Monday night is demo night

Mobile Monday London is at a new location this Monday (15th June). Most of the MoMoLo events I've attended over the last few years have been at the CBI Conference Centre in the Centrepoint building near Tottenham Court Road tube station. But on this occasion, the venue will be the 10th floor of the Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, SE1 0SU. This venue is south of Tate Modern, and nearby tube stations include Blackfriars, Waterloo, Southwark, Cannon Street and London Brige. The event is being hosted by IPC Media, who are based in the building.


Blue Fin building has its own significance in the Symbian world. The second floor of that building is home to the UK branch of SOSCO - which is an acronym for "S60 on Symbian Customer Operations". Prior to Nokia's acquisition of Symbian Ltd last December, the unit was known by the simpler name of SCO - "Symbian Customer Operations". It's a descendent (via several renamings) of the Technical Consulting ("TC") department which was created on the initial formation of Symbian Ltd back in June 1998. I was responsible for TC at that time, and several of the people from the early days of TC still work in SOSCO. Among other claims to fame, SOSCO engineers recently ported a version of the Symbian platform to run on an off the shelf Atom based motherboard from Intel.

This Monday's event is a demo night. At the last count, the following mobile demos are lined up:

• Vopium - like Skype but fully integrated into your mobile's phonebook
• Peepr.TV - webcam streaming to mobile
• 0870.me - standard rate calls instead of 0870
• Photofit - photo mashup application
• Total Hotspots - Rummble your nearest wifi hotspot
• Audioboo - audio micro-blogging as much loved by Stephen Fry amongst others
• Artilium - making LBS easy for developers
• Proxama - the latest in NFC wallets
• Ookl - mobile learning
• Singtones - karaoke on your phone
• Masabi - rail ticketing
• Corebridge - CRM on the go
• Spoonfed - London restaurant finder

It will be a fine chance to weigh up some innovative mobile applications and services. There will presumably be some of the latest mobile devices on show too - given that the co-sponsor of the evening (along with IPC Media) is Samsung Mobile Innovator.



The word on the streets is that Samsung Mobile Innovator "will be making a special announcement on Monday evening" - which is another reason for attending. (OK, full disclosure: let me confess my source for this info: it's someone who used to work for SOSCO, but who is now employed by Samsung Mobile Innovator.)

As the official site for the event explains:

• Doors will open at 6pm for a prompt start at 6.30pm;
• There's a LOT to get through;
• Please allow enough time to get through security on the ground floor and take the lift up to the 10th floor;
• Also please make sure you are registered well in advance so you can whizz through security;
• There is no guarantee of entry unless you are registered in advance.

To register, please visit the event website.

The venue has capacity for 155 participants. As I write this, there are 38 places still available.

What have operators done for us recently?

Mobile Monday in London this Monday evening (9th March) will be on the topic of "What have operators done for us recently?".

To quote from the event website,

What have mobile operators done for innovators and developers, lately? Our next MobileMonday London event will explore this issue. The event will be held on March 9th at CBI conference centre (at Centrepoint Tower) at 6:00 pm, sponsored by O2 Litmus and Vodafone. Panelists will include James Parton from O2, Terence Eden from Vodafone, Steve Wolak from Betavine, David Wood from Symbian Foundation and Jo Rabin representing dotMobi. The event will be chaired by Anna Gudmundson from AdIQ and Dan Appelquist will be your host for the evening.

At the time of writing, there are still a few registration slots left. If you're in or around London on Monday evening, and you're at all interested in the future of the mobile phone industry, you will almost certainly find the meeting worthwhile. From my past experience, these events are great for networking as well as for highlighting ideas and sharply debugging them. The breadth and depth of experience in the room mean that any superficially attractive proclamations from panellists are quickly challenged. I typically leave these meetings wiser than when I went in (and often chastened, too).

Usually people blog meetings after they happen (or whilst they are happening). In this case, I'd like to set down a few thoughts in advance.

Early last year, Symbian commissioned a third party report into the viewpoints and experiences of mobile developers. The report had a Californian bias but the results are familiar even in the context of Europe. The report did not specifically seek out the opinions of developers towards network operators, but these opinions came through loud and clear regardless. Here are some representative comments:

• "Everyone in tech has rope burns around their necks from doing business with the carriers [network operators]. They hung themselves trying to do carrier deals."
• "The operator is an adversary, not a partner."
• "The basic problem with mobile is that operators are in the way."
• "The reality is that the mobile operators will screw you, unless they already want to do what you're developing. They always ask, 'What's in it for me?'"

