Life blog

Got mobile platform stats? Anders does.

Some interesting stats collected and brought into one place by Anders. He's looking at the different mobile platforms.

I am impressed that there are 700M Java phones, though he doesn't split them between MIDP 1 or 2 (and of course, this must included smartphones and such). How long will it take, though for Symbian, soon to pass the 100M mark to overtake this value and be the dominant platform? Or will Linux win that race?

Either way, that leaves about 1.3B phones that do not have Java, which suggests to me basic SMS and voice phones. That number is growing, too. And, to me, that's a platform.

Hmm, just realized one 'platform' I'd like to see as part of this list is XHTML, since that's a platform that can be built upon for services and such. How many such devices out there?

Link: the mobile experience - Blog Archive - Mobile platform statistics.

I’ve done some searching for statistics on different types mobile platforms and their current global uptake. Here is a what I’ve found.

Stephanie on: Alex, Pig, GSM and the Digital Divide

Stephanie has this great article looking into the impact of mobile phones in emerging markets. Emerging markets are a large part of the book I'm working on, since the numbers of folks who will take the next billion phones* who are from India, China, or Afica should make us wake up to the impending (already happening?) global and local social and economic impact.

Link: Keitai / Alex, Pig, GSM and the Digital Divide.

One of the topics I find the most fascinating in mobile was again in the news yesterday with the imminent arrival of the 2 billion-th GSM subscriber—mostly due to astronomically high subscriber numbers in emerging markets.

*Stephanie, I think we are past 2B already, and 4B is already expected by 2010

And speaking about going analog...

Even though I live with gadgets and tech, I am not really a gadget person. I think in terms of 'doing' things not 'enablers' and such.

Chris Heathcote, who might come across as a techie, but isn't really (he's 'just' a really interested, as in 'interested in everything', person). He voices his realization   that he is a 'neophile' and that 'doing' is what he does.

Here he mentions the most recent things he's done. I think this ties in well with some of the things he says he heard Ben Hammersley talk about (link below) and with some things Ulla-Maaria, of Crafting fame, keeps talking about - despite our digitalization of everything, we still need tanglible things - sweaters, books, albums, bicycles (that's my weakness), glass, shirts (that's Chris' weakness), and so on.

When I think of the narrative the underlies all that we create, electronic or otherwise, I always like to ask myself how that fits into our Lifestyle. Too often I see colleagues enamoured with the latest trend, a trend that just doesn't make sense or is unsustainable since it really doesn't fit how we love, live, fight, screw, build, touch, taste, and feel.

It's about making meaning, about being relevant, about slipping in to the way I experience and share my world.

Link: Reboot.

I’m speaking, on Thursday night, at Reboot 8. It’s a wonderful conference - despite having had me back to speak three times now - and always a joy. For a tech conference, it’s remarkably untechy: I’m talking on “How to be a Renaissance Man,” but as I’ve been given the keynote slot of fun/doom - 8pm between the beers and the DJ - expect lots of knob gags and references to the more profane influences on the life of Raphael.  Looking at the programme the striking thing is the amount of old tech people running as fast as they can from the digital to the tangible, and from the solo to the social. I know many people in the online world who yearn to make things with their fingers, to be cooks or gardeners or painters or carpenters, and who are rejecting the web2.0 rehash of 1999 as ultimately tiresome and meaningless. Maybe I’m old and jaded, but there’s got to something more beautiful than yet another blog or social network. Time to find it.

Chris, I'll take your lead (again) and strive to say 'Yes' more often. Looking forward to more adventures you will have by just saying 'yes'. :-)

Boston Globe on: PDA buffs go back to basics

Great article in the Boston Globe (link below) investigating the analog counter-culture - pads and pens replacing PDAs.

Even though I have have managed my calendar, contacts, to-dos, and some notes on mobile devices for the past 8 years* or so, I still write most of my articles and stories, and take notes at meetings with a simple pad and pen. I have a preferred pad format (tall and thin with a spiral binder on the side), but any will really do.** And I have a preferred pen (Uniball, black), but any pen will do (no pencils, though).***

For me, it's about protability and ease of use. A laptop just doesn't cut it. As for PDA, they stink for long note taking or writing or drawing (my biggest beef).

