About Mobility

Visit Xen’s Xellular Identity blog for this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists #144. Great set of posts from the mobile blogosphere. Thanks to Xen for including my piece of Mobile Context, Interactions and Data.

Good to see Xen, who has been very busy at work, hosting this week…

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Google Apps for Android, which includes YouTube, Search w/ suggestions, Mail, Calendar, Maps, Contacts and Talk, all seem very well implemented and very well integrated with the web and their corresponding web-based applications:

The Android platform is looking good…

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The Texas Wireless Summit, organized by the Austin Wireless Alliance is in two weeks, October 14-16, 2008.

You can register at http://www.twsummit.com/register/ to attend and interact with industry leaders and learn about the future of the wireless industry.

As a special offer to friends and partners of the Austin Wireless Alliance and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group you are eligible to use code TWS08100 to receive $100 off of the standard admission rate!

The theme of this year’s Summit is “Open” and keynote presentations and panel discussions on the topic will address the shift that the industry is experiencing towards open networks, platforms and operating systems, applications, and new open business models.

In addition, 2008 Texas Wireless Summit will address the critical political and regulatory environment that underpins many of the opportunities and challenges that the industry will face as a result of this shift.

Visit http://www.twsummit.com for more details on the Event Program and Sponsorship Opportunities.

Confirmed Keynotes

• Arun Bhikshesvaran, Vice President Strategy & CTO North America, Ericsson Inc.
• John Donovan, Chief Technology Officer, AT&T
• Dr. Brian L. Evans, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wireless Networking and Communications Group, The University of Texas at Austin
• Dr. Edward Knightly, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University
• Tony Lewis, VP of Open Development, Verizon Wireless
• Mark Louison, President, Nokia Inc.
• Yoram Solomon, Senior Director, Worldwide Standards and Technology Strategy, CTO Office, Wireless Terminals Business Unit, Semiconductor Group, Texas Instruments

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The Skyfire mobile browser is now available in public beta. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should; the browser is pretty neat, is fast, and works great. Currently, the Skyfire browser is only supported in the US on Windows Mobile (5 or 6) and Symbian platforms (Nokia N or E series 3rd edition).

See the Skyfire Open Beta registration page.

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(Disclaimer: I help Skyfire with their product development)

Below is my presentation at Design4Mobile.

The Design4Mobile mini-conference has been packed with great presentations and people; researchers, designers and implementers from around the world, all with great ideas and information to share. And the town of Lawrence KS is a very nice small (university) town that reminds me of Austin…

See Design4Mobile photos at Flickr.

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Dennis Bournique of WapReview wrote a nice piece on Mobile Web applications, where he ponders on the topic after attending both Mobile Web Megatrends and the CTIA Mobile Jam Session.

I agree with most of Dennis’ points. But in the article Dennis mentions two points, from Michael Mace presentation, that are pointed out as necessary for mobile web applications to take off: 1) offline functionality, and 2) access to core phone features like the phone book, calendar, camera and location.

But it is all relative…

There are classes of applications. Many applications are just fine as mobile web always-connected/no need for offline functionality and/or other handset capabilities.

Don’t take me wrong, the above two points are very important and defines the next step on mobile applications (which I call Lightweight mobile apps).

It is clear that less platforms and less fragmentation is a good thing. And that the promise of mobile web as a consistent and centralized platform is great. But for the time being and for a while (OK long time), fragmentation is here to stay: web, local, widgets. So work with the tools available to you today.

If your application is sufficient as a web app, go web. Need more functionality or richness *today*? Go (or add) local. Is the application pure query-response? Go SMS. Is there an exciting web runtime that you care about? Make a widget out of it. But there will always be web vs local apps, and it all depends on what the application needs to deliver, what your customer wants, the use cases, the target users, security, and so on… while trying to minimize development costs.

A point I want to make is the Widget vs. non-widget applications. A widget is really a design pattern. Regardless of authoring (i.e. local, web, etc) a widget by definition is supposed to be a very focused, typically single-tasked application-behavior-and-User Interface; examples are clocks, alarms, weather, search that are easily accessible and visible. Because of today’s approaches to web runtimes (i.e. differences in authoring and packaging, APIs, security and so on) we have many widget runtimes and widgets are downloadable, similar to local applications. It is a phase. But once all this is overcome, there won’t be a difference between a widget and a web application, except for the design pattern mentioned above. Efforts like Google Gears or BONDI will help with this.

My main concern with mobile web applications and widgets and the new web runtime models that will provide access to local functionality is the security and policy models, which I am afraid will be a repeat of local applications models (and related nightmares).

At the MobileWidget Camp Austin the folks from BONDI presented their initiative, and I will say that it looks promising, assuming the network-provider-centric/natural bias of the OMTP won’t become a roadblock; but the guys seem very open-minded, and I didn’t get any indication that will be the case…

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A number of companies have been applying their encryption technology to SMS. One of these companies is Masabi; see Encrypted SMS As a Backup for Mobile Data Applications (Cellular-news).

Is SMS encryption a must have? Do you think users care? Personally, I don’t think so.

