About Mobility Weblog

If you see a flashing light while looking at the moon, it might not be an optical illusion but an meteoroid impact; from 100 Explosions on the Moon (NASA):

Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.

:

“Even when no meteor shower is active, we still see flashes,” says Cooke.

Below is an impact near crater Gauss on January 4, 2008 (NASA):

…explosions don’t require oxygen or combustion. Meteoroids hit the moon with tremendous kinetic energy, traveling 30,000 mph or faster. “At that speed, even a pebble can blast a crater several feet wide. The impact heats up rocks and soil on the lunar surface hot enough to glow like molten lava–hence the flash.”

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Josh Kopelman (Redeye VC blog and managing Director of First Round Capital) wrote a piece titled Depending on pending… where he argues about the importance of patents w.r.t. barriers to entry vs. focusing on going to market first:

Most people don’t realize that the average software patent will take many years from initial application to issuance. (According to the USPTO, software patents have the longest backlog of any type of patent. In 2005 the backlog was almost four years…and it has grown larger since then).

Given that a patent needs to be issued before it can be enforced, and given that it takes 4+ years for a patent to issue, you can’t really call it an effective “barrier” to entry. Before you can even consider enforcing the patent, your company has already succeeded or failed in the marketplace. And by the time you try to close the “patent door” to the barn, the horse has not only left the barn, it has probably died of old age.

Yes, patents alone won’t do the trick as barrier to entry, but it is part of the barrier to entry equation, and innovation companies must protect their IP, and that is the responsibility of the CTO. The following is the comment that I left on Josh’s blog:

The role of the CTO; to envision, anticipate, create and execute the technology roadmap, and protect the related IP. This is a must do, but must not take your company into a tangent and preclude execution and go to market. Expensive and long process it is, a must do, and at the end of the game, what your company had protected might not be inline with the company’s “new” technology/business direction. But that is the role of the CTO, to understand this… A tricky balance and race, for technology companies and startups.

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The Phoenix Mars Lander has landed. Perfect landing. Congrats to the Phoenix Lander team…

Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53 Eastern Time), May 25, 2008, in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.

…and the Children of the Earth continue moving forward towards the inevitable; them leaving their home Planet. It will happen, someday.

Below is one of the first pictures taken by the Phoenix Lander — Click to enlarge (NASA):

I’ve always said that “space probes” are the coolest embedded application ever to work on; talk about creativity, challenges and rewards at the end…

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Below is a diagram that will appear on a piece that I am writing titled Mobile Internet Programming. The diagram presents (and compares) the attributes for the different methods for mobile software programming:

Click to Enlarge — Mobile Internet Programming: Browser, Web Runtime, Local-based Applications.

This is work in progress…

Comments are welcome.

ceo

Update 1 - May 23 ‘08: I just found these two excellent presentations by peer Mobilists Barbara and Paul, slides that complement the diagram above:

• Going Mobile (Barbara Ballard)
• Decided To Mobilise? How to Engage with the Mobile Internet User (Paul Golding)

Update 2 - May 24 ‘08: I’m not too satisfied with the above visualization approach to show the characteristics of the different mobile applications… plus and it is missing the fourth method, mobile messaging-based apps.

I haven’t blogged for a whole week… My team and I have been extremely busy, heads-down, with no time to blog.

I’ve lots good stuff to blog about, thoughts and technical stuff, and my apologies for my slow blogging, but let’s not forget Blogging Conjecture #1…

But it’s all good… lot’s of great stuff coming from eZee. Beta has been great, and our customers love our offerings, and the platform has been solid. Our next generation offerings are being developed; our robust mobile platform, our services on the web, our mobile marketing tools, the Open APIs, our context-based/people-centric secret sauce, oh, and our new web-site will be up soon. We also were recognized as one of Austin’s top emerging companies.

And none of the above means a thing, unless our customer-base continues to grow and we generate revenue, so it is great that we are signing more customers; Jim, my head of sales is awesome and rocks - that guy can sell ice to an Eskimo in the Arctic circle in the middle of winter. Can you do that? Neither do I.

