I spent a fun day on Saturday at BarCamp Scotland meeting lots of interesting people (old and new) from the software community in Scotland. After a very amusing and typically Scottish first 20 mins with everybody milling around a safe few paces away from the sign-up boards not wishing to be first, an excellent program of talks and discussions came into being which kept the six presentation zones running for the vast majority of the day.
One of the early speakers was Ewan Mcintosh from 4IP, a major sponsor of the event, who gave an interesting 30 minute outline of what 4IP was supporting and some key tips on how to effectively engage with them. He described how he sees media being divided into a series of spaces: watching, participating, performing, publishing, group, and secret.
The next talk I saw, and at the other end of the corporate scale, was by Cole Henley who in his spare time has created tinyadr, a system for effectively publishing contact details over the web in place of traditional printed and static business cards. It uses the hCard HTML microformat to embed semantic information into the markup which was new to me.
The ever entertaining Mike Masnick of Floor64 and Techdirt fame was in town for the week visiting Informatics and the Business School. On previous days I had heard him speak on the history of Silicon Valley and how they had created floor64. This time he spoke about one of his pet subjects - the danger of protectionism and why giving things away for free can make sense.
The core of his argument is that goods are broken down into two groups - those which can be reproduced at no cost which he describes as "infinite", and those which have real costs to reproduce/create and are thus "scarce". He states that to maximise your market you should give infinite goods away for free and seek to monetize based on associated scarce goods. Creating artificial scarcity in infinite goods - i.e. protectionism of various sorts simply inhibits growth of the overall market.
Next up Michael Clauser of Gadder (amongst many other places!) talked a little about their automatic prospect data-mining solution, which combines automated search of the public internet with sophisticated natural language analysis in order to assist researchers find relevant background on individual prospective partners quickly and effectively.
I then had my turn to speak. The Appleton Tower lecture theatres have great projectors for doing demos of mobile apps which is nice. My slideset is on slideshare:
After a coffee to recover I listened to Fred Howell of Textensor present their new A.nnotate.com cooperative document review/annotation system. This web based system allows users to upload documents in a number of standard formats. Representations of the document can then be viewed by the user as well as any other users they choose to invite and comments and discussions can be attached to sections of the text using a postIt like metaphor.
Finally Jonathan Brown of Blue Droplet Media presented on his Drupal Openpackage Video module - which handles upload, transoding and serving video within Drupal based web applications.
The day finished in the Library Bar in Edinburgh University's Teviot House where I had an interesting chat with Andrew Williams about the progress and direction of Maven in general, and his own headsupdevelopment project in particular.
All in all it was an excellent event - and look forward to going again next year!
ps. The latest carnival is up over at Vision Mobile.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Technical, Internet and mobile events in Scotland
There are a wide range of interesting events being hosted in Scotland at the moment, and on Saturday I went along to the annual Barcamp Scotland hosted by Edinburgh University Informatics Ventures and 4IP.
I will write up what caught my eye at Barcamp in my next post, but there are many other events worth going to in Scotland:
UPDATE: Mike Coulter has posted an excellent video montage about what goes on at the Edinburgh Coffee Morning.
I will write up what caught my eye at Barcamp in my next post, but there are many other events worth going to in Scotland:
- A series of interesting speakers visit the Business School and/or Informatics, and their events are incorporated into The Edinburgh Internet Marketing Meetup etc.
- On more of a technical theme there is the techmeetup which provides that unbeatable mix of a strong technical theme along with free beer and pizza!
- On a wireless/mobile theme Wireless Innovation run a series of interesting events at Hillington Park Innovation Centre.
- For the Rubyists there is the wonderfully successful (and now sold out!) Scotland on Rails at the end of the month. I understand there are still places for the charity tutorial day - learn Ruby and Rails from Chad Fowler and Marcel Molina no less!
- There are various rumblings about a new mobile group starting up picking up the baton from where I left off with MX Techtalk, possible under the Mobile Monday banner.
- And finally for those in need of caffeine in less formal circumstances a new Edinburgh OpenCoffee series is kicking off these week (pity about the slightly impractical timing :-<) to join the existing Edinburgh Coffee Morning.
UPDATE: Mike Coulter has posted an excellent video montage about what goes on at the Edinburgh Coffee Morning.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Eclipse Pulsar: Defragmenting fragmented development???
Read an interesting story on el reg this morning about the Pulsar project which is slated to be part of the next major release of Eclipse. This is the new name for the Mobile Application Development Kit project from the Eclipse Mobile Industry Working Group.