The problem is lack of true integration with the native SMS inbox and thus are not transparent enough. These 3rd party SMS encryption solutions work as a separate application, meaning the end-user must invoke a native or Java ME application to send/receive encrypted SMS messages.

One of the issues with encryption is key management. To address this, these 3rd party solutions rely on a server to authenticate and perform some kind of key management; here the server must always be involved in the sending and receiving on the other end (which could be another handset or a server). Some may rely on public-key encryption (digital certificate), or hashing w/ salt, or maybe even exchanging a symmetric key directly. In either case, all those solutions rely on a data connection to a proprietary server for such secure SMS exchanges. Another thing to consider is that some encryption algorithms increases the size of the actual message, and complications may arise (including extra cost) if the resulting ciphertext exceeds 160 characters.

While I am not familiar with how Masabi works, it is my personal opinion that most solutions are not transparent enough and users will not use them, not to mention that the majority of people don’t care about encrypting their text messages.

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The Mobile 2.0 2008 conference has been announced for November 3rd 2008 and the list of confirmed speakers looks great. What makes this event special for me is that it has been more in touch with reality, due to the number of practitioners involved. I hope that such spirit continues. I am planning/hoping to attend.

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EWeek reports that the HTC Dream, the first Android phone, is expected to be launched in New York on Sept. 23 on the T-Mobile network. The article also covers the importance for Google to get it right on the first try, which is why they are deploying at first only on a single network provider, a good idea to have a controlled environment.

I’ve been debating what my next mobile phone will be: an Apple iPhone, a BlackBerry Bold (which also will be available on the last week of September on the AT&T network), or a Google Android phone (T-Mobile at first). The Nokia Tube looks very cool but it won’t be available until next year. It is a pretty big decision as it requires getting into a contract, which I hate, and buying new handsets.

The BlackBerry Bold I like, but so far it seems that I’ve decided to go with the Android Dream cellphone… mainly because I like touch + keyboards, and it is/should be an open mobile (development) platform that offers lots of (new experimentation) possibilities.

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Photos for the MobileWidget Camp Austin event have been uploaded to Flickr and tagged MobileWidgetCampAustin. If you have any photos of your own, please use the aforementioned tag, and thanks to all who have contributed photos so far:

I’m very happy with how the event turned out; this was the first event of this size that I have organized. The speakers and sessions where awesome, the facilities and food and beer were awesome, and everyone had a great time.

Thanks to all our sponsors, and to my co-organizer Dan Appelquist of MobileMonday London and evangelist at Vodafone. And many thanks to the Austin Technology Incubator’s Bart Bohn and Stephany Puno who took care of all the logistical details and helped make this event a reality.

And thanks to all the presenters both companies and individuals, wow, who traveled to Austin and made this event a high-quality mobile technology event. Hats-off to all of you!

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…while at home working this weekend coding away, took a snapshot of my 2nd computer screen. Pretty geeky I guess: 1) the movie War Games, 2) SETI @ Home, 3) Process Explorer:

(Click to enlarge)

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I argue that for mobile interactions such as (smart/2D) barcodes and NFC to really takeoff, they must be “one click away”…

OK, no surprise there.

But what I really mean is that cellphones should have an explicitly designed and easy to reach “interaction” key/button to initiate the desired interactions… Perhaps a key-button to activate NFC and/or the camera. Users can easily activate and search or do appropriate action based on the type of interaction.

The “interaction” key/button… to effective mobile interactions.

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During the 1990s when I used to work on the space program, the US lawmakers (president Reagan and Congress at that time) made the worst decision on the future of the space station: they canceled the USA-space station in favor of an international version of it. Some of the consequences of that decision included: 1) it pushed back the space station by more than a decade (i.e. we still haven’t finished it!), 2) it created dependencies on countries, particularly Russia, 3) it has cost much more to build than it would have if original plans had remained, and 4) it affected (eliminated?) thousands US engineering jobs.

The current administration have made the decision to retire the Space Shuttle by 2011 i.e. *before* the next generation manned spacecraft (Orion/Ares) will be ready, thus, leaving a gap for the US and the US presence in the space station. This is totally stupid — remember, the US has carried the bulk of the cost, work, *risk*, and technology building the space station, including losing crewmen in the process.

Political incompetence and bad decisions is the reason why the future of the USA space program is the private (commercial) sector.

Russia and China and others will push forward… and they should.

Global relationships are important, but business is business and there are things that you can’t just delegate to others especially when we all know the thing call “political climate” is always in a state of flux.

I will say it again, the future of the USA space travel is the private (commercial) sector.

See NASA chief blasts US space policy in leaked email (The Register).

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The first ever MobileWidget Camp, the MobileWidget Camp Austin was a success. Thanks to all the attendees, speakers and sponsors!

I will be posting photos shortly, same with all the results posted notes. Anyone with photos, please post to Flickr. Presentation slides will be posted to Slideshare. Please tag all event-related stuff with tag “MobileWidgetCampAustin”.

Again, thanks to everyone for helping make this mini-conference a total success…

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Below are Rudy De Waele (m-trends.org) MobileMonday Amsterdam presentation on “15 Tips To Create Value For Mobile”… as always, great content: