One of the cool things about helping judge/select the mobile sessions for SXSW Interactive Festival is that it is like taking the pulse of the Mobile industry — how the mobile industry and technologists feel about the state of things.

This year’s mobility and new technology submissions show how Geo & Social, AR and Big-Data continue to evolve and are key technology areas in the mind of many mobile technologists and marketers alike; a not surprising trend. Some NFC/RFID and barcodes came up. And the topics of native vs. web continues but not as strong, same with Flash, perhaps indicating native as the preferred approach to mobile apps, at least for now.

A lot of very good sessions this year; it was a bit tough to choose… congrats to all who submitted.

ceo

Check out this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists (#236) at MSearchGroove with topics on Mobile Games, Mobile Web, Mobile Data, Bible Apps, Trends and my entry on NFC. Enjoy…

ceo

But before I continue, a question: how often do you click on an Ad, or better, when was the last time you clicked on an Ad?

Most people that I ask answer this question as follows: “not very often” or “long-time ago”.

Now the realization…

Today I saw someone clicking on an Ad, multiple times. This person *didn’t realize* it was an Ad, but part of the app!

(From the app-design perspective, this is “great” and it validates the fact that if you make Ads look as part of your app itself that people will click more often.)

So it occurred to me, could it be the long-tail of click-throughs come from people who don’t really know that what they are clicking on are Ads? And could this be the reason why all the people I ask (mostly folks who know computers and the Web and what are Ads are) don’t click on Ads that often? And also is the the reason why Click-through rates fall but interactions continue good performance?

And does this mean that *over time* as people continue to get more educated about the Web and Ads, that they will not click on Ads as often? Thus, Ads as a revenue model is in jeopardy?

I think so…

ceo

Dean>> “I think this is one of those rare occasions where Nokia gets it right (i.e. dropping NFC) and Apple gets it wrong (embracing NFC).”

CEO>> Nokia continues pushing for NFC. Last July they re-iterated their commitment.

Dean>> “Nokia did a bunch of trials, which despite the PR hyperbole were absolutely not “successful”. There is no clear consumer need, no business model, and a myriad of technical and user interaction problems.”

CEO>> Consumer feedback from trials (at least in the USA) have been positive. (note to self: try to find the results for the trials)

Dean>> “Quite rightly, Nokia realised that adding NFC to phones wouldn’t make them any extra money, any time soon (or indeed, probably ever).”

CEO>> See my comment above. The problem is the operator was not distributing (ordering) the Nokia NFC handsets. The problem is the operator wants control via the SIM card. But, Nokia will push forward with the non-Single Wire Protocol (SWP) handsets next year. Nokia and the other handset manufacturers realize that forcing NFC-app enablement via the SIM only will just slow things down/won’t work.

Dean>> “In particular, users would have to be insane to trust mobile payments to an operator rather than a 3rd party.”

CEO>> Again, this is why handset manufacturers will be offering non-SWP NFC handsets as well (via microSD NFC?). This will allow for 3rd party applications vs. operator-centered/controlled, where apps are restricted to a few big-name players.

So let’s see how Apple will approach this; very likely by not using the SIM/SWP approach.

And yes, part of NFC solutions are the services on the cloud. This approach would allow and leverage the developer ecosystem to bring useful apps to the consumer.

About ROI, it will be there via the apps similar today, plus perhaps additional transaction-based revenue.

And let’s not equate NFC to payments only; there are other interesting scenarios we will see once this is made available to the developer ecosystem.

ceo

NFC is one of those technologies that I have written quite a bit about (see my NFC/Touch page) and that I believe will change how people use their handsets. Unfortunately it has taken forever to hit the mass market; blame the operators…

And as I’ve previously written, I’ll say it again in 2010 — Even though Nokia was first in understanding the power of proximity and had introduced some of the first handsets, it is the iPhone what will drive the NFC revolution…

Related to this see:

• Apple said to be making big mobile payment move with recent hire (ComputerWorld)
• Apple hires NFC expert as mobile commerce product manager (NFC Word)
• Near-Field (Proximity) Communication in late 2009 (About Mobility)

A reminder that the 2011 SXSW Interactive PanelPicker community voting is open and that voting ends Aug 27, 2010. SXSW Interactive is on March 11-15, 2011.

For SXSW Interactive alone there are 2344 sessions! Wow. And for mobile/wireless and mobile apps there are 96 sessions.

Please remember that SXSW is a community-driven event and that your vote literally accounts for about 30% of the decision-making process for any given programming slot.

So go ahead, find the proposals (and mobile proposals!) that most interest you and vote!

Voting ends 11:59 CDT on Friday, August 27.

See you March 11-15, 2011…

ceo

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists #234 is at TheFonecast.com. Packed with great entries by Steven Hoober, Antoine RJ Wright, Ajit Jaokar, Judy Breck, Peggy at MSearchGroove, the folks at The Fonecast and myself!

Enjoy!

ceo

Location-based applications can bring many benefits to business processes, and help create exciting social and business software, but poorly used or mismanaged, especially when applied to people or personal information, can become a major area of concern with respect to privacy.

…and with it I also wrote some guidelines for developers on using location information on mobile applications. These have been evolving since then and today can be summarized as follows:

• Always Alert the User
• The End-User, the Ultimate Decision Maker
• Safeguard All Captured Information
• Use Geofecing responsibly | Use Passive Tracking instead
• Be responsible…

Today I read some great Best Practices for Handling Android User Data (Nick Kralevich, Android Developers Blog) that echoes similar guidelines plus other good ones that I recommend you read:

• Maintain a privacy policy
• Minimize permissions
• Give your users a choice regarding data collection
• Don’t collect unnecessary information
• Don’t send data off the device
• … but if you have to, use encryption and data minimization
• Don’t use code you don’t understand
• Don’t log device or user specific information.