I raise these comments here, not because I endorse them, but because they articulated a set of opinions that seem to be widely held, roughly twelve months ago.

Operators are (of course!) aware of these perceptions too, and are seeking to address these concerns. At the Mobile Monday meeting, we'll have a chance to evaluate progress.

Ahead of the meeting, I offer the following six points for consideration:

1: With their widespread high bandwidth coverage, the wireless networks are a modern-day technological marvel - perhaps one of the seven wonders of the present era. These networks need maintenance and care. For this reason, network operators are justified in seeking to protect access to this resource. If these resources become flooded with too much video transfer, manic automated messaging, or deleterious malware, we will all be the losers as a result.

2: Having invested very considerably in the build-up of these networks, it is completely reasonable for operators to seek to protect a significant revenue flow from the utilisation of these networks - especially from core product lines such as voice and SMS. Anything that risks destroying this revenue flow is bound to cause alarm.

3: The potential upside of new revenue flow from innovative new data services often seems dwarfed by the potential downside from loss of revenues from existing services, if networks are opened too freely to new players. In other words, network operators all face a case of the Innovators' Dilemma. When it comes to the strategic crunch, innovative new business potential often loses out to maintaining the existing lines of business.

4. New lines of revenue for operators - to supplement the old faithfuls of voice and SMS - include the following:

• Straightforward data usage charges;
• A micro-share of monetary transactions (such as mobile banking, or goods being bought or sold or advertised) that are carried out over wireless network;
• Reliable provision of high-quality services (such as would support crystal-clear telephone conference calls);
• Premium charges for personalised services (such as answers to searches or enquiries)
  
• A share of the financial savings that companies can achieve through efficiency gains from the intelligent deployment of new mobile services; etc.

But in all cases, the evolution of these new lines of service is likely be faster and more successful, if new entrepreneurs and innovators can be involved and feel welcome.

5. The best step to involving more innovators in the development of commercially significant new revenues - and to solving the case of the Innovators Dilemma mentioned above - is to systematically identify and analyse and (as far as possible) eliminate all cases of friction in the existing mobile ecosystem.

6. Three instances of mobile ecosystem friction stand out:

• The diversity (fragmentation) of different operator developer support programmes. Developers have to invest considerable effort in joining and participating in each different scheme. Why can't there more greater commonality between these programmes?
• The hurdles involved with getting sophisticated applications approved for usage on networks and/or handsets - developers often feel that they are being forced to go through overly-onerous third party testing and verification hoops, in order to prove that their applications are trustworthy. Some element of verification is probably inevitable, but can't we find ways to streamline it?
• The difficulties consumers face in finding and then installing and using applications that are reliably meet their expectations.
  

In all cases, it's my view that a collaborative approach is more likely to deliver lasting value to the industry than a series of individualist approaches.

Mobile development in a hurry

"Google Mobile are moving all development away from downloadable apps to the mobile web"

That's a message mjelly records Charles Wiles, product manager for Google Gears for mobile, as making at this week's MoMo London event.

I was at the same event. I'm not sure I remember hearing quite such an emphatic message as mjelly reports, but I do remember hearing the following:

• Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) has been asking the Google Mobile team why they only make one app release every six months, whereas development of apps for PC web-browser happens much more quickly
• Downloadable apps for mobile devices are fraught with problems - including BIG issues with device fragmentation
• Taking Google Maps for mobile as an example: there are 10+ platforms to support, requiring 100's of builds in total - it all adds up to PAIN
• There must be a better way!
• The better way is to deliver services through the mobile web, instead of via downloadable applications.

I've heard this kind of message at previous MoMo London events, from lots of different speakers. Downloadable applications (whether written in native C++ for in Java) introduce lots of problems with development, deployment, and usability, whereas mobile web apps are a whole world simpler. The message that comes across is: If you want rapid development that in turn allows rapid innovation, stick with the mobile web. It's not a message I've enjoyed hearing, but I can't deny that lots of speakers have said it (in various different ways).

But what made the presentation from Charles Wiles all the more interesting was that, after highlighting difficulties facing downloadable mobile apps, he was equally critical of mobile web applications (which run inside a web browser environment on the device):

• Mobile web apps suck too!
• Javascript takes time to execute on mobile devices, and since it's single threaded, it blocks the UI
• There's often high network latency
• The mobile web apps lack access to location, the address book, and camera, etc.

