • stability, performance, UI

The story of ribot from penny arcade to retail giant

Antony Ribot @ribot

Antony gave a highly personal account of how he and his brother Jerome founded and grew Ribot to the point where they are designing and building Tesco’s grocery apps.

• started Ribot with £10k savings and two people
• now 10 people
• reading: “how to start and run sandwich and coffee shops”

Lessons learned from Future Platforms over the years

Tom Hume @twhume, Future Platforms

• growing pains
  • gone from 2 to 20
  • 5-6 just about at limit of collaboration without confusion
  • 7-8 is inflection point
  • 12-15 can’t organise a night that everyone can make
  • then need someone to run the process for you
  • 50-60 walk into work and see people you don’t recognise..
• you will have problems with staff
  • FP have introduced a much more rigorous hiring process in the last 18 months
  • interviews now includes brainstorming, estimating and other less usual tasks
  • people leave:
    • lack of career path
    • want to do their own things
• service work
  • resented account management, but realise now that you need it
    • need someone to handle the relationship issues between companies
  • your real process is what happens when the shit hits the fan
  • it’s hard to find a service company that doesn’t have aspirations to have its own products
    • it doesn’t work to leave things until the end of the project
    • instead have 1 day in 10 for each person for experiments
    • can get R&D tax credits for this time!
• get a peer group, advisory board (ex-customers)
• use lightweight metrics
  • use half day estimates
  • work out totals at the end of each month and compare to originals
• “Everybody wants to be Steve Jobs: don’t start by being an arrogant prick!”

Android and CouchDB

Aaron Miller, Developer, CouchOne

• started porting CouchDB to Android before he started working at CouchOne
• CouchDB is a non-relational database (NoSQL) that stores JSON documents
• instead of queries, create “views” that allow fast lookup by keys
• all comms over HTTP
• db is highly durable
  • append-only file format
  • survives battery drops out, process killed etc
• can easily transition an app that uses remote CouchDB
• really good at replication: multi-master replication
  • can write to any server
  • can introduce conflicts, but can deal with that
  • really powerful on a phone
    • can sync with a server or with another phone
    • can have multiple DBs on net syncd to a single DB on phone
  • can have continuous integration (via long-running HTTP response)
• on Android, ported the Erlang VM and then CouchDB on top
  • since all Android apps run in separate instances of Dalvik VM, not that expensive to run another VM
  • works with Android service model to shut it down when not needed
• can install from Android Market right now — but still in beta
  • installs quite a few bits on the phone…
  • takes a while to download
• can forward the CouchDB port from the device to your computer and use existing CouchDB tools
  • adb forward tcp:5985 tcp:5985
• can store application and logic in CouchDB as well (just another document!)
  • e.g. WikiLeaks available as a CouchDB instance…
• once you have a CouchDB app on your phone, you can access it even when you’ve got no internet access
• can show new data instantly as it appears
• CouchDB as an Android service — can bind to it from native apps
• DroidCouch is a Java interface library to CouchDB
• in production:
  • there’s not a good way of having your app depending on another app
  • at the moment Android CouchDB is pretty big
  • in the future, will have a slimmer version
• battery life impact of continuous replication?
  • if just watching, then not much (just holding open an empty connection)
  • will stop and only try and look when your device is awake
  • probably want to use scheduled replication in the background, but turn on continuous replication when app in foreground
• if don’t want to replicate whole server-side, can use a filter on replication
• CouchDB has a user model with login
  • validation methods can check user and associated data

Monetize your apps in emerging markets

Chua Zi Yong, SEO MoVend; runs Android developer group in Singapore

• movend provide: * in-app commerce in 10 minutes * DRM services, product management services
• what devices are popular in emerging markets:
  • S40 & S60 (esp in Philippines) — all top 10 devices
  • BlackBerry, though not corporate — students, housewives
    • 1:50 BlackBerry to iPhone in Indonesia
  • lots of MTK Java/Linux devices (mediatek) — knock-off devices
    • generally low-end devices below $150
  • iPhone is not even 1% in China today
• Android has really picked up in Asia Pacific over last 6 months
• Loads of Android devices coming through
  • Open source and free
  • Reduced cost of the handset by having services that charge per month
• support from low cost hardware manufacturers like MTK
  • seeing first ones in Indonesia
• population more familiar with connecting to internet on Nokia phone than on a computer
  • first and only connectivity to internet
  • only gaming console, social network tool, …
• “they probably know your app, but not that they are online”
• payment if different in china, indonesia & thailand:
  • have physical kiosks — people pay in cash for someone to download the app for them
• more than 50% of mobile app payments in Asia Pacific already
• highly fragmented markets & user behaviour
  • sizeable markets: China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia
• highly regulated market place
  • launching an app on China Mobile takes 6-8 months
  • they want to control everything…
  • and money takes similar time to come through…
  • and low cut of profits — at most 50%
• localized payment methods — at least 20 different forms of credit card in China
  • PayPal doesn’t work that well in many of these markets
• but a lot of money available if you get through…
  • hundreds of millions of users
• localize
  • languages…
  • avoid taboo images (e.g. pointed finger is not friendly in Malaysian context)
• casual games don’t work in China
  • more familiar with MMORG with in-game items