At least now I don't feel like I am still too analog.

Oh, and see who they quote - someone who's recently rediscovered the joys of paper and ink.

Link: PDA buffs go back to basics - The Boston Globe.

Christian Lindholm , vice president of global mobile products for Yahoo!, used a Moleskine to go analog this February for brainstorming and taking notes. He now carries around a Moleskine reporter-style notebook and uses it sideways, or as he puts it, in ``landscape" format.

``I needed an instant portable solution that I could have with me all the time, which doesn't run out of batteries, has high resolution and is ergonomic to write on," he said. ``I'm actually quite pleased. I'm already in my second generation, almost third."

*I've been synching my Mac then my PC to various different generations of mobile devices. The ones I remember at the moment: Palm III, Palm V, Nokia 6210, 9100, 9210, 7650, 3650, 6600, 7610, 6630, 6680, N70, N93. Synching, especially over the air, has been near and dear to me for a long time and I have learned quite a bit about what to do and not to do. :-) Fodder for a future article, I am sure.

**Folks, what's with the Moleskine? Too trendy for me. :-P

***Oh, but someday I do want to try all those different pens.... :-)

 

Blindspot: Mobile browsing

Yesterday, I had a great, if rushed, conversation with Nokia's Browser Master, Franklin Davis (nice bio on this page). Franklin has been deep into mobile browser and Web technologies for a very long time and I like to go to him for insight into where things are going. His big thing now is the Nokia Open Source S60 Browser that is based on the same code as Safari from Apple. I've been using the browser on my N93, but it's also available on a bunch of other more recent S60 phones, if are lucky enough to get one. It's really the fullest browser on a mobile, allowing you to do a lot more than most PC-based browsers only a few years ago.

But, here comes my blindspot*: As you may have noticed from reading my site, I am not too fond of passive mobile browsing or content consumption. And, talking to Franklin, I was wondering how to put my thoughts in a positive light, since he's a 'browser' guy. After talking with him and then doing some more thinking today, I have better positioned the S60 OSS Browser in my model of the mobile world.

We are not consumers. We are active participants in our life.
The mobile has taken communication and sharing to a new level for humanity. The two most used features of a mobile phone are voice and text messaging - communication. Unfortunately, most mobile service providers think all we want to do is sit and watch TV, download ring tones and wall papers, and, yes, browse information. Eh, that doesn't fit my idea of the Mobile Lifestyle.

If the survivors of Web 1.0 and the poster children of Web 2.0 are any indication, even on the PC-based Web, people aren't just passively consuming. Ebay and Amazon are not about consuming, but connecting via an enabling platform. Google is not about browsing, but about seeking and finding answers to our questions. Flickr is not about browsing, but about sharing images of our life. On-line journals and logs are not about browsing, but about communicating intimately.

Then what is the fascination with mobile browsing? I want mobile cognecting, sharing, finding, interacting.

I admitted to Franklin that I really don't think it's about full access to Web content, but full access to Web services. I think a full browser on a mobile phone that enables browsing of full Web sites is nice. It's part of a continuum from simple sites that are mobile-savvy, to mobile-friendly (they don't break on a mobile browser), to all the millions of old and current sites that ignore the mobile. And, it's surely a better option than .mobi (which Franklin and I didn't discuss) and maybe transcoders (which we did discuss and Franklin is aware of the legal issues brought up by Scott Rafer and Dave Harper).

Furthermore, my head lately has been in low-end, mass-market phones with simpler browsers, so full browsing is not part of my daily thoughts. On my mind, when it comes to the mobile browser, are the kind of services, like Winksite, that create a helping intermediary between the capabilities of my phone and the services I want to reach. On my mind, is not the 10s of million S60 phones, but the 100s of millions basic phones with no access to Web services.

Words of wisdom
Franklin and I have had many discussions of this sort over the past years and I can sometimes see his influence in my thoughts. Nonetheless, it pleased me when, once again, it turned out we were of the same mind - his vision is to have the best mobile browser out there so that mobiles no longer have to be second-class citizens on the Web, so that mobile users can interact with all the services out there, so that, as more mobiles actively and interactively use the Web, the Web will have to become mobile-savvy.

