MomoLondon: Living in a Multi-Platform World

Another Mobile Monday on fragmentation of platforms, but this time hosted by a big company just about to launch yet another platform… The Microsoft reps seemed to come on a little strong tonight. So much so that I started to tune out when it was their turn to talk.

Nick Lansley from Tesco.com was a new face at Mobile Monday — and had some good things to say. He seems to have his head screwed on right about where to take Tesco.com in the face of multiple platforms and a wide spread of consumers (it’s the API, stoopid).

Tom Hume of Future Platforms also gave some interesting insights — I like his idea of using an AdWords campaign to figure out the target platforms for a new product. It’s always better to measure than to guess — and the internet lets you measure everything.

Alex Reeve - Director of Mobile Business Group, MSFT UK

• it’s fair to say that MS have had their challenges in the mobile industry
• they’re fully aware of that and they’re aware that “a new dawn is coming”
• mobile is enormously important to MS
• Windows 7 coming this side of Xmas
  • integrating contact details & social connections
  • options to show thing separately or together
  • keeping pictures together (including Facebook, etc)
  • “people want Internet Explorer on their phone”
  • do they really? don’t they just want Facebook/Yahoo/BBC, etc
  • fully-editable Word documents
  • email works the same as Outlook
  • I hope not… that would be horrible
  • “Zune is mainly a product in the US only”

Panel session

Panel (and their phones):

• Chair: Marek Pawlowski
  • this is no longer just about mobile — platforms to support now extend to TVs, games consoles, etc…
  • nearly all devices can do voice
  • most can do SMS, and a lot have browsers and Java
  • Q1 this year about 18% of mobile sales were smartphones
  • 11% of market by end of this year will be smartphones
  • 3/4 of developers use an Android or an iPhone as their primary device…
• Oded Ran - Windows Phone in the UK
  • Windows Phone - HDT HD2
• Tom Hume - MD of Future Platforms
  • Nexus One
• Nick Lansley - Head of R&D at Tesco.com
  • iPhone, Nexus One (which crashes 3 times a day)
• Jerry Ennis: CEO at Flirtomatic
  • #1 mobile social network in UK, if not in Europe, according to Comscore
  • though I guess it’s dwarfed by Facebook & twitter, which are social networks that people access on mobile…
  • iPhone
• Ilio Uvarov - lead UX practice at RG/A London
  • clients such as Nike, Nokia
  • iPhone

Which mobile platform would you develop for first and why?

• NL: probably give a different answer every couple of months
  • would like to choose most common in Tesco customer base, but that would mean a phone that’s incapable
  • started with iPhone “because I had one”
  • iPhone is a “hero device” — you get much more marketing for your buck
  • but need to balance with what devices customers are using
• JE: started believing they could use downloadable Java apps
  • but wasn’t really possible
  • target market are not using Java apps, even if their phone is capable
  • have instead gone to mobile web
  • also seeing some startling usage growth from iPhone (Flirtomatic have an iPhone app that wraps a browser)
• TH: would probably cheat and spend £50 on an Adwords marketing campaign to see who was interested…
• IU: depends on target
  • business people in NYC — Blackberry
  • teenagers in middle east — Blackberry
  • hipsters in London — iPhone

What can platform providers provide to developers to attract them?

• OR: don’t want to write once, debug across multiple hardware
  • want to make money
  • choose to piggyback on a platform launching (someone else’s marketing muscle)
• NL: iPhone and Android offer push update notifications
  • really important — bug fixes are v. important to customer experience
  • Ovi falling down massively here
  • Apple also making things difficult by making updates take up to two weeks
• JE: Flirtomatic app is just a wrapper around mobile web app
  • can’t take advantage of native aspects
  • but changes can be deployed very quickly without going through Apple

Who in the audience had a bad experience of starting out on a mobile platform?

• TouchNote: went for Nokia 3rd edition (Symbian) & Ovi store
  • just not a lucid, easy experience for customers, even in comparison to Blackberry, let alone iPhone & Android

Who’s had a good experience?

• No one put up their hands!!

Do customers really take updates?

• TH: 60-70% take updates for android
  • would imagine iPhones are about the same
  • Java apps are almost impossible to get customers to update
• NL: always offer new features with bug fixes
  • every time Tesco update the Tesco Finder app, they see 99.9% of new version by the end of that day!
• IU: have about 100 pending updates on his iPhone
  • end up not using 90% of apps that you’ve downloaded
• MP: 70% of mobile web users went to 10 major brands

MS have developer lock-in for tools, will they lock-in legally like Apple?

• Silverlight & XNA plus mobile web are main ways to market on Windows Phone 7
• Haven’t finished Ts&Cs yet

Is it sustainable to support so many platforms, or will we see consolidation?

• TH: we are seeing consolidation around the web
  • don’t feel intimidated by number of platforms, as only have to deal with those that provide an audience
  • feel locked in to Apple not by legal language, but by the audience that they provide

What can platform providers do to make a new platform attractive?

• don’t make us write the app in Silverlight — let us write it in C#
• reveal the number of apps in the store — no hype
• charge less than Android & Apple (30%)
• make it easy for customers to buy cheap things with enough money going to developers

Which platform gives the best ROI? How does mobile web compare?

• JE: make money with virtual currency (80% revenues), rest from advertising
  • how do we bill people to buy virtual currency?
  • operator billing (reverse SMS), credit card, paypal
  • still 60/40, 70/30 — not so good
  • credit card still cheapest for business
  • Apple don’t let you use in-app purchases for virtual currency…
• TH: not sure that there’s a link
  • look to introduce customers with operator billing and then convert repeat customers to credit card later
• JE: operator billing is a terrible UX — sometimes a 12-step process
  • not as bad in UK, but US can be really bad

What about emerging markets? What are platforms doing?

• OR: active in two sides, services (Hotmail, etc) & devices
  • phone becomes 1st screen
  • exploring new ways of getting hold of the phone, since Windows Phone is not targeted at emerging markets
• NL: when Tesco arrives in a market, it could be said to have “emerged” already…
  • “Tesco in a box” — all systems for a new country shipped out
• MP: discussing India with major internet brand, responsible for UX
  • because device is becoming primary, there are increasing number of smartphones
  • also multiple SIM cards for each user (up to 12!!)
  • Italians have 1.77 SIM cards per subscriber, cf. 1.4 UK & 1.3 in US

Multiple platforms outside of mobile

• IU: depends on the use-case
  • things that work nicely across channels: e.g. instapaper
  • boxee: combining web, mobile & TV (can use mobile as remote)
• NL: did ethnographic research in people’s homes as to how they shop
  • calling on phones, SMS, writing messages on paper
  • wanting to allow people to add things little and often throughout the week
  • have cheated by building an API to get other people to create apps
  • e.g. Yahoo widgets on TV: watch cooking show, and add ingredients while you watch
• TH: big fan of opening up API, but how does that work as a provider? are you worried about the customer contact being mediated via a third party?
• NL: grocery shopping is not really exciting to customers
  • would rather get great ideas in front of customers
  • customers still have to login and checkout on Tesco site

What about voice as a platform?

• TH: Google introduced voice search and changed his behaviour
• MP: need to be very careful about experience:
  • experience was significantly enhanced when interacting with an avatar
• JE: tried out a voice part of app a year or two ago
  • watched my teenage daughter who never talks to people, but uses text & facebook instead
• MP: is that an opportunity? getting people to use their unused minutes!

How do you handle that your app is living on a phone with others?

• NL: Nexus One had an app using up all his minutes when in US
  • data hogging apps rapidly become unpopular
• TH: it’s one of the important things that makes the difference between mobile and desktop
  • number one feature on the iPad is battery life

What about upcoming standards: JIL, BONDI?

• NL: if you don’t make your app the best it can possibly be for that device then don’t bother
• MP: customers have one device — they’re not bothered by fragmentation

Brief summary

• IU: kept going back to UX
  • do you want to be good enough or delightfully different
• JE: all about UX — the best possible UX is using the latest features of any platform, rather than going cross-platform
  • payment is crucial, runs across different platforms
  • needs to be improved, simplified and cheaper for business
• NL: has to be relentlessly good design for every make and model of handset
  • gives you brand consistency
• TH: root causes of fragmentation are a good thing
  • mass market (2/3rds of world’s population) and extremely fast rate of change
  • developers have to get used to it
• OR: successful developers are embracing the fact that fragmentation is here to stay
• MP: “can economise on plumbing but make sure your bathroom is pretty bling”

Announcements

• Microsoft BizSparkCamp: June 22nd 9.30-5.30
  • “they want to give you things…”
• July - MomoLondon: Marketing your mobile app
• August - MomoLondon break
• September 10th & 11th - OverTheAir 2010

MomoLondon: Mobile Entertainment Applications

A fairly slow evening, but some nice gems tucked away. Lots of interesting stats from Flirtomatic (and a few interesting ones from GetJar). Interesting to hear that Vodafone widgets will be marketed as apps to customers (but widgets to developers).

Anyway on with the notes…

Adverts for upcoming events

EcoMo — code camp

• http://ecomo09.eventbrite.com/
• September 11-12th
• Mobile Applications for sustainability

Over The Air

• http://overtheair.org
• September 25-26th at Imperial College

GetJar - some stats on downloads

Patrick Mork

• aim to make it seamless for downloads for 1500 handsets
• Half a billion downloads reached last month
  • but the Apple app store has been going for a much shorter time and reached 1.5bn just recently…
• 75% of downloaders are under 25
  • breakdown something like:
  • <10 12-13%
  • 11-17 23%
  • 18-24 28%
  • 25-34 15-18%
• 70-80% male
• all downloads on getjar are free
  • developers monetize content themselves
• no cost to upload content
• GetJar make money by paid placement:
  • 20-25% of developers bid for placement on their catalogue
• GetJar’s experience is that you must make the initial experience free to the user
  • the general public are not used to downloading apps yet so we need to provide free tasters with no bill shock
• Over 50% of users are downloading content at least once a week
• Top 10 downloaded apps in UK last month:
  1. Ebuddy
  2. Nimbuzz
  3. Google Maps
  4. Opera Mini
  5. Change Ringtone
  6. Magic Bluehack
  7. TV To Go
  8. GetJar (web site shortcut)
  9. Qeep
  10. Facebook (web site shortcut)
• which platforms?
  • 70% of getjar downloads is JavaME
  • mobile web growing fast!
• “applications is not about smartphones — it’s about everyone”
• #1 handset in Indian market: Nokia 6600
• games are growing and probably will grow faster when billing is easier
• what are people searching for?
  • often specific programs (e.g. ebuddy, mig33)
• over 30% of new people from word of mouth
• in Egypt see a lot of download for religious apps (e.g. prayer times)

Panel

• Chair: David Murphy from Mobile Marketing Magazine
• Audience:
  • few app developers
  • similar operators
  • slightly more agencies
  • one client side developer
• Patrick Mork: getjar
  • used to be at Glu and iPlay
• Andreas Constantinou: Vision Mobile (Analyst)
• Joachim Hoffman: Fjord (Services Agency)
• Mark Curtis: Flirtomatic
• Dan Appelquist: Vodafone Group R&D

How do you go about making money from mobile apps?

• PM: see various business models: adfunded, freemium, virtual currency
• AC: sharing revenue (e.g. Nokia Ovi sharing with operators)
  • sharing cost using open source (e.g. Symbian)
  • now talking of wallet sharing
• JH: funded (e.g. BBC iPlayer); ad-funded (and you have to make your service sticky)
• MC: 160m WAP pages in UK in May
  • every now and then they want to buy things
  • “every time we’ve given away flirt points we see an upsurge in spending a few days later”
  • users sent each other 5,000 ice cubes during the heatwave (at about 50p each)
  • “cost of materials was very high” :-)
  • most nights top spenders will be spending £20-30ea. to keep themselves at the top of the ratings!!
  • when we increase inventory, they respond within three or four hours
  • also do alerts (e.g. when people log in)
• DA: have been spearheading mobile widgets over past year
  • cross-platform, cross-operator
  • Voda will introduce an app store later this year with a “competitive” revenue split
  • are also launching in-app or in-widget billing events
  • when Voda launch widgets, it will be called Apps
  • Flight Control — see high scores of people playing around you (and on your twitter network)

Why does a developer develop for Vodafone and not for Nokia or SonyEricsson?