Android has a “dude” problem

Belinda Parmar @belindaparmar, Lady Geek TV

• Lady Geek TV: marketing company that helps companies talk to women
• in survey only 5% of women said Android for their next phone, 57% said an iPhone
• BUT… more women than men bought smartphone in the last 6 months
• and more female gamers 25-35 than men
• Forrester did some market segmentation on women gadget owners
  • 37% self sufficient, tech savvy
  • 35% neutral, little engagement, low willingness
  • 28% opportunity
• iPhone is marketed as what it does for your life
• women feel overwhelmed and confused by choice of Android devices
• women are twice as likely to have never downloaded a single app
  • don’t see most of the apps as relevant to their lives
  • want apps to solve a problem, to answer a question
• women are interested in apps but want to be involved on their terms
• Recommendations:
  • solve a problem
  • entertain, don’t educate
  • if you have an app and want it featured in the next season of the App Show, get in touch at http://facebook.com/ladygeektv

Android behind the scenes

Karl-Johan Dahlström and Erik Hellman

The afternoon keynote session: Sony Ericsson was very open about their process in designing, building and improving their Android phones. They’ve got some lovely devices (I bought an X10 Mini Pro for my wife) but are currently behind in Android software — their devices run 1.6 and a 2.1 update has only just been announced. However, they seem really committed to the platform going forwards (and they did make the best of a bad job on J2ME…)

• Sony Ericsson wanting to be the Android benchmark going forward
• have Google base, adding Sony features, then Sony Ericsson design
• have teams going out to cities and imbuing culture to identify macro trends
• current focus: Human Curvature, Precision by Tension
  • fits to your body, but precise interaction
• X10 Mini inspired by the Cloud Gate in Chicago, a “pure object”:

• hardware and software need to harmonise

• Now introducing “(Erik) Hellman, version 2.0 of Hellboy” :-)

• all products using same source code
• contributing all changes back to platform
  • sony ericsson one of the main contributors to Android Open Source project
• decouple apps — signature apps built on top of standard Android Platform
• No point setting up an Android forum solely for Sony Ericsson
  • we should be where you are already, answering questions and providing support
• promotions:
  • have app for the week on local facebook groups
  • Susanna working for marketing in UK — going out to stores, telling people which apps to demo
• launching Ericsson Application Awards 2011
  • theme: connected things
  • prizes: € 60K + phones at various stages of competition
  • two categories: students or companies with less than 100 employees
  • launch —> submissions —> beta-test —> prize ceremony
  • http://ericssonapplicationawards.com

Turn good ideas in to great apps

Reto Meier @retomeier, Developer Advocate for Android, Google

See Beginner’s guide to Android for more details on deadly sins & glorious virtues

Five deadly sins

• sloth
  • responsiveness is crucial
  • avoid modal dialogues & activities
  • always update the user on progress — and hourglass is not enough
  • render the main view and fill in data as it arrives
  • you’re not going to have the user’s full attention
  • as soon as they look away, they’re going to do something else
  • never lock people out of the app while you’re processing
  • have about 5 seconds for UI to respond until the OS pops up a warning
  • that’s a back stop to protect the user from crashing apps
  • UI should respond in 100-200ms
  • use AsyncTask
• gluttony
  • if you’re app uses too many resources, it will get killed when it goes into the background
  • don’t overuse WakeLocks
  • think about how to do battery-draining stuff as infrequently as possible
  • let users manage updates
  • share data
  • use Receivers and Alarms, rather than Services and Threads
  • instead of WakeLocks, add flags to WindowManager (FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON)
• hostility
  • respect user expectations for navigation
  • workflow should be self-explanatory
  • don’t hijack the native experience — other people use the device in different ways than you
  • give users options to do things, especially around network connections & location
• arrogance
  • undocumented APIs may not be supported in future releases
  • save state when app is paused so can restore nicely
  • will put off users if you restrict rotation behaviour
• descrimination
  • APK is designed to work with devices from SE X10 Mini to Galaxy Tab to Google TV
  • include multiple graphic resources
  • ensuring hardware happiness:
    • use uses-features in manifest (and make not required if happy for alternatives)
    • then check for API existence in code to modify UX

Five glorious virtues

• beauty
  • people perceive a beautiful app as more professional
  • e.g. tweetdeck gets installed on devices with a pre-installed twitter app
  • optimize assets
• generosity
  • use intents to start other apps
  • e.g. Where and OpenTable
  • create widgets, live folder, live wallpapers to increase user engagement
• utility
• measure your success
  • user feedback
    • can’t follow instructions
    • can provide unhelpful feedback
    • users LIE :-)
    • instead use analytics (e.g. Google Analytics for Mobile Apps, Flurry)
• be epic
  • change the paradigm

Quick tips

• let the runtime kill your service
  • service should return START_NOT_STICKY
  • if started several times then think about making it sticky
• kill your own service
  • use alarms & intent receivers for periodic tasks
  • use inexact repeating alarms
• cloud to device messaging
  • works best for targeted updates
  • com.android.C2DM package is open source sending mechanism for server