The core idea seems to be a cross manufacturer development environment for J2ME incorporating the SDK tooling from all the supporting manufacturers in a single environment which is a welcome improvement.
Interestingly Sun don't seem to be welcome at this party - with JavaFX specifically not a part of the roadmap.
Of course while this does help a little in reducing the fragmentation of development tools when developing J2ME it doesn't reduce the inherent fragmentation of the platform itself - the phones themselves are as diverse as ever!
From this focussed and pretty sensible core idea things start to smack of design by committee with stated intentions to incorporate mobile webapp and native app development within the same environment.
Unsurprisingly there is no sign of iPhone, Android or Palm WebOS support!
The core idea seems to be a cross manufacturer development environment for J2ME incorporating the SDK tooling from all the supporting manufacturers in a single environment which is a welcome improvement.
Interestingly Sun don't seem to be welcome at this party - with JavaFX specifically not a part of the roadmap.
Of course while this does help a little in reducing the fragmentation of development tools when developing J2ME it doesn't reduce the inherent fragmentation of the platform itself - the phones themselves are as diverse as ever!
From this focussed and pretty sensible core idea things start to smack of design by committee with stated intentions to incorporate mobile webapp and native app development within the same environment.
Unsurprisingly there is no sign of iPhone, Android or Palm WebOS support!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
metaTXT: Aiming for one web and gaining discoverability!
One particularly interesting new contact I made at MWC last week was Sinead Quealy of visibility mobile - the mobile SEO company founded by Bena Roberts. As well as telling me about their work on mobile SEO she mentioned they were involved with pushing the "metaTXT" spec through W3C in order to improve discoverability of mobile sites.
Now I have got back and the dust has settled I have had a look at the metaTXT white paper and it seems to be promising stuff. Fundamentally it is an attempt to solve the problem of supporting multiple versions of a site for different classes of device in a way that is transparent to the user - creating a practical step towards the one web ideal I have blogged about before.
What is interesting is it does this by adding a small file (meta.txt) alongside the existing robots.txt at the top of the site providing metainformation about the site. The primary use of this is to provide different paths for the root page for various different device classes - which is all well and good though one webbers may quibble about not driving them via the same markup.
Perhaps more interesting is the ability to provide further meta information about the site within meta.txt - in a standard form independent of any device and/or markup specifics. This can include the usual title and keywords, and intriguingly things like the location the site is related to which opens interesting possibilities for the return of context specific results for the mobile user.
The primary challange they will face with all this is obviously the usual chicken and egg one of convincing sites to publish meta.txt files, and convincing search engines to look for and use them. That said they have already got a couple of mobile search providers deeply involved in the associated working group which is a good sign.
Discovery is one of the key problems that needs to be solved in mobile and this may be one part of the solution to that problem.
Now I have got back and the dust has settled I have had a look at the metaTXT white paper and it seems to be promising stuff. Fundamentally it is an attempt to solve the problem of supporting multiple versions of a site for different classes of device in a way that is transparent to the user - creating a practical step towards the one web ideal I have blogged about before.
What is interesting is it does this by adding a small file (meta.txt) alongside the existing robots.txt at the top of the site providing metainformation about the site. The primary use of this is to provide different paths for the root page for various different device classes - which is all well and good though one webbers may quibble about not driving them via the same markup.
Perhaps more interesting is the ability to provide further meta information about the site within meta.txt - in a standard form independent of any device and/or markup specifics. This can include the usual title and keywords, and intriguingly things like the location the site is related to which opens interesting possibilities for the return of context specific results for the mobile user.
The primary challange they will face with all this is obviously the usual chicken and egg one of convincing sites to publish meta.txt files, and convincing search engines to look for and use them. That said they have already got a couple of mobile search providers deeply involved in the associated working group which is a good sign.
Discovery is one of the key problems that needs to be solved in mobile and this may be one part of the solution to that problem.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Truphone's new "intelligent SIM" at #mwc
Every now and again as you wander around the halls of the Fira you trip over something which is clearly a bit of a game changer - something deliciously disruptive. Truphone themselves seem to think so. They are brimming with excitement about it!
The new product - whose availability is still to be confirmed - is based around a combination of two key things:
I will say up front that I am not very clear on the specifics of SIM signalling but as I understand it this effectively this gives them a ~256kbps data channel to the device which is both free and exists whether or not the SIM has been able to formally bind to the host network.