It's for this kind of reason that Google has continued to release downloadable versions of their most popular applications. (Incidentally, pride of place on the Quick Access bar on my Nokia E61i idlescreen are the native C++ versions of Google Search and Google Maps. They're in that pole position because I find them both incredibly useful.)

It's also for this kind of reason that Apple's initial message about how to develop apps for the iPhone - that developers should just write web applications - was so poorly received. Would-be iPhone developers strongly suspected they could achieve better results, in many cases, by writing downloadable apps. This expectation has been vindicated by the heady events around the recent launch of the iPhone application store.

Four challenges facing mobile web apps

The four factors I generally highlight as limitations in mobile web applications vs. downloaded apps are:

1. The UI provided by a web browser is general purpose, and is often sub-optimal for a more complex application on the small screen of a mobile device (an example of the unsuitedness of the web browser UI in general is when users are confronted with messages such as "Don't press the Back button now!" or "Only press the OK button once!")
2. Applications need to be able to operate when they are disconnected from the network - as in an airplane or during a trip in an Olde World London underground train - or whenever reception is flaky. On a mobile device, the user experience of intermittently connected "push email" from the likes of BlackBerry is far more pleasant than an "always connected web browser" interface to server-side email
3. Web applications suffer from lack of access to much of the more "interesting" functionality on the phone
4. Web applications are often more sluggish than their downloaded equivalents.

Exploring two routes to improved mobile apps

So what is the best answer? Improve native mobile app development or improve mobile web app development? Unsurprisingly, the industy is exploring both routes.

To improve mobile web app development:

• Google Gears is providing offline functionality, and more besides
• The OMTP has unveiled the important BONDI initiative: "Leading Mobile Operators Collaborate to Enable Rich Mobile Web Services"
• AJAX supports improved user interfaces in web applications.

Each of these initiatives (and I could have mentioned quite a few more) is significant, and each deserves wide support. Each of them also faces complications - for example, the more AJAX is included in a web application (addressing problem #1 of the four I listed above), the more sluggishly that application tends to run (exacerbating problem #4). And as web applications gain more access to underlying rich phone functionality, complex issues of security and application validation rear their heads again. I doubt if any of these complications are fatal, but they reinforce the argument for the industry also looking, in parallel, at initiatives to improve native mobile app development.

To improve native mobile app development, Symbian has been putting considerable effort over the last few years into improved developer tools, developer documentation, APIs, and so on. The results are encouraging, but the job is far from done.

Quick recipes on Symbian OS

One of the disincentives to doing native application development on Symbian phones is the learning curve that developers need to climb, as they become familiar with various programming idioms. That's a topic that Kari Pulli (Nokia Research Fellow) discussed with me when he visited Symbian HQ back in Fall 2006. Kari had in mind the needs of people (especially in universities) who were already good C++ developers, but who don't have a lot of spare time or inclination to learn brand new programming techniques.

We brainstormed possible titles for a new Symbian Press book specifically targeted at this important developer segment:

• "Symbian progamming in a hurry"?
• "Hacking Symbian OS"?

In the months that followed, this idea bounced around inside Symbian, and gathered more and more support. The title changed in the process, to the more 'respectable' "Quick Recipes on Symbian OS". Michael Aubert stepped forwards as the lead author - you can read an interview with him on the Symbian Developer Network. Happily, the book went on sale last month. For my hopes for the book, I append a copy of the foreword I wrote for the book:

This book has been designed for people who are in a hurry.

Perhaps you are a developer who has been asked to port some software, initially written for another operating system (such as may run on a desktop computer), to Symbian OS. Or perhaps you have to investigate whether Symbian OS could be suited to an idea from a designer friend of yours. But the trouble is, you don’t have much time, and you have heard that Symbian OS is a sophisticated and rich software system with a considerable learning curve.

If you are like the majority of software engineers, you would like to take some time to investigate this kind of task. You might prefer to attend a training course, or work your way through some of the comprehensive reference material that already exists for Symbian OS. However, I guess that you don’t have the luxury of doing that – because you are facing tight schedule pressures. There isn’t sufficient slack in your schedule to research options as widely as you’d like. Your manager is expecting your report by the end of the week. So you need answers in a hurry.

That’s why Symbian Press commissioned the book you are now holding in your hands. We are assuming that you are a bright, savvy, experienced software developer, who’s already familiar with C++ and with modern software programming methods and idioms. You are willing to work hard and can learn fast. You are ready to take things on trust for a while, provided you can quickly find out how to perform various tasks within Symbian OS. Over time, you would like to learn more about the background and deeper principles behind Symbian OS, but that will have to wait – since at the moment, you’re looking for quick recipes.