Android beyond the phone; Tablets, eReaders, and more

Al Sutton, Company Director of Funky Android

• Dell Streak uses mDPI resources but has much bigger screen
• android.os.Build gives you device-specific data
• use library projects to keep common core together
• even Facebook and Twitter get it wrong (and have done on Dell Streak)…
• there are Android dual screen displays
  • e-Ink displays behave completely differently
  • to get it to work requires a custom class…
• custom device manufacturers are really keen to have your apps on their devices
  • they’ll expect a 20-50% markdown, but you won’t have to pay app store fees
• ViewSonic ViewPad 7 available in the UK for £399
  • 800x400px display
  • offering £100 rebate for any old laptop or netbook
  • runs Android 2.2 and has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS & 3G
  • it sometimes says it’s a phone

Evolving past the fingertip

Nick Hunn, Director, WiFore Consulting (http://www.nickhunn.com)

• Lots of proprietary devices coming out that are essentially connected tablets (or could be)
  • Energy monitors (govt has mandated that we will all get two)
  • Home health hubs
  • Android can do their jobs very easily
  • But it’s much harder on embedded operating systems
• putting sensors into everyday objects
  • blood glucose monitor in toothbrush
  • thermometer in TV remote control
• Bluetooth low energy coming out — new name for WiBree * connectionless, mostly OFF * good at small, discrete data transfers * will appear in phones in middle of 2011 * coin cell will die of old age before bluetooth before it runs out! * costs about $1 in bulk, size of a fridge magnet * chips are 5mm square * not really Bluetooth, just been designed so it’s compatible
• can also do broadcasting
  • can be location — great for indoor location
  • range is about 100m outdoors, 50m indoors (can cut down if you want)
• people keep updating online tracking services (e.g. weight, running, electricity usage) for 4-6 weeks then give up
  • too much hassle
• instead, get devices (scales, pedometers, etc) to update online services via the phone
  • changing the source of ARPU for network operators (lots of small packets of automated data)
  • information is sent automatically, without user touching phone
• often much more compelling ways of showing data than just basic units and graphs
  • some scales are just showing difference since last measurement!
• phones don’t include RFID as it’s not a standard frequency around the world
  • one country’s frequency is actually illegal in other countries
  • NFC is different and starting to appear in phones
  • NFC requires more power than Bluetooth Low Energy
  • starting to see different standards working together instead of fighting

The Snapdragon Mobile Development Platform

Leon Farasati, Senior Product Manager, Qualcomm - leon@qualcomm.com

http://developer.qualcomm.com

• Qualcomm is taking on a new role of being the link in the ecosystem
  • ensuring that there are great apps for the ecosystem
  • have a huge installed base, want to make sure that apps work well
• Snapdragon is a system on a chip
  • ARM-based CPU, GPU, rich multimedia, GPS, 3G, Camera, power management
• offering pre-load opportunities…
• Snapdragon MDP (mobile development platform):
  • commercial-like device (can actually use it in the field)
  • will be available through bsquare
  • full load of sensors including:
    • gyro and compass
    • proximity, temperature, pressure
• early access to next generation hardware

Future of Android Panel

Ewan MacLeod with panel:

• Ben Medlock — TouchType (makers of SwiftKey)
• Volker Hirsch — ScoreLoop
  • mobile social infrastructure tools
  • virtual economy tools, good, gifting, etc
• Aaron Johnson — Principal Product Manager for Games & Applications at Vodafone
• Michael Smith — Head of Platforms for INQ Mobile

• Leon Farasati — Senior Product Manager, Qualcomm

• Anssi Vanjoki likened Android to “peeing in your pants”…

  • MS: Nokia not core of mobile software any more
    • Android opens up ecosystem of competition
    • Allows delivery of applications at web speed
    • Just that speed alone is enough…
  • AJ: there will be a point when people start asking for money for Android (”What!? I’m not sure I understand his fear here. There are licenses in place…”)
  • VH: SMS & Smartphone outside of Western Europe etc, Nokia is still a big player
    • but no longer in mobile developed countries
  • BM: a platform that fosters partnership is better
    • Android has challenges with fragmentation
  • VH: iPhone developers were complaining about 3GS causing fragmentation
    • nothing compared to J2ME: multiply devices by operators by bugs…
  • LF: one challenge for Android is capturing lower end
    • but high end phones will trickle down
  • MS: fragmentation to Android is similar to building your own PC in late 80s
    • i.e. no impact

• We’re still on the dream phase for Android: consumers “only buy one Android device”… Will consumers retreat to “something familiar”?

  • VH: is HTC sense out there because Android needs it or because HTC does?
    • Android lacks the polish at the moment
  • AJ: didn’t like the UI on various Nokias I had, but I kept getting them…
    • there’s whole range of reasons why a customer chooses a device
  • BM: the breadth of Google’s web services provides a very strong disincentive to leave
  • MS: Google is encouraging OEMs & operators to fight amongst themselves to get great user experience
  • LF: want to allow the people who actually know the end users to drive that
    • this is the OEMs & operators (”is it really?”)
    • e.g. Japanese phones are tailored to Japanese market — we would probably hate their UI over here

• If I was your fairy godmother, what would you wish to change in Android?

