Oct

28

Here is an article about a software developer who created an app that allowed users of eBay to keep track of their auctions. Awesome! I had the same idea and created a Flash Lite app. I’ve been asked if it could be shown during a session at Macromedia MAX, so if you are going to be there you just might see it. ;-)

My Flash Lite app was just a quick prototype, it was not the same thing as waymobile.com’s app, but it probably could be if I had 40 hours a week to spend developing it. Note to self, start mobile software company now and quit whining.

These ideas are so easy to come up with. Think of something you do on your computer. Is anything time sensitive, if so build an app that would make your internet life so much more convenient if you could have it with you anywhere you go without having to tote around a laptop. Phones can do these simple things now. Unlimited data plans cost 20 bucks here in the states. Convenience is the selling point. I really wish days were 36 hours long.

Oct

27

Another announcement from CTIA. This time from Yahoo!. Again from Yahoo!!!!

Yahoo gets mobile content. They understand that mobile usage is going to grow quickly over the next year or two. I’ve blogged about their mobile services before. As has Russell.

Their Chief Operating Officer, Dan Rosensweig, is quoted as saying “the mobile Internet industry is at a ‘tipping point’.” Google is getting in on the game. Other search engines will as well. Shopping sites will have to jump in soon as well.

What I don’t understand is why the article says the service is only available on certain carrier networks. Perhaps Yahoo! doesn’t have gateways with the other carriers. Not sure. Regardless these are just more services available from Yahoo! aimed at mobile users. Wish they would accept telecommuters, I would love to be in on the stuff they are working on. I just can’t convince the wife to move back out to Silicon Valley. Argh!

Oct

27

This article is right on. Communication services are beating content services in the mobile space. I still create content services, but I know communication is a better use of the platform. I have some ideas that I need to make materialize. This article is a great read regarding the current and future states of mobile as a platoform. Great for developers to get an idea on possible apps.

I really like how these guys spell out that mobile data is not supposed to be the same as desktop data just pushed through a small pipe onto an even smaller screen. I was surprised to not see very many comments posted to this article, this article was very well written and gave some great insight. Kudos to the authors.

Oct

27

Qualcomm announced today that it has licensed BitFlash’s SVG-T player. BREW already had support for SVG-T, if I remember correctly. I can only imagine that Macromedia would like to have the Flash Lite player be supported by BREW as well. It looks like BREW is going to start to adopt SVG-T as an interface component, probably built into their chipsets. Bitflash is the creator of the player and the main component of the standard.

So built in support could mean a number of things. One could be that it may just be used to create zoomable features in apps. One instance might mean some kind of Microsoft Avalon type of UI constructor. Apps for BREW could be written in it, or at least the interfaces could. I don’t think anyone would want to write an entire apps logic in SVG.

It has been announced that the Flash Lite 1.1 player for phones could also support playback of SVG-T. So is Qualcomm choosing to support SVG-T over Flash Lite? Doubt it. I’m sure SVG-T was a whole less to license. And they might have unfortunately made their decision on SVG-T being an “official” Web standard. I say unfortunate because Flash supports so much more and is a much more robust development environment. I imagine we’ll see Flash Lite on BREW sometime in the future as well. That BREW $10k cover charge price tag for developers is still tripping me up though.

I don’t know if it is a direct result of this news, but QUALCOMM is trading up a buck – twenty. Damn! I should have bought some shares right when they split.

Oct

27

The Feature has this article (via Tom Hume) which describes some of the carriers current rule on porn. Most are saying no. Vodafone tries to filter it out. Voda and others also provide an age verifcation system as well, but apparently they are not working very well.

The issue is that the adult industry is the first to really produce large amounts of content, which means cash to the carriers for all of that data flying around. However, they don’t want to be associated with it. Not to mention, they don’t want to dispute the billing complications. So they are just walling it off for now.

But more interesting than the article is a comment by someone living in Japan. Most of Japan’s carriers don’t do walled gardens. So anyone can produce mobile content and make it available to phones. However these content creators have no way of using the carriers billing systems and Keitai (i.e. Japan smartphone) users aren’t willing to pay via credit card over their phone. So until mobile porn content providers can use the carrier’s billing system, they are not “the killer app” people keep rumoring them to be.

Should we all buy stock in the telecomms again, seems that our mobile bill is going to be responsible for a lot. Interesting….