He envisions a two-prong approach of 1) evangelizing this versatile browser and what it can do - convincing folks to become mobile-savvy, and 2) increase the numbers of mobile phones accessing the Web in general - to wake people up to the rapidly growing numbers of phones accessing their sites and hence convince folks to become mobile-savvy.

And, in response to some of my desires as to how I would like to interact with the Web from my mobile (and not just browse), he let me in on some current and future developments. I'm not sure what is public of not, so just a tease right now - sorry. Suffice it to say, Franklin is part of a cool team that has a long-term vision of how mobile phones will interact with Web services in the future.

Model holding steady
I can still say that I am not so keen on mobile browsing. Nonetheless, my idea of the mobile Web is well within the plans Franklin and the browser team have. Indeed, the browser team is not really building a browser, but a tool to interact with the Web, with the same freedom and flexibility I have from my PC.

Maybe Franklin and team should no longer call it a 'browser', that's too passive and misleading, considering their vision. What could it be called? Hmm. :-)

*I call a 'blindspot' anything I don't get or think others don't get, basically trying understand why I don't agree with the general consensus. Click here for other blindspots I have written about. Sadly, I have a long list of other blindspots of mine that I still want to write about.

Martin asks: Porting FON into a Symbian 3G Wifi Phone

A friend of mine pointed out that Martin Varsavsky is thinking of how to combine WiFi mobile phones with his FON movement.

It really depends on what he has in mind. Is it to turn the phone into a FON bases station? The wifi on the phone doesn't actually work in that manner, as far as I can tell (I have an N93).

The WiFi is really only for the phone to connect to a WiFi network. If anyone were to connect to the phone, I am pretty sure that the phone would not be able to tunnel that to the 3G network - so no badwidth sharing, really.

Hence, there may two ways at least to approach this:
1 - make the WLAN phone FON-friendly, such that it connects to FON basestations easily and provides all the FON services to the phone.
2 - make the phone FON-friendly such that the phone can share its 3G connection via WiFi. Eh, there are cost issues and such, but it would be interesting to share bandwidth in this way. Normally, the phone will share bandwidth with one device over bluetooth. Here, you could have multiple WiFi devices sharing the phone's bandwidth.

So, it comes back to what he has in mind.

Martin?

Link [via Dirk H]: Martin Varsavsky | English.

Does anyone know how we could port FON functionality say chillispot into a Symbian 3G/WiFi phone like the N80? If so please write to me. I see a great potential in taking the Fon Movement into mobile phones and have 3G to WiFi converters. Just look at the WiFi Alliance site and see how many gadgets have WiFi while there are almost no gadgets that are not phones with 3G.

From the Nokia press site: Nokia decides not to go forward with Sanyo CDMA partnership and plans broad restructuring of its CDMA business

Looks like Sanyo and Nokia in the end could not agree on some issues (Disclaimer: Just like most of you, I am not privvy to anything regarding this announcement, so don't ask me for more info.).

I don't know what this really means for Nokia's CDMA line, but there's sure to be more turbulence ahead for that division.

I have a lot of opinions in this space, as I have watched the CDMA guys try to find their groove. But, alas, I don't think it's appropriate for me to say anything further at this time other than 'Best of luck, Nokia CDMA'.

What a tease. :-P

Link: Nokia - ShowPressRelease.

Espoo, Finland - Nokia announced today that it will not be forming the new CDMA device company with SANYO it preliminarily announced on February 14, 2006. Nokia decided not to pursue its earlier plan as it concluded the terms and conditions of the proposed partnership were not satisfactory and in the best interests of Nokia's long term success. In addition to an already financially prohibitive CDMA ecosystem in general, recent developments may indicate that the CDMA emerging markets business case is looking more challenging.

Exploring the Depths of Thought and the Inquiry into Our Spirit:* Aula Movement 2006

Marko Ahtisaari and Jyri Engeström, with the help of a team of wonderful people I was fortunate to meet, organized a two-day event in Helsinki called Aula Movement 2006.

Aula is an ‘open community of people working in different fields of life including science, art, business, government, and NGOs.’ It is run by Marko and Jyri and a few other enlightened people here in Helsinki. I must shamefully admit that I am not half (quarter!) as involved as I would like to be - I find the mix of thinking and doing closer to my academic (philosophic?) ways.