  • BM: I’d love to see a decent automated testing framework on a range of devices
    • love to see something comprehensive
    • I think this should be Google
  • VH: a working billing infrastructure
  • AJ: developers making sure that their app manifests include clearly defined API access and permissions
    • so can manage lifecycle
  • MS: Google has history of encouraging competition and then eating them
    • would like Google to be a little more open about what they’re aiming at and what they’re not, to provide some reassurance
  • LF: want a better way of getting hardware acceleration support

• What should we know about? What’s really interesting?

  • BM: the tech community
    • there’s a great community of tech blogs ready to test new software
  • VH: entering Google email in device and seeing calendar & picasa just popping up
  • AJ: paid Android submission to developer.vodafone.com
    • everyone can sign up, with charge to bill included
  • MS: cloud to device messaging
    • should destroy BlackBerry BDM very quickly
  • LF: this room right here — Java brings a huge talent pool
    • peer to peer proximity based stuff
    • device contextual awareness: walking, driving, in your purse/pocket

Droidcon London 2010 - Day One

I’m heading home with my brain stuffed full of new knowledge from Droidcon London 2010. And this was just the first day, with unplanned, unprepared barcamp-style presentations!

Most of the presentations today were technical (tomorrow there’s a design and business thread as well) but they varied from doing continuous integration through discussing low-level TCP details to a Q&A session with some of Google’s Android team.

I’m seriously looking forward to the second day’s programme.

In the meantime, here’s my notes for the sessions I attended:

Android UI tricks from Sony Ericsson

• limit of 200ms to respond to user interactions — don’t do long running tasks in the UI thread
• so how do you deal with longer lasting processes? use the Handler & Service classes
• …and use Toasts to show quick popup status
• number of devices on 1.5 is below 10%
• all demos will be available on the Sony Ericsson developer blog

Handler

• don’t use inner class Runnables inside a Handler (save heap & garbage collector)
• within XML use onClick for buttons
• handler.sendEmptyMessageDelayed(message, delay);
• then have a message handler that deals with loop & sends next message
  • any UI activity should be in a Runnable called with runOnUiThread(runnable)
• don’t forget onDestroy

Service

• used for downloading
• pass a message from service to activity by implementing your own Application class
• Application defines callback interface and methods to fire & receive
• use IntentService for your service
  • deals with sequential handling automatically
• call to the application (need to cast getApplication())
• don’t use AIDL interfaces — unless you want to share service with other apps or between multiple processes in your app

Animation

• create an AnimationSet and add Animations within the getAnimation call
• second parameters for RotateAnimation are relative to view, not screen
• can also do animations in layout.xml
• Twitter app removed animations from their home screen…
  • the background was a live wallpaper — consumes a lot of battery
  • continuous animations can use up battery so be careful
  • shouldn’t be a problem with performance though
• see also Zooming demo and

BootListener

• when the phone is rebooted, the alarms are cleared
• don’t listen for boot completed unless you really have to
  • slows down startup if you have too many
• can have a broadcast receiver that is disabled
• in app xml set bootlistener disabled by default
• then in listener when intent comes through: {{{ context.getPackageManager().setComponentEnabledSetting( new(ComponentName(context, BootListener.class), PackageManger.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DISABLED, PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP) }}}

3D & OpenGL with Android views

• combine the strengths of Android views (text, layout, etc) with OpenGL (3D but not text)
• create a bitmap
• use MeasureSpec method
• draw the view onto the OpenGL texture bitmap
• GLUtils.texImage2D(...)
• if you do this today, suggest you use OpenGL ES 2.0

Location services

led by Nick Black, Founder & Head of Products at Cloudmade

cloudmade

• cloudmade will support Android later this year with a Maps SDK
  • based on OpenStreetMaps
  • worked out a way to squeeze vector data onto the device
  • map data comes as you need it and is stored locally on device
  • downloadable data includes searchable street names, etc
  • early access available end of this year, early next year
• cloudmade also has http://maps.cloudmade.com/editor to let you choose and configure your design —- your style will work on mobile too!

Impleo

• formed from ex-Motorola & Alcatel employees
• also adding tracking for insurance
  • includes accelerometer info so can tell how good a driver you are!

cloudmade location-based advertising

• created a network that finds highest value ads from other networks
• goes out to other ad networks, will also go out to more specialist networks
• trying to deal with the fill-rate problem…
• some android apps got backlash when adding advertising after the app release
  • put the ads in at the beginning!

map data

• most owned by Google, Nokia or Tomtom (Navteq)
• skobbler Android app - built on cloudmade’s navigation service
• cloudmade see navigation services not as an app but as a feature within apps
• Google don’t allow access to driving directions API on Android

google latitude and other services

• Is anyone using the latitude API?
• GPS in Android drains the battery quite heavily
• if things are further away then turn off GPS temporarily
• battery management isn’t good built-in
  • have to manage your own choice between coarse and fine location services
• Motorola went to use Skyhook instead of Google location API on Android
  • that way they would get data for their customers WiFi location
  • Google forced them to switch back to Google location
  • Skyhook now suing Google…

