About Mobility

As I read Terrence’s blog Goodbye Sun & Thanks, Scott, I think back at my days when I worked closely with Sun. Many believed that I worked for Sun but I actually didn’t…

I have been a fan of Sun Microsystems through out my school years and then during my professional career. Like many, I was part of Sun’s and Java ecosystem and developer community.

Sun and Java have played a big role in my professional career…

I had the pleasure to work with many great people and minds at Sun and use Sun’s technologies. I spent a lot of time working with Sun’s mobile (from KVM to J2ME/Java ME) and server technologies and even writing for them (also see my Mobile Java section on my blog).

For years I ran a popular website/blog called J2MEDeveloper.com and I wrote one of the first books on MIDP. I participated and contributed to many Java Specs (JSRs) and was a very active member of the Java Community Process (JCP) and the Mobile & Embedded community where I was recognized as a community champion/star. I also helped co-design Sun Microsystems’ Mobile Java Developer Certification Exam (SCMAD). Even recently I provided advice to the ME executive committee on the future of mobile Java. In 2009 I was nominated to the 7th JCP Annual Awards.

While I was at AGEA, a startup where I was one of its first employees, I helped bring both companies to work very close to each other. Back in 2000-2003 we created products based on J2EE and J2ME and created NetBeans extensions for developers to create mobile apps. I even helped raise $12.2 million in funding most of which as the lead investor came from Sun, making AGEA a Sun portfolio company. And when I was at Aligo, I created or help create a number of software solutions based on end-to-end Java. And at eZee and others. And via Artemis Wireless Werks the dozens of companies I helped with their mobile Java solutions. And today it continues from Java ME to Java on Android.

As you can see, Sun played a big role in my professional career. Those were great days that I enjoyed very much and which I am very proud of. Those days as Sun are gone now; a new era indeed. I can’t get used to see Oracle’s brand on Sun’s sites. Bye Sun Microsystems, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish…

ceo

With my first blog post of 2010 I would like to wish you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

And with the new year and the new decade, I reflect on the previous decade and my involvement with mobile; writing this helps me remember the good and not so good times and prepare for the new decade of mobile.

2000-2009. Wow, ten years have past! Some good times and some bad times. I survived, making a living throughout the decade mostly working on mobile. Not too bad…

During the last decade I did a bit of everything: a software developer, architect, a products guy, CTO and evangelist, business owner, researcher, speaker and writer, startup founder, raise angel and VC money, board member, mentor, events organizer, standards bodies, blogger, open source, inventor, documentation and testing, marketing and managing people and products. Top to bottom, left to right. I did great on some and not as good on other. All that while being a husband and a father…

From WAP and cHTML, to web clipping, PalmOS and BlackBerry, Symbian OS, web and widgets, local/native apps, connected and occasionally connected apps, J2ME, Android and iPhone too. From device to network to server, J2EE and Servlets and containers, from XML to Java, PHP, C and C++, DBs and many OSes. Algorithms and patents. User interfaces and user experience. From social and user-generated content software before it was called that, to SMS, LBS, personal data and proximity before it was cool and/or massively used. Lots of other things as well. I remember ‘predicting’ that enterprise would drive mobile adoption, but boy, I was wrong — consumers did! I predicted that by 2006-2007 or so mobile would become what we all have been talking about, and off I was, but not as bad.

…and we are still not there but we are getting there!

During the last decade I started companies, and joined others; both small and large. From agentGO/AGEA, Aligo, Artemis Wireless Werks, to eZee and Motive/ALU. From helping raise millions of dollars in VC money, bringing software products to market, some very successful, to creating partnerships and relationships, almost getting acquired by BEA, to selling the company assets or dissolving the company, the last decade was a hell of a ride.

With Artemis Wireless Werks (my mobile services company) alone helped dozens of companies including Skyfire, AMF Ventures, OMTP.org, MediaSourcery, RGL Forensic Accountants & Consultants, Arrowhead Electronic Healthcare, Edioma, NAKA Media, Blim Law, Sun Microsystems, Nokia, Motorola Metrowerks, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, The Burton Group, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Santa Fe, Aligo, Datamaxx, IBM, Mobile Candy Disk, mLoc8, Salsa.Net, PodCast Ready and Kenosia. Thanks to all for the business!