Aula Movement 2006 was ‘about the direction of society, culture and technology.’ The theme tended towards where mobility meets the Web, ‘the overlapping of the physical and the virtual, and the social movement-like nature of new technologies.’

I was fortunate enough to attend the first day and the tail end sliver of the second day. And, as happens any time I enter the Marko-Jyri Zone, I left enlightened, my head full of new thoughts, old thoughts pulled up and shaken up again, having met and listened to the gaggle of clever and active people who are normally part of Marko and Jyri’s world.

The first day was open to the general public. As happens when I go to local events that are tech (especially, mobile) oriented, I met a bunch of great folks I already know (great seein’ ya!). There were also some folks I was surprised to see there (I have an idea why, now). Nonetheless, even though they seemed out of place, it was a needed eye-opener for them.

The speakers that day were Clay Shirky, Alistair Curtis, Martin Varsavsky, and Joi Ito. Interspersed were some music and interpretive dance pieces - to clear the mental palate, as it were, cool and interesting like lime sorbet between courses of a meal.

Clay spoke about how the open source movement allows coders to sample the full range of possibilities and fail often in a cost effective way. To the biologist geek in me, it’s a simple Darwinian selection process. What I think Clay left out, though I know he understands, is that the way you sample the space of the possible, your selection mechanism, necessarily restricts the kinds of things you come up with. So, to me, the open source process is good, but I want to see such broad sampling in the mobile world, where things are multi-part, more complex, and have larger hurdles than simply a coder with a PC.

Alistair, Chief of Design, Nokia, I am embarrassed to say, I sort of tuned out. There were too many corporate slides. And he droned on about how Nokia Design was connecting with user emotion. I am sure Alistair is a nice guy. But if you are passionate about something, especially designing experiences, which is the soul of the company, then it should show. My problem was with his lack of enthusiasm in the presentation. I keep coming back to the idea that corporate leaders should be measured on how enthusiastic and infectious they are. Case in point: Martin Varsavsky.

Martin is the Chief Fonero (I mentioned him before). He introduced the audience to FON, his grass-roots WiFi community. He was also launching FON formally in Finland (Marko is Chief Fonero, Finland). In terms of enthusiasm, Martin exuded it. He was like a stand-up comic, bringing reality to what he was saying, not being afraid to make a bold statement, and telling it in the true way of a believer. Anina has a few more things to say about Martin, and even has him on video.

Joi was the last speaker of the day. He is a breed apart, living a few years ahead of the regular world. Listening to him is like tunneling the mind-waves of how folks will live and communicate in the future. For those who don't follow Joi, his last big trend bet was blogging. He was an early investor and supporter of Six Apart, introducing me to them (with Marko), when they were a still small company (and I have watched them blossom incredibly). Now, he’s hooked on World of Warcraft - an immersive online 3-D role-playing world. It may sound geeky, but, along with a bunch of folks he roped in or met there, he is discovering new things about how people interact, form groups, establish their own identity, and create. There have been some notes in the news about WoW (and a similar world called Second Life) being the New Golf. But, Joi clearly shows that it is actually the New Church. In golf, you get together to play a game then disband, and it’s the way to make connections in business. In contrast, in church, people get together, volunteer, in an ad-hoc fashion to accomplish certain tasks for the community or other individuals in a totally selfless fashion, and make meaningful, supportive, and lasting connections. WoW is about social reputation, accomplishing tasks in a non-authoritative environment, volunteering for the benefit of others, sharing, and so on. An interesting development to follow, for sure.

Later that evening there was a great dinner, where I had the good fortune to catch up with old acquaintances (great seein' you guys, too!) and meet some new people I hope to meet again, like Arwen O’Reilly and her pal (name?), both from Make Magazine. Together with the inestimable Ulla-Maaria (Jyri’s other half), we talked a lot about making things and, what Ulla-Maaria champions, crafting (read her Crafter's Manifesto!). I also spoke with Tyler Brûlé about his evolving ideas of a mobile TV channel. I also finally met Marko’s other half and partner in crime, Lisa Sounio, and some of her friends. Great bunch all.