Always in sync client & local unit testing

Carl from Novoda (@charroch)[http://twitter.com/charroch]

RESTProvider

• available on github
  • depends on JacksonJSON etc
• makes a RESTful API available as a Content Provider
• couple of branches — caching_carl one stores locally in SQLite
• can start service with loads of requests — it will handle them in a queue
• can add params: putExtra("params", new List(...))
• Tip: adb shell setprop log.tag.Database VERBOSE
  • slows it down a lot
  • can add your own tags too
• ResultReceiver: a way of passing back status to app UI
• if connectivity is lost, it stops the queue
• need to watch out for the user setting to disable background downloading
• extend HttpQueuedService
  • override getMarshaller
  • create a LoggableJsonRequest with a marshall method to store data using a ContentProviderOperation
• library supports ETags too — saves a download as server data is just a HEAD response
• also created novoda.mixml (minimal XML) which works in same way as Jackson JSON
  • integrated into RestProvider to cope with XML content as well as JSON
• hopefully have time to build a more stable version over the new year
• end goal: to have declarations in application XML and service definition

Unit testing of android classes without emulator

• see also the RestProvider code on github
• android.jar only contains stubs, so can’t even instantiate
  • major problem for your subclasses even when you only want to test your additional methods
• PowerMock works somewhat
• need to find a different way of doing the tests
• Carl has copied the source of the Android classes into his test source and modified them to ensure no call to the system…
  • not too hard — just need to ensure that the constructor can work
• have to keep your code copy up to date with the base Android source
  • but it doesn’t matter that much as you won’t be testing Android code
• possible next step: Android will run on Intel — could run locally with unit tests
• currently have three projects:
  1. main classes
  2. local tests using this mechanism
  3. instrumentation tests
• changing to have a single folder with tests marked with annotations
  • want to have some tests marked as local if possible
  • android instrumentation tests should run all of tests (including local tests)
• maven could be overkill for Android development
  • build process is quite well-defined, not that many other libs
• SBT could be interesting (simple build tool, written in Scala)

App Analytics from Capptain

• combining in-app analytics with CRM
• collect/measure -> analysis -> engage
• send messages to users and get feedback
• SDK available in Android and iOS
• similar services: motally (acquired by Nokia) & xtify
• released beta two days ago
• have REST/JSON API for data
  • not publicly available right now, but available on a case-by-case basis

• also have a real-time API

• pricing:

  • free during beta period
  • haven’t decided pricing structure
  • probably freemium — pay for additional functions/users

new analytics capabilities

• how long users are spending in each screen of your app
• really nice user path — based on screens, not events
• real-time analytics — can monitor where people are in your app right now
• crash logs with device, firmware, etc details
• as per other analytics, store data locally and send later if not connected
• Android SDK automatically picks up activities

CRM

• announcements and polls
• target by carrier, country
• test before publish by sending to a single device
• schedule for particular times

Qualcomm Alljoyn

http://developer.qualcomm.com/dev/alljoyn-p2p

• exposes a shared communication bus based on DBus
• automatically uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as device allows
• Java and C interfaces
• Java interface lets you just send/receive/call POJOs
• Wi-Fi uses mDNS to find services by well known name (a URI)

Continuous Integration with Maven & Hudson

Hugo Josefson from Jayway (founded Maven Android plugin)

http://code.google.com/p/maven-android-plugin/

Slides and Hudson installation script available from http://code.google.com/p/maven-android-plugin/wiki/Presentations

Android and Maven

• there’s also a proguard plugin — can use to trim unused classes
• maven can handle inter-project dependencies
  • keep pure Java code in a Library (so can have local unit tests)
  • then can have app depend on library and on-device tests depend on app
  • see Samples project for MorseFlash example
• there’s also an Eclipse plugin that helps ADT & Eclipse understand that they’re dealing with Maven
• the process that takes the longest time is the DEXing

Android, Maven and Hudson

• don’t see any reason to run Hudson in Tomcat — it comes with its own webserver
  • though it should work fine within Tomcat too
• Android emulator plugin for Hudson: http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Android+Emulator+Plugin
• emulator settings: 2.2, mdpi, hvga, en_US, 64M
• can loop through different settings for emulator
• Hudson server needs some X libraries but will still run headless
• currently don’t find out which tests fail when Android tests fail — have to look at logs

Google Q & A

I only noted down one question from the second Google Bootcamp Q & A session:

• can you target apps at Android tablets?
  • can target large screen devices (currently Galaxy Tab + Dell Streak)
  • will also hit Evo 4G as that has hi resolution too, but smaller screen

MomoLondon: Go your own way? A fresh look at LBS

Tonight’s event was probably the busiest I’ve ever seen the CBI Centre — the room was packed and there were loads of new faces. In terms of the content, there were good bits and not so good old bits — the “walk past a shop and get a voucher” idea reared its ugly head yet again, despite being shown several times to be of no interest either to advertisers or to the consumers.