Got the opportunity to speak on many conferences and wrote hundreds of technical articles on mobile and one book, and thousands of entries on my blog and other blogs. Contributed directly or indirectly to a few other books and wrote the foreword for one. Started 3 other books but didn’t finish them, and I owe book reviews to a number of friends, all great writers; sorry guys! I will review all the pending books! and should at least finish one of those books that I had started.

During the last decade I met wonderful and super smart Mobilists, some in person and others virtually, from all around the world, many becoming good friends even though some of them I’ve never met in person. Others who started in mobile at the same time as I did are still going strong on mobile — way to go! I also helped a number of students, some local but most from around the world, thanks again to the power of the Internet, some even throughout from their Bachelor to their PhD. I’m proud of them.

The space shuttle — my first job out of college in the 90s went through very hard times and a fatal accident losing all crewmen and the vehicle Columbia — glad am I to see the program continue, even though its end of life is to occur on 2010, to move forward into the next phase of the manned space program.

Also during the past decade (in 2005) founded MobileMonday Austin which today has close to 350 members and continues strong, and also was a founding member of the Austin Wireless Alliance and the Carnival of the Mobilists which also continue strong. Helping companies is a passion of mine and throughout the decade I helped dozen of companies with software to pure advice. Got involved with SXSW Interactive as an advisory board member focused on mobile which continues in 2010; hope to see you there.

During the same decade I spent a lot of time helping evolve J2ME by helping with the specs and APIs, writing about it, evangelizing, helping with the JCP and JavaOne and with the Mobile & Embedded Community. In 2009 I was nominated for the 2009 JCP Program Participant of the Year. It is sad for me that J2ME stalled towards the end of the decade (long story) but it is not dead and I think it will (should) live as the preferred development platform for Feature-phones.

Towards the end of the decade I co-founded eZee inc. a mobile marketing and interactive advertising company and joined the UT Austin Technology Incubator (ATI). I’m a proud alumni of the ATI with which I continue having a strong relationship. eZee’s technology was based on my vision of mobile with interactions between the physical and digital worlds and the user (and the analysis of such interactions), and the mobile user context while keeping the technology and adoption as practical to the times as possible — very interesting as in 2000 when I joined agentGO I focused on the importance of user-context and agent software and data as key ingredients to a successful mobile experience. So in many ways, eZee inc was the culmination of the previous 8 years of mobile vision and experience. And that vision is not dead!

And I ended-up the decade at Motive, which was later acquired by Alcatel-Lucent, where I work on software for Telcos in the areas of device management and call-center software and network stuff; things that typically happen “behind the scenes”.

The decade was hell of a ride, as I wrote before. I’m sure I’ve missed a number of things but the above is a good summary — I ended up writing much more that what I had anticipated.

2000-2009 was a decade of vision on things mobile, with lots of research, and partnerships, with some real deployments, with lots excitements and some disappointments. The mobile industry has taken a long time to evolve, mainly because of the operators, and as a consequence the technology took long to evolve and become adopted.

But it is happening now. I see it. I feel it. From the mobile lifestyle, to the ecosystem, from the operator to the developer, from the network to the devices. And as we enter the new decade, mobility will be even *more* pervasive. The technology, the devices and networks are catching up, and we will be able to bring to market all those product concepts that we have been talking about/researching over the last decade. For one, the users are ready with a next generation of users that if you think you and me are connected today, think again. Voice? Nah, only 1% of usage will be voice, and apps/data/messaging/social/media will be the other 99%, always-on/connected. Where 80% of the devices will be Smart-phones and Feature-phones will have 80% of Smart-phone capabilities/functionality. Hybrid apps (80% local/native and 20% web-based) will rule for the first half of the decade, and by the 2nd half, mobile web should rival local/native apps and/or complement them in ways that it is almost transparent when jumping from one to the other and back. The next decade will see Augmented Reality and digital/physical world convergence become a common tool, with the mobile handset right in the middle, and AR it will be standardized and absorbed into the browser as a view — similar to the “street vs. map view”. The mobile handset will also serve as the personal gateway to the Internet, providing the computing power to simple sensors and to the new 5th screen — AR visors/eye-glasses powered by the mobile handset.

