About Mobility

The Carnival of the Mobilists #133 is at VisionMobile (Andreas Constantinou’s weblog). VisionMobile is one of the top mobility blogs in the global blogosphere; a must read. This week’s edition of the Carnival comes with mobile technology essays by Justin Oberman, Ian Wood, Ajit Jaokar, Andrew Grill, Dean Bubley, Barbara Ballard, Martin Sauter, and truly yours, C. Enrique Ortiz (me!).

Thanks to Andreas for selecting my essay as the post of the week:

The post of the week honours go to C. Enrique Ortiz for his thesis on why discoverability is what’s stalling the take-up of mobile apps. It’s always great to see such thought leadership in the mobile industry.

Thanks for the kind words Andreas!

See the Carnival of the Mobilists #133.

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At our last MobileMonday Austin event we had the pleasure of having as guest speaker Nikunj Mehta, team leader of the Atom DB project at Oracle.

It really was a great technical presentation by Nikunj, where he discussed mobile web applications, synchronization and disconnected databases. He introduced AtomDB which in my opinion has great potential for mobile web applications and the problem of intermittent connectivity, caching and offline data synchronization. Nikunj and his team definitely understand the problem and have come up with a very interested solution, AtomDB.

AtomDB is a browser-runtime component (plug-in) that allows (mobile) web applications to have a data access layer with relational data management and networked data synchronization capabilities. AtomDB uses standard technologies such as JavaScript-based APIs, the Atom syndication format for transport (publishing), and the web browser itself. Because it is a browser extension (plug-in) only browsers with plug-in support can be extended with AtomDB (an obvious observation); they are first proving/validating the technology using Windows Mobile, and other browsers will follow, probably with support for WebKit-based browsers coming up next.

With AtomDB, the (mobile) web application doesn’t have to worry about connectivity and network details — from the application itself, the data may or not reside on the handset, and AtomDB takes care of connectivity and synchronization details. AtomDB is a relatively new project and is (research) work in progress. I totally recommend that you follow up on this project.

If you are interested in learning more about AtomDB, see Nikunj’s blog The Asymptotic Tight Bound blog.

Below are Nikunj’s presentation slides Mobile Data Access Using AtomDB:

ceo

Free pass to MobileBeat 2008!

I’m not going to make it to the event tomorrow July 24th, which is happening at the Plug & Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale CA — product deliverables/milestones are 1st priority…

So whomever contacts me first, can have my $450.00 pass that is on my name…. Email me, call me, twitter me, or leave a comment on this blog… All I need is help with is “transferring” this pass to whomever wins it…

ceo

Not bad…

From Apple Says 25 Million iPhone Apps Downloaded (CNN):

Apple Inc. (AAPL) said iPhone owners has downloaded 25 million copies of software programs for the phone in about 11 days, which it sees as a significant benefit for future iPhone sales.

Related to this see Apple Store - 10 million downloads in just 3 days (who said local apps are RIP?) It is about ease of discovery.

ceo

This is big. This very much could mean the end of software patents… See the article The Death of Google’s Patents (Patent Law Blog). From the Patent Law Blog article:

If the PTO’s test is followed, the crucial question for the vitality of patents on computer implemented inventions is whether a general purpose computer qualifies as a “particular” machine within the meaning of the agency’s test. In two recent decisions announced after the oral arguments in the Bilski case, Ex parte Langemyr (May 28, 2008) and Ex parte Wasynczuk (June 2, 2008),[3] the PTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences has now supplied an answer to that question: A general purpose computer is not a particular machine, and thus innovative software processes are unpatentable if they are tied only to a general purpose computer.

This has major implications on everyone who has protected, is protecting or will try to protect Intellectual Property, especially software patents:

That stark answer should capture the attention of the many inventors and firms owning, or seeking to own, patents on innovative computer implemented processes, for the PTO’s new interpretation of patentable subject matter provides a clear avenue to reject patent applications and to invalid issued patents on all such innovations without regard to how meritorious or creative the innovation is. To understand the sweeping implications of this new position, we need only to consider how the PTO’s position applies to the patent on Google’s PageRank technology, which is surely one of the most famous and valuable of all modern software patents and which is now almost surely invalid under the agency’s position.