Our new CEO, Ron, is rock solid. Our new advisory board is just kick-ass, the best. Having these folks joining us is all on itself a great validation of our vision and execution; these folks wouldn’t be joining us if we were BS’ing here. And I can’t be any happier with this. More on this later.

BTW, I’m looking for a strong Web UI designer and graphic artist, Web UI developer, and Product Manager. For more information text the word jobs to 23933 (2eZee).

To learn how to reach me, text my name, enrique, to 23933 (2eZee).

ceo

dotMobi continues providing great services to the mobility development community, and has published Ten Mistakes in Mobile Web Marketing. It is a good compilation of things to avoid and related suggestions and best practices:

The mobile web is taking off, with traffic rising on thousands of great mobile websites from the world’s top brands and hot new players.

But there are still marketers who treat the mobile web just like the desktop PC web. We call it “dotcom thinking” and it makes for mobile sites that are hard to use, hard to find and hard
to like.

Ten Mistakes in Mobile Web Marketing shows you ten of the most common examples of dotcom thinking, so you won’t repeat them.

It includes examples of best practice from mobile sites…

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From Google lays out mobile future (Silicon.com):

Google Mobile group product manager, Hugo Barra, added a great user interface – like Apple’s iPhone - and a flat data plan are key in making mobile internet appeal to consumers.

A great UI and flat data plans…. Right on…

Also:

Chang said that Google prefers to avoid developing apps which require elements to be downloaded to the device as this makes the user experience slower and less attractive.

Instead, the company can focus on innovative web applications such as Google Grand Prix - the mobile software suite which includes search, email and location based services.

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If you own a home, or are looking to buy one, check out Zillow.com, a very cool website/tool. You can look at homes, or if selling, check your home, and all the information, photos and charts based on public records, market history, and other…. You can set estimates based on upgrades done to the home, and compare to other houses in the neighborhood. Very neat and useful tool.

ceo

Interesting, I just read via Olle’s blog JavaWire, about MSA version 2 (JSR 249)… I haven’t been able to keep up with JSR 249 for a while; so I decided to take a look at it today.

…wow, lots of things have happened. For one, it is no longer called MSA for CDC, but now its called MSA 2; I think they made the right call, good:

Unlike the first version of MSA (specified in JSR-248), MSA 2 does not only cover Java feature phones (CLDC phones), but also more advanced phones (CDC phones). MSA 2 will specify three different sets of API – a limited, a core, and a full set – for different types of phones, from low-end phones to advanced smartphones.

Interesting. They followed the JSR 248 concept of API stacks. With MSA2, the API stacks are as follows:

Click to Enlarge (Source: MSA2 spec)

Click to Enlarge (Source: MSA2 spec)

Very cool. I’m very excited to see the new APIs that MSA2 includes:

• MIDP3 (JSR-271)
• Mobile Sensor API (JSR-256)
• Contactless Communication API (JSR-257)
• Mobile User Interface Customization API (JSR-258)
• Mobile Broadcast Service API (JSR-272)
• XML API for Java ME (JSR-280)
• IMS Services API(JSR-281)

This is great news; from NFC to IMS; can’t wait.

I do see (or fail to see) some JSRs that should be considered for inclusion:

• JSR 304: Mobile Telephony API version 2 -or- JSR 253 MTA version 1
• JSR 266: Unified Message Box Access API (UMBA-API)
• JSR 307: Network Mobility and Mobile Data API

MSA 2 looks hot. If all these APIs get delivered consistently across all handsets, we will be in business…

Related MSA news:

• MSA at JavaOne (Johan Vos)

ceo

Mowser lives; pretty awesome.

Just read that dotMobi has acquired Mowser, and that Mike and Russ will join dotMobi… From dotMobi Loves Mowser (dotMobi):

At long last we can announce some great news! dotMobi is acquiring the well-known Mowser service that provides content adaptation services for mobile.

We’re very excited about this. Russell Beattie and Mike Rowehl are both very talented mobile gurus and they’ll be joining the dotMobi team to help us do cool things with their technology. We did this deal because Mowser fits really well into lots of our current projects.

Good to see this, good move by James… A win-win situation.