The dinner party then moved to a local designer hotel and the conversation flowed on for hours. I met and chatted with, among others, a bunch of designers, met and spoke with Thomas Madsen-Mygdal of reboot fame, spoke a lot about the future of floor-ball with Fred, caught up with Loïc (dude, we gots to hit the road again - it's what we're good at!), and had a good chat on many things with Ross. While I have forgotten the details (for various reasons), I picked up a bunch of ideas and gossip that are now brewing in my head.

The second day was by invitation only and I wasn’t invited (I guess I'm not enough of a mover or shaker). But, there was a dinner in the evening, to which Anina was invited and I was her date (though I still felt a bit of a party-crasher, hence my uncharacteristic mousy-ness). Before dinner there was a talk titled ‘Tokyo Blues’ by Nurri Kim, about how she went around Tokyo and created cool photos of the many uses of a common blue tarp material all across Tokyo. Really cool.

After that, Cory Doctorow gave a great and enthusiastic talk about self-determination (I commented on a part, earlier this week). Loïc has a video of the talk - watch it.

With all the talks completed, Thomas Crampton gave a great summary of the whole thing (is it written down anywhere? it was really great.), so I was able to get a (teasing!) taste of what day 2 was like. Amazing. Too bad I missed it. Maybe next time.

We then were entertained by a great dance troupe, Gruppen Fyra, who did this amazing piece called ‘Pendulum’. Really hit the right buttons in my brain and soul.

After that we retired to a nice dinner with DJ music and great conversation. All in all, Marko and Jyri and gang know how to feed the mind and spirit. I am blessed to know them and share a small part in the things they do.

For more coverage on the event, check out more links here. 

*In good self-referential fashion, I borrowed the title from myself.

Great humor: 2006 Year of the Quitter by mojo

Mojo and I were talking this morning and she told me about this 'thread' of quitting she had been noticing. Here at Nokia, the past 12 months have seem like the quittin' time (in more ways than one), since so many big kahunas took off for other things: Pekka Ala-Pietälä, Jorma Ollila, Christian Lindholm, Pertti Korhonen, Matti Ala-Huhta, Frank Nuovo, just to name a few (and Sari Baldauf and JT Bergqvist earlier last year).

Yes, Mojo, we are still not at Summer even. And I do know a few who will likely quit (or are so jonesing to) in the next 6 months, too.

One thing: 'quitting' usually has a bad connotation. I would like to to hope that for most on your list, the 'quitting' was done for a positive reason and the interesting tid-bit is not in 'why they quit' but 'what they are doing now' and 'how by quitting, I am a better person'.

Eh, just a more positive spin, cause, well, we can talk about that later. :-)

Link: 2006 Year of the Quitter | 6/20/2006 | mobile jones.

The 21st century is different in so many ways from the 20th century.  In its short life, this century is about complexity, information explosion, democracy breaking out all over, shifting power and from observing the landscape of social media; it's also "The Year to Quitter."

Will this work?: Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club

I was listening to an amazing talk by Cory Doctorow at the Aula Movement 2006 and of the many interesting things he brought up (I hope to bring them up eventually) was the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club.

These folks are bent on building phones on their own, much like the Homebrew Computer Club built computers outside the realm of the Big Iron.

Will it work? Will it get anywhere? Is the mobile world right now as constrictive as the computing and telecom world of the 70s?

Hmm.

And who will be the equivalent players - the Wozniaks and Jobs and Gates, not to mention the Osbornes and other forgotten along the way?

Link: telefono: Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club.

I’m announcing the formation of the “Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club.” Our purpose is to provide support and guidance for individuals building their own “convergence devices.” We’re going to have monthly meetings where we discuss designs and applications with the idea that two heads is frequently better than one. Don’t toil in solitude, trying to get your latest wireless hardware hack to work. We’re “hackers” only in the classic sense, no phone cloners please.

Interesting: Nokia and Siemens to merge their communications service provider businesses

Many observers have been expecting the big wireless network providers (Ericsson and Nokia) to gobble up a smaller provider in response to the Lucent-Alcatel merger.

A different thought I had was that the providers throw all their chips into one kinda lab that keeps the tech going. One thing that is hard is that all of them need to develop stuff for a really tight market. I was hoping that they would pool resources to avoid losing the skill sets needed for the upswing in the market in a few years (if it comes?).