…time to engage the patent lawyers!

ceo

A lot of noise recently, triggered by the recent S3 Outage, on the fragility of Web Services…

And guess what? This is (and will continue to be) a recurring and expected theme on the highly interdependent world of Mashups and services on the web.

When having such dependencies, you need to take the time to understand the robustness of the services/platform that you are depending on, and make sure there is a good Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place. And then, wish for the best, because web services do and will fail on you. So, if you have critical dependencies, you must do infrastructure and capacity planning (see below), and contemplate going with a redundant fail safe approach, but that is going to cost you extra (as in time and money).

Note that Amazon S3 does have what seems a reasonable SLA.

Related to this see:

• Infrastructure and capacity planning
• Should SLAs be extended to Web 2.0?

ceo

Back in March of 2006 I wrote about Neomedia’s patent claims related to computer systems that rely on scanned inputs — they claimed that they owned the IP for all technologies and computer systems that perform processing based on scanning barcodes, 2D codes, words, and whatnot. Then took that one concept and applied for 12 different patents — see Same Book 8 Times, One Concept 12 Patents.

Neomedia used FUD to intimidate other companies and preclude innovation from others.

But thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the U.S. Patent Office Rejected All Ninety Five NeoMedia Patent Claims (The via the Pondering Primate); from the Pondering Primate article:

NeoMedia Technologies, Inc., claimed to own rights to all systems that provide information over computer networks using database-like lookup procedures that rely on scanned inputs, such as a barcode. NeoMedia has used these claims not only to threaten and sue innovators in the mobile information space, but also to intimidate projects focused on increasing awareness among consumers about the social and environmental impact of the products they buy.

It is a very good day for physical to digital worlds connection companies…

ceo

Another report that claims big numbers; this time by Juniper Research — see NFC Mobile Payments to Reach US$75 Billion by 2013 (via Payment News).

2013, or five years from today, seems about right for the NFC sweet spot (or start of).

But to see that happening, it must begin today. It is not until I see the technology gap closing, that I will believe such numbers. Let’s not confuse potential with reality. NFC has huge potential, including beyond payments; the use cases and merits are there, and people will use it.

But the gap is too extreme today. Show me the NFC phones, where are they? There are next to zero NFC-phones in the U.S. — I am not seeing it happening…

The Juniper Research report says (via Payment News):

2009 will see limited numbers of NFC devices shipped (except in the Far East & China region) but the market will begin to ramp up from 2010 onwards and by 2013 20%, or 1 in 5 phones shipped, will possess NFC capability.

Global annual gross transaction value will grow over 5 times between 2011 and 2013.

The top 3 regions (Far East & China, North America and W. Europe) will represent nearly 90% of the $75bn p.a. market (by gross transaction value) by 2013.

Show me the phones!

Believe me, I can’t wait; when the phones come out for real, I will be one of the first ones with a very interesting solution for it…

…in the meantime, we will continue to see trials after trials after trials. It is time to move-on to the next phase of NFC deployment.

ceo

Update Jul-22: Apple Says 25 Million IPhone Apps Downloaded (in 11 days). Wow…

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Apple Inc. (AAPL) said iPhone owners has downloaded 25 million copies of software programs for the phone in about 11 days, which it sees as a significant benefit for future iPhone sales.
William Volk wrote at ForxumOfxord the following:

It took over 70 days for the original iPhone to hit the 1m mark. The 3G did this in 3 days.

iPhone 3G at one million sold and counting, App Store hits 10 million downloads

Even with the glitches with activation (I had to return to the store on Saturday to get the phone due to these issues) it sold 1m.

The bigger news is that the iTunes Apps Store saw 10m downloads over the weekend.

Awesome, 10 million downloads, in just 3 days.

I (and others) knew it all along, and proves the point I we have been making again and again and arguing for a long time: that people WILL download applications, if the problem w/ downloading (i.e. discovery) is solved. (Of course, the app must be useful to begin with) — see iPhone SDK, the App Store, the iPhone on the Enterprise.

And Local applications are not RIP, as many have argued… For those non-believers, here is the proof.

Apple solved it, and everyone is happy… Andriod MUST solve it, if they want to be successful w.r.t. local apps. Java ME doesn’t have a solution to this, and that is a problem. And Mobile Widgets also need a discovery solution. Ease of discovery must always be part of the mobile solution: being it a search box, an icon on the home page of the handset, a mobile widget, or side-loading…

That said, the next level of mobile applications will be based on Web Runtimes (for example, the OMTP Bondi initiative); the hybrid platform that will provide for web-based applications with occasionally connected behavior support and access to the device’s local functions.