Clearly this opens up many interesting possibilities and I understand that beyond using it to help support their existing voip/roaming products (e.g. intelligence to allow incoming calls to be recived as if local) they are also looking at expanding into situational services - with a continuous location feed being the first element of that.
Of course there is the question of how the more conventional mobile operators will react to this since it will clearly cut into their juicy roaming revenues, and takes a step beyond their control of what happens on their network that they are unlikely to be 100% comfortable with.
This is my first really exciting product (baring our own of course ;-) of the show this year. Look forward to hearing more about it when it is officially released tomorrow.
UPDATE: On reflection I was a little loose in my use of the term data channel above. It is of course a channel that Truphone can use for their own signalling to and from the cpu on the SIM card in order to implement their services - NOT a channel for user IP data.
Truphone have now formally announced their first service built on this kit.
The new product - whose availability is still to be confirmed - is based around a combination of two key things:
- In April 2008 Truphone acquired roaming operator SIM4travel.
- They have now developed a SIM card sporting an ARM core and 2MB of flash storage.
I will say up front that I am not very clear on the specifics of SIM signalling but as I understand it this effectively this gives them a ~256kbps data channel to the device which is both free and exists whether or not the SIM has been able to formally bind to the host network.
Clearly this opens up many interesting possibilities and I understand that beyond using it to help support their existing voip/roaming products (e.g. intelligence to allow incoming calls to be recived as if local) they are also looking at expanding into situational services - with a continuous location feed being the first element of that.
Of course there is the question of how the more conventional mobile operators will react to this since it will clearly cut into their juicy roaming revenues, and takes a step beyond their control of what happens on their network that they are unlikely to be 100% comfortable with.
This is my first really exciting product (baring our own of course ;-) of the show this year. Look forward to hearing more about it when it is officially released tomorrow.
UPDATE: On reflection I was a little loose in my use of the term data channel above. It is of course a channel that Truphone can use for their own signalling to and from the cpu on the SIM card in order to implement their services - NOT a channel for user IP data.
Truphone have now formally announced their first service built on this kit.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Barcelona here we come
As I made my final source control commit of the day at midnight last night I reflected briefly on the less glamorous side of the run-up to the four days of frenetic activity that makes up Mobile World Congress. The past week or so has been mayhem and this week is even worse, but now the various demos, graphics and materials are coming together and things are falling into place and it is time to focus on the event itself.
There are many sites out there (and m-trends is a good starting point) listing all the many parties and events striving to gain your attention and your footfall around the conference proper so I won't try to list them here - but there are a couple which deserve a special mention.
Longtime mobile marketeer, blogger, and MoMo London co-organizer Helen Keegan has worked up her usual magic to create not one, but three different events this year. Swedish Beers has moved onto the Wednesday night and into a bigger venue - that being a really good thing after the crush at Belchica last year! Not satisfied with that she is also working with UKTI to organise a fascinating lunch event focussed on the Future of Mobile, and I understand will be announcing a third and final event "for the ladies of mobile" tomorrow.
It is interesting and encouraging to see that despite the economic troubles of the world at large that sponsorship for so many events is still forthcoming. That said it will be interesting to see what the overall visitor numbers end up being. Many of the "usual suspects" to turn up to the whisky reception are taking a year off MWC - the Americans in particular.
Of course within the exhibition itself there are also interesting events - and none more so than the traditional whisky reception run by Scottish Development International on whose stand we are based:
If you are in the exhibition do come along and enjoy a dram or two. This year there is competition though with Rapid Mobile having branched out onto a stand of their own in hall 7 and running their own whisky tasting starting at 5.30pm on Wednesday evening!
Of course beyond the networking and socialising there will be a *lot* of new devices and services to absorb and evaluate. Will be great to get hands on the new Palm Pre in particular!
One new experience this year is that we are delighted to have been invited to contribute to the mobile advertising sessions on Thursday afternoon in the conference proper - with Chris taking part in the panel on "The New Enablers" and then both of us putting various of our services through their paces in the "Entertainment & Advertising Demonstration & Networking Session". Looking forward to it!
Now time to get back to eclipse and get the next chunk of that demo sorted out!
There are many sites out there (and m-trends is a good starting point) listing all the many parties and events striving to gain your attention and your footfall around the conference proper so I won't try to list them here - but there are a couple which deserve a special mention.
Longtime mobile marketeer, blogger, and MoMo London co-organizer Helen Keegan has worked up her usual magic to create not one, but three different events this year. Swedish Beers has moved onto the Wednesday night and into a bigger venue - that being a really good thing after the crush at Belchica last year! Not satisfied with that she is also working with UKTI to organise a fascinating lunch event focussed on the Future of Mobile, and I understand will be announcing a third and final event "for the ladies of mobile" tomorrow.