And many thanks to all the companies such as Apple and Google and RIM and Nokia and Symbian and the other hundreds of super innovative small companies and people who made the difference during the last decade; while some made it and others failed, they all have a part and made important contributions.

So welcome to the year 2010 and the new decade… Let’s see what the new decade will bring us.

Let’s make it happen! Bring it on!

ceo

With this post I would like to wish you and your family a peaceful and happy Christmas holidays and an awesome, full of health and prosperity 2010!

ceo

Niklas Zennstrong and Janus Friis, Skype, eBay, Joost, Index Ventures, Volpi, Joltid, investors…

There are many opinions floating around the Web, but this case is of interest to me because of the following: 1) Buy vs. License, 2) Due-diligence process, and 3) Core-IP vs. Solutions.

What a mess. A mess that could have been avoided with a proper due-diligence process by eBay. Or perhaps, proper due-diligence was done, and everyone agreed to all, but now they look back, and don’t like the decision made back in 2005, but too late.

Who owns the core-IP? That is the question…

• Skype founders created core-technology.
• The founders applied the core-technology to a specific solution: Skype.
• The founders (and investors) for obvious reasons wanted to maximize their intellectual property.
• So, they sold the solution, Skype, for lots of money, while maintaining ownership of the core-technology, which was made available via licensing.

OK, so what is wrong with that picture so far? NOTHING!

eBay (or someone in eBay) must have known they were not buying the IP. Or perhaps they failed to recognize that running/monetizing a solution like Skype is not the same as for a bidding web-site. Maybe for eBay the solution by itself was attractive-enough; Skype, the solution, had millions and millions of users, which could have been all what eBay cared about at the time. Or maybe eBay was convinced (by Joost or other) or decided by themselves that the technology area was not their core competency and that it was better to keep it with Joost; who knows…

In my opinion, the licensing IP / sell solution approach was (and will always be) a smart move.

eBay at a minimum should have acquired a “branch” of the IP, or pay a fraction of what they paid; but they didn’t. This could have been the result of incompetence or just a deliberate decision. eBay made a mistake, and now must live with it.

As long as the transaction was done legally, it is what it is.

This world is full of smart-and-not-so-smart-people. And that will never change.

ceo

It is once again that time of the year; it is time to vote for next year’s SXSW (2010) panel sessions! To vote, go to the SXSW 2010 Panel Picker.

==> Note that voting closes September 4th!

An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, SXSW Interactive, in Austin TX, features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, bringing together the world’s most creative web developers, designers, bloggers, wireless innovators, content producers, programmers, widget inventors and new media entrepreneurs.

Being a community-driven event, SXSW panels are selected based on community input which accounts for 30% of the total voting power formula:

And this time around the Interactive Festival has 238 242 submitted panel proposals on Mobile/Wireless (108) and Mobile Apps (134).

As a member of the Advisor Board and for obvious reasons I refrain from influencing voters about specific panels to vote for, but I’ll say that I am very excited about the mobility proposals that have been submitted for 2010; it is great to see how year by year the mobility presence continues to grow.

Looking beyond mobility, the Interactive Festival also have a number of great sessions on topics such as social networking, Art, new Technologies, Design, non-profits, content, collaboration, case studies, programming, animation, augmented reality, about our Environment (Mother Earth) and many more topics: a total of 2,282 sessions have been submitted and based on what I saw on the panel picker web site, the SXSW 2010 event will be another great event to attend. And if your schedule permits, stay for the whole SXSW event that includes the Music and Film festivals.

SXSW is a unique and fun experience; you have to attend to understand what I mean; you will learn, meet great people and have a blast; guaranteed! So go ahead and vote and see you next March 12-20 of 2010!

For more information visit the official SXSW web site.

ceo

First and foremost, my apologies to all the readers of my blog, as I haven’t been able to write much at all lately… I’ve been so busy at work, literally ->0 time to write/blog.