• DA: widgets mean you can make one thing for everybody
  • however, there is fragmentation for the operator APIs
  • widget specification is bedding down — next step is to get operators
  • setting up device APIs working group (Nokia, Mozilla, Google)
  • already have geolocation API standard launched in iPhone 3.0, Firefox 3, Opera 9(?)

Flirtomatic stats in May

• top handset was Nokia N95 and only 6%
• only 4 or 5 other handsets above 1%
• Vodafone is well over a quarter of our users in the UK

Is the future apps or web-based?

• PM: a mix
  • a lot of criticism a few months ago when Yahoo dropped apps apart from iPhone & BlackBerry
  • but GetJar Yahoo shortcut was doing 40-50K downloads a week, so app would have to be very good to be worth more than that
• JH: SportsTracker vs. Flirtomatic: SportsTracker needs hardware integration (bluetooth, etc)
• MC: had an appalling experience making a Flirtomatic app a few years ago with Jo Rabin
  • tried to make the service work in the tube offline
  • speed of development on web is much faster
  • games development are sold shrink-wrapped like a film — and are paid as such
  • web-based dev often gets paid by usage, or with ongoing revenue so need to be able to change things quickly

Since most widgets are free, does calling them widgets endanger the market?

• DA: you’ll be able to sell widgets through Ovi, Voda & others
• PM: Loopt — mapping service to share locations with your friends
  • make money by selling the service & helping operators sell data bundles

Flirtomatic: do you see a time when auction stuff will rival fixed price

• 25% revenue is advertising
• 75% is premium services
• about half of premium service income is auction-based

Where do you think mobile entertainment is going? What type of apps?

• DA: Casual gaming really taking off
  • Augmented reality making a lot of noise at the moment, but really in its infancy still. Will play out over a couple of years.
  • More interesting when put it together with advanced displays — in your glasses, or in your environment
  • “We could either end up in a very dystopian world or we could end up in a utopian place where the user in control and their privacy is paramount…”
• AC: augmented reality become possible due to simple sensor: compass
  • temp sensor could pick up if your phone is in your pocket
  • sound sensor could tell if you were at work or at home
• PM: frustrated that can’t get a basic cell phone reception on a train back from Northern England
  • apps must be useful for consumers
• MC: sneaky suspicion that NFC will be huge
  • Oyster went from nothing to mass market in 3 years (admittedly only in London)
  • “When TfL get a 95% revenue share, the rest of us won’t be stuck in a corner called special needs”
• JH: error handling has to be good

Are fragmenting app stores making getting money for development harder?

• J2ME development a lot better than it used to be
• PayForIt at least enables off-portal payment
• 3 UK can now go off deck

What are the next moves aside from technology?

• PM: Coming along a huge way since a year and a half ago, people now know about downloading apps
  • Apple started actually advertising download apps
• DA: Social apps will drive it e.g. Facebook
  • Flight Control local high scores shows how sensors enable cool features that drive user engagement
• AC: sensors will change how we communicate

MomoLondon: Demo Night

A brilliant evening in a beautiful venue, with a fantastic view to round off the evening. Demo nights are one of the things that makes Mobile Monday great. 14 different presentations, most of which involving hands-on demonstrations and all for real, shipping, mobile software with plenty of ideas to inspire. Sure, some of the apps weren’t exactly new (ReVoice presented way back in 2007) and not all were particularly exciting, but with so many people presenting their ideas, you’re sure to pick up some valuable nuggets.

Here’s the presentations, with the tidbits that caught my attention:

Do Tank Studios: Photo Fit iPhone app

Adam Hoyle

Take a photo of several people and mix them up like a game of consequences: a forehead from Fred, the eyes of Isabelle, the nose of Norbert, the mouth of Millie and the chin of Charles. The app lets you take photos or source them from your photo album, and line them up using basic eye and mouth alignment. Shake to mix up further, or slide to choose your mix. Simple and fun.

Adam runs a design agency and this app is a hobby app to show that they can produce iPhone apps. They’ve mostly been focussing on a fashion app, which is currently waiting for app store approval. They were going to make Photo Fit free, but there was already an app on the store that did something similar for £1.20, so they put it in the store for the next price point down. Apparently they’ve made enough to have a few beers.

Total Hotspots

Alex Housley @ahousley

• Global Wirefree Community — help people find the best WiFi connectivity
• partnered with Rummble in October 2008
• iPhone app rummbles to twitter and Total Hotspots website (using Yahoo GeoPlanet to show surroundings and identify location name)
• had a few thousand downloads from iPhone store at £3 each
• also working with Microsoft
• Alex worked at multimap for a while while they were being taken over by Microsoft
• Total Hotspots’ database includes data direct from service providers
• cf. WeFi: client connection software, that has background app that does WiFi collection as you walk down the street — picks up personal and corporate wifi (mostly secured)

Audioboo

Mark Rock

“as used by Stephen Fry…”

• geolocation embedded in the meta-data of the audio
• will be releasing API in about 3 weeks
• business plan:
  • there’ll always a free version
  • plus version: £2.95 a month
    • longer recording time
    • queuing recording
  • pro version: for companies
    • just signed first customer: British Library
• community auditing of inappropriate content
  • had to put this in place before the app was accepted in the iPhone store