It is interesting and encouraging to see that despite the economic troubles of the world at large that sponsorship for so many events is still forthcoming. That said it will be interesting to see what the overall visitor numbers end up being. Many of the "usual suspects" to turn up to the whisky reception are taking a year off MWC - the Americans in particular.
Of course within the exhibition itself there are also interesting events - and none more so than the traditional whisky reception run by Scottish Development International on whose stand we are based:
If you are in the exhibition do come along and enjoy a dram or two. This year there is competition though with Rapid Mobile having branched out onto a stand of their own in hall 7 and running their own whisky tasting starting at 5.30pm on Wednesday evening!Of course beyond the networking and socialising there will be a *lot* of new devices and services to absorb and evaluate. Will be great to get hands on the new Palm Pre in particular!
One new experience this year is that we are delighted to have been invited to contribute to the mobile advertising sessions on Thursday afternoon in the conference proper - with Chris taking part in the panel on "The New Enablers" and then both of us putting various of our services through their paces in the "Entertainment & Advertising Demonstration & Networking Session". Looking forward to it!
Now time to get back to eclipse and get the next chunk of that demo sorted out!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Use your loaf - anonymised sms messaging
"Never give out your mobile number again use your loaf.co.uk The safe anonymous way to send sms txt messages from your UK mobile phone."
That is how loaf introduced themselves to the world on 19th December and at first glance it makes a very appealing proposition for the youth dating and small advertising demographics which appear to be the key markets they had identified.
The core idea is very simple. Instead of being identified by your real mobile phone number when sending or receiving text messages you use your loaf name instead. All messages are sent to and from the loaf 25p MO premium shortcode - 88845.
Recipients can control access to their loaf name by blocking particular senders if they so wish.
To succeed the service will need to generate a relatively large volume of traffic. The rev share on a 25p premium message will barely cover the cost of the resulting bulk MT message. The tiny remaining margin will have to be multiplied up a *lot* of times to cover the company's overheads.
This will be improved slightly by the "mobile-to-email" feature - sold as a bonus feature for the users but in reality a bit of a business model saver since it will reduce their bulk SMS costs and increase the revenue generated from users who take it up by at least a factor fo five!
There are some potential rough edges:
This is a huge and possibly terminal problem for service uptake since if you give out your loaf id to someone who is not on loaf they must choose to go to the website and sign up in order to send you a message - and any mobile service that requires the user to go to their PC has little chance of success.
If they could handle signup interactively on mobile that would improve the experience hugely. Hard to see why the bounce message doesn't simply push the user into a mobile internet signup page.
That is how loaf introduced themselves to the world on 19th December and at first glance it makes a very appealing proposition for the youth dating and small advertising demographics which appear to be the key markets they had identified.
The core idea is very simple. Instead of being identified by your real mobile phone number when sending or receiving text messages you use your loaf name instead. All messages are sent to and from the loaf 25p MO premium shortcode - 88845.
Recipients can control access to their loaf name by blocking particular senders if they so wish.
To succeed the service will need to generate a relatively large volume of traffic. The rev share on a 25p premium message will barely cover the cost of the resulting bulk MT message. The tiny remaining margin will have to be multiplied up a *lot* of times to cover the company's overheads.
This will be improved slightly by the "mobile-to-email" feature - sold as a bonus feature for the users but in reality a bit of a business model saver since it will reduce their bulk SMS costs and increase the revenue generated from users who take it up by at least a factor fo five!
There are some potential rough edges:
- To reply via the service requires the user to manually transcribe the senders loaf name from the end of the incoming SMS to the start of the reply - this is error prone and reduces the usability of the service for the typical user.
- The premium messaging cost is collected on the MO which potentially creates complications for using the service since every user who publishes their loaf name is effectively advertising a premium messaging service which may raise a few eyebrows down and PhonePayPlus!
- In addition if the recipient has blocked that particular sender (or as below if the sender is not a loaf member!) the sender still pays the premium charge but gets nothing for it.
This is a huge and possibly terminal problem for service uptake since if you give out your loaf id to someone who is not on loaf they must choose to go to the website and sign up in order to send you a message - and any mobile service that requires the user to go to their PC has little chance of success.
If they could handle signup interactively on mobile that would improve the experience hugely. Hard to see why the bounce message doesn't simply push the user into a mobile internet signup page.
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