(well, I’ve been busy writing other kinds of stuff — business cases and new products requirements and marketing and sales and pricing stuff; but I digress)

A lot of mobility-related things have been happening, from Augmented Reality to other cool stuff, but allow me to briefly focus (rant) on one aspect that bugs me the most at this age of “openness”: Apple’s angle and attitude w.r.t. iPhone/App Store and its effect on (against) the developer community. For a good example of what I’m talking about go read the blog post There’s No App for That - the nightmare experiences by iPhone app developer Riverturn (I know Kevin Duerr indirectly through a good friend of mine). Also read about Riverturn’s case at Mac|Life - Apple’s FCC Response Infuriates Google Voice App Developer.

I stick by what I said back on July when I wrote on Twitter:

“Google Voice was removed as it “duplicates features that come with the iPhone”. That’s anti-competitive, unlawful and will bite Apple later”…

(First it was Google Voice, then Riverturn’s VoiceCentral application)

A couple of days later, the FCC started some inquiries on the matter and then Apple officially responded to the FCC inquiries.

In my opinion, Apple with its policies, selective rejections and lack of explanations on why the applications are being rejected (leaving developers with no route to re-enter the app market and leaving their users/subscribers unhappy potentially resulting on not returning back) Apple is clearly behaving like a “monopolist”.

And what I find ironic is that Apple (a god when it comes to design) is wrapping “policy” around “design” and making design (and thus policy) the reason for rejections; here design is the iPhone’s “distinctive user experience”.

But what Apple is conveniently ignoring is that 3rd-party developers, even the ones who are competitors are the ones who have made the iPhone successful — all you have to do is watch the iPhone TV commercials; it is about the applications.

It is about the E C O S Y S T E M — don’t screw with it!

Related to this see:

• Hey Apple, One More Thing… (what’s up with these refunds?) (Riverturn)
• Apple Responds to the FCC with Illogical Arguments (Riverturn)

ceo

Earlier this month Amazon not only pulled a number of eBooks from their online catalogs, but also deleted such eBooks from the Kindles of people who had purchased such eBooks. The reason: some kind of publishing/copyright debacle.

But ironic it is that one of the eBooks in question was 1984, the classic dystopian novel that introduced us, back in 1949, to “Big Brother”.

But the real novel is right now about the Dystopian (business) structures by companies such as Amazon (and Apple).

Dystopia begins with ignorance and the hope of an Utopian society or business structure that in the name of “our own good” or the “good of the business/investors” instead turns into a nightmare.

Today we have companies that can easily turn from their Utopian beginnings to true Dystopia — with our personal information that they own and control. And as in the case of Amazon, the *invasion by the company* which to them at first seemed such a natural course of action; but it was not.

Since then, Amazon has apologized and has promised not to do that again…

But this pattern will continue because *we* allow it to happen; we give up our own individual rights, via EULAs and Terms-and-Conditions; as I said, Dystopia begins with ignorance… And it is all around us; in businesses such as Apple, Amazon, MSFT, Google and other. And governments with their pervasive surveillance (and control), and the escalation on the rights of the individual.

ceo

Yes, that’s right, the SXSW 2010 Panel submission closes tonight at midnight CST (July 12, 2009) — submit your entry at the 2010 Panelpicker website. Submit your mobile panel today!!!

ceo

As I have written here before, a couple of texting “records” have happened in my family; at one point my oldest daughter had more than 3K text messages in one month, and more recently my youngest daughter had around 1,300.

This past weekend at soccer, I was talking to a good friend of mine about texting. My friend said…

“…so we had to talk to our daughter — last month her texting count was 19K text messages”

I, having previous experience with daughters and texting said:

“…nah, that’s nothing, my daughters had 1,300 and 3K”

he said:

“no, Enrique, you didn’t understand, I said 19 THOUSAND!!!”

To what I responded…

“what the hell, no way! that’s crazy!”

Wow, 19 thousand messages — that is an average of ~633 (sent and received) messages a day…

That reminds me, have you ever seen my essay Texting and The Evolution of the Thumb?

ceo

As (mobile) technologists we must be aware of and recognize the potential for harm when obvious/weak-patents are granted by the Patent Office. We should be able to trust the patent system, but the system is weak.