Oct

26

So yesterday came the announcement from Nokia that they are going to offer a service to carriers called Preminet. The service will be a catalog of software available for their phone models. Think iTunes on phones, just loaded with software not music. The carriers will be able to co-brand and offer this site to its customers (probably through some link from their walled garden). Qualcomm has the same kind of service for BREW, their mobile service offering. This is good and bad for developers. Good that developers only have one place to go to get their app listed and sold through the numerous carriers. Bad in that the charge to do so is very great. Qualcomm charges $10,000 to start listing signed apps. As an independent developer, I don’t have 10k laying around.

So the question is, will Macromedia follow. Is this how FlashCast is going to be distributed? The business model of getting the carriers to pay for the Flash Lite player may not pan out without content, so will Macromedia stop charging for the player, but start charging for the catalog of content? Again this could be good and bad for developers. I am happy to work with Macromedia to get my app listed (much like we currently do with Macromedia Central), however if they do go this way, I really hope they are more realistic with their pricing than BREW. Remeber the goal is to have a lot of content, which would spur more and more people to want the Flash Lite player on their handset. Content is still king, use it to grow.

No word on Nokia’s pricing structure yet, but if Nokia and Macromedia were smart, they would drop that price of admission.

Oct

25

Tom Hume writes for Netimperative about Java Content Portals. He mentions a few points I made in an older post about Java being a difficult technology to deploy to mass number of phones. He does however have some more insight about working with the carriers over in Europe. If you remember these are the carriers with the walled off portals. Carriers only allow the phones to use their WAP site, so content providers have to work with the carriers to get their content listed for their audience, and then controlling the branding is hard, etc… So people turn to technology out of the browser that users can download and run at any time, but this is technically very hard and expensive to do. So the debate really comes down to, carriers have a strangle hold on the content providers. All the content providers can wish for is that enough users start wanting the carriers to break down the walls and let them really harness the power of data on their devices. KDDI (number 2 carrier in Japan) is listening. So far the US carriers are not following suit. T-Mobile, ATTWS, and Cingular all have open data plans. Sprint and Verizon might as well, although their plans and portals are a little less open than the GSM carriers.

Oct

21

Macromedia and NTT DoCoMo announced yesterday that the success of Flash Lite over the past year on DoCoMo’s i-mode network has been so great that the technology is going to be deployed to the rest of the i-mode Global Alliance. This means the Flash Lite player will be available on i-mode networks across Europe and Australia, along with some Asian countries as well.

I don’t know if this means Flash Lite 1.0 or 1.1. I am assuming 1.0 because that is what DoCoMo is currently deploying on their 505 handsets. The difference in the two player versions is mostly platform compatibility. Flash Lite 1.1 is mostly for Sny Ericsson and Symbian platforms where Flash Lite 1.0 was compiled for the DoCoMo i-mode platform.

This is great news for Flash developers. This sector of the community is gaining a big step forward towards competing with J2ME.

Oct

21

Interesting look at the digital music industry shaping in Japan. Of course the iPod is there, more as a fashion accessory than anything else. However, iTunes is not available in Japan yet due to the countries strict copyright-protection laws. The popular digital music service there is over-the-air downloads of popular songs. This apparently is a very popular service and songs cost a 200 yen, compared to iTunes singles which would cost approximately 110 yen (99 cents). The music services available cater to more than just mobile phones. Stereos have connections to the service as well. All songs delivered are sent in a format specific to the device, which makes it hard to rip and burn onto media like a CD-R. Their copyright-protection is a direct result of trying to protect the CD industry. Because of Japan’s high speed networks, a single song takes approximately 30-40 seconds to download to a device. They make the price a little higher because at that convenience, why go to a store and buy a CD, when you can just download an entire album in a little over 5 minutes. Very cool.

Highly different contrast compared to the US, iTunes/MSN Music/MP3 industry.

Oct

18

Weekend bits

October 18, 2004 | Leave a Comment

Major news outlets are starting to cover the idea that mobile phones could be an iPod killer.

Macromedia CEO talks about Macromedia future being consumer driven apps and mobile devices.

Russell has a fantastic idea for the two candidates to get voters to the polls.

Finally, good luck to my now ex-coworker Tom. He has decided to leave our company and join the poker tour over the next year. You know that whole World Series of Poker thing you see on ESPN late at night. Well next year, he’s going to be on it. Watch his blog for more info and first person point of views. Good luck Tom!

keep looking »

Linkroll

Recent Projects