Congratulations, you’ve found them!

In the pages ahead, you’ll find recipes covering topics such as Bluetooth, networking, location based services, multimedia, telephony, file handling, personal information management – and much more. In most recipes, we provide working code fragments that you should be able to copy and paste directly into your own programs, and we provide a full set of sample code for download from the book's website. We have also listed some common gotchas, so you can steer clear of these potential pitfalls.

Since you are in a hurry, I will stop writing now (even though there is lots more I would like to discuss with you), so that you can proceed at full pace into the material in the following pages. Good speed!

MoMo London: the momentum continues

Mobile Monday is a worldwide phenomenon, with chapters in more than 60 cities. Typically, chapters hold one meeting most months, usually on the first (or second) Monday - though some smaller groups meet less frequently. I hear that the London chapter is among the liveliest.

Tonight, Mobile Monday London held its thirtieth speaker meeting. Checking back through my Series 5mx Agenda, I counted that I've attended 18 out of the 30, going back to my first attendance in December 2005. The reasons I keep returning to these events are:

1. The networking opportunities are first class: all sorts of developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, project managers etc attend, from both large and small companies (including independent contractors)
2. The presentations (which are deliberately kept short) and the demos that follow (which are kept even shorter) often convey new insight about the cutting edge of the mobile industry
3. Disruptive yet throughtful questions are asked by highly knowledgeable audience members who have in many cases already personally been through a couple of business cycles, in different companies, experiencing the reality of technical ideas and business models similar to those being advocated by the presenters.

The quality of the Q&A alone often makes these meetings considerably more interesting and useful than some industry conferences which come with hefty price tags. That's the benefit of the collectively highly experienced MoMo London community.

The topic for this evening was "Enabling Location in Applications". The audience was enormous - being swelled, first by some members of the W3C who are attending a working meeting in London, and second by visiting members from overseas MoMo chapters (Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, Boston, Italy, and New York, among others) who were in town to discuss the future international setup of the organisation. This was on top of the very sizeable more local audience.

All seven of the presentations / demos included interesting comments. Here's a few points that caught my attention:

• Skyhook Wireless (who were the sponsors for this particular event) have a database of the locations of over 50 million wireless access points, including 16M+ in Europe alone. This database grows as the result of the records made by 500 drivers worldwide, include 200 in Europe (who have already driven some 750,000 km)
• A (non-mobile phone) application of the Skyhook technology is explained by David Pogue in this video: the Eye Fi system of automatically geo-tagging photos taken by your digital camera, without involving any GPS receiver
• Another partner of Skyhook is Trapster, who have an app for mobile phones that allows drivers to provide real-time alerts to one another about speed traps in the area
• Google Gears provides a Geolocation API, which in turn could provide much of the basis of a similar API in HTML5; that's a reminder that (as stressed by the Google speaker, Charles Wiles) "Google Gears is much more than offline"
• The demos and screenshots tended to show either the Nokia N95 or the iPhone; Andrew Scott of Rummble cheekily remarked that "It will take a long time before everyone has an iPhone - maybe two years"
• Andrew touched on another sensitive point with a follow-up remark: "Mobile Network Operators are probably never going to waken up and realise that they shouldn't be charging for location information"
• Both Andrew and Justin Davis of NinetyTen emphasised that mobile search and recommendations needed to be filtered, to give more prominence to entries that had been favourably reviewed by trusted contacts of the user
• Uniquely of all the speakers, Mark White of Locatrix (who said he had flown all the way from Brisbane Australia to speak at this event) spent more time reviewing business model issues. "'Can do' doesn't mean 'can make money'", he emphasised
• During the Q&A, the panel suggested it was only a matter of time before a free access API would be available, allowing applications to query central databases to find out the location of a cell with a given ID; any new startups who are working on providing this service wouild therefore be well advised to stop this at once.

Because the room was so full and was becoming pretty warm, the Q&A was stopped before it got into full gear, which was a bit of a pity. But lots of lively conversation continued in the reception area afterwards, over drinks.

To my mind, the energy and upbeat attitude of the meeting is testimony to:

• The overall health of the mobile industry in and around London
• The ever greater role of location elements in mobile applications.

I'll end by echoing the closing words of Mark White: "This is not the LBS industry of 2000. It's better". Users have learned about the general benefits of GPS and positioning from car-based satnav systems, and are now increasingly looking for similar benefits from their mobile phones.