Congratulations to all…

Related to this see:

• $dotMobi[] = $Mowser (Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility)
• Is the mobile web dead? Maybe not. A conversation with Mowser co-founder Mike Rowehl (VentureBeat)

ceo

Sun has released (at J1) its Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) for Java ME, the library, demos and example code, as part of the a new project LWUIT on Java.net:

LWUIT is a UI library that is bundled together with applications and helps content developers in creating compelling and consistent Java ME applications. LWUIT supports visual components and other UI goodies such as theming, transitions, animation and more.

LWUIT seems like a a cool addition/library, and provides a UI API with support for animations, buttons, forms, fonts, layout managers, scrolling and tabs, transitions, styles and themes. Very cool. For 225 KB, LWUIT will help developers add spice to their applications with less effort.

Jonathan Knudsen has written a tutorial that introduces LWUIT.

LWUIT binary library is licensed under Sun License Agreement (SLA), and the source code is licensed under GPLv2.

LWUIT competes with Paxmodept’s UI library and Tricastmedia TWUIK UI toolkits.

Related to this see 11 Things About LWUIT (Shai’s Weblog).
ceo

I had missed this; thanks to Alex Kerr for point this out: Talking Transcoding (Mobile Marketing Magazine) where Novarra’s President and COO, Jayanthi Rangarajan, was interviewed. Also make sure to scroll-down and go over the comments.

My response to this:

Prime example of lack of vision, and lack of network neutrality; only the partners get preference. Shame on both, the network provider, and Novarra for promoting closeness (and unnecessary control), and shame on Novarra for failing to take advantage of their position to educate their customer.

Prime example of group of people, in this case Novarra and the network carrier, thinking they know better than the rest… Novarra and the network provider should be smart, and should listen to the collective intelligence (vs. being defensive); collective intelligence that surpasses the intelligence of any single company out there.

Come one, the Manifesto can’t be more clear than what it is! Embrace it!

And be considerate about the content owner’s original intentions! Off-deck web-sites do generate traffic, content, revenue to others in the ecosystem.

C. Enrique Ortiz, CTO @ eZee
— Signer of the Manifesto

ceo

A good writeup by Joel Spolsky where he covers the concept or role of Architecture Astronauts:

I tried to coin a term for the kind of people who invented Hailstorm: architecture astronauts. “That’s one sure tip-off to the fact that you’re being assaulted by an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!”

The hallmark of an architecture astronaut is that they don’t solve an actual problem… they solve something that appears to be the template of a lot of problems. Or at least, they try. Since 1988 many prominent architecture astronauts have been convinced that the biggest problem to solve is synchronization.

See Joel’s article Architecture astronauts take over.

ceo

Like 3 weeks ago I was reading about Fuzzy Databases. I used Google Books to mark an interesting book titled Fuzzy Database Modeling that I saw online. But since then, Google believes my name is “Fuzzy Database Modeling”.

…on my Google shared items: “Fuzzy Database Modeling’s shared items ”

…the comments I leave on Blogger-powered sites: “Fuzzy Database Modeling said…”

and so on…

Google, my name is not “Fuzzy Database Modeling”; you have a bug.

ceo

We are moving towards the next phase in mobile-based marketing? Some people call this Mobile Marketing 2.0:

“…combines business and customer interaction data to automate the delivery of relevant marketing information.”

So what’s the next phase after MM 2.0? For some folks, the answer seems to be MM 2.0g — or get the government involved:

“We’re filing a complaint to force the FTC to take a proactive stance,” Chester said. Mobile ad companies “incorporate the same problematic business practices that we witnessed with PC-based broadband marketing, including behavioral targeting and profiling techniques–except that this time they know your location,” he said.

Jeff Chester is founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

Too much government involvement? Others deciding what is best for you or me? You decide. But in my opinion, the government is the LAST thing you get involved. Let the market/industry develop, and settle all by itself. Let those who abuse the trust of their customer just crash-and-burn, or just go sue their asses. But keep the government out; their involvement minimal.

See Groups Complain To FTC About Mobile Marketing.

Update: FTC Warns Mobile Marketers to Keep it Honest (Wireless Week).

ceo