Artilium

Dave Hodder

• software for mobile network operators
• previously solely in Belgium
• acquired location company that uses app on SIM or device to identify accurate location using nearby cell strengths as well as current cell tower location (TILS)
• in London tends to be sub 100 metres accuracy
  • lower resolution outside built-up areas
• work with mobile operators — have their mast data
  • also drive around the area
  • improve with usage too
• gets better accuracy than Google Maps for Mobile (using cell ID only)
• end customer is mobile operators
• will probably implement GSM ONE API when it gets more developed (i.e. has more event-based APIs)

Proxama

James Norris

• payWave credit cards on an NFC phone
• working with MasterCard
• can change PIN over the net (combined with the secure element)
• they use J2MEPolish for their JavaME apps
• integrates with secure element in SIM
• person to person payment is not supported with existing terminals & framework
• upcoming NFC devices:
  • Nokia 6216 — has secure element on SIM
  • Samsung & LG also coming out this year (also USIM-based)

OOKL

Dan Phillips

• mobile learning service
• clients are schools & cultural venues
  • have 25 venues signed up
• provide hardware and software
  • old Nokia phones that you can buy for £50
• every object in the physical environment is labelled with a shortcode (two-letter code)
• type it in on the phone to see and hear content
• can write why collecting it
• find out who else collected it
• take photos or record audio to annotate it
• all info collected is uploaded to a shared space to consider later

Synchro Arts’ ReVoice Karaoke

Jeff Bloom

As mentioned above, these guys have been around for several years now selling essentially the same thing, but the demo always gets a laugh… Jeff sings horrendously out of tune and badly timed into the ReVoice system (here an iPhone app), then uploads his “masterpiece” and has it retuned by the ReVoice server. The result is perfectly in tune and in time and still recognisably Jeff.

• now have an iPhone app
  1. record yourself
  2. gives scores for accuracy
  3. uploads, corrects, downloads to iPhone and shares online
• can try out on http://singtone.com
• aim is to send it to someone else as your ringtone
  • when you call, they hear your voice
  • At the moment, this doesn’t work with the iPhone, as you currently have to pay Apple to make a ringtone (unless you hack something…)

Masabi Rail Ticketing

Ben Whitaker (getting married this weekend— congratulations!)

Ben Smith (of the Really Mobile Project) recorded video presentation; may also be on Slideshare (old version)

• Working with ATOS Origin (heathrow express & national express)
• only 12% of rail tickets sold on the internet — most bought at station
• masabi’s implementation has no sign up — no usernames or passwords
• mostly offline…
• for consumers: if it feels slick and looks slick, people will use it
• Chiltern trial: compelling reason (get out of queue) got people who had never downloaded an app before to use mobile ticketing
  • advertise at the pain point — “while you’re queuing, try this”
• Q: How have TfL responded? A: They’ve already put their investment into NFC
• Big rail & bus operators like the soft roll-out of mobile barcodes rather than ITSO…
  • “there’s space for both”
• IATA have legislated that all major airports must implement barcode tickets by May next year
• In Germany, if you turn up with a mobile ticket and your battery runs out, you’re fined!

Corebridge with Wings

Simon Taylor

• VPN via small app on phone
  • iPhone, Blackberry, WinMo & Symbian
• If phone rings, CRM app launches on laptop
• Similarly, click a phone number on screen and phone makes call straight away
• App logs phone calls made from mobile back onto corporate server
• Can send SMS messages from Lotus Notes & Outlook, but this system uses your actual mobile phone to send — so responses come to you, not the SMS gateway
• Also provides enterprise-wide voice mail

spoonfed

Alex Will

• 21st Century version of Timeout
• high quality local event content
• 30,000 events per month
• iPhone app — Event Radar
• LBS mobile Java app launching in Q3 2009
  • complete with maps…
  • looking at options for map source
• have small editorial team of 5 editors to cover the whole of London
• has some social features — meet up with your friends, etc.
• “user generated content is great for cats on skateboards”

Samsung

• Samsung Mobile Innovator
  • includes lab.dev testing (using Digia remote devices), market.dev pitching
  • core partners are invite only but still free
• Staines office focusses on supporting Symbian
  • ramping up skills to support Symbian Foundation
• Samsung IQ widget competition:
  • opens on 24th June
  • £15,000 top prize, 2nd & 3rd prizes too
  • download the i8910 HD DevPack
  • submit entry at http://www.samsungiq.com
  • widget marketplace (More Widgets) is free to user

Vopium

Tanvin Sharif http://vopium.com/

• based in Denmark
• free calls on your mobile via VoIP, or else local call then VoIP then local call
• free to download app — runs in the background transparently
• first 100 SMS are free then charged after that
• available from all channels
• can do free mobile termination for Skype!
• merge address books and identify with phone number
• cf. Fring, Nimbuzz — they’re aggregators and run within a separate app
  • main competitor is TruPhone — seamless integration into phonebook
• tells you if totally wifi or involves a local call
  • doesn’t tell you if one or two local call
• remote leg: Vopium pay 1p, charge 2p

peepr.tv

Mun Kong, d2see http://peepr.tv

• stream live from any webcam — pick up on http://peepr.mobi
• can send an SMS when you detect motion
• launches native media player on phone
• showcase of technologies
• cf. Qik: phone to PC, this is PC to phone, with no app needed on phone
• can make feeds private, but not password protected

0870.me

• mobile access to alternative to 0870 numbers
• iPhone app got rejected — “circumventing carrier policies”
• Android app intercepts standard dialler
• with 5 minutes call length, estimated savings of £54K
• 0870.me — open API for anyone to access, or even download the whole database
• API integrates with 0800buster.co.uk

OverTheAir — September 25/26th

Keep the date free!

Thanks to the organisers!

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.

Future of Mobile 08: Barriers & Gateways for Mobile Startups

A great panel session, led by Ewen MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review (don’t forget their Xmas Charity Prize Draw!). Lively, energetic and containing actual useful information. The first panel made Future of Mobile start with a whimper — this session made it end on a bang!