Following guidelines such as the ones described above is of extreme importance; be proactive about these. Key to mobile is trust and violating the user’s trust is something you obviously want to avoid.

Related to this see my LBS page.

ceo

1. In the UAE where “The issue … against BlackBerry’s super-secure encrypted services” (Reuters);
2. In India where “Indian officials say they need to be able to intercept BlackBerry messages” (Information Week);
3. In Indonesia where “We don’t know whether data being sent through BlackBerrys can be intercepted or read by third parties outside the country,” (USA Today).

Their arguments are around the inability by the respective governments to monitor messages due to BlackBerry’s 1) strong encryption products and RIM not willing to share the device’s master-key to break into the messages, and 2) RIM’s central Infrastructure with data-centers in Canada and the UK.

From Reuters article:

“We are very clear that any BlackBerry service that cannot be fully intercepted by our agencies must be discontinued. Offering access to data is part of the telecom licensing guidelines and has to be adhered to,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed security official as saying.

Background Info
There are two solutions for BlackBerry: 1) BlackBerry Internet Service and 2) BlackBerry Enterprise solution.

The BlackBerry Internet Service is not necessarily that secure:

Email messages and instant messages that are sent between the BlackBerry® Internet Service and your BlackBerry device use the security features of the wireless network. Messages that are sent between your messaging server and the BlackBerry Internet Service are automatically encrypted if the server supports SSL encryption.

Other encryption mechanisms include PGP and S/MIME.

On the other hand, the security in the BlackBerry Enterprise solution is super strong.

The BlackBerry Enterprise Solution offers end-to-end encryption between the BlackBerry device and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (that resides at the enterprise’s premises) by using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) or Triple Data Encryption Standard (Triple DES).

The BlackBerry is not PKI-based but uses symmetric cryptography, meaning that there is a master-key. In BlackBerry there is a unique master-key for each device and a per-message-key that are dynamically generated. Messages are encrypted using the per-message key, and the per-message key is in turn encrypted using the master-key. The master-key resides on the device itself as well as inside the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), that again resides at the enterprise’s premises and not at the operator nor Canada or the UK RIM data-centers.

The RIM folks made a public statement as follows:

“The BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is based on a symmetric key system whereby the customer creates their own key and only the customer ever possesses a copy of their encryption key. RIM does not possess a “master key”, nor does any “back door” exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data.”

But what is that article from India Times?

India Times wrote an article BlackBerry to open code for security check that reads:

The company has offered to share with security agencies its technical codes for corporate email services, open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days and also develop tools in 6 to 8 months to allow monitoring of chats, telecom department documents (dated August 2) available with ET show.

So what is it? Is RIM opening or not? What does “technical codes for corporate email services” really means? Master-keys?

Based on BlackBerry’s architecture I don’t see how RIM can accommodate the above request for enterprise users unless RIM show the governments how to break and retrieve the master-keys from the Enterprises servers themselves. But for BlackBerry Internet Service (consumers) yes they can easily do it by just handing over the intercepted messages themselves, unless the messages are encrypted with SSL or PGP or S/MIME in which case it is not RIM’s problem.

What are the implications?

First, what all of the above means is that the issue against RIM is really against BlackBerry enterprise users (i.e. businesses) and that the argument against the central network architecture of the BlackBerry Infrastructure is really inconsequential since regardless of where the central servers reside, across the globe or local to the country, they won’t be able to easily break the symmetric encryption (remember, the master-keys don’t reside at the central data-centers anyway).

(If you think about it, regional servers would actually help RIM alleviate the management of BlackBerry handset-traffic by managing it regionally; assuming there is something to alleviate.)

So what this means is that the issue should not really be about the location of the servers themselves, but the real issue here is obviously the requests by the respective governments to monitor the messages themselves.

The next logical question is: “Must all services that cannot be intercepted must be discontinued in those countries?”

RIM is in over 175 countries and even Obama uses RIM. And the world relies daily on Public-Key cryptography and infrastructure for online transactions and secure messages. If governments were to force a change that would break PKI or BlackBerry for that matter, that will be the end of secure online transactions; you won’t be able to trust online purchases or share information in a secure fashion. If governments can break into it, so will hackers.

Shutting down the BlackBerry services seems unlikely to me. Will RIM be forced to change their architecture/infrastructure to satisfy these governments? Perhaps RIM should do a Google (as when it pulled out of China).

And how is the market responding/treating RIM because of this debacle? “RIM’s Nasdaq-listed shares [RIMM 53.39 -2.14 (-3.85%)] ended down 2.5 percent at $55.53 while its Toronto-listed shares fell 4 percent to C$56.77. (CNBC.com) — and the ironic thing is that I bet you that those same traders are BlackBerry users themselves who wouldn’t think about using their devices without strong encryption…

Related to this:

• BlackBerry Ban Threat in UAW seen as a Negotiation Tactic (Reuters Video)
• Kuwait wants RIM to filter BlackBerry traffic, Saudi Arabia testing three servers (Engadget)
• What happens to your smartphone data — and is it safe? (CNN)
• RIM reported to have made deal with India

ceo

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is at Mobsessed where you can find mobile blogging from James Roswell who writes about the Wholesale Application Community’s mission, Eric over at MobileSlate gives you an insight into the cardinal sins of Foursquare, Peggy Anne Salz interviews Alan Moore about engagement marketing, Tomi Ahonen writes about understanding the smartphone market, Andy from MobiThinking writes about Mobile awards, and yours truly writes on insights into the reasons for the mobile boom.

Enjoy…

ceo