In particular I am here writing about the USA patent 6,199,048 (PDF) titled “System and Method for Automatic Access of a Remote Computer over a Network” by NeoMedia which was part of EFF’s Patent Busting Project. I’ve written about NeoMedia back in 2006 and now I find myself once again writing about it.

As a technologist in the field of software and specifically mobile computing, I will say that the patent ‘048 has no merit. And that it is unfortunate that our PTO is weak in understanding the foundations of the web (on which ‘048 is based) and what is obvious vs. non-obvious concepts and variations. The ‘048 patent is totally based on existing Point of Sale (POS) and Web concepts (even for 1999 when it was filed). That an index or key (i.e. code) is entered by hand or scanned and is then mapped by a remote computer and related information is returned, this has existed years before in POS systems. That a URL is returned and used later on for the initiation of a connection to a particular resource on the Internet is at the heart of the Internet and the Web, even before 1999. While I do recognize the inventors’ vision, their claims are or should be invalid due to non-obviousness and prior-art.

It is my personal opinion that honoring this patent is harmful to the industry, and that the EFF while having good intentions failed by initiating a process which gave NeoMedia the opportunity to “strengthen” its position from the PTO perspective, resulting on the narrowing of some of its claims vs. invalidating the patent per-se. That said, the narrowing might turnout to be a success all on its own, as by narrowing the claims it allows for alternative paths or workarounds. At the end patents are about protecting a set of claims, which also is the weaknesses of patents.

I want to point out the fact that the PTO first granted, then invalidated, then narrowed the claims for ‘048 is proof of the PTO’s incompetence and lack of proper expertise thus failing at its duties. You will hear from lawyers that this happens all the time, but it still shows the lack of expertise by the PTO as this specific ‘048 is not rocket science to get.

The community must recognize the harm of granting obvious patents such as ‘048 which is going to be applied in strength by NeoMedia to everything related to digital-to-physical world connections, such as “mobile barcodes” and even potentially to NFC-based interactions; the latter harder to protect as the ‘048 is mainly about barcodes yet it is up to interpretation as the ‘048 does mention “RF”.

This is a serious matter and I predict the ‘048 patent is going to be a heated topic in the future.

ceo

I’m sure that by now you have heard the rumors about IBM potentially buying Sun. Even yesterday Intel CEO says Sun was shopped around (cnet news).

Why is this a significant announcement? And why I think Intel’s CEO is wrong (when he said that Solaris and SPARC will get EOL)?

Well, besides acquiring an iconic and historically-rich company in the Valley when it comes to technology, there are other items of interest:

1. Java licensing - IBM has invested millions if not billions on Java technology. I remember years ago when the company totally committed to Java technology, and even created the San Francisco project on which IBM poured millions of dollars. IBM has its server-side J2EE and Java ME (mobile) technologies and VMs. Most of IBM’s products are Java based. On every Java Specification (JSR) voting cycle IBM always comments on their disagreement when it comes to the current licensing model. But, by acquiring Sun this would mean a long-term strategy on security and millions of dollars saved on a core technology that IBM is dependent on, now and in the future
2. Access to great IP - Sun has a great Intellectual Property (IP) porfolio: from software to hardware. This will put IBM, the already leader in patents and intellectual property, much further ahead than everyone else
3. Solaris and Sun servers (here is where I disagree w/ Intel’s CEO) - Sun has a lot of expertise and robust products from S/W to H/W. The UltraSPARC processor are pretty kick-ass design. Sun equipment and Solaris 10 is certified for telecoms (NEBS and ATCA) — IBM/AIX is not! This would give IBM immediate access to all telecoms; pretty big stuff, don’t you agree?
4. Access to lots of smart people - Sun has lots of smart people, again from S/W to H/W and services
5. Java open source - back to #1 above, IBM might end up (fully) open source Java and related technologies, all under the Eclipse model! This will benefit IBM and the whole community