Panel:

• Dan Appelquist: Vodafone
• Mark Curtis: Flirtomatic
• Alfie Dennen: Moblog
• Justin Davies: social media consulting + Budyping
• Carl Uminski: Trutap
• James Body: Direct of Research @ Truphone
• Sam Machin: a UK Mobile Operator

Q&A:

• Mark: First Flirtomatic ad on operator portal — got 3,500 new visitors in 3hrs
• Is downloading apps still a dark art?
  • Justin: still problems even though a little more standardized
    • VC firm about a year ago just wanted them to have a mobile site
    • Getting better — people understanding benefits
• How do emerging markets cope with apps?
  • Carl: network isn’t 3G: wait wait wait
    • Once they get it down, it’s really cheap to use (optimised protocols)
• Has the iPhone store changed things for truphone?
  • James: yes, for everybody in this room
    • we were first VOIP app in app store, and only one for a long time
    • did really well out of that
    • expect to see something similar from Android, Symbian & Vodafone stores
    • Apple system not perfect, but fair chance that app will work if comes from store
• Will app store model work?
  • Justin: Yes. It already does. It’s so easy. Payment system built-in.
  • James: we make more money off Apple iPhone than off Symbian
  • Dan: urbanspoon — shows you restaurants nearby
    • television ad showing you how to download and install an app
    • I challenge you to see any television ad showing you how to download & install a Java app!
  • Sam: you can make instant decisions on seeing other people’s stuff
• What about O2 Litmus app store?
  • Dan: Betavine different — aimed at long tail rather than monetization
    • Gives developers a route to market in Germany & Spain — they appear on the portal
    • Betavine is an animal of Vodafone R&D — we have just as much trouble as anyone else getting onto the portal
  • Sam: operators have identity, location & billing location
    • location advantage being rapidly eroded (see Google, etc)
    • Visa take 1-2% of enabling an economy — operators could use billing mechanism to do something similar
• Do you use external agencies?
  • Mark: used for useability — repaid many times over
  • Carl: some design in house but also use FuturePlatforms
• Do you see movement to web-based apps?
  • James: going to be a mixture
• How does a company approach Voda to get on portal or devices?
  • Dan: working towards a future where you don’t have to ask that question
    • If there’s a funnel and a person you have to talk to, that’s a broken system
    • The answer is the web — distribution, development & deployment medium
    • App stores are a part of that
    • Voda talking to Softbank Mobile & China Mobile about widget store
• iPhone or Android?
  • Mark: iPhone — it’s already out there
  • Alfie: depends on your business. Aim for web unless you need more
  • Dan: aim for web, include Gears + PhoneGAP & you’ve got all you want
  • James: Symbian — quantity has a quality all of its own
    • iPhone — you’ll make more money
    • Blackberry
    • Android
    • We’re even getting on SIM cards
  • Sam: want to get all platforms if your business is based on usage
    • otherwise, if you want to sell the app, then iPhone
  • Carl: J2ME and getjar download store for non-western world
• Are iPhone users normobs?
  • Justin: most are, though not this panel
    • I gave my mother-in-law my iPhone and she just knew how to use it
  • Alfie: it’s broken in so many ways, but it’s so much better than the rest
• What user numbers are mobile ad servers looking for to place ads?
  • Mark:
    • CPM — need upwards of 20-30K per day
    • Cost per click — 1000 a day will probably do
    • operators lack understanding of how to sell advertising
    • “Have to evolve very different techniques to milk a pig, a cow and a chicken”
  • James: anybody who uses a fixed price for an ad will have to sharpen their act
• Network location-based services. Are they dead?
  • Justin: people want to use location, but if operators charge too much then their services will wither
  • Alfie: INQ1 unified messaging with location starting to be useful
  • Sam: two strands to location — tracking vs checking in
    • passive tracking still requires operator
    • enterprise tracking services will still use operator services, but client-side
  • Mark: 40% of mobile users had voluntarily filled in postcode in their profiles
    • then launched location as a search option
    • added 20% to revenues that night
• What’s the best way to get new users?
  • Justin: get them on the mobile web — pre-qualifies data services, phone ability
    • admob: can ask for specific phone characteristics
• Most exciting mobile apps from Silicon Valley or Europe?
  • Europe (apart from Dan: India)
• Future of Mobile is:
  • Justin: complexity — but that’s good
  • Carl: please cheap data
  • James: freedom
  • Sam: one web
• iPhone or Android?
  • Dan: PC will be Android to iPhone Mac
  • Justin: Android ‘cos more in emerging markets
  • Carl: iPhone or Symbian. We’ll see Android without even knowing it’s Android
  • James: today
  • Sam: Android on an iPhone :-)
• Favourite mobile app?
  • Sam: twitter
  • James: mobile facebook
  • Carl: google maps
  • Justin: gmail
  • Dan: koi pond — it keeps my kids quiet for the longest time

Google Developer Day 2008: Gears for mobile and the New Geolocation API -- Charles Wiles

• google maps for mobile took a long time to deliver on different platforms
  • 10+ platforms, 100s of builds
  • mobile updates every 6 months, cf. desktop every few weeks
• gears apps can be designed with UI talking only to local database
• background threads then bring in data as it becomes available
• how does Gears compare with HTML5?
  • short term — gears
  • Opera Mobile (WinMo) & Android Q4 2008
  • Expect S60 & BlackBerry in the future
  • long term — HTML5…
• geolocation to within 1km with wifi — enough for a lot of apps
  • two ways to call: one shot + event-based
  • typically takes about 5secs to get a fix