Yeah, joint ventures are one way of doing it. By my count, this is Nokia's second big jiont venture in a core area - one with Sanyo over CDMA and now this one with Siemens over Network Infra.

Kinda makes the head spin, thinking about it.

Nokia - ShowPressRelease

Nokia and Siemens today announced that they intend to merge the Networks Business Group of Nokia and the carrier-related operations of Siemens into a new company, to be called Nokia Siemens Networks. The 50-50 joint venture will create a global leader with strong positions in important growth segments of fixed and mobile network infrastructure and services.

Marc says: Point at or Store - we don’t care

Marc has been a leader in the thinking around Digital Lifestyle Aggregators, the portals, personal home pages, aggregators, and what-not that bring various data or media channels together into one coherent experience.

It's a pet idea for me, since I think DLA's are the way to go to provide a great mobile Web experience.

A short while back, Marc had a reply to a comment regarding the difference between storing data or just pointing to data. This is relevant (and I stretch the thread a bit here) to the mobile world since storage is limited and going online is never the best thing to do, so it's never a clear-cut case whether to locally store or to store on a server or to just point to the original somewhere out there.

To his credit, Marc reiterates that the location of data or user info (relevant morsels a DLA aggregates) is not the necessarily the point, but the ability to bring it all together is. And, to pass his insight through my mental filters, it maybe better for the service that brings these morsels together to hold some local info about the user to provide the best user experience via profiles, storage, and interactivity.

Indeed.

Geez, Marc, we are so of one mind here.

Link: Marc’s Voice � Blog Archive � Point at or Store - we don’t care.

Please don’t confuse the fact that we CAN store media, empower you to blog with structured blogging or provide you easy ways to move your data IN; but we can also provide you ways to move your data OUT - to anywhere you wanna be, post to, make friends with or in some other way “exist in cyberspace”.

At the Bio Rex, Helsinki for the Aula 2006 Movement

Wed 14.06.2006 16.37 Image039

Sittin' in back, natch.

On Stephanie Rieger

I met Stephanie first at Les Blogs. Very interesting stuff, but we never had a chance to talk. Then she showed up at the MoMo Global Summit (representing the Vancouver chapter) and we were able to have a long chat over dinner.

Stephanie and her husband are creating some really cool mobile education apps. A combination of cool design and relevant content packaged in a neat little app.

Here is a great article covering a few of her apps. It's a great read. Oh, and go check out her stuff!

Link: mopocket.

I want to talk with you today about a little Canadian company doing big mobile things that I discovered during last months Mobile Monday Global Summit in Helsinki, Finland. Yiibu is a small team of creative types with one obsession—creating unique and engaging content for emerging mobile technologies and devices. But that explanation does not even merely come close to their creative skill and the powerful aspect of mobile medium that they have tapped. When Stephanie Rieger (cofounder and head of content strategy and design) first showed me some of the Flash Light Symbian Series 60 based content that Yiibu has designed I immediately fell in love with it.

Way way way off-topic: Brasil 1x0 Croatia

A wee tid-bit: I'm half-Brasilian and grew up in Brasil. Natch, football* is a passion (my daughter and son play it). As fates would have it, I married an amazing footballer who shares my love of the game.

This month I pulled out the TV from storage to watch the Cup (as I do every 4 years).

What's this got to do with the Mobile Lifestyle? Uh, nothing really. So, here's a mobile plug:

I've been following the matches I can't watch with Yahoo's FIFA World Cup mobile portal.

Hmmm, maybe a review is in order.

*Football? Yes, I might be an American, but I grew up calling it football and now I live in Europe. Football is a game you play with your feet, not with tons of padding and a helmet and a ball nestled in your arms. :-P

Check out Widsets' smooth mobile-friendly service sigh-up

One thing I want to point out about Widsets is the sign-up process. There are at least two ways I have used.

Push message:
- You sign up with your mobile number.
- The services sends you a push SMS.
- Click on the link in the message.
- Download the app.

Mobile site:
- Just go to get.widsets.com (easy to remember) with your mobile browser.
- Sign in with your Widsets username and password.
- Download the app.