Vodafone showed off their 360 phone and some services, but shorn of the glitzy launch, it looked a little clunky. The panellists spent a lot of time talking about foursquare and Andrew Scott of Rummble got a few words in edgeways. I’m not quite convinced that either of them have a business model. Shazam looked impressive and gave a good demo — they do have a business model, even with Spotify around. The guy from Cloudmade knows his stuff about maps (the stuff they do is fantastic), but didn’t seem to have much of a clue about mobile.

Skyhook Wireless

Kate Imbach

• Now selling hybrid location: Wi-Fi, Cell ID & GPS
• 10-20m accuracy within 1s
• Drive to find networks
• London coverage follows people, but empty in parks
• 125m+ APs worldwide
• 70% population coverage in Europe
• Commercial apps require an ad revenue share or a licensing fee
• Free apps can use SDK for free

Some examples (all on the iPhone):

• Sit or squat — rate toilets…
• MyStarbucks
• Flixster — cinema reviews w/social features + find cinemas & restaurants close by
• Shazam tying music to locations
• Sportacular — voting by location, then see stats over country
• TuneWiki — see where people are listening to what music, and what’s popular around you

Advertising

• MyTraffic — driving alerts, works in Boston
  • has smarter location-based advertising — but who is selling them?
• Scoreloop — location-based leaderboards
• Amazon — what’s popular in Seattle this week? what are the business books selling in London?

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/developers/developersguide.pdf

New launch — Maps Booster for S60

• feeds Skyhook location into all location APIs on the phone

Vodafone 360 Demo

Patrick Weissert

• WiFinder acquired by Voda and providing location for 360 phone
• VF 360 widgets (see http://jil.org) have location API available
• Apparently Vodafone 360 is still beta…

Flook

Tristan Brotherton

• browse photos (“cards”) around you and see where they are
• can add comments to the cards
• have a follow model like twitter
• can collect cards you find interesting (favourite)
  • can then add categories
• scoring mechanism
  • if other people collect your cards, you score more
• seems too much like twitter with twitpic
• (integrates with twitter)
• what’s the business model?

Shazam

Jonathan Symons

• > 35m users
• live in 150 countries
• Jonathan’s role is to think of the money…
• money comes from:
  • users getting involved, sharing app & music
  • buying things
• getting roughly 60,000 tweets of music a day
• “I can find myself in a bar”…
• meet new people who like the same music
• basic service for free, funded by advertising & follow-on content acquisition
• additional services cost

Panel Session

Panellists:

• Stuart Dredge of Mobile Entertainment
• Kate Imbach, Skyhook Wireless
• Jennifer Hicks, Ink Communication
• Nic Black, Cloudmade
• Roberta Lucca, Vertu
• Patrick Weissert, Vodafone

Vertu

• just launched a new phone
• together with a location awareness service
• Vertu consumers work hard, play hard, spend hard
• travel way more than average
• not digital natives — use things that are relevant for them
• want recommendations & whole experience, completed with human concierge

Cloudmade

• here to lower the barriers to entry for location apps
• making location a feature, not a whole application

Ink Comms

• Global Marketing & Strategy
• analysis

Is iPhone leading the way? What about Android & Symbian?

• KI: a lot of focus on iPhone
  • Android devs scaling back and going for iPhone instead, since that’s where the money is now
  • Lots of faith in Android but it will take its time
• NB: various limits for iPhone, esp. everything has to be active
  • Android allows swapping out services for others, e.g. using Cloudmade map service instead of Google
• PW: VF360 addresses 3 out of 6 segments
  • iPhone is making mainstream what we thought a couple of years ago was just for geeks
  • Android will take similar path
  • can share VF360 even if you’re not on Vodafone (and it picks up facebook, etc)

Foursquare

• JH: foursquare may come up with a biz model with advertising on a local level
• NB: foursquare about building up local content
  • need it for developers to play with
• RL: content useful and so is location, but targeting is vital — need to match the right content according to the influencers
• NB: have a choice of “what don’t I show on the map”
  • depending on the activity, the time, the context
• SD: segmenting by the apps you select
• RL: sometimes people don’t want discover things — they want the choice made for them

Has the industry come round to starting with the service rather the tech?

• KI: lots of complaints that the Apple App Store has too many apps, but there are a lot of niches
• KI: 100s of millions of lookups every day — location is becoming ubiquitous within apps, becoming mainstream

How are people making money?

• KI: Visa are sponsoring a shopping app, seeing $15-24 CPMs — does anyone know what this is?
• JH: still trying to come together
  • lives in Amsterdam, people are using foursquare like crazy
  • social networking side of location services
• NB: releasing first part of location based advertising service later this year
  • tailor advertising to app’s context
• RL: need to involve audience
• PW: flixter are ticketmaster — they sell tickets
  • the app is advertising for their own service

@torgo: What about the privacy issues? Could that lead to a backlash against location services?

• KI: app developers are sensitive to the privacy issues
  • generally sharing location for the user experience
  • weird when app asks for location for no reason
  • Skyhook don’t do user application tracking
• JH: consumer issues will hit as this stuff spreads
  • consumers can get picky
  • getting libel suits as twitter becomes mass market
• NB: thinks the early adopter community are more concerned by privacy issues

How does immediacy affect social mores?