Demos

• Google Search with My Location — Andrei Popescu
  • plugs location and postcode into a mobile version of google local search
• fonefood — Marko Balabanovic
  • towards the beginning of the year looked at operator location
  • doesn’t work outside of home network
  • have to get multiple agreements to work around Europe
  • also looked at open source cell tower databases
  • patchy data
  • need to write a native app to get cell ID
  • now uses Gears Cell ID, works well for restaurant finding
  • shows Google static map with restaurant markers
• rummble — Clive Cox, CTO
  • can choose when to ask for permissions (call getPermission())
  • windows mobile:
  • always call db.close() before a page refresh
  • similarly, lastposition is only useful on a single page
  • google provide a whitelist/blacklist of user agents that support gears
• ITN Offline News — Ave Wrigley, Head of Technology Strategy & Innovation
  • ITN ON is the new media department of ITN
  • also have their own production team: showbiz, lifestyle, etc
  • generally produce content for other people, but are starting to go direct to consumer
  • use case: “flaky mode” — travelling to work with patchy coverage
  • watching videos as well as browsing news
  • also using geolocation for local news & weather
  • configuration interface — choose categories to browse offline
  • settings are on every page of the site
  • also forces that updates are grabbed wherever you are on the site
  • can find out through gears if the device is offline or online
  • don’t have to use XMLHttpRequest
  • not part of public API…
  • site grays out subscription options when offline
  • site warns you how many MB of video you are downloading
  • gears managed store is a bit of a black box — can’t tell how much you’ve downloaded
  • had to implement their own back-end AJAX call to find this out from the server side!
  • 80% of development time has been on platform — Pocket IE is effectively IE4…
  • they had to write specific libraries to cope with the crap browser
  • debugging is very difficult
  • code is in the managed store
  • need to make sure that you’re using the right version
  • developed techniques to get around that — ask offline

Q&A

• when Series 60 or BlackBerry?
  • sometime soon…
• will Google develop a gears translation layer for HTML5 browsers?
  • probably not — HTML5 is the standard, not gears
• will gears integrate with GWT?
  • probably soon

MomoLondon: Mobile Platforms: Too much choice or Hobson's Choice?

• Annie Turner — editor of telecomseurope.net
• Marko Balabanovic — lastminute.com labs
  • launched fonefood as web site around Western Europe
  • have two or three customisations for screen sizes but not much more than that
  • world looks like iPhone version + everyone else
  • want to have rounded buttons etc for iPhone, but everyone else the same
  • adding location — launched with Google Gears for Windows Mobile
• Ricardo Varela — European Mobile Engineering Lead, Yahoo!
  • working to make Yahoo Go widget framework (Blueprint) available for single apps
  • have native Symbian, iPhone, Android platforms
• Ben Last — EMCC
• Nick Allot — OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform)
  • working with BONDI initiative — calls to mobile APIs from Javascript
• Simon Rockman — Sony Ericsson
  • hope for the future: app stores

Is there a sustainable business model?

• iPhone proves there’s people willing to pay money
  • interesting that this has eclipsed any other payment

Designed for device

Simon Rockman: You don’t get games developers wanting to write the same thing for different devices — they optimize for different hardware

• Simon Rockman: “Trying to make things easy in development will end up with products that people don’t want to buy”
• Ben Whitaker (Masabi): “Niches are too small”
• SR: “It’s more about what can you charge for the app. You can do segmentation based on the device — music phones are sold to particular people”
• Nick Allot: “No route to market”
• Ben Last: “Can address enterprise using just Nokia Series 60v3 & BlackBerry”
• BL: “Route to market via the web — mobile apps are often things that people want to take from the web with them on their mobile. e.g. Google Mail, Yahoo”

We’ve heard “write once play everywhere before” with Java…

• Ben Last: “operators want a piece of iPhone pie, and getting rid of fragmentation will sort that”
• Kai Hendry (Aplix): “the web can degrade nicely, better than Java”

Will the operators and manufacturers really get involved?

• Simon Rockman: “Existing phones are getting cheaper and that’s where the growth is. Processor power is not growing in the same way as computers. Battery power is only growing at 10% a year.”
  • however, there is increase in processor growth at the high end, and this is filtering down steadily
• Nick Allot: OMTP have OEMs & operators on-board

Putting things in the way of normal mobile users actually using applications

• Nick Allot: “warnings are absolving network operators and manufacturers of responsibility for upstream content, just like warnings in a car park telling you not to leave your valuables in the car”
  • “OMTP trying to come up with a sensible trust mechanism — especially one that will allow you to take a phone from one network to another”
• Ben Masabi: “setting up data connections and installation warning texts could be standardized across all phones — just like NTT DoCoMo”
• Nick Allot: “we tried this and have done what we can…”
  • e.g. removing an application that’s deemed dangerous, depends upon legal implications of country, operator contract

What do Yahoo Blueprint think of OMTP and vice-versa?

• Nick Allot: OMTP based on web standards
• Ricardo Varela: Blueprint is out there already

Whither Fennec?

• Ben Last: “Where firefox got good, was when it stopped trying to fight IE but implemented the de facto standards. It’s good to see more browsers coming out that are standards-compliant”

Staying on mobile or going back to web to register?

• Ben Whitaker: “stats — losing 2/3rds when ask to register on PC; losing 50% when trying to go online with GPRS”
• Gambling software (J2ME): “78% installed from a link for the trial — gobsmacked! Don’t expect that for the actual release”

How will the platforms go in the future?

• Ben Last: “will be driven by the killer app”
  • but the killer app is already there — it’s making phone calls!
• Simon Rockman: “killer app is seamlessness. Need to do the right thing on the right device”

Demos

Goojet widget engine couldn’t make it

Shazam — Dominic Pride

Taking music recognition further:

• buy track
• artist info
• share track

Application built by EMCC on Symbian

• deliver same consistency of experience
• go deep into messaging & contacts API

Next MoMo

• October 13th: NFC
• November 10th: MoMo London Turns Three
• December 1st: Social Networking Revisited?

OverTheAir: Hacking Competition & Presentations

Lots of people stayed up overnight to hack mobile applications and there were some very cool results.

I tried out building a mobile widget using the Nokia Web Runtime. This is an application environment on recent Nokia Series 60 devices that uses the WebKit browser with various extensions. You write widgets for it using JavaScript, XHTML and CSS (just like any other widget, but, as always, slightly different to the other formats). In fact, I started off building the widget using Apple’s DashCode — a web application builder for the iPhone. This comes with an interface builder that allows you to drag and drop controls onto the screen and wire them together.