We are experiencing a wonderful transformation in a relatively short amount of time, on what mobile applications are and should be. Think about all of this as phases and gaps to deal with during this evolutionary transformation of what the true personal computing platform of the future will be.

Related to this see:

• Jason Delport’s comments
• Apple’s announcement

ceo

NASA has published the remaining shuttle flights manifest. Ten more space shuttle missions before the fleet is decommissioned; that’s it:

The manifest includes one flight to the Hubble Space Telescope, seven assembly flights to the International Space Station, and two station contingency flights, planned to be completed before the end of fiscal year 2010. The agency previously selected Oct. 8 and Nov. 10 as launch dates for Atlantis’ STS-125 mission to service Hubble and Endeavour’s STS-126 / ULF-2 mission to supply the space station and service both Solar Alpha Rotary Joints on the port and starboard end of its truss backbone that supports equipment and solar arrays.

This is emotional for those of us who have worked on such awesome Bird… but it time for the next phase of the space program… If all goes as planned, the future of the U.S. manned space program will be based on the Ares Launch Vehicles and the Orion Crew Vehicles.

…and then, to the Moon!

See NASA Constellation Multimedia.

Godspeed!

ceo

A reminder that next Monday July 14th is our next Austin MobileMonday session.

A very interesting topic, come see Nikunj Mehta, tech lead for Oracle’s AtomDB project, talk about an emergent approach to mobile applications and browser-embedded databases, involving the use of the Atom publishing protocol for application programming as well as data synchronization, and areas of future work in off-line data for Web applications.

This event is sponsored by Oracle.

For more information see the MobileMonday Austin website.

Hope to see you there!

ceo

What began as a colorful Internet fluke has blossomed into a full-fledged political movement - one that Republicans and Democrats alike are reluctantly having to acknowledge.

See The C. Enrique Ortiz Phenomenon:

ceo
(P.S. Thanks to my brother Carlos)

Some videos of the RoboCup Japan Open 2008 competition this past May (via Robot Dreams):

Various Competitions:

Robot Sprints:

Robot Fights:

Have you heard about Bondi? It is OMTP’s initiative to extend the mobile browser to provide AJAX-like capabilities and access to local functionality on the handset.

From the OMTP website:

The OMTP BONDI initiative is addressing the problem that an application written for one phone must be rewritten again and again if it is to work on all phones. This is the mobile platform fragmentation problem. The cost to the mobile industry of this inefficiency is huge. It slows down time to market, limits market size and increases customer confusion; hence impedes uptake of services.

OMTP seeks to remedy this problem by helping to address the way in which the existing web 2.0 environment is moved onto mobile devices. Mobile devices offer new capabilities to web service developers which make them very desirable, but present new security issues. OMTP is defining the key interfaces that enable the mobile web platform to access sensitive functions on the mobile device. OMTP is defining appropriate security that will enable new services and create user trust.

It is very cool to see this initiative happening, as this is in part the result of a study performed earlier this year for the OMTP by Ajit, Tony Fish, and others, including myself, and with input from Industry experts who were interviewed including James Pearce, Barbara Ballard, Tom Hume, Paul Golding, Mike Rowehl, Thomas Landspurg, Jason Delport, Brian Lee, and many others. I think of the study as a success, and a goldmine of captured knowledge, and seeing Bondi is great…

As expected, the top concern with Bondi is security — from the OMTP says mobile Web 2.0 is a beach (The Register) article:

Yesterday saw the first meeting of the Bondi working group, who will be deciding how much freedom is too much for untrusted applications, and how to identify those applications that deserve a little more trust. Apparently digital signatures will be on the agenda, but accompanied by the domain listing approach, where access to the APIs is restricted to scripts loaded from known sites.

So I’m looking forward to see how they will solve that security problem — best answer, let the user decide! Prompt the user for permission, and go…

If this OMTP project is successful, we will be MUCH closer to next level of mobile applications based on Web Runtimes — see Mobile Internet Programming: Browser, Web Runtime, Local-based Applications.

ceo

A great summary of Public Resources about Mobile OSGi (courtesy of Jo Ritter, Mobile OSGi Blog).

ceo