Have either of these methods worked for you? What do you think of services that let you sign up this way? Are there services you wished were like this - integrating sign-up in this mobile-savvy way?

 

If I recall, ShoZu does a good job with sign-up, too. The common thread between the two services is that they come from companies with a deep understanding of the mobile lifestyle.

OK, so there are other mobile-friendly aspects that I wish Widsets had (a topic for another day). But because sign-up is so crucial for service take-up, I think these guys have done a good job.

Where I'd like to be: Aula 2006 - Movement

Looking to attend at least the first day and then some.

Lots of folks I know and would like to get an update from. Great topic, too.

Pity, I only found about it today. But, as luck would have it (sort of), my schedule is open.

Link: zengestrom.com: Aula 2006 - Movement.

Marko Ahtisaari and I are organizing the Aula 2006 - Movement event in Helsinki next week. This will be the largest Aula event yet, and we've moved it to a larger venue at Bio Rex to accommodate as many participants as we can.

The theme 'movement' points to mobility meeting web 2.0, technologies as social movements, and the overlapping between physical and virtual worlds. On a personal level movement is about not staying still but taking action to shape the future.

First ad-supported Symbian software?

One more cool product has now lost all value and become a free product.

And they expect 10 million s60 users in 18 months - about 1 in 10 of all s60 users. Eh, I don't think so, but it must be the figure the product manager fooled his boss with. And what is the expected revenue per user? Is this a move that validates the difficulty (impossibility) of building a business on software sales? Or, do they expect to actually make more money this way?

Best of luck dudes.

Link [via Stephen, via Tommi]: WorldMate Free Edition - First Ad Supported Symbian Software.

This is the first piece of ad supported software (also known as adware) to be made available for the Symbian platform. Symbian developers are finding application distribution and marketting to be the most difficult issue to face in the application development cycle. MobiMate is clearly looking to innovate in this area and gain a wider market share for its best selling product. MobiMate will then be able to use this customer base both as a revenue source (mobile advertising), but also for marketing base. It is likely they will offer pay-for updates (with a greater level of functionality) as well as cross selling other applications.

Still trying to get mobile browsing right?

Widgets, browsers, portals, feed readers, widgets, and so on - folks are still trying to figure out the best way to get media to a mobile device. Via Gawker (I was checking out their mobile offerings, just following a trail) I (re-)discovered Mobileplay.*

Checking out their intro, it looks to me like a variation on what everyone is trying to do:

How to design the best mobile browsing experience?

Hmm. Something to think about. Nontheless, alternatives are good.

Link: Mobileplay.

Welcome to Mobileplay
Now Let's Have Some Fun.


Add FREE News, Apps & Games to your PDA or smartphone. Easy.


Get Travel Itineraries, Hotels, Restaurants and Weather updates on the go. Fast.


Share Apps, Games, Articles, Messages with your friends. Fun.

*Mobileplay reminds me of Omnisky, which bundled data access with a content browsing system.

More on Widsets

Here's the announcement on the Widsets blog, from my fellow colleagues (we are on the same floor) at Nokia.

I hope to write a first look type of review, if I ever get the chance and no one beats me to it. I have a whole long list of notes on it and some comments. But, you'll have to wait or harass me into doing it. :-)

Link: WidSets.

Hopefully without any magic of numerology we opened the site and made 06.06.06 a unique day. We have run the site internally and with selected test groups for a while, and also already made first upgrades according to the feedback. The whole team feels excited in such a day and at the same time we commit to stay creative and fast in future as well. Please feel encouraged to contribute, and don't forget to tell your friends!

Widsets - Mobile widgets from Nokia

I've been playing with it internally and now found out the you can play with it too.

http://www.widsets.com

More about it later. In an all-day meeting.

Feel free to leave your impression of the service down in my comments.

MobHappy on .mobi

As you may have heard, .mobi domains have started to be distributed. But, the heated discussion has not settled down. Indeed, I see the complaints and warnings outnumbering the positive messages. And for the most part, the only positive messages have come from folks directly involved with .mobi.

That's not too promising. Sounds like a marketing exercise on the order of so many initiatives that were born in 2000 and 2001 (I was there, I remember).