Getting the control logic to work took a bit of getting used to — as with all interface frameworks, there’s a learning curve where you build up understanding of how the pieces are supposed to fit together. In the DashCode case, this isn’t helped by the lack of any documentation for the interface controls. However, the development environment more than made up for this — there’s a very capable Javascript debugger, complete with an interactive console, and it’s very easy to start and stop your widget in the iPhone emulator.

I used prototype to power up the Javascript side — making the Ajax calls to our server much easier and enabling some mucking around with the results to provide some pretty formatting.

Once I’d got the basic application working in DashCode, I took it across to the Nokia Web Runtime environment. This provided some extra features such as storing preferences between invocations so that the widget could start up straight into showing you the departures that you’d chosen previously.

I found the Web Runtime very effective, and it fills a very useful niche for simple, web-connected apps on recent S60 phones. Development time is fast and you have access to a reasonable amount of the phone features, though nothing quite as useful as location or the address book (as yet).

My hack won special mention in the “Most practical / ready for market” category — runner-up to the SNOB address book picture enricher. I’ve included a movie of the widget in action (within an iPhone environment) below.

Some other hacks were:

• PimPam — social BBC programmes
• 21st Century Fridge Door — text & MMS to a shared web space
• Location-based games w/J2ME — e.g. capture the flag
• Social Tracker — basically just captures where you are to a database…
  • seems to use Google Maps in a browser to capture the current location
• Flat Music Player UX design — zoomed out user experience — see the album art very small and in specific places on the screen
  • uses sense of physical location rather than words
• Twitter client for Windows Mobile today screen
• Browser Sync while ActiveSync’d — nice!
• YourLocal - displays the local transport stops around Imperial College
• FuturePlatforms — Octobastard robot — you have to see it to believe it :-)
• SNOB: Social Network Open Butler — add pictures to your address book from social network avatars (web service outputs XML independent from social network)
• Autowigificationizor (Owen Griffin) — click a firefox button and get a web runtime widget generated for you based on the RSS feeds for that web page
• MixItUp — cocktails in Flash
• Bluetooth + FOAF — unique ID from hash of bluetooth ID & device bluetooth name; can revoke it by changing your device bluetooth name; get a list of all the people you came into contact with at a conference
• Update FireEagle location from command line, then display it on blog
• LastMinute Labs — PhonePhight with motion detection & bluetooth — very cool!
• Torchwood Sweded — again, I think you just had to be there…

OverTheAir: Case Study: PrimeSky -- Bringing Web 2.0 to Mobile (Tom Hume & Bryan Rieger -- FuturePlatforms)

A webservice to let people find out what’s in the sky that night… oh, and it has to work on mobile too! How do you fit Space onto a mobile phone? And we want to open source it at the end of the project.

How do you orientate people? How do you display constellations on a small screen?

design process:

• put stuff on paper first — it’s easy to change
• iterate with real people
• get it on a handset as soon as possible
  • initially simple PNG files (look like a simple web page) to check expectations on single pages
  • then some simple HTML to check out navigation, with SVG images showing constellations and context

development process:

• went through at least 3 iterations of the database schema
  • avoid database-driven design
• needed to present images in a house style, easy for creation and working at different scales
• technologies: Symfony PHP, WURLF+WALL4PHP, ImageMagick all on a LAMP stack
• subjective scaling: manipulating SVG files to keep captions and stars large but overall image small
• rendering SVG to appropriate format for mobile using ImageMagick
  • then cache pre-created images for a while
• added in microformats:
  • events for days — every page on the site has a little API in it
  • transformed to vCal on mobile devices — allows you to bring something direct into your phone calendar
• also provide JSON, YAML, XML, serialized PHP feeds by just adding ?api=xxx on the end of the RESTful URLs (search API is also exposed)

Development took about 7 weeks for one developer.

conclusions and questions

• look for design solutions first (over and above technical solutions)
  • e.g. orientation
• you don’t get a choice of which version you want — it’s always the one for your device
  • e.g. iPhone gets a widescreen mobile version, not a zoomable full web page
  • Tom: “the iPhone has a kind of split personality — it’s billed as full web on a phone, but the big sites all have iPhone-specific versions”

There’s also an SMS and email alerting service for interesting events.

Launch date: soon...

See the whole presentation:

| View | Upload your own

OverTheAir: Volantis Mobility Server (Adrian Jackson & Julian Ludwikowski)

Has three parts:

1. Multi-Channel Server — content delivery
2. Message Preparation Server — rich messages & text
3. Media Access Proxy — media transcoding

All three have been open-sourced (community edition — released under GPLv3) with professional edition that has regular (weekly) updates to devices — close to 200 devices per month.

Community edition is limited:

• device database updated much less regularly
• no database support from XDIME

Can generate AJAX for higher capabilities and optimize page size for lower end

Content

Content developed in XDIME — XML Device-Independent Markup

• XDIME 1: based on XHTML 1, CSS 2 and early draft of XForms
• XDIME 2: based on DIAL (developed by DIWG), using XHTMLTM 2.0 which includes XForms 1.1 & DISelect.

Can provide XDIME content using a plugin from any source (i.e. dynamic content). There is a webservices plugin built-in. The database plugin is for the pro version only.

Two common ways to set up:

1. servlet filter
2. remote site rewrite (like Apache mod_rewrite)

Device database

• has 530+ attributes including things such as as one-handed use
• repository editor is an Eclipse extension
• covers non-phone devices as well, such as Voice & TV browsers

Doesn’t deal with Novarra gateways by default, but could create a secondary rule to fetch the real device. I didn’t get a useful answer to how this would work — they seemed to say that if the MCS was lied to in the user agent then it wouldn’t know to be clever and look elsewhere.

There’s a wide range of logging options, including an unknown devices log that can be sent back to Volantis. MCS uses log4j, so can extend using the usual methods.

Layouts

How you decide where the content is presented on screen. Includes things such as “dissecting panes” (automatic pagination) and iterators.