About about NetBeans? That probably continues but w/o funding/support from IBM — totally community based. OpenOffice on the other hand may have a different story as it doesn’t compete with IBM/Eclipse and is a pretty valuable office-suite, and thus would probably continue under the Eclipse model, meaning with funding/support from IBM. As a matter of fact, all open source projects acquired by IBM from Sun would move to an Eclipse or Apache licensing model.

ceo

A reminder that this evening, Sunday March 15 don’t miss the “Mobile Web Apps & Widgets Meet-Up” at 5:00pm:

• Event: Mobile Web Apps & Widgets Meet-Up “Find out about your chance to win £20,000″
• What: Informational Meeting
• Host: Vodfone/Betavine & OMTP
• Start Time: Sunday, March 15 at 5:00-8:00pm
• Where: Driskill Hotel Bar

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=56573382794&mid=238ec8G3289174dG3ff128fG7

Or if you don’t use Facebook, just show up.

ceo

After so many years in mobility, 2009 was my first 3GSM/Mobile World Congress. I always wanted to attend, but couldn’t justify the expenses at the time (being a small startup).

It was my first time in Spain as well, “La Madre Patria” as it used to be said in Puerto Rico. Visiting Spain was interesting for me, mainly because of my inheritance implications; was great to see that part.

MWC was for me about business meeting after meeting every day: with partners and potential partners, customers and potential customers and walking the halls for some intelligence gathering of course. Because I was so busy I missed many of the annoucenments and friends and couldn’t blog anything at all during the event (I Twittered a bit tho). I think that it is funny that one can learn more about the event itself by not attending and just reading the news/blogs.

Mobility-wise, I saw a little bit of everything. Product and products, big announcements such as (billions of dollars) LTE-related which will soon shape the future of wireless networks, app stores, WinMo and PalmPre, widgets, partners and competitors, and something that really, really bugged me - a blatant copy cat of the iPhone, BlackBerry and other look-a-like handsets (where is the honor and pride on that?). I did though find a couple of gems; more on this later.

I enjoyed the city very much; no, I loved the city, the people, and the food. We stayed at an apartment right in the middle of Barcelona (see photos below). I really had a blast. I met some of my Mobilists and Twitter friends, some of whom I’ve known virtually for years. And I missed many folks due to my crazy meeting schedule; sorry about that. I also missed many of the activities and parties as well; not enough time to see it all. MWC at night is pretty intense.

I was able to attend the MobileMonday dinner and one or two of the parties (such as the Smaato). I missed the Mobile Peer Awards and the MobileMonday founder’s meeting, and I missed Helen Keegan and Caroline Lewko’s (WIP) events, and many others.

But I was able to visit La Rambla (what an experience, literally), el Puerto Olimpico, La Sagrada Familia (impressive). Got to eat great paella and drank great wine, great coffee too, and got to hang out with my co-workers and friends from ACCESS, and others. The best food I had was at a couple of very small restaurants right in the middle of Barcelona - great tapas and Cataluña food and wine.

By the time I got home on Saturday, I was so exausted that I could sleep for 2 straight days; but I couldn’t! That Saturday was my wife’s birthday for which I cooked something nice for her and then Sunday it was soccer game (daughter) all over again.

Going to MWC of course means pushing your regular schedule back a week+, so this last week after MWC was tough with business stuff + hundreds of emails and thousands of blogs to read (still), with MobileMonday Austin that following Monday (great meeting BTW), so it was not until today, a week later, that I got a chance to write this piece about MWC/Barcelona.

So, in short, it was a great trip and experience, definitely a business/working trip that helped validate many product ideas (Motive), met great people and it was all worth it, business-wise and personally… I hope to be back. Below are some of the few photos I captured. Cheers.

ceo

For those attending Mobile World Congress 2009:

• I would love to meet my (virtual) friends, followers and people who I follow,
• From work perspective, if your company has or will have “end-to-end digital management” needs anywhere in the world from activation to support to management for mobile handsets and 3G-and-4G nomadic devices, I would love to chat with you and explore…
• Send me an email if you can meet.

I will be in Barcelona the whole week. My personal email is enrique dot ortiz at gmail dot com.

Also, if there are any events that you recommend I attend, please let me know too; for example, I believe MobileMonday Barcelona is that Monday.

See you in Barcelona!

ceo