Carlo, at MobHappy (link below), posted* a good piece that has generated some great comments. Reading the comments, I was able to finally wrap my head around this and put it in perspective. Indeed, Tom Hume, the last comment I saw, pulls us back to see some of the simple benefits of .mobi, though not necessarily the main benefits the .mobi gang might be pushing (see quote below).

So, this is the thought that is forming in my head:

.mobi is a ghetto of a sort, causing a squatters rush of domain buyers. That's a nasty comment, but I see .mobi at odds with the direction everyone else has been trying to go. But, here's the silver lining, due to the stipulations of domain ownership, these buyers, as Tom points out, will have to create some sort of mobile site. That's good, in the sense that it will get these domain owners to deal with mobile version of their site. I think that's a bit of a backhanded compliment, but the intent can have interesting consequences.

Now, let's pull back a bit more.

I like to view things as continuums. Adding a thought I got from Christian Lindholm, I think we're going to have all sorts of combinations out there - unchanged sites, sites with separate mobile versions, sites that sniff the user agent and re-do the layout via CSS, multiple sites being viewed via a transcoder (sorry, Scott and Dave), and, with .mobi, special mobile sites. I don't think .mobi will ever be the only way to serve mobile sites, I don't think they will dominate ever, I don't think we will ever have a simple way to tackle this.

On the flip side, what I do think will happen is that, as the mobile replaces the PC as the main channel to access Web info, basic market forces will help us find 1) the best ways to provide Web info to phones, 2) drive businesses to no longer treat their mobile site as a second-class citizen. My prediction is that, in the end, it will not be about browsing, which is where I think most of the discussion is right now, but in making the Web mobile-savvy, fusing the Web with the Mobile Lifestyle (you knew I'd say that, right?).

What do you think? Can we stop wasting brain cycles debating .mobi, relegate it to being just one (albeit minor) way of mobilizing websites, and realize that there are other ways for us to drive the market to mobilize the Web? Can we all wake up and realize that it is not about browsing, that special domain names or fancy browsers are not the answer to mobilizing the Web, that it is deeper than that?

What do you think?

.mobi — Kickstarting the Mobile Web, Or Holding It Back? at MobHappy

To be the big win of .mobi is that it will get companies thinking about their mobile presence. Motivated in part by fear and need to protect brands and trademarks, they’ll need to ensure they own their .mobi domain - and to use it, they’ll need to put out some sort of mobile presence. So we benefit from a groundswell of new mobile content.

*Hey, and I know Carlo's post was a while ago. The bigger the topic, sometimes the slower I am to craft a response. :-) Also, I've been falling behind on my feeds and emails, so appy-polly-logies to all affected.

I've been interviewed

Oh-ho. Seems like Phil finally has captured me for the future.

Thanks Phil for including me in your illustrious list of interviewees. :-)

Go listen to this and other recordings about S60.

Here's also an intro you can read.

Link: Voice of S60

Charlie Schick was a good sport to be my very first victim interview. He's was with S60 way back in the early days and provides a very interesting and unique perspective. Many thanks to Charlie for coming on the show! Here's the podcast...

Not a bad interview, if I may say so. Very pleased. If you want to know where I came from and what I'm thinking of, this is a great place to find out about it. :-D

Number for the day: 4 billion

I heard a figure yesterday:

4 Billion mobile phone users by 2010

Whoah.

Are you ready?

Something tells me that it will actually come sooner.

Be a winkster. I'm a winkster! Have you ever been winkster?

Dave Harper sent me this link (below) he came across of someone who uses WINKsite.

Megan Heckeroth is a pro golfer, seemingly with ties to Nokia (I have no idea, but there are folks I can ask), among others. Her site is chock-full of info on her and what she's up to and she uses her WINKsite as her 'personal podium to the world'.

Wow.

But, what really had me grinning was her asking folks if they want to be a 'winkster'. Sorry, Dave, but it's a great and fun tag for all of your - winksters. Heh.

I'm a winkster (see upper right of my site). Are you?

Official Site of Megan Heckeroth, Golf Tour Pro, On the Road the LPGA

use my mobile site as my personal podium to the world, updating my scores and my schedule, being in contact regardless of timezone or date; it is for me a convenient mobile dashboard to all you find important or as a space to build and manage a mobile community.