There is an Eclipse plugin to edit the layouts — you control their appearance with Themes (CSS styles) that are attached to their class attributes.

Themes

Effectively CSS stylesheets. Also edited with an Eclipse plugin.

MAP image transformation

Can be used by itself to transcode and resize images, but you’ll need to provide the required width yourself.

MomoLondon: The Mobile Web One Year On

Someone wants to flirt with you - Mark Curtis @ Flirtomatic

• abandoned Java (stayed with web & wap
• only thing that’s on web but not mobile is video
• 80% of our customers are not interested in dating, just fun
• very important to show web users which users are mobile (as their responses will be slower)
• revenue from ads + value added services
• high usage on mobile
  • 2,500 page view per user per month since last Aug/Sep
• started over a year ago, making zero revenue at beginning of this year, break even by Q3 next year
• started off completely off-portal
• Andrew Odlyzko - content is not king (it’s communication between people)
• small groups market seems like an opportunity (Zygo looking at this hard)
• why social network?
  • everybody’s doing it
  • intrigue — “somebody wants to flirt with you”
  • theme specific e.g. Chelsea footballers
• but why go on?
  • my friends are there
  • it’s fun (people like to feel wanted; voyeurism)
  • sex / lifetime romance
  • content habit - e.g. discussing rugby world cup
• lost money and time by taking mobile site and taking almost straight to the web
  • continual struggle to keep the two products divorced
  • e.g. “look at me!” people pay to appear at the top — totally different presentation on mobile than for web
• bare essentials of registration — every additional info
  • flirtomatic use: sex; target flirts; date of birth
• abandoned flash on the web & java on phones as they stop you deploying new features quickly
  • absolutely impossible to move fast if you have loads of devices to test
  • therefore mobile app has to be only something that isn’t possible on wap — and rest is a link to wap site
• not yet come across a case study of viral working on mobile
• operator portals very powerful
• admob was only channel available on mobile, but now have 7 channels
  • advertise on wap to get onto a wap service
  • 80% register once they’ve clicked through
  • difficult to advertise on web / other as
• took the opinion that subscription suppresses usage, so ads & value ad services only
• advertising now beginning to work; May / June beginning to work
• advertising model on wap currently slavishly copying web, history shows that model always changes
  • expecting a bumpy ride but don’t know which way
• value added services:
  • e.g. selling pictures of roses
  • bidding for points etc.
  • users will pay to delete their worst rating (delete my freak)
• shifting to PayForIt using MIG… otherwise PSMS most popular payment method
• 65-70% of revenue from value added services — expecting to decrease to 50-55% with extra advertising next year
• payment by mobile is understood and embraced — making more money from mobile users than web
• flirtomatic pre-moderate all visual material (moderation is a big issue for operators)
• finding that SMS is a good tool for CRM
• wap vs web:
  • overlap in users is 15%
  • if you log on to web, you automatically get logged off wap (and vice versa)

Mobile Web Initiative - Crossing the Chasm - Philipp Hoschka @ W3C

• W3C have mobileOK automatic tests and best practices checker (online version still in beta)
• Working on a new open source Java version available to download (released fairly soon) — Mobile Test Harness / Open Mobile Web Test Suite
  • community submits tests
  • can be used for browser manufacturers as well…
• Mobile AJAX Workshop chaired by Dan Applequist
  • discussed API to phone internals…
• Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group
  • Device Independent Authoring Language
• Next exciting area — developing countries:
  • 2006 BBC: 61% of international WAP users came from Nigeria
  • India: many more mobile web users than desktop web users

Content Transformation - Ed Moore @ OpenWave

• OpenWave transformation product is called OpenWeb
• Operators are saying that “45% of traffic / 1.8 million requests a month off-portal”
  • trying to make point that people are trying to go to URLs that don’t work for phone
  • but doesn’t that say that portal is not the be all and end all…?
• weirdies:
  • www.vnexpress.net — loads images using javascript timer 8 seconds after page load!
  • microsoft mobile site, sends wap content type then html content!
• operators seem to be 2:1 in favour of network proxy over portal URL field
• wap.* or *.mobi does help to identify mobile sites
  • need to identify site before you make the request, as may need to fake the user agent…
• operators: simple marketing message & enough capacity — 1 week of traffic went up 9 times in data usage
  • where adaptation has been deployed, there has been at least twice the traffic
• entering a URL will probably work — increases user confidence — encourages operators to spend more on mobile web
• predictions:
  1. mobile web will merge with PC web
  2. operators will stay with open gardens and will continue to offer more flat rate
     • admob — internet revenue models
  3. end of the mobile web only brand
     • mobile only services will very specific niche

Content Transformation - Richard Blades @ Novarra

these guys do the content transformation for Vodafone

• do Java and BREW clients as well as server-side
• some operators are talking about using both client and server
  • if client — what are the default bookmarks…?
• operators are using this change as an opportunity to move to web2.0-stylee
• moving to server-side enables faster deployment of new technologies (e.g. new video codecs)
• average usage after transformation: 0.6 MBytes / day (from 0.18 MBytes before)
  • top 100 sites on alexa show up high on mobile
  • social networking, email
  • similar time profile to flirtomatic: peaks from 11.30pm
  • not unusual to find sessions of up to 30mins
• www.novarra.com/faqs — will be available shortly
• mailto:mobilecontent@novarra.com

Internet Made Mobile - Andrea Trasatti @ dotMobi

• phone.mobi is the definitive device database on the web
• trying to build
  • mobile web test suite
  • web interface to device database
  • standards-based API to embed into application
    • easy to install, but keeps in sync with central server
• create & manage tests on the mobile device
• contributing opinions — from UAProf and actual experience
• http://ready.mobi provides emulators for phones

mippin makes it mobile

http://mippin.com/preview

• used to make mobizines
• can’t cross the chasm with a client so switched to server-based
• off-portal portal providing access to RSS feeds
• also has mipplets to provide widgets on mippin customised home page

Next momoLondon

• November 6: 2nd Anniversary + “Mobile Advertising”