Archive for June, 2009

Feature vs. Smart-phone

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Feature vs. the Smart-phone. There is no straight answer; the lines are blurring too fast. At the end, your definition will be different from mine. Nevertheless, this is how I’m defining it (to be included in an upcoming article):

Both Feature and Smart-phones support voice and data capabilities, including multimedia audio and video, camera, gaming, high-speed networks, GPS and advanced user interfaces. Both are programmable. And both are updatable while on the field. While the line that separates Feature vs. Smart phones is become thinner over time, Smart-phones are considered more advanced and are seen more like a portable Internet computer with voice capabilities, as opposed to the Feature phone which is seen as a programmable cell-phone device with data capabilities. Compared against Smart-phones, the Feature phone is typically Java or BREW-based, while the Smart-phone has a more advanced operating system and corresponding development environments.

I might rephrase the above some, but the described main idea should remain…

ceo

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Posted in Handsets | 4 Comments »

Friday Poll: Browsing the Internet, the Web or the Mobile Web

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

When browsing on your mobile, do you call it browsing “the Internet”, “the Web” or browsing “the Mobile Web”?

After an interesting discussion at ForumOxford on one vs. many webs, I’m curious (keeping in mind that the majority of the readers of this blog are mobile techies) on how folks see this.

Related to this see Barbara Ballard’s essay how many webs? (Little Springs Design).

ceo

P.S. It is the 1st time I use PollDaddy and I’m not sure how it will work, on the blog or feeds.

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Posted in Polls | 2 Comments »

SPRXmobile launches Layar mobile Augmented Reality browser

Friday, June 19th, 2009

By now you probably have already seen the video on Layar augmented reality (AR) browser, embedded below:

Layar is a location-based, context-aware product by SPRXmobile, a group of very smart folks in Amsterdam that I have been following for a long time; because they get it. I got the pleasure to meet Raimo van der Klein, co-founder of SPRXmobile in the past, which I enjoyed very much. SPRXmobile gets what mobility is all about — about the intersection of mobility with the user context and with our surroundings. Which is why it is of no surprise to me that they came up with Layar.

And with Layar they also came up with an interesting business model. What about that! And it seems a sound one, meaning they will make money — what a concept! I’m not being sarcastic here; you see in mobile it is hard to make money, and those who make real money are either people who develop software for others (i.e. get paid as consultants) and the other group are the network operators. The others are left with models that are based on ads such as AdMob or Google, or must go straight after the businesses, which is what it seems Layar is doing. So it is pleasing to see a mobile application with a reasonable business model. And this business model is about “information sharing”, at this time, around advertising. But what it is interesting is the way information/ads are grouped into “buckets of related information” or Layers. So, perhaps you are trying to find ATMs, for this you will use the ATM layer. Or you can switch to other layers containing other information such as the banks layer. This concept of layers is very applicable to plain maps as well. This concept of layers is powerful.

Next, and to maximize such a great idea, the folks at SPRXmobile should also take advantage of the community, and allow for “social or user generated” layers, layers that people, anyone, can create, contribute to, and share. Is this Zcapes + Layars?

Layar is first targeted at Android handsets; no surprise there as Android is an open, feature-rich (video, accelerometer, GPS, compass, touch-screen, etc), easy to deploy environment. Because of its business models, it will be made available on a city by city basis; which is a reason they should just make it available anywhere and let community create layers. Next I am sure it will be made available on iPhone and other environments that provide the required elements of (video, accelerometer, GPS, compass, touch-screen, etc.)

ceo

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Posted in AugmentedReality | No Comments »

Call for Submissions – VentureBeat Announces the “It’s the application, stupid!” Competition For Outstanding Mobile Apps

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

VentureBeat Mobile Trophy

VentureBeat is looking to recognize Mobile innovation at the second annual MobileBeat Top Startup Competition.

Last year the awards went to firms such as AdMob and Loopt. This year the competition shifts to mobile applications and services, with 50 finalists to be determined and a final 14 to present live at MobileBeat on Thursday July 16th.

Top Startup Submission Rules:

  • Startups must complete and submit a form by June 30, 2009 for consideration
  • Fifty finalists will be announced on July 2nd on Venturebeat.com. Voting will then be open to the public to select the top seven companies per sector.
  • Seven finalists from each category will present for five minutes each to the MobileBeat audience determined by judges as to avoid any vote manufacturing.
  • Nominees must be younger than three years old. Special consideration will be given to companies that are launching for the first time.

Winners to be announced at the MobileBeat Conference July 16th, San Francisco CA San Francisco.

Directly following each two-minute presentation, a panel of judges will provide feedback in rapid fire. After final deliberation in the afternoon, winners will be announced.

Submitting a company for nomination is completely free. For more information visit the startup competition website.

MobileBeat 09 will take place on July 16, 2009 in the Parc 55 Hotel in downtown San Francisco. The theme of this year’s show is “It’s the application, stupid!”, focusing on mobile applications’ recent explosion in popularity.

