Thoughts on systems, engineering, AI, technology and life.
Today is MobileBeat2009. And congrats to my friend Michael Yuan, who was Mobility Researcher and Lead Developer at eZee Inc. (my previous start-up) and who was invited to present his new start-up company Ringful at the MobileBeat2009 event — see 14 finalists picked for MobileBeat2009 Top Startup Competition. Our apps finalists include two that have … Read more
VentureBeat is looking to recognize Mobile innovation at the second annual MobileBeat Top Startup Competition. Last year the awards went to firms such as AdMob and Loopt. This year the competition shifts to mobile applications and services, with 50 finalists to be determined and a final 14 to present live at MobileBeat on Thursday July … Read more
As some of you may already know, MIDP 3.0 is going public. While smartphones have taken their own route with respect to the runtime environment, I expect feature phones to adopt MIDP 3.0; to be seen is the adoption by device manufacturers. But that said, FYI, the list of new features is very good (and … Read more
Via @hametner, a couple of handset and Mobile Network Operators (MNO) metrics of interest (USA). Top 5 U.S. smartphones sold in Q1 2009 BlackBerry Curve Apple iPhone 3G BlackBerry Storm BlackBerry Pearl T-Mobile G1 Note that 3 out of 5 are BlackBerry handsets, and that 4 out of 5 are Java handsets! RIM seems to … Read more
I’ve been keeping track of a very interesting thread at Forum Oxford (FOROX) on the topic of Android phone dissapointing developers (w.r.t. iPhone), with Jason Delport, Alex Kerr, William Volk (who started the thread) and others adding their different perspectives on the matter. All these guys are mobile experts so what they say resonate with … Read more
A great writeup by Mike Rowehl, Please Don’t Mistake My Apathy For A Lack of Understanding, in response to VentureBeat’s piece iPhone devotion blinds Silicon Valley app developers. Mike, who is a very experienced mobile developer and technologist in general, writes about his apathy for all the companies and people how now seem to “get … Read more
When app stores first came out, I was very excited. Finally, I said, all the right pieces, all together, all correctly placed: the integrated catalog that allows for easy application discovery, the download over the air that works, integrated billing/payment, the ecosystem, the business model, and apps that work. The realization was that app stores … Read more
As you may know, there are rumors of Nokia getting ready to launch their very own app store. This is an interesting (but necessary) move by Nokia, a company that traditionally has been very careful about not “crossing the line” into their customers (i.e. MNO) territory, as crossing such line creates a love/hate relationship with … Read more
The other day Luca Passani sent me an email pointing me to a very important discussion that had been happening at the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group WG. The discussion is around Transcoding of web content and HTTPS -or- justifying breaking HTTPS in the name of transcoding. That same week Dennis Bournique (WAP … Read more
When I started eZee inc, one of my proudest accomplishments was the great R&D/development team I had. And one of the members of that team was Michael Yuan. Enter Ringful… Since then, Michael went on and started Ringful, a mobile mashup company for voice and mobile messaging applications. Ringful is the creator of apps such … Read more