• RL: different countries reacting differently
  • next generation will not bother about personal info
  • e.g. Google StreetMap just useful
• KI: gave up on privacy after my mother guilted me into accepting her friend request on facebook
• Floor: In Amsterdam, youth feel privacy is very important
• JH: want you to ask permission to share their info
  • teens will not part with their phones
  • will not be sliced by age; depends on industry
• PW: need to enable location selectively
  • not enable every tweet
  • choose to

How does Vertu work with location?

• RL: Vertu handsets are Series 40, but luxury
  • use of location is made clear — transparency
• SD: more like “push my location to the paparazzi right now!”

What is the thing that O2 UK could do that would be most helpful?

• NB: reduce barriers to entry: make location part of the platform, and pay them for using it, via location

Does advertising really work?

• A user is in Kensington, shoe shopping and I want to serve them an ad. Right now, advertisers might have an advert about shoes, probably clothing instead, almost certainly not Kensington
• NB: might also want to tell people about coffee shops nearby
• JH: talks about walk-by advertising…
• @fj says “I’m not responsible for any store making money - get outta my phone!”
• KI: no inventory
  • no incentive to sell more targeted ads as they sell less impressions that way
  • location-based banner ads are probably not the way things will go
• PW: time & location push model doesn’t really work
  • more about pull — enabling people to find you

Will there be more integration between mobile and web apps?

• PW: VF360 all about that. Can sync them up
• RL: all about lead time: takes a long time to put a new device on the market, but not to launch a service

Are we going to see content fragmentation?

• PW: biggest problem of app store model — think that services will converge
• SD: federating content like wikipedia
• NB: will be launching a “publish content through a central service” later this year

For certain apps, a facebook app is worth about 400 leads

• JH: it’s too early
  • foursquare think they will make money from local advertising
  • they’re experimenting at the moment
• Andrew Scott: foursquare not making money — just taken $100m of funding…
• RL: concentrate on providing something that is highly valuable for their consumers

Upcoming events

• 26 Oct — Mobile Phones for the Senior Market
  • Even in the UK there is only about 50% penetration in the 55+ market
  • Learn about the opportunities and how to take advantage of them
• 26 Oct PM — DCKTN Mobile World Congress competition judging
• 9 Nov — Mobile Monday joint birthday part w/Swedish Beers
• 7 Dec — Heroes of the Mobile Screen
• 4 Dec — OpenMIC in Guildford on AR & Location

MomoLondon: Mobile Web & Widgets

This was a great Mobile Monday London. Short, snappy presentations; an exciting and relevant topic with a real buzz going on; announcements that you heard here first; and really useful networking afterwards.

Many thanks to Dan, Alex, Jo & Helen!

GSMA One API

Kevin Smith — Vodafone

Kevin works closely with Dan Applequist.

Aim to produce network enabler APIs across mobile operators — charging, location, messaging, user profile, connection profile. They’re a network-level complement to OMTP BONDI, using a RESTful and lightweight web services system.

Major European & Asian operators all involved.

Have a reference implementation (beta) available at http://oneapi.aepona.com. Go try it out!

OMTP BONDI

Nick Allott — OMTP

I went to the OMTP BONDI codefest back in January (sorry, I ran out of time to blog about it). So I didn’t take many notes on this presentation.

OMTP is an organisation of mobile operators working together (who would have thought!), with manufacturers and system providers joining in the fun. They’re working on defining a javascript API through which a web runtime environment can access and interact with device-specific information.

So there’s a location API (compatible with the W3C spec as it goes), access to calendar and contacts, etc. Crucially, they’re actually building a reference implementation in order to figure out how the API should work. That way they can change their spec as they discover that it doesn’t quite work in real situations. The spec so far looks good — more details and the downloadable SDK at http://bondi.omtp.org.

The only problem is that the reference implementation is built on Pocket Internet Explorer. Great access to device information, but really hard to make a good-looking, functional widget using web standards…

They’ve got one demo widget so far:

• EMCC Gig Guide w/last.fm
  • location
  • cached feeds
  • syncing calendars

And here’s where to find the latest widgets: http://bondi.omtp.org/widget-gallery/

Ikivo Enrich

Samuel Sweet, VP Sales

T-Omnia widget solution launched November 2008 in Korea. Based on Samsung, Windows Mobile & Ikivo Enrich.

• SVG display engine (provided by Ikivo)
• Javascript w/device APIs & AJAX support
• Aiming to support HTML display engine later
• W3C widget spec

“Putting lipstick on a pig” for Windows Mobile!

SK Telecom have had 300% increase in shipments month on month since they’ve launched the new interface.

Importantly, the W3C Widget spec now allows SVG as an alternate rendering option for widgets. This means that the Ikivo widget engine can be W3C-compatible.

Announcement tonight: Ikivo will be supporting BONDI

Firefox Mobile

Christian Sejersen

Currently called Fennec but will be called Firefox when it gets released. It runs on the same codebase.

Some countries currently have more than 50% Firefox usage. Mozilla are starting to wonder what they should do when they get a monopoly…

Fennec for Windows Mobile coming out soon (April?); Symbian version started not so long ago.