See registration information.

Speakers at this year’s MobileBeat include: Dr. Tero Ojanperä (Nokia), Russ McGuire (Sprint Nextel), Matt Murphy (Kleiner Perkins iFund), Rick Segal (Blackberry Partners), Nagraj Kashyap (Qualcomm Ventures), Aditya Khurjekar(Verizon), and Michael Rayfield (Nvidia)

ceo

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Posted in Mobility | No Comments »

Radio Spectrum Allocations

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Below is a nice illustration on Radio Spectrum Allocations (Yankee Group):

Radio Spectrum Allocations

…and those with the spectrum, the spectrum-rich players, are in the driver’s seat for Mobile Broadband economics.

Radio spectrum is a scarce resource that is critical for mobile communications. The expansion of mobile broadband services places tremendous pressure on available spectrum resources, and typically sees service providers with greater spectrum bandwidth having a distinct economic advantage as broadband services take hold. The most coveted spectrum bands are those that support mobile communications (generally less than 3 GHz operating frequency), have adequate bandwidth for economic service delivery and are aligned with a robust device and infrastructure ecosystem. These key resources include six distinct frequency bands that are illustrated above.

(Source: Yankee Group, June 2009)

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Posted in Spectrum | No Comments »

On Startups – Internal vs. External Pressures

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Internal vs. external pressures impact the (potential for) success of your startup in different ways.

I’ll argue that internal pressures are the worst… how do I know? I’ve learned this the *hard way*. But remember that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; never forget that.

When building a startup, external forces are not the worst of your enemies. Competition? Who cares? Bring it on! The economy and funding? What about IT infrastructure? Nah, don’t worry — today is very cheap to build and run your venture. People/resources? Yes, that too is available and with reasonable/negotiable terms and expectations. Guy Kawasaki writes a good summary about this new economy on his Building 43 interview by Scoble The new economics of entrepreneurship.

And I’ll argue that external pressures such as competition or potential for competition are great incentives, for example, to go to market, fast.

But it is the internal forces, the struggles within — and especially the inter-personal forces, such as lack of balance, openness and trust… ah, those are the forces that might keep you from winning. Those are forces for you to watch out for… Those are your worst enemies, and believe or not, are all within, very close to you. Otherwise, the company will kill itself from the inside; which is the worst (and stupidest) way to die…

This is why the team composition, from management and down is so important on a startup. Keep the team small, to the minimal. Cut the excess; or better, avoid excess — if you need a specific resource but deep inside you know it is not a match for your startup, bring the person as a contractor. And be open and be fair and be balanced.

If I were to put a totally non-scientific chart on this, it would look as follows:

On Startups - Internal vs. Extnernal Pressures

…which in summary translates to “internal forces increases the threat levels for your company”.

Related to this topic see a couple of great pieces by Paul Graham:

ceo

P.S. This essay is part of what might become a series of related essays based on written notes on startups from previous life; notes that I thought I should share. I will be compiling these under the On Startups page on my weblog. And I’ve to admit that publishing these notes, which I recently re-discovered, is at times a bit “painful” in different ways; but hey, life goes on…

Posted in Entrepreneurship | 2 Comments »

What is new in MIDP 3.0 – a quick summary

Monday, June 1st, 2009

As some of you may already know, MIDP 3.0 is going public. While smartphones have taken their own route with respect to the runtime environment, I expect feature phones to adopt MIDP 3.0; to be seen is the adoption by device manufacturers. But that said, FYI, the list of new features is very good (and many of my wishes were satisfied); to mention a few:

  • Backgrounds MIDlets (i.e. services) and auto-launched MIDlets
  • Enhanced storage management w/ support for record tagging/labels and support for external, secure storage
  • Access to unique device IDs such as UUIDs and IMEI (to better manage deployment instances)
  • New UI functionality such as support for splash, idle screen and screenisavers, text input into Canvas elements, tables, tabbed panes, splash screen, scalable images and animated GIF, menus and form layouts, other
  • Support for libraries — now you can decouple common infrastructure components from the app and into libraries that can be shared across apps
  • MIDlet concurrency and inter-MIDlet communication
  • Support for application and system eventing (from the system events such as low-battery, etc)
  • HTTP support for PUT and DELETE in support for REST-like web services
  • IPv6 URLs, file selectors, and other
  • Migration path to CDC
  • A number of clarifications that I hope helps reduce ambiguities that previously permitted inconsistent implementations
  • …and other

Related to this see JSR 271: Mobile Information Device Profile 3 – Proposed Final Draft.

ceo

Disclaimer: I was a member of the expert group that defined MIDP 3.0, so I am obviously a bit biased to see this succeed and at the same time very pleased with the set of features that made it to the next generation of the Mobile Information Device Profile (Java ME).

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Posted in Mobility | 3 Comments »