Nov

17

Fellow Ft. Wayne Telecommuter, Nathan Yergler, has a post outlining his experiences with J2ME vs. Python on a recent project. Good read if you are interesting in either concerning mobile devices.

I always focus my posts on the business of mobile and more specifically Flash Lite, maybe I should post more on my experiences with Python on Series 60 and J2ME. Hmmm….

Nov

17

Apparently Cingular read my post from Monday. Kidding. Today they announced a few Web services for mobile users, as a first dabble into increasing revenue from non-voice and non-text services. Cool.

Of course, they are getting out of the gate with something simple like Stock quotes (which are easily accessible via Google’s SMS service). But regardless, at least they are getting it.

Everyone is talking about Web 2.0 and web-based applications, that may or may not run in a browser. I guess Web 3.0 is when we start talking about “companion apps” (read: not gadgets) that run on mobile devices. Oye vey!

Nov

15

Due to the XMLRPC vulnerability in PHP, I am cleaning up my site files and removing all old files no longer needed. If you see something broken please let me know.

Time to implement a better system for development/QA, staging, and live. I have a box set up here at the house for development and staging now, so hopefully that will keep the “not ready for production” files off the live server.

If you are using XMLRPC with PHP, check for updates to your software and libraries.

Nov

14

South Korea Telecom and Earthlink are planning an MVNO here in the states called Helio. Nothing too new there. The concept is to market wireless services at a specific group. However, Helio might be different. They are targetting younger, more savvy users. They are doing this through brand, but it also appears they are going to do this through offering wireless data services as well. This is different, at least for the US.

I was contacted by one of their recruiters a little while ago, and we spoke briefly about some of the open positions they had in their new LA offices. Judging from the open positions and our brief discussion, it appears that Helio will be offering some great Web based mobile services. Finally, the US will see how mobile data can become a great convienence (and a selling point).

A lot of the carriers here offer data plans so users can use the browsers that ship with phones, or get Blackberry email, etc… However most don’t realize the potential in offering mobile services. Photo sharing is used here but not greatly. It’s not marketed in a way that can easily be understood by non-techie people. Sprint has announced a music service so maybe they are seeing the potential of iTunes on mobile phones. Most just aren’t realizing the potential. There are rumors that Amp’d, another MVNO aimed at the Gen X crowd, is linking up with Facebook, the popular college social site. So maybe Amp’d gets it like Helio does. The bigger carriers just don’t see to be getting how easy this could be. Adding a selling point like that shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish. Maybe they are doing this and just haven’t announced the plans. That has to be the case.

The carriers control the handsets but don’t ship anything right out of the box that requires/uses a data connection. ESPN’s MVNO could surely offer an app for getting sport scores over the air. Maybe even highlight clips. Hopefully they are planning this. Just having the Sportscenter theme as a ringtone and the logo on my phone is not enough for me to sign on.

It’s pretty obvious that the phone is going to be a necessity in life. The first carrier to really embrace the phone as more than just a voice call device, and realize the potential in bundling data services that keep us connected to the services we use everyday, stands to become a very profitable company, dare I even say to the size of a Microsoft. Maybe not, but there will be more handsets than PCs in the coming years, so the size could surely be large. If it’s all about attention these days, then the carriers better hurry up and start offering things to get subscribers attention. These little MVNOs are moving at a pretty good clip it seems.

Nov

4

Symbian unveiled this week a new browser for 3rd generation Series 60 (S60) phones. I saw this mentioned in a couple of news outlets and over on Russ’ blog. The specs are really a step forward in mobile browsing. Integrated RSS is very cool. The Netscape style plug-ins including Flash Lite really caught my attention. This would mean that Symbian phones would become more inline with the DoCoMo handsets and Flash Lite could be used in a different manner than we are currently using it as a standalone app platform. Web based apps make sense for phones. Web Services makes sense for phones and Flash Lite can provide the rich UI. Other rather large things to note is the compatibility with standards such as XHTML 1 and CSS 1 and 2. This may seem trivial at first, but really the CSS compatibility makes a big difference in developing sites for the mobile browser. Not sure I believe in the idea of the Page Overview feature. It looks like it works well. Opera has SSR. Both seem like interim fixes for me though. The mobile Web isn’t the same experience as on a desktop and I’m not sure it should be. But these technologies certainly do the job they set out to do and I’ll give the engineering teams props for that.

Looks like I’ll need to update my line up of Symbians and get one of the N series phones. Wish my 6680 was supported. Oh well.

Linkroll

Recent Projects