Shows a demo of running Fennec on Nokia N810 (Maemo) — Fennec Alpha Walkthrough on Vimeo

Browser controls are off the edge of the page to the left and right. Just scroll that way to see them.

Firefox Addons can be made compatible with Fennec. 20 or 30 Addons are available after a month, with no promotion from Mozilla.

There is full API compatibility between mobile and desktop, so once they add location & camera access to mobile, these APIs are available from the desktop build too.

My thoughts

As per Bruce Lawson’s talk at the Betavine birthday party, the browser writers don’t see the difference between mobile and desktop. I agree with them that the APIs and browser can be very similar, but I still think there’s a difference in how you would design a service.

A mobile service needs to take one particular function and “polish the hell out of it” (as goes the recommendation for iPhone app design). A desktop web app still needs to be polished, but has more leeway in its design. There’s also the interaction styles: a mouse is not a finger is not a d-pad, and you need to make the interface appropriate for each of these styles. Sure some of this can be done with stylesheets, but when you’ve got less screen space you want to deprioritise certain content off the screen completely.

Panel session

Chaired by Dan Appelquist

• Francois Daoust (W3C)
• Graham Thomas (T-Mobile)
  • 8 years at Nokia on UI & UX
  • Also bringing games into market (Club Nokia)
  • Been at T-Mobile for 7 years, now Head of Multimedia
  • T-Mobile very active in mobile internet — have iPhone and G1
• Christian Sejersen (Mozilla)
• Kevin Smith (Vodafone)
• Brad Sipes (CTO, Ikivo)
• Nick Allott (OMTP)

T-Mobile widget roadmap — want to have develop once, run across all handsets. Enabling the long tail…

SVG helps to bridge the gap between different screen sizes — since scalable. But Brad sees it more to “make things fun”.

Q: How does BONDI fit in with other web runtime initiatives, like Adobe AIR or Mozilla Prism?

• CS: Prism currently in labs (local look & feel for web-based content). But don’t really have anything to say as Mozilla…
• NA: OMTP did due diligence and found 25 different ways of doing the same thing. Operators decided on a common standard and then broke it in 25 different ways…
• NA: 3 parts to standardisation
  1. APIs
  2. Display engine
  3. Security (one of the big problems for Java on mobile — see signed apps…)

Q: Sounds like lots of separate bits. Do they fit together?

• NA: Yes. At least all the people on this panel do… OMTP working with W3C. SVG long-established as rendering tech. OMTP location API is W3C compatible, and could use One API as implementation by getting location from http query.

Q: How do I make money out of writing a widget?

• GT: Key benefit of widgets — start using internet more, like iPhone & G1.
• KS: Earn £20K from Voda competition…?
• FD: sell the widget like the iPhone app store.

One advantage of interoperable widgets is that you can buy your widget from anywhere. You can have your own payment mechanism

• DA: Can we build interoperable application stores? Micropayments never really went anywhere with the web. Will we get there with widgets?
• FD: There were some standards about micropayments 10-15 years ago, but they werer never finished… Maybe it’s time to dust them off and complete them.

Q: What benefits do I get from a widget that I don’t get from HTML5? (Hugo from Google)

• FD: Widgets give you more context, but it’s just a wrapper.
• CS: A lot of the widget issues have come up because of security issues. But in essence it’s the same thing that needs to be solved across mobile and desktop.
• BS: Widgets give you local application feel that HTML5 isn’t aiming for initially. But HTML5 will converge in the longer term.
• NA: Some of the widget stuff has been created as a sticking plaster to avoid 15-20 different solutions while HTML5 gets itself ready.
• DA: BONDI allows HTML5 over https to take advantage of secured APIs.

Q: My question: widgets on the standby screen? What about battery life?

• GT: want them on the idle screen, with notification etc. Want eBay etc event-based dynamic.
• CS: Palm Pre will be fully web-based
• BS: T-Omnia has widget framework attached to button on the side of the phone. Can have lightweight widget framework on low-level phones that aren’t capable of running full HTML5 browser.
• NA: battery notification & event APIs planned for BONDI 1.1

Q: What sort of security model?

• NA: BONDI — consumer delegates trust to an entity. Doesn’t work to prompt the user for everything. Instead they should be able to trust Norton, Google, T-Mobile, etc.
• DA: using XML digital certificates within the widget

Q: If you had one widget, what would it be and how would you interact?

• BS: weather. would beep at me if thunderstorm coming in.
• KS: widget that tells me if my 8 year old daughter has turned off her light…
• CS: can I have a browser instead?
• FD: tells me which way I should vote on W3C…
• GT: M25 road traffic info
• NA: a widget that syncs my contacts
• DA: location-based ski conditions. What’s important is that the bar is lowered. I want my mom to write widgets!

Q: Have Palm come up with a way to make webapps feel like native apps? (Hugo, Google)

• CS: Mozilla often have discussions about how to make the browser look native. But people don’t care. They want Facebook to look like Facebook, not a T-Mobile application.

Q: What do operators feel about making widgets more available? (David Stone)

• GH: Shortly launching service with idle screen. Demo on idle